There’s a good chance you’ve heard of Betty Dodson, a woman who made her name as a guru of female self-pleasure. Earlier this year, the pioneering sex educator shared her wisdom with all those who worship at the altar of Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop in an episode of the hit Netflix series, Goop Lab (and made Paltrow blush in the process). But before she was introduced to a new generation of admirers, the sexologist and second-wave feminist, who died this week at the age of 91, changed the lives of countless women through her efforts to promote the importance of female pleasure.
Below, valuable lessons from the legendary sexologist that every woman should know.
On your most important love affair
Dodson believed one of a woman’s most important sexual relationships is the one she has with herself. “The most consistent sex will be the love affair you have with yourself,” she wrote in Sex For One, a quasi memoir first published in 1987. Now translated into 25 languages, women still refer to it today. “Masturbation will get you through childhood, puberty, romance, marriage and divorce, and it will see you through old age,” she wrote in her enduring how-to guide.
On her personal mantra
Dodson, who described herself as heterosexual, bisexual and a lesbian, had a mantra: “Better orgasms, better world.” It’s a sentiment she held onto throughout her career in the field, which began when she started teaching sex workshops in the ’60s and ’70s in New York City. In the sessions, she taught women about vibrators, and how to use one to orgasm. Dodson’s method involved women getting naked and examining one another’s vulvas, to illustrate that they are all different sizes, shapes and colours – and all beautiful. Dodson wickedly proclaimed that the workshop’s end result was: “Everyone gets off”. Today, her workshops have been viewed by millions of people online.
On important distinctions
Dodson was always careful to make one thing clear: the vulva and vagina are two different body parts, with different functions. In the Goop Lab episode she appears in, Paltrow boasts that “vaginas” are her favourite subject matter. “The vagina’s the birth canal only,” Dodson says firmly, correcting her. “You wanna talk about the vulva, which is the clitoris and the inner lips and all that good shit around it.” In short: do your homework.
On men, monogamy and love
Part of her emphasis on the importance of self-pleasure was as an end to women’s sexual dependence on men. Women are “so addicted to romantic love,” she said. “It’s the heaviest drug in the world and we make long-lasting bad decisions because of it.” Dodson, who divorced her former husband six years after they wed, appeared wary of the institution of marriage. “You get married, you give up sex. Pretty much count on it,” she once quipped. She also said: “Men are so two-dimensional. If there is anything interesting about them, it’s because of the women they’ve been with.”
However, Dodson did have a defining relationship with one man. She believed she had met her sexual match in Grant Taylor, an English professor from New York University. Together, they learned about “electric orgasms”. Before Taylor, she was married to Frederick Stern, an advertising director, before they filed for divorce in 1965. She wrote in her 2010 memoir, Sex By Design: The Betty Dodson Story: “Instinct told me that sexual mobility was the same as social mobility. Men had it and women didn’t.”
Ultimately, Dodson believed that putting the clitoris in the spotlight was her calling in life. As Annie Sprinkle, the ’70s porn star turned-sex-educator said of her work: “Betty had it all. She popularised the clitoris and clitoral orgasms and gave the clitoris celebrity status.”
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