Excerpts:
Orgasms during consensual sexual encounters are not always unilaterally positive experiences, contrary to how orgasms are portrayed in media messages and much of academic and medical discourse. … [This may be due in part to the use of biased instruments.] For example, in the Orgasm Rating Scale, participants are only able to rate their cognitive-affective experience according to positive adjectives like loving, euphoric, relaxing, and ecstasy (Mah & Binik, 2010). The scale does not include options to rate orgasms according to negative adjectives, which perhaps bolsters misconceptions that orgasms cannot be negative. …
Many of our participants described their experiences [during coerced sex, compliant sex, and orgasm pressure] in completely negative terms, even though we asked participants to describe their positive feelings during and after the sexual activity (if they had any). For example, as outlined in Table 3, participants’ descriptions of their experiences included terms like “mental torture,” “hollow and mechanical,” “irritating and uncomfortable,” and “not a good experience,” among others….
Men reported resentment toward the stereotype that men are always interested in sex and that their orgasms are easy and occur during every sexual encounter. …
There may be other types of bad orgasm experiences that were not explored in this study. Now that the phenomena of bad orgasm experiences have been established, future research should consider how orgasm experiences might be bad in a wider variety of contexts. …
Research has shown that many women and men of varying sexual identities feel that orgasm is not an essential component of their sexual pleasure and that intimacy and affection can be equally if not more important (Bolsø, 2005; Grace, Potts, Gavey, & Vares, 2006; Lavie & Willig, 2005). …
The scholarship critiquing the orgasm imperative has helped to refute the notion that orgasms are, in fact, “imperative” for sex to be good, satisfying, and healthy. This has served to deconstruct the assumption that orgasm absence is necessarily negative and/or bad.
Archives of Sexual Behavior
pp 1–25 | 11 September 2019
Sara B. Chadwick, Miriam Francisco, Sari M. van Anders
Abstract
Orgasms during consensual sex are often assumed to be wholly positive experiences. This assumption overshadows the possibility that orgasm experiences during consensual sex could be “bad” (i.e., negative and/or non-positive). In the present study, we employed an online survey to explore the possibility that orgasm experiences could be “bad” during consensual sex by asking participants of diverse gender and sexual identities (N = 726, M age = 28.42 years, SD = 7.85) about a subset of potential bad orgasm experiences. Specifically, we asked participants whether they have ever had an orgasm during coerced sex, compliant sex, and/or when they felt pressured to have an orgasm (i.e., orgasm pressure). We also asked participants who had such an experience to describe it, resulting in qualitative descriptions from 289 participants. Using mixed quantitative and qualitative analyses, we found compelling evidence that orgasm experiences can be “bad” during consensual sex. Specifically, many participants described their experiences in negative and/or non-positive ways despite orgasm occurrence, reported that their orgasms were less pleasurable compared to other experiences, and suggested that their orgasm experiences had negative impacts on their relationships, sexuality, and/or psychological health. Participants also suggested that social location shaped their bad orgasm experiences, citing gender and sexual identity, gender identity conflict, race/ethnicity, and religion as important to their perceptions of and responses to their experiences. Results directly challenge the assumption that orgasms during consensual sex are always and/or unilaterally positive experiences.