It is summer, hot and horny, and I am on a roll. So I am going to continue this theme of beauty, attraction, seduction, sex, love and self-love until I run out of content — or steam, whichever comes first.

Betty Dodson, artist, author, and PhD sexologist has been one of the principal voices for women’s sexual pleasure and health for over three decades. She calls herself “A second wave feminist liberating women one orgasm at a time.”

Dodson had her first one-woman show of erotic art in 1968 in New York, followed by three others. She left the art world to teach sex to women and never turned back. She produced and presented the first feminist slide show of vulvas at the 1973 NOW Sexuality Conference in New York where she introduced the electric vibrator as a pleasure device. For 25 years, she ran Bodysex groups where women learned about their bodies and orgasms through the practice of self-stimulation.

Her first book, Liberating Masturbation: A Meditation on Selflove (1974) became a feminist classic. Sex for One (1987) sold over a million copies. Orgasms for Two (2002) embraces partner sex. Most recently she released her memoir recounting the feminist movement and all her sexual experiences, Betty Dodson: My Sexual Revolution.

She has authored numerous articles on the subject of women’s sexual pleasure and orgasm. In 1994, she earned a PhD in clinical sexology. Dodson has presented at conferences for sexual scientists, therapists, and psychologists.

She is a founder of the pro-sex feminist movement, having left behind the more traditional feminist movement because she considered it banal, anti-sexual and over-politicized. Dodson considers too much is made of sexual labels and embraces them all by calling herself a heterosexual, bisexual lesbian. She looks forward to the day we can all be just “sexual.”

I would applaud you, Queen Betty, but my hands are busy.

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Donna Henes is the author of The Queen of My Self: Stepping into Sovereignty in Midlife. She is the Midlife Midwife™ offering counseling and upbeat, practical and ceremonial guidance for individual women and groups who want to enjoy the fruits of an enriching, influential, purposeful, passionate, and powerful maturity. Consult the MIDLIFE MIDWIFE™

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The Queen welcomes questions concerning all issues of interest to women in their mature years. Send your inquiries to thequeenofmyself@aol.com.