— Women-Led Digital Platforms That You Must Check Out
From the female orgasm to increasing the visibility of underrepresented sexual orientations, these women-led digital platforms are hitting the right spot.
Prom nights, cheerleading squads, and annual basketball games are all representative of classic high school films that we have all been guilty of binge-watching at some point in time. So when director Ben Taylor’s Sex Education, a popular Netflix series, came around, it was a breath of fresh air in an, otherwise overcrowded genre as it normalised the conversations around teenage sex, and sex in general, portraying it in all its awkward, confusing glory. The show is centered around Otis (Asa Butterfield), the awkward, virgin teenage son of a sex therapist (Gillian Anderson), who along with his friend, Maeve (Emma Mackey), decide to put his mother’s (sometimes) overbearing skills to use in order to make a little cash. They discover that their classmates are bogged down by sex and body issues they’re not comfortable speaking about with anyone.
In addition to educating us about sexual health practices, the show destigmatises masturbation, sexual fetishes, and fantasies, while also shining the spotlight on cyberbullying and physical harassment. Closer home, a slew of independent, women-led digital platforms are also normalising the conversations around sex, namely Agents of Ishq, Liberating Sexuality, RedWomb, and LSD Cast (Love Sex Desire).
First up, filmmaker and writer, Paromita Vohra’s bi-lingual multimedia platform, Agents of Ishq that uses interesting audio-visual formats to disseminate information about sex. For instance a Lavani on consent to animation on masturbation to a survey on how men feel about their penis. “I started Agents of Ishq because I felt the pre-existing conversation about sex was stultifying. We have always talked about sex in context to violence or negativity – how to avoid rape, pregnancy, or disease. Even though lived experiences are complex and multi-layered, we have spoken about it in a polarised way between the sexual revolution and absolute repression. Agents of Ishq created a friendly, fluid, and inclusive space. We even used relatable (desi) language to talk about sex, rooted in Indian experience and contexts.” explains Vohra.
The platform now has over 250 user-generated accounts of their sexual experiences and a highly engaged audience that looks out for fun, clarification, confession, a sense of community, and even sharing their own stories. They have affirmed their audience that they are not alone who have doubts and questions about the subject.
In the same vein Indraja Saroha’s YouTube channel, Liberating Sexuality is a repository of sex-positive videos that look at the intersection of mental health, body positivity, and sexuality. The law graduate started the platform to begin a conversation around taboo subjects. Indraja believes for a woman to express her sexual desires is a revolutionary act. Women tend to attract attention from people who consider this to be a declaration of their sexual availability because they’ve almost never seen a woman’s sexuality independent of the male gaze, or have reduced it to fetishisation. Further, Saroha elaborates, “Whether it is movies, pop culture, art, or even sex education, the conversation is limited to heterosexual men, as if they are the only ones entitled to pleasure and by extension, to have their desires represented and acknowledged as normal. Most of us need a voice, someone we relate to, who can express what we feel. It helps us feel less lonely, realise that our experiences are natural and we have our own agency.”
Similarly, Independent radio producer and journalist Chhavi Sachdev encourages people to engage in open conversations about sex through her candid podcast, LSDCast – Love, Sex, and Dating. While Pallavi Barnwal, a sex educator and founder of RedWomb, organises meetings to help men and women embrace their vulnerability and sexuality in a safe space. “Being a woman who runs a sex-positive platform has worked in my favour. I’m not only able to discuss issues faced by other women, but also engage with people from different genders and age groups without my intentions being questioned. Had it been man, he wouldn’t have received similar access” adds Pallavi.
Quarantine has changed our everyday existences, from the workplace to how we consume content to the way we go out and interact with others. The question, however, of ways self-isolation is affecting our sex lives has remained speculative thus far. Because while people have joked about a post-pandemic baby boom and latched onto the idea that everyone is masturbating based on anecdotes and data about sex toy sales being on the rise, it seems as if these beliefs may be completely off-base.
Last month, sex toy company Lora DiCarlo commissioned a study about how quarantine is changing our views on sex and self-pleasure, as “there’s a lot of excitement out there about like, ‘Oh, people are home all the time now, so they must be having a lot of sex. We’re gonna have a baby boom in 9 or 12 months,'” said Sarah Brown, a certified sex educator and the brand’s director of product.
“But people make a lot of assumptions based on just what they think would happen,” she continued, “And we wanted to make sure we understood what’s really happening, so we can help people and consumers with their sex lives.”
According to new data collected by Lora DiCarlo and Persuasium Research, it turns out that for many people, it’s not all masturbation and constant sexual activity. After speaking to 443 men and women, the study found that while half of those surveyed said their sex lives have stayed the same, a third of respondents reported that their sexual relationships were actually in decline. And the big reason why? It’s anxiety.
“What we found was, regardless of gender, a lot of people are really stressed. They’re stressed, they’re anxious, they’re worried about their finances,” said Carey Plunkett, the founder of Persuasium Research. “That’s not really conducive to feeling sexy or feeling aroused.”
“We had quite a few comments about how people aren’t getting dressed up. They aren’t able to get their hair done. They’re eating comfort food, and that’s also not conducive to feeling sexy,” she said, before sharing a few specific quotes from people who explained that “getting heavier,” “sleeping worse,” having too many people in the house, and not having the ability to “get pretty or dressed up” has equaled a “declining sex drive.”
Women in particular have been negatively impacted by the pandemic, with 40% of female respondents saying they were masturbating less now for similar reasons.
“It’s not happening as much for men as it is for women,” she said, before hypothesizing that it could have something to do with the fact that — in between work and having too much going on in the household — women are bearing the brunt of this decline in libido.
“Just in other data I’ve seen, women are the ones doing the cooking, the shopping, the home chores,” she said. “Women are taking care of everyone, and that’s not giving them enough time or energy to take care of themselves.”
Brown further posited that many women are likely feeling drained from all the emotional labor they’re having to do as well, saying that this “invisible labor becomes a lot more visible when it’s layered on top of everything else.”
She went on to refute initial speculation surrounding a baby boom by pointing toward pervasive feelings of anxiety and existential dread as reasons why it’s too soon to say whether or not it’ll actually happen. In the wake of the pandemic, Brown’s friends who were going to try for a baby “pretty much said ‘nope,'” and are “reupping their birth control and being very, very careful.”
“Because they don’t want to get pregnant right now — and not even nine months from now — not knowing what the hospital environment is going to be like,” Brown explained. “That’s the huge question for all of us. Yes, potentially, there’s more people having sex, but we also have a lot of people who are super anxious right now.”
There were also some heartening takeaways from their findings. LGBTQIA+ consumers and those quarantined apart from their partners have been more likely to report better sexual relationships with themselves — something that may explain the data related to an increase in sex toys sales. Brown interpreted this as people using this time to “explore a bit more,” as well as using masturbation to “release stress and tension… for a sense of well-being.”
Both Brown and Plunkett said it makes sense that the LGBTQIA+ community has been masturbating more as a whole, given the trends spotted in their past Sexual Pleasure Study. “LGBTQ+ persons tend to be more comfortable with masturbation than heterosexuals in terms of how they use masturbation,” Plunkett said. “It’s more integrated into their overall health and wellness routines… for stress relief. They just use masturbation more productively and positively for their overall health and wellbeing.”
One of the biggest takeaways has been about how our communication styles surrounding sex and intimacy will likely change thanks to the pandemic. After all, according to the study, live-in partners have been doing more touching that is comforting, rather than sexual — with 40% more hugging and 17% more intimate touches being reported.
“To me, one of the things that get missed on a lot of the studies on sex, sexuality and pleasure is that missing part of intimacy and communication. I thought it was pretty interesting to see in a pandemic situation, where stress is very high, that comfort has come into the conversation,” Brown said, pointing out that couples — many of whom spend their days apart at work — are now together all the time. “In this case, we’re seeing it’s happening in other ways than experiencing pleasure with genitals. I think there’s a lot we can learn on the communication side of sex and relationships here.”
That said, while couples quarantining apart have seen improvements in communication as they’re being forced to keep in touch digitally, Plunkett added that some have felt a lack of intimacy from trying to keep their sex lives alive this way.
“People may be sending more texts, and a lot of them said that they were communicating their sexual fantasies a lot more than they ever have to their partner. There’s more video chat sex,” Plunkett relayed. “But [as one respondent wrote], ‘I miss the touch of my partner, both sexual and for affirmation of closeness. But we have improved our text and phone conversations and have experimented with more sexy selfies which has been fun.'”
Which means that while Brown believes that there’s a lot of positives to be gained from improved communication techniques, nothing will change our intrinsic need for physical contact, as “there’s something very primitive to us as humans when it comes to physical contact and being touch-starved is an absolute thing we’re not necessarily going to get away from.”
She concluded, “The future is basically open, and we don’t really know. But I think there’s a lot of opportunity for people to take skills they learn in quarantine and with different technologies for connecting with people and carrying that forward.”
Has your sex life taken something of a nosedive in recent months? It’s likely, at this point in lockdown, that the answer is yes, since the majority of us fall into one of two camps: those who have been unable to see (or meet new) sexual partners; and those who have now been inseparable from the apple of their eye for a little bit too long. Throw in the stress and anxiety caused by current events, and it’s no wonder our libidos are feeling the effect. Research has shown that not only are we having sex less in lockdown, the quality of the sex we are having is lower.
So as lockdown restrictions start to ease, what can we do to spice up our sex lives? Here, Mia Sabat, sex therapist at Emjoy, offers her expert advice.
Try listening to audio erotica
Tapping into our senses is an excellent way to address a flagging sex drive, and Sabat recommends audio erotica to help revive the libido, stimulate the mind and reconnect with your own – and your partner’s – sexuality. “One of its primary functions is to appeal to the body’s most important, and often neglected, sex organ: the brain,” she says. “Research has actually shown that listening to erotica can be one of the most successful practices women can utilise to achieve sexual satisfaction.”
Unlike pornography, which tends to cater to a male audience and focuses on the visual side of sex, audio erotica delivers the script via sound, encouraging our imaginations to go wild. “It’s great for couples because, when listening, each individual can engage with their own fantasies, preferences and turn-ons, while still connecting over the same storyline or narrative, as they act out the story that is being told.” Sabat says. Emjoy is but one of an array of audio erotica apps that offers guided sessions to get you started.
