Like some of the rest of us I’ve been up to my neck in other stuff. But over at my blog I recently posted about three items that in retrospect are pretty related. Here’s the second.
The editors at the political news blog Big Think decided to make their daily centerpiece article about yet another study of the “mystery” of women’s sexual response.
What’s the Latest Development? The locations of the vagina, cervix and female nipples that correspond to the brain’s cortex have been mapped for the first time. The study confirms that there is a difference between stimulating the vagina and the clitoris and that there is a direct neurological link …
Source: Big Think
Yeah! Whee! Lady parts! We all just love sticking probes in women’s ladybusinesses. “For science” of course.
Extra credit for tossing in the nipple stimulation!
(I’m unable to confirm whether they’re now hoping to get additional funding to measure the cortical reaction to researchers shaking their faces between the subject’s breasts and going wooba-wooba-wooba-wooba.)
You know why this irritates me beyond all fucking belief?
Because, hello, when was the last time anybody reported on a study of male sexual map?
Answer: 1951! And back then they did it during open-skull surgery.
When was the last time anybody did a cortical assay of men’s secondary erogenous zones?
Because, great bactrian camel humps! Isn’t anybody curious about male sexual response beyond “Oh men? They just stick it in a hole and wiggle, case closed. Now let’s get more hawt chix to play with themselves in the fMRI machine?”
You wanna know something gang? We know roughly 130 times more about women’s orgasms, women’s sexual response, women’s arousal patterns, women’s SES/SIS interactions in the Dual Control Model of Sexual Response model, the maps of women’s erogenous zones, women’s g-spots, p-spots, a-spots, plus vaginal depth, width, lubrication, relative humidity, and fucking barometric pressure than we do about men.
So. Anyway. Two really, really big objections here.
1) It’s not that women’s sexual response isn’t mysterious, it’s that men’s are no less mysterious. For instance ask any woman if things went exactly the way she expected the first time she tried to give a handjob or blowjob.
2) It’s not that men’s sexual response is mysterious, it’s that women’s sexuality isn’t either. For instance just ask almost any woman who’s not worried she’ll get slut-shamed for showing you that, on average, she can get herself off in roughly the same time it takes the average man to get himself off.
Men and women aren’t identical. But we’re not so different that the unbelievable imbalance in research is warranted.
One possibility that doesn’t change my social critique at all: what do you think the probability is that were the roles reversed the corresponding study would have been given as much prominence all over the internets? I mean, not to be a sourpuss but while it’s nice to know they did homunculus mapping on (male only) brain-surgery patients back in 1951, and nice to know that they’ve just now updated the map for women, but have they done any research on men since? On men’s nipple stimulation? (Which if nothing else should surely be of interest to men’s partners.) How about other areas? And is anybody doing cross checks where they look at areas where women’s brains light up in fMRIs during stimulation and then ask “I wonder what the corresponding parts on men might be and what stimulating them might do?
Most importantly, and really the point of my post, if they did bother to update 60-year-old information with research using contemporary tools and attitudes, and they did decide to publish it, would it make the “From the Editors” post of the day at Big Think and other venues? Considerable evidence suggests no, not at all.
*Forgot to add, the studies also found similarities in homosexual women and heterosexual men that had less in common with the male-attracted.
@FIgleaf “Oh yeah, the “gay” brain has definitely been studied a lot. Especially while attempting to “prove” they’re somehow really ladybrains inside (because if they’re not then any straight guy could suddenly “turn gay!”)” Out of interest, a couple studies found that heterosexual women and homosexual men had much more similarity in their brains than they do to homosexual women and heterosexual men, I think a few very ignorant individuals might go around “Ohh look gay men have ladybrains!” when the reality’s far more nuanced; gay men have male-attracted brains and so do straight women, the actual accuracy of the… Read more »
@MaMu: I wonder if syphilis contributed to the persistence of that myth. People who screwed around a lot were more likely to catch syphilis, which does indeed cause dementia…
@figleaf Until the 20th century, the idea that semen was a finite resource was gospel (according to medical researchers.) It was a leftover of ancient Greek dogma (to wit, male “seed” is stored in the skull in a finite duly, and the exhaustion of the supply led to senility, dementia and death. Our continual emphasis on telling people to “follow their heart” is based on the the Greek belief that the heart was the font of rationality and the brain was a blood-cooling/semen-producing/storing organ. Given the knowledge that the brain is a greyish-white of slippery fat, and that semen is… Read more »
The reason for the difference in level of studies is simple: the squeaky wheel gets the grease. For all of the Victorians’/Puritans’ efforts to squelch male sexuality, 99/100 men could and did pursue orgasms. In contrast, despite literal decades of pro-feminist propaganda/teachings, its still relatively easy to find women who have never had an orgasm (in western society, of course. I’ll not cast aspersions of satisfaction rates among people who I’ve not lived with/around.) This is an anecdotal observation of mine, but I can actually say that I’ve met women who (when drunk) admitted that they’d never had “the big… Read more »
@QRG: Oh yeah, the “gay” brain has definitely been studied a lot. Especially while attempting to “prove” they’re somehow really ladybrains inside (because if they’re not then any straight guy could suddenly “turn gay!”)
