Book picks similar to
The Ultimate Guide to Cunnilingus: How to Go Down on a Woman and Give Her Exquisite Pleasure by Violet Blue
sexuality
sex
nonfiction
non-fiction
We: A Manifesto for Women Everywhere
Gillian Anderson - 2017
It’s about transitioning from a me-first culture and imagining what a we-based world might look like. In We, Anderson and Nadel ask why so many women are locked in cycles of depression, addiction, self-criticism, and even self-harm. How much more effective and powerful would we all be if we replaced our current patterns of competition, criticism, and comparison with collaboration, cooperation, and compassion? Putting these values at the center of our lives allows each of us to be happier and more empowered, and to replace harmful habits with a more positive, peaceful, and rewarding way of being. We is a rallying cry for “every woman, everywhere on the planet. Open to any page. And there you will find a truth that can set you free” (Christiane Northrup, MD, author of Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom).
How to Love a Woman: On Intimacy and the Erotic Life of Women
Clarissa Pinkola Estés - 1993
Est�s teaches that in love relationships, each partner challenges, nourishes, and transforms the other. To achieve this lifelong love requires an understanding of the mysterious internal cycles that fuel relationships.Through irresistible storytelling, How to Love a Woman shows how every relationship fades and expires, only to be reborn in a fresh and strengthened form.
The Joy of Gay Sex
Charles Silverstein - 1977
A full decade has now passed since the last update, and while the gay community has seen improved treatments for AIDS, more positive media coverage, new forums for the expression of community, and more favorable laws, there continues to be an urgent need for this book’s brand of positive and responsible advice.Invaluable not only as a sex guide but as a resource on building self-esteem, and a coming out guide for young gay men, The Joy of Gay Sex addresses the many emotional and relationship-oriented issues in gay life, from long-term couples and one-night stands, to loneliness and growing older. It also serves as a general reference on a number of diverse topics, including living wills and insurance.
Read My Lips: A Complete Guide to Vaginal and Vulvar Health, Culture, and Pleasure
Debby Herbenick - 2011
The primary purpose of Read My Lips is to educate women and men about the vulva and vagina in a manner that is smart, informative, and entertaining. Readers, both women and men alike, will come to think differently about women's genitals and become a little more curious and a lot more comfortable with them. They will learn more about the female body in terms of health, sex, pleasure, culture, and art. Though based on sound scientific and medical research, Read My Lips will be accessible to the masses, so women and men who are curious about the clitoris, Brazilian waxing, labiaplasty or whether the G-spot really exists, will find something of interest in these pages. Chapters focus on sex and the vulva/vagina which, in spite of the many interesting cultural and historical aspects of vulva and vagina lore, remains of central interest to many people - as it should given that women's genitals and how they work, especially in regard to sex, remain a mystery to so many well-intentioned lovers. In keeping with the overall theme of celebration and education, the authors take a sex-positive, pleasure-focused perspective on women's genitals, pointing out the parts that can help women to enjoy sex and feel more comfortable in their own bodies. Tips on technique will also be shared alongside information on vaginal health.
Sex is a Funny Word: A Book about Bodies, Feelings, and YOU
Cory Silverberg - 2015
Much more than the "facts of life" or “the birds and the bees," Sex Is a Funny Word opens up conversations between young people and their caregivers in a way that allows adults to convey their values and beliefs while providing information about boundaries, safety, and joy.The eagerly anticipated follow up to Lambda-nominated What Makes a Baby, from sex educator Cory Silverberg and artist Fiona Smyth, Sex Is a Funny Word reimagines "sex talk" for the twenty-first century.
You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in Conversation
Deborah Tannen - 1990
This is the book that brought gender differences in ways of speaking to the forefront of public awareness. With a rare combination of scientific insight and delightful, humorous writing, Tannen shows why women and men can walk away from the same conversation with completely different impressions of what was said.Studded with lively and entertaining examples of real conversations, this book gives you the tools to understand what went wrong -- and to find a common language in which to strengthen relationships at work and at home. A classic in the field of interpersonal relations, this book will change forever the way you approach conversations.
