orgasmic difficulty

What if it Wasn't "She Comes First,' or "He Comes First," But Who Comes First?

Posted by figleaf | Tags:
Tue, 2011-07-26 07:51

In comments to Noah Brand's marvelous NSWATM post questioning all assumptions about the transactional model of heterosexual sex, Kaija pointed out that rather than some kind of hypothetical genetic pickiness about who might fertilize her eggs women report two much more prosaic reasons why they tend to avoid "casual sex." The first is concern for personal safety, the other is...

"[T]he assumption of a lower probability of sexual pleasure from casual sex. I suspect that casual sex is much more appealing if you’re pretty sure it’s going to get you off (if you’re horny and looking to hook up in the short term and not looking for Twoo Lurve Everlasting). If there’s a high probability that the hookup is going to result in a woman getting all hot and bothered and then…end of encounter, the female equivalent of “blue balls” (all that blood pressure in the female tissues can be uncomfortable too as well as the psychoological effect of getting 70% of the way up the arousal hill and then stalling), getting yourself off or asking for some assist in getting off…then it just might be too much cost for not much benefit."

She said it here

Ooh, I wonder if this has anything to do with the "women just want to cuddle" and "women need more cuddling after sex" theories. Because I remember reading that over and over in sex manuals from the 1950s, 1960s, and early 1970s, but when I began having sex it seemed so intermittently true that I wondered where the idea came from.

One could be that I'd over-interpreted the message and all they really meant was "women don't want to leap out of bed two seconds after orgasm." Which I've never particularly wanted to do either.

Another could be that sex manuals written in the 1950s, 1960s, and early 1970s were necessarily written by men (it was almost always men back then) who were born roughly between 1910s (Albert Ellis, William Masters), 1920s (Alex Comfort) and maybe 1935 (David Reubin). If so then they would have grown up in an society that was barely getting over its century-long medical anxiety about male "semen depletion" as the cause of everything from weak eyesight to tuberculosis. In which case, again, the difference they saw really was a lot about still very real male guilt, anxiety, and aversion after sex. And so the admonition for aftercare of one's partner was more about not jumping up or rolling over immediately after sex and pretending it never happened.

Or... maybe as Kaija said it's that anybody who's gotten wound up but doesn't get that orgasm is going to want to continue contact after her or his partner is satisfied... and stops.

The reason I'm inclined to believe it's the last item is that women who've had an orgasm (or enough of them) are often able to shift gears pretty quickly. On the other hand, even as a teenager I often had difficulty having orgasms (it was easy during intercourse but when I was fertile and psychotically distrustful of condoms intercourse was off the table.) And several of my partners have been the woman version of "premature ejaculators" where they've been able to get to orgasm very quickly -- well before intercourse and sometimes before our clothes were off. And as I mentioned just now, once they're done women seem as ready to switch gears as anyone else. Anyway, the result has often been that when a partner has had an orgasm and I haven't then I've been the one who wants to stay "intimate and comforting" after sex.

I like that last explanation quite a lot. First because it fits my experience, and second because it matches a lot of anecdotal and statistical data.

And since "the end of sex" is almost always defined as "male ejaculation, however long that takes" researchers collecting data are likely to overlook or discard cases where he never ejaculates at all.

Meanwhile, since, especially when the old guys were writing their sex manuals the idea that women had orgasms was still somewhere between inconceivable and intolerable, there wasn't a whole lot of effort... or even conscious thought... put into making sure women had their turn after their partners were done.

Anyway, the upshot might be (might be, I'm proposing a hypothesis, not a conclusion) that the idea that women need more cuddling after sex than men might be because at the time women rarely had completion orgasms when or before their partners did. But that in reality anybody left hanging by their partner is going to at least appear more affectionate, smoochy, and "needing intimacy" even if the don't mind that they're not going to come.

Your thoughts?

