The English term “orgasm” derives from the Greek “orgasmos”, meaning excitement or swelling. Definitions of the phenomenon have changed over time, and different definitions existed in various cultural spaces. Currently, there is no consensus on what an orgasm is, as a long-standing debate in the medical community about whether the orgasm is primarily a physical or psychological experience persists. Cultural theorists argue that this struggle to define orgasm creates sexual norms – often male and heterosexually centred – which facilitate social control and the policing of bodies and identities(1).

Before the 18th century in Europe, the orgasm was described as a heat sensation that overcame the entire body and a quasi-metaphysical experience. In the late 1700s, the medical establishment began to localize the orgasm specifically in the genitalia and to describe it as a decidedly physical phenomenon(2). In 1918, the orgasm was already frequently described as the peak or climax of sexual activity – a conception that remains a mainstream understanding today(3) including across the Middle East.

Women’s orgasms have triggered more scientific curiosity and popular scrutiny than men’s. For example, an extensive study on human sexuality by Masters and Johnson, published in 1966, dedicated 100 pages to describing women’s orgasms and only 39 to describing men’s(4). Early 19th century medical experimentation convinced doctors that women ovulate even in the absence of sexual pleasure and thus do not need to climax in order to become pregnant. By the end of the 1800s, this argument had transformed into a belief that women are either incapable of orgasming or orgasm rarely(5). Diagnoses such as hysteria and anorgasmia began to appear at the same time, and were later transmitted into acquired colonies.

The 20th century witnessed a great interest in categorizing orgasms in women across Western Europe. In 1906, Sigmund Freud – whose writings would also influence Middle Eastern psychological studies – advanced the thesis that young girls initially experience clitoral orgasm but transfer the experience of orgasm to the vagina in the course of their psychosocial development(6). Women who were interviewed by researchers in later studies described two different types of orgasmic sensations associated with clitoral and vaginal stimulation(7). The Masters and Johnson’s study, which was based on direct observation in a laboratory setting, disproved the thesis of the two orgasms and argued that vaginal contractions were present in women’s sexual climaxes regardless of how they were stimulated(8). While no evidence has been found to support the frequently-cited classification of women’s orgasms into “vulval”, “uterine” and “blended”(9), more medical research into the anatomy of the clitoris demonstrated that the internal parts of the clitoris may be involved in women’s experience of so-called “vaginal orgasms”(10).

Feminist texts from the 1970s argued that the vaginal orgasm was a myth meant to deny women clitoral pleasure and make them submit to male penetrative sex(11). Alternative, lesbian, and queer feminisms, mostly emerging from the U.S., Canada, and parts of Europe has also pushed for non-orgasm-centered view of sexual intercourse and re-prioritization of bodily pleasure. In Lebanon, two generations of leftist feminists (in the 1970s and the 2000s) have engaged with a variety of feminist literature on sex and sexuality. Sexual pleasure is tackled indirectly through the delivery of psychosocial services to women survivors of domestic violence, where they describe their experiences with marital rape and express their lack of pleasure during intercourse. However, the debate about sex and women’s pleasure remained in the personal and intimate circles of those groups and did not directly reach to political agendas and public discourse(12). Some activists explain this political gap by the unsafe context, where they fear violent reactions against them from the community they are working with, or from religious institutions. Sociological studies today continue to point to an “orgasm gap” between women and men in heterosexual relationships wherein men’s orgasms are prioritized and more frequent than women’s(13). It is in this sense that women’s orgasm continues to be a political issue tied to the liberation of women’s bodies and their right to control over their own pleasure(14).