It is well-accepted that women can and do fake orgasms. Meg Ryan did her part in establishing this fact for all of posterity with her delighted delicatessen delivery in 1989’s “When Harry Met Sally.”
But what about the guys? When it comes to orgasm, are men also lying while laying?
Charlene Muehlenhard and Sheena Shippee at the University of Kansas sought to address this very question.
According to their survey of 180 male and 101 female college students (mostly white and heterosexual) in this month’s Journal of Sex Research, 25 percent of men and 50 percent of women reported having “pretended” orgasm, usually during penile-vaginal intercourse.
So how were they faking? Both male and female participants reported bodily or vocal acting, or simply stopping and reporting afterwards to their partner that they had climaxed. One male pretended he “caught” the ejaculate in his hand; others discarded or hid the condom used.
And why? Most participants said that their partner had initiated sex when they were tired or not in the mood, orgasm was taking too long or seemed unlikely, or they wanted the sex to end.
Differentially, more women described faking so that their partner could then orgasm for the sex to end. Also, more women reported a partner who lacked skill but wanted to avoid hurting his feelings or to make him feel good about himself.
These results reflect a few of our sexual assumptions. Virginia Braun of the University of Auckland described a heterosexual script: During intercourse the woman orgasms, then the man orgasms, then sex is over.
While the script prioritizes a woman’s orgasm, it puts pressure on her to climax during intercourse (which is actually difficult for many women), and it denotes the man’s orgasm as the completion of sex.
