by Ann Regentin
(12/07/05)
There are a lot of theories out these days about why women orgasm. Some say that women are more likely to orgasm at certain times of the month and that it increases the intake of sperm into the uterus, making it a sort of fertility enhancer. Others believe that women are more likely to orgasm with certain partners, that their orgasms are a mate selection device. Newer research indicates that the ability to orgasm easily may be genetic. In any case, it seems that the female orgasm, now that it's clearly understood to exist, has gone under the microscope, and the primary line of inquiry is into why it is so elusive.
There's only one problem. Women's orgasms are not elusive.
Men and women, when they masturbate, both take the same amount of time to go from zero to one-fifty: about six minutes. Even better, women have a shorter recoil time, making it possible for them to have a second orgasm much sooner, never mind a third or fourth, and their orgasms last a lot longer. Freed from guilt over masturbation and barring serious problems, women can orgasm until their fingers get tired or their batteries run dry. By comparison, it's the male orgasm that's elusive.
The only reason why the female orgasm is said to be elusive is because most women cannot come during intercourse. The thrusting of a penis in a vagina usually doesn't do it, and even when it does, it rarely does it all of the time. The exact number of women who can come consistently through intercourse alone, without any additional clitoral stimulation, varies depending on the study, but it could be as low as 6%. It's not a question of masculine endurance or technique, just a physical quirk so rare that it could be said to be abnormal.
This is the real cause of the angst, though, and the primary definition of female sexual dysfunction. It's not that women can't come; it's that they don't come when or how men want them to. Millions of men have agonized over their performance and millions of women have berated their lovers or themselves all because of something that no technique or duration of penetration can change. The female body is just not made to come when fucked.
Men have long considered this a design flaw and this might be the case if the vagina was intended only for sex, but it's not. It's also known, at least in obstetrical circles, as the birth canal. In this light, the design of the female genitalia, especially the placement of the clitoris and the relative insensitivity of the vagina, makes a good deal of sense. Women have the capacity for orgasm, but the route thereto is kept well clear of childbirth.
Orgasm, for men, is clearly a reproductive function. Although pre-come makes it possible for a man to become a father without ejaculating, the odds are much more in his favor if he does and orgasm is how he does it. Therefore, the reasoning goes, if orgasm is a reproductive necessity for men, then it must in some way be a reproductive necessity for women and since it rarely happens during intercourse, then that lack must be a critical evolutionary feature.
The absurdity of this is plain to anyone who has contended one way or another with the capriciousness of human fertility. Women get pregnant even when they don't want sex, never mind whether or not they have orgasms, or they don't get pregnant no matter how much they want to or how many orgasms they have. However, theory after theory clings to the notion that orgasm must, one way or another, play a critical role in reproduction and the result is pretty much what you'd expect: an abundance of speculation that has stronger roots in ideology than biology. It would take an entire book to pick them all apart and, luckily for me, someone else has already done it. In The Case of the Female Orgasm: Bias in the Science of Evolution, Elisabeth A. Lloyd carefully and meticulously dismantles the reproductive-based theories. None of them, it turns out, hold up to close scrutiny. Even the uterine upsuck theory currently in vogue doesn't hold water, or anything stickier either. Evidence that it occurs at all is, according to Lloyd, "ambiguous at best."
The idea that orgasm must be reproductive reflects how much of how we believe about sex is fundamentally androcentric. Even the language we use to talk about it is based on male perspective. Foreplay is what comes before "the act" itself, which is the insertion of the penis into the vagina, and then what happens afterward, meaning after the male orgasm, is called afterplay. The end result of this is that women's needs and point of view are essentially removed from the discussion. Remove the penis instead, and the picture changes significantly. What straight people call foreplay bears a remarkable resemblance to what lesbians call sex, and it's far more likely to result in female orgasm.
So what's up with the female orgasm anyway? We've been barking up the wrong tree for so long that at this point we really don't know, but what little we do know leads in some interesting directions. The endorphin rush is pretty much the same in both sexes, creating warm, pleasant feelings, but it's not as sedating for women as it is for men, and of course there's the quicker recoil. Not all women are capable of a machine-gun effect, but in general, they do not lose their arousal in the same way that men do. These differences, however, are minor compared to the effects of orgasm on male and female brains.
Studies involving brain scans and sexual stimulation have had some interesting results. Men's responses were hard to measure because their orgasms don't always last long enough for the scans to work, but based on what data the researchers could gather, genital touch activates emotional areas in the male brain, and orgasm activates the reward center and shuts down the amygdala, the part of the brain responsible for perceiving and responding to threats.
