Feminism begins with sensation
- Sarah Ahmed, Living a Feminist Life
Hi friends,
This week’s words come with a warning particularly if you’re a member of my family, someone I once taught or you’re not at a life stage where your attention is grabbed by the prospect of honest revelations about women’s sexual pleasure in midlife. I’d suggest you folks take your leave this week. I’ll be back with something vanilla for you next Sunday.
Why am I using my Substack to broadcast something so personal? Well, because I can’t find anyone else talking about it. If you can, please lead the way. I get it: it’s sensitive stuff – literally – but I can’t be alone and I want to talk about it with you. I’m also buoyed by Lauren Elkin who has me punching the air this week reading Art Monsters: Unruly Bodies in Feminist Art. This book is giving me a rich perspective on why it’s ever more vital we make art that attempts to articulate what it feels like to really live in these precious, porous bodies of ours.
“The first person is arguably the only voice with any political urgency, but one that has often been denied women and other marginalised people… It’s rejected or minimised for being small, anecdotal, irrelevant… Particular instead of universal. We get accused of being narcissistic, inappropriate. We say too much; we overshare. (The persistence of feelings!) Anything women say about their lives is suspect.”
Narcissistic.
Inappropriate.
We say too much; we overshare.
Often, I agonise over whether I’m inappropriate. Whether I’ve said too much. If I’ve overshared. I’ll feel it when I hit publish on this post but I’m going to anyway.
And in that spirit, I’m not going to be shamed into silence. I have a right to pleasure and so do you.
You in?
I’ve lost my orgasm.
Well, that’s not strictly true. It’s not completely vanished but achieving it has become fucking painful. Migraine-inducing and with an ever-narrowing set of conditions attached, to be frank. This is brand new for me. I’ve never struggled before and would have said for two and a half decades I found it “easy.”
I was smug about that.
For the past six months or so, though, I’ve been tilted off my axis. I’ve been assured it’s not a medication thing. I know it’s not a lifestyle thing nor a mental thing either because – weirdly – my orgasm’s become elusive while I’ve been otherwise enjoying a resurgence in desire and overall good feelings the likes of which I can’t recall for many a year.
A few things have happened to bring this sexual renaissance about but let’s summarise and say I’m no longer touched-out by my children and have come to rediscover some of the reasons I married my spouse. I also like my body and have been working hard at making it strong and healthy to combat the impacts of perimenopause. I strongly suspect my current troubles are hormonal, which is making my campaign for something stronger than vaginal oestrogen ever more fraught. Despite taking this issue to my GP three times since March along with the night sweats, the joint aches, the GI and the urinary tract symptoms, the blood work just isn’t indicating HRT, she tells me. Incidentally, it has been able to diagnose me with Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS) at the ripe old age of 41. Weren’t all those years of querying my non-existent periods, my struggles to conceive, my adult acne and excess facial hair indicative of the need for a fairly routine blood test? Obvs not.
This isn’t a GP-bashing post, btw. I moved GPs as often as I moved flat in my late teens and early twenties. The practice I’m registered at now works an appointment system that means I can see one if I want to, but that’s at the expense of continuity of care. I don’t tend to see the same one twice so I have to start at the very beginning when I present with a symptom (or two). They have ten minutes to get to know me; diagnose me.
Anyway, you can read all about some of that in this post from a few months back:
But back to my orgasm. Why is it that when sex feels easier than it has in many a year, I have the motivation to have it, get turned on easily and am really enjoying all the ancillary action, that I can’t come? It feels cruel especially because I can almost get to it and then, Golden Snitch-style, it darts away. I might get close again but then all of a sudden I can’t even see it. It’s no longer tantalisingly in reach. It’s kind of… dissolved and, along with it, all pleasant sensation. I’m numb.
Like I said, I never used to have a problem. To illustrate: when I was in my late teens, I spent some of my pay on gadgets from the Ann Summers shop only in part to give my flatmates something to shriek about. Whenever a new item crossed the threshold, one particularly invested friend would stand in the hallway beside my (closed) bedroom door and time me to see how long it took for me to come. We were highly evolved by turn-of-the-century standards, and I was (probably) breaking some speed records. Perhaps I should’ve been working as a sex toy tester instead of a barista during my undergraduate years?
Even during the baby and toddler years, I’d always come if and when we did muster up the energy or inclination. And I was grateful for that. It wasn’t effortful. It was efficient and pleasurable and then I didn’t have to think about it again for some weeks. Maybe months, all told.
But now? Well. In the absence of HRT I’ve been dabbling with a Chinese herb called Tongkat Ali and have resorted to Viagra from the internet. Yes. Viagra. From the internet. I can report that it does something, but not enough. It’s not sustainable at £4.50 for half a pill either, and spontaneity is a thing of the past if I want to get within sniffing distance of even an unsatisfactory climax.
