My Personal Sexual Harassment & Groping Score: What’s Yours?

All this talk of groping and forced kissing got me thinking. What’s my count of unwanted sexual encroachment? What’s yours?

I consider myself a woman who has not been sexually assaulted. Not in the ‘classic’ sense of being raped or sodomized. I wasn’t incested nor have I experienced date rape. And yet, as the cultural conversation turns to the topics of harassment, groping and unwanted kissing, I started to think about my list of negative sexual experiences that do actually constitute sexual assault. My list was surprisingly (and yet not surprisingly) long. My first unwanted experience was with the milkman (yes, in the old days when someone delivered milk to your door!). I was seven and he grabbed me and tongue-kissed me! While it never occurred to me to tell my parents, I did have the good sense to never go near him again. In fact, one day my whole family visited him at his farm and I distinctly remember being very careful to not be alone with him all the entire day despite his efforts to ‘show me the hayloft.’

I’m not counting any of the incidents that occurred in my sexual explorations with boys and men because I was freely participating (albeit from a sometimes ambivalent place).

Next stop: I moved to New York City right after high school. I was an innocent (in the ways of the street, at least) young ‘hottie’ roaming the wilds of New Yawk, dressed in my artsy thrift-shop vintage slutwear.

There I had a variety of unpleasant, infuriating and sometimes scary experiences.

The first shocker was the catcalls and commentary from men on the street. No one in the suburbs where I grew up had ever screamed lewd remarks about my boobs, described the things they wanted to do to me or the ways in which I could be of service to them. At first, I shot back nasty comments and put-downs, but that just seemed to fire them up to assault me with nastier words, including, of course what a bitch I was for not swooning at their feet or dropping to my knees. I soon learned that ignoring them and swallowing my rage was a safer approach and likely to end the verbal assaults more quickly.

There was the creepy guy who followed me on the street muttering about all the things he wanted to do to me. There was the silent hoodie guy who followed me out of the subway at the mostly deserted hour of 5 AM and stalked me through the streets. Both times, being in neighborhoods I knew, I headed for an open deli, went in and told the men working there that a creepy guy was following me and got their support and protection until the predator went away.

I was groped on the subway a number of times in the rush-hour packed car, unable to know where the offending hand was coming from. I saw several flashers and a few causal subway masturbators.

There was the guy on the street who grabbed my ass. I spun around and kicked him the kneecap with my pointy-toed boot. My friend was worried that he was going to knife me or shoot me, but I was still young enough to feel invulnerable and pissed-off enough to want to hurt him. So I did.

And then there were the clubs and bars. Another guy grabbed my ass and got kicked in the kneecap, too. There was the man who grabbed me from behind while I was dancing—he got an elbow in his solar plexus. The next one grabbed me on the dance floor (a stomp on his instep for that one). The one who glommed onto my girlfriend got my fist to his solar plexus … and so on and on and on. I guess I’m lucky that none of them hit back, stabbed me or shot me.

I believe my impulse to hit back came from having an older brother. As little kids we sometimes fought, winding up rolling on the floor in an all-out brawl. He was older and bigger, but I fought back with whatever I could. I fought ‘dirty’ when I needed to, kicking, punching, pulling hair and even biting when he was overpowering me. I’m grateful that I learned to fight back—and also grateful that my fighting back against the gropers never got me injured. Again, I now realize how lucky I was.

Don’t forget the landlord, who after fixing my toilet grabbed me and laid a slobbery gross tongue-kiss on my unsuspecting mouth. He was a big strong guy and I was a small woman, alone in my apartment. So rather than hit back, I threatened to tell his wife if he ever did anything like that again. (That definitely scared him!) I still made sure never to be alone with again.

As far as bosses or co-workers, I was very lucky to never have a predatory guy at a job, but then again, I’ve been in business for myself for most of my work life. So, while I can certainly be a bitch to myself, I never created a self-hostile workplace vibe.

So, to add up my creepy guy score: Gropers: A dozen or more. Flashers and public masturbators: Five or six, as near I can recall. Unwanted kissing (plus extra points for the first guy because I was a child): Two. Overall, my physical harassment score is over twenty.

If I were to include all the men who cat-called me on the street, the count would soar. That number seems endless, a multitude of rude aggressive harassment from countless men.

In sum, I’ve encountered lots and lots of sex-related boundary violations. Fortunately, they were mostly relatively minor. I consider myself blessed to have been spared more aggressive and invasive sexual assault. I don’t believe my experience is unusual. As a midwife and gynecology provider for over twenty years and as a sexuality educator for 17 years, I am well aware of how often women are violated.

But as I ponder my own, relatively benign history, I have to reassess my earlier statement that I haven’t experienced sexual assault. While the violations were ‘minor,’ the effects on me were not. I have lived, as I think most women do, in a culture that has made it necessary for me to be on alert every time I walk out my door. A culture where the so-called ‘locker room’ has potentially invaded every space and created a need to be vigilant in an environment that feels unsafe.

Has the time finally come where a culture that creates such a hostile and threatening environment for women will no longer be tolerated?

As I pondered these issues and I started counting, I recalled more and more incidents that qualified as sexual assault and harassment. The final score: hundreds of men.

That got me to thinking, inspired me to write this post and has me wondering: how long is your list, especially once you include the full range of ways you’ve been can violated, trespassed and harassed? What’s your score?

When will the time come when, as women and as a culture, we decide that any number is unacceptable. Are we arriving at the time when we’ve finally had enough?

