For the Newly Sexually Awakened
Books about embracing pleasure for everyone – including serious neuroscience nerds
Hi everybody. I hope you’re having the best week possible under the circumstances.
This week, we’re shouting out to our indie bookseller friends at Octavia's Bookshelf in Pasadena, CA, Antigone Books in Tucson, AZ, and Loudmouth Books in Indianapolis!
On to this week’s question:
I'm a 52 yo, late diagnosis autistic woman. I’ve been in a long-term relationship which is mostly fabulous, but I have struggled with sex over the years due to growing up in a sex-negative environment, societal expectations, and my neurodiversity. My partner and I have worked hard to make sex a priority in our relationship and we have good communication about sex given our differing needs (my partner’s career was therapy-adjacent, so he was a supporter of CAYA from about the minute it came off the press!).
I’ve recently reached a point in my life where I'm ready to really embrace my sexuality and work on focusing on “pleasure as the measure” and my partner is very supportive of giving me all the time and space I need. It’s exciting and joyful, but I’m not really sure where to start. I’m doing a daily pleasure and gratitude practice, but I’m wondering if you could do a blog post with some book recommendations for the newly sexually awakened? There's so much out there and I would greatly appreciate a curated list from someone like you who I have come to trust.
Thank you again for everything you’re doing--your podcast on pleasure was the impetus for this new journey for me!
As a 46-year-old, late diagnosis autistic woman, I feel this question very deeply. I want to say “Congratulations!” because that’s how I felt when I was diagnosed a couple years ago, but if that’s not what feels right for you, never mind. But definitely CONGRATULATI🥳NS on finding your way to embracing your sexuality and living the kind of life that human bodies are built for.
I myself learned to have relationships by reading books and peer reviewed science, and later I learned to be a person in the world and in a body by reading the kind of books my academic training would have told me to ignore.
Here’s a few to start with:
Pleasure Activism by adrienne maree brown. As a person on the spectrum, I had to read this book multiple times to get it, because it is intensely poetic and metaphorical without explaining the metaphor. But it was worth it.
The Body Is Not an Apology by Sonya Renee Taylor. A foundational text on living in a body and the world.
Sensual Self by Ev’Yan Whitney. This is a workbook that guides you through prompts and exercises to explore sensations of all kinds, in all kinds of contexts.
If you noticed any kind of pattern with the authors of the books I’ve mentioned here, that’s both an accident and not an accident. It makes all the sense in the world that the authors who best understand and explain sensuality are Black, queer women, femmes, and trans/nonbinary people; they’re the ones who had to fight hardest against multiple domains of marginalization. No fucking wonder they get it.
For clinical research (that is, research specifically for how to make improvements): Magnificent Sex by Peggy Kleinplatz and Dana Menard and Better Sex Through Mindfulness by Lori Brotto.
For an expansive and illuminating integration of gender stuff: Gender Magic by Rae McDaniel, Fucking Trans Women by Mira Bellweather (only available digitally, to the best of my knowledge), Trans Sex by Lucie Fielding, and Queer Sex by Juno Roche.
And then there are the nerd books. You didn’t specify an interest in how pleasure functions in the nervous system, but in case that’s of interest to you or anyone else, here are the ones I’ve relied on:
The Archeology of Mind by Jaak Panksepp and Lucy Biven. There are several models of emotion/motivation, but this is the one that has been most helpful to me. I would also recommend A Short-Cut to Understanding Affective Neuroscience by Lucy Biven for those who don’t want an 800 page tome; it’s also quite a bit newer. Nan Wise’s Why Good Sex Matters explains the same model of emotion/motivation specifically in the context of sexual health. (NB: None of these books are inclusive in their language, in the way the pleasure books are.)
For the nerdy stuff about sex and evolution, not just for humans but for life on Earth, there’s Bobbi Low’s Why Sex Matters.
There are also the broader subjects of living a life worth living, filled with pleasure and purpose. This one might seem a little random, but Off the Clock by Laura Vanderkam presents a way of thinking about time and pleasure that I found really practical; tl;dr: a life we experience as worth living is a life of deliberately facilitated peak moments, savored in the present and later as memories. A related area of study is the science of savoring—I write about that science a lot in the last chapter of Come Together. There’s a new book, Happier Hour by Cassie Holmes, that I haven’t had a chance to read yet, but I know it covers the related science. These books and the science of savoring explain why your gratitude and pleasure practices are so important and maybe how to do them in a way that maximizes their efficacy.
That’s more books than you need to read, and each one will refer you to other books, too. Reading is not a path to insight or change for everyone, for any number of reasons, but for those who depend on books to help them live in the world… I hope this helps!
Emily
📕📕 And please check out Octavia's Bookshelf in Pasadena, CA, Antigone Books in Tucson, AZ, and Loudmouth Books in Indianapolis if you can! 📕📕
Questions or comments? Please email my very tiny team at unrulywellness@gmail.com
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Stay safe and see you next time.
