Best Sex Ever Contest Winners! (Plus a l'il patriarchy smashing).

Clean up, clean up, everybody do their share.

The winners of the Best Sex Ever Contest have been notified and if it wasn't you, fear not, there's always tomorrow for dreams to come true (Clarice, 1964). And to dry your tears, I'll share two entries with you that I especially liked.

The first is from "Wilma" not her real name, nor near as I can tell, anyone's real name.

I could not pass up entering your cool contest because it involves a subject near and dear to my heart. Very sadly, for me, the best and most profound and powerful sex was with a man who destroyed my heart and soul so thoroughly, I haven't wanted to have sex with another man for several years. And goddamn it! I'm a woman who LOVES SEX!

I never should have gotten involved with him in the first place, as I was (very unhappily) married with two daughters. It was a simple and completely innocent Facebook post asking if any of my many musician friends happened to have a pair of bongo drums that I could borrow or buy to use at a middle school Earth Day garden party. Wouldn't you know, Mister Great Cock-Heartless Lover answered. From that moment on, I was in thrall to him, ultimately destroying my already wrecked marriage, shattering the trust between me and my daughters and spending the next 4 years in total, self destructive despair. Even after years of therapy, countless suggestions and support from friends and far too much journaling and self reflection, I am still pathetically addicted to this man.

It was because of That Moment, the first, single moment when I finally opened up, became totally and terrifyingly vulnerable and allowed my self to meld mindblowing sex with Love. I had never allowed it before out of fear of intimacy, and here I did it with the one man who would use it against me over and over and over again. But man, I still remember That Moment, and the power and beauty of it all and for that, I am grateful. Because at least now, I know what I am capable of. I still believe, after all these years of self afflicted misery, that I'll experience That Moment with someone worthy and who I'll feel worthy enough with.

Jill, going against all my better judgment, I'm shooting this email off to you without taking one moment to re-read, proof or edit what I've written.

Goddamn! It feels fucking great to get this off my chest! Thank you for offering the opportunity for your readers to participate in this endeavor.

Love you.

And this from Sky Roy, which actually is his real name. I love this because it's so outside what I've ever experienced. Also he used the phrase "sexual compersion." (Compersion, n: A feeling of joy when a loved one invests in and takes pleasure from another romantic or sexual relationship.)

One time myself and two women I am involved with decided to have a threesome. We all got tipsy and/or high, and sat on the couch together. We started talking, electricity just crackling around us, and finally somebody started touching in a way that was erotic. Suddenly everyone's clothes went flying into the air and we started having the most natural, effortless, astounding sex. We moved from room to room trying every configuration you can imagine, extending the session over about three hours.

The best parts of the experience were me having four mindbending orgasms, which given that I am male and pushing forty is pretty rare over that timespan, as well as two separate occasions where we had a simultaneous three way orgasm. We were so in tune that we were able to get each other to come just by proximity somehow, and the people just touching on the sidelines of the current action were able to climax just from sexual compersion. It was magnificent.

People talk about threesomes full of jealousy and and possessiveness, but I have never experienced that. It has always been good, and this one in particular was wonderful because we were all so happy watching each other be happy.

Thanks for your entries, loved reading them.  And if I could, I'd be mailing each and every one of you something to stick up a favorite hole.

****
I've been tossing around the idea of a post The 10 Most Humiliating Things About Being the Chick Who Writes Cosmo's Sex Positions, Ranked, with both #1 and #10 being "I am the chick who writes Cosmo's sex positions."

However, my 12-stepping friend says "Don't go pain shopping" which is the exact opposite of how I've spent my entire life. So in that spirit....

There is actually a lot I love about the gig, mostly that they pay me, unlike most of you cheap-ass motherfuckers (not you dear Ada, IBWMW Minister of Making an Automatic Monthly Donation), but also that I can use the sexual bully pulpit to tell younger chicks the Very Important Information that would have been VERY nice to know in 1989 that if they can't come via P-in-V (that is, practically everyone) then just getting on top or angling themselves just right isn't gonna make them start spewing rainbow colored orgasms. (Clean-up on Aisle 3.)

