"The clitoris rivals the penis in size."

Well why at the end of the article does she say that the penis is larger?

Anyway, anyone who's paid attention to that portion of our anatomy knows well that the penis and clitoris have the same origins in cellular development and that testosterone is what causes males to develop penises. If not for the testosterone, men would be, well, women.

Back to size though, As is mentioned in the article, as the clitoris is more than the glans, the "size" of a penis is more than what protrudes in front of us.

I'm not sure, what exactly, a medical article on the clitoris has to do with feminism.

Isn't it amazing what we find out when scientists and doctors devote time and enegery to women's sexual health? ;)

This article has to do with feminism because scientists and doctors have traditionally (as said the article) paid more attention to the male aspect of sexuality and not given much credit to the fact that females are also sexual beings versus just reproductive "vessels". It is extremely relevant if you read the BBC article.

Apologies for tooting my own horn, but I'm in the process of writing an extensive series on female ejaculation for an awesome feminist webzine. I just finished the anatomy piece, which explains more about the internal clit and how it relates to female ejaculation:

http://empowerment4women.com/culture/sexuality/fun_with_anatomy/

The first article is here, which discusses the history of female ejaculation and how women's health, pleasure, and overall sexual function has been wildly ignored, misunderstood, and mis-categorized throughout history:

http://empowerment4women.com/culture/sexuality/fetch_the_towels%3a_the_art_of_female_ejaculation/

BlackThirteen: I learned about the penis and its workings in 6th grade sex ed. All I was told about the clitoris was that it had a hood, and was the only organ that functioned specifically for pleasure.

It was not until a feminist-run orgasm workshop in my freshman year of college that I learned that the clitoris is more than a "little hill," as posted here.

Why was it that at 11 years old I knew how a penis works, but it was only at 18 years old that I learned how my own sex organs work?

Basically: Is the clitoris so damned MYSTERIOUS that it didn't even get half the airtime as the penis?

Heaven forbid girls learn about their sex organs too.

I love you, BCT.

I didn't know that the clitoris was more than a "little hill" until just now!

It was not until a feminist-run orgasm workshop in my freshman year of college that I learned that the clitoris is more than a "little hill," as posted here.

How can you utter the words "orgasm workshop", and not see the ridiculousness of it?

Why was it that at 11 years old I knew how a penis works, but it was only at 18 years old that I learned how my own sex organs work?

Sex-ed is to teach children about reproduction, safe sex, contraception, and the like. It's not to teach them how to give each other orgasms.

You might be comfortable with the idea of a bunch of 11 year olds running around learning orgasm-giving techniques, but I'm not.

From a purely biological, reproductive standpoint, the female orgasm is without purpose.

Sex for pleasure is a perfectly fine use for sex, but human sexuality is primarily a reproductive system. Thus the name, "reproductive system".

That's why most biologists and classes don't focus on the female orgasm. Because when learning about reproduction, a woman "getting off" really has no bearing on it.

That's why.

Though, it's odd to me:

When all a man thinks about is getting off, and sexual pleasure, feminists and women call him an "objectifier of women", and "someone who believes women are for his pleasure", and a "man child"...

But when women do the same, it's "empowering"?

I'm sorry we apparently disagree on feminist views. I think there's a lot more to it, and MUCH more important feminist work to be done than making certain you get lots of orgasms.

Great orgasms...or woman president? Great orgasms...or equal representation in congress?

It's just tacky to me to try to act like orgasms are important to feminism.

The only thing I know about the clitoris is that I better work on it, and that working on it yields results ...other than that, I am pretty fucking clueless.

Although reading the Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm a few years ago, as a college student, helped me greatly ...

Hurray! Thanks for posting this, Ann. That video was excellent, and Betty Dodson does indeed rock. The more vajay myths and mysteries that are proven wrong, the more i love my lady parts and what they can do.

"There's nothing quite like the shape of a clitoris."

I'll second that!

So the clitoris is like Hawaii...mostly beneath the surface.

Love the vid!

If the vaginal wall is, in fact, a part of the clitoris, does it mean that Freud was accidentally right when he referred to "vaginal orgasms"? That's kinda scary.

