oursin | Entries tagged with orgasm

It's like the fact that anyone has studied it just gets erased from the record?

24 scientists contribute a preprint on Neuroanatomy of the clitoris:

The clitoris is one of the least studied organs of the human body. The detailed anatomy of the clitoris is challenging to address through a gross dissection, as most of its parts are embedded internally, surrounded by pubic bone and several pelvic organs.

Helen O'Connell and colleagues, 2005, Anatomy of the Clitoris?

O'Connell does feature in the citations, I see. Along with various other scientists who boldly went where no man....

Because one does rather want to enquire 'Least studied BY WHOM???'

Take it away, Lil Johnson:

Watch on YouTube

I feel that this is sort-of related: Founder of ‘orgasmic meditation’ company gets nine years in prison in forced labor conspiracy" - a bit more on What the Hell is Orgasmic Meditation: What to know about the controversial practice of ‘orgasmic meditation’:

“One rule of thumb when exploring sex-positive spaces might be to ask: ‘Is someone getting rich from this?’” says Dr Anouchka Grose, a writer and psychoanalyst in London. “If the answer is yes, there’s a distinct possibility that money is more important to the organizer than your wellbeing.”

Or any spaces, really.

Firstly:

So, farewell then, PSC, whose advice to the sexually-bothered (rather than the lovelorn) has so oft provided fodder to oursinial musings. Guardian G2 today includes 23 of the best Sexual Healing columns

Not sure if they are The Greatest Hits rather than molto tipico of the kind of thing she addressed: in particular we note (as she stresses in the interview about the lessons learnt over 10 years of agony-aunting):

The female orgasm is still a mystery to some people
I’m still getting questions that show me people continue to think that the only “correct” type of female orgasm is one that’s purely vaginal and doesn’t involve the clitoris. For people to still think that, or to have that as the ideal, is extraordinary, but there it is. They just haven’t had the education to understand otherwise.

There is a waterspout off Portland Bill (where Marie Stopes' ashes were scattered). Volumes of the Kinsey Report on the Human Female are spontaneously falling off library shelves. The shade of Shere Hite is gibbering and wailing.

We also note the recurrent MenZ B Terribly Poor Stuff theme, what with the one who appears to regard his wife's bisexuality as a USP meaning *3SOMES* and two or three where one feels she did not interrogate sufficiently whether the male querent was actually gratifying his female partner before offering reassurance/solution e.g. 'My stunning wife makes no effort with our sex life' where we should like to know precisely what effort he is putting in, ahem.

However, there are also some of the wilder shores there.

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Secondly, and could we have a big AWWWW for this: David Attenborough seeks out London’s hidden wildlife:

Filming the wildlife of London requires an intrepid, agile presenter, willing to lie on damp grass after dark to encounter hedgehogs, scale heights to hold a peregrine falcon chick, and stake out a Tottenham allotment to get within touching distance of wary wild foxes.
Step forward Sir David Attenborough, who spent his 100th summer seeking out the hidden nature of his home city for an unusually personal and intimate BBC documentary.

If ever there was a question which demanded the answer NO in very large letters, flashing lights: The end of menopause: would women be healthier and happier if they menstruated for ever?

Y O Y? What seems to have completely vanished from the discourse is Margaret Mead's formulation of 'post-menopausal zest', leading to an upsurge of creative energy. Does this not happen any more because of various lifecycle factors affecting the midlife woman which are actually nothing to do with menopause and its aftermath? Is it due to a whole lot of emphasis on the temporary phase of perimenopause/menopause (?and the possibilities for medicalisation and Big Pharma) rather than the longer sunlit uplands that follow?

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And on, why does knowledge get lost and why are these things constantly being rediscovered and why do things not change, along with, crap research methodology: Researchers surveyed 24,000 single Americans aged from 18 to 100. Men’s orgasm rates ranged from 70% to 85%, while women’s ranged from 46% to 58%.