Four Lessons Prince Taught Us About Sacred Sex

Prince(By Sheri Winston and Carl Frankel)

Because Prince was the rare artist-celebrity who was both deeply religious and openly sexual, his untimely passing has placed a sudden spotlight on the topic of sacred sex. His view of the relationship between sex and God provides invaluable insights to people who want to practice sacred sex, but aren’t sure how to do it.

Many religious faiths are vehemently sex-negative—anti-sex and anti-pleasure. You can only get to heaven, these traditions tell you, by transcending the body and its shameful desires. Because these attitudes have permeated our culture, many people see sex as sinful and the farthest thing from sacred.

Prince was the absolute opposite of sex-negative. He believed that sex was one of God’s greatest gifts to humanity. For him, all sex was sacred. He believed that we can have sex that both feels amazing and connects us with the Divine. That’s a pretty radical belief in a world where sex has become deeply associated with sin.

Here are four takeaways from the Gospel of Prince about how to have sex that is both hot and holy.

1. Sacred sex isn’t ‘sex lite.’ It’s not sex with the raw, lewd, hot stuff stripped out. Prince made it clear that sex can be sacred and wildly profane at the same time. Since sexual desire was a gift from God, unbridled lust was one of many possible ways to praise Him. (An especially fun way!)

In Darling Nikki, he meets the song’s protagonist when she’s “in a hotel lobby, masturbating with a magazine.” They go upstairs and have a “funky time.” She’s quite the bedmate: Prince’s body “will never be the same.”

Sounds like quite the delightfully raunchy encounter, right? Only the song ends with a surprise—these words played backward:

“Hello, how are you? I’m fine, ‘cause I know
That the Lord is coming soon, coming, coming soon.”

Prince is suggesting that no matter how hot and dirty the sex gets, God is fine with it. Although Nikki turned him into a “dirty little Prince” whose one desire was to “grind grind grind,” that didn’t make him a sinner. He was “fine.” His journey into lust wouldn’t keep God from “coming soon.”

Great news! You can get down and dirty and still have it be sacred.

2. There’s a big gap between Prince’s view of sex as inherently sacred and the notion many people have of sacred sex as a sort of special sauce that elevates the usual sexual experience. Although many people associate sacred sex with ancient erotic traditions like Tantra, that’s not required. In Adore, Prince writes:

“When we be makin’ love
I only hear the sounds
Heavenly angels cryin’ up above
Tears of joy pourin’ down on us.”

There’s no mention here of special breathing techniques or any of the other sacred-sex moves you can study up on in the esoteric traditions. Prince and his partner were madly in love and making love. That was good enough to make it sacred. How do we know? Because the angels wept with joy for them.

Special techniques can help—a lot, actually—but sex doesn’t become spiritual just because you paint by the sacred-sex numbers. Sex is sanctified by what your soul brings to it.

3. Prince believed that the body is inherently sacred—both a gifyou-came-into-my-life-1174536_1920t from God and a path to God. In The Human Body, he writes:

“Can U get me excited?
Excited enough 2 thank the God above 4 the human body.”

Here, too, we see him making his familiar sex-and-God connection. If you turn me on enough, he’s saying, the spirit will come over me and I’ll cry “Hallelujah!”

We can follow Prince’s lead on this one, too. Sacred sex transmutes physical arousal into powerful feelings of gratitude to God for giving us hearts that can love as intensely as they do, and bodies that can experience such amazing pleasure.

4. For Prince, sex was right up there alongside salvation as part of God’s grand plan—so much so, in fact, that the Second Coming, as imagined by Prince, sounds suspiciously like a sex party.

From Sexuality:

“Stand up everybody, this is your life
Let me take u to another world, let me take u tonight
U don’t need no money, u don’t need no clothes
The Second Coming, anything goes
Sexuality is all u’ll ever need
Sexuality—let your body be free.”

That’s right, folks—Prince basically had his God presiding over an orgy. A holy orgy. Talk about radical sex-positivity!

Which brings us to our fourth takeaway: If you want to practice sacred sex, be like Prince and be sex-positive.

Prince left us many gifts, including his vast musical output and his amazing performances. Perhaps his greatest gift, though, was his unshakable belief that sex didn’t cause our downfall. Quite the opposite, actually—it’s what brings us back to the Garden.

Read more

“What Is Squirting Video” Gets It So Wrong!

Wow, do they get so so many things wrong in this video. I’ll try to be brief but thorough in clearing up the massive misinformation in this: What Is Squirting Video

cappiello-vittel-regime-1911-france-woman-waterfall-trickleIt’s All the Same

I’ll start with their basic premise. They claim that ‘female ejaculation’ and “squirting” are two different processes. I totally disagree! The only difference is in how much fluid is produced. A few tiny drops, small dribbles, big gushes, or huge fountains, it’s the same fluid, just more more or less, either more concentrated or more dilute.

Bad Science

Next, let me briefly address the recent study they refer to. I believe it has a variety of flaws most especially their methods of assessment, their stimulation and measurement techniques as well as a statistically insignificant sample size. I do not consider this study to be good or accurate science.

To the point made in the video about the study showing the subjects having an empty bladder post-ejaculation, I say that data is not borne out in real life. Anecdotally, I and many other women report that after having profuse ejaculation we have then gone to the bathroom and had an abundant amount of urine. If I squirted all my pee out with ejaculation, how would I still have a full bladder needing to be emptied afterward?

