S ava g e L o v e
The CliT’s The Thing! DEAR READERS: Sophia Wallace, the NYCbased conceptual artist behind the Cliteracy project, was a recent guest on my podcast (episode 371). During our chat, she said a column I wrote years ago about the importance of the clit had a big impact on her as a teenager. I’m reprinting that column this week for three reasons: Ignorance about the clit is still rampant, reprinting the column allows me to plug Wallace’s work (see sophiawallace.com), and I’m taking the week off. For newer readers: Letter writers addressed me as “Hey, Faggot” for the first few years. These days, only my husband talks to me that way. Happy New Year!
dating.
Hey, Faggot: My present girlfriend and my ex-
girlfriend, as I’ve had the same problem with both. Both say I’m a good lover. Lovemaking sessions have lasted hours. However, neither could have an orgasm via intercourse alone. Each can come in a second by masturbation, and in minutes from oral sex. They say they’ve come very close during intercourse with me. They also say I shouldn’t worry. But if I didn’t worry about it, wouldn’t I be one of those guys women complain about all the time? I’m beginning to get a complex. I wonder what I’m doing wrong. I wonder if they would be more satisfied if they were with someone better endowed. During intercourse, I feel myself becoming discouraged: I think she will never enjoy this as much as I do, and sometimes these thoughts have caused me to go soft in the middle of the act. Please tell me what to do.
Brooklyn Hey, Brooklyn: Your desire not to be “one of
those guys women complain about all the time” is commendable, but it would be more so if you’d educated yourself about women’s bodies and women’s orgasms before you started fucking women. News flash: Most women are unable to “have an orgasm via intercourse alone.” Because the business end of the clitoris — which plays as central a role in her sexual pleasure as the head of your cock plays in yours — is located outside and above the vagina, not inside and up it. It doesn’t matter how big your dick is, how hard your dick is, or how far you manage to get it in. (OK, those things do matter, but not for the sake of this argument.) The clit’s the thing! While some women’s clits are angled in such a way that bumping and grinding provide enough direct clitoral stimulation to get them off, most are not so conveniently angled, and you have to go out of your way to make her orgasms happen. Many heterosexual men don’t know these basic vagifacts. According to Cosmo, fully 70 percent of women need stimulation above and beyond
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vaginal intercourse in order to achieve orgasm. I’m going to let you off the hook a bit: You most likely aren’t entirely responsible for your ignorance or your predicament. The women you’ve slept with may have contributed to your ignorance. A lot of women, when they first start having sex, believe they should be able to have orgasms from intercourse alone because that’s the way women’s orgasms work in movies, porn and romance novels, and it’s the way their ill-informed young boyfriends insist women’s orgasms work. Some young women psych themselves out, convincing themselves that they’re having orgasms while their boyfriends huff and puff; other women fake orgasms for fear that their boyfriends will think they’re damaged goods if they can’t come from intercourse alone. Since inexperienced young women tend to have sex with inexperienced young men, these psyched/faked orgasms can leave young men with a false impression of the way women’s bodies work and, sadly, of their own sexual abilities. When a boy finds himself in bed with a woman who demands that her orgasm (and her clit) play as central a role as his orgasm (and the head of his dick), these boys freak out. They think the new girlfriend is some sort of psychotic nympho, or, like you, they think their lovemaking skills have deteriorated or their cocks suddenly aren’t big enough. But the new girlfriend is just a doormat. And the boy’s lovemaking skills haven’t deteriorated; they never developed in the first place. Almost all women need stimulation in addition to fucking to achieve orgasm, regardless of their manfriend’s cock size. Your girlfriend will enjoy the fucking as much as you do, so long as you remember to pay attention to her clit while you’re fucking her. Reach down or around and finger her clit while you bang away; encourage her to play with herself when you’re fucking; try different positions to see if different angles of penetration provide more direct stimulation to her clit, and then let her control the speed and pace of the grind; get her off with your mouth or your hand before you fuck; buy some “clit grapes” at a sex-toy store — the possibilities are endless. Learn more about women’s bodies, listen to your partner’s verbal cues, watch for her physical ones, and make her pleasure a priority — that’s how you avoid being one of those men women complain about all the time. Good luck. The Savage Lovecast is at savagelovecast.com.
Have a question for Dan Savage? E-mail him at mail@savagelove.net