There is a popular idea out there that the clitoris is the only organ of the human body whose sole function is pleasure:
“orgasm has persisted as a pleasurable evolutionary legacy, without the reproductive association.”
It’s a sexy idea, isn’t it?
That women’s bodies are special, containing a little button that exists purely to enhance our pleasure…
This idea is widely shared in sexology, feminism, science, and popular media.
But it is wrong.
Not only do scientists and sexologists propagate this idea, the notion that the clitoris is purely-about-pleasure is also presented as a liberating, revolutionary, and feminist idea.
For some reason, we have gotten to the point that if female sexual pleasure is biologically and evolutionarily linked to conception, pregnancy, or motherhood, that women are brought back to the dark days of being trapped by their reproductive role.
I think we’ve swung too far in the direction of divorcing pleasure from processes of reproduction, in an attempt to compensate for past sexism and misogyny. But correcting these past mistakes shouldn’t involve falsehoods, or under-emphasizing the evolutionary legacy left by the many challenges of female reproduction.
We must travel back in history to understand this current context of clitoral conversations.
You see, back in the day, the clitoris was seen as a somewhat problematic little entity. It’s anatomy, which is largely subterranean, with limbs and bulbs extending around the vaginal canal, was unknown. Freud believed that orgasms generated from clitoral stimulation represented developmental immaturity in women, and that a vaginal orgasm elicited from penile-vaginal intercourse meant that a woman was fully mature.
There still exist researchers who believe this idea, though they parade it in a different costume. These researchers try to make the case, similar to Freud, that clitoral orgasms represent a less optimal type of orgasm than the deep, vaginal orgasm generated by coitus.
In earlier times than Freud, clinicians even practiced surgical removal of the clitoris as a treatment for mental illness and hysteria. Of course, clitoral removal still occurs today in cultures that practice female genital mutilation, a truly barbaric and terrible practice that must be stopped.
Key advances in sexology and our understanding of female sexual behaviour began to formally emerge with Kinsey’s and Master and Johnson’s work, and continues to this day.
Women masturbate!
Women engage in lesbian sex.
Women have more orgasms from non-penetrative sex.
Lesbians have more orgasms than straight women!
These pieces of data created a puzzle for evolutionary biologists. If female orgasms, which are largely but not exclusively generated from clitoral stimulation, occur frequently in non-intercourse sexual contexts, then do female orgasms have any importance to reproduction at all? Why would such a thing evolve?
If coital sex is the process through which evolution propagates our genes via sperm transfer into the female body, why wouldn’t that kind of sex be the most fulfilling to women? Why wouldn’t pleasurable and reinforcing orgasms occur along with the kind of sexual activity that produces pregnancy?
The function of the male orgasm is obvious - it provides a reliable mechanism for inserting semen which contains sperm into the female body. We know that women can get pregnant without orgasms.
One idea is that female clitoral sensitivity and resultant orgasms are a by-product of male orgasms. Since males and females develop as somewhat bi-potential embryos, strong selection on male erectile tissue and overlapping early development gave females a ‘happy accident’ of orgasmic-capable tissue, manifest as the clitoris.
This hypothesis does not adequately address the large and complex inner structure of the clitoris, nor does it address all of the outcomes that clitoral stimulation has on the female genital tract.
What does clitoral stimulation do to the female brain and her reproductive tract?
(all of this comes from Levin, 2020)
enhances vaginal blood flow
increases vaginal lubrication
increases vaginal partial oxygen pressure
partially neutralizes vaginal acidity
activates vaginal tenting and ballooning
increases vaginal temperature
Why do these effects matter?
They have direct consequences on the female capacity to conceive.
How so?
Sexual arousal via clitoral stimulation creates multiple changes in the female genital tract that prepare her body for fertilization.
These include:
vaginal secretions promote changes in sperm that make them motile
vaginal secretions affect sperm’s ability fertilize (broadly called capacitation)
vaginal tenting lifts the cervix away from the pool of semen until the sperm are ready to fertilize
after orgasm or a reduction in arousal, the cervix drops and contacts the ready-to-go sperm
this gap in time from ejaculation to capacitation prevents semen components from breaking down the ovum, and also prevents too many sperm from penetrating the ovum
The inner structure of the clitoris also becomes larger in volume prior to ovulation, further supporting the role of clitoris in conception.
I wonder why it is seen as more progressive and liberating to incorrectly view the clitoris as a ‘pure pleasure organ’ entirely disconnected from female fertility and reproduction.
You can have sexual pleasure without conceiving or without wanting to conceive, without being fertile, without a male partner or without a partner at all. All of these facts do not remove the long evolutionary history of the clitoris and its important role in generating sexual arousal and physiological changes to the female genital tract that have direct roles in procreation.
We do not need to incorrectly frame the clitoris to win a feminist battle.
We do not need to separate pleasure from reproduction to permit casual sex, multiple partners, non-heterosexual sex, masturbation, or female sexual liberation.
We can celebrate female sexual pleasure in its own right, while acknowledging how powerful evolutionary forces weave pleasure into all processes of reproduction.
I think it is more feminist, and honest, to honour women’s evolutionary legacies as the sex that conceives, gestates, births, and nourishes offspring.
All of these process are under extremely strong selection, and pleasure plays an important role in reinforcing our participation in these processes.
Indeed, female sensuality and pleasure are intimately tied to sex, pregnancy, nursing, and motherhood. For example, we know that the clitoris becomes engorged during childbirth, that some women experience orgasm during birth (I sure didn’t!), and that some women find breastfeeding sensual and satisfying.
Pleasure is a proximate motivator to engage in acts that promote the passing on of our genetic material. Thus pleasure mechanisms should weave between all aspects of female reproduction, insuring women engage in these acts again and again. Even the intensity and pain of childbirth is quickly rewarded with the most intense relief, joy, and ecstasy when the baby finally emerges.
Originally scientists working in overtly sexist and misogynistic times were too concerned with interpreting female sexuality through the narrow lenses of conception and male pleasure. Their rudimentary understanding of the clitoris further contributed to their lack of acknowledgement of female sexual pleasure, including its role in reproduction.
Perhaps we have now swung to the other extreme of trying to divorce female pleasure from reproduction and motherhood.
So, let’s truthfully celebrate the clitoris:
as an organ that brings women delight
as an organ whose stimulation activates nearly our entire brain
as an organ whose stimulation creates changes cascading throughout our entire reproductive tract
as an organ whose stimulation promotes pelvic blood flow and muscular integrity
as an organ whose stimulation helped our maternal ancestors get turned on, get pregnant, and ultimately, create us!
Perhaps we can say that yes, the clitoris exists for pleasure, but that pleasure enhances our fertility, and thus ultimately our survival.