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DID YOU COME?

The Mystery of the Female Orgasm

Female orgasm has been described in countless romantic ballads as well as measured under the bright lights of scientific scrutiny, yet it still remains a mystery. The sexual orgasm is one of my favorite metaphors for life: I have often experienced these heightened moments of pleasure in my body, mind, and soul, yet I can never fully describe what happens with words. I’ve had some orgasms that are barely perceptible, others felt as good as a sneeze, and then there are those orgasms that have turned me into a quivering mass of utter delight as I transcend space and time, soaring through a star-filled universe. But there I go with another description of orgasm that feeds into the already existing romantic myths.

After four decades of observing women’s orgasms socially and professionally, even I have resorted to asking the dreaded question, “Did you come?” No wonder the same question rests on so many men’s lips. One of the reasons women dislike being asked is because many of us do not have orgasm during partner sex. Sometimes the woman herself may not know if she came or, in some cases, she is deliberately faking orgasm. Since men often measure their sexual ability by a woman’s response, women who are not orgasmic worry that their lovers might stray. So whether we lie to protect his ego or admit the truth, we feel sexually inadequate.

There is no law that says all women must be orgasmic. Many say they enjoy the affection and closeness of sexual intercourse without a climax. While it’s true that an orgasmic woman doesn’t have to come every time she has partner sex, if she isn’t coming some of the time, she will eventually see intercourse as a tiresome routine. Why is it that something as fundamental as an orgasm continues to elude so many women or become such a long painful process to learn? I believe the answer lies somewhere between the romantic misinformation that falling in love will automatically include orgasmic partner sex, the repression of female masturbation, and women not being taught sexual skills.

The greatest tragedy for women in recent history came about when Dr. Sigmund Freud formulated his theory that the clitoris was an infantile source of pleasure and that once a woman fully submitted to the sexual act, the excitement she once felt in her clitoris would be transferred to the vagina. One might ask how he arrived at this conclusion since he didn’t have a clitoris or a vagina. Perhaps Mrs. Freud was faking a few to keep hubby happy. Although he was a brilliant and brave man, Freud’s infamous theory has kept countless numbers of women from becoming orgasmic. Despite ample evidence that the clitoris is the source of orgasm for most women, vaginal orgasm as a result of intercourse remains the preferred kind of partner sex to this day.

When I came of age in the fifties, I was desperate to be “sexually mature.” That meant phasing out masturbation and going through the tedious process of learning how to come from a man’s penis moving inside my vagina. It was no easy matter. After much trial and error and many missed climaxes, I discovered that if I got on top during intercourse and established a rhythm, I could climax some of the time. When I found a lover who could sustain an erection for at least fifteen minutes (which wasn’t easy), it would still take weeks before I felt secure enough to get on top. At that point he became the source of all of my orgasms. Within a year of two, one of us would fall out of love and we would break up. Once again I would be back to doing “immature” clitoral masturbation.

By the time William Masters and Virginia Johnson hailed the primacy of the clitoris in the sixties, I was already divorced and enjoying intercourse combined with direct manual clitoral stimulation. Masters and Johnson claimed that clitoral and vaginal orgasms were not separate biological entities—regardless of the source of stimulation, all orgasms centered in the clitoris. Then later, amazingly enough, they contradicted their own findings with a description of indirect clitoral stimulation that was so utterly bizarre it degenerated into a modified version of vaginal orgasm. They stated that the thrusting action of the penis exerted traction on the vaginal opening, specifically the inner lips, which caused the hood covering the clitoris to move back and forth, stimulating the head of the clitoris. In the end, Mr. Penis retained the crown as the most legitimate source of a woman’s orgasm.

In the sixties, I also discovered the writings of Wilhelm Reich, who had been a student of Freud. In his book The Function of the Orgasm, Reich not only describes the process of orgasm but also the necessity of experiencing consistent sexual release. Like Freud, he believed a woman could climax from intercourse if she had a man who was potent. Freud and Reich never got to read the Kinsey report, which put America’s national average time of thrusting with full erection after penetration at two and a half minutes. That’s barely enough time to get me interested in sex, let alone have an orgasm.

