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Episode 396: Why Women Orgasm More With Female Partners

2025/5/13
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Sex and Psychology Podcast

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Carly Wolfer
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Justin Leigh Miller
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Justin Leigh Miller: 我观察到女性与男性性行为时性高潮频率较低,但与女性时则相似。我认为这与伴侣性别相关的不同性脚本有关,影响了性高潮的可能性。我相信通过改写这些脚本,我们可以促进双方的共同愉悦。 Carly Wolfer: 我认为性高潮差距并非天生,而是情境性的、社会性的。数据显示,女性在自慰时能有效达到性高潮,这挑战了女性天生性高潮能力较弱的观点。我认为公众对生物学原因的过度强调与性别歧视有关,我们需要改变这种观念,强调性脚本的影响。

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You're listening to the Sex and Psychology Podcast, the sex ed you never got in school and won't get anywhere else. I am your host, Dr. Justin Leigh Miller. I am a social psychologist and research fellow at the Kinsey Institute and author of the book, Tell Me What You Want, The Science of Sexual Desire and How It Can Help You Improve Your Sex Life. When women have sex with men, we see that on average, women orgasm with far less frequency than their male counterparts.

However, when women have sex with other women, they actually orgasm at rates that are pretty similar to those of men. So why is that? In today's show, we're going to dive into some new research that explores the sexual expectations that women have when they engage sexually with partners of different genders. It turns out that women anticipate that sex is going to follow a very different script based on the gender of their partner, and those scripts have big implications for whether they're likely to have an orgasm.

However, these scripts aren't set in stone. They're actually quite malleable, and by rewriting our sexual scripts, we can help to ensure mutual pleasure for everyone involved.

I am joined once again by Carly Wolfer, a sex researcher, relationship scientist, and health educator whose work explores how to create more equitable and pleasurable sexual experiences. She's working on her PhD in social psychology at the CUNY Graduate Center. Her research has been published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships and the Archives of Sexual Behavior. She also teaches a human sexuality course. This is going to be another fascinating episode. Stick around, and we're going to jump in right after the break. ♪

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Okay, Carly, so in the last episode, we talked all about the orgasm gap and what some of your new research tells us about how to close it. Now, we're going to dig even deeper into this topic in today's show. And as a starting point, one of the key things we see in the research on the orgasm gap is that it's unique to situations where women are having sex with men. When women are having sex with other women, the gap disappears. So what does that tell us? What's this all about?

Yeah, this really tells us that the gap is not innate or natural or biological or shaped by women's naturally reduced ability to orgasm, right? It's contextual, it's social, and it's relational. So when sex isn't scripted around

Yeah, you know, we so often hear that

the female orgasm is just elusive, right? Or that women are more complex when it comes to sex and it's just much harder for women to have orgasms. But when you start looking at the data and you see that women can reliably and effectively reach orgasm on their own, just as often as men do in the context of solo masturbation. And I think that was actually one of the

big contributions of Cher Heights research back in the 1970s, where she did these large-scale studies of women's sexuality that really challenged a lot of these ideas about

men and women and orgasms and started to change the way that we think about these things and really started calling attention to this orgasm gap for the first time because it's not the case that it's just harder for women to have orgasms. It's just there's something about that context of women having sex with men where women's orgasms seem to become more elusive, but in other contexts, not so much.

Yeah. And even though there's really compelling evidence that this is not a biological or innate reasoning, we do see that the general public tends to overemphasize and assume biological reasons for the orgasm gap.

So 75% of men and 50% of women actually attribute the orgasm gap to this reduction in women's ability or natural differences in women's orgasm ability. When people believe or endorse biological reasons for the orgasm gap, it's also associated with higher levels of sexism. It's associated with beliefs that the orgasm gap can't be fixed and

And that it's not actually a problem that should be fixed. And so this does show that we have to still change people's beliefs and debunk those myths that this is purely a biological problem because we know that it's not.

