Women's Sexuality Close Up

As a result of the second and third waves of the feminist movement, many women have felt freer to examine and express their sexuality. Before this time, it was simply assumed that heterosexuality centered on the experience of the male partner. If you asked a heterosexual couple how many times per week they had sex, they counted by times of intercourse and male orgasm. This definition was used as recently as the studies of Masters and Johnson, who, in their own way, helped disabuse the public and professionals of this antiquated notion and even discovered that women were capable of multiple orgasms, given the right stimulation. [1] The definition of sex had to change.
The role of the clitoris and its anatomy were virtually ignored and often unknown until the second wave of the women’s movement, which coincided with the sexual revolution in the United States.  Feminist clinicians and researchers took up the issue of women and sexual pleasure. Wasn’t that sex also?
It was soon discovered that women had a sexual organ that was homologous to the male penis and it was named the clitoris. Various forms of stimulation would bring a woman to orgasm. To begin with, Betty Dodson[2] and others began to run what they called pre-orgasmic groups to teach women how to self-stimulate to orgasm. Initially this involved the use of vibrators and was conducted in Pre-Orgasmic groups. The term pre-orgasmic replaced the previously common one "frigidity." Once the woman learned her own body, she could teach the ins and outs to her partner for a more satisfying sex life.[3]
This kind of study became an area of research and treatment in psychotherapy. Research on female sexuality has continued and so have clinical observations. I offer here my clinical observations, which are being supported by the research of many young scientists, as Western culture passes once again through a sexual revolution, perhaps smaller than the earlier one, but just as significant. It concerns orientation and fluidity.

Many girls and women, the majority in fact, grow up being attracted only to males. They are cisgender and heterosexual by definition. Then somewhere around the age when reproduction is no longer an option, many of these women find themselves surprisingly attracted to other women. Apparently women’s sexuality is also fluid in a way that men’s does not seem to be even when they are younger. Many women have gone on to form lifelong romantic relations with other women, after having considered themselves strictly heterosexual.[4]
It is too soon to know if this phenomenon is hormonal, psychological or cultural. I would add to this list that it may have an evolutionary aspect, in that women did not need men after their reproductive years. However, this idea does not explain the greater fluidity found by researchers in earlier years and I myself have seen it in my practice with women from 20 to 80 or more. An alternative hypothesis is that women are a bit more advanced on the evolutionary scale than are men as a group. These are still only hypotheses.
There is still much to be learned about women’s sexuality in a society that has suppressed it all these years. We are no longer in the Victorian times of Freud. Cultural context always affects individual psychology in different ways.
In my next post, I will discuss what we have learned about the sexuality of men in these years since the 1960’s, when feminist revolution made this research possible.

A Touchy Subject: The Health Benefits of Masturbation

by Jason Hannay
A recent Gallup Poll reported that half of Americans regularly take a vitamin or nutritional supplement. It appears that adults in the U.S are becoming steadily more health-conscious and taking steps to improve their own health.
There is one healthy activity, however, that is often considered a taboo topic in our culture and even a source of shame for many individuals. That activity is masturbation. Information provided by Planned Parenthood tells us that “Negative feelings about masturbation can threaten our health and well-being. Only you can decide what is healthy and right for you. But if you feel ashamed or guilty about masturbating, talking with a trusted friend, sexuality educator, counselor, and/or clergy member may help.”

The organization's website also lists the varied health benefits of masturbation, including creating a sense of well-being; enhancing sex with partners both physically and emotionally; increasing the ability to have orgasms; improving relationship and sexual satisfaction; improving sleep; increasing self-esteem; improving body image; reducing stress; releasing sexual tension; relieving menstrual cramps; strengthening muscle tone in the pelvic and anal areas; and reducing women’s chances of involuntary urine leakage and uterine prolapse. Another recent study suggests that men could reduce their risk of developing prostate cancer through regular masturbation, and another notes that for women, masturbating can flush old bacteria from the cervix, decreasing the chances of developing a urinary tract infection.

Masturbation is also a cornerstone of modern sex therapy. Those who seek professional counseling for sexual difficulties, including inability to orgasm, are typically instructed to masturbate to learn about their bodies and then encouraged to communicate what they discover to their partners. Many outstanding self-help books, such as Becoming Orgasmic and The Elusive Orgasm, suggest masturbation as a core strategy, and sex educators including Betty Dodson and Corey Silverberg, tout the benefits of the practice and provide how-to guides.

There is a biochemical basis for the positive effects of masturbation. It "releases feel-good neurochemicals like dopamine and oxytocin that lift your spirits, boost your satisfaction, and activate the reward circuits in your brain," reports Gloria Brame, Ph.D. "An orgasm is the biggest non-drug blast of dopamine available.” In short, a masturbation-induced orgasm creates feelings of euphoria: It’s a safe, free, and natural high.

Considering all the benefits, why aren’t more people—especially women—masturbating regularly? Societal taboos and the resultant shame they cause are partly to blame. For women, there may also be another reason: Stated simply, female masturbation presents more of a logistical challenge than does male masturbation, and reaching arousal takes longer for women than for men. Finding sufficient private time to reach arousal and/or orgasm may be difficult for women who share a bed with a partner or who have children.

