Women, Sex and Orgasm
The Clitoral-Vaginal Controversy - continuedCan one not conceptualize this difference in terms of role differences? The woman who is receiving stimulation from a man who has his penis inserted in her vagina is engaged in an act of mutual stimulation. At the same time that the man is trying to bring her to orgasm she is doing likewise for him. It is a transaction in which they are both closely and equally involved. This contrasts with the situation in which manual clitoral stimulation is applied by a man. In this instance the woman is receiving stimulation intended to arouse her to orgasm; and although the man may also be receiving arousing stimulation from her, it is usually not immediately intended to produce orgasm in him. The woman occupies the role of the principal receiver; the man's is the relatively more detached role. He will have achieved orgasm and ejaculation during sex or will do so after she has reached orgasm. What this means is that a man knows how to give a woman an orgasm during sex in which the sex partner is equally involved as a giver and taker. The clitorally oriented woman is aroused to orgasm in a context where she is the primary receiver and her sex partner is in many respects a spectator or onlooker. If this analysis is correct, it means that the greater a woman's clitoral orientation the more she prefers to achieve orgasm during intercourse and sexual excitement in a context in which she is the central object, in which her partner is clearly separate and largely giving his attention to her. The vaginally oriented woman could be said to prefer that her ability to reach orgasm during sex and the sexual excitement associated be generated in an interchange in which she is not the observed object, but rather "fused" with a partner who is as equally involved as she is. Related to this formulation is another obvious difference between the conditions of vaginal versus direct clitoral stimulation. In the first instance the primary aspect of the sexual transaction involves vaginal penetration and a resultant unique closeness of two bodies. In the second instance, the bodies of the two sex partners are more clearly separate. On this basis, too, one can say that delivery of manual clitoral stimulation leaves the male sex partner relatively more psychologically detached than does delivery of vaginal stimulation. There is great intimacy in both contexts, but there are differences in the degree to which the woman can think of herself as a "separate" entity. How do such formulations relate to other differences between the clitorally and vaginally oriented woman that have appeared in the data? They immediately seem to lead right back to the greater tendency of the vaginally oriented woman to experience her body as depersonalized. The essence of the depersonalized feeling is that one's body is alien, distant, and not truly a part of self. In other words, there is a sense of not having full ownership of one's own body. This may represent a belief on the part of the vaginally oriented woman that she has no right to feel that her body belongs to herself or to enjoy body experiences that only gratify her personally. She might, then, further believe that an intense body experience such as sexual arousal should occur only when someone else, a male sex partner. becomes so closely involved with her body that he is sharing in the responsibility for it. In other words, when her body is fused sexually with his, she can think of her sexual arousal as a joint event. She can perceive the experience as not primarily for her own satisfaction but also for another. At the other extreme, the clitorally oriented woman would, from this viewpoint, have the opposing need to experience her body autonomously and to be reassured that an event such as intense sexual excitement belonged clearly and personally to her. She would be a person who would have a negative response to conditions that seriously challenged her sense of body autonomy. How might such attitudinal differences between the vaginally and clitorally oriented woman with respect to the autonomy of her body arise? There is no solid information available upon which to construct an answer. One can only speculate that parental attitudes play a prime role. The vaginally oriented woman could be pictured as having grown up in a family in which she was made to feel that she was obligated to her parents and had only limited rights to enjoy anything unless they approved or could derive indirect profit from it themselves. That is, she would be made to feel that her parents had important proprietary rights over her and her body. The sense of not having body autonomy might be particularly fostered if the parents promulgated strict rules about various kinds of body activities. For example, if they emphasized that she could use her body for sexual purposes only under special conditions that they would spell out, they would be giving her the message that, in this realm, her body really was only partially under her own control. They would, in essence, be telling her that an important aspect of her body functioning was alienated from her own decision making. It is possible that similar feelings of not being in possession of one's body could be encouraged by parents who demanded strict adherence to certain standards about eating or who enforced elaborate arbitrary rituals with regard to toilet training. The basic attitude would