INTRODUCTION :
Good sex books help us gain sexual knowledge and have better sex. Better sex is part of having happier lives. Yes, this book is full of tips and techniques, but the real benefit of sex books, and this is coming from someone who reads a ton of them, is that the good ones celebrate sex in a way that makes you want to have more of it. Reading a great sex guide reminds you how much you love sex and makes you want to experiment with new techniques and positions. A good sex guide can make you feel closer to your lover, or if you are single, eager to go out and get frisky with a new person.
Most everything in this book can help you feel hotter and sexier and more ready for sex, regardless of whether you are partnered or not. Reading this book can help you understand a great deal more about your sexuality. All that knowledge will pay off in the form of confidence and readiness to have sex without shame or fear. You don’t have to love everything in this book, but if reading about new things makes them feel more familiar to you, then I’ll consider this book a success.
There’s a book by famed lesbian historian Lillian Faderman called To Believe in Women: What Lesbians Have Done for America. Faderman’s premise is that many nineteenth-and twentieth-century civil rights pioneers were lesbians, and this can be traced to the fact that women who weren’t tied to heterosexual marriages and heteronormative gender roles had greater social freedom to create change.
I thought about that book recently as I was reading about ergonomically designed sex toys. It made me think of all the lesbian-designed sex toys, lesbian-made porn, lesbian-hosted sex parties, and basically all the other aspects of lesbian and queer culture that make the world a better place for women to get it on with each other. I had a “What Lesbians Have Done for America” moment thinking about the ways that lesbians and queers have focused on improving queer sex lives, from creating sex toys for women with mobility issues to producing ethical pornography with happy, willing participants. Lesbian, bisexual, and queer women have worked hard to create a culture that encourages happy, healthy sexual expression. I see this book as part of that.
This book is for all of us. I have tried to be inclusive toward women of many identities and with different genders and bodies. I use the word lesbian throughout the book, but that is not meant to feel exclusive or unwelcoming to women who don’t identify as lesbians. Choosing a word and sticking to it helps make the text simpler and more readable. I have at different times in my life identified as lesbian, bisexual, or queer, and have dated and had serious relationships with women and men both cis and trans. I know that women come in many different forms. Lesbian, bisexual, bi-curious, queer, or questioning: this book is for you. Trans women and trans men who sleep with women: this book is written with you in mind, too. If you are queer or female-bodied and have female partners or want to, then this book was written with you in mind. On Our Backs, the magazine was the first lesbian sex magazine created by women for women. It started in 1984 when lesbians were just coming out of the sex wars and into sex positivity. It was a huge part of lesbian culture for twenty years. If you were an On Our Backs reader, that was shorthand for “I’m interested in having hot lesbian sex.” The magazine changed hands a few times and had many different editors, each with their own interests and aesthetics. I worked there from 2000 to 2005. I left to move from San Francisco to New York when I was offered my own radio show on Sirius XM. There were ten solid years of my life where my professional job was to live, breathe, and have lesbian sex and then write and talk about it. Now I’ve gone from being a pornographer and talk show host to a gender studies professor. I teach courses on gender and sexuality and help smart college students understand the ways that our sexuality is regulated and controlled.
I feel lucky to have had that career, and I think it shaped me into the sex-positive, sex-radical, happily partnered queer woman I am now. I hope that reading this book helps you feel that way, too. This isn’t a recipe book, and I don’t give you instructions on what to do every day to have the sex life of your dreams. But I do give you enough concrete information that you’ll be able to handle anything that comes your way sexually. I hope you’ll keep this book on your nightstand, alongside your favourite vibrator, and use both regularly.
Great sex is your right, and it’s within your reach. Happy reading!
- File size : 10.6 MB
- Pages : 213 pages
- Images Include: Yes
- Language : English
- File Type: PDF
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Sticky notes : On Kindle Scribe
- Simultaneous device usage : Unlimited