Come as You Are (47 page)

We’ve learned that we’re all made of the same parts, organized in different ways—no two alike. That sexual arousal is the process of both turning on the ons and turning off the offs. That context—your environment and your mental state—influences how and when the ons and offs activate.

We’ve learned that genital response and sexual arousal aren’t always the same thing. That desire can be spontaneous or responsive, and both are normal. That some women orgasm pretty reliably from intercourse, most don’t, both are normal, and neither is a bigger deal than you want it to be.

Above all, we’ve learned that it’s not how your sexuality functions but
how you feel about how your sexuality functions
that determines whether your sex life is characterized by worry and distress . . . or by confidence and joy.

To get there, we’ve discussed anatomy, physiology, behavioral and comparative psychology, evolutionary psychology, health psychology, moral psychology, gender studies, media studies, and more. I’ve used metaphors, stories, my twenty years of experience as an educator, and a century or more of science.

The depth and complexity of women’s sexuality demand all this, and more.

why I wrote this book

Like many of you, I was taught all the wrong things as I was growing up. Then as I reached adulthood, I made all the mistakes. And I spent many years stumbling with unspeakably good fortune into settings where I could learn how to get it “right”—settings like the Kinsey Institute and one of only a handful of Ph.D. programs with a formal concentration in human sexuality.

I wrote this book to share what I’ve learned—what has helped me and what I’ve seen help other women. I wrote it for my sister and my mother, for my sister’s young adult stepdaughters, for my niece who is just approaching adolescence, and most of all for my students. I wrote it to share the science that taught me that I and my sister and my mother and my friends are all normal and healthy. I wrote it to grant us all permission to be different from one another.

I wrote it because I am done living in a world where women are lied to about their bodies; where women are objects of sexual desire but not subjects of sexual pleasure; where sex is used as a weapon against women; and where women believe their bodies are broken, simply because those bodies are not male. And I am done living in a world where women are trained from birth to treat their bodies as the enemy.

I wrote this book to teach women to live with confidence and joy.

If you can remember even one of the ideas in this book—no two alike, brakes and accelerator, context, nonconcordant arousal, responsive desire, any of them—and use it to improve your relationship with your own sexuality, you’ll be helping me with that goal. And if you share any of these ideas with even one other person, you’ll be expanding the global space in which women can live with confidence and joy.

In a way, it’s a small goal. I’m not trying to prevent cancer or solve the climate crisis or build peace in the Middle East. I’m just trying to help
people live with confidence and joy inside their bodies—and maybe, just maybe, if enough people are able to achieve this, we can ultimately live in a world where everyone’s sexual autonomy is respected.

Do I think that living with confidence and joy and respecting everyone’s sexual autonomy could play a role in preventing cancer, solving the climate crisis, or building world peace? Yes, actually. But that’s another story.

where to look for more answers

I don’t have all the answers—I don’t even have half the answers. The science is constantly growing and expanding, so more insight, more clarity will come. In this book I’ve presented some of the answers that I’ve seen help women, and I hope I’ve done it in a way that heals and renews and expands your sexuality.

All of us are engaged in the ongoing process of cultivating our gardens—digging out the weeds and nurturing the plants we hope will flourish. Often it’s a joyful experience; sometimes it’s painful; always it’s deeply personal. And as we tend our gardens, all of us look outside ourselves for confirmation that what we are experiencing is normal. We look to our community for comfort when we’re distressed. We look to experts for answers we can’t find on our own. Everyone does it, from the toddler who falls down while she’s learning to walk to the gifted meditator feeling her way through recovery from a sexual assault. We all look up from our own experience, look out to the world, and say, “That hurt. Am I okay? Am I doing this right?”

(You are doing it right. You are okay. When you hurt, you heal.)

And in the same way that our stress response physiology made a lot of sense when our typical stressors had sharp teeth and claws, so this practice of looking outside ourselves for confirmation that we’re okay may have made more sense when “outside ourselves” meant our local community and people we actually knew in real life, rather than people we know only through mass media.

We live in a Top 5 Tips world, where there are twelve new techniques for mind-blowing fellatio each month, followed by six sexy new positions he’s always wanted to try. This world is full of fun, exciting, entertaining things that draw and hold our attention.

But the structure of the truth is quieter, slower, more personal, and
so
much more interesting than mere entertainment. And it lives exclusively
inside you
, in the quiet moments of joy, in the jarring moments of worry, in the torn moments when the flock that is you is trying simultaneously to fly away from a threat and toward a pleasure.

So when you notice something unexpected inside yourself and you want to look outward to check if it’s normal, if you’re okay, remember me saying this:
You are okay.
Let this book be a mirror: When you look up, see yourself. And you are beautiful.

Trust your body.

Listen to the small, quiet voice inside you that says, “Yes! More!” or “No. Stop.” Listen especially when that voice is saying both at once. When that happens, be compassionate with yourself. Go slow.

When you look “out there,” you’ll find inspiration and entertainment and amazing science and support, too. But you won’t find the truth of your own sexual wellbeing—what
you
want, what
you
like, what
you
need. To find that, look inside.

I think very often people follow a blog like the one I write, take a class like the ones I teach, or read a book like this one, hoping to find the secret ingredient, the hidden all-powerful something or other that will put the apparent chaos of their sex lives into some kind of meaningful order.

So, what is the secret ingredient?

Well.

Have you seen the movie
Kung Fu Panda
?

It’s about a cartoon panda named Po, who becomes a kung fu master through diligent effort, the support of his teacher, and the wisdom of the Dragon Scroll, which contains “the key to limitless power”—in other words, the secret ingredient.

