February 22, 2012 • 29 mins
How many people have actually faked an orgasm? How have cultural perceptions of orgasms changed over time? Join Cristen and Caroline as they cut past the cultural baggage and get to the facts behind sex and orgasms.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff Mom Never told you?
From House Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Kristen and I'm Caroline and Caroline. Since
(00:21):
we're talking about fake orgasms today, I just want to
go ahead and get the one Harry met Sally reference
out of the way. In almost every article that we read,
Nora Ephron's hit about friends who can't possibly not be
lovers came up because there's that famous scene with Meg
(00:43):
Ryan faggy and orgasm to Billy Crystal and catsas Deli
in New York City, and it's hilarious and no I'm
not going to reenact it because that would be very inappropriate,
but there it is, and their conversation in the movie
during that scene pretty much sums of everything that going
to talk about, and which is basically like Meg Ryan saying, oh, well,
(01:04):
everybody every woman's faked it at one point or another,
and Billy Crystals like, oh but not with me, and
she goes, well, you do the math. Every woman's faked
it and every man thinks that they haven't, so but not.
It's not the entire conversation that it's not that cut
and dry. Yeah, So before we get into statistics, because
we got a lot of statistics to go over with
(01:27):
fake orgasms, because I'm sure everybody's wanting to know what
percentage of women have done it? Have men done it too? Um?
But the whole female faking thing has a lot of
cultural baggage with it as well. That goes way back
beyond when Harry Melt Sally. Yeah, goes back to the Victorians,
(01:47):
those dark Victorians. They always come up, what do they Why?
Why are we still suffering under Victorian things stuff? At
least we got Graham crackers and corn flakes out of it,
I guess, and doubt Navvy And although it's more of
an Edwardian anyway. Um. Yes, Well, during the Victorian era,
(02:09):
the woman's orgasm came to be seen as sort of
an unnecessary part of sexual intercourse. It really was sort
of viewed as a man's thing to really enjoy sex
and have an orgasm, whereas women were supposed to lie
back and think of England and if they didn't orgasm,
who cares? Right? Well, there was the point made by
(02:29):
Brian Fawz in performing sex, the making and unmaking of
women's erotic lives. That the sort of self imposed sexual
oppression became linked during that era to higher class for women. Yeah, um,
not only higher class, but it's it's funny to talk
(02:50):
about uh sex and gender and all this stuff in
the Victorian area era. Excuse me because um tied into
all this is his sterea, the female disease which was
caused in their minds by a wandering womb, which goes
back to Hippocrates. Hippocrates Um who said that the you know,
(03:13):
women might go crazy because they're their uteruses are are
wandering around, just wandering, wandering the womb. But if you
fast forward to the eighties, when the first vibrators were invented, Um,
they realized that they could cure hysteria, all of this
anxiety and sleeplessness and excessive sexual fantasy that these women
(03:37):
were experiencing by bringing women to orgasms. Right, and this
was something done in doctor's offices, Like medical professionals were
leading women to orgasm as a way to be like, hey,
just calm down, don't don't have so much anxiety in
your life, lady. And it's it's I can't believe that
an orgasm went from being a normal thing that men
and women experience to something that women shouldn't experience because
(04:01):
they're too classy for that, to being something that happens
in doctor's offices. But then after that though, I mean, like,
if we're talking about orgasm today, not only is it
considered this normalized part or expected part of the sexual experience,
but that is we conflate sex with orgasm. Yeah, good
(04:23):
sex equals having an orgasm. It's an expectation. It's also um,
I think brand Faz also frames it as a type
of gift that women give. And we're talking to at
this point about heterosexual women a gift that they give
to their male partner. Yeah, And as as far as
it's more of the history goes of of sexual intercourse
(04:43):
and orgasms and how they relate um, the psychoanalysts. Freud
got in on the discussion and it became okay suddenly
for women to have orgasms, expected for that to happen.
But you're a weirdo if you can't have an orgasm
through vaginal intercourse alone, right. Floyd Freud was very dismissive
of c literal stimulation. He said that was basically for girls.
