How to be good at sex as a straight man
"Topping, or being the one who initiates, when done responsibly, is an act of trust."
I can count on one hand the times having sex with someone for the first time went well. Most times it was a few minutes of fumbling around in the dark literally and figuratively, with little fun or pleasure and lots of tension and embarrassment. A few times were so awkward that I couldn’t keep it up, which was so embarrassing it caused me shame.
If only I’d read the writer Clementine Morrigan’s newsletter post “They don’t even know they are tops and bottoms.” It’s so helpful and clarifying that I thought of just copying and pasting the entire thing here for other men to read. But Morrigan is queer and bisexual, so her perspective needs a little translating for straight men. Her point is that there are unspoken assumptions in straight sex that make it a “roll of the dice,” potentially “traumatizing,” and “rather bleak.” She writes:
“Men feel they have to be very assertive and initiatory or nothing will happen. Women feel they can’t or shouldn’t express the specifics of what they want, or they aren’t even sure what they want because arousal for them is more complicated than stating a set of actions.”
Without intentionally talking beforehand—doing a “check in,” Morrigan calls it—these unexpressed scripts between straight men and women often lead to a lot of mediocre, bad, or harmful sex. Like when I was super attracted to a woman but couldn’t stay hard because we were moving too fast. Or when a woman whispered in my ear in bed that she liked “kinky stuff” and I froze up and couldn’t respond. Or when a woman I wasn’t sexually attracted to pulled me into a bathroom at a party and did things to me I didn’t really want.
One time I remember vividly was when a woman I was sexually attracted to invited me back to her apartment after a fun, flirty date.
We talked for hours about politics and philosophy but never broached the growing sexual energy between us. I wanted to have sex with her but was nervous to make a move or—god forbid—talk about it. When we finally got into bed at, like, two in the morning, I was exhausted. We got naked and fumbled around for a while before spooning and passing out. I hadn’t been able to get hard but chalked it up to being tired.
When I texted her the next day to set up another date, she seemed cold and detached. We planned to meet again, but when we met at a theater for a play we’d previously been excited about seeing together, she barely said a word to me. Just before the end of the night, I summoned the courage to ask, “What’s wrong? You’ve been quiet.” She responded, “I think we tried to have sex too fast.” I filled with shame. Had I tried to push things too fast? Or was I not “assertive and initiatory” enough? I’ll never know because I never asked, and she ghosted me afterward.
A lot of my awkward, embarrassing fumbling back then could’ve been prevented if I’d known, in Morrigan’s words, the “basic skills of sexual communication ... and why it is hot and nice to find out the information necessary to have hot, consensual sex.” Straight people tend to not know this stuff, especially straight men. We learn through a hodgepodge of movies, porn, and friends boasting about sexual conquests. We never talk about it honestly and vulnerably with other men. We learn alone in front of a screen from corporations like Pornhub and XVideos, who exploit sex workers and cause us to have worse sex in real life. We learn through trial and lots of error, with outcomes that are “totally unpredictable and random.”
So many men have sex in ways they don’t really like. Either because they are nervous and feel too scared to admit it or because the feel shame that their body doesn’t look or work exactly the way they see in porn or because they are so focused on pleasing her that they forget to experience pleasure themselves or because they assume that men must always be dominant or because they never learned how women’s arousal works or, as Morrigan writes, “because there really isn’t much education on or representation of straight sex freed from the shackles of heteronormativity, sex-as-penetration, and restrictive gender roles.”
To be sure, there are plenty of men who solely focus on their own pleasure and use women’s bodies as objects to masturbate with.
This is why so many women feel like they have to go along with sex they don’t really like. And why sex with straight men can be so traumatizing. As Morrigan writes, this is not quite sexual assault, when no consent has been given. Sex can be traumatizing simply because of “poor communication and being stuck in unsatisfying scripts.” If you’re a man who does this, please read the next paragraph about how to do a check-in, as you need it the most.
Morrigan suggests pressing pause as a sexual experience begins and asking these sorts of questions to each other: “Are there ways you don’t like to be touched? Are there particular things you like? How will I know if you don’t like something or want to stop? Is there anything else I should know?” You might start the conversation when you’re kissing and starting to mess around or even before things get physical. For example, I would answer that I like to start slow. That I like my arms and back being massaged. That I get really turned on by her being turned on. That sometimes I lose my erection and that doesn’t mean I want to stop. And that I most enjoy being in charge but also like when she tells what to do to pleasure her.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m terrified to ask these types of questions and answer them—even with my partner, who I’ve been with for over four years. But after years of trial and error, I’ve learned that talking about sex counterintuitively turns up the hotness and pleasure. The vulnerability this level of communication requires increases emotional intimacy, which is a necessary ingredient for the sort of sex I want to have. It creates trust, which is needed for each partner to open to each other and have a great time.
“Topping, or being the one who initiates, when done responsibly, is an act of trust,” Morrigan writes. “It requires a whole skill set around communication, and being perceptive, none of which are taught to or modeled for straight guys, and it also requires a certain degree of trust that the receptive partner will meet us halfway.”
It's not your fault that you’ve so far bumbled your way through sex, with some hits and many misses. We were never taught this stuff, and the stuff we did learn made it even harder to be good in bed. Like pretty much all relationship issues, it’s not something we can figure out by ourselves on our own, like men tend to try to do. If we want great sex, we have to learn how to talk about it.
I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments—what’s sex been like for you? What frustrates you about it? What did you wish you had been taught?
— Jeremy
I think most cishet men really need more sex education from queer sources. Queerness truly frees us all. I’m glad you’re being the bridge and hopefully more men can, like you, begin accessing queer speakers/writers on the topic.
I also think cishet women could use some of this, too. Because of cisheteropatriarchy, so many straight girlies are out there absolutely being complicit with their own erotic mediocrity (at best) because they are also unskilled in having conversations around sex, arousal, and desire. Sometimes they aren’t even aware of what they really like or need.
Queer liberation is really about everyone getting more free (and having more fun). You’re playing your part!
Another community that does this well, IME, is the kink community. Consent and desire are languages that have been shrouded in puritanical ambiguity and honestly it’s nonsense we culturally do this to ourselves.