The female orgasm as you know it does not exist



This was published 6 years ago

The female orgasm as you know it does not exist

By Sarah Berry

The vaginal orgasm does not, and cannot, exist.

Furthermore, women do not ejaculate and the elusive, euphoric G-spot - G for "Gräfenberg" after gynaecologist Dr Ernst Gräfenberg - should perhaps be renamed the F-spot.

The female orgasm: not as we know it?

The female orgasm: not as we know it?Credit:Getty Images

F for fantasy.

This is the last, anticlimactical, word on the female orgasm debate, according to a paper published in the latest issue of the journal Clinical Anatomy.

The researchers, from the Italian Centre for Sexology, argue that the only way for women to climax is through clitoral stimulation.

"Vaginal orgasm has no scientific basis and the term was invented by Freud," the authors say.

Rather, they conclude, "female orgasm is possible in all women, always with effective stimulation of the female erectile organs, eg, the female penis".

But not all sexual health professionals are happy with their ending.

It doesn't capture the complexity of female sexuality, including the female orgasm, argues Kayt Sukel, science writer and author of Dirty Minds: How Our Brains Influence Love, Sex and Relationships.


"While anatomy is important, sexual response is more than the sum of our nether regions," she says.

Sukel also points out that the researchers' dismissal of any other path to orgasm falls short for other reasons.

"In their anatomical reasoning, the authors do not explain why so many women don't climax even with sufficient clitoral stimulation – or why some are capable of orgasm in the absence of it," she says.

"They don't seem to take account of studies, outside the anatomical field, that examine the function of the vagus nerve, the role of the brain in orgasm, or how direct cervical stimulation can lead to orgasm in paralysed women."

The paper's authors argue that the female penis, aka the clitoris, is a purely external organ, thereby making an "internal" vaginal orgasm impossible.

This is contrary to the anatomical diagrams of New York's Museum of Sex and those of renowned Australian urologist Helen O'Connell.

"The clitoris is a very internal structure," O'Connell has said.

Dr Vivienne Cass of Curtin University's School of Public Health and author of The Elusive Orgasm says the clitoris is not "internal" like a kidney, but it is in a "cavity" area where the genitals lie.

"For the general public that would be seen as 'internal'," Cass says.

The paper's authors are being "pedantic about use of language", she says.

"The clitoris has long 'legs' inside the vaginal wall or behind it," sexual health therapist and Fairfax blogger Matty Silver agrees.

"If you tickle that part of the vagina, it's possible to [have an] orgasm from that."

As for orgasms via the "erotically sensitive" G-spot located (theoretically) a few centimetres inside the front vaginal wall, well ...

The 55 per cent of men who have apparently never found it should not fear, for it is but a fairy tale.

"The G-spot does not exist," the researchers state flatly, crushing the adult version of the tooth fairy fantasy.

They claim that recent "confirmations" of the G-spot have largely been made by cosmetic gynaecology clinicians who offer G-spot "augmentation".

The G-spot is "like a folk tale", the authors quote one bioethicist as saying.

"You can prove that something exists if you find it, but if you don't find it, that doesn't prove that it doesn't exist. The G-spot belongs in the same category as angels and unicorns."

Silver agrees that there is "no scientific basis" for a G-spot, but says it appears to be more of an erogenous "zone".

"It is not a spot but really an area of sensitivity created by the position of the urethral sponge lying against the vaginal wall," Cass explains.

The authors continue their sex myth debunking campaign by also rejecting the notion that female ejaculation exists.

However, they concede that "emissions", which occur via the intraurethral glands, can happen and this is a more accurate term "from a physiological point of view".

Silver agrees there is still debate around the idea of female ejaculation and what exactly it is, but says the conclusions about the female orgasm aren't quite as cut and dried as the paper's authors suggest.

They state that "female orgasm is possible in all women, always with effective stimulation" of the clitoris.

Perhaps, but Cass believes the authors' snapshot of female ecstasy is not the entire picture.

"Women can find engaging in sex to be very fulfilling and orgasm is not necessarily a part of this."

Silver, who says she has seen at least three women in the past week who have never been able to reach orgasm, agrees that "effective stimulation" is only one aspect of sexual ecstasy.

"You have to first become aroused," she says. "It's stimulation and arousal."

And, with that advice, the gauntlet is thrown.

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