Bitches & Bisexual Dykes

One summer at a Yoga camp, I'd watched a group of young men rolling their abs. When I asked the benefits of the exercise, they said it forced old blood out of the internal organs, allowing new blood to enter. They claimed that advanced male yogis could give them selves an enema by sucking in water and pushing it back out. Speaking in superior tones they let me know that as a woman, I could never master this exercise. At the time I thought, "Yeah? Just wait and see."

Ever since then, I'd been practicing how to give myself a vaginal douche while in the bathtub. One evening as I repeated the exercise, the muscle ridge stood up, my vaginal barrel opened, and I felt a trickling of water seep inside. Success at last! I got out of the tub, dried off and sat down on the floor in front of my free-standing makeup mirror. Isolating the muscles again, I sucked in air, and forced it out, making the sound of a loud "pussy fart". It made me laugh so I did it several more times. In the past, I'd accidentally get a pussy fart when air was sucked in my vagina during intercourse. Now I could do it on demand!

Next, I aimed a gooseneck lamp between my legs and the 8 inch mirror became a large movie screen in theaters across the country. As I gave fantasy free rein, my vaginal opening was an exotic sea coral, moving rhythmically to absorb tiny delicacies into its folds. A camera zoomed in for a close up as I oiled my genitals and caressed my clitoris with glistening fingertips. The sexual heat spread and my vaginal lips deepened to a darker red. I choreographed a ballet of fingers dancing on a swollen clit to a gripping orgasmic finale when my hand became a blur.

Saturday afternoon when Laura and I got together, I demonstrated my new skill with "cunt breathing". I began sharing a fantasy about writing a script for a feminist porn movie as I passed her the joint. Laura had recently left teaching and was now an international banker getting her consciousness raised on a daily basis in the male-dominated corporate structure of high finance. Aware of how conservative her profession was, I said she could wear a wig so her boss at the bank wouldn't recognize her.

"I wouldn't have to be disguised", Laura said, holding in the sweet smoke. "I'd probably be promoted to vice president if he ever saw me. The men in my office are so horny that it would be a ray of sunshine to see a movie about sexual women who are feminists, no less."

"Actually, we're bisexual dykes" I said staunchly. We grabbed each other and rolled around on the floor, shouting and laughing for joy. Since that day, I've loved the word "Dyke", a perfect label for financially and sexually independent women who design their own sexlives.

Not long after that, Laura called and said she wasn't going to have sex with Grant any more either with or without me. Knowing how difficult he could be, I wasn't surprised. Spending more time with women was giving me a better perspective on the constant power struggle in most straight relationships. Recently my friendship with Grant had also been strained, so I too was ready to put some distance between us again. Although we had enjoyed many good times with happy orgasms, we all agreed it was time to end our sexual threesome.

With Grant out of the picture, Laura and I started sharing orgasms together. Since it took nearly thirty minutes or more for either one of us to come from oralsex, it could seem like a job without pay. Instead of trying to get each other off orally or manually, we decided to take turns sharing massage and masturbate together or separately side by side for our orgasms. I was thirteen years older and wanted to avoid falling into the symbiotic relatedness of romance times two that plagued most lesbian couples. After talking it over, Laura and I agreed to continue seeing other people. Instead of being exclusive lesbian lovers, we were more like two gay men who were "fuck buddies"- best friends who could share orgasms together without going steady.

For weeks, Laura had been bugging me to get into the martial arts. She said her Kung Fu class had been channeling her anger, and she was feeling more centered and peaceful. I finally pushed through my resistance and signed up. Laura went in the mornings before work, and I settled for a daily one o'clock class. There were about sixteen men in my group, mostly black, all very serious students with night jobs. The Chinese Master who headed the dojo said women were welcome, but the way the other students glared or completely ignored me made it painfully clear I had just invaded an all male preserve.

During the first week, I got through the warm up exercises better than expected, which boosted my morale a bit. A young Puerto Rican and I were both newcomers and about the same size. We were paired off which devastated his macho image. Once, as we stumbled through a new routine, I overheard one of the guys tell his buddy as he smirked, "Dig the chick with the spick." Our instructor was a handsome young black from Newark, a humorless fanatic who kept a tight military control in class. Oh but he was a joy to watch as he moved like a big, powerful black cat. Many nights I would masturbate with a sex fantasy that involved him or the entire class.

For one solid year, I endured some degree of public humiliation every day. The first time I punched a sandbag with all the guys watching, my lantern jawed instructor kept yelling, "More power! More power!" When I saw he was not going to let up, I just focused on my sexual power and thought, "Poor things, they'll always be limited to their one measly Saturday night fucks." Still, I loved the challenge of pushing beyond my physical boundaries. The day we did 150 sit ups at a fast clip was sheer ecstasy. Three of the guys couldn't make it and fell out, but I got a second wind and managed to finish with the group. Besides building physical strength, I was developing an inner strength by confronting a hostile environment on a daily basis.

