anatomy

Why Women's G-Spots Are Considered More Mysterious than Men's B-Spots (Never Heard of B-Spots? I Rest My Case.)

Posted by figleaf | Tags:
Sun, 2010-08-15 12:37

Via the authors of the NCBI ROFL Discover Blog, medical researchers used ultrasound to record the anatomy of penis-in-vagina intercourse. Their shocking conclusion?

We focused on the size of the clitoral bodies before and after coitus. Results. The coronal section demonstrated that the penis inflated the vagina and stretched the root of the clitoris that has consequently a very close relationship with the anterior vaginal wall. This could explain the pleasurable sensitivity of this anterior vaginal area called the G-spot. Conclusions. The clitoris and vagina must be seen as an anatomical and functional unit being activated by vaginal penetration during intercourse.”

Read the quote in context here.

It’s basically confirmation that the nominal controversy over the “g-spot” is more semantic than anatomical: there’s a spot. It might or might not be “the Gräfenberg Spot.” Or instead it could turn out to be something else in the same location that responds to stimulation in the same way that we just call the G-spot.

This might sound a bit like oversharing (although I think I haven’t been sharing enough lately) but it occurs to me that a big part of the controversy is that it’s considered a problem that 100% of women don’t respond to stimulation in the area. Except that a) it’s not considered a problem that some women don’t respond, or don’t respond “correctly” to stimulation of any number of other locations including direct contact with the external clitoral body. And also that b) it’s not considered a problem (in fact it doesn’t appear to be considered at all that different men respond best to stimulation of different parts of their genitals too.

The oversharing bit would be that I’m really only orgasmically sensitive in one spot on my penis. It’s about the size of a nickel about a quarter of the way down from the top. Other men are evidently sensitive in other areas. I know this because until they had the time to figure out how I worked other partners have tended to concentrate their attention on other spots — ones that worked for their own previous partners. The glans itself for some. The corona for others. The frenulum seems to be very popular. And one partner, who hadn’t had a lot of partners, was completely baffled when I asked her why she concentrated so much at the very base of my penis. Turns out that had been a holy-grail spot for her two previous partners.

Let’s call that last spot the male “B-Spot.” And do a bunch of MRIs, and electromyography, and write dozens of books, hundreds of articles, and thousands of blog posts and tweets about whether it does or doesn’t exist. Let’s spend a lot of energy demonstrating that anatomically there’s no special gland, duct, specialized tissue, or ganglia at that location that could possibly account for reports that it might in fact respond well to stimulation in some men. We can call the glans area the male “g-spot,” the corona the “c-spot,” the frenulum the “f-spot,” and my spot “the other f-spot” just to make it all sound more obfuscating. Oh, and for extra credit let’s spend a little time castigating men for either claiming they prefer stimulation in some of those spots. Or for instead claiming they don’t. I know, we’ll call them “immature,” or “repressed,” or “not in touch with their bodies,” or even thralls of penetrative ideology” if they can’t find theirs. Then let’s sell a bunch of books and videos demonstrating how men can “find” theirs. And finally we’ll create a whole ‘nother culture around saying how if they ever could find them they’d have mind-blowing orgasms instead of the perfectly lovely orgasms they already have.

Oh wait, no, for men it’s just one spot, “the penis,” and everybody knows all about that. Never mind that men’s “g-spot” is about the same number of centimeters distant from their “b-spots” as clitorises are from women’s “g-spots.” And if it doesn’t work the same way then they’re probably latent homosexuals if they prefer female partners, or maybe latently hetero if they prefer men.

Or we could just acknowledge that genitals, men’s and womens, are delightfully diverse puzzles for which there’s usually no “right” answer.

That’s how I like to read research like the one cited as “ROFL” whacky. And while I strongly agree with Sungold that we might want to keep electromyography (ouch!) to a minimum, I’d still like to see more rather than less interest in the ways all our different spots work.

