Good Vibrations Magazine

It’s always funny (in that I’m-a-bad-person-for-thinking-this-is-funny way) when Hollywood actors try to do things in the “real world.” For instance, in late fall of 2001, Scientologist actress Jenna Elfman felt the firing of a synapse, somewhere, and decided to emulate fellow actress and Scientologist pal Kirstie Alley and open up a Scientology mission in her home town. Elfman lives in Los Angeles, but her show “Dharma and Greg” is set in San Francisco, and so logically that’s where she decided to set up shop.

Specifically wanting to reflect what she thought was the “young and fresh” dot-com energy in SOMA, Jenna shopped around to find a suitable warehouse space, and finally settled on one. And she did. Right, perhaps, in the geographical center of the hurricane of nouveau riche hipness and evictions and $100 a square foot mess — at the very moment anyone who could read a newspaper could tell you that it was so over in SOMA, baby. But it’s the location she chose to reflect her aspirations that makes me a bad person for thinking the whole thing is funny: the area of Sixth St. and Mission. Those of us who live here know what that neighborhood is like. To say that it’s is intense is an understatement: junkies, crack heads, prostitutes, folks as down on their luck as it gets, and, wow, the smell. Oddly, attendance at Jenna’s IKEA-styled ex-sweatshop is low. Hello, “real world.”

I tried really really hard not to think of this when I reviewed Satisfaction: The Art of Female Orgasm by Kim Cattrall. Really. It was in the pile of new sex books on my desk that magic elves seem to keep replenishing — I come to work in the morning, and there are more books. It’s like having a dirty tooth fairy. And recently, mixed into the pile was Cattrall’s book. So I put on my objective, sex-educator hat on and began to read.

I’m the first to admit that I have refined tastes when it comes to sex guidebooks. I want accurate sex information. Good writing. No insults. No judgmental attitudes about what people are interested in — inclusiveness. Good bones, meaning that the information is presented in a structured fashion practical for the reader to put into use. And nothing that reinforces male and female stereotypes — I have strong feelings about people being able to self-determine their own brand of healthy sexuality. But I’m also interested in new ideas, new ways of seeing sex — trying on other people’s glasses, so to speak. And I think that any chance to talk about sexuality in a healthy way, from the basic to the specialized, is important.

However, with Satisfaction, the “real world” philosophy holds as true for Kim as it does for Jenna Elfman. Satisfaction sells itself as a guide for heterosexual couples to enhance sex, specifically aimed at increasing a woman’s sexual pleasure. Unfortunately, the authors’ (the book is co-written with Cattrall’s husband) stereotyping of sex and gender, and need to convince the reader about the validity of their advice, hobbles the book before it even leaves the starting gate. Sex techniques are rendered jumbled and unclear through the authors’ stereotyping of male and female roles, not to mention the sales-copy edge that oozes from every sentence. It’s also clear as a bell that the authors have no training, education, or background to write a book on sex.

Like all formulaic mass-market sex guides, the techniques and information in Satisfaction are grouped in instant-gratification vignette descriptions. There are short “tab A into slot B” formulas, and all promise results. Those are exactly the sort of promises that no sex book can make. Since the authors provide no explanation about how their techniques tie into male or female pleasure cycles, the reasoning behind the techniques is unclear — they promise us the methods work, but why should they? When the authors state that “doing (insert suggestion) will finish her off,” they intentionally give the reader a clear message that each suggestion is what we at GV call a “magic button to orgasm” — something that does not exist, yet is exactly like every “lose weight now” gimmick on the market. The authors are also unclear about which specific parts of the anatomy they refer to within the text, and leave out essential safety information. In fact, it’s what’s left out of the book that makes it problematic.

When a nonfiction sex writer makes assumptions about his or her reader’s (and by implication everyone’s) sex and sexuality — what people like, how they do it, and what they want — they distort reality by filling the blanks in for us. Satisfaction is layered like a big fluffy cake in assumptions about men, women, and sex. It assumes that men are the “do-ers,” that they care most about penetration and being “finished,” and that men will always have a reliable sex drive. What it assumes about sex is most egregious: that women can be “made” to come, that women want to come “until they can’t take it any more,” that all women like the types of stimulation in this book, that intercourse is the goal in sex, and much more. The instant-make-her-come stance the book takes implies that a lack of success with the technique lies not in the technique, but in the woman it’s supposed to “work” on. In another instance, the authors state that because men think linearly they prefer in-and-out stimulation, and because women think circularly, they like circular stimulation. How ridiculous. Peel back the lid on these stereotypes and assumptions, and you’ll see that the authors clearly believe that men are the ones who should “perform” and that women are the ones who should change their personalities for sex. How very old-fashioned — to say the least.

These dated notions about sex are in direct contradiction to the anti-stereotype, non-judgmental perspectives about male and female sexuality that Good Vibrations and most other contemporary sex guides strive to offer. This book begs the question: What are its assumptions, and are they correct? By means of what the authors are saying about sexuality as they describe sex techniques, they are suggesting that smaller truths are larger truths. That makes this book worse than inaccurate — it’s biased.

The techniques, suggestions, and positions in Satisfaction can be found in any ordinary sex guide, except that most ordinary sex guides being released right now have at least a few new ideas in them. Nothing in Satisfaction makes it stand out from the pack — except for the celebrity hook and the huge type. When you buy a sex guide, look for something inclusive, informative, and not chock full of insults and assumptions like this book. The notions and techniques in Satisfaction are dated. Buy something else. Anything. Please.