Betty Dodson with Carlin Ross

Better Orgasms. Better World.

• Login
• Join

Search this site:

In the late sixties, Germaine Greer became one of my feminist heroes when I first read her article, "Lady, Love Your Cunt" in Suck, Europe's sex magazine. Then again in 1970 with her book, The Female Eunuch. Thirty years later in 1990, Marie Claire ran an article by Germaine titled "Self-Love or Self-Abuse." Below is an excerpt from the article in which my name appeared six times. It was spelled correctly I might add, for which I am grateful. After all, we know there is no such thing as bad publicity- PR is PR.

... "To become a career masturbator like Betty Dodson is to spend your intellectual and spiritual powers on vacancy. Masturbation is like housework; doing it once only leads to doing it again. It is an exercise in futility, unless like Betty Dodson, you invest it with displaced significance...by calling it liberation and praising the masturbating woman as truly independent. Betty Dodson's crowning fantasy goes like this: 'It's New Year's Eve, 1999. All the television networks have agreed to let me produce Orgasms Across America. Every TV screen will be showing high tech fine art porn created by the best talent this country has to offer. At the stroke of midnight, the entire population will be masturbating to orgasm for World Peace.'

Betty Dodson imagined that her crusade to make masturbation respectable was an important contribution to the liberation of sex. Her egregious blurting out of her own power trip makes obvious the fact that she is simply a pawn in the commercialism of sex. The TV porn industry has gone ahead without her, not only in the middle tech blue video business, but in the highest tech of all: advertising. Whether we come to orgasm in the arms of another or with ourselves, we have become a masturbating society." Germaine ends with: "Whatever became of dignity? And passion, what of it?"

My Letter to the editor: "To refer to self-sexuality as self-abuse is to dip back into the darkness of the Victorian closet with all its moral judgments, closed-minded and narrow definitions of sex. When youth fades and hormone levels drop, a woman's best friend just might be her vibrator along with her favorite dildo. I'd rather have an abundance of electric orgasms than be a bitter old woman who dislikes sex because I never found my perfect prince. I'm only 61 now, so he might come along any day. Who knows? Maybe I'll fall in love with a princess."

In 2003, Germaine came out with a book titled The Beautiful Boy, an art history book about the beauty of teenage boys illustrated with 200 photographs of what The Guardian called "succulent teenage male beauty," alleging that Greer had appeared to reinvent herself as a "middle-aged pederast." Greer described her book as an attempt to address women's apparent indifference to the teenage boy as a sexual object and to "advance women's reclamation of their capacity for, and right to, visual pleasure." When she makes statements like that, I remember why I originally thought she was so terrific. Of course women have the right to develop an erotic eye for male beauty, which is usually, if not exclusively, the realm of youth.

Not to brag, but in 1999, I fell in love with a beautiful boy. Eric Wilkinson was twenty-two finishing up his last year of college. I was sixty-nine, about to enter the youth of old age when I would turn seventy in eight months. He contacted me after reading my book Sex for One, telling me it was one of the best sex book he'd ever read. We not only had a torrid affair but he moved in with me and he's still here in 2007. So after many years of happily masturbating and enjoying the occasional casual sex encounter, my prince charming did indeed show up. I've watched him grow from a beautiful boy into a handsome young man who has become my protégé.

At first I saw Eric's time with me limited to a short period of sexual fun, but within six months he'd replaced my assistant and was working with me full-time. We were having partnersex nearly everyday. What a delight to be fucking whenever we felt like it without any concern for birth control or condoms; one of the benefits of being a postmenopausal woman. I always enjoy looking at him moving around the apartment naked- a living work of art with his broad shoulders narrowing down to a firm tight ass with strong muscular legs. His youthful playfulness is charming and he's always available for any kind of sex with a perfectly sized penis and a perpetual hardon. I'd found the perfect boy toy.

Meanwhile, I kept expecting him to move into his own place with a roommate so I could reclaim my apartment. I knew it was a disaster for two people to live, work and have sex together under the same roof- a dynamic I counseled couples to avoid. On top of that, I'd promised myself to never have another roommate or to ever live with a lover again. I was breaking all of my own rules. At one point I blamed this temporary insanity on my Y2K fears that the world could quite possibly fall apart if computers failed.

At the end of our first year together, I finally stopped trying to get rid of Eric and embraced the joy he brought into my life. I decided he was a divine gift from the universe, my reward for years of promoting masturbation and teaching thousands of women how to have orgasms. I began to graciously accept his bright shinning presence. After all, the combination of older men with younger women has been a part of history since the beginning of time. People accept and even admire men who do this. However, if an older woman claims the same rights, it threatens our authoritarian society that wants to maintain the sexual double standard. Given that I'm competitive, I decided to fully enjoy the same privilege that men have always taken for granted.

