title: Toy Story

text: Originally, "Toy Story" was going to feature "Tinny", the wind-up one-man band toy from the "Tin Toy" short film, along with "the dummy", a ventriloquist's dummy. While the film's premise was still about toys' desire to be played with by children, the rest of the film's script, which involved Tinny being left behind at a gas station, meeting up with the dummy, and having a series of adventures before finding their way into a kindergarten classroom where they can be played with every day, was quite different. Katzenberg was unhappy with the treatment drafted by Lasseter, Andrew Stanton, and Pete Docter, as the two character's motivations were too similar. Instead, he encouraged them to write it as a buddy film, giving the two main characters contrasting personalities, and having them only become friends after being forced to work together. Lasseter, Stanton, and Docter delivered a revised treatment in September 1991 that more closely resembles the final version of the film: Tinny replaces the ventriloquist dummy as a child's favorite toy, their bickering causes them to be left behind at a gas station, they almost catch up to the family at a pizza restaurant, they have to escape a kid that mutilates toys, and the movie ends with a chase scene as the two toys try to catch up to the family's moving van.


title: Toy Story

text: The script went through many changes before the final version of it. Lasseter decided Tinny was "too antiquated"; the character was first changed to a military action figure and was then given a space theme. Tinny's name changed to Lunar Larry, then Tempus from Morph, and eventually Buzz Lightyear (after astronaut Buzz Aldrin). Lightyear's design was modeled on the suits worn by Apollo astronauts as well as G.I. Joe action figures. Also, the green and purple color scheme on Lightyear's suit was inspired by Lasseter and his wife, Nancy, whose favorite colors are green and purple, respectively. Woody was inspired by a Casper the Friendly Ghost doll that Lasseter had when he was a child; he was a ventriloquist's dummy with a pull-string (hence the name "Woody"). This was until character designer Bud Luckey suggested that Woody could be changed to a cowboy ventriloquist dummy. Lasseter liked the contrast between the Western and the science fiction genres and the character immediately changed. Eventually, all of the ventriloquist dummy aspects of the character were deleted as the dummy looked "sneaky and mean". However they kept the name "Woody" to pay homage to the Western actor Woody Strode. The story department drew inspiration from films such as "Midnight Run" and "The Odd Couple", and Lasseter screened Hayao Miyazaki's "Castle in the Sky" for further influence.


title: Toy Story

text: Since "Toy Story"s script writers had little experience with feature films, they attended a seminar given by screenwriter Robert McKee. They were inspired by his guidance, based on Aristotle's "Poetics", that the main character in a story should be defined by how they react to the obstacles they face, and that it is those obstacles that make characters interesting. Disney also appointed the duo Joel Cohen and Alec Sokolow and, later, Joss Whedon to help develop the script. Whedon thought that while the script did not work, it had "a great structure". He added the character of Rex and sought a pivotal role for a Barbie doll; the latter transformed into Bo Peep as Mattel would not license the character. Whedon also re-visioned Buzz Lightyear from being a dim-witted but cheerful and self-aware character to an action figure who isn't aware that he's a toy—an epiphany that transformed the film. A brainstorming session with members of Disney Animation's creative team resulted in the addition of the three-eyed squeaky toy aliens.


title: Toy Story

text: Paul Newman, who subsequently accepted the role of Doc Hudson in another Pixar film, "Cars", which was released in 2006, was considered for the role of Woody. Robin Williams and Clint Eastwood were also considered for the role. Lasseter always wanted Tom Hanks to play the character of Woody. Lasseter claimed that Hanks "has the ability to take emotions and make them appealing. Even if the character, like the one in "A League of Their Own", is down-and-out and despicable." To gauge how an actor's voice might fit with a character, Lasseter borrowed a common Disney technique: animate a vocal monologue from a well-established actor to meld the actor's voice with the appearance or actions of the animated character. This early test footage, using Hanks' voice from "Turner & Hooch", convinced Hanks to sign on to the film.


title: Toy Story

text: Billy Crystal was approached to play Buzz, and was given his own monologue, utilizing dialogue from "When Harry Met Sally". However, he turned down the role, believing the film would be unsuccessful due to its animation. Crystal regretted this upon seeing the film; he subsequently accepted the role of Mike Wazowski in another Pixar film, "Monsters, Inc.", which was released in 2001. In addition to Crystal, Bill Murray, Chevy Chase and Jim Carrey, along with a number of other actors, including Jason Alexander, Dan Aykroyd, Matthew Broderick, Kevin Costner, Michael J. Fox, Richard Gere, David Hasselhoff, Michael Keaton (who later voiced Ken in "Toy Story 3"), Wayne Knight (who later voiced Al in "Toy Story 2"), Bill Paxton, Dennis Quaid, Kurt Russell, Adam Sandler and John Travolta, were also considered for the role of Buzz. Lasseter took the role to Tim Allen, who was appearing in Disney's "Home Improvement", and he accepted. Crystal later stated in an interview that he would not have been right as Buzz, and that Allen was "fantastic" in the role. Before Wallace Shawn and Jim Varney were cast as Rex and Slinky Dog, Rick Moranis and John Cleese were originally considered for the roles.


title: Toy Story

text: To cast Andy, Pixar held an open call for young male actors to bring a toy with them. Morris brought multiple toys, specifically 45 "X-Men" figures, contrary to the instructions of bringing just one, and Pixar re-acted to his dumping of the toys with laughter.


title: Toy Story

text: "Toy Story" was both Hanks's and Allen's first animated film, and they recorded their lines together to make their characters' chemistry and interactions realistic.


title: Toy Story

text: Every couple of weeks, Lasseter and his team showed Disney their latest storyboards or footage. Disney was impressed by Pixar's technical innovation, but less-so of the plot. Katzenberg discarded most of Pixar's script ideas, giving his own extensive notes. Katzenberg primarily wanted to add "more edginess" to the two main characters, as Disney wanted "Toy Story" to appeal to both children and adults, and they asked for adult references to be added to the film. The characters ended up being stripped of their charm, with Hanks, while recording Woody's dialogue for the story reels, complaining that the character had been made into a "real jerk". Pixar screened the first half of the film for Disney executives on November 19, 1993—an event they later dubbed the "Black Friday Incident". The results were disastrous, and Disney's head of feature animation, Peter Schneider, halted production. Katzenberg asked colleague Thomas Schumacher why the reels were bad, to which Schumacher answered, "Because it's not their movie anymore; it's completely not the movie that John set out to make."


title: Toy Story

text: Lasseter was embarrassed by the current state of the film, later recalling, "It was a story filled with the most unhappy, mean characters that I've ever seen." Katzenberg allowed him to take the script back to Pixar for rewrites, and the production crew shifted to television commercials while the head writers worked out a new script, being funded personally by Jobs until Disney resumed production. Although Lasseter attempted to keep morale high by remaining outwardly buoyant, the production shutdown was "a very scary time", recalled story department manager BZ Petroff. Schneider appealed directly to Eisner to cancel the project altogether. Stanton and the other story artists worked to quickly produce new script pages, with help from consultants such as Whedon, and the revisions were completed in two weeks as promised.


title: Toy Story

text: Pixar's script rewrites took three months, and saw Woody transformed from a tyrant to a wise leader. It also included a more adult-oriented staff meeting amongst the toys rather than the juvenile group discussion that had existed in earlier drafts. Buzz Lightyear's character was also changed "to make it more clear to the audience that he genuinely doesn't know he's a toy". Katzenberg and Schneider resumed production with the new script by February 1994, and the voice actors returned one month later to record their new lines. The crew grew from 24 people to 110, and now included 27 animators and 22 technical directors. In comparison, "The Lion King", released in 1994, required a budget of $45 million and a staff of 800. In the early budgeting process, Jobs was eager to produce the film as efficiently as possible, impressing Katzenberg with his focus on cost-cutting. However, the $17 million production budget was no longer going to be sufficient, and Jobs demanded more funds from Disney to compensate them for the time lost in rewrites based on Katzenberg's notes. Catmull was able to reach a compromise on a new budget, but the incident led Jobs to rethink their deal with Disney.


title: Toy Story

text: Recruiting animators for "Toy Story" was brisk; the magnet for talent was not mediocre pay but the allure of taking part in the first computer-animated feature. Lasseter said of the challenges of computer animation, "We had to make things look more organic. Every leaf and blade of grass had to be created. We had to give the world a sense of history. So the doors are banged up, the floors have scuffs." The film began with animated storyboards to guide the animators in developing the characters. 27 animators worked on the film, using 400 computer models to animate the characters. Each character was first either created out of clay or modeled from a computer-drawn diagram before reaching the computer-animated design. Once the animators had a model, its articulation and motion controls were coded; this allowed each character to move in a variety of ways, such as talking, walking, or jumping. Out of all of the characters, Woody was the most complex, as he required 723 motion controls, including 212 for his face and 58 for his mouth. The first piece of animation, a 30-second test, was delivered to Disney in June 1992, when the company requested a sample of what the film would look like. Lasseter wanted to impress Disney with several things in the test that could not be done in traditional, hand-drawn animation, such as Woody's yellow plaid shirt with red stripes, the reflections in Buzz's helmet and the decals on his spacesuit, or Venetian blind shadows falling across Andy's room.


title: Toy Story

text: There were eight teams that were responsible for different aspects of all of the shots. The art department was responsible for determining the overall color and lighting scheme. The layout department was responsible for determining the position of all elements of the shot, as well as programming the virtual camera's position and movements. The animation department created the movements of the characters, generally with one animator being assigned to animate an entire shot, but occasionally with each character having its own animator. The shading team used Pixar's RenderMan software to assign surface textures and reflectivity properties to objects. The lighting team placed global, spot, and flood lighting within the scenes. The "Render Farm" used Sun Microsystems computers, running around the clock, to produce the final frames of the film. The camera team recorded the finished frames, which had been rendered at a resolution of 1536 by 922, onto film stock. Finally, Skywalker Sound mixed sound effects, the musical score, and the dialogue to create the audio for the film.


