The Pleasure Gap by Katherine Rowland

Author:Katherine Rowland
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Basic Books
Published: 2020-02-03T16:00:00+00:00

We are all affected by the increasingly sex-negative cultural climate. Sex coaching is a way for you to share sex positivity, get the sexfacts, and celebrate your sexual power.

Sexual fears, ignorance, confusion, and the many stressful pressures on our lives today are killing sexual pleasure. Sex coaching offers a safe space where you can heal your pain, reclaim your birthright to enjoy sex as pleasure, and regain mastery for your own success.23

In her book, Britton presents sex coaching as a paradigm shift. She writes, “More creative and flexible than traditional therapy methods, sex coaching is an art.” However, to understand what sex coaching really is, it is perhaps easiest to lay out what it is not. First off and most importantly, it’s not therapy. As one coach put it to me, therapists tend to be great at talking the language of language, but coaches also approach intimacy from the language of touch. Sex coaching is not pathologizing, that is, it doesn’t proceed from the label of dysfunction and endeavor to restore “normalcy.” It doesn’t designate certain behaviors or longings as unhealthy, but aims rather to normalize what individuals are already feeling and doing. It is forward-looking rather than focused on untangling the past. And unlike traditional therapy, in which professionals rarely reveal any personal information, coaches tend to be self-referential, modeling empowerment through their personal demeanor and selective disclosures about their own life histories (or, in the case of Somatica, their own genitals). Coaching comes from an I place, Britton said. She readily shares, for instance, that she has traveled the spectrum of human experience. She has lived in a sexless relationship, felt the “ravages” of menopause, and lost her daughter to HIV/AIDS, and yet, she says, she moved from grief to ecstasy.

As I surveyed the field and talked to some of its practitioners and clients, one of the chief distinctions I saw between sex therapy and sex coaching was around the personal value of sex—and what we believe we can aim for. Therapists may readily concede that sex is life energy, a creative power, but at the same time they acknowledge that it’s as much about the plumbing as it is about transcendence. In their emphasis on the naturalness of sex, therapists maintain that intimacy and sensuality should be enjoyable, playful, and satisfying, but they also say it’s perfectly normal for sex to be marked by mediocrity or complacency, or to be just “good enough.” The coaching industry, by contrast, stresses excellence. The word “extraordinary” makes routine appearances in coaching materials. In some respects, this orientation is a return to the Age of Aquarius and the human potential movement. But in others, it is thoroughly of the current moment and our culture’s bleating faith in self-optimization (another term, “sex hacks,” also floats in the coaching vernacular). As in other areas of today’s culture, the restless individual takes center stage.

As the founder of sex coaching, Britton is attuned to the rapid growth in her field, and she is particularly sensitive to the competing programs that certify new coaches.

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