Let's Talk About Sex: The Reality of the Sexual Pleasure Disparity | Grace Wetzel | TEDxStLawrenceU

Summary

In this TEDx talk, Grace Wetzel discusses the sexual pleasure disparity between straight men and women, focusing on the concept of sex and how it's typically defined around penetrative intercourse. Wetzel presents statistics showing that women typically have far fewer orgasms than men during heterosexual encounters, addressing myths surrounding female orgasm difficulty and linking these perceptions to societal norms and gender dynamics. By advocating for a reframing of sexual pleasure equality, Wetzel calls for societal change and awareness to create a more balanced and fulfilling sexual experience for all.

Highlights

• Sex is traditionally framed around male pleasure, marginalizing women. 🚻
• Definitions focus on penetration, ignoring clitoral orgasm. 🤔
• Women often orgasm less than men, highlighting a pleasure gap. 📊
• Misconceptions about female orgasm difficulty are debunked by research. 🔍
• Female masturbation rates equal male, suggesting external factors to blame. 🤯
• Women in same-sex relationships report higher orgasm rates. 🌈
• Expectations of vaginal orgasm contribute to sexual inequality. ❌
• Addressing misconceptions can lead to more equitable sexual experiences. 🤝

Key Takeaways

• Society often defines sex as penetrative, sidelining female pleasure. 🧐
• Statistics show women orgasm less frequently than men in heterosexual encounters. ➗
• Reframing sex to include clitoral stimulation can promote pleasure equality. 🔄
• Cultural myths incorrectly claim female orgasms are harder to achieve. 📉
• Female masturbation times refute myths about orgasm difficulty. 🕒
• Greater orgasm equality is seen in non-heterosexual encounters. 🌈
• Societal norms pressure women to prioritize male pleasure. 🤯
• Opening dialogue on sexual pleasure can foster true gender equality. 🔥

Overview

Grace Wetzel takes on the challenging topic of sexual pleasure disparity in heterosexual encounters in her TEDx talk. She boldly challenges the conventional definitions of sex that center on penetrative acts, which often sideline the importance of female pleasure and the clitoris. By doing so, she calls attention to the orgasmic gap between straight men and women, sparking a call for reevaluating sexual pleasure equality.

Wetzel busts myths surrounding the difficulty of female orgasms, using research to debunk the notion that women naturally struggle more to reach orgasm compared to men. Citing studies, she illustrates that external factors, not biology, often contribute to the orgasm discrepancy in heterosexual relationships. Her talk emphasizes that societal norms push women to accept a subordinate role in their sexual experiences, making it a cultural issue.

The call to action in Wetzel's talk is clear: society must reframe its understanding of sex to include pleasure equality, particularly by acknowledging clitoral stimulation and overcoming outdated myths. By encouraging open discussions and respect for mutual satisfaction, she envisions a shift towards a more equitable sexual landscape, aligning more closely with principles of true gender equality.

