Woman on Fire (21 page)

Sometimes just stroking and massaging the outside of the vulva is a good way to bring blood flow into the genitals and build arousal. There are two vestibular bulbs underneath the outer labia, which are plump spongy tissue and part of your erectile structures. When stimulated, they will fill with blood, plumping up the labia and the whole vulva. You can explore different kinds of massage and touch and see what feels good for you. Play with pressure. Pressure against
the vulva stimulates the organs within and under it. And be sure to look in the mirror before, during, and after arousal so you can learn how your genitals change with arousal.

With somewhere between six and eight thousand nerve endings, the clitoris is clearly an important and central part of your pleasure. In fact, it's the only organ with a sole purpose of pleasure in the male or female body. Your clitoris has many parts: the head or glans, which is the part you see, connects to the shaft that runs vertically above it, and there are two crura, or legs, that flank both sides of your vulva. All of these structures are erectile tissue, which means that when you are aroused, they fill with blood and become erect, in the same way a penis becomes erect. You don't see your erection in quite the same way, as it is more subtle and internal.
What you will notice is that your vulva gets plumper and it will become richer in color (deeper reds, purples, and browns) as you get an erection. Your clitoral glans will pull back farther underneath its hood and won't be as visible when you are erect, unlike the penis, which becomes more pronounced.

There are many ways to explore your clitoris. You can apply pressure directly to the glans, above it on the shaft, or more indirectly via the inner labia, which are attached to the glans or hood at their upper tips. Some women need to be aroused a bit before the clitoris is directly touched or touched with much pressure because it's so sensitive. Some like light, feathery touch, some like more firm touch. Sometimes using fingertips will be satisfying, sometimes larger surface area of flats of fingers or palm works better. Play with speed and hand position. Many women use vibrators because of their consistent stimulation, and oral sex is a great way for many women to experience pleasure on their clitoris. We generally need consistent motion and technique to get to a heightened state of arousal. Some women feel pressure about how much time they take to become aroused or to climax. There is no need to feel bad about taking time—it's perfectly normal, and it takes as long as it takes. Letting go of the “I take too long” story will free you tremendously so you can have more pleasure and be more present sexually.

There has been much debate about whether the vagina has many nerve endings and how much of a sexual organ it is because the idea of the “vaginal orgasm” was touted as superior to “clitoral orgasms” by Freud. We know the clitoris is deftly important to women's pleasure because it is a tremendous pleasure center and there is a concentration of thousands of nerves there. Many feminists have framed it as superior to the vagina in order to express its importance in the power of pleasure and to shift women's pleasure away from being in service to male sexuality and pleasure. Yet there is no doubt
that the vagina is also important and is a pleasure epicenter for many women.

The opening to the vagina can be sensitive and looks different on every woman. It sometimes resembles a mouth or a flower with petals, or it can have a variety of shapes in the tissue. The vagina is muscular and is lined with sensitive mucous membranes that are soft to the touch. The vaginal walls provide some fluid for lubrication and will engorge during arousal. The opening tends to be tighter, and the inside of the vagina can change and open dramatically when a woman is aroused to accommodate penetration by fingers, a penis, a toy, or a hand.

Many women love the feeling of being penetrated, of a thrusting motion inside of them, or of being filled. There is an emotional vulnerability in being penetrated that a person knows intimately if they've had the experience. You are inviting someone else into your body, and that is more significant than most people acknowledge. And so many women have had it “taken” from them that they feel intensely vulnerable to a point where it's hard to surrender to the pleasure of penetration.

In exploring what works for you, consider how much you want inside of you (from just a finger to a large penis or hand), the depth that feels good, the angle, and the pressure. Some women really like pressure against their cervix internally and others do not like it. Some like pressure toward the upper wall (where the G-spot is) and some don't. Some like the friction of a lot of in-and-out movement and some like smaller motion that results in less friction. The intensely hard thrusting that is so common in porn is one way some people like intercourse, but it is not a standard for women's pleasure. There isn't a right or wrong way to have intercourse. The erectile tissue of the vestibular bulbs and the clitoral legs that flank the vagina are part of what make the in-and-out motion of penetration feel so good, because they plump up as they get erect, become more sensitive, and are stimulated by the movement.

If you've never penetrated yourself, try it. If other people are going to be invited there, why not have the experience yourself? The inside of a vagina feels amazing to the touch: it is a lush “rubyfruit jungle” that deserves appreciation and exploration. Fingers can be particularly good because they are adept and can crook to varying angles and can grow in size by just adding another. You might like different things on different days. There is not one way to enjoy it.

You've got a tremendous muscular system in your pelvis that makes everything work better and feel better. Most people have heard that they should exercise their PC muscle or do their “Kegels.” But what
are we really talking about? Underneath the exterior genitals are layers of muscle. How else would women be able to push babies out of their vaginas? The PC, or pubococcygeus muscle, attaches at the pubic bone near the clitoral apex and runs underneath the labia around the urethra and vagina, around the anus, and attaches at the coccyx (tailbone) in the back. It's like a sling that holds the whole pelvic bowl in place. There is a muscle that runs straight across the perineum at the base of the vagina separating it from the anus. And underneath all of that is the entire pelvic floor muscle, which forms the foundation.

