Come as You Are (6 page)

This statement was such a gift to me. I go back to this idea over and over now, as I write my lectures. I spend hours searching the Internet for sex-positive images of a wide variety of vulvas, because my students vary—no two alike—and I want them to know that their bodies are normal and that they belong there in my classroom.

why it matters

Why might the seemingly simple fact that all human genitals are made of the same parts,
organized in different ways be the most important thing you’ll ever learn about human sexuality?

Two reasons:

Because it means your genitals are normal—and not just normal, but amazing and beautiful and captivating and delicious and enticing, on down the alphabet, all the way to zesty—regardless of what they look like. They are made of all the same parts as everyone else’s genitals, organized in a configuration utterly unique to you. The entire range is normal. Beautiful. Perfect. And because it is true for each and every facet of human sexual expression. As we’ll see in the chapters that follow, from genital response to spanking fetishes, our sexual physiology, psychology, and desires are all made of the same parts, just organized in different ways.

If we embrace this simple, profound idea—all the same parts, organized in different ways—it answers that ever-popular question: Are men’s and women’s sexualities the same, or are they different?

Answer: Yes.

They’re made of the same parts, organized differently.

While we can see obvious group differences when we look at populations—male and female bodies—there’s at least as much variability within those groups as there is between those groups.

I can illustrate with a nonsex example. The average height of an adult woman is five feet four and the average height of an adult man is five feet ten, a six-inch difference between the two groups’ averages. But height varies more within each group than between the groups. If you measured the heights of a thousand random people—five hundred men and five hundred women—you’d find that nearly all the women would be between five feet and five feet eight—an eight-inch difference within the group—and nearly all the men would be between five feet four and six feet four—a twelve-inch difference. Notice three things: There’s more difference
within
each group (eight or twelve inches) than
between
the two groups (six inches); there are four inches of overlap between the groups; and one or two hundred people among the thousand would be outside even these wide ranges!
⁹

The same goes for sex. Within each group we find a vast range of diversity—and I don’t mean just anatomically. I mean in sexual orientation, sexual preferences, gender identity and expression, and—the subject of the rest of this book—sexual functioning: arousal, desire, and orgasm. We also find overlap between the two groups, and we find folks who vary wildly from the “average” while still being perfectly normal and healthy.

Some authors argue that the differences between men and women are more important than the similarities. Others say that the similarities are more important than the differences. My view is that the basic fact of homology—all the same parts, organized in different ways—is more important than either.

And
variety
may be the one and only truly universal characteristic of
human sexuality. From our bodies to our desires to our behaviors, there are as many “sexualities” as there are humans alive on Earth. No two alike.

Here’s the kind of conversation you have when you’re a sex educator out drinking with your friends:

Laurie: “This woman I know told me if she ever has kids, she’ll have plastic surgery on her ladybusiness right after she gives birth, because she thinks it won’t look good anymore.”

Camilla: “Did you tell her that the cosmetic medical-industrial complex paid a lot of money to make sure she felt that way about her body, so that they could profit from her needless self-criticism?”

Laurie: “No, I told her that once you have kids, your partner is just glad if they ever get to see your business, whatever it looks like.”

Emily: “Let’s invent a ritual where women celebrate the transition into their postpartum bodies. I mean, it’s not just its appearance that changes, it’s what your body
means,
to yourself and to the world.”

Laurie was the only mom in the group, and she was the only one who didn’t look at me like I was on drugs. She said, “I totally want a ritual. Anything to make it easier to live in a body that feels like a deflated balloon.”

“But you’re so beautiful!” everyone said instantly.

The compliments to Laurie’s indisputable beauty flowed even faster than the wine, but a few days later, Laurie told me that was the opposite of what she needed.

“What I need is to hear that it’s okay to feel sad that my body will never be what it used to be. I put a lot of effort into learning to love that body, and now I’ve got to start all over again learning to love this one.”

So I said, “It’s okay to feel sad that your body has permanently changed.”

Laurie burst into tears—which is something she does a lot lately, sudden quiet little storms that pass through her anytime she finds herself on the receiving end of the affection and attention she lavishes on others.

“It shouldn’t even be about whether I like my body or not,” she sniffed. “That’s really what changed after I had Trev. Now it should really be about whether or not it does what I need it to do.”

By “what she needs it to do,” Laurie means giving birth—at home, squatting in the tub, like a boss—breast-feeding for more than a year, and never sleeping more than four hours in a row for almost three years. The statement “Trevor is a bad sleeper” doesn’t even begin to cover the dark circles under Laurie’s eyes. Laurie’s body is
amazing.

But she doesn’t feel that way.

The notion of “all the same parts, organized in different ways” is as true for the ways a woman’s body changes over the course of her life as it is for the ways people’s genitals vary. And just as everyone’s genitals are normal and beautiful, so all women’s bodies are normal and beautiful.

