DEAR READERS: Sophia Wallace, the NYC-based conceptual artist behind the amazing Cliteracy project, was a guest on my podcast recently. (Check out savagelovecast.com and look up episode 371.) During our chat, Wallace told me that a column I wrote years ago about the importance of the clit had a big impact on her as a teenager — in fact, she still had the copy of the column. I’m reprinting that column this week for three solid reasons: Ignorance about the clit is still rampant (hence the importance of Wallace’s work), reprinting the column allows me to plug Wallace’s work (check it out at sophiawallace.com), and it’s Christmas and I’m taking the week off. For newer readers: Letter writers addressed me as “Hey, Faggot” for the first few years. These days, of course, only my husband talks to me that way. Happy New Year!
Hey, Faggot:
My question involves my present girlfriend and ex-girlfriend, as I’ve had the same problem with both. Both say I am a good lover. Lovemaking sessions have lasted hours. However, neither could have an orgasm via intercourse alone. They can each 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 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.
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 bothered to educate 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.” Why is this? 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. The clitoris is not a joy buzzer at the top of the vaginal canal. It doesn’t matter how big your dick is, how hard your dick is or how far you manage to get it in: The clit’s the thing!
While some women’s clits are angled in such a way that bumping and grinding provides enough direct clitoral stimulation to get them off, most are not, and you actually have to go out of your way to make her orgasms happen. It never ceases to amaze me just how many heterosexual men don’t know these basic vagifacts. According to Cosmo — my reference for all questions regarding female anatomy, sexual response and makeup — fully 70 percent of women need stimulation above and beyond vaginal intercourse in order to achieve orgasm.
You most likely aren’t entirely responsible for your ignorance or your predicament. The women you’ve slept with up to this point 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 seem to work in movies, porn and romance novels, and, funnily enough, it’s the way their ill-informed young boyfriends insist women’s orgasms work. Consequently, some young women psych themselves out, convincing themselves 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.
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. Bad-in-bed boys bop through their sex lives until the earth-shattering moment when they find themselves in bed with a woman who insists on a little hand action or a lot of oral sex. When a boy finds himself in bed with one of these women, they freak out. They think the new girlfriend is some sort of psychotic nympho, or, like you, they think their lovemaking skills have deteriorated.
But the new girlfriend isn’t a psychotic nympho. She’s just not a doormat. And the boy’s lovemaking skills haven’t deteriorated — they never developed in the first place. And as for your particular cock, Brooklyn, it may be too big, too small or just right, but almost all women need stimulation to achieve orgasm. So the size of your pee-pee doesn’t matter all that friggin’ much.
