The Clitoral Truth: The Secret World at Your Fingertips (9 page)

and psychologists perceived women’s sexuality It was as if, for most of the twentieth century, women’s extensive genital anatomy, and even the explosive little glans, was vaporized. Memory of the clitoris gradually faded until it became an anatomical nonentity.

In
Making Sex
, Laqueur makes the powerful and chilling argument that women’s place in society is determined not by their anatomy and physiology, but by the way that their anatomy and physiology are defined and perceived. “Bodies, in these [Enlightenment] accounts are not the sign of but the foundation for

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other words, the clitoris is a child’s plaything, while the vagina—the

civil society.”

In other words, perceived differences in women’s

cozy space that has few nerve endings but provides such effective stimulation for the penis—is the grown-up woman’s sexual destiny. This suggests that masturbation or other means of clitoral stimulation is an inappropriate or useless adult activity, and privileges heterosexual intercourse as the only healthy, mature, acceptable form of sexual activity for women. Freud’s demotion of the clitoris and elevation of the vagina as the adult woman’s primary means of giving and receiving sexual pleasure brought the male-centered heterosexual model of sexuality to its phallocentric apogee, and set in stone for the next century that it was not only appropriate but essential for women’s sexuality to be defined in terms of male preferences.

Freud’s summary dismissal of the clitoris as an important focus of sexual sensation for women had an atomic effect on how physicians

bodies became the rationale for denying them equal access to the

social stage, just as perceived differences in their genital anatomy denied them the right to pleasure and orgasm in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Thanks to Dr. Freud, this carried over through much of the twentieth century as well. Practically speaking, this means that as long as women’s genitals are seen as inferior, our ability and right to explore and experience pleasure may continue to be seen as less vital than that of men. If we don’t struggle to achieve equality in the sexual sphere, it is possible that achieving equity everywhere else will rest upon a shaky foundation. In other words, anatomy is not destiny so much as the social construction of anatomy is destiny.

HAS ANYONE SEEN THE WORM?

Laqueur ended his investigation with the publication of Freud’s
Three Essays
in 1905. But the mystery doesn’t end there. Lisa Jean Moore and Adele E. Clarke, two sociologists at San Francisco State University, picked up the trail of the ever-vanishing clitoris. In a wide-ranging analysis of twentieth-century medical literature, Moore and Clarke documented the deterioration of accuracy and detail in medical illustrations of the clitoris under the Freudian model.
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They discovered that “the online University of California Melvyl Library Catalog found three records of books on the clitoris and 35 on the penis; a Current Contents tide words search found 19 citations on the

recorded the enormous normal variations in the appearance of women’s genitalia, and illuminated the hidden parts beneath the surface of the skin.
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Despite Dickinson’s widely known work, things deteriorated even further during the 1950s and 1960s. Eight post-Dickinson texts surveyed from the 1950s and 1960s “varied little in their treatment of the clitoris; they omitted it.” In one book, our sleuths found “a worm-like, unlabeled part of the body which we assume to be the clitoris.” Shortly after reading the article, I picked up my well- thumbed 1981 edition of
Taber’s Cyclopedic Medical Dictionary
and, looking at the illustration of the female reproductive system

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clitoris and 347 on the penis; and a Medline search found 78 ankles

found a squiggly, unlabeled dotted line.

The worm! To Tibers

with clitoris the keyword, and 1,611 with penis.”

In examining anatomical representations of the clitoris, Moore and Clarke found that clitoral images in the first half of the twentieth century “varied from simple to complex,” with a more generous supply of simple renderings. “Anatomies matter,” they conclude, because they “create shared images which become key elements in repertories of bodily understanding touted around by all those who have seen them.”

As mid-century approached, the work of Dr. Robert Latou

credit, later editions do label the glans, and the eighteenth edition

provides the only illustration of the female genitals—in color—to be found in any standard medical reference, although you will not find the complete clitoris identified as yet.

Moore and Clarke did not include Masters and Johnson’s work in their survey, but I want to mention it here because their work was so profoundly influential for a quarter of a century. In a climate more receptive to the public discussion of sexuality, the 1960s publication of
Hunan Sexual Response
finally brought discussion of the clitoris

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Dickinson, a New York City gynecologist who was also a self-taught

to light.

Indeed, the “first couple” of sex theory and therapy

artist, provided an exception to these bland renditions. In his 1949 classic
Human Sex Anatomy: A Topographical Hand Atlas
he

devoted an entire chapter to it, calling it both “a receptor and

transformer of sensual stimuli,” as well as an “organ” and an “organ

system.” Yet in purporting to dispel certain “phallic fallacies,” Masters and Johnson actually created a new vaginal fiction, the so- called “orgasmic platform” located in the “outer third of the vagina.” What they are really describing here are clitoral structures, which surround the vaginal opening. Since they firmly believe that the vagina and not the clitoris is “the human female’s primary means of sexual expression,” they apparently needed to concoct something impressive-sounding to back up this assumption.

