The Best Scandanavian Female Orgasm Book You Never Knew About - I Accuse! by Mette Ejlersen
Mette Ejlersen. I Accuse! Tandem, 1970.
Listen. This book, people. It's ON POINT.
So, that badass SSL friend that is always sending me amazing tips, sent me a link to a book called "I Accuse!" by Mette Ejlersen. It's Scandinavian, first published in 1969. I read the description and was instantly intrigued. I was actually starting a road trip vacation at that moment, but I NEEDED it, so I ordered it, and 2 weeks later found it waiting for me at home. I finished it in 2 days.
I'm often reading descriptions of books, getting excited, and then realizing upon reading that it's really just like everything else out there with all the terrible misconceptions about lady-gasms that, well, do something between pissing me off and making me sad. This, my friends, was not the case here. It's soooo rare to find something that is bold and poignant and doesn't throw out unverified claims about how the inner parts of the vagina cause orgasm too, but when I do find one, it's usually from the 60's or 70's - so I have a special love for the oft-described radical feminists that write them.
I have been looking into this lady-gasm shit since about 2002, and I've never heard of this book. It's crazy to me. In fact you can't really even find the book unless you Google both the title and the author, and even then it's not many entries and not a lot of copies available. The book says it's a Scandinavian Best Seller, and the one I have is the 1970 reprint. It also seems like it was also called Sexual Liberation, but that title is even harder to find. Anyway, much like The Hite Report which is also a banger that everyone should read (although created in the US 7 years after this one), this book seems to have kinda dropped into relative obscurity...which makes sense because as a culture, we've pretty much disregarded, minimized and/or glossed over all the truths and wisdom these radicals were slinging at us in these books, but I'll get into that later.
A BOOK OVERVIEW
To give you a quick overview, I Accuse! starts from the 'widespread superstition' that women orgasm from simply getting fucked (that's a maybe more crude and simple way to say it, but that's about it), our badass author Ejlersen calls BULLSHIT on that. She speaks about how so many women don't get what they thought they would get from sex -aka intercourse- (an orgasm or even much pleasure) and don't know what to do it about it. Some just pretend that they are getting it. Some fret and seek professional help. Some understand that they aren't getting the (clitoral glans area) stimulation they need, but don't know how to speak about it to their partners or have tried to and it doesn't work. Some are lucky enough to work together with their partners and incorporate the clitoral stimulation they need into their partnered sex lives. And pretty much everyone feels like some kind of freak about it. Mothers don't talk to their daughters about it, and so each girl and woman has to navigate this striking difference between orgasm expectation and orgasm reality pretty much all on their own.
This book aims to let women know they are not alone or weird or different really at all from the other women around them. It also has the beautiful intention of speaking these truths out loud so that both men and women alike can finally understand that ladies need clitoral glans area stimulation to come (at least as much as dudes need penile stimulation) and intercourse is not a realistic road to female orgasm. It further hopes this knowledge can stimulate people to adjust partnered sexual activity accordingly so that everyone can get a chance at orgasm.
MY BIG DOWNER RANT ABOUT HOW THIS BOOK IS AMAZING BUT IT WON'T BE TAKEN SERIOUSLY
The Naivety of Lady-gasm Activists
It's a nice hope. Shere Hite also had that hope when she wrote The Hite Report in 1976 (and clearly was disappointed in what change had happened by 2011) I also had that hope when I made Science, Sex, and the Ladies in 2014. What I know now is that we were all naïve. The idea that if people simply knew the reality of this situation then the world and the people in it would adjust accordingly, simply hasn't come to fruition. The myth of the vaginal orgasm, the idea that intercourse should be as orgasmic for the vagina-haver as it is for the penis-haver is unfortunately so deeply engrained that even when we know it's not true, we still don't really believe or act as if it's not true. As much as I wish we were and as much hope as I still have for the future, we're just not there yet.
