One of the difficulties in discussing women’s sexuality is the suggestion that women ‘enjoy’ sex. This can mean many things. Orgasm is a specific erotic phenomenon not the sensations women feel from intercourse.
Sexual phenomena, such as arousal and orgasm, rely on explicitly adult themes. Anyone who is restricting these phenomena to a loving relationship with one individual is confusing the sensual and emotional aspects of sexual activity with a lover and the true sexual release of orgasm.
Many women expect sex to have an emotional context and so they dismiss masturbation as unrewarding. This is confusing emotions with orgasm. The gay world demonstrates men’s focus on casual sex versus women’s preference for longer (often platonic) relationships. Women are not driven to engage in penetrative sex or genital stimulation as men are.
Even researchers ignore the advantage gained by women who profess an enthusiasm for sex as well as the fact that orgasm has become so synonymous with women’s sexual satisfaction that they are almost obliged to imply that they are orgasmic. A definition of female orgasm that depends on men providing intercourse is a much more effective means of cementing relationships than accepting that women enjoy orgasm when alone.
Women are often unaware of the nature of orgasmic response. So they accept the need for physical stimulation (intercourse or a vibrator) but consider any form of fantasy whether in the mind or in commercial form (erotic books or movies) to be either unnecessary or morally suspect.
Women can experience an intense desire to be physically intimate with someone they are attracted to. A woman can also enjoy pleasuring a man through sex because of the intense pleasure men obtain from intercourse.
But the emotional and sensual sensations that women experience from sexual intimacy are incompatible with orgasm (such feelings cannot be resolved as an orgasmic response). The key issue is that intercourse, as an act of mating, not only provides the wrong kind of physical stimulation but also it does not represent an erotic turn-on in the female mind.
It seems unfair that Nature has given men and women such wildly different sex drives. But Nature does not need to provide a mechanism to bond women to their lovers (by providing for female orgasm during sex) because women already need men to support them with raising a family.
[i] Nearly all (but not all) younger males are aroused to the point of erection many times per week, and many of them may respond to the point of erection several times per day. Many females may go for days and weeks and months without ever being stimulated unless they have actual physical contact with a sexual partner. (p682 Kinsey 1953)