Inspired by a comment from Dirty Talking Girl from Pussy Talk on my post about Wegg’s post about something DTG also posted about earlier this month… whew, let me start over.

In comments DTG said:

I think women have known about this “internal erection”, if only instinctively, since time began. I always knew there was a helluva lot more to fuckjoy than that little clit. And anyone who’s ever fingered and licked an aroused taint can see that a penis is deeply rooted in the pelvis.

DTG xxoo

I wrote my own comment in reply but as is often the case when I begin a reply it turned into, well, a whole ‘nuther post. (A common problem and one reason I don’t reply more often to comments even though I really, really appreciate receiving them!)

Anyway, I think DTG’s right that there’s more than one little (external) clit’s worth of joy in sex. Eventually even us guys figure it out. Sometimes. It’s funny how something that’s that big a deal (not to mention that large a structure) could be overlooked for so long, but I think I can provide a unified field theory of why that would be, based on stuff I’ve learned over the years.

1) Although a lot of people don’t remember, it takes a while to develop neural connections between our genitals and the brain. (This isn’t too surprising. It takes time to develop neural connections to a lot of things, as anyone who’s watched a newborn develop into a toddler will have noticed. It’s not that the signals don’t arrive in the brain, it’s that it takes a while to learn how to organize them into something coherent.)

2) Even for stereotypically quick-on-the-trigger boys it takes time to turn the very pleasant signals from penile stimulation into orgasms and the same appears to be true for girls.

3) External parts of the clitoris, like external parts of the penis, are pretty easy targets. Just being exposed to the outside world means they get constant tactile (though certainly not always erotic) stimulation which means, compared to our internal parts anyway, external pathways are already better established when it’s time to develop erotic ones. (This is based, by the way, on my own relatively late discovery of masturbation, on my even later discovery of masturbatory variations, and on relationships with a couple of pre-orgasmic women who became orgasmic during our relationships.)

4) Inside or outside, though, man or woman, it’s all pretty much based on the same tissue so presumably ongoing stimulation increases sensitivity the same way too.

5) If I’m ever given the “books” tag I’m going to say that Shere Hite’s Hite Report, despite several flaws, is one of the most important ones for me. Among other things she mentions that a majority of women (and, in my sample-of-one, men) typically learn one way to come and then stick with it. It’s not that one can’t come other ways, but for an awful lot of us we stick with what we know, even if, eventually, we could learn to come from other kinds of stimulation of other parts of the same genital structure.

6) I’m just guessing here, and I’m not defending anybody’s theories, but if I were to try to make sense of early-mid-20th-century ideas about “mature” vaginal orgasms vs. “immature” clitoral ones, and if I were to try to make sense of the elusiveness of “urethral sponge” orgasms in women or even prostate orgasms in men, I might stop taking MRIs and doing autopsies and start investigating how long it takes for an unfamiliar form of stimulation to become first erotic and then orgasmic.

7) Put 1-6 together and you start to see why the inner clitoris has seemed so elusive to so many people, despite (as DTF says) women’s instinctive understanding that there’s a lot more than meets the eye.

Please feel free to respond with reinforcement or corrections in comments or in your own blogs. Extra credit for pointers to other sources of information!