News-Letter

These are just two emails I've received regarding female sexuality. It seems like everyone is confused about how to please a woman and what it means to be a sexual woman. It's just part of our culture that we think men, naturally, masturbate and always have sex on the brain, while women never masturbate or certainly never talk about it if they do. Though this trend in gender roles is changing -- take me, for instance -- I think most women still have a hard time entirely separating their own personal self-images from the decades and centuries of cultural weight that contribute to them. Once again, look at me: even I have my (all-too-often) moments of believing what society thinks of me instead of sticking to my personal beliefs and telling them to shove it.

Try as we might, each and every one of us lives in society. It is difficult to divorce our images of ourselves from society's views of us. This division is also quite a damaging one in terms of the average American's sexual health, men's as well as women's, because our natural desires are judged inappropriate and dirty. As best as I can see, the only way out of this snafu is to get the truth of our desires out there and do all we can to make society realize that sex is the best thing we've got going for us, and it should be embraced with delighted vigor. In that spirit, I begin a two-week mission to instruct women, and their men, how to come to a screaming orgasm each and every time, and feel absolutely wonderful about it each and every time.

The first step in our mission is cutting out all the falsities surrounding female sexuality. So, here are some basic truths about women: we masturbate, though not all of us, and some of us aren't nearly as proficient as we could be. We dish the dirt gleefully about sexual encounters, significantly more than men do -- it's what happens when you put more than two women in a room with a bottle of wine. Most importantly, we have sex simply for the sake of getting off, just as men can -- it's not always about love and affection.

Here are some unfortunate facts about females and sex: women do not understand their genitalia, generally, as well as men understand theirs. For example, I bet some of us can't explain the difference between our inner and outer labia. The words "slut," "ho," and "whore" de facto apply to women, thus making us feel a little more exposed, and thus more reticent, when discussing sexual matters, especially around men. Finally, even though we do enjoy sex without orgasm, there's no replacement for a good orgasm -- never believe otherwise.

Now that we know women are essentially no different than men, except that we're women and you're men, we can move on to the first problem women can have in getting off: we're not so emotionally comfortable with our sexuality. Often the most outspoken, brazenly sexual woman ends up being a little frigid and not so comfortable with doing what they're doing.

We as women need to spend some quality time by ourselves deciding what it is we want out of sex -- physical pleasure, emotional connection, or my favorite, both -- and come to terms with these motives regardless of what anyone else thinks of them. This harkens back to my first cardinal rule of sex advice: do only what you're comfortable with doing. If women can isolate what they want, and be comfortable with that, our big O will be that much nearer. Remember, orgasms are relaxing. If you're not relaxed, you're not going to come.

Once we've mastered the emotional matters, we can move on to mastering our physiology and learning what we like down there. So come back for next week's G-Spot, wherein I will detail the ins and outs of the female body, explain how as either a man or woman you can be more comfortable with manipulating the clitoris and vagina, and tie it all up with a sweeping, sexually revolutionary statement.

Editors' Note: In this weekly column, Sarah Gibson will discuss her own experiences and answer sexual queries on any topic. To send questions anonymously to the columnist, go to http://www.jhunewsletter.com and click "Contact Us." Or you can write to sex@jhunewsletter.com.

The columnist is not a trained medical professional. If you seek professional medical advice, please consult your doctor.