The Clitoral Truth: The Secret World at Your Fingertips (13 page)

Whipple became interested in female ejaculation in the late 1970s when she was treating women with stress urinary incontinence (SUI). One of her clients with very strong pelvic floor muscles complained that she typically lost urine only during sex. “This just didn’t make any sense to me,” Whipple says. “Women with strong pelvic floor muscles aren’t likely to suffer from incontinence.”
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Whipple teamed up with John Perry and opened up the subject of female ejaculation to public scrutiny and discussion. A chapter on the subject was included in
The G Spot and Other Recent

Discoveries about Human Sexuality
, co written with Alice Kahn Ladas, a well-known bioenergetic analyst and sex therapist.
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“I thought it extremely important to validate the sexual experiences that may vary from accepted norms,” explains Whipple. “I also wanted to help women avoid surgery for SUI when they really didn’t have it.”
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In addition to including a chapter on female ejaculation in
The G Spot
, Whipple published articles and lectured at conferences on the subject, and even made a film showing women ejaculating in a clinical setting, but many sexologists remain unconvinced. In that vacuum, feminists interested in sexuality began to share their own experiences, and several made videos.

After a flurry of interest from a handful of researchers in the 1980s, few medical studies have looked at urethral anatomy or female ejaculation. A 1998 Australian study published in the prestigious
Journal of Urology
conducted careful dissections of female cadavers and found that “current anatomical descriptions of female human urethral and genital anatomy are inaccurate” and that “end organ erectile tissue was surprisingly different from the descriptions of it in anatomy publications.” The authors discovered that the urethra is attached to the vaginal wall, but “in all other directions it is surrounded by erectile tissue.” Although these researchers did not look for prostate glands, they concluded that the

sexual function of the urethra is an issue that should be investigated.
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Now we know that the existence of a female prostate and the phenomenon of female ejaculation are fact, not fantasy. We know that the amount of fluid produced varies greatly, from unnoticeable or a teaspoon or so to copious gushes. We know that ejaculation may occur with or without stimulation inside of the vagina and that it may accompany orgasm, or it may occur simply as a sign of intense sexual pleasure without orgasm. Even for women who regularly produce lots of fluid, orgasm may occur without ejaculation. There is just no set pattern. We don not know why some women ejaculate more than others. It is also unclear as to whether it can be “learned,” although some women discover that they do ejaculate by enhancing their sexual response. Chapters 4 and 5 describe ways that women are exploring and expanding their sexual repertoires. Even if you don’t discover an ability to ejaculate, you are likely to discover new and more rewarding ways of giving and receiving pleasure.

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ex—how we think about it and how we do it—has changed more in the last three decades than it has in the last four or five thousand years, and it is exhilarating to think that these changes have primarily benefited women. Due to the mass marketing of the Pill, the wide availability of other types of contraception, and the legalization of abortion, for the first time in recorded history, women can have sex without fear of pregnancy and thus have a measure of sexual freedom that was previously unattainable. Feminists have led the struggle to rescue masturbation from antisex zealotry, claiming it as a technique for self-discovery and self-pleasuring, as well as for enriching partner sex. Many young women are refusing to be bound

by rigid gender roles and some are even identifying themselves as bisexual rather than as exclusively heterosexual or lesbian. Tired of male-centered “fuck-’n’-cum” pornography, feminists are writing, filming, and performing and distributing their own post porn erotica. A few enterprising feminists have established boutiques and mail- order catalogs catering to women, making vibrators, sex toys, sex advice books, and erotica widely available. Others are offering workshops that help women break out of unrewarding sexual patterns and explore their sexuality and enhance their sexual response.

These are just some of the most visible changes that are beginning to transform the long-standing male-centered heterosexual model of sexuality. After thirty years of change and evolution, sex is definitely different for women in ways that our grandmothers could hardly have imagined.

IS IT SEX OR JUST FOOLIN’ AROUND?

Perhaps the most important change now under way is the movement to redefine sex as far more than intercourse. This shift is occurring but remains a revolution in progress. President Clinton’s repeated denial that he and Monica Lewinsky were having sex is just one of myriad examples of how far we still have to go. While many people clearly thought of their encounters as “sex,” according to standard reference books, they were merely fooling around.
Sex in America: A

Definitive Survey
finds that “vaginal intercourse is... what people imagine when they think of sex.”
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The streetwise, up-to-date Random House Dictionary of the English Language defines “to have sex” as “to engage in intercourse.” The definition of “the sex act” in the authoritative Complete Dictionary of Sexology (CDS) is “a colloquial term for copulation, sexual intercourse, or coitus.”
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President Clinton’s definition was correct according to the prevailing notion, and the irony is that most if not all of the president’s most vociferous critics probably believe that, too. My question is that if “fooling around” is so great as to cause the constitutional crisis of the century, why would anybody want to limit their physical interactions to intercourse?

This is not to say that intercourse isn’t enjoyable. A number of women prefer it above any other form of sexual expression. “I just love the delicious sensations of penetration,” Diane says. “Besides orgasm, it’s my favorite part.”