Also, I think in these 60's and 70's writings, there was an additional naivety because it was all new. There was new scientific evidence from Masters and Johnson that negated the vaginal orgasm and confirmed the clitoral glans as the organ of female sexual orgasm (in the way the penis is the organ of male orgasm). Women themselves were speaking up clearly and boldly about the lack of clitoral glans area stimulations (and thus orgasm) in their sex lives. I mean it was exciting, and why wouldn't both men and women use this opportunity of permission and knowledge to change their perspective about what a sexual interaction should be, to assure everyone having sex was also getting the physical stimulation they needed? Well, I don' know why we wouldn't adjust (I mean I definitely have a lot of theories), but by and large we didn't. You'd think in the 2000's when I was making this movie and starting this blog, I would have been less naïve, given that I saw how little had changed since these radical feminists and their wild idea hit the world 50 years ago. I mean making the argument that sex should not be equated with intercourse and that 'foreplay' should be considered the whole meal and not just an appetizer, is not necessarily uncommon to hear today, but it's a progressive stance, and it still needs to be said because by and large it's not the way of things. And, there doesn't seem to be less women and girls today desperately searching for advice about ways to orgasm during intercourse - and worried they're lesser if they can't...so yeah we're basically still treadmilling on the same big issues now that these radicals spoke on 50 years ago. Even with that, though, I was naïve - wide-eyed and hopeful.
What none of us really considered was how much people desperately want to believe that banging a penis into a vagina not only is great for dude orgasms, but also will make the person attached to the vagina come too. Easy peasy. We also, I think, underestimated how much we women are a part of keeping the vaginal orgasm lies alive - and for a variety of fairly sensible and understandably human reasons. I mean, first, still to this day information about what a female orgasm is remains intensely (and unnecessarily) contradictory and confusing. In a sexual culture not set up for the ladies, to just happen upon an orgasm during partnered sex is very unlikely, and with all the wild misinformation around regarding what an orgasm is for women, identifying when you orgasm can be strangely difficult and can easily lead to believing orgasms are happening at times when they actually are not but are 'supposed' to be happening. There's also like 100 reasons to straight up fake it - from getting things over with to making the partner feel good to wanting to seem normal or desirable or sexy.
There's just a lot more to unpack on this issue that's deep under the surface. What my older self realizes now is that just speaking sense and facts isn't going to change it. In fact, there's a lot of junk info that's piled up the last 50 years on top of the already problematic junk info that existed when this book was written. That all must be counteracted before sense and facts (and info like in I Accuse!) even get a fair chance to be taken seriously at all.
Sexpert books Then vs. Sexperts books Now
In this book Ejlerson talks to a variety of people; mothers, teens, prostitutes, a few married couples, Medical doctors and a variety of women to get their take on the topic of lady-gasm. It's actually a lot like many lady-gasm related books of today in that it's an author going around asking people and reporting on their opinions and experiences. All in all, I don't have a ton of love for that style, because asking regulars ol' people about shit neither they nor experts really have a handle on and taking a person's interpretation of their personal experience as truth just leads to more misinformation. However, it works better in the 70's than now - just because of the newness of the topic.
Back in the late 60's and 70's there was scientific data showing for really the first time that the clitoral glans area is as important to female orgasm as the penis is to male orgasm. It also showed there is really no evidence that the vaginal canal can be stimulated to orgasm. To counteract that, there was already also a lot of pretty sexist and looney opinions about female orgasm and specifically 'vaginal orgasm' that are silly and outdated to the contemporary eye (Freud and the immature clitoral orgasm is but one). So although these reporter authors of the 60's and 70's got some ridiculous answers from the experts and a few women that answered, those answers probably feel to the modern reader as ridiculous as they actually are. That's not quite the same in contemporary discussions.
The current scientific evidence still indicates the same thing about clits and vaginal orgasms that it did in the 70's - basically. There has since been some important research about female ejaculation, but that is not orgasm. In both males and females ejaculation and orgasm are different physiological events that can sometimes happen at the same time. However, one couldn't be blamed for assuming we've learned all sorts of stuff about lady-gasms. Since about 1980 there's been "scientific evidence" that either the G-spot (now actually kind of out of vogue among sexperts as an orgasm button but not as it relates to ejaculation) or the 'inner clit' or the cervix are able to give women orgasms through the stimulation of the vaginal canal during intercourse. I put "scientific evidence" in quotes, because there is NOT scientific evidence, there are only studies that are related but do not in fact make those conclusions. None the less these are used in both "science" reporting and in popular media as if they do, and these ideas are so pervasive, they have become canon of contemporary, educated, progressive sexual educators and advisors. It is deeply ingrained in the culture of sex.