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On Faking Orgasms -- It's Not Just For Women Anymore (If It Ever Was)

Posted by figleaf | Tags:
Mon, 2010-12-13 22:40

Rashida Hull of Utica College's independent student publication, Tangerine, says

According to a journal of sex research, it seems that women aren't the only ones who fake orgasms during sex. Studies are now showing that men, too, fake it.

The study revealed "more than 200 college students, 25 percent of men, and half of the women reported that they'd acted out an orgasm during sexual activity." Most male students admitted to faking orgasms because they said the sex was terrible and wanted it to end.

...

Other reasons men fake it are to avoid awkward moments with their partner or so they don't hurt their partner's feelings. Male students may also feel pressured to have an orgasm after their partner had their orgasm.

Source: Tangerine

Hull doesn't cite the source, nor can I find a reference, but it appears she's talking about a study in the November Journal of Sex Research by Charlene L. Muehlenharda and Sheena K. Shippee out of theUniversity of Kansas psychology department.

Here's the abstract

Research shows that many women pretend or “fake” orgasm, but little is known about whether men pretend orgasm. The purpose of this study was to investigate (a) whether, how, and why men pretend orgasm and (b) what men's and women's reports of pretending orgasm reveal about their sexual scripts and the functions of orgasms within these scripts. Participants were 180 male and 101 female college students; 85% of the men and 68% of the women had experienced penile-vaginal intercourse (PVI). Participants completed a qualitative questionnaire anonymously. Both men (25%) and women (50%) reported pretending orgasm (28% and 67%, respectively, for PVI-experienced participants). Most pretended during PVI, but some pretended during oral sex, manual stimulation, and phone sex. Frequently reported reasons were that orgasm was unlikely, they wanted sex to end, and they wanted to avoid negative consequences (e.g., hurting their partner's feelings) and to obtain positive consequences (e.g., pleasing their partner). Results suggest a sexual script in which women should orgasm before men, and men are responsible for women's orgasms.

Source: Journal of Psychology

Interestingly, Hull quotes popular sexpert Ian Kerner, who says the two big reasons men faking intercourse more are increasing use of SSRI-based antidepressants (which based on my experience with the things sounds 100% plausible) and porn-fueled disappointment with less-than-ideal real-life partners (seems more cliche -- ever heard a woman who watches porn use that as a reason?)

I say interestingly because neither of those reasons seem to have been on the minds of the researchers themselves. (Or if they are other reporters aren't mentioning it -- I haven't read the pay-per-view article myself.)

For instance Stephanie Pappas, senior writer at LiveScience.com, who has read the article says it looks more like this

For men, the most common reasons for faking it were that orgasm was unlikely or taking too long and that they wanted sex to end. Four-fifths of women reported they faked it to avoid negative consequences, like hurting their partner's feelings. Half of men reported the same motivation.

The participants who faked shared a common sexual "script," the authors wrote, in which both genders feel pressure to orgasm during intercourse, with the woman orgasming first. In some cases, people are so wedded to this script they pass up the chance to orgasm for real in order to fake orgasm at the "right" time. The study found that 20 percent of the women pretended to orgasm because their partner seemed about to.

Source: LiveScience.com

Those reasons sound a lot more plausible.  I've said for years I think the problem of men and anorgasmia is one of those major stealth issues.  Not every man can get away with faking orgasms every time but the expectations are so high (for both men and their partners) that if for some reason you can't or otherwise don't come easily you're not going to disclose it readily.

I'd also add that even back in the 1970s, before either porn or antidepressants became nearly universal, between 5 and 15% of men could be persuaded to admit at least occasional difficulty having orgasms.

(Via Razib Khan)

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Paradox of Paper Cuts and Plastic Creates an Intriguing Hitachi Magic Wand / Tenga Egg Mashup

Posted by figleaf | Tags:
Tue, 2010-11-30 00:13

Paradox of Paper Cuts and Plastic finds a great off-label use for a male-masturbation product. It relates to a widely-experienced but little-mentioned hassle with a legendary sex toy used mainly by women.

I got a Tenga Egg from Good Vibrations!