(05:07):
And if you cannot figure out how to have an
orgasm through penile vaginal intercourse, you really weren't a woman. Yeah,
not a real woman. And then so fast forward, way
forward into the dawn of the feminist movement. Feminist activism
and the female orgasm, according to Jane Gerhard, came to
(05:28):
signify the political power of women's sexual self determination. So
suddenly the discourse was more about we can have an
orgasm anyway we want, and we deserve to have an
orgasm any way we want, right, and it shouldn't just
be some kind of gift or performance unless it is
a gift or performance, you know, for ourselves. Maybe that
(05:49):
just sounds like masturbation though, which was another two part podcast, right, yeah,
we've already covered that. Um yeah. The author of that
Making an Unmaking of Woman's Rotic Lives book sites research
that shows that some women tend to downplay the significance
of orgasm, while other women rate it as the most
important feature of sexual satisfaction. And so now we're getting
(06:12):
into more of the oh well it's okay, you just
go ahead kind of mentality that some women have about sex. Right,
and a lot of Surveys from the Kinsey Institute have
found that if you ask men and women whether or
not sex can be satisfying without an orgasm, way more
women will say yeah, that's okay, compared to men who
(06:34):
are like, oh, I gonna know, I mean sort of,
that's what that's my end goal, right, And that Fause
says that by downplaying the importance of orgasms, women may
be indicating that they don't value their orgasmic pleasure, or
like you were saying, it could be that they have
placed a greater importance on other aspects of relationships. So
maybe just emotional connectedness, but uh, having the connectedness of
(06:59):
sex is more important than actually achieving orgasm. Um. So
by that, by extension of that logic, you would think
that if we're faking orgasm, it would be too foster
emotional intimacy or to trappaman depending on what you're reading,
(07:20):
Depending on what you're reading, because there's also the notion
that you know, completely opposite to that, that faking an
orgasm is a way for us to distance ourselves from
male sexual partners by ourselves, I'm still talking again about
heterosexual women will talk about same sex relationships a little
bit later on, Um, do you want to get into
some statistics. Let's do it. Hit the stats, let's set
(07:41):
the stats. There have been a number of studies and
surveys on women faking it, women specifically faking it from
nineteen seventy three to the present day. A series of
studies have found that anywhere from fifty three to sixty
five percent of both married and unmarried women have pretended
(08:06):
to climax at some point. Um. There was a study
I believe it came out in two thousand and ten
from Aaron Cooper who was a psychologist at Temple University,
and she talked to three hundred and sixty six women
ages eighteen to thirty two and found that about sixty
percent of these women faked it. And I thought that
(08:27):
this study was kind of compelling because the number one
reason that she found for these mostly college females faking
it was creating distance. And then she also found for
a small subset said that it actually enhanced their own
sexual experience. Was kind of a fake it till you
(08:47):
make it sort of thing. Yeah, maybe the faking it
just turned them on more and maybe they could actually
achieve a real orgasm. Well yeah, by maybe by by
faking excitement that could turn the other person on or
as well, and then it's sort of snowballs. Perhaps Yeah. UM.
Some other reasons that people say in various studies that
they faked orgasm. We're avoiding the blame and pressure that
(09:12):
comes along with with sex and avoiding conflict, doubt, guilt, shame,
whether it's yours or your partners. UM and some people
that Fause talked to you in her book, Basically we're saying,
you know, well, I don't have a good reason for
not you know, orgasm NG, so maybe I should just
go ahead and fake it. I feel bad about it. Oh,
(09:33):
these expectations. A lot of this goes back to UH,
to these sex roles and these sexual scripts that we
take into the bedroom and feel so compelled to follow. UM.
And in addition to you know, not wanting to have
to explain yourself, there's also the idea of wanting to
make your partner feel adequate, especially among UH opposite sex couples.
(09:58):
There was a study from the University of Kansas from
Charlene L. Mullenhard and Sheina K. Shippy, and she similar
to the Temple University study I just mentioned, pulled both
male and female students and asked whether they had faked orgasm,
and the number one reason why the of women said
(10:23):
yes they had faked an orgasm was that they didn't
want to bruise the guy's egos. This would be called
altruistic deceit. Yeah, that's uh, that's interesting because men's a
lot of men's reasons for faking it are similar to
women's the same, like they just wanted to be over
or they know they're not going to achieve orgasm, so
(10:44):
let's just go ahead and get this over with. But
I wonder if men have the same the same reasoning
as far as not wanting to hurt someone's feelings. There
is a gender difference um that Dr Mullenhard at the
University of Kansas uncovered between ends and women's rationale for
faking and orgasm. More women said that they wanted to
(11:07):
either avoid the negative consequence of having to explain why
they weren't able to finish um, or they wanted to
please their partners, So kind of from both angles, it's
a way of it's sort of a subservience to the
other person. Yeah, and going back to Aaron Cooper, who
you mentioned earlier, and altruistic deceit, you know, saving the
(11:27):
person's feelings. UM. Aaron Cooper called it a relationship maintenance
strategy and basically said that this leads into another study
called do women pretend orgasm to retain a mate? I
was not on board with a study from Todd Shackelford
and Dr Shackleford. If you're listening, no, nothing personal, but
(11:48):
I question your methodology. It felt like one of those
kind of self fulfilling prophecies that's set up like these
researchers basically went into this study assuming that via evolutionary biology,
that women who suspected their partner of cheating were more
likely to fake because it was it was a way
(12:08):
to manipulate a partner's commitment by signaling a mate selection.
Because it also goes back to this theory of female
orgasm existing as a way for um women to retain
sperm of fitter mates, so that you know, it's a
signal to guys that were like, hey, you know what
my body is into your body? That means you're amazing.
(12:31):
I'm boosting your ego right now. And uh so, so
they pulled these women for how often they faked orgasms
and then they also asked about certain behaviors such as
intentionally flirting in front of other guys to make their
partner jealous, or displaying jealous tendencies toward other women that
there uh, their mates might interact with. And so they said, yes,
(12:55):
there is a correlation, and women be faking just to
keep their men around. Exactly. That's actually a quote from
the study. And really, I mean, if you think about it,
we have like listed out so many different reasons why
women might fake. It might be to keep a man.
It might be to drive him away, it might be
to go to bed, it might be to stay awake
(13:17):
and cuddle. And I would just like to state my
favorite quote from this this Retain a mate study. Uh.
You know, we talked about how women are are faking
orgasms to to retain their mate and being like, you're sexy,
so I'm going to fake it and look at how
sexy I am by making all these noises, So let's
be sexy together. Um. Another reason is to prevent defection
(13:40):
from the relationship, which I think is a great way
a great of course a scientist person would write that,
so instead of saying we broke up, just start saying, well, Uh,
she defected. Yeah. I think the next time that anything
like this happens to me, like a breakup or something,
I think I'm going to say it's I'm not breaking
(14:02):
up with you, I am defecting. Defect from this relationship.
It sounds much more revolutionary like rod from the anyway.