And I second skittle's love for BCT.

My recollection is that women who orgasm during sex are more likely to conceive, though they don't really understand the mechanism, presumably because it's only in the last few decades (if that) that we've even started to seriously study the female side of reproduction apart from the "passive receptacle for sperm" model.

Studying the female orgasm actually is empowering for a lot of women, if they've been told that their only role is sex is to please their male partner.

Not that women can't be selfish in bed. I've known a few who were. And they, just like their male counterparts, went through life thinking they were great in bed. And why wouldn't they? After all, they always had a good time...

[i]How can you utter the words "orgasm workshop", and not see the ridiculousness of it?[/i]

Because I found it [b]very[/b] useful. :3

[i]Sex-ed is to teach children about reproduction, safe sex, contraception, and the like. It's not to teach them how to give each other orgasms.

You might be comfortable with the idea of a bunch of 11 year olds running around learning orgasm-giving techniques, but I'm not.[/i]

Interesting how demanding an accurate education about female sex organs equates to teaching children sex techniques.

[i]From a purely biological, reproductive standpoint, the female orgasm is without purpose.[/i]

When a woman has an orgasm, the vaginal walls contract and dip into the pool of semen supposedly left, and help to deliver it up the canal. So yes, the female orgasm DOES have a purpose.

[i]When all a man thinks about is getting off, and sexual pleasure, feminists and women call him an "objectifier of women", and "someone who believes women are for his pleasure", and a "man child"...

But when women do the same, it's "empowering"?[/i]

Do all feminists believe that? Can you prove it? I certainly don't mind if men learn how to get off, I'd just like the same education.

[i]I'm sorry we apparently disagree on feminist views. I think there's a lot more to it, and MUCH more important feminist work to be done than making certain you get lots of orgasms.

Great orgasms...or woman president? Great orgasms...or equal representation in congress?

It's just tacky to me to try to act like orgasms are important to feminism.[/i]

How are equal representation and female orgasms mutually exclusive?

BlackThirteen, the female orgasm IS a feminist issue.

The reason that focusing so much on men's sexual pleasure is objectifying is because of the pervasive idea that women exist FOR men. This is evident throughout history and is ever-present in today's media. Even the Bible says "neither the man was created for the woman, but the woman for the man" (1 Cor. 11:19), and we know how influential the Bible was and is. So, the idea that women exist to give men orgasms and that the female orgasm doesn't exist/isn't important is by extension demeaning and objectifying.

However, saying that a female orgasm exists and is important doesn't get rid of the male orgasm, it just levels the playing field. Suddenly, sex is a happy fun time for everyone, not just for men; and women can go into having sex with the positive idea that their bodies are capable of getting something out of it as well. Suddenly, a woman's sexuality doesn't end in only a man's pleasure; it ends in pleasure for both partners.

Sure, there are very important feminist issues and orgasms pale in comparison. But when you think of what this knowledge of our bodies means, and how it can influence the bigger picture and the way everyone views sex, it does become at least moderately important. Having a sense of ownership of one's body (and that sense can come or be helped along by understanding how the body works) IS empowering, especially for women who have been told all their lives that their bodies exist for others.

From a purely biological, reproductive standpoint, the female orgasm is without purpose.

So the fact that we can even have one SHOULD be studied, seeing as something that *shouldn't* be there is.

Sex-ed is to teach children about reproduction, safe sex, contraception, and the like. It's not to teach them how to give each other orgasms.

BCT didn't say she learned how to give males orgasms, she said she knew how the penis WORKED. She was not taught how the clitoris or her vulva and vagina WORKED. Not how to stimulate it to orgasm but how it WORKED, as the article demonstrates. If grade school children know how male genitals WORK then why are they denied how female genitals WORK. The systems, the functions. No one is saying that the teacher needs to do a tell all about the many various ways to bring a female to orgasm, just how the system works, much like we learn about how the heart functions.

When all a man thinks about is getting off, and sexual pleasure, feminists and women call him an "objectifier of women", and "someone who believes women are for his pleasure", and a "man child"...

