Introduction
This is one in a series of short essays that will ultimately wind up in one or more chapters of my book Civilizations and Its Contents: Platonic Reflections on Eros and the Culture Wars. You can find an overview of it here.
My book is, for the most part, not focused on the details of our sexual practices. But for a few reasons, I became interested in the phenomenon of multiple orgasm about five years ago.
My book *is* very much focused on how theories of sexuality support patriarchal views about the nature of men and women and how patriarchal sexual practices limit sexual pleasure for both men and women. It is widely believed that women have troubles with orgasm, yet at the same time, it is also widely believed that women are capable of multiple orgasms while men are not. Now, on the surface that seems contradictory. Are women more capable of orgasmic pleasure than men or less so?
I’ve long been suspicious of both alternatives. I follow many feminists in claiming that the best evidence we have is that women’s problems with orgasms are not a product of nature but, rather, of the problematic way in which men and women who follow patriarchal norms have sex as few women have problems with orgasm by themselves and many do when they are with men.
So, I also wondered whether there might be something wrong with the other claim, that is, that women but not men have a capacity for multiple orgasms.
And, if there is reason to also question this distinction between men and women, it occurred to me that we could again find something in our sexual practices under patriarchy that could explain the difference.
I considered these ideas for some time but did not make much headway until a few years ago friend posted something about her experience with multiple orgasms that helped me focus on the issue in the context of something else I had been thinking about, the distinction between active and receptive roles (or the difference between being a top or a bottom) in our sexual practices.
The result was a preliminary draft of this essay which I shared with a few people, including men who I had interviewed who had some experience with multiple orgasms. Their responses gave me the clue I needed to tie the active / receptive distinction to the capacity for multiple orgasms. I had a theoretical argument I used to complete the first full draft of the essay which I posted a few months. But I didn’t have all the evidence I needed to be confident it made sense. Last week, however, I had a few email exchanges with my interview subjects about the draft and they confirmed my interpretation of their experience.
So here is another revision, one that I put forward with more confidence not only that my argument is quite possibly right, but that if I am right, we all–men and women–have another good reason to break down the rigid sexual roles that is our patriarchal inheritance.
This is a work in progress. Feel free to comment publicly or privately.
Multiple Orgasm in Women
Three years ago, a friend wrote this on social media: “I’m starting to think I should fake not having an orgasm.” Why would one do that? Because she explains, “Most of the men I date seem to think that if a lady gets off as easily as sneezing, they don’t have to do anything to attempt to pleasure her. But what if, with a bit of effort, her orgasms come in waves, a fabulous variety of depth, intensity, and duration?”
One of the oddities about the female orgasm discussion is that the notion that women are more likely to have difficulties in having orgasms lives side by side with the recognition that women are far more likely than men to have multiple orgasms, that is, one orgasm that quickly follows another.
Multiple orgasms among women are varied. Some women who experience multiple orgasms find that they are a series of typical orgasms in a row, with a short period after one orgasm in which sexual tension relaxes before it quickly heightens again, and the woman reaches another orgasm. I will call these kinds of multiple orgasms, “independent multiple orgasms.”
Of the women whose multiple orgasms are of this type, some find that when they have multiple orgasms, they are all similar to one another. Others find that they their multiple orgasms are quite as intense as those they have when they have a single orgasm. Some find that they their orgasms start small but become more intense as they repeat. Others find that their orgasms start big and then decrease in intensity.
There are other women, however, such as the women quoted above and one other who has shared her experience with me in an interview, who report that they can experience overlapping waves of intense pleasure over five to twenty minutes time, pleasure that barely subsides. They are having orgasmic pleasure for the although it is marked by repeated heights of pleasures. Typically, the characteristic physical signs of orgasm including muscle contractions in the pelvis, as well as a markedly faster respiration and heartbeat, are continuous with occasional moments of heightened intensity. I will call this kind of multiple orgasms, “wave multiple orgasms.”
There appears to be great variation in the capacity of women to have multiple orgasms. Some women report that, despite having tried in multiple ways, it is impossible for them. Others find it relatively easy. And some women—including the two with whom I talked about the question in some depth—said that it took them some time to develop the ability to have multiple orgasms, and especially to have them in a way that makes them qualitatively special.
