Women often assume sexual arousal during sex

Unless they masturbate, most women are unaware that clitoral stimulation is needed for female orgasm. Equally, they are unaware that before genital stimulation can be effective, a person needs to know how to achieve true sexual arousal, which depends on an appreciation of eroticism (images for men; scenarios for women).

From puberty onwards men’s sexual arousal (as evidenced by an erection) makes regular masturbation inevitable. Since women do not experience erections (of the clitoris) in the same way, most never learn how to achieve sufficient sexual arousal for orgasm either alone or with a partner. Consequently even those professing enthusiasm for sex are rarely able to display any real knowledge about how to reach orgasm.

After decades of marriage one woman told me: “I have to disagree with the comment of a woman’s arousal and the ease of achieving orgasm. Maybe I am one of the lucky women out there that is in touch with her sexual being. I get sexually aroused by my husband just by looking at him without his shirt, the words that he uses with me, and by the attention that he gives to me. Also I have I believe an easy time in obtaining an orgasm or two with my husband.”

Most men can orgasm within a few minutes. So is this woman claiming to be able to match her partner’s speed of reaching orgasm? Perhaps her partner is one of those one-in-a-million men who is willing to continue pleasuring a partner after he has come? Anyone who suggests that it all happens "naturally" or that women’s arousal is as easy as men’s is, frankly, mistaken.

Women’s minds and bodies simply do not work the same way as men’s. If they did then women would pay for sex as well as lap- and pole-dancing as men do. The sight of a man’s sexual attributes do not cause us to become aroused enough for orgasm. Also women do not approach sex already fully aroused because our bodies are not full of testosterone.

Women who discover orgasm through masturbation in their 20s or 30s will often admit that they had always been utterly convinced that they did orgasm during sex when it turns out they didn’t. How can women not understand that orgasm is a significant pleasure? Not only do you definitely notice orgasm but also you set out with the intention of achieving it.

The facts of female sexuality are:

• Women do not have the same levels of testosterone (the sex drive hormone) as men;
• Women do not buy erotica or pornography as regularly as men do;
• Women do not masturbate anything like as much as men do; and
• Not every man pays for sex but many evidently do – most women never pay for sex.

When I talk about the fact that sex tends to be much more important to most men than it is to most women, I am talking about how we enjoy our own sexual arousal and orgasm. Women who disagree with me are only talking about the emotional (loving and affectionate) aspects of their relationships with men. They are rarely interested in orgasm at all.

A popular suggestion is that a woman needs a truly loving partner who knows how to "give a woman an orgasm." Wouldn’t that be nice! It is a fallacy to think that anyone else can give us an orgasm. Even men have to learn about their own sexual arousal through masturbation. So how do women experience orgasm as men do without the same knowledge or practice?

I would love to believe that women understand how their sexual arousal works but the evidence stands against this. Most couples today clearly continue to base their sex life on vaginal intercourse despite the fact that intercourse provides insufficient clitoral stimulation for orgasm. Yet very few women question a lack of orgasm during sex. Equally, society still censors eroticism to protect women’s sensitivities but without sexual fantasies women are unlikely to discover orgasm by any means.

By Jane Thomas founder of the female sexuality forum Ways Women Orgasm.