Want an Orgasm? Be Selfish.

Over the last week or so I've seen many references to an article about the orgasm gap between men and women. The headline caught my attention: the real reason women get off less than men. That sent my head spinning just a bit, since it's pretty clear that women, on average, have a much shorter refractory period post-orgasm than men, allowing us the opportunity to indulge in multiples in short order.

Photo courtesy of Don't I Wish

The issue, somewhat unsurprisingly, has almost nothing to do with anatomy and everything to do with how comfortable women feel with their partners. According to the research, college women in relationships have nearly 7 times more orgasms with their partners than college women hooking up with a dude for the first time. But here's the frustrating fact: even those who have achieved relationship "status" are not having orgasms during partnered sex as frequently as their (male) partners do.

In the study, the researchers explored the variety of sexual activities the subjects participated in. Their findings showed that when a woman experienced oral sex, vaginal intercourse and clitoral self-stimulation in the same encounter, her likelihood of orgasm reached parity with her (male) partner's.

Rather than pegging the orgasm to anatomical issues (though it's shocking that 35% of women apparently don't know where their clits are located), the report found that the key factor in whether women reached orgasm as frequently as their partners was how invested the pair were in the woman's pleasure. And of course, how comfortable they were with each other to do all the things it apparently takes to get there.

Keeping in mind that the study subjects were college students, I wonder to what extent maturity and comfort with one's body and desires played into the results. While college kids seem like ideal subjects because they a) have a lot of sex (or the freedom to have a lot of sex), and b) they may be more likely to have more hookups than the average adult, they are relatively new to the whole experience of communicating openly about sex. That's not to say that adults with a few more years of hookups or relationships behind them are any better at the whole communication ballgame, but they might have the advantage of knowing what it really takes to get off with a new partner and the courage to make sure it happens more often than not.

I'm curious to hear from those who are more experienced with hookups than I am, or at least, more recently experienced. Does the nature of the hookup, in your opinion, encourage a greater focus on the man's pleasure and almost none on the woman's? And what's holding women back from being a bit selfish early on and asking for what they need to get off?

My recent experience, which is definitely non-hookup-y and all relationship-y, says that women have more orgasms than men, and sometimes men get a little cranky and jealous about that. What say you to that?