Are we trapped in tomb-like textiles,
exiling our flesh from experiencing the environment? Are we atrophying
our epidermis, our senses, our neuro-intelligence?
If you put a plaster cast on a broken arm the skin starves for
Vitamin D, the muscles weaken due to strangled range of motion, the
nerve synapses depress to a whimper of their former joy. Twenty-first
century hominids? We shroud our entire skin palette except for face,
neck and hands - we obliterate symbiosis with the planet.
We hide in cocoons, when we could be free as butterflies.
History reveals many cultures that were not clothes-minded. Spartans
were basically bare and their victories in pan-Hellenic sports
competitions enticed all neighboring Greeks to exercise nude, creating
the word “gymnasium” (Greek gymnos
= naked). Romans mingled in magnificent bathhouses, enjoying dense
communal nudity as they drank, dined, defecated, bathed, read books,
argued politics, and watched theater.
Adamists — naked heretics — performed stripped-down church services
in North Africa, Bohemia, the Netherlands, and England. Pre-Hitler
Germans were avid adherents of Freikorperkultur(“Free Body Culture”) with 70,000 attending co-ed Nacktkultur schools.
There’s naked Japanese in hot springs, naked Finns in saunas,
“sky-clad” Jain monks in India, plus millions of nudists worldwide going
to “Nakation” camps, beaches, and resorts.
They’re still sporty as Spartans, eager to hike naked (“free bush
rambling”), canoe naked (“canuding”), bicycle naked, ride horses naked,
run naked, play volleyball, badminton, ping-pong and chess naked, swim
naked, dance naked, do Naked Yoga, Naked Tai Chi, Naked Gardening, Naked
Bowling, and of course, many of us, perhaps you and I, dear readers,
are NIFOC — Naked In Front of Computers.
Many famous figures were bare-all aficionados; too many politicians
to name, so I’ll just list sci-fi and scientists: Leonard Nimoy,
Alexander Graham Bell, Robert Heinlein, and seismologist Charles Richter. Nudism is prominent in Philip Jose Farmer’s Riverworld books and John Varley’s Steel Beach. Celebrities? Many movie stars skinny-dip at the French Riviera, trying to elude paparazzi seeking pix of Bruce WIllis’ willy or Natalie Portman’s port side.
Here’s evidence suggesting that skin-only can be superior:
Born Free. Pediatricians agree that infants thrive with a
daily dose of “naked time” because the unhampered range of motion aids
brain development, stimulating neuron growth. Recent discoveries reveal
that the “plastic” brain changes and develops throughout our entire
lives. Neuroplasticity pioneer Michael M. Merzenich believes, “Everything that you can see happen in a young brain can happen in an older brain.” Doesn’t this imply that “naked time” is equally valuable for humans of any age, especially the elderly?
Weakened Bodies. A 2003 University of Reading study
entitled “A Naked Ape Would Have Fewer Parasites” posits that “humans
evolved hairlessness to reduce parasite loads, especially ectoparasites
that may carry disease.” Unfortunately, the garments we wear can be a
breeding ground for filthy fungi and bad bacterium, causing yeast
infections, urinary tract infections, rotting toenails. Lyme Disease
deer ticks can grab onto our sweaters and sea lice
can sneak into our bathing suit crotches. Cinched-up belts, ties, and
clothes impede breathing. Men’s snug pants raise testicle temperature,
lowering sperm count and fertility.
Barefoot Medicine. Going shoeless is now recognized as an
anti-Alzheimer’s, brain-boosting activity because the sole sensation
entices your brain into growing extra, efficient neuron connections. Dr.
Norman Doidge (author of The Brain That Changes Itself) believes
skipping shoes increases brain flexibility and youthfulness, and many
podiatrists now advise going barefoot as much as possible. Bare feet are
today’s prescription. Will tomorrow’s elixir take the next step: Bare Body?
Superior Socialization. Self-actualization proponent Abraham Maslow believed “Nudism… is itself a kind of therapy.”
Health benefits of social nudity include stress reduction, satiation of
curiosity about the human body, reduction of porn addiction, a sense of
full-body integration and developing a wholesome attitude about the
opposite gender. Research at the University of Northern Iowa discovered that nudists have significantly higher body self-acceptance. Another study concluded
that teens at a New York nudist camp were “extraordinarily
well-adjusted, happy, and thoughtful.” It’s also excellent for children
to grow up free of shame about the human body.
Tolerant Views.A University of Central Florida 2008 study
of 384 participants concluded that pro-nudity students “were
significantly more accepting of other religious groups and gays and
lesbians” when compared to the anti-nudity students. They were also
“less prejudiced towards ethnically dissimilar others.”
Soothe Away Your Crazies. Massage is recognized as a
therapeutic treatment for mental health issues like depression, anxiety,
schizophrenia, bipolarism, borderline personality disorder, learning
difficulties, and low self-esteem. The skin stimulation
of massage — improving blood flow and detoxifying the lymph system — is
duplicated by the warmth, freedom, and improved circulation generated
in nakedness.
Soak Up The Rays Vitamin D deficiency is currently soaring,
with up to 75% of USA teens and adults receiving insufficient amounts
of the “sunshine vitamin.” Lack of this essential health aid is a factor
in numerous ailments, including cancer, heart disease, osteoporosis and
diabetes. Anyone who bares all outside as a “naturist” harvests larger
amounts of Vitamin D in a quicker time span.
Financial Liberation. Clothes are a huge money and time-suck
with shopping, laundry, closets, dressers, and gazillions of hours
wasted wondering what so-and-so looks like with their garments removed.
The global markets for swimsuits
alone is expected to reach $17.6 billion annually by 2015; our carbon
footprint would shrink like a wool sweater if fabric was no longer
manufactured.
Longevity (just joking!). Have you noticed that the furry Norway Rat only lives 2-3 years, while the Naked Mole Rat survives to be 28?
So… is the future going to be full frontal? Will the post-Singularity
planet be stripped? Will everyone in a climate-controlled tomorrow
choose to be nude, strutting around like the Nuba dancers and boxers of Leni Reifenstahl?
Trends point to an era where there won’t be a stitch to worry about. Many resort areas are are now offering nudism to increase tourism, and American naturist clubs claim their enrollment is growing 20% annually. The German airline OssiUrlaub.de offered nude chartered flights
to a Baltic sea resort, and today’s lengthy luggage searches at
airports are steering travelers to destinations where they only need
carry-on towels and sunblock. Twenty million Europeans already go to nude beaches and spas.
Vulva - The external female genitalia, including the outer lips, inner lips, clitoris, clitoral hood and the entryway to the vagina.
In The Beginning
Oh my, this afternoon was great. Lying
on the living room floor, I was loved so sweetly. Three wonderful
orgasms, right there on the carpet. Sunlight streamed through our big
front window as my partner rubbed my vulva so sweet.
Oh wait… did I say my partner? no, oops. I meant to say my HAND.
Masturbation itself is not new to me. I
first masturbated when I was five, finding the good feelings suddenly as
I rode my new teddy bear like a horse across my my still baby-quilted
bed.
But although masturbation is not new to me, empowered masturbation is. And the difference between these two is huge.
When I discovered I could rub my little place down there on a pillow
and make myself feel oh-so-good, from the first moment I found it, I
felt shame. The orgasm washed over me. It was so surprising, so
wonderful. But as I emerged out of the waves, a gasp of dread filled me
and then like a sharp spear, the thought entered me so clearly “I can
never share this with my mother. She must never find out. Not her, not
ANYONE.”
Fast forward to today, 20-ish years
later, and after the three yummy orgasms and I sat down to write this,
my clit got so hot typing those first two paragraphs, I had to run
downstairs and give myself a good pillow fuck, just like I used to as a
little girl. And for one of the first times in my life I didn’t feel
sorry for it, no not one bit.
