The Act of Marriage: The Beauty of Sexual Love (18 page)

Clitoral Versus Vaginal Orgasms

One of the most confusing aspects of our research in this field concerns the varied opinions among medical doctors as to whether a woman experiences an orgasm by clitoral stimulation only or through vaginal stimulation. Very strong feelings have been expressed by those who believe that a woman can have orgasm only by manipulation of the clitoris. Some researchers have discovered that the tissue of the walls of the vagina contains very few nerve endings and thus is not capable of great feeling; hence they conclude that the clitoris is the only source of female sex stimulation.

Ronald Deutsch describes the vagina this way:

The walls of the vagina are covered with a delicate mucous membrane. They have many folds or
rugae
. The walls are supported by muscle fibers, which surround the passage and run its length. And it is in these vaginal walls that researchers have hunted in vain for one perplexing factor—physiologists could find virtually no nerve endings in the vagina. This organ, though the woman’s sexual center, appeared to be almost incapable of perceiving sensation.

As recently as 1962, Baruck and Miller described in
Sex and Marriage: New Understandings
the general scientific view that the walls of the vagina were “not endowed with sensitive nerve touchspots…. The vagina is made of the same kind of tissue the intestines are made of.” They concluded that the vagina could not be the pathway to orgasm.
⁸

Deutsch describes the clitoris as the female parallel of the male penis.

The clitoris has been a source of confusion in understanding how women function sexually. The most keenly sexual part of a woman’s body, it was long taken as the seat of all sexual satisfaction. And because stimulation of the clitoris alone will produce an orgasm in nearly all women, it has been assumed that, whatever else happened in the act, it was direct clitoral stimulation alone which produced the climax.

Most doctors thought the reason why a few women were regularly satisfied in love was a fortunate placement of the clitoris, so that it came in contact with the penis during intercourse. Size, too, was thought significant, for much the same reason. The result was that doctors actually performed surgery to expose the clitoris more, or to bring it closer to the vagina. Much of this confusion is not resolved.
⁹

Dr. Miles’s studies are in agreement.

Since the clitoris is the arousal trigger of the wife, and since the penis does not contact the clitoris in normal intercourse, marriage counselors recommend what is called “direct” stimulation. That is, the husband, in the process of love-play before intercourse starts, will gently stimulate his wife’s clitoris with his fingers for ten or fifteen minutes, or whatever time it takes, until he is certain she is fully aroused sexually and ready for intercourse. There is nothing wrong in this procedure. Remember the piano-violin duet. A couple must do the right thing at the right time in the right attitude for full arousal and complete love harmony. It is normal in the love-play and arousal period for a couple to touch and handle each other’s sexual organs. This is a pleasant and meaningful part of love expression. It was planned this way by the Creator.

… The important point to remember here is that the
clitoris is the external arousal trigger
; that there must be uninterrupted stimulation of the clitoris and the area close to the clitoris for a wife to have an orgasm. The
method
of stimulation of the clitoris is not so important. Any one of several different methods may be satisfactory. The fact that the clitoris
has to be stimulated
is the
important thing
to remember. If a couple can give the wife sufficient stimulation simply through the process of intercourse alone to experience orgasms regularly, fine, wonderful! We have simply said that direct stimulation in the arousal period is one of the surest ways for a young bride to reach an orgasm in the early part of marriage. Our research shows that 40 percent of wives, after they have gotten used to sex life in marriage, are able to become aroused and experience orgasm through intercourse only, and no manual stimulation of the clitoris is necessary. It took several weeks for most of these couples to learn how to succeed in this manner. All couples would do well to work toward this goal. However, we need to be reminded that 60 percent of all women need direct stimulation of the clitoris in the arousal process before they can reach orgasms in intercourse. Couples should not hesitate to use this method when there is need for it.
¹⁰

Dr. Marie Robinson, in her book
The Power of Sexual Surrender,
is scathing in her indictment of women who experience only clitoral orgasm. She equates clitoral orgasm with sexual infancy, vaginal orgasm with sexual maturity. Many normal women doubtless have been unnecessarily frustrated by thinking they were missing something by having only a clitoral orgasm. Frankly, I have found many women who would be delighted if they could accomplish even that.

Dr. Robinson states her case thus:

I have already described the so-called clitoridal woman to you, but now I must tell you more about the implications of her problem. You will remember that in the female genitalia both the clitoris and the vagina are capable of experiencing orgasm. This fact is of decisive importance to the problem of frigidity in women.

Why? It means, in effect,
that women have two distinct sexual organs, both capable of bringing her release from sexual tension
. In the unconscious sense many women can “choose” one type of sexual satisfaction in preference to another. This ability to choose often spells disaster, for one of these methods of gratification represents immaturity and is allied to neurosis.
¹¹

Fortunately for womanhood, modern research has disproved this notion. Masters and Johnson have uncovered more data in this field than anyone to date.

You might wonder about the origin of all the misunderstanding concerning such basic and essential truth. Although we cannot give him all the blame, Sigmund Freud is more responsible than any other person. Dr. David Reuben in his inimitable way has explained the situation admirably:

For the most part women have come to rely on men for information on how their bodies work; the results have been good and bad. Sigmund Freud was one of the major (though certainly not the first) researchers who pointed out that the brain was inseparably linked to the genitalia. That helped bring a lot of sexual problems into clearer focus.
Regrettably, Dr. Freud was not aware that the clitoris was inseparably linked to the vagina.
He can be considered the father of modern psychiatry for his first discovery; he must be considered the father of the next myth of female sexuality for his related omission. He forced at least two generations of women to pay the penalty for believing:
There is a difference between vaginal and clitoral orgasm and vaginal orgasm is somehow superior
[emphasis ours].

