‘Orgasm myth’: scientist studies female sexuality – 04/09/2024 – Equilíbrio

“I don’t know where the clitoris is,” a 54-year-old woman told her daughter.

The young woman had been talking to her mother via Skype about her semester classes, including the subject “Women’s Sexuality”, taught by American professor and author Emily Nagoski.

After her mother’s confession, the student decided to send her the course slides, in which photos of vulvas, diagrams and illustrations could be seen.

This anecdote is told by Nagoski herself in her book “The Pleasure Revolution: How Science Can Lead You to Orgasm”, a best-seller published in 2015 and released in Brazil by the publisher Guarda-Chuva in 2018.

Based on scientific studies and the experiences of thousands of women, the author explores the science of female sexuality and questions many of the concepts that are taken for granted.

Nagoski has a doctorate in health behaviors, with a specialization in human sexuality, and a master’s degree in educational counseling, both from Indiana University, in the United States.

In January of this year, she published the book “Come Together: The Science (and Art!) of Creating Lasting Sexual Connections” (“Enjoying together: The science (and art!) of creating lasting sexual connections”, in free translation, still unpublished in Brazil).

Check out the main excerpts from the author’s interview with BBC News Mundo, the BBC’s service in Spanish, below.

BBC News World – As Sex educator, you say one of your goals is to debunk common sex myths that make women “feel inadequate between the sheets.” Can you tell us about some of these myths?
Emily Nagoski – My God, there are so many! Let’s just address the myths about orgasm.

It’s a myth that most women orgasm through penetration: only about 25% of women achieve it this way. The rest of them succeed sometimes, rarely or never.

It’s a myth that we will orgasm the first time we have sex: only about 10% of women achieve this and the majority of it is because they touch their own genitals.

It’s a myth that orgasm is “the height of pleasure”: it may be, but there are many other ways to experience intense sexual pleasure. Furthermore, not all orgasms are pleasurable.

There are so many myths, I could literally quote them all day.

BBC News World – Exist Are there any myths that are particularly harmful to women?
Nagoski – A really dangerous myth is the idea that you can tell what a person wants or likes based on what their genitals do.

The genital response simply indicates that the brain is perceiving something related to sex, but this does not mean that the person wants or likes what is happening.

It’s called “arousal mismatch.” I gave a TEDTalks talk about this.

BBC News Mundo – Have we been measuring and evaluating our sexual experiences in the wrong way? Do we overvalue orgasm as the main objective of a sexual experience? As women, are we putting too much pressure on having orgasms?
Nagoski – Orgasms only matter to the extent that you decide they matter. If they are very important to you, great. If they aren’t, that’s great too.

If you care about them, I recommend knowing what type of stimulation and in what type of context you feel the most pleasure.

If they are not important, I suggest enhancing communication with your partner, so that they know that this is not your priority and that you prefer to experience sexual pleasure in other ways.

Communicate with confidence and joy; It’s your body and your sexuality, you decide how and when you will be touched.

BBC News Mundo – You say it’s not about orgasms, how many we have, how often we have sex or the desire to have it, but about pleasure. “Pleasure is the measure”, “pleasure is what matters”. Why?
Nagoski – On the one hand, I say that “pleasure is the measure” of sexual well-being, because that is what research indicates.

When scientists talk to people who identify as having extraordinary sexual relationships, these people don’t talk about desire or orgasms, they talk about authenticity, vulnerability, empathy, and pleasure.

If we want to be like people who have the kind of sex that many of us would envy, we will put pleasure at the center and let desire, orgasm and the rest take care of themselves.

On the other hand, focusing on pleasure is a surefire way to ensure you enjoy every aspect of the sex you have.

Sometimes desire makes us feel good, but other times it is painful, a source of frustration and anguish. Pleasure, by definition, is not.

I want to live in a world where we only have the sex we like and don’t feel bad about not having the sex we don’t like.

I think this is the difficult part.

BBC News Mundo – You say that “it is the right place, in the right way, by the right person, at the right time, in the right external circumstances and in the right internal state”. What role does the “right context” play when we think about our sexual experiences?
Nagoski – Pleasure is more complex and subtle than most of us have been led to believe.

Neurologically, it exists in small “hedonistic pockets” that are tuned to be more or less sensitive to pleasure depending on the state of the brain.

When the brain is stressed, the pleasure centers are tuned to interpret almost any sensation as a potential threat, even those that in a different context might have been interpreted as something to be explored with curiosity.

It’s when the brain is in a state of curiosity, safety and/or fun that these pleasure centers tune in to interpret almost any sensation as pleasurable.

The neurological importance of context is why sometimes tickling feels good. If you’re feeling playful, excited, and connected to an attractive, trustworthy partner, their tickling can make you feel good.

