Interview of Alyx Gorman by Freya Bennett
Despite strides toward gender equality in education, pay, and workplace rights, one frontier remains stubbornly unequal: the bedroom. In All Women Want, journalist Alyx Gorman delves into the “pleasure gap”—the stark disparity in sexual satisfaction between straight women and their male partners. With wit, candor, and insights from over 130 interviews, Gorman unpacks the cultural, societal, and personal barriers that keep women from experiencing the pleasure they deserve. Gorman shares what sparked her deep dive into this issue, the surprising revelations from her research, and why it’s time to rethink everything we’ve been told about sex.
The “pleasure gap” is a striking concept. What initially sparked your interest in investigating this issue, and did anything in your research surprise you the most?
I first learned about the pleasure/orgasm gap while editing a feature for my day job as lifestyle editor of Guardian Australia. The pull quote for that article, from an interview with Prof Alan McKee was: “Heterosexuality is essentially broken”. I had that thought living rent free in my head for years, further cemented by letters to our advice columnist and through my own reporting. Eventually, I realised there was a book in it – and yes, I did interview McKee for All Women Want.
What surprised me when I started digging into the issue further was just how linked our sexuality is with the rest of our lives. I think there’s this pervasive cultural assumption, which I was also guilty of, that sex should be separate from the rest of our lives. No matter how tired you feel, how stressed you are or your sense of self outside of sexuality. In reality, these things are all intimately connected.
Your book is based on over 130 interviews and field reports. Were there any particularly eye-opening or unexpected stories that stood out to you?
Some of the spiciest stories I heard didn’t even make it into the book. Buy me a drink and I’ll tell you about them. As for the unexpected, I was amazed by how much sex people have in cars. When you think about the logistics, it makes a lot of sense. Many people’s homes aren’t particularly sexy: you might have young kids and a bedroom door that doesn’t lock, or live in a sharehouse with paper-thin walls, you might live with your parents, or even your ex. In all these scenarios, a car starts to seem like a very viable alternative.
We often see progress in gender equality when it comes to education, pay, and workplace rights—why do you think the bedroom remains such a persistent frontier for inequality?
While we’ve seen progress on all these fronts, we’re still very far from gender equality, and these inequities – especially when it comes to free time and the mental load – definitely have an impact on sexual flourishing. There are other issues at play too, and most of them have to do with shame. Shame around talking about sex, shame about the way our bodies look, shame around having too little sex or too much of it. Given great communication and an ability to sink into your body and be present in the moment are pretty critical to having pleasurable sex, all of these forms of shame – which are the fault of our society, not individuals – share part of the blame.
What role do pop culture and media play in shaping our expectations around sex and pleasure? Do you think we’re moving in the right direction, or is there still a long way to go?
I think we’re moving in the right direction and we have a long way to go. There’s a very specific script for how straight sex should work, that we see play out in movies, TV shows, porn and the way we talk about sex in the media. It involves spontaneous, explosive passion, penetration and a speedy, sometimes simultaneous orgasm. Sex doesn’t actually work that way.
Now that there are intimacy coordinators on movie sets, I think pleasurable sex scenes are getting more realistic. The already-legendary carriage scene in season three of Bridgerton comes to mind. There’s also a greater emphasis on female pleasure in media at the moment. But the flipside of these positives is that since we’ve started to talk about sex so much more, some people now feel anxious about their sex lives – even if their sex lives are lovely.
You tackle this topic with humour and wit—how important was it for you to make these discussions feel accessible and engaging rather than purely academic or clinical?
Given I was writing a book about pleasure, my hope was to make it a pleasure to read. That meant not using big words when small ones would do, and trying to come up with helpful metaphors and illustrative examples for ideas that are scientific or cerebral. As for the humour – good sex should be fun, or even funny. If you start taking it too seriously, it might be harder to enjoy yourself.
What are some of the biggest myths or misconceptions about female pleasure that you hope this book will help dismantle?
For female pleasure specifically, I hope the book shatters the idea that some women “take too long” to start enjoying sex. As Betty Martin, who developed the Wheel of Consent told me, what if we start thinking that some men “take too short” instead? I also hope readers can learn to stop equating sex with penetration. Penetration can be a great part of sex, but it is very far from all of it.
I’d also like to dismantle a more general misconception that sex is mandatory, or that there’s one right way to do it. You being happy with your love life is the only thing that matters, whether you’re never having sex; or swinging from the ceiling with four different play partners.
If readers take away just one key message from All Women Want, what do you hope it would be?
To stop judging themselves, and others, by bullshit standards imposed on us by centuries of inequity and stigma, plus decades of commercial interests. These standards really don’t work for anyone, and we’ll all be better off if we throw them away and do our own thing instead – whatever our own thing may look like.
All Women Want is out now through Harper Collins.
