Betty Dodson's blog

I first met Jim Haynes in the offices of Grove Press owned by Barney Rosset who broke through US censorship barries and brought us Lady Chatterley's Lover. Barney also published a radical chic magazine called Evergreen. The afternoon Jim and I met, I invited Jim to join me and a few friends for some friendly sex at my place that evening. We made love not war! Jim recipracated by inviting me to be a judge at the second Wet Dream Film Fesitval in Amsterdam and natually, I accepted. A year later Evergreen Magazine published an interview with me titled "The Fine Art of Lovemaking that included twenty images of my erotic art. Many people today still have a copy of that issue published back in February 1971.

It's been ages since I've seen Jim, so I can't wait to see his documentary. Hey! Where is my documentary? Could it be that my story is still too hot to handle? A guy can love sex but not a woman? Oh, I forgot. It's okay if she is a porn star, a prostitute, a pole dancer or a madam. But not if she's enjoying sex just for the fun and pleasure it provides.

Over the years of running workshops, several women told about having orgasm giving birth. One friend actually used a vibrator on her clitoris during labor. She was clear that sexual pleasure definitely helped her to deal with the pain. Once the birthing tub was brought back into use by midwives, it facilitated birth by using gravity and warm water. Manual stimulation of the clitoris along with massage naturally fell into place and many women began to describe birth as orgasmic.

When I read in Marty Klein's Sexual Intelligence that "state representative Kathi-Anne Reinstein has introduced a bill making it a crime for anyone over 60 to pose nude or sexually for a film or photo" I figured she'd just found a photo of her sixty-something husband fucking their maid. I'm sorta sorry I don't live in MS cause my DVD Selfloving about the workshops has me naked as a Jay bird running a workshop in my sixty-year-old body. I have to figure out a way to get arrested soon. What kind of a sexual revolutionary am I without a rap sheet?  Thank you, Marty:

Massachusetts state representative Kathi-Anne Reinstein has introduced a bill making it a crime for anyone over 60 to pose nude or sexually for a film or photo. The person taking the photo-whether a lover, artist, or commercial porn maker-would also face jail time.

Adding insult to injury, the proposal amends a bill designed to punish those who make child pornography. It treats fully functional adults who happen to be over 60 the same as children under 18; it explicitly takes away their right to consent to be photographed in a lascivious way.

David Steinberg is a friend of mine who is currently writing a new SF Gate blog. His short piece on "The Politics of Sex" seemed appropriate to post as a follow up to our last video Podcast on "Going Public" or "Pubic" depending on how you read the word.

I've known for ages that along with the Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, Secretary of Finance, etc., we must establish a Secretary of Sexuality. Until that happens, government will continue to marginalize those of us who don't conform to the formula of a heterosexual monogamous married couple with at least one child. It's time we stop pretending that represents all of us.

The Politics of Sex

It seems so obvious, yet never gets said, so let's put it on the table:

Sex is the number one political issue of these times.

I know: The economy is tanking. War is raging in Iraq, Afghanistan, and a dozen other places. Global warming is about to change the planet as we know it. It's not ALL about sex.

But if there is one core issue that defines and shapes the American political landscape at this particular moment in history, that issue would have to be sex.

This post is a double hitter. Becky Chalker, a good friend and author of the book "The Clitoral Truth" and the National Women's Health Network, a group of women who lobby in Washington for women's health. I've been involved with the NWHN for many years and suggest you consider joining us. They are a source of information about all things dealing with women's health. And Becky's book tells all you ever wanted to know about our powerhouse of a sex organ, the clitoris. Enjoy!

Strategies for Staying Sexual After Menopause by Becky Chalker

When was the last time you heard a joke suggesting that sex invariably goes ever downhill or totally crashes after menopause? Like yesterday? This concept was boldly reaffirmed - without reference to reliable research - at a conference on menopause held by the National Institutes of Health in 2005! So, if you ask your doctor about sex after menopause, she or he will likely agree that the outlook is gloomy. On the flip side, the golden-years myth is heavily promoted by TV ads for erection drugs, which portray the "Cialis woman" always blissfully ready for intercourse whenever her partner drops a pill.

