ABSTRACT
The common cultural narrative about men's orgasms is that, if anything, they arrive too easily and too quickly. Sex advice for men tends to focus on the need to prolong sexual activity by delaying orgasm. If women don't have orgasms, the narrative about women's bodies suggests that it's because the clitoris is hard to find and complicated to operate; it's shy and persnickety. Lesbians and bisexual women have orgasms about 83 percent of the time. The orgasm gap between men and women in first-time hookups reflects the national average: Women have one orgasm for every three orgasms that men have. Sex education classes, which typically focus more on reproduction than sex per se, discuss male orgasm in the context of ejaculation but usually don't address female orgasm at all. The sexual script involves a "coital imperative", a rule that, if heterosexual people are going to have sex, it must include penile-vaginal intercourse.
