Doesn’t hurt me, thank god.

RJN, thank you for sharing this. I can’t imagine that it’s easy to write, let alone share.

I am saying this because it occurred to me while thinking about people’s responses to Wicked Child’s comments that one of the reasons I was suspicious of Vanessa was that I felt manipulated by the way she told me what happened, as if she were trying to trap me in guilt. I am not accusing her now of being manipulative–though for a long time I did. I am simply describing how the way she told me made me feel. It’s true she said she didn’t hold me responsible; yet she also made it clear that this was something I did to her, something that I, not she, (not we) was reponsible for, even though she was willing to absolve me of that reponsibility. It was, suddenly, as if I had initiated the sex we had, as if the whole thing had been my idea.

Again, I am not trying to blame her for how she told me, even if she said it that way with the explicit intent of trying to absolve herself retroactively of responsibility and imprisoning me in a kind of perpetual guilt. She had after all almost bled to death; any guilt or discomfort I might have felt after the fact pales in comparison to that. But the way she told me did leave me feeling manipulated, and I think it’s interesting how easily we fall into the male/subject female/object formulation in thinking about something like what I wrote about in this post.

Thanks for the citation; it never occurred to me to try to work into this essay actual medical information. It’s something to ponder if I ever edit this piece again. One quibble: I do not think I ever make the point in the essay that what happened to Vanessa is not-infrequent.

Everyone else:

Thanks for your supportive words.

Also, take into consideration that Richard is not a woman and can’t imagine our nerve endings–the inner walls of the vagina don’t actually feel that much (hello, tampons!), it’s the clitoris where all the stimulation usually takes place. Plus, you’re having sex. He could be slowly wittling away into the walls of her vagina, yes, but that could be gradual, with time for an orgasm to build in Vanessa. Pleasure masks pain. She probably did not show any indications of pain, outside the normal discomfort of intercourse. Maybe right after she had sex, Vanessa also wondered if she was having her period–before being onset with what I imagine would feel like the worst case of cramps ever.

It probably would feel seem amazing to somebody with a penis. There probably would be an “Are you kidding? Seriously?” reaction to something like that, because men feel so much with their penis. I would wonder if she was lying too. But I wouldn’t be able to reason why somebody would lie about that. Richard is not a monster, but a human being, who is far from omniscient. Give him a break for feeling guilty.

Wicked Child: You don’t even consider how painful sex is for women

I think your partner is Doing It Wrong.

This is doubly true because he addresses nearly everything from your latest comment in his post, including your contention that he “decided that she was lying about it,” which by my reading he manifestly did not.

—Myca

Thene: What happened to you with Vanessa happened to a friend of mine about a year ago; they’re still together, because they love each other, but from what he’s said their sex life is yet to fully recover.

What on earth did happen to Vanessa and to this friend of yours? I’ve never heard of such a thing, and from what I’ve read here, I’m grotesquely remiss in my knowledge.

And sheesh, Richard Jeffrey Newman, if you’re going to drop the bomb that women are not-infrequently so fragile that non-painful sex might just cause them to up and croak in the middle of the ensuing night, could you at least provide a bit more information about this? I’ve found a few journal articles, but nothing for a lay audience.

I’m now wondering how common the problem is, and whether your med student friend’s reaction - that it was unlikely, that she might be lying about her body - is also common. Men accusing women of lying about things their bodies’ experience during sex, and then using privileged positions to make ‘She’s Lying’ be canonical truth, isn’t too rare; the other instance I’m thinking of atm is the BBFC’s declaration that female ejaculation doesn’t exist, couldn’t possibly exist, and is thus obscene and can’t be shown on film.

Then there’s the more common, less life-threatening, but painful instances of broken frenulums during oral sex. I bet everyone knows a few people who’ve done that. Seems like it gets treated as an embarrassing joke, at least once the wound has healed. Medical professionals take it in their stride. Can it happen to people who perform cunnilingus, or is it specific to fellatio? In other words, is the penis uniquely ‘dangerous’ to the other sexual body?

Thank you again for posting the series. It’s got layer upon layer of fascinating thoughts.

I was writing specifically about me, not trying to make any grand generalizations, but reading that passage over, I think it would have been more accurate for me to have written, “and we are going to have intercourse,” because I was thinking specifically of genital intercourse and not any of the other various ways that heterosexual couples can, as you rightly point out, fuck. I got carried away by my own rhetoric. Thanks for pointing it out to me. I will edit it as soon as I get the chance.

Huh? Are you saying this at a level of practice (i.e. this is always the way you choose to do it) or at a level of social metaphor (i.e. this is how sex between men and women is always described and contextualized by the dominant notion of “fucking”) or what? It’s certainly not literally true, in any number of ways, even without anything but bodies involved, and I know plenty of heterosexual couples who wouldn’t even consider that “normal sex” for them.

Thene: So you are the second person to tell me that what happened with me and Vanessa has happened to others. Even though I have not stressed about this for a lot of years, it is nonetheless “good” (if I can use that word here” to know.

I’m wary of ’sex is already inside the body’ talk because it’s at least rubbing conceptual shoulders with ’sex is inside a WOMAN’S body and men have to go pry it out, and once you’ve got it out of her she’s never the same again’. I understand that that’s not what you’re saying, but I fear the two are related.