French women are fed up with conservatism in sex. ‘Penetration is a form of male control over women’
Jüne
She was bored in bed, even though she liked sex. She even watched porn and considered herself liberated. But she felt weary. It’s been the same over and over again for years, even though the partners have changed. Foreplay, intercourse, ejaculation. The scenario kept repeating itself. If oral sex occurred, it was only to prepare the ‘ground’ for penetration. After intercourse – bang! – inhale, orgasm, climax, exhale. And that’s that. Game over, we go to sleep.
Jüne Plã felt like she was having endless déjà vu. She was missing something. It wasn’t about orgasms, because she was having some, although her vagina sometimes hurt. She didn’t know why, she thought there was probably something wrong with her. She suggested spicing the sex up to her partners, but it wasn’t easy to wean them away from the fixed menu: appetiser, main course, dessert. ‘It’s like eating the same dish every day’, Jüne thought. ‘Why are we creative in the kitchen but not in bed?’.
‘I guess that’s normal’, she answered for herself. No one tells us how to make love differently. No one gives us advice or shows us what and where to put in differently, where to lick or press. The only free documentation are porn films that are also based on the same pattern. There’s a bit of action at the beginning, two women by the pool, a man comes to fix the sink, they seduce him, invite him into the room – and there it is again: foreplay, intercourse, ejaculation. Women scream because they (pretend to) come simultaneously with men. ‘Penises dominate vulvas in porn films and we imitate it, pathetic fools’, Plã says. ‘Penetration is so important that something like “foreplay” was even invented’. There’s foreplay, and then there’s sex – real sex. Everything happens fast. Fast because I have to get back to work, fast because I’m hungry, fast, fast, fast.
STOP.
Several years and thousands of experiments later, Jüne Plã has become a symbol of the ongoing sexual revolution in France. For the first time it is a revolution of women.
Maïa
In 2020, a column appeared on the front page of the French daily newspaper ‘Le Monde’ the title of which stunned a lot of people. They hid the newspaper when on the metro so as not to be seen reading it. Usually in the newspaper you can read about parliamentary sessions, disasters, strikes, pensions, taxes, trials. Expert political and economic analysis dominates.
Maïa Mazaurette, a journalist and author of many award-winning books, wrote in strong words: ‘We have known for decades that two-thirds of women do not reach orgasm through vaginal penetration alone. We also know that their bodies are not dysfunctional: if the vagina were as sensitive as the clitoris, childbirth would be even more painful. Women would refuse to get pregnant, humanity would disappear. Unfortunately, our sexual culture is unforgiving. It continually develops strategies to disregard the anatomical realities of most women... to continue to favour penetration’.
Martin
He remembers how shocked he was when his friend uttered those strange sentences: ‘While we’re on the subject of sex, I’ll tell you honestly that I don’t like penetration. I would have had just as much pleasure without it. Maybe even more’. It hadn’t occurred to him that it was possible not to like it. In American films, women scream in pleasure as men insert their penises into their vaginas and press them against the wall.
Martin Page is a writer, everything incomprehensible makes him curious and he decided to ask more people about it. He published an ad on the internet: ‘If you have anything to say about penetration, write to me’.
The reaction of French men and women exceeded all his expectations.
INTERCOURSE
Jüne
920,000 followers on Instagram in two years. The book topped the bestseller lists worldwide. Translations into more than 15 languages (the Polish version will be available soon). ‘Jouissance Club’, or freely translated ‘Pleasure Club’, is bought by women for women, women for men, sisters for sisters.
It’s a book that changes the sexual mores in France, which despite the international stereotype of ‘liberté à la française’ is still very conservative, especially towards women.
Plã is a graphic designer and started drawing what could be done in bed instead of penetration.
She had sex and listened to her friends, although talking about sex was not so easy. France is a prudish country according to her. ‘Hardly anyone walks naked around the house. Friends are ashamed to undress or pee in front of each other’, says Plã. ‘We talk about sex, but we don’t tell each other the details because that’s the so-called intimate life of the relationship. It’s not appropriate. And certainly only few admit that they don’t have orgasms. After all, it would mean that something is wrong with their partners and women cover for men. We think it’s our fault, and it can be swept under the rug. We clench our teeth.
But in the past few years, women have started to speak out: we don’t feel good in bed’. When Plã asked people following her on Instagram how many of them have orgasms and what they are like, the results surprised her: out of 20,000 female respondents, only 13% said they climax during penetration. 87% reach orgasm through clitoral stimulation. Lesbians experience much more pleasure from sex than women in heterosexual relationships. ‘The division between vaginal and clitoral orgasm is a myth. All women climax thanks to the clitoris, through its external or internal stimulation’, Plã explains.
