Ep #222: Becoming Cliterate – Book Club Part B: Owning Your Pleasure

Hello, hello, hello, Diamonds. You are listening to the Midline Sex Coach for Women podcast, episode 222 with Dr. Sonia Wright. Wow, 222, that is really amazing. Welcome back, my Diamonds. Last week we talked about the book, Becoming Cliterate in the Diamond Intimacy Collective Book Club. It was a.

conversation that we had and I was just so inspired by this conversation that I just wanted all of my diamonds to hear this conversation. So if you haven’t listened to part A yet, I highly recommend going back and listening to the episode before this episode because we laid the foundation for understanding pleasure, anatomy, and myths that may have shaped many of our experiences and our understanding about sexuality.

And now in the second half of the conversation, we go deeper. And this is where awareness begins to turn into ownership. Inside this discussion, you’ll hear us explore how to advocate for your pleasure, letting go of shame and silence and stepping into the new identity as a woman who prioritizes her desire. And it’s not just about information. This is about transformation. Because when women understand their body, and give themselves permission to experience pleasure, everything changes. So as you listen, I invite you once again into intimate curiosity and also into possibility

Because of the version of you who fully owns her pleasure, she’s already with you. Diamond, she is here and she wants to come forth and she wants to engage and enjoy and be and express. She wants all of the things, right? So let’s continue with part B of the Diamond Intimacy Collective Book Club on becoming cliterate.

I remember years ago talking to my friend about an orgasm She had had four children with her partner.

And she wasn’t quite sure what an orgasm was. Like she’s like, is that when you kind of feel a little tired and exhausted? know, like if you need to ask what an orgasm is, have one, one. I mean, for the majority of people, if she’s like, oh yeah, I’ve had that, like I’ve had sex and then I was kind of a little tired, you know? And I was like, ooh, damn.

I had to come up and laugh a little bit like that. I mean, but this is true. This is so true. This is like the real conversation right here. The folks that don’t know really do not know. I was there at a particular point, right? And during that time, I kind of had a curious mind and I kind of wanted to learn more. And then I started diving into different ways to kind of experience pleasure. And that’s awesome.

Yeah. Yeah. And it’s so important. And then like getting back to the book, she really advocates for masturbation, self pleasure, because we don’t know what we don’t know if we don’t know our own bodies. And this isn’t even fair for our partners. Right. We were like, okay, so, okay, I’ve read this book, but I haven’t really read it. And I sat there and I said, I deserve my own pleasure, but I’m not doing the work to know my body. And then I tell my partner, you need to give me the pleasure that I deserve. Right.

That’s kind of just like one sided in terms of like now, hey, ⁓ let’s go. But the part that’s missing is you don’t even know your own body. Right. And once again, there’s this narrative in society that says sexual, like self pleasure, masturbation. We don’t even use the word masturbation because it’s so it’s got so much on it. Right. That we prefer to use. I prefer to use self pleasure just because as soon as I say masturbation, everybody’s like, I say self pleasure, they’re like

What? Wait. So they’re like, their minds are a little bit more open to hearing what I have to say. But the, whole point of it is if we don’t know what our body is capable of, if we don’t know how we generate the pleasure in our body, how is it that we’re supposed to tell our partner? So part of this, this social construct that has happened where we had this concept of sex and sexual intimacy, it does nobody.

Like what serves nobody. It does not serve the woman. It does not serve any penis owners, you know, like, because we’re not aware of how our body works, right? And if we don’t know how our body works, then how are we supposed to tell our partner? So it does become so important that masturbation self pleasure needs to be part of this. And I love how in this book, she has a whole section on it. And she’s like a whole section of like, first you lie down.

then you touch your clitoris or your vulva area and then you rub and then you see what you like. Make sure to look in a mirror and see it like step by step Because if you don’t have somebody that will tell you, you know, and I always think about like.

Since I have sons and I like from the time they’re little, they, they love their penis and it’s their best friend. it’s a magical thing right on the bike. They’re like, Hey, look how this works. Right. But girls are not given the same permission to explore their body. They have to do it in silence more times than not. And, and shame can be a factor in there. If they have been told certain things, you know, about what they can and what they can’t do and what.

good girls versus bad girls or whatever that bullshit is, you know, so we’re coming to a place where we realize there’s an inequity here in terms of the balance of pleasure. And yet there’s a bigger inequity, which is in terms of permission and understanding of how our body works and the pleasure that we are allowed to have and how we can’t, if we are not our own best lover, and I love this concept, if we are not our own best lover, we can not tell anybody else what we like and what we need.

