Speaker 1: Welcome to stuff Mom never told you From how supports
Speaker 1: dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristen
Speaker 1: and I'm Caroline, and we are going to talk all
Speaker 1: about the Clitteriest today. Ladies and gentlemen. Everything you never
Speaker 1: knew that you wanted to know about the clitterest will
Speaker 1: be revealed in this podcast. That's right, in a safe
Speaker 1: for work format. Very safe for work. Yeah, Caroline and
Speaker 1: I learned lots of stuff along the way, and I
Speaker 1: think it's important for everybody to learn more about the clitterests. Which,
Speaker 1: by the way, can we just start off with one
Speaker 1: fascinating fact please? The clitterest itself, just just the visible
Speaker 1: part of it, outside of our bodies, contains eight thousand
Speaker 1: nerve endings. That's more than twice on the head of
Speaker 1: a penis, guys, not to not to make you jealous,
Speaker 1: but not to tout our own horn. I feel like
Speaker 1: this podcast is going to be full of euphemisms. It
Speaker 1: might be. It might be, but let's uh, we we
Speaker 1: got a long way to go before we get up
Speaker 1: to those eight thousand nerve endings. Let's go back in time,
Speaker 1: Caroline showing do Yeah, we we first want to talk
Speaker 1: about where this word came from, what does it mean,
Speaker 1: And it actually didn't originate until the seventeenth century, which
Speaker 1: is interesting. This word has not been around forever, but
Speaker 1: it was coined from the Late Greek word clay torus.
Speaker 1: And I assume that we will get some correction letters
Speaker 1: if we mispronounced the following Greek words that we're about
Speaker 1: to say, because you might not know this, but I
Speaker 1: am not Greek, yes, and nor am I Caroline uh.
Speaker 1: And that's clear us with a K. And there's a
Speaker 1: word clayenne in Greek which means to sheath, also to shut,
Speaker 1: so something it might come from that because of the
Speaker 1: reference to the clitterest being covered by the laby a menorah.
Speaker 1: And then there's also though a related Greek noun form police,
Speaker 1: which has a meaning of a key, latch or hook
Speaker 1: to close a door. And then there's another Greek word
Speaker 1: that it could come from that is a variant of
Speaker 1: the word meaning side of a hill. It's related to
Speaker 1: the verb to slope, from the same root word as
Speaker 1: climax I Carol, I think that one is my favorite,
Speaker 1: although there are some ancient medical sources that also say
Speaker 1: that there is a Greek verb clyde ri izing that
Speaker 1: means to touch or to the late lasciviously, to tickle. Well, Kristen,
Speaker 1: speaking of tickling, the Germans have my favorite slang word
Speaker 1: for the clitterest, which is the kitzler, which means the tickler. Yes, indeed, yeah,
Speaker 1: and even just the slang clit originated in the nineteen fifties,
Speaker 1: although I have a feeling that whoever was in the
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties saying the word clit was probably just scandalizing
Speaker 1: everyone so scandalous. So there there's a little background on
Speaker 1: the word clitterest, why we call it the clitterest. But
Speaker 1: let's go back in time as well and cover some
Speaker 1: CLIs story. How did we even figure out what this
Speaker 1: clitterest is all about? I mean, obviously women were probably
Speaker 1: figuring out what this clitterest was all about for a
Speaker 1: long time, but women weren't exactly prominent members of the
Speaker 1: medical field until more recent history. So let's start in
Speaker 1: fifteen fifty nine with one of my favorite characters in
Speaker 1: this episode, an Italian anatomist, Realdo Colombo. Yeah, so of
Speaker 1: course a man would claim to have discovered the clitter
Speaker 1: lit and I like that his last name is Colombo
Speaker 1: Kristen because if his name were in English texts around
Speaker 1: that time, it would have been Umbus. And so I
Speaker 1: just liked the idea of the parallel between like Christopher
Speaker 1: Columbus claiming to have discovered the New World when really
Speaker 1: there were already people there, and then you have Rialdo
Speaker 1: Columbus claiming to have discovered the clitterus when plenty of
Speaker 1: women were already. There's the Christopher Columbus of the glitters
Speaker 1: Clistopher Columbus. God, I wish we had art to accompany
Speaker 1: this episode of these explorers and these scientists. But anyway,
Speaker 1: so yeah, he's this anatomist who says that he discovered it,
Speaker 1: and there were some researchers at a New Zealand university
Speaker 1: who were like, no, it was already quite known to Greek,
Speaker 1: Persian and Arabic writers on medicine and surgery all about,
Speaker 1: albeit with misconceptions about its function, which I also think
Speaker 1: is funny because it's like, why are we talking about
Speaker 1: a body part in terms of who knew it first.
Speaker 1: But that's not to say that Columbo slash Columbus didn't
Speaker 1: actually make some sort of contribution to the understanding of
Speaker 1: what it was. Yeah, he it wasn't anatomist, and he
Speaker 1: did provide these really detailed drawings based on human dissection
Speaker 1: of the clitterests, and he was one of the first
Speaker 1: to describe its physiological properties. And although he did think
Speaker 1: that it produced a type of female sperm, and he did,
Speaker 1: he wasn't really a big fan of the clitterest. He
Speaker 1: called it the more venerous, meaning like the mound of love.