ORGASMS FOR TWO

Although I differed with Reich on the function of the clitoris, I agreed with him on many of his other ideas about orgasm and partner sex. In another one of his books, The Sexual Revolution, Reich spoke about “compulsory heterosexuality” and “compulsory monogamous marriage” as problems rather than sacred cows—a very radical concept that totally intrigued me, since I had been questioning both in terms of my own life.

In 1970, the President’s Commission on Obscenity and Pornography recommended the repeal of all laws prohibiting the distribution of sexually explicit materials to consenting adults. The floodgates opened as feminist articles and books started breaking down traditional notions of female sexuality that had been formulated by male researchers. The first article to inspire me to action was “The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm” written by Anne Koedt. I was so impressed that I made an appointment to see her and get reprints of her article to pass out to all the women in my CR group.

In 1971, my art and sexual views appeared in an interview in Evergreen, an avant-garde magazine published by Grove Press. The article was accompanied by a large sampling of my sex drawings, along with positive statements about the importance of masturbation to women’s sexual liberation. That led to an editor from the recently formed Ms. magazine requesting an article from me on masturbation. When I submitted seventeen pages titled “Liberating Masturbation,” the editors feared my views would cause women to cancel their subscriptions. They said they might publish the article at a later date, when they felt the time was right. Infuriated to think feminists had censored me, I published several thousand copies and began distributing the information myself.

While many feminists struggled with my ideas about women’s sexual liberation, sex professionals were interested; Ed Brecher, a noted author and sex researcher, was extremely supportive. He agreed that most women could learn to have orgasms through masturbation, and then use that knowledge to become orgasmic with a partner. Wardell Pomeroy, who worked with Alfred Kinsey, and Albert Ellis, who has written hundreds of books on sex, also supported my views on the importance of female masturbation. Alex Comfort was heartbroken when I didn’t do the line illustrations for The Joy of Sex. However, I did illustrate Helen Kaplan’s The New Sex Therapy. At the time, Dr. Kaplan headed the sex therapy program at the Payne Whitney Clinic of New York Hospital.

Kaplan came to my studio the day I’d hired a photographer to shoot the sex positions we had discussed. While Grant and I took the poses naked, Helen directed us to do this and that. After showing her my favorite right-angle position, where I did my own clitoral simulation during intercourse, I gave an impassioned plea for her to include a drawing of it in her book. The drawing appeared, but a disclaimer went with it saying a woman stimulates herself to a point just prior to orgasm and stops. She then has her climax from his penis “thrusting vigorously,” thereby having a “coital orgasm.” Kaplan said a woman who needed clitoral stimulation all the way to orgasm during intercourse didn’t necessarily represent a treatment failure, but her bias was crystal clear.

My Secret Garden by Nancy Friday came out in 1973, and although the content of women’s sexual fantasies shocked many, her book sold millions of copies. Her many informants made it obvious that women not only masturbated, but they did it with images that were bawdy and very unladylike. Ms. magazine wouldn’t even review Nancy’s book, but they finally published a couple of pages from my original article after having shelved it for over two years. In response to their heavily edited version, thousands of women wrote in wanting more information about female masturbation and orgasm.

Unable to find a publisher that would consider doing an entire book on female masturbation, I published and began distributing Liberating Masturbation in 1974. Best of all were the sixteen full-page pen-and-ink “pussy portraits” I did of my friends showing the differences among individual genitals as well as the beauty of women’s sex organs in general. Although my book was considered part of a feminist underground, I was selling it through the U.S. Post Office. I claimed that masturbation forever put an end to the concept of frigidity. If a woman can stimulate herself to orgasm, she is sexually healthy. “Frigid” is a man’s word for a woman who can’t have an orgasm in the missionary position in a few minutes with only the kind of stimulation that’s good for him.

