It's great to be a man in our society. The perks seem to be endless. Everything is built with the intention of accommodating our needs. It's fantastic, really. We men are constantly validated.
And the bedroom is one place where we receive consistent validation. I'm talking about women faking orgasms and giving us the sense that we're the greatest lovers that have ever lived.
What a terrific arrangement for men. We get all the sexual pleasure and the feeling that we have satisfied the woman we're sleeping with, without actually having done so.
A woman faking an orgasm is now sort of just part of the deal, isn't it? You just do it; it's almost like something that's passed down from generation to generation, like makeup tips or a recipe. It's a gift women give to men to keep them satisfied and calm.
I couldn't disagree more.
I think it's a major offense to women and their sexual selves. And it shouldn't be casual water cooler conversation nor should it be reserved for women's magazines like Cosmopolitan.
The fake orgasm should be examined as a systemic problem in our society.
A Temple University study, featured in the CBS News column, "Study: Most Women Fake Orgasms -- But Why?" shows around 60 percent of women have faked an orgasm.
This all comes down to conditioning. From a very early age, women taught to satisfy the fiery male ego. The fake orgasm is just another moment in which a woman sacrifices for a man without receiving anything in return and worse, it leaves her feeling sexually unfulfilled.
Today, when we see the female orgasm covered in the main stream, it's dealt with in a comedic way. We see Meg Ryan's character in When Harry Met Sally screaming at the top of her lungs (in a diner) or we see an Herbal Essences commercial with a woman having a massive orgasm over fabulous shampoo. We find the sound of a woman faking an orgasm to be funny.
It's not. It's the sound of an unsatisfied woman working to satisfy the already exploding male ego.
We don't talk publicly about the orgasm gap in the mainstream -- but that doesn't surprise me. Our male-dominated society would never want to expose that women are faking orgasms, that men really aren't satisfying women in droves.
However, the numbers reveal something more clarifying. According to the ABC News article, "Female Orgasm May Be Tied to 'Rule of Thumb,'" 15 percent of surveyed women have NEVER had an orgasm (I wonder if its much higher in reality). And the same surveys show that 75 percent of women don't reach orgasm during intercourse -- that's right, Gentleman.
So why do women fake it?
Two major reasons stuck out as I spoke with many women over the past two months: feeding the male ego and time.
"It just makes him happy, it feels more complete," said one friend.
"But does it leaving YOU feeling complete?" I asked.
"No, it leaves me feeling like I am just a tool for his orgasm."
That comment reminded me of what my friend D'Andra's grandmother used to tell her, "Sex is for men, sex is for their benefit."
Imagine growing up with that ideology ...
Many women fake their orgasms as a means to end an un-pleasurable sexual process.
"I don't have time. I can't sit here while he plows away like a jack rabbit; it's not fun for me when it's like that."
A woman writer I know mentioned that a man should never ask a woman if she fakes it.
I disagree. The male ego has been coddled for way too long. Enough is enough. We have to blow the cover off the secret world women are living and in this case, it's a world where we get everything we want and they usually get nothing. And we teach women that it's just the way things are and always have been.
This is how I see it: The fake orgasm is not compartmentalized from the rest of what women have to do. It sits at the core of a larger dismissal of a woman's needs and desires, extrapolating across all parts of their lives, work, life, home. Women are not simply a tool for our sexual pleasure, they are ultimately a tool for making every part of our lives easier.
Many of the women I've talked with see faking an orgasm as a little gift, a favor for the man they're with. That makes no sense to me. Faking an orgasm is not like making him a snack after he comes home from work or remembering what kind of beer he likes to drink.
It's not that having an orgasm is critical during every sexual juncture; it's that faking it takes women away from themselves. Faking it with any regularity generally leads to a path of a lifetime of sexual dissatisfaction, and dissatisfaction in general.
But too many women treat sex as an activity left in the bedroom -- they see it as an isolated activity. I disagree. Sex is important, and if the man displays a lack of care in the bedroom, is he thoughtful in other areas of a woman's life?
As I've noted in previous columns, we condition men to maintain women, to keep them satisfied on a periodic basis. We don't condition them to think about their day-to-day needs -- the same basic needs women think about with regard to the men in their life.
Most women have yet to discover their true sexual power -- not their power over others but the power they can feel within themselves. So when men maintain women by doing a little here and there in the bedroom, and women fake it, it just leads to a diminishing of female power.
What I find to be remarkable is the lengths to which this culture will go to ensure men are sexually satisfied. We spend billions of dollars to produce drugs, like Viagra and Cialis, for erectile dysfunction, providing seventy-year-old men with the possibility of a thirty-six hour erection. But discussion about the millions of women who don't have orgasms or are sexually dissatisfied is shoved into the fringes.
