Victorian Shocker: Ladies Liked Sex!

From the archive: 2010

Here's another knock for the myth that the Victorians were a bunch of prudes: a little-known survey that shows ladies of the era actually enjoyed sex.

In fact, one woman said she chose to sleep apart from her husband 'to avoid temptation of too frequent intercourse.'

Dr. Clelia Mosher began interviewing American women about their sex lives starting in 1892.

By 1920, she'd compiled 45 profiles.

Her results—which predated Kinsey's studies by a half century—showed that although most women entered marriage ignorant of sex (some admitted that they'd learned by 'watching farm animals'), most of them came to love it.

'Of the 45 women, 35 said they desired sex; 34 said they had experienced orgasms; (and) 24 felt that pleasure for both sexes was a reason for intercourse,' according to an excellent article in the Stanford Alumni magazine.

As one respondent, born in 1860, put it: 'My husband and I… believe in intercourse for its own sake—we wish it for ourselves and spiritually miss it, rather than physically, when it does not occur, because it is the highest, most sacred expression of our oneness.'

MY KINDA GAL 

In The History of Sex (But Not As We Know It), I note one of the ironies of the Sexual Revolution: we may very well be having less sex than our ancestors.

I also argue that we should learn from the early campaigners for gender equality and ignore the sex-obsessed celebrity feminists of the Sixties.

Compared to them, Mosher looks like an unsung heroine who spent her career trying to prove that women weren't inferior to men.

Dr. Mosher in her Red Cross uniform

In her day, people thought that women breathed from their chests rather than their diaphragms, but Mosher showed that this supposed biological difference was probably the result of tight corsets.

She also developed abdominal exercises—'moshers'—to counter menstrual pain, arguing that debilitating periods were partly due to a lack of exercise and the common practice of confining women to their beds during 'that time of the month.'

'Equal pay for women means equal work; unnecessary menstrual absences mean less than full work,' she wrote.

Mosher apparently lived quite a lonely life – again, the Stanford article is well worth reading – but she envisaged a day when life would be different for intelligent women like her.

'Born into a world of unlimited opportunity, the woman of the rising generation will answer the question of what woman's real capacities are,' she wrote in 1923. 'She will have physical, economic, racial and civic freedom. What will she do with it?'

Fortunately, Dr. Mosher didn't live to see 'Girls Gone Wild.'

The History of Sex: Venice and Florence -- The Clit Writ Large -- (Chap. IV, Pt. 23)

Believe it or not, it wasn't until the nineteenth century that physicians finally managed to distinguish gonorrhea from syphilis, and neither disease was definitively cured until the discovery of antibiotics.

As for telegony, homunculi, and other misconceptions, scientists weren't able to prove that sperm-and-egg fusion caused fertilization until the late 1800s—and even then just in starfish.

It's only in the last half century or so that we've actually been able to witness the moment of human conception.

As for the clitoris, well, if this sounds familiar to women, I apologize: every time we men think we've found it, we end up losing it again.

The clit has been popping in and out of male consciousness ever since its rediscovery during the Renaissance.

Columbus' lyrical moniker was apparently too much of a mouthful, so an anatomist in nineteenth century Vienna circulated something catchier, based on a Greek word—kleitoriazein—meaning 'to titillate.'

FREUD VS. FEMINISM

Ironically, the man who did the most to bury the clitoris after that was another Viennese doctor who set himself up as an authority on sex.

Freud dismissed clitoral orgasms as immature and bordering on the perverse.

It wasn't until the feminist backlash of the 1960s that women began to reclaim their bits, so to speak, and now there's no getting away from them.

Amid a slew of neologisms ('clitmaster,' 'cliterature,' etcetera), the clit's writ large in modern culture, arguably bigger than ever before.

In fact, it's hard to imagine it ever being 'lost' again.

Then again, if history is anything to go by…

* * *

From the archive: Happy 60th, G Spot! (We Know You're There Somewhere)

From the archive: 2010

In our sex-obsessed age, you might have expected fireworks, parades, and maybe even an Oprah Special. 

