Holmes Patricia - Girlology - A Girl's Guide to Stuff that Matters

The BigO

(We don’t mean Oprah, but we love her anyway.)

“O”

Orgasms feel great, no question. And lots of people make a huge deal out of them. It’s important to understand that sometimes orgasm doesn’t happen at all during the penis-in-vagina part of sex, particularly for women. Most women need to feel very relaxed, comfortable and safe to experience orgasm. Sex isn’t just about orgasm,and it can still feel good even if an orgasm doesn’t happen. Being sexual with someone you love is about expressing warmth, closeness and intimacy—an orgasm is an added bonus.

Sometimes for guys, orgasm (ejaculation) may happen very quickly and actually before they are ready for it to happen. Teenage boys in general are not always able to control how long they can keep an erection. That means a guy can get an erection and ejaculate before a girl even starts to get sexually arousedand enjoy the experience—that can lead to frustration. For a lot of women, sex is more about emotional attachment, comfort and security in a relationship. Guys sometimes get a reputation for being just into the act without the emotional attachment. There are definitely some great guys out there who are looking for emotional intimacy before sexual intimacy. There are also guys, especially teen guys, who can seem unemotional and pushy when it comes to sex. It’s not always the guys, though. There are also girls who are pushy and unemotional when it comes to doing sexual things. For too many teens, it seems to be more about bragging rights and being able to say, “Hey, I got laid!” Just remember, sex isn’t supposed to be like a Nike ad. It’s about a lot more than “just doing it.”

SoloSex

Orgasm can happen without sexual intercouse. It can happen for males and females just from sexual touching or even in sexual dreams. A lot of males and females will touch themselves sexually. This can just feel good, or it can be intense enough to create an orgasm. Touching yourself sexually is called masturbation. When guys masturbate, they will hold and rub their penis, usually pretty vigorously, to stimulate it. When girls masturbate, they may touch their breasts, rub their clitoris or vagina. Basically, masturbation involves touching or rubbing yourself in whatever way makes you feel good sexually. There’s nothing dangerous about it (as long as it doesn’t consume your free time), and it is actually quite normal. For many teenagers, masturbation is a way to enjoy their sexual urges without risking sexual activity or intercourse with another person. Masturbation (just masturbation with yourself ) can’t cause pregnancy and can’t cause sexually transmitted diseases. And if you’ve ever heard that it will make you grow hair on your palms, make you go blind or that other people can tell you masturbate by looking at you, we hope you know by now that that’s not true. Duh.

There’s another term called mutual masturbation. Think of it as masturbation with someone else. That means that one person will touch the other person sexually and vice versa without having intercourse. Some people call this “outercourse” because it doesn’t involve intercourse. It’s also called heavy petting or a “hand job.” Like masturbation, this isn’t dangerous if the “masturbators” are only using their hands. Once it goes beyond a hand job to closer skin-to-skin contact or mouth-to-skin contact, then we’re talking about a different topic and increased risks. We’ll talk more about this in chapter 9.

OralSex

If touching each other sexually involves using your mouth or tongue to stimulate another person’s genitals, it’s called oral sex. Some people call it “going down” on someone. If a girl puts her mouth over a guy’s penis, the scientific word for that is fellatio, but most people refer to it as oral sex or a blow job. Blow? We don’t think blowing on the penis is really involved; that’s just a term people use. When a guy uses his mouth or tongue on a girl’s clitoris or vaginal area, the scientific word for that is cunnilingus. There is no nice way to describe it in everyday language; we prefer to stick with the term oral sex.

AnalSex

Bet you can guess what this means. It means penis in anus. As you can imagine, the anus has loads of bacteria and is not really built for that, so it can be much more risky and cause infection, as well as be painful. Some girls think that if they have anal sex, they are being “abstinent” and can still be a “virgin.” But basically, anal sex is just as intimate as vaginal sex, and as we’ve discussed, the virginity issue is very questionable.

WhatIs SEXUAL and What Is ABSTINENCE?

There’s a lot of talk out there about abstinence. Lots of federal money and entire educational programs have been designed to promote sexual abstinence until marriage. The problem is, many of these programs don’t define sexual abstinence very well, so teens are making up their own definitions.

The word abstain means to withhold or “not do” something. Like abstaining from drugs means you don’t use them. So what is sexual abstinence? Well, it depends on your definition of SEXUAL. We’ve spent a lot of time talking about sexual feelings and physical touch that is sexual. Is it sexual to hug someone? French kiss? Touch private body parts through your clothes? Sure. All that stuff creates sexual feelings, so it is a sexual thing. But is that what these programs mean? You can’t kiss until you are married? We don’t think so, but some people’s definitions might mean that.

Whether these recommendations are based on religious teachings or just on common sense, the whole reason for encouraging sexual abstinence for all young people is to prevent unwanted pregnancy, sexually transmitted infections and emotional pain that can come from having sex when you’re not ready. That means you should abstain from any activity that can cause these problems.

Let’s be more precise just for the record. We hope you know how a pregnancy occurs by now, so obviously sexual abstinence means no penis-in-vagina because that could lead to pregnancy. Also, to prevent infections, sexual abstinence would include abstaining from oral sex, anal sex and very close skin-to-skin contact, particularly of the genital areas. Finally, the emotional pain thing is the most difficult to figure out. It may be impossible to prevent emotional pain if you let yourself have strong feelings for others. We can’t help having our feelings and emotions hurt in life. But, if you use your Girl Power to keep yourself from doing sexual things you don’t feel comfortable doing or don’t feel ready to do, you’re doing the best you can to protect your emotions related to sexual activity. And believe us, there’s a very strong link between our emotions and what we do sexually.

So don’t fall into the trap of believing that sexual abstinence means you can do anything sexually except have a penis in the vagina. It’s not that easy. Think about it, and make a decision you feel good about.

The Consequencesof Sex

Let us first emphasize that most young teens do not have sexual intercourse, neither vaginal nor anal. These days, teens may be having more oral sex, thinking that it is risk free. Wrong! Any type of sexual contact carries risks, as we’ll explain. That means it requires responsible behavior and thinking ahead to avoid those risks.