Let's not be tethered by simple sexual stereotypes

THE raunchy television series Sex and the City once showed Charlotte, the most prudish of the four female characters, lunching with some equally prim girlfriends she'd known since her high school days. In a voice a little too loud for the crowded, swank New York restaurant, Charlotte says: "Don't you ever just wanna be really pounded hard, you know? Like when the bed is moving all around, and it's all sweaty, and your head is knocking up against the headboard and you feel like it might just blow off."

Sex and the City was ground-breaking television because it showed just how far American women had come since the 1960s sexual revolution. The show unapologetically challenged assumptions about women and sex by tracking the lives of a group of sassy 30-something women comfortable with their sexual desires. The series didn't pretend to dictate what women want, nor did it assume to represent the full gamut of female choices. That alone made Sex and the City a refreshing chapter in the ongoing story of female sexuality.

Sadly, some missed the series. Even worse, some also seem to have missed the progress since the 60s bra-burning days of women's lib. Some are still determined to prescribe appropriate female sexual behaviour.

Last week, writing in The Sydney Morning Herald, Richard Ackland mused about the dropped rape prosecution against former International Monetary Fund head Dominique Strauss-Kahn. After detailing the many reasons why prosecutors in New York dropped the case against DSK and setting out the plaintiff's many lies and resulting lack of credibility, Ackland seemed to assume the only reasonable conclusion was still that the pudgy banker had raped the immigrant chambermaid in the suite of his expensive hotel.

In a throwaway line, Ackland finished by saying: "Of course he [DSK] insisted the sexual encounter with the maid was consensual. Which leaves us wondering: how consensual do you have to be not to end up with vaginal bruising?"

Charlotte, where are you? Before we look at why sex pushes even more thoughtful minds to jump to stereotypes about women, let's extract DSK from this discussion. This is not about his innocence or guilt. After all, if the plaintiff has a credibility problem, so does the defendant. Apart from his backward Keynesian views about spending, the French politician who wants to be president has a tainted track record involving other allegations of sexual misconduct against him.

The point is not about DSK and the chambermaid. It's about the stubborn puritanism that says if a woman is bruised during sex, then it must be rape. Let's lay it out in the clearest of terms. If it's consensual, it's not rape, even if it's rough. Surely we should have learned by now not to prescribe the choices women make about how they conduct their sexual lives, whether these choices are totally white-bread or rough and rollicking or somewhere in between.

Indeed, the assumption that rough sex must equal rape sits there alongside equally flawed, outdated assumptions that women only watch porn to please men, that women would prefer to read a book or finish the housework than have sex, and if they do have sex, they certainly don't want what Charlotte wants.

Haven't we yet learned that when it comes to the complicated story of female sexuality, one size doesn't fit all? And neither should it. Women's empowerment ought to champion the fact that different women want different things, be it in the bedroom or elsewhere. That more enlightened view means the past sexual proclivities of women have long stopped being relevant in rape prosecutions. A woman who likes rough sex can also be the victim of rape. By the same token, let's repeat that rough sex does not equal rape.

Alas, women are not alone when it comes to being on the receiving end of stubborn, moralising assumptions about sex. Plenty of skewed sexual assumptions are made by women about men. In fact, most of the public debate over morality in the bedroom is now conducted entirely by women; men rarely dare voice an opinion lest they be shouted down. Writing in The Age last week, Bettina Arndt gave the perfect example about a man who got into all sorts of trouble for writing about his "inner goat". His article, published in Britain's The Telegraph Magazine, agonised about the fact that while "on the surface, you may look like a gentleman, inside, you're a goat".

The author, too shy to identify himself, talked about his testosterone-fuelled single friend, Marcus, who openly discusses what he'd like to do to a pretty woman who passes by them in a cafe. More coy than Marcus, the married man admitted: "Inside my respectable married self, I do have an inner goat. It's just that I have spent a lot of time - several years - taming the goat . . . inside a concrete pen, tethered to the post." But then sometimes, when an attractive woman walks by, "the goat rattles the door of its pen. Sometimes it butts the door: sometimes the door opens. I shove the goat back inside. Then I close the door and delude myself that it never opened; that the goat never got out."

As Arndt explored, even this light-hearted attempt to be open about men's struggle with their hidden desires brought howls of rage from women who suggested he learn to control his "pathetic, primitive mind".

The rope restraining this poor chap's inner goat is an assumption that, once married, especially if happily married, a man must not fantasise about women other than his wife. It's the assumption Charlotte would make about men until she realises that, just as many men don't fit neatly into her sex and sensibility story about men, neither does she always fit neatly into assumptions made about women and sex.

Challenging the cultural fault lines about sex unsettles many people. The intimate business of men and women living and loving together is tricky territory. Those who still succumb to simplistic assumptions - be it about men and their inner goat or women and their desires - should try to catch repeat episodes of Sex and the City screening on television just about any day of the week. Just don't assume all women fit neatly into the characters of Carrie, Charlotte, Miranda or Samantha. Happily, the reality is far more complex than that.