Why is the clitoris so misunderstood and ignored in social and medical society? Because it's more than a pleasure system—the clitoris is a symbol of liberation and fear. The history of the clitoris is intrinsically tied to the patriarchy’s insidious plot to misinform and silence women’s sexual liberation.
"If people with pussies had known from the jump that they are biologically equal, they may have gotten pissed about their subjugated social position a lot earlier" - Audre Lorde, Erotic: The Erotic as Power.
Zoe Mendelson, a writer, speaker, and advocate created the book Pussypedia - an inclusive guide to the vulva and vagina. Within her book, she provides transparent information about the pussy through bright fun graphics and casual language. In PussyPedia, she demonstrates how the medical industry refused to acknowledge and discuss the pleasure system within the vulva, specifically the clitoris. She illustrates that the medical and social dismissal of "pussy sexuality" advertised that it was frail and unfeeling.
Infamous scholars such as Sigmund Freud denounced the clitoris, labeling it an "infantile organ" - claiming it is an immature and childish way of receiving pleasure. Freud announced that girls engage in clitoris stimulation as children before they can experience penetrative pleasure. In more ways than one, he set a precedent of misunderstanding and devaluing the clitoris by subjecting external vulva pleasure as secondary to vaginal penetration by a penis.
One doctor acknowledged the power of the clitoris and masturbation - Dr. Isaac Baker Brown, the President of the Medical Society of London. In the late 1800s, Dr. Brown performed clitoridectomies, the complete removal of the clitoris from the vulva; he argued that it was the cure for "insanity, epilepsy, catalepsy, and hysteria in females." Luckily, in 1867 his license was revoked for performing clitoridectomies without the patients' consent. However, those kinds of procedures carried on for years. The last recorded clitoridectomy was in 1940. The power of the clitoris frightened men and their control so much that they resorted to mutilating the bodies of women. Women weren't allowed to consume accurate information concerning their bodies, nor could they openly discuss sexual desires or masturbation in fear of being ostracized or deemed ill.
Even if the clitoris or other parts of the vulva were discussed, they were practically erased from medical journals. Gray's Anatomy, an influential medical guide, featured the clitoris in the 1901 book, yet erased it from the 1948 edition. This created a cycle of misinformation and loss of knowledge in both the social and medical fields. Nancy Tuana, in her paper, The Speculum of Ignorance: The Women's Health Movement and Epistemologies of Ignorance, establishes that the medical community solely focused on the reproductive system of a woman's vulva and vagina—ultimately ignoring pleasurable portions of the female anatomy.
There is one woman who broke through the cracks and decided to finally take her health and pleasure into her own hands: Carol Downer. In the 1960s, she traveled around the country with Feminist Women's Center providing birth control, abortions, and fertility health care before the legalization of abortion in 1972.
In 1981, she spearheaded the writing and publication of A New View of a Woman's Body, the first medical book to illustrate the entire female anatomy and pleasure system blatantly. Downer and eight of her friends were tired of vulva and vagina misinformation, so they decided to take off their pants and examine one another collectively. The group masturbated in front of each other taking note of where they all mutually experienced pleasure, compared their vaginas to textbooks, and took pictures and videos of their anatomy. Their group study allowed them to create A New View of a Woman's Body, a revolutionary piece of feminist literature.
The book doesn't shy away from conversations of pleasure; in fact, it provides directions for masturbation, and what portions of the vulva may invoke pleasure and orgasm, "Extending from the hood up to the pubic symphysis, you can now feel a hardish, rubbery, moveable cord right under the skin. It is sometimes sexually arousing if touched. This is the shaft of the clitoris." This book provides a transparent and honest look at the vulva and vagina - the first of its kind.
By limiting the knowledge of the vulva and creating misinformation concerning pleasure, men can obtain power over women's independence. The patriarchy has and is attempting to maintain a "You need us" mentality, but the vulva disputes their claim. The clitoris demonstrates that women don't need a penis to orgasm, meaning the clitoris is the patriarchy’s kryptonite. The patriarchy may be able to pay women less, control our reproductive rights, and systematically value us below men; but there's one thing they can't do—take away our orgasms.
By Abby Stuckrath