Lonnie Barbach followed in 1975 with her book For Yourself. At one of my early workshops in 1973, she stood in the doorway taking notes. Since Lonnie was a Ph.D. psychologist, her book helped to legitimize masturbation, but we differed on one important point: I felt masturbation could be an end in itself, and she saw it only as a way for women to learn about orgasm to improve partner sex. She, too, believed in the coital orgasm, or teaching women how to retire a vibrator so they could at least orgasm from a lover’s fingers.

The Hite Report, which entered the picture in 1976, was a remarkable though not scientific survey of female sexuality. When Shere Hite showed me her involved and complex questionnaire, I urged her to simplify it, saying there was no way women would take the time to write out essay-type answers. I was wrong. The women she contacted through NOW chapters and several magazines couldn’t wait to tell the details of their sex lives. Her conclusion that any woman could easily masturbate to orgasm is not true for all women then or now. She did not take into account the built-in bias of her survey. Middle- or upper-class white women who liked sex or were interested in the subject were the ones who took the time and trouble to fill out her questionnaire.

Any sex researcher who has the commitment and patience to gather information, run statistics, and then crunch numbers has my undying admiration. However, when it comes to presenting their findings, it’s only human that some end up proving their own subjective bias in the name of objective science.

Since my Ph.D. in sexology came much later—at the age of sixty-two—my understanding of female sexuality is primarily experiential and very subjective, with a little objectivity thrown in. Throughout all the years I’ve taught sex by doing sex, I continue to think of myself as an artist rather than an academic bound by traditional methods of statistical analysis. My strength lies in the respectable research called “working in the field.” As a self-proclaimed sexual anthropologist, I’ve been having sex with the natives in most of the major cities here and abroad. In 1966, when I first began attending sex parties, I was shocked to see how many women were accommodating men and faking orgasms.

Without the need to please a partner, it seems obvious to me that masturbation is a more direct route for women to enjoy pleasurable sensation and orgasms. Therefore how a woman masturbates needs to be translated into partner sex, not the other way around. I know there are some women who do not like direct clitoral stimulation. They start and end with vaginal stimulation, masturbating with a dildo. However, in all my years of observing female sexuality, I never once saw a woman doing clitoral stimulation until she was about to come, then grab a dildo and fuck herself to orgasm.

Although no two orgasms from self-stimulation are exactly alike, most women use some form of direct or indirect clitoral stimulation with or without penetration. The body responds with movement, no movement, and different breathing patterns from panting to holding the breath. Some women remain silent, while others make a variety of sounds. The mind can be paying attention to what a woman is feeling in her body or focused on her sexual thoughts or fantasies. During my workshops, a handful of women looked around the room, while most kept their eyes closed, listening to the sounds. Later I designed a process that allowed them to look at what was happening so they could have images of different women being sexual.

COMMON TYPES OF ORGASM

The following categories are in no way complete. They represent some of the general variations of women’s sexual responses that I have observed socially, during my workshops, and in private sessions. I have included my own experiences as well. Many of these observations will also apply to men.

Pressure orgasms are frequently used in childhood with some kind of indirect genital stimulation. We all start off sexual. It has been repeatedly documented with sonograms that both unborn boys and girls engage in genital self-stimulation. From the age of five to around seven years of age, I clearly remember rocking back and forth with a pillow pulled up between my legs to get that “tingly feeling.” One workshop woman said she pressed her clitoris against overstuffed furniture; another pressed against the hard nose on her teddy bear. Some little girls squeeze their legs together to get good feelings and a few carry that over into adulthood for their orgasmic release.

Never moving beyond indirect stimulation might make it easier for a woman to climax from intercourse alone. Maybe that’s why the clitoris has been denied for so long. Because once a woman has had a more direct form of clitoral contact, she will definitely want more of it. Women who grew up with a strong prohibition about touching themselves directly have made a transition to stronger orgasms by letting the water run on their clitoris from a bathtub faucet. Others say wearing tight jeans got them off, and more than a few were very fond of their bicycle seats. As a preteen, I was crazy about riding horses before I got interested in boys.

