O by Jonathan Margolis Page A

ejaculatory outward passage of liquid through the urethra during orgasm, combined with the flow of accumulated lubrication from the vagina, contributes to a more powerful and intense sensation, perhaps of the same order of concentrated physical climax men feel from liquid rushing through the penis. It is one of the mostintriguing features of orgasm that we cannot know this for sure because nobody in history has experienced both forms of orgasm. But women’s descriptions of orgasm rather suggest to envious men either that females do get a rather better deal from their more complex anatomy – or that they merely feel less reticent about describing their feelings. ‘An altered state of consciousness,’ ‘euphoria’, ‘a spiritual experience,’ and, ‘an oceanic roaring,’ are among the more mellifluous of women’s representations of their orgasms. The ‘oceanic’ metaphor interestingly echoes Freud’s belief that such a feeling lies at the root of all religion.
    Contrary to the modern trend in thinking that the male and female orgasm are relatively similar in the way they feel, descriptions by women sent questionnaires by cultural historian Dr Shere Hite for her 1976 book
The Hite Report
vigorously support the view that the female orgasm is more powerful and interesting than the male. Hite’s book was proclaimed as revolutionary, although strictly speaking what it did more than to pioneer was to popularise material on female sexuality that had been presented more dryly in the 1950s by Professor Alfred C. Kinsey, a zoologist at Indiana University, who before undertaking his sociological studies of human sexual behaviour – work that was the Western world’s declaration of sexual independence from hundreds of years of mischief and mythology – was a world authority on the gall wasp.
    Both researchers demonstrated that the manipulation of the clitoris was the best or, usually, only way women had orgasms. Hite concluded: ‘Not to have orgasm from intercourse is the experience of the majority of women’, while Kinsey held that, ‘The techniques of masturbation and of petting are more specifically calculated to effect orgasm than the techniques of coitus itself. But while Kinsey’s solidly academic doorstop works were surprise post-war bestsellers, Hite’s slicker style and somewhat arousing anecdotal accounts made her a media favourite.
    â€˜The orgasm itself reminds me of a dam breaking. I can feelcontractions inside me and a very liquid sensation. The best part is the continuing waves of build-up and release during multiple orgasms,’ reported one of Hite’s respondents. Another wrote: ‘My vaginal and clitoral area gets absolutely hot and I seem to switch into a pelvic rhythm over which I have no conscious control; every contact with my clitoris at this point is a miniature orgasm which becomes more frequent until it is one huge muscle spasm!’ Another still: ‘First, tension builds in my body and head, my heart beats, then I strain against my love and then there is a second or two of absolute stillness, non-breathing, during which I know orgasm will come in the next second or two. Then waves, and I rock against my partner and cannot hold him tight enough. It’s all over my body, but especially in my abdomen and gut. Afterwards, I feel suffused with warmth and love and absolute happiness.’
    Needless to say, ejaculation is not the major component of female orgasm. For women, sexual Nirvana is primarily a variable peak muscular experience accompanied by involuntary, rhythmic contractions of the vaginal walls, the uterus, rectal sphincter and urethral sphincter, all allied to the partial dissipation of the muscular tension of sexual arousal and the parallel release of vaso-congestion – but, critically, not as complete a release as men undergo.
    It remains a moot point whether the vagina itself is sensitive to