Single women & the pleasure gap

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Figure 1: Illustration of the Pleasure Gap.

Alessia Carrano

Student Number: 12207578

Sociology Master Thesis - Gender, Sexuality & Society

Faculty of Social & Behavioral Sciences, University of Amsterdam

First supervisor: Dr. M.D. Cottingham

Second supervisor: Dr. M.L. Janssen

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Summary

A lot has been said on the topic of gender equality in the past decades, from pay gap issues to political representation, but gender equality needs to take place in the bedroom as well as in the boardroom: should it be in a meeting or in between sheets, everyone is entitled to be empowered. However, there exists such a concept as the pleasure gap between genders, which can be understood as experiencing less sexual pleasure than one’s partner during sexual interactions, and previous research has demonstrated that this gap affects heterosexual women the most. Whilst the pleasure gap has mostly been studied quantitatively, with a focus on individuals in relationships, research has not yet focused on cis-hetero single women’s casual sexual experiences. This qualitative study focuses on the casual sexual encounters of women that identify as single, in order to answer the following question: how do women experience and explain this so-called pleasure gap during casual sex? For this purpose, I interviewed 15 women between the ages of (21 – 34) in Berlin in April 2019 about their sex lives.

Through the frameworks of ‘Doing Gender’ and ‘Sexual Scripting’, I examine the pleasure gap during casual sex and its consequences, and how it helps understanding gender and sexuality. The two theories belong within the theoretical umbrella of symbolic interactionism that focuses on “meaning, self, identity, and their relationships to behavior” (Longmore, 1998:51) and highlights micro-interactions among individuals. The first one is sexual script theory, coined by Gagnon and Simon (1973), that explains sexual behavior is both culturally acquired and dependent on the ways in which sexuality is sustained and organized by social structures. Sexual behavior is enacted by non-verbal communication, which focuses on the staging of interaction and the structuring of appearance. This apparent

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communication “includes both the presentation of self and organizing the stage of interaction” (Gekas & Libby, 1976:42). The second theory is ‘Doing Gender’, introduced by West and Zimmerman in 1987, and it suggests an ethno-methodological understanding of gender, in other words how people assign meaning to social life. They argue that gender is a product of social doing and it is portrayed through interactions. The two were combined to analyze the pleasure gap as a product of both gendered and sexual scripts.

The findings that emerged from the interviews were divided into three different sections. The first section describes how women experience a pleasure gap during casual sexual encounters. The second is a continuation of the first, as it answers the question of how they explain these experiences in their own words and hence with their biases. The third chapter draws consequences of the described experiences and explanations of the pleasure gap for single cis-hetero women during casual sex. The findings of the first section suggest that the participants experience sex as non-mutually enjoyable because the male partner they interact with is mostly focused on his own pleasure. In the second section, they explain this by stating that emotional sex is better sex -- they define emotional as involving intimacy and comfort -- which is why casual sex is not experienced as pleasurable for them. The sexual experience is also hindered or enhanced by negative or positive communication before, during or after the act. The final point made in this chapter revolved around shame as a consequence of undoing gender and unlearning the sexual scripts. The combination of the first and second section lead to the third section, which had not been anticipated prior to the data collection. This section suggests that un-pleasurable casual sexual experiences lead to not enjoying and challenging being single. The outcome of the pleasure gap during casual sex for the single women who took part in my study was that they would prefer casual affairs.

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Each had their own definition of a casual affair, but a consensus was to engage with a sexual partner that they see regularly.

Overall, this has been understood as a result of established gendered and sexual scripts that emphasize male pleasure rather than female pleasure in a heterosexual encounter. The findings have been related to the way in which doing gender applies to the cultural, interpersonal and intrapsychic level of sexual scripting. However, the results of this thesis have highlighted how the frameworks of doing gender and sexual scripting are too limited for a complete understanding of the pleasure gap during casual sex. These limitations are mainly due to the failure of acknowledging Hochschild's theory of emotion work (1983) and how fundamental it is to understand the behavior that the women in my study have proven to engage in during these sexual interactions. Including emotion work is essential to get a more comprehensive understanding of the pleasure gap during casual sex. Researching the pleasure gap is a crucial contribution to the reduction of gender inequality, as well as to understand other gender-based discriminations that take place in the social world, such as sexual violence.

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Acknowledgments

I would like to extend my gratitude towards Sofia, Aurora, Giulia, Martina, Greta, Chiara, Sara, Alice, Francesca, Lucia, Nicole, Elisa, Rebecca, Mia, and Camilla who agreed to let me interview them, without whom this research would not have been possible. I would like to thank Marci Cottingham for all the guidance, support and for helping me stay on track as well as Marie-Louise Janssen for accepting to be my second reader and for introducing me to sexuality research at the beginning of this program. Thank you to my peer and friend Elodie for being by my side. And finally, I would like to address a particular thanks to my family and my partner Alix, who remained a constant source of calm and support throughout.

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1. Introduction

“Most of the time they don’t ask If I came but if they do I just explain to them that it’s not them it’s me, I feel bad because they try so I reassure them.” - (Dalia, 28).

Statements like these made me wonder why some people experience sexual pleasure less than others. Conversations about sex with friends had me question why some are unable or have a hard time reaching orgasm. An example of a conversation would be with a female friend of mine who was telling me about her one-night-stand, saying that it was great but that she didn’t come and then added that it was normal for her because she never had orgasms when she was with a casual partner. In this thesis, I therefore chose to focus on cis-heterosexual women, in order to understand how they understand and explain the lack of sexual pleasure they experience during casual sexual encounters. During these conversations, I specifically noticed that the women I was speaking to were open about masturbation and had no issues having an orgasm on their own, but the moment they were engaging sexually with a male partner it was very difficult or almost impossible.

The concept of the “pleasure gap” has been used to illustrate the fact that women experience fewer orgasms than men during heterosexual sex, and has been used interchangeably with the “orgasm gap” (Frederick et al.,2018). Casual sex will be used mutually with one-night-stands and they imply a sexual relationship that is between two people who do not know each other well and do not have a romantic involvement (Farvid & Braun, 2013).