Speaker 1: So he was also very much focused on the pleasurable
Speaker 1: aspects of the clitterest. So although Colombo did mistakenly claim
Speaker 1: that he was the first one there, at least he
Speaker 1: liked it. Yes, not everybody can say that he liked it,
Speaker 1: but I mean, I think his whole person well, he
Speaker 1: was far from the only person who thought or positive
Speaker 1: that the clators produced some type of female sperm or
Speaker 1: or played some role in procreation. Um, But I think
Speaker 1: he's unique in the fact that he also really dug it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: other other medical or scientific writers at the time we're like, well,
Speaker 1: we think that it could produce spiram and contribute to procreation,
Speaker 1: but we don't like it. Well, if you go way
Speaker 1: back before Colombo to say Aristotle, they I mean he
Speaker 1: wasn't really talking all that much about the clitterest, but really,
Speaker 1: this is when you have the idea of women being
Speaker 1: just mutilated. Men are clitterist. Is really just a vestige
Speaker 1: of what should be a penis. Yeah, it makes me
Speaker 1: think of that song from a Little Mermaid, Poor unfortunate Souls,
Speaker 1: Like that's kind of how Aristotle and Hippocrates saw women.
Speaker 1: So yeah, Aristotle just thought that there were adverse uterine
Speaker 1: conditions that basically turned what should have become a beautiful,
Speaker 1: functional penis into an underdeveloped and sterile stump of a clitterest.
Speaker 1: And Hippocrates, the old Greek father of medicine, disc drived
Speaker 1: women's genitalia on the whole is just our shameful parts,
Speaker 1: So thanks a lot, And he acknowledged that the clitterest existed,
Speaker 1: but he just thought it was a random protrusion. He
Speaker 1: referred to it as the colamela or the uvula, possibly
Speaker 1: because it resembles the uvula in our throats, a little
Speaker 1: punching bag and you see if you open open your mouth.
Speaker 1: Well obviously, I mean, the uvula definitely doesn't contribute to
Speaker 1: sex or procreation, so why would this tiny protrusion have
Speaker 1: anything to do with it either. Um. Greek physician Serranos
Speaker 1: of Ephesus also does acknowledge the clitterest exists. Um. He
Speaker 1: has a different description for it, other than the shameful parts,
Speaker 1: thank god. Uh. He says, this small formation is called
Speaker 1: the nymph because it is hidden underneath the laby is,
Speaker 1: such as young brides under their veil. Well, isn't that precious,
Speaker 1: so precious little nymph? Yes? But I think it should
Speaker 1: be noted though, that while these guys, essentially we're seeing
Speaker 1: women as sort of the mutilated men we we should
Speaker 1: we we could have had gorgeous penises, but instead we
Speaker 1: ended up with gining nymph siding under veils. Because it
Speaker 1: wasn't until in fact, the eighteenth century the European scientists
Speaker 1: started seeing men and women as distinct sexes. This was
Speaker 1: really just the line of thought that like, Okay, we
Speaker 1: have a guy here, so we're going to figure out
Speaker 1: women based on what she doesn't have, based on his body.
Speaker 1: But then, I mean, things also got pretty intense in
Speaker 1: the Middle Ages, understandably because it is the Middle Ages, right,
Speaker 1: A lot of superstition flying around, and you know, despite
Speaker 1: the relative and and minor advances and understanding what this
Speaker 1: nymph is. During the preceding centuries, the physicians in the
Speaker 1: Middle Ages relied more on fear and superstition. Uh. They
Speaker 1: did also think that it was responsible for creating female sperm.
Speaker 1: But in fourteen eighties six, the Malleus Maleficarum, which was
Speaker 1: a guide to finding and detecting witches, called the clitterest
Speaker 1: quote the Devil's teet through which the devil sucked out
Speaker 1: his victim's soul. So, yeah, we are women are just
Speaker 1: no matter what we do, just being aligned with witchcraft
Speaker 1: and evil and the devil's teet. I don't even I
Speaker 1: When I read that, Caroline, and preparing for this episode,
Speaker 1: I just had to stop for a moment because the
Speaker 1: images coming to my mind were quite intense. But moving
Speaker 1: out of the Middle Ages and into the nineteenth century,
Speaker 1: we were in one of the history books that we
Speaker 1: read focusing on the history of the Clitterest the author wrote,
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century really should have been the clitterests century,
Speaker 1: and that the clitterest century. I'm not making it up.
Speaker 1: That is a direct quote. Because in eighteen forty four
Speaker 1: we have this German guy G. L co Belt draw
Speaker 1: a detailed clitter lists not just the external clitteriest but
Speaker 1: also the internal structure of well as well, which included
Speaker 1: the erectile tissues that we'll talk about more in a
Speaker 1: little bit. And this was probably the very first accurate
Speaker 1: depiction of what the clitterests in total looks like. But
Speaker 1: it turns out that the nineteenth century and moving into
Speaker 1: the Victorian era was not such a great time for
Speaker 1: the clitter is well. I mean, you also had to
Speaker 1: grapple with the general fear that people had about women
Speaker 1: in general, specifically and especially women's sexuality, because God forbid
Speaker 1: a woman actually want, crave, or enjoy any type of
Speaker 1: sexual behavior. So it was also kind of just assumed
Speaker 1: that in general women were passionless, they didn't have a
Speaker 1: sex drive, they were just basically sperm vessels, um, and
Speaker 1: that if a woman did have a sex drive, she
Speaker 1: was considered hysterical and she'd't have to go to see
Speaker 1: a doctor and get treatment, and that treatment was a vibrator. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the the vibrator technology started to take off in the
Speaker 1: eighteen fifties and in extreme cases of nymphamania, wherein you
Speaker 1: have a woman who actually enjoys sex and might even masturbate.
