Anorgasmia - inability to orgasm

[GNCQ]

5-10% of women have lived their whole lives without ever having experienced an orgasm.

The statistics in men with primary anorgasmia is about 0.15% so 1.5 in every thousand men will have the same issue.

I have roughly 20 good female friends, so it's possible 1 or 2 or them don't/can't ever orgasm. This is no doubt a feminist issue.

Seeing as some of the psychological causes of primary anorgasmia include bad body image, embarrassment and guilt, I'm not surprised it's more prevalent in women.

Maybe better sex education would help? FGM (basically forced inability to orgasm) affects only women, also perhaps it is possible that women are more likely to be turned off by sex from (bad) early childhood experiences.

It's rather a Taboo subject.
How many women on here can't orgasm?

I personally couldn't imagine my life without the experience, and basically had no idea it was so prevalent in women until recently.

What could feminists do to help?

Do you think your anorgasmia should or could be cured? Are you alright with it?

It is what it is. I've got used to it.
Not sure about a cure. It's not something I would go to a doctor about.
It's not like it's essential is it? How many times do we read on this board "nobody NEEDS sex"?
I don't consider it important enough to visit a doc.

I’m curious to know what a doctor could do about it?

I think I've recently had my first, in my late 30s..... its not what I expected from films, more like a moment of total loss of control and release? No squirting or shaking!!
I felt deeply embarrassed and ashamed about never having done it. I told a friend once while drunk and she was completely flabbergasted. I felt like a total prude. A weird situation because my shame around sex prevented me letting go, but I also felt ashamed about being so repressed!!
I don't remember masturbating when younger - I was raised religious and probably absorbed some shame. I was on the pill, then anti depressants for about 15 years and had no urge.
I do feel pleased I can do it now but it's not completely life changing. I guess if you've been having awesome ones since a young age you're more attached to them.

And I think you can definitely wire someone up to sensors and an MRI and measure that they definitely have had one according to brain regions lighting up and muscular contractions, heart rate, etc. There is a bit of research on this but obviously you're not going to wire most people up to tell...

I guess it’s difficult to recognise if it hasn’t happened to you before. I found out fairly late (mid-late 20s). I guess it’s just about trying different things until you find something that works. I used to think it was mental - but then I got ones with contractions after - and DH has felt those too. Not that it matters whether physical/mental - as long as it feels nice. He is v considerate and patient, which helped and got a subscription to omgyes which gave good ideas.

Yes there aren't always contractions (in fact those are in the minority for me).

It's strange to me in a way, that so many men's lives are completely designed around how they can get their orgasm, they pay for it at the expense of their wives and families, the UK prostitution industry is worth £xxxBillion per year funded almost entirely by men, porn consumers are over 80% men, then if a man has a paraphilia - which is 5% of men, literally their whole lives are arranged in order to get their orgasm.

Yet so many women just don't have them.

I suppose if you've never had one you don't know what you're missing so it's not a big deal on an individual level.
It really isn't "like a sneeze" though! It's like.... Well words are up-thread.

@GNCQ

It's strange to me in a way, that so many men's lives are completely designed around how they can get their orgasm, they pay for it at the expense of their wives and families, the UK prostitution industry is worth £xxxBillion per year funded almost entirely by men, porn consumers are over 80% men, then if a man has a paraphilia - which is 5% of men, literally their whole lives are arranged in order to get their orgasm.

Yet so many women just don't have them.

I suppose if you've never had one you don't know what you're missing so it's not a big deal on an individual level.
It really isn't "like a sneeze" though! It's like.... Well words are up-thread.

I think because for 100s of years women were not permitted to enjoy or discuss sex. Generations before us it was seen as a woman’s duty to have sex. Men did not want or know how to turn a woman on. We had sex to make a baby or to please a man as it was his right to have sex. There are still men today that think it is their right. Just read about a case of a disabled man taking the NHS to court over his right to have sex and therefore a prostitute to be paid for by the state. There are still men today that have no interest in making a Woman organism or any interest in pleasuring a woman at all - just read the relationship boards on here. But it is changing and women are discussing their sex lives on forums like this, asking their GPS to help with their libido. However even that is often a fight and can take years yet men can buy viagra over the counter………..so men’s sex lives are still priority even today.