This is one of those days where I'm convinced that all things sex are a distraction from the destruction taking place by our government. We are completely addicted to war and building more military bases. STOP IT USA! Instead of destroying poppy fields (the main source of revenue in Afghanistan)how about we stop trying to control the world and take care of our own crumbling infra structure. I live on Madison Avenue in NYC and it's falling apart. It's become a pot holed country dirt road. Listen to what Tom Engelhardt says about the Af-Pak-War.

Let's start by stopping.

It's time, as a start, to stop calling our expanding war in Central and South Asia "the Afghan War" or "the Afghanistan War." If Obama's special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke doesn't want to, why should we? Recently, in a BBC interview, he insisted that "the 'number one problem' in stabilizing Afghanistan was Taliban sanctuaries in western Pakistan, including tribal areas along the Afghan border and cities like Quetta" in the Pakistani province of Baluchistan.

The 3D Vulva has been sent to me from several different sources. I'm finally going to post it with my suggestions on how I think it could be made more informative.

As an artist and clinical sexologist, I've often dreamed of creating a 3D vulva instead of just drawing one in two dimensions. This particular 3D vulva example comes close, but it leaves much to be desired. However, I'm going to post it along with what I'd like to see changed. If I am ever able to reach the person who created this, I'd like to work with them. We could do it again with my additions and deletions. Instead of using medical terms, I would dump them in favor of regular terms. Then I'd add my many years as a clinical sexologist working with women and combine that with my trained artist's eye to make the following changes:

I get upset when I'm 3 to 4 New Yorkers behind. When I finally got around to the March 2nd issue I was delighted to read the article on the Lesbian Nation by Ariel Levy (you have to register to read the article but it's free). So many of the names were friends of mine at one point or another. For me, the eighties was a time when America's Sexual Revolution moved over to the Gay Women's Community. That's when I joined a support group of lesbians and bisexual women who were into fantasy role playing with BDSM. Thanks to these outrageous women, I was entertained with all kinds of new things as well as learning about the exchange of power in sex.

PS. Now I gotta publish the story in my memoir about the time Sheila and I went to show the Cunt Slides to a group of lesbian sepratists living near Woodstock, NY.

Something's rotten in the State of America! How come Obama is talking about Cheney rather than calling him up on criminal charges for torture among other things? Do we dialogue with criminals now instead of arresting them? Is this the result of having so many criminals in government that we now think it's normal? Let's get behind the ACLU, sign their petition, and pitch in to get some much needed action. Carlin thinks that Obama agreed not to prosecute Bush/Cheney in exchange for the $350B in unspent bailout funds.

It's been six years since the first reports of detainee abuse and nearly five years since Abu Ghraib. A recent report from the International Committee of the Red Cross provided undeniable documentation of torture at Guantánamo. Yet the Justice Department has failed to prosecute any civilians for crimes related to interrogation, except a single contractor in June 2004.

Last week, the ACLU sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder calling for the appointment of an independent prosecutor to investigate the interrogation of detainees in the war on terror. Help reach the goal of 25,000 citizens calling for a full and fair criminal investigation.  Sign a petition demanding the Justice Department appoint a Special Counsel to investigate the torture and abuse of detainees.

I'm loving the photos on beautifulcervix.com showing a woman's cervix on each day of one month. Finally after all these years of explaining to my women clients that the white discharge, mucous or my favorite term, "pussy juice" does NOT indicate there is a problem or that she has an infection.

It's the normal cycling of our menses that allows us to get pregnant and give birth. The following photos show the fertility cycle very clearly. The amazing female body is wondrous to behold.

PS Thanks David Hersh for the link ;)

The NY Times Magazine Section (March 13, 2009) had an article titled The Pleasure Principle about a co-ed live-in commune dedicated to the female orgasm in San Francisco called "One Taste." It's founder Nicole Daedone, places emphasis on women's pleasure where love, romance and even flirtation are not required. She was quoted as saying, "I don't think women will really experience freedom until they own their sexuality."

At first I think Nicole is a kindred sister teaching women masturbation skills. However it turns out that clothed men are doing the women who lie comfortably naked from the waist down with their eyes closed while the guys carefully stroke the upper left quadrant of each clitoris. This morning ritual is called orgasmic meditation or "OMIng."

