Bodies meant for pleasure
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Bodies meant for pleasure
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Sex hormones: If you're a young person, you've no doubt heard all about your "raging hormones." Grr! Androgens, estrogens and progestins are "sex" hormones produced by the adrenal glands by people of all sexes, with some difference in amounts between all sexes, and also in the testes, ovaries and a couple other parts of the body. These play a part in sexual pleasure. Androgens effect the desire for sex and are one of its many drivers, though within average hormonal ranges, the brain plays a bigger part in sex drive than those hormones. Androgens play a part in erection and response of the penis, the clitoris and the vagina. For those with a vagina, estrogens influence vaginal lubrication and elasticity of vulvovaginal tissues.
If you get how big a part our brain and whole body plays in sexuality, it’s also easier to understand how while most people, most often, reach orgasm through some kind of genital stimulation, sexual enjoyment and orgasm can also occur sometimes without any genital stimulation at all. Some people with disabilities that impact or inhibit genital sensation can still reach orgasm because sex is mostly about the brain and the body as a unique whole, not compartmentalized parts.
If in doubt about what kind of genitals someone has, what they like to call them, or how a person genders themselves in relationship to their body, just ask. If you're getting intimate enough with someone to be engaged with their genitals, you're certainly intimate enough to talk about them openly and honestly. However someone tells you they prefer to identify their gender or their body parts, that's how you should identify them, too.
Want to get a better idea of where all the parts of the clitoris are in the context of the vulva? Betty Dodson has a great video of real-time illustration (with a perfect soundtrack) here at YouTube.
The Skene's glands are internal, each just to the side of and below the urethra (the urinary opening). While the urethra rarely plays a part in sexual pleasure, the Skene's may not only be the source of ejaculate, but pressure around that area -- likely in part because parts of the internal clitoris are there, too -- can be something some experience as pleasurable. While we're on urethras, some folks with penises enjoy urethral stimulus, too.
originally written 12.22.2009 • updated 07.09.2021 •
Usually, when we’re looking at a layout of sexual anatomy it's through the lens of reproduction, so it’s all about penises and vaginas, testes and uterus . But from a standpoint of pleasure and sexual response, sexual anatomy is about far more than genitals and is far less about reproductive organs. Ultimately, all the parts and systems of the body are potential sexual organs in the context of pleasure.
Our most important sexual organs when it comes to pleasure are not only usually different than we think, but operate far less independently than we assume or have been told.
We're not saying the genitals aren't important or a big deal with sexual pleasure and experience: for most people, most of the time, they are. That's hardly surprising. There are a lot of densely packed nerve endings in our genitals, and if and when we stimulate them ourselves, wantedly have them stimulated by others, or rub two sets together, it does tend to often result in a sexual kapowie. But the kapowie experience is a lot more complicated than the stimulating of the genitals part.
Sexual anatomy is also often presented as only about genitals because sexual anatomy presentations tend to privilege reproduction above pleasure and cultural thinking about sexuality often isn’t very holistic or sophisticated. Let’s face it: we also live in a world where it’s considered a lot more socially acceptable to frame sexual anatomy as reproductive than as the parts that can bring us sexual pleasure. We can talk about cute babies-to-be at the dinner table with Grandma: we can rarely say the same about knee-knocking orgasms or dizzy arousal .
Reproductive function tells us little about pleasure. Seeing our sexual anatomy through the lens of pleasure can dismantle myths about sexual response, gender or sex binaries or sexual orientation stereotypes; can let us discover parts of our bodies or ways they functioned we didn’t even know we could cultivate a tangible awareness of. It can tell the truth that for most people, most of the time, the pursuit of solo or partnered sex is often about the pursuit of emotional and physical pleasure, not about a desire to breed, and that the form of that pursuit is as diverse as we are. Pleasure is a big and vital part of most of our lives, including sexual pleasure, and the anatomical basics of sexual pleasure need be no more a mystery than where babies come from. (Of course, not everyone wants to or can have babies by using their genitals to do it, so the focus on reproduction leaves a lot of us out of the pleasure part, even when we don’t need to be left out.)
You might be used to sexual anatomy being framed as male or female, but as we usually don't, we're not going to do it that way this time, either. We don't need to, we'd rather not, and in the context of pleasure, it makes much more sense not to go that route. This shouldn't be a big deal. After all, you know if what you’ve got is a penis or most like a penis; if you’ve got a vulva or what is most like a vulva. They look different enough most of the time: you don’t need us to assign sex or gender to know that stuff.
We’re going to start not just with the parts every one of us has, but also with the part of everyone’s body that influences sexuality the most.
The largest, most important and most active sexual organ of the body isn’t a penis or vagina . It’s the brain and its structures.
The brain is responsible for our emotions, our perceptions (including of pain and of pleasure), our memories; for regulating and controlling our central nervous system , our cardiovascular system, our endocrine system and our senses. The hypothalamus of the brain is responsible for the secretion of hormones that influence sexual feelings and response, like oxytocin, vasopressin, serotonin and dopamine. The brain receives and processes messages from your sensory organs, giving you and other parts of your body information about how something (or someone, including yourself) looks, sounds, tastes, smells and feels to you. It's also the brain that sends and receives signals regarding blood pressure, heart rate, body temperature and how we breathe: all huge parts of sexual function, experience and response.