Instead, a landmark date in sex history has slipped by all but unnoticed.

This year marks the sixtieth anniversary of the "discovery" of that controversial pleasure zone, the G spot (not to mention the associated phenomenon of female ejaculation).

Before anybody starts with the usual breast-beating, though, let's get a couple of things straight:

1) yes, the G spot exists;
but
2) no, you shouldn't get your knickers in a twist about it.

If anything, you should be thankful they didn't call it "the Whipple Tickle." (More about that later…)

First, here's the lowdown on der G-Punkt, as it's known in German.

In 1950, a gynecologist who'd been ransomed to America from the Nazis wrote a short article for the International Journal of Sexology called "The Role of the Urethra in Female Orgasm."

At the time, Dr. Ernst Gräfenberg was nearly seventy years old but still treating women on New York's Upper East Side.

Outside Dr. Graefenberg's New York office

However, his path to Park Avenue had been anything but easy.

Gräfenberg had started out in the working-class districts of Berlin, where he'd been shocked by the suffering he encountered, including victims of botched abortions who died in his arms and women who lost their lives trying to give birth to yet more children, in addition to the ten, fifteen, and even twenty they already had. 

Experiences like that inspired the young doctor to invent one of the first ovulation tests, as well as the first "safe" intrauterine device, or IUD.

By the time Hitler came to power, Gräfenberg was at the top of his profession, and like many sex researchers (and German Jews), he hoped he would be safe, not least because some of his patients were the wives of Nazi officials.

However, he was eventually thrown into prison on a dubious charge—he'd supposedly smuggled a valuable stamp out of Germany—inspiring his colleagues in the small world of sexology to band together to get him out.

According to the surprisingly little information we have about his personal life, the person who ransomed him was none other than the mother of American birth control clinics, Margaret Sanger, who sprung the inventor of the IUD from jail in 1940.

Once freed, Gräfenberg embarked on what must have been a fascinating odyssey, emigrating to New York via Siberia, Japan, and Hollywood, where he met up with former patients, presumably members of the German film industry who'd also escaped the Nazis.

Gräfenberg worked in Chicago for a while before settling in Manhattan, where he treated rich and poor around the clock—he opened on Saturdays to treat professional women—and wrote the article that would posthumously make him synonymous with female ecstasy.

DOCTOR, YOU ARE RIGHT! 

Despite its decidedly unsexy title, "The Role of the Urethra in Female Orgasm" reads like notes from a man who'd seen it all, mixing dry scientific research with juicy anecdotes from Gräfenberg's remarkable (and remarkably obscure) career.

One of his patients had married a much older man for money and kept "pestering" the doctor about her inability to climax.

"Bored by the repeated discussions with her," Gräfenberg wrote, "I finally asked her if she had tried sex relations with another male partner."

"'No,' was the answer, and reflectively she left my office. The next day in the middle of the night, I was awakened by a telephone call and a familiar voice who did not give her name asked: 'Doctor, are you there? You are right,' and hung up the receiver with a bang!"

"I never had to answer any further sexual questions from her."

Then there were the two girls who masturbated with hairpins, and the male patient who did the same with a rifle bullet and wound up lodging it in his bladder: "He had played with it while he was lonesome on duty on New Year's Eve."

Most importantly, though, Gräfenberg mentioned a sensitive area on the front wall of the vagina (as well as the expulsion of a mystery fluid during orgasm), making him one of the first modern doctors to describe these ancient phenomena.

"An erotic zone always could be demonstrated on the anterior wall of the vagina," he noted. "This particular area was more easily stimulated by the finger than the other areas of the vagina." 

THE WHIPPLE TICKLE? 

Nearly three decades later, when a new generation of sex researchers received similar feedback, they dug up Gräfenberg's article.

