Get Cliterate
[Music]
there’s an old joke
what’s the difference between the
clitoris and a pub
every man knows how to find a pup
but is it men’s fault
there’s ignorance about an important
organ to women
today we’ll look at the basis for that
ignorance
research that’s changing the way we
think
and also the exciting news that men and
women alike
are getting cliterate
when i was studying to be a surgeon the
textbook we used
had a lot to say about the penis
the male urogenital triangle
took up four pages
then the female urogenital triangle
started off like this all the male
formations and structures are present in
the female
but modified greatly for functional
reasons
modifications we’re not modifications
i would try to educate the author of
last some of the quotes from the book
that got me going the essential
difference
is the failure in the female of midline
fusion of genital folds
lacking the rigid support of the
complete
perineal membrane of the male and
there are a few poorly developed
pit-like glands
said to be homologous with the prostate
more to the point the clitoris
which as a young woman i was very aware
of
from the inside was actually almost
completely emitted from the book
there was a book written about the
clitoris in 1866
by a british gynecologist dr isaac baker
browned
isaac becker-brown
his book is entitled on the curability
of certain forms of insanity
epilepsy catalepsy
and hysteria and females what was the
cure for this range of ailments
surgical removal of the clitoris
but it wasn’t just in the uk that this
operation was offered for this range of
problems it was in other parts of the
western world as well
elizabeth sheen a medical anthropologist
put it this way
the clitoris was so unimportant to a
normal woman
so as not to be missed if removed and
yet lurking
in its substance was the greatest threat
to female welfare ever known
intellectual and surgical
removal of the clitoris is part of our
cultural inheritance
in preparation for our final surgical
exams
as young urologists in 1993
i had the benefit of a tutorial
from professor john hudson a renowned
pediatric surgeon
who was talking to us about intersex
surgery
it was clear listening to him that he
really cared
about preservation of the dorsal
clitoral nerve and vessels
at the time of this surgery i found this
a real breakthrough and it gave me
great hope
i did ask him about becoming my
supervisor for
a proposed doctorate and
and he was a great supervisor
around that time in urology
and even today there’s been a lot of
focus in surgery
in prostate removal surgery on um
not harming the nerves to the penile
erectile mechanism
i did a literature search at that time
to see if there’d been similar work done
in females
couldn’t find anything and so we started
a research program mimicking the studies
that have been done
on male anatomy and then following the
nerves
by dissection all the way from the spine
forward
past the rectum cervix
on the under surface of the vagina wall
to the back of the clitoris
i had the benefit of access to
incredible and incredible archive of
fatal material
from the late professor douglas stevens
the doyenne of embryology
but having studied these fetal tissues
and the nerve studies
just increased my belief that the most
important study to do was the study of
the anatomy of the clitoris per se
having finished my training then in the
us i came back and started a new
research program
people asked me whether the
establishment was supportive
they really provided resources and
enormous expertise
to this work urology society awarded me
their highest
fellowship um
the royal melbourne hospital’s head of
surgery
gave me the assistance of an incredibly
gifted dissector in his own right and
photographer
rob plenter and the department of
anatomy
colin anderson professor colin anderson
just knew how to get a piece of tissue
that i was able to
obtain and he would photograph it at
exactly the right magnification
in exactly the right section to tell the
story of the anatomy
science is so much related to this
communication
communication piece and and medical art
complements that we have the benefit of
working with a great
medical artist in dr levine effy as well
so an example of the work
you can see in this dissection
so you can see the very large
dorsal clitoral nerves arising at the
pelvic side wall
and going up underneath the pubic bone
and then the same nerves you can see in
this whole histology section or
microscopic section
at the glands of the clitoris and you
can see there’s very large nerve trunks
in
in addition to the receptors for
vibration and light
touch
grace said in relation to these nerves
the female nerves they were very small
and supplied the clitoris
that was it anyway
that proved to be wrong the nerves were
very large at every age even in children
and they would stay large all the way
through
um even to that very sensitive tip of
the clitoris
i received in the mail recently this 3d
model from dr
e mulligan who is definitely cliterate
this may be a helpful way to um
understand the anatomy so
this is about life’s this is life size
but this is quite small
but it gives you the idea of the
clitoris tucking in under the bone as it
does
these arms or croura unite as they go
up under the bone
and then join to form the body of the
clitoris
they then the body takes a sort of
