I have been on a podcast kick lately. From Call Her Daddy to Match Made in Manhattan, I have been listening to a lot of random people talking about sex and relationships on the daily. Yet, nothing has blown my mind as much as Wendy Zukerman’s concept of the ‘Orgasm Gap” and its perpetuation of the ‘Primacy of the Penis’.
Wendy Zukerman
Wendy Zukerman is the host of the science podcast Science VS (available on Spotify and other streaming platforms). In the show, Wendy rips apart social media myths using science. She has covered everything you could possibly imagine: intermittent fasting, the meaning of dreams, Ayahuasca… you name it!
Nonetheless, her most popular episode since its release in 2015 is ‘Orgasms’. An hour dedicated to the questions: Why aren’t women enjoying sex as much as men? Is it social or biological? Is it our fault as women?
Feel free to listen to the full episode, but if you are in a rush, this is what I think we should all take from it.
The Discomfort Attached to Female Sexual Pleasure
Throughout the past century our society has been associating misogyny and sexism with the infamous “wage gap”. Given that we live in a capitalist society, it is not surprising that we search for inequality at an economic level. But have we been missing out on other very important indicators of male ‘superiority’?
There are many gaps between the female and male experience and perhaps one of the most unexpected is the sexual gap.
As a teenager, I personally was extremely uncomfortable with the thought of being sexual. Sexually active, sexualised; if it had the word sex in it, I would be running in the opposite direction. I thought I was the only fifteen year old girl who was uncomfortable with ‘sex’ and it wasn’t until I came to university that I realised this was a common trend amongst women in my generation.
We were now okay with the word ‘sex’ but when it was followed by ‘pleasure’, we all became fifteen year old girls again.
Enter the Orgasm Gap.
The Orgasm Gap
The Orgasm Gap is a common term used in sex studies to describe the disparity in sexual pleasure experienced by men and women during intercourse. Now, this sounds very professional, but what it essentially means is that heterosexual men are enjoying sex more than heterosexual women.
A survey cited by Zukerman in her episode concluded that out of a group of 500 heterosexual men, 95% said they orgasmed frequently during sex with a member of the opposite sex. Meanwhile, only 65% of the heterosexual women surveyed could say the same.
At first, surveyors thought this could be due to biological differences, so a second survey was carried out amongst lesbian women. This time, more than 85% of the women affirmed that they frequently had orgasms with their same-sex partners. So, definitely not a biological issue.
Perhaps this is due to men not knowing the female reproductive organ well enough? Well, a similar survey tried to test men’s knowledge of the location of the clitoris. More than 90% of the men were, surprisingly, able to find it without hesitation.
So, why are they not putting this into practice?
The ‘Primacy of the Penis’
In her interview on Emma Chamberlain’s podcast, Anything Goes, Zukerman referred to the issue of the ‘Primacy of the Penis’.
This term is used to describe the prioritisation of masculine sexual pleasure. It exposes how our use of language when discussing sexual pleasure has created a pattern where sexual pleasure has strictly masculine connotations.
Flashback to your teenage years. Do you remember the boys in your school talking freely about masturbation, sexy women, and sexual positions? I do! In fact I remember very clearly a conversation I had during a ski trip with my guy friends. We had just sat down after a long day on the mountain and we were discussing the positive health effects masturbation had on men. We were thirteen! We were all very aware of the link between wellness and sexual pleasure for men, but did we ever stop to discuss the benefits it had for women? No.
This being said, no shame on teenage boys for being comfortable with their sexuality. What I am trying to bring to the foreground here is the gap between men and women. We should not ban these conversations amongst boys; instead we should encourage girls to have them too.
By engaging in conversations on male sexual pleasure and forgetting to address female sexuality altogether, we are repeating misogynistic patterns of behaviour that will be translated into every aspect of our daily lives.
Thankfully, social media has provided us with many female voices who are willing to open up this conversation to women. Zukerman, Alex Cooper, and Gweneth Platrow are all great examples.
So, if you still do not have a New Year’s Resolution (better late than never), why not set yourself the goal of becoming more comfortable with your own sexuality? Explore your body, get to know it, and most importantly, talk about it!