Archive for May, 2012

Has the G-spot finally been located and verified? We’ll get to that, but first we need to look at the history of the controversy.

I have been covering the issue of the g-spot for many years now. The one thing I notice  is that it is always male researchers who deny that it exists. I honestly can not think of a single female researcher in the denial camp (although I suppose it is possible and I missed it).

None of this is surprising. We know far more about male sexuality than we do about female sexuality, and not just because the male parts are simpler. The same is true about women’s biology in general. Historically, it was thought that it was more important to study men.

Then there is the tradition of things being all in women’s head. I have fibromyalgia, a condition that primarily affects women. It has long been ignored and dismissed as something that has all been in women’s heads. Despite the increasing knowledge and hard physical evidence that has been attained just in the last few years, there are still, and almost exclusively male, doctors who deny its existence.

I have seen first hand how male doctor’s dismiss women’s experiences with their own bodies. I have a close female friend who has a tethered brain stem. As you can imagine, this leads to all sorts of problems, including an inability to drive, which is why I took her to the doctor and was involved with the search for a diagnosis. It took a long time and a number of specialists before we got to that point. Getting her to specialists in the first place was like pulling teeth, though, because her male doctor insisted that it was all in her head. Technically it was, but not in the way that he thought.

Considering the long history of male dismissal of women, it is not surprising that there is still a debate about the g-spot. To many men, the fact that countless women report a different type of orgasm through g-spot stimulation is irrelevant. Many men do not care what women have to say about themselves. They consider women unreliable reporters of the conditions of their own body.

One of my favorite science bloggers, P.J. Meyers, recently wrote this: “My favorite argument against Intelligent Design is the fact that the clitoris is located nowhere near the cervix — for women, reproduction and recreation are fairly effectively uncoupled. But that doesn’t stop some people from imagining the existence of a vaginal source of sexual pleasure, the G-spot. I don’t believe it exists; I do believe that individuals can be sexually stimulated by contact in all kinds of places, from vagina to toes to neck to belly-button, that it varies from person to person, and that you don’t need to find an excuse in sloppy anatomy to justify what makes you feel good.”

Doctor Meyers is a biologist that many might even consider a feminist, and he is generally pretty reasonable about women’s issues and women’s equality. He is not, however, an expert on sexuality.

While he is brilliant, this is an area I have far more experience in than he does. Not only have I talked to researchers studying the g-spot, I have used my hand on dozens of women on this supposedly mythical area to generate an orgasm without clitoral stimulation, an orgasm that is amazingly intense and that they report as feeling different from other types of orgasm.

This is the male blindspot on this issue. For most men, an orgasm is an orgasm is an orgasm. They are all pretty much the same. This is not true for more sexually experienced men. For example, many have reported a different type of orgasm from prostate stimulation.

For women, though, the sensation of orgasm can differ quite a bit. It is not always the same. There is quite a lot of diversity. For example, my wife can orgasm from foot stimulation. She will report, though, that it is not exactly the same as a g-spot orgasm, or a clitoral orgasm.

Doctor Meyers is partly correct in that women can achieve orgasm through a number of different forms of stimulation. They do know the difference between them, though. A g-spot orgasm is a distinct type of orgasm. It is replicable. It has been my personal experience that most women can achieve a g-spot orgasm.

So, why then do so many, mostly men, deny the existence of the g-spot? Because they can’t find it. Not anatomically, at least. This should not be surprising. Consider how long it takes many of them to find the clitoris.

The most recent thinking has been that the g-spot is actually just the back side of the clitoris, a larger structure than we normally think of it as being. But still, in 60 years of research, no certain anatomical structure has been proven to be the g-spot.

In 2010, a team of researchers at King’s College London published a study in the Journal of Sexual Medicine. That study claimed that the G spot was possibly a figment of women’s imaginations, one encouraged by the popular press and sexuality professionals.