You might be asking yourself why I would choose a male masturbator as my first toy to review. You might be thinking that I do not have a bio cock (although I do have a few less-sensate ones in my drawer at home) and therefore might not be able to write a detailed review of this kind of product. You might then conclude that I’ve used it with one of my male partners, but you’d actually be wrong!

Source: Paper Cuts and Plastic

The legendary sex toy, of course, is the Hitachi Magic Wand
. It’s been around for years. They were the primary learning tool in Betty Dodson’s masturbation workshops for decades. Genuinely countless women say the Magic Wand gave them their first orgasms, sometimes when nothing else from hands to partners to prayer had worked before.

The widely-experienced but little-mentioned hassle, though, is that while it’s well designed and of course perfectly, perfectly safe, they’re made with the same electric motor Hitachi puts in its consumer-grade electric sanders! (Hitachi being better known around the world for its construction tools and kitchen appliances than its one-and-only sex aid.) Consequently their vibrations are very intense.

Intense enough that, like Paradox, most of the women I know who use them at least started out using them through clothes (don’t ask how I know tight jeans work well) or folded towels or, when even that’s too intense, folded pillows!

Turns out that Tenga Eggs (a very stretchy plastic-gel single-use penis stimulator I probably ought to try some day) can be stretched over the vibrating end of a Magic Wand. Once in place the very soft, jiggly egg material buffers the vibrations enough to permit direct clitoral contact.

The downside for most people would be the Egg’s single-use construction and relatively high price ($7-$10 each.) And since there are a number of after-market attachments for the Magic Wand I’m guessing you might find a more permanent but still impact-buffering solution at Babeland or other quality sex-toy shops.

But worth a try.

Quick questions: What’s been your experience with Hitachi-style wand vibrators? Do you go for direct contact? (I know some people can handle it right away and many more work up to it.) Do you use padding? How about turning it around and “riding” the relatively less-intense handle (as one person I know does)? Did you have your first orgasm with one? Is it still the only one that works for you?

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Folly of Assuming Women Evolved Not to Have Orgasms or That Men Require Orgasms to Reproduce

Posted by figleaf | Tags:
Sun, 2010-07-11 13:32

Another finished draft I inexplicably neglected to post earlier this year provides a timely opportunity to link to Emily Nagoski. —fl

Going back to that goofy idea proposed most recently by g-spot denier Tim Spector that women have “evolved” orgasmic (difficulty during intercourse only, natch) in order to “test” the reproductive worthiness of their male partners.

That notion’s first screeching collision with reality, as Holly Pervocracy and I’m sure others pointed out, would be where waiting for orgasms during intercourse would seem to be a bit late in proto-women’s mate-selection process.

The second obvious collision with reality would be the part about where roughly a third of all women report they never have orgasms from intercourse.

A third obvious collision would be that there’s no evidence whatsoever that women who have fewer orgasms from intercourse reproductively “penalize” their partners by having fewer children than women who do. (A corollary would be that there’s no evidence that childless women are any less, or more, orgasmic than their childbearing counterparts.)

There’s a completely non-obvious collision.

It’s non-obvious because it’s not particularly related to orgasms.

Which makes it almost completely non-obvious because if you’re reading this in English you’ve almost certainly been indoctrinated with the idea that sex is all about orgasms. Or, in the slightly more sophisticated version sex is all about orgasms for men, and all about the promise that they might “give” women orgasms on the way to having their own. Or in the slightly less sophisticated version sex is all about orgasms for men and economic security for women and “their” babies.

The non-obvious part is that even men and women who never have orgasms at all, let alone orgasms with partners, let alone orgasms during intercourse still desire sex.

Intensely.

Sometimes achingly.

If you wanted to claim humans were evolved to desire sex, meaning sex just about any way you care to define it, I’d have to agree. No problem. If you wanted to claim humans evolved to have orgasms I’m probably quibble that they’re more of a side effect than directly selected for. If you were going to claim, though, that one sex evolved not to have orgasms in order to “test” the fitness of the other sex? I’d have to pat you on the head as if you were a simpleton and write long posts about it.