Didn’t Freud know any better? As a scientist he
should
have known better. His early studies in psychoanalysis led him to the awareness that little girls masturbated. Academically this was a dramatic discovery but realistically it was something that other little girls and mothers of little girls had known for centuries. He also observed that most female masturbation in this age group (and though he didn’t realize it, in
every
age group) centered around the clitoris. As the girls matured and grew into young women they began to replace masturbation with sexual intercourse and showed
apparently
less interest in the clitoris and more interest in the vagina. Freud then leaped to the conclusion that there were two types of orgasm. The clitoral variety was childish and only suitable for the Viennese equivalent of teeny-boppers. Any mature woman immediately relinquished all clitoral sensation and felt everything she was going to feel exclusively in the vagina. It was a magnificent theory, at once profound and dazzling. There was only one problem—it was completely wrong.

If it was wrong, why didn’t someone set the record straight? Unfortunately the only people who knew for sure that Freud was in left field were women—and no one listened to them. Psychiatry in those days was exclusively a man’s domain (and things haven’t changed that much since then) and all important decisions relating to how women were supposed to feel were made by men. But there was another more compelling reason for the myth of vaginal-clitoral orgasm—it was flattering to men. Many psychiatrists lost their objectivity when they put on their pajamas and every theory that made them more comfortable in bed was greeted with eager delight. The traffic from New York to Vienna took on rush hour proportions and every American analyst who could afford passage made the pilgrimage. They returned with the new and exciting revelation that American women were copulating all wrong and if things didn’t work out, it wasn’t the man’s fault. According to the psychoanalytic smoke signals at the time, all a man had to do was get an erection and ejaculate—if a woman wasn’t satisfied it was her own fault.
¹²

Dr. Reuben—a practicing psychiatrist whose medical qualifications are superb but whose moral principles and judgments are usually shocking to Christians—goes on to describe a patient named Nina who regularly experienced orgasm but became “frigid” after reading a magazine article suggesting that a woman who didn’t experience a vaginal orgasm was “missing it all.” The more Nina tried, the more frustrated she became, and eventually she even lost her capability for clitoral orgasm. After three years of treatment with two different psychiatrists without relief, Nina came to Dr. Reuben. He explains how he advised her:

Instead of telling Nina why she shouldn’t have orgasms, it made more sense to tell her how to go about having them again. And the first step was to explain the mechanics of orgasm in the female. It goes something like this:

The clitoris is directly connected to the spinal cord and brain by the same plexus of thousands of nerve fibers that supplies the vagina. Stimulation of either organ immediately affects the other. In addition, the extremely sensitive roots of the clitoris extend deep into the walls of the vagina itself. As the penis rubs against the vaginal wall it applies exactly the same pressure to the internal part of the clitoris and to the vaginal lining. The third factor is probably the most important. The labia minora, those two thin curtain-like membranes that extend over the vaginal opening, are attached above to the body of the clitoris. Even though the shaft of the penis may never actually come into contact with the top of the clitoris, as the penis slides in and out of the vagina it successively pulls and releases the lower ends of the labia. This causes constant and rhythmic friction against the head and shaft of the clitoris and if everything else is right, orgasm is rapid and inevitable.
Every orgasm that occurs in a woman is basically clitoral
. Orgasms occurring by sexual intercourse may be clitoral
and
vaginal—which only means that the penis is stimulating the vagina and clitoris simultaneously. But for Nina—and every other woman—that part was academic. The only real question was whether or not she was able to enjoy sexual intercourse.

The answer wasn’t long in coming. Once she clearly understood that all orgasms were identical and were basically dependent on stimulation of the clitoris, things began to improve.
¹³

Naturally some women will ask, “But isn’t a vaginal orgasm better in some ways than just a clitoral orgasm?” To that question Dr. Reuben responds,

Nope. From a sexual point of view, there is an Orgasmic Bill of Rights—all orgasms are created equal. Every orgasm, whether produced by intercourse or foreplay… depends on the same sensory triple play—clitoris to spinal cord to brain, instantaneously followed by a reverse explosion—brain to spinal cord to clitoris. Every other part of the body—vagina, heart, lungs, skin—also participates, but the center of attention, as always, is the clitoris.
¹⁴

Much of this controversy was caused by the fact that many women can experience orgasm when their husband tenderly manipulates their clitoris, but they cannot come to a climax in intercourse. This usually leaves both husband and wife with a sense of frustrating inadequacy. Freud and his followers have tried to blame everything on some “deep-rooted emotional problem.” This usually required a battery of psychological tests and a long series of counseling encounters, all of which are enormously expensive and not always productive. Dr. Reuben has pointed out that until recent years most psychiatrists have been men; consequently most women have been tricked into believing that some psychosis or neurosis was the primary cause of the problem, when in reality it probably wasn’t that at all.

Ronald M. Deutsch explains the paradox:

Recent research has asked some important questions about this long-accepted concept. Is this the only way in which women fail sexually? If not, what proportion of women who fail are emotionally normal? And what are the other causes of the failure?