Female Orgasm vs Male Orgasm – How Do They Compare?

Most of you people watching this will have
experienced the topic of today’s show. If you haven’t yet, then statistically it’s
very likely you will. In fact, many males of a certain age will
get down with this biological buzz on a daily basis, while females may not be quite as prolific
in producing this heavenly stimulant that nature has bestowed on us. We might be indebted to this fleshy machine
that we call our body for giving us a natural high that for the most part doesn’t cost
us a penny. It offers some respite from the grind of work
and the endless obstacles in what can sometimes be a difficult life. For that reason, we salute the orgasm, this
wonderful gift mother nature has bequeathed to us. Let’s now discuss the nitty-gritty of our
gift, in this episode of the Infographics Show, Female orgasm vs male. Before we start comparing orgasms let’s
look at why we have them in the first place. Of course we know that we have orgasms as
part of the impetus to copulate with another person. This gift makes that experience pleasurable,
and in turn we sometimes churn out other human beings and keep the species ticking over. Do all animals have orgasms though? That’s something scientists are not absolutely
sure about because we can’t exactly ask a dog, a fish or a proboscis monkey what it
was like for them after they got it on. Scientists know by observing some animals’
vocal chords and muscle contractions that they do seem to have this biological carnal
pay-off, just as humans do. All female mammals have clitorises, and scientists
have even stimulated nonhuman female primates in labs and given them orgasms. Perhaps that’s the best job a monkey can
get when sent to the lab for testing. They didn’t say how they did the testing,
however. So, simply put, science thinks most animals
have sex because of the feeling they receive from it. Being the beneficiary of an orgasm is of course
not the only reason animals do it – there may be power plays if there’s a hierarchy
for instance – but it certainly acts as the main incentive. We don’t know what it feels like for the
animal of course, but as one scientist talking to Popular Science says, it looks like a very
pleasurable experience for some animals. Talking about our male feathered friends,
he said, “The bird shudders its wings and clenches its feet as it ejaculates– who knows
whether it feels like a human orgasm, but the external behavior looks like it.” We are told animals don’t have the brain
capacity to plan for babies; rats don’t think when they’re getting it on that they
can’t wait to see a little rascal ratty taking his first breaths in the world. They do it for pleasure. Humans are different because we are cognizant
of the consequences of love making if conditions haven’t been met to prevent pregnancy. But some animals also masturbate as humans
do. They may not fantasize as we do, or spend
time and energy watching others do it for their own gratification and enhanced stimulation,
but some do enjoy pleasuring themselves. These animals include other primates (the
animal champs of sexual self-gratification), elephants, walruses, bats and turtles, among
many others. Some animals, such as the brown bear and wolf,
even practice autofellatio. Humans generally don’t have the flexibility
for that. We orgasm fans know that when it happens it
is pleasurable. Our muscles contract, we feel euphoria, and
then we experience a period of relaxation. We also know that orgasms are not all made
equal, with some feeling like a minor bump of pleasure chemicals in our brain, while
others feel more like being mainlined into the ecstasies of chemical heaven. We experience what is called neuromuscular
euphoria when our brain’s pleasure centers are activated. This happens because of stimulation, but that
stimulation can come many ways. We’ll cut this short, because all the ways
one can orgasm would take a while to explain. As you probably know, even stimulation of
a nipple or another erogenous zone can create this sublime feeling. Some people even orgasm in their dreams, when
thought alone is the main driver. There’s even something called Foot Orgasm
Syndrome, which you can work out for yourself. It’s unusual, to say the least, and apparently
not pleasant. But for men, they mostly orgasm when their
penis or scrotum is stimulated and something called the pudendal nerve sends signals to
the brain. It’s the same for women when their clitoris
is stimulated. Both sexes can orgasm from stimulation of
their rectum when the pelvic nerve is stimulated. The hypogastric nerve sends signals from a
man’s prostate, while it does the same in a woman’s uterus and the cervix. For women, the vagus nerve comes into play
when the cervix, uterus, and vagina is stimulated. These we might call the main bases. When orgasm is achieved your brain is flooded
with neurochemicals, and these activate what we call the brain’s reward systems. It’s these reward systems that motivate
us to do certain things, not just have sex, but perhaps complete a marathon or get a job
