Zeitgeist Zenpuss!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/nov/20/yvonne-roberts-over-60s-divorce
This is an article in the newspaper today, and there was me writing about the very subject yesterday.
.............................................................................
A footnote: Angie Watts/Anita Dobson performed last night but I couldn't bring myself to vote for her because she reminded me of one of the women who have made my life such a misery over the last six months.
I love older women and I totally want them to be liberated and free, even free to fuck the person that I thought cared for me more than anyone else. I just wish they would do all their fucking and thinking honestly and openly with due regard for my relationship. But no, none of them could be bothered to do that.
See Zakelius.
But good luck to them anyway. I hope they are all enjoying themselves as I hope these silver separators in the making find their way in the world too.
Sunday 20 November 2011
The Female Orgasm
The Female Orgasm
Back in the news this week is the scientific approach to
the female orgasm.
It appears that somebody has finally decided to look at
how the brain functions during orgasm. It surprises me that it has taken this
long to state the bleeding obvious as far as arousal and blood rushing to the
brain. Haven’t we always said that the brain is probably the largest and even
the most important organ in the whole game of love-making?
"The general aim of this research is to understand how the orgasm builds up from genital stimulation and what parts of the brain become recruited and finally build up into an orgasm," said Prof Komisaruk, who presented the work at the Society for Neuroscience annual meeting in Washington DC on Monday. The work has yet to be published in a peer-reviewed journal.
As the animation plays, activity first builds up in the genital area of the sensory cortex, a response to being touched in that region. Activity then spreads to the limbic system, a collection of brain structures involved in emotions and long-term memory.
As the orgasm arrives, activity shoots up in two parts of the brain called the cerebellum and the frontal cortex, perhaps because of greater muscle tension. During orgasm, activity reaches a peak in the hypothalamus, which releases a chemical called oxytocin that causes pleasurable sensations and stimulates the uterus to contract. Activity also peaks in the nucleus accumbens, an area linked to reward and pleasure.
After orgasm, the activity in all these regions gradually calms down.
Well, I could have told them that without being bungled
into an MRI machine – apart from the bit which says these regions gradually
calm down. It takes me quite some time to ‘calm down’ after an orgasm and I
think my brain is still doing somersaults for some considerable time after my
first orgasm of the day.
Of course the thing that really interests me is the
comments made about such a study. There’s the people who moan that we are
wasting time in finding out about the female orgasm and why can we not
concentrate on the man for a change (!). Then there are the oh so not witty
responses about the need for glasses of wine and a fag as part of the female
orgasm. I mean how could a woman possibly climax without one of those drugs?
Then there are thoughtful comments in praise of the study
with the subtle suggestion that if we finally get this right, then sex for men
and women could be vastly improved.
Women have suppressed their sexuality for years due to a
misogynist society and an economic determinant of where a woman’s supposed best
interests lie. Men did not want women to enjoy sex in case they bogged off and
did it with someone else. It suited everyone’s needs, apparently even women’s,
to ignore their sexuality and get on with being the less dominant person in a
family.
I think a change is in the air and it is good that these
scientific tests are taking place so that some credence and value is rightly
apportioned to female sexuality.
However, isn’t it sad that we need a scientific study
such as this to state the bleeding obvious?
Why is it that we rely so heavily on academia when we
should really be concentrating on getting on and enjoying the entire
experience, together, exploring our sexual potential with one another.
And of course, within the entire article there is no
mention of female ejaculation.
As far as I am concerned, I would have thought we had
moved on from whether females have orgasms and what happens to the brain when
they do. Shock horror, there is increased blood action and oxytocin is
released!
But who has done a study into what female ejaculation is,
how it happens and why certain women and more gloriously susceptible to most
natural of bodily functions?
I actually want to know why I gush, what I am gushing and
how come I can continue to pour stuff out of my body even when I have soaked a
towel and a duvet or two. I want to know these things.
And I want to know them now.
I want to know whether there is any link between female
ejaculation and fertility. I want to know why we have been forced to suppress
this essential part of our sexuality and I want to know it now.
