Being Cliterate by Laurie Mintz - 2 Thumbs on the Clit from Me!

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"Becoming Cliterate: Why Orgasm Equality Matters- And How To Get It" 

Laurie Mintz, Harper One. 2017.

A little background on where this book fits into feminist, lady-gasm writing, and on why I love it 

So, you'll have to forgive me for just now getting to this book. To be blunt, it's fucking on point about ladygasms - probably the most on point book I've seen since the 1998 sleeper hit of sex advice books (with a title that feels way too click-baity), "5 Minutes to Orgasm Everytime You Make Love" by D. Claire Hutchins (who I've been looing for but have never found) - which basically just says, ya know, 'rub one out while you're getting fucked and you'll have an orgasm, people. It ain't that hard, and if dudes don't like it, fuck 'em.' I love the vibe of that book.

The 70's and the heyday of the clitoral glans and female orgasm

I'd also compare it to all the great feminist writing on female orgasm during the sweet-spot of ladygasm culture; post 1966 Masters and Johnson's "Human Sexual Response" research that gave us the detailed physiological info on female orgasm that debunked the the vaginal orgasm....but pre 1982 Whipple, Ladas, and Perry's "The G-spot and Other Recent Discoveries about Human Sexuality" that brought back (the completely unsubstantiated) idea of vaginal orgasm through the 'newly discovered G-spot' (the culture surely picked up on a BS idea of vag-gasms from this book, but completely ignored the useful info about female ejaculation's).  

Anyway, in between those years you have lots of great writing including, but certainly not limited to The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm by Anne Koedt, Organs and Orgasms by Alix Kates Shulman; and of course, Shere Hite's "The Hite Report on Female Sexuality" - which all say basically the same thing as 'Being Cliterate' and the 5-Minutes to Orgasm book (because it's, like, the truth - even though our culture as a while refuses to see that), but all with their own fab way (but seriously read the Hite Report). 

The 80s thru today(ish) and the rise of g-spot as vag-gasm maker

After the G-Spot craze hit in the early 80's, the anatomically and experimentally substantiated idea that the external clit area was what caused lady-gasms that was gaining popularity in the70's quickly took a backseat to the deeply held, but completely unsubstantiated (seriously), belief/desperate-hope that a woman could come from a good banging. The G-spot book allowed people to believe the 'newly discovered' G-spot was the reason vag-gasm could happen. Previous to the G-spot, and pre Masters and Johnson research, the misguided assumption was slightly different. They had been focused on the vaginal canal itself as the thing that could cause an orgasm,  So the G-spot replaced the refuted idea of the vaginal canal as the cause of 'vaginal orgasms,' and even though there wasn't actual evidence for 'vaginal orgasms,' the g-spot became the vaginal orgasm scapegoat for decades until actually quite recently. 

Current - the 'inner clit', 'clitoral bulbs', 'c-spot', what have you as the new exciting vag-maker

Only a few years ago, after the G-spot just couldn't hold onto it's myth anymore, the idea that the 'inner clitoris' or the clitoral bulbs or clitoral legs were 'discovered' and was the cause of 'vaginal orgasms' gained traction. It is no more valid a vag-gasm cause than the G-spot or the vaginal canals, but it none the less is the current, hot, progressive vag-gasm scapegoat. Like the G-spot and the vaginal canal before them, the inner clit is just another sad grasp at anything that might seem believable as something in the vag that might trigger an orgasm while a woman is getting a penis jammed in and out of her. It's sad because there is no physical evidence in all of scientific research, even with decades of trying, of an orgasm caused by stimulation inside the vagina: Ejaculation? sure. High arousal? of course. Orgasm? No. Yet as a culture we hold on so tight to the idea of intercourse causing orgasms for females as readily as they do for a male.

Sexperts are weak on the clitoral glans and shit hasn't changed

All that to say, outside of the heyday of the clit in the 70's. The discussion of female orgasm over the last 4 decades has been tainted by a strong making-of-room-for the idea women can orgasm from getting banged. This is true even of progressive, sex-positive, feminist sexual advisors and educators. Yes, of course, the best of them say that most women need clitoral stimulation, but they also take pains to point out all the ways women can come from intercourse too. 

Outside of the fact that there is literally no physical scientific evidence that women can orgasm from vag-stimulation - which sexperts truly don't seem to understand- reasserting the idea that some women come from just fucking is harmful in another way. It acts to reinforce incorrect cultural assumptions. Cracking the door for vaginal orgasms leaves room for the avalanche of media depicting women coming from intercourse to crash through and drown out whatever small clit focus there was. I'm not saying there is not some value in sayin most women come clitorally. It's better than saying most women orgasm vaginally, I guess, but it leaves women believing there is valid evidence that some women do come vaginally- and there simply isn't - and with the overwhelming clout vaginal orgasm has in our world, it basically keeps sexual culture stagnant and the orgasm gap wide. 

Like - it really does. Read the women talking about orgasm and masturbation in The Hite Report from the early 70's and then read Deborah Tolman's Dilemmas of Desire from 2005 where she interviews teenage girls about similar things. Guess what? Women and girls are just as confused, just as weirded out about masturbation, and orgasming just as little. Look at the questions women are asking sex advisors - it hasn't changed. 60 years later, we are still desperate to know how to come. It's not that hard, we just aren't setting up our culture to make it easy for us ladies, and a huge part of that is the unwillingness of even the most progressive, sex positive, feminist sexperts to take a stand and tell everyone that IT'S THE EXTERNAL CLIT - it's just as important as the penis - no ifs and or buts about it. 

The Book

Dr. Mintz - bringin' back the external clit focus and popping out top notch lady-gasm surveys

That's a long intro to say that Laurie Mintz, with her book "Becoming Cliterate: Why Orgasm Equality Matters- And How To Get It" takes this stand better than just about anyone I've seen in the last 40 years. It's got that just-work-the-clit-for-god's-sake vibe which I love and desperately want more of, because that's the only way the next generation of people will get used to the clit being as central to sex as the penis. 

Also, she does her own surveys in her University about how women are orgasming in partnered sex. She asks the questions in a more open way (and the way these questions about orgasm in surveys are asked matters so much - which she absolutely gets and I love), and she finds only 4% who claim to orgasm from penetration alone. There's a study about wording in her survey vs. others' that I will review later, but point is, she didn't get those sometimes large numbers people get and I venture to say hers are more realistic (I have a long-ass post about how people get these numbers and the problems with it). Point is, she gets to avoid all the "most" women need clitoral stimulation BS and just pretty much says that women need clitoral stimulations. That is a revelation, my people.

Dr. Mintz - not letting the vag-gasm loud minority derail the discussion (much)

We don't need hemming and hawing and back-stepping, just to avoid offending someone who feels they or their partner can orgasm from intercourse. The truth is if some person does orgasm from nothing more than stimulation in the vagina, they are rare, and we don't yet have any research that shows physical evidence of someone else orgasming that way. It doesn't mean they are wrong or that they are not enjoying sex right. It's just that we don't have evidence of them. Let them go enjoy their sex as they have been, acknowledge we may get physical evidence of their experience in the future, but their assertion of a clearly rare experience (and it is just an assertion) shouldn't derail accurate portrayals of how orgasms are known to happen for females - yet it does for almost every other female sexualit or lady-gasm book I've read. 

Mintz doesn't hem, haw, or backstep, though. She indeed keeps the focus on the vulva - and off the vagina when it comes to orgasm. I will admit, though, there are a couple tiny moments when I see Mintz give a slight nod to the possibility of coming vaginally (G-spot, inner bulb/legs) but it's slight, downplayed, and also more of a description of how others think of things and not her own advise/thoughts. It's in her Section "Are there Different Kinds of Orgasm?" where she explains how different camps of people view that question and then finishes with an insinuation that it doesn't really matter and might "contribute to women doubting their own most reliable route to reaching orgasm." I think she does skirt around this issue a bit and does tip her hat slightly in a vag direction there for a hot second. I mean, I would love to have seen her go hard with a physical description of orgasm (as there is really just one physically observed/recorded orgasm reaction out there for both males and female). I'd also have liked to see a reminder that stimulation of the vagina alone has not been physically observed to cause those physical qualities of orgasm - so if there is some other orgasm out there, we don't know of it.  