The woman quoted at the start of this essay said that “my abilities didn’t emerge until my mid-30s. Before that it was very hard for me to get off with a partner. I am grateful to Wellbutrin and queer sex parties, and multiple threesomes, for helping me to get where I am today!”
Another woman who had multiple orgasms said, “I could always have an orgasm easily and read about multiple orgasms but never really had one. I really learned what my body could do when a man was giving me oral sex and didn’t stop after I came. And then he didn’t stop after I came a second and third time. If I hadn’t said something he might not have even realized that I had more than one orgasm because I was very quiet back, then. He was so intent on making me feel good, he kept going and I had four in a row. And the cumulative effect was special because I was orgasming pretty much the whole time even though it got more intense three times after the first one.
This second interview subject, like the first one, found that being capable of orgasming easily didn’t encourage men to help her orgasm more than once. “The first man with whom I had multiple orgasm was excited when I told him and eager to try again. We did it a few times. But until I met my husband it was not easy to find partners who were interested in putting in the time and effort as I learned to have better and multiple orgasms. That I had an orgasm so quickly discouraged men from doing anything after my first. And that became a bigger problem when my orgasms became more vigorous and thus obvious. The men more concerned about my pleasure may have cared about my having an orgasm but even for most of them, as soon as I had one, they thought their job was done.”[1] While my first interview subject described “wave multiple orgasms” the second interview subject sometimes had “independent multiple orgasms” and sometimes had a series of wave-like orgasms. Both kinds, she said gave her “an enormous sense of well-being that was better than just having one.”[2]
We saw in a previous essay that sexual equality—which essentially means empowering women to take some control of their sexual lives with men—is critical to women having more sexual pleasure and better orgasms. And now we see another reason why that’s so. It’s not just about making sex better for women who find it difficult to have orgasms with their partners, and need some control over sexual encounters to ensure that they get the kind of stimulus that gets them off. It’s also about making it possible for women who can have orgasms easily to have better ones and more of them.
Feminist theorists have often suggested that the ability of women to have multiple orgasms leads men to fear the sexual power of women. In the ancient world where the sexual desires of women were thought to be more powerful than those of men, perhaps because of their capacity for multiple orgasm. The fear of women’s sexual power survives in the modern world, even though women are usually thought to have weaker sexual desires than men (at least among “good” women). It has long been thought that very few men have a similar capacity. After an orgasm, most men lose their erection and have a more or less lengthy refractory period during which they can neither become erect nor have another orgasm.
Multiple Orgasm in Men
But is it possible that the common notion that men are incapable of multiple orgasm is in fact not true? Is it possible that far more men are capable of multiple orgasms than we recognize? And if so, why have we not recognized it before?
There is evidence in the research literature of men capable of multiple orgasms at least of the independent kind.[3] And during my interviews, I found two men who had experiences of them.
One interview subject said that when he was in his twenties and thirties, he would not necessarily lose his erection after having an orgasm and could stay erect and have a second orgasm a short time after first and then have a third one as well.
A second interview subject also did not lose his erection after having an orgasm and could continue to have intercourse, but his second orgasm took longer than his first. He thought both abilities had faded as he grew older although he said, “I don’t really try to do that anymore.”
The first interviewee explained how he discovered his capacity for having multiple orgasms.
“It happened almost by accident or, maybe, necessity. When I was first having sex in my teens I would ejaculate very quickly, sometimes within ten seconds of entering my partner. I was embarrassed that I had to stop sex so soon. But I discovered that if I just keep thrusting that I stayed hard. I could keep going and then have a second orgasm, and I had a little control over how quickly that happened. And sometimes I could have a third orgasms as well. Sometimes my partner recognized what was happening. Other times they didn’t really notice.
