SexyPrime, a blog by Susan Crain Bakos

HOW DRUNK DO YOU HAVE TO BE TO SLEEP WITH HIM?: A Study Says "Very"-- But I'm Not Convinced

"The results are a clear indication that British women are severely lacking in confidence," Kathryn Lakeland, head researcher at FemFresh.

Those "results" come from last week's Sex Study of the Media Moment, this time out of Britain.  The study by FemFresh, a feminine hygiene company, surveyed 3,000 women between the ages of 18-50 and reported that the average woman had 8 sexual partners, had been drunk with 5 of them and couldn't even remember the names of 2.  A few other numbers:

• One in 20 has never had sex sober.
• 75% say they are "able to let loose" with a drink or more.
• 75% preferred to have a drink before sex with their husbands.
• 14% said they couldn't stand to have sex with their partners sober.

Sobering statistics, yes?

Do they lead to the conclusion that British women are severely lacking in confidence?  I don't think so--but it may be reasonable to conclude that FemFresh consumers are.  They're buying into the premise that healthy vaginas need to be sprayed with chemicals daily.  Let's talk to 3,000 women who don't think so.

What about their male partners?  No hand-wringers are judging them.  I couldn't find a headline saying, "British men are having sex drunk so they're severely lacking in confidence."

Why should we conclude that the 75% of women who like to have a drink before sex with their husbands are getting drunk?  They are likely having a glass of wine to relax after a stressful day before shifting gears from working woman/mother to lover.  A recent Italian study found that a glass or two of red wine increases desire in women.

Heavy drinking and sex are part of single social life, especially for men and women under 30. I had a conversation with Chip Rowe, the Playboy Adviser, last week about drunken hook-ups.  We agreed that we didn't see the point in drunken sex because men don't perform well and women don't come.  Why risk sex with a stranger when the best you may get out of the experience is the hang-over?  Share a sloppy kiss and go home alone to sleep it off.

But I can't buy into the conclusion Lakeland reaches either.  We always blame the woman in one way or another.  If she's not a sinner or a slut, she's in dire need of psychological self help.  

About that 14% who can't face sex with their partners without a drink:  I would have guessed higher.

SLOW DESIRE, NOT LOW DESIRE: A New Study Describes Lady Libido

Photo Credit:  Drawing by Johne Attitude on Photobucket

If you’ve read the sections on desire and arousal in The Sex Bible for Women—you already know that the model Masters and Johnson created for the sexual trajectory from desire through orgasm has the first two steps backward:  Desire does not always precede arousal.  In women, desire may only come first in the early heady days of “relationship” when she’s thinking about her beloved most of the time, living in the state of New Relationship Euphoria. Nobody explains this better than Nan Wise in her theory The Desire Curve (which was first reported in SBW.)

How many millions of women have been told they have “low libido” (labeled “dysfunctional”) because they don’t feel desire for their partners?  

A new study including interviews with hundreds of women conducted by Rosemary Basson of the University of British Columbia reports that, in women, arousal comes after “sex,” not before.

“Women often begin sexual experiences feeling sexually neutral,” she says.

Why do they have sex?

She cites the old familiar reasons:  to please their lover, feel “intimate”, short-circuit an argument or make up after one.  (I would add:  Sometimes women use sex to get what they want or reward the guy for having given it.)

In Basson’s view of female desire, long and sensual lovemaking works best for women who don’t have time to get aroused during quickies.

But what if there often is no time for anything but a quickie?  Again, if you’ve read SBW, you know how to make a quickie work for you.

I am always glad to see studies that validate what should be obvious: female sexuality cannot be defined, let alone judged, by the male sexual model.   Yet, the analysis in this case overlooks what already is obvious:  In the standard model of heterosexual sex—foreplay, intercourse—he comes, she doesn’t.  Basson is describing a woman who is aroused when the sex is over because she hasn’t had an orgasm.   (Grammy?  Mom?  You?)

Yes, explain how desire and arousal work.   But add:  Don't wait to feel your desire simmering way below the surface.  Jump start that desire/arousal process by masturbating, particularly with a vibrator, as part of foreplay; and you’re more likely to reach orgasm before the sex is “over” if you continue the direct clitoral stimulation during thrusting.  Still not satisfied?  Ask for oral or manual stimulation to get you there.

