This is How You Please a Woman.

(*This originally appeared in Alternet and Salon. I hope I'm allowed to run it my damn self...Um...maybe don't tell anyone about this.)

Yes, everyone knows porn is just fantasy blah blah blah, but for some people, porn is--seriously!-- their primary source of sex ed. Less than half the states require sex ed in public schools and only 19 require it to be “medically, factually or technically accurate”(!) Even when the sex ed is there and semi-decent, there tends to be way too much information on fallopian tubes and little, if any, on what one should do upon encountering a clitoris. People genuinely want to be decent lovers, I think, and scrutinizing porn for love tips can be all kinds of fun, but as a source of actual lady-pleasin' info, it kind of sucks.

“Every technique you learn in porn is wrong. If men are going to porn to figure out to how to please women they're going to be very disappointed, ” says Gail Dines, author of Pornland: How Porn Has Hijacked Our Sexuality. “Everything that makes sex fun--the creativity, mutuality, enjoyment, connection, intimacy--is bled away and in its place is kind of a robotic fucking of women's orifices.”

So, lesson number one: “robotic fucking of women's orifices,” maybe a “no” on that. But with that off the table (at least most of the time...), what you do instead? Great thinkers from Ovid to Master Tung-hsuan to Naomi Wolf have offered their own answers, and there are certain Great Truths that run through them all.

We're getting into the Deep Magic now, my friends. Use it wisely.

Embrace the Erotic Outside the Bedroom

“Most men, if you breathe on them or look at them the wrong way, they're ready for action. But for most women, you have to get between their ears before you get between their legs. You have to build the story,” says Dr. Adam Sheck, aka The Passion Doctor.

So build the story. “A man should tell his wife, detail by detail, what he wants to do to her, how he wishes to touch her,” counsels Rabbi Shmuley Boteach in his book, The Kosher Sutra. “Eroticism is the thrilling desire to connect: to know, to explore, to penetrate, and to comprehend. When our lives are electrified by an erotic pulse, all existence becomes illuminated.”

Express Your Desire

According to studies by Marta Meana, president of the Society for Sex Therapy and Research, being desired is the source of a woman's desire. It is “at once the thing craved and the spark of craving,” explains Daniel Bergner in his beautifully written book, What Do Women Want?: Adventures in the Science of Female Desire. So, by all means, let a women that you think her body is insanely hot—so hot you can barely take it--and it's making you hard just thinking about her. (Ratchet this language up or down, filth-wise, depending on the chick.) Tender, respectful love is fine enough but please note that approximately 1 billion percent of romance novels are about a woman inciting a man with a passion so savage and hungry that he can barely control himself. (Spoiler: he doesn't).

Don't Be Afraid to Ravish

The desire to be taken by force consistently sits there, all petulant and non-PC-like, among women's top sexual fantasies. This doesn't mean that women want to be raped, obviously, but it is related to the tip above on desire. Being taken strongly and urgently is a clear physical expression of a male's searing desire for a woman. Bergner describes Meana's take on it thusly: “The ravager, overcome by craving for that particular women, cannot restrain himself; he tears through all codes, through all laws and conventions, to seize her, and she—feeling herself to be the unique object of his unendurable need—is overcome herself.” (See above: plot of every romance novel.)

“For the heterosexual female 'ravish me' fantasy, the man embodies the masculine and takes charge with those masculine qualities to be focused, direct, relentless in pursuing his goal, in this case, loving his woman into 'submission.' This can range from simply initiating sex, to being a little more assertive than usual, to being more aggressive, to being a little 'rough' all the way to role play and using restraints and sex toys,” writes Dr. Sheck. “I’m 6’3″ and around 200 pounds and have found that many woman have simply enjoyed the weight of my body pressing into them and found that arousing. Perhaps that is enough to begin your journey. I also happen to have large hands and usually able to hold both of a woman’s wrists in one of my hands. Even that small step can often be assertive enough to feed into the submission fantasy.” (And if you did not just experience a little unbidden thrill thinking of Dr. Sheck holding you down, well, then that's where we differ.)

Focus on Goalless Touching

“The whole sexual experience can be totally enjoyable, but most men and women are taught to go straight for climax. We educate guys to enjoy the whole ride,” says consultant Robert Kandell, who coached men at Onetaste, where “orgasm” is defined as the entire sexual experience beginning at the first thought of making out with someone. He offers a metaphor: “The climax of a symphony is the cymbals crashing at the end, but that’s not the main draw.

