The archaeology of the orgasm. (Sexualities).

A Costa Rican anthropologist and historian, the author is founder and coordinator of the Asociacion de Mujeres en Salud (AMES, Association of Women in Health) and director of the Centro Latinoamericano de Salud Integral de las Mujeres (CLASIM, Latin American Center for Women's Comprehensive Health). She also teaches in the graduate program of women's studies, organized jointly by the Universidad de Costa Rica (UCR) and Universidad Nacional (UNA).

   "Women affected by sexual problems may receive a U.S.
   government-approved medical treatment to enable them
   to reach orgasm by pumping blood to the clitoris."

   In "The Fight Against Frigidity," AP wire service
   note in the Costa Rican daily La Nacion, 2000.

   "A team of Boston University researchers announced that Viagra,
   the famous remedy created to counter male sexual dysfunction,
   may also relieve sexual problems that affect some women."

   In "Viagra and Eros for Muggers," EFE wire service
   note in the Costa Rican daily La Nacion, 2000.

From the distant past to the present day, men have responded to the unhappiness and frustration many women experience negotiating their hetero/sexual lives by preoccupying themselves with understanding and explaining the constancy, location and frequency of our orgasms and by seeking remedies for the lack of female sexual pleasure. Men have become experts in female sexuality, particularly women's orgasms. Most women, on the other hand, are almost completely ignorant of their own genital sexuality and especially of their orgasms. Indeed, women's own opinions about how, what and how much they feel and desire have appeared in works of these scholarly men only in recent decades.

This article examines what has been said about our orgasms. The topic of pleasure continues to interest me because it is good for body and soul, and it is high time we reclaim it. We need to build a society based on a true eroticism. To do this, we must free ourselves of all that binds us subconsciously to crazy myths and painful realities. Even until today, we have been denied the knowledge we need about our bodies in order to explore our own capacity for pleasure. The clitoris is absent, masturbation silenced; and the orgasm--such an esoteric "right" for many women--is elusive.

How we have arrived at this current situation continues to be one of my major concerns. This really is "archaeology"--we are going to dig, brush off layers of dust and try to unearth some understanding. I hope that these efforts will shed some light on how culture affects biology. Thousands of years of prejudice and lies are lodged in our psyches and in our cells. At the same time, I hope that our marvelous biology, wherein lies the root and memory of what is most profoundly human in each individual, will help us rediscover this wisdom.

Biology as the Product of Culture

The biology of women is a profoundly political issue, not only because it is not in our own hands, but especially because an entire civilization has been founded upon the total control of our bodies and on contempt for the human body in general and of women's sexuality in particular. The inferiority of female biology is inscribed in the Christian Bible, in law, science, medicine and culture.

Nonetheless, if we are to better understand the social role of the body and the way we live and perceive ourselves as corporal beings, we must begin by understanding biology from a historical and cultural standpoint. The body is much more than a series of anatomical parts discovered by science. Obviously, the body is composed of parts, but their relative importance and relation to the whole are culturally defined.

Until recent years, the body's biology has been viewed as a "natural" fact, rather than a cultural construct. The concept of the biological body gives rise to the perception of our bodily processes and practices as naturally inevitable and beyond our control. Studying what has been said about our orgasms not only reveals many contradictions, but also shows that there is no such thing as a natural truth about biology or about the body.

Our perceptions and interpretations of the body are conveyed through language. In the past, these discourses were furnished primarily by religious institutions. In today's society, biomedical sciences play this role. But scientific truths and facts are not objective; rather, they are created in a context of values and prejudices. The sciences are born in cultures molded by sexist and racist assumptions and are equally marked by the use of language. What is said about the body depends on who says it, the historic context, and how the social organization of gender is defined. The body in general, but the female body and its reproductive capacity in particular, now comprise a critical topic of political discourse.

According to Dutch biologist Nelly Oudshoorn, scientists do not discover reality, they actively construct it. This means that the "natural" reality of the body does not exist as such but rather is created by scientists as an object of their scientific research.

