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In the shadows of the cultural obsession with male erections, women’s vaginal lubrication and experiences of wetness have received surprisingly little academic attention. Framed largely as a biological or normative behavioral “sexual function” issue and not as a subjective experience, no previous qualitative studies have asked women to discuss their feelings about their vaginal lubrication and wetness. This study analyzed semi-structured interviews with 20 women from a diverse 2014 community sample collected in a large Southwestern U.S. city in order to examine American women’s subjective feelings about their own vaginal lubrication and wetness, particularly the sensations they experience and the meanings they make around wetness. Results revealed four themes in how women described vaginal lubrication: (1) wetness as pleasure, joy, and connection; (2) wetness as physical and biological phenomenon; (3) anxiety about insufficient wetness; and (4) having excessive or “too much” wetness. Tensions surrounding women’s sexual anxieties and where they place responsibility for “too little” wetness is discussed in tandem with analyses of how pleasure and arousal may (or may not) overlap with feelings about sexual normality and health. Ultimately, renewed attention to the complexities of women’s sexual arousal and function, particularly in stark contrast with pharmaceutical efforts to medicate women’s sexual arousal and reduce it to “brain chemistry,” are examined.

Despite the frequent depiction of heterosexual anal sex in pornography, and growing indications that heterosexual couples engage in anal sex, almost no research has examined women’s subjective experiences with receptive anal sex with men. This study draws upon qualitative interviews with 20 American women (mean age = 34, SD = 13.35) from diverse ages and backgrounds to illuminate five themes in women’s narratives about receptive anal sex: (1) initial resistance followed by submission; (2) initial interest followed by withdrawal from subsequent anal sex experiences; (3) violence and coercion surrounding anal sex; (4) social norming (e.g. men’s male friends normalizing heterosexual anal sex; seeing anal sex as normative after watching pornography); and (5) pleasurable experiences with anal eroticism. Implications for the re-evaluation of consent, imagining a continuum of sexualized violence, heteronormative assumptions about access to and power over women, silences surrounding non-penetrative anal eroticism, and women’s (dis)engagement with anal sex are explored.

Courses in women’s studies and gender studies within US contexts have long prioritized content that critically examines the social construction of bodies and sexualities, consciousness-raising about how social identities interface with disciplinary and institutional practices, and the notion that ‘the personal is political.’ This article examines the social and pedagogical implications of an extra-credit assignment where I asked women to grow out their body hair and men to remove their body hair for 10 weeks in several upper-division women’s studies courses. Students’ response papers and weekly logs from 87 students over four semesters highlighted the social policing of gender and sexual identity, pervasive disgust and misinformation about body hair, raced and classed dimensions of students’ experiences, configurations of masculinity as agentic and powerful, and postexperiential reflections on challenging social norms. This assignment showed how temporary excursions into rebelling against body norms can generate sociopolitical awareness, particularly for living as Other (e.g. queerness, fatness, disability). I also consider implications for ‘ripple effect pedagogy’ and ‘peer generated pedagogy,’ along with pedagogical reflections about using the assignment as a consciousness-raising tool in feminist classrooms.

While much research has addressed negativity surrounding women’s menstruation, surprisingly little research has interrogated the relationship between menstruation and sexuality. This study used inductive thematic analysis of qualitative interviews with 40 women across a range of age, race and sexual orientation backgrounds to examine women’s experiences with sex during menstruation. Results showed that, while 25 women described negative reactions — and two described neutral reactions — 13 women described positive reactions to menstrual sex. Negative responses cohered around four themes: women’s discomfort and physical labor to clean ‘messes’, overt partner discomfort, negative self-perception and emotional labor to manage partner’s disgust. Positive responses cohered around two themes: physical and emotional pleasure from sex while menstruating, and rebellion against anti-menstrual attitudes. Notable race and sexual identity differences appeared, as white women and bisexual or lesbian-identified women described positive feelings about menstrual sex more than women of color or heterosexual women. Bisexual women with male partners described more positive reactions to menstrual sex than did heterosexual women with male partners, implying that heterosexual identity related to negative menstrual sex attitudes more than heterosexual behavior. Those with positive menstrual sex attitudes also enjoyed masturbation more than others. Implications for sexual identity and racial identity informing body practices, partner choice affecting women’s body affirmation, and women’s resistance against common cultural ideas about women’s bodies as ‘disgusting’ were addressed.