I’m not talking about slowing things down for religious or moral ideals or social pressures. I’m not talking about slowing things down to prevent STIs and pregnancy. Heck, I’m not even talking about slowing things down for legal reasons or because of your age.
by Heather Corinna

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I’m not talking about Just Say No, and I’m not talking about not having sex at all.

I’m talking about PLEASURE.

I’m about to tell you something that you may not want to hear, that you might not have heard before, and that a whole lot of people — maybe even you — can find threatening, insulting or downright objectionable.

Heterosexual intercourse — sexual intercourse, penis-in-vagina intercourse, vaginal intercourse, whatever you call it — not only isn’t the be-all end-all, greatest sex act of all time, it just isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, ESPECIALLY all by itself, and especially when you run into it like a Mack truck in an ice storm. Intercourse is not, just by having Tab A inserted into Slot B, “real” sex.

That’s the case whether we’re talking the first time or the 301st; whether you and yours have no idea what you’re doing, or you’re sleeping with (or are) Casanova.

Now, that isn’t to say vaginal (or anal, for that matter) intercourse or penetration sucks eggs, or that it can’t be enjoyed, even greatly: not at all. But all by itself, in a big massive hurry, without a bunch of other stuff going on before, during and after? As some sort of default sexual setting or obligatory act? As the only sex someone is having? As product, not process? It DOES often suck, especially for women, but not for women alone.

Consider sexual anatomy
On a purely physical level, while for most men, going right into sexual intercourse, or having that be the only thing going, can be — and often is — physically pleasurable, for the vast majority of women, it is not, and to boot, is often even uncomfortable, sometimes to the point of being physically painful.

Why is that? Let’s look at the physics.

When we’re talking about genitals, for men, the whole of the penis (especially for uncircumcised men) is very sensitive. There are often areas of the penis with greater sensitivity than others, but what is being stimulated by intercourse alone is satisfactory for a majority of men, physiologically. For women, on the other hand, the most sensitive part of the genitals isn’t stimulated by intercourse much, because often the clitoris is not being stimulated, as the most sensitive portions of it are not primarily located in the vaginal canal.

That isn’t to say the vaginal canal is numb, because it isn’t. In fact, parts of the clitoris — namely the urethral sponge, often called the G-spot, located on the posterior wall of the vagina (towards the belly, rather than the back) a couple inches in — ARE inside the vaginal canal. But most of that sensation not only is often not as great for many women as more direct clitoral sensation (or paired with same), the sensation that does exist within the vaginal canal is pretty much only in the first 1/3rd of the vagina. The clitoris, for the record, is the ONLY part of the male or female body whose only purpose is for sexual pleasure, and it contains more nerve endings than any other part of the male or female body: about four times as many as the male penis does. In case you’re confused about where it is, you’re not alone. On the vulva, externally, above the vaginal opening and the urethra, we can see the hood and the shaft of the clitoris, and technically, the inner labia are also part of the clitoris (which is part of why cosmetic reductions of the labia are such a bad idea). The clitoris also has little �legs,� inside the body called the crura which run down the sides of the vagina. The clitoral bulbs are also internal, beneath the inner labia, and the G-spot is also connected to the internal portion of the clitoris.

(Which is a big part of why heterosexual men worried about penis length are generally being pretty silly.)

For most women, high levels of sexual arousal are required for pleasurable vaginal penetration, even just COMFORTABLE vaginal penetration, and before that penetration begins. Very few women are likely to enjoy themselves sexually during penetration if no other sexual or affectional activity has been engaged in beforehand, or is coupled with intercourse. The vast majority of women will not orgasm from intercourse alone just because of basic physiology, though emotional factors are also often an issue, including the way a partner approaches intercourse: if a woman is pretty clearly being treated as little more than a receptacle, it’s not a big shocker that physically and emotionally, she’s going to gain little from intercourse, or that it may be uncomfortable for her.

