The third conclusion to be drawn from the mysteries of the female orgasm is balder and more disturbing to generations of men. It is, simply, that penile penetration is rarely involved other than in a peripheral role with the attainment of orgasm for women. They may get plenty of psychological fulfilment conducive to orgasm from penetrative sex, but, according to every serious study and the vast majority of anecdotal evidence, it is downright unusual for a woman to reach orgasm solely through the friction of conventional sexual intercourse – even if she gets substantial pleasure from the feeling of penetration and simply having the man’s erect penis inside her.
It is undeniable, meanwhile, even when ambiguities over anatomy and questions of copulatory etiquette and gender politics are factored out of the sexual equation, that not all women have orgasms. Statistics understandably vary, the matter of the female orgasm being more subjective than the binary certainties of the male, but the most comprehensive and methodically sound investigation into Americans’ sexual practices ever conducted, the 1994 survey Sex In America: A Definitive Survey by members of the University of Chicago’s National Opinion Research Center, confirmed that it is women who experience far greater problems of sexual satisfaction and interest than men. This study and others indicate that 40 or more per cent of women suffer from some type of sexual dysfunction. Most of these women are between the ages of 25–50.
Most women, it appears, can attain orgasm with clitoral stimulation, but only about 50 per cent of women who can orgasm ever claim they can reach climax during coitus. Around 10 per cent of women never achieve orgasm, whatever the situation or degree of stimulation. Women can be orgasmic throughout their lives, and 85 per cent retain sexual desire after the menopause, for once a woman learns how to reach orgasm, she rarely loses that capacity. However, sexual activity tends to decrease after the age of 60 because of lack of partners and untreated bodily changes such as atrophy of the vaginal mucosa.
A pooled global survey in 2001 of 27,500 men and women aged 40-80 in thirty countries, Global Study of Sexual Attitudes and Behaviors, carried out again by the University of Chicago and funded by Pfizer, suggests that a third of all women at any one time (not just of the dysfunctional 43 per cent) lack any interest in sex, a third are unable to orgasm, a third have only occasional orgasms, 21 per cent do not find sex pleasurable, 20 per cent have trouble lubricating, and 14 per cent experience pain with intercourse.
Orgasmic disorder in women, it is generally accepted today, may be lifelong or acquired, general or situational. Because of the widely varying definitions of female orgasm – an orgasm can mean different things to different women – the diagnosis of sexual dysfunction in women is frequently problematic. The most clinical definition is that, with increased blood flow, the vagina and uterus contract and make orgasm impossible. But much of the female sexual anatomy even today remains unknown, particularly the nerves and blood vessels affecting sexual function. An even greater variety of causes can affect and nullify orgasm in women than in men.
Among the factors which can make orgasm difficult or impossible for women are medical diseases, minor ailments, depression, medications including antidepressants, stress, psychosocial difficulties such as financial, family or job problems, family illness or death, physical, sexual abuse or rape (currently or in the past), smoking, cycling (unlike horse riding, which can stimulate orgasm, bicycle seats can cause perineal pressure and reduced blood flow), anger, ignorance of genital anatomy and clitoral function and of arousal patterns and techniques, anxiety, association of sex with sinfulness and of sexual pleasure with generalised sense of guilt, more specific guilt (such as felt by a widow with a new partner or a woman engaged in an extra-marital affair), fear of intimacy, concern about reputation, fear of unwanted pregnancy, hormonal changes, mood disorder, fear of ‘letting go’ and losing control, fatigue, time pressure, religious taboos, social restrictions, sexual identity conflicts, sexual inexperience, different sexual preferences from a partner and other conflicts, and poor sexual communication.
The Canadian QueenDom.com website revealed in a 1999 poll of an unusually large sample of 15,000 sexually active adults in the US, Canada and the UK, that the simple matter of self-consciousness inhibited orgasm in a large proportion of women and an equivalent or larger number of men, too. While 46 per cent of anorgasmic women blamed the problem on lack of confidence in their appearance, 70 per cent of men having trouble with orgasm admitted that the difficulty was that they get hung up about their looks when they have sex.