When Po first looks at the scroll, he is disappointed to find that there is nothing written on it. It’s a mirror—it reflects his own face.

And then comes his epiphany: “There is no secret ingredient. It’s just you.”

So. One more time, for the record:

Yes, you are normal. In fact, you’re not just normal. You’re amazing. Beguiling. Courageous. Delectable. All the way down to yawping and zesty. Your body is
beautiful
and your desires are
perfect
, just as they are.

The secret ingredient is
you.

The science says so.

And now you can prove it.

acknowledgments

Gratitude, first of all, to all the women who’ve talked to me about their sex lives, whose stories are woven into the narratives of Camilla, Olivia, Merritt, and Laurie, and throughout the book. I hope I have done justice to your stories.

Gratitude to the researchers, educators, and counselors who talked to me, read chunks of the book, told me I didn’t sound like a nut, told me I did sound like a nut, and/or nodded sympathetically as I apologized about the difference between writing science itself and writing about science for a general audience. In alphabetical order: Kent Berridge, Charles Carver, Kristen Chamberlin, Meredith Chivers, Cynthia Graham, Robin Milhausen, Caroline Pukall, and Kelly Suchinsky. Let the record show that any mistakes in the science are my own fault, despite precise and clear feedback from these good people.

Gratitude to Ms. Erika Moen, who drew the genitals so beautifully.

Gratitude to the beta readers, especially Andrew Wilson and Sabrina Golonka, Patrick Kinsman, Ruth Cohen, Anna Cook, and Jan Morris.

Gratitude to readers of my blog, who read early drafts of the book, commented on posts for four years, kept me intellectually and emotionally honest, and kept me questioning what I thought I knew, so that I could be a better writer.

Gratitude to my students at Smith College, who asked questions I’d never considered (“What’s the evolutionary origin of the hymen?”) and pushed me to understand ever more deeply what I was teaching, so that I could be a better teacher.

To all of you: Thank you.

And then there’s the gratitude where there just aren’t any words anymore, all there is is this swollen feeling around your heart and no way to talk about it. You know that feeling? It’s the one that tells you to go to the person, get on your knees, and cover your face with your hands, grateful, humble, bound.

I’m pretty sure that every person for whom I have this feeling would find it very, very awkward if I actually did that. So instead I’ll just write a list.

Here, in approximate chronological order, are the people who helped me in ways I don’t have words for:

Nancy Nutt-Chase

Cynthia Graham and John Bancroft

Erick Janssen

David Lohrmann

Richard Stevens

Lindsay Edgecombe

Sarah Knight

Julie Ohotnicky

Amelia Nagoski

Stephen Crowley

Grateful. Humble. Bound. Thank you.

appendix 1: therapeutic masturbation

If you are experiencing frustration around orgasm—whether you’re learning to orgasm, learning to orgasm with a partner, or learning to have more control over your orgasms—I offer these instructions.

1. Find your clitoris (instructions in chapter 1).

2. Create a great context. You can use your worksheets from chapters 3 and 7 to help with this. In general, it’ll be a context where you have no concern about being interrupted for about thirty minutes, where you feel safe and private and undistracted by outside worries.

3. Touch your body and notice how that feels. Touch your feet and legs and arms and hands and neck and scalp. At first, when you’re learning to have an orgasm, stop here. Spend your thirty minutes just doing this. Do it a few times a week for a couple weeks. Gradually incorporate your breasts, lower abdomen, inner thighs.

4. Now stimulate your clitoris indirectly. The most indirect stimulation is simply to think about your clitoris. Just give it quiet, loving attention. Try rocking or rotating your hips, to bring your attention to your pelvis. You may or may not notice some emotions emerging as you attend to your clitoris. That’s normal. Allow those feelings and practice feeling affectionate and compassionate toward yourself, your genitals, and all those feelings.

When you feel ready (and you may not feel ready for days or weeks—that’s okay), move to “distal” stimulation, which means indirect, roundabout stimulation. Try any of these, or whatever else feels right:

• Gently pinch your labia between your thumbs and forefingers, stretch the labia out, and tug from side to side. This will put very indirect pressure on the clitoris and move the skin over the clitoris (the clitoral hood).

• With your palm over your mons, press down a little and pull upward, toward your abdomen. Again, this will put gentle pressure on the clit and move the skin around it. Try different pressures, different speeds of tugging (e.g., one long slow tug, several quick tugs in a row), or rotating your palm in a circle.

• Place your palms against your inner thighs, so that the outside edges of your thumbs are pressing against your labia, possibly even squeezing them together. Rock your hips against the pressure of your hands.

Some people prefer indirect stimulation over direct stimulation. You may notice as you try these techniques that the muscles in your arms, legs, butt, and/or abdomen get tense. That’s a normal part of the arousal process. You might even find yourself feeling like you don’t want to stop doing a particular kind of stimulation. I humbly suggest you go with your gut; don’t stop. Keep going for as long as it feels good, just keep paying attention to the pleasurable sensations without trying to change them or even understand them.

5. Try direct stimulation. For most people this is pleasurable only when arousal has already started up, so once you’re feeling pretty pleasurable and warm, try any of these:

• With the flat of one or two or three fingertips, lightly touch the head of the clitoris with a steady back-and-forth motion. Try slow, fast, anything in between that feels good, and with light, brushing touch, light pressure, deep pressure . . . try different combinations of speeds and pressures.

• With as many fingertips as feels comfortable, rub circles directly over your clitoris—fast or slow, light touch or deep pressure, or anything in between.