But even then there hasn’t been much research into straight orgay men’s erotic functionality.
“(For instance I’ve heard that in most men the “internal penis,” the mass of erectile tissue that anchors the erection inside the body, is considerably larger than the external part. Which begs the questions, for instance, is prostate stimulation really what’s going on? Is the inner tissue reachable by ordinar means? Is it capable of erogenous stimulation?” I have done some personal research in this um…area. This is how it works. No, it’s not all prostate. First the anal sphincter is pretty sensitive just by itself. A lot of guys get pretty aroused just having that played with. Then there… Read more »
“Anyway, then some time around maybe 2002 (not sure exactly when) researchers finally bothered to image the complete clitoris in young, healthy, and still living women. And noticed the visible, external part was, um, the tip of an iceberg compared to the much larger internal parts.”
2002 – this almost excuses the melodrama about how FGM completely excises the clitoris and destroys any and all chance of orgasm. People are just failing to keep up. All they have to say is…all the same totally valid arguments aginst circumcison. Telling that they don’t.
Three related articles but slightly different focus on these ‘scientifc’ studies of sexual response . There have been a few on men, but mainly to prove they are gay or straight.
http://quietgirlriot.wordpress.com/2011/04/08/the-appliance-of-science-1-sexing-the-brain/
http://www.marksimpson.com/blog/2008/06/20/the-zombie-medias-hunger-for-gay-brains/
http://quietgirlriot.wordpress.com/2011/04/09/the-appliance-of-science-2-chicks-dicks-flicks/#comments
@Noah & OrangeYouGlad: Eh. Skene’s glands were known previously but I’m not sure they were identified as homologs to the prostate in terms of sensation or stimulation until well after Skene himself had passed away. Meanwhile, of course, Whipple, Ladas, and colleagues resurrected the g-spot in the 1980s, and made a connection with it and the prostate in men. Incidentally, to the best of my knowledge their book, The G-Spot, was the first book to advocate for recognition of the g-spot stimulation and female ejaculation, it was also the first to advocate stimulation of the prostate and perineum during sex… Read more »
Noah: “and the existence of the female prostate was only established in 2002”
I’m pretty sure Skene died in the year 1900, placing teh discovery of the Skene’s gland/female prostate well before 2002? Unless we weren’t 110% sure WITH SCIENCE until 2002? Or you’re talking about something else, in which case I’d like to know about it as homology is fascinating (particularly between the sexes).
figleaf; And @Danny: Rachel’s right — your erstwhile partner was a jerk. An even bigger jerk if she didn’t know you were sensitive there, found out you were sensitive there, and didn’t like that you were sensitive there even after she knew it revved your engines. Incuriosity, ignorance, or anxiety’s one thing, possibly forgivable. Irritation or rejection is something else entirely. Oh rest assured such a women would have no chance in hell of being my partner. And I feel sorry for any man that would be their partners. Many thanks for the reassurance figleaf, rachel, and rae. rae: How… Read more »
Rae, “How do you pay appearance-related compliments to somebody who is starved for sexual acknowledgement, as opposed to somebody who will probably spend the rest of her life regretting she’s ever sprouted boobs?)” With your eyes, would be a good start. Do it like you mean it. Own your Female Gaze and don’t let anyone deny the reality of it – that’s just their own self-serving slut-shaming. Just do it. And go check out Quiet Riot Girl’s posts on metrosexuality at http://quietgirlriot.wordpress.com/ And to those who were asking about male nipple play, check out some gay porn, of the bearish… Read more »
“Thoroughly nasty business, once again foisted on the population almost exclusively by male doctors. No idea why.” Males police males, females police females. Why is this example surprising? I know there is a pre-adolescent notion quite common among feminists of some kind of gender solidarity – boys think girls all have cooties, girls think the boys are “icky”, so boys are on one side of the playground and girls are safely on the other, and they stick together like that throughout life and you can analyze society that way. Class Man and Class Woman. But it’s bunk. It’s women whjo… Read more »
@Jim: “In other words the doctors were masturbating these women, at a time when hysteria about male masturbation was driving the adoption of circumcision in America and the same hysteria was hardly unknown in Europe” Well, technically doctors were regularly masturbating women back in the 4th Century B.C., except they didn’t consider it even remotely sexual (quite the opposite, they thought it was tedious.) No word has been recorded what their patients thought. But records show that husbands and fathers were as likely to send their wives and daughters as women were inclined to go themselves. The difference between what… Read more »
@Typhonblue — Yes, the whole point of this post is that male sexuality is considered such a given that we could go a very long time assuming that human and orangutan penises were close enough for rock ‘n’ roll because, “eww, penises ammmiright?” I wonder if the advent of women doctors will tend to pull more interest in that direction the way men seem to be single-minded about women’s ladybusinesses.
