The Big Lie

In a New York Times article by Mary Katherine Tramontana (Jan. 14, 2022) “‘There’s Not Just One Type of Porn: Erika Lust’s Alternative Vision,’ [t]he Swedish moviemaker thinks pornography can create a society that sees sexuality as myriad and joyful, and where women’s pleasure matters.” 

According to Tramontana’s plainspoken piece, Erika Lust says that commonly watched heterosexual porn makes women the object of man’s pleasure and does nothing to show how women get pleasure in sex. If a male is penetrating a woman, Lust says, she needs to be touching her clitoris with her hand or a vibrator to have an orgasm.

Wow! Even though I have been writing about the need for more pleasure in a woman’s life and the importance of her clitoris in experiencing sexual pleasure, until I read those words in black and white, I realized I still had not grasped that it was okay for me to touch myself sexually with my hand or a vibrator while having sex with a man. I’m not saying I never did it, but I am saying I never read that it was okay—more than okay—essential. When I read those words, it was as if a bomb had exploded in my head. 

Then I felt very angry. Why was I seeing this important information in credible mainstream media for the first time in 2022 when I am 77 years old?

Why didn’t anyone tell me this when I married at 25? My husband and I were together for over 50 years. Lovemaking would have been mutually much more satisfying and more pleasurable for me if I had felt it was okay to pleasure myself while we made love. I would have come more reliably and faster, and we both would have wanted to make love more often. 

Then I wondered,“Even today, do most women know it is okay? Do men think it’s okay?” So I googled “How may heterosexual women believe it’s fine to masturbate during lovemaking with a man?” I pulled up only one relevant article written by a woman (but directed at men) in Men’s Health by Maria Del Russo “Truth About Why Some Women Masturbate During Sex” (Aug. 27, 2018). *

In the article, Del Russo talks about male sexual partners who didn’t want her to touch herself during lovemaking because they felt they were the ones who should be giving her pleasure. In this piece, she tries to persuade men that a woman touching herself during sex is good by offering them a whopping statistic: most women can climax only by having their clitoris touched during sex and only 18% do so through penetration alone; by telling men that women know best how and where to touch themselves; and by adding that it can be fun and exciting for a man to watch. 

How many men have been persuaded? How many women still believe the lie that masturbation is okay only when we are alone, but when we are with a male partner, he alone should give us pleasure? How many women still think they need to be tactful and fake an orgasm just to make sure their partner’s manhood remains in tact?

Right now, the phrase BIG LIE is all over the news—Trump’s big lie that the 2020 election was stolen. This lie makes me furious because it threatens our very democracy; however, that even some women may still believe in 2022 that they have no right to their own sexual agency when they make love with a man is appalling! Trump’s lie has been going on for little more than a year. Women have been lied to and shamed about allowing themselves sexual pleasure for centuries. 

This big lie connects to two other paramount lies affecting women’s overall pleasure and life choices. First, that women should be caretakers, and second, that to be a full woman in society, a woman should have children, should take care of their husbands and households, and should sacrifice their own needs for their families’ comfort even if that means putting their own desires last. How much has changed? A 2021 AP-NORC poll shows mothers [still] are more likely than fathers to say they do most of the household work. 

Reinforcing the message that the prime function of marriage is to bear children, the Catholic Church has long made it clear with its ban on contraceptives that it sees the primary role of women as mothers. Recently an article in The Week (Jan. 21, 2022) stated that the Pope thinks young people are substituting pets for babies and that this is wrong.

Having enjoyed more than eight wonderful pets in my life my life, I found the Pope’s words misguided at best and insulting at worst. Raised a Catholic, I  certainly felt the onus to have children. The fear of appearing selfish if I didn’t was front and center when I was trying to decide whether or not to bring a child into my life.  

After many failed attempts to bring a baby to full term, I realized what I really wanted was what I have now; namely, a loving dog named Rosie and unstructured time to bring different children into the world as an artist through visual media, writing, painting, and blogging. Back when I was contemplating having a child and a creative life, unplanned time frightened me. I knew that I risked having nothing to show for days, weeks, or even months and that if I had a child, I would have found it nearly impossible to take time away from my family for my art when I was rolling the dice every day and could come up empty. 

My dilemma was that I saw myself feeling continually pulled between my child’s needs and mine as an artist. For many years even without children, I never thought I had the right to unplanned time. I would feel someone else’s needs were more important than my creative work because I said to myself, “You aren’t a real artist. How can you call yourself a writer, when you have not published anything.”

