The Elusive Female Orgasm

by Sarah Treleaven Mar 20th 2009 3:05AM

Categories: Sex

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Women often have trouble having orgasms, and many assume that sexual satisfaction is just a question of finding the right spot. But evidence points to some women having physiological issues that prevent them from reaching climax during sex. Here, we ask Dr. Elisabeth Lloyd, author of The Case of the Female Orgasm: Bias in the Science of Evolution, about the mysteries of the female orgasm.

Q: I was under the impression that all women are capable of orgasm under the right circumstances. Is that wrong?

A: I thought that, too, until I stopped thinking that. When I started out doing my research, I thought that all women were capable of having orgasms and that what they needed was the proper partner or the proper stimulation or social atmosphere to support them. But then I went through surveys from over the last 80 years, and survey after survey found one segment of the population that just didn't have any orgasms at all. I kept wondering about them. Was it true that they just didn't have the right partners or circumstances? And then I ran into this paper on the nerves that go down to the clitoris and around the genitals. They did these tests in women who didn't have orgasms and they found that these nerves were different or weakened in the women who had no orgasms. There was a physiological difference between women who could have orgasms and women who couldn't have orgasms. In other words, there was something different about them.


Q: So these women are incapable or reaching climax?

A: Some of those women could have orgasms with a good vibrator and the right circumstances. Some of them don't have the nerve function to have an orgasm – they just can't.

Q: And that includes with clitoral stimulation?

A: Yes. A third of women rarely to never climax during intercourse. The always or almost always group – and the almost always just means unless they were too drunk or whatever – is about 20 to 25 percent of women. Nearly half of women sometimes do and sometimes don't. And when you look at intercourse without clitoral stimulation, the rarely or never numbers go up another 12 percent.

Q: Is the ability to have an orgasm genetic?

A: There was a good study recently done on twins discussing their heritability given the same circumstances and environment. That study showed a medium or average level of inheritance, so it did show that it was passed on.

Q: There's a lot of debate about whether or not the female orgasm serves an evolutionary function. You believe that it arose by accident and doesn't serve any evolutionary purpose?

A: At this point, I think that's where the evidence is. We don't have any evidence that if you have more orgasms you'll have more babies. It plays no role in fertility.

Q: Is there any evidence that women who more regularly have orgasms have more sex?

A: No. And it's so weird and counter-intuitive. But one of the things that Kinsey discovered was that the amount and timing of sex during marriage was almost completely determined by when the man wanted to have sex and also by convenience. For example, most couples have sex on Saturdays. That's a matter of convenience. But when a couple has sex twice a week, Kinsey found that it was because the man wanted to have sex twice a week. That was back then, but I don't know how much that has changed.

Q: Are women having more orgasms now than they were previously?

A: That's a really good question, and the answer within the context of intercourse seems to be no. It's counter-intuitive because we think we know so much more about it now, and people are so much more aware of it now. But according to surveys done in the mid-1990s, the answer seems to be no. They found no greater evidence of female orgasm with intercourse than the females done in the 1920s. It's crazy. But it's more evidence that the issue is physiological.

Q: If women who reached climax started having more sex and babies than those who didn't, is the ability to orgasm something that could become selected for?

A: Yes, if it led to more births. But unfortunately that's not what the evidence indicates, and I know how weird that seems. It should be the most obvious thing in the world that women who have more orgasms have more sex, and more sex means more babies. Part of it is this idea that men are calling the shots when it comes to frequency. The other thing is that it doesn't actually make a difference to fitness, so it can't get a foothold in the selection process.

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