Around 80% of women cannot reach an internal orgasm without external stimulation, making penetrative sex more challenging for may. This is often felt as a physiological or anatomical limitation. It is not. It is cultural and educational.
Where the gap comes from
Many of our standards of reference are built around male pleasure. A great deal of this traces back to Freud, who in Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905) framed the vaginal orgasm as the mature form of female sexual response, and the clitoral orgasm as 'infantile'. That framework was held as authoritative through much of the twentieth century, and it shaped how generations understood sex as penetration.
The same structures, in different bodies
All structures associated with male sexual pleasure exist in the female body. We all start from the same embryonic tissue and differentiate around six weeks of gestation. The clitoris is not only the visible glans. It has a shaft, internal legs (the crura), and vestibular bulbs that wrap around the vaginal opening. The erectile tissue extends across the clitoris, the labia minora, the urethral sponge, and the bulbs. When aroused, these tissues engorge with blood, up to 300%, around the same proportion as a penis. The blood carries oxygen and nitric oxide, which fire the nerve endings that communicate pleasure to the brain.
The female body needs a minimum of around twenty minutes for the physiology to move from its normal state to one fully prepared to experience pleasure.
Knowing what you have
Because of the lack of pleasure education, we might believe that we do not have a particular structure (a g-spot for example) and therefore, we will not access the pleasure it offers. Understanding your pleasure anatomy, and how the physiological changes with arousal, allows you to connect mind and body.
Try this
As many of these practices require privacy, which might not be immediately available, I invite you to simply imagine the practice. Visualise, sensualise, how you would do this practice, and what it would feel like.
Give the body what it needs
Before any goal, give yourself at least twenty minutes to build arousal slowly, with breath and touch. Treat that time as the practice, not the warm-up.
Use a mirror and an anatomical reference to identify your own structures. Knowing precisely what is there gives the mind something real to focus on.
Notice that pleasure follows attention and blood flow, not pressure. The more aroused and present the body is, the more sensation becomes available.
Science check
Pleasure does not come from one spot. The clitoris, urethra, and vaginal wall work together as one functional unit, sometimes called the clitourethrovaginal (CUV) complex. The internal clitoris, its bulbs, and the surrounding erectile tissue, including the urethral sponge, engorge with blood during arousal, so what was once split into separate 'clitoral' and 'vaginal' orgasms is the same connected structure stimulated from different angles.
Jannini, E.A., Buisson, O., & Rubio-Casillas, A. (2014). Beyond the G-spot: clitourethrovaginal complex anatomy in female orgasm. Nature Reviews Urology, 11(9), 531–538.