Grunting, groaning and facial grimacing during the latter stages of sex (the critical endgame known colloquially by some, because of the facial expressions involved, as ‘the vinegar strokes’) can make us feel embarrassed and fail to orgasm – 61 per cent of women and 72 of men feel they ‘lose the plot’ when they start becoming too demonstrative, the figures showed. Equally, if a partner seems to be thinking about work or football scores during sex, the chance of orgasm for many vanishes. Anger with a partner over some unresolved emotional issue was shown to be a reliable showstopper, as was the wrong kind of physical assertiveness. Here, however, the statistics are a little double-edged: 60 per cent of women and 52 percent of men explained that when orgasm eludes them, it is because their partner is too rough; conversely 50 per cent of women and 63 per cent of men said that it happens because their partner is not rough enough!
New sexual dysfunctions are regularly identified. According to recent work by Jim Pfaus, who studies the neurobiology of sexual behaviour at Concordia University in Montreal, for instance, some women confuse what is called sympathetic arousal, as evidenced by increased heart rate, clammy hands, nerves and so on, with fear. As Pfaus explains: ‘That makes them want to get out of the situation. Psychotherapy is a common treatment for the condition, although if anxiety is a factor, patients may also be prescribed Valium. But then Valium can actually delay orgasm.’
Cultural differences, especially male machismo, also come into play in anorgasmia. In a 1985 survey, 60 per cent of working-class women and 50 per cent of professional women in Puerto Rico admitted to faking orgasm to avoid a vanity-fuelled interrogation from their male partner. In South Africa, the Sexual Dysfunction Clinic at Johannesburg Hospital has treated black men worried about their inability to sustain an erection for an unrealistic length of time, or to have sex up to four to five times a night. In Brazil, where sexual expectations are generally perceived as high, poor female field workers treated for anorgasmia in 1990 were found to have neither expectations nor a scintilla of sexual knowledge. Over a third of the women were unaware that the sexual act was normal in marriage, although they knew that prostitutes and other ‘bad men and women’ engaged in sacanagem (‘the world of erotic experience’). They were under the impression that all sex was immoral and indecent and that their husbands were insane for desiring sex.
The caveat mentioned earlier, that orgasm can mean different things to different women, deserves more than cursory attention. There is, by some accounts, a significant phenomenon among women of mis-perceived orgasmic dysfunction. This may well spring from the reluctance among many women, open as they are to frank discussions with their peers about sensitive topics, to talk as openly about their experiences and expectations of orgasm.
A urologist, J.G. Bohlen, working in the early 1980s, made the remarkable finding that there was minimal correlation between the perception of orgasm by women and physiological signs of it as measured in the laboratory. Some women he monitored said they had experienced orgasm when no muscle contractions had occurred. Other sex researchers have also reported that, in tests, some women can have what they are satisfied is an orgasm while lying perfectly still and without contractions.
Conversely, Hartman and Fithian monitored a group of 20 female therapy clients who claimed thev were not orgasmic. Three-quarters, however, were found to be undergoing the classic physiological responses associated with orgasm. Once the women had these changes highlighted for them, all but one were able
to identify it for themselves as an orgasm the next time they were monitored. Significantly, many of the subjects had read up widely on orgasm, but decided what they had did not seem to feel what it was supposed to be like. It is as if the modern mythology and cult of orgasm has placed the sensation on such a pedestal – created such an aspirational ‘super-brand’ of it – that women perfectly capable of orgasm refuse to believe they are having a legitimate one and must instead be experiencing an inferior imitation brand. Either that, or they simply discover that, for their taste, orgasm simply is not all it is cracked up to be.