Masturbation certainly requires more time and effort than taking a multivitamin. Yet the research on vitamin and supplement benefits is riddled with conflicting results, whereas the findings on masturbation are unequivocal. What Woody Allen called "sex with someone you love" and what Betty Dodson called "selfloving" is beneficial for one’s physical, emotional, and relational health.

In my Human Sexuality class at the University of Florida, students can choose to complete a Psychology Today-style blog for a class project. I then choose the top five submissions, and the students vote on their favorite, with the winner given the option of having me edit their post and publish it here. Above is the edited version of the winning post from my Fall 2013 class, submitted by junior Jason Hannay.

Mixed marriages

A couple of news stories this week deal with "mixed marriages."  I don't mean Jewish/Christian or Black/White marriages, but marriages where the sexual drive of one partner is fundamentally different than the sexual drive of another. In the first set of stories, it is about women who "marry gay."  In the other, it is about women who just don't want to have sex as often as their male partners.

Kiri Blakeley's Can't Even Think Straight: A Memoir of Mixed-up Love tells the story of her ten year relationship with a man who decides, in the end, that he's gay.  Apparently Ms. Blakeley finds not just the fact that her partner of ten years would dump her memoir worthy, but feels particularly betrayed that the reason he left her was because of his sexuality.   She describes the scene of his coming out as her trotting into the living room like the family dog, expecting a belly rub, but getting a bullet in the head instead.  A bit dramatic, but then again, betrayal always leads to self-pity, at least at first. 

On a particularly alarmist segment about Blakeley's book on the Today Show , the viewer is told that "experts" say that "for a woman to find that the man she's in love with is gay is happening more and more often."  Really?  How are we measuring that number?  Then a psycho-therapist is trotted out to tell us that when women cheat with other women it's for emotional connections, and therefore easier to forgive, but when men cheat with men it's purely sexual.   

Sigh.  There is so much wrong with this story that I don't know where to begin. But let's stick with the most obvious problem: men are sexual; women are victims.  Men want sex; women want emotional connection.  And the experts are here to help us figure out what to do with our "mixed marriages."  Ms. Blakeley may not realize it yet, but she's set off a whole cottage industry now where the media plants fear and panic in the listeners who then rush to experts because they fear they "married gay."

This widespread assumption that we need experts in love and desire is also what drives large pharmaceutical companies for a cure to "female sexual dysfunction."  A new documentary,  Orgasm,Inc., makes the danger of corporate love experts clear.  The "pink viagra"- which has yet to be approved for human use- attempts to put a chemical end  to something that the vast majority of women seem to feel at some point in their lives:  difficulty orgasming and decreased sexual desire. In Orgasm, Inc. filmmaker Liz Canner realizes that the purpose of big pharma is not "pleasure" but "profit" and that in pursuit of that profit they are willing to put women's health at risk. 

Of course,  these stories of mixed marriages are not really newsworthy. After all, what's the news?  That people break up even after seemingly perfect relationships?  That sometimes people leave other people for unfulfilled sexual and emotional desires, including the desire to be with someone of the same sex?  That sometimes one partner wants sex more or less than the other? Or that there are "experts" and the corporations that employ them out there trying to convince us that the love we have is not the love we want?

Instead of getting sucked into believing that there is something wrong with us and only experts can fix it, we might be better off taking a deep breath.  Let's relieve both sex and the experts of some of their significance.  So your fiance is gay?  That may or may not mean the end of your coupling, but it surely doesn't have to end your friendship in the bonfire that is a tell-all memoir.  So you just don't want to have sex anymore?  That too need not be seen as a problem.  Instead of rushing into the arms of "experts" and others who will sell us "true love," we'd be better off listening to the words of the 20th century's two greatest philosphers:

Why Older Women (Cougars) Seek Sex With Younger Men (Cubs)

There have always been couples comprised of older women (cougars) and significantly younger men (cubs), but these relationships went mainstream in 2009 with the premiere of the TV show “Cougar Town.” Then in 2017 Emmanuel Macron was elected president of France, and the media feasted on the fact that his wife, his former high school Latin teacher, was 24 years older. Not surprisingly, sexologists have recently delved into the cougar-cub phenomenon.

"Script-Defying" Sex
A French researcher conducted in-depth interviews with 55 women, age 30 to 60, who'd been involved with significantly younger men. Their choice of mates involved several factors independent of their age differences: appearance, intelligence, kindness, family background, and sense of humor. But the younger men also gave their older partners a welcome gift—“script-defying” sex.

“Script” refers to sexual scripts, the sexological term for culturally accepted generalizations about lovemaking, what most people consider conventional and normal. Prevalent sexual scripts include:
•Men lust. Women want to feel desired.
•“Sex” equals fellatio and intercourse, with perhaps a bit of cunnilingus.
•Men should orchestrate sex. Women should follow their lead.
•Women come during intercourse.