I finish with a response from one commentator on the
article.
Interesting, forthright and I love the thing about faking
orgasms.
Female orgasms happen in exactly the same way as male ones; keep rubbing it the right way and eventually you'll get there. Just like male orgasms, in the final few stages, for the final few strokes, it's basically (mutual) masturbation (just like with a penis). In fact, if you look at it under a microscope the clitoris is shaped just like a tiny penis, complete with a perfectly shaped glans.
The reason female orgasms have become so 'complicated', is because of the hangover from the punative taboos around female sexuality; men wanted their woman to stay loyal to them, not go off and and have sex (and breed) with other men, so the best way to achieve this was by making sure women didn't enjoy sex, by punishing and ostracising the ones that did, or who were promiscuous. In some parts of the world they even cut the clitoris off adolescent girls to ensure they don't have an orgasm and therefore are more likely to stay loyal to their husbands. In Victorian England too, the 'little operation' (a clitorectomy) was prescribed by doctors to wives who were regarded as 'hysterical', one of the 'symptoms' being a woman becoming 'over excited' during sexual intercourse.
Today things have changed, but the 'slag' stigma still exists, and inhibits a lot of women from really letting themselves enjoy sex (and have an orgasm) because they might start wanting it with lots of different people, and they might be called a 'slag' and subsequently treated as inferior.
Many women still don't have orgasms during sex, or even through masturbation, partly because women are still governed by the need to behave in a feminine and 'pretty way, and orgasms require one to push quite hard, and not necessarily be particularly 'feminine'. Also, mass media still for the most part tends to show men 'giving' a woman an orgasm through penetrative sex, and this inhibits women (and men too) from doing what feels good & works naturally, making them think they have to do it in a certain way, otherwise they will be thought of as 'weird' or not 'feminine' or 'manly' enough.
For all the men out there, if you really want a woman to have an orgasm, all you really have to do is make sure she doesn't feel inhibited or self-conscious when she's in bed with you, by making her feel good about herself, her body, and that anything she needs to do to come, or needs you to do to get help her come is fine with you. Non- judgemental.
For all the women out there - DO NOT FAKE IT! EVER! HOW ELSE ARE THEY GOING TO LEARN WHAT A FEMALE ORGASM REALLY LOOKS & SOUNDS LIKE?! If you really can't come, (but usually can) it's probably tiredness, or too much to drink, or anxiety etc...men understand this - these are the things that stop them having orgasms too.
Though searching for a clitoris using a microscope, and discovering it is penis shaped?
Oh dear!
Saturday 19 November 2011
Older Women
Before I go any further, I want to make it perfectly
clear that I contentedly count myself as one of women in the title of this
piece. I may not be a Granny or have to dye my hair to eradicate the greyness
but it is only a matter of time, (well the hair dying at least).
I am the right or wrong side of fifty, depending on your
perspective, but I am certainly a mature woman – well at least most of the
time.
Older women seem to be in the news at the moment. Older
women, apparently include women from the age of 31 years old upwards. From where
I am standing, I wouldn’t call a 31 year old woman an “old woman” but I suppose
if you are having a relationship with a 17 year old, then you could certainly
be described as being older.
The other day, I was reading something on the Yahoo
website about how some famous Z-lister was “dating” another wannabee celebrity.
There was total outcry because she was 31 and he was 17.
I’ve now found the link on the Daily Mail website and
have discovered that this woman has had death threats.
I’m not going to go into the age-old debacle of the
hypocrisy involved here, in so far that if the age of the genders in this case
were transferred, people would find it less problematic. It is a well-known
fact that a younger woman having sexual relationships with an older man is far
more socially acceptable than the other way around. Personally, and this really
is a personal view, I would be concerned with anyone in their thirties having
sex with someone who may not be emotionally mature and who has only just passed
the age of consent.
But then again, when are we emotionally mature enough to
cope with the complexities of sex?