Consider the kind of pornography you watch
Since many forms of pornography are created with a male viewer in mind, it’s a good idea to look for erotica that is being made by women, for women, and that appeals to both sexes. “The story you watch is so important when choosing any form of erotica,” says Sabat. “And because of this I recommend women engage with porn that is going to engage their mind first and foremost, so that their pleasure, preferences and fantasies are able to come to life. By engaging with less conventional and more creative forms of pornography, individuals are better able to cultivate their sexual energy, because it allows people to connect their brains to their sexual desires more tangibly.”
Experiment with touch
Consider incorporating touching “rules” to up the ante on your intimate time together. “You may want to lie together, listening to an audio story, with a no-hands policy in place,” suggests Sabat. “Equally, you might be curious about experimenting with mutual masturbation. My best advice is to let the story build heat and tension between you and your partner and to enjoy that feeling – the mind is so powerful!”
Schedule sex
It may sound a bit, well, unsexy, but making plans for intimacy can actually ensure you look forward to and enjoy precious time together: “Not only will you both feel mounting excitement by looking forward to it throughout the day, but you’ll both feel less on edge, knowing what to expect. Use this dedicated day or hour as a special time for intimacy, exploration and play, and engage with one another’s pleasures,” says Sabat.
Masturbate and explore yourself
“It’s important to remember every sexual experience begins within ourselves, and masturbation embodies this journey. Beyond stimulating our sex drive, self-pleasure allows us to connect with our minds and bodies within a context we often aren’t able to explore,” says Sabat. “It can help us really focus on what we enjoy, without worrying about anyone else, and this can be excellent for both our own wellbeing and our sex life as a whole.” Getting to know our bodies allows us to understand what makes us tick, what doesn’t, and importantly makes us better able to communicate what we want and need, with confidence.
In the contemporary moment of sex-positive feminism, praises for the orgasmic capacity of the vibrator abound. “They’re all-encompassing, a blanket of electricity, that’ll course through your veins, producing orgasms you didn’t know you were physically capable of having,” wrote Erica Moen in her web comic “Oh Joy Sex Toy.” Vibrators today go hand in hand with masturbation and female sexuality.
Yet for American housewives in the 1930s, the vibrator looked like any other household appliance: a nonsexual new electric technology that could run on the same universal motor as their kitchen mixers and vacuum cleaners. Before small motors became cheap to produce, manufacturers sold a single motor base with separate attachments for a range of household activities, from sanding wood to drying hair, or healing the body with electrical vibrations.
In my research on the medical history of electricity, vibrators appear alongside galvanic battery belts and quack electrotherapies as one of many quirky home cures of the early 20th century.
Vibrating for health
The first electro-mechanical vibrator was a device called a “percuteur” invented by British physician Joseph Mortimer Granville in the late 1870s or early 1880s. Granville thought that vibration powered the human nervous system, and he developed the percuteur as a medical device for stimulating ailing nerves.
Current medical opinion held that hysteria was a nervous disease, yet Granville refused to treat female patients, “simply because I do not want to be hoodwinked… by the vagaries of the hysterical state.” The vibrator began as a therapy for men only. It then quickly left the sphere of mainstream medical practice.
By the early 20th century, manufacturers were selling vibrators as ordinary electric household appliances. The merits of electricity in the home were not as obvious then as they are today: Electricity was dangerous and expensive, but it promised excitement and modernity. Electric commodities, like sewing and washing machines, became the hallmarks of the rising middle class.
Vibrators were another shiny new technology, used to sell consumers on the prospect of modern electric living. Just as banks handed out free toasters for opening checking accounts in the 1960s, in the 1940s the Rural Electrification Administration distributed free vibrators to encourage farmers to electrify their homes. These modern electric devices were not thought of as sex toys.
Vibrating snake oil
In what may sound surprising to 21st-century readers, these appliances promised relief of a nonsexual variety. Users of all ages vibrated just about every body part, without sexual intent.
A 1913 advertisement for the White Cross Electric Vibrator in the New-York Tribune.
Vibrators made housework easier by soothing the pains of tired housewives, calming the cries of sick children and invigorating the bodies of modern working men. They were applied to tired backs and sore feet, but also the throat, to cure laryngitis; the nose, to relieve sinus pressure; and everything in between. Vibration promised to calm the stomachs of colicky babies, and to stimulate hair growth in balding men. It was even thought to help heal broken bones.
A 1910 advertisement in the New York Tribune declared that “Vibration Banishes Disease As the Sun Banishes Mist.” In 1912, the Hamilton Beach “New-Life” vibrator came with a 300-page instructional guide titled “Health and How to Get It,” offering a cure for everything from obesity and appendicitis to tuberculosis and vertigo.
As such advertisements suggest, vibrators were not standard medical treatments, but medical quackery, alternative medicine that didn’t deliver on their promises. Yet the electrical cure-alls sold by the millions.
The classic form of medical quackery in the U.S. market was patent medicine – basically useless concoctions made mainly of alcohol and morphine, sometimes containing downright damaging ingredients like lead and arsenic. After the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act in 1906, the federal government began regulating the sale of patent medicines.
Vibrators and other electrotherapies were not covered by the new law, so they took up the market share of older medical concoctions. The White Cross Vibrator replaced Mrs. Winslow’s Soothing Syrup as a popular home cure rejected by the medical establishment.
In 1915, the Journal of the American Medical Association wrote that the “vibrator business is a delusion and a snare. If it has any effect it is psychology.” The business was dangerous not because it was obscene, but because it was bad medicine. The potential, acknowledged by doctors, for the vibrator to be used in masturbation was just further evidence of its quackery.
The Shelton vibrator’s motor head with various attachments, made by General Electric in the early 20th century.
A cure for masturbatory illness
Sex toy scholar Hallie Lieberman points out that nearly every vibrator company in the early 20th century offered phallic attachments that “would have been considered obscene if sold as dildos.” Presented instead as rectal or vaginal dilators, these devices were supposed to cure hemorrhoids, constipation, vaginitis, cervicitis and other illnesses localized to the genitals and the anus. Hamilton Beach, for example, offered a “special rectal applicator” for “an additional cost of $1.50,” and recommended its use in the treatment of “Impotence,” “Piles—Hemorrhoids” and “Rectal Diseases.”
The two most prominent scholars of vibrator history, Rachel Maines and Hallie Lieberman, argue that vibrators were always secretly sexual, but I disagree. Vibrators were popular medical devices. One of many medical uses of the vibrator was to cure diseases of sexual dysfunction. And this use was a selling point, not a secret, during an era of anti-masturbatory rhetoric.
Special vibrator attachments like the rectal applicator offered dubious treatments for dubious diseases: remedies for ailments purportedly caused by “ruinous and prevalent masturbation.”
Masturbation was thought to cause diseases like impotence in men and hysteria in women. Masturbatory illness was a pretty standard idea in the early 20th century. One of its surviving formulations is the idea that masturbating will make you go blind.
There’s no way to really know how people were using vibrators. But the evidence suggests that they signified medical treatment, not sinful masturbation, regardless of the use. Even if users were doing physical actions that people today think of as masturbation, they didn’t understand themselves to be masturbating, and therefore they weren’t masturbating.
By 1980, vibrators had been rebranded in the public imagination.
Rethinking the vibrator’s history
For most of the 20th century, vibrators remained innocuous quackery. Good Housekeeping even bestowed its seal of approval on some models in the 1950s. When the sexual revolution hit America in the 1960s, vibrators were largely forgotten, outdated appliances.
In the 1970s radical feminists transformed the vibrator from a relic of bygone domesticity to a tool of female sexual liberation. At Betty Dodson’s bodysex workshops, electric vibrations changed “feelings of guilt about masturbation to feelings of celebration so that masturbation became an act of self-love.” She and her sisters embraced vibrators as a political technology that could convert frigid anorgasmic housewives into powerful sexual beings capable both of having multiple orgasms and destroying the patriarchy.
This masturbatory revolt erased the vibrator’s fading reputation as a cure for masturbatory illness and replaced it with a specific, powerful, public and lasting linkage between the vibrator and female masturbatory practice.
They say the mind is the biggest, most powerful sex organ in the body. But, uh, don’t try visualizing that mental image too vividly or literally, unless you’re into that sorta thing?
Instead, imagine your favorite fictional crush pressing you up against a wall, or think back to the hottest sex you ever had in your life. Now stop imagining, because this magical place where all your desires are possible and acceptable exists. And literally anyone can tap into it.
While sexual fantasies are by definition not “real,” their effects on your sex life (especially when explored during masturbation) are — shall we say — palpably physical.
“Engaging your imagination rather than relying on visual porn for example helps to build, enhance and strengthen your erotic mind,” said Dr. Britney Blair, co-founder and Chief Science Officer of the sexual wellness Lover app. “You can bring that imagination to life when you want to prime the pump on your desire or push yourself over the edge to climax while solo or with a partner.”
“It’s incredibly liberating, recognizing our own power to design the scenes and situations that turn us on.”
To be clear, there’s nothing wrong with porn or other forms of erotica. But there’s something especially powerful in orgasming to smut that couldn’t be more personally tailored to what you like.
“In our minds we’re not confined to our studio apartments or our current sexual partners. There are no rules or judgments. Not even the laws of physics apply,” said Gina Gutierrez, co-founder of the popular audio erotica app Dipsea. “It’s incredibly liberating, recognizing our own power to design the scenes and situations that turn us on and to scrap the ones that don’t work for us.”
Don’t take our word for it, though. There’s science to show exactly how real the effects of a healthy erotic imagination are.
“The mind is really the recipient of all the body’s sensations. So there’s this empirical evidence of a huge connection between the mind and pleasure,” she said.
While everyone can benefit from using their imagination as a sexual aid, it’s an especially potent practice for women and others who society has conditioned to feel ashamed about their sexuality.
“We have to do more work to lay down the connections, the neural pathways, between the genitals and the brain’s sensory reward regions,” said Wise. “Using your imagination to masturbate not only gives us the information about what stimulation we need, but also actually strengthens the connections between our genitals and the brain.”
Beyond that, getting off to our own sexual fantasies tackles another negative effect that patriarchy can have on women’s sexuality.
“We’re socialized to think of ourselves as the objects of other people’s desires, like we need to borrow someone else’s idea of pleasure” said Wise. That’s why learning how to be the subject of our own desires, to embody the pleasure we conjure up in our own mind, can be so empowering.
Everyone with a brain, genitals, and desire is already equipped to masturbate to their own sexual fantasies. And while the practice does come more naturally to some, it only takes little guidance and patience to unlock the endless possibilities tucked inside your erotic mind.