The Big Truth

How does societal pressure on women to have children and to be good caretakers connect to the big sexual lie I began with? Women must feel they can carve out a life that gives them pleasure, not the life society deems acceptable and unselfish, nor the life a man can create for them. I am saying there is a link between a woman’s need to give herself pleasure while she is making love with a partner or by herself—knowing what feels good and what doesn’t—and her need to create a way of life and work that pleases her, not someone else. 

To find this way of life, women must let themselves feel all kinds of pleasure—  especially sexual. Our minds can lie to us about why we want something or even about what we like. Our bodies rarely do. That has been true for me. The more I am able to give my bodily pleasure, the more I can discern what I really want in other areas of my life, and the less likely I am to make decisions from the “I should do this” place.

Sexual pleasure helps me give myself the permission to delight in being creative every day regardless of whether or not I am ever recognized as an artist. It reminds me to trust my instincts—to stop to enjoy a sunset, to journal, to work on a poem or a blog post, to put it down and to pick it up later. Happily, now I am less concerned with productivity and more able to enjoy creating in the moment.

The last thought I want to leave you with is this: a woman’s passion and her creativity come from the same source—pleasure! Its core is her clitoris. Women, we ignore it at our peril!  

*(https://www.menshealth.com/sex-women/a22839638/women-masturbating-during-sex/)

The Big Lie

In a New York Times article by Mary Katherine Tramontana (Jan. 14, 2022) “‘There’s Not Just One Type of Porn: Erika Lust’s Alternative Vision,’ [t]he Swedish moviemaker thinks pornography can create a society that sees sexuality as myriad and joyful, and where women’s pleasure matters.” 

According to Tramontana’s plainspoken piece, Erika Lust says that commonly watched heterosexual porn makes women the object of man’s pleasure and does nothing to show how women get pleasure in sex. If a male is penetrating a woman, Lust says, she needs to be touching her clitoris with her hand or a vibrator to have an orgasm.

Wow! Even though I have been writing about the need for more pleasure in a woman’s life and the importance of her clitoris in experiencing sexual pleasure, until I read those words in black and white, I realized I still had not grasped that it was okay for me to touch myself sexually with my hand or a vibrator while having sex with a man. I’m not saying I never did it, but I am saying I never read that it was okay—more than okay—essential. When I read those words, it was as if a bomb had exploded in my head. 

Then I felt very angry. Why was I seeing this important information in credible mainstream media for the first time in 2022 when I am 77 years old?

Why didn’t anyone tell me this when I married at 25? My husband and I were together for over 50 years. Lovemaking would have been mutually much more satisfying and more pleasurable for me if I had felt it was okay to pleasure myself while we made love. I would have come more reliably and faster, and we both would have wanted to make love more often. 

Then I wondered,“Even today, do most women know it is okay? Do men think it’s okay?” So I googled “How may heterosexual women believe it’s fine to masturbate during lovemaking with a man?” I pulled up only one relevant article written by a woman (but directed at men) in Men’s Health by Maria Del Russo “Truth About Why Some Women Masturbate During Sex” (Aug. 27, 2018). *

In the article, Del Russo talks about male sexual partners who didn’t want her to touch herself during lovemaking because they felt they were the ones who should be giving her pleasure. In this piece, she tries to persuade men that a woman touching herself during sex is good by offering them a whopping statistic: most women can climax only by having their clitoris touched during sex and only 18% do so through penetration alone; by telling men that women know best how and where to touch themselves; and by adding that it can be fun and exciting for a man to watch. 

How many men have been persuaded? How many women still believe the lie that masturbation is okay only when we are alone, but when we are with a male partner, he alone should give us pleasure? How many women still think they need to be tactful and fake an orgasm just to make sure their partner’s manhood remains in tact?

Right now, the phrase BIG LIE is all over the news—Trump’s big lie that the 2020 election was stolen. This lie makes me furious because it threatens our very democracy; however, that even some women may still believe in 2022 that they have no right to their own sexual agency when they make love with a man is appalling! Trump’s lie has been going on for little more than a year. Women have been lied to and shamed about allowing themselves sexual pleasure for centuries. 

