Mars and Venus in the Bedroom.

Reading this book may be one of the most shamelessly unfair things I've ever done on this blog. I gave it no chance, admitted no redeeming virtues. But that's just because it doesn't have any. This is a book in which John Gray, the author of Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus (which I previously trashed) tells you how to fuck. By the way, he was a celibate monk for nine years. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but if you want to be an authority on gender relations, maybe it isn't the best life experience to bring to the table.

As before, his advice is all predicated upon the idea that men and women are entirely separate species and the only way for them to relate successfully is to learn each other's bizarre and unreasonable needs from his book, never discuss them openly, and treat each other like gender exemplars rather than people.

He does lots of little summary bold-text things in this book (I guess the "complete paragraph" format was kind of alienating his readers with its highfalutin ivory-tower intellectualism), so it's really easy to grab the main crazy ideas in a sentence and see how ridiculously anti-woman, anti-man, and anti-sex they are.

Below the cut, I do just that.

Edit: This website deconstructs John Gray much more rigorously than I do. And it's fun.


Sex allows a man to feel his needs for love, while receiving love helps a woman to feel her hunger for sex.
That's the central thesis of the book, right there. Men only want to get their dicks wet, women only want to be hugglebunnies. In which case I'd say they it sounds like they just shouldn't be dating and clearly God wants us to all be gay.

For a woman, arousal slowly builds long before it becomes a physical desire for sex... it could be days before she wants to have sex.
DAYS? Another main theme of this book is "man sex takes ten seconds, woman sex takes hours." But... days? How can you get aroused over the course of days? Don't you have to go to work?

Men need sex to feel. To go out into the wild or into battle, men needed to put their feelings aside. To provide for and protect their families, men were required to risk their lives while enduring the discomforts of scorching sun and freezing cold. Men gradually adapted to this requirement by becoming desensitized... Women's skin is ten times more sensitive than men's skin.
Um, I don't think hunter-gatherer women had the benefits of central heat and A/C. And women generally have a higher pain tolerance than men. Which doesn't translate into lowered sexual sensitivity anyway; neither sex is exactly leathery and I've seen men respond to some very light touches in the right context.

When Mom said that the way to a man's heart was through his stomach, she was about four inches too high.
Okay, now I'm... somewhere in the intestines.

How are men supposed to know what makes women happy when they are not women?
Gosh, what a quandary! If only women were capable of communicating somehow... maybe a crude tapping code or pointing to simple pictures!

She didn't go right to my erogenous zone. It was as though she was purposely striking out. She was moving her hands slowly up and down my body. Down my thighs and then back up to my chest. Up and down my arms and then up and down my chest and back. She was touching me everywhere I didn't want to be touched. Since we were planning to go all the way, I reached down to her hand and put it between my legs. I said, "There!"
Congratulations, John Gray, you're a dick.

When a man is kissing a woman, abruptly putting his tongue in her mouth can be too sudden. Instead, he should kiss her lightly several times, and then as she begins to open up, he can place his tongue in her mouth.
Whoa there cowboy, it's not my butthole, I'm actually pretty good at opening my mouth up with a minimum of mouthplay and artificial lubrication. (The whole section on "how to make love to a woman" is like this; some guys do need to slow down but he makes all women out to be absolute molasses in January.)

Instead of taking off her panties, he can reach around her buttocks and pull her panties into her crack to expose her bare bottom.
NO. DO NOT DO THIS. THE EROTIC WEDGIE IS NOT ALLOWED.

One very effective way a man can learn to give a woman a longer interlude in sex is to time it. It doesn't sound romantic, but it sure works. I recommend that the man discreetly put a clock by the bed. While he is touching her vulva and clitoris, he can occasionally glance over and time himself.
Um... you're right, that doesn't sound romantic. Like, at all. Also, does he make love exclusively to frozen pieces of brick? I think my lovers time themselves via the progression from "mmm" to "OH GOD," not the ticking away of the minutes.

Huh. I just finished a chapter on "how to please a woman," and I was expecting it to be followed by "how to please a man," but no. No such equivalent in the book. Apparently you please a man by owning female genitals and not screaming "don't touch me!"

For a woman to experience the big "O," a man needs to place the "O" after his two to three minutes, making it twenty to thirty minutes.
Now I know people are all different (John Gray doesn't), but I've never been with a guy who regularly finished in two to three minutes. It's happened a couple times, but as a general rule, every guy I've been with has needed a good fifteen minutes of stimulation to get to his happy place. And me? It depends a lot, but it's somewhere between thirty seconds and ten minutes. Usually well less than ten minutes. This is just me of course, because people are different.

What makes sex fulfilling and memorable for a man is a woman's fulfillment. What makes success fulfilling and memorable for a woman is the same, her fulfillment.
Why do you hate men, John Gray? Why is your whole book about men demonstrating skill and patience and women merely enjoying? Why are a man's enjoyment and a woman's skill (or rather lack of need for skill, because having a vagina is enough) taken for granted?

These are some common phrases for initiating sex and common answers a woman can give instead of just saying no.
A little context: his idea in this section is that when women don't want sex, rather than refusing it they should agree to just have a "quickie" to get him off. No pressure on her to undertake the long and agonizing process of reaching orgasm, he relieves his burning masculine need, and everyone goes home happy, except of course the woman who just got a totally pleasureless fuck when she didn't want to fuck at all.

He says, "I have some time. Would you like to have sex?" She says, "We could go for a quickie now and then maybe tomorrow we could schedule some more time to have sex."
She says, "You're a real fucking romantic, aren't you, John Gray?"

My favorite example of sexual signals came from a movie I watched about a Mongolian family. When the wife was in the mood for sex, she would put out a flag. When her husband came home, he would see the flag and know that she was in the mood. He would then race to get his flag and hoop while she got on her horse and rode away. He would then get on his horse and chase after her, lasso her with his hoop, and wrestle with her. Then they would have sex.
Ah, this explains why the women of Mongolia are known for their passion, sensuality, and severe spinal injuries.

A man should remember that it is not what he does but how long he takes to do it that ensures a woman's fulfillment.
Jesus Christ. You shoulda stayed a monk. Or, like, consulted with actual women when you wrote your book on how to please women.