What! Sex is Pleasurable?

What! Sex is Pleasurable?

- by Prativa

Growing up, if only someone had told me that sex is normal and fun, life would have been a little oasis. An oasis where I could skinny dip, soak in the warmth of the sun, and quench my thirst in its various forms. No filter of shame or guilt, just endless pleasure.

The first time we are introduced to sex in school, the conversation finishes quickly. In less than a minute, the teacher briefly touches on how sperms and eggs meet because of sex and spends the rest of the class talking about condoms, implying that we need not think about this until we are ready to have babies. The embryos, the fetus, and the magical gestation of 9 months that brought us to this world is the very extent to which the Nepali education system preaches about sex. Baby and sex are so synonymous that navigating sex with that droplet of information would be no surprise to lead to anything but pleasure.

81.6% of heterosexual women between the age of 18 to 94 years never orgasm from penetration intercourse, and almost 15% of them never get to experience the bliss of orgasm in their life span. Orgasm is one of the most intense pleasures attainable to an organism, and yet its underlying mechanism remains uncommunicated or unattempted to be understood. Our society gives us a lens of sex as a chore necessary for bearing children, and often times in this process, the sensation of orgasmic pleasure and fun gets forgotten. Especially, when the whole act has become taboo in name of sacredness, male ejaculation becomes predominantly understood as the end product of sex. Although male orgasm is associated with ejaculation, it stands as a distinct physiological process. Yet, 95% of heterosexual men report experiencing orgasm during sex. Pleasure during sex for men is a slim line that often becomes blurred with the end result of ejaculating- regardless of which it could be seen that they can experience the sensation of orgasm. However, the fact that a large number of straight women do not get to experience or understand the feeling of pleasure, and yet take part as vessels for attaining pleasure for men in the name of bearing children is concerning.

Historically, our mothers and grandmothers rarely got to experience the dimension of pleasure in name of sex. However, the fact that the men in the family did, even if just for the sake of bearing children, shows how marginalized female sexual pleasure is. We have been conditioned to think of ejaculation as the end product of both reproduction and pleasure, often barricading women from experiencing or embracing sexual pleasure.

Sex is not limited to the task of reproduction, and it is definitely not a pain women have to endure for their contribution to society. Every sexual interaction is an intimate act of peak sensation of intense pleasure- and we should be able to claim this bliss with wide arms and wider legs. The first step always comes with understanding your body and making love with yourself. Embracing your biological existence and communicating your needs would enable you to explore individual desires and experience pleasure with everyday sexual activities. It would depend on no one but you to define this pleasure, and you have every right to claim them—for it is an oasis where you test the depth of waters unhesitantly, and no one can tell you otherwise!