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Fixing the Orgasm Gap (1-16)
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In this episode, we explore the orgasm gap and its impact on sexual satisfaction. Join us as we discuss the causes behind the disparity, and learn practical tips for enhancing communication and intimacy. Whether you're looking to boost your own satisfaction or support your partner, this episode offers valuable insights and actionable advice for a more equitable and fulfilling sexual experience. Tune in for a deeper understanding and practical steps to bridge the gap.
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Transcript
Introduction to Orgasm Gap
00:00:01
funwithsexpodcast
Hello and welcome to the Fun with Sex podcast. I'm Natalie. And I'm John. And today we are going to talk about the wonderful world of orgasms. And more importantly, closing the orgasm gap between cis men and cis women. Yeah. So to get right into it and kind of establish what's going on with this gap, we're going to go over some not so fun statistics.
Statistics on Orgasm and Societal Expectations
00:00:29
funwithsexpodcast
So over 80% of vulva owners don't orgasm for penetration alone, which totally agree. I'm one of those people. And I want to jump in. I think that there's an idea or expectation that women should orgasm from penetration and that sex is defined as penetrative sex. And I think a lot of times when people say that like, oh, women can't orgasm from sex. Their view and the idea of sex is so narrow. They're like, yeah, that's true.
00:00:58
funwithsexpodcast
But let let's also expand what it means to orgasm from sex. Yes, in hetero circles, there is definitely such an emphasis put on the penis and penetration.
Orgasm Rates Across Sexual Orientations
00:01:10
funwithsexpodcast
And it's so funny as a bi woman because people, like, they can't even conceptualize what lesbian sex is because they're like, oh, there's no dick.
00:01:20
funwithsexpodcast
And I feel like a lot of people don't even view lesbian sex as actual sex, which is so ironic because when you look at the statistics, I was freaking ready to get into lesbian women orgasm at similar rates to gay men and straight men. Yeah. Because like gay men and straight men both orgasm and the 90 percentile. Is that correct? Yeah.
00:01:42
funwithsexpodcast
Yeah, I think like gay men are like 95, straight men are like 91 for orgasmic, consistently during sex. And I think lesbian women are like 85%.
Skepticism on Orgasm Statistics
00:01:51
funwithsexpodcast
And then there's like a massive jump off for straight women or women who are having sex with men, which includes bi women. Yeah, that brings us to our next statistic. 95% of hetero men always orgasm during partnered sex, whereas only 65% of hetero women So this is just your validation if you've ever been with a guy and they say, oh, I always make women come, you're the only one, you're weird. False. It's just false. And I even feel like the 65% number is high when you look at like other studies, because I've seen numbers like as far down as like 40 to 30%. Like the people, like the women who can orgasm for penetrative sex and a couple more women are the only people who consistently orgasm and like,
00:02:37
funwithsexpodcast
sex with heterosexual partners with another man.
Anatomy and False Reporting
00:02:40
funwithsexpodcast
And I feel like those couple of other women or women who have partners who give a damn about their pleasure in making sure that they orgasm. Well, I wouldn't be surprised if there's false reporting for a couple of reasons. On one hand, I think there's false reporting because because there's such a dynamic and hetero partnerships where often if you struggle to reach orgasm in general,
00:03:04
funwithsexpodcast
or reach orgasm when you're doing only penetration, there's a lot of shame around it. And you're weird, every other girl could do it. And for some reason, the pressure is put on you that there's something wrong with your body when it's like, girl, it's just your anatomy. It's how we're made. The clitoris, some of us have a more tucked away clitoris and that's okay. But I think that could cause false reporting for the study.
Impact of Sex Education and Purity Culture
00:03:30
funwithsexpodcast
And then also just the fact, a surprising amount of women because they've never had an orgasm or the orgasms they've had have been so short and not allowed to its fullest potential just honestly don't even know what it really feels like. I mean that's like one thing else we'll get into next is that there's a lot of commentary on cis men not knowing cis women body but due to how bad our sex ed is and how bad our
00:03:57
funwithsexpodcast
biology, our biology classes are a lot of cis women also don't know about like their own bodies when it comes to sexuality. And that goes into the topic of like purity culture. And we're going to get into later, I don't want to get the cart, the horse and cart in front of the horse. And the idea that we' we're raised as a society not to explore our bodies, not to explore what pleasure looks like. So a lot of women don't even know what an orgasm looks like to them.
