How are men taught about sex? What do they learn? The “information” is not very useful, and is often destructive. A man has to actively seek out correct information on what women want and need. The sexual environment we grow up in is terribly unhealthy. Naturally there’s going to be problems, as this thread has revealed. But I’m amazed at the insights here, especially the women.

Tim, most of what your saying is similar to what everyone here is saying, except for your assumptions that women get off in porn movies and that those movies contain “making love”. Women in porn movies are often forced into it and are being raped. Even if it is consensual, usually the men in the movies are doing nothing that would give a woman pleasure, plus are verbally abusing them at the same time. Movies that range from mildly abusive to extremely abusive have nothing to do with love, and your assumption that women are having great orgasms on film just because they’re howling about it is stupid. The reason she probably yelled at you, I’m guessing, is because it’s really offensive to suggest that women being raped are “making love” and might orgasm.

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I’d be careful of that statement in bold. If I wanted, I could conflate it to, “wives are often forced into marriage” ;p Also, some women do get off on the violent, verbally abusive enactments in some porn. There is a range of porn out there that’s less violent, but from what I’ve seen, it doesn’t really sell as well.

Tim, your porn point is laughable, because porn is very obviously geared towards men. We’ve already covered this. And you’re completely missing the general point: you want to make sure your partner orgasms? Sure, no problem. But if she doesn’t orgasm and you push her to do so even if she just wants to roll over and sleep, or if she doesn’t orgasm after your best efforts and you end up pouting and scolding her for not doing so? There’s the problem.

I totally don’t understand this “but the patriarchy hurts men too” attitude (best espoused by DAS). Yeah, well, we know that. But every male I’ve seen who comes out with it as an argument just stands there, looks frustrated and/or confused (or smug), and there’s this subtle demand on women to magically fix shit for them using our Magical Feminist Powah™. Like, seriously dudes. We know. But we got enough of our own problems, so how about you go fight the patriarchy in your own damn time.

If I’m recalling correctly, Lloyd summarizes some research that shows that women don’t actually take very long to orgasm when they masturbate (I think it’s like 3 minutes on average) and that after a certain point (10 minutes-ish I think) a longer amount of intercourse doesn’t up a woman’s chances of having an orgasm (so it isn’t just time that is a factor in women not having orgasms in male-female sex). I have known a few women (one a lesbian) who had just never had an orgasm–both were taking anti-depressants since an early age, and I suspect this was a large part if not the whole part of the problem. (My partner also takes an anti-depressant and when she was off of it for a few months she had much better/stronger orgasms and a much higher sex drive…unfortunately she also got depressed so she had to go back on them. She’s still lucky though in that she’s still in the 3 minute range and can still have multiple orgasms–they just aren’t as strong as they would otherwise be–it’s just her sex drive that is really killed by the meds.)

I’m a woman who apparently is on the very upper end of time it takes to orgasm–even when I’m masturbating it’s a 15-20 minute commitment. I just can’t be any quicker than that. And it was hard to to learn how to orgasm during partner sex (and it still involves a lot of me doing things to my own body). But I still ALWAYS have an orgasm with my partner (assuming I want one–sometimes we take turns and just focus on the other person during a bout of sex). My partner and I are often kind of confused about these kinds of studies that show only 1/3 of women having sex with men always have an orgasm. I have trouble having one, so the majority of women are probably climax more easily than I do–so why are so many of them not having them regularly? I myself have been in that situation in a couple one night stands with men–and I think the reason I didn’t get them was that I didn’t feel comfortable totally taking control of what I needed. And we were drunk and having casual sex for the first time. And there were time constraints. So those experiences were fun but disappointing and frustrating. I can’t imagine it being a usual experience of partner sex that I go to sleep having gotten all turned on and then not having climaxed.

It’s a matter of thought crime that’s the difference between the two, okay? The woman who pulls out the dildo does it because she needs that physically to get off, but she’ll be thinking of the man she’s with, because if she’s not thinking of him, why bother with him when she does already have a dildo?

The man who pulls out the porn mag on the other hand, is thinking of Other Women. Now, if the man also pulls out a dildo, hey, I understand! Or maybe a vibrating cockring for himself if he needs that. Or even his own hands afterwards if she has fallen asleep…

Hey, tantric takes TIME and people have work tomorrow. Doing the above nightly is better than only waiting until the weekend to have The Perfect Sex.

Cara, just wanted to say that your willingness to put the smackdown on rape denial makes you my hero for the day.

Dude. You have just described me and the boy I was dating last summer. How much oversharing do you want?

Seriously, I did do some worrying that maybe I was the one who wasn’t hot enough. And there was a fair amount of time spent checking in to see if there was something he wanted that I wasn’t doing, and encouraging him to get himself off while we were fooling around if what I was doing wasn’t getting him off, and also learning to trust him when he said he was content without getting off.

I wouldn’t call it the best sex of my life, but it was possibly the most experimental, and that in itself was pretty damn hot.