Anyway, that's truly my only real very slightest of slight criticisms. Largely this book is fab, and I'd recommend it to anyone. I think Laurie Mintz is hardcore doing badass Orgasm Equality work. I mean, she wrote this book, but she's also, I believe, teaching the contents of this book to college students in Florida every year. That's amazing, and also gives me a lot of hope. 

Dr. Mintz - rockin' orgasm equality

Dr. Mintz - you are the highest order of Orgasm Equality Hero (highest order because, unlike you, not everyone on that list is full-on, pure cliterate, but they all are moving in the right direction and that's still important, I'll take all the Orgasm Equality Allies we can get).

Come As You Are - A Book You Should Read

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This Book, Ya'll
Come As You Are: The Surprising New Science That Will Transform Your Sex Life  by Emily Nagoski

I've heard people talking about this book for a good while, and it's been on my list to read, but honestly, from the things people have said to me about it, I had a bit of a bad taste in my mouth. I was wrong though. Barring her, I would say problematic and scientifically incorrect, take on what orgasms are, all the worries I had were thoughtfully and much more subtly and complexly dealt with in the book. Actually reading it was way better than randos giving you their take on it - which is not actually that surprising, I guess.

In fact, it's an important book about sexual desire and how it works in an individual. It focuses on women, but much of the points are universal, and it's a truly useful read for men as well. But I think the issues of desire tends to feels more critical for the ladies. Many, many women (I would venture to say all women) feel like they struggle in serious ways with their desire at least at some points in their lives, and this book quite rightly points out many of the ways that these struggles are not related to personal 'brokenness' but to the very real context of our lives and our culture. This is so important because so many women feel they are broken when in fact we are all quite normal and sane. It is the stories we hear about how things should be and the expectations from our sexual culture that are broken. Nagoski does a fantastic job of step by step showing how one can become more conscious of their relationship to sex, desire, and arousal in order to heal in their own individual way where they need to heal. I recommended it almost immediately to one of my best friends and to many others since.

Points That Deserve To Be Shared From The Book
I'm going to quickly impart a couple of the main messages in this book. They are important and Nagoski wants us to share these messages with each other because, well frankly, we all deserve that knowledge and I appreciate Nagoski's activism on this front. Respect. Then, however, I will go ahead and talk about the improper way I thought the book treated orgasm...because I think that's important too.

1 Your sexuality, your desire, your arousal - it's all normal, even if it doesn't feel that way right now. Yeah, it sounds a little optimistic and naive - maybe even a little hippie-dippie, but she's right, and we women need desperately to really know that. We so often feel damaged or abnormal when it comes to these things, but truth is whatever your body or your desire is doing (or not doing) is really just a fairly sensible reaction to the situation at hand given your particular circumstance and experience. There's a great garden metaphor and a lot of talk about context and it's good, helpful stuff; stuff you need to hear, stuff you might otherwise have to work through with a good therapist. What I have here is a simplistic explanation. There's a lot to unpack on this topic, and it's worth reading the book and doing some of that unpacking because it can bring back a level of control and contenedtness with one's desire and sex life that may have previously felt impossible.

2 When it comes to arousal, we all have 'breaks' and also an 'accelerator.' Some things hit our breaks, others the accelerator, and we all have different levels of brake/accelerator sensitivities. You can encounter all the turn-ons in the world (which engage your 'accelerator'), but if something else is hitting your 'brakes,' arousal ain't gonna happen like you might expect - or at all. Noticing what is a brake for you, what is an accelerator, and how sensitive you are to each type of thing is key to understanding what's going on with your desire and why it actually makes way more sense given the context of your past experiences and your current situation than one might think. Maybe you get turned on really easily, but also turned off really easily...or maybe turned on really slowly and break really easily - you get the point. She speaks about this well.

*Okay, I'm gonna start my criticism a bit early. I love her discussion surrounding this. It's grounded in reality and helps visualize and unpack complicated feelings and scenarios of arousal. My gripe, though, is that it's missing what I see as the most glaring piece of context surrounding female desire. The book never specifically calls out how lack of consistent orgasm in previous and/or current sexual encounters over time could cause a person to code sexual scenarios drastically different than a person that has consistently orgasmed during sexual experiences in the past and present. Sadly, women more often than not fall into the first category and men the second - due to a shit culture for the clit and a fab one for the penis, but I digress.

Let me give an example for context: your partner rubs their pelvis against you as you get in bed ready for a good night's sleep, and it clearly means they want to fuck. For a person that has and continues to have consistent orgasms during their sexual encounters, that pelvis rubbing starts the 'accelerator,' bringing to mind a lot of arousing memories and expectations of an orgasmically satisfying adventure. However, for a person that hasn't been orgasming during fucks on the reg, well, that might easily trigger their 'breaks' because they don't like the frustration of not coming or maybe it doesn't really hit the break, but it does nothing for the 'accelerator.' It brings to mind memories of a fair amount of meh sex and expectations of not orgasming. Frankly, in this situation, something non-sexual like sitting down together with Netflix with a bowl of ice cream is sensibly more exciting. I think this is a desperately important part of how women's and men's desire and arousal can and often do diverge over time. Considering that penis owners (due to situational not biological differences mind you) tend to come almost every partnered sex act and clit-owners often don't is a fucking important thing to note when discussing the context surrounding how a person might experience desire.

3 Responsive and spontaneous desire - Some of the first things I heard about this book were people telling me that I should read it because it uses science to prove that some people have 'Responsive Desire' and some people have 'Spontaneous Desire' - like as in desire just pops up spontaneously for some people (i.e. mostly men) and for others (i.e. mostly women) desire is more likely to arise as a response to being physically aroused. That kind of annoyed me because it sounded to me like whoever wrote the book was just making up biological stories to ignore/paint over the much more complex and toxic problem of unequal damage our sexual culture spills upon women as opposed to men - damage that lowers sexual desire (see my above rant about how lack of orgasm during sexual encounters quite sensibly leads to a lesser interest in pursuing sexual encounters).

That annoyance still persists a bit after reading the book, but it is clear that Nagoski's points about responsive and spontaneous desire were much more complicated and thoughtful than the reader points I had been seeing. Firstly, I was happy to see that she was very clear in saying that no desire is actually 'spontaneous.' There is always a catalyst. It's just that for some people many, many more things are a catalyst, and she does admit that mostly men are in that category.  She was also very clear that this was not simply an innate biological difference - culture, experiences etc. have plenty to do with this. I appreciated that, but as you might expect, I think it's a real oversight to identify this thing that is obviously divided largely by gender without acknowledging that another known gender difference - the rate of orgasm during partnered sex - may have a strong relationship to this. I get it though. There is a time and a place for everything and maybe this book wasn't the time or place.

Although coming at it from a larger cultural perspective I find it problematic categorizing desire in this way, I think in a practical (maybe personally therapeutic) perspective, I can see this categorization as being quite helpful to an individual (i.e. tons of women and certainly many men as well) whose desire does not fit cultural expectations and are in need of some ideological scaffolding from which to build their understanding of themselves. So, from the aim and perspective of this book as, I think, largely self help, I understand why Nagoski categorized this way, and I see that it is useful in this context.

4 Non-concordance - This is simple and important. People can and often do experience non-concordance between their body and their mind when it comes to arousal/desire. So for instance, one's body may become aroused (get wet or hard) but there is no real desire felt. There also may be desire, but the body does not react with physical arousal. It's normal and very common, and trying to make sense of your desire only by how physically aroused your body becomes (and vice versa), is problematic. There are relationship, personal, moral even legal implications to truly understanding this.

My Criticism of How Orgasm is Discussed
So, do go read the book, but know that I disagree with how she discussed orgasm in the ways I map out below, and I ask to just keep it in mind as you absorb.

Lady-gasm and desire
First off, I'll just reiterate what I said above about lack of consistent partnered orgasm being an important element of desire loss in women. I think it was an unfortunate oversight in the book.  Everything else Nagoski said about what kinds of things might affect desire and how one might work to adjust those things is completely valid and important, but I think it's incomplete without really diving into lack of orgasm's affect on desire.

