Although many sources refer to women’s ‘sexual dysfunc­tion’, it is rare to find a defin­i­tion of what is supposed to be sexu­ally ‘normal’ for women in the first place.

Sex involves both repro­duc­tion and sexual pleasure. So in repro­ductive terms, a man could be described as sexu­ally dysfunc­tional if he cannot impreg­nate a female (male orgasm required) and a woman if she cannot conceive (female orgasm not required).

Enjoy­ment of sexual pleasure certainly includes sexual arousal and orgasm for men. However, many women are uncon­cerned about a lack of orgasm during sex.

Men can usually enjoy orgasm through masturb­a­tion alone, masturb­a­tion with a partner, oral sex or inter­course. Many women limit their sexual exper­i­ences to ‘love-making’ despite the fact that inter­course provides insuf­fi­cient clit­oral stim­u­la­tion for orgasm.

Even if a woman is willing to try more direct ways of stim­u­lating her clit­oris during sex with a partner, the fact is that she is unlikely to be aroused enough for clit­oral stim­u­la­tion to lead to orgasm. Many women are only able to orgasm during masturb­a­tion alone because this allows them to generate suffi­cient arousal for orgasm by focusing on their sexual fantasies.

Around 10% of women are estim­ated to be ‘an-orgasmic’, that is, they never exper­i­ence orgasm ever. Women who only orgasm from masturb­a­tion are referred to as ‘pre-orgasmic’. The number of men who cannot orgasm during sex throughout their lives is negli­gible whereas, for women, the figure is around 50% (including an-orgasmic and pre-orgasmic women).

“Only about half of all the women who have told me about their sexual exper­i­ences say they usually have orgasms during love­making. The others either do not have orgasms, or find that they usually have an orgasm only when masturb­ating.” (p80 Woman’s Exper­i­ence of Sex 1983)

Lack of female orgasm is not a sexual dysfunction

It is unreas­on­able to categorise such a high percentage of women as having a sexual dysfunc­tion. So there is nothing abnormal about either an-orgasmic or pre-orgasmic women. Such women do not have a ‘problem’ at all. They simply need to accept that this is the way things are for many women who hope for orgasm in their sexual relationships.

Even these stat­istics for women’s sexual perform­ance are likely to be optim­istic because women who respond to surveys or talk to others about sex are already in a minority. Many other women justify their sexual rela­tion­ship in terms of loving their partner or having chil­dren rather than as a means of enjoying their own sexual arousal and orgasm.

From Shere Hite’s survey (1976) 30% of women claimed to be able to orgasm regu­larly from inter­course alone. This is quite amazing when you think that it is equi­valent to 30% of men boasting that they prefer to orgasm without stim­u­lating their penis.

An equally amazing 44% said that they masturbate during inter­course. At least this is a more real­istic way to achieve orgasm but means that almost every other woman masturb­ates herself during sex. How likely is this? Well given that very few women masturbate at all and even fewer succeed with the same tech­niques with a partner, I am guessing not very likely.

Only 26% of the women surveyed were brave enough to admit that they could not orgasm during inter­course at all (only through oral sex, masturb­a­tion alone or that they never orgasm by any means). As Rachel Swifts points out:

“Further­more it’s a pretty safe guess that the stat­istics are worse than that. Because if it’s a volun­teer sample, the women most likely to come forward and be candid about sex are likely to be those who are also successful with sex. And while many people might be tempted to pretend they do orgasm when they don’t, few are likely to pretend that they don’t when they do. That’s about as prob­able as a woman claiming she weighs ten stone when she actu­ally weighs nine.” (p19 Women’s Pleasure 1993)