‘CONGRATS!! You had an orgasm’: Constructing orgasm on an internet discussion board

Sex education for pleasure

Feminists have persistently critiqued school-based sex education for perpetuating a ‘missing discourse of desire’ (Fine, 1988) by focusing on the dangers and risks of sexuality, positioning young women as the potential victims of male aggression, failing to address them as sexual subjects, and undermining the development of the kind of sexual agency needed to negotiate safe, pleasurable, and consensual sex (Allen, 2005, 2007; Holland et al., 1998). This trend, identified in the US (Fine and McClelland, 2006), New Zealand (Allen, 2007), Australia (Harrison and Hillier, 1999), United Kingdom (Measor et al., 2000), Canada (Connell, 2005), and Ireland (Keily, 2005), has prompted calls for a more positive approach which includes space for pleasure and desire (Allen, 2007; Burns and Torre, 2005; Jackson and Wetherell, 2010). Yet orgasm, which is culturally constructed as the ‘peak’ sexual experience, essential to ‘normal’ sexual functioning and well-being, and emotionally and interpersonally meaningful (Potts, 2000), rarely appears in anything but a superficial way in much sex education curricula (with the possible exception of The Netherlands: Ferguson et al., 2008).

Given the limitations of sex education in schools, the internet presents an alternative mechanism for sexual health promotion and education potentially less encumbered by social policy requirements and political influence. For those seeking to ‘protect’ teenagers by controlling access to sexuality information the internet is deeply troubling; for those seeking to provide more comprehensive education it offers exciting possibilities. However, research exploring online sexual health/education material finds these sites often focus on providing information about sexual risk and/or safer sex, mirroring the narrow agenda of school curricula (e.g. Noar et al., 2006; Smith et al., 2000). Moreover, information-only sites typically reiterate discourses of sexual victimization and few provide sex-positive messages to girls (Bay-Cheng, 2001). In contrast, interactive sites in which users pose questions, provide answers, and engage in discussion with each other can provide rare opportunities for young women to explore issues around orgasm and sexual pleasure in ways which address their own concerns, and provide alternatives to the ‘official’ discourse provided within schools or by ‘experts’ (Allen, 2001). This article explores data from one such interactive discussion forum.

The data

The website examined here is drawn from a larger dataset exploring the representation of orgasm, which identified a systematic ‘snap-shot’ of accessible information available to young people at one time point. ² Researchers adopt different approaches to sampling material from the internet – some analyse websites developed by reputable organisations (e.g. Bay-Cheng, 2005), others enter key words into popular search engines to more closely emulate young peoples’ search strategies (Noar et al., 2006; Smith et al., 2000). Five questions (e.g. what does an orgasm feel like, why can’t I have an orgasm?) were entered into two UK search engines (Google and Yahoo!). The question/answer format – familiar to young people seeking advice and information through offline media (e.g. advice columns in teen magazines: Jackson, 2005) – is a popular mechanism for producing interactivity (identified as a unique feature of the internet: Bay-Cheng, 2005).

The first 10 results produced by each search engine (excluding links to video clips) were examined. Since the distinction between public and private is blurred in online discussions, which may take place in public (internet sites) and private (people’s homes) spaces simultaneously (The British Psychological Society, 2007), researchers have suggested helpful ‘rules of thumb’ for guiding ethical decisions about whether web postings can be considered public or private. If membership is required to join the community, if membership is small or use intensive, and if the norms of the community suggest a need for privacy, then the group should be considered private (King, 1996; Mayer and Till, 1996). Since using quotations may threaten anonymity by being easily traceable (British Psychological Society, 2007), and since extra caution is needed when accessing materials written by young people (Association of Internet Researchers, 2002), a number of exclusion criteria were developed (e.g. using only archived material; sites which can be viewed without registration; sites requiring only minimal registration to participate; and sites with large, open communities of users) to ensure sites only at the more public end of this spectrum were included. In actuality no sites were excluded using these criteria. The study was approved by a Higher Education Ethics and Research Governance Committee.

The site analysed here was the ninth ‘hit’ to the question ‘What is an orgasm?’ entered into Yahoo!. The website (http://www.dearcupid.org/) describes itself as an ‘online agony aunt service’ in which users give each other advice on relationships, sex, and dating. The material consists of the initial post and 180 responses published over a three year period from June 2007 to March 2010 (accessed August 2011), a small sub-set of which (n = 5) offered congratulations to the original poster. I draw on ideas from conversation analysis to explore the political consequences of expressing congratulations. Conversation analysis studies the structural organisation of talk, identifying patterns in interactional sequences (such as turn-taking) to demonstrate how everyday reality and social order is produced by those engaging in it; feminist variants explore the role of these mundane ‘micro’ events in oppression (Kitzinger, 2000). However, before exploring the importance of offering ‘congratulations’, it is necessary to contextualise these within the broader discussion.

