Bisexual women expect to have an orgasm with women more than with men
When asked to imagine a hypothetical sexual encounter, bisexual women anticipated that they would be more likely to orgasm with another woman than with a man
By Chen Ly
4 April 2024
Women, particularly if they are heterosexual, report being less likely to orgasm during sex than heterosexual men, referred to as the “orgasm gap”
Zoonar GmbH / Alamy
Bisexual women anticipate they are more likely to orgasm when they have sex with another woman than when they have sex with a man, a study has found.
Orgasms are typically a strong indicator of sexual satisfaction, as well as often reflecting satisfaction within a relationship. A study of more than 52,000 adults in the US by David Frederick at Chapman University in California and his colleagues found that 95 per cent of heterosexual men said they usually always orgasm during sex, compared with 65 per cent of heterosexual women.
This disparity is often referred to as the “orgasm gap”, which research suggests almost entirely disappears during masturbation or with acts like clitoral stimulation. In Chapman and his team’s study, 86 per cent of lesbian women and 66 per cent of bisexual women said they usually always orgasm during sex.
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To learn more about the orgasm gap, Grace Wetzel at Rutgers University in New Jersey and her colleagues asked 481 bisexual women, none of whom were transgender, to imagine themselves in a hypothetical sexual scenario. Around half were instructed to picture themselves with a man and the others with a woman.
The participants were asked to rate their orgasm expectations on a scale of 1 to 7, with 1 indicating that they saw it as being very unlikely and 7 as very likely. When they imagined having sex with a man, they scored an average of 4.88, compared with 5.86 with a woman. Although this may seem like a relatively small difference, a statistical analysis suggests the results weren’t chance findings.
