by Betty Dodson
Now, after more than three decades of dispelling sexual myths, new ones have appeared. The Freudian vaginal orgasm goes by a new name: the G-spot orgasm. Today, sex stores all over the country sell G-spot dildos, along with books and videos that tell women how to ejaculate. Even though the vagina is not the correct term for a woman’s sex organ, The Vagina Monologues made history worldwide. In our media-driven society it continues to be difficult to get an honest conversation going about the reality of female sexuality. However, in spite of all the current vaginal chic, I and many other knowledgeable people proudly wave the clitoral flag.
Women of all ages continue to show up in my office because they can’t have an orgasm from vaginal penetration alone. Some have boyfriends who want them to learn how to ejaculate, but they can’t find their G-spot. I’m beginning to sound like a broken record saying the same thing over and over: “It’s great to have your individual preference for clitoral stimulation combined with vaginal penetration from a penis, dildo, or a finger happening all at once.”
Whenever I carry on about the clitoris being our primary sex organ, someone always mentions a woman they know who has great climaxes from fucking only. Yes, I’m aware that a small percentage of women adore having orgasms with vaginal penetration and some enjoy spurting fluid during orgasm. However, I’m also aware that women have been conditioned to sexually please men for food, shelter, and protection ever since we lived in caves, so I take some of these reports with a grain of salt. How could I dare question a woman’s personal testimony? Over half of the many women I’ve worked with admitted to faking orgasm to please their partners at one time or other. Some do it just to end partner sex.
Furthermore, we now have twelve-year-old girls giving blowjobs to boys before they reach high school just to be popular, and that’s without any expectation of sexual reciprocation whatsoever. Instead of worrying about whether these children are having sex at too young an age, I worry more about the one-sided kind of sex that’s taking place. Will these boys grow up expecting blowjobs without ever returning the favor? Will these young girls have enough self-esteem to feel they deserve sexual pleasure as adults? Or have they already been trained to sexually service a man in order to be loved and taken care of after marriage?
Men who are sexually skilled and love women have their own set of problems to deal with in partner sex. Besides making the date, deciding where to go, and picking up the tab, a man is also expected to initiate sex. He’s usually in charge of getting her in the mood with kissing, sensual touching, and genital fondling. After figuring out a way to get both of them out of their clothes, he has to navigate his way among all the intricate folds of her labia to locate her clitoris and stimulate it with his tongue or fingers without any information about what she likes. Then he has to get and keep an erection, put on a condom, add lubrication, and find her vaginal opening. Once he penetrates he has to pay attention to the angle and the depth of his penis while holding back his orgasm.
In my youth, what made partner sex so wonderful was having passionate orgasms with a lover. What made it so difficult was my undying belief that romance, love, and sex would eventually come together and last for a lifetime. Meanwhile, society’s financial and sexual double standard favors men, perpetuating an imbalance of power between the sexes. Due to religious beliefs, some women think their position in life is “naturally” subordinate to a man’s, and they accept the status quo. But this inequality really pisses off the rest of us.
Allow me to paint a picture of heterosexuality with broad strokes. Women act as if they’re dedicated to romance and love, but they’re really more interested in financial security and marriage. Men go through the motions of romance and love, but they’re really more interested in sex without commitment. Women use sex to get a man, but after marriage many lose interest because they are either nonorgasmic or it’s too difficult to come during partner sex. Men promise to be good providers but they don’t always succeed, or if they do, they become stingy misers after marriage. Some men never propose. Other men are already married, so she ends up as his mistress. Very few women are happy with a secondary role and scheme to change his mind.
There are many reasons why women don’t like sex. First of all, young girls learn that partner sex is more about attracting a man than about pleasure and orgasm. After a woman falls in love, she is not guaranteed an orgasm, while her partner is assured of one during ejaculation. Women fear unwanted pregnancy and not all men are willing to be responsible. Some dispute their paternity. Extramarital sex is fairly common among men, and while more wives are beginning to have extramarital affairs, women are still the custodians of monogamy. Once jealousy enters the picture it begins to erode the joy in sex with doubts and suspicions. Very often, sex is a woman’s only bargaining chip or weapon. The emotional baggage from childhood repression, fear of abandonment, and the ongoing power struggle drive the wedge of separation deeper. After a baby arrives, the woman usually has the lion’s share of raising the child and partner sex often disappears altogether.
Allow me to paint another picture, this one of a world that includes sexual pleasure. Masturbation would be seen as a totally acceptable activity for children. Our middle schools would help girls and boys cope with the sexual urges brought on by puberty by encouraging self-sexuality. Along with the story of procreation, our teens would be taught the basic sexual skills necessary for sharing sexual pleasure. They would have access to birth control. Every young adult’s first-time partner sex would leave a sweet memory upon which he or she could build subsequent pleasures.