These scripts may be widely accepted, but they are seriously mistaken:
•Yes, the large majority of women want to feel desired. In addition, some—an estimated 5 to 10 percent—also experience lifelong male-style lust. Many cougars said they’d been denigrated by friends and previous close-in-age lovers for having lusty libidos.
•Sex equals fellatio and intercourse with a little cunnilingus in one key realm—pornography. Porn shows almost constant penis worship, but comparatively little (if any) cunnilingus. This seriously deludes men about women and lovemaking. Gentle, extended clitoral caressing—particularly cunnilingus—is key to most women’s orgasms and erotic satisfaction. Many cougars said they’d tried unsuccessfully to persuade similar-aged lovers to provide oral. They found cubs more open to instruction and much less resistant to providing extended cunnilingus every time. As a result, the women were more consistently orgasmic than many had been with age-matched lovers, and reported greater sexual satisfaction.
•When men orchestrate partner sex, they work up to orgasms around 95 percent of the time. But depending on the study, women’s rate of partner-sex orgasms is only 50 to 70 percent, no matter how long it lasts or how large the erection. As just mentioned, in cougar-cub relationships, the women insist on extended cunnilingus, which helps them climax. And most cubs appreciate having experienced teachers who clue them into the fine points of pleasuring women and helping them come.
•When TV and movies depict intercourse, after a few thrusts, both lovers come. Actually, only around 25 percent of women are consistently orgasmic from intercourse alone. The other 75 percent need kissing, cuddling, whole-body massage, genital hand massage, and especially cunnilingus. Compared with men their own age or older, cougars say cubs are more teachable, and therefore, preferable partners.


Finally, in the study, the cougars appreciated their young bucks’ sexual energy and stamina, including their ability to raise new erections soon after ejaculating so the couple could go second and sometimes even third rounds.
While the cougars in the study placed great value on cunnilingus, they did not reject intercourse. On the contrary, they wanted it every time. But they also wanted generous cunnilingus—and made sure their cubs provided it.

Cougar-Cub Sex When the Men Are Minors: Is It Child Abuse?
Many cubs are legal adults—say, 55 year-old women with 30-year-old men. But some cubs are barely teenagers. If a 30-year-old man has sex with a 12-year-old girl, she’s a victim, he’s a pedophile, and most Americans would support locking him up. But if a 30-year-old woman has sex with a 12-year-old boy, is she a pedophile?

In the case of Mary Kay Letourneau, the court thought so. In 1996, Letourneau was a married, 34-year-old elementary schoolteacher in Burien, Washington, when she began a consensual sexual relationship with her then-12-year-old student, Vili Fualaau. The following year, she gave birth to their daughter.

When Letourneau’s husband discovered their affair, he divorced her. Then a relative of his took additional action. He called the police. In a plea bargain, Letourneau was sentenced to six months in jail on the condition that she never see Fualaau again. A month after her release, police caught the two together and she was sentenced to seven years in prison.         

In 2004 when Letourneau was released, Fualaau was 20, an adult who could legally consent to sex. He petitioned the court to rescind the no-contact order. His request was granted. The couple married in 2005 and had another child. “I always wanted the relationship,” Fualaau said, “I was never a victim. I’m fine.”

Until the late 1970s, the legal system typically ignored sexual relationships involving cougars and underage boys based on the belief that they caused no harm. Since then, cultural sentiments have changed. If cougars bed underage boys, the courts treat them as sex offenders. But when cougars get busted for sex with minors, they’re much less likely than comparable men to go to prison, and if imprisoned, they serve shorter sentences.

Meanwhile, the vast majority of men with histories of cougar-cub relationships believe there’s nothing wrong with them. In one study, almost two-thirds of adult men who, as minors, had sex with adult women felt fine about it. Many expressed gratitude for their sexual initiation and the erotic instruction they’d received. Of those who felt less than positive, 33 percent felt neutral. Only 5 percent said they’d been abused.

How do you feel about cougar-cub relationships? If adult women have sex with male minors, do you think it’s child sex abuse?

Friend No More?

My closest friend of the last five years has recently developed two new close friends and shuts me out so that our conversation remains impersonal. I feel all my loyalty has been in vain. I don't know whether to confront her or just let her go. She makes me feel bad when she directly excludes me. I know I have my faults but a friend can depend on me. The worst part is she doesn't seem to notice how she's treating me.
What a limited set of options you give yourself! Why do you think that confrontation is the only kind of conversation two people can engage in over an uncomfortable situation? The assumption that a disagreement means that talk must be adversarial in itself leads people into hostile stances and that almost guarantees negative outcomes. Instead -- and this holds true for any conversation with anyone about anything, and in any kind of relationship -- when you have a complaint or seek change of some kind, request setting aside time for a conversation. You would be wisest to begin it in a way that is most likely to bring about the result you want, while preserving your own dignity. That means not beginning with criticism. If you launch into an attack, your friend will feel defensive and that will render her unable to hear your request for more closeness. Besides, she won't be in any frame of mind to want it at that point. You don't need to distort your very legitimate feelings. You might begin by saying that you miss the closeness you two used to have and you want to know whether you've done something specific to put her off. At the very least, you'll get valuable feedback you can use to correct course in the future. Your role is to listen nondefensively. If the door is open at all, then ask what steps you both can take to resolidify the friendship. At the same time you're approaching the problem nonconfrontationally, you are making yourself more likeable. It's a very winning combination. Still, don't expect success 100 percent of the time; some people are too glued to their grievances.
Love Is a Weighty Matter
My wife and I have been married for 15 years and have five kids. Until two years ago, we had a good sex life -- sex about twice a week. Then she lost interest, citing 10 to 15 pounds of weight gain as the culprit ("I'm fat and unattractive"). I have assured her that the weight can be lost, that she is still attractive. I have also tried physical contact without expectations of sex. We also talk to each other about what is going on with our lives. Bottom line: We now have sex once or twice a month, when she urges me to just "get it over with."
Perhaps you are the one who needs to lighten up. Ten to 15 pounds is not a dramatic gain, but weight is a loaded issue for most American women. Telling your wife that the gained weight can be lost is tantamount to declaring you dislike the way she looks now. Even if she doesn't understand how she picks up the signals, your unspoken feelings could be making her so uncomfortable that she can't wait to get any exposure over with. She may read your interest in lovemaking as desire not so much to be with her as to satisfy your own sexual needs. Depending how much real power in the relationship she does or doesn't have, she may find it hard to tell you directly what's bothering her -- and the weight can even be a convenient scapegoat for lack of power. On the other hand, women's heads are so wacked on weight matters that it may take outsize demonstrations of affection to persuade her she is lovable as is, even if she wants to lose weight. Either way, the best path to getting your sex life back is to forget about both sex and weight for now. Focus on doing fun things together and surprising your wife often with unambiguous demonstrations of affection.
My Boyfriend Doesn't Have Orgasms

