A brain dump on sex

Isn't it a little early in the week to be talking about sex? Probably!

Artwork by Helen Beard

I’m writing a book at the moment that involves a lot of sex. Like, I-will-never-be-able-to-look-my-family-in-the-eye-if-it-ever-gets-published amounts of sex. When I think about certain people reading it, I still feel that childlike squirm of shame, like “Is this necessary? Could I not gloss over some of the more…detailed descriptions?” But I’m not sure you can write honestly and realistically about relationships without taking a long look at the intimate, sticky act of sex. 

As I’ve been writing it, I’ve become particularly interested in the way different people represent “good sex” in film, television and literature. I watched Belfast a couple of months ago and found the character of Pa - played by Jamie Dornan - to be so sexually charismatic without ever mentioning sex, that I went and watched Dornan in 50 Shades of Grey, too. By contrast, Dornan as Christian Grey - a character whose entire personality is built around the act of intercourse - ironically lacks that same kind of allure. He is laughably unerotic, trying on sex like a child tries on their father’s giant shoes and stomps about the house in them. 

I can’t even use the excuse that women write good lovers and men write bad ones, because 50 Shades of Grey was both written and directed by women. Rather odd women, I might add, but still women. But I do think that, on the whole and in reality, most women aren’t attracted to men that stalk them, abuse them and control them in relationships. It might be curiously thrilling to read about (in the same way that people love true crime and horror films) but two, three years down the line, I think the novelty of Christian as your real-life boyfriend would grow quite as thin and grey as his personality. 

If I were to pick a character that’s the antithesis of Christian Grey, it would be Connell Waldron from Normal People. Another character brought into existence by a woman, Connell is differently wired. There is a scene in Sally Rooney’s second novel where Marianne asks Connell if he will hit her during sex. “No, I don’t think I want that. Is that okay?” is Connell’s response. For every woman that’s ever swooned at the idea of being ‘punished’ by Christian, there are as many (more, I would imagine) that are enamoured by the idea of a man that - even when asked - won’t sexually degrade a woman. Not out of some chivalrous stance, but because it genuinely doesn’t do it for him. 

There is this idea that men like sex more than women. And in the world that we live in where the culture of sex is so one-dimensional and pornographic, I think this is probably true. But I also think that if we prioritised the kind of sex that women tend to enjoy more, we would all end up enjoying it more. For example, all the straight men I know that have read Normal People said the same thing: that it was amazingly, surprisingly hot—a book all about the act of sex being a means of knowing someone better through their body, of communicating love through sex. They weren’t disappointed or unstimulated by the gentle, intimate depictions of sex. It was just as good.

I have this theory that straight men like ‘doggy style' so much because they’re afraid to fall in love. It’s become one of my favourite things to rant about when I’ve had three or more wines. On the show Love Island, year after year, they inevitably end up sharing their favourite sex positions. Nine times out of ten, the men will say doggy style (or some bizarre thing we all have to Google because it’s apparently very cool to pick something obscure) and some poor woman will end up being called boring for choosing missionary. Whenever this happens, I think about how frightened these men are of having the best kind of sex there is: the kind of sex that connects you. I’d also suggest that missionary gets a particularly bad rep because it’s the most intimate and, therefore, the most frightening. For the man, missionary is to be seen. To be looked in the eye.   

In the book I’m writing, I accidentally created a character who’s clearly just my thinly-veiled ‘perfect man’—one whose sexuality is built around honesty and intimacy. I didn’t even notice I was doing it. Thinking it through, though, I think this is something women do all the time—in books, literature, art and in real life. We create men that can never exist: men entirely made in the image of women. It’s probably why we end up feeling disappointed by actual men, because we’ve ingested so many characters that could not exist outside of a woman’s imagination. Mr Darcy. Hot Priest. Connell Waldron. 

I don’t think this is necessarily men’s problem. On the contrary, it’s unfair to expect men to behave exactly as we want them to, or strip them of their autonomy. But I do think it’s a shame that tenderness in sex is still met with an eye roll from a lot of men—as though masculinity and sexual intimacy are two passing ships. I wonder - if we all learned to lean into the loving side of sex a little more - whether we might end up not just feeling pleasure but feeling seen, too.

For more writing and poetry, follow me on Instagram @alannaduffield