But what if the same partner you were attracted to tickled you when you were in the middle of an argument? It would be quite irritating.

It’s the same feeling, it’s even the same partner, but it’s a different internal state, so your brain interprets it completely differently.

That’s the power of context.

BBC News Mundo – When we think about sex, we have the idea of ​​sensations, hormones, emotions, very specific parts of our body and perhaps we forget the supreme boss: the brain. You say that “sex is much more of a brain process than a genital process” and that orgasms are “orchestrated primarily by the brain, not the genitals.” Why is this important to keep in mind?
Nagoski – Nowadays, when scientists want to study orgasm, they do brain scans, because orgasm is a brain function, unlike ejaculation, which is a spinal reflex.

What you listed: sensations, hormones, emotions and even parts of the body are brain functions in whole or at least in part.

Sensations are perceived in the brain, emotions are a product of the brain, hormones influence the brain and the brain has multiple maps of the entire body, a map for perceiving sensations and a map for organizing motor functions.

Your body doesn’t feel something without your brain being involved, you have no fantasies, no emotional connection.

When people have difficulty achieving orgasm, it is almost always because there is something in the context, that is, in the external circumstances and the internal state, that “slams the brakes” in the brain.

BBC News Mundo – Speaking of the brain, in one of your TedTalks speeches you suggest an exercise to the public: stand in front of a mirror as naked as possible and write down everything you like about what you see. And you add: “Of course, first your brain will be flooded with culturally constructed messages about how your body does not meet the culturally constructed ideal.” How does this idea of ​​a desirable body affect our sexuality?
Nagoski – The research is very consistent on this: body image impacts sexual functioning.

Body self-criticism is associated with all the ways in which we can experience problems with sexuality, from pleasure to arousal, desire and orgasm.

To perceive pleasure in your body, you must focus your attention on it. And if this triggers all kinds of self-criticism, it will slow down or even stop your sexual response.

But if, when we direct attention to our body, we only feel self-acceptance and even pride, this can activate the sexual accelerator in our brain.

BBC News Mundo – You point out that many of us, including you, grew up believing in an “outdated narrative about how desire works (…) that is not only incorrect, but also mistaken.” For example, the idea of ​​”keeping the spark, the passion, alive” in long-term relationships is a way of oversimplifying sex and evolution. Why?
Nagoski – The “why” of how this oversimplifies evolutionary science could take up an entire book, but basically the idea that sex should be about being aroused and in the “I can’t wait to put my tongue in your mouth” mood is part of of the conception that the fun experience of falling in love is and should be the same as being in love.

When two people start to get to know each other and fall in love, they spend a lot of time together doing sexy things, sometimes even to the detriment of other things in their lives.

But once they are in love and have an established relationship, they spend time together living their normal lives.

This is not a problem, it is inevitable, and for people who want a long-term sexual connection with a person with whom they also share a house and even children, that is precisely the point!

Your sexual connection can be a lovely enhancement to this, a source of pleasure that contributes to the quality of your life together.

Not that there’s anything wrong with wanting and creating “spark.”

Sharing sexual pleasure is part of how I express love, so I will make sure to set aside enough time, energy, and attention to be able to share sensual moments with that special someone.

This is what couples who maintain a strong long-term sexual connection do.

I was wise enough to learn from their example, and things are better now in my relationship than they have been in the 13 years we’ve been together.

BBC News Mundo – In that widespread narrative that after the age of 50 “apparently all the hormones we’ve ever had float in a sea of ​​aging and we become asexual and castrated”, your idea of ​​the centrality of pleasure gains even more importance. A perimenopause and menopause bring their own challenges for many women. How can we enjoy our sexuality during these phases?
Nagoski – The idea that the hormonal changes associated with normal aging mean our sexuality is doomed is part of the myth of “imperative desire.”

It turns out that there is no direct impact of sex hormones on sexual functioning, including sexual desire and pleasure, with one exception: with lower estrogen levels, genital tissue can become more fragile, which will cause pain.

Lubrication is absolutely essential, but if you experience pain during genital contact, talk to a healthcare professional about estrogen creams, which can help restore these tissues.

It is mainly the life changes that accompany aging that can affect our sexual functioning, including how we feel about changes in our bodies, our sexuality and our relationships.

At this stage, a revolution occurs in the minds of many women.

They recognize that all the rules they’ve been following about who they “should” be as a sexual person, how their sexual relationship “should” work, simply don’t apply to them.

And they begin to explore their authentic sexual selves and those of their partners, and collaborate to create contexts that facilitate the experience of pleasure in their brains.

When we free ourselves from purity culture and gender norms, we free parts of our sexuality that we thought we should hide. And we expand our access to sexual pleasure.