With the publication of their global bestseller, The G Spot, in 1982, Dr. Beverly Whipple and her colleagues sparked a controversy that's continued to this day.

"Before we published, a colleague of mine said, 'Bev, you should call that the Whipple Tickle.' I said, 'No way!'" Dr. Whipple tells me. "We thought it was very appropriate to name it after Gräfenberg. It was really nice to know that someone else had found something similar to what we'd found."

As for female ejaculation, given the current plethora of porn devoted to the subject, it's hard to believe that many sexologists (and feminists like Germaine Greer) didn't believe in the phenomenon until Whipple and her colleagues produced footage of it.

After one screening, a newly converted gynecologist predicted: "Years from now, I am sure that a medical school lecturer will joke about how it wasn't until 1980 that the medical community finally accepted the fact that women really do ejaculate."

Funnily enough, though, the G spot is still controversial after all these years.

In January 2010, a team of "scientists" in London trumpeted the results of the biggest study ever on the subject: after surveying 1,804 twins, they concluded that "there is no physiological or physical basis for the G spot."

"It is rather irresponsible to claim the existence of an entity that has never really been proven and pressurize women—and men, too," sniffed Andrea Burri, the 29-year-old female "scientist" who led the research.

Incredibly, though, Burri and her colleagues hadn't physically examined any of the twins; instead, they simply gave the women questionnaires asking whether they thought they had a G spot or not.

Among the many flaws in their methodology, Whipple notes dryly, is the fact that most twins don't have the same sexual partner.

And modern researchers are subject to stricter patient-doctor boundaries than Gräfenberg, who clearly took a hands-on approach to his patients.

Ultrasounds, brainscans, and autopsies have indicated a slight thickness in the tissue where the G spot is thought to be, but it's nearly impossible to prove the existence of something that may be more of a physiological change than an anatomical feature.

"It has to be sexually stimulated," Dr. Whipple says. 'And it's very hard to do surgeries or autopsies and ask, 'Tell me, does this feel good?'"

Ironically, like Burri and Co., many women—and self-styled sexperts—complain that the discovery of the G spot has put pressure on them to perform sexually. But anyone who argues that clearly hasn't read The G Spot—or Gräfenberg's original article, for that matter.

"My whole point has been to validate women's experience—not to set new goals," Dr. Whipple says.

And you can't help but think Dr. Gräfenberg would be bemused by all the fuss about the spot that bears his name. As he noted sixty years ago, there's a lot more to sex with a woman than any single pleasure zone.

"There is no spot in the female body from which sexual desire could not be aroused," he wrote. "The partner has only to find the erotogenic zones."

The History of Sex: Venice and Florence -- Pig Ignorant Anatomy -- (Chap. IV, Pt. 2)

Of course, for women born with all their bits in the right place, this particular 'discovery' must have been an anticlimax.

But you can hardly blame Renaissance men for wanting to find a magic button that could turn women on at will—or, as the Columbus of the Nether Regions put it (no doubt with a pervy chuckle), 'even if they don't want it.'

After the official prudishness of the Middle Ages, the clitoral dispute reflected a rediscovery of the human body and the Roman maxim that 'nothing human is alien.'

Up until the Renaissance, even the most learned doctors were literally pig-ignorant about the basics of the human body. Textbooks were based on Galen's anatomies. Problem was, the Romans had banned human dissection, so he'd had to extrapolate from pigs and other animals.

It was Columbus' university mentor, Andreas Vesalius, who pioneered the use of cadavers to correct Galen's mistakes, making him the founder of modern anatomy—and a kindred spirit of artists like Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, whose fascination with the body compelled them to dissect human corpses themselves.

Remarkably, it was only then that men began to realize the fair sex was profoundly different physiologically; previously, most great thinkers believed that women were merely males 'turned outside in.'

Columbus' reference to women's 'semen' was probably what's now called 'female ejaculate,' though in reality he was referring to the ancient theory that both men and women produced a kind of sperm that magically commingled to make babies.