Set the right environment
A major key in setting your mind up for erotic success is to ensure your environment allows your brain to feel fully relaxed, safe, and free from distraction.
Pick a time and place where you’ll have full privacy without needing to worry about any interruption, whether from roommates or notifications. For most people, that place will naturally be the bedroom. But put some effort into also making it a true fortress of sensual solitude, like by locking the door, setting your phone to airplane mode, putting on an eye mask, or maybe even using some essential oils and putting on your favorite sexy playlist.
Blair even recommends purposefully scheduling these more exploratory kind of session and making them habitual. So maybe it can be something you add to your nightly ritual before bed: Brush your teeth, do the skincare routine, put on some pajamas, then let your mind wander as you touch yourself.
Create a safe space in your mind
Of course, priming yourself with the right mindset is vital to unlocking your brain’s full fantasy potential.
One of the biggest hurdles to exploring our erotic imaginations is actually the engrained social shame many of us have picked up (even subconsciously) through sexism, homophobia, social stigmas, religion, etc.
“It’s important to know if that is coming up for you, you’re not alone. But there is no such thing as a wrong or right fantasy.” said Blair.
Treat your imagination as a judgement-free zone. To be fair, clearing or redirecting your mind away from feelings of shame is easier said than done. But certain exercises can help (which we’ll get into more in the mind-body connection section below).
Blair suggests that, while exploring sexual fantasies in your mind, try to distinguish between when you’re having a reaction versus a judgment to a certain scenario. Judgments often come from values imposed on you by something or someone else, while visceral reactions can be an indication that your mind wants to explore it further — especially if it’s something your never thought you’d be into.
It’s easy to get scared off by an intense response to a fantasy, and write that off as being too weird or outside the norm for your taste. But if you give yourself a second to assess where that response is coming from, you might actually find that the intensity comes from a part of you that you’ve never tried tapping into before.
“Everything is okay in the world of fantasy. No fantasy is a crime.”
Or maybe not, and that’s fine too. The point is, if you feel safe doing it, just try leaning into parts of your erotic mind that feel challenging and see where it goes.
“Everything is okay in the world of fantasy. No fantasy is a crime,” said Blair. “Whatever turns you on in your mind is totally healthy. Your fantasy doesn’t say anything about you except that you are lucky to have a rich imagination that you can use to have an exciting and enduring erotic life.”
That’s another major benefit of sexual fantasies versus traditional porn, too. You don’t have to worry about any ethical concerns, because your imagination can’t hurt you or anyone else. You’re in total control.
“You imagination is a completely safe space,” said Dipsea’s Gutierrez. “We can play out fantasies that are risky or illicit that we would never actually want to happen in real life. In our minds we’re free to experiment without consequences.”
Familiarize yourself with (but don’t feel limited by) common sexual fantasies
While the whole point is to tap into the unique potential of your own mind, a good jumping off point is to explore whether the most common sexual fantasies spark your interest. Researchers have labeled them into different categories, though there’s a world of possibilities within those labels as well.
Dr. Blair described these categories as multi-partner sex like group sex or threesomes; power, control, or rough sex; novelty, adventure, and variety; taboo and forbidden sex; partner sharing and non-monogamous relationships; passion and romance; and erotic flexibility like homoeroticism or gender-bending.
Jess O’Reilly is a sex educator, author of The New Sex Bible, and Astroglide’s resident sexologist. She explained that through each of these fantasy categories you can help identify the specific core erotic feelings that get you into a heightened state of arousal.
“Oftentimes, they relate to fantasy, escapism or subverting otherwise ‘negative’ emotions. You might find that sex is really hot when you feel powerful, submissive, challenged, mindful, or playful,” she said. “You may also find yourself aroused by feelings that you don’t naturally associate with pleasure, like jealousy, inadequacy, fear, and even humiliation can be exciting.”
What our brains often gravitate to most is pure novelty. What gets you off in a fantasy can actually be the total opposite of your real-life sexual orientation or even completely removed from you, as an abstract scenario happening to someone else entirely.
So don’t be weirded out if you learn that you’re as horny for that fish-god monster from The Shape of Water as the Academy Awards were in 2018. Or maybe you’re one of the many women who enjoys a rape fantasy — which, as Dr. Wise points out, in a fantasy context is the opposite of a real-life rape since, “you’re choosing to have the fantasy and who’s overpowering you. You’re in complete control.”
One other general rule of thumb Wise found is that while men tend toward more visually-oriented fantasies centered around preferred body parts, women tend to focus on overall scenarios. However, it’s impossible to distill the endless possibilities of human sexuality into neat categories. Which is why you also shouldn’t get discouraged or ashamed if none of these common fantasies do it for you.
“Our capacity for imagination is limitless,” said Wise. Don’t feel pressure to confine yours to a specific label.
Start building your erotic imagination through fiction, porn, memories… anything!
The truth is that, while other obstacles might make it hard initially to give yourself permission to explore sexual fantasies, using your imagination is a very natural and innate part of being human. Who doesn’t fantasizing about getting up from their desk in the middle of a hard work day and quitting, or spend time daydreaming about how they’d furnish their dream apartment?
“We make Pinterest boards and save Instagram photos, collect and catalog all these things that we like. I recommend starting to do that for your sex life,” said Gutierrez. “Become more mindful observing what attracts you to someone. The moments where you feel sexiest. What you want to say out loud during sex but hesitate to. Then the next time you want to use your fantasy for pleasure, you know exactly where to draw from.”
Everything in your life can become part of your horny mood board.
Everything in your life can become part of your horny mood board.
We all have that one fictional character or public figure — whether from books, tv, movies, video games, or even politics and the internet — that just does it for us. Begin there, expanding into a specific sexy scene that got you going or whatever comes to mind when you think of that person. Heck, maybe you’re like me and realize that a silky, authoritative voice is actually your kink, leading a bunch of non-erotic popular podcasts to become your go-to spank bank material.
Audio erotica can be a great place to start if you don’t want to take the training wheels off yet to explore sexual fantasies of your own making. Unlike visual porn, audio erotica still exercises the muscles of your erotic imagination, asking you to fill in the details and paint the full picture. While we always recommend Dipsea, there’s also plenty of free ways to try audio erotica like r/gonewildaudio and Girl on the Net.
Once you’re ready to bring yourself more to the forefront of the fantasy, begin with a memory of the hottest, most visceral sex you’ve ever had. Really ground yourself back in that moment by recalling your senses: What position were you in? What did the person’s lust feel like? Were you sweating? How exactly did they touch you?
Touch yourself while pulling from all the erotic mental material you’ve curated, and don’t be afraid to really get your whole body involved in mimicking the sensations you’re creating through your mind. Maybe that means masturbating while you’re on all fours, or matching the tempo of the fantasy, or even dry-humping a pillow. Don’t put any pressure on yourself to orgasm throughout any of this, though, and instead just zero in on embodying the experience of your imagination.
“It’s about giving yourself full permission to explore all our internal pleasure places, and how we experience them in both our minds and bodies at the same time,” said Wise.
Try these exercises to strengthen your mind-body connection
Through her research and other studies in the field, Wise has ultimately found that, “This distinction we make between the mind and body is really a very arbitrary one.”
One of the best ways to embrace this in a way that engages your erotic fantasy life in is through something called mindful sex.
This increasingly popular branch of sex therapy describes a bunch of different practices and exercises that add a layer of sexuality to mindfulness, to help you stay present in your body while experiencing pleasure, train your mind to focus on whatever arouses you, and engage in a non-judgmental curious sexual mindset. Try out basic exercises like pleasure mapping (which Dipsea has a guide for), mindful masturbation (which you can read about here), and sensate focus (which you can read about here).
Wise also suggests a very simple exercise for getting your imagination more connected with your genitals on a neurological level: Just start by tapping or pleasurably touching your genitals, then stop, then think back on the sensations you felt while touching them. Try to recall and summon them back in your body: What did it feel like in your body when the stimulation was building, then dissipating?
At first, it might not feel like much at all and the pleasure may be pretty mild compared to what you’re used to while using more immediate erotic visual aids like porn.
“But you’ll slowly start to develop a better connection to that pleasure sensation channel in your brain,” she said.
Use your imagination during partnered sex
While sexual fantasies are a great way to enhance self-love, learning how to engage with them during partnered sex can also do wonders to get people over the edge and into orgasm.
At this point though, you might be wondering: Is it even OK to fantasize about other situations — or maybe even other people — while having sex with a partner?
“It doesn’t matter where you get your appetite, as long as you’d come home to eat.”
“Yes, it’s an unequivocal yes! Because thinking about stuff is not the same as doing it,” said Wise. As the famous saying goes, “It doesn’t matter where you get your appetite, as long as you’d come home to eat.”
It’s totally normal for your mind to desire novelty, especially if you’re not in a new relationship anymore. In fact, Wise found that one of the best ways to ensure a couples’ longevity is precisely this kind of openness and understanding that people need to fuel their erotic imagination with new stuff.
“If we can get over these kind of hang ups, get past this fear of our partners having a fantasy about somebody else while they’re with us, and instead use it as an opportunity talk about: What would you like? What haven’t we tried? What are you afraid to tell me? Because that’s hot. That’s really hot,” said Wise.
Or maybe instead of thinking about someone else, you’d simply rather use your imagination during partnered sex to transport you both to a setting or scenario that heightens your arousal even more.
In the end, what you do with your erotic imagination is up to you. You can share it if you’d like — or keep it all to yourself. That’s what’s so great about sexual fantasies you cut from your own cloth: They’re all yours, and no one else’s.
This May is #masturbationmonth – and these imaginative masturbating ideas will level up your self-loving techniques
There is no shame is self-pleasure. In fact, more and more women are recognising masturbating as a form of sexual self-care (read: wellness). Because the fact is, when you reach climax, your body really does release chemicals which encourage mental wellbeing, something we need more than ever right now. This month is known as Masturbation May, a national celebration of self-love. With all of us having more time on our hands, we asked journalist and sex educator Alix Fox (her portfolio includes being a script consultant for hit Netflix series Sex Education and resident X-rated Agony Aunt for Channel 4’s The Sex Clinic) for her expert, imaginative ideas on how to level up your masturbating techniques, and lead your own personal re-vulva-lution this #MasturbationMay.
Right, it’s time to go and practice some sexual wellness during lockdown.
