orgasm

Sharing the Sexy #15

Kate Sloan

• Here’s a tirade in favor of menstrual sex. Can’t say I’m on board with the penis-shaming therein, but she makes some good points.

• While we’re on the topic… This slam poet loves him some period sex!

• Porn star Madison Young taught a hands-on female ejaculation workshop. I love this part: When a female audience member came up to her after class and explained that she’d never had an orgasm, Young responded, “Hold on, I’ve got an extra 10 minutes — get on up there!”

• S. Bear Bergman writes about teaching a two-year-old to respect consent.

• What can self-proclaimed “Nice Guys” teach us about “the very real problem of male sexual entitlement”?

• Interesting fetish of the week: sexualized tampon use. Edward Cullen, anyone?

Sharing the Sexy #2

Kate Sloan

Here’s what I’m reading/watching/consuming about sex this week. Yeah, baby!

• Shay, of Conscious Cunt, interviewed me about body hair. We chatted about our pubes, pits, and legs, and how it all makes us feel about our bodies. Good readin’ for feministas and hairy princesses!

• Luscious Playthings is a new Etsy shop specializing in handmade glass toys. How stunning is this butt plug?!

• I love, love, love this video of Steve Hughes doing stand-up about the perceptions of gay men and straight men. His argument is a good one to bring up with any homophobes in your life, though they probably wouldn’t find it as funny as I do.

• Dodson and Ross answer the question, “How do I know if I’ve had an orgasm?” I usually say, “If you’ve had one, you’ll know,” but they have a different perspective.

• I know you’ve heard this all before, but this dude on Sexxit is insecure about his dick and a bunch of folks chimed in to cheer him up. My favorite comment (the top-voted one) is a great reality check for men everywhere: “Your dick is for your orgasm, not hers.” Amen to that! I certainly don’t know any men who can come from having a clit rubbed on them, the way women are expected to come from having penises penetrate them – do you?

• This post about “trans fat” people makes me realize how weird the world is getting. Trans fat folks are thin but identify as fat. Yeah, whatever…

• An oldie but a goodie: Starling writes about how to avoid coming off as “creepy” if you’re a dude. I strongly recommend that all men read this, especially straight men, to gain some insight and get some perspective.

• Rachel Kramer Bussel, one of my favorite erotica writers, lists her reasons for loving the Hitachi Magic Wand. As a side note, I recently bought a Hitachi and my feelings on it keep flip-flopping from loathing to love…

• Vagenda profiled 10 ridiculous products that are marketed at women. Surprise, surprise: a lot of them have to do with genital shame. When will this culture finally get tired of claiming that vaginas are gross?

• Mission: Great Sex is raising money to help find the most pleasurable, well-fitting condoms, in an effort to improve the population’s enjoyment of safe sex. Awesome!

5 Books That Have Shaped My Sexuality

Kate Sloan

I don’t read as many books as I’d like to. This is partially due to the fact that I spend zillions of hours a day on the internet, reading blogs and articles and other web resources. Still, though, I owe a lot to the books that I’ve read on sexuality, and I wanted to profile some of them today.

1. Butch Is a Noun (S. Bear Bergman)

Bear is perhaps my all-time favorite queer author. At the time that he wrote Butch is a Noun, he still identified as a butch and used gender-neutral pronouns (he’s since started identifying as a trans man and uses male pronouns now, from what I’ve seen). Bear visited my high school at one point and read aloud from Butch at one of the first Queer-Straight Alliance meetings I ever attended, and I was immediately enthralled. His writing is richly descriptive and often hilarious. This book helped me refine my ideas and fantasies about what I, as a queer femme, am looking for in a partner: a chivalrous, old-fashioned gentleman (though not necessarily male-bodied or male-identifying), who is nonetheless well-versed in new and progressive ideas about gender and sex.

2. Sex at Dawn: How We Mate, Why We Stray, and What It Means for Modern Relationships (Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá)

The “polyamory bible” used to be The Ethical Slut, but ever since Sex at Dawn came along, it’s pretty much reigned supreme in poly circles. It presents countless fascinating arguments for the idea that monogamy doesn’t come naturally to humans, using plenty of evolutionary psychology and bonobo research to prove its central point. This one is definitely worth a read if you’re interested in delving into consensual non-monogamy or have already made that plunge.

