A post about Dr. Laurie Mintz has been on my list for a few months now - ever since I saw her on Twitter. She has a new book out called Becoming Cliterate: Why Orgasm Equality Matters and How To Get It. Obviously, I'm gonna like this book. First, it actually says the words 'orgasm equality,' which is like my #1 favorite thing to say besides lady-gasm and lady-bation. Second, it talks about being Cliterate which clearly means this book is rightly focusing on the clit in relation to female orgasm, and it also gives an homage to artist Sophia Wallace's badass 2012 Cliteracy project, which we all know I also have mad respect for. I haven't actually read Dr. Mintz's book yet, but I've ordered it, and I will. I will also write about it when I'm done, but judging from her blog, I will be in love.
In fact, from blog content and book name alone, Dr. Laurie Mintz is getting directly added into an oh-so-coveted space in the Orgasm Equality Heroes List. She's doing the good work people..the good work.
So, just to give you a taste of the good work she is doing let me mention a few things.
Her latest blog post at the time I was writing this article was so damn on point. It said pretty much all the things I yearn to hear in an article about lady-gasms. That just plain doesn't happen very often. In even the most progressive articles I read, the details about how fundamental the clit is to female orgasm are too often wishy-washy and easily yield to the scientifically unfounded but culturally omnipresent idea that women can orgasm through inner vaginal stimulation as well as numerous other ways (like, 'the clit is sooo important, but any way a woman orgasms is super valid too!'..I mean whatever you do and like is valid, of course, but sex educators should be real about the fact that there has never been physical evidence in all of scientific literature of a physical orgasm achieved through stimulation inside the vagina), or there isn't usually a clear bold statement about how totally fucked up it is that female bodies are able to orgasm, but that they simply don't very often in partnered situations (particularly with male bodies).
Dr. Laurie Mintz's post does not do that. What it does is say the things we as a culture should be screaming at the top of our lungs.
- Females orgasm strikingly less than men in partnered sex situations (particularly cis hetero ones)
- Female bodies are absolutely able to orgasm as quickly, easily, and reliably as men during masturbation (which means when they have appropriate stimulation to do so)
- When males have intercourse, the stimulation is similar to how they masturbate, for females intercourse stimulation is not similar to how they masturbate, and clearly is a big reason for less female orgasms in so many sexual situations
- The best advice for how a female can orgasm with a partner is for them to get, during that experience, the same type of stimulation they get when they are masturbating on their own.
I mean those are the basics. If you just roll those around in your head for a minute and then really consider how the world describes, teaches, depicts, and experiences sex with females...it's just a little insane how much disconnect there is. It's a bit sad actually, but I believe that every time a person speaks/writes these things out loud (and honestly it doesn't happen that much), it makes someone or hopefully a lot of people have to face a reality that we as a culture are really blind to, and it makes a dent. Her blog and presumably her book are making a dent.
Later she wrote a post as a letter to young women about what maybe they might learn from the Aziz Ansari thing, and again, I was really excited and happy to see that she connected the general state of the sexual landscape for females with the more specific and complicated issues brought up by 'grey area' coercive sex....'cause I agree, at the heart of all this is that as a culture, we don't physically understand female orgasm and frankly don't care much about it. She, oh so rightly says,
Later she wrote a post as a letter to young women about what maybe they might learn from the Aziz Ansari thing, and again, I was really excited and happy to see that she connected the general state of the sexual landscape for females with the more specific and complicated issues brought up by 'grey area' coercive sex....'cause I agree, at the heart of all this is that as a culture, we don't physically understand female orgasm and frankly don't care much about it. She, oh so rightly says,
The bottom line is that both these grey-zone coercive situations and completely consensual sexual encounters during which you don’t orgasm are both related to the same root cultural problem. The problem is a culture that prioritizes and privileges male pleasure and an erect penis as the center of sex and disregards female pleasure and the clitoris as secondary or irrelevant.So, BRAVO to you Dr. Mintz! Keep fighting that good fight, and let's get some Orgasm Equality Revolution up in this bitch!
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