Not everyone’s brain works the same way -- not by a serious long shot -- and sometimes wires can get crossed. Also, if you have any kind of paralysis the signals from parts of your body to your brain may not move as fast as someone else’s or they may be silent altogether. This doesn’t mean you can’t feel things, mind: even with paralysis there are few absolutes. You may have been told one thing by a doctor, but we think the best way to find out what’s possible is to explore on your own.
It’s the pleasure center of your brain that sends signals back to you that what's happening feels good (or doesn’t), and it's your brain and nervous system that transmits the feelings and sensations we have with orgasm . Not only is sex about communication between people, it's about the systems of your brain and the rest of your body communicating, too. The beauty of bodies and brains is that they don’t all communicate the same way. It may take time to figure out how your personal communication works, but it’s definitely worth the effort.
Without your brain, you wouldn’t feel pain or pleasure, even if you were touched in a way or in a place which many people find pleasurable. The brain is primarily responsible for orgasm: during sexual pleasure, all the nerve endings of your body (including your genitals, all linked to your nervous system) are in concert and communication with your brain, and vice-versa. Without everything going on in our brains, we wouldn’t have any interest in sex at all, nor find sex anything of interest.
This -- and the fact that orgasm is more about the brain and nervous system than body parts where physical stimulation that might be part of why we have an orgasm occurs -- is one reason why classifying orgasms like "vaginal orgasm" or "clitoral orgasm" is problematic. Ultimately, when it comes to orgasm (as well as most of sexual pleasure), if we want to attach it to one body part, the only correct term would be "brain orgasm," since that’s where orgasm, like so much of sexuality, happens most.
Sexuality is physical and sensory, but also chemical, emotional (yes, even for anyone who says sex isn’t at all emotional for them), psychological, intellectual, social, cultural and multi-sensory. That's all brain stuff. It’s not just what we feel if we touch ourselves or someone else touches us a certain way and how the brain influences those sensations, but all we think and feel about it, including messages others have given us, all our previous sexual experiences and experiences which may have influenced our sexuality, our hopes and fears, our sexual fantasies or expectations, how we feel about who we’re with if and when we have sexual partners, how we feel about our sexual selves as a whole and everything going on with us hormonally and physically when we are sexually stimulated – whether we’re aroused without any kind of touch, or if touch is also involved -- in any way. No matter what other parts of our bodies are part of what’s going on with us sexually our brain is our biggest, most important and most active sexual organ.
Once you understand how the brain – what it is, what it does, all the systems it controls and responds to – is our largest and most important sexual organ, it's a lot easier to see why we, as a people, can be so sexually diverse and experience any kind of sex so differently. After all, if sex was only or mostly about our genitals, even with genital diversity, it would be sound to expect that those of us with the same basic parts would have the same experiences with a given kind of touch. But we don’t, not by a serious long shot, and that's primarily because of our brains. Once you understand how the brain is our largest and most important sex organ you can also begin to see how thinking differently isn’t necessarily a negative when it comes to sexual pleasure.
You might have heard someone use the term “erogenous zones” at some point. That’s a term popularized in sexology in the 60's and 70's to describe areas of the body of high sensitivity which people often (but not always) find particularly sexually stimulating.
When we say high sensitivity, we mean that some areas of the body have more sensory nerve receptors (a nerve that passes impulses from receptors to the central nervous system: that engages more of a hey-how's-it-going-good-how-about-you running conversation between those parts of your body and your brain) than other areas. They're places where we’re generally more sensitive to both pain and pleasure. When it comes to sensory nerves, not all parts of the body are created equal. That's why, for instance, we can find a lot of people who feel highly stimulated by someone rubbing their nipples, and fewer people who feel highly stimulated by someone rubbing their elbows.
Lists of erogenous zones can sometimes be arbitrary – when someone lists them, sometimes they're just making a list of what they personally like best -- but for many people, typical erogenous zones include the lips, tongue, palms and fingers, the soles of the feet, the inner thighs, nipples, neck, ears, armpits and the genitals. Our skin, as a whole, is really an erogenous zone. Mucocutaneous regions of the body (made of both mucosa and cutaneous skin) are also often particularly sensitive: parts like the foreskin , penis, the external clitoris, the inner labia , the perineum , mouth or nipples. Just so it’s clear, there is no absolute relationship between gender and where on your body you feel sexually sensitive: people who are or who identify as men can and do enjoy nipple stimulation, while some people who are women do not, for instance.
Bear in mind, not only is individual sensitivity different – what feels great for one person may feel ticklish or like too much to someone else – but what we carry in our brains about a given part of our body and what's happening there influences our sexual response with those parts.
If we had violent or negative experiences or ideas about a given part, even if it’s packed densely with sensory nerve receptors, it can feel unpleasant instead of pleasant. If someone we aren't into touches one of those areas unwantedly, it tends to feel a lot different than when they’re touched by someone who we very much want to have touching us. When a relationship is really great, a partner touching us in this place, in this way, might have felt amazing. But that same person touching us in the same place in the exact same way can feel lousy or even like nothing at all if that relationship has later gone straight to hell. One day, a given kind of stimulation might result in orgasm, while the very next day, it won't.