Most of the women I spoke to saw porn, and the men who watch it regularly, as a root cause for this need to fake orgasms. For the record, I don't fundamentally see a problem with porn. Rather, my issue is with the kind of porn that is defined as mainstream and is made specifically for men. An entire generation of porn watching men (thanks to the internet), now have this idea that women climax by instantly screaming at the top of their lungs as soon as they see a penis ... give me a break.
My friend Nina Hartley, feminist, registered nurse, and porn icon, has a take on porn that may come as unexpected, given her vocation: "If any person is watching porn to get an idea of how actual people have sex, then they need their heads examined. Porn is FANTASY, like a live-action cartoon, and shouldn't be taken seriously as sex ed."
But there seems to be a bigger issue here: how our society sees women and their needs.
"Women are so complicated," one of my guy friends said, when I asked him about women's sexual needs.
No, actually they're not. While certain women may need more concentration, effort, or focus to reach orgasm, I don't think that makes them complicated.
We persist in this illusion that women are sexually and emotional complicated so we don't have to show them the care and affection they need. We can put it on them. It's really easy to say, "Oh, she's so complicated," as if a woman is a puzzle that only three men in the world can solve.
As a result, we can justify why we don't or can't give her what she needs -- it's just too hard to figure her out!
There's a pretty simple formula here: women want what we men want.
Don't be a jerk. Ask her what she wants, and when she tells you, see it as a fantastic opportunity to please her. Don't think it's a personal assault on your manhood. Basically, do what she does for you.
For most men, sex is carnal; it's about the raw pleasure. But for too many women, sex is often a cerebral process. One in which they have to think and plan when to fake an orgasm, when to make everything perfect for the man in their lives. They are pleasing our massive egos, instead of pleasing themselves.
I'm tired of the fake orgasm being treated by women's magazines like the newest lipstick color or the season's best handbag. We treat a woman faking an orgasm so casually. It is a BIG deal. It should no longer be seen as an act of convenience or consideration, but rather, an act of submission: Submission to the male ego and submission to our screwed up rules about women and sexuality. We condition and encourage women to submit across the board, and in the case of sex, it is the most fundamental part of a woman's identity, whether they know it or not. And by her sexual identity, I am not necessarily saying that it's about sex with others, I am referring to her sexual self.
So how does this all boil down in terms of the role men have to play? I think in terms of our perception of sex, women see it as an experience and men are conditioned to see it as a performance. We see it as a one-man performance, one in which we are the star, the director, the producer -- it's how we condition men to exist in life and relate to women.
It's like the Wizard of Oz. On the surface, you see a lot pomp and circumstance, but if you peek behind the curtain, there's a scared little man who has not only been taught to focus on himself, but has also been taught that focusing and pleasing a woman, on her terms, is an act of submission and weakness.
I try to avoid being and sounding prescriptive in my writing, but in this case I am begging women to put the fake orgasm out of business. Men don't need or deserve more validation -- we get it every day, in many different ways.
It's time for women to seek the sexual (and all other types of) pleasure that has been, for too long, absent or lost in their lives.
And it's time for men to stop automatically assuming that they are fantastic in bed.
Frankly, it's time for men to assume we aren't that great in bed, until we are told otherwise ... and not by a fake orgasm.
I hope you will join me on Facebook and follow me on Twitter.
This piece originally appeared on The Current Conscience.
Follow Yashar Ali on Twitter: www.twitter.com/yashar
I'm sure that many of the women that these men have "never had trouble getting off before" are fakers themselves. I don't blame them, but I think that in order for this to really change, every woman in the tri-state will have to cut this shit out simultaneously, or all of the brave non-fakers will be dismissed offhand. Now how can I envision that really happening? No, I think the better solution for the real world is to toss him a fake every once in a while, just to show him I do enjoy sex (which I certainly do), and then gently break him in with sporadic suggestions and feedback. The evolution of woman's role in society has to be a subtle, gentle machine.
Also, the enormous amount of drugs and "devices" for women to prevent birth...
Seriously, he goes on and on about "male ego" and trying to find new ways to blame men, never stopping to realize that men never asked women to fake their orgasm in the first place. The women who do it are doing it just to be nice. If she talked nicely to her husband about how to improve their love making then, most men would be glad to help.
It makes me feel angry and sad reading "men never asked women to fake their orgasm in the first place". We were molded and twisted to please men and every woman knows what will happen if we don't.
This article is not an attack on male ego, I see it rathen as an invitation into intimacy. Intimacy that gives a space to a woman to be whatever she is: wild, mad, errotic, nurturing, furious... But for this to happen a man needs to put down his deffences (however clever they are) and feel her, really feel her. And it will blow your socks off....
What does every woman know while happen if she doesn't please men? Surely you are not saying that every man is violent? Because that would be demonizing an entire gender with a negative stereotype and would be kind of sexist. Perhaps I am misunderstanding you.
