FROM THE A-SPOT TO G-SPOT: UNDERSTANDING ORGASMS
A veteran researcher translates science into sexual healing in her new book, The Orgasm Answer Guide
BY JUNE 4, 2010
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Best known for popularizing and naming the G-spot (after the researcher Ernst Gräfenberg, who first wrote about it in 1950), Beverly Whipple, PhD, has spent more than 30 years studying pleasure—largely, she says, "in order to validate women's experience." Written in collaboration with three other sexperts, Whipple's sixth book, the new Orgasm Answer Guide, is exhaustive, sweetly sex-positive, and funny in that unflappable science-nerd way: "One might wonder about the duration of the perceptual orgasm in a male pig...." (Well, you will when you find out that male pigs' breath paralyzes female pigs!)Answer Guide touches on subjects Whipple has researched for decades, including women with spinal-cord injuries, many of whom thought they'd never come again. About one such experiment, Whipple says: "We had the injured woman self-stimulate her cervix, her G-spot and her breasts. (Her breasts were above her injury.) She had 12 orgasms. She cried; I cried; it was very moving." The book also covers "nongenital" orgasms, including "thinking off" climaxes sparked just by mental imagery (plus those generated by prayer, meditation, childbirth, and "stimulation of lip, nipple, shoulder, or toe"). Other fun facts: An orgasm burns only two or three calories; men ejaculate on average after two to 10 minutes of intercourse; a woman's risk of breast cancer is lower the more sex partners she's had; and, perhaps best of all, the G-spot may have some company down there. The A-spot (located between the G-spot and the cervix) and the U-spot (just above and around the urethra) may also have pleasure generating potential.
ELLE : What made you choose a career in sex research?
Beverly Whipple: A student asked me in a nursing class I was teaching in the early '70s, "What can a man do sexually after he has a heart attack?" The board of trustees of the program said I couldn't talk about it. So I quit my job and went to graduate school. I got a master's in counseling, a master's in nursing, and a PhD in psychobiology.
ELLE : What do most women ask you?
BW: My research into the G-spot came from women who ejaculated and said, "Am I normal?" Every woman is unique; we have to be able to feel good about what brings us pleasure. You can't enjoy it if you think something's wrong with you.
ELLE : Does everyone have a G-spot?
BW: I don't know. We studied 400 women and they all did, but not everybody liked it being stimulated. One interesting finding is that self-stimulation of the G-spot produces a strong pain-blocking effect. Just
putting pressure on the area elevates pain thresholds—but not tactile thresholds— about 40 percent; with pleasurable stimulation, the threshold rises between 80 and 100 percent.
putting pressure on the area elevates pain thresholds—but not tactile thresholds— about 40 percent; with pleasurable stimulation, the threshold rises between 80 and 100 percent.
ELLE : I'd never heard of a cervical orgasm. Can anybody have one?
BW: We can't say for sure. Some women describe their orgasms from different forms of stimulation—clitoral, G-spot, vaginal, cervical—as feeling different to them. Our study of cervical orgasms started with women with spinal-cord injuries, but then some women without injuries said, "Oh, I've never felt that before," when they rhythmically pushed on their cervix, and the same areas of the brain were activated in women with and without injury. It helps prove that there are many nerve pathways that can help a woman experience orgasm— that orgasm isn't just a reflex.
ELLE : You tell people not to obsess about finding the G-spot or having simultaneous orgasms.
BW: We don't use the words reach or achieve with orgasm in the book; we use experience. You shouldn't strive for this or that, just enjoy yourself. Women can have pleasure and satisfaction without orgasm. The last chapter of our 1982 book on the G-spot was called "The Best Is the Enemy of the Good."