Women and Men: Differences and Similarities

The cultural construction of the realities of our genitals, reproductive organs and women's orgasms has a long history. From the earliest years of our lives, we are taught that the principal male sexual organ is the penis and that the principal female sexual organ is the vagina. These organs allegedly define the sexes and the difference between boys and girls. Female sexual pleasure nearly always remains outside the margin of such definitions.

Since the Christian faith only accepted coitus for the purpose of procreation, Christian physicians tended to ignore the parts of the female body they thought irrelevant to reproduction. The uterus was the center of interest, and most of the rest of the female genitalia were disregarded.

Nonetheless, during a very long period, science considered the clitoris to be the female analog to the male penis. Although the clitoris has no urethra or similar duct, for centuries women were viewed predominantly as a sort of inferior man, and each generation constructed novel interpretations of the subject. By the end of the 19th century, Sigmund Freud used this analogy to argue that women suffered from penis envy. Freud identified two kinds of female orgasms, clitoral and vaginal, and only the latter was acceptable. Clitoral orgasm was unseemly because it induced women to cast aside their femininity and resemble men.

Despite echoing silences and tremendous voids, the genitals and women's orgasmic pleasure have been the interest of a great many people, as we shall see in the examples discussed below.

Since the classical era of the Greeks (more than 2000 years ago), a model of anatomical homologues has defined men and women. The model was founded on a hierarchical, but not totally polarized, difference between the female and male reproductive systems. In other words, men and women's reproductive systems were seen as similar but different.

Plato introduced the idea of a hierarchy within the natural world based on intelligence, with man at the pinnacle. His disciple Aristotle (384-322 B.C.E) incorporated this concept in his own theory and developed a scale of classification by gender, placing the species in order of perfection, a quality he likened to heat. He placed man on the highest rung of the ladder, followed by the imperfect woman, termed cooler and of mediocre intelligence.

When the first anatomists identified similarities between certain parts of men's and women's genitalia they followed Aristotle's hierarchical order. Women were perceived to be inferior to men, and their female organs, derived from male equivalents, were considered secondary and inferior.

The model of homologues perceived women's bodies as an inferior and inverted version of men's. The vagina and the uterus were described as an internal penis, and the ovaries were called "testiculi" until 1819.

However, since the time of Greek doctor and anatomist Galen (c. 130200 C.E.), it was believed that women ovulated at the moment of orgasm. The idea that conception required orgasm in both the man and the woman was firmly entrenched. Desire and sexual pleasure were not taboo for women; on the contrary, they were necessary and healthy. Books and texts written by midwives of the 16th century clearly defined the role of the clitoris as an organ to be cared for and stimulated so women would feel desire. The orgasm was defined as the vital "heat" needed for conception, even though the woman, who was normally colder, only reached the same temperature as the man at the moment of her orgasm.

Galen introduced the idea that the vagina was the equivalent of the penis, describing the vagina as a penis turned inwards. He emphatically sustained that the only difference between the sexes was that female genitals were inside the body while the male organs were outside.

However, in her book Eve's Secrets: A New Theory of Female Sexuality, Josephine Lowndes Sevely proposes that the clitoris-penis correlation is erroneously attributed to Galen. She explains the misconception as a result of translation errors of ancient Greek texts into Latin and from Latin into Arabic. Somehow the clitoris-penis parallel became incorporated into medical thought, and it was never doubted because of the assumption of Galen's authorship.

The following three correctly translated fragments of ancient texts, rescued from the semantic confusion, prove that ancient Greek and Arab doctors never said that the clitoris and the penis were homologous:

1. In his work "On the Vagina," Avicenna (Ali Ibn Sina, 980-1037 C.E.) limited his depiction of each correlating part to a repetition of Galen's original description: the penis becomes the vagina; the scrotum, the external folds; and the foreskin, the external parts of the woman (the internal folds that Avicenna called the foreskin of the vagina).