Don't lie back silently suffering your slow burning Lady Libido.  Light a fire under it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

RED WINE AND SEX: From My Pal Steve, A New Study I Can Support

Photo Credit:  Alfanhul:  "I've put the cup [glass] close to a window--taking profit of a strong ray of sun and--surprise, the red colour of the wine is now on the white paper in the background."

My pal Steve Otero at Sexy Spirits sent me a link to a new science of sex report, one I can enthusiastically support:

"RED WINE INCREASES WOMEN'S SEXUAL DESIRE.  A glass or two of red wine may increase a woman's libido," Roger Dobson reported in the U.K. Telegraph on July 26, 2009.  

I switched from white wine to red.  Thanks, Steve!

From the article:

"Researchers concluded that levels of sexual desire were higher in women who were moderate drinkers of red wine than in their counterparts who preferred other alcoholic drinks, or were teetotal.

"One theory put forward by the team of Italian doctors who carried out the study is that chemical compounds found in red wine may improve sexual functioning by increasing blood flow to key areas of the body..."

THE ORGASM STUDIES: Genes and Orgasms, Money and Orgasms--And The Shocking Orgasm Gap

Some women still claim it's the "closeness and intimacy" of lovemaking that matters--not the O.  I dispute that claim.  Logically, these women would not be saying No to sex with their partners as often as they report they do were they simply in it for the "intimacy". Why not happily cuddle up to him as he ejaculates inside you every night?  Ladies, stop telling me orgasm lies.  You are turned off to sex because you're not coming.  Why are you not reaching orgasm?  New studies have new answers.  Pick one.  Maybe he's not rich enough; maybe it's in your genes.  Or you don't have enough Emo smarts. Whatever.  He's coming and you're not; and you say No more often than he does.

Or maybe you're trying to figure out which of the revered female sex authorities to believe before you concentrate your energy on the "right" erotic zone:  Dr. Betty Dodson who says the only female orgasm is clitoral and thus all female orgasms are clitoral--or Dr.Beverly Whipple (of G spot fame) who has fMRI proof (in Rutgers University labs) that paralyzed women register orgasm in the brain--and that some women can have a "no hands" "thinking off" orgasm, again lighting up the fMRI machine.  She speculates that the orgasm comes from stimulation of the vagus nerve, a "livewire" that runs from the cervix through heart, lung and other organs into the brain.  

Betty probably has a point about vaginal orgasm when she says that the clitoris has a rich trove of nerve endings, extending into the vagina; and stimulation of those nerve endings via thrusting in the vagina, leads to orgasm mislabeled "vaginal".  But I'm also with Beverly.  You cannot fake an fMRI orgasm that happened without clitoral stimulation.  

With so many women struggling to have an orgasm, I often wonder why the experts need to take sides on clitoral vs. vaginal O.  But I also question why we need new theories on what makes one woman orgasmic and another--not.

Recently, we have been told in credible publications reporting on scientific studies that women have more orgasms with wealthy men than poor men; that women with more "emotional intelligence" have more orgasms; that female orgasm may be genetic and some women don't have the genes for it--and that men come twice as often as women do.  (And more.  These are my Orgasm Studies Highlights picks.)  Some writers have speculated that women who don't reach orgasm are holding out for a wealthier man.  Yes, there are giggles in these studies.

Paula England, a professor of sociology at Stanford University refers to the his two/your one equation as The Orgasm Gap.  

She says, "The orgasm gap is an inequality that is as serious as the pay gap; and it's producing a rampant culture of sexual asymmetry."

Another, more lopsided equation may help explain The Orgasm Gap:  Men receive oral sex four times more often than they give it.  In hook-ups, the man gets the blow job 80% of the time.  The gap persists in relationships even after a man actually knows a woman and cares if she comes or not.  Many women need cunnilingus to reach orgasm.  Why aren't more caring men putting their tongues into service?