But when women do the same, it's "empowering"?

You're grasping at straws here. If a man has sex with a woman and jack hammers away, orgasms and quits without respecting his partners sexual pleasure then yeah, he's an asshole, we'd say the same for a woman if she did the same thing. In fact, a commenter has already pointed out how one of her friends was sexually selfish.

What's "empowering" as you so put it is women learning about their bodies and being able to have orgasms. And for a long time the scientific community didn't give a shit, even going as far to believe that the female orgasm didn't exist at all but they were proven wrong. There's a whole history there that I can't possibly go into here but one suggestion that I know you won't take (because really, you don't give a shit you just want to rant) The Technology of Orgasm: "Hysteria", The Vibrator and Women's Sexual Satisfaction

Sex-ed is to teach children about reproduction, safe sex, contraception, and the like. It's not to teach them how to give each other orgasms.

You might be comfortable with the idea of a bunch of 11 year olds running around learning orgasm-giving techniques, but I'm not.

I see. So teaching kids about the structure of the penis is actually a how-to guide on male masturbation.

From a purely biological, reproductive standpoint, the female orgasm is without purpose.

So, in other words, you know nothing about either biology or evolution. Animals have many different mechanisms for mating. Some animals, particularly some species of birds, have highly ritualistic mating practices. Some animals have restrictions on who can mate and when. (Only alpha male and female in a wolf pack are allowed to mate. Only the alpha female in a coyote pack is allowed to mate.) Some animals have mating practices that very closely resemble rape or gang rape to human eyes. (Dolphins and ducks come to mind.) Among other species, the female and only the female decides when, where, and with whom to mate.

All of these mating practices serve a purpose and are directly related to evolution and biology. It stands to reason that the female orgasm figures into this. Without it, perhaps fewer hominid women would have chosen to mate many millennia ago, drastically reducing the survival of the species. Since we don't have a time machine, we don't know, but it's highly unlikely that the clitoris and female orgasm would exist if they were irrelevant from an evolutionary and biological standpoint. If they were unnecessary, they would have been selected out and the clitoris would have turned into a vestigial organ a long time ago.

And, yes, this is a feminist issue. For too long (i.e. most of human history) women's sexual desire has been reviled and suppressed by the culture at large. It's a feminist issue to encourage women to take charge of our own sexuality.

"It's just tacky to me to try to act like orgasms are important to feminism."

In a world where FGM is still a far-too-common practice and orgasm denial is seen as a way to force sexual subservience on women orgasms are INCREDIBLY important to feminism.

I don't see why there's some "choice" between orgasms and a female president. They're completely separate, and both are important. Acting like orgasms aren't important, or are somehow "tacky", is just sweeping a huge issue under the rug in the hopes of making an issue go away.

If anything, the "tacky" description best applies to my orgasms. Friggin' semen.

"How can you utter the words "orgasm workshop", and not see the ridiculousness of it?"

Clearly spoken by someone whose genitals are easily accessible on the outside of his body, and who has never felt the weight of centuries of teaching that said genitals are disgusting.

"Sex-ed is to teach children about reproduction, safe sex, contraception, and the like. It's not to teach them how to give each other orgasms. You might be comfortable with the idea of a bunch of 11 year olds running around learning orgasm-giving techniques, but I'm not."

Did 11-year-olds at your school learn about safer sex and contraception? They didn't at mine. My first sex ed class, in fifth grade, taught us mostly about puberty. The girls had one class explaining tampons and maxi pads. Discussions of anatomy, safer sex, pregnancy, and so on took place in my seventh- and ninth-grade sex ed classes.

"From a purely biological, reproductive standpoint, the female orgasm is without purpose."

BZZZT! Wrong. Female orgasm changes the pH of the vagina to make it more hospitable for sperm. Also, the "milking" motions made by the vaginal walls serve to pull sperm towards the uterus.

"Sex for pleasure is a perfectly fine use for sex, but human sexuality is primarily a reproductive system."

Oh? So why don't humans go into estrus?

"Great orgasms...or woman president? Great orgasms...or equal representation in congress?"