Contesting young women’s sexuality

As a whole the dataset was framed by contestations over whether it is appropriate for young women to be interested in, want to find out about, or engage in sexual activities. Constructed largely as a disagreement between older respondents ³ who marked out sexuality as an adult domain, and younger respondents who asserted the ‘right’ of young people to ‘fool around’ and to experience pleasure, this debate was vociferous. Older posters criticised the advice-seeker (and younger respondents) for being ‘silly’, ‘immature’, ‘immoral’, or ‘sick’, and positioned her as ‘too young’:

Wow. This makes me feel sick. I had just had my first period at 13. I didn't even THINK about having sex at that age. I was still into toys, and fun stuff about being a kid […] Grow up some before you start ruining your life with something meant for adults. Seriously.

i would like to remind you that about 2 years ago, you probably didnt even have breasts. you are a kid. no thirteen year old understands sex or what they are doing.

Echoing many of the themes found in sex education (Allen, 2005; Fine, 1988), these comments were often accompanied by warnings about the ‘risks’ of engaging in sexual activities at this age (pregnancy, diseases, emotional distress), and positioned the bodies of young women as being too childlike (barely having breasts or periods) to be involved in the adult world of sex.

In contrast, younger posters accused others of being ‘judgemental’ for ‘having a go at’ the advice-seeker, and encouraged her to explore and enjoy her sexuality:

dont listen to any of the people who tell you your too young! its not about your age its about your maturity and making your own decisions! taking it from experience, at the age of 13 i had done everything! fingered, hand, head, licking out and sex. its all great. i love it!

These respondents directly addressed the question of whether ‘needing to pee’ was indicative of an impending orgasm with some arguing that ‘yeah u feel like u have to pee’ and others that ‘he just found your g-spot’. Respondents advised ‘don’t stop’, offered encouragement to ‘keep going if it feels good’, and wished her ‘good luck’ in reaching an orgasm. Accompanied by embodied descriptions of orgasm (‘my whole body started to feel tingly’ or ‘wonderful extreme spasms and contractions’), these offered the kind of knowledge about the pleasurable sensuality valued by young people but often missing from sex education (Allen, 2001). In the context of this debate, I explore the work done by offering ‘congratulations’ and how these position young women’s sexual experiences as normative, appropriate, and desirable.

Congratulations!

Although only five responses (out of 180) explicitly offered ‘congratulations’ to the poster, alongside these other supportive responses they do important work in positioning female adolescent sexuality as normative and acceptable:

hey im 14 and i am a virgin … [whilst masturbating] i started getting this feeling and my stomach started getting tight then i was feeling like i had to pee bad […] an orgasm feels great … CONGRATS!! you had and orgasm … [18F]

Yeah when you have an orgasm it feels like you have to pee. It definitely sounds like you did! Congratulations!

Conversation analysis has convincingly demonstrated that during turn-taking interactants are expected to respond in ways that are sensitive to the action deployed in the prior turn. For example, following a telling of troubles, a display of sympathy may be due, or following a report of good news, congratulations may be expected (Maynard, 1997, 1998; Pudlinski, 2008). This work tells us that ‘congratulations’ are a normative response to the telling of good news. In this case, the original post was not accompanied by any ‘news indicators’ – such as a preannouncement (e.g. ‘Hey, I’ve got some news’). But Maynard (1997) argues that ‘information’ is often presented without explicit indicators that it is ‘news’, so whether information is ‘news’ depends on whether it is received as news.

In the absence of news indictors, there are numerous ways of responding. For example, the original post could be read as seeking advice, reassurance, or confirmation (‘I want to know… I’m not really sure’) rather than giving news – indeed comments like ‘I hope that helps’ or ‘to answer your question’ suggest that some respondents are orientating to the original post in this way. But the act of responding to information as news (or not) has micro-political consequences. Kitzinger’s (2000) reading of the absence of congratulations in response to the ‘news’ of people ‘coming out’ as lesbian or gay is useful here. She argues that responding to this information as ‘not news’ enables people to avoid accusations of ‘flaunting’ their sexuality and to resist the idea that homosexuality is unusual or noteworthy. The presence of congratulations in this dataset positions the initial post as delivering news that should be celebrated or acknowledged – that the advice seeker has had an orgasm. Offering congratulations establishes that a significant event has happened. In a situation where whether or not an orgasm has occurred is ambiguous, and whether or not these experiences are appropriate for young women is contested, ‘congratulations’ may establish certainty. Offering ‘congratulations’ makes a claim about the status of the advice-seekers account by positioning the original post as an announcement that an orgasm has occurred.

