As a teenager in Louisiana, Myisha Battle learned about sex from textbooks censored with Sharpie markers. Today, she’s a San Francisco–based sex coach dedicated to helping other women orgasm — and to squirt, an ability that Myisha unleashed in herself during a phase when she was doing a lot of Pilates. For this week’s Sex Lives, Myisha explained her job, fielded calls from Sex Lives listeners, and explained the wide world of orgasms in ways that shocked, confused, and inspired.
This is a partial transcript of New York Magazine’s Sex Lives podcast, edited for clarity and length.
What else can we do to make our orgasms better?
I’ve written about female ejaculation. First of all, I’m a squirter. That’s something that I can share from the get-go. When I was younger it was a little bit, and now it’s like Niagara Falls. I’ve written about this. I actually sort of unlocked it through Pilates, because you’re training your core. And I was dating all these guys in New York and having crazy ejaculations, and I was like, I just think I’m really fuckin’ strong down there.
Your core is so strong that you’re pushing out all the liquids?
Well, yes. Every woman has the gland that builds up the fluid — that’s the Skene’s gland, and it’s located on the top wall of the vaginal cavity. When it is aroused, it becomes rigid. So you can feel it. Your partner can feel it. And once it becomes rigid like that, and hard, you can stimulate it and it will produce ejaculation. So that is the great mystery solved. That’s really all it is.
It is kind of a magical thing because they have shown that, if you do work that area, the more you ejaculate, the more you ejaculate. It’s an organ that will grow. And that’s one of those things that, if someone is like, “I’m having a perfectly fine sex life, I just am really feeling exploratory.” My exploratory clients are my favorites because then you get to give them crazy-ass assignments. Like, go to sex shops. Try to find your Skene’s gland and try to ejaculate.
To unlock the next level. What else?
A lot of people come to me with guilt or shame about certain desires. And they want someone to support them in their exploration of that. So it could just be giving someone an assignment — like I said earlier, to go to a sex shop that you know specifically addresses the niche that they’re looking to explore. Give them permission to go there, and give them an assignment to peruse, look, touch, have an experience, and come back and report on it. Because all of those things are so important for owning our desires and being able to enact them in a safe, sane, and consensual way.
That’s the case with my clients who are looking to explore BDSM. I’m not going to send them to a sex club right away. There are baby steps that have to happen for them to gain some ownership. Or maybe we have to talk about, “Okay, what specifically are you drawn to about this?” Is it the restraints? Is it the material? Are you more just needing to invest in some leather? Do you have that in your budget, and how can we build a savings plan so you can invest in some leather? It can get down to that granular level.
Are there crazy levels of orgasm that I don’t even know about?
I don’t specialize in tantra, but that is something that there are folks out there who are coaches who really work with their clients on — breath work breath control — and that can really deepen your experience. And then there’s also edging, prolonging the orgasm by not letting yourself orgasm until it builds up to this critical point. There are a number of levels.
I don’t actually want to work that hard. I myself am too lazy to deal with extra bed sheets or moisture-wicking whatevers, but in theory, I want to know what’s happening. What is happening on the other sex levels?
A lot. And I think that there’s always more. And that’s the best part of my job. Someone might come to me and say, “I’m in an open relationship and we go to sex clubs regularly and we just want to know: what else?” And it’s my job to be able to refer them to someone who can, like, take them to some other level.
Are there ever people who come to you and you advise them to chill out and stop trying to reach the next goal?
Not yet.