I’d also like to point out that the age difference is not
an issue here. It is the age of the youngest person involved. For instance,
Catherine Zeta Jones is decades younger than her partner but she did not jump
into a sexual relationship with him when she was still of school age.
And even then, there are times when it is perfectly acceptable.
At that age I was gagging for sex with an older bloke and I think I had the
emotional maturity to have happily been fucked to pieces by this gorgeous one.
Ah, if only.
Diane Keaton was on Woman’s Hour this week. At the age of
65, as a successful film actor, she has had opportunities galore in her life;
opportunities that most of us can only begin to imagine, and yet, half way
through the interview she stated that she had many regrets, one of which was
that she had been too cautious in her previous decades.
I don’t want to wake up at the age of 65 and regret the
fact that I did not seize the moment when the moment arose. I do not want to
wake up in years to come and wish I had taken the opportunity to do the things
that I wanted to do. I do not want to wake up in decades to come and feel
remorseful that I didn’t experience lots of sensational sexual experiences
throughout my life.
I spent years not understanding, valuing or expressing my
sexuality and now that I have discovered all the joys of sex, I’ll be damned if
I am going to put a stopper in my delightfully spunky body now.
I want to spray my stuff all over the place. I want to be
filmed having sex with myself and others and I want to be free to be sexually
proud with whoever chooses to enjoy my sexuality.
This brings me onto another issue that was discussed
recently with a group of friends.
Again, I’m back to the glorious Daily Mail.
This article points out that there are a growing number
of “silver separations” whereby people arrive at an age of retirement only to
discover (or finally acknowledge) that they have nothing in common with their
lifelong partner. They may have been contented and have even survived the empty
nest syndrome when their children fled from the family home, but then, all of a
sudden, they find that they simply have nothing to say or no desire to do
anything with their partner.
The divorce rate for these former Baby Boomers has
escalated dramatically.
And I really hope that part of this is down to the
empowerment of women. I really hope that there are some people who, like Diane
Keaton, wake up one day and say, “I am in my 60s. I have regrets but actually
there is still plenty of life ahead of me and I am damn well going to get out
there and enjoy it”.
Sexual freedom is vital. It is empowering and liberating,
and if, at the age of sixty you suddenly feel as though you want something
different then why shouldn’t you do it? IF your partner is not offering you
what you want, then surely you have an entitlement to look elsewhere. Even if
you partner is giving you everything you need, there may still be a desire to
feel the liberation of another body in your bed.
Circumstances vary from person to person and relationship
to relationship but the issue remains; nobody owns anybody and if it takes
almost a lifetime to realise that, then so be it.
But there is a problem.
Google “STI rise in older people” and you will find that
this is a world-wide problem, well at least in the western world. Americans,
Canadians, Brits and Ozzies have all found that there has been a significant
increase in the number of cases of STIs in the over 55s. Clearly, it is not
coincidence that this is happening simultaneously with the rise in the over 55
divorce rate.
People suddenly free and expressing their sexuality for
the first time in years may suddenly feel as though nothing in the world can
prevent them from enjoying themselves, right up to the point when they contract
the Clap.
It can be an extremely difficult, embarrassing discovery
and unnecessary shame occurs.
With the concerns of pregnancy averted by the menstrual
nightmare clocking off, women particularly are in danger of making assumptions
that they are safe when it comes to sex. I can totally understand this. The
total liberation of knowing that you cannot accidentally conceive must
certainly relieve a nagging issue in the middle of sex. It is also reported
that with an increase in the use of the little blue pill, more older men are
thankfully enjoying sex more frequently but once more, in their elation, they
are sometimes forgetting that it is not all about being hot and horny.
Sometimes, a little care and consideration is required too.
I am honestly not trying to be negative in all of this. I
want women and men to thoroughly enjoy their sexuality. I am an advocate of
people of all ages enjoying sex. I am damn sure that I want to be enjoying sex
as a sexagenarian – lexicographically it seems rather befitting.
Older people MUST enjoy sex and lots of it.
And talking of older women, let’s just celebrate the fact
that finally we can look forward to a life of liberation and an enjoyment of
our sexuality.