This does not explain references to this spot in ancient sex manuals, long before Dr. Grafenburg gave it a name in the 1940s. It does not explain why women who have not heard of the g-spot have g-spot orgasm anyway. In fact, it sounds quite familiar- it is all in women’s heads. This is the fallback position in medicine when it comes to women. I can’t figure it out, she’s a woman, so it must just be in her head.

Frankly, the King’s College research was total crap. Here is how they went about it. They used a sample of over 1,800 women, and concluded that no pattern emerged between identical versus non-identical twins when participants were asked if they had a G spot. This indicated that there could not be a gene at play which would be shared by identical twins, thus the g-spot must be a myth.

Really? You are simply asking women if they have a g-spot? Here is a key bit of information. Like the clitoris, the g-spot is not normally stimulated during intercourse. In fact, it is very difficult to do with your penis. Fingers are a far better tool. A woman can go her entire life without ever having her g-spot directly stimulated.

It requires someone who knows what they are doing. You have to know where the right spot is, the proper type of stimulation (it is more about pressure than thrusting in and out), and you have to know that it is easier to stimulate once a woman is sexually aroused, and that as she become more aroused the interior of the vagina changes shape a little and the area you need to stimulate actually moves a bit. Once you figure all of this out you can pretty much consistently hit the spot and help her achieve this type of orgasm.

I have personally observed g-spot orgasm countless times, as an observer watching the techniques of experts, and personally with dozens of women. I have talked to the women who have experienced them. It is not just something that is all in their head. A specific procedure is required for this type of orgasm.

Is it a spot, a particular type of pressure in a certain area, or something else? I don’t know. But it is not fictitious. In fact, the proper technique is somewhat counter intuitive. You would not think that this technique would lead to such an intense orgasm. And yet, I have personally observed it countless times.

Here is what brings this all back into the news. It is a new study published in this month’s The Journal of Sexual Medicine. Dr. Adam Ostrzenski claims he has found an anatomical structure that could be the g-spot. He found it while dissecting the cadaver of an 83 year old woman.

According to Ostrenski,”The anatomic existence of the G-spot was documented with potential impact on the practice and clinical research in the field of female sexual function,” and he concluded “The anatomic discovery of the G-spot existence may inspire a new study for establishing the anatomic presence of ‘a female prostate.”

So, is this it? Are we done? Is the controversy over? No. This is a single study on a single cadaver. It points the way towards future research. It could prove out, or it could go nowhere. Too early to tell.

Personally, if they never find a specific anatomical structure, I am fine with that. Time and time again, you can teach the technique of g-spot stimulation, and women do achieve g-spot orgasm. Sure, it is possible that some women can not achieve g-spot orgasm. But, I have seen results in the majority of women who have tried, when with an experienced partner.

In my many years as a sexual libertine, I have seen women have a lot of orgasms. They report that a g-sport orgasm feels different. I have been intimately involved with these types of orgasm and it seems different to me to.

We can not absolutely rule out that this is a psychological phenomena. Self-reporting can be unreliable. For those of us whose experience with g-spot orgasm that is more than theoretical, I think that is unlikely.

This study throws cold water on the claims that pornography is harmful and linked with criminal behavior. Milton Diamond, a professor of anatomy and reproductive biology at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, was the lead on a study called “Pornography, Public Acceptance and Sex Related Crime: A Review.” Published in the International Journal of Law and Psychiatry. A metastudy, it looked at study over many years on porn’s impact on both individuals and society. A metastudy looks at the overall results of mountains of peer reviewed research, providing a snapshot of the conclusions of scientists overall, and the general consensus they have reached. Yeah know, just like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report showing the consensus on climate change, so we know conservatives will ignore this study as well, just as they do most science that does not conform to their own bias. And this study definitely does not. Based on the research of a lot of scientists, there is no objective verifiable evidence that exposure to pornography by itself causes societal harm- including sex crimes, abuse of women, and destroying. In fact, it shows just the opposite. Where pornography is readily available, these problems are reduced.

