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I was sexually abused at a young age and had an orgasm." "…although I never stopped resisting I was horrified to find myself having a series of multiple orgasms…" "I thought I would never be able to tell – except here." "Reading your post made me feel like maybe I am not such a freak.

There have been very few studies on orgasm during rape, but the research so far shows numbers from 10% to over 50% having this experience. In my experience as a therapist, it has been somewhat less than half of the girls/women I've worked with. (For the record, I have worked with very few boys/men who reported this.)

Arousal and orgasm during rape happen. Probably much more often than we know. It is not a sign of guilt or pleasure. It in no way indicates consent. It is a sign that our bodies react, just as they do with a rapid heartbeat or an adrenaline rush. We react. And then we try to heal.

But how can this be? How can a victim's experience of rape, especially violent rape, include an orgasm? If you are a blogger on one website (which I refuse to honor with a link) the explanation is simple: "You've suddenly realized that actually, in spite of what you thought before it happened, in reality you wanted to be raped and you're... loving every minute of it... that fact alone makes 'rape' an act of consensual sex."

No. This is not the explanation. Rape and arousal can happen simultaneously, and one does not exclude the other. As disgusting as they are, that blogger's words illustrate a common error of conflating arousal and conscious intention. An orgasm, at least in popular understanding, represents a peak of sexual pleasure, a state of euphoria. In that perception, if someone is experiencing rape, shouldn't pleasure be absent? Shouldn't the body, you know, shut that whole thing down?

We really need a better understanding of human sexuality and human physiology. Just as Todd Akin (and hundreds of years of science) was so wrong in thinking that rape can't lead to pregnancy, I and many others were entirely wrong about arousal and climax during rape. Despite what many rapists would like to believe, arousal does not mean that an assault was enjoyable or that a victim was asking for it. So what does it mean?

Quite simply, our bodies respond to sex. And our bodies respond to fear. Our bodies respond. They do so uniquely and often entirely without our permission or intention. Orgasm during rape isn't an example of an expression of pleasure. It's an example of a physical response whether the mind's on board or not, like breathing, sweating, or an adrenaline rush. Therapists commonly use the analogy of tickling. While tickling can be pleasurable, when it is done against someone's wishes it can be very unpleasant experience. And during that unpleasant experience, amid calls to stop, the one being tickled will continue laughing. They just can't help it.

but the research so far shows numbers from 10% to over 50% having this experience. In my experience as a therapist, it has been somewhat less than half of the girls/women I've worked with.