If you gathered together the assorted ideas in porn, women’s magazines, and playground hearsay, you could easily believe that there are 999 different orgasms of which women’s bodies are capable. In porn, of course, there is the greatest available variety: for one thing, a few very lucky porn stars appear to be able to orgasm at the very sight of an erect penis (sorry, a ‘throbbing member’). 50 Shades of Grey has the innocent Anastasia Fairycastle reach the brink through licking her own juices off some CEO’s fingers; countless teenage movies have the female character miraculously orgasm (sometimes, if she’s extra luckily, simultaneously with her boyfriend) during her first time ever; and Look magazine this week claimed that there are ‘seven different types of orgasm (and you can’t have them all!)’ These included ‘sense memory orgasms’, cumming through kissing, and cumming through massaging your nipples. The other four were your ‘U-spot’ (urethra tissue, which magazines have been fairly unsuccessfully trying to sell to us as orgasm enhancing rather than pissing material for a good few years); the cervix; the much-contested G-spot; and what Look rather insulting calls ‘the quick fix’: the clitoris.
Well, excuse me, Sigmund Freud in a baby pink vajazzled disguise. All this female orgasm interrogation started out with him, of course, when he claimed that ‘immature’ women came from clitoral stimulation, and ‘mature’ women came from vaginal sex. Not that that makes it easier on men or anything, to believe that their womenfolk should be cumming the way they cum (and if they don’t, well, it’s their own fault for being so damn immature about it.) And this was the general consensus for about a kajillion years, before we all stopped fooling ourselves and admitted that trying to get the entire population of women to cum during penetration is like trying to cook a roast dinner with a candle: you might get lucky once or twice, but overall you’re in for a pretty disappointing Sunday.
Around 75% of women DO NOT CUM THROUGH PENETRATIVE SEX ALONE. But you know how they do cum? Via the clitoris, which mirrors the head of the penis in nerve endings and constitution. Yes it would be convenient if that bad boy was inside rather than out, but wishing that it was won’t change a thing. Incorporating clitoral stimulation into the whole ‘penetrative sex’ thing is the single best tip a magazine could realistically give you – meanwhile, no matter how much Look basically tells you to try harder (a clitoral orgasm is only a ‘quick fix’ rather than the real deal, after all), the pages of a women’s magazine just can’t alter physiology.
Because women don’t predictably spurt out a mass of white globular maybe-babys everytime they cum (not to tread on the toes of the ‘female ejaculators’ out there, but the wet patch is USUALLY down to the guy), it’s become a general assumption that therefore our orgasms must be mysterious and probably a bit sinister. Just Google ‘different types of orgasm’ and countless pages come up: ‘the 9 different types of female orgasm’, ‘the key to the 11 different types of orgasm’, ‘your girlfriend can orgasm in 5 different ways’, ‘the 10 explosive female orgasm types (must-know info!)’ These came up for me just on the first page of search results. No doubt there’s a veritable goldmine of bullshit just waiting to be dug up and aired out if you continue. And while it’s all very lovely that we’re talking about getting women off, does all this speculation really do anything to make us moan?
Unfortunately, I feel deep in my bones and my C-spot that it doesn’t. All it does, really, is perpetuate the notion that ultimately, women MUST be made to get off in the same way as men. We all know the clitoris works, sure, but it’s just a nerve-ridden stepping stone on the path to a sexual nirvana where everything revolves around what a man’s cock does or is capable of doing while it’s still inside you. Right? Right? …Guys?
Now, I’m not disputing that many important differences between male and female sexual responsiveness exist. Refractory periods in women, for one thing, can sometimes boil down to a number of seconds (case in point: so-called multiple orgasms, which just means ‘cumming again quicker than dudes can’.) Meanwhile, far fewer women than men can respond orgasmically to physical stimulation alone (we’re just so damn romantic like that.) But really, I think we’re all a bit afraid to admit that the female orgasm is a relatively simple beast, composed pretty much of a bit of mechanics and a bit of fancying the person you’re with. And despite being that simple, it just doesn’t routinely happen inside the vajayjay. Not via the X-spot, the Z-spot, or any other alphabetised part of your womb. If you’ve ever lain back and checked the time as your boyfriend insistently scrapes the inside of your lovehole and tells you you’ll experience an earth-shattering G-spot orgasm any second, you must surely know what I mean (what, that was just me?)
The G-spot is a reality for many of ‘the ladies’ (not for me – see the watch-checking episode above, but equally I have friends who swear by it.) And yes, foreplay is one of the best things woman ever invented – which is where kissing, nipples, ‘sensory memory’, electrified whips, etc etc are properly employed. But all this moving away from the clit is starting to make me sick to my back teeth (fanny teeth – feminists have those.)
In other words, there are many ways for a gal to get her happy ending. But sorry, guys, 75% of the time, your magic wand just isn’t what makes it happen.
I want a t-shirt or bumper sticker that says ‘But really, I think we’re all a bit afraid to admit that the female orgasm is a relatively simple beast, composed pretty much of a bit of mechanics and a bit of fancying the person you’re with’. Brilliant!
Haha, I want one that says “fanny teeth – feminists have those”.
I have to be honest, I skim-read that. Is the 99 orgasm anything like the Mars bar one, or is it the crumbliest, flakiest experience that tastes like no orgasm did ever before.