Sex and Orgasm Myth Questions from the BBC
I could name myths all day, literally
Hello! It’s been a busy few weeks here on sex mountain. Emily was recently interviewed in the Spanish language BBC about sex and orgasms. You can read her original untranslated replies below.
And if you’re in the mood for a podcast, Emily recently spoke to Monica of About Progress about how couples can create strong sexual connections in their long-term relationships. Give it a listen! Monica’s a good one.
And on to the questions…
1. As a sex educator, one of your objectives is to debunk the common sexual myths that are making women “feel inadequate between the sheets”. Can you tell us which are some of those myths?
Oh gosh there are so many! Let’s take just orgasm myths: It’s a myth that most women have orgasms from penetration—about a quarter of women reliably orgasm that way, and the rest sometimes, rarely, or never orgasm that way. It’s a myth that we’re likely to orgasm to first time we have sex with someone—only about 10% of women do, and most of them orgasm because they touch their own genitals. It’s a myth orgasm is a “pinnacle of pleasure”—it can be, but there are many other ways to experience intense sexual pleasure, and not all orgasms are even pleasurable at all. There are so many, I could name myths all day, literally.
2. Is there a myth which has been particularly harmful to women?
I think a really dangerous myth is the idea that you can tell whether a person wants or like something based on what their genitals do. Genital response just indicates that something sex-related is being noticed by the brain; that does not mean the person wants or likes what’s happening. It’s called “arousal nonconcordance” and I did a whole TED talk about it. If any reader hasn’t heard about this one, I highly recommend that talk!
3. Some women think that if they do not have an orgasm is because maybe they have a problem or perhaps the one with the problem is their partner, who is unable to make them reach an orgasm. And that situation can be frustrating. Have we been measuring, assessing, valuing our sexual experiences in the wrong way? Have we overrated orgasm as the main goal of a sexual experience? Are we, as women, putting too much pressure on having orgasms?
Orgasms only matter as much as you decide they matter. If they’re very important to you, that’s great! If they’re not, that is also great. If they’re important to you, I recommend knowing what kind of stimulation, in what kind of context, is most pleasurable for you. If they’re not important, I recommend enhancing your communication with partners, so they know that it’s not your priority and you prefer your sexual pleasure in other forms. Communicate with confidence and joy—it’s your body and your sexuality; you get to choose how and when you are touched.
4. You tell us that it is not about orgasms, about how many we have, how frequent we have sex or the desire to have it, it is about pleasure. “Pleasure is the measure”. “Pleasure is what matters”. Why?
On one level, I say that “pleasure is the measure” of sexual wellbeing because that’s what the research says. When scientists talk to people who self-identify as having extraordinary sex, those folks do not talk about desire or orgasms; they talk about authenticity, vulnerability, empathy, and pleasure. If we want to be like the people who have the kind of sex a lot of us might envy, we will center pleasure and let desire, orgasm, and the rest of it take care of itself.
But on another level, centering pleasure is a foolproof way to guarantee that you’ll enjoy every aspect of the sex you have. Sometimes desire feels good, but sometimes desire is painful, a source of frustration and distress. Pleasure, by definition, is not. I want to live in a world where all of us only ever have sex we like—and (this is the hard part, I think) we don’t even feel bad for not having sex we don’t like.
5. Many times, sex and the pleasure associated to it can be reduced, as you say, to “the right place on your body touched in the right way” and it is “supposed to be easy and obvious”. But it is not the case, “it’s the right place, the right way, by the right person, at the right time, in the right external circumstances and the right internal state”. Why is so important for us to understand the role of “the right context” when we think about our sexual experiences?
Pleasure is more complex and subtle than most of us have been led to believe. Neurologically, it exists in tiny “hedonic hotspots” that tune themselves to be more or less sensitive to pleasure, based on the state of the brain. When the brain is stressed, the pleasure centers tune themselves to interpret almost any sensation as a potential threat—even a sensation that, in a different context, might have been interpreted as something to explore with curiosity. It’s when the brain is in a curious, safe-enough, and/or playful state that those pleasure center tune themselves to interpret almost any sensation as pleasurable.
Pleasure is more complex and subtle than most of us have been led to believe.
The neurological importance of context is why tickling sometimes feels good, right? If you’re already feeling playful and aroused and connected with a trusted and attractive partner, they can tickle you and it might feel good. But if that same attractive partner tickled you while you were in the middle of an argument? It would be intensely irritating. It’s the same sensation, it’s even the same partner, but it’s a different internal state, so your brain interprets it completely differently. That’s the power of context.
6. When we think about sex, many have the idea of sensations, hormones, emotions, very specific parts of our body and maybe we forget the supreme boss of our body: the brain. You say that “sex is far more a brain process than a genital process”. So, can you tell how orgasms are “orchestrated primarily by the brain, not the genitals” and why it is so important to have that into account?
When scientists want to study orgasm these days, they do brain scans, because orgasm is a brain function—unlike ejaculation, which is a spinal reflex. The things you listed—sensations, hormones, emotions, even body parts—are either entirely or at least partly brain functions! Sensations are perceived in the brain, emotions are a product of the brain, hormones influence the brain, and your brain has multiple maps of your whole body, a map for perceiving sensation and a map for organizing motor functions. Your body doesn’t feel a sensation without your brain being involved, you don’t have fantasies, you don’t feel emotional connection, you don’t know you’re safe enough without your brain. When people struggle with orgasm, it’s nearly always because there’s something about the context—external circumstances and internal state—that’s keeping the brakes on in the brain.