Filmmaker Trisha Borowicz of Science Sex and the Ladies and a huge inspiration to me saw through my secret plan. "The sacred institution of the Cosmo sex position list is breaking up the patriarchy, bitches," writes Trisha who says cool shit like that all the time. Check out her post "Cosmo Sex Position Lists Will Bring the Orgasmic Equality Revolution!"

To hear me talking me more on this, or just to deepen your stalking routine, go to iTunes and have a listen to the "Who Invents Cosmo's Sex Positions" episode on The Cosmo Happy Hour Podcast. 

Next time I will tell you the one easy trick that will make you come like a race horse every damn time.

xoxox
jill

PS Thank you Sarah and Aneros for the Helix Syn and the Evi!

How to Make a Woman Come--Even If You Are That Woman. AKA Things I Learned from Science, Sex, and The Ladies

Louis CK* has a bit on how men complain about women's "neediness" after sex:

“After sex, you’re looking at two very different people. The man just wants to lay there and be cool and the woman wants to cuddle. 'Why is she so needy?’ She’s not needy you idiot, she’s horny, because you did nothing for her. You did absolutely nothing. Her pussy is on fire because it's gone unfucked completely. Of course you’re fine, you climbed on and went “KFHGSKG” and rolled off. And she’s on you because she’s like ‘WH-at SOMETHING ELSE HAS TO HAPPEN! This is bullshit!!' If you fuck a woman well, she will leave you alone. ‘Thanks a lot, buddy. Zzzzz.’”

Louis says this happens because men are "bad at sex." Perhaps, but I think a lot of us are kinda bad at sex--just by default, because we never got the proper instruction. People want to be good lovers and fuck well. But it's incredibly difficult--ridiculously so--to get any sort of reasonable, real-world education.

Even today, we know so little about women's bodies. So very little!  It was only in the past few years that I learned that the clit occupies an extensive bit of pelvic real estate, that scientists still don't know what the fuck women are squirting when they ejaculate (it's "not pee," which just leaves...every non-pee substance), and that the cervix is so insensitive that 95% of women can't tell if it's being rubbed with a cotton swab. (This being the primary reason that the Gentleman's Cervical Swab Rubbing Courtship Technique of 1847 has fallen out of favor.)

In other cases, we know very well what's going with on women's bodies, but for some reason, bury or don't acknowledge this info.

The most egregious form of our sexual ignorance/denial is about how most women actually have an orgasm: A woman comes from having her clitoris rubbed. There are a lucky few (very few!) who can get the job done via p-in-v fucking, but even then, what's going down with every woman is that:

1. their clit is rubbed.
2. they come (or don't.)

That's it.  

This is pretty much contrary to every depiction of women's sexual response we see in porn, mainstream films, and read about in books. Even books written for women by women. (Er. Or not.  See updated discussion about this in the comments.)

Trisha Borowicz got all Fight-the-Power about this (yay!) and made a smart, funny, cheeky film called Science, Sex, and The Ladies "for all the women who have felt confused, frustrated, or ashamed about their ability to orgasm."  

 I learned all kinds of things from Science, Sex, and the Ladies, up to and including:

--I couldn't tell a whit of difference between the photos of the Aroused Clitoris and Unaroused Clitoris (possible future lesbian lovers: you have been forewarned.)
--Women have their strongest orgasms by their own hand, second strongest with someone else's hand, and weakest via fucking and the frustratingly indirect stimulation of a penis rubbing-near-but-not-quite-exactly-where-you-need-it.
 --Contrary to popular belief, women don't take forever to come. Women come as quickly as easily as men, given the right stimulation. Men would also take forever to come if they were only being stimulated by, say, someone diligently rubbing their pubic hair.

My favorite part of the film depicted scenes of people engaged in various forms of sexual congress--a blow job, fucking, etc...--when a cheery actress would walk into the each scene and advise the female participant to "Rub one out!" to enhance her experience. It was fun, breezy and educational--like a particularly racy episode of The Electric Company.

I actually do wish this was the sort of stuff young people saw. And, while I'm at it, I wish more sex scenes depicted women being stimulated realistically, in the way that women actually need to be stimulated, so that women would no longer have to think they were somehow broken, doing it wrong or hadn't yet found the proper dick.

