Do Vaginal Orgasms Really Exist?

Do Vaginal Orgasms Really Exist?

When you think of a sonogram, you probably think of some grainy gray and white image of your baby’s hand waving at you labeled with the caption “Hi Mom!” You probably don’tthink about the clitoris. But a couple of French doctors do (leave it to the French).

Is There Really a G-Spot?

A study in Sexual Medicine called “The Clitoral Complex: A Dynamic Sonographic Study” mixes ultrasound, the clitoris, the G-spot, and vaginal orgasms together into a sexy soup I couldn’t resist writing about. Whether or not the G-spot exists remains controversial. One of the questions I answered in my upcoming book What’s Up Down There? Questions You’d Only Ask Your Gynecologist If She Was Your Best Friend is “Does the G-spot really exist?” The answer:

According to the teacher in my Gross Anatomy lab, the answer is no. As we were dissecting the vagina, someone asked, “So where’s the G-Spot, Doc?” My teacher, in his thick Eastern European accent, said, “Zere is no G-Spot in ze human female.” Okay, good to know.

The rest of my medical training pretty much agreed with Professor Von Buzzkill. An expert in the field even told me that every part of the vagina has been examined under the microscope, and there is nothing on the anterior wall of the vagina that looks any different than the rest of the vagina. Therefore, the G-spot does not exist. Period.

However, as is the case with much I learned in medical school, my patients tell me otherwise. Over the years, thousands of patients have sworn that there is a place felt through the anterior wall of the vagina that hits the oh-oh-oh spot –- or, rather, is the spot. I believe in many things I cannot see, so I tend to believe my patients.

Hunting for data to validate their experience, I came across Dr. Beverly Whipple, who famously named the G-spot after German OB/GYN Dr. Ernst Gräfenburg, who described a zone of erogenous feeling on the anterior wall of the vaginal canal. (A friend of hers suggested she name it the “Whipple Tickle,” but out of respect for Whipples everywhere, she vetoed this idea.)  According to Dr. Whipple, the G-spot definitely exists. When I asked her why some in the medical community vehemently deny its existence, she seemed baffled.  She said, “I don’t know. I guess because they can’t see it under a microscope, they think it doesn’t exist. But my career has been about validating what real women experience. And some -- but not all -- definitely experience pleasurable feelings when you stimulate the G-spot area.”

Her belief runs so deep that she went on to conduct hundreds of studies aimed at validating the sexual experiences women relate. For one study in 1981, 400 female volunteers were examined. According to Dr. Whipple, a spot that empirically swells with stimulation was found in each of these women, although she admits that not all women appear to be sensitive to this type of stimulation. 

 So what is the G-spot? Dr. Whipple isn’t sure. As Dr. Von Buzzkill said, no specific anatomic differences can be detected in this area. But she suspects a cluster of blood vessels, nerves, glands (including the “female prostate gland”), and part of of the clitoris may all merge to create a sensitive area that hits the spot.  She believes the female experience more than the microscope, and I tend to agree with her.

Drs. Foldes and Buisson seem to agree with Dr. Whipple, theorizing that the reason some women can have vaginal orgasms is that the anterior wall of the vagina (in the location of the famed G-spot) overlies the root of the clitoris, where the crura (legs) come together. So perhaps the reason that nobody can find an anatomic location for the controversial G-spot is because there’s nothing special about this part of the vagina other than it butts up against a sweet spot of the clitoris.

A Clitoral Anatomy Lesson

First, a bit of anatomy. You may think the clitoris starts and ends as the little nubbin that lies just below the mons pubis (where you pubes are) and just above the urethra (where the pee comes out). But the little hot button you can see (the glans of the clitoris) is just the tip of the sensual iceberg. The clitoris functions like a female version of the penis and is made up of 8,000 nerve endings, all dedicated to your pleasure. (Nice work, Universe!) The clitoris also consists of two crura, little legs that fill up with blood and become erect, much like a penis does.

In the French study, researchers wanted to investigate what happens to the clitoral root and crura and whether these parts of the anatomy could explain the phenomenon of vaginal orgasm. In other words, if vaginal orgasms come from deep clitoral stimulation through the anterior wall of the vagina, why can’t all women have them? What might be going on?

But how do you investigate such a thing? Turns out that the handy dandy ultrasound of fetal fame proves helpful. In the Clitoral Complex study, researchers took five women and did ultrasounds, both at rest and when they were contracting the perineum (a.k.a. doing Kegel exercises). They then asked women to identify the sensitive spot they associated with pleasure. Sure enough, women pointed to the spot on the vagina closest to the clitoral root, where the crura of the clitoris come together.

So What Does This Mean For Vaginal Orgasms?

Well, the jury’s still out. This was a very small study, with only five women, and we need more data. But it suggests that what Dr. Whipple has been saying all along is true, that perhaps it’s not the vagina itself that feels good to women who love their G-spots but the clitoris they’re reaching underneath. Perhaps the “G-spot” defines the place closest to the root of the clitoris, which is overflowing with juicy nerves that hit the spot. 