title: Toy Story

text: In order to make the film feel as realistic as possible, the layout department, led by Craig Good, avoided the sweeping camera shots popular in computer animation at the time, and instead focused on emulating what would have been possible had the film been shot in live-action with real film cameras. The animation department, led by Rich Quade and Ash Brannon, used Pixar's Menv software to hand pose the characters at key frames based on videotape of the actors recording their lines, and let the software do the inbetweening. To sync the characters' mouths and facial expressions to the actors' recorded voices, animators spent a week per eight seconds of animation, as Lasseter felt that automatic lip syncing would not properly convey a character's emotions. The shading team, led by Tom Porter, used scans of real objects, as well as textures drawn by artists and created with procedural generation algorithms, to "dress" the objects in the film.


title: Toy Story

text: The film required 800,000 machine hours and 114,240 frames of animation in total, divided between 1,561 shots that totaled over 77 minutes. Pixar was able to render less than 30 seconds of the film per day.


title: Toy Story

text: Lasseter did not want to make "Toy Story" into a musical, as he felt that it would make the film feel less genuine. Whedon later agreed, saying "It would have been a really bad musical because it's a buddy movie. It's about people who won't admit what they want, much less sing about it. ... Buddy movies are about sublimating, punching an arm, 'I hate you.' It's not about open emotion." However, Disney preferred to make it a musical, as they had had much success with incorporating Broadway-style musical numbers into their animated films, and encouraged Pixar to do the same. As a compromise, although the characters would not sing, the movie would feature non-diegetic songs as background music. Randy Newman was hired, and composed three original songs for the film. The film's signature song "You've Got a Friend in Me", was written in one day.


title: Toy Story

text: On Newman, Lasseter said, "His songs are touching, witty, and satirical, and he would deliver the emotional underpinning for every scene." The soundtrack for "Toy Story" was produced by Walt Disney Records and was released on November 22, 1995, the week of the film's release.


title: Toy Story

text: Editors, including Lee Unkrich, worked on "Toy Story" up until the September 1995 deadline to deliver a final cut for scoring and sound design. According to Unkrich, a scene removed from the original final edit featured Sid torturing Buzz and Woody violently at his house; Unkrich decided to cut right into the scene where Sid is interrogating Woody because the film's creators thought the audience would love Buzz and Woody by that point. Another scene, in which Woody tried to get Buzz's attention when he was stuck in the box crate, was shortened because the creators felt it would lose the energy of the film. A test screening in July 1995 received encouraging responses from the audience, but the film was not rated as highly as had been hoped, leading to another last-minute round of edits. Eisner, who attended the screening, suggested that the final shot of the film should be of both Woody and Buzz, leading to the film's final shot of the two worried about the arrival of Andy's new puppy.


title: Toy Story

text: Crew members had difficulty analysing the film's quality due to footage being in scattered pieces. Some animators felt the film would be a significant disappointment commercially but felt animators and animation fans would find it interesting. Schneider had grown optimistic about the film as it neared completion, and he announced a United States release date of November, coinciding with Thanksgiving weekend and the start of the winter holiday season.


title: Toy Story

text: Sources indicate that Jobs lacked confidence in the film during its production, and had been exploring the possibility of selling Pixar to companies such as Hallmark Cards and Microsoft. However, as the film progressed, Jobs, like Schneider, became increasingly passionate about the film and the transformative nature of what Pixar might be able to accomplish. Eager for Pixar to have the funds necessary to negotiate with Disney as an equal partner, and optimistic about the impact the finished film would have, Jobs decided that he would schedule an initial public offering (IPO) of Pixar just a week after the film's November release.


title: Toy Story

text: Both Disney and Pixar held separate premiers for "Toy Story", with Disney holding theirs at their flagship El Capitan Theatre in Los Angeles on November 19, 1995, and Pixar holding theirs the following night at the Regency Center in San Francisco. According to David Price's 2008 book "The Pixar Touch", the film deeply resonated with audiences, with even the adults being noticeably moved by the film.


title: Toy Story

text: The theatrical release of the film was preceded by either the "Roger Rabbit" short "Roller Coaster Rabbit" or the early Pixar short "The Adventures of André and Wally B.". In addition to showing at the El Capitan, where tickets included admission to the "Totally Toy Story" funhouse that Disney had built in the Hollywood Masonic Temple next door, the film opened on 2,281 screens on the 22nd and later expanded to 2,574.


title: Toy Story

text: The film was also shown at the Berlin International Film Festival out of competition from February 15 to 26, 1996. Elsewhere, the film opened in March 1996.


title: Toy Story

text: Marketing for "Toy Story" included $20 million spent by Disney for advertising as well as advertisers such as Burger King, PepsiCo, Coca-Cola, and Payless ShoeSource paying $125 million in promotions for the film. Marketing consultant Al Ries reflected on the promotion: "This will be a killer deal. How can a kid, sitting through a one-and-a-half-hour movie with an army of recognizable toy characters, not want to own one?" Despite this, Disney Consumer Products was slow to see the potential of "Toy Story". When the Thanksgiving release date was announced in January 1995, many toy companies were accustomed to having eighteen months to two years of lead time and passed on the project. Disney shopped the film at the Toy Fair trade show in February 1995, where only the small Canadian company Thinkway Toys, was interested in licensing the toy rights for the "Toy Story" characters. Disney promoted the film by inserting its trailer into the home-video re-release of "Cinderella", showing a behind-the-scenes documentary on the Disney Channel, and incorporating the characters into a parade at the Disney-MGM Studios theme park in Florida. A teaser trailer for "Toy Story" was first shown on April 7, 1995, in the opening to A Goofy Movie.


title: Toy Story

text: It was screenwriter Joss Whedon's idea to incorporate Barbie as a character who could rescue Woody and Buzz in "Toy Story"s final act. The idea was dropped after Mattel objected and refused to license the toy. Producer Ralph Guggenheim claimed that Mattel did not allow the use of the toy as "They [Mattel] philosophically felt girls who play with Barbie dolls are projecting their personalities onto the doll. If you give the doll a voice and animate it, you're creating a persona for it that might not be every little girl's dream and desire." Hasbro likewise refused to license (mainly because Sid was going to blow one up, prompting the filmmakers to instead use a fictional toy, Combat Carl), but they did license Mr. Potato Head. The only toy in the film that was not in production was Slinky Dog, which had been discontinued since the 1970s. When designs for Slinky were sent to Betty James (Richard James's wife) she said that Pixar had improved the toy and that it was "cuter" than the original.


title: Toy Story

text: On October 2, 2009, "Toy Story" was re-released in Disney Digital 3-D. The film was also released with "Toy Story 2" as a double feature for a two-week run which was extended due to its success. In addition, the film's second sequel, "Toy Story 3", was also released in the 3-D format. Lasseter commented on the new 3-D re-release:


title: Toy Story

text: The "Toy Story" films and characters will always hold a very special place in our hearts and we're so excited to be bringing this landmark film back for audiences to enjoy in a whole new way thanks to the latest in 3-D technology. With "Toy Story 3" shaping up to be another great adventure for Buzz, Woody, and the gang from Andy's room, we thought it would be great to let audiences experience the first two films all over again and in a brand new way.


title: Toy Story

text: Translating the film into 3-D involved revisiting the original computer data and virtually placing a second camera into each scene, creating left eye and right eye views needed to achieve the perception of depth. Unique to computer animation, Lasseter referred to this process as "digital archaeology". The process took four months, as well as an additional six months for the two films to add the 3-D. The lead stereographer Bob Whitehill oversaw this process and sought to achieve an effect that affected the emotional storytelling of the film:


title: Toy Story

text: When I would look at the films as a whole, I would search for story reasons to use 3-D in different ways. In "Toy Story", for instance, when the toys were alone in their world, I wanted it to feel consistent with a safer world. And when they went out to the human world, that's when I really blew out the 3-D to make it feel dangerous and deep and overwhelming.


title: Toy Story

text: Unlike other countries, the United Kingdom received the films in 3-D as separate releases. "Toy Story" was released on October 2, 2009. "Toy Story 2" was instead released January 22, 2010. The re-release performed well at the box office, opening with $12,500,000 in its opening weekend, placing at the third position after "Zombieland" and "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs". The double feature grossed $30.7 million in its five-week release.


title: Toy Story

text: "Toy Story" was released by Walt Disney Home Video on VHS and LaserDisc in the United States and Canada on October 29, 1996, with no bonus material. Within the first few weeks of this release, VHS rentals and sales totaled $5.1 million, ranking "Toy Story" as the 1 video, beating out "Twister". Over 21.5 million VHS copies were sold during the first year. A deluxe edition widescreen LaserDisc 4-disc box set was released on December 18, 1996. This THX certified LaserDisc release features bonus material, such as the history and development of characters, storyboards and story reels, abandoned concepts and characters, outtakes, deleted animation and trailers. On January 11, 2000, the film was re-released on VHS, but this time as the first video to be part of the Walt Disney Gold Classic Collection with the bonus short film "Tin Toy". This release sold two million copies.


title: Toy Story

text: "Toy Story" was released for the first time on DVD on October 17, 2000, in a two-pack with its first sequel "Toy Story 2". The same day, a 3-disc "Ultimate Toy Box" set was released, featuring "Toy Story", "Toy Story 2", and the third disc of bonus materials. The twin-pack release was later released individually on March 20, 2001. The DVD two-pack, the Ultimate Toy Box set, the Gold Classic Collection VHS and DVD, and the original DVD were all put in the Disney Vault on May 1, 2003. On September 6, 2005, a 2-disc "10th Anniversary Edition" was released featuring much of the bonus material from the "Ultimate Toy Box", including a retrospective special with John Lasseter and a brand new DTS sound mix. This DVD went back in the Disney Vault on January 31, 2009, along with "Toy Story 2". The 10th Anniversary release was the last version of "Toy Story" to be released before being taken out of the Disney Vault lineup along with "Toy Story 2". Also on September 6, 2005, a UMD of "Toy Story" featuring some deleted scenes, a filmmakers' reflect, and a new "Legacy of Toy Story" was released for the Sony PlayStation Portable.


title: Toy Story

text: "Toy Story" was available for the first time on Blu-ray in a Special Edition Combo Pack that included two discs, the Blu-ray, and the DVD versions of the film. This combo-edition was released by Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment on March 23, 2010, along with its sequel. There was a DVD-only re-release on May 11, 2010. Another "Ultimate Toy Box", packaging the Combo Pack with those of both sequels, became available on November 2, 2010. On November 1, 2011, the first three "Toy Story" films were re-released all together, each as a DVD/Blu-ray/Blu-ray 3D/Digital Copy combo pack (four discs each for the first two films, and five for the third film). They were also released on Blu-ray 3D in a complete trilogy box set. The film had a re-release on 4K ULTRA HD Blu-ray on June 4, 2019.


