“I don’t think we have any evidence
that the G-spot is a spot or a struc-
ture,” says Nicole Prause, PhD, a neu-
roscientist who studies orgasms and
sexual arousal. “I’ve never under-
stood why it was interpreted as some
new sexual organ. You can’t stan-
dardize a vagina—there is no consis-
tency across women as to where
exactly we experience pleasure.”
Sure, she says, some women might
have an area inside their vaginas
that contains a bunch of smaller,
super-sensitive areas. But some
women say that when they follow
Cosmo’s old two-finger come-hither
advice, they feel discomfort or like
they have to pee. Others feel nothing
at all. Because for them, there’s
nothing there.
NOW FOR THE TRICKIEST PART OF
this story—and, TBH, the reason this
is even a story at all. Despite the lack
of scientific evidence, there are still
lots of G-spot believers, many of them
super-smart, well-meaning sex edu-
cators. They’re a pretty heated group
(one hung up on us when we called
for an interview) and not...entirely...
wrong. Their point is: If a woman
believes she’s found her G-spot, that
should outweigh any lack of science.
And specifically, if someone claims to
have experienced G-spot pleasure, it
seems “bizarre” to shut her down,
says Kristen Mark, PhD, a sex educa-
tor at the University of Kentucky.
“That feels like going backward.”
Fair. It’s just that, as Prause points
out, “women deserve accurate
information about their bodies.” Can’t we have our pleasure—
and the truth too?
As Prause said (and this bears repeating), for some women,
there is sexual sensitivity where the G-spot is supposed to be.
But for others, there’s none. Or it’s to the left. Or it’s in a few
places. And that’s kind of the whole point. It’s all okay. It can
all feel good.
What everyone can agree on is that we need more research.
Women’s sexual health is vastly understudied, and the scientific
hurdles are borderline absurd. In 2015, Prause tried to get a trial
going at UCLA that would study orgasms in women who were,
you know, actually alive. The board heard her out but wanted a
promise that her test subjects “wouldn’t climax” because they
didn’t like the optics of women orgasming in their labs. (As
you’ve already guessed, the study wasn’t approved.)
So yeah, a new kind of thinking about female pleasure is going
to take a minute for certain people to get on board with. Like
those brunch friends who go on and on about G-spot rapture.
And like men, who might love the idea of the G-spot best of all.
A G-spot orgasm requires penetration, which just so happens to
be the way most guys prefer to get off. “If you’ve got a penis, it
would be super convenient if the way the person with a vagina
has pleasure is for you to put your penis in their vagina,” says
Emily Nagoski, PhD, author of Come as You Are, a book that
explores the science of female sexuality. Related: 80 percent of
the men in Cosmo’s survey said they believe every woman has a
G-spot; nearly 60 percent called it the “best way” for a female
partner to achieve pleasure. (“Once you rally enough experience
like myself, you can find it on every girl,” one supremely
confident guy told us.)
Just like it did for women, the G-spot gave men a universal
performance metric and the “cultural message that pleasure for
women happens by pounding on their vaginas with your penis,”
says Nagoski.
Things were thisclose to going in a much better direction.
“In the early ’80s, there was research that was really putting the
clitoris front and center,” explains Nagoski. “Then along came
the G-spot research, creating this pressure for women to be
orgasmic from vaginal stimulation even though most women’s
bodies just aren’t wired that way. And if you really think about
it would be super
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98 Cosmopolitan May 2020
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