Subjective Descriptions of Orgasm
The following accounts, selected from our files, illustrate the diversity of orgasmic descriptions. The first account is by a woman and the second by a man. The final three descrip — tions—labeled Reports A, B, and C—contain no specific references that identify the sex of the describers. Perhaps you would like to try to determine whether they were reported by a man or a woman. The answers follow the summary at the end of the chapter.
Female: When I’m about to reach orgasm, my face feels very hot. I close my eyes and open my mouth. It centers in my clitoris, and it feels like electric wires igniting from there and radiating up my torso and down my legs to my feet. I sometimes feel like I need to urinate. My vagina contracts anywhere from 5 to 12 times. My vulva area feels heavy and swollen. There isn’t another feeling like it—it’s fantastic!
Male: Orgasm for me draws all my energy in toward a core in my body. then, all of a sudden, there is a release of this energy out through my penis. My body becomes warm and numb before orgasm; after, it gradually relaxes and I feel extremely serene.
Report A: It’s like an Almond Joy, "indescribably delicious." The feeling runs from the top of my head to the tips of my toes as I feel a powerful surge of pleasure. It raises me beyond my physical self into another level of consciousness, and yet the feeling seems purely physical. What a paradox! It strokes all over, inside and out. I love it simply because it’s mine and mine alone.
Report B: An orgasm to me is like heaven. All my tensions and anxieties are released. You get to the point of no return, and it’s like an uncontrollable desire that makes things start happening. I think that sex and orgasm are one of the greatest phenomena that we have today. It’s a great sharing experience for me.
Report C: Having an orgasm is like the ultimate time I have for myself. I am not excluding my partner, but it’s like I can’t hear anything, and all I feel is a spectacular release accompanied with more pleasure than I’ve ever felt doing anything else. (Authors’ files)
Although the physiology of female orgasmic response is relatively well understood, misinformation about its nature has prevailed in our culture. Sigmund Freud (1905/2000) developed a theory of the vaginal versus clitoral orgasm that has adversely affected people’s thinking about female sexual response. Freud viewed the vaginal orgasm as more mature than the clitoral orgasm and thus preferable. The physiological basis for this theory was the assumption that the clitoris is a stunted penis. This led to the conclusion that erotic sensations, arousal, and orgasm resulting from direct stimulation of the clitoris were expressions of "masculine" rather than "feminine" sexuality (Sherfey, 1972). Unfortunately, this theory led many women to believe, incorrectly, that they were sexually maladjusted. Our knowledge of embryology has established the falseness of the theory that the clitoris is a masculine organ, as we have seen in our discussion of the genital differentiation process in Chapter 5.
Contrary to Freud’s theory, the research of Masters and Johnson suggests that there is one kind of orgasm in females, physiologically speaking, regardless of the method of stimulation. Most female orgasms result from direct or indirect stimulation of the clitoris. However, as we note elsewhere, females can experience orgasm from fantasy alone, during sleep (nocturnal orgasms), or by stimulation of other body areas such as the nipples or the Grafenberg spot, or G-spot.