Despite all our troubles, we live in a time of great discovery. ‘In each of the last four decades, a book has been published that has greatly altered our understanding and knowledge about human sexuality. The pioneering works of Kinsey, Masters and Johnson, and Hite are about to be succeeded in the 1980s by The G Spot and Other Recent Discoveries about Human Sexuality. Never before have the facts been explained so thoroughly and convincingly, within the context of other sexual discoveries throughout history. Scientific and statistical evidence is included to substantiate the pioneering work of the authors … Bound to be widely read and hotly argued, The G Spot is the perfect guide for millions of people who want to explore further the pleasures of their sexuality’.
So runs the jacket blurb; and inside, authors Ladas, Whipple and Perry’s own message: ‘This book is about important newly discovered facts that are crucial to our understanding of how human beings function sexually. We believe that the information presented here can be used to help millions of women and men lead more pleasurable and satisfying lives and avoid a good deal of unnecessary suffering and frustration’. In this one field, at least, the endless red carpet of Progress unfurls faster than we can run down it, discovery succeeding discovery on the path to true ‘understanding and knowledge about human sexuality’. For those of us who have grown up under the artificial light of positivism, believing that science and society march forward into the future hand in hand like the children in the Start-Rite ad, there is still one area where technology, medicine and statistical logic can offer riches, in the midst of general devastation. That area is physically small, but in the alchemy of science, its power and effects are magically limitless. It appears to be on the one hand, a small area the size of a bean located on the inside wall of the vagina, and also, simultaneously, ‘sexuality’, that mystical substance denoted by a word which only came into existence in the nineteenth century.
That access to ‘human sexuality’ should be afforded through such a small and specific spot is a mystery to unravel later. But as long as we understand ‘sexuality’ to be as old as the hills, and only our understanding and knowledge of it to be new, we miss the point that in the modern era, ‘sexuality’ has been set up, precisely to be understood. The relatively recent use of the word itself shows that it is a particular concept of sex which characterizes our own time, not the revealing of sex itself, which, after all, has always been known to people.
For what is so interesting about these twentieth century ‘discoveries’ about sexuality – a context in which this new book quite rightly places itself – is not the actual findings, which are always either statistical or clinical, but the evangelical nature of their de-mystifying, in fact the belief that they are indeed de-mystifying anything. A mystique is created in the very act of ostentatiously knocking it down. A glance over the last few issues of Cosmopolitan – a key product of this era – shows this most simply: ‘sex myths exploded’ (what myths?); ‘sex – the new realism’ (what was the old idealism?); ‘How I stopped worrying and put sex into perspective’ (were you worrying?); and finally, the ultimate modern dictate, ‘be true to your own sexuality’. The real point about this endless, obsessive speech about sex is that it claims over and over again to destroy some previous notion, it is a knowledge that parades a cast-off ignorance before it like a shadow. Ours is a society which speaks insistently of what it doesn’t speak of, relentlessly finding things that no-one had lost in the first place.
And the territory of the great march forward into sexual knowledge always seems to be the female body. It is our bodies the pioneers search, for clues into ‘the understanding of human sexuality’ – yet another case of ‘they’ve got it, she wears it’. Far more revealing than anything The G Spot could reveal about our bodies, is the claim that ‘these findings constitute an important step in demystifying Freud’s “dark continent”, which is not quite as dark as it was when he coined that phrase in connection with female sexuality one hundred years ago. But much more research remains to be done’. The missionary zeal with which this colonization of the dark continent takes place is one which holds up a light, precisely to reveal darkness; an empire on which the sun never sets, but is always rising. Maybe the dark continent is no longer ‘quite as dark’ – but there can be no slacking, ‘much more remains to be done’.
So what are the ‘new facts’ that further this cause? The G spot itself, called after Ernst Gräfenberg who ‘discovered’ it in the ’40s, is a small, invisible area of sexual sensitivity ‘usually located about halfway between the back of the pubic bone and the front of the cervix … the exact size and location vary. It lies deep within the vaginal wall …’ – like the Sleeping Beauty, waiting for Prince Science to awaken it from centuries of oblivion. ‘The clitoris, located outside the body, is easy for every woman to discover and enjoy by herself. The G spot, located inside the anterior wall of the vagina, is more difficult for a woman to find on her own.’
