Even today, female sexual arousal is shrouded in mystery. Female orgasm is assumed to happen ‘naturally’ or with the assistance of a loving partner.
No one needs to tell men how their sexual arousal works. Boys experience spontaneous erections so that male masturbation is inevitable. Girls do not develop the same genital focus and so they end up confusing the emotions of sex with true sexual arousal and orgasm. Since many women never discover orgasm through masturbation, they have no way of knowing what it is or how to achieve it.
Men’s easy arousal leads to the misconception that sexual arousal relies purely on PHYSICAL stimulation. Yet anyone who is familiar with orgasm will know that genital stimulation only works if there is accompanying PSYCHOLOGICAL arousal.
So although it is often implied that a woman can become sexually aroused during sex through physical stimulation, it is highly unlikely that clitoral stimulation alone will lead to female orgasm unless a woman first knows how to achieve the kind of psychological arousal that causes genital stimulation to lead to orgasm.
A woman learns from masturbation that her sexual arousal arises from an appreciation of eroticism through sexual fantasies. When her psychological state of arousal reaches a peak, synchronised with explicit stimulation of the clitoris, she is able to reach orgasm. In other words, psychological sexual arousal is not an optional extra but a necessary prerequisite in order for a person to enjoy orgasm.
After all the role of the clitoris (as the female sex organ) was identified, not from women’s experience of sex but, from their experience of masturbation. Whereas men use EROTIC IMAGES during masturbation, women use EROTIC STORIES (involved psychological and sexually explicit scenarios) to achieve the levels of mental arousal needed for orgasm.
A woman is likely to have much greater difficulty transferring her sexual fantasies to sex with a partner than men typically have with images. The psychological and emotional context of masturbation alone is so different to ‘making love’ with a partner that a woman may never even consider using fantasy during sex. Women, whose fantasies have a relatively kinky psychological context to them (as many do – usually quite surreal), often find it difficult to relate these to real life sexual activity with a partner.
Another reason women may find it difficult to transfer their fantasies from masturbation alone to sex is because achieving the arousal to reach orgasm from fantasy alone requires a high degree of mental focus. Not only can this be difficult to do in the presence of another person, even a lover, but such a mental block-out is often incompatible with ‘making love’ to a partner.
Men’s psychological transition from masturbation to sex is easy because their arousal comes, in part, from an appreciation of their partner’s sexual attributes, which is a natural substitute for images. But it doesn’t make sense to assume that women can find a partner’s naked body arousing enough for orgasm during sex when they don’t use images during masturbation.
Since relatively few women masturbate, many women are unfamiliar with orgasm through genital stimulation. They prefer to limit their sexual experiences to vaginal intercourse. Consequently, although few men would attempt to reach orgasm without stimulating their penis, many experts still assert that clitoral stimulation is not needed for a woman to orgasm during sex.
If men need to use techniques, including eroticism for arousal and genital stimulation for orgasm, then it is highly likely that women might need to use similar orgasm techniques if they are to experience orgasm. Conversely, if we truly believe that women achieve orgasm without the arousal techniques (psychological and physical stimuli) and learning processes (masturbation) that men typically employ then women would have to be considerably MORE sexual than men are.
Excerpt from Ways Women Orgasm (ISBN 978-0956-894700)