What is “the whole ride”? “Non-genitally focused sexual behavior, referred to popularly as 'foreplay'...is a broad category of activities which are usually undertaken with the goal of increasing one’s own and/or one’s partner’s sexual arousal and pleasure. These activities can include, but are not limited to, kissing, stroking, massaging, and holding anywhere from one part to the entirety of a partner’s body,” writes Dr. Adena Galinsky, in a woefully unsexy passage.

Not only do you miss out on plenty of fun if you skimp on the “non-genitally focused sexual behavior,” you increase the odds of squelching orgasm or arousal, according to Galinsky's recent study. Just don't call it “non-genitally focused sexual behavior” and you should be go to go.

The More Time You Put in, The Hotter It Gets

The mid-7^th century sex manual “Ars Amatoria of Master Tung-hsuan” advises much “dalliance before penetration.” “He presses on her slender waist, he caresses her precious body, he whispers endearing words and engages in passionate discourse,” writes the Master. There is extensive stroking, loving gazes, and deep rich kisses until the Jade Stalk rises “standing strongly, pointing upwards like a a lonely peak towering high up in the Milky Way” and the Cinnabar Crevice becomes “moist, exuding a rich flow of secretions like a lonely well springing up in the deep vale.” Even when it gets to the point when the man is kneeling between his lover's open thighs, Jade Stalk in hand—and it's pretty clear what's going to be going down--he continues to tease and woo, letting his member “play about in this portal” while continuing his impassioned speech, sucking her tongue and stroking her belly, breasts and labia.

In another Ars Amatoria (The Art of Love) the Roman poet Ovid counseled lovers of 2 A.D. to take their time in love, too: “If you will listen to me you will not be too hasty in attaining the culmination of your happiness. Learn by skillful maneuvering to reach your climax by degrees. When you are safely ensconced in the sanctuary of bliss, let no timid fear arrest your hand. You will be richly rewarded by the love-light trembling in her eyes, even as the rays of the sun fitfully dance upon the waves. Then will follow gentle murmurs, moans and sighs, laden with ecstasy that will sting and lash desire.” Sigh.

Whether You Think It's a G-spot or Not, Try Stroking It.

"Find her 'sacred spot,' then hang out there far longer that you think is necessary," writes Naomi Wolf  in Vagina . While scientists are still dithering about whether there is a G-spot or not, Tantric masters have been in there stroking said "sacred spot” and making the ladies come. Carefully, slow stroking of the spot--which is part of the whole neural tangle, but can also be considered to be sort of a back end of the clitoris--is highly effective at making women purr for you. In one study researchers gave 89% of their female subjects orgasms by "systematic digital stimulation of both vaginal walls." This despite the lab conditions and calling it "systematic digital stimulation of both vaginal walls."

Don't Lock In to A Successful Sequence of Moves

A systematic approach in which a man “politely lets himself into the vagina, perhaps waiting until the retraction of the clitoris tells him that he is welcome, is laborious and inhumanely computerized,” writes the ever-blunt Germaine Greer in The Female Eunuch. “The implication that there is a statistically ideal fuck which will always result in satisfaction if the right procedures are followed is depressing and misleading.”

“You want to be present. You want to feel what you're partner's feeling, you want to sensitive to the amount of lubrication, to the engorgement of the labia. And from there, you know when to be rough, when to be aggressive, when to pull on hair, when to smack things, when to be kind,” says Dr. Sheck. “It's really a tuning to the body.”

A Well-Fucked Woman Kind of Loses It (And That's Good)

“Feminine sexual excitement can reach an intensity unknown to a man. Male sexual excitement is keen but localized, and—except perhaps at the moment of orgasm—it leaves a man quite in possession of himself; woman, on the contrary, really loses her mind; for many this effect marks the definite and voluptuous moment of the love-affair, but it also has a magical and fearsome quality,” writes Simone de Beauvoir in The Second Sex.