Our world is changing and our sexuality with it.
Last night, I caught a small amount of the Children in
Need programme on the television. There was a Strictly Come Dancing session
with four newsreaders (all of them over 40 years of age).
Whether you are a fan of this genre or not, I have to say
that they all looked bloody good. Susannah Reid, who I confess to having a huge
crush on, looked completely gorgeous but the others too showed how to be an older
woman oozing with sexuality and confidence.
The routine culminated with Angela Rippon, aged 66,
appearing from behind the newsdesk just as she had done decades before on the
Morecambe and Wise show, still managing to kick her legs in a full air splits!
Amazing!
Good on them!
Older women, however old they are, are out there and
enjoying their sexuality, and I am proud to think of myself as one of them.
On a final note about older women in the news, I return
to the BBCs Saturday bonanza programme.
At present, Anita Dobson, she of Angie fame in
Eastenders, is currently strutting her stuff on “Strictly Come Dancing”. This
week, she was in the news and was also on “Woman’s Hour”. There was a slight
outcry in the dancing quarters because she apparently performed a brilliant
dance last week, scoring an exceptionally high mark from the judges only to
find herself in the bottom two at the end of the evening.
Why? Well the only possibility is due to her age. Despite
her clear ability and her absolute passion for dancing, she found herself without
the support of the public, and I can only, assume as did the media this week,
that this was all due to her age.
Older women are not deemed to be as exciting and invigorating
as the younger type.
I’m not an avid fan of this programme but I might just
watch tonight and vote for Anita just to support the liberation and the
sexuality of the older woman.
Life begins at 40, 50, 60 or even further along than that
if you explore and embrace your passions, particularly if that passion is for
sex.
Here’s to the older woman and her opportunities in life
so that nobody in the future wakes up at the age of 65 and says, “I wish.....”
Monday 7 November 2011
Girls Just Wanna Have Fun
It was the mid eighties. I was bored. I’d been dumped by
an extremely good looking bloke for a relatively plain looking stick insect.
The fact that she was icy, upper middle-class, soulless and condescending
somehow made matters worse.
I didn’t actually want to be with the bloke in question.
He was a bit of a twat, if I am honest. He was a public school moron with the
politics to accompany the silver spoon that had been left in his mouth.
This new girlfriend of his was far more in tune with him,
although she had no sense of humour whatsoever, and she wore pearls! I’ve not
got anything particularly against pearls but on a 22year old, they just seem
rather misplaced, or certainly did at the time.
We all went out one evening, a whole load of us hitting
the town in the monstrous way that students do. I’d spent most of my evening
with a group of male friends and had been hopelessly hit on by this one lad
with the most enormous mouth. I mean, literally. It was the size of Julia
Roberts’s with an additional pump of Botox, probably before Botox had even been
invented.
He had wavy hair, decent looking eyes and that was about
it.
He was deeply unintelligent.
But I was bored and I was pissed off at seeing Little
Miss Perfect and the moronic one. I didn’t like the way that she was looking at
me. What precisely had she got that I hadn’t apart from a cold and calculating
manner?
What she had in abundance was “class” and money and
therefore I was redundant, though I am obviously not so full of myself that I
did not recognise there was much more to it than that. Some people are just
suited to one another, and these two fitted together perfectly.
They got married in the end.
And probably got divorced too.
Anyway, Botox features wouldn’t leave me alone.
I was bored. So when he sat down next to me on the bus
home, I let him slide his fingers all over my legs. I let him brush his hands
over my breasts as he kissed me, and I decided that I was going to fuck him
that night, not because I was particularly attracted to him but because I just
fancied doing something outlandish. And of course, there was something to prove
to the beautiful ex.
I had my fair amount of fucks whilst at university but
had never had a one-night stand before.
As the bus approached my stop, he followed me off the
bus, miles away from his own house.
I let him.
I let myself into the house, walked straight up to the
bedroom and got fucked.
We fucked quickly and immediately, and then we clambered
into bed where he fucked me again. It was raw, unsensual but quite thrilling.
