Best Sex Writing 2012: The State of Today's Sexual Culture (3 page)

Most patients who wish they were different are perfectly sane people who are somewhat overconcerned about their penises. Others are a bit less sane. And a few are intensely involved with their feelings to the point of ignoring science, logic, and the sworn statements of one or more lovers.

I believe the people behind the San Francisco proposal to ban circumcision are among the latter group. In 31 years of talking with men about their penises, I have never met a man who felt damaged, mutilated, or emasculated by his circumcision who did not have other emotional problems as well. The pain they claim to remember from the brief procedure is impossible; the rejection from “all women” a childish overgeneralization; the sense of being incomplete a neurotic problem that has other sources.

Yes, there are a few sensible reasons that some sincere people want to discourage routine circumcision. But this is dramatically different from men who feel mutilated or disgusted with their penis blaming all their life’s problems on an event they can’t possibly remember.

The sexual effects of circumcision are clear: there are none. Say what you want about foreskins protecting penile sensitivity—virtually no one complains that their penis isn’t sensitive enough. I make my living listening to stories of sexual frustration and dissatisfaction, and they almost never center on “my penis doesn’t feel things intensely enough.” When they do, it almost invariably involves a serious emotional problem (guilt, Asperger’s syndrome, anxiety, trauma, dissociation, etc.), and the guy is as likely to be uncircumcised as not.

The idea that a penis being 2 percent or 20 percent more sensitive (from the protective action of a foreskin) would prevent men’s sexual distress is nonsense. You might as well say that bigger testicles would make sex better. The truth is, most men (like most women) do very few of the things that could enhance their enjoyment of sex: relaxation or meditation beforehand; more kissing; communicating more about likes and dislikes; experimenting more with nonerogenous parts of both bodies; taking more time; starting when they’re not already tired; covering contraception more reliably; using a lubricant before it’s “necessary”; and learning to enjoy sex with a bit of light in the room.

Men who cry that they can’t enjoy sex without a foreskin are in real pain—but it isn’t really about their circumcision.

The United Nations recognizes the health benefits of circumcision ; the World Health Organization is now promoting a huge circumcision campaign in sub-Saharan Africa, which has been wildly successful in reducing HIV infections in Uganda, Kenya, and South Africa. Ironically, it’s world-famous San Francisco urologist Ira Sharlip who’s been asked to advise the project. Halfway around the world, the Philippines recently offered free circumcisions for poor people, who lined up enthusiastically.

Indeed, studies around the world show that circumcision reduces urinary and other infections, has no negative sexual effects, and is rarely dangerous when performed according to simple public health guidelines. There is absolutely no evidence that the sexual experiences of circumcised and uncircumcised men are different for them or their partners (outside of their partners’ simple personal taste, of course). What do women prefer? Most prefer the penises they’ve spent their lives with.

As a therapist, I am sworn to empathize with the pain of every man, woman, and child in my office. I am also devoted to reducing suffering by helping people understand the meaning behind their pain, the better to resolve and escape from it.

As a citizen, my sworn concern is to keep emotion out of public policy, the better to foster the impartiality of science and enhance everyone’s well-being. So I urge anyone who feels damaged by their circumcision to get as much therapy as necessary, as much good sex as possible—and to keep their self-admittedly damaged psyches away from public policy. Guys, pleasure and intimacy await—as soon as you make friends with your penis. The ballot box is not the place to work out your self-loathing.

On July 28, 2011, California Superior Court Judge Loretta Giorgi ordered the proposed ban on circumcision removed from the upcoming San Francisco ballot. She explained that medical procedures, just like marriage and driver’s licenses, can only be regulated by the state, not by individual municipalities.

Proponents of the ban vowed to take their drive to the state level.

In the wake of my posting of this piece, I received over 100 responses, comments, and emails. Although a few were supportive, the overwhelming majority were negative. Some cited the various international associations that don’t support circumcision. Others cited statistics purporting to show that circumcision is dangerous—the extremely rare infection and even the one-ina-million death.