THE REDISCOVERY OF THE MISSING CLITORIS

Although Masters and Johnson allude to a “clitoral system,” and point out a number of equivalent structures of the clitoris and the penis, they failed to grasp the significance of these correspondences. Dr. Mary Jane Sherfey argued that because women’s genital anatomy is equivalent to men’s, women’s capacity for sexual response should also be equivalent. Using Masters and Johnson’s anatomical description of the penis, Sherfey found the clitoris to be a powerful organ system in contrast to the commonly accepted view of it as a diminutive pea sized outcropping on the female vulva. Using established embryological evidence she debunked the conventional idea that the clitoris is a miniature penis, arguing instead that the male and female genitals are equivalent structures that function in similar ways to produce sexual pleasure and orgasm. In fact, Sherfey believed women’s capacity for sexual response was even more

powerful than men’s for three specific reasons. First, women have a greater blood supply to the pelvic region and genitals. Second, women have longer and stronger pelvic muscles—both of these conditions are necessary for the potential demands of childbirth. Lastly, women have the innate (though largely unacknowledged) capacity to experience multiple orgasm. “The Popular idea that a woman should have one orgasm which should bring ‘full satisfaction,’ act as a strong sedative, and alleviate sexual tension for several days to come is simply fallacious,” Sherfey declared.
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“That the female could have the same orgasmic anatomy (all of which are female to begin with) and not be expected to use it simply defies the very nature of the biological properties of evolutionary and morphogenic [structural evolution of an organism] processes.”

Today Sherfey has been largely ignored by feminist sexologists. Some perceive her work as too steeped in biology, and she has also been dismissed for being an early disciple of Masters and Johnson. Nonetheless, her study is startling in its prescience, and it is all the more impressive because she was working in the very belly of the Freudian beast during the 1960s, when the term “feminist psychoanalyst” was considered an oxymoron, and the dramatic gains of feminist activism were a decade away. From a close reading of Sherfey’s work, it does not seem that she was trying to prove that women’s sexuality is “better” than men’s, or that she was implying that orgasm was the only goal of sexual activity. Her point, I believe,

was that by having their sexuality defined through male standards, women have only the dimmest idea of what their sexuality really is and have little sense of their sexual power. Sherfey’s book was published in 1972, and when the FFWHCs discovered it in 1975, it provided the basis for their more comprehensive and anatomically accurate redefinition of the clitoris. The tenacious buttressing of traditional gender norms is no joke. Once, when Suzann Gage and I were presenting a poster session on the clitoris at the American Public Health Association, we were attacked by two Ivy League MDs who created a huge scene by loudly denouncing our interpretation. Naturally, a large crowd gathered. With fire in their eyes, they told us that our interpretation was WRONG, and that we had NO RIGHT to be disagreeing with experts in the field. There have been others who have disagreed or disbelieved, Masters and Johnson and some feminists among them.

When I discovered Laqueur’s book, I was astounded to see that someone had actually undertaken the arduous job of sifting through a bewildering array of texts in many languages over the vast stretch of two millennia to track down the story of the missing clitoris. Laqueur’s study affirmed the FFWHCs intuitive inclination to reject the grossly inaccurate two-sex version of genital anatomy. He also provided documentation for the anatomical correctness in the reconceptualized depiction of the clitoris, which was unavailable in modem anatomy books. Moore and Clark’s study showed us why

getting professional validation for the redefinition of the clitoris had been so hard. It is really quite astonishing that a small group of women without medical degrees, a clue about the history of the missing clitoris, or the intention of making medical history, money, or fame, reconceptualized women’s genital anatomy in a way that should he the envy of tiny up-and-coming anatomist. They were on such intimate terms with their own anatomy that Sherfey’s description of the clitoris made sense. Due to their reverence for women’s bodies, the women at FFWHCs were able to make a conceptual leap that most anatomists have yet to make.

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T

he idea that many women experience a spurt, gush, trickle, or dribble of clear, alkaline fluid during sexual response that is directly analogous to the fluid from the male prostate has been one of the most hotly debated questions in modern sexology. It is not, how ever, a new discussion. This phenomenon is mentioned in Chinese and Indian sex advice books as early as 500 B.C.E. Physicians and philosophers in ancient Greece were aware of the existence of glands around the female urethra that emit prostatic-like

as to whether women “ejaculated,” what caused it, or where the fluid came from. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the concept of female ejaculation was not discounted so much as obliterated due to the medical and social myopia through which women’s sexuality was viewed. For the first eighty years of the twentieth century—with the exception of a few isolated journal articles by physicians interested in diseases of the female urethra—information about female ejaculation entirely disappeared from medical discourse, and from our concept of women’s sexuality.

When Beverly Whipple and John Perry documented women’s ability to ejaculate in the 1980s, it elicited a yawn from many sexologists, and disbelief and scorn from others. Many feminists were skeptical as well. Nevertheless, reliable studies have revealed that during intense sexual excitement, or as orgasm approaches, many women produce a clear, alkaline fluid that is not urine, which may vary in amount from a few drops to about a quarter of a cup (about two ounces), sometimes much more. Yet many women, and perhaps their partners as well, believe that this fluid is really urine. Whipple reports that some women find ejaculating this mysterious fluid embarrassing and suppress sexual response to avoid producing it. There are doctors who prescribe drugs to suppress the “urine,”

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secretions, and such tissue was identified by anatomists during the

while others have performed surgeries to stop it.

Is it possible that

Renaissance. Until the eighteenth century, when male and female sexuality began to be seen as radically different, there was no debate

these women are wetting the bed, dousing their partners, and

splashing the walls with urine? Or are they experiencing a phenomenon analogous to male ejaculation?

Today, despite an impressive chain of historical evidence, several important contemporary studies, a tsunami of personal testimonies by women who experience ejaculation, and a collection of stunning visual images on video produced by feminist activists, most sexologists, physicians, and women themselves remain confused about female ejaculation. Even among the believers, there is still widespread disagreements as to how many women do ejaculate with regularity, why all women don’t appear to ejaculate, and whether, as some proponents insist, it can be learned.