The first time I heard about blue balls, I was 14. Like most of my primary exposure to sexual education, this information was given to me by one of my similarly adolescent male friends and accepted with a mix of interest and amazement. The idea that dudes experienced actual, physical pain upon being denied a sexual release was astounding. As if not having an orgasm was an affliction, comparable to getting clocked in the bits. I remember feeling sorry for my buddies, whose balls were probably constantly being treated like a not-so-proverbial punching bag by the heavy petting habits of myself and my peers. And I felt thankful that no such affliction existed for us womenfolk.
As you may have guessed from my apparent obsession with sex, I was a bit of a late bloomer. It wasn’t ’til years later that I realized the notion of women escaping pain when missing out on an orgasm was a pipe dream. Let’s face facts here, people: women get blue balls, too. Just not in the balls.
Now, for the purpose of being a smarty-pants and not just regaling my readers with thinly veiled dick jokes, I did a little research. Here’s what I found out. “Blue balls” is a sweet alliterative term used to describe the painful sensation caused by vasocongestion upon the absence of an orgasm.
For those of you who haven’t taken HSD 460 with Charlotte Reading (and if you haven’t, take it — it was the best 500 bucks I ever spent), vasocongestion is the process by which sexual arousal occurs. In layman terms, it’s the blood rushing to your junk. Dudes get boners, dudettes get excitable clits and wet vaginas. Vasocongestion is basically the most fun reflex you’ve got.
That is, until this whole blue thing happens. If there’s no orgasm, the blood stays where it is instead of being released back into other parts of the body, and your junk takes longer to stop standing at attention — thus occurs what is often described as an “aching” sensation.
Columbia Health’s online ask-answer site Go Ask Alice described the female side to this occurrence as “blue vulva.” Although that’s totally accurate, it’s not quite as awesome sounding as blue balls, and therefore I will continue my quest for a cooler name. Blue clit? Lapis ladybits? Colbalt curtains? Sapphire sex-parts? The search continues.
What I’m trying to get at here is this: women may also get physically uncomfortable when orgasms don’t occur, and the world needs to hear about it. ’Cause let’s be serious here, folks: the male-to-female orgasm counter is not always balanced. That means that chicks are probably getting blue-whatever more often than their male counterparts (depending on your situation and sexual identity). It’s fucking uncomfortable, it’s frustrating and we haven’t even come up with a sweet-sounding name for it yet. Everything is horrible.
So here’s the gist, people: be nice to each other’s junk, whether you identify as male, female or any other identity on the spectrum. Orgasms for all! ’Cause wouldn’t we all rather come up with awesome alliterations for mind-blowing sex rather than names for crippled-junk syndromes?