My boyfriend and I have taken our relationship to the physical level. But I am the only one having orgasms. When I question him, he tells me he has a problem reaching orgasm and only reaches it once in a while, and that I shouldn't take it personally. I work in the medical field and know male physiology. I told him he should have this checked. He is a thoughtful lover, always making sure I'm pleased. I don't want to be a nag. He's 47 and appears to have no other health problems.
Take your cue from your boyfriend -- don't get hung up on his orgasms unless he makes them an issue. Having a beau who is a good person and a thoughtful lover is like hitting the jackpot. Far more important than any particular variation from the norm, sexual or not, is how you two handle it. You need to be able to communicate freely and to "read" each other's reactions accurately. I suggest that you take the emphasis off his performance and not club him over the head with your medical knowledge or intuition -- that could be a big deterrent to open communication. Male anorgasmia is not as uncommon as you may think. Most often, it is a side effect of antidepressant use. It's possible that your boyfriend is taking Prozac or a similar drug and feels the need to conceal that fact. Perhaps your real concern with his anorgasmia is that it keeps you from knowing whether he is sexually satisfied. If so, you might tell him that you would like to be sure you are satisfying him as much as he is satisfying you, and without this pretty obvious signal you don't know whether that is the case. Ask what signs the two of you might use. By taking the emphasis off his failure (anorgasmia) and putting it on his success (satisfying you), you just may find him relaxing and opening up to you. That emotional intimacy is by far the sexiest part of any relationship.
What Happened to His Sex Drive?
For the past year or so, my partner and I have had completely mismatched sex drives -- I want it, he doesn't. It's not that I want to be pinned against the wall every night (or even every week) but I also don't want to have to twist his arm to make love. I know he's not getting it anywhere else; his libido just seems to be lacking. I'm getting impatient.
We like to think that sexual desire has a life of its own, especially in men; you don't have to do anything to it, it's just there. But that's not how it works. Low libido has much to do with general mental state, desire for you as a partner and the state of your relationship. More and more, men are less and less interested in sex because they're angry at their partner, usually for being critical and complaining. When asking for something different or new, women often criticize rather than express appreciation of their partner ("You never want to do anything anymore" usually prevails over "I like spending time with you and miss the fun we used to have together"). Resentment can stifle desire as thoroughly as a toothache. Good sex starts with a good emotional connection. That's where you're likely to find your partner's missing sex drive. Make him feel wanted, and spend time sharing your inner worlds with each other. Talk in a loving, nonconfrontational way. Ask what his needs and preferences are. Desire will come from his wanting to share something with you. You might also jump-start desire by taking unilateral action. A little seduction may just make your partner feel much more wanted and more interested in the relationship.
Married With... Attractions
I have a wonderful marriage of 30 years and have never been unfaithful. The past two years I also have had a very special relationship with a woman I met through work. We can talk about common interests, understand each other, but also know boundaries. My wife knows and likes her as well. There is some attraction between us, which is kept in check. "Experts" insist such a relationship means something is missing in the marriage. Isn't it natural to be attracted to others and develop more than one relationship, as long as sex is limited to your spouse?
The question is not whether attraction to others happens but how it's handled. Sexual attraction need not lead only to the bedroom. If you are a living, breathing human being, you are likely to encounter many people in many settings who are attractive to you and vice versa. Work definitely provides opportunities for intimate interaction, as men and women spend time sharing professional challenges and the intense emotions of accomplishment, frustration and failure. Two people can acknowledge the frisson and agree to channel the sexual energy into work, sparking creativity and productivity. But there are emotional boundaries to be heeded, too -- like not sharing inside information about your marriage. Once you cross that line, your primary relationship becomes secondary. Your wife would rightly feel violated -- and as pained as if there were sexual infidelity.