He had a decent cock and I remember getting rather aroused, not by the bloke
but by the whole raunchy situation. I knew that I had no intention of seeing
him again, and prayed that the dimwit wouldn’t fall for me.
In the morning, he left.
I met him at lunch time where he explained to me that he
had a girlfriend and was going to be engaged to be married within the year. I
didn’t have the heart to tell him that I was not exactly heartbroken at this
news. She was welcome to his rubbery lips and his tailored manner.
I was out of there!
For my own confidence though, I just wish I had been
assertive enough to tell him this rather than allow him to think he was giving
me the brush-off.
But bizarrely, the whole experience was wonderfully
empowering. I hadn’t deliberately dressed myself up that evening in order to
get laid, but as soon as this guy started on me, I just thought to myself, “Why
not?”
I was a relatively decent looking girl. I hadn’t had sex
for nearly a month and in those days, before I rediscovered celibacy or a
certainly a lack of interest in sex, I was rather desperate for a decent bit of
cock.
It wasn’t a big deal.
On Friday night, I was out in town once more; a different
town and different circumstances. I was with a load of girlfriends, the
majority of whom were in a stable relationship, or certainly ones of longevity.
Nobody had dressed to flirt – after all, apparently middle aged or older women
of a certain standing don’t do that sort of thing. Certainly nobody was out to
get hold of a man and have their brains fucked out for the sake of it, not even
me!
But I was surrounded by others with a different story to
tell, not part of my group, but certainly dressed to devour.
Ask teenager girls what they aspire to in life and some
respond with the most horrific of statements; they want to be a WAG.
All they want is to go out into the city, meet up with a
wannabee or established footballer, stick their fannies in their faces and end
up, a few months down the line, as the next Cheryl Cole. I shudder to myself at
their lack of self-worth; not merely for their weird aspiration but because
they feel a need to define themselves by a man. No woman should do that and it
is tragic that we are still in a situation when this happens.
However, on this Friday night, there may not have been
the would-be WAGs wandering around the mild autumn streets, only groups of
women with various reasons as to why they were dressed or semi-dressed up to
the three times threes.
Alert: gross stereotyping coming on.
You’ve all seen them, pottering around on their stiletto heels,
carrying the smallest little clutch bag containing keys and condoms, with their
Facebook pouts at the ready.
They collect or mutate together into congealed
conformity; all long hair, short skirts, skimpy tops, fake tans and a sense of
purpose, clothed in a manner that pays no heed to the seasonal variation of our
climate.
But I must stop this stereotyping at once. There are also
the women who group together and do not tart themselves up to the eyeballs.
They are out in the late autumn breeziness with a far more casual appearance;
free to choose what they want to wear, perhaps holding a can or two of lager in
hand, dying on the spot to be compared with the prospective WAGs.
The night is full of these groups of women. They are
merry and alive and enjoying life, I think.
But we don’t know anything about them, about their lives,
their dreams, their hopes and yet we start to make assumptions according to
what they are wearing and indeed the fact that they are gathered together as a
group.
And the first assumption is that they are out to find a
man!
That is how conditioned we all are.
There must be a reason why they are dressed in a certain
way or giggling profusely. Surely there is only one reason why these girls stay
together; safety in numbers until they can shed their unity to subdivide.
Our fiendish automatic assumption, even the enlightened amongst
us, is that they are officially on the pull.
But it is not that simple and who are we to imagine as such.
And isn’t it tragic that we cannot instantly consider another reason why these
women are out and about in the early hours of the morning; that they are just
out to have fun.
As I am wandering through the night and journeying with
them, I play a little game, I imagine where they have come from, what they are
doing, what they hope to achieve in their evening and indeed their lives.
And I look at them and see a little of the adventures
that I had when I was their age, or certainly the adventures that I would have
liked, for my life was relatively sheltered.
Let’s take a quick look at a group of women then.
There’s the one who really does want to be a WAG: the
exhibitionist who is the first on the dance floor, or the one who surreptitiously
winds herself on the bar in the hope that a wealthy passer-by will grab her
attention, or vice versa.
