the tragic physiognomies of the g-spot-less

On the car ride to Cleveland this last Christmas, with me and my screamingly injured hip wedged amidst suitcases and wrapped gifts in the back seat and my parents arguing about a banana peel in the front seat, I read Laura Kipnis' new book The Female Thing. Actually, I have a lot to say about all the issues upon which she touches in that book, but I'm going to save a lot of that for some other posts.

I bring up that book today, however, because she cites statistics about how hetersexual vaginal intercourse creates a pleasure deficit on the female side of the equation. Apparently, somewhere between 60% and 75% of women are unable to come via the ol' in-out-in-out method. Now, as I find myself among the blessed 25-40%, I kinda always figured it was something that could be taught and/or learned. I mean, it was certainly something that I didn't know I could do until I had some help learning how (more on that...maybe... if you're lucky... in future posts as well). Kipnis doesn't ever come out and say that she doesn't think that it's possible for women to learn to come that way, but her assertions that some women just "can't" suggests that she either hasn't considered whether it's a learned physiological response or an innate one or that she just plain thinks it's a matter of anatomy and that, no, some of us just aren't built for it.

And then along comes this article. Please excuse the ridiculously inappropriate and trite photo of Meg Ryan faking one in When Harry Met Sally. God, that's such a tired movie reference. I mean, surely women have faked it on screen better than that by now. Let's take, for instance, my own former classmate, l'il Laura Jean Reese Witherspoon in an atrocious movie called Fear. Who didn't know she was Oscar-bound when she quietly faked her little death on a roller coaster? Yeah, it's a bad movie, but so what? I can't say, however, that I anticipated her Oscar win when she was shooting me in the boob with a water gun out in front of our high school library building, but, you know-- shooting stuff onto boobs-- maybe it was anticipatorily symbolic of faking orgasms instead. Hmph. It appears I've digressed.

Anyway, I find the article interesting because it suggests that some of us are physiologically predisposed to being capable of g-spot orgasms and some (most) of us are not. And that explains a lot. But it's real sad, ain't it? Perhaps there is no teaching or learning to be had! Kipnis talks about how acts that perpetuate the species are, due to anatomical considerations alone, just plain more pleasurable for men-- and how fucking unfair that is. But while she acknowledges the ongoing debate about the existence of the g-spot, she never said one way or the other whether she personally believes in its existence, choosing instead to focus on the pleasure deficit. Now, all-in-all, Kipnis does a pretty good job of not presenting the female as a victim of a culture that privileges maleness... but she does give in to a little bit of frustrated teeth-gnashing that so many of our bodies are so unrelenting in their refusal to grant us internal orgasms. And that's fair, I guess.

I, too, am sorry about those bodies that lack thicker tissue between their vaginae and their urethrae.

I know what you're thinking. And yes. I do spend all day trolling the internet for crap like this. Why? What do YOU do all day?