What I learned about sexual pleasure by tapping virtual vulvas
Note: The following descriptions may be considered NSFW.
This morning at my breakfast table I learned how to pleasure another woman with my boyfriend.
Sex education site OMGYes is starting conversations about female pleasure, via some experimental new methods.
In a recent chat with currently controversial feminist icon Gloria Steinem, actress and women’s rights activist Emma Watson endorsed OMGYes, encouraging fans to “definitely check it out...It’s worth it” (“it” being the site’s $29 subscription fee).
SEE ALSO: Can you be a feminist and like rough sex?
Image: OMGYES
The interactive site, backed by several research studies about the pleasure preferences of over 1,000 women, features video interviews with real women talking about their real experiences of sexual pleasure. Most notably, touchscreen video lessons of sexual stimulation techniques allow users to tap and caress a variety of virtual vulvas on-screen.
But what is a site like OMGYes actually teaching us about female sexual pleasure? Most notably, when we’re invited to learn about sexual pleasure via a futuristic touchscreen, are we framing sexual pleasure as something to talk about or just another thing to type about from the isolating safety of our handheld devices? Though Emma Watson got gutsy to publicly praise OMGYes as a concept, her language was still vague, peppered in the age-old euphemism for sex — “it” — and still left female sexual pleasure in the background of the site itself. Are we really ready to use OMGYes as its creators intended or is this just another piece of a human sexuality, untranslated from the web to real life?
How it's packaged
OMGYes certainly makes strides in breaking the silence, by packaging female sexual pleasure in new, educational ways. But its one-sided sexual stimulation experience (created by viewing and virtually touching these women through a screen) runs the risk of continuing to promote female sexual pleasure as something to be achieved rather than cooperated, intuited rather than asked about, and perfected rather than made genuine. This could reinforce the disconnect between pleasure and communication that mainstream porn has already vastly propagated.
Image: omgyes
At times this is even presented in similar packaging to porn: The women featured on the site conform to many classic beauty standards, and their pre-recorded moans of pleasure are soft, dainty and (notably) never audibly climactic, an intentional decision on the creator’s part. OMGYes co-creator Lydia Daniller says, “We’re actually working to counteract the orgasm as goal-oriented view of sex through the entire site, and through the simulations in particular. We wanted to emphasize pleasure for pleasure's own sake and not pleasure to reach an ‘end goal.’”
Nonetheless, when my boyfriend and I took OMGYes for a spin on his iPad one morning, we couldn’t help but direct our eyes to the prize. We chose to learn about one woman on the site who was teaching us the technique “layering,” via video. We listened to how exactly she likes to experience this kind of touch and why. She cautioned us against moving too quickly or venturing away from her clitoris too far or for too long, which rang realistic. After watching her video and reading the site’s blurb about “layering” we ventured to the virtual vulva, taking turns to practice the moves we were just taught.
The virtual video was good at responding quickly and accurately when we disobeyed our new sex partner’s instruction. After a few minutes, in place of her climax, the video just ended. That’s when my boyfriend exclaimed, "Hey! We won! This is like a video game.”
Christina Vasiliou, OMGYes Experience Designer and Co-Director who created the touchscreen functions of the site, says this goes against the hopes of OMGYes. “We took many measures to avoid any kind of similarity or connection to video games. The only feedback the user receives is verbal feedback from the participant — there is no score.”
In our current digital age, it’s only natural that OMGYes’s touchable virtual reality videos are the crowning jewel of the site and that its 45,000+ users (split 50/50 men-to-women) are drawn to it. But the virtual reality may be distracting from the site’s mission — communication about sexual pleasure in real life — in ways similar to mainstream porn.
What's porn got to do with it?
When I’m not writing about sex or testing products and services, I’m teaching workshops about sex to teens (covering topics like consent and healthy communication) and adults (on topics like sexual pleasure and sex toys). In every workshop one of the first things we do is talk about porn.
SEE ALSO: How tech is reshaping male masturbation
First, I ask the group, “What did you learn in sex ed class?” Responses range from “Nothing” to “I guess gay people don’t have sex then, huh?” but always include “pregnancy” and “STIs” on the short list of not-so-useful information gleaned from our nation’s often medically inaccurate, abstinence-based and rarely gender-and-sexuality-inclusive sex education programming.
Then I ask a series of questions about porn: “Who is having sex in the porn most widely available to us?”; “What kind of sex are they having?”; and then, most importantly, “Who’s doing the talking and what are they saying?”
Because their critical minds are sharp and fresh to the happenings in this world, teens are usually the quickest to conclude that women in porn are rarely ever saying words (let alone complete sentences) and, most impactfully, they’re almost never speaking directly about their own sexual pleasure when they do.