The judgement that a woman is anorgasmic – and the above strongly suggests that, at some level, it is a judgement – is also subject to the cultural wind blowing at any particular time in history. One early male sex researcher, E. Elkan, argued in 1948, in an attempt to place female orgasm in an evolutionary context, that ‘fixing’ mechanisms such as hooks and barbs have evolved in lower species such as snakes to allow the male time to inseminate the female. In species where males do not have such capture mechanisms, there are behavioural immobilising mechanisms such as skeletal contractions to ensure insemination. Elkan went on to argue that since orgasm is not one of these mechanisms and therefore does not occur in animals, women should regard orgasm as a gift and not part of their due. An anorgasmic woman, therefore, should be no more worried about it than if she were unable play the piano.
In a very different age, the 1980s, the libertarian Professor of Psychiatry Thomas Szasz wrote in a book, Sex: Facts, Frauds and Follies, that women have learned that being sexually self-affirmative is ‘unfeminine’, and hence, are unable to discharge their sexual tension through coital orgasm. This socialisation argument, that women simply learn to be less orgasmic than men, has wide currency today. ‘Such women are now called anorgasmic,’ contended Szasz, ‘but men who cannot weep are not called alachrymal. The former condition is thought to be a sexual dysfunction, but the latter is not considered to be a lachrymal dysfunction.’
A number of interesting explanations for the mystery – and frustration – of female anorgasmia have been garnered from experts by QueenDom.com. Peg Burr, a Californian sex therapist avers there: ‘My guess is that anorgasmia relates to a lack of efficacy and control in one’s life. Orgasm requires becoming vulnerable and open. This openness is based on an intact sense of self which does not feel threatened (engulfed, or overpowered) by sexual union. Persons who are rigid and/or controlling have great difficulty allowing themselves to be vulnerable and completely orgasmically responsive with another person … Women have less personal power in (and over) their own lives, due to social roles which teach them to be passive and non-assertive. They therefore may (unconsciously) exert control where they can, over their own bodies, and unfortunately, limit their own sexual pleasure.’
A practical and pragmatic analysis of anorgasmia – and a possible solution to it – comes from Dr Judith Schwambach, the Indiana-based syndicated sex advice columnist. ‘By far the most common culprit I have observed in my practice is a weakened female PC [pubococcygeal or pubic] muscle. Without a strong PC, most women require direct clitoral stimulation to experience orgasm. A very weak PC may be unable to provide sufficient vaginal tightness for the man to easily achieve orgasm.’ The advice, says Dr Judith, is ‘Kegel exercises’, available from a variety of medical sources, to tone up your PC.
Bryan M. Knight, meanwhile, a Canadian hypnotherapist and proprietor of the Web domain http://hypnosis.org puts his explanations for anorgasmia more crisply still, in four bullet points: If there is no biological cause, then possible reasons are, ‘The woman was sexually abused as a child. She has a need to feel in control. She’s having sex with an inconsiderate or unknowledgeable person. She’d be responsive to a woman.’
Other suggestions from QueenDom experts to combat the problem include self-hypnosis, making sure you are not already having orgasms but simply not recognising them as such, managing stress, avoiding alcohol and drugs before sex, not worrying about losing composure or dignity, never faking orgasm – and ‘being a little greedy: when you know what you like, ask for it. Your pleasure is your partner’s delight.’
But is it still possible that the human female, ultimately, is just less well designed for sexual and orgasmic pleasure? Is it something in the plumbing? Or is the most important thing we have to understand about sexual delight that men and women desire it equally, are equally capable of it – but are designed to approach it via separate routes?
The sociobiological case for the latter is put eloquently by an Illinois clinical psychologist, John B. Houck. ‘The best strategy for men to increase their gene pool,’ explains Houck, ‘is to father as many babies as possible with as many women as possible, trusting that some will survive to adulthood and produce more offspring. This leads a man to be prepared to have as many orgasms as possible. In contrast, the best genetic strategy for a woman is to form a relationship with a man and get him to protect and provide for her and her children, since without modern fertility drugs, she can usually have only one child a year, and needs to extend every effort for those children to grow to adulthood and reproduce. This leads a woman to be focussed on her relationship with a man, to be turned on when she feels safe, protected and provided for, and not turned on when she doesn’t.’