Yeah, and it's easy to see how if you believe that this is something biological, well, if you're a woman, that might lead you to then say, well, I'm probably not going to have an orgasm, or I'm probably not going to have them very often with a partner. And so they might just give up when in reality, maybe there are different ways that they could be approaching sex, or we could all be approaching sex that would increase pleasure for everyone.

So you have a new study where you looked at the impact of partner gender on women's orgasms, and you specifically focused on bisexual and pansexual women. So why did you focus your work on these women's experiences?

Yeah, so this study is in press right now in collaboration with Grace Wetzel and Diana Sanchez and Cheryl Carmichael. And we're really excited about these results because it again shifts the conversation away from blaming women, right? So the orgasm gap, we often call this a gendered orgasm gap. And we conclude or focus on men versus women's orgasm rates.

However, if we look closer at the data, we actually see that this orgasm gap is based on partner gender and sexual scripts or norms that govern that encounter rather than a personal gender or rather than just women, right? So by researching bisexual and pansexual women, we're actually able to keep women's own gender constant and instead isolate the effects of a partner's gender, sexual

sexual scripts and behaviors, motivations underlying the inequity that we see when those same women are partnered with men compared to the equity that we see and they're able to access when they're partnered with women or queer people.

Yeah, and I think that's important because a lot of the work that's out there looking at the orgasm gap is focused on comparing heterosexual women who are partnered with men to lesbian women who are only ever partnered with other women, right? And so looking at women who have those mixed experiences reveals something very different.

So, in your study, you gave participants a hypothetical scenario where you asked them to imagine spending a long evening with someone that you feel comfortable with and you're attracted to, and things are starting to get hot and heavy. Now, everyone gets the exact same description. The only thing that varies is the gender of the person that they're with. So, what did your study reveal about the different expectations for sex that women had based solely on the gender of their partner?

Yeah, so we see that when partnered with other women, bisexual and pansexual women expected more clitoral stimulation, they expected more support from a partner, and they expected to orgasm more.

With men, however, all of those expectations were lower. And this was particularly emphasized when the script implied intercourse only or vaginal penetration only. So this brings us back to important mechanisms that explain why we see a partner gender difference in orgasm access for women.

And that was going to be my next question was about the mechanisms. You know, what accounts for this pattern of differences? You know, because it seems like there's quite a different sexual script that people are following based on whether a woman perceives herself as being intimate with a man versus with another woman. So what's up with that? What's going on here? What are the factors that explain this?

Yeah. So when we think about sexual scripts, these are basically certain expectations or ideas we have about the way an encounter is supposed to go. Now, when we think about the sexual script that governs sex between men and women, that is usually what we refer to as the heterosexual script, or it's very heteronormative in nature, right? Sex

maybe starts with kissing. We maybe have foreplay, but that's kind of an add-on or optional. Then the main event is the vaginal penetration, then the man orgasms, and then the end, right? In this case, clitoral stimulation is seen as optional or extra rather than just as valuable as what we usually call the main event is.

And so this shows us that these sexual scripts don't need to be fixed. And actually, when we remove that pressure around coital imperatives or phallocentric motives, we see greater access to pleasure in a more balanced way, where foreplay is the main play for women when they're having sex with women.

So we often see that when women are having sex with women, we have more sexual variety, longer duration, more direct clitoral stimulation, less emphasis on like completion or the end and more focus on this shared partner process.

Yeah, you know, this has me thinking about a study that I saw a few years back where they were looking at people of different sexual orientations in terms of how they defined sex. And when you look at heterosexual adults, the predominant way that people define sex is in terms of penile vaginal intercourse, right?

And when you look at gay men, like the predominant way that they define sex is in terms of penile anal stimulation. But when you're looking at women who have sex with other women, you see that there is a whole wide range of activities that they count as sex. And if I'm remembering that study correctly,

I feel like there were 10 or 12 different activities that they counted as sex. And certainly there's individual variability. You know, for example, if we talk about gay men, not all gay men are into anal sex and some of them are sides. And, you know, the way they define sex might be very different. We're just talking about on average.

for gay men and for heterosexual adults, they tend to have pretty narrow, restricted definitions of sex. But for women who have sex with other women, like they tend to have these more expansive ideas, like sex can be a whole lot of different things because it's not centered around a penis being inserted into a particular orifice.

