Betty Dodson Memoir

In 1966 I was having the best orgasmic partner sex of my life with a brilliant English professor who had recently quit academia over politics. He was forty-two. I was thirty-six and had been separated six months from a sexless seven year marriage. He'd been divorced a year from a seventeen year marriage and had recently gone cold turkey off uppers and downers prescribed by his psychiatrist. He was an emotional mess going through withdrawal while I was convinced great sex would bring him back to mental health.

On Christmas Day, I noticed Grant staring off into empty space, a sign he was about to sink into one of his morbid depressions. To alter his mood, I asked if he'd like to make love before dinner. Instead of responding to my offer, he began talking about how my gift presented a problem. I'd given him my first vulva self portrait that appeared to be of some ripe red fruit. When he said he could never hang my painting, I was momentarily crushed. He claimed he had to think of his maid's feelings as well as friends who visit.

"WANKER'S WORKSHOP" read the bold type in the Village Voice. The year was1983 just before AIDS was about to throw America into a sexual panic. Howard Smith, the editor of Scene's, was telling his readers about my men's workshops. Since the subject was masturbation, he was milking it for laughs like everyone else did. When he first called, I told him the men's workshops were due to popular demand.

"Betty, it sounds utterly crazy. I'm sorry, but I'm hard pressed to follow what you're up to. I can understand how women could benefit from learning about masturbation; it would teach them how to have orgasms. But most research shows men are regular masturbators and they start at an early age. So what's to teach?"

In 1974, I was at the University of Chicago speaking to a small audience in a very large auditorium, not my favorite venue. No speaker likes to see so many empty chairs. After my talk followed by the vulva slide show presentation, I went for coffee with a group of friends, including Nat Lerman, one of the editors from Playboy magazine. As we were sitting around talking and laughing, Nat mentioned that Playboy was going to run an article about me. He'd commissioned a woman to take my workshop so she could write about it. I was stunned! Playboy had sent a spy to infiltrate my all-women's masturbation groups? Nat said I wasn't going to like the article, but all was fair in love and journalism.