Laura and I had grown up with exactly the same family dynamic: the only girl with three brothers. Playing adventuresome games with boys rather than girls' passive games had made our childhoods similar. Maybe it was because we'd been close to our brothers, or that we'd never been raped, but for whatever reason, we were not physically afraid of men. Our kung fu class was further demystifying the notion that most men were dangerous. We saw their vulnerability always wearing plastic cups under their uniforms to protect their precious testicles. We saw how terrified they were of getting kicked in the balls while we weren't nearly that afraid of getting punched in the tits. We both had small firm breasts instead of big mama boobs.

One morning my walking feminist dictionary Pauline called to tell me she was starting a new CR group for women interested in money and power. Her excitement was contagious as she talked about a feminist "old girls" network where we helped each other to get ahead in business.

"The personal is political," Pauline reminded me. "Sharing our histories is the best way to understand women's problems are social, not personal." I took what she said to heart and joined the group, filled with ideas about collective solutions for women's sexual problems.

At the first meeting, I talked at length about what I'd learned at sex parties: the men were coming, but way too many women were faking orgasms, which was a big mistake. Nothing turned a man on more than a fully orgasmic woman who genuinely enjoyed sex. Then I went on to talk about the importance of women becoming responsible for their own orgasms by learning how to stimulate their clitoris during partnersex. When I finished, the room was silent. That night the personal was not political. Every woman there felt that sex was a private matter.

Laura came to a couple of meetings before dropping out. She thought it was just too boring for words. Most of the women were trying to get their orgasms from penis/vagina sex. Fascinated, I kept going, hoping I'd eventually understand why successful women who were tops in their professions were so sexually conservative. Since most of them had decided they didn't want to have children, it was difficult to figure out why they were still desperately looking for Mr. Right just like all the secretaries in the typing pool. Eventually I would learn that it boiled down to economics and fitting in socially. Even though they had well paying jobs, marriage added more to their coffers, and society still functioned like Noah's Ark with people going through life two by two.

Some nights in the CR group, I'd do a little sexual assertiveness training. I also promoted guilt free masturbation, demonstrating different positions, pelvic movements, and how I used my vibrator so any woman in the group who wasn't orgasmic could easily learn. I told them I felt free to ask a man out for a date, and I showed them how to reach down and stimulate their clitoris during intercourse. When I talked about my sexual friendship with Laura and how we saw ourselves as bisexual dykes, they looked at me like I was from another galaxy.

That spring of 1971, I got a call from Harriet Lyons, one of the editors of the newly formed Ms. Magazine. She started off by saying she'd heard through the grapevine that I'd been teaching classes in masturbation. The image was so hilarious that both of us broke up laughing. One of the women in my CR group must have been talking, but she wouldn't say who.

"I'm calling to find out if you'd be interested in writing an article about female masturbation for Ms.?" Harriet paused, but I was speechless, so she went on. "Dr. David Rueben is the only one who's mentioned masturbation in print that we know of, and he has a penis. The subject is pertinent, and we want to hear about masturbation from a woman. Well, what do you say?"

"Yes, yes, yes." I shouted, finally finding my voice. "I've got an important announcement to go with the article: There's no such thing as a frigid woman! Any woman can teach herself how to have an orgasm with masturbation."

"Write it," she said. "Call me when you have something down so we can start working on it together. I'm going to be your editor."

When I hung up, I thought, "Glory Hallelujah! The new feminists in power are interested in sexual pleasure!" My own masturbation history was where I had to start, but as I tried to recall my sexual beginnings, I was distressed by all the blank spaces that represented my own repression.

One afternoon while doing Yoga postures, an early memory of masturbation finally floated up into consciousness. It was the time Mother drove us kids cross-country when our family moved to California when I was 5 years old. I called her for verification. She chuckled as she said she'd seen me rocking on my pillow in the back seat of the car. At the time, I'd forgotten about the rear view mirror, but I was reminded once again of my good fortune to have a mother who believed masturbation is a natural activity for children. With my first sexual memory in place, the article started taking shape and I spent the next few weeks feverishly writing every day.

Filled with visions of orgasms in every feminist bedroom across the country, I began the article with an erotic poem about a woman reaching down to discover the wet, pink satin folds of her beautiful cunt. I was going to create feminist porn that would have Ms. readers masturbating with abandon. Talk about being naïve! I went on at length about the joys of masturbation- how it was the best way for women to learn about orgasm once they discovered what kind of clitoral stimulation they preferred. To top it off, I'd come up with a perfect title: "Liberating Masturbation."

Needless to say, the first draft was a total reject by every editor in the Ms. Collective. The day Gloria Steinem took time out of her busy schedule to meet for lunch convinced me that Ms. was still sincere about the subject of masturbation. As we talked, she suggested I make the article a bit more academic, cite some statistics, refer to the work of sexologists, and most important was to eliminate all four letter words. She thought it was perfectly valid for the women's movement to have their own female Portnoy, but I had to tone down the article and fill out my information to appeal to a broader audience of women. At the moment I was at a loss for words. Although I'd loved reading Portnoy's Complaint by Phillip Roth, somehow I felt put down without knowing why. I thanked Gloria for her suggestions and promised to submit another version.