They were asked how often they had an orgasm “when having sexual intercourse”. This wording changes everything. Research shows that for the vast majority of straight people, the word “sex” means penetration, even more so when associated with “intercourse”.... Whichever way you slice it, there remains a glaring problem: women are significantly less likely to orgasm this way.

I am assuming here that Sexual Medicine is a serious journal - and it appears to be, reputable academic publisher etc. Duh.

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140 women in England receive payout for vaginal mesh implant complications. And this, my dearios, is why we are very suspicious when somebody comes along with some Magic Bullet for the Troubles of Women and their bothersome Bits.

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This too is creepy: UK sperm donations being exported despite 10-family limit:

Until five years ago, the UK was primarily an importer of sperm, largely from Denmark and the US. But, as a growing number of international sperm and egg banks have opened donor centres in the UK, the picture is becoming more complex. From 2019-21, 7,542 straws of sperm were exported from the UK, according to data provided by the HFEA (one IVF cycle typically requires one straw of sperm). The European Sperm Bank, which accounted for 90% of exports, applies a worldwide limit of 75 families a donor and estimates that its donors help on average 25 families.
....
Others noted that the increasing commercialisation of the market contrasts with the altruistic basis for donation of sperm and eggs, with the UK law only allowing compensation for time and expenses. “It’s presented to donors as a beautiful gift to help someone create a family, not as, ‘We’re going to maximise the number of births from your gametes and make as much money as we can from that,’” said Prof Nicky Hudson, a medical sociologist at De Montford University. “When you speak to donors and present these possibilities to them, they’re really surprised.”

And there are now possibilities of trafficking in donated eggs, cringe, shudder.

Inside the Secretive World of Penile Enlargement: How a doctor’s two-decade quest to grow the penis is leaving some men desperate and disfigured. What's it all about, I wonder, since it doesn't seem to be about pleasure, their own, or that of their partners.

Though I remember a TV documentary a good while ago, but I think that was about impotence, just pre-Viagra, in which men were injecting themselves with papaverine and having prolonged painful erections, getting prosthetic inserts, etc.

Was lately at a seminar given by someone who has been looking at the rather sparse history of attempts to establish a medical speciality of andrology, cognate to gynaeology, which never really got off the ground, and wonder whether that leaves a niche for these dubious practices. Or whether it had trouble achieving lift-off because the subject was already associated with rather dodgy small ads for improving MANHOOD...

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A couple of PSC columns in which she doesn't quite say 'terribly poor stuff', but there is a certain subtext:

My wife and I have stopped having sex. Are my fetishes to blame?:

Up until recently, my wife has been perfectly OK with indulging me in my various fetishes.... Now though she no longer seems interested in having sex with me

It’s not your kink that’s causing the problem. Since your wife has been “indulging” you in that for many years, it is far more likely that this shift in her behaviour is due to some other problem or problems.... Some partners who join in fetishistic behaviour simply to please their partner can understandably start to feel resentment if they are not able to experience their preferred vanilla style at least part of the time, so it is possible there may be a need for renegotiations about that.

I can only climax in one position. Why do my lovers try to talk me out of it?

I can only orgasm when I am on top during sex.... when I try to explain this to a potential partner, their ego kicks in and they assure me I will orgasm in the missionary position with them. However, this is never the case for me.

Men who think they will never fail to bring a woman to orgasm during penetration are lacking in the correct knowledge about female physiology and sexual response.... Find a partner who admires the way you take responsibility for your own pleasure and avoid the uneducated.

She seems to have moved on from exhorting women to gently educate their partners!

Okay, the article itself is pretty much on the side of It's All More Complicated:
Who Killed the ‘Female Pleasure Button’? In 1998, a North Carolina doctor accidentally discovered a device that could make women cum at the drop of a hat. Two decades later, we've got nothing to show for it. This is the long, strange story of the Orgasmatron.

(Me, I couldn't help thinking that the answer to why this did not take off in a big way was the same as the answer to the question of why there were by no means the numbers of women interested in male sexbots as there were men interested in female sexbots. There is a much simpler, more portable/less invasive solution.)

