rigorousintuition.ca

PW wrote: History (Western)

"The tale of the clitoris is a parable of culture, how the body is forged into a shape valuable to civilization despite and not because of itself."
Thomas Laqueur

The Greeks understood that male and female genitalia were made up of analogous components: the male external and therefore superior; the female internal, inverted, and inferior. This view persisted until the 18th century when an even less complementary, separate-sex paradigm began to displace it.

In the 16th century, as if no one had ever noticed it before, two Italians issued competing claims for the discovery of the female penis. One of them, Gabriel Fallopius, did succeed in having his name attached to the tubes between the ovaries and uterus. Despite this controversy, a hundred years later, Reinier De Graaf described the internal clitoris and remarked, “We are extremely surprised that some anatomists make no more mention of this part than if it did not exist at all in the universe of nature.”

It is interesting to note that during De Graaf's time, folk belief held that female orgasm was necessary for conception. Midwives offered the newly betrothed advice on how to accomplish the task. Over the next few centuries, various pressures of evolving sexual politics distorted attitudes toward female sexual response and by the mid 19th century, physicians blamed all manner of illnesses and neuroses on genital dysfunction. In the UK, Isaac Baker Brown, publicly promoted the practice of clitoridectomy as a cure-all, and records show that young women submitted to the procedure for problems as insignificant as irregular menstruation. Others offered their female patients a weekly therapy of stimulation to what they called hysterical paroxysm, or orgasm.

In the 1840's, German doctor George Ludwig Kobelt rediscovered the clitoris. He mapped the entirety of the organ including the cavernosa, crura, and bulbs. While his discoveries did not impact the content of subsequent medical texts, his work is once again referenced today and one of his diagrams is included in this website.

With the notable exception of another rediscovery at the beginning of the 20th century, most anatomy texts, including those issued today, remained vague about the clitoris, and focused on comparisons with the male rather than fully describing female genital anatomy.

Recent Discoveries

"The clitoris is a structure about which few diagrams and minimal description are provided, potentially impacting its preservation during surgery."
Dr. Helen O'Connell

The mid 20th century work of sexologists, and the social justice movements of the 1960's led to further rediscoveries of the clitoris. Psychiatrist Mary Jane Sherfey described the organ as part of her challenge to the destructive Freudian dualism of clitoral versus vaginal orgasms. His belief that only immature females achieved orgasm through clitoral stimulation caused generations of women shame and confusion over their sexual response.

The Boston women's health collective 1970 publication Our Bodies Our Selves provided detailed drawings of the female sexual organ in both relaxed and aroused states. They included the crura, shaft, and glans as part of the clitoral complex, but not the bulbs. In 1981, A New View of a Woman’s Body by the Federation of Feminist Women’s Health Centers provided the first contemporary description of the internal clitoral organ. However, none of these works has had an impact on anatomy texts. In fact, according to a study by researchers Moore and Clark, they led to a kind of backlash, "In sum, scholarly focus on the clitoris appears to be minimal, relatively dwarfed by phallocentric narratives, images, and fascinations."

Today a few medical researchers, utilizing new imaging technology in addition to traditional techniques, are clarifying the anatomy and attempting to standardize the nomenclature of the clitoris. Among these are Australian urologist Dr. Helen E. O’Connell, researcher Dr. Claire C. Yang, and French gynecologists Dr. Odile Buisson and Dr. Pierre Foldès.

In 2003, Yang and colleagues published the first MRI imagery of the clitoris in pre- and postmenopausal women. In her 2005 Report Anatomy of The Clitoris, Helen O'Connell described the anatomy of the internal clitoris, and reviewed its rediscovery through history. French researchers Dr. Odile Buisson and Dr. Pierre Foldès published a 3-D sonography of the stimulated clitoris in 2008. Dr. Foldes has pioneered new surgical techniques that help restore some function to women who've undergone genital mutilation.

The Art After Dinner Party: Mass Public Clitoral Action
Posted by Jen Graves on Wed, Feb 8, 2012 at 2:30 PM

Courtesy Lynn Schirmer
The clit of Lynn Schirmer.

Seattle artist Lynn Schirmer today announced a new project called After Dinner Party. The title is a reference to Judy Chicago's early feminist masterwork The Dinner Party, which is on long-term display at the heart of the Elizabeth Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum. The Dinner Party is a vagina thing. After Dinner Party is clitoral, a body part that's inherently more politicized, more feared, more misunderstood, more ignored, more attacked, more everythinged. It's time to clitoralize.

At this point, After Dinner Party is just a web site—but one with drawings of the clitoris that already make you remember its shape when you close your eyes. (I did not already have a 3D projection of the clitoris in my brain; maybe you did.)

The project has two upcoming (ahem, upcoming) phases, set to begin during Pioneer Square's First Thursday Art Walk in May:

At present, After Dinner Party consists of two kinds of activities: a curated art exhibit and celebration; and a loosely coordinated series of individual and/or mass public actions. The form and scope of the second portion is entirely dependent upon the energy and creativity of participants. The goal is to represent the shape of the clitoris, in as many art forms and in as many venues or public spaces as possible, all over the city.

You've really gotta check this out.

Project Willow wrote:Stranger art critic slogged my clitoris.

At present, After Dinner Party consists of two kinds of activities: a curated art exhibit and celebration; and a loosely coordinated series of individual and/or mass public actions. The form and scope of the second portion is entirely dependent upon the energy and creativity of participants. The goal is to represent the shape of the clitoris, in as many art forms and in as many venues or public spaces as possible, all over the city.

Project Willow wrote:Stranger art critic slogged my clitoris.

http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archiv ... ral-action

Project Willow wrote:Care for a shirt with some dancing clitorises on it?