Secrecy, hiding, exploring only in
darkness, experiencing without being able to talk about it. These are
the hallmarks of shame. And guilt comes in to follow closely, the ever
faithful bed-mate of shame.
I don’t remember masturbating much
between the age of five and twelve. From that first time, I tried my
best to put the idea out of my mind. ‘If I cannot share it with anyone,
should I even share it with myself?’ My fear of being caught shut
down any desire I would have had otherwise.
As a young teen however, my sexual energy
soared and I found myself masturbating almost compulsively. I’d try to
talk myself out of it, shaming myself for the desire, but the energy
took over and ahhhhhh…. sweet pleasure, sweet release. And then guilt
would fill me…
Over and over, the self-beatings would come. I hit
myself with everything I had. I don’t think there was a moment I was
free from the abuse, the abuse of my internal self-hate and sexual
shame.
As an adult, when I began to explore the
ideas of sexual shame and sexual freedom, I saw no reason in my mind for
me to feel guilt around masturbation. My mind renounced the shame, but
I noticed I still felt a guilt or strange, uncomfortable feeling when I
did self-pleasure. It was subtle, but enough I felt embarrassed for my
partner to see me doing it and that after orgasm I would always feel a
little empty and frustrated. It was energy draining rather than energy
giving.
This is what shame does to our
sexuality. It turns a normally very energizing, mood-lifting,
happy-making activity like sex and masturbation, and makes into
something that sucks our energy and leaves us more behind than ahead.
Masturbation itself and those who do it
are made fun of in American culture and media. ‘If you masturbate, you
must have something wrong with you, or you are incompetent to find
‘real’ sexuality.’ That is the attitude communicated to all of us, man
or woman, that masturbation is somehow a ‘lesser’ form of sexuality, and
of course something we should hide.
For some reason, us women buy into this
idea hard. Many women masturbate, but many many more do not. Women
often feel disgust, intense embarrassment or shame at the idea. For
myself, I know the shame around masturbation inhibited me in my ‘normal’
sex life enormously. Even though I did pleasure myself occasionally,
the shame prevented me from really exploring my body and my individual
sexual response. I expected or hoped my partner to find the proper way
to stimulate me, hoping for orgasm, without even knowing how to do that
myself. Sometimes it came, but other times I was left high and dry and
never knowing why or what exactly it was I needed really to climax. How
are we supposed to help our lovers find the way to pleasure us if we
are numb and unaware of our sexual response ourselves? Waiting, hoping,
for others to find the way to pleasure us, without us putting in any
effort to discover it for ourselves, is like searching for a tiny box in
a dark storage room.
Even for the women who do masturbate,
many never find how to move past their childhood masturbation method.
They may try other methods here and there, but give up quickly as the
other methods do not yield as consistent results right away as their
usual method does. This was the boat I was in. I knew how to get off
by humping a pillow, but had no idea how to do it any other way. And
seriously, it’s not very practical for my partner to give me a pillow
hump to get me off - that’s pretty much a solo job. So it was very
limiting as far as letting it be a part of partner play goes, as well as
it being a dead-end method of sexual growth. There was no way for me
to use it to teach my partner how to help me orgasm, and I couldn’t even
learn more about my body sexual response from it. As I got older too,
the two minute orgasm that came from it became less and less
satisfying. I needed something more. I needed my orgasm to grow and
mature.
Hearing in college of women who orgasmed
by touching themselves, water, vibrators or other means, made me want to
learn as well. During sex with my partner, I didn’t seem to respond
strongly to manual stimulation of my clit or even oral. Sure it felt
good, but I never seemed to climax like I did when masturbating. And
yet, the means I masturbated by was completely nontransferable into
partner sex! At various times then, I tried to masturbate using my
hands or a vibrator. I’d rub myself for say three or four minutes and
dang… nothing would happen. So I’d give up.
The vibrator yielded
better results, but after some weak orgasms here and there, it only
ended up desensitizing me more so I felt even LESS in partner sex.
What I didn’t understand then though, was
that sex is a SKILL and pleasure is something you DEVELOP. You grow it
and build on it. Unfortunately though, when women like me give up
quickly on new self-pleasure techniques, especially the more practical
ones like hand stimulation, we are giving up on our sexual pleasure as a
whole. Instead of gaining understanding through dedicated
self-exploration, we leave our pleasure in the hands of fate, instead of
our own. Maybe for some, the hands of fate know how to stroke a woman
right, but looking around at all the masses of women who have trouble
orgasming and finding satisfying sexual pleasure, I don’t think fate
knows what it’s doing.
Silk On My Body
Finally, the next chapter started. Enter Betty Dodson.
Stumbling around the internet early last year I discovered her, the
queen of female orgasm and masturbation. Betty Dodson has been teaching
women how to orgasm through clitoral stimulation and self-exploration
since the 1970′s, encouraging them to learn their bodies and cultivate
pleasure through masturbation. And one night, a month or two after I’d
found her, I decided I wanted to put her ideas to practice. You can
watch a great video by her about masturbation here.
By this time I had reached the point I could orgasm beautifully during
partner sex much of the time, but I was totally dependent on him and the
randomness of the act to somehow *make* it happen for me. Inside I
felt an emptiness and sadness that I could not do that for myself. My
partner was out of town and the frustration of being lost sexually
without him to help me was coming to the surface.
‘I want to do that for myself. I want to love myself. Can I do this? I want to love myself.’
So I decided to try masturbating with my
hands again, the way Betty suggested. I washed my body, did my hair all
short and pretty…. slipped on something silky. My heart sent a little
prayer up to God ‘Can you please just help me have an orgasm like I do
with him?’
I looked in the mirror and started to feel a seed of joy
growing up out of my barren heart. It felt good to do this, even if it
was just for myself.
Silk on my body. My jewelry all arranged. Silk on my body. I felt so pretty….
Little candles lit my room, burning
softly. Laying down, I gave myself a very loving and slow massage. I
started on my thighs, warming up my body softly… Then I moved to my
vulva rubbing softly with lots of massage oil. I let every touch be
exquisite, letting myself feel everything, gently and fully. My hands,
two sculptors, worked to make a work of art, molding my flesh like
clay. My mind drifted to beautiful images of pleasure, enticing
fantasies of feeling. After a while I started to feel the lovely
lifting, swelling feeling of growing arousal. The pleasure slowly built
up in me, flowing up my body softly till at one point it’s warmth
filled me up and I hovered there, full and bright. Then I felt it come
down, washing down my body gently and I felt good.
‘Wow, I that was an orgasm’ Finally *I* had done that for myself and with my hands!
I had felt the blossom of orgasm, but was hardly done. ‘More orgasms,
please’ my body sang sweetly. I brought my little glass dildo, Mr.
Snakey, to the bed (glass is great by the way, because it is incredibly
hard which feels amazing). Mr. Snakey moved slowly into my body, loving
me sweetly as I caressed my clitoris and vulva up above. We worked
together, found a beat, and from that added in a sultry rhythm, altering
or keeping it constant as it felt good to. The feelings built upon
themselves slowly. Oh it felt sooooo good, as good as the best sex
sessions I’d had. As I moved up levels of pleasure, closer and closer
to orgasm, I questioned whether I could really do it. But soon I did.
And it was great.
After that night, I felt a greater love
and confidence in my body and self than I had ever felt before. I could
do it. I could take care of and love myself. I also learned some
important things about myself I had never realized before. The orgasms
had been so good and full and I have felt so relaxed and aroused from
when I first laid down, and because I did not have the distraction of
someone else there, I was able to realize in retrospect why everything
had gone so right. All of the preparation I had done by getting dressed
up, looking at myself in the mirror and mentally preparing for the
event had really helped me get aroused fully and relax. Before that
time it had never even occurred to me that I needed any kind of
preparation for sex. Instead I had treated myself like a machine – push
this button and I get this result – instead of a dynamic being with
emotions, a sexual process of arousal, and needs. The realization that
arousal was not a formula of foreplay was huge and helped me in my
sexual relationship with my partner a lot.
