Since the experts I talked to had no rational explan­a­tions, I decided to do my own research by talking to women I met in everyday life.

I quickly learned just how highly embar­rassing it is to approach women on such an intimate topic. Very few women are willing to talk about sex at all and even fewer have anything to say about female orgasm.

The vast majority is silent so who knows what they think? We might imagine that at least some are quietly getting on with it; too busy doing to be talking about it.

But when I mention sex (only to those women I hope will not drop dead from shock at the mention of the word!) most women simply ignore me or change the subject. They don’t even risk a common­place comment like ‘How inter­esting!’ or ‘How brave!’.

I can only assume that women’s sexual exper­i­ences are not as sensa­tional as we’d like to hope.

“Because there is such wide vari­ation in the sexual respons­ive­ness and frequen­cies of overt activity among females, many females are incap­able of under­standing other females. There are fewer males who are incap­able of under­standing other males.

… Sensing some­thing of this vari­ation in capa­cities and exper­i­ence, many females — although not all — hesitate to discuss their sexual histories with other females, …” (p539 Sexual beha­vior in the human female’ 1953)

Men may exag­gerate their sexual abil­ities but they do not grossly misrep­resent their sexu­ality the way that women do. Natur­ally there is distrust between women who suspect that those, who claim to be sensa­tion­ally orgasmic, are simply reacting to men’s desire for a responsive sexual partner.

I have talked to women of varying ages. No doubt, people will tell me that I have encountered an unrep­res­ent­ative group of women. One woman suggested that I must ‘live in a broom cupboard’ because of the reac­tions I have reported. They have no idea.

Most women show little interest in orgasm

Anyone who doubts that these atti­tudes exist should get out of their own broom cupboard. I chal­lenge anyone who thinks that everyone is happy to talk about their sex life to try approaching women they know: relat­ives, friends, neigh­bours, etc.

Many people claim to be relaxed about sex but they run a mile if you ask for details. Like­wise women may joke together as a group and compare notes over their lovers’ sexual perform­ance but never their own. The women who were brave enough to talk to me admitted that they had never divulged the same details to anyone else not even to their closest friends.

A young woman in her mid-twenties told me that she was too embar­rassed to talk to anyone about her inab­ility to orgasm during sex. She had assumed that it was her boyfriend’s fault and that perhaps she didn’t love him enough. Only once I told her some of the facts that might explain her exper­i­ence was she brave enough to mention the issue to her mother.

Her mother, a medical doctor, replied (with slight bravado given her previous silence): “Of course you don’t orgasm during sex!” Some women accept such conclu­sions without ques­tioning. Others want to under­stand why popular beliefs are so misleading. I certainly did. Unfor­tu­nately, it isn’t done to ques­tion because people feel uncom­fort­able when they have no answers.

One woman told me that she would never allow her adult chil­dren to have sex in her house. I do not under­stand this atti­tude towards sex but it was clearly impolite to ask for an explan­a­tion. Even discussing the taboo nature of sex is a sens­itive subject.