Since when is a Female Orgasm a bad thing?

I sat down a few minutes ago, browsing through the news on my home page, and caught an interesting article regarding a Dr. Leonore Tiefer, a sexologist at NYU, who is disagreeing with the pharmaceutical companies making/marketing a type of female Viagra.  I personally do not know enough about this issue to comment one way or the other. 

However, after I read this brief article, I went to an attached link which sent me to a place where Dr. Tiefer wrote another article regarding female orgasms.  Here, she makes a claim that female orgasms are (in my own paraphrase) unnatural.  Yes, the female body may be capable of having an orgasm, but an orgasm does not and should not be a goal or even something to look remotely forward to. 

Excuse me?

I had to take a few minutes to process this. 

From when I was a young girl, ever since I first learned what sex even was, I always heard/read/was told that a female orgasm is attainable, but do not depend upon it.  I accepted this train this thought as normal (yuck!).  And if we were to really think upon it, male-dominated cultural influences have only enforced this thought.  The belief that once a man orgasms the sex is over is unwarranted, unfair and plain old bullshit.  Too bad way too many men and women believe this.  Too bad this is the acceptable norm for almost all sexual relationships. 

Relationships can go up and down, and individuals do have real hang-ups regarding sex and orgasms.  Maybe its medical conditions, maybe psychological.  Maybe it's just the wrong partner or the wrong hand. 

Yes, I do know there are real issues regarding a womans' inability or difficulty in achieving that final peak.  But to say that more women go without than with?  This I have a hard time believing.  Is it just me? 

As an erotic romance author, I understand the importance of female orgasms in our stories.  Do our heroines always come?  No.  Sometimes we write it as the fault of a poor lover or because of an event in her past that is hampering her ability to peak.  This then becomes part of the storyline.  There are times, very rare, when we might write our heroine not attaining her end.  There is a reason why.  Depends on the occasion, but there are times when the simple intimacy of being with a lover overcomes the have-to-have-an-orgasm.  And we can be okay with this because this can happen to us in real life.  But to write our heroines as women who can never orgasm, well, our industry would bomb and we'd be blamed for the degradation of women as weak.  

By the same token, one can ask, do we unnecessarily set women up to fail when we write about explosive orgasms every time she makes love?  I don't think so.  People need to remember we write fiction.  That's fiction people.  Do we blame Stephen King for all the nightmares in the world?  Of course not.  We write about love.  Sexual love.  Any time our heroine comes, it is wrapped up with whom she comes, how she comes and why she comes (my, that's a lot of "come"). 

We, as women, do know (no doubt from our own experiences) that a female orgasm can be elusive.  We write about worlds, about lovers, about life where we can be in more control.  Where it is okay to have an orgasm every time we have sex and that it is absolutely plausible to have simultaneous orgasms with our lover(s).  

Can this be true?  Absolutely!  Does it happen every time?  Absolutely not ... but it could.  Think about it.  Empowering, isn't it.  Still sound like fantasy?  Maybe a smidgen.  But remember, in every lie there lies a little truth.  In every fantasy there lies a possibility of fact.  

Sex and orgasms are a human event, not a clinical one.  I feel sorry for the women who believe the way Leonore Tiefer do, that the female orgasm is something to be belittled.  We need to remember these women and pray that one day their lives can be rocked to the moon and back.