But most responses dispensed with such civilized conventions as citations and statistics, however bogus or agenda-driven. These correspondents were generally anguished, enraged, or both. They questioned my credentials as a sexologist and as a psychotherapist, often in very nasty terms. They powerfully described their sadness, hopelessness, and bitterness. They felt mutilated and abused, and betrayed by what they interpreted as my dismissal of their pain.

As I said, that pain is real, but it goes much deeper than circumcision. These men feel alienated from masculinity, from sexuality, from their bodies. Unfortunately, this is not rare in America. As people who struggle with anorexia, obesity, addiction, violent impulses, and lack of sexual desire show us, you don’t have to be circumcised to feel that alienation.

Some substantive issues did recur in the dozens of negative responses I received. Let me address them directly:

Why is male circumcision acceptable to those who reject female genital cutting?

Because the latter brutally damages an entire system of a woman’s body, reduces sexual function for a lifetime (not just sexual pleasure, but sexual function—that’s the intention), and often leads to lifelong infections. Virtually all male circumcision is free of subsequent infection, sexual dysfunction, or urinary damage.

Circumcision is done before a male can consent, so why not just prevent it until adulthood?

Our society accepts that parents are responsible for making virtually all decisions for their babies. Parents choose a wide range of medical practices for them without waiting for them to reach adulthood—for example, vaccination, ear piercing, invasive testing, many elective and corrective surgeries.

A circumcised man can’t know the sexual pleasure he’s missing, so he shouldn’t insist that the procedure is harmless for his (or other) babies.

This is a curious (and common) argument. If a man can’t know what he’s missing, how can he miss it—as so many anticircumci-sion activists claim? Most men could immediately increase their sexual pleasure by drinking less, kissing more, quitting smoking, talking to their partners, and starting sex earlier in the evening when they’re more energetic. The common unwillingness to take these steps trivializes any demand for “more pleasure.”

I am certainly no apologist for circumcision. As we say about abortion, nude beaches, and nonmonogamy, if you don’t believe in it, don’t do it.

But legislating sexuality is the way citizens most often demand that society deal with their personal demons. Fear of our kids being molested? Create horrible sex offender laws. Fear of teens being sexual? Criminalize teen sexuality and “sexting.” Fear of our neighbors being too kinky? Shut down swingers’ clubs. Fear of our kids actually learning something about sex? Destroy sex education and sanitize libraries and network TV.

When emotion drives public policy, everyone suffers. The pain of stifled sexual expression and the obsessive promotion of sexual fear, guilt, and shame are ultimately far more destructive than any distress about circumcision could possibly be.

Endnotes

1
In California, a group of people can get a proposition on the general election ballot by collecting sufficient signatures on a petition. Signature collecting is now a huge business in the state; out-of-state money often drives the process.

The Worship of Female Pleasure

Tracy Clark - Flory

Nicole Daedone pulls her long dirty-blond locks into a bun, rolls up the sleeves of her crisp white dress shirt, and readies her lube. On the table in front of her there is a woman, naked only from the waist down, with her knees spread wide. The 40-something founder of OneTaste, a center dedicated to “mindful sexuality,” is about to give a live and impromptu demonstration of orgasmic meditation (“OMing” for short) in a conference room at the sophisticated Le Méridien hotel in San Francisco. She takes a long look between the volunteer’s legs and enthuses to the audience of roughly 40 women: “Oh my god, it’s beautiful. It’s an electric rose color. The swelling is already beginning.”

Before long, Daedone is hunched over and vigorously stroking the woman’s most sensitive “spot”—the “upper left quadrant” of the clitoris—with just her forefinger. The recipient moans wildly as though she is being taken over by a spirit and Daedone urges her on: “Good girl. Good, good. Reach, reach, reach, reach.” As the woman’s groans peak, Daedone lets out a throaty exhalation that sounds as if it belongs in a Lamaze class. Two audience members overcome by the intensity of the performance are silently crying. The demonstration, which is part of a weekend-long women’s retreat, continues for 15 minutes.

