Emily Nagoski - Come: The Surprising New Science That Will Transform Your Sex Life

PRAISE FOR COME AS YOU ARE

Goodreads Choice Awards, Top 5 Science and Technology Books

Buzzfeeds 17 Things that Changed Our Sex Lives in 2015

Book Riots Best of 2015

Autostraddles Top 10 Queer and Feminist Books

SSTARs 2017 Consumer Book Award

This is the best book I have ever read exploring the science of female sexuality. I am a total evangelist for Nagoskis work. You think you know how womens sexuality works? I can guarantee that you do not. Not until you read this, anyway. The book is definitely great for college students and for bright high schoolers as well.

Peggy Orenstein, author of Girls and Sex

This is the best book I have ever read about sexual desire and why some couples just stop having sex, and what they can do about it. Come As You Are is an absolutely necessary guide for all couples who want to understand the ups and downs in their own sex life. It is a must-read!

John Gottman, Ph.D., author of The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work

Emily Nagoski has written one of the most important books about sex any woman (or anybody else) could ever pick up, full of insights that are both fascinating and deeply useful. Synthesizing new research and theory about sexuality with old-school sex-positive information of the sort you didnt learn in sex ed (unless, perhaps, you are a Unitarian, or Scandinavian, or lucky enough to be in Dr. Nagoskis class), I guarantee Come As You Are will open minds and change lives.

Carol Queen, Ph.D., founding director of the Center for Sex & Culture

Emily Nagoski is worth her weight in TED Talks, and Come as You Are is a master class in the science of sex.

Ian Kerner, sex therapist and bestselling author of She Comes First

Its the science of sex, decoded and demystified. Want to be educated on the latest findings about female genitalia? Of course you do. Empowering and sex-positive at best, this informative read makes for an enticing bedfellow.

Refinery29

Lots of booksand articles and expertsclaim to have the keys to transform your sex life. This one actually has it. It isnt as fast as taking a pill, but it will last a whole lot longer. You will find no hot new bedroom movesits that deeper-level soul stuff. You know, the stuff that actually works.

Salon.com

Wonderful new language to help us articulate to women (and their lovers) what is going on.

Huffington Post

Like a punch to the gut. When I read the passage that made me realizeafter all these yearsthat I was not actually broken, I began to cry. I wished [Nagoski] was someone who was actively in my life, someone I could reach out to for grounding every time I momentarily forgot the lessons in her book.

Book Riot

Nagoskis book deserves plaudits for the rare achievement of merging pop science and the sexual self-help genre in prose thats not insufferably twee. [Come As You Are] offers up hard facts on the science of arousal and desire in a friendly and accessible way.

The Guardian (UK)

For my students

YES, YOU ARE NORMAL

To be a sex educator is to be asked questions. Ive stood in college dining halls with a plate of food in my hands, answering questions about orgasm. Ive been stopped in hotel lobbies at professional conferences to answer questions about vibrators. Ive sat on a park bench, checking social media on my phone, only to find questions from a stranger about her asymmetrical genitals. Ive gotten emails from students, from friends, from their friends, from total strangers, about sexual desire, sexual arousal, sexual pleasure, sexual pain, orgasm, fetishes, fantasies, bodily fluids, and more.

Questions like

• Once my partner initiates, Im into it, but it seems like it never even occurs to me to be the one to start things. Why is that?
• My boyfriend was like, Youre not ready, youre still dry. But I was so ready. So why wasnt I wet?
• I saw this thing about women who cant enjoy sex because they worry about their bodies the whole time. Thats me. How do I stop doing that?
• I read something about women who stop wanting sex after a while in a relationship, even if they still love their partner. Thats me. How do I start wanting sex with my partner again?
• I think maybe I peed when I had an orgasm?
• I think maybe Ive never had an orgasm?

Under all these questions, theres really just one question:

Am I normal?

(The answer is nearly always: Yes.)

This book is a collection of answers. Theyre answers that Ive seen change womens lives, answers informed by the most relevant science and by the personal stories of women whose growing understanding of sex has transformed their relationships with their own bodies. These women are my heroines, and I hope that by telling their stories, Ill empower you to follow your own path, to reach for and achieve your own profound and unique sexual potential.

After all the books that have been written about sex, all the podcasts and TV shows and magazine articles and radio Q&As, how can it be that we all still have so many questions?

Well. The frustrating reality is weve been lied tonot deliberately, its no ones fault, but still. We were told the wrong story.

For a long, long time in Western science and medicine, womens sexuality was viewed as Mens Sexuality Litebasically the same but not quite as good.

For instance, it was just sort of assumed that since men have orgasms during penis-in-vagina sex (intercourse), women should have orgasms with intercourse, too, and if they dont, its because theyre broken.

In reality, about a quarter of women orgasm reliably with intercourse. The other 75 percent sometimes, rarely, or never orgasm with intercourse, and theyre all healthy and normal. A woman might orgasm lots of other waysmanual sex, oral sex, vibrators, breast stimulation, toe sucking, pretty much any way you can imagineand still not orgasm during intercourse. Thats normal.

It was just assumed, too, that because mens genitals typically behave the way their minds are behavingif a penis is erect, the person attached to it is feeling turned ona womans genitals should also match her emotional experience.

And again, some womens do, many dont. A woman can be perfectly normal and healthy and experience arousal nonconcordance, where the behavior of her genitals (being wet or dry) may not match her mental experience (feeling turned on or not).

And it was also assumed that because men experience spontaneous, out-of-the-blue desire for sex, women should also want sex spontaneously.

Again it turns out thats true sometimes, but not necessarily. A woman can be perfectly normal and healthy and never experience spontaneous sexual desire. Instead, she may experience responsive desire, in which her desire emerges only in a highly erotic context.

In reality, women and men are different.

But wait. Women and men both experience orgasm, desire, and arousal, and men, too, can experience responsive desire, arousal nonconcordance, and lack of orgasm with penetration. Women and men both can fall in love, fantasize, masturbate, feel puzzled about sex, and experience ecstatic pleasure. They both can ooze fluids, travel forbidden paths of sexual imagination, encounter the unexpected and startling ways that sex shows up in every domain of lifeand confront the unexpected and startling ways that sex sometimes declines, politely or otherwise, to show up.