sustained, more sensitive,
requires to reach orgasm—
and more tuned to the
result in very few women
unique design of the cli-
reaching orgasm during
toris (which is the only
intercourse.
part of the human body
designed solely for sexual
pleasure, with six thousand to eight thousand sensory nerve endings, far more than the tongue or the fingertips or a man’s penis). Natalie Angier captures some of the nuances of the clitoris and how closely it is linked to the emotions in her book,
Woman: An Intimate Geography
: If you are frightened, it becomes numb. If you are unin-terested or disgusted, it remains mute. If you are thrilled and strong, it is a taut little baton, leading the way, cajoling here, quickening there, andante, allegro, crescendo, refrain.
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The type of stimulation that produces an orgasm for most women is different than it is for a man. For example, a stream of water or a vibrator do almost nothing for a man’s penis but can be highly arousing on a woman’s clitoris. Another difference: if clitoral stimulation is interrupted, or if it’s too rough or intense, the woman can lose her place and need to start over.
What is the result of these two male-female differences? During conventional intercourse, a woman doesn’t get the kind of sensitive, well-tuned, and continuous stimulation necessary to bring her to orgasm. Straightforward, unassisted, penis-in-vagina intercourse is almost always sexually rewarding for a man—and rarely is for a woman.
This is an important insight—yet there seems to be a conspiracy of silence about these male-female sexual asymmetries. They are almost never described in sex education classes, parental talks, peer banter, and other sex materials. As a result,
most people are in the
For some reason, sex
dark until their first sexual
literature and the popular
encounters—and unfor-
media almost never discuss
tunately that’s not a time
the built-in reasons why
when couples talk openly
most women don’t have
and honestly if things
orgasms during intercourse.
aren’t going the way
they’re supposed to go.
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In fact, when men and women have intercourse for the first time, they tend to react somewhat differently.
It’s natural for them to compare two-person sex with their own experience with solo sex (virtually all males and most females masturbate). For the man, intercourse is usually a major improvement because of the way the lubricated vagina stimulates his penis. For the woman, early experiences with intercourse are often a disappointment because her clitoris gets little or no stimulation. Here’s how a seventeen-year-old described her first experience:
The first time I had intercourse I was lying there thinking,
You mean this is IT? Am I supposed to be thrilled by this?
It wasn’t that it hurt me or anything, because it didn’t. It just didn’t feel like anything to me. I figured there must be something wrong with me, so I didn’t say a word to him.
Add to this confused disappointment a woman’s fear of getting pregnant, her worries about sexual infections, and her uncertainty about the emotional side of things (Does he really love me? Will he dump me after we do this? Will he tell his friends?), and it’s no wonder that many women secretly conclude that intercourse is vastly overrated.
A generation ago, when most couples didn’t rush into intercourse, they spent more time on first base (kissing), second base (touching above the waist), and 2 2
T h e G r e a t S e x S e c r e t
third base (touching each others’ genitals). This kind of extended “outercourse” without penetration can be satisfying for a woman because the man is more likely to bring her to orgasm. But nowadays, a lot of couples charge around third base and head straight for home, sometimes on the first date, while others “hook up,”
engaging in quickie oral sex with most of the focus on male pleasure. (Which “base” is fellatio? Third in terms of getting pregnant, home in terms of sexual infections.) Couples who progress rapidly to vaginal or oral penetration tend to learn less about each other’s bodies, and men who begin with this kind of sex may never get acquainted with the all-important “geography” of lovemaking—what gives a woman deep satisfaction. Here’s how a woman described this kind of unsatisfying early lovemaking:
We rush into it—or let our partners rush us into it. We end up fucking with great intensity, swept off our feet just like in the movies, and swept under the rug when it comes to climaxes.
A Design Flaw?
Why do these sexual asymmetries between men and women exist? What possible purpose is served by the woman’s orgasm-producing nerve endings being in a place where the movement of a man’s penis in the
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vagina does not give her maximum pleasure? Why isn’t the body laid out so that a woman’s orgasm can occur
during
the procreative act? Everything in the body is supposed to have a purpose, so is the placement of the clitoris a design error?
Let’s take the argument a step further. Is the female orgasm even necessary to our species’ survival, since a woman does not need one to get pregnant?
Not so fast. Sexual satisfaction is just as important for women, both mentally and physically. In fact, a woman’s orgasm is more glorious than a man’s in measurable ways. When a man reaches orgasm, he has three or four major contractions followed by a few irregular minor ones, all confined to his genital area. When a woman climaxes, she has five to eight major contractions, then nine to fifteen minor ones, all of them felt throughout her pelvic area.
Clearly, female orgasms are
fun
. But do they serve an evolutionary purpose? Over the years, various theories have been advanced, including:
• That a woman is slightly more likely to get pregnant when she has an orgasm because the cervix pulls more sperm into the uterus during a climax.
• That when a woman has an orgasm during intercourse, oxytocin, the “bonding hormone,” is released, and she has affectionate feelings and a desire to be close to her partner, which confers a 2 4
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Darwinian advantage by helping the couple stay together through the vicissitudes of life.
• That a woman’s health is improved when she has orgasms as part of lovemaking because pelvic engorgement is reduced, she gets more of a cardio-vascular workout, estrogen levels are boosted, endorphins are released (which reduce stress and pain), and her immune system and general well-being are enhanced.