Speaker 1: From time to time, you would have doctors cauterizing or
Speaker 1: removing the clitterest entirely. There were a lot of methods
Speaker 1: out there for curing in quotes, hysteria through clitter ectomys. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think that's such a scary but very
Speaker 1: clear illustration of how women's sexuality was viewed. The fact
Speaker 1: that it's like it's so abnormal for a woman to
Speaker 1: like or want sex that it's like if she does, oh,
Speaker 1: we better take off the parts that make or enjoy
Speaker 1: it well. And there are still there's still clar ectomies
Speaker 1: that are going on as well in different parts of
Speaker 1: the world. You hear about this when people talk about
Speaker 1: female genital mutilation or female circumcision. This was also we
Speaker 1: we we usually today probably in the US, think about
Speaker 1: it happening in far away countries such as Sadan, but
Speaker 1: this was happening also in Victorian era America, right. But
Speaker 1: during this period some people were all about the clatorus.
Speaker 1: They understood that it served a great purpose. In eighteen
Speaker 1: fifty two, for instance, Dr Jules Guio wrote a book
Speaker 1: about sexuality that wasn't actually published until eighteen eighty eight,
Speaker 1: ten years after his death because it was so scandalous,
Speaker 1: and he wrote that there exists an immense number of ignorant, egoistic,
Speaker 1: brutal men who do not bother to study the instrument
Speaker 1: that God has entrusted to them well. And one of
Speaker 1: those arguably egoistic and brutal men was likely Dr Isaac
Speaker 1: Baker Brown, who was president of the Medical Society of
Speaker 1: London in the eighteen sixties, and in eighteen sixty five
Speaker 1: he published what became a widely circulated medical book that
Speaker 1: put forth his ideas for curing insanity, epilepsy, hysteria, and
Speaker 1: catalepsy all through clitter ectomys. Yeah, and it's interesting to
Speaker 1: to read about people's views from this time period because
Speaker 1: we have Dr Pierre Garnier in one who was definitely
Speaker 1: not a fan uh and didn't believe that the clitter
Speaker 1: is could or should contribute to any type of like
Speaker 1: sex life between people or solo sex lives at that
Speaker 1: He said that to claim that this minuscule apparatus, which
Speaker 1: is most often an insensitive little button, so long as
Speaker 1: it has not been touched or artificially manipulated, is the
Speaker 1: most active erogenous center is to implicitly accuse all girls
Speaker 1: of once having resorted to masturbation or of one day
Speaker 1: becoming debauched. So I mean, right there, you have this
Speaker 1: doctor who's basically saying, like the fact that you were
Speaker 1: even insinuating that it is part of sex, part of
Speaker 1: sexual activity can make someone enjoy sex. That's implying that
Speaker 1: our beautiful, fragile, angelic nymph like women that they're debauched. Well,
Speaker 1: it's telling to that that quote came in eighteen ninety one,
Speaker 1: which is a few years after something really important happened
Speaker 1: in the history the medical history of the clitterest, because
Speaker 1: in eighteen eighty four, doctors were able to see procreation
Speaker 1: the sperm fertilizing the egg on a microscopic level for
Speaker 1: the very first time, and they realized that, Okay, there
Speaker 1: is no such thing as female sperm. Like the lubricant
Speaker 1: in a woman's vaginal a canal has nothing to do
Speaker 1: really with uh, it doesn't have any kind of fertilizing qualities,
Speaker 1: and it doesn't come from the clitterest. And oh my god,
Speaker 1: the clitterest has absolutely nothing actively to do with reproduction.
Speaker 1: So why should we even care about it? Well, why
Speaker 1: should we care about it, but also, oh god, you
Speaker 1: mean women have something on their bodies that is just
Speaker 1: for sexual pleasures exactly. And so not only did they
Speaker 1: demonize it because that means if you're messing around with
Speaker 1: your clitterest, that is because it gives you sexual pleasure.