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Since It's a Holiday Weekend, Here From My Server Logs are 500 Ways People Search to Find My Most Popular Post

Posted by figleaf | Tags:
Sun, 2010-07-04 21:14

By far the most-popular, most Googled/Yahoo’d/Binged-for post on this blog has been How to find someone’s clitoris (if you don’t already know). I didn’t write it intending it to be a mainstay internet sex-ed resource.

And indeed it isn’t! In Google it’s approximately the 500th reference for the most commonly used phrase, “How to find the clitoris!” 500th! In Google’s default mode of 25 hits per page you’re talking about someone who’s had to click the little “next” arrow roughly 20 times before they’d get to mine!

And yet?

And yet!

Hundreds of people do it every day!

Whatever else you can say about people’s ignorance (and you can actually say a lot) you can’t say nobody cares.

So to celebrate American fireworks day, and to celebrate the fact that it’s a very slow day for posts in the U.S., and to celebrate my standing as the 500th-most-common link on that particular keyword*, here’s the top first 500 (500!) key-phrases people have used to find that page. (500!!!!) Note — to avoid screwing up anyone else’s searches, and to avoid looking too much like spam, I’ve replaced the word and all it’s various spellings, misspellings, and wild-assed guesses with underscores.

# ————————————————————
# Table
# ————————————————————
Keyword
how to find the ________
________
how to find the ________
finding the ________
how to find a girls ________
how to find ________
find the ________
find the ________
how to find the ________
how to find a ________
find ________
finding ________
how to find a girls ________
how to find her ________
how to find ________
how to find my ________
how to find her ________
________ pictures
finding her ________
________
how to find the ________
show me the ________
how to find a girl’s ________
show me a ________
show me ________
see my ________
show me a ________
________ erection photos
find her ________
hard to find ________
hot to find the ________
small ________
________ photos
________ pics
finding a girls ________
finding the ________
how do you find a girls ________
how to find the ________
show me ________
find my ________
hard to find ________
how to ________
how to find the ________ on a girl
how do i find my ________
how to find a girls ________
how to find the ________
find a ________
hot ________
how to find a ________
how to find a girl’s ________
how to find the ________ in the dark
wide open ________
best way to find the ________
can’t find ________
________ erection
________ hard to find
________ how to find
________ photo
________ photos
find ________
find her ________
how to find a small ________
how to find the ________ in the dark
how to find the ________
how to find the ________
my ________
show me ________
show me your ________
________ show
________ photo
hot to find a girls ________
how can i find my ________
how find ________
how to find the ________
my wife’s ________
where to find a girls ________
________ finding
do ________ get hard
easy way to find the ________
find a girls ________
finding ________ in the dark
girl ________
how to find a girl ________
how to find a girls ________
how to find girls ________
how to find girls ________
how to find the ________
how to find the ________ on a girl
how to find the ________
how to find your ________
how to find your own ________
how to locate a girl’s ________
see her ________
slide your penis back and forth ________ rub head
where is a girls ________
best ________
best way to find ________
can’t find the ________
cant find my wifes ________
________ find
________ on ________
________
________ hunt
does a ________ get hard
does ________ get hard
easy way to find ________
erect ________ photos
erecting ________ photos
find ________
find girls ________
find that ________
finding a girl’s ________
finding a girls ________
finding ________
finding her ________
finding the ________ in the dark
finger ________
girls ________
hard ________
hooded ________
how 2 find the ________
how find the ________
how to find a ________ on a girl
how to find a ________ in the dark
how to find a girl ________
how to find a girls ________
how to find a small ________
how to find ________
how to find my ________
how to find small ________
how to find the ________
how to find the ________
how to find the ________
how to find the ________
how to find the ________
how to find the ________
how to find the girls ________
how to find your ________
how to get a ________ hard
how to locate the ________
how to locate your own ________