Michael Kimmel, author of Guyland, compares The Orgasm Gap to The Housework Gap:  "Men don't pull their weight on either front because no one makes them."

Babes, we must close The Orgasm Gap.  If that means spreading your legs, grabbing his head and thrusting him downward--do it for the sake of the team.

The Sex Bible for Women has MANY techniques for reaching orgasm, in masturbation or partner sex.  And Babeland is having a sale on vibes.

Photo credit: The Sex Bible for Women

THE SEX LIVES OF ALPHA WOMEN: Why Do Strong Women Fantasize About Aggressive Lovers?

Photo credit:  "Beautiful Woman" by Alaskan Girl

Why does a successful career woman, not intimidated by any man in her professional world, fantasize scenes of erotic domination?  And why does she sometimes live out those fantasies, with carefully chosen male partners who let her “top from below”?

Because it makes her feel sexually desirable—not because she likes being hurt, rejected, humiliated.

In SexyPrime conversations and interviews with my guy pal Alex Zola (The Zola System blogger), I’ve been exploring this phenomenon.  I named him The Spanking Man after he confessed that his sex life in the decade of his thirties—He’s forty now—consisted of “being a kink provider for the women who want it,” with a specialty in erotic spanking.  I’ve had some interesting emails from readers in response to Zola’s confessions.

Some women hate him; other women say, “I use guys like that to get what I want.”  Some men identify with him; others say, “It’s assholes like this…”  And every now and then I hear from a total jerk threatening me with physical violence for daring to say there are alpha women and beta men—a dumb total jerk unaware that his computer’s IP number is on record, attached to his threats in a permanent file. 

As it turns out, Psychology Today‘s news editor, Matthew Hutson, is blogging about the same subject—powerful women who fantasize domination.  (My pal Steve Otero at Sexy Spirits sent me the links.)

Interestingly, the alpha woman who dreamed of having it rough caught the attention of researcher and therapist E. Barbara Hinton back in 1973, when the modern women’s movement was emerging, putting more women into alpha roles.  She interviewed women about their fantasies and found many dreamed of being “forcefully taken.”  They fantasized aggressive lovers, she said, because they felt more desired by men who were so passionate about having them.  (What is spankiing if not a lot of attention paid to one's ass?)

University of Kansas psychologist Patricia Hawley published a paper in the Journal of Sex Research in April that studied how both men and respond to domination fantasies. Both enjoyed fantasies in which they were dominant.  But here is the surprise:  “socially dominant women” were more turned on by submission fantasies than any other groups in the study.

Hawley concluded, as Hinton did, that women are more turned on by the idea of  the forceful man’s passion than the domination itself.  

Yes, that reinforces conclusions I’ve drawn in my own interviews with women about their BDSM fantasies—BUT a sizable segment of alpha women also act out their fantasies, finding men like Zola who will, for their own complicated reasons, provide the kink.   The Alpha woman assuming the submissive role and the Beta male playing dominant is an interesting dynamic, an apparent flip-flop of their positions in society where she has more money and power than he does.   A power exchange, however, is not a reversal of power.  When she pulls on her panties and goes home, she is still the Gold Card Babe and he is—what?

Resentful, according to one beta male reader.  “These women think they can get anything they want from us, sexually or domestically—and they can discard us the way men discard women.”

Yeah.  That would be so unfair.

Into denial, writes another.  “I pretend I’m her equal because we come from the same backgrounds.”

The Zola speaks best for Beta men.  So I go to him.

“It’s her fantasy but it’s our reverse egotism get-back.  We long for women.  We want to get them but we want to get at them for all the years they rejected us in favor of Alpha males.”

 Aha!  Spanking is a passive/aggressive act!

“When I started spanking women,” he says, “It was 90/10 erotic to passive/aggressive.  Now I’m never quite sure which is which.  I look at the redness of her bottom and ask, is that erotic?  Or is that about me wanting to smack her?”

Would you rather spank an Alpha woman or a Beta woman?  I ask. 

“Alpha women are more cock-sure of what they want…”

Wait a minute!  I stop him.  Are you saying that a sexually empowered woman is masculine?

