A delightful, informative and insightful exposé on female pleasure – from soup to nuts.

Here’s my summary of Emily Nagoski’s Come As You Are – that one was a long time coming.

  • Metaphor of the garden: you have a plot of land with unique soil, and plants grown for you by your family and culture. Some are good, some are not so great. You can unroot the bad ones, plant new ones.
  • Brakes and accelerators (SIS and SES) People have accelerators (turn-ons) and brakes (turn-offs), spontaneous or chronic, running in parallel, each more or less sensitive based on the person (× Sex Talks).
    • “Accelerating with the brakes on”: first turn off the turn-offs. (× Sex Talks)
    • Men have more sensitive accelerators, women more sensitive brakes (in general).
    • Communicate your turn-ons and turn-offs. Arrange the context for yourself.
      • Conversely, know your partner’s turn-ons and turn-offs; arrange the context for them.
        • Sexual context: the combination of the external circumstances and your internal brain state (× “set and setting” in drug trips; sex as a drug trip – as an experience, and to be designed and prepared as such (× sacred sexuality, Urban Tantra))
    • “Move your partner’s hands on your body to show what you like.”
    • “Beyond its already skyrocketing heights” (“Make your partner feel like a superhero”): to avoid hurting feelings, when bringing up ideas for improvement (e.g. lube), frame them as ways to enhance your sex life “even more” (× Sex Talks). “All the things your partner can do to increase your pleasure beyond its already skyrocketing heights.”
    • Brakes and accelerators are learned.
    • Stress is a brake for most people, an accelerator for some – though typically as craving behaviour, i.e. with eagerness but no enjoyment.
  • Arousal non-concordance: lubrication does not equate desire. Non-concordance is more prevalent in women than men.
    • Arousal, then desire ((genital) arousal as a precondition for desire). For women: arousal monitors sexual relevance; then desire arises past an arousal threshold and with the right context.
      • Spontaneous vs responsive desire (most men vs most women): most men experience desire spontaneously, while most women require extra attention to context and build up desire more gradually.
        • Differing desire styles yield a “chasing dynamic”. For people with a responsive desire style, “asking them for sex” doesn’t work.
        • Continuous teasing help build desire up for women (until it crosses the threshold). (× Sex Talks: sexual simmer)
        • Common turn-ons for women: physical attractiveness, physicality, sex talks/salience, emotional intimacy.
        • “Low” or “high” desire is always relative to your partner – not objective.
          • “If you’re feeling low desire [i.e. responsive], you don’t have to change yourself, you can just change your context.”
  • expecting - enjoying - eagerness. Three independent components of sex — you might have one but not the other (e.g. expecting but not enjoying (dread); eager but not enjoying (craving)). Genital response is “expecting”. Eagerness can be towards or away from.
    • Modelled on “wanting - liking - learning” (Berridge & Robinson)
      • Two distinct mechanisms for craving & for enjoyment. Craving unpleasant experiences. The “wanting/liking/learning” model distinguishes between the mechanisms of craving (dopamine) and of enjoyment (opioid) — explains why some people might crave for unpleasant experiences.
  • emotion I - emotion II - emotion III (genital arousal; body language; subjective arousal)
    • You might experience subjective arousal (III) without exhibiting concordant body language (II) or genital arousal (I). Being “hard to read” (unlike these notes).
    • Women’s facial expressions reveal their subjective experience. For men, their physiology (heart rate, blood pressure) is more revealing than their facial expressions.
  • “Men-as-default” makes women abnormal. The majority of men are sexually concordant, experience spontaneous desire, and orgasm from intercourse. This is the case only for a minority of women, and so a patriarchal culture makes most women feel abnormal.

