Read My Lips by Debby Herbenick, Vanessa Schick Read Free Book Online

find out if a woman had a G-spot or not. Some researchers (Debby included) felt that such statements were going well beyond the limited data they had collected from a very small study of only twenty women. And so this study largely became chalked up as interesting without necessarily telling us anything one way or the other about the G-spot.
    Then in 2010, a team of researchers from the UK published a study suggesting that there is no G-spot—or at least no genetic basis for one, in spite of 56 percent of the women in their survey saying they had one. 29 They conducted a survey of 1,840 twin, heterosexual women in the UK, asking them, “Do you believe you have a so-called G-spot?” The fact that agreement among identical twins was no more common than among fraternal (non-identical) twins suggested to the researchers that there must be no physical basis to the G-spot. However, many researchers criticized this study, too. After all, a woman may believe or not believe in the existence of the “so-called G-spot” for any number of reasons including her own sexual experiences, things she has heard from friends or partners, human sexuality classes, or articles about the G-spot she has read in the media. Again, it was a curious study but it didn’t close the gap in our understanding of the G-spot one way or the other.
    To sum up, what we do know about the G-spot is this:
     
It is clear that there is an area along the front wall of the vagina that some but not all women find to be pleasurable when stimulated with fingers, a penis, or a sex toy.
There are undeniably body parts on the other side of the front vaginal wall (parts such as the internal parts (crura) of the clitoris, the urethral sponge, and their associated nerve endings) that may be stimulated through the front wall of the vagina.
Large studies of women suggest that the majority of women feel they have a G-spot, or an area of erotic sensitivity on the front wall of the vagina.
    As such, if you want to explore this area, go ahead! If you are a woman, you can try this on your own with your own fingers or with a sex toy. If you have a female partner, you might ask her if she would like to explore G-spot play, as well, with fingers, a sex toy, or (if you’re a guy) with your penis. If it doesn’t feel all that interesting or exciting to you, then perhaps move on to something else and try again (or not) another time. And if it does feel pleasurable to you, then yay for you! You’ve learned something new about your body that may enhance your sex life.
VIVA LA VULVA!
Activity
One of our favorite vulva-themed movies (and we have a few) is Viva La Vulva , created by vulva activist, educator, author, and artist Betty Dodson. 9 In Viva La Vulva , women come to Betty’s home to be interviewed about their bodies, to groom (or not groom) their pubic hair in whatever way feels good to them, and to have their vulva portrait taken. One unique feature of this film is that the women—who span a few decades in age—go around and look at each other’s vulvas, admiring them and remarking on various features such as the coloration of certain parts or the size or shape of the inner labia or clitoral hood. We have both shown this video in classes that we’ve taught, and male and female students alike often have a powerful reaction to watching even just twenty minutes of the film. We highly recommend you get a copy (see Resources).
    FEMALE EJACULATION
    Another vagina controversy has to do with female ejaculation—and it doesn’t even seem to be coming from the vagina (although for years, some wondered if female ejaculation came from the vagina, so we still consider it a “vagina controversy”). It seems that some women release fluids from their urethra during sexual excitement or orgasm. We don’t know how common this experience is, as there have been no good population-based studies of women that would tell us with any certainty whether it’s 10 percent of women, 40 percent of