The Orgasmatron worked by stimulating nerves “from the pelvis that enter the spinal highway near the tailbone,” which “shoots pleasure signals straight up to the part of the brain that processes information coming from the genitalia.”

It involved a implant inserted at the base of the spinal cord, which could be activated by remote control.

But quite apart from the problem of scurrying up research funding in this, ahem, sensitive area, the inventor has had problems in finding volunteers:

Justin Lehmiller, a research fellow at the Kinsey Institute and the host of the Sex and Psychology podcast, says he isn’t surprised that volunteers were hard to come by. “While the preliminary data looked promising, it’s expensive and invasive, and there’s still a lot we don’t know about long-term effects and potential risks,” he tells me. Also, while the device may be of “great value” for those with disabilities or “significant and persistent difficulty orgasming,” it doesn’t address any of the interpersonal, cultural or environmental factors that prevent climax (communication issues, shame and sexual anxiety are particular culprits). “The concern is that biomedical devices that facilitate orgasm could potentially just become another Band-Aid solution,” Lehmiller explains.

We note also good comments from Dr Petra Boynton on whom be praise.:

["]The Orgasmatron is very much part of an early 2000s view of ‘perfect sex’ that, in some ways, feels old fashioned now.” This idea of “perfect sex” — often buoyed by free, mainstream, heterosexual porn — centers on the cis male-esque climax, and the widely-held view that sex ends — and is “good” — when one or both parties have cum.

We are not entirely surprised, my dearios, when another sex therapist suggests that men would like this as it would give them the gratification of getting their partner off without any fuss and bother.

(Wot, me, cynical?)

Hark to the biohacker's dreams (I think I read this in sf in the 70s, didn't I???)

He says that with the right technological upgrade, the Orgasmatron could even facilitate “massive multiplayer orgies,” where users could feel the pleasure that other users were feeling via their spinal implants. “You could have what your partner’s feeling added to you and then send it back to them,” he explains. “It would be amazing to have a bunch of people plugged in and feeling what multiple people are feeling at once. It’s got a lot of weird and awesome potential.”

While the valid point is made that “There’s still a lot of stigma, bias and lack of resourcing in health care for female sexuality”, reservations are also in play concerning this mechanistic approach as the way forward.

As I recall, didn't the original Orgasmatron in the movie obviate the need for actual human sexual contact...?

On another paw, we have historically-attested evidence that people in The Past did it, though not quite for the same reasons...

'Soaking', which is allegedly something that young Mormons do so that they can have sex but not actual sex that they'd have to admit to? (Okay, am not entirely up in the spiritual practices of the LDS.)

Anyway, what it is, (apparently) is, intromission without any movement, no thrusting, no orgasm, etc, and, it seems, it does not violate the young woman's status as a virgin? (No, I don't even.)

Well, I have come across this practice before but predominantly in the context of C19th married sex with not wanting to have too many baybeez/weird religious cult territory.

Alice Stockham, author of Tokology (1883) a general guide to women's health, parturition, infant care, and dietetics, also wrote a book on Karezza (1896), which advocates sexual union without ejaculation as a form of spiritual couple bonding as well as promoting health.

She had picked up this idea from John Humphrey Noyes of the Oneida Community, in which a form of 'male continence' was an essential element in the 'complex marriage' system within their community, although it was actually taught to the young men, they weren't expected just to go ahead and do it, there was an assumption that it required practice. It also allegedly paid off in multiple orgasms for the women.

In Aldous Huxley's final novel Island (1962) the practice was identified with a similar yogic one.

However, as far as I can tell from such descriptions of 'soaking' as I can find, there is no indication either that it produces extreme ecstasy for the female partner, or a mystical experience for either/both.

Yes, it's the return of No Nut November as reported here last year, though apparently some voices are crying that it should be cancelled for pandemic reasons.

Though I suspect that the overlap between the kind of bloke who does this because Manly Challenge and Increase in Macho Powers and the ones who refuse to wear masks because those compromise their masculinity is pretty much complete?

