Multiple Os

How can one write a how-to guide that’s intended to be a resource for another person’s orgasmic experience? Is a guide even an adequate modality? What makes a person qualified to write a guide? A sex educator? A sex researcher? A doctor? A person with a lot of sexual experience? Anyone? Should qualifications even be considered? 

For the last couple weeks, I contemplated how I want to go about discussing guides on orgasm and sex and apply it to my r/multipleos posts. I decided to provide guidelines for the guides. I have made some of these mistakes too, so I will use this as a reference. 

Disclaimer: These are not set-in stone rules and are subject to change. They are only my opinion. I will try to update this list as much as possible with your input. 

ON THE WORD “GUIDE”

I do like the word “guide” as it pertains to sex and orgasm. Perhaps there are worse words like “recipe.” “Guide” connotes a linear process to an end or a goal. Orgasm, however, is a complex phenomenon, which simple linear approaches fail to adequately conceptualize or explain. Orgasm does not need to be the goal of the experience either.

I thought of many synonyms as alternatives like tool kit, list,collection, information source, et cetera. After looking through many options, I decided that no word comes to the mind as readily and works quite as well from an search engineer optimization perspective as “guide.”

As an alternative, sharing personal experiences can also be useful for others to get ideas for new ways to explore their own bodies. Many members of subreddits like r/becomingorgasmic, r/prostateplay, and r/Transgender_Surgeries share their experiences. Personal experiences tend to be less prescriptivist, as many focus solely on the individual author’s experience. One can write about their own experience or what they do to feel how they like to feel, but they may have difficulty conveying the information and describing what they do. Perhaps that’s future post topic: “On talking about sexual experiences.” However, the tyranny of the masses might become a problem if the users are, for instance, all penis-owners following the same ideological group-think or one-truism, and there are no trans people or clitoris-owners. On the other hand, a guide can be more focused if the author(s) provides a diversity of opinion through referencing and quoting a diversity of voices from a diversity of people. 

MY FIRST ENCOUNTER WITH GUIDES

When I was first interested in learning to pleasure myself and other people, I resorted to searching for “how-to” guides on the internet. I found hundreds of guides. The quality ranged greatly depending on the source.  I’d encounter titles such as “How to have an Orgasm?” “How to last longer in bed?” “How to make your girlfriend squirt?” “How to make my boyfriend have an orgasm?” “How to have multiple orgasms?”  Many of these were blogs. Others I’d watch on video format on YouTube. 

THE WORSE GUIDES

Since I was interested in clitoris-owners, I found many resources filled with gender stereotypes, pick-up artist culture, male superiority, alpha male culture, and misconceptions written all over them. Here is an example from the pick-up artist community called “Always Make Her Cum.” Thankfully, it seems like Google and major search engines are not ranking misogynistic sex guru guides as high as 17 years ago, as I had trouble finding a bad example on the first many pages of search results.              

THE BETTER GUIDES

I also encountered some more reputable educational resources available like Dodson and Ross’s website, Beverly Whipple’s The Orgasm Answer Guide, and Ruth Westheimer’s Good Sex Guide. These works are far from perfect from today’s standard, but they are much more detailed and less assuming than some blog alternatives. Their problems are usually more nuanced, requiring individual discussion and review to adequate explain. For example, in their as-published states, they do little to highlight the experiences trans people, consider people in different states of mobility, people with non-positive experiences of orgasm, and other populations. 

CURRENT TOP GOOGLE SEARCH RESULTS

Today, there seems to be some decent top search results for “How to have an orgasm?” For example, Bad Girls Bible “How to Have Good Sex” and Planned Parenthood’s “How to have an orgasm?” contain decent content. Bad Girls Bible in particular seems to be doing a decent job with their guides, and they have 62 pages of how-to guides. They also did a written response survey that includes trans women’s description of orgasm.

THE GUIDELINES OF THE GUIDES: DOS AND DON’TS

THE DON’TS

1.     Do not assume your guide is a simple solution to a complex problem. This is no static how-to guide to anyone’s orgasm, as people differ vastly in their likes and dislikes at any given point and overtime.

2.     Do not use terms from pick-up artist culture,like alpha male. Just because you have had multiple partners with your pick-up artists approaches does not mean you’re an orgasm expert.

3.     Do not assume the reader’s gender. This means to avoid gender words that assume the gender binary or heteronormativity.

4.     Do not write 3, 4, 5, or any steps. For example, light candles, play music, get naked, cuddle, kiss, play with nipples, lube up, and so on. While steps can be useful from a writing and public speaking lens, it suggests that orgasm is a simple, linear process. Rookies and even some very experienced people commonly follow these scripts (which is also reinforced by porn and movies) without ever talking to their partner first. Communication can be difficult at times and is reported to be a problem across the board in many diverse people owing to many complex and individual circumstances. Unless it’s a guide for something simple like calculating how many flogger flies you can get out of a yard of leather, do avoid steps. Instead, provide options to choose from.