So, woe is me. I can’t come and I’m sad. I read this back and wonder if I’m just the new Naomi Wolf, crying about her lost orgasm while the world burns. Some women never come. Some do, but only sometimes. Where do I get off prioritising my pleasure over a whole lot of other things, and not just that but telling you all about it?
Because it matters to me.
I could tell you that it didn’t and that I’m OK not orgasming as powerfully or easily now I’m in my 40s. That it’s about the entirety of the pleasurable experience. But that would be a lie. As sex educator and therapist
tells us, “orgasm is only as important as you decide it is for you and your sexuality.”1 Well, I’m telling you I’m not willing to let it go without a fight.Sidebar: this is not a post about the so-called “orgasm-gap”2 between women and men in heterosexual relationships but there’s plenty out there you can read on that if you’re keen to engage with the discussion around orgasm as an issue of gender justice. What, though, I am interested in is exploring the psychology of stating that orgasm isn’t important, because I think the two are linked. Several studies have found that in women’s definitions of sexual pleasure, having an orgasm played a minor role as compared to other aspects like emotional intimacy or partner satisfaction3. But do women say this because they really believe it or because they’re so conditioned by patriarchy, which encompasses a stymying of sexual agency aka discovering what you like, articulating it, pursuing it and getting it? Even with shifting gender roles, some US studies have argued that women are still conditioned to act passively rather than agenticly when it comes to their sexual encounters.4 The “done to” rather than the “done with,” let alone the “doer.”
Our language around this perhaps reveals something important. Men want to fuck women. Do women feel comfortable announcing they want to fuck someone? Or are they having sex? Making love (sorry, I hate this one)? Think about those verbs for a min. Maybe I actually do want to fuck someone? Maybe you do, too? Maybe if you say that out loud you’ll have a better experience the next time you’re naked with a/your person. Though, for the record, there’s no amount of verb-play fixing my situation.
If you need yet more evidence, try this on for size:
“Sexual agency is correlated with sexually pleasurable outcomes, yet research shows that many women restrict the expression of sexually agentic behaviours for fear of backlash in [heterosexual] sex. Acting in accordance with traditional sexual norms, consequently, might protect individuals against social penalties and the risk of being perceived as a less desirable partner.”5
What this makes me think about is the way we’ve been conditioned to restrict, diminish or make more palatable our expression of sexuality. This applies in both life and art and is what Elkin is at pains to interrogate in Art Monsters, too. Even in 2024, when women in all their squishy, unruly, messiness articulate a sexuality that sits outside of demure or passive or which dares breach a good-taste boundary, they’re punished. Censored. Othered.
Monstered.
In truth, I feel somewhat monstered in writing this. In revealing to you how important a specific type of sexual experience is to me, I wonder if you’ll be disgusted. Feel like slamming your laptop shut and shaking your head at this woman who’s daring to write about wanting to come hard. It’s not an erotic post by any stretch, but I am talking about what makes me tick and maybe that causes you to recoil?
Maybe ask yourself why.
But none of this is new. In Art Monsters, Elkin recounts the consistent backlash that performance artist Carolee Shneemann endured throughout a career that sought – as much performance art in the decade that followed the legalisation of abortion and the introduction of the pill – to explode the taboo of the female body as a sexual agent in and for itself.
In 1975, she performed Interior Scroll, a naked reading of a scroll pulled from her vagina as part of the exhibition Women Here and Now as an attempt to position her body at the centre of her art. For Shneemann, a woman is not an object of male desire but rather a subject who can and should feel pleasure. Gaslighting, specifically of men convincing women that their own pleasure should be the focus of intercourse, had – in Schneemann's view – forced women into submission.
Liberation, she argued, allowed women to reclaim (I argue, claim) their own pleasure and the equal importance of their orgasms to that of their male sexual partners. To not see sex as an act of servitude, but one that might serve their own desire. She was lambasted for this. Of course she was. But 50 years on, I wonder how far we’ve come when an academic debate still rumbles on in some quarters as to the purpose of female orgasm6. As reproductive rights are squeezed and the trad wives movement that
wrote searingly on this week gathers pace on both sides of the Atlantic, we need to take this seriously. “Feminism begins with sensation,” remember? Sensation as in to feel, yes. But also, in causing one. Come the fuck on.So let’s agree that women’s right to orgasm is a political issue and add to the above that recent research has found both women and men (still) believe that men are “more deserving of orgasm than women in both casual and committed sexual encounters”7 and the idea that women, on the other hand, do not need orgasms for sexual satisfaction persists8. Maybe that is you. Maybe it’s all about the physical intimacy with another human or the sense of connection sexual encounters offer you, and that’s brilliant. If it’s enough for you, that is. If you’re truly at peace with that, having suitably interrogated your beliefs around sex and roundly reject you’ve been conditioned to accept it.