All Women Can Learn to Squirt

The video also refers to the idea that only some women ejaculate. I disagree. All women have the equipment to FE. Female ejaculation (whether small squirts or a generous series of giant gushes) is a learnable skill (much like female orgasm itself.) Women can learn to ejaculate with information, support and encourage. And, I most certainly encourage it! Female ejaculation, when done in concert with orgasm (which I heartily recommend) it is an awesome, expanded, emotional and often full-body experience. I encourage women to add squirting to their orgasmic repertoire (you’ll be glad you did)!

vienna-434519Demystifying The Fluid & It’s Source

Let me give you a bit more information about the fluid. It’s produced by the paraurethral glands and is released via tiny ducts into the urethra. From there it can emerge via the urethral opening or be retained and held in the bladder until the next urination.

The paraurethral glands are surrounded by the erectile tissue of the urethral sponge. (Commonly, but incorrectly named the g-spot.) The more stimulation that the sponge gets, the more engorged it becomes, as the erectile capillaries fill with blood. The fluid part of the blood diffuses through the capillary wall and enters glandular tubules. There it mix with the glandular products. Engorgement of the urethral sponge’s erectile tissue causes more fluid to fill the glands, leading to more profuse ejaculation.

Their claim that FE is a small amount of liquid that occurs solely in the vagina is incorrect. The fluid does come from the female prostate (AKA the urethral sponge). But it is not vaginal lubrication nor does it come from the vagina. As noted above, it comes from the paraurethral glands and they empty into the urethra.

It’s NOT Pee

They claim that “squirting is diluted pee”. Studies of female ejaculate (of which there are few) have documented that the fluid produced does not contain significant amounts of urea and nitrate (major components of urine) and that it does contain Prostate Specific Antigen (PSA is also produced by the male prostate.) If you are a woman who ejaculates or you have a partner that does, this claim can be easily checked in the laboratory of your bedroom with the fine sensing equipment of your own nose, eyes and mouth. It’s not yellow. It doesn’t smell like pee. It has a distinct non-urinary flavor.

Stimulating the so-called g-spot (which is actually the underside of the urethral sponge) certainly encourages FE because stimulation causes the erectile tissue to swell. But that doesn’t “put pressure on the urethra, opening the angle between the urethra and bladder making it easier to pee.” Anyone who has experience engorged erectile tissue around their urethra (male or female) knows that that makes it harder to urinate.

artist-making-natural-artAmrita By Any Other Name

Amrita is what this fluid was called in the Sanskrit by practitioners of the ancient practice of Tantra, where it was recognized as sacred. Whether we call it amrita or female ejaculate, whether we squirt, gush, or dribble—it’s all the same thing. A natural, learnable and intensely pleasurable experience that all women can have.

Become Your Own Expert

Check it out for yourselves, become your own experts and then it will be easy to disregard bad science, ignore confused experts and discount video’s like this one that are mostly, just plain wrong. Except that last little line—it is completely natural! Squirting happens!


You want MORE?
For more information about female ejaculation, watch the online class: The Fountain of the Goddess: the Learnable Art of Female Ejaculation.

Or read my award-winning book, Women’s Anatomy of Arousal: Secret Maps to Buried Pleasure to discover more about female anatomy and pleasure than you ever dreamed possible!

 

Vaginal Vs. Clitoral Orgasm

Vaginal Vs. Clitoral Orgasm

It’s one hundred and ten years since Freud stirred up controversy with his theory that vaginal orgasms were the ‘mature’ way to come and that immature clitoral orgasms were for little girls and adolescents. It’s hard to believe that we’re still talking about it now—and that we’re still in a very muddled dispute. But we are.

Vaginal Vs Clitoral Orgasm: In the News! Again.

Since it’s about this century-old debate, I probably shouldn’t be too surprised to see the extensive press coverage that’s attended the publication of a scientific review of anatomy literature. The article in question is Anatomy of Sex: Revision of the New Anatomical Terms Used for the Clitoris and the Female Orgasm, by sexologists Vincenzo Puppo and Giulla Puppo, published in the forthcoming issue of Clinical Anatomy.

In today’s blog, I’ll focus on the vaginal vs. clitoral orgasm argument. The media frenzy is almost orgasmic (although not in a good way) as outlets variously applaud and decry the Puppos’ conclusion that “vaginal orgasm does not exist.” Unsurprisingly, women who don’t experience orgasm from intercourse seem to be on board with these scientists, while women who do experience orgasms from intercourse are shaking their heads and mocking the distance between science and real life (and real bedrooms).

Lizzie Crocker is in the no-vaginal orgasm camp. In her Daily Beast article, The Truth About Female Orgasm, she writes, “Thanks to the two Puppos and their clarifying study, women can finally stop … differentiating between types of orgasms that don’t exist. So … stop taunting us with claims of your intense, superior vaginal orgasms. It doesn’t exist and it never happened.”

I do understand where’s she’s coming from. From her words and tone, I conclude that she’s one of the women who don’t have orgasms from intercourse. I’m sorry if she feels ‘taunted’ by those who do. No one should suffer from orgasmic one-upmanship.

So, for Lizzie (presumably) and all the other women who feel orgasmically shamed, let me hasten to reassure them and impart a few important pieces of information that are missing from these heated discussions.