Moving on, Um, well, a lot of this research is
focused on women, but we have not gotten to one
of the most groundbreaking points of all this research, which
(14:25):
is that guys, guess what, you're doing it too. Guys
are doing it too, and not just a couple of
fellas here and there no no going back to that
University of Kansas study which was done specifically because Charlene L.
(14:45):
Mollenhard wanted to know whether or not men pretended orgasm,
and of the men surveyed said that yes, they had pretended,
and another in addition to that, another six teen percent
said that they had kenna sort of pretended, done something
(15:06):
along the lines to to deceive their partner in terms
of how much they were really enjoying the sexual activity. Um.
And there was one interesting difference that she found in
the ways that men and women faked it. Uh, Carolin,
you mentioned, uh, you know, looking sexy and being all like,
(15:26):
oh wow, you know, going back to the when Harry
met Sally, Oh wow. Women tend to fake by becoming
a lot more vocal, whereas men tend to fake by
clenching their muscles more and thrusting harder and then being like, Okay,
I did it. I'm done, or just stopping. Some of
(15:49):
the guys were like, well, I just I just stopped. Yeah,
it's over now. And and some of the studies talked
about scripts for this kind of thing, relationship and sexual
scripts for this kind of thing, and how, um, when
a man fakes it, or when a man orgasms real
or fake, uh, that signifies that sex is over, whereas
(16:12):
if a woman fakes it, that signifies like okay, honey,
you can go now, so that we can stop right um.
And I think it's also worth pointing out that a
vast majority of this fakeery takes place during penile vaginal intercourse.
Oral sex came in a quote distant second, So there's
(16:35):
something about intercourse that that that sets these crazy scripts
into play. And the script, the established script is that, uh,
that the woman should orgasm first and then the man
should orgasm, because the male orgasm signals the end of
sex because in the physiological process of sexual intercourse some
(17:00):
climax men go through a latency period after sex, whereas
women can have multiple orgasms. And playing off of some
of those differences you were talking about, UM, a study
bisexual research team William Masters and Virginia Johnson found in
the lab. I wonder what kind of experiments these were
found in the lab that men took about four minutes
(17:21):
to orgasm with their partner, while women took ten to
twenty minutes to orgasm with a partner. But when masturbating
women took about you guessed it four minutes. So there,
you're right, there is something about partnered sexual uh, penile
vaginal intercourse right because UM, and I don't have the
(17:42):
statistics in front of me, but women will report far
higher prevalence of achieving an orgasm through clitoral stimulation versus
achieving orgasm through vaginal stimulation exclusively a lot of women.
I think it's something around of women rarely will have
(18:02):
an orgasm just from vaginal intercourse. But there was all
this brought up a question in my mind of whether
or not this is just an issue for heterosexual couples. UM,
and while a majority of the research is done on
on street women, there was a study that we found
from the Journal of Sex Research in a little bit dated,
(18:27):
and the researchers were investigating the differences in self reported
sexual satisfaction among lesbians compared to straight women, and they
found that lo and behold, lesbian's report having sex more often,
feeling more sexually satisfied, and having orgasms uh more often
(18:48):
than their straight counterparts. And so the researchers wondered if
maybe this had to do with the type of sexual
simulation that is going on now. At the same time, UM,
I also was doing a little little poken around on
the interwebs and landed on a column on AlterNet basically
(19:09):
urging people to dispel the myth of the perfect lesbian
sex because that only perpetuates this idea that all women
function sexually the exact same way and that's not true.
Um But statistically lesbians do seem to have seem to
have a better, better time of it. But I wonder
(19:30):
if it's because they're breaking there, they're not operating within
that rigid heterosexual script. Could be they feel more free
to um do whatever feels good instead of just what
they think their partner wants or what they think sex
is supposed to be like. Um, Going back to Masters
and Johnson, who you referenced, their research showed that same
(19:51):
sex couples of both genders were more likely to take
their time, maybe because there's not some order in their head. Okay,
well you go first, and then I'll go, and then
we'll then we'll fall asleep. Yeah. Maybe So going back
to the Journal of Sex Research from three uh, they
(20:14):
cited some stats that of heterosexual women reported difficulty reaching
orgasm and fifteen percent reported inability to reach orgasm. And
this compares with percent of lesbians who reported difficulty reaching
orgasms and only seven percent of lesbians who reported inability
to reach orgasm. So a big difference there, right, which
(20:37):
just makes me think of that the statistic of how
piano vagual intercourse is usually far more correlated to fake
orgasms where both men and women compared to other forms
of sexual contact. But the whole faking thing, I mean,
it's it's a it's it's pretty fascinating that we that
(20:58):
we would a lot of time when you read in
women's publications about faking orgasms, it's urging us not to
because the bottom line is you might not need to
fake it if your sexual communication is open and honest
and you're telling your partner you know what feels good
and what you like, and hopefully that will help things.
(21:18):
I mean the fact though, that people in that Masters
in Johnson study were able in a laboratory setting to
the orgasm within ten minutes, it's pretty astounding to me.
I wonder how they set the lab up, Like, did
they did they make it look like the Playboy Bunny?
A lot of tea candles in sense, lots of pillows.
