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SMNTY Classics: Who fakes orgasms? · Stuff Mom Never Told You

0:05
Speaker 1: Hey, this is Annie and Samantha. If I ever told
0:08
Speaker 1: you protection I hiar Radio. Here's a personal question for you.
0:20
Speaker 1: I suppose have you ever had a celebrity sex dream? Yes? Oh,
0:27
Speaker 1: mind sharing, Uh, always kind of vague. I feel like
0:32
Speaker 1: the last celebrity sex dream I had, I think I
0:37
Speaker 1: ended up telling my partner and he was like, thanks,
0:41
Speaker 1: I want to say it was Brendan Fraser. I think
0:45
Speaker 1: it's like the mommy yes, yes, and it would be
0:49
Speaker 1: that time frame as well, And it was just pretty
0:52
Speaker 1: much like I have some weird dreams, and all of
0:55
Speaker 1: it has implications of like is romantic and sweet but
1:00
Speaker 1: also confusing because typically in public and I don't know
1:04
Speaker 1: why weird dreams, but it takes place either where it's
1:08
Speaker 1: public enough that we may be in a children's little
1:15
Speaker 1: like playhouse, you know, those plastic playhouse that would happen
1:19
Speaker 1: one time, and or a tree house, so but people
1:24
Speaker 1: are around, and it's like it doesn't make sense while
1:28
Speaker 1: we're there. But it's typically those types of dreams. Somebody
1:32
Speaker 1: might interpret this. Yeah, please don't don't tell me. I
1:36
Speaker 1: don't that. Um. I remember very vividly the first sextream
1:41
Speaker 1: I had with celebrities and it was after I saw
1:45
Speaker 1: Black Swan, So I was I was in college. Uh,
1:51
Speaker 1: I had a sex dream with Mila Kunes and Joseph
1:54
Speaker 1: Gordon lived it was so it was a threesome. But
1:58
Speaker 1: I know we talked about this in our um A
2:00
Speaker 1: sexual episode. I normally don't like. I don't fantasize about people.
2:04
Speaker 1: I don't normally have sex streams. A few times i've
2:06
Speaker 1: had them, it's almost always been with a fictional character
2:11
Speaker 1: that I don't like, and I wake up really angry
2:14
Speaker 1: about it. Why I hated every second of that? Why
2:19
Speaker 1: that guy? Which also probably says something about me, and
2:23
Speaker 1: you can interpret it if you want, But I just
2:28
Speaker 1: wanted to ask because recently we we've done a lot
2:30
Speaker 1: of talking about orgasms and virginity as we are want
2:35
Speaker 1: to do on this show, and UM a while back,
2:38
Speaker 1: Kristen and Caroline did an episode on who Fakes Orgasms,
2:41
Speaker 1: which is something that we talked about in our orgasm episode.
2:44
Speaker 1: So you'll probably hear some of the same stuff, but
2:46
Speaker 1: some new new stuff are like updated stuff from us
2:50
Speaker 1: and then more in depth stuff here. So please enjoy
2:53
Speaker 1: this classic episode. Welcome to Stuff Mom Never told you
3:00
Speaker 1: From housetop works dot com. Hello and welcome to the podcast.
3:08
Speaker 1: I'm Kristen and I'm Caroline. And Caroline, since we're talking
3:12
Speaker 1: about fake orgasms today, I just want to go ahead
3:16
Speaker 1: and get the one Harry met Sally reference out of
3:18
Speaker 1: the way. In almost every article that we read, Nora
3:24
Speaker 1: Ehron's hit about friends who can't possibly not be lovers
3:30
Speaker 1: came up because there's that famous Dean with Meg Ryan
3:34
Speaker 1: faggy an orgasm to Billy Crystal and Cats his deli
3:38
Speaker 1: in New York City, and it's hilarious and no, I'm
3:41
Speaker 1: not going to reenact it because that would be very inappropriate,
3:44
Speaker 1: but there it is, and their conversation in the movie
3:48
Speaker 1: during that scene pretty much sums of everything that we're
3:50
Speaker 1: going to talk about, and which is basically like Meg
3:53
Speaker 1: Ryan saying, oh, well, everybody every woman's faked at one
3:56
Speaker 1: point or another, and Billy Crystal is like, oh, but
3:58
Speaker 1: not with me, and she goes, well, you do the math.
4:01
Speaker 1: Every woman's faked it and every man thinks that they haven't.
