Our definition of female sexuality must reflect reality and what women are physically and emotionally capable of achieving in the real world. We are limited by the responsiveness with which we are endowed. The advantage of a more realistic approach is that couples can build on what is practically attainable rather than longing for the unattainable fantasy.
Just as intercourse is not designed to facilitate female orgasm, women are also not nearly as orgasm-driven as men. If women were motivated by orgasm, they would masturbate. They would masturbate as a natural activity using their hands, not because they have been sold a trick that is supposed to bring them to orgasm. Even women who are able to orgasm do not go to the lengths that men often go to engage in sexual activity.
Men never witness the female orgasm because women only have orgasms. Men are also unaware of how female arousals work because a woman achieves arousal using fantasies that she prefers to keep private. So, men’s idea of these phenomena is based on women’s behaviors (not their responses). Women are not as flexible in the circumstances in which they can orgasm. This is due to the difference in the arousal mechanism between men and women. It is also due to the limited nature of the female orgasm.
Women who promote sex eagerly insist that women enjoy sex. This is because men label anyone who is not interested in sex as inhibited or frigid. But these women say nothing about orgasm. None of them can explain the anatomy or the erotic arousals involved in the female orgasm. Women believe in the female arousal fantasy of erotic fiction just as much as men. This reflects the universal ignorance of how orgasm is achieved.
The concept that women should enjoy sex was a common belief that existed before any sexual research was done. But this belief was always a male vision. Men want women to be sexually willing to maximize their pleasure. The sex industry promotes this view because it makes money selling a fanciful view of women’s sexuality to straight men.
Men’s sexuality is simple in the sense that men focus on the act of mating. Orgasm is the physiological event that provokes (rewards) the male for the reproductive act of ejaculation. It has been assumed that women must reach orgasm during intercourse because of men’s desire for penetrative sex. Most women never stimulate themselves. So the only time their genitals are stimulated is when they are with a lover.
The researchers try to get answers from the general public. How do they expect to discover something from the public that they themselves do not know? Any heterosexual, male or female, should be aware of the anatomy and arousals involved in the female orgasm if it occurs routinely with a lover. The problem with researching a topic that women know nothing about is that women cannot provide answers that they themselves do not know. Instead of concluding that women cannot explain erotic arousals because they are not turned on by a lover, men have assumed that women must be too modest or too shy to reveal the details of this mysterious phenomenon.
Some women suggest that they use a sex toy or their fingers to stimulate the clitoris during intercourse. Women who have never had an orgasm are not aware of how inflexible are the conditions that a woman needs to reach orgasm. Women can describe almost any sensation, emotional or sensual, that they experience during sexual activity with a lover as an “orgasm.”
The anatomy involved in orgasm is a red herring. The real problem is the psychological arousal that causes a person to stimulate her sexual organ. They didn’t wonder why heterosexual couples had failed to discover the clitoris. Nor did they ask why women themselves are so unaware of the clitoris. They did not realize that lesbians (like other women) confused sensual and emotional sensations with orgasm.
Most women have no idea how orgasm is achieved. So when researchers ask women about arousal and orgasm, they get confusion, not science. The more women are told they must have an orgasm, the more confusion there is. Women are asked simple yes or no questions, such as “Do you have an orgasm?” But no one tries to determine the validity of women’s orgasm claims.
Anyone who can have an orgasm knows what stimulation and erotic arousals they need to use. However, women are not asked to provide any evidence that they understand what orgasm entails (either mentally or physically). Women who are surprised (or even disgusted) by any hint of eroticism are supposed to reach orgasm just because they have sex.
Let’s reflect on Beyoncé’s anthem “Single Ladies” with its butt-slapping, butt-rattling choreography. It basically says that if men want to keep hitting him, touching him or jumping on him, they better put a ring on him. (Joan Sewell 2010)