Tag Archive for: genitals

Be Vulva Wise

What Does That Mean?

To be VULVA WISE means that you understand the basics of female genital anatomy, including the parts that most people (yes, even sex educators, doctor, midwives and other experts) don’t know about.

What Is This Image?

This is the Female Erectile Network!

It’s an awesome set of interconnected but separate female genital structures all made out of erectile tissue.

What’s Erectile Tissue?

The most familiar form of erectile tissue is in the penis. It’s what enables them to transform from small and soft to big and hard.

Do Women Have the Same Stuff?

Pound for pound and inch for inch, women have just as much erectile tissue as men. It’s just arranged differently. The female genitals contain just as much of this expandable, engorgable, highly pleasurable tissue as male genitals do. Just as much!

Where Is It All?

The erectile tissue makes up the Female Erectile Network. The structures include the three parts of the clitoris; the paired vestibular bulbs; the urethral sponge; and the perineal sponge.

 

Want to Know More?

For more details about the different structures, take a look at this post: The Missing Female Pleasure Parts

For more information on what’s been misunderstood and neglected, here’s another post: Lost Sexy Bits.  (It includes a quickie home play assignment.)

Become VulvaWise!

It’s simple: check out this information. Check out your own or a friendly and willing vulva-owning person’s body. Once you experience all the parts, you’ll be your own expert. Once you know, you’ll be vulvawise!


Want to learn more about women’s astounding, engorgable and delightful erotic equipment?

Find out why Dr. Christiane Northrup has called Women’s Anatomy of Arousal “the most comprehensive, user-friendly, practical and uplifting book on women’s sexuality I’ve ever read. It’s the gold standard!”

Get More Women’s Anatomy of Arousal!

Arousal_frontcover-w-Book of theYear Award
Read the award-winning Women’s Anatomy of Arousal book.

WINNER, 2010 BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD!
(From The American Assoc of Sex Educators, Counselors & Therapists)

It’s available as a physical book, as a Kindle or an audiobook!


Want Even More Vulva-Wisdom?

TAKE THE COURSE!
You can ‘attend’ the recorded 4-session
online Women’s Anatomy of Arousal course.

 


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Lost Sexy Bits

Genital Anatomy - Think you really know?

Lost Sexy Bits

It doesn’t seem possible, yet in this 21st century age of information, we lack the basic truth about our sexual anatomy. It’s sad but true, the pictures in the sex books and the text books are missing some of our vital equipment. We’ll never be able to see the whole picture, if we keep trying to put the puzzle together when important pieces are missing. When we don’t have this information, we can’t understand the reality of our bodies, much less figure out how to pleasure ourselves or others fully. If you don’t know what you’ve got, how can you really play with it?

What’s Missing From This Picture?

Cousin - Livre de pourtraiture-1608-cropped 2.Imagine playing the piano but only being able to see half the keys. Even though the invisible keys are still there, you wouldn’t know that you could or should play with them. Or imagine that a quarter of the keys have been permanently removed. You’d still make perfectly good music but it would lack the range, complexity and depth that having access to all the keys could give you.

That’s the situation we have now in our culture with our current models of male and female genitalia. The pictures in the books only show us a part of what’s actually there. Much of the equipment that’s responsible for arousal and orgasm in women* is missing from our standard depictions thus absent in our brains as well. Women have just as much erogenous equipment as men do although it’s arranged quite differently. Women have a network of structures for arousal that is utterly analogous to the male apparatus. But since a number of these structures are missing in our images and our minds, much of that equipment isn’t being played with.

Our model of male equipment is based on a cultural norm that removes extremely important functional sexual tissue. The cultural myth is that the foreskin is extraneous, and is better off removed. As if Mother Nature had some extra time on her hands, so she knitted a useless frilly doily and tossed it on the end of the penis. Now, being so modern and tidy, we just remove that quaint little dust catcher, improving on evolution’s design. The reality is, the foreskin is far from insignificant, it’s a well-designed part of the male equipment with important and irreplaceable functions.

Our mental maps of our sexual equipment are incomplete. This missing information hinders our sexuality, our relationships, our health and our understanding and enjoyment of our very selves in myriad ways. It’s a virtual amputation with very real effects.

Mental Mismatch Mess-Up

What happens when our models of what ‘should be’ don’t match what actually is? Many people assume there’s something wrong with them, instead of recognizing that the pictures and scripts are flawed. Many feel broken, inadequate, and believe they got ripped off when Mother Nature was giving out the good stuff.

