My favourite conference moment of 2018 (it's about erections)

One of my conference highlights this year was at the Australian Prostate Cancer Conference in Brisbane. Specifically, getting the audience to applaud the humble male erection.

It actually takes a lot to make a spontaneous erection happen.

The recipe needs good blood flow, so healthy veins, arteries, cardiovascular system, intact cavernous nerves, and the right hormonal balance including a low stress, high arousal environment.

Every erection deserves a round of applause.

But, even more impressive I feel, and what led to my second favourite conference moment, is the female erection (clitoral erection). And for that I asked the audience for an even more rousing applause (a spin on the term ‘standing ovation’)

As you can see from my slide below (tweeted by Peter Mac nurse extraordinaire Marc Ciocera), both erections are identical in structure, but the female erection is a stealthy ‘ice berg’. There’s more below than above the surface.

This is why I feel the female erection deserves applauding too. The same combination of ingredients is involved in creating both erections - but the female one is far more elusive. This has it’s advantages when riding on a particularly bumpy bus in public that the external male erection has a much harder time with. However, being so out of sight, has led to a bit of ‘out of mind’ too.

Research is lacking on the female erection - it was only truly ‘discovered’ in 1997 - and it’s exciting to think about what else we can learn about sexual function by studying this elusive pleasure organ.