Mind the Gap
My daughter came to me and said, “How does sex really work? I know how to do it, but I don’t think I’m doing it right. It’s a bit meh … I’ll take chocolate thanks.” I realized that while I thought of myself as liberal, I hadn’t talked about female pleasure or orgasm. I just assumed that today people would be better informed than I had been when I was having a lot of pleasurable but mostly un-orgasmic sex. But why would that be the case when you look at sex ed, the media and stats on porn? Who pays for ethical or female focused porn when you are young? Mind Geek, the company that owns Porn Hub, is in the top three data streaming companies in the world and the sex shows women experiencing orgasm less than one fifth of the time, so it’s hardly championing pleasure for women.
There is a huge orgasm gap in heterosexual hook ups: 11% of women report experiencing an orgasm as part of one-time encounters; this remains below 40% for women hooking up on multiple occasions with the same partner. It is only when you look at orgasm rates for established couples who have been in a relationship for 6+ months that 67% of the women report an orgasm as a regular part of their sex lives. Compare this to 95% of men in all of these scenarios getting fireworks every time. See the gap?
A great piece of advice I read in my twenties was if you can’t do it yourself, how can you expect someone else to do it? For many women this is the first hurdle because female masturbation is still taboo. It’s as if it’s like farting – OK for penis owners, but not the “done” thing if you have a vulva. Yet most women do masturbate, and when they get good at it, 95% of women are orgasmic and most within a time frame similar to men, so this orgasm gap is NOT because women have trouble orgasming.
Why are women having trouble experiencing orgasm in heterosexual encounters? Here’s why.
Heterosexual couples have a model of female sexual pleasure created through the media and porn. Yup, that one where she lies back, hands above her head, he thrusts a few times and whopee! Everyone comes. You get foreplay if you are lucky, and even then, it’s cursory. Yet the reality is, 75% of women do not orgasm through p in v sex alone. Yes, read that again, 75% of women.
For 75% of women, foreplay is the main event. They need direct clitoral stimulation to climax. Many of the 67% of women experiencing orgasm regularly as part of their sexual encounters are incorporating clitoral stimulation into the mix.
The Clitoris and female pleasure have been slowly erased by science and culture. The clitoris is a glorious structure that extends into the pelvis. We can feel and see the glans but the bulk is like an iceberg, hidden internally. It has 2 bulbs that extend either side of the vagina, and 2 cura that extend into the pelvic cavity. During arousal the clitoris swells with 8 to 11 times more blood than normal which is released with the pelvic contractions of orgasm. Tell this to a guy next time he complains of blue balls. In SOME women the bulbs of the clitoris are close enough to the vagina and they can be stimulated through the vaginal, making up part of the G spot. Science has known of the structure of the clitoris since 1844, and in 2005 it was 3D imaged live. Here’s a 3D printed model on a hand.
In Western culture the sexual emphasis has been on the vagina, which only swells with 3 to 4 times its blood flow during arousal. The sex researcher, Alfred Kinsey, reported in 1953 that the vagina has very few nerve endings - which is lucky when you think about it as otherwise birth would be nigh impossible and Tampax would be the brand name of a sex toy. When the Victorians began to understand about the clitoris, there was great anxiety that women would suffer “marital aversion” (Hmmm. No agenda there boys) and great emphasis was put on the idea that mature, functioning women ought to experienced pleasure through penetration.
How your clit is positioned in your body is unique to you, like the shape of your breasts. Maybe when aroused your clit will be stimulated with penetration. And maybe not. Not ever, however you tilt your pelvis, tighten your muscles, breathe, focus your mind, bend, lie, straddle or ride … it’s just not going to happen. Many men find this hard to believe and are part of the NWMD (Not with my dick) brigade. These are the guys who endlessly comment on the Tik Tok and Instagram pages of sex educators, believing their dick holds magic powers. They don’t believe women fake orgasms with them and they probably don’t indulge in enough foreplay to give you a fighting chance if you do come with penetration anyway.
3. Western Culture has created a society that has made female sexual desire shameful. Being too lusty, taking too much pleasure in sex, sex toys and masturbating have all been made to feel dirty for women. This, along with the lack of language that we have for female sexuality (think of the way “vagina” has become the only word everyone knows, when in reality it refers to the birth canal, and not the vulva,; the way people tend not to give girls the word “clitoris” when boys get “penis” and “scrotum”, and the type of slang that surrounds female genitals) and you begin to see why it is hard for women to speak up and ask for what they like. Women are fearful of how they will be interpreted, what the reception will be, and often don’t even have the words to explain their needs.
If you are not having sex to make a baby, then male pleasure is no more necessary than female pleasure. Kerching! Hold that thought. Be kind and patient with yourself, but make a commitment to yourself to have sex that YOU like. Me, I like bubbles in my champagne, and I’ll have the chocolate as well as the orgasm. As Mae West said, “Too much of a good thing can be wonderful.” Fuck the gap.
With love, @its.personalgirls
If you enjoyed this guest blog, I wrote a book, The Sweetness of Venus. A History of the Clitoris and it’s available on Amazon.
