I was talking to my mom on the phone earlier this week about post ideas I’m working on -- if you know me, I have probably talked to you about my endless topic ideas, either ones I am working on or ones I have already written, at some point or another, because that’s what I do -- and I mentioned wanting to write something about first orgasms, “Because, of all the women I know--” I began.
“Everyone remembers it,” my mom finished. Given that my mom and I are not usually a pair of individuals given to completing one another’s sentences, I figured I must be on to something.
My own story is unsurprisingly banal: I am unsure of how old I was, probably somewhere in my early teens. It happened as a result of the fairly innocuous and common “playing” with oneself that kids of all ages often do, only this time I had a RESULT. I vividly remember sitting on my bed afterward and thinking WHAT THE HELL JUST HAPPENED?
What little I knew about orgasms at the time was culled from the copies of Cosmopolitan I routinely pilfered from my mom, something I’d been doing regularly for quite awhile before I ever found myself blinking at the Garfield poster on the wall opposite my bed in shock, trying to process what had just taken place. I knew that orgasms were something everybody wanted, and some folk had difficulty locating, for a wide variety of reasons. Was the thing that just happened an orgasm? Maybe? I don’t know?
I’d like to say my reaction was pure THIS IS AWESOME -- the standard response I’ve heard from most dudes on their first orgasm experience -- and if it had happened later in my teens that may have been the case. But in the moment I was mostly bewildered and confused, and weirdly wracked with guilt; the girls’ sex ed programs I’d been party to in school thus far hadn’t covered this, not at all. What, exactly, was it? Would it happen again? Did I actually do it, or was that just a coincidence? And if I did it, then HOW?
The female orgasm, like lots of other female sexual stuff, continues to be a bit of a medical mystery. It has long been assumed that the reason male orgasms exist is to inspire dudes to reproduce. If women needed to have an orgasm to get knocked up, their version would serve a clear biological purpose, but women are quite capable of achieving pregnancy sans orgasm. The current thinking on the matter suggests the female orgasm could be a promoter of pair-bonding, or it could just be a biological “byproduct” of gender differentiation in fetal development, an echo of a male orgasm knocking around inside a lady’s body. There is a pretty active controversy going on even today between these camps.
According to The Kinsey Institute, only 29% of women have regular orgasms during sex with a partner. (Compare that with 75% of men.) Furthermore, between 10% and 15% of women reportedly never have orgasms, alone or with a partner, period. Most women who do have regular orgasms have them alone, via self-stimulation, or as a result of non-intercourse-based sexual activities with a partner.
Some folks don't give a fig about orgasms, and that's fine too.
But it’s probably not surprising that most of us who do have regular orgasms first do so on our own, and then attempt to transmit that knowledge (sometimes with varying degrees of success!) to our partners. Unfortunately, while it’s tacitly accepted that boys are going to explore their sexual parts fairly early in life, girls are often actively deterred from doing so, and this likely contributes to the trouble many women have in instructing a partner on how to get ‘er done, or in having orgasms at all -- too much shame, not enough encouragement.
But now it’s your turn: we want to hear about your first orgasm. How did it happen, and how did you feel about it, and how do you think about it now?