So that gets to be ⁓ part of the scenario is that we need to be comfortable saying, hey, a little over to the left and down and ⁓ there you go. And like, there’s ways to say it. You can be like a little over to the left and down dumb ass, or you can say it.

A little over to the left and down. You are such a fabulous lover. Oh my goodness. You’re the best that you know, you’re so responsive to what I have to say that it makes sex just a pleasure. Like just makes me want to do this more often. And once they catch the idea that, a minute, she wants to do this more often. All I gotta do is listen to what she says. What? This is radical.

Sorry, I always like to amuse myself. Okay, let’s see. Yes, yes. So like the water approach, self-pleasure lands in a softer way. It does, right? And that it’s a shame that there’s so much that has been tied to the word masturbation. And we could go down there, we could try to like pull all those things off. Or we could just shift over to self-pleasure, you know?

self-rasmatize, like whatever you want to call it. Happy hands, your hands are super happy. Yeah, what’s your code word for masturbation? Rasmatize. Whatever you want. I think we should all come up with a code word on here, but like you get to have your code word, you know. But what I do love is, ⁓ what I love to think about is that our clitoris is within hands reach.

And so I’m like, hey, like there’s a reason like it’s not on our toe where we got to like lift up our leg to get to it or something like that, right? It’s right there where we could just go, hey, how you doing today? Jazz hands. ⁓ I am going to tickle the ivory, right? That’s like, the, what is it? It’s like,

row on the, ⁓ pink, pink boat. There’s a better term than that, you know, then there’s like the, the pink Pearl, you know, tickle the pink Pearl. Like there’s so many different ways to say like, you know, talk 11 day, you there’s so many code names and the fact that they’re all code names is just so interesting too. Going back to just.

you know, how we’ve been, I don’t want to say suppressed in the area of female pleasure and, you know, just the clitoris in general. But it’s interesting because the clitoris anatomy wise is the pleasure center, you know, like this is the pleasure center. This is why the clitoris was designed in our makeup. You know what I mean? For pleasure. Yeah. And that, I if you think about it, it, I mean, I love the fact that the clitoris is

is embedded in the vulva, the outside, not within the vagina. And there’s a good reason for that, because if you’re going to have 10,000 nerve endings, do I want it in the middle of a passage where ⁓ like a baby the size of a football is coming out? Like, do I want that? Do I want my 10,000 nerve endings in there? Sure as hell, no. No, don’t. Like, please. And I love how it’s got like this perfect structure. where it just bends up out of the way, the football comes out and it snaps back down and majority of the time it is not injured. ⁓ How amazing is that, right? If you think about it, how amazing is you have a structure here that stays intact for your pleasure, right? ⁓ I just love that.

But you know, it’s interesting in the book, they talk about the anatomy and they spend a lot of time talking about anatomy. And let’s see if I can find the section on the anatomy because I love. Like they’re talking about the clitoris and ⁓ where it’s located and then the full structure of the clitoris that has like the bulb and the legs and the glands there.

This is on page 71. And then they go on and they on page 74, they start talking about this G-spot. You know, I have mixed feelings about the G-spot, right? The G-spot is not a specific spot, first of all, but they’re talking about something called the urethral sponge. If you can see it here, it’s kind of got like the dotted stuff. And we need to talk about that a little bit for a second. I got to say that I got some issues with the G-spot.

And once again, it’s not the G-spot’s fault. But there’s a lot of shit that’s been put on the G-spot and how it has been brought to light, almost like the savior of the female orgasm, which is not true. But this concept that if you stimulate the G-spot, you’re going to have this amazing ⁓ orgasm. And also, the G-spot is in

It’s along the anterior or the roof, the top of the vagina, right? And so you have to ask yourself as well, why are we putting so much focus on this G-spot? When we have, we know where the clitoris is, it’s in the vulva, all on the outside, we can access it. This is really fabulous. But now we’re talking all about this G-spot, right? Which is inside the vagina. It’s about two inches into the beginning of the vagina.

