First, a word about orgasm. If you have never had one, you may not know what to expect. And, if you wonder if you have ever had an orgasm or not, you probably haven’t. An orgasm generally consists of four to fifty contractions. You may feel them mainly in your genital region, or all through your body. You may have an emotional response, like laughing or crying.
Sex Shops Where You Will Want to Shop!
• Good Vibrations, San Francisco, Berkeley, CA, http://www.goodvibes.com.
• Grand Opening!, Boston, Los Angeles
• Toys in Babeland, Seattle, WA, New York, http://www.babeland.com.
• It’s My Pleasure, Portland, OR.
Good Vibes and Toys in Babeland, and many other sellers, sell great products on-line, too. But an in-person visit just can’t be beat!
• • •
Fun Fact! A half hour of moderate sexual activity burns 144 calories in a 150-pound person.
Source: http://www.clitical.com/sex-tutorials/sex-facts/sexercising.php
(I include this fact only to show that sex produces energy. I am NOT suggesting that you need to lose weight.)
As you go forth into the world of orgasm, you may want to play with breathing techniques. You may find that holding your breath, or breathing deeply, or rapid, shallow breathing makes your orgasm more pleasurable. Allowing yourself to make noise might be fun, or try forcing yourself to remain totally silent.
And here’s a word about masturbation, in a general sense. If you find a producer, writer, actor, or product that you like, porn can be fun. Erotic reading materials, graphic novels, anime, videos, and good old “men’s magazines” are used much more widely by women than you might think. If you have never tried using porn, you might want to. Your imagination is a great ally, too. Don’t censor your fantasies. Follow your imagination where it wants to go, as long as it gets your pussy wet.
There is no one right way to orgasm. Just relax, do what feels good, and let yourself go.
How-To: Fingers
You will need a private space, some lotion or lubricant, some time, and maybe some porn (or erotica, if you prefer—wink, wink).
Relax into your space, and allow your fingers to explore your vulva, your clit, your entire genital region. Whatever feels good, do more of. Some women like direct clitoral stimulation, some like less direct. Figure out what you like.
With enough time, open-mindedness, and dedication, you are likely to find ways to make yourself orgasm.
How-To: Vibrator
You can pick up a vibrator at any drugstore. Your new best friend will be packaged as a “massager,” and you can expect to spend as little as $10 to $50 for it. You will not find the quality or diversity at your corner drugstore that you will see somewhere at specialty sex stores like Good Vibrations in California (see sidebar), but you won’t be dropping quite as much cash, either.
“When I get my period I get moody. But my moodiness isn’t coming out of nowhere. The feelings just get bigger than they usually are. Sometimes it’s a bit much, but I have learned to really pay attention when I am PMSing. I can learn a lot about what’s really going on with me that way.”
L. S., age 30
• • •
“I like getting my period. During the first few days, I get kind of spacey and feel a little bit high. It’s kind of like time stretches out. And, I am really nice to myself when I’m bleeding. I take time to really take care of myself. That makes it a special time of the month for me.”
A. C., age 23
Once you have your new toy, find some private time and space, and play with it! Vary the speeds, and the intensity. If the intensity of the vibe on your bare skin is too extreme, put cloth between your clit and the head of the massager. Try it with lube, and without. Let your intuition be your guide.
Vibrators will tend to get you off quickly and simply. And take it from me—it’s a real joy to be able to deliver a satisfying quickie to the one who matters most!
Journaling Prompt
• The first time I masturbated, . . .
★ Daily Practice: Sex Magick
Every day during the week that you work this chapter, “spend some quality time.” Sexual energy is powerful, and you can use it to build joy in the world; not just with the intractable fact that it makes you feel good, and that feeling good tends to have a ripple effect (which is great in itself, and you may well become a beacon, emanating pulses of joy), but also the amount of energy that is released by your body when you orgasm (the activity of neurons, hormones, nerves, muscles, blood) is measurable. You can use this energy to power your prayers, intentions, spells, and wishes.
With each orgasm that you rack up, say a prayer for those who went before, and give thanks for the liberties those libertines granted us. Every woman who ever lived outside the lines that her culture built around her made more room for you and me to be who we are today. And, you and I are doing the same for future generations.
While you are giving thanks, give thanks also for the miracle of muscle and flesh—our pleasure-making, sensual, sexy bodies; these amazing bodies that look exactly the way they look, feel exactly the way they feel, and work exactly the way they work.
Menstruation
Ever heard the saying “I just don’t trust something that bleeds for days and doesn’t die!”? Well, why the hell not trust? It is natural for a woman to bleed. This is yet another example of the sometimes supercilious denouncement of women that exemplifies our cultural construct of dismissal.
Of all the psychological areas in which misogyny has been internalized, our relationships with our menstrual cycles may well be where it is lodged the deepest.
