Joy, pain, obligation and shame: why we need the clit test
Women who have sex with men have alarming rates of unsatisfying, bad and even painful sex. We know that the vast majority of cis women only orgasm through clitoral stimulation. And yet you wouldn't know this from the sex we see on screen.
Of course, not all women have a clitoris and a vagina and not everyone who has them identifies as female. If a person has a clit, it will most likely be the most sensitive part of their body but trans and non-binary people will have different relationships with their anatomy depending of a range of factors including their own relationship with their gender identity or their type of transition. The aim of this campaign is specifically to improve ‘cliteracy’ so it will be primarily of benefit to people who have clits and anyone who has sex with them. There are other equally important issues we need to address to ensure we can all enjoy sex such as body (and vulva) image, enjoying sex after sexual assault, FGM, and on screen representation of diversity in gender identity and sexuality. We’ll regularly be signposting to some fantastic resources on these topics throughout the campaign.
Sex often forms a pivotal part of our relationships, and the ability to enjoy sex has been linked to self-esteem, and other indicators of wellbeing. But numerous studies have shown that when cis women have sex with men, mutual satisfaction is far from guaranteed.
Women are much less likely to orgasm than the men they have sex with. This is despite the fact that when women masturbate or have sex with other women they are very likely to orgasm.1
Estimates of the extent of the orgasm gap vary but its existence has been well documented.2 In a recent landmark study, more than 50,000 US adults were asked if they usually or always orgasm during sex with another person. The most satisfied group were heterosexual men, 95 per cent of whom agreed with the statement. The worst served group were women who have sex with men, only 65 per cent of whom could say the same.3 Other research has revealed even starker statistics. A 2018 US study of newlyweds in heterosexual relationships found that just under half of the women interviewed consistently experienced orgasm.4 The reality may be even worse than these figures suggest because people tend to underreport phenomena which are deemed to be socially undesirable. It is not pleasant to admit to yourself that you’re having substandard sex. Research has already shown that women are more likely to underreport sexual experiences that are not socially condoned for women, like masturbating and using pornography.5
Of course, orgasm is just one aspect of sexual pleasure, the point is to have a good time. But a 2018 Public Health England study found that 42 per cent of women aged 25-34 complain of a ‘lack of sexual enjoyment'. A similar picture appears to be common across the globe. One recent meta-analysis of more than 200,000 women aged 15 to 49 worldwide revealed 41 per cent of women experienced some form of sexual dysfunction.6
Sex that isn’t enjoyable isn’t just disappointing and awkward, it is often painful.
Numerous studies have documented the alarming rate at which young women and girls experience physical pain during penetrative sex. For example, in the Netherlands, a national survey of under 25 year-olds found that for 57% of young women, sex was often or always painful.7 Painful sexual experiences can lead to extended sexual problems like vaginismus as the body and mind learn to perceive sex as threatening.
A sexual landscape that centres around only men’s pleasure, and often involves women and girls enduring pain, can only feed into to a culture of sexual violence. For centuries women have been defined as sexually passive and less desiring than men, which has surely stemmed in part from the fact that our primary sex act has been something that bypasses women’s pleasure entirely.
Putting women’s pleasure on an equal footing and creating the expectation that sex should be enthusiastically enjoyed rather than consented to is essential for tackling rape culture.
A driving force behind the terrible state of women’s sex lives is the pervasive cultural script that sex between a man and a woman is defined by a penis penetrating a vagina (PVI), usually culminating in male ejaculation. But this doesn’t reflect what we know about women’s physiology. The vast majority of women only orgasm through stimulation of their clitoris.8 In a 2018 US study less than one in five women said they had experienced orgasm from PVI alone.9 In 2011 Wallen and Lloyd found only 25% of women consistently orgasm from PVI and it is not known whether these women were experiencing simultaneous clitoral stimulation during sex. Even these estimates might be inflated for the reasons discussed above.
The most tried and tested methods of achieving clitoral stimulation involves touching, oral sex or sex toys on the outside of a woman’s vulva, not inside her vagina. It is telling that OMGYes, a website founded to provide education about female sexual pleasure waited until their second season to introduce the topic of penetration. Few women who have sex with men would want to forgo penetration altogether, but for the vast majority of women, to have sex without involving the clitoris would be like a man having sex that didn’t involve his penis.
Despite the scientific consensus, and the lived experience of women, the fact that most women don’t orgasm through penetrative sex often seems like a little known secret.
Sex acts that reflect that women need clit stimulation are rarely depicted or even hinted at on screen, and women experience them less in real life. With market-driven pornography being so widely accessible to children as young as 7, it’s never been more important to ensure the norms we create around sex centre on mutual enjoyment.10
The fact that boys like to masturbate is a well-worn trope, but masturbation for girls is conspicuously absent from our culture, leaving too many girls - and the women they grow into - disempowered, confused and even ashamed of their own sexuality.
I grew up in a liberal household and saw plenty of sex on TV. By the age of 10 I knew what blow jobs were and I knew that boys masturbated but I didn’t think for a second that any of this had anything to do with the disgusting habit I had of touching myself. It was a secret so shameful I daren’t tell even my closest friends. Because the concept of women masturbating had never been introduced to me through any of the culture I’d consumed. When I had my first sexual encounters as a teenager these mirrored the sex I had seen – blow jobs as a no big deal entry level act and eventually penetrative sex. It did not even occur to me that clitoral stimulation could be a part of sex. Countless friends have shared similar stories with me. One told me as a teenager she’d wish she had a penis so she could masturbate.
