The new NSSHB is out! No, I’m not talking about the latest New Kids on the Block. It’s the National Survey of Sexual Health and Behavior. This is the biggest sex survey conducted and published since 1994’s National Health and Social Life Survey, which was, like, so ‘90s.
Since then, people have gotten a little older, a little wiser. We’ve found 41 different combinations of having sex, that condom usage is high in adolescents and that more people are having oral sex and anal sex.
One more finding is that in their most recent sexual event, 85 percent of men think their partner had an orgasm while 64 percent of women had an orgasm, and this gap is too large to be explained by men who had male partners.
Something’s off here, or rather, someone’s not getting off here.
A couple of obvious explanations would be that men are over-guesstimating their abilities, or that women are faking it. Suffice it to say, “There’s this massive gap between men’s perception and women’s reality,” said Dr. Debby Herbenick, Ph.D., M.P.H., told ABC News.
It’s difficult to assign blame to either party. Some men are just clueless, and some women fake for well-intentioned reasons. But we shouldn’t ignore one underlying fact: For a lot of women, it’s just hard to have an orgasm.
As many as 24 percent of women have reported an inability to achieve orgasm, or anorgasmia, in the previous year. That’s nearly one in four. Sometimes, this is due to a medical condition or medication. Other times, it’s a result of hormonal changes during aging.
A few studies have also revealed genetic or even anatomic influences, like the distance from the clitoris to the vagina or the thickness of the urethrovaginal space.
Finally, there’s a litany of psychosocial factors that come into play as well, such as shame or self-esteem.
