The Pleasure Principle By PATRICIA LEIGH BROWN and CAROL POGASH SAN FRANCISCO March 15, 2009
EVEN in a culture in which sex toys are a booming business and Oprah Winfrey discusses living your best life in the bedroom, a coed live-in commune dedicated to the female orgasm hovers at the extremes. The founder of the One Taste Urban Retreat Center, Nicole Daedone, sees herself as leading "the slow-sex movement," one that places a near-exclusive emphasis on women's pleasure - in which love, romance and even flirtation are not required. "In our culture, admitting our bodies matter is almost an admission of failure," said Ms. Daedone, 41, who can quote the poet Mary Oliver and speak wryly on the intricacies of women's anatomy with equal aplomb. "I don't think women will really experience freedom until they own their sexuality." A core of 38 men and women - their average age the late 20s - live full time in the retreat center, a shabby-chic loft building in the South of Market district. They prepare meals together, practice yoga and mindfulness meditation and lead workshops in communication for outside groups as large as 60. But the heart of the group's activity, listed cryptically on its Web site's calendar as "morning practice," is closed to all but the residents. At 7 a.m. each day, as the rest of America is eating Cheerios or trying to face gridlock without hyperventilating, about a dozen women, naked from the waist down, lie with eyes closed in a velvet-curtained room, while clothed men huddle over them, stroking them in a ritual known as orgasmic meditation - "OMing," for short. The couples, who may or may not be romantically involved, call one another "research partners." A commune dedicated to men and women publicly creating "the orgasm that exists between them," in the words of one resident, may sound like the ultimate California satire. But the Bay Area has a lively and venerable history of seekers constructing lives around sexual adventure. ... http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/15/fashion/15commune.html *********************************** * POST TO [email protected] * *********************************** Medianews mailing list [email protected] http://lists.etskywarn.net/mailman/listinfo/medianews