Why does a “vaginal” orgasm feel different than one created by stimulating the glans of the clitoris? Well, the stimulation would be anatomically different. Because the part of the clitoris being stimulated is farther away from the spot of stimulation, it might take longer to build. And it might simply feel different because it may be a different part of the clitoris getting stimulated. Truth is, nobody really knows.

Why Can’t All Women Have Vaginal Orgasms?

So if we all have a clitoris, why can’t we all have vaginal orgasms? Perhaps it’s simply a matter of anatomy. If that clitoral root is too far away from the anterior wall of the vagina, maybe you simply can’t feel it enough to be stimulated. If you’re lucky enough to hit the spot, perhaps it’s because your clitoral root is closer. Every woman is different –- you’re normal if you do have vaginal orgasms, and you’re normal if you don’t.

Don’t Let Anyone Take Away Your Vaginal Orgasms

Regardless of how the science works, I say that if the G-spot works for you, and you’re rocking your vaginal orgasms, own it, baby! Don’t let any study interfere with your pleasure. If you’ve tried and can’t seem to find the spot, don’t worry. You’re so not alone.

When it comes right down to it, orgasms are God’s gift to women (after all, unlike men, we don’t even have to have one in order to procreate. The way I see it, they’re sort of a fortunate freebie!) Whether you get your pleasure from the clitoris or the vagina doesn’t matter outside the realm of academics. Enjoy what you have, honor your body, and leave the science to us nerds.

How about you? Do you have vaginal orgasms? Do you believe it’s all clitoral? Can you tell the difference? Do you care one way or another?

Rooting for your O- O- O!

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Sexual Awakening: The Truth About What Women Really Want

Are you a woman? Me too! So we know exactly who we are when it comes to sex: It’s better if we feel an emotional connection with our partner. We’re not crazy about pornography, but if it must be on, we prefer it narrative, softer lit, less violent. We are, relative to men, seductive, submissive, receptive, and monogamous. We get more attached than men do when we have sex. We want to be in trusting and respectful long-term relationships. Let’s call ourselves Dutiful Wives.

But wait—this just in: Journalist Daniel Bergner finds that none of the above is true! We are in fact turned on, he reports, by every contextless pornographic scene imaginable: straight and gay sex, masturbation, copulating apes. We get turned off by the too familiar (husbands…); we need distance and novelty to enjoy sex. Up to 60 percent of us fantasize about being raped by a stranger. We can have clitoral, vaginal, even cervical orgasms. We’re wilder and lustier than men, but we’ve been brainwashed by society to believe we’re Dutiful Wives. Let’s call ourselves Bonobos instead, after the famously most sex-positive primate species.

Bergner lays out the history of this brainwashing and then debunks it in his entertaining new book, What Do Women Want? (Ecco). He recaps ingenious studies that have plumbed our desires, including those we deny or hide from ourselves.

Another new take on female lust is British academic Katherine Angel’s Unmastered: A Book on Desire, Most Difficult to Tell (Farrar, Straus and Giroux)—a more personal journey into the wilds of female sexuality, using literature, politics, and Angel’s own experience rather than science as guides. She weaves impressionistic sketches of her ecstatic sexual experiences together with musings on feminism, pornography, and quotes from the likes of Virginia Woolf and Susan Sontag.

Neither book answers the clueless query of Freud’s that gives Bergner his title; in fact, neither addresses the inherent absurdity of one answer fitting all 3.5 billion of us. But they do try to expand the sexual territory women occupy in the world, and thus point us toward the questions we need to ask ourselves about sex.

Bergner surveys the history of men writing about women’s sexuality. I was shocked to learn of the long-held belief that women couldn’t conceive unless they climaxed—a scientific “truth” for 1,500 years that clearly was not vetted by women! Meanwhile, fear of lustful women has been spun out in cautionary tales from the myth of Pandora to whichever halls of power women manage to infiltrate today. In the 1600s, scientists discovered that orgasm was not necessary for reproduction, which only paved the way for a new myth—that of the sexless female (less scary because she can’t be disappointed). In the nineteenth century, women thus became purified, the gentle reins on men’s animal natures, enduring the indignities of the marriage bed—thinking of England!—to keep civilization up and running.

Bergner points out that though we now laugh at Victorianism, women’s supposed monogamous tendencies remain a core assumption about feminine nature via the ruling secular doctrine of evolutionary psychology: that men spread their seed, whereas women seek a lifelong mate to provide for the offspring. This construct is Bergner’s main target, and it’s about time. I’ve noticed that evolutionary psychology is especially beloved by men. Their fairly straightforward drives are mirrored in the animal kingdom more than women’s are: Unlike our mammalian sisters, we mate regardless of whether we’re not in estrus; our lust doesn’t aim at procreative sex—we’re usually trying not to get pregnant; and intercourse isn’t the primary means by which most of us achieve orgasm.