Let me start by making an important distinction. Most of the participants in this debate are equating ‘vaginal orgasm’ with an orgasm that results from penis-in-vagina intercourse without any added clitoral stimulation. These are not the same thing!

hand-461261_1920The Vaginal Vs. Clitoral Issue

To elaborate: Let’s start with the vaginal vs clitoral issue. The terms ‘clitoral orgasm’ and ‘vaginal orgasm’ are really only referring to where the woman feels the orgasm most intensely. Most people can experience orgasms that have different focal points. While most orgasms are genitally focused, it’s also possible to have ones that feel focused elsewhere, such as ‘heart-gasms’ or orgasms that are so expanded that they feel like the whole body is coming. Even within the genital region, orgasms can feel more centered in one part or another, accounting for orgasms that feel more clitoral, vaginal, uterine or anal (or in men, penile, prostate or anally-focused). The Puppos seem to think that “the few women who report ‘vaginal orgasms’” are deluded by the sexologists and the media. As if women don’t know their own bodies well enough to feel where their orgasm feels centered! If you are in tune with your own body, you’ll be able to distinguish which parts of you are pulsing and palpitating. There is a wide (and normal) range of embodied orgasmic experiences.

Why do we tend to feel orgasms in different areas of the genitals? In part, this has to do with which of the major sexual nerve pathways get more stimulated. More stimulation of the external structures tends to create orgasms that feel more clitoral. More internal stimulation tends to lead to a more internal (i.e., vaginal, uterine or anal) orgasmic experience. Stimulate all the nerve pathways and you get ‘blended’ orgasms that tend to feel especially intense.

andre_lambert_footjob-1917Now to address the separate but related issue about the various types of stimulation that can induce women to have orgasms. The Puppos basically say is impossible for women to achieve orgasms through penis-in-vagina intercourse without any additional direct clitoral stimulation. They say, “In all women, orgasm is always possible if … during vaginal/anal intercourse the clitoris is simply stimulated with a finger.” Rebecca Adams, writing “The G-Spot And ‘Vaginal Orgasm’ Are Myths, According To New Clinical Review” in The Huffington Post, seems to agree, quoting the Puppos: “Every woman has the capacity to orgasm if her clitoris is stimulated.”

There’s nothing wrong with clitorally-stimulated orgasms. If that’s the only kind of orgasms you have, you’re not broken nor are your orgasms ‘immature.’ Any way that you come from any type of stimulation is just fine and dandy! If you aren’t orgasmic in response to penetration, you’re not alone—over half of women don’t have orgasms with intercourse or without direct clitoral stimulation. It’s totally common and completely normal.

295535The most important thing I’d like everyone to know is that women can learn to become orgasmic from a wide variety of stimuli (including with intercourse). Got it? People can learn to become aroused and have all kinds of orgasms from many different types of actions and activities.

While direct genital stimulation is usually an important component of sexual arousal, people can get turned on and orgasmic from stimulation of other body parts or without any direct physical stimulation at all. Extra-genital arousal and orgasms are most likely to happen when sensitive erogenous zones are pleasured such as your nipple, the back of your neck or your mouth (kissing!)

The Puppos state, “Orgasms with a finger in the vagina are possible in all women, but the partner must also move the hand in a circle to stimulate all the female erectile organs.” This would certainly create a limited repertoire for attaining orgasms! In fact, we now have documentation via the MRI studies of hands-off female orgasm done by Komisaruk, Whipple, et al at their lab at Rutgers University that some women are capable of having orgasms by ‘thinking off’ with no clitoral, vaginal or genital stimulation whatsoever.

One thing the Puppos do have right is that women have a number of erectile structures. Unfortunately, they don’t acknowledge them all nor do they seem to understand how they work together. Understanding these erectile structures is one of the keys to increasing the incidence, intensity and frequency of female orgasm. It’s great for the vulva owners to know this, and their partners too.

The Female Erectile Network: A Revolutionary Map of Buried Pleasure

As I noted in So Is there Or Is There Not A G-Spot?, women have what I call the Female Erectile Network, or FEN*. It’s a set of separate but interconnected structures made of erectile tissue—the very same tissue that enables penises to go from small and soft to big and hard. Women have just as much erectile tissue as men, it’s just arranged differently. Some of these pleasure parts are well known while others are almost unheard of (even by scientists, medical practitioners and sexologists).

Starting with the familiar, the FEN includes the super-sensitive ‘jewel in the crown’ —the head of the clitoris. (That’s what most people are referring to when they say ‘clitoris.’) It’s a unique and remarkable structure and merits lots of attention. The clitoral head is the main and usually easiest orgasmic trigger for most women. It is not, however, the only path to female sexual pleasure. The female erectile network also includes the two other parts of the clitoris: the shaft (under the hood) and the 3-4 inch-long paired legs. In addition to the clitoral structures, the FEN includes the paired vestibular bulbs that bracket the vaginal opening, plus two additional structures—the urethral and perineal sponges. The urethral sponge is a cylinder of erectile tissue that surrounds the tube of the urethra. The perineal sponge rests under the vaginal floor, in the wall between the vaginal and anal canals. All of these structures are composed of engorgeable erectile tissue.

gerda-wegener-satyrOne key to making intercourse highly pleasurable and much more likely to be orgasmic for the woman is to make sure that the whole circuit of erectile tissue is fully engorged prior to penetration. Other keys include making sure that the woman is in deep, high-level arousal prior to penetration; using our additional inner ‘sexcraft tools’ (such as breathing, sound, movement, awareness and imagination, to name just a few†) to increase stimulation; having one or more orgasms prior to intercourse; and, during intercourse, using more pelvis-connected movements such as rocking or grinding rather than a penis thrusting in-and-out motion.

