Young Women Often Don't Know How to Have an Orgasm

Becky explained via e-mail: "I had my first orgasm at 26 during masturbation - pretty late I know & since then no stopping me with the sex toys :) Plenty of my girlfriends have not though - and like you say, don't seem too bothered about it which I can't understand."

Despite this evidence from her friends, Becky was convinced that every woman must be as enthusiastic about orgasm as she was. Many women are unfamiliar with orgasm because female masturbation is relatively uncommon and so they never explore their sexual fantasies.

Ironically Becky's experience of sex was more miserable than most. "I'm 31 & have had pretty non-orgasmic experiences to date! Issues with vaginismus & then guys who can't get their heads around that, hormone stuff, dry years & mostly casual relationships."

As a sex writer, Becky justified exploring sex with different partners as a means of learning about female sexuality. "I've been seeing an escort for various treatments - yoni massage, spanking, fantasy play etc, which has really helped & just started seeing a guy who I think will be good for me so we'll see."

As they become more financially independent, more young women explore learning about enjoying sexual arousal through dating men. Even so women stand to gain less from sexual promiscuity than men. All the evidence indicates that most women who learn how to orgasm during sex do so only after years of investment in a sexual relationship with the same partner.

Becky told me: "I had a breast orgasm at the weekend - interesting as it's never happened to me before :)" Despite all this, Becky had still did not know how to have an orgasm from sex and had to masturbate herself to orgasm after her boyfriend reached his orgasm from their sex play. After all this, Becky was totally unconvinced that men might have a stronger sex drive.

A woman may want to have sex for emotional reasons (such as a subconscious desire to get pregnant) but this 'female sex drive' is a quite different phenomenon to the male drive to reach orgasm. From their teens men have little conscious choice over their sexual arousal and they quickly learn how to orgasm whereas Becky did not even discover orgasm until her mid-twenties.

Women's sexuality has been hyped so much today that women often believe that they get as much out of sex as men do. Women can be terribly naive about men's sex drive. Men tend to cover up their interest in sex for fear of either offending women or opening themselves up to ridicule. So even within marriage, many women are unaware how often their partner masturbates.

"Male masturbation has always been a secret from which women have been excluded. Even in marriage, few women are given the opportunity to witness it." (p53 Healthy Sex 1998)

It is really quite disturbing that young women today are so unaware of the facts about male sex drive. Every man knows that past a certain point it is difficult for a man to hold back on his instinct to follow through on his sex drive. This is why women who 'lead a man on' may find it difficult to convict a man of rape and, in the UK, rape within marriage has only been a crime since 1991.

Jane Thomas: Author http://WaysWomenOrgasm.org and http://Nosper.com