I think because for 100s of years women were not permitted to enjoy or discuss sex.

Is that true? I thought prior to the 19th century,orgasms were seen as an important part of women conceiving. (Can't look it up just now, on account of actually being in the office for once.)

I doubt anyone knew what an orgasm was prior to the 19th century.

@SwimmingUnderwater

I doubt anyone knew what an orgasm was prior to the 19th century.

Ha - I'm guessing you haven't read Fanny Hill...

I'm guessing you haven't read Fanny Hill...

I innocently picked that from the returned books trolley on a quiet summer day when I was having a boring hour on the check-in desk at the uni library I was working in. I had assumed that Penguin Classics would be worksafe. (I don't know why I assumed it; I did Latin A-level and read some of those in translation as Penguin Classics.)

Anyway, women's orgasms have been known about for a long time.

@SwimmingUnderwater

I doubt anyone knew what an orgasm was prior to the 19th century.

😂 there is plenty of stuff about orgasms in literature going back a VERY long way! 😂😂

So they might in literature. But I doubt that was the case in real life. We were never taught about the clitorus at school or in any sex Ed books. We can’t even get the language correct for females vulva, vagina etc. And reading the boards here it’s still all about men and their sex lives.

There were certainly periods in history where female sexual pleasure was much more acknowledged than at other times. It hasn’t always been assumed that women did not enjoy sex or had no sexual responses.

Early 40s, never orgasmed, have seen therapists but it remains a bit of a mystery. Therapists commented that it was clear looking at me that I have positive body image, so it's not that and I've told them that I was brought up in a household with a totally sensible attitude to sex - neither prudish and forbidding nor inappropriate, and I have never experienced sexual trauma.

The best theory I have to go on was that it's connected with medical treatment at an early age when I was separated from my parents for periods and was encased in plaster below the waist for months on end. I think maybe that happened around the time when children might normally discover... uhm, playing with their bits? And that somehow I missed that window - it just feels like I'm not really connected with my sexual organs. Stuff happens to them and I'm not sure how I feel about it?

I do get a bit annoyed about sex advice that just says 'LOL, get a rabbit and you'll orgasm in 2 minutes flat!' Nope. Have tried toys, and I got to a point where I seemed close, but never quite there.

Then again, I have heard some women don't have massive, shuddering orgasms, so maybe that 'getting close' and then it seemed to peak was it, but because I've been told to expect something earth-shattering I didn't know it.

For me, part of the issue, if it is an issue, is that I don't really want it. I feel like I'm supposed to want it, and I feel bad that it makes DH sad I don't orgasm, but I can't really want it for his sake or because I'm told I should want it. And I don't feel sad for myself as I can't miss what I never had.

@SwimmingUnderwater

I doubt anyone knew what an orgasm was prior to the 19th century.

you do realise the Kama Sutra has been around for a rather long time? And that it has rather a lot to say about not just women's orgasms, but female ejaculation, and recommends that a woman should orgasm first?

Human beings have been making pornographic drawings since we first started scratching on walls with burnt sticks. Do you really think they would have failed to notice that women experience sexual pleasure?

I mean women themselves . Certainly women in Britain. India may be a different matter.

To follow up on what EBearhug said, l remember reading that a few hundred years ago it was believed a woman had to orgasm in order to release an egg, so husbands of the time believed they had to make their wives come first if they wanted an heir.

Ok so we agree then that at some stage women and men knew about the female orgasm. We have gone backwards then in female sexuality.

I'd expect the side effects of medications, and the potential impact on orgasm, is something probably not well articulated and explained to people who need to take these medicines. Perhaps some improvements could be made with better patient - doctor communications, so patient knows what to expect, can try different does, alternatives, etc.

However, the primary anorgasmia case must be very different. I can't really imagine that. I've never heard that mentioned by friends.

I did actually read an article several years ago by Winne Li, where I first heard about that condition goop.com/wellness/sexual-health/a-writer-on-her-decision-to-freeze-her-eggs/

Background: I'd read her book after seeing here speak at an event a few years ago.

I think we have gone backwards and then some. I'm sad to read here how things have gone downhill since even the 80s. I've fond memories of very attentive lovers in the 80s myself.