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.

Following up on my previous post about the latest g-spot debunking researcher.

I mentioned earlier that in the early 20th Century Freudians accused women who responded to external clitoral stimulation of being immature, repressed, and otherwise sexually incomplete. Then in the 1970s, after Masters & Johnson, David Rubin, etc., women who responded to vaginal stimulation rather than “correct” external-clitoral stimulation were thought to be... immature, repressed, sexually incomplete, and/or in thrall to patriarchal notions about intercourse. (In her big report Shere Hite sounded particularly exasperated about women who claimed to enjoy penetration.)

Of course the whole debate — Freudian, sex “revolutionary,” and feminist alike— was still patriarchal to the core. In fact migrating genital stimulation to the external clitoris completed the dominant notion that women’s internal genitals were an utterly passive emptiness of interest only to penises going into and babies coming out of, end of story.

This latest research about the non-existence of the g-spot seems to be part of that same tradition by the way. Via Debbie Notkin at Body Impolitic and Dr. Petra Boynton it turns out that back in 2005 the same researchers who are now debunking the g-spot published another twins-based study on women’s orgasms. As an article in The Guardian put it

Tim Spector of St Thomas’s hospital in London, who led the research, said: “The theory is that the orgasm is an evolutionary way of seeing if men can prove themselves to be likely good providers or dependable, patient and caring enough to look after the kids.”

It gets better though

The findings suggest the failure of some women to orgasm regularly is not a dysfunction, but a sophisticated mate-selection strategy that evolved during prehistoric times.

...

Women who orgasm very easily may be more likely to be satisfied with poor quality men.

“Perhaps women who had orgasms too easily weren’t very good selectors,” Professor Spector said.

He said it, with his bare face hanging out, here.

Never mind that these same researchers consciously discarded women who's "common use of digital stimulation ... may bias the results." Never mind that they excluded women who had never had intercourse. Never mind that they asked somewhat... leading questions like "Do you believe you have a so called G spot, a small areas the size of a 20p coin on the front wall of your vagina that is sensitive to deep pressure?" They used twins! They're evolutionary psychologists! It must be true!

Keeping women’s genitals passive responders to men’s prowess instead of, say, active, sophisticated, and highly-organized systems of organs in active, sophisticated, and highly-organized autonomous human beings is in keeping with the same researcher’s g-spot conclusions as well.

No-sex class much?