So, today when these reporter authors talk to experts and some women, there is certainly an acknowledgement that the clit is important (That's progress. Thank you for that, feminists of the 2nd wave!), but it is almost always counteracted by making sure we know there is oh so much more to the female orgasm and often reference or allude to the "many different types of orgasms" women can have as if there's decided science behind it that can give you actual information about what these different orgasms are, how they can be stimulated, and how they physiologically occur. There is absolutely none of that information, but it seems like there is because at this point in history, their non-scientific assertions that they pass off as scientific don't feel as ridiculous as they did in the 70's.
For instance in I Accuse! a medical doctor tells us there are 3 orgasms: clitoral, vaginal and Uterine. They go up in intensity and difficulty. Of the Uterine orgasm he says, "Consciously or subconsciously the woman is seldom herself for many minutes afterward. A man can never reach the same height in a climax as this type of woman, because the woman's wish for a child is always far deeper than a man's. A man never achieves an orgasm too overwhelming to prevent him smoking a cigarette immediately after intercourse. This, these women cannot do. They are miles away - lost for a long time."
That feels like a crazy town thing to say.
However, today, 'experts' regularly say things that are as, if not more, bonkers, but somehow get away with it and are still touted as progressive feminists sexperts. I think maybe this ability to pass goes back to a few things. Unlike the 70's experts, contemporary experts saying bonkers things are often women. They are also usually credentialed in some type of science or sexology (which doesn't make them correct, just aligned with the sadly erroneous norms of contemporary 'knowledge' on ladygasm), and maybe most importantly they tend to be liberal and progressive. They don't seem like the sexist arrogant white male up there talking about women blacking out from 'uterine' orgasms because they are baby-crazy. These contemporary 'experts' are well intentioned in every other way, just really incorrect about the science that exists on the physical realities of lady-gasms without realizing they are incorrect. Look at this quote from Emily Nagoski's very popular and progressive tending 2015 book, Come As You Are (I write about this book HERE. Although I have strong criticism regarding her assertions about orgasm, the book does have a lot of worthy, important elements):
Here's a small sample of the highly pleasurable orgasms women have described to me: orgasm from clitoral stimulation, orgasm from vaginal stimulation, orgasm just from breast stimulation, orgasm from having her toes sucked, orgasm when her partner penetrated her well lubricated anus with a finger while pinning her to the bed with her hair (the most erotic sensation, she specified, was his warm palm resting gently on her butt cheeks), orgasm when her partner slowly and gently stroked fingertips on her outer labia again and again and again (she said what started out as an appetizer turned into the main course), orgasm without any genital stimulation while she was giving her partner oral sex (she was so closely attuned to his arousal that when he came, she did too).
She came from stimulating his dick with her mouth??? His orgasm made her come? Are we not going to have any skepticism about that?? Doesn't seem off or problematic or fucked-up or anything?? We're just gonna let that sit with no comment?? Really??? Granted, this is a woman 'expert' relaying a woman's experience as a source of knowledge about female orgasm rather than a man talking about the female experience, so it feels less gross, I guess...but does that make it any less bonkers or any more true and worthy of being in print? The blowjob-gasm is looney, yes, but to go a little deeper, the vaginal stimulation one is too. There is still no physical evidence in all of scientific literature (I'm taking that stand, prove me wrong. please.) that stimulation inside the vagina with no additional outer vulva stimulation has caused an orgasm (again ejaculation is another thing entirely and if the author was referring to ejaculation, not orgasm, she should be clear about that because they are different physiological events). For real. Yet, in that book it seems like there are women that can just come from getting their vaginal canal stimulated (a good bang, perhaps?). There is no sense anywhere in that book that this would be an incredibly rare situation if it is possible at all. It just stands as a possible way women could orgasm. That matches the larger public perception around vaginal stimulation, but it doesn't match the science that exists. Granted, I Accuse! is no pillar of scientific integrity. It's more journalism than science, but its assertions about lady-gasm match the science that exists today WAY more than books like Come As You Are that are also more journalism than science, but tout how scientifically minded they are.
