A NOTE ON LANGUAGE: Please note that while this article uses binary language (male/female, men/ women, etc.), it is not intended to erase or diminish the experiences of individuals with non-binary gender identities. My focus here is on the societal pressures that impact people who identify as women, but I do recognize and respect that gender identity is far more fluid and diverse than this binary language suggests. This article is not intended to exclude or misrepresent the experiences of transgender, non-binary, or gender-nonconforming individuals.
(Not my usual topic on mental health, but I still hope this will be useful for some!)
― Mae West
In an ideal world, the bedroom is a sanctuary, a space where partners (in any configuration) feel safe to be their authentic selves. Yet, a pervasive and often unspoken issue amongst many couples can change everything: the pressure to ‘fake it’ in sex.
While the pressure to perform in the bedroom can affect anyone, historical and sociological research reveals a disproportionate burden on women. Drawing upon various philosophical insights and theories, this article delves into the origins and complexities of the ‘faking it’ phenomenon and what it means for men and women.
Let’s start with the ‘Male Gaze’
From a young age, girls are conditioned to view sex and their bodies through a male lens. The ‘Male Gaze’ concept in sociology and film studies describes the way visual media often depicts the world from a heterosexual male perspective.
A readily identifiable aspect of the Male Gaze is the blatant objectification of the female form. The camera, often assuming a male viewpoint, lingers on a woman’s body and movements, reducing her to a collection of desirable parts rather than a whole person. Consider the classic “slow-motion hair flip” in a shampoo commercial. The camera, often employing soft-focus lighting and suggestive music, focuses excessively on the woman’s hair, body, and the movement itself. Action movies usually incorporate ‘unnecessary’ scenes focusing on a woman’s cleavage or lingering on her body as she bends over. These seemingly insignificant moments, when considered together, contribute to the pervasive idea of women as objects that exist primarily for male pleasure and visual consumption.
The Male Gaze extends far beyond hypersexual images in films and advertising. Traces of the Male Gaze can be found even in children’s shows and cartoons. Think about classic Disney princesses. Disney’s ethos and awareness might have evolved, but many early princesses were defined by their beauty and grace, often with exaggerated features like large eyes, tiny waists, and flowing hair. The focus on physical perfection reinforces the idea that a woman’s worth is tied to her appearance. The visual imagery, coupled with the “damsel in distress” plot of most stories, perpetuates traditional gender roles and the idea that women are objects to be rescued.
Unfortunately, the constant bombardment of images and narratives eventually leads women to internalize the male gaze and begin to view their own bodies and worth through the lens of male desire. In other words, they begin to self-objectify even when no one is watching.
Within such a system, it is understandable that a woman would internalize the message that her worth, her ability to fit in and belong to humanity, to be medically sound and recognized by the wider society as ‘normal’, even down to her sense of ontological safety in the world, is contingent upon her ability to satisfy a man. Her pleasure is an afterthought, her body reduced to an object for his gratification.
This is when the negative impact of the Male Gaze on women’s sexuality becomes painfully salient: The pressure to conform to a male-defined ideal is salient in the bedroom.
Why the Clitoris Matters
The Male Gaze does not just shape how women are perceived — it limits the experience of sex itself. Mostly, the dominant narrative equates sex with intercourse, sidelining other forms and sources of female pleasure.
The truth is, that the over-emphasis on penetrative sex clashes violently with the biological reality of many women. Mounting research, anecdotal evidence, and whispered truths in therapists’ rooms all reveal a powerful truth: for many women, the clitoris — boasting 8,000 nerve endings (double the amount found in the penis) — reigns supreme as an intense source of pleasure. Yet, throughout their lives, women are taught to look elsewhere, to chase fulfillment through vaginal intercourse.
The cultural landscape that holds up the ‘faking it’ pandemic is what philosopher Simone de Beauvoir sharply captures in her seminal work, The Second Sex. As de Beauvoir famously wrote, “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.” Unlike men, who are often free to experience and understand pleasure on their own terms, women find themselves in the disconcerting position of having to ‘retrain’ themselves on what pleasure is and should be. Women are forced to deny their body’s innate, primal responses, silence their true feelings, and retrain themselves to think and feel according to a predetermined script.
De Beauvoir also observes, “Man is defined as a human being and woman as a female — whenever she behaves as a human being she is said to imitate the male.” This statement cuts to the heart of a patriarchal system that positions “Man” as the default, the universal, while “Woman” is relegated to the realm of the “other” — defined not by her own inherent humanity but by her difference from the male norm.
The disconnect between social expectations and lived experiences can be traumatizing for the psyche. Imagine a young girl discovering the joy of her clitoris, only to learn later that penetrative sex is the “main event.” They have to deny their inner reality just to fit in with what is expected from them.
The dominant medical paradigm also reinforces the narrow definition of sex. Women experiencing difficulty achieving orgasm through penetrative sex are diagnosed with conditions like Anorgasmia. While physical factors can certainly contribute to sexual difficulties, the unnecessary medicalization of a sociological problem can lead women down a path of seeking external validation and solutions — consulting books, therapists, sexual health clinics, toys, lubricants, even medicines — in a desperate attempt to “fix” what they’ve been told is broken. Many women are left traumatised by the many unsuccessful attempts to find ‘cures’, and ended up feeling inadequate, insecure, like something is deeply worng with them.