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Women who are not in a relationship and who engage in casual sexual encounters will be the focus of my research. Research has been centered on the social constructions of single women and their representation in popular media (Taylor, 2011). Budgeon (2015) speaks about the “problem” with single women regarding choice, accountability, and social change. Budgeon’s findings suggest that in a heteronormative framework, that challenges the dominant position of heterosexuality in society by deconstructing the norms that dictate “ways of organizing family, sexuality, and lifestyle” (Herz & Johansson, 2015:1010). Single women are disrupting the gender order. Moreover, women within hetero-norms tend to be framed as “sexually passive, experience less desire, are less easily pleasured than men, and value relational aspects of sex over physical aspects” (Muise, 2011:415). These characteristics seem to be incompatible with being single, as the physical aspect of sex is not deemed as important for women. In turn, this denies single women their own sexual desires.

I focus on casual sex because I believe it is a common characteristic of a single woman’s sex life, even though I acknowledge it is not exclusive to being single. I have certain themes in mind that could explain the pleasure gap from previous conversations and knowledge such as self-confidence, emotional boundaries, strict gender codes or sexual unawareness, but have kept an open mind and have let the women in this study explain their experiences in their own terms.

But first, I have conducted a literature review of the main themes that surround the topic of cis-hetero single women experiencing less pleasure than their male counterparts during casual sex: “the pleasure gap” and “casual sex”, to further define these concepts.

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1.1. The Pleasure Gap

The pleasure gap is one of the main concepts examined in this study. Quantitative research has demonstrated differences in orgasm frequency among gay, lesbian, bisexual, and heterosexual men and women, placing heterosexual women as a lesser priority, as they experience orgasms the least frequently (Frederick et al., 2018). Further quantitative research has suggested phallocentric imperatives or the inevitable vaginal-penile intercourse during sex as an explanation for the orgasm gap (Willis et al., 2018). Braun, Gavey and McPhillips (2003) highlight the problem with reciprocity in hetero sex, explaining that even if women experience orgasms they are still expected to engage in vaginal-penile penetration, in order to satisfy their partner. Salisbury and Fisher (2014) have put forward that the lack of female orgasm in a partnered context was mostly taken into consideration because of the negative impact this might have on the male partner’s ego, as opposed to being important for the well being of the female partner. The study finds that the female orgasm remains the responsibility of the male partner and therefore the female orgasm is imperative for male satisfaction. Potts (2000), has challenged the idea of sex as outcome-based and questioned the focus on the idea of orgasm itself. In other words, to justify sex as outcome-based, it builds on the idea that our sex life is a part of our identity and can be defined by the ability or not to have orgasms. I found limitations to this study as I wondered how it would be possible to measure the pleasure gap and therefore understand the different gendered experience with regards to sex. I decided to consider orgasms an important part of the research as I do not believe that sexual experiences should be outcome-based but I do think that they are indicative of inequality in terms of sexual experiences between men and women and should be considered as such. The orgasm gap will be implied as a part of the pleasure gap in this study.

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Building on the pleasure gap, I will introduce the term ‘sexual empowerment’ defined “as a subjective internal feeling of power and agency or an objective measure of power and control” (Peterson, 2010: 307). Gavey (2012) argues that sexual empowerment as an umbrella term is too large and simplistic to describe sexual experiences for women and girls. The idea that there is a complete separation between the social construction of female sexuality and the actual embodied experience has been challenged, which moves us away from essentialist and biological accounts of female sexuality (Holland, Ramazanoglu, Sharpe & Thomson, 1994). A study by McQueen (2009) puts forward the dichotomy between the body as an instrument and the body as an object, contributing to the literature on embodied sexual experiences for women. She explains the term ‘sexually schizophrenic society’ and describes the ways in which Western societies hold “sexuality to be both a source of dirt, disease, a denigration as well as a gateway to ecstasy, enlightenment, and emancipation. This conflict has been argued to be more acutely felt by women, needing to be both chaste and pure, as well as sexually available and attractive at the same time” (McQueen, 2009:96). McQueen’s understanding of a ‘sexually schizophrenic society’ combined with Peterson’s understanding of sexual empowerment among women could both enable understandings of the pleasure gap during casual sex for heterosexual women.

1.2. Casual Sex

The second important concept in this research is casual sex. Li and Kenrick’s (2006) qualitative study demonstrates that men are more likely to enter a ‘no commitment’ relationship in comparison to women. Moreover, Carroll et al. (1985)’s quantitative study argues for clear evidence of gender differences in motives for intercourse. Male motives more often include pleasure, fun, and physical reasons, whereas females' motives include

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heterosexual women to believe they need to be in a long-term relationship in order to be sexually satisfied. These social constructions contribute to the idea that women need an emotional connection to enjoy sex. Rubin’s “Thinking Sex” (1984) describes the hierarchy when it comes to socially accepted sexuality. In Rubin’s work, on one hand, the “charmed circle” represents the sex that is socially accepted, described as normal, heterosexual, monogamous, natural and in private. On the other hand, the “outer limits” describe sex that is socially considered as bad, abnormal, homosexual, promiscuous and non-procreative (Rubin, 1984). Farvid and Braun’s (2013) qualitative study puts forward that one-night-stands are not seen as a ‘natural’ act in heterosexual relationships. Moreover, they are undervalued as the ideal heterosexual relationship is monogamous and long-term (Farvid & Braun, 2013). They put forward a hierarchy of respectability that positions casual sex “outside the ‘charmed circle’ of normative heterosexuality” (Farvid & Braun, 2013:369). Socially, there is still a stigma surrounding one-night-stands and the lack of emotional involvement they imply. This study will be criticized for failing to acknowledge the gendered hierarchy, arguing the stigma around casual sex is worse for women than for men. Building on this stigma with regards to casual sex, postfeminist work has challenged the idea of sexual empowerment and the definition of female sexuality within neoliberalism (Gill, 2016). Gill challenges the neoliberal idea that the “solution to injustice is to work on the self rather than to work with others for social and political transformation” (Gill, 2016:617). I would argue that this is comparable to the pleasure gap for women during one-night-stands, discourses such as ‘you cannot expect others to know what to do when you do not know yourself’ make women responsible for this issue as opposed to challenging the structural barriers women face with regards to the understanding of their sexuality. Meenagh’s (2017) study, challenges empowerment within a postfeminist framework and the definition of female sexuality within neoliberalism. She highlights how female sexual empowerment can be put into practice as the objectification of

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the female body during one-night-stands. Finally, Fahs’ (2014) research puts forward the dichotomy between celebrations of sexual progress and regressive attacks on sexual empowerment for women highlighting the current limits to sex-positivity with regards to sexual satisfaction during one-night-stands (Fahs, 2014).