Drive systems vs incentive systems

  • Drive systems: activating when below a critical point, turning off when within the range (thermostats — × systems thinking). Examples: hunger, thirst, sleep, thermoregulation. Typically associated with needs.
    • Weak point: Drive systems by themselves don’t encourage saving for a rainy day
    • Hunger, thirst, sleep as deliberate mechanisms implanted for the creature’s self-preservation.
  • Flockbuddies: flocks make a system, without leaders, by following only a few simple rules (“avoid predators”, “fly towards the magnetic pole”, “stay by your neighbours”) (× Emergent Strategy; systems thinking). Wisdom of the swarm: a single bird notices a predator, pulls away, the rest follows (abiding by the rule “stay by your neighbours”) (× Elegant Design; The Design of Everyday Things).
    • The brain as a flock: the brain as a system whose parts have to remain coherent.
  • Incentive systems are based on an external reward – don’t return to a baseline.
  • Sex is an incentive-based activity, not a need. People die of thirst, hunger, sleep deprivation — but not from lack of sex.
    • Sex seen as a need damages people with low desire. If sex is a need, then not experiencing it is “wrong” — and judging oneself for it makes it even more difficult to experience it, sets off a vicious cycle.
    • Sex seen as a need exculpates sexual assailants — acting “out of a need”.
  • Model of the “little monitor”: brain system aiming to reach goals. Responds (emotionally) based on progress: satisfied, frustrated or despondent when the goal is suddenly seen as unattainable (× Psycho-Cybernetics: unproductive resentment; “freeze” stress response).
    • Three variables to change when things are not working out: goal, kind and amount of effort, expected amount of effort to reach goal.
  • Curiosity needs a relaxed environment. Curiosity is an incentive-based activity. Curiosity is subordinate to survival and as such requires a stress-free context. Absence of stress allows for exploration and curiosity whereas presence of stress call for a safe and familiar environment (reduced “capacity” for new things).
  • Sex is not like hunger; sex is like curiosity. Sex is not a drive like hunger, satisfying a need; it’s an incentive-based activity, like curiosity. (Also bi-curious sounds less bad than bi-hungry)
    • “Your partner is not an animal to be hunted for sustenance but a secret keeper whose hidden depths are infinite. Sexual boredom can happen only if you’re no longer curious.”
  • Food is both a need and an incentive-based activity – explains wanting delicious food despite being satiated. Making the necessary pleasant (cooking, kitchens; improvising around the necessities, × Chekhov, hospitality).

Relationship tips

  • Flipping roles like burgers, e.g. in a relationship with a high-desire partner and a low-desire partner: let the low-desire partner go at their pace, do the chasing, create the right context for themselves.
    • “When Patrick was in charge with full permission to do whatever occurred to him, they tried new things and played together. They learned a lot about what context worked for Patrick, because he had to create that context, had to ask for what felt right. […] Creating a great sex-positive context for the lower-desire partner resulted in a context that was mind-blowingly, almost painfully erotic for the higher-desire partner.”
  • Pause sex, e.g. for a month, if the dynamics are weird. Clears the mind, rebuilds affection through physical intimacy.
  • Distinguish between touch for your pleasure vs for the other’s pleasure. (× Wheel of Consent; Conscious Touch).
    • Common progression used in sex therapy: 1) touching for the toucher’s pleasure and switching 2) touching for both people’s pleasure and switching 3) touching for both people’s pleasure, now including breasts and genitalia, and switching 4) simultaneous touching for both people’s pleasure, including breasts and genitalia 5) penetration without thrusting (if you have thrust issues) 6) penetration with thrusting, without orgasm 7) the whole shebang.
      • The toucher must practice “self-assertion” and the touched must practice “self-protection”, voicing to stop when things are uncomfortable (e.g. below a -2 on a -10 to +10 pleasure scale).
  • “20 minutes of sensual touching before bed” (× Sex Talks: emotional connection rituals).
  • Attachment styles vary from relationship to relationship – not just from person to person. (× Attached)
  • Make sex a priority: “Long-term couples with good sex lives consistently mentioned: (1) maintaining a close, connected, and trusting friendship; and (2) making sex a priority in their lives.”
  • Subscriptions for adventures: “Every few months, a box would come in the mail—like a Fruit of the Month thing, only instead of fruit they got kits with a sort of prefabricated sexy fantasy.”
  • Picture ideal sex. Make a plan. “What sex is worth having, and what will you do to create it in your life? Concrete. Specific. Detailed.” (× Sex Talks: sex flavours; × intentions for sex, e.g. sex magic, “sex that advances the plot”, e.g. after emotional intimacy)
    • Sex as De Sering: it can be anything you want to make out of it; sex as a blank slate. (× Steve Pavlina) (also check out my 9-hour playlist for my former workplace – shameless plug (hi, my name is doxxy))
    • Improving your relationship’s sex life can be a committed, intentional, deliberate project. (The Toyota Way)
    • Plan for barriers: what will you do to prevent them and what will you do if they occur?
    • Make it your identity (“Don’t just run. Be a runner.”) (× Psycho-Cybernetics)
  • Cardio to increase desire. Do activities that pump up your heart rate to increase desire.
  • More orgasms with socks on. Cold feet vie for attention.
  • NVC Lite:
    • Identify the feeling.
    • Feel and accept it.
    • Take responsibility for it, come up with something concrete that would help.
    • Communicate your feeling, need and solution.
  • The opposite of mindfulness is over-identification with feelings.
  • Holding space: provide loving presence.
  • Self-compassion exercise: counsel yourself as you would a friend. (× 7 Habits of Highly Effective People)

