Orgasmic Bodies

The Orgasm in Contemporary Western Culture

Hannah Frith

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781137304377
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Movements in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Orgasmic Bodies explores how bodily experiences of orgasm are worked up as present/absent, complicated/straightforward, too slow/too fast, fake or real, in the doing of masculinities and femininities. Engaging with both science and popular culture it examines the meanings given to orgasmic bodies in contemporary heterosex.

1

What Is an Orgasm and Why Does it Matter?

Explaining what exactly an orgasm is seems to become more elusive even as science tries to specify it more precisely. Indeed, some would argue that orgasm is a mystical and magical thing which should not be subject to too much scrutiny in case this mysteriousness is unravelled and spoiled. But what exactly orgasm is, is perhaps a less interesting question than why it matters. Scientific work on orgasm focuses on trying to establish definitively what an orgasm is, specifying the biological pathways through which physical sensation is perceived as pleasurable, and the mechanisms through which this ‘response’ is triggered. But the more interesting question – at least for social scientists – is why orgasm is seen as having such significance, to be worthy of such attention. Orgasm, and female orgasm in particular, has been dogged by scientific and social controversy – from disagreements about whether orgasm originates in the vagina or the clitoris (or any other part of the body), whether or how it serves any evolutionary function, whether it is a necessary part of women’s sexual satisfaction, and whether it is a site of women’s oppression, liberation or both. Orgasms are also big business – for pharmaceutical companies desperate to find the ‘pink’ Viagra™ to ‘help’ women orgasm more easily or more frequently, for those who profit from visual representations of orgasm in everything from shampoo adverts to hard core pornography, for sex workers who are paid to elicit orgasms from clients, and for those who trade in creams, gels, toys, self-help books, and therapeutic services designed to enhance orgasmic pleasure. This cacophony of cultural chatter about female orgasm draws attention both to its problematisation and its symbolic significance in relation to a range of competing professional and commercial interests. This book, then, explores the meaning of orgasm. Noisy debates about female orgasm, accompanied by intense scrutiny, monitoring, measurement, and disciplining of female bodies, are not paralleled by similar careful and considered attention to men’s orgasm. Here there is relative silence. This is not to suggest that men’s sexuality or bodies are not subject to the clinical (and other) gaze – the recent commercial success of pharmaceutical treatments for ‘erectile dysfunction’ and the reshaping of the aging body as ‘forever sexual’ would suggest otherwise. But the bodily location, presence, or availability of men’s orgasm has not been considered controversial or even particularly interesting. This suggests that the meaning of orgasm is heavily gendered, and that the ‘doing’ of orgasm has a bearing on the ‘doing’ of masculinity and femininity. The place of orgasm in heterosex (sexual practices – especially penis-in-vagina intercourse – between men and women) is subject to intense surveillance and offers a focus for this book. Evidence of an ‘orgasm gap’, where men experience orgasm more frequently and reliably than women, is often the focus of social and scientific scrutiny in ways which reaffirm heterosexuality as an institution and reproduce the unequal gendered power relationships on which this rests. Treating orgasm as primarily an embodied sociocultural ‘event’ (rather than a biological response) – something which is experienced in and through the body but which becomes knowable only through its socially embedded meaning – this book uses orgasm as a useful springboard for examining the relationships between gender, the body, sexuality, science and consumption.

