To talk about the clitoris is to say that women’s sexual satisfaction matters.

To even use that word-clitoris, the clit, the only human organ devoted solely to pleasure-is to change the conversation around sexuality to make equal room for discussion of female erotic gratification. When I get the students talking about it, they gleefully suggest the phrase Going to Clit City instead of Pound Town.

To then introduce the term cliteracy-literacy about the clitoris, a savviness about women’s sexuality-is to speak a truth that is silenced and suppressed by the traditional cultural scripts about gender and sexuality. The truth: female sexual pleasure centers on the clitoris. It is to shift discourse away from a vagina to be penetrated to a clitoris to be stimulated. Ultimately, it is to affirm women as full and equal sexual citizens.

Here’s the thing: penetration doesn’t work for most women. It is not a reliable pathway to climax. The problem, at its core, is that vaginal intercourse favors male orgasm. Penis-in-vagina sex quite reliably brings heterosexual men to orgasm. Less so heterosexual women.

According to numerous science-based studies, only about 25 percent of women consistently reach orgasm from vaginal penetration alone. Much more consistently, what brings more women the most pleasure-and what leads most easily to female orgasm-is stimulation of the clitoris. Over 90 percent of women who masturbate do so with little or no vaginal penetration, concentrating on clitoral stimulation instead. As sex educator Dr. Emily Nagoski puts it, “The clitoris really is the hokey pokey.” That’s what it’s all about.

Time to start reclaiming the politics of pleasure. Doing so means that those people who’ve been shut out of experiencing sensual delight regain access to the pleasures of which their bodies are capable. The gender and sexual scripts have encouraged a disconnect in women from the full pleasures of their bodies, as much as in men from the full range of their emotions. Neither result is good. In an ideal world, children of all genders are allowed to develop into whole human beings, encouraged to connect fully with the goodness of their bodies and the depth of their emotions. In an ideal world, society respects the rights of all bodies to feel good. That’s the world of the Manisexto.

Greater cliteracy addresses the heterosexual orgasm gap caused by the problems of power-over relationships, by shaming and double standards in the gender and sexual scripts, and by one-sided porn and hookups. The lesson of cliteracy is to close that orgasm gap through less emphasis on the penis as the magic wand of pleasure and on penetration as the means of pleasure delivery.

That’s the old-school script-that sex “means” a man putting his penis in a woman’s vagina. Penetrative intercourse has been the norm, functioning as more or less the standard cultural definition of sex, despite its one-sidedness. There’s even a slang acronym for it: PIVMO, for “penis-in-vagina-male-orgasm” sex. As one of my students says, “We can’t get away from dick.”

This penetrative norm is certainly one major form of intimacy. And it’s a technique that works for pregnancy, if that’s your goal. But if the goal is shared pleasure in the heterosexual bed, it’s best to add in other techniques as well. Give the gal a hand, with some fingering; a tongue, with some oral sex; a vibrator, with some sex toys. Ask her what feels good for her and listen closely for the words and body language of her answer.

Women’s sexual pleasure is less assured in heterosexual coupling when the master narrative favors vaginal intercourse. Cliteracy instead changes the definition of sex away from penetration to whatever forms of intimacy bring mutual good feelings to the partners. Expanding this definition reduces anxiety and pressure for guys, as well. The whole notion of “erectile dysfunction” and “premature ejaculation” assumes that a man needs a hard erection for a long time to be a good lover and bring his partner to orgasm. Cliteracy teaches the simple message that he doesn’t. Much unnecessary shame and deception follows from this false assumption: Women faking orgasms so the guy doesn’t feel inadequate, to spare his feelings, or simply to end a session that isn’t doing it for her. Guys worried they’ll be judged and mocked as a “one-minute man” or a “two-pump chump.” It’s time for less anxiety and more enjoyment for guys, too, with freedom for them to explore wider genital pleasures (their prostate and anus, for example).

Cliteracy queers-it calls into question and transforms-the penis-in-vagina penetrative norm as the be-all and end-all of sex. It offers alternatives and opens a wider vision. It doesn’t matter how quickly a man reaches climax in an encounter, as long as his orgasm doesn’t end the action for a partner who would still like to experience her own. A man does not need his magic wand ever-erect penis to make that happen. A generous and cliterate lover knows he has other options available to him, and he’s open to exploring his own wider ranging landscape of pleasure.

Cliteracy gets us beyond the convention of phallic penetration, with its limitations as a pathway to pleasure for women. It explores more diverse depictions of what gives most women more gratification: clitoral stimulation, with or without penetration, the solo joys of masturbation, and a wide range of body pleasures, all in a safe and supportive context. Everyone ends up happier all around: less shame and anxiety and faking it; more pleasure, mutuality, and making it.

Cliteracy gets us equity of pleasure.

The orgasm gap is not only about the individual. This new wave of cliteracy has been gaining ground in various twenty-first-century conversations about what it means for society itself to become more cliterate and knowledgeable about female sexuality.

The work of conceptual artist Sophia Wallace is one trailblazing example of “artivism”-the interplay or overlap of activism (in Wallace’s case, feminist activism) with art. Wallace’s Cliteracy Project-originating in a 2012 art exhibit at a New York gallery and now encompassing a documentary film and ongoing mixed-media installations-features one hundred “natural laws” or truths and aphorisms about the clitoris and, more broadly, about the cultural illiteracy around women’s sexuality.

These natural laws include:

. No Justice, No Peace, No Orgasm, No Liberty.

. Penetration with a penis is just one of innumerable ways to have sex.

