Explanations For Women's Sexual Experiences

People who like to talk confidently about sex often claim that women can orgasm easily from vaginal intercourse. I am very happy for anyone who can achieve easy orgasm and yet, when I ask for details, the responses tend to be frustratingly vague and defensive. I am not questioning that orgasm may happen 'naturally' or 'automatically' for some women but it would be more convincing if explanations of women's experiences did not contradict the physical and psychological facts of women's sexuality.

Popular beliefs mean that many people assume that women 'naturally' orgasm during sex. I have been advised to read a sex manual as if only extreme sexual ignorance can explain a lack of orgasm for women today. Alternatively, I am asked, with a sympathetic expression, about my feelings for my partner: "Do you find him attractive? Do you love him?" The implication is that orgasm comes naturally when a woman truly loves a man.

"The woman-in-the-street (most of us) still has the impression that it is 'normal' to orgasm from male thrusting." (p49 The Hite Reports 1993)

More informed sources commonly explain women's lack of sexual arousal during sex and their failure to reach orgasm during intercourse by:

• some deficiency on the part of the woman (i.e. that she is either physically or psychologically abnormal in some way);
• or ignorance (i.e. that we are not doing it right) including the suggestion that the man might be an incompetent lover.

A popular suggestion is that women have emotional hang-ups about sex and yet it is not logical that women should be more inhibited in their intimate relationships than men are. Given women's much closer emotional intimacy with friends and their children, it seems more likely that if anyone is going to be emotionally inhibited it would be men not women.

Traditional beliefs about female sexuality explain why women are told that they (but not men) need a loving relationship to enjoy sex (orgasm involves erotic not loving sensations). Of course, the ultimate fall-back is when experts suggest that female orgasm is unimportant, which is only true from a reproductive point of view and when a woman has no expectation for orgasm.

Facts versus sexual fantasy

Most boys work out how to enjoy orgasm through masturbation by the age of 12 or 13. Some women discover orgasm in their late teens, or in their twenties or thirties. Many others never discover orgasm throughout the whole of their lives. These phenomena are often diagnosed as women's sexual dysfunction but there has to be a more reasonable explanation for these different experiences.

"Orgasms are natural, but intercourse is not, for many of us, the easiest way to have them." (p79 Woman's Experience of Sex 1983)

All those magazine articles proposing a million ways to give a woman a mind-blowing orgasm sound very promising but why are they needed in the first place? You rarely see an article explaining how to give a man even one orgasm, mind-blowing or otherwise. These articles prove that there are many women who struggle with orgasm of any description during sex.

It's about time that sex experts stopped patronising the average couple out there. There are whole books written about female sexual arousal and orgasm so how can it be so straightforward that every woman achieves it as we'd like to think? Even the terms 'arousal and orgasm' refer to women's experiences because men's sexual arousal is usually easy. Yet so often we are told that the solution is as simple and obvious as pressing a button - the clitoris. Evidently, clitoral stimulation is not everything.

Unfortunately, although an increasing number of women ask about orgasm during sex, there is no research (sex surveys are notoriously unreliable) that provides the answer. Sex experts do not have the time that I have been able to spend on this issue. As a result of my extensive research, I can vouch for the fact that female arousal is not straightforward. Anyone who implies otherwise is misguided: they have either mis-interpreted their own experiences or they are simply quoting popular beliefs.

"... since female orgasm is not necessary during intercourse for reproduction to occur, why should nature provide stimulation for female orgasm during intercourse?" (p38 The Hite Reports 1993)