In October researchers on the Oregon Well being & Science College introduced that they approximated the variety of nerve fibers within the human clitoris which are answerable for sexual pleasure—greater than 10,000—for the primary time ever. Compared with the penis, which has been studied extensively, the vulva has been largely ignored in anatomical examine.
“I imply, like, the final story of the clitoris is that it seems to have been misplaced and located all through historical past,” says Rachel E. Gross, a science journalist and creator of Vagina Obscura, a ebook that explores how science has lengthy considered the feminine physique with a slender give attention to copy and the way that’s altering.
It was solely about 20 years in the past that urologist Helen O’Connell comprehensively mapped the clitoris for the primary time utilizing microdissection and magnetic resonance imaging, proving that what we see above the floor is only a small a part of the complete construction under.
Clitoral anatomy continues to be making its method into medical textbooks, partly by the advocacy of 1 girl named Jessica Pin, who misplaced clitoral sensation after present process cosmetic surgery on her labia in 2004.
“I spotted that surgeons have been doing surgical procedures they have been by no means educated to do on anatomy they have been by no means taught,” Pin wrote in an e-mail. “The dorsal nerves of the clitoris have been omitted from each anatomy textbook I may discover. They have been omitted from each OB/GYN textbook I may discover. They have been nowhere described in cosmetic surgery or OB/GYN literature. They have been nowhere thought-about in literature on feminine genital beauty surgical procedure. Surgeons have been working blind to nerves.”
Pin considers what she went by a type of “preventable genital mutilation,” brought on by “carelessness and taboo round feminine sexuality.”
As late because the mid-Twentieth century, clitoridectomies, or the removals or reductions of the clitoris, have been overtly practiced within the U.S. and U.Okay. to forestall masturbation. And within the mid-Nineteenth century, such surgical procedures have been carried out as a “remedy” for “hysteria” and attitudes comparable to a “distaste for marital intercourse” and “an amazing distaste for her husband.” Based on an estimate by UNICEF, right this moment at the very least 200 million women and girls in 31 international locations have been subjected to genital reducing, in any other case referred to as feminine genital mutilation, or FGM.
In California, Marci Bowers, a gynecologist centered totally on gender-affirming surgical procedure, performs clitoral reconstruction procedures for survivors. Whereas genital reducing has been proven to trigger extreme ache, bleeding, infections, urinary issues and childbirth problems, very little research has investigated its influence on sexual perform and options.
“Whenever you suppose that this impacts 200 million girls worldwide, it’s an embarrassingly small quantity of consideration,” Bowers says. “It was actually attention-grabbing once I started interviewing sufferers who had undergone FGM, and their main motivation for getting the surgical procedure was not intercourse or sexual feeling even; it was the sense that their id had been taken from them.”
Within the fifth and last episode of Scientific American’s documentary collection A Question of Sex, we meet Bowers and one in every of her sufferers to know what it means for science to prioritize feminine pleasure.