2. Ibn Hubal (1117-1212) based his work on Galen: the internal folds are to the vaginal opening what the male foreskin is to the penis. The Arabs employed the term al bathara, synonym of the Greek clitoris. The error is in the translation which says: "the clitoris is to the vaginal opening what the foreskin is to the penis."

3. Arab and Greek doctors must have been familiar with the external part of the clitoris, because female circumcision--ablation of the clitoris--long had been in practiced in Egypt.

4. All these terms are explained in the work by Rufus, a Greek physician of the first century. He refers to the external parts of female genitals as "pudendi" and to the "crevice," which separates the fleshy external. He then goes on to identify the "clitoris" as the skin that forms the inner folds.

Lowndes Sevely believes this mistranslation is key, and she challenges the penis-clitoris analogy. She begins by noting that the theory of the man-woman correlation, accepted during so many centuries, was not developed as part of a normal, scientific process. The theory is founded on sexual prejudices that date to the era of the ancient Greeks and the first Judeo-Christian writers and their notions about sexual inequality and woman as an incomplete version of man.

New ideas about a given subject commonly arise every ten years, but in the case of female sexual anatomy no fundamental changes have been produced in over twenty centuries.

For more than one thousand years, no one dared question the authority of Galen. Not until the 16th century was there a resurgence in the study of anatomy.

Gabriel Falopio (1552) discovered the uterine canals that were named for him and was the author of the first detailed description of the clitoris. He was also the first to undertake an in-depth study of the internal structure of the clitoris, a part of female anatomy ignored by earlier scientists. However, even though he made such an important discovery, Falopio made the mistake of assuming that the clitoris was a miniature penis.

Based on seven years of research at Harvard University, Lowndes Sevely maintains that the tip of the clitoris and the glans of penis are not equivalent. The true correlation is between the tip of the clitoris and that of a structure located inside the penis. The equivalent male structure is the part that fills up with blood and causes an erection. Resembling a capsule, it is called the corpora cavernosa, which means literally "cavernous bodies."

We can now establish, with a great degree of certainty, that the true correlate of the clitoris is not the penis but this internal zone which the author identifies as the male clitoris. In her work, the author uses the term "Lowndes crown" to refer to both the tip of the clitoris and the male internal structure.

The female clitoris has deep structures under the surface of the skin, comprised of two extremities that extend the length of and underneath the pubic bones on both sides of the lower vagina, between the inner thighs. All parts of the clitoris have simple names: the crown (the tip); the corpus (body) and the crura (base). Men have the same structure, but it is united inside the penis. There is a different organization, but the difference is not substantial. The male organs tend to unite, whereas the corresponding female organs tend to separate.

Both the female and the male clitoris are composed of the same erectile tissue. Lowndes identifies only one major difference between the male and female crowns: the latter is an external structure, easily visible and accessible to direct touch, while the corresponding male structure is internal but very sensitive to pressure.

What corresponds to the male glans is easy to locate and observe in the woman. If the inner folds (labia minora) are separated, the opening of the urethra (from which urine exits) is clearly visible. Called the urethral meatus, this opening is immediately above the vaginal opening, which in most women is located 1.9 cm. below the Lowndes crown, or clitoris. The meatus is surrounded by a fairly prominent acorn-shaped zone, which is the female glans. The male and female glans are perforated by the urethral opening. But what is of most importance for men and women is that the glans of both sexes is richly endowed with nerve endings that render it exquisitely sensitive to the touch.

Female Emissions

Lowndes Sevely began her studies of the female genitals with the subject of female ejaculation. She was intrigued by the apparently indisputable belief that ejaculation is the only aspect of sexual response physiology that differs in men and women: men ejaculate and women do not. The author doubted the veracity of this assertion because, in her readings, she constantly found reference to female emissions. In addition, Lowndes Sevely's skepticism was reinforced by the statements of women describing their own experiences and the Kinsey report which supported a popular belief in female ejaculation--although Kinsey himself doubted it.