Let's Talk About Sex: The Reality of the Sexual Pleasure Disparity | Grace Wetzel | TEDxStLawrenceU Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 Translator: Jordan Vartanoff Reviewer: Peter van de Ven Today, I'm going to be talking to you about sex. I'm going to be talking about the clitoris, orgasm, oral sex. I thought I should throw a few of those words out there right now so that we can all get prepared for what's coming over the next 15 minutes. Sex is a taboo topic,
• 00:30 - 01:00 one that people typically shy away from speaking to large groups about. Large groups that may even include their professors and family members. But I'm here talking about it anyway, and that's because I have a problem with the way that we are currently thinking about sex. And that's the reality that straight women often have a very different experience with sex than straight men do, and that we live in a sexual world that revolves around the pleasure of the penis.
• 01:00 - 01:30 In this speech, I'm going to start by talking about the ways that we define sex, I'm going to talk about the differences in orgasms rates and pleasure distribution for women and men, and finally, how we can move towards a more equal sexual experience. I want to preface this entire speech by specifying that I'm addressing heterosexual encounters only. So for the reminder of this talk, whenever I refer to women or to men, I'm referring exclusively to heterosexual and cisgender women and men.
• 01:30 - 02:00 Additionally, this speech is directed towards college-aged women living in the current generation and sexual climate. So let's start with how we define sex. According to the Cambridge Dictionary, sex is listed as "the activity of sexual intercourse." Sexual intercourse is defined by Merriam-Webster as "heterosexual intercourse involving the penetration of the vagina by the penis."
• 02:00 - 02:30 So, essentially, the definition of sex is just the definition of penetrative, heterosexual sex. So what does this mean? Why does it matter how we define sex in the dictionary? Well, think about it for yourselves: what do you count as sex? When you're thinking to yourself about the people that you've had sex with, what acts are you thinking of?
• 02:30 - 03:00 For a lot of people, this centers around penetration. Centering sex around the penetration of the penis is problematic not only for any sex that doesn't involve a penis - God forbid - but also for the straight woman's experience. This is because if you're in the 3/4 of women who don't experience regular vaginal orgasm, a statistic found by Harvard professor Elisabeth Lloyd's analysis of 33 studies regarding human sexuality.
• 03:00 - 03:30 So if you're in the 3/4 of women who don't vaginally orgasm, then your orgasm is already considered extra. Your orgasm isn't even part of the textbook definition of what real sex is. The significance of the clitoris as the main and most consistent form of female pleasure and orgasm has been proven time and time again from researchers like Alfred Kinsey to the survey studies of Breanne Fahs.
• 03:30 - 04:00 So, essentially, the pleasure that stimulates women's main sexual organ - which, sometimes hard for people to accept, is actually the clitoris, not the vagina - is not even considered real sex but something else, "foreplay," something extra.
• 04:00 - 04:30 Here is the reality of the sexual-pleasure disparity. According to a large-scale survey of American adults conducted by Laumann and colleagues, women are having, on average, one orgasm for every three that men have during heterosexual encounters. One for every three. I've met women who thought that this number sounded pretty accurate, and I've met a lot of women who said that, in their experience, this gap was a hell of a lot larger.
• 04:30 - 05:00 So why are men having so many more orgasms than women? There are two common cop-out explanations for this orgasm inequality. The first is that sex is a means for reproduction. If reproduction were the purpose of sex, then female orgasm may be unnecessary, because male orgasm is the way that reproduction would be achieved. Makes sense, except that this argument is outdated and just completely irrelevant
• 05:00 - 05:30 because reproduction is clearly not the purpose of sex in the majority of cases today, as you can see through the prevalence of many birth control methods. So then, why are people having sex? For pleasure, right? Because it's fun, because it feels good. So if the purpose of sex is pleasure and not reproduction, then this argument just does not apply. In a mutual, pleasure-based encounter,
• 05:30 - 06:00 theoretically, both parties should be benefiting equally from that encounter. This idea of the male orgasm as the means for reproduction represents an excuse for this orgasm to retain privilege, and nothing more. The second cop-out explanation is the "It's just more difficult for women to orgasm" excuse. There's this idea that women's bodies are somehow naturally just less capable of orgasm
• 06:00 - 06:30 and that the clitoris is elusive and difficult to operate. This so-called "scientific" explanation of sexual difference ignores crucial social factors that play a huge role in how we experience our sexuality, like hook-up culture, anatomical misunderstanding, gender roles, and power dynamics. The myth that the female orgasm is naturally less easy to achieve can be proven false with two very simple statistics.
• 06:30 - 07:00 The first is that according to research done by Alfred Kinsey, the average time that it takes women to orgasm from masturbation is the same as the average time that it takes men, which is about four minutes. So this means that if you know what you're doing, as in doing it to yourself, then sex differences in the time it takes to orgasm literally disappear. Additionally, women who have sex with other women
• 07:00 - 07:30 have orgasm rates that are much higher than straight women's, orgasm rates that are almost as high as straight men's. This research was conducted at the Kinsey Institute by Dr. Justin Garcia and colleagues. The idea that the female orgasm is just as easy to achieve as the male orgasm can be a tough one for us to wrap our heads around because we've been so conditioned to think of the male orgasm as the natural result of sex and the female orgasm as something extra.
