blowjob drama (or "my sex is better than your sex," take 5)

No time to really elaborate, just an observation - sex is so highly personal that when you write about your own preferences, even when you explicitly state that these are your personal interests and you really don't care what the hell other people do in their bedrooms, people still take it to heart. They seem to always think you're saying "If I like ___, you should too" and I never say that, never have, never will, which is part of why I've had to excuse myself and pass on certain projects. I'm not a sex educator and I don't want to be held to that standard. It would impede my writing and would make me truly uncomfortable. I'll write about topics like "how to give or take a spanking" because I feel like I know that, but that would be for people who already have an interest in that. So it's a little disheartening to get an email like the one below.

Miriam knows exactly what I'm talking about, after the recent furor over her columns. I find this part of the whole "if you write about sex, forget about writing about anything else, and let's also read all kinds of feminist theory into your sexual fantasies." It's fucked up, and I think part of that is this problematic conflation of the personal and political, as if we should let our politics entirely dictate our sex life, ignoring the fact that a lot of what turns us on might not be politically incorrect, might actually directly contradict other areas of our lives, hence we fetishize it. And please note, I did not criticize Flanagan for any personal preference, but for her blanket castigation of any woman who'd choose a blowjob over a handjob. She made it a one-upsmanship kind of situation. It's funny because so many of these writers will never, ever, ever even hint at any personal preference about anything sexual, but feel free to cast blame on all sorts of other women, tell them how to act, how to dress, what to do.

It's sortof a catch-22 because if you're at all public about your likes and dislikes, that becomes some proxy for what you think everyone else should do and I think that's bullshit. I just find it highly irritating that someone would turn it around like that, to basically say "I think blowjobs are submissive, therefore you are perpetuating a stereotype." And I think there's this idea out there that if you're at all submissive in the bedroom, you're submissive elsewhere and setting back feminism by decades. If that were the case, why don't these people advocate women dominating in the bedroom? Oh, right, because it doesn't fucking work like that. That last sentence is precisely why my book will probably never get written - a) I'm too lazy and b) I get so riled up that I just resort to the easy "it doesn't fucking work like that." Which I stand by, but if my book ever gets picked up, I'll clean that up a little because really, this is part of a much larger symptom of people taking offense at someone else's sexual choices, which I will perhaps elaborate on another time, but it's in those two books I keep talking about, it's all over the place, and it's totally offensive.

I just happen to find your column in the village voice, I have never seen your work in the voice before so i decided to check it out just so happens it was the subject of (for me personally) the oh so tiresome giving head article. The part where you and some blowjob party planner couldnt understand the point of the writer Flanagan, I think that giving head to me is personally very submissive, and I am a fiercely independant women and anything that appears to be bowing down to any guy na aint doing it. For starters blowjob are very one sided to me , and too many guys are obsessed with it , sex is suppose to be about to people together (unless you doin 3-some) but with guys and women willing to do it its about females dropping to their knees with the quickness and men dont have to do shit so its yet again another thing thats set up to cater to them and not do a damn thing for us. With that said if their are women who do it great thats in their personally do get down like that but for those who dont do it its reversed stigmatisim now your prudish or stuck up, and considering all these diseases out there of which people dont want to take seriously , i do if thats beind stuck up,thats me but i did find your column entertaining and your website too.