Without adequate sex education or a history of successful masturbation, the first time a young woman has sex with her boyfriend she usually experiences pain, not pleasure. If birth control isn’t used she faces weeks of fearing pregnancy. Sex is so disappointing that she focuses on the attention he pays her and the idea of being loved. On the other hand, if she has her first orgasm from his touching her clitoris, she either has to learn how to do it for herself or become dependent on him. In the latter case, she now views him as the source of her sexual pleasure.
Some people see no problem with orgasm dependency. Isn’t that what love is all about? But what happens if her partner becomes abusive and she continues to “love” or need him? She is trapped in the cycle of love/hate while hoping he will change. Once financial dependency is combined with the responsibility of raising children, she continues to put up with his tirades or physical violence. She is a victim and he is an abuser, and together they are raising the next generation of women victims and abusive men. But abuse can go both ways. A man who is financially or sexually dependent on a woman can also be caught up in the cycle of verbal or physical abuse.
Men are also victims of female sexual repression. A nonmasturbating woman tells her partner she’s never had an orgasm and he takes on the project of giving her one. He could spend years working on her lack of sexual response with countless hours of oral and manual sex, buying vibrators and trying everything under the sun to get her to come. But in spite of all his efforts, she is unable to climax. Some women get a lot of mileage from all this attention. Other women feel so bad that they can’t come after everything their partner has done that they end up faking orgasm and getting trapped in a pattern that’s difficult to break.
Some rape or incest survivors are unable or unwilling to move on, to sexually heal themselves with therapy and masturbation. And their partners suffer for their early misfortune. The healing process for sexual abuse takes time and is often complex, but can be done. A friend of mine was raped at knifepoint but was determined to fight back by regaining her enjoyment of orgasms. She felt that doing otherwise would mean the rapist had won, had destroyed her sexuality. For a woman who has never experienced any sexual pleasure, not even with masturbation, the road to recovery can be difficult indeed.
We seldom hear how male masturbation affects partner sex. Being a quick ejaculator is often the result of doing fast masturbation to avoid getting caught or no
t masturbating at all. Once these men penetrate a vagina, they last only a few moments before shooting their load. At the other end of the scale, a young man I know grew up humping a rough shag carpet in his bedroom. Now in his late twenties, he can’t get enough stimulation from a vagina to climax. On the one hand that means he can last for some time, which pleases some women. However, when he wants to come, he needs a lot of stimulation, and hard, fast friction inside a vagina can be painful to a woman. He finally discovered that when his girlfriend used a vibrator on her clitoris while they were having intercourse, the added stimulation also helped him to orgasm more easily.
Until we acknowledge and accept masturbation as the most basic form of sexual expression we will continue to be a nation of fast-ejaculating men and nonorgasmic women. Through the consistent practice of masturbation, girls can become orgasmic women who are rarely victims because they have self-esteem and can speak their minds. They look forward to enjoying partner sex. Boys who have trained themselves to control ejaculation will become men with sexual self-assurance who are less prone to violence. Masturbation allows both boys and girls to develop their sexual feelings, make better social adjustments, and, by lessening sexual frustration, improve the quality of their lives. Sexual repression—not the expression of human sexuality—is society’s enemy.
As we begin to unravel the economic and sexual inequalities that maintain the sexual double standard and the power struggle between the sexes, we can be more honest about what turns us on instead of using sex to manipulate the partner who holds the purse strings. Instead of having every sexual encounter a test of masculinity or femininity, we can relax and enjoy sex for the simple pleasure of it. Rather than seeing partner sex as a serious matter that defines the depth of our commitment and love, we can see it as a delightful form of adult play that remains in the present moment without making demands on the future.
Change is a slow process, but I do see some improvement. A few more sexually informed young couples are exploring what turns them on through an open dialogue about sexuality. Married couples have said that watching each other masturbate has spiced up a lagging sex life. Mothers have talked with me about not interfering with their children’s natural sexual exploration with masturbation. More women are dispelling myths about romance, and they are no longer confusing good sex with falling in love. Survivors of sexual abuse are healing themselves by learning how to experience pleasure with the consistent practice of self-sexuality. Couples who choose to be monogamous are agreeing to a single standard. A brave few are even questioning the ideal of monogamy by confronting jealousy and allowing more sexual freedom in their partnership.
These changes are the result of couples’ realizing that there is no one “right” way to have partner sex. Every sexual dance has a different rhythm. When we add the mental stimulation of sexual fantasy, the range of differences becomes infinite. There are a multitude of variations on how a clitoris or penis can be stimulated during intercourse, so there is no reason to limit sex to the procreative model. Instead, we can include all the wonderful things we can share with our lovers by touching, kissing, and licking each other’s faces, bodies, and genitals. No one gets enough affectionate hugging and kissing.
Sexual fulfillment is our birthright and belongs to individuals and couples of every sexual orientation, both young and old. Experiencing more sexual pleasure just might end some of the wars being waged behind the closed doors of America’s nuclear families and domestic partnerships. With more physical affection and closeness, couples can begin to negotiate boundaries, express their feelings, request changes, and express their gratitude for what is working in the partnership. Sharing mutual orgasms is essential in liberating and healing partner sex of all persuasions by bringing couples closer together.