boomerang-like path
out under the bone and projecting into
the mons or
mound of the pubis ending in this
highly sensitive tip or glands of the
clitoris
these parts are called the bulbs
and they uh join together at what’s
called
the root of the clitoris where the four
organs
unite there’s also another
area that’s called the pars intermedia
and professor claire yang has done some
studies specifically on this
it has conjoined blood vessels to unite
all of these
parts and it’s immediately under the
skin
very important and anatomical area
one of the things that the lay public
have
coined is a concept of internal clitoris
which is pretty useful
actually so this is the only bit that
can be seen from the outside
the rest of it all being hidden from
view
in elderly cadavers in
young cadavers the clitoris
is a very substantial organ it’s
multi-planar and
one of the changes we see with age
is the these bulbs tend to shrink up
towards the other parts of the clitoris
it was an incredible gift from
all of these donors these selfless souls
um this donation of their
their body
when i was working in the us i had the
privilege of working for professor
edward mcguire himself a pioneer of a
new specialty female urology
one day he had a chance conversation
with
professor john de lancie a
guru international guru of gynecology
and
pelvic anatomy john had been
researching pelvic mr pelvic
mri studies
and he shot me an email saying ed says
you’ve been studying the clitoris we
think we can see the clitoris on mri are
you interested in collaborating
well let me think about that for about a
micro second
um anyway it was the
most incredible opportunity to be able
to combine
the dissection studies with this very
complementary
live anatomy that mri
brings norm eisenberg
the professor of anatomy at melbourne
uni and professor chris briggs and
others
added to these forms of anatomy
surface anatomy as they’ve done for
every other body part
in the development of their educational
tool anatomedia
people ask me has anatomy changed the
teaching of anatomy
and i would have to say our young
doctors and other health workers
at the university of melbourne have had
the opportunity to become
clitorate through the provision of anata
media
in 2007 working with norm eisenberg
we created a publication for the journal
of sexual medicine
where we aimed to bring together
anatomical concepts but for health
professionals more generally
but whilst maintaining that scientific
validity
there’s this crazy kind of cultural
concept of
vagina versus clitoris and
as though is one or the other where both
organs
are very important to female sexuality
this mri helps you to understand the
relationship between these
two organs so at the top the highly
vascular
or intensely blood supplied organ the
clitoris
you can see its components here the body
the bulbs all wrapping around
the upper aspect or into the
mons which is up here and here’s the
urethra which is sort of target-like on
mr and then the vaginal wall here
so the idea that they’re
completely separate organs is is just
wrong
and graze did say there’s no
relationship between the clitoris and
the urethra
which also proved to be incorrect
you can see again in this tv art from a
documentary forbidden pleasure
the relationship between these parts
clitoracy is gaining momentum
the clitoris is not as the so-called
father of anatomy visalia
said in the 16th century a new and
useless part
today we bring meaning to the word
cliteracy
by the power of science we’re empowering
women and men alike
yes the brain is where orgasm occurs
but it almost always occurs in the
presence
of clitoral stimulation it’s not that
orgasm can’t occur without clitoral
stimulation it’s just
very unlikely
but how wonderful for people to
understand these organs of pleasure
much more how great for the people who
own them
and for the people who love them
i’m going to show you some exciting
resources that just seem to be
manifesting this is
a box of clitorises that just arrived in
the mail
3d printed clitoris it
is amazing how technology is aiding
in this movement but then more
old-fashioned a little puppet
showing the labia majora menorah
the glands of the clitoris and the
internal parts of the clitoris
for educational purposes and this one
a model sent to me from some german
model makers showing the pubis on the
inside
the pink being the body and so forth and
the
bulbs in blue
journalist melissa fife won two awards
for her
work on getting cliterate in 2018.
hillary barrage wrote the most uplifting
book
hard to believe a book called female
mutilation could be uplifting
but she shares her vision for the steps
to end
female mutilation giving us great hope
there are many resources online
documentaries and podcasts
as long as great as as as well as great
books
to help in the movement of getting
clitorate
for the future of this movement i
visualize a world
where every person is cliterate where
schools provide accurate resources
every time where pornography actually
serves and helps
female sexuality and well where the
world
reflects upon the history of thousands
of years of trauma to
girls clitorises that commits to healthy
change and protection
against that mutilation where sex is
about mutual pleasure
not one partner pursuing and the other
resisting
celebrate getting clitorate