Indiana Joel Illustration/The Ubyssey
My first book about puberty was called GURL. It was bright pink and illustrated such things as hair waxing, masturbation, blow jobs and sex. The most uncomfortable proposal it had, at least when I was 13, was this cartoon girl spreading her legs and looking at all of herself in a handheld mirror for “self-exploration.” Push the labia to one side, then the next, and oooh ahh! So THAT’s the clitoris!
The first time I tried this, I almost wiped out in the tub. The lighting was too bright and I was less than excited about what I saw. Without the glass of wine, the bath beforehand, the candlelight and your great-grandmother’s tarnished silver mirror, your vagina can look just like…well, the organ it is. It’s a bit of visceral anatomy at the tips of your fingers. I think you bloom into appreciating its beauty.
The debate on clitoral versus vaginal orgasm has raged on late night TV shows for years, but the actual examination of the biological complexities of the female orgasm is much older. Princess Marie Bonaparte, Napoleon’s great-grandniece, really, really wanted to be able to orgasm vaginally, but was unable to.
She hypothesized the thumb rule, after interviewing (and examining) hundreds of women. If the gap between the clit and the vaginal opening is equal or less than the distance from the tip of the thumb to the first joint, the woman has a higher likelihood of coming vaginally. If the distance is longer, lovers can anticipate the necessity for creativity and acrobatics, since vaginal pleasure would be more difficult, in theory.
Nonetheless, the dichotomy seems insufficient, especially since I learned that the majority of the clit is actually within the pelvis. With that fact comes the possibility for every woman to explore pleasurable penetration—if she so desires, of course.
That friendly little bulb is actually just the tip of the iceberg. It was only in the 1990s that Dr Foldes completed an MRI of the clit. There’s the corpus cavernosa—the cartilage folds that surround the vaginal opening. The corpus cavernosa also extend into the clitoral crura, which join together at the bulb of the clitoris and look like a wishbone.
Under the labia majora (internally) are the clitoral vestibules, which also become engorged when the woman is aroused. The glans is the part you can see, while the rest is all internal.
The MRI images show these absolutely beautiful soft round shapes. Not only do women have the ability to have multiple orgasms, but they also have this elaborate structure of pleasure within them!
It also leaves a lot to explore in terms of discovering how to control orgasm if you become aware of those internal structures and the different ways in which they may be sensitive within your personal anatomy.
And better orgasms are good for everyone.
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