Women's orgasms have long been subject to vociferous scientific debate, but over the last 10-15 years a small but growing body of largely feminist qualitative research has begun to explore how the sociocultural construction of orgasm finds contemporary articulation in popular culture and in lay accounts of heterosex. This work is explicitly concerned with gendered power relations and how these operate. This paper provides a critical review and synthesis of this work by exploring three discursive imperatives: (1) orgasm and the coital imperative (2) efficient orgasms and hard work (3) and the ethic of reciprocity. Drawing on these insights, this paper outlines how a focus on embodiment, on situated meaning-making and on everyday sexual practices would further extend our understanding of the social construction of orgasm. Finally, the paper argues for the importance of locating these processes of meaning-making in relation to socially structured material realities.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 1. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 23 March 2013.
All research outputs
#28,602,152
of 34,361,833 outputs
Outputs from Culture, Health & Sexuality
#1,322
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#197,154
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Outputs of similar age from Culture, Health & Sexuality
#19
of 21 outputs
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