00:04:22
funwithsexpodcast
I mean, even just think of the crazy fact that a lot of science books and medical books that are still used today, they insist on omitting the chorus from the diagrams. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah, that is just insane to me. It's a part of our body and we're just almost supposed to not acknowledge it's there or talk about it or talk about the fact that it is necessary for female pleasure.
Broadening the Definition of Sex
00:04:47
funwithsexpodcast
And I want to just get back to like,
00:04:50
funwithsexpodcast
what we define as sex from like the original conversation is that like when you look at one how bad our sex ed is and when we do have sex ed is focused solely on you take a penis you stick it into a vagina and then that's about it it doesn't explore manual sex oral sex all of which leads to better results when it comes to women orgasmic because again when you look at the statistics Lesbian women and other women, other cis women who have sex with women, other vocal helpers who have sex with other vocal helpers don't have issues with orgasm. They orgasm over 85% of the time, which is a rate similar to two cis men or penis helpers, which means that it's not the hardware that is stopping most women from being able to orgasm. them yeah It's the fact that we've been conditioned to view orgasm as a thing that needs to happen during sex.
00:05:42
funwithsexpodcast
specifically during penile penetration sex and without the assistance of toys. Because I promise you that like a lot of women would be able to orgasm a lot longer if they incorporated vibrators.
Honesty in Sexual Communication
00:05:53
funwithsexpodcast
Either, if we're talking about a cis couple, if they incorporated vibrators into the bedroom, not penetrative sex. So even if you're doing like penile sex in missionary or writing and you just have a vibrator or your hand manually stimulating the clitoris, that adds to a lot of pleasure.
00:06:10
funwithsexpodcast
But I've also heard horror stories of like women wanting to do that and their cis boyfriends or their cis partners slapping their hands away or like removing a vibrator because they saw that as a threat to their ego because their penis isn't the only thing bringing them pleasure. Yeah, definitely. And we'll get into a bunch of different tips to help you orgasm because there's no shame if you're struggling. As we said in the statistics, most women have, leading us into our next one, that 59% of women have fake dick orgasm.
00:06:41
funwithsexpodcast
So yeah, a lot of people struggle with this and it's okay. ah How do you feel about faking orgasms? Like I understand why people do it, but I think that like, if we're going to progress sexually as a society, people need to stop doing that and being able to vote. It's easier said than done, but need to be able to voice that like, I'm not experiencing pleasure during sex.
Media Influence on Sexual Misconceptions
00:07:02
funwithsexpodcast
My advice to women who fuck men is to not do it.
00:07:08
funwithsexpodcast
Like, I will not fake a moan. I will not fake an orgasm. I will not put on a performance if you're not doing something pleasurable enough to get me there. And I just simply don't care. And if you ask me, I'll say no. And, you know, we can have a conversation about how to make it better because you know, either you're going to take a person not orgasming as like, oh, what can I do? And that's the funny thing is like a lot of men because every woman they've been with has faked it. They're like very shocked when you're like, no, because they're like, what happened? And then you just kind of like start, you know, schooling them on stuff and being like, yeah, I can't come from just penetration, like,
00:07:57
funwithsexpodcast
I need other stuff and like you don't have a vibrator at your place. So. And I do kind of understand why women in the moment feel the needs like fake and orgasm out of fear of like, especially if you're in a casual hookup and you don't know this person and you understand how violent a lot of men react, especially when their own masculinity is thrown in and like society has conditioned man to the idea that like you should be able to please your lover or just your penis and make it out.
00:08:25
funwithsexpodcast
Because when you watch porn or even watch like rom-com movies that I think don't get enough hate for how bad they portray sexuality and sex. Not to mention the coercion that goes on in seduction and quote on quote seduction in those movies. But like a lot of those sex scenes is you're making out, you're having penetration sex and then this woman is like screaming of pleasure because she enjoys her penis that much and then you both finish only from penetrative sex.
00:08:55
funwithsexpodcast
You may, if the movie is quote unquote feminist, get a scene of the guy going down for 10 seconds, but you're never going to see a scene where the guy's like using a vibrator or using his hands. And even though, even when you do see fingering scenes, it's this very aggressive fingering that you're more for the voyeur's pleasure than like for the women's pleasure. So which way I think that like a lot of men are conditioned to believe that like my penis needs to get the job done.
00:09:20
funwithsexpodcast
Or what does that say? so What does that say about me as a man? And what does that say about my skills in bed?
