When I started dating girls about four years ago, my mom asked me if I was sure I didn’t want to be with a man. “Guys can do more than girls can, if you know what I mean,” she whispered, wearing a smile I’ve been actively trying to scrub from my memory ever since.
As traumatizing as it is having your mom tell you about her opinions on straight or gay sex when she’s never slept with a member of the opposite sex, I have to respectfully disagree with her. If anything, straight sex walked so sapphics, or women attracted to or partnered with women, regardless of orientation, could sprint, somersault and absolutely stick the landing.
In sleeping with both men and women, I learned pretty quickly that when you sleep with someone who has the same anatomy as you, it feels like you skip an entire tutorial level. There’s no “is that okay?” whispered into the void – no confusion about pacing or guessing.
The first time I slept with a woman, she touc hed me like she’d already read the instruction manual printed somewhere behind my ribs. Not because she was psychic, but because she’d spent her whole life navigating her own pleasure map. She didn’t need hints; she spoke the language.
Science backs this up. A 2024 study published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Sciencefound that the higher orgasm rates among lesbians stem partly from “sexual scripts,” which are the cultural expectations about what sex “should” look like. Straight women in the study reported lower expectations for clitoral stimulation and orgasm when their partner was a man, while lesbians and bisexual women with female partners expected and pursued more pleasure. The researchers argue this gap isn’t biological but social: different partner genders come with different scripts, which create different outcomes.
This aligns with what past research has shown. A 2013 set of studies, summarized in a 2023 Psychology Today article, found lesbian women reported orgasming in about 74% of sexual encounters, compared with around 62% of straight women and 58% of bisexual women. Those older studies also noted that sex between women often lasts longer (30-45 minutes on average) and includes more oral sex and more clitoral stimulation, which are the things that lead most women to orgasm, rather than penetration alone.
Taken together, the newer 2024 findings and the established research point to the same truth: women who sleep with women tend to engage in sex that prioritizes the acts most likely to produce pleasure, while heterosexual scripts often center the man’s orgasm as the natural endpoint.
Before I go any further, let me be clear: this is just my story, not a universal representation. Plenty of people have great sex with men, women, everyone and no one. But, in my experience, when I was dating men, there was always this quiet logic humming under the surface, like their orgasm was the natural endpoint. Mine was optional, a cameo if the plot allowed. Because of these sexual scripts, straight culture trains men to think sex is a race they win by crossing their own line.
I think sapphic sex isn’t built around a single act; it’s built around possibility. Hands that know what they’re doing, mouths that understand timing, toys that aren’t shame-coded or treated like competition, and eye contact that feels like someone is trying to unzip your soul. It’s intuitive, curious and collaborative.
Let me be clear: sapphic sex isn’t some enchanted land of eternal orgasms. We get awkward, we miss cues, we laugh in the middle of it and we get tired. Bodies don’t always cooperate.
Yet the truth remains: when women sleep with women, pleasure isn’t an afterthought. It’s not a prize you might win if the vibes align. It’s built in, baked in, expected and invited.
My mom thought men could “do more” because she believed sex was defined by what a penis can or can’t achieve. If only she knew how many things two women can do with hands, mouths, hips, toys, rhythm, trust and a ridiculous level of attentiveness. She thought sapphic sex would be limited. It isn’t. Sapphic sex can be expansive, generous, patient and electric.
Straight sex walked. My sapphic partners? They didn’t just fly. They also took me with them.
BedPost is a sex and relationship column that does not reflect the views of The Post.
