What Female Sexual Dysfunction and Vaginal Rejuvenation Have in Common

It all started with a friggin' Camp Fire Girls meeting. A high-school girl showed a short film she'd made on body image, then in a halting, nervous voice told about her struggles with an eating disorder. By the end, every mother there was in tears. In tears! Because we all had our thing -- too fat, too thin, hair too weird, butt too little, butt too big, etc., that made us so horribly not right.

The next night, finally off a Hoarders bender, I watched a Netflix documentary called Orgasm Inc, about how in the past few years, pharmaceutical companies, along with willing shills in the medical community, have popularized the "disease" of Female Sexual Dysfunction (FSD -- not to be confused with FTD, which provides human females with unattractive flower arrangements).

Photo by Harris Shiffman (Shutterstock).

"I think there is dissatisfaction and perhaps disinterest among a lot of women, but that doesn't mean they have a disease," Dr. Sandra Leiblum, professor of psychiatry at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School told BBC News in an article about the myth of female impotence.

I'm not arguing that some women don't have sexual problems that could be improved medically, but a lot of the FSD "symptoms" are just the way womenare. Yes, women can take a long time to come, yes, women can take a while to get aroused (note: FTD flowers will not speed arousal time), and, yes, women get pissed at their mates which, yeah, does affect desire.

A 2007 study of FSD among women in Lower Egypt found that marital disharmony, hate and unfavorable socioeconomic circumstances were the most common aggravating factors, constituting 28.1 percent of sexual dysfunction causes among the participants. The next biggest factor were pregnancy-related events.

I'm not a doctor, but as far as I know, there isn't a pill for curing "unfavorable socioeconomic circumstances" and the like (although if there were, I would so take it).

One middle-aged women in Orgasm Inc, volunteered to be a guinea pig in some freaky-ass experimental procedure in which electrodes were inserted into her back. Into her back, as in under her skin. Did I mention that this was a totally untested procedure by, for all she knew, a completely iffy doctor?

The implants did nothing for her besides causing her to kick her left leg at random times. This new trick, while novel and exciting, did not help her sex life, in fact, the creepy invasive procedure did nothing to cure her "problem" which was -- oh, dear god -- inability to come during intercourse. Not inability to have an orgasm. Not inability to come. No, this woman -- raised on the notion that women's sexuality is just like men's -- believed that if she couldn't come from penetration alone, she was "ill."

I so wish she could have read an article like this one from RH Reality Check, which takes care to state in the very biggest and boldest of fonts:

The majority of women -- according to most studies, at least 70 percent -- do not and will not reach orgasm through vaginal intercourse or vagina-only stimulation.

So yeah, a little testosterone might help you out a bit, but even this isn't certain. So it seems to me the best way to alleviate FSD would be to spend a little time on arousal, make sure the female parts that feel pleasure are actually the parts that get stimulated(did I really just have to write that sentence?). Plus a bunch of boring stuff like providing favorable economic conditions for the ladies and whatnot.

What is that? You have more sexual problems, you say? You've suddenly realized that your vag is not completely normal as you'd thought for years and years, but, in fact, hideously ugly and in need of surgical intervention. Don't worry, my ugly little freak, Vaginal Rejuvenation (i.e., plastic surgery for your vulva) will fix any and all labia deemed unsightly.

What's sightly and what is not? Well, the highly lucrative genital mutilation vaginal rejuvenation centers that have popped up in the last few years (Hey... isn't that about the same time you started becoming displeased with your own vag? *shrugs* Weird.) have to find some way to keep the ladies coming in, so currently they've determined that "too long" labia are "out." If you go ahead and get them shortened, I sure hope that long labia don't come into vogue because then you'll be bumming, huh?! (See also: The Sneetches by Dr. Seuss).

Check out these before and after gential muti vaginal rejuvenation photos from one place "helping" women. Seriously!!!??? Not only did this chick not realize that she had a perfectly fine vag (I think it's a good one, actually, don't you?) but she actually thought it was so heinous that it required surgery -- surgery! -- to "correct."

Expensive surgery too. When I googled "vaginal rejuvenation" for you, the sponsored link offered a raffle for $1,000 off. If they're offering $1,000 off, you know that $%$# ain't cheap. Although I have to admit that the concept of a vaginal rejuvenation raffle is sort of appealing in its utter wrongness. Coming soon... penile bleaching cake walk.

Okay. I would hope that we women would all come to our senses and just... stop it. Realize how totally fine we are and get on with more important things (see above: taking time with and enjoying arousal). At the very least, I can think of about 6 million better ways to spend our time and money than getting friggin'surgery. However, as it looks now, I think that the only things that's changing is that more men are buying into this crap too with their pec implants, ED drugs, and the like.

My big wish is that one day someone will be lying on an operating table, legs open wide as they watch a surgeon walking toward them eyeing their groin and wielding some sharp pointy thing and the patient (patient being "regular person misled by fucked up societal norms") will think, "What the hell am I doing?!?" And, O, they shall Rise Up and Spread their Enlightenment among the people, who shall toss aside their sense of shame and unworthiness, and be free to rush forth into the forest where they shall fuck freely and joyfully under the dense green canopy of the trees.

