The hetero­sexual act of vaginal inter­course is designed fore­most as an expres­sion of love between a man and a woman.

After all, if sex was purely about two people reaching orgasm, then we would more natur­ally engage in activ­ities that involve more direct genital stim­u­la­tion. Inter­course is a natural progres­sion from kissing to a man capit­al­ising on his sexual arousal to ‘make love’ to a woman.

When a woman is amen­able to accepting a man’s sexual initi­ative, inter­course allows her body to provide him with the sexual release of orgasm.

Penet­ra­tion provides the maximum turn-on for a man and signi­fies a high level of trust and intimacy between two people. Inter­course repres­ents the most personal accept­ance that a woman can offer that can be emotion­ally rewarding for a man (espe­cially if her sexual accept­ance is awarded sparingly).

“Although we may use orgasm as a measure of the frequency of female activity, and may emphasize the signi­fic­ance of orgasm as a source of physiologic outlet and of social inter­change for the female, it must always be under­stood that we are well aware that this is not the only signi­ficant part of a satis­factory sexual relationship.

This is much more true for the female than it would be for the male. It is incon­ceiv­able that males who are not reaching orgasm would continue their marital coitus for any length of time.” (p371 Sexual beha­vior in the human female 1953)

Many women see sex as a loving and sensual act with a man they love. The vast majority of women are not inter­ested in the erot­i­cism and phys­ical sex play (focused on genital stim­u­la­tion) that would lead to their own sexual arousal and orgasm.

The sexual revolu­tion implied that women’s sexu­ality could become more like men’s simply as a result of a change in atti­tudes. In fact, many women settled for faking orgasm to keep men happy rather than being motiv­ated to reach orgasm with a partner.

Female sexu­ality cannot change just to fit the fashion

Despite the supposed liber­al­isa­tion in atti­tudes, men today still feel obliged to apolo­gise to women for sexual innu­endo. They appear to assume that a woman will always be offended by sexual refer­ences, which of course they often are.

But if women are so shocked by erot­i­cism how do they achieve the sexual arousal that leads to orgasm? The answer is that they don’t. Most would be horri­fied at the sugges­tion that they could exper­i­ence sexual arousal by appre­ci­ating aspects of erot­i­cism. Women prefer to assume that female orgasm involves loving feel­ings rather than crude sexual urges.

Many women enjoy the kind of romance stories that end just as the couple kiss. Although sex is implicit, there are none of the explicit sexual refer­ences that so often offend women. This is just where men would want the story to start not to end.

Women are not natur­ally attracted to the phys­ical as men often are. A woman who is unable to empathise with men’s enjoy­ment of these phenomena will have diffi­culty under­standing the attrac­tion of erot­i­cism. Women who masturbate enjoy aspects of erot­i­cism through sexual scen­arios or stories. Fantasy allows women to gloss over the crude prac­tical details of sex.

But it is one thing to use sexual fantasies during masturb­a­tion alone or during sex, for that matter. It requires a much higher level of trust and commu­nic­a­tion to discuss ways of sharing our sexual fantasies with a partner during phys­ical sex play.

Women may not be happy about a lack of orgasm during sex but they can put up with it. If a man ever exper­i­ences impot­ence, he can feel that life is no longer worth living. Women don’t have the same biolo­gical drive to reach orgasm with a partner.

This means that women don’t have the same motiv­a­tion to explore all the options with a partner. Since inter­course has been endorsed by society as ‘accept­able and proper’ hetero­sexual beha­viour, it is the default and requires minimal discussion.