THE REVOLUTIONARY ORGASM

THE REVOLUTIONARY ORGASM

- Why Is the Clitoris Still Such a Threat?

It’s fun to read evolutionists’ theories about the purpose of the female orgasm. The male orgasm has an obvious biological function since ejaculated sperm will swim like crazy toward eggs tucked deep inside a woman’s vagina, and procreation may result. Sexual excitement in the female for procreation may or may not be important, but, as pregnancies from rape certainly demonstrate, female desire is unnecessary. Anyway, let’s forget that question and posit that desire in a female might serve evolution’s goals. That still leaves the problem of the female orgasm. What’s it for, really?

Most of us now know that the clitoris is the center of desire and orgasm. But, oops, the clit is not inside the vagina! It doesn’t even reside as close to the vagina as the anus does. Some evolutionary biologists* have viewed the clitoris as vestigial, an artifact, like the appendix. Other theories involve ‘drift’ of the clitoris away from the vagina, though toward what purpose remains evolutionarily problematic.

When I got married back in the dark ages of 1964 (I was 19), my husband’s father gave him a book called Ideal Marriage: Its Physiology and Technique. This book, originally published in 1926, had been controversial because it supported the notion of shared sexual pleasure in marriage. My husband and I did try to study the text but, both being nearly virgins, still made a mess of our marriage. If I remember correctly (and I do not intend to research this point), the locus of sexual pleasure in a woman was posited to be in, yes, the clitoris, but clitoral orgasm was deemed immature, and mature women, through practice or pretense or magic, would learn to transfer the site of orgasm to the vagina.

Some women, of course, do have orgasms through vaginal penetration (figures reported are about 40%) or within the anus (no figures readily available on that one!), but a sense that vaginal orgasms are somehow more grownup remains with us.

In my novel TERMINAL VELOCITY (1997, Vintage), one of the main characters, a lesbian feminist outlaw named Jordan Wallace** proclaims, “The female orgasm is revolutionary because it is connected to nothing!” This is a hilarious thing to say, although it’s not entirely accurate. The FO (short for female orgasm because I’m tired of typing it) is connected to sexual pleasure, and sexual pleasure can lead to the FO, and the FO can lead to sexual independence. And there’s the bigger danger. There’s the revolution. Female sexual independence.

Sexual independence in women remains wildly threatening. That’s why the word clitoridectomy can even exist. Female castration involves removing that dangerous clitoris but may also include sewing together the labia. Jeez, really? And genital mutilation of women remains a worldwide problem. Some 230 million women, largely in Muslim countries, are reported to be victims, but also in the current dystopian television series The Handmaid’s Tale, women in the country that was formerly America suffer it. And if the current proponents of increasing the population to save the (white?) race, manage to send women back to a primary purpose of producing babies, the FO will lose its entire purpose.

I once asked a woman therapist what she thought the purpose of the female orgasm might be, and she said, the release of tension. Really? Why not just get a good backrub or smoke some weed? Her answer was stupid.

Eve Ensler, the writer who now calls herself V, wrote a theatrical piece called The Vagina Monologues, basing her outrageous play on interviews with women about their genitals, and when she took her show on the road she kept a “vagina-friendly” map. Some locations would publicize her play with its actual name, but others called it The V Monologues or even The Monologues. The New York Times once censored an ad when the play was performed on Broadway. They did use the word vagina - which I’m sure felt very daring - but the logo, an oval containing a V with a dot, had its dot removed.

It's worth learning some physiology to discover that the clitoris is not that dot, that the dot is merely the tip of a grand jungle of underground sexual nerves some 3-5 inches wide. Reading about this made me think of Smithsonian Magazine, where I like to learn about the excavations of lost civilizations.

These questions do make me cross my legs tight, but I want to ask them: Why does the clitoris remain such a threat? Is the sexual independence of women so dangerous? I’d love to hear your theories.

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In case you don’t know this:

*Evolutionary biology posits that ‘Natural selection’ is the process by which individuals with traits better suited to survival and reproduction pass those traits on to their offspring.’

**On Friday at 6 am I will post (and read aloud) the first chapter of Terminal Velocity so you too can meet the infamous character named Jordan Wallace.