By David Futrelle
Today, a brief visit to the Men Going Their Own Way subreddit, where men who claim they’ve given up women — and don’t even think about them any more — spend all day every day talking about women. This time, they’re talking about female orgasm, which according to them doesn’t exist.
Annoyed by a post in the badly named women-centric TwoXChromosomes subreddit in which a young woman wondered if she might possibly have just had her first orgasm while taking a highly stressful physics test, a MGTOW Redditor called TVTestPattern declares flatly that the female orgasm is a “myth.”
Oh, dude. Dude.
I feel a little bad for him. And a lot bad for any woman who may have suffered the misfortune of having sex with him.
Also, dude, the fake orgasm scene from When Harry Met Sally — which is what his final line links to — isn’t actually proof of anything, except perhaps that screenwriter Nora Ephron might just have endured some really shitty boyfriends and husbands in her day (we already knew she had one extra-shitty ex-husband, Carl Bernstein). But I digress.
The commenters in the MGTOW subreddit thought that Mr. TestPattern here was really onto something with his totally original female orgasm theory.
“I have always said this,” wrote YouLoseAgainDipshits.
As men, we know that orgasms don’t feel thatgood. When’s the last time you screamed and moaned while masturbating?
While women are drama queens, it’s clear they don’t even know what an orgasm is.
A guy called Avyctes managed to have an opinion that was somehow even worse than this.
“A female orgasm is irrelevant,” he wrote.
As long as the Man gets off. She’s nothing more, and a whole lot less, than a walking masturbation sleeve.
So weird that there are so many guys out there not only willing to admit that they’re terrible people, but also to make it absolutely clear that they are utter shit in bed. The internet is an amazing thing.
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@ Vicky P
That is a nice touch. Human sacrifice is an interesting topic; and one we actually covered in Penal Policy. There’s some fascinating societal stuff behind the shift from sacrificing the best of your people in your society; who were often very willing; to using it as a way of getting rid of criminals.
Some proto-celtic cultures used to sacrifice the last person to turn up on the battlefield. I bet that did wonders for punctuality.
@Victorian Parasol:
Last time I wrote Steampunk was many years back, for a small press ‘zine which unfortunately folded on exactly the issue which was supposed to include my story.
I set it up during the construction of the western branch of the Canadian Pacific Railway, where one of the cost saving measures brought in by Michael Haney (who in the real world had a steam-powered sawmill built to pre-cut the lumber needed for bridges) also involved an early steam-powered difference engine used to assist the surveying and explosives calculations.
@Alan:
That reminds me of the anime From the New World, which is set in a post-apocalyptic world in which the apocalypse happened because people started developing psychic powers, while still being, you know, people.
One flashback scene involved somebody who had himself crowned emperor, and who decreed at his coronation that everybody should start applauding… and that the first hundred people to stop applauding would be executed immediately. As in, he made anybody who stopped clapping burst into flame.
After bits like that, it’s pretty obvious why the society of the main storyline is a quietly fascist organization that promptly ‘disappears’ any children who show problematic psychological issues, and then brainwashes the remaining children to forget that they existed.
@ Jenora
Ugh. Yeah, that’s the peril of a small press sale. Been there, done that. It’s why “pay on acceptance” is so much nicer than “pay on publication.”
@Victorian Parasol
Didn’t Failbetter Games do something like that, only with more space bats?
(I’m only mostly joking)
@ Tovius
Heh. Well, it’s an obvious departure point for AH, like the South winning the American Civil War. Harry Turtledove may be the gold standard, but there’s plenty of room for good stories exploring an idea.
@Victorious Parasol:
This was a very early fanzine. Payment would have been in contributor’s copies anyway.
Actually, the collapse was fast enough that some of the people who had been contributors to the previous issue didn’t even get their contributor’s copies. I ended up showing the copy that I’d bought at a convention to a friend with a story in that issue, because said friend hadn’t even received a copy for their contribution.
(This was very early 90s, with Desktop Publishing only recently becoming a thing, and the ‘zine editor worked at a company with access to good printers. End result was that the ‘zine looked professional, wraparound cover on the second issue and everything. Too professional. There were apparently tax issues because somebody with the authority to make such decisions couldn’t believe that this was a personal fan project, and that was a significant factor in everything being shut down and unsold existing copies being confiscated. Or so I was told at one point.)
@alan
Well, sure. The scam worked, after all. Why wouldn’t you start believing in it? (The moment also really works because Lee’s been at his charming, reasonable best throughout the whole rest of the film. Well, except for his casual prejudice about the “Christian copper.”)
Out of curiosity, who’s doing the apologizing in the Cage commentary?
@Jenora Feuer
I love that idea, and I’m going to want to read your WIP once it’s no longer in progress.
@Rabid Rabbit:
Thanks.
I will fully admit that part of the real-world background of this story is essentially taking a couple of personal interests(/kinks) and trying to write a completely coherent, self-consistent, and non-pornographic story involving them. Working out the details of the world background and what side effects they would have is required for the ‘coherent’ and ‘self-consistent’ parts.
(And, honestly, I feel background building has often been one of the weaker aspects in my writing.)
What are they wondering about?
It is known that women can orgasm from physical activities, like sports and certain repeated body movements.