It’s hardly new information that women are done many disservices by mainstream pornography (and the writer would like to note that not all porn is created equal and some is even created feminist). However, it is new(er) information that young people are definitely watching porn especially with the ease-of-access via their smartphones.
What I’ve found from doing these brainstorms in my workshops is that while adults may be watching porn for sexual excitement, experimentation and enhancement, young people, caught in the beginning stages of their introduction to the confusing world of sex, are likely seeking porn because it offers a version of sex education to fill the void left by what their schools offer. Two examples: What is sexual pleasure? And how does it happen?
When we learn about sexual pleasure via mainstream pornography, we’re taught that sexual pleasure is wordless-yet-seamless, limited to heterosexuality, penetration and scenes like pizza deliveries, locker rooms and high rise offices. But rarely are we taught the specifics of genital touch — what it looks like, what it feels like and how to do it.
Image: omgyes
OMGYes aims to fill the need for this kind of education. The site boasts an impressive team of designers, creators and sexual advisors such as Annie Sprinkle and Carol Queen, the latter of whom suggested to the site’s creators that the site initially focus on the specifics of female genital touch: “It’s completely missing from sex education. Porn distorts it terribly. And taboo and embarrassment surround the issue. Consequently, people think women are all roughly the same in their sexual reactions — women aren’t explaining what they like, and their partners aren’t asking.”
Image: OMGYes
So, OMGYes co-creators Rob Perkins and Lydia Daniller set out to fill in the pleasure education gaps by directly responding to what women said they want and need for greater sexual pleasure: communication.
"What makes for ‘good sex’ varies from person to person,” says Daniller. But when they asked a representative sample of 1,055 American women ages 18 to 95 to tell them what makes for a good sex partner, the three most common characteristics were:
He/she takes the time to find out what I like. (91% of women)
He/she is attentive to me — listening and being aware of whether I’m enjoying sex. (89% of women)
He/she asks me what feels best for me. (81% of women)
“[Our] research showed that a major barrier in accomplishing great sex was the lack of specific enough language and a comfortable way to describe what one likes or wants,” says Daniller.
OMGYes, Carol Queen and even I agree: Communication is the key to genuine, real-life, non-pornofied sexual pleasure education.
Let's just agree to be awkward
But are we learning what OMGYes wants to teach us?
Upon reviewing the site for Refinery29, Sara Coughlin wrote, "The female orgasm has garnered a reputation for being so complex that many women have taken it upon themselves to draft specific instructions for partners. But a new online training program, OMGYes, aims to lessen that educational burden by teaching people how to make any woman climax.” Bobby Box for AskMen.com observed, "The website understands that videos needn’t be too long, nor should the copy."
The vast majority of women require over 20 minutes of continuous and consistent clitoral stimulation in order to climax. OMGYes’s very own research unsurprisingly unearthed huge amounts of variety in the particularities of how women desire and respond to erotic touch person-to-person. Female orgasm is complex and unique and yes, Bobby Box, takes a little longer than some brief copy might convey.
Image: omgyes
All sexual partnerships should include the safety, space and expectation of specific instruction and a lengthy learning curve when it comes to pleasuring each other. Neither should be cast as a time-consuming “educational burden” but rather a chance to connect via verbalizing our unique erotic make-ups.
One of my favorite sex educators Al Vernacchio says of sex: “The most freeing thing we can do is allow ourselves to be awkward. And no one in porn is ever awkward.” Rarely does the suave guy we see in porns fall off the bed, get a leg cramp or ask his co-performer, “Remind me exactly where your clitoris is again, babe?” All of these negotiations happens off-screen and mistakes are edited to present picture-perfect-penetration and opulent orgasms. In order to finally allow ourselves to bring conversations about real female sexual pleasure out of the perfect porn world and into the messy reality of our bedrooms, orgasms and relationships, we must first embrace the value of awkward sex.
When we make mistakes, we build trust. When we laugh at ourselves, we build connection. When we ask for direction, we build consent. When we state our desires, we create pleasure. And when we can unplug from our devices and experience all of this for real with our partners, we create intimacy.
OMGYes is undoubtedly making strides. It will take work to lift the shroud of mystery, shame and deprioritization that has cloaked female pleasure for a long, long, long time. But we also can and should go further.
What questions can I ask my partner to learn about her unique sexual pleasure? What should I do if these techniques don’t pan out in the sack? How can I instruct my partner to do what pleasures me without hurting his/her ego?
Because tapping and rubbing one of OMGYes’s virtual reality vulvas certainly won’t equip you to “blow any woman away in bed,” but breaking taboos with conversation might — as long as people can take it off-screen and get real.