Houck concludes: ‘From whatever perspective we come from, it is clearly more important for most women to have more time to feel safe, protected, loved, cared for, and special, in order for them to reach orgasm. Foreplay for many women starts a day or two before the sex act, with the man showing them special attention and love, which begins to put them in the mood for love. Men usually do not need such a long time to get ready.’
4
Afterglow
‘Orgiastic potency is defined as the capacity for complete discharge of all damned-up sexual excitation through involuntary pleasurable contractions of the body’
Wilhelm Reich, Function of the Orgasm, 1942
Many ancient cultures believed their orgasms were mystical experiences, and there can be little doubt that such a perception had its roots in the accumulated folk wisdom of the ancient people’s own distant ancestors. It should be of no wonder, really, that the rapturous sensation of the immediate aftermath of orgasm was revered as something on a parallel with a religious experience from the moment human beings began to develop spirituality – the belief, often prompted by times of crisis, that there is meaning, purpose, inspiration and answers about the infinite to be had in life.
The most common word that even atheists exclaim when they have an orgasm is ‘God!’ It is that easy, in extremis, with the oxytocin and other pleasure-inducing chemicals flowing, to confuse an exceptionally pleasant bodily sensation with an awed, revelatory, mystical metaphysical feeling of harmony with the universe.
Even today, there is a wide and sometimes slightly woolly literature arguing the case for orgasms as a mystical experience. Long before the current ‘Tantric’ cult, a lot of psychedelic bric-à-brac from the sixties had pioneered a school of thought that the ancient Hindus, Mayans, Aztecs, Egyptians and so on had better and more meaningful orgasms than modern, consumerist man. Here, for instance, is Elizabeth Gips, a leading voice of the sixties ‘counterculture’ in her memoir called Scrapbook of a Haight Ashbury Pilgrim: Spirit, Sacraments and Sex in 1967/1968. She recounts thus a particularly splendid orgasm she experienced on New Year’s Eve 1966: ‘Male and female are one body that is no body in the time before time when God/me gave birth, created itself. An orgasm beyond orgasm that shakes loose streams of energy which become space, stars, planets, trees, bugs and people. RAPTURE. Am God, energy or whatever, me/you/they. Everything. Created creator.’
The importance of a neo-mystical feeling of post-orgasmic rapture is discussed a little less excitably by clinical psychologist John B. Houck. ‘The spiritual dimension of sexuality is very important,’ he says, ‘since sexuality can lead people into powerful spiritual experiences, including the ecstatic experienc
e of unity with the divine, with each other, and with all of creation.’
To those brought up in the modern Christian world in which sexual pleasure was, as a matter of policy, to be imbued with guilt as a way of asserting man’s superiority over animals, thinking of sexual and religious rapture in the same breath is, of course, anathema – which is obviously what attracted the hippy movement to it. But in pre-Christian days, most notably in the Old Testament millennia, there was nothing un-Godly about enjoying sex; in fact, to do so was rather religious. An historian, R.C. Zaehner, in a 1957 book Mysticism Sacred and Profane, wrote: ‘There is no point at all in blinking at the fact that the raptures of the theistic mystic are closely akin to the transports of sexual union, the soul playing the part of the female and God appearing as the male. The close parallel between the sexual act and the mystical union with God may seem blasphemous today. Yet the blasphemy is not in the comparison, but in the degrading of the one act of which man is capable that makes him like God both in the intensity of his union with his partner and in the fact that in this union he is co-creator with God.’
Or as George Ryley Scott, an historian, sociologist and anthropologist, put it in 1966 in his book Phallic Worship: ‘… the more abstract, intangible and symbolic becomes the cult, the more likely is sexual indulgence to prove the only possible outlet for what would otherwise result in a sense of frustration … Once it was thoroughly realised where lay the responsibility for the pleasurable Nature of the sex act, it was perfectly natural that the organs concerned in this sensation should be treated with the greatest respect and adoration … sexual indulgence had a magical effect. It was always, and is, to some extent, even to this day, imbued with mystery.’
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