Four ways the woman next door is making penetration more pleasurable
I love talking with my best female friends, the ones who know way too much about me, who aren’t afraid to talk about the personal and embarrassing stuff. They’re the ones I trust to give me the best advice.
I recognize that not everyone has friends like this. Trust me when I say I have very few who I can really spill the beans to. The internet, podcasts and books can certainly be a valuable source of truth. I didn’t read “A Good Girl’s Guide to Bad Girl Sex” when I was in my 20s because I had a good source of truth in person!
If one woman is struggling with something, chances are that another woman has had a similar struggle and made it to the other side, enough to be able to share advice. Let’s dig into some “advice” from more than 3,000 American women (age 18-93) who shared details of techniques of sexual stimulation and penetration techniques they use to enjoy solo or partnered sex. This “advice” comes in the form of a research study published in 2021 in the psychology journal, PLoS One. The data came from the second OMGYES Pleasure Report, a cross-sectional, online, national probability survey of women’s sexual experiences and discoveries.
Before we learn the techniques, let me highlight the reasons the authors believe this study to be important, the type of reasoning I can raise a toast to:
“Absent detailed and robust person-centered empirical data on women’s sexual pleasure approaches in the scientific literature, women and/or their partners may be left to rely on non-scientific sources, such as popular print or electronic media, to inform their expectations about which stimulation and penetration techniques they can and should use to enjoy sex…
“Individuals need to be empowered to seek out the pleasure promoting techniques that meet their needs, rather than falling back on what literature/media tells them they “should” like or what they expect is “most likely” to be enjoyable…
“These data provide techniques that are at women’s disposal to make penetration more pleasurable—which can enable women to better identify their own preferences, communicate about them and advocate for their sexual pleasure.”
According to the study, the ladies next door who are enjoying penetration the most are using four previously unnamed, but distinct techniques:
Angling (87.5% of women): Rotating, raising or lowering the pelvis/hips during penetration to adjust where inside the vagina the toy or penis rubs and what it feels like.
Shallowing (84% of women): Using penetrative touch just inside the entrance of the vagina, not on the outside, but also not deep inside, with a fingertip, sex toy, penis tip, tongue or lips.
Rocking (76% of women): Encouraging the base of a penis or sex toy to rub against the clitoris constantly during penetration, by staying all the way inside the vagina rather than thrusting in an out.
Pairing (69.7%): Clitoral stimulation, performed by herself or her partner, at the same time of vaginal penetration.
Which one will you try next?
*PAUSE FOR SCIENCE
After years of working as a science writer, I learned that not all research studies are created equal, and that there are always limits to their application. While findings from one group could apply to another, it’s unwise to over-generalize science. That’s why we need more science in the world; there’s always more to know. If you want to see the full details of the study for yourself, find a full-text version here.