Tara Tainton

Name Calling

Unlike the penis, of which it is usually described as the female homologue, the clitoris does not enjoy an array of nicknames, euphemisms or slang terms. There is even some controversy as to its pronunciation, whether this should be clitt-oris or cly-toris, dictionaries vary and some give both as correct (although the OED prefers 'cly-toris) but this means that there is still a decision to be made which may cause hesitation in referring to this organ in speech. The derivation of the word is commonly alleged to derive from the Greek 'Kleis' meaning key but there is some philological debate about this.

Discovery

The anatomy of the clitoris was described in 1559 by Renaldus Columbus of Padua, who claimed that previous anatomists had overlooked the very existence of 'so pretty a thing'. Although they claimed to have discovered this organ, since antiquity there had been a powerful belief that mutual orgasm was necessary for conception, which suggests that, though unnamed, the clitoris was known to be there.

Anatomy

The visible glans of the clitoris, which is hooded by a prepuce formed by the meeting of the labia minora, is, however, only the outward and visible manifestation of much more extensive structures of erectile tissue, which form a padding over the pubic bone. These concealed parts are anatomically continuous with and functionally linked to the vagina. The whole structure is densely packed with nerve endings: although there are a similar number to those of the penis, they are much more concentrated and closer together. It may be noted that although anatomically speaking, the clitoris is homologous to the penis, the female genitalia are far more differentiated than those of the male: instead of one organ which conveys sperm, urine and is the source of sexual pleasure, a woman has three different parts for these distinct purposes. When erotically stimulated the clitoris becomes engorged and erectile; when a high degree of arousal is reached it retracts, with the effect that it appears to have reduced in size. Vaginal lubrication takes place along with the engorgement of the outer part of the vagina. When sexual excitement reaches its peak orgasm takes place with rhythmic contractions of the clitoris and vagina. Unlike men, women have the capacity for multiple orgasm without an intervening refractory period.

The appearance of the external glans of the clitoris is very various. In some women it may be quite noticeable and an obvious analogue to the penis, in others it may be small and barely visible. Although these are innate physiological characteristics, the size of the clitoris was once assumed to relate to the sexual activity of the female, and to be excessively developed by masturbation or indulgence in lesbian practices.

The role of the clitoris in orgasm has been the subject of very heated controversy. Although for centuries it had been known by medical and religious authorities in Europe that titillating the clitoris had a beneficial effect on conjugal relations, rendering them more pleasant and more likely to be fertile, from the later eighteenth century this information apparently became increasingly hidden. Popular handbooks which went on being reprinted in the nineteenth century underwent expurgation and referred, if at all, much more generally to the necessity of mutual caresses and pleasure between the married couple.

A new ethos of mutual sexual pleasure in marriage arose during the early twentieth century: though shared pleasure had been an ideal in the Victorian era, repression and ignorance meant that it had not always been achieved even with the best intentions. Authors of marriage manuals emphasised the important contribution of the clitoris to the sexual arousal and satisfaction of the woman, even going so far as to suggest, in some cases, that the bridegroom should give his wife her first orgasm by manual stimulation before proceeding to defloration. Even so, clitoral stimulation was seen as something ancillary to penetrative heterosexual intercourse, which was defined as the central conjugal act.

Popularity

The clitoris received, as it were, a setback as a result of the wide acceptance and popularisation of Freudian psychoanalytic ideas. According to this, clitoral stimulation was immature and masculine in its nature, and to be truly women, women needed to abandon clitoral pleasures and effect a transfer to achieving orgasm vaginally. This theory was contested by a developing school of empirical sex research, though it should be noted that marriage advice manuals continued to stress the importance of clitoral stimulation, at least until the wife's sexual responsiveness was 'fully developed'.

Research

Alfred Kinsey, in his study of the sex life of the American female (published in 1953), noted the vast difference in sensitivity between the vaginal wall and the clitoris and labia minora. (William) Masters and (Virginia) Johnson observed sexual interactions in a laboratory setting, and on the basis of these observations, which involved various technological devices to measure arousal and orgasm, they concluded that orgasm was always clitoral: even if the clitoris was not being directly stimulated indirect stimulation was taking place as a result of friction from the pulling on the labia caused by penile thrusting during intercourse. Vaginal contractions were one manifestation of the orgasm produced by the clitoris.

These findings came out in 1966, contemporaneously with the enormous social changes which led to the 'second wave' of feminism and the short-lived 'Sexual Revolution'. Women found that this research supplied them with a way of describing experiences which had been neglected or distorted by the masculine assumption that the acme of sexual pleasure consisted of penis-in-vagina thrusting. The notion was disseminated in a range of popular publications, handbooks on women's health from a feminist perspective, works of sexual advice, and also in numerous novels taking advantage of a new explicitness to describe female sexual experience.

Fear of the Clitoris

Although the clitoris is such a small organ, there are and have been widespread conceptions that it is dangerous and threatening. There are substantial areas of the world today , in Africa and the Middle East, in which clitoridectomy is still routinely practised on ritual and hygienic grounds*, though the number of cultures which practice it are far fewer than those in which some kind of circumcision of the penis is performed on boy children or youths in transition to manhood. The practice is deeply embedded in national and religious cultures and has proved very difficult to extirpate, attempts to do so having caused crises for colonial powers in Africa.

Clitoridectomy takes different forms, from a relatively minor removal of a small amount of flesh from the tip of the clitoris to almost complete extirpation, along with other practices such as infibulation and sewing up of the labia. Such an operation is regarded as reprehensible and unethical by Western medicine, although there have been cases of private practitioners performing the operation under surgical conditions in the United Kingdom for members of cultures in whom it is regarded as an essential attribute of the marriageable female.

However, there is no reason for an attitude of complacent superiority. During the 1860s the British surgeon Isaac Baker Brown performed an unknown number of clitoridectomies at his London Surgical Home. He believed that female masturbation was widely prevalent and the cause of a number of nervous ailments, including epilepsy, a point of view he advanced in his book On the Curability of Certain Forms of Insanity, Epilepsy, Catalepsy and Hysteria in Females (1866). The operation was however widely regarded as mutilating and shocking (especially given Baker Brown's rather cavalier attitude towards consent) and in 1867 he was expelled from the London Obstetrical Society and the London Surgical Home was closed. Baker Brown subsequently became insane. Clitoridectomy in Britain never recovered from this and did not become part of the medical repertoire, although it went on being practised, to an extent which it is probably impossible to ascertain, in the United States well into the twentieth century. While the excesses of the advocates of 'Orificial Surgery', which advocated excising the clitoris as the remedy for a range of ailments, were probably not typical, as late as 1936 Holt's Diseases of Infancy and Childhood was not averse to recommending circumcision or cauterisation of the clitoris as a cure for masturbation in girls.

Perceptions of, and attitudes towards, the clitoris, provide a powerful reflection of wider societal attitudes to female sexuality, whether this is seen as so dangerous that it must be eradicated, or simply needing to be brought into a greater complementarity with male sexual needs.

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3.23 Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved."