Years ago I remember reading about a king of a mid-sized European country who, for some reason, either ate very quickly or else ate very little. This was a problem for everyone else at court because tradition dictated first that they took all their meals with the king, next that when food was brought out the king was served first, but finally traditioin also dictated that all plates be taken away the moment the king pushed his away empty. The point of the anecdote was that the queen and courtiers were a miserable and hungry bunch.
I bring this up thanks to some strikingly unproductive news from Lynn Sherr, a reporter for ABC New’s 20/20 website called “When It Comes to Orgasm, Women Work Harder”
We humans are much more complicated. Women need to be in the mood, which many men don’t seem to understand.
“I think that most men, and I have to underline the word ‘most,’ just don’t get it,” said Jenny McCarthy, an actress, former Playmate of the Year, and best-selling author of “Life Laughs: The Naked Truth about Motherhood, Marriage, and Moving On.”
She laments that our differences — the ones that can make sex so much fun — can also get in the way.
“It’s amazing to me how much brain work it takes for a girl to have an orgasm,” McCarthy said. “Guys just need to look at a nipple, and they lose it. God, I wish it was that easy for us!”
It doesn’t get any better on the next page (why two pages for such a short answer anyway?)
“Women need a context in which to be sexual,” Berman said. “She has to feel good about the situation, even about the surroundings, in order to let go and really enjoy the sexual scenario.”
And a man?
“A man isn’t as picky,” Berman said. “It’s just the way they’re wired. Men are much more goal-oriented. And so they’ll try to heat things up way too quickly. And if, you know, men are a microwave oven, women are a slow-cooking stove.”
Hmmm. I could say that maybe it’s not that women have to overthink to enjoy sex. Or that maybe it’s because for at least the last 250 years our culture has trained women to internalize virtue, chastity, self-restraint so thoroughly that it takes a hell of a lot of work not to have the orgasm but to get over all the other shit. I mean, after all, many many of the women Shere Hite surveyed, for instance, and many of the women I’ve spoken with personally say they’re able to have solo orgasms in minutes whereas they may never have them with partners. Even considerate and skillful ones. For instance as Lynn Gassiz-Sax of Noli Irritare Leones notes
Maggie Gallagher at Marriage Debate reports a UK survey in which 61% of men said they had no problem with their partner having sex with another woman (here I’m tempted to add “especially if they get to watch”). And another 31% could maybe forgive it if it happened once. Now, compare the Australian survey results reported by Vanessa at Feministing, in which lesbians reported more frequent orgasms during sex than straight women. Which, if we believe both survey results, suggests that maybe the UK men are too sanguine about lesbian affairs for their own good. Also of interest, in the Australian survey, is the fact that 31% of the women in heterosexual relationships didn’t climax the last time they had sex, while this was true of only 5.2% of the men. And part of the reason this fact catches my eye is the report that Four in 10 Britons are willing to give up sex if that meant they would live to be a hundred years old.
And I could say that as for McCarthy’s claim that men just pop off? I dunno. Between ages 14 and maybe 22, yeah, that happens pretty often. But even that’s not all young men. Neither are all men young.
But, thinking about that story about the king and all I’m wondering, gee, d’ya think that number Lynn cited, of only 5% of men not having orgasms might have something to do with the fact that “sex” has historically be defined as “whatever it takes to give the man an orgasm?”
Or that if the average man doesn’t give his partner a reliably enjoyable experience she may not have a lot of incentive to initiate sex, while that in turn makes it even more likely that when sex happens it’ll be when he’s initiates it, while em>that in turn makes it likely that sex happens only when he’s horny? (Which, incidentally, would make him more “goal oriented.”) And, getting back to the ABC article, if he’s not very considerate in bed do you think that might have something to do with why…
Women are also more easily distracted than men, even in bed.
McCarthy admitted that she often made lists — grocery lists — while making love.
“That’s not because she’s not interested. Women are natural multitaskers,” Berman said. “Our main sexual organ is our brain. So our body can actually be physiologically responding, but if we’re not in a state of mind to respond, it doesn’t register.”
Pretty irksome article. It’s not that I dispute the facts in the story: women take longer than men, men have an easier time, women are more easily distracted… but I do question whether the the underlying assumptions about why that should be are being addressed at all.
What if it wasn’t a communications problem at all? What if it wasn’t about differential rates of arousal? What if it wasn’t about spousal competence? I mean, sure, all those are good things, but what if underlying all that one little shift could make all that irrelevant.
Hint: Lynn’s article said 31% of women surveyed hadn’t had an orgasm the last time they had sex. So when did the other 69% have their orgasms? Let’s go halvsies and say half of that 69% had theirs first.
Not enough of a hint? Scroll back up a second to the traditional definition of sex. See anything missing?
Last hint: Nothing in the traditional definition — sex till the man comes — says anything about when the woman does which means…
Change the definition to “till the woman comes” and suddenly it’s (mumble… arithmetic… mumble, mumble… round up to the nearest whole number…) 35% of men not having an orgasm the last time they had sex! (35% is awfully close to the 31% figure Lynn cited isn’t it?)
You wouldn’t have to change anything else at all for it to work out that way — just pick another person to signal when all the other plates are taken away and the world turns upside down.
Aaaannnddd…. people tease me for quibbling over semantics?
I could say more, in fact lots more, but I’ll let that soak in. (It’s still soaking in for me.)
Update: Of course I’m not recommending we simply reverse the status quo, which would only put the shoe on the other foot. As a thought experiment, though, it’s a surprising indication that all our fretting — as classically regurgitated at ABC — about women and “low libido” is a structural rather than gender-based problem.