As Bergner points out, evo psych also validates the old double standard: If a guy cheats on his girlfriend or wife, it’s in his nature; you can’t argue with science, baby. But if she strays, she’s an aberrant slut. “Does the fact that women are expected to be the more demure gender in Lusaka and New York, in Kabul and Kandahar and Karachi and Kansas City, prove anything about our erotic hardwiring?” Bergner asks. “Might the shared value placed on female modesty speak less to absolutes of biology than to the world’s span of male-dominated cultures and historic suspicion and fear of female sexuality?”

Those excellent questions lead Bergner to studies that swing the needle from Dutiful Wife to Bonobo. The niftiest is researcher Meredith Chivers’ measure of women looking at pornographic images with a plethysmograph tucked into their vaginas, a sensor that measures blood flow and wetness. The women watched a range of pornographic clips: straight and gay sex, men and women masturbating, bonobos copulating. As they watched, they typed about what turned them on and what left them cold.

You know where this is going. While their fingers said, “Not really my thing,” their nether regions clanged the lust-o-meter’s bell like a young stud showing off for his date at a carnival. The only image that didn’t win the little ladies a stuffed animal was that of a hunky man sauntering on the beach, erectionless. As another sex researcher, Marta Meana, puts it, “The male without an erection is announcing a lack of arousal. The female body always holds the promise, the suggestion, of sex.” The plethysmograph also found that women got more turned on by imagining sexual encounters with strangers than with friends or their romantic partners—even as they typed out their denials.

Men, when administered a similar test, revealed no such dissonance. Gay-male porn made the gay men hard, but women left them limp; vice versa for the straight guys. What to make of this? I would venture that while everyone’s sexuality is shaped partly by culture (look at the range of female sex objects, from the Venus of Willendorf to Kate Moss), women’s lust is more so, and it’s vastly more complex. We’ve been the objects, not the authors, of sociological study for most of history, and we bring more shame, doubt, and worry to bed with us. Many women report having rape fantasies and like being overpowered in bed—we seem to use taboos very creatively to turn ourselves on.

Bergner concludes with a study challenging the proposition that speed-dating patterns prove men are less choosy and women more monogamous because men check more boxes indicating people they would like to date than women do: At gatherings where the women rather than the men got up and moved on when the bell rang, the women checked “I’d date him” as frequently as the men did when they were the “movers.” Prowling for prey seemed to excite more openness and desire in both sexes.

I enjoyed but was not really convinced by Bergner’s book—he seems to want to ground women’s sexuality completely in their physicality in much the same way men seem to be, rather than digging deeper into this fascinating mix of biology, culture, and psychology. Ideally, of course, we would rid society of misogyny and then see how our fantasies and behaviors change—but I’m not holding my breath.

I expected Katherine Angel’s Unmastered to be more my cup of tea, bookwise. I was certainly predisposed to trust a Katherine more than a Daniel on the topic of female desire. Angel raises familiar anxieties about being female and sexual: the pressure to be silent, pleasing, sexy but not too sexy, and never greedy. But she doesn’t connect them to her own sexual reveries, and her feminism doesn’t seem to impede her pleasure with her dream guy. She shyly asks him to rough her up, and his response is “pitch-perfect”: He won’t do it right then, on command, but he ambushes her later when she’s not expecting it. It is as sublime as she had hoped, unclouded by feminist guilt. I was left wondering, Then what’s the problem here, exactly?—and I hungered for more quoted insights from Sontag and Woolf.

Angel doesn’t connect the personal with the political, while Bergner peddles a new strain of animal-based essentialism: We’re nothing like those Dutiful Wives—we’re all Bonobos. But both books raise the right questions. Every woman’s sexual self is patrolled by a bewildering array of good and bad cops—our parents, our religions, our femininity, our feminism, our fear of being undesirable, our training in pleasing and making others comfortable, and a culture that’s subtly or not-so-subtly misogynistic. We need to turn the spotlight around and inter-rogate them all, along with all the “experts” who historically have used their science to keep our sex, and our sexuality, in its place.

We need to question anyone who seeks to explain us to ourselves. For example, are we all on board with the idea, which Bergner unmistakably implies, that to have more “masculine” sex is progress—that we’ll be happier if we all embrace stranger-sex and exult in the hunt and the conquest, or if we scavenge for a new hot thing when the sex cools off? Would buying sexual services enhance our sexuality—does that way lie liberation?

Might it be possible to ignore the clamor of other voices and listen instead to ourselves and our lovers? Is it Victorian to suggest that discovering your freest sexual self might be connected to trusting, liking, and—sorry, Bergner—maybe loving the person you sleep with? Angel cocreated a relationship where kink could bloom organically, pushing back the censors and finding heat in the contradictions and the defiance. We don’t need to censor our lust. We know this intellectually but can’t quite believe it, and so we keep defaulting to outside opinions of what’s “normal” or “natural.”

The important questions about sex for women are not category questions—because who feels sexually normal, consistent, or classifiable? Anybody else a little bit Dutiful Wife and a little bit Bonobo? Some mix, however subtle or implicit, of straight and gay? Anybody else occasionally surprised by what she wants? “What do women want?” is a terrible thing to have to worry about. It distracts from the only two questions that do matter in sex: What do I want, and what do you want?

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