Editor’s note: The “Let’s Talk about Sexuality” series explores the diverse values and experiences that women in their twenties have with regards to sex, bodies, and relationships. Through it, Ilda hopes to create a new, feminist sexual discourse. The series is funded by the Korea Foundation for Women’s Gender Equal Social Development Project.

 

Girls’ secret masturbation and guilt

 

Men’s sexual desire is everywhere in society. Adolescent boys’ masturbating and watching porn is treated as completely natural. In fact, boys who don’t do those things are picked on. That’s the degree to which male sexual desire is seen as not just natural but something that must be expressed.

 

It’s easy to find information on male masturbation methods, and the information is imparted kindly. Advice like ‘use gel so that you don’t take off any skin’, ‘make sure to wash your hands afterward’, and ‘don’t grip your penis too hard or you may not be able to feel much when you have penetrative sex later’ is even shows concern for the recipient’s future pleasure.

 

In contrast, female sexual desire can’t exist. It’s not that it doesn’t exist, it’s that it can’t. Society won’t allow it to. Is there a place for adolescent girls to learn ways to masturbate? Not only are they not given that kind of information, but it’s common for girls to begin masturbating without even knowing what masturbating is. And they feel guilty without knowing why.

 

Male sexual desire is permitted to exist anywhere, but women’s nowhere. Women even fake orgasms when having sex with men in order to fulfill that male desire.

 

Of course, some women do let it be known that they have sexual desires. But those who freely talk about sex and their sexual tastes and preferences in front of men are then treated by those men as “bodies I can have sex with”. The women are called “easy”, “cheap”, and “slutty” and have to endure come-ons from men who want to have sex with them. If they reject those advances, they are resented and, in the worst cases, subjected to violence.

 

‘Why won’t you sleep with me?’ seems to have become a widespread attitude among Korean men toward women.  If a rumor spreads that a woman has slept with one man, it’s like she becomes the public property of all men. Women who express their sexual desire and live sexually liberated lives face this risk. 

 

What do I really want?

 

I’ve been very interested in sexual matters since I was young, and I still am today. I first remember masturbating when I was four years old. If I put my blanket between my legs and put pressure on it, I felt good. I didn’t understand what was happening or why I felt good, but I knew that I didn’t want anybody to see me doing that.

 

After I realized that this was masturbation, I often felt a crushing sense of guilt about my dirty, impure thoughts. Even after I found feminism and learned that female desire is natural, this guilt didn’t go away. This deep-seated feeling could only be defeated by gathering with other women and talking about it.

 

In March, I was part of the planning committee for Fireworks Femi-Action’s latest feminists’ sex ed event. The theme was “Sex That’s For Me”, and I was in charge of an activity called “Making my Sexuality Map”. It was a chance for participants to get to know their sexuality and sexual tastes and think about their right to sexual self-determination.

 

Women don’t have many chances in their everyday lives to think or talk about their own sexuality, and the social environment doesn’t condone it. So during the program, we talked to each other about our sexual tastes and spoke freely about what kind of mood, acts, and so on turned us on.

 

Personally, I hoped that by thinking about their fundamental desires, participants would even be able to think about their sexual orientation and whether it wasn’t aromantic or asexual. This was because while trying out the program myself, I had become certain that I was aromantic.

 

▲ My Sexuality Map. This map includes Castle, Forest, Harbor, Inland, Boat, Sea, and Another’s island. ©Fireworks Femi-Action

[(Name)’s Sexuality Map

-Castle: I really like that, come in (a space for writing down the acts that you like the most)

-Forest: I want to do that secretly 

- Harbor: Shall I try that?

-Inland: I like that

-Boat: Not yet, but maybe later

-Sea: I probably won’t ever do that

-Another’s island: Meh, I’d rather eat cake (asexuals’ territory, a space for writing down things that aren't for me)]

 

I explained the activity to the sex ed participants, and they wrote their desires and dislikes down on post-its. These could be sexual or romantic. Then I collected all of the post-its and read them out loud.  The participants listened to each desire, thought about what it meant to them, and wrote it in the appropriate space in their map.

 

Desires have to first be brought forward in order for us to know whether we really hold them or not. I wrote the common TV drama situation of ‘wrap a scarf around my partner and give them a peck’ in the harbor box, but ‘visit a rooftop bar to listen to music and hold hands’ went into the sea box.

 

Really, on my map, a lot of things that weren’t pretty directly connected to sex went into the sea box. But some things that the media tells us are romantic went into the harbor or forest boxes. However, I realized that this was because I was confusing society’s ideas of desires for my own. When I think hard about it, I realize that since I was little I’ve never imagined or dreamed about romantic situations. But I’ve longed for them. I was brainwashed into believing that women naturally long for love and romance, just like I used to think that actions like men trapping women against a wall, forcibly kissing them, etc. were romantic.

 

Our sexual fantasies are all different

 

By leading this program, I not only learned about the true nature of my own sexual desires, I also learned that other women have sexual desires and that these are every bit as explicit as men’s. Each post-it described one desire and participants were asked to make three post-its, but some of them made 10 or more. It was even more amazing to find, when I read the post-its, that every desire was different. This was true even if they seemed similar on the surface. For example, ‘holding hands’ showed up several times, but each time it was in a different situation – while lying naked in bed, to draw on each other’s palms as a joke, while watching a movie, and so on.