We turn from the contemplation of this distasteful subject, to the topic of the silence over the clitoris: Medical textbooks are full of anatomical pictures of the penis, but the clitoris barely rates a mention. Many medical professionals are uncomfortable even talking about it:

In the 20 years since [Helen O'Connell's] groundbreaking study was released, clitoral anatomy remains largely absent from the medical curriculum and from medical research. A literature review conducted by O’Connell’s team for her editorial in the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology found just 11 articles on anatomical dissection of the clitoris had been published worldwide since 1947. Hundreds more mentioned clitoral anatomy only as it related to procedures to restore sensation following a cliteradectomy, or female genital mutilation. Despite that work, O’Connell wrote, “we see literature doubting the importance of female orgasm, entertaining the argument that from an evolutionary standpoint, female orgasm could merely be a byproduct of selection on male orgasm”.

(Though, honestly, the preconceptions and stereotyping here:

With her neat glasses and dry, technical language, O’Connell does not appear the rebel. But then she talks, quite calmly, about subjects that would make many of her peers blush, and the rebel slips out.

Siiiiigh. )

I fancy that this book - just out I think - is perhaps working in related areas: Alyson K Spurgas, Diagnosing Desire: Biopolitics and Femininity into the Twenty-First Century:

Spurgas makes the case that, together, all of these technologies create a “feminized responsive desire framework” for understanding women’s sexuality, and that this, in fact, produces women’s sexuality as a complex problem to be solved.

What between this:

The inimitable Nancy Banks-Smith on The night I watched Vera Lynn with Marlene Dietrich

[T]hat image has stayed with me for more than half a century because I don’t quite understand it. Marlene Dietrich listening so intently to Vera Lynn and whipping herself.

It's like a scene from one of the movies she did with von Sternberg, no?

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And this:

Recently discovered via a link from jesse_the_k, A new sextech site aspires to solve the “problem” of female sexuality. But why is female sexuality still a problem—and where do its “solutions” come from?. Yet again, the problem is vested in the woman, and there is some kind of techno-solution:

OMGYes’s killer app: eleven interactive screens displaying digitized recreations of individual women’s vulvas. The viewer uses the mouse to stroke, rub, and caress in specified patterns while coached by the voice of the woman whose nether regions he or she is manipulating.

We feel that a lot is being left out of the scenario: tactility, individuality, and, in the first place, the willingness of a partner to engage in the activity. I have a ghastly vision of the video-gaming of the female orgasm which leaves actual women and their bodily pleasure completely out of it.

Current Music: The Bogglemen, The Masochism Boggle

Rabbits may hold key to solving mystery of human female orgasm:

A possible explanation for one of biology’s greatest mysteries, the female orgasm, has been bolstered by research showing that rabbits given antidepressants release fewer eggs during sex.

The human female orgasm has long proved curious, having no obvious purpose besides being pleasurable.

I would bang my head, but honestly, that gives me no pleasure at all.

When I first spotted this (yesterday, on Twitter), there were a LOT of very predictable responses about Rampant Rabbits...

And I was reminded that the presense of orgasm in the doe rabbit was something that has been known about for some decades, because I posted about coming (hur, hur) across some correspondence with Alfred Kinsey from a British researcher on the subject when I was in Bloomington last year. Who mentioned not merely manually stimulating the rabbits himself ('wot abaht bestiality?') but that does kept solely with other does would mount one another, induce ovulation, and experience phantom pregnancy.

(I think this is the same Professor of Agriculture who was a pioneer of Artificial Insemination - presumably in the agrarian context - which at the period when he was working meant there were sufficient taboos in the UK that he had to conduct some of his experiments abroad, including in the Soviet Union. Possibly his son, though having managed to gain access to the relevant Biographical Memoir of Fellows of the Royal Society, it does look as though he published on rabbit reproductive issues.)