Speaker 1: Therefore you are debauched, as Guarnier wrote, and then also
Speaker 1: medically they were like, oh well, we don't really even
Speaker 1: need to study it because it is it's useless. It's
Speaker 1: like the appendix of the vagina. Thank god, it can't
Speaker 1: explode um ideas about women's sexuality there. It's not like
Speaker 1: they were so much better. When we get into the
Speaker 1: twentieth century um around World War One, there was this
Speaker 1: case of a dancer named maud Allen who was essentially
Speaker 1: attacked for existing outside social norms sexual norms, and of
Speaker 1: course by that I just mean you know, she had
Speaker 1: sexuality and danced. She was an exotic dancer who attracted
Speaker 1: a lot of attention because during this period that was
Speaker 1: very scandalous. It also so happened that she was a lesbian,
Speaker 1: and this sensational libel trial in Britain exploded around maud
Speaker 1: Allen when she brought a libel suit against this guy
Speaker 1: named Noel Pemberton Billing, who was an editor of a
Speaker 1: right wing journal, The Imperialist, and the Imperialist was claiming
Speaker 1: that there was this black book of forty seven thousand
Speaker 1: World War One British turn coats who had been turned
Speaker 1: gay by the Germans. And since maud Allen was a
Speaker 1: lesbian and was also performing in Oscar Wilde salam Ay,
Speaker 1: there was this item in The Imperialist about if you
Speaker 1: went to see maud Allen, dancer highly erotic at the time,
Speaker 1: dances in this production of salom A, that you would
Speaker 1: be among some of those British turncoats. And he headlined
Speaker 1: this little news item, the cult of the clitteris yeah,
Speaker 1: which is funny to see this anxiety, the steep deep
Speaker 1: anxiety which I get. Social norms, gender norms, wore all
Speaker 1: of this good stuff going on. It's quite a melting
Speaker 1: pot of of you know, all these things getting stirred up.
Speaker 1: But she, maud Allen, was so popular that they had
Speaker 1: to continue adding shows. And she was so popular, and
Speaker 1: not just with gentlemen who were coming to watch her
Speaker 1: dance in such a seductive fashion, I mean women, socialites,
Speaker 1: others were bringing their daughters to see this woman perform
Speaker 1: with their own set of binoculars to further examine her dances. So,
Speaker 1: I mean that's got to be anxiety inducing for a
Speaker 1: guy like Pemberton Billing who you know, he's like, oh
Speaker 1: my gosh, society is changing, women are going to see
Speaker 1: women dance. Well, it's interesting too that in this five
Speaker 1: day trial that ensues a lot of Britain's didn't even
Speaker 1: know what clitterists meant, right, because he assumed that when
Speaker 1: he made that headline, the Cult of the clitterest, and
Speaker 1: he was right, you know, not a lot of people
Speaker 1: would know what it meant. But if you did know
Speaker 1: what clitterists meant, then that meant he would deviant, right,
Speaker 1: And so Billings actually cited Alan's familiarity with the term
Speaker 1: clitterests as evidence that she was a deviant. He said
Speaker 1: that it's an organ that, when unduly excited, possessed the
Speaker 1: most dreadful influence on any woman. And so just this
Speaker 1: combination in his mind of her being a as being
Speaker 1: an exotic dancer and someone with knowledge of such an
Speaker 1: esoteric term as glitterest, she's got to be a sexual
Speaker 1: deviant and she's got to be somehow in cahoots with
Speaker 1: the Germans. Well, and if we step back a little
Speaker 1: bit to nineteen o five, we have Sigmund Freud coming
Speaker 1: in dealing yet another blow to the clitter ist, because
Speaker 1: this is when he puts forth the idea that if
Speaker 1: you are a woman who is having clitteral as opposed
Speaker 1: to vaginal orgasms, then that means that you are not developed,
Speaker 1: that you're like stuck in adolescence. Yeah. He was one
Speaker 1: of many physicians and clinicians and psychologists who didn't deny
Speaker 1: the existence of the clitteral orgasm, but said that that
Speaker 1: is something that adolescence do children do adult mature women
Speaker 1: only have vaginal or jasms, and um, a woman who
Speaker 1: could not orgasm through vaginal intercourse was obviously frigid. And
Speaker 1: that frigid was a term. It wasn't just like an
Speaker 1: insult thrown around. I mean that was a term used
Speaker 1: to describe a whole slew of women. Yeah. And there
Speaker 1: is a paper that we were looking at called Waking
Speaker 1: Sleeping Beauty, the pre Marital Pelvic Exam and Heterosexuality during
Speaker 1: the Cold War, and it talked a lot about how
Speaker 1: doctors at this time, I mean leading all the way
Speaker 1: up to you know, and during the Cold War, as
Speaker 1: the title of the paper implies, vaginal orgasms were considered
Speaker 1: to be the hallmark in the bedroom of a stable
Speaker 1: marriage and thus of a secure community. Yeah. So more,
Speaker 1: you know, just more norms, norms everywhere, Kristen. So, now
Speaker 1: that we are into the Cold War, by way of
Speaker 1: this paper that Kristen decided, we obviously have to bring
Speaker 1: up famed sex researcher Alfred Kinzie, who in nineteen fifty
Speaker 1: three publishes Sexual Behavior in the Human Female, in which
Speaker 1: he dismissed the vaginal orgasm and pointed to the clitterest
Speaker 1: as the source of pleasure. He wrote that the vagina
Speaker 1: walls are quite insensitive to the great majority of females.
Speaker 1: There's no evidence that the vagina is ever the sole
Speaker 1: source of arousal, or even the primary source of erotic
Speaker 1: arousal in any female, which is groundbreaking. Yeah, and then
Speaker 1: Masters of Sex fans might be aware of William Masters
Speaker 1: and Virginia Johnson's research that happens in the mid to
Speaker 1: late nineteen sixties. And it's in sixties six that they
Speaker 1: published their work on the phases of sexual stimulation, and
Speaker 1: they observed that both vaginal and clitteral orgasms had the
Speaker 1: same stages of physical response, and argued that clteral stimulation
Speaker 1: was the primary source of both kinds of orgasms. So finally, finally,
Speaker 1: we have people saying, you know what, the clitteriest is
Speaker 1: not so bad. In fact, it is in many ways good.
