A Book Review: The Tyranny of the Female Orgasm

From My Book Readings This Week. Most of my blog readers worldwide know that I write almost on any topic, from Alzheimer's Disease to X'rated movies/TV shows, but this is the first time I am posting an article on female sexuality.

“I wonder whether I’ve actually been having orgasms all along, whether the occasional spasms I feel are the real thing,” Katharine Smyth wrote in 2021 of her years-long quest for an orgasm. https://theatln.tc/ZfS2Oa9J

Studies tend to put the share of nonorgasmic women at 5 to 10 percent. Smyth, who loves sex, spent years searching for an orgasm. Her quest was a revealing exploration of feminism, patriarchy, medicine, and the way American culture weaponizes women’s sexuality against them.

She discovered that there are many, often expensive, resources aimed at helping women achieve orgasm: $1,690 a year for unlimited access to events at an elite New York City sex club for Millennials; $999 for an online “finishing school” with a sex therapist known as the “orgasm whisperer”; $600 for two hours with a tantric healer; a $250 appointment with a sex therapist; and $59 for one season of OMGYes videos breaking down female pleasure.

Attempts to understand the female orgasm have a long and complicated history. Not until 1730 was it finally proved that the female orgasm was not, in fact, a requisite for reproduction. “The truth is that no one knows for sure why women come,” Smyth continued. “The female orgasm is a kind of Rorschach test—an abstraction upon which each new generation of doctors and scientists can project its worldview, almost always to the benefit of men and their assumptions about normally functioning female sexuality.”

Read more: https://theatln.tc/ZfS2Oa9J

Meanwhile, here's a more detailed write-up on:

The Elusive Orgasm: A Mirror of Culture, Science, and the Self

In a 2021 essay for The Atlantic, Katharine Smyth posed a question both intimate and universal: “I wonder whether I’ve actually been having orgasms all along.” Her reflection on years of searching for the elusive “real thing” became far more than a story of personal frustration—it was a meditation on feminism, medicine, and the way society still struggles to understand female pleasure.

Despite decades of sexual liberation movements and scientific study, the female orgasm remains partly a mystery. Studies estimate that 5 to 10 percent of women never experience one, yet the cultural obsession with orgasm—especially as a symbol of fulfillment or validation—persists. Smyth, who openly loves sex, discovered that the modern “orgasm industry” has become a lucrative business, promising transcendence at a price:

• $1,690 a year for access to an elite New York sex club,

• $999 for an online “finishing school” with an “orgasm whisperer,”

• $600 for a two-hour tantric session,

• $250 with a therapist,

• and $59 for a season of OMGYes instructional videos.

Behind these numbers lies a larger truth: the search for female pleasure has often been shaped—and sometimes distorted—by the forces of patriarchy, commerce, and cultural myth.

It wasn’t until 1730 that scientists finally agreed that women’s orgasms weren’t necessary for reproduction. From then on, the female orgasm became, as Smyth beautifully wrote, “a kind of Rorschach test—an abstraction upon which each new generation of doctors and scientists can project its worldview.” What once symbolized fertility and divine creation became, in modern times, a metric of sexual “normalcy” or even a moral battleground.

Medicine has long tried to explain it, psychology has pathologized it, and popular culture has commodified it. Yet the essence of pleasure—what it feels like, means, or requires—remains profoundly individual.

In this sense, Smyth’s journey mirrors a deeper societal quest: the effort to reconcile body and identity, biology and belief. The female orgasm is not just a physiological event; it is also a reflection of self-awareness, trust, safety, and imagination. And perhaps the greatest insight from Smyth’s exploration is that the pursuit of orgasm often reveals as much about society as it does about sexuality itself.

As someone who has spent a lifetime studying human health and the science of the body—from pharmaceuticals to public health—I’m struck by how even in our age of data and discovery, certain aspects of human experience resist measurement. The female orgasm, like love or awe, belongs as much to the realm of mystery as to medicine.

And maybe that’s not a failure of science—but a reminder that not everything worth understanding can be quantified.

Closing Reflection:

During my years with the FDA, I often saw how scientific inquiry could illuminate the workings of the human body, but also how it sometimes overlooked the subtleties of human experience. Writing about topics like this reminds me why I began blogging in 2009: to bridge that gap between science and the soul, between data and the deeply personal realities of being human. The search for meaning, whether in medicine, love, or pleasure remains, in every sense, a lifelong exploration.

Meanwhile

During One of our meal time conversations, three women who has been residents here at THD for more than 5 years, mentioned that it would really enhance the quality of life and our well being,  if THD could add a Manicure and Pedicure Services.  This services could have alternate days with our current excellent barbershop/hair saloon services.  I said will mention this to THD Management. 

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