Lesbians Have Orgasms More Than Straight Women, Bisexual Women May Have Less

    In the December, 1994 volume of Off Our Backs, a peer-reviewed journal of contemporary women's issues, a short article, without an author's name attached was published entitled, "Lesbians More Likely to Have Orgasms." More appropriately, it would have been titled "Women Who Have Sex With Women More Likely to Have Orgasms", as it was reporting on the National Lesbian and Bisexual Women's Health Survey, put out by the Lesbian Health Clinic,  of lesbian and bisexual women (4).  In any case, it was discovered that, using another study that asked heterosexual women about their orgasms, that 65% of lesbian and bisexual women regularly experienced orgasm during sex, compared to 26% of heterosexual women (4).

    This actually makes a lot of sense, because we know from previous studies reviewed here, that women are socialized from a young age to put their partner's s pleasure before their own,  including sexual pleasure, and we know from Kimmel's chapter on social construction, that socialization has a powerful influence on the way people think about themselves and others, and act. If women consider their partner's sexual pleasure the most important thing, and men are not socialized this way, as been shown in other studies discussed on this blog, then in a heterosexual relationship, it makes sense that women don't orgasm very often. However, when both partners are women and they are both socialized to put the other's sexual pleasure before their own, it's no wonder they both enjoy sex more! (Perhaps to answer Mary D. Pellaneur's question of whether it's men or women who need to change their attitudes about sex- should women care less about men's pleasure? should men care more about women's?- this study would suggest both partners prioritizing the other's pleasure gets good results!) Furthermore, we know from Maines' book that the majority of women cannot orgasm from intercourse alone, and need clitoral stimulation, and sex between women definitely emphasizes the clitoral. 

When another study was done twenty years later, in 2014, in the Journal of Sexual Medicine, that compared sexual pleasure between heterosexual, bisexual, and lesbian men and women, and was covered by the Huffington Post by Cavan Sieczkowski, it was discovered that not only were men still more likely to orgasm then women (85% vs. 61%- so the number of even heterosexual women orgasming has increased significantly since 1994!), but lesbians were still more likely to orgasm then heterosexual women- 74% to 61%. The gap is closing, but lesbians still orgasm fairly significantly more often, so the above factors should still be present as well- women are still socialized to prioritize others over themselves, and men are not. A reason why the gap might be closing, is that men might be more encouraged than now than before to take women's needs into consideration, women may be in better places to advocate for themselves more, and also other forms of sexual pleasure might be becoming more popular. (The article is entitled, "Lesbians Are Having More Orgasms Than Straight Women.")

What's different, and interesting, is that bisexual women orgasm only 58% of the time, which is not only lower than the percentage for heterosexual women by just a little bit, but also lower than bisexual women's orgasm rate in 1994, and I can't think of why this is the case.

Any ideas?