Inaccurate models are like mental chains that limit your movement, cramp your style and prevent you from discovering your truly awesome capacity for pleasure. Accurate models help people expand their capacity for sexual expression and their repertoire of sexual skills. When your experience fits your mental picture, you feel whole, functional, and connected. You’re free to explore the full range of your sexual potential. Most importantly, it helps you know you’re normal.

The Missing “Female Erectile Network”

As I point out in my book, Women’s Anatomy of Arousal: Secret Maps to Buried Pleasure, women have what I call the Female Erectile Network: a set of interconnected but separate structures all made up of erectile tissue, that amazing, arousable, expandable and especially sexy erotic equipment.

Pound for pound and inch for inch, women have just as much erectile tissue as men—it’s just arranged differently. Some of these pleasure parts are well known while others are almost unheard of (even by scientists, medical practitioners and sexologists).

While it’s beyond the scope of this article to go into detail about each of the structures of  the erectile network, these are the components: the three parts of the clitoris; the paired vestibular bulbs; the urethral sponge; and the perineal sponge. They are connected both functionally and structurally. For more details check out this post: The Missing Female Pleasure Parts.

Female Genital Anatomy Quiz

Female Genital Anatomy – You Think You Know?

Each of the network’s structures is composed of erotically responsive erectile tissue, and with proper stimulation, each can become engorged. While women can become aroused and orgasmic with only some of the network activated, for maximum pleasure, get the whole network engorged. When all of the separate structures are engorged, the erectile network becomes like a snug and stretchy cuff of delightfully responsive equipment. Getting one component stimulated and engorged is good. Getting the whole network puffed up and pleasured is way better!

What Else Is Missing?

It’s not just that our representations of genitalia are inaccurate. Our understanding of arousal is also limited as it doesn’t take into account personal, cultural and gender differences and is based on a goal-directed, male-oriented pattern of arousal and sexual expression. Even the language we have to talk about sex and bodies and all of the delicious things we can do with them is limited and filled with shame. All of these skewed visions have very real and damaging effects, just as accurate models offer vistas of expanded possibilities and untapped potential.

How Do I Get There From Here?

We need accurate models that reflect the actual bodies and experiences of people of all genders. It’s challenging to find the few resources available to fill in the missing pieces of the puzzle. You need and deserve accurate depictions of your sex parts, new visions of what’s possible, and a good map to show you how to get there.vintage-erotica-art-cocks-cunts-550x820

What Does Whole Look Like?

It starts in your mind. Begin by taking a deep breath, right now and imagining who you would be if you were sexually whole. Visualize yourself able to enjoy all of the sexual experiences you’ve ever imagined and more. You can become that person when you open your mind to your potential and begin to learn how to fully play the beautiful instrument of your sexual self. It begins with having a comprehensive and accurate understanding of your instrument.

Your Home Play Assignment

Got that mind set? Good. That’s a great basis for step two: exploring your body. That’s right — now it’s time for you to do some home work (er, I mean home play) and, if you own this equipment, go check it out directly. If you are not a vagina-owner, you’ll need to find a vagina-equipped lab partner for your home play assignment. Here’s the nutshell version of your mission. (For more detailed home play instructions, you may want to read the book or take the recorded online course.) Take a look and a feel of all the parts when not aroused, then get turned on and check them all out again.

There you go … you’re on the road to becoming your own expert and finding all of the neglected pleasure equipment! That’s how you can learn about all the parts that are really there, discover how to engorge them and how to really fully play your incredible instrument.

 


To Learn More

WAA-LOLC_Wegener-Self-Exam_V7-HeaderThese lavishly illustrated Online Courses focus on Female Genital Anatomy and Erotic Pleasure:

Want more info on vaginas and related parts? We got more!


This is the BEST BOOK EVER! I am an owner of a “sexy boutique” – Va Va Vooom, in Asheville NC, designed especially for the pleasures of women. This book is always placed prominently in my store as a “must read”.  – Lisa Zeimer

Arousal_frontcover-w-Book of theYear Award
Sheri’s award-winning book, Women’s Anatomy of Arousal – Secret Maps to Buried Pleasure contains unique and extensive anatomy illustrations (drawn by Sheri!) that show, in great detail all of the parts women have, how they’re connected and how to make them happy! In fact, it won the 2010 Book of the Year award from AASECT (the American Association of Sex Educators, Counselors and Therapists) due to this ground-breaking understanding of female sexuality and anatomy.

