Cordelia is here with some sex education about sleep and sex.

Nocturnal Orgasms

“Nocturnal orgams” aka a wet dream doesn’t just happen to men. That’s right, ladies, it happens to us too! Alfred Kinsey was the on to discover this while researching female sexuality. A nocturnal orgasm is basically an orgasm that happens during REM sleep and causes ejaculation or vaginal wetness after an orgasm. Alfred Kinsey researched female sexuality and found that out of a sample size of 5,600 women (in the United States), roughly 37% of those women had a nocturnal orgasm by the age of forty-five. So while it’s still not as common as a male nocturnal emission, it does happen.

Furthermore, these women reported have three or four nocturnal orgasms per year and it was more common for older women to admit to this. Because this research was done nearly sixty years ago, I wonder if it was still because there was a heavy stigma about female sexuality back then.

More common than you think

There was another study done in 1986 that looked at female sexuality of just female college students (specifically undergrads and only 245) of them. They found the same statistics that 37% of these women had nocturnal orgasms, HOWEVER, Kinsey’s study looked at a sample of women of all ages which means that in his study, only 8% of the same aged females reported nocturnal orgasms.

The cool thing is, it does show that it’s actually MORE common for younger women to have them. (again, back to my question about whether they were just too ashamed to admit it in the older study.) While 20 year olds were being studied, they reported these orgasms between sixteen and twenty years old and while there wasn’t a true link between nocturnal orgasms and sex dreams, there was a link between woman with liberal attitudes toward sex and the frequency of these nocturnal orgasms. I.E. The more sexually satisfied and more open women were to sex, they were more likely to have a nocturnal orgasm. While these studies are older, they’re still pretty interesting and I’m curious to see what researchers would find in today’s society where women are much more sexually liberated.

Along with things that are not just for men – neither is “morning wood” – females have their own version of it where the clit actually becomes erect. This can actually happen up to five times during a deep REM sleep and this was proven during a REM sleep study done in 2005 by J. M. Siegel.

There was also another study done on dreaming in Hong Kong in 2012 that researched 670 college students (a majority of them females 66%) and based on this study, they found that stomach sleepers tend to have more sex related dreams. The theory is that it puts more pressure on the genital areas and that some how transfers to the dream. The study itself is actually quite long and if you’re interested, you should check out the in depth verison  (The study was done by C.K.C. Yu and it’s literally called Dreaming, the effect on sleep position on dream experiences.)

Not sure about you guys, but this information was all knew to me. As I said above, I would really love to see researchers focus on female nocturnal dreams in today’s society. I have a feeling they would find it happens way more frequently than they believed/found in the past.