Why does it have to be either/or? See this.

"When all a man thinks about is getting off, and sexual pleasure, feminists and women call him an "objectifier of women", and "someone who believes women are for his pleasure", and a "man child"... But when women do the same, it's "empowering"?"

Oh, gee... because for centuries both men and women were taught that women were only supposed to enjoy penile thrusting, but if they enjoyed it too much they were "whores"? And that the female orgasm was "unimportant"? And... oh hell, BlackThirteen, why don't you read a fucking book?

"Great orgasms...or woman president? Great orgasms...or equal representation in congress?"

Whoa, wait, we have to choose? And here I thought I could have all the orgasmic sex I want and it wouldn't have any effect on, say, Hillary's run for president. I guess my husband and I are to blame for Obama becoming the nominee instead of Hillary!

"It's just tacky to me to try to act like orgasms are important to feminism."

Personally, I'd rather be tacky than ignorant. The rule that women's (and to some degree, men's) physical selves shouldn't be talked about are patriarchal, pure and simple. Would you be as concerned about tackiness if you were talking about the function of, say, your ear or your hips? ...Ever wonder why not?

Anyway, first the pictures of ovulation and then this clit info... I love learning about my body! Thank you!

Black Thirteen is giving me serious deja vu back to this discussion about Sex Ed from a few months ago.

Sample Comparison:

Black Thirteen: "You might be comfortable with the idea of a bunch of 11 year olds running around learning orgasm-giving techniques, but I'm not."

Mild Ennui: "teaching 11 year olds how to pleasure each other is not the task of a sex education classroom in a middle school"

Black Thirteen: "From a purely biological, reproductive standpoint, the female orgasm is without purpose.
...
human sexuality is primarily a reproductive system. Thus the name, "reproductive system".
...
That's why most biologists and classes don't focus on the female orgasm. Because when learning about reproduction, a woman "getting off" really has no bearing on it."

Mild Ennui: "From a medical point of view, definining the reproductive system of the human body, involves detailing the parts necessary for reproduction.

The vulva, clitoris, and labia are irrelevant when it comes to these things.
...
The reproductive system doesn't care if you had an orgasm or not. For the purposes of reproduction, your clitoris is irrelevant."

Maybe y'all can see why I'm having trouble convincing myself that Black Thirteen isn't actually Mild Ennui posting under a different name?

Oh wow, thank you! I knew there was something more going on down there!

It's just tacky to me to try to act like orgasms are important to feminism.

It's pretty tacky and rude to tell people what they should or shouldn't talk about, or think is important.

Feminism=about women

Woman's anatomy=about women

see the connection?

You are continuing the patriarchal myth that women's orgasms are unimportant and have no reproductive function.

Teaching women about their own bodies and how they work is important and empowering in other
"non-sexual" aspects of their lives.

All humans are sexual beings and to tell a woman that her sexuality is unimportant is a way to control and belittle her humanhood. So stop it.

How could sexual agency and awareness of your own body, and the promotion of such against structural ignorance, NOT be feminist?

Also, after I popped in on Sullivan's blog (I had read it up until a month or so into Clinton's campaign) after Clinton's concession, and now I just want to rant and rant at that misogynist douchebag.

Yay! I am so happy to see this. I teach anatomy and didn't know anything about the internal structure of the clit until I took gross anatomy for the first time when I was 22. Figuring that I probably was not the only one for whom it was all a revelation, I now make it a point to teach about clit anatomy whenever I teach female pelvic anatomy. Just doing my part to make sure the doctors of the future know what's in there, too!

Black Thirteen-

I'm relatively new to learning about feminism, so others here might disagree with me, but for my personal feminism is less a set of rigid beliefs I adhere to and more a way of framing my arguments and world view; it's a set of questions I ask when I look at the world.

So the influence feminism has on ones political beliefs might lead them to campaign for more female politicians. Or, more usefully, politicians who recognise that issues like affordable housing, education, poverty, criminal justice, employment rights and reproductive choice aren't less of a priority when the ones losing out are women.