Lack of definition for orgasm - aka orgasm is whatever you say it is
The problem, though, and I imagine part of the reason she doesn't get into the orgasm/desire issue, is that Nagoski basically cuts off any nuanced discussion by saying an orgasm is anything and everything. One cannot give any practically helpful advise about what affect lack of orgasm may have or how to include more orgasms in partnered sex if one cannot even pinpoint what an orgasm is. I mean - might as well say getting a clown to do balloon shows in front of you while getting railed could work for some people, because why not? Anything is possible with orgasms, right? And, the clown example may seem extreme, but it's not too far off from what she actually does say about orgasm.

Here's a small sample of the highly pleasurable orgasms women have described to me: orgasm from clitoral stimulation, orgasm from vaginal stimulation, orgasm just from breast stimulation, orgasm from having her toes sucked, orgasm when her partner penetrated her well lubricated anus with a finger while pinning her to the bed with her hair (the most erotic sensation, she specified, was his warm palm resting gently on her butt cheeks), orgasm when her partner slowly and gently stroked fingertips on her outer labia again and again and again (she said what started out as an appetizer turned into the main course), orgasm without any genital stimulation while she was giving her partner oral sex (she was so closely attuned to his arousal that when he came, she did too).

Really? She came from having her toes sucked? She sucked dick to orgasm? Tell me she found it highly pleasurable. Tell me she felt a sudden climactic high from it. Tell me it's her favorite ending to sex. Who am I to judge? But, calling it an orgasm and categorizing it in with the rhythmic physical release of pelvic muscle tension that is universally understood as orgasm, is deeply problematic. It's also the contemporary way to talk about orgasm - in the sex education crowd - to take a 'if you like it and say it's an orgasm, I can't disagree stance,' so I understand why Nagoski refuses to put fences around the word, but that doesn't make it less problematic. Her only attempt at definition is 'sudden involuntary release of sexual tension' but then she takes great pains to make it clear that means anything you want it to mean.

When you strip it down to the universal essentials, here's what you get. Orgasm is the sudden involuntary release of sexual tension. Notice how much is missing from that definition; genitals, muscle contractions, sexual behavior, pleasure, or indeed anything that mentions what it feels like or how it happened. They can happen from clitoral stimulation, vaginal stimulation, thigh stimulation, anal stimulation, breast stimulation, earlobe stimulation, or mental stimulation with no physical contact at all.

She goes on to say a variety of places they happen and how they feel. I will wholeheartedly agree that it is not sensible to define orgasm using pleasure or what it feels like - who can ever say what something feels like to someone else. I'm even completely behind not defining orgasm by what sexual behavior is happening during it or what is being stimulated.

There is a good marker for orgasm, though
The involuntary muscle contractions, however, I think we must use as a marker for orgasm. Nagoski admits that "Those rhythmic involuntary contraction are perhaps the most nearly universal physiological marker of orgasm," but she goes on to say "even that can't be relied on all the time." To back that up she sites a study where 11 women masturbated to orgasm. I reviewed this article in 2016 if you'd like more information, but here's the basics. The female subjects masturbated and each had a probe in their anus to collect the involuntary muscle contractions of orgasm. They pushed a button to tell the researchers when exactly they orgasmsed so the researchers could see what was happening with their pelvic muscles at that time. 2 of the 11 women said they orgasmed but did not exhibit the involuntary muscle contractions.  Nagoski asserts that this means that orgasms cannot be defined by muscle contraction alone. Maybe. It also might mean that the tools for recording those orgasms were not sufficient. It could also mean that those women did not have an orgasm. The authors of this study struggled with the meaning and did not come to such a clear conclusion of their research as Nagoski. In the article's conclusion, they wrote:

"Two of the subjects did not demonstrate the distinct muscular evidence of orgasm that the other nine did. During none of their orgasms did the initial series of regular contractions occur. Were these subjects interpreting some less pronounced change as orgasm? Should orgasm be defined by what is perceived or reported, or by physiological criteria? At this early stage in recording pelvic muscular activity, we are not yet prepared to conclude that physiological characteristics are more valid than self-reported perceptions for identifying orgasm. At least until more data are collected, especially of the ontogeny of contraction patterns, we will continue our analysis of physiological changed based on subjects' self-defined orgasm."

In other words they made the executive decision for the purposes of this 1982 scientific article to call an orgasm whatever their subjects said was an orgasm because they were not yet prepared to say a woman might say she's having an orgasm when she is not.

Definitions matter
But, does it really seem so crazy in this confusing sexual culture that a woman might say, even believe, she is orgasming when physically she is not? We can't account for this not so absurd possibility if we are unwilling to define what an orgasm is. Yeah, it seems nice and women-empowering to believe all women about their orgasms, but to do that we must accept that anything any woman says is an orgasm is in fact an orgasm.

That might seem cool because, like, who am I to yuck someone's yum (that's super hip for sex positive sexperts to say btw)? It's not cool, though. It's not helpful. It's not kind. It's not sex positive. It's not feminist, and it's not even very nice in my opinion. BECAUSE DEFINITIONS MATTER - for education, for understanding, for clarity, for practicality, and for goddamn sure - for scientific inquiry. An orgasm is not an orgasm just because you say it is and an old coke can is not a rock just because it's on the ground with rocks. Sure, we can decide to call everything that's laying on the ground in that size range 'rocks,' but if you want to study rocks, how they're formed, how they get where they are, what they tell us about our earth - then adding old coke cans into the mix will really throw off the study results. Same with studying orgasms.

Involuntary rhythmic pelvic muscle contractions are no joke
Most things we call and understand as orgasms include the involuntary rhythmic muscular contractions that Masters and Johnson identified as markers of orgasm in the late 60's. Certainly this is true for male orgasms (which also include a usually simultaneous ejaculation as well), but also for females. Unfortunately there seems to be a deep urge to act as though there are lots of 'orgasm types' women (but not so much for men) have even though the evidence points to women's orgasms largely being the same as males - stimulated by the penis/clit area, preceded by physical arousal, and marked by the involuntary rhythmic pelvic muscle contractions. And guess what? Contrary to popular belief and even with decades of research trying to prove that things like 'vaginal orgasms exist; most of the things Nagoski listed up there have never in all of scientific literature been shown to cause those pelvic muscle contractions -  not cervical stimulation, not g-spot or urovaginal space pounding, not stimulation of the vaginal barrel, not penile stimulation of 'clitoral legs' through the vagina during intercourse, not thinking oneself into orgasm / non physical, not toe sucking, nor sucking dick. Women have had orgasms plenty of times in a lab, just as men have, but only clitoral/vulva stimulation and nipple stimulation (for 3 women in the original M&J study, but it should be noted all had weak contractions compared to their vulva/clit stimulated orgasms) caused the muscle contractions we know and love. You might have heard about studies that say otherwise, but that's because people act like a few famous studies prove things they actually do not...I summarized some of these studies for your reading enjoyment: one supposedly about cervical orgasms, one supposedly about clitoral leg orgasms, one supposedly about thicker urovaginal tissue causing 'vaginal orgasms. Oh and also, since Nagoski incorrectly asserts that the distance from the vagina to the clit is the reason some women 'vaginally orgasm' and some don't, here's 2 articles that supposedly prove that, but do not. HERE and HERE

Definition doesn't mean exclusion, though
So, yeah, I guess it comes down to words. If you want to call anything and everything orgasms, go for it, but please at least discern between orgasms that cause the involuntary rhythmic muscle contraction marker (let's call them marker orgasms) and ones that do not. One is not the same as the other. Let's go back to the 'coke can / rock', 'marker orgasm / other orgasm' analogy for scientific inquiry. If one is trying to understand how and why orgasms happen in order to understand better how to advise for achieving them, how to therapeutically help lack of orgasm, or even to understand what is common and what is not, then willy nilly including other orgasms in with marker orgasms quickly creates a confusing heap of messy, shit data. Similar to data about rock formation that is forced to include printed pressed aluminium cans in the analysis, data about marker orgasms that is forced to include other orgasm will throw off connections that should be made if the research was willing to call a spade a spade. I'm not saying that non-marker orgasms are not valuable or pleasurable, but they are different than marker orgasms. They should be studied differently, discussed differently, advised about differently, and women should know that one is not the other. We as a whole are not aware of that though, and frankly that is exactly why it currently seems like the data is unclear about female orgasm, but again, I digress.

