Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom (56 page)

Steve and Vera Bodansky point out that most women are angry with men at some level because we women have been second-class cit izens for so long. And though this anger is justified, the problem with it in an individual relationship is that it interferes with your ability to experience sensual pleasure. Anger and pleasure are mutually exclusive. You can’t have pleasure when you’re angry. Learn how to discharge your anger effectively without blame. (See part three, “Women’s Wisdom Program for Flourishing and Healing.”) Though this isn’t easy, please make every effort to leave your resentments at the bedroom door. Let your partner know when he’s doing it right. Most men are performance oriented. When you let them know when they
are
doing it right, they will go out of their way to do it right every time. When they are able to give you pleasure, they feel good about them selves.

In the process, lose the goal orientation. Nothing is more elusive than the orgasm that you are “trying” to get to. And nothing is less sen sual than the goal orientation of today’s hurried couple. One of the best parts of the Bodanskys’ work is that they teach that orgasm begins at the first sign of a pelvic floor muscle contraction. Instead of contracting your muscles and striving to reach an orgasm, you do just the opposite. You learn how to relax all your pelvic floor and buttock muscles so that you feel more and more. Any other approach limits your erotic potential. It’s okay to have a “quickie” now and then. But make sure you have some uninterrupted afternoons or evenings when the only goal is to explore each other and not try to reach a finish line. Remember, orgasm doesn’t have to be the ultimate goal.

In fact, once you know how to have an orgasm, you don’t have to worry about it. Now you’re free to lose yourself in the sensation of your partner’s skin, scent, and kisses. This is what’s really missing from many couples’ lovemaking. And it’s why lack of desire is so common. We literally have to train ourselves to stay in the moment and bask in the delicious sensation of being touched or kissed, without any other goal in mind. It’s like being seventeen again, when you weren’t ready for intercourse and spent hours and hours necking and petting instead. The amount of desire and fulfillment you can build up is wonderful.

11.
Give nature a hand if necessary. It is very well documented that humans secrete sexual attractant pheromones in their sweat. These are particularly potent in women at ovulation, which, when women lived together under natural light, tended to occur at the full moon. One example of the power of pheromones is their effect on mosquitoes. It’s also well documented that the biting activity of female mosquitoes increases five hundred times at the full moon. At ovulation, women are also more likely to be bitten by mosquitoes, and blondes are more likely to be bit ten than brunettes.
²²
According to the research of Winnifred Cutler, Ph.D., and others, external application of specially formulated pheromones can mimic the sexual attractant properties of naturally occurring pheromones, thus rendering the wearer more attractive to potential sexual partners. In her research on women who had had hys terectomies and who were using pheromones, the researchers stopped the study because it was so obvious that the women who were using the pheromones were attracting more attention than the control group.
²³

We’re just beginning to appreciate this new and exciting area of hu man biology. For example, there is evidence that when the hormone oxytocin is given to people via nasal spray, they become more trusting.
²⁴
Oxytocin is the bonding hormone and is produced in the body in large amounts during childbirth and breast-feeding and in lesser amounts during pleasurable social interactions and also during sex. (A word of caution. Pat Allen, Ph.D., points out that having intercourse with a man you’ve recently met and are attracted to produces a lot of oxytocin in a woman—so much so that she can become addicted to him. Then if “he doesn’t write, he doesn’t call,” she has to go through a painful oxytocin withdrawal that can take up to two years. It’s worse than crack cocaine! Most women know exactly what I’m talking about. So if you are looking for a committed mate, you should be careful about having intercourse before you are clear about your potential partner’s intentions. See Dr. Allen’s website at
www.drpatallen.com
.)

Pheromones are a different class of hormones than oxytocin, but I use the example simply to document the powerful effect that small molecules can have on our brains and behavior. Pheromones are available from Winnifred Cutler’s Athena Institute (see
www.athenainstitute.com
) and also from
www.love-scent.com
.

By the way, a little help from hormone therapy can also boost a low libido if you’ve already tried the other suggestions outlined here (including practicing self-cultivation twice per week, as mentioned in step 5). If the problem is vaginal dryness or painful intercourse, using a bit of vaginal estrogen may work wonders. Be sure to use lots of lubrication. If that doesn’t work, try systemic estrogen for a month or so. Transdermal testosterone is another option (start with less than 300 mcg per day, either as a patch or in a skin cream from a compounding pharmacy). A 2008 study of 814 women showed that it does increase sexual satisfaction, although almost half the study group dropped out eventually because of unwanted hair growth and voice deepening, and four developed breast cancer.
²⁵

12.
Get creative. Don’t be afraid to try new things, step out of the box a little, and expand your ideas about who you are. Adding some spice keeps your sex life exciting, and a little creativity can go a long way. For example, a colleague of mine takes turns reading erotic fiction out loud with her boyfriend in bed. “The book we’re reading, part of the Herotica series of women’s erotic fiction, has almost sev enty stories, so if one doesn’t appeal we just flip to another that does. I love these stories because they’re written for women, which is better for couples than the male-oriented material out there (much of which is a turn-off for me).” She finds that reading such stories out loud works because it’s far less intimidating to speak someone else’s words than to come up with her own.

She’s also experimented with using a silk scarf as a blindfold. “It doesn’t have to be kinky,” she says. “It just heightens your senses (when you’re the one who is wearing it) and builds anticipation in a major way. When we did this the first time, in front of a wonderful fire on a cold winter night, my boyfriend gave me a fabulous massage with essential oils. What we did wasn’t necessarily so amazing, but using the blindfold dialed up the excitement so it felt pretty amazing. A side benefit is that this also fosters trust, because the per son being blindfolded is trusting his or her partner, and the partner is honored by being the recipient of that trust.”

