Clitoris Researcher Wants You to Know Everything This Sex Organ Can Do |
The clitoris does a lot more than make sex feel good. And Angela Towne wants it to get the respect it deserves.
Mainstream understanding of the clitoris has come a long way in recent decades. In the 1960s and 1970s, feminists worked to destigmatize sexual pleasure involving the clitoris.
“It was really important to do that during second wave feminism,” Towne, a sexuality researcher and educator who teaches at Southern Illinois University School of Medicine, told Rewire News Group, but “now what I see is that it’s being used as a reason to disregard” the clitoris. “‘Oh it’s for pleasure, it has no other purpose, so who cares?’”
Towne’s research on the many functions of the clitoris sheds light on how U.S. society’s male-centered take on sex and gender has affected the traditional dynamics of whose pleasure gets prioritized during sex. That perspective has also skewed what the science shows—biologically—about the clitoris.
RNG sat down with Towne to set the clitoral record straight.
This interview was conducted by phone and email, and has been edited for length and clarity.
What else is the clitoris used for, beyond pleasure?
The clitoris has important safety functions. Greater vaginal lubrication lessens the likelihood of micro-tears and abrasion in the vaginal canal or in the outer vulva, which are potential inroads into the body for sexually transmitted infections.
So if I stimulate a clitoris, that stimulation causes greater vaginal lubrication that lessens the likelihood of…viruses and bacteria. … We could include clitoral stimulation in sex education aimed at reducing STI risk because communicating with someone about how they like their clitoris to be touched is going to be protective.
The clitoris has reproductive support functions as well. So along with creating a safer bodily state for the main reproductive method—which is penile vaginal intercourse—there’s also clitoral stimulation, we find, changes the chemical makeup of vaginal fluid.
For example, vaginal fluid with clitoral stimulation: The vaginal fluid has i