Some Day, Your Vaginal Orgasm Will Come

Now, here's the thing: all of this should be common knowledge and practice. But it's not. One of the most baffling, self-perpetuating sexual myths — that women not only should but do achieve orgasm by intercourse alone, by the mere thrusting of a penis inside us — just will not go away.

Many men and women still believe this fairy tale, and it leaves those women not only sexually ungratified, but feeling sexually inadequate as well. They fake orgasms not only for their partner's self-esteem but also their own: they don't want to admit that they haven't had a vaginal orgasm because they think they're supposed to have one. If they can't, they think something must be wrong with them instead of what they think they know about sex.

In reality, most women never achieve orgasm by sexual intercourse alone, and it's a rare occurrence for the minority that do. The female orgasm almost always requires direct stimulation of the clitoris, which can be achieved during intercourse with a few contortions of the hand [and a lot of concentration]. But if you think the way to make a woman come is to just get inside and pump away, you've been watching too much porn or your partner has been faking it. Or maybe both.

That said, while Kerner directs his book at men with vaginal orgasms on the brain, even the most sexually evolved men will learn from it. That's because the book is jam-packed with information about the female genitalia and sexual response, as well as a fairly complete set of how-to cunnilingus techniques. So anyone who is interested in learning more about these topics — man or woman — will benefit from reading this book.

Getting Down to Business

In the introduction, Kerner begins the most annoying part of the book: the extended metaphor of cunnilingus as a language. Here, he originates his use of the term "cunnilinguist" and invokes E.B. White's The Elements of Style, the age-old, handy-dandy writer's style guide, as the model for this book. In fact, even the physical dimensions of She Comes First appear to mimic the pocket-sized Elements of Style. She Comes First is a much longer book, by far, but then again, the subject matter is so much more deserving of attention! Over time, however, I became annoyed with the E.B. White comparisons, even though I have two degrees in English. If the constant allusions are too much for me, then they're probably annoying to even a "thinking man."

Luckily, however, on the matter of cunnilingus substance, I have no complaints.

Part I, "The Elements of Sexual Style," informs readers about the importance of cunnilingus, redirects their attention from the holy grail of vaginal orgasms to the reality of clitoral orgasms, corrects common misconceptions about female genitalia, and sways readers to see oral sex as a requirement for female sexual pleasure.