Come as you are
Emily Nagoski
2015 - Simon & Schuster
Essentials | Sex and Science
This book offers a scientific exploration of the functioning of female sexuality. The goal of the writer, Emily Nagoski, is to help us live our sexuality with confidence and joy. She emphasizes that every woman has a unique sexuality and that in our anatomy, sexual mechanisms and the way our bodies respond to sexual stimuli, there is greater variability between women than between men. And, we are all normal.
It shows that sex and the image we have of it are very context-dependent. In particular, all the worries of everyday life directly influence the excitement, desire and orgasm of every woman.
Based on cross-disciplinary research, she explains that the most important factor in a fulfilling sex life for women is not what you do in bed or how you do it, but rather how you feel about it. This means that stress, confidence in ourselves and in others, our state of mind, the image we have of our bodies are not marginal factors in women’s sexual well-being; they are central. And once we understand this, we can play on these factors to create more pleasure for ourselves than we thought possible.
Emily Nagoski explains a fundamental concept of her book in the TED video “The Truth about Unwanted Excitement“.
This book has been a revelation to me. It has been very rich in scientific discoveries about how we function sexually: it helps me to accept myself and gives me keys to get more pleasure out of bed. I would like to list all the notions that have titillated my clitoris brain, but that would be too long, so I will settle for two examples.
First of all, I didn’t know that I could get wet without getting excited, simply because my brain associates what I see/hear/sense with a sexual stimulus. I can also be aroused without getting wet (long live lube!). It has a name: the non-concordance between a physiological genital response and my emotions. And it is more common among women than men (and she explains why!).
And I was relieved to discover the notions of spontaneous desire and reactive desire, knowing that men have spontaneous desire more frequently than women. And that I’m more on the side of reactive desire than spontaneous desire, and that’s normal!
In short, this is a must-read book for anyone interested in human sexuality.
Iris.