4:03
Speaker 1: So but not, it's not the entire conversation that Carolina,
4:09
Speaker 1: it's not that cutting dry. Yeah. So before we get
4:13
Speaker 1: into statistics, because we got a lot of statistics to
4:15
Speaker 1: go over with fake orgasms, because I'm sure everybody's wanting
4:19
Speaker 1: to know what percentage of women have done it? Have
4:23
Speaker 1: men done it too? Um? But the whole female faking
4:27
Speaker 1: thing has a lot of cultural baggage with it as well.
4:32
Speaker 1: That goes way back beyond when Harry Melt Sally Yeah,
4:36
Speaker 1: goes back to the Victorians, those dark Victorians. They always
4:39
Speaker 1: come up, what do they Why? Why are we still
4:42
Speaker 1: suffering under Victorian things stuff? At least we got graham
4:47
Speaker 1: crackers and corn flakes out of it, I guess, and
4:50
Speaker 1: doubt Navvy And although it's more of an Edwardian anyway. Um. Yes, Well,
4:56
Speaker 1: during the Victorian era, the woman's orgasm came to be
5:01
Speaker 1: seen as sort of an unnecessary part of sexual intercourse.
5:05
Speaker 1: It really was sort of viewed as a man's thing
5:09
Speaker 1: to really enjoy sex and have an orgasm, whereas women
5:12
Speaker 1: were supposed to lie back and think of England and
5:14
Speaker 1: if they didn't orgasm, who cares? Right? Well, there was
5:18
Speaker 1: the point made by Brian Fawz in Performing Sex, The
5:22
Speaker 1: Making and Unmaking of Women's Erotic Lives that the sort
5:27
Speaker 1: of self imposed sexual oppression became linked during that era
5:32
Speaker 1: to higher class for women. Yeah, um, not only higher class,
5:39
Speaker 1: but it's it's funny to talk about uh sex and
5:43
Speaker 1: gender and all this stuff in the Victorian area era.
5:46
Speaker 1: Excuse me because UM. Tied into all this is hysteria,
5:51
Speaker 1: the female disease which was caused in their minds by
5:55
Speaker 1: a wandering womb, which goes back to Hippocrates Hippocrates um
6:02
Speaker 1: who said that the you know, women might go crazy
6:06
Speaker 1: because they're their uteruses are are wandering around, just wandering,
6:11
Speaker 1: wandering the womb. But if you fast forward to the eighties,
6:14
Speaker 1: when the first vibrators were invented, Um, they realized that
6:20
Speaker 1: they could cure hysteria, all of this anxiety and sleeplessness
6:24
Speaker 1: and excessive sexual fantasy that these women were experiencing by
6:29
Speaker 1: bringing women to orgasm. Right, and this was something done
6:32
Speaker 1: in doctor's offices, Like medical professionals were leading women to
6:36
Speaker 1: orgasm as a way to be like, hey, just calm down,
6:39
Speaker 1: don't don't have so much anxiety in your life, lady.
6:42
Speaker 1: And it's it's I can't believe that an orgasm went
6:44
Speaker 1: from being a normal thing that men and women experience
6:48
Speaker 1: to something that women shouldn't experience because they're too classy
6:52
Speaker 1: for that to being something that happens in doctor's offices.
6:56
Speaker 1: But then after that though, I mean, like, if we're
6:58
Speaker 1: talking about orgasm today, not only is it considered this
7:03
Speaker 1: normalized part or expected part of the sexual experience, but
7:08
Speaker 1: that is we conflate sex with orgasm. Yeah, good sex
7:13
Speaker 1: equals having an orgasm. It's an expectation. It's also um,
7:18
Speaker 1: I think brand Faz also frames it as a type
7:20
Speaker 1: of gift that women give. And we're talking to at
7:23
Speaker 1: this point about heterosexual women a gift that they give
7:27
Speaker 1: to their male partner. Yeah, and as as far as
7:30
Speaker 1: it's more of the history goes of of sexual intercourse
7:34
Speaker 1: and orgasms and how they relate um, the psychoanalysts. Freud
7:39
Speaker 1: got in on the discussion and it became okay suddenly
7:42
Speaker 1: for women to have orgasms, expected for that to happen.