2
HETEROSEXUALITY REVISITED
Intergenerational Sex
Everyone has a right to keep his or her sex life private. The reason I’m willing to go public with mine is because it’s been proven to me time and again that the most effective way to teach something as subjective as sexual pleasure is by using the power of example. Since the seventies, I have shared my challenges and successes in the process of exploring sexual pleasure. What is happening to me in terms of my sexuality is not an isolated incident taking place in a vacuum. The chances are good that many other people are dealing with similar issues.
Although the idea of pleasure might be frivolous in a world that appears to be on the brink of horrible disasters, I believe one of our best hopes for survival depends upon embracing and celebrating human sexuality as a healing force.
As a seeker of sexual pleasure, I have tried many different lifestyles. In my twenties, it was romantic love with hot sex along with the inevitable pain and suffering of breaking up. The first part of my thirties was love and marriage with minimal sex while I enjoyed the illusion of security. When I got divorced, I was back to romantic love, until my lover and I discovered threesomes and group sex. By my forties, lighthearted sex with both women and men greatly expanded my exploration of sexual pleasure. After AIDS shut down casual sex, the women’s lesbian and bisexual SM community captured my imagination and spiced up my postmenopausal fifties.
Following an extended hiatus from heterosexuality, I succumbed in my sixties to the desire for a little old-fashioned fucking with men again. Straight sex even seemed a bit kinky. Over the next few years, I discovered that there were very few age-appropriate men with the sexual skills or stamina to match mine. Older men weren’t turning me on, but it was no big deal. My women friends were emotionally satisfying, my private practice was doing well, and producing videos had my creative juices flowing. I was content to let heterosexual fucking remain a fantasy for my delightful sessions of self-loving.
For several years I’d been masturbating with a vibrator on my clit, doing slow penetration with a sapphire blue dildo while fantasizing about sex with a handsome young man. Maybe I mentally pulled him in from the electronic highway. While I was going over my e-mail one day, a question caught my eye. What exactly did I mean when I used the term “suction fuck”? In my book I contrasted it with “friction fuck,” which seemed self-explanatory, but it wasn’t enough detail for a man seeking explicit sex information—something that rarely happened. Men usually acted as if they knew everything about sex.
My response explained that “suction fuck” was when a woman consciously used her pelvic floor muscles during partner sex. As the man pulls out, she squeezes her vaginal muscle on his penis and releases it as he goes back in. Using slow fucking motions allowed both partners to feel more genital sensations rather than the usual fast friction fucking we so often see in film and porn. It was okay to move a little faster just before orgasm, but not to go at it like rabbits the entire time.
Eric Wilkinson was about to graduate from college with a degree in English. He was also sexually precocious. He told me he’d studied all the important sex books and he thought the ones by women made the most sense. Sex for One was one of his favorites, so right away I knew he was smart. Over the next few months his e-mails were my favorite masturbation material. His descriptions of how he’d designed different sex scenes with his girlfriends showed signs of the artist—someone who paid attention to the smallest details.
One night after reading one of his e-mails and having a fabulous orgasm, I invited him to come see me—fully aware that I might be risking the loss of my fantasy lover after we met. I offered to show him a few advanced sex techniques if he ever got to New York. I felt it wasn’t likely to happen because he lived in Virginia, but it was fun to imagine.
He answered my e-mail promptly, saying my invitation was a great honor. He’d always dreamed of having a woman “sex master” teach him advanced sexual techniques instead of struggling with the usual trial and error. We made a date to meet during the Christmas holidays, which were several months away. To cover my back, I requested that we have lunch first and talk. If we both felt positive about his being a student
and I his mentor, we could continue; if not, we could part with no hard feelings. He agreed.
On the designated weekend, he was to call Friday night when he got to the house of a friend who lived in Queens. When I didn’t hear from him, a dark cloud of paranoia settled over me. Had some twisted person seduced me with a young virile man’s sexual fantasies? The media had been filled with sensational stories about cyberspace creeps who made dates with gullible women, some ending in disaster.
That night when I went to bed, I was angry with myself for offering to have sex with a total stranger. I was insecure about my aging body whenever I had sex with a man, especially for the first time, but I never felt judged by other women. If it weren’t for the exhilarating rush of leaping into the erotic unknown, I would never have considered dipping back into heterosexual adventuring after menopause, especially with a much younger man.
I was shocked the next day when the doorman announced Eric’s arrival on the intercom. Waiting for him to come up in the elevator, my heart pounded with fear and excitement as adrenaline pumped through my veins. As he entered the foyer, I caught my breath: six feet tall, dressed all in black, in a suit with a vest and a crimson tie under a full-length topcoat. His short dark hair set off a handsome face that had a distinctive sharp nose, piercing deep-set eyes, and a full sensuous mouth framed by a pencil-thin mustache with a devil’s goatee. He could have stepped out of the pages of Anne Rice’s vampire books: a mysterious man, dark and sensual, yet just under the surface I saw the boy who was fresh, bright, and a bit self-conscious.
