Unfortunately, there are still many inequalities between men and women in today’s society—hookup culture is no exception. From an analysis of hookup culture, it is apparent that there is specifically a discrepancy between the sexual desires of the men and women during a hookup.
It is clear that females experience a lack of sexual pleasure compared to their male counterparts. Females experience a lack of sexual pleasure during hookups as they seem to solely surround the sexual pleasure of the male. This deviation between men’s and women’s sexual pleasure during hookups can be tied to the historically sexist gender roles that are still plaguing society today. As a heterosexual female, it is frustrating that women still aren’t treated equally. These hookups are preserving male dominance and female compliance which is specifically seen in oral sex practices.
Oral sex is prominantly sided towards the men’s pleasure as women are simply seen as the “givers” and not the “receivers.” Women often stated that they would give oral sex without expecting anything in return. So why is this? Apparently, this one-sided practice can be traced back to men not waiting to wait for their female partner to become aroused (Hunt & Curtis, 2006). Impatient men would request that the female perform oral sex on them to provide “natural lubrication.” Here is a deep-rooted, gender-biased reason behind this practice that revolves around male desires which needs to be crumpled up and thrown away. It is 2020 and women do not have any room to deal with this disgusting double standard. I think that by revealing the roots of this practice it sheds some light onto the problem of “pleasure equality” during hookups.
In an article published in the 1980s, it discusses the female orgasm stating, “despite more has been written about the female orgasm than practically any other aspect of human sexuality, it is still largely a will-o’-the-wisp that defies accurate scientific description” (Levin, 1981). A table then follows with thirteen different authors each defining/describing the female orgasm in a different way. It could be concluded that these thirteen male authors do not know what a female orgasm is because men do not know how to make women achieve them. In the 1980s scientists were trying to understand the biology of the female orgasm and in doing so, revealed some gender bias along the way. They found that many women only had an orgasm after several years of marriage while their husband would orgasm almost every time (Levin, 1981). This article is very relevant today because it highlights the complexity of female reproductive anatomy and connects to now (40 years later) where most women are still not sexually satisfied with the man they are engaging with.
I thought it would be interesting to see if this complexity had anything to do with the difference in anatomy between the male and female reproductive systems but I found that it does not. In “Becoming Cliterate: Why Orgasm Equality Matters – And How to Get It,” Mintz describes this orgasm gap as a cultural problem, rather than a biological one. The way that the female orgasm is shown on TV and in pornography misrepresents how females achieve orgasms. This orgasm gap is even more prevalent in hookup culture where only 4% of women reach orgasm during a first-time hookup with that partner while men can almost always orgasm through sexual intercourse. For most women, sexual pleasure is achieved externally through clitoral stimulation but this is not how most sexual pleasure is portrayed in TV shows or in pornography. In most films, women are seen “pleasured” from vaginal sex but just because a woman is seen to be enjoying herself, it doesn’t mean she is. A lot of women fake orgasms simply to increase the pleasure of thier partner and/or to finish sex earlier. Mintz also explains that a lot of men and women are not aware that this is how many females achieve orgasm and that this is a small contribution to the orgasm gap.
So basically, heterosexual men need to get educated onto how to actually please women because we will not put up with this forever. While I did not mention sexual pleasure between lesbians, it is because there is no orgasm gap between woman-woman hookups, only between man-woman hookups.
Sources
Currier, D. M. (2013). Strategic Ambiguity. Gender & Society, 27(5), 704-727.
Hunt, A., & Curtis, B. (2006). A genealogy of the genital kiss: Oral sex in the twentieth century. The Canadian Journal of Human Sexuality, 15(2).
Levin, R. J. (1981). The female orgasm – A current appraisal. Journal of Psychosomatic Research, 25(2).
Mintz, L. (2017). Becoming cliterate: Why orgasm equality matters — and how to get