Feminists Corner: Reasons I Don’t Consider Orgasm the Goal of Sex
By: Suzannah Weiss When I first became sexually active at age seventeen, I had what I’d come to view as a “problem”: I wasn’t able to orgasm with a partner, even though I could alone. I didn’t think of it as a problem initially. I loved my orgasm-less sexual encounters. But after hearing partners talk about how badly they wanted to make me come, I started to feel bad about it. As if by not coming, I was being ungrateful for their efforts. Medical professionals didn’t help. On the form I had to fill out to see my college’s nurse, they asked me to check off any sexual problems I had, and that was one of them. When I brought it up to my psychiatrist, realizing my antidepressants were probably the culprit, he asked me if that was why my last relationship ended. But I didn’t want to go off my antidepressants, and I considered sex (I’m defining sex as any sexual activity, not just intercourse) something to enjoy for the pleasure of the whole thing, not a ...