Here's a truth. People don't always know what's actually happening in their body. Women don't get taught that much about their pleasure organ (clit) or their orgasms. We see more faked ones in the media than real ones. It's not crazy to think we might say and even think we marker orgasm when we have not, and the advise and information out there is so confusing that we may not know for years that there is a difference and that we haven't been having the type of physical orgasms that the men around us have probably been regularly having their whole sex life.

So, yeah, maybe whatever non-marker orgasm sensation a person has been having is pleasurable in some way, but again, it's not a marker orgasm, so it's physically different. Think about this. You have a pain in your chest. Are you having a heart attack or a panic attack? They might feel similar from what you understand about them, but the actual physical things happening and the results are drastically different. This is the same with an 'orgasm' that does not include the rhythmic muscle contractions that quickly rid the body of most of the built up sexual tension from arousal and an orgasm that does. When sex advisers, like Nagoski, so casually ignore the difference between a marker orgasm and other climactic experiences, they are robbing women of an incredibly important piece of sexual information.

Women deserve better information than we've been getting 
I truly believe that to act as though, for women, orgasm is just whatever you want to call orgasm is a disservice (men, lucky for them, don't seem to get this idea that lots of other things besides the rhythmic muscle contractions are orgasm forced upon them like women do, so take that as you will).

Women are not idiots. You can tell us that pleasure can come from anywhere, that a feeling of climax, even if it is not physical is a lovely thing to pursue if that's what you want. You can also tell us that when involuntary muscle contractions release the physical, sexual arousal that has built up, it's called an orgasm - or if you prefer marker orgasm. You don't need to place any value on it. It doesn't have to be the most pleasurable aspect of any sex act. It doesn't even have to be included in a sex act for it to be worthwhile. But we deserve to know what that physical experience is, that it is not something known in scientific literature to accompany vaginal canal, earlobe, thigh, or cervix stimulation, and that it is by far most likely to happen (and I mean almost exclusively - truly don't expect it to happen any other way) from clitoral glans/vulva stimulation - either direct or indirect. We can make our decisions about how to go about our pleasure from there, but without that information, it seems like porn is correct. It seems like an "orgasm" - the kinds men have way the hell more than we do in partner situations - can happen from just about anything (especially from intercourse), and that is categorically not true.

Thanks Dr. Nagoski - I loved the book despite my criticism
So, that's my hot take on Emily Nagoski's Come As You Are: The Surprising New Science That Will Transform Your Sex Life. I hope I sufficiently portrayed my deep respect and gratitude for the important things Nagoski is saying alongside my criticism of how she treated orgasm. My hope is never to hate on other people doing the hard work to improve the sexual lives of women. I have great respect for that and understand there are many avenues to get there. I do want to open the eyes of already thoughtful, smart people to a different perspective, to give resources and back up my statements so that maybe these smart, thoughtful people might adjust their work ever so slightly to incorporate the new perspective - because I think we get to orgasm equality and a better sexual culture faster if we all take the best from each other. It's a fine line, though. So, Dr. Nagoski, I hope I didn't offend.

I'll leave you with some of Nagoski's final words in the book because I think they sum up the spirit of sexual activism work, and I very much identify with it.

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 to get it right. Settings like the Kinsey Institute and one of only a handful of PhD programs with a formal concentration in human sexuality. I wrote this book to share what I learned, what has helped me and what I've seen help other women. I wrote it for my sister and my mother and for my sister's young adult step daughters, 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, non-concordant arousal, responsive desire, any of them - and use it to improve you relationship with your own sexuality, you'll be helping me with that goal.

The Technology of Orgasm: A Meticulously Researched, Awesome, Orgasm Equality Book (A Retro SSL Post)

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I am behind on my writing. Sorry. I will write some real posts this weekend. In the meantime, please enjoy this retro SSL post from 2017 about one of my very most favoritist awesomeist books . 

MAINES AND HER TECHNOLOGY OF ORGASM BOOK - AN INTRO
Rachel P. Maines is bonafide badass feminist researcher, and not only that, but a straight up Orgasm Equality Hero. I hadn't heard of her book until I went to the Kinsey Institute Library and got my eyes on a whole bunch of cool things, and The Technology of Orgasm:  "Hysteria," the Vibrator, and Women's Sexual Satisfaction was one of the best of those things. It was first published in 1999, so it's been out there a while, and if you've heard about the idea that doctors used to masturbate women as a treatment for a largely made-up disease called hysteria and that the vibrator was first created and used in this context, then you can largely thank Dr. Maines. She seemed to have put all that shit together and told the world about it.

The art it inspired
Actually, a play I have not seen but heard about on NPR called In the Next Room (or the Vibrator Play) was inspired by this book. Also the 2011 movie Hysteria with Maggie Gyllenhaal was kinda based on this book, but I have to be honest. I gave that movie the worst SSL Review (a review only of depictions and discussions of female orgasm, female masturbation, and the clit) I have ever given a movie. I didn't even know this book existed back when I reviewed Hysteria and I was more harsh in reviews back then, but I thought that movie was putting backwards ideas about female orgasm out there and that it missed such an opportunity to be so progressive. I still think that, but that is sooooo not true of the book it's based on. The movie Hysteria, now that I know about this book, really truly for real does not represent the information and tone of the book - which is sad because it could have been a revolutionary movie.

There was also a 2007 doc inspired by this book called Passion and Power: The Technology of Orgasm that I finally bought and watched a couple weeks ago (and will do an SSL Review on eventually). The author, Rachel P. Maines, is interviewed in it and so is Betty Dodson, and those women are clearly orgasm equality champs, but even this doc did not get to the heart of what Maines was saying with this book. It instead focused more on the interesting history of vibrators, modern vibrator laws, a vibrator home-sale company's business structure, and the 70's sexual and women's revolution, and focused very little (if at all) on Maine's revolutionary assertions about how Western culture -to this day- does its best to believe that penises rubbing in vaginas create female orgasms even with tons of evidence to the contrary.

VIBRATORS, HYSTERIA, LADY-GASMS, AND THE RICH HISTORY OF P-in-V OBSESSION: A REVOLUTIONARY BOOK
This book, my friends, is the most researched historical look at female orgasm that I have ever seen. It's quite epic, really. I am no historian, so something this book taught me that I had not really thought about before was that the things a society makes its machines do, how their machines are used and how they are advertised says a lot. And what our long history of technology-to-make-women-come says is that our society has always had a complicated relationship with female orgasm in that we desperately want to believe it arises from a dick moving in and out of a vagina, but also know deep down that it doesn't, so we create both things and lies that allow women to get orgasms from time to time without actually having to adjust our sense that women should orgasm during intercourse or to expect women's partners do the work to get women to orgasm.

A more cumbersome name for this book, in my opinion, might be: Let's pretend intercourse gives females orgasms and then deceive ourselves into believing crazy shit like stimulating a woman's clit until she has a 'paroxysm' is not sexual or that we don't need to pay attention to women's clits when we have sex with them even though we kind of know that we do. -by All of Western History

Desperately clinging to female orgasm through penetrative sex
This book starts from and stays aligned to a basic truth that my loyal readers will know is a major thesis of this blog and my movie:  Vaginal penetration is not good for female orgasm and great for male orgasm. I tend to take that one step further and say that as far as all of scientific literature is concerned, there has never been a recorded observations of physical orgasm from something stimulating the inside of the vagina. Seriously, Either way, though, it's pretty undeniable that outer vuvla/clit stimulation causes orgasm in women just like penile stimulation causes orgasm in men. That means basic P-in-V penetrative sex with no additional clitoral stimulation is a terrible way for women to orgasm. It's absolutely fabulous for men though. So, that means getting a woman off takes more than just having a man get himself off inside her vagina through intercourse.  Women need clitoral stimulation, and that simply doesn't (or rarely ever) just automatically happens at the same time she's getting banged.

