Saturday, December 4, 2010

Men Fake Orgasms - Is Porn to Blame?

Strong Silent Types - Stuff for Men (blogged by ultimo167) posted this research summary that I found quite interesting. It seems about 25% of college age men fake orgasms.

There is a huge belief in this culture that men are always ready, willing, and able to have sex - and that many of them struggle to last long enough to please their women. The researchers concluded: "Results suggest a sexual script in which women should orgasm before men, and men are responsible for women's orgasms."

Another study (see the 2nd article) showed similar results:
For its 2010 Great Male Survey, AskMen.com asked more than 100,000 men if they had faked an orgasm during intercourse. An average of 16 per cent said they had done it repeatedly; an additional 14 per cent admitted to faking, but just once.
For men, the ability to orgasm is tied to their "power" as a man - failing to do so would suggest they are not masculine enough, not fully men. That's nonsense of course, but it is a prevailing belief.

The more challenging and disturbing part, to me at least, is that this may be connected to young men spending too much time with porn - becoming so desensitized to anything but their own method that a real women is not adequate for orgasm. How sad is that?

Men Fake Orgasms Too

Posted: November 27, 2010 by ultimo167

A study published in the November 2010 edition of the Journal of Sex Research found that around 25 per cent of the 180 male university students surveyed had faked an orgasm when having sex with a woman. That included during penile-vagina intercourse, ‘oral sex, manual stimulation, and phone sex’ (Muehlenhard et al., 2010, p.552). The reasons proffered for why these men felt the need to engage in such interesting, if not altogether challenging, deception included wanting the sex to end, not wanting to hurt their partners’ feelings and accepting that ‘[o]rgasm was unlikely or taking too long’ (Muehlenhard et al., 2010, p.561)…

The specific methods that men reported most often were moaning or making other sounds, saying that they were orgasming, moving or thrusting faster or harder, freezing or clenching their muscles, and acting spent or exhausted. Many men reported multiple methods of pretending (e.g., ‘‘I made moaning noises and was saying things like ‘oh . . . I’m coming baby, I’m coming!!!’ ’’M-123)‘ (Muehlenhard et al., 2010, p.559).

According to sex therapist, Ian Kerner, what we really might be witnessing is something much more sinister than fake moans and fake trips to the bathroom to dispose of empty condoms. Kerner argues that the shift by many young men to a life filled with net porn and self pleasure might be relegating sex with women, or other men, to the too hard basket. I mean, who has the time for all that fuss and bother when instant gratification is already on your desktop? As real orgasms allegedly become increasingly delayed or non-existent, that leaves men so afflicted with the difficult choice of either fessing up to their partners or continuing to hone their shtick, with the utmost dread of ever being outed…

The article that ultimo167 referred to in the Globe and Mail is interesting. This article also mentions another issue some men don't talk about much - SSRI antidepressants can delay orgasm or even prevent it. But rather then being honest about this reality, many men would rather hide it and fake the orgasm.

The big O: Men fake it too

ZOSIA BIELSKI

They don’t scream affirmatives, call out to God or whip their hair around like a tornado. Then we’d know they were faking it.

But men fake orgasms too, for myriad reasons – not least of which is sparing their partner’s ego.

A recent University of Kansas study of nearly 300 college-age men and women found that 28 per cent of the men had faked an orgasm during intercourse.

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