If this article was an "invitation into intimacy" then maybe he should have written it praising that intimacy rather than angrily asserting that men "don't deserve validation" and blaming him for what he never asked his wife to do in the first place. Men don't have "defenses" if their wife is willing to talk with them. Rather than seeking new ways to criticize men, the author should simply tell women to have a conversation with her husband about what she'd like to do in bed and most husbands will be happy to try it out.
The argument simply put is that when a man is emasculated we understand this will affect his sex drive - he gains pity
When a man is impotent for any other reason we have drugs at the ready plus another lot of sympathy because a man MUST be able to be sexually ready
When a woman is efeminated ( the consistent phenomenon of undermining female agency we see on every billboard in every magazine on every lip) we don't even name it! And the resultant 1in3 women who suffer sexual dysfunction are beckoned to turn to the myth of female neuroticism to understand what is happening
When a woman (1in3) suffers impotency there are no drugs... worse, the doctors ( here in the UK at least) insist upon viewing the problem as a psychological FEAR of intercourse and pursue it as such
Ahh we have a long way to go before we see humanity as just that and not as 2 seperate species of male and female!
Q: Why do women fake orgasms?
A: Because they think we actually care?
I know, I know, but I couldn't resist.
I never fake.. did when I was very young and never would think of doing it now. I don't feel bad telling him...even if it causes him some frustration. His frustration can be motivation. ;) Most men are very open to this if they care for you. They want to please you and he'll feel so much better when he actually knows he has brought your body to pure pleasure, multiples.... Men love this more than anything.
And aFter the newness of the relationship wears off, the fake orgasm "tying to do something nice for her man", isn't going to work anymore and she just isn't going to want sex. I mean, who wants to have sex if it doesn't feel good. Watching your partner recieve this ultimate pleasure while she gets nothing? Leaves a woman feeling very cheated.
Women needs to stop being shy and tell men what pleases them! Most men truly want to please their partner but they can't do it unless she tells him what works for her.
I am a a firm believer that in MOST cases where you have a good couple but sex becomes an issue in the relationship, if you want your lady to want it more give her more orgasms....
However, what I could never understand is why do these women stay in these "relationships?" You say, "don't be a jerk." But women seem to love to sex jerks, "bad boys..." I think this is why most men see women's sexuality as "complicated." It really isn't. It's quite simple once you understand women.
I personally am not interested in being with a woman who fakes an orgasm. Why? Because it would tell me she really is not interested in having sex with me. And I do not want to sex a woman who does not really want to have sex with me.
Women must be more open and honest. A fake orgasm is just another form of deception. Why not just tell the guy you are no longer interested in sex with him? Or tell him what he needs to do to please you? Speak up! You only live life once. So live it to the max!
Life is Good!
How is it one comes to 'understand women' - this has been a riddle to me my whole life
And why is certain people take a few examples of people ( who happen to be women) behaving in a certain way and then use that as a theory to analyze the entire world population of women?!
WE ARE 50% OF THE WORLDS POPULATION - did it never dawn on you that we may all be different and the fantastical 'formula' to understand 'Women' is naught but myth!?
Look at women as individuals not a species ...please, please...please!
It has been my experience that most women say one thing, but believe something else. Women say they don't like bad boys but seem to end up dating and sexing many. Why look at Sandra Bullock and Jesse James.....
Most women say a man's penis size does not matter. But look at they typical sex toy....Is it "average?" When with their girlfriends, they talk penis size.....The list goes on and on...
Obviously, from a personality standpoint and in other areas there are differences. But, when you have a population, one can draw a sample and make certain conclusions from it.
Women like men whom they are attracted too. Often it is based on what their current objective is: sex, short-term relationship, family.....We men are treated like ice cream; what ever a woman's flavor of the moment is, that's what she wants....
Do you know over 60% of women say they no longer love their husbands? Guess what: they never did!!!
We all have to make judgments about people in life. Too many women simply make poor choices with men, then blame ALL men for their dumb choices. Frankly, I resent it.
What a terrific arrangement for men. We get all the sexual pleasure and the feeling that we have satisfied the woman we're sleeping with, without actually having done so.
[snip]
I disagree. The male ego has been coddled for way too long. Enough is enough. We have to blow the cover off the secret world women are living and in this case, it's a world where we get everything we want and they usually get nothing."
Yashar, how have you experienced any of this personally. I see no evidence of you having been sexually fluid from your writing. You appear to be a very gay man.
This article makes no sense. Yashar uses 'we' alot yet in this recent article on GMP says,
"I came out to my parents nine years ago, when I was twenty-two. "
http://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/losing-my-identity-only-gay-when-im-not-iranian/
Also, If i imagine that Yashar's articles had been written by a feminine man* or a feminine transwoman, then their weird construction suddenly makes sense to me. It also explains in the comments, why the (most) women relate to your articles and the (most) men dont
*there are feminine men(whether gay through to straight, in orientation), and masculine men(whether gay through to straight, in orientation)