1.3. Aim of This Study and Research Question

The aim of this study is to understand why women who are comfortable with their sexuality and can self-pleasure are not able to reach orgasms and experience pleasure with their male counterparts. Much has been said about the pleasure gap and self-pleasure for women, and casual sex has been extensively tackled in the body of literature on sex research. The pleasure gap has been researched without a specific focus on casual sex and casual sex has been researched without specifically focusing on the lack of pleasure that women experience during these encounters. Therefore, the focus of this study is on single women and the pleasure gap that they experience when engaging in casual sex with male partners.

The question of pleasure for cis-hetero women still needs to be explored even though a lot of work has been done. In a post #metoo era where the societal issue of sexual violence is starting to receive the attention it deserves, non-pleasurable sex and nonconsensual sex describe experiences that are not entirely different. I believe it is important to combine the notion of pleasure with the notion of consent, simply because if it does not feel good then it is not right. There is still much taboo around female sexuality and discourses such as “the female orgasm is complicated” are still very present. The pleasure gap with a male partner during casual sex is relevant as it concerns women who chose to engage in casual sex yet they still experience less pleasure than their male partners. Sometimes this lack of pleasure

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Single women tend to not be the focus group of sex research due to the underlying assumption that their sex lives are not active. However, if they engage in casual sex, as this practice belongs outside the charmed circle of sexuality (Rubin, 1984) it bears the common understanding that casual sex is ‘bad sex’. This understanding is especially relevant for women due to the lack of emotions and intimacy involved. The pleasure gap has not yet been explored focusing specifically on single women and their sex lives. In order to contribute to the body of research on female sexuality and to tackle the present gap in the literature on single women and the sexual pleasure gap they experience during casual sexual encounters, this study will attempt to answer the question:

How do cis-hetero single women experience and explain the pleasure gap during casual sex?

This main question can be divided into three sub-questions:

• How do women experience the pleasure gap during casual sex?

• How do women explain the pleasure gap during casual sex?

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2. Theoretical Framework

This research is situated in the theoretical framework of symbolic interactionism that includes “sexual scripting” and “doing gender”. Together these concepts form the main theories that will overarch this research question.

2.1. Sexual Scripting

In order to answer this research question, I will firstly use ‘symbolic interactionism’ as a theoretical framework to understand the pleasure gap for cis-heterosexual women during one-night-stands. Symbolic interactionism focuses on “meaning, self, identity, and their relationships to behavior” (Longmore, 1998:51) and highlights the micro-interaction among individuals. Mead (1934) provided symbolic interactionism with its three main concepts: “mind, self, and society” (Longmore, 1998:51). Mead argued that the individual “creates and transforms his or her self as well as a society via the mind and the uniquely human ability to role-take” (Longmore, 1998:52). Building on the idea of role-taking, Goffman develops display where the primary motive of behavior is self-presentation. Goffman also conceptualizes scripts that refer to “normative clusters that specify the parameters for lines of action in given social contexts” (Longmore, 1998:51). Regarding sexual behavior, sexual scripts specify how to behave sexually (Gagnon & Simon, 1973).

Within this theoretical umbrella emerged the theory introduced by Gagnon and Simon (1973), called sexual script theory. According to Gagnon and Simon, sexual behavior is culturally acquired and dependent on the way in which sexuality is sustained and organized by social structures. Sexual behavior is enacted with non-verbal communication which

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communication “includes both the presentation of self and organizing the stage of interaction” (Gekas & Libby, 1976:42).

Sexual script theory operates at three different levels: the cultural, the interpersonal and the intrapsychic (Simon & Gagnon, 1986). The first corresponds to the macro sexual scripts which relate to gender roles within heterosexuality (Beres, 2014:77), the second is developed through “socialization and learning in particular circumstances” (Beres, 2014:77) and the third influences how “gender roles are produced at the individual level including sexual fantasies and desires” (Beres, 2014:77). This theory has challenged the way sex is researched and challenged the dominant biological model of sexuality.

Although Gagnon and Simon’s sexual script theory emphasizes the social construction of sexuality moving us away from essentialist understandings of sexual behavior, the theory does not directly focus on how these social constructions are gendered. For this reason, I have decided to include ‘Doing Gender’ as I will be focusing on cis-hetero-women specifically. Therefore, just focusing on the social construction of sexuality would not be sufficient to answer the research question.

2.2. Doing Gender

The theory ‘Doing Gender’ was introduced by West and Zimmerman in 1987 and suggests an ethno-methodological understanding of gender, in other words how people assign meaning to social life. Building on Goffman’s theory of ‘Gender Display’ (1976) within the framework of symbolic interactionism, they argue that gender is a product of social doing and it is portrayed through interactions. They make a clear distinction between sex which is assigned at birth as biological criteria, sex category which is the achieved placement as

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man/woman through gender displays, and gender which is the routine accomplishment in everyday interactions and the situated behaviors based on norms corresponding to the appropriate sex category. Doing gender entails laying claim to a specific sex category which is created to reinforce the essentialism of gender. For example, it is expected to behave in situated feminine ways in order to be perceived as a woman. People are held accountable for doing their gender appropriately. Doing gender takes place in any social situation as it is based on social interaction and it is learned through self-regulating processes and through the appropriation of the socially constructed gender ideals and identities. According to West and Zimmerman (1987) doing gender is unavoidable as the sex category is present in every interactional situation. This theory is useful for the analysis of gendered behavior and like sexual script theory focuses on learned scripts which influence people’s behavior.

