The Guide to Getting It On (15 page)

CHAPTER

7

What’s Inside a Girl

M
ost books on sex present female genitals as though they were a static entity that is easy to comprehend. They give you a few carefully illustrated diagrams and proceed to speak of women’s genitals as one would a carburetor. This is a big mistake.

Since you can’t hardly see them, women’s genitals are more of a mystery than men’s. And although men’s and women’s genitals are made from many of the same cells, if a man approaches a woman’s genitals in the same way he does his own, he and his partner might be missing out on a lot of fun.

This chapter approaches women’s genitals differently than most books on sex. It begins with a boy’s quest to discover what’s between a woman’s legs.

Instant Pussy

What follows is an experience that the author of this book had with women’s genitals when he was 11-years-old and very, very curious.

He had been in the big city visiting relatives and it was time to return home. He was at the bus depot early. The northbound bus didn’t leave until noon, so he had time to kill. He also needed to use the rest room.

The men’s bathroom in the Greyhound depot was a far cry from the one-seater he had grown up with. It was massive, not nice on the nose, and it had three vending machines that called to him like giant aluminum Sirens.

One of the machines had men’s colognes in it; you could spritz yourself with Old Spice or Brut for a dime. Next to that was a machine with a product that was totally baffling. And next to the mystery machine was one that said
Instant Pussy—2 Quarters.

To put this into perspective, back then candy bars weren’t much more than a nickel, and two quarters amounted to a near fortune. But then again, the front of the machine promised a facsimile so exact that you couldn’t tell the instant pussy from the real thing.

For the next hour, the young boy pondered the ultimate existential question: ten candy bars or instant pussy, ten candy bars or instant pussy, ten candy bars or instant pussy. A rush of guy hormones apparently kicked in, and he returned to the smelly porcelain palace with two shiny quarters.

The rest of the day was spent in quiet anticipation, with thoughts of instant pussy overwhelming whatever interesting sights and sounds the big city had to offer. Finally, after he had arrived home and done his chores, he anxiously opened the small box and read the instructions. “Place capsule in a large glass of warm water.” He spent the next half hour trying to decide just how warm the water should be. He even took out the thermometer and tried to make it a perfect body-heated 98.6. Then came the big moment. He crossed himself and revved up his courage. With an Enola Gay-like swoop, his trembling fingers dropped the capsule into the glass. Then he waited for the hidden mystery to unfold. And he waited. And he waited.

Forty minutes went by before the gelatin capsule finally melted and revealed a thin piece of sponge in the shape of a cat.

A grown man would have known to go for the candy bars. But the young boy was still clinging to the hope that there were answers to questions that felt so much bigger than he.

What’s Inside a Woman?

A fine way to learn about what’s inside a woman is to hold her. For hours. Your skin against hers, the weight of her body and emotions pressing against yours. And if you really want to learn about a woman, consider having babies and raising them together. Hopefully, you will like what you discover, although there are no guarantees for either of you. As for understanding a woman’s sexuality, some women will let you deep inside of them; others will only have sex with you. It’s no different than with men.

The Myth That Men Are Hornier than Women & Men Peak Sexually In Their Late Teens While Women Peak in Their Late Thirties

There is a silly notion in our society that young men are hornier than young women and that the cause is biological (hormones, chromosomes, or the will of God). It is also said that women don’t reach their sexual peak until they are in their late 30s.

It is interesting that these myths don’t exist in cultures that are more accepting of women’s sexuality than our own. Perhaps it’s not until women in North America get into their thirties that they start to realize what a crock they have been swallowing all their lives about themselves and their sexuality. But by that time, many of their male contemporaries have gotten fat or are out of shape, which makes them less receptive to anything that requires physical effort and stamina.

Wrestling with the Concept of “Womanhood”

People make all kinds of assumptions about womanhood, yet not many of these assumptions hold up to scrutiny. Consider some of the contradictions we have about womanhood:

• Intuition is said to be a defining element of womanhood. Yet there is not a single respectable study on intuition that has ever shown women, as a group, to be any more or less intuitive than men. Besides, you don’t have to know too many women who date and marry total jerks to have serious doubts about the assumption that women are the more intuitive gender.
  
• In the past, motherhood was thought to be an essential element of womanhood. Yet we all know plenty of women without children who are far from deficient in the area of womanhood, whatever womanhood might be.
  
• It is often assumed that women are the less aggressive gender and that men’s aggression makes them more bullying or controlling than women. While women don’t always do it with bullets and knives, there is no shortage of aggressive, controlling, and unpleasant females. When you adjust for the number of miles driven by each sex, there are just as many aggressive female drivers as male drivers, and researchers have found that when women don’t think anyone is watching, they can be even more aggressive than males. Aggression, or the lack of it, is not a defining element of womanhood.
  