The most ancient writings refer to "female semen," also called "fertile female emissions," a concept generally related to reproduction, not sex. However, Lowndes Sevely discovered a scientist who did believe in its erotic nature, the Dutch physician Regnier de Graaf who in 1672 made an association between emissions and female sexual pleasure.

Earlier, Hippocrates (460-377 B.C.E) advanced the theory of the procreation of the "two semens," in the belief that both male and female sexual emissions contributed to conception. Pythagoras (580-495 B.C.E.) believed that the woman's fertile flow was foam from pure blood that dripped from the brain. Democrites (450 B.C.E.) thought the flow originated in all parts of the body, which is true in a sense. Parmenides (450 B.C.E.) sustained that the healthy physical constitution of children depended on the proper mixture of the parents' genital emissions. On the other hand, Aristotle sustained that the potential for fertility resided exclusively in the man's "seminal liquid." He believed that only men controlled the magical power of conception; the father--not the mother--is the true parent of the newborn. Women only furnish the "matter." Galen opposed Aristotle's theory and supported the earlier position held by Hippocrates: both men and women produce the seed. He also differentiated the emissions of the female prostrate from those of other parts of the body.

The Babylonian Talmud, compiled approximately in 500 C.E., includes the Niddah, a complete treatise on menstruation and other female emissions. The text details the impurity of the "menstruator," as described in the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament. The detailed texts of the Niddah differentiate between a "white" female discharge and a "red" one. The red discharge obviously refers to menstrual blood. The white discharge, said to resemble semen, is described as one that "does not soil the woman." Lowndes Sevely reasonably assumes that this reference is to the female prostrate flow (mixed with other genital emissions related to female ejaculation).

One of the conjugal acts prohibited by the Church since medieval times is amplexus reservatus, which refers to the interruption of ejaculation of both the man and the woman. Birth control methods such as amplexus reservatus, the decision to suppress ejaculation by both sexes (dry orgasm) and coitus interruptus, directing the male semen outside the uterus, were two of the practices priests condemned. In other words, because these female emissions are considered fertile, the Church prohibits women from not ejaculating.

If Greek women of the 17th century and before normally experienced a sexual response that women of the 20th century do not experience, and the existence of various female emissions including ejaculation was commonly accepted and acknowledged, then the question is: What happened? Why is it that today you only hear about "vaginal emissions" generically and only in the context of lubrication for penetration? Why is there so much ignorance about our genitals?

The glorification of men as beings endowed with complete reproductive capacity paralleled the systematic devaluation of the female and her protagonism in reproduction. That the only purpose of feminine emissions is to nurture the fetus is an invented idea. Women were supposed to be passive, and their sole biological purpose was to assist the true parent. Everything related to bodily emissions and sexual practices that controlled the release or retention of these emissions has been a matter of deep religious concern both for the early Judaic and Christian faiths. Western notions of medicine took shape during this era, and silence has enveloped our intimate geography ever since.

Finally, in 18th-century Europe, a revolutionary new interpretation of the sexual differences between men and women was developed. The model of anatomical homologues based on similar hierarchical differences between the female and male reproductive systems was replaced by a model that stressed a binary opposition between the two (totally opposite) physiologies. By the 19th century, women were defined as beings frigid by nature incapable of feeling sexual pleasure. The man was the paradigm of normality and became the model employed by the medical culture, even though male biological functions are identical to female functions.

The new binary model defined the female orgasm as superfluous for conception. Women and men differed in every imaginable way: in their bodies and souls, physically as well as morally. Women were governed by their reproductive biology. In 1840, based on observations of dogs, pigs and other mammals, scientists asserted that women ovulated spontaneously without copulation and, of course, with no need for orgasm. It is important to note that this era gave rise in the Western world to the development of new philosophies on "man" and his surroundings--the so-called Enlightenment--and the emergence of incipient capitalism, widescale colonialization of new cultures and the institutionalization of medicine as a male profession.