7:45
Speaker 1: But you're a weirdo if you can't have an orgasm
7:48
Speaker 1: through vaginal intercourse alone, right. Floyd Freud was very dismissive
7:53
Speaker 1: of c literal stimulation. He said that was basically for girls,
7:57
Speaker 1: and if you cannot figure out how to have an
8:00
Speaker 1: orgasm through penile vaginal intercourse, you really weren't a woman, Yeah,
8:06
Speaker 1: not a real woman. And then so fast forward, way
8:09
Speaker 1: forward into the dawn of the feminist movement. Feminist activism,
8:14
Speaker 1: and the female orgasm, according to Jane Gerhardt, came to
8:18
Speaker 1: signify the political power of women's sexual self determination. So
8:23
Speaker 1: suddenly the discourse was more about we can have an
8:26
Speaker 1: orgasm anyway we want, and we deserve to have an
8:28
Speaker 1: orgasm any way we want, right, and it shouldn't just
8:31
Speaker 1: be some kind of gift or performance unless it is
8:35
Speaker 1: a gift or performance, you know, for ourselves. Maybe that
8:39
Speaker 1: just sounds like masturbation though, which was another two part podcast, Right, yeah,
8:44
Speaker 1: we've already covered that. Yeah. The author of that Making
8:47
Speaker 1: an Unmaking of Women's Erotic Lives book sites research that
8:51
Speaker 1: shows that some women tend to downplay the significance of orgasm,
8:55
Speaker 1: while other women rate it as the most important feature
8:58
Speaker 1: of sexual satisfaction. And so now we're getting into more
9:01
Speaker 1: of the oh well it's okay, you just go ahead
9:05
Speaker 1: kind of mentality that some women have about sex. Right,
9:08
Speaker 1: and a lot of surveys from the Kinsey Institute have
9:11
Speaker 1: found that if you ask men and women whether or
9:15
Speaker 1: not sex can be satisfying without an orgasm, way more
9:20
Speaker 1: women will say yeah, that's okay, compared to men who
9:24
Speaker 1: are like, oh, I gonna know, I mean sort of,
9:27
Speaker 1: that's what that's my end goal, right, And that Fause
9:31
Speaker 1: says that by downplaying the importance of orgasms, women may
9:33
Speaker 1: be indicating that they don't value their orgasmic pleasure, or
9:37
Speaker 1: like you were saying, it could be that they have
9:40
Speaker 1: placed a greater importance on other aspects of relationships. So
9:43
Speaker 1: maybe just emotional connectedness, but uh, having the connectedness of
9:48
Speaker 1: sex is more important than actually achieving orgasm um. So
9:54
Speaker 1: by that, by extension of that logic, you would think
9:57
Speaker 1: that if we're faking orgas um, it would be too
10:02
Speaker 1: foster emotional intimacy or to trappaman depending on what you're reading,
10:09
Speaker 1: depending on what you're reading, because there's also the notion
10:12
Speaker 1: that you know, completely opposite to that, that faking an
10:15
Speaker 1: orgasm is a way for us to distance ourselves from
10:18
Speaker 1: male sexual partners by ourselves. I'm still talking again about
10:21
Speaker 1: heterosexual women. Will talk about same sex relationships a little
10:25
Speaker 1: bit later on. Um, do you want to get into
10:27
Speaker 1: some statistics. Let's do it the stats. Let's set the
10:31
Speaker 1: stats there have been a number of studies and surveys
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Speaker 1: on women faking it, women specifically faking it from nineteen
10:41
Speaker 1: seventy three to the present day. A series of studies
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Speaker 1: have found that anywhere from fifty three to sixty five
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Speaker 1: of both married and unmarried women have pretended to climax
10:56
Speaker 1: at some point. Um there was a study at leave
11:00
Speaker 1: It came out in two thousand and ten from Aaron
11:02
Speaker 1: Cooper who was a psychologist at Temple University, and she
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Speaker 1: talked to three hundred and sixty six women ages eighteen
11:10
Speaker 1: to thirty two and found that about sixty of these
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Speaker 1: women faked it. And I thought that this study was
11:18
Speaker 1: kind of compelling because the number one reason that she
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Speaker 1: found for these mostly college females faking it was creating distance.
11:29
Speaker 1: And then she also found for a small subset said
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Speaker 1: that it actually enhanced their own sexual experience. Was kind
11:36
Speaker 1: of a fake it till you make it sort of thing. Yeah,
11:39
Speaker 1: maybe the faking it just turned them on more, and
11:42
Speaker 1: maybe they could actually achieve a real orgasm, well yeah,
11:44
Speaker 1: by maybe by by faking excitement, that could turn the
11:48
Speaker 1: other person on more as well. And then it's sort
11:50
Speaker 1: of snowballs perhaps, Yeah, UM some other reasons that people
11:55
Speaker 1: say in various studies that they faked orgasm. We're avoiding
11:59
Speaker 1: the blame, aim and pressure that comes along with with sex,
12:03
Speaker 1: and avoiding conflict, doubt, guilt, shame, whether it's yours or
12:07
Speaker 1: your partners. UM and some people that Fause talked to
12:11
Speaker 1: you in her book. Basically we're saying, you know, well,
12:14
Speaker 1: I don't have a good reason for not you know,
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Speaker 1: orgasm NG, so maybe I should just go ahead and
12:19
Speaker 1: fake it. I feel bad about it. Oh, these expectations.
