[Twosugars]

The truth about the clitoris: why it's not just built for pleasure

Debate has raged for years as to whether female sexual pleasure exists for its own sake or has a role in reproduction. But the two views need not be at war

The results are finally in – a study in Clinical Anatomy has found that the clitoris does play an important role in reproduction, activating a series of brain effects (taking as read, incidentally, that it is done right: so we are talking about a female orgasm, not about an ignored clitoris, sitting there, minding its own business). Those brain effects in brief: enhancement of vaginal blood flow, increased lubrication, oxygen and temperature, and an altered position of the cervix, which paradoxically slows down the sperm and improves their motility.

From a lay perspective, this feels pretty uncontroversial. The clitoris is right there in the reproductive ballpark; it would be weird if it did not at least try to help. Yet this – perhaps predictably, since female sexuality is involved – is a highly contested space.

It was a popular view in the 70s, that female orgasms were important to egg fertilisation, thanks to the suction effect of the muscle contractions, ensuring that sperm went in the right direction, and did not get distracted by, you know, open air. This was decreed false by the end of last century, and the debate took on the distinctive language of scientific scorn: it was a “zombie hypothesis”, according to the physiologist Roy Levin; it wasn’t live but it refused to die.

A feminist case was powerfully made by philosopher Elisabeth Lloyd in The Case of the Female Orgasm. When we seek to characterise sexual pleasure in women as an aid to fertility, we are turning it into an adaptive mechanism, any pleasure a by-product to the service of the species.

We are also being androcentric, taking the male reproductive journey (have orgasm; produce sperm; make baby) and trying to find its mirror in the female (have orgasm; grab sperm; make baby). If you want to explore female sexuality meaningfully, you have to see it as its own terrain, in which pleasure quite possibly exists for its own sake, irrespective of such a mechanism being absent in men.

Daniel Bergner’s book What Do Women Want? makes a parallel and fascinating case that starts with nerve endings in the vagina and ends (I paraphrase) at the conclusion that female desire is so immense we could be turned on by anything, up to and including bonobos.

At the risk of sounding a bit triangulated, I wonder if there is any need for these ideas to be at war; you can see the clitoris as reproductively useful, if that is how the science directs you, without minimising the epic power that has nothing to do with reproduction.
The Guardian

[parmnion]

Oh, I thought you we're going to enlighten us.

[Twosugars]

Originally Posted by parmnion

Oh, I thought you we're going to enlighten us.

Read the article.
It says the clit actually does things to promote fertilisation
It doesnt just sit there looking like a micro dick

[parmnion]

Originally Posted by Twosugars

Read the article.
It says the clit actually does things to promote fertilisation
It doesnt just sit there looking like a micro dick

Does it flap about like a cock?

[Marsh.]

Originally Posted by Twosugars

It says the clit actually does things to promote fertilisation

It stands outside the vagina with a sandwich board saying "Baby making facilities within!"?

[Kizzy]

Originally Posted by Twosugars

The truth about the clitoris: why it's not just built for pleasure

Debate has raged for years as to whether female sexual pleasure exists for its own sake or has a role in reproduction. But the two views need not be at war

The results are finally in – a study in Clinical Anatomy has found that the clitoris does play an important role in reproduction, activating a series of brain effects (taking as read, incidentally, that it is done right: so we are talking about a female orgasm, not about an ignored clitoris, sitting there, minding its own business). Those brain effects in brief: enhancement of vaginal blood flow, increased lubrication, oxygen and temperature, and an altered position of the cervix, which paradoxically slows down the sperm and improves their motility.

From a lay perspective, this feels pretty uncontroversial. The clitoris is right there in the reproductive ballpark; it would be weird if it did not at least try to help. Yet this – perhaps predictably, since female sexuality is involved – is a highly contested space.

It was a popular view in the 70s, that female orgasms were important to egg fertilisation, thanks to the suction effect of the muscle contractions, ensuring that sperm went in the right direction, and did not get distracted by, you know, open air. This was decreed false by the end of last century, and the debate took on the distinctive language of scientific scorn: it was a “zombie hypothesis”, according to the physiologist Roy Levin; it wasn’t live but it refused to die.

A feminist case was powerfully made by philosopher Elisabeth Lloyd in The Case of the Female Orgasm. When we seek to characterise sexual pleasure in women as an aid to fertility, we are turning it into an adaptive mechanism, any pleasure a by-product to the service of the species.

We are also being androcentric, taking the male reproductive journey (have orgasm; produce sperm; make baby) and trying to find its mirror in the female (have orgasm; grab sperm; make baby). If you want to explore female sexuality meaningfully, you have to see it as its own terrain, in which pleasure quite possibly exists for its own sake, irrespective of such a mechanism being absent in men.

