The Orgasm Gap

-- By KatieWaissbluth - 18 Feb 2025

Vulgar exposition .

Frances sits on the toilet dripping John’s cum out of her to avoid another brutal UTI. In her moment of solitude, she thinks of the previous time they’d had sex, last night, where she let him cum on her face. The pro is having a lower risk of UTI and pregnancy, the con being having cum on her face. None of her pros and cons affected their sex life though; their sex life, one year into the relationship, is and always has been about John’s pros and cons.

Having released the dying sperm and the yellowed liquid confidence of two martinis, she returns to say to a half asleep John, “Do you know that you have never made me orgasm? In our whole relationship. Not once. You haven’t even really tried.”

John peaks an eye open, “Are you not enjoying our sex? You seem like you enjoy it.”

Frances frowns, “Sure, I can still enjoy intimacy without orgasm, but it’s been a year. You finish every time, and we stop having sex when you finish. And I feel perplexed at what is happening in your head. Do you think I’m orgasming? Do you care that I’m not? How have you never brought this up before? Do you know where my clit is?”

John silently and swiftly shows her that he knows where her clit is. This makes France feel worse. A week later, John breaks up with Frances on New Years Day, citing being in different places in life, cementing their relationship as entirely devoid of the female orgasm.

What is the orgasm gap?

Think of fraternity brothers Kyle and Chad who pump for 45 seconds to their own completion, avoiding touching the vagina entirely with any appendage that isn’t their dick. Think of John, who may even care deeply for Frances, but is too comfortable in the standard heterosexual routine of sex. Think of shy little Simon from the midwest who never encountered female anatomy in health class and has been too scared to figure it out since. Think of evil Mateo who gets off on the one sidedness of his sex life, collecting orgasms and tossing aside bodies.

Think of the wage gap, with which we are all familiar, but instead of pay disparity, we are dealing with a pleasure disparity. The orgasm gap refers to the disparity in orgasm rates between heterosexual men and heterosexual women. Women report significantly lower rates of orgasm than men in heterosexual encounters. Various studies have men somewhere in the over 94% rate of orgasm in every heterosexual encounter, whereas women typically fall in the 40-60% range. This is not because of some biological elusivity of the female orgasm, as women report over 90% rates of orgasm in homosexual encounters with other women or while pleasuring themselves alone.

So then what is it because of?

Patriarchy, capitalism, capitalism, patriarchy patriarchy, blah blah, men hate women, blah blah, whatever, insecurity, self-hatred, an increasingly isolated and online society, patriarchy, Donald Trump, Andrew Tate, Kobe Bryant, capitalism, men hate women, women never learn to speak up for themselves, patriarchy, Harvey Weinstein, Drake, whatever, rape rape rape rape rape culture. There is an amalgam of nebulous factors at play, but let’s get specific where we can: the media and the misconceptions it perpetuates about the female orgasm.

Movies, television shows, and porn have historically been primarily produced by heterosexual men. (Why? Patriarchy, capitalism, blah, blAH, BLAH!) Humans are primates, and primates learn by imitation. The typical script follows along the lines of 2-3 minutes of passionate kissing that lead immediately to peena-vageena penetration that happens effortlessly. The female character is always exactly wet enough for a hands-free entry, despite having received suboptimal foreplay and no vaginal or clitoral stimulation. The male pumps while the female moans in pleasure. Some may portray a female orgasm at this point, feeding into the male fantasy that their dick is so perfect and powerful as to make a woman cum with no other stimulation or effort, despite the truth of only 10-30% of women reporting the ability to have penetrative orgasms with no clitoral stimulation. Most don’t bother and skip straight to the triumphant male orgasm which promptly ends the sexual encounter. When he is done, we are done.

Why does it matter?

A dead shrimp lays limp frozen on ice at the grocery store. The shrimp has been stripped of its legs, its skin, its eyes. The only remnant of its personhood is the thin strip of shit that remains for an unknowing shopper to consume shortly. The shit filled, grayed shrimp is a being cursed by its body, cursed by its physicality. Its consciousness would be better off untethered to the lonely body splayed out for shoppers to observe. This is how your girlfriend, your casual hook up, feels after you turn over and fall asleep once you’ve come: shrimpified, disassociated, cursed by having a body.

A necessary note

This essay would be incomplete without a mention of the widespread practice of female genital mutilation. The practice is defined as the partial or total removal of external female genitalia (the clitoris) for non-medical reasons. Over 230 millions woman alive today are victims of female genital mutilation, and most incidents happen between infancy and the age of fifteen. There is no medical justification for this mutilation, and it is solely a product of hatred, of the desire to control and restrict women in their sexuality. On the American white feminism end of the Orgasm Gap issue, I will complain about Chad and Kyle affecting the emotional wellbeing of my best friends. One must always investigate the other end of the spectrum, where in this case, women, primarily women of color, are genuinely dying and experiencing torture in order to prevent their orgasm.

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