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The Orgasm Gap Matters More Than The Wage Gap

Updated: Aug 22, 2018 11:22
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The best part about being a woman in the 21st century is having whatever kind of sex you want, with whoever you want, and no one will burn you alive for witchcraft!

It helps you weed out the douchebags faster, and we have the medical technology to both prevent and cure most STD’s or unwanted pregnancy. It’s almost perfect!

Via- https://broadly.vice.com

Via- https://broadly.vice.com

But, it’s not enough. I know I’m whining, but in addition to all the exciting sex, we women were hoping we could maybe also orgasm.  

The orgasm gap matters more than the wage gap. For one thing, the math is easier to understand. Women are simply not coming as often as men.

I believe the wage gap is real…it’s just that every time someone tries to explain it to me the roof of my mouth starts to itch and it’s hard to focus. Here a man explains why the gender wage gap is real.

There are lots of smart sounding people who seem to believe that the statistics about the wage gap are troubling, or silly. Sometimes I find myself on the fence. Here a woman explains why the gender wage gap is not real.

The orgasm gap feels less theoretical to me. I am 30 years old and just learned how to cum this year. That is both pathetic and common.

Part of the reason I couldn’t finish is my fault, I’m a control freak and I invested a huge chunk of energy learning how to disassociate during performative sex, which is what sex work is. But the other reasons I, and millions of other women, couldn’t figure it out is because we, as a culture, don’t want women to orgasm.

Trouble with the O. Via - Trouble with the O. Via - http://www.shemazing.net

Trouble with the O. Via – Trouble with the O. Via –
http://www.shemazing.net

We’ve rationalized this by telling ourselves that female sexuality is simply too complicated to understand. I’m calling bullshit. 

Most men say they want the women they’re having sex with to come. But not really.

I know adult dudes who read books ABOUT how to get better at the video games they play, that don’t know what a cervix is. It’s not their fault. We, as a society, are willfully ignorant about female sexual response and physiology.

For example, scientists JUST figured out how big the clitoris is within the last decade.

It’s still a shock to audiences when I tell them. It’s not just that “button” that hangs out at the tip of your labia that dude’s dry rub like they’re playing that video game they’ve actually mastered. It’s shaped like a wishbone and that expands when it becomes erect, which is when the G-spot “appears.” So if you can’t find it, she’s not aroused enough for you to have your fingers up there.

We invented a pill to make men’s dick hard, went to the moon, and built enough bombs to end human civilization before we bothered to figure out how clits work. Let’s stop pretending female pleasure was ever a priority.

man achievment montage

Female anatomy wouldn’t be so incomprehensible to us if we spent more time studying it, and less time convincing ourselves that the elusive orgasm is a mysterious math problem only “the one” can solve. Women’s bodies are anatomical. We are not mythical creatures with incomprehensible, uncooperative, parts. I know we make people in our body, which is neat. There’s also a lot of plumbing that seems to communicate with the moon (and other women,) but it’s not a magic trick.

We pretend that men’s orgasms are mechanical, and women’s are like an ancient myth. I’ve been in bed with enough men to state plainly and definitively, y’all are not as simple as you think you are. Men have varying sexual preferences, different ways they like to be touched, and wildly fluctuating libidos. There is no such thing as “all men,” just like there is no such thing as “all women.” And yet, most men do not report having a problem orgasming during sex.

Part of it is that us straight women know SO MUCH about how dicks work. Porn, commercials, women’s magazines, are all obsessed with it. I spent hours in middle school strategizing with a bunch of other virgins how to make sex, sexier for men.

This was a ludicrous waste of time because it’s like trying to make dinner more exciting for your Labrador. If a man loses his erection during sex, it’s an emergency that has to be dealt with immediately! But if I’m not wet, there’s spit.

For 5,000 years we’ve taught men that sex is something they take from women. We’ve so deeply internalized the belief that when a man and a woman go to bed together the man has won, and the woman has lost … something. Physiologically this is ludicrous. If anyone is taking anything from anyone it’s women taking something from men. Men are useless after they come.

But of course, sex is not something you take from or do to, people. It’s something you do with them.

All the metaphors we have for sex treat it like a sport. Which means that I’m in bed with an opponent who’s trying to “score.” Since I’m usually 40-100 pounds lighter than my adversary, this can be scary. We’ve taught women that they HAVE to be VIGILANT in bed or men will do something moronic that might result in an uncomfortable, and expensive, doctors visit. It’s super hard to come if you’re on guard against a bigger person’s malevolent intentions. We’ve normalized a wide range of predatory, inconsiderate, and sometimes violent behavior, because “boys will be boys.” But if a woman lets her guard down for a second, she deserves whatever happens to her.

Courtesy 20th Century Fox

Courtesy 20th Century Fox


So, if you want the woman you’re sleeping with to come, try to unlearn what society has taught you about sex. Read a book! Respect her boundaries. Try to listen to her body in the moment. Let go of what you think she should respond to and find out what she actually likes. 

Women don’t need intimacy to come, we need connection. (And reason to believe you’re going to act like a decent human being.) We can connect for an hour or a lifetime. We just both have to fight the script to become porn bots. 

I do not believe that women are less likely to orgasm now than they were in the past. We have more information, and antibiotics, than we’ve had in thousands of years. But old ideas die hard. Let’s kill the one’s that make sex less fun for women.

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Kaytlin Bailey

Kaytlin Bailey

Kaytlin Bailey is a stand-up comic. You may have seen her on MTV's Braless, or heard her on SiriusXM radio. She writes for Vice and travels with the CAKE Comedy Tour.