I would caution those who wish to argue from animals to humans to consider this recent post on the NOTCHES History of Sexuality blog: Gay penguins, medieval heretics, and the place of animals in the history of sexuality: 'In writing our histories of sexuality, then, it is vital that we closely and critically examine the role that animals have played in our conversations about sex.'

So, I recently read Lara Feigel's Free Woman: Life, Liberation, and Doris Lessing (2018), which is pitched as 'An intense exploration of the life and works of Doris Lessing and how their themes are reflected in the writer's own life', and in fact is a lot more about Lara Feigel than it is about Doris Lessing and her works.

Sometimes that 'about a person's personal quest' can work: but it's a delicately balanced thing and easy to do wrong.

I got the feeling, which I have had before on occasion with people writing about their great literary heroines, that had they ever been in a room with the heroine in question she would have eaten them alive and then asked for something rather more sustaining in the way of nutrition...

It actually discusses a somewhat narrow tranche of Lessing's substantial oeuvre - mainly The Golden Notebook and the Children of Violence sequence, with a bit on The Summer Before the Dark and Love, Again. I suspect Feigel has not, in fact, read Lessing's science fiction (no, I would not consider it has the theme of androgyny - ahem, and for example, The Marriages Between Zones Three, Four, and Five?) I can't recall much touching on her short stories. Nil on In Pursuit of the English.

I was irked in a somewhat Marxist way by the constant jetting off hither and thither and buying of seaside cottages, when thinking of the contrast with the period of Lessing's life that most preoccupied her when Lessing was poor, and the reason she got involved with Clancy Sigal was because she needed to take in a lodger - rather than being in a position to fly to LA to go and visit Sigal (even though he'd expressed a disinclination to talk to her about the project). A certain neglect of the material conditions of Lessing's life even while trying to make sense of her allegiance to communism.

Also annoyed by a very badly and superficially researched shallow account of historical understandings of the female orgasm, which even manages to stand Masters and Johnson on their heads (they were all about the clitoris, honestly!). But I am almost, almost, inured to lit scholars Doin It Rong when it comes to the history of sexuality.

I'm not against women (or anyone, really), writing confessional, self-exposing narratives - whether in fictional or non-fictional guise. What I am peeved by is being led to expect rather more about Lessing than I got - and I don't think that the invocation that Feigel makes of Chris Kraus's I Love Dick really works, because one does not, I depose, start reading that in order to find out about 'Dick' (whose identity would, I think, remain opaque had he not, I believe, outed himself as her, as it were, Mr WH?).

Perchance I was interrogating the text from the wrong perspective...

Or, Wot Abaht Bestiality - FOR SCIENCE!!!!

In my researches today came across correspondence with a professor who was a great expert on the rabbit.

Query: someone says the female rabbit experiences orgasm, and you are the fellow who would know.

And did he know. He had clearly gone into the topic in depth, including, in the interests of advancing the frontiers of knowledge, manually stimulating doe rabbits.

('And what did you do at work today, darling?'...)

As well as observing that if they were kept solely in the company of other does, when they came into heat they would mount one another, induce ovulation, and experience pseudo-pregnancy.

He was also of the opinion that the female ferret experienced orgasm.

Compared to this by-way of history, the chap who wrote mansplaining at some length his theories about gender differences in sexual arousal, based on beliefs about the female orgasm and where it happens from which reading Kinsey's Sexual Behaviour in the Human Female had not disabused him, fades positively into insignificance.

Current Music: The Bogglemen, Do the Bunny-Bunny Boggle

I’m really shocked by how many people say they’ve never been to bed with someone who looked them in the eye, particularly at the point of orgasm.

And I can think of all sorts of reasons for that, and this statement seems to me to have embedded in it a rather trad missionary position subtext of what is sex; and it reminds me of something that I saw cited in Stephen Heath, The Sexual Fix (1982), about some Reichian sexual guru saying that the only proper healthy way to have sex was face to face, gazing into one another's eyes, and being deadly serious (no laughing, this is not funny) and, if I recollect aright, naturally having simultaneous orgasms.

