By Maria Padhila
Do you have more orgasms from one-time hookups, or from sex in a long-term relationship? I think your answer in the comments would be just as valid and probably, given our demographic and general level of expressive skills around these parts, more interesting than the New York Times blog entry that generated a discussion on just that topic all over the Internets last week.
“In Hookups, Inequality Still Reigns,” by Natalie Kitroeff in the New York Times’ Well science blog looked to research and anecdotes professing that women find it more difficult to come when they’re in a quickie or one-night stand with a man.
I’m making this one clear in advance: this blog post will revert to heteronormative terminology just to keep from blowing my word count. We’re talking straight men and straight women who identify squarely in their respective typical gender.
But I’d like to say that as happy as I was to see this research, any sex research, being done and discussed in public forums, it’s not enough — we need to get similar work done beyond the cisgender barriers. How about a study on Lesbian Bed Death, for instance (a popular term for the phenomenon in which women in long-term relationships not only don’t have more orgasms, they lose all desire whatsoever)?
So here are some facts and figures from the article:
Research involving 600 college students led by Justin R. Garcia, an evolutionary biologist at the Kinsey Institute at Indiana University, and researchers at Binghamton University found that women were twice as likely to reach orgasm from intercourse or oral sex in serious relationships as in hookups. The paper was presented at the annual meeting of the International Academy of Sex Research and at the Annual Convention for Psychological Science this year.