Women Are Taught to Expect Bad Sex
As a sex therapist, I spend a lot of time in my practice dismantling the tired myth that women have inherently lower libidos than men.
I think that most people have all heard the cultural scripts like - "When it comes to sex, men are simple, women are complex," or "women just naturally care less about sex." I recently read a paper in Personality and Social Psychology Review by Diana E. Peragine, Emily A. Impett, and Doug P. VanderLaan which discussed that it’s not accurate to say that women have lower capacities for desire; they just get handed objectively worse sex right when their brains are most primed to learn what sex is.
Some of my takeaways from the article:
1. The Orgasm Gap Peaks When We're Most Teachable
Adolescence and early adulthood (ages 10–24) isn't just an awkward phase of questionable fashion choices (lol, just me?) - it’s an “evolutionarily canalized window of development”. The not sciencey translation? During puberty our brains are flexible, absorbent learning sponges.
With a wild cocktail of neurohormones, elevated brain plasticity, and sensitive reward systems, our early sexual encounters carry a massive amount of emotional weight. In this era, our brains are unconsciously asking: "Is sex safe? Is sex rewarding? Is sex worth my energy?"
Yet, right during this critical learning window, the pleasure gap is at its absolute worst…
At sexual debut (first sex), only 6% to 12% of young women orgasm during their first time, compared to 62% to 84% of young men. That’s a massive 5x gap!! By adulthood, the orgasm gap shrinks, but that initial neuro-conditioning has already done its damage.
2. Pain, Fear, and "Scary Sex"
The research shows that while men are usually having a great, low-risk time at debut, young women are navigating a totally different, hyper-vigilant reality:
33% to 69% of women report physical pain or discomfort during their first time (vs. basically zero men).
Over 52% of women use words like "horrifying" to describe their sexual debut.
By adulthood, 71% of women report having experienced "scary sex" - meaning encounters involving threats, choking, rough treatment, or physical violation. …71%!?
3. The Clitoral Erasure in Hetero Sex
When we’re young, we’re conditioned to believe that "real sex" strictly means penis-vagina penetration. The problem with that? Penetration naturally stimulates the glans penis, but completely bypasses direct clitoral glans stimulation (which is essential for most women’s arousal and orgasm!!)
What this tells me is that this isn't a biological defect or something “wrong” with women’s bodies - instead it points to the issues with the normative structural scripting.
The Queer Proof: Research shows that when women debut with female partners, they are twice as likely to receive clitoral stimulation and five times as likely to reach orgasm. IE: The anatomy works fine and we need to get more curious about the hetero sexual script.
I Think The "Evolved Biological Differences" Argument Sucks
For decades, traditional evolutionary psychologists have tried to write off women's lower desire by claiming women just evolved to want sex less because of pregnancy risk. These researchers and their BLOOM model dismantles this.
If low libido was purely hardwired by evolution, it wouldn't account for why some women have super high libidos, why queer women have totally different debut experiences, or why a woman's desire changes so drastically depending on her partner.
On the flip side, social-only theories couldn't explain why the desire gap persists across almost every culture and generation.
The BLOOM model bridges the gap by exploring the ways that women’s sexuality is actually more amenable to learning than men’s. Because women have high "sexual learning aptitude," bad early sex restructures their sexual motivation. The desire gap persists globally simply because women everywhere are consistently handed the worst sex right when their brains are learning what to expect.
How Women Learn to Settle
When your early experiences with sex are painful, boring, or scary, your brain adapts to protect you. This part of the research made me scream a little in frustration, but I’m just quoting the facts, please don’t kill the messenger:
> Men grow up defining "good sex" as feeling great, experiencing pleasure, and reaching orgasm.
> Women grow up defining "good sex" merely as sex that is free of pain and degradation.
Women are trained to expect nothing and then we act surprised when they aren't super motivated to jump into bed 10, 20, 30 years later. I don’t know… this seems less like low desire is a biological flaw and more like it’s a rational, learned response to a lack of reward?
My Thoughts on Reclaiming the Script
Good news, brain plasticity works both ways. If your internal system learned to expect underwhelming sex, it can re-learn to expect (and demand) incredible sex.
Whether you're unlearning years of bad conditioning or setting up the next generation, here is an official permission slip, signed by a qualified and experienced sex therapist:
NAME: You
DIAGNOSIS: A healthy nervous system reacting normally to years of subpar conditioning
Permission 1: Cease "Fine" and “Meh” Sex Immediately
Direction: Stop treating sex like a performance you're hosting for someone else or a task to tolerate. If an encounter doesn't feel safe, mutual, and deeply pleasurable, you are given complete permission to hit pause, pivot, or stop entirely.
Permission 2: Administer Clitoral Centering as the Main Event
Direction: Ditch the outdated myth that penetration is the core dish and everything else is warm-up. Clitoral stimulation is essential, non-negotiable anatomy. Demand it, prioritise it, and take it without apology until fully satisfied.
Permission 3: Mandatory Solo Research (As Needed)
Direction: Get curious about your own body before inviting a partner into the room. Masturbation is not just self-care, it is essential personal research so you can step into the bedroom as the leading expert on your own pleasure.
Permission 4: Proactive Re-Education at Home
Direction: If you have young people in your life, teach them that sex without pleasure and mutual care isn't just risky, it's quite simply, not good sex. Administer the truth that pleasure is a basic component of human health, not a taboo bonus.
CLINICIAN NOTE: You do not have a broken libido. You just need (and deserve) a much better prescription.