Another theory as old as Aristotle was that of telegony, the idea that a woman's first pregnancy altered her womb so much that all her future offspring would resemble the father of her first child—even if they had different dads.

(Then again, Aristotle thought that men with small penises were more fertile—and more aesthetically attractive. So what did he know?)

The History of Sex: Venice and Florence -- And Man (Re)Discovered Flesh -- (Chap. IV, Pt. 1)

Chapter Four 

AND MAN (RE)DISCOVERED FLESH 

Waving Hello! to the Flesh in Venereal Venice and Syphilitic Florence 

Let's make love, my beloved,
If you adore my cock,
I love your pussy,
And the world wouldn't be worth a fuck without this.

--The 'Divine' Pietro Aretino, c1527 

The Renaissance produced not one but two great explorers named Columbus: the first, a discoverer who spread syphilis; the other, an anatomist who 'discovered' the clitoris… and died shortly thereafter. 

The latter Colombo was a professor in his forties when he published his text On Things Anatomical in Venice in 1559, claiming to have found something that everyone in the history of medicine had somehow overlooked—the very 'seat of woman's delight:' 

'It should be called the love or sweetness of Venus,' declared Renaldus Columbus. 'If you rub it vigorously with a penis, or even touch it with a little finger, the pleasure causes women's semen to fly this way and that, swifter than air, even if they don't want it to.' 

Tragically, the cocksure prof died later that year—I blame the flying female semen—and his successor at the university promptly accused him of plagiarism.

The Columbus of the Nether Regions: 
Renaldus Columbus

Gabriel Fallopius claimed he'd already had a good look under the hood years earlier; ultimately, though, he had to make do with being immortalized for his less-sexy discovery of the egg tubes connecting the uterus with the ovaries. 

It took centuries before a Dane pointed out that, like Christopher Columbus' 'discovery' of the New World, both the Italian anatomists had got it wrong: the great guru of Western medicine had caught sight of the clitoris way back in the second century AD. 

Sadly for women, though, Galen had thought the clit simply protected the vagina. 

He'd even compared it to the thingamabob at the back of the throat—nearly eighteen centuries before a porn-flick doctor informed a would-be nymph that her clitoris was lodged deep in her Deep Throat.

Would you pierce your uvula? 

The History of Sex: The Original G-Spot Article--Part 6 of 6

Other somatic factors help to sexually stimulate the female partner.

As was mentioned there is no spot in the female body, from which sexual desire could not be aroused.

Some women have greater sexual desire at the ovulation time while others at the time of the menstrual period. It may be that during menstruation the sexual tension is higher, because the danger of unwanted pregnancy is lessened.

The woman-on-top posture is more stimulating as the erotogenic parts come in contact better. The angle which is formed by the erected penis and the male abdomen has a great influence on the female orgasm. 

These mere somatic causes are often overshadowed by psychic factors, even the commonest automatic reflexes produce sexual reactions. It is possible to cause an orgasm merely by using some stimulating sentence.

Such a reaction follows the laws of the unconditioned reflexes. The erotogenic zone on the anterior wall of the vagina can be understood only from a comparison with the phylogenetic ancestry.

In the most commonly adopted position, where "the lady does lay on her back," the penis does not reach the urethral part of the vaginal wall, unless the angle of the erected male organ is very steep or if the anterior vagina is directed towards the penis as by putting the legs of the female over the shoulders of her partner.

The contact is very close, when the intercourse is performed more bestiarum or a la vache i.e. a posteriori.

LeMon Clark is right when he mentions that we were designed as quadrupeds. Therefore, intercourse from the back of the woman is the most natural one.

This can be performed either in the side-to-side posture with the male partner behind, or better still with the woman in Sims', knee-elbow or shoulder position, the husband standing in front of the bed.

The female genitals have to be higher than the other parts of her body. The stimulating effect of this kind of intercourse must not be explained away as LeMon Clark does by the melodious movements of the testicles like a knocker on the clitoris, but is merely caused by the direct thrust of the penis towards the urethral erotic zone.