But, man, wouldn't it be cool/easier/convenient if women did just orgasm during a ramming like men do?

Maines shows us in this book that somewhere along the line, long-ago-Western-society said 'Yeah, that would be cool! I will go ahead and believe that!' And so it was believed. It was believed ever so strongly, and yet...it was also kinda known that it wasn't true. I mean, it's. just. not. true., and so it's hard to look past actual real life facts, but by gods the world has tried! This wierd dichotomy of believing strongly that women should and could orgasm through vaginal penetration and also kinda knowing that they don't has created all kinds of strange interactions between the world and the female orgasm.

How western society has rationalized our incorrect beliefs about female orgasm 
Okay so, in rectifying what is true of women's  orgasms and what is believed to be true of those things, Maines argues (in great detail and with tons of primary references, I might add) that since ancient times physicians have employed 5 basic strategies.

1 (least common) Straight-up acknowledge that only a minority of women can reach orgasm during penetration with no additional clitoral stimulation. She says this usually comes with advice about providing appropriate stimulation during coitus, not through masturbation. This is close to what we see from progressive, sex-positives today. It's better than not acknowledging the reality of clit-stimulation-to-orgasm at all, but it a. still keeps intercourse front and center, b. still hangs onto the idea that there are some women, even if it's just a minority, that can orgasm from stimulation inside the vagina. However, there just doesn't seem to be physical evidence that this is true. Now, Maines doesn't come right out and say in the book that orgasm from vaginal stimulation alone is a completely unverified thing and that there's no good evidence to believe any women can orgasm that way, but she does do something that I almost never ever see - she argued that the number of women in surveys who say they can orgasm this way (it tends to be around 30%) are quite likely inflated - which is real talk and soooo needs to be said.

So, although this is really how the most progressive in our society society deal with this, it still leaves so much room for the belief in vaginally induced orgasms and the uber-importance of intercourse that it doesn't really do enough to combat the status quo feeling that intercourse should be as orgasmic to women as it is for men.

2 Confusing desire, arousal, or enjoyment/pleasure with orgasmic resolution. Ummmm...

Having reaffirmed the norm as coitus, twentieth-century physicians tended to blur the distinction between orgasm and satisfaction much as their nineteenth-century predecessors had done. A propensity to equate enjoyment of coitus with orgasmic satisfaction remains embedded in both medical and popular discussion despite nearly a century of study of female sexuality." p 63

True. True .True. This happens today all. the. time. And this brings me to where Maines goes next with this argument. She insinuates that it's not just male physicians. Women seem to use this conflating of pleasure and orgasm to hold the line on this as well. I have to tell you, I just about flipped my lid when I read this. It's just simply not a thing people are willing to talk about (for real, it's the thing I say that I find people get the most pissed off about) - that women might be reporting orgasms from penetration minus any extra clitoral stimulation even though they are not actually experiencing orgasm that way.

Jeanne Warner, who wrote about this in 1984, used Joseph Bohlen's 1981 definition: "Only the unique waveforms of anal and vaginal pressure associated with the reflexive contractions of the pelvic muscles provide distinct physiological evidence of orgasm." In the absence of these signs, the emotional and physical enjoyment that women experience in coitus is frequently elevated to the stature of orgasm, both in the women's reports and in the medical interpretation. Women are under pressure to appear normal and feminine in their sexual response - defined, of course, in the androcentric model - and physicians have traditionally sought evidence that validated this model. Warner thinks it is likely that female orgasm in coitus is substantially over reported owing to women's tendency to say what their husbands and doctors want to hear... p 63

3 They gave the female orgasm a different name and identity. "Hysterical Paroxysm" was a term used for something that women had...and it was obviously an orgasm, but they either failed to see it as that or intentionally didn't call it that. So, by calling the female orgasm something different no one had to acknowledge that orgasm was what was happening from certain clit-stimulating situations - particularly medically induced ones.

4 Many physicians just believed women didn't have sexual feelings and desires.

It is in the nineteenth century that we see the fullest flowering of the third and fourth approaches to reconciling perceptions of women's sexuality with their observed behaviour: believing that women enjoyed intercourse sufficiently with or without the resolution now medically defined as orgasm, or that normal women experienced no sexual feelings at all. pg 59

hmmmm. Women enjoy intercourse with or without orgasming...where do I hear that? Oh yeah - all over modern sex advice that assures us women can be fully satisfied by sex even if there is no orgasm. You know, because we're more interested in the emotional/closeness aspects of sex or something like that.

Also, you see how nicely 3 and 4 play together? You can send women with 'Hysteria' to a physician to get a medical procedure (a doctor masturbating her with his hand or a vibrator) until she experiences a paroxysm (orgasm), and since women don't have sexual feelings at all or at least not without P-in-V sex, then that medical visit is fine, and pure, and cool for upstanding ladies to partake in.

5 "Finally, some medical authors omit all mention of female orgasm, even in discussing female sexuality." p51

I mean, just ignore it completely is a good plan too.

Hysteria (or how misunderstanding female orgasm makes normal female reactions seem pathological )
Maines lays out a fab argument that hysteria and its "sister" disorders in western medicine have been used as catchall for reconciling the reality of female sexuality and sexual response with the baseless beliefs about how women's orgasms and sexuality should be.

Imagine (and it's not hard to really since it's actually not too far off from the female situation today) the wierd position a woman was in.

She should be pure sexually but also supposed to enjoy or at least be fine with sexual contact from her husband only.

• ...but the sexual contact she and her husband mostly have is intercourse, and being that it doesn't do much for the clit, he comes and she does not. 
• ....so, it's actually not that exciting of a thing for her and there's not quite the same motivation for her to do that again as there is for him and she starts to be less interested in him and their sex life
• ...but that very natural response to shitty, orgasmless sex is deemed as pathological because no one is willing to acknowledge that she isn't having orgasms that she could very well be having if they just did sexual contact differently. 
• ...but, at the same time, if she does either try to stimulate herself in a very sensible and orgasm-creating way, it's considered a bit deviant given it doesn't include a dick in her vagina, so this also makes her a deviant.
• ...and if she does anything that might be considered a sensible reaction to living in an orgasmless marriage, like crying or being bored or sad or being too interested in seeking sex or companionship elsewhere - that'll get her a hysteria or hysteria-like diagnosis as well. 

Basically, when women's sexuality is viewed through the idea that hetero-penetrative sex is the ultimate in sexual satisfaction for all, things start getting wierd and women's quite normal reactions to things don't make sense. It's some shady business that results in reframing normal female sexual functioning as diseased. Can't orgasm during intercourse? Diseased. Masturbate? Diseased. Feel frustrated and bored with your sex (because you actually can't orgasm during intercourse)? Diseased. Want sex a lot? Don't want it enough for your husband? Diseased! Diseased!

This desperate attempt to believe that women should orgasm during intercourse despite all kinds of contrary evidence created a lot of confused damned if you do, damned if you don't statements and ideas about female sexuality. Talking of famous 18th century doctor Richard von Kraft-Ebing and his statements about sexual "anesthesia" (i.e. not able to enjoy/orgasm), Maines writes,

Nineteenth-century physicians noted that their hysterical and neurasthenic women patients experienced traditional androcentric intercourse (me: normal ol' in-out sex) mainly as a disappointment. Richard von Kraft-Ebing , who thought that "women...if physically and mentally normal, and properly educated, has but little sensual desire," nevertheless considered the failure of his female patients to enjoy sex a pathological condition. p 39

So, women aren't supposed to have sexual desire, but if they don't they're diseased? Hysteria and its sister diseases, of course, were sometiems treated by masturbating a woman to orgasm (or as they liked to call it - paroxysm). It was lovely way to get women an orgasm, something quite important to most humans, without admitting that penetration is not great for orgasm or that women need clitoral stimulation to orgasm and without inconveniencing women's partners in the slightest.

