Vaginal Orgasms Are A Myth, According To Science

We’ve talked about the G-spot orgasm before, and more to the point, we’ve talked before about how others simply refuse to believe that it exists. Over the course of centuries, scientists have been trying to get to the bottom of the female orgasm, how it happens, why it happens. Books have been written, magazines like have weighed in, and sex therapists have told us how to find it and make it work for us. However, a study came out a few years ago saying that the vaginal orgasm isn’t a real thing and women are trying to find something that isn’t attainable, and they presented evidence that they believed proved it.To be fair, while we’ve talked about G-spot orgasms before, and the studies that have proved they exist, the other side of the argument has a point: what we could be calling the G-spot might actually be the rest of our clitoris. Despite what most people think, the female clitoris is not just a little button that sits above our vaginal entrance. Rather, it’s a complete organ where the rest of it rests inside us. Think of it like an iceberg, we can only see the tip and the rest of it is lurking under the surface, just waiting to be stimulated. The word clitoris actually drives from the Greek word for key, which is ironic because understanding the clitoris can unlock great things. Here’s what you need to know about the clitoris as a whole, not just what you can see.

The clitoris is only partially visible to our naked eyes. Our clitorises aren’t little buttons, they’re four-inch long organs that are mostly hidden inside the female body. That means that there’s a lot more fun to be had with the rest of the clitoris if you know about the rest of the clitoris.

50 to 75% of women need their clitorises stimulated to orgasm. Most women are not going to get off just from penetrative sex alone, that’s just facts. That means that your sexual partner needs to go out of their way to show your clitoris some love.

If you’re addressing the clitoris, labia and vagina together, that’s called a vulva. Words matter, guys. We need to be able to talk about our own bodies with the actual words that are used to describe those parts. That way, we can be more educated about our own bodies, and more importantly, get to know them well enough that we can show a sexual partner around.

The clitoris actually grows over the course of a woman’s life. After menopause, the clitoris can be something like 2.5 times larger than it was when that same woman was a teenager. We’re not sure if size matters with a clitoris in the sense that a bigger clitoris can be more pleasurable, but we do know that no woman has tried measuring their clitoris size the way men measure penises.

Clitorises are organs that are designed to do one thing. Our clitorises are solely designed to bring us pleasure and make us feel good. It has nothing to do with reproduction like a penis does, it’s solely for fun sex stuff. Women are pretty lucky in that respect, which is why we should take advantage of that.

The clitoris can vary in shape and size. Much like a man’s penis, a woman’s clitoris can be different shapes and sizes. Some stick out, and some don’t. Also, different clitorises like different things, like different kinds of pressure. Basically, every clitoris is like every woman, they’re all different. If you’re having sex with a woman, take the time to figure out what she likes. She’ll thank you for it.

Back during the 19th century, doctors thought that women could fall ill to “hysteria” and would cure it with orgasms. This is not nearly as fun as it sounds. Hysteria was basically a code word for “women acting differently than we think they should act.” The diagnosis of hysteria dates back to Greek physician Hippocrates, and the symptoms were things like nervousness, sexual fantasies, lots of vaginal lubrication, and anxiety. Basically, these were a lot of women who weren’t getting off much.

This is actually sort of how vibrators were invented. They were brought in to help doctors bring the women to "arouse to paroxysm,” which was their word for orgasm. Some doctors thought that hysteria could actually kill a woman, and would do crazy things to “cure” it, like removing the clitoris or burning it with acid.

There are lots of different kinds of orgasms. Sure, maybe the G-spot orgasm can be attributed to having the internal parts of the clitoris stimulated, but cervical orgasms are also a thing, too. Then again, those are really, really hard to have. This is why very few women can orgasm without the clitoris being involved in some way.

Freud thought clitoral orgasms were “immature.” According to him, vaginal orgasms were “mature and feminine” and clitoral orgasms were “masculine, imature, and inferior.” To be fair, Sigmund Freud’s theories about sex were largely discredited and this makes him sound like a guy who never gave a woman an orgasm in his life, but for a long time, this theory made the rounds and women everywhere tried not having clitoral orgasms for fifty years, until feminists in the 60s made it a point to take the clitoral orgasm back.

There are a lot of weird names for the clitoris. People nickname this organ all the time. Some weird names I’ve heard before are “man in canoe,” “rosebud,” “joy buzzer,” “cherry pit,” “love button,” or “bald man in a boat,” among others.

Let’s talk parts of the organ. The clitoris is made up of the clitoral head, the hood, the clitoral shaft, the urethral sponge, the erectile tissue, the glands, the vestibular bulbs, and the clitoral legs. The only parts we can see are the clitoral head and hood. That’s why some people think the G spot orgasm is actually just part of the clitoris that’s stimulated in a different way.

Women can have multiple orgasms. Women basically have the opposite of a refractory period: we’re capable of having one orgasm roll right into another. Women who have had multiple orgasms might think this one is a bit obvious, but not every woman has had this experience, and it wasn’t even known in the scientific community that that was possible at all until the research of Masters and Johnson changed how we study sex.

A clitoral orgasm can be anywhere between 10 to 30 seconds long. This isn’t including multiple orgasms that involve pelvic contractions, though. The average clitoral orgasm can bring about anywhere from 3-16 contractions. Additionally, a woman’s average orgasm lasts longer than the best orgasm a man has ever had. Sorry, guys.

We shouldn’t worry so much about types of orgasms, really. In reality, an orgasm is an orgasm regardless of how it happens, and we shouldn’t be acting like any one orgasm is better than another. The whole point is that we have fun, and any kind of orgasm is fun.