Yeah, absolutely. And it has a lot to do with the way that we're taught about sex growing up, right? I mean, if you're talking with a bunch of friends and you have a friend who tells you they just hooked up with someone, people often ask the question, well, did you have sex? And if you think about what people mean by that or what they imply by that, it's a lot of different things.

The definition of sex is very centered around the sexual script that ends up erasing women's possibilities of pleasure or greater possibilities of pleasure. And so if we actually just flip that script and revise that script, we could access greater possibilities for everyone because more diverse sexual experiences are actually associated with pleasure for all people, not just people with vulvas in this case.

So even we see that most people actually prefer or want an average of almost 20 minutes of foreplay during partnered sex. But the average sex act between men and women is usually only about 15 minutes total. So there's really this room for increased effort and time and care across the board. Yeah, you know, I've seen those studies where you ask people about how long does sex usually last and how long do you want it to last?

On average, people want it to last about twice as long, both the foreplay and the sex part, right? There is that want, that desire for sex to last longer for everybody, but for some reason it doesn't really seem to be translating into big differences in the way that they're actually approaching sex and how long they're typically spending on it.

And, you know, something else I was thinking about as you were speaking was in terms of how when women are having sex with other women, there might be greater recognition and understanding of the fact that different women orgasm in different ways, right? So some women can orgasm from nipple stimulation alone. Some women have cervical orgasms. Some women...

orgasm from G-spot or clitoral stimulation. Some women can thank themselves to orgasm, right? There are all kinds of different ways that people can orgasm, but there seems to be more in the way of non-genital orgasms for women. And so maybe when you're partnered with somebody who maybe is more likely to have those kinds of experiences, again, that might open up more opportunities to explore different avenues toward pleasure.

Absolutely. And valuing all of those equitably, right? So not just assuming that one is better than the other. I mean, this dates back to Freud who made a lot of myths about how only mature women or stable women orgasm from vaginal penetration, right? We know that that's obviously not the case. And there is no evidence to suggest that psychological or sexual distress exists.

is associated with your preferred type of stimulation or source of orgasm or pleasure. But because of those myths, we often still internalize that. And many men think that women should or will orgasm from penetration like they do. And many women feel bad if they aren't. But when we see women having sex with other women, we have sort of this dissipated myth and more exploration without judgment for whatever that preferred process looks like.

Yeah. You brought up Freud. You know, he literally did say that, you know, women who orgasm through clitoral stimulation, that this was somehow immature, right? And that, you know, women needed to evolve in order to learn to have sex through orgasm.

vaginal penetration and that if they couldn't orgasm that way, there was something wrong with them. And, you know, I think that idea is still with us today. You know, Freud made a lot of contributions to the field. Some of them not so great. Some of them still have a very longstanding legacy with us. Yeah, absolutely. So you did a second study where you attempted to change the sexual script and not the partner.

to see if that would change women's expectations for orgasm and pleasure. So how did you test this? What did you do differently in this study compared to the first one? Yeah, so we did a follow-up study, again, using those experimental vignettes. And what we did was we edited the scenario or the vignette with a man partner to include more clitoral stimulation and opportunity to orgasm. And what we were looking at here is,

is whether changing certain situational cues and behaviors in the script rather than the partner gender itself would facilitate differences in orgasm expectations and by extension, orgasm access and equity. We see that by increasing the,

inclusion of clitoral stimulation and opportunity to orgasm, we actually see that women's expectations when they were with men were able to get up to the same level as when they're with women by default.

This tells us a lot of things. One, again, it's not fixed, right? So even though we see an orgasm gap between gender, we see an orgasm gap based on partner gender, it goes further than that. It's actually because of the behaviors that we usually enact or execute with those partners.