I'm also deeply, deeply sceptical that 'feelings of isolation and a lack of true human connection have fed into the seismic political shifts' lately experienced. Which, you know: It's All More Complicated.

And a niggle: In the print edition this had the subhead: 'young people turn creative to take a break from tech'. And okay, I know what they mean there, but part of me was going, 'you know what? textile crafts are technology too, they are not the primeval world of nature'. I also wonder whether they are really so very stress-relieving, but any time I undertake anything involving stitchery - and I will admit that this is usually about running repairs in matters of detached buttons, gaping seams, etc - I find it a cause rather than a emollient of stress. Maybe if I was doing something lovely and creative instead?

Revealed: The Amount Of Time Sex Lasts For The Average British Couple.

We note that the average British couple is heterosexual.

Those of us who have studied the history of sex advice would point out that Marie Stopes said at least 20 minutes was necessary - so if the average time is 19 minutes they're stopping just a little bit too soon.

I'm beswozzled by the emphasis on the 'shared orgasm', which appears to be that shibboleth of the 50s marriage manual (and also literary sources), the simultaneous orgasm, which tended to sound enough hassle to achieve as to rather undermine its status as the pinnacle of mutual pleasure. Is it really that great? It has always seemed to me that there was a good deal of ideology in its advocacy, especially as it was entirely contingent upon both partners achieving orgasm via penetrative sex.

We should like to know how the sex toy retailer who compiled the study obtained the sample of 4400 people (presumably 2200 couples? enquiring minds would like to know a leeetle more on this count). (We see that they retain a 'sex expert': enquiring minds would also like to know the qualifications for the post.)

Whoever they are, they seem to have a somewhat uncritical belief in the existence of the G-spot as a universal.

I am very inclined to be cynical and think that all those percentages and numbers and 27 degree angles are a spurious scientific coating to what we critical historians of sex would call, bollox and woowoo.

I have been keeping this article open in a tab: Dr Petra Boynton responds to Sex with my man is a chore and I can't orgasm. Help!.

It is quite excellent in itself and I daresay could stand alone, but I've been looking for some more context or other relevant stuff, and lo and behold, today in The Guardian G2, Passnotes: Smart condoms: like Fitbit for sex – and you can even share your stats.

I think I saw something about that on Twitter, or maybe FaceBook, the other day, and thought, wow, point thahr misst:

Have you ever wondered how many calories you’re burning during intercourse? How many thrusts? Speed of your thrusts? The duration of your sessions?
....
The i.Con promises to measure all those things, as well as how often you have sex, the girth of your penis, your average skin temperature and (subject to Beta testing) how many different positions you used.*

What it doesn't appear to measure is whether the wearer and their partner are actually enjoying themselves.

Whereas, the wise words of Dr Petra:

A key error made in much sex science and self-help is the assumption that "great" or "healthy" sex is defined by energetic, novel, technique-centred, frequent sex in a variety of positions that always ends in orgasm.

*We are just a leettle astonished that it does not measure both the quantity of the ejaculation and its sperm count.

Apparently this thing that I posted about some years ago is now London’s latest craze

Okay, I am really totally behind the curve here and had no notion that 'Orgasmic meditation classes' are A Thing.

In London.

Have the ravens left the Tower yet? Has Big Ben struck thirteen?

Mind you, I am like to suppose that 'craze' and 'spread... like wildfire' have a somewhat arcane meaning, i.e. not what one would normally mean by that word and that phrase.

I see that when I posted about this back when I invoked the 70s: and given the deployment of the phrase '“free, hip, powerful” women' I really do think the cult leader has been shot forward in time some 40 years.

Yes, well, o sigh, 'pink Viagra' gets FDA approval:

Addyi gains US marketing licence after third attempt, but questions remain about its effectiveness, potential side-effects and the true need for the drug: includes some good solid sense from the ever-reliable Dr Petra Boynton:

Dr Petra Boynton, an agony aunt and psychologist who has researched sexual functioning, says losing interest in sex is a real worry for women, “But what are they actually worried about? They think they are not normal because they don’t want sex that much. They wonder, ‘Will my partner leave me?’ and, ‘Am I undesirable or inadequate?’”