i can’t find the ________
is the ________ hard to find
mouthing the ________
my ________ is hard to find
open ________
photos ________
photos of the ________
pictures of the ________
show me a real ________
show me how touch the ________ by pics
show me pics of the ________
show me that ________
show me where the ________ is
show your big ________
small ________ photo
tip of the ________
tongue on ________
wheres a girls ________
wife’s ________
“how to find the ________”
“locating ________ with the tongue”
*________
30 year old photos ________ shaved
a girl’s ________
abby winters ________ ________ose ups
abby winters ________ pics
abby winters ________
abbywinters+________
adult ________ women
adult female ________ pictures
adult sex girle ________
asstr licking ________
base of ________
best ________
best ever ________
best way to find a girls ________
best way to find the ________
best way to find the ________
big buts ________ woamen picture
biger ________
boys discover preteen girl’s ________
can a ________ get hard
can u run your tongue down somones ________
can’t find her ________
can’t find my wife’s ________
can’t fnd my wife’s ________
cannot find glans ________
cant find a girls ________
cant find ________
cant find her ________
cant find my wifes ________
chow me the ________ of a girl
________ being erected
________ blog
________ cir________es or back and forth
________ display
________ erect and hard
________ erection photos
________ foto
________ getting hard
________ girl
________ hood hot girl
________ hot
________ magazines
________ owm
________ pictures of girls
________ shaft pics
________ shudder
________ tip
________ to ________
________ vagina adult
________ watch
________
________
________ sex.com
________ medicine airplane
________
________ kiss porno
________ photo
________ sex photos
________ erection photos porn
________ erection pics
________ errection photos
________ et sex
________ exploring pictures
________ find the
________ fingering
________ girls small
________ hard to find
________ in hand pics
________ is hard to catch
________ lick guide pics
________ location photo
________ photo locate
________ real photos
________ sex
________ sex photo
________ the big one
________ where place photo
________ σεχ
________
________ games
________ grow big porm
________ his ass
________ kissing ________
________ vagina
________ose-up lesbian ________ tongue
cunt photos and erect ________
dark ________ pics
dark ________
diagram human vagina ________ erection
discovering a woman ________
do ________ get hard?
doctor checks girls ________ ________ose up
does ________ get stiff
does the ________ get hard?
drawing ________
easier to find ________
easiest way to find a small ________
east way to find the girls ________
easy way to find a ________ on a girl
easy way to find ________ in the dark
easy way to find ________
easy way to pop her ________
educational images woman exploring ________
educational pictures of a ________
educational porn how to find the ________
emily naomi ________ fingers
emma james ________
engorged ________ pics dry
erect ________ pics
erected ________ porn
erectile ________ you porn
erection of ________
erections ________
erections of the ________ photographs
erotic ________ by private
exploring ________
exploring my ________
exploring the ________
fastest way to find the ________
female vagina show me a________
fibd my ________
figleaf real adult ________
find a girl ________
find a girl’s ________
find and show big ________
find ________ dark
find ________
find ________ dark
find ________ fingers
find ________ with tongue
find ________
find ________
find girls ________
find her ________ every time
find her ________
find her ________
find it hard to wax the ________
find my wifes ________
find the ________ everytime
find the ________ fingers
find the ________ with fingers
find the ________
find the ________
find the ________ in the dark
find the ________
find the ________
find the ________
find thé ________
find. a. ________
finding a chicks ________
finding a ________
finding a females ________
finding a girl’s ________
finding a girls ________
finding a older womans ________
finding a small ________
finding ________ big lips
finding ________ in hairy pussy
finding ________ in the dark
finding ________ pictures
finding ________ tongue
finding ________ with tongue
finding girls ________
finding girls ________
finding girls ________
finding my wife’s ________
finding small ________
finding the ________ every time
finding the ________ in the dark
finding the ________ on a hairy pussy
finding the ________
finding the ________ when a girl has big lips
