Smartphones – self-soothing object or a habitual intimacy irritant? Understand and mitigate the negative impacts of the “phonedemic” on your sex lives! Read my 91st article here!
And enjoy some of my other recent articles for FutureofSex.net too!
By the way, I’ll be reaching my goal of 100 columns for Future of Sex by the end of 2025! That’s going to feel pretty good! I’d love readers to tell me which columns have been good for them too!
Soft Cock Appreciation Week is a remarkable free event which takes place this coming week, with an “opening ceremony” livestream on YouTube on Sunday, Nov. 10th, at 5 PM PST. You can enjoy the presentations and interviews here.
My own interview with the lively, thoughtful, and delightful Erica Leroye is up on YouTube as of today, November 17th. Hypnosis demo included. Access it here:
So many reasons to get this book before Feb. 14! Give it someone you love!
Sex toy reviews are a pleasant addition to my assignments at FutureofSex.net. Here is my first for Lelo’s Enigma Wave. Apparently, there is another review opportunity coming up (no pun intended).
These days, in television and movies, “hot sex” (usually the cis-het variety) is always a face chewing kiss, absolutely no foreplay, a bang against the wall (or on a table), one hot thrust into an immediately lubricated orifice, a few more moans and thrusts, and then it’s over–both partners presumably satisfied and spent. The scripts always call for the female actors to orgasm in the time it takes to open a can of catfood. And no make-up was harmed in the filming of this sex scene.
Of course I realize that filmic treatment of sex–whether in mainstream entertainment or commercial porn–has very little resemblence to most incidents of real-life human sexual behavior, but I’ve long suspected that many other people don’t understand this and that they model their behavior and their ideals on this impossible scenario. They are also deprived of the message that taking time to inhabit their own sensuality and that of their partner offers greater opportunities for enjoyment.
Common sense about cis-female and cis-male physiology and sexual responses aside (most cis-women do NOT orgasm at warp speed unless it’s with a vibrator on or near their clit, and no, lifting a partner up against a wall is not the most comfortable way to have vaginal penetrative sex…)–I find myself saddened about the lack of attention to sensuality as a key ingredient of embodiment and satisfying sex (of all kinds, not just PV penetration).
It’s not that lust isn’t a great element of human sex, it’s just that it’s not the only element as the media would have us believe. And we have to understand that the greatest kindlings of lust arise from a history of desire and longing based on glances, flirtations, brief touch, fantasy, words, visual cues, and so on. It might be a brief history for some, but if you’re in touch with your sensuality, the match of lust struck to the kindling of sensuality sparks the brightest flame.
Without sensuality, lust becomes boring–“Wham, bam. Here’s the false eyelash you dropped. Where’s a tissue? Thank you ma’am.” Meh.
Many people are alive only from the neck up, with an occasional hyper-focus on their genitals. They’re missing the dream-like “erotic trance” of caress, kiss, suck, sigh, glide, smooth, rest, press, hold, grip, move, fuck, kiss, caress, climax, suck, sigh, hold, melt” with time out for a sip of water or wine (“never tasted so good!”) and a bite of fruit (“tell me again about the ripe peaches you picked…”). All the suspense that preceeded the first touch or kiss, all the desire-heightening gestures that are given the dreary name of “foreplay,” and the melting sensation of the afterglow (aptly named)–these are essential elements that so many miss and that most media never shows.
Sensual starvation is no fun. It’s half a life, unlived. But a sensual diet is easy to adopt. Revel in music, the movement of your own body as it walks or dances, and the utter dropping away of tension when you relax. Feel your own skin, enjoy how your thigh feels against your hand. Enjoy how your lover’s thigh feels against your groin. Inhale, smell, breathe. Let rain drop on your eyelids. Let sun warm your limbs. Pull the orgasm into the rest of your body. Imagine your eyelashes cumming.
You can do it. And hey–looks like I’ve just written the start of another erotic hypnosis script. That’s one great addition to a sensual diet, but that’s also another blog post.
Enjoy to the utmost what there is to enjoy in your day. Cultivate your pleasures, both large and small.
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No, this doesn’t mean making your penis “less sensitive,” it means soothing your nervous system responses to stress and worry. The advantage of being soothed is that if you have a male body, you are less likely to become so worried about a sexual encounter that you flip into sympathetic nervous system responses (“fight, flight, freeze”) and thus experience diminished blood flow to your penis.
