I remember at one point actually BELIEVING the theory of Freud’s “vaginal orgasm”. And when I finally realized the ridiculousness of it, I had to chuckle. It’s time we educate all girls about the wonders of their magical “for pleasure only” organ — residing deep inside their bodies.

“Picture a clitoris in your mind. Got it? Now, what if I told you that what you’re imagining is just the tip of a much larger, internal clitoral iceberg — that the clitoris is actually much, much larger than what this sensitive bundle of nerve endings would lead you to believe?” from: until-2009-the-human-clitoris-was-an-absolute-mystery.

Check out this wonderful animated documentary short Le Clitoris by Lori Malépart-Traversy.

Jewelle Gomez writes in Care to Speculate (Epochalips in August 2013): “Apparently the clitoris was a scientific mystery until recently.  I guess it shouldn’t really be a surprise since much knowledge held by the western medical establishment can be parochial at best and misogynist in general. How we—women and men and those along that spectrum—are supposed to figure out our bodies is an even bigger mystery.

When I was about eleven, the pharmaceutical companies did one good thing of note: they produced a booklet on women’s reproduction and menstruation which was distributed free of charge to schools and the camp I attended! A teacher was even allowed to teach us about our bodies back then. This was a major gift for me since I was raised by my great grandmother who was born in 1883 and the least likely person in my life to be explaining the facts of life and love.

I like to think that young people today have a better idea of how their bodies function, especially since the religious right has helped pressure school systems around the country to prohibit teaching anything that would help girls know how to take care of their gynecological health. The idea probably is that if we know something it might lead to us believing we have a right to power over our own bodies…like contraception and prosecuting rapists.”

Check out another interesting article about your clitoral function here called Clitoral-Atrophy.

From Renate Stendhal in Much Ado About Vaginas:(Epochalips, September 2013): “When women gathered at performances of Eve Ensler’s play The Vagina Monologues and ecstatically yelled the V-Word in chorus, did they and the play’s author realize that they tapped right into the stereotypical notion that ‘Boys have a penis, girls a vagina“? And what about Naomi Wolf’s book, Vagina. A Biography? Did she realize?

Girls have a vulva, thank you. In case there is some confusion, let me explain. The vulva is our whole genital area composed of many delightful details. The clit — the only sexual organ exclusively dedicated to pleasure and endowed with more nerve endings than any other human sex organ — is surrounded by a hood and continues with inner and outer lips, enclosing the small opening of the urethra (the urine passageway) and the larger opening of the vagina. The vagina is a passageway to the uterus, also called the birth canal. Let’s say it again: the vagina doesn’t contain the all-important clitoris or the lips.

Lesbians have always known these basic facts. But as Jewelle pointed out, it’s nice that science has finally caught on, too. We can now look at the astonishing reaches of the clitoris. In MRI images, the clitoris looks like the ancient moon goddess of matriarchal cultures, stretching out crescent-shaped arms like an all-embracing offering, to share its orgasmic pleasures with both the vagina (the so-called G-Spot) and the anus.

I remember my own brave investigations, a mere few decades ago, as women launched into liberation. I was living in Paris, a notorious center of erotic laissez-faire. Women in Paris (and soon everywhere else in Europe) grouped together, each armed with a hand-held mirror and a speculum, to examine their own and each other’s genitals and sexual treasure troves. Freedom from shame and inhibition was the mission, a mission shared with big Aha’s and a lot of laughter by all sorts of women — homo, bi, hetero and questioning. This wasn’t easy for everyone at first, as you can imagine, but the general enthusiasm and celebratory mood carried us forward like a storm.

Danish women opened their “women’s island” Femoe to women from all over the world. This first International Women’s Summer Camp, in 1974, was something to behold. The Nordic Amazons were playing soccer naked between the tents, hotly admired by French and Italian femmes in bikinis and dresses. Some women had even made it all the way from America. The arrival on the island of Jill Johnston, the author of Lesbian Nation, was announced by the excited rumour that a woman in Jeans was making love to another woman on a nearby country road.”

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