It is both arousing and deeply bizarre.

It isn’t every weekend that I find myself watching a woman being repeatedly brought to orgasm in front of a live audience—but I hardly expected normality when I asked to sit in on the workshop. Instead, I was hoping to get a candid view of Daedone ahead of the release of her book,
Slow Sex: The Art and Craft of the Female Orgasm
, which attempts to market her meditative practice to a broader audience. That is a challenging task when your practice involves a bunch of clothed men (and sometimes women) gathering in a room and manually stimulating half-naked female “research partners” for exactly 15 minutes. Two years ago, a
New York Times
feature detailed the eyebrow-raising practices at OneTaste’s “urban retreat center” in the wacky-woo Bay Area and described Daedone as “a polarizing personality, whom admirers venerate as a sex diva, although some former members say she has cultlike powers over her followers.” Since that high-profile coverage, OneTaste has become a bit more circumspect, but clearly not so much as to bar spontaneous OMing demonstrations—at an event initially advertised as including no “sexual activity.” (But, you see, Daedone has a tendency to go off script—that, or else appearing to do so is part of her script; it’s hard to say.)

Dig beneath the freaky OMing exterior and the core of her message is very marketable to the mainstream. Consider the demand for “female Viagra,” a product estimated to have a $2 billion market. Study after study tells us that women desperately want more sexual desire and more orgasms (or orgasms, period). Female desire and pleasure are what Daedone is all about—to the point that many criticize her for being too womancentric. (After I explained the OneTaste mission to a male friend, he exclaimed incredulously: “The man never gets a turn? That’s messed up!”)

Just as with the slow food movement, the idea behind “slow sex” is to slow down enough to know when you’re hungry or satiated, to identify your cravings, to savor every sensation, and to be present in this very moment. As she writes in the book, the aim is to give women the “permission to enjoy the journey, rather than pushing them ever sooner to the finale.” With that comes a recasting of what orgasm means: “We have been defining the term ‘orgasm’ as the traditional definition of male orgasm: climax,” she writes. “Climax is often a part of orgasm, but it is not the sum total. Make this distinction, and you change the whole game.” (I met a woman at the workshop who says she had OMed 300 or so times and only climaxed once.)

These basic ideas are not especially controversial; they are pretty intuitive as well as having roots in the practice of Tantric sex. More generally, her emphasis on mindfulness—a sexual take on “Be here now”—borrows heavily from Eastern philosophies. Daedone’s background in gender studies also shows: she speaks passionately about negative cultural conditioning around sex and all the ways that women are taught to replace their own desires with men’s. Balancing the academic side of OneTaste is the fashionable, cosmopolitan vibe of Daedone and her inner circle, a crew of supremely attractive, sensual, and pristinely dressed women in their 30s and 40s. Think
Sex and the City
’s Samantha at a Buddhist retreat. Daedone can just as readily sound like a New Age sex guru as she can an everywoman ranting to her girlfriends about frustrations in the bedroom. There is an Oprahesque strain of feminism here, too: In her manifesto, she reveres the sort of woman whose epitaph would read, “She scaled mountains, in hiking boots and in heels.” Where there’s an Oprah comparison, there is good old-fashioned capitalism: there are products for sale on the group’s website, including OneTaste-branded lube, special OMing pillows and an instructional DVD on the practice. There’s also a “slow sex” coaching program that costs anywhere from $4,000 to $11,000. The weekend retreat I attended was $495.

In between Daedone’s workshop lectures, the motley group of women, ranging in age from their early 20s to their 60s, engaged in a series of intimacy exercises. We were encouraged to enter a makeshift photo booth to have our personal “pussy portrait” taken, and then printouts of the shots were displayed for all to see. At one point we were instructed to gather in the center of the room, standing close enough to one another that we could “feel each other’s body heat,” and whisper to one another previously unspoken desires; some of these secrets were written on Post-its (the messages ranged from “rape fantasy” to “soft kisses”) and pasted on the walls of the conference room.