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Its only been a mystery because, as usual, men don't care. Lots of men are so arrogant they'd rather believe they know better than women about their own orgasms, than learn what women actually like. Men also get irrationally triggered at the fact women don't require a man to orgasm or even prefer a man not be involved, period. Many women don't even enjoy penetration, and certainly don't need it to get off.
Lots of men are so arrogant they'd rather believe they know better than women about their own orgasms
for example, men who believe just because they started taking estrogen or had their nethers surgically rearranged, that means they're having a "female orgasm"
The Hite Report on Male Sexuality, trade paper edition, is on one of our bookshelves; I don't know who put it there or when. (That bookshelf has been our unofficial leave-a-book / take-a-book shelf for all comers for some years now, so most of the books are of unknown or forgotten provenance.)
I didn't even realize there was a Female counterpart by this author—let alone that it came first and is far better known—which makes me feel a bit silly, even though I have the fairly compelling excuse of having been born long after they were written.
Hite talks coolly about the shocking revelation (at least to many men) that women had orgasms easily when they masturbated
I think this misdiagnoses the real issue, by making it seem like these things were big super-secret secrets kept safe from most men, forever hidden in the inner sanctum of Team Woman headquarters.
I would bet that this type of thing was less of a novel revelation, and more of a piece of knowledge that had already been dangled in front of most men's faces countless times, and of which they remained WILLFULLY ignorant—just paying no mind to Women's sexuality at all, even when it's (literally) spread out in front of them.
Imean like... how many husbands out there have seen their Wife pleasuring Herself hundreds or even thousands of times without ever self-penetrating with a toy, but STILL remain steadfast in their belief that penetration is the main event™ for Her too? Lots and lots, even though that takes an absolutely mind-blowing degree of long-term disregard for Her pleasure.
Idk, perhaps those dutiful wives of times past kept it secret that they masturbated to badly written romance novels?
(Modern women masturbating to Fifty Shades of Grey is a well known fact, I think)
But if so, then they did it because they knew their husband would have a mantrum if he realized that they don't need his dick at all.
Modern women masturbating to Fifty Shades of Grey is a well known fact, I think
Shades of grey in more than one way—the median age of readers of that book in 2011, when it first came out, was almost 60. (Embarrassingly enough, there was even a spike in STI cases among divorced boomers in 2011-12, as a fair number of them went YOLO and tried out a new type of sexual rl with new partners—and lots of them, being devoutly religious and/or the Women being past menopause, had no clue how to use "protection" and/or no motivation to do so.)
Considering the relatively young age of the author (E. L. James, who is only 60 right now as I write this), all those shades of literal gray in the readership are something to behold.
Buuuuuttt, the thing to remember about 50 Shades is that it started out as a fanfic of Twilight, whose authoress Stephenie Meyer (complete with Mormon-style misspelling of Her first name!) was the consummate stereotype Mormon goodgirl. So, 50 Shades ended up with all the inexperienced awkwardness and overall narrative incoherence that you might more normally associate with breathless fanfics that 12-year-olds who've never kissed a boy might write about, well, kissing boys (and occasionally progressing to hilariously weird sex scenes, as imagined by puberty-crazy Girls with no relevant experience to draw on), plus one more layer of fanfic-of-fanfic.
...and just as importantly, that was 2011—arguably the peak year for alt Girls who banged out 100,000 words a month on Wattpad, Livejournal, Archiveofourown, Spankingarchive and others—so most of the Girls and Women between, say, 15 and 40 with interests trending anywhere near BDSM were reading and writing somewhat heavier, more real lifey stuff (not necessarily to be confused with "heavy stuff"—just heavier than Twilight, which is one hell of a low bar), and would not possibly have enjoyed 50 Shades as anything other than self-unaware ironic cringe comedy.
...Which left EL James and 50 Shades with a fan base of mostly "older" (pretty much postmenopausal) Women, with some younger Evangelical or Mormon housewives thrown into the mix, plus a handful of middle-school Girls at the peak age for writing their own Twilight fanfic😅.
A Friend "of a certain age" described the main 50 Shades fandom—the Women whose median age was pushing sixty—as "the Female equivalent of your old-school guys who think 'porn' means Playboy centerfolds", which is genuinely one of the best, most pinpoint-accurate analogies I've ever had the pleasure of hearing.
they knew their husband would have a mantrum if he realized that they don't need his dick at all.
Imean I'd almost think he would feel relieved in a certain way—because that's the only male bodypart involved in sexual congress that might actually fail to perform to spec. Everything else is 100% reliable baha.
Of course, that entire thought process is based on an assumption that the #boy is hell-bent on pleasuring his Woman come hell or high water, so, um, yeah •____•
Well, yes, you would expect a rational man to be relieved that his dick isn't all that important, but what with the dick worshipping going on in general society ...
Granted, I don't watch porn, perhaps there's a lot of it where the man loses his erection, then has a lightbulb moment and proceeds to pleasure the woman with his tongue, but ...
But perhaps not.
I don't know about this. You have to remember the age. This is all very pre-mainstreaming of porn. There was a lot of shame and stigma circulating around female masturbation in the 1970s. It took Sheri Hite, Nancy Friday, Our Bodies /Ourselves to undo all that. I didn't even think about it until I was in my mid-20s and bought My Secret Garden. And, none of my partners have seen me masturbate bc I am having excellent sex WITH them. I'd much rather be having stellar sex with my partner than masturbating.
Apart from the fact that men are socialised to be entirely self centered, many women kept their sex lives a secret because they would have known women who were incarcerated in a psychiatric hospital, or remand home for wayward girls. They could be locked up for being too interested in sex. Or not interested enough. 'Female hysteria' wasn't dropped as a medical diagnosis until the 1980's. https://www.valmcbeath.com/victorian-era-england-1837-1901/victorian-era-lunatic-asylums/