Words by: Elodie Ricaud

The pursuit of authenticity during young adulthood can only be undone through a gradual process that requires us to turn inwards and evaluate our lives through a different lens.

In our sex lives, this includes discovering our innate sexual desires and challenging the internal and external factors that colour our experiences. I have recently been questioning the way we are socially conditioned to operate within the constraints of gender norms and how that influences our ability to be mindful during sex.

Often, we get hung up on superfluous ideals of sexual desirability and what intercourse is “supposed” to look and feel like. This can lead to deceptive and performative experiences that subdue our authenticity. Studies have found that conforming to gender norms can rob us of our sexual autonomy, which ultimately diminishes sexual satisfaction¹. Maybe we should turn inwards first, to our imagination and senses, or explore unconventional sexual models.

So, I pose the question, if it weren’t for gender norms what would sex really look like?

If we examine our conditioning from a young age, we remember being bombarded with representations of sexual desirability from the mass media that fall into two categories — feminine and masculine. A common theme in all these representations remains, the male gaze. This was a term coined by Laura Mulvey in 1975, and referred to a new way of describing how women are constantly exhibited, and thus perceived, as objects of male sexual desire. While it was specifically used within visual arts, it has since become a fundamental part of Feminist Theory to describe the gender power relations that are found within sexual and romantic relationships. Berger’s famous quote, “Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at”² accurately captures its essence.

For femme-identifying people, the persistent pressure to live up to norms of sexual desirability is worsened by the internalised male gaze. A particular scene from HBO’s ‘Euphoria’ accurately visualises this, where Maddy rigorously practices the exact movements and expressions of female actors she sees on Pornhub. She later performs these imitations during intercourse with her boyfriend Nate. In return, Nate emulates the violent, macho masculine and often sadistic representations that he witnesses in porn, which he assumes
are the most accepted and desirable. It also goes to show, how for masculine-identifying individuals, the types of roles and traits that are represented as the norm during sex are black and white: big ego, big cock, dominant, unfeeling. Even though male pleasure can be achieved through various explorations of erogenous zones such as stimulation of the prostate. As we know, deviating from those gendered expectations within everyday life can be met with disregard, disgust, and even violence¹. 

It can be uncomfortable to really see how far removed we are from what is supposed to be an enjoyable act of intimacy. However, I think this is a reality that is a consequence of growing up in a generation where a lot of people still use porn as their primary source of sex education.

The porn industry is riddled with misrepresentations that reinforce this need to perform masculine and feminine roles. At the end of the day, no matter how well actors lure the viewers into their performances, it is just that, a performance. Yet, it is that very enactment that we strive to follow. Like the actors on screen, we all often fake expressions of pleasure, feel pressured to prioritise our sexual partner’s needs over our own and assume submissiveness or dominance as our only options.

Of course, there is nothing wrong with finding satisfaction within those realms, but it can be liberating to know that there is more to experience outside of those restrictions. Luckily, there are alternatives to mainstream porn that display more ethical, gender fluid sexual interactions, focused on displaying different forms of pleasure. For example, female-focused porn site ‘Bellessa’, audio erotica app ‘Quinn’, and experimental pornography website ‘Four Chambers’.

It is worthwhile to ask ourselves why we have certain desires, if they are rooted in equality and whether they leave us feeling connected to ourselves. It’s nerve racking to deviate from what we assume to be conventional ideals of sexiness, but being honest with our bodies and our sexual partners is the first step to finding more realms of pleasure. But above all else, claiming sexual autonomy can help us reframe pleasure as not something that happens to us, but something that we actively participate in. Maybe sometimes it’s better to just disconnect from all the channels that show us how to master pleasure and just experiment with our own bodies alone. If we know what brings us pleasure individually, then we can discover these experiences with others too.

There are no social limits, except for the ones that we impose on ourselves.