accurate source of knowledge about sex, you’ll be able to hear your body’s signal that it needs help, and you’ll take it seriously.
This is as literal as it gets: It’s not how you feel (pain). It’s how you feel (tolerant or not) about how you feel.
When Little Monitors Should Be Impatient!
This is the kind of story that fills me with righteous anger. A woman in a wheelchair approached me after a public talk and told me that my presentation was the first time she had ever heard that there are effective treatments for vaginismus, chronic tension of the pelvic floor muscle that makes penetration of the vagina either impossible or very painful. Her doctors had never mentioned that her vaginismus might be treatable.
Why didn’t they tell her? Was it because the doctors didn’t know? Was it because they didn’t feel comfortable talking about sex with any twenty-something woman? Was it because it didn’t occur to them that a woman in a wheelchair has just as much right to a satisfying sex life as any other woman? I don’t know. But I can’t help wondering if those doctors would have ignored complaints of sexual dysfunction and pain from a twenty-something man in a wheelchair. influencing the little monitor part 2: changing the
kind of effort I have a big “Demotivator” poster on the wall in my office, featuring a photo of a penguin waddling away from the camera, and this caption: LIMITATIONS Until you spread your wings, you’ll have no idea how far you can walk.
It’s a joke, obviously, but I bought it when I was writing my dissertation because I actually found it highly motivating. Anytime I bumped up against an unexpected challenge, or anytime a challenge turned out to be more difficult than I anticipated, that waddling penguin reminded me that I would find a way around or through it. If I couldn’t get there by flying, I’d get there some by other method, even if I had to walk the whole way.
If there is somewhere you want to go and it turns out your plan for getting there won’t work, that doesn’t mean you can’t go there or that you shouldn’t try; it just means you’ll have to get there some other way. If you would like your sexual wellbeing to be different from how it is now— whether that means repairing some damage or expanding into extraordinary ecstasy—you may just need to change the kind of effort you’re putting into the goal.
If your goal is orgasm during intercourse, it’s helpful to know that only about a quarter of women are reliably orgasmic from penetration alone— that fact can change your criterion velocity—but it’s more helpful to know that clitoral stimulation is often a more effective path to orgasm. To have an orgasm during intercourse, change the kind of effort you’re investing: Add clitoral stimulation. You can do this with your own hand, your partner’s hand, a vibrator, or by grinding your pubic bone against their pubic bone.
If your goal is spontaneous desire, knowing that spontaneous desire is comparatively rare helps change your criterion velocity, but knowing how
to create a highly sex-positive context lets you invest the most effective kind of effort. The best contexts, as we’ve seen, involve turning on all the ons and turning off all the offs. Or, to switch metaphors, dig out the weeds of sex-negative culture from your garden. Go back to your worksheets and see what aspects of your context you might be able to change, to create a context that promotes both enjoying and eagerness.
And practicing the skill of nonjudging is the most fundamental new effort you can invest in improving your sexual functioning. If your family and culture planted things in your garden that you want to dig out and replace with something new, nonjudging is the tool that will allow you to stand quietly in your garden and watch the weeds die, even the weeds you were taught to cherish and nurture. Allow the weeds to die, for the sake of the whole garden.
Merritt is the queen of not doing it the way you expect her to. She began to trust herself not when she could give herself pleasure, but when she could give her partner pleasure. She embraced herself as a sexual woman . . . when she allowed herself not to be sexual. She sank down in the light of intense pleasure . . . when she let go of trying to experience pleasure.
“It’s like how your fingers feel when you come in from the cold. It hurts for a while, but then they’re warm.” That’s how she described the experience of letting go of the sexuality she thought she was supposed to have and opening up space for the sexuality she did have.
“You’d think a middle-aged lesbian would know better than to accept what the world says about how women’s sexuality works. But letting go of all that is hard.”
“You’ve got a sensitive brake,” I said, “and you’ve probably had that brake a lot longer than you’ve had feminist politics.”
One last story: Merritt and Carol got married not long after their daughter graduated from high school. That kid—a peer sex educator in her high school, of course—organized a bridal shower for her moms that included, among the more pragmatic gifts of garden store gift cards and new towels, a kit from their daughter containing sparkling cider, scented candles, and massage oil, in a pretty basket with a bow.
“I can’t believe my child is giving her parents date night paraphernalia,” Merritt said.