HomeSexual PoliticsSexual desireFemale orgasm is not required for reproduction

Female orgasm is not required for reproduction

We have known for decades that intercourse doesn’t provide sufficient PHYSICAL stimulation (of the clitoris) for orgasm. But even more fundamentally, how do women achieve the PSYCHOLOGICAL arousal needed to orgasm during sex?

Over the years, I have found very few women who seem bothered that sex is unlikely to provide female orgasm. I understand that women who never masturbate are not motivated by orgasm. I am targeting women who are familiar with orgasm from masturbation and who are interested in experiencing something similar with a partner.

Women do not become aroused enough for orgasm simply by looking at the naked male body. If we did, then we would also pay to enjoy the bodies of the opposite sex as men do through lap-dancing and pole-dancing bars. Equally, women would buy pornographic magazines to enjoy their own arousal from looking at men’s naked bodies and genitals.

Men learn from masturbation that their sexual arousal arises from looking at pictures of naked women, especially their sexual attributes. So men find it natural and easy to become aroused during sex through kissing and caressing the body of a sexual partner.

Women learn from masturbation that their sexual arousal arises from an appreciation of eroticism, through sexual fantasies. These are surreal psychological scenarios involving highly taboo sexual acts (such as rape) and unrealistically assertive men.

To reach orgasm from sexual fantasies alone a woman has to achieve an intense mental focus. Not only is this difficult in the presence of another person, even a lover, but such a mental block-out is frankly incompatible when ‘making love’ with a partner.

Intercourse (at its best) provides a woman with a loving act through which she can encourage her man’s commitment to the relationship by facilitating his orgasm. Men naturally find vagina intercourse a fulfilling sexual act since it provides both the physical stimulation (of the penis) and the psychological arousal (by penetrating a woman’s vagina) that they need for orgasm.

This explains the contradiction of rape. How can an act that is supposed to be mutually pleasurably also inflict so much misery on women? Men are not victims of rape (through vaginal intercourse) because intercourse is an act of male sexual dominance. A woman’s natural instincts are to accept a man making love to her only once she has identified him as a potential mate.

Women’s sexual role (during sex with a partner) remains what it always was:

  • To accept a man’s desire for physical intimacy as his sign of devotion to her;
  • To provide a man with sexual pleasure by facilitating male orgasm; and
  • By appreciating a man’s love-making, to provide the emotional intimacy that motivates him to support a family.

Men’s psychological arousal is almost instant partly because their bodies are full of the sex hormone, testosterone. Sex has been designed to facilitate male orgasm and this emotional payback helps in part to motivate men to support a family.

Whether we like it or not, orgasm represents a much smaller part of the wider picture of female sexuality. Women may be unhappy about a lack of orgasm during sex but they are able to put up with it. Very few are motivated to find answers.

Women today who hope for orgasm have been given unrealistic expectations by the modern drive for sexual equality in all things. This has also increased the pressure from men who have always hoped that women might be as enthusiastic about sex as they are.

Excerpt from Ways Women Orgasm (ISBN 978-0956-894700)