One of the greatest legacies bequeathed to western women by second-wave feminists was the unabashed joy of orgasms. I’m not claiming we didn’t have climaxes long before feminism was a glint in Gloria Steinem’s eye but, under the Christian tradition that shaped the modern West (especially once the Puritans got going), it could be a hit and miss affair. Depending on the age and society a woman lived in, the big O could be viewed as the province of trollops, or even as a sign of hysteria and madness.
In 1858 the influential surgeon Isaac Baker Brown set up the London Surgical Home for the Reception of Gentlewomen and Females of Respectability Suffering from Curable Surgical Diseases. He was particularly interested in curing “hypertrophy and irritation of the clitoris” (he really meant the physical effects of masturbation) via the surgical excision of the clitoris. One man who’d said his wife had attacked him like a “tigress” reported that, after the procedure, she “became in every respect a good wife”. Baker Brown was eventually discredited by colleagues, when it transpired he’d performed a number of clitoridectomies without consent.
If this tale sounds familiar, you may have watched the film Poor Things, where erotically-uninhibited Bella Baxter is threatened with this very procedure by her tyrannical first husband. Although the film is set in a fantastical parallel Victorian universe, the message about patriarchal control is all too real: females who display overt sexual behaviour should brace themselves for dire consequences. Tragically, this is the lived reality for millions of women across the globe right now who face terrible consequences for dressing immodestly, not being virgins or having love affairs. Not to mention all those who are mutilated before they can even get to express their sexuality. Around 200 million women and girls worldwide are currently believed to have undergone some degree of FGM.
The “orgasm gap” between men and women has been cited in the Commons and a recent University of Florida survey
I am constantly, acutely aware that my delightfully immodest, pleasure-filled existence (including eight years editing The Erotic Review) would have proved impossible for any woman in most times and places. My liberty to conduct myself largely as I please has been enabled by all the boundary-breaking women who came before me. I’d like to put in a shout for Marie Stopes and her campaign for proper contraception, and Margaret Mead for pointing out many indigenous populations didn’t suffer from our stultifying prudery. But I still feel my biggest debt of gratitude is to the female sexual pioneers of the 1960s and 70s: Nancy Friday who alerted an astonished world to the full bold range of women’s erotic fantasies (octopus or Alsatian sex anyone?), Erica Jong and her zipless fuck, Germaine Greer for not giving a flying fuck. And I worship at the shrine of Betty Dodson, who until her death aged 91 was holding workshops exhorting women to learn to love their vulvas, before showing them how to rev themselves to climax with a Hitachi Magic Wand.
However, it was Shere Hite who really got to the soft, fleshy nub of the matter. Like another feminist heroine Suzanne Moore (who’s written on Hite for this issue), I watched the new documentary about the single-minded, otherworldly sexologist with dismay. It is titled The Disappearance of Shere Hite with good reason: the backlash against the author in the US was so extreme she left New York and spent her last decades exiled in Europe. Where to start with her crimes? Hite’s research demonstrated most women climax through clitoral stimulation rather than penetration alone; it also showed men were emotionally-repressed souls, saddled with performance anxiety. But what really outraged the moralists was her suggestion in Women and Love (1987) that many unsatisfied married women had love affairs.
What’s astonishing is that the same issues continue to plague us. The “orgasm gap” between men and women has been cited in the Commons and a recent University of Florida survey of 193 male psychology students aged 18-24 revealed four in ten believed the clitoris was situated on the front wall of the vagina (28 per cent had no clue at all). Half thought the best way for a woman to achieve orgasm was – yup – through penetrative sex.
Perhaps women will just shut up shop and abandon soft, squishy human contact altogether. The biggest sociological-sexual surveys – like the UK’s NATSAL and its US equivalent – suggest this is the way humanity is trending. The number of sexual “episodes” young people are experiencing is in distinct decline. In February an astonished world learnt that even the French – traditionally the most amorous race on the planet – are abandoning the chaise longue. The French Institute of Public Opinion found that 28 per cent of people aged 18-24 had never had sex, up from five per cent in 2006.
When it comes to Eros, we seem to garner knowledge and then wilfully discard it. The G-spot has been “discovered” (notably by sexologist Beverly Whipple in 1982) and discounted again, several times in my lifetime. Why don’t we believe what wise women tell us about sex, the way we believe Newton about gravity? Particularly when they’re devoted their lives to the cause of enhancing erotic satisfaction? All Hite wanted to do was to strip away the lies, myths and inhibitions that stop women AND men from feeling sexual pleasure. But even in 2024 there are people who find that idea threatening – and, it would seem, dangerous.
Rowan Pelling is editor at Perspective and former editor of The Erotic Review
