Do Females Also Have A Penis?: A Feminist Perspective

 

Do you know that the females have a penis too? Yes, they do have one. It is their clitoris. Clitoris and penis are in many ways very similar to each other. The outer part of the clitoris almost looks like a penis. Clitoris and penis are both made of the same tissues. They both have a shaft and a head. Both get erected during the time of arousal. They both play an important role in sexual pleasure. It is not the vagina that is the most sensitive and stimulating sex organ but the clitoris since this tiny external portion has more nerve endings than any other human body, be it male or female. We all know about vaginal orgasm but we hardly know about clitoral orgasm. The difference between these two types of orgasm is just the means by which nerves are stimulated. For clitoral orgasm, it is the external part of the clitoris that is being stimulated and for vaginal orgasm it is nerves inside the vagina that are being stimulated. Most women reach climax sooner from clitoral stimulations and not from vaginal stimulations. The clitoris was not even scientifically discovered until the 1900’s. In fact, the idea that a woman could have different types of orgasm did not arise until the late 1900’s. This was mainly because of the taboos surrounding female sexuality. For the centuries, the body part “Clitoris” has been pretty much ignored while for the males the organ “Penis” has been mostly socially, culturally and politically attributed to them in spite of the fact that they are born with it. Michel Foucault in his The History of Sexuality has talked about the “repressive hypothesis” which holds the view that our society is happy with people who talk about faces, haircuts, beards, brain and mind but punishes people who talk about the various reproductive organs or sex organs, physical or carnal pleasure also known as jouissance etc. Famed psychiatrist Sigmund Freud argued that clitoral orgasms are inferior to vaginal orgasms in terms of the fact that women can only fully realise their mature sexuality from having intercourse with a man. So, a woman was supposed to depend and wait for her sexuality— for her to know the relevance of her various sex organs and identify those sex organs—on men. Have you ever wondered that if clitoris was discovered in the early 1800’s and if the women and the feminists of the then time were abreast of the affinity between clitoris and penis that this tiny portion called “Clitoris” is called the female penis then how much weightage they would have gained in their protests and fights against the supremacy of the males with respect to the tasks such as to produce literature, to vote (suffrage), to hold public office, to have equal rights in family law, to work, to have reproductive rights, to own property, to receive education, and all other essential and minority rights?