The PIV POV
Not as fun as it sounds. Or maybe it is, depending on your POV.
PIV
Penis-in-vagina sex.
POV
Point of view.
I have the PIV POV. Unfortunately. I don’t think I was born with it, but I do think it started seeping into me very soon after my birth. There are plenty of heteronorms/religions who would try to convince me otherwise. “You have the PIV POV because penis-in-vagina is the only natural form of sex (and only when it’s practised with the intention to make babies, at that),” they’d say. Except they wouldn’t say PIV POV or penis-in-vagina. More likely, they’d refer to penis-in-vagina sex quite simply as a “sex” or, in more conservative circles, “procreation”.
Evil as they sound, “they” are most people. At least in the sense that most people (especially those of the heterosexual-identifying variety) say “sex” when they mean penis-in-vagina sex, even though most vaginas can't orgasm from penis inside them. But most people are not to blame. PIV is everywhere. It’s the sex we learn about in school (if at all), it’s the sex portrayed in mainstream literature, movies and porn. Disappointingly, many writers who (I hope) know about and enjoy other kinds of sex, still write all their sex scenes consisting entirely of PIV.
We’re caught in a cycle where what we consume influences what we do (in bed) influences what we produce (for others to consume) influences what we do (in bed) and so on.
When I say “we”, I’m not just talking about heterosexual people. PIV, as the so-called “norm”, has an impact on everyone’s understanding of what sex is. As long as penis-in-vagina sex is “sex”, all other kinds of sex (oral, anal, manual, something-else-al) are “other”. Just as non-white people are defined by their ethnicity and non-cisgender-male people are defined by their gender: the “black president” or the “trans writer” and very rarely the “white president” or the “male writer”. The “norm” doesn’t have to define itself or argue for its norm status, the “other” generally doesn’t have an easy time of it.
Not only does the PIV POV ignore the clitoral orgasm, the P-spot orgasm, the nipple-twiddling orgasm, the mind orgasm and all the other kinds of orgasm, it also reduces male sexuality to a predictable, penis-centred thing that looks good (subjective) on camera. Which is offensive to everyone. Human sexuality is waaaay funkier than the little trick the penis does when it’s rubbed up and down for a while.
If you’re into PIV and nothing but PIV, you’re probably missing out. That’s ok. You can choose vanilla, you can own it and call it JOMO. But I’d recommend tasting a few other flavours before settling on vanilla for life.
Other flavours include the kind of stuff that is usually relegated to “foreplay” (with the unspoken intention of getting a vagina wet enough/a penis hard enough for the main act), whilst everything else usually gets categorised under “experimental sex”. Whatever it is, it can absolutely be had instead of, or alongside, PIV sex.
Despite my vanilla-ness and my PIV POV, I have discovered that I am more sensitive on the underside of my arms than I am in my entire genital area. When someone lightly brushes them (my arms) my brain fills with tingles that no other kind of physical stimulation can match. If I got to dictate the sex norm, we’d all be tingling each others’ arms until we climaxed and pregnancy scares would be a thing of the past.
Then there’s the brain itself—“our biggest sex organ” say all the sex gurus—and its capacity for fantasy. Some people are even able to think themselves to orgasm (it’s called “thinking off”). I haven’t quite managed this one yet, but I came close, once, after smoking some weed and releasing a lot of repressed emotion from my childhood. I can also recommend the good old drawn-out tease, where you touch everything but the genitals, including long periods of no touching at all.
Easier said than done though. When it comes to the PIV POV, I am the guiltiest feminist of them all. After a couple minutes of “foreplay” I always find myself suggesting or initiating PIV. Very occasionally it’s because some wild urge in me wants nothing more than to leap onto the peen (usually during ovulation), but much more often, I’m doing it because I know it’s going to happen anyway, so I go ahead and make it happen. It’s expected of me. Not by anyone in particular, not by the person attached to the penis. It’s just the way things are, the way norms are. It feels weird/naughty/selfish to challenge them.
And no matter how much I write about it or talk about it with the penis in question, I challenge nothing (except perhaps feminism) when I then go and act against all my talk of redefining sex and leap onto the penis anyway. If I actually wanted to make some progress, the best thing I could do would be to lie back and take my clitoral/underarm stimulation like a woman(?) and not make a single suggestion or leap in the direction of PIV sex.
Not because PIV sex is bad. I enjoy PIV and I don’t want it to stop. I also enjoy vanilla ice cream. But I don’t want to eat vanilla ice cream for every course of every meal. And sometimes it would be nice to have a meal without any vanilla ice cream, or the unspoken expectation of vanilla ice cream, at all.
We’re back at ice cream, it must be time for some toppings.
Optional toppings
💦 Caitlin Moran on THE ADAM BUXTON PODCAST (skip to 27:01 to hear her theory about why porn is so obsessed with the cumshot)
🧠 Here's How To Give Yourself An Orgasm Using Only Your Mind, a clickbait-y article that doesn’t really do what it says on the tin, but is interesting nonetheless, and links to this study about imagery-induced orgasm
🥒@monachalabi on Instagram
A slightly shorter one this time, but as the penis-lingo goes, it’s not the size that matters, it’s how you use it. Use it well (or not at all).
— H. E.