I'm sitting here on a Sunday morning, and I thought I'd just maybe get a little bit cazj for this one and just throw some thoughts out there on something I've been thinking about a bit more than usual for the past few weeks or so - the importance placed on orgasm in a sexual encounter, or more specifically a woman's right to say she doesn't care about her orgasm.
The general feel of our sexual culture is that orgasm is important for males but not for females, and obviously I think this is bullshit. Females are able to orgasm. We are biologically as capable as males, but the penis-focused, clit-ignoring norms of sex and all the lady-gasm squashing experiences and learnings that have plagued all us ladies' histories in so many varied ways makes it, quite frankly, hard to eek an orgasm out of many if not all partnered sexual experiences.
So, yes, the fact that we live in a world where the importance of male pleasure (particularly male orgasm) is so important that it encompasses and almost completely overshadows female orgasm without even much thought is sad and appalling and needs to be corrected.
But...and this is really what I wanted to talk about...I get why women often are uninterested to some degree in fighting the power, why we sometimes say something to the effect of, "Orgasm isn't that important to me in a sexual encounter." I get it. I've said it. I've also said stuff like, "I didn't orgasm, but it was really, really good." I've also faked it. I've faked it when I was completely uninterested and wanted to get it over with.
I've faked it when I was crazy hot and into it, but had no idea how I was actually going to come, but knew I had to fake to put the punctuation mark at the end of the experience.
I've 'kinda' faked where I make noises throughout that sound like I'm perma-gasming, as if in a porn but didn't really fake an orgasm even though it could easily be assumed I orgamsed.
I've faked because it was soooo close to getting me there, but I didn't think it was going to happen.
I've even faked many a time where - now that I look back at it - I didn't really probably realize I was faking - at least not in a really conscious way. I think that was the case for a long time. I think I just 'orgasmed' at the height of my pleasure or excitement or intensity and just kinda assumed that's what coming while being fucked felt like. It usually happened while he was also orgasming - not in quotes but actually, physically orgasming.
When I talked above about how the importance of male orgasm can almost completely overshadow female orgasm, that's part of what I meant. I think there is something set up deep in us ladies as we grow and learn about sex that, I don't know what other way to say it even though it sounds kind of insane, makes it feel like when our male partner orgasms it's almost like we orgasmed. It's not even a conscious decision that our orgasm is less important or that his orgasm is enough for both of us. It's more like our orgasm just...I don't know...isn't...or...maybe it is anything and everything.
Maybe it's because the things we learn about our orgasm, about where it should happen and why, just don't make sense when those things are actually happening, so instead of us thinking, 'FUCK! everything I saw and heard about sex and my orgasm was pretty much BS!' (which is what we really should be thinking) we just put this new knowledge together in a different way. We either think we're broken/maladjusted/not doing it right or we adjust our expectations of what an orgasm is. Instead of 'an orgasm should be happening now and it's not,' we say, 'an orgasm should be happening now, so this must be an orgasm.' I don't know - something like that. I think most females having sex have justified the reality of their experience to their expectations of that experience in some combination of those 2 ways. Then again, maybe I'm the only woman out there like this, but I doubt it. No, I don't doubt it - there's no reason for me to be less bold than I feel here. I know I'm not. I've met other women with the same experiences, and my assumption is that these experiences are somewhat universal.
So, when we tell our partners or ourselves that our orgasm isn't really all that important to us, we're not lying. The idea that our orgasm is inconsequential, that it almost isn't even a thing, is so deeply ingrained in us that it's kinda true.
It's also, let's be honest her, hard to figure out, even if we wanted to, how to orgasm to given all this BS, and it takes work and change, and it can make sex frustrating and not fun for a while...maybe a long while. So, yeah, maybe getting the sexual touches and intimacy and romance of sex is more important to you over rocking the boat and losing all that to the work and frustration of chasing an orgasm that doesn't fit into the normal sexual scripts we're all used to. Maybe we don't want to find that our partner doesn't give a shit, because then we have to start facing whether that partner is actually worth shit. Or maybe we have old partners who we've created patterns with before we realized that in the long run when we don't orgasm and our partner does, more and more of our sex acts get tedious and boring and unfullfilling, and we realize how hard it is for both of you to break those patterns...and that sucks. Maybe you have a new or one-time partner that is like every other person in the world and doesn't know shit about lady-gasm, and the work to get the stimulation and attention you need in order to orgasm is just a bunch of work that may or may not pay off....so you just settle for the sexy, lusty other enjoyable parts of sex.
I know for me that after I really truly realized that I wasn't having orgasms during intercourse and that I was starting to lose my desire and to feel bothered by sex, and I decided that I should be orgasming, it was not just a switch that got turned. It was and still is a long road of trying and adjusting. I have more than once thought it would be nice to just go back to the early days where I was young, excited, aroused and just having fun with the sex that was happening, where I was blissfully ignorant that these fun sex acts -minus the orgasms- were also slowly but surely chipping away at my desire while at the same time reinforcing my orgasming partner's desire.
That said, I've overall enjoyed the stupid and crazy journey of trying to make my orgasm a priority, but I also don't blame any female who isn't doing that. If you are in the 'orgasm isn't that important to me right now' camp, I get it. Dealing with our orgasm and the bullshit way it exists in our sexual culture is a special, shitty, burden all us females must deal with in our own way in our own time.
So all that to say I love, without judgement, all you ladies out there dealing with your orgasms in whatever way you are - and to me that includes all *ladies. Don't get me wrong, I am chock full of judgement about how ignorant we are about lady-gasms, but it's toward our culture and history and specific pieces of media, advice, and science. It's never, ever towards the people dealing with the repercussions of the shitty sexual culture...not even the gentlemen.
*When I say ladies I mean whoever this might apply to - those with clits and vaginas, those who identify as women but with other hormones, body parts or chromosomes, and everyone in between that this makes sense to in some small way. I use a variety of words, and I'm working on how to be more consistent and correct, but it's not easy, and my arguments are almost always concerned with the physical body parts in particular. But just know that my intention is to always include anyone that this feels relevant to...for what that's worth.
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