Sexuality Happens

I was really excited about this book, and not just because I have a bit of a fetish for collecting every sexuality based book IN THE WORLD (ok, not really, but close). Moregasm is Babeland’s new Guide to Mind Blowing Sex, written by the owners/founders of the lovely Babeland (who sent me this book to review. Take that FTC).

Why was I so excited? Because I was really for an all-encompassing, queer and straight friendly, monogamous and non-monogamous, rocking sex ed book, ready to take the world by storm. As a whole, Babeland is a great company, providing accessible and inclusive sex education to people of various genders, identities, backgrounds and more.

Maybe I hyped it up too much in my own mind, but I do have to say that I wound up being disappointed.

Some parts were great. I loved that they showed different XX bodies; women, genderqueer, gender fuckers, different races, different sizes, etc. Awesome.  They also showed lots of different vulvas, showing that everyone is unique. Again, awesome. They did a great job with talking about cuntacular/vulvar plumbing.

But then the poor pensises didn’t get that kind of love. There weren’t pictures of lots of different XY bodies.  Nor were there pictures of different types of pensises, to help normalize different sizes/shapes/circumcized/uncut.  I remember the first time I saw an uncut penis in a text book in college, and it was a whole different world to me.  Lots of people have never seen one, or are concerned about their size, whether they are curved or not, etc.  I thought it was kind of sad that they chose not to show the awesome variety of men out there.

So I started thinking that maybe this should be called the Queer Guide to Mind Blowing Sex, which, in my mind is a needed book, and that would be awesome.  Yes, Babeland is women focused, but the poor cis guys were getting the short end of the stick here.

Never fear; the chapters on blow jobs and intercourse completely reinforced hetero-normitivity.  All the illustrations showed a traditional looking woman (pretty hair and all) with a traditonal looking man (biceps and all).  Cause you know queer people don’t give blow jobs or have sex.  The strap on section was ridiculous short, and not as inclusive as I had hope.

What did they do well? I thought they showed off a great variety of sex positive toys in all of the chapters. The one exception to this was the lube chapter, where they ONLY showed Babeland lube. Now, Babeland carries other awesome lubes, like Maximus, so it wouldn’t be promoting something they don’t carry, and I know I personally get yeast infections from their Organic Babeland Lube. Ergo, I don’t know why they didn’t expand that chapter.

The book itself is beautiful; I love the color, the pictures inside, the quality. I love the list of resources in the back. I love the relaxed tone they use to talk about sex (although I’d say that lots of women/gender queer people with cunts, myself included, don’t like being refered to as “babe” but I totally get that it IS “Babe”-land).

I think this book would be good for an open minded straight couple, or maybe a therapist working with lots of hetero couples. I’d give it 2 or 3 stars (out of 5), because it is well written, but I was just really sad not to have an inclusive book coming from such a great company.

Click here to be the owner of your own copy of Moregasm.

-Essin’ Em