In fact, protestations of armchair evolutionary psychologists notwithstanding there’s no evidence that women or men really need to have orgasms to reproduce. That doesn’t mean we don’t enjoy them thoroughly, just that there’s no evidence that they’re needed to encourage other organisms to reproduce, nor is there evidence that we need them either.

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An Em & Lo Reader Asks "Do Men Fake Orgasms?"

Posted by figleaf | Tags:
Thu, 2009-10-15 10:51

In this week’s Wise Guys feature Em & Lo pass along the question do men ever fake orgasm. They get three answers, all different, all interesting — from a straight single man (“of course!”), a straight married man (“I have personally only faked once.”) and a committed gay man (“If guys fake orgasms, then I ‘d love to know how.”) Read their answers in full here.

My take is it’s actually easier than it sounds. Even easier when there’s lots of lube. And even easier than that when you’re wearing a condom. (You can just say “oops, gotta get this off before it leaks” and scamper to the bathroom.) Back in the old pre-web days a popular Usenet poster also said it was easier than you’d think if a partner was deep-throating him.

And you might wonder how, if one was being deep throated, one would need to fake it. One answer would be if you’ve had too many orgasms recently but you still really like sex. Another would be that you’re taking those #%!$% SSR anti-depressants where you can’t come to save your life, where sex still feels really, really good, and where your partner nevertheless feels bad/inhibited/inadequate/uninterested if you’re not going to have one. There are other less cheery reasons as well (untreated depression, for instance) but those will do.

[Disclaimer: I also appear in Em & Lo’s Wise-Guy rotation. —fl]

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Good Advice from Petra Boynton: Sex is an Experience, Not an Achievement

Posted by figleaf | Tags:
Tue, 2009-08-25 12:54

Dr. Petra Boynton slips in a really critical point about sex in general, in a very nice post about difficulties with orgasms.

Sex is something to experience, not achieve

She said it here.

Couple of points:

She’s most often asked by straight women about orgasm difficulties but her answers aren’t exclusively for them. Which is handy since whatever the averages might be, individuals with problems come in all genders, orientations, and ages. And as you read her post it’s very clear that she doesn’t mean you just experience sex and not worry about having orgasms.

But what strikes me about that little phrase is how it applies to so much else about sex besides orgasms, from virginity to marriage to first kisses to, for that matter, 20th (or 50th!) Anniversary celebrations. As Boynton says “It sounds corny but if you focus on the destination you may miss out on the journey.”

Note: I’ve made this post about one small almost-unrelated aside in Boynton’s post. If you do have problems with orgasms during sex, or feel you do, the rest of her post is worth a read.

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Men and Women Aren't *Exactly* the Same... But We're Not *That* Different Either

Posted by figleaf | Tags:
Sat, 2009-01-10 13:15

Dr. Kate, who’s recently moved to her own blog, Gynotalk, posts a reader’s question

So, here’s a twist: I (the girl) orgasm super easily, while my boyfriend does not—in fact, he’s only come during sex with me once, and that was the first time in his life (he’s almost 30). He can come if I go down on him (although I am the first girl he has been able to with and he didn’t for the first few months of our relationship) and it took him a while to even come when I used my hand. He thinks something is physically wrong with him

Read the quote in context here.

I don’t actually mind her answer but I do have some reservations about it.

I don’t think that your boyfriend’s issues are physical ones – a circumcision (good or bad) shouldn’t affect his ability to orgasm (though yes, it can affect his surface sensitivity) – for most men, it’s primarily a pressure/friction issue, not a skin-touch issue, like for women. And the fact that he can come “pretty regularly” in ANY way, means that his “plumbing” is fine. So that’s the good news, since most physical problems don’t have easy answers.

But what I think is happening is that he has some mental difficulty with intimacy and sex – if he can regularly come through masturbation, but has a harder time with a partner, then something larger is going on.