7. Talking about the brain, in one of your TedTalks you suggest an exercise to the audience: “To stand in front of a mirror as close to naked as you can and write down everything that you see that you like”. And you add: “Of course, first your brain will flood with culturally-constructed messages about how your body falls short of the culturally-constructed ideal”. How that idea of the desirable body has been affecting our sexuality as women?
The research is very consistent on this: body image impacts sexual functioning. Body self-criticism is associated with all the ways we might struggle with sexuality, from pleasure to arousal to desire to orgasm. Of course it does, right? In order to notice pleasure in your body, you have to turn your attention to your body. And if paying attention to your body activates all kinds of brakes-hitting self-criticism, that’s going to slow down or even stop your sexual response. But if, when we turn our attention to our bodies, we feel only self-acceptance and even pride, that can activate the sexual accelerator in our brains.
8. What can we do to love our body and feel sexy as you also want “to teach women to live with confidence and joy within their bodies"?
When I say “confidence,” I mean knowing what is true—knowing what’s true about your body, brain, sexuality, life history, culture, partner, relationship, etc. Knowing what’s true, even when it’s not what you were taught “should” be true. Even when it’s not what you wish were true. And joy is loving what is true—even when it’s not what you were taught “should” be true, and even when it’s not what you wish were true. (Joy is the hard part.) So to develop confidence and joy, start with learning as much as you can about your body and brain and sexuality and the ways your life history has impacted all of those. Know what’s true for your partners about all those things. Read everything you can get your hands on, that you trust. Listen to podcasts. Above all, talk honestly and openly with people you trust! You will find out that you all vary from each other, but you are all normal! None of us is doing it “right” or “wrong,” we’re all just doing our best in a culture that is trying its hardest to make sure we always feel like shit about our bodies and our sexuality.
9. In your most recent book, you say that many of us, including you, have grown up believing an “old-fashioned narrative about how desire works”. You wrote that it “is not merely wrong, but wrongheaded”. For instance, the idea of “keeping the spark alive”, “the passion”, in long-term relationships is a way of oversimplifying sex and evolution. Why?
The “why” of how it oversimplifies the evolutionary science could be a whole book in itself (see Bobbi Low’s Why Sex Matters if you’re interested), but basically the idea that sex is supposed to be about being all hot and horny and can’t-wait-to-put-my-tongue-in-your-mouth is grounded in the idea that the fun experience of falling in love with someone is and should be the same as being in love with somebody. When you’re first getting to know each other and falling in love, you spend a lot of your time together doing sexy things together, sometimes even to the detriment of other things in your life! When you’re in love and in an established relationship, you spend your time together living your ordinary lives. This is not a problem, it’s inevitable; and for people who want a long-term sexual connection with a person with whom they also share a household and even children, it’s the whole point! You want your connection to be filled with your shared, ordinary life. Your sexual connection can be a delightful enhancement of that, a source of pleasure and connection that contributes to the quality of your lives together.
If someone has time to focus on sex and creating a context where everyone involved feels super-horny all the time, the way they might at the start of a relationship, more power to them. There’s nothing wrong with wanting and creating “spark.” But look, I’m busy. Aren’t you busy? I’m also in love. Sharing sexual pleasure is part of how I express that love, and so I’m going to make sure I reserve enough time, energy, and attention to be able to share sexy time with my certain special someone. I don’t need to crave sex out-of-the-blue, I just need to know my partner is great and our sexual connection is full of joy and pleasure, and if I protect time, energy, and attention to devote to sex, I’ll be so glad I did.
That’s how couples who sustain a strong sexual connection over the long term do it. I’ve been wise enough to learn from their example, and things are better now in my own relationship than they have been in all our 13 years together.
10. In that narrative that you disagree with, after 50, “apparently every hormone we ever had floats away on a sea of aging and we’re left, sexless and neutered, to hold hands at sunset”, your idea of “center pleasure” gains even more importance. Perimenopause, menopause come with their own challenges for many women. How to enjoy our sexuality in those stages?
The idea that the hormonal changes associated with normal aging mean our sexuality is doomed is part of the myth of the “desire imperative.” It turns out there is no straightforward impact of sex hormones on sexual functioning, including sexual desire and pleasure—with one exception: with lower estrogen, the genital tissue can become more fragile, which will result in pain. Lubrication in general is absolutely essential, but if you’re experiencing pain with genital contact, talk to a medical provider about estrogen creams, which can help restore those tissues.
But mostly it’s the life changes that come with aging that can impact our sexual functioning, including how we feel about our changing bodies, our sexuality, and our relationships. A revolution happens in the minds of many women at this stage. They recognize that all the rules they’ve been following about who they’re “supposed” to be as a sexual person, how their sexual relationship is “supposed” to work, those rules just don’t apply to them. And they begin exploring their authentic sexual selves and getting to know their partners’ authentic sexual selves, and collaborating to create contexts that make it easy for their brains to experience pleasure. When we liberate ourselves from purity culture and gender norms, we free up parts of our sexuality that we thought we had to hide. We expand our access to sexual pleasure.
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