Since that night, masturbation has helped
me cultivate and understand my orgasm immensely. The canvas of
masturbation is so much simpler than partner sex because you are free of
all distractions. You have only yourself and your own mind and body to
deal with and so deducing what techniques work and how is much
simpler. This makes it a very easy and wonderful way to get in touch
with your orgasm and pleasure response on a deeper level. Practicing
self-loving has also helped me learn how to teach my partner to bring me
to orgasm and greater pleasure. And I feel a deeper sense of
confidence and love for myself. Plus, anytime I am down, I can just
give myself a few orgasms and suddenly my mood is lifted and no one even
had to be there to help me.
I love myself more and I have found I can
be my own source of pleasure. This is empowered masturbation –
masturbation as a source of pleasure and self-love. And it feels
completely different than it did before my liberation from shame –
before I liberated myself by simply loving myself freely and gently till
my cup was full. I believe we can all find that empowerment and
freedom. We don’t need anyone else to give us happiness, but can always
find at least a little bit for ourselves through our own self-loving or
love of self. You can be your own source of love and pleasure. Can
you feel that?
I love you, self. I love you. I love
myself. I give myself pleasure. I give myself happiness. I give
myself orgasm. I love myself. I love myself. I love you….. self…… source
The sexual revolution of the ’70s has
allowed women to claim their right to pleasure and to better know their
body. However, 30 years later, the female orgasm remains mysterious to a
lot of people – both men and women.
Most of us can recall that scene in the movie “When
Harry Met Sally” and Meg Ryan is moaning and groaning having an alleged
orgasm. In the movie she is obviously faking it. The movie endeavors to
show that women have the ability to confuse or mislead their men into
believing that they are actually having and orgasm.
Unfortunately for men, no matter how much they scream
or moan, they cannot fake an orgasm – as well, let’s face it, a
masculine orgasm is rather messy.
During the 1970′s the sexual revolution enabled women
the ability to lay claim to a right of pleasure in the bedroom; for the
first time in public society, women were able to better understand
their own bodies and discover what it actually is that enables/causes
the orgasm. However, we are now 40 years since that revolution and for
many men the onset and occurrence of feminine orgasm remains a total
mystery.
The Internal Clitoris
The internal erect clitoris
The scientific name for the external
“little button” or “bulb” is glans. Not to be confused with glands,
glans simply refers to a small circular mass. This little structure
contains approximately 8,000 sensory nerve fibers; more than anywhere
else in the human body and nearly twice the amount found on the head of a
penis! The fact is, though, that most of the clitoris is subterranean,
consisting of two corpora cavernosa (corpus cavernosum when referring to
the structure as a whole), two crura (crus when referring to the
structure as a whole), and the clitoral vestibules or bulbs.
The glans is connected to the body or
shaft of the internal clitoris, which is made up of two corpora
cavernosa. When erect, the corpora cavernosa encompass the vagina on
either side, as if they were wrapping around it giving it a big hug!
The
corpus cavernosum also extends further, bifurcating again to form the
two crura. These two legs extend up to 9cm, pointing toward the thighs
when at rest, and stretching back toward the spine when erect. To
picture them at rest, imagine the crura as a wishbone, coming together
at the body of the clitoris where they attach to the pubic symphysis.
Near
each of the crura on either side of the vaginal opening are the
clitoral vestibules. These are internally under the labia majora. When
they become engorged with blood they actually cuff the vaginal opening
causing the vulva to expand outward. Get these puppies excited, and
you’ve got a hungrier, tighter-feeling vaginal opening in which to
explore!
We now understand how the
erectile tissue of the clitoris engorges and surrounds the vagina – a
complete breakthrough that explains how what we once considered to be a
vaginal orgasm is actually an internal clitoral orgasm.
"During
orgasm, it has been found by scientists who put electrodes in the brain
that a woman’s brain completely shuts down. No-mind is a highly prized
spiritual state because it takes us beyond past or future, into the
present moment. When a woman is moving into orgasmic ecstasy, she can
easily use this state to access what is known as Mahamudra, meaning ‘the
great gesture which arises out of the orgasm with the universe.’ A
woman’s orgasm can be so powerful and full bodied that it can propel her
into Samadhi (universal consciousness). Having known her capacity for
ecstasy, she then wants to bless the whole world. She becomes a devotee
of life."
Clitoris
From Greek kleitoris, "divine, famous, goddess-like." 1 Greek myth
personified the phallus as Priapus and the clitoris as an Amazon queen
named Kleite, ancestral mother of the Kleitae, a tribe of warrior
women who founded a city in Italy.2 In Corinth, Kleite was a princess
"whom Artemis made grow tall and strong," an allegory of her
erection.3 Or, again, she was a nymph who loved the phallus of the sun
god and always followed his motion with her "head" -a transparently
sexual metaphor.4 In a bowdlerized version of the story she was
transformed into a sunflower, turning to follow the motion of the sun
across the sky.
Pausanias said the Arcadian city of Clitor was sacred to Artemis, or
to Demeter, and stood at the genital shrine of the earth, the
headwaters of the Styx (or Alph).5 The meaning of this geographical
myth is made clear by the primitive belief that the Styx represented
Mother Earth's menstrual blood, source and solvent of all things. In
this place, too, the orgiastic priestesses of Artemis were "soothed" out
of their frenzies; therefore the local omphalos must have signified the
Goddess's clitoris instead of her navel.
Later patriarchal society managed to ignore the clitoris. Since the
Christian church taught that women should not experience sexual
pleasure but should only endure intercourse for the sake of procreation,
growing girls and boys alike were kept ignorant of female sexuality,
insofar as possible.6 Even physicians came to believe that no clitoris
would be found on a virtuous woman.
From medieval times onward, virtuous women rarely showed
themselves naked to any man, even a husband; so it was perhaps not
surprising that men should remain ignorant of the female anatomy they
clumsily fumbled with in the dark. Pious married couples wore the
chemise cagoule, a voluminous nightgown with a small hole in front, to
allow impregnation with a minimum of body contact.7
At a witch trial in 1593, the investigating gaoler (a married man)
apparently discovered a clitoris for the first time, and identified it as a
devil' s teat, sure proof of the witch's guilt. It was "a little lump of flesh,
in manner sticking out as if it had been a teat, to the length of half an
inch," which the gaoler, "perceiving at the first sight thereof, meant not
to disclose, because it was adjoining to so secret a place which was not
decent to be seen; yet in the end, not willing to c~mceal so strange a
matter," he showed it to various bystanders.8 The bystanders had
never seen anything like it either. The witch was convicted.
European society certainly knew all about the penis, and never
ceased to worship it, even in Christian times.
Yet the clitoris was forgotten:
Almost from the very beginning of our lives, we are all taught that the
primary male sex organ is the penis, and the primary female sex organ
is the vagina. These organs are supposed to define the sexes, to be the
difference between boys and girls .... This is a lie . . . . Woman's
sexual pleasure is often left out of these definitions. If people considered
that the purpose of the female sex organs is to bring pleasure to
women, then female sex would be defined by, and focused on, a different
organ. Everyone would be taught from infan~y that, as the primary
male sex organ is the penis, so the primary female sex organ is the clitoris. 9
Medical authorities in the 19th century seemed anxious to
prevent women from discovering their own sexuality. Girls who learned
to develop orgasmic capacity by masturbation, just as boys learned it,
were regarded as medical problems. Often they were "treated" or
"corrected" by amputation or cautery of the clitoris, or "miniature
chastity belts, sewing the vaginal lips together to put the clitoris out of
reach, and even castration by surgical removal of the ovaries. But
there are no references in the medical literature to surgical removal of
testicles or amputation of the penis to stop masturbation (in boys)." 10
In the United States, the last recorded clitoridectomy for curing
masturbation was performed in 1948-on a five-year-old girl. 11
The Catholic church's definition of masturbation as "a grave
moral disorder" in 1976 may have incorporated fears of the effect of
masturbation on female orgasmic capacity, now well known to evolve
through masturbatory experience the same as that of a male. 12 Less
than a century ago, in the Victorian era, priests and doctors realized that
"the total repression of woman's sexuality was crucial to ensure her
subjugation." Leading authorities like Dr. Isaac Brown Baker performed
many clitoridectomies to cure women's nervousness, hysteria,
catalepsy, insanity, female dementia, and other catchwords for symptoms
of sexual frustration.
