Should We Expand Definitions Of Sex To Shut The Orgasm Gap?
Narrowing the definition of sex to just penetration is like narrowing the definition of a meal to just a single dish and a single course. For some people, it is a workable definition but it misses out so much of the joy and beauty and meaning of what sex is about.
Most people, but particularly women, people with vaginas, trans and nonbinary people, and people who are in LGBTQ relationships know the joys of touches, tongues and toys. So much pleasure comes from everything around penetration.
This begs the question of why such a narrow definition of sex continues to endure, not just in the wider cultural consciousness but in academia.
Closing The Orgasm Gap
A study published in Sexual Medicine explored trends surrounding the orgasm gap and how this changes as people age.
The topic is not the problem by itself; there is a trend of women having fewer orgasms than men, one that is backed up by decades of analysis as well as the experience of many people.
There were a few issues with the study, in part because it was the first to explore it in the context of age, but the biggest problem by a significant margin was the question that was asked.
The question asked about the average rate of orgasm during sexual intercourse, on a scale of zero per cent for never up to 100 per cent for all the time.
There are always issues with sample-based studies like this, but the big problem was less methodology and more the actual question itself.
Sex is more than penetration, but whilst sexual intercourse can mean fingers, tongues and toys, it is almost always taken to mean penetrative sex with a penis.
The problem here, as studies have shown and most people are more than aware, many women and people with vaginas are far less likely to orgasm that way, it leads to less intense orgasms for some people and others cannot orgasm at all this way.
This small issue not only potentially warps the results by discounting orgasms that come from foreplay, touching and tasting, but also is indicative of a wider issue with so many people’s understanding of sex.
It pushes a rather heteronormative idea of sex, that the only type of sex worth exploring academically is penetrative, which is not only far from reality but also ends up widening the orgasm gap more than it should.
Much like how the ideal time spent having sex should count more than just when the penis goes in, sex should be considered much more broadly than it currently is.
This is not only good for presenting a view of what sex really is for people who do not fit into a heteronormative bubble, but it also helps straight women by making it clear that those touches, those kisses, those embraces, those playful sweeps with a vibrator, all matter and are all part of sexual joy.
Closing the orgasm gap requires us to expand the definition of sex as many academic studies see it to better reflect how we all do it.