Lux Alptraum

Basic thesis: “while a number of honorable women have been unfairly slandered as dishonest, it’s the lies that many, if not most, of us are telling on a daily basis that offer the greater insight into the female experience. We lie because it makes our day-to-day lives easier; we lie to keep ourselves safe; we lie because no one believes us when we tell the truth. But most of all, we lie because the world expects us to live up to an impossible standard—and frequently, lying is the only way to get through life with our sanity intact.” Alptraum covers faking orgasm (or faking understanding why orgasm is a big deal), lies about virginity (or lack thereof), lies about sexual interest, lies about having a boyfriend, makeup as “lying,” and lies about contraception, with a coda on lies about rape (adults who lie usually have otherwise disordered lives and report a stranger rape, while juveniles are more likely to lie to avoid parental condemnation). “When women are assumed to be unable, or unwilling, to overtly communicate desire, men treat everything as a covert expression of desire, a secret code that they and they alone have the power to decipher.” Along the way, she argues for acknowledging the struggles and realities of all kinds of women—those who can and can’t orgasm through vaginal penetration alone, those who lie and use long-term contraception as a form of harm reduction because they’re in abusive relationships, those who lie and don’t use contraception because they want to control their own reproductive futures, those who are willing to have not-fantastic sex for other goals, those who want casual sex and those who don’t. Even so, she recognizes, some of these lies end up contributing to toxic myths, and others just don’t encourage (mostly) men to do any better. I’m not sure I learned a lot, but it was a saddening juxtaposition of different types of lies, often because women haven’t been asked for their truths. In comparison, she points out, men who pressure and deceive to get sex—or lie and remove the condom they agreed to wear—don’t see themselves as untrustworthy, but as doing what is only natural and commendable. Ultimately, as she quotes one of her sources, “[w]e don’t need empowerment messages; we need power,” and a lie is, “in a sense, an attempt to claim power, and as a short-term strategy it can be a fairly successful one.”… (altro)