Massage your hands before your glands
Giving yourself a hand massage – there are great tutorials on YouTube – is a fantastic way to wind down as part of a self-care routine…and helps distribute silky, softening, sensual oil over your mitts before you caress your bits. It’s especially enjoyable if you’ve been typing all day. WooWoo Bliss Arousal Oil does excellent double duty, containing CBD and aloe vera, as well as geranium extracts for a heavenly scent.
Learn the subtle art of ‘self sensate focus’
Becoming more aware of tiny, everyday scrumptious sensations can help you ‘tune into’ your body, heightening your ability to feel thrills, and giving you clues as to new kinds of touches or erogenous zones that you could harness for sexual satisfaction. For instance, when you’re in the shower, move your attention slowly from your head to your toes, noticing how the water feels in each place. As you apply lotion, see how it feels to flutter your fingers on your thighs, or grip your own wrists.
When you notice something that feels luscious, like a beautiful smell, a cool breeze, or the sounds of nature, take an extra moment to savour it. It sounds deceptively simple, but the more you get used to honing in on small, delightful sensations, the easier it is to practise in an erotic context.
Get lippy
Partnered sex often starts with kissing, yet in solo sex the lips are frequently neglected. Apply a little balm, and try stroking and pressing your lips with a fingertip as a form of “for-me foreplay” – some women find this really turns them on. Sucking and licking your fingers or toys during masturbation can be highly erotic too, and connects you with your own intimate scent and taste.
Enjoy a little pain (au chocolat)
A degree of controlled, consensual pain is deliciously pleasurable for many people, as it triggers the body to release endorphins which can give a blissed-out, floaty feeling…but it doesn’t occur to a lot of us to experiment with BDSM without a partner. Explore how it feels to pinch your nipples or slap your bum cheeks with a paddle or crop as you masturbate.
Invest in some coloured wax play candles and drip hot drops artfully on your skin, painting patterns as you savour the sizzle, then taking artful x-rated self-portraits afterwards: I’m a big believer in the body-acceptance and esteem-raising power of taking sexy photos for no-one but yourself.
Combine ‘oh la la’ with ‘ha ha’
Good times come in many forms, and masturbation doesn’t always have to be slinky and sultry, or a hallowed spiritual experience. One of the loveliest things about solo sex is that it’s entirely on your terms. Try getting comfy in bed or on a ‘pleasure picnic’ blanket spread on the floor; have your favourite snacks, drinks and toys set out; and play a comedy series on your TV or laptop while you have a leisurely play with yourself.
The world’s largest global survey of masturbation habits, carried out by toy company Tenga, found that 90 per cent of Brits state that self-touch positively boosts their mood and sense of wellbeing; add the old adage that ‘laughter is the best medicine’, and lazy night of climaxing and cackling at Park & Rec could be just what the doctor ordered if you’re feeling low.
Add the latest power tools to your ‘downstairs DIY’ kit
Innovative new sex toy designs mean there’s no need to ration yourself solely to vibration. The Zumio X looks like nothing you’ve seen before – kinda like a water flosser for vagina dentata – but instead of buzzing, its pinpoint tip moves in miniscule circles, delivering sensation that’s intense, precise, yet oh so quiet it should be sponsored by Bjork. Then there’s the Womanizer Premium – this time looking like an ear thermometer – which uses pulses of air to caress the clitoris and quickly coax out an orgasm like some kind of coochie conjuror (a vagician?!). The Smart Silence feature means it automatically turns off when you take it away from your body, so you’re not frantically jabbing at buttons trying to shut it down before throwing it out the window in a panic if you’re accidentally interrupted by kids or flatmates.
Use the fabric of your imagination
For a new take on breast stimulation, wear a top woven from a sensual material – think a loose silky-satin vest, or a super-soft fluffy jumper, without a bra – and use the fabric to tease yourself instead of touching your chest directly. Gradually, languidly draw the garment up and down the side curves of each breast; graze it over the nipples; and use it to cup and slide against the undersides scintillatingly slowly. Need to stay silent? Slip your knickers off and stuff them in your mouth as a gag, or hoist up the folds of your T-shirt or even a long skirt using your teeth, preferably in front of a mirror so you can see how hot you look. Filth.
While the history of women and pleasure is fraught with stigma, it appears we’re in the midst of a pleasure revolution. Now, female-identifying founders are creating pornography, sex toys, sex-education platforms, and erotica, all of which normalizes and celebrates a woman’s right to get off. Not only are consumers turned on by this building movement—the global sex toy market alone is expected to be worth $35 billion by 2023, up from $23.7 billion in 2017—but investors, too, are shuttling millions of dollars into sexual wellness start-ups such as Dipsea, a sexy short-story app, and Unbound, an e-tailer selling sex toys and other bedroom accessories. In short, there’s never been a better time than now for having a vulva and loving to orgasm.
So how did we get to this place of openness when, just two decades ago, Samantha Jones’ unapologetic pursuit of big Os on Sex and the City was considered radical? While there have been many twists and turns throughout the history of women and pleasure, it can be argued that the modern movement’s roots first planted in the 1950s. Back then, attitudes toward sexuality were still, in many ways, informed by the repressive Victorian era—when society demanded a “don’t ask, don’t tell” attitude toward female desire. Yet in 1953, sexologist and biologist Alfred C. Kinsey, PhD, published his landmark (and controversial) book titled Sexual Behavior in the Human Female, which shed light on women’s then-rarely discussed habits regarding masturbation, orgasms, and sex before marriage. (Spoiler alert: Among the 6,000 women interviewed for the book, all of those activities were highly popular.) From there, the world slowly but surely opened its eyes to women as sexual beings.
The early history of women and pleasure
Four years following the release of Dr. Kinsey’s book, William Masters and Virginia Johnson began their pioneering work on the physical mechanisms behind sexual arousal at Washington University in St. Louis. Their most groundbreaking findings are still frequently cited today, like the four stages of sexual arousal—excitement, plateau, orgasm, and resolution—and the idea that women are able to have multiple orgasms. “Even the very suggestion that sexual pleasure might be important for women and not just men was massively radical during those times,” says Zhana Vrangalova, PhD, professor of human sexuality at New York University and resident sexpert for sex-toy brand Lelo.
As the history of women and pleasure progressed, a succession of cultural milestones continued to help champion the idea of non-procreative sex among women. First, the birth control pill hit the market in 1960, which officially allowed women to have sex without the prospect of pregnancy. Helen Gurley Brown’s book Sex and the Single Girl (1962) gave advice for sex and dating as an unmarried woman, and a group of Boston women later self-published the seminal Our Bodies, Ourselves (1970), which provided evidence-based information to teach women about their sexual anatomy. Then as the hippie counterculture spread a message of free love, leaders of the second-wave feminist movement encouraged women to take an active role in their own sexual experience. You know, like men had been doing for centuries beforehand.
Despite all of this progress, however, Dr. Vrangalova points out that the framework for female pleasure in the 1960s and early ’70s was still largely based on a male perspective. “Given that the ’60s were a time when women were still very much second-class citizens, the way sexual pleasure was conceptualized was the way men, rather than women, thought about pleasure,” she says. “There’s no doubt women participated, but it seems like they adopted the male-driven vision of sexual pleasure, rather than focusing specifically on female pleasure. This was an inevitable product of the times—even scientists across diverse fields believed that whatever findings were true of men were also true of women, more or less.” For instance, at this point in the history of women and pleasure, there was still a pervasive view that women, like men, should be able to reach orgasm through vaginal intercourse alone.
“The ’60s were a time when women were still very much second-class citizens, and the way sexual pleasure was conceptualized was the way men, rather than women, thought about pleasure.”
—sexologist Zhana Vrangalova, PhD
But soon after, new discoveries around women’s pleasure began to cool off, a phenomenon that Dr. Vrangalova attributes to the early days of the HIV/AIDS crisis. “Unfortunately, that swung the pendulum on sexual pleasure—male and female—back toward the more conservative end of the spectrum, and America entered the Dark Ages of abstinence-only sexual education,” she says. “This had the incredibly harmful effects of sexually crippling an entire generation of Americans with lack of information, increasing fear of sex and STIs, and increasing stigma around pleasure, especially if it was outside of long-term committed relationships.”
Women are sexual beings, but there’s a pleasure gap to close and stigma to stop
Fast-forward a decade, however, and pleasure once again started to creep back into the zeitgeist. But even in 1999, when Sex and the City was must-watch viewing, 40 percent of women still claimed to experience sexual disfunction, characterized by a lack of sexual desire and difficulty attaining arousal.
According to public-health researcher Katherine Rowland‘s new book, The Pleasure Gap, this feeling of sexual dissatisfaction still endures, despite all the strides that have been made during the past 60-plus years. “Among the women who I spoke to, the persistent low desire was heavily associated with the idea that sex should revolve around penetration as the main course, with maybe a polite prelude of a foreplay, rather than thinking about sex as a broader universe of intimacy,” Rowland previously told NPR. “It’s the combination of a larger culture that privileges male sexuality over women’s, a culture that doesn’t teach women that pleasure belongs to them. A lack of anatomical self-knowledge. And feelings of sort of persistent danger and women being often censored and censured for expressing their desire.”
Yet on all of these fronts, the tides have been slowly turning in recent years, thanks in large part to the rise of the digital age. “The internet and smartphones enabled unprecedented access to vast amounts of sexual pleasure information and to all sorts of alternative and more liberal sexual values and lifestyles,” says Dr. Vrangalova, who notes that online porn and erotica helped to normalize the concept of “a women’s right to pleasure.”
Furthermore, the #MeToo movement of 2017 set the stage for the current pleasure revolution. “There are a lot of women who relived their traumas during #MeToo…it wasn’t a linear path,” says Alexandra Fine, sexologist and CEO of next-gen vibrator company Dame. “But it does ultimately feel like it empowered women to reclaim their sexual pleasure as their own and to speak more openly about it.”
It’s that open dialogue around sex that’s leading women to get curious about their own pleasure patterns right now—and that’s clearing a path for companies to create products and services that help them get to know their own bodies. “[At Dame,] we’re hearing so many stories of women being really honest about what their sexual experiences are in an unfiltered way that wasn’t available before,” Fine adds.
