The hype, the myths, and especially the hope surrounding orgasm persist. That ballyhooed (or is it “hooey-ed”?) book 24-Hour Orgasm was pure hype, a great cover line for selling a book. Many such cover lines have sold other books based on tiny kernels of orgasm truth exploded into nuclear popcorn—hype. The idea that love leads to orgasm: myth. Another myth: A woman can come during intercourse if a man has a big penis and knows what to do with it. You will encounter more examples of both hype and myth in the chapters that follow.
The hope? It’s all a woman has if she doesn’t know her own body and leaves the “job” of making orgasm happen up to her partner. Women come during passionate intercourse with no visible signs of direct clitoral stimulation in novels and mainstream movies and even in porn films where the producers and directors ought to know better. The trailer for a new adult flick by a respected woman producer shows a couple in a rear-entry intercourse position. The happy woman appears to be on the verge, but no hand is anywhere near her genitals. Now, come on! I would love to see that scene done with a finger vibe (on her finger or his) in the right place——just as I would love to see a real anal sex scene where the lube is applied copiously and the fingers, tongue, and even butt plug are introduced to relax and open the anal sphincter muscles before penetration. (Trust me: all that happens off camera now.)
You know the joke: Yes, the Prince will come——but too soon. And he will leave the Princess hanging on the edge. Why do women, and men too, put our erotic faith solely in the symbolic sword of the Prince, when women have it within their power to take themselves over the edge at any time?
We do that because generations of women and men have bought into the biggest orgasm myth of all: intimacy over orgasms. Women would rather feel close and connected to their partners than come, according to the myth. A study reported in a CNN story in November 2006 was one of many claiming that it’s not orgasm but intimacy women crave. Doesn’t that remind you of a woman waving away the dessert menu and saying, “Oh, no dessert for me. I shouldn’t! I’ll just have a bite of yours.”
So women are satisfied with a bite of what he’s having? The reflected glow of his orgasmic delight? Do women really not mind thrilling to his throb alone? Do men not mind the disparity?
Oh, yeah, we all mind.
Women order desserts now and still sample his. Don’t you think it’s time women claimed their pleasure, too?
For more than twenty years, I have been writing sex advice columns in magazines from Penthouse Forum to Redbook, and in books as well. I have surveyed and interviewed thousands of women and men. The number one question from women, both then and now, is: “How can I come during intercourse?” The number one question from men, then and now, is: “How can I give her an orgasm?”
Women mind. Men mind, too.
In fact, we mind so much that every few years major studies report great dissatisfaction in our bedrooms. Up to 70 percent of women don’t reach orgasm during “lovemaking” or “sexual encounters” ——and that typically means intercourse-based sex. An equal number report loss of desire in long-term relationships, especially marriages. Men are losing desire, too.
Some studies go as far as to label women as “dys-functional” because they don’t reach orgasm and don’t want sex. Is it dysfunction or a passive/aggressive rejection of the sexual status quo: He comes, she maybe does?
If women have been cheated by our reliance on the myth of intimacy over orgasm, then so have men. The pressure has been on him to do something he probably can’t do no matter how “good” he is in bed: bring her to orgasm on the strength of his penis alone. That gives him “performance anxiety,” his own special sex problem to complement hers.
In the 1970s, young baby boomer women gave their men a message: cunnilingus. Many got the message. Cunnilingus became not only an accepted part of sex play but also a preferred way to “give” a woman an orgasm before intercourse, where he could get his. In 2004, Ian Kerner, Ph.D., repeated the message for a new generation of men in his book She Comes First. In the introduction, he wrote that he was inspired to write the book by his own struggles with premature ejaculation. (His follow-up book? He Comes Next.)
While I love Ian and his book, I wish readers could take away the wonderful information about pleasuring women without buying into the implicit premise: It really is up to him to “give” her that orgasm.
As Carlin Ross, the founder and CEO of Cherry-bomb, a women’s lifestyle brand, says repeatedly: “It’s not his job to make her come.” A feminist whose primary agenda is the sexual empowerment of women without the disenfranchisement of men, Carlin believes that “women’s heads——and that includes the heads of female therapists and researchers——are so filled with guilt about sex that they perpetuate the myths in the guise of science. They bolster the belief that it is his job to make her come.”