be shaped that one dare not have a really important or dramatic body experience unless it was approved by, or shared with, some other significant figure. What can one say about the possible socialization background of the clitorally oriented woman? It is quite conceivable that she too grew up with parents who made the same demands for proprietary rights over her body as have been speculatively attributed to the parents of the vaginally oriented woman. However, instead of acquiescing to these demands, she may have rejected them and adopted compensatory defenses built around the idea that she would not permit intrusion upon the autonomy of her body. This would mean that she would be wary of situations in which her perception of her body as a clearly separate entity might be violated. One can also conceive of such an orientation being encouraged in a family setting in which there was an exaggerated, and probably defensive emphasis placed on being autonomous and not allowing one's individuality to be encroached upon by others. It would be a difficult task to test this formulation empirically. There might be multiple patterns of parental behavior that would encourage either a loss of sense of body ownership or an opposite exaggerated feeling of body autonomy. Such attitudes could be a function of the parents' moralistic expectations about sex or their special ideas about eating and adoption of their perfectionistic demands for control of anal functions and maintenance of body cleanliness. One can also think of manifold other possibilities, for example, the parental assumption that the child's body has to be carefully watched and controlled in order to protect it from accidents or other physical trauma. The various ways in which parental control over the body might be exercised would make it difficult to specify a particular parental attribute that would be predictive of a daughter adopting a clitoral versus vaginal orientation. The difference in body attitude between those with clitoral versus vaginal preferences specifically involves the dimension of depersonalization. There were no discernible differences with respect to other body attitude dimensions (for example, general body awareness, body-boundary differentiation, or feelings about the body interior). However, if one portrays the clitorally oriented woman as being particularly uncomfortable about conditions that threaten to compromise her sense of body autonomy, would this not lead one to expect that she would have special feelings of potential body vulnerability, and by implication, poorly defined body boundaries? Whereas this may sound like a logical deduction, previous empirical findings argue against it. These findings emerged from studies that were indirectly concerned with what kinds of women are most resistive to assuming the role of a medical patient. The studies indicated that the greater the definiteness of a woman's body boundaries the longer she delays in seeking treatment for early symptoms of cancer of the breast and cervix. It was concluded that the woman with well-defined boundaries is especially loath to assume the role of patient, which implies partially sharing the ownership of her body with the physician who would be treating her. In other words, reluctance to give up body autonomy does not mean that one necessarily has poorly differentiated boundaries. In the context of the cancer studies just mentioned, it actually had the opposite significance. It is pertinent too that no correlations have been found in previous studies between feelings of body depersonalization and boundary differentiation. The entire question of clitoral versus vaginal preference is obviously extremely complex. Only a small beginning has been made in understanding its psychological components. What are some of the key issues and problems that remain to be further investigated? Consider the following: 1. We need to know more about the specific fantasies and concerns that characterize the clitorally and vaginally oriented when they are sexually aroused. Do they, for example, differ in how passive or submissive they feel? Do their existing differences in feelings of body depersonalization become even more accentuated? Would one find that the vaginally oriented women show a relatively greater decrease in their sense of boundary differentiation during sexual excitement? 2. Much more needs to be learned about whether parents of the clitorally versus vaginally oriented woman differ in the communications they give about body autonomy. Studies should be undertaken in which parental behavior pertinent to body control can be examined minutely. If one were to construct a composite index of all of the major ways in which a parent may deny a child proprietary rights over his own body, would the parents of vaginally oriented women obtain higher scores than the parents of clitorally oriented women? Would the difference apply more to fathers than mothers? 3. Do the clitorally and vaginally oriented women "choose" different kinds of men when they marry? Perhaps the vaginally oriented woman is more likely to prefer a man who gives her the message that he expects to have "Proprietary" rights over her body or that he expects her to be willing to fuse her identity with his to a considerable degree. The clitorally oriented woman may look for a rather aloof man who is more willing to be a "spectator" of her feelings and passions.
|
The
Clitoris Website