Another point about the bonkers quotes from experts (an interviewed medical doctor in I Accuse and the PhD wielding author in Come as You Are) in these 2 different books is that in I Accuse! the doctor's bonkers quote was there along with a variety of other doctors' take on the matter as a way, I believe, to show where the medical establishment was on the topic. I don't know if it sounded as bonkers then as it does to us now, but the book in general does not condone it, and actively works against that kind of mystical, incorrect thinking. Come As You Are (and so many other books like it - it's truly not unique in that sentiment by any means), however, is not only condoning that insanity, but actively pushing it as the accurate, scientifically backed, progressive reality of lady-gasms.
And this is why I really love reading these books from the late 60's and 70's. They were the first (and really only) to strongly call bullshit on the vag-gasm agenda. There's a purity and excitement to it. A real sense of revolution on the horizon. More contemporary works, in a way, can't exist like that. Too much has happened; too much pushback against these radical feminist ideas; too much desperate research to prove women can orgasm from a good banging has been published. They're shit science that proves nothing of the sort, but damn if they didn't have great PR and a receptive audience. Sexperts today have to exist in a world where this shit science is taken seriously and fed to them in whatever sexpert training they may have gotten. It's mainstream. It's as if today, the message that vaginal orgasm doesn't or probably doesn't exist, is merely some old and incorrect radical feminist-agenda from the 60's and 70's and cannot be returned to seriously because it was proven wrong - even though it has not in fact been proven wrong at all, and in fact the 40 plus years since have actually just reinforced how correct this 'radical feminist agenda' was because nothing in those subsequent years has given any recorded scientific information that a vaginally stimulated orgasm has ever occurred. But to know that, one would need to dig deeper in the primary scientific literature. It's all there, but the way it's summarized and perceived and taught is clearly skewed in a significant way. Sexperts often speak as if they are informed about lady-gasm research, but if I may be so bold, they clearly are not because too often and too seriously, studies that do not prove or indicate vaginal (or a variety of other kinds of) orgasms are incorrectly touted as concluding that they do.
All that to say, we've had 40 years of progressive, liberal, well-intentions, often educated and credentialed sexperts, many of whom are women, reinforcing the idea that science has shown us that -very basically and crudely - *whatever you do to a lady, eh, could probably make her orgasm, you know - if she's into it* So as a whole are we women and our partners really any more informed, grounded, or supported in our sexual endeavors than we were in the Freud vag-gasm times...oooorrrr do we just have a new set of confusing shit, different day?
I recommend this book...if you take it as it is and don't act like it's left behind by new science
All that ranting to say that I really, really want to scream from the rooftops that everyone should read this book, but I also know that it won't be understood as it should be. It will be seen as a relic of another time when we didn't know as much as we know today. People will read it and say something like, "it was a really empowering book back in the 60's when women were just learning about the female orgasm. The radical feminists of the time were (rightly so) pushing the pendulum away from Freud and his obsession with vaginal orgasms and towards the Clitoris. Of course we now can see that this push towards the clitoris and away from intercourse was a bit too far, as science has now shown us that there are so many more aspects to the female orgasm than that tiny button - including the inner clitoral legs that we now know are likely responsible for what used to be called 'vaginal orgasms.'"
I mean on first read that seems like a sensible assessment. It's been 50 years. We should certainly know more about lady-gasms shouldn't we?
Well, sorry to break it to you, but we don't really. They had it largely correct back then. What about the Gspot? the inner clitoris? Those are all new discoveries in ladygasm science, right? Wrong. There, of course, has been new info since the 60's that refined, adjusted, and expanded knowledge about both male and female orgasm (female ejaculation, male orgasm sans ejaculation, male multiple orgasm for instance), but largely subsequent scientific inquiry work has strengthened the basic physical knowledge of orgasms that the studies of that time revealed. And since that time, contrary to what we all tend to hear, there have been no studies that significantly indicate lady-gasms and how to get them are any different than this old-ass book describes. Not inner clit (I have a whole post about that shit HERE) not the G-spot, not nothing.
This 1969 book, if you look at the scientific research from then until this very day, is still basically as accurate as it was then. In fact please don't read about female orgasm from most contemporary 'experts' because they will reinforce incorrect ideas from incorrectly interpreted and/or wrongly summarized scientific studies that give people the sense that women can orgasm in ways that are unrealistic and rare at best. They will, unknowingly and with the best of intentions, carry on the oldest of traditions in which sexperts gloss over (if not outright ignore) the very simple and obvious but inconvenient truth of how women orgasm and give crazy advice that continues the confusion, misunderstandings, pretenses and shame that dominate our cultural and personal understanding of female orgasm. You are at risk of getting Freuded like our ladies of old, but with a sweet bow on top like it's something new and useful.