title: Toy Story

text: Before the film's release, executive producer and Apple Inc. co-founder Steve Jobs stated "If "Toy Story" is a modest hit—say $75 million at the box office, we'll [Pixar and Disney] both break even. If it gets $100 million, we'll both make money. But if it's a real blockbuster and earns $200 million or so at the box office, we'll make good money, and Disney will make a lot of money." Upon its release on November 22, 1995, "Toy Story" managed to gross more than $350 million worldwide. Disney chairman Michael Eisner stated "I don't think either side thought "Toy Story" would turn out as well as it has. The technology is brilliant, the casting is inspired, and I think the story will touch a nerve. Believe me, when we first agreed to work together, we never thought their first movie would be our 1995 holiday feature, or that they could go public on the strength of it." The film's first five days of domestic release (on Thanksgiving weekend) earned it $39.1 million. Moreover, "Toy Story" earned a total of $158.6 million from ticket sales combined with the five-day Wednesday opening. It would go on to hold this record until "Independence Day" took it the next year. The film placed first in the weekend's box office with $29.1 million and maintained the number-one position at the domestic box office for the next two weekends. "Toy Story" went on to become the highest-grossing domestic film of 1995, beating "Batman Forever", "Apollo 13" (also starring Tom Hanks), "Pocahontas", "Casper", "Waterworld", and "GoldenEye". At the time of its release, it was the third-highest-grossing animated film of all time, after "The Lion King" (1994) and "Aladdin" (1992). "Toy Story" became the second-highest-grossing film of 1995, just $3 million behind "Die Hard with a Vengeance". When not considering inflation, "Toy Story" is number 96 on the list of the highest-grossing domestic films of all time. The film had gross receipts of $192.5 million in the U.S. and Canada and $181.8 million in international markets from its original 1995 release and two re-releases for a total of $374.4 million worldwide. At the time of its release, the film ranked as the 17th-highest-grossing film (unadjusted) domestically and the 21st-highest-grossing film worldwide.


title: Toy Story

text: "Toy Story" has an approval rating of based on professional reviews on the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, with an average rating of . Its critical consensus reads, "Entertaining as it is innovative, "Toy Story" reinvigorated animation while heralding the arrival of Pixar as a family-friendly force to be reckoned with." Metacritic (which uses a weighted average) assigned "Toy Story" a score of 95 out of 100 based on 26 critics, indicating "universal acclaim". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A" on an A+ to F scale.


title: Toy Story

text: Particular praise was offered for the film's 3D animation. Leonard Klady of "Variety" commended its "razzle-dazzle technique and unusual look" and said that "the camera loops and zooms in a dizzying fashion that fairly takes one's breath away." Roger Ebert of the "Chicago Sun-Times" compared the animation to Disney's "Who Framed Roger Rabbit", saying that "both movies take apart the universe of cinematic visuals and put it back together again, allowing us to see in a new way." Due to the film's creative animation, Richard Corliss of "TIME" claimed that it was "the year's most inventive comedy".


title: Toy Story

text: The voice cast was also praised by various critics. Susan Wloszczyna of "USA Today" approved of the selection of Tom Hanks and Tim Allen for the lead roles. Kenneth Turan of the "Los Angeles Times" stated that "Starting with Tom Hanks, who brings an invaluable heft and believability to Woody, "Toy Story" is one of the best voiced animated features in memory, with all the actors ... making their presences strongly felt."


title: Toy Story

text: Several critics also recognized the film's ability to appeal to various age groups. Owen Gleiberman of "Entertainment Weekly" wrote "It has the purity, the ecstatic freedom of imagination, that's the hallmark of the greatest children's films. It also has the kind of spring-loaded allusive prankishness that, at times, will tickle adults even more than it does kids."


title: Toy Story

text: In 1995, "Toy Story" was ranked eighth in "TIME"s list of the "Best 10 films of 1995". In 2011, "TIME" named it one of the "25 All-TIME Best Animated Films".


title: Toy Story

text: It also ranks at number 99 in "Empire" magazine's list of the "500 Greatest Films of All Time" and as the "highest-ranked animated movie".


title: Toy Story

text: In 2003, the Online Film Critics Society ranked the film as the greatest animated film of all time. In 2007, the Visual Effects Society named the film 22nd in its list of the "Top 50 Most Influential Visual Effects Films of All Time". The film is ranked 99th on the AFI's list of the "100 greatest American Films of All-Time". It was one of the only two animated films on that list, the other being "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" (1937). It was also the sixth best in the animation genre on AFI's 10 Top 10.


title: Toy Story

text: In more recent years, director Terry Gilliam has praised the film as "a work of genius. It got people to understand what toys are about. They're true to their own character. And that's just brilliant. It's got a shot that's always stuck with me when Buzz Lightyear discovers he's a toy. He's sitting on this landing at the top of the staircase and the camera pulls back and he's this tiny little figure. He was this guy with a massive ego two seconds before... and it's stunning. I'd put that as one of my top ten films, period."


title: Toy Story

text: The film won and was nominated for various other awards including a Kids' Choice Award, MTV Movie Award, and a British Academy Film Award, among others. John Lasseter received a Special Achievement Academy Award in 1996 "for the development and inspired application of techniques that have made possible the first feature-length computer-animated film". Additionally, the film was nominated for three Academy Awards, two to Randy Newman for Best Music—Original Song, for "You've Got a Friend in Me", and Best Music—Original Musical or Comedy Score. It was also nominated for Best Original Screenplay for the work by Joel Cohen, Pete Docter, John Lasseter, Joe Ranft, Alec Sokolow, Andrew Stanton and Joss Whedon, making it the first animated film to be nominated for an Academy Award writing category.


title: Toy Story

text: "Toy Story" won eight Annie Awards, including Best Animated Feature. Animator Pete Docter, director John Lasseter, musician Randy Newman, producers Bonnie Arnold and Ralph Guggenheim, production designer Ralph Eggleston, and writers Joel Cohen, Alec Sokolow, Andrew Stanton, and Joss Whedon all won awards for Best Individual Achievement in their respective fields for their work on the film. The film also won Best Individual Achievement in technical achievement.


title: Toy Story

text: "Toy Story" was nominated for two Golden Globe Awards, one for Best Motion Picture—Comedy or Musical, and one for Best Original Song—Motion Picture for Newman's "You've Got a Friend in Me". At both the Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards and the Kansas City Film Critics Circle Awards, the film won "Best Animated Film". "Toy Story" is also among the top ten in the BFI list of the 50 films you should see by the age of 14, and the highest-placed (at 99) animated film in "Empire" magazines list of "500 Greatest Movies of All Time". In 2005, "Toy Story", along with "Toy Story 2" was voted the fourth greatest cartoon in Channel 4's 100 Greatest Cartoons poll, behind "The Simpsons", "Tom and Jerry", and "South Park".


title: Toy Story

text: "Toy Story" had a large impact on the film industry with its innovative computer animation. After the film's debut, various industries were interested in the technology used for the film. Graphics chip makers desired to compute imagery similar to the film's animation for personal computers; game developers wanted to learn how to replicate the animation for video games; and robotics researchers were interested in building artificial intelligence into their machines that compared to the film's lifelike characters. Various authors have also compared the film to an interpretation of "Don Quixote" as well as humanism. In addition, "Toy Story" left an impact with its catchphrase "To Infinity and Beyond", sequels, and software, among others. In 2005, "Toy Story" was selected by the United States Library of Congress to be preserved in the National Film Registry for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".


title: Toy Story

text: Buzz Lightyear's line "To Infinity... and Beyond!" has been used not only on themed merchandise, but among philosophers and mathematical theorists as well. In 2008, during STS-124 astronauts took an action figure of Buzz Lightyear into space on Space Shuttle "Discovery" as part of an educational experience for students while stressing the catchphrase. The action figure was used for experiments in zero-g. It was reported in 2008 that a father and son had continually repeated the phrase to help them keep track of each other while treading water for 15 hours in the Atlantic Ocean. The phrase occurs in the lyrics of Beyoncé's 2008 song "Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)", during the bridge. In 2012, the late Capital STEEZ released a song titled "Infinity and Beyond" in reference to the phrase as part of his "AmeriKKKan Korruption" mixtape.


title: Toy Story

text: Disney has also recycled the phrase in homage to "Toy Story" at least twice. In the "blooper reel" shown during the credits of "A Bug's Life", Dave Foley says the line while in character as Flik, and Tim Allen himself repeated his famous line in "The Shaggy Dog", in a scene when the titular character jumps off a bridge onto a moving vehicle.


title: Toy Story

text: "Toy Story"s cast of characters forms the basis for the naming of the releases of the Debian computer operating system, from Debian 1.1 "Buzz", the first release with a codename, in 1996, to Debian 11 "Bullseye", the most-recently announced future release.


title: Toy Story

text: In 2013, Pixar designed a "Gromit Lightyear" sculpture based on the Aardman Animations character Gromit for Gromit Unleashed which sold for £65,000.


title: Toy Story

text: The sequel, titled "Toy Story 2", was released on November 24, 1999. In the film, Woody is stolen by a toy collector, leading Buzz and his friends to launch a rescue mission. Initially, "Toy Story 2" was going to be a direct-to-video release, with development beginning in 1996. However, after the cast from "Toy Story" returned and the story was considered to be better than that of a direct-to-video release, it was announced in 1998 that the sequel would see a theatrical release.


title: Toy Story

text: "Toy Story 3" was released on June 18, 2010. In the film, Andy's toys are accidentally donated to a day-care center as he prepares to leave for college.


title: Toy Story

text: "Toy Story 4" was released on June 21, 2019, with most of the main cast returning for the film. In the film, Woody, Buzz, and the rest of the gang get used to living with Bonnie, who creates a new toy named Forky, from recycled materials from school. As they go on a road trip with Bonnie, Woody is also reunited with Bo Peep, and must decide where his loyalties lie.


