A brief history of the clitoris
what do you REALLY know about the seat of pleasure?
I’m back! This week is all about the organ for female pleasure. I am digging deeper into the history of how the clitoris was discovered, misnamed, misappropriated, controlled and abused. But also how it is a vector for liberation. The question I’m exploring is: What does the clitoris tell us about our society?
As usual, a ritual and playlist are at the end of the piece to accompany you.
In her wonderful book Sensuous Knowledge, Minna Salami calls the clitoris a poetic organ, and I can’t think of a better verb for it. In a society that has neglected female pleasure, the clitoris is a poem, a symbol of stoicism that has resisted various attempts to be cancelled (you’ll see how below). Like a fire lily after a fire, the clitoris resists, and every female orgasm, shared or solitary, is a statement against a system that has kept female sexual liberation closed in the fists of power. I find it a beautiful metaphor also, just like many underground movements that exist in darkness during oppressive times, one-third of this organ hides inside the body.
Around the clitoris is a quiet political battle where pain, violence, and liberation swim together. There is no way we can speak about this poetic organ without acknowledging the patriarchal abuse of female pleasure and its liberation.
Let’s start with the basics
clitoris (name) - as from the Britannica Encyclopedia- female erogenous organ capable of erection under sexual stimulation. A female homologue of the male penis, the clitoris develops (as does the penis) from the genital tubercle of the fetus, and it plays an important role in female sexual response.
As patriarchal as it gets, the Britannica Encyclopedia defines the clitoris in comparison to the male penis, a blatant example of how much our history centres on the male perspective. Here I propose another definition:
clitoris (name) - the female erogenous organ with the sole function of making a woman feel pleasure.
Clitoris comes from the Greek kleitoris, which has been translated as both “little hill”.
What I have noticed researching this organ, is how much of women’s history is inexistent. Because it was primarily men who were doctors, scientists and physicists, no one told our stories. In fact, when it comes to the clitoris, it is unclear who discovered it and when, it is mostly scattered accounts of curious physicists, scientists and one midwife. Here is what I found out:
The first mention of women’s sexual anatomy was during the Roman Empire, by the Greek physician, philosopher and surgeon Claudius Galen, who essentially said that all the parts that men had women had too, except on the inside. No mention of the clitoris yet.
In comes Renaldus Colombus, a white male, and anatomist, who “discovered” the clitoris in 1550, and called it the love of venus, speaking of the organ’s primary function as being the seat of pleasure. There are many accounts about who said what and how about this organ. Apparently, a French physicist who dissected it around this time called it the membre honteux—“the shameful member”—and declared its sole purpose to be urination. It was a woman, a midwife named Jane Sharp, who called it the female penis, recognising its primary function as pleasure. Years passed and various scientists attempted to find similarities between the clitoris and male sexual organs, for lack of comparison. What I observed is that it seems that it was very difficult in a society that needed to find a practical function for everything, to come to terms with the fact that this organ was not, in their eyes, functional.
But then things got crazy. The clitoris was inserted in the infamous anatomy reference book for Western medicine, Gray’s Anatomy, in 1901. Then forty-seven years later, in 1948, the clitoris disappears from the book. Puff, gone! Everyone who studied anatomy in the next 50 years, did not study the clitoris.
Let’s pause for a second here - not studying the clitoris means that many women who were subjected to pelvic surgeries were operated on by doctors who sometimes permanently damaged their sensitivity in that area. This means that many women’s ability to feel pleasure was lost because of intentional ignorance.
In 1998, Australian doctor Helen O’Connell began to map the clitoris and delve deep into women’s pleasure. The reason she did this? Rage of course. Her surgical exam was based on a 1985 version of Last’s Anatomy and had no mention of the clitoris, no illustrations, it described aspects of female genitals as a "failure" of male genital formation, and dedicated two full pages to the male’s phallus.
Her anger fuelled curiosity, and most probably redemption. I can imagine a conversation in her mind during the exam went something like this:
O'Connell reads: “ female sexual anatomy represents a “failure” of that of the male.
O’Connell: What the hell? (frantically underlines the word failure in blue pen)
O’Connell: notices the absence of the clitoris in this book. A clitoris she knows, because she has orgasms and is a striving medical doctor.
O’Connell: this book is absolutely ridiculous! How is this in my surgical exam? How many people are in this room? “
O’Connell looks around and counts heads: “50”
Agan O’Connell, in her brain: “Ok so 50 people right now are reading this, and will use this knowledge as a basis of their medical practice. That’s outrageous, it stops today.”
O’Connell failed that test three times, that’s how outraged she was. She discovered that the limited research in the medical field was something that needed to change. Her groundbreaking research changed the way we look at the “love of venus” both from an emotional perspective, for women who can reclaim pleasure as a bodily right, and for practical reasons, because it gave doctors a map of the key nerves and blood vessels so they could avoid creating permanent damage to a patient’s sexual sensitivity during a surgery. Her work inspired everyone from artists to doctors, answering a centuries-old question.
We now know that the clitoris has 8000 nerve endings and is intimately connected to the urethra and the vagina, and is believed to be responsible for the g-spot and vaginal orgasms. Whilst Freud decided that a clitoris orgasm was for weak people - he said vaginal orgasm was the only female orgasm because he could not bare the thought of the penis not having much importance in the act - we know now that only 15% of women manage to orgasm through the vagina. The rest need the “love of venus”.
For centuries, society has denied us our power to feel pleasure, indulge in our desires, and decide for ourselves. Millions of women have children before they have orgasms, and many women I know have trouble with pleasure, and a lot of it is due to sexual trauma. More than 200 million girls and women alive today have undergone female genital mutilation. Anaorgasma is a diagnosed condition:
Anorgasmia is delayed, infrequent or absent orgasms after sexual arousal and adequate sexual stimulation. Different factors may lead to this, including intimacy issues, cultural factors, medications, and trauma. Treatments include education about sexual stimulation, sexual enhancement devices, individual or couple therapy, and medications.
Quite simply then, knowing about the clitoris liberates women from being reliant solely on the male sexual organ for pleasure. It is a pioneer in sexual liberation and therefore women’s liberation.
One of the most powerful documentaries I have seen in the last few years is called Las Muertes Chiquitas by Mireia Sallares. It follows 26 different women in Mexico, in intimate conversations about sex, pleasure, and everything that comes with it in a patriarchal society.
One of the parts I remember with the most tenderness is the one where a woman who used to be a nun describes her first orgasm. She says:
“Then I discovered my clitoris and I cried. I found out how we are and I cried so much. And then I laughed because, for all those years, I had denied myself the chance to know myself”
I’d love to end with a note of love for all the women discovering themselves or those who cannot. You are heard and you are not alone, this is a road that had been made full of obstacles, but we are slowly liberating. For those giving us orgasms, or working with those of us who have difficulty with pleasure, thank you, we love you and thank you for listening and informing yourself.
The attempt to nullify female pleasure is just another example in a world where so many people are kept from their full power and desire. May we live in a world where all bodies are accepted in their full desire without shame.
Much love,
V
For Today’s ritual, I have this beautiful playlist I found on NTS and a lemon and thyme tea (with honey) which is my favourite right now.