Contents

Preface

1 Liberating Partnersex
The Myth of Foreplay

2 Heterosexuality Revisited
Intergenerational Sex

3 Loving Love
Romantic Love Junkies

4 The Bridal Shower
We Haven't Come a Long Way, Baby

5 Loving Others
Defusing the Power Struggle

6 Did You Come?
The Mystery of the Female Orgasm

7 G-Spot or My-Spot
Reaffirming the Clitoris

8 Masturbation for Couples
Sexual Compatibility

9 Sex Toys
For Couples Who Want to Have Fun

10 Orgasms for Two
Intercourse with Clitoral Stimulation

11 Especially for Men
World-Class Lovers

12 I'll Show You Mine
Our Magnificent Sex Organs

13 Creative Partnersex
Exploring New Sexual Skills

14 Rosebud
Anal Eroticism for Heterosexuals

15 Sexual Seniors
The Beat Goes On

16 Sex Coaching
Teaching Sex in the New Millennium

Afterword

1

LIBERATING PARTNERSEX

The Myth of Foreplay

It's totally understandable why heterosexual men and women want to climax from penis/vagina sex -- how convenient, how easy, and how wonderful to have partnersex be consistently and mutually orgasmic. However, if Romeo's firm penis moving sweetly inside Juliet's wet vagina provides orgasms for nearly every man and a mere handful of women, what are we going to do about the majority of women who cannot climax from vaginal penetration alone? We can broaden our definition of partnersex to include some form of direct stimulation of a woman's clitoris either manually or with a vibrator during heterosexual lovemaking.

Let's start with the concept of foreplay. Women's magazines as well as many sex books emphasize the importance of "foreplay" for couples. We are told that women want more of it and men don't do enough of it. It's been my observation that a little appetizer of kissing, breast fondling, and clitoral touching before the main course of penetration is seldom enough to satisfy the sexual appetite of most red-blooded women. Just as she is getting excited from some form of direct clitoral contact, he stops and penetrates her vagina. While he is enjoying his ideal erotic sensation with his penis moving inside her, she is now struggling to get a little indirect clitoral contact, which for most women can't compare to consistent clitoral stimulation all the way to orgasm.

Imagine a man being told he can rub his penis inside a woman's vagina as foreplay, but when it's time for his orgasm, she must be sitting on his face penetrating his mouth with her clitoris. This will give him a "mature oral orgasm." He must not reach down and touch his penis while she's fucking him in the mouth or she'll think her clitoris isn't big enough to provide his orgasm. To protect her female ego, he ends up faking orgasm, but he figures it's worth it to keep the peace. Later on he can masturbate in the bathroom, or if she's a sound sleeper, he can finish himself off in bed providing he can come while holding his breath and not moving so as not to wake her.

Instead of using the word "foreplay," we need to think of a new term to use, such as "sexplay." Most women desire clitoral pleasure in the beginning of, during, and sometimes even after partnersex, if she wants to come again.

As I enter the fourth decade of teaching women how to have orgasms, I've come to the conclusion that just as a man's penis gets consistent contact during penis/vagina sex, many women also want consistent clitoral contact throughout the entire act. Any man who is considerate will add direct clitoral stimulation with his fingers or a confident woman will stimulate her own clitoris with her hand, a little battery-operated vibrator, or an electric vibrator. Once the clitoris and the head of the penis are engaged, every thrust of his penis and contraction of her vaginal muscle becomes mutually pleasurable. They can share the ecstasy of orgasm during intercourse with few exceptions.

One of my basic principles for sharing mutual orgasms is: How we make love to ourselves is what we bring to partnersex. New designs for partnersex require a man who has learned ejaculatory control through the practice of masturbation and a woman who's learned her orgasmic response the same way. If he occasionally comes before she does or she feels like having another orgasm after he's been satisfied, there is nothing to prevent her from continuing. He can add sensuous touching or slow finger or dildo penetration while she continues clitoral contact with either her finger or a vibrator.

Another creative way for couples to share orgasms during partnersex is by taking turns. If she prefers oralsex for her orgasm, then after she has her climax they can go on to intercourse for his orgasm. If he prefers oralsex, too, they can flip a coin to see who goes first. Instead of seeing penis/vagina sex as the only thing on the menu, they can treat fucking as her appetizer and his main course. After he comes, she can have her orgasm with direct clitoral stimulation from a number of ways. For variety, lovers might choose to masturbate together and give themselves their own orgasm.

Over the years, my approach to teaching sex has been criticized by some and applauded by others. Some accuse me of being too focused on the body and orgasms. They believe love and relationships are far more important than cocks, clits, and sexual technique. Others are convinced that until we deal with the cultural, social, and economic inequalities in women's lives, sexual pleasure is a luxury most of us cannot afford. Some feminists believe we must end all forms of violence against women before we will feel safe enough to enjoy sexual pleasure. I disagree. One important avenue to improve women's lives and begin to end violence would be to defuse the war between the sexes.

