If ‘sex’ only means penetration, then of course there is a huge gap in orgasms between men and women | Franki Cookney

Women have fewer orgasms than men. Really. I can imagine the sarcastic comments: “This is not news!” What could be news, possibly the fact that women continue have fewer orgasms than men throughout their lives, despite what we might consider an increase in experience and confidence, and an understanding (on both sides) of what they like in bed.

A new studypublished in the journal Sexual Medicine, found that not only do men report higher rates of orgasm during sex than do women, but that these statistics remain consistent with age. Researchers surveyed 24,000 single Americans between the ages of 18 and 100. Men’s orgasm rates ranged from 70% to 85%, while women’s ranged from 46% to 58%. Any hope that we would reach parity with age quickly went out the window. Women’s orgasm rates remained 22 to 30 percentage points lower than men’s across all age groups.

This may seem surprising. Like you, I was relatively unmoved by the “discovery” that men have more orgasms, my reaction more of a shrug emoji than righteous anger. It wasn’t that long ago that the last major study of orgasm discrepancy, and sexual culture isn’t changing that quickly. That the orgasm gap remains wide open is unfortunate but not at all surprising. Like the researchers, however, I would have expected that older women (at 40, I would be classified by the study as an “early middle adult”) would be more knowledgeable about what they want, more confident about asking for it—and, perhaps most importantly, less willing to tolerate partners who don’t deliver. But that’s not what they were asked. They were asked how often they had an orgasm “during intercourse.”

This wording changes everything. Research shows that for the vast majority of heterosexuals, the word “sex” means penetration, and even more so when it’s associated with “intercourse.” Most often, they’re talking about penis-in-vagina, although many also consider anal intercourse to be intercourse. However you slice it, there’s a glaring problem: women are significantly less likely to orgasm this way.

This shouldn’t be news either. Writers, therapists, researchers, and educators have been talking for years about the need to broaden our definition of sex to take into account the fact that most women need clitoral stimulation to have an orgasm. As a sex and culture reporter for nearly a decade, I’ve lost count of the articles, podcasts, panels, and social media posts in which I’ve discussed this particular topic.

When it comes to heterosexual sex, the things that happen with lips, hands, tongues, fingers, and toys are far too often lumped together as “foreplay” – they’re not considered “real sex.” Yet for women, these are the activities most likely to lead to orgasm. “We need to stop using the word ‘sex’ to mean intercourse, because it gives the false impression that intercourse is the most important event for both men and women and… that’s not it,” wrote American psychologist Laurie Mintz in her 2017 book, Become literate. Indeed.

Viewing penetrative sex as the main event is particularly ridiculous in the context of queer relationships, which is likely why the 13% of gay, lesbian, and bisexual people who responded to the survey were able to extrapolate from the term “intercourse” to their own experiences. Not surprisingly, women who have sex with women consistently report higher rates of orgasm during sex than women who have sex with men. This was observed by sexologist Alfred Kinsey in 1953repeated by Masters and Johnson in the 1960sand has since been proven reliable in every study of the orgasm gap, including this most recent study performed by Match in collaboration with the Kinsey Institute. “Lesbian (and, this writer might add, bisexual) women are more likely to have and receive oral sex, with encounters often lasting longer than those of heterosexual women,” the study authors note. You certainly won’t catch me ignoring the importance of enthusiastic oral sex, but could it be partly because queer women include oral sex in their definition of sex in the first place?

Polling women about their orgasm speed during “intercourse” is the academic equivalent of the guy asking “Did you come?” without having done anything to facilitate or speed up that outcome. And repeating this study every few years, as if our anatomies have evolved in the time it takes to film a new season of Euphoria, isn’t going to close the orgasm gap. The only way to do that is to start talking meaningfully about and prioritizing other types of sex.

• Franki Cookney is a freelance journalist specialising in sex, gender politics and social development. She presents the sex podcast The Second Circle