[Thanks to Amber for emailing me the link. —fl]
Submitted by 951 (not verified) on Sat, 2006-09-30 05:13.
It never took much to get me in the mood, especially when I was younger. It seemed like I had sex on the brain all the time then. Having sex was mostly anticlimactic. Don't remember any time I experienced an orgasm with a partner.
[Yeah, a lot of people say sex was anticlimactic. To be honest I sort of thought so the first time too, partly because the anticipation had been so overwhelming, and partly because all we had for a condom was a plastic baggie with a twist-tie. (She came, I didn't.) Thanks, Five. --fl]
Submitted by 951 (not verified) on Sat, 2006-09-30 10:42.
Don't ever stop quibbling over semantics! Makes for some excellent and thought-provoking posts.
But I'm semantics-obsessed myself, so my perspective is a tad biased.
[Thank you, Vistana! --fl]
Submitted by 951 (not verified) on Sat, 2006-09-30 13:18.
I've said it before, but I must say it again: I'm skeptical of all these studies, but I wonder if it's not because I seem to be the opposite of everything I read about "how women are". It would seem that I'm simply an outlier, but ... being an outlier makes me wonder.
I like to get down to business. I'm not a make-out-for-20-minutes kinda person. I don't particularly care if there are rose petals and soft lighting, as long as there's enough space.
But ... I guess I'm not really a woman.
[That's the problem with stereotypes, eh? You wind up with things like saying that everyone in Cleveland is in Ohio, and if you're in Cincinnati, then you must not be in Ohio. I guess the main thing is that, like elections, people can create a stereotype when only 50-percent-plus-one come close to fitting it. Thanks, EL. --fl]
Submitted by 951 (not verified) on Sat, 2006-09-30 16:32.
Interestingly enough, my partner and I were watching that on TV last night in bed, and he was looking at me quizacally, almost troubled. Then the TV said something else about women taking longer, etc. I said, "I think we have switched roles. All I want to do is fuck." My partner, a wonderful red-headed chap, however, takes a little longer to get excited, needs a little more loving throughout, and needs much more stimulation to climax. I'm more wham, bam, and fall asleep.
There were a lot of things I found troubling with that news piece. Namely, when I read the article on ABC (before I watched the TV that night) I noted they said something about the female brain and emotive responses and then "perhaps that is why teenage girls feel the need to be attractive to boys."
I thought "What the fuck?" They drew some dangerous parallels between behavior and science, and I am always particularly skeptical when such parallels are done without the assumption of person-in-environment. While I know that certainly some differences are biological, as were noted with the babies, I also think even more are social and due to biases.
And while we may be different, whether on basis of nature or nuture, I think it especially important that socially we do not use ANY of our differences as reasons for discrimination or inequities. I also think it especially important we do not draw the fictive norm in such a way as to make females who are more sexual, or less emotive, or males who are more emotional, less "goal-oriented" labeled "deviant" or somehow less-than.
Just my two bits, as per "normal."
[Oh my, I didn't see the program and only read the article so I didn't see anything about "teenage brains." Which I feel makes my point even more important -- if all it would take to magically alter half the population's brains (actually 100%) by changing the definition of sex, then maybe it has nothing to do with brains at all. Thanks, Rae. --fl]
Submitted by 951 (not verified) on Sat, 2006-09-30 16:36.
Also, I thought the whole thing to be very heteronormative.
Just a third bit.
And about the climax thing. Whoever said orgasm was the goal of sex? It's nice, sure, but just the physicality of it and the intimacy and the all-body pleasure is sometimes a goal in itself. I think, too, that so much pressure is put on folks to orgasm that we begin to think that's the only point.
And while I think it's important, the other things are just as much so. Just outright fun is reason enough, I'd say.
[I agree that we've all become a little fetishistic about orgasms. For instance are you really somehow less of a woman if you aren't multiply orgasmic? Um, no. Can you enjoy sex without having one? I certainly can, and often have (for instance before my vasectomy and when there wasn't other birth control.) It's not that they're not very, very nice, and I totally understand how they gained importance after Masters and Johnson "discovered" them in their major report. (Oh there's fodder for 1000 posts on the reaction to their report!) But I think people might have more of them if we could quit stressing about them. Thanks, Rae. --fl]
Submitted by 951 (not verified) on Sat, 2006-09-30 19:24.
I do think there is something to be said for all the rules women are burdened with. I mean isn't it interesting that most women find they are more sexual as they get older and more likely to have an orgasm? There is something to be said for experience of course. But I think being less concerned with being the "good girl" could also play a part.
[Oh absolutely, Cat. In fact when I started to write the post that was going to be my main point -- backed up with an astonishing chapter in Stephanie Coontz's Marriage, a History about what amounts to the establishment of our contemporary set of "womanly virtues" in the 18th and 19th Centuries.) But! Sometimes posts get away with you and mid-post I realized the more important news was that *even though* all that is true and *nothing else changed* the entire problem could be disposed of simply by altering the traditional definition of "sex" by only one word. I'm *not* suggesting we make that change since, I contend, books and articles would would simply start trying to diagnose why roughly 30 of *men* never reached orgasm during "sex" and trying to figure out how to fix it. Which still just blows me away. But yeah, I think that part of any *comprehensive* solution would involve helping women off the pedestal ledge they got put up on back in the 18-1900s... and men out of the corresponding gutter they wound up in. Thanks, Cat! --fl]