If you want a lesson in good sex, you may want to consider a tip or two from lesbians.
According to a report from The Guardian on Monday, several studies have shown lesbians, in fact, do have better sex than straight women.
One 2014 report from the Journal of Sexual Medicine found 75 per cent of lesbians had orgasms during sex, compared to 61 per cent of heterosexual women, the site notes. Another larger survey from the Kinsey Institute found lesbians orgasmed 86 per cent of the time during sex, while only 65 per cent of straight women did.
Claire AH, a Toronto-based LGBTQ+ matchmaker says there are many reasons why the results favour lesbians.
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Women understanding their bodies
“A chief one is that cis men, and to an extent everyone who identifies with masculinity, are fed a very narrow idea of what sex is, and it doesn’t often include much outside of penetrative sex meant to display skill and virility leading to their own orgasm,” she tells Global News. “Sex needs to be paired with a lot of nuance and understanding of what each individual partner wants, needs, likes and dislikes.”
And of course, the obvious, as Matty Silver, a sexual health therapist based in Australia told the Guardian, women know their own bodies.
“Lesbian women know where their clitoris is and know what to do with it to get an orgasm. They don’t need to show their lesbian partner what to do, which means their sexual satisfaction is higher,” he told the site.
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Claire adds having sex with people who have similar bodies to our own can lead to more familiarity, but knowing exactly what stimulates you doesn’t happen overnight. And because not all women have a clitoris, sex should be about getting to know what works for each individual.
“When we do eventually learn more about other bodies and more generally about pleasure, we still know our own most intimately, and therefore often the best. That said, even bodies that look similar may have very different responses to stimulation. Having the same parts does not mean always having amazing sex. There’s more to it than that.”
Sex education is mostly terrible, she explains, and depictions of sex in pop culture often focus on the male orgasm. “Our current heterosexual script does not leave much room for sex outside of its norms.”
Redefining sex
Moving forward, Claire adds before we start digging into why some women have better sex than others, it’s important to realize lesbians aren’t the only people have this type of sex.
“We need to do away with the concepts of foreplay vs. real sex,” she says. “It categorizes acts, creates a hierarchy of importance, and encourages a focus on activities which are generally not necessarily pleasurable or even desirable to everyone involved.”
She adds sex is most exciting when people are creative, communicative, and untethered from societal expectations.
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“Talk about what you want, explore together, check in, feel free to do things in a way that feels “out of order,” and don’t centre on one person’s orgasm as the de facto end of the sexual experience.”
And like always, a lot of this comes down to education.
“We just need to start having conversations about other kinds of sex and other configurations of gender identities and sexualities,” she explains.
“Heterosexuality has been made the default, but it would really help everyone have better sex if we discussed sex more broadly and moved away from the heteronormative scripts attempting to keep us all boxed in, away from more free explorations of our sexual selves.”
arti.patel@globalnews.ca