Not Faking It

Since my husband has started smoking again and hanging out in the back alley where all the other career professionals go to indulge their vices, he’s been bringing home a lot more interesting stories. He’s the sort of man women feel comfortable around, which may or may not be a compliment, you decide. He is the least judgmental of men, and he genuinely likes women as human beings, so they share things with him that they might hesitate to tell their significant other. While chatting with a fellow nicotine addict in the aforementioned alley, the conversation turned to an absent coworker. His friend, whom I will call Shelia not only out of respect for her privacy, but because I just can’t remember her real name. Hell, maybe it’s Shelia, I don’t know. Anyway, the night before there had been a mighty toad choker of a storm in an outlying county where one of their mutual acquaintances lives. Shelia asked if their friend, I’ll call her Betty Lou, which I am quite certain is not her real name. Anyhow, Shelia asked how Betty Lou had fared in the terrible deluge. My husband stated that Betty had missed it altogether, because instead of going home, she had stayed in town last night. The slightly past middle age Shelia made a disapproving noise.

“I bet she got laid,” was her blunt remark. I’m sure my husband gave one of his hearty laughs and said something like, “Good for her.” As the talk progressed from puff to puff, it got a bit more personal.

“Women my age don’t care for sex,” she told him authoritatively.

I can just see his smile when he proffered, “Well, not all of them feel that way.” He intonated that his wife was a definite exception, without going into detail. My man wanted to brag, I just know, because he’s been feeling like the cock of the walk lately. Still, he is a gently reared southern boy, and he held his tongue when she retorted.

“Some women are real good at faking it.”

He laughed for a long time, and I’m sure she got the implied message, but I’m equally sure she didn’t believe him. He couldn’t wait for me to get home so he could tell me the story and we could have a good laugh together.

I have mulled this conversation over for several days and have moved from finding it humorous, to realizing it’s just plain sad. It seems like Shelia and I are at opposite ends of some sexual response scale, but I wanted to know the facts. Google directed me to a great site that I think you all might enjoy, even though it’s not porn. Sorry, but you all look at plenty of that on your own just like I do. In case you don’t have time to read it all I will summarize in the interest of science.

One Elizabeth Lloyd states “males get nipples because females need them, and females get orgasms because males need them”. Her well-researched theory is that female fun is just an accidental byproduct of evolution and serves no biological purpose. She notes that only 25 percent of women have orgasm with intercourse and that includes those who self stimulate during the act. Shelia, on the other hand (snicker), is in all probability one of the thirty percent of women who never have orgasms with intercourse, because research indicates that women do NOT lose that ability with age (thanks mother nature). You doubtless all know by now that I am at the other end of the bell curve from Shelia, regardless of what she chooses to believe. Here’s the deal though—both Shelia and I have 3 children each, and there is no scientific evidence that the ability to have an orgasm has any relationship to reproductive capacity. I have no idea if the ability to have orgasms is inherited, but the research I did about sexual attitudes and response in other countries leads me to believe that it is not culturally but biologically determined. The mores of say, Sweden for instance, are about as far as you can get from the ones in rural western Kentucky where I spent my formative years, yet they seem to have the same percentage of orgasmic women, non orgasmic women, and the “sometimes” ones in between. I read a great quote in the Sun this month that could have been written about my hometown. It comes from Butch Hancock:

Life in Lubbock Texas taught me two things: One is that God love you and you’re going to burn in hell. The other is that sex is the most awful, filthy thing on earth and you should save it for someone you love.

Auspiciously, neither Mr. Hancock nor I seem to have learned the lessons our parents taught us, which is another point in favor of a nature over nurture. In other words, guilt did not stop me, or any of the other girls I grew up with (especially those in the 25 percent group), from doing what “comes naturally”. I first thought that maybe holding out until the ring is on your finger assured that the girls in the thirty percent category continue to reproduce and to turn out daughters with the same issues. However, this makes the assumption that without religious training, the non-orgasmic girls would try sex a few times, find it unfulfilling, and decided to remain single and childless, but neither delight nor reason seem to be factors in our reproductive decisions. Ms. Lloyd’s conclusion that sexual pleasure for women is just a happy accident may seem cold and logical, but it may well be true. She certainly has stirred up a pot of controversy for those unaccustomed to thinking scientifically. They seem to believe she is saying that orgasm has no cultural value just because she does not see it as necessary for evolutionary success. As for Shelia, Betty Lou, and myself, all this investigation just goes to prove what I already knew. Whether orgasm is a biological oops, a learned behavior, or a misunderstood essential for the survival of the human race, I’m willing to continue with the research as long as is necessary. It’s a dirty job but somebody’s got to do it.