Free The Clitoral Truth: The Secret World at Your Fingertips by Rebecca Chalker

and Clarke documented the deterioration of accuracy and detail in medical illustrations of the clitoris under the Freudian model. 28 They discovered that “the online University of California Melvyl Library Catalog found three records of books on the clitoris and 35 on the penis; a Current Contents tide words search found 19 citations on the
    recorded the enormous normal variations in the appearance of women’s genitalia, and illuminated the hidden parts beneath the surface of the skin. 29
    Despite Dickinson’s widely known work, things deteriorated even further during the 1950s and 1960s. Eight post-Dickinson texts surveyed from the 1950s and 1960s “varied little in their treatment of the clitoris; they omitted it.” In one book, our sleuths found “a worm-like, unlabeled part of the body which we assume to be the clitoris.” Shortly after reading the article, I picked up my well- thumbed 1981 edition of Taber’s Cyclopedic Medical Dictionary and, looking at the illustration of the female reproductive system
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    clitoris and 347 on the penis; and a Medline search found 78 ankles
    found a squiggly, unlabeled dotted line.
    The worm! To Tibers
    with clitoris the keyword, and 1,611 with penis.”
    In examining anatomical representations of the clitoris, Moore and Clarke found that clitoral images in the first half of the twentieth century “varied from simple to complex,” with a more generous supply of simple renderings. “Anatomies matter,” they conclude, because they “create shared images which become key elements in repertories of bodily understanding touted around by all those who have seen them.”
    As mid-century approached, the work of Dr. Robert Latou
    credit, later editions do label the glans, and the eighteenth edition
    provides the only illustration of the female genitals—in color—to be found in any standard medical reference, although you will not find the complete clitoris identified as yet.
    Moore and Clarke did not include Masters and Johnson’s work in their survey, but I want to mention it here because their work was so profoundly influential for a quarter of a century. In a climate more receptive to the public discussion of sexuality, the 1960s publication of Hunan Sexual Response finally brought discussion of the clitoris
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    Dickinson, a New York City gynecologist who was also a self-taught
    to light.
    Indeed, the “first couple” of sex theory and therapy
    artist, provided an exception to these bland renditions. In his 1949 classic Human Sex Anatomy: A Topographical Hand Atlas he
    devoted an entire chapter to it, calling it both “a receptor and
    transformer of sensual stimuli,” as well as an “organ” and an “organ

    system.” Yet in purporting to dispel certain “phallic fallacies,” Masters and Johnson actually created a new vaginal fiction, the so- called “orgasmic platform” located in the “outer third of the vagina.” What they are really describing here are clitoral structures, which surround the vaginal opening. Since they firmly believe that the vagina and not the clitoris is “the human female’s primary means of sexual expression,” they apparently needed to concoct something impressive-sounding to back up this assumption.

    THE REDISCOVERY OF THE MISSING CLITORIS
    Although Masters and Johnson allude to a “clitoral system,” and point out a number of equivalent structures of the clitoris and the penis, they failed to grasp the significance of these correspondences. Dr. Mary Jane Sherfey argued that because women’s genital anatomy is equivalent to men’s, women’s capacity for sexual response should also be equivalent. Using Masters and Johnson’s anatomical description of the penis, Sherfey found the clitoris to be a powerful organ system in contrast to the commonly accepted view of it as a diminutive pea sized outcropping on the female vulva. Using established embryological evidence she debunked the conventional idea that the clitoris is a