Menstruation has been equated with uncleanliness by every major patriarchal or patrifocal culture in history, and is the most abundant example of the hatred and mistrust of the body in general, coupled with the hatred and mistrust of women.
The word taboo means “sacred” and “menstruating” in Polynesian and Siouan. In Dakotan, wakan means “spiritual,” wonderful,” and “menstrual.”
Source: Penelope Shuttle and Peter Redgrove, The Wise Wound, New York: Grove Press, 1988.
• • •
Blood Art: A Compendium
• Karen Finley: http://www.karenfinley.net.
• Vanessa Tiegs: www.vanessatiegs.com.
• Tinet Emlgren: www.kommiekomiks.com/blood.htm.
• Saleena Ki’: www.transformationalart.com/mohe/visuals/ajl/moong/moong.html.
Checking in with your own feelings about menstruation is probably all you need to do to see how true this is. If it’s not, take as evidence the slew of products designed to hide the fact that you are bleeding, the pathologization of moodiness leading up to menses, and the mass of slanderous references to our periods: “Oh, don’t mind her; she’s on the rag!”
How can we own this most alienating aspect of our sex? There are lots of theories out there that may lend a bit of empowerment, like those that attempt to explain the concealed ovulation: the anomalous fact that women don’t show outwardly—or sometimes even know—when they are ovulating. One theory regarding this evolutionary mystery is that human females can control their fertility by deciding when to invite sexual contact, and when not to.
There is also the lunar cycle theory, which postulates that our menstrual cycles are influenced by the cycles of the moon. This theory hasn’t been proven, but perhaps our fertility cycle would mirror the cycle of the moon if we didn’t intervene with hormones, electric light, alcohol, drugs, and stress. Perhaps it is true that women in a “natural” environment would share this cosmic link with la luna. But even so, it is not of much use to us in the culture we live in today, aside from being a possible reference point for a spiritual mythos.
Here is one true thing: Blood is powerful. Fear of blood is powerful, and reasonable. Fear of our own mens
trual blood? Senseless. There is power in facing fears, and power in overcoming the fear of our own blood. Even the solitary act of facing the fears and shame may have a profound effect on your relationship with your body, your sex, and your concept of your gender.
Journaling Prompt
My blood, my moon, my period, my menses . . . What I call it, and how I feel about it.
Spell Working: Blood Magick
Next time you are bleeding, take a bath and relax. Once you are clean, comfortable, and dry, take some time to get familiar with your blood. It washes off, so don’t be afraid to get some blood on you! Touch it. Smell it. If you are clean and fresh, your blood should smell fresh, too, if a bit metallic, and possibly pungent. Like vaginal fluid, your blood will have a smell that is unique to you. (If your blood smells bad in some way, something may be amiss. It would be worth a visit to your doctor to make sure everything is fine.)
What It’s Called:
Latin: Matrix
Greek: Hustera
Middle English: Womb
Middle English: Uterus
Once you’ve made friends with your blood, do some finger painting with it. (You don’t have to show anyone if you don’t want to!)
Using Blood to Charge Spells and Talismans
Blood of all sorts can be used to charge talismans and spells. Women are lucky to have an approximately monthly supply of life-blood that comes free of wounding. This blood is also special because it reminds us of our power to create.
Blood can be burnt over incense as an offering of your life force to the spirit world. It can also be dabbed on talismans, used to consecrate magickal and divinatory tools, and more.
Some practitioners of magick claim strict rules about when, and for what, blood magick should and should not be performed. I am not so sure that there are as many rules to it. Let your conscience be your guide. One thing to remember, though: dabbing your blood on a talisman will send some of you with it, so be choosy about where it goes.
Matrices: The Womb
Our wombs, center of the world. We all came from a womb. It is one of the few global predicates that exists; one thing we all have in common. Everyone has a mother, mater, matrix; a place to move forth from.
Blood in the
Boardroom
by Ani DiFranco,
Puddle Dive, Righteous Babe Records, 1993
. . . every woman learns to bleed from the moon
and we bleed to renew life
every time it’s cut down
I got my vertebrae all stacked up
as high as they go
but I still feel myself sliding
from the earth that I know
so I excuse myself and leave the room
say my period came early
but it’s not a minute too soon
I go and find the only other woman on the floor . . .
I ask her if she’s got a tampon I could use
she says
oh honey, what a hassle for you, sure I do, you know I do
I say, it ain’t no hassle, no, it ain’t no mess
right now it’s the only power
that I possess
these businessmen got the money
they got the instruments of death
But I can make life, I can make breath . . .
As women, we have myriad relationships with this inner sanctum, this yoke, this pit, this core, this center. This, more than any other place in our bodies, is our seat of creation. It is also the place where we can be fully owned by needs other than our own. It is our seat of power, and it is the place where we can feel the most hijacked. Our wombs can become a home of disruption, a resting place for intruders. Yet, this is also the home of our ability to “create breath,” as Ani DiFranco says (see sidebar2). It is the home of the future, the home of possibility, perhaps even the home of the possibility of the future of the whole human race.
