Betty Dodson | |
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 Dodson in 2010 | |
| Born | (1929-08-24)August 24, 1929 Wichita, Kansas, U.S. |
| Died | October 31, 2020(2020-10-31) (aged 91) New York City, U.S. |
| Known for | Sex-positive feminism |
Betty Dodson (August 24, 1929 – October 31, 2020) was an Americansex educator. An artist by training, she exhibitederotic art inNew York City, before pioneering thepro-sex feminist movement. Dodson's workshops and manuals encourage women tomasturbate, often in groups.
Dodson went toNew York City to train as an artist in 1950, and lived onManhattan'sMadison Avenue from 1962.[1] In 1959, Dodson married Frederick Lief, an advertising director; they divorced in 1965.[1] Dodson's quest for "sexual self-discovery" began after herdivorce.[1] Dodson held a first one-woman show of erotic art at theWickersham Gallery in New York City in 1968.[2] In 1987, herMs. magazinememoir and instructional series,Sex for One, was published.Random House later published the work broadly, and it was translated into 25 languages.[3]
Dodson criticizedEve Ensler'sThe Vagina Monologues, which she believed has a negative and restrictive view of sexuality with ananti-male bias.[4]
Dodson earned a degree from theunaccreditedInstitute for the Advanced Study of Human Sexuality for her research work on sexuality.[5]
Dodson became active in thesex-positive movement in the late 1960s.[6]
From the 1970s onwards, she organisedBodysex workshops. Bodysex is a practice developed by Betty Dodson to help women connect with their bodies anderogenous zones, healshames, improvepleasure perception, and promoteself-love. In the workshops, women were guided to explore their bodies and masturbate together to learn, with guidance,how to have anorgasm as a woman alone and with asexual partner.[7] Her two-hour sessions featured 15 naked women, each using aHitachi Magic Wand to aid in masturbation.[8] Dodson used the Magic Wand, a mains-poweredvibrator, in demonstrations and instructional classes to instruct women regarding self-pleasure techniques.[9][10] She provided a Magic Wand to each woman for these sessions.[11] She recommended women put a small towel over theirvulva in order to dull the sensation of the vibrator and prolong the pleasurable experience.[12] The essence of her method was to provide vaginal and clitoral stimulation at the same time.[13] Dodson taught thousands of women to achieveorgasm using this technique.[8] Her technique became known as the Betty Dodson Method.[14]
A study conducted in 2007 tested the "Betty Dodson Method" in group therapy with 500 previously anorgasmic women. Of the 500, 465 (93%) had orgasms during therapy, while 35 (7%) did not.[15] In a 2021 study, the female techniques for pleasurablevaginal intercourse taught by Dodson ("Angling, Rocking, Shallowing, Pairing") are again described by women.[16]
Dodson published a memoir,Sex by Design, in 2010.[1]
In 2014, she stated that she considered herself afourth-wave feminist, stating that the previous waves of feminist were banal and anti-sexual, which is why she has chosen to look at a new stance of feminism, fourth wave feminism. In 2014, Dodson worked with women to discover their sexual desires through masturbation. Dodson said her work has gained support from an audience of young, successful women who have never had an orgasm. This includes fourth-wave feminists – those rejecting the anti-pleasure stance they believethird-wave feminists stand for.[17]
Dodson died on October 31, 2020, at the age of 91, fromcirrhosis in a Manhattannursing home.[18][3]
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