Forced orgasm

What is a forced orgasm?

A forced orgasm is bringing on an orgasm that falls outside the receiver’s will: she can’t hold it back and can’t break it off. The word “forced” points at the orgasm, not at the consent. The scene itself is agreed in advance. In practice it usually happens with a vibrator and the hands tied down.

What a forced orgasm looks like in practice

Like a scene with two halves. The first is plain arousal: the receiver lies tied down, can’t push the stimulation away, and comes. The second is what it was really about, because the vibrator doesn’t leave. That’s where the experience tips, and where the limit turns out to be shorter than expected.

A typical run with a couple: wrists tied, vibrator on the clitoris, the agreement that the receiver doesn’t stop on her own, and a number named in advance. Three often turns out to be too many, and by a second session that number drops.

Why a forced orgasm tips over after the orgasm

Because the body reacts differently to the exact same touch right after an orgasm. In The Journal of Sexual Medicine, Paterson, Amsel and Binik had twenty-six women masturbate to orgasm and, in a second session, to just before it. With standardized pressure they measured how pleasant and how painful touch on the clitoral glans and the vaginal vestibule felt.

After a real orgasm the pleasure scores on the genitals were lower, and the pain threshold of the vaginal vestibule was lower too, than after the near-orgasm. Their conclusion: masturbation keeps the sense of pleasure steady but raises pain sensitivity. So going on after the orgasm means stimulating a body whose pain threshold has dropped. Not a matter of mindset.

Why people seek out a forced orgasm

For the experience of not being able to stop something. In almost everything in bed you have a say; here you have it in advance and not during the scene.

• For the one on the receiving end, the payoff is in losing the steering. There’s nothing left to direct, not even your own body, and that’s an unusual kind of rest.
• For the one doing it, it’s in the response: you see straight away what you’re doing.
• For a couple, it gives you information. Few scenes make it so clear so fast how someone signals that it’s enough.

A forced orgasm doesn’t fix any hesitation about sex, and with pain during sex or a sensitive vulva it’s a bad idea. Anyone who takes “more” as the goal ends up at pain instead of pleasure.

How people do it

In two forms. The short version stays at one orgasm plus a bit of going on, counted in seconds. The stretched-out version, called multiple forced orgasms or post-orgasm torture in the scene, counts orgasms and uses bondage the receiver really can’t get out of.

What separates the careful version from the sloppy one is the stop mechanism. Someone tied down and overstimulated doesn’t talk clearly anymore, so there’s a sign without words: an object that drops from the hand. See consent.

What a forced orgasm is not

“An orgasm proves someone wanted it.” The most dangerous misconception on this page. In their review in the Journal of Clinical Forensic Medicine, Levin and van Berlo concluded that non-consensual stimulation can lead to unwanted arousal and even to an orgasm, and that this proves no consent. A defense that leans on orgasm as proof of consent has, in their words, no validity at all.

“Forced means without consent.” No. The word describes the orgasm falling outside the receiver’s will, not the scene doing so. The agreement is made in advance, as with every form of CNC.

“It’s the same as edging.” Exactly the other way around: with edging the climax is delayed, here it’s imposed.

“Vibrators wear out your sensation.” There’s a number against that. Among 2,056 American women in The Journal of Sexual Medicine, Herbenick and colleagues found that 52.5 percent use a vibrator and that 71.5 percent never got genital complaints from it. So a good quarter did: reason to speak up about complaints.

What I see of it myself

I’m Victor, a gigolo, at home in BDSM for more than twenty-five years and trained as a psychotherapist. Orgasm control is part of what I do, and the forced orgasm is its most underrated piece.

It’s almost always about the number. Women come in with a count in their head, usually from a clip, and it’s almost never right: it’s about seconds after the first orgasm, not about tallies. The second thing is that stopping is harder than starting. Someone tied down says nothing anymore, so you read it off her face and her breathing. Anyone who can’t do that shouldn’t be running this scene.

What you can do yourself

• Agree on a sign that works without words. Put something in the hand that can be let go; speech is the first thing to fall away here.
• Work in seconds instead of counts. Ten seconds of going on is a scene; five orgasms is a contest.
• Stop at pain, even when nothing is said. After an orgasm the pain threshold on the vulva is measurably lower.
• Use lubricant and move the vibrator around; staying in one place turns overstimulation into chafing pain.
• Set up the bondage so you can release it in one move.
• Talk afterward about what happened. Memory and experience drift apart.

More about the forced orgasm

On this site the opposite move sits at edging, and the article on orgasm control, power and surrender explains how a say over the climax works.

Off this site, Paterson, Amsel and Binik were the only ones to measure the tip after the orgasm, and the review by Levin and van Berlo is required reading for anyone who thinks a body has an opinion.

Where this fits on this site

Orgasm control is on my profile as something I do, and a forced orgasm falls under it. How something like this is agreed in advance and where the brake sits is on the page about the BDSM date.

Sources

• Sexual arousal and orgasm in subjects who experience forced or non-consensual sexual stimulation. A review. Levin & van Berlo, Journal of Clinical Forensic Medicine 11(2), 82–88, 2004 (DOI 10.1016/j.jcfm.2003.10.008). Provides the conclusion that unsolicited or non-consensual sexual stimulation in women and men can lead to unwanted arousal and even to an orgasm, that producing arousal and orgasm does not mean someone consented to the stimulation, and that a defense built on genital arousal or orgasm as proof of consent has no intrinsic validity.
• Pleasure and Pain: The Effect of (Almost) Having an Orgasm on Genital and Nongenital Sensitivity. Paterson, Amsel & Binik, The Journal of Sexual Medicine 10(6), 1531–1544, 2013 (DOI 10.1111/jsm.12144). Twenty-six women masturbated in two sessions, to orgasm and to just before it, with standardized pressure stimulation on the clitoral glans, vaginal vestibule and forearm at three measurement points. Provides that the pleasure scores and the pain threshold of the vaginal vestibule were lower after a real orgasm than after the near-orgasm, and the conclusion that masturbation keeps the sense of pleasure steady but raises pain sensitivity.
• Prevalence and Characteristics of Vibrator Use by Women in the United States: Results from a Nationally Representative Study. Herbenick, Reece, Sanders, Dodge, Ghassemi & Fortenberry, The Journal of Sexual Medicine 6(7), 1857–1866, 2009 (DOI 10.1111/j.1743-6109.2009.01318.x). Nationally representative sample, 2,056 participants aged 18 to 60. Provides the usage rate of 52.5 percent (95 percent confidence interval 50.3 to 54.7) and the finding that 71.5 percent of the women never had genital complaints connected to vibrator use.
• Orgasm control. Wikipedia. A disambiguation page, not an article, and cited here only for what a disambiguation page does record: the description of orgasm control as an umbrella term for compelling, refusing, delaying or prolonging an orgasm, and the definition of forced orgasm as compelling an orgasm that falls outside the receiver’s voluntary control.

Related terms

• Edging. The opposite move, where the climax is delayed instead.
• Bondage. What you need to keep the hands away.
• Consent. Where the stop agreement comes from that makes this scene bearable.
• CNC. The kind of agreement the word “forced” fits into.
• D/s. The dynamic in which a say over the climax takes on meaning.
• Magic wand. The device most often reached for here, and why it’s a brand name.
• Orgasm control. The family a forced orgasm is the contrary form of: there the climax is compelled instead of delayed.
• Ruined orgasm. The opposite intervention: the orgasm does come, but the peak is taken out of it.
• Vibrator. The device almost always used here, with the prevalence figures.