The Surprising Science Behind Why Women Moan During Sex

Why do so many women make noise during sex?

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I remember being young and feeling out of place as I navigated the world of sex. I fumbled around like a child who’d just been handed a violin and asked to play Mozart.

I think we all were. Puberty is a tough part of life. There’s a lot going on with our bodies and minds and we don’t quite know what to make of it. If it felt like you were a child living in an adult’s body, that’s because you were. I know it felt that way for me.

My young mind was opening up to a world of sexy, scary, and intimidating things as I navigated my way from boyhood to manhood. And one thing that always confused me was the way women moaned during sex.

It was the 90s and the sounds of sex were everywhere. And it was especially important that our culture, like other cultures, focused on the sounds that women make during sex.

Women moaned during sex in movies, they moaned during sex in pornos, their moans were described by friends and romance novels alike. I couldn’t tell if everyone was exaggerating how awesome sex was or if it was really just that awesome and I was missing out by being a child.

It felt like the kind of fraudulent exaggeration we see all over our culture in the way that lipstick is an embellishment of red, blood-filled, and perky lips; or the way that foundation is an exaggeration of smooth, blemish-free skin that nobody really has.

Sexual vocalizations seemed like the Instagram influencers of the sex world.

Culture and Sexual Vocalizations

If I asked you to close your eyes and imagine couples having sex, which party do you automatically assume is going to be the loudest?

I’ll let you answer that question.

Of course, the truth is a bit more nuanced than that. Some men are very vocal (and many women love this, by the way). Some women aren’t vocal at all. But on a whole, in every culture, whether you’re on the far eastern reaches of Asia, up north in Finland, or even down south in the rainforests of the Amazon, all over the globe, women are the louder sex when it comes to sex.

And it’s because of this universality that cultures place such a premium on emphasizing female sexual vocalizations.

Cue Meg Ryan’s epic performance from When Harry Met Sally where she had an orgasm in the restaurant sitting across from actor Billy Crystal, a moment that would basically go down in cinematic history.

As such, if we scan history, we’ll find that there have even been instruction manuals on how to properly moan during sex. The Kama Sutra instructs women on how to moan. In related news, sexual vocalizations have also been performative for a very long time.

It wouldn’t be until years and years later that I would discover something truly fascinating, that sexual vocalizations are actually built into our biology.

The Sounds of the Animal Kingdom

Humans aren’t the only ones with a loud, proud vocalizing female when sex takes place. Primatologist Meredith Small thinks she might have some of the answers to our questions about sound and sex.

A sample of 550 primate vocalizations was taken and the results became strikingly clear as they were analyzed.

Such vocal sounds aren’t made in any other situation a primate might find themselves in. They’re reserved specifically for sex.