In the book, she has drawn out the female and male genitals, and encourages everyone to first look at their vulvas or penises in the mirror before going to bed with their partner again, because many of us don’t know our own bodies. Our own anatomy can be a big surprise especially for women. No wonder, since even in French school textbooks the clitoris was not marked until 2017. It disappeared from dictionaries for a very long time, mainly due to Freud’s research according to which adult women should restrain their lusts connected with this organ and develop the desire for penetration.
Laura
A couple comes in and the guy says: ‘I brought my wife because she doesn’t feel like making love to me. Please help her. Maybe she needs medicine?’.
That’s what Laura Beltran, a psychologist and sexologist, sometimes hears. The couple leaves with a prescription: no sex for three weeks. During this time she recommends to them: massages, kisses, stroking, dancing, lying naked and spooning. ‘It starts with women getting bored during sex, but they don’t tell their partner because they don’t want to hurt him. Sometimes they make excuses with headaches, but sometimes they give up. They’re thinking about doing laundry and making sandwiches for the kids for school, pretending they feel good so the man will just reach orgasm as quickly as possible and go to bed. The problem has been solved. Except that he wants to make love again three days later. Conflict ensues, and over time desire is extinguished on both sides.
Beltran’s 20-year-old patients are more liberated than their 40-year-old counterparts. But the goal is still to satisfy the man. Younger women sleep with men and women, gender doesn’t matter much to them. The older ones admit in the privacy of the office that they have no desire for penetration. They avoid even the slightest tenderness on the part of their partner, for fear that it could lead only to one thing – ejaculation. And they would like to be petted, stroked on the back, kissed. That would be enough for them.
‘Women are often embarrassed to talk about their needs. Maybe they don’t even know them, the masturbation taboo is still strong, and vibrators are hidden deep in closets. But something is slowly changing. Thanks to social media and women like Jüne Plã, my patients finally have a guide to their own sexual needs. They choose a page that interests them and test the proposal shown in the drawing with their partner. We should remember, however, that this technical side of sexuality is only one facet of it. To feel good in bed, it is best to also use sensuality, eroticism and tenderness. Compliment each other, kiss often. Allowing the partner to undress us. Find time – because that’s the key word – to play, to fantasise. This will make communication in a couple easier and, for example, giving up penetration for a while or at least occasionally will be possible’.
Martin
He collected the stories in a small book called ‘Au-delà de la pénétration’ (freely translated: ‘more than penetration’). No one wanted to publish it because editors were afraid even of the title, so he and his wife published two thousand copies on their own. They sold out in a few weeks and the book has been consistently on the best-selling sex books lists ever since.
‘A lot of people have written to me, both men and women. Women said that they often experience painful intercourse because they were molested, because they have an infection or their vagina has not yet healed after childbirth, but their partners still want to penetrate them. Other women just don’t get any particular pleasure from penetration. Nothing hurts them, they’re not scared, but they’re not particularly interested in it. They would prefer oral sex, penetration with fingers or fondling. Of course, a whole lot of women love sex with penetration and that variety is great’, Martin says. One woman also pointed out to him that penetration can be costly for women. After all, you have to take precautions: take hormonal pills (which can increase the risk of deep vein thrombosis), pay for visits to the gynaecologist who inserts the IUD (another task on the calendar) or be prepared for a broken condom and taking the morning-after pill.
Page received quite a few abusive e-mails, mostly from men who called him a ‘faggot’. But in the last two years he’s had no single day without a letter in which someone recounts their experience of penetration – bad, good or neutral.
‘Sexuality cannot be reduced to a single organ and gesture. It can take many forms, it should not be limited to “either this or nothing”. It’s sad to think that penetration is mandatory, like a tradition that cements a relationship’.
Page also came across similar research as Plã.
Thanks to Shere Hite’s research, it was already known in 1976 that 30% of women reach orgasm through the vaginal route. In 2002, the study was repeated on a larger scale. The conclusion was one and still the same: the female orgasm is essentially clitoral.
Men need to learn and act on this. Hite revealed this in her report a long time ago, yet 40 years later female sexuality is often described as a mirror of male sexuality – women should feel pleasure primarily from the forward-backward movement of the penis, not from clitoral stimulation.
‘Imagine what would happen if only a third of men achieved orgasm through penetration. Would this practice be popular? I think it would be the exact opposite: fondling and oral sex would be the norm. We certainly wouldn’t think that 75% of men have a problem with the quality of their orgasms. This is evidence that penetration is another form of male control over women. Women who do not come during penetration aren’t sick, aren’t crazy, they aren’t insensitive or less mature. They shouldn’t go to a doctor with it. If we men finally let them off the hook, maybe they will start to feel their sexuality fully and have more pleasure’.
Author: Anna Pamuła
Illustrated by: Marta Frej
The text was published in „Wysokie Obcasy” a magazine of „Gazeta Wyborcza” on 11 December 2021