From Barbara Walker's Women's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets
The clitoris, the beautiful stranger
I’ll Have What She’s Thinking
SCIENCE has looked into some strange
things over the centuries — reports of gargantuan sea monsters,
purported images of Jesus, sightings of alien spaceships and so on. When
I first heard of spontaneous orgasm, while researching a book on yoga,
including its libidinal cousin, tantra, I figured it was more allegory
than reality and in any event would prove beyond the reach of even the
boldest investigators.
Well, I was wrong. It turns out science
has tiptoed around the subject for more than a century and of late has
made considerable progress in determining not only the
neurophysiological basis of the phenomenon but also its prevalence. Men
are mentioned occasionally. But sex researchers have found that the
novel type of autoerotism shows up mainly in women.
Ground zero for the research is Rutgers
University, where scientists have repeatedly had female volunteers put
their heads into giant machines and focus their attention on erotic
fantasies — the scans reveal that the pleasure centers of their brains
light up in ways indistinguishable from everyday orgasms. The lab
atmosphere is no-nonsense, with plenty of lights and white coats and
computer monitors.
Subjects often thrash about so forcefully that obtaining clear images of their brains can be difficult.
“Head movement is a huge issue,” Nan
Wise, a doctoral candidate at Rutgers who helps run the project, said in
an interview. “It’s hard to get a decent signal.”
She said a volunteer’s moving her head
more than two millimeters — less than a 10th of an inch — can make for a
bad day in the lab.
It is easy to dismiss this as a new kind
of narcissism in search of scientific respectability, a kinky pleasure
coming out of the shadows. Many YouTube videos now purport to show
people using controlled breathing and erotic introspection to achieve
what they describe as “thinking off” and “energy orgasms.”
But the research is also illuminating a
plausible neurological basis for the long intermingling of sexuality and
mysticism and, in particular, the teachings of tantra, which arose in
medieval India as a path to spiritual ecstasy. Perhaps most important,
it illustrates how little we really know of human physiology. Scientists
have long debated the purpose of the female orgasm, which plays no
direct role in procreation. The emerging reality of spontaneous orgasm
seems to do nothing but deepen the mystery.
The investigations began more than a century ago as physicians described what some called psychic coitus.
On the Upper East Side of Manhattan, at
the Metropolitan Dispensary and Hospital for Women and Children, the
chief physician, T. J. McGillicuddy, issued a warning in “Functional
Disorders of the Nervous System in Women,” published in 1896. He said
“involuntary orgasms” from erotic thoughts could lower a woman’s vital
energies and “cause melancholia and mental weakness.”
As a cure, he recommended hard mattresses and cold sponge baths.
The stigma associated with spontaneous
orgasm fell away as sex investigators began to see autoerotism as a
normal part of human experience.
Havelock Ellis, the pioneering British
physician, described the contemplative state in his landmark six-volume
study of sexual behavior, published between 1897 and 1910. He said that
concentrating on sexual images, among other stimuli, could lead to
“spontaneous orgasm in either sex, even in perfectly normal persons.”
Surveys revealed that the phenomenon,
while rare, nonetheless seemed to occur with some regularity. In 1948,
Alfred C. Kinsey of Indiana University and his colleagues published
“Sexual Behavior in the Human Male.” That groundbreaking study looked at
thousands of cases but noted only two in which men “could reach climax
by deliberate concentration of thought on erotic situations.”
But the team’s follow-up report on women,
published in 1953, surveyed 2,727 women, and the researchers found that
2 percent of the interviewees — 54 women — reported an ability to reach
orgasm by “fantasy alone.”
The finding was significant in that it
challenged a common stereotype — that men achieve orgasm more readily
than women. Now science was suggesting that, at least for some women,
all it took was a vivid imagination.
William H. Masters and Virginia E.
Johnson achieved fame for their rigorous study of all kinds of sexual
practices, as dramatized in the new Showtime series “Masters of Sex.”
But the scientists, in their 1966 book, “Human Sexual Response,” noted
rather wistfully that they could find no subjects “who could fantasy to
orgasm.”
Still, the pace of the science
intensified as women got involved. In the late 1970s, Gina Ogden was
working on her doctorate at the Institute for Advanced Study of Human
Sexuality in San Francisco when a woman demonstrated the orgasmic state
for a small group of sexologists-in-training. Fascinated, she took up
the topic for her doctoral research and dissertation.
In 1980 she mentioned her research while
giving a talk at a conference on women’s issues and was astonished when
half the audience came up afterward to volunteer. “There was a
stampede,” Dr. Ogden recalled. Of the 50 women she interviewed, 32 — or
64 percent — reported that they could reach orgasm by imagination alone.
Dr. Ogden later teamed up with Barry R.
Komisaruk, a biologist on the Newark campus of Rutgers, who specializes
in orgasm research. They studied 10 women who, despite the laboratory
setting, reached sexual climax not only by stimulating themselves
manually but also by indulging in erotic imagery.
The scientists found that both states
resulted in significant rises in blood pressure, heart rate and
tolerance for pain — a signature of orgasm. The findings, the team wrote
in a 1992 paper, called for “a reassessment of the nature of orgasm.”
The idea began to go public. A 1996 book,
“Sexational Secrets,” described a workshop on spontaneous orgasm and
featured a how-to guide.
At Rutgers, Dr. Komisaruk expanded his
research to brain scans. In 2003, the first images confirmed the earlier
study. Pleasure centers lit up more or less identically whether the
women reached sexual highs by hand stimulation or by erotic thoughts.
Dr. Komisaruk had difficulty finding
enough volunteers for a thorough study until he met Ms. Wise, the
Rutgers doctoral student. A sex therapist, she turned out to have the
right contacts as well as her own autoerotic skills. “It’s the least
sexy thing in the world,” she said of having her brain scanned. “But I
do it for science.” By early 2010, Ms. Wise and Dr. Komisaruk had
succeeded in scanning a dozen volunteers.
Late that year, at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience,
the world’s largest group for brain research, the Rutgers team
presented a surprise finding that suggested that the scientists were
zeroing in on the phenomenon’s origins.
Women who simply thought about the
stimulation of their breasts and genitals, the scans revealed, lit up
the brain’s corresponding sensory areas.
“That’s not the traditional view of the
sensory cortex,” Ms. Wise said recently, alluding to how sense organs
are usually seen as responsible for the cortical responses.
Dr. Ogden, from her home in Cambridge,
Mass., praised the research as likely to expand the accepted definition
of female sexuality.
“Sex research for a long time
shortchanged women by asking the wrong questions, or asking very limited
questions,” she said. “If we just notice what’s around — notice what
people are doing and saying and feeling — we can do a better job.”
William
J. Broad is a science reporter for The New York Times and the author of
“The Science of Yoga: The Risks and the Rewards.”
