There are all sorts of things that I might expect to be doing on a Sunday morning, but reading an article about the biology of the clitoris is not one of them. Kate Elliot lives in Hawaii, so it would have been Saturday evening when she tweeted about it, which is maybe not so weird. Anyway, I was busy doing housework and stuff yesterday and didn’t get around to writing about it. Today you have no such protection.

You can find the article here, and as Kate says in her tweet it is exceptionally illuminating. I’m not entirely surprised, because one thing you learn when you study the biology of gender is that apparently “different” human organs are actually the same structures that grow differently under the influence of hormones. So testicles and ovaries start off the same, and so do the clitoris and penis. What the article reveals is that the clitoris we are familiar with is not a very small penis, it is the tip of a similarly large and sensitive structure, most of which is inside your body.

The obvious thing that the article brings to mind is that all this talk about “vaginal orgasms” really needs to be informed by a bit of biology, then it will all make a lot more sense. The thing that stood out to me, however, is the possibilities this knowledge offers to unfortunate women who have had their clitoris mutilated by religious fanatics. The correct solution to this is, of course, to stop people doing it, but for those who have already been brutalized in this way it is apparently not too late. “Hope springs internal”, as the article puts it.

Overall, however, the clear message we can take from this is that there is one part of the human body that medicine doesn’t want to know about. It is pretty scandalous that so much medical information can be so badly wrong. It may only be extremists who resort to mutilation, but not wanting to talk about female sexuality is endemic.

I guess also someone is going to offer this as “proof” that trans women can never be “real”, because surgery can’t possibly reproduce something so wonderfully complex. After all, I still occasionally see (male) doctors insisting that trans women can’t ever have orgasms because they have lost their penises. Actually it is the inability of surgeons to provide a functioning womb that really upsets many trans women. As far as sex goes, yeah, trans women don’t get the full deal. But what they do get can be pretty awesome.