3. The Vagina Monologues (Eve Ensler)

In a world that shames, commodifies, and minimizes vaginas, it’s unspeakably refreshing that a play like this could get so popular and be talked about so often in the public eye. This piece is a must-read if you, like so many of us, suffer from vagina shame, or just don’t think about your lady-parts all that often (although, if you’re reading this blog, I doubt that’s an issue of yours). I also encourage men to read this, if just to gain some perspective on the pussy.

4. O: The Intimate History of the Orgasm (Jonathan Margolis)

I’ve never heard another person talk about this book. It’s just not very well-known, which is a shame, because it’s brilliant and quite possibly my favorite book on the topic of sex. Margolis, with a surprisingly balanced and empathetic attitude for a straight cis guy, leads us through the history of the human orgasm. Of particular interest is his in-depth description of the Victorian era’s stuffy attitudes about sex, which hid all the suppressed, lascivious shit that was going on under the surface. His main hypothesis is that testosterone has been the most influential hormone in our history, and he may well be right.

5. Flow: The Cultural Story of Menstruation (Elissa Stein and Susan Kim)

As you might expect from a book about menstruation written by two women, this book has a serious feminist bent and leans heavily toward anti-establishment. Stein and Kim write about the male fear of menstrual blood, the various products that have been invented to make it disappear (often at the risk of women’s health), and alternatives to these sometimes crippling “solutions.” Definitely a book for the hippie-mama within, but still a great read if you’re tired of the world telling you to stuff a “dry wad of fuckin’ cotton”* up your vag every month.

*This is a quote from The Vagina Monologues about tampons. Yet another reason to read it.

Progress Report: G-Spot Orgasms (Take Three)

Kate Sloan

When I first wrote about my G-spot here, I had figured out how to make it feel good and swell up, but that was about as far as I’d gone. When I wrote an update a couple weeks later, I had given myself a seemingly “blended” orgasm by using a very intense G-spotting dildo in conjunction with a reliably excellent clit toy.

This time, I’m checking in to let you know that, for the first time I can remember, I managed to achieve a seriously intense, blended orgasm during intercourse with my boyfriend.

It started out innocently enough. At around 4AM, we dragged ourselves to bed, wanting sleep but also wanting to fit in a little “intimate time” before nodding off. We agreed that it would have to be slow and lazy sex, because neither of us had the energy for the hard ramming that is usually my preference.

Earlier that day, I’d been reading Deborah Sundahl’s book (yes, still – I’m a slow reader, okay?!) and she mentioned that it’s sometimes helpful for a man to concentrate on rubbing his coronal ridge over the G-spot with every thrust. I told this to my boyfriend and he accepted the challenge.

I was on my period, and feeling slightly self-conscious about my ladybits, so we skipped our usual foreplay and cut right to the chase. My man condom’ed and lubed his cock, I grabbed my Eroscillator (my clit’s best friend, and a perfect choice for those times when I’m too exhausted to rub myself during sex or just can’t be bothered), and we got down to business.

Normally my G-spot needs a good amount of prep and warm-up before it becomes sensitive enough to register pleasure, but as Ms. Sundahl predicted, my spot seems to gain sensitivity the more I use it and the more I focus on its sensations. So when my man slid into me, there was vaginal pleasure almost immediately.

Using a vibrating (or oscillating) toy during sex presents an advantage over using my hand, which is this: I don’t have to think when I’m Eroscillating my clit. I just have to turn it on and hold it there, and maybe increase the speed after a while. This makes it ideal for trying to induce internal orgasms because it allows me to focus all my attention on my G-spot.

And focus, I did. As the Eroscillator trembled faithfully against my clit, I directed all my awareness onto the feeling of my man’s cock sliding over my G-spot again and again (he is very, very good at locating my spot, and seems to only get better as time goes on). I was in another world; normally I’m mentally present enough to be aware of how I’m moving, the sounds I’m making, the way my boyfriend might be experiencing the interaction, but this time, the pleasure was so great and so deep that I didn’t notice any of that stuff. I probably looked like a total lunatic, but who cares?

After less than five minutes (very uncharacteristic for me when there’s no foreplay involved, and especially when I’m tired), I was suddenly hit with a super-strong, profound, internal, indescribable tidal wave of an orgasm. I let out a cry which my boyfriend later told me was loud enough to make him worry it’d wake the neighbors.