In women, the effect was easier to measure and surprisingly different. A study done in the Netherlands showed no reward response in women who were stimulated by their partners, but the shutting off of the amygdala and other parts of the brain involving emotion, memory, and anxiety, including the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex, was more pronounced, and the pain center shut down as well. Unrelated research indicates that women can experience physical arousal without any corresponding emotional reaction, or even any conscious awareness of that arousal at all.
This isn't as counter-productive as one might think, because sex can have catastrophic consequences for women. Not only are women are more likely to catch sexually transmitted infections from men than men are from women, but women are the ones with the uteri. Considering the dangers of pregnancy and childbirth, plus the long-term commitment involved in raising children and the precariousness of human pair-bonds, it makes sense for a woman to avoid engaging in intercourse unless she has good reason to trust her partner or her birth control, or trusts herself to handle any potential fall-out on her own.
Just as the female body is perfectly designed for sex, so is the female brain. The agony of childbirth with the clitoris too close to the vagina would pale in comparison to the misery of a life of constant pregnancy by every half-way attractive male who happened along. Intercourse, for women, poses a survival risk similar from a primitive point of view to a saber-toothed tiger attack. Even now, it can have drastically life-changing consequences. Other, non-reproductive things are less risky and perhaps easier to relax for.
It turns out that the biggest complaint most straight women have about sex has nothing to do intercourse at all. Penile size or endurance are far less important than the fact that clitoral stimulation doesn't usually go on long enough. A lot of men are perfunctory about it, thinking of it as a way of arousing a woman in hopes of later getting her off with his penis. The problem is that it's the equivalent of trying to get a man off by sucking his knob for thirty seconds, then playing with his balls and maybe brushing the shaft from time to time with the heel of one's hand. It might be fun, but it's unlikely to have an explosive effect.
Fingers, tongues, or vibrators applied to the clitoris are the best tools for inducing female orgasm, and this should be good news because dicks are notoriously temperamental. There are piles of books, Web sites, devices, and ointments designed to help men control their willies, and I strongly suspect that none of them work, especially in light of the fact that orgasm is a reflex. The ability to control a reflex is limited, and the methods thereto look like far more trouble to implement than the original problem, whether it's a smallish penis, an unreliable erection, or a quick trigger. Stressing out over the body part least under conscious control and trying to pound women to orgasm with it isn't fun for anybody, but it also isn't necessary and we've known that for decades. The problem isn't the "elusive" female orgasm. The problem is getting get rid of the notion that sex and orgasm revolve around reproduction.
Unfortunately, in an increasingly conservative social climate, this gets harder to do. The possibility that sex might not be strictly reproductive is a direct threat to the people who would like to regulate and control it. From a certain perspective, women's orgasms are a form of biological anarchy, and I think that's why there's this rush to find some reproductive purpose for them and bring them into ideological line. Women coming without inserted penises, without any fertility-related reason at all, flies smack in the face of the notion that sex should be limited to married, monogamous heterosexual couples who want to have children. Women's orgasms are a reminder that sex is richer, and more complex than that. Reproduction is only part of the picture.
The purely vaginal orgasm is a phenomenon best compared, I think, to premature ejaculation. Both seem to be the result of inherited reflexes, and the fact that one is worshipped and the other reviled is strictly a matter of cultural expectations. Strip them of their emotional significance, and neither of them contributes to or detracts from sexual pleasure, or at least they don't need to as long as pleasure, rather than intercourse, is the main dish.
It's not that women don't like penetration, or that they never want to come when fucked, or that doing so is impossible. It's that there's no compelling, biological reason why fucking alone should result in female orgasm, so it rarely does. Unfortunately, this fact still hasn't sunk very deeply into the collective psyche. A letter to askmen.com describes a man struggling with what he thinks is premature ejaculation, and Kegel exercises aren't helping. "I would hate to be my wife," he says, "She has to finger herself or I will have to perform oral sex to get her off." The site's sex expert goes on about how the writer must try harder with the Kegels, but I seriously doubt that's going to help. The bottom line is that women come primarily from clitoral stimulation, and the world record for Kegels on the husband's part isn't going to change that.
However, if he's giving her emotional room in the relationship to finger herself when they're in bed and regularly licking her to orgasm, then I suspect that a lot of women married to men with more penile endurance would envy her.
