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Last week, Stephen Fry offended much of the transgender community after stating that he didn’t want to ‘abandon’ JK Rowling or his friends in the LGBTQ+ community in regard to her divisive anti-trans views.
And it seems that this isn’t the end of the backlash for Fry, as an unearthed interview saw him taking a swipe at women who supposedly don’t like sex as much as straight men.
Speaking to Attitude Magazine back in 2010, the actor expressed that he felt bad for straight men who worry that ‘they disgust women’ as they ‘find it difficult to believe that women are as interested in sex as they are'.
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He then went on to add: "For good reason. If women liked sex as much as men, there would be straight cruising areas in the way there are gay cruising areas.
“Women would go and hang around in churchyards thinking: 'God, I've got to get my f***ing rocks off', or they'd go to Hampstead Heath and meet strangers to shag behind a bush. It doesn't happen. Why? Because the only women you can have sex with like that wish to be paid for it,” Fry said in the uncovered interview.
"I feel sorry for straight men,” he went on. “The only reason women will have sex with them is that sex is the price they are willing to pay for a relationship with a man, which is what they want.
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"Of course, a lot of women will deny this and say, 'Oh no, but I love sex, I love it!' But do they go around having it the way that gay men do?"
Well, there’s certainly a lot to unpack here, but why don’t we start with the issue of safety?
For a start, women are taught never to give out their whereabouts or travel alone for fear of harassment, stalking, kidnapping or rape. So, why on earth would women, broadly speaking, broadcast their location to ‘meet strangers to shag behind a bush’ when they have to tackle the very real threat of being a victim of crime?
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As one social media user responded: “It always shocks me how unaware of how dangerous things can be for us. His quote reminds me of hearing about Grindr's management team thinking that they could make a straight version of Grindr.”
As for my next point, why don’t we discuss the orgasm gap? Maybe, just maybe, the kind of men he’s siding with about women’s supposed disinterest in sex are the ones that haven’t the slightest clue about where the clitoris is.
And when you pair that with the fact that only a reported 24 percent of women and 10 percent of non-binary people manage to reach orgasm from penetrative sex alone, compared to almost half of men, that outdated ideology might start to make sense.
In fact, in a recent survey by Lovehoney, they outlined that the ‘winning method’ for women to land an orgasm was through clitoral stimulation, with almost 40 percent of women stating that is how they most frequently reach their peak. I rest my case.
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We’ve also got to take into consideration that women are susceptible to a whole host of painful conditions.
Fibroids, IBS, endometriosis, menopause and even vaginismus - where the muscles in or around the vagina shut tightly, making sex painful or impossible - can mean that sex is the last thing on a woman’s mind.
And that’s without even mentioning the worries of unwanted pregnancy, issues with contraception and the lack of abortion care in the US following the overturning of Roe v Wade.
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It may not be 2010 anymore, but women should never be prude-shamed, sl*t shamed or be made to feel like they owe men anything - especially not sex.
Featured Image Credit: PA Images / Alamy Stock Photo / Doug Peters / Alamy Stock PhotoTopics: Sex and Relationships, News, LGBTQ+