The #MeToo Effect on Sex

Like all of us in the throes of #MeToo, I have been taking rigorous inventory of my sexual history, rolling back the tape on past highs and lows: the disturbing teenage experiences no longer chalked up to miscommunication, those times I gave in because it was easier, some unwanted advance successfully fended off.

And then there are the memories of being brusquely, and without permission, pushed up against a wall — and loving it. In fact, those were the steamiest moments I could recall. I wondered if I would ever experience such an unscripted embrace again, and then immediately worried: Did my secret desires make me a traitor to #MeToo and what it stands for?

No, according to Michaela Boehm, a sex and intimacy therapist and psychologist; they make me pretty normal.

Her 25 years as a counselor have taught her what many women and men privately know but are now too afraid to admit, the same truth that the success of “Fifty Shades of Grey” tells: Many women like to be dominated in bed. “Not in their lifestyle, not in their career, but in the bedroom, many women would like to surrender,” Boehm said. This may explain why, on Amazon’s list of best-selling erotica — a medium that, unlike pornography, is mostly produced and enjoyed by women — themes of male dominance tend to, well, dominate.

Theories differ on whether this preference is a result of societal norms or biology or both. But it’s interesting to note that separate research conducted by sexologists Meredith Chivers and Marta Meana supports the idea that biology plays a supporting role. Moreover, a 2009 study by Patricia H. Hawley at the University of Kansas found that the more socially dominant a woman was, the more likely she was to enjoy fantasies of sexual submission.

The last thing a woman wants to be worrying about while in the heat of the moment is whether her arousal is an expression of her own eroticism or a symptom of patriarchal oppression. Yet, in the #MeToo landscape, many 30-and-younger women and men — including me — are finding it harder to untease the two as we navigate dating and fledgling relationships. In a surprising twist, what began as a very public airing of powerful men’s sexual misconduct has come to cast a sinister pall over private intimacies that once seemed OK to enjoy.

“After being exposed to so many accounts of different women’s sexual abuse or harassment, I was hyperaware and hypersensitive about it,” said Jessica Tallarico, 30, of Toronto, a newly engaged friend. “So on one occasion, playing around affectionately in bed, my fiancé got the tiniest bit rough and I had such an adverse reaction to what would normally be playful. Adverse as in, I became defensive, flooded with a bit of fear.

“This felt so strange to me because it happened with my partner who I love and trust immensely, and he did nothing wrong or really that out of the ordinary.”

This winter, around the time that The New Yorker published “Cat Person” and Babe.net published the Aziz Ansari takedown, #MeToo grew to include a conversation on good sex: what it is; who, historically, has been allowed to have it (hint: not the people with vaginas); and how we can have more of it. It’s an important, albeit privileged, conversation, but it’s also one that tends to ignore certain messy truths about sex — the fickleness and wide variability of female desire, for instance, or the inconvenient fact that good sex often defies logic, political values and social mores.

This has put young feminists like Tallarico and Virginia Rand, a 24-year-old writer and actress in Los Angeles, in a tricky situation. Rand recalled one recent sexual encounter in which her partner asked for verbal consent “every step of the way.”

A rape survivor, Rand is well versed in feminist theory; she understands just how vital a shift such behavior from a young man is when it comes to casual sex. Yet, in practice, she had mixed feelings. “It’s difficult because on the one hand you’re like, ‘Dude, if I didn’t want it, I would stop you,'” she said. “On the other hand, that can be used against you if it was assault.”

Rand is not the only one conflicted by the new standard of consent; men are, too. Miles Mobley, a 24-year-old college student in Fresno, California, remembered an experience with a close female friend last year. They were both naked and fooling around, he said, but when he went to initiate sex, she told him to stop.

He did so immediately but was confused because “it seemed we were going one way, and then all of a sudden we were not.” He asked her if she was sure she didn’t want to. “And then she said, ‘No, it’s OK,'” he said. They had sex. Now Mobley is plagued with a sense of uncertainty and guilt over the incident: “Was it wrong of me, to ask a clarifying question? Was that coercion? That wasn’t what I meant at all. I was just legitimately confused.”

Mobley said that post-#MeToo, he and many of his male friends have sworn off making the first move. “Now, I just sit back and wait for the girl to do it,” he said. “I know there’s been a lot of sexual situations that have not come to fruition because of it, and I’ve even had girls be like, ‘Why didn’t you kiss me?’ But I just really don’t want to overstep my boundaries.” We tend to expect sexually liberated women to act the same as sexually liberated men. It makes sense: For most of history, we only had the male model as an example. However, in practice, women may choose to enjoy sexual liberation in significantly different ways than their male counterparts.

“The sooner we acknowledge that our sexuality is distinct and different, the more we can express ourselves in an empowered way,” Boehm said. “Women’s pleasure and arousal unfolds differently than men’s, and by being educated and aware of this we claim our birthright, which is full-bodied pleasure.”

Moreover, a submissive role is not equivalent to meekness. “There is absolutely power in it,” said Boehm, who is also an expert in tantra. Surrendering to your partner, as the tantric tradition encourages, she said, can be enormously liberating.

Ultimately, Boehm said, the most empowering thing a woman can do is take control of her own sexual experiences. “If we want the same freedoms as men, we have to take on the same duties,” she said.