The Surprising History of Sex And Love:
This award-winning documentary is a look throughout history at the
different and surprising attitudes to sex and love, presented by Terry
Jones. The programme traces the story of changing social and religious
attitudes to sex through a broad swathe of history. Starting with the
place of ’sacred sex’ in the ancient world and ending with a discussion
of the contemporary relationship between sex, marketing and prurience,
the programme offers some kind of map of how we got from there to here,
and indicates that changes in sexual attitudes are connected with issues
of power and control. Filmed in India, Egypt, Greece, Italy, France the
USA and the UK, the programme includes much surprising material, some
of which (such as the celebration of the wedding of Shiva and Parvati at
Khajuraho, India) has never before been seen on television
Sex
Rev. Dr. Joseph Fletcher of the Episcopal Theological School wrote,
"The Christian churches must shoulder much of the blame for the
confusion, ignorance, and guilt which surrounds sex in Western
culture .... [T]he Christian church, from its earliest primitive beginnings,
had been swayed by many Puritanical people, both Catholic
and Protestant, who have viewed sex as inherently evil." 1
Others have been less forgiving, and stated bluntly that Christian
churches must shoulder not just "much of' the blame, but all of it.
R.E.L. Masters declared, "Almost the entire blame for the hideous
nightmare that was the witch mania, and the greatest part of the
blame for poisoning the sexual life of the West, rests squarely on the
Roman Catholic Church." 2 The rest of the blame presumably
devolves upon Protestantism, for there was no institution in western
culture other than Christianity that made any effort to teach human
beings to hate or fear sex.
Christian abhorrence of sex began with the fathers of the church,
who insisted that the kingdom of God couldn't be established until
the human race was allowed to die out through universal celibacy.3
Marcion announced that all propagation must be abandoned at once.
St. Jerome ordered: "Regard everything as poison which bears within it
the seed of sensual pleasure." 4 St. Athanasius declared the great
revelation and blessing brought by Jesus was knowledge of the saving
grace of chastity.5 Tertullian said chastity was "a means whereby a
man will traffic in a mighty substance of sanctity," whereas the sex act
rendered even marriage "obscene." 6
Numenius of Apamea proclaimed that only total cessation of all
sexual activity could bring about the union of the soul with God. 7 St.
Augustine pronounced the doctrine that "concupiscence" is the root of
original sin and the means of transmitting Adam's guilt to all
generations. Thus he sealed the church's commitment to asceticism, at
least in theory, for the next 1600 years.8 Augustine said sexual
intercourse is never sinless, even within marriage.9 Augustine didn't
invent this doctrine. He got it from Gnostic Manicheans, to whose
sect he belonged before his conversion to orthodoxy. Gnostics taught
that souls are entrapped in flesh by "the mystery of love and lust,
through which all the worlds are inflamed." This teaching probably
came ultimately from ascetic Jain Buddhist yogis, who enjoined the
same precept as the First Book of John: "Love not the world, neither
things that are in the world . . . for all that is in the world, the lust of
the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the
Father." 10
These views became more entrenched as time went on. Medieval
theologians said sex "caused the damnation of humanity, which was
on its account put out of Paradise, and for its sake Christ was killed." 11
Officials of the Inquisition taught in their handbooks that women's
"carnal lust" was the cause of witchcraft and Satanism, since God
"allows the devil more power over the venereal act, by which the
original sin is handed down, than over all other human actions ...
because of its natural nastiness." 12
The church promulgated legends about saints so devoted to
chastity that they preferred extreme physical torment to sexual
pleasure. St. Paul the Hermit was tied down by the wicked emperor
Decius and subjected to the lascivious caresses of a harlot. As soon as
he felt his penis ~ise, "having no weapon with which to defend himself,
[he] bit off his tongue and spat it into the face of the lewd woman."
The sainted Pope Leo was so pure that when "a woman kissed his
hand, and aroused in him a violent temptation of the flesh," he cut
his hand off. By singular good fortune it was restored by the Holy Virgin
so he could continue to perform religious ceremonies. 13
The early church attacked most bitterly the many pagan faiths
that made sex a central holy sacrament, enacting union of the Great
Goddess and her phallic consorts. Tertullian denounced "the whoredams
of Eleusis," and Eusebius condemned "the unnameable rites of
the mysteries, adulteries and yet baser lusts." Yet Plato and his
contemporaries had worshipped Eros, god of sexual love, as "the most
venerable of the deities, the most worthy of honor, the most powerful
to grant virtue and blessedness unto mankind both in life and after
death." 14
From the most primitive period, European pagans incorporated
sex into their religion. The word Lust in old Germanic languages
meant "religious joy."15 At their holy feasts, Norsemen sang songs the
Christians called "lewd and shameful," and danced hip-swinging
dances the Christians called "female gyrations."16 The people refused
to give these up, believing them essential to general fertility. When
seasons went awry and crops failed under the first Christianized kings,
the peasants were sure the cause was neglect of the old deities' rites. 17
Sexuality was reverenced in cultures where the female principle
was accorded freedom and honor, as in Egypt, where women chose
and wooed their lovers at will. 18 Egyptians described carnal knowledge
as "knowing a woman perfectly," and regarded it as a joy. Sages
counseled men never to be rude to a mistress or wife, nor to try to order
her about; it would be unseemly in one with whom she shared
"joy."19 This was like the Tantric identification of sexual bliss with the
bliss of the Goddess and God as they continually engendered life in
the universe.20 Hindus said intercourse with any woman is like union
with the Goddess herself. Far from being sinful, "to have carnal
intercourse with the Goddess Parvati is a virtue which destroys all sin."21
But in the Christian view, woman brought death into the world
and sex perpetuated it.22 It was claimed that Adam was made to be
immortal, but he lost both his innocence and his immortality when Eve
taught him about sex. All women were copies of Eve, said Tertullian;
"the unsealer of that Tree," her very existence bringing destruction to
"God's image, man."23 Women were dangerous even when dead.
An early church edict ordered that a male corpse must not be buried
next to a female corpse until the latter was safely decomposed. 24
St. John Chrysostom said a man "cannot endure" looking at a
woman. 25 A biographer of St. Augustine assumed automatically that
"because of his great holiness, he was unwilling to look upon a woman's
face." 26 St. Augustine's doctrine of original sin was destined to
crucify not only Christ but the whole of the western world with its antipleasure,
pro-pain philosophyP Even today it is hardly possible for
anyone brought up in one of the western nations to comprehend the
ancient world's opinion of sex as an experience of divine pleasure or a
preview of heaven, without deliberate, laborious intellectual progress
toward such an opinion.
Not only was Europe crucified by Christian antisexuality but also
much of Oceania, Africa, and the Far East. Wherever Christian
missionaries went-which was everywhere-people were told their
own generally healthy sexual attitudes were wrong and sinful. One
missionary described Bantu harvest festivals as Bacchic feasts: "It is
impossible to witness them without being ashamed. Men and women,
who in ordinary circumstances are modest in behavior and speech,
then abandon themselves to licentiousness." Another missionary
wrote: "I have seen the most indelicate performances in the shape of
dances or theatrical pieces in front of the Badago temples, and on
bearing witness to their wickedness have been told that the god
delighted in them."28
A missionary in Malaya observed that the natives engaged in all of
what he called the carnal sins except one: rape.29 He didn't follow up
the thought to the prevalence of rape in his own society; but today's
psychologists are beginning to understand the leading role played by
sexual repression in developing the kind of woman-hatred that leads to
rape. Western thinkers have only recently caught on to the fact that
cultural suppression of the need for bodily pleasure will inevitably result
in perverted expression through cruelty.30
Cruelty to both women and children was the early Christian
substitute for the affection usually shown them in less ascetic societies.