Erections are all about blood flow, so you want to be in your parasympathetic nervous system mode (even if you are excited!). Parasympathetic mode is sometimes dubbed “feed and breed,” with good reason. You need to be in this mode to experience and sustain sexual arousal (this is generally true for all humans). (Oddly, sympathetic mode governs ejaculation.)
So what can you do, assuming you have no medical problems that interfere with your circulation (do get screened for diabetes!) or other aspects of sexual health?
Change your erotic mindset. One thing you can do is focus on your (and your partner’s) sexual enjoyment, rather than worrying about function (Klein, Sexual Intelligence, pp. 229-231). One way to do that is to cultivate a variety of pleasures beyond penetrative intercourse (anal or vaginal). These range of course from oral sex to erotic massage to anything else you both enjoy. I teach erotic hypnosis to people who want to learn to do this with their lovers–proving that “the brain really is the largest sexual organ.” There are numerous ways to have a rollicking good time in bed (and out of it), that have very little to do with a hard penis. In fact, Annie Sprinkle, Ph.D., has a brilliant video on YouTube that cheers on the soft penis as a wonderful, juicy, pleasure-giving part of the body. I’m completely in favor of her “Soft-Cock Revolution” and wish more partners of penis’d people would get on board with this.
Understand that erection fluctuations are normal. Bernie Zilbergeld’s classic books, Male Sexuality (1978) and his revised The New Male Sexuality (1992), has a chapter called “It’s Two Feet Long, Hard as Steel, Always Ready, and Will Knock Your Socks Off: The Fantasy Model of Sex.” I think that title says a lot about erection expectations, don’t you? I wish every cisgendered* male would read this book, even though it was published so long ago.
Understand the intelligence of your body, especially your penis. If you feel you may have worried yourself into a cycle of reluctant erections you might need more emotional safety in your relationship(s). Emotional safety would allow you to remain in parasympathetic mode when you’re with your partner. This is more important than you might imagine. Most of the men who come to me for help with “erectile dysfunction” (I dislike that term more and more every day) are younger men who have come out of a long term relationship and are just now starting to date again. They’re scared, yet feeling pressured to get back into circulation. And they expect to be “ready, willing, and able” without regard for their own (or their partner’s) emotional context, even if they are no longer in their teens. I’ve sometimes had clients “talk with” their penises under hypnosis or later ask them to write letters to themselves from their penises. This can be very insightful, odd as it sounds!
I also teach partners to do “affectionate” hypnosis as a regular part of their week–each spending five to ten minutes in light trance while the partner pours loving words of appreciation into their receptive ears. Then switch! This can do a lot to create feelings of bonding and emotional safety in relationships.
Breathe deeply and focus on the present moment. Forget about your “performance” and get back inside your body. For some men, this can actually be enough to help overcome the triggered leap into sympathetic nervous system mode. It’s a learned skill. Those who already do yoga or meditation will generally pick it up more easily.
Consider hypnosis and self-hypnosis to re-set your nervous system responses. Usually people are triggered by a series of escalating steps toward sexual intimacy. I typically ask my clients for a list of (up to ten) things that begin to make them feel worried, and then we rank them in order of least worrisome to most worrisome. The idea is that we “desensitize” their reactions to the less stressful steps first–like texting someone for a date–and then work to diminish sympathetic nervous system responses to the more intense triggers like “unhooking my wife’s bra,” “putting on a condom,” or “starting to thrust.” This process takes repetition and practice. I teach self-hypnosis so that my clients can also practice this at home.
Hypnotism Male Sexual Dysf Handout– Here is a list of some early studies using hypnosis to improve male sexual function.
What I’ve just described is a focus simply on the cisgendered male client, without taking the partner(s) into account. Often the partners have their own responses to a “dysfunction” which may range from exasperation or frustration in the moment to “he’s not really into me” or “I must be too fat” (or other body image issues and emotional insecurities). Often the partner needs basic adult sex ed too–including reasonable expectations of how penises work and what other lovely, wonderful things can be enjoyed together. Emotional safety and generosity for both (or all) partners are crucial for re-inventing mutual sexual enjoyment. So I like to also have some session time with the partners as well.