Certain it is that this area in the anterior vaginal wall is a primary erotic zone, perhaps more important than the clitoris, which got its erotic supremacy only in the age of necking. The erotising effect of coitus a posteriori is very great, as only in this position the most stimulating parts of both partners are brought in closest contact i.e., clitoris and anterior vaginal wall of the wife and the sensitive parts of the glans penis.

This short paper will, I hope, show that the anterior wall of the vagina along the urethra is the seat of a distinct erotogenic zone and has to be taken into account more in the treatment of female sexual deficiency.

Reference

• Adler, The Frigidity of the Female Sex, Berlin, 1913 
• Elkan, The Evolution of Female Orgastic Ability -- A Biological Survey, Int. J. Sexol, Vol. II, No. 2 
• LeMon, Clark, The Orgasm Problem in Women, Int. J. Sexol, Vol. II, No. 4 and Vol. III, No. 1 
• Hardenberg, The Psychology of Feminine Sex Experience, Int. J. Sexol, Vol. II, No. 4 
• Kinsey, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male 
• Bergler, Frigidity, Misconceptions and Facts, Marriage Hygiene, Vol. I, No. 1 
• Helena Wright, A Contribution to the Orgasm Problem in Women, Marriage Hygiene, Vol. I, No. 3 
• Lena Levine, A Criterion for Orgasm in the Female, Marriage Hygiene, Vol. I, No. 3

The History of Sex: The Original G-Spot Article--Part 5 of 6

Analogous to the male urethra, the female urethra also seems to be surrounded by erectile tissues like the corpora cavernosa.

In the course of sexual stimulation, the female urethra begins to enlarge and can be felt easily. It swells out greatly at the end of orgasm.

The most stimulating part is located at the posterior urethra, where it arises from the neck of the bladder. 

Sometimes patients of Birth Control clinics complain that their sexual feelings were impaired by the diaphragm pessary.

In such cases the orgastic capacity was restored by the use of the plastic cervical cap, which does not cover the erotogenic zone of the anterior vaginal wall. Such complaints occurred more frequently in Europe than here in the U. S. A., and was one of the reasons for giving preference to the cervical cap over the diaphragm pessary.

Frigidity after hysterectomy may happen, if the erotogenic zone of the anterior vaginal wall was removed at the time of the operation.

The vaginal wall is preserved best by the abdominal subtotal hysterectomy, less by the total hysterectomy and least by vaginal hysterectomy when always large parts of the vagina are removed.

That is the cause of vaginal frigidity after vaginal hysterectomy observed by LeMon Clark.

The uterus or the cervix uteri takes no part in producing orgasm, even though Havelock Ellis speaks of the sucking in of sperm by the cervix into the uterus.

The non-existence of the uterine suction power was proved by a simple experiment, in which a plastic cervical cap was filled with a contrast oil (radiopac) and fitted over the cervix. The cap was left in for the whole interval between two menstrual periods.

These women had frequent sexual relations with satisfying orgasm.

Repeated X-ray pictures taken during the time when the cap was covering the cervix, never showed any of the contrast medium inside the cervix or in the body of the uterus. The whole contrast medium was always in the cap.

The glands around the vaginal orifice, especially the large Bartholin glands, have a lubricating effect. Therefore they are located at the entrance of the vagina and produce their mucus at the beginning of the sexual relations and not synchronously with the orgasm.

Sometimes the mucus is produced so abundantly and makes the vulva slippery, that the female partner is inclined to compare it with the ejaculation of the male. Occasionally the production of fluids is so profuse that a large towel has to be spread under the woman to prevent the bed sheets getting soiled.

This convulsory expulsion of fluids occurs always at the acme of the orgasm and simultaneously with it. If there is the opportunity to observe the orgasm of such women, one can see that large quantities of a clear transparent fluid are expelled not from the vulva, but out of the urethra in gushes.

