Faking Orgasm to Hide Sexual Dysfunction

There are several excuses that some women use to hide their difficulty or inability to reach orgasm during conventional intercourse, such as claiming that orgasm isn’t very important (the “closeness” is sufficient), or their partners aren’t competent performers (“too fast”), or the partner’s penis isn’t big enough (need a stallion), or female anatomy suffers from “a design flaw,” or that the clitoris is in “the wrong place” (1). This post focuses on the attempt to hide sexual dysfunction by faking orgasms.

First we should note that no woman need feel guilty or blameworthy for any attempt to hide sexual dysfunction. As I have pointed out previously (2), I believe that female sexual dysfunction is often caused by mental castration in childhood by parents and other misguided teachers, so when a woman grows up sexually dysfunctional she can hardly be considered at fault, and since mental castration is not yet popularly acknowledged, attempts to hide the problem rather than admit it and confront it are perfectly understandable.

The classic attempt to fake orgasms is for the woman to make dramatic noises during intercourse, such as “Ooh, ooh, oh, oh, ah, ah…” with increasing pitch and/or frequency to coincide with the male’s approaching climax. The dysfunctional woman attempts to deceive her partner into thinking she is normal and healthy (i.e. sexually functional).

But in reality the build-up to genuine orgasm is a process of progressively deepening relaxation, not increasing “excitement” as the dysfunctional woman mistakenly presumes. It has become a cinematic fashion to portray feverish excitement as normal sexual arousal, but such exaggerated drama is for the goal of story-telling, not realism.

Monkeys in the wild approach copulation very casually, and female monkeys in the laboratory have been measured reaching orgasm within seconds of penetration, without any sound effects, just as male monkeys and sexually functional male humans. If anything, making theatrical sounds distracts the male’s concentration and interferes with relaxation, rendering his orgasm more difficult. I suspect that women who manage to reach orgasm alone with the aid of a medical prosthesis (“vibrator”) do not engage in any audio drama. The only purpose of the woman’s sound effects during intercourse with a partner is to hide the woman’s sexual dysfunction.

I think it’s also safe to assume that male monkeys don’t study sexual techniques to become expert performers to satisfy their mates. Nor do male monkeys try to delay their own orgasm as long as possible to give the female “enough time” to climax too.

When it comes to the question of penis size, the logic of the “big is better” is unconvincing. Relative to body size, all species of monkeys have a smaller penis than human males. In theory, a larger penis is more effective in stimulating the vagina and clitoris (which actually extends internally and along both sides of the vaginal opening). But if that were true, then large vibrators would be more effective than small vibrators, or in the case of the male, being masturbated by a large hand would be more effective than being masturbated by a small hand. But none of these natural extensions of the logic of penis size have ever been verified.

Some men may really believe that a partner faking orgasm is sexually functional, while other men don’t care, and some men pretend to believe it so as not to hurt the woman’s feelings. (Some men fake orgasm too.) In a random telephone survey, most women who admitted faking orgasm (nearly half of those surveyed) said they did it to “please” the partner or to get the act over with. Only 30% of women surveyed said they always have orgasm during “sex” (3). The latter figure is consistent with previous surveys in which two-thirds of women admitted suffering from some form of sexual dysfunction. Strangely, the multiple choice questions did not even include “to hide sexual dysfunction” as a possible answer to the question: Why fake an orgasm?

We may reasonably ask, What is more pathetic: women pretending to have orgasms, or men pretending to believe them? Monkeys and other mammals make no attempt to hide their desire for copulation, nor the obvious pleasure of intercourse. The young see sexual activity modeled on a daily basis as a normal and positive part of life. Monkeys and apes do not grow up sexually addicted by such modeling. Our closest relatives do grow up to become sexually dysfunctional when they are isolated in the laboratory and don’t witness sexual desire and the pleasure of normal intercourse.

Historically I suspect that faking orgasms is a recent phenomenon. In the past when religious dogma had more influence on popular culture, male sexuality was downplayed and female sexuality was denied completely. So if a woman did feel sexual desire or sexual pleasure, she was expected to hide it rather than exaggerate it.

Once when I was a university student a professor was talking about estrus in lower mammals (the period of fertility when females become more receptive to copulation), and I remember a young woman in the class turned red and she looked away to hide her embarrassment. Even today, in some families a “virtuous” woman is expected to act as if she is mentally castrated whether she actually is or not; i.e. she is expected to be uninterested in and unresponsive to sexual stimulation.

That’s one reason why the “spurned woman” was traditionally considered a victim. If a man had a sexual relationship with a woman without following up with marriage, he had enjoyed himself but she (assumed to be “virtuous” and hence uninterested in sexual pleasure) hadn’t.

Sexual desire and sexual pleasure are perfectly normal and natural, and there is good reason to believe that the immature clitoris and penis need stimulation during childhood to allow the relative brain areas to develop healthy sexual function (4). Women’s physical and mental health require that the custom of mentally castrating little girls be stopped.

Even though immature sexual organs aren’t capable of genital intercourse, they may be effectively stimulated through self-masturbation. In the current climate of hysteria over child sexual abuse, that means there needs to be legislative reform that specifically allows parents to teach their children how to masturbate (e.g. by providing access to instructional videos), and specifically allows a parent to give children the opportunity (time and space) to masturbate or engage in sex play (mutual masturbation) with each other. Such children will grow up to become sexually functional adults, and pathetic behavior like faking orgasms will then become a relic of history.

References:

1. The hypothesis of a “design flaw” in female anatomy is quoted in: “The Science of Orgasm.” Barry R. Komisaruk, et al. 2006. The suggestion that the clitoris is in “the wrong place” is by the author of: “The Technology of Orgasm: Hysteria, the Vibrator, and Women’s Sexual Satisfaction.” Rachel P. Maines, 2001.
2. “Sexual Inhibition and Mental Castration.” https://sexhysteria.wordpress.com/2011/04/06/sexual-inhibition-and-mental-castration/
3. “The American Sex Survey: A Peek Beneath the Sheets.” ABC News, 2004. http://abcnews.go.com/images/Politics/959a1AmericanSexSurvey.pdf
4. “Clitoral Erectile Dysfunction.” https://sexhysteria.wordpress.com/2012/06/04/clitoral-erectile-dysfunction/