Call it what you will -- an embellishment in the service of priming the motor here, an over-the-top working it there -- it still begs the question: Is it ethical to fake an orgasm?

"On the one hand, faking an orgasm is a kind of lie to your partner," says Janet R. Jakobsen, director of the Barnard Center for Research on Women at Barnard College. "But then we have to think of what kind of lie, and it probably varies from situation to situation. Is it the small, make-things-go-smoother type ('Yes, your haircut looks good'; 'Yes, you played well at the company baseball game') or something more serious?"

A female colleague considers faking orgasm to fall squarely in the "white lie" category -- "those times when you want to be careful, when to tell the truth is to hit somebody over the head with a railroad tie."

But some psychologists who specialize in sexuality warn that there's an inherent danger in lying of any sort in sexual relationships. "The problem with dishonesty is that when it succeeds in one area, then there's temptation to use it in another area," says Bernie Zilbergeld, a psychologist and author of "The New Male Sexuality."

What's more, on a practical level, faking can have long-term implications in the sack. Lonnie Barbach, a psychologist and author of numerous books on female sexuality, including "For Yourself: The Fulfillment of Female Sexuality," says: "If you're faking it, you're teaching your partner exactly the wrong thing to do. You're not going to lead yourself to a better sexual relationship because your partner is just not getting the information." As a result, instead of discovering how to really please a sexual partner, men may go away satiated and smug in their belief that no woman of theirs has ever stooped to faking it.

It may be that most men are either oblivious to any faking going on or in deep denial that they're not able to bring a partner to orgasm. But it could just be that their female partners are truly gifted fakers. Without exception, the men I talked to said that their sexual partners rarely if ever embellished so much as a tad during sex.

"I always worked hard at my craft," one guy said. "If they didn't have an orgasm -- which they sometimes didn't -- they didn't act out the death scene from 'Scarface' to make me think they were having a good time. They had pleasure and that was what we were there for."

Other guys admitted that sometimes a partner may not reach orgasm -- which is fine as long as the guys have given it their best shot. "It's better for both of us if she's really having the orgasm," one guy told me. "But personally, I'd rather she not fake the scream and such. If it happens, great. If it doesn't, don't pretend for my sake. It doesn't make me feel like any less of a man to not get a woman to orgasm, particularly if I'm doing everything possible (listening to what she wants, responding, being in the moment, asking questions, getting out the scuba gear and ostrich feathers) to make it happen."

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