I was asked recently to comment on the view that too many women in the West are too actively doing things to be able to attract a man, that “if you have a feminine core, your natural essence isn't to pursue, but to be pursued.” The implication in the question was that if you’re out there and active in the world, then you're not 'feminine'.

One of the main reasons women don’t reach their orgasmic potential, and why men miss out on the pleasure of their woman reaching that level, is that they go too far too soon.

A woman’s body opens up in stages. If you rush the process, she won’t be able to get there. If you kiss her before she’s ready, she won’t like it. If you touch her breasts before she’s ready she’ll be repulsed and feel like you’re groping her. If you get genital before she’s ready it will feel unpleasant, even painful, and if you enter her before she’s ready she’ll feel used/abused/bored/in pain/contemptuous, or any number of negative emotions far from the ecstatic pleasure that her man is hoping for.

Women do not have an on/off button. The clitoris is not for turning a woman on, she has to be aroused before you get genital with her. A woman needs to progress in stages.

The masculine sexual energy is like fire: it comes on quickly, burns brightly and extinguishes quickly.

The feminine sexual energy is like water: it’s slow to heat up, but once it’s boiling it will boil and boil and boil and boil…

So if we divide sex into two phases, desire and response, then the masculine has more energy in the desire phase and the feminine has more energy in the response phase.

 This is why men generally tend to have a stronger libido, and why women have a greater range and intensity of arousal and orgasmic response.

While men's sexual energy tends to be like fire, it comes on quickly, burns brightly and extinguishes quickly, women's sexual energy tends to be like water: it takes longer to warm up, but once it’s hot it will boil and boil and boil…

The warmer a woman’s 'water' energy is, the more open and ready she is for sex. If she enters the sex act with icy cold-water energy, even frozen, then it’s going to take an awful lot of work to warm it up. She’ll either be averse to having sex or it will take so long to heat her up that one or both of them will give up before she gets anywhere, or she'll engage even though sh'es not ready and won't enjoy the experience.

There is a school of thought that says women should ‘just do it’. The implication being that sex really isn’t that important, it’s easy to lie there and get it over with - I guess the idea is that you can just plan the shopping list or something while he gets his necessary sexual release (as if he doesn’t have two hands available).

I find that approach abhorrent on so many levels. Most obviously, men don’t actually want obligation sex. Radical concept to some perhaps, but men actually want their partners to enjoy sex too. (Hmm, maybe men aren’t just animalist creatures wanting to get their end in?)

Less obviously, but more importantly: sex is not just sex. The vagina is exquisitely linked to a woman’s brain, her self-worth, her creativity, her joie de vivre. For her to feel good about herself and about life she needs to treat her vagina well.

A vagina that engages in gorgeous, desirable, satisfying love-making will make her owner feel wonderful. A vagina that engages in unwanted, unprepared sex (slapping on some lube is not preparation) will not make her owner feel good. The vagina is being subjected to low-level trauma and so the woman is... read more

Everyone has masculine and feminine in them. I prefer to use the terms Yin and Yang, as we have so much unhelpful meaning attached to the terms masculine and feminine. Well-developed people have a pretty good balance of both within themselves, they have both strength and softness, can protect and nurture. If we reject one, thinking the other is somehow better, we reject a major aspect of ourselves. When we reject our feminine side we become dominant and controlling, and when we reject our masculine side we become weak and dependent.

How can women embody this balance? How can we be empowered women, embracing our yin and our yang, our masculine and our feminine?  A concept I share, which a lot of women have said has been very helpful to them, is to think of  having our yin softness on the outside and yang strength on the inside. So you can trust your inner strength to allow the outer softness, your strength emanates out through softness. This is is so different to the way women had to be under the patriarchal systems that ruled for millenia, where women couldn't show their strength, and it's also different from what a lot of modern women do,... read more

Firstly, let me apologise on behalf of my profession that, in the early 21st century, we still don’t know how women’s bodies work! I find it appalling that there’s still debate over what’s in our vaginas and what effect touching various parts produces!