Tension orgasms, with direct genital rubbing and muscle tension, get most of us through puberty, into young adulthood, and, for some, through the rest of our lives. Tension orgasms rely on leg and buttock muscles being squeezed tight, with the rest of the body held fairly rigid. While holding the breath, a fast motion is used on the clitoris or penis for a few moments or minutes until orgasm explodes in a quick burst. Because these climaxes are silent, many of us grow up masturbating this way to avoid getting caught by our siblings or parents. These quick tension orgasms often carry over into many men coming quickly in partner sex.

A few women have orgasms with muscle tension only, without any direct genital contact. One woman climaxed by hanging from the top of a door to create tension in her entire body while squeezing her vaginal muscle tight. She had to come in under a minute due to the stress in her arms. In contrast to coming fast, a friend of mine has developed tension orgasms without clitoral contact into an art form. Now in her early fifties, she’s in great shape from all the isometric exercise she gets by straining against some form of erotic bondage or keeping her body rigid during elaborate scenes of suspension.

Most people are too busy to spend quality time enjoying sex. So it will come as no surprise when I say tension orgasms are the most common for the largest number of people. While there is no such thing as having the “wrong” kind of orgasm, some are definitely better than others. When a person spends more time building up sexual arousal by breathing, moving, and allowing the body to express a little joy with sounds of pleasure, it will create a more joyful and satisfying experience with orgasm. Fast sex is like fast food—it takes the edge off hunger but it’s not all that nourishing.

Relaxation orgasms are difficult to achieve alone because it’s nearly impossible to be totally relaxed while doing some form of self-stimulation. My relaxed orgasms first happened in my teens with manual sex from a boyfriend’s delicate touch. During long sessions of kissing, I was the classic Sleeping Beauty. To avoid exhibiting any animal-like behavior, I kept releasing the build up of sexual tension by repeatedly relaxing all my muscles. This took major concentration, but I felt my reputation was at stake. At some point, when I could hold back no longer, the orgasm would come and get me. As long as I did nothing to make my orgasm happen and he didn’t “put it in,” I was still considered a virgin.

The best way to experience a relaxation orgasm is to do it with a partner. Some teachers of Eastern sex techniques have their students take turns giving and receiving manual sex with explicit verbal guidance telling each other exactly when and how to vary the stimulation. They are also taught to slow down, relax the pelvic floor muscles, and breathe to allow the orgasm to build more gradually. Rajneesh, a Tantra teacher from India, called this kind of climax a “valley orgasm”—sinking down into the sensation instead of building up as in a “peak orgasm,” which is what I call a tension orgasm.

Rajneesh told his students that people would have a different view of sex in the future; he believed sex would involve more fun, more joy, more friendship, and more play than the serious affair it is now. I wholeheartedly support this image and have incorporated it into my own approach to teaching sex. Two of my heroes, Rajneesh and Wilhelm Reich, both ended up in jail—an indication of how new ideas about sexuality threaten insecure American men and women in government.

Combination orgasms are my favorite, so here is my bias. These orgasms use both tension and relaxation as well as some form of direct clitoral stimulation with either fingers or a vibrator, along with vaginal penetration. The combination orgasm is the one I ended up teaching in my masturbation workshops. After a few groups, I realized I could jump-start sexual arousal for women who had never had an orgasm by using the electric vibrator. So I began teaching women how to harness all that power for pleasure. Even women who were already orgasmic with their hands could take their orgasms to the next level by plugging in and masturbating much longer than the usual few minutes. The key to enjoying an electric vibrator is to layer a washcloth over the clitoris to control the intensity of the vibrations. As stimulation continues, a layer is removed.

After getting in touch with our pelvic floor muscle, we did slow penetration with a dildo while squeezing and releasing the PC muscle. Then we added clitoral stimulation with a vibrator. While the hips rock forward and back, the muscles in the body flex and relax similar to those of an athlete in motion. We continued doing slow rhythmic pelvic thrusting along with deep breathing and sounds of pleasure. Just in front of an orgasm, some women’s pelvic movements got more urgent, while others slowed down and a few stopped just before climax.

