This episode contains explicit content so listener discretion advised.

Hi everyone! It's Emily Nagaski, your guest host for the week. Welcome to Radio Headspace and a Thursday.

I'm a sex educator and researcher and as you know this week is all about sex. So today we're

discussing drum roll orgasms. Everyone wants one but almost none of us understand them.

Today I'm going to explain the role of orgasms in our lives and how to have more of them

if that's what you want to do. Science has been wrong about orgasm in every way that it is possible

to be wrong. Around the 1970s this idea that women's orgasm is not selected for by evolution,

it doesn't have a reproductive function particularly, turned into the idea that women's orgasms aren't

important as if we could measure the importance of a phenomenon by its relevance to reproduction.

Even if we could accept that orgasm doesn't have a reproductive role, that does not mean that it

is not important or does not matter. If you want it and you like it, that matters. That's what's

important. When people are struggling with orgasm, there's two directions they can go. They

can't have them or it takes too long or on the other side, they're happening too fast.

Premature ejaculation of course is this side of the coin. They would like to have more control

over their orgasms and there are evidence-based strategies. The primary one is called the Stop

Start Technique, which was developed for people with penises to control ejaculation but

it can absolutely be used for people with vulvas who are interested in having control over their

speed of traversing their erotic landscape. It's very simple, you begin stimulation, you get

pretty close to orgasm and then you stop stimulation and allow your arousal to back down,

and then you approach orgasm again and then you back back down and then you approach orgasm and

you back back down and this gives you practice getting close and pulling back so that you have

that control. When people struggle to have orgasm because they feel like it's taking too long

...