In yesterday’s Boston Globe there was a review of a book on the evolution of female orgasms. This topic is interesting in and of itself, and it’s bothered me that Desmond Morris’ claims don’t square with those of Stephen Jay Gould and others. But that’s not what bothered me.
The article quoted statistics on female orgasms. I don’t recall the numbers, but a surprisingly large percentage of women apparently rarely experience orgasms. Even more troubling, a smaller (but still surprisingly large) proportion never experience orgasms!
This is 2005! Kinsey was half a century ago. Playboy was half a century ago. Franmk discussions of sex in literature has been pretty free since the 1960s. The Sexual Revolution is over 40 years old. You can buy any number of good and explicit books like Our Bodies, Our Selves in your local bookstore. How is this possible?
I oput the question to Pepper Mill, who said that she certainly believes it to be true. There are women who do not, in fact, feel orgasms, and those whose partners rarely provide them with this.
My own experience is pretty limited, but I do know that PM has an orgasm very nearly every time. This isn’t bragging on my part. If anything,. it’s simply concern for my partner, and application of listening and response and (as needed) persistence. I refuse to believe that I am unique in this.
The SDMB patrons seem to be a healthy, sexy, and orgasmic bunch. Are they atypical? What are your experiences? Can it really be true that women are experiencing a severe orgasm deficit? If true, why hasn’t there been a revolution. Forget Wal-Mart and Iraq, and look for the Lysistrata in your own town. Heck, if it were me not being fulfilled *I’d * revolt and set up re-education centers for the men.
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The SDMB patrons seem to be a healthy, sexy, and orgasmic bunch. Are they atypical?
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Um…yes? The SDMB is the home of every exception that proves the rule. As a bunch, we tend to be more sexual than the norm, or at least claim that we are. We also tend to be more atheistic, less nationalistic, less likely to adhere to a monogamous model of relationships, are more likely to suffer some sort of mental illness, more likely to be on medication, be picky eaters, be foodies, and any number of other things that make us outsiders and complicate our lives.
The least we could get in compensation for all of our quirks is good sex.
Do you mean never/rarely have orgasms at all? Or never/rarely have orgasms during penis in vaginal intercourse?
Based on my very unscientific experiences I’d guess the later is true, not the former.
What I’ve read is that orgasm during standard intercourse is uncommon in most women. Orgasm achieved by direct stimultation of the clitoris ranges from likely to automatic.
The article doesn’t make it clear, although possibly the latter. Peppel Mill maintains that the former is true, mainly because a great many men never think about anything but the latter.
Some of the time the problem may be semantic rather than erotic. It may be a matter of defining what an orgasm actually is. A case in point:
Many years ago, I befriended a young woman who was a temp employee in my office. We became quite close, and she confided in me that she had never experienced an orgasm, either by herself or with a partner. Further conversation revealed that she had a notion that an orgasm was always the kind of thrashing, hollering event that is typically portrayed in porn movies. Since my friend didn’t feel the urge to undulate wildly and scream, she thought that her pleasurable sensations that built to a peak didn’t qualify as orgasms.
I also think it’s more likely that the article refers to lack of orgasm during intercourse; I know quite a few women who have had trouble in that area, but only one who had not (until recently) orgasmed at all.
A great many women aren’t assertive enough to let their partners know what feels good to them, thinking he’ll get his feelings hurt or be offended–and while it’s certainly true that there are some men who are so insecure they would feel that way, most (IME, at least) are more than happy to do whatever needs done to help their partner. I’ve always been sort of horrified by the number of women who fake orgasm; he’s going to keep doing the wrong thing thinking it’s the right thing! Der!
Also, some women’s anatomy is such that it’s very difficult to get the needed clitoral stimulation during intercourse, and they may be reluctant to use manual or mechanical means to help things along. They also might just decide it’s not important enough to them to make that effort and are content with getting off by themselves.
Sorry, I couldn’t help but to hijack a bit. I can’t say anything about the work you cite, but from my experience reading Morris’s The Naked Ape, he seems to conduct most of his research using the “making it up” technique.
I swear, I have no idea where he gets most of his stuff. However, it’s been a few years since I’ve read anything by him, so I’m willing to stand corrected.
It’s quite amazing how little girls/women know about their bodies. When I interned at my school’s health center (two years ago) and gave sex-related presentations (in the dorms and classes), a lot of girls came to me afterward and asked me how they could achieve the Big O. Apparently they believed that their partner should be able to get them to reach climax and that they were mere observers in the act. This is coming from college students! I told them that it would be easiest if they experimented with their bodies and discovered what pleases them. It basically horrified a good deal of them because they believed that touching their body was “nasty” or “wrong”. But how could you expect someone else to know how your body works if you don’t know yourself?
I guess those girls didn’t think it was okay for them to masturbate so they would be able to communicate to their partner what produces orgasms. Perhaps there are some girls out there who do masturbate, but don’t orgasm, but I haven’t heard many of those stories.
It seems that these days, there are still a great deal of conservative people who refuse to educate these young ladies about their bodies and demonize sexual acts. I think this has impacted young girls for the worse.
It’s in fact, amazing how little a lot of people know about women’s bodies. Look up one of the “do women pee out of their vagina?” threads for some elucidation.
No kidding! I cannot think of a single woman I have ever dated who knew more about the basics of how their body worked than I did. I am not a doctor or biologist or anything, just interested in the subject.
I don’t know why it still seems necessary for women to have the idea that her genitalia are ‘dirty’. Personally I think when you tell a guy ‘go to town!’ with his plumbing, but tell a girl ‘don’t touch it’, you get a lot of problems. All the women I’ve known who could orgasm tended to be pretty comfortable about their bodies and knew what felt good.