title: Toy Story

text: A spin-off film, "Lightyear", was released on June 17, 2022, with Chris Evans portraying the original Buzz Lightyear, upon whom the toy given to Andy in the first film was based.


title: Orgasm

text: Orgasm (from Greek , ; "excitement, swelling") or sexual climax is the sudden discharge of accumulated sexual excitement during the sexual response cycle, resulting in rhythmic, involuntary muscular contractions in the pelvic region characterized by sexual pleasure. Experienced by males and females, orgasms are controlled by the involuntary or autonomic nervous system. They are usually associated with involuntary actions, including muscular spasms in multiple areas of the body, a general euphoric sensation and, frequently, body movements and vocalizations. The period after orgasm (known as the refractory period) is typically a relaxing experience, attributed to the release of the neurohormones oxytocin and prolactin as well as endorphins (or "endogenous morphine").


title: Orgasm

text: Human orgasms usually result from physical sexual stimulation of the penis in males (typically accompanying ejaculation) and of the clitoris in females. Sexual stimulation can be by self-practice (masturbation) or with a sex partner (penetrative sex, non-penetrative sex, or other sexual activity).


title: Orgasm

text: The health effects surrounding the human orgasm are diverse. There are many physiological responses during sexual activity, including a relaxed state created by prolactin, as well as changes in the central nervous system such as a temporary decrease in the metabolic activity of large parts of the cerebral cortex while there is no change or increased metabolic activity in the limbic (i.e., "bordering") areas of the brain. There is also a wide range of sexual dysfunctions, such as anorgasmia. These effects affect cultural views of orgasm, such as the beliefs that orgasm and the frequency or consistency of it are either important or irrelevant for satisfaction in a sexual relationship, and theories about the biological and evolutionary functions of orgasm.


title: Orgasm

text: In a clinical context, orgasm is usually defined strictly by the muscular contractions involved during sexual activity, along with the characteristic patterns of change in heart rate, blood pressure, and often respiration rate and depth. This is categorized as the sudden discharge of accumulated sexual tension during the sexual response cycle, resulting in rhythmic muscular contractions in the pelvic region. However, definitions of orgasm vary and there is sentiment that consensus on how to consistently classify it is absent. At least twenty-six definitions of orgasm were listed in the journal "Clinical Psychology Review".


title: Orgasm

text: There is some debate whether certain types of sexual sensations should be accurately classified as orgasms, including female orgasms caused by G-spot stimulation alone, and the demonstration of extended or continuous orgasms lasting several minutes or even an hour. The question centers around the clinical definition of orgasm, but this way of viewing orgasm is merely physiological, while there are also psychological, endocrinological, and neurological definitions of orgasm. In these and similar cases, the sensations experienced are subjective and do not necessarily involve the involuntary contractions characteristic of orgasm. However, the sensations in both sexes are extremely pleasurable and are often felt throughout the body, causing a mental state that is often described as transcendental, and with vasocongestion and associated pleasure comparable to that of a full-contractionary orgasm. For example, modern findings support distinction between ejaculation and male orgasm. For this reason, there are views on both sides as to whether these can be accurately defined as orgasms.


title: Orgasm

text: Orgasms can be achieved during a variety of activities, including vaginal, anal or oral sex, non-penetrative sex or masturbation. They may also be achieved by the use of a sex toy, such as a sensual vibrator or an erotic electrostimulation. Achieving orgasm by stimulation of the nipples or other erogenous zones is rarer. Multiple orgasms are also possible, especially in women, but they are also uncommon. Multiple orgasms are orgasms that occur within a short period of one another.


title: Orgasm

text: In addition to physical stimulation, orgasm can be achieved from psychological arousal alone, such as during dreaming (nocturnal emission for males or females) or by forced orgasm. Orgasm by psychological stimulation alone was first reported among people who had spinal cord injury. Although sexual function and sexuality after spinal cord injury is very often impacted, this injury does not deprive one of sexual feelings such as sexual arousal and erotic desires.


title: Orgasm

text: Scientific literature focuses on the psychology of female orgasm significantly more than it does on the psychology of male orgasm, which "appears to reflect the assumption that female orgasm is psychologically more complex than male orgasm," but "the limited empirical evidence available suggests that male and female orgasm may bear more similarities than differences. In one controlled study by Vance and Wagner (1976), independent raters could not differentiate written descriptions of male versus female orgasm experiences".


title: Orgasm

text: In women, the most common way to achieve orgasm is by direct sexual stimulation of the clitoris (meaning consistent manual, oral, or other concentrated friction against the external parts of the clitoris). General statistics indicate that 70–80% of women require direct clitoral stimulation to achieve orgasm, although indirect clitoral stimulation (for example, via vaginal penetration) may also be sufficient. The Mayo Clinic stated, "Orgasms vary in intensity, and women vary in the frequency of their orgasms and the amount of stimulation necessary to trigger an orgasm." Clitoral orgasms are easier to achieve because the glans of the clitoris, or clitoris as a whole, has more than 8,000 sensory nerve endings, which is as many (or more in some cases) nerve endings as are present in the human penis or glans penis. As the clitoris is homologous to the penis, it is the equivalent in its capacity to receive sexual stimulation.


title: Orgasm

text: One misconception, particularly in older research publications, is that the vagina is completely insensitive. However, there are areas in the anterior vaginal wall and between the top junction of the labia minora and the urethra that are especially sensitive. With regard to specific density of nerve endings, while the area commonly described as the G-spot may produce an orgasm, and the urethral sponge, an area in which the G-spot may be found, runs along the "roof" of the vagina and can create pleasurable sensations when stimulated, intense sexual pleasure (including orgasm) from vaginal stimulation is occasional or otherwise absent because the vagina has significantly fewer nerve endings than the clitoris. The greatest concentration of vaginal nerve endings are at the lower third (near the entrance) of the vagina.


title: Orgasm

text: Sex educator Rebecca Chalker states that only one part of the clitoris, the urethral sponge, is in contact with the penis, fingers, or a dildo in the vagina. Hite and Chalker state that the tip of the clitoris and the inner lips, which are also very sensitive, are not receiving direct stimulation during penetrative intercourse. Because of this, some couples may engage in the woman on top position or the coital alignment technique to maximize clitoral stimulation. For some women, the clitoris is very sensitive after climax, making additional stimulation initially painful.


title: Orgasm

text: Masters and Johnson argued that all women are potentially multiply orgasmic, but that multiply orgasmic men are rare, and stated that "the female is capable of rapid return to orgasm immediately following an orgasmic experience, if re-stimulated before tensions have dropped below plateau phase response levels". Though generally reported that women do not experience a refractory period and thus can experience an additional orgasm, or multiple orgasms, soon after the first one, some sources state that both men and women experience a refractory period because women may also experience a period after orgasm in which further sexual stimulation does not produce excitement. After the initial orgasm, subsequent orgasms for women may be stronger or more pleasurable as the stimulation accumulates.


title: Orgasm

text: Discussions of female orgasm are complicated by orgasms in women typically being divided into two categories: clitoral orgasm and vaginal (or G-spot) orgasm. In 1973, Irving Singer theorized that there are three types of female orgasms; he categorized these as vulval, uterine, and blended, but because he was a philosopher, "these categories were generated from descriptions of orgasm in literature rather than laboratory studies". In 1982, Ladas, Whipple and Perry also proposed three categories: the tenting type (derived from clitoral stimulation), the A-frame type (derived from G-spot stimulation), and the blended type (derived from clitoral and G-spot stimulation). In 1999, Whipple and Komisaruk proposed cervix stimulation as being able to cause a fourth type of female orgasm.


title: Orgasm

text: Female orgasms by means other than clitoral or vaginal/G-spot stimulation are less prevalent in scientific literature and most scientists contend that no distinction should be made between "types" of female orgasm. This distinction began with Sigmund Freud, who postulated the concept of "vaginal orgasm" as separate from clitoral orgasm. In 1905, Freud stated that clitoral orgasms are purely an adolescent phenomenon and that upon reaching puberty, the proper response of mature women is a change-over to vaginal orgasms, meaning orgasms without any clitoral stimulation. While Freud provided no evidence for this basic assumption, the consequences of this theory were considerable. Many women felt inadequate when they could not achieve orgasm via vaginal intercourse alone, involving little or no clitoral stimulation, as Freud's theory made penile-vaginal intercourse the central component to women's sexual satisfaction.


title: Orgasm

text: The first major national surveys of sexual behavior were the Kinsey Reports. Alfred Kinsey was the first researcher to harshly criticize Freud's ideas about female sexuality and orgasm when, through his interviews with thousands of women, Kinsey found that most of the women he surveyed could not have vaginal orgasms. He "criticized Freud and other theorists for projecting male constructs of sexuality onto women" and "viewed the clitoris as the main center of sexual response" and the vagina as "relatively unimportant" for sexual satisfaction, relaying that "few women inserted fingers or objects into their vaginas when they masturbated". He "concluded that satisfaction from penile penetration [is] mainly psychological or perhaps the result of referred sensation".


title: Orgasm

text: Masters and Johnson's research into the female sexual response cycle, as well as Shere Hite's, generally supported Kinsey's findings about female orgasm. Masters and Johnson's research on the topic came at the time of the second-wave feminist movement, and inspired feminists such as Anne Koedt, author of "The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm", to speak about the "false distinction" made between clitoral and vaginal orgasms and women's biology not being properly analyzed.


title: Orgasm

text: Accounts that the vagina is capable of producing orgasms continue to be subject to debate because, in addition to the vagina's low concentration of nerve endings, reports of the G-spot's location are inconsistent—it appears to be nonexistent in some women and may be an extension of another structure, such as the Skene's gland or the clitoris, which is a part of the Skene's gland. In a January 2012 "The Journal of Sexual Medicine" review examining years of research into the existence of the G-spot, scholars stated that "[r]eports in the public media would lead one to believe the G-spot is a well-characterized entity capable of providing extreme sexual stimulation, yet this is far from the truth".


title: Orgasm

text: Possible explanations for the G-spot were examined by Masters and Johnson, who were the first researchers to determine that the clitoral structures surround and extend along and within the labia. In addition to observing that the majority of their female subjects could only have clitoral orgasms, they found that both clitoral and vaginal orgasms had the same stages of physical response. On this basis, they argued that clitoral stimulation is the source of both kinds of orgasms, reasoning that the clitoris is stimulated during penetration by friction against its hood; their notion that this provides the clitoris with sufficient sexual stimulation has been criticized by researchers such as Elisabeth Lloyd.


