Faking It: The Lies Women Tell About Sex—and the Truths They Reveal
Lux Alptraum, 2018
Why does a woman fake pleasure, make up a boyfriend or hide her pills? Journalist Lux Alptraum talked to many women and experts and reached an unexpected conclusion: lies about sex say a lot about the world around women, not about women themselves. The book shows which rules push women into lying and why the best remedy for it is not exposure but trust.
Who it is for
For anyone who wants to understand why telling the truth is so hard in intimacy, and for everyone who wants the people around them to feel safe telling it.
The question isn't whether women are trustworthy. The question is why women lie, and what those lies are trying to tell us.
The sign above the table
Not far from Lux Alptraum's home in New York is Katz's deli. Above one of its tables hangs a sign: this is where Meg Ryan faked an orgasm in "When Harry Met Sally". People still remember the scene, because it touches a subject that both excites and embarrasses: can you believe a woman's pleasure?
When she started the book, Alptraum was sure that the image of the lying woman had been invented by men to keep women away from power. But the deeper she dug, the more clearly she saw that women really do lie. They fake pleasure, fake innocence and tidy up their past.
They lie, she says, because it makes life easier, because it's safer and because no one believes the truth anyway. Above all, women are expected to do the impossible, and lying is often the only way to stay sane.
So Alptraum changes the question itself. She is interested not in whether women can be believed, but in why they lie and what those lies are trying to say. Ahead are seven such untruths, from the faked orgasm to the "no" that gets taken for flirting. Let's start with the most famous one.
The orgasm that became mandatory
Elisha started having sex with men before she had ever had an orgasm. She believed it would flare up by itself once she met the right person. It didn't. She couldn't explain to a partner what she needed, because she didn't know herself. Saying "that was nice, but I've had enough" never even occurred to her: an orgasm seemed a required part of sex. So Elisha faked one.
According to Alptraum, culture has blown the orgasm up into a firework that must go off every time. Ruby, one of the women the author talked to, didn't even notice her first orgasm, it was that quiet. Tessa doesn't have orgasms at all and made her peace with it long ago. What irritates her is partners who see it as a challenge and a puzzle rather than a chance for closeness.
Researchers who spoke in 2016 at a conference held by the British Psychological Society found a common thread in the different stories. A faked orgasm gives a woman at least some control over when sex ends. It's like politely closing the door without explaining why you're leaving.
Alptraum suggests being gentler with those who fake it. Sometimes it is simply a way to smooth over the gap between expectation and reality. When pleasure without an orgasm is considered normal, there is no reason to fake it.
About the author
Lux Alptraum is an American writer and producer from New York who has been writing about sex and relationships for many years. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, New York Magazine, Vice and Cosmopolitan.
All books by this author: Lux Alptraum
Terms from the book
- Ryan
- TED
- Freud
- Blank
- Chivers
- Harding
- Friedman
- Katz: Katz's Delicatessen, an old deli on Manhattan's Lower East Side, famous for its pastrami sandwiches. The famous scene in the film "When Harry Met Sally" was shot there.
- British Psychological Society: The professional body of psychologists in the United Kingdom, which holds scientific conferences and publishes journals.
- Gallop: Cindy Gallop, a former advertising executive and entrepreneur. After her TED talk in 2009 she founded MakeLoveNotPorn, a site about real rather than staged sex.
- Taormino: Tristan Taormino, an American sex educator and director of educational films. She has been giving lectures and workshops for students for many years.
- Kerner: Ian Kerner, an American sex counsellor and author of She Comes First, a popular guide for men published in 2004.
- Hite: Shere Hite, an American researcher of female sexuality. Her 1976 Hite Report is based on the answers of thousands of women.
- Shechter: Therese Shechter, an American director of a documentary about how society understands virginity.
- Vesalius: Andreas Vesalius, a sixteenth-century anatomist from Flanders and one of the founders of modern anatomy.
- Mpinja: Baze Mpinja, a journalist who worked for many years as a beauty editor at Glamour, Vibe Vixen and other magazines.
- Kaur: Harnaam Kaur, a British activist who campaigns against bullying and for the acceptance of every kind of appearance. Because of a hormonal condition she grows a beard.
- Hess: Amanda Hess, a New York Times journalist who writes about internet culture and has faced online harassment herself.
- Crista Anne: An American woman the author talked to. For many years she has made up stories about a husband and illnesses to get rid of pushy men.
- Roy: Debjani Roy, at the time deputy director of the Hollaback movement.
- Hollaback: An international grassroots movement that fights street harassment.
- Pepe Le Pew: An amorous skunk from Warner Bros. cartoons who stubbornly chases a cat even though she keeps running away from him.
- Vendetta: Bella Vendetta, a stripper from Massachusetts, one of the women the author talked to.
- reproductive coercion: A medical term: attempts to control a partner's decisions about contraception and pregnancy, for example by tampering with condoms or forbidding the pill.
- Brodsky: Alexandra Brodsky, an American feminist lawyer. In 2017 she published an article on secretly removing a condom during sex.
- Barrica: Andrea Barrica, founder of the sex education project O.School.
All terms
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