In earlier work, West and Zimmerman (1987) explore the implications of the “processes of doing gender and the difficulty of separating this from the maintenance of heteronormativity”. Clark (2013:6) puts forward an argument made by Tolman (2012) suggesting that through “the naturalizing forces of compulsory heterosexuality the bodies of girls are policed and their desires silenced” (Clark, 2013:6). Ideally, both theories would be used simultaneously as not doing gender or sexuality in the right way challenges the social constructions of gender and sexuality (Clark, 2013:6). Moreover, per Jackson (2006) heterosexuality while exclusionary also governs the lives of those “included within the

boundaries” (Jackson, 2006:108). Additionally, according to Jackson (2006),

heteronormativity tells us little about “the ways in which couples practice, negotiate and potentially struggle over their mundane gendered and heterosexual routines” (Jackson, 2006:115). Whilst heteronormativity provides a macro sociological approach, the micro

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approaches of doing gender and sexual scripting have been deemed more adequate to understand and analyze the pleasure gap for single women.

2.3. Combining Sexual Scripting and Doing Gender

Combining ‘sexual scripting’ with ‘doing gender’ within a symbolic interactionist framework enables an understanding of how learned ‘scripts’ have been inscribed onto the gendered bodies of society’s individuals. Both sexual and gender scripts are influenced by similar directions, informed by cultural understandings of the masculine and feminine sex category. In other words, socialization which is part of one’s sexual script is initially learned in contexts related to one’s gender (Gagnon, 2004:68). Both theories allow an understanding of how sexual and gendered scripts influence the behavior of an individual. Therefore, it is possible through both theories to attempt to understand how and why cis-hetero women experience and explain the pleasure gap during casual sex. The two main focuses of this research: the pleasure gap and casual sex could straightforwardly be understood at all three levels of sexual script theory: cultural, interpersonal and intrapsychic. Doing gender operates at all levels and is also applicable to the concepts explored in this research.

The sexual pleasure gap and casual sex are gendered as they are experienced by women differently than they are by men (Frederick et al., 2018; Kraus, 2017; Li & Kenrick, 2006). The cultural level of sexual scripting enables an understanding of the orgasm gap in the ways female pleasure is understood socially in different contexts but also with regards to how it evolved historically. Arguably historical conceptions of female sexuality contribute to the existing pleasure gap today during one-night-stands between heterosexual cis-men and cis-women. For example, the 19th century introduced the ideas of the enlightenment into practice by the earliest sexologists, such as Krafft-Ebing and Freud and controlling the sexual

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behavior of women became a major social issue (Krafft-Ebbing, 1885; Freud, 1905). This means normative sexual standards were present and anything outside of these were looked upon as mental disorders or health issues. These norms are heterosexual coital sex that aims at procreation (Krafft-Ebbing, 1885; Freud, 1905). Historical and cultural understandings of female sexuality are to be considered when attempting to understand the issues encountered today.

In addition to cultural understandings of femininity, cultural understandings of masculinity enable an understanding of the cultural level of sexual and gendered scripts. According to Coles (2008:242), the meaning of masculinity in the lives of men is associated with “being biologically male and necessarily excluded women”. Therefore, it was necessary for men to “dichotomize male from female so as to separate masculinity from femininity.” (Coles, 2008:242). Drawing on Flood’s study on men, sex and homosociality, it is put forward that the way men interact with each other influences the way they behave sexually with women (Flood, 2008). Moreover, sexual promiscuity is socially accepted and valued because sexual activity is an important passage to masculine identity (Flood, 2008) this study demonstrates how although this research focuses specifically on sexual interactions due to the fact that they are heterosexual encounters, masculinity plays a role to understand the men that the women are interacting with. It enables an understanding of the masculine way of doing gender but also it fuels the cultural sexual scripts that men are following when engaging sexually with women.

The interpersonal level and intrapsychic level of sexual scripting allow an interpretation of the pleasure gap that takes place during casual sex as a consequence of the

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that to feel desire and pleasure entails not just a body that is physically able to feel, but “an embodied decoding of sensation (being caressed) and internal states (bodily signifiers of arousal) as sexually significant: the sources of arousal, passion or excitement (the recognition of a sexual possibility) derive from a complicated set of layered symbolic meanings” (Gagnon and Simon, 1974: 23). The reluctance of using condoms which although is not the focus of this research is an issue that may arise during casual sex. It will be used to illustrate how the cultural level influences the interpersonal and intrapsychic of sexual scripting. According to Flood (2003:359), “using condoms involves men learning to appreciate the different and sometimes less intense physical sensation”. Heterosexual men’s privileging of their sexual pleasure expresses the primacy of the penis and penis-in-vagina intercourse in constructions of male sexuality (Segal 1990, Fracher and Kimmel 1992).” (Flood, 2003:359). The sexual scripts which privilege male pleasure as a result of the dominant cultural scripts that influence and are influenced by the way each person is supposed to do their gender in everyday interactions including sexual ones enable an analysis of the reluctance to use condoms as well as the fact female sexual pleasure is undervalued in casual sexual interactions.

In order to specifically apply the cultural, interpersonal and intrapsychic level to this research, I would need to identify general trends and behaviors that define the scripts whilst keeping in mind that they are gendered. Instead of having these predefined I have let them emerge from the data and have understood what the scripts were once I interpreted the data provided by the participants themselves (Beres, 2014).

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3. Methodology

3.1. Data Collection

Qualitative methods have been used to answer the question: how do cis-hetero women experience the pleasure gap during casual sex? I have interviewed women to collect the data as I wanted to get in-depth accounts from the women I spoke to about their sexual experiences. I used semi-structured interviews to collect the data as I wanted to maintain a conversational flow rather than a question-answer structure, as I believed this would allow the interviewees to speak freely about what they wanted to share as opposed to being confined to closed-ended question (Oakley, 2016). I brought an interview guide as well as a grid to help me structure my interviews. The grid helped me ensure I situated the data they shared within a timeline that was a part of the structure I created. I did not ask them to provide the information in a timely linear manner but rather the grid helped me situate the data during the analysis. I have structured the interview guide in a way that the focus is on the single life of the interviewee. Starting from this point I divided the guide into three sections. The first zooms in on the start of their single life and their relationship to casual sex. I started by asking them to describe their first one-night-stand and build on from there. The second section is about their current sex life and focuses on the present. I started this section asking them to describe their most recent one-night-stand. The final section focuses on the future. I asked them about their ideal sex life as a single woman and if they consider orgasms important. Although this is not directly related to lived experiences I thought that when interviewing about sexuality, fantasy plays an important role and I got a glimpse at that

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share that does not fit within these three sections such as perhaps an experience that was not the first or the most recent one they had.

