Unless they masturbate, most women are unaware that clit­oral stim­u­la­tion is needed for female orgasm. Equally, they are unaware that before genital stim­u­la­tion can be effective, a person needs to know how to achieve true sexual arousal, which depends on an appre­ci­ation of erot­i­cism (images for men; scen­arios for women).

From puberty onwards men’s sexual arousal (as evid­enced by an erec­tion) makes regular masturb­a­tion inev­it­able. Since women do not exper­i­ence erec­tions (of the clit­oris) in the same way, most never learn how to achieve suffi­cient sexual arousal for orgasm either alone or with a partner. Consequently even those professing enthu­siasm for sex are rarely able to display any real know­ledge about how to reach orgasm.

After decades of marriage one woman told me: “I have to disagree with the comment of a woman’s arousal and the ease of achieving orgasm. Maybe I am one of the lucky women out there that is in touch with her sexual being. I get sexu­ally aroused by my husband just by looking at him without his shirt, the words that he uses with me, and by the atten­tion that he gives to me. Also I have I believe an easy time in obtaining an orgasm or two with my husband.”

Most men can orgasm within a few minutes. So is this woman claiming to be able to match her partner’s speed of reaching orgasm? Perhaps her partner is one of those one-in-a-million men who is willing to continue pleas­uring a partner after he has come? Anyone who suggests that it all happens ‘natur­ally’ or that women’s arousal is as easy as men’s is, frankly, mistaken.

Women’s minds and bodies simply do not work the same way as men’s. If they did then women would pay for sex as well as lap– and pole-dancing as men do. The sight of a man’s sexual attrib­utes do not cause us to become aroused enough for orgasm. Also women do not approach sex already fully aroused because our bodies are not full of testosterone.

Women who discover orgasm through masturb­a­tion in their twen­ties or thirties will often admit that they had always been utterly convinced that they did orgasm during sex when it turns out they didn’t. How can women not under­stand that orgasm is a signi­ficant pleasure? Not only do you defin­itely notice orgasm but also you set out with the inten­tion of achieving it.

The facts of female sexu­ality are:

• Women do not have the same levels of testosterone (the sex drive hormone) as men;
• Women do not buy erotica or porno­graphy as regu­larly as men do;
• Women do not masturbate anything like as much as men do; and
• Not every man pays for sex but many evid­ently do — most women never pay for sex.

When I talk about the fact that sex tends to be much more important to most men than it is to most women, I am talking about how we enjoy our own sexual arousal and orgasm. Women who disagree with me are only talking about the emotional (loving and affec­tionate) aspects of their rela­tion­ships with men. They are rarely inter­ested in orgasm at all.

A popular sugges­tion is that a woman needs a truly loving partner who knows how to ‘give a woman an orgasm’. Wouldn’t that be nice! It is a fallacy to think that anyone else can give us an orgasm. Even men have to learn about their own sexual arousal through masturb­a­tion. So how do women exper­i­ence orgasm as men do without the same know­ledge or practice?

I would love to believe that women under­stand how their sexual arousal works but the evid­ence stands against this. Most couples today clearly continue to base their sex life on vaginal inter­course despite the fact that inter­course provides insuf­fi­cient clit­oral stim­u­la­tion for orgasm. Yet very few women ques­tion a lack of orgasm during sex. Equally, society still censors erot­i­cism to protect women’s sens­it­iv­ities but without sexual fantasies women are unlikely to discover orgasm by any means.