Good in Bed Guide to Female Orgasms (7 page)

And worry is the opposite of arousal. It is the anti-arousal, because anxiety slams on the brakes of your sexual inhibition system. Turning off anxiety eases off the brakes, letting your sexual response flow smoothly forward.

We know the phrase “performance anxiety” because men experience a similar phenomenon, worrying about whether or not they’ll be able to get and sustain an erection—which in turn makes it more difficult for them to get erections.

Women, whose erections are non-obvious and unnecessary, strictly speaking, for intercourse, haven’t been The Good in Bed Guide to Female Orgasms 81

given credit for this particular problem, but it affects us too, often in the form of spectatoring.

Fortunately it’s one of those problems that’s simple (thought not necessarily easy) to fix! Here’s a quick and dirty how-to:

Humans, unlike any other species, can be in control of our minds, rather than the other way around. We can notice what we’re thinking or feeling, and we can
do
something about it. That’s the key to managing performance anxiety. Notice that you’re worrying and then do something about it. Simple.

But it requires practice. Lots and lots of practice. It will probably be easiest if you begin by practicing outside the context of sexuality— say, standing in line at the grocery store or sitting on the bus, notice how your arms and legs feel, how your stomach feels, what you’re thinking about, the speed with which you’re thinking, how what you’re thinking is making your shoulders and belly feel. Your breath. In. Pause. Out. Pause. Just notice.

The
most
important thing to notice is when your attention wanders from the thing you’re trying to notice.

That skill right there? That’s mindfulness. Noticing 82

The Good in Bed Guide to Female Orgasms when your attention wanders from the thing you’re trying to notice is the skill that will help you stop spectatoring, because you’ll learn to notice when you’re spectatoring and then redirect your attention to the sensations in your body.

To conclude: Teach yourself to notice how your body feels and to notice when your attention wanders from how your body feels. Do it every day, even if it’s just two minutes, and apply this skill during sex. Have better sex and easier orgasms, and light up the world with your unbounded ecstasy. The world will thank you for it.

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Chapter Eighteen: Homage to the

Clitoris

It’s the hokey pokey—it’s what it’s all about.

It’s two turn-tables and a microphone—it’s where it’s at.

It’s a Visa card—it’s everywhere you want to be.

It’s the clitoris and I can’t say enough about it.

Averaging just one-eighth the size of a penis, yet loaded with nearly double the nerve endings, it is the only human organ with no function other than pleasure.

The penis? Bah! Urination, penetration, ejaculation.

It’s a workhorse, a solid and reliable trooper, but without the finesse or precision of the clitoris. Watson to the clitoris’s Holmes.

Biologically, the clitoris is emphatically not just the nubbin of tissue at the dorsal end of the vulva; that shaft bends back deep within the tissue of a woman’s vulva and splits into two legs (crura) that terminate at the mouth of the vagina. Stimulate the clitoris up north, get lubrication down south. The anatomy of the clitoris extends right down to the bottom edge of the vaginal introitus—the delicate, ever-so-sensitive tissue 84

The Good in Bed Guide to Female Orgasms of the fourchette, female homologue of the frenulum.

Thus, the clitoris extends everywhere throughout the vulva. It really is everywhere you want to be.

As exquisitely specific as it is sensitive, the clitoris demands trustworthiness, respect, and appreciation or it will not be tempted. Treat it with kindness, generosity, and patience, and you’ll be rewarded. The brusque, the indelicate, and the inattentive need not apply. Above all, each clitoris has a different personality. What works for one will not necessarily work for another. Some like a pointy tongue, some a soft and flat tongue. Some like it direct and intense; others would flinch from anything more than the softest, most peripheral of caresses.

But nearly all of them want to be warmed up. Never
start
with the clit. In fact, start with mood and mind and trust and affection. Move from there to kisses, and from there to caresses, and from there to fondling. Like ovens and baking, women need to be pre-heated.

Be kind to the clit and it will be kind to you. Be excellent to the clit and, well, I won’t say that you’ll generate world peace, universal love and respect, or eternal happiness… but you might. Worth a try, anyway!

Also, use lube. And confidence and joy.

Can’t go wrong.

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Chapter Nineteen: Vibrators

There are two things I’d like everyone in the universe to know about women, orgasms, and vibrators: First, 95% of women who masturbate do so with no vaginal penetration. So even though many quality sex toy shops feature rows of phallic vibrators lined up like soldiers, with oscillating heads and beaded shafts and god only knows what else, and even though these displays make an awe-inspiring, wallet-opening presentation, in fact, most of women’s masturbation involves clitoral stimulation alone.

Don’t get me wrong, ain’t nothin’ wrong with penetrative masturbation, heck no. I just want to make sure you know that most women, most of the time, don’t do it, despite what porn, mainstream media, and, indeed, too many sex educators might have you believe.

Second, the important thing about vibrators is the intensity of stimulation they provide—far more stimulation than you can get organically.

For women who take longer to orgasm than they want (on average, 10 to 30 minutes, with wide variability, from 2 minutes to an hour+), or who have difficulty orgasming from oral, manual, or penetrative sex, a 86

The Good in Bed Guide to Female Orgasms vibrator can provide more stimulation and give you more control—and it will never get frustrated, bored, or impatient.

Can you get “addicted” to your vibrator? I get asked this fairly frequently. The short answer is “No.” The longer answer is that you can certainly get
used
to needing only a few minutes to orgasm, and so when you go for orgasm without the toy you might feel like it’s taking aaaaaaaaaages, when really it’s just taking as long as it always did pre-vibrator. But using a vibrator will not make it impossible for you to orgasm by a different modality, just as learning to orgasm through earlobe stimulation, for example, will not prevent you from orgasming through direct clitoral stimulation.

