The first time I ever had sex with a woman, I remember being overwhelmed – and not in the way I had expected. Over the course of several hours, we had three all-encompassing orgasms each and, finally, I understood the significance of our recovery periods (or the lack thereof) to women’s capacity for pleasure. It even gave me a newfound empathy for the plight of your average heterosexual male, inwardly sighing that his partner might be ready to go at it again already. Then I smugly counted my XY fortune....
Which is why I can’t say I’m surprised at the lesbian orgasm ratio in a scientific survey published this week in the Journal of Sexual Medicine. Of the 2,850 men and women surveyed, the researchers concluded that men engaging in sex with a familiar partner have a greater chance of orgasm than women – a mean ratio of 85% of men compared with 63% of women. Lesbians, though, had orgasms 75% of the time. For the guys, it didn’t matter if they are gay, bi or straight – having a penis was enough.
Men: they’ll steal your heart, plunder your face cream and commandeer the most orgasms – but only if you let ’em.
Back in my days as a professional dominatrix, one of my most popular services was the ruined orgasm: bringing a man – or letting him bring himself – quickly to the point of climax, causing ejaculation without the muscle-spasming respite of a full-bodied orgasmic release. In the ‘Gynarchy’ (an alternative play-reality where men are at the mercy of women’s every decision), the most efficient kind drains a poor fellow’s balls until he’s literally dried out.
I never had a female client – nor met a woman since – who was into ruined orgasms. That’s not to say they don’t exist (there is a festishist for every fetish) but having one’s sexual pleasure so curtailed seems to be a particularly male preserve: the fetish functions by denying something that came with such physiological and psychosocial ease to so many men. And while many men suffer from erectile dysfunction issues that can affect their ability to orgasm at all, women don’t seem to fantasize about something they usually have to work harder to achieve, whether as a result of physiological vagaries or their partner’s neglect.
Lesbians, though, reportedly have less trouble reaching orgasm than straight or bi women. Sexologists as far back as Masters and Johnson theorized that lesbians enjoyed sex more because they weren’t inhibited by the same gendered expectations of performance and pleasure – or chaste endurance– that plagues hetero pairings.
If I were a conspiracy theorist kind of feminist, I might think that the lesbian death-bed phenomena was a hetero male ruse, employed to distract straight and particularly bi women from finding out that they were getting shafted while getting it on with men.
The lesbian orgasm rate isn’t just about an advanced skill set, though. The study also determined that the way women sexually identify affects how frequently they orgasm – and bisexual women fare the worst, regardless of whom they’re trying to reach orgasm with. But bi-visibility, and the still-limited understanding that bisexuality exists as more than just a waystation between deciding to be gay or straight, is still hard for many of us to navigate publicly (just watch Anna Paquin explaining her “active” bisexuality to Larry King) and in the bedroom. So if self-identification – and comfort and attachment to that identification – affects the orgasm ratio, it’s not surprising that bisexual women lag behind.
Meanwhile, I’m left absent-mindedly counting up my climaxes and wondering if I’ve been robbed without realizing it for picking the “wrong” sexual orientation.
But there’s more to sexual compatibility than just orgasms, no matter how many of them you have. My first girlfriend and I, for instance, had great sex. But we split up because we disagreed politically – and because there were things I missed about men that weren’t related to orgasms. Still, it’s true that even the most equality-oriented, sexually skilled men often require a steer towards (at least) a 1:1 orgasm ratio. Men– my work both as a domme and sex writer – has shown me actually love to please. But both of us, men and women, too easily accept that it “can’t” happen every time.
While we know the Great Climax Divide exists, scientists haven’t yet offered a solution to the hordes of ritualistically unsatisfied straight and bisexual women. That is where there might just be an opportunity for men to fill the gap: put that old-fashioned psychosocial chivalry to good use, and make sure the women in your lives get their orgasms first.
theguardian.com
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