@megan
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I truly cheered for Betty when she was in the thick of her sexual explorations, travelling to Europe, being wooed and seduced by wealthy lovers and group sex parties expanding her expression, playing with all genders and the feeling of “rightness” that I share with her, being in naked and sexual spaces. Full embodiment, joy and pleasure that she was experiencing was intensely palpable and I mourn for folks who will never get to experience that kind of freedom. She lived clit to the wall and inspired all of us to join her in the hedonistic ritual of life.
<p class=”p1″>There are so many chapters of this book that delight me and I come back to: when Betty goes through her celibate priestess phase writing Liberating Masturbation in LA, when she attend the gay men’s bathhouse (a personal fantasy), but one I recall the best and holds several opposing elements at once is when she goes back to Kansas and supports her mother in palliative care in her childhood home and has the scary/hot sexual interaction on a summer night with a stranger. What a fucking story! the pacing of it delights me, I constantly think “you can’t write this shit!” but she DID! and she lived it. Betty you inspire me endlessly. Thank you for your stories and your wisdom.</p>
I squealed out loud at this one “What a year it had been! I’d gone from being a sexually frustrated monogamous wife to becoming an independent sex adventurer – a sexual anthropologist of sorts.”
I loved this and was delighted because this is also a term I’ve self identified with before I knew that she had as well.
I have always felt such a kinship with Betty, her artist mentality, her lack of filter or fucks to give patriarchal, heterosexual, capitalist society. She was making the connections between all these systems before others were making the connections. She ruffled so many feathers and really got off on making people uncomfortable when she spoke out about the harm society did to women. She evolved by leaps and bound in her own exploration, leading to a life that amazed and shocked everyone she came across. You can’t help but love her. I feel an ancestral/mentorship kinship with her and feel her always finding her way to me along me journey.
Because I started out my masturbation as a child with humping a teddy bear and then a macrame blanket well into my teens, touching myself was initially uncomfortable because I didn’t like the idea of my hands getting wet or sticky. It’s a strange thing to recall back on, because now I love touching my vulva. Giving her massage, sniffing her on my hand, tasting her (my hand or my partners face!) all feel integral to my adult self love practice. It’s always empowering to track how she’s doing throughout my cycle and her health and mine are linked so I know intuitively how to care for my health.
When I feel disconnected, anxious or stressed, knowing I can always come back to being curiosity of my own body and re-centre.Today she’s smelling musky, tangy and tastes a bit salty and umami flavour. Somedays I’m no addicted to the smell and wish I could bottle it up and make millions. I especially find it fun and funny when it smells a but like freshly sharpened lead pencil. The taste doesn’t change too much, mostly the tangy salty flavour, sometimes it don’t even taste like anything.
I enjoy patting and grinding my palm and the heel of my hand up and down over the outer labia. I like stroking my middle two fingers up and down my inner labia with oil and building up tension. I will include stroking my perineum and my anus and bringing long loop circles up and around my clitoris and down again. My favourite thing to do is gently dipping two fingers into my vaginal opening and stroking up and down across my vulva, just slightly pushing in and sensing the tension of my vaginal opening that resists my fingers and that buildup of tension can make me have an orgasm.
I have been practising vulva massage and intentional masturbation for most of my life, but the inclusion of Bodysex and the energy of sacred sensuality gives me so much more fulfilment when I prioritize making it a part of my self-love practice. Personally, I am a sex witch, and I deeply value the spiritual and somatic connection that this practice offers to my ongoing play in this realm. Revisiting this work reminds me to make sure that I am making it a regular practice and not waiting longer than a month between deeper sessions. I currently live in a room with two large mirrors and a lush carpet. I enjoy playing music and sprawling out on the floor with candles and a joint, oil, glass of water and have a fantastic time exploring myself. I’d like to add a shorter but still intentional massage before I masturbate so my maintenance pleasure can also be imbued with this energy.
I love the process of being talked through my self-pleasure. I’ve subscribed to a few audio erotica and meditation apps that have really supported my sensual exploration in recent years, and this recording supported me in a very similar way. It’s very supportive for me to have outside structure that allows me to take away the responsibility of maintaining a slower pace and essentially being Dommed into dropping in with presence and not rushing towards pleasure or orgasm. It’s amazing how much the breath work and allowing my body to move with intention while taking time to explore my vulva, clitoris and vagina from a deeply curious place. I always feel so much more satisfied and deeply connected to myself when I take the time to be intentionally creative in my sexuality and I’m grateful to Carlin for creating this recording that I can return to.
There are so many positive outcomes from sharing our genitals with each other. Belonging in a community of sisterhood. Witnessing and recognition of our similarities and differences that make us all unique and beautiful without comparison or competition. Normalising all the unique features of our genitals and loving them as our power and pleasure centres. Seeing something about ourselves and each other that brings us pleasure, that we all face challenges in our lives connected to our bodies and our sexualities – we are not alone.