But for these theories to be valid, female orgasms would have to have been a regular feature of intercourse through the millennia, with women who had during-intercourse orgasms surviving and women who didn’t have them dying out. There’s strong evidence that female orgasms during intercourse have
not
been the norm throughout history. This casts serious doubt on the theory that female orgasms exist because they conferred any kind of selective advantage.
In her book,
The Case of the Female Orgasm: Bias in
the Science of Evolution
, biology professor Elisabeth Lloyd trashes the adaptationist theories, arguing that they work backwards from the assumption that the female orgasm
must
have an evolutionary function and ignore lots of evidence to the contrary. Lloyd presents an alternative theory: that the
potential
for female orgasm is a by-product of embryological development in all mammals. In humans, the same fetal tissues
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develop into a penis or a clitoris starting in the eighth week of pregnancy, depending on whether they get a dose of male or female hormones. Both sexual organs have the same origins and, years later, both can produce orgasms. But because of the location of the clitoris, females’ potential for orgasm is realized only under certain conditions—which rarely include basic intercourse.
When women do have orgasms with their partners, some of the advantages kick in, including bonding and health benefits. But Lloyd disposes of the notion that these have been evolutionarily purposeful.
So why have our anatomies evolved in this apparently incompatible way? Why is it so difficult for women to get deep sexual pleasure during intercourse?
How can millions of sexually frustrated women be part of nature’s design?
We can explore this
evolutionary puzzle by
Lovemaking that is one-sided
dividing sexually active
and unfulfilling for one partner
heterosexual women into
does not stand the test of
those who don’t have an
time and can sow seeds of
orgasm during inter-
resentment and unhappiness
course (65 to 85 percent
in a relationship.
of women are in this cat-
egory, according to most
research) and those who do (the remaining 15 to 35
percent). Among the former, there are three common 2 6
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scenarios: Wham, Bam, Thank You, Ma’am (the man has an orgasm and does little or nothing to give pleasure to his partner); the man tries to give his partner an orgasm but fails; and the woman fakes an orgasm. In each case, lovemaking ends without the woman getting deep sexual satisfaction. The next three chapters explore each of these scenarios in turn.
Chapter Two
Wham, Bam, Thank You,
Ma’am: The Long History
of One-Sided Sex
In the first no-female-orgasm scenario, Wham, Bam, Thank You, Ma’am, the man engages in a little foreplay, stimulates the clitoris just enough to produce some lubrication, enters the vagina, pumps to orgasm, rolls over, and goes to sleep. This approach has also been called 3-2-1 sex: three minutes of foreplay, two minutes of intercourse, and one orgasm—his. A man who “makes love” this way gets satisfaction himself but gives little or none in return.
Why would a man act so selfishly in bed? In some cases, it’s because he’s ignorant of how a woman’s body works: he assumes that what feels good for him must also feel good for her. Or perhaps he’s lazy about putting in the time and effort needed to give equal satisfaction to his partner. Or it could be that he’s selfish and doesn’t give a damn. Men in the last category would probably enjoy this joke:
Question: How can you tell if a woman has had an orgasm?
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Answer: Who
cares
?
Or maybe Wham-Bam men are uncomfortable with the intense emotions surrounding a woman’s orgasm and the deeper relationship (and, God forbid,
commitment
) that it might portend.
Whatever the thought process, the result is the same: a sexually unsatisfied woman.
Over the years, lots of women have experienced this kind of sex, and they may have felt they had little choice but to put up with it. In another time and place, women were advised to “lie back and think of England.” Nowadays women with partners like these are more likely to multitask, tolerating their partners during intercourse while mentally planning tomorrow’s dinner.
Two contemporary jokes show that this problem is very much on people’s minds:
• Lawyer to witness in court: “Are you sexually active?” Woman: “No, I just lie there.”
• What do women do after sex?
5 percent fall asleep
5 percent take a shower
5 percent read a romance novel
85 percent go get their vibrators
We smile, but the humor has an edge to it. Over time, the emotional costs of one-sided sex are high.
Here is one woman’s poignant testimony:
W h a m , B a m , T h a n k Yo u , M a ’ a m
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Sex was something that was “done to me.” I felt an incredible lack of mutuality and lack of control. I became, over time, a passive instrument for my husband’s pleasure. I felt very distanced from him during intercourse. I had the sense that he was relating to his own fantasies while he was having contact with me. He later told me this was often the case. It was not just my husband’s fault…Neither of us had people close enough to talk to about the problem, nor a sense of other people going through similar things. I felt sexually destroyed.
Another woman shared this angry fantasy: We are having intercourse. I have an orgasm before him.
I pull off of his penis and lie beside him, enjoying myself fully. He’s very hurt. I say: “I should, but I don’t want to continue.” (His words to me on former occasions.) He insists. I scream at him:“Selfish pig! Can’t you take what you dish out? Now you know what it feels like most of the time for a woman having sex.” You’re supposed to say: “It’s okay. Just lie back and enjoy yourself. I’ll wait until next time.”
How many couples are in the Wham-Bam mode?
We don’t have accurate statistics on couples today (a result of the right questions not being asked and the fact that a lot of women are probably fibbing), but there is 3 0
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growing evidence that throughout human history, this is the way the vast majority of human beings have experienced sexual intercourse. In her comprehensive book,
Sex in History
, Reay Tannahill says that for thousands of years, sex was an overwhelmingly male-dominated, one-sided affair. In his book,
Human Sexuality in Four Perspectives
, William Davenport concurs: “In most of the societies for which we have data, it is reported that men take the initiative and, without extended foreplay, proceed vigorously toward climax without much regard for achieving synchrony with the woman’s orgasm.”