Of course, every woman needs to find what works for her, and the variations are endless. I personally like the erotic literature ed ited by Lonnie Barbach, such as
Erotic Interludes
(Plume, 1995). The Emmanuelle movies from the 1970s are also very erotic, as is the movie
Two Moon Junction
.

C
IRCUMCISION AND
S
EXUALITY
: T
HE
C
RUCIAL
L
INK

If we are to reclaim the erotic in our lives and move toward a partnership society in which the sexuality of males and females is celebrated equally, we must be willing to look at our participation in practices that are as harmful to the sexuality of men as they are to women. In other words, women aren’t the only ones who have suffered sexually in our dominator society. Routine male infant circumcision, done within the first three days of life and often without anesthesia, is a form of massive, societally approved male sexual abuse that removes a very important erotic tissue in men. Few people would disagree that routine female circumcision—the removal of the clitoris and labia—is completely unacceptable. In fact, the United Nations has issued a decree against it. Happily, the rate of male circumcision continues to fall in the United States.

Uncircumcised Is the Norm

The vast majority of the world’s men, including most Europeans and Scandinavians, are uncircumcised. And before 1900, circumcision was virtually nonexistent in the United States as well—except for Jewish and Muslim people, who’ve been performing circumcisions for hundreds of years for religious reasons. Believe it or not, circumcision was introduced in English-speaking countries in the late 1800s to control or prevent masturbation, similar to the way that female circumcision was promoted and contin ues to be advocated in some Muslim and African countries to control women’s sexuality.
²⁶
As the absurdity of this position became apparent, new justifications, such as the prevention of cervical and penile cancers, received the blessing of the medical establishment. But these are justifications that sci ence has been unable to support. Nor is there any scientific proof that circumcision prevents sexually transmitted diseases.

The Pleasures of Natural Sex

The male foreskin, one of the most richly innervated and hyperelastic pieces of tissue in the male body, is there for a reason. In her well-researched book,
Sex as Nature Intended It
(Turning Point Press, 2001), author Kristen O’Hara documents why the design of an intact penis not only ensures maximal sexual sensation for the male but also satisfies the female need for clitoral stimulation at the same time. Most American women have not personally experienced the sensation of sex with an uncircum cised man because the majority of men in this country, espe cially those born before 1980, have been circumcised. But O’Hara’s long-ago affair with an uncircumcised man was the spark that touched off years of research, the result of which is her eye-opening book. Consider the following:

The primary pleasure zones of the natural (uncircumcised) penis are located in the upper penis, which includes the penis head, the foreskin’s inner lining, and the frenulum—the hinge of skin that connects the foreskin to the head of the penis. When a male is circumcised, some of the most erotically sensitive areas of the penis are removed: the foreskin that normally covers the head of the penis (the glans) and some or all of the frenulum.

The frenulum contains high concentrations of nerve endings that are sensitive to fine touch. The glans was designed by nature to be covered all the time except during sexual activity. Upon erection, both foreskin layers unfold onto the up per penile shaft, leaving the highly innervated frenulum, glans, and inner lining exposed and readied for sexual activity. This is one of the reasons why the penile tip is the focus of sexual excitement.

New scientific evidence shows that highly erogenous tissue equivalent to the female clitoris is located in the core of the penis, beneath the corona (the hook-like head of the penis) and coronal tip. This sensitive tissue extends all the way down the length of the penile shaft to the pubic mound, and onto the pelvic bone in a manner analogous to the anatomy of the female clitoris. Though the penis contains nerves that are sexually excited by pressure, its tip contains the greatest density of these nerves and is therefore the most sexually responsive part, just as the tip of the clitoris is the most sensitive part in the female. And like the tip of the female clitoris, the tip of the penis is sexually stimulated by the pleasurable sensations created by the massaging actions of the movement of the foreskin upon it during intercourse.
²⁷
During intercourse, these exquisitely sensitive nerves of the upper penis both excite a man sexually and control the rhythm of penile thrusting. “When the natural penis thrusts inward, the vaginal walls brush against the erotically sensitive nerves of the glans, the foreskin’s inner lining, and the frenulum, causing these nerves to fire off sensations of pleasure,” writes O’Hara. “The inward thrust of the penis keeps these pleasure sensations ongoing, but after these nerves have fired, the penis senses a reduction in pleasurable feelings, so it stops its inward thrust and begins its outward stroke in search of stronger sensations. During the outward stroke, the foreskin’s outer layer slides forward to cloak the nerves of its inner lining, while the inner lining itself covers the frenulum,” she continues. “Once covered, these nerves are allowed to rest from stimulation until the next inward thrust. As the foreskin moves forward on the shaft, it bunches up behind the coronal ridge, and may sometimes roll forward over the corona, depending upon the length of the stroke. This ap plies pressure to the interior tissue of the corona and coronal ridge where nerves that are excited by pressure send a wave of sexual excitement throughout the upper penis. The natural penis receives pleasure sensations from one set of sensory nerves on the inward thrust and a different set of nerves on the outward stroke. It can maintain a continuous stream of highly pleasurable sensations by maintaining the right rhythm.” And intriguingly, because the area of sexual sensation is so localized in the tip, the penis only has to travel a short distance to excite one set of nerves or another. In other words, it doesn’t have to withdraw very far to receive pleasure on the outward stroke. This allows the penis to stay deep inside the vagina, keeping the man’s pubic mound in close and frequent contact with a woman’s clitoral area, which increases her pleasure and a sense of closeness. Most women really enjoy the sense of melting into their mates that this position enhances.