Technology for the job no one wants
A large portion of the book involves setting the scene for discussing the technologies-to-get-women-off. It needs a lot of background and context because frankly we modern people are not much more enlightened about the female orgasm than the Romans and the 19th century physicians Maines writes about. We still hold a strong belief that women can and should orgasm from intercourse alone despite piles of evidence to the contrary. If you are skeptical of that just quickly check out how we depict sex in porn, movies, TV and romance novels. What Maines calls the Androcentric Model of sex (penile- vaginal intercourse to male orgasm as the ultimate in pleasure for both parties), is still deeply embedded in our modern beliefs about sex. We are a touch more progressive in some ways, but not enough so that Maines can assume all the stuff about how intercourse just plain doesn't work for lady-gasms is obvious and skip through it with a line or two. Like...she must argue that point and get us to understand/believe that before she can even begin her main technology related argument.

I'll let Maines introduce the technology-focused part of the book.

The overloaded and leaky vessel of androcentric sexuality, as we have seen, has required systematic bailing out of contradictory data. Some of this has been accomplished, I have suggested, by medicalizing the production of female orgasm, thus relieving husbands and lovers of the chore of stimulating the clitoris, a task rarely compatible with such reliable masculine favorites as coitus in the female-supine position. Physicians did not relish the job either, however lucrative it might be as an office visit cash cow, and from ancient times to the end of the nineteenth-century they sought some means of literally getting the female orgasm off their hands. Their efforts to mechanize and expedite the task while retaining the profitable character of orgasmic treatment are the subject of the next chapter. p. 66

The description of how lady-gasm was mechanized from ancient times to now is pretty fascinating, and Maines makes in-depth arguments for the high importance society has put on the mechanization of this task.

The first home appliance to be electrified was the sewing machine in 1889, followed in the next ten years by the fan, the teakettle, the toaster, and the vibrator. The last preceded the electric vacuum by some nine years, the electric iron by ten, and the electric frying pan by more than a decade, possibly reflecting consumer priorities. p.100

The history she gives us about all the contraptions people created to get women off, how the vibrator got into the home, and how it was eventually advertised is fascinating (I won't go into it, but you should get the book and read about it).

As for the vibrator and modern life; concrete, physical, mid 20th century scientific knowledge that women do in fact come from clit stimulation and not vaginal stimulation (Masters & Johnson)  as well as the birth of film that showed women getting off  from vibrators on their clits has taken the safety cloak off women getting 'non-sexual' 'medical procedures' to orgasm as well as advertisements of vibrators in respectable women's magazines. We know it's sexual now and most people at least recognize that clitoral stimulation is a way to get women off, even if there is still widespread belief that vaginal penetration is also a way to do that.  It is progress, but frankly not enough. We still largely cling to the idea that women should orgasm during intercourse just like men, and that directly stimulating the clit (which is what actually makes women orgasm) is 'extra' or 'foreplay.' As Maine writes in the end of her introduction,

The women's movement had completed what had begun with the introduction of the electromechanical vibrator into the home: it put into the hands of women themselves the job that nobody wanted.

Progress, yes, but we're still largely working from the assumption that p-in-v intercourse is as orgasmic for women as it is for men, and if women want to get off in a way other than penetration we, not our sexual partners, are generally the ones expected to do it.

THE REAL PUNCH OF THIS BOOK IS THAT IT SHOWS US THE PROBLEM IS STILL HERE
I've read reviews of this book and seen art created from it, and what struck me is that often the really subversive punch of this book seems to have gotten lost. Yes, all the info about how women were masturbated through history is funny and interesting. Yes, the fact that women's normal sexual functioning was deemed pathological is infuriating, but underneath all that is the truth no one wants to speak too loudly. We as a society still. don't. get. it. Women don't orgasm through intercourse, but we arrange our society as if they do and then expect women to fit themselves into that fiction however they can. Maines is incredibly clear about this.

What is really remarkable about Western history in this context is that the medical norm of penetration to male orgasm as the ultimate sexual thrill for both men and women has survived an indefinite number of individual and collective observations suggesting that for most women this pattern is simply not the case...Since women cannot alter their sexual physiology in order to achieve compliance (consistent orgasm during coitus), they have employed a variety of strategies to reconcile reality with the normative mode. p 49-50 

A-fucking-MEN sister. Although this book is already almost 20 years old, and I can confidently say, it's still relevant because SHIT STILL HASN'T CHANGED. If it had, then speaking out against belief in female orgasm through vaginal stimulation like we do in my movie and this blog would not get the kind of combative, offended reactions they often gets.  Maines wouldn't have gotten those kinds of reactions from her research and this book either, but she most certainly did. She discusses it in detail in the preface of her book. This topic has created quite a fuss. She describes a variety of presentations and interactions surrounding this research that were surprisingly shitty.

At this point I discovered what I should have realized all along: that some people, most of them male, take my findings personally and resent them as implied criticism. p xiii

I am right there with her, although I'd say I get quite a lot of women in that boat as well. The truth is, though, that the harsh reactions to the idea that women might not get off from penetrative sex just proves her point even further. The need to believe dicks make women come despite tons of evidence to the contrary was and is still STRONG.

She ends her book with a chapter called "Ending the Androcentric Model" She makes no bones about the fact that our society has been living a long and strange lie about how women orgasm, and that it's long past due to come clean.

Many questions can and should be raised about the persistence of Western belief that women ought to reach orgasm during heterosexual coitus. Certainly its importance to impregnation must have contributed to our doggedly maintaining it in the face of abundant individual and societal evidence that penetration unaccompanied  by direct stimulation of the clitoris is an inefficient and, more often than not, ineffective way to produce orgasm in women. It is hardly worth belaboring the point that most men enjoy coitus and that men have been the dominant sex through most of Western history. Yet the fact remains of our normative preference for coitus, in which the constant from Hippocrates to Freud - despite breathtaking changes in nearly every other area of medical thought - is that women who do not reach orgasm by means of penetration alone are sick or defective. The penetration myth is not a conspiracy perpetuated by men; women too want to believe in the ideal of universal orgasmic mutuality in coitus. Even the sexual radical Wilhelm Reich could not see beyond this time-honored norm. The feminist questioning of androcentric sexuality over the past three decades is recent and, one might say, long overdue. p115

Her last lines in the book

The rifts of this ancient wall continue to be patched with exhortations to women to avoid challenging the norm even if it means faking orgasms and sacrificing honesty in their intimate relationships with men. In the past we have been willing to pay this price; whether we should continue to do so is a question for individuals, not historians. p123

She basically said, 'I laid this shit out for you. I told you that our society has been and is still obsessed so deeply with the belief in mutually orgasmic intercourse that it has twisted and contorted female sexuality and stunted female orgasm in a wide range of ways. There has barely started to be real discussion in this arena thanks to a few decades of feminist criticism, but not nearly enough. It's now up to the people. Are you going to acknowledge the ridiculousness of our culture's most precious sexual belief and affect change, or are you going to continue ignoring it and awkwardly plastering over the cracks in its facade?'

CONCLUSION
I am telling you, this is as bold and revolutionary a book on female orgasm as as I've seen. I have read a shit-ton of books and articles about female sexuality and female orgasm from the time I started researching my movie in 2003. Nothing else, besides The Hite Report, has floored me with its absolutely unabashed realism and clarity on this topic. It's kinda insane to me how tame people are when they write about this book or make movies/docs related to it. They rarely speak about the orgasm-during-intercourse-being-BS part and speak on other more palatable things. It doesn't surprise me at all, though. If it's anything like the reaction I get to my work, it's one of 3 things. 1. some level of pissed 2. Some level of mind blown or 3. completely ignore all the uncomfortable parts about problems in our current society and focus only on how thing 'used to be' or on the interesting, fun, or sexy parts. I think #3 is what's happened a lot with this book. (OMG! So crazy about hysteria and vibrators, right?)

In the end this book, her bold stance, and all the detailed research she did is important. Period. I know there are plenty of people out there who have read this book and deeply moved by it. I was. I just wish I'd found it like 15 years earlier - some parts of it surely would have made their way into my movie.

