Diana Cage hits the head with her tips for fantastic sex.
Whether single or in a relationship, this article will help you discover your ‘sexy consciousness’ and set you on the path to hotter sex.
There’s a reason why Diana Cage’s book isn’t called Mind-Blowing Lesbian Sex. However, you might think it should be with her name on the cover. Since she’s a former editor of the legendary lesbian sex magazine On Our Backs and the author of essential lesbian reads such as Girl Meets Girl: A Dating Survival Guide and Box Lunch: The Layperson’s Guide to Cunnilingus, it only makes sense that Cage’s latest book would be about sex for girl-loving girls. Instead, this famously one-step-ahead sexpert says that for all “female-bodied people” solving the problem of sexual desire begins by taking sexual and gender identity out of the equation altogether.
During the three years that The Diana Cage Show aired on Sirius XM, Cage, already well into her career as an expert on lesbian sexuality, came to a new realisation. “Previously,” she says, “I had always travelled in an urban lesbian world—my dating pool was always urban and lesbian. Suddenly [on the radio show], I’m talking to all kinds of lesbians—those from the Midwest, truckers—all kinds of different people. And I realised that what we wanted from sex and didn’t know about sex was the same.”
Whether you’re lesbian-identified, transgender, or cisgender, and however your partners identify on the ever-blurring scale of modern queer identities, if you’re female-bodied, Cage says, your basic sexual needs remain the same: “I’m a dyke. The gender of my partner is hugely important to me—it’s part of my culture, and it’s part of my identity. But, having good sex isn’t about who you’re having sex with. You are the key to having good sex. If you’re a female-bodied person, you have the same basic needs, regardless of the kind of body your partner has.”
While our physical commonalities may seem obvious to some, Cage reminds us that sex, gender, sexuality, and identity are so intertwined that we can forget the importance of getting back to one of the most crucial aspects of good sex—our minds. “You must get your head in the right place even to feel the physical. We’re so often distracted by work, our day, or thoughts like ‘I’m not attractive,’ or ‘they’re bored going down on me for 20 minutes.’ Millions of messages in your head prevent you from paying attention to what’s happening.
We need to quiet the negative messages and realise that they’re not helpful and not doing us any favours.” Instead, Cage urges us to “cultivate a sexy consciousness,” which she describes as “getting into our [own] heads sexually” by permitting ourselves to figure out what we find sexy, to embrace our eroticism, and to find out what turns us on. Cage says that without this kind of sexual mental clarity, sex becomes all about the body and, therefore, less attractive. Without mental stimulus and eroticism, “you may as well be brushing your hair,” she laughs.
“When I read other sex books,” she says, “there’s advice to ‘cultivate your inner sex kitten.’ This thinking is reductive. Good sex is not about finding the cliché, but is about getting in your head and figuring out what actually makes you feel good and what makes you crave somebody else. We, as people, judge what we find hot. Not only do you need to give yourself permission to fantasise, but to also have an erotic experience.”
When we get stuck in our sexual and gender identities, we can also limit ourselves to the types of sex, the fantasies, and the eroticism that we believe should properly be paired with those identities. For example, all lesbians take turns having orgasms, all butch women are “stone,” and trans guys never fantasise about X, Y, or Z. Cage asks us to get these stereotypes and barriers out of our own “sexy consciousness” in the introduction to Mind-Blowing Sex: A Woman’s Guide to “forget sexual orientation and sexual identity” and return to a more self-focused kind of sexuality. “I’m a femme lesbian who sleeps with butch lesbians,” she says, “and my sexuality is expressed in a way similar to other women in butch/femme relationships. However, my ability to enjoy sex and my identity are not completely linked.” From the beginning of female sexuality, she says, our sexual bodies have been categorized—MILF, cougar, femme, butch. “So much meaning is attached to our bodies that there’s barely any other expression of who we are beyond our physical selves. The female body is public domain. Our bodies are used to sell us things so often that sometimes we forget we own them.”
To reach mind-blowing sex, Cage says, “we need to go way back to the beginning, where things just started to go awry, and figure out what it looks like to have a sexuality that’s not tainted by all of these irrelevant messages: How can we be sexual outside of a partner? What does spontaneous desire look like? Figure out what you are, who you are, and what you want, and then add everything else. Once you have a better grasp on finding pleasure, you can embrace your identity with far more fervour than ever.”
25 Tips For Mind-Blowing Sex
Diana Cage’s book is a wealth of hot hints on how to reignite or start a superlative sex life. Here is a summary of some of our favourites:
1. Spend some quality time getting to know your genitals.
2. Test-drive your sexy. Masturbate frequently.
3. Kill a dry spell. Buy new toys. This will get you thinking about sex.
4. Keep your sex drive alive by engaging with erotic stimuli. There’s nothing wrong with enjoying erotica and porn on your terms.
5. Ditch your judgments about yourself and the people around you.
6. Develop an erotic fantasy life and open your mind to new sexual experiences.
7. Be healthy. The best thing you can do for your sex life is to take good care of your body.
8. Exercising can help you have easier, faster, and stronger orgasms.
9. Stress kills your sex life. Make a pact with yourself to get off the stress cycle.
10. Make lists: things you find sexy in other people; your hottest sexual experiences or memories.
11. Have conversations about sex regularly. Be aware of the power of words.
12. Wear something sexy. Dressing for sex can turn on both you and your lover.
13. Use flirting as foreplay. Try glancing suggestively at your lover from across the table.
14. If you are in a relationship where the sex has dropped off, bring kissing back.
15. Avoid criticizing your partner at all costs. It’s a sure way to ruin a sex life.
16. Don’t be shy about your body. Let your lover see you naked.
17. Touch, stroke, and kiss your lover the way you would like her to touch you.
18. Take a bath together. Wash your partner thoroughly, paying particular attention to the feel of her wet skin.
19. Use positive reinforcement to get what you want during sex play.
20. Stay present. Keep your mind from wandering during sex.
21. Think of orgasms as a possible way to end sex, not a necessary one.
22. Explore role-play, bondage and discipline, dominance and submission, and spanking.
23. Three ways are exciting. Three people can do things that two people can’t.
24. Sex parties can be loads of fun. A sex party is a great way to be sex-positive and expand your network.
25. Explore your sexuality with your lovers. Being a sexually happy woman is a revolutionary act in a world full of shame and ignorance.
