Vagina: A New Biography by Naomi Wolf
I have yet to see a relationship guide for couples that takes seriously enough the issue of men engaging in low-level snapping at their wives and children, and how that affects women physically. Plenty of women are certainly guilty of snapping at or showing irritation to their partners and children, of course—and men deserve a book of their own about what female snapping does to the male body. But my subject here is the female body and mind. There is still an often unconscious assumption in our culture that the right of men to snap or be irritable with women and children in their families is not really serious, and that this entitlement goes along with other privileges of male domestic life. There is not a great deal of cultural energy directed at urging men who are not otherwise abusing them, to stop snapping at women and children in their homes.
But in an environment in which women expect to be snapped at regularly, the female ANS closes down the channels that women need open in order to be sexually alive. It is evolutionarily negative for women to bond with violent or scarily unpredictable men. For evolutionary reasons, probably, many women react to men’s sudden anger at themselves and at their children (whom they are wired to protect) in immediate ways, with raised heart rate, adrenaline response, and so on; if the snapping is chronic, the woman’s “bad stress” levels will be chronically raised and her sexual response will suffer. Men who want a more passionate sexual response from their wives or girlfriends may wish to try a no-snapping week on their part, and see what good things begin to happen to them when their partner’s ANS can be activated fully, having gotten used to an emotional environment without those stressors.
FIND HER “SACRED SPOT,” THEN HANG OUT THERE FAR LONGER THAN YOU THINK REASONABLE
I asked Mike Lousada what advice he had for heterosexual men. What was the takeaway from all the experience he had had successfully sexually arousing and awakening women—even those who had had great difficulty with orgasm or great problems with low libido?
“It’s very simple, in a way,” he said. “It’s not rocket science. I want men to have two pieces of advice. One: be patient and compassionate. The other thing men should remember is that women have two sexual centers, the clitoris and the G-spot.” (There are actually many, as we saw, but two is a good start.)
As noted earlier, the average man climaxes in four minutes whereas the average woman requires sixteen. This average time differential is worth taking very seriously. Women are often expected to ‘adapt’ to men sexually but this is one way in which such expectations are pointless. Many women may have taken for granted that, sadly, it is just not easy for them to climax when they are with a man; but this is an unnecessarily bleak conclusion, one that the latest data do not support. The right kind of stimulation—which is most successful when it combines clitoral, G-spot, and other kinds of stimulation—brings the success rate for female orgasm to almost 90 percent. In one study, Milan Zaviacic at Comenius University in Bratislava, Slovakia, found a G-spot in every one of the twenty-seven women he studied; every single woman, who had her “sacred spot” massaged, had an orgasm: ten of them ejaculated. In another study, an additional 40 percent of 2,350 respondents also experienced ejaculation.36 So the low levels of satisfaction and desire that American and Western European women report are a sign of a major schism between the levels of pleasure and orgasmic capacity that women are capable of in the right conditions, and their actual experience; it is a sign that they are not being treated in an ideal way, either physically or emotionally.
“Vaginal Eroticism: a Replication Study,” a study by Heli Alzate, in the Archives of Sexual Behavior, investigated “vaginal eroticism” in a group of women volunteers.37 Alzate and the research team engaged in “systematic digital stimulation of both vaginal walls.” The headline is that “erogenous zones” were found in all subjects, mainly located on the upper anterior wall and the lower posterior one. An orgasmic response was elicited by stimulation of these zones in 89 percent of the subjects. That is a darned high rate of return for women and orgasm; remember that a third to a half of women in the University of Illinois study had problems with attaining regular sexual satisfaction. When I read this study’s striking results, which have been replicated elsewhere, I thought of the remarkable amounts of time—by Western standards—Tantric practitioners spend caressing the sacred spot (the actual technique is often demonstrated as a “come here” kind of beckoning gesture with an index or index and middle finger, often combined with clitoral and other stimulation).
Alzate concluded that the study supports earlier findings on the importance of vaginal eroticism and the sacred spot, or G-spot, to orgasm, though he notes that he did not find a “discrete anatomical structure” in terms of the “G-spot.” Alzate also argues that the findings support the concept that there are two kinds of orgasms for women, clitorally evoked and vaginally evoked, and that some women expel fluid through the urethra during orgasm.
Many women—and Tantra gurus—report that while clitoral orgasm involves bodily tension and release (a lot like male orgasm), “sacred spot” orgasm involves relaxation. Many women learn to have sacred spot orgasms, those Tantric four-star never-ending orgasms, by actually directing themselves to relax and lose consciousness during sacred spot stimulation—to their surprise, this can make the orgasm come in sequential inexhaustible waves—rather than tensing up and focusing on sexual thoughts or fantasies, which women tend to do to secure clitoral orgasms (and which Western images of sexuality model).