finding the ________
finding the girl’s ________
finding the wifes ________
findng the ________
fing thge ________
finger her ________
fingering ________
fingering the ________
first erect ________
fondling of the girl ________
full screen and masturbating, ________ tickling
full view of naked cunt pointing to the ________ video
g spot & ________ sex secrets
girl ________
girl discovery ________
girl finding ________ for first time
girl finds ________
girl fingers ________
girl measure ________
girl measure ________
girl nibbles ________
girl playing with ________
girl show ________
girl shows how to find ________
girls and ________
girls ________ picture
girls ________
girls playing with ________
girls stroking ________
girls sukn my ________
girls with ________
good ________ picture
google ________ porn
google porn ________
har to find the ________
hard ________ photos
hard ________ pictures
hard ________
hard ________
hard to find ________
hard to find ________
hard to find ________
hard to find ________
hard to find partner ________
hard to find the ________
hard to see ________
her ________
her ________ picture
high school girl ________
hoe to find ________
hooded ________ being opened
hot ________
hot over 30 ________
hot tiny ________
hot to find my ________
hot to find the ________
hot to find the ________
hot to identify ________ in girls pussy
how big is a womens ________ pics
how can i find my ________
how can i make my ________ bigger
how can i make my ________ erect
how can i play with my hard ________
how come it’s hard to see the ________
how do i check my ________
how do i find a girl’s ________ without looking
how do i find a girls ________
how do i find a girls ________
how do i find a small ________
how do i find her ________
how do u find a girl’s ________
how do u find someones ________
how do you find a girls ________
how do you find a girls ________
how do you find a girls ________
how do you find the ________ on a firl
how do you find the ________ on a girl
how do you know the ________ is hard
how find a ________
how find her ________
how find the ________ on a small pussy?
how hard is the ________ to ind
how i kiss or lik the girls ________ with photos
how is it hard to find the ________
how to “find a girls ________”
how to arouse a via ________
how to best find the ________
how to fimd small ________
how to find a ________ in the dark
how to find a ________
how to find a girl ________
how to find a girl ________
how to find a girl ________
how to find a girls ________ quickly
how to find a girls ________ to finger
how to find a girls ________ with out looking
how to find a girls ________ without looking
how to find a girls ________
how to find a girls ________
how to find a girls ________
how to find a girls ________
how to find a girls ________
how to find a old woman’s ________
how to find a tiny ________
how to find a very small ________
how to find a woman’s ________
how to find an unshaved woman’s ________
how to find and rub your ________
how to find big ________
how to find ________ in a girl
how to find ________ in agirl
how to find ________ in dark
how to find ________ in the dark
how to find ________ ina girl
how to find ________ pics
how to find ________ with tongue
how to find ________
how to find ________
how to find ________
how to find ________
how to find ________
how to find ________ pics
how to find ________ porn
how to find ________ tendon
how to find ________ with fingers
how to find ________
how to find ________ with pictures
how to find ________
how to find for her ________
how to find girl ________
how to find girl’s ________
how to find girls ________
how to find girls ________
how to find he ________
how to find her ________ everytime
how to find her ________ in the dark
how to find her ________ without looking
how to find her ________
how to find her ________ in the dark
how to find her ________ forum
how to find my ________
how to find my ________
how to find my ________
how to find my wifes ________
how to find small ________
how to find the “________”
how to find the a ________
how to find the ________ a girl
how to find the ________ easily
how to find the ________ of a girl
how to find the ________
how to find the ________
how to find the ________
how to find the ________ in the dark
how to find the ________
how to find the ________
how to find the ________
how to find the ________
how to find the ________
how to find the ________
how to find the ________ ?
how to find the ________ in the dark?
how to find the ________ through panties
how to find the ________ with your finger
how to find the ________
# ————————————————————————————————————————