done. Sexual arousal affects many areas of the brain,
such as the amygdala, cerebellum, pituitary gland, nucleus accumbens and ventral tegmental
area. If all that terminology means little to you,
the Journal of Neuroscience simply tells us that sexual arousal in terms of brain patterns
looks similar to what happens in the brain when one takes heroin. Thankfully, sexual stimulation isn’t as
expensive and doesn’t produce severe withdrawal symptoms after long-term use. Wouldn’t that make a dent in our masturbating
regimen… For men, the result of this orgasm is usually
the release of fluid through the penis, that may contain semen (dry outcomes are possible,
too). All sorts of things come into play here, but
usually with enough testosterone the male can send his homemade gunge into a female
orifice or simply into open space. Prior to this, the man is aroused, and his
penis becomes erect due to blood racing up the appendage’s arteries at high speed. The blood rush causes hardness and the rest
of the body tenses. Houston, get ready for lift off. This may take a while, but orgasm can be achieved
as quickly as 30 seconds from the first arousal. At this time the heart might be beating around
150 and 175 beats per minute, while parts of the body might be moving involuntarily. Nature now plays an ace card by secreting
a pre-ejaculatory fluid in the penis which helps protect the arriving sperm by changing
the pH balance in the urethra. All you men know that when it’s time for
lift off there is no going back, and this is called “ejaculatory inevitability,”
a fine term if ever we heard one. Muscles around the penis and anus will contract
rapidly, you may push out your pelvis, and all those chemicals flood the brain and possibly
cause one to grimace wildly like a madman in the grips of an ecstatic seizure. But it’s not over yet. Men go through a pleasant recovery stage,
a kind of easy comedown plateau after the rush, and they will see their member slowly
reduce to its original unimpressive state. Younger guys can sometimes recover from this
in as little as 15 minutes, while older men may require hours to go through all that again. There seems to be a lot of content out there
on what it feels like to have female orgasm, and not much on the feeling of the male orgasm. As we said, orgasms are not all the same. Perhaps a seasoned masturbator on his fifth
adult video session of the day might have a few substandard climaxes in that day’s
organism medley, but when one has orgasmed for the first time with the love of his life
the feeling might be somewhat more intense. One description we found online said this
of his orgasms, “Like a tickle that creeps up from every corner of your body until you’re
desperate for it to stop and also to continue forever, as if squeegees are scraping through
your limbs. Like a gunshot, startling and discreet, leaving
you with the vibrations, the trembling steel, the blow-back.” Hmm, that sounds good, and the reason many
men during sex or masturbation will be thinking about the next round before the current round
has even finished, but they often change their mind immediately after orgasm. That’s just because they have achieved a
satisfactory result and the brain is contented, at least for a while. Again, we have this feeling so we will want
to do it again, and again. Men are blessed with this – some may argue
they were cursed – so that the merry-go-round of life continues to spin. It’s as simple as that. With that in mind, now let’s turn to women. Women could still procreate even if they didn’t
have an orgasm. Women don’t need to achieve orgasm to have
babies, so why are they blessed with this blissful treatment from nature? There has been much research about this. First, we should say that 10 percent of women
don’t orgasm through sexual intercourse, or not at all even with their own hands or
certain purpose-made instruments. Some sources say it may be as high as 15 percent. You can read things like this on the web,
“I don’t understand. I feel like less of a woman because I can’t
have an orgasm and I want to so bad. I feel incomplete sometimes after sex.” Vice magazine cited what it called the “Biggest-Ever
Orgasm Study” which told us that “nearly 37 percent of American women required clitoral
stimulation to experience orgasm” while 18 percent said that vaginal stimulation did
the trick. 9 percent of women in that study said that
nothing worked, not clitoris rubbing, cunnilingus, pulsating plastic toys or penetrative sex. 66.6 percent of those women did say they enjoyed
their clitoris being stimulated, usually with an up-and-down rubbing motion with medium
pressure of perhaps their own or their partner’s digit. As for why women orgasm at all, science is
not all agreed on this. Some experts tell us the reason is because
orgasm will help women find a man of better genetic quality. Women may not orgasm with a man of lower genetic
quality, and so we are told the fact they can orgasm will weed out the weaker men. Not everyone agrees with this theory, though. Some scientists compare the female orgasm