We’ve seen throughout the course of this book that sexual satisfaction and regular orgasm foster a woman’s creativity, confidence, and sense of self. The more men learn about how to bring heterosexual women to orgasm via sacred spot massage, as well as all other ways, the better for women’s state of mind. Stuart Brody and Petr Weiss report that scientists from Scotland and the Czech Republic found that simultaneous orgasm in intercourse, and regular vaginal orgasm, not only contributed to women’s satisfaction with their sexual lives, but correlated with their levels of happiness with their partners, their own lives, and satisfaction with their overall mental health. (Women, of course, can reach simultaneous orgasm more easily if they understand and feel a sense of control over their own sexuality, and feel that they have a right to communicate about their responses.) In other words, sexual satisfaction correlated with satisfaction in many other “unrelated” areas of women’s lives.38
Other extraordinary but underreported recent data about vaginal satisfaction confirm that when researchers are trained, they can identify women who have vaginal orgasms from the way the women walk, with accuracy rates above 80 percent, a finding that Lousada believes has to do with the pelvic levator muscles. Other researchers, G. L. Gravina and colleagues, found that a thicker urethral pad made it easier for the women they studied to have vaginal orgasms—perhaps because the thicker pad made penile or other pressure on the woman’s pelvic neural network more efficient. In 2008 these Italian scientists discovered the Holy Grail of understanding female sexual response when they confirmed that changes in the clitoris and G-spot during orgasm seemed to prove that the G-spot is actually part of the clitoris—the back of the clitoris, essentially—which in turn turns out to be much bigger, and to extend far deeper into the pelvis, than was believed to be the case.39
Dr. Deborah Coady and Nancy Fish’s 2011 book, Healing Painful Sex, confirms this finding, which is now being integrated into their concept of female anatomy by researchers in the vanguard of the study of female sexual response: indeed, the clitoris and G-spot are two points on the same nerve structure.40
Scandinavian researcher Zwi Hoch reported, in “Vaginal Erotic Sensitivity by Sexological Examination,” that 64 percent of women who identified themselves as “coitally anorgasmic”—that is, they could have orgasms through masturbation or external stimulation but not during intercourse—were able to learn to have “coital” orgasms immediately upon simply being shown what to do in terms of rhythmic pressure on what had earlier been called “the G-spot.”41
The entire anterior vaginal wall, including the deeper situated urinary bladder, periurethral tissues and Halban’s fascia, rather than one specific spot, were found to be erotically sensitive in most of the women examined, and 64% of them learned how to reach orgasm by direct specific digital and/or coital stimulation of this area. All other parts of the vagina had poor erotic sensitivity. This supports our conceptualization of a “clitoral/vaginal sensory arm of orgasmic reflex” including the clitoris, the entire anterior vaginal wall as well as the deeper situated tissues. Instead of looking for a “vaginal (coital) orgasm” distinctly different from a “clitoral orgasm,” this concept speaks towards a “genital orgasm” potentially achievable by separate or, most effectively, combined stimulation of those different trigger components of the genital sensory arm of the orgasmic reflex.
Given how easily orgasmic most women are with nothing more romantic going on than a clued-in researcher minimally showing them the ropes, it is shocking that the data on female orgasm and sexual satisfaction currently show such relatively low levels of female sexual happiness.
Don’t be alarmed: I do not think any of these data suggest we need to bring back the days before The Hite Report, when women had to adjust their response around the pacing of male penetration. The data above about using different kinds of stimulation to address all of women’s sexual centers show that up to 90 percent of women can have regular orgasms if they want to—if their partners are “patient and compassionate” and a bit clued in. We could also read this data as demonstrating that those who do attend well to their lovers’ vaginas, and so adjust their pacing, are likely to bring about clitoral/vaginal orgasms reliably in their partners. The data may also show that having someone like that in one’s bed—or knowing these skills for oneself with oneself—correlates positively to satisfaction in all other areas of one’s life—including to good mental and physical health.
TELL HER SHE’S BEAUTIFUL
This is not trivial. There are evolutionary reasons, as I noted above, that women need to be told regularly by their mates that they are beautiful—indeed, “the most beautiful”—in order to truly sexually release.
When I was in college, a friend was dating a man who was very nice, but who absolutely never told her she was pretty. They had lots of sex, but she was never completely at ease afterward. He would leave, and then the three of us young women who hung out in the apartment used to sit together around the kitchen table, drink pots of dark coffee with cream, and listen to this roommate fantasize. She would regularly imagine locking him into an unused room in the flat and not releasing him until, a hungry day or two later, she finally heard his grudging voice mutter, “Fine, okay. You’re pretty.”
Was she a bitch? Or was she dealing with a terribly uncomfortable ANS? There was not a woman who passed through our apartment who did not understand this fantasy.
We saw that it stands to evolutionary reason that women would respond sexually to what they see as “investment behavior” from their partners—signs that he is in for the long haul. If a woman thinks her partner sees other women as more attractive, she will not be able to relax fully, because she will be anticipating competition for resources and protection that she needs for her own offspring. (This one aspect of female sexuality alone is a reason that men’s looking at pornography often affects women’s arousal levels negatively.) But if a man assures a woman often that she is, to him, “the most beautiful,” a woman’s ANS can send the message: it is safe here. Then it can let go of the stress of vigilance about the threat of another woman’s potential encroachment on her caretaker team.
