Grab them by the pussy.
— President Donald J. Trump
Thinking about sex can be uncomfortable when we stop reducing it to pure biology. Things can get a little awkward once we admit sex is fundamentally a social activity.
Biology is obviously part of it; we seek out interpersonal contact to obtain physical pleasure, which may lead to reproduction in some instances. Yet the fact that humans search out and engage in this behaviour is just the tip of the iceberg. Sex is connected to a whole other world, one far removed from biology.
It is an organized system, one that defines how we establish, negotiate, and represent these contacts. It also prioritizes them.
Sex itself, along with the period of courtship that precedes it, is governed by rites and rituals. Similarly, we fuel and condition our desire through a collection of symbols.
Certain individuals, called “fetishists,” will develop a sexual fascination with unconventional symbols related to their own personal history. But most of us will simply fall back on representations propagated by popular culture.
The reason porn is so predictable, the storylines written to feed our private fantasies so redundant, is that certain pervasive sex symbols have come to be so etched into our collective imagination that they have become essential for desire and, by extension, pleasure.
While overutilization of these symbols would constitute a cliché in some spheres, we consider them biologically pre-programmed when it comes to sex. In this way we can avoid asking uncomfortable questions.
But ultimately, they’re still just clichés.
How women are passive and how we focus on their bodies, on youth, purity, and fashion — these are the most hackneyed sexual clichés. And stringing these clichés together reveals a matrix through which the cumshot principle emerges.
When we examine sexual stereotypes and how they impact our lives, we realize it is no coincidence that women and their bodies are placed at the centre of our fantasy world. It is wholly consistent with a woman’s place within the world: on the fringes of power, on the second rung of the social ladder.
We are forced to admit that society prioritizes and normalizes heterosexual male desire. Women, on the other hand, are trained to give precedence to male sexual interest.
Female desire takes a back seat and women are expected to conform to a set of unspoken rules:
Women are asked to adapt their own desires to all of these fantasies projected onto them. We insist that they share these fantasies and forbid them to write their own scripts. Their job isn’t to sully the man; it is to be sullied by him.
We think about and represent sex as a unidirectional force that originates with the man and is directed onto the woman. She is doomed to act as a target, a receptacle of desire. And that is the essence of the cumshot principle.
This is the dominant ideology. The resulting conventions include a purity imperative, a male hunter/female prey dynamic, sex segregation (which sanctions the mass objectification of women), an obsession with youthfulness, the subjectification of men, the Holy Grail of Love, and the pro-vagina bias. Together they establish an order and create a world where a woman’s desire is formed around autophilia, where she must come to terms with rape culture, slut-shaming, a hyperawareness of the body — its imperfections, sex appeal, and decline — and all the contradictions these entail.
Sure, we can tell women they have the power to sexualize men and fight to change the system. But shifting the paradigm cannot rest on women’s shoulders alone. It takes two to tango. Men are part of the problem — and also part of the solution.
The cumshot principle also alienates men by imposing certain rules onto them, such as being responsible for making the first move and dominating in the bedroom. The sexual potential of both genders is being held hostage by the status quo — the difference is that male desire forms the foundations of the system and supplies its raison d’ être. Men desire sex, and our rituals serve to maintain and satisfy this desire. Female desire is oriented around and designed to achieve this imperative.
To do away with the cumshot principle, we need to eliminate the stereotypes it propagates. We need to give women the same political and economic power men have and let them produce their own set of cultural artifacts. Men must agree to be the object of female desire and use their own bodies to send visual stimuli. We must stop regarding sex as degrading and develop new sexual schemas that step beyond our Judeo-Christian past, ones that no longer hinge on guilt and impurity. We must restore integrity to the female body by ceasing to see it as offensive. We must work to make sex positive and put an end to sex segregation. Finally, we must break down and fuse the gendered silos where men and women remain trapped inside.
The clichés and practices fuelling the cumshot principle help perpetuate a coherent narrative. Their logic guides us, making it impossible for us to regard the world in any other way.
Female desire, unlike its male counterpart, cannot evolve independently within this context. It is secondary, optional, and unimportant.
The situation is grossly unfair.
It is tempting to view sex as one superficial element of women’s liberation. But it is a truly fundamental issue, since the cumshot principle places submission at the heart of a woman’s identity and domination at the heart of a man’s.
By formatting women’s desire, we are also formatting their personalities, dreams, and ambitions. And when we accord disproportionate attention to heterosexual male desire, we stand in the way of a woman’s independence by limiting her potential outside of sex.
Many will disagree, arguing that our behaviours and desires are not a conduit for ideology, that what I am describing is strictly a biological matter, or that our relationship to sex is immutable because it is rooted in “human nature.” That it’s no use fighting the system. Many will brandish anecdotes that contradict the systemic phenomena I have described. I will be told the issue does not exist, and, in the same breath, that it cannot be avoided.
Like all unjust ideologies, the cumshot principle relies on effective propaganda to remain in place — propaganda that seeks to paint the status quo as unavoidable. The force of the propaganda reflects the weight of the issue.
And the stakes are high. Defying this ideology necessitates rethinking entire swathes of our social fabric. It would mean questioning the practices and symbols that give our lives meaning.
But if we truly want to achieve equality between men and women, we must do away with the cumshot principle and all the sexual stereotypes underpinning it. Because until we do, women will continue to get screwed.