What to expect from the next chapter in the history of women and pleasure
As knowledge gaps continue to emerge around women’s sexual pleasure, organizations like Allbodies—a digital sex-ed platform—are stepping up to fill them. Allbodies co-founder and doula Ash Spivak says there are still many vulva-owners who feel alienated by conventional pleasure wisdom, either because they’ve previously experienced trauma or by virtue of the fact that everyone’s body works differently. “We have so much emphasis on orgasms in general as being the pinnacle, but pleasure is a spectrum,” she says. “There’s so much room in there to really play around and that’s really never been taught.”
“We have so much emphasis on orgasms in general as being the pinnacle, but pleasure is a spectrum. There’s so much room in there to really play around and that’s really never been taught.”
—Ash Spivak, Allbodies co-founder
There are also plenty of institutions that aren’t yet ready for an open dialogue around female arousal at this point in the history of women and pleasure. For instance, Facebook still doesn’t allow advertising for sex toys—although it does allow ads for sexual-health companies, like those promoting erectile-disfunction treatments for men. And Fine says targeting this is the next frontier of the pleasure revolution.
“This conversation around advertising policy is a really interesting place where it’s showing up,” she says, noting that Dame sued the New York City MTA in 2019 for refusing to run its vibrator ads in the subway. Changing this reality is part of her bigger mission for Dame. “If we can’t have public discourse around sexuality because we think it’s inherently inappropriate, then we’re pushing sex to the shadows. And the things that happen in the shadows when it comes to sex harm women.”
Fortunately, research is continuing to unveil nuances of the female sexual experience, which can only help to erase shame and popularize the idea that there’s no one-size-fits-all path to pleasure. One 2019 study, for instance, debunked the idea that all orgasms are positive experiences—some women do, indeed, view them as negative at times, particularly when they feel coerced into having sex or pressured into climaxing.
Brands are even contributing to our collective knowledge. Dame, for instance, asks members of its Dame Labs community to test its prototypes pre-launch and then uses feedback to fine-tune each product. For instance, Dame engineers were surprised to learn when developing the company’s first internal vibrator, the Arc, that testers considered the toy’s external sensations to be even more important than its internal stimulation properties—even though testers said they would purchase the toy to use internally. The engineers edited the design accordingly, and as a result, pleasure won.
And while pleasure is a right entitled to all people, vulva-owners certainly included, Fine, for one, believes there are even bigger health gains to to glean from knowing as much as possible about the female sexual experience. “I really believe that sex is part of our wellness—it’s literally what creates our life,” she says. ‘Why would we think it’s not constantly impacting [us]?”
Home truths: sex boosts our mood and increases feelings of connection.
This could be the perfect time for couples to boost their sex life
By Karen Gurney
For many of us right now, sex couldn’t be further from our minds. Our usual routines have been turned upside down and the way we are living can be challenging for even the most harmonious of relationships. But what if we viewed this time as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reset and refresh our sex lives?
The fact that sex isn’t a priority for a large proportion of people fits with findings from sex research along with, well, common sense. Stress and anxiety are known to reduce our sexual desire and a preoccupation with the news, our finances, the health of our loved ones, or how much is in our store cupboards, can understandably slow the wheels of our sex life to a standstill.
But for some of us, the opposite happens. Sex boosts our mood and increases our feelings of connection and wellbeing. Some people are motivated to have sex to relieve stress or find that they naturally feel more sexual in times of fear and anxiety, so for them desire might be on the up and an important means of coping.
For the good of your relationship, it’s worth considering whether you know how each of you relates to sex in times of stress and make this knowledge explicit. How does dramatic change affect the libidos of you and your partner? What if one of you sees a rise and the other a fall in sexual appetite in the next few months? How can you manage this discrepancy? Research shows again and again that it’s not the difference that can be damaging, but the lack of discussion and acknowledgement around it.
It’s also useful to know a little bit about how desire actually works. We have been socialised to understand sexual desire as a drive, a feeling you have out of the blue. It’s true that many of us experience these feelings – and more so in the early years of a relationship – but this is certainly not the only way to experience desire, and definitely not the most common way in a long-term relationship.
Every day of the week I see evidence of the 34% of women and 15% of men in the UK with concerns about their lessening interest in sex as they arrive at my clinic for counselling. The truth about desire is that we don’t truly understand how it operates and, if we did, we’d manage our sex lives very differently indeed.
This is the opportunity we have ahead of us right now and some of us may be in the right headspace to take advantage of it.
It’s important to know that in long-term relationships, many people don’t ever feel like sex out of the blue, but instead need to have their desire triggered. These are the people who say to me in therapy: “I never feel like having sex, but when we do it’s great and I say to my partner, we should do this more often!” This is a normal manifestation of desire in a long-term relationship and not feeling like it from the outset shouldn’t be something to worry about.
Our societal expectations of desire have trickled down from the findings of sex science in the middle of the last century, as pioneers such as Alfred Kinsey, and Masters and Johnson made headlines with the study of human sexuality and how sex “worked”.
In sex research, the popular view of the time was that desire came first, before our bodies become aroused. When I speak to my clients for therapy, I hear the practical legacy of this societal understanding: “We don’t kiss passionately other than as part of sex”; “I never feel like it so I avoid going to bed at the same time as him/her so he/she doesn’t get the wrong idea.”
Over the decades, attitudes and understanding have progressed and we know now that sexual desire is a more complex process. Often we can start from a position that isn’t triggered by sexual longing alone, but other factors – think “stress relief” or “wanting to feel connected” or even “wanting to feel like it”. This motivation – which is neither a sex drive nor unbridled lust – encourages us to either make advances, or be open to advances in the right circumstances. Only once there is sexual stimuli – such as a passionate kiss – might desire then make an appearance. This means we’re often instinctively doing the very opposite of what our desire might need, and curtailing any opportunity we have to trigger it.
When I talk through these newer understandings of desire with my clients, it can be a complete game changer. Not only do they realise that they are not broken, but they understand that the way they have been managing their sex lives is all wrong.
Waiting to feel like it in the context of a busy life when you only have half an hour alone together a day and you’re both exhausted, does not constitute “the right circumstances” and is very unlikely to work anyhow. All the elements that we rely on to fuel sexual desire, such as novelty, a lack of pressure that “A must lead to B” and a lack of predictability, make it even more challenging in long-term relationships. Challenging, but not in the slightest bit impossible.
Another danger is to assume that sex should be the last thing on our minds at the moment, with so much else to worry about. Even though it is viewed in our society as a frivolous recreational pursuit, it is anything but. Sex meets psychological and relational needs, and sexual satisfaction has been shown to boost mood, self-esteem and wellbeing.
A good sex life has also been shown to act as a buffer against a drop in relationship satisfaction – and I think we can all agree that feeling connected to our partners and experiencing improved psychological wellbeing are important right now.
In this sense, there is no better time for many couples to nourish their desire. Long-term monogamous relationships bring with them the most challenges for maintaining desire – especially for women – and there are many reasons for this. One is the dilution of our roles as sexual partners by the prevalence of other less sexy roles, such as being housemates or co-parents.
Many of us currently find ourselves suddenly seeing an increase in the amount of childcare in our day, or by the introduction of a new role at home together – as work colleagues. These changes are necessary and temporary, but risk the squeezing out of any time we might have left to relate to each other as sexual partners.
There are two ways we can respond to this. One is to increase the moments in the day we relate to each other as sexual partners, which I call “sexual currency”. Sexual currency can be defined as anything that’s not “sex”, but you would only do with a partner. It might look like a five-second lingering kiss rather than a peck on the cheek, a suggestive glance, a compliment, an unexpected touch as you pass each other in the kitchen. Sexual currency not only marks out and reminds you both of your role as sexual partners, but can also be a stepping stone to a natural transition to more sexual ground, should you wish to head in that direction. Sexual currency is also, of course, a trigger for desire.
The second change you could make is thinking about how you spend the time you have together. Research tells us that couples who engage in challenging, exciting or fun activities together have more desire than couples who spend that time doing something else (think Netflix). This means that swapping one of those evenings watching TV to cook something elaborate together, play a game or even planning where you’ll go when you can finally travel again, could be just what you need to feel connected sexually.
Only you can know whether this time is fertile ground for your sex life or not – and whether you use these weeks to nurture it, or put it on hold. One thing is for sure – your sex life is unlikely to be unaffected by the strange and difficult times we find ourselves in
Dr Karen’s top three tips for boosting desire
Stop Faking It Faking orgasms reinforces the sexual scripts we currently have available to us by creating the illusion that women are just as satisfied by the way sex is happening as men are. Faking it also affirms the false belief held by society that most women can come from penetrative sex.
Plan time for each other The mistake many couples make is waiting for desire to emerge without doing anything to encourage it, so no desire emerges. The key thing here is that having a good sex life is not always about needing to be on the same page, or wanting as much sex as your partner, but the success with which you navigate these differences.
Plan time for yourself Masturbation provides a great opportunity for people to enjoy their sexuality outside of a relationship, connect with their sexuality, know what works for them, and trigger arousal and desire.
It’s National Masturbation Month! YES darling, there is such a thing.
Tra la! It’s May!
The lusty month of May!
That darling month when ev’ryone throws
Self-control away.
It’s time to do
A wretched thing or two, And try to make each precious day
One you’ll always rue!
It’s May! It’s May!
The month of “yes you may,”
The time for ev’ry frivolous whim,
Proper or “im.”
It’s wild! It’s gay!
A blot in ev’ry way.
The birds and bees with all of their vast
Amorous past
Gaze at the human race aghast,
The lusty month of May.
— Alan Jay Lerner
GO AHEAD Squeeze one out! Diddle yourself senseless!
Is masturbation healthy? When it comes to sex—which is already so taboo—talking about masturbation is one of the most uncomfortable of subjects. It’s one thing to admit to being sexual with a partner but quite another to admit to taking pleasure into your own hands—literally and figuratively. Especially for women. But as a certified sex therapist and neuroscientist, I’ve got good news: Masturbation isn’t just pleasurable, it’s good for you.
For years I’ve worked with people with anxiety, depression, or relationship issues, treated people with problems in the bedroom, and taught human sexuality courses (when I’m not busy conducting sex research as a neuroscience Ph.D.), and yet I continue to be amazed about how uncomfortable people are when it comes to discussing sex in general and their own sexual health in particular. It isn’t unusual for me to have to reassure a talk show host who cautions me to be careful about what I say on the air since they don’t really “talk about sex” on their show. I think to myself, What? You’ve had a show for decades that deals with health and lifestyle issues, and you haven’t talked about sex?”