When I was more experienced, I could last much longer if I wanted, mostly by focusing on pleasing my partner not myself. I didn’t need my capacity for having orgasms one after another, although I’ve always enjoyed coming more than once in a sexual encounter, often beginning again after just a very short break of a couple of minutes. But one time in my forties or so, I was wondering what would happen if I tried thrusting after an orgasm again. I found two things. First, I could draw out the pleasure of my orgasm for a longer period, extending it from maybe 30 seconds to 2 or 3 minutes. My orgasm didn’t end with five or six strokes, but the intense pleasure could continue much longer. And then, while experimenting with that, I found that I still had the ability to stay hard and then have a second and sometimes a third orgasm in a row with a short break between them.”
Sex with multiple orgasms made it special for this man.
“On good days, I can still come two or three times while staying hard. An even when I do lose my erection it comes back quickly if I’m being stimulated. The first one is often quicker and feels great. The second one takes longer and the pleasure I get from sex during this longer period is wonderful and that build up makes my second orgasm even more powerful. The third time is longer still. Sometimes the build-up leads to an orgasm as powerful as the second one although sometimes it is not quite as intense. But the feeling after that third orgasm is special. I get a sense of being drained. That’s not really connected to ejaculating more because not that much comes out of me the second or third time. It’s more a matter of being completely tension free, relaxed, and physically sated in a way that one orgasm doesn’t give me. And it’s not just physical. The experience of being with a woman who wants to have sex with me so long and intensely makes me feel deeply cared for by and connected to her.”
This description comports with what the three women with the capacity for multiple orgasm described to me. One said, “Having a few orgasms in a row leaves me feeling totally free of tension and incredibly connected to my lover.” Another reported that “sex is so much more than having an orgasm for me. But the pleasure of orgasm adds to the experience. And when I have two or three in a row, it just makes my day and often carries over for a few days as I remember it.”
There was a major difference, however, in the experience of men and women who had multiple orgasm. The two men, like the three women, were able to have what I’ve called independent multiple orgasms, a series of orgasms separated by three second to a few minutes. However, two of the women and none of the men were able to experience wave multiple orgasm, a state of continuous waves of orgasmic pleasure that also came with moments of heightened more intense pleasure when the waves peaked. After hearing about the men’s experience, I had related what I had been told by the woman capable of wave multiple orgasms, just to see if the had had such an experience. Neither said they had.
But a year or so after these initial interviews, one of them—the interview subject who had described his discovery of multiple orgasms as a teenager embarrassed by premature ejaculation, wrote to me to tell me of his more recent experience.
“Remember when you told me about the experience of women who had waves of orgasms that were continuously pleasurable? I was fascinated by that description and wondered whether I could attain the same state and if so, how.
I didn’t really know how to get started. But one day it just happened. I’m generally a top and my orgasms always come from penis in vagina sex with me thrusting away. Although it’s incredibly pleasurable, I’ve rarely been able to have an orgasm from manual or oral sex and don’t like doing either of them for too long. On the other hand, I love being in a woman. It’s not just the pleasure of having my cock stimulated although that is wonderful. It’s also the pleasure of physical exertion whether it’s slow and deliberate or vigorous and fast that really gives me pleasure not just in my cock by in my whole body. And, of course, when it is really great, it is the synchronicity with my lover that is the most wonderful part of sex. We can sometimes do together we can have incredibly powerful orgasms in ways that neither of us can do on our own. And when sex is at its best, fucking is a mutual give and take between us where we respond to what each other is doing over and over again.
But one day I was lying on my back and my girl friend, who sometimes gets me started with a wonderful intensely pleasurable hand job, kept going a little bit faster and I found myself getting more and more excited. I soon had an unusually strong orgasm that just lasted and lasted. Seeing me come, my girlfriend stopped stroking me, but I asked her to keep going. The intense pleasure continued and heightened, and I had a second orgasm, and then a third on. The second was mostly and the third one entirely dry.
Since then, we’ve tried this four or so times and twice got the same result.
What’s different between these experience and the multiple orgasms I’ve had before is four things.
First, the three experiences were of extended periods of be orgasmic pleasure that’s have lasted five to almost ten minutes. Second, my level of excitement, and the level of pleasure from each stroke, doesn’t decline at all but stays at a very high level of intensity. And third, I get what one of your women interview subjects described, a series of waves that reach an even higher level of intensity accompanied by strong orgasmic contractions. And fourth, this is all happening when my partner taking the lead. I’m not setting the pace or the intensity of the stimulation of my penis as I do when I’m in her. I’m just letting her take charge and that bring it all about.
