Profs & Pints Baltimore: The Orgasm Gap
Profs and Pints Baltimore presents: “The Orgasm Gap,” a beyond-the-bedroom look at why women have fewer orgasms than men, with Brittany Dernberger, who teaches a popular course on the sociology of sex and gender as a professorial lecturer in sociology at George Washington University.
Studies have shown that more than 90 percent of men—but just 65 percent of women—usually or always have an orgasm from straight sex. Moreover, lesbian and bisexual women report higher rates of orgasm than women who are straight.
What accounts for such differences? Come hear that question tackled by sociologist Brittany Dernberger, who argues that the “orgasm gap” is an important dimension of gender inequality that has implications well beyond intimacy in the bedroom.
Drawing on theories of gender inequality, she’ll discuss how sexuality and sexual behavior are intertwined with our ideas about masculinity and gender performance. Sexual behavior and the orgasm gap are the product of how we define sex, our notions about who has sexual privilege, and “slut discourse.”
She’ll explain how the orgasm gap stems from “gender labor” and attitudes that center men’s sexual pleasure and view men’s orgasms as normal and ordinary while problematizing women’s pleasure and assuming women’s orgasms to be rare and inconsistent.
You’ll end up with a better sense of how social norms shape your experience beneath the sheets. (Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Doors open at 5. Talk begins at 6:30.)