According to Diamond: “With these data from a wide variety of communities, cultures and countries we can better evaluate the thesis that an abundance of sexual explicit material invariably leads to an increase of illegal sexual activity and eventually rape. Similarly we can now better reconsider the conclusion of the Meese Commission and others that there exists ‘a causal relationship to antisocial acts of sexual violence and … unlawful acts of sexual violence’ Indeed, the data reported and reviewed suggests that the thesis is myth and, if anything, there is an inverse causal relationship between an increase in pornography and sex crimes.”

Yes, my conservative friends, pornography does not turn you into a rapist or wife abuser. This has been one of the key claims against pornography- a direct link to actual harm to society and an increase in violent crime, and it is full of hot air. The vast majority of sex offenders had strict religious upbringings, and while we can see a pattern there, we can’t say that religion creates rapists. We also know that rapists and child molesters tend to view less pornography than the average male- but we can’t say that not viewing porn turns you into a rapist. The factors that cause men to abuse women, or rape women, or even lead to divorce are a lot more complicated than that. Its easy to just say porn did it, but it is not very scientific. And it certainly isn’t a justification for the level of censorship that conservatives would like to impose on all of us.

That still leaves the claim that pornography destroys marriages. People make the claim, but there has to be evidence. If someone divorces and claims it was because of pornography, we need to be able to say that pornography was the cause and not a symptom or an escape or simply irrelevant to the real problems that caused the divorce. The problem is, we just don’t have objective proof that that is the case, and if pornography were causing that level of harm on a societal basis, there would be enough available data for us to find that proof. It isn’t there. Isolated instances of supposed harm are not a valid reason to claim that something causes general or overall harm. Especially when almost everyone is exposed to pornography. We’d see a huge spike in the divorce rate over the last few years, when, in fact, the divorce rate has been going down in the U.S. Claiming that your husband’s obsession with sports destroyed your marriage does not mean that watching sports is harmful, even if it was true that his constantly watching sports and ignoring you did in fact destroy the marriage. Smoking cigarettes is harmful. We have a mountain of data showing a causal relationship. We don’t have that with porn, but if a causal relationship actually existed, we would see it in the dataThe scary thing is that the same anti-science attitude that conservatives have used against pornography, including their own junk science, is the same that they have used against teaching actual sex education in schools, the same anti-science they have used against evolution, and the same that they are now trying to use against climate science. Instead of finding their bliss in their faith, they seek it in their ignorance, and try to enforce it on the rest of us. And its worked. We are now a nation that is essentially scientifically illiterate. They can’t find qualified scientists and engineers to replace the aging NASA scientists. We are falling behind other countries in many areas related to science. Science is the true engine of a nation’s economy, and our engine is starting to sputter. The U.S. took the technology lead after the launch of Sputnik, which created a governmental panic that lead to an emphasis on science in the schools. For the last 60 years we have been a technology and science powerhouse. Recent conservative battles have led to a diminishing of science education in the schools. I guess we need another scare to shake us out of our stupor.

Professor Simon Louis Lajeunesse, from the University of Montreal, Canada, had what he thought was a great idea for a study. He wanted to see what the impact of porn was on male sexuality. First, they needed a control- men in their twenties who had never watched porn. Turns out that they could not find any. So he instead turned to studying young men who did watch porn. He found that single young men viewed porn for 40 minutes three times a week, compared with those in committed relationships who watch it 1.7 times a week for 20 minutes. Bad news for DVD sales: He also found that 90 percent of porn was viewed on the Internet compared to just 10 percent from the video store. What he failed to find was any pathological sexuality amongst the porn viewers. Nor did he find any evidence that it changed their perceptions of women or of their relationship. And he did not find evidence that porn viewers seek out more extreme porn as they become bored with it. Instead, he found that men watched porn that matched their own view of sexuality, and quickly discarded anything that did not. All test subjects supported gender equality. Nor did it lock them into a world of fantasy expectations, as they did not want their real life partner to look or act like a porn star. Amazingly, they were able to differentiate between fantasy and reality, an ability that seems completely lost to anti-porn advocates.