Pleasure is the measure

I'm a bit surprised people haven't been discussing Emily Nagoski's book (or podcast based on the book), Come As You Are. It's a big seller, and is discussed a lot in various sexuality podcasts. Maybe because it's aimed at women, and most here are men? But many of the men here seem genuinely motivated to provide pleasure to their female partners, and to learn how to do so better... Maybe it's more interesting to me because I'm genderqueer and can identify more easily?

Anyway, one of her key ideas is that "pleasure is the measure", not achieving orgasm. Sure, orgasms are pleasurable but so is the journey ... even if orgasm isn't reached. And it's the pleasure that we want, even if there isn't an orgasm. That sounds like an idea lots of men here can identify with!

She writes about how to "turn off the offs" and create context so that pleasure is enhanced. She also writes about "slowing down the ons" -- that is, not rushing forward, not being orgasm driven, but enjoying the pleasure in the moment and letting it build slowly. Again, sound familiar to those who delay orgasm days, weeks, months?

By the way, on a search, I found only one previous mention of Nagoski here, and it was about this same idea:

She has many other ideas -- she's very smart and deeply expert. And though her practice and the way she writes the book is mostly aimed at women, the underlying science of desire, sexual response and pleasure is mostly gender neutral (as she frequently states, we all have the same parts, just arranged differently). I recommend this book highly -- the podcast will give you a shorter way to get the main ideas if you don't want to dig in as much.

 

Just to clarify about what Nagoski's is about: she is not recommending orgasm denial for women(generally: she does discuss how it can be effective as a temporary therapeutic technique for women with a particular difficulty). In what I was discussing, she is addressing women who have difficulty reaching orgasm, and argues that making orgasm the goal can be a central part of the problem: not achieving a goal is frustrating (in the usual, negative sense) and that it results in feelings (stress) that make it *harder* to achieve orgasm, leading to more frustration, and so on. She then argues that if women focus on experiencing pleasure as the *goal* then the sensations of the buildup towards orgasm result in positive feelings, even if orgasm isn't reached every time or as quickly as the old goal had set for it, and without the stress it actually becomes easier to achieve orgasm.

I raised this here because I thought this also was relevant to chastity and intentional orgasm denial (which is not what she is writing about): we are choosing to deny orgasm, and developing a heightened sense of the pleasure from the journey towards. By choosing to do without orgasms (at least sometimes), many here seem to find they are able to experience greater pleasure .... and, at least sometimes, greater pleasure when we do reach orgasm.

 

We've heard throughout our adult years that the majority of women can't come with penetration alone, and that many have trouble orgasming at all. Not why we were reading the book (it's about much, much more) -- my KH orgasms very easily (often with less than a minute of oral stimulation) and multiply, so it's foreign to us. But we feel for those for whom this is an issue, and this book apparently is helping many women enjoy more pleasure.