11 Things You Never Knew About The Female Orgasm

Science is pretty sexist, and so the body of research on female orgasms unsurprisingly lacking. But it’s getting better, more studies are being published, and we’re learning more all the time about what sets female sexuality and pleasure apart. And there’s so much to be gained from learning! Most importantly, the more is known about female orgasms, the smaller the pleasure gap gets.

So read up, improve your knowledge, and get better at a very specific type of trivia. Here are 11 things you probably never knew about the female orgasm, but truly should.

1. Less than 20 percent of women can orgasm from vaginal penetration alone. According to the largest study on orgasms so far, published in the Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy in 2017, only 18 percent of American women say they can orgasm from just vaginal penetration. Which hammers home the importance of the clitoris, bringing us to the next point…

2. More than a third of women say they need some sort of clitoral stimulation to orgasm. TBH this number feels small, given what is known about the structure of the clitoris and how many nerve endings there are (thousands). According to the big orgasm study, 36.6 percent of women say clitoral stimulation is “necessary” to orgasm.

3. But clitoral and vaginal stimulation can be difficult to separate… Because, as Rosara Torrisi, a certified sex therapist at the Long Island Institute of Sex Therapy, says, the clitoris can be stimulated “indirectly from vaginal penetration.” This is because the clitoris isn’t just a little dot on the vulva, but a whole structure that extends into the body. It’s believed that this internal clit situation is what a lot of people think is the elusive (fake) G-spot.

4. Foreplay isn’t just polite, for most women, it’s necessary. In the same orgasm study, a majority of women cited “spending time to build-up arousal” as something that enhances an orgasm. Torrisi says that “for many women, sex is more about intimacy, so foreplay is a way of accessing that intimacy.”

There you have it, a sex therapist-certified, scientific reason to emphasize foreplay even more.

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