Untrue: Why Nearly Everything We Believe About Women, Lust, and Infidelity Is Wrong and How the New Science Can Set Us Free

by Wednesday Martin

the average time for a woman to orgasm from intercourse after stimulating foreplay ranges from ten to twenty minutes, while for men it is two and a half to eight minutes. “The only hard and fast facts regarding time to orgasm are that there is a range, and women take longer on average, and that it’s faster from self-stimulation.” And it’s not uncommon for women to fear they are taking “too long,” Gordon observes. There is no doubt that this latter fact is at least in part a symptom of a culture-wide failure to tell women that great sex is our right, and that we are entitled to “release” as we have been taught men are. Among heterosexuals, there is a significant “orgasm gap” as well as a sexual entitlement gap: one study found that when it comes to sex with a familiar partner, heterosexual men come a hefty 22 percent more often than women do. (Bisexual women fare no better than straight women, while lesbians come out on top, experiencing orgasm nearly 75 percent of the time during partnered sex.) Another study found that in first-time hookups, straight men have over three orgasms for every orgasm a straight woman has.