Dear Desperately,
Throughout history, the lengths women have gone to in order to procure intercourse-based orgasms provide unresolved, and disquieting, clues into how this relatively uncommon occurrence (contemporary numbers suggest 20 to 30 percent of women have them) has come to define our concept of womanhood, manhood and legitimate sexual expression. In her book Bonk, Mary Roach writes about Princess Marie Bonaparte, who was frustrated that she never came during missionary sex, and theorized that the distance between the vagina and the clitoris established a woman’s orgasmic potential during intercourse. Rather than try a new position—granted, perhaps anything original or time-consuming was off limits seeing as how her husband was gay—she measured 243 women’s private bits, then inquired if they came during sex. She determined that the women she coined téléclitoridiennes, “females of the distant clitoris,” with a span longer than an inch, were unable to orgasm during intercourse because their clitoris wasn’t receiving stimulation (keep in mind this was before we understood the subterranean anatomy of this organ). Bonaparte, declaring herself a téléclitoridienne, went through two surgeries to have hers lowered.
Roach doesn’t elaborate on too many of the details, but regardless, the procedures didn’t work. The most revealing part of this anecdote, to me anyway, is not Bonaparte’s progressive recognition of the clitoris as a source of pleasure, but her obsession with putting it closer to her vagina, the “true” organ of femininity as Jean Walton calls it in Fair Sex, Savage Dreams. Bonaparte, of course, discredited the whole study after a 1925 meeting with Freud—“no friend,” as Roach writes, “of the clitoris.”
Though on the surface your remark appears positive, “a sexy man who turns me on in all the right ways” strikes me as an indirectly self-critical mantra, and implies that someone’s ego has required stroking due to your lack of climax during simple penetration. Perhaps your lover hasn’t been putting pressure on you, and you’re just obsessed with the idea that you’re missing out on a wondrous experience, but I also want to talk about the phrase, “I’ve only reached orgasm through masturbation.”
Only? Masturbation remains the ugly stepchild of intimate amusement in our culture, yet given all the shade thrown on it, it is the one thing that brings you to climax. In light of this, I must ask: why is it almost always cast as a compromise? With so much attention, both social and scientific, focused on penetrative orgasms, you would have thought we’d come up with something more universally effective by now, but nope—good old frigging, despite all the ignominy, still leads the charge for so many.
I know what you’re thinking: “I’ve read your pro-jerking-off stance here a million times, Sasha, but I want the unicorn orgasm and I won’t be happy until it’s mine all mine.” Fine then, Desperately, here are a few suggestions:
1. Contemporary advice always warns against turning sex into a competition, but as sexual physiology researcher Kim Wallen says in Bonk, “Women who routinely have orgasms during intercourse without explicit clitoral stimulation all say that it makes little difference what the guy does, as long as he doesn’t come too soon. In fact, it is sometimes preferred that he just lie there and anchor the woman’s pelvis to his.” So, with single-minded determination, keep trying Cowgirl on Dead Horse.
2. You don’t mention a vibrator, so I suggest trying one on your exposed clitoral area (yes, meaning you masturbate!) while you’re being penetrated. I also recommend reading Bonk; you may find some of the studies Roach writes about worth further investigation.