(21:39):
It was the early sixties, so you know, beaded curtains, yeah,
a lot of shag carpeting. And one more thing, just
bring it back to men, because we've talked about how yes,
men do it, but we've spent a lot more time
talking about women. And it reminds me of an article
that came out a couple of years ago in New
York Magazine talk about this phenomenon of men faking it
(22:04):
and especially men using condoms as a tool of subversive
uh fakery. And one of the guys said, one of
the men who was who was interviewed for the article says,
as a guy your biggest fear is that you'll come
too soon. And another man who has interviewed said that
there was a double standard because men are expected to
(22:27):
be the sex craze beast who can yes, achieve an
orgasm within four minutes and even a laboratory of a setting,
whereas women are almost assumed to take longer and maybe
not even be able to reach orgasm at all. And
if we are, we might be faking it. So I
(22:48):
can see how how some some fellows might might see
a double standard there. But to all of this, I say,
maybe we should just use this as a lesson in
why communication is so important. Yeah, I feel I mean,
tell your partner what's what works for you and what doesn't.
But also, if it's not going to happen, it's not
(23:09):
going to happen. And yes, there is the fear that
you might hurt someone's feelings or someone might feel guilty
or insulted or whatever. But yeah, I think opening those
channels of communication my lesson the need to fake it right,
Because if you look at psychological studies of couples who
are complaining of having disappointing sex lives, a lot of
(23:33):
times it traces back to their level of sexual communication
if there's a dip in the activity. A lot of
times there's been a dip in or non existence of communication.
And I mean, communication is not an easy thing, but
it's something to keep in mind. And can I can
I toss that one last fun finding it's only if
(23:57):
it's fun, it's pretty fun, um and I have tweeted
about this, so Twitter followers, you're already in the know.
But there was a two thousand and ten study from
Emory University looking at the economics of faking it, and
they found that a funny correlation between education levels and
uh faking orgasm and found that people who are more
(24:20):
highly educated tend to fake it because quote, love making
takes time and people and people with more education may
have a higher opportunity cost of time and may therefore
be more likely to fake just to get it over with.
Perhaps this is a quote, perhaps so they can return
to writing papers. So doctoral students out there, we are
(24:43):
onto you interesting now. I mean the study really had
like whole giant formulas with symbols and things division signs.
I don't know. Uh So now that we have bombard
you with statistics and theories about who is faking it
and why you know what we're gonna ask for your stories.
(25:06):
Don't be ashamed. Yeah, Also, don't be too dirty. We
can't read them on the air if they're too dirty,
right And uh, you know, or if someone out there
who has never faked it before, let us let us know.
Or you just said in an incredible communicator yeah, oh,
another group of people I would like to hear from.
Some of these studies talked about people who fake it
(25:26):
intersect with women who have report never having had an orgasm.
And so if we have any people out there who
have never had an orgasm, they've they've tried, but maybe
just have never gotten there. Do you fake it? Yea.
For that reason, let us know mom stuff at Discovery
dot com. And you can also head over to Facebook.
(25:49):
But again, please keep our Facebook walk clean. Uh. And
in the meantime, we've got a couple of emails here.
I have one in response to our long ago episode
about female scientists, and I really wanted to share this
one because it is from Chloe, who is a PhD
student in chemistry at one of the top research institutions
(26:10):
in the US, and she writes, first of all, I
think people should understand that STEM females may make a
little more money, but it's also the result of an
additional five to ten years, ten to fourteen hour days
six days a week of additional experience post post bachelor degree.
I think this is something important that should be considered
before convincing people to pursue careers in STEM. Secondly, I
(26:33):
think your lack of role models explains explains the gender
gap very well, but it's not because there aren't lack
of successful female scientists. There are plenty of these very successful,
intelligent scientists, but that doesn't translate to an individual we
can look up to. I have a female advisor, and
while she is a successful scientist, she has to nanny's
on rotation, travels at least a week out of the month,
(26:54):
and makes it clear that family is not high on
our list of priorities. The sad part is this is
an uncommon Many women my age and their late twenties
scientists or not want a family. However, it's very difficult
to find a role model who can show us how
to balance family life, their love for science, their careers,
and also show compassion toward others. I think this is
often the case that successful scientists might lack the more
(27:17):
quote unquote human side of things that many women consider
to be important. This is why I and many of
my friends are not pursuing This is why I and
many of my friends are not continuing to pursue traditional
academic careers. So some great insight from Chloe, Thank you.
We have some more insight from Jessica. This is about
(27:37):
our friendship podcasts plural. She says that she's in somewhat
unique of a position of being best friends with a
male and female romantic couple. Through an odd but not
uncomfortable set of circumstances. We have ended up sharing a
two bedroom apartment here in Korea along with their two cats,
also a male and a female. The difference in our
friendship pretty clearly exemplifies the differences you mentioned between male
(27:59):
and female roommate. With my female best friend, I share
a very caring, warm bond. I call her when I'm
upset about something, and she is the one who keeps
up with me when I'm out of town. We know
just about all of the intimate details of each other's lives,
from my dating foibles to her relationship with her parents,
her boyfriend, my male best friend loves and cares about me,
but expresses this through wanting to spend time with me
(28:21):
and watching funny movies are making jokes together. We rarely
talk about our emotions, and when I gave him a
hug the other day at his receiving some bad news,
it was probably the first time we touched affectionately in months.
They're very different friendships, and having them both is a
complimentary force that needs I don't have to search for
someone to share brunch or a movie. And thanks to
everybody who's written in again. Our email addressed is mom
(28:43):
Stuff at Discovery dot com, but of course you can
also head over to our Facebook page and send us
a tweet. We're at Mom's Stuff podcast. And if you
want to know more about orgasms, both fake and not,
you can read How Orgasms Work by me written by
me How Stuff Works dot com. Be sure to check
(29:06):
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Are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff Mom Never told you?