It’s hard for a woman to reach her own G-spot. She’s got to kind of go down and around and try to feel it and get it in there. It’s good for your partner to reach it easier. But once again, we’re told that the G-spot orgasm is the best orgasm or a blended orgasm, whereas the clitoral orgasm plus the G-spot. And then we realized that the G-spot is in the vagina and stimulating it would involve penetration of some kind, right?

And so if we look at reasons why we might be putting so much focus on the G-spot, the G-spot has done nothing wrong. And at the same time, I kind of resent the little fucker. ⁓ And it has not done anything wrong. It’s like, Hey, I am not the problem here. And I’m like, I’m going to say, okay, I got issues with the G-spot. The G-spot is fine.

But then I had so many women coming to me that are saying things like, I need to squirt. My partner wants me to squirt. I see he sees it in the porn stuff. And he’s like, if I stimulate the G spot on go to squirt, and then that’s a better orgasm. So now there’s another layer of bullshit on women, right?

Like we’re just trying to have an orgasm here. We’ve already been told that our clitoral orgasm is not the right kind of orgasm. And now we’re being told that you better have a vaginal orgasm and add in the C spot that nobody in their right mind can find very well because it’s not a one spot. Some women have like great sensation when they feel the G spot. Other women, you can stimulate the G spot and they don’t feel a damn thing. And that is okay. It has a lot of different functions. It’s not just

for pleasure. It’s like this tissue that can get engorged that is around the urethra, which is a tube from the bladder to the outside. gets engorged. It blocks off the urine flow. There’s a lot of things that are going on with the G-spot. Part of it is pleasure. Some people have innervation that makes it a little bit more pleasurable, and other people don’t have the same type of innervation, right? And Treasurer’s saying, not another performance. before we had it, yeah, like another performance. So now…

Instead of being in our body, enjoying ourselves, we’re up in our mind going, please, where’s this G spot? Can I come the way he wants me to come is am I going to be able to squirt properly? Please. Like most people, if you are able to squirt, which is related to milking or stimulating this quote unquote G spot, as you say, about like a, maybe a teaspoon or so of fluid. Like it’s not a huge amount of fluid, but

Most of the time they’re pouring water into the vagina before they do a shoot on a porn site, right? So then they’re like, then they start the camera rolling and stuff is gushing all over the damn place, but they put the water in there into the vagina. It’s not this little teaspoon of water that’s coming out naturally. So yes, maybe some women can squirt a little bit more than others, but a lot of the time it is more about fluid that they’ve already put in the vagina that is squirting out or they’re urinating.

You know, so please understand that another construct has been layered on top of women and sex and sexuality in terms of, can you do this as well? If I’m so busy trying to figure out if I can squirt and if my G-spot is being stimulated and all those things, how can I just be in my body enjoying myself? Right? Now I’m worried, can I squirt? Can I squirt enough? Does it look good enough? You know, I’m like, I’m tired.

I think I’m going to go watch Netflix over here. No, I don’t want to chill. You go over there. you know, like there’s so many things that it just gets to the point where you don’t want to try. So if we have this concept of sex and sexual intimacy where we can expand the ideas around it, then we can kind of go from there and we can get to this concept of like, hey, however you get your orgasm gets to be great. Like, how about that? Right.

How about whatever way works for you works for me? And in the book, has this, she talks about the play with the different acts, right? And I love this section where she’s talking about, ⁓ let’s see, it’s ⁓ act one, fooling around for 20 minutes. ⁓ This becomes kiss, stroke, grind, roll, take each other’s hand, do all sorts of fun things, right?

So act one, fooling around for 20 minutes, doing whatever it is that you wanna do, right? ⁓ And then play one, ⁓ you can come first. So the woman comes first in this act. So she has her orgasm, whatever way works for her. And then if it’s a heterosexual type of thing or whoever is into penetration, then the penetration can ensue ⁓ at that point in time, right? Then there’s another part.

this play where you come second. So the woman comes second. But it’s like, the concept is still there that the woman is going to come, you know, it’s not optional. She is going to come. It’s just what order, right? So you have the fool around stuff. And then in this play, your partner comes first in whatever way works for them. And then you come, right? But it’s it is required that you come, right? And then this other next play version would be only you come.

