Female Clitoral Orgasms: Improving Human Sexuality with Increased Discourse

The female clitoral orgasm is sometimes labeled as multiple or achieved by intercourse. Being that the physiology of the female genitalia is the same as the male, with regards to the tissue that can be stimulated for orgasm, the female orgasm is almost exactly the same as a male’s, without ejaculation. This paper presents the viewpoint that media should discuss the female orgasm by illustrating similarities, and that research should be done to demonstrate the sameness between the two male and female orgasm to increase public understanding.

For many centuries, the male orgasm has presided over discourse about human sexuality. The male orgasm is easily notable because it occurs during sexual intercourse and can occur by other forms of stimulation. Contrastingly, female orgasms occur most often by clitoral stimulation. The clitoris is located on a woman’s vulva, or outer genitalia. According to experts in the field of sexology and authors of the book, Exploring the Dimensions of Human Sexuality, Jerrold S. Greenberg, et al., the clitoris is made up of similar tissue as the penis, and fills with blood during arousal as the penis does (Greenberg 125). The sole purpose of the clitoris is for sexual pleasure. Sexual intercourse has been given primary attention in educational programs, allowing for the male to orgasm to be normative, while the female orgasm is little discussed or researched. The female orgasm ought to be given the same attention as intercourse in so that women and men become aware that it is not typically intercourse that causes female orgasm, but rather, outer genital stimulation of the clitoris. Men and women need to be knowledgeable of the clitoral orgasm through increased discourse and sexual education: this spread of information will improve the study of sexuality and will improve people’s sexual lives.

There are reasons for the belief that intercourse creates orgasm as clitoral stimulation does. Human sexuality was not first considered a subject worth studying until the 1890’s. One of the first researchers of sexuality, Richard von Krafft-Ebing explained sexual pleasures such as masturbation, as a mental disease that could cause an individual harm. It took fellow researcher, Henry Havelock Ellis, sixteen volumes of scientific work to counter Krafft-Ebing by stating that masturbation is normal for both sexes and that orgasm is very much the same in both males and females (Greenberg 48). Because sexuality is a new subject in light of others that have been studied for centuries, beliefs are controversial, and many need substantiating. There is no doubt that the newness of human sexuality has caused controversy. Female orgasmic ability needs to be included into the talk about intercourse and pleasure as knowledge on the subject proliferates.