Why Guys Get Turned on When You Orgasm

It’s not enough that men are already having more org@.$ms than women. To make matters worse, a new study published in the Journal of S3@.x:’ Research found — aside from deriving pleasure from their own org@.$ms, obviously — men also derive a specific sort of masculine pleasure from making female partners org@.$m. The researchers in the study, Sara Chadwick and Sari van Anders, refer to this incredibly predictable phenomenon as a “masculinity achievement.”

I’m not exactly sure what that means, but I imagine a “masculinity achievement” looks something like Super Mario punching a coin out of one of those floating boxes in the video game.

The study gathered 810 men to read a story where they had to imagine an “attractive woman” either did or did not org@.$m during S3@.x:’ with them. Each man was then asked to rate their S3@.x:’ual esteem and the extent to which they’d feel “masculine” after experiencing the scenario. The results are what you’d expect: Men felt more masculine and felt high self esteem when they imagined a woman org@.$med during S3@.x:’ with them.

“These results suggest that women’s org@.$ms do function — at least in part — as a masculinity achievement for men,” researchers wrote.

Let’s be clear — there’s nothing wrong with feeling good about making your partner feel good (in this case, org@.$ming). It’s nice to bring pleasure to your partner! But the researchers point out a S3@.x:’ist flaw in the masculinity boost thing.

“Despite increasing focus on women’s org@.$ms, research indicated that the increased attention to women’s org@.$ms may also serve men’s S3@.x:’uality, complicating conceptualizations of women’s org@.$ms as women-centric,” researchers wrote.

In a separate statement from Chadwick and van Anders, they explained why it’s a bad thing for men to gain masculinity points for bringing female partners to org@.$m. “One reason is that it might pressure some heteroS3@.x:’ual men to feel like they have to ‘give’ women org@.$ms, as if org@.$m is something men pulled out of a hat and presented to women,” they wrote. “This ties into cultural ideas of women as passive recipients of whatever men give them.”

They also mention another S3@.x:’ist org@.$m trope: women feeling pressured to fake org@.$ms in order to appease a male partner, or in their words, “to protect men’s feelings.” For women who have S3@.x:’ with male partners, the pressure to org@.$m is a relatable feeling. Hence all the faking that we know is going down in hetero bedrooms all over the country.

The researchers draw a fairly frightening conclusion from the research findings. When women’s org@.$ms begin to serve as a masculinity achievement for male partners, the org@.$ms cease to be about women’s liberation or S3@.x:’ual pleasure. They just become another opportunity for men to flex, or “shore up their sense of masculinity.”

“These men, therefore, were more likely to view women’s org@.$ms as a notch on the bedpost of their manliness,” Chadwick and van Anders wrote in the statement. They end their note with an encouragement for men to think of org@.$ms less as achievements to be unlocked, and truly view them for what they are: tiny little pleasure explosions that should be enjoyed — frequently — by female partners.