What’s the difference between vaginal and clitoral orgasms? Is there even a difference? The answers may surprise you.
Let’s start this somewhat sensitive discussion with a brief anatomy lesson:
The idea of a total separation between the vagina and clitoris is mostly false. The clitoris consists of more than the clitoral glands and hood (external parts). Because the internal parts surround the vaginal opening, and canal (which has few sensory nerve endings) the internal parts of the clitoris are muy importante in the feeling department.
Orgasms mostly involve our brains and central nervous systems, therefore our sexual response is about more than genitals or having a given part of our genitals touched. If this weren’t the case, then a pelvic ultrasound would be a very different experience. By the same token, I can kiss my lover and feel a special sensation in my private place but I’m not going to orgasm. No offense, lover.
Orgasms come from the inside of our brains and central nervous systems, and flare out, impacting certain parts of our bodies. So when I ask my lover to dim the lights, or close the door, or some other perceived neuroses (perceived by him that is) so that I may focus on my orgasm as a whole, it’s because those things are affecting my brain and thus, my genitals.
Sigmund Freud suggested that the clitoral orgasm was the predecessor to what he considered the deeper and more satisfying vaginal orgasm. He went on to say that the clitoral kind was immature. This makes me feel the need to point out there is nothing immature about my clitoris. But there’s more. He also believed, as did others (which accounts for a lot of messed up thinking out there on the subject), that a married woman was supposed to naturally “transfer” the awesomeness that she felt from her clitoris to her vagina. There wasn’t any scientific proof that this could occur; at work was the power of supposing and suggesting.
The male perspective continued with Alfred Kinsey, who supposedly found that women could not and were not having vaginal orgasms. Later, the Masters and Johnson research team of Williams H. Masters and Virginia E. Johnson, studied sexual behavior through observing and measuring masturbation and sexual intercourse in the laboratory. Their results showed no difference between vaginal orgasms and the supposedly immature clitoral orgasms.
Masters and Johnson found that the majority of their subjects could only achieve clitoral orgasm, while a small minority achieved vaginal orgasm. Women everywhere stood up and took back their clitoral orgasms. While I’m not about to march on Washington for orgasmic respect, I am thankful for those that leveled the playing field.
Unfortunately, pop-culture and the media haven’t helped by putting in their orgasmic two cents. They’ve messed women up, leading some to feel sexually dysfunctional if they don’t perform like the women in the movies, who are often portrayed as completely sexual beings who respond only to physical stimulation. No need for foreplay, mental stimulation, or to even take your clothes off. I’d like to meet those women just to see if they really exist.
It’s hard to believe that in this day and age, there are women and men who believe that if a woman doesn’t experience an orgasm through intercourse alone, that they are sexually dysfunctional.
The physiological response between clitoral and vaginal stimulation are identical. Orgasms are orgasms are orgasms. Can we agree that orgasms are a blessing? Let’s stop caring so much about how we attain them and where we think they’re coming from. Isn’t it enough that we have them to begin with?