Here is a difficulty we did not know we had until Knowledge handed it to us. But why now? The G spot was not, in fact, ‘discovered’ but only cashed in on, in the 1980s. The particular significance it acquires in this book comes from its association with the ‘dramatic discovery’ of female ejaculation. The G spot is found to be the equivalent of the male prostate gland, and its stimulation produces an ejaculation similar to men’s. The excitement at finding this analogy also hands us something we might not have felt – that we were missing something because we were different. Now we know we are up to scratch: we have an equivalent for the penis (the clitoris) and the prostate (the G spot) and we can also come like the boys. The relief of the specialists at finding these precise analogies measures the unease, perhaps, aroused by sexual difference. But for women, the endless reassurances which accompany each ‘discovery’ are merely the giftwrapping for more anxieties. It is perfectly normal to ejaculate a quantity of fluid through the urethra on orgasm – but what if one doesn’t? The sexual tasks pile up like homework on a Sunday night.
The authors claim that ‘the G spot is what specifically frees us from the either/or thinking of past decades’, i.e. the clitoral vs. vaginal orgasm debate. They begin the book with a tour through Freud, Kinsey, Masters and Johnson and others, leading up to their own discoveries as if on an inevitable escalator to enlightenment: ‘These four discoveries, the Grafenberg spot, female ejaculation, the importance of pelvic muscle tone and the continuum of orgasmic response, unify the findings of the Freudians and other sex researchers into an understandable and consistent whole. Our dilemma is resolved. We now have a new synthesis that validates the experience of both vaginal and clitoral orgasm.’ They parade their work as the solution to an enormous dilemma. (Our dilemma?) But why was it a dilemma in the first place? In claiming to solve it, they actually confirm that there was a problem to be solved – the ‘problem’ of the female orgasm. Although The G Spot is so superbly liberal in allowing both sides of the debate to be true, it also confirms the categories of clitoral/vaginal orgasm even further than before, with its diagrams showing the difference between the ‘Tenting’ (clitoral) and ‘A-Frame’ (G spot) effects – which make one’s vagina sound like a campsite.
The point about the clitoral/vaginal argument, whether seen from one side or the other, or ‘both’, is that it presupposes an incredible faith in the truth of scientific categorization – a truth which one would think would be questionable simply on account of its so frequent updating. It is a strange assumption that we need our experience of orgasm validated by research, as if it was not valid on its own. Clearly there is an enormous range of sexual experiences, and obviously sex feels different having something inside you. The G Spot mistakes trying to name the wheel for inventing it.
This is exemplified in the opening chapter, where the authors remind us that Kinsey et al ‘certainly brought into the open a whole range of human behaviour that had previously been discussed only in whispers behind closed doors, if at all.’ Oh, how they love those whispers, which confirm their own imagined shout! Those closed doors, which they believe they are the first to open. But historically, this is nonsense. Sexual theories were in the market-place long before the twentieth century. A popular sex manual, bizarrely titled Aristotle’s Masterpiece, which ran through hundreds of editions over the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, was most graphic about the identification of the clitoris as ‘the seat of venereal pleasure’ in women, and the female capacity for multiple orgasms; and such works as this were, as an eighteenth century observer wrote, ‘sold openly on every stall’.
No, what is modern is the idea that sex is such an explosive subject. ‘Three times in this century, great pioneers in the field of human sexuality have shocked, informed and transformed our world. The people responsible for these seismic changes are Sigmund Freud, Alfred Kinsey and the team of Masters and Johnson’ (my italics). And this seismic shock – ‘tenting’, perhaps – is nothing to the global, ‘A-Frame’ orgasm triggered by The G Spot. Its main selling point is not, in fact, its discoveries, but the controversy and violent storms it claims already to have aroused. The publishers themselves suggest that the truth of the argument is far less important than its impact: ‘As expected, publication of The G Spot has set off fireworks amongst sexologists – some wholeheartedly agree with the existence of the spot, whilst others fault the authors’ research. One thing however is quite certain – no other book has ever prompted such a response from the public’ (my italics).
