But the figure \u2013 startling as it is – is overshadowed by the reasons why so many women feel obliged to put on a show, according to researchers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cPeople know that it\u2019s normative to have sex, but I don\u2019t think there is a common understanding of exactly how to have sex and what to do,\u201d says study author Emily Harris, a postdoctoral research fellow at Queen\u2019s University, in Canada.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Harris and her colleagues surveyed 462 heterosexual women from the United Kingdom who had been in a relationship for at least four months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The scientific questionnaires evaluated the women\u2019s political ideology, religiosity, beliefs about gender, sex, orgasms, their partner\u2019s sexual skill, and fidelity concerns, among others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Some of the respondents who admitted to faking orgasms said they did so to preserve their relationships, who measured their own virility against their ability to please women.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cMostly it\u2019s an ending mechanism,\u201d says a 28-year old survey respondent named Shelby. \u201cI haven\u2019t done it for a long time now, but when I did, it was because I just wasn\u2019t going to get there and it was easier to end it that way.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In other words, some women fake orgasms to avoid bruising their partners\u2019 egos, which could result in a situation that undermines a relationship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This “mate retention strategy” has been around for as long as men and women have been having sex \u2013 and it works both ways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Psychologists explain the urge as a survival tactic handed down from our ancestral savannahs \u2013 where retaining a mate meant the difference between life and death for both partners.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That\u2019s a deceptively simple – but nevertheless valid \u2013 explanation, according to the scientific community. Since it works both ways, one might assume it is at least part of the reason why Viagra earned revenues amounting to some $500 million last year alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But competition for suitable mates is apparently as tough for some women now as it was for our ancestors in Africa five million years ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Or at least, Harris and her colleagues seemed to find proof of this in respondents who faked orgasms because they wanted to avoid angering their partners.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cSometimes it\u2019s less work to just fake it and get them out,\u201d says Adaire, who is 26. \u201cSome men get defensive and angry like it\u2019s their job to make it happen. I don\u2019t like that. I find it forceful.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now, there is something patently absurd about an urge to fake it in order to appease a partner you don\u2019t trust to check his temper. The implied bias here, of course, is that a woman who does not orgasm gives a man sufficient reason to be angry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Why would such an untrustworthy, oppressive male ally be worth keeping in the savannah, in the streets, in the home, or anywhere else, in the first place?<\/p>\n\n\n\n This question is worth some attention as it is, in turn, intertwined with the idea that a man should care about his partner\u2019s pleasure and well-being, too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Most would agree that a man should know the difference between a clitoris from a foot \u2013 and, of course, most adult men do. Most feminists would also argue that men shouldn\u2019t be selfish in bed. That is, that a man should take care to be attuned to what his partner wants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Unfortunately, however, the latter idea isn\u2019t always true. Yet the researchers found that many women felt obliged to fake an orgasm, anyway, to fulfill what they believe to be a kind of social responsibility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One 31-year old respondent, Lucy, saw her partner\u2019s inability to make her orgasm as a failure on her part. Interestingly, she also felt that achieving an orgasm somehow makes a woman more sexually attractive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt seemed like my friends were having a great time and I felt like I was failing by not being able to [orgasm],\u201d says Lucy. \u201cWomen fake it because of the societal pressure to be sexy and desirable and not to upset others.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Harris found this \u2013 and other responses like it – particularly striking. While faking it out of a desire to keep a mate might be somewhat reasonable, the belief that it\u2019s somehow a woman\u2019s responsibility to climax certainly is not. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThese final pieces are what interest me the most,\u201d Harris says pointedly. “Specifically, women who think that a man needs them to orgasm in order for that man to feel satisfied are going to feel greater pressure to orgasm, and will be more likely to fake her orgasms.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Quite tellingly, the respondents who faked orgasms more frequently were mostly of the opinion that women who challenge men\u2019s power are manipulative and subversive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI am glad women are more empowered these days, but feminists make a bigger deal out of it than they need to,\u201d says the 49-year-old Maddie, who admits to faking orgasms with her husband. \u201cI think feminists think women are better than men.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n What this research reveals, Harris suggests, is a profound problem in the context of how women have come to view their roles in a sex-obsessed, male-dominated society. <\/p>\n\n\n\n That\u2019s why she dowels the opinion of women such as Maddie and Lucy squarely along the lines of ideological attitudes and assumptions toward gender roles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Not at all women would go through the tribulations of teaching a partner precisely how to pleasure them correctly in one fell swoop. The fact is, a man is likely to get so inundated with the details of the message that the task would be, at best, difficult and complicated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Such things can take time \u2013 and faking it to buy time and keep a partner who wants to learn is one thing. Faking an orgasm in order to fulfill some imagined responsibility to society is quite another. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Even worse: faking it out of a belief that a man is somehow entitled to a woman\u2019s orgasm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWomen who hold anti-feminist attitudes don\u2019t have anything holding them back from faking orgasm,\u201d says Harris. \u201cWhereas women who adopt a feminist worldview may not fake orgasm because it goes against her belief in a woman\u2019s right to pleasure, and her right to talk about sex openly.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n As for grunting, snuffling, chest-thumping men who get offended when women don\u2019t climax for them, they have a role, too, obviously.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"Recent](\"https:\/\/espressoblues.comm\/stories\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/14\/2020\/11\/FAKING-IT-15.jpg\")
Why Women Fake It<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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When Dealing with Cavemen …<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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Faking it for the Common Good?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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A Woman\u2019s Work is Never Done<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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Own Your Orgasm<\/h3>\n\n\n\n