Sexpert ReMark

Happy International Women’s Day! This post is women-related. Obviously.

A few minutes ago, I was having some breakfast while watching the ladies of The View talk about the human sexuality professor at Northwestern, Michael Bailey, and the live sex show that he staged to teach the class how female orgasm works. If you haven’t read about it, where have you been? And you can read about it here, and here, and here (among other places).

I was pretty interested to hear their opinion, and was pleasantly surprised with the majority of the reactions. However, one thing rubbed me the wrong way, especially in light of today being International Women’s Day. Joy Behar questioned the importance of learning/teaching about female ejaculation (I’ll link to it once it is up). She asked “why do we need to know more or teach about [female ejaculation]?”

Well, Joy, how about because we know about 8 times more about male ejaculation than we do about female ejaculation? How about because women have been routinely excluded from medical studies until recently? There has long been an assumption that if it worked for men, it would work for women. And how about because, even today, women struggle to be represented in research studies (e.g.: heart health or alcoholism)?

When it comes to sexuality, we know even less about women. We know minimal about the anatomy of women’s genitals in comparison to men’s. We still struggle to understand the g-spot and the clitoris. The first comprehensive study of the anatomy of the clitoris was released in 2005 and found that the paired bulbs and paired corpora (which are continuous with the crura) are a part of the clitoris and appear to be the locus of female sexual function and orgasm. So the clitoris is far larger than ever before known. The crura (the ‘roots’ of the clitoris) are only recently being discovered as incredibly interconnected with the rest of the organs in the genital area. One fascinating study, using sonography, found that the g-spot orgasm may actually be the stimulation of the crura and the richly innervated clitoris (and this was just published in 2009).

Clearly, we are lacking in our knowledge of women’s sexual anatomy and function. We know far less about women’s sexual functioning than we do about men’s. So, Joy, that is why it is important to understand female orgasm and ejaculatory responses. And in light of Women’s Day (and every day), let’s acknowledge that although women have come far, there is still a long way to go before the sentence “women and men are treated equally” can be uttered in truth. Today is the 100th birthday of International Women’s Day – here are some ways to celebrate using social media.