Anna remembered, ‘Cindy just came up to me one night and said, “I really fancy you and Josh, I’d like to go to bed with you both, would that be alright?” I thought, Good grief. Then I thought, Mind you, it sounds quite sexy, I quite like the idea of slightly way-out things – so I told Josh and he said yes and off we went to bed.’
Among my interviewees, sexual arrangements involving two women and one man were always initiated by a woman, and negotiated between the women involved. This makes sense because it reduces competition between the women. Here Cindy initiates from outside the couple. But if it’s one of the couple who asks another woman in, again it makes sense for the woman to make the arrangements. If the man made the move, the two women might be in competition, but when the woman does the asking, the second woman is there for her.
This sexual arrangement may seem wonderfully decadent in fantasy. But, in reality, female-initiated threesomes sometimes have an agenda that isn’t primarily sexual. The threesome can be an attempt to domesticate or make safe a disruptive lesbian desire in a married woman, or a way of defusing sexual jealousy between two women who’ve slept with the same man. These strategies tend not to work, or only to work in the most temporary way. Three is an uncomfortable number, and such an arrangement can never satisfy the deepest needs we bring to our sexual relationships. (As W.H. Auden put it, ‘Not universal love, but to be loved alone’.
(#litres_trial_promo)) It’s rare for a threesome to meet more than once. But here women are clearly initiating for their own pleasure, though that pleasure may only be of the most transitory kind.
Group sex situations may also be set up by women, or involve bold female moves. And one reason why a woman might be keen to initiate this kind of sexual activity is that it enables her to have sex with another woman without calling her own sexual identity into question. This was clearly one of the attractions of group sex for Ginny, who said, ‘It was with my boyfriend Dave and my best friend Claudette and her bloke and another bloke. We were really quite drunk. Claudette was very flirtatious, we were both flirtatious women, and we were enjoying turning the men on, and we got into playing Strip Jack Naked. We were peeling our clothes off playing this card game and ended up totally naked and there was music playing, and Claudette and I got up and started dancing with each other, very much trying to turn the men on, and enjoying being exhibitionists. It was Dave who came up and put us together physically and Claudette and I just did what was expected really and carried on. The thing that was doing a lot for me was thinking the men were being turned on by it.’
Here the lesbian love-making is carefully placed within a heterosexual frame. Ginny stresses that for her the turn-on was the element of voyeurism and display, rather than the chance to make love to her closest friend.
Hanif Kureishi’s autobiographical novel, The Buddha of Suburbia, has a female initiator who sets up group sex, but this time with no lesbian element. Marlene is married to Pyke, the trendy theatre director. Her lust for Karim, the narrator, is the ostensible trigger for group sex involving the two couples – Marlene and Pyke, and Karim and his girlfriend, Eleanor.
Marlene is a comic figure, a little too old to be attractive: ‘… as my mother would have said, she was no spring chicken.’ She initiates with Karim: ‘ “Shall we have a kiss?” she said, after a while, stroking my face lightly.’ She has boundless sexual enthusiasm. ‘When we broke apart and I gulped back more champagne she raised her arms in a sudden dramatic gesture, like someone celebrating an athletics victory, and pulled off her dress.’ But towards the end of the session her libidinousness becomes pathetic as she gets drunk. Even her sexual skills are for laughs. ‘When she wanted to stop my moving inside her she merely flexed her cunt muscles and I was secured for life.’
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In the end, as so often in male fictions, conventional and male-centred sexual values assert themselves. The group sex ends with the disruption of both relationships involved. At first Marlene seems rather splendid – but she’s revealed as a woman past her sell-by date. Her initiatives are comic, and she loses out in the end. It’s Pyke rather than Marlene who gets what he wants.
So who are the women who make the first move? Bad women, predators, prostitutes, and women with ulterior motives. Fat women, older women, little girls, and women who want threesomes or group sex.
Meredith Johnson, the Wicked Queen, Mrs Robinson and Mae West may entertain us delightfully. But they’re also profoundly influential and their influence is of the most retrograde kind.
They teach us that women only make the first move if they are exceptional, or want something exceptional, and that this isn’t something an ordinary woman might do with an ordinary man she likes. And they teach us that men are right to be wary of women who ask them out. As Kevin said, when I asked him how he’d feel about being approached by a woman, ‘I’d just always worry there’d be something behind it, or you’d be being pissed about in some way.’ No wonder.
Above all, they seem to be showing us that women shouldn’t do this if it’s true love that they’re after. What women who make the first move in our stories never ever get – except in the metamorphosing climaxes of fairytales – is love that lasts.
CHAPTER 3 WOMEN’S FEARS (#ulink_c7558892-b52b-5328-887a-411b68cec9e7)
‘I told him I was a nice girl.’
