Five takeaways from Sarah Barmak’s Closer: Notes from the Orgasmic Frontier
Closer: Notes from the Orgasmic Frontier of Female Sexuality By Sarah Barmak Coach House Books 168 pp; $14.95
With a combination of interviews, reporting and personal reflection, Toronto journalist Sarah Barmak delivers not a guide on how to achieve an orgasm (she is careful to note), but an exploration of how women are defining their own sexual identities in a world that continues to see male pleasure as the norm and female pleasure as unexplored territory. Here are your five takeaways:
1 The “orgasm gap,” the central issue of Closer, reveals that 57 per cent of women from 18– 40 typically climax during sex with a male partner, as opposed to their partners’ 95 per cent, according to a 2015 Cosmopolitan survey of over 2,300 women. Which means, Barmak writes, “a lot of ordinary women have a bad time in bed,” whether we talk about it or not.
2 Female ejaculate is a real substance, though little understood. Emitted from the urethra, the odourless, clear or milky white liquid “drips, spurts or streams” and often, contains a prostatic-specific antigen, an enzyme also produced by the male prostate gland. Yet many doctors still consider female ejaculation to be unverified, despite countless women – including many who Barmak spoke with – having experienced and even documented it.
3 A “cascade of stimulation” building toward explosion, an orgasm isn’t just a muscular reflex: in fact, it’s a perception that “takes place in the mind, not the muscles.” Consider it a “sexual sneeze” with feeling
4 Literature can often capture the essence of female sexuality more than science itself. Take, for example, the word orgasm, which is referred to as “la petite mort” (little death) by the French. While that may not sound quite so passionate, it stems from both the seeming loss of consciousness at the peak of climax, and the “brief period of exhausted unconsciousness” that settles in post-climax: “a lost moment in time … It is not a thing, but an absence.”
5 Orgasm is so difficult, according to Barmak, because it involves physical, mental and emotional surrender. A major obstacle is pressure, and the process itself is debilitating for many. “Orgasm ( has become) to women what an erection is to men – a one- size- fits- all measure of sexual functionality, and a source of feelings of inadequacy if it doesn’t appear on cue.”