This tells us that we can actually change those behaviors. These scripts are not fixed, but they can be changed. And so we were basically trying to find out certain mechanisms that would facilitate partner support within those scripts so that we can provide men and women who are having sex with each other the same access to pleasure equity that is accessed when we have women having sex with women.

So women don't inherently see themselves as being less likely to orgasm with a male partner than with a female partner. It really depends on the context and the situation and if they believe that they're going to be with a male partner who

who is going to be invested in their pleasure and who is going to provide them with clitoral stimulation or whatever type of stimulation it is that they need to orgasm, then they perceive their odds of having an orgasm as being just as high as it would be if they were with a female partner, right?

Exactly. Yeah. And we also had a condition where we kept it the same as the first study. And so we had just information about the fact that you were going to have sex with a man. And interestingly, when we don't provide explicit cues that there would be sufficient clitoral stimulation or partner support, that's where we still see lower levels of orgasm expectations. And this tells us that

by default, people are reverting to the dominant sexual script, right? This reduces our cognitive load. We kind of know, we go through the motions of what we expect sex to be like or what to happen. And so this does require some effort in adding important behavioral and situational support into sexual scripts between men and women that can facilitate more equitable access.

Yeah, so when it comes to women's orgasms and pleasure, the gender of their partner matters, but what matters even more is the anticipated script. So it's sort of this interaction between the gender of your partner and the script that's going to be followed in that particular situation. So whether you're with a male or female partner, the pleasure outcomes can be similar as long as the script is supportive of your pleasure, but...

that requires some effort on our part to figure out how to rewrite and readjust that script. And, you know, I've done some episodes before on rewriting sexual scripts and, you know, it sounds great in theory. It sounds very intuitive, you know, that we just kind of like need to ditch the old script.

But all too often when people go to approach sex, they're just following it the same way that they always have, even when that script hasn't been fully supportive of their pleasure before. And sometimes partners have sex with each other where they're both following the script that they've always done, and it's not working for either of them, but they're still doing it anyway. And it, I think, goes back to a bigger issue with sexual communication and how sometimes people just find it easier to have sex than to actually talk about it.

Yeah, absolutely. And we kind of are on autopilot, especially in those earlier sexual encounters or with a casual partner where you're still learning what your ideal sexual scripts might look like or might be adapted to with that person. And we, in those cases, the dominant sexual script is usually amplified. Now, sexual scripts happen at multiple levels, right? So even though at the cultural level, these are sourced from media, laws, policies, I

We then internalize and enact them at the interpersonal and individual level. And it is really hard to change the cultural scripts at the macro level. We need institutional buy-in, time and resources, but it is possibly more malleable at the interpersonal level. So this could be a really interesting hotspot for interventions to target.

Yeah. And so speaking of interventions, you know, based on the results of this research and the studies we discussed in the last episode, you know, how do you think your work informs the way that we should be teaching people about pleasure and sex and relationships? I mean, of course, like...

As a starting point, we just need to have basic sex ed, which so many people don't even get. And for many people who are getting sex ed, they're not necessarily even learning helpful, useful or medically accurate information. So ideally, we could at least get to the place where we're offering people basic sex ed. But what do we need to be teaching them beyond this?

Yeah. In that basic sex ed, we have to remember that sexual pleasure is sexual health. So too often, sex ed, if we have it at all, is about prevention. It's about how to prevent risk or danger. This doesn't provide us any conversation about what healthy or pleasurable

interactions or relationships actually look like. And so at baseline, I think pleasure needs to be included in sex ed. I also think we have to expand our definitions of sex and not just focus on penetration. We have to reimagine all kinds of sex acts, all kinds of intimacy and foreplay as the main event as well. So those are some of the things that would be ideal.

But it also, we have to think about how on an individual and interpersonal level, we might have some agency in changing our scripts. And so just giving people space to imagine what they actually would want in a partnered sexual encounter if no one was telling them or teaching them what it was supposed to be like or what they should do. Obviously, that's very difficult. We don't live in this vacuum.