The repeated emphasis on this flood of response carries overtones not only of sexual eruption, but also of the Confessional, in which ‘hundreds of case histories and personal testimonies’ pour through the grille to our high priests of modern sexuality. Sex and confession have always been intimately linked, but with The G Spot this is hardly metaphorical: one of the authors, John D. Perry, MDiv, PhD is ‘an ordained minister, psychologist and sexologist, specializing in vaginal myography and other innovative applications of bio-feedback, the inventor of the Electronic Perineometer which measures the tone and health of pelvic muscles.’ The chapter devoted to Minister Perry’s device, headed ‘The Importance of Healthy Pelvic Muscles’, suggests it is a moral duty to keep your pubococcygeus muscles in tip-top shape through constant vigilance: ‘You can encourage yourself by placing some kind of reminder where you will see it. For example, affix a brightly coloured dot to your briefcase, the telephone, the refrigerator, a clock or lamp. Every time you see the dot, contract your PC muscle several times.’ The religious energies once used to suppress the sexual are now conveniently, but equally obsessively, channelled into it. There is the case history of an extremely religious woman whose husband ‘threatened to get a divorce if she did not get medical help for her weak muscles. According to the therapist “she was the best patient I ever treated. She was literally motivated by the fear of Hell and Damnation … She practised like mad …”.’
The peculiar machines for measuring the strength of your contractions look like a dog-bone attached to a battery charger and are on mail order at the end of the book, with the footnote: ‘“Personal Perineometer” (patents pending) is a trademark of Health Technology Inc … “Femtone Isometric Vaginal Exerciser” is a trademark of J & L Feminine Research Center … “The Vagette 76” is a trademark of Myodynamics Inc …’ and so on. There is money to be made from pelvic contractions.
The obsession with sex as health follows directly from Reich and his excessive belief in the social power of orgasms. But it takes on a sinister edge here, since ‘undiagnosed chronic pelvic tension … can also contribute to more serious problems’ like, guess what, cancer, the punishment of our time for a failure to THINK POSITIVE. Your attitude is all-important: The G Spot bullies with the voice of a games mistress or brisk nurse. It prescribes Sexual Healing as if it were a form of Savlon.
For the most striking aspect of the whole G spot enterprise (and others like it) is the way it manages to de-eroticize sex. Our bodies become a form of fruit-machine, to be played on for pleasures: women can have different kinds of orgasms, multiple orgasms, plateaux, climaxes, ejaculations, you name it. But how about desire? – without which the G spot is as useful as a hole in the head, and which, equally, can turn the nape of your neck or the back of your hand into a sexual explosion. But it is always as if men have desire, women have ‘pleasure’ – usually ‘given’ by a man. You can bet that hordes of heterosexual couples will be up all night searching for her G spot, not his prostate gland (which the book also locates).
Underlying the very earnestness of this search are two mistakes. The first is a tendency to overestimate the power of ‘sexuality’, which in recent times has taken on a pseudo-radical role. In modern jargon sexuality ‘frees’ us; it has become part of a discourse of ‘liberation’ which makes repression, rather than oppression, the enemy of human happiness. But is ‘sexuality’ really the arena in which our well-being is determined in the power-structure of modern societies? And if indeed we overestimate its power, what effect does this have? What is the function of an ideology that keeps everyone looking for the meaning of life up their own or someone else’s vagina?
But the second mistake is the assumption that ‘sexuality’ can be conjured up through anatomical locations: the G spot plays the part of Aladdin’s lamp, with female sexuality as the genie. The whole drive of books like this, and the articles which reinforce them, is one that simultaneously sets up ‘sexuality’ as unfathomable, while purporting to fathom it through de-sexualized clinical information. When will they stop searching our bodies for new sources of pleasure, and allow us desire?