Happy 4th of July

* The post is actually #1 for the keyphrase “how to find someone’s clitoris” but it’s not all that commonly searched for. —fl

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The Male Edition of Louann Brizendine's Brain

Posted by figleaf | Tags:
Mon, 2010-03-29 05:50

Mark Liberman of Language Log hasn’t yet read Louann’s Brizendine’s The Male Brain, but he’s already skeptical. With, evidently, good reason. After reading a review by Vaughn Bell at Mindhacks Liberman says it looks like…

...Dr. Brizendine’s new book is cut from the same cloth as her earlier one, The Female Brain. (See here, here and here for links to previous LL discussion.) Vaughan quotes this passage from [Brizendine’s] CNN piece

Our brains are mostly alike. We are the same species, after all. But the differences can sometimes make it seem like we are worlds apart.

The “defend your turf” area — dorsal premammillary nucleus — is larger in the male brain and contains special circuits to detect territorial challenges by other males. And his amygdala, the alarm system for threats, fear and danger is also larger in men. These brain differences make men more alert than women to potential turf threats.

and notes that

Male and female humans are indeed the same species, but we are not a species which has a dorsal premammillary nucleus because it’s only been identified in the rat.

Furthermore, there is no reliable evidence that amygdala size differs between the sexes in humans and a recent study that looked specifically at this issue found no difference.

Liberman said it here.

In other words it’s approximately as disingenuous for Brizendine to bring up rats’ dorsal premammillary nuclei while discussing men’s and women’s brains as it would be for her to bring the venomous spurs of the male Australian platypus while discussing men’s and women’s ankles, or male moose antler placement in the context of human skulls.

---

You might want to follow the links back to Liberman’s post to see how various gay and lesbian commenters responded to Brizendine’s claim that testosterone forces men to stare at women’s breasts.

All that testosterone drives the “Man Trance“– that glazed-eye look a man gets when he sees breasts. As a woman who was among the ranks of the early feminists, I wish I could say that men can stop themselves from entering this trance. But the truth is, they can’t. Their visual brain circuits are always on the lookout for fertile mates. Whether or not they intend to pursue a visual enticement, they have to check out the goods.

Actually, here’s one comment that refers to another

“Dierk’s reaction echoes mine. As I gay man, I can confidently say I’ve never been entranced by a woman’s breasts. “

Yeah, me neither. Brizedine flatters herself. Testosterone makes me look at her husband’s stubbly jawline, not her breasts.

---

Finally, though, Liberman repeats an excellent point he first raised in discussion of Brizendine’s earlier book, The Female Brain.

As I’ve watched the reaction to Louann Brizendine’s book over the past few months, I’ve concluded that “scientific studies” like these have taken over the place that bible stories used to occupy. It’s only fundamentalists like me who worry about whether they’re true. For most people, it’s only important that they’re morally instructive.

Actually while I completely agree with Liberman’s general premise — “scientific” studies like this really are the new bible stories — I think he’s got it almost exactly backwards on the whole “innate gender difference” genre. Because whereas bible stories generally really are meant to be morally instructive and uplifting, virtually all gender-difference stories are meant (and sought!) to justify or excuse the often highly-immoral status quo. It might not be the intent of authors either to uplift (bible) or downtrod (sociobiologists) but it certainly seems to be the intent of those who most-often pass them on.

And with that in mind The Male Brain is bound to be another best-seller.

---

Final question: Does Brizendine really imagine that human women are less territorial than men? Or less aware of territorial challenges? Has she never been in a school lunchroom? An office cubicle farm? A theater dressing room? A restaurant kitchen? Hello? Neither men nor women have a monopoly, or even a charter, in that department.

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Small Gendered Hearing Differences Shouldn't Require Different Teaching Strategies

Posted by figleaf | Tags:
Sat, 2009-09-05 13:55

Apropos yesterday’s post on deep vs. shallow behavioral studies Mark Liberman of Language Log takes to task yet another study “proving” gender differences.

According to Abigail Norfleet James, Teaching the Male Brain: How Boys Think, Feel, and Learn in School (2007), p 37:

The shape of the inner ear is not the same for boys and girls. As we have seen in the previous chapter, the female cochlea responds more quickly to sound than does the male cochlea (Don et al., 1993) That means that boys are likely to respond to aural information of questions just a bit slower than girls will. Because boys don’t hear soft or high sounds very well and because they don’t respond to sounds as rapidly as do girls, boys may have trouble with auditory sources of information.

The reference is to M. Don et al., “Gender differences in cochlear response time: An explanation for gender amplitude differences in the unmasked auditory brain-stem response“, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 94(4): 2135-2148, 1993. And yes, there really are sex differences in cochlear response time — but the distributions for males and females overlap, as usual, and the average sex differences are less than a thousandth of a second.

He said it here.

