story of women’s sexuality—I’m not sure the whole story would actually fit in one book. Instead, I’ve included the parts of the story that I’ve found most powerful in my work as a sex educator, promoting women’s sexual wellbeing, autonomy, and pleasure.
The purpose of this book is to offer a new, science-based way of thinking about women’s sexual wellbeing. Like all new ways of thinking, it opens up a lot of questions and challenges much preexisting knowledge. If you want to dive deeper, you’ll find references in the notes, along with details about my process for boiling down a complex and multifaceted body of research into something practical. if you feel broken, or know someone who does One more thing before we get into chapter 1. Remember how I said we’ve all been lied to, but it’s no one’s fault? I want to take a moment to recognize the damage done by that lie.
So many women come to my blog or to my class or to my public talks convinced that they are sexually broken. They feel dysfunctional.
Abnormal. And on top of that, they feel anxious, frustrated, and hopeless about the lack of information and support they’ve received from medical professionals, therapists, partners, family, and friends.
“Just relax,” they’ve been told. “Have a glass of wine.”
Or, “Women just don’t want sex that much. Get over it.”
Or, “Sometimes sex hurts—can’t you just ignore it?”
I understand the frustration these women experience, and the despair— and in the second half of the book I talk about the neurological process that traps people in frustration and despair, shutting them off from hope and joy, and I describe science-based ways to get out of the trap.
Here’s what I need you to know right now: The information in this book will show you that whatever you’re experiencing in your sexuality— whether it’s challenges with arousal, desire, orgasm, pain, no sexual sensations—is the result of your sexual response mechanism functioning appropriately . . . in an inappropriate world. You are normal; it is the world
around you that’s broken.
That’s actually the bad news.
The good news is that when you understand how your sexual response mechanism works, you can begin to take control of your environment and your brain in order to maximize your sexual potential, even in a broken
world. And when you change your environment and your brain, you can change—and heal—your sexual functioning.
This book contains information that I have seen transform women’s sexual wellbeing. I’ve seen it transform men’s understanding of their women partners. I’ve seen same-sex couples look at each other and say, “Oh. So that’s what was going on.” Students, friends, blog readers, and even fellow sex educators have read a blog post or heard me give a talk and said, “Why didn’t anyone tell me this before? It explains everything!”
I know for sure that what I’ve written in this book can help you. It may not be enough to heal all the wounds inflicted on your sexuality by a culture in which it sometimes feels nearly impossible for a woman to “do” sexuality right, but it will provide powerful tools in support of your healing.
How do I know?
Evidence, of course!
At the end of one semester, I asked my 187 students to write down one really important thing they learned in my class. Here’s a small sample of
what they wrote:
I am normal!
I AM NORMAL I learned that everything is NORMAL, making it possible to go through the rest of my life with confidence and joy.
I learned that I am normal! And I learned that some people have spontaneous desire and others have responsive desire and this fact helped me really understand my personal life.
Women vary! And just because I do not experience my sexuality in the same way as many other women, that does not make me abnormal.
Women’s sexual desire, arousal, response, etc., is incredibly varied.
The one thing I can count on regarding sexuality is that people vary, a lot.
That everyone is different and everything is normal; no two alike.
No two alike!
And many more. More than half of them wrote some version of “I am normal.”
I sat in my office and read those responses with tears in my eyes. There was something urgently important to my students about feeling “normal,” and somehow my class had cleared a path to that feeling.
The science of women’s sexual wellbeing is young, and there is much still to be learned. But this young science has already discovered truths about women’s sexuality that have transformed my students’ relationships with their bodies—and it has certainly transformed mine. I wrote this book to share the science, stories, and sex-positive insights that prove to us that, despite our culture’s vested interest in making us feel broken, dysfunctional,
unlovely, and unlovable, we are in fact fully capable of confident, joyful
sex. • • • The promise of Come as You Are is this: No matter where you are in your sexual journey right now, whether you have an awesome sex life and want to expand the awesomeness, or you’re struggling and want to find solutions, you will learn something that will improve your sex life and transform the way you understand what it means to be a sexual being. And you’ll discover that, even if you don’t yet feel that way, you are already
sexually whole and healthy.
The science says so.
I can prove it.
I. I’ll use “they” as a singular pronoun, rather than “he or she” throughout the book. It’s simpler, as well as more inclusive of folks outside the gender binary.