Thus, “faking it” is not merely a personal choice as a symptom of a historical, sociological, systemic issue. When her body is viewed primarily through the distorted lens of the Male Gaze, faking an orgasm becomes a survival strategy in the world. Many women feel compelled to resort to ‘faking it’ as a way to meet actual and internalized social expectations and to make sure they still fit in as a ‘normal person’. Genuine personalities, desires, and sexual preferences become masked behind a constructed facade.
Our Obsession with Orgasms
Behind the “faking it” pandemic is a larger cultural phenomenon that places an unrealistic emphasis on achieving orgasm — what we might call the “orgasm imperative”. In many of our cultural artifacts, from movies to magazines to online chats, the pursuit of orgasm is often presented as the ultimate goal, the only true signifier of a “successful” encounter.
Orgasm, for many men, is a relatively straightforward, almost inevitable, outcome of sexual activity. However, for many women, achieving orgasm through intercourse alone is more elusive than most think. The orgasm paradigm is once again rooted in a patriarchal framework that prioritizes male pleasure and ego. While many men genuinely want to please their partners, they often unconsciously define sexual ‘success’ based on their own experiences. This isn’t any individual man’s fault; it’s how certain norms and values have been passed down and institutionalized.
A big contributor to this orgasm obsession is, unsurprisingly, mainstream pornography. It frequently portrays a skewed and unrealistic representation of female sexuality — the timeline, what it looks like, sounds like, what women “should” say when they achieve orgasm, etc. Women in porn are often shown climaxing from penetration alone.
The obsessive focus on “giving” orgasms as a measure of sexual prowess can be incredibly damaging — for both men and women. It reduces intimacy to a scoreboard, where a man’s worth in the bedroom is judged by his ability to deliver a specific outcome. It also reduces female pleasure to a simplistic binary: orgasm or no orgasm. This not only puts immense pressure on men but also ignores the vast spectrum of female pleasure, which extends far beyond the singular goal of climax.
The situation leaves many women feeling pressured, inadequate, and ultimately, more likely to fake it. Many feel pressured to choose between admitting they haven’t climaxed (and potentially bruising a partner’s ego) or feigning satisfaction to end it.
Perhaps it’s time to shift the narrative away from this singular focus on the orgasm imperative. As sex therapist and author Emily Nagoski states, “The goal of sex isn’t orgasm, it’s pleasure.”
Can we stop faking it?
If you’ve ever found yourself, as a woman, silently performing an ecstasy that your body screams otherwise, you’re not alone. The epidemic of inauthenticity when it comes to sex has caused many communication breakdowns in relationships, and it does not help that female orgasm remains a taboo in most conventional social settings.
Start by realizing that the pressure to fake it is not your fault, nor a personal weakness. It is a consequence of the immense social pressures you have been under, a performance honed by years of internalizing a script not of your own making. It is not that you are dishonest or trying to lie — you’ve almost been puppeteered, brainwashed, and gaslit into this performance. As sociologist and philosopher Michel Foucault would argue, power operates not just through overt coercion but through subtle, insidious forms of social conditioning. From a young age, you were bombarded with stories, images, and ideas about how women experience and express desire — this started as early as when you watched Cinderella or Sleeping Beauty. These stories told you what your body should look like, how you should move, sound, and even feel during sex. And so, you have learned to contort yourself, to silence your own needs, and become a performer in a play you didn’t write. Faking it is a way of conforming to a system that benefits from your silence.
Unlearning these ingrained scripts may require you to question long-held assumptions about desire, and most importantly, start an honest, and perhaps uncomfortable, conversation about female pleasure — both with yourself, your partner, and if you feel courageous enough, the wider world. But for the sake of reclaiming your right to true connection and your truth, it may be worth it.
If you are a man who has ever felt disappointed, frustrated, insulted, or embarrassed when struggling to help a partner climax, it might be time to examine the values and beliefs you’ve unknowingly internalized. You do not deserve to feel immense pressure during sex or be nervous about failing to please your partner every time. Perhaps this discomfort signals a need to go deeper, to examine the roots of your values surrounding masculinity.
Despite what you have heard and internalized, masculinity is not defined by the outcome of conquests, neither on the battlefield nor in the bedroom. The truth is, the pressure you feel to “give” a woman an orgasm is a symptom of a much larger problem: a patriarchal framework that often reduces female pleasure to a singular outcome. As feminist scholar bell hooks argued, men are also victims of the patriarchal framework and pressured by toxic masculinity. This framework serves no one. It traps you in a performance of masculinity that prioritizes conquest over connection and pressures you to the point where it is counter-productive. Being a man — capable of vulnerability and true intimacy — is not about achieving some mythical “scoreboard” victory in the bedroom. Perhaps ask yourself: What does your wisest self, the deepest part of you that resonates with integrity and compassion, believe about connection and pleasure?
Dismantling the “orgasm imperative” and the pressures of “faking it” requires a collective shift in understanding — a movement away from scripted performances and toward authentic experiences. True intimacy, for all genders, thrives not on achieving a specific outcome, but on mutual respect, genuine curiosity, and a shared commitment to exploring the full spectrum of what pleasure can be.
Listen. The old orgasm script is tired. Rip it up. Rewrite sex on your terms.