Combining these five elements—clitoral stimulation, vaginal stimulation, PC muscle contractions, pelvic thrusting, and breathing out loud—make the combination orgasm the one that translates the most easily into partner sex. During intercourse, the woman or her partner simply adds her preferred kind of clitoral contact.

Multiple orgasms started getting press after Masters and Johnson documented women having this sexual response. When I first read about multiple orgasms I felt envious, like a lot of other women did. I thought they happened one right after another like a string of pearls breaking—pop, pop, pop. Most of us are grateful to have one orgasm during partner sex, let alone many. I had no idea it was possible to have more than one orgasm until I was thirty-five. One memorable night Grant kept stimulating my clitoris after I came and I ended up having two more giant orgasms before collapsing in a blissful heap, satisfied beyond my wildest dreams.

Later, when I thought about it, I realized that each one of my orgasms had required some kind of build up. During masturbation, moments after having a nice big come, my clitoris was always hypersensitive, so I stopped touching myself. After having that first experience of several orgasms, I softened my clitoral stimulation, stayed with it, and moved into another buildup. From there I could go on to enjoy several more orgasms. Then I discovered the same was true for other women as well; they, too, needed some additional build up to come again. Once I started calling them “serial orgasms,” instead of “multiple orgasms,” more women could identify with the image and another sexual myth was cleared up.

When women talk about having thirty to forty orgasms in succession, I suspect they are counting the aftershocks of pleasure that follow a big orgasm. These autonomic reflexes can go on for several minutes or longer if we continue clitoral stimulation. While it feels great, I believe the sexual energy is being dissipated from the first full orgasm or two, not thirty new individual orgasms. Because so many men get their self-esteem by taking credit for a woman’s sexual response, every twitch or jerk of her body is counted as another orgasm. Women play into this notion, maintaining the idea that multiple orgasms come one right after another. Due to the confusion and misinformation about female sexuality, I’m sure some women are convinced they are telling the truth when they report these large numbers of orgasms.

G-spot orgasms entered the picture in 1982 with the book by the same name, and we were thrown back to the old debate of vaginal vs. clitoral orgasms. The authors claimed that women had a sensitive spot on the ceiling of the vagina. Finding this spot and stimulating it vigorously with a finger could lead to orgasm. An enhancement to the theory was that some of these orgasms are accompanied by “female ejaculation.” Since I have already made it clear that I support some form of clitoral stimulation for orgasm, I question the trend to glorify G-spot orgasms accompanied by some kind of mysterious fluid as better, deeper, or more satisfying. For a detailed discussion of the finer point of this new Holy Grail of female orgasm, see Chapter 7, “G-Spot or My-Spot.”

Fantasy orgasms or “Look Ma, no hands” are those that some women claim to achieve from sexual fantasy alone. They are either the luckiest women in the world or they are “good girl” holdouts grimly determined to never touch themselves “down there.” Why else would a woman want to avoid touching her sex organ? Another possibility is that some of these fantasy orgasms are imaginary. I know a mistress who has convinced her rich married lover that listening to him talk dirty not only turns her on but also gives her passionate orgasms. However, a few white lies are understandable if an important source of your livelihood depends on persuading a man he’s the hottest fuck in town.

Every time I hear someone say “The biggest sex organ is between our ears,” I agree and I also disagree. While I adore searching my mind for forbidden images that create more arousal, I’ll admit I’m attached to playing with the incredible sex organ that’s between my legs. Sexual fantasy can definitely enhance orgasm, but emphasizing all that is born of the mind is based on our society’s fear and trembling over those unruly sensations and filthy physical functions that emanate from the human body.

The one-hour orgasm is the epitome of sexual hype. There have been articles, books, and videos about women having “one-hour orgasms.” This is a man’s fantasy of a woman’s sexual response. We can enjoy high states of sexual arousal for an hour, and have a series of orgasms over a period of many hours, but no one orgasm lasts an hour. In one video, a man does genital massage to a woman who is carrying on sufficiently to win the Academy Award for best actress. Like I said, every twitch or sound a woman makes is proof enough for a power-driven man to be convinced he’s making his woman come, and come, and come. She goes along with him to keep the peace or maintain her standard of living—or she also believes she’s having a one-hour orgasm.

