So, after skimming through this extract from Fay Weldon’s book “What Makes Women Happy” I found myself wondering if it had been written in jest. Surely she can’t be serious? What else to make of paragraphs like this:
Better, more conducive to happiness, to see orgasm as an additional extra, something special that happens, a bonus. Just fake. Happy, generous- minded women, who are not too hung up about emotional honesty, fake….
Half the pleasure of sex is being nice to the other person. Remember you are not in pursuit of justice; you are seeking what makes women happy. Faking is kind to male partners of the New Man kind, who like to think they have done their duty by you.
Do yourself and him a favour, sister, fake it. Then, who knows, as a reward for your kindness, sublime pleasure may creep up on you unawares.
She then goes on to say “The fight for gender equality is bad for the looks. It makes no one happy.”
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That’s the bit that had me thinking she must be indulging in irony. But perhaps not. The Guardian says she’s become a Christian and she really does think that faking it gets women away from the whole guilt/expectation thing surrounding the need to “achieve” orgasm.
“Orgasm is not essential for sexual enjoyment. It’s pointless to insist on your right to have an orgasm or to define your sexual contentment through orgasm. You see yourself as sexually unfulfilled if you don’t have enough – It’s one of those socialisations that hurts women.”
An interesting enough idea but one that is fundamentally flawed, I think, especially because it’s based on the assumption that men are the ones who give women orgasms (presumably through penetration), and we don’t have any control over our own pleasure. It also assumes that all women have trouble having orgasms, which is far too broad a brush to use.
I can see Weldon’s book ruffling a few feathers.
Update 12 September” There’s a good opinion piece at the SMH on this.
“With this statement Weldon manages to be anti-feminist and anti-men. It is a woman’s duty to suppress her desires in order to please a man, but only because men are useless at sex and too fragile to be told the truth.”