It’s entirely possible that something larger is going on with the correspondent and her partner, but maybe it’s just because I’m old enough to remember advice in sex manuals from the 60s**

But check out the results if you run that post through Regender.com’s very-clever gender-switching engine (which among other things replaces “Dr. Kate” with “Dr. Karl”)

Dr. Karl,

So, here’s a twist: I (the boy) orgasm super easily, while my girlfriend does not—in fact, she’s only come during sex with me once, and that was the first time in her life (she’s almost 30). She can come if I go down on her (although I am the first boy she has been able to with and she didn’t for the first few months of our relationship) and it took her a while to even come when I used my hand. ...

I’m sure the problem is compounded by other stuff. She’s less self-conscious about this than she used to be, but if in 10 years of having sex YOU weren’t able to orgasm, it would just be like the biggest, most embarrassing elephant in the room, right? I can’t help but think that there’s something more I could do. I really, really want her to be able to come again, and now it’s all I think about! Before she did, I didn’t think much of it because she had said she wouldn’t be able to and I just went with that. But then she did, and it was amazing for both of us, and now it’s like my hopes are up.

Wishing for Coming

Dear Wishing,

I don’t think that your girlfriend’s issues are physical ones … for most women, it’s primarily a pressure/friction issue, not a skin-touch issue, like for men. And the fact that she can come “pretty regularly” in ANY way, means that hers “plumbing” is fine. So that’s the good news, since most physical problems don’t have easy answers.

But what I think is happening is that she has some mental difficulty with intimacy and sex – if she can regularly come through masturbation, but has a harder time with a partner, then something larger is going on. Kudos to you for being so caring and concerned about her pleasure, and clearly she feels more comfortable with you than with previous partners.

Regender-ized version from here.

Probably not the advice one would offer were the roles reversed!

I’m saying this not in a “what about the men” sort of way but because while the bell-curve distribution of orgasmic success for men tends to lie to the left of the graph for women it’s still a bell-shaped curve.

Speaking for myself I’m pretty sure I’m sexually perfectly healthy but I didn’t figure out how to have orgasms from fellatio till well into my 30s (not enough pressure where I needed it, and generally not enough pelvic-muscle involvement to make up for it.) And when I briefly took a prescription anti-depressant I still thoroughly enjoyed sex but was barely able to have an orgasm manually, let alone during any kind of sex with a partner.

Anyway, the point I’m trying to make is that cliches about expected male functionality can be as perilous as the ones about women were 30 years ago. (Cool by the way, that Wishing doesn’t feel out of place that she comes super easily. In earlier times women often would preface something like that with “I’m like a man that way because I…”)

[** By the way, see Holly’s post for why I might remember so much about sex manuals from the 60s! And while I’m at it see also Lynn Gazzis-Sax’s take on the extent of gender differences in “Men are from Baltimore, Women are from Philadelphia.” Oh, and finally, see also Anastasia’s take on the return of orgasms after discontinuing use of anti-depressants. —fl]

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Letting O-Face Imperil O-Space

Posted by figleaf | Tags:
Sun, 2008-11-23 11:27


Photo by Flickr user Mushroom boy. Used under a Creative Commons license.

Know how when you were a kid at some point you were sitting somewhere totally engrossed in a book, or game, or movie, or especially just daydreaming… just 1,000 miles away in your own world anyway… and someone, probably a grownup, would come by and say something like “sit up straight, honey, that can’t be good for your back/neck/posture/whatever?” Or maybe they just said “at least close your mouth so the flies don’t get in?” And even just dropping out enough to asses what they said, let alone sit up, or fly right, or close your mouth was usually all it took to knock you out of the dreamy, timeless place you’d been? And do you remember how much work it usually was to get back? Or that by the time you were back you’d slid back into whatever posture you’d been upbraided for, or your face had gone completely slack again? Funny how trying to please someone else’s idea of how you should look when you’re having a good time pulls you… right out of that good time.

