The following is intended for readers 18+

For most of us, orgasms are, simply, awesome. Yet from the origins of modern psychology in the late nineteenth century, a combination of cultural stereotypes, pseudoscience, and plain old misogyny created an enduring notion that women’s orgasms were a problem to be solved, rather than anormal part of sexual pleasure and mental wellbeing.

While historical stigma against women’s sexual pleasure contributes to anorgasm gapthat persists today, contemporary psychologists are drawing on the work of pioneering feminists and sexuality researchers to correct misinformation and celebrate the diversity of healthy female sexuality.

Here’s how contemporary women came to take our sexual pleasure (and our clitoral orgasms!) back.

Frigidity and Freud

It was in this atmosphere of stigma that the father of modern psychology, Sigmund Freud, produced his influential work.According to Freud, while female children experienced pleasure from the clitoris, adult women had to shift their focus exclusively to vaginal intercourse or risk psychological disorder.

As a result, until the mid twentieth-century psychologists considered women who orgasmed from clitoral stimulation immature and even prone to psychosis. “Proper” sexual pleasure was defined only through married, vaginal heterosexual intercourse. Women who couldn’t orgasm this way wereoften considered “frigid,”disordered, or automatically assumed to belesbian — which was also considered a mental illness.

Feminists Fight Back

With the sexual revolution of the sixties, feminists and researchers embarked on a mission to reclaim the clitoris.

Second wave feminists virulently critiqued the idea that female sexuality should be centered around married, heterosexual vaginal intercourse. Feminists likeLuce Irigary,Monique Wittig, andAdrienne Richargued that the Freudian focus on the vagina was simply a way to make women subservient to men. They argued variously for a reclaiming of the clitoris as the source of women’s pleasure and orgasm, for a more holistic experience of sensuality beyond the genitals, and for the liberating potential of lesbianism.

Other feminists didn’t merely write about female sexual pleasure: They showed women how to obtain it. The Boston Women’s Health Collective pioneered medically accurate, frank, and sex-positive information about sexuality with their 1971 publication ofOur Bodies, Ourselves, which is still in print. Tee Corinne’s 1975Cunt Coloring Bookcelebrated the diversity of vulvas (not just vaginas!) with detailed illustrations. And starting from the late sixties,sex educator Betty Dodsonbegan championing the transformative power of women’s masturbation through writing and group masturbation workshops — with much emphasis on the wonders of the clitoris.

Finally, with the fullremoval of homosexuality from the DSMin 1987, psychologists acknowledged that a wide variety of sexual pleasures and orientations were not only normal — they were healthy.

The Current Clitoral Consensus

Most contemporary sexological research agrees that, in contrast to Freud’s unscientific view, female orgasm does not, in fact, come from the vagina, where there are few nerve endings. Rather, women orgasm from stimulation of the “clitourethrovaginal complex,” a structure of nerve endings which extends from the visible clitoris deep into the body.

That means that rather than there being anatomically different “clitoral” and “vaginal” orgasms, with vaginal being superior, women may experiencedifferent orgasmic sensationsfromstimulating the clitourethrovaginal complexin different places. Clitoral stimulation thusisn’t just healthy — it’s the basis of orgasm.

Today, many psychologists are focusing not on sexual “normalcy” but onsexual equality, the idea that people of all genders should have access to healthy sexual pleasure stemming from good communication, mutual respect, and accurate information about the body.

Bring on the Orgasm Equality

Bycorrecting longstanding stereotypesabout female sexuality — especially the idea that all people with vaginas should be able to orgasm from intercourse alone — we can make sexual pleasure more accessible to everyone. So don’t let stereotypes about what’s “normal” hold you back. Partnered, group, or solo; clitoral, vaginal, and everything in between — sexual pleasure is totally normal, and totally good for your physical and mental health.

Our goal at Talkspace is to provide the most up-to-date, valuable, and objective information on mental health-related topics in order to help readers make informed decisions.

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