Medical textbooks are full of anatomical pictures of the penis, but the clitoris barely rates a mention. Many medical professionals are uncomfortable even talking about it.
The first comprehensive anatomical study of the clitoris was led by O’Connell and published in 1998. A subsequent study in 2005 examined it under MRI. It was not, O’Connell discovered, just a small nub of erectile tissue, described in some texts as the “poor homologue” of the penis. Instead it was an otherworldly shape, with the nerve-rich glans merely the external protrusion of an organ that extended beneath the pubic bone and wrapped around the vaginal opening, with bulbs that become engorged when aroused. It looked like an orchid. It was beautiful.
In 2016, O’Connell co-authored a paper that found, based on a series of macroscopic anatomical dissections, that there was no evidence of erectile tissue in the vaginal wall – in other words, that the G-spot did not exist. (O’Connell has stressed there was more work to be done on the subject, including mapping the urethra.) To date, the only known erectile tissue in the area is the clitoris, leading to the working theory that the G-spot is just the engorged bulbs of an aroused clitoris felt through the vaginal wall.
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