by Betty Dodson
America spends trillions of dollars on technology making the latest in military planes, tanks, and guns. Trillions more are spent on traveling to the moon and back and sending satellites into orbits that circle Earth, establishing instant communication systems. Yet we have little or no technology about how to enjoy our relationships and our sexual bodies and how to raise happy, well-rounded children. As science leaps forward it seems that our quality of life loses more ground. Since I believe that thought creates form, I hold the image that in the near future we will have a science and technology devoted to the heavenly pursuit of sexual happiness so we can enjoy our earthly garden of delights in healthy bodies and minds.
Afterword
My website was launched in 1996 with my old friend, onetime lover, and writing mentor, Grant Taylor, as the Webmaster. When he first brought up the idea, I was only mildly interested in the Internet. Technology was moving way too fast for me to keep up. For the life of me I couldn’t understand the concept of a World Wide Web—an electronic cloud of data surrounding Earth that anyone could access with a computer and telephone wires. Grant reminded me that I didn’t fully understand how electricity worked either, but that never kept me from flipping the switch on my vibrator. He made his point so I eventually agreed. After working on my mission statement, Grant and I gave birth to www.bettydodson.com, which has turned out to be our best collaboration yet.
The website quickly grew and soon millions of visitors were dropping in each month. At the end of the first year, I began to realize that the Internet was my first completely uncensored form of communication. Editors of newspapers and magazines consistently censored my views about the importance of masturbation. A few network television talk shows interviewed me when Sex for One came out. But I was better known by European television viewers than here at home. Amsterdam had me on their big Sunday night talk show and showed a portion of the video about my workshop. In contrast, even bold HBO showed only the women’s faces during the brief segment on my masturbation workshop for the series entitled Real Sex.
For Grant, learning HTML language and building my website served two purposes: first, it was his therapy for developing new parts of his brain after a stroke took away his ability to speak and write; second, he was fulfilling his boyhood dream of publishing a sex magazine. More than once he’d ended up in the principal’s office after getting caught drawing popular cartoon characters involved in sexual acts or showing off their sex organs. The Genital Art Forum is one of his favorites. People send us photos of their cocks and cunts (I prefer the old Anglo-Saxon terms) along with an essay about the relationship they are having with their sex organs. The Genital Art Forum remains a sexual healing for society’s fig-leaf mentality. Hiding our sex organs is one of the cornerstones of the foundation of sexual repression. This shame is based upon the idea of original sin that was invented and enforced by organized religions.
Ask Betty is my favorite labor of love. Two days a week I answer questions from my website visitors. My responses are not based on the formulaic approach of traditional therapists who adhere to the coital imperative of women having orgasms through “vigorous penile thrusting inside a vagina after adequate foreplay.” Instead, I advocate some form of direct clitoral stimulation all the way through orgasm just the same as men have enjoyed from the beginning of time. I guess by now you have picked up on this concept since I’ve been yammering about it for the last two hundred pages.
One of the biggest concerns for men and women visiting my website is whether some feeling, idea, or sexual activity is normal. People desperately want to be “normal”—the universal ideal of social acceptability. Instead, I’m all for sexual diversity and creativity. As long as any particular sexual activity is between one or more consenting adults and no one is harmed, I say get the sex you want. Of course, that statement assumes a person understands enough about sexuality to know what he or she wants. Finally, I am a huge fan of self-sexuality. I’m convinced that masturbation is the major source for many of our orgasms, with partner sex thrown in occasionally. Whether or not our partner sex is mutually orgasmic depends on both people involved.
Now with my website, I continue my commitment to introducing sexual pleasure into the feminist dialogue. My ideal of sexual freedom follows a similar path as that of my suffragette hero, Victoria Woodhull. In 1873, the then “scandalous” Victoria stated: “I never had sexual intercourse with any man whom I am ashamed to stand side by side before the world with the act. I am not ashamed of any act of my life. . . . And if I want sexual intercourse with one hundred men I shall have it. . . . And this sexual intercourse business may as well as be discussed now, and discussed until you are so familiar with your sexual organs that a reference to them will no longer make the blush mount to your face any more than a reference to any other part of your body.” Today the public discourse by most feminist leaders, scholars, and educators is primarily centered on some form of abuse, disease, or dysfunction. We can openly talk about women’s sexual pain and suffering, but goddess forbid we openly talk about how we have our best orgasms. One thing is clear to me: As long as we continue to insist that the only “right” way to be sexual is within a monogamous heterosexual relationship, men and women in a position of leadership will continue to avoid discussing the subject of pleasure for fear of being outed. The fact that they are not having any sexual pleasure would be as embarrassing as having too much or the “wrong” kind.