It was a different quality of orgasm than I’ve ever experienced before. Not only was it deeper and stronger, but it left me with a feeling of utter exhaustion and satisfaction that I only very rarely get from clitoral-only orgasms (after an hour-long cunnilingus session, for example). It was so all-consuming that I felt like I could barely move afterward. It was difficult to even sit up in bed for long enough to put my menstrual cup back in. And I fell asleep seemingly within seconds after lying back down.

We’re going to experiment more with this combination of techniques to see if it’s a reliable way to give me these splendiferous blended orgasms. I’m going to attempt to lower the amount of clitoral stimulation (for example, by keeping the Eroscillator on its lowest setting) so I’ll be forced to rely more and more on the G-spot stim to get off. I think this could be a very important step toward my eventual ability to get off with my G-spot alone. (And honestly, if that never fully happens, I won’t even care. Just let me have more of those glorious orgasms!)

Readers: If you can have G-spot orgasms, how did you first learn to do so? Any tips for a n00b like me? If you haven’t yet mastered your G-spot, what methods have you tried? What methods have you yet to try?

Progress Report: G-Spot Orgasms (Revisited)

Kate Sloan

The last time we spoke about G-spot orgasms, I had only just started to experiment. I’d given a stack of towels a permanent home on my bed, and I’d invested in some highly-praised G-spotting toys. But I’d barely ventured into the world that is G-spot pleasure.

I’ve been playing with my G-spot a lot more lately, so I thought I’d give you a little update on how it’s going.

I was reading Deborah Sundahl’s squirting bible and she mentioned that some women find it easier to incorporate a steadily-lessening amount of clitoral stimulation over time, as they learn to master their G-spots. This idea sounded much easier and more appealing to me than just dropping clit stim cold-turkey in favor of concentrating on my G-spot.

Today, I started with my Amethyst, a favorite but oft-forgotten dildo of mine. It’s glass, and fairly skinny, so it requires little to no lube and is great for warm-up. Plus, when inserted, it makes a freaking bee-line for my G-spot, immediately triggering that need-to-pee sensation.

Normally I need a little clit play to get me going, but the Amethyst felt good right away. I wish it were always this easy to get started. (Maybe it would be if I always started with the Amethyst!)

After a while, my pussy started to crave something bigger. The small, tapered end of the Amethyst just wasn’t cutting it anymore, so I pulled out the Pure Wand. The G-spotter to end all G-spotters. A pound and a half of glorious steel.

Like glass, steel barely needs any lube – I just stuck the Wand’s larger end in my mouth for a second and that was enough to get it to slide in. My G-spot was pretty swollen and aroused at this point, so again, it felt good right away. I thrusted and rocked and tilted and manoeuvred. Good god, the Pure Wand knows what it’s doing.

After about 15 minutes of that, I started to feel a little stuck – like my arousal wasn’t progressing anymore. So I grabbed my Eroscillator, kitted out with the fingertip attachment, turned it to the lowest setting and held it on my clit while continuing to thrust the Pure Wand. I increased the speed of my thrusting, and a few times, I felt the glimmer of an oncoming orgasm somewhere in the distance, but it didn’t happen.

I should tell you that the Eroscillator’s lowest speed is not normally one that gets me off. I always click up to the second and third speeds to finish the job. While using it in tandem with the Pure Wand, I occasionally felt a momentary desire to increase the power of the oscillations, but when that happened, I knew it was only because I was focusing on my clit too much. Ms. Sundahl says achieving G-spot orgasm is about shifting your awareness from your clit to your urethral sponge, so I knew that’s what I had to do.

I left the Eroscillator buzzing at a low speed on my clit, while thrusting very fast with the Pure Wand. I focused all my mental energy on the way the big steel ball felt as it slid over my G-spot again and again. I revelled in that sensation, that unusual pleasure that I don’t typically encounter without the help of toys. And before very long, I came.

It wasn’t a full-on G-spot orgasm – I felt some of it in my clit, and was hypersensitive afterward in a very clitoral sort of way. But I definitely feel that I now know how to shift my orgasms into a deeper part of my pussy, at least somewhat… and that feels like an important step.