Good Sex doesn’t always mean an orgasm

 

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Good Sex doesn’t always mean an orgasm

According to science, an orgasm may have very little to do with sexual pleasure.

When the sex toy company Dame Products develops new items, they ask beta testers a variety of questions to determine how well a new design is working for their clientele. Testers are asked to assess the contours of the toy’s body, the strength and rhythms of its vibration, and, for an overall assessment, they’re asked if the product they just tested “got the job done.” As opposed to: “Did you orgasm?”

The Dame team doesn’t rely on euphemism because they’re shy about pleasure and sex. Rather, the phrase “get the job done” is more open-ended; it allows testers to determine for themselves how a product contributed to the success of their sexual experience. And notably, when testers are asked to define what “getting the job done” means for them, the answers are more diverse than you might expect.

Many respondents define “getting the job done” as experiencing orgasm (or, in some cases, a particularly strong orgasm, or several orgasms in a row). But in a survey conducted by Dame during the development of the Pom – a flat, slightly curved vibrator designed to fit in the palm of the user’s hand – 14 % testers reported that they don’t see orgasm as a necessary criterion for a toy to be considered good. Instead of orgasm, these respondents cited “relaxation” or “pleasure” or, in one case “a throbbing clitoris” as their goal – all experiences that can coexist with orgasm but certainly don’t have to.

Data shows again and again that women are more likely than men to struggle with orgasm. Studies report that women are significantly less likely to experience orgasm during heterosexual sex than their male partners, and women experience orgasm-less sex at a higher rate than men. There’s an assumption that the absence of orgasm is the result of an incompetent partner or insufficient stimulation – the kind of problem that vibrators are supposed to solve. So why are some people, who are invested enough pleasure and sex toys to beta test vibrators, also happy with products that don’t result in a big finish?

Alexandra Fine, the CEO and co-founder of Dame Products, says the existence of a significant cohort of people who experience pleasure, enjoy masturbation, but don’t prioritize orgasm is a sign that the way pleasure and orgasm are talked about isn’t fully accurate. Although Fine is personally a fan of orgasms (they’re “done”, she tells me), she things focusing on orgasm as the sole purpose of a sexual experience is too limiting when trying to assess the effectiveness of a sex toy.

“There continues to be a debate about what the function of orgasm is. One function could be getting blood back out of the genitals.”

“Socially we’re taught that [pleasure and orgasm] are one and the same thing,” says Nicole Prause, a scientist at the sexual biotechnology company and research center LiberosCenter who researches what happens in the brain and body during masturbation and orgasm. Orgasm is framed as “the ultimate pleasure, the peak experience.” But maybe pleasure and orgasm are less tightly entwined than assumed. What if experiencing pleasure is more important than having an orgasm?

“There continues to be a debate about what the function of orgasm is,” says Prause. “One function could be getting blood back out of the genitals.” If orgasm is purely a way of flushing blood from the genitals, its connection to pleasure is tenuous: It may feel good most of the time, for most people, but the good feeling isn’t guaranteed or essential. Indeed, people who suffer from persistent genital arousal disorder (PGAD) routinely experience spontaneous orgasms that are more uncomfortable or painful than pleasurable; in the absence of sexual arousal, orgasm is not the same thing.

Orgasm could still be seen as an important component of a sexual experience, insomuch as clearing blood from the genitals helps bodies return to an unaroused state. “But if that is what orgasm is for, then it’s completely disconnected from pleasure,” Prause says. And whether or not a person had an orgasm ceases to be an accurate measure of whether they enjoyed sex or masturbation.

This isn’t to say that people who feel orgasm is essential to their pleasure or sexual experiences are wrong or misguided. Even if orgasm itself isn’t a pleasure response, the fact that it often co-occurs with intense pleasure can lead the brain to associate the contractions of orgasm with that pleasure, making them feel like an essential part of the pleasure response.

If orgasm itself is not the ultimate source of the pleasure experienced during sex and masturbation, it would help to explain some curious things – like, for instance, the fact that some orgasms can be painful, uncomfortable, or even just underwhelming. If your brain doesn’t associate the contractions of orgasm with pleasure, or if an orgasm occurs during an underwhelming sexual episode, those promised heights of pleasure might not arrive – not because you’re doing orgasm incorrectly, but because orgasm isn’t pleasure without the context of intense, exciting stimulation.

Detaching pleasure from orgasm helps explain some of the more confusing results Prause has observed during her studies. During her research, Prause monitors several data points while her subjects masturbate, including their brain activity, presence or absence of anal contractions (generally considered to be a sign of orgasm), and, of course, the subject’s own perception of whether they’ve had an orgasm and how long it lasts.

“A lot of women said they’re having climax and there’s no evidence of contractions,” Prause says. Even more confusing is that some women exhibit similar contraction patterns indicating an orgasm had occurred, yet not all of those women would describe said contractions as orgasmic. “One woman would say, ‘I had an orgasm at that time,’ and another woman would say, ‘I had no orgasm,” she reports. “Some women are clearly waiting for those contractions as a symbol of their climax, and others seem completely independent of it” – perhaps because subjects are identifying orgasm, not as involuntary contractions, but as a major surge of pleasure that occurs independently of that physical response.

Tempting as it is to try to parse which of these women are “really” having orgasms, it’s worth asking why so many thing that question mattes. If women are reporting enjoyment and pleasure without experiencing orgasm, or are identifying pleasure as orgasmic even if it doesn’t look the way orgasm is expected to, chances are good that they’re still reaping the mental and physical health benefits associated with orgasm. On her end, Prause says that the much-discussed “orgasm gap” is only an issue if women who aren’t experiencing orgasm aren’t experiencing pleasure either. If they are experiencing sufficient pleasure, she says, then less frequent orgasm isn’t really a pressing issue.

“a lot of women really struggle to have an orgasm. A lot of women aren’t positive whether they have orgasm or not,” says Fine. But even when orgasm is difficult or impossible to achieve, “there’s pleasure potential for sure,” she says.

Focusing on pleasure is far more likely to lead to enjoyable sexual experiences and to, in the words of Dame Products, “get the job done,” however that’s defined.