The Deep Secrets of Her Clitoris and Yours

This is a shocking truth, but your girlfriend may have a bigger dick than you do. In 1998 anatomist Dr. Helen O’Connell dissected the genitalia of 10 female cadavers in an attempt to redraw textbooks she had first seen in medical school that portray the organ as a miniature penis, a dot or, worst of all, nonexistent. O’Connell’s work confirmed the 17th century observations of Regnier de Graaf, who sketched the clitoris as a wishbone, with a visible tip and legs, or crura, reaching into the body on either side of the vagina. O’Connell found these crura to each extend up to 3.5 inches. “The vaginal wall is, in fact, the clitoris,” she has said. “If you lift the skin off the vagina on the side walls, you get the bulbs of the clitoris— triangular, crescental masses of erectile tissue” that rest between the crura and the urethra. The nerves and tissue of the distal, or front, part of the vagina and the clit are so intertwined, as are the vagina and the urethra (the floor of one being the ceiling of the other), O’Connell suggests the three sisters be renamed “the clitoral complex.”

The clit is secured by suspensory ligaments that reach into the body in a fan shape beneath the mons pubis (the fatty area under the inverted triangle of pubic hair). These muscles keep the engorged organ from bending and pull it up and out of the way in anticipation of a thrusting erection—which is why the damn thing becomes so much harder to find as a woman gets more turned on. In The Story of V, Catherine Blackledge proposes that the clit acts as a sentry—its sensitivity ensures a woman will be sufficiently wet to avoid injury. In fact, the clitoris head, or glans, is so responsive it is covered by a hood of skin to discourage direct stimulation.

The clit has historically been viewed as the consolation prize of a process that turns the same glob of fetal tissue into male or female genitalia—i.e., a penile “remnant.” But it’s more accurate, points out Josephine Sevely, to think of the race as a tie; the spongy tissue inside the penis is the male clitoris. The size ratio of the male clit to the female clit is five to four, which Sevely notes happens to be the ratio of the average male-to-female body weight. In the female, the clitoral body is shorter but the crura are longer and spread out. In the male, the body is longer but the legs are shorter and closer together.

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