I remember reading a Rihanna quote or tweet or some piece of media where she said she thought she was “on her monthly,” but then realized she just had “that juicy fruit.”
Immediately, I recalled all the moments my “fruit” more closely resembled a cactus or a raisin or another shriveled plant that would thrive in a desert. Initially I shame-spiraled into the possibility that I had defective, dried-up, and dusty fruit. Then I remembered the time I saw two tortoises in the throws of passion. Or the time I walked past the rolled up carpets in Home Depot. Or the time I stared at the ceiling dissociated waiting for it to end. I wasn’t dried-up, dusty, and defective in those moments, so, what the fuck.
Was I more turned on by flooring products, horny animals, and sexual violence than to the people and situations I was subjectively aroused by? What was going on? I’ll tell ya what was going on: arousal non-concordance, which describes the extremely normal phenomenon that happens when genital response doesn’t match a person’s experience of arousal.
Movies, porn, romance novels all tell us wet equals aroused. Wet equals yes. Wet equals ready to go. And that’s just simply not true. Our brains and our genitals are distinct but interconnected systems.
So what does sex research tell us?
A person with a vulva comes into a lab and is shown a variety of different types of porn & given a button to press when they find the porn arousing. This study showed there was no predictive relationship between what she found arousing and what her genitals responded to – in other words, she got wet even though she didn’t say she was aroused. Researchers have found that for people with vulvas there is only about a 10% overlap between physiological arousal (what her body is doing) and perceived arousal how aroused she feels). As in, she might be soaking wet watching two bonobos going at it, but not think it’s hot. Or she might be bone dry watching something she thinks is super hot.
This is because our genital response is specific to sex related stimuli – regardless of whether that stimuli is actually appealing. So getting wet is really just our bodies being like, “that’s a sex thing!” not necessarily them saying, “that’s a sex thing and I like it!”
Obviously this experience varies between person to person, and it also very much varies between people with penises vs. vulvas. There is about a 50% overlap between what male bodied genitals respond to as “sex related” and what their brains respond to as “sexually appealing.”
Emily Nagoski illustrates this distinct but connected relationship between these systems brilliantly in her book “Come As You Are” by telling the story of the brain and the genitals walking down the street trying to find a restaurant where they’ll have dinner:
She describes how the genitals notice any restaurant they pass. They are oblivious to literally all the museums or shops, but they notice every restaurant. Thai, fast food, pizza places, even maybe a pet store that sells food – they recognize all the places where eating is possible and say: “this is a restaurant. We could eat here.” They don’t really have an opinion about it. They are just adept at sniffing out food. Meanwhile, the brain is assessing all the contextual factors to decide whether or not they want to eat at the restaurant. “This restaurant doesn’t have a good health rating,” or “I got food poisoning from that restaurant before,” or “I heard this restaurant has commitment issues” etc. Now, imagine they pass a museum and the brain says “there is apparently a great cafe in this museum.” The genitals initially can’t compute and have nothing to say other than: “this isn’t a restaurant.” But that is because the genitals don’t have all the information the brain has. The brain has to show the genitals the little cafe inside the museum, and then the genitals can be like “ooooooooh NOW I see this IS a restaurant. We could totally eat here!” And now the brain & the genitals are on the same page.
What can you do:
1. LUBE!
First and foremost, lube is the fucking best. Why is anybody giving handjobs without lube? Drown me in lube. Put me in a bathtub of lube and leave me there to set like a jell-O mold. Lube is that girl. Lube is your best friend.
2. Cultivate attunement to yourself and partner(s)
Attunement is the practice of reading and responding to another person’s nonverbal and verbal cues, and it is born from the connection we hold to ourselves. The more in touch we are with our own bodies and feelings, the more we are able to communicate what is working and what isn’t, and sync the physical and mental.
3. Communication
It’s a two-way street. If you’ve read this far and it feels applicable to you, talk to your partner about it. As we move towards understanding sex to be a collaborative co-creation versus a performance of a skillset, the easier it feels to express what we want. Or discover what we like & want alongside our partner if we aren’t sure ourselves.
Human beings are complex. Complexity feels frustrating when we want things to be simple and linear. We put so much pressure on our bodies to do stuff. Then, when our bodies don’t become soaking wet or rock hard right at the moment we think they are supposed to, we assume something is wrong.
But more often than not, the issue lies not with us. So often our bodies are actually behaving normally, but within our limited understanding of our own unique functioning we think there is something wrong. I’m here to tell you it’s all right. Your fruit is ripe even if it needs a little context to get juicy.
