Male and female sexual rhythms differ sharply, with women slower to climax

Evidence

Even when a woman overcomes her resistance and eventually experiences vaginal pleasure, not all her problems are eliminated: the rhythm of her sexuality and that of the male do not coincide. She is much slower to reach orgasm than the man. The Kinsey Report states: … For perhaps three-quarters of all males, orgasm is reached within two minutes after the initiation of the sexual relation … Considering the many upper level females who are so adversely conditioned to sexual situations that they may require ten to fifteen minutes of the most careful stimulation to bring them to climax, and considering the fair number of females who never come to climax in their whole lives, it is, of course, demanding that the male be quite abnormal in his ability to prolong sexual activity without ejaculation if he is required to match the female partner. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 995

Categorization

• XREF: Beauvoir grounds the gendered asymmetry of female sexuality in hard data from Kinsey, connecting to the empirical-quantitative turn in mid-century sex research alongside Hite and Masters-Johnson. — connects to: Gender differences in sexual enjoyment are small except for two specific acts — Bob Altemeyer, The Authoritarian Specter, 2357; Observed male-female differences reflect social situation, not fixed essence — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 608

Broader Connections

• Observed male-female differences reflect social situation, not fixed essence #complicates (0.85) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 608
• Gender differences in sexual enjoyment are small except for two specific acts #complicates (0.75) — Bob Altemeyer, The Authoritarian Specter, 2357