Carlin is right. From girlfriends to sex therapists to porn producers, women have all colluded to make that “his job.” How much freer and more satisfying for both partners sex would be if we truly believed and accepted the immortal words of Teri Garr’s character in the classic film Tootsie: “I [the woman] am responsible for my own orgasms!”
Orgasm is easy for men, difficult for women, the reasoning goes, yet paradoxically women can have them longer, stronger, and more often than men. Orgasm could be, should be, just as easy for women——and it would be if women embraced the orgasm truths and didn’t cleave to the hype and the myths while clinging desperately to the hope. You doubt that? Consider this: Men and women reach orgasm via masturbation in about the same amount of time, five to six minutes.
That “elusive” or “problematic” female orgasm is right at her fingertips (or vibrator) when she’s pleasuring herself.
The biggest truth about her orgasm is that it probably isn’t going to happen via intercourse alone. Anatomy and physiology are the determining factors. Most women are not built to get all the stimulation they need to reach orgasm through the friction of intercourse. That friction works great for him. But it will only produce the same waves of ecstasy for her if she is one of approximately 25 percent of women who have what I call an “innie” clitoris. Some belly buttons pop out, some go in. Some clitorises stand out as soon as the woman is excited. Others hide beneath their hoods and the tongue must search for them, but they get what they need from intercourse friction. Intercourse alone will never do it for the woman whose clitoris is an “outie.”
Nobody ever talks about this! We hide behind language that makes it sound like only a small percentage of women are “sexy” enough to come with no hands——and/or only a small percentage of men are skilled enough to bring them to orgasm with no hands. And we label women “dysfunctional” if they don’t reach orgasm during intercourse alone——and, correspondingly, lose their desire for sex. How crazy is that?
Orgasms are splendid. They are worth pursuing. Having them makes everyone happier, healthier, and more connected to their own sexuality as well as to their partners. For women, the ability to reach orgasm easily and often is empowering. Yet feminists have curiously had little interest in leading women to that kind of empowerment——and have often seemed to be victims of intimacy myths themselves.
Doris Lessing was suspicious of men who were motivated to find a woman’s clitoris. They “fear intimacy,” she wrote. Simone de Beauvoir never had an orgasm with Jean Paul Sartre——and they call that a great love affair!——but was slavishly devoted to him, to the point of valuing his writing over her own. Both de Beauvoir and Germaine Greer held that “digital massage” of the clitoris by men “subjugated women still further.” Greer encouraged women to hold out for “ecstasy” and the vaginal orgasm. American feminists of the 1970s knelt in obeisance to lesbianism but had little interest in improving sex for heterosexual women. Remember the late Andrea Dworkin’s contention that all intercourse was rape?
One might think that the younger generation, especially the women——Gen X and Gen Y——have sex and orgasm figured out, but one would be wrong. Writing in Her Way: Young Women Remake the Sexual Revolution author Paula Kamen concluded from her interviews that twenty-something women can’t tell men what they want in bed——and aren’t getting it, either. Although these women lament that the men with whom they “hook up” or have “booty calls” don’t care whether “we’re getting off or not,” they keep hooking up and answering the calls. Why? They don’t want to “scare the boys away.” What must the boys think of all that?
What kind of new revolution is this if the girls don’t even get dinner before having sex without orgasm? What are they getting out of those hookups and booty calls? Surely not even “intimacy.” The anthropologist Margaret Mead said that men and women know sexual techniques in societies where sexuality and sexual pleasure are valued. I do not recall her writing about “intimacy issues” within those societies, either.
To say that women would choose intimacy over orgasm is an insult to our intelligence anyway. How intimately connected, how close and fond does she feel lying at his side after he has come and she has not? I would wager: not very. She may even be seething with resentment. And she’s certainly——according to the statistics——in no hurry to do it again. How must he feel knowing she’s dissatisfied?
Men have it right: Good sex and orgasm create intimacy between lovers.
Women can have this. It’s not that hard. Men want it for their partners, too.