“No.  She’s the ultimate feminine, projecting all the qualities of a woman.  Beta males want the Alpha woman but they’re afraid….so they work out a way of dealing with her.  Those guys who are into cheating on her or refusing sex have found the way to regain their manhood.”

That will take us into new territory, a blog post for another day.

Are you happy being a beta male? I ask Zola.

“No, but I try to see the humor in it.  I just want to be a regular guy. A pretentious Joe Six Pack.”

I doubt that.  He wants to be widely admired and desired by many women.  In the act of dominating a woman, he can believe that he is all that and more.  His fantasy and hers interact in one fine moment of perfect equilibrium.

Babes, this is social progress.

HAVE YOU HAD YOUR ORGASM TODAY?

Photo credit: The Sex Bible

As you know, I believe every woman should own a wardrobe of vibes and use one daily to reach orgasm, whether she's in a "relationship" or not.

Kimmie and I are headed to the Soho Babeland store Tuesday morning and then to lunch.  If your Tuesday isn't looking so lovely and indulgent, check out this video clip, Ten Things You Didn't Know About Orgasm.  You will be surprised and entertained.  (Thanks to Steve Otero of Sexy Spirits for sending the link to me.)

SCIENCE OF ORGASM video

via Boing Boing by Cory Doctorow on 5/25/09

Mary Roach's TED Talk, "10 things you didn't know about orgasm," will have you scratching your, um, head, in amazement as you learn the particulars of pig-wanking, the delicate matter of explaining foreplay to royalty, and the business of measuring the human penis's muzzle-velocity.

Mary Roach: 10 things you didn't know about orgasm (via MeFi)

Do You Squirt--and if so, What IS That Stuff?

Last night I attended a demonstration of Orgasmic Providing by Richard Anton Diaz at Sexy Spirits in midtown.

This was the second time I watched Anton work his touch magic on a lovely naked model gracing his massage table. Both were extraordinary events, so above anything I’ve ever witnessed as a peripatetic sex journalist that I cannot put them into one of the usual categories, like Tantra/WooWoo and Relationship Yada, Yada, Yada. Anton operates from a place of great integrity and intelligence, attracts like-minded people--and takes everyone in the room on a journey.

Each time the audience was composed mainly of men who watched in rapt and respectful silence as he massaged all the woman’s body before moving, at last, to her vulva. The first model some weeks ago seemed to go quietly and deeply inside herself during genital massage, gently pulsating beneath Anton’s fingers, her being defined by her sweet, bare little pussy. The second goddess, a little hair covering her mons, writhed and throbbed, wailed and moaned as she came--and even talked to the audience at times. Her prominent proud clitoris and her full juicy lips, purple in their passion, claimed pleasure. She made frequent eye contact with Anton in a power gaze of charged energies exchanged.

And she ejaculated. Copiously. Towels were placed around to catch the overflow.

Her pussy was positioned away from the audience, but a camera focused exactly on her so that we could see (almost as if they were 6 inches away) every detail of her, as well as how Anton stroked her, on the screen above them.

“The camera gives her more privacy because her pussy is not fully exposed,“ he says. “The audience is not focusing on her but on the image on the screen. They can see the orgasmic pulsing. And I want their attention on the strokes as that is happening.”

Yes, our attention was on the strokes--and, in this case, the generous squirts of fluid shooting out.

Some women are squirters, at least occasionally, most likely with G spot stimulation--which this goddess did not have last night. (Though Anton’s Orgasmic Providing strokes include internal ones, his fingers did not leave her clit and labia.) Many Western sex experts dismiss the “ejaculate” as merely a gush of fluid composed of urine and copious vaginal secretions. Others believe it is fluid from the Skene‘s glands, a string of several masses of tissue, embedded in the urethra, which when stimulated sexually in some women, releases the fluids into the urethral canal. Devotees of Amrita, the “nectar of the goddess”, base their cult on ancient Tantric writings. Men ejaculate sperm from the testicles via tubes that go through the prostate gland where the sperm mixes with seminal fluid--a very clear process that everyone understands.. There is no question that whatever this fluid that some women “ejaculate” or squirt, upon orgasm is--it is not the female equivalent of seminal fluid. Strictly speaking, there is no female ejaculate or ejaculation.