Speaker 1: It isn't many ways good. And then two years later,
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty eight, radical feminist and Coat writes the
Speaker 1: myth of the vaginal orgasm and say what right was
Speaker 1: it mean? Caroline? She basically attacked as fraudulent the idea
Speaker 1: that women could only orgasm through vaginal intercourse. She said
Speaker 1: that the idea that idea created psychological problems for women,
Speaker 1: and it served as a critique of heterosexuality in general.
Speaker 1: And she said that sex had been defined for so
Speaker 1: long from purely a male fellow centric perspective. And it's
Speaker 1: not that she's necessarily wrong, but I think Masters and
Speaker 1: Johnson were way more on the nose as far as
Speaker 1: how orgasms work, because so is writing that, you know,
Speaker 1: the vaginal orgasm is a total myth that never happens,
Speaker 1: whereas before people like Freud were saying vaginal orgasms are
Speaker 1: the only way to go when in reality, if we
Speaker 1: start talking about anatomy, which we will hear in a second,
Speaker 1: there's a whole beautiful, complicated, wonderful internal c literal structure
Speaker 1: that is stimulated by a vaginal intercourse. So it's really
Speaker 1: not either or, and you, guys, we don't have to
Speaker 1: fight about it. We don't have to fight about it.
Speaker 1: But I will say that it is worth considering. And
Speaker 1: I think that this is a lot of what codes
Speaker 1: theory is getting at in terms of the fellow centrism
Speaker 1: that for so long and even today, just the word sex.
Speaker 1: When you think of sex, it is implied that it
Speaker 1: is a penis going into a vagina. And so, in
Speaker 1: say Freudian terms, in order for a woman to be
Speaker 1: you know, healthy and adjusted in the correct psychoanalytic phase
Speaker 1: or whatever of her adulthood, that requires her achieving orgasm
Speaker 1: through vaginal penetration with a penis with a penis. So
Speaker 1: then things are coming around to say, oh, well, penis
Speaker 1: not necessarily required, but there are, like Caroline said, there
Speaker 1: is a lot more to it on the inside, which
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about in glorious, glorious detail. When
Speaker 1: we come right back from a quick break. All right,
Speaker 1: So Kristen and I hinted at the well, didn't hand
Speaker 1: We told you flat out that there is there's a
Speaker 1: fabulous internal structure going on with your clitterest. And you know,
Speaker 1: I my my whole attitude reading about this, the history
Speaker 1: of of the study of the clitterest, in the in
Speaker 1: the history of the science of it, I just I'm
Speaker 1: like this, this poor this poor body part. It gets
Speaker 1: no attention. And it's really not until the late twentieth
Speaker 1: century that people even start going should should we look
Speaker 1: inside there? Should we? Should we figure out what's going
Speaker 1: on up in there? Because it turns out that all
Speaker 1: we see on the outside with the hood and the glands,
Speaker 1: that's gland. Not gland with a d is, but the
Speaker 1: tip of an iceberg inside of us. Although iceberg might
Speaker 1: not be iceberg kind of lens itself to fridgid, so
Speaker 1: that might not be the best analogy. It's the tip
Speaker 1: of something fabulous about that, that's right. So in the
Speaker 1: nineteen nineties, researchers performed an mri I that revealed a
Speaker 1: very elaborate structure to the clearest most of which is internal.
Speaker 1: Andrologist Helen O'Connell described the quote clteral complex, the important
Speaker 1: internal clteral structures and their dimensions in a groundbreaking Journal
Speaker 1: of Urology paper. And it should be noted too that
Speaker 1: there had already been m r s of the internal
Speaker 1: structures of penises that had been done in the seventies. Finally,
Speaker 1: O'Connell's like, oh, can we please apply the same technology
Speaker 1: to look inside the vaginal structures to see what's in there? Because,
Speaker 1: oh surprise, there's all of this stuff. Yeah. And in
Speaker 1: a two thousand five paper, O'Connell criticized typical textbook descriptions
Speaker 1: and illustrations, saying that there is no way that you
Speaker 1: can give an accurate portrayal of all of the amazing
Speaker 1: things that are going inside going on inside a woman
Speaker 1: in their clural structures by just showing a single plane.