Now, the last time we did this, she was getting tired after I came three times in a row, but I didn’t feel like I was quite done. So, I asked to get inside her. While I could now set the pace and the intensity with which I thrusted into her I didn’t do the kinds of things I usually do when I’m ready to have an orgasm. I just continued at about the same moderate pace she had been stroking me. The waves of pleasure continued, and I had reached two more peaks.”
This testimony is striking in two ways. First, it shows that multiple orgasm, an experience that is generally thought to be only available to women, is open to men as well Second it shows that a wave multiple orgasms is open to men as we well. And third, at least in this case, the man who had this experience did so while being, to use the terminology developed in an earlier chapter, sexually receptive more than sexually active.
After getting that report I returned to the two women who had discussed their multiple orgasms and they, too, said that securing orgasms that comes in waves occurs almost entirely she is being receptive, no matter whether the active partner is a man or a woman.
Is there some theoretical reason to think that the extraordinary experience of wave multiple orgasms, that is sustained orgasmic pleasure punctuated by repeated physical release, is more likely to come to women as well as men when they are being sexual receptive rather than active, that is when they are responding to the sexual stimulus created by another person, or to use the colloquial terms, is a bottom not a top? It is difficult to generalize from three cases, one male and two female, who find that can only reach this heightened state when they give up control of a sexual experience to their partner. (At this point, I’ve asked the other women whose experiences are reported here more about the circumstances under which they have multiple orgasms but have not yet heard back from her.)
I suspect that the answer is yes. There is a reason that multiple orgasms, especially those that are experienced as a wave of sustained orgasmic pleasure is more likely when one is taking a more receptive rather than active role in bed. As we saw see in more detail in the previous chapter, there are advantages and disadvantage of being the more active vs a more receptive partner in a sexual encounter.[4] Much contemporary writing on sexuality tells us that the sexual pleasure of women is limited with male partners because women are more often the receptive partner. When men always take the active role in sexuality—when they determine what kind of sex to have (e.g., intercourse, manual, oral, anal) and for how long, when they determine the position in which different kinds of sex occur, and when they determine the pace and pressure with which sexual touch takes place—women often don’t get the kind of sex that best stimulates them and / or helps them reach orgasm. Not only do women not get what they desire, but lack of control also makes it more difficult for them to discover the kind of stimulation in partnered sex that works best for them. That women are less likely to know and get the kind of stimulation they need to have an orgasm accounts for what has come to be known as the orgasm gap, the far greater likelihood that men will have an orgasm in a heterosexual encounter than women.
By taking control of sexuality, we can get the kinds of stimulation that leads to orgasm. Being in control enables us to pursue sexual pleasure in familiar ways. And also, for the active partner, the sense of control and the pleasure we give our partners—or think we give them—enhances our self-esteem.
It seems that men and women who have independent multiple orgasms are more likely to take the active role in sex as this enables them to get the stimulation, they need to reach a second or third orgasm after their first one.
Yet while the limits of always taking the receptive role in a sexual are more obvious, there may be limits to taking the active role as well. It’s possible that being in control of a sexual encounter can make it more difficult for us to reach higher levels of pleasure and stronger orgasms. The very act of taking control of sex—or anything else—narrows our experience. We focus on what we are doing and what we are going to do next. And if we are concerned about our partner’s well-being—which we know is not always true for men—we are thinking about the effect we are having on them. When our focus is narrowed in this way, we sometimes find it difficult to fully let ourselves go and immerse ourselves in an experience. Or, because we are focused on what we are doing and expect to happen as a result, we may miss aspects of our experience that are different from the norm, that are unexpected or special or surprising. And that is often what is especially delightful and pleasing in any sexual experience, or in many aesthetic pleasures as well. And finally, when we are active rather than receptive, we may not fully appreciate what our partner is giving us in a sexual encounter, and the recognition of their, hopefully skilled interest in giving us pleasure, it itself pleasurable and affirming. If active sexuality gives a sense of having power over the world, receptive sexuality gives us a sense of living in good and pleasurable world.
