The Clitoris Book Is for Men, Too

Two Frenchwomen wrote a book about the clitoris. For women. Or so you would think. Nature is forever in motion. In spring, leaves appear on the trees; in autumn, they fall again. Then the tree begins to form buds from which, the following spring, new leaves emerge.

IN A WOMAN, THE BUD EMERGES FROM THE LEAVES​

When you are making love, nature is in motion too. But with a woman, something remarkable happens. With her, leaves do not emerge from the bud; rather, the bud emerges from the leaves. A little bud that grows ever larger and more sensitive, a little bud to wink at and to plant soft kisses upon.

The pleasure of the man

If a man had a clitoris, he would certainly know about it. At every touch he would shout from the rooftops that he possessed one. Frenchwomen Alexandra Hubin and Caroline Michel, who wrote the fascinating and humorous The Clitoris Book, acknowledge this too: 'If men had a clitoris, it would have been studied and measured for an eternity. Competitions would have been held, drawings would have appeared on school walls, enticing emails would have circulated with techniques for enlarging it and with advertisements for magic pills to make it stiff again in cases of impotence.' And, a passage earlier: 'To acknowledge that there exists an organ intended solely for the pleasure of the woman (no other functions have been found to date) is quite something in a world where sexuality long revolved around penetration and the pleasure of the man.'

An overlooked role

It is clear. The Clitoris Book was written by and for women, but that does not mean men will find nothing to their taste in it. Quite the contrary. The history of this delightful female organ is fascinating, one in which the clitoris played an overlooked role for years, and in which Freud was, for the umpteenth time, wrong. From the book: 'Freud held that women who reach orgasm thanks to the clitoris are not only immature, but even neurotic. The clitoris is spoken of once more, but in a negative way. According to the famous psychoanalyst, the clitoral orgasm amounts to less than the vaginal one.' From the man who prescribed cocaine as medicine, you could hardly expect anything else, of course.

The tip of the iceberg

And this despite the fact that there is no such thing as a vaginal orgasm. 'We do not know precisely how large the clitoris is,' write Alexandra and Caroline, 'but we do know that one centimetre more or less is not important for our understanding of its anatomy and its role in pleasure. What concerns us above all is to drive home the realisation that the clitoris, at least as it is commonly understood, is merely the tip of the iceberg.' Because it is a book for women, it contains no tips for men on how to stimulate the clitoris, but the knowledge that this jewel measures some nine to eleven centimetres beneath the skin, wraps almost entirely around the vagina, and is therefore also stimulated during penetration, and is more sensitive than the glans (doucement, messieurs!) provides ample material to get creative. A delightful book. NB: The book's illustrator, Lori Malépart-Traversy, previously released this award-winning short animated film, Le Clitoris. The Clitoris Book – Published by Nieuw Amsterdam