If not ejaculate, what? Something does happen for many women though no one [Sorry, Amritas.] has answered definitively the question: Pee or Amrita? I lean toward the Skeen’s glands theory because it makes the most sense to me.

Female ejaculation isn’t exactly a technique. If you want to try to make it happen, use G spot stimulation and don’t hold back when you feel the urge to urinate. Bear down. Anton’s goddess of the Amrita drinks water before the demonstration. Some women empty their bladders before trying to squirt because they want to be absolutely sure they aren’t peeing. Whatever soaks your towels!

Anton’s philosophy of life and sex is: Give a woman everything she wants. You see why women love the man?

In comparing the two demonstrations of orgasmic providing on two very different women, I realized how beautifully he does that, adapting his style to suit the needs of the goddess at hand, going with her flow, be it an electric current in her pussy or a gusher of wondrous fluid spurting forth.

I have squirted on rare occasion, always involving a lot of oral and manual play, a large dick and too much wine. One time was particularly memorable--a hottest ever sex adventure; and I will write about it for Christmas because it happened just before the holiday, a few years back in Soho.

Visualize Your Arousal--and Reach Orgasm

"When a woman sees a strong sexual image, her body is primed for sex before the mind has a chance to talk her out of arousal.  If she loses the image before she feels aroused, the sex-negative mind has won," Dr. Ellen Laan, University of Amsterdam sex researcher.

The first step in The Orgasm Loop--the no-fail technique I created for reaching orgasm--is:
Visualize Arousal.

If you can "see" arousal, you can't deny it.  See your arousal and you won't let that sex-negative brain win by shutting you down.  That part of your brain says you are too busy, too tired, too fat, too angry at your lover, too "good" to do what you've been fantasizing doing--and it's a judgmental old lady in baggy sweats.  Are you gonna' take orders from her?

Men don't have much trouble visualizing their arousal because it's hard to deny an erection.  (Society has rarely insisted that they deny their erections unless they enter the priesthood--and look how that's been working out.)  Numerous studies have shown, however, that women routinely deny arousal.  Hooked up to sensors, watching erotic videos, many women say, "I'm not aroused by that porn!" though their heart and breathing rates are elevated and their vaginas are lubricating.  These women have trouble owning their arousal.  They short-circuit their own orgasms.

Further complicating the issue, we get confuse between desire and arousal. 

For decades, sex researchers and therapists accepted the model of sexual response developed in the 1960s by Dr. William Masters and Dr. Virginia Johnson:  desire precedes arousal.

New studies contradict that.  Neurobiologists report that women's brains are blazing with arousal before they even experience desire for a sexual encounter.  A 2005 University of Amsterdam study, for example, demonstrated that a woman's arousal is triggered almost instantly by sexual imagery.

That's why Step One of the Orgasm Loop is:
Mental Arousal

Excerpted from my book The Orgasm Loop:

Close your eyes, clear your mind of distractions and visualize your own arousal.

Create your arousal image.

Some women, for instance, might visualize their genitalia--lips sweating and moisture forming, the color changing to deeper pink.  Other women might visualize a flower, perhaps an orchid.  some women might see arousal as a color, perhaps pink, red or saffron yellow, the color of Saraswati, the Hindu goddess of knowledge and the arts who embodies the wisdom of Devi, mother goddess in Hindu mythology. 

Find the image that represents arousal to you and focus on it every time you use the Orgasm Loop.  This image must become your mental equivalent of an erotic mantra.  Focus to the extent that no other image enters your mind.

Why Do We "Debate" Female Orgasm?

"I'm so tired of orgasm how-to articles in women's magazines," a friend whined.  She'd just read "The Truth About Orgasms" on the Sirens magazine website and agreed with one respondent who basically said:  Enough already.  "Having an orgasm is no big deal.  Why do women have to 'learn' how to do it?"

Like the "enough already" writer, she has vaginal orgasms, something less than a third of women do experience.

