As part of my training to become a clinical social worker, I’ve been reading about sexuality. It comes up a lot in working with couples, and quite often with individuals.
One of the biggest things I’ve learned is that I grew up viewing sex from a very much male-performanced based model. I don’t think this is what my parents intended to teach me, but when my mom asked me if I wanted to talk about sex before my wedding, I said, “no thanks”, opting to talk to an aunt instead, she was helpful and thorough, but 16 years later, I am still discovering some hang ups. 
Whether it is through lack of education, or miseducation, we seem to be sending the message to our young people that sex is about male ejaculation. One book I’m reading Sex Made Simple: Clinical Strategies for Sexual Issues in Therapy has really opened my eyes to the problems of centering sex around male ejaculation. First of all, as I previously mentioned, it creates a performance-based model, where sex is about the male orgasming, and not paying much attention to whether the woman has a good experience or not.
Many women whom I have talked to have spent years thinking that they have low libido. Turns out low libido is kind of a given when you don’t find sex enjoyable. Turning from a performance model empowers women to speak up and find out what they enjoy. One of my first introductions to the idea of “figuring out what feels good” was from Laura Brotherson’s, And They Were Not Ashamed, where she encourages women focus on what she calls “intimate learning” and figure out what feels good to them before focusing on their partner’s experience.
Secondly, a performance model only works for so long. As men age, they aren’t going to “perform” the same as they did when they were younger. A performance model sets them up to feel like sexual failures when they don’t “perform” like they once did. A mutually satisfying model encourages a couple to work together to figure out what they enjoy and places less emphasis on specific events being *what it’s all about*.
Yesterday I read an article by Maureen O’Conner titled, The Case for Teaching Girls to Masturbate in Sex Ed. It’s about a new book out by Cinderella Ate My Daughter author, Peggy Orenstein, Girls & Sex: Navigating the Complicated New Landscape. The article highlights some of the issues I’m coming across in my clinical work.
I’m going to share a few quotes from the article/interview, and then encourage you to read the full thing and then go find a copy of the book. We need to be having these discussions with all of our children.
After interviewing more than 70 high-school and college-aged girls about sex, orgasms, sexting, blow jobs, and Brazilian waxing regimens that start at age 14 — and consulting with parents, teachers, sociologists, and medical researchers — Orenstein reaches some bleak conclusions. “Listening to girls’ litany of disembodied early experiences,” she writes, “it sometimes struck me that we’d performed the psychological equivalent of a clitoridectomy on our daughters: as if we believed, somehow, that by hiding the truth from them (that sex, including oral sex and masturbation, can and should feel fabulous) that they won’t find out, and so will stay ‘pure.’”
And…
When little girls impersonate sexiness but don’t yet understand that word, the risk is a disconnect between the performance of sexiness and true sexual feelings that are about your body.
And…
When we talked, girls would sort of go round and round about it. They might say, I never feel more liberated than when I wear skimpy clothes. But then also say, five minutes later, If I gain weight I’m afraid to wear them because boys will call me fat. How liberating is that, exactly? I think you have to ask girls: Who gets to be proud of their bodies, and under what circumstances?
And…
I was so moved when I first heard the phrase “intimate justice“…In intimate relationships, it means asking who has the right to engage sexually? Who gets to enjoy the experience? Who’s the primary beneficiary of the experience? And how do we define “good enough” for each partner? When you’re applying that to girls, you’re looking at girls who learn almost nothing about their own bodies growing up. They learn almost nothing about their own capacities for pleasure, but they learn that sex is something that boys take pleasure in, you’re really coming into it in an unequal playing field.
And…
I read somewhere, when I was pregnant with my daughter, that people tend to name all the boy parts in infant boys, but not infant girls. They go right from belly button to knees when it’s a girl. And then you get to puberty-education class… You learn that boys have erections and ejaculation, and girls have periods and unwanted pregnancy… And then they go into their sexual partnerships, and you expect them to be able to advocate for their own pleasure? It’s ridiculous, it’s not going to happen.
And most of all, this series of questions the author asked her daughter:
I just want to put this out there: Have you ever masturbated? Have you had an orgasm on your own? Have you had an orgasm with your partner? Can you tell him what you like and don’t like during sex? And if you answer no to those questions, why are you having intercourse? What are you hoping to get out of it, exactly, and what does having a sexual relationship with somebody mean?