Nadia Bokody: Man’s bedroom question shocked me

Sydney feminist and sex columnist Nadia Bokody has been asked “all sorts” of intimate questions – but this one really “shocked” her.

As a sex columnist, I get sent all sorts of questions.

I’ve been asked about threesomes, foot fetishes, bondage, butt stuff – you name it.

It’s incredibly rare for anything to shock me, and provided the curiosity pertains to something legal and consensual, as a general rule, I don’t apply judgment.

But an inquiry I’ve been receiving from men lately has challenged that.

When it first appeared in the comments section of something I posted about coming out as a late-bloomer lesbian, I wrote it off as a meaningless troll. It wasn’t until the query began popping up in my inbox on a routine basis, I realised it was genuine.

The men writing in wanted to know: “How do lesbians even have sex, anyway?”

Sex columnist Nadia Bokody has revealed the one question that ‘shocked’ her. Picture: Instagram/Nadia Bokody.

This question is obviously problematic for a number of reasons, not the least being that it highlights the lack of LGBTQ+ representation in sex education and dismisses queer sex as somehow less legitimate.

It also, alarmingly, reveals many straight men don’t understand how female sexual pleasure works.

Researchers have known for a while now, conventional heterosexual sex (that is: intercourse in which a vagina is penetrated by a penis) is not orgasmic for the vast majority of women. Roughly two-thirds of us require or prefer sustained clitoral stimulation to reach climax.

This isn’t to negate the pleasure women can receive via penetrative sex – it’s merely to emphasise a fact, which is that it’s not conducive to climaxing.

One only needs to look at the latest stats on the orgasm gap (something regular readers of this column will already be well versed in, because I won’t stop quoting these figures until we’re all actually getting off) to know this.

An overwhelming 95 per cent of straight men climax every time they have sex, compared to just 65 per cent of hetero women who can say the same.

One man continually asked how gay women have sex. Picture: iStock

Of course, sex education doesn’t teach boys about female pleasure (rather, it focuses on pain: periods, pregnancy prevention and childbirth). And porn – where roughly a quarter of teens say they go to learn about sex – does little to fill in the gaps.

On the pages of RedTube, boys are taught women climax spontaneously and frequently via vigorous jackhammering. They learn too, consent isn’t something discussed prior to or during sex, and factors like lubrication, foreplay and checking in simply don’t exist.

It’s little wonder then, when asked in a study published in the Journal of Paediatric and Adolescent Gynaecology to locate the clitoris, just 56 per cent of 18 to 36-year-old men were able to do so.

A sharp Twitter user once put it this way: “It’s fascinating women can watch a 20 min YouTube tutorial and suddenly they’re a hair and makeup artist, but men watch porn their whole lives and can’t find a clitoris.”

All jokes aside, porn is about as accurate a representation of how sex works in the real world as a rom-com is a realistic depiction of healthy romantic love. And yet, with so little readily accessible sources to turn to on the mechanics of female pleasure, many men end up using it as their guidebook.

It’s incredibly telling, and rather depressing, that so many guys still consider sex between two women as a kind of faux sex, or a fantasy at best.

Especially when lesbian women orgasm almost as reliably as heterosexual men (according to a landmark study of over 52,000 people published in the Archives Of Sexual Behaviour, gay women climax 88 per cent of the time during partnered sex. That’s 23 per cent more than their straight counterparts.)

One of my favourite viral memes, which features a family sat at a dinner table, and a child asking his mother, “How does lesbian sex work?” to which the mother replies, “Everybody comes,” perhaps best sums up the absurdity of treating queer female sex as illegitimate.

If climax is the goal of intercourse (and heteronormative culture tells us it is), it’s arguable gay sex actually “works” far more effectively than what so many of the men who question the validity of my sex life each week are having with their partners.

Studies show gay women have more orgasms than women who have sex with men. Picture: Instagram/NadiaBokody

Us lesbians (including late-bloomers, like me) may even have a few things we can teach the straights. Like the fact penetrative sex isn’t the gold standard, and lubrication, consent, foreplay, and regularly checking in really do matter.

The truth is, lesbian sex “works” in just the same way sexual intimacy does for people across all parts of the sexuality and gender spectrum. There’s no right way to get it on.

Though, incidentally, women don’t have a refractory period (the time it takes a penis-owner to achieve an erection post-climax), so the only thing holding us back from multiple ‘Ohs’ is time, and how much Gatorade there is in the fridge.

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