My work with couples and in the lab conducting studies has proved time and time again that pleasure is not just important but necessary—something I explore in my Glamour column Ask. Dr. Nan and in my new book Why Good Sex Matters—based largely on my research of the female orgasm, which can relieve stress, improve mood, reduce pain, boost immunity, and enhance self-esteem.
So when someone asks me if masturbation is healthy, the answer is a resounding yes. Here’s why:
Do most people masturbate?
The short answer? Yes. The longer answer? More men do than women.
Despite the persistent taboo around masturbation, statistics show that in Western cultures, most people do it. In the U.S., roughly 80% of women aged 25 through 40 say they’ve masturbated at some point in their lives, with 50% of women aged 18 through 24 reporting having masturbated during the past year.
Men tend to masturbate more often than women—largely because women are still shamed for being “too sexual.” If you group men and women together, nearly 76% of young adults aged 25 through 29 report self-pleasuring over the past year.
Is masturbation healthy?
I consider masturbation to be one of the best forms of self-care. Not only does it feel good, it’s good for you.
First, there are the physical benefits of masturbation. My research involved having participants masturbate to orgasm in an fMRI scanner to document how the brain responds to genital stimulation leading up to and culminating in the Big O. We found that when you experience sexual pleasure, many areas of the brain receive more oxygen.
Sufficient oxygen is absolutely critical to healthy brain function, so the widespread increase in blood flow to the brain (particularly regions involved in sensation, movement, cognition, reward, and hormone production) make orgasm a great workout for nearly your whole brain. Orgasm triggers the release of a cascade of substances such as natural painkillers, stress relievers, and mood enhancers. Think of your brain enjoying a delicious cocktail of increased dopamine (associated with reward and enthusiasm), endorphins (our own internally produced opioids promoting feelings of well-being), serotonin (for calming), and oxytocin (which facilitates bonding). The result is a health-promoting natural high.
A regular masturbation practice also has other benefits. When women learn to cultivate the pleasures of masturbation, we radically challenge some of the sex-negative notions pervading our culture. Rather than focusing on being a sex object for someone else, masturbation allows us to focus on being intrinsically sexual beings whose bodies are places of pleasure that exist at times just for us. It puts your pleasure first.
Are there side-effects of too much masturbation?
Any behavior which becomes compulsive can become problematic. I have treated men whose masturbation practices have gotten out of control, causing physical and emotional distress, even interrupting their ability to go to work. These compulsive sexual behaviors appear less frequently in women, although they have been reported. In general, out-of-control sexual behaviors can result when people have trouble regulating their moods and use sex to self-soothe.
The bottom line? By making a commitment to prioritizing your own pleasure though cultivating a regular masturbation practice, you will reap big benefits.
Though sex can be a multiplayer game, there’s a lot to be said for getting it on with your bad self. Whether you charge up your favorite toy or prefer to get your own hands dirty, knowing how to orgasm without a partner can be a total game-changer.
“Each body is equipped for pleasure all on its own,” Brianne McGuire, host of the Sex Communication podcast, tells Elite Daily. “For those struggling to reach orgasm, the absence of pressure and observation [from partnered sex] often allows for great success.”
As McGuire shares, masturbating, or bringing yourself to orgasm, can allow you to learn about your own erogenous zones and “unique pleasure points” at a pace that’s comfortable and enjoyable for you. When you’re not worrying about being in tune with a partner or trying to arouse someone else, you can turn all your attention to yourself, and really learn about your body.
“[Orgasming without a partner] is a great way to reduce stress, connect with your body, and feel pleasure that’s in your control,” Kayna Cassard, sex therapist and founder of Intuitive Sensuality, tells Elite Daily. “When you know what makes you feel good and orgasm, you can better explore and reach orgasm with your partner.”
While some people may reach orgasm by stimulating their genitals, Lola Jean, sex educator and mental health professional, shares that because everybody is different, orgasms look and feel different for everyone. “There are prostate orgasms, penile orgasms, breath orgasms, skin orgasms, clitoral orgasms, [and] cervical orgasms which can be induced manual or via the vagus nerve,” Jean says.
For Dr. Christopher Ryan Jones, sex and relationships therapist, experimenting with different sensations on different parts of your body is a great way to understand yourself more. “I highly recommend that everyone experiments with different erogenous zones on their body (nipples, genitals, anus, etc. ) using their hands and adult toys,” Dr. Jones tells Elite Daily. “This is a fantastic way to explore and understand your body, which is really important so that you can communicate your likes and dislikes with your partner later on and increase both partners’ satisfaction in the bedroom.”
Jean adds that while it’s possible to orgasm from directly stimulating these locations, it’s also possible to reach the big O from indirect touching. “You can achieve a G-spot orgasm via accessing it through the anal canal. You can have a blended orgasm — prostate and penile, or g-spot and external clitoris. There are so many ways to experience pleasure that we tend to limit ourselves by receding the definition down to one or two things,” Jean says.
Additionally, Cassard shares that some orgasms don’t need physical stimulation at all. “For all kinds of people, there can be the ability to have energetic orgasms or orgasms that typically come through breathwork, meditation, and the right mindset without even touching the genitals,” Cassard says. In addition to breathing and meditating, Jean suggests listening to guided masturbation tracks and imagining different sexual fantasies in our brains or visual stimulation.
All of the experts suggest exploring your own body and seeing what feels right for you. “Getting to know your body through touch is the easiest path to solo orgasm,” McGuire says. “If visuals help get your blood flowing, then pull out some porn or whatever turns you on and begin there. Toys are extremely helpful, and there are many options — try external and internal toys, even a combination of the two, and find what works best for you.”
In addition to finding what toys work for you and incorporating porn or other erotic media, Cassard suggests using different props or stimuli, like a showerhead or a couch cushion. “[You can orgasm by yourself] in a lot of the same ways that you orgasm with a partner,” Cassard says. “Lying down with your back on the bed or couch stimulating the genitals, facing downward ‘humping’ a pillow or rolled-up towel, in the shower with a water-safe toy or with the showerhead directly on the clitoris — [there are ] so many ways!”
Of course, no matter what road to take to the big O, it’s important to listen to your own body. “The most important thing being to listen to your body, be patient, and don’t emulate what you think you’re ‘supposed’ to do,” Jean says. Though orgasming may look a certain way in movies or on TV, Jean shares the importance of learning your own orgasm. Cassard also urges you to keep an open mind as you learn about your body. “Notice the places in your body that feel neutral or pleasant to help you stay out of your head and in the pleasure,” Cassard says. “Explore! Have fun with it!”
While you may enjoy the connection and intimacy from partnered sex (which, BTW, is totally cool), Jean shares that it can still be important to take some time to get it on with yourself, even when you’re seeing someone. “It is often easier and potentially faster to orgasm by one’s self,” Jean says. “You can adjust based on your own feeling without having to communicate that to someone else.” Though you may love nothing more than getting it on with your partner, it’s always OK to want some one-on-one time as well.
From using a toy to touching yourself with yourself, knowing how to make yourself orgasm can be super empowering. Though it may take two to tango, it only takes one to reach the big O.
When we polled our readers earlier this month on what they’ve always wanted to ask a sex coach, they flooded our DM’s with questions, concerns, and complaints about their partners’…techniques.
One thing to note: whatever is going on in the bedroom isn’t a “just you” issue, per se. According to the Cleveland Clinic, 43 percent of women and 31 percent of men experience some type of sexual dysfunction during their lifetimes, including low libido and low confidence. And so many readers submitted the exact same questions and the same deepest darkest secrets. You’re normal. Sex can be weird! Let’s talk about it.
Below, Gigi Engle, SKYN sex and intimacy expert and certified sex coach and author of All The F*cking Mistakes, answered questions submitted by HelloGiggles readers. Don’t see your concern below? Check out the rest of our State of Female Pleasure package for more sexpert advice.
How do I tell my partner that I’ve been faking my orgasms without hurting their feelings?
Your partner may have hurt feelings but the important thing is to assure them that you like everything they’re doing and you were faking orgasms because things felt good but you just felt you weren’t going to get “there.” Offer to show them exactly what feels good for you with gentle guidance.
How do I stop faking orgasms without offending my boyfriend?
Having an open conversation with your partner about this can be challenging. Sex is an emotionally charged thing and many of us lack the vocabulary to communicate our needs. Let your partner know that you want to try some new sex things together. You want to show him new ways to touch you and to have more orgasms. Tell them you love your sex life so he feels good about himself and then offer some guidance. When it comes to faking, if you feel like you’re not going to get there, offer some gentle guidance. Maybe you could use some more oral sex, or a toy during sex. Make those suggestions to him.
How can I be more comfortable in my body during sex?
Masturbate, masturbate, masturbate. When you get in touch with your body and internal energy, you start to feel so much more comfortable in your power. Having control over your own orgasm is empowering and will help you feel good when guiding someone in how to touch you. Body confidence is not something that happens overnight. Look at yourself in the mirror naked and tell your body how much you love it; how it takes care of you, gets you where you need to go, and is strong for you. It does not matter what you look like. You’re beautiful and sexy and powerful.
What can I do to get my partner to explore other fun sexual options? Ex: BDSM.
Make a sex menu. You write down three things you want to try and then have [them] write down three things [they’d] want to try. Then, swap lists and see what you both are interested in. This gives you a pressure-free way to learn about your partners desires and to share your own. Introduce [them] to new things slowly—maybe start out with a new lube or small sex toy. For BDSM specifically, you don’t need to go buy a bunch of expensive gear. Use a tee shirt as a blindfold and a necktie as handcuffs. It’s really not as complicated and scary as some people tend to think!
I can’t orgasm at all! Is there something wrong with me?
There is definitely nothing wrong with you. This is super common! Orgasms are 90 percent mental and 10 percent physical. So, you need to be in a positive headspace. If you believe you cannot come, your brain tells your body you can’t come, and then … you don’t come! The first thing to do is to step outside of this negative feedback loop. Take orgasm off the table for a while and focus on pleasure. Buy some sex toys (SKYN Vibes is my go-to). Take time to masturbate and see what you like. Don’t worry so much about orgasming and eventually orgasms will come.
How to move past (unknown) mental roadblocks that make it hard to orgasm with a partner?
Being present and in the moment can be very challenging when life comes at you. It’s key to remember that sex is important and life is always going to be busy. Breathe into your body and try to be more intentional. Watch some porn to keep you focused or listen to an erotic story while you’re having sexy time. Sometimes we need to ignite all of our senses to stay in the moment. Treat sex like a meditation: It’s a time to focus and breathe and enjoy.
