conclusion
YOU ARE THE SECRET INGREDIENT So what have we learned?
We’ve learned that we’re all made of the same parts, organized in different ways—no two alike. That sexual arousal is the process of both turning on the ons and turning off the offs. That context—your environment and your mental state—influences how and when the ons and offs activate.
We’ve learned that genital response and sexual arousal aren’t always the same thing. That desire can be spontaneous or responsive, and both are normal. That some women orgasm pretty reliably from intercourse, most don’t, both are normal, and neither is a bigger deal than you want it to be.
Above all, we’ve learned that it’s not how your sexuality functions but how you feel about how your sexuality functions that determines whether your sex life is characterized by worry and distress . . . or by confidence and joy.
To get there, we’ve discussed anatomy, physiology, behavioral and comparative psychology, evolutionary psychology, health psychology, moral psychology, gender studies, media studies, and more. I’ve used metaphors, stories, my twenty years of experience as an educator, and a century or more of science.
The depth and complexity of women’s sexuality demand all this, and
more. 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 how to get it “right”—settings like the Kinsey Institute and one of only a handful of Ph.D. programs with a formal concentration in human sexuality.
I wrote this book to share what I’ve learned—what has helped me and what I’ve seen help other women. I wrote it for my sister and my mother, for my sister’s young adult stepdaughters, 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.