I was in my late twenties before I had my first orgasm. Even later before I knew how to get it done on my own.
Q: Did your first orgasm happen when you were still a virgin?
A: Shy kid growing up in a conservative Mormon household? Oh yes. Hell yes.
First nocturnal emission was about age 12; solo first masturbation to orgasm shortly thereafter.
First non-solo sexual experiences to orgasm were with another boy (who is now semi-famous in the gay male community), around 14.
First orgasm with a woman, my preferred gender today: 24.
It wasn’t until I was in my early thirties, and out of my first marriage, that I really got the chance to make up for lost time. 
Female here. I masturbated to orgasm for the first time when I was either ten or eleven. I wouldn’t go so far as to say it was a ‘shock,’ but it was sort of surprising the first time it happened because there had been plenty of other times when I’d done similar kinds of things to myself and felt like there was this steady progression towards…something…so finally getting there seemed more like, ‘oh, okay, that’s what this is all about.’ At first I remember doing it by straddling something (like a folded up pillow) and grinding against it, and not long after figured out that I could touch my clitoris directly and get a much faster turnaround. The orgasm itself was pretty much the same, though. I soon after discovered that laying down in the tub and shimmying under the running warm water faucet to let the water do the work could also be pretty amazing.
I would occasionally use objects (I had a hair brush handle for which I have very fond memories) for the purpose of vaginal insertion, but I’ve never had (either from penetrative sex or from other forms of stimulation) a purely vaginal orgasm. This is pretty standard, though by no means universal, and may be something the OP should consider with respect to his depiction of female self-stimulation/orgasm. It’s not that vaginal stimulation doesn’t feel incredibly good, but it in and of itself it just isn’t enough to send me over the top. YMMV.
I masturbated A LOT as a teenager (like, a time or two a day most days, and some days into the double digits) from the time I figured out how it worked until the time I stopped being a teenager and started being a twenty-something who masturbated a lot.
I wouldn’t say it had any effect on me when I lost my virginity (as it was the most lackluster experience imaginable for reasons I won’t go into here), but it definitely had a larger impact on my sexual experiences with subsequent partners in general. Specifically, I knew where, when, and how I like to be touched and can pass that information along to my partner (rather than resign myself to a life of a bunch of fruitless floundering about).
Ehm… apparently I masturbated as a baby. According to the pediatrician that’s normal, baby girls generally masturbate more easily and therefore more often than baby boys.
Since I didn’t do the forbidden “touch myself” (about 1/3 of women in Spain masturbate without touching or using toys), and since women don’t “shoot off”, I didn’t realize I was masturbating until the first Sonrisa Vertical prize for erotic novel went to one that described the technique. Apparently, the resulting arguments about whether it was possible or not for a woman to masturbate without touching led several million women to realize that, uh… well… yeeeeees actually.
I was very curious as a kid, and had a girl friend who experimented with me. We were probably 5 or 6.
I didn’t orgasm until I was maybe 10? I’m not sure how old I was, only that it surprised me. Then I did it daily. When I was a teenager I only dated women, but we rarely were intimate beyond kissing and when we did, I never orgasmed, so me masturbating didn’t change.
Slept with a man for the first time when I was 17. I don’t orgasm from penetration, only clitoral stimulation, so it didn’t change anything. Hetero sex is pleasurable, but I don’t climax (which is fine with me, still fun). And when someone else gives me an orgasm, it doesn’t feel quite the same as when I give one to myself. I appreciate every form of pleasure for different reasons.
Masturbating has given me the opportunity to know what I like and am open to. I know quite a few women who had never touched themselves into adulthood, but were open to my suggestions that they try it, and ended up loving it. It’s a way of knowing yourself.
Or “female people”, from AHunter. News flash: we’re just people!
So since my example is still different from everyone in this thread, I’ll relate mine. I masturbated plenty in high school and even earlier, but I didn’t orgasm until I got a vibrator. I get irritated at both men and women who think that somehow a vibrator is Bad, and someone not wanting me to use would be an Instant Dealbreaker. Finally having that stupid orgasm with the vibrator made it possible for me to have one without; it was after I started using it regularly I began to occasionally have orgasms during intercourse.
Lots and lots and lots of women rarely or never have orgasms during sex. I know what I like now, and sometimes I will, but thankfully I have a loving SO who doesn’t mind that I use the vibrator.
I’m with your SO. My SO and I fairly often use it during sex. I love it because it’s almost a “cheat” in that it makes virtually any position I want to try great for her. 
Or “female people”, from AHunter.
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???
What’s unmannerly about the phrase “female people”?
What’s wrong with “women”?
Not all female people identify (and/or are considered by others to be) women. I use “women” to refer to people by gender and “female” to refer to people by sex. The latter seemed more appropriate to the conversation. Anyway, no disrespect or other negative connotation was intended by any means.
I knew about guys jerking off for a long time, and thanks to scenes in comedies like Parenthood, though I’d never seen one in person I knew what a vibrator was/did, but it never really occurred to me that women could get off without an object until I read a non-fiction book about adolescence that described it when I was fifteen - written by the same folks who did Our Bodies, Our Selves, I think.
I thought it was sort of a strange idea for a few months, but I, uh, figured out how to apply that new knowledge pretty quickly after that, though.
Education is a wonderful thing.
I’m all in favor of using whatever means are necessary. I was convinced, for years, that I could not get off with just my hand. My first orgasm/ejaculation happened when I was about 14, while humping my pillow. Explanation: This was 1980, and I did not have easy access to porn, so I started writing my own*. In longhand, in spiral notebooks, in bed. Purely for comfort reasons, because I was trying to write while facedown on my bed, propped up on my elbows, I found it was more comfortable to have my pillow under my body (I had a bad back even then). So I’d be writing, and while I was writing I’d be sorta unconsciously humping the pillow … and then, one night, boom. Surprise!
I tried for years after that to just rub one out with my hand. It never worked. Couldn’t say why. But then I finally got to watch hardcore porn when I was 20. I was watching this video (on VHS!), and I was stroking it, and not really thinking about it because I’d never reached the point of ejaculation that way. So I was taken by surprise, and it sort of went everywhere (which was embarrassing, because it was in somebody else’s house — thankfully, I was alone in the room when it happened, and I was able to clean it up with nobody being the wiser). But after that incident, I never had any trouble getting off with my hand.
- Yes, the stories were ridiculous. Though not quite as ridiculous as this (NSFW, but not exactly explicit either; Cracked.com article). I may have been a virgin, but I’d at least seen real live boobies, understood the actual mechanics of sex, and had read some actual, published erotic fiction (sneaking peeks into Penthouse Forum and Variations at the local mini-mart, so I at least had a general idea of how a sex scene might play out).
First orgasm when I was still a virgin, around age 12 while I was asleep. I had a dream I was floating in water, then bam! It woke me up and had me intrigued all the next day.
Actually, when I was like 7, I just saw a photo then I came twice. Didn’t even masturbate. Just saw a photo where Amy Jo Johnson was crossing her legs. It felt weird. I looked away. I saw again. Came again. I didn’t think much about it at then, but it was a ejaculation, twice. Other than such a flooding mental shock to orgasm without even any friction, I would think that most people need masturbation (or any form of friction) to orgasm.
As the twig is bent, so grows the tree.
Your posts are gross.
In the general question, yes. Wet dreams. In the specific question, no. I didn’t know how, until after I’d had sex the first time. Obviously I’d tried, but I didn’t know it took so long, so nothing ever happened and I was always frustrated. Real sex taught me pretty quickly, though I hate to think about what I used as lubricant (it seemed necessary at the time, thankyouverymuch).