The benefits of a receptive approach to sexuality are likely to be important in the experience of wave multiple orgasms. Even when we are taking control over sex in a way that brings us to orgasm, the experience of orgasms is always a kind of letting go of control, of allowing the physical experiences that are central to orgasm to take over our bodies and allowing the pleasure to take over our minds. While an active partner can control the stimulation that brings him or her to orgasm, orgasm is something that we ultimately experience as happening to us not something we do. The long, repeated, overlapping of waves of pleasure as described by three interview subjects is experienced in the same way, as something that happens to them because the intense stimulation by their partners enables them to reach an unusually high degree of sexual excitement and anticipation and then release. Just as we talk about the greatest pleasures of the arts—of say music and dance—coming when we lose ourselves in the experience, the greatest pleasure is sex may only be available if we can lose ourselves in the pleasures of sexual stimulation that turns into repeated orgasms. And that, I suspect is why the active partner in a sexual encounter may not receive as much pleasure. For to the extent they are thinking about what they are experiencing or, even more, trying to anticipate or direct it, the experience will be somewhat disrupted and the pleasure it brings reduced.
The usual explanation for the greater ability of women to have multiple orgasms than men is based on the idea that men need a refractory period between ejaculation and that ejaculation is central to orgasm. Yet as we have seen in an earlier chapter, this is simply not true. In men, ejaculation can happen without orgasm and orgasm without ejaculation. Tantric practices have long been known to enable men to have orgasms without ejaculation. Men who have a short refractory period often have little or no ejaculate after their first orgasm. The interview subject who recently discovered his capacity to secure multiple overlapping waves of orgasmic pleasure specifically said they were often, although not always, dry.[5]
I want to suggest that an alternative explanation of why women are far more likely to have multiple orgasms than men is that women tend to be the receptive partner and men the active partners in Western heterosexual encounters. That is, the reason women are less likely to have orgasms in partnered sex also allows those women, assuming they have willing and skillful partners to be, to be more likely to have multiple orgasms. And that is why women are not only far more likely have multiple orgasms, including those extraordinary ones we have been discussing—and possibly greater orgasmic pleasure.[6]
If that’s true, then perhaps these reflections on multiple orgasm can be a wedge that helps us break down that rigid roles that assign the active role in sex to men and the receptive role to women. Suppose men who seek sex because they care about securing sexual pleasure—or, since we know that this may not be the prime motivation for having sex among men,[7] could come to pursue sex for this reason—recognized that adopting a more receptive approach in sex was a path to the extraordinary kinds of pleasure not available to them in any other way. One would think that this might help make men more open to take on that role. And that, in turn, might make them more open to women taking an active role in sex, and thus make it easier for them to learn how to have good orgasms and ensure that they do. And if men also began to see how pleasure women taking the active role can give them, they might more readily understand what they can give their partners if they make pleasuring women more central to what they do as active partners.[8]
There is far more to undermining patriarchy than breaking down sex roles. But it might help. As a woman interview subject once said to me, “Men will never take us seriously in the boardroom if they just fuck us in the bedroom.”
[1] When this woman read the comments of the other women mentioned in this section she laughed and said, “Well she was smarter than me in having threesomes with women. Threesomes with men did not give me better orgasms. Rather it seemed that the two men only put in half the effort to satisfy me.”
[2] A third woman who described having multiple orgasm said that she could have three to ten orgasms over the period of ten minutes to an hour. As she was the first women to describe multiple orgasms to me, and I was not then aware of the wave multiple orgasms, I did not ask her whether she had that experience or whether her multiple orgasms were of the independent kind.
[3] One study based on the self-report of men suggests that less than 10% of men in their 20s are capable of multi-orgasm and less than 7% of men over 30 are capable of multiple orgasms. See Erik Wibowo and Richard J. Wassersug, “Multiple Orgasms in Men—What We Know So Far,” Sexual medicine reviews, 2016, Vol.4 (2), p.136-148. The study distinguishes between men who have “sporadic” multiple orgasms with “interorgasmic intervals of several minutes” and those who are capable of “condensed” multiple orgasms with “bursts of 2-4 orgasms within a few second to a few minutes.” Both of these kinds of multiple orgasm seem to be contained with my category of independent multiple orgasms. While condensed multiple orgasms do happen without a break, they do not last as long as wave independent orgasms described by the women and men who had them.
