Orgasmic Bodies The Orgasm in Contemporary Western Culture

Engaging both with science and popular culture, this book examines the meanings given to orgasmic bodies in contemporary heterosex. Starting from the assumption that orgasm is not a 'natural' or pre-social experience, Orgasmic Bodies argues that the meaning of 'orgasmic experience' must be learned – sometimes through explicit pedagogical instruction which is wrapped up in gendered ideologies. Despite detailed attention to 'knowing' the orgasmic body, especially the female body, embodied experience remains ambiguous and ineffable even as scientific and lay discourses seek to make it concrete and unmistakable. The dominance of an 'orgasmic imperative' where orgasm is essential to 'good sex', combined with evidence that women experience fewer orgasms than men, generates differing obligations to produce, work on, and enact, orgasm. Orgasmic Bodies explores how bodily experiences of orgasm are worked up as present/absent, complicated/straightforward, too slow/too fast, fake or real, in the doing of masculinities and femininities.

Hannah Frith teaches critical psychology at the University of Brighton, UK. Her research examines interrelationships between identity, embodiment and sexuality, including negotiating sexual refusals, clothed identities, a changed appearance, the mediation of dying, and makeover television. She co-edited Critical bodies: Representations, identities and practices of weight and body management (Palgrave Macmillan).

1. What Is An Orgasm... And Why Does It Matter?
2. The Orgasmic Imperative
3. Complicated Women, Straightforward Men
4. Coming Together: The Timing Of Orgasm
5. Orgasmic Labour: Training The Body For Orgasmic Success
6. Performing Orgasm: Blurring The 'Real' And The 'Fake'
7. Embodying Orgasmic Sensation
8. The Climax: Conclusions And Reflections
Endnotes