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*”cisgendered” means your own sense of gender is congruent with your gender assignment at birth.
Since moving to Hawai’i I’ve gotten a fair number of calls from men (cisgendered*) who are concerned about the size of their penises and worry that they are “too small.” In some cases, these men have told me that this worry has blighted, and even prevented, their pursuit of sexual relationships. This makes me feel sad. No one should suffer from body shame.
Popular culture is unfortunately a major conduit for delivering body shame. Smaller sized penises are objects of scorn and curiosity. Donald Trump’s portrait with a “micropenis” is a staple of this year’s political humor. Vogue, Cosmopolitan, and other magazines and websites routinely publish articles about men with smaller penises, and tips for dating them. When I wrote the “penis slang and invective” entry for the Cultural Encyclopedia of the Penis (Kimmel, Milrod & Kennedy), I did include a number of derogatory terms for smaller penises. And I hate to admit that I did snicker at a few, including “hung like a cashew.”
However, the anguish of the men who contact me about such matters makes me a little ashamed of this. And I wish I had more positive resources to offer them.
Large penises weren’t always the rage. Consider the modest members immortalized on classical Greek and Roman statues (and later works such as Michaelangelo’s David, above). Most writers agree that the Ancient Greeks (and Romans too) considered smaller penises to be more desirable and refined than larger ones, and of course, such statues are also quite wonderful examples of male beauty (unlike the Trump portrait mentioned above).
But none of this matters to contemporary men who must cope with the “Supersize Me” standards of pop culture and porn. Just as many women feel compelled to surgically alter their breasts and labia, many men feel desperate to measure up, and miserably anticipate rejection and ridicule based on their genitals when they think they don’t.
There isn’t that much positive information for men with smaller penises. An article called All the Good Things About Having a Small Penis was mostly sarcastic, though it did mention two real-life benefits:
I would also suggest the following possible advantages:
While many articles and documentaries focus on heterosexual men, worries about penis size also affect men who are gay, bisexual, and/or queer or who simply have sex with other men. Gay men may experience “life with a small penis” as “a debilitating source of shame, anger, displeasure, and resentment” (Is Small Beautiful, Erik Piepenburg, OUT Magazine, 4/17/2005).
At least two men have made documentaries about coping with a smaller penis: Brian Spitz released UnHung Hero (trailer) in 2013, and Lawrence Barraclough released My Penis and I (entire movie) in 2005. I’ve watched both, and they’re both good.
But what I’d really like to see is a documentary that’s an all-out, sex-positive celebration of the possibilities and advantages of the smaller penis, something that includes classical statues AND rave reviews from lovers.
Suggestions for men with smaller penises: if you haven’t already done so, please consider exploring:
For partners, I’d like to suggest enthusiasm, tact, and even erotic worship of your partner’s penis – as well as the above. Yep, that’s right! Become a phallus whisperer and tell that penis how wonderful it is. You can even incorporate this into an erotic hypnosis session! Such words of affirmation and appreciation could become a gift of sexual healing, as well as a creative exercise in pillow talk.
I’m also launching the #SmallisSexy hashtag as a sexological crusade to promote acceptance and end the shaming of people with smaller cocks. The men who have called me, and others like them, deserve more chances at love and sexual pleasure than they’ve gotten and I frankly just can’t stand the fear and sorrow they are living with. It’s so unnecessary. So wrong.
Here are just a few articles and resources. I’d love to find more. If you know of any, please do send in the comments section!
Measurection.com is a helpful site for people discussing smaller penises.
The Condom Review offers 6+ Best Condom Options for Small Penises: Slimmer Fit Condoms for Better Sex.
Small Penis Sex: How to Make It Work, Adriana, Bad Girl’s Bible, 2/24/2014.
Eight Positions to Enhance Sex When He Has a Small Penis, Sujiery Gonzalez, Latina, 9/12/2015.
So Why Do Ancient Sculptures Have Such Small Penises, Ashley Uzer, Galore, May 17, 2015.
Why Do Classical Sculptures Have Such Small Penises? Kalli Holloway, Alternet, May 14, 2016.
Why Do Greek Statues Have Such Small Penises?, Olivia Goldhill, Quartz, May 21, 2016.
Prolapse and Sex – Facts and Tips Women Want to Know, Michelle Kenway, Pelvic Exercises, April 9, 2011.
