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.