From House Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Kristen and I'm Caroline and Caroline. Since
(00:21):
we're talking about fake orgasms today, I just want to
go ahead and get the one Harry met Sally reference
out of the way. In almost every article that we read,
Nora Ephron's hit about friends who can't possibly not be
lovers came up because there's that famous scene with Meg
(00:43):
Ryan faggy and orgasm to Billy Crystal and catsas Deli
in New York City, and it's hilarious and no I'm
not going to reenact it because that would be very inappropriate,
but there it is, and their conversation in the movie
during that scene pretty much sums of everything that going
to talk about, and which is basically like Meg Ryan saying, oh, well,
(01:04):
everybody every woman's faked it at one point or another,
and Billy Crystals like, oh but not with me, and
she goes, well, you do the math. Every woman's faked
it and every man thinks that they haven't, so but not.
It's not the entire conversation that it's not that cut
and dry. Yeah, So before we get into statistics, because
we got a lot of statistics to go over with
(01:27):
fake orgasms, because I'm sure everybody's wanting to know what
percentage of women have done it? Have men done it too? Um?
But the whole female faking thing has a lot of
cultural baggage with it as well. That goes way back
beyond when Harry Melt Sally. Yeah, goes back to the Victorians,
(01:47):
those dark Victorians. They always come up, what do they Why?
Why are we still suffering under Victorian things stuff? At
least we got Graham crackers and corn flakes out of it,
I guess, and doubt Navvy And although it's more of
an Edwardian anyway. Um. Yes, Well, during the Victorian era,
(02:09):
the woman's orgasm came to be seen as sort of
an unnecessary part of sexual intercourse. It really was sort
of viewed as a man's thing to really enjoy sex
and have an orgasm, whereas women were supposed to lie
back and think of England and if they didn't orgasm,
who cares? Right? Well, there was the point made by
(02:29):
Brian Fawz in performing sex, the making and unmaking of
women's erotic lives. That the sort of self imposed sexual
oppression became linked during that era to higher class for women. Yeah, um,
not only higher class, but it's it's funny to talk
(02:50):
about uh sex and gender and all this stuff in
the Victorian area era. Excuse me because um tied into
all this is his sterea, the female disease which was
caused in their minds by a wandering womb, which goes
back to Hippocrates. Hippocrates Um who said that the you know,
(03:13):
women might go crazy because they're their uteruses are are
wandering around, just wandering, wandering the womb. But if you
fast forward to the eighties, when the first vibrators were invented, Um,
they realized that they could cure hysteria, all of this
anxiety and sleeplessness and excessive sexual fantasy that these women
(03:37):
were experiencing by bringing women to orgasms. Right, and this
was something done in doctor's offices, Like medical professionals were
leading women to orgasm as a way to be like, hey,
just calm down, don't don't have so much anxiety in
your life, lady. And it's it's I can't believe that
an orgasm went from being a normal thing that men
and women experience to something that women shouldn't experience because
(04:01):
they're too classy for that, to being something that happens
in doctor's offices. But then after that though, I mean, like,
if we're talking about orgasm today, not only is it
considered this normalized part or expected part of the sexual experience,
but that is we conflate sex with orgasm. Yeah, good
(04:23):
sex equals having an orgasm. It's an expectation. It's also um,
I think brand Faz also frames it as a type
of gift that women give. And we're talking to at
this point about heterosexual women a gift that they give
to their male partner. Yeah, And as as far as
it's more of the history goes of of sexual intercourse
(04:43):
and orgasms and how they relate um, the psychoanalysts. Freud
got in on the discussion and it became okay suddenly
for women to have orgasms, expected for that to happen.
But you're a weirdo if you can't have an orgasm
through vaginal intercourse alone, right. Floyd Freud was very dismissive
of c literal stimulation. He said that was basically for girls.
(05:07):
And if you cannot figure out how to have an
orgasm through penile vaginal intercourse, you really weren't a woman. Yeah,
not a real woman. And then so fast forward, way
forward into the dawn of the feminist movement. Feminist activism
and the female orgasm, according to Jane Gerhard, came to
(05:28):
signify the political power of women's sexual self determination. So
suddenly the discourse was more about we can have an
orgasm anyway we want, and we deserve to have an
orgasm any way we want, right, and it shouldn't just
be some kind of gift or performance unless it is
a gift or performance, you know, for ourselves. Maybe that
(05:49):
just sounds like masturbation though, which was another two part podcast, right, yeah,
we've already covered that. Um yeah. The author of that
Making an Unmaking of Woman's Rotic Lives book sites research
that shows that some women tend to downplay the significance
of orgasm, while other women rate it as the most
important feature of sexual satisfaction. And so now we're getting
(06:12):
into more of the oh well it's okay, you just
go ahead kind of mentality that some women have about sex. Right,
and a lot of Surveys from the Kinsey Institute have
found that if you ask men and women whether or
not sex can be satisfying without an orgasm, way more
women will say yeah, that's okay, compared to men who
(06:34):
are like, oh, I gonna know, I mean sort of,
that's what that's my end goal, right, And that Fause
says that by downplaying the importance of orgasms, women may
be indicating that they don't value their orgasmic pleasure, or
like you were saying, it could be that they have
placed a greater importance on other aspects of relationships. So
maybe just emotional connectedness, but uh, having the connectedness of
(06:59):
sex is more important than actually achieving orgasm. Um. So
by that, by extension of that logic, you would think
that if we're faking orgasm, it would be too foster
emotional intimacy or to trappaman depending on what you're reading,
(07:20):
Depending on what you're reading, because there's also the notion
that you know, completely opposite to that, that faking an
orgasm is a way for us to distance ourselves from
male sexual partners by ourselves, I'm still talking again about
heterosexual women will talk about same sex relationships a little
bit later on, Um, do you want to get into
some statistics. Let's do it. Hit the stats, let's set
(07:41):
the stats. There have been a number of studies and
surveys on women faking it, women specifically faking it from
nineteen seventy three to the present day. A series of
studies have found that anywhere from fifty three to sixty
five percent of both married and unmarried women have pretended
(08:06):
to climax at some point. Um. There was a study
I believe it came out in two thousand and ten
from Aaron Cooper who was a psychologist at Temple University,
and she talked to three hundred and sixty six women
ages eighteen to thirty two and found that about sixty
percent of these women faked it. And I thought that
(08:27):
this study was kind of compelling because the number one
reason that she found for these mostly college females faking
it was creating distance. And then she also found for
a small subset said that it actually enhanced their own
sexual experience. Was kind of a fake it till you
(08:47):
make it sort of thing. Yeah, maybe the faking it
just turned them on more and maybe they could actually
achieve a real orgasm. Well yeah, by maybe by by
faking excitement that could turn the other person on or
as well, and then it's sort of snowballs. Perhaps Yeah. UM.