I kind of like this one. Because so often it’s the other way around, right? So what would happen if we’re like, yeah, I want to play a full around, but I’m kind of tired. I wouldn’t mind coming. And then I want to go to sleep. Right. So then it’s kind of like, OK, well, let’s do that. You know, let’s what would that be like, even if it was like once or twice a month? You know, it was your like you fool around for 20 minutes. You come and boom. Yeah, I had to have fun. And then 

Play number four, you both come. She says you come together. ⁓ the only concern that I have about with this concept of coming together is that it puts it more performative. And once again, it’s like, I think what they’re saying is that you both come at whatever pace or time or whatever, not specifically simultaneously. But sometimes there is this concept that it has to be simultaneous. And if it’s not simultaneous, then it’s not, ⁓ it’s not.good enough or it’s not the right kind of pleasure or it’s not accurate, you know, because you both didn’t come together and the stars and the sky didn’t open up and music started playing and all that bullshit, right? ⁓ maybe I should be doing this. My clock is a little cynical.

But my main point being, I just want to make sure that women have their pleasure, right? It works well for everybody involved. And our partners are fabulous. I really need to call out and give like a thank you and a celebration to our partners. The majority of our partners care so much about us. They recognize it’s an honor for us to share our body with them. And they just want your pleasure too. But they’ve been given a script.

And most of the time the script says that there’s penetration and everybody orgasms together and everything is fine. And then, you don’t know how many women come to me and they want coaching and they feel like they are not enough because their partner may have mentioned once 10 years ago, like the partner’s not even even aware they even mentioned it, but it has been living fret free in this woman’s mind for 10 years that

their previous partner was easier to get them to come. Right. And so 10 years they’re sitting there going, I’m just not good at this. His partner before could come really easy. And they’re sitting there like, I don’t understand why you can’t come. My other partner would come after four minutes or after 30 seconds. Right. And you’re like, ⁓ maybe she did, or maybe she just didn’t want this to continue. And so she was like, that was fantastic.

And so this woman for 10 years is thinking that she sucks at doing this. And, and the majority of the time is the previous partner, ⁓ was, just like, I’m just not into this. Let me get this over as fast as I can, you know? So there’s a lot that we don’t know if we could go back and find the other partner. Maybe we’d be like, Hey, you know, was that, did that really happen that way? And they might be like, my goodness.

They were just such a bad lover and I was just like, I love you and I don’t want to sit here for the next 20 minutes. I want to go get my nails done or something. So that might’ve been it. You don’t even know what’s going on. And so for that moment on you’re spending all this time trying to make it work, trying to do what the previous lover did and you’re not able to, and you’re up in your mind anxious and worried that you’re not doing enough or you’re not good enough instead of being just

down in your body enjoying yourself and saying to the left to the left and down a little bit and you got this. Alrighty and let’s just talk let’s be real let’s add some toys in there like I’m always always advocating adding toys into the mix adding toys into the mix I think that that’s something that’s very important. Okay we’re down to like the last 10 minutes. ⁓ Anybody else want to talk about something? one of the things she said was and relevant to the differences so that ⁓ penis partners could come in two to 10 minutes, whereas ⁓ women might take up to 45 minutes. But we’ve heard women can

speak of ⁓ if they’re taking 20 minutes to 25 minutes then they’re this is taking too long because I’m taking up too much energy I need too much whatever something’s wrong because this is taking too long ⁓ and sometimes you can think why is he such a hurry because

then have a whole lot of control over this and it’s about to take off and, you know, leave without you. Yeah, there’s a lot that you’re bringing up there, Spice. part of it, especially when we get older and we get into the midlife, ⁓ our partners, they have penises, may have issues around erections, you know.

they might’ve taken that little blue pill and it had a certain short life and they’re like, I gotta get this going, you know? And so it rushes things up or maybe they’re not taking a pill, ⁓ but you know, they kind of need to, but they’re like gonna wing it and see and they know that, okay, I got an erection now, we gotta make this work, you know? So that could be part of it. And then as you’re saying, like, if the woman has in her head that she’s not doing it right, she’s taking too long, all these thoughts, how are you gonna get into your body to enjoy yourself?