PT Bookshelf: From Parenting to Perceptions

Crawling: A Father's First Year
By Elisha Cooper (Pantheon Books)
"There's a head sticking out of my best friend. This is insane." The opening lines set the pace for a wry, frank, and uniquely paternal perspective on initiation into a parent's life. Cooper, a children's book author and illustrator, admits early on that he never liked children, and liked parents even less (except his own). But this young father and husband grows quickly. Much about raising a baby is universal, so Cooper uses tales, details, and reflections economically, sparing us both gushes of emotion and a deluge of the mundane. We witness the suctioning of snot from a tiny nose and the softening of a skeptical heart, but both are inlaid with humor and insight. As Cooper sobs in the final scene, filled with love for his daughter and doubts about himself, you realize that the one learning to crawl is not the baby but the dad.

—Matthew Hutson
The Science of Orgasm
By Barry R. Komisaruk, Carlos Beyer-Flores, and Beverly Whipple (The Johns Hopkins University Press)
Disclaimer: Don't expect this book to contain diagrams detailing the art of giving your partner multiple orgasms. Rather, it covers the "multiorgasm" by highlighting the role of the pubococcygeus muscle and citing studies speculating on the function of mindset. More of a reference manual than a how-to guide, The Science of Orgasm takes a brainy perspective on the big O. Approach the book with any question you can conjure about the whys and wherefores of orgasm and you'll receive a minutely detailed answer that incorporates findings from the latest sex research. Do orgasms serve a biological function? How are they influenced by aging? How do drugs, from cocaine to alcohol to Zoloft, affect them? After tackling the answers to these questions and many more, the authors admit that the brain regions responsible are still under debate: Orgasm research has not yet peaked.

—Katie Gilbert
Strange and Dangerous Dreams: The Fine Line Between Adventure and Madness
By Geoff Powter (The Mountaineers Books)
An explorer's fiercely competitive nature drives him to the North Pole. On his return, he meets a chilly end just miles from salvation. A woman, unhinged by heartbreak, boards a sailboat alone, convinced that circumnavigating the globe will allow her to shed her psychic baggage. She is never seen again. Clinical psychologist Powter dissects the personal odysseys of adventurers, including Meriwether Lewis and Aleister Crowley, in an attempt to determine when healthy risk taking gives way to madness. Powter's postmortem diagnoses of his subjects deliver no clear answers, but readers will likely find themselves swept up in these tales of emotional strife and physical hardship.

—Orli Van Mourik
A Mind of Its Own: How Your Brain Distorts and Deceives
By Cordelia Fine (W.W. Norton)
We convince ourselves that we're all whipsmart valedictorian manques (had we just cared a bit more back then...), we guard against self-critical information with the zeal of a star DA, we display not the slightest aptitude for basic statistics—especially when the need to justify our own choices arises—and we generally sail through life blanketed in a consciousness that both insulates and smothers. Fine, a young Oxbridge-trained psychologist and philosopher, catalogs this mental scramble in wry, spirited prose. While readers may occasionally balk at the detailed study descriptions, Fine is ever entertaining on the bigotry and pigheadedness of those nearest and dearest to her: her husband's abject delight on encountering evidence of Scottish thrift; her two-year-old's glee in chastising a naughty playmate. Fine succeeds marvelously at a tricky task—exposing the psychological hijinks and hijacks that propel us forward.

Closing the Orgasm Gap: Tips for Personal and Culture Change

Today is International Women’s Day. This day is a global celebration of women’s achievements across many domains—social, economic, cultural, and political.  It’s also a day where women are called to action to focus on equality.  This year’s theme is #PressforProgress.
Here’s what the organizers say about the theme this year:
Individually, we're one drop but together we're an ocean. Commit to a "gender parity mindset" via progressive action.
The organizers recommend that individuals commit to pressing for gender parity in their own sphere of influence
As a sex educator with a specialization in women’s pleasure, for me this means continuing to press for gender parity in the bedroom. It means pushing for gender equality in our most personal, intimate encounters.
Research shows we don’t yet have such gender parity.  Instead, we have an orgasm gap between women and men. Here are some telling statistics:
One study of university students found that 91 percent of men vs. 39 percent of women report always or usually experiencing an orgasm with a partner.
While this study didn’t ask the context of the sexual encounter (e.g., hookup or relationship), when I poll my students (using anonymous classroom technology), across five years and over 500 students, I’ve found that:
55 percent of men versus 4 percent of the women say they always orgasm during first-time hookup sex.
Clearly, the orgasm gap is massive in casual sexual encounters. And, while it narrows, it doesn’t disappear in relationship sex. In one study, 85 percent of men vs. 68 percent of women said they’d orgasmed during their last sexual encounter that occurred in the context of a committed relationship.
It’s time to push for progress in terms of closing this gender orgasm gap. If you are a woman who has sex with men, here are a five steps that you can take, at a personal and a cultural level.Know your own anatomy. One study showed that over a quarter of women couldn’t locate the clitoris—their most essential orgasmic organ—on a diagram. My experience as a sex educator is that even more women don’t know that their inner lips are chock-full of nerve endings (they’re analogous to the head of the penis). If you don’t know what you’ve got “down there,” you won’t know how to please yourself or to tell a partner how to do so. So, grab that hand mirror and a diagram of a vulva, and take a look at yourself. And, while you are taking a look, pleasure yourself too. Every woman’s genital nerves are positioned a bit differently, so before you can tell a partner what feels good, you will need to learn this by yourself.