But in their personal life feminism might lead a woman to learn about her own sexuality. To learn to see her body as her own body- not a science class variation on a male body or a series of poses in a magazine. And if my personal experience of sexuality is dominated by a rather warped cultural and social image of female sexuality, then what feminism has to say about personal issues of sexuality takes on a political significance.

I learnt about sex from magazines.

A couple of years ago, up to the age of 16 I went to a very small all girls Catholic school, we sat in the common room reading magazines and talking almost exclusively about sex; who'd done what with who, allegedly. There was even an intricate little map in the back of someone's homework diary so you could work out the degrees of separation between every girl in our year via the slightly rough boys from the technology college we paired off with for parties.

We had no official sex education just a video in Religious Education once, narrated by a Catholic priest about how drinking leads to rape in a pub car park leads to shame. Marriage leads immediately to pregnancy (and rather graphic birth), but this is the best possible thing for a girl. Homosexuality leads to getting beaten up leads to pity and a death from AIDS at 19 and no-one will come to your funeral, except your parents (who will sit in the back looking ashamed!). It was from the 1980s, or possibly another planet. I got sent out of that class for laughing too much.

Anyway, no-one paid very much attention to the party line on this one. Instead we'd read out loud the dirty bits from Cosmo and Marianne Keyes to each other and laugh and bitch relentlessly about anyone who wasn't actually in the room at the time and disect on Monday morning what had happened at parties at the weekend- which meant who had puked and who had pulled.

So the magazines told us to always a use a condom (but not how to, or other means of contraception) and that you shouldn't let a boy pressure you into sex but five signs he fancies you and articles about teenage mothers ('I only had sex once when I was drunk and now I'm the 14-year-old single mother of twins') and not to worry if your boobs are wonky.

But there was nothing about our genitalia, nothing about our orgasms. And everyone was disgusted, or feigned disgust, to read that 47% of women (less than half anyway) reported that they masturbated. And this despite the fact that it became the vogue for a while for the cliquier- and we all knew 'sluttier'- girls to give each other sex toys as a 16th birthday present. I remember sitting in our form room, while this ridiculously lurid silicone thing was being passed along the desk and the birthday girl- who had a certain way with words- said to her friend "hey, don't touch that that's going up my fanny later" and her friends mortified were like, "oh, you don't seriously mean you're..."

They meant, you don't mean you're actually going to use it. As though they'd been accesorising a Barbie. The same way these girls would talk loudly about giving boys blowjobs, but no-one ever talked about receiving oral sex.

And for me personally, this teen magazine sexuality was even emptier and more conflicting. Since I was awkwardly and hopelessly and silently fairly sure I was gay. Every magazine I read I'd turn first to the problem pages at the back, to see if I could see someone a bit like me. And when there was the answer was always the same, and it was always that probably this was only a phase. And my phase went on longer and longer and it never said what to do if it actually wasn't.

And when I had my first girlfriend when I was 15 I still didn't know where the clitoris was. Which, as you can imagine, was something of a disadvantage.

So that's what mainstream culture taught me about sexuality in general. The magazines didn't help, neither did the young adult novels filled with teenage mothers who seemed to get pregnant about as immaculately as the Blessed Virgin under the influence of alcopops, neither did the films that faded to black or else added a laugh track to the bedroom.

And this is in an allegedly hyper-sexualised culture.

Well it's not. We're meant to try for sexy, never sexual. To be sexy is to strike the right poses. That's what we can learn from mainstream culture. The girls who got off with each other at parties, while boys took photos on their mobile phones were 'sexy'. My agonsing about my actual homosexuality wasn't, but it was real; because it was real. So Katie- who'd been with more girls than me- could call me a dyke when she saw me and my girlfriend holding hands in the hall, because no-one was watching us.

Sexy is the inanimate version of sexuality. No-one ever got off because they struck the right pose, subtly lit, in lacy knickers.

So if mainstream culture tells me how to be a sexy girl, but feminism says it can help me discover how to be a sexual being- whether or not that's at a 'ridiculous' orgasm workshop- then I know what I chose.