Speaker 1: You know, you've seen this in textbooks. It's just like
Speaker 1: the side cut of like here's the uterism, here in
Speaker 1: the oraason, there's the vagina in the butthole. But there's
Speaker 1: I mean, there's a whole like amazing sculptural structure going
Speaker 1: on inside us. Who knew? And to give you an
Speaker 1: idea of the scope of this clitteral complex of Caroline
Speaker 1: and I are about to jump out of our seats
Speaker 1: with excitement discussing it contains at least eighteen distinct interacting
Speaker 1: functional parts comprised of muscular, erectile, and sensitive tissues. And
Speaker 1: this is what in eight eight four g l Co
Speaker 1: Belt had drawn. But it took from then until the
Speaker 1: late nineties, in the early two thousands for us to
Speaker 1: come back around to it and really give it its
Speaker 1: due right. And adding to this modern science of the
Speaker 1: clitter ist, in two thousand nine, surgeons O'Dell Boissan and
Speaker 1: Pierre full Days produced the first complete three dimensional scenography
Speaker 1: of a stimulated clitters Because this is important too, because
Speaker 1: there's different stages of our genitalia, if we are aroused
Speaker 1: or not, or having intercourse or not. Things don't always
Speaker 1: look the same in one stage or another. So they
Speaker 1: actually did this research over a couple of years without
Speaker 1: any major funding. So that should tell you about how
Speaker 1: people view the clitter lists and women's sexuality and genitalia
Speaker 1: today as well. Any who, They were actually going in
Speaker 1: search of this g spot you might have heard of,
Speaker 1: and they ended up just finding all of this other
Speaker 1: beautiful stuff. During the search. Yeah, and it turns out,
Speaker 1: based on what we now know about the structure of
Speaker 1: the clitteral complex, which will go into more detail in
Speaker 1: just a second, but the g spot might simply be
Speaker 1: where the anterior vaginal wall makes contact with the internal
Speaker 1: clitter lists. It's not necessarily this magical spot one spot,
Speaker 1: and and and and that's it, sort of in that
Speaker 1: two dimensional way that we often think of, but rather
Speaker 1: it's the convergence of all of this stuff. I wish
Speaker 1: I had a more elegant word than stuff to describe
Speaker 1: it going on inside of us. Yeah, so let's talk
Speaker 1: a little bit about that stuff. So we have the
Speaker 1: glands s glands s, which is what you see on
Speaker 1: the outside. It's what people call a button, but which
Speaker 1: is really like an iceberg, but not an iceberg because
Speaker 1: we're not frigid. It's our little hill. It's our little hill.
Speaker 1: That's right, the ticula. But so okay, here's here's basically
Speaker 1: a rundown. We're going to do our best to describe
Speaker 1: this with words, but I recommend that you look it
Speaker 1: up for an image. Go to stuff Mom Never Told
Speaker 1: You dot com. There is a blog post up called
Speaker 1: a Brief History of the clitterest and it contains a
Speaker 1: picture of exactly what we're talking about, and it is
Speaker 1: safe for work, so excellent. Yes, Well, because the structure
Speaker 1: kind of looks like an awesome little inner tube with
Speaker 1: some shoots coming off of it that's around the vaginal canal.
Speaker 1: It reminds me of an airplane neck pillow. Perfect when
Speaker 1: you blow it up. Yeah, it's inflatable. Yeah. So the glands,
Speaker 1: which is what you see on the outside, is attached
Speaker 1: to that internal structure which we're just crazy about. And
Speaker 1: internal structure is made up of two corpora cavernosa, which
Speaker 1: is a rectile tissue that encircles the vaginal canal. The
Speaker 1: corpora cavernosa then splits to form to what are called crura,
Speaker 1: or it's more erectile tissue that forms a wishbone shape,
Speaker 1: and at rest they point toward woman's thighs and when
Speaker 1: erect they stretch back toward the spine. And then near
Speaker 1: each of the crura on either side of the vaginal
Speaker 1: opening are the clitteral vestibules and they're actually up under
Speaker 1: the labia majora, so inside the labia majora, and when engorged,
Speaker 1: they cause the vulva to expand outward. Yeah, And so
Speaker 1: you know, this is all a bunch of erectile tissue
Speaker 1: that does swell when you get aroused, and that basically
Speaker 1: cuffs the vagina so that a vaginal orgasm is more
Speaker 1: like an internal clitteral orgasm them. And then we can
Speaker 1: all join hands and be friends and no longer debate
Speaker 1: a clitteral orgasm versus a vaginal one, because they're all
Speaker 1: sort of different types of the same thing. It's just
Speaker 1: different methods to stimulate the same structure. And I do
Speaker 1: really like how this wrapping around of the structure is
Speaker 1: often described when it becomes engorged as it giving us
Speaker 1: a hug. And what a hug, A very giving hug,
Speaker 1: such a hug. I love that and a lot of
Speaker 1: people there are a lot of artists, activists, people out
Speaker 1: there talking about the clitterists and women's genitalia in general
Speaker 1: to sort of bring awareness that hey, we're sexual beings
Speaker 1: to your genitals, aren't gross, Get in touch with your sexuality,
Speaker 1: and that the whole reason behind this push to sort
Speaker 1: of make more women aware of their anatomy is that
Speaker 1: so many women report having trouble orgasm NG. Yeah, about
Speaker 1: one in three women and an average has trouble reaching
Speaker 1: orgasm with a partner. About one intent has never reached orgasm,
Speaker 1: whether alone or with a partner. And what often makes
Speaker 1: it a challenge is this shame often associated with our
Speaker 1: bodies and with our genitals. There are women that I
Speaker 1: have known, in fact, who are adults who have never masturbated. Um.