​Call your anatomy by the correct name. Perhaps you noticed that I used the word vulva in a prior sentence. This is the correct name for women’s external genital anatomy. Yet, in our culture we call everything down there a vagina. By doing so, we are erasing our most erotic parts and calling our genitals by the part that is most useful to men rather than to women themselves. Words convey the importance we place on something. Use words that show you consider your pleasure important.
Stop thinking of sex as synonymous with intercourse. Speaking of words, in our culture, we use the words sex and intercourse synonymously and relegate everything that comes before as “just foreplay.” This language privileges men’s most reliable route to orgasm (penetration) as the only one that counts as sex and relegates women’s most reliable route to orgasm (clitoral stimulation) as a warm-up for the real act. Only about 5 percent of women say they most reliably orgasm from intercourse alone. About 95 percent of women need clitoral stimulation to orgasm—either alone (e.g., oral sex) or paired with intercourse (e.g., using a vibrator on yourself during intercourse). Start considering your pleasure just as much sex—in other words, just as important—as his pleasure.
Get the stimulation you need during partner sex. To put the attitude that your pleasure is as important as his into action, you will need to get the stimulation you need to orgasm during partner sex. A survey by Cosmopolitan magazine found that during heterosexual encounters that involve intercourse, 78 percent of women’s orgasm problems were due to not getting enough clitoral stimulation. In other words, when a penis is part of the sexual encounter, we forgo the stimulation we need in favor of his stimulation. Don’t skip over your pleasure. Instead of relying on the standard cultural script of 1) foreplay; 2) intercourse; 3) male orgasm, and 4) sex over, use sexual scripts where your orgasm is as central as his. While you can find details of these sexual scripts here, the summary is that you can employ a turn-taking model where you come first (e.g., oral sex during which you orgasm followed by intercourse) or you come second (e.g., enough stimulation to get you ready for intercourse, intercourse, and then have him or you use a vibrator on yourself after). Alternatively, you can both come during the same sexual act (e.g., touch your clitoris during intercourse, or use a couple’s vibrator, such as a cock ring with a clitoral vibrator). When enacting these new sexual scripts, keep in mind that the key to getting the stimulation you need is getting the same type of stimulation you use with yourself when with a partner.  We know how to pleasure ourselves when alone (94 percent of women orgasm when pleasuring ourselves), but we too rarely transfer this to sex with a partner.Start talking about women’s pleasure, and your own pleasure, loudly and proudly. To implement the tips above, you’re going to have to learn and use good sexual communication skills. Say what you like and what you don’t like loudly and clearly.  Research shows that clear, enthusiastic consent and female pleasure are highly related.  And, it’s not just in our own bedrooms that we need to talk—it’s publicly. Push for progress by talking about the orgasm gap and by educating others about how to close it. As one example, the next time you are watching a movie with friends and there is a scene where after two minutes of foreplay, the couple has intercourse and they both have screaming, simultaneous orgasms, call this out. Similarly, call out penis size jokes, as they perpetuate the lie that penetration is the route to female pleasure, as well as perpetuate male insecurities. In both cases, call out the lie and then share the truth—that is, that women’s and men’s easiest and most reliable routes to pleasure (penile and clitoral stimulation, respectively) need to be equally attended to and valued.I hope this blog inspires you to push for progress, today and every day.  When it comes to orgasm equality, pushing for progress can be quite pleasurable!

Polyamory and Women's Orgasms

Scientists once claimed that female orgasm was unique to humans and explained that its function was to “sustain the long-term pair bond at the heart of the nuclear family” according Psychology Today blogger and author Christopher Ryan. This theory is problematic partly because more astute observations have revealed that human females are not the only ones to have orgasms. As Ryan so cleverly put it, “Your problem gets worse if the most orgasmic species happen to be among the most promiscuous as well, which appears to be the case.” The fact that the nuclear family is a twentieth century invention also casts doubt on the evolutionary relevance of this theory on the function of women’s orgasm.
Scientific researchers have long been aware of the bias introduced by the expectations, personality and belief systems of the observer. The “self-fulfilling prophecy” has a powerful and demonstrable effect. Selective attention also skews results. This phenomenon became apparent to me as an undergraduate psychology student at UC Berkeley in a lab course where we were instructed to observe and record the mating behavior of the golden hamster while electrodes measured their brain waves. As I watched these hamsters I noticed that in addition to their attempts to mate with females, the males engaged in both self stimulation and homoerotic activity. When I mentioned this to the other students, none of the guys had noticed the hamsters masturbating or interacting with other males, but all of the women had seen both behaviors. Coincidence? I doubt it.