There is an orgasm disparity among women and men that drastically affects the way each understand themselves and each other. The truth is, women go through their sexual lives having very few orgasms compared to their male partners, and this has become a matter of course, a sort of unspoken accepted reality. This discrepancy, however, is not a result of innate differences between male and female biology, but a result of how we as a culture have come to understand, teach and experience sex.

Science, Sex and the Ladies aims to make it known that this orgasm disparity is culturally created, harmful, and in no way inevitable. It's actually quite an appalling and over arching problem that creeps into every aspect of our lives and relationships. Neither modern women or modern men are fully responsible for this problem, but a change in both are necessary for a solution. Science Sex and the Ladies, as part of a larger Orgasm Equality Movement, is a call to action.--Science, Sex, and the Ladies.

Anyway, if you want to be part of the Orgasm Equality Movement--and I do, although I'm totally not going to refer to it as that--the film makers are offering screeners of the movie if you'd like to host a small group showing. It's free--all they ask is that you send them a photo of the festivities. For more info, email anc@ancmovies.com.

I watched it alone, but wish I'd been with a group because I have all kinds of questions now. Like:

--Why are women writing romance/erotica about easily orgasmic p-in-v sex? Are all erotica writers among the tiny percentage of penis in vagina cumees? Or are they writing about how they think sex should be? Or how they wish it could be?
--What is the connection between emotions and sex? I'm totally onboard with Naomi Wolf's ideas in Vagina about sexual/spiritual/emotional connections, heady neurochemicals, and the transcendence that can happen in a really good fuck. And yet..... While emotional connection and getting "in the mood" is great, and certainly something to strive for, it's clearly not absolutely necessary for an orgasm. A woman masturbating with a showerhead or something can come plenty easily without having a big emotional experience and/or scene-setting. And yet... I have also burst into tears after an orgasm. Why and how are emotions all mixed up with sex? Or do we just assume they are, ergo, they are?
--If you are like pretty much every other chick and need to rub your clit to come, do you do it during sex with someone else? Or have you been among those (and, yes, I have been there as well) making "secret, quiet circles on disappointed clits next to sleeping lovers."

What are we all gonna do about this?

xoxo
jill

PS. I recently was also cited on some Spanish-language anti-gay site (blergh) for my supposed anal bleaching expertise.  "Una experta en el tema, la Sra. Hamilton entra en grandes detalles sobre la historia de esta reprobable técnica."

PPS. That site has 2 million views.

*This was before. Damn you, Louis.

(photo via Church of the Victorian Cult, not sure where Wendy Rose got a hold of it.)

Semen Strips are Still Not Candy, Vaginal Oppression, and other Reader Mail.

Grapes: A more suitable snack choice

--Semen Strips--Still Not Candy
"This stopped me dead in my tracks," wrote the apparently recovered William Quincy Belle, sending a screen shot showing IBWMW is the #1 hit on Google Canada for "semen strips are not candy." (Sadly, we still languish at number 3 here in the U.S.)

Still, I stand by the "not candy" statement regarding Masque--a kind of watermelon fruit-roll-up product that you place in your mouth before giving head to neutralize the taste of your lover's very Life Essence--despite the company's confusing assertion in their FAQs: 

"They are certainly not candy and were created for an intended purpose. However, we have many people in our office that eat them merely for the taste."

Which indicates to me less about semen strips' deliciousness and more that the Masque corporate offices are in dire, dire need of a decent vending machine.

--The Misguider Googler of the Day
The dear soul who found us via the search term "woman has fat camel toe vagina."  

--My Work Sullying Other Places
The brave and beautiful Erica at A Sexy Woman of a Certain Age is running my piece The Appeal of an Older Woman. She also called me a "debauched ninja" which I fucking love. Look for her piece about her 7 most erotic experiences appearing here anon.

My article about Trisha Borowicz's bad-ass film Science Sex and the Ladies and how it's pretty much biologically impossible for most women to reliably (or ever) come via p-in-v fuckery is currently running in Salon as The Simple Secret To Making Women Orgasm No One Understands and AlterNet as The Simple "Secret" to Making a Woman Orgasm That Way Too Many People Don't Get (it's the number one story!)