Speaker 1: There are women who have never looked at their own vaginas,
Speaker 1: or they looked once and they were so weirded out
Speaker 1: by what they saw because they didn't know what to expect,
Speaker 1: or it didn't look like what they saw in pornography
Speaker 1: that they assumed that it is wrong and it's not
Speaker 1: the way it's supposed to look, and that's that's not
Speaker 1: the case at all. Right. There was a study study
Speaker 1: in the Psychology of Women quarterly that looked at undergrad
Speaker 1: college women's attitudes towards their bodies and their genitals that
Speaker 1: found that greater dissatisfaction with genital appearance was associated with
Speaker 1: things like higher genital image, self consciousness during physical intimacy,
Speaker 1: which in turn was associated with lower sexual self esteem,
Speaker 1: sexual satisfaction, and motivation to avoid risky sexual behavior. So basically,
Speaker 1: if you think that this important part of yourself is awful, ugly, dirty, shameful,
Speaker 1: or you're afraid of it, then how can you possibly
Speaker 1: enjoy sex? And not surprisingly, the researchers concluded that there
Speaker 1: is a strong relationship between in enhancing the satisfaction with
Speaker 1: the natural appearance of genitalia, with the development of a
Speaker 1: healthy self concept and long term benefits of sexual safety
Speaker 1: and satisfaction, because a lot of times when that sort
Speaker 1: of insecurity over your genitalia happens or you don't think
Speaker 1: it looks right like usually tends to affect you in
Speaker 1: the bedroom in the sense of putting the their person's
Speaker 1: sexual needs and desires over your own. And so, not surprisingly,
Speaker 1: the researchers and in concluded that if you enhance that satisfaction,
Speaker 1: if women are more comfortable and accepting of what their
Speaker 1: vaginas and volvas and clitterestas look like, then it usually
Speaker 1: relates to a more satisfying sex life and also just
Speaker 1: a healthier sexual self esteem. Right exactly. And one person
Speaker 1: who's pushing what she calls cultural c literacy is Susan
Speaker 1: Ekberg Spirits, who wrote a paper in for the Berkeley
Speaker 1: Journal of Gender Law and Justice, and she talks about
Speaker 1: how cultural cliteracy is this thing that denotes what an
Speaker 1: adequately educated person should know about the clitterest, which we
Speaker 1: hope we're contributing to right now. But she talks about
Speaker 1: how the clitterest is quote a despised body part because
Speaker 1: it is an obdurate reminder of women's independence and power
Speaker 1: and supports women's liberation. And she talks about how society's
Speaker 1: shape versions of what is proper adult sexuality conforming with
Speaker 1: values that exist in that society, and she says, quote, unfortunately,
Speaker 1: for women, Western culture equates being human with being male. Accordingly,
Speaker 1: Western culture considers sex proper when it is confined to
Speaker 1: actions needed to produce children. Yeah, And I mean, I
Speaker 1: just think that there is a basic gap and understanding,
Speaker 1: I mean, clearly, as we've talked about in this podcast
Speaker 1: between simply how female sexual pleasure even works and how
Speaker 1: girls are educated in that regard versus boys, and how
Speaker 1: a lot of times our concept of what sex is
Speaker 1: and what sexual pleasure is usually is based around the
Speaker 1: model of vaginal intercourse. Not that there's anything wrong with
Speaker 1: vaginal intercourse, it's just also important for girls and women
Speaker 1: to under stan that we have this part of our
Speaker 1: bodies that has, like you said, nothing to do with
Speaker 1: reproduction whatsoever. It is there purely to facilitate pleasure and
Speaker 1: that's nothing to be ashamed of. And being curious about
Speaker 1: it is nothing to be ashamed of, and exploring it
Speaker 1: is nothing to be ashamed of either. And if you
Speaker 1: want to check out the ways that maybe other women
Speaker 1: are trying to raise cultural cliteracy awareness, uh, you should
Speaker 1: check out New York artist Sophia Wallace who in launched
Speaker 1: a multimedia project called Cliteracy and it includes all sorts
Speaker 1: of art installations and even a clip rodeo where you
Speaker 1: can ride like like a bucking bull at some sort
Speaker 1: of honky tonk bar, you can ride a giant golden
Speaker 1: clitteris yeah, And so I do wonder if anybody's actually
Speaker 1: seen that, like gone to it and participated in this
Speaker 1: art movement to ride the glitter to the well. And also,
Speaker 1: I mean that looking at that, this might sound crass,
Speaker 1: thinking of, oh we writing the clitter is what what
Speaker 1: of that? But the sculpture that she created for this,
Speaker 1: of that engorged internal structure will give you a sense
Speaker 1: of the extent of the size of it as well. Um,
Speaker 1: I mean I mean, it's not the the external glands
Speaker 1: is so diminutive compared to it's a nymph. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: is rather a nymph compared to the powerhouse that is
Speaker 1: inside of us. So, I mean, if we sound like
Speaker 1: we're super high on clitter clitter list knowledge, we are
Speaker 1: because it's incredible to learn about these things inside of
Speaker 1: us that really it's taken us this long to really
Speaker 1: begin to figure out. Right, Well, I feel like there's
Speaker 1: just such a general societal fear of and always has been,
Speaker 1: of women's sexuality and and independent sexuality and a desire
Speaker 1: to want to have sex and enjoy it um. And
Speaker 1: I feel like that is definitely contributed to sort of
Speaker 1: men being afraid of learning more or knowing more or
Speaker 1: caring about women's both both their physical structures and their
Speaker 1: their sexual excitement. But it's also contributed to plenty of
Speaker 1: women being afraid to learn more about it. And so
Speaker 1: I definitely I'm glad we could talk about it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I just wanted to add one final note about
Speaker 1: that surgeon Peerful Days that we mentioned who in two
Speaker 1: thousand nine, along with his research partner Odeal Bissan, producer's
Speaker 1: first three d ultrasounds of the clitterest. He pioneered a
Speaker 1: surgery using this research to treat women who had undergone
Speaker 1: female genital circumcision, and by understanding this internal structure of
Speaker 1: the clitterest, he's been able to perform more than three
Speaker 1: thousand restorative surgeries to give these patients back sexual pleasure
Speaker 1: that had been taken from them through the clitter ectomys
Speaker 1: or other kinds of female circumcision techniques. So it's it's
Speaker 1: it's about female pleasure and us knowing more about our bodies.
