When it comes to orgasms, men are simpler than women. Or, at least, that is how conventional wisdom sees it. The mystery of the female orgasm tends to be self-fulfilling divination.
Perhaps because so little is known about it, women themselves often frame the Big O as some spiritous, finicky, complicated objective.
Is bringing a woman to orgasm more difficult than making a man ejaculate? Yes.
Is it impossible? If a woman’s partner happens not to know the difference between a clitoris and a foot, then the answer is obviously Yes.
Do women fake it, then? Of course. Recent research published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior says that 77 percent of women have faked an orgasm at least once.
But the figure – startling as it is – is overshadowed by the reasons why so many women feel obliged to put on a show, according to researchers.
“People know that it’s normative to have sex, but I don’t think there is a common understanding of exactly how to have sex and what to do,” says study author Emily Harris, a postdoctoral research fellow at Queen’s University, in Canada.
Harris and her colleagues surveyed 462 heterosexual women from the United Kingdom who had been in a relationship for at least four months.
The scientific questionnaires evaluated the women’s political ideology, religiosity, beliefs about gender, sex, orgasms, their partner’s sexual skill, and fidelity concerns, among others.
Why Women Fake It
Some of the respondents who admitted to faking orgasms said they did so to preserve their relationships, who measured their own virility against their ability to please women.
“Mostly it’s an ending mechanism,” says a 28-year old survey respondent named Shelby. “I haven’t done it for a long time now, but when I did, it was because I just wasn’t going to get there and it was easier to end it that way.”
In other words, some women fake orgasms to avoid bruising their partners’ egos, which could result in a situation that undermines a relationship.
This “mate retention strategy” has been around for as long as men and women have been having sex – and it works both ways.
Psychologists explain the urge as a survival tactic handed down from our ancestral savannahs – where retaining a mate meant the difference between life and death for both partners.
That’s a deceptively simple – but nevertheless valid – explanation, according to the scientific community. Since it works both ways, one might assume it is at least part of the reason why Viagra earned revenues amounting to some $500 million last year alone.
When Dealing with Cavemen …
But competition for suitable mates is apparently as tough for some women now as it was for our ancestors in Africa five million years ago.
Or at least, Harris and her colleagues seemed to find proof of this in respondents who faked orgasms because they wanted to avoid angering their partners.
“Sometimes it’s less work to just fake it and get them out,” says Adaire, who is 26. “Some men get defensive and angry like it’s their job to make it happen. I don’t like that. I find it forceful.”
Now, there is something patently absurd about an urge to fake it in order to appease a partner you don’t trust to check his temper. The implied bias here, of course, is that a woman who does not orgasm gives a man sufficient reason to be angry.
Why would such an untrustworthy, oppressive male ally be worth keeping in the savannah, in the streets, in the home, or anywhere else, in the first place?
Faking it for the Common Good?
This question is worth some attention as it is, in turn, intertwined with the idea that a man should care about his partner’s pleasure and well-being, too.
Most would agree that a man should know the difference between a clitoris from a foot – and, of course, most adult men do. Most feminists would also argue that men shouldn’t be selfish in bed. That is, that a man should take care to be attuned to what his partner wants.
Unfortunately, however, the latter idea isn’t always true. Yet the researchers found that many women felt obliged to fake an orgasm, anyway, to fulfill what they believe to be a kind of social responsibility.
One 31-year old respondent, Lucy, saw her partner’s inability to make her orgasm as a failure on her part. Interestingly, she also felt that achieving an orgasm somehow makes a woman more sexually attractive.
“It seemed like my friends were having a great time and I felt like I was failing by not being able to [orgasm],” says Lucy. “Women fake it because of the societal pressure to be sexy and desirable and not to upset others.”
A Woman’s Work is Never Done
Harris found this – and other responses like it – particularly striking. While faking it out of a desire to keep a mate might be somewhat reasonable, the belief that it’s somehow a woman’s responsibility to climax certainly is not.
“These final pieces are what interest me the most,” Harris says pointedly. “Specifically, women who think that a man needs them to orgasm in order for that man to feel satisfied are going to feel greater pressure to orgasm, and will be more likely to fake her orgasms.”
Quite tellingly, the respondents who faked orgasms more frequently were mostly of the opinion that women who challenge men’s power are manipulative and subversive.
“I am glad women are more empowered these days, but feminists make a bigger deal out of it than they need to,” says the 49-year-old Maddie, who admits to faking orgasms with her husband. “I think feminists think women are better than men.”
What this research reveals, Harris suggests, is a profound problem in the context of how women have come to view their roles in a sex-obsessed, male-dominated society.
That’s why she dowels the opinion of women such as Maddie and Lucy squarely along the lines of ideological attitudes and assumptions toward gender roles.
Own Your Orgasm
Not at all women would go through the tribulations of teaching a partner precisely how to pleasure them correctly in one fell swoop. The fact is, a man is likely to get so inundated with the details of the message that the task would be, at best, difficult and complicated.
Such things can take time – and faking it to buy time and keep a partner who wants to learn is one thing. Faking an orgasm in order to fulfill some imagined responsibility to society is quite another.
Even worse: faking it out of a belief that a man is somehow entitled to a woman’s orgasm.
“Women who hold anti-feminist attitudes don’t have anything holding them back from faking orgasm,” says Harris. “Whereas women who adopt a feminist worldview may not fake orgasm because it goes against her belief in a woman’s right to pleasure, and her right to talk about sex openly.”
As for grunting, snuffling, chest-thumping men who get offended when women don’t climax for them, they have a role, too, obviously.
That is, if you’re a man who tends to have sex with vaginas, then it’s a good move to learn how to please them.
Otherwise, feel free to use your hands to please yourself.
Photo Credits: Wallhere and Unsplash.