I made the mistake of reading the hatey comments, which for the record is not a good way to start your day, and got all bunged up when people said stuff like "I come vaginally--that's BS, you're oppressing me, etc..." (Note:  If the majority of people have an experience but you don't, that doesn't mean the statement is untrue, it just means you're in the minority.  Because that's how statistics fucking work.)

Anyway, tons of nicer, more logical people shared the story via Facebook and Twitter and totally got it, like Jane Rising who wrote this today: 

I was raised Mormon, and Mormons are taught that masturbating is BAD BAD BAD. I was a good Mormon girl, so I never ever touched myself. For reals. I got married at age 22, and was expecting all of my sexual frustration to come to an end in holy matrimony. But my husband didn't seem to know anything about sex, either, and it just never felt that good to me. We were just doing it the way we saw people do it on tv or in movies (the PG-13 ones, of course). It took about 5 minutes, and for me it was just wet and slimey and didn't feel like anything other than a mess. He seemed pretty happy with me, though, so I patted myself on the back for being a good wife.

As time went on, he seemed less and less happy with me. He wanted me to be thinking about sex all the time, and I wasn't. He wanted me to want him, and I didn't. He wanted me to "get into it," and I couldn't. So he sent me to a sex therapist, who was supposed to "fix" me. Nothing really changed.

After 16 years unhappily married to this man, I filed for divorce. And about a year later I stopped being Mormon. Imagine my surprise when I had sex for the first time with someone other than my husband. This new guy spent a few minutes with his fingers on my clit and I was through the roof. I started weeping. He wanted to know if something was wrong. Why was I crying? Because I had just had my first orgasm at age 39, and it was so easy. After all those years of anger, blame, frustration, guilt and pressure, I finally realized that I was not broken. Not broken one bit.

I haven't had a chance to watch this movie yet--I just read about it today for the first time. But the message of this film needs to be spread far and wide, and hopefully make its way to women like I used to be--women trapped by ignorance in a miserable sex life. We need to know our own bodies, claim them, and love them.
****
Huzzah!

--"Gigantic and Instantly Fun"

Murca, a blogger in Estonia, wrote this about In Bed With Married Women:

Minu see lemmik väljamaa blogi peab juba mõnda aega suurt pidustust avaldades ja taasavaldades lugejate päris (voodi)elu lugusid. Ja see on nii hiigla tore ja kõhe ja huvitav ja veidral kombel haarav, et ma just mõtsin, et üks blogi ei saa enam paremaks minna ja siis see läks.

which according to Google translate means:

My favorite Väljamäe this blog has been for some time, and big parties by publishing a pretty taasavaldades readers (bed) life stories. And it is so gigantic and instantly fun and exciting and strangely captivating, so I just mõtsin that one blog will no longer get better and then it went away.

Which, for me at least, could also use a Google translation. If you speak Estonia, let me know what it means. Unless Väljamäe means "you're vaginally oppressing me," in which case, keep that $%## to yourself.

--Why I Can Never Get A Real Job, Reason #47
A friend who moved away said her daughter remembers me as "the penis and vagina pals lady." Which is awesome and totally what I'm doing the very next time I'm called upon to do an animated feature and/or children's puppet show.

xoxox
jill

What is "Adult Content"? Hell, I don't even know anymore.

Please avert your eyes.

The first time I went into a gym locker room when I was a kid, I was completely wigged out that grown-ups were walking around naked. Not because adults were naked--I had seen plenty of that--but because it seemed so arbitrary. Naked in locker room = a-ok. Naked in KMart = alert the police. How could rules be so iron-clad in one place, then completely disregarded in another?

It was a dual morality that seemed a bit pointless. Why were we pretending to be shocked by nudity, when it was obvious from the locker room experience that we could all handle it just fine? Yes, I get that the gender-segregation made it "different," but I think that's crap. If some chick was walking around naked in the Winn-Dixie, we would need to giggle and/or pretend to be scandalized.

I think the same phenomenon is happening right now with sex--this sort of weird combo of pretending, denial, and reacting like we think we're supposed to react.