I believe there is a revolution boiling that could really get a strong-hold on flipping the male-focused model of sex, but these things take time. It's been brewing decades and will probably be brewing for many more, but even if it seems like things aren't changing, I truly believe books like this add a few more hands and a lot more power to the fight. It moves the Orgasm Equality Revolution forward.

Cheers to you Rachel P. Maines. You deserve an awesome award, but all I have to give you is a place of honor in my Orgasm Equality Allies list.  Do enjoy all the power and prestige that goes along with this distinct honor.

Random Hite Report #28

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Hello, welcome again to one of my favorite segments on the SSL blog, Random Hite Report! It's simple really. I flip through the pages of the The Hite Report: A Nationwide Study of Female Sexuality  (or sometimes The Hite Report on Male Sexuality) by a one Ms. Shere Hite and copy the contents of the page where I land - no more no less. Anyone who reads my blog will know that this 1976 book is a fave of mine; not only because of its realistic and progressive insight about the female orgasm that is still shockingly relevant 40 years later,  but also because of its very touching insight into the lives of the women who took part in this huge, comprehensive survey. This is an under-appreciated and under-read book if you ask me - I suggest you buy it online (seriously, you can get them for like 1 cent) and read it.

 So, sit back, getcha a beverage, and enjoy a little...Random Hite Report.

The Hite Report: A Nationwide Study of Female Sexuality Dell. 1976.
Pg. 136 From the chapter "Is Orgasm Important."

...partner reach an orgasm - and find it just as stimulating."
    "Sometimes it's more fulfilling without orgasm because it's possible to experience my partner's orgasm more completely."
    "I think sometimes it's okay not having orgasm during intercourse, but perhaps I am too concerned with making the sexual experience whatever he wants."
    "Giving is more important than taking, therefore if there is a choice between my partner's and my orgasm, I take theirs." 

Some women came to the conclusion that orgasm during sex was not important.    "Orgasms are exceedingly pleasurable and as I haven't given up masturbation, I guess you could say they're 'important' to me. But that's exactly the point of something else - I totally associate orgasm with masturbation. I don't have to come, and often when he comes, it's the peak of sex for me."
    "To me orgasms have nothing to do with regular male/female sex. Orgasm is not necessary because I can give them to myself in masturbation."
    "Since I don't have orgasms during intercourse, therefore I enjoy it without."
    "Personally, I don't mind very much if I don't have one with a man. I don't expect to."
    "Orgasm is something I am able to give myself any time - so it's no big deal to not have one. Cuddling and touching is more important to get from my partner."
    "I think orgasms are overrated. When I masturbate, it is to achieve orgasm, but with my lover, I really don't care if i do or not. I just want to feel warm and close."
    "Orgasm is not always necessary during intercourse. It's still okay because of the warmth and comfort and just to let someone know you accept their physicality."
    "Orgasms are only important in context. If all I wanted was orgasm, I'd masturbate. If someone wants to give me an orgasm, and it is an act of love and affection and consideration, then that is important."

Retro Author Interview: Miriam Reumann and American Sexual Character

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A Retro SSL Post for this most American of Weekends!
Since it's almost the 4th of July, which is very American, and since this blog is about female orgasm, I thought to myself, 'what is the best combination of these two things?' And almost immediately I thought of the Amazing book American Sexual Character: Sex, Gender and National Identity in the Kinsey Reports by Miriam Reumann. I cannot recommend this book enough. I used a lot of info from that book in the movie from which this blog sprang, Science Sex and the Ladies. 

Science, Sex and The Ladies from AnC Movies on Vimeo.

That part in the trailer where a dude from the 50's is doing his wife - that's inspired by info in this book, and where there's a family from the 40's at a table and where there's 2 types of 50's women standing around a man on a couch, and where there's a dude and his wife grilling hotdogs - all inspired by info in this book. I love this book. Read it. 

Also, in October of 2011, I was lucky enough to interview the author of this book, and I'm re-posting that here for you now. Enjoy.

The 2011 Interview with author Miriam Reumann I will not mince words here. I like Miriam Reumann's book. I've read a fair share of long dry books as I was researching for this movie. Yes, many were quite useful, but honestly Reumann's book was one of the most useful and most informative, and it was not a bit dry. It was fun, and quirky, and tells a unique story about an iconic time in American history. In fact this is such a well-researched and interesting book that as I was looking through it to find questions I wanted to ask her, I found it a little hard to come up with any. I kept reading a few lines and thinking, "wow – that’s so interesting," but there just wasn’t a question because the book was so thorough. It’s just a really great read. 

This book, American Sexual Character: Sex, Gender, and National Identity in the Kinsey Reports  is actually the main inspiration for a section of the movie. Part of the story Reumann tells involves America's "discovery" of the female orgasm in the period after WWII, and she does a fantastic job of discussing the expectations, worries, and talking points  surrounding this new idea that women (married women of course) could and in fact should orgasm. The middle section of our movie Science Sex and the Ladies, considers the impact of this cultural shift on our current understanding of female sexuality (here's a clue - surprisingly little has changed). The historical point of view I was able to take from this book  really helped me illustrate the stark differences between the status quo perception of female sexuality and the perspective of female sexuality that Science Sex and the Ladies promotes.

Still from Science, Sex and the Ladies 

However, as I said before, this book is chock full of great info, and it tells many other stories too - about marriage, masculinity, and homosexuality among other things. The larger idea in the book goes something as follows: The cultural climate after WWII facilitated a unprecedented public discussion of sex, and in fact, sex became a matter of American "character." How Americans dealt with sex was often discussed as related to the very core of what America was like as a country. Although there were disagreements among experts at the time (were Americans too repressed or too promiscuous?), there was widespread agreement that these questions were utterly important to the American way of life. Screw the 60's. This was the real American Sexual Revolution. 

I thought it was important to interview Reumann in this SSL interview series, because, outside of the fact that aspects of her book have added unique insight into the movie we've made, I also appreciate that her work is an intensely researched and incredibly innovative look at America’s relationship to sexuality. Deeply held assumptions about gender, that she clearly reveals to be important influences on the cultural discussion of sex, are as pervasive today as they were in the post WWII period. Her discussion is progressive, thoughtful, and relevant to a more realistic understanding of female sexuality.

I contacted Miriam Reumann earlier this year and was happy to find that she was funny, engaging, and happily open to an interview. We eventually worked out a time, and I conducted an interview over email. I wrote a question. She answered. Then I wrote another question. The email thing was her idea, and I loved it. I am 10 times more relaxed writing than talking, so I had a great time, and I think she did too.

How did you get interested and started in the type of research you did for American Sexual Character? 

In grad school, when I started thinking about dissertation topics my parameters were pretty broad: I knew that I wanted to do something in the early or mid 20th century, and that I was interested in gender and sexuality. One of my professor/mentors, Anne Fausto-Sterling, said in passing one day that there was very little work on Kinsey, so my interest was piqued. I knew the general narrative about the Reports (huge, shattered common perceptions, important and controversial, etc., etc.) but realized that I’d never actually read any of either Sexual Behavior in the Human Male or Female, so I checked out incredibly thick and heavy copies from Brown’s library. Now, I wish I could say that looking at them filled me with exciting and original ideas, but the reverse was true – I found them so incredibly dull that I instead wondered how on earth anyone had ever seen these studies as remotely sexy, or threatening, or even readable! 


That, as it happens, wasn’t a bad question, and so as the dissertation research – and later the book – evolved, my central concern remained how they were USED, as opposed to what they actually found, or meant. That turned out to be useful in keeping me focused, since it meant I didn’t have to get mired down in the kinds of debates about accuracy or representativeness that Kinsey’s biographers cared about, and it also meant that I got to look not only at sources like serious journalism but also wacky popular culture – for years, I looked at every Kinsey artifact that cropped up on ebay, and lots of them, like cartoons or film posters, made it into my research. That said, I also got pulled in lots of unexpected directions, like when I discovered foreign policy analyses from the 1950s that focused obsessively on American sexuality as a key to our success or failure in the Cold War, and the central concept and title just flowed from there.  

I'm impressed you read through both the Kinsey reports. I have looked a tiny bit through them, but really couldn't bring myself to do any more than skim slightly and to read books like yours - that were about them. From reading American Sexual Character, it really does seems as though you went though an insanely immense amount of resources. How long were you researching and what were some of the most surprising or interesting things you came across?