How do you deal with extraordinary clitoral sensitivity?
Try different touch than straight up clitoral rubbing. Touch the labia, the mons, and vaginal opening. Try layering the labia over the clitoris when you use a sex toy on a low vibration setting. Sometimes having a barrier can provide comfort. You can also circle the clitoris rather than putting vibration or a tongue directly on it.
You might also benefit from cognitive behavioral therapy in tandem with working with and OBGYN. There may be an underlying medical issue that should be addressed. Seeking the help of a well-rounded team of professionals who are there to work for you is a grounded way to get the orgasms and sex you deserve.
Whether you’re worried it means your partner doesn’t find you attractive anymore, would rather wank than have sex with you, or they have a sexual desire that’s not being met in your sex life, please know masturbation – even in a relationship – is perfectly healthy and normal. What’s more, it can also be really, really hot. Still not convinced? Read on.
Why do people masturbate?
Despite the stigma and misconceptions surrounding masturbation – where a person stimulates themselves sexually, whether by hand or using sex toys – masturbation is normal for people of all ages, gender identities and sexualities. ‘Not only is it totally normal for your partner to masturbate, it’s good for them. And it can be good for you both as a couple, too,’ says sex educator for Tenga, writer, and broadcaster Alix Fox.
Whether you’re single, casually dating or in a long-term monogamous relationship, masturbation should be a healthy part of your life. There are many reasons why people masturbate, including:
‘Masturbation is a form of self pleasure and self-care and in some ways can offer us different elements to having sex with another person,’ says psychosexual therapist and sex therapist for LELO, Kate Moyle. ‘Like sex, there can be many reason for why we might masturbate, and sometimes partners can jump to assumptions that aren’t helpful for either of you.’
We shouldn’t naturally feel threatened when a partner masturbates. But if you notice a change in your sex life and are unhappy with it, or if you feel your partner isn’t engaging in couple sex as much, Moyle says it’s worth discussing this with them.
Is it normal for your partner to masturbate?
Thanks to stigma, shame and misinformation, masturbation has a bad rep. A global survey of over 10,000 people by Tenga found just 17 per cent of British women learned about masturbation during sex education lessons. ‘As a result, many associate it with shame, dirtiness and taboo – negative messages that are unfortunately frequently delivered by religious and cultural influences, and often not corrected by teachers or media,’ Fox explains.
Some of us may also worry that if our partner masturbates, they aren’t fulfilled by partnered sex with us.
Some of us may also worry that if our partner masturbates, it’s a sign they don’t want (or aren’t fulfilled by) partnered sex with us, but this is usually not the case. ‘Some folks see it as a judgment, rejection, or a signal that something’s wrong with the relationship,’ Fox says.
This may be why so many of us aren’t truthful about how often we masturbate when our partners ask. According to the Tenga research, 38 per cent of men and 34 per cent of women have lied about their masturbatory habits, while 37 per cent have avoided talking to their partner about it at all.
Will masturbation impact your relationship?
If your partner still enjoys solo sex on occasion, it’s unlikely to be a sign that they’re no longer attracted to you. They might have a high sex drive or simply enjoy the release. But why would they choose to masturbate instead of having sex with you?
‘Sometimes they might simply fancy a solo session because it’s generally a faster way of getting a little sweet relief than coupled sex,’ Fox says.
‘They might not want to impose on you if they suspect you may be busy or not in the mood. They might feel tired and want to relax, but worry they don’t have the energy to “perform” and please you.’
The benefits of your partner masturbating
While it might make you feel left out or confused, if your partner still masturbates regularly alongside enjoying sex with you, it actually comes with a number of health benefits:
• Masturbation makes you better at sex
Masturbating can make someone better at partnered sex, and make them enjoy sex in a couple more, too. ‘I am a huge advocate for masturbation as a means of exploring and discovering your own intimate likes and dislikes, and what particular moves, motions, sex toys and tricks make you feel great,’ Fox says. ‘Once you figure out how to enjoy yourself, by yourself, for yourself, it’s so much easier to have satisfying, scintillating sexual experiences with a partner if you wish.’
A common misconception is that people should only masturbate when they’re younger and before they’re in a healthy, fulfilling sexual relationship. But as Fox explains, ‘that exploratory process shouldn’t just be something that happens when you’re younger, or when you’re single.’ She says there are many factors that affect your sexual response throughout your life: pregnancy, birth, menopause, hormonal fluctuations, what point you’re at in your menstrual cycle, stress, tiredness, HRT, and contraceptives. Medications increasingly prescribed to treat depression such as Selective Serotonin Re-uptake Inhibitors (SSRIs) are known to lower sexual desire and cause absent or delayed orgasm in many people.
‘Something that legitimately felt good a year ago may not tickle your pickle or excite your hot spots so much today, and vice versa,’ Fox adds. ‘So masturbating – and switching up the style in which you do so – is essential throughout the decades to keep you literally in touch with your own body.’
• Masturbation is good for mental health
Tenga’s research found an increasing number of people are beginning to view masturbation as an important part of looking after themselves. 64 per cent of people said they used it as a form of self-care. 52 per cent said it improved their wellbeing by helping them unwind, improving their connection to their own bodies, bettering their self-image (‘if your body makes you feel good, you’re more likely to feel good about your body,’ Fox says), and assisting with peaceful sleep.
‘British respondents ranked masturbation as just below sleep but above listening to music or taking a hot bath as most effective in relieving stress,’ Fox says. ‘And a chilled out, confident person is more likely to make a happier, healthier partner.’
• Masturbation improves your confidence
The more you engage in physical stimulation, the more you train your body to want it and anticipate it, says Dr Shirin Lakhani, women’s intimate health expert and founder of Elite Aesthetics. ‘Your body essentially learns how to feel sexual pleasure and have an orgasm which can in turn have a significant impact on relationships and a person’s self-esteem and confidence.’
• Masturbation relieves pain
Masturbation ultimately leads to the release of neurotransmitters like serotonin, endorphins, and oxytocin which bring a feeling of calm as well as offering pain relief. Dr Lakhani says, ‘The resulting blood flow to the genitals is beneficial to the physical health too, and can have a positive impact on the tissue in the area.’
• Masturbation is really hot
Many people find the idea of their partner masturbating sexually arousing. Whether that’s when their partner is alone (and they then tell you about it), or in front of them, or while they also masturbate (known as mutual masturbation), it can be a really fun and sexy way to be intimate.
‘Masturbating next to each other is a joyfully hot part of mine and my partner’s sex life, and before we lived together we’d send each other videos and elaborate text descriptions of our wanks,’ says Jane*.
‘In addition to the erotic visual/aural thrill, it’s exciting to know I have my partner’s trust; that they feel sufficiently safe with me to embrace the inherent vulnerability intensifies the turn-on,’ says Aisha*.
‘Watching your partner masturbate is a great way to find out what they like,’ says Susannah*.
‘You get to really concentrate on the expression on their face as they lose control and THAT IS SO HOT!,’ says Eric*.
‘For me it’s about seeing someone get pleasure just the way they want it. I basically can’t get my partner to orgasm because of my disability, and sometimes that’s disheartening. When they jerk off it’s almost a more intimate experience because it feels more vulnerable,’ Ruth* says.
‘If I’m not feeling horny and my husband starts to masturbate, it’s not long before my juices are flowing and I’m ready to go,’ says Kate*.
How to enjoy mutual masturbation
you’ve previously been worried about your partner masturbating, but want to accept this is a good and healthy thing for them to do, it’s worth trying mutual masturbation. ‘Masturbating together, or in front of one another, can be a great way of learning about your partner’s sexual preferences, so you’re more likely to know how to deliver personalised pleasure to them in future,’ Fox says.
Here are two of Fox’s simple ways to masturbate together, one’s for the extroverts and one for the shyer among you:
1. Show ‘n’ tell
‘Masturbate in front of your partner, so they can learn precisely where and how you prefer to be stimulated from the ultimate expert – you! As well as being an educational exercise, this can be deeply erotic,’ says Fox. Here’s how:
✔️ Command your lover to sit on a chair facing the bed, then tell them that you’re going to put on a show – and you demand their close attention.
✔️ If dirty talk turns you both on, describe each move you make to give extra details: the spot you’re touching, the speed you’re going, whether you’re moving your fingers in circles or stroking up and down.
✔️ Get them to say out loud what they see, too. In addition to sounding seriously sexy, vocalising what you’re doing and what they’re viewing will help them learn more and commit it to memory, so they can put their lessons into action later.
2. Hide ‘n’ peek
Feeling nervous while masturbating together is totally natural, so if you’re feeling timid, ask them to watch you through a half-open door. ‘This helps some folks feel like they’re the only person in the room, so it’s easier to shrug off their inhibitions, and many “watchers” find the voyeurism of “spying” on their partner’s “private moment” hugely hot,’ Fox says.
Alternatively, have your partner sit behind you so you can’t see them watching. ‘Place their hands over yours, so they can feel exactly how you massage and caress yourself.’
After centuries of secrecy, female sexuality is finally finding a voice, with women entering a new era of enlightenment and fulfilment thanks in part to the booming wellness industry.
Considering how long females have graced this earth, it’s astounding to think it was only 21 years ago that scientific research discovered something fundamental about that crucial female sexual organ, the clitoris.
In 1998, Melbourne-based urologist Dr Helen O’Connell published a groundbreaking paper debunking the long-held belief that the clitoris was merely a small glans, proving instead that it extends up to nine centimetres long underneath the pubic bone. The findings set a more accurate representation for medical professionals, sexologists, educators and womankind of the inner workings of one of the most complicated areas of the female body.
Revolutionary as the research was, however, there is still a lot we don’t know about female sexuality. At least 50 per cent of women don’t orgasm from intercourse alone and some don’t experience orgasm at all. While science made great leaps, the taboos surrounding female sexuality are still stuck in a time warp.
But change is afoot. In 2019 vaginas are big business and the female gaze is casting its eye over the US$30 billion sex industry. A recent report by trend forecasters J. Walter Thompson Intelligence, coined the term vaginanomics – an emerging market addressing women’s sexual fulfilment, which runs the gamut from aesthetically pleasing sex toys, female-positive porn and an increasingly open conversation led by fact and research.
Once a topic only discussed with your inner circle (or frankly, not at all), female sexuality is now seemingly all around us. And we have the wellness movement to thank for it. Having stocked our wardrobes with a lifetime supply of sportswear, our pantries with activated everything and our schedules with an endless roster of workouts, the final frontier of wellness has set it sights on another heart-rate-raising activity: sex.