This can be induced and/or supported by sexual thoughts but also can occur through simple mechanical stimulation.
I’ve actually had small orgasms (not very intense full-on climaxes but still orgasms) once from
a) riding a bus that bumped over a street that had seen far better days, which made my panties rub over my clit in a very pleasant way.
b) as a 12-13 year old, while making that swinging leg movements to raise a swing higher, although I admit I also had somewhat erotic thoughts about a certain older girl.
But it was mostly the physical sensation that made it, in that bus I had no sexual thoughts whatsoever and had been in no mood for sex when it started due to the bumpy ride. Just mechanical stimulation of the clit.
Needless to say, I had no motivation to make a show of it. On the contrary, with all those people around I rather had the trouble to maintain composure. The funny thing was there was another young woman who I suspect experienced something similar. She noticed me looking at her, grinned back knowingly and somewhat lewdly and made some subtle but telling pelvis moves. xD
However, it’s just amazing how it never even occurs to these morons that women have different bodies, different nerve pathways especially in this region and entirely different genitalia. So, quite likely, their sexual sensations generally and their orgasms specifically just might be – surpriiiiise: different. Not better, not worse, just other than men’s. And comparing them to his own, considering he simply doesn’t have, never had and never will have the respective organs is at the very least futile and stupid.
I’m very curious about what men experience during sex and already asked dozens of men. My guy was one of the few men who ever gave me usable and comprehensible answers.
(The vast majority literally (!) replied things like “it feels good” or that amounted to this much information. Yes, really. Or they didn’t know how to describe their sensations at all.)
Part of the trouble all those men experienced explaining me is that for them it’s normal, language doesn’t hold adequate expressive possibilities for immediate physical sensations, emotions or mental states and men are usually less experienced and often not so good at describing these at all which doesn’t get easier when it’s something sexual. (Interestingly most of those same men were far more able to describe and quite open about their sexual thoughts and images, many first didn’t even grasp I wasn’t asking for them but for their physical experiences.)
But the biggest obstacle for me to understand is that I don’t have a dick and all that goes with it. I don’t know and I can’t imagine because it’s something entirely outside my bodily experience. Think MRAs will happily accept this acknowledgement – but why don’t they consider it is just the same the other way around?
We can try to tell them but they can’t feel and know it the way other women can. Even if their feelings are different women are more capable to relate to female recounts of sexual experiences, just like men are with men.
So how arrogant and presumptuous can you be to state women don’t even know what orgasms are?! Well, there are billions of women out there who know very well.
Limit such statements to virgins you deflorated and other inexperienced women you had sex with, please. Might even believe it then. Those poor girls…
My explanation for this is: this kind of “men” cannot accept under any circumstances that women orgasm from anything else but the Almighty Dick. Beware without any man anywhere near them! Or even with another woman!
But even in the hetero”normal” intercourse this notion makes it impossible to accept that clitoral stimulation is crucial for most women to come and they mostly won’t orgasm from penetration alone or at least, if they can, for most of this minority it’s still not as satisfying as orgasms from clitoral or combined stimulation.
So as long as they ignore the realities of female anatomy and focus on or even make their sole attempt at penetration they will logically not satisfy their partners.
I’ve met men with more mild manifestations of this in-penis-we-trust-beliefs and it was quite difficult or nearly impossible to convince them their based on faulty conceptions of female sexuality.
Many men who entertain such beliefs are quite obsessed with their dicks (especially the notorious size complex regardless of the actual size and how often they’re told if size matters then it’s certainly not about the length parameter).
It’s actually even worse sometimes when they have big dicks because then they think every women ought to swoon when they only unpack it, let alone puts it in and they’re absolutely not going to get what’s the matter with her that this excellent piece of masculinity doesn’t satisfy her.
Clit? What clit? Isn’t this clit BS for women whose partners have small cocks? How can she need anything else when she gets THIS from him?!
Obviously to such men their dicks are tied to their narcissism even closer than it is the case with the average male.
Needless to say, it’s far easier and more satisfying to dump such jerks right away and find a man willing to please you than to argue, explain how the female body works and why yes indeed, as a woman you know better and get mansplained on that while trying to bring those befuddled airheads down to the grounds of reality.
If they were capable of learning they would seize opportunities to become better lovers when meeting women who know what they like and want (sadly, many still don’t… and since they’re often so insecure they’re more prone to sleep with douchebags like them – which is another reason why they conclude women don’t know orgasms).
Unfortunately their self-absorbed attitude hinders them to learn and after a couple of sexual failures, which they can’t explain to themselves because they don’t occur in their world due to the beliefs mentioned above, they conclude women don’t even know or just fake orgasms anyway and from that take the comfy little bridge to Hotel Who Cares on Egocentric Island.
In their distorted logic it all makes sense: if female orgasms are mostly faked and in the other case insignificant anyway why not consequently argue there is no such thing as a female orgasm at all?
After all, they would’ve seen it by now if there was one, wouldn’t they?
Love how they don’t even notice how they expose themselves as terribly unskilled… fuckers. Don’t deserve to be called lovers.
And this Avyctes is just so gross! Yuck! Luckily for the women in his reach, with this rampant misogyny he’ll probably scare them away soon enough and have to stick to non-walking – that is, actual masturbation sleeves. Likely “stick” means literally. Baaah!