The Apostolic Constitutions called for severe physical punishment
of children. Fathers (not mothers) were told: "Do not hesitate to
reprove them, chastening them with severity . . .. Teach your children
the word of the Lord, straiten them even with stripes and render
them submissive, teaching them from infancy the Holy Scriptures."31
Recent experiments have shown that inhibition of sexual responses
(in animals) is associated with aggressive cruelty, whereas sexual
permissiveness goes with peaceful co-existence. While some investigators
theorized that aggression and lust rise together from a common
source, experiments don't support this belief. Instead, it seems one
alternative inhibits the other.32 Christianity made all Europe a vast
experiment in sexual inhibition, with predictable results. In one of
history's most cruel ages, Thomas Browne spoke of a nearly total
rejection of sex: "I would be content that we might procreate like trees,
without conjunction, or that there were any other way to perpetuate
the World without this trivial and vulgar way of union."33
In 1721 Beaumont ordered the pious to reject any and all
sensual pleasures, even the most subtle or involuntary ones:
If ye perceive a sudden sweet taste in your mouths or feel any warmth in
your breasts, like fire, or any form of pleasure in any part of your body,
or . .. if ye become aware by occasion of pleasure or satis!action derived
from such perception, that your hearts are drawn away from the
contemplation of Jesus Christ and from spiritual exercises ... then this
sensation is very much to be suspected of coming from the Enemy; and
therefore were it ever so wonderful and striking, still renounce it and do
not consent to accept it. 3~
Inhibition of sensual impulses was the keynote of western
morality up to and including the 19th century, when Dr. Alcott
authoritatively stated that even marital sex should never be indulged
more than once a month. Any greater frequency was "prostitution of
the matrimonial life." 35 For many centuries the church insisted that
marital sex should be as barren of sensual pleasure as possible, and that
orgasms in women were unseemly or even devilish. The "missionary
position" was the only permitted sexual position, because it afforded the
least pleasure, especially to the wife.
In consequence of such socialization, "good" women were frequently
sex-haters. Bertrand Russell said of his first wife that "she had
been brought up, as American women always were in those days, to
think that sex was beastly, that all women hated it, and that men's
brutal lusts were the chief obstacle to happiness in marriage." 36
A Christian scripture falsely attributed to St. Dionysius, Of the
Names of God, said the name of Love was not suitable for God,
"because one could only honor God, not love Him." 37 Love was left to
the sinful, bearing out Nietzsche's observation that "Christianity gave
Eros poison to drink; he did not die of it but degenerated into a vice." 38
Only recently has it even been suggested that love, or Eros, is
essential to the moral development of a man, in a sense that was never
hinted at by the moralists of the west. A man may rise to "a new
moral plane" by falling in love, a process that cannot be pursued
through any rationally established program. Western society doesn't
understand how to instill a comfortably "instinctive" morality into any
individual, even with the opportunity to work on the problem from
earliest childhood-let alone to improve the moral outlook of an adult.
But a man's emotional commitment to a beloved, if sincere, may
radically alter and improve his whole view of the world, of himself, of
right and wrong, and of the individual's relations with and responsibilities
toward others. 39
Patriarchal religion was devoted to destruction of the sensual
female nature that elicited and responded to such emotional commitments.
Women's sexual desire or pleasure was generally considered
detrimental to the marital relationship.40 A standard Christian work
on sex dedicated to Cardinal d'Este, Sinibaldi's 17th-century Geneanthropeia,
said no woman could conceive if she enjoyed sex.41 Before
the turn of the last century, it was expected that "good" women would
know nothing of sexual pleasure. If they showed an inclination to
learn, they might be cruelly teased. Thomas Branagan's advice to young
men was to test the virtue of a fiancee by trying to seduce her, to
make sure she would react with "becoming abhorrence." If she seemed
too compliant, she must be jilted.42
The name of John Bowdler became a byword for his pious labors
in removing all risque words from the Bible, Shakespeare, etc. He
even objected to any mention of women's traditional care of the sick or
of infants, on moral grounds: "Few women have any idea [Bowdler's
italics] how much men are disgusted by the slightest approach to these
in any female .... By attending the nursery or sick bed, women are
too apt to acquire a habit of conversing on such subjects in language
which men of delicacy are shocked at." 43 Male "delicacy" even
dictated that the books of male and female authors must be kept on
separate bookshelves unless the authors "happen to be married." 44
The Victorian authority on sex was Dr. William Acton, who
couldn't heap too much praise on "all those mysterious sensations
which make up what we call VIRILITY," a quality that "seems
necessary to give a man that consciousness of his dignity, or his
character as head and ruler and of his importance, which is absolutely
essential to the well-being of his family, and through it, of society itself.
It is a power, a privilege, of which the man is, and should be, proud."
But women were permitted no such pride in their sexual nature. "As a
general rule," said Acton, "a modest woman seldom desires any
sexual gratification for herself. She submits to her husband, but only to
please him; and, but for the desire of maternity, would far rather be
relieved of his attentions." Acton admitted however that there were a
few sad exceptions to his rule, who might be found either in the
divorce courts or in lunatic asylums, suffering from "the form of insanity
called nymphomania." 45
Those women labeled nymphomaniacs and imprisoned in Victorian
asylums were frequently women who had somehow stumbled
upon discovery of their own orgasmic capacity and found to their
dismay that men neither knew nor cared anything about it. Even
Freud's view of female sexuality was all wrong. For over fifty years,
doctors slavishly followed Freud's interpretation and wondered why
there were so many "frigid" women, whose sexual readiness was
constantly aroused to no purpose until they rejected sex out of sheer
frustration. "It is remarkable that only recently has Freud's classic theory
on the sexuality of women-the notion of the double orgasm-been
actually tested and found just plain wrong." 46
The 20th century was not much more enlightened than the 19th.
Stall's marriage manual, the ultimate authority at the turn of the
century, blamed women themselves for the sexual ignorance society
imposed on them. If a wife failed to understand her husband's sexual
needs, she was to blame "for her lack of knowledge and consideration."
47 But men's lack of knowledge and consideration was part of
the culture.
The oft-heard complaint directed by women at the clumsiness, crassness,
and incompetence of men in their sexual approaches and in sexual
intercourse itself, men's lack of skill in foreplay and their failure to
understand its meaning, almost certainly substantially reflects the lack
of tactile experience that many males have suffered in childhood. The
roughness with which many men will handle women and children
constitutes yet another evidence of their having been failed in early tactile
experience, for it is diHicult to conceive of anyone who had been
tenderly loved and caressed in infancy not learning to approach a woman
or a child with especial tenderness. The very word "tenderness"
implies softness, delicacy of touch, caring for. The gorilla, that gentle
creature, is the most frequently slandered when women wish to
describe the sexual approaches of the average male. Sex seems to be
regarded as a tension releaser rather than as a profoundly meaningful
act of communication in a deeply involved human relationship. ~8
One modern woman-a rape victim-thus expressed her own view
of sex:
Sex, for men, is totally oriented toward the man's orgasm and isn't
successful unless it involves intercourse and orgasm, which is ridiculous,
because sex to me is a much more sensual, much more emotional
experience. It doesn't involve just one particular spot on the body getting
excited and aroused, and then it's over, and it's either a success or
failure. 19
Men culturally trained not to pay attention to women seldom
understood what women meant by "love," even when they tried to
explain. The celebrated Kinsey reports on American sexual behavior
didn't mention "love" in their index. 5° Certainly there was no such idea
in America as the Tantric karuna, which combined all forms of love
in communion with the female, though modern women sometimes try
to grope toward this concept, unaware that it was elucidated long ago:
Gestation ... is a complex inner process in which sexuality is fed by
everything else a woman has at her disposal, much in the same way that
she might feed a fetus. When there is no fetus, an inclusive kind of sexual
intimacy fills up a comparable inner space. But when sex is separated
from that context, the disparity between a penetration that is no more than
an "action" and a penetration that reaches into complex inner space
can become quite overwhelming . .. .