I expected that sharing such intimate experiences might generate both positive and negative feelings for the interviewees, therefore, I made it clear several times that it is entirely up to them what they choose to share during the interview. I said this at the start of the interview as well as in the consent form. As I am not trained to deal adequately with survivors of sexual violence, I went to the interviews with information about organizations that provide English support to survivors in Berlin. I printed out the different contacts before the interview and brought them with me so it was available in case it was needed. I did not want to push the participants to share anything that makes them feel uncomfortable. The support information about survivorship of sexual violence was necessary as one participant disclosed during an interview. I could share this information with her but found it difficult to maintain my position as a researcher as I felt the need to provide more emotional support. Several participants shared experiences where the question of consent between them and the partner was not negotiated properly but they did not ask for the support information even though I suggested it when I deemed the situation was appropriate.

I also confirmed to them that everything will be kept anonymous and none of the information that they share will be traced back to them. I did not identify them by name in any reports using information obtained from the interview and continue to ensure that their confidentiality as a participant in this study remains secure. Subsequent uses of records and data will continue to protect the anonymity of the individuals. Furthermore, I will delete any contact information after the research is complete. The consent form was presented to and signed by each person before the interview begun.

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I have conducted and transcribed 15 interviews with 15 different cis-hetero single women that live-in Berlin. The interviews lasted between 30 minutes and 1 hour and 30 minutes depending on their availability from a time perspective. I communicated with them before to make sure that we would meet at a time and place that suited them. As I recorded all interviews and the topic addressed is very intimate I stressed that a quiet place where they feel comfortable was the most suited. All participants were trustworthy as I did not have the impression that they were reluctant to share anything during the interview, the communication felt very fluid and open to me. Most of them preferred to invite me over to their place. Out of 15 interviews, only four took place outside of their homes, three of them took place in a quiet cafe and one of them took place in a very private meeting room at her office. I did not observe any relationship between how much they shared and where the interview took place. I ensured that we both felt comfortable even in the cafes and in the meeting room. As the topic is very intimate I attempted to create rapport by sharing personal stories of mine with regards to a three-year period of my life when I was single and engaged in casual sex. I realized that this helped create a safe space for the participants to openly share their feelings and experiences. I luckily did not experience any cancellations and all participants respected the scheduled meeting we had which I am very grateful as I could conduct all interviews between the 8th of April 2019 and the 24th of April 2019 thanks to their reliability. I was therefore done with the transcriptions by the 6th of May. I am also grateful that I did not face any technical difficulties with regards to the recording and the transcriptions.

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3.2. Sample

I have collected data in Berlin because that is where I have been living for the past years and decided that through the snowball effect it would be easier to recruit participants. This study focuses on cis-gender, heterosexual women between the ages of 20 - 35 that are single and live in Berlin. The interviews were collected in English and French as my level of German is not fluent enough to be able to conduct the interviews in German. Using snowball sampling (Coles, 2008) I had access to participants that have a similar socio-economic background to mine. I am part of three closed Facebook groups, the groups are closed because you need to request access to them and get approved in order to interact with the other members and share information. The first group is called “Berlin Feminists” that has 600 members, the second is called “Just for women - Berlin” and has 1,140 members. The third group is called “Les Berlineuses” and it has 6348 members that are all francophone women that live-in Berlin, in this group I posted in French. The final technique I used was to get in touch with ten female friends of mine in Berlin that are part of a group we created called “Women are talking”, they all have different identities, occupations and social networks to mine so I asked them to put me in touch with women they know that are between the ages of 20 - 35, that are cis-gender, heterosexual, single and comfortable doing the interview in English or French. I also included this information in the post I made on the Facebook groups. I was happily surprised to receive many messages from women asking to take part in this project. The moment I started receiving the messages I started organizing the information I got from them in an excel sheet that I called “participants tracking sheet” that I have password protected in order to safeguard their anonymity. I received approximately 38 potential participants that corresponded to the criteria I had mentioned previously. I would like to specify that except for one participant that I found through the personal women’s group I have no mutual contacts with any of the other ones. I was able to gather from all of

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them their age, their nationality, and their occupation before we met in person. I initially told most of them that I was in the recruiting process and that I would get in touch with them on the 19th of March 2019 to schedule an appointment for an in-person interview. I received about 20 requests from the francophone group, so had initially thought to focus on just francophone women living in Berlin. However, I decided to go for a mixed sample as it was too niche to just focus on French women in Berlin.

3.3. Participants

Of the 15 women, I interviewed that live-in Berlin, five women were from France, one from Spain, one from Portugal, one from the Netherlands, three from Germany, two from the UK, one from Austria and one from Greece. I gave them fake names in order to ensure their anonymity and their ages are in between brackets: Sofia (32), Aurora (28), Giulia (33), Martina (21), Greta (33), Chiara (28), Sara (24), Alice (25), Francesca (28), Lucia (26), Nicole (34), Elisa (28), Rebecca (27), Mia, (29) and Camilla (25). Ten interviews took place in English whilst five took place in French, with the participants from France, as it would be strange for both them and me to conduct the interview in English. As I was unable to speak fluently the mother tongue of the participants from the Netherlands, Germany, Greece, Austria, Spain, and Portugal, I made sure that they were comfortable enough to share their intimate stories in English. Luckily all of them were and we did not face any linguistic communication issues. All the women ranged between the ages of 20 to 35 and identified as cisgender heterosexual women. However, they varied in terms of how long they had been single for and the amount of time that they had been living in Berlin. These variations have influenced the data as they reported different experiences with dating in general and in Berlin specifically. Moreover, the fact that most of them were not from Berlin also meant that they

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provided elements of comparison between where they were local and their life in dating in Berlin.

Out of the 15 women, two are women of color and 13 are white. Their occupations include tour guide, teacher, flight attendant, cook, designer, photographer, learning specialist, curator, student (3), sales manager, advertisement specialist, naturopath and project manager.

3.4. Limitations of the Sample

In the recruitment process, I did not specify a minimum time that they had been single for. I think this would have facilitated the analysis if all of them had been single for at least 2 years as they would have had enough time to experience casual sex and not still been very focused on their previous long term partner which was the case for a few participants that had been single for only a few months. Moreover, I should have maybe reduced the age range as the participants are between the ages of 21 and 34 and during the analysis I realized it was perhaps too much of an age difference.