12:23
Speaker 1: A lot of this goes back to UH, to these
12:25
Speaker 1: sex roles and these sexual scripts that we take into
12:29
Speaker 1: the bedroom and feel so compelled to follow. UM. And
12:35
Speaker 1: in addition to you know, not wanting to have to
12:37
Speaker 1: explain yourself, there's also the idea of wanting to make
12:42
Speaker 1: your partner feel adequate, especially among UH opposite sex couples.
12:48
Speaker 1: There was a study from the University of Kansas from
12:54
Speaker 1: Charlene L. Mullen Hard and Sheina KA Shippy, and she
12:59
Speaker 1: similar to the Temple University study I just mentioned, pulled
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Speaker 1: both male and female students and asked whether they had
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Speaker 1: faked orgasm and the number one reason why the of
13:11
Speaker 1: women said yes, they had faked an orgasm, was that
13:15
Speaker 1: they didn't want to bruise the guy's egos. This would
13:18
Speaker 1: be called altruistic deceit. Yeah, that's uh, that's interesting because
13:25
Speaker 1: men's a lot of men's reasons for faking it are
13:28
Speaker 1: similar to women's the same, like they just wanted to
13:31
Speaker 1: be over or they know they're not going to achieve orgasm,
13:33
Speaker 1: so let's just go ahead and get this over with.
13:35
Speaker 1: But I wonder if men have the same the same
13:39
Speaker 1: reasoning as far as not wanting to hurt someone's feelings.
13:41
Speaker 1: There is a gender difference um that Dr Mollenhard at
13:46
Speaker 1: the University of Kansas uncovered between men's and women's rationale
13:51
Speaker 1: for faking an orgasm. More women said that they wanted
13:55
Speaker 1: to either avoid the negative consequence of having to explain
14:00
Speaker 1: why they weren't able to finish um, or they wanted
14:04
Speaker 1: to please their partners, So kind of from both angles,
14:07
Speaker 1: it's a way of it's sort of a subservience to
14:10
Speaker 1: the other person. Yeah, and going back to Aaron Cooper
14:13
Speaker 1: who you mentioned earlier, and altruistic deceit, you know, saving
14:16
Speaker 1: the person's feelings. Um. Aaron Cooper called it a relationship
14:20
Speaker 1: maintenance strategy and basically said that this leads into another
14:26
Speaker 1: study called do women pretend orgasm to retain a mate?
14:30
Speaker 1: I was not on board with a study from Todd
14:32
Speaker 1: Shackelford and Dr Shackleford. If you're listening, No, nothing personal,
14:37
Speaker 1: but I question your methodology. It felt like one of
14:41
Speaker 1: those kind of self fulfilling prophecies that's set up like
14:44
Speaker 1: these researchers basically went into this study assuming that via
14:50
Speaker 1: evolutionary biology, that women who suspected their partner of cheating
14:55
Speaker 1: were more likely to fake because it was it was
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Speaker 1: a way to manipulate a partner's conmit meant by signaling
15:01
Speaker 1: a mate selection, because it also goes back to this
15:04
Speaker 1: theory of female orgasm existing as a way for um
15:09
Speaker 1: women to retain sperm of fitter mates, so that you know,
15:15
Speaker 1: it's a signal to guys that were like, hey, you
15:17
Speaker 1: know what my body is into your body? That means
15:20
Speaker 1: you're amazing. I'm boosting your ego right now. And uh so,
15:24
Speaker 1: so they pulled these women for how often they faked orgasms,
15:28
Speaker 1: and then they also asked about certain behaviors such as
15:32
Speaker 1: intentionally flirting in front of other guys to make their
15:34
Speaker 1: partner jealous or displaying jealous tendencies toward other women that
15:39
Speaker 1: they're uh, their mates might interact with. And so they said, yes,
15:44
Speaker 1: there is a correlation, and women be faking just to
15:49
Speaker 1: keep their men around. Exactly. That's actually a quote from
15:53
Speaker 1: the study. And really, I mean, if you think about it,
15:56
Speaker 1: we have like listed out so many different reasons why
15:59
Speaker 1: women might fake. It might be to keep a man.
16:01
Speaker 1: It might be to drive him away. It might be
16:04
Speaker 1: to go to bed, it might be to stay awake
16:06
Speaker 1: and cuddle. And I would just like to state my
16:08
Speaker 1: favorite quote from this this Retain a Mate study. Uh.
