Ways Women Orgasm

William Masters and Virginia Johnson’s research in the 1960s focused on inter­course but even they acknow­ledged that the clit­oris is the source of female orgasm (NOT the vagina as is often assumed).

To explain female orgasm during inter­course, they suggested that the hood of the clit­oris is pulled each time the penis thrusts into the vagina, thus providing enough clit­oral stim­u­la­tion for orgasm. But in 1976 Shere Hite concluded that this indirect clit­oral stim­u­la­tion was INSUFFICIENT to allow MOST women to orgasm during sex through inter­course alone.

These conclu­sions were not gener­ally popular and, having failed to gain general accept­ance, have been margin­al­ised in modern day explan­a­tions for women’s sexual experiences.

Possible reasons for their rejec­tion include:

• Although hetero­sexuals can engage in other sexual activ­ities, vaginal inter­course is seen to be core to how a man and a woman enjoy their sexual relationship;
• Given the diffi­culty in identi­fying female sexual arousal and orgasm, it was natural to assume that women’s response to inter­course must be similar to men’s;
• The belief that women orgasm during sex as easily as men enhanced women’s attract­ive­ness, not only in men’s eyes, but also in terms of how women saw themselves;
• Female masturb­a­tion is relat­ively rare and so most women approach sex through inter­course as a loving and sensual exper­i­ence rather than aiming for orgasm through genital stim­u­la­tion; and
• Hite’s conclu­sions reas­sure women who masturbate but they don’t help women under­stand how to orgasm during sex.

Clit­oral stim­u­la­tion is needed for orgasm

Clit­oral stim­u­la­tion is inev­it­able during female masturb­a­tion but there is a miscon­cep­tion that the clit­oris is irrel­evant to orgasm during sex. Not so: the clit­oris is a woman’s sex organ and the source of female orgasm however she achieves it.

Amaz­ingly, not all experts today agree that clit­oral stim­u­la­tion is required for female orgasm. The issue remains conten­tious because relat­ively few women under­stand that genital stim­u­la­tion is required for a person to exper­i­ence orgasm. So although few men would attempt to reach orgasm without stim­u­lating their penis, many women claim to orgasm without clit­oral stim­u­la­tion simply because they assume (as most men do) that female orgasm arises when the penis stim­u­lates the vagina.

Women can enjoy many aspects of touching, penet­ra­tion or non-genitally focused stim­u­la­tion just as men do. But if a woman wants to orgasm during sex (or alone for that matter) then she needs to stim­u­late her clit­oris. Men orgasm by stim­u­lating their penis directly, through masturb­a­tion, oral sex or inter­course but even they have diffi­culty with orgasm when genital stim­u­la­tion is reduced e.g. by a condom. It is ludicrous to suggest that women can orgasm with less genital stim­u­la­tion than men need.

“The source of an orgasm, then, is clit­oral. But a woman can feel orgasm mainly in her clit­oris or the area beneath it, or in her vagina, or both, or in the whole pelvic area including her uterus, or – indeed – flooding her whole body.“ (p75 Woman’s Exper­i­ence of Sex 1983)

The clit­oris is highly sens­itive to touch much as the glans of the penis is. So when we talk about direct stim­u­la­tion of the clit­oris, my personal exper­i­ence is that this involves stim­u­lating the clit­oris through the skin around (the labia) and over (the hood of) the clit­oris. I tend to rub down­wards from my vulva above the clit­oris and press one or two fingers from each hand over the clitoris.

The sens­itive clit­oris is pres­sured through the protective layer of skin imme­di­ately around it. During masturb­a­tion, my stim­u­la­tion of the clit­oris is not partic­u­larly vigorous or even direct. However, stim­u­la­tion can be focused at crucial moments of arousal and is far more direct than the total lack of sensa­tion that I exper­i­ence during vaginal intercourse.