Note: future scenario includes ecological renewal, elimination of STDs, and men and women with true knowledge of each other's sexualities. Void where prohibited by law.

Jill Hamilton writes In Bed With Married Women, a blog about sex in all its funny, strange, boring, smokin' hot glory.  visit sometime.

The Blow Job as Path to the Divine

I am not a religious person. I don't even know that I want to be. I have sort of tried, a little, but for better or worse, I don't seem to have the God gene. The closest I ever get to the sublime feeling of connection with the universe that religious people describe is generally through music. Walking at night, the wet smell of the evening mist, a full moon hanging overripe in the sky, and Pandora radio seducing me with exactly what I want to hear before I know myself (Damn, Pandora, I will tell you again, I would so fuck you if I could) is the closest I get to experiencing the Divine.

Except for sex. I think what's appealing to me about sex is not the actual friction between body parts-- although that's pretty damn good, too--but the out-of-body, out-of-your-fucking-mind, brain/body explosion that happens during the best sex. Good sex is just somehow...beyond. You're extremely focused on the Now, the line between you and other is blurred, and, in the best moments, you feel like you and the Universe are sort of throbbing together as one. Which sounds a lot like religious ecstasy.  (Other times it's just you and your partner, or your hand, or your vibrator--you get off, then go about your day. Which is fine as well.)

In an article in the January 2011 issue of Playboy, Samantha Gillison wrote a wonderful essay "The Platonic Ideal" on this idea of sex as route to the Divine. I would link to it, but--incredibly in this day and age--it is not available on-line! Well, unless you pay. This is why this month, I am a member of iPlayboy.com.  For my $8 (paid happily because I care for YOU, dear reader), I get to go into the link that says "Members Only," like I'm Hef's friggin' best friend. I can also look at every issue ever made, which would be great except my computer is so old that every issue ever made is slightly blurry, rendering the copy barely readable and the voluminous boobs semi-impressionistic swipes of pink and white.

In Gillison's piece, she describes the moment she became illuminated on the joys of giving head. It was after a Bad Brains concert, and in the darkness of the parking lot, she knelt before her date.

We could have been strangers--we almost were--and somehow the darkness, the anonymity of the situation liberated me from worrying about doing something wrong or feeling self-conscious. I allowed myself to sink deep into the fantasy of what it must feel like for him--the pressure, the warmth, the wetness. All of a sudden the only thing in the world was that cock and my connection to it.

Previously, Gillison had thought of blow jobs as something you gave, like a gift, or something you did as a favor. Plus there was some fear and uncertainty.

It was just that I was unsure of cock when I got up close to one; it contained unreadable male mysteries. I might hurt it or maybe just do nothing right. Maybe I looked ridiculous. I didn’t really know which parts of it wanted to be touched, or how. It seemed to be its own creature, almost uncannily separate from the man who owned it. Perhaps simpleminded but authoritarian and judgemental.  

 This time, however, she had a revelation.

But starting that night in the parking lot, I began to understand the profound, dirty pleasure of giving blow jobs. It isn’t just that I discovered how much I like being in control, how much I like giving the kind of pleasure that makes someone helpless, and how intoxicating it is to be on the recieving end of hurricane-levels of desire. But, that night, it was also the revelation of the particular male smell you get up close with a cock and balls that turned me on in ways that are almost beyond description.  It was like being inside sex.

Which is so completely hot. Are you still with me here?

Plato said that human beings can only truly access the divine through sexual ectasy, Eros.  This has always made so much sense to me. When else are humans as rapt by feeling as when they come and when they touch God? That feeling of connection to the universal, the feeling of having exited my own body as I orgasm is nothing other than touching the infinite.

Yet I have never been able to get close to that Platonic, out-of-my-mind kind of sexual esctasy unless I can satisfy a primal hunger:  Whether in fantasy or reality, I need a connection to another equally rauncy human being. It has always been the case with me, since I was a teenager, that I have to see someone else’s horniness in order to feel horny. What I happily realized on my knees in the parking lot is that an erect cock in my face is among the most blatant ways of experiencing the realness of someone else’s desire I’d ever encountered. And every time, it spurs a repsonse in me, hot and dark and if I’m doing something transgressive in the best possible way.

Blow jobs! Philosophical talk! The phrase "erect cock"!  Gah, I am a goner! LOVE this $%$&!

I'll add a little bit more of her essay, because I want to make sure I don't stray from "fair use" territory to "stealing" and "copyright infringement." Here's Gillison on the experience of blowing a long time friend and feeling, then overcoming, the awkwardness inherent in that particular situation.

But then a supple communication started between me and his penis as I began to suck, a communication beyond words and much deeper than any we had ever had before.