• 07:30 - 08:00 The problem does not lie in the nature of the female orgasm. When women are put in a situation where the penis is not involved, as in the situations I described before, then sex differences disappear. This means that it can't just be biology - societal and gender dynamics must be at play here. But the problem is not men's alone, the problem lies in the way that all of us are approaching, viewing, and participating in heterosexual sex.
• 08:00 - 08:30 Given the statistic I stated before that only about 1/4 of women report regular vaginal orgasm, it shouldn't even be expected that women orgasm this way - but it is. There is a huge pressure put on women to orgasm vaginally, and when they don't or can't have an orgasm this way, there's a stigma and a sense of shame. Statistically speaking, this shame simply should not exist,
• 08:30 - 09:00 because it should be common sense that women typically need clitoral stimulation in order to reach orgasm. This expectation for vaginal orgasm is one of the reasons why women are orgasming less, and this pressure to do so is one of the reasons why, according to Breanne Fahs's surveys, over 50% of women report having faked an orgasm before. That's the majority of women have faked an orgasm.
• 09:00 - 09:30 Women are so trained to put men's pleasure first that it's almost as if they would rather please their partner by giving the appearance of an orgasm than actually have one themselves. By believing, whether consciously or subconsciously, that their orgasm is less important, women accept and reproduce subordinate sexual status. Sexual inequality can also be observed through the prevalence of certain sexual activities,
• 09:30 - 10:00 like oral sex. According to Wendy Chambers' study on the sexual behaviors of college students, she found that women reported giving oral sex more, and men reported receiving oral sex more. So, why are men giving oral sex less than women are? An easy way for women to help fix this problem is to ask for oral sex, or to ask for orgasm, or for clitoral stimulation, or for whatever it is that they want. The problem is,
• 10:00 - 10:30 asking for pleasure, as a woman, is a lot easier said than done. First of all, asking for pleasure comes with the assumption that you deserve it. Women always deserve it, but they often feel like they don't. It can be hard to ask for something from your partner when that person is making that act feel like an inconvenience or a chore. Second of all, women shouldn't have to be asking.
• 10:30 - 11:00 Men should be making women's pleasure and orgasm an equal priority to theirs, period. And third, women often feel like they can't ask. I've known women who have asked for things that focused on their pleasure and have been straight-up told "no," or treated like it was an inconvenience, or told that sex was over now because the man had had an orgasm. A lot of times, women don't feel like they can ask or they just don't, but that doesn't mean that they don't want oral sex
• 11:00 - 11:30 or that they don't want an orgasm. And when we're talking about sexual inequality, the differences skyrocket when it comes to casual, uncommitted sexual encounters, or "hook-ups." Sociologists Armstrong, England, and Fogarty found in their study on college students that women were 56% less likely to have an orgasm in a first hook-up than in a committed relationship. Women in this study
• 11:30 - 12:00 reported their partners' complete disregard for their pleasure, and men in this study also reported being sexually inconsiderate. However, this does not mean that the orgasm gap doesn't exist for many committed women, because it really, really does. There are also a lot of women who have never had an orgasm from a partner. The reality of the situation is that women's pleasure and orgasm consistently become secondary,
• 12:00 - 12:30 less important, less prevalent, and sometimes ignored altogether or even disrespected. Women internalize this belief that they don't deserve the same sexual experience as men, or that it's just not a physical possibility - although, I'd like to argue that the possibilities for women's pleasure are limitless. Women actually have a huge, varying capacity for orgasm - we're just not exploring it.
• 12:30 - 13:00 I'd like to specify at this point that I don't want men's pleasure to go down, I don't want orgasm rates for men to decrease, and I don't want to diminish the importance of penetrative sex, because penetrative sex is really important. All I'm asking for is equality. I'm asking everyone who's listening, all genders, to open your minds and just consider that the way you're currently viewing sex might be oppressive.
• 13:00 - 13:30 The experience of pleasure is different for every single person, but as long as interactions have consent, respect, and a goal of equality, then we will have more pleasurable sexual experiences. It can be hard to stop viewing sex as penile-vaginal penetration only, and it can be hard to start viewing the female orgasm as just as expected and important as the male orgasm. It's hard to accept these things at first,
• 13:30 - 14:00 but once you do, the reality of sexual equality becomes really easy. It's really all in the hands of the individuals participating. How long is it going to take for women to realize what they deserve, demand better, and not accept anything less? And when are men going to start treating their partners as equal, active participants in sex? And when are we all going to realize that the way we're currently viewing sex is centered around penetration,
• 14:00 - 14:30 and centered around the orgasm of the penis, and that it's a good thing to question the validity of that? The trend of less pleasurable and less fulfilling sex lives for women limits the sexual power of women as a whole. If we could create a movement to abolish the sexual inequality and pleasure gap, if we could start viewing sex in a more equal and positive light overall, then we would be one big step closer
• 14:30 - 15:00 to the reality of true gender equality. Thank you. (Applause)