Why do we need more orgasms?
A major thrust of Susan Stiritz’s talk last Tuesday was that women need to have more orgasms. It’s somehow bad that most women don’t have orgasms on a regular basis. Stiritz is an avowed feminist, and she surely believes that feminism should support more female orgasms. I’m sad that she seems to think this way, because it truly is capitulation to the male understanding of sex, which treats orgasm as sex’s ultimate goal.
What’s so important about an orgasm, anyway? As Stiritz noted, orgasms only total about 10 hours of your entire life. There are a million other things to do in life than come. Granted, sex is part of what it means to be human, but to elevate it to the importance Stiritz did does a disservice to the rest of our humanity. Is getting off really our most pressing concern?
Look, I’m not against sexual education, or teaching kids the facts of life. I haven’t the slightest problem with premarital sex, homosexual sex, group sex or any kind of sex between consenting adults, really. But we need to question equating frequency of orgasms and sexual experiences with quality of sex life.
Let me speak from personal experience. Having sex twice or three times a day didn’t make the sex better. It didn’t make me any happier than when I was having sex once a day. Having a steady partner didn’t make me happier than having several, and vice versa. In fact, as the frequency of having sex decreased, the quality of each sexual experience generally increased. Too much sex desensitized me, making it increasingly difficult to be satisfied.
This idea may seem counterintuitive, but it isn’t new. Jewish law, for example, mandates a two-week period every month where husband and wife don’t even touch to enhance the quality of the couple’s sex life, according to an article by Rabbi Manis Freidman on Chabad.org. Just think of how great the sex would be if you had two weeks to build up desire.
Strictly in terms of maximizing physical pleasure, then, we should limit sex, not multiply it like mating rabbits. Throwing mental pleasure or satisfaction into the mix tilts the scales even further. I’ve largely abstained from sex in the last year, and I’ve been quite happy for it. It’s such a psychological relief to not obsess over getting laid or getting off; I’ve been able to find better uses for my energy in my schoolwork, my hobbies and my friends. As a hedonist, I’m much better off with less sex.
Another point of Stiritz’s that troubled me was her call for more masturbation-self-love, as she called it. Our egos are big enough, thank you. We sure as heck don’t need more self-love on this campus and in this country. And if masturbation truly does provide a more powerful orgasm than intercourse for women, and if orgasm is our focus, then why have intercourse at all? Indeed, why have any sort of coupled sex? It would be more efficient and pleasurable to do it yourself.
Call me old-fashioned, but couple (or even group) sex is a necessary part of life. It’s not about emotional intimacy, because sex doesn’t need that. It’s not about physical pleasure, because you can get yourself off easily enough. Sex is about establishing a basic relationship of human reciprocity. In its most developed forms, that includes emotion, commitment and the like. But even in a one-night stand, the partners are pooling their respective talents for mutual benefit. I submit that unsatisfying sex is mainly the result of selfishness on the part of at least one of the partners, medical and psychological problems notwithstanding.
Do we need sex ed? Absolutely. Bring on the contraceptive literature, the human anatomy textbooks and Masters and Johnson. Get people comfortable with the idea and help them overcome the socially induced shame. But don’t treat sex as a value-free activity. If the value of sex is pleasure, then be honest and comprehensive in the utility calculations. And if the value of sex is human contact, then maybe we should encourage more orgasms, but only those caused by partners.
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