Stress, emotions, healing & self-judgment

  • Stress responses: fight (conquer), flight (escape), freeze (facilitate painless death / play dead when neither fighting nor fleeing would let you survive). Fight and flight are sympathetic responses, freeze is parasympathetic.
    • All (negative) emotions belong to a category of stress response: fight, flight, or freeze.
      • Worry, anxiety, fear, terror: flight.
      • Irritation, annoyance, frustration, anger, rage: fight.
      • Emotional numbness, shutdown, depression, despair: freeze.
    • You can deal with the stressor or deal with the stress.
    • Complete the cycle to overcome stress and negative emotions. Conquer, escape, or unlock from freeze.
    • “Physical activity is the single most efficient strategy for completing the stress response cycle and recalibrating your nervous system into a calm state.”
      • The runner’s high is the relief of successfully escaping a predator and having survived.
    • Celebrating communicates the end of a stress cycle to your body. Once the stressor is conquered (e.g. exam passed), signify to your body that the stress cycle is over – through physical activity, affection, primal scream, emotional release, relaxation, self-care.
    • Shake and sigh to complete the stress cycle and reset.
  • Emotions are cycles to complete; rollercoasters to descend; tunnels you have to go through to get to the light.
    • Emotions want to be experienced and gone through, naturally do so if you allow them. “Your body knows how to process emotions; you just have to allow it.”
      • Feeling one’s way through one’s emotions is counter-intuitive: you have to go there to not be there anymore (to an extent like fear: stage fright, cold showers).
      • Feel your feels just like you have to pee. Just find an appropriate place.
      • Even if a feeling doesn’t have a “solution”, feeling the feel lets you complete the cycle.
      • When you trust that feeling your feels will let you go over them, being in emotionally uncomfortable places stops being scary.
    • Nonjudge is what matters; not simply observation. Nonjudge, not simply awareness of one’s emotions, is the predictor of well-being and getting over emotions. “It’s not about being aware of how you feel; it’s about how you feel about how you feel.” “Nonjudge is neutrally observing your feelings.”
      • Self-judgment gets in the way of allowing yourself to experience the emotions and completing their cycle. Meta-emotions: how you feel about how you feel.
      • “Feeling okay about how you feel—even when it’s not what you expected—is the key to extraordinary sex.”
  • Healing hurts. When you hurt, you heal. When you hurt other people, you heal other people.
    • You cannot choose not to hurt. But you can choose to heal.
    • If we try to “numb” the emotional pain, we pause the pain, but we also pause the healing.

Anatomy

  • Hymens are not a marker of virginity. Some women are born with, others without. Hymens vary in shape, form and other synonyms, and not all bleed. (So now give me a hymen break)
  • Anatomical homologues: a man’s major labia is a woman’s scrotum; a man’s clitoral head is a woman’s penis.

Chanel Heading No. 5

  • “We were sitting together one afternoon, talking about sex.” (× Sex Talks: talk sex every day)
  • What do you associate sex with? (× Psycho-Cybernetics; Steve Pavlina)
  • “There are as many sexualities as there are humans on Earth.” Celebrate! Explore!
  • Play disarms nervousness. “It is literally impossible to feel stressed and anxious about something when your approach is playful, curious, and humorous. Let it be a little silly; let it be fun.”
    • “This is about pleasure, remember?” (× Bliss Club)
  • “We’re all made of the same parts, just organized in different ways.” (× Your Symphony of Selves: We’re all made of the same selves but with varying degrees of expressions?) (× deep humanity in all of us; shared humanity; deep benevolence & heartfulness of e.g. kids; All About Love)
  • Primary, secondary identities: “…because that wasn’t what being female felt like to me, I decided my first identity is ‘geek.’ Not woman, not Black: geek. Gamer.” What do you decide to be your primary identity?