Some other reasons that people say in various studies that
they faked orgasm. We're avoiding the blame and pressure that
(09:12):
comes along with with sex and avoiding conflict, doubt, guilt, shame,
whether it's yours or your partners. UM and some people
that Fause talked to you in her book, Basically we're saying,
you know, well, I don't have a good reason for
not you know, orgasm NG, so maybe I should just
go ahead and fake it. I feel bad about it. Oh,
(09:33):
these expectations. A lot of this goes back to UH,
to these sex roles and these sexual scripts that we
take into the bedroom and feel so compelled to follow. UM.
And in addition to you know, not wanting to have
to explain yourself, there's also the idea of wanting to
make your partner feel adequate, especially among UH opposite sex couples.
(09:58):
There was a study from the University of Kansas from
Charlene L. Mullenhard and Sheina K. Shippy, and she similar
to the Temple University study I just mentioned, pulled both
male and female students and asked whether they had faked orgasm,
and the number one reason why the of women said
(10:23):
yes they had faked an orgasm was that they didn't
want to bruise the guy's egos. This would be called
altruistic deceit. Yeah, that's uh, that's interesting because men's a
lot of men's reasons for faking it are similar to
women's the same, like they just wanted to be over
or they know they're not going to achieve orgasm, so
(10:44):
let's just go ahead and get this over with. But
I wonder if men have the same the same reasoning
as far as not wanting to hurt someone's feelings. There
is a gender difference um that Dr Mullenhard at the
University of Kansas uncovered between ends and women's rationale for
faking and orgasm. More women said that they wanted to
(11:07):
either avoid the negative consequence of having to explain why
they weren't able to finish um, or they wanted to
please their partners, So kind of from both angles, it's
a way of it's sort of a subservience to the
other person. Yeah, and going back to Aaron Cooper, who
you mentioned earlier, and altruistic deceit, you know, saving the
(11:27):
person's feelings. UM. Aaron Cooper called it a relationship maintenance
strategy and basically said that this leads into another study
called do women pretend orgasm to retain a mate? I
was not on board with a study from Todd Shackelford
and Dr Shackleford. If you're listening, no, nothing personal, but
(11:48):
I question your methodology. It felt like one of those
kind of self fulfilling prophecies that's set up like these
researchers basically went into this study assuming that via evolutionary biology,
that women who suspected their partner of cheating were more
likely to fake because it was it was a way
(12:08):
to manipulate a partner's commitment by signaling a mate selection.
Because it also goes back to this theory of female
orgasm existing as a way for um women to retain
sperm of fitter mates, so that you know, it's a
signal to guys that were like, hey, you know what
my body is into your body? That means you're amazing.
(12:31):
I'm boosting your ego right now. And uh so, so
they pulled these women for how often they faked orgasms
and then they also asked about certain behaviors such as
intentionally flirting in front of other guys to make their
partner jealous, or displaying jealous tendencies toward other women that
there uh, their mates might interact with. And so they said, yes,
(12:55):
there is a correlation, and women be faking just to
keep their men around. Exactly. That's actually a quote from
the study. And really, I mean, if you think about it,
we have like listed out so many different reasons why
women might fake. It might be to keep a man.
It might be to drive him away, it might be
to go to bed, it might be to stay awake
(13:17):
and cuddle. And I would just like to state my
favorite quote from this this Retain a mate study. Uh.
You know, we talked about how women are are faking
orgasms to to retain their mate and being like, you're sexy,
so I'm going to fake it and look at how
sexy I am by making all these noises, So let's
be sexy together. Um. Another reason is to prevent defection
(13:40):
from the relationship, which I think is a great way
a great of course a scientist person would write that,
so instead of saying we broke up, just start saying, well, Uh,
she defected. Yeah. I think the next time that anything
like this happens to me, like a breakup or something,
I think I'm going to say it's I'm not breaking
(14:02):
up with you, I am defecting. Defect from this relationship.
It sounds much more revolutionary like rod from the anyway.
Moving on, Um, well, a lot of this research is
focused on women, but we have not gotten to one
of the most groundbreaking points of all this research, which
(14:25):
is that guys, guess what, you're doing it too. Guys
are doing it too, and not just a couple of
fellas here and there no no going back to that
University of Kansas study which was done specifically because Charlene L.