In my opinion, experiencing consistent orgasms is essential in developing self-esteem and sustaining a loving relationship. During the twenty-five years I ran my masturbation workshops, the opening question, "How do you feel about your body and your orgasm?" made us realize how much confusion, pain, and unnecessary suffering sexual ignorance had caused us. We all agreed that both women and men would be happier and society less violent if everyone took a course in Orgasm 101.

When I was studying at the Art Students League in New York City, both teachers and students agreed that the creative process required complete freedom to explore our deepest feelings and convictions. Now, in my second career as a clinical sexologist, I feel the same way about human sexuality. Creative lovemaking also requires the complete freedom to explore our sexual bodies and our erotic minds. No religious organization or government agency has the right to tell us with whom, or under what circumstances, we can share our sexuality with other consenting adults. In any country that upholds the ideals of the democratic process, artistic and sexual freedoms go hand in hand.

Sex and art share other commonalities. Being a world-class lover or a first-rate artist requires skills that must be learned and practiced. Unfortunately, many people continue to believe that good sex comes naturally, as a result of an emotionally sound relationship. This idea has kept heterosexuality imprisoned for hundreds of years. Yet where do we go to learn the basics of how to erotically please ourselves, let alone another person? This is the challenge facing sex educators today, especially in America, where sex is a political battlefield as the boundaries between church and state continue to blur. The question is: Who owns our bodies, minds, and sexuality? Most would answer: Each individual does.

On the one hand, America flaunts sex in the media and entertainment fields, yet on the other, our Puritan underpinnings show through when we avoid the most fundamental, real-life aspects of sexual pleasure. Congress struggles with laws to restrict adult entertainment industries and ways to censor the Internet. Religious groups impose their beliefs on all students in public schools with government-funded, abstinence-only sex education that limits sexual expression to monogamous heterosexual marriage. Our teenagers are being told that birth control usually fails and abortion and homosexuality are morally wrong, and masturbation is never mentioned as a safe alternative to penis/vagina sex. Until America accepts sexual diversity as the law of the land, to include gay men, lesbians, bisexuals, transsexuals, and intersexuals, we will remain in the dark ages of human sexual expression.

The religious and politically conservative people who are trying to control the dissemination of sex information claim it to be the domain of parents to teach their children. However, not all parents are in a position to teach sexual skills because many have never learned themselves. And by the time kids reach their teens, they don't want to discuss sex with their parents -- it's too embarrassing. Those parents who enjoy their own sexuality will pass on positive nonverbal messages, and the clever ones will have a few good informational sex books on the family's bookshelves.

The next big chunk of sex information comes from children's peers, and it's often incorrect or distorted. I was six or seven years old the day my girlfriend Mimi told me that a baby would come out of a hole between my legs. I was horrified. No babies for me, thank you. Later, when I asked Mother if it was true, she said yes, but that having a baby was a beautiful thing. She explained that when I grew up and got married, my husband would put his penis inside my vagina and that's how a woman got pregnant and had a baby. She also said that having sex with a man I loved would be wonderful. From that day on I played with my nameless clitoris while dreaming of the moment my faceless husband would put his penis inside my vagina. What's wrong with this picture?

My first erotic drawing remains vivid in my memory. I was the best artist in school, so one afternoon at my friend Diane's house, several of my girlfriends asked me to draw a picture of sex. The image I created was a man on top of a woman. His arms were as stiff as the polelike penis disappearing between her thighs. I drew a small puddle of blood alongside her body to show she'd been a virgin. We were all heated up by my twelve-year-old rendition of sex -- something we longed for and feared in equal measure. We talked about sex while ceremoniously sharing a few puffs on a cigarette that Diane had stolen from her mom's purse. Then I tore the drawing into little pieces and flushed them down the toilet.

Many people continue to believe that the man-on-top intercourse depicted in my first "dirty picture" is the preferred form of sexual expression. They say it's natural -- God ordained it. But it is man, not God, who advocates the "missionary position," since it serves most men's need to control the action that leads to male ejaculation. In spite of the fact that this seldom provides orgasms for the majority of women, each new generation believes women should be able to climax from "normal" heterosexual intercourse.

I'll never forget the day, at age thirty-five, when I realized the awful truth about my own sexual ignorance. Despite all my years of childhood masturbation, teenage hand jobs, and seven years of sneaky marital masturbation, when it came to partnersex, it never dawned on me to make direct clitoral contact while having sexual intercourse. When I had an orgasm with myself I stimulated my clitoris, but when I had sex with a boyfriend, my clitoris became nonexistent. I was outraged to think it had taken so long to understand that my clitoris was my sex organ, and my vagina was the birth canal.

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 partnersex.

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 partnersex. 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 partnersex 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 partnersex. 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 partnersex 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 partnersex 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 partnersex 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 partnersex. Being a quick ejaculator is often the result of doing fast masturbation to avoid getting caught or not 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 partnersex. 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 partnersex 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 partnersex. 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 partnersex of all persuasions by bringing couples closer together.

Copyright © 2002 by Betty Dodson, Ph.D.