On the Trail of the Big O

By John Leo

Ralph: Quiz time, dearest. What moves around more often than Elizabeth Taylor, the QE2 and the wandering albatross?

Wanda: I give up, Ralph. What?

Ralph: The female orgasm. In the old days, it used to be in the vagina. Then they moved it to the clitoris, where it remained stationary for a decade. Now it seems to be on the move again. Just restless, I guess.

Wanda: Ralph, what on earth are you talking about?

Ralph: The Great Traveling Orgasm, my pet. Under the majestic scepter of science, not to mention the cattle prod of sexual politics, the Big O is thrashing about once again. It's gone from vagina to clitoris and now seems headed for the brain and back to the vagina. Before you know it, it will come to rest on the elbow or the pancreas. Ralph's Guide to Sex, as yet unpublished, will advise all ardent males to rub everything once. One never knows where tomorrow's sexual climaxes will be located.

Wanda: I am about to have an out-of-body experience, Ralph. But I suppose I - could remain here with you and your monologue if a fact or two happened to intrude.

Ralph: Facts are the backbone of good argument, my beloved. I hold here in my hand the current winter issue of the Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy. I quote: "From recent empirical studies it can be concluded that most (and probably all) women possess vaginal zones whose tactile stimulation can lead to orgasm." Apparently the long tyranny of the clitoris is coming to an end, dearest. At least until the next dramatic breakthrough of sexual science or the next wave of feminism.

Wanda: You argue like a rogue elephant runs, Ralph. Look, Masters and Johnson showed that the clitoral-vaginal debate was irrelevant. There is only one kind of orgasm, and it almost always involves stimulation of the clitoris. It's just that orgasms without that stimulation are rarer and milder than those with it.

Ralph: Manfully argued, my pet. But let us cast a practiced eye at the politics of orgasm. Freud thought that truly mature women always shift their focus from the clitoris to the vagina, so women who needed clitoral stimulation were made to feel like retards or perverts. The feminists just reversed that. It was a much-loved way of downgrading penis-vagina sex and upgrading masturbation. Soon provagina women had to take to the hills like guerrillas. Clitoral enforcers like Shere Hite were sent out to mop up any remaining opposition: the poor deluded women who said they had vaginal orgasms and thought they were enjoying them. Hite called this "emotional" orgasm, as opposed to "real" orgasm. The clitoro-feminists also managed to clear out the compromisers, who believed in "blended" vaginal-clitoral orgasms. What the heck. It worked for Scotch, why not for climaxes? But no, the clitoral-pride movement got so strong it became somewhat embarrassing to admit that you owned a vagina or a penis. For all we know, women who used to fake vaginal orgasms for their hubbies began to fake clitoral ones for the women's movement. I guess you could call this progress of a sort. But do women really have to limit themselves to politically correct orgasms? Wanda, I stand before you as that rarest of males, a true feminist, calling for relief from the dogmas of Freudians and clitorists alike!

Wanda: I liked you better as a chauvinist pig, husband of mine. Your argument has only one minor flaw, Ralph: it's totally wrong. There is no clitoral party line, though easily threatened males may think so. The clitoris ! is the normal center of women's sexuality, and it is not our fault that it happens to be located in a spot that men find inconvenient. I bet that the article in the Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy is just more woolgathering about the G spot.

Ralph: Wrong, beloved helpmate. In fact, the author of the journal's piece, a sexologist named Heli Alzate, says that his own studies show no evidence of any such sexually sensitive tissue in the vaginal wall where the G spot is alleged to be. These are dark days for G spotologists, my dear. Ernst Grafenberg discovered his spot in the late '40s. But after many exhausting years in the lab stimulating all those hired prostitutes and cutting up all those cadavers, there's still no convincing evidence. But then, sexology is not an exact science. Who says sexologists should be able to locate a major sexual organ after only 40 years of searching? Anyway, the G spot people say the sensitive spot is usually found between 11 o'clock and 1 o'clock on the vaginal barrel. Alzate thinks there may be two other hot spots, at 4 o'clock and 8 o'clock.

Wanda: Why do I find all this so tacky? All these white-coated males poking around the female body, checking the wiring and looking for new buttons to push. Why are you all so obsessed with the technology of women's bodies?

Ralph: Easy, Wanda. It's just that males found out where their orgasms were located a million years ago, and women are still working on it. They'll probably figure it out any day now. No offense. It's just that if men's bodies were constructed like that, we'd still be looking for our knees.

Wanda: Let me tell you a little secret, Ralph. I married a lout. Who cares about the technology of orgasm? Sex is supposed to be part of a relationship, not a high school biology course. Some women have orgasms without contractions, and the white coats smile down and say, "Sorry, we can't count those because we can't measure them." Same old stuff of males using science to define and control women.

Ralph: Mellow out, dearest. Surely an acknowledged feminist such as myself is not the enemy . . .

Wanda: I'm developing a blinding headache in my R spot. That's the tiny part of my brain that thinks you're rational, Ralph. This headache is fully located between 9 p.m. and 6 a.m. on both my clock and my cranial barrel. Thank you and good night.