Are people losing interest in the clitoris?

Jessica Pin
2 min readJun 7, 2018

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The patterns in Google Ngram viewer mostly make sense. But it looks like interest in the clitoris is declining or at least not increasing, as it should be.

Freud published his theories on female orgasm in the early 1900s, which are said to have caused decline in interest in the clitoris, though the response appears delayed. Finally, in the 70s, there appears to be a steep rise due to feminism and the sexual revolution. Then in the 80s, there is a correction, which all makes sense. But why is it continuing to fall moving into the 20th century?

For some perspective, here is Ngram for penis, which seems to be dropping more, though mentioned about 5 times as often. It appears the frequencies of clitoris and penis move together to some degree, possibly reflecting fluctuations in sex positivity.

Patterns in the use of vulva are depressing.

Can we please stop calling vulvas “vaginas”?

What doesn’t make sense is how, in the current cultural climate of women’s rights resurgence, interest in the clitoris seems to be waning.

Why do we talk about vaginas so much more than vulvas when vaginas are just cavities and vulvas are the primary locus of female pleasure and orgasm? Even internal stimulation has been attributed to the clitoral bulbs and crura or to the “female prostate,” neither of which are the vagina.

Why does it seem like people take so little interest in the anatomy of female pleasure and orgasm? At the very least, the yellow and green lines should trade places.

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Jessica Pin
Jessica Pin

Written by Jessica Pin

Getting clitoral neural anatomy included in OB/GYN textbooks. It was finally added for the first time in July 2019. BME/EE @WUSTL

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