 

Orgasmic Learning: The Real Sex Ed

For women, orgasm skills are learnable. Some women haven’t yet learned how to have any kind of orgasm. There’s nothing wrong with you if that’s your situation—there are just skills you haven’t learned yet. Step one is discovering your easiest path to orgasm, which usually involves self-pleasuring and clitoral stimulation. Once women develop orgasmic proficiency, they can go on to learn orgasmic mastery, where you develop many paths through arousal, expand the ways you can get off and discover the wide realm of orgasmic possibilities.

Most women who have penis-in-vagina intercourse-only orgasms have learned how to get there. For those women who haven’t had penis-penetration-induced climaxes, you can develop the skills that will allow you that experience.

If you want to. You don’t have to. It’s an orgasmic option.

carlos-schwabe-spleen-and-idealThere is no right way to have orgasms. There is no better way. Nor is there a Freudian ‘mature’ way to come. But there are different orgasmic experiences. Clitorally or vaginally-stimulated ones, anally stimulated ones, orgasms in your dreams, hands-on ones, hands-off orgasms, whole-body ones. Orgasms from humping a pillow, from penetration of your vagina, your anus, your mouth or your mind. It’s all learnable! You can learn to expand your orgasmic range.

Celebrate All Orgasms

Please don’t let any reporters, scientists, partners (or anyone, for that matter!) tell you that your experiences aren’t real, that you’re not normal, or that the way you get off is wrong. If people with paraplegia can learn to have orgasms by having their mouth or fingers stimulated (and they can and have), then let’s stop limiting and shaming anyone’s experience and learn to celebrate orgasms in any way, shape or body part that helps us have them.

Having great sex is a learning journey. One part of that journey is learning to have orgasms. And, if you choose, learning how to use your many parts and multiple skills to have stupendous ones.


Want to Know More?

For more details about the different structures, take a look at this post: The Missing Female Pleasure Parts

For more information on what’s been misunderstood and neglected, here’s another post: Lost Sexy Bits. (It includes a quickie home play assignment.)

For a few orgasmic pointers, I invite you to download a free Orgasmic Abundance e-book.


Save

Genital Anatomy in the News! Again. Confusion Still Reigns About the G-Spot.

Part One. So Is there Or Is There Not A G-Spot?

Due to the depth and complexity of information in both the original article and the media interpretation of it, I’ll be posting a series of blogs addressing various aspects of the female anatomy and orgasm debate and discussion.

Confusion Still Reigns

Is there a g-spot? A recent scientific article says no. Media outlets have hopped on that article and are promoting the idea that there’s nothing to play with inside a vagina. I say that while there is no structure that be accurately named the g-spot, there are indeed some delicious, erectile structures that can be accessed from inside the vagina to the great delight of the vagina owners.

Sad to say, we continue to have confusion and dissent among ‘experts’ as well as translation problems as press takes information from scientific journal articles and interprets (and often misstates it) for the general public.

After reading both the scientific article that started the furor and various media reports that paraphrase, misunderstand and twist the data, I’m ready to weigh in with my own sexpert opinions based on my education and clinical experience as a former certified nurse-midwife and gynecology practitioner, plus my current experience as a sexuality teacher and author.

The Anatomy of Sex

Let’s begin with the science—Anatomy of Sex: Revision of the New Anatomical Terms Used for the Clitoris and the Female Orgasm, by sexologists Vincenzo Puppo and Giulla Puppo, published in the forthcoming issue of Clinical Anatomy.  (And, by the way, media folk, this is a literature review, not a study.)

One aspect of their basic argument is that sexologists, scientists and health care providers should use anatomically correct terminology. I agree insofar as terms such as G-spot and internal/inner clitoris are inaccurate and best not used. I disagree with the scientists, however, about what terms we should be using instead, what’s actually there, and how it operates.

The Female Erectile Network

As I point out in my book, Women’s Anatomy of Arousal: Secret Maps to Buried Pleasure, women have what I call the Female Erectile Network: a set of interconnected but separate erectile structures made up of the three parts of the clitoris, the paired vestibular bulbs, the urethral sponge and the perineal sponge. They are connected both functionally and structurally. While the Puppos’ article discusses the three parts of the clitoris and the vestibular bulbs, they neglect to consider the more internal erectile structures: the urethral and perineal sponges. These are important components of the female erectile network. While the Puppos are proposing “female penis” for the descriptor of this collection of erectile structures, I strongly believe Female Erectile Network is more useful and descriptive and far less confusing then naming a female body part after a male one.

While it’s beyond the scope of this article to go into detail about each of the female erectile structures, I do want to point out a few salient bits of information about the network. Pound for pound and inch for inch, women have just as much erectile tissue as men do. Each of the network’s structures is composed of erotically responsive erectile tissue, and with proper stimulation, each can become engorged. While women can become aroused and orgasmic with only some of the network activated, for maximum pleasure, get the whole network engorged. When all of the separate structures are engorged, the erectile network becomes like a snug and stretchy cuff of delightfully responsive equipment. Getting one component stimulated and engorged is good. Getting the whole network puffed up and pleasured is way better!

Let me go into a bit more detail about the urethral sponge (so named in the ground-breaking 1981 book, New View of A Women’s Body). It’s also known as the female prostate, since embryologically it’s formed from the same tissue that becomes the prostate gland in males. It’s composed of spongy erectile tissue that forms a cylindrical tube that surrounds the tube of the urethra. It’s rather like a roll of paper towels, with the urethra being like the cardboard tube, while the erectile tissue is like the paper towels. When unaroused, it’s as if you’re near the end of the roll. With proper and pleasurable stimulation, the sponge swells and becomes more like a brand new jumbo roll. The Puppos refer to the urethral sponge as the “corpus spongiosum of the female urethra,” but neglect to connect that to the ongoing controversy about whether or not there’s a g-spot.