16:13
Speaker 1: You know, we talked about how women are are faking
16:16
Speaker 1: orgasms to to retain their mate and being like, you're sexy,
16:20
Speaker 1: so I'm going to fake it and look at how
16:21
Speaker 1: sexy I am by making all these noises, So let's
16:23
Speaker 1: be sexy together. Um. Another reason is to prevent defection
16:30
Speaker 1: from the relationship, which I think is a great way
16:33
Speaker 1: a great of course a scientist person would write that,
16:37
Speaker 1: so instead of saying we broke up, just starts saying, well, uh,
16:43
Speaker 1: she defected. Yeah. I think the next time that anything
16:46
Speaker 1: like this happens to me, like a breakup or something.
16:48
Speaker 1: I think I'm going to say, it's I'm not breaking
16:51
Speaker 1: up with you, I am defecting. To defect from this relationship,
16:55
Speaker 1: it sounds much more revolutionary like rod affection from the anyway,
17:00
Speaker 1: moving on, Um, well, a lot of this research is
17:04
Speaker 1: focused on women, but we have not gotten to one
17:09
Speaker 1: of the most groundbreaking points of all this research, which
17:15
Speaker 1: is that guys, guess what, you're doing it too. Guys
17:22
Speaker 1: are doing it too, and not just a couple of
17:25
Speaker 1: fellas here and there no no going back to that
17:29
Speaker 1: University of Kansas study which was done specifically because Charlene L.
17:35
Speaker 1: Mullenhard wanted to know whether or not men pretended orgasm,
17:41
Speaker 1: and of the men surveyed said that yes, they had pretended,
17:46
Speaker 1: and another in addition to that, another sixteen percent said
17:50
Speaker 1: that they had kenna sort of pretended, done something along
17:55
Speaker 1: the lines to to deceive their partner in terms of
17:59
Speaker 1: how my they were really enjoying the sexual activity. Um.
18:05
Speaker 1: And there was one interesting difference that she found in
18:08
Speaker 1: the ways that men and women faked it. Uh, Carolin,
18:13
Speaker 1: you mentioned, you know, looking sexy and being all like
18:16
Speaker 1: oh wow, you know, going back to the when Harry
18:18
Speaker 1: met sally, oh wow. Women tend to fake by becoming
18:24
Speaker 1: a lot more vocal, whereas men tend to fake by
18:29
Speaker 1: clenching their muscles more and thrusting harder and then being like, Okay,
18:35
Speaker 1: I did it, I'm done, or just stopping. Some of
18:38
Speaker 1: the guys were like, well I just I just stopped. Yeah,
18:43
Speaker 1: it's over now. And and some of the studies talked
18:47
Speaker 1: about scripts for this kind of thing, relationship and sexual
18:51
Speaker 1: scripts for this kind of thing, and how, um, when
18:54
Speaker 1: a man fakes it, or when a man orgasms real
18:57
Speaker 1: or fake, uh, that signifies that's faith over, whereas if
19:01
Speaker 1: a woman fakes it, that signifies like okay, honey, you
19:05
Speaker 1: can go now, so that we can stop right. Um.
19:09
Speaker 1: And I think it's also worth pointing out that a
19:12
Speaker 1: vast majority of this fakery takes place during penile vaginal intercourse.
19:20
Speaker 1: Oral sex came in a quote distant second, So there's
19:24
Speaker 1: something about intercourse that that that sets these crazy scripts
19:30
Speaker 1: into play. And the script, the established script is that, uh,
19:36
Speaker 1: that the woman should orgasm first and then the man
19:39
Speaker 1: should orgasm, because the male orgasm signals the end of sex.
19:45
Speaker 1: Because in the physiological process of sexual intercourse and climax,
19:50
Speaker 1: men go through a latency period after sex, whereas women
19:54
Speaker 1: can have multiple orgasms. And playing off of some of
19:57
Speaker 1: those differences you were talking about, UM, a study bisexual
20:00
Speaker 1: research team William Masters and Virginia Johnson found in the lab.