It may or may not be the case that boys think, feel, and learn differently from girls in school. If you read his post, though, Liberman questions how a study demonstrating an infinitesimal difference in a single component of hearing and processing language could possibly support the burden placed on it.

Compare how we would interpret a similar study of thousandths-of-a-second differences men’s vs. women’s reaction times as “proof” that men are better drivers than women (or vice versa.) If that were the only factor, biological, social, or psychological between men and women we could all go home. But actually before you left you’d probably want to ask whether the difference was large enough to account for many actual accidents, whether there might be other factors affecting men’s or women’s behavior (likelihood of drinking and driving, likelihood of rubbernecking or attention to the road, socialization to be cautious or aggressive, etc., or for that matter other minute, biological, even gendered-biological cognitive or metabolic factors that might account for the differences — average blood-sugar levels at peak drive times, for instance.) And the reason you’d look for those factors, by the way, is to see whether they make more or or less of a difference than the reaction-times under discussion. And, finally, you might even want to know because, seriously, we’re not going to be influencing reaction-processing neuron speed any time soon but we probably could influence alcohol or blood-sugar levels or rubbernecking/cell-phone use. Which would probably make everyone safer drivers because...? Because as usual there’s liable to be a great deal of overlap, which means that while men on average and women on average might have different reaction times it’s far less likely that differences between any two randomly-chosen individuals can be attributed to their gender.

Same with learning differences in school. Having shepherded two children to the verge of puberty I’m aware there really are differences between boys and girls. I’m also (as Liberman mentions in his post) aware that there’s massive overlap. In other words while the two individuals most likely to face discipline for being inattentive or disruptive over the last six years in either of my children’s classes are definitely boys the five next-most-likely children to be inattentive are a mix of girls and boys.

Same with the topic Liberman discusses, learning difficulty. Two of the seven least attentive children in one of my children’s classes, both boys, are also near the top of their classes academically speaking. They learn fine, they’re just bumptious. (Their hearing, incidentally, is also perfectly fine, as I’ve determined by whispering “ice cream” across the room.) A number of of the kids who get pulled out for special coaching, on the other hand, are perfectly attentive.

The point being that while there are surely differences in the children’s inner ears, and the differences may even be gender-identifiable, I’m… pretty sure that

  • That minute hearing differences are not the biggest factor in children’s thinking, feeling, or learning in class.
  • That even if it were there’s enough overlap between boys and girls to make assertions about “how boys learn” or “how girls learn” useful only in the aggregate, and therefore
  • You probably wouldn’t want to use hearing differences as your justification for dividing classes into boys and girls, or, if you did
  • It would make even more sense to divide classes into one for “faster” hearing boys and girls and another for “slower” ones… or
  • Heck, once freed of gender binaries you might be able to divide the class into even smaller categories of inner-ear shape or auditory-processing speeds.

In other words in a technical sense it might be interesting that on average boys and girls hear very slightly differently, but in a practical sense of determining education policy, even determining gendered policy, it’s irrelevant.

—-

One other point about this? Let’s say boys really are handicapped hearingwise compared to girls. And not fractionally but markedly — enough so that, upon learning it teachers radically altered the way they taught. (Yes, this requires forgetting that teachers are bright, motivated, trained, and experienced professionals who wouldn’t have noticed and adapted to differences years or decades ago but let’s say that too.) Would that be enough to warrant separate-but-equal instruction for boys and girls? Or would it be enough to, oh, say, recommend that teachers speak louder and more clearly? And/or, possibly, more directly and to the point using simpler or shorter sentences? Call me a wild-eyed gender-equalitarian here but wouldn’t girls also benefit. (Hint: as an adult educator familiar with instructional design and information delivery I know it facilitates information adoption in both female and male adults.)

If you look at the history of modern-day conveniences, from TV remote controls to self-opening doors to telescopes and microscopes (which derive from eyeglass technology), to comfortable handles on kitchen utensils you see all kinds of technology originally developed for the physically or biologically disadvantaged that’s been readily, even enthusiastically, adopted by the general public because it benefits everyone and not just the bedbound (tv remotes), people with crutches or wheelchairs (door openers), bad eyesight (glasses), arthritis (Good Grips knives and peelers), or developmental disabilities (Montessori education.)