Sweetie, orgasm is "no big deal" for you and for some other women--but for many, it is a VERY big deal.  Maybe they don't understand their own bodies or know how to reach orgasm.  Maybe they didn't masturbate in adolescence because they internalized those family, church and societal messages repressing female sexuality and tying orgasm into "sexual awakening," i.e. the male touch/kiss/thrust.  Maybe they are on antidepressants, suffered sexual trauma, are dealing with anger and control issues in their sexual relationships--or, if they only have sex after drinking, have dulled responses.  (Vaginal rejuvenation surgery can destroy nerve endings--another reason to eschew the designer vagina.)

Men come from friction against the head of the penis.  Orgasm is more complicated for women.  On the other hand, we have more paths to orgasm, are more capable of sustained orgasms, multiple orgasms, longer, more intense orgasms.  (No wonder men have historically feared female sexuality.)  If the average woman doesn't come as easily as a man, she has far more orgasmic potential.

When women have orgasms as easily as men do--the How To Have An Orgasm article will become a quaint anachronism.  Meanwhile, the articles (and their critics) waste space "debating" whether vaginal orgasms really exist--[Yes, they do.]--whether or not women should be encouraged to "achieve" orgasm because that makes the quest for an O sound like "work" or "pressure"--and, finally, Does all this talk about orgasm make women who don't have them "feel like failures?"

We are all wired differently.  And it's time we laid to rest the vaginal vs clitoral orgasm debate.  The newest volley in that on-going argument comes from Dr. Betty Dodson (a great proponent of the clitoral O) who says that even vaginal orgasms are clitoral because the rich web of clitoral nerve endings reach the vagina in some women. 

Yes, the clitoris has an astonishing web of nerve "roots".  But why should we be so attached to a theory about orgasm that we need to debate the validity of one path vs. another?

And why should we assume that articles and books informing and teaching women about orgasm (and how to get there) are too much "pressure."  Having sex without reaching orgasm is rarely good enough.  I suspect that the so-called "plague of low desire" is simply this:  Men come; women don't; and women lose interest in sex.

It's not that hard to learn how to have an orgasm.  Go to my books, specifically The Orgasm Bible and The Orgasm Loop.  You will learn how to have an orgasm whenever you want one.  That is the essence of female sexual empowerment.

It's All About Her Sex Drive!

"For a woman who looks like that and doesn't know much about her husband--this relationship has to be about her sex drive,"  Matthew Weiner, creator of AMC's "Mad Men" series on Betty Draper, the character played by beautiful actress January Jones.

If you're watching "Mad Men" season two (and it is the only show I am watching this summer), you know that Betty's sex drive is shifting into higher gear.  Intrigued by learning that her old roommate is a call girl, this well-married mother of two--who looked great in her Valentine's Day sexy lingerie though husband Don suffered performance failure--got her smoldering flirt on with an auto mechanic and a guy on a horse.  Will the married sex heat up?

Well, maybe.

The research shows that desire falls off in new relationships somewhere between 18 months and three years--and that women actually lose interest in sex when they feel secure with their man. So much for that theory on female sexuality opening like a flower in the warm rays of the emotional sun that is soul mate love.  (Read in depth about the science of desire and arousal--including research only published here-- in The Sex Bible For Women.)  A magic desire pill for re-igniting female desire does not yet exist.

I have a theory about why so many women lose interest in sex:  It doesn't work that well for them.  They aren't reaching orgasm regularly and reliably--not even through masturbation, which many women shun if they are "in a relationship."  (Babes, you really need my books!) 

A new study from the Kinsey Institute intrigues me.  (Click on link to go to report on study.) Most previous studies linked age, education, socioeconomic factors, religious background and other demographics with women's loss of desire and other sex problems.  This one looked at the connection between sexual inhibition and sexual dissatisfaction and found that "the strongest predictors of reports of sexual problems were women's sexual inhibition scores."

If we can help women overcome their inhibitions about their bodies, masturbating, playing with sex toys, touching their own clits during intercourse, asking for what they want and need sexually--we also empower them sexually.

As for Betty Draper, she looks like she has overcome any little inhibition that might have held her back--and I'm staying tuned to see just how much she shakes up her married world.