Sexy Origins and Intimate Things: The Rites and Rituals of Straights, Gays, Bis, Drags, Trans, Virgins, and Others
Charles Panati - 1998
Obsessed with getting to the root of things, Panati reveals facts that will surprise even the most informed reader.
Love Thy Body: Answering Hard Questions about Life and Sexuality
Nancy R. Pearcey - 2018
A two-time winner of the ECPA Gold Medallion Award, Pearcey has been hailed by The Economist as "America's preeminent evangelical Protestant female intellectual." In Love Thy Body she offers a respectful but riveting exposE of the secular worldview that lies behind trendy slogans and political talking points. A former agnostic, Pearcey is a sensitive guide to the secular ideas that shape current debates. She empowers readers to intelligently and compassionately engage today's most controversial moral and social challenges.In a surprise shattering of stereotypes, Pearcey demonstrates that while secularism promises much, in reality it delivers little. She turns the tables on stereotypes that portray Christianity as harsh and bigoted, and invites a fresh look at its holistic, life-affirming principles: it is a worldview that matches the real world and fits with human experience.All along, Pearcey keeps readers entranced with gripping stories of real people wrestling with hard questions in their own lives--sharing their pain, their struggles, and their triumphs.
Love's Not Color Blind: Race and Representation in Polyamorous and Other Alternative Communities
Kevin A. Patterson - 2018
To make polyamorous communities inclusive, we must all acknowledge our part in perpetuating racism and listen to people of color. Love's Not Color Blind puts forward the framework—through research, anecdotal testimony, and analogy—for understanding, identifying, and confronting racism within polyamorous communities.
The Polyamorists Next Door: Inside Multiple-Partner Relationships and Families
Elisabeth Sheff - 2013
At the same time, gay couples in states that recognize same-sex marriage are getting married in droves. Some people prefer non-monogamy and have relationships that include swinging and polyamory. The landscape of American marriage and relationships is changing, and a variety of family systems are developing and becoming more common. The Polyamorists Next Door introduces polyamorous families, in which people are free to pursue emotional, romantic, and sexual relationships with multiple people at the same time, openly and with support from their partners, sometimes forming multi-partner relationships, or other arrangements that allow for emotional and sexual freedom within the family system. In colorful and moving details, this book explores how polyamorous relationships come to be, grow and change, manage the ins and outs of daily family life, and cope with the challenges they face both within their families and from society at large. Using polyamorists' own words, Dr. Elisabeth Sheff examines polyamorous households and reveals their advantages, disadvantages, and the daily lives of those living in them. While polyamorous families are increasingly common, fairly little is known about them outside of their own social circles or of the occasional media sensationalism. This book provides information that will be useful for professionals with polyamorous clients, educators who wish to understand or teach about polyamory, and especially people who wish to better understand polyamory themselves or explain it to their potential partners, adult children, or in-laws.
Sex Outside the Lines: Authentic Sexuality in a Sexually Dysfunctional Culture
Chris Donaghue - 2015
The connection is electric. They fall in love, marry and have amazing sex. Soon there are children, and then grandchildren. They grow old, loving one another for the rest of their lives. What’s wrong with this picture? Absolutely nothing, if you are one of the relatively small group of people whose lives work out this way.What’s wrong is that we’ve defined this as “normal,” which makes most of us “abnormal.”In The New Sex, Dr. Chris Donaghue describes the holes in society’s definition of “normal,” taking a sharp eye to institutions such as marriage, cheating, virginity, identity, and sexual orientation. He also examines all the ways that accepting society’s “truths” have led to the demise of long-term relationships and sexual pleasure. All of this misinformation is showing up in your bedroom and preventing you from having the sex life you’re entitled to.In Donaghue’s years of training in sex and couples therapy, he has developed highly successful methods for freeing clients from sexual hang-ups, enabling them to let go of shame and embarrassment. Donaghue pulls apart cultural phobias with a “sex positive” therapy practice, a kind of sexual deprograming that helps people see and accept the desires they have—even if they don’t align with societal expectations—are really natural, healthy, and part of having a great sex life.