. Democracy without Cliteracy? Phallusy.

. 99% of porn is a monocrop of rapid penetration gratuitous ejaculation 1% plot and 0% cliteracy.

. The world isn’t flat and women don’t orgasm from their vaginas.

Wallace frames cliteracy as a way to address head-on a pernicious cultural blind spot: the paradox of “the global obsession with sexualizing female bodies in a world that is maddeningly illiterate when it comes to female sexuality.” Through her art, Wallace’s goal is to correct ongoing misconceptions about sexuality, expose media misrepresentation, highlight the horrors of female genital mutilation, create open dialogue, and celebrate the right to human thriving and creativity for everyone.

One of Wallace’s most intriguing “natural laws of cliteracy” is the claim that “freedom in society can be measured by the distribution of orgasms.” One measure of who is most free in society is who can access the most pleasure. Those who have the freest agency to experience orgasm enjoy the fullest sexual citizenship. Other people, subject to forces that suppress their sexuality or weaponize it against them, are shut out of fullest agency and pleasure. The gender distribution of orgasms is thus an issue not simply of personal satisfaction but of human rights. It becomes one measure of the strength of civil society.

Wallace highlights how pleasure is not just about mindless hedonism. Pleasure is a concept with sharp political implications about the distribution of power. Everyone, regardless of their gender, has an equal right to exist as a sexual citizen in society. People’s right to sexual autonomy is not limited based on their gender-nor on their race, sexual orientation, or disability status.

One other recent creative zone of cliteracy-a space in the culture that talks about female sexual pleasure-is woman-oriented erotica and romance fiction. This entertainment genre is equal parts controversial and massively popular. Beyond E. L. James’s Fifty Shades series (which set records for the fastest-selling paperback ever), think Netflix’s most-watched series, the 2020 adaptation Bridgerton; the online UK erotica and sex-education magazine Cliterati, launched in 2001; as well as the long-standing, billion-dollar, romance novel publishing industry itself, featuring levels of on-page erotic content from the mild and sweet to the five-pepper spicy-all story worlds supported by a huge and engaged online fan community.

Largely written and consumed by women, part of why this genre is controversial is precisely because it shows women’s erotic desire and satisfaction. It delights in such scenes. This is a realm of tales, not simply about people falling in love, but of women experiencing the fullest sexual satisfaction while doing so. No need to fake it for these gals.

As the coeditors of The Feminist Porn Book note, “Society’s dread of women who own their desire, and use it in ways that confound expectations of proper female sexuality, persists.” Or, as New York Times best-selling romance author Sarah MacLean puts it, “Romance gets the literacy stink-eye because of the sex bits.” Stories of women wanting and getting hot sex from lovers who are invested in female climax and know how to deliver: that’s an anxiety-provoking message for a culture more comfortable with male arousal and satisfaction than its female counterparts. When Fifty Shades came out to international blockbuster status, it got slapped with the shame label of “mommy porn.”

While debates rage among scholars and readers about the feminist empowerment of the romance genre (and the literary quality of the books), here is a key to its progressive and radical message: in these narratives, women like sex. Their desire is taken as natural and normal and good. Never as shameful. This rise of more or less mainstream woman-oriented erotica destigmatizes female sexuality. The stories provide creative respite, a fun and sexy play field of fantasy, all while affirming love as a force for good in the world. In this genre, women work out, within the realm of fiction, and make up for, through the pleasures of the text, a legacy of illiteracy around sexuality, as we slowly gain more cliteracy in our new gender and sexual revolution. The genre creates a space of sexual imagination, of solace and possibility. The space is safe but queer-transgressive, unruly, unacceptable to the literary hierarchy, and refusing to conform to traditional ideals of what a “proper lady” should read and write and how she should act in bed.

The rise of sex-positive American women rappers carries on in this tradition. In 2020, Cardi B released “WAP,” a collaboration with Megan Thee Stallion. The chart-topping number-one single went on to become the most acclaimed song of the year. The title stands for “wet-ass pussy” and features samples from the song “Whores in This House.” The lyrics and music video are gloriously-and controversially-slut-identified, pro-whore, and reveling in triumphant displays of female sexual desire and prowess.

The term cliterate takes on further meaning in all these examples to describe a person who dares explore desires and fantasies that run contrary to traditional scripts for feminine sexual service, who dares expect full sexual citizenship for women. More broadly, a cliterate person is someone who assents to the mutuality of good sex. Someone who understands that good sex means shared pleasure. Someone who knows that sexual justice means orgasm equality and egalitarian power-with relationships where everybody gets to feel good, in ways that work for them.

Here is our new normal: twenty-first-century storytelling that features fresh scripts about gender, love, and sex. Where is this erotica going? A heterosexual BDSM romance like Shades was just the beginning. How about gay and lesbian and bisexual love stories of the boldest rainbow stripes, polyamorous erotica, singledom tales with happy-for-now endings, or asexual romance-all currently available at bookstores? Ideally, like all aspects of the Manisexto, this storytelling opens space in the culture. It leads toward a goal of equity and inclusion in support of sexual and gender diversity, toward a full range of consensual options for relationship pleasure, toward intimacy understood as always reciprocal and respectful.

It leads toward a climax, not only of sexual pleasure, but of a bold vision of love.

Excerpt from Good Sex: Transforming America through the New Gender and Sexual Revolution by Catherine M. Roach. Copyright © 2022 Catherine M. Roach. Reprinted with permission of Indiana University Press.

Good Sex is available from Amazon.