Unveiling the Mystery of the Female Anatomy

Ever heard the phrase ‘the tip of the iceberg’? It doesn’t just describe what happened to the Titanic but is actually an apt metaphor for the prevailing gap of knowledge concerning the female sexual anatomy. Here’s why learning more about the ins and outs of your sex organs – focusing on the entirety and not just the tip of it – could be key to a better sex life.

In season four of the iconic tv-series “Sex and the City”, the ever so neat and very strait-laced Charlotte faints after looking at her intimate parts in a hand mirror. Today, more than twenty years later, we hopefully know enough about our vulvas (and how they look) not to do that. Still, both women and men are generally lacking full knowledge of the anatomy of the female sex organs and, more importantly, that including a bigger part of them could change – and improve – the sexual experience. 

The pursuit of female sexual pleasure has traditionally been focused on clitoral stimulation, as the multitude of suction sex toys and rabbit-style vibrators available shows. Being as highly innervated as it is – the clitoral glans is estimated to have more than 10,000 nerve endings – it’s no wonder. But just as the iceberg that tipped Titanic was infinitely larger than the tip visible above water, the clitoris is much larger and more widespread than the tiny “button” that most of us connote with sexual pleasure. It is, in fact, a complex structure, consisting of external and internal components. The “button”, or glans, and the clitoral hood that covers it, are just two teeny parts of a whole that is much more intricate than you might think. Apart from them the clitoris consists of the body (composed of two erectile structures known as the corpora cavernosa), two “legs” (or crura), and the clitoral bulbs (or vestibular). Together they extend from the clitoral gland up below the pubic bone, sideways towards the uppermost part of the inner thighs, and along the labia down to the vaginal opening. Research actually indicates that clitoral tissue extends all the way into the vagina’s anterior wall. 

So far so good. But why, might you ask, do I need to know all this? Well, in addition to combatting a lack of knowledge historically impacted by cultural perceptions of the organ, thereby alleviating social stigmas associated with female sexuality, knowing the layout of your sexual organs can help you achieve greater, longer lasting pleasure during sex and masturbation.

‘We might know more about our sexual anatomy nowadays’, says psychologist and GLÄNTA contributor Maria Pavlovic, ‘but we don’t necessarily know what to do with that knowledge.

We don’t know that it’s possible to stimulate not just the glans but the entire structure, or what effect that’d have’. Being made up, in part, of erectile tissue that becomes blood-filled when stimulated, focusing on the entirety of the clitoris instead of just the glans can result in stronger orgasms and longer lasting pleasure. Learning how you respond to different types of touch and stimulation of the various parts of your clitoris is key to getting to know your own sexuality, thereby improving your sex life. But it might be difficult to know where to start. ‘Explore, touch yourself, and register how it feels’, says Pavlovic, who recommends us to ‘treat ourselves the way we’d treat a new lover’: exploring, trying things out, gradually learning what triggers which reaction. ‘You can spend time on the labia and the insides of the thighs before moving on, they’re also part of the clitoris’, says Pavlovic, ‘or you can vary between them. Things will happen, the experience will change, and the pleasure’. She stresses the value of touching without a given goal (i.e., an orgasm), ‘the kind of exploring you did when you first started masturbating and didn’t yet know what your body was capable of’. 

’I’m still hoping for that device’, she finishes, ‘that offers pleasure with the option of orgasm rather than jumping straight to the goal’. Considering all the new knowledge, aren’t we all?