To most men the problem ... does not seem very real. To them the
clearest aim of sex is orgasm, that moment ofintense physical intimacy
and satisfaction which so often serves as a substitute for other kinds of
intimacy. Perhaps that is one of the reasons why men seem to be so
concerned with satisfying women sexually and interpret that satisfaction in
terms of what they think would satisfy them if they were women. It
may also be one of the reasons why men seem to think that many women
can never be completely satisfied sexually. The terrain where a woman
remains forever unsatisfied or even, as they say, "insatiable," is probably
the area where her sexuality borders most closely on that more complex
psycho-sexual area of her being. 51
In Oriental countries where an image of the Goddess was
retained, broader ideas of sexuality were retained also:
Western attitudes . .. look on sexual intercourse as a matter of tension,
appetite and relief . .. according to the simplistic biological conception
which is still current. · . .. It is well known that the man who, in the Kinsey
Report on the Human Male, recorded a frequency above thirty times a
day for many years became a kind of folk-hero in America. Sexual/ave, in
such a context, becomes at best a matter of frequently happily shared
orgasms.
To the traditional Indian mind this attitude is grotesque and pathetic.
Even the ordinary man recognized that such banality was absurd. ...
Eighteenth-century Indian harlots mocked European men for their
miserable sexual performance, calling them ~'dunghill cocks" for whom
the act was over in a few seconds. Despite recent advances in sexological
knowledge, the West's chosen external explanations of sex, attached as
they are to a provisional and impoverished rationalization of the infinite
complex of human experience, still tend to regard sex as the pursuit of
orgasm. ... Traditional India did not.
A mystical or poetic view of sex, like the Indian one, seemed to
jar the puritan consciousness even more than a "dirty" or degraded
view. Dr. Marie Stopes's Married Love was imported from England
in 1918 but banned for obscenity in the U.S., chiefly on account of
such delirious passages as the following:
The half-swooning sense of flux which overtakes the spirit in their eternal
moment at the apex of rapture sweeps into its flaming tides the whole
essence of the man and woman, and as it were, the heat of the contact
vaporizes their consciousness so that it fills the whole of cosmic space.
For the moment they are identified with the divine thoughts, the waves of
eternal force, which to the Mystic often appear in terms of golden
light. 5J
Some progress has been made since the sexual obtuseness of
western men made them a laughingstock in India. But recent investigators
found "a view of sex that is as distorted as the Victorian, for it is
still shrouded with the unrealistic expectations and outmoded standards
of gender behavior of the past. Fantasy rather than reality is its
keynote; hostility, anxiety, and guilt are aggravated rather than alleviated."
54 Significantly, a male author characterizes male sexuality as
loveless and death-centered, capable of destroying the foundations of
society:
Contemporary eroticism attempts to free woman sexually but according to
a masculine conception of sexuality . ... The present rehabilita~ion of
the erotic in its purely sexual, loveless aspect is completely at variance with
the truly feminine conception ... an ultimate striving toward dislocation,
destruction, and death- Thanatos-as against Eros, the love-filled
erotic, unifying and conservationist . ... Ultimately, this overemphasis
of the masculine component in Western society threatens to destroy its
foundations. »
To counterbalance the destructiveness of male-dominated society,
nothing could be effective except recognition of the feminine
principle, according to George Sand: "It will be in the female heart
par excellence, as it always has been, that love and devotion, patience
and pity, will find their true home. On woman falls the duty, in a
world of brute passions, of preserving the virtue of charity .... When
woman ceases to play that role, life will be the loser."56 Modern
thinkers also regret the loss of cultural emphasis on the feminine
morality that can integrate sex with affection, tenderness, and sensitivity
toward others' emotional needs. It has been often said that
male-dominated societies tend to burden the sexual impulses of both
women and men with basically unrelated guilts, fears, angers, and their
resulting aggressions. Some forms of"entertainment" for example
take advantage of the new frankness to introduce disturbingly sadistic
elements into mass socialization for sexual adulthood. "Rather than
lament the fact that sexual appetite is now being encouraged, we might
more profitably spend our time trying to ensure that the emotions
that are integrated with it are the ones we approve of." 57
As recently as 1966, an anthropological study of the Irish
islanders of Inis Beag revealed a mini-culture of 19th-century Christian patriarchal
patterns in sexual life. Female orgasm was unknown.
Women were trained to endure rather than enjoy sex. Men habitually
ejaculated within seconds. Modesty was the overwhelming preoccupation
of both sexes; husbands and wives didn't see each other naked.
Sexual foreplay consisted of rough fondling outside the sleeping
garments. No coital position other than Venus observa was used.
Premarital sex was virtually unknown, since young couples were
never alone together. Not even "walking out," the old-fashioned
version of dating, was allowed. Young people received no instruction in
sexual matters. The islanders said after marriage "nature would take
its course" without the embarrassment of discussion.
Though the men were often at sea in small boats, they never
learned to swim, being unwilling to undress in public for this purpose.
"Bathing" in the sea meant wading, fully clothed. The sexes were
rigidly separated for this activity. Men were known to die of disease or
injury rather than to go to a hospital on the mainland, where they
thought their bodies would be bared to the eyes of female nurses.
Even the dogs of Inis Beag were whipped for licking their genitals
or other "obscene" behavior. Imported copies of American magazines
such as Life or Time were denounced from the pulpit as
pornography. Fear of female "mysteries" was overt: women were not
approached sexually for many months after childbirth, or during menstruation,
when men thought them especially dangerous. Predictably,
severe repression exacted a severe toll in quarrelsomeness, alcoholism,
violence, and frequent mental disturbances. 58
Paradoxically, the more sexuality is banned and ignored, the more
fear it seems to engender in men. A patriarchal-ascetic ethic seems to
arrange sexual attitudes according to the way men would like them
arranged, but it doesn't work well even for men. A psychiatrist says,
"In the privacy of our consulting room we do from time to time see
strong men fret, and hear them talk of women with dread and horror
and awe, as if women, far from being timid creatures to be patronized,
were as powerful as the sea and inescapable as fate .... Man, confronted
by woman, does seem to feel, variously, frightened, revolted,
dominated, bewildered, and even, at times, superfluous." 59 One male
author in a revealing passage on men's sexual feelings refers to a woman
as "it," but also admits "general helplessness in the face of her," and a
sense of her "awesomeness and power" -seemingly overblown terms
for an ordinary human female:
We cannot relate to the total object as it [sic] is, and thus we need
standardized definitions of sexual attractiveness. These we get in the
form of"cues" that serve to cut the object down to manageable size: we
look at the breast or the black underwear, which allow us not really to
have to take account of the total person we are relating to . . . . [W]e strip
the partner of awesomeness and power and so overcome our general
helplessness in the face of her. 60
The symbols of "sexiness" are created and instilled by the
society, however odd it may seem to realize that human physiological
responses can actually be keyed to abstract images. "It is now quite
clear that how a person behaves sexually is largely determined not by
inborn factors but by learning."61 The prevailing conventional wisdom
and its influence on the growing child determine whether most
people will enjoy sex or hate it, perceiving their own bodies as heaven
or hell. Western anti-sexuality has created many individuals tending
toward the "hate" or "hell" end of the spectrum, epitomized by a
psychiatric patient who said, "Somehow I always think that sexual
intercourse is a great disgrace for humans." A female patient called
her body an "abhorrent envelope," and said, "I wish I could tear this
skin off. lfl didn't have this stupid body, I would be as pure outside as
I feel inside."
Women have an especially difficult time with the body-image in a
society that attaches little value to their complex body-oriented roles
of wife, mother, nurturer, or comforter; and may even cease to play
these roles when they have fully accepted the value system of the
dominant sex. Women don't reject traditional "feminine" roles out of
perversity, nor because of that Freudian absurdity, penis envy. Like
men, most women prefer to do what their society values and rewards. If
the wife-and-mother role is undervalued- or even deprecated, as it
has been throughout the past two millenia in the western worldwomen
can hardly be blamed for seeking valid achievement in other
fields.63 In our society the universal standard of valuation is money, and
the so-called "career" of wife-and-mother earns none at all.