There are some who wonder if they are missing out on pleasure, she said, but that was not their main anxiety. “They are talking about not being good enough or not measuring up. People have a perception that everybody else is having fantastic sex all the time with exotic positions.” There is, Boynton said, “anxiety brought about by misinformation about sex”, which is perpetuated by the media and especially men’s and women’s magazines. “The cultural wallpaper is telling you that to keep someone and be desirable and not left alone, which is a huge fear, you must be having and providing frequent sex.”

Addyi could help a small number of women, but Boynton pointed out that, like the other drugs for sexual problems, it had only been tested against placebos. It would have been interesting, she said, to trial it against candles and bathnights and sex toys – and, for that matter, relationship therapy.

[T]he holy grail of the drugs industry. Let’s face it, it’s the holy grail of all kinds of cultural imaginings: the magic substance that makes women who mostly can’t be that bothered with sex suddenly crave it.:

The truth is that the drug that liberated women’s desire is the one we all take for granted: the contraceptive pill.

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O, Simon Jenkins, have you ever done archival research? I think you would bring less of the nostalging to the concept of handwriting if so, because most handwriting is not, actually, beautiful. And, okay, I can see that it does communicate something and one might miss certain characteristics, but even if she had been typing or word-processing her letters instead of exploding inkily all over and around the page, I think Stella Browne would have been including the extra levels of emphasis, the exclamation points and no doubt, in this day and age, emojis. As someone who can sometimes not read back my own handwritten notes, never mind communicating to anybody else, I bless the day (well, actually it was a week's intensive course) that I learnt to type.

I think there's a significant difference between pursuing calligraphy as an art, and writing as a functional thing.

I suppose I do wonder about how people unused to them manage when faced with handwritten documents. But I don't think that's necessarily about handwriting as an art that must be preserved.

Initially, my heart sort of sank when I read this, because I thought, 'oh, wow, is this Clitoraid reprised?': My ambition is to empower all women to have orgasms.

Which I think is possibly a clickbait headline imposed at a higher editorial level, because Firliana Purwanti really has some sensible things to say from within Indonesian culture (though I am wondering about class and status and degrees of privilege), and its need

to be honest to resolve our issues around teen pregnancy, sexual transmitted diseases, sex workers and discrimination against LGBT people.

What she's really incensed about, and what the bulk of the article concerns, is the imposition of highly physical intrusive (and not actually reliable, hat-tip to Hanne Blank's important work) virginity tests by various state organisations (the police, the military, educational institutions), and it appears that there is a good deal of pushback going on.

I am just not sure whether she has things right end on when she claims that

women who have orgasms have equal personal relationships, are able to express themselves and, most importantly, are free from violence.

Given Kinsey's findings in his 1953 report on US women that there was a notable class, economic and educational-level component to whether women enjoyed sex (almost I think the reverse of men, because as I recall without actually looking it up, he found that middle class men were more likely to be sad anxious unspontaneous creatures with hangups and problems).

I.e. that it's the empowering of women in other areas that enables their orgasmic empowerment.

Yes, I will concede that it's All More Complicated and this is not necessarily universal and that no generalisation is wholly true (including this one), but I am also thinking of the early C20th British birth controllers and their discovery that really, you had to stop women being scared that letting their husband bother them would lead to pregnancy no 12, before they could start thinking about the Marie Stopes vision of conjugal bliss.

Plus, I am not sure the ultimate sign of empowerment is an orgasm.

Shock horror: Pamela Stephenson Connolly says DTMFA - or at least, seriously consider doing so - rather than how to fix a dysfunctional relationship which appears to be largely thus because of male partner's attitudes/behaviour -

I’m constantly compared to every other woman he’s slept with – because I don’t have a multiple orgasm or “squirt” during sex, he automatically assumes that he’s failed. I don’t always climax during sex – again, that’s a massive problem for his ego.