“I feel so full and connected to my partner during intercourse, and I almost always come that way,” Jodie reports.

Many women, however, find lots of sexual benefits from non- intercourse sex. I was recently at a dinner party with a dozen or so women doctors. When the conversation turned to sex, one woman piped up, “I’ve been dating a seventy-two-year-old man. He can’t

get an erection, and, let me tell you, it’s the best sex I’ve ever, ever had!”

“You go girl!” I thought, but I had the sense that her enthusiastic endorsement of the joys of non-intercourse sex met with skepticism among many at the table.

In a marvelously canny essay entitled “Are We Having Sex Now or What?,” Greta Christina, one of the new “sexpert” generation who is actively exploring and critiquing contemporary sexual practices, personally assesses the question of sex.
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She kept a list of the men with whom she had intercourse, but when she started having sex with women, she realized she needed a more inclusive definition, and then things got more complicated. “As I kept doing more kinds of sexual things, the line between sex and non-sex kept getting more hazy and indistinct,” she writes. “I know when I’m feeling sexual...but feeling sexual with someone isn’t the same as having sex with them... Even being sexual with someone isn’t the same as having sex with them.” Some of Christina’s friends suggested, “If you thought of it as sex when you were doing it, then it was.” Naturally, this brought up the issue of “what do I think it is?” She tried to construct a definition. “Perhaps having sex with someone is the conscious, consenting, mutually acknowledged pursuit of shared sexual pleasure,” she thought. What if one or neither partner was able to derive pleasure? What if one person is asleep? “Can you have a situation where one person is having sex and the other isn’t?” she

asks. “It seems that no matter what definition I come up with, I can think of some real-life experience that calls it into question.” What about S/M games without any genital contact? What about a sex worker who’s turned on while a client watches her masturbate? Is that sex, or work for hire?

Christina provides a thought-provoking and very instructive inquiry. In the end, though, she doesn’t come up with an entirely satisfactory definition, illustrating just how complex, nuanced, variously constructed, often vexing, and many-splendored sexual interactions can be.

REWRITING THE INTERCOURSE SCRIPT

The sexual script that most men learn in their youth is entirely goal oriented. The goal, of course, is to experience the maximum pleasure of an orgasm as quickly and efficiently as possible. The surreptitious masturbation that most boys engage in allows for a prolonged period of experimentation, in which they learn what is pleasurable and how to achieve it in as short a time and with as little effort as possible. In this context, goal orientation seems entirely reasonable. According to most reports, the average male orgasm occurs within two to five minutes after direct penile stimulation begins. If the goal is a single orgasm, and quality is of no concern, then this pattern works quite well for men.

As the Kinsey report notes, “Exceedingly few males modify their attitudes of sex or change their overt behavior in a fundamental way after their mid teens.”
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The problem is that when adolescent boys begin to have sex with girls or other boys, this well-rehearsed script is passed on whole cloth and becomes the template for girls’ sexual scripts as well. Like the hand, the firm moist grip of the vagina provides the stimulation that is likely to result in male orgasm with as little effort as possible.

One of the most important changes that feminists have advocated is taking the focus off of intercourse and rewriting the sexual “script.”

The notion that not every sexual encounter includes intercourse may come as a shock to many heterosexual men whose well-honed masturbation script is focused on the most efficient route to an orgasm. Even when men are considerate of their female partners’ needs, once intercourse is initiated, it usually results in male orgasm. After that, even if a man is up for the job, as it were, his hormone levels drop precipitously, and subsequently his enthusiasm for continuing sex is considerably diminished.

It takes many women far longer than men to become fully aroused—as long as a half-hour in many cases. California sexologists William Hartman and Marilyn Fithian monitored over 20,000 orgasms and found that it takes an average of twenty minutes for women to reach orgasm in the laboratory. For many women, it

can take up to a half-hour or more of sustained stimulation to move into orgasmic range.
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If orgasm is the goal, then moving the attention off of intercourse will equalize a woman’s chances of achieving it. The key is for men to learn ejaculatory control. By varying the type and intensity of stimulation to the penis, men can learn to provide their partners with an equal chance to explore the peaks and valleys, and perhaps the hidden nooks and crannies of their sexual response. We’ll look at the issue of male ejaculatory control in chapter 5.

For many years, sexologists and family planning advocates have been promoting the idea of “intercourse,” a form of sexual activity that includes everything that partners find sexy and pleasurable except vaginal or anal intercourse. “Outercourse is the most exquisite way of experiencing sexual pleasure without exchanging bodily fluids,” Whipple points out.
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In the age of AIDS, the idea of women and men having rewarding sex without vaginal or anal penetration has taken on a heightened, sexuality-enhancing, and in some cases lifesaving significance. People who are disabled or seriously or chronically ill have long employed outercourse when intercourse is painful or impossible.

Many women, and surely some men as well, have mourned the loss of the heavy petting that was the sexual norm before the advent of the Pill and legal abortion. Petting allowed women to get as good as they gave, and to get it at great length. Since intercourse vas less