Yes, orgasm may happen in the vagina and be experienced differently than stimulating the pea-size glans of the clitoris directly, however, it is time to set the record straight and correct incorrect information that for decades damaged the psyches of women. Freud was wrong. In the 1930’s he had the nerve to say that women’s clitoral orgasms were “infantile” and that “mature” women had vaginal orgasms while, of course, a man was thrusting his penis inside her vagina. Robinson (1959) wrote a chapter in her book, The Power of Sexual Surrender, about “The Normal Woman” and in this section was a chapter describing women who have “Normal Orgasms”. So sad that us women have had to deal with the repercussions of such misinformation for so long. This ideation left women feeling inadequate for not having the “right” kind of orgasm that “counted” towards their being “mature” women. Numerous researchers (McGovern, et al., 1975, Everaerd, et al, 1981, Milan et al., 1988) through the 70s and 80s tried to help women have the vaginal orgasm termed with a dysfunction called secondary orgasmic dysfunction. Secondary orgasmic dysfunction was defined to be when a women could have an orgasm with her clitoris but not in any other way – so couples would go to therapy and into research settings to help women “get it right”. It angers me when I write about it as I was caught in this web of feeling inadequate around my sexual functioning for decades myself.
If you ask most people to describe the clitoris they’ll likely tell you it’s a pea sized nub at the top end of the labia minora. Research has discovered that there is so much more than what meets the eye. In 2009, yes, just 11 years ago, clitoral reconstruction surgeons Dr. Odile Buisson and Dr. Pierre Foldès produced and published the first complete 3-D sonograph of the stimulated clitoris. We didn’t even know how big the clitoris was until the late 1990s when urologist Helen O’Connell of the Royal Melbourne Hospital began to study the microscopic nerve supply to the clitoris using MRI. Five years earlier, Basson (2005) claimed that women may experience orgasm BEFORE maximum arousal and during peak arousal. The media perpetuates women and the Big “O”, well it turns out women can orgasm as they are going up and coming down from their Big “O” and the Big “O” may be a term for men – but not for women as women can and do have multiple orgasms in multiple ways and we do not have to come down or stop until we want to. Just a few years prior to that, Basson (2001), found that women have an “overlapping” nature to the sexual response cycle, that we all learned about by Masters and Johnson in 1970 – the cycle goes like this….. desire….arousal…..orgasm…..resolution…. so that linear model of sexual functioning is no longer valid. It may or may not happen like that for women.
We are onto a new era of knowledge with scientific data, not just heresy, about women’s orgasm and it is my hope that the psyches of women heal in this era as well so all can enjoy the pleasure of our clitoris and bodies.
Sources and Citations:
Basson, R. (2001). Female sexual response: The role of drugs in the management of sexual dysfunction. Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, 98, 350–353.
Basson, R. (2005). Women’s sexual dysfunction: Revised and expanded definitions. Canadian Medical Association Journal, 172, 1327–1333.
Everaerd, W., & Dekker, J. (1982). Treatment of secondary orgasmic dysfunction: A comparison of systematic desensitization and sex therapy. Behavior Research
and Therapy, 20, 269–274
Milan, R. J., Kilmann, P. R., & Boland, J. P. (1988). Treatment outcome of secondary orgasmic dysfunction: A two- to six-year follow-up. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 17(6), 463–480. https://doi.org/10.1007/bf01542336 McGovern, K. B., Stewart, R. C., & LoPiccolo, J. (1975). Secondary orgasmic dysfunction. I. Analysis and strategies for treatment. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 4(3), 265–275.
Masters, W. H., & Johnson, V. (1970). Human sexual inadequacy. Boston: Little, Brown.
Robinson, M.N., The Power Of Sexual Surrender. New York: New American Library, 1962, c1959.
The Tip of the Iceberg, (2014). Curve Magazine. November, 3. Retrieved: December 1, 2020.
