introduction YES, YOU ARE NORMAL To be a sex educator is to be asked questions. I’ve stood in college dining halls with a plate of food in my hands answering questions about orgasm. I’ve been stopped in hotel lobbies at professional conferences to answer questions about vibrators. I’ve sat on a park bench, checking social media on my phone, only to find questions from a stranger about her asymmetrical genitals. I’ve gotten emails from students, from friends, from their friends, from total strangers about sexual desire, sexual arousal, sexual pleasure, sexual pain, orgasm, fetishes, fantasies, bodily fluids, and more.
Questions like . . . • Once my partner initiates, I’m into it, but it seems like it never even occurs to me to be the one to start things. Why is that? • My boyfriend was like, “You’re not ready, you’re still dry.” But I was so ready. So why wasn’t I wet? • I saw this thing about women who can’t enjoy sex because they worry about their bodies the whole time. That’s me. How do I stop doing that? • I read something about women who stop wanting sex after a while in a relationship, even if they still love their partner. That’s me. How do I start wanting sex with my partner again? • I think maybe I peed when I had an orgasm . . . ? • I think maybe I’ve never had an orgasm . . . ?
Under all these questions, there’s really just one question:
Am I normal? (The answer is nearly always: Yes.) This book is a collection of answers. They’re answers that I’ve seen change women’s lives, answers informed by the most current science and by the personal stories of women whose growing understanding of sex has transformed their relationships with their own bodies. These women are my heroines, and I hope that by telling their stories, I’ll empower you to follow your own path, to reach for and achieve your own profound and unique
sexual potential. the true story of sex After all the books that have been written about sex, all the blogs and TV shows and radio Q&As, how can it be that we all still have so many questions?
Well. The frustrating reality is we’ve been lied to—not deliberately, it’s no one’s fault, but still. We were told the wrong story.
For a long, long time in Western science and medicine, women’s sexuality was viewed as Men’s Sexuality Lite—basically the same but not