Thomas Laqueur contends that these changes were never grounded on scientific advances of the times but on new ways of representing and constructing social realities. The female body was problematic for men. Female sexual pleasure had been acceptable until the early 18th century because vestiges of ancient beliefs still linked the social, the body and the cosmic. However, the old social order--which had witnessed 300 years of witch hunts, conflict between the Church and the new States and emerging social movements--was toppled and replaced by a new "rational" social order of consolidated States in which the sexual and gender order became a critical issue and the basis for political practice and theory. "Man" ended up controlling and defining everything.

In the 1970s, attention is focused once again on the female orgasm. A veritable mythology is invented on the subject. These myths included the fantastic G spot that with a mere touch set off an orgasm that moved the Earth, multiple orgasms (which made women fake orgasms multiple times!) and the belief that the female orgasm was the most incredible and transcendental experience that a person could possibly have. In The Whole Woman, Germaine Greer proposes that the myth of the orgasm can be considered the last hurrah of the heterosexual establishment. The orgasm was guaranteed to be the greatest attraction of relations between men and women.

Yet, we must not disregard the fact that women cannot change their behavior from one instant to the next simply because experts give her permission to do so. A long time has elapsed since sexuality was encouraged and taught as a method of obtaining pleasure. Silence, labels and ignorance are not overcome by writing a new prescription.

The Job No One Wanted

For centuries, the female body and sexuality have been problems for men, and in many ways, they continue to be problematic today. The female orgasm is a source of much interest, debate, controversy, technical manuals and scientific and popular literature only because it is so absent, unlike the male orgasm which appears with such monotonous regularity.

In contrast to men, women do not easily reach orgasm during coitus, and sustained stimulation of the clitoris is needed to produce the "paroxysm," as medical science calls the orgasm. Research conducted by Alfred Kinsey and Shere Hite shows that women can reach orgasm in an average of four minutes by masturbation, even though they rarely, if ever, experience it during intercourse. They suggest that many women do not reach orgasm, or only do so sporadically, simply because coitus is a very inefficient way of stimulating the clitoris.

Yet, for over 2000 years intercourse has been touted as the only acceptable form of sexual relations between men and women. Authorities even issued instructions and prohibitions regarding the woman's position for coitus--under the man, never above him--and on the recommended frequency for sexual relations.

Throughout ancient times and down to our present day, doctors have been aware of women's difficulty in reaching orgasm. It has also long been known that the orgasm is good for health. Genital stimulation to produce orgasm was at one time a standard medical treatment prescribed by Western medical culture for hysteria, defined as a common and chronic pathology in women.

In The Technology of Orgasm, Rachel P. Maines traces the historical course of this common yet little-known medical practice. Descriptions of genital stimulation as a medical treatment appear in the works of Hippocrates, in writings of Celsius in the 1st century C.E. and in the works of 2nd-century writers Aretao, Sorano and Galen. Subsequently, this treatment was addressed by various authors from the 6th to the 19th centuries.

Pelvic massage, as it was known in gynecology, always had its advocates who claimed to have very good results. However, because therapists had to use their own fingers for genital stimulation, the level of orgasm was limited. Stimulation sometimes had to continue for up to an hour for the "patient" to reach orgasm. The job was not to the liking of most doctors, who found it tedious and time-consuming. The procedure was profitable, however: their "patients" did not recover, but neither did they die. Instead, they had to return regularly for further treatment because it afforded only temporary relief.

Studies have shown that doctors sought replacements who could free them from having to provide the treatment. They tried to enlist the help of the woman's husband or the expert hands of midwives. Just like many husbands, doctors did not wish to be bothered by the job of stimulating women, an undertaking that required skill and care. At the same time, however, "hysterical" women represented a large, lucrative market. In the 17th century, female hysteria was said to be the most prevalent ailment. In the 19th century, up to a third of the female population was considered to be "in poor health," and this population comprised the largest market for therapeutic services in the United States.

Throughout history, masturbation has been off limits for women due to the psychological, physical and moral damage it was said to cause. Prior to the 20th century, most men failed to understand or were not interested in understanding that penetration as a method for reaching orgasm produces sexual satisfaction only for a minority of women. As late as the 1970s, medical authorities assured men that women who did not reach orgasm during heterosexual coitus suffered from some kind of psychological or physical impediment. Since men could not fathom penetration as less than a panacea, the failure to attain sexual satisfaction was perceived as the woman's own fault.