Strengthening these muscles impacts your pleasure. The stronger they are, the more they do for you. You can do this by tightening them like you would to hold in urine and then releasing. Do at least twenty repetitions a day—anytime, anywhere—and it will have a positive effect on your experience of pleasure; it will also make birth easier if you have a child and help you to avoid urinary incontinence as you age. You can also practice isolating parts of the muscles (a more advanced trick).

Because these muscles line the vagina on both sides, playing with contracting them and releasing them when you are engaged in intercourse or other penetration can improve your pleasure, and your partner might also enjoy it during intercourse. When you insert a finger in your vagina, play with contracting your muscles and see how it feels around your finger. Many women's experience of orgasm and pleasure extends to the muscles in their legs and feet. When having an orgasm some women need to have their thighs tight and clenched or like to push against something because the pelvic and leg muscles are connected.

A few years ago I was talking with the participants in my women's sexual empowerment program about the G-spot—which was named after the guy who was the first physician to discover and describe it:
Mr. Gräfenberg. (I'm sure many women before him had discovered it themselves.) I told them I thought it should have a new name, because it's not about some guy's discovery—it's an integral part of a woman's body. They came up with a new name we all liked: “The Me-Spot.”

The Me-Spot is not actually a spot at all—it's a structure. There is an spongy, erectile tissue that surrounds the urethra. It protects the sensitive urethra from too much pressure and, as with all of your erectile tissue, it also engorges with blood when you are aroused, which can provide a lot of pleasure. The urethra is parallel to the front wall of the vagina, so you can feel it through the wall if you insert a finger and crook it toward the front of your body. Stimulating this part of the vagina can often lead to ejaculation or “squirting” because there are fluid-filled glands within the urethral sponge that, if stimulated enough, will result in a gush of fluid for many women. This is normal, and if you squirt, just use extra towels or get waterproof sheets so you can enjoy yourself without feeling embarrassed and making yourself hold back. We rarely hear of men holding back ejaculate for fear of embarrassment. Why should women?

Studies have been done in order to figure out just what this “female ejaculate” is made of. A recent pop science headline stated a myth that even the research didn't state: “Study Concludes That Women Who Squirt During Sex Are Actually Peeing.” Nope. The research actually says urine is “indicated,” along with prostatic fluid. Yep, female bodies make that too.

Sex educator and nurse-midwife Sheri Winston proposes that female ejaculation is antimicrobial and designed to keep potential infection-producing agents out of the urethra. Given that women often get UTIs (urinary tract infections) from sex, it makes a whole lot of sense that our bodies would have a function to prevent infections that can cause potentially dangerous kidney and full-body
infections. Where's the research on that? It's a really good research question. Our bodies have amazing ways of building immunity. Women have been reporting ejaculation, and indeed it has been documented for millennia in old Chinese texts, the
Kama Sutra
, and by Aristotle. It's not new and it's not a myth. Ask any woman who experiences it. Yet some folks avidly try to discredit ejaculate among women.

Regardless of the content of the fluid, which does contain prostatic fluid from the paraurethral or Skene's glands, it results from a sexual event. Calling it “bed-wetting” or attempting to shame women because it contains urine is totally dismissive of the arousal that creates it. Amy Luna Manderino of the Sex Evolution proposes we call it an “orgasmic flush.” This highlights the fact that sexual arousal produces the fluid. And since urine is primarily water, of course our bodies would use that to flush out what it doesn't want. It is likely that ejaculation has a function, as Winston purports.

If it feels good, let loose and enjoy your orgasm. I know that my orgasms that include ejaculation tend to be pretty powerful. I would not want you to miss that because of unnecessary embarrassment. And if you don't ejaculate, there is nothing wrong with you. Not everyone does, and you can still have incredible orgasmic capacity sans squirting.

People are often confused about where all the fluid comes from. Women emit it from three different places. Much of our lubrication comes from the vaginal walls—sometimes called “vaginal sweating” in textbooks. Not a very sexy way of describing it. The vulvovaginal (Bartholin's) glands produce some of this fluid. Second is the ejaculatory fluid I just discussed, which comes from the paraurethral glands in the urethra sponge and the urethra itself, often via stimulation of the Me-Spot. And third, we get some of our fluid from the
cervix—often called “cervical mucus” (so not sexy). That's the fluid you often see in your underwear.

The cervix releases fluid that differs at varying points in the menstrual cycle for women who are premenopausal. It goes from menstrual blood to a more slick, clear fluid that becomes sticky and gooey during ovulation to a more milky fluid toward the end of the cycle. As women age, there will be less copious fluids and this can be distressing for some women. Knowing what is normal for you by paying attention to your body is important in each phase of life so that you'll notice when or if something smells or looks different or is out of whack. You are the best gauge for that because women have different amounts of fluid—some are juicy all the time, some less so. Your fluids have natural smells that tend toward musky, and that scent is part of your sexuality—it's your sexual scent. It's part of what your lovers are attracted to and what draws you to people you find attractive.