Gwen of Sociological Images says

Brianna S. mentioned to me that the December issue of Cosmo has an article about whether you’re making an attractive face when you orgasm. I googled “Cosmo make face orgasm,” and found an image of the cover (notice the big “Your Orgasm Face” tagline next to one of Jessica Simpson’s boobs) and a discussion of the article at Jezebel:

The implication (“What he’s thinking when he sees it”), of course, is that if you’re not careful, you might make an unattractive face while you orgasm, and that your male partner (because who cares what women’s female partners think?) will be put off by it. It’s female orgasm as performance. Cosmo is reminding us, in case we forgot, that a woman’s sexual pleasure isn’t really about her. Even while having an orgasm, she needs to be sure she looks attractive.

I can’t help but think that if you’re anxiously trying to monitor your facial expression, it might get in the way of you getting to have an orgasm at all. I wonder which would be preferable, then: having a real orgasm but with an ugly orgasm face, or faking an orgasm but making sure your face is under control.

Read the quote in context here.

This seems like a pernicious influence of porn, but even more so (and going way further back) of conventional movies, where a) the people on camera are nothing but trying to look their best for the camera. And if, as sometimes happens in porn, they actually are in “the zone” as when male performers are trying to perform a “money shot” the directors and camera operators direct the attention away from the often-necessarily-slack “O-is-for-effort” face.

Which is sort of a tragedy when you think about it. Because teasing a partner about his or her “O-face” isn’t just knocking them out of their, well, O space(!!!) it’s also totally deprecating the skill and effort you’ve put into helping them have one! And because being too self-conscious about your own O-face” isn’t just knocking you out of or keeping you out of your O-space, it’s deprecating the skill and effort your partner puts into helping you build it.

And seriously, this isn’t about being afraid to cook because the kitchen might get dirty — for most people cleaning the kitchen, however delicious the meal, is still a chore! It’s more like being afraid to put cinnamon rolls in the oven for fear they might become puffy, and brown on the top, and sticky/gooey/bubbly on the bottom, and smell heavenly melted-buttery, and incredible tasting.

In other words it’s about learning to get that our O-faces, and our partners’, means things are happening perfectly.

—-

Hmm… there’s obviously more to it than this but… I wonder how much of people’s often very real enjoyment of rear-entry positions has something to do with not having to worry about revealing O-faces, with the result they’re better able to just let go and enjoy themselves. I’m guessing probably not much but… well some people really do go home after sex rather than sleep with their partners for fear of being seen with “morning face.”

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Hey, wait a second!

Posted by figleaf | Tags:
Mon, 2008-01-14 21:01

Vix of The Over-Educated Nympho says

I just came in fifteen seconds. I did it while waiting for my stock portfolio to refresh on my browser. I didn’t even have to take off my pants.

And that is why I have a clit ring.

Details here.

For the record I think in my entire life I’ve only come in fifteen seconds twice. Nor is this bragging as especially early on I’ve come long before my partner multitudes of times… certainly (and embarrassingly for me) in less than a minute.

Anecdotes don’t add up to much when they come in ones and twos, but neither Vix’s experiences nor mine are unique at all for our respective genders.

Which is funny because, of course, the stories for our genders are that — except for ostensibly humiliating “erectile dysfunction” (more about that one of these days) — when it comes to heterosexual sex, especially heterosexual intercourse, men come easily and women only with great difficulty… if at all. All of which men use to help validate our goofy ideology of women as the “no-sex” class.

The only problem being that while Vix’s 15 seconds might be quick (with or without a piercing) when she takes matters into her own hands she’s not so much quicker as to be an outlier. That and there are any number of men who, despite complete and perfect health, have to work very hard to have an orgasm if they’re going to have one at all.

So…

When you hear stories like only so and so many heterosexual women reliably have orgasms during intercourse that’s just not all of the story. And more to the point, while I’m not saying it’s sex-class men’s responsibility to provide orgasms for passive “no-sex” class women, since women reliably do have orgasms by themselves there’s more to the story of heterosexual dysfunction than “it’s just hard for women to get off.”

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