3.5. Data Analysis

The interviews were recorded with the voice recorder of my phone and transcribed with Microsoft Word. ATLAS.ti has been used to analyze the data. I used an inductive approach as I did not want to pre-identify any sexual scripts and see whether they applied to the data but rather the contrary. I had in mind before collecting the data to identify new scripts or patterns that would emerge from the interviews (Riessman, 2001). I used a narrative approach to analyze the data as I wanted to focus on the participants themselves and see how they tell their own story (Ezzy, 2000). Focusing on the self is what makes the narrative approach unique and this procedure is the most suitable to analyze intimate stories about one’s own sexual life. The question of temporality (Kleres, 2011) has been important

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for my analysis as I wanted to hear how the participants told their own story, therefore I chose to divide the interview guide into three sections: past, present, and future.

I coded the interviews after they had all been conducted and transcribed as I wanted to have an overall idea of all the data that was collected. Using Atlas.ti I created 67 codes in the first round for 458 quotations. I used three types of codes to codify my data: In vivo, value and descriptive codes. One of the In vivo code used was “casual affairs”. It can be categorized as In Vivo because it meets the definition given by Saldana (2013): a code that is directly taken from the data and can be applied to a wider excerpt signification (Saldana, 2013:3). “Casual affairs” came up 23 times in my data, mostly to describe casual sexual affairs that the women in my sample were engaging in. I considered this code relevant to my research question as will be explained in the third chapter of the findings.

An example of the value code I used is “emotional sex=good sex”. I used this code to codify parts of the data, which were descriptions of positive sexual encounters and experiences. I considered it a value code as these messages could be understood in many ways.

Amongst the descriptive codes I used were “he comes too fast” or “no foreplay straight for penetration”, these represent the direct descriptions of sexual encounters I got from the participants during the interviews. I created a code that represents the past which is “first ONS” this code was used to code the description of their first one-night-stand. The code “ideal sex life” represents the future and how they define their ideal sex lives as single women. I expected them to mention their sexual experiences when they were in a relationship

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partner”. I have tried to focus on just the descriptions of their single life even though all of them mentioned their most recent long term relationship and how that affected their current situation and state of mind.

After having grouped the codes into 8 different categories which were “approach to sex & dating”, “communication”, “external factors”, “out of circle sex”, “single life”, “focus on him and his behavior”, “negative sexual experience”, “positive sexual experience”. I became very confused as I realized the topic of self-pleasuring which was initially a focus of this thesis was not relevant to the data that I had. With regards to self-pleasuring all participants mentioned that they masturbated and felt pleasure every time so I changed my research question and divided it into three sub questions that were presented in the introduction. Once this change was made it became very easy to structure the codes under the three questions that I identified. I ended up using 6 codes for the first question which resulted in being the first chapter of the findings: “not mutual enjoyment”, “no foreplay straight for penetration”, “he comes too fast”, “no orgasm during penetration” and “sex ends post penetration”. For the second chapter I used: “emotional sex = good sex”, “communication before, during and after”, “shame about body” and “shame about sexual directness”. For the final chapter I used: “negative single life”, “sexless single life”, “romance ideals”, “casual affairs” and “ideal sex life as a single woman”. One of the difficulties that I encountered was to realize that I could not use all the data and that even if I found it all very interesting I had to accept to drop the data that was not relevant to the research question.

I have tried to not just focus on the similarities when coding, but also on the differences as people are all unique and I believe their experiences will contribute to the overall understanding of social life.

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4. Findings

4.1. No Orgasms at All

“I haven't had orgasms at all.” (Martina)

The main theme that came up to describe how women experience the pleasure gap during casual sex is that it is not mutual enjoyment for the two partners. This section will describe what happens during casual sex for the women in my sample and therefore how it is experienced by them. In order to answer the question of how women experience the pleasure gap during casual sex, quotes that were coded with the following five codes will be used: "not mutual enjoyment", “No foreplay straight for penetration”, "he comes too fast", “No orgasm during penetration” and “Sex ends post penetration”. These codes have been disclosed in an orderly manner as they expose a sexual script that I have identified from my participants to explain why the sex is not about mutual enjoyment for both parties.

It seems there is an order in which the sexual encounter takes place that paints a picture of why it is not pleasurable for the women in my sample. Firstly, they explain that there is no foreplay or very little foreplay and the male partner wants to start penetration as fast as possible. In this sense foreplay is understood as sexual practices that are not penetration such as kissing, the mutual touching of genitals as well as oral sex. Foreplay as a word has been used by the participants themselves to describe these sexual practices. This word has been contested in previous academic literature as it implies that these practices need to take place before penetration and therefore that post-penetration the sexual activity ends. More will be expanded on this whilst describing the code “sex ends post penetration”. Remaining within the order of how it was described by the participants it appears the male

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partner reaches climax, penetration ends and therefore all sexual activity ends. This also explains why the word foreplay is problematic as it implies that touching and oral sex should take place before penetration and not after which leaves the women in my sample with a less pleasurable experience than their male sexual partners. Although it has not been explicitly described as such, these codes appeared the most to describe un-pleasurable sex for the women in my sample.

4.1.1. Not mutual enjoyment.

I will start by explaining the code “not mutual enjoyment” and which quotes are assimilated to this code. Alice described how she felt about the sexual encounter:

“I just feel like it's very like just so they can come. It's really the goal is just their

pleasure basically” (Alice)

I thought this quote provides a general idea of how it seems that the result of the experience is not mutual enjoyment of both parties but rather solely the male partner’s pleasure is prioritized. This is how she describes how she feels during casual sexual encounters. According to another participant Camilla, it seems the fact that the experience cannot be described as mutual enjoyment also has something to do with being greedy and selfish as pleasure is something shared:

“They want to share the orgasm not to take it from you. They want to share. And this

is good. There are many guys I think, most of the guys they only care about themselves.” (Camilla).

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Camilla states that in her experience most guys prioritize themselves and their pleasure during the sexual act which also highlights that the pleasure is unilateral rather than shared. Another participant Chiara describes this unshared experience as “porn like sex” which she depicts as pounding sex:

“Well, I just remember that it was like really porn like, you know, that kind of

pounding sex where he it’s just it's good when it makes that snapping not snapping sound, but you know that bang noise” (Chiara).