His cock felt so sexy in my mouth, hard and hot and aching with desire. But I could also feel how much of this man was being revealed to me:  his sexuality, his vulnerabilty, his musky smell.

Soon the connection started to feel like a merging, as though I was experiencing that blow job too. It felt crazy, off-the-charts raunchy, to fantasize that I was not only giving head but getting it. All of a sudden I was overwhelmed by pure animal pleasure. I was so turned on that I came.

Since that night’s discovery I always revel in the double fantasy of giving and receiving. And I honor the wisdom of the old Greek philosophers who pointed out that although the Divine is inscrutable, it is easy to find while sucking on a dick.

And there is no better way to end a post than what Gillison ended with right there, so I will leave you to your day.

xoxoxo
jill

* Afterword:  Do NOT do a Google image search for "penis public domain." Hideous medical photos!  "Lesion on the glans"! Holy crap! Look away! Look away!

Ultimas Palabras

A new American revolution has begun
Not against the forces of a colonial kingdom
But a rebellion against an oppressor that has risen among us
It is not a foreign invasion we have to fear
Rather the threat of a force within our nation
That has usurped what was once a dream of having the greatest democracy ever known to man

We now live in a world where the population has grown exponentially
And the planet is running out of resources to sustain us all
We in the inner-city and those struggling in the suburban ghettos may not realize it yet
But make no mistake
The people who control the technology and run every enterprise that makes up our world
Have seen this coming for a long time
The ideas of renewable energy
Global warming
The idea of collectively working
Were purposefully bought out, derailed, demonized, or corrupted
In favor of an economic structure designed by a monetary caste system

In a desperate attempt to convince us that we need to maintain that extravagant existence
They’ve pretended we might share in their dream
That we can justify any inhumanity in its name
Out of this blind ignorance was born the curse of slavery

Many of the founders of this nation were themselves Masons
That is not a Left wing or Right wing conspiracy theory
It is a widely known and accepted fact
So then explain to me how a nation founded by men
Who not only understood the long and complicated history of Europe
But also that of Africa
Could permeate such a lie in convincing the American public
That one race of men was superior and one inferior
When in fact we know that all the early men
The people who created civilization and every aspect of what we see today
The foundation of all human life
Were from Africa

The greatest cowardice of course came not with slavery itself
Unfortunately
But with the excuses for slavery
For if America had been as brave as the Roman Empire and all other empires that have come after her
And claimed “No, we were just stronger and that’s why we took you”
Then when slavery was over racism would’ve probably followed in suit

But instead it was the social lie
The religious lie that was told
That stayed in the minds of people
That seperated one human being from another
In order to distract us from the issues of class and freedom
They created issues around religion and race to dominate the world for centuries to come

Some claim that they respect that they respect the culture of life in this country
They cry out for indignity of children that are slaughtered before they are born
But God has not penetrated their souls
For they have no empathy
Nothing in their cold hearts for the hundreds of thousands of lives we have taken in our wars overseas
For that which they call “collateral damage”
Which the are the burnt and damaged children of the world
They have no prayers for them
Only snide commentary on the internet and laughter in their hearts
And yet you claim to be one with God?
Huh
We talk about immigration in this country
Might doesn’t make right ladies and gentleman
It just makes right now

What we are saying to the rest of the world
Is one day when America grows weak
One day when her legions falter
On the day when her economy crumbles
China, Russia, Europe, whatever power has arisen
All you have to do is come here and conquer us in a few military excursions

And then you too can set up shop here
And in 100 years you can tell every red-blooded American
“No, you are an illegal human being
I am the true citizen
I have all the rights
You have no rights"

Maybe you forgot how you got this country
Maybe you take for granted the blood, the sweat, the tears
That the people who live in practical serfdom shed everyday
For we may not run America, but we make America run
We talk about the Law
Yet
How many indignities have been legal in the past?
How many treaties with Native American people have we broken?
How many international laws have we violated?

And
Speaking of laws
How can a corporation be regulated by a government that is funded and controlled by corporations?
How can there be accountability
For people who see a profit margin above the lives of Americans?
Above the lives of human beings in other countries?

We have taken the soul out of ourselves and placed them inside machines
My words, of course, will be marginalized, demonized
In typical fashion

Anytime you dare to question the power structure they say you hate America
No, I love this country
I see its beauty every day in its people
And I love it a lot more than those who have abandoned the American worker
That have chose to exploit and try to take away every single benefit she has
Those that attempt to make excuses for every atrocity committed
In the name of supposed freedom

Those who demand accountability from everyone
But offer none themselves
Who favor contracts over lives
Who favor invasion and control over organic democracy overseas
The greatest flaw that any intelligent person has is to think that they’re smarter than everyone else

And so as the government has planted its spies amongst us
We have planted our spies among them
They have infiltrated every branch of the American government
They have retrieved names, data, hard numbers
The paper trail that will expose those that truly control this country
Those that control the political parties
Those that control the oil industry
The energy
Those that stand behind the companies faceless
Whose names have never been revealed

Married Sex

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