A woman’s clitoris has eighteen parts, all of which play a role in her sexual pleasure. The vagina, which accepts the penis, is only a part of the vast inner workings of the woman’s sexual satisfaction. Although this is not common knowledge, the respect for the sexual potential of a woman has increased dramatically since the 1950’s. Many men now know that their own stamina comes nowhere near that of women and must find other methods, such as cunnilingus (the use of the tongue on the clitoris to stimulate an orgasm), to satisfy their lover. However, in the fifties, the idea that a woman could not be satisfied by the male’s penis was blasphemy against his masculinity.
In the 50’s, knowledge of the female’s “lower regions” was scarce, but the desire to find that knowledge was almost unheard of because of Sigmund Freud. Almost all theories about the female’s sexual organs came from his outdated (almost forty years) and biased proclamations that a woman who could not be satisfied by the penis of her lover “must have something wrong with her” (2). He publicized the idea that clitoral orgasms were merely the “launching pad for the more ‘mature’ vaginal orgasm” (2). His ideas reinforced the penetrative and reproductive model, and because of them, doctors and psychologists gradually overlooked the vagina “until it became an anatomical nonentity” (1). Since it was of no scientific importance, the common couple based their sexual experiences on what was widely approved: sex for reproduction, not pleasure.