According to Chiara porn like sex is also a reason why she could not come during sex, why she did not experience the pleasure as shared:

“And I mean, I watched porn sometimes, as well as a teenager. And I thought that was

normal. And I never came with him.” (Chiara).

I also created a code for this and it appeared 11 times in my data set. It seems that pornographic sex is a way to describe un-pleasurable sex for women according to my data set. As the way sex is depicted in porn influences both men and women’s behavior and contributes to the depiction of un-pleasurable sex. This is connected to the portrayal of female pleasure in mainstream porn (Rich, 1983). Although there is feminist debate around the pros and cons of pornography in terms of female sexual empowerment, in my study porn has been mentioned as negatively influencing their sexuality. The representation of female sexuality in mainstream porn could be linked to the cultural level of sexual script theory and how it arguably influences the interpersonal and intrapsychic as Chiara claims in her second

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quote where she states she had internalized the ‘porn like’ way of having sex, she normalized it.

4.1.2. No orgasm during penetration.

In addition to the participants overwhelmingly describing sex as not mutually enjoyable, it was not common for the women in my sample to reach orgasm during penetration during one-night-stands. Nicole’s quote is representative of this as the code “no orgasm during penetration” appeared 35 times in my data set.

“No, because normally, you know, I don't orgasm through penetration.” (Nicole).

However, there is a level of complexity when it comes to reaching orgasms during penetration as some of them still described feeling pleasure even if they could not come and two others stated that they could come during penetration but that it was not happening systematically. The fact that reaching orgasm during penetration is not straightforward for the women in my sample contributed overall to the picture of non-mutually enjoyable sex as they therefore engage in penetration because it belongs to the commonly integrated sexual script even if it is not necessarily pleasurable for them. Simply because penetrative sex is what is expected of a heterosexual sexual encounter.

Many studies have challenged the “coital imperative” understood as the importance and value on penetrative sex in western societies (Mcphillips, Braun, & Gavey, 2001). According to Jackson, mature heterosexuals do not have real sex unless it involves penis-vaginal penetration (Jackson, 1984:44). The focus on the “coital imperative” has also been combined with the notion of phallocentrism which has been understood as viewing the penis as a symbol of male dominance. In the context of sex, patriarchal values are enacted through

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the focus on the male orgasm and vaginal penile intercourse. Peterson and Muehlenhard (2007) have placed vaginal-penile intercourse atop the hierarchy of sexual behaviors. Willis, M. et.al (2018) have demonstrated in their study that phallocentric imperatives hinder the female orgasm. This has been confirmed by the women in my study. Arguably penetrative sex belongs to the cultural level of sexual script theory; this highlights that male sexual pleasure is prioritized in these scripts. For heterosexual individuals to do their gender and sex properly they should engage in penetrative sex which puts women at a disadvantage in terms of sexual pleasure. Nicole’s quote puts forward the issue with the cultural level of the sexual script and how it negatively affects women.

Participants have provided clear explanations on how this pleasure is not shared during the sexual encounter. Elisa recounted what happened and why she did not experience mutual pleasure:

“But then once penetration happened, it became clear like, okay, no, this is not going

anywhere it's not going to happen. Because maybe because the foreplay wasn't enough, or maybe because also the penetration, it really depends on how they penetrate and as well, yeah. Which oftentimes when it's like super fast, and you realize, okay, you are coming soon, which is why this has to go super fast now. And sometimes. Well, I do know, like we know, I guess as women the techniques of like, cooling the other person down and like calming them down. But then once they pass the certain, like leverage, I guess or level it's like, Okay, this is not happening to me tonight. And then well, what usually happens is that they are super satisfied, right? And you lie there and you're like…” (Elisa).

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Elisa’ quote combines all three codes as she mentions that the foreplay was nonexistent, that he came too fast and she tried to calm him down. I have connected this to a form of emotion management as per Hochschild's understanding which refers to the “active effort of individuals and groups to align felt and expressed emotions with interactional emotion norms (or feeling rules)—the constructed and situation-specific expectations for what and how to feel (Hochschild 1979, 1983)” (Cottingham, 2016: 453). By attempting to slow him down she is performing a form of emotion work as she is understanding how he feels and what he is doing whilst trying to control it. She then felt unsatisfied because the sexual encounter ended once the penetration ended because he came, by not acting upon this dissatisfaction she is also acting according to feeling rules (Hochschild, 1983). Emotion management can also be connected to an in vivo code from my data set which is “women are givers” which appeared 21 times. This code highlights how this form of emotion management is also gendered. Whilst the theory doing gender acknowledges the necessity to perform emotion work in order to do your gender properly (Pfeffer & La Rossa, 2010), it seems like sexual script theory fails to incorporate that to enact the different levels of the script, emotion work is unavoidable. Greta statement confirms this.

“You know, and I think that women are very connected to this a lot of times. We are

givers. Mostly, you kind of forget about yourself” (Greta).

4.1.3. No foreplay straight for penetration.

Alice echoes Elisa’s statement by providing an example where there is no foreplay and the partner expects penetration very fast.

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“Yeah I think the foreplay is just not involved. When your relationship or something

you might've had like some strange sense of foreplay throughout the day and you've been you've had this interaction with this person as you have when you meet someone so briefly and you just have the sexual encounter. It's really not like I feel like it's very transactional they just want to get you wet. Basically yeah they want to fuck you. It's like it's always been that it does completely depend on the guy. I think the people I've had like one-night-stands with. It's sometimes just very dependent on the man but it often they just want to come. Often times that you have to slow them down…”

(Alice).

She reiterates that foreplay was not involved and makes a comparison between being in a relationship and a one-night-stand by stating that the latter is transactional. She emphasizes the idea of slowing down the partner which I interpreted as the partner coming to fast.

Mia’s explanation combines all three codes as she speaks about the lack of foreplay, the fact he comes very fast and the point about sex ending once penetration is done because he comes:

“Yes sometimes when it’s one-night-stands the guy could invest himself a few more

minutes in oral sex or foreplay in general instead of just interrupting. Some guys they just touch you a few seconds and then straight for penetration and usually it’s done after and it doesn’t last very long” (Mia - translated from French).