“We need to be open to the idea of more a holistic model around sex. For us to feel healthy and happy we need to be enjoying a healthy sex life, too … having a healthy relationship with our sexuality is a good start,” says Australian sexologist and Authentic Sex podcaster Juliet Allen.
All this pillow talk is also being championed by some of the biggest names in Hollywood. Love her or loathe her, Gwyneth Paltrow has fuelled a positive conversation about sex and has become the closest thing we have to a grown-up incarnation of Dolly Doctor. Want to know the ins and outs of orgasmic meditation or how water can improve your sex life? It’s all in her book: The Sex Issue: Everything You’ve Always Wanted to Know about Sexuality, Seduction and Desire.
While the tome isn’t without is fair share of Goop-isms (sacred snake ceremony, anyone?), in the foreword Paltrow addresses the selfconsciousness we harbour around sex: “Women talking about sex – about what they like and don’t like, what they are getting and not getting in their intimate relationships, the toll of sexual trauma and how they heal – has a tendency to make people (both men and other women) extraordinarily self-conscious and uneasy,” she writes, continuing: “Whether tantra or BDSM or threesomes or vanilla are your thing will never be the point; knowing yourself, all your options, and how to ask for and pursue what feels good to you, is.”
New Yorker Eileen Kelly created Killer and a Sweet Thang, a sex-demystifying website which promotes an open and honest dialogue around sex, for similar motivations. What started as a Tumblr for Kelly to offer peer-to-peer sex education – information which, she says, was off-limits in her Catholic household – quickly transitioned into a popular Instagram account and website serving up real-world sex advice and coming-of-age titbits from more than 100 writers. “Whether you talk about it or not, sex is constantly around you in advertising, in movies, in magazines – you can’t escape, so we might as well have a conversation about it,” the 23-year-old founder says.
Elsewhere online, a lack of reliable information around female sexuality has ushered in a new wave of honest, female-created and approved content. OMGyes, a one-time-purchase site with the seal of approval from actor Emma Watson, is a research-backed education resource with a singular objective: female pleasure and orgasm. “The more we talk about it and learn about it, the better it gets. And we made OMGyes to accelerate that shift – with new scientific research and a frank, honest showcase of the findings,” says program director Claire Kim, who notes that Australia has the most subscribers per capita.
The site’s not-safe-for-work video tutorials demonstrate a host of techniques and cliterature – prepare to add adjectives like edging, signalling and orbiting to your bedroom vocabulary – but uniquely, they feel as safe and inclusive as if you were hearing this information first-hand from a friend.
With OMGyes Kim wants “more people to see and feel the way the current generations are releasing those old taboos. Many ways of thinking that have been passed down aren’t really good for anyone. And we’re so excited that, maybe, we can shift culture so the next generation can enjoy pleasure more.”
Millennials and Gen Z are driving much of this shift, which could be credited to logistics – excellent information and purchasing power is at their fingertips. According to the 2018 Global Wellness Summit Report, it’s thanks to young people that “sexual pleasure brands are strongly aligning themselves with wellness, and sex is fast shedding its taboo status”.
In fact, the sex and tech worlds are now happy bedfellows, with the newest haul of toys being designed by women, for women. A report by Technavio released last year notes the sexual wellness market is set to grow by almost US$18 billion by 2022. The most buzzed-about products – everything from vibrators, clitoral stimulators, devices for Kegel training and pelvic floor exercises – rival beauty brands with their aesthetically pleasing packaging and whipsmart innovations. Lioness, the world’s first smart vibrator, even collects data from your experiences and links that information to your smartphone.
And forget exploring the dark, often-irksome depths of the web: the e-tailers promoting these goods are beautifully curated and, dare we say it, cool. Co-founded by ex-magazine publisher Monica Nakata, online store Par Femme aims to “destigmatise the whole consumer purchasing decision around sex toys”. “Sexual empowerment is such an important step in empowering women overall,” says Nakata.
On the site, white cotton basics sit alongside editorial-worthy imagery of sex toys and candid discussions and reviews. Nakata notes the fact that as the sex and wellness industries have converged, conversation has opened up to “a wider audience group than ever before and reinforcing the idea that it’s nothing to be ashamed of. In the past, sex positivity was something we didn’t really hear about, and now it’s actually becoming aligned with body positivity,” she says.
Meet the non-human primates who tell us everything our culture doesn’t want to hear about female sexuality.
You’ve probably heard about bonobos — close relatives of chimps who are somewhat skinnier, and are native to the Democratic Republic of Congo. In the popular imagination, bonobos have a somewhat hippie-ish reputation. They’re portrayed as the “free love” primates, but are also supposedly a more likable, peaceable version of their stressed-out, lashing-out chimp cousins. Several articles even refer to bonobos as pacific, “Make love not war” “swingers.” It has long been believed that bonobos have sex to diffuse potential tension — when they come upon a cache of food, for example, or a new bonobo troop, having sex is a way to bond and take the stress level down.
Dr. Amy Parish, a primatologist who has studied bonobos for her entire career, pointed out that this was happening as we observed them being fed in their enclosure at the San Diego Zoo (many primatologists who study bonobos believe they behave basically the same way under human care and in their natural environment). Once the food was flung down to them, at least one pair of bonobos began to “consort” immediately, and others followed. Only after getting down did they get down to the business of eating
Early in her career, Parish, who has blonde hair and wore heart-shaped sunglasses the first day we met, and whose voice has a sing-songy, So-Cal inflection, noted that bonobos were female affiliative, socially gregarious, and very sexual. She also quickly realized that females ate first, and got groomed more often than the males; and that there was a clear pattern of female-on-male violence. Females swatted, chased, smacked, gouged, and bit males, who mostly seemed to know better than to annoy them.
Eventually, Parish observed a male in Frankfurt with only eight digits intact, and she learned of another male who had had his penis nearly severed from his body (the vet was able to reattach it, and the male went on to have erections and successfully reproduce, though you have to wonder how good he felt about the females from then on). Parish asked her mentor at the time, Franz De Waal, about it. He had worked with the San Diego Zoo population in the 1980s, and had in fact recorded a list of injuries but didn’t recall the males being injured more often or more seriously than the females. Still, Parish asked to see records — both De Waal’s and the logs zoo veterinarians had kept of bonobo injuries over the years. Sure enough, of a total of 25 serious injuries, 24 were inflicted on males. By females.
That clinched it for Parish. She realized that bonobos were female affiliative, female bonded, and, most extraordinarily of all, female dominant, sufficiently so that females eat first, are groomed more often, and have the authority to attack males. All this in spite of the males being physically larger and ensconced within a kin network of automatic allies (female bonobos leave their families, their natural power base, at sexual maturity, in order to join another troop and better avoid in-breeding).
Female bonobos manage to dominate males because they form coalitions of two or more whenever they perceive a male is challenging them. It doesn’t take males long to stop trying and to realize who’s in charge. But how exactly are these females, who are unrelated and who disperse from their kin, able to form power coalitions in the first place? It’s the sex, Parish told me. “They choose what feels good, and what feels especially good is having sex with other females, probably because of the front-facing, relatively exposed, innervated clitoris.”
This excerpt is from Untrue: Why Nearly Everything We Believe About Women, Lust, and Infidelity Is Wrong And How The New Science Can Set Us Free by Wednesday Martin (Little, Brown Spark, 2019).
In fact, Parish told me, when a female bonobo is solicited simultaneously by a female and a male, she will tend to pick the female (other primatologists have observed this preference as well). On my second day observing the bonobos with Parish, then-three-year-old Belle sat directly in front of us, right up against the glass. She had a long piece of grass looped around her torso, like a necklace. Her legs were splayed, and she poked between them with one finger. She was playing with her clitoris, which was about the size of a large pencil eraser. Clearly, she was enjoying herself.
Another day, Parish and I watched Belle mount her big sister Maddie, who was lying on her back; they indulged in some genital-to-genital swishing back and forth. Bonobos don’t just reduce tension with sex. Females are grinding and G-to-G-ing their way to establishing goodwill and connectedness, or reinforcing goodwill and connectedness already in place, using sex to build a sisterhood of sorts. And bonobo sisterhood is powerful. “We don’t see infanticide or females being sexually coerced, and we don’t see males being aggressive to females in any way,” Parish explained. “But we cannot ignore female bonobo violence toward males and female dominance among bonobos.”
I was momentarily stunned by the simplicity and profundity of what Parish was asserting. Our closest non-human primate relatives are non-monogamous. Females have baroque anogenital swellings, the better to attract the interest of multiple males, not one “best” alpha guy. In fact, there are no alpha guys, because they are a society of alpha gals. And this is so mostly thanks to gals preferring sex with one another. Which they do because of how wonderful it feels to rub their front-facing, exposed, and richly innervated clitorides (yes, that’s the plural of clitoris) together.
It all begs a number of questions about our world and the bonobo world, which we might think of as the original hookup culture. If human females lived under these conditions — a world that was female bonded, female affiliative, and female dominant, and where females had the freedom to be blatantly pleasure focused — then sex on college campuses would look very different indeed. It certainly wouldn’t be about women serving men’s needs at the expense of having their own fulfilled, as Peggy Orenstein discusses in her book Girls and Sex. Affirmative consent, analyzed so thoroughly by Vanessa Grigoriadis in Blurred Lines and familiar to millions of teens in the U.S. thanks to a video comparing it to offering someone tea, would not be an issue — men would not dream of assaulting women in a world where sex happens publicly, women are there to watch it all happen, and “Girl Power” is the actual order of things, not some abstract motto about how things might be.
More generally, Parish’s work is richly suggestive of other possibilities: What if human sexuality is more like bonobo sexuality than chimp sexuality? Specifically, what if human female sexuality is as much informed by our bonobo sisters as it is by comparatively abject chimp females (who risk violence when they themselves have multiple, rapidly sequential consorts during and also outside of estrus)? What if all our presumptions of alpha males being dominant adventurers in sexual conquest, and women as passive recipients seeking a single dominant male’s attention, come from the long shadow cast by a culture of containment and control, not from how we evolved? What if women are in fact “wired,” at some level, to be sexually dominant and promiscuous, and to use sex for pleasure and building social bonds with other women — and it is primarily environment that has resulted in our behaving otherwise? The bonobo sisterhood is part of the arc of humanness. Are we ready to acknowledge it?
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