Here’s a little-known fact lots of people miss—the underside of the tubular sponge is what in common (and incorrect) parlance is known as the g-spot. I prefer not to use that term. It is not a spot—it’s the bottom of the tube of the urethral sponge. So while I can truthfully say that the ‘g-spot’ as an anatomical structure doesn’t exist, the erectile tissue known as the urethral sponge most assuredly does. Got it? There is no g-spot, but there is a urethral sponge—an engorgeable (and potentially pleasurable) erectile tissue tube that lies just above the roof of the vagina. The Puppos are correct that the g-spot is not a part of the vagina. The urethral sponge is not a part of the vagina itself, as it lies right above the ‘roof’ (anterior wall) of the vagina. However, it can be stimulated is through the vaginal roof, so from the lay point of view it is ‘inside’ the vagina since it can be accessed that way.

And the media? Here’s an example of its hyperbolic and inaccurate response (these from Lizzie Crocker in “The Truth About Female Orgasms: Look to the Clitoris, Not the Vagina” in The Daily Beast): “A new study claims the G-spot is nothing more than a ‘scientific fraud,’” and “Thanks to the two Puppos and their clarifying study, women can finally stop digging around for their G-spots.”

WRONG! Women have erectile tissue that can be stimulated intra-vaginally, it’s just not a g-spot. It’s the bottom of the urethral sponge and I do recommend that women (and their lovers) discover it.

Who Wins The Battle of the Sexperts?

Can’t figure out which ‘sexpert’ is right? How about if you all check it out for yourselves? You can become your own expert and solve the question for yourself!

Let me invite you to do a bit of homework. (This is a shortened version of the suggested guided tour of The Succulent Sponge exploration from my book. If you own the aforementioned equipment, you can do this exploration solo. (It’s written from the female perspective.) If you don’t have female equipment of your own, you’ll need a lab partner for this experiment.

Guided Tour of the Succulent Sponge

Begin in an unaroused state. Put one or two of your fingers inside your vagina, turn the pads of your fingers up, curl them and reach up, exploring the roof.

Remember as you go on your guided tour that this is erectile tissue that you’re feeling, so during stage one of your exploration, that is, in a completely unaroused state, it won’t feel like anything in particular. Since the urethral sponge surrounds the urethra, when you push against the non-puffed tissue, you’ll really be rubbing almost directly on your urethra( pee tube). It will probably make you feel like you need to pee. For most women, this is not an erotic sensation.

Play with yourself (or get help from a partner) and get moderately aroused.

Now, feel it again. Notice the differences in size and sensation. It probably won’t feel irritating anymore, but it may not feel great, either.

Return to sexual pleasuring and get to high level arousal.

Feel inside again. When your urethral sponge is really big and puffed, you’ll be able to feel the whole two to three inch length of it. You’ll also notice its ridged or ribbed texture. If you separate your fingers a bit, you can run them along the gutters or sides of the tube. If you can reach in far enough, you’ll feel where it ends. When you play with it for awhile, you may notice that it starts to feel like a wet sponge, as if it’s full of tiny fluid-filled grapes.

If you’re using a mirror, you can see some interesting sights. If you hold your vagina open and look inside with a light, you’ll see the roof bulging boldly down into your vaginal canal. You can also note the raised circular ring that’s the end of the tube surrounding the opening of your urethra.

Pleasuring Female Parts

Here’s a little tip about pleasuring female parts: most women prefer to have their erectile tissue played with after it’s at least partially engorged. If you or your playmate are pressing the urethral sponge too early in arousal it will usually not only not feel good, it will often feel irritating. Save sponge stimulation for high level arousal and if playing with it doesn’t feel good—back out and turn up the turn on before returning to inner sponge play.

For a more detailed version of your home play assignment, detailed anatomy descriptions and unique illustrations, please see my book, Women’s Anatomy of Arousal: Secret Maps to Buried Pleasure.

In part two of Female Orgasm and Genital Anatomy in the News, I’ll look at the vaginal vs. clitoral orgasm controversy and explain why all the fuss is misguided.


For a few orgasmic pointers, I invite you to download a free Orgasmic Abundance e-book.

For lots more details, illustrations and guides to discovering all of the female pleasure equipment, I invite you to read my award-winning book, Women’s Anatomy of Arousal: Secret Maps to Buried Pleasure.

For in-depth information, my recently released book, Succulent SexCraft: Your Hands-On Guide to Erotic Play & Practice expands on many of the ideas in this article, such as how to use your ‘sexcraft toolkit’ to expand your pleasure.


Save

Save

Save

Is Porn Turning Boys Into Monsters?

Headline from The Guardian: “Any boy who tells you that he hasn’t seen porn is lying. Porn changes what you expect from girls”

While I certainly agree with many points in the article, such as we need to be teaching about relationship and communication skills and consent in sex education for children and teens, there are a few points that seem to arise frequently about the influence of porn.

This article in the UK Guardian states:

“A 2013 report for the Office of the Children’s Commissioner, called Basically … Porn is Everywhere, examined recent research on the impact of pornography on children and young people. According to the report, pornography “influences their attitudes towards relationships and sex; it is linked to risky behaviour such as having sex at a younger age; and there is a correlation between holding violent attitudes and accessing more violent media”.

As far as I know, the data I’ve seen does not support that conclusion.

