Aislinn Emirzian has been road tripping around the country in an RV since January to promote her new book, The Ultimate Guide to Prostate Pleasure. She landed in Milwaukee last Friday and was kind enough to sit down with me at Beans and Barley to talk about the process of writing the book and what she’s learned on her tour.
I have been waiting for a book like The Ultimate Guide to Prostate Pleasure for a long time. I teach about prostate play, answer questions about it and sell all kinds of prostate stimulators, yet I haven’t had a good, comprehensive guide to recommend until now. Aislinn said that she also saw that “there was a hole to fill” (ba-dum tish!) and that she and her co-author, Charlie Glickman, began researching and writing the kind of book that they wanted to see on their own shelves.
Not only does The Ultimate Guide to Prostate Pleasure provide detailed, practical advice about prostate stimulation, it is inclusive of transgender women and genderqueer people, and it comprehensively addresses cultural constructs of masculinity that may prevent men from enjoying prostate play (for instance, the idea that heterosexual men do not enjoy sexual penetration). I loved reading it and would highly recommend it to anyone interested in this topic.
LAS: What surprised you while you were doing research for the book?
AE: I had this expectation that most people heard about the prostate first, and then went looking for it. Through the surveys I did, I realized that a lot of men—especially men of an older generation—had originally gotten into it through exploring anal play and maybe didn’t even know what the prostate was, just noticed that there was a particular area that felt better when it was massaged, and later made the connection that this was the prostate.
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LAS: One of the things I found most interesting when reading the book is the section where you compare the prostate and the G-spot. A lot of sexuality educators have very strong opinions about how these two sexual structures are (or aren’t) related. When I read that section, it didn’t seem as if there was a definitive answer to this question. I’d love to hear more about the debate about whether the prostate and the G-spot are essentially the same in men and women and why these areas are pleasurable.
AE: First, a couple of specifications about the difference between the “female prostate” and the “female G-spot.” The “female G-spot” refers to an area, whereas the “female prostate” refers to an organ. My understanding is that the male and female prostate are definitely homologous, so the male prostate is to the female prostate as the testicles are to the ovaries. The female prostate is located in the area that is identified as the G-spot, but there’s no scientific consensus as to what the organ is that causes G-spot sensations. I really wanted to talk in the book about the idea that the prostate is the male G-spot. For both of these pleasures, you are basically massaging the area of the prostate, but it’s not necessarily the sensory nerves of that gland that are causing the sensation, and there’s no scientific consensus at this point about what’s actually going on there. However, I personally still like the idea that the prostate is the male G-spot, because it suggests that men, like women, have this intense internal pleasure zone, and it fucks with the idea that men are “external-only” in terms of their genital anatomy. I like that it shows us that men and women, in terms of the anatomy of pleasure, are not so different as people tend to think.
LAS: What have been the most common questions or areas of interest on your tour?
AE: A lot of folks are very interested in hearing about the way that prostate stimulation can greatly increase the intensity of their orgasm and are interested in trying to learn multiple orgasm techniques, which many men experience through prostate massage. There are quite a lot of folks who are interested in trying something new and have heard about this and think, “Why not?” There are also a lot of people who are interested in prostate health and the possible health benefits of prostate massage and are intrigued to hear about how, in addition to feeling really good, this might be good for you too.
Laura Anne Stuart owns the Tool Shed, an erotic boutique on Milwaukee’s East Side. She has a master’s degree in public health and has worked as a sexuality educator for more than fifteen years. Want Laura to answer your questions in SEXPress? Send them to laura@shepex.com. Not all questions received will be answered in the column, and Laura cannot provide personal answers to questions that do not appear here. Questions sent to this address may be reproduced in this column, both in print and online, and may be edited for clarity and content.