Daniel Bergner’s book What Do Women Want? makes a parallel and fascinating case that starts with nerve endings in the vagina and ends (I paraphrase) at the conclusion that female desire is so immense we could be turned on by anything, up to and including bonobos.

At the risk of sounding a bit triangulated, I wonder if there is any need for these ideas to be at war; you can see the clitoris as reproductively useful, if that is how the science directs you, without minimising the epic power that has nothing to do with reproduction.
The Guardian

In my opinion as a woman this male perspective of female sexual desire is bollocks.

[Twosugars]

Originally Posted by Marsh.

It stands outside the vagina with a sandwich board saying "Baby making facilities within!"?

More than that

It activates neuronal impulses leading to enhancement of vaginal blood flow, increased lubrication, oxygen and temperature, and an altered position of the cervix, which paradoxically slows down the sperm and improves their motility.

[Kizzy]

Originally Posted by Twosugars

More than that

It activates neuronal impulses leading to enhancement of vaginal blood flow, increased lubrication, oxygen and temperature, and an altered position of the cervix, which paradoxically slows down the sperm and improves their motility.

I can believe that yet hormonally at times in the reproductive cycle there are times when this process is more likely too, so an orgasm is not the only way for the stars to align that makes having a baby more likely.

[parmnion]

Don't we all know this already?

[Toy Soldier]

I mean, anecdotally, with my first me and my wife were both so drunk that on the same night we had tried to break into some poor old woman's house because we thought it was her Uni shared house but we were actually three doors down.

And with our second, we were trying out a position that was so bad that we've literally never done it again and it did in both of our backs for weeks, and we still laugh about it 7 years later.

I'm not sure it was our best effort either time .

[parmnion]

Originally Posted by Toy Soldier

I mean, anecdotally, with my first me and my wife were both so drunk that on the same night we had tried to break into some poor old woman's house because we thought it was her Uni shared house but we were actually three doors down.

And with our second, we were trying out a position that was so bad that we've literally never done it again and it did in both of our backs for weeks, and we still laugh about it 7 years later.

I'm not sure it was our best effort either time .

This is not a pm

[Twosugars]

Originally Posted by Toy Soldier

I mean, anecdotally, with my first me and my wife were both so drunk that on the same night we had tried to break into some poor old woman's house because we thought it was her Uni shared house but we were actually three doors down.

And with our second, we were trying out a position that was so bad that we've literally never done it again and it did in both of our backs for weeks, and we still laugh about it 7 years later.

I'm not sure it was our best effort either time .

Well we know you came on both occasions
Did she?

[Marsh.]

What position?

[Marsh.]

Originally Posted by Twosugars

Well we know you came on both occasions
Did she?

She came.

She never left.

[Toy Soldier]

Originally Posted by Marsh.

What position?

It doesn't have a name and no one should ever try it, we were both genuinely injured.

[Marsh.]

Originally Posted by Toy Soldier

It doesn't have a name and no one should ever try it, we were both genuinely injured.

A Leslie Ash kinda tea

[parmnion]

Originally Posted by Marsh.

She came.

She never left.

Oh I think she did.

[parmnion]

Originally Posted by Toy Soldier

It doesn't have a name and no one should ever try it, we were both genuinely injured.

Did she twist her neck in the gaps in the headboard?

[parmnion]

Perhaps perfume ain't the only thing TS can put behind his ears.

[parmnion]

I must admit. .that article has intrigued me..the first 2 paragraphs..

I just re read..I thought they were on about the bloke...but it's about the clitiros controlling the sperm as it gets excited and inflamed slowing it down....

A swollen clitiros slowing down sperm!!..my ex needs to get back on this forum..

If anything a swollen clitiros turns sperm into Tom bloody Daley for about 5 seconds....

[parmnion]

It was a popular view in the 70s, that female orgasms were important to egg fertilisation, thanks to the suction effect of the muscle contractions, ensuring that sperm went in the right direction, and did not get distracted by, you know, open air




Nobody appreciates a fanny fart at that moment.

[parmnion]

Originally Posted by Twosugars

Read the article.
It says the clit actually does things to promote fertilisation
It doesnt just sit there looking like a micro dick

https://www.google.com/search?q=bono...obile&ie=UTF-8


Women can be clitiroly aroused by monkeys?

[parmnion]

Reputation: Bonobos are miniature, sharing, caring chimps, living in hippie communes with no aggression and lots of sex. ... Bonobos (Pan paniscus) used to be known as "pygmy chimpanzees", a designation that served to distinguish them from regular chimps (Pan troglodytes).17 Mar 2016

[parmnion]

Is there a book called " I know my own clitiros"

I shall promote that, and not the one by the man who would wave his penis at a monkey..

[Niamh.]

Originally Posted by Toy Soldier

It doesn't have a name and no one should ever try it, we were both genuinely injured.