the Female Body GOVERNING

“It’s Down To You” 29
and she’ll feel like you’ve shoved a mop down there. Don’t: Bite her
neck. Are you twelve? (FHM, “Girl Talk,” 2001)
Many of the warrants for the kinds of sexual techniques proffered to
men, to become better lovers and increase their own sexual pleasure,
are warranted through the use of female, and often lesbian authors,
to authenticate the advice given. The following extract is just one
example of the ways in which the lesbian woman is credited with a
special knowledge of women’s bodily and sexual pleasure, which can
be imparted to men to improve their own mastery of the complexity of
female sexuality.
The Lesbian Workshop No. 23
How to . . . Drink from the fi shpot without fear.
If going down disgusts you, don’t panic. You can learn to crave giving
oral sex. . . .
FACE THE FACTS. Fifty years ago, you could get away with denying
your girl oral sex, and still keep her around to wash your socks. Not
any more. In today’s world, only the most weak-willed women will stay
with a man who won’t go south. (Marie Claire, “Lesbian,” 2002)
The article goes on to suggest ways the man can become accustomed
to the idea and practice of oral sex, including reading a chapter on
oral sex in The Whole Lesbian Sex Book (Newman, 2004) and buying Nina
Hartley’s Advanced Guide to Oral Sex Video from www.goodvibes.com. If
this fails, the reader is introduced to a variety of strategies to habituate
the man to oral sex, including forms of negative reinforcement such as
burning a £20 note each day oral sex is avoided and taking deep breaths
to quell any fears and anxieties. In line with the argument made thus
far, when men are required to work at a relationship, the techniques
of self-production they are invited to engage in are based on an intellectual
mastery of female bodies, through divisions and dichotomies,
which reproduce some of the most essentialized discourses associated
with masculinity and femininity. These include the location of men’s
sexuality within a basic sexuality, contrasted from women’s complex
sexuality; that men are active and women are passive; women want
commitment, men want sex; men are always ready for sex and women
are unavailable and need encouragement. These divisions are further
differentiated through the madonna/whore dichotomy where good