I’m a woman in a relationship with a sexy man who turns me on in all the right ways. We have wonderful chemistry, but I’ve never been able to climax during intercourse. The only way I have managed to come is through marathon masturbation sessions with him assisting, which is great, but I feel like by not coming during sex, I’m missing out on a big part of the fun. We’ve tried using lots of lube and spending a long time in foreplay. I’m often on top, running the show, but still no dice. I haven’t been able to with any of my previous partners either. I’ve only reached orgasm through masturbation. Is this just the way I’m made, or are there techniques I can use to try to come during sex? DESPERATELY SEEKING ORGASM

Throughout history, the lengths women have gone to in order to procure intercourse-based orgasms provide unresolved and disquieting clues into how this relatively uncommon occurrence (contemporary numbers suggest 20 to 30 per cent of women have vaginal orgasms) has come to define our concept of womanhood, manhood and legitimate sexual expression.

In her book Bonk, Mary Roach writes about Princess Marie Bonaparte, who was frustrated that she never came during missionary sex and theorized that the distance between the vagina and the clitoris established a woman’s orgasmic potential during intercourse. Rather than try a new position — granted, perhaps anything original or time-consuming was off limits, seeing as how her husband was gay — she measured 243 women’s private bits, then inquired if they came during sex.

She determined that the women she coined téléclitoridiennes, “females of the distant clitoris,” with a span longer than an inch, were unable to orgasm during intercourse because their clitoris wasn’t receiving stimulation. (Keep in mind this was before we understood the subterranean anatomy of this organ.) Bonaparte, naming herself a téléclitoridienne, went through two surgeries to have hers lowered. Roach doesn’t elaborate on too many of the details but, regardless, the procedures didn’t work.

The most revealing part of this anecdote — to me, anyway — is not Bonaparte’s progressive recognition of the clitoris as a source of pleasure, but her obsession with putting it closer to her vagina, the “true” organ of femininity, as Jean Walton calls it in Fair Sex, Savage Dreams. Bonaparte, of course, discredited the whole study after she met Freud in 1925. (“No friend,” Roach writes, “of the clitoris.”)

Though on the surface your remark appears positive, “a sexy man who turns me on in all the right ways” strikes me as an indirectly self-critical mantra and implies that someone’s ego has required stroking due to your lack of climax during simple penetration. Perhaps your lover hasn’t been putting pressure on you and you’re just obsessed with the idea that you’re missing out on a wondrous experience, but I also want to talk about the phrase “I’ve only reached orgasm through masturbation.” Only? Masturbation remains the ugly stepchild of intimate amusement in our culture, yet, given all the shade thrown on it, it is the one thing that brings you to climax. I must ask in light of this, why is it almost always cast as a compromise? With so much attention, both social and scientific, focused on penetrative orgasms, you’d have thought we’d have come up with something more universally effective by now, but nope, good old frigging, despite all the ignominy, still leads the charge for so many.

I know what you’re thinking: “I’ve read your pro-jerking-off stance here a million times, Sasha, but I want the unicorn orgasm and I won’t be happy until it’s mine, all mine.” Fine then, Desperately, here are a few suggestions:

1. Contemporary advice always warns against turning sex into a competition, but as sexual physiology researcher Kim Wallen says in Bonk, “Women who routinely have orgasms during intercourse without explicit clitoral stimulation all say that it makes little difference what the guy does, as long as he doesn’t come too soon. In fact, it is sometimes preferred that he just lie there and anchor the woman’s pelvis to his.” So, with single-minded determination, keep trying Cowgirl on Dead Horse.

2. You don’t mention a vibrator so I suggest trying one on your exposed clitoral area (yes, meaning you masturbate!) while you are being penetrated.

I also recommend reading Bonk; you may find some of the studies Roach writes about worth further investigation.

LOVE BITS: The topic of low libido gets raised here quite frequently and never without some comment from readers. When Hopeful inquired about her own flagging sex drive a few weeks ago, I suggested some resources, but reader Tom had more to add. “I read your comments to Hopeful about her low libido,” he wrote. “Basically you gave her good advice in my humble opinion, except that you left out one very important point. Low libido may be due to an undiagnosed medical condition. There are many such possibilities. One of them is hyperparathyroidism, a condition that is considered rare but is perhaps more common than believed to be the case — just underdiagnosed. For more information on hyperparathyroidism, please join [my] Yahoo group.”

As a matter of fact, Tom, Kathryn Hall does cover endocrine disorders in the book I suggested, Reclaiming Your Sexual Self, along with a range of other medical issues that may affect libido. She does so articulately, though not in great detail and not hyperparathyroidism particularly. If you do even a modicum of research into the thyroid, you begin to realize that, in the context of sex, it’s a little like Homer’s assessment of alcohol: the cause of and solution to all of life’s problems. It is certainly a good idea to check out any potential medical issues with regards to a reduced libido, keeping Leonore Tiefer, the watchdog for the medicalization of female sexual dysfunction, close at hand.

Email us at: LETTERS@EYEWEEKLY.COM or send your questions to EYEWEEKLY.COM
625 Church St, 6th Floor, Toronto M4Y 2G1