 

I'm sure there are still large sections of both reports that I've never actually "read" - very few people then actually read them either, just pulled out whatever numbers and statements seemed most relevant or helpful to their beliefs.

   On the "immense amount of research" issue, I plead guilty - and you should be glad that the book version is much more streamlined than the dissertation, which had to be bound in 2 volumes because it was so embarrassingly long! I probably could have written the same basic dissertation in a year or 2 less if I'd trusted more in my own observations and felt less commitment to look at as much as possible. Some of that simply reflected that this was my first big intellectual project; it is probably also relevant that I did my grad work in an interdisciplinary program (American Studies) and was very conscious of having to make sense of how these different conversations (between sociologists, physicians, clergy, politicians, etc., etc.) linked up. At the time I thought that meant citing endless sources; nowadays, I trust I have a much better sense of when enough is enough. Lastly, of course, there simply was a huge amount of stuff on Kinsey, and a lot of what I used was things that I stumbled across rather than being able to find through, say, the Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature, since they didn't index pulp magazines and the like (again, hooray for ebay, one of a pop culture historian's best friends).

   I spent about 8 years on the dissertation, and, as noted above, it was probably longer than really needed (although I was about average for my department in terms of time to completion). There were certainly times when I researched less and wrote more, put the whole thing aside to work at side jobs for more money, or - more than once - got overwhelmed and just disengaged. As for sources, some of the most helpful material came late in the process, when I finally got to the Kinsey Institute in Bloomington, which didn't happen until I was revising the dissertation into a (different and much better) book. By that point, I could use it more to support my sense of where I was going rather than as brand new ideas. Most surprising was probably the cartoons I featured in the book, which did a fabulous job of crystallizing many of the kinds of fears and reactions that I was finding in much more "serious" sources. Also, I ran across a number of material culture items that I couldn't feature in the book because they were so ephemeral, my only access would have been to buy them (and, really, who needs a Kinsey toilet paper holder, or bobble-head? Okay, maybe I regret not purchasing the bobble-head.

You really should have purchased the bobble head :) 

Marie Robinson pops up in the book several times. She seems like an interesting character, and I’m sure you’ve read a lot from her. What is your personal take on what kind of person she was and what kind of figure she was to that era?

  I’ll ask the same question of Paul Popenoe, and if you don’t mind, could you comment about what you know of Abraham Franzblau (“...It is as though the broad plateau of ecstasy can be reached only after climbing over the top of a high hill. In a happy marriage, the female lives up near the top and can reach the peak with ease…")? We actually had actors play all 3 of these people to convey some of their quotes from your book on frigidity and marriage. The one who played Franzblau was curious about him, and I didn’t have much to go on, so I thought you might be able to help out. 

 I didn’t do a ton of biographical research on commentators, even though some of them popped up a lot! Those three are each fascinating, and each also, I think, speaks for a particular niche.

  Marie Robinson, as a female MD, probably had a pretty hard time positioning herself as an expert in postwar debates on sex, and to me that helps explain the way in which she authorized her writing as a maternal act, based on concern for young women who could easily make a sexual mistake that would doom their lives. That was, of course, still largely true for the middle-class young white women who were her subject and the target audience for her books (well, their mothers would have been the main purchasers). Despite writing books that sold well and reached a wide audience, she never quite appeared in the top category of sex experts of the era, who were overwhelmingly male and usually had university scientific credentials. But her work quite possibly reached more people, through being excerpted in places like the Readers’ Digest. So, I see her as an interesting example of the “type” of the concerned yet educated/professional mom, who was called on to speak for many women.

  As for Popenoe, he – and the legacy he left that continues through his son – was and is much more widely known, and has been discussed by a lot of historians (Wendy Kline’s book, Building a Better Race, is good on his popularization of eugenics, along with the work of other historians of medicine). He, to me, usually was called on (in regard to Kinsey’s work and mid-century sexuality in general) to fill the role of the good cop/bad cop, predicting to the public that Behavior A will result in happy marriages, healthy children, and good mental health, while Behaviors B through Z will not.

  Franzblau has been much less well documented. Like you, I find his theory of sexuality as a marathon in which women are located in the home stretch (Heartbreak Hill?) hilarious, but my memory of his other ideas isn’t vivid after all this time. I think he represented a very Americanized and partial version of Freudianism, which is a big theme in much of the heated negative psychiatric response to the Reports. (I just pulled up my long-ago notes on his book The Road to Sexual Maturity, and see that he did a lot of arguing with deBeauvoir on female nature, and also described any interracial couple as an example of “blemish mating” and maintained that women who steal other women’s men are actually repressed lesbians. There may be a reason I’ve blocked my memories of his work). Franzblau, who also wrote on modern Judaism, also raises the issue of religion and its place in the postwar sexual debates that I chronicled in the book. In retrospect, I think that I didn’t pay enough attention to the really wide range of attitudes towards Kinsey’s work and sexual change in general that there were – it was easy to bring in some of the fire-and-brimstone voices, and I did note that many mainstream Protestant pastoral counselors, among others, were cautiously in favor of greater sexual information and education, but there is a much more complex and interesting story there waiting to be told.

 Am looking forward to seeing/hearing these voices appear in the movie! 

"Blemish mating," huh?
 

 If you don’t mind, could you tell us a little about the research relating to sex studies of the 20s/30s that you are currently working on? 
 

 Yeah, "blemish mating" is just . . . words fail one.  

 Sure, historians love to talk about that! While finishing the Kinsey book, I got interested in what had come before him: Kinsey was invested in seeing his own work as utterly original, and so downplayed American research prior to his as poorly done, inadequate, etc. At the same time, though, it was increasingly clear to me that he relied on earlier work in human sex research and also on a network of supporters that included many of the advisers who had conducted it, mostly in the 1920s and 30s before he really got going. So, I thought it would be interesting – perhaps just as a brief article-length piece of research – to examine these studies, some of which were funded but never published.

 As I got going, I discovered a lot more examples than I had known of, and was lucky enough to work with an archivist who dug up a collection of sex histories taken in that period by Dr. Adolf Meyer, head of psychiatry at the Phipps Clinic at Johns Hopkins, and known as probably the preeminent educator in psychiatry at the time and also very active in the mental hygiene movement).

 So, I’m currently working on this generation of sex researchers, from the well-known, like Robert Latou Dickinson, to the forgotten, like Meyer, who has become the center of my work. The material is so rich and complicated that I’ve been working very slowly (teaching 4 courses a semester as an instructor doesn’t help with that). Meyer’s sex histories, taken primarily from his students, range from a few sentences to close to 30 detailed pages, and cover everything you can think of – the subjects’ upbringing, sex ed, fantasy lives, education, various kinds of experiences, moral beliefs, etc., etc., etc.

 I’m still figuring out where they fit, but do feel clear on two main things. First, there was a big struggle in the early 20th century between 2 groups of human sex researchers; those who wanted to focus on quantitative evidence and count acts (as in Kinsey’s eventual approach) and those who distrusted numbers and preferred to privilege narratives, stories, collected through individual life histories. Secondly, the sex histories that Meyer collected, which he hoped would bridge this divide by allowing him to correlate individual studies with larger numbers, speak to the post-WWI era as a really confusing one for the middle- and upper-class young men (plus a few women) whose histories he collected. The transition between what you might call Victorianism and modernity was fraught, with distinctly different values systems and behaviors coexisting among men in the same cohort, as the histories feature men who boasted about their varied sexual conquests (including a great deal of same-sex activity, especially during wartime) right next to those who were deeply conflicted and others who denied any sexuality whatsoever and railed at the modern expectation that they should exhibit desires at all. So, fascinating stuff, but slow going, in part because it involves actual individual participants rather than the broader social and cultural patterns I was looking at in the first book.

 

 ***Thanks again to Miriam Reumann. I really appreciate that she took the time to do this. If you get a chance, and you like history or fun or books that are good, check out American Sexual Character: Sex, Gender, and National Identity in the Kinsey Reports.