(Which is a big part of why heterosexual women worried about not reaching orgasm from intercourse alone, and thinking there’s something wrong with them are generally being pretty silly.)

With no intent to be crass, if you’ve ever had a doctor give you a rectal examination, you have some idea of how vaginal intercourse can feel for women when nothing else is involved, and when adequate sexual arousal isn’t in place. In a word: not so nice.

This isn’t to say that for plenty of women heterosexual intercourse or vaginal penetration (as well as anal penetration) of other types isn’t enjoyable, because for a whole lot of women, it very much can be. But. If that is ALL that is going on? Not likely to be so great. Men, too, may find it’s not enjoyable in those instances, not only because of their own pleasure, but because most people of all genders are invested in their partner’s sexual enjoyment and comfort.

During heterosexual intercourse, if partners haven’t already become aware of what else women enjoy/need, what angles, positions, combined activities WITH intercourse DO create satisfying stimulus, AND/or the environment of intercourse is such that a woman is dehumanized, then it’s often unlikely to be enjoyable, especially for the female partner. You can read books to find out what those things might be, but ultimately, the only real way to find them out with YOUR partner is to experiment, explore, try different things, and talk to one another, treating each person and their pleasure as equally important. If doing all of that isn’t enjoyable or makes either partner uncomfortable, it should be pretty obvious that intercourse is NOT the logical next step. In many ways, partnered sex is like freeform dancing: there aren’t required steps one needs to know, it’s simply a matter of doing what feels natural, and working off one another’s rhythm, movements, and individual quirks. How you dance — or have sex — together and what you do is going to depend on who you both are, what music is playing, what both people are comfortable with, how well you know one another and what feels good and what doesn’t.

Too, just like some people just don’t enjoy or like oral sex or manual sex or anal sex, there are plenty of people — of either gender — who just don’t enjoy intercourse, or for whom, it just isn’t their favorite thing. We’ve all got to be careful about considering any sexual activity obligatory or some sort of holy grail — after all, we’d not do that with food, we always recognize that there are foods some people just don’t like — because in general, or sometimes, or with certain partners, some folks just aren’t going to like everything, and that includes intercourse.

Physically, women carry greater risks than men do from heterosexual intercourse. Obviously, pregnancy is the biggie. But as well, women are not only more inclined to develop sexually transmitted infections — and that’s more the case with younger women than older women — but the complications from STIs are greater for women: infertility and reproductive cancers are not uncommon due to contracting an STI. Those issues alone make intercourse a bit of a bigger deal to women than to men, whether we’re aware of it or not.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t also mention emotional aspects. We hear a lot of generalizations about how women can’t have good sex outside of love, about how emotional needs are more important with women than physical ones, and those generalizations are not only not especially helpful, they just aren’t true for all women at all times. However, without sounding like a total cheeseball, there is something unique about the process of essentially letting another person enter inside your body: men who engage in receptive anal sex can know something about this, too, but otherwise, men just don’t have an equivalent. That isn’t to say that for most women, intercourse has to be approached with utter seriousness, or as if women were breakable in any respect, but even a little reverence and acknowledgment of this issue goes a long way. Conversely, when intercourse is treated without any recognition of that whatsoever, it’s not uncommon for that to feel a bit callous, disrespectful or dehumanizing, especially given that as explained above, the vagina is not simply an open hole to insert things into. Rather, it is a canal which, when a woman is aroused, interested and consenting, welcomes, for lack of a better word, what is being placed inside it, and really draws whatever that is in — be it a penis, fingers, what have you — and which when she is none of those things, literally does what it can to physically bar the gates (by not lubricating or loosening, as well as by not tenting to pull the cervix back).

So, much like if someone opens the door of their home to us, we’re grateful for that and recognize it as their trust of us, as an intimacy, the same should go with intercourse, whether the scenario is casual or long-term. That is one aspect of intercourse which really does make it uniquely intimate that really isn’t about social or cultural agendas, religious mores or the like.