This seat of creation that abides within us is the seat of responsibility and power. Where do you stand in this awareness? Do you find yourself in awe of creation, or fearing this magnificent muscle as the very yoke of our sex?
The womb, and the questions it raises with its mere (miraculous) existence, are not simple: To breed, or not to breed? If I choose not to, will I regret it later? If I choose to, will I regret it later? What is my worth as a woman, beyond my womb? Why can’t I just be a person!?!
And then you start menstruating again, and are reminded that you are a woman, with a womb, and that you may as well get used to it.
Or perhaps you are on hormonal birth control, and your cycle has been force-fit to the mechanized cycle of the nonhormone-carrying pills in the pack. You never feel the pull anymore of the early flow, or the scare of late days. Or maybe you are one of the roughly 600,000 women who have had a hysterectomy performed in the past year, and you do not bleed, and you cannot breed, and you have no need for birth control.19
Seat of power, seat of choice. And with choice, again, comes responsibility. We are responsible, us and our wombs, for our fertility, for our control of it, for the ultimate choice should it come down to a question of shedding blood, or not.
The medical industry is still dominated by men, and medical textbooks are still written primarily by men. But this trend is changing. There has been a gradual yet somewhat steady increase of women going into medicine since 1848, the year in which an American woman named Elizabeth Blackwell was the first woman accepted into an American medical school. In the 2003–2004 school year, 49.7 percent of those enrolled in medical school in the United States were women.20 While there are still more male doctors than female in practice in nearly every field of medicine, there’s a good chance that in the near future the numbers will be close to equal.
Ovarian Illumination
Since 1912 it was thought that baby girls are born with all their eggs already developed, as opposed to men who produce more sperm than they could ever use throughout their lives.
In 2004, a study authored by Jonathan Tilly posited that the number of eggs may be renewed throughout adult life, and the scientific world is abuzz with the possibilities. This new look at women’s reproductive realities is likely to revolutionize reproductive health.
—Source: http://focus.hms.harvard. edu/2004/March19_2004/reproductive_biology.html.
• • •
Fact: Hysterectomy’s damage is lifelong. Among its most common consequences, in addition to operative injuries, are loss of sexual desire, arousal, and sensation; painful intercourse; profound fatigue; loss of short-term memory; despondency, irritability, anger, and suicidal thinking.
(continued)
As a matter of fact, looking at the climb in the number of women choosing medicine as their profession over just the past few years, it’s even possible that within the next decade or so there will be more women working in medicine than men.21 And more good news: this is not only happening in the United States. There are women flooding into careers in health care in the United Kingdom and British Columbia, too.22 And in 1998, a co-educational medical school opened in Afghanistan.23
How will this affect the future of our bones, our blood, our choice? What potential does this relative equality hold? How will things change when as many women as men are researching causes and cures, answering questions, and finding the right ones to ask?
Journaling Prompt
• My womb is . . .
Spell Working: The Womb Room
This is another guided visualization. The goal of this visualization is to claim the power of your womb. In this case, I am using the term womb to encompass the system that is made of the uterus, tubes, and ovaries. I know that’s not literally accurate, but for the purpose of this exercise, please indulge me in this slightly quirky use of language.
Please note
that if you have had a hysterectomy, you may choose to skip this exercise. Or you may want to use this exercise as an opportunity to create a magickal womb for yourself. This may be a challenging task, though. If you feel unsettled about your surgery, you may want to wait until you are more comfortable with your choice to create a magickal stand-in for the parts that were removed.
You may perform this practice by itself, or you may include it in this week’s ritual (in part 2).
Fact: Twice as many women in their twenties and thirties are hysterectomized as women in their fifties and sixties.
Fact: No drugs or other treatments can replace ovarian or uterine hormones or functions. The loss is permanent.
Fact: The uterus and ovaries function throughout life in women who have not been hysterectomized.
Fact: 98% of women HERS has referred to board-certified gynecologists after being told they needed hysterectomies discovered that, in fact, they did not need hysterectomies.
—Source: Adapted from a list posted at http://hersfoundation.com. HERS in the only independent, international organization dedicated to the issue of hysterectomy, and advocates for fully informed medical choices by women.
What You Will Need
• Time. Ten minutes for visualization, and ten minutes for journaling or drawing.
• Journal.
• Writing or drawing implements.
Again, you may want to read aloud and record the instructions for the visualization before doing this exercise.
Visualization Script
Sit in a comfortable position. Close your eyes and relax. Focus on breathing. Pull each breath into your lungs, allowing them to expand to their fullest capacity. Breathe out, and release any tension you feel in your muscles. As you breathe, let your lungs become even fuller, pulling your breath deep into your abdomen. Allow your belly to relax, your ribs to expand, your mind to quiet. When thoughts come to the surface, allow them to gently pass.
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