20:05
Speaker 1: I wonder what kind of experiments these were found in
20:08
Speaker 1: the lab that men took about four minutes to orgasm
20:11
Speaker 1: with their partner, while women took ten to twenty minutes
20:14
Speaker 1: to orgasm with a partner. But when masturbating women took
20:18
Speaker 1: about you guessed it four minutes. So there, you're right,
20:23
Speaker 1: there is something about partnered sexual uh, penile vaginal intercourse
20:30
Speaker 1: right because um, and I don't have the statistics in
20:32
Speaker 1: front of me, but women will report far higher prevalence
20:38
Speaker 1: of achieving an orgasm through clitoral stimulation versus achieving orgasm
20:43
Speaker 1: through vaginal stimulation exclusively a lot of women. I think
20:48
Speaker 1: it's something around of women rarely will have an orgasm
20:53
Speaker 1: just from vaginal intercourse. But there was all this brought
20:58
Speaker 1: up a question in my mind of whether or not
21:01
Speaker 1: this is just an issue for heterosexual couples. UM. And
21:06
Speaker 1: while a majority of the research is done on on
21:09
Speaker 1: street women, there was a study that we found from
21:12
Speaker 1: the Journal of Sex Research in a little bit dated,
21:16
Speaker 1: and the researchers were investigating the differences in self reported
21:22
Speaker 1: sexual satisfaction among lesbians compared to straight women, and they
21:28
Speaker 1: found that lo and behold, lesbian's report having sex more often,
21:32
Speaker 1: feeling more sexually satisfied, and having orgasms uh more often
21:38
Speaker 1: than their straight counterparts. And so the researchers wondered if
21:43
Speaker 1: maybe this had to do with the type of sexual
21:46
Speaker 1: stimulation that is going on now. At the same time, UM,
21:51
Speaker 1: I also was doing a little little poken around on
21:54
Speaker 1: the interwebs and landed on a column on AlterNet basically
21:59
Speaker 1: urging p people to dispel this myth of the perfect
22:03
Speaker 1: lesbian sex because that only perpetuates this idea that all
22:06
Speaker 1: women function sexually the exact same way and that's not true.
22:11
Speaker 1: Um But statistically lesbians do seem to have seem to
22:17
Speaker 1: have a better, better time of it. But I wonder
22:19
Speaker 1: if it's because they're breaking there, they're not operating within
22:22
Speaker 1: that rigid heterosexual script. Could be they feel more free
22:28
Speaker 1: to um do whatever feels good instead of just what
22:31
Speaker 1: they think their partner wants or what they think sex
22:34
Speaker 1: is supposed to be like um. Going back to Masters
22:37
Speaker 1: and Johnson, who you referenced, their research showed that same
22:41
Speaker 1: sex couples of both genders were more likely to take
22:45
Speaker 1: their time, maybe because there's not some order in their
22:49
Speaker 1: head of Okay, well you go first, and then I'll go,
22:53
Speaker 1: and then we'll then we'll fall asleep. Yeah. Maybe so.
22:59
Speaker 1: Going to the Journal of Sex Research from three uh,
23:03
Speaker 1: they cited some stats that of heterosexual women reported difficulty
23:08
Speaker 1: reaching orgasm and fifteen percent reported inability to reach orgasm.
23:13
Speaker 1: And this compares with twenty percent of lesbians who reported
23:17
Speaker 1: difficulty reaching orgasms and only seven percent of lesbians who
23:21
Speaker 1: reported inability to reach orgasm. So a big difference there, right,
23:26
Speaker 1: which just makes me think of that the statistic of
23:29
Speaker 1: how pan vagual intercourse is usually far more correlated to
23:37
Speaker 1: fake orgasms where both men and women compared to other
23:40
Speaker 1: forms of sexual contact. But the whole faking thing, I mean,
23:45
Speaker 1: it's it's a it's it's pretty fascinating that we that
23:48
Speaker 1: we would a lot of times when you read in
23:51
Speaker 1: women's publications about faking orgasms, it's urging us not to
23:55
Speaker 1: because the bottom line is you might not need to
23:58
Speaker 1: fake it if you're sexual communication is open and honest,
24:01
Speaker 1: and you're telling your partner you know what feels good
24:04
Speaker 1: and what you like, and hopefully that will help things.
24:08
Speaker 1: I mean the fact though, that people in that master's
24:10
Speaker 1: in Johnson study were able in a laboratory setting to
24:14
Speaker 1: the orgasm within ten minutes, it's pretty astounding to me.
24:18
Speaker 1: I wonder how they set the lab up, Like, did
24:21
Speaker 1: they did they make it look like the Playboy Bunny?
24:23
Speaker 1: A lot of tea candles in sense, lots of pillows.