Back home, it started to sink in. "I'm nothing like Portnoy!" I protested to the room. "He was a guilt ridden schmuck who was always trying to stop masturbating. He was pussy starved so doing himself was a second rate sexual activity! I'm talking about masturbation as an important part of every person's sex life." For days I couldn't stop wondering why she'd made that remark. Did it indicate her true feelings that masturbation was basically for losers?

As the reality of the commitment set in, I became battered with insecurity about my ability to write. I floundered for another two weeks working obsessively for endless hours. Even though our friendship had cooled off, I called Grant. When I told him that Ms. wanted a more academic approach and I could use his help, he wasn't sure he wanted to be involved with me because we seemed to disagree about everything these days. After telling him how serious I was about doing the best feminist sex article of the century, he at least agreed to read what I'd written.

The next time we talked, he said I'd lost sight of my reader. "You're not writing for Screw Magazine, Betty," he said in his stiff professorial voice. Instead of working together as we had in the past, he said he'd prefer to go over it alone. Grant spent a week reworking my article, and when it was finished, I was impressed. But I also felt strange. It was about my experiences, but it had a Ph.D. ring to it, and wasn't at all how I sounded when I talked.

"If this is what editing is, it makes me feel dishonest." I told Grant over the phone. "I'd never let a person paint on one of my canvases."

"There's nothing dishonest about it," he insisted. "All writers have editors. Your ideas and experiences are all there. Mainly it's better organized. I suggest you live with it a few days and change anything you don't like."

Over the next few days, I reread the article many times, changed a few things, and took out most of Grant's fancy three syllable words. When I turned it in, I fully expected a welcome mat, but instead, the eighteen-page article provoked another red hot controversy at Ms. My ideas about masturbation, they feared, were still too radical. Readers might be offended and cancel their subscriptions by the thousands. Harriet told me my article still might appear at a later date when the editors thought the time was right. After all that work without pay, Ms. Portnoy was put on the shelf and would remain there for over two years.

When I hung up the phone, I growled, "The authoritarian matriarch has silenced the sex freak! Having independent orgasms might interfere with our blind goddamn devotion to romantic love! It's more tasteful and ladylike to commit suicide than to jerk off!"

That moment was a major turning point for me. A more potent opponent- the matriarchy, had replaced the patriarchy. When it came to sex, Daddy was a pushover compared to Mother who was a force to be reckoned with. Mother always knows best- she is unbending, unyielding, unforgiving. A big chunk of my frozen idealism about feminists being perfect had just broken off and was now floating out to sea. For the rest of the week I struggled with the pain of rejection.

Finally, my devotion to sex guided me back to the path of pleasure. Laura and I began sharing orgasms with new feminist sex fantasies that we verbalized out loud. We were on the US women's Sex Olympics team and we'd won the gold, bronze and silver medals in masturbation. Or we were in the Women's Sex Army, setting out on a thousand-mile march equipped with electric vibrators and portable generators to bring pleasure to the people. We visualized the entire women's movement becoming a tidal wave of orgasms.

At our next CR meeting, I did a dramatic reading of the rejected eighteen-page article for my group. They were all impressed and commented on how much sense it made, how well my thoughts were articulated. When I dramatically announced the editors at Ms. had refused to publish it, everyone in the room was stunned.

"Censorship!" said Lorna, our TV producer. "Your article has important sex information for women. Clearly they're deciding what we should and shouldn't read."

"It's exactly what they claim men do to us," Pauline said in an angry voice.

The women all wanted a copy of "Liberating Masturbation." Their support and enthusiasm helped make up for the alienation I'd felt at the hands of the Ms. collective.

I couldn't wait to tell Grant that everyone in my CR group wanted copies of the article. He suggested I publish a thousand copies under my own imprint and I liked the idea. The following week Laura, Grant and I were collating the eighteen pages creating stacks on the living room floor to be stapled. The cover was plain with just the words "Betty Dodson Speaks Out about Erotic Art, Masturbation, and Women's Liberation." The inside page had a drawing of a woman using a Panabrator, the electric massager that was available at the time. Below the drawing it read: "Liberating Masturbation." Several more of my sex drawings were included inside. On the back page was my new publishing logo: the many-armed goddess, Kali, and beneath her were the words "Goddess Books." Laura and I were into New Age spiritual practices of the seventies that were part of goddess worship- like the Tarot cards were said to be a woman's bible.

That day, stapling the pages together, all three of us felt like righteous, revolutionary pamphleteers going head-on with the establishment- this time it was the feminist establishment. Circulating the information on my own would show the editors at Ms. that women wanted this information. It was all very exciting, except for one small problem. Grant had talked me into putting, "From Betty Dodson's forthcoming book on women's sexual liberation," under the copyright notice. Now everyone was looking forward to the book I wasn't writing.