But mostly that’s not what women are taught. Mostly we’re taught that our bodies are supposed to be one specific shape, otherwise there’s something
wrong
with us. I’ll talk about that—and how to overcome it—in chapter 5.

change how you see
¹⁰

I realize that just saying, “Your genitals are perfect and beautiful,” won’t change anything if you feel uncomfortable with your genitals, but if seeing the beauty of your unique and healthy genitals is something you struggle with, there are two things I’d like you to do:

1. Get a hand mirror and look at your vulva, as I described earlier in the chapter. As you look, make note of all the things you
like
about what you see. Write them down. You’ll notice that your brain tries to list all the things you don’t like, but don’t include those. Do it again every week. Or twice a week. Or more. Each time, the things you like will become a little more salient and the noise will get a little quieter. Maybe even consider telling someone else about what you see and what you like. Better still, tell someone who also did the exercise!

It’s an activity that gets labeled cognitive dissonance because it forces us to be aware of good things, when mostly we tend to be aware of the “negative” things. Try it.

2. Ask your partner, if you have one, to have a close look. Turn on the light, take off your clothes, get on your back, and let them look. Ask them what they see, how they feel about it, what memories they have of your vulva. Let your partner know what you’ve felt worried about, and ask for help to see what they see. Listen with your heart, not with your fear.

a better metaphor

We started this chapter thinking about the ways we metaphorize anatomy, creating meaning from random acts of biology in ways that end up making us feel uncomfortable with our bodies. To help undo all that, I like to use a different metaphor: a garden. It’s a metaphor I use a lot—remember the apple tree from the introduction?—because it offers a judgment-free way of thinking about how the sexual hardware we’re born with (our bodies and brains) and the families and culture we’re born into, interact to give rise to the individual sexual self that emerges in adulthood.

It goes like this: On the day you’re born, you’re given a little plot of rich and fertile soil, slightly different from everyone else’s. And right away, your family and your culture start to plant things and tend the garden for you, until you’re old enough to take over its care yourself. They plant language and attitudes and knowledge about love and safety and bodies and sex. And they teach you how to tend your garden, because as you transition through adolescence into adulthood, you’ll take on full responsibility for its care.

And you didn’t choose any of that. You didn’t choose your plot of
land, the seeds that were planted, or the way your garden was tended in the early years of your life.

As you reach adolescence, you begin to take care of the garden on your own. And you may find that your family and culture have planted some beautiful, healthy things that are thriving in a well-tended garden. And you may notice some things you want to change. Maybe the strategies you were taught for cultivating the garden are inefficient, so you need to find different ways of taking care of it so that it will thrive (that’s in chapter 3). Maybe the seeds that were planted were not the kind of thing that will thrive in your particular garden, so you need to find something that’s a better fit for you (that’s in chapters 4 and 5).

Some of us get lucky with our land and what gets planted. We have healthy and thriving gardens from the earliest moments of our awareness. And some of us get stuck with some pretty toxic crap in our gardens, and we’re left with the task of uprooting all the junk and replacing it with something healthier, something we choose for ourselves.

Your physical body—including your genitals—is one part of the basic hardware of your sexuality, the plot of land. Your brain and your environment are the rest of the hardware, and they’re the subject of chapters 2 and 3.

What It
Is
, Not What It
Means

Olivia used her idea about her hormones, her “masculine” genitals, and her high sexual interest as a shield against the cultural criticisms that said she was . . . well, all kinds of things for which she “ought to be ashamed.” A slut. A nymphomaniac. Trying to “get attention,” “get a man,” or “control people” with her body—none of which were true, but all of which had been flung at her at various times in her life. The world had tried to convince her that her sexuality was toxic, dangerous to both herself and the people around her.

She had fought hard against these messages, in defense of her own sexual wellbeing. The shield of, “It’s my hormones, so it’s natural,” was an important part of that defense.

But as she absorbed the idea of “all the same parts, organized in different ways,” she didn’t need the shield anymore. She realized that the shield was actually blocking her off from other people, while “all the same parts” actively
connected
her with other people—it meant she wasn’t different or separate. She was the same—unique, but still connected in the continuum of human sexuality.

This is what science can do for us, if we let it. It offers us an opportunity to lower our defenses and experience the ways that we are all connected.

I know for a fact that Olivia was not born feeling uncomfortable with her genitals or her sexuality, and neither were you. When you were born, you were deeply, gloriously satisfied with each and every part of your body. But decades of sex-negative culture have let in weeds of dissatisfaction. Chapters 3 and 4 explain precisely how this can influence your sexual wellbeing, and chapter 5 describes how to undo that process and get back to living wholly inside your body, to return to that state you were born into, of deep, warm affection for and curiosity about your own body.

But before we get there, let’s spend a chapter talking about the biggest of all your sex organs and how it, too, is made of all the same parts as everyone else’s but organized in a unique way.

I refer, of course, to your brain.

tl;dr

• Everyone’s genitals are made of the same parts, organized in different ways. No two alike.

• Are you experiencing pain? If so, talk to a medical provider. If not, then your genitals are normal and healthy and beautiful and perfect just as they are.

• The genitals you see in soft-core porn images may have been digitally altered to appear more “tucked in”; don’t let that fool you into believing that all vulvas look that way.

• Find a mirror (or use the self-portrait camera on your phone) and actually look at your clitoris. Knowing where the clitoris is, is important, but knowing where
your
clitoris is, is
power.

two