Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Carleton University
PHIL 2306 A
Christine Koggel
In The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm Anne Koedt argues that it serves men’s purpose to
perpetuate the myth about the female vaginal orgasm. According to Koedt no such thing exists;
females cannot achieve orgasm through vaginal stimulation alone. She states that inside the
vaginal wall there are almost no nerve endings and most women are completely unaware when
they are being touched there. The myth about vaginal orgasm is apparently so prevalent that
when women achieve orgasm they automatically assume it was centered in the vagina. This is
because they have “a desire to fit [their] experience to the male-defined idea of normalcy” (246).
Why would men want to perpetuate this myth? Koedt cites that the vagina creates the perfect
balance between lubrication and friction to give a man an orgasm so it is in his best interest to
keep this form of copulation as the standard. Furthermore Sigmund Freud popularized the idea
that clitoral orgasm was adolescent while vaginal orgasm was mature and that women who failed
to achieve orgasms were envious of men thus it was an anti-male phenomenon. Koedt also says
that “the establishment of clitoral orgasm as fact would threaten the heterosexual institution”
(248) as it would mean sexual pleasure could be received from men or women thus the male-
female role would become optional. Koedt’s argument has strong points but by declaring there
are no orgasms other than those centered in the clitoris she aligns herself with those thinking in
exclusionary terms; such as Freud. Just as Freud declared that achieving vaginal orgasm is a sign
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of a ‘mature’ woman Koedt declares that all self-aware women recognize that orgasms occur
through clitoral stimulation alone. Both of these exclusionary terms have the same pitfall; they
close off a whole set of possibilities. Thus instead of trying to discover the full range and
possibility of female sexual experience these types of arguments try to confine them within its
One of the main reasons cited by Koedt for the perpetuation of the myth of vaginal
orgasm is that the vagina creates the perfect balance between lubrication and friction to give a
man an orgasm. Koedt argues women have thus been defined sexually in terms of what pleases
men. The vagina may create a good balance between lubrication and friction but there are other
parts of a woman that can also do the same; such as the mouth. The saliva in the mouth creates
adequate lubrication and women have better control of the muscles in their mouth and tongue
than in their vagina and so they can better control the intensity of friction. Given these details
and the fact that men need to expand less energy when they are being orally stimulated, versus
repeatedly penetrating the vagina, one may conclude that it would be in their best interest to
Koedt also argues that orgasms are centered in the clitoris only and any other forms of
orgasms felt by women are actually clitoral ones which they mistakenly believe to be vaginal.
This statement is as arrogant and harmful as those of Freud declaring all clitoral orgasm as
adolescent. To completely disregard the G-spot as a real area of stimulation that may lead to
overwhelming number of women need clitoral stimulation to achieve orgasm but at the same
time there are significant numbers who can either achieve orgasm through penetration alone or
those who do not enjoy clitoral stimulation at all. Just as those women in patriarchical society
who are made to feel inferior because they ‘failed’ to achieve orgasm through vaginal
penetration, Koedt’s argument puts a similar blame on those that do not enjoy clitoral
stimulation. The important thing to recognize would be that every woman has unique desires and
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needs and in order to achieve orgasm the specific needs should be catered to; be it a need for
Sigmund Freud made the pronouncement that the "mature" woman has orgasms when her
vagina, but not her clitoris, is stimulated. This, of course, made the man's penis central to a
woman's sexual satisfaction. Anne Koedt felt by shattering this ‘myth’ and showing how it is
actually the clitoris which gives women pleasure the penis would no longer be a central figure in
women’s sexual satisfaction and so in effect men would no longer be central. This type of
argument implies that women seek men for their penis alone which is a purposely narrow view
of why individuals seek physical intimacy. Furthermore her argument that “the establishment of
clitoral orgasm as fact would threaten the heterosexual institution” (248) is based on the idea that
what keeps some women from being with other women is the idea that orgasm could only be
achieved through a penile vaginal penetration. If a woman was truly attracted to another woman,
and was worried about achieving orgasm without a penis, a dildo is available for them to use and
have been around for decades if not centuries. What attracts a woman to a man has to do with
more than a penis and similarly I would assume what attracts a woman to another woman has
more to do with than just breasts. A clitoral orgasm as fact would not threaten the heterosexual
institution; it would only teach men and women alike what to do to achieve mutual orgasmic
satisfaction.
In The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm Anne Koedt argues that it serves men’s purpose to
perpetuate the myth about the female vaginal orgasm. Well, it may serve lesbian individuals’
purpose to perpetuate the myth about the female clitoral orgasm. Arguing that there is only one
way to achieve orgasm disregards the complexity of our human sexuality and alienates those that
do not fit into the mold. It must also be recognized that sex includes more than just a goal to
achieve sexual satisfaction and peak; individuals seek emotional as well as physical bonding. At
which stage the penis becomes secondary to emotional connection. It is more important and far
more helpful to try to understand the diverse range of female sexual experience and to recognize
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that the biggest myth of them all may be our false assumption that we fully understand our own
sexuality.
Work Cited
Koedt, Anne. The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm. Ed. Carole R. McCann and Seung-Kyung Kim.