Better sex – Part 2/4: Organic chemistry or: What they didn’t tell you

Each individual has other sexual preferences which is why general principles for “good sex” cannot easily be defined. While the fact stands that no two individuals have the same sexual preferences in equal proportions, it is possible to observe some basics of how a vulva or a penis react during sexual arousal and intercourse and what, therefore, constitutes enjoyable sex.

The direct way to obtain such knowledge could be via age-appropriate sex education, so that as a teenager or young adult, people would have a clue how to please themselves and others, and thus build a fulfilling sex life with relatively few obstacles.

Except this is not the case in any mainstream, patriarchal society. Due to the way that satisfying sexuality produces solidarity which in turn produces power, insufficient sex education is a useful tool for any parasitic system to keep most of its individuals unsatisfied, powerless, and divided. It is also the reason why all conservative worldviews (including pseudo-liberal, relativistic ones) reduce sex education to a “how to make babies” guide, or try to shut it down completely, for teenagers and for adults.

The social role “woman“ in which all people with a vulva at birth are raised, demands that women don’t have sexual
desires of their own. The easiest way to cut down these desires, is by omitting information from sex education about the women’s body and how it works. This erasure or misinformation is then used to justify all kinds of sex myths about women’s sexuality that confuse women, men, and other genders, and thus guarantee bad sex for all.
This guide aims to fill in the gaps, by giving a complete explanation how a female body is able to feel arousal and desire.

Here is what they didn’t tell you in sex education:

Women, just like men, get erections when they are sufficiently relaxed and aroused. Many find this surprising, because a vaginal erection happens mainly inside the vagina, making it less visible from the outside than a man’s boner. Apart from this, everything works in the same way: First, the visible clitoral head and the inner labia swell and increase in size. This is her semi. Through this, the genital area becomes more sensitive which is necessary for the next step, because, for a full erection, most people require their genitals being touched in a way that they enjoy. Then the inner tissue around the vagina swells which makes the vagina flexible and wider. This is called a vaginal erection which is the same as a man’s full hard-on. A vagina that is erect adapts to the length, diameter and shape of an inserted penis, finger or object. For this, the woman doesn’t have to do anything consciously, as her body does it automatically. Just as a man is only able to glide into a vagina as long as he has a sufficient erection, a woman is only able to receive a penis with pleasure as long as she has a sufficient vaginal erection.

A common sex myth is that vaginas get “loose“ or widen after a woman has had sex very often, or with multiple men, which would decrease pleasure for men. This is, however, based on a false understanding of the vaginal erection. The vagina widens when erect, but then bounces back to its original size, after the erection has gone, just like a man’s penis. The reason why even women carry on this belief, is, besides slutshaming, that with sexual experience, having tried out different sizes, or after giving birth, the vagina adapts more easily to bigger sizes when erect. So, in fact, the vagina gets more elastic with practice which actually increases pleasure because everything “fits” better.

Another common sex myth is that all women orgasm by vaginal penetration, when, in reality, most women do not.
The reason why this is so often shown in porn or movies, is that most of them are still written, directed and produced by straight men, and the easiest sex for a man who likes to penetrate is when he does just that, and the woman gets off. As a consequence, women that are actually able to come by penetration might be more likely to pursue a career in the porn industry – and the rest is faking it to do their job.

Women do not orgasm with their vagina. In fact, the vagina itself does not feel much: It does not have many nerve
endings, since it has to be a tough organ: It passes discharge, accepts penetration, and gives birth (!). This is why
women can wear hygienic products (such as a tampon or a menstrual cap) for hours: Once it is in, they hardly feel it
any more. Still, only women that derive pleasure from penetration will seek straight sex partners, and procreate.
Evolution has solved this dilemma by evolving pleasure-generating areas outside the vagina. Tada: the clitoris!
Therefore, women have an orgasm when their clitoris receives sufficient stimulation. Since male and female genitals are homologous, meaning they were once the same body part during fetal development, every part of the female anatomy can be mapped to its corresponding male part. For most people, even the techniques that give these parts pleasure are the same as for its counterpart.

So let’s begin our anatomy lesson:

The clitoris consists of external, visible, and internal, under-the-surface parts. The external part comprises the clitoral head with its clitoral hood, which corresponds to the penis head and its foreskin. The internal parts comprise the area around and below the head until the urinary opening, which corresponds to the penis’ ridged band, and two clitoral legs on either side, that correspond to the penis shaft,
and go from the head along the labia, until they end next to the vagina. The part that corresponds to the frenulum,
however, is the half-circle below the vaginal opening, which is called the fourchette.

Penetration stimulates the internal parts next to the vagina. However, in order for a woman to generate enough
pleasure to orgasm from penetration alone and thus from this part, it has to grow into a certain size and shape (during fetal development and puberty), and this is not often the case. While an internet-based study from 2017 (Women’s Experiences With Genital Touching, Sexual Pleasure, and Orgasm: Results From a U.S. Probability Sample of Women Ages 18 to 94) found out that only one out of five women is able to orgasm by penetration alone, in my personal experience, the number is significantly lower. A woman who is able to have a vaginal orgasm corresponds to a man being able to orgasm just by getting the lower half of his shaft rubbed, while anything further up doesn’t get any stimulation.

Since the clitoral legs are different in every woman, reactions to different methods of vaginal stimulation vary greatly. Besides the women who never have a vaginal orgasm, some are only able to with a penis or dildo of a specific shape and size, or a specific penetration technique, while it doesn’t work with others. And even the women who nearly always orgasm vaginally report that additional touching of the outer parts of their clitoris results in more pleasure. As the clitoral legs end around the G-spot that is responsible for squirting, the same causality applies: Some women are able to squirt, others on occasion, and some not at all. One thing is for sure: The majority of women orgasm with other parts of the clitoris, which are not involved in penetration: The clitoral head, its hood, around and below. Fortunately, there are fingers, things to rub against, and, since the invention of the vibrator, sex toys for precisely this purpose.

Each body that experiences sexual arousal and desire automatically contracts the muscles around the genital area. When people masturbate or engage in sexual activities, many describe these contractions as sudden movements over the whole body, which they find difficult to suppress. In a female body with a vulva this behaviour looks like this: If a dildo, a finger or a penis are inserted into the vagina and moved back and forth, and she likes being penetrated in this way, she automatically and unconsciously pulls the muscles around the vagina together and relaxes them again. The stronger this movement is, the more aroused she will feel, until these contractions are strongest during her orgasm. This, again corresponds to the male body, as a man also automatically and unconsciously contracts his muscles upon pleasure, leading the contractions getting stronger, until they pump and release sperm during his orgasm.

During all straight sexual activities, especially penis-in-vagina intercourse, her muscle movements are not only
producing pleasure for the woman, however; they also massage the penis which is inside the vagina, between the
muscles. This is usually just as pleasurable for the man. Concerning fucking, this means for a man: The more pleasure the woman feels, the more his penis will get massaged and the more pleasure he, also, will feel. We can therefore safely conclude that a man who considers the desire of the woman “too much work” actually behaves stupidly even from an egocentric perspective: He rids himself of a pleasurable penis massage.

These conclusions of anatomy are directly transferable to same-sex sexual activities: During lesbian intercourse, be it with fingers, a dildo, or orally, the muscle movements are pleasurable to the receiving as well as the giving woman who is able to feel directly how the other woman is enjoying her actions. The muscles around the anus move exactly like the ones around the vulva (in a female and in a male body). Therefore, during gay anal intercourse which is pleasurable to the receiving man, his muscle movements massage the penis of the giving man in just the same way.