This androcentric definition of sexuality and the construction of an ideal of female sexuality based on the "normal" heterosexual model of vaginal penetration by the penis until the man reaches orgasm reduces female sexuality to the status of a pathology in need of treatment. Women have traditionally been regarded as "abnormal" or "frigid," and for decades many people have profited from their sexual misery.

Inducing women to reach "paroxysm" as part of legitimate clinical therapy obscures the need to question the elevated status conferred the penis, the efficacy of coitus for achieving female orgasm, and indeed, the ethics of the practice itself. However, it does reveal how doctors transform the female body into a hysterical, sexual object. Since ancient and medieval times, the Renaissance and up to the modern era before Sigmund Freud, medical professionals usually viewed hysteria as a sexual problem. As early as 2000 B.C.E., Egyptian medical texts prescribed exercise and genital massage with lubricating oils as treatment for the "disease of the uterus." The androcentric focus did a good job of camouflaging the sexual nature of medical massage. Because there was no penetration, the treatment supposedly was not sexual.

The annoyance of doctors and the demand for the treatment led to the mechanization of pelvic massage with the invention of the vibrator. Ever since 1880, stimulators for the clitoris and the vulva have been invented using pressurized water, steam and other devices. The first electric vibrator was invented by a British doctor. By 1900, more than a dozen manufacturers produced electric or battery-powered vibrators with foot pedals, air pressure or gas motors. A few years, later vibrators were offered as a health and relaxation aid in women's magazines and even in the Sears, Roebuck & Co. catalogue.

But by 1929, the feminine vibrator began to disappear from medical offices and magazines. Maines suggests that the withdrawal of the vibrator from the public scene might have been due to the greater knowledge about female sexuality in the medical profession, but it might also be related to the appearance of vibrators as sexual paraphernalia in pornographic movies of the time. Not until the 1960s does the vibrator make its reappearance as a sexual device. Its capacity to produce orgasms in women was the major sales attraction: the job doctors and husbands were not interested in performing was now in the hands of women themselves.

Lessons to be Learned

The contradictions inherent in the perception of women as essentially sexual--and even dangerous--beings is clearly apparent in the issue of the orgasm. In the attempt to turn women into silent and passive objects, the female body was conceptualized as indeterminate, lending itself for reinterpretation by any new expert. In general, scientists have espoused the concept of nature as the basis for social inequality, and as a result, their research fashioned a perspective detrimental to women.

In 1797, the first drawing of the female skeleton depicted it as a child, with a very small skull to prove women's lack of intellectual capacity. Medical and scientific authorities have said that we are governed by the uterus or the ovaries. They have told us that there is no feeling in the vagina, that there is no feeling even in the perineum and that women feel no pain when a episiotomy is performed. They have told us that women have no sexual feeling or that we feel less than men; that we don't ejaculate; that giving birth does not hurt, and so on. The people who have made these affirmations and who define women physically and psychologically do not have women's bodies. They are men.

The voices of women are rarely ever heard. In addition, women are highly ignorant in sexual matters and particularly of female sexual pleasure. A slew of myths, sayings, taboos and preconceptions surrounds the subject. However, information, and even educational programs, on reproductive health are beginning to include sexual health and sexuality. Sexologists, psychologists and other professionals specialize in the subject, but they are not women. It's time to change this situation around.

What follows are a few ideas to help empower our knowledge. Not all of them are directly related to orgasm, but since discussions of orgasm are a cultural construct, it is not isolated from other topics.

1. The First Sex

Historian Timothy Taylor chronicles the evolution of woman and the female body in his book, The Prehistory of Sex: Four Million Years of Human Sexual Culture. He makes two very striking points:

1. Just as language is unique to humans, faking an orgasm is apparently unique to human females.

2. The common genetic plan for the human skeleton is contained in an original genetic blueprint for the entire body. The genetic plan for the flesh, as well as bones, is essentially female. Hormones then form the male. Men have nipples because these are part of the original genetic blueprint.

