Between the Bedsheets: A Survey on Female Gratification During Sex

Sex. It’s on all of our minds, whether we’re sexually active or not. Unfortunately, much of it is bad sex. What is bad sex, you ask? Well, as I sat down with some of the 5C’s sexiest students, they gave me the lowdown on getting down. While bad sex can be as simple as a man not getting an erection or just not having an emotional connection, one male student said that for him, “if you cannot get the woman to orgasm then I think that it is considered awful sex because obviously [the guy] is not doing something right.”

Ah—the female orgasm; such a beautiful mechanism of the female body, and yet she can be so elusive sometimes. After conducting an informal survey and a few interviews with students on the 5Cs, I discovered that many students, both males and females, concluded that the lack of female orgasm leads to bad sex.

So what do we do in times of crisis like this? Unfortunately, too many women (including myself) turn to Cosmo, a magazine which will only leave you high and dry…and horny, too.  Cosmo, which is supposed to be a magazine geared toward empowering women, both in and out of the bedroom, sure does spend a lot of its time reporting on male pleasure and giving women an infinite number of ways on how to please men in the sack. Just glance at the cover of any male magazine, and you’ll find that pleasing women in bed is not their primary concern.

Now don’t get me wrong, I, along with other people interviewed, believe that good sex comes when there is mutual pleasure and orgasms for everyone involved. But magazines send conflicting messages, saying that the female orgasm is amazing while placing heavy emphasis on how to please men, instead of showing women how to achieve maximum pleasure for themselves. One woman surveyed said that, “I feel like society says that women should not get as much pleasure out of sex, or should not masturbate.” She may disagree with these stigmas, but their presence in our society has inhibited even her own ability to talk openly about sex.

Sex can be amazing, though! With the right components, such as having an emotional connection and mutual attraction, it’s possible to have good sex. Yet there are still people who are having bad sex. A huge factor in having good sex is communication. Another woman surveyed lamented, “ I used to feel that my male partner’s satisfaction should come before mine, so sometimes this would result in me performing sexually when I didn’t want to or when it was physically painful… and he was very upset when I told him how I felt.” No person who is invested in seeing you have good sex would ever deny you the ability to communicate about it. As many people reported in the survey and interviews, your partner is the best resource for enhancing your sex life. While this woman’s male partner had no real reason to be upset with her about communicating her feelings, his anger might have stemmed from the high amount of pressure in the male community to please women sexually.

One male interviewed said that, “ if [the female partner] is not pleasured, then I am not happy, [I’m] unsatisfied, upset, and demoralized. Feeling the need to please her is imperative… because [there is] a stigma of being male in this society that if you can’t perform [sexually] then there is something wrong with you as a person…they are frowned upon in the male community.” A lot of this pressure emanates from the ambiguity shrouding the ideologies around masculinity; as sociologist Michael Kimmel explains and educator Harry Brod reiterates, “For a man to admit that he has questions about masculinity is already to admit that he has failed at masculinity.”[1] As has been shown by many male responses, sex is important to defining manhood. The perception seems to be that, if a man has to ask his partner if he is pleasing her, then he is failing at his role of being a man.

Yet even with all this supposed attention that men are spending on making sure that women are sexually gratified, women are still having bad sex. One woman surveyed wrote, “I often feel pressured to make sure a guy orgasms when we are hooking up. That being said HE doesn’t seem to feel like he has to make ME come. It’s quite the double standard.” This sad fact might be due to the reason that not a lot of men even know what a real female orgasm feels like—sound absurd? I know, but it just might be the truth, as one male interviewed described the female orgasm as “the candidness of her facial features…smiling and/or shaking.” A description which, in some cases, may be true. But all of these indicators can also be easily faked. Not to mention the fact that they appear frequently in porn.

Relying on porn as your major source of sexual mores might be to blame for these false indicators. One woman interviewed exclaimed that when researching sex, especially for first-timers, people will “turn to porn and that’s not what it’s like at all.” Many people forget that porn is simply another form of entertainment, like a musical. Porn is not solely the truth about sex.

While orgasms vary from person to person, one telltale indicator of the female orgasm was described from a woman interviewed as “uncontrollable intervaginal spasms.” In a focus group of women, one woman who prefers to have sex with women pondered, “I don’t know how men don’t know a woman is faking it because I know.” Another woman explained that her ability to identify a real female orgasm came from her personal experience of being a woman; she also pointed out how the cyclical nature of faking an orgasm can only be detrimental to the male’s sexual performance, as a man can “get married and sixty years later still not know sh*t all because the first woman he had sex didn’t have the nerve to say that was horrible.”