Point being that it’s very unlikely that educational technology that might benefit boys would only benefit boys. Certainly not so much that boys should be segregated from girls. (Remembering that gender segregation leads to… other social problems.)

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Irrelevant, Inappropriate Non-Sequitur of the Day

Posted by figleaf | Tags:
Mon, 2009-03-23 21:45

“It grosses me out that someone would bring up the elasticity of a woman’s vagina when talking about her success at her job.” Context here.

Crikies!

Tip: I hate to even bring this up but… assuming it was even remotely relevant to anyone but a partner it really doesn’t make that much difference.

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Figures of Fact and Fantasy

Posted by figleaf | Tags:
Wed, 2008-06-18 13:21


Photo by Flickr user mick y. Used under a Creative Commons license.

As long as I’m obsessing about breasts I ought to mention this post from a while back by Shelah, of the always interesting, no-kidding Feminist Mormon Housewives. Her last (planned) daughter just finished breastfeeding and now Selah asks a question more common than a lot of people think

Other than the navel, I can’t think of any other external body parts that stay with us after they’ve ceased to be useful. My navel, tiny as it is, doesn’t require it’s own separate undergarment. My breasts, on the other hand, continue to be front and center, even though now they are at best, a pleasant place to rest a hand or a reminder of times gone by, and, at worst, a potential breeding ground for lumps and tumors.

It’s not that I don’t like my breasts, don’t appreciate them for what they’ve done, but now that they’ve served their main purpose, it seems kind of silly to me to think that they’re such a force in our culture– that they, in the minds of many people, sum up a woman’s womanhood. We’ve had all of these posts about pornography lately, and when I think about how pornography basically boils down to breasts (I know that’s overly simplistic, but when I think porn, I think breasts), I look at my own and think, “This is what all the fuss is about?”

She said it here.

Breasts haven’t even always been a force in our culture in our culture! (Some times it’s been asses, elsewhen it’s been legs or ankles or necks. And round and round and round.)

And by the way, I’m not pretending to be above it all, not at all, at all. Breasts for me are pretty important signifiers of age and sex. Even though, at least for me, it’s complicated in the sense that, say, mastectomy scars count but “man boobs” don’t.

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The Point of Perky Nipples

Posted by figleaf | Tags:
Tue, 2008-06-17 20:23

Quick follow-up to the previous post. So… Nipples aren’t little penises, contrary to 10,000 cheesie porn stories (written, one could sometimes imagine, by people who actually haven’t had a lot of actual sex.) And so nipple erections aren’t nearly the reliable an indicators of arousal that penis erections are. Instead if they consistently mean anything it seems to be “something just changed.” A chill, a breeze, a touch, a surprise, a shift in emotion, even recognition of someone or something that’s arousing. (I think it’s less noticiable but they seem to behave the same way for men as women.)

To be honest between all manner of erotic interactions with quite a few partners and experience with multiple friends and a partner while they’re nursing their children I’ve always wondered what, exactly, the point of the stereotypical pinup-style crinkly-areola nipple erections might be. (During arousal and during nursing the nipples engorge sure — in fact during pregnancy they undergo some amazing, and amazingly reversible changes. But not so much crinkling at all.)

I got one possible clue from a bodyworker (can’t remember if he was a physical therapist or a chiropractor) who was talking about the surprisingly redundant number of muscles in people’s necks. He said that while they don’t do very much (except give us literal pains in the neck, or at least my neck!!!) they contain thousands of special nerves for detecting body position (a.k.a. proprioception) which would be pretty critical if you were a featherless biped trying to balance our heavy-as-a-bowling-ball heads on the ends of our spines.

So I’m just sooo guessing here but maybe the point of the extra muscles in our nipples isn’t the nerves themselves but the proprioceptors that come with them. How, or whether, that would actually make a difference in women or men might be beyond me but they are there so… anyone else care to take a guess?

By the way I’d like to say I was just curious but I can’t. :-)

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