In the case of women’s orgasms, we are up against a number of prejudices which obscure the truth of the matter. First is the idea that women are sexually weaker than men. As ancient Taoist sexual teachings put it, the woman, whose sexual nature is like water, is slower to heat up than the man, who sexual nature is like fire. But like fire, he quickly burns out while she is just coming to a boil. A man who has not learned to delay his ejaculation, or to orgasm without ejaculating, is no match for a woman whose sexual endurance is essentially infinite. Just in terms of our physiology, the average man has difficulty engaging in intercourse with more than one woman in the course of an evening, whereas the woman is much more likely to become orgasmic if she has access to multiple partners who can provide the quantity and variety of stimulation she may need to reach orgasm.
In other words, one of the most common sexual problems for men is premature ejaculation. While many men fantasize about how wonderful it would be to have two women in bed, many become too excited or too confused to take full advantage of the opportunity in real life.
One of the most common problems for women is difficulty reaching orgasm. Women who manage to overcome the conditioning which tells them they are sluts or whores if they don’t adhere to monogamous standards, often report very satisfying experiences.
Of course there are exceptions to the rule, but given this equation, one would expect that in the interest of promoting sustainable relationships, polyandry would be the norm (one woman mated with multiple men). But historically, in most cultures the norm has been polygyny (one man mated to multiple women). Clearly factors other than sexual satisfaction are at play. One of these factors is which gender controls the economic resources and has the political and religious power to make the rules. Another is emotional intelligence. Both of these are addressed in my forthcoming book, Polyamory in the 21st Century (Rowman & Littlefield, June, 2010).

Silicon Valley makes everything worse: Four industries that Big Tech has ruined

Adapted from “A People’s History of Silicon Valley: How the Tech Industry Exploits Workers, Erodes Privacy and Undermines Democracy,” by Keith A. Spencer, on sale now from major booksellers. © 2018 Eyewear Publishing. Excerpted with permission.
The word “innovation” has become synonymous with Silicon Valley to the point of absurdity. Indeed, the tech industry's entrepreneurs and "thoughtfluencers" throw it around as casually as a dodgeball in a middle-school P.E. class; what it really means is perpetually unclear and purposefully hazy. It is vague enough to be suitable in nearly any situation where a new product, service or "thing" is advertised as superior to the old — never mind if the so-called "old" thing has some distinct advantages, or if the new thing's superiority is solely that it makes more money than the old thing, or if there are other old things that are actually superior yet which won't make anyone rich. (Consider Apple removing the headphone jack from its new phones to be Exhibit A.)
That summary may sound flippant, but it is a good explication of the path of the tech industry over the past two decades: Some venture capital–backed entrepreneurs jackhammer their way into a new industry, "tech"-ify it in some way, undermine the competition and declare their new way superior once the old is bankrupted.
Thus, rather than confine themselves to operating systems and PC software like they did in the 1980s and 1990s, the tech industry has figured out that the real money lies in being a middleman. By that I mean serving as the in-between point
 for, say, web traffic to newspapers and magazines (like this one); or being the go-between for taxi services, coordinating drivers and passengers through apps. In both of these examples, the original product isn't that different from the pre-tech world: a taxi ride, in the latter case, a news article in the former. The difference is that a tech behemoth takes a cut of the transaction. And also in many cases, the labor — the people making and producing and doing the things the tech industry takes a slice from — is more precarious, less well-remunerated, and less safe than it was in the pre-tech era.Looking at it this way, the tech industry doesn't really seem innovative at all. Or rather, its sole innovation seems to be exploiting workers with more cruelty, and positioning itself in the middle of more transactions. Granted, there are certain services that have become more convenient

 because of apps and smartphones — but there is no reason that convenience must come at the high cost that it does, besides the tech industry's insatiable lust for profit. Here are but a few examples of how our livelihoods and our societies have been worsened by Silicon Valley as it sinks its talons into new industries.

Public transit was never great in the United States, with the exception of a few big cities like New York, and thus private taxi services were around to supplement. Being a taxi driver was once a much-vaunted job, so much so that a taxi medallion was perceived of as a ticket to the middle class.
Then came Uber and Lyft, who flooded the market for private transit and undercut the taxi industry by de-skilling the industry and paying their workers far, far less. Driving a taxi is no longer a middle class job; once-valuable taxi medallions have become burdens for some taxi drivers. The outlook for career taxi drivers is so dismal that an alarming number of taxi drivers have been committing suicide.
Meanwhile, because of the precarious nature of Lyft and Uber jobs, those drivers are frequently not vetted or under-vetted — resulting in significant safety concerns for passengers. And unlike a taxi back in the old days, being a rideshare driver isn't a ticket to the middle-class at all:  a recent study of such employees revealed that most contractors use these kinds of jobs not as their sole source of income, but as supplementary jobs to make ends meet.Richard D. Wolff
, an economics professor at the New School in New York City, describes gig economy companies like Uber as "winning the competition" by taking shortcuts that "frequently endanger the public." Regulatory agencies for taxis were created in most countries, Wolff says, because taxi companies were historically unsafe. "Taxi companies are required now to have insurance, training for drivers, well-inspected cars, and other safeguards to protect the public. The cost of riding in a taxi reflects those safeguards," Wolff said, adding:

Lightbulbs have existed for around 140 years, and home refrigerators for about 100. In that span, they haven't changed too much, besides getting more energy-efficient, mostly because they haven't really needed to: we need to keep food cold, and we need light. The appliances that do these things don't really need to do much else.

