Genital Arousal | Sexual Gratification and Orgasm

Of course, while the skin may be the largest sexual organ, it isn’t generally viewed as the focal one. And with feelings of sexual arousal, changes occur in the genitals that can create all sorts of pleasurable sensations for women.

When a woman is sexually aroused, blood travels to the pelvic areas of the vagina, labia, and clitoris, and to other regions such as the urethra, uterus, and possibly even the fallopian tubes and ovaries. This pooling of blood in genital tissue is referred to as ovaries. This pooling of blood in genital tissue is referred to as “genital vasocongestion.” In a nonsexually aroused state, a woman’s vagina is the approximate size and shape of a cooked cannelloni noodle—without the filling. It is four inches long, with ridged, horizontally wrinkled walls. As vasocongestion occurs, the inner two-thirds of the vagina expands considerably in length and width, allowing for the accommodation of a penis or another stimulating object. The upper part of the vagina balloons out, the uterus elevates, and the lower portion of the vagina swells. These changes decrease the vaginal opening and ease the vagina’s ability to hang on to any object that enters it. The inner labia, or lips, double or triple in thickness as they fill with blood, which in turn pushes apart the outer labia to make the vaginal entry more accessible. As sexual arousal increases, the clitoris increases in length and diameter and hides under its hood to protect itself from too much stimulation.

Vasocongestion also leads to vaginal lubrication. Most people think that vaginal lubrication comes from a gland inside the vagina, but it does not. When a woman is physically sexually aroused, the pressure of blood engorgement in her vaginal tissue actually squeezes lubrication into the vagina. Even when a woman is not sexually aroused, tiny droplets of lubrication slowly seep through her vaginal walls to keep the sides of the “noodle” from sticking together. Consequently, vaginal engorgement and lubrication are closely related, and both are signs of genital sexual arousal in women. Some researchers have measured genital arousal by having women insert a tampon when they are not sexually aroused, and then removing and weighing the not sexually aroused, and then removing and weighing the tampon after they experience sexual arousal. How much more the tampon weighs after arousal demonstrates how much vaginal fluid has been absorbed by the tampon. This is a clever but not terribly accurate way of measuring vaginal lubrication. More often, genital arousal in women is measured in the laboratory with a device called a vaginal photoplethysmograph. The device, which looks like a clear plastic tampon, contains a photosensitive cell that measures, from within the vagina, the amount of light reflected from vaginal walls, which indicates the amount of vasocongestion.

Women often describe genital vasocongestion as feelings of pelvic “fullness,” “tingling,” or “pulsing and throbbing.” These sensations make some women feel warm and good. They also make some women want to have sex as a way to “resolve” the buildup—like an itch that needs scratching. For some women, genital sensations have an added advantage: Not only do they feel good, they also provide a woman with feedback that her body is turned on. Recognizing this can add to a woman’s experience of sexual arousal. For some women, though, feeling turned on and sexually gratified has little, if anything, to do with how their genitals are responding—physiological arousal does not necessarily lead to psychological arousal.

The fact that a woman’s genital response does not automatically lead to her psychological pleasure is probably why Viagra and similar drugs have not been nearly as helpful for women with sexual arousal problems as they have been for men women with sexual arousal problems as they have been for men with erection problems—despite the fact that the genital tissues of men and women are very similar. Both men’s and women’s genital tissues consist of a network of tiny blood vessels surrounded by intricate muscles. For a man to attain an erect penis and for a woman to experience clitoral and other genital swelling, blood must flow into these tissues. And in order for blood to enter the genital tissues, the muscles surrounding the blood vessels need to relax. Drugs such as Viagra, Levitra, and Cialis work by causing the muscles in genital tissue to relax for a longer period of time, thus providing more time for blood to enter the vessels. Several studies have shown that the amount of blood that flows into genital tissue during a sexual situation is enhanced in women if they have taken Viagra beforehand. Certain herbal formulas such as ephedrine, yohimbine plus Larginine glutamate, and ginkgo biloba extract can also have the same effect of increasing blood flow to women’s genitals.

Why is it that experiencing genital vasocongestion is more likely to cause pleasurable sexual thoughts, feelings, and sexual desire in men than in women? One explanation is that men are more “in touch with” or have a closer relationship with their genitals than women do. Whether considered from the perspective of anatomy or socialization, this explanation makes sense. A penis is significantly larger than a clitoris and, unlike a vagina, it is on display and ready to be noticed—especially when erect. Men also use their penises to urinate and so, from the time they are toilet-trained, they are taught to touch and hold their penises. Women, on the other hand, are often taught the penises. Women, on the other hand, are often taught the message “don’t touch down there,” as if their genitals were a biohazard zone. As a consequence, many women have spent their lives not even knowing how many orifices they have down there. Some researchers have speculated that these gender differences in anatomy might explain why men learn to masturbate at an earlier age than women, and why many more men than women engage in masturbation, and with higher frequency. These gender gaps in masturbation have not changed substantially over the past fifty years. For example, a study conducted in the late 1980s found that 93 percent of men and only 48 percent of women had masturbated by the age of twenty-five—percentages almost identical to those reported by Alfred C. Kinsey and his colleagues twenty years earlier. Among college students, the Meston Lab found that 85 percent of Caucasian men and 74 percent of Asian men said they engaged in masturbation compared with only 59 percent of Caucasian women and 39 percent of Asian women. Gender differences in anatomy might also explain why there are many more penises than vaginas and clitorises with names.