The Body As A School: How Queer Women’s Experiences Can Lead To Even Better Sex

This piece explores how queer women’s sexual experiences—particularly those involving women and non-binary partners—offer unique insights into sexual dynamics, communication, and pleasure that heterosexual women often do not encounter. Interviews reveal that queer women describe sex with men from a more distanced, critical standpoint, frequently noting men’s difficulty reading emotions, their focus on their own pleasure, and the normative expectation that sex should end with male ejaculation. By contrast, queer encounters were described as more communicative, exploratory, mutually attentive, and less constrained by predetermined endpoints. These embodied experiences allowed queer women to use their bodies as tools for comparison, helping them recognize which dynamics felt pleasurable, equitable, or safe—and which did not. Heterosexual women also reported frustrations with men but tended to accept these dynamics as expected or inevitable. Overall, the findings suggest that exposure to diverse sexual experiences can expand understanding of communication, boundaries, and pleasure, offering lessons that could improve sexual wellbeing for people of all orientations.