Orgasmic origins

One way of exploring the social construction of the orgasm, and unsettling its status as a biological/medical ‘fact’, is to understand how the meaning of orgasm has changed over time. Laqueur’s (1986, 2009) invaluable historical analysis of the use of the term ‘orgasm’ is illuminating. For centuries, he argues, orgasm was an allegory of the cosmos and creation, an event of cosmic significance signalling the origin of the soul and its entry into the body during conception. But, between the early 18th and late 19th century orgasm transformed into being understood as ‘simply a feeling’ (1986: 1), something that a body might or might not experience. According to Laqueur, these changes were not the result of new scientific discoveries, but were closely tied to cultural shifts in the status of biology as a science and the social, economic and political roles of women. He identifies a number of key points at which the meaning of orgasm shifted. In 1556, Realdo Columbus claimed to have discovered the clitoris, which marked a ‘decisive shift from orgasm being understood as pleasure which overwhelms the whole body to a pleasure fixed primarily on an organ’ (Laqueur, 2009: 429). In 1716 masturbation became seen as a sinful practice resulting in a variety of physical, mental and societal ills. This signalled a shift away from understanding orgasm as linked to the cosmos and generation, and towards orgasm being constructed as a feeling which is intimately connected to the inner world of the individual. In 1899 the word ‘orgasm’ was first applied to the distinct pleasure associated with the culmination of sexual excitement, and by 1918 climax became synonymous with orgasm. Finally, in 1905 when Freud gave the transferral from clitoral to vaginal orgasms an essential role in women’s psychosexual development, orgasm became central to distinguishing between psychological health and pathology.

As Laqueur demonstrates, the story of ‘orgasm’ as a distinct phenomenon has a long history. Collectively these changes have constructed orgasm as a distinct event located in specific areas of the body, as the culmination of sexual activity but as separate from reproduction, as linked to the inner world or subjectivity of the individual, as indicative for psychological ill/health, and as essentially different for men and women. These ideas set the stage for the contemporary discursive context in which gendered sexual subjectivities are produced and negotiated. In this book I explore how orgasm is constructed, negotiated and managed in relation to a range of ‘modern’ phenomena – including the rationalisation and medicalisation of sexuality (Jackson and Scott, 1997; Tiefer, 1995, 1996), the increased importance of expert systems and knowledges in the pedogogisation of life (Bernstein, 2001), the rise of postfeminism and the sexualisation of culture (Gill, 2009), and the infusion of neoliberal discourse into the most personal and private spheres of life (Tyler, 2004).

Orgasm, discourse and heterosex

By focusing on the meaning of orgasm in heterosex, this book contributes to the growing scholarship on critical heterosexualities which seeks to explore the diversity of meanings, social arrangements, and hierarchies within heterosexuality (Hockey et al., 2007; Richardson, 1996). The concept of compulsory heterosexuality (see also Rich, 1980), initially developed by lesbian feminists and gay liberationists in the late 1960s and early 1970s, identified heterosexuality as a social institution, rather than a freely chosen (or biologically determined) sexual orientation or preference. Heterosexuality became recognised as a highly structured social arrangement maintained through norms, rules and rituals which guide the behaviour of large numbers of people (Ingraham, 2002), and which reflect distinct power relations between men and women, and between heterosexuals and homosexuals (and any non-straight identities that fall between). While initial analyses focused on the consequences of heteronormativity (the privileging of heterosexuality throughout social life) for the pathologisation of non-heterosexualities (Seidman, 2009), a parallel strand of work has been keen to unpack heterosexuality as a site for the reproduction of women’s subordination and the privileging of male sexuality (Rich, 1980; Vance, 1984; Dworkin, 1987; Kitzinger and Wilkinson, 1993). Heteronormativity creates a structural pattern of gendered binaries and sexual hierarchies among heterosexuals, according to those who fall closest to a normative standard.