title: Orgasm

text: Australian urologist Helen O'Connell's 2005 research additionally indicates a connection between orgasms experienced vaginally and the clitoris, suggesting that clitoral tissue extends into the anterior wall of the vagina and that therefore clitoral and vaginal orgasms are of the same origin. Some studies, using ultrasound, have found physiological evidence of the G-spot in women who report having orgasms during vaginal intercourse, but O'Connell suggests that the clitoris's interconnected relationship with the vagina is the physiological explanation for the conjectured G-spot. Having used MRI technology which enabled her to note a direct relationship between the legs or roots of the clitoris and the erectile tissue of the "clitoral bulbs" and corpora, and the distal urethra and vagina, she stated that the vaginal wall is the clitoris; that lifting the skin off the vagina on the side walls reveals the bulbs of the clitoris—triangular, crescental masses of erectile tissue. O'Connell et al., who performed dissections on the female genitals of cadavers and used photography to map the structure of nerves in the clitoris, were already aware that the clitoris is more than just its glans and asserted in 1998 that there is more erectile tissue associated with the clitoris than is generally described in anatomical textbooks. They concluded that some females have more extensive clitoral tissues and nerves than others, especially having observed this in young cadavers as compared to elderly ones, and therefore whereas the majority of females can only achieve orgasm by direct stimulation of the external parts of the clitoris, the stimulation of the more generalized tissues of the clitoris via intercourse may be sufficient for others.


title: Orgasm

text: French researchers Odile Buisson and Pierre Foldès reported similar findings to that of O'Connell's. In 2008, they published the first complete 3D sonography of the stimulated clitoris, and republished it in 2009 with new research, demonstrating the ways in which erectile tissue of the clitoris engorges and surrounds the vagina, arguing that women may be able to achieve vaginal orgasm via stimulation of the G-spot because the highly innervated clitoris is pulled closely to the anterior wall of the vagina when the woman is sexually aroused and during vaginal penetration. They assert that since the front wall of the vagina is inextricably linked with the internal parts of the clitoris, stimulating the vagina without activating the clitoris may be next to impossible. In their 2009 published study, the "coronal planes during perineal contraction and finger penetration demonstrated a close relationship between the root of the clitoris and the anterior vaginal wall". Buisson and Foldès suggested "that the special sensitivity of the lower anterior vaginal wall could be explained by pressure and movement of clitoris's root during a vaginal penetration and subsequent perineal contraction".


title: Orgasm

text: Supporting a distinct G-spot is a study by Rutgers University, published 2011, which was the first to map the female genitals onto the sensory portion of the brain; brain scans showed that the brain registered distinct feelings between stimulating the clitoris, the cervix and the vaginal wall – where the G-spot is reported to be – when several women stimulated themselves in a functional magnetic resonance (fMRI) machine. "I think that the bulk of the evidence shows that the G-spot is not a particular thing," stated Barry Komisaruk, head of the research findings. "It's not like saying, 'What is the thyroid gland?' The G-spot is more of a thing like New York City is a thing. It's a region, it's a convergence of many different structures." Commenting on Komisaruk's research and other findings, Emmanuele Jannini, a professor of endocrinology at the University of Aquila in Italy, acknowledged a series of essays published in March 2012 in "The Journal of Sexual Medicine", which document evidence that vaginal and clitoral orgasms are separate phenomena that activate different areas of the brain and possibly suggest key psychological differences between women.


title: Orgasm

text: Regular difficulty reaching orgasm after ample sexual stimulation, known as anorgasmia, is significantly more common in women than in men (see below). In addition to sexual dysfunction being a cause for women's inability to reach orgasm, or the amount of time for sexual arousal needed to reach orgasm being variable and longer in women than in men, other factors include a lack of communication between sexual partners about what is needed for the woman to reach orgasm, feelings of sexual inadequacy in either partner, a focus on only penetration (vaginal or otherwise), and men generalizing women's trigger for orgasm based on their own sexual experiences with other women.


title: Orgasm

text: Scholars state "many couples are locked into the idea that orgasms should be achieved only through intercourse [vaginal sex]" and that "[e]ven the word "foreplay" suggests that any other form of sexual stimulation is merely preparation for the 'main event.'... ...Because women reach orgasm through intercourse less consistently than men, they are more likely than men to have faked an orgasm". Sex counselor Ian Kerner stated, "It's a myth that using the penis is the main way to pleasure a woman." He cites research concluding that women reach orgasm about 25% of the time with intercourse, compared with 81% of the time during oral sex (cunnilingus).


title: Orgasm

text: In the first large-scale empirical study worldwide to link specific practices with orgasm, reported in the "Journal of Sex Research" in 2006, demographic and sexual history variables were comparatively weakly associated with orgasm. Data was analyzed from the Australian Study of Health and Relationships, a national telephone survey of sexual behavior and attitudes and sexual health knowledge carried out in 2001–2002, with a representative sample of 19,307 Australians aged 16 to 59. Practices included "vaginal intercourse alone (12%), vaginal + manual stimulation of the man's and/or woman's genitals (49%), and vaginal intercourse + manual + oral (32%)" and the "[e]ncounters may also have included other practices. Men had an orgasm in 95% of encounters and women in 69%. Generally, the more practices engaged in, the higher a woman's chance of having an orgasm. Women were more likely to reach orgasm in encounters including cunnilingus".


title: Orgasm

text: Other studies suggest that women exposed to lower levels of prenatal androgens are more likely to experience orgasm during vaginal intercourse than other women.


title: Orgasm

text: Kinsey, in his 1953 book "Sexual Behavior in the Human Female", stated that exercise could bring about sexual pleasure, including orgasm. A review in 1990 on the sexual response itself as exercise, reviewed the literature and stated that the field was poorly researched; it also said that studies had found that aerobic or isotonic exercise that resembles sexual activity or sexual positions can induce sexual pleasure, including orgasm. A 2007 review of the relationship between pelvic floor dysfunction and sexual problems in men and women found that they are commonly linked and suggested that physical therapy strengthening the pelvic floor could help address the sexual problems but that it was not well studied enough to recommend. Starting in at least 2007, the term, "coregasm" was used in popular media to refer to exercise-induced orgasm or in academic parlance termed "exercise-induced sexual pleasure" or EISP, and an extensive discussion of the "yogasm" occurred in a 2011 "Daily Beast" posting. A paper published in 2012 presented results of an online survey of women who had experienced an orgasm or other sexual pleasure during exercise. The paper was widely discussed in popular media when it was published. The authors of the paper said that research on the relationship between exercise and sexual response was still lacking.


title: Orgasm

text: In men, the most common way of achieving orgasm is by physical sexual stimulation of the penis. This is usually accompanied by ejaculation, but it is possible, though also rare, for men to orgasm without ejaculation (known as a "dry orgasm"). Prepubescent boys have dry orgasms. Dry orgasms can also occur as a result of retrograde ejaculation, or hypogonadism. Men may also ejaculate without reaching orgasm, which is known as anorgasmic ejaculation. They may also achieve orgasm by stimulation of the prostate (see below).


title: Orgasm

text: The traditional view of male orgasm is that there are two stages: emission accompanying orgasm, almost instantly followed by a refractory period. The refractory period is the recovery phase after orgasm during which it is physiologically impossible for a man to have additional orgasms. In 1966, Masters and Johnson published pivotal research about the phases of sexual stimulation. Their work included women and men, and, unlike Alfred Kinsey in 1948 and 1953, tried to determine the physiological stages before and after orgasm.


title: Orgasm

text: Masters and Johnson argued that, in the first stage, "accessory organs contract and the male can feel the ejaculation coming; two to three seconds later the ejaculation occurs, which the man cannot constrain, delay, or in any way control" and that, in the second stage, "the male feels pleasurable contractions during ejaculation, reporting greater pleasure tied to a greater volume of ejaculate". They reported that, unlike females, "for the man the resolution phase includes a superimposed refractory period" and added that "many males below the age of 30, but relatively few thereafter, have the ability to ejaculate frequently and are subject to only very short refractory periods during the resolution phase". Masters and Johnson equated male orgasm and ejaculation and maintained the necessity for a refractory period between orgasms.


title: Orgasm

text: There has been little scientific study of multiple orgasm in men. Dunn and Trost defined male multiple orgasm as "two or more orgasms with or without ejaculation and without, or with only very limited, de-tumescence (loss of erection) during one and the same sexual encounter". Although, due to the refractory period, it is rare for men to achieve multiple orgasms, some men have reported having multiple, consecutive orgasms, particularly without ejaculation. There may not be an obvious refractory period, and the final orgasm may cause a refractory period. Multiple orgasms are more commonly reported in very young men than in older men. In younger men, the refractory period may only last a few minutes, but last more than an hour in older men.


title: Orgasm

text: An increased infusion of the hormone oxytocin during ejaculation is believed to be chiefly responsible for the refractory period, and the amount by which oxytocin is increased may affect the length of each refractory period. A scientific study to successfully document natural, fully ejaculatory, multiple orgasms in an adult man was conducted at Rutgers University in 1995. During the study, six fully ejaculatory orgasms were experienced in 36 minutes, with no apparent refractory period.


title: Orgasm

text: In both sexes, pleasure can be derived from the nerve endings around the anus and the anus itself, such as during anal sex. It is possible for men to achieve orgasms through prostate stimulation alone. The prostate is the male homologue (variation) to the Skene's glands (which are believed to be connected to the female G-spot), and can be sexually stimulated through anal sex, perineum massage or via a vibrator. Much of the available information about prostate-induced orgasms comes from anecdotal reports by individuals, and the exact mechanisms by which such orgasms are produced are unclear; some sources suggest this occurs via stimulation of nerves in the prostatic plexus surrounding the organ, others suggest it is via nerves within the prostate itself, and others say changes in the brain (neuroplasticity) are required to derive pleasure from prostate stimulation. Regardless, prostate-induced orgasms are often reported to be intensely pleasurable. Prostate stimulation can produce a deeper orgasm, described by some men as more widespread and intense, longer-lasting, and allowing for greater feelings of ecstasy than orgasm elicited by penile stimulation only. The practice of pegging (consisting of a woman penetrating a man's anus with a strap-on dildo) stimulates the prostate. It is typical for a man to not reach orgasm as a receptive partner solely from anal sex.


