Orgasm and its Enemies: Karezza, Daoists, and other anti-orgasm crusaders

Every now and then, I get a barrage of messages from someone claiming that male ejaculation is bad, or that all orgasms are bad. Responding individually is time-consuming and unproductive, so I thought it would be worthwhile creating a general response. Perhaps this will help those of you who have run into these sorts of anti-orgasm fanatics.

How to learn to enjoy sex

For most people reading this blog, this is going to be an irrelevant question. But I was reminded today that it's a serious problem for some people whose bodies and minds have never quite gotten synched up to experience sex as something pleasurable.

The most common causes of 'sexual anhedonia' (lack of pleasure) are drugs and medications, hormonal problems, depression, dysthymia (a form of chronic depression), and religious repression. These require major lifestyle changes and/or serious medical or psychological treatment.

But what about the mysterious cases of anhedonia that don't seem to be related to any of these causes?

The Art of the Handjob

I'm continuing to collect things I wrote in other places that are relevant here. In this case, I was asked to explain what I mean by "giving a great handjob." (I'm going to describe giving one to a man, but the setup is similar and there's a link at the end to more detailed instructions for women.)

For starters, I strongly recommend three things:

Modern Buddhist Tantra

At the beginning of the main "how to learn tantric sex" part of this blog, I made some highly critical comments about the way religious tantra is being marketed in the West. Ninety-nine percent of it is a blatant scam, an attempt to sell a fake, cotton candy version of Tantrism using sex as bait to get people into a cult.

Most of the ideas that are being peddled by these scammers as "spiritual truths" can be traced back to 19th century European mysticism, not to Asian religions, and especially not to Tantra. Even some of the most basic elements, like chakras, were words borrowed from the East, given totally different meanings in the West, and then exported back to Asia in an unrecognizable form. But no matter what you have been told, Tantra is NOT just another flavor of Western mysticism in Eastern clothing.

Authentic mainstream Buddhism as practiced in Asia has never interested me. It is deeply ascetic and monastic, and I have no interest in renouncing the real physical world, stifling all pleasures and desires, or becoming a monk or nun. And the watered-down, sanitized form of Buddhism taught in the West has always struck me as passive and weak – a wimpy, artificially-neutered shadow of the real thing.

I am also severely prejudiced against the typical form of Tantrism currently practiced in India, the home of my ancestors. This is an embarrassingly sleazy form of fake witchcraft and sorcery that preys on poor people, with "tantric wizards" peddling useless charms and hexes and fake cures around the edges of Hindu temples.

And, until recently, I had not given Buddhist Tantra more than a glance, because it seemed to be filled with bizarre demons and spirits and a lot of the same magical nonsense as the Hindu version.

However, at the urging of several of my friends and tantric sex preceptors, I have recently been reading David Chapman's blog Vividness and a number of related sources. And Chapman has just about convinced me that the kind of tantric sex that I have been studying, practicing, and writing about CAN live comfortably within a modernized form of Buddhist Tantra.

Since I know some of the readers of this blog are looking for something more than "just" fantastic sex, I wanted to share some of Chapman's ideas about what a truly modernized form of Buddhist Tantra would look like.

For him, Tantra is not some tacky hedge wizard selling you amulets. Nor is it some goofy crystal-brained New Age guru selling you "sacred sex" on the installment plan. And it is definitely not an ascetic, life-denying way to achieve nirvana in some far-distant future. On the contrary, it is a muscular, no-nonsense application of a pragmatic problem-solving philosophy to effective action in this world.

Bad, good, and magnificent sex

This is another in a collection of pieces that I've written elsewhere and wanted to include in this blog. I wrote it in answer to a deceptively simple sounding question:

What is the difference between bad sex, good sex, and great sex?

Bad sex is easy. It's sex that leaves one or both people feeling bad: bored, uninvolved, hurt, used, abused, violated, shamed, humiliated, neglected, ignored, and/or unsatisfied.

Describing good or great sex is a lot harder, and it might be a good idea to divide it into two kinds, because they use different biochemical pathways in the body and brain and they feel so different:

The Evolution of the Clitoris

In my last post, I talked about an impressive online program at OMGyes.com that teaches users a wide variety of techniques for using the fingers to stimulate the clitoris, get a woman aroused, and help her have an orgasm.  Knowing how to do this is important for those of us with clits and for those who love us because so many women – over 70% according to many studies – are unable to have an orgasm from normal penetrative sex alone, without any direct or indirect stimulation of the clit.

But this raises the obvious question:  why is that true?  If the purpose of the clit is to make sex pleasurable and lead to orgasms, why isn't the clit positioned so that it is directly stimulated during normal, penetrative, penis-in-vagina (PiV) sex?

OMG Yes!!!

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The Fabulous(?) Fornix

I recently got a request for information about the cervical fornix and the role it can play in having good sex. This reader wanted to know if it's true that some women get extreme pleasure from having the fornix stimulated, and wanted more information about its location and what was required to stimulate it.

There have been a rash of web posts in the last few years claiming nearly magical properties for this "spot," with some people claiming that simply having the head of the penis enter into the fornix causes an instant orgasm for the woman that is more intense than any other. With claims like that floating around, it seems like a good idea to take a serious look at the subject.

Bram & Kat & Gunter & Ann: A Tantric Foursome

As some of you know, I was traveling from July to early Sept, which is why there are no posts here for July and August.  But I want to share with you one of the most interesting stops I made on my journey, a visit with  two couples in Amsterdam who are in a committed tantric foursome.

How Women Can Become (More) Orgasmic

This post started life with a plea for help from Jim, a man whose partner is frustrated because she hardly ever has orgasms during sex, in spite of a lot of stimulation.  She is in her early 20s, has only tried to masturbate a few times, and has had only a handful of orgasms in the two years that she has been sexually active.

I've researched this topic a number of times over the years and have accumulated a long list of links to good resources, so I decided to share the best ones with him, and now with you.

This was my response:

Dear Jim,

Most people don't realize it, but an orgasm is something women have to learn to do.  Or, really, it's something our nervous systems have to learn to do.  Some girls are lucky and start masturbating when they're little, but a LOT of us start later and have to catch up. Because, as Drs. Julia Heiman and Joseph Lopiccolo pointed out 40 years ago in their groundbreaking book, Becoming Orgasmic, "the more orgasms a woman has had, the easier it is to have more."