5.     Do not assume that everyone has a strong desire to explore or to try many things. Variety may be the spice of life for some,but for others, variety may be anxiety-inducing associated with fear of the unknown and a comfort of sameness and routine.

6.     Do not hype up the guide too much as the be all-and-end-all guide. Paid resources have a tendency be promoted or pitched to contain “secret” techniques or “barred” information that is somehow superior, more valuable, or more effective than others. While it may be suggested in some survey somewhere,it does not mean it’s the case for your body. Intersections between marketing,capitalism, consumer beliefs, wants, needs, and more have created an environment for catchy titles like The Multi-Orgasmic Couple: Sexual Secrets Every Couple Should Know. Even some of the top resources like Dr. Ruth’s “The Good Sex Guide?” or Whipple’s “The Orgasm Answer Guide” feature such loaded titles for marketing purposes. What is good sex?, and is there really an answer to orgasm? Sure, people from many fields have made some progress in the study of orgasm and many other sexological topics, but there remains more questions than answers.

7.     Do not market your guide with assumptive wording, such “best way” or “make love all night long.” You read may not want to “make love all night.” If you do, you need a disclaimer up front See the Dangerous Lilly article for an example:  https://dangerouslilly.com/sex-toy-reviews/the-best-toys/. I highly recommend Dangerous Lilly for as a resource for sex toy safety.

“Looking for a list of the best sex toys? Well, there is no “best” because we’re all so different, with vastly different needs. But this is my personal recommendation list, broken down into categories. To be on this page it has to get me off–and if it can get me off, it can probably get you off. As you can see, for vibrators, power is king in my book. I prefer rumbling, deep vibrations that don’t make you itchy or numb and I respond best to pinpoint vibrations. You might see others refer to items I’ve listed as “moderately intense” as “very intense”. It’s all relative.” 

THE DOS

1.     Do provide information on consent and communicating the sex-related topic. Too many guides, especially of the pick-up artist sort, totally skip this part.

2.     Do use clarifying language such as “to me” for“for me” “for some people.” This avoids making any assumption about one group and clarifies that you believe your experience is not universal.

3.     Do include citations for any scientific claims.Also, provide any limitations and refutations of the claim if available. Do not say “science says.” This is prone to argument from authority and does not open the talk up to discussion and refutation.

4.     Do be careful to dissect assumptions about orgasms. For instance, the belief that all clitoris-owners are multiple orgasmic, or the belief that clitoris-owner orgasms are multi-faceted, whereas penis-owner orgasms are simple and of one type.

5.     Do suggest people read the guide with their partner to get the partner’s thoughts and consent.

6.     Do not assume how one experiences or feels orgasm. Consider that orgasm might not always feel good or even be desired.

7.       Do research and mention experiences people of distant lands, people of mobility issues, medical conditions, trans people,people of other cultures, et cetera report having with whatever topic you are writing about. Search books, scholarly articles, websites, subreddits, forums, blogs, and YouTube, influencers from the communities on social media (TikTok, Twitter, Instagram), et cetera.

8.     Do consider cultural differences in sex practices as well as lesser-known sex practices like kunyaza, the coital alignment technique, muffing, and non-dysphoric masturbation techniques for trans people. Here and here are more lists on masturbation techniques, although they, like most unfortunately, leave out trans people.

9.     Do link (if applicable) to high-quality resources, such as kinkacademy.com for BDSM activities, Fetlife for community and in-person classes, dangerouslilly.com for sex toys, and resources, such as Planned Parenthood, for reproductive health information. Here is a great example with resources for Black clitoris-owners. Here’s another great example with resources for trans people.

10.     Do avoid one-truisms. Avoid promoting one way or one best way. Ideally, bloggers should be as exhaustive as possible with their research and efforts with their guide. For instance, if your guide is on nipple stimulation, it should either link or list every way you can find that people report feeling this. Bloggers who solely state the most common or most popular are further contributing to the development of one-truisms in orgasmology and sexology through the popularity and survivorship bias. The key is to provide as many options as possible to be explored.

11.     Do avoid sex-is-sports mentality. Avoid language of competition, ablism, Darwinism, and intense training. This is a feature of many of the pick-up artist guides.

12.  Do be careful of reciting and reinforcing bad science. For example, this is how the myth of the clitoris cow study–that the number of nerve fibers in penis-owners is 4000 and clitoris owners is 8000–was spread.