You might think it's tacky "to try to act like orgasms are important to feminism". But I don't think it's unreasonable to say that orgasms are important to women.

(and anyway I'm 19 and I've never even had an orgasm)

Sorry, this long and slightly off the topic. I just wanted to explain.

I recently read a book, The Clitourist (yes, that's not a typo) and agree wholeheartedly that the more information made available about this amazing part of a woman's body the better and healtier our society will be.

According to the book, the clitoris's only purpose is for pleasure, and it has about twice the nerve endings than a penis. For too long women have been made to believe that their orgasm is secondary to a man's - anything that helps to change that sick idea should be applauded and it is a feminist topic, at least imo.

david

You all seemed to have covered this discussion pretty well, so I suppose I don't have much to add, except to note that it's not even as though the only thing we're discussion is whether or not female anatomy is important to teach children (which is t obviously is). More shockingly, this isn't a diagram I ever saw in high school biology, or anywhere else that wasn't a feminist forum, for that matter! To withhold information about their bodies from women is a powerful form of oppression. If women are not taught they are biologically able to enjoy sex, then that information obviously shapes their perception about what their role in a sexual relationship is in a harmful way.

In the absence of accessible good science about female sexuality, a lot of mysticism evolves - particularly for young women.By effectively learning that men can physically enjoy sex while women can only enjoy it psychologically since the proper biology is absent, women lose agency and misunderstand the source of their own arousal - what is this feeling? It must be love!

JaneL, it gets better, really. And solo sex can help you be better with a partner, so it's definitely worth, um, exploring.

Regarding "it's a phase", I will say that an awful lot of what we go through in our teens and twenties turns out to have been a phase. That's probably true of the thirties, too, but I'm still in that phase. Heck, if you take a long enough view, breathing and standing upright is "just a phase" we're going through.

Some are gay, some are straight, some are bi, some are into, well, things the rest of us might find a bit odd. And some don't care about sex at all. Don't worry about fitting yourself into a category, just try to figure out how to be happy.

As far as whether or not the female orgasm is important when learning about reproduction:

I was under the impression that when a woman came, it increased the likelihood of her being impregnated. Am I totally wrong here? (I also wouldn't assume that the woman's sexual pleasure is "useless" while the male's is the be-all end-all of human existence.)

Anyway, I would be perfectly cool with 11 year old girls understanding female orgasms. Kids are already starting to masturbate by that time. And I do think it's ridiculous that female sexuality is not considered "important" to hetero sex and making babies! That kind of thinking is like saying we shouldn't teach kids/teens about sex at all, because then they might DO it! Oh wait, I just summarized a whole semester of abstinence only sex-ed!

Oh & btw, thanks for this post. I had no idea how ginormous my clit was. Not as if it would be possible to love it anymore than I already do, but...

The video is excellent.

They really need to teach this in sex ed classes. My sex ed class taught a lot of important things, but it ignored the clitoris. I think that it is important for girls AND boys to know how a woman's body works.

I think all women should know exactly all about their vaginas and clitorises and so forth. There's a great book called The V Book: A Doctor's Guide to Complete Vulvovaginal Health, by Elizabeth Stewart, and I think it should be required reading for every woman.

I think that it is important for girls AND boys to know how a woman's body works.

Why is it important for young boys to know how a clitoris works? In order to give women those orgasms feminists feel we "owe" them?

Why is it important for young boys to know how a clitoris works? In order to give women those orgasms feminists feel we "owe" them?

Thanks for making it clear what you really think, Black Thirteen.

By the way, your inadequacies, your fear of not being able to satisfy a woman sexually, and your probable hatred of women that makes you gag at the thought of women being sexually fulfilled are your problem, not ours.

And, yes, you do "owe" your sex partner orgasms. And if you fail to deliver, she is well within her rights to dump your sorry ass.

Well, no, Black Thirteen. Not "in order to give women those orgasms feminists feel" you "'owe' them". Plenty of women are perfectly adept at giving themselves orgasms.

Okay, I'm done being glib. It's actually because young humans are fascinated with their own body and the bodies of others. Why shouldn't young boys and girls learn about all human sex organs, on a "this is what it is, and this is where it is, and this is its size" level?