What I find even stranger is the women that seem to refuse to have an orgasm, i.e. they get close then stop (wtf?! )
It could be that the way the onset of an orgasm feels is similar to the peeing sensation and they feel they are going to tinkle*, which would be rather embarrassing.
The best effort is is to make sure you go to the bathroom before you have sex.
I’ve also found that when I’ve had difficult reaching Zee Big O and was not the usual level of pleasure ( y’know…“hmmm, that was a little weak.”) that I’ve had to pee, but didn’t realize it. Damn my bladder!
It has occurred to me that one of the best ways to prevent teenage pregnancy would be to give girls vibrators. Once they realized how little pleasure they actually receive from inexperienced boys, they would take things into their own hands, so to speak.
Sadly, the female body has been treated as some form of deformed male in medical and sex education. Women’s genetalia are ignored or treated as some amorphous blob - and the focus is placed upon the uterus and ovaries. It’s not surprising so many are uninformed.
In Freud’s era, absolutely. In the 1970s, maybe. But, today? Not even close. In the past two decades, tremendous attention/research/media play has focused on every conceivable aspect of female sexuality. And whereas medical research on women’s issues was once woefully lacking, today it is considerable and shows no signs of slowing. If people today are clueless about female sexuality despite this information blitz and availability of excellent resources, there’s really little excuse or hope for them.
Yep. It feels great but gets me nowhere by itself. Fortunately, my SO is all for either doing or letting me do anything I need to get there. Sometimes if I’m really tired or something it just isn’t going to happen, but normally all it takes is some patience and persistence.
And when were the parents/educators of today’s girls educated themselves? There is more information - but if people are unwilling to acknowledge it, it doesn’t do much good.
Ironically, we see more open sexuality and exhibitionism, and no real increase in self-awareness.
Maybe it’s a matter of my body maturing a bit, maybe it’s a matter of finding the right guy (it’s probably a bit of both), but I went from only being able to get myself off to having orgasms from intercourse alone. I suspect if a woman started having sex as a teen, with her sexual organs still in flux and with inexperienced or selfish partners, she could well come to the conclusion that orgasms are impossible and not try further.
Nothing is more frustrating and uncomfortable than your man trying and trying to make you come, and not being able to get there. It turns sex into the emotional equivalent of a calculus test you didn’t study for.
I too suspect that much of the problem stems from little girls being told (or yelled at, or having their hands smacked) that masturbation is wrong. Left to their own devices, babies play with all parts of their bodies, and they keep playing with the areas that feel good. My parents were really laid back about this issue, and I have been masturbating to orgasm for as long as I can remember (circa 4 years old?).
I wonder if women might experience an orgasmic renaissance due to the greater number of uncut men with each generation. I suspect this factor may contribute to my newfound happiness with intercourse-only sex.
I’ll throw my vote in with the assertion that there are a lot of women out there who don’t know much about their own bodies and are too nervous to direct their partner and tell them what feels good. Most women I know would never admit to masturbating. Although I’m betting most of them do it, they still consider it dirty. I’m not sure if this is a good example, but when I was little, I was taught that men just couldn’t help themselves. They had stronger “base” needs than women. But as women, we should rise above it - after all, if we have more self control, we should use it, right?
Also, I think women are often pressured to tell men they’re having a great time even if they’re not. With previous boyfriends, it was sometimes easier to say, “Oh, that was great. You are so wonderful in bed,” than to bother saying, “This isn’t working for me - I need you to do something else.” Before I found my husband, any time I’d try to re-direct a boyfriend’s attention, he’d get all bent out of shape and upset. It was often far easier to avoid a fight and just pleasure myself later than to bother telling the guy that he needed to do something else now.
There are also a lot of women out there who just aren’t educated on the variety of sexual positions. There are certain positions that will increase a woman’s chances of orgasm during vaginal intercourse, depending upon which spot is most pleasurable for her. For example, if she likes deep penetration, doggy style is a good choice, and if she likes clitoral stimulation and deep penetration, lying on your back with your legs over the guy’s arms and your hands free so you can touch yourself can be helpful. But a lot of women don’t know that there are more than three ways to have sex - doggy style, missionary man-on-top and missionary woman-on-top. Either that, or they’re too nervous to try new positions or maybe think that doing so makes them sluts.
I am kind of skeptical on this. How is a man’s foreskin making sex feel any better for the woman? Setting a precedent like this kind of implies that guys that were circumcised at birth will be at a disadvantage when it comes to pleasuring women.
Forgive me if this has been said, I haven’t thoroughly read all the replies, but I wanted to comment.
While I do not doubt that the stats are true, I want to pose a theory that seems to conflict with the OPs premise. You’ve implied that if these statistics are true, then obviously the sexual revolution hasn’t gone far enough and there must be some need for more enlightenment. While there is a component to this, and there certainly are far to many people, especially women, who have unhealthy hang-ups about sex, I think theres a physiological compenent to this that doesn’t get adjusted for. Women’s bodies, some more than others, simply aren’t wired to readily climax on par with men. As much as equality in sex is a good thing, and that societal pressures and such need adjusting, it’s probably unrealistic to assume that women will all be climaxing every day like most guys do. Girls just aren’t built the same way, and there’s likely a good natural reason for that.
I guess these stats, to me, beg the question: What percentage of those orgasmless women are that way due to emotional problems and/or unhealthy attitudes towards sex vs. what percentage are simply physiologically predisposed to not easily climaxing.
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