to the male nipple, in that it serves little evolutionary function. Another theory is that orgasms in women will
make them want to have sex with as many men as possible, and this increases the possibility
of getting pregnant and promote what you could call sperm competition. Others suggest that her orgasm will help bond
a pair and so ensure that the child has two parents. Orgasming in unison is quite a beautiful thing,
perhaps sometimes even spiritual, and maybe that bonds a couple. This doesn’t say much about many animals
though that are hardly monogamous. It’s an ongoing debate. Now let’s look at the female orgasm in terms
of what happens physiologically. Like men, women’s orgasms can be vastly
different. Sometimes, they may feel like they’ve been
rocketed to the moon and back and sometimes they are a mere fulfilling glitch in an otherwise
unspectacular day. Like the man, the woman will experience a
rush of happy chemicals to the brain; she may also contract and convulse and exhibit
facial expressions that can border on being frightening. Again, we can’t talk for all women and all
orgasms. We can see what some women say about their
orgasms, though. One women told Cosmopolitan, “The pleasure
builds up and I feel it coming. Then an explosion of pleasure takes over everything
from the waist down. The feeling trickles down through my legs
and everything is completely relaxed.” As you can see, this doesn’t sound too different
from what men say. It can also sound like more hard work, though,
as this woman explains: “It is like a warm, tingling wave that starts at your center,
and just radiates outward. It can be frustratingly blissful as you start
to build and then lose it and then build again and each time you start to climb that mountain
it becomes more intense and desperate.” Perhaps we can say a man is a rocket with
a certain trajectory, and a woman is a more complex machine with a few more moves before
it achieves lift-off. The experts tell us that is correct, in that
the female orgasm is more complex. She may have multiple orgasms, or even what
are called blended orgasms. If you’ve ever been the sole contributor
of such an orgasm, you’ll know it can last longer than the male orgasm and come with
many shakes, involuntary convulsions and perhaps the man being gripped onto tightly as she
experiences her bit of physical bliss. Women can also have relaxation orgasms and
tension orgasms, which should be self-explanatory. As you know, this orgasm might be clitoral,
vaginal, from G-Spot stimulation or even other happy zones such as the lips or nipples. They can be grand, they can be minor, they
can move mountains or barely eclipse normality. “Unlike men, women can have a remarkable
variety of orgasmic experiences, which evolve throughout the lifespan,” said one academic. “A woman’s erotic body map is not etched
in stone, but rather is an ongoing process of experience, discovery and construction.” Now men sound rather dull and predictable. We are also told that women become more lost
in the moment during orgasm and the build up to it; that they block out everything else. Does that mean like some men they could be
thinking about an upcoming football game or how they are performing during copulation? Yes, that could happen, too, if she’s not
into it. But as one writer said, if she is, “We lose
our usual self-awareness and consciousness of other noises, feelings, and smells around
us.” Described like this, it sounds what we might
call more “full-on”, as if the woman is not the astronaut taking off but the rocket
itself. It sounds like it could be almost an outer
body experience. It lasts longer, too, about 20 seconds compared
to that short blast the men get. But in terms of what happens to our brains,
we are not that different. Women might have different kinds of orgasms
and existentially things might seem different, but that heroin hit we get is both present
in men and women. We may be different in how quickly we get
aroused, usually easier for men, but as Psychology Today tells us, “The orgasmic experience
is almost identical in both sexes.” This means heart rate, blood pressure, tensed
muscles and the release of the love chemical oxytocin. Nature didn’t get too complicated in this
respect, and made us both similar. We feel the same love buzz of an orgasm, and
for this we can be thankful as we can empathize and know what joy we can give to each other. We are different in some respects, though,
in that men self-administer orgasms more often. In spite of some remaining social taboos preventing
some women from pleasuring themselves as often as they might, the Kinsey Institute tells
us men are just hardwired to beat-off. Call it practice for the big day that an orgasm
might result in the beating heart of another wonderfully constructed human being. All we want to know from you, is what do you
make of all this? Tell us in the comments. Also, be sure to check out our other show
Your Body During Sex. Thanks for watching, and as always, don’t
forget to like, share and subscribe. See you next time.