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posted by LaminatorX on Monday August 25 2014, @09:37AM   Printer-friendly
from the Ladies'-night dept.

Despite recent advances in understanding orgasm variation, little is known about ways in which sexual orientation is associated with men’s and women’s orgasm occurrence. Now Discover Magazine reports that scientists at Indiana University have surveyed over 6,000 people on the internet to generate some hard data on how often people experienced orgasm with a familiar partner and it turns out that homosexual and heterosexual men have similar orgasm frequencies (~85%), while women on average have lower (~63%) rates of orgasm. However, if you separate heterosexual and homosexual women, there’s a big difference: heterosexual women reported having orgasms 61.6% of the time, while lesbians have orgasms 74.7% of the time.

The study, titled "Variation in Orgasm Occurrence by Sexual Orientation in a Sample of U.S. Singles" and published online this week in the Journal of Sexual Medicine, uses a large-scale nationally representative sample to examine how self-identified sexual orientation can affect how often lovers have orgasms (paywalled original paper). "These findings may contribute to promotion of more informed sexual health, by reminding us to pay attention to individual variation in research and clinical practice -- variation in sexual experiences, variation in sexual identities and variation in sexual outcomes," says lead author Justin R. Garcia,

The researchers speculate on the patterns observed, suggesting it could be the result of such known factors as length of a sexual encounter (earlier research points to lesbian women spending more time per sexual session); differences in gendered and sexual attitudes across sexual orientation; and even possible biological factors, such as prenatal exposure to the hormones testosterone and estrogen. "Some individuals will say what they want in a sexual encounter, or may be willing to say as much if their partner asked," says Garcia. "For others, communication may be nonverbal, with body language being key. This may also involve getting to know each other, both in and out of the bedroom, to understand what allows a particular sexual partner to experience a positive sexual outcome."

 
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  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by FatPhil on Monday August 25 2014, @11:52AM

    by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Monday August 25 2014, @11:52AM (#85277) Homepage
    Every kid knows that, yup, including the girls.
    And they also know that we males don't give a monkeys, as long as we get our end away.

    I presume the Kinsey et al. researchers weren't actually in people's bedrooms ticking the "came" box on a clipboard. And therefore the females were self-reporting. This makes the data a matter of opinion rather than of fact.

    Name one lesbian who would say "actually, I'm just as sexually unfulfilled in my lesbian relationship as I hear all those poor straight women are, with their horrible uncaring male partners" were she not getting there as often as she would like? There are possible incentives both for unfullfilled lesbians to over-report orgasms and for unfullfilled straight females to under-report orgasms.

    Humans are notoriously unreliable at judging things about themselves even in the absense of stereotypes that they think they should conform to.

    Caveat humptor.
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  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by Daiv on Monday August 25 2014, @02:31PM

    by Daiv (3940) on Monday August 25 2014, @02:31PM (#85337)

    Name one lesbian who would say "actually, I'm just as sexually unfulfilled in my lesbian relationship as I hear all those poor straight women are, with their horrible uncaring male partners" were she not getting there as often as she would like? There are possible incentives both for unfullfilled lesbians to over-report orgasms and for unfullfilled straight females to under-report orgasms.

    Funny you say that. Last week, the local radio station personalities had women call who strolled both sides of the fence and the end result about a couple dozen calls was that it was completely subjective. Several callers called in and said exactly your challenge "I'm just as sexually unfulfilled in my lesbian relationship as" they were in their straight relationships.

    Sexual encounters are horribly subjective to *everything.* Mood, diet, temperature, everything! Even if you ignored orientation of the participants, these numbers really are quite meaningless.

    • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday August 26 2014, @10:17AM

      by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Tuesday August 26 2014, @10:17AM (#85668) Homepage
      And of course phone-ins are a self-selecting sample. Those are even less reliable for gauging the population as a whole.
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  • (Score: 2) by frojack on Monday August 25 2014, @05:38PM

    by frojack (1554) on Monday August 25 2014, @05:38PM (#85393) Journal

    Humans are notoriously unreliable at judging things about themselves even in the absense of stereotypes that they think they should conform to.

    Spot on.

    So this study fixed that by surveying over 6,000 people on the intern.

    Because if its done on the internet, its SCIENCE!

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