(14:45):
Mollenhard wanted to know whether or not men pretended orgasm,
and of the men surveyed said that yes, they had pretended,
and another in addition to that, another six teen percent
said that they had kenna sort of pretended, done something
(15:06):
along the lines to to deceive their partner in terms
of how much they were really enjoying the sexual activity. Um.
And there was one interesting difference that she found in
the ways that men and women faked it. Uh, Carolin,
you mentioned, uh, you know, looking sexy and being all like,
(15:26):
oh wow, you know, going back to the when Harry
met Sally, Oh wow. Women tend to fake by becoming
a lot more vocal, whereas men tend to fake by
clenching their muscles more and thrusting harder and then being like, Okay,
I did it. I'm done, or just stopping. Some of
(15:49):
the guys were like, well, I just I just stopped. Yeah,
it's over now. And and some of the studies talked
about scripts for this kind of thing, relationship and sexual
scripts for this kind of thing, and how, um, when
a man fakes it, or when a man orgasms real
or fake, uh, that signifies that sex is over, whereas
(16:12):
if a woman fakes it, that signifies like okay, honey,
you can go now, so that we can stop right um.
And I think it's also worth pointing out that a
vast majority of this fakeery takes place during penile vaginal intercourse.
Oral sex came in a quote distant second, So there's
(16:35):
something about intercourse that that that sets these crazy scripts
into play. And the script, the established script is that, uh,
that the woman should orgasm first and then the man
should orgasm, because the male orgasm signals the end of
sex because in the physiological process of sexual intercourse some
(17:00):
climax men go through a latency period after sex, whereas
women can have multiple orgasms. And playing off of some
of those differences you were talking about, UM, a study
bisexual research team William Masters and Virginia Johnson found in
the lab. I wonder what kind of experiments these were
found in the lab that men took about four minutes
(17:21):
to orgasm with their partner, while women took ten to
twenty minutes to orgasm with a partner. But when masturbating
women took about you guessed it four minutes. So there,
you're right, there is something about partnered sexual uh, penile
vaginal intercourse right because UM, and I don't have the
(17:42):
statistics in front of me, but women will report far
higher prevalence of achieving an orgasm through clitoral stimulation versus
achieving orgasm through vaginal stimulation exclusively a lot of women.
I think it's something around of women rarely will have
(18:02):
an orgasm just from vaginal intercourse. But there was all
this brought up a question in my mind of whether
or not this is just an issue for heterosexual couples. UM,
and while a majority of the research is done on
on street women, there was a study that we found
from the Journal of Sex Research in a little bit dated,
(18:27):
and the researchers were investigating the differences in self reported
sexual satisfaction among lesbians compared to straight women, and they
found that lo and behold, lesbian's report having sex more often,
feeling more sexually satisfied, and having orgasms uh more often
(18:48):
than their straight counterparts. And so the researchers wondered if
maybe this had to do with the type of sexual
simulation that is going on now. At the same time, UM,
I also was doing a little little poken around on
the interwebs and landed on a column on AlterNet basically
(19:09):
urging people to dispel the myth of the perfect lesbian
sex because that only perpetuates this idea that all women
function sexually the exact same way and that's not true.
Um But statistically lesbians do seem to have seem to
have a better, better time of it. But I wonder
(19:30):
if it's because they're breaking there, they're not operating within
that rigid heterosexual script. Could be they feel more free
to um do whatever feels good instead of just what
they think their partner wants or what they think sex
is supposed to be like. Um, Going back to Masters
and Johnson, who you referenced, their research showed that same
(19:51):
sex couples of both genders were more likely to take
their time, maybe because there's not some order in their head. Okay,
well you go first, and then I'll go, and then
we'll then we'll fall asleep. Yeah. Maybe So going back
to the Journal of Sex Research from three uh, they
(20:14):
cited some stats that of heterosexual women reported difficulty reaching
orgasm and fifteen percent reported inability to reach orgasm. And
this compares with percent of lesbians who reported difficulty reaching
orgasms and only seven percent of lesbians who reported inability
to reach orgasm. So a big difference there, right, which
(20:37):
just makes me think of that the statistic of how
piano vagual intercourse is usually far more correlated to fake
orgasms where both men and women compared to other forms
of sexual contact. But the whole faking thing, I mean,
it's it's a it's it's pretty fascinating that we that
(20:58):
we would a lot of time when you read in
women's publications about faking orgasms, it's urging us not to
because the bottom line is you might not need to
fake it if your sexual communication is open and honest
and you're telling your partner you know what feels good
and what you like, and hopefully that will help things.
(21:18):
I mean the fact though, that people in that Masters
in Johnson study were able in a laboratory setting to
the orgasm within ten minutes, it's pretty astounding to me.
I wonder how they set the lab up, Like, did
they did they make it look like the Playboy Bunny?
A lot of tea candles in sense, lots of pillows.
(21:39):
It was the early sixties, so you know, beaded curtains, yeah,
a lot of shag carpeting. And one more thing, just
bring it back to men, because we've talked about how yes,
men do it, but we've spent a lot more time
talking about women. And it reminds me of an article
that came out a couple of years ago in New
York Magazine talk about this phenomenon of men faking it
(22:04):
and especially men using condoms as a tool of subversive
uh fakery. And one of the guys said, one of
the men who was who was interviewed for the article says,
as a guy your biggest fear is that you'll come
too soon. And another man who has interviewed said that
there was a double standard because men are expected to
(22:27):
be the sex craze beast who can yes, achieve an
orgasm within four minutes and even a laboratory of a setting,
whereas women are almost assumed to take longer and maybe
not even be able to reach orgasm at all. And
if we are, we might be faking it. So I
(22:48):
can see how how some some fellows might might see
a double standard there. But to all of this, I say,
maybe we should just use this as a lesson in
why communication is so important. Yeah, I feel I mean,
tell your partner what's what works for you and what doesn't.