Moreover, ‘congratulations’ typically celebrate a person’s accomplishment (Pudlinski, 2008) and acknowledge their agency (Maynard, 1998). Congratulating this young woman on the ‘accomplishment’ of her orgasm may (partially) disrupt conventional discourses of heterosex in which women passively ‘receive’ orgasms from men (Roberts et al., 1995), since the accomplishment is hers regardless of his actions.

Finally, congratulations do more than acknowledge news of an accomplishment – they also provide an assessment that this news is ‘good’ (i.e. that this young woman experiencing an orgasm is good news). Although ‘congratulations’ are a normative response to good news, they are not an inevitable response. The relationship between the first part (the news) and second part (the congratulations) is dynamic – news is neither inherently ‘good’ nor ‘bad’, or even ‘news’, but is marked as such by interactants (Maynard, 1997). It is not simply a question of recognising good news and responding with a fixed type of reply. Offering congratulations actively positions the ‘news’ that this young woman has had an orgasm as ‘good’. Moreover, as Pudlinski (2008: 798) notes, congratulations serve to both ‘mark news as “good” and portray some “event-in-the-world” as endorsable, or having a (very) good character’. Although it could be argued that orgasms are always already ‘good news’ since the orgasmic imperative positions them as highly pleasurable, emblematic of healthy sexuality, and as the most appropriate and desirable outcome of sexual interactions (Potts, 2000), the ‘good-ness’ of orgasms is dependent on the context in which they are produced. Orgasms become troubling when they are on the ‘wrong’ bodies (i.e. children), in the ‘wrong’ context (i.e. during a rape), or untimely (i.e. ‘premature’ orgasms). While feminist analyses of the gendered construction of orgasm rightly caution against treating orgasm uncritically (Braun et al., 2003), offering ‘congratulations’ nevertheless serves to construct this young woman’s orgasm as a ‘good thing’. Congratulations concisely disrupt the dominant discourses permeating the online debate which position adolescent sexuality as ‘bad’ (as age inappropriate, indicative of male pressure, or dangerous) or indicative of a ‘bad’ person (stupid, naïve, or slutty). Offering congratulations and positioning the young women’s post as depicting ‘good news’ serves to make good the connection between young women and their embodied sexual pleasure.

Conclusion

In the context of feminist concern about the relative dearth of positive, pleasurable sexual experiences for young women (Holland et al., 1998), and dissatisfaction with the absence of a ‘discourse of erotics’ within sex education (Allen, 2004), the internet forum explored here may offer a welcome source of alternative sexuality education which engages explicitly with embodied pleasure. Yet the presence of ‘congratulations’ in response to the ‘news’ that a young woman has experienced an orgasm exposes a paradox for feminists. On the one hand, these congratulatory responses serve to celebrate an active, positive, embodied adolescent sexuality. In so doing, they have the potential to disrupt dominant discourses which position young female sexuality as risky or immoral and undermine young women’s sexual subjectivities (Allen, 2005; Fine, 1988). As such, sexuality educators should be encouraged to think about other ways of celebrating and congratulating young women on their experiences of sexual pleasure or their first orgasm (in much the same way as some celebrate menstruation in an attempt to alter negative cultural messages: Kissling, 1996). Paradoxically, this approach could reinforce the conventional and deeply problematic notion that orgasm is the ‘goal’ of sex (Potts, 2000). Similarly, celebrating the ‘accomplishment’ of orgasm may reiterate cultural discourse which position female orgasms as elusive, mysterious, problematic, or difficult to attain (Lavie-Ajayi and Joffe, 2009; Moran and Lee, 2011). Parallel data in which men congratulate each other on experiencing orgasm is hard to imagine since men’s orgasms are constructed (problematically) as easy and unproblematic (Nicolson and Burr, 2003) and as such are not typically newsworthy. Nonetheless, while talk about orgasms (and pleasure) remains absent from sexuality education, and while young people continue to value information from peers and information based on experience (Allen, 2001), the internet provides opportunities to engage in alternative dialogues about sexuality.