Girlhood
Melissa Febos - 2021
A wise and brilliant guide to transforming the self and our society.In her powerful new book, critically acclaimed author Melissa Febos examines the narratives women are told about what it means to be female and what it takes to free oneself from them.When her body began to change at eleven years old, Febos understood immediately that her meaning to other people had changed with it. By her teens, she defined herself based on these perceptions and by the romantic relationships she threw herself into headlong. Over time, Febos increasingly questioned the stories she’d been told about herself and the habits and defenses she’d developed over years of trying to meet others’ expectations. The values she and so many other women had learned in girlhood did not prioritize their personal safety, happiness, or freedom, and she set out to reframe those values and beliefs.Blending investigative reporting, memoir, and scholarship, Febos charts how she and others like her have reimagined relationships and made room for the anger, grief, power, and pleasure women have long been taught to deny.Written with Febos’ characteristic precision, lyricism, and insight, Girlhood is a philosophical treatise, an anthem for women, and a searing study of the transitions into and away from girlhood, toward a chosen self.
Why Does He Do That?: Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men
Lundy Bancroft - 2002
So...why does he do that? You've asked yourself this question again and again. Now you have the chance to see inside the minds of angry and controlling men--and change your life. In Why Does He Do That? you will learn about:The early warning signs of abuse- The nature of abusive thinking- Myths about abusers- Ten abusive personality types- The role of drugs and alcohol- What you can fix, and what you can't- And how to get out of an abusive relationship safelyPrevention Programs, Harvard School of Public Health
How Sex Works: Why We Look, Smell, Taste, Feel, and Act the Way We Do
Sharon Moalem - 2009
It’s almost as much fun, and needs less energy.” — Peter Macinnis, author of 100 Discoveries: The Greatest Breakthroughs in History "How Sex Works manages to inject science writing with the prurient thrill of a gossip rag." —O magazineMedical maverick and New York Times bestselling author of Survival of the Sickest Dr. Sharon Moalem presents an insightful and engaging voyage through the surprising history and evolution of sexual reproduction. Fans of Freakonomics, Blink, You: The Owner’s Manual, and Why Do Men Have Nipples will find many engaging insights in How Sex Works.
Born Both: An Intersex Life
Hida Viloria - 2017
My name is Hida Viloria. I was raised as a girl but discovered at a young age that my body looked different. Having endured an often turbulent home life as a kid, there were many times when I felt scared and alone, especially given my attraction to girls. But unlike most people in the first world who are born intersex--meaning they have genitals, reproductive organs, hormones, and/or chromosomal patterns that do not fit standard definitions of male or female--I grew up in the body I was born with because my parents did not have my sex characteristics surgically altered at birth. It wasn't until I was twenty-six and encountered the term intersex in a San Francisco newspaper that I finally had a name for my difference. That's when I began to explore what it means to live in the space between genders--to be both and neither. I tried living as a feminine woman, an androgynous person, and even for a brief period of time as a man. Good friends would not recognize me, and gay men would hit on me. My gender fluidity was exciting, and in many ways freeing--but it could also be isolating. I had to know if there were other intersex people like me, but when I finally found an intersex community to connect with I was shocked, and then deeply upset, to learn that most of the people I met had been scarred, both physically and psychologically, by infant surgeries and hormone treatments meant to "correct" their bodies. Realizing that the invisibility of intersex people in society facilitated these practices, I made it my mission to bring an end to it--and became one of the first people to voluntarily come out as intersex at a national and then international level.Born Both is the story of my lifelong journey toward finding love and embracing my authentic identity in a world that insists on categorizing people into either/or, and of my decades-long fight for human rights and equality for intersex people everywhere.