[4] Keep in mind that while some people are mainly active and some mainly receptive in partnered sex, others are versatile and can be more active or receptive in partnered sex. And some sexual partners take turns through an encounter to such an extent that they are alternately active and receptive in a mutual give and take in which first one then the other takes the lead.
[5] There have been some suggestions in the literature that multiple male orgasm is more likely if men do not ejaculate. Tantric sex practices in which men have orgasms without ejaculation are said to lead to prolonged sexual intercourse and at least independent multiple ejaculation. There is some suggestion that men who have had a prostatectomy, which leads to orgasm without ejaculation, are mor likely to have multiple orgasms. Yet while all this is true, while the man who reported to me his experience wave orgasms said that many of his orgasms were try, not all were. And he attempted none of the practices to discourage ejaculation.
[6] This theory raises the question of multiple orgasms in masturbation. Both men and women can secure ordinary multiple orgasms through masturbation. But can they secure waves of pleasure during multiple orgasms? At this point I’m not sure. Most of the time, people who masturbate tend to play, at least in part, the active one in partnered sex. They are generally focused on bringing ourselves to the point of orgasm as efficaciously as possible. That attitude, I would think, would make the waves of pleasure kind of multiple orgasms impossible. On the other hand, some people report longer periods of less focused, “dreamy” masturbation when they enjoy sexual self-stimulation without rushing to orgasm. That kind of masturbation seems more receptive in nature. If it continues long enough and with enough intensity to for a person to attain a very high level of sexual excitement and sustain it without disrupting the “dreamy” state, it certainly seems possible that they could secure the waves of pleasure kind of multiple orgasms. I discussed this possibility with the male interview subject who had wave multiple orgasms who reported back that he “had not quite gotten there but was getting close to having a wave multiple orgasm when “relaxing into a long masturbation session using a sleeve-like masturbation device.”
[7] Elsewhere in the book I point out that there are many reasons human beings pursue sex and that, for many men, especially those influenced by patriarchal ideas, success in sexual conquest or recognition of their mastery over women is a more important motivation than pleasure itself.
[8] Contemporary discussion of active vs receptive (or top vs bottom) roles in sexuality owes a great deal to the experience and reflections of gay men and lesbian, who cannot divide those roles based on their gender. Indeed, I suspect that many men and women of my and earlier generations in patriarchal societies simply took for granted that men would take the active and women the receptive role in sexuality. Learning about the experience of gays and lesbians awakened heterosexuals to alternatives to what see simply assumed to be the nature of things. And it also helped redefine or broaden the understanding of the active role. The traditional understanding of the role of the active male is, perhaps after preparing his female partner with what is called “foreplay,” to have do is to have intercourse with her in ways that brings him pleasure. (And in sex manuals written even today, the hope–which is rarely attained–is for the man and woman to reach orgasm simultaneously.) To the extent that female pleasure and satisfaction is considered a goal of intercourse, it is assumed that whatever bring the male satisfaction will accomplish the same for his female partner. Something similar can occur in anal penetrative sex between men as well. But when women have sex with women, the active partner who is stroking or penetrating a woman is not necessarily stimulating herself. The active role then becomes one of satisfying one’s partner and bringing her to orgasm. There are of course many possible variations, the key point however is that the goal of taking the active role is as focused on the pleasure of the one taking the more receptive role. Sexual pleasure and orgasm for the two partners is not something that is generally pursued or attained simultaneously but rather by taking turns. This has become the more common practice among heterosexual partners who are focused on ensuring that both the male and female partners are pleasured and stimulated orgasm.
There is much more that can be said about this beyond these remarks. But I do want to acknowledge that how the practices of gay and lesbians has influenced and contributed to our understanding of better sexual practices for men and women. My effort to show suggest that men might benefit from more often adopting the receptive role in sexuality is in part a product of this influence and meant to extend it.