title: Orgasm

text: For women, penile-anal penetration may also indirectly stimulate the clitoris by the shared sensory nerves, especially the pudendal nerve, which gives off the inferior anal nerves and divides into the perineal nerve and the dorsal nerve of the clitoris. The G-spot area, which is considered to be interconnected with the clitoris, may also be indirectly stimulated during anal sex. Although the anus has many nerve endings, their purpose is not specifically for inducing orgasm, and so a woman achieving orgasm solely by anal stimulation is rare. Direct stimulation of the clitoris, a G-spot area, or both, while engaging in anal sex can help some women enjoy the activity and reach orgasm during it.


title: Orgasm

text: The aforementioned orgasms are sometimes referred to as "anal orgasms," but sexologists and sex educators generally believe that orgasms derived from anal penetration are the result of the relationship between the nerves of the anus, rectum, clitoris or G-spot area in women, and the anus's proximity to the prostate and relationship between the anal and rectal nerves in men, rather than orgasms originating from the anus itself.


title: Orgasm

text: For women, stimulation of the breast area during sexual intercourse or foreplay, or solely having the breasts fondled, can create mild to intense orgasms, sometimes referred to as a "breast orgasm" or "nipple orgasm". Few women report experiencing orgasm from nipple stimulation. Before Komisaruk et al.'s functional magnetic resonance (fMRI) research on nipple stimulation in 2011, reports of women achieving orgasm from nipple stimulation relied solely on anecdotal evidence. Komisaruk's study was the first to map the female genitals onto the sensory portion of the brain; it indicates that sensation from the nipples travels to the same part of the brain as sensations from the vagina, clitoris and cervix, and that these reported orgasms are genital orgasms caused by nipple stimulation, and may be directly linked to the genital sensory cortex ("the genital area of the brain").


title: Orgasm

text: An orgasm is believed to occur in part because of the hormone oxytocin, which is produced in the body during sexual excitement and arousal and labor. It has also been shown that oxytocin is produced when a man or woman's nipples are stimulated and become erect. Komisaruk also relayed, however, that preliminary data suggests that nipple nerves may directly link up with the relevant parts of the brain without uterine mediation, acknowledging the men in his study who showed the same pattern of nipple stimulation activating genital brain regions.


title: Orgasm

text: Masters and Johnson were some of the first researchers to study the sexual response cycle in the early 1960s, based on the observation of 382 women and 312 men. They described a cycle that begins with excitement as blood rushes into the genitals, then reaches a plateau during which they are fully aroused, which leads to orgasm, and finally resolution, in which the blood leaves the genitals.


title: Orgasm

text: In the 1970s, Helen Singer Kaplan added the category of desire to the cycle, which she argued precedes sexual excitation. She stated that emotions of anxiety, defensiveness and the failure of communication can interfere with desire and orgasm. In the late 1980s and after, Rosemary Basson proposed a more cyclical alternative to what had largely been viewed as linear progression. In her model, desire feeds arousal and orgasm, and is in turn fueled by the rest of the orgasmic cycle. Rather than orgasm being the peak of the sexual experience, she suggested that it is just one point in the circle and that people could feel sexually satisfied at any stage, reducing the focus on climax as an end-goal of all sexual activity.


title: Orgasm

text: As a man nears orgasm during stimulation of the penis, he feels an intense and highly pleasurable pulsating sensation of neuromuscular euphoria. These pulsating sensations originates from the contractions of pelvic floor muscles that begin in the anal sphincter and travels to the tip of the penis, commonly described as a "throbbing" or "tingling" sensation. They eventually increase in speed and intensity as the orgasm approaches, until a final "plateau" (the orgasmic) pleasure sustained for several seconds.


title: Orgasm

text: During orgasm, a human male experiences rapid, rhythmic contractions of the anal sphincter, the prostate, and the bulbospongiosus muscles of the penis. The sperm are transmitted up the vas deferens from the testicles, into the prostate gland as well as through the seminal vesicles to produce what is known as semen. The prostate produces a secretion that forms one of the components of ejaculate. Except for in cases of a dry orgasm, contraction of the sphincter and prostate force stored semen to be expelled through the penis's urethral opening. The process takes from three to ten seconds, and produces a pleasurable feeling. Ejaculation may continue for a few seconds after the euphoric sensation gradually tapers off. It is believed that the exact feeling of "orgasm" varies from one man to another. After ejaculation, a refractory period usually occurs, during which a man cannot achieve another orgasm. This can last anywhere from less than a minute to several hours or days, depending on age and other individual factors.


title: Orgasm

text: A woman's orgasm may, in some cases, last a little longer than a man's. Women's orgasms have been estimated to last, on average, approximately 20 seconds, and to consist of a series of muscular contractions in the pelvic area that includes the vagina, the uterus, and the anus. For some women, on some occasions, these contractions begin soon after the woman reports that the orgasm has started and continue at intervals of about one second with initially increasing, and then reducing, intensity. In some instances, the series of regular contractions is followed by a few additional contractions or shudders at irregular intervals. In other cases, the woman reports having an orgasm, but no pelvic contractions are measured at all.


title: Orgasm

text: Women's orgasms are preceded by erection of the clitoris and moistening of the opening of the vagina. Some women exhibit a sex flush, a reddening of the skin over much of the body due to increased blood flow to the skin. As a woman nears orgasm, the clitoral glans retracts under the clitoral hood, and the labia minora (inner lips) become darker. As orgasm becomes imminent, the outer third of the vagina tightens and narrows, while overall the vagina lengthens and dilates and also becomes congested from engorged soft tissue.


title: Orgasm

text: Elsewhere in the body, myofibroblasts of the nipple-areolar complex contract, causing erection of the nipples and contraction of the areolar diameter, reaching their maximum at the start of orgasm. A woman experiences full orgasm when her uterus, vagina, anus, and pelvic muscles undergo a series of rhythmic contractions. Most women find these contractions very pleasurable.


title: Orgasm

text: Researchers from the University Medical Center of Groningen in the Netherlands correlated the sensation of orgasm with muscular contractions occurring at a frequency of 8–13 Hz centered in the pelvis and measured in the anus. They argue that the presence of this particular frequency of contractions can distinguish between voluntary contraction of these muscles and spontaneous involuntary contractions, and appears to more accurately correlate with orgasm as opposed to other metrics like heart rate that only measure excitation. They assert that they have identified "[t]he first objective and quantitative measure that has a strong correspondence with the subjective experience that orgasm ultimately is" and state that the measure of contractions that occur at a frequency of 8–13 Hz is specific to orgasm. They found that using this metric they could distinguish from rest, voluntary muscular contractions, and even unsuccessful orgasm attempts.


title: Orgasm

text: Since ancient times in Western Europe, women could be medically diagnosed with a disorder called female hysteria, the symptoms of which included faintness, nervousness, insomnia, fluid retention, heaviness in abdomen, muscle spasm, shortness of breath, irritability, loss of appetite for food or sex, and "a tendency to cause trouble". Women considered suffering from the condition would sometimes undergo "pelvic massage" — stimulation of the genitals by the doctor until the woman experienced "hysterical paroxysm" (i.e., orgasm). Paroxysm was regarded as a medical treatment, and not a sexual release. The disorder has ceased to be recognized as a medical condition since the 1920s.


title: Orgasm

text: There have been very few studies correlating orgasm and brain activity in real time. One study examined 12 healthy women using a positron emission tomography (PET) scanner while they were being stimulated by their partners. Brain changes were observed and compared between states of rest, sexual stimulation, faked orgasm, and actual orgasm. Differences were reported in the brains of men and women during stimulation. However, changes in brain activity were observed in both sexes in which the brain regions associated with behavioral control, fear and anxiety shut down. Regarding these changes, Gert Holstege said in an interview with "The Times", "What this means is that deactivation, letting go of all fear and anxiety, might be the most important thing, even necessary, to have an orgasm."


title: Orgasm

text: While stroking the clitoris, the parts of the female brain responsible for processing fear, anxiety and behavioral control start to diminish in activity. This reaches a peak at orgasm when the female brain's emotion centers are effectively closed down to produce an almost trance-like state. Holstege is quoted as saying, at the 2005 meeting of the European Society for Human Reproduction and Development: "At the moment of orgasm, women do not have any emotional feelings."


title: Orgasm

text: However, a subsequent report by Rudie Kortekaas, et al. stated, "Gender commonalities were most evident during orgasm... From these results, we conclude that during the sexual act, differential brain responses across genders are principally related to the stimulatory (plateau) phase and not to the orgasmic phase itself."


title: Orgasm

text: Research has shown that as in women, the emotional centers of a man's brain also become deactivated during orgasm but to a lesser extent than in women. Brain scans of both sexes have shown that the pleasure centers of a man's brain show more intense activity than in women during orgasm.


title: Orgasm

text: Male and female brains demonstrate similar changes during orgasm, with brain activity scans showing a temporary decrease in the metabolic activity of large parts of the cerebral cortex with normal or increased metabolic activity in the limbic areas of the brain.


title: Orgasm

text: EEG tracings from volunteers during orgasm were first obtained by Mosovich and Tallaferro in 1954. These research workers recorded EEG changes resembling petit mal or the clonic phase of a grand mal seizure. Further studies in this direction were carried out by Sem-Jacobsen (1968), Heath (1972), Cohen et al. (1976), and others. Sarrel et al. reported a similar observation in 1977. These reports continue to be cited. Unlike them, Craber et al. (1985) failed to find any distinctive EEG changes in four men during masturbation and ejaculation; the authors concluded that the case for the existence of EEG changes specifically related to sexual arousal and orgasm remained unproven. So disagreement arises as to whether the experiment conducted by Mosovich & Tallaferro casts a new light on the nature of orgasm. In some recent studies, authors tend to adopt the opposite point of view that there are no remarkable EEG changes during ejaculation in humans.