Thanks Betty for inspiring so many and reigniting the sexual urges that all to often get buried deep under all the business in our lives. Our sex life was growing stale until my husband read some of your information. We sat down and talked.

I used to be very sexual. I was frankly in love with my orgasm and so you can probably guess where I spent most of my free time. Before we wed, I also enjoyed masturbating with a number of girlfriends, quite often in fact, who shared my interest. It's much easier now to connect up friends with similar interests than it was then. Even with this going on, my husband and I had intercourse and oral sex almost daily.

After we married, I ocassionaly indulged with my girlfriends behind his back but I didn't feel right about it so I got busy with work and my girlfriends and I eventually drifted apart. Sex with my husband also went down to twice a week so did masturbation. Then I lost my job due to the economy. Fortunately, he earns plenty now so we're OK but depressed with all the free time to dwell on things.

We talked after reading your material and he encouraged me to take advantage of this time to rediscover myself and explore my needs. A real "economic stimulous" we joked. I got back in touch with my girlfriends and even made a few more friends and started getting back into what I used to enjoy so much. I feel so much freer now with his consent and interest. My orgasms are back even stronger than ever.

We made it fun for us both as he loves me to call him at lunch every day while I'm indulging with a girlfriend or even just plain masturbating on my own. Sometimes it makes him so excited he has had to cum also, over the phone in his office. On those days, the first thing he does after coming home is make love to me. We do it almost every day again and love it. Perhaps the free time forced on people from this economic slump can be used in positive ways to get us all re-focused on our sexual needs which had become so buried.

Women's struggles are celebrated on March 8 every year for International Women's Day. This grew out of a march in 1908 when thousands of women garment workers took to the streets in New York City demanding better working conditions and the right to vote. The day is now celebrated all over the world. Pardon my cynicism, but here we are in 2009 and we still don't get equal pay for equal work.

Another day to celebrate women but what does that really mean? Like Mother's Day. She gets a card or taken out to dinner or at least a phone call. Lean pickings for a woman who has given birth and raised a child. I'd like to see some acknowledgement in the form of recognizing the real value and importance that every Mother has on her children, both positive and negative.

I'm not saying all Moms are great at Mothering. I've spent the last thirty-some years teaching adult women about orgasm through self exploration with masturbation. Their mothers unknowingly repressed their child's natural curiousity and as a result, these women's sexual development has been blocked. No grown woman will ever be able to claim her full personal power without claiming sexual pleasure for herself. We need sexual, financial and political equality. Once that takes place, we'll have something to celebrate. That's a holiday we are working toward at dodsonandross.com.

Back in the nineties when I was on the advisory board for Xandria, the second largest sex toy company, they sent out a questionaire to learn more about their customers. Turned out that the most sex toys were bought by young Christian married couples who were Republicans. Go figure:

Americans may paint themselves in increasingly bright shades of red and blue, but new research finds one thing that varies little across the nation: the liking for online pornography.

A new nationwide study (pdf) of anonymised credit-card receipts from a major online adult entertainment provider finds little variation in consumption between states. 8 out of 10 Porn-consuming states voted Republican in the last election!

"When it comes to adult entertainment, it seems people are more the same than different," says Benjamin Edelman at Harvard Business School.

However, there are some trends to be seen in the data. Those states that do consume the most porn tend to be more conservative and religious than states with lower levels of consumption, the study finds.

Sometimes you just want to pay to have the job done by a pro who knows what he's doing and then he goes away until you call him for the next time.  No hounding, obsessive phone calls, love notes.  Just a good fuck when you're in the mood:

It's not just men who pay prostitutes to sleep with them. For some women, paying for sex is more convenient than cruising bars and clubs trying to find men. "They don't want to be found out. They want to do something private - it's their own world, a part of their life that they want to be secret."

Nicole runs a high-class escort agency in the West Midlands, whose clients include women as well as men. Her male escorts host "in-calls" for female clients at a large country cottage, three quarters of a mile away from the nearest town. The exterior gives no clue as to what goes on inside and instead looks more like a French chalet.