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]