24:29
Speaker 1: It was the early sixties, so you know, beaded curtains, yeah,
24:34
Speaker 1: a lot of shag carpeting. And one more thing, just
24:36
Speaker 1: bring it back to men, because we've talked about how yes,
24:39
Speaker 1: men do it, but we spent a lot more time
24:43
Speaker 1: talking about women. And it reminds me of an article
24:46
Speaker 1: that came out a couple of years ago in New
24:47
Speaker 1: York Magazine talking about this phenomenon of men faking it
24:53
Speaker 1: and especially men using condoms as a tool of subversive
25:00
Speaker 1: uh fakery. And one of the guys said, one of
25:04
Speaker 1: the men who was who was interviewed for the article says,
25:06
Speaker 1: as a guy, your biggest fear is that you'll come
25:09
Speaker 1: too soon and Another man who has interviewed said that
25:13
Speaker 1: there was a double standard because men are expected to
25:16
Speaker 1: be the sex craze beast who can yes, achieve an
25:20
Speaker 1: orgasm within four minutes and even a laboratory of a setting,
25:24
Speaker 1: whereas women are almost assumed to take longer and maybe
25:31
Speaker 1: not even be able to reach orgasm at all. And
25:34
Speaker 1: if we are, we might be faking it. So I
25:37
Speaker 1: can see how how some some fellows might might see
25:41
Speaker 1: a double standard there. But to all of this, I say,
25:46
Speaker 1: maybe we should just use this as a lesson in
25:50
Speaker 1: why communication is so important. Yeah, pheel, I mean, tell
25:54
Speaker 1: your partner what's what works for you and what doesn't.
25:57
Speaker 1: But also, if it's not going to happen, it's not
25:59
Speaker 1: going to happen. And yes, there is the fear that
26:02
Speaker 1: you might hurt someone's feelings or someone might feel guilty
26:05
Speaker 1: or insulted or whatever. But yeah, I think opening those
26:08
Speaker 1: channels of communication my lesson the need to fake it right,
26:13
Speaker 1: because if you look at psychological studies of couples who
26:18
Speaker 1: are complaining of having disappointing sex lives, a lot of
26:23
Speaker 1: times it traces back to their level of sexual communication.
26:28
Speaker 1: If there's a dip in the activity. A lot of
26:31
Speaker 1: times there's been a dip in or non existence of communication,
26:36
Speaker 1: and I mean, communication is not an easy thing, but
26:40
Speaker 1: it's something to keep in mind. And can I can
26:43
Speaker 1: I toss that one last fun finding only if it's fun,
26:47
Speaker 1: it's pretty fun um And I have tweeted about this,
26:51
Speaker 1: so Twitter followers, you're already in the know. But there
26:54
Speaker 1: was a two thousand and ten study from Emory University
26:57
Speaker 1: looking at the economics of faking it, and they found
27:01
Speaker 1: that a funny correlation between education levels and uh faking
27:07
Speaker 1: orgasm and found that people who are more highly educated
27:10
Speaker 1: tend to fake it because quote, love making takes time
27:15
Speaker 1: and people and people with more education may have a
27:18
Speaker 1: higher opportunity cost of time and may therefore be more
27:22
Speaker 1: likely to fake just to get it over with. Perhaps
27:25
Speaker 1: this is a quote, perhaps so they can return to
27:27
Speaker 1: writing papers. So doctoral students out there, we are onto
27:33
Speaker 1: you interesting now. I mean the study really had like
27:37
Speaker 1: whole giant formulas with symbols and things division signs. I
27:42
Speaker 1: don't know. Uh So now that we have bombarded you
27:47
Speaker 1: with statistics and theories about who's faking it and why,
27:52
Speaker 1: do you know what we're gonna ask for your stories.
27:55
Speaker 1: Don't be ashamed. Yeah. Also, don't be too dirty. We
27:58
Speaker 1: can't read them on the air to dirty, right And uh,
28:01
Speaker 1: you know, or if someone out there who has never
28:04
Speaker 1: faked it before, let us let us know, or you
28:07
Speaker 1: just did in an incredible communicator. Yeah. Oh, another group
28:11
Speaker 1: of people I would like to hear from. Some of
28:13
Speaker 1: these studies talked about people who fake it intersect with
28:17
Speaker 1: women who have report never having had an orgasm. And
28:21
Speaker 1: so if we have any people out there who have
28:25
Speaker 1: never had an orgasm, they've they've tried, but maybe just
28:28
Speaker 1: have never gotten there. Do you fake it for that reason?
