Introduction
Suggestions for Reading this Blog
I started publishing myfriendpleasure.org amid the COVID-19 pandemic. For a few years, I had been researching and writing about the importance of inviting more pleasure into my life to ameliorate stress. When COVID-19 hit, I decided to publish my thoughts in what seemed like a natural fit—a blog.
So many of us are stressed out. Many families are grieving from the tragic losses of loved ones. As of the beginning of Dec. 2020, the deaths amid a mega surge in the U.S. alone number over 280,000. In addition, many, many Americans continue to endure financial hardship, food insecurity, and the psychological stress of isolation from friends and family.
The virus has especially stressed two groups: mothers with children and healthcare workers. Women pick up the largest share of supervising online learning for their children as well as performing cleaning, cooking, and other household tasks—all while trying to work at their jobs from home. In the U.S. healthcare sector, women hold 76% of all jobs. (See footnote.*)
This blog hopes to offer strategies for coping with this ongoing stress by inviting readers to experience and create pleasure of all kinds each day. These pleasures range from singular moments in nature delighting in sunlight streaming through leaves to letting ourselves have nature’s other balm for stress, the deep calm that follows sexual pleasure.
I realize some readers may not be fully comfortable reading about sexual pleasure as a panacea for stress in a pandemic—or at any time. To address this potential discomfort, at the end of this introduction is a list of my suggestions for an order in which to begin reading this blog, the case for sexual pleasure as a stress reducer appearing in posts 12-18.
While the primary audience for myfriendpleasure.org is straight women, men are encouraged to read the posts and to comment.
How does pleasure play out in the lives of the LGBTQ community? I call for their comments to broaden my thinking and to add to topics for my research, particularly about how the division of their household labor compares with straight couples. I do not think sexual pleasure among lesbians and gays is an issue, for it is high in both groups compared to straight women. (See footnote.**)
Researching the disparity in sexual pleasure for heterosexual women versus lesbians and gays and drawing from my own experience led me to focus on straight women; however, many posts on this blog could inform all genders, sexual orientations, and races: The overlooked pleasures in each day (“Look at the Light of this Hour!”; Jewels Are Everywhere; My Pleasure); the curse of the Adam and Eve story (The Original Mega-Bite; What Do Fear of Snakes and Men’s Fear of Women Have in Common?); and the unequal sharing of household tasks and lack of permission to be an artist (Room-inations; A Century of Woman’s Suffer-Rage).
Finally, as a caretaker of my husband of more than 50 years whose health is declining rapidly from Lewybody dementia and Parkinson’s, my journal entries reflect my day-to-day attempts to cope with and to offset my stress by finding moment-to-moment pleasures (“The Spirit of the Fountain Never Dies”).
Suggested Order for Reading Blog Posts
1. What Does Pleasure Mean to You?
2. “Look at the Light of this Hour!”
3. Jewels Are Everywhere
4. My Pleasure
5. Of Arks and Arcs: Take Heart!
6. The Original Mega-Bite
7. What Do Fear of Snakes and Men’s Fear of Women Have in Common?
8. “The Spirit of the Fountain Never Dies”
9. Room-inations on Too-Still-a-Life
10. A Century of Women’s Suffer-Rage!
11. Unlocking the Mountain that Is Woman: International Woman’s March
12. “Let’s Talk about Sex”
13. Reducing COVID-19 Stress: Why Is One Suggestion Still in Quarantine?
14. 1981 Scientific Breakthrough!
15. In Memory of Shere Hite: Speaking Truth to Power for All Women
16. Down with “Down There!”
17. What Do You Think?
18. “Let’s Do That Again!”
19. Top Ten Reasons Women Love Erotic Novels: A Must-Read for Men
Footnotes
*(https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2019/08/your-health-care-in-womens-hands.html-)
**According to a 2018 article in The Guardian by Hannah Jane Parkinson, “A Public Health England survey of more than 7,000 women last month found that half of respondents [50% of women] aged between 25 and 34 did not enjoy their sex life. The percentage dropped to 29% among 55-to 64-year-olds, suggesting that sex for women gets better with age…
But previous global research suggests that women who have sex with women are probably more likely to be in the half that did not report sexual dissatisfaction…The sexual orientation of men, however, did not appear to have much effect on their rates of orgasm—gay men reported coming 85% of the time, while for heterosexual men it was 86%.
Read full article at https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/jul/09/do-lesbians-have-better-sex-than-straight-women.)