"Why is it important for young boys to know how a clitoris works? In order to give women those orgasms feminists feel we "owe" them?"

To tell you the truth, BlackThirteen, it's probably better for us all if you, personally, don't bother learning anything about the clitoris. That way no woman will be tempted to stay with you.

That way no woman will be tempted to stay with you.

I should add, that this is also terribly sexist.

Because, you know, a man without a woman is essentially nothing, so it's the ultimate insult to tell him that women might not want him, right?

Much as women and feminists tell men, I tell you: Don't overestimate your own worth to the opposite sex.

"Why is it important for young boys to know how a clitoris works? In order to give women those orgasms feminists feel we "owe" them?

Obviously, you want to keep boys ignorant so they can grown up to be like you. You are an idiot. Damn right, men owe women orgasms. That said, it's important for boys to know how a woman's body works so that they learn how to give a woman the same kind of pleasure that they will expect from her when they grow up instead of being sexually frustrated trolls who post stupid comments on feminist blogs because they can't understand that women are human beings with the same kind of sexual desires that men have. But than, trolls like you think that it's always the woman's fault anyway.

Wow, JaneL really hit the nail on the head re: the difference between sexual and sexy. Well put, and thanks for sharing such a strikingly articulate, insightful, and personal comment.

Ad Hominems, Strawmen, and botched psycho-anaylsis.

Quite the debate this is.

"'That way no woman will be tempted to stay with you.'

I should add, that this is also terribly sexist.

Because, you know, a man without a woman is essentially nothing, so it's the ultimate insult to tell him that women might not want him, right?

Much as women and feminists tell men, I tell you: Don't overestimate your own worth to the opposite sex."

I think you misunderstand the word sexist. You also seem not to understand that if you don't think it's important that your partner have orgasm (male OR female) then that means your relationship is lacking respect & consideration. So if you are going to be a shallow, selfish partner, who WOULD want to be with you? This isn't a sexist comment to ask that you behave like a human. No one is saying that you're worthless without a woman. All that was said is that if you'd like to have a good, long-term relationship with a woman, you should treat her well and consider going down on her every now and then (especially if you want the same done for you).

Btw, would you be offended if your girlfriend refused to understand how a penis works? Wouldn't you find that unreasonable, especially considering how uncomplicated it is?

That's how we feel about this. Get it now?

BlackThirteen, why are you still here? I thought it wasn't possible for you to look any more foolish, but you outdo yourself with every new comment.

"...a man without a woman is essentially nothing, so it's the ultimate insult to tell him that women might not want him, right?"

It's more a case of pointing out consequences for asshole behaviour.

A heterosexual male who thinks that women's orgasms are "unimportant", and who can't understand why he and other straight males should educate themselves about women's pleasure, is one who will leave his sex partners unsatisfied and unhappy. It's better for all concerned if no women have sex with such men.

Since this describes you, then you shouldn't have sex with women. QED.

If you feel insulted by this advice, then you should change your attitude so that it no longer applies to you.

This is awesome. (I'm male)

I'm surprised any heterosexual men would be irritated about giving a woman orgasm(s). Isn't that the best part? I love the idea of making her feel good.

While I know it's not necessarily the case, it seemed like men in general were too eager to please women (lots of men being desperate to offer massages, cunnilingus, gifts, etc) and the women being (understandably) reluctant to let the men try to give them pleasures, either being too suspicious of their intent and/or being altruistic.

(For me, it would be almost selfish to do cunnilingus and other stuff like that. The thought of a woman enjoying herself, in both sexual and non-sexual ways, makes me feel euphoric, almost like a drug)

All along I thought there was only this obscure "G-Spot" that had to have the precise amount of pressure applied to it, or the woman would be annoyed or even have a tiny amount of pain.

It makes me happy knowing I would have a whole clitoris to work with, rather than a tiny, uncertain G-Spot.

(Of course I have never had a girlfriend/wife, and most likely never will, since I don't really know how to go about it correctly, but if it ever happens, at least I have some wonderful ideas from this site)