A short while ago, there was an APW post about sex in marriage, which produced an outpouring of response. Reading through some of the comments (I admit I didn’t make it through all of them—there were more than four hundred!), I began to think that it might be time for the APW Remember the Lesbians: The Sex Edition. There were just a lot of comments that had recurring themes of sexual difficulties faced by women in straight relationships that I thought lesbian culture might be able to help with. Lesbian sexual culture is, after all, entirely about women’s sexual pleasure. So here are three ideas from the world of the lesbians to women in all kinds of relationships.
1. Hands are your friends.
Hands are a huge part of lesbian sex. In fact, when my wife and I talk about “having sex,” what we usually mean is that we are making love to each other with our hands. Hands have some very useful features as sex toys. They are flexible, sensitive, and strong. I think there is a perception that making love with your hands doesn’t count as “real” sex. But in my book, whatever my partner does that makes me feel as good as that, and reliably produces orgasms definitely counts as real sex!
Many people in the comments talked about needing clitoral stimulation to have an orgasm, but not liking oral sex for various reasons. In what may be lesbian heresy, I gotta say, I’m with you on that one. I’m not a huge fan of oral sex. For me, it’s great at the time, but kind of gross afterwards. But hands! Hands can do all the same things tongues can do but with less mess, and in some cases, with more accuracy.
2. Take turns.
Some folks in the comments talked about this ideal of simultaneous orgasm or the fact that their partners might reliably have orgasms, but they themselves only have orgasms a small percentage of the time. From my perspective in lesbian culture, my wife and I solve this by taking turns. Here’s how this works. First one of us will make love to the other. The point of this is the pleasure of the one receiving. So she’s in charge. She calls the shots, and, ideally, we continue until she is satisfied. (I say ideally because one of us could really just keep going all day long, and the other of us does eventually get tired, but this does 99.9% of the time mean at least one orgasm.) Then, we switch. Now the second person is in charge, calling the shots, and the experience is geared to her pleasure.
Usually, we both enjoy giving as well as receiving, but we each also get to enjoy some time when we can be totally focused on our own pleasure. And like I said, we both have at least one orgasm over 90% of the time.
I’m not necessarily suggesting that this become the dominant way anyone else has sex, but if you’re finding that one of you is routinely more satisfied than the other, it might be something worth trying from time to time to see how it goes.
3. Invest in a good lesbian sex book.
Seriously, even if you’re not a lesbian, as long as your relationship has at least one woman in it, this can be helpful. Again, lesbian sexuality is all about women’s sexual pleasure. Anything a woman can do to another woman can also be done by a man, and there are enough ways for women to penetrate women that a decent book will probably cover that, too. I particularly recommend The Whole Lesbian Sex Book by Felice Newman, which is just about as comprehensive as the title suggests. While written for lesbians, from a lesbian perspective, it covers just about everything you would need to know about female sexual response, and includes a whole chapter on vaginal penetration.
Wishing you all satisfying sex lives!