figleaf
@Danny: Another instance of assholes ruining it for everybody. Every idiot who makes fun of her boyfriend for the way his body works is putting roadblocks in the way of people who want men to feel sexy and comfortable during sex. (I’m sorry; I want to simultaneously reassure you that your sensitive nipples are wonderful and beautiful, and also not sound like a giant space-invading creeper. Hopefully if I just bumble around, some sort of positive message will get through?) (By the way, if somebody wants to do a post on how to broadcast the information that men are sexy,… Read more »
“(The job being medically “massaging” women’s “pelvises” to treat their “hysteria” by giving them “paroxysms.” Maines nicely documents how doctors, sick of rubbing women’s clitorises all day, invented vibrators to automate the task. No shit.)” In other words the doctors were masturbating these women, at a time when hysteria about male masturbation was driving the adoption of circumcision in America and the same hysteria was hardly unknown in Europe – http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/nov/15/white-ribbon-review. It’s not that these doctors were celbrating women’s sexuality. It’s just that masturbation was a male evil that women by definition couldn’t commit. Simples. Once again male sexuality was… Read more »
If you want to talk about sexual ignorance… Some anatomical studies of the human penis are still based on studies done on orangutans in the sixteenth century. I think they may have updated it recently but those studies introduced significant anatomical errors in regards to male penile anatomy. Also anatomical textbooks still don’t consitantly include the foreskin in natural male penile anatomy. Funny how we have so little modern knowledge of something we feel free to cut off men. To conclude, male anatomical study has never been either accurate nor comprehensive nor void of bias against the ‘degenerate’ parts of… Read more »
@EasilyEnthused: “I’m not *entirely* sure this is on-topic – but here is my theory regarding the mystification of female sexuality.” It’s a good theory but there’s some… interesting historical evidence saying it goes more the other way. I’ve already mentioned this in my reply to Vanessa Vojinov, but a much, much, much bigger driver has been a basic, um, confusion about whether women have any independent sexuality at all. I mentioned the hysterical paroxysm business, but to grasp the immensity of it I recommend electrical-engineering historian Rachel P. Maines’s “The Technology of Orgasm: “Hysteria,” the Vibrator, and Women’s Sexual Satisfaction.”… Read more »
@Vanessa Vojinov: “I think we’re lucky when sex research gets funded at all, and since women have been considered ‘nonsexual beings’ for so long, I think our ladybits are a good place to start.” You’ll never, ever get me to disagree that society has treated women as non-sexual (check out the medical history of “hysterical paroxysms” and reflect on the fact that from Antiquity until the beginning of the 20th Century husbands routinely sent their wives and daughters to physicians to have their genitals massaged to treat “hysteria.” Reflect further on the fact that while it brought in up to… Read more »
I think we’re lucky when sex research gets funded at all, and since women have been considered “nonsexual beings” for so long, I think our ladybits are a good place to start. Heck, the clitoris has been discovered and forgotten again over and over over the course of history. Maybe some extra research right now is owed to us. But I agree that they should be studying men as well.
@Rachel: “those women are crap and should feel like crap and also shouldn’t get laid ever again until they learn to act like goddamned human beings >:(” Nicely said! I’ve run into that every now and then. It’s one of the reasons I keep saying (over and over) that “patriarchy” is a co-ed enterprise. The expectations for how men and women are “supposed to be,” plus the anxiety and/or annoyance when they’re not, is obviously waaaayyy too common. And one thing men are supposed to only interested in our dicks So while there are plenty of women (just check out… Read more »
I’m not *entirely* sure this is on-topic – but here is my theory regarding the mystification of female sexuality. A long time ago in a galaxy right here – women were told that “real women” don’t go about enjoying and pursuing sex. So if you took a group of 100 random women – all of them trying their best to be “real women” you might end up with ~20 or so who had problem with enjoying sex. They decided to speak up (for all women – because they assumed other women were like them.) They said “The reason women don’t… Read more »
@Danny: those women are crap and should feel like crap and also shouldn’t get laid ever again until they learn to act like goddamned human beings >:(
i really don’t have anything to add, it just appalled me that people have said those kinds of things.