Which came first - Viagra or The Clitoris?

Some Australian based readers might have seen The Good Weekend magazine last week featuring a picture of a golden wishbone on the front cover. aka, the clitoris.

Functioning solely for sexual pleasure, it’s wish granting connotations are appropriate.

The article tells the story of Melbourne based urologist, Helen O’Connell. The first person to essentially ‘discover’ this part of anatomy by mapping it first using cadaver dissection in 1998, then MRI in 2005.

Here are three shockers/insights I took away from the story.

  1. 1998 was one year after Viagra was launched. It’s quite strange when we think about this because the clitoris is in fact an erection, homologous to the male erection. Imagine if Gray’s Anatomy featured diagrams of male anatomy that looked like ken dolls?! Yet that’s how the female anatomy was - and in many textbooks still is - portrayed.

  2. This gives us a moment of compassion for the entire field of sex research and our culture of sexual shame that still persists regarding sexual pleasure. It’s only been 20 years since we started the work on really understanding an organ of the body designed for pleasure. It’s no surprise we are still learning and un-learning as our knowledge increases.

  3. Speaking of learning and un-learning — The G-Spot does not technically exist, because it IS the Clitoris. For more information I highly recommend reading the article here.

Victoria Cullen

I help men after prostate cancer treatment recover sexual function. I am a PhD researcher and sexual recovery consultant based in Melbourne, Australia.

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