Has anyone seen this report or this data?

Do you believe this is true?

Are they conflating correlation, influence and “links” to causation? (It’s a favorite media tactic for sensationalizing and twisting data.)

Also, is “slag” British for slut?

This Is Your Brain on Sex

The following is an excerpt from Succulent Sexcraft: Your Hands-On Guide to Erotic Play and Practice:
brainonsexYour neocortex is the executive headquarters of your brain, perched in the penthouse at the front of your skull. This is not where sex takes place. Sexuality is primarily a function of the older, more primitive parts of our brain. Sexual energy is animal energy and our animal selves live in the limbic system and old brain. Sex taps into ancient evolutionary machinery that resides, so to speak, in the cranial basement. You need to go down the brain elevator if you want to really get down sexually.

Your busy babbling executive forebrain can be more of a hindrance than a help. We’ve probably all had times when our chattering neocortex blocked our sexual energy. People get stuck in their heads—or, rather, neocortex—all the time thinking about things like what you should (or shouldn’t) be doing, if you’re doing it right, if the ceiling needs painting… the list goes on and on.

The simple fact is that to go into erotic trance at all, and especially to go deep, your forebrain needs to turn off so your animal body can wake up and turn on. Your command center needs to stop thinking, deciding, planning, worrying and judging—it needs to go off-line. Until that happens, the primal templates that reside in the old parts of your brain can’t be accessed.

Turning off the jabbering conversations in your executive office is easier said than done. We can do it, though, with the help of our sexcraft toolkit. Focusing on sound and breath, for instance, takes our attention away from all that administrative prattle and brings us to greater body awareness — it makes us, in this sense, more ‘animal.’ Similarly, visualizing heart energy stills the mind and activates the limbic system, which, as we’ve seen, is the mammalian part of the brain that deals with love and attachment.

Great sex brings out the animal in you. not literally, but not merely figuratively either. You go down into the more animal parts of your brain, on vacation from your control-aholic, hyper-active head office.

The deeper we get into our arousal trance, the more difficult it becomes to communicate coherently. talking is a fore-brain activity and when we’re turned on, we’re down in the basement and that upper story is far away. This explains why we tend to communicate in shorthand when we’re having sex (“now!” “please!” “Yes!”) or stay with our animal selves and simply purr and howl.

The three aspects of the brain—the old ‘reptile brain,’ the ‘mammal mid-brain’ and the ultra-modern ‘human new brain’ — can act in coordination or competition. Sex is a great example of how this plays out. It’s a journey where you shift from mundane reality to the altered state of intense arousal. At the beginning of the experience, your prattling neocortex predominates. As you go deeper into arousal, it slowly shuts down, allowing you to descend to where the primeval apparatus of sex resides. In between are the connections, emotions and experiences that form the web of who you are, what turns you on, your dreams and fantasies, your hopes and expectations, your anxieties and fears, your thoughts, sensations, meaning and stories. These can facilitate or inhibit your shift into deep erotic trance. For instance, your command center can assist you on your journey by reminding you to use your tools, advising you to take some deep breaths, make pleasure sounds and rock your hips. You can use your sexual imagination to replace negative thoughts with hot scenarios. Brain management is, believe it or not, a bedroom skill. You don’t want your forebrain working against you. Learn to harness it in service to your arousal—use your conscious brain to get animal and wild.

You can consciously use your brain to change your mind and you can use your mind to change your brain.

Women’s Health Magazine Gets It Wrong about Women & UTIs

4693614248_97a6977e6d_bIt’s not fair to women to put out an article about women’s health that mixes correct and incorrect information. Let me set the record straight about what they got right and what they got disastrously wrong and what they just don’t understand.

True: UTI’s are common in women and often related to sexual intercourse.

To start with, it’s important to understand that there’s a difference between irritation from too much friction and an infection caused by bad bacteria.

If irritation is the issue then applying frequent and generous lubricant will help reduce friction. Especially if you’re using condoms, and going at it a lot, than lubricants are your friend.

Even more important: make sure the woman is totally and thoroughly aroused prior to penetration. Most people are confused about what constitutes full female arousal and readiness for penetration. For most women that can take 30 – 45 minutes of getting turned on. Without having all of your erogenous tissue fully engorged, you are prone to irritation and significantly less pleasure. Ladies, don’t allow “premature penetration!”

Back to the mistakes in the article. Here’s another place they’re completely wrong: “When you have sex, bacteria from the vagina can get rubbed into the urethra, where it travels up to the bladder.” Nope, it’s not vaginal bacteria that are the problem. It’s almost always bacteria from the anus that cause urinary infections.

Since it’s anal invaders that are the source of urinary infections, the best prevention is excellent sexual hygiene, meaning that nothing that touches in or around the butt should go in or around the vulva and vagina. (At least not until it’s been thoroughly washed with soap and water.)

While the frequency of the sex is an factor in UTI’s it’s not the amount of sex per se that’s the problem. It’s friction, inflammation and un-friendly bacteria. More sexual activity provides more chances for butt bacteria will get tracked into the vaginal and urethral areas. In addition, irritated and inflamed tissue is more susceptible to infection. That’s a bad combination.

They got this right: “taking cranberry extract on a regular basis can help. Cranberry actually keeps the bacteria from sticking to the wall of the bladder.” That is true! Using cranberry extract capsules is a great strategy for prevention and can also nip an impending infection in the bud (if you catch it super early.)

