Abstract
The Big O. Climax. Getting off. These metaphors for the supposed peak of a sexual experience barely scratch the surface in describing the enormous cultural significance ascribed to it. In Orgasmic Bodies, Hannah Frith ventures on a long-overdue exploration of orgasm’s subjective meaning in western culture. The book takes a mostly social-constructivist perspective, employing examples from the websites of two lifestyle magazines: the US edition of Cosmopolitan and the UK version of Men’s Health. Although the focus is on heterosexual dynamics, Frith also summarizes the relevant, but limited, literature on orgasm in same-sex contexts.
The book begins by offering a critique of the ‘orgasmic imperative’, or the widespread assumption that every penile–vaginal intercourse must end in orgasm for both partners, regardless of what its presence or absence means to them subjectively. Highlighting the supposed ‘orgasm gap’ between men and women in the frequency and timing of orgasms, Frith takes a feminist perspective in arguing that the orgasmic imperative shortchanges women. Not only do contemporary cultural scripts suggest that women facing orgasmic absence have a ‘problem’ and must work to correct it, but these scripts also encourage concerns about preserving the fragile egos of the male partners who have worked hard to ‘give’ women an orgasm. Under these pressures, Frith suggests, it is little wonder that the practice of faking orgasms – which sex researchers Masters and Johnson hoped would be on its way out, thanks to knowledge about sexual physiology– continues to be widespread. Cultural anxieties remain steadily focused on women’s faking, which is conceived to be ‘downright unfeminist’ (p. 109), even though surveys show pretend orgasms are also commonly employed by men.
Alarmingly, Frith argues, this is not the only way in which women are singled out as deviating from the sexual norm, which is masculine by a sort of patriarchal default. Women’s orgasms are consistently portrayed as slower, more unpredictable, and more effortful than men’s, creating a narrative of fearful uncertainty (will it happen or will it not?) for both parties in a heterosexual intercourse. This uncertainty, in fact, extends to the very definition of the female orgasm, which is frequently explained by its physiological signs (pelvic thrusts, vaginal and anal contractions), but which remains vague in terms of its subjective experience and meaning. By contrast, Frith suggests that the male orgasm, traditionally assumed to coincide with and be signified by ejaculation, is constructed as a simple and ubiquitous point of pleasurable release, even though evidence exists of a substantial variance in how men can and do experience sexual pleasure and orgasm.
Mainstream orgasm advice, Frith argues, dovetails with the neoliberal ethic of self-improvement, work, and individual efficiency, encouraging men and women to perfect their sexual technique and learn to control their bodies. Furthermore, good sex is portrayed as one’s individual responsibility, as magazines encourage women to orchestrate sexual encounters – a picture-perfect ignoring a large body of research that, Frith writes, ‘highlights women’s difficulty in negotiating safe and pleasurable sex with male partners’ (p. 104). Although this is an important critical point, it is impossible to know how often readers may engage in oppositional readings of lifestyle magazines’ advice – just like Frith herself.
The book fits well with the social constructionist literature on sexuality, and it deserves credit especially for acknowledging the issue of embodiment, which many other scholars have dodged. Frith is aware that sex and orgasms do not happen outside of bodies, and, at the same time, is rightfully critical of the proliferation of psychophysiological accounts at the expense of subjective narratives of meaning. However, the book falls short in its assumption that ‘western culture’ is synonymous with the popular discourse in English-speaking countries. Lacking is any exploration or the potentially more diverse social constructions of orgasm in French culture (known for its depiction of orgasm as la petite mort or la mort douce), the sexually libertine northern Europe (especially the Netherlands and Sweden), or the stereotypically ‘passionate’ but relatively sexually conservative southern Europe (Spain, Italy, and Portugal).
Even within English-speaking cultures, it is important to acknowledge the wide variability in terms of education about sex, whether as a biological fact or a subjective experience. Only 22 states in the USA require schools to provide information about STDs and contraception. Forget about diagrams of anything below the waist. Could the construction of sexuality in lifestyle magazines like Cosmopolitan and Men’s Health – global brands originating in the USA – reflect their core content for mostly uncritical American audiences, hungry for quasi-scientific advice about sex? Indeed, many contemporary sexual scripts seem to have been ‘made in the USA’ and exported elsewhere.
The book takes a critical perspective, and some of its focus is on power and knowledge systems, but deserving of further exploration is the subjective experience of loss of control inherent in orgasm (the word is said to come from the Greek orga, meaning explosion). Frith does point out the ways in which one partner’s orgasm can, and often is, interpreted as signifying the ‘power’ of the other – especially when a man ‘gives’ a woman an orgasm as a proof of his masculine prowess. But there is also power in denying an orgasm; orgasm denial is, in fact, a common power play in the BDSM world. From that perspective, not needing or wanting an orgasm can be seen as the ultimate empowering experience. Perhaps this could explain why the occurrence of women’s orgasms – not men’s – is mandated so heavily in our postmodern patriarchal societies.