Then there is another who loves her evenings out with her
girls but would like an alternative too. She is a little more demure than the
previous girl but what she wants more than anything is a man; a boyfriend,
someone to share some time with, almost irrespective of whether there is any
true compatibility. The coupling is more important to them than the connection.
Although there is generalisation here, there is an
element of truth.
Who else is there within this group of young women? Do
they all have the same purpose in life?
Perhaps, amongst them, there are those who just want to
be out with their friends, having fun, dancing, drinking, revelling in the joy
of female company, not in a sexual way.
There is much to be said for groups!
There is much to be said for having a close-knit group of
friends with whom to share a meal or a couple of drinks, and once more, just
because they are a group of young women, rather than the group of women of my
age, we should not assume that they are all desperate for a man to satisfy
their every need. Sadly, as I said, that is precisely what we do.
“Girls just wanna have fun” cried Cyndi Lauper, and that
is absolutely right. So shouldn’t we let them do precisely that?
Or perhaps there is the young woman who is brave enough
to admit, like I did decades before, that they just fancy a fuck.
Have times really changed?
When I see these women, I actually dance in delight at their liberation and their opportunity. It may not be what the feminists strove for but I love the fact that there are more women out there taking power for themselves.
I did it one night, once. I never kissed a bloke without a
serious amount of flirtatious foreplay that would take place, sometimes over a
period of months. Frequently the flirtatious foreplay was so subtle I didn’t
even know I was engaging in such a process.
Nowadays it does feel as though young women do not have
such reticence. If they want something they go for it.
I watch a group in a bar; giggling and chatting, moving
their eyes around the room. I pass them as I go to get the next bottle of wine
for the muttons shying away in the corner.
All too soon, the force of the group of collective women
disperses. They are gradually dissipating from the whole to the fractions, and
the mathematical breakdown soon becomes multiples of two, with a few odd ones
left out of the equation.
There’s safety in numbers, they said. But now there are
only two. And that causes problems. The “one’s” left out feel periphery. The
ones who thought they might find the love of their lives are disappointed but
the ones who have caught the eye of a prospective snogger or fucker are
oblivious in an instant to the needs of their friends.
And all because..........
Why do we have to play this game, and why do I have to
sit on and watch, losing all sense of excitement at their liberty, knowing that
ultimately everyone is just going to play the conformity game, just like I did.
I look again at the group of young women and hope to see
my younger self within.
I find her and I want to grab her by the hand and tear
her away. I want to tell her to be herself. I want to tell her that if she
wants a fuck, then she should be more forthright and admit to herself and
others that this is what she needs. I want to tell her that it is okay to love
someone, to care for them, to feel an ultimate connection with another but she
mustn’t lose herself, her dignity and everything that she is for the sake of
any other human being, however wonderful they may be. I want to tell her that she
has plenty of time. She’s not a bird – she is not designed to be monogamous and
if she manages to catch the eye of a sexual partner now, it doesn’t have to be
forever. I want to tell her that she will be happy and she can have fun and
that enjoyment of life comes from diversity and inclusivity.
That’s what I want to tell her, only I know that she has
a list of counter-arguments about babies and biological clocks and security and
the safety not of numbers but of the number two.
And I cannot argue against that intuitive feeling that I
know she has.
The women sit on the train at the end of the evening.
They are no longer a large group of young women. Their numbers have been
swelled or diminished by the additional men or the loss of some of their party
to the delights of a “result” where the keys in the handbag are unused for the
night but the other article might come in handy.
Nothing is straight forward but I still live in hope that
the groups of girls that I see, be they clad in stilettos or be they simply
enjoying an evening of sipping wine at a table in a heated shelter, learn to be
unconventional, realise their own worth and feel confident to be themselves,
and simply have fun with no expense to others.
Some boys take a beautiful girl
And hide her away from the rest of the world
I wanna be the one who walks in the sun.
Simple, even simplistic lyrics but I want that sunshine
back on my back.
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