HomeSummaryLSIOrgasm comes at the end of activity intended to achieve it

Orgasm comes at the end of activity intended to achieve it

Orgasm comes at the end of activity intended to achieve it
Orgasm comes at the end of activity intended to achieve it

I used my own experience of sexual activity with a lover to draw conclusions about women’s use of behaviours in responding to sexual scenarios in the way that men appreciate. Sociable sexual activity focuses on male orgasm because of men’s acute arousal. Due to their lack of arousal, women may provide turn-ons and stimulation to assist with male orgasm. Intercourse is a mating act. So intercourse always ends with male orgasm [i] because it triggers ejaculation. In order to orgasm, we have to ensure that stimulation continues up until orgasm is reached. This is the easiest way to explain why intercourse cannot cause female orgasm, no matter what female sexual anatomy intercourse is supposed to inadvertently stimulate.

If women were able to orgasm with a lover, they would dictate the anatomy that they wanted to stimulate or to have stimulated by a lover. The anatomy would not vary from woman to woman or from occasion to occasion. The fact is that men stimulate the female anatomy that arouses them. Then it is assumed that women should orgasm from this stimulation even though it is directed towards different anatomy and never to the point of orgasm. It is simply assumed that women have an orgasm at some point before sexual activity ends (always co-incident with male orgasm and ejaculation).

It was decades later that I came to appreciate that my arousal worked very differently to male arousal. Male arousal is acute, intense, immediate, highly physical and easy to resolve as an orgasm. My own arousal was subconscious. I was rarely aware of being aroused at all. It was only when I was alone and able to focus on mental fantasy that I had any sense of arousal. Even then the feelings were muted. They were not intense or acute. They certainly did not easily cause spontaneous orgasm. It took extreme concentration and some perseverance on my part to achieve orgasm.

I realised that because of embarrassment no one ever talks about the specifics of sexual activity. I never really appreciated this until I attempted to do the same. Kinsey was a good start. But, as an empirical scientist, he recorded what the general population told him. He did not feel obliged to provide explanations where these were not apparent. Specifically, he did not explain how arousal and orgasm are achieved. It has taken me decades to consider the possibilities and even to record my own experiences. We lack practice in talking about our sexual responses and intimate experiences. We don’t have any structure to build on because we have no source of accumulated knowledge. It’s like being in the Stone Age, before the wheel was invented, and trying to explain how a combustion engine works.

[i] Most of the men in my heterosexual career… wanted oral stimulation from me of their penis, after which they would mount me and reach their climax. After their ejaculation they would ask, “Didja come?” In general, my female lovers have taken far more creative and varied approaches to love-making. … The women did not act as though I was a ‘masturbation machine’. (Shere Hite)

Excerpt from Understanding Sexual Response (ISBN 978-0956-894762)