8 Ways Virginia Johnson Improved Your Sex Life

The female half of research team Masters and Johnson died earlier this week. To celebrate her life, let's look back at the team's finest work.

1. She brought science out of the whorehouse and into your bedroom.

Before Virginia Johnson joined William Masters in his sex research in 1957, he had been studying the sexuality of prostitutes, as they were the only subjects he could find to openly cooperate. After realizing this was a limited and atypical demographic to study, Johnson, whose bedside manner was much warmer than Masters', successfully recruited 382 women and 312 men from the Washington University community to observe having sex or masturbating. Which made much more sense, because most of us don't have sex like pros.

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2. She helped develop the 4 stages of the sexual response cycle.

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They broke the horizontal mambo down to: the excitement phase, the plateau phase (full arousal), orgasm, and resolution phase. Before then, the tight-lipped social conventions of the time hadn't let the conversation revolve around any steps except the third one.

3. She proved all orgasms are created equal.

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Masters and Johnson debunked Freud's belief that vaginal orgasms were superior to clitoral orgasms. Studying physiological responses during female orgasm, they discovered the area of stimulation didn't matter—just the orgasm did. Ergo, all the more reason for foreplay.

4. She discovered men really do need a break after sex.

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Masters and Johnson proved that men have a sexual refractory period after orgasm in which they can't ejaculate again for some time. Sleep often ensues. Lots of sleep.

5. And that women don't.

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Johnson found that because women don't have a sexual refractory period, they can have mutliple orgasms, meaning they can continue to have orgasms after their first one. Again. And again. And again.

6. She proved that old people get horny.

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Masters and Johnson confirmed that as long as you were healthy and had a consenting partner, there isn't an age when you're too old for sex. There may be more obstacles, but even octogenarians get the itch.

7. She made sexual dysfunction curable.

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Before Masters and Johnson, sexual dysfunctions like premature ejaculation, impotence, and vaginismus were treated with long-term psychoanalysis that hardly ever worked. They developed a two-week rapid couples treatment that had a great success rate and was adopted by other sex therapy clinics throughout the country. It also lifted some of the taboo off a few embarrassing topics.

8. And declared that size doesn't count.

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In their research, Masters and Johnson concluded that the size of a man's penis has no correlation to his performance. Thank god.

Despite some valid criticisms, most of Masters and Johnson's work revolutionized the way we look at human sexuality.

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And so much more to learn.

If you're in need of a highly-dramatized version of Masters and Johnson's work, there's also going to be a new Showtime series, Masters of Sex, starring Lizzy Caplan and Martin Sheen. It will probably be full of sexy sex: