ABSTRACT
Reflecting on how women can understand themselves in a patriarchal culture—and what women’s narratives teach us about their sexual subjectivities—this chapter examines what we can understand about men by looking at women’s narratives about men. Drawing from a community sample of 20 women collected in 2014, I examine, using thematic analysis, two common areas where women describe their personal and sexual experiences with men: 1) sexual activities women perform solely to please a partner, and 2) women’s experiences with sex as a form of labor. Together, these stories shed light on the ways that women’s sexuality exists largely in relation to asymmetrical power structures that grant greater power to men than to women. These stories complicate notions of sexual labor, emotion work, patriarchal impositions on women’s sexual lives, and sexual liberation after second-wave feminism. The stories in this chapter also complicate the often over-simplified notions of sexual satisfaction, gender equity, and sexual pleasure.