The meltdown orgasm is a variation on the relaxation orgasm with penetration and clitoral stimulation. It first appeared when Eric and I got together. With a vibrator held near my clitoris, it feels as though the soft spongy tip of his penis is either moving past the mouth of my uterus or gently pressing against the tip of my uterus with slow, deep penetration. Instead of squeezing my PC muscles, I keep everything relaxed. With each deep thrust of his penis, I reach a point where I feel as though my orgasm is building of its own accord, and I know my body will be overtaken by an orgasmic wave. The orgasm is very full and satisfying, but then, I’ve never had an orgasm I didn’t like. Some are just better than others.

The first time I experienced the meltdown orgasm I couldn’t wait to do it again. The next time we had sex; those sensations were nowhere to be found. And I knew why. My mind was focusing on any sign of “impending ecstasy.” It’s similar to wanting simultaneous orgasms—it’s very nice when it happens, but if I look for it, expect it, or try to achieve it, I’ve lost it altogether. Sexual activity continues to be one of my best teachers. I cannot command my body to go into orgasmic ecstasy. I must trust my body, stop thinking, and allow my senses to take over. The minute I think I’m taking too long, or think he’s getting close to coming, or wondering if I’m about to catch the orgasmic wave, I’m outside my body looking in. I need to be inside my body focused on the pleasurable sensations.

THE AUTONOMIC NERVOUS SYSTEM

This is the key to having orgasms. Along with all the romantic or commercial versions of female orgasm, I agree with Wilhelm Reich’s theory of the two phases of the voluntary and the involuntary control of orgasm. The orgasm reflex is part of the autonomic system. We can consciously control how we are building up sexual excitation, but we are not in control of the actual orgasm.

The autonomic system operates the motor functions of all the internal organs and the smooth muscles in the intestines, blood and lymph vessels, and glands. I can’t will my body to come, just as I can’t make a decision to sneeze. But I can tickle my clitoris or my nose until my body responds with an orgasm or a sneeze, which are both autonomic reflexes.

In many of my Bodysex groups, we did a position I called the goddess pose, which stretched the inner thigh muscles while opening the pelvic floor. Putting the soles of our feet together and drawing them close to our bodies, we let our legs drop open. After breathing and relaxing the leg muscles while in this position for at least three to five minutes, we very slowly drew up our legs an inch at a time. Everyone’s legs would tremble to different degrees as the tension was released. This was an exercise in learning to trust our bodies instead of always trying to control them with our minds. The automatic leg trembling was a demonstration of the autonomic nervous system, which is where our orgasms come from.

There are many forms of sexual stimulation. To one woman it’s a tongue on her clitoris; another wants deep vaginal thrusting that pushes against her uterus; still another prefers fingers inside her vagina because her partner has more control; and many want a vibrator on the clitoris alone while others want to combine a vibrator with vaginal penetration. Some sexually advanced women want anal and vaginal penetration along with a vibrator for clitoral stimulation all at once. A few women squirt a small amount of fluid when they come, a few can have orgasms with breast stimulation, and a person with a spinal cord injury can develop a new place to trigger orgasm.

Some women like role-playing and erotic restraints and some want a little light spanking before or during partner sex. Oh, I almost forgot the Tickle Orgasm. We all know that people who are ticklish have probably been conditioned to respond that way by a parent who went tickle, tickle, tickle when they were babies. Several men and women have told me how their lovers have used restraints or tied them to the bed so they were helpless. They were tickled until they were limp from laughter. Then with just a few strokes with a hand on his dick or a feather on her clit, it triggered a big O. Exhaustion equals surrender equals orgasm.

I’m sure I’ve left out a thousand other ways women as well as men are enjoying their orgasms alone and with their partners. However, I’m positive about one thing: Among all this sexual variety, once a woman discovers what turns her on and is able to clearly state her pleasure, instead of the question “Did you come?” her lover or husband will be asking “Do you want to come again, honey?”