(sorry for the length, but it's a longish story)... An issue that took a long time for me to get past was one that I picked up as the kid of a second-wave feminist (I grew up in the 70s and early 80s). I know it was partially filtered through the limited cognitive ability of a kid, but the picture of men drawn by second-wave feminist was of nothing but knuckle-dragging rape machines that women were better off without. Implicit in this characterization is that men always and forever want nothing but sex and women only participate to pacify men. So I grew up thinking that women didn't like sex and the only reason that did it was to a) take the pressure out of the rapey impulses that men were ruled by or, most charitably b) for intimacy and a sense of closeness.

Given the anti-porn and pro-lesbian (again, this is reductive but there is a grain of truth to it) views of people like Catherine McKinnon and Andrea Dworkin, I was determined not to be one of "those men" and thus had an incredibly conflicted view of sex. Like everyone, I had a libido, but I suppressed it in an attempt to rise above what I had been taught was the veniality of men (sidebar: the one thing that this did, since I was so focused on making sure my partners enjoyed sex, was to make me a champ at oral sex. Unfortunately, because of my fear of the raw, animal nature of fucking, I tended to be over-gentle and over-considerate, which I don't think turned anyone on, including me.) Additionally, I've always been (plagued? blessed?) by a rich fantasy life that included lots of group sex. I was particularly interested in girl-girl sex, especially when it was sincere; it couldn't be for the male benefit (though I was hyper-sensitized to the appearance of performative lesbian sex because of the feminist insistence on the effect of the "male gaze"). So, all in all, all the way into my first marriage and two kids, I was kind of a mess about sex. I wanted kinky, uninhibited sex, but I was certain that there were no women that wanted anything like that. Also, after my first kid was born, my wife lost all interest in sex, more or less permanently. This only served to reinforce my suspicions w/r/t female sexuality.

Then, for reasons that remain unclear to me to this day, when I hit 35, my libido went out of control. My now-ex-wife and I ended up separating for other reasons, but being single and relatively young (if only I had known how young!), I had the opportunity to have a lot of sex with a lot of women. I started dating the future Mrs Libidinous when I was about 43. One of the things that I loved about her was her absolutely unabashed love of sex (which made me think that perhaps the sexual stereotype of redheads was true. I still think redheads are over-represented in the Lifestlye...we were once involved in three-redhead six-way orgy...but I digress). But I still couldn't express all the kinky stuff in my head and it wasn't until she broached the subject of a threesome after we'd been together a couple of years that I was able to open up about it. We had the threesome...which led to going to swing parties...which led to us diving headlong into the deep end of the swinger pool. We're heading to Desire in three weeks time for the fourth time and I was finally able to let on what in my head. And seeing women having sex just because it brought them pleasure has finally (mostly) convinced me that women do, in fact, enjoy sex. Watching my wife on a massage table early on being erotically massaged by three people and loving it finally shattered the mistaken view that women were only having sex to humour men. And since then, I've had many other experiences which have helped reshape my thinking about sex.

Additionally, I started reading the emerging academic work that calls into question the Victorian notion of the purity and monogamous nature of women with regards to sexuality. I read a couple of popular books that made reference to academic work that suggested that women have probably evolved to be even less biologically disposed to monogamy and even more inclined to promiscuous sexuality (the popular books including Sex at Dawn (Ryan and Jetha, 2012), Come as You Are (Nagoski, 2015), Mating in Captivity (Perel, 2016), Untrue (Martin, 2018) and What Do Women Want? (Berger, 2013)). I've tracked down a lot of the papers these books were based on and the conclusions that have been drawn are strong re: women having a more wanton desire pattern then we've been led to believe. Of course, nothing will quite convince you of this like seeing your wife (and others) moaning in ecstasy in a sea of bodies at an orgy.

I'm genuinely curious to see whether I was alone in my (mis?) interpretation of second-wave feminism and its negative effect on my sex life. I've come to love third-wave feminism for embracing sex and sexuality since I've always been an enthusiastic supporter of women's equality and the breaking down of oppressive social structures. In addition to the academic work above, the hottest porn is made by sex-positive feminist women like Tristan Taormino and Erica Lust. So, anyone have any similar stories? Was it just that I misunderstood second-wave feminism (though re-reading Dworkin, et al, has convinced me there's at least a major theme of anti-heterosexual sex negativity in the writing of the 70s and 80s feminism--not everyone, mind, but among some of the prominent writers).