When I embarked upon this research at the age of 32 I was appalled to see my teenage experience being borne out again and again by young girls. An English study interviewing girls from 16 to 18 who had all had penetrative sex found the vast majority had never spoken to even female friends about masturbation. Their experiences were varied but many revealed feelings of ambivalence or even disgust at the idea of women masturbating. With one saying, ‘that’s for slags’.11
The penis in vagina script is so strong that women who masturbate with clit stimulation and not penetration (the vast majority of us) think that they are unusual.12
The status quo is bad for EVERYBODY. We all want to know that the person we’re having sex with is having a good time, which is one of the reasons women fake orgasms at ridiculous rates.13 In a 2014 study of American college students, more than two thirds of women admitted they sometimes fake orgasm during penetrative sex.14 In a 2017 US study, half of recently married husbands overestimated how often their wives experienced orgasm.15
For too long our sexual script has centred on penetration and male orgasm. But we can fix this - all it takes is for us to show and talk about sex that recognises women’s pleasure.
The clit test celebrates sex scenes that reflect that the clitoris is a central part of sexual pleasure for most women - and we hope this will inspire others.
Though the campaign may be of particular resonance to women who have sex with men - we know women orgasms fairly consistently when they have sex with other women - it is hoped that an increased understanding of how women’s bodies work will increase all women’s comfort and confidence in their own sexuality. It should also help us move away from the still pervasive idea that sex is something done by a man and woman with a penis and vagina.
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References
[1] Orgasm rates during partnered sex: while men climax about 85% of the time during sex (whether with a man or a woman), women having sex with women orgasm about 75% of the time and women having sex with men orgasm just 63% of the time. Garcia JR, Lloyd EA, Wallen K, and Fisher HE. Variation in orgasm occurrence by sexual orientation in a sample of U.S. singles. Journal of Sexual Medicine 2014;11:2645–2652. Orgasm rates during masturabtion: In a 2016 survey of >1000 American women, 83% reported easily reaching orgasm through masturbation, only 5% said they never come from masturbating. In the pivotal 1976 Hite Report, Shere Hite showed that 95% of women who masturbate acehive orgasm (82% of those interviewed masturbated).
[2] In her analysis of studies on female orgasm Lloyd found the percentage of women who reported “always” or “almost always” experiencing orgasm during sex ranged from 12% to 59%. Lloyd E. The Case of the Female Orgasm: Bias in the Science of Evolution. Harvard University Press; Cambridge, MA: 2005. Richters et al.’s 2006 study found only 69% of women had experienced orgasm during their last sexual encounter versus 95% of men.
[3] Frederick, D.A., John, H.K.S., Garcia, J.R. et al. Differences in Orgasm Frequency Among Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Heterosexual Men and Women in a U.S. National Sample Arch Sex Behav (2018) 47: 273.
[4] Leonhardt, Willoughby, Busby, Yorgason & Holmes, 2018. The Significance of the Female Orgasm: A Nationally Representative, Dyadic Study of Newlyweds' Orgasm Experience, Article in Journal of Sexual Medicine 15(8)
[5] Fisher, T & Alexander M, 2003. Truth and Consequences: Using the Bogus Pipeline to Examine Sex Differences in Self-Reported Sexuality, The Journal of Sex Research 40(1):27-35
[6] McCool-Myers M, Theurich M, Zuelke A, Knuettel H, Apfelbacher C. Predictors of female sexual dysfunction: a systematic review and qualitative analysis through gender inequality paradigms. BMC Womens Health. 2018;18(1):108. Published 2018 Jun 22.
[7] Bancroft, John & Graham, Cynthia. (2011). The varied nature of women's sexuality: Unresolved issues and a theoretical approach. Hormones and behavior. 59. 717-29; Mitchell KR, Geary R, Graham CA, et al. Painful sex (dyspareunia) in women: prevalence and associated factors in a British population probability survey. BJOG. 2017;124(11):1689–1697. d
[8] Roy J. Levin (2012) The deadly pleasures of the clitoris and the condom – a rebuttal of Brody, Costa and Hess (2012), Sexual and Relationship Therapy, 27:3, 272-295.
[9] Debby Herbenick, Tsung-Chieh (Jane) Fu, Jennifer Arter, Stephanie A. Sanders, Brian Dodge, (2018) Women's Experiences With Genital Touching, Sexual Pleasure, and Orgasm: Results From a U.S. Probability Sample of Women Ages 18 to 94
[10] The report also found that half of 11 to 13 year olds had seen pornography British Board of Film Classification, 2019 https://bbfc.co.uk/about-bbfc/media-centre/children-see-pornography-young-seven-new-report-finds
[11] Harriet Hogarth and Roger Ingham (2009) Masturbation Among Young Women and Associations with Sexual Health: An Exploratory Study
[12] Fahs, Breanne, and Elena Frank. “Notes from the Back Room: Gender, Power, and (In)Visibility in Women’s Experiences of Masturbation.” The Journal of Sex Research 51, no. 3 (April 2014): 241–52.
[13] Recent research has consistently shown that the majority of women sometimes fake their orgasm cf Brewer G1, Hendrie CA. Evidence to suggest that copulatory vocalizations in women are not a reflexive consequence of orgasm. (Also Ellsworth &Bailey, 2013; Roberts, Kippax, Waldby, & Crawford, 1995 in Shirazi et al 2017:).
[14] Fahs, B, 2014 Coming to power: women's fake orgasms and best orgasm experiences illuminate the failures of (hetero)sex and the pleasures of connection
[15] Leonhardt, Willoughby, Busby, Yorgason & Holmes (2018) The Significance of the Female Orgasm: A Nationally Representative, Dyadic Study of Newlyweds' Orgasm Experience Article in Journal of Sexual Medicine 15(8)