The reason for this is that there are not 60 kinds of orgasm; there is just ONE orgasm: the explosive release of sexual tension.

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Chapter Twenty: Faking It

It’s easy to do (and don’t get me started on the bad date I had with a cardiologist who insisted he could tell the difference because—he said in a smug tone that indicated that I, with my PhD in sex, was unlikely to understand this—of the contractions of the pelvic floor muscles. Can’t fake that, he said. Oh yes you can, I said. Bad. Date.)

I take a slightly heretical line on the question of faking and I’ll probably be accused of submitting to the patri-archy or subsidizing women’s pleasure in the service of men’s. But I promise you I’m not; I’m just dealing with physiological reality in the face of cultural demands, hoping to help women have happy, healthy sex.

Here’s the thing: A woman is less likely to have orgasms early in a relationship. Her body needs time to adapt to the new partner, to learn to trust him or her, and to relax into the knowledge that her partner accepts and appreciates her body.

At the same time, good partners revel in making a woman come. I like that in a partner, both personally and conceptually; I approve of people who enjoy women’s orgasms, on principle. IDEAL partners 88

The Good in Bed Guide to Female Orgasms recognize that a woman’s orgasms might be thin on the ground early on, and happily recognize that her intense pleasure, even in the absence of orgasm, isn’t a sign of failure but an encouraging sign that things are moving in the right direction. Then when the orgasm does happen, it’s a delicious and joyful indication that she’s moved to a new place in her connection with her partner. Hooray!

But most people aren’t ideal, and in particular, sorry for the generalization, most men aren’t ideal. (After all, a woman’s female partner is maybe less likely to im-pose a male template on female sexuality.) They take it personally—both success and failure. If a woman comes, it’s because he did a great job! If she doesn’t, horrors, it’s because he failed.

Why is this? Well, because we STILL (STILL!) think about women’s sexuality in terms of men’s sexuality, and for men, whose orgasms are faster, more reliable, and more homogeneous, orgasm often is the measure of satisfaction. The same standard must apply to women.

So here’s what happens. If a woman likes a man, she wants him to feel good about the relationship. She wants him to enjoy sex with her and to know that she The Good in Bed Guide to Female Orgasms 89

enjoys sex with him. If orgasm is a way she can show him she’s enjoying it, but orgasm just isn’t there for her yet, faking it is a completely viable option. He feels good, she feels good. Fair enough.

Another reason women fake it is, well, to get sex over with. Again because women want their partners to feel satisfied and happy, and because sometimes men want sex more often than women do, women go along with having sex when they’re not quite there and fake it to indicate that they’re ready for it to be over now. Again, in my opinion, fair enough.

Faking is problematic, of course, for a number of reasons:

1. If you fake it when your partner does stuff that doesn’t really do it for you, you’re teaching him the wrong thing about your sexual functioning; only fake when you COULD have had an orgasm, had trust and relaxation been more fully in place.

2. When you get right down to it, faking it is lying. Is it a harmless white lie, like, “You look great in those candy-striped clamdiggers”? Or is it a dark and deceptive lie, like, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman”? Well, there’s the rub (pardon 90

The Good in Bed Guide to Female Orgasms the expression). I’m inclined to prefer the white lie view, but lots of people disagree with me.

3. On some level it perpetuates the cultural model of women’s sexuality as a subset of men’s sexuality.

Our partners should take our sexuality as they find it and not need it to be something it’s not! They
should.

Yet they don’t.

For those who don’t want their women partners to fake it: Don’t take either credit or blame for her orgasm.

Her sexual responsiveness may appear complex even to the point of inconsistency. Go with the flow.

For those women who are trying to decide whether or not to fake it: Have a chat with your partner about what does and doesn’t do it for you. Most of what you say will probably be less about fingers, tongues, and phalluses and more about stress, trust, and affection.

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Chapter Twenty-One: How to Have an

Orgasm During Intercourse

So now you know how to fake—and not fake—an orgasm during intercourse. But how do you have one?

I mentioned earlier that about one-third of women are reliably orgasmic from penetration, another third are sometimes orgasmic from penetration, and the remaining third are never or almost never orgasmic from penetration. This is a statistic that’s been found over and over again in many different kinds of studies and I feel very confident about it.

Yet women ask me all the time, “Why can’t I have an orgasm during intercourse?” or, “How can I have an orgasm during intercourse?”

Well, the reason you can’t is very likely the same reason
most
women can’t, which is that intercourse is not a very good way to stimulate the clitoris, and clitoral stimulation is THE way to make an orgasm happen.

The “how,” therefore, is to add clitoral stimulation to intercourse. (This is technically called “assisted intercourse,” which is not very sexy but is clear and descriptive.) You can add clitoral stimulation lots of ways. As I described above, you can touch your 92

The Good in Bed Guide to Female Orgasms clitoris; your partner can touch your clitoris; you can use a vibrator on your clitoris; your partner can use a vibrator on your clitoris; you can sandwich a vibrator between your two bodies; you can angle penetration so that your partner’s pubic bone rocks against your clitoris; you can be on top so that your clitoris rocks against your partner’s pubic bone; you can choose a position that keeps your thighs clamped together, which allows for stimulation of your clitoris; you can explore g-spot stimulation, just to name a few.

That’s the shortcut answer and it’s the one I give most often. But I have to take this opportunity to say that I wonder about this pervasive desire to have an orgasm during penetration, when it’s clearly not the thing that naturally does the trick for most women.

WHY have an orgasm during penetration? No one ever asks me that, so I’m asking you.

(Caveat Lector: If you’re a lesbian couple or a trans-man and a female-bodied woman couple using a dildo, you’re experimenting with gender sufficiently and have probably interrogated the heteronormativity of your choice enough that I totally excuse you from the following rant.)