Q I’m a 23-year-old female, sexually active for seven years, and I can’t reach climax. I’m extremely frustrated. I have a wonderfully patient and helpful partner. He’s tried hard to no avail. I can’t even get myself there. I feel like I’m broken. My partner and I talk out anything that’s bothering me, we try different things, but no matter what the situation, I can never reach orgasm. When I went off birth control, I brought up to my doctor that I’d never had an orgasm, and she told me that female orgasms are largely a mental thing. She suggested I try using fantasy, which was not new to me.
“It’s called the ‘by-product’ theory,” says Clark-Flory, “and it might help make FAP feel less broken.”
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“Evolutionary selection has hugely favored the male orgasm, for obvious reasons,” explains Clark-Flory, the most obvious being that males who can’t come aren’t going to have many descendants. “The by-product theory goes that since females share the same embryological origins of pleasure-friendly nerves and tissues as males, women are physically capable of climaxing as well. In this view, the female orgasm is an evolutionary hand-me-down—or, more cynically, lukewarm leftovers.”
“At first, I found this theory terribly off-putting,” says Clark-Flory, “but I would encourage FAP to think about it differently, as I eventually did.”
Then there’s this detail from the Buffalo News:
As I’ve said since launching the It Gets Better Project in this space a year ago, nothing about participating in the IGBP excuses or precludes us—the adults among us—from doing more. The videos have helped and continue to help; we’ve heard from thousands of kids and their parents over the last 12 months. But we can do more. We can press for the passage of the Student Non-Discrimination Act, we can fight to get anti-bullying programs that address anti-LGBT bullying into the schools, we can support the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network and its efforts to get gay-straight alliances into every public middle and high school, we can support the Trevor Project and the crucial work it does.