Conceptualising heterosexuality as a social institution draws attention to the consequences of heteronormativity across a broad range of social spheres, but how individuals ‘do’ heterosex, what they do in bed (or elsewhere), constitutes a central mechanism for the reproduction of heterosexuality. Situated with a critical feminist framework (Tiefer, 1995), this book argues that heterosex – including orgasm – is not a ‘natural’ act, but is a product of the social discourses through which sex is constituted, defined, experienced and made sense of. Consistent with poststructuralist theories of language (e.g., Gavey 1989; Weedon 1987), I take as my starting point the idea that language constitutes meaning through discourses which enable and constrain people’s choices for how to be and act in the world.This includes what counts as ‘sex’, with whom one ‘should’ have sex and under what circumstances, as well as the meanings attributed to, and the experience of, sex. Using orgasm as a lens, this book identifies the norms, rules and rituals of orgasm in heterosex, as these are communicated through popular culture, biomedical and sexological discourse, and through the talk of women and men. This reflects an understanding that institutional (bio)medical, scientific and mediatised discourses and practices are mutually constitutive rather than oppositional (Polsky, 2002), and that these might shape, and be shaped by, ‘lay’ understandings of orgasm as evidenced in the talk of men and women. This allows an understanding of how subjectivities are negotiated in and through biomedicine, science, media and everyday experience. In particular, the book focuses on the ways in which discourses through which orgasm is given meaning reproduce heterosexuality and gendered hierarchies. Heterosexuality rests on the assumption that men and women have essentially different, but complementary, bodies, desires, motivations and ways of being in the world which mean that they ‘naturally’ belong together in a heterosexual union. Heterosex is a key practice through which boys/men negotiate their place in relation to hegemonic masculinity and girls/women negotiate femininity. Feminists have identified the ‘coital imperative’ – the privileging of penis-in-vagina intercourse as ‘real sex’ – as central to the reproduction of gendered subjectivities and the privileging of male sexuality (Richardson, 1996; Tiefer, 1995; Gavey, 1992; Hite, 1976; Holland, Ramazanoglu, Sharpe and Thomson, 1998; Roberts, Kippax, Waldby and Crawford, 1995). Hollway’s (1984) classic work articulating three powerful discourses of heterosexuality – the ‘male sexual drive’ discourse, the ‘have/hold’ discourse, and the permissive discourse – has provided an influential springboard for exploring heterosex. The ‘male sexual drive’ discourse constructs men as driven by a biological need for sex which is urgent and (once aroused) unstoppable. Men are depicted as sexually active and agentic, taking responsibility for initiating and seeking sex while women are passive and responsive, either acquiescing or resisting men’s demands for sex. In contrast, the ‘have/hold’ discourse, which is typically associated more with women, situates sex within the broader context of monogamy, intimacy, partnership and family life. Here sex is constructed as essential to emotional connectedness and the maintenance of relationships. In this sexual division men are often positioned as ‘wanting sex’ while women are positioned as motivated by a desire for a relationship. The ‘permissive’ discourse offers an ‘anything goes’ approach to sex in which freedom of sexual expression is taken as a right for both men and women as long as it is consensual and without harm. This analysis provides a useful foundation for exploring the construction of orgasm and its role in heterosex. To help us to get an insight into the meaning of orgasm, we will look first at three discursive frames: the biomedical frame, the behavioural frame and the spiritual/experiential frame. These approaches frame the production of knowledge about orgasm in different ways, draw on different mechanisms of legitimation, and have different consequences for action. I sketch them here, giving a rough characterisation of each. I explore how each of these frames relate to key themes which will be picked up throughout the book – before identifying some contemporary shifts in heterosexual relations which are further elaborated throughout the book. These different approaches offer us varied ways of answering the question: ‘what is an orgasm?’

The biomedical frame

Orgasm is a sensation of intense pleasure creating an altered consciousness state accompanied by pelvic striated circumvaginal musculature and uterine/anal contractions and myotonia that resolves sexually-induced vasocongestion and induces well-being/contentment. (Meston et al., 2004a: 66)

Within the biomedical frame, orgasm is primarily constructed as a bodily response, an event which is accompanied by a series of physiological changes which can be discovered, documented and described using scientific rationality and methods. Sex and sexuality are inextricably linked to biomedical understandings of the body in contemporary Western cultures in which sexuality has become increasingly medicalised and amenable to surveillance, intervention and management. The aim of this approach is to isolate and locate the exact physiological triggers and correlates of orgasm. Researchers are concerned to document the biological pathways to orgasm by studying the physiological changes that occur prior, during and after orgasm. They seek to document the role of the central nervous system and the sensory pathways activated during sexual arousal and orgasm, the neurochemistry of orgasm and how orgasm might be affected by drugs and medications, the different areas of the brain involved in orgasm and the connections between the genitals and the brain, and the role of hormones in regulating sexual behaviour (see Komisaruk, Beyer-Flores and Whipple, 2006 for an overview).