So, although I'd love to recommend this book as a revolutionary mind-opener for the world, I know it won't be helpful because it won't be taken seriously and won't erase all the current bullshit being said about lady-gasms because that current bullshit feels like it's not bullshit but instead 'new knowledge,' and that's sad to me. It's also maybe poignantly descriptive of the biggest hurdle of orgasm equality activism, but I digress.
HIGHLIGHTS FROM I ACCUSE!
As if this post isn't long enough, I still want to give a few highlights from the book, so here they are below. And just to be clear, even after that whole rant, I do still recommend this book. It's a great read and it says important shit. Just know you should take it seriously.
The ABZ of Love -Vonnegut's fave
There was a marriage/sex advice book heavily touched on in I Accuse!. It was called The ABZ of Love, a 1961 book authored by Danish couple Inge and Stan Hegeler. The author brings this book up early because one reason she decided to write I Accuse! was that a friend confided in her that she did not know how to talk to her own teenage daughter about the sex situation - meaning that the mother wanted to tell her daughter that intercourse wouldn't do much for her and that she needed to include her clitoris in the act and all that. It was simply too personal a thing to discuss even though other elements like birth control were easier and more widely discussed in the public. The author decided to write what would become I Accuse! and began looking through the current resources. The only book she found that gave the kind of sensible (not intercourse orgasm obsessed) advice she was looking for was The ABZ of Love.
Interestingly, around 2012 a new book of letters from Kurt Vonnegut was released and in it, he tells his wife about this book. He calls it 'really lovely' and tells her she can find it on his bookshelf if she is as interested in sex as she says she is. So although it's not an easy book to find, it comes up on the internet quite a bit as Kurt Vonnegut's favorite sex book. Anyway, this author couple writes a lovely approving letter at the back of Accuse! Although in it they do add in some of their own spins and advise, including a questionable bit saying one should not tell a man straight up about having lied about orgasms for years. Instead, given men's vanity in the bed, the Hegeler's say,
The only way out of this particular pretense is to pretend that it has become more difficult to be satisfied: to hint that trying something different - something new, unusual and more imaginative surely isn't to be sneered at - and then just hope that the bungler will understand the hints. p137
That's probably just a recipe for a dude to lament his lady's loss of the easy vag-gasms and push all kinds of cure's and professional help on her to 'get it back,' but you know times were different, I guess. Otherwise, the Hegeler's letter is pretty forward and thoughtful. At the beginning of I Accuse!, the author, quite excited that she has found allies in this couple and a book that might be given to her friend's teenage daughters, quotes the Hegeler's from The ABZ of Love in an incredibly forward statement (this book seems to have been published in 1963 - 3 years before Master and Johnson's Human Sexual Response was published. Although papers by M&J's research had been published).
"Every woman's orgasm is a clitoral orgasm, usually direct and less frequently indirect. It is very important to realise this, if one is to understand the true nature of an orgasm. An orgasm is felt over practically the whole body; in the muscles of the vagina, which contracts during orgasm. An orgasm does not originate inside the vagina, nor thumps against the mouth of the womb, as many believe. It is the lustful excitation of the clitoris, either directly or indirectly, that culminates in an orgasm.
It has long been superstition, a misunderstanding , that a vaginal orgasm is finer and nobler than a clitoral orgasm. But the vaginal orgasm does not exist. What is believed to be a vaginal orgasm is in effect an indirect stimulation of the muscle fibers and nerve-endings at the entrance to the vagina. This and other forms of indirect clitoral orgasms are quite rare, whereas direct excitation of the clitoris is comparatively common"
A Top Notch Dis Session
Another book they delve into is a book called The Marriage Art by John E. Eichenlaub M.D. published first in 1961. I googled it and found it on a delightful blog called Hersteria - where Miss K. LaMoine finds and briefly discusses somewhat insane sexual, marriage, femininity training type books from the 1880's to the 1960's. She says of this book,"Even though it’s one of the more recently published books in my collection, Dr. Eichenlaub’s advice is often more archaic and misogynist towards women than my books from the 1920s and ’30s."
