In a 2017 Kinsey Institute study of 53,000 Americans, lesbians reported climaxing 86% of the time during sex, compared to 65% of straight women. So women having sex with other women have cracked the sex aspect of couple life. However, if you identify as lesbian and are contemplating sex for the first time with another woman, don’t trust mainstream lesbian porn to paint a realistic picture of what lesbian sex is. There are tons of great sources out there.
Intercourse involving a penis and a vagina is not the only big deal, as Peggy Orenstein asserts in her 2016 TED talk on female pleasure for young women and girls. Young people should not be learning that the only way to lose your virginity is by having your/their penis penetrate your/their vagina – this excludes lesbian, gay and non-binary children.
Normalizing the scope of sexual possibilities and framing them to involve “…warmth, affection, arousal, desire, touch, intimacy…” is essential if we want to completely do away with the offensive myth that lesbian sex is not “real” sex. Because in case you weren’t already aware, sex can happen between trans women with penises, intersex individuals, and non-lesbian-identifying folks with vaginas.
Don’t ask us to define what lesbian sex involves – that’s another conversation for another time – but do believe us when we say that it is 100% legitimate.