But it really starts with just giving ourselves permission to even consider alternatives. And we see this happen all the time. The idea of queering sexual scripts is not new, right? I mean, people have done this forever. Queer people have done this forever. And so there is a window here where we can reimagine what pleasure looks like and how to get there.

Yeah, there's so much that we really need to be teaching when it comes to sex and good sex and how to have it. And you know, that topic of pleasure is conspicuously absent in the majority of sex ed that people receive. And I think the way that sex ed is often taught

teaches it in a way that safety and pleasure are kind of at odds with one another. And that's like, you're only choosing one or the other. You can either have safe sex or you can have pleasurable sex. And I think we really need to move toward a way of framing sex education as how safe sex can be pleasurable sex. Because I think when we pitch these things as being at odds with one another, ultimately it reduces people's ability to actually experience pleasure during their encounters.

Absolutely. And when we think about pleasure equity, it is existing in the same conversation as violence prevention and the power dynamics that are often underlying both pleasure gaps and also disproportionate rates of violence against women. And so pleasure actually could be this really cool mechanism that we can balance the playing field and really

remove those gendered and really powered sexual scripts that end up enacting violence and also the erasure of pleasure for women. Yeah. Now, there are lots and lots of conversations going on in broader society right now about sexual agency, power dynamics, gender equity, gender equality. How do you see your work as being connected to those bigger conversations that we're having at this moment?

Yeah, absolutely. I started actually in this field as a trauma and crisis counselor for people who were survivors or victims of domestic violence. And so I really do see this work as in the same camp as violence prevention when we talk about gender equity and power dynamics.

It's just that in those conversations, we rarely talk about pleasure. And so I think thinking about pleasure and agentic and equitable access to pleasure is one way that we can legitimize women's agency, not only in the bedroom, but in the boardroom and on the streets and everywhere.

beyond, right? So there's a lot of great work around gender entitlement and how people explicitly believe that men have more of a right to experience pleasure than women. This says a lot about whose positive experiences are valued in our society. And it's not just about orgasms in the bedroom. This is a larger conversation about social power and social equity.

Thanks for sharing that. So we're running short on time, but I have one more question for you, which is what you want listeners to take away from all of this. So we've talked about a lot in these last couple of episodes about the orgasm gap and pursuit of pleasure. What do we do? What do you want people to do with all of this information?

Yeah, I think it's really important to think about pleasure as a shared and playful process. And I just want to empower listeners to imagine more expansive definitions and thresholds of sexual pleasure. So just thinking about what it would look like to support and collaborate on each other's pleasure,

Removed from expectations or shoulds or the pressure that we often internalize too often. So starting somewhere, giving yourself permission to feel pleasure that's truly your own and embodied rather than maybe trying to only follow the should in the scripts we're told.

Yeah, so it's all about understanding, defining, figuring out what it is that is pleasurable for you, expanding your definition of sex, recognizing that it can be more than just one thing. Sex can be anything that you want it to be. And then working on sex and pleasure as this collaborative project with your partner or partners where everyone's pleasure is equally prioritized. Absolutely. Absolutely.

So thank you so much for this amazing conversation, Carly. It was a pleasure to have you here. Can you please tell my listeners where they can go to learn more about you and your work? Yeah, you can visit me at carlywolfer.com. And I'd love to hear from you if you are interested in any of this work or have thoughts about how we can make the world more pleasurable. Let's make the world a more pleasurable place. Well, thanks again so much for your time. I really appreciate having you here. Thank you so much, Justin. It was great to be here. Thank you.

Thank you for listening. To keep up with new episodes of this podcast, visit my website, sexandpsychology at sexandpsychology.com or subscribe on your favorite platform where I hope you'll take a moment to rate and review the show. If you listen on Apple Podcasts, please consider becoming a Sex and Psychology Premium subscriber to enjoy ad-free listening for just $3.99 a month.

You can also follow me on social media for daily sex research updates. I'm on Blue Sky and X at Justin Laymiller and Instagram at Justin J. Laymiller. Also, be sure to check out my book, Tell Me What You Want. Thanks again for listening. Until next time.