Improving Male Sexual Skills
00:09:26
funwithsexpodcast
And then I understand why a lot of women feel coerced to say that like, I don't want to hurt this guy's ego either because I care about him or because I'm scared of how he may react. So I'm also going to like fake this in bed. Yeah, it's totally understandable. And I get it. We've all been there, especially if you've had situations which is super common for people where when you don't do tell them like,
00:09:48
funwithsexpodcast
no I didn't finish and then they instantly go into shaming you and being like well there must be something wrong with you because every woman I've been with always finishes and again it's because you know if you're somebody where especially you've only been with heterosis men and you don't have education on your body you might think like oh maybe there is something wrong with me and I think that like goes into the fact that like There was a study that shows that most men are insecure about their skills in bed, and insecure about their penis sizes. And again, we can blame porn for a lot of this. We can also blame society and like dick shows for a lot of this. But for like men who truly want to get better in bed, your penis game can only go so far. But like the reality is that if you get really good with a vibrator, you get really good with your mouth, you get really good with your fingers.
00:10:40
funwithsexpodcast
That's more important than how good your penis is, especially when we're talking about if your goal is to bring pleasure to this person, get a vibrator. Yeah. That's how you get really good in bed is that you become really, really skilled with like how to use a vibrator. Yeah. And I think that brings us into our next point, which is kind of the education aspect of you know, okay, you're somebody who's acknowledged, I really struggle to orgasm or I rarely orgasm. I mean, first of all, what is orgasming even look like? There's no education on that. And like I said, the clitoris as of even in scientific dialogue diagrams. So just a quick little spark notes. First of all, everybody orgasms differently. So there's like a baseline stages, but
00:11:29
funwithsexpodcast
it's going to look different from person to person. I know a lot of women too feel, they can feel insecure about either having too small of a reaction or too big of a reaction. And a lot of it is involuntary and it's different for everyone. um So basically what happens is some kind of touch stimulates the erection of the clitoris. Then once the clitoris is erect, because your clitoris, if you didn't know, it's not just yeah external component, there's internal lobes to it as well inside of you. So after the clitoris is erect from touching, the vagina expands and the uterus changes positions. And if stimulation keeps going and it keeps feeling good, that is when you'll experience the orgasm. And you'll get involuntary muscle reactions in your vagina and anus,
00:12:23
funwithsexpodcast
Um, and that's when you have that big moment, you know, that everybody is looking for. Also, I think it's important to note that like, there are percentage of women who just can't orgasm. And I think that like, that is something that's like not talked about enough. As other people who just like, they're physically can't. There's also another percentage of women who do, these are very small percentage, obviously as we talked about women who have sex with women orgasm pretty consistently, but there is still very small percentage of women who do take a long time or struggle to orgasm. And I think that like they need to be acknowledged and talked about. Yeah. I mean, there's also a lot of factors that impact your orgasm. Something as simple as having the AC on and being chilly.
00:13:06
funwithsexpodcast
Having a mental health disorder like ADHD that makes focusing on things difficult can
Exploring Personal Pleasure
00:13:12
funwithsexpodcast
make it harder. Medication. Yeah, being on certain medication, not getting enough sleep. Alcohol and drugs. Being stressed out about something. So many factors can affect your ability to orgasm. Going back to anxiety or ADHD, there's this really cool study that found out that women who participate in kink orgasm a lot more than women who don't participate in kink-borne vanilla sex. And there's a couple of like hypothesis why. One is because in kink, a lot of the pleasure is decentralized to penis. I mean, a lot of it is like bondage and spanking and other like toys. Also like somebody who's like brains of wooden paddle and other toys into the bedroom also probably is not scared or intimidated by like a vibrator being a partner pleasure, or not them.
00:14:01
funwithsexpodcast
Uh, the other thing that people think is that kink forces you to stay focused on a moment in a way that vanilla sex doesn't serve like somebody's like spanking you or you're spanking someone or whatever power dynamic that you're doing. It makes you center the sex itself and your mind doesn't drift and allows you to focus on your receive your pleasure. Yeah. And I think that brings us to our next point is everybody talks about the orgasm gap, but what can you actually do if you're somebody who's struggling because we've established it's totally okay if you are so many people are, so what can we do? I think first of all, on the topic of medication making it difficult, that is a valid thing to bring up to your provider. And I think so many people have negative experiences when doing this, because for some reason, there's still a lot of providers that don't see that as a valid side effect that should be avoided in medication.