When a lover stimulates a woman properly, it sets off all kinds of chemical tomfoolery. A lover who suckles a woman's nipple, for example, will set off a release of the bonding love chemical oxytocin and she, perhaps without quite realizing why, will favor that lover over another. When a woman is fully relaxed, open and receiving pleasure she can enter sort of a trance state. And when a woman has an orgasm, she gets a heavy dose of opiates--the regions of her brain involving self-awareness and inhibition going dark. "This can feel to the woman involved like a melting of boundaries, a loss of self, and, whether exhilaratingly or scarily, a loss of control," writes Wolf. If a man gives his lover a deep, deep orgasm, the kind where it feels like his cock is hitting some deep emotional/physical/spiritual place within, a woman can have a profound experience. Some women will feel an exquisite rapture, some will burst into tears, and 100% will take that dude's call next time around.

xoxox
jill

How To Please a Woman. Maybe. Well, me, at least.

I'll be here for a bit

I just wrote my first article for Alternet: What Men Raised on Porn Really Need to Know About Pleasing a Women. Whee!

Well...kinda. You'll see.

The idea was that since most porn has little in the way of usable lady-pleasin' info, I would offer some ideas culled from the Sexual Wisdom of the Ages. I nerdishly went back through sex manuals and uncovered common themes from sources both ancient, like Master Tung-hsuan and Ovid, to modern teachers like Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, Ovid, Daniel Bergner, and Naomi Wolf.

I loved what I found and thought, "I am sharing the Deep Wisdom here. The people, they shall rejoice!"

Except "the people"-- oh god, I don't know how to put this but, some of them are not so dear and smart and open-minded like you. The commenters, some who maybe even read the article, did not fawn over me as I was expecting, but instead saw all kinds of nefarious messages in what I thought was a completely benign (and mighty delightful!) article. One guy thought was I calling men "shitty" (what??), another said I was advocating rape (for the record, I am "anti-rape"), another thought that I didn't include enough info on gay dudes...in an article on how men can please women.

Sure, plenty of people got it, like the 1000+ people who are sharing it on Facebook or readers like this chick who wrote: "This is possibly the best article on the subject that I have had the pleasure to read." (btw, another complaint:  calling female humans "chicks." Because I AM THE OPPRESSOR!) 

Of course I gave the negative comments a billion times more of my attention. How was my message and intention so so misheard? I mean, how did anyone end up interpreting it as some sort of criticism against men? (Also for the record: Yay, men!)

I was completely disappointed and thrown and was gonna write this big ol' sad, pissed-off, point-by-point refutation of each gripe. I was even going to cite Erica Jong from Fear of Fifty about the backlash when women talk honestly about sex. ("We need to unlock the staggering power of Eros in the female psyche. We must demand the right to depict women's lives as we know them, not as we might like them to be." Go Erica!)

But....then I looked at comments on other articles and realized:  They are all like that.  Angry, off-topic, defensive.

Oh.

Internet people just like bitchin,' I guess. Crisis averted.

In the meantime, the article is among the site's "most read."  Just hope some people are actually reading it.

Go ahead and have a look yourself.  I still really like it, dammit, and agree with practically all of my points. Let me know what you think.*

xoxo
jill

*Be gentle. I'm still a little raw.

Update 12/15/14:  The article is the number #1 most read piece on Alternet and is now on Salon.  So suck my non-gender specific dick, haters.

Dopamine Withdrawal and Litost

Litost is a nearly untranslatable Czech word, a state of feeling miserable and humiliated. "Litost is a state of torment created by the sudden sight of one's own misery," writes Milan Kundera in The Book of Laughter and Forgetting.

Anyone who has experienced the end of a love affair and/or unrequited passion is well aware of litost, translatable or not, because there it is, living in your head, all fucking day and night.

There are already plenty of good reasons why the death of passion is so unbearable. I mean, hmm, there's the personal rejection of everything you are, the shame ("Why the fuck did I think it was wise to text him that picture of my butt?"), the anger/incredulousness at the other person's inability/fear/general fucktardedness at not seeing how flippin' incredible you are, and the sadness over that very same thing. I mean, well, it all sucks. Hard.

But in one of the crueler aspects of neurochemistry, just when you're hitting this personal low happens to be the exact second that dopamine decides to flee the scene. Dopamine, as you will recall, from Dopamine, The Cruel Bitch Mistress is a chemical that floods your brain in the first throes of love. (Oh, god, remember how good it was? I'll pause a moment here for anyone who needs to take a sobbing break...)

A dopamine high is great--there might be nothing better--but it's a harsh, difficult-to-manage kind of high. Someone giddy on the dopamine may be very creative, in love with the world, happy and open to the many glorious wonders of the world and their fellow human beings. Dopamine just hammers on your reward system in your brain and you feel good, man. Really good. This, however, is accompanied by less delightful effects like lack of sleep, loss of appetite and a need to keep the good chemicals coming through increasing intensification of the affair. But you kinda don't care because everything else is just so...amazing.

