Female Orgasm and How Biology is a Jerk

O, cruel biology

This is a rerun.*  Do not be alarmed. 

So I was going through your responses to the questions about clit-vag distance and its relation/non-relation to your propensity to come via straight-on intercourse alone (Woo! Sexy talk. Is it hot in here?) and now I am just...depressed. Or possibly pissed off. At the very least, I am most certainly miffed.

Why? Because of those among you who can have an orgasm--like no problem--with no other kind of hand stimulation, mouth assistance, divine intervention--nothing. Practically all the time.

For example, in response to "Do you come easily, sometimes or never via intercourse alone?" Anonymous commented:

"rather easily and usually multiple times"

And Naomi bragged answered:

"always come easily, no fingers or appliances needed (or even wanted, too distracting from the main event)"

For me, coming from just fucking alone has happened--maybe--five times. In my life. And that's rounding up.

It's biological tyranny, I say.

For men and the rare lucky chick who just needs a little in-and-out to come "rather easily and usually multiple times," let me explain. I think porn and romance novels and the in-and-out chicks have skewed what we think is a "normal" sexual response. Despite what we see and read all the damn time, the majority of women need some sort of extra stimulation to have an orgasm. The vast majority of women. That's just how it is.

Several men and women, who I consider to be generally enlightened, have mentioned variations of "it just takes the right man"--which is, I think, only true to a certain extent. Yes, some men are much better lovers. Yes, some men's parts are more compatible with your own. And yes, some men will get you so hot you could practically come from their gaze. All of these are good and can help.

However, in most women, the clit is where things are happening. But in a cruel twist of nature, Today's Generally Accepted Fuck Moves are happening in the vagina, which is annoyingly close to the clit, but...not...quite...there. Men, picture if your main sensory pleasure center was, say, on your perineum but you were expected to get to your bliss via regular old boning. You could get close. Your balls might rub against there occasionally, or you might figure out some crazy-ass position that sort of almost did the trick. But it wouldn't the kind of direct you-are-there-stimulation you'd need.

This is not to say that most women don't like pure fucking because we do. We definitely definitely do. And not just gentle soul-lock lovemaking--sometimes the hard and fast porny fuck pounding, too.

Wrote JS: I like the fuck pounding even if it doesn't "get me there." This is what I crave during sex, a certain amount of roughness or hard thrusting. The soft stuff and touching is great also, but I can do that on my own. I can't fuck myself hard.

Added Anon: Oh, hell yes!! But I don't come like this. Just enjoy it for the raw intensity and squishy noises. :)

I was feeling embittered by this and started wondering if I were a bad lay. After all, would you rather fuck someone who came "rather easily and usually multiple times" (sorry, I'm obsessed with this) or someone who was going to need a hand, and not in a metaphoric sense? I mean I can see that there's a certain hotness in being able to control a woman's orgasm with your touch or to be able to watch her as she brings herself to that place, but damn, I was still a little jealous.

Luckily Trisha, who's making a completely cool sounding movie about female sexual response called Science Sex and the Ladies [update:  She made it!] calmed my ass down over at Reddit:

Agreed, it does make you feel high-maintenance and frustrated sometimes, but I say we think of these "in and out" orgasmers in a different way; as a really small minority - like the 1% billionaires. They're loud and influential, and the culture seems to be shaped around their needs, but it shouldn't be. The vast majority of us, and probably a lot more than we'd think, are in the same boat. We just need to start shaping the culture more around our majority situation; then we wouldn't have to feel so frustrated for no reason. Let's rise up Grinders and Manual Stimulators!! :)

While I head to my workshop to make signs for a Grinders and Manual Stimulators rally, here's a bit more from Trisha:

Masters and Johnson found and recorded physiological evidence of some women who orgasmed from penetration alone, but hypothesized it was a Rube-Goldberg situation where the penis pulled on the inner lips which pulled on the clitoral hood, which rubbed against the clitoris. These orgasms were just like the ones they recorded from more direct clit stimulation, but were the weakest orgasms they recorded - not surprising since it was the most indirect way to stimulate the clit. They didn't find any anatomical characteristics that predicted the ability to have orgasms this way.