We are all here via fucking--someone did IT with someone else. Our ancestors made love, they had tepid sex because the ovulation thermometer said it was time, they co-mingled souls and saw God, they slam-fucked on a dirty old couch in the dorm. Everyone* came from someone coming. To ignore that and pretend that sex is still some sort of unspeakable thing that adults cannot even discuss without everyone needing to giggle and/or be scandalized is ridiculous. Ridiculous! And yet it's STILL happening all the time. I don't mind the giggling part, sex is funny, but the scandalized bit, I am just so...done with that.

To wit: Trisha Borowicz has made a smart, funny, amazing film about female pleasure called Science, Sex and the Ladies. It's educational and cheeky. She's been shopping it around to festivals but reports they flat out won't run it because it's "too explicit." "Even festivals that are known for taking risks," she reported via email, though I've added in my head that she was also shaking her head in disbelief.

The film is sort of "explicit," in that it shows stuff like photographs of an aroused clitoris vs. unaroused clitoris, but it's not porn. It's about biology and the history of how society views women's sexual pleasure and how women can best have an orgasm. It's for learnin'. And besides, even if it was porn, these are film festivals, for fuck's sake. When the hell did film festivals get all uptight?

I honestly don't know what's acceptable anymore. Every night on TV there are shows about grisly sexual/violent crimes, but this month Facebook made me take down a photo of a vaguely naked woman. Everyone's mom has read Fifty Shades of Grey, and there were articles in major publications about it, but Google has docked me for my supposed "pornographic content." My friggin' Sunday paper supplement has coupons for vibrators and lubes, but my blog provider (Google, again) has threatened to take down all Blogger blogs with ads for "adult products." Seriously? The dorky newspaper coupon section is more progressive than these supposedly modern, forward-thinking tech companies?

Do we really not get the difference between supposedly offensive content and regular adults just trying to figure out how to have proper sex? Why do we have such a nonsensical patchwork of rules that apply here, but not there? For this body part but not that one?

So, yes, this was supposed to be about Science, Sex and the Ladies, but kind of digressed into ranting. Fear not, next post I will tell you how you can see the movie, for free. People, especially women, need to know how their bodies work. Why is that even controversial? It's madness!

Anyway, tomorrow we talk about the movie and female pleasure.

Til then.
xoxo
jill

*Test-tube babies: even you came from some jizz.

Real Sex Lives: Trisha, "Giant, Cumbersome Back Massagers Misused in the Cover of Night" and Other Faces of "Lady-bation"

In honor of this semi-creepy, embarrassingly accurate completely neutral information I received today via email (shown there at the left), I offer you this guest missive on my area of expertise which, you will recall, is MASTURBATION.

The piece below is from the blog SSL, which focuses on the "specific intersection of science, sexuality, and feminism; particularly paying attention to how female sexual response is discussed, portrayed, and studied in our culture." Trisha is also the filmmaker behind the fabulous "Science, Sex and the Ladies" which reveals that despite pretty much every thing we see about how women come, most chicks actually need to do some outer rubbing to get the job done.

Here's Trisha's My Tribute to the Many Faces of Lady-bation:

Here's to all the ladies rubbing up against their pillows; grinding hips into old teddy bears; laying on the couch spread eagle with their hands between their legs; riding their palms, face down on their bed; legs crossed in class gently pressing thighs against lips; silver bullet vibrators gliding across their vulvas; handle ends of old electric toothbrushes with just enough vibration pressed against clits; giant, cumbersome back massagers misused in the cover of night; fancy removable shower heads held dangerously close to the nether regions; quick rub offs in bed to help nod off; secret, quiet circles on disappointed clits next to sleeping lovers; joyously lip jigglin' in office bathroom stalls with memories of last night; frantic childhood couch arm humping; bored fingers on swollen clits; pick-me-ups between study sessions; unintentional bike seat friction; slow, sensual vulva massages in front of dirty internet searchings; good vibrations sitting on top of dryers; and all the other dirty, sexy, bored, silly, loving, gentle, secret, uninhibited, prohibited, fantastic ways we get ourselves, by ourselves, off.