Now, tech companies are putting wi-fi and Bluetooth chips in all kinds of things that didn't used to be internet-connected. They call it the "smart home," and while the word is open-ended, the common thread with smart home devices is that they can generally be monitored via an app.
The smart home is sold to us as next-gen, a new advance on traditional appliances. But these devices tend to waste more of our time, and have both privacy and safety risks that regular appliances lack. You can't just put a wi-fi chip in a mundane household object like a lightbulb or a smoke detector without doing something to fix the security holes that emerge with having another device connected 24/7 to the web. But that is exactly what happened: a tremendous number of smart home devices have been hacked and turned into digital soldiers forming massive botnets that can be called up by hackers to engage in distributed denial of service attacks. An Atlantic reporter did an experiment that found that their fake smart home device attracted hundreds of hacking attempts in a matter of hours after being plugged in.

Part of the reason that companies are so eager to market the smart home to us is because these devices can be used to build digital dossiers on customers to market things to them. A refrigerator without an internet connection can't generate any data about a consumer, but a fridge with one can regularly report back all kinds of data on the person using it — data that can be monetized and sold.
Even barring the hacking issue or the privacy issue, smart home devices aren't necessarily an innovation because their whole function seems to be to create more work for us and turn us into (essentially) managers. There is a certain managerial mindset that trickles down from the device's creators (who are, at some level, managers themselves) to consumers — as if I wanted to spend my days and nights studying graphs and charts of my fridge's power consumption, or do a data analysis on my Roomba's path. That sounds horrible.
Additionally, the difficulty of setting up many of these devices in the first place can be mind-numbing for those lacking technical savvy; notably, drastically increasing the number of wi-fi enabled devices in one's house often means that you need to invest in new internet equipment, either routers or faster internet service or both. Not everyone is an engineer, nor wants to be, but smart home devices often compel us to be — and this increasingly complex domain of appliances is supposed to be superior to the simplicity of flicking a lightswitch on the wall.
And speaking of turning us into managers...
Fitness
Steve Jobs' greatest genius was not in engineering, but in marketing. He understood that late capitalism no longer fulfill needs, but creates them; inevitably, Apple became the premier exporter of desire, master marketers who compel us lust over their clean-looking products and obsess over them once we own them.

To that end, there was never really anything wrong with fitness; it wasn't an industry that needed to be "disrupted," to use Silicon Valley's favorite dystopian verb. But if you slap monitoring devices on your shoes, your watch, your armband, and your water bottle, suddenly you have a huge cache of data points about your body and activity that you can analyze later. Apple and a slew of other apps even help you monitor your ovulation cycle, and some analyze and monetize that intimate customer data. This can create some funny situations when those devices stop being updated or get corrupted; Nike was widely mocked when a $350 pair of "smart" sneakers were ruined by a faulty update. The idea of being able to hack into someone's shoes and ruin them is not exactly where I thought the future was headed.

I suppose if you were dreaming of being a statistician collecting data on your body constantly might seem kind of interesting, but if you aren't, it's just a new source of busyness in your life. Again, building devices to quantize as much fitness data as possible wasn't an example of capitalism fulfilling consumer desire — no one, save a few data scientists, ever said, "I want to turn my leisure activities and exercise regime into spreadsheets" — but the tech industry has been very effective at making us desire just that.
This obsession with quantifying our existence is known in academic circles as "computationalism." Previously I interviewed Professor David Golumbia, who has written about this extensively, and who describes computationalism as "the philosophical idea that the brain is a computer" as well as "a broader worldview according to which people or society are seen as computers, or that we might be living inside of a simulation."
“There is a small group of people who become obsessed with quantification,” Golumbia told me. “Not just about exercise, but like, about intimate details of their life — how much time spent with one’s kids, how many orgasms you have — most people aren’t like that; they do counting for a while [and] then they get tired of counting. The counting part seems oppressive.”
Convenience stores
In many of the above cases, Silicon Valley has torn into an industry and taken good jobs and turned them into bad  jobs. In the case of the corner store, Silicon Valley's aim seems to be to eliminate the human component altogether.
There are a few different business spins on how this might be done. The most infamous is Bodega (now known as Stockwell), which we reported on in 2017:
Unsurprisingly given that the friendly neighborhood corner marketplace is something that has existed for centuries across most cultures, seeing a group of out-of-touch tech bros working hard to destroy that touched a collective nerve. In the wake of internet outrage, the two of them apologized and then later rebranded.
Stockwell/Bodega is far from the only example of Silicon Valley's crusade against human interaction. There's a company that is trying to make robots that make, serve and sell smoothies, which we reported on ruefully last year. There are multiple companies, including CafeX, making robot baristas. Amazon is creating Amazon Go stores that lack cashiers, and rather rely on cameras to track what people pick up and then bill them accordingly.The thing is, baristas and cashiers aren't things that we are all dying to get rid of; this isn't a comparable situation to the horse-and-buggy days, where cars felt like a serious improvement on using beasts of burden for transit. Silicon Valley is only trying to put baristas and cashiers out of business because human labor costs money; the difference between a $4 coffee from a robot and a $4 coffee from a human is that there are no labor costs in the former purchase, something that makes Silicon Valley go googly-eyed with dollar signs. The tech industry's vision of the future is of a world with less human interaction, less conversation, less humanity; and more surveillance and more monetization of our buying habits. No one wants this, but it's being forced upon us.