As long ago as the 1950s the clit­oris, and not the vagina, was acknow­ledged to be the origin of female orgasm. So that by the 1960s when Masters and Johnson explained female orgasm from inter­course alone, it was in terms of women finding posi­tions and tech­niques for sexual inter­course that maximise the indirect clit­oral stim­u­la­tion (caused by the penis thrusting into the vagina).

As sex ther­apist Lonnie Barbach notes: “In reality, the clit­oris is the female sex organ. … The vagina is compar­able in sens­it­ivity to the male testicles.” (p587 Human Sexu­ality (fifth edition) 1995)

By the mid-1970s though it was accepted that this indirect action was not suffi­cient to enable the majority of women to reach orgasm. It was agreed that most women are likely to find orgasm with a partner easier by applying orgasm tech­niques to sex learnt from masturb­a­tion or through oral sex because the clit­oral stim­u­la­tion is more direct.

In fact it’s not just lack of orgasm during vaginal inter­course that women struggle with but orgasm by any means with a partner. Most informed people today are aware of the import­ance of the clit­oris and a woman can only know that some­thing is missing from sex if she is familiar with orgasm from masturb­a­tion. So why do women still ask about orgasm with a partner?

Clit­oral stim­u­la­tion is known to help but cannot guar­antee orgasm

Experts often imply that female orgasm is easily achieved but if it was a simple as pressing a button, why wouldn’t we all have worked it out by now? I appre­ciate that sexual ignor­ance is rife out there but surely it is accepted that the ‘informed couple’ exists? Don’t sex experts realise that couples read sex manuals and try different approaches to sex?

Clit­oral stim­u­la­tion is known to assist with orgasm during female masturb­a­tion but ONLY when combined with the use of highly explicit sexual fantasies. So the sugges­tion that clit­oral stim­u­la­tion alone will lead to orgasm during sex with a partner is simply a shot in the dark. It is a sugges­tion that is intended to be helpful but one that can, in fact, be quite misleading.

Despite all the lime­light that our genitals (clitoris/penis) get, it is in fact the brain that is the true sex organ. If you cannot generate some PSYCHOLOGICAL sexual arousal then you can forget about the rest. I have certainly never been able to use my sexual fantasies effect­ively during sex with a partner — it just does not work the same way. After years of researching the small print, I also know that I am not the only woman who has had this experience.

Women’s sexual arousal relies on sexual fantasies during masturb­a­tion and many women are able to use the same orgasm tech­niques during sex. Try bringing some sexual fantasies into sex with a partner even if that means reading some erotica while he touches you up. This can be a very enjoy­able precursor to sex if nothing else.

I find that women’s erotica can be a little too ‘soft porn’ and overly focused on the woman’s body. If you want some­thing a little more gutsy then try some homo­sexual erotica, which can be a real turn-on because it is full of male body parts, anal sex and fellatio. Of course, there’s always the more mundane domin­a­tion and sadism which gets many of us going, like it or not.