The Mystery of Female Pleasure

The mystery of female pleasure is extended orgasmic states, full-body orgasm and delicious, powerful bliss — covered up by an invisibility cloak called “complicated”.

The arena of sex and pleasure has long been male-dominated — both in the way we are socialised and in the pages of medical textbooks. Female sexual health has been so underfunded and understudied that endometriosis, affecting 1 in 10 women globally, has received less research funding than male pattern baldness. And I wish I was joking.

But here’s the thing I want to say clearly, right at the start: this is not a man-bashing piece. The men in our lives — our partners, lovers, the ones who genuinely want to give us pleasure — are working with the same inadequate education we are. Imagine finding out years into a relationship that your partner has been faking orgasms. That’s not just a disappointment for her. That’s a loss for everyone involved. The education gap harms us all. This is about the system, not the people navigating it.

The Textbook That Forgot Women Existed

In 1947, a man named Dr. Charles Mayo Goss sat down to edit the 25th edition of Gray’s Anatomy — the gold-standard medical reference used by doctors and students across the world — and quietly removed the clitoris from its anatomical diagrams. No announcement. No debate. It simply disappeared.

When it crept back in during the 1960s, it was depicted incorrectly — a worm-like, unlabelled shape that bore little resemblance to the actual organ. The reasoning? Researchers call it 'concerns about social hygiene and morality.' Translation: an organ that exists purely for female pleasure — no reproductive function, no man required — was simply too threatening to put in print.

This is not ancient history. It was only in 1993 that the US Congress mandated that women be included in clinical research at all. And even in modern OB/GYN textbooks, the full nerve pathways and vasculature of the clitoris are frequently absent — while the microscopic anatomy of the penis is covered in detail. As one researcher put it, this tells you everything about what female anatomy has been considered important for: delivering babies and pleasing men.

What Nobody Told Me

When I first started having sex, it didn’t bother me that I didn’t orgasm. I was having fun, things felt good, and my “affirmation bucket” was being filled — I was desired and wanted, and I was getting compliments that I was “good in bed”.

After a while though, this faded. I became frustrated. Why wasn’t I orgasming at the same time as my partner? Why wasn’t I orgasming from sex at all?

I read somewhere that some women never orgasm, and I quietly placed myself in that box. Oh well. I guess I’m one of those.

Until I started to seek out more.

And what I found made me equal parts fascinated and furious.

The script of “female pleasure is complex” is not just unhelpful — it’s false. When I began to learn how my body actually worked, everything shifted. The clitoris is one of the most sensitive parts of the human body. It is, co-incidentally, also the part that has been ignored the most.

And it was only in the last few years that I learned the clitoris isn’t just that cute little bean we can see with our eyes. It’s actually 10–12cm of internal structure — a network of erectile tissue that extends deep inside the body. If it’s not obvious enough: more tissue means more pleasure. We’ve been working with a fraction of the map.

Men Are Microwaves. Women Are Ovens.

We are not men. Our bodies don’t work the same way and were never meant to. It doesn’t take us mere seconds to get aroused — full arousal and engorgement can take women 20 minutes or more. Men are like a microwave. Women are like an oven. You’ve got to preheat us, baby.

The sex shown in movies is almost always a wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am situation — a moment of kissing, then straight to penetration. This isn’t always unrealistic; when anticipation has been building for hours or days, arousal arrives early. But in everyday life, especially in longer-term relationships, the preheating is non-negotiable if you want to reach those blissful orgasmic states.

And around 70–80% of women need clitoral stimulation to orgasm — and yet somehow, this is still news to most people. Penetration alone does not do it for most people. That is anatomy, not a flaw. The “main event” has simply been mislabelled for centuries.

You Are Not Broken

Our sex education is fear-based, shame-based, and almost entirely devoid of any pleasure-based information. We were taught about reproduction and risk. We were never handed the blueprint to our own bodies, or that our bodies can experience pleasure and that’s something to celebrate. 

We can sit here and point fingers — at the patriarchy, at health systems, at history. All of that critique is valid and worth having. But we can also do something more radical: learn about our bodies. Learn about pleasure. Become people who are incredibly, unapologetically well-acquainted with what feels good.

I want to be honest here: not everyone orgasms. That is true, and it matters that we say it. Pleasure is not synonymous with orgasm, and the goal of all of this isn’t to hand you a destination. It’s to hand you a map you were always supposed to have.

The mystery was never yours to carry. It was manufactured by a system that forgot — or feared — your pleasure.

If you’re ready to take pleasure into your own hands 😉, start with my Free Resources, or if you’re ready for personalised support, reach out to me for 1:1 online coaching details. 

A note: in everything I share, I speak to common patterns and experiences — not universal ones. Bodies, desire, and pleasure are beautifully individual. If something here doesn't reflect your experience, that's not a contradiction — that's just you being human.

With Pleasure,

Taryn — Alive with Pleasure

alive-withpleasure.com

@alive_withpleasure_