I look forward to the day when going public about who we are as sexual beings will be no different than discussing our favorite foods, movies, sports, or hobbies. Through my website as well as many others, there is now a sex-positive movement with millions of activists joining together on the barricades against sexual ignorance. If you’re a friend of sex who would like to take a stand for pleasure, start today by enjoying your own selfloving sessions without any guilt or apology. Telling a few friends about your favorite masturbation or partner sex techniques with a description of one of your better orgasms qualifies you as a budding sexual activist in my book. Come join me in cyberspace at bettydodson.com for the erotic renaissance of the new millennium and we’ll celebrate sexual pleasure together.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Betty Dodson went public with her love of sex in 1968 when she had the first one-woman exhibition of erotic art in New York City. Whether she is drawing, painting, writing, teaching, or producing videos, sexuality has been the subject off her life’s work.
By the early seventies, teaching women masturbation skills and an appreciation of the aesthetics of their sex organs became her feminist commitment. She also began writing articles to express her ideas about women’s sexual liberation. In 1973 Dodson left a successful art career to begin teaching and writing about sex full-time. Over the next twenty-five years the women in her workshops shared the truth about their sex lives and explored the varied experiences of orgasm by sharing group masturbation. Her first book, Liberating Masturbation, was self-published in 1974 and became a feminist classic. Sex for One: The Joy of Selfloving, published in 1987 and revised in 1996, became a bestseller.
Dodson received a Ph.D. in sexology from the Institute for the Advanced Study of Human Sexuality in 1992. She has a private practice in New York City and maintains a website: www.bettydodson.com.
OTHER BOOKS BY BETTY DODSON, PH.D.
Sex for One (1987)
Liberating Masturbation (1974)
A WORD FROM BETTY ABOUT HER ILLUSTRATIONS
Without giving it much thought, I agreed to provide illustrations for the book, a decision I would temporarily regret. Even though it had been nearly two decades since I’d drawn anything except for an occasional sketch or two, I assumed drawing was like riding a bicycle—you never forget how. But after drawing every day for nearly a month, I was convinced I’d lost all my skills. One day, in desperation, I started repeating out loud what Bernard Klonis, my drawing instructor at the Art Students League, used to constantly say, “Draw through the form.” Finally, the f
irst illustration came off the end of my Rapidograph pen and I was elated. Drawing turned out to be a joy, as I spent some time on the other side of my brain. I could draw and talk on the phone, listen to music, or think about everything or nothing. Working in pen and ink was wonderful and demanding.
The diagrams of genital anatomy were taken from several sources. First, I want to acknowledge the work done by the Federation of Feminist Women’s Health Centers. The illustrations by Susan Gage in their book, A New View of a Woman’s Body, were a major resource. I also used information from the Color Atlas of Anatomy by Johannes W. Rohen and Elke Lutjen-Drecoll, medical doctors at the University of Erlangen in Germany. And finally, the art of Frank H. Netter, M.D., of the CIBA collection of illustrations, was my first introduction to detailed drawings of the human reproductive organs.
One of the most interesting discoveries I made was that every artist has his or her own version of how to represent the anatomy of the human body. The images varied greatly. My personal interpretations may not always be entirely accurate. Still, they will give my readers some idea of the marvelous design of the human body, especially our magnificent sex organs.
Copyright © 2002 by Betty Dodson, Ph.D.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Published by Harmony Books, New York, New York. Member of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc.
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HARMONY BOOKS is a registered trademark and the Harmony Books colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Dodson, Betty.
Orgasms for two : The joy of partner sex / Betty Dodson.— 1st ed.
1. Sex instruction. 2. Orgasm. 3. Female orgasm. I. Title.
HQ31.D712 2002
613.9'6—dc21 2002005935
eISBN: 978-1-4000-5203-5
v3.0