This is totally wrong: “Your doctor may also prescribe an antibiotic that you can take each time you have sex, which will deliver a high level of antibodies to the urine (though not to your blood stream, so you won’t get a yeast infection).” So very wrong. When you take antibiotics, you deliver antibiotics to your whole body via your blood stream. While antibiotics will kill the bad bacteria in your urinary system, they can also kill the good bacteria in your vagina and lead to yeast infections.

The take-away: Make sure that the women’s body is really ready for penetration by taking as much time as she needs to be completely ready. And ready doesn’t just mean wet—that’s an sign of early arousal. For a woman to be totally turned on means that she’s deeply into her state of arousal and that her whole erectile network (her circuit of connected erectile tissue structures) is engorged.

Use extra lube.

Practice careful sexual hygiene.

Have as much sex as you want.

photo CC-BY Graham

Breastfeeding Is The Better Choice

I love that Huff Post is showing  “22 Candid Photos That Show How Beautiful Breastfeeding Really Is.” I love it because breastfeeding is beautiful and normal, natural and super-healthy. Looking at these lovely loving pictures is a great way to end World Breastfeeding week. These photos  are a wonderful way to help normalize something that is so foundational that an entire class of animals is named after it. We are, after all mammals, identified by our ability to provide perfect food for infants via our mammaries.

It’s a bummer, though, that HuffPost also felt the need to put Kim Simon’s article30 Ways Breastfeeding and Formula-Feeding Are Exactly the Same” on the same page. Because, while all parents may share concerns and challenges, breastfeeding and formula feeding are not exactly the same—and their differences matter.

Yes, I understand that many women choose not to breastfeed, but articles like this won’t help future moms make an informed choice to breastfeed. And it is the better choice—no two ways about it. The evidence is clear—breastfed children have lifelong advantages in health and intelligence.

The author wrote this in anticipatory defense against the possible shaming of formula-feeding parents. I’m not writing this commentary to shame mothers who don’t breastfeed. I felt compelled to write it because I want to co-create a world where breastfeeding is understood for what it is—a huge benefit for baby (and mom, too.) Babies that are fed ‘mama milk’ are healthier not just while they’re nursing, but for the rest of their life. Every disease known to humans has a lower lifetime incidence if the person was breastfed.

I love that Kim Simon is a co-founder of the I Support You project, which aims to foster understanding and connection between formula-feeding and breastfeeding moms.  I also want all moms to be connected, supported and supportive of each other whatever their choices.

At the same time, I want mothers to understand that breastfeeding is the healthier choice. Not only that—it also makes life super easy. Here are just a few of the many ways this is true:

  •  Nursing makes it easy to feed your baby anytime. The milk is always ready. It’s the perfect food at the perfect temperature, and there’s an endless supply.
  • If you sleep with your baby (and I strongly recommend that you do), night feedings are simple—roll over and pop a nipple in their mouth! You can actually get lots more sleep if you breastfeed.
  • Since breastfed babies get sick less often, you have fewer cranky sick baby days and nights.
  • Wear your baby in a sling and you can be nursing while you answer the door, deal with your other kids, eat your own meal and so on.

No one should be shamed for their choices. At the same time, breastfeeding is far and away the better option. I want people to know this, and I want breastfeeding to be the norm.

Everyone has an equal right to choose. But not all choices are created equal.


 

Correcting The Orgasmic Record

Gervex - Woman Tossed by a Wave

Gervex – Woman Tossed by a Wave

When the Strange Sex Ms. Orgasm episode, featuring me aired, I was surprised that they had invented two “facts”.

The 1st invention was that I claimed to have estimated my lifetime orgasm total as 15,000. Really? Whoa! I never said that. In fact, they never asked me that question, nor have I been counting. Seriously, who has been racking up a lifetime orgasm estimate?

Still, once the episode was broadcast, I decided to think about what a more realistic estimate would be. So, here goes my best guesstimate. Let’s see … I’ve been having sex for about 40 years. Including both solo and partnered encounters, I’ll guess that I’ve had a sex session about 4 times a week. For simplicity’s sake, let’s say 50 weeks per year. So that’s about 200 sex sessions per year. Figure that each sex session includes an average of 10 orgasms. (That accounts for my less orgasmic younger years where 3 was a great night and the more multi & mega later years, where one or two or three dozen is common, so an average of 10 makes sense.) So, let’s do the math. 4 times a week, times 50 weeks, times an average of 10 orgasms for 40 years, equals 80,000! Cool!

The 2nd “fact” was that my record for non-genital orgasms was five in a day! Now that’s just silly since over the three days of filming, they must have recorded me having dozens and dozens. I can have an orgasm in three breaths, (you can see the little educational Three Breath Orgasm video here) and I can have way more than five in five minutes. Frankly, I can’t even begin to guess my maximum or my all time record.

It would depend how you count anyway. Are we only including hands-off experiences or all orgasms achieved without direct genital stimulation included? Does a five minute orgasm with ten peaks count as one or ten? I give up on this. Counting orgasms is just silly anyway. Fantastic sex is about so much more than orgasm, anyway. And expanded orgasms are about so much more than numbers. Is there really any point to quantifying bliss? I don’t think so. For me, it’s not about my personal abilities anyway. For me, this is all about inspiring and educating you and everyone to be able to have multi-mega-orgasmic experiences. Then questions of ‘how many’ evaporate from our culture to be replaced by discussions and teachings about how to connect to pleasure, to access ecstasy and expand orgasms. And that is a land without numbers.

And, just a reminder – no one sprinkled orgasm dust on me – I learned how to do this and so can you!