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4.1.4. Sex ends post penetration.

Although with regards to sex ending post penetration there was a common consensus amongst the women in my sample that this was something negative as it hindered their ability to achieve climax. Nicole mentioned that she also understands that men do not want to continue once they come. She puts herself in their shoes and does not expect that from them as she would not want to give after reaching orgasm.

“Yeah, but also at the same time. If I come. I also think like, okay, cuddling time.

Yeah, you don't want anything. I can also imagine that like that, exhaustion and, like, satisfied feeling. So um, yeah. So, it would be nice, but at the same time, I'm not sure if I would have come if I would, like Okay, let's do 15-minute blow job here. I then also want to relax” (Nicole).

Nicole provides a form of justification for her sexual partner and in a way, understands why sex ends post penetration after the male partner comes. Continuing with participants who provided a form of justification for the lack of enjoyment, Camilla highlights:

“yes it happens also that he comes too fast. And then it's finished and I was surprised.

Then we tried it again, but probably the guys when I don't know, maybe when they are stressed or they're drunk or they didn't have sex for a long time. It happens.”

(Camilla).

In this case, she combines coming too fast as well as sex ends post penetration in order to illustrate how it was pleasureless. She also attempts to explain his behavior with the last sentence which I interpreted as a justification in a way of why the sexual encounter went this

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way. Following with Camilla’s justification of the male partner’s behavior, Chiara also does not put the responsibility on her partner:

“Yeah, sometimes I wish I could let it go more like also, you know, that's the that

pressure the men in return, so to speak, like I have to have an orgasm, but I get really frustrated when I can't. Also, although it might not be his fault, so to speak, because he's selfish or whatever. Yeah. Just because it didn't work out. Because sometimes when you don't know each other, so well, he could also come too soon. That just happens. It's okay. But I can't help not getting frustrated.” (Chiara).

Moreover, Sara states that the male partner wants penetration without engaging in foreplay however she also shows a form of understanding in the words she used:

“And like all guys, they go straight for the penetration, at least with the people that I

slept with. They want penetration and I understand it, but sometimes it's always good to have some foreplay” (Sara).

Sara, Chiara, Camilla and Nicole’s quote demonstrate that by understanding and empathizing with their partner they internalized the sexual script that prioritizes their partner’s pleasure. The effort that it takes to understand and internalize could be interpreted as performing emotion work (Hochschild, 1983) in order to comply with the situation specific feeling rules which is arguably a result of them doing their gender (West & Zimmerman, 1987).

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“With him it wasn’t great because he came very fast and then he started developing

this thing where he was afraid that I would get attached to him so he started being a bit cold and I just told him yeah let’s stop seeing each other because the sex is not great and you’re starting to act weird with me so yeah let’s stop.” (Sofia translated

from French).

She does not directly stop seeing him because the sex was not good but rather that in combination with his behavior it pushed her to stop sleeping with the partner in question. It is interesting to note that the interaction ended based on his behavior but not necessarily based on his sexual behavior. In this case she challenges both gender and sexual scripts but the fact that he was acting cold which could arguably be a result of him doing his gender properly by not showing too much emotion and care was the deal breaker for her (West & Zimmerman, 1987).

4.1.5. Post – penetration masturbation.

I would like to make one final point about what the women in my study experience during casual sex. It seems that post penetration masturbation could be a way to reduce the pleasure gap however this was only coded four times in my data set. Two participants reported touching themselves after penetration ended.

Alessia: And do would you feel comfortable touching yourself in front of your partner?

Martina: Yeah, I’ve done that before.

I think it is important to consider post-penetration masturbation as it will be expanded on in the next chapter when the women from my study explain why they believe the pleasure gap

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takes place. Moreover, as a sexual act it is not part of the sexual script according to sexual script theory therefore arguably performing this act could be going against commonly integrated understandings of how sex should take place.

In order to answer the question: how do the women experience the pleasure gap during casual sex? I have combined quotes from the five codes: "not mutual enjoyment", “No foreplay straight for penetration”, "he comes too fast", “No orgasm during penetration” and “Sex ends post penetration”. The quotes are from the participants Greta, Sofia, Sara, Chiara, Camilla, Nicole, Mia, Alice and Elisa. I have combined the quotes together in order to put forward a sexual script that has emerged from my data set. As the excerpts, I have chosen show, it seems that the sexual encounter is not about mutual enjoyment but rather it seems that the male partner has a more pleasurable experience. In order to describe their experience, the participants show that the partner is willing to engage in very little or no foreplay at all, he reaches orgasm too fast. This hinders the women’s pleasure as they are not able to come from penetration or at least not if it lasts so little time and is not done in a way that they enjoy. The sexual encounter is most likely to end once the man comes after penetration even if the woman does not which is problematic as there is an imbalance in terms of sexual pleasure. The cis-heterosexual women of my sample who identify as single have described their experiences of casual sex in this way and have enabled me to identify a script in which the pleasure of the female partner is hindered. The overall finding of this section suggests that casual sex is not mutually enjoyable for the women in my sample. The sexual script that emerges here includes elements of emotion work (Hochschild, 1983) on the part of women as a form of doing gender (West & Zimmerman, 1987), as well as negative representations of female pleasure in porn and the coital imperatives.

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4.2. Good Sex is Emotional and Communicative

“You have this emotional connection which really enhances the sexuality” (Alice).

According to the women in my sample, in order to experience pleasure during casual sex there needs to be a form of emotional connection between the two partners. This connection takes place if there is good communication which leads them to feel comfortable to receive and give what they need in order to be sexually satisfied. This section will focus on five codes: “emotional sex is good sex”, “communication before”, “communication during”, “communication after” and “shame about sexual directness”. These codes were overwhelmingly present in my data set.

4.2.1. Emotional sex.

The first part of this section will focus on the code which is "emotional sex= good sex", this code appeared 56 times in my data set. This code was the most frequently used one. Although none of the participants provided a clear definition of what they meant by emotional sex the quotes give an idea of why this emotional connection is important in order to experience pleasure.

The first quote by Martina explains how she feels about engaging in one-night-stands:

“I had ONS, yeah but I don't really enjoy them cuz I like to get like to get to know the