Dopamine acts in the same way as pretty much any drug of abuse, according to Helen Fisher in my now-dog-eared copy of Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love:

If the beloved breaks off the relationship, the lover shows all the common signs of withdrawal, including depression, crying spells, anxiety, insomnia, loss of appetite (or binge eating), irritability, and chronic loneliness. Like all addicts, the lover them goes to unhealthy, humiliating, even physically dangerous lengths to procure their narcotic.

That is, litost. (a side note: As one who has well tried the whole "unhealthy, humiliating" etc... route, I can advise you with some authority that that's not gonna work out so well for you.)

So what the fuck are you supposed to do, faced with the one-two punch of psychological trauma coupled with, basically, a really harsh drug withdrawal?

Unfortunately, your options are not terribly exciting, but rest assured, they do work. After a time at least. A very unpleasant, suckfest of a time. For advice, I would steer you to my two gurus in matters of the heart, one modern, Helen Fisher, and one ancient, Roman poet Ovid (43 BC-17AD).

According to Fisher, the cure is basically--do other shit. (Fisher, a respected author and scientist, uses much more genteel language, of course.) Take a walk, go have a coffee, climb a mountain, get a dog. All non-"them" related activities that give you pleasure are fine. Meditate, don't eat sweets or hit the booze, get plenty of sunlight, and plaster a big ol' fake smile on your face to convince yourself and others that you are just fucking fine. (This actually works, according to Fisher, "The nerves of these facial muscles activate nerve pathways in the brain that can give you feelings of pleasure. Even imagining that you are happy can spur pleasurable brain activity.")

Also, you can't go around thinking of your former lover, that hideous, unappreciative, (too fucking sexy, no! wrong train of thought!) emotionally-stunted wreck of a person, because that just makes it worse. You must physically remove reminders of their wretched existence to eliminate chances of backsliding. Suggests Fisher:

You must remove all evidence of the addictive substance: the beloved. Throw out cards and letters or stuff them in a box and put it out of reach. Don't call or write under any circumstance. And depart immediately if you see your former lover in the office or the street. Why? Because as Charles Dickens said, "Love...will thrive for a considerable time on a very slight or sparing food." Even the briefest contact with "him" or "her" can fire up your brain circuits for romantic ardor. If you wish to recover, you must expunge all traces of the thief who stole your heart.

Meanwhile, back 2000 years ago in Remedia Amoris (Remedy of Love), Ovid was pretty much dishing up the same advice--do other shit.

Love is the child of idleness, as slothfulness begets sensuality. It behooves you, therefore, to be active, and you may succeed in breaking the painful shafts of Cupid and putting out his torch.

And Ovid goes further than having you burn letters and such (which he does recommend as well), he advises leaving town entirely. "I believe in drastic treatments only, for there can be no cure without pain," he writes. But the principle is the same, do anything to avoid re-fanning your ardor.

Remember that you must stay away, for it is possible that embers of the fire that consumes you are still smoldering treacherously beneath the ashes of your surface indifference. To return prematurely will undo all the efforts you have wasted on your cure. It will be fatal to come back and find that your absence has merely given you a keener appetite for what is bad for you.

If these sound too grim, there are three more methods that sound a little more fun:

1. Take on a second lover and "let your affection hover uneasily between the two," counsels Ovid. The idea is more lovers = a certain helpful detachment.
2.  Overdose on the loved one. "Throw yourself at her night and day; have your fill of her in every way and manner; and she shall prove the means of curing your ills," wrote Ovid. For some reason, our brains refuse to continue getting a dopamine fix from the same person. Eventually, your brain just stops responding to the dopamine flood (see also: "The Coolidge Effect" in "Our Genes Can Be Heartless Puppeteers") unless you....
3. Find some other incredibly bangable mate. Writes Fisher: "Of all the cures for a bad romance, by far the most effective is to find a new lover to fill your heart." And start the whole fucking thing again--Wheeee!

(photo source: Frantisek Drtikol: Nude With Circles, 1928)


*Thank you to Nicole Daedone for reminding me of the lovely word, litost.

Note: This is running again by request from a heartbroken chick and is 3rd in a series of body/sex/mind/chemical fuckery.  See also Dopamine, the Cruel Bitch Mistress and The Crush, Explained by Science.