At first I thought that the bladder sphincter had become defective by the intensity of the orgasm. Involuntary expulsion of urine is reported in sex literature.

In the cases observed by us, the fluid was examined and it had no urinary character. I am inclined to believe that "urine" reported to be expelled during female orgasm is not urine, but only secretions of the intraurethral glands correlated with the erotogenic zone along the urethra in the anterior vaginal wall.

Moreover the profuse secretions coming out with the orgasm have no lubricating significance, otherwise they would be produced at the beginning of intercourse and not at the peak of orgasm. The intensity of the orgasm is dependent on the area from which it is elicited.

Mostly, cunnilingus leads to a more complete orgasm and (consequent) relaxation. The deeper the relaxation after intercourse the higher is the peak of the orgasm followed by depression and hence the students' joke: Post coitum omne animal triste est.

The higher the climax the quicker is the reloading of the sexual potential.

The History of Sex: The Original G-Spot Article--Part 4 of 6

Erotogenic zones in the female urethra are sometimes the cause of urethral onanism.

I have seen two girls who had stimulated themselves with hair pins in their urethra. The blunt part of the old- fashioned hair pin was introduced into the urethra and moved forwards and backwards.

During the ecstasy of the orgasm the girls lost control of the pin which went into the bladder.

Both girls felt ashamed and tried to hide the incident from their mothers until a huge bladder stone had developed around the pin as centre.

One stone was removed by supra-pubic, and the other by vaginal, cystotomy.

A third hair pin entered the bladder and before the bladder was inflamed, it was angled out via the urethra.

Since the old hairpins are no more in use, pencils are used for urethral onanism. They are longer than the hairpins and do not glide into the bladder so easily, though they cause a painful urethritis.

Urethral onanism may happen in men as well.

I saw a patient with a rifle bullet which glided into his bladder.

He had played with it while he was lonesome on duty on New Years Eve.

The History of Sex: The Original G-Spot Article--Part 3 of 6

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The History of Sex: The Original G-Spot Article--Part 1 of 6

Ever wondered what the G in G-Spot stands for?

This is the article that earned Dr. Ernst Graefenberg his posthumous place in history as one of the first modern doctors to notice that many (if not all) women have a particularly pleasurable spot inside their vaginas.

Dr. G was also one of the first modern sexperts to describe female ejaculation (though a few early anatomists had noticed the phenomenon, too).

Here's his original text in full, though I've divided it into parts and added links and illustrations for your reading pleasure.

JR

The Role of the Urethra in Female Orgasm 

by Dr. Ernest (Ernst) Graefenberg 

The International Journal of Sexology, 1950 

A rather high percentage of women do not reach the climax in sexual intercourse.

The frigidity figures of different authors vary from 10-80 per cent and come closer to the statistics of older sexologists. Adler (Berlin) came to the conclusion that 80 per cent of women did not reach the sexual climax. Elkan guessed that 50 per cent suffered from frigidity, while Kinsey found it to be 75 per cent. Hardenberg's figures have a very wide range from 10 to 75 per cent.

Many of these statistics cannot be compared, since the various authors use different criteria.

Edmund Bergler sees the condition of eupareunia only in vaginal orgasm and so his frigidity figures are naturally much higher than those based on any kind of sexual satisfaction.

The restriction to the vaginal orgasm, however, does not give the true picture of female sexuality. Lack of orgasm and frigidity are not identical. Frigid women can enjoy orgasm. The lesbian is frigid in her relations to a heterosexual partner, but is completely satisfied by homosexual loveplays.

A deficient orgasm need not always be associated with frigidity. Numerous women have satisfactory enjoyment in normal heterosexual intercourse, even if they do not reach the orgasm.

Genuine frigidity should be spoken of only if there is no response to any partner and in all situations. A woman with only clitoris orgasm is not frigid and sometimes is even more active sexually, because she is hunting for a male partner who would help her to achieve the fulfillment of her erotic dreams and desires.