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2008/05/30

Are Male and Female Orgasms Different?

I doubt you'll be able to answer this question, but my girlfriend and I were arguing about the difference between men's orgasms and women's orgasms, and I wanted to know if there are any proven differences.

There is still so much we don’t know about orgasms, but even as we discover more, this will always be a difficult question to answer. For one thing, if you’re comparing orgasms, what are you comparing exactly: Physical response? Psychological experience? Emotional reactions? Also, how can we compare, or what is your point of comparison? But there is a little research on this, and there is also someone I asked the question of who is in some ways qualified to answer your question.

If you’re defining orgasm as only the physical sexual response, then I guess you could say that male and female orgasms are different because we have different body parts. But even considering those differences, the physiological processes (like increased heart rate, blood pressure, muscle tension, etc…) are very similar in male and female orgasm.
And when we consider orgasm as a whole experience, there is little reason to suspect that male orgasm and female orgasms are experienced differently. Here are some ways people explain the difference, or lack thereof.

In The Science of Orgasm, authors Barry Komisaruk, Carlos Beyer-Flores, and Beverly Whipple cite two studies that are relevant to this question, although neither provide a concrete answer.

In one study, researchers had male and female college students write out descriptions of their personal experience of orgasm. Then they removed any terminology that would reveal the gender of the person who wrote the description (substituting the word genitalia for the word penis, for example). Finally they had male and female judges try to determine from the written descriptions which ones were men and which were women. They found that people were not able to tell the difference. The authors also cite the research of Kenneth Mah and Irving Binik which suggests that people focus more on how an orgasm feels than where in the body they feel it. Given this it seems less likely that the anatomical differences between men and women would amount to a lot in terms of whether male and female orgasms are experienced as different.

I also turned to a different kind of expert with your question. Buck Angel is a well known adult performer and an outspoken transsexual speaker and activist who was born female and has transitioned to male. I first learned about Buck when he was featured on Sextv (you can see a short video on the Sextv website). Buck talks a lot publicly about his experiences living in the world as a woman and as a man.

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