In her book, The Nature and Evolution of Female Sexuality, Dr. Mary Jane Sherfey describes the discovery she made in 1961, which she calls induction theory. This theory explains that all mammals, both male and female, are anatomically female during the first stage of fetal existence. She asks why medical literature ignored this fact after 1951 when it originally was discovered.

In 1999, genetic research conducted in the United States by scientists of the University of Chicago and Whitehead Institute confirmed that women do not come from man's rib. On the contrary, the Y male chromosome originated from the female X chromosome during a long process of separation of the sexes over more than 300 million years.

My aim here is simply to point out that one of the two sexes has existed longer than the other. And woman is most definitely not inferior to man; rather, it is becoming increasingly clear that the male was a mutation of the female. In terms of genitalia, this is completely consistent with Josephine Lowndes' description of the clitoris not as a small penis, but as the same part found within the male penis.

2. Pleasure Points

In 1982, Alice Kahn, Beverly Whipple and John D. Perry published The "G" Spot. Their research proves the existence of the Grafenberg point, an erogenous zone located in the lower vaginal wall. When subjected to direct stimulation, the G spot swells, triggering an orgasm that produces an ejaculation of a substance similar to male semen. The ejaculation takes place through the urethra, but most women are unaware that it is an ejaculation. In the belief that they are urinating, the ejaculation causes confusion and embarrassment in many women who react by repressing their orgasms.

Josephine Lowndes Sevely explains that the glandular region of the urethra--which is called the prostate in the man--produces a sexual emission. Both men and women know about the male prostrate and its fluids, but few know that a similar gland exists in the woman. In antiquity, the existence of the female prostate and ejaculation was not doubted. In recent years, it has been frequently denied, despite what women themselves say.

In terms of structural organization, the same pattern of male fusion and female diffusion is evident. In the man, the prostate consists of a group of glands joined in a chestnut-shaped organ. At least 10 to 20 prostate ducts open within the urethra, in an area known as the verumontanum. This is where sperm mixes with the prostate fluid and other secretions before ejaculation.

The female prostate glands are scattered throughout the length of the lower wall of the urethra, forming an angle that pushes into the vagina. The urethra and the vagina are united and form a common "wall" in this area. In other words, the floor of the urethra is the roof of the vagina. Female prostate glands are located throughout the length of this vaginal zone, which may contain up to 31 channels ducts. When stimulated sexually, the area expands. The female urethra is a sexual organ.

Indeed, all these parts--vulva, clitoris, vagina, anus and urethra--are intimately related and participate simultaneously in the sexual function.

During sexual arousal, the vagina produces lubrication from various sources. Besides the secretions (ejaculation) of the urethra, fluids are secreted by the Bartolin and Skene glands--located where the vulva comes together with the vaginal opening (the introitus)--and by the walls of the vagina itself.

The fluid of female ejaculation is produced by what has been called the "sacred place," and it does not only occur with orgasm. It may also be released when a woman is happy or laughs. Understood as an energy of happiness and love, this emission is associated with the essence of these emotions. Ejaculation takes place when a woman is profoundly happy, and is not necessarily related to sex.

The "sacred place" is also where women store their personal sexual pain and suffering. For many women, excitation of this zone triggers painful memories, and the climax of the orgasm may be accompanied by tears and fear. It is important to recognize the need to be held and embraced when this happens. Tantric sexuality experts have long known about this zone and the importance it plays in sexual healing of women with history of abuse and sexual traumas.

3. Love Hormones

Science has shown us that many of the forms in which we human beings love are holistic, in the sense that hormones are involved and that the same patterns of behavior repeat themselves when people make love or when a woman gives birth or nurses an infant. During these three moments, the body produces the hormone oxytocin.