Not only do I very much like the Rube Goldberg reference tossed into a discussion of fuckery, but this idea of the weaker orgasm is interesting to me.

I asked a friend if she could come via straight ol' p-in-v (Yes, my social skills could use a little refinement. Thanks for noticing!) and she said, "Sure. Sometimes." When she saw my face darken with envy, she added kindly, "But they aren't as good as the ones I get when I masturbate."

I come away (not via vaginal intercourse, as you now know) even more confused. Are women's orgasms via sex generally weaker than via external stimulation? Are men a little bummed out when they get a woman who requires more work? Shouldn't our high-maintenance ancestors been edged out through evolution--how are we the majority? And how fucking unfair is it that most of us get what might be seen as a pretty major genetic rip off?

I'm also having new admiration for straight men, gay chicks and other lovers of women. I know every new lover is a different country to discover and all that, but seeing the huge variations in what women want, like and require made me realize just how hard it would be to fuck a woman well. The focus-on-the-clit move that would be meltingly blissful to one would be way too intense for another. Men are different from each other too, of course, but it doesn't seem like the differences between them are quite as extreme.

What do we do with all this? Well, we keep talking about it and how female sexuality actually works instead of how we think it should probably work. Just fucking do it. If not for you, then for your sisters, so that we may all go forth and fuck freely and well as nature intended.

xoxo
jill

*Why am I running this again? Because just the other day a grown man, a perfectly smart and earnest one, told me that his new girlfriend probably had a biological issue because she couldn't come via his his smart and earnest thrusting.

photo: Etude de nu 1950 by Raymond Van Doonen

How to Make a Woman Come--Even If You Are That Woman. AKA Things I Learned from Science, Sex, and The Ladies

Louis CK* has a bit on how men complain about women's "neediness" after sex:

“After sex, you’re looking at two very different people. The man just wants to lay there and be cool and the woman wants to cuddle. 'Why is she so needy?’ She’s not needy you idiot, she’s horny, because you did nothing for her. You did absolutely nothing. Her pussy is on fire because it's gone unfucked completely. Of course you’re fine, you climbed on and went “KFHGSKG” and rolled off. And she’s on you because she’s like ‘WH-at SOMETHING ELSE HAS TO HAPPEN! This is bullshit!!' If you fuck a woman well, she will leave you alone. ‘Thanks a lot, buddy. Zzzzz.’”

Louis says this happens because men are "bad at sex." Perhaps, but I think a lot of us are kinda bad at sex--just by default, because we never got the proper instruction. People want to be good lovers and fuck well. But it's incredibly difficult--ridiculously so--to get any sort of reasonable, real-world education.

Even today, we know so little about women's bodies. So very little!  It was only in the past few years that I learned that the clit occupies an extensive bit of pelvic real estate, that scientists still don't know what the fuck women are squirting when they ejaculate (it's "not pee," which just leaves...every non-pee substance), and that the cervix is so insensitive that 95% of women can't tell if it's being rubbed with a cotton swab. (This being the primary reason that the Gentleman's Cervical Swab Rubbing Courtship Technique of 1847 has fallen out of favor.)

In other cases, we know very well what's going with on women's bodies, but for some reason, bury or don't acknowledge this info.

The most egregious form of our sexual ignorance/denial is about how most women actually have an orgasm: A woman comes from having her clitoris rubbed. There are a lucky few (very few!) who can get the job done via p-in-v fucking, but even then, what's going down with every woman is that:

1. their clit is rubbed.
2. they come (or don't.)

That's it.  

This is pretty much contrary to every depiction of women's sexual response we see in porn, mainstream films, and read about in books. Even books written for women by women. (Er. Or not.  See updated discussion about this in the comments.)