Check it out! Or just go ahead and grab a copy!

 


* Just to be clear about the terminology, let me elucidate. When we use the terms “women” and “female” and are referencing anatomy, we are referring to cis-women. (Cis is a term meaning that your gender identity matches the sex assigned at birth.) The term “vagina” and other anatomical terms refer to the genitalia of people who are born with a vagina and an erectile network. Usually these will be cis-women. There are also trans-men who have vaginas and this anatomy would be accurate for them. This anatomy does not include the variations of surgically-produced genitals that may be the equipment that trans-women have.

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Genital Anatomy in the News! Again. Confusion Still Reigns About the G-Spot.

Part One. So Is there Or Is There Not A G-Spot?

Due to the depth and complexity of information in both the original article and the media interpretation of it, I’ll be posting a series of blogs addressing various aspects of the female anatomy and orgasm debate and discussion.

Confusion Still Reigns

Is there a g-spot? A recent scientific article says no. Media outlets have hopped on that article and are promoting the idea that there’s nothing to play with inside a vagina. I say that while there is no structure that be accurately named the g-spot, there are indeed some delicious, erectile structures that can be accessed from inside the vagina to the great delight of the vagina owners.

Sad to say, we continue to have confusion and dissent among ‘experts’ as well as translation problems as press takes information from scientific journal articles and interprets (and often misstates it) for the general public.

After reading both the scientific article that started the furor and various media reports that paraphrase, misunderstand and twist the data, I’m ready to weigh in with my own sexpert opinions based on my education and clinical experience as a former certified nurse-midwife and gynecology practitioner, plus my current experience as a sexuality teacher and author.

The Anatomy of Sex

Let’s begin with the science—Anatomy of Sex: Revision of the New Anatomical Terms Used for the Clitoris and the Female Orgasm, by sexologists Vincenzo Puppo and Giulla Puppo, published in the forthcoming issue of Clinical Anatomy.  (And, by the way, media folk, this is a literature review, not a study.)

One aspect of their basic argument is that sexologists, scientists and health care providers should use anatomically correct terminology. I agree insofar as terms such as G-spot and internal/inner clitoris are inaccurate and best not used. I disagree with the scientists, however, about what terms we should be using instead, what’s actually there, and how it operates.

The Female Erectile Network

As I point out in my book, Women’s Anatomy of Arousal: Secret Maps to Buried Pleasure, women have what I call the Female Erectile Network: a set of interconnected but separate erectile structures made up of the three parts of the clitoris, the paired vestibular bulbs, the urethral sponge and the perineal sponge. They are connected both functionally and structurally. While the Puppos’ article discusses the three parts of the clitoris and the vestibular bulbs, they neglect to consider the more internal erectile structures: the urethral and perineal sponges. These are important components of the female erectile network. While the Puppos are proposing “female penis” for the descriptor of this collection of erectile structures, I strongly believe Female Erectile Network is more useful and descriptive and far less confusing then naming a female body part after a male one.

While it’s beyond the scope of this article to go into detail about each of the female erectile structures, I do want to point out a few salient bits of information about the network. Pound for pound and inch for inch, women have just as much erectile tissue as men do. Each of the network’s structures is composed of erotically responsive erectile tissue, and with proper stimulation, each can become engorged. While women can become aroused and orgasmic with only some of the network activated, for maximum pleasure, get the whole network engorged. When all of the separate structures are engorged, the erectile network becomes like a snug and stretchy cuff of delightfully responsive equipment. Getting one component stimulated and engorged is good. Getting the whole network puffed up and pleasured is way better!

Let me go into a bit more detail about the urethral sponge (so named in the ground-breaking 1981 book, New View of A Women’s Body). It’s also known as the female prostate, since embryologically it’s formed from the same tissue that becomes the prostate gland in males. It’s composed of spongy erectile tissue that forms a cylindrical tube that surrounds the tube of the urethra. It’s rather like a roll of paper towels, with the urethra being like the cardboard tube, while the erectile tissue is like the paper towels. When unaroused, it’s as if you’re near the end of the roll. With proper and pleasurable stimulation, the sponge swells and becomes more like a brand new jumbo roll. The Puppos refer to the urethral sponge as the “corpus spongiosum of the female urethra,” but neglect to connect that to the ongoing controversy about whether or not there’s a g-spot.

