Pleasure Is Its Own Reward

By SARAH MUNDY

If you're looking for people who have come to their senses, look no further than acclaimed American sexual revolutionary Betty Dodson. She's spent nearly four decades encouraging everyone - especially women - to explore the pleasures of masturbation and orgasms. She's a sex educator, an artist, the author of the bestselling book Sex For One: The Joys of Selfloving and, most recently, the creator of several DVDs showcasing women's self-pleasure techniques. Better yet, she'll be in Victoria this week to present both a women's sexuality workshop and the keynote lecture at the Erotica Festival of Film and Arts. Yet despite the PhD she boasts after her name, Dodson has never been interested in dry, academic topics. "I call it erotic sex education," she says of her current work. "Pleasure is the key word."

As a pioneer of sex-positive feminism, Dodson's pro-pleasure message has influenced whole generations of sex educators and activists. "I'm the sexual mother for a lot of these younger women," Dodson says. Well-known educators and performers including Annie Sprinkle and Carol Queen attended Dodson's early "Bodysex" workshops in New York in the 1970s, before embarking on their own projects. Dodson's "field research" involving masturbation workshops, slideshows of female genitals, and other projects, is cited by most progressive sexuality institutions and was honoured with a Ph.D. by the Institute for the Advanced Study of Human Sexuality in San Francisco.

That said, her ideas are far from uncontroversial. She recently told Xtra-West, with her typical humour, "I've made it a point to be diligent about being politically incorrect. The best way to kill off the joy in sex is to determine what's correct. Barf!" She's been criticized from many sides for being, as she declares, "addicted to my vibrator" instead of focusing on device-free techniques, for refusing to distinguish between "pornography" and "erotica," for criticizing the lack of pleasure information in The Vagina Monologues, and simply for having an "extreme" reputation.

Dr. Ruth said to me, "You know Betty, I couldn't do what I've done without standing on your shoulders." I said, "Great! Why don't you write a little blurb for my next book?'" She wouldn't do it, for fear of ruining her reputation. She said I was too radical, it would be all over Page Six."

Her charm doesn't seem to waver, even talking about her frustrations. "I just have to let it go, bless everyone, and get the information out there. I have to stay strong inside myself, and remember why I'm doing this."

And why does she do this? Dodson says her focus remains on sexual pleasure because "that's the basis of sexual health." If people aren't enjoying sex or not having orgasms, that isn't sexually healthy. They're being put upon, rather than acting independently and responsibly. "I hear stories from young women that break my heart," she says, "and most of the time it's a basic lack of sex information. If you can give a woman information about self-pleasure and she can learn to have orgasms for herself, she can take that knowledge into her partnersex."

Beyond the bedroom, Dodson sees sexual pleasure as a liberating force. Her first version of "Sex For One" was called "Liberating Masturbation," and she has always drawn connections between masturbation and personal freedom. "Here's my latest statement," she tells me. "Until masturbation is universally accepted, acknowledged and celebrated, we are going to be manipulated by any authoritarian religion or government." When people are ashamed of themselves or their sexuality, she says, they are easier to lead and mislead. Dodson sees happy masturbators as a force of liberation. "You can't keep us down. We bounce back."

"It starts with ourselves. I see this as such an important thing, but even though masturbation may be more talked about now [than it was in the '60s and '70s], it's still usually a joke. It's always a funny thing to do. It's seldom treated with respect."

Clearly she still has work to do, and she keeps busy. "I would never have been able to imagine what I'm doing now. It is so far beyond where I started. I'm running as fast as I can to keep up with myself!"

excerpted from:
"Betty Dodson Highlights of the Erotica Festival."
By SARAH MUNDY
Monday Magazine May 1, 2007