*Cisgendered: When gender assigned at birth is congruent with an individual’s gender identity.
(FYI – Matters concerning trans and intersex genitals will be the focus of a future blog or two or three.)
Any truly ethical “helping professional” will make great effort to attain a measure of “multicultural competency” in order to effectively assist people who are of different backgrounds, religions, ethnicities, countries, cultures, etc. than the person who is doing the “helping.” This is important because offending a person – intentionally or otherwise – means the “helping” is less likely to happen. There will be no trust, and without trust, no rapport, and without rapport nothing can be achieved on behalf of the client, student, patient, consumer.
Helping professionals include licensed clinical social workers, medical personnel (doctors, nurses, clinic staff, etc.), mental health professionals, licensed professional counselors, sex therapists, sexologists, sexuality educators, sexual health educators, physical therapists, case managers, and so on. Many of these folks will spend time and money on training to improve multicultural competency, either through academic or continuing education venues, such as conferences, workshops, etc. Professional and scientific literature also proves and endorses the importance of multicultural competency and awareness in ethical clinical practice.
To get a rough sense of the range of multicultural ethical considerations and practice expectations which affect the competency of helping professionals, check out these links. In some cases these documents represent decades of work.
Multicultural Issues in Social Work, Vol. 2 – book description.
The Ethics of Cultural Competence by Michael Paasche-Orlow, MD, MPH, MA (PDF of the entire article). Here’s a quote from the abstract: Though rarely stated explicitly, the essential principles of cultural competence are (1) acknowledgement of the importance of culture in people’s lives, (2) respect for cultural differences, and (3) minimization of any negative consequences of cultural differences. Culturally compe- tent clinicians promote these principles by learning about culture, embracing pluralism, and proactive accommoda- tion. Generally, culturally competent care will advance patient autonomy and justice.
AMCD Multicultural Counseling Competencies – PDF of guidelines. Here’s a quote: Culturally skilled counselors understand and have knowledge about sociopolitical influences that impinge upon the life of racial and ethnic minorities. Immigration issues, poverty, racism, stereotyping, and powerlessness may impact self esteem and self concept in the counseling process.
My book is coming out at last! This has truly been one of the best weeks of my life! A few days ago, I received an invitation to serve on the Advisory Board of the American College of Sexologists (see previous blog) and I’m so thrilled about that! And today I got my first peek at the cover of my first book, Sex Squicks, published by Sizzler Editions in the Sexperience (nonfiction) section. I’m so delighted with the cover! It surpasses my expectations! Sex Squicks is volume one of a collection of my Carnal Nation columns. I adored writing a weekly column for Carnal Nation and was so sorry when they abruptly stopped publishing. The second and third volumes should be out later this year.
Sex Squicks will be available as an eBook and later in paperback. It should be up on Amazon, too!
I’m just so glad and delighted about this, today of all days! It was worth the wait! Many thanks to the amazing Jean Marie Stein, my publisher, and Frankie, the talented graphic designer, and all the rest of the amazing Sizzler Editions staff!
Generating routine sex tips for fairly common forms of heterosexual behavior is the kind of gig I never get – which is odd, considering I’m a sexologist and therefore open to all kinds of press queries on all things sexual. I’ve mostly been approached by writers looking for information about topics like Objectum Sexuality, and my last National Geographic Taboo gig had me in front of a green screen commenting on human puppy training. (They shot some foot fetish comments too, but I haven’t seen them and don’t know if they were used.) However, a few weeks ago I was approached by a writer from Redbook looking for some tips on blow jobs. I was actually rather pleased to get a request for something so simple and uncomplicated.
The problem is that there are so very, very many articles that recycle the same old sex tips. I tried to include some new ideas, but they didn’t make it into the article.
The stock photos of phallic fruits and vegetables were also somewhat predictable. However, they remind me of the penile gastronomy encyclopedia entry I wrote for the Cultural Encyclopedia of the Penis, soon to be published by AltaMira Press, edited by Kimmel, M., Milrod., C. & Kennedy, A. (I also wrote entries for penis slang and invective and hypnotizing the penis.) I’ll be overjoyed when that book makes it into print!
Still, I’m always happy for a chance to comment on just about anything pertaining to sex! Especially if someone somewhere will have a better time as a result.