Oxytocin is produced by a primitive structure in the brain called the hypothalamus, from which it passes to the lower part of the pituitary, to be released into the blood stream under certain conditions. Babies in the womb trigger the production of the hormone prior to birth. Not only does oxytocin augment the maternal instinct, it also plays an important role in sexual excitation of both men and women.

During the male orgasm, the production of oxytocin helps produce contractions of the prostrate and seminal glands. During the female orgasm the immediate effect of oxytocin are uterine contractions that transport the sperm to the ova.

Endorphin is another hormone that acts as an analgesic and also produces a sense of pleasure. The production of endorphin is very high during natural births and also when partners make love in an ambience of trust and security. Endorphin produces a drugged, mutually-dependent state in the couple.

In The Scientification of Love, the French medical visionary Michel Odent advocates the recovery of what is natural to the body. He explains how people produce adrenaline under conditions of stress, threat or lack of privacy and safety. Associated with fear, danger or difficult activities, adrenaline inhibits the production of the hormones described above. Adrenaline is also responsible for the pain many women feel when giving birth, and it also inhibits libido and relaxation during copulation.

Ecstasy

Women cannot be expected to have a happy sex life in a society that continually treats them as objects and discriminates against them. Nevertheless, there does exist a more gratifying, refreshing and creative alternative to the prevailing notion of sex as an activity that must yield a certain outcome. This alternative is to understand sex as a vehicle for transformation and higher growth, not as an action taken under obligation, as a routine, or driven by fear or emotional needs.

In traditional cultures that do not differentiate between the sacred and the profane, sexuality has always been a facet of the great mystery of existence. Ancient Tantric texts taught sexual rituals practiced by the Hindu Cult of Ecstasy as a means of becoming one with the cosmos. One of the objectives of reaching a state of orgasm or ecstasy was the disappearance of the ego.

Ecstasy is an altered state in which the awareness of the Self is lost and the divinity that resides in each living being is revealed. This is a wisdom developed over a thousand years ago in cultures for whom sexuality and spirituality were sacred and indivisible elements. Ecstasy is reached through orgasm or prayer. Sex is infinitely more mysterious than we generally imagine. But it is no mystery that, if we are lucky, it can take us by surprise. In days of old, people were prepared and instructed in techniques and understanding of the human body and spirituality in order to approach this sacred mystery.

Today, these techniques are taught for one single goal: to reach orgasm by any means necessary--Viagra, clitoral pumps or any thing else--as long as the goal is reached. A million-dollar industry reaps profits from people's sexual misery. Yes, it is wonderful to have orgasms, and we all have the right to pleasure, but the internalized cultural rules hold strong. These taboos are buried deep within the body's subconscious. We must first free ourselves from the burden of history and find our own road healthily, by claiming and consecrating our bodies.

Bibliography

Angler, Natalie (1999). Woman. An Intimate Geography. New York: Houghton Mifflin.

Eisler, Riane (1998). El Placer Sagrado. Volume I and II. Chile: Editorial Cuatro Vientos.

Irvine, Janice M. (1990). Disorders of Desire. Sex and Gender in Modern American Sexology. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

Kahn L., Alice, Beverly Whipple and John D. Perry (1983). El punto "G". Mexico: Grijalbo.

Kitzinger, Sheila (1983). Woman's Experience of Sex. London: Penguin.

Laqueur, Thomas (1994). La Construccion del Sexo. Cuerpo y Genero desde los griegos hasta Freud. Valencia: Ediciones Catedra.

Lowndes Sevely, Josephine (1987). Los Secretos de Eva. Nueva Teoria de la Sexualidad Femenina. Barcelona: Granica.

Maines, Rachel R (1999). The Technology of Orgasm. "Hysteria," the Vibrator, and Women's Sexual Satisfaction. Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press.

Odent, Michel (1999). The Scientification of Love. London: Free Association Books Ltd.

Oudshoorn, Nelly (1994). Beyond the Natural Body. London & New York: Routledge.

Taylor, Timothy (1996). The Prehistory of Sex. Four Million Years of Human Sexual Culture. New York: Bantam Books.