Underevaluation of the mother affects sons as well as daughters,
since the mother's reaction to social expectations of her inevitably
creates a deep impression on her children. "Psychiatric observation
suggests that human sexual behavior is subtly shaped by the nature of
the social attachments formed during a person's development"; and the
mother is the primary social attachment.64 Chodorow says the modern
civilized male "is in the unhappy position of being able to attain
masculine identity almost solely through efforts to distinguish himself
from the person closest to him [the mother], with whom he might most
naturally identify. His efforts commonly take the form of a rather
primitive rejection of all that is 'feminine' in women and in himself." 65
Sexual development is further hampered by conventional religions
which still attach fear and guilt to almost every stage of the process.
Ignoring recent proofs that masturbation is necessary for development
of normal orgasmic capacity in both sexes, Pope Paul VI's 1976
declaration on sexual ethics pronounced masturbation "a grave moral
disorder." Moreover, within the framework of marriage, only the
"finality" of procreation could "ensure the moral goodness" of sex-in
other words, sex must make babies, not pleasure.66 As for premarital
sex, Norman Vincent Peale declared it a dreadful sin even for persons
deeply in love; they cannot be forgiven without prolonged spiritual
"treatment." 67
It is now said that sexual appetites have "little or no relation to
biological or physiological needs .. . . [E]rotic urges stem more from
socio-cultural factors than from those of the strictly physiological nature."
68 Therefore the broad extent of ugly or cruel sexual behavior
patterns in modern society should stimulate serious thought about what
the society is teaching. In 1972, the Chief of the Sex Section of the
Washington D.C. Police Department reported: "The newspapers print
only what they want to. I tell them about little girls of seven or eight
who come up with venereal diseases inflicted on them by male members
of their own families. An appalling number of 11- and
12-year-olds are giving birth after being raped by their own fathers. But
they won't print things like this. They're only heart-breaking and
horrible-not sensationaJ."69
A report of the Commission on Obscenity and Pornography
concluded: "Failure to talk openly and directly about sex ... overemphasizes
sex, gives it a magical nonnatural quality .... Such failure
makes teaching children and adolescents to become fully and adequately
functioning sexual adults a more difficult task. ... The very •
foundation of our society rests upon healthy sexual attitudes grounded
in appropriate and accurate sexual information." 70 In other words, the
foundations of society rest on dissemination of precisely the kind of
information that Christian morality insisted on withholding from one
and all-men, women, and children.
Churches today have largely renounced all their responsibility to
establish guidelines for sexual development or sexual behavior, leaving
their congregations in an area of confusion. Theologians stress "the
personal responsibility of the Christian to find God's will for himself."71
In which case, he hardly needs a church.
From Barbara Walker's Women's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets
The internal erect clitoris
The corpus cavernosum also extends further, bifurcating again to form the two crura. These two legs extend up to 9cm, pointing toward the thighs when at rest, and stretching back toward the spine when erect. To picture them at rest, imagine the crura as a wishbone, coming together at the body of the clitoris where they attach to the pubic symphysis.
Near each of the crura on either side of the vaginal opening are the clitoral vestibules. These are internally under the labia majora. When they become engorged with blood they actually cuff the vaginal opening causing the vulva to expand outward. Get these puppies excited, and you’ve got a hungrier, tighter-feeling vaginal opening in which to explore!
personified the phallus as Priapus and the clitoris as an Amazon queen
named Kleite, ancestral mother of the Kleitae, a tribe of warrior
women who founded a city in Italy.2 In Corinth, Kleite was a princess
"whom Artemis made grow tall and strong," an allegory of her
erection.3 Or, again, she was a nymph who loved the phallus of the sun
god and always followed his motion with her "head" -a transparently
sexual metaphor.4 In a bowdlerized version of the story she was
transformed into a sunflower, turning to follow the motion of the sun
across the sky.
Pausanias said the Arcadian city of Clitor was sacred to Artemis, or
to Demeter, and stood at the genital shrine of the earth, the
headwaters of the Styx (or Alph).5 The meaning of this geographical
myth is made clear by the primitive belief that the Styx represented
Mother Earth's menstrual blood, source and solvent of all things. In
this place, too, the orgiastic priestesses of Artemis were "soothed" out
of their frenzies; therefore the local omphalos must have signified the
Goddess's clitoris instead of her navel.
Later patriarchal society managed to ignore the clitoris. Since the
Christian church taught that women should not experience sexual
pleasure but should only endure intercourse for the sake of procreation,
growing girls and boys alike were kept ignorant of female sexuality,
insofar as possible.6 Even physicians came to believe that no clitoris
would be found on a virtuous woman.
From medieval times onward, virtuous women rarely showed
themselves naked to any man, even a husband; so it was perhaps not
surprising that men should remain ignorant of the female anatomy they
clumsily fumbled with in the dark. Pious married couples wore the
chemise cagoule, a voluminous nightgown with a small hole in front, to
allow impregnation with a minimum of body contact.7
At a witch trial in 1593, the investigating gaoler (a married man)
apparently discovered a clitoris for the first time, and identified it as a
devil' s teat, sure proof of the witch's guilt. It was "a little lump of flesh,
in manner sticking out as if it had been a teat, to the length of half an
inch," which the gaoler, "perceiving at the first sight thereof, meant not
to disclose, because it was adjoining to so secret a place which was not
decent to be seen; yet in the end, not willing to c~mceal so strange a
matter," he showed it to various bystanders.8 The bystanders had
never seen anything like it either. The witch was convicted.
European society certainly knew all about the penis, and never
ceased to worship it, even in Christian times.
Yet the clitoris was forgotten:
Almost from the very beginning of our lives, we are all taught that the
primary male sex organ is the penis, and the primary female sex organ
is the vagina. These organs are supposed to define the sexes, to be the
difference between boys and girls .... This is a lie . . . . Woman's
sexual pleasure is often left out of these definitions. If people considered
that the purpose of the female sex organs is to bring pleasure to
women, then female sex would be defined by, and focused on, a different
organ. Everyone would be taught from infan~y that, as the primary
male sex organ is the penis, so the primary female sex organ is the clitoris. 9
Medical authorities in the 19th century seemed anxious to
prevent women from discovering their own sexuality. Girls who learned
to develop orgasmic capacity by masturbation, just as boys learned it,
were regarded as medical problems. Often they were "treated" or
"corrected" by amputation or cautery of the clitoris, or "miniature
chastity belts, sewing the vaginal lips together to put the clitoris out of
reach, and even castration by surgical removal of the ovaries. But
there are no references in the medical literature to surgical removal of
testicles or amputation of the penis to stop masturbation (in boys)." 10
In the United States, the last recorded clitoridectomy for curing
masturbation was performed in 1948-on a five-year-old girl. 11
The Catholic church's definition of masturbation as "a grave
moral disorder" in 1976 may have incorporated fears of the effect of
masturbation on female orgasmic capacity, now well known to evolve
through masturbatory experience the same as that of a male. 12 Less
than a century ago, in the Victorian era, priests and doctors realized that
"the total repression of woman's sexuality was crucial to ensure her
subjugation." Leading authorities like Dr. Isaac Brown Baker performed
many clitoridectomies to cure women's nervousness, hysteria,
catalepsy, insanity, female dementia, and other catchwords for symptoms
of sexual frustration.
SCIENCE has looked into some strange things over the centuries — reports of gargantuan sea monsters, purported images of Jesus, sightings of alien spaceships and so on. When I first heard of spontaneous orgasm, while researching a book on yoga, including its libidinal cousin, tantra, I figured it was more allegory than reality and in any event would prove beyond the reach of even the boldest investigators.
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