Book Excerpt: Mind-Blowing Sex: A Woman's Guide by Diana Cage

As part of our effort to profile more authors within the LGBT community, we present Diana Cage.

Author, editor, blogger, and media personality Cage is the former host of The Diana Cage Show, a wildly popular, no-holds-barred nightly talk show on Sirius XM. Her books include Girl Meets Girl: A Dating Survival Guide, Box Lunch: The Layperson’s Guide to Cunnilingus, Bottoms Up: Writing About Sex, and the groundbreaking On Our Backs Guide to Lesbian Sex.

As part of our effort to profile more authors within the LGBT community, we present Diana Cage.

Author, editor, blogger, and media personality Cage is the former host of The Diana Cage Show, a wildly popular, no-holds-barred nightly talk show on Sirius XM. Her books include Girl Meets Girl: A Dating Survival Guide, Box Lunch: The Layperson’s Guide to Cunnilingus, Bottoms Up: Writing About Sex, and the groundbreaking On Our Backs Guide to Lesbian Sex.

Cage served as editor of On Our Backsmagazine, the only sex magazine made by and for women, for five years. She has been featured in dozens of publications, including the San Francisco Chronicle, Xtra magazine, Time Out New York, The Bay Area Guardian, Maxim, Bitch, Curve, and Girlfriends, and was named one of GO Magazine's "100 Women We Love" in 2008. She is featured in seasons one and two of the Here! Television series Lesbian Sex and Sexuality, and has appeared on HBO’s Real Sex and Showtime’s Family Business, as well as on Channel Jimmy in Italy and on Sex TV in Canada.

Cage lives in Philadelphia and holds an MFA from San Francisco State University. She currently speaks about sex and sexuality at top colleges and universities around the country.

The following is excerpted from Mind-Blowing Sex: A Woman's Guide by Diana Cage. Available from Seal Press, a member of the Perseus Books Group. Copyright 2012.

RETHINKING SEX

I feel like I’m always learning about sex. I read about it, write about it, talk about it at conferences, and, of course, have as much of it as I can, and I am constantly surprised by the amount of new information I encounter. Funny how much there is we don’t know, when sex has been around as long as we have, and that’s what? Four million years? Part of my job, as I’ve come to discover, is separating useful information from information that further obfuscates what we need to know to have fantastic sex lives. I enjoy thinking, talking, and writing about sex almost as much as I love having it. And not just the mechanics of sex—I also enjoy thinking, talking, and writing about sexuality, gender, culture, and society. I’ve spent my life combining those things. I know that my desire to understand who I am in this world as a woman and a sexual person, combined with my eagerness to master sexual techniques, is what makes me a good lover.

I believe that good sex requires an open mind, a willingness to listen and learn, and practical skills. This book is neither a thorough discussion of feminism nor an exhaustive list of bedroom skills. Instead, it’s an introduction to the idea that the two things complement each other. Sex-positive feminism is something we’re already familiar with. What I hope to provide you with is feminism-positive sex.

SEXUALITY IS CULTURE

What we think we understand about sex and sexuality has changed over time, and is still changing rapidly. Our sexuality is a cultural phenomenon, meaning that while our drive to have sex may be innate, the way we express ourselves sexually—for instance, the type of sex we desire, and what we consider erotic or taboo—changes based on the culture we live in. A lot of current thinking on sexuality still tells us that women are less sexual than men and are by nature heterosexual and monogamous. This thinking about female sexuality is rooted in a very sexist notion that females don’t desire sex as much as men, and instead, being naturally powerless, use it as a form of currency.

For instance, many popular theories about female sexuality and infidelity purport that females, being less able to fend for themselves, have evolved to offer sex to multiple partners on the sly in exchange for things their partner can bring them, like food and protection. These are ideas we’ve constructed as a society because they reinforce the power of the dominant culture and have been upheld so strongly over time that they now seem as if they are part of our biological makeup.

We’re in a period where it is very popular for science to link gender differences with biological differences in the brains of males and females. This is why contemporary sex and relationship advice centers on helping individuals understand “the opposite sex.” Men are from Mars, women are from Venus, etc. We can’t know for sure, though, that the development of our brains isn’t somehow affected by our socialization as male or female. If the female brain is better designed for communication and empathy, as theories claim, and the male brain is designed more for linear thinking and spatial tasks, is it purely genetic, or is our brain development affected by our environment?

Contemporary theories about the biological differences between men and women, heterosexuals and homosexuals, are so easy to believe because they seem true, and backed up by science. Scientific discoveries, however, are limited by the way science is practiced, i.e., positivism, or the belief that knowledge isn’t authentic unless it can be positively verified. This form of scientific inquiry favors the idea that all gender differences are biologically driven and innate, and that if we don’t fit neatly into the prescribed roles that match our biological sex, then we are somehow deficient or, worse, deviant.

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