Like you need to be able to settle your nervous system, settle into your body and enjoy yourself in order to be able to, to have this orgasm. Right. And also, yeah, it might take her 45 minutes because she’s not getting the type of stimulation that she wants, but she’s also not saying something about what would be really good and helpful for her stimulation. Maybe she needs some stimulation to her anus, but she’s in a lot of shame.

because she’s like, ⁓ my goodness, no, I can never really tell somebody that I kind of need that, right? So there she is, maybe having an orgasm or not having an orgasm, but if she were able to have the conversation and feel okay and understand that all the innovation to your vulva, which includes your anal region, is all interconnected, right? And what we’re talking about here is a network of neurons.

and a network of pleasure and how you’re made and maybe such that you need stimulation one place versus another. And if we could, you know, if we’re talking to a penis owner and we’re like, okay, this is the equivalent of like you rubbing here is not doing it for me. It’s the equivalent of me rubbing on your thigh and wondering why you’re not coming. Right? So like, if we can put it in a perspective that they can understand and be like, ⁓

I’m not stimulating the right place for the way this person’s neural connections are made. Like if we could just do it that way as opposed to putting all sorts of stuff on it that there’s a one right way to do this. So there’s a lot of reasons why we may, this woman might be taking 45 minutes. And then also we also get to say what’s wrong with taking 45 minutes, right? So that’s.

Another thing that we, know, so we get to say, you know, ask that person if they’re taking 45 minutes. Is this when you’re self pleasuring yourself is, does it normally take you about 45 minutes, you know, or minutes to 45 minutes. Is that kind of the amount that at time that normally takes you? And if she says yes, then that’s just how long that she takes. Put that into your concept of what sex looks like with this special, unique, wonderful person.

that there’s going to be the 45 minutes that you’ll need to, you and we have this concept that if you have an erection, it’s gotta be used right then and there. Like erections come and go, like it’ll be back. It’s gonna come back. so it’s okay. Like it’s going around the block, they’re coming right back. We’re not gonna work.

that, you know, so if you have an erection and you’re in the middle of pleasuring your woman and you’re 20 minutes in and you got another 25, don’t worry about it. You don’t got to keep that erection going for 45 minutes. Let it rest for a while, you know, and then also understand that for women versus men or penis owners versus vulva owners, like ⁓ the way the sexual response cycle for penis owner is, is there’s this period of engorgement and stimulation and then there’s a plateau.

then there’s an orgasm and then there’s a refractory period where they’re down and out for the count and you just can’t get that thing back if you want to. But the way it works for women is, you know, there’s that orgasm and then don’t have a refractory period so they can have multiple orgasms that they want. So if she takes 45 minutes to get to that place.

but she has 30 or like 10 orgasms one after the other. Hey, we get to celebrate how she’s made and how that’s amazing, right? And who’s that lucky person that gets to have sex with her because she’s going to orgasm like 10 times, you know, and be able to share that pleasure with her partner. So we get to kind of look at all these different ways that it is. One thing I like about this book is it has a whole section on it for our partners. And so I think that that is ⁓ very important. It’s near the end. I think it’s section five, but let me see what it is.

You don’t have to have a clitoris to be clitorite, clitorisy for him or for whatever partner you have, right? And that starts on page 199. Yeah, 199. And basically, if you’re male and you’re breathing, you’re reading this chapter because you’re interested in sex, and I guess that means you’re male and you’re breathing. That’s she starts it off.

but female pleasure, the fiction. And we need to recognize that porn is not good or bad, one thing versus another, but what it is is fiction. What it is is entertainment. And what it is is not necessarily factual. So we need to be aware of how a woman’s pleasure and her orgasm is depicted and even her body, really. There’s a lot of…

people that have had labiaplasty. So the way their vulva looks is not actually what the average woman’s vulva looks like. So now we have a layer of shame about how our vulva looks because the labia, the inner lips or the outer lips have been cut down. So it looks nice and trim and beautiful, right? Like that’s crazy. Cause a lot of people’s lips, I’m going on a tangent for a minute, but give me a minute.

