I am not so crazy as to approach just any random woman on the subject of sex. I know that most women will be irre­vers­ibly offended even at the mention of sex. So I choose women who appear to be fairly liber­ated and then I approach the subject tangentially.

Of the women I have been brave enough to approach, the vast majority have shunned me. It is this almost fearful reac­tion that so many women have to any mention of sex that causes me to ques­tion the asser­tion that women are just as enthu­si­astic about sex as men are.

To date, not one woman has said “Wow, aren’t you brave! I would love to compare notes. Please feel free to ask me any ques­tions you want to.” Let’s face it, open­ness about sex is much more diffi­cult for women because of misun­der­standing about female sexu­ality.

Of the few women who have been willing to discuss their sexual exper­i­ences, only a couple have talked about easy orgasm. See Some women never tune into erot­i­cism and Bluffers, fakers and sex surveys. Both women talked about sex in terms of their rela­tion­ship. One was openly disgusted by any form of erot­i­cism and the other was dismissive of female masturb­a­tion even though these are both funda­mental to men’s sexuality.

The modern liber­ated view is that women reach orgasm during sex almost as easily as men do. The more conser­vative view is that a woman only finds sex rewarding as part of a loving rela­tion­ship. Iron­ic­ally both of these approaches imply that women enjoy sexual arousal ‘natur­ally’ during sex and make it diffi­cult for women to compare notes on how to orgasm with a partner.

The popular belief is that women need do nothing other than be on the receiving end of male thrusting to enjoy sex fully. So although the average woman is shocked by the idea of sexual fantasies and never masturb­ates, we still assume that she exper­i­ences sexual arousal and orgasm during sex. How on earth can this logic­ally be?

Although everyone assumes that women enjoy sex as much as men, the fact is that relat­ively few women ever comment on sex. I am chal­len­ging women who say that orgasm with a partner is easy, not only because their exper­i­ence does not tally with the known facts but also because they are contrib­uting towards the continuing misun­der­standing of female sexu­ality.

The fact is that women do not exper­i­ence spon­tan­eous sexual arousal as men do. This explains why most women do not masturbate and why women often inter­pret their sexual exper­i­ences in terms of their rela­tion­ship. The sensa­tions arising from a woman’s loving emotions may be very pleasant but it is not likely that they equate to the phenomenon that men call orgasm.

The idea that female orgasm is achieved through emotional feel­ings is misleading because:

• When these women claim to orgasm easily during sex, women who are asking about lack of orgasm with a partner assume that we are all talking about the same exper­i­ence; and
• Unfor­tu­nately emotional passion tends to wane over the longer-term and men, hoping for an active sex life, have diffi­culty under­standing why women are no longer inter­ested in sex.

There seems to be a surprising amount of resist­ance to asking women to account for their sexual exper­i­ences. I simply want to get a more open discus­sion of the facts so that we can be sure that we are all talking about the same kind of experiences.

I am taking all the risk and yet other people are so easily defensive. Surely it is in all our interests to improve our under­standing of the facts? I have legit­imate ques­tions and I am looking for answers in a society that claims to support rational explanations.