This big lie connects to two other paramount lies affecting women’s overall pleasure and life choices. First, that women should be caretakers, and second, that to be a full woman in society, a woman should have children, should take care of their husbands and households, and should sacrifice their own needs for their families’ comfort even if that means putting their own desires last. How much has changed? A 2021 AP-NORC poll shows mothers [still] are more likely than fathers to say they do most of the household work. 

Reinforcing the message that the prime function of marriage is to bear children, the Catholic Church has long made it clear with its ban on contraceptives that it sees the primary role of women as mothers. Recently an article in The Week (Jan. 21, 2022) stated that the Pope thinks young people are substituting pets for babies and that this is wrong.

Having enjoyed more than eight wonderful pets in my life my life, I found the Pope’s words misguided at best and insulting at worst. Raised a Catholic, I  certainly felt the onus to have children. The fear of appearing selfish if I didn’t was front and center when I was trying to decide whether or not to bring a child into my life.  

After many failed attempts to bring a baby to full term, I realized what I really wanted was what I have now; namely, a loving dog named Rosie and unstructured time to bring different children into the world as an artist through visual media, writing, painting, and blogging. Back when I was contemplating having a child and a creative life, unplanned time frightened me. I knew that I risked having nothing to show for days, weeks, or even months and that if I had a child, I would have found it nearly impossible to take time away from my family for my art when I was rolling the dice every day and could come up empty. 

My dilemma was that I saw myself feeling continually pulled between my child’s needs and mine as an artist. For many years even without children, I never thought I had the right to unplanned time. I would feel someone else’s needs were more important than my creative work because I said to myself, “You aren’t a real artist. How can you call yourself a writer, when you have not published anything.”

The Big Truth

How does societal pressure on women to have children and to be good caretakers connect to the big sexual lie I began with? Women must feel they can carve out a life that gives them pleasure, not the life society deems acceptable and unselfish, nor the life a man can create for them. I am saying there is a link between a woman’s need to give herself pleasure while she is making love with a partner or by herself—knowing what feels good and what doesn’t—and her need to create a way of life and work that pleases her, not someone else. 

To find this way of life, women must let themselves feel all kinds of pleasure—  especially sexual. Our minds can lie to us about why we want something or even about what we like. Our bodies rarely do. That has been true for me. The more I am able to give my bodily pleasure, the more I can discern what I really want in other areas of my life, and the less likely I am to make decisions from the “I should do this” place.

Sexual pleasure helps me give myself the permission to delight in being creative every day regardless of whether or not I am ever recognized as an artist. It reminds me to trust my instincts—to stop to enjoy a sunset, to journal, to work on a poem or a blog post, to put it down and to pick it up later. Happily, now I am less concerned with productivity and more able to enjoy creating in the moment.

The last thought I want to leave you with is this: a woman’s passion and her creativity come from the same source—pleasure! Its core is her clitoris. Women, we ignore it at our peril!  

*(https://www.menshealth.com/sex-women/a22839638/women-masturbating-during-sex/)

The Big Lie

In a New York Times article by Mary Katherine Tramontana (Jan. 14, 2022) “‘There’s Not Just One Type of Porn: Erika Lust’s Alternative Vision,’ [t]he Swedish moviemaker thinks pornography can create a society that sees sexuality as myriad and joyful, and where women’s pleasure matters.” 

According to Tramontana’s plainspoken piece, Erika Lust says that commonly watched heterosexual porn makes women the object of man’s pleasure and does nothing to show how women get pleasure in sex. If a male is penetrating a woman, Lust says, she needs to be touching her clitoris with her hand or a vibrator to have an orgasm.

Wow! Even though I have been writing about the need for more pleasure in a woman’s life and the importance of her clitoris in experiencing sexual pleasure, until I read those words in black and white, I realized I still had not grasped that it was okay for me to touch myself sexually with my hand or a vibrator while having sex with a man. I’m not saying I never did it, but I am saying I never read that it was okay—more than okay—essential. When I read those words, it was as if a bomb had exploded in my head. 

Then I felt very angry. Why was I seeing this important information in credible mainstream media for the first time in 2022 when I am 77 years old?

Why didn’t anyone tell me this when I married at 25? My husband and I were together for over 50 years. Lovemaking would have been mutually much more satisfying and more pleasurable for me if I had felt it was okay to pleasure myself while we made love. I would have come more reliably and faster, and we both would have wanted to make love more often. 