 

In particular, “Meow”, a post-it I made, was wildly popular. In my imagination, it was something to say while engaging in “cat-play” (acting like a cat during sex), but I was surprised and pleased to find that others had other interpretations and imagined uses of it, such as as a prelude to sex or as a way to act cute. The wide variety of other sexual fantasies mentioned included having sex in an outdoor place like a swimming pool, mutual masturbation facing one’s partner in a brightly-lit place, and sex in a cramped car.

 

All that time, I had thought that my thoughts were dirty, but as I listened to the other women, I realized that those thoughts were completely natural. When, as a little girl, I had masturbated while thinking about animated characters kissing each other, I hadn’t been strange, perverted, or impure for a girl. This was natural behavior for a human born with sexual desires. When I learned that the desires I had thought to be excessive weren’t and, what’s more, that everyone was harboring all these different sexual desires, my guilt disappeared.

 

After filling out my map, I learned a new fact about my sexual tastes. I hadn’t thought that I was an S&Mer (someone who enjoys sadomasochism), but it turned out that I tend towards sadism. I like catheters and anal plugs, and dream of various types of S&M play. I like imagining my partner saying, “I’ve been bad,” and, “Forgive me,” with their eyes full of tears. (Though, of course, this kind of play can only be engaged in with consent.) I had to fully express my fantasies before I could really come to know myself.

 

▲ From Fireworks Femi-Action’s “Feminist Sex Ed” program in March. ©Ilda (Park Ju-yeon)

A society filled with men’s rape fantasies

 

As a 21-year-old, I’m a legal adult who can have sex freely if she wants. These days, most youth start watching porn as adolescents. But both porn and mutually consensual sex are still not very friendly to women. Porn is heterocentric and clearly aimed towards men. A majority of its scenes feature violence against women, and I feel sick when I watch it.

 

The first porno that I watched featured the rape of a woman. I felt uncomfortable for a few days after seeing it. Instead of turning me on, it had made me worry that I would be raped. I wondered how I should deal with being raped if it happened, and even – though this is the extreme choice – if I should kill myself.

 

The video was one that my older brother had downloaded and hadn’t gotten around to deleting. It made me queasy to think of him using something like that to masturbate. After that, as I saw more of that type of media, I got used to the idea that some people used it to turn themselves on. But getting used to the idea didn’t mean that I liked it.

 

I still struggle to find videos to masturbate to that are racy, don’t make me feel scared, have a story that I can understand, and feature handsome actors. I look here and there for porn made from women’s point of view, not this crap drenched in men’s fantasies.

 

The world around me only talks about sex that is for men and led by men. In that world, there’s no opportunity for me to consider whether I’d like S&M and no place for women to discuss our sexual fantasies. In a situation where it’s difficult to even find content that stimulates my sexual imagination, it’s not surprising that I didn’t discover my real sexual tastes until I was 21 years old. Maybe it’s lucky I discovered them at all.

 

There are still few places where women can safely reveal the existence of their sexual desire. In fact, I think you could say there are none. We can’t even reveal it to our partners, out of fear that we’ll look “too experienced”, seem easy, or that our partner will go around telling other people about it after we break up.

 

In contrast, male sexual desire is projected even into objects – like women’s stockings, girls’ school uniforms, socks, etc. And that desire transfers over onto the people wearing them. When I was a high school student, an adult man asked me to sell him my used stockings for 50,000 won [45 USD]. In this way, women’s very existence is sexually objectified by men. Meanwhile, women’s sexual desire is always being obstructed and poses a threat to its owner if it erupts.

 

Crying out my sexual desires

 

Really, it’s not just women’s sexual desires but any type of female desire that society does not tolerate. Working women who desire promotions are criticized as overbearing, and women who desire material possessions are called snobs. Society is scared of the idea of women having desires, because its continued existence relies on their oppression. The desires to enter the workforce, to be free of having to care for children, or to at least choose a better husband (a desire that used to be necessary for survival) are treated as personal, narrow-minded, and unacceptable.

 

 In the stories I’ve heard since I was young, men risking their lives and fighting to get a pretty bride have been depicted as brave, but women fighting for a good husband have been treated as greedy and awful. In fairy tales like “Kongjwi and Patjwi” and Cinderella, it is the “pure” woman with no desires who gets a good husband. In past society, wives were seen as men’s accessories, while husbands were needed for women’s survival. This situation meant that of course women had to choose the best possible men for their husbands. But men couldn’t accept the thought of needing to be chosen and so kept the power of choice all for themselves.

 

Society is still scared of female desire and doesn’t want to listen to women’s voices. Men enjoy women talking about their sexual desires as long as they keep within the limits set by men. Think about it – whose sexual desires are reflected in the pop idols dancing suggestively on TV while wearing school uniforms, in the child models wearing adult-style makeup, or in the very existence of tight-fitting school uniforms?

 

So it was even more meaningful that women gathered to talk about their sexual desires and fantasies and make sexuality maps. By candidly revealing their desires and talking about how others’ desires sound and what they mean to them, the women were able to rethink their sexuality. They realized what they liked and what made them uncomfortable.

 

If women want to, they can have this kind of talk anytime and anywhere, and until the day that doing so becomes normal and not fodder for men to consume, I’m going to keeping crying out my desires to the world. [Translated by Marilyn Hook]

 

*Original article: http://ildaro.com/8214 Published May 29, 2017

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