Finally, the clitoris is getting the attention it deserves
There’s no excuse for being icliterate any more.It was a long time coming, but, almost 30 years after the web of nerves inside the penis was charted, we’ve finally got a similar 3D map of the nerves within the glans of the clitoris.You can’t see all of the nerve branches of the clitoris via dissection or clinical imaging methods, which is why this sort of visualisation is so important.Ju Young Lee, one of the researchers behind the scan, has said she’s amazed it has taken so long for a project like this to materialise.But the clitoris has long been understudied and misunderstood.
The Malleus Maleficarum, a 1486 guide to identifying witches, even described it as the “devil’s teat” and noted that if you found one, it would prove a woman was a witch.(The good news: not many men could find one.The bad news: you may just have discovered you’re a witch.)Over the centuries, the clitoris has been discovered then forgotten then debated then rediscovered again and again.The first published anatomical dissection was performed by the French anatomist Charles Estienne in 1546; he charmingly described it as the “membre honteux” (shameful member).
Around the same time, an anatomist called Andreas Vesalius dismissed the idea of the clitoris, calling it “a new and useless part” and arguing that it didn’t exist in healthy women.Not all men of that era were quite so clueless.In 1672, the Dutch physician and anatomist Regnier de Graaf noted that every female body he had dissected had a visible clitoris and added: “We are extremely surprised that some anatomists make no more mention of this part than if it did not exist at all in the universe of nature.” And I’m sure you won’t be surprised that women were well aware of their own body parts.A midwife called Jane Sharp described the sexual function of the clitoris in 1671.
It’s easy to laugh at historical men who associated the clitoris with witchery, but modern medicine hasn’t been that much more enlightened.A 2018 study in the journal Sexual Medicine found that, because “physical examination of the clitoris is uncommon and not routinely taught” in gynaecology training programmes and clinical practice, doctors regularly overlook sexual health conditions related to the clitoris.All this to say: this map is a long overdue development that could have some important ramifications for public health.Let’s hope the clitoris finally starts to get the attention it deserves.Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnistThe assault on freedom with Mehdi Hasan and Arwa Mahdawi On Monday 8 June, join Mehdi Hasan and Arwa Mahdawi to discuss the current seismic changes in geopolitics, the alarming rise of populism and nationalism, and its global implications.
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