If you’re a regular reader of this column, there’s a good chance you’re familiar with the “orgasm gap,” given I talk about it ad nauseam.
It’s the pleasure disparity between heterosexual men and women, and I mention it routinely because it’s pivotal to discussions about pleasure.
In case you’re new here, the most extensive study ever conducted into climax and sexuality found that, of all groups of people, straight women orgasm the least during sex – just 65 percent of the time.
This is notable because the same study found women who don’t sleep with men are largely unaffected by this “gap.” Lesbians get off almost as frequently as heterosexual guys, who topped the list for climaxing most, reaching the Big O 95 percent of the time during coupled sex.
What’s even more striking is that, when we’re on our own, we all get to the finish line within a pretty similar time frame. According to research, most of us require just four minutes to get the job done, sans partner.
It’s almost as if everything we’ve been told about how complicated and challenging pleasure is for people with vulvas is wrong, and that, actually, the real issue lies with the men who partner with them.
Of course, each time I so much as suggest this, men fall over themselves to yell at me on social media and pen rageful emails declaring I’m a bitter misandrist pedaling propaganda aimed at turning their wives and girlfriends into lesbians. (To be fair, who wouldn’t want to live in a world with more lesbians??)
I could be forgiven for thinking men really, REALLY don’t want me to talk about this.
Particularly not to other women.
And especially not to the ones they’re trying to bed.
This is because a lot of these men have benefited from living in a culture that conditions women to treat sex as a performance rather than a mutual exchange, and consequently doesn’t require men to invest in their partners’ pleasure.
This is reinforced through porn, which is largely catered to the male gaze and depicts women as receptacles for men’s erections, rather than active participants in a reciprocal act.
A 2017 study that looked at the 50 most-viewed videos on PornHub found women were shown reaching orgasm a mere 18 percent of the time, while men were depicted getting off 78 percent of the time.
We see women’s pleasure omitted too, in the skipping over of acts like foreplay, personal lubricant use and most especially, vibrator use.
Vibrators are rarely featured in heterosexual porn as aids to help bring women to climax.
Instead, they appear almost exclusively in solo and lesbian scenes, as penetrative devices used like stand-in penises, perpetuating the idea that the penis is the portal to female pleasure.
In reality, only a small number of people with vaginas reach climax this way.
Some studies estimate as much as two-thirds of us require sustained clitoral stimulation – not penetration – in order to orgasm, something unacknowledged in sex education and routinely absent from porn.
However, a lack of adequate blood flow to the genitalia, which can be influenced by factors like antidepressant medication, certain birth control pills, menopause, illness, and chronic stress, can make clitoral orgasms challenging.
This is why vibrators are a critical tool for so many people with vulvas – sustained vibration attracts blood flow into the clitoris, increasing the likelihood of climax occurring. But because women are taught to prioritize men’s egos around sex, the very thing that could close the orgasm gap is often left sitting in the bedside drawer, never mentioned.
Last month, “MAFS” contestant Ella Ding took to her podcast “Sit With Us” to warn listeners not to use their vibrators routinely, confessing, “I had to put [my vibrator] away. I said to myself, you have to stop using this, because it was making it harder to be with a man with no toy.”
This belief – that women should only climax via a male partner – and therefore, if we’re unable to, are essentially defective – is rooted not in logic or medical science, but in a deeply patriarchal idea of sex focused on a fragile definition of masculinity.
In truth, there’s nothing dysfunctional about requiring a vibrator to get off, nor is reaching for one a comment on a partner’s sexual abilities.
Given how infrequently straight women reach orgasm at all during sex, anything that allows them to bridge the gendered pleasure gap should be celebrated, not shamed and shunned.
To date, there are no credible studies to indicate routine vibrator use desensitizes or numbs the genitalia, as we’ve been brainwashed to believe (conversely, this paper published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine found vibrator use was associated with improved sexual function).
This propaganda is perpetuated by a sexist construct aimed at sexually disenfranchising people with vulvas.
It should really go without saying, but you don’t actually need to “train” yourself out of climaxing with a vibrator to have sex with your partner, and a partner who cares about your pleasure will never implore you to do so.
If you’re having trouble reckoning with all of this, it’s worth remembering that men will come and go; but that handheld device you’ve been hiding in your bedside drawer? It’ll only ever make you come and come.
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