A recent study conducted by leading Australian and British sex researchers found that women who have sex with other women have a significantly improved chance of achieving orgasm. Is this good news for lesbians or does it reflect lamentable shortcomings in men's awareness of female sexuality? Croydon J Hounslow takes a deep breath and dives in...

The announcement of these findings in the Journal of Sex Research may have deeper implications for psychologists, sociologists and sexologists, but in the minds of those of us who are less well educated about such things it provokes certain inevitable reactions. My immediate and no doubt tragically male reaction to reading this was to think (and not for the first time) “Good God, I wish I was a lesbian!”, immediately followed by the slightly less whimsical “In that case, why on earth are there any straight women left?”. Now before we start, I should acknowledge that I am fully and painfully aware of just how clownishly ridiculous both of those sentiments are; but, not to put too fine a point on it, I am prone to bouts of knee-jerk idiocy. I think it's a male thing.

So, women who have sex with other women, based on the responses of 19,307 Australians regarding their most recent sexual encounter, are 7.1% more likely to achieve orgasm during sex than their exclusively heterosexual counterparts. “Hooray for boobies!” cries my mind on some cro-magnon level “simple maths: the more boobies the better the sex! Ug!”. As so often happens, I then second guess myself and realise I'm being, if you'll pardon the pun, a total tit.

I decide to look at things in a different, and frankly less appealing way; why is there such disparity in these figures? This isn't the 1950s, why aren't men doing a better job of pleasuring their female partners? Apart from the obvious cliched claim that a same sex partner is by definition a better lover as they 'know their way around the equipment', is there a lesson that straight men can learn from this? In fairness, it seems a little bit strong to start trying to draw such conclusions on the basis of a single percentage figure, a return to the survey results seems in order. Let's look at them from a slightly different angle:

Percentage of exclusively heterosexual women who said that they did not achieve orgasm during their last sexual encounter: 31.1%

Percentage of homo(and presumably bi)sexual women who said that they did not achieve orgasm during their last sexual encounter: 24%

Percentage of men (no significant difference based on sexuality) who said that they did not achieve orgasm during their last sexual encounter: 5.2%

Wow! Put it that way and suddenly it seems that straight women aren't trailing quite so badly after all, 24% of women who have same sex encounters are still going without orgasm, whereas men... Actually if we're honest about it chaps, it's hardly too surprising is it? A woman's orgasm is something achieved through subtlety, patience and not inconsiderable skill whereas most men could probably punch it repeatedly for long enough and eventually get there!

Page 1 of 2 :: First | Last :: Prev | 1 2 | Next