title: Orgasm

text: Orgasm, and sexual activity as a whole, are physical activities that can require exertion of many major bodily systems. A 1997 study in the "BMJ" based upon 918 men age 45–59 found that after a ten-year follow-up, men who had fewer orgasms were twice as likely to die of any cause as those having two or more orgasms a week. A follow-up in 2001 which focused more specifically on cardiovascular health found that having sex three or more times a week was associated with a 50% reduction in the risk of heart attack or stroke.


title: Orgasm

text: There is some research suggesting that greater resting heart rate variability is associated with orgasms through penile-vaginal intercourse without additional simultaneous clitoral stimulation.


title: Orgasm

text: A small percentage of men have a disease called postorgasmic illness syndrome (POIS), which causes severe muscle pain throughout the body and other symptoms immediately following ejaculation. The symptoms last for up to a week. Some doctors speculate that the frequency of POIS "in the population may be greater than has been reported in the academic literature", and that many POIS sufferers are undiagnosed.


title: Orgasm

text: The inability to have orgasm, or regular difficulty reaching orgasm after ample sexual stimulation, is called anorgasmia or inorgasmia. If a male experiences erection and ejaculation but no orgasm, he is said to have sexual anhedonia (a condition in which an individual cannot feel pleasure from an orgasm) or ejaculatory anhedonia. Anorgasmia is significantly more common in women than in men, which has been attributed to the lack of sex education with regard to women's bodies, especially in sex-negative cultures, such as clitoral stimulation usually being key for women to orgasm.


title: Orgasm

text: Approximately 25% of women report difficulties with orgasm, 10% of women have never had an orgasm, and 40% or 40–50% have either complained about sexual dissatisfaction or experienced difficulty becoming sexually aroused at some point in their lives. A 1994 study by Laumann et al. found that 75.0% of men and 28.6% of women always had orgasms with their spouse, while 40.2% of men and 79.7% of women thought their spouse always orgasmed during sex. These rates were different in non-marital straight relationships (cohabitational, long-term and short-term heterosexual relationships), with rates increasing to 80.5% for men and 43.0% for women orgasming during sex with their short-term partners, and 69.3% for men and 82.6% for women thinking their short-term partners always orgasmed. Women are much more likely to be nearly always or always orgasmic when alone than with a partner. However, in a 1996 study by Davis et al., 62% of women in a partnered relationship said they were satisfied with the frequency/consistency of their orgasms. Additionally, some women express that their most satisfying sexual experiences entail being connected to someone, rather than solely basing satisfaction on orgasm.


title: Orgasm

text: Kinsey's 1953 "Sexual Behavior in the Human Female" showed that, over the previous five years of sexual activity, 78% of women had orgasms in 60% to 100% of sexual encounters with other women, compared with 55% for heterosexual sex. Kinsey attributed this difference to female partners knowing more about women's sexuality and how to optimize women's sexual satisfaction than male partners do. Like Kinsey, scholars such as Peplau, Fingerhut and Beals (2004) and Diamond (2006) found that lesbians have orgasms more often and more easily in sexual interactions than heterosexual women do, and that female partners are more likely to emphasize the emotional aspects of lovemaking. In contrast, research by Diane Holmberg and Karen L. Blair (2009), published in the "Journal of Sex Research", found that women in same-sex relationships enjoyed identical sexual desire, sexual communication, sexual satisfaction, and satisfaction with orgasm as their heterosexual counterparts.


title: Orgasm

text: Specifically in relation to simultaneous orgasm and similar practices, many sexologists claim that the problem of premature ejaculation is closely related to the idea encouraged by a scientific approach in the early 20th century when mutual orgasm was overly emphasized as an objective and a sign of true sexual satisfaction in intimate relationships.


title: Orgasm

text: If orgasm is desired, anorgasmia may be attributed to an inability to relax. It may be associated with performance pressure and an unwillingness to pursue pleasure, as separate from the other person's satisfaction; often, women worry so much about the pleasure of their partner that they become anxious, which manifests as impatience with the delay of orgasm for them. This delay can lead to frustration of not reaching orgasmic sexual satisfaction. Psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich, in his 1927 book "Die Funktion des Orgasmus" (published in English in 1980 as "Genitality in the Theory and Therapy of Neurosis") was the first to make orgasm central to the concept of mental health, and defined neurosis in terms of blocks to having orgastic potency. Although orgasm dysfunction can have psychological components, physiological factors often play a role. For instance, delayed orgasm or the inability to achieve orgasm is a common side effect of many medications.


title: Orgasm

text: Menopause may involve loss of hormones supporting sexuality and genital functionality. Vaginal and clitoral atrophy and dryness affects up to 50%–60% of postmenopausal women. Testosterone levels in men fall as they age. Sexual dysfunction overall becomes more likely with poor physical and emotional health. "Negative experiences in sexual relationships and overall well-being" are associated with sexual dysfunction.


title: Orgasm

text: The function or functions of the human female orgasm have been debated among researchers. Researchers have several hypotheses about the role, if any, of the female orgasm in the reproductive and therefore evolutionary process. The literature started with the argument that female orgasm is a byproduct of shared early male ontogeny, where male orgasm is an adaptation. Research has shifted to investigate and also support the sire-choice hypothesis, which proposes that female orgasm has been shaped by natural selection to function in the selection of high quality sires (male parents) for offspring. Therefore, orgasm increases the chances of conceiving with males of a high genetic quality. Research by Randy Thornhill et al. (1995) suggested that female orgasm is more frequent during intercourse with a male partner with low fluctuating asymmetry.


title: Orgasm

text: Wallen K and Lloyd EA stated, "In men, orgasms are under strong selective pressure as orgasms are coupled with ejaculation and thus contribute to male reproductive success. By contrast, women's orgasms in intercourse are highly variable and are under little selective pressure as they are not a reproductive necessity."


title: Orgasm

text: Desmond Morris suggested in his 1967 popular-science book "The Naked Ape" that the female orgasm evolved to encourage physical intimacy with a male partner and help reinforce the pair bond. Morris suggested that the relative difficulty in achieving female orgasm, in comparison to the male's, might be favorable in Darwinian evolution by leading the female to select mates who bear qualities like patience, care, imagination, and intelligence, as opposed to qualities like size and aggression, which pertain to mate selection in other primates. Such advantageous qualities thereby become accentuated within the species, driven by the differences between male and female orgasm. If males were motivated by, and taken to the point of, orgasm in the same way as females, those advantageous qualities would not be needed, since self-interest would be enough.


title: Orgasm

text: There are theories that the female orgasm might increase fertility. For example, it has been suggested that the 30% reduction in size of the vagina could help clench onto the penis (much like, or perhaps caused by, the pubococcygeus muscles), which would make it more stimulating for the male (thus ensuring faster or more voluminous ejaculation). The British biologists Baker and Bellis have suggested that the female orgasm may have a peristalsis or "upsuck" action (similar to the esophagus' ability to swallow when upside down), resulting in the retaining of favorable sperm and making conception more likely. They posited a role of female orgasm in sperm competition.


title: Orgasm

text: The observation that women tend to reach orgasm more easily when they are ovulating also has led to the suggestion that it is tied to increasing fertility. Evolutionary biologist Robin Baker argues in "Sperm Wars" that occurrence and timing of orgasms are all a part of the female body's unconscious strategy to collect and retain sperm from more evolutionary fit men. This theory suggests that an orgasm during intercourse functions as a bypass button to a woman's natural cervical filter against sperm and pathogens, and that an orgasm before functions to strengthen the filter.


title: Orgasm

text: Desmond Morris proposed that orgasm might facilitate conception by exhausting the female and keeping her horizontal, thus preventing the sperm from leaking out. This possibility, sometimes called the "Poleaxe Hypothesis" or the "Knockout Hypothesis", is now considered unlikely. A 1994 Learning Channel documentary on sex had fiber optic cameras inside the vagina of a woman while she had sexual intercourse. During her orgasm, her pelvic muscles contracted and her cervix repeatedly dipped into a pool of semen in the vaginal fornix, which might ensure that sperm would proceed by the external orifice of the uterus, making conception more likely.


title: Orgasm

text: Evolutionary psychologists Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá, in their discussion of the female orgasm, address how long it takes for females to achieve orgasm compared to males, and females' ability to have multiple orgasms, hypothesizing how especially well suited to multiple partners and insemination this is. They quote primate sexuality specialist Alan Dixson in saying that the monogamy-maintenance explanation for female orgasm "seems far-fetched" because "females of other primate species, and particularly those with multimale-multifemale [promiscuous] mating systems such as macaques and chimpanzees, exhibit orgasmic responses in the absence of such bonding or the formation of stable family units." On the other hand, Dixson states that "Gibbons, which are primarily monogamous, do not exhibit obvious signs of female orgasm."


title: Orgasm

text: The female promiscuity explanation of female sexuality was echoed at least 12 years earlier by other evolutionary biologists, and there is increasing scientific awareness of the female proceptive phase. Though Dixson classifies humans as mildly polygynous in his survey of primate sexuality, he appears to have doubts, when he writes, "One might argue that ... the female's orgasm is rewarding, increases her willingness to copulate with a variety of males rather than one partner, and thus promotes sperm competition." Ryan and Jethá use this as evidence for their theory that partible paternity and promiscuity were common for early modern humans.


title: Orgasm

text: The clitoris is homologous to the penis; that is, they both develop from the same embryonic structure. While researchers such as Geoffrey Miller, Helen Fisher, Meredith Small and Sarah Blaffer Hrdy "have viewed the clitoral orgasm as a legitimate adaptation in its own right, with major implications for female sexual behavior and sexual evolution," others, such as Donald Symons and Stephen Jay Gould, have asserted that the clitoris is vestigial or nonadaptive, and that the female orgasm serves no particular evolutionary function. However, Gould acknowledged that "most female orgasms emanate from a clitoral, rather than vaginal (or some other), site" and stated that his nonadaptive belief "has been widely misunderstood as a denial of either the adaptive value of female orgasm in general, or even as a claim that female orgasms lack significance in some broader sense". He explained that although he accepts that "clitoral orgasm plays a pleasurable and central role in female sexuality and its joys," "[a]ll these favorable attributes, however, emerge just as clearly and just as easily, whether the clitoral site of orgasm arose as a spandrel or an adaptation". He said that the "male biologists who fretted over [the adaptionist questions] simply assumed that a deeply vaginal site, nearer the region of fertilization, would offer greater selective benefit" due to their Darwinian, "summum bonum" beliefs about enhanced reproductive success.


