It is often suggested that a lack of female orgasm during sex is a sign of sexual dysfunc­tion but the truth is that this is simply the way things are for women who hope for orgasm from their sexual rela­tion­ships. A woman is lucky to orgasm by any means.

The belief that women orgasm ‘natur­ally’ during sex is based on fantasy (erotica and porno­graphy) and contra­dicts the conclu­sions of the scientific researchers.

“In fact, for over 70 per cent of women, inter­course — the penis thrusting in the vagina — did not regu­larly lead to orgasm. … In other words, not to have orgasm from inter­course is the exper­i­ence of the majority of women.” (p35 The Hite Reports 1993)

Some people suggest that lack of orgasm is not a problem or that it is unim­portant. This may be true for women who never masturbate because they never know what orgasm is.

But for women who are familiar with orgasm from masturb­a­tion, it is frus­trating to be told that female orgasm is unim­portant when there is so much sympathy for men’s sexual perform­ance prob­lems and so much insist­ence that women should orgasm during sex.

Women need to be told the facts:

“This means that some­thing between 36 and 44 per cent of the females in the sample had responded to orgasm in a part but not in all of their coitus in marriage.

About one-third of those females had responded only a small part of the time, another third had responded more or less half of the time, and the other third had responded a major portion of the time, even though it was not a hundred per cent of the time.” (p375 Sexual beha­vior in the human female 1953)

Inter­course is not designed to facil­itate female orgasm

Anyone, male or female, whether alone or with a partner, uses genital stim­u­la­tion to take a state of mental arousal to orgasm. So during masturb­a­tion a man stim­u­lates his penis and a woman stim­u­lates her clitoris.

Psycho­lo­gical arousal arises from an appre­ci­ation of erot­i­cism and is the most important factor in enjoying our sexu­ality since without it genital stim­u­la­tion is inef­fective. During masturb­a­tion a man uses EROTIC IMAGES (porno­graphy) for psycho­lo­gical sexual arousal and a woman uses EROTIC SCENARIOS (sexual fantasies).

If a woman wants to exper­i­ence orgasm during sex, she needs to ensure that:

• (1) she obtains the DIRECT clit­oral stim­u­la­tion needed for orgasm (manual or oral); and
• (2) she finds a way to incor­porate her fantasies into her sexual rela­tion­ship with a partner.

Men are lucky because (since male orgasm/ejaculation is required for repro­duc­tion) inter­course natur­ally provides both the penile stim­u­la­tion and the visual turn-on of a sexual partner’s naked body that they need for orgasm. The surreal nature of women’s sexual fantasies makes them much more diffi­cult to map onto a woman’s real life sexual relationship.

Some women find that their mind-based sexual fantasies are unsuit­able for use with a partner. An altern­ative is for a woman to enjoy her own sexual arousal by using her sexual fantasies to inspire a wider variety of phys­ical sex play with a partner.