(Woman on ‘Blind Date’)
HERE’S SOME typical advice to the girl between about ten and fifteen who’s fallen in love and is wondering what to do about it.
‘Summer’s too short to wait around for him to make the first move, so take a deep breath and do it … . “D’you wanna go to the beach with me on Saturday” fixes the place and date and makes your intention clear so that you both know where you stand …. [Or you could try] the cheeky approach: “If you don’t come to the beach with me this Saturday I’ll tell all your mates that you wear knitted underpants”.’
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‘All the signs are there – yes, he probably does feel the same way … Next time you’re both standing there smiling at one another – give him a kiss! That should sort things out.’
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‘Do plan some things to say. You don’t need to write a script, just have a few suggested date locations up your sleeve. Do be persistent. When his Mum says he’s out, he probably is out. (Unless she says it, like, all the time!) Do call him. Just do it.’
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The magazines in which this advice can be found – It’s Bliss, Fast Forward, Just 17 – have a very young readership. The girls who buy these magazines are on the cusp between childhood and sexual maturity, poised on the edge of the world of adult relationships – curious, excited, perhaps a little hesitant. Many of them aren’t yet going out with boys. Where they do have boyfriends, their relationships may have all the deep seriousness of first love – but they’re unlikely to lead to lasting pair-bonding.
The magazines reflect the ‘in-between’ status of the girls who read them. Sex advice columns, often vibrantly frank, jostle with pictures of polar-bear cubs. The mix of sexual sophistication with the artefacts of pubescent girl culture – Simba rucksacks, pop-star icons, pets, butterfly barrettes – gives these magazines a rather touching charm. And in this half-play, half-serious world of snogs, dreamy boyfs and Russian hamsters – a world that’s still close to that ‘little girl’ one in which girls take outrageous initiatives – making the first move is actively encouraged. Girls are urged to ring him, ask him out, get a life. Take a deep breath and say it – summer’s too short. If you want to know if he likes you, give him a kiss. Ring him, just do it. We seem to have entered the broad sunny uplands of female sexual assertiveness already.
Advice for young women who’ve left the hamster stage behind is quite different, though. Sexually mature women for whom sexual relationships might be about reproduction are urged to take quite another approach.
‘Great Date – but will he call again?’ asks an article in Company.
(#litres_trial_promo) The sub-heading urges, ‘Forget waiting by the phone – make that second date happen.’ The illustration shows a buoyant-looking woman in a slinky red dress. The promise of both illustration and sub-heading is that this will be all about female assertiveness.
The writer reflects, ‘I’ve called men up. I’ve even asked a few out on dates … I’ve since discovered how great it can be if you give a man the space to make a move on you. It’s a wonderful confidence boost for you when he does ring. Calling him first can deprive you of that pleasure … .’ What looked at first glance like a paean to female sexual initiatives turns out on closer inspection to be a manifesto for the courtship backlash – the story of a woman who used to act unconventionally and who reverts with a sense of relief to the traditional way of doing things and finds it rewarding.
The writer bases her advice on a concept of men’s true nature. ‘Why can’t we just come out and say what we really mean? Something along the lines of, “Listen, I really enjoyed myself tonight. Let’s do it again. How about next Wednesday?” Why? Because we all know how most men would react to such a request. What you mean is, you’d like to see him again; but what he thinks you mean is, “I am after commitment, not a casual fling, so if you’re not the marrying kind, you’re wasting my time.” ’
So what to do? She has a solution: to fib a bit.
‘So if, like me, you can’t stand shampooing your hair with the water off in case the damned phone rings after a great date, get real. He wants to call you? Don’t give him your number. Madness? No. Ask him for his. That’s what I did when I first went out with Jack. I told him the telephone line wasn’t yet connected at my new flat and, because I was temping, he couldn’t call me at work either – but I’d be happy to call him. It worked. For once, I didn’t have to stare at the phone and will it to ring.’
An article in Cosmopolitan is called ‘The lure of the sexually aggressive woman’.
(#litres_trial_promo) The illustration shows a woman with tousled hair and underwear embroidered with flowers gleefully hitting a prostrate man with a pillow. This is female sexual aggression as sexual display: like the flowery underwear, it adds to her appeal. But the text itself is full of qualifications. Every description of what an assertive woman might do is followed by a warning.
“The sexually aggressive woman … propositions men as easily as most of us play coy, never hesitates to tell her partner what she needs. If he can’t handle her directness, she dismisses him, reasoning that she’s better off with a man who lets her take the lead. Not all such women are acting out of healthy desire. Some are motivated by a deep-rooted hostility towards men.’