title: Orgasm

text: Proponents of the nonadaptive hypothesis, such as Elisabeth Lloyd, refer to the relative difficulty of achieving female orgasm through vaginal sex, the limited evidence for increased fertility after orgasm and the lack of statistical correlation between the capacity of a woman to orgasm and the likelihood that she will engage in intercourse. "Lloyd is by no means against evolutionary psychology. Quite the opposite; in her methods and in her writing, she advocates and demonstrates a commitment to the careful application of evolutionary theory to the study of human behavior," stated Meredith L. Chivers. She added that Lloyd "meticulously considers the theoretical and empirical bases for each account and ultimately concludes that there is little evidence to support an adaptionist account of female orgasm" and that Lloyd instead "views female orgasm as an ontogenetic leftover; women have orgasms because the urogenital neurophysiology for orgasm is so strongly selected for in males that this developmental blueprint gets expressed in females without affecting fitness, just as males have nipples that serve no fitness-related function".


title: Orgasm

text: A 2005 twin study found that one in three women reported never or seldom achieving orgasm during sexual intercourse, and only one in ten always orgasmed. This variation in ability to orgasm, generally thought to be psychosocial, was found to be 34% to 45% genetic. The study, examining 4000 women, was published in "Biology Letters", a Royal Society journal. Elisabeth Lloyd has cited this as evidence for the notion that female orgasm is not adaptive.


title: Orgasm

text: Miller, Hrdy, Helen O'Connell and Natalie Angier have criticized the "female orgasm is vestigial" hypothesis as understating and devaluing the psychosocial value of the female orgasm. Hrdy stated that the hypothesis smacks of sexism. O'Connell said, "It boils down to rivalry between the sexes: the idea that one sex is sexual and the other reproductive. The truth is that both are sexual and both are reproductive." O'Connell used MRI technology to define the true size and shape of the clitoris, suggesting that it extends into the anterior wall of the vagina (see above).


title: Orgasm

text: O'Connell describes typical textbook descriptions of the clitoris as lacking detail and including inaccuracies, saying that the work of Georg Ludwig Kobelt in the early 19th century provides a most comprehensive and accurate description of clitoral anatomy. She argues that the bulbs appear to be part of the clitoris and that the distal urethra and vagina are intimately related structures, although they are not erectile in character, forming a tissue cluster with the clitoris that appears to be the center of female sexual function and orgasm. By contrast, Nancy Tuana, at the 2002 conference for "Canadian Society of Women in Philosophy", argues that the clitoris is unnecessary in reproduction, but that this is why it has been "historically ignored", mainly because of "a fear of pleasure. It is pleasure separated from reproduction. That's the fear". She reasoned that this fear is the cause of the ignorance that veils female sexuality.


title: Orgasm

text: Brody Costa et al. suggest that women's vaginal orgasm consistency is associated with being told in childhood or adolescence that the vagina is the important zone for inducing female orgasm. Other proposed factors include how well women focus mentally on vaginal sensations during penile-vaginal intercourse, the greater duration of intercourse, and preference for above-average penis length. Costa theorizes that vaginal orgasm is more prevalent among women with a prominent tubercle of the upper lip. His research indicates that "[a] prominent and sharply raised lip tubercle has been associated with greater odds (odds ratio = 12.3) of ever having a vaginal orgasm, and also with greater past month vaginal orgasm consistency (an effect driven by the women who never had a vaginal orgasm), than less prominent lip tubercle categories." However, lip tubercle was not associated with social desirability responding, or with orgasm triggered by masturbation during penile-vaginal sex, solitary or partner clitoral or vaginal masturbation, vibrator, or cunnilingus.


title: Orgasm

text: An empirical study carried out in 2008 provides evidence for Freud's implied link between inability to have a vaginal orgasm and psychosexual immaturity. In the study, women reported their past month frequency of different sexual behaviors and corresponding orgasm rates and completed the Defense Style Questionnaire (DSQ-40), which is associated with various psychopathologies. The study concluded that a "vaginal orgasm was associated with less somatization, dissociation, displacement, autistic fantasy, devaluation, and isolation of affect." Moreover, "vaginally anorgasmic women had immature defenses scores comparable to those of established (depression, social anxiety disorder, panic disorder, and obsessive–compulsive disorder) outpatient psychiatric groups." In the study, a vaginal orgasm (as opposed to a clitoral orgasm) was defined as being triggered solely by penile–vaginal intercourse. According to Wilhelm Reich, the lack of women's capacity to have a vaginal orgasm is due to a lack of orgastic potency, which he believed to be the result of culture's suppression of genital sexuality.


title: Orgasm

text: Medical research shows that the genital reflex is also regulated by the spinal cord, and not necessarily under conscious control.


title: Orgasm

text: An involuntary orgasm may occur as the result of sexual assault or rape, which may result in feelings of shame caused by internalization of victim-blaming attitudes. The incidence of those who experience unsolicited sexual contact and experience orgasm is very low, though possibly under-reported due to shame or embarrassment of the victim. Such orgasms may happen to either gender.


title: Orgasm

text: Tantric sex, which is not the same as Buddhist tantra (Vajrayana), is the ancient Indian spiritual tradition of sexual practices. It attributes a different value to orgasm than traditional cultural approaches to sexuality. Some practitioners of tantric sex aim to eliminate orgasm from sexual intercourse by remaining for a long time in the pre-orgasmic and non-emission state. Advocates of this, such as Rajneesh, claim that it eventually causes orgasmic feelings to spread out to all of one's conscious experience.


title: Orgasm

text: Advocates of tantric and neotantric sex who claim that Western culture focuses too much on the goal of climactic orgasm, which reduces the ability to have intense pleasure during other moments of the sexual experience, suggest that eliminating this enables a richer, fuller and more intense connection.


title: Orgasm

text: Orgasm has been widely described in literature over the centuries. In antiquity, Latin literature addressed the subject as much as Greek literature: Book III of Ovid's "Metamorphoses" retells a discussion between Jove and Juno, in which the former states: "The sense of pleasure in the male is far / More dull and dead, than what you females share." Juno rejects this thought; they agree to ask the opinion of Tiresias ("who had known Venus/Love in both ways," having lived seven years as a female). Tiresias offends Juno by agreeing with Jove, and she strikes him blind on the spot (Jove lessens the blow by giving Tiresias the gift of foresight, and a long life). Earlier, in the "Ars Amatoria", Ovid states that he abhors sexual intercourse that fails to complete both partners.


title: Orgasm

text: The theme of orgasm survived during Romanticism and is incorporated in many homoerotic works. In "FRAGMENT: Supposed to be an Epithalamium of Francis Ravaillac and Charlotte Cordé", Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822), "a translator of extraordinary range and versatility", wrote the phrase "No life can equal such a death." That phrase has been seen as a metaphor for orgasm, and it was preceded by the rhythmic urgency of the previous lines "Suck on, suck on, I glow, I glow!", which has been seen as alluding to fellatio. For Shelley, orgasm was "the almost involuntary consequences of a state of abandonment in the society of a person of surpassing attractions". Edward Ellerker Williams, the last love of Shelley's life, was remembered by the poet in "The Boat on the Serchio", which has been considered as possibly "the grandest portrayal of orgasm in literature":


title: Orgasm

text: Shelley, in this poem, associates orgasm with death when he writes "the death which lovers love". In French literature, the term "la petite mort" (the little death) is a famous euphemism for orgasm; it is the representation of man who forgets himself and the world during orgasm. Jorge Luis Borges, in the same vision, wrote in one of the several footnotes of "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" that one of the churches of Tlön claims Platonically that "All men, in the vertiginous moment of coitus, are the same man. All men who repeat a line from Shakespeare "are" William Shakespeare." Shakespeare himself was knowledgeable of this idea: lines "I will live in thy heart, die in thy lap, and be buried in thy eyes" and "I will die bravely, like a smug bridegroom", said respectively by Benedick in "Much Ado About Nothing" and by King Lear in the play of that ilk, are interpreted as "to die in a woman's lap" = "to experience a sexual orgasm". Sigmund Freud with his psychoanalytic projects, in "The Ego and the Id" (1923), speculates that sexual satisfaction by orgasm make Eros ("life instinct") exhausted and leaves the field open to Thanatos ("death instinct"), in other words, with orgasm Eros fulfills its mission and gives way to Thanatos. Other modern authors have chosen to represent the orgasm without metaphors. In the novel "Lady Chatterley's Lover" (1928), by D. H. Lawrence, we can find an explicit narrative of a sexual act between a couple: "As he began to move, in the sudden helpless orgasm there awoke in her strange thrills rippling inside her..."


title: Orgasm

text: The mechanics of male orgasm are similar in most male mammals. Females of some mammal and some non-mammal species, such as alligators, have clitorises. There has been ongoing research about the sexuality of dolphins, one of many species which engage in sexual intercourse for reasons other than reproduction. The duration of orgasm varies considerably among different mammal species.


title: Beastie Boys

text: Beastie Boys were an American rap rock group from New York City, formed in 1978. The group was composed of Michael "Mike D" Diamond (vocals, drums), Adam "MCA" Yauch (vocals, bass), and Adam "Ad-Rock" Horovitz (vocals, guitar, programming). Beastie Boys were formed out of members of experimental hardcore punk band the Young Aborigines in 1978, with Diamond as vocalist, Jeremy Shatan on bass guitar, John Berry on guitar, and Kate Schellenbach on drums. When Shatan left in 1981, Yauch replaced him on bass and the band changed their name to Beastie Boys. Berry left shortly thereafter and was replaced by Horovitz.


title: Beastie Boys

text: After achieving local success with the 1983 comedy hip hop single "Cooky Puss", Beastie Boys made a full transition to hip hop, and Schellenbach left. They toured with Madonna in 1985 and a year later released their debut album, "Licensed to Ill" (1986), the first rap record to top the "Billboard" 200 chart. Their second album, "Paul's Boutique" (1989), composed almost entirely of samples, was a commercial failure, but later received critical acclaim. "Check Your Head" (1992) and "Ill Communication" (1994) found mainstream success, followed by "Hello Nasty" (1998), "To the 5 Boroughs" (2004), "The Mix-Up" (2007), and "Hot Sauce Committee Part Two" (2011).