Because of the role of the ANS in female sexual response, to release completely into the sexual trance state, a woman must, to a certain degree, feel permitted to indulge in a kind of self-absorption that can feel to contemporary women like narcissism; she must feel unselfconscious. She can’t worry about her cellulite or how long she is taking to climax or about her smell “down there.” All of that is easier if a woman feels admired and cherished, which is where “You are so beautiful” comes in.
In the Cambridge Women’s Pornography Collective’s half-joking anthology, Porn for Women, a sexy male model gazes deeply into the eyes of the camera and the caption reads: “You get more beautiful every time I look at you.”42 Another page shows another male model looking surprised: “You’re telling me there’s pornography on the Internet?” the caption reads. For the ANS to be completely activated, a women ideally should feel, in short, not just beautiful, but actually, ideally, like “the most beautiful”—and this is where that unfamiliar “Goddess” language comes in.
Why do Mike Lousada and other Tantric gurus say, at the very start of their sexual contact with a woman: “Welcome, Goddess,” and engage in seduction rituals that address “the Goddess” in the woman? Why did scores of women who don’t actually believe in this kind of New Age mumbo jumbo respond with transformationally different orgasms, or have orgasms for the first time, after being addressed in this way? What magic did this seemingly obscure or slightly ridiculous honorific confer? Did it operate, I wondered, on some kind of physiological level?
The more I learned about the ANS, the more I realized that addressing a woman as “Goddess”—or addressing the Goddess in her, if the former is just too much to attempt—is a way of allowing her a transcendental sexual response, or even an orgasm for the first time.
Why a Goddess? Goddesses are powerful; those around them hold them in reverence. Goddesses do not need to doubt themselves, their value, or their allure—they can even be a bit self-absorbed—so they can allow permission to go on the trance journey inward identified by Georgiadis’s team. And Goddesses are entitled, without anxiety or guilt or self-reproach, to high levels of attention and pleasure.
I put this hypothesis, and Mike Lousada’s experience with his clients around the Goddess language, with some trepidation, in my online and face-to-face interviews with women. Again I received very surprising confirmation of this aspect of the Goddess Array, which I think of as the erotics of reverence—or at least of admiration.
“I tried what you wrote about,” wrote one reader. “We were in our hot tub in the backyard. . . . I love [my husband] and our sex life is usually okay, but with jobs, commuting, etc. it has been kind of mundane for quite a while much of the time.
“I told my husband about the ‘Goddess’ hypothesis,” she continued, “and about the information in your article. He was amused, but seemed interested, I think especially at the prospect of its possibly changing my own response. He started to try to become sexual with me, and I wasn’t really in the mood yet—it felt kind of porny and not really engaging. I could do it, and climax, but felt I would sort of be going through the motions. I was ready for that slight sense of disappointment you feel at those times. But I kind of pushed him back a little, playfully, and said, ‘You should address the Goddess.’
“He laughed and said, really awkwardly, ‘You’re a cute Goddess.’ It sounds crazy, but something in me opened up. I think he saw this, so he added, making the most of the moment, ‘You have a cute yoni.’ I laughed too—he said it in such a goofy way, and it was very funny—but there was something there that was also sincere. When we made love after that it was as if gates that had been rusted shut had opened. When we were done with our lovemaking, I felt different about myself. I felt differently toward him afterwards because of what he had said. It wasn’t about some fake flattery. It is hard to put into words. I felt seen somehow.”
I am not
DON’T BE SCARY, BUT DON’T BE BORING
There is a continuing duality in the representations of men that heterosexual women desire, which resurfaces in culture from decade to decade and even century to century. Consider (bad, haughty, unkind) Darcy in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (1813) and (good, kind) Darcy revealed later in the novel. Think about (nice) Edgar Linton versus (dangerous) Heathcliff in Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights (1847). Look at the (dangerous) Rochester before the fire in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847), vs. the (safe, nice) St. John, and the (safe, nice) Rochester who is blinded, after the fire. Look at (nice, boring) Ashley Wilkes vs. (bad, enthralling) Rhett Butler in Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind (1936). Look at the (safe, nice) early Beatles versus the (bad, dangerous) Rolling Stones in the 1960s.
This is more than a good parlor game; these dual heroes are, I believe, archetypal for heterosexual women. Romance novels, which are the biggest-selling category of any fiction at all, tend to center on a repeated narrative arc involving an apparently bad man—a lead character who seems emotionally troubled, or arrogant, or dangerous—who turns out to be a good man, and a stable, loving, and committed husband. The enduring appeal of reading romances with this plotline—a plotline that women who read romances consume over and over with minimally changed details—may have to do with how fantasy can resolve, at least temporarily, painfully unresolvable real-life physiological tensions.