Faking Orgasm: Sex Is About the Journey as Much as the Destination

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According to a recent slideshow on iVillage based on a piece on AskMen.com by Jasmine Leigh, an estimated 70 percent of women fake orgasms at some point in their lives.

The reasons women do this are simple, Leigh states: she either doesn't want a man to keep trying and thus prolong the encounter, or she doesn't want him to feel bad about not bringing her over the edge. To help men figure out if they're "being duped," Leigh outlines 14 signs to know for certain.

The first sign she tells men to watch out for is the retraction of the clitoral head. She soothes the worries that this will be hard to see if the lights happen to be off, or if a man’s face is not close enough to that part of her anatomy: "Under the guide of giving her some extra special treatment, you can feel whether she's actually close to climaxing or just faking," she writes.

Sign number two that a woman is not faking it is increased breathing and heart rate. "Liars and the truthful alike might clutch at you and moan and groan, but her breathing is the missing link," Leigh writes. "Her thumping heart will also be a sign that it's for real; if she isn't actually excited, her heart rate and her bodily manner will be very ordinary."

Third: dilated pupils. "This might be hard to tell in the dark, but if the lights are on, all you have to do is ask her to look into your eyes as she climaxes," Leigh says. "Chances are she'll be more than willing to oblige to that romantic request. Just make sure to note of what her pupils looked like at the beginning of your romp so you can compare their difference in size at the end."

Does anyone else feel like this is becoming more like a sobriety test than an romantic encounter? I'm all about educating men about pleasure and women's bodies, but how can a man enjoy himself if the entire time he is in bed with a woman, he's also in the middle of an engrossing discovery process to build a case against her?

Worse, the list doesn't stop there. It goes into the reddening of the lips, vaginal muscle spasms (which the author proclaims cannot be faked, though any practitioner of Kegels and pilates might disagree), sudden perspiration, "post-coital bliss" (if she jumps out of bed immediately or makes conversation, she is lying, Leigh declares), and so on.

The last item on iVillage slideshow is a simple "ask her," which in my opinion should have gone first. But the original piece by Leigh is more egregious, suggesting a man quiz his partner about what she feels when she climaxes and use her body language as a make-shift lie-detector test. She also suggests a man ruin a woman's orgasm as she's approaching the edge, suggesting that if a woman is really about to orgasm, she will be cross about being denied release.

At the end, Leigh consoles men who may find they're being deceived and suggests "more quality foreplay."

This has to be the most damaging piece of sexual advice I have ever read in my life, and I've read a lot of bullshit in the fifteen years I have been devouring sex literature.

Firstly, if a man feels his partner is not enjoying herself as much as she could be, the course of action should not be to test and interrogate her, but to initiate a discussion about bringing pleasure to the next level. If a man isn't comfortable discussing sex, he may try declaring an evening is all about his partner's pleasure, call her a goddess and playfully ask her to instruct him in the ways of her pleasure.

I don't like talking about sex outright a lot of the time, either. It goes against my belief that my partner and I are sex gods, born with the ability to make others orgasm with a single touch. So instead, when I first start having sex and every once in a while afterward, I ask him to teach me how to please him. This is done in the context of a sex game, not a serious discussion, but it nevertheless serves to show me things about how he enjoys to be touched -- perhaps even more than a discussion might, as it happens in the heat of moment.

Another good idea is to watch your partner masturbate. If you'd rather go all the way when you're in the same room,