When I Was 35 I Thought Urine Came From Vaginas

Bridget is a local celebrity with her own Facebook page. She’s not a human, though. She’s a bridge. Every week, a new truck gets stuck under her, so we erected a “Bridge ahead” sign.

It didn’t work, so then we put up signs with the precise height of the bridge.

It didn’t work, so we tried signs with actual lights.

Even digital signs and GPS were ineffective. Redirected trucks just kept choosing the hungry bridge. so now Bridget’s signage has been mangled by stuck trucks.

The clitoris is a lot like Bridget. We swear up and down that it’s hard to find, even if you put flashing signs pointing the way.

In the Nineties, we came up with the grand idea of simple communication.

It didn’t work, so then we improved upon medical diagrams that actually showed the full extent of the clitoris. Grey’s anatomy even stopped portraying the female reproductive system inaccurately for its 40th edition. Do you think Grey’s ever created diagrams of a quarter of a spleen or half of a kidney? Nope. The clit is the only organ medical textbooks have misrepresented, so society began to correct the problem.

It didn’t work, so artists and speakers started a clitoris awareness movement replete with 3D models, Ted Talks, and paintings.

25% of men can’t find the clitoris on a diagram. For that reason, Women and Health called the female orgasm “incidental.”

“Incidental” means a minor occurrence that happens as an adjunct to the main act. We’re becoming more aware of the female orgasm, but it remains a “nice to have” rather than a “must have.” This is why straight men are designed to fall asleep after sex: to give her some quiet time to finish herself off in the bathroom later.

That’s sad.

Every body is a new puzzle to solve, but you can’t solve the clitoris if you can’t identify it in a drawing. I know you’re all thinking, “I’m different. I know exactly how to find the clitoris,” but do you know that the clitoris is the size of a penis?

Do you know it’s more of a wishbone than a pea?

Do you know how different parts of the clitoris produce different kinds of orgasms?

Do you even know how to find the clit through the vaginal walls? Because this is rather important knowledge if you want her to have orgasms through intercourse alone.

Many of us don't know these things, but how would we when medical textbooks still don’t depict the clitoris in detail? They’ve improved, but you will usually find a distinct difference in complexity and labelling in academic texts. Often, they just say female anatomy is (and I quote) “analogous to the erection phase in the penis.”

I can’t tell you if our ignorance is the result of gender biases or whether gender biases lead to our ignorance. Both are probably true—a sort of snake eating its own tail.

Remember that study that found that 25% of men can’t find the clitoris in a diagram? Well, it also found that 29% of women couldn’t find it either. When I was 35, I thought urine came from vaginas. My biology classes never bothered to teach me otherwise. I spent most of my adult life thinking clits were tiny, secret nubs, then wondered why intercourse didn’t yield the requisite female orgasm. I only found out that vulvas are all different in the post-internet age when some hero posted thousands of the things online.

The clit is often illusive, even to women. Before that old vulva site went live, I was deeply ashamed of my own body. Before the Vagina Monologues, I was deeply ashamed of my sexual makeup. We are getting better, but “better” means we’ve yet to reach the ultimate goal.