00:15:00
funwithsexpodcast
But yeah, I would really advise you to bring it up to your provider. And if they don't take it seriously, look into getting a new provider because you do deserve to have pleasurable sex and you do deserve to experience that. um But there's a lot you can do too with your partner as well. Like John said, vibrator play, exploring oral sex as well. A lot of people sometimes need a combination as well. I'm somebody where I need a combination of literal stimulation as well as penetration at the same time. And maybe penetration isn't just in the vagina and you can explore anal play too as well. And with all these different things, this isn't, you know, if you're not partnered or if you're feeling nervous to try it with your partner, you can explore so much on your own and you can figure out
00:15:54
funwithsexpodcast
You know, what motions with the vibrator feels right. What red and what the vibrator feels right. Go to a sex store and talk to the workers there and ask about, you know, their top selling vibrators. What they recommend you trying maybe experiment with a plug while using the vibrator or penetration with a dildo while using the vibrator. I think the important thing to notice, like to be able to do all this, you also have to unpack your shame.
00:16:21
funwithsexpodcast
And I think that having almost any conversation about sex in the context of we United States and our culture, you also have to unpack shame. There's a big reason why like a lot of people don't know what brings them pleasure in bed and how to orgasm is because they felt too shamed to masturbate or talk about masturbating or to explore their own bodies or to buy a vibrator and know like what motions do what and what motions turn you on.
00:16:46
funwithsexpodcast
I mean, also like, it's a lot, it's really hard for people to walk into a sex store, talk to a stranger and say, Hey, I'm having problems or gasoline. Can you find me a vibrator that helps me feel good in the same way that they can talk to a car mechanic or a grocery store provider and say they're like, Hey, I need your service. Not to mention, please go to the sex stores. A lot of them are really good at their jobs. But like, I think a lot of that does come with like the unpacking of shame.
00:17:14
funwithsexpodcast
any idea of feeling like embarrassed and that like, there's something dirty about sex and something dirty about wanting to orgasm. And you need to like, one, reaffirm to yourself that like, no, this is perfectly normal. I deserve to have pleasure. I deserve to have sexual pleasure. I mean, that's the thing too, is not only do the men, head or a woman are partnered with perpetuate this shame, but it also happens in circles of women as
Masturbation as a Tool for Understanding
00:17:39
funwithsexpodcast
well. So,
00:17:40
funwithsexpodcast
You know, so many women like will not admit they own a vibrator, will not admit that they masturbate, will not admit that they don't orgasm during sex and kind of just like live in this false fairy world where it's like, I come from penetration alone and I've never masturbated. And I never figured out what I was into by masturbating because I just come from my man's penis. And statistically, that's just not a reality for a lot of people.
00:18:10
funwithsexpodcast
So yeah, that's why, like John said, step one, unpacking the shame. Step two, maybe explore on your own, because I think you also have to acknowledge that if you struggle to orgasm, there's a lot of pressure. Even if you have a partner who is so healthy, so willing, wants to help you so badly, it can still feel like a lot, especially if you're someone where it takes a while, you may feel just kind of overwhelmed by trying to figure it out in the moment. And that is where masturbation is really helpful because then you can figure out, you know, all these different aspects that can help you because, you know, maybe just holding the vibrator still isn't going to work, but maybe certain emotions, maybe certain emotions of penetration while using the vibrator. I do want to circle back to one thing and I
Queer Communities and Sexual Communication
00:19:01
funwithsexpodcast
think that like one of the big reasons why
00:19:05
funwithsexpodcast
gay men have more pleasurable sex than straight men, and queer women, sorry, queer men have more pleasurable sex than straight men, and women who have sex with other women have more pleasurable sex than women who have sex with other men, is one, I think that like women care more about other women's like pleasure and their sexuality because they understand how those experiences feel, but two, I think that like queer communities, having to deal with the unpacking of their own identity have done a better job of like unpacking the stigma and shame around sex. And they're probably a lot better at communicating what they need to get out of sex to orgasm. They're probably more receptive when a partner says, hey, this is what I need. Because like due to America's homophobic society, sexuality is such a prominent part of their identity that you have to learn how to talk about sex in queer cultures. You have to learn how to love sex. and like
00:20:02
funwithsexpodcast
be more open to that in their environment than in like straight culture. So like where you said, you can go in your entire relationship with your partner without talking about sex and like what brings you pleasure in bed. I keep going back to the statistic where over half of American couples, married couples feel uncomfortable talking to their spouse about their fantasies and what they want to do in bed. And a lot of that has to do with that stigma around sex in heteronormative culture.
Conclusion and Final Thoughts
00:20:29
funwithsexpodcast
oh All right. Anything else? Do you have any more posts, your points you want to hit? No, I don't think so. All right. Well, this has been the final sex podcast. Thank you for listening.