Here’s a little-known fact lots of people miss—the underside of the tubular sponge is what in common (and incorrect) parlance is known as the g-spot. I prefer not to use that term. It is not a spot—it’s the bottom of the tube of the urethral sponge. So while I can truthfully say that the ‘g-spot’ as an anatomical structure doesn’t exist, the erectile tissue known as the urethral sponge most assuredly does. Got it? There is no g-spot, but there is a urethral sponge—an engorgeable (and potentially pleasurable) erectile tissue tube that lies just above the roof of the vagina. The Puppos are correct that the g-spot is not a part of the vagina. The urethral sponge is not a part of the vagina itself, as it lies right above the ‘roof’ (anterior wall) of the vagina. However, it can be stimulated is through the vaginal roof, so from the lay point of view it is ‘inside’ the vagina since it can be accessed that way.

And the media? Here’s an example of its hyperbolic and inaccurate response (these from Lizzie Crocker in “The Truth About Female Orgasms: Look to the Clitoris, Not the Vagina” in The Daily Beast): “A new study claims the G-spot is nothing more than a ‘scientific fraud,’” and “Thanks to the two Puppos and their clarifying study, women can finally stop digging around for their G-spots.”

WRONG! Women have erectile tissue that can be stimulated intra-vaginally, it’s just not a g-spot. It’s the bottom of the urethral sponge and I do recommend that women (and their lovers) discover it.

Who Wins The Battle of the Sexperts?

Can’t figure out which ‘sexpert’ is right? How about if you all check it out for yourselves? You can become your own expert and solve the question for yourself!

Let me invite you to do a bit of homework. (This is a shortened version of the suggested guided tour of The Succulent Sponge exploration from my book. If you own the aforementioned equipment, you can do this exploration solo. (It’s written from the female perspective.) If you don’t have female equipment of your own, you’ll need a lab partner for this experiment.

Guided Tour of the Succulent Sponge

Begin in an unaroused state. Put one or two of your fingers inside your vagina, turn the pads of your fingers up, curl them and reach up, exploring the roof.

Remember as you go on your guided tour that this is erectile tissue that you’re feeling, so during stage one of your exploration, that is, in a completely unaroused state, it won’t feel like anything in particular. Since the urethral sponge surrounds the urethra, when you push against the non-puffed tissue, you’ll really be rubbing almost directly on your urethra( pee tube). It will probably make you feel like you need to pee. For most women, this is not an erotic sensation.

Play with yourself (or get help from a partner) and get moderately aroused.

Now, feel it again. Notice the differences in size and sensation. It probably won’t feel irritating anymore, but it may not feel great, either.

Return to sexual pleasuring and get to high level arousal.

Feel inside again. When your urethral sponge is really big and puffed, you’ll be able to feel the whole two to three inch length of it. You’ll also notice its ridged or ribbed texture. If you separate your fingers a bit, you can run them along the gutters or sides of the tube. If you can reach in far enough, you’ll feel where it ends. When you play with it for awhile, you may notice that it starts to feel like a wet sponge, as if it’s full of tiny fluid-filled grapes.

If you’re using a mirror, you can see some interesting sights. If you hold your vagina open and look inside with a light, you’ll see the roof bulging boldly down into your vaginal canal. You can also note the raised circular ring that’s the end of the tube surrounding the opening of your urethra.

Pleasuring Female Parts

Here’s a little tip about pleasuring female parts: most women prefer to have their erectile tissue played with after it’s at least partially engorged. If you or your playmate are pressing the urethral sponge too early in arousal it will usually not only not feel good, it will often feel irritating. Save sponge stimulation for high level arousal and if playing with it doesn’t feel good—back out and turn up the turn on before returning to inner sponge play.

For a more detailed version of your home play assignment, detailed anatomy descriptions and unique illustrations, please see my book, Women’s Anatomy of Arousal: Secret Maps to Buried Pleasure.

In part two of Female Orgasm and Genital Anatomy in the News, I’ll look at the vaginal vs. clitoral orgasm controversy and explain why all the fuss is misguided.


For a few orgasmic pointers, I invite you to download a free Orgasmic Abundance e-book.

For lots more details, illustrations and guides to discovering all of the female pleasure equipment, I invite you to read my award-winning book, Women’s Anatomy of Arousal: Secret Maps to Buried Pleasure.

For in-depth information, my recently released book, Succulent SexCraft: Your Hands-On Guide to Erotic Play & Practice expands on many of the ideas in this article, such as how to use your ‘sexcraft toolkit’ to expand your pleasure.


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