We’re warned that not only may sexual assertiveness be pathological, it may also be deeply unattractive – and even lead to sexual dysfunction in the man. ‘Few men will take orders from a drill sergeant. Telling him to “give it to me like a man” … may immediately kill desire … Angry demands may even result in your partner suffering from impotence or premature ejaculation.’
Above all, Cosmo Woman is warned not to be too assertive at the start of the relationship. The writer’s parting shot is about timing: the risks of female sexual ‘aggressiveness’ are greatest at the beginning of the relationship. ‘It’s true that some men are scared off by women who like to take charge; other men may welcome an assertive stance – but only after they’re well past the initial stages of courtship. And since nobody likes rejection, you’re probably better off playing by the old rules of seduction – at least until your romance develops … . Just remember that it’s best to hold off until he trusts you. When you are sure that he feels safe, unleash the tigress!’
Both these articles ooze ambivalence. Their ostensible subject matter is female sexual assertiveness: that’s the promise of the titles and the illustrations. But the writers have a problem. They like the idea of women asserting themselves – but they’re also worried that the woman who makes the first move will drive the man she wants away. They struggle to reconcile their enthusiasm for female initiatives with their beliefs about the nature of men – as creatures who hate to be told what to do, flee from commitment, are scared by women who come on too strong, and only want casual flings.
The solution both writers offer? Be devious.
The Company writer’s suggestion is to tell a little lie. Women are advised astonishingly often to lie in the early stages of courtship: advice columns in women’s magazines frequently urge us to lie to new lovers about how old we are and how many men we’ve slept with. This advice connects with a long tradition of female sexual pretence – faking orgasms, pretending to be a virgin when you’re not, or – its contemporary version – pretending not to be a virgin when you are. Different theories are brought to bear on the later stages of relationships. We’re always being told that successful marriages are all about openness and honesty: the Relate buzzwords are trust, sharing and communication. But here we’re only on the second date, and covert stratagems are called for. And the highly complicated way of taking the initiative that’s advocated is to pretend our phones don’t work to take away from him the option of ringing us so we have to ring him … .
For the Cosmopolitan writer, too, the answer is to act covertly, and to conceal your true sexual nature – ‘the tigress’ – till you’re sure he feels safe. Family therapists sometimes use paradoxical injunctions, where they try to upset rigid and pathological behaviour patterns by giving clients instructions that contain a contradiction: for instance, a client who can’t control her anger might be told to lose her temper at a specified time each day. Something rather similar and equally complicated is happening here – when women are told only to act on impulse with great caution.
We’ve moved a long way from the clear injunctions and cheerful egalitarianism of the pre-teen and teen magazines. In their later teens and twenties, it seems, women enter a sexual world where female initiatives are much more fraught and have all sorts of complicated meanings – insecurity, repressed hostility, a pathological need to control – and where there are huge discrepancies between male and female interests. In this world women may want one thing and men quite another, and women are urged, for their own good, to be cautious and cunning: to be devious when they yearn to be direct, to fib about their phones.
Articles in women’s magazines help to set the love agenda of the culture, and shape the stories women tell one another about their relationships. But of course it’s two-way traffic: these articles also reflect that culture. And advice to women in magazines, however contradictory or retrograde, does at least accurately mirror the uncertainty and ambivalence that many women feel.
Women react to the idea of female initiatives quite differently from men. ‘I wouldn’t do it, it’s just a thing I’ve got’, they say, or ‘You think if you look too keen they’ll go off you’, or ‘It’s a nice idea – but I really can’t see it working’, or ‘I just think there are all sorts of things in man/woman relationships which sorry to say are true’. Where do all these fears and worries come from?
FEMALE SHAME: Why true love still waits
Charlotte met a man at a party. ‘He was in love with me for the night,’ she said. ‘He was everso gorgeous, and he was going to Scotland the next day, and he gave me his address and said, “You must write” – and I did write, and I got this letter back which was clearly saying, “I had this fantasy about you for one night but I’m not interested.” It was a mistake to hurl myself – I felt I’d crossed some boundary and I shouldn’t have done.’
Charlotte’s letter was actually a response to a male initiative. By writing to him she didn’t really cross a boundary. But she thinks even this was going too far, and what she feels is a time-honoured form of sexual shame that’s clearly marked ‘Women Only’.
‘Shame’, says psychotherapist Susie Orbach, ‘acts as an internal censor, checking our thoughts and desires; sometimes protecting us from transgression, but more often constraining desire. The desire often can’t even be examined because it is fused with a shame that acts as a prohibition, telling us that it is wrong to want.’
(#litres_trial_promo) And there are good historical reasons for this vestigial shame about ‘hurling yourself’ that tells us that it is wrong to want. It’s a hangover from a time not so long ago when a woman’s sexual reputation was a practical and financial issue with far-reaching implications.
