Is Achieving Orgasm as Simple as It Sounds?

  Vanessa Pinto

Would it surprise you to know that people can achieve orgasm when they are brain dead, or that you don't necessarily need genitals to orgasm? Mary Roach's TED talk, "10 Things You Didn't Know About Orgasm" isn't just an eye opener, it's also really funny. As I continue to research and interview professionals about sex, sexual response and the things our bodies are capable of, I never cease to be amazed. According to Roach, when it comes to how you achieve orgasm, the world is your oyster and the sky is the limit. Roach even discusses how one woman could think herself to orgasm.

Our school-district-approved sex-ed class in junior high never taught me about orgasm; it's usually something we discover along our own sexual journey or even completely by accident. My sex education as a student in junior high lectured me about my menstrual cycle, how one becomes pregnant with a sterile diagram of internal organs and that sexually transmitted infections were waiting to use me as a host. There was never a point where anyone taught me the how and why of how my body worked when it came to sexual pleasure or that it was even an option.

Smart phone app shows men how their penises measure up to world sizes

By David Ferguson

A smart phone app for iPhone and Android shows men how the size of their penis compares to other men’s in the world. According to U.K. technology magazine TNT, the app is designed to help men find a better fitting condom.

The American Sexual Health Association has said that poor-fitting condoms are a leading reason why some men prefer not to use them. While most men are comfortable using condoms, men who find them too loose or tight or too short or long tend to use them less often, contributing to the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. A study published by Indiana University sex researchers said that the belief that sex is more pleasurable without a condom is actually a myth.

Sizzler #12 Female Orgasms

I was kind of disappointed on my wedding night when I discovered that having intercourse with my husband didn’t give me an orgasm. I just thought that it would, why would intercourse only let him have the orgasm and not me, that didn’t make sense. But lucky for me, I had “accidentally” figured out how to have an orgasm by myself when I was a teenager and I just had to show my husband the techniques.

A lot of women figure out how to have an orgasm through masturbation (without their husbands around) and then they teach their husbands how to do it. This is not something to be ashamed of or to avoid. If you have been married awhile and still haven’t had an orgasm, then I highly recommend you masturbate and figure it out. Orgasms are totally worth it, sex is about BOTH of you receiving immense pleasure, not just him. He is going to like the fact that you can orgasm, it will help him to not feel like a failure and it really arouses him too when you start screaming and breathing heavily.

Is it possible to get STDs in a monogamous relationship?

Q: Is it possible to get STDs in a monogamous relationship?

I had unprotected sex before I met my current partner. I’m the first and the only partner of the person I’m with now. I recently went to a clinic to get myself tested and I have no STDs. If my partner and I just stick with each other (for sexual pleasure), can we still get an STD through unprotected intercourse or through unprotected oral sex?  

The Pervocracy - Using my vagina.

(Yes, I have a modular hacked vibrator in my bedroom.
I don't know why you'd imagine for an instant that I wouldn't.)

I can be very good at standing back and using my body instrumentally. When I have to do something disgusting at work, I can dissociate from my hands. I can still feel them (obviously), but I don't invest any emotion in it and I don't expect to enjoy it. Washing out a wound or emptying a bedpan isn't about how my hands feel, and that's okay.

Caveman sex

Conservative folks would have us believe that sexual intercourse has only one true purpose: procreation. The fact that sex has obviously evolved to be a pleasurable activity seems to have passed these dinosaurs by altogether, even in the face of overwhelming evidence that sex is actually a whole lot of fun! Perhaps they’re just not getting any?!

These mental Neanderthals often claim that in the animal world, sex is all business and no fun, suggesting that this should also apply to humans. But scientists have clearly refuted these allegations: animals engage in a staggering range of wild and wonderful sexual activities, so why shouldn’t we?

What about our ancient forebears, the early humans in the Stone Age, though? Surely for them sex was all about a bloke wrapped in bear pelt dragging a suitable female into a cave by her hair for a perfunctory shag to expand the gene pool and ensure the survival of the clan. Not at all! It turns out that our ancestors have enjoyed sex as a pleasurable act for literally much longer than anyone can remember – for tens of thousands of years!

Removing The Obstacles To Sexual Pleasure

Let's begin to overcome the roadblocks to your own true pleasure.

by Pamela Madsen in Shameless Woman

The "Pleasure Principle" is rising! Have you noticed? There are lots of self help coaches preaching the power of pleasure as a tool of holistic healing and personal transformation - including me!

I know that pleasure is life transformation - because I lived it and everyone around me witnessed the changes in my being and my life. But sometimes I want to scream to all of us on the pleasure wagon - "Enough with the 'Pleasure Platitudes' - we have to give people some real skills on how to face their own personal obstacles to pleasure.

I didn't know that pleasure was healing - I just went on an adventure to try to figure out who I was as a woman. It was a crazy, funny, out of the box journey that not many women would go on - but at the end of the day - I learned some incredible lessons that I can pass on without you having to go exactly where I went.

Do You Feel Sexually Discarded?

You can get your sexuality out of the trash can!

by Pamela Madsen in Shameless Woman

Once upon a time, I felt sexually discarded. I didn't feel like anyone noticed me anymore as a sexual being. I was a lot of things, a wife, mother, worker-bee, daughter, sister and general good doer! But a sexually being? A hottie? A Head turner? Not so much! And I once was! What happened?