Trisha Borowicz got all Fight-the-Power about this (yay!) and made a smart, funny, cheeky film called Science, Sex, and The Ladies "for all the women who have felt confused, frustrated, or ashamed about their ability to orgasm."  

 I learned all kinds of things from Science, Sex, and the Ladies, up to and including:

--I couldn't tell a whit of difference between the photos of the Aroused Clitoris and Unaroused Clitoris (possible future lesbian lovers: you have been forewarned.)
--Women have their strongest orgasms by their own hand, second strongest with someone else's hand, and weakest via fucking and the frustratingly indirect stimulation of a penis rubbing-near-but-not-quite-exactly-where-you-need-it.
 --Contrary to popular belief, women don't take forever to come. Women come as quickly as easily as men, given the right stimulation. Men would also take forever to come if they were only being stimulated by, say, someone diligently rubbing their pubic hair.

My favorite part of the film depicted scenes of people engaged in various forms of sexual congress--a blow job, fucking, etc...--when a cheery actress would walk into the each scene and advise the female participant to "Rub one out!" to enhance her experience. It was fun, breezy and educational--like a particularly racy episode of The Electric Company.

I actually do wish this was the sort of stuff young people saw. And, while I'm at it, I wish more sex scenes depicted women being stimulated realistically, in the way that women actually need to be stimulated, so that women would no longer have to think they were somehow broken, doing it wrong or hadn't yet found the proper dick.

There is an orgasm disparity among women and men that drastically affects the way each understand themselves and each other. The truth is, women go through their sexual lives having very few orgasms compared to their male partners, and this has become a matter of course, a sort of unspoken accepted reality. This discrepancy, however, is not a result of innate differences between male and female biology, but a result of how we as a culture have come to understand, teach and experience sex.

Science, Sex and the Ladies aims to make it known that this orgasm disparity is culturally created, harmful, and in no way inevitable. It's actually quite an appalling and over arching problem that creeps into every aspect of our lives and relationships. Neither modern women or modern men are fully responsible for this problem, but a change in both are necessary for a solution. Science Sex and the Ladies, as part of a larger Orgasm Equality Movement, is a call to action.--Science, Sex, and the Ladies.

Anyway, if you want to be part of the Orgasm Equality Movement--and I do, although I'm totally not going to refer to it as that--the film makers are offering screeners of the movie if you'd like to host a small group showing. It's free--all they ask is that you send them a photo of the festivities. For more info, email anc@ancmovies.com.

I watched it alone, but wish I'd been with a group because I have all kinds of questions now. Like:

--Why are women writing romance/erotica about easily orgasmic p-in-v sex? Are all erotica writers among the tiny percentage of penis in vagina cumees? Or are they writing about how they think sex should be? Or how they wish it could be?
--What is the connection between emotions and sex? I'm totally onboard with Naomi Wolf's ideas in Vagina about sexual/spiritual/emotional connections, heady neurochemicals, and the transcendence that can happen in a really good fuck. And yet..... While emotional connection and getting "in the mood" is great, and certainly something to strive for, it's clearly not absolutely necessary for an orgasm. A woman masturbating with a showerhead or something can come plenty easily without having a big emotional experience and/or scene-setting. And yet... I have also burst into tears after an orgasm. Why and how are emotions all mixed up with sex? Or do we just assume they are, ergo, they are?
--If you are like pretty much every other chick and need to rub your clit to come, do you do it during sex with someone else? Or have you been among those (and, yes, I have been there as well) making "secret, quiet circles on disappointed clits next to sleeping lovers."

What are we all gonna do about this?

xoxo
jill

PS. I recently was also cited on some Spanish-language anti-gay site (blergh) for my supposed anal bleaching expertise.  "Una experta en el tema, la Sra. Hamilton entra en grandes detalles sobre la historia de esta reprobable técnica."

PPS. That site has 2 million views.

*This was before. Damn you, Louis.

(photo via Church of the Victorian Cult, not sure where Wendy Rose got a hold of it.)