• One female professor penned a bestseller that claims there are big differences in the ways men and women express themselves. Perhaps this is a defining element of womanhood. Yet when an interviewer noted that this woman’s own style was more like the men she describes in her book, she fully agreed and added that her husband’s style is more like a woman’s. It’s a good thing she didn’t include herself and her husband in her studies.
  
• There are women who equate womanhood with their ability to create desire in a man’s eyes or a bulge in a boy’s boxers. Others don’t view womanhood as having anything to do with being attractive to men.
  

Some of today’s women feel challenged in trying to define womanhood. Hopefully, you and your sexual partners will feel safe enough to be whatever you need to be, whether it is society’s stereotypes of manly, womanly, boy-like, girl-like, passive, active, or bits and pieces of each.

Women’s Sexual Anatomy — The Nerve of It All

In the late 1950s, a scientist named Kermit Krantz dissected the genital regions of eight dead women. He explored how women’s genitals are wired. It is difficult to find a single research report on the topic of women’s sexuality that is of more value than the one produced by Kermit Krantz.

He found a great deal of variation in the way the nerve endings are distributed throughout the different women’s genitals. While there tended to be a higher concentration of nerve endings in the clitoris, the amount varied significantly among the different women; that is, some had more nerve endings in the labia minora (inner lips) than in the clitoris, and some women’s nerve endings were highly concentrated in one area while other women had nerve endings that were spread out over a larger area. To quote Dr. Krantz:

“The extent of innervation in different females varies greatly.”

What this suggests is that no two women get off sexually in the exact same way. Each woman needs to explore her own unique sexual universe, from where to touch to the kinds of fantasies that get her off. One woman might love oral sex and be so-so about intercourse, while the next craves a penis between her legs.

A man won’t know exactly what a woman likes in bed until she tells him. It’s not the sort of awareness he is going to assimilate during a one-night stand. The most important thing that experience can do is to help him feel comfortable asking for and taking direction.

How Long Do Women’s Orgasms Last?

Researchers have hooked volunteers up with all kinds of equipment that can measure the changes in a woman’s body while they are having an orgasm. They asked these volunteers to masturbate in the lab while hooked up to the equipment. They also asked the women to indicate when they started to experience their orgasm and when their orgasm stopped. Given that the readings on the equipment closely mirrored the women’s own reports, it’s pretty clear the researchers had an accurate read on how long the women’s orgasms lasted.

The average time for an orgasm was 26 seconds, give or take 15 seconds. (Another group of researchers found the average length of orgasm in the women they studied was 36 seconds, give or take 24 seconds, with a range from 8 to 108 seconds.)

The women in the first study were also asked to guess how long their orgasms lasted. The average guess with 13 seconds, which means the women underestimated the length of their orgasms by half. The lead researcher suggested that widespread activation inside the brain during orgasm interferes with a person’s ability to sense time accurately.

Show & Tell

“While women speak to each other in graphic terms about things like menstruation, blow jobs, and the ratio of penis size to male ego, we usually don’t talk to each other about what our crotches look like; not that we’d necessarily want to.”
female age 34

Most guys know what other guys’ penises look like. That’s because male genitals stick out. You can’t help but notice when you shower or pee together. But women have no subtle way of looking at each other’s genitals. Perhaps that’s why some women find it reassuring to see pictures of other women’s vulvas. They are often surprised to find that there is so much variation.

There are even photo books on vulvas which have been published by feminists. But the muff shots in the politically-correct beaver books have a sterile edge that’s not particularly arousing. Perhaps it’s because there are no visual cues that the women are having fun. The new-age beaver books are missing an attitude that says, “What we have between our legs is a good thing. It’s cool, it’s nice, we like it.” Perhaps there is something reassuring about a woman who finds her genitals to be sexy. Perhaps it’s why some men nearly ejaculate on the spot if a partner enjoys masturbating and lets him hold her or watch while she’s doing it. Maybe it explains some of the allure of lingerie. It’s in knowing that a woman finds her genitals sexy enough to cover them in a sensual or erotic way.

Dear Paul,

My girlfriend thinks her genitals are ugly. Is there anything I can do to help her change her mind? —Bobby in Beaver Falls

Dear Bobby,

It’s the strangest thing how women can harbor negative feelings about the way their crotches look. A lot of girls don’t even look at their own genitals until they are older, and even then, they refer to them as “down there.” Men end up knowing more about women’s genitals and how they look than a number of women do.

Then again, our society has never wanted girls to be curious about their genitals. While it is natural for a child to fall asleep with a hand between her legs, parents often assume that this kind of self-comforting will turn an innocent girl into a slut-in-the-making. Heaven help a young girl who is caught bringing her fingers to her mouth or nose after touching herself “down there.”