Ejlersen and a 29 year old woman read The Art of Marriage, and take a chapter to dis on it in I Accuse!, which I love and it's frankly well deserved. Their fuck you to this guy is definitely worth a read.
An Actual Equitable Sexual Relationship
There's a great transcript of a woman and her husband that met with the author to be recorded talking about their journey with her orgasm. Basically, she had kinda accidently gotten a hand on her clit from a former lover, realized, 'oh shit - that's what this is all about.' Then when this current couple had their first few sex sessions and it, well, sucked for her, she finally decided to tell him what's up - thinking he'd probably break up with her. Well, he was into it, and now they are both real clear that intercourse ain't the way for it, and they work together to, ya know, do something wildly radical like stimulate the clit as much as the penis so all have equal opportunity to orgasm.
That woman's experience was not a common one.
Interviews: Drunk Girl-Talk and Straight Prostitutes'-Talk
There's also a lot of intimate, introspective quotes from women answering questions about their sex life as it has to do with orgasm. There is also another great transcript from a woman who sent in a recording she made of her and her drunk middle-aged gal-friends at a celebration. They all realized sex kinda sucked as far as orgasm goes for everyone else too.
The author also talks about the absurdity of famous books like Fanny Hill and how unfortunate it is that people will read the ridiculous reactions Fanny Hill has to the sex acts and believe that is the way things should/could be. She also interviews a few real-life prostitutes. A snippet from one of the interviews: "'Men!' she says, with a little smile. 'Men are naïve and stupid. The bigger the performance you put on, the more they're convinced it's not acting.'"
Faking To Get Her Married Man: A Story
There's also this story from one of the women she interviewed. I like it because, well, I think it's poignant - about the pressures women have regarding their orgasm, about the reality of navigating relationships and sex, about one of many possible reasons a woman might proclaim she orgasms vaginally and why a man might say he's seen it happen, and about the messiness of all this. This is about 50 years old and might seem old-fashioned, but if you ask me this is as relevant now as it ever has been - even though we'd like to think otherwise. p96-96
Twenty-eight year old civil servant, formerly married to a businessman, now divorced
I met a married man and we fell in love with each other - wildly in love - with the inevitable result. Not that I didn't fight against it for a long time. I had a terribly guilty conscience because of his wife. So when it eventually happened, he was so eager and in such a state that he had a climax straight away. Afterwards he was in despair and asked me if I'd got something out of it too. He would always blame himself if he hadn't satisfied me especially as it was the first time we'd been together.
His happiness was my happiness - his despair my despair. So, I reassured him. I told him that all was well, 'Of course I had been satisfied.' But of course this wasn't true, and I doubt whether any woman could have reached her climax during that half-minute's furious intercourse. But I thought to myself, 'My God, how I love him! It doesn't matter at all. Little by little I'll teach him what it's all about.'
Then he said something that made me abandon this idea immediately. He said, almost with gratitude, that he thought it was a miracle that I felt that way. He had known a woman who could only be satisfied if he touched a certain spot. I knew immediately what the spot was, and I also knew that he was talking about his wife, though he didn't say so both for her sake and mine. He went on to say that he sometimes had cramp in his hand because she insisted on having it that way - and that it was wonderful that I was 'normal!'
I know my reaction will look utterly unscrupulous in black and white, but I think it was what most women would have done if it was a question of holding onto a man they couldn't live without. So, I expressed great surprise that any women should want to have it that way, even though I fully sympathized with her and, only a few moments earlier, had been thinking of teaching him to do the very same thing. I actually sympathised with him: it must have been terribly strenuous, I said. How had he been able to stand it? And a lot more of the same sort of thing.
It was disgraceful, I agree. But I felt it had been worthwhile when he said that he couldn't stand her, because I knew then that he would be able to stand her less and less the better I performed my little act. How many women would throw away their strongest weapon in the battle for the man they really want? Not many, I think. But eventually, they will smart as I am now smarting. Because I got him, and now I am trapped in this sexual quagmire I created for myself. So, I cannot emphasize strongly enough that we women have got to look at this business in a wider perspective; only when all men know, and all women frankly admit the truth about their sex lives are we on equal terms, both woman to woman and sex to sex, and only then will we reach the stage where the right to have climax will be the right of both parties.