But also, if it's not going to happen, it's not
(23:09):
going to happen. And yes, there is the fear that
you might hurt someone's feelings or someone might feel guilty
or insulted or whatever. But yeah, I think opening those
channels of communication my lesson the need to fake it right,
Because if you look at psychological studies of couples who
are complaining of having disappointing sex lives, a lot of
(23:33):
times it traces back to their level of sexual communication
if there's a dip in the activity. A lot of
times there's been a dip in or non existence of communication.
And I mean, communication is not an easy thing, but
it's something to keep in mind. And can I can
I toss that one last fun finding it's only if
(23:57):
it's fun, it's pretty fun, um and I have tweeted
about this, so Twitter followers, you're already in the know.
But there was a two thousand and ten study from
Emory University looking at the economics of faking it, and
they found that a funny correlation between education levels and
uh faking orgasm and found that people who are more
(24:20):
highly educated tend to fake it because quote, love making
takes time and people and people with more education may
have a higher opportunity cost of time and may therefore
be more likely to fake just to get it over with.
Perhaps this is a quote, perhaps so they can return
to writing papers. So doctoral students out there, we are
(24:43):
onto you interesting now. I mean the study really had
like whole giant formulas with symbols and things division signs.
I don't know. Uh So now that we have bombard
you with statistics and theories about who is faking it
and why you know what we're gonna ask for your stories.
(25:06):
Don't be ashamed. Yeah, Also, don't be too dirty. We
can't read them on the air if they're too dirty,
right And uh, you know, or if someone out there
who has never faked it before, let us let us know.
Or you just said in an incredible communicator yeah, oh,
another group of people I would like to hear from.
Some of these studies talked about people who fake it
(25:26):
intersect with women who have report never having had an orgasm.
And so if we have any people out there who
have never had an orgasm, they've they've tried, but maybe
just have never gotten there. Do you fake it? Yea.
For that reason, let us know mom stuff at Discovery
dot com. And you can also head over to Facebook.
(25:49):
But again, please keep our Facebook walk clean. Uh. And
in the meantime, we've got a couple of emails here.
I have one in response to our long ago episode
about female scientists, and I really wanted to share this
one because it is from Chloe, who is a PhD
student in chemistry at one of the top research institutions
(26:10):
in the US, and she writes, first of all, I
think people should understand that STEM females may make a
little more money, but it's also the result of an
additional five to ten years, ten to fourteen hour days
six days a week of additional experience post post bachelor degree.
I think this is something important that should be considered
before convincing people to pursue careers in STEM. Secondly, I
(26:33):
think your lack of role models explains explains the gender
gap very well, but it's not because there aren't lack
of successful female scientists. There are plenty of these very successful,
intelligent scientists, but that doesn't translate to an individual we
can look up to. I have a female advisor, and
while she is a successful scientist, she has to nanny's
on rotation, travels at least a week out of the month,
(26:54):
and makes it clear that family is not high on
our list of priorities. The sad part is this is
an uncommon Many women my age and their late twenties
scientists or not want a family. However, it's very difficult
to find a role model who can show us how
to balance family life, their love for science, their careers,
and also show compassion toward others. I think this is
often the case that successful scientists might lack the more
(27:17):
quote unquote human side of things that many women consider
to be important. This is why I and many of
my friends are not pursuing This is why I and
many of my friends are not continuing to pursue traditional
academic careers. So some great insight from Chloe, Thank you.
We have some more insight from Jessica. This is about
(27:37):
our friendship podcasts plural. She says that she's in somewhat
unique of a position of being best friends with a
male and female romantic couple. Through an odd but not
uncomfortable set of circumstances. We have ended up sharing a
two bedroom apartment here in Korea along with their two cats,
also a male and a female. The difference in our
friendship pretty clearly exemplifies the differences you mentioned between male
(27:59):
and female roommate. With my female best friend, I share
a very caring, warm bond. I call her when I'm
upset about something, and she is the one who keeps
up with me when I'm out of town. We know
just about all of the intimate details of each other's lives,
from my dating foibles to her relationship with her parents,
her boyfriend, my male best friend loves and cares about me,
but expresses this through wanting to spend time with me
(28:21):
and watching funny movies are making jokes together. We rarely
talk about our emotions, and when I gave him a
hug the other day at his receiving some bad news,
it was probably the first time we touched affectionately in months.
They're very different friendships, and having them both is a
complimentary force that needs I don't have to search for
someone to share brunch or a movie. And thanks to
everybody who's written in again. Our email addressed is mom
(28:43):
Stuff at Discovery dot com, but of course you can
also head over to our Facebook page and send us
a tweet. We're at Mom's Stuff podcast. And if you
want to know more about orgasms, both fake and not,
you can read How Orgasms Work by me written by
me How Stuff Works dot com. Be sure to check
(29:06):
out our new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join
how Stuff Work staff as we explore the most promising
and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. The How stepp Works iPhone
app has a arrivee dewlmoad it today on iTunes, Brought
to you by the reinvented two thousand, twelve camera. It's ready.
(29:27):
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