In many ways our mentor/student relationship makes sense historically. Tribal cultures had older aunts and uncles teaching sex to young people. In the Tantra tradition, older women were the teachers. My Native American ancestors had a tribal Fire Woman, a wise elder who taught sex to the young braves. When people worshipped a female deity and human sexuality was revered, the Goddess's consorts were young virile men whose sole purpose was to provide Her with sexual pleasure. Besides, there isn't a single discipline on the planet that doesn't value mentoring.

When we first began living together, I received a lot of kidding from friends who took an excessive amount of pleasure reminding me of all the years I'd bad-mouthed couples who were joined at the hip. I often referred to them as living in "pair-bondage" as I detailed the pitfalls of co-dependent relationships to anyone who would listen. Needless to say I was brutal when it came to criticizing romantic love. I know because I've had a lot of experience falling into love with men who could never measure up to my many idealized expectations, which is not really their fault, now is it?

Over the years Eric's heard all the accusations about having a sugar mama, being a star fuck, a gold digger and a mama's boy. I've been told I'm robbing the cradle, spoiling him, and because of me he'll never grow up. His friends think I'm taking advantage of him and my friends think he's taking advantage of me. While all of this may or may not be true, it's precisely our age difference that allows us to have so much fun together. We are both equally dedicated to exploring and refining the art of partnersex. I adore having him as my apprentice, my assistant and my consort. Before jumping to any conclusions, let me assure everyone that we have never been monogamous and I don't expect our erotic love to last "forever." It will last for as long as it's good.

After living as a committed self-sexual single for nearly two decades, retracing my steps through another heterosexual love affair was unexpected, demanding, and also delightful. Make no mistake, this time around I was under no illusions. Given the best of circumstances, the ideal of two people living together while expecting great sex to be part of the picture indefinitely is highly improbable or akin to a miracle. It amazes me why more people don't question the sanity of trying to make the entire world come in two's, like the animals boarding Noah's Ark. Okay, okay! I'll be the first to admit that the early stages of partnersex when two people are in love or in lust can be quite extraordinary. That's the reason we're willing to pair off- we get hooked after a few months of rip-snorting orgasms and end up saying, "I do" or we ask them to move in with us. In the heat of the moment, we forget that romantic sex, like most things, follows the law of diminishing returns.

Today, nearly nine years after we first met, our sexlife is now in transition. We managed to have hot sex regularly for nearly five years before it began to cool down, little by little. Not on his part, but more on mine. At the beginning of 2007, I told Eric I wanted to take some of the emphasis off of our partnersex, explaining it had nothing to do with my feelings toward him. I still loved him dearly, but I wanted to spend more time and energy on my creative projects. We are in such different places now. I'm working on my end game while he's at the beginning of his. Instead of relying on him for my best orgasms, I felt a need to get more in touch with myself. Yup, it's back to masturbation and meditation with the occasional afternoon in bed doing what I described in Orgasms For Two: my knees on the edge of the bed, my behind in his hands, a vibrator on my clit while he slowly moves inside me. That coupled with an abundance of affectionate hugs, kisses and cuddles keeps our time together very sweet.

More to the point, I also knew it was time for my beautiful boy, who is now a handsome thirty year-old man, to spread his wings and spend more time flying solo. With my blessing, he has been enjoying sex with women his own age. I can't honestly say I've been free of jealousy during this recent transition. Often I fear losing him while at the same time I remain willing to release him. Sometimes I envy his youth as I watch him thrill to a new sexual adventure. It reminds me of myself when I was in my mid-thirties. I've also had moments of sadness wishing we were closer in age so I could join him in his sexual adventures. However our glass is definitely half full. We continue to make a great team as we build our little business of promoting sexual pleasure with the help of my website that was set up by Grant Taylor in 1998.

My ability to be sexually non-possessive goes back to my years with Grant who continues to be my current webmaster. Together we explored America's sexual revolution and learned that the essence of loving another person was the ability to let go, not to own them by demanding sexual fidelity. When I wrote about this in Sex for One, I described our sexual friendship as a different kind of love story. We lose sight of the fact that marital vows of life-long monogamy is a concept that was invented by organized religions to make sure we are all sinners who can easily be manipulated with sexual guilt.

After years of believing that one of my many women assistants would carry on my work, none of them stepped up to the plate. One of the best aspects of having Eric as my first apprentice is resting assured that these concepts will live on in another person long after I am gone. Eric is secure and strong enough to carry on my selfloving message: establish a vibrant sexual relationship with yourself and my partnersex message: blend emotional intimacy with sophisticated sexual skills.

So Germaine, my dear sister feminist, some career masturbators end up a lot happier than some traditional academics. However, I will always admire your ability to shake things up, to speak your mind no matter what people think, and in the end, I have agreed with most of what you have written with one exception: That masturbation is a worthless activity. I believe that until the entire world accepts self-sexuality as the foundation for all of human sexual activity, people will be fearful and angry, and societies will continue to be manipulated by authoritarian governments and religions.