Masters and Johnson, although far from the first investigators to scientifically study sexuality – including orgasm – are perhaps the most well known and the most credited with transforming the study of human sexuality. As such, they provide a useful exemplar to illustrate the biomedical approach. The aim of their research was to document the physiology of sexual behaviour by observing masturbation and partnered sexual activities within the laboratory. Volunteers were wired up to the latest technological devices to measure the physiological changes that occurred before, during and after orgasm. From 1957 until 1965, they recorded extensive data on the anatomy and physiology of human sexual response by observing of over 600 men and women in what they conservatively estimated to be over ‘10,000 complete cycles of sexual response’ (Masters and Johnson, 1966: 15). One of their most significant contributions was not simply documenting physiological changes (such as uterine contractions, lubrication, increased blood flow to the vagina, penile erection, contractions in the anus, etc.), they also brought these observations together to describe what they claimed was a universal pattern of sexual responses – the Human Sexual Response Cycle (HSRC). A sequence of four essential stages, characterised by observable and measurable physiological changes was identified: ‘excitement’, ‘plateau’, ‘orgasm’ and ‘resolution’. This placed orgasm as an essential part of normal sexual response, and the pinnacle of sexual responsiveness. They documented the precise nature of the physiological changes that occurred during orgasm – both those that are externally observable on the body, and those which are internal and less visible. In addition, building on their invention of a universal sexual response cycle, they developed new therapeutic techniques for treating sexual difficulties and ‘dysfunctions’. In contrast to the psychodynamic approaches which proceded them, Masters and Johnson positioned sexuality as central to health and well-being and saw sexual difficulties as arising primarily from poor sex education, a sexually restrictive upbringing or conservative social norms rather than from intrapsychic conflicts. They revolutionised therapeutic approaches to sexual problems by advocating a treatment programme based largely on psycho-education and behavioural techniques which was brief, solution-focused and directive, designed to bring wayward sexual responses more into line with the normative model they had developed (Masters and Johnson, 1970).

There are a number of key aspects of the biomedical approach, as illustrated by Masters and Johnson’s research, to which I wish to draw particular attention, since these capture some of the key tensions which are addressed in the book. This includes: the construction of orgasm as an essential and ‘peak’ aspect of normal (as opposed to dysfunctional) sexual response; the role of technologies of visualisation in scientific expertise; the similarity of male and female sexual response; and the construction of body and embodiment in relation to orgasm.

Firstly, the model gives scientific legitimacy to the idea that orgasm is the ‘peak’ of sexual experience, and that sexual response follows a normative pattern in which orgasm is a key component. Not only does orgasm form one of the key stages in the model, it is also positioned as the ‘ultimate point’ in the cycle, and psychologically as the ‘subjective perception of a peak of physical reaction’ (Masters and Johnson, 1966: 127). Although revised, largely influenced by the work of Helen Kaplan (1977, 1995), to include an initial stage of ‘desire’, the HSRC model retains its privileged status as bearing the standard of sexual functioning despite intensive methodological and conceptual critique (Basson, 2000; Tiefer, 1991). This resilient model continues to form the basis of the ‘diagnosis’ and ‘treatment’ of sexual dysfunction outlined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) of the American Psychiatric Association (APA). By providing a universal normative framework of human sexual response, the model offers a standard against which abnormal or dysfunctional sexual response can be identified. Failing to ‘achieve’ the sexual peak of orgasm falls short of normal sexual functioning since orgasm is an expected part of the sexual response cycle. The absence of orgasm is cause for concern and may trigger an intervention to ‘correct’ this dysfunction.

Secondly, Masters and Johnson’s work made distinctive use of technologies, often developed s...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• 1  What Is an Orgasm and Why Does It Matter?
• 2  The Orgasmic Imperative
• 3  Complicated Women, Straightforward Men
• 4  Coming Together: The Timing of Orgasm
• 5  Orgasmic Labour: Training the Body for Orgasmic Success
• 6  Performing Orgasm: Blurring the Real and the Fake
• 7  Embodying Orgasmic Sensation
• 8  The Climax: Conclusions and Reflections
• Appendices
• Notes
• References
• Index