Some studies do seem to contradict the ones I’ve cited above, suggesting that orgasm rates are even more important for women’s than men’s satisfaction. One such couples’ study revealed that orgasm consistency was significantly associated with sexual satisfaction for females, but not for males9. Really? Well, it turns out it’s not that simple. Of course it isn’t. These results are limited by the very small variance in men’s orgasm frequency — above 90% for most of the men in the sample. Sorry, men orgasm in 90% of sexual encounters, while for women that figure bounces around the mid 60s if they’re lucky? No wonder they don’t say that orgasm is as important. They’re not used to not having one. They likely put that one in ten occurrence of zero-coming down to being tired or hungover or rundown or something fleeting that they don’t have to concern themselves about in the longer term. Unlike the male participants in the study, it was found that women reported desiring an orgasm frequency rate that was markedly greater than their current frequency rate.
In plainspeak: women want to come more than they do. So why aren’t they getting what they want?
Before I get off my soapbox, order (another) sex toy and book in for some acupuncture, what about this. Because in seeking sexual satisfaction in the form of good orgasms, we may be doing more for the personal and the common good (as well as our floundering NHS) than we ever thought an orgasm was capable of:
“Not only is orgasm physiologically rewarding thanks to the substantial release of dopamine, but by activating the cerebellum, orgasms are associated with increased relaxation, improved sleep, pain relief, increased immune system functioning, and positive mental health like decreased anxiety and depression.”10
I have another GP appointment booked for next week to discuss these and other symptoms of my perimenopause. Maybe I’ll lead with this quote and see what it gets me?
Lindsay x
The "Orgasm Gap" - Confidence and Joy by Emily Nagoski (substack.com)
We need to talk about the orgasm gap — and how to fix it | (ted.com)
Goldey KL, Posh AR, Bell SN, van Anders SM. Defining pleasure: a focus group study of solitary and partnered sexual pleasure in queer and heterosexual women. Arch Sex Behav. 2016
Joshi SP, Peter J, Valkenburg PM. Scripts of sexual desire and danger in US and Dutch teen girl magazines: a cross-national content analysis. Sex Roles. 2011
Dienberg, MF., Oschatz, T., Piemonte, J.L. et al. Women’s Orgasm and Its Relationship with Sexual Satisfaction and Well-being
Pfaus JG, Quintana GR, Mac Cionnaith C, Parada M. The whole versus the sum of some of the parts: toward resolving the apparent controversy of clitoral versus vaginal orgasms. Socioaffect Neurosci Psychol. 2016
Klein V, Conley TD. The role of gendered entitlement in understanding inequality in the bedroom. Soc Psychol Personal Sci. 2021
Colson M-H. Female orgasm: myths, facts and controversies. Sexologies. 2010
Leonhardt ND, Willoughby BJ, Busby DM, Yorgason JB, Holmes EK. The significance of the female orgasm: a nationally representative, dyadic study of newlyweds’ orgasm experience. J Sex Med. 2018
Dienberg, MF., Oschatz, T., Piemonte, J.L. et al. Women’s Orgasm and Its Relationship with Sexual Satisfaction and Well-being
THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOUUUUUUUU for vocalizing EVERYTHING here and sayin' it put LOUD! Every woman whatever age she is deserves to reach orgasm and experience that and it's lovely during sex with another someone but also just as pleasurable (sometimes more) when you part with "Hand Solo" 😉 or something vibracious. This post has me asking if you're getting enough goji, maybe there's something in your diet that could help spur things on? Maybe it's time to order the Kama Sutra if you haven't already and make it a kind of recipe book where you try a different dish every week (every day? Every hour?) I think menopause really is a stage where our bodies begin to go crazy like it's our last hurrah or something but having been menopausal for many years now, I can attest, my own desire has not ever dissipated nor thankfully my ability to play every note on the xylophone if you get my meaning. So I hope hope HOPE this can be resolved for you Lindsay!!! I KNOW you can do this and when you resolve it on all our behalf's you better fucking write about it!!!
Finally I will add: I've always been somewhat inappropriate in speaking about sex/my body/fucking. Now when I look back I wonder if it was my ADD that I didn't generally have a filter. But I realized long ago that whatever I said was often deemed inappropriate. I spoke up. I spoke back. I just wouldn't shut up. And when that's the norm and the alternative is silencing yourself to make others comfy, then you realize perhaps the best approach is that you begin to worry less about what other people think. Which is very VERY VERRRRRRRY freeing.
Also I laughed out loud at this gem of a paragraph: "So, woe is me. I can’t come and I’m sad. I read this back and wonder if I’m just the new Naomi Wolf, crying about her lost orgasm while the world burns. Some women never come. Some do, but only sometimes. Where do I get off prioritising my pleasure over a whole lot of other things, and not just that but telling you all about it?"
Where do you get off indeed? And how? And why? And wherefore? And please don't stop telling us!!! I adore your courage and your zero BS, no-nonsense approach to getting shite spoken about and resolved. You GO, Glaswegian Girl! 😘❤️😅😎
Definitely not slamming down my laptop lid ;)