There goes the brain at work, yet again, showing us how we can't segregate physical sensations from it and how what's going on with us up between our ears has a whole lot to do with what goes on between our legs.
Where are your tingly bits? Most of us can find out about where your erogenous zones are with your own two hands: masturbation doesn't have to just be about genitals, after all. If touching yourself with your hands doesn’t work, you might be able to use other body parts, or even notice how parts of your body feel when sheets, clothing, the rain, or the wind touch it. With partners, take the time to find out about areas on both of your bodies you each tend to find sensitive and sexually arousing, really focusing on exploring ALL of your body, and communicating to each other where those sensitive areas are. This is one reason it makes a lot of sense not to rush into genital sex : you can miss finding out about all the parts of each other's bodies which are sexually responsive and which can be exciting either all by themselves, or can add pleasure to genital sex. Genital sex doesn’t work for all of us, and for most people sex that's only genital tends to get old really fast.
Before we go there, know that just like with all the parts of our bodies, genital variation is diverse and genitals are not always as dimorphic (looking only one of two ways) as they are presented or as we may assume them to be , especially when we’re young or haven’t had an earnestly wide diversity of sexual partners, as many people won’t in their lives.
We don’t say that noses only come in this shape or that one, or that faces only look this way or that: it’s no more accurate to say that genitals only look one of two ways. The genitals of some people -- like some intersex people, people who have had sexual reassignment or other genital surgery, people who have had genital injuries, mutilations or who just had major variances at birth -- may not match ideas of what genitals "should" look like or fit any one diagram or description well. Some people who identify as men or male have a vagina; some people who identify as women or female have a penis. As well, some people who have a penis may call it a vagina or something else: we don't all use the same language for our body parts, and some people are comfortable with terms for their genitals that others are not.
Genital variation is also important to keep in mind when anyone talks about "normal" sexual function or an experience of sexuality/anatomy which we gender and/or attribute as normal for a given sex or gender. For instance, when we talk about penises, we can’t say that only a penis with a foreskin or one without one is normal since both types exist and many men have one or the other. A vulva of someone with a large clitoral hood and small labia can look massively different from the vulva of someone with larger labia and a smaller hood. Color differences between different people can also be substantial: while some genitals are peach or pink, others are dark brown or purple. And what feels really great to one person genitally may feel either really uncomfortable or completely boring to someone else.
Let’s start with something that not only can everyone have, but that everyone can also be.
Everyone has an asshole (and everyone can also be an asshole). The nerves and muscles within and around the perianal area play a part in the genital sensations of sex even if no one is engaging in any kind of anal or perianal sexual stimulation or sex whatsoever.
The anus -- the external opening to the rectum, visible between your butt cheeks -- is surrounded by two concentric rings of muscle: the internal and external sphincter. The external can be voluntarily controlled (in other words, you can think about squeezing it open or closed and make that happen); the internal can’t. The anus is rich with sensory nerve endings: it has half the nerve endings in the whole pelvic region and those are interconnected with other pelvic muscles. Like the vagina, most of those nerve endings are concentrated around the opening and just inside the rectum. The anus is unlike the vagina in that it does not self-lubricate.
The anus and its surrounding areas can be a site of sexual pleasure for any gender or sexual orientation: notions that only gay men can or do enjoy anal stimulation, for instance, are false and based in homophobia , even though plenty of gay men do enjoy anal stimulation (so do plenty of bi or straight men). Ideas that the only reason women would engage in any kind of anal sex would be to please male partners are false, even if that’s why some women do. Sexual anal stimulation may be more stimulating for people who have a prostate gland than for those who are don't. The prostate gland can only be directly accessed via the rectum and is only present in people who also have a penis (though the Skene's glands discussed below are homologous to the prostate gland we're talking about here). For those who do have a penis, a lower portion of it is inside the body and stimulus to that person's rectum or perineum can stimulate that area.
The pudendal nerve – something else we all have -- is located in the perianal region at the bottom of the spinal cord, and for folks whose nerve pathways aren’t being disrupted in some way, it’s quite the powerhouse. It supplies nerves to the bladder, anus, perineum, penis, areas around the scrotum and the clitoris. It divides into two terminal branches: the perineal nerve, and the dorsal nerve of the penis or the dorsal nerve of the clitoris. A lot of the feelings people have in their genitals and pelvis during orgasm – including the spasms people can feel with orgasm or ejaculations -- are because of the pudendal nerve as well as the pelvic nerve.
If you want to see the differences up close between the pudendal, other nerves, muscles and other aspects of the internal anatomy in a vulva and a penis (and other surrounding parts of those genital systems), you can click here to see the vulva or here to see how it works from a back view of the penis and anus . Looking at both is also a pretty cool way to see some interesting similarities between them and to consider all of the muscles involved and surrounding any set of genitals: how our muscles react and what having those muscles engaged feels like are yet another component of sexual pl
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