Then I wondered,“Even today, do most women know it is okay? Do men think it’s okay?” So I googled “How may heterosexual women believe it’s fine to masturbate during lovemaking with a man?” I pulled up only one relevant article written by a woman (but directed at men) in Men’s Health by Maria Del Russo “Truth About Why Some Women Masturbate During Sex” (Aug. 27, 2018). *

In the article, Del Russo talks about male sexual partners who didn’t want her to touch herself during lovemaking because they felt they were the ones who should be giving her pleasure. In this piece, she tries to persuade men that a woman touching herself during sex is good by offering them a whopping statistic: most women can climax only by having their clitoris touched during sex and only 18% do so through penetration alone; by telling men that women know best how and where to touch themselves; and by adding that it can be fun and exciting for a man to watch. 

How many men have been persuaded? How many women still believe the lie that masturbation is okay only when we are alone, but when we are with a male partner, he alone should give us pleasure? How many women still think they need to be tactful and fake an orgasm just to make sure their partner’s manhood remains in tact?

Right now, the phrase BIG LIE is all over the news—Trump’s big lie that the 2020 election was stolen. This lie makes me furious because it threatens our very democracy; however, that even some women may still believe in 2022 that they have no right to their own sexual agency when they make love with a man is appalling! Trump’s lie has been going on for little more than a year. Women have been lied to and shamed about allowing themselves sexual pleasure for centuries. 

This big lie connects to two other paramount lies affecting women’s overall pleasure and life choices. First, that women should be caretakers, and second, that to be a full woman in society, a woman should have children, should take care of their husbands and households, and should sacrifice their own needs for their families’ comfort even if that means putting their own desires last. How much has changed? A 2021 AP-NORC poll shows mothers [still] are more likely than fathers to say they do most of the household work. 

Reinforcing the message that the prime function of marriage is to bear children, the Catholic Church has long made it clear with its ban on contraceptives that it sees the primary role of women as mothers. Recently an article in The Week (Jan. 21, 2022) stated that the Pope thinks young people are substituting pets for babies and that this is wrong.

Having enjoyed more than eight wonderful pets in my life my life, I found the Pope’s words misguided at best and insulting at worst. Raised a Catholic, I  certainly felt the onus to have children. The fear of appearing selfish if I didn’t was front and center when I was trying to decide whether or not to bring a child into my life.  

After many failed attempts to bring a baby to full term, I realized what I really wanted was what I have now; namely, a loving dog named Rosie and unstructured time to bring different children into the world as an artist through visual media, writing, painting, and blogging. Back when I was contemplating having a child and a creative life, unplanned time frightened me. I knew that I risked having nothing to show for days, weeks, or even months and that if I had a child, I would have found it nearly impossible to take time away from my family for my art when I was rolling the dice every day and could come up empty. 

My dilemma was that I saw myself feeling continually pulled between my child’s needs and mine as an artist. For many years even without children, I never thought I had the right to unplanned time. I would feel someone else’s needs were more important than my creative work because I said to myself, “You aren’t a real artist. How can you call yourself a writer, when you have not published anything.”

The Big Truth

How does societal pressure on women to have children and to be good caretakers connect to the big sexual lie I began with? Women must feel they can carve out a life that gives them pleasure, not the life society deems acceptable and unselfish, nor the life a man can create for them. I am saying there is a link between a woman’s need to give herself pleasure while she is making love with a partner or by herself—knowing what feels good and what doesn’t—and her need to create a way of life and work that pleases her, not someone else. 

To find this way of life, women must let themselves feel all kinds of pleasure—  especially sexual. Our minds can lie to us about why we want something or even about what we like. Our bodies rarely do. That has been true for me. The more I am able to give my bodily pleasure, the more I can discern what I really want in other areas of my life, and the less likely I am to make decisions from the “I should do this” place.

Sexual pleasure helps me give myself the permission to delight in being creative every day regardless of whether or not I am ever recognized as an artist. It reminds me to trust my instincts—to stop to enjoy a sunset, to journal, to work on a poem or a blog post, to put it down and to pick it up later. Happily, now I am less concerned with productivity and more able to enjoy creating in the moment.

The last thought I want to leave you with is this: a woman’s passion and her creativity come from the same source—pleasure! Its core is her clitoris. Women, we ignore it at our peril!  

*(https://www.menshealth.com/sex-women/a22839638/women-masturbating-during-sex/)