If it’s so detrimental to our sex lives, why do women fake orgasms? Don’t women deserve to get off too? A man cannot and most likely would never fake it, and even though a woman can, what is really the point behind doing it? You might as well not have sex at all…

It’s time that we take ownership over our own orgasms. While it is nice that some partners will spend “8 hours down there” and “wait till their hand falls off” to get females to orgasm, nobody should rely on a partner for all the pressure of orgasming. Despite the media’s mixed messages that it is up to the male to make women orgasm, it is, in fact, up to us to make ourselves orgasm.

Experiment! Talk with friends!. Let’s continue to open up the discourse on sex. As one male interviewed said, “I wish sex wasn’t so taboo so that people would talk about how to please people more openly.”

I know engaging in that discourse can be hard (pun intended), so to get the ball rolling, I compiled a list from our very own 5C sexperts—the students surveyed and interviewed—to find what they see as being a real turn-on. So have fun and always be safe!
The Golden Tips
These tips often recurred throughout people’s responses to the survey and interviews. Keep in mind that when trying out any of the tips listed, it is always best to talk with your partner first before trying something new.
1)    Communication– It is always important to consult your partners when having sex. Talk about ways they can better please you and you can better please them.
·      “General communication, seeming really into it, and responding when I communicate that something is working or not feeling as good.”
·      “It’s not about one particular action: sometimes a specific move will work and other times the same move will do nothing. It’s more about watching for a response and improvising from there.”
·      “I listen to her and her body and what she wants.”
·      “She is vocal about what she likes and is not shy about showing it.”

2)    Multitask– Many people surveyed reported that stimulating multiple areas at once will help to facilitate maximum pleasure during sex.
·      “Sucks my nipples while fingering me.”
·      “He mixes penetration and rubbing my clit and I mean oral sex is wonderful too.”
·      “She rubs my clit and uses her other hand to stroke my g-spot.”
3)     Foreplay– A large quantity of people reported that foreplay is fundamental to achieving an orgasm later
·      “A lot of foreplay; building up the emotion and seeing who is going to give in first.”
·      “He goes down on me, kissing me everywhere as he works his way down.”
·      “Kisses and bites my neck, rubs my clitoris, softly strokes my body, strokes my breasts, kisses my inner thigh, licks my clitoris with light, fast strokes.”
·      “He feels every inch of my body during sex, like rubs my back, my thighs and hips.”
·      “It’s usually what they do before: sweet-talking and rubbing my clit before sex makes the sex better.”
4)    Have fun and be enthusiastic– Having sex with just a body is no fun…So make sure to show your partner how happy you are to be with that person.
·      “He playfully pushes me down on the bed and thrusts with a lot of energy.”
·      “Pulls my hair, moans, just the indication that she wants me.”
·      “Being passionate and a bit aggressive, saying he loves me, making sure I orgasm, spending some time with just him and my clit.”
·      “He is great at (and is enthusiastic about) giving oral sex, which feels great, but also makes me feel very sexy and desired.”
·      “He allows me to take my time to climax and he is always willing to switch between intercourse and manual/oral stimulation. It sounds cliché but he tells me I’m beautiful and that he cares about me often while having sex.”
Spicy Tips
These tips are responses from the survey and interviews that are great for spicing things up if you are looking for new and creative ways to please your partner. Once again I remind you that, when trying out any of the tips listed, it is always best to talk with your partner first before trying something new.

1)    “Fingering, touching my neck/choking, holding me down/tying me up.”
2)    “Heavy breathing in my ear.”
3)    “The best thing when fingering a girl is to use 2 fingers and curl them in order to feel this spongy part of the vagina and put pressure on it sporadically.”
4)    “He kisses my collarbones.”
5)    “I like being dominated a bit, and having my partner move my body in new ways…clitoral attention is always nice, too. Some biting, and attention near the neck and clavicles feels nice. There’s something very intimate about just holding hands, or nakedly lying together and stroking the arm with a feather touch.”
6)    “She surprises me with a deep kiss or caresses pleasure points on my body when we are hanging out. Other than casual sex, she also dresses up for me and allows me to buy her costumes or sexy stuff for more planned out occasions. She looks up at me when going down on me and turns me on.”
7)    “She rubs my clitoris. She dry humps me. She French kisses me. She kisses/breathes in my ear.”
8)    “She talks dirty.”
9)    “Moans, growing in intensity.”
10) “He hits the g-spot but not rough or too fast. It’s a slower rhythm that lets it last a longer.”
11) “He kisses my stomach, scratches my back, plays with my nipples, bites my ear, and holds me close to him.”
12) “He kisses me, rubs my clitoris, squeezes my breasts, squeezes and slaps my ass, sucks on my neck.”
13) “Biting…nuf said.”

[1] Gardiner, Judith Kegan. “Studying Masculinities As Superordinate Studies.“ Masculinity Studies & Feminist Theory: New Directions. Ed. Henry Brod. Columbia University Press, 2002. 161-175.