Speaker 1: But it's also about this kind of healing as well,
Speaker 1: very real physical healing for women around the world too.
Speaker 1: So with that, let us know your thoughts. I'm curious
Speaker 1: to know what people are thinking. Do you love your clitterests? Guys,
Speaker 1: what do you think about the clitterests. There were a
Speaker 1: lot of letters that we ran across in the process
Speaker 1: of researching this too, from guys asking sex educators about
Speaker 1: how to find the clitterest when what do you do?
Speaker 1: And that's not a question that you should be ashamed of.
Speaker 1: That's a great question for a straight guy to want
Speaker 1: to know about his female partner. So and and also
Speaker 1: side note to um when it comes to statistics about
Speaker 1: women reaching orgasm. There was a recent study that found
Speaker 1: that lesbians tend to achieve orgasm more regularly than straight women,
Speaker 1: possibly because women might be a little more acquainted. Imagine that.
Speaker 1: So with that, I have finally no more final thoughts.
Speaker 1: Email us mom Stuff at how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: You can also tweet us at Mom's Stuff podcast and
Speaker 1: messages on Facebook, and we have a couple of messages
Speaker 1: to share with you right now. So we've got a
Speaker 1: couple of letters here in response to our episode Mama's Boys.
Speaker 1: This one is from Alex and she writes, I thought
Speaker 1: I would chime in with some comments spout dating someone
Speaker 1: who is very close to their mother as someone who's
Speaker 1: friends with his parents. I understand and support being close
Speaker 1: to your parents. However, there does come a point where
Speaker 1: it goes too far. My best example of this going
Speaker 1: too far would be after we had been dating for
Speaker 1: well over a year. At this point, he was still
Speaker 1: spending more of his free time and weekends with his
Speaker 1: mother than he was with me. Yes, I know, great relationship.
Speaker 1: So this one week, he was only going to be
Speaker 1: free for one night on Friday, so after getting off
Speaker 1: work four hours late, he finally makes it to my house.
Speaker 1: Not more than five minutes after getting there, he gets
Speaker 1: a call from his mother, so going into another room
Speaker 1: to talk to her for fifteen minutes, he comes out
Speaker 1: and says he has to go to his mom's house. Concerned.
Speaker 1: I asked, what's wrong this being the one night we
Speaker 1: will see each other for a week. Apparently his mother
Speaker 1: had a bad date and his feeling insecure. I could
Speaker 1: probably dredge up more stories on the same threat as
Speaker 1: this one, but this is definitely a gem of a story,
Speaker 1: especially since it hits both of your request for stories
Speaker 1: about dating Mama's boys, bad stories about dating Mama's boys
Speaker 1: and the stereotypical game Mama's Boys. Definitely enjoying the podcast
Speaker 1: and keep up the good work, so thanks. I'll all right,
Speaker 1: I have a letter here from Rachel. She says, my
Speaker 1: primary partner, I'm polyamorous, is definitely a mama's boy, and
Speaker 1: even though his mom and I don't really see eye
Speaker 1: to eye, I'm really glad for his less macho leanings.
Speaker 1: My partner's mom fled Europe to get away from his
Speaker 1: dad and raise my partner and his brother as a
Speaker 1: single mom and immigrant, as should be expected. Both my
Speaker 1: partner and his brother have a lot of love and
Speaker 1: respect for their mom. One thing I found to be
Speaker 1: much more present in my partner and his brother is
Speaker 1: a willingness to listen to women and an openness to femininity.
Speaker 1: And they both tend to date strong willed women, which
Speaker 1: is a part of why I butt heads with my
Speaker 1: mother and thin she calls her anyway. I've never had
Speaker 1: my partner's relationship with his mom get in the way
Speaker 1: of his relationship with me, but his dad being back
Speaker 1: in the picture has caused a little drama because his
Speaker 1: dad doesn't appreciate the avoidance of machismo as much as
Speaker 1: everyone else does. Of Course, true to form, my mother
Speaker 1: and sin has managed to keep her husband in line,
Speaker 1: and that makes me cackle a bit. So thanks Rachel,
Speaker 1: and thanks to everybody who's written to us. Mom Stuff
Speaker 1: at how stuffworks dot Com is our email address and
Speaker 1: for links to all of our social media as well
Speaker 1: as all of our blogs, videos, and podcasts, including this one,
Speaker 1: which also includes all of our sources. So you can
Speaker 1: follow along with us. Go to stuff Mom Never Told
Speaker 1: You dot com for more on this and thousands of
Speaker 1: other topics. Does it how Stuff works dot com,