And instead of this bit coming first:
'If this man is open to receiving real education about how to please you, you could consider teaching him.'
an approach for which she has significant form -

PSC starts off with:

Help me understand why you put up with someone who treats you this way and makes you feel like this? For a start, he is lying to you. Unless he is extremely inexperienced, it is statistically impossible that every woman he has slept with has multiple orgasms, ejaculates or is able to climax on command in diverse positions.... My guess is your partner is actually extremely insecure, has no idea how a woman’s body works and needs to put you down to make up for his inadequacies.

I'll go to the foot of our stairs.

Was 2014 the Year Science Discovered The Female Orgasm?

Okay, sometimes I think the female orgasm is much like those 'forgotten/neglected' novels/writers which are regularly being 'rediscovered'.

Alternatively, maybe the elusive Big O is always news, no?

But really, it demonstrates a particularly presentist mindset to suggest that Now! it has Finally!! been Discovered!!!

(Like, go tell that to Marie Stopes, I double-dare you. Or even to dear old D H Lawrence...)

The article does express some scepticism about reported surveys, at least, so I give them a few more than nul points for that.

However, how often does one have to point out that 'GSOH =/= tells jokes' and that

Women also reported initiating sex more frequently with partners who had a sense of humor. So take note, college aged boys—instead of ensconcing yourselves in choking clouds of AXE Body Spray, try telling a few jokes instead.

is so POINT THAHR: MISST.

Are we finally unlocking the secrets of female sexuality? Stella Browne would like a word from 99 years ago.

No, really, what is it with every 'wave' or generation of feminists complaining that their predecessors were Not Cool About Teh Sexx?

Interview with Betty Dodson that has me gnashing my teeth:

Dodson says her biggest fans are fourth-wave feminists bored with the right-on, anti-pleasure stance they feel third-wavers stand for; for them, Dodson's message of rediscovering your power through getting into your body and independent orgasm seems much more attractive than banging on about childcare and sexual violence.

Ummmm - wasn't it only yesterday, more or less, that the third wavers were moaning on about the puritanical second wavers, who were complaining about the prudish 'first wave' (you know, the ones who campaigned for birth control and legalising abortion and divorce law reform and all that good stuff).

I think this is about age of entry into feminism and the impact of experience, more than actual generations. After a bit, however keen on getting into your body and having super orgasmz you are (and these are not bad things), issues like sexual violence and equal pay and around childcare start to look a lot more important to you.

There's something weirdly depoliticised about her position - it reminds me of back in the 70s when I did a thing called 'sexual attitude restructuring' and raised a question - which never got a really satisfactory answer - about yeah, all very well to get in touch with one's sensuality and etc etc but what about sexual harassment and unwanted interest? (I did not really buy the allegation that you would be So Confident that this would be but a bagatelle with which you would be Able to Deal...)

I am also making like a goldfish about the 'private sessions' thing, because back in the dear dead 70s it was about groups with other women and sharing and a collective experience rather than private coaching. (Mi Ageing Hippie, I show u her.)

ETA I thought Dodson's name had come up in connection with the Woowoo Sect's Adopt a Clitoris campaign, couldn't immediately find any link, but lo and behold, was indeed the case.

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It's Always More Complicated

The wandering thoughts of a wandering hedgehog

Entries tagged with orgasm

Continually being rediscovered....

This icon is doubly appropriate

Sigh, moan, groan, cringe, shudder

I do wonder are they okay, sometimes, really

O dear, biohacking the female sexual response...

I'm not sure if this is even a thing, or an urban myth

It's baaaaack

The boggle quotient is - bogglesome

At it like rabbits

Suspect Doris would have had her on toast for breakfast

This did not feature in Watership Down

I daresay this isn't meant to be prescriptivist, but -

This all seems very retro

When will they ever learn?

It all depends on what you think 'craze' means

Points thahr, misst

I think she's well-intentioned, but...

Blooooo mooooon: a first time for everything

Yet another headline asking a question to which the answer is: no

Condemned to repeat it, condemned! I say