Like if we’re looking at the vulva puppet, this is the outer lips, this is the inner lips, right? This is the vagina here. And sometimes when the vulva is all ⁓ like closed up like this, ⁓ then the outer lips can go out beyond the inner lips. And people have a concept that that is not aesthetically pleasing. ⁓ And ⁓ sometimes the person that might have a longer inner lips than outer lips, maybe they have been teased by their sibling or you know or somebody else are told that it doesn’t look right or it’s a problem and so they’re they will not have sex with somebody because they’re in so much shame about what it looks like and then they will go and get labiaplasty and then also porn stars will go get labiaplasty as well so they’ll cut down their inner lips and if you think about this this is like this the inner lips are analogous to the head of the penis

If we’re talking about embryologic, the tissue, right? Imagine if we suggested to somebody, the head of your penis doesn’t look really appealing to me. Could you get that cut down or changed in some way? This is what’s happening because we are looking at what porn looks like and saying that this is what we should look like. So it’s very important to understand that and to see that what that’s happening. But also to recognize porn is fiction.

And so we need to be aware of that. So she female pleasure and the fiction around it. She talks about penis and the facts around pleasure. And she has like a little graph here about rarely have ever had an orgasm with a partner ⁓ intercourse plus direct clitoral stimulation, having an orgasm and percentage of direct clitoral stimulation alone, right?

So I’m just giving some information and then just giving some pictures and some basic things. So sometimes it’s like hand the book to your partner and they just wanna read this one section, it’s straightforward, it’s got information on it and it helps them give them just the main points. all righty. Let’s see. It’s so interesting that having a preliminary sex talk about pleasure. 

around pleasure and pleasure with your partner may have been skipped. Yeah. So that’s an important aspect. And that gets back to that people have hard times having conversations, right? And so part of the like if you’re doing a hit it and quit it, you’re just like, just getting on Grindr or Tinder or whatever, and you just want some sex and you just like, hey, then hey, you get to decide. But if you’re in ⁓ a more committed type of relationship where you want to have more communication or you’re going to be seeing this person, more often than yes, I would say no matter what the situation is, you get to have conversation about it, but you get to choose. But if you’re going to be in a long-term relationship with this person, definitely communication has to happen, right? ⁓ I think it’s so fascinating and Lee’s room for exploration. This is the fun part, depending on the approach and each partner’s willingness to understand and engage in pleasure-centered experience both parties. Yeah, definitely.

⁓ That’s real because the circumsized penis versus uncircumcised is a little different. It’s a lot different, right? There’s like a whole movement of people that are trying to get their foreskin back to grow it back because they feel that they’ve lost sensation in their head, you know, because they don’t necessarily have that tissue there. So there is a whole movement of people that are trying to grow their foreskin back to protect their head of their penis so that it will have more sensitivity and stuff like that.

Alrighty, well, we are just about at time. And once again, we’ve been talking about becoming clitoral. We’re going to have to make a decision as to next month’s book. So if you have suggestions of things that you would like to read, then let’s bring it to collective and come up with ⁓ the next.

that we’re gonna be reading, because I love book clubs. I think that you gain a lot of different kind of information in a different way. and it also leads to a different type of conversation. And always, I am Dr. Sonia, I am the Midlife Sex Coach for Women. Yes, I am also a coach if that’s not known, and I do do private coaching as well as doing this group in the collective. Okay, love you all, take care.

All right, my beautiful diamond. If you love this conversation, if something sparked inside of you, if you found yourself saying, wow, I’ve never heard women talk about intimacy like this before, then I want to personally invite you into the space where conversations like this happen all the time. The Diamond Intimacy Collective is my private community for midlife women who are ready to reclaim their pleasure, deepen their connection, and step into their most empowered comfort self-confidence cells both inside and outside the bedroom. So inside the collective we have monthly book clubs just like this one. We have live Q &A calls and we also have coaching and we also have our pajama party which is just girl talk. We get together on Saturday morning. You wear your pajamas or sweats or just whatever you want and we talk about all different things and we have a great time. intimacy education the way you were never taught. And it’s a supportive community of women who are walking through this journey right along with you. You don’t have to figure this out you don’t have to stay in a place of confusion or silence or disconnection. Your pleasure matters. Your voice matters because you matter. So if you’re ready to take this work deeper, come join us in the Diamond Intimacy Collective. The link is in the show and I can’t wait to see you and to welcome you there. Take care. Dr. Sonia out.