Sex

      Sources of Envy

      10 per cent of women never experience orgasm.

      20 per cent occasionally do.

      50 per cent sometimes do.

      20 per cent usually do.

      10 per cent always do.

      Or so the current figures say. But figures change. Someone in the 10 per cent ‘always’ category suddenly goes down to the next division: ‘My partner came back from his trip and he’d grown a beard.’ Someone in the ‘never’ group claims now to be in the ‘sometimes’ category: ‘I met another man.’ But the broad pattern is clear. The pleasure so liberally bestowed upon men by nature is only grudgingly given to women.

      Of course women resent it. Listen to any conversation between women when men aren’t there: at the hen night, on the factory floor, over the garden fence, at the English Lit. tutorial. Women may laugh and joke, but actually they’re furious. ‘They can, we can’t, unfair, unfair.’ They may not know what’s biting them, but that’s it.

      But facts are facts and there we are. Deal with it. Life is not fair. Resenting the fact is no recipe for happiness.

      Indeed, the less you think about orgasms the better, since the greatest bar to having one, if we’re to believe the research, is wanting one. Best if they creep up on you unawares. Women are at their most orgasmic when they are least anxious, but wondering why you’re not having one can make you very anxious indeed. Which is ironic, since what you want most you’re going to get least.

      But a lot of life is like that. Want too much and it’s snatched away. An attitude of careless insouciance is more likely to pay dividends.

      Because really, having an orgasm or not doesn’t matter in the great scheme of things, just as having an éclair or not doesn’t matter. Life goes on pretty much the same with or without. There are other pleasures. There’s true love, trust and sensual pleasure. Or, if you’re that kind of person, and I hope you are not, the victory of disdain. ‘See, knew you were no good in bed.’

      But actually, it’s as likely, if not more likely, to be your doing, not his.

      Unfair – but what you are after is happiness. Sexual repletion is not a necessary ingredient. Sexual satisfaction can happen anyway, and is not dependent on orgasm. If women were not so often described as ‘achieving orgasm’ then there would be no sense of failure when they didn’t. The word is wrong, not the thing itself.

      ‘I don’t do orgasm’ might be a more useful way of describing yourself, initially, to a partner, and it’s a bonus to both if it turns out not to be true. But having an orgasm is not a sign of true love any more than the lack of it is the opposite. I have read letters from girls who think they must end a relationship because sex between them and their true love does not conclude with an orgasm for her. Imagining sex has failed, they feel the relationship has failed. It hasn’t – all that has happened has been that she didn’t have an orgasm. So what? Better, more conducive to happiness, just to see orgasm as an additional extra, something special that happens, a bonus, a surprising gift from heaven which descends like manna from time to time, not your natural-born right – and then a whole raft of unhappiness will be wiped from your life.

      In Any Case

      Female orgasm has no apparent usefulness to the human race. This puzzles those who think that everything in nature has to have a purpose, those who personalize evolution as if it knew what it was doing and had some end of perfection in sight. Some say muscular spasms help the sperm on its way to the egg; others doubt it. It is not the longing for orgasm which makes the virgin girl fall in love – though it may be the boy’s. Another inequality, another injustice!

      The peacock’s tail demonstrates sexual attraction in overdose as he struts before the female; his voice would be enough to put anyone off. I don’t suppose nature was after fairness, trying to balance things in the scales of justice, when she gave with one hand and took away with the other.

      Why different birds have different voices no one knows – and no one’s worked out what they’re for – but those with (to our ears) the sweetest voices are the ones who sing the loudest and seem to relish their singing most. I like to think that the thrushes in my garden sing because it occurs to them that it’s a beautiful morning and they feel like acknowledging it. It’s an irrational thought, but it makes me happy for at least ten minutes, wandering in the garden and listening, but then the sun gets too hot and I worry because I haven’t got a hat.

      Some say that, like male nipples and the appendix, female orgasm is a mistake which nature has failed to recognize as a non-necessity. Better to see it as a celebration and a reward just for being alive. But there are others – the exhilaration of ideas, conversations, the company of good friends and so on – which probably add up to more.

       The Joy of the Fake Orgasm

      Just fake. Happy, generous-minded women, not too hung up about emotional honesty, fake. Research tells us that when you do there is ‘activity in the part of the motor cortex that relates to the genitals, the amygdala, but not the deactivation of the cerebral cortex that occurs prior and after a genuine orgasm’. In other words you have to be happy to have an orgasm, but if you have an orgasm you will be happy.

      Activate the positive. Deactivate the negative. That’s what it’s all about.

      The more highly educated you are, the more likely you are to fake orgasm. I am not sure what we deduce from that. Is too much intellectual