Lucy-Anne Holmes is the author of the funny, moving and intimate memoir, Don’t Hold My Head Down, which has been making waves and starting conversations since it was launched in February this year. She also appeared at our recent Festival of New Masculinity as a brilliant panellist at our event about ‘What’s changed since #metoo?’

Here she explores some aspects of female sexuality that men can often overlook. Please share this story, this is life-changing stuff that every man should know…

1) It all starts at the heart

The positive sexual pole for a woman is the heart area. This positive sexual pole has to be awakened and stimulated in order to really activate the yoni (vulva and vagina) so that it will welcome you and let you in. For men it’s the other way around, their positive sexual pole is the penis, which is why genital touch early on tends to work much better for men than women. On a woman if you go straight for the clitoris or vagina it will most likely feel a bit nothing-y or uncomfortable.

Stimulate the heart area, include the lips, neck, shoulders, chest, the whole breast (leaving the nipple until last) before exploring the yoni.

2) The whole of a woman’s body has the potential to be an erogenous zone

Most men tend just to concentrate on the clitoris, vagina and perhaps also the nipples.  Heading straight to these highly erogenous zones can be too much too soon, so much so, there might be more pain than pleasure, or it can take a long, long time for these areas to heat up. Widen your landscape. Enjoy stimulating (with strokes, nibbles, kisses etc) the neck, shoulders, waist, lips, ears, scalp, inside of the wrists, armpits, inner thighs, behind the knees, back, you get the gist!

Activate the entire body with arousal and energy.

 3) The magic happens the slower you go

There is a real longing amongst the women I speak to for slow sex, as opposed to the speedy routines of porn. The female body is capable of some incredible pleasure and amazing orgasms, but the ones that ricochet through your body for hours afterwards and cause you to howl like a beast released from a cave, aren’t quickly won.

Think of slowly building sexual arousal and energy.

4) Less can often be more

No pounding, please. We have been slammed, smashed and banged enough. Many men associate sex with the hard penetration of porn but for many women this is painful or unpleasant (the thing I hear again and again is ‘it really hurts’) or can only be enjoyed after a really long build up of arousal.

Very often less is more. Try just holding still inside us and see what happens, let us gyrate and find the rhythm. Hold a hand nearly but not quite touching a breast. Hover your tongue over a clitoris.

You can do less than you think.

5) We can find it hard to voice our desires

Hundreds of years of women not having had a voice in society, and having been socialised to please men, means that it can often be really hard for us to state our needs and desires around sex. You think it should be easy to say ‘I’m not ready for that’ or ‘could you touch me there a bit gentler, please’ but it’s like learning to use a new muscle (one that has been out of action for 1000s of years) Bear with us, we are working on this!

If you don’t think we are enjoying something you are probably right. Stop. Ask. Talk. The more we talk about sex the better we will get at it.

6) You can help us to heal 

The physical body retains memories of all that it has experienced. You fall over as a child, you get a scar or a dodgy hip in later years. The yoni is no different. Think about what this area might have been through, childbirth, stitches, female genital cutting, sexual abuse and rape. Not to mention the shame, embarrassment and guilt many women have around this intimate area.

Women are reclaiming their bodies and their sexuality after thousands of years of patriarchal Christian control. To put it mildly this is a bittersweet time. On the one hand we are witnessing seismic electrifying empowerment, but on the other, well, as we know from #metoo there is pain, and there is trauma and there is suffering, much of which is being shared, revisited and hopefully healed.

This is a lot for you guys to hold, I know, but do try to hold it, and hold us. Please don’t be afraid to show us your gentleness, and access your inner strength to simply witness what might be coming up emotionally for us. Feel honored that we can share this with you, it’s a sign that we feel safe and loved. Thank you for helping us to heal.

Approach the yoni with the tenderness and reverence it deserves.

‘Don’t Hold My Head Down’ by Lucy-Anne Holmes is out now. 

Photo below of Lucy by Laura Dodsworth.