Book Review: Women’s Anatomy of Arousal
Автор: Black Dating Service
Finally, a book gives us information on sex we all really, really need to know.
The deeper I got into the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors and Therapists 2010 Book of the Year, Women’s Anatomy of Arousal: Secret Maps to Buried Pleasure,
Truth is, every woman (and man) should read this book, along with it becoming required reading upon turning 18 and/or graduating high school.
Seriously.
“Welcome to the land of mixed messages!” author Sherri Winston proclaims near the beginning. Winston, a Registered Nurse, Certified Nurses Midwife, massage therapist, and sex educator points to our Western cultural obsession with sex, multitudes of airbrushed photos as-close-to-nude-as-possible without showing any nipple adorning our magazines covers and billboards, saddled alongside our basic traditional/religiously influenced/patriarchal shame around sex and our bodies. I mean, who can win here?
What we are left with is no real, honest conversation about the ins and outs of our bodies (women’s, in particular), little truth about sexual needs or desires or any idea about how to actually get them fulfilled, and porn teaching young men (and women) how to get a woman off (spoiler alert: they don’t. Neither is it okay that many porn stars have had plastic surgery on their pussies, or that they have their labia glued open. WRONG).
That’s where this book comes in. I am being dead serious when I say every person should read this book – especially medical professionals that deal with women’s nether regions, yet weren’t taught this particular anatomy lesson in med school.
Taoism at its Finest
Although the first section is probably a necessary intro for most (after years of reading self-help books, discussions about inner-journeys and integral consciousness can make me nod off a bit), I think the book really gets going in chapter four, where Winston breaks down the yin and the yang as it relates to sex.
Though I know the ideas that come from the Taoist tradition equate to the masculine (yang) and feminine (yin), I never really thought about how important it is to understand your personal tendencies when it comes to sex.
It’s not so simple as to say penises are yang and pussies are yin (what about those who fall outside the hetero-’norm’? I appreciate Winston making clear this isn’t a simple anatomy=traits), but looking at sex through this lens made me understand why women generally take a lot longer to get ready to rumble and men just need a low-cut top to walk by.
I mean, how often do we talk/debate/classify men’s arousal as compared to women’s? We just relegate women to being “complicated.” Winston explains the why and the how (good). Her perfect analogy of cat=yin and dog=yang drove the point home. What cat is gonna let you come up out of nowhere and start rubbing its tummy? I don’t think so. You must subtly woo the pussy cat.
Her comparison of pussies and hearts being similar makes it even more clear – “neither can be forced to open, only invited and encouraged to do so.”
The Meat and Sweet, Sweet Potatoes
After what I thought was a profoundly illuminating section, Winston gets into the real elucidation: the anatomy of the vulva. And the ass.
To say this part took me a long time to read would be an understatement. Not because it wasn’t interesting, but because there was so much I didn’t know and wanted to soak in every morsel.
I mean, ladies, we’ve got erectile tissue out the wazoo. And most of us have been focusing on one area, and one area only.
She also breaks down the truth about the ever-elusive g-spot, explaining why every woman has one (at least if you pee), and how every woman can not only orgasm from there, but also squirt (makes perfect sense when you read the book, but let’s just say you gotta wait until super full arousal). I also now understand why, mechanically-speaking, “pound pound pound” can and does feel amazing sometimes, but doesn’t most of the time.
Finally, the book rounds out with the ‘hows’. You might have guessed this by now, but becoming multi-orgasmic, having an orgasm by just touching your nipples or by giving love to your partner’s genitals, does not come without some work. And much of this work looks familiar to the ‘new-age’ set – focused breath work, focused mind/meditation, straight up imagination – but Winston opens it up enough for those without that background to get the idea pretty quickly.
Plus, she adds in the little Jedi mind-trick it takes to have an orgasm on command.
Now that’s what I’m talking about.
Seriously Love Yourself
Beyond the fact that the material is so damn necessary for everyone to know, Winston is actually a good writer. She has a fluid quality to her writing that is a bit poetic at times, and funny-as-hell at others (especially as holistic health/spiritual books can go). New catch phrases include, “the wang is yang and loves to bang!” “Put it this way: most ass play isn’t full of shit”, and some broke-down truth:
In this country, you’re lucky if that [school-based sex education] teaches you how to put a condom on a banana. While that’s great for safer snacking, it’s not going to help you have the kind of sex you dream of.
Besides providing ‘tools’ in sidebars throughout the book, and focusing on the fact that to get anywhere, you have to free yourself from personal constraints around sex and permit yourself to be erotic, she taps over and over again into the idea of self-love that we strive to promote at CL.
She writes: “Some people confuse self-love with narcissism and view it as selfish or indulgent. It’s neither. You can’t have a healthy relationship with anyone unless you love yourself.” I couldn’t have said it better.
I’ll leave you with a thought of Winston’s that struck me in particular:
We all have the physical equipment for casual sexual encounters, and many of us have the emotional capacity, too. While quickies like this can be wonderfully naughty and delightful, for sex to reach its transcendent potential, we have to show up – and open up – in our entirety. The moral of this story is that the best sex happens when you’re making love, even if it’s “only” to yourself.
Go learn how to make it
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