Women, Sex and OrgasmOne of the prime ways of defining sexual responsiveness is being orgasmic. This is true despite the often discussed fact that there are other important feelings and sensations linked with intercourse that, in individual cases, may be even more important than the orgasm itself. In general, orgasm is a major criterion of sexual responsiveness, whether one evaluates it from the private perspective of the individual's own feelings or that based on more public norms and expectations. Because it is assigned so much importance, as compared to other kinds of feelings and sensations, there has been surprise at the repeated research findings that about 10 - 15 percent of all women cannot have an orgasm during sex or masturbation. This may be because many men do not know how to make a woman come. These findings have been interpreted by some to mean that a large segment of women in our culture do not get very aroused by, or really enjoy, sexual stimulation. But women generally value sexual stimulation and assign considerable importance to it in their lives, despite their not infrequent difficulties in achieving orgasm. But there still remains the puzzling question as to why so many women lack the ability to accumulate their excitement to the orgasm threshold. One of the most popular explanations is that many women are brought up in an inhibited atmosphere and have so much anxiety and inhibition about sexual matters that they respond negatively when exposed to sexual stimulation. A second explanation places the burden of failure upon the male partner who is portrayed as inadequate in his sexual approach; he is said to be too unadapted to his partner's needs in his sexual behavior or not willing to deliver sexual stimulation for a sufficiently sustained period or not bestowing it in the correct proportions to certain anatomical areas as compared to others (for example, clitoral versus vaginal orgasms).
The explanation based on inhibited upbringing is difficult to sustain in
the face of several contradictory facts. First of all, no one has been
able to detect a convincing link, except perhaps in a few extreme instances. Also, a woman's
recall of how permissive versus repressive her parents had been about sex
does not correlate with her orgasm consistency. It is additionally
pertinent that several studies have shown that the extent to which a
woman recalls her parents as having personally participated in giving her
sexual information is quite unrelated to her sexual responsiveness. This hypothesis would, on the contrary, lead one to expect that
since parents who refrain from giving information about sex probably are
inhibited about sexuality, their children would have difficulties in
sexual interactions. The notion that a woman's orgasm difficulties reflect her partner's poor lovemaking technique does not stand up-well against the available research evidence. Extensive studies by Terman turned up few, if any, consistent correlations between diverse partner attributes (including sexual behavior) and a woman's orgasmic ability. It is also true that Kinsey and others were generally unable to show that a woman's orgasm consistency is related to several different aspects of the partner's sexual behavior (for example, how long he persists in applying sexual stimulation to his woman). There were no consistent correlations between variables that certainly reflect the partner's sexual behavior (number of intercourse positions, amount of foreplay, and duration of sexual stimulation) and the woman's orgasm consistency. However, such findings are not meant to imply that a partner's particular pattern of sexual behavior does not importantly affect the content and "feel" of his woman's sexual experiences, but only that it does not play a decisive role in whether she will reach orgasm. The probable picture that emerges is that beyond the point of delivering a certain necessary minimum of stimulation the partner's sexual behavior is of secondary importance as to whether his woman will build up to orgasmic excitement. At a later point, the potential role of the partner's personality in this orgasmic process is further considered. More detailed information is needed about male sexual behavior and its effect on female orgasm. How, for example, does orgasm consistency change with different sex partners and if why? Let us review the factors that have been empirically shown to be correlated with a woman's orgasm consistency. One of the primary findings was that greater a woman's feeling that love objects are not dependable (that they are easily lost or will disappear) the less likely she is to attain orgasm. Women with orgasm difficulties were found to have more than usual interest or preoccupation with themes referring to death and separation. Also, there was actual evidence that such women are likely to have suffered the literal loss (through death) or functional loss (because of long periods of absence from home) of their fathers during childhood. These and related findings have been explained in terms of a model that focuses upon the blurring of consciousness and the diminished "hold" upon what is "out there" by a woman as her sexual excitement mounts to the point of orgasm. It was theorized that the woman who feels that objects are undependable and who fears their loss finds the blurring of her relationships with objects that is produced by sexual excitement so threatening that she has to "turn it off." Presumably, she is made so uncomfortable by the loss implications of her excitement that the process of building up to orgasm is inhibited or blocked. But there was no indication that women who do not attain orgasm consistently are generally more anxious or in poorer "mental health" than women who do reach orgasm consistently. Concern about loss of objects may be viewed as one problem among many other kinds of psychological difficulties that afflict humans, and need be neither more nor less burdensome than other varieties of problems. Furthermore, one may suggest that although a woman is especially concerned about object loss she can still learn to cope with it through compensatory defenses, which would make it possible for her to function just as well as persons without such concern in most contexts (with the exception of situations involving buildup of sexual excitement). There is no greater general psychological disturbance in low - as compared to high - orgasmic women, which certainly fits with the majority of previous studies that have failed to demonstrate that a woman's sexual responsiveness has anything to do with how psychologically disturbed she is. Another point that needs underscoring is that orgasm consistency has not been found to be related to a host of variables that have often been cited in the literature as contributing to "frigidity." For example, orgasm consistency turned out not to be related to degree of femininity (as conventionally defined), attitudes toward the mother, aggressiveness, passivity, guilt, religiosity, recalled attitudes of parents toward sex, impulsivity, and narcissism. One cannot glibly speak of orgasm as more likely to occur in women with certain personality traits as compared to others. The likelihood of orgasm is no greater in the forceful than the passive, in the feminine than the not so feminine, in the sociable than the shy, in the extraverted than the reflective, in the self-centered than the altruistic, in the conservative than the liberal, and in the calm than the anxious. What has emerged is that orgasm consistency tends to be diminished in women with a specific kind of uncertainty about people (that they cannot be depended upon to remain available for relationships). However, this type of uncertainty can exist in women of all kinds of personalities.
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