The Viva La Vulva video has so much nostalgia for a time before social media and the layers of complicated comparisons and body/sex negativity and censorship. It’s joyful, the women are free, confident and still experiencing something new and boundary pushing with assertiveness and assurance that sharing that kind of experience isn’t scary. The Women hearing from each other their admiration of the unique styles and types of vulvas, labias, clitori, vaginal openings, and assholes 😀It’s wild that we know how vastly different every person’s face and body is and have no problem depicting that diversity in media and education, and yet we only ever see two generic types of genitals represented. It’s no wonder most people fear being abnormal to what we typically see represented. I’m an artist and also especially interested in erotic art and representations of vuvas, and even find myself stuck for inspirations of the diversity of genitals because there aren’t enough real examples that I can turn to. A realization is certainly how few vulvas have seen the light of day or that have been accurately represented. Some jealousy of Betty and Carlin and how many vulvas they’e collectively witnessed! Each time I get to gaze at my vulva in the right setting (the good lighting and self sat makeup mirror are key and I don’t always haver access to them) and different contexts- phase of my cycle, aroused or unaroused- I learn more about her. Much like I find the changes in my own face interesting, I find my vulva’s expression just as mesmerising.
Recently within my sex education certification program, they offered another term: “vaginal corona” to describe the elastic-like tissue surrounding the opening of the vagina (which would include skin tags and folds) and did away with the term hymen all together. I like this framing since we know that the description of “hymen” itself is anatomically inaccurate (when people think of it, the visual is of a seal or cover to the opening – which, as seen in the diagrams in the prior topic pages is INCREDIBLY rare).
I also like to explain to folks that the tissue that they think of as the hymen, but is actually the vaginal corona, is something that starts the same as the webbing between our fingers and toes in utero that get “eaten” (kinda) by enzymes and some bits of tissue remain until puberty then thin out/stretch to create more of an opening for menstruation and penetration.
Bleeding caused by tearing is caused by lack of arousal (and therefore blood and vaginal fluids not being present in the clitoris and vulva), lack of time and patience, lack of proficiency and lack of lubricant
I’m incredibly fortunate to have gotten to do genital show and tell with Betty and Carlin back in 2017 and getting to be in a Vulva-social environment during the first Menla retreat and sharing genital show and tell with a couple of attendees who had never been to one before. Very recently, I did a one-on-one session with Emma Snellgrove and got to do another deep dive into getting to know her again during a current life transition.. I’ve since done it a couple of times on my own, and I’m really enjoying my deepening relationship with her.
Her name is Cunny (Cunt + Hunny)
She is bold and furry. She has wings that extend from the top just under where the skin connects to my clitoral hood, much like a Samurai kimono sleeves. They are long and I remember Betty commenting on and thinking I might’ve had longer in her lips than her! She has a dusty rose colour and a darker pinky brown eyeliner around the edge as the top inner lips connect to the fourchette at the bottom, where the inner lips are shorter. I’d say I have a medium-size clitoris, sensitive, and well-protected by the hood, but easily found when I pull the skin open. My pussy is strong and she will be quite lippy when I squeeze up and lift (she’s been known to push out penises and dildos quite easily). I very much like the smell and taste of her during most times in my cycle, and she has a funny habit of grabbing onto bits of toilet paper and saving them for later. She gives me tons of pleasure and makes me laugh.I can’t recall exactly when I would have first looked at my vulva, but I do assume I did it as a young person. I know that when I discovered “Sex for One” and within the year had decided to take a workshop, I definitely would have taken the time to look before attending. I’m an A+ student and did a lot of things preemptively when it came to my body and sex. For example, I tried inserting tampons before I got my period so I would know what to do and I also chose to penetrate myself with a sex toy before having penetrative intercourse with a partner, so it makes sense that I would have done my homework ahead of the workshop to get to know her a bit before doing it in front of Betty 🤣
The documentary was lovely. It was so wonderful to see Betty in her Wise crone era in full power, getting to record the transcendence of genital show and tell and adding the photo shoot. It was so wholesome, so welcoming, and I truly feel such joy as well as grief, watching a style of media and approach that was had before social media, and the impact that it has had a negative affect on women’s body confidence. It’s clear these women have been influenced by media and culture, but still at a time when they could make up their own minds and opinions for themselves, and that really shone through. Getting to see the photo shoot brought back a similar feeling to when Betty was in San Francisco and shaved her friend’s head. It was so relaxed, joyful, playful, and unique. I absolutely love being in these spaces. I loved the approach and encouragement of the photographer! She clearly got Betty’s vision 🙂
I’ve been so fortunate to see so many vulvas and get to know the women they are an integral part of. I get reconnected to my vulva frequently and take time to converse with her, massage her and create art inspired by her. I love Betty’s vulva drawings, and she has definitely solidified in me the confidence I feel advocating for vulvas and their rightful acknowledgement as the root seed and gem of a woman’s sexual expression. I love celebrating their unique styles and further learning and being curious about their designs, structures and functions for exploratory pleasure. I recently went into a spiritual/sexual small business shop where an artist had candles in the shapes of penises and vulvas. They were beautiful, and I know they were all the same for being cost-effective with one mould, but I lamented that they couldn’t all be designed as uniquely and realisticly in their variation as Betty’s drawings. Art has SUCH a profound healing capacity for this misunderstood and stunning part of the female body.
