O by Jonathan Margolis

woman so that she becomes aroused; this leads to unsatisfactory sex and in turn to lack of sexual interest, depression, and aversion to sex. The self-evident fact that young, healthy, apparently balanced women experience sexual dysfunction is probably the clincher for this view.
    As for whether male sexual dysfunction was ‘treated’ in any way by prehistoric man, we are particularly clueless. We know, as we will see in a later chapter, that the ancient civilisationswere very aware of the subject and had any number of supposed folk remedies for it. But as far as prehistoric man is concerned, we have no idea if dysfunction was considered a problem, because we do not know if functioning
correctly
was thought particularly desirable.

3
Herstory
    â€˜I’ll have what she’s having’
    Director Rob Reiner’s mother’s line in
When Harry Met Sally
    In theory, if the tumescent male, caveman or not, can control himself enough to thrust for long enough inside the female, typically for between ten and twenty minutes, the female will automatically reach an explosive orgasm, a consummatory release as intense and tranquillising as the male’s. Her muscular actions will have become largely involuntary from the moment of penetration, her vaginal contractions harmonising with the thrusts, her eyes losing focus in ecstasy.
    In practice, things are a little more complicated. But as the mythical Tiresius discovered at the cost of his sight, even if reaching orgasm for a woman is a longer and more painstaking process, a sensation that does not simply happen spontaneously but has to be consciously coaxed and cultivated, the neurological reward is much more intense, long-lasting, satisfying – and almost immediately repeatable.
    How long does it or should it take? In laboratory experiments – not the most seductive atmosphere for all but the more imaginative among us – a minority of women need to stimulate themselves for an hour or more before reaching orgasm, although, with experience (of the clinical atmosphere of the lab, that is), this time generally reduces. The average time for most women to reach orgasm in the laboratory is twentyminutes. The shortest time recorded in the research laboratory for a woman to reach orgasm is fifteen seconds, but such alacrity is extremely rare.
    Laboratory observation of orgasm, as with clinical studies of any physiological process from sleep to behavioural experiments, is obviously only suitable for a small proportion of people. It may well be that subjects prepared to take part in sex experiments are of a mildly exhibitionist temperament, but this should not affect the physiological processes under examination. And physiologically the female orgasm as observed scientifically is not dissimilar to the male, even to the extent of encompassing an analogue to erection (the swelling and stiffening with arousal of the area surrounding the urethra) and to ejaculation, with the secretion at the moment of climax of a small amount of pale milky-coloured fluid, consisting of the plasma-like product of the Skene’s glands surrounding the urethra and the paraurethral gland, mixed in with traces of lubrication, male ejaculate and urine. A major component of female ejaculate is lubrication that pools in the back of the vagina and is expelled by the contractions at orgasm.
    Since it is not widely known that female ejaculate exists, even though women are as capable as men of wet dreams, it is generally mistaken for urine alone, and for this reason, in the tense minutes preceding orgasm, women tend instinctively to brace and tighten the vaginal walls and bladder. After she hits the plateau, however, a woman involuntarily releases the tension and experiences swift muscular relaxation; the small amount of ejaculate she was holding in, plus some male ejaculate if any is present, now exits, albeit at a more stately velocity than the male ejaculation.
    Some women report that this