Tara Reid’s Vicky gets her first orgasm from her boyfriend in American Pie. Source: Supplied

That movie was more than 15 years ago, but we don’t seem to have progressed very far in knowing what women want. Many boys learn about sex from clueless or bragging friends, and through free internet porn, which is usually entirely focused on male pleasure.

Meanwhile, heterosexual women have detailed chats about sex with friends, peruse the ubiquitous ‘How to please your man’ articles in women’s magazines and read erotic fiction, or soft-porn chick-lit.

That doesn’t mean women are always experts on their own bodies either, with society discouraging women from being open about their sexual desires. That’s why it was significant to see men’s magazine GQthis week heap praise on a website that publishes anonymous essays by women on how to make them orgasm. “We wanted to start a dialogue about how women achieve sexual pleasure; something that is often ignored, devalued, or misunderstood,” reads the Tumblr page, which currently features 72 fascinating posts. “Here is our look into the spectrum of desire.”

It’s an eye-opening set of opinions, preferences, fears and fantasies, with some giving practical advice (“I hate that thing when a tongue gets all hard and pointy”) and others recounting anecdotes about when they did and didn’t reach climax (“You got visibly bored, which made me tense in exactly the wrong way”).

The prompt for the site’s contributors is this: “Imagine you could give this essay to a past or future sexual partner, free of judgment or repercussion. What would you want them to know?”

It’s what we should be saying in real life, but it isn’t happening.

The famous fake orgasm scene from When Harry Met Sally. Source: Supplied

FAKING IT

Around one in five women are affected by anorgasmia, or inability to orgasm, according to the Mayo Clinic, and one in 10 have never climaxed at all. It doesn’t always mean they can’t climax, in many cases, something isn’t right.

In another enduring scene from a movie, When Harry Met Sally, Sally (Meg Ryan) demonstrates to a shocked Harry (Billy Crystal) just how easy it is to fake it.

As many as 26 per cent of women regularly fake orgasms, and almost 70 per cent of women who have had sex have done it at some point in their lives, a University of Kansas study revealed. That’s not great news for men and women, and it’s only making the problem worse.

So why do we do it?

NOT TURNED ON

For women more than men, sex generally involves the brain as well as body. That means women need to be in the right headspace. Psychological barriers can include thinking too much about what a partner wants, worrying about what they look like or feeling pressured to have sex or an orgasm.

In a UK study by Gayle Brewer from the University of Central Lancashire and Colin Hendrie of the University of Leeds, the researcher found that around 80 per cent of women consciously made noises during sex to “boost their partner’s self-esteem” and speed up their partner’s climax “to relieve discomfort/pain, boredom, and fatigue ... as well as because of time limitations.”

Almost 70 per cent said they would stay with an otherwise satisfactory partner, even if they never reached orgasm with them.

“When a woman has low sexual desire or libido, they are really sexual neutral,” Desiree Spierings, director at Sexual Health Australia, told news.com.au. “It is just not something in the forefront of their minds.”

She said that while spontaneous desire for sex can wane in longer-term relationships, we have something called ‘response desire’, which kicks in after we begin an intimate encounter.

“A woman may not feel like having actual sex, however, once she starts to participate in something intimate like kissing, hugging or maybe getting or receiving a sensual massage, they may get aroused and then their response desire kicks in, and they do feel like taking it further.”

Magic Mike is a rare movie that prioritises female lust. Source: Supplied

PLEASING A PARTNER

Many women are making the right noises or acting like they are enjoying something when they aren’t. This is obviously problematic, as it means the same mistakes are being repeated over and over.

“When we look at the messages, or even porn, it is very much focused on male pleasure,” said Desiree. “It can raise false expectations around what sex looks like or is. Sex is very much a learned behaviour and if we learn to be sexual through watching porn, we can have some issues when it comes to the actual sexual performance in the bedroom.”

While porn can be an asset to a healthy sex life both alone and in company, much of what’s out there isn’t great for the women involved (who wear expressions of forced sexiness or even pain), or those watching.

Young men and women are expecting sex to look like it does in videos that rarely show female pleasure. There were protests in the UK recently when censors tried to ban primarily acts associated with female enjoyment from porn videos.

Porn can also raise inadequacy issues, around weight, breast or penis size and sexual performance. The Australiasian Institute of Sexual Health Medicine revealed that 80 per cent of Australian women “believe that they are too fat to make love”.

At its worst, excessive watching of porn can become an addiction or compulsion, leading to an inability to enjoy real-life sex or a need to be more extreme or even violent. The Australian Study of Health and Relationships found last year that 22 per cent of women had been forced or frightened into doing something sexual they did not want do do.

DOING IT WRONG

Here’s perhaps the most important point many men don’t understand: most women don’t consistently orgasm with vaginal penetration alone. “Men are very performance-focused today and do believe it is important to pleasure a woman,” said Desiree. “This can also cause a few issues with performance anxiety though.”

As a sex therapist, she encourages both partners to recognise that sex is not all about intercourse, but about foreplay too, in and out of the bedroom. She suggests flirting, sexting, trying new things and making time specifically for sex.

Some women don’t understand their bodies either. “Sometimes women feel inhibited, due to their upbringing for example,” said Desiree. “They do not feel open about what they like or do not like.

“Your body belongs first of all to you ... through masturbation, you can learn what it is that you like or do not like and how your body respond to this stimulation. It can help you to feel more comfortable with yourself as a sexual being, which in itself can be freeing in the bedroom.”

The Australian Study of Health and Relationships found that only 42 per cent of women aged 16 to 69 said they had masturbated in the past year, compared with 72 per cent of men. Some attribute this to a lack of sex education or society frowning on women who openly express their sexuality through their clothes, behaviour or sex life. Just look at the issues with slut-shaming or the recent horror at a young woman’s choice of a sexual song lyric as her Tinder profile.

MEDICALISING IT

Often we only hear about sex and sexuality in problematic contexts: STIs, disorders, fertility, sexual abuse, addictions, cheating and deviant behaviour. But medicalising sex, or commercialising it in advertising and the media, means the conversation initiated by the Tumblr on the female orgasm is never had.

Recent discussion of a “female viagra” was met with contempt from many commentators, because it ignores the fact that a woman’s difficulty with arousal is often not simply be mechanical.

Sex can be an expression of love or emotion, or about being playful and having fun. Today, more women are comfortable talking about sex, asking for what they want and having multiple partners than in previous generations. But as we’ve seen here, there’s still plenty of progress to be made.