28:32
Speaker 1: Let us know. Mom stuff at Discovery dot com. And
28:36
Speaker 1: you can also head over to Facebook. But again, please
28:39
Speaker 1: keep our Facebook walk clean. Uh. And in the meantime,
28:42
Speaker 1: we've got a couple of emails here. I have one
28:47
Speaker 1: in response to our long ago episode about female scientists,
28:52
Speaker 1: and I really wanted to share this one because it
28:54
Speaker 1: is from Chloe, who is a PhD student in chemistry
28:57
Speaker 1: at one of the top research institutions in the US,
29:00
Speaker 1: and she writes, first of all, I think people should
29:03
Speaker 1: understand that STEM females may make a little more money,
29:06
Speaker 1: but it's also the result of an additional five to
29:09
Speaker 1: ten years ten to fourteen hour days six days a
29:12
Speaker 1: week of additional experience post post bachelor degree. I think
29:16
Speaker 1: this is something important that should be considered before convincing
29:18
Speaker 1: people to pursue careers in stem. Secondly, I think your
29:23
Speaker 1: lack of role models explains explains the gender gap very well.
29:26
Speaker 1: But it's not because there aren't lack of successful female scientists.
29:30
Speaker 1: There are plenty of these very successful, intelligent scientists, but
29:33
Speaker 1: that doesn't translate to an individual we can look up to.
29:37
Speaker 1: I have a female advisor, and while she is a
29:39
Speaker 1: successful scientist, she has to nanny's on rotation, travels at
29:42
Speaker 1: least a week out of the month, and makes it
29:44
Speaker 1: clear that family is not high on our list of priorities.
29:47
Speaker 1: The sad part is this is an uncommon Many women
29:51
Speaker 1: my age and their late twenties scientists are not want
29:53
Speaker 1: a family. However, it's very difficult to find a role
29:56
Speaker 1: model who can show us how to balance family life,
29:59
Speaker 1: their love for fience, their careers, and also show compassion
30:02
Speaker 1: toward others. I think this is often the case that
30:04
Speaker 1: successful scientists might lack the more quote unquote human side
30:08
Speaker 1: of things that many women consider to be important. This
30:11
Speaker 1: is why I and many of my friends are not
30:13
Speaker 1: pursuing This is why I and many of my friends
30:17
Speaker 1: are not continuing to pursue traditional academic careers. So some
30:21
Speaker 1: great insight from Chloe, Thank you. We have some more
30:25
Speaker 1: insight from Jessica. This is about our friendship podcasts plural.
30:30
Speaker 1: She says that she's in somewhat unique of a position
30:33
Speaker 1: of being best friends with a male and female romantic couple.
30:36
Speaker 1: Through an odd but not uncomfortable set of circumstances. We
30:38
Speaker 1: have ended up sharing a two bedroom apartment here in
30:40
Speaker 1: Korea along with their two cats, also a male and
30:43
Speaker 1: a female. The difference in our friendship pretty clearly exemplifies
30:46
Speaker 1: the differences you mentioned between male and female roommates. With
30:50
Speaker 1: my female best friend, I share a very caring, warm bond.
30:53
Speaker 1: I call her when I'm upset about something, and she
30:55
Speaker 1: is the one who keeps up with me when I'm
30:57
Speaker 1: out of town. We know just about all of the
31:00
Speaker 1: him at details of each other's lives, from my dating
31:02
Speaker 1: foibles to her relationship with her parents, her boyfriend. My
31:05
Speaker 1: male best friend loves and cares about me, but expresses
31:08
Speaker 1: this through wanting to spend time with me and watching
31:11
Speaker 1: funny movies, are making jokes together. We rarely talk about
31:14
Speaker 1: our emotions, and when I gave him a hug the
31:15
Speaker 1: other day at his receiving some bad news, it's probably
31:18
Speaker 1: the first time we touched affectionately in months. They're very
31:21
Speaker 1: different friendships and having them both is a complimentary force
31:24
Speaker 1: that means I don't have to search for someone to
31:26
Speaker 1: share brunch or a movie. And thanks to everybody who's
31:30
Speaker 1: written in again. Our email address is mom Stuff at
31:33
Speaker 1: Discovery dot com. But of course you can also head
31:36
Speaker 1: over to our Facebook page and send us a tweet.
31:39
Speaker 1: We're at Mom's Stuff podcast. And if you want to
31:42
Speaker 1: know more about orgasms, both fake and not, you can
31:46
Speaker 1: read How Orgasms Work by me written by me How
31:50
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Be sure to check out our
31:56
Speaker 1: new video podcast, Stuff from the Future. Join how Stop
32:00
Speaker 1: Work staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing
32:02
Speaker 1: possibilities of tomorrow. The Househufforks iPhone app has arrived. Dewnlmoad
32:07
Speaker 1: it today on iTunes, brought to you by the reinvented
32:15
Speaker 1: two thousand twelve camera. It's ready. Are you