Maybe it was the baby weight - or my life obligations, or monogamy. I didn't know - but I had stopped looking in the mirror and I didn't see myself reflected back in the eyes of men anymore. I felt like nobody saw me as a sexual being anymore - and I think that perhaps that is because I stopped seeing myself as a sexual being. The fact is that I was not unattractive. I was perhaps a little too plump by societies standards, but I was not un-kempt or unattractive. But I had lost the swing to my hips.

Want to Be Sexually Successful?

Douglas Weiss, Ph.D. New Man - eMagazine

I believe that God wants every Christian man to be sexually successful. He desires all of us to enter into the holy of holies where spirit, soul and body intimacy occurs with your wife on a regular basis. His desire is to equip each one of us with the skills to be spiritually and emotionally intimate outside of the bedroom so that we can be sexually successful inside of the bedroom.

Are you wondering what a sexually successful man is and how you can become one? Let me be perfectly clear. Sex is by far one of God's best ideas! Don't you agree? I imagine the Creator could have made procreation a behavior that brought little pleasure and only engaged our bodies, completely detached from the wealth of a soul and spirit experience. What a bummer sex would have been if that were the case.

Sexuality and Breast Cancer

How Breast Cancer Can Affect Sexuality

By Cory Silverberg, About.com Guide

Updated September 28, 2010

About.com Health's Disease and Condition content is reviewed by the Medical Review Board

Sexuality is part of life, and all life experience may affect our sex lives and sexuality. Even if you haven't had a confirmed diagnosis of breast cancer -- you think you've felt a lump, a doctor suggested they'd like to take a closer look at something you hadn't noticed -- the possibility of breast cancer, the idea of it and all that it evokes, can affect your sexuality. We may not always say them out loud, but people often have questions about sex and sexuality early on in their experience with breast cancer, questions like:

• Will breast cancer change the kind of sex I can have?
• Will it change how much I want sex, or how much I enjoy sex?
• Will it affect who I get to have sex with? Will people not want to have sex with me?
• Will sex feel different?

It can be easiest (although easy probably isn't the best word) to focus on detailed questions like these, the anatomical and physiological parts of sexual activities. This approach is often supported by doctors who, if they are comfortable talking about sex at all, tend to focus on sexual functioning. But there are drawbacks to this approach, including:

• Focus on individual and not social, cultural, environmental factors that affect sexuality can mistakenly lead people to think that they can solve every problem with the right medication or attitude.
• Breaking sexuality into its "functional" components can strip it of much of its meaning and limit opportunities for sexuality to be a source of strength and support.
• Medical models focus on heterosexual intercourse, ignoring the infinite possibilities for sexual pleasure (not to mention the fact that we don't all have heterosexual intercourse!), and eliminating the possibility that breast cancer can lead to positive personal exploration.
• Focus on the individual or couple also contributes to social isolation, reducing the opportunities to connect with others around shared challenges.

It is almost certainly the case that breast cancer, like any other significant life experience, will change your sexuality and your sex life. What we forget, or sometimes don't realize until we're confronted with an illness, is that our sexuality is always changing, and in the long run, that change may be for the better.

Below are links to information on some of the predictable ways that diagnosis of and treatment for breast cancer can affect your sexuality in general and your sex life in particular. As you're reading, remember that each of us experiences sex in our own way. Comparing yourself to what is written here or to others, may feel like the right thing to do, but in the end it's often not that helpful. More helpful in the long run is to start with yourself. Ask yourself what connections you're already aware of between what's happening with and to your body, and your sexuality. Know that you have the right to care as much about sex, or as little about sex, as you want. Along the way you'll have to pull partners and/or health care providers in for support and ideas, but ultimately you are the one that should be deciding the priorities, pace, and timing of conversations about sex, and having sex.

Sexuality and Breast Cancer Diagnosis
In what ways does a diagnosis of breast cancer immediately change the way you think about sex, the way you imagine your immediate and distant sexual future? If every message we get about sex is that it's for the young and healthy, what does it mean for your sexuality if you're now branded as "sick" or "diseased"? Here are some examples of obstacles people face when they are diagnosed with breast cancer, and tips on how to reduce the affect and increase your access to sexual health and pleasure following breast cancer diagnosis.

Sexuality and Breast Cancer Treatment
There are many different treatments for breast cancer and each of them can have multiple effects on sexuality. On the one hand it's important to get detailed information from health care providers about the effects of your treatment regimen. On the other, it may be time to broaden your definition of what sexuality includes, in order to find ways to be sexual during what can be a long and difficult process, physically, emotionally, and psychologically.

Sexuality and Surviving Breast Cancer
Surviving breast cancer doesn't mean that your sexuality or sex life will go back to the way it was. Just as your sex life when you're 30 won't ever be like it was when you were 20, your sex life after cancer won't be exactly the way it was before. We can't go back. Mind you for many of us the way it was may not have been so hot, and there are those who talk about how dealing with major illness, including breast cancer, has eventually led to them having better sex because they had to learn to ask for what they want and become more active participants in their sexual pleasure.

Sexuality and Terminal Diagnosis
Just as sexuality is a part of life and living, it's a part of dying too. No one has the right to tell you that you should or shouldn't care about sex or want sex to be a significant part of your life, at any time, and least of all at the end of your life. If your cancer diagnosis is terminal you may feel a silent pressure from those around you to put sex and sexuality way on the back burner. And if that's how you feel too, that's okay. But if sexuality is an important part of your life, know that it can be a part of the end of your life as well, it just takes advocacy, desire, creativity, and usually some humor.

gotquestions  http://sexuality.about.com/od/Cancer-and-Sexuality/a/sexuality-and-breast-cancer.htm