one is tempted to ask: is not the very insistence on female orgasm as a physiological inevitability itself a kind of ideological fantasy—one that sutures together the fragile legitimacy of both scientific objectivity and feminist empowerment? of course, this may sound like a provocation, an attempt to question something that has become, in certain circles, almost axiomatic: that female sexuality is defined by an intrinsic, clitoral truth. but what if the very act of defining female pleasure in strictly anatomical terms is itself a trap, a mode of control masquerading as liberation?
the lab as the theater of pleasure
picture this: a woman reclines on an examination table, her body adorned with wires, her most intimate movements catalogued by the cold gaze of a coloscope—ulysses, as it was lovingly named by masters and johnson. through this transparent phallus, the vaginal canal is no longer a mysterious abyss, but a landscape that can be mapped, measured, and ultimately, disciplined. in the name of science, she is asked to perform her pleasure, to make her body intelligible, legible, reducible.
but here’s the paradox: by insisting on making female orgasm visible, masters and johnson were not merely unveiling a hidden truth; they were constructing one. the act of making orgasm a medical event—a phenomenon recorded in eegs and mapped onto neat, diagrammatic stages—redefined sexuality itself. the clitoral orgasm, once a flickering moment in the messy, contingent world of desire, was turned into a predictable outcome, a function of anatomy rather than an encounter with the unpredictable.
monkeys and machines
the story, however, does not end in the laboratory. the universalization of female pleasure required another kind of justification—one that lay beyond the constraints of modernity, beyond the messiness of cultural and historical contingencies. enter the monkeys.
primatologists, eager to establish the natural basis of human sexuality, began their own experiments. rhesus macaques were sedated, penetrated with “penis-simulators,” their spasming vaginal walls meticulously noted. and lo and behold, female primates, too, were capable of orgasm! the conclusion was clear: orgasm was not a cultural construct, nor a modern pathology—it was an evolutionary imperative.
but should we not pause here? what does it mean to derive human sexuality from the enforced copulation of captive animals? the image of a restrained monkey, subjected to human technology in order to confirm the naturalness of pleasure, carries an unmistakable irony. the very act of proving that orgasm is “natural” relies on the most unnatural of circumstances: an apparatus of observation, sedation, penetration. that female sexuality must be “discovered” through such means already tells us that we are dealing with something far more artificial than its proponents would like to admit.
the clitoral myth and the politics of feminism
by the late 1960s, radical feminists eagerly embraced the findings of masters and johnson as a weapon against patriarchy. anne koedt, in her now-famous manifesto, the myth of the vaginal orgasm, argued that women had been deceived by centuries of phallocentric ideology. the clitoris, she declared, was the true center of female pleasure. freud was a liar, the vaginal orgasm a patriarchal scam. if only women could liberate themselves from this deception, they would discover their own innate, clitoral truth.
but should we not ask: why this insistence on an anatomical destiny? why this fervor to replace one truth (the vaginal orgasm) with another (the clitoral orgasm)? could it be that both are, in fact, different iterations of the same demand—that sexuality be legible, categorizable, governable? by centering pleasure on the clitoris, radical feminism did not so much break with patriarchal science as participate in its logic: the body as a machine, pleasure as an observable mechanism, desire as a matter of nerves and reflex arcs.
the dildo wars: when penetration becomes the enemy
the irony, of course, is that the very feminists who embraced the clitoral orgasm as a site of resistance would later turn against the instrument that made it visible: the dildo. in the cultural feminist discourse of the 1980s, penetration became the ultimate signifier of male dominance. to penetrate was to wield power; to be penetrated was to submit. the lesbian, in this formulation, was the purest subject of feminism precisely because she refused penetration, embracing instead a sexuality freed from phallic simulation.
but here we must confront another paradox: was not ulysses—the transparent, penetrating machine of masters and johnson—the very device that allowed for the feminist discovery of the clitoral orgasm? was it not precisely through penetration (albeit medical, technological) that female pleasure was made legible? and if so, what does it mean for feminists to reject the dildo while celebrating the coloscope? to dismiss penetration in the bedroom while embracing it in the laboratory?
the specter of the natural
the question that lingers, then, is this: why do we still feel the need to ground female sexuality in something beyond culture? whether through evolutionary biology or radical feminism, the search for a natural sexuality continues to haunt us. but what if female pleasure is not a matter of anatomical truth or evolutionary destiny? what if it is precisely its contingency, its resistance to definition, that makes it powerful?
the clitoris, the vagina, the dildo, the monkey—each, at different times, has been mobilized as proof of something essential. but what if pleasure does not belong to any of these? what if it is not a matter of what we are, but of what we do?
one is tempted to conclude: the real radical move is not to reclaim an organ, nor to historicize a response, but to recognize that pleasure—like power—is always, necessarily, a site of struggle.
Musser, Amber Jamilla. “On the orgasm of the species: Female sexuality, science and sexual difference.” Feminist Review, No. 102 (2012), pp. 1-20.
Masters, William, and Virginia Johnson. Human Sexual Response. Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1966.
Burton, Frances. “Sexual climax in the female Macaca mulatta.” Proceedings of the Third International Congress of Primatology, Vol. 3 (1970), pp. 180-191.
