Masturbation for Beginners
Author: Betty Dodson, Ph.D.
Hi! I'm Betty Dodson, author of Sex for One and producer of several erotic sex-ed videos that are available from the Xandria Collection.
I'd like to discuss female masturbation, a subject that's dear to my heart. After running sexuality workshops for women more than twenty-five years, I've learned a lot about the difficulty experience by women in their search for orgasm in a sexually repressed society. Since most of us struggle with periods of self hatred, negative body images, shame, guilt and confusion over sex, I recommend having a passionate love affair with yourself.
First, get a make up mirror that stands by itself to free both of your hands. Find a comfortable sitting position where there is good lighting, perhaps under a lamp or near a window. Using a bit of massage oil, cover your genital area. Smoothing away the pubic hair, pull your outer lips apart and look inside your vaginal flower. There's a great deal of variation in female genitals, so your inner lips may be small, large or just medium, smooth or textured, symmetrical or one completely different from the other. All these variations are normal and beautiful. Examine your clitoral hood and the shaft of your clitoral body. Pull the hood back to expose the tip of your clitoris. Does it look like a tiny seed pearl or a pointy pink jewel? Touch it with your oily finger, moving above, to the side and below. After caressing your clitoris a moment, see if it doesn't pop out a bit more, actually growing larger with sexual stimulation.
If manual stimulation doesn't create much sensation, you might want to try an electric massager. At first, use a wash cloth between you and the vibrator to control the intensity. Get into an easy pelvic rocking and vary the movement of the vibrator. Listen to yourself breathing. Say "I love you" in your sexiest voice. Bring yourself up slowly and don't think about orgasm, think about the good feelings. You might want to have a couple of selfloving sessions with yourself without any orgasm demands.
One workshop woman had her own version of a selfloving session. Her private time was during the day when her husband and children were gone and she had the house to herself. She'd stretch out on the couch fully clothed and use her electric vibrator for ten minutes. Then she'd stop and go about her housework. After a while, she'd return to the couch for another ten minute session of vibrating. After a couple of hours of "masturbation inerruptus" she'd have an intense orgasm that left her feeling marvelously refreshed.
Getting into high powered thrills is an individual choice. Some women prefer the lesser vibrations of a battery operated dildo. When a woman is new to electric massagers, she may experience any number of responses. One friend reported having the most intense orgasm of her life, but it was over before she know what had happened. Another woman said her orgasm was ever so slight, lasting for only a second. Little orgasms that occur within moments of contact are similar to a man's premature ejaculation. Masturbation is the best way to learn to control the urge to come quickly, for both men and women. It's also the best way to learn how to tolerate higher levels of sexual excitement. Little comes that are like sneezes or hiccups mean you're in the Kindergarten of your sexual response pattern. With more sexual self-knowledge and practice, your orgasms will grow deeper and stronger. Meanwhile, you want to love those little orgasms.
Wilhelm Reich, the well known psychoanalyst who wrote The Function of the Orgasm, described a full bodied orgasm as, "...the ability to surrender to the flow of sexual energy without any inhibition; the capacity for complete discharge of all sexual excitation through involuntary pleasurable contractions of the whole body." A wonderful description, but for a long time it didn't apply to me. All my years of childhood and marital masturbation were about not getting caught. I'd trained myself to come fast while remaining silent and holding my breath. When I was with a partner, in order to have "ladylike orgasms" I always held back by avoiding heavy breathing, barely moving my body and never breaking out into a sweat. My orgasm was very small, just a little hiccup, but it kept me interested enough to want to learn more about sex. Remember, sexual healing begins by increasing our tolerance for sexual pleasure with an abundance of selfloving.
After all these years of teaching women how to discover their orgasmic potential, one problem continues to loom large. So many women hold romantic idealized images of what they think an orgasm should be like, they are unable to recognize what is actually happening. These unrealistic expectations are supported by every romantic love story in books, movies, soap operas and even X-rated videos. The myth continues -- when we find the perfect lover, he or she will give us an earth shattering orgasm that will take us to the stars. A more real approach is being clear that each of us is the creator of our own orgasm.
One final word to beginners is "patience." Don't beat yourself up if you don't get immediate results or turn your orgasm into just another goal to be achieved. Be kind and gentle and give your body time to relearn what sexual pleasure feels like. Ideally, our childhood masturbation begins the process of developing our individual sexual response patterns. If you have little or no memory of childhood masturbation, you are in sexual kindergarten. That means playing and feeling and seeing all the new things in your erotic world. Orgasm is not having your body go into dramatic spasms or some kind of imaginary ecstasy. Rather it's a brief blessed moment of inner joy so getting there is more than half the fun. Love yourself.