"The Moral Significance of Female Orgasm" Review

    In her article, "The Moral Significance of the Female Orgasm: Toward Sexual Ethics That Celebrates Women’s Sexuality”, published in a 1993, in volume 9 of Journal of Feminist Studies of Religion, Mary D. Pellauer suggests important questions concerning the orgasm that she believes the feminist movement and women working on women’s sexuality and experiences in academia, should address. Published in 1993, this is the earliest of the academic articles that I will be reviewing, which is why it is also the first I am reviewing. It will be interesting, moving forward, to see the extent to which the questions Pellauer suggests here, are addressed and answered. In this particular piece, she does not attempt to answer many of the questions she poses, leaving it largely open for other writers and researchers.

        I don’t know that this diminishes the article’s significance, as some of the questions posed, just by nature of them being asked, complicate or nuance the traditional narrative that surrounds woman’s orgasm. Some of these questions are: What are the differences between women who find talk of orgasm exciting, and are willing to participate in discussions, and those who feel that they’ve talked about it too much, and do not want to hear about it? (165). Does the ability to have orgasms confer moral status? (165). Can sex without orgasm still be good sex? (165). Is orgasm a male-dominated standard for evaluating sex? (165). How do your backgrounds inform our orgasmic experiences? (167-170). Should we ask “should woman have orgasms?” and should the answer be yes? (177). Should women take orgasms more for granted, or should men take them less for granted? (179). Interestingly, in 2014, over twenty years later, I don’t think there are conclusive answers to any of these questions. These are all still relevant today.

     She does attempt to make some assertions, in the form of guidelines for discussions about orgasm, which can be briefly laid out. She argues that as important as it is to correct misconceptions about the female orgasm, it is also imperative that we “create more adequate accounts of female sexuality”. (161). And that is what she begins to do here. She also emphases the importance of the fact that women, unlike men, do not take orgasm for granted in their sexual relations, and encourages us to investigate the causes and consequences for this. (162-165). She stresses that is important when we discuss the significance of orgasm, to remember women who have not or cannot orgasm, and not marginalize their experience or shame them for it. (181).

       She also suggests “six important elements” in orgasmic experience, that she feels are important both to the experience, and investigations of that experience. There are: (1) “being here-and-now” (how “in the moment” one is during sex, and how varied sexual likes/dislikes/needs can be depending on specific circumstances), (2) the varieties of the orgasmic sensation, (3) the experience of ecstasy, (4) vulnerability, (5) power, and (6) the fact that, again, none of this, for women, is taken for granted.  (170-175).

      She makes a second list as well, of four “phonological problems”, or problems that she experiences or anticipates in discussing the female orgasm. They are: (1) that orgasms are brief and overwhelming, and thus hard to describe, (2) in order to describe it one must also be able to remember a single orgasm and keep it separate from other orgasms one has experienced which she says is difficult, (3) orgasms are very different from one another, both between women, and in the same woman, and finally (4) that woman do not talk about orgasmic experience enough for women to have an idea of whether their experience of orgasm is different from other women’s experiences. (167-168).

          At each point, while she writes about these elements, she discusses her own personal experience with these things, as she experiences them in her sexual relations with her husband. She admits that, in focusing on her personal experiences with her husband, she is focusing only on sexual relations with men, and ignoring personal fantasy and masturbation-to-orgasm (176). She is also ignoring sex with women, though she doesn’t explicitly state that. In general, Pellauer frequently emphases that she wants a “multiplicity” of women’s stories, and that she does not speak for other women, cannot do so, and therefore does not universalize, focusing only on her own personal, individual experience. She stresses that she is a “1” on the Kinsey scale (very heterosexual), white, Lutheran, highly educated, and well-off financially, and that her (very privileged) experience cannot speak for all women (168).

      The Kinsey scale.

     Of course, this perspective is also the most commonly discussed narrative. In some ways, this is good, as she is right that her experience is not all women’s experience, and she shouldn’t assume that it is. However, I wished she had then done some research into other women’s experiences, so that she could speak to that, instead of just accepting that she can’t and leaving it at that, so she provide us with some useful answers to her questions and ideas.  Her own personal experiences alone, regardless of her background, really don’t tell us too much about women’s orgasmic experience in general (not even about all WASP straight women, as she focuses so strongly on details specific  to her as an individual), which is why I am not discussing them here- although when we write about the collection of individual narratives we’ve read, her perspective will of course be included.

        Some important statistics given this article: 10% of women, in 1990, had never experienced orgasm, and of the 90% that had, 50-70% did not have orgasms by “penile thrusting” alone (163). 23% of women who have orgasmed experienced their first orgasm before the age of fifteen, and 90% of the woman who have orgasmed, experienced their first orgasm before the age of thirty-five.