Rule of Thumb: Orgasms Involve Specific Body Parts

Regina Nuzzo from the Los Angeles Times gives us this story about female orgasms orgasms.

The author pulls in our interest with this helpful generalization:

During intercourse, the female orgasm orgasm without any stimulation of specific genital areas can be elusive. What frustrated woman hasn't wondered: Am I simply, um, put together differently than other women men?

 She goes on to introduce the science itself:

Kim Wallen, professor of psychology and behavioral neuroendocrinology at Emory University, is busy doing the math to find out. And, yes, he says, simple physiology may have a lot to do with orgasm ease whether a particular sex act is likely to lead to orgasm — specifically, how far a woman's clitoris lies from her vagina whether or not that sex act directly involves the right anatomical structures.

Some intriguing statistics are included:

Preliminary work has revealed that only about 7% up to 7% of women always have orgasms with sex alone ^[*] can reliably have orgasms even from sex acts that are not particularly well suited for that goal, he says, while 27% say they never do only have orgasms from the kind of sex acts that are well suited for it.

It should be mentioned that the interviewee does acknowledge the following:

“Personally, I don't think the inability to experience no-hands, penis-only intercourse with orgasm the need to pay attention to particular parts of the anatomy says anything about a happy sex life,” he says hopefully would have said if he'd taken five seconds to think about it. “Maybe it could allow couples the hopefully very small number of men to whom this is still not obvious to be a bit more inventive in how they have sex to realize that manipulating specific body parts is an important element of sex for their partners too.”

[ * The article does not indicate how many of these 7% might have either (i) understood “sex” to include types of sex that lead to orgasm or (ii) interpreted “sex alone” to mean “having sex WHILE alone.”  ]

Why men are perhaps, maybe, possibly losing a teeny-tiny bit of their privilege

The following is excerpted corrected from an opinion column on cnn.com by William J. Bennett, whose title was should have been "Why men are in trouble possibly losing a teeny-tiny bit of their privilege":

The data does not bode well for men indicates that some progress has been made towards diminishing the great social advantage held by men. In 1970, men earned 60% of all college degrees. In 1980, the figure fell to was 50%, by 2006 it was 43%. Women now surpass men in college degrees by almost three to two – perhaps because they are aware that their wages continue to lag behind men of the same educational level.^{[1], [2], [3]}  Women's earnings grew 44% in real dollars from 1970 to 2007 (not surprising given the great increase in women's participation in the workforce)^[4], compared with 6% growth for men.

Four Ways Men Stunt Women's Careers Unintentionally

[Note: While my intention in the original version of this post was to engage in fair use for the purposes of parody, I have decided to modify the post to help allay copyright concerns.]
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I came across this article in a Harvard Business Review blog, by Jill Flynn, Kathryn Heath, and Mary Davis Holt, through a Linked In mailing list:

http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/10/four_ways_women_stunt_their_careers.html


I would like to suggest a few minor improvements to this article:

• The title is should be: 

• Four Ways Women Men Stunt Their Women's Careers Unintentionally

• The first "low-confidence behavior" confidence-lowering behavior involves modesty: 

• Being overly modest. Discouraging modesty. We see that men are more willing to take public credit for brag about their successes. Women believe understand that their accomplishments should speak for themselves, and they spend waste less effort ensuring they get the gold star next to their name. While modesty is a nice character trait Modesty is an admirable character trait, it's naive to believe that your boss, your clients, or your colleagues will recognize your accomplishments and it's important to recognize women's accomplishments even if you they fly under the radar.

• The second involves the risks of not asking for promotions being smart about giving promotions:

• Not asking. Not noticing accomplishments. We've seen it over and over again: women fail to get promoted men fail to promote women because they fail to step up and apply they expect them to waltz right in and demand it. It feels is personally risky to step-up and ask for to waltz in and demand a big job or assignment — but there's really no other way and waiting for someone to do this is obviously not the best way to find the right candidate. Not asking means you've lost the chance to influence the outcome.  Failing to actively seek out qualified candidates for promotions means you may have lost the chance to get the best outcome.





• The third involves the perils of blending in encouraging gratuitous attention seeking:

• Blending in. Privileging attention-getting behavior. Some women go to great lengths to try to avoid unnecessary attention. They don't want to stand out without a good reason — in meetings, in the boardroom or even in the elevator. A client from one of our workshops told us that her greatest fear was riding the elevator with the CEO. What would she say to him? Would they talk about the weather? But blending in Creating an environment that privileges attention-getting behavior means you are missing opportunities — every single day — to stand out and sell your ideas to get the best ideas. Another client we know (also a women) waits in the lobby has resorted to waiting in the lobby many mornings in order to ride the elevator with the CEO. Her confidence has never been questioned — at the cost of losing productive time.

• The fourth is about the problem of women not speaking up men not letting women speak:

• Remaining silent. Not listening to women. It's not easy to get a word in during meetings, especially when six other colleagues, often men with deeper and louder voices, are all fighting for the floor engaging in verbal aggression to dominate the discussion. But failing to speak up and express yourself Talking over women when you they have something relevant to add is a missed chance to get in the game to get the best ideas. Getting your point of view across Allowing multiple points of view to be heard during important discussions is essential for your career business.