There’s no doubt it’s one of the greatest sexual obsessions of modern times. Does a woman have a G-spot, an extra-sensitive point believed to be central to sexual pleasure?
This week, Australian researchers reported that the most conclusive study to date has failed to provide any evidence that it anatomically exists at all.
So, is the G-spot really just a myth? Gents, have you ever found evidence of it? Ladies, does your other half know his way to yours?
Here, our panel of fearless writers make some very bold confessions . . .
So, is the G-spot really just a myth? Gents, have you ever found evidence of it? Ladies, does your other half know his way to yours?
I ‘DISCOVERED’ IT — BUT IT ELUDED ME
Linda Kelsey, former editor of Cosmopolitan magazine
‘The G-spot rather complicated things’, says former Cosmopolitan editor Linda Kelsey
So, researchers have revealed there’s no damn G-spot after all! Good riddance, I say.
I remember the exact moment when I discovered the G-spot. Not ‘my’ personal G-spot, note, but ‘the’ G-spot.
It was 1982 and I was the deputy editor of Cosmopolitan magazine. News had just come in of a sexually explosive study conducted in the U.S. by the suggestively named Nurse Whipple and her working partner, psychologist Dr John Perry.
A new erogenous zone had been found. How thrilling for us to bring news of this to our readers!
The illustrious pair had been focusing their research on a trigger spot inside the vagina, which, when firmly pressed, was said to result in orgasm.
Named after the German gynaecologist Dr Gräfenberg, who originally wrote about this so-called phenomenon in 1950, Whipple and Perry speculated that the area corresponded to that of the prostate in the male.
Educating women about sex was a big part of the Cosmo mission. Meanwhile, for those of us on the staff, hastily dispatched to do some exploration of our own, the results were mixed.
For one or two, the study heralded a moment of sexual liberation. Most of the others, including me, were sent in search of treasure and came back, sadly, empty-handed.
The G-spot rather complicated things. As well as ushering in new sexual pleasure for some, it also created new sexual neuroses among those who couldn’t manage to hit the spot.
The magazine gave directions as best we could, but continued to suggest that, while the G-spot orgasm might be the icing on the cake, the cake could still taste good without it.
Given the lack of concrete evidence one way or the other, it seems we were right to do so.
FOR MEN, IT’S THE HOLY GRAIL . . .
Quentin Letts, writer and broadcaster
‘Love is surely meant to be more than something mechanical’, says Daily Mail columnist Quentin Letts
When I first heard someone mention the G-spot many years ago, I thought they were talking about a squash ball.
You know squash balls: they come in different sorts — red spot, yellow spot, and I guessed there must be one called G-spot. Of such simple misunderstandings are divorces possibly made.
Two things you can say about men: they are pretty clueless about women’s plumbing, but if you tell them something exists, they will try to find it.
More than that, they will set about the task with determination of the ‘if it’s the last thing I do’ variety, swearing that they will leave no cave unexplored until the elusive object has been discovered.
We saw that in 1595, when Sir Walter Raleigh sailed to South America in pursuit of the mythical golden city of El Dorado.
We saw it in Arthurian days when Sir Lancelot galloped round the ancient British Isles in search of the Holy Grail.
They did not succeed. Nor do most blokes when they are hunting the G-spot.
Now, we are told that it may not even exist. Well, thanks! You might have told us earlier. For years, dutiful husbands have set to the quest with Herculean intent.
They have gone to their work like dervishes, occasionally looking up and saying: ‘Now, is that it, Petunia?’
This may not have been altogether romantic, I fear.
Nor, really, would there be much romance if the G-spot were a simple matter of physiological fact.
If it existed, and we learned how to press it like some red button, like a cross-Channel ferry workman raising the barrier on the car deck, how true an expression of affection would that actually be?
Love is surely meant to be more than something mechanical. Is it not as much in the mind as it is in the flesh?
The real G-spot is surely in laughter, in tender feelings, in emotional security, in the dancing embrace of your lover’s eyes.
And, in fact, it becomes only lovelier with the years.
BACK TO ROSES AND LOVE POEMS
Virginia Ironside, agony aunt and author
‘Women revelled in the idea of it’, says agony aunt and author Virginian Ironside
In a lifetime as an agony aunt, I must have received hundreds of letters from women desperate to find this Holy Grail of sexual fulfilment.
The idea was that, once located and pressed, it could, like the words ‘Open Sesame’, reveal a world of orgasmic treasures, breathless desire and instant fulfilment.
No more hours of fiddling foreplay, no more whispered promises of eternal love. No more hours spent gazing into each other’s eyes. No, German ‘sexpert’ Ernst Gräfenberg promised us a shortcut to heaven.
Women revelled in the idea of it. This Teutonic approach appealed to the simple mechanical side of men’s brains, too.
At last, sex was reduced to a job that was as easy as banging a nail into the wall.
Find the right spot, align nail, raise hammer and bingo — your lover was instantly reduced to gasping jelly and you were the best lover on the planet.
Like most women, I spent a while searching for mine — but it was like metal-detecting in the desert. It simply refused to appear. And, like a lot of women, I thought that there must be something peculiar about me.
So, thank goodness for the Australian researchers who have finally put paid to the whole mad idea.
Back, chaps, to the love poems and mandolins. And don’t forget the rose between your teeth.
I MIGHT DIE BEFORE MY MAN FINDS MINE!
Hilary Boyd, novelist
‘If I asked him to find the G-spot, I might die waiting’, say novelist Hilary Boyd
What a load of nonsense the G-spot is. Take my husband, Don. He’s renowned for losing things and not being particularly good at finding them.
If I asked him to find my G-spot, I might die waiting.
What I want to know is how the good Dr Gräfenberg made his dubious discovery back in the Fifties. Not that it matters, of course, because, in every decade since, there’s been new research which proves, quite categorically, that the G-spot does exist and doesn’t exist in equal measure.
But the point is, the more these well-meaning medics tell us that eating oatmeal and peaches, for example, or sniffing a hormone spray, or doing crunches with your pelvic floor, is going to produce the perfect orgasm, the more pressure is heaped upon our luckless lovers.
And the more pressure they face, the more chance there is of failure and disappointment.
The myth of the perfect body, engaging in perfect sex, culminating in the perfect, exquisite orgasm, is regularly forced upon us.
But it’s strictly for the movies: we don’t all have Brad Pitt lifting the duvet of an evening. Sexual pleasure is to do with fancying someone, being in the mood and not being angry that he’s drunk and forgot to put out the bins.
It’s certainly not to do with the G-spot.
Although . . . come on, Don!
I’VE NO IDEA IF I’VE GOT ONE OR NOT
Lynne Franks, PR guru and the inspiration for Ab Fab
‘To be honest, I have no idea if, medically, mine exists or not,’ says PR guru and inspiration for Ab Fab Lynne Franks
For hundreds of years, women have been taught that sexual pleasure is for men alone and that the female body is there to serve the male.
So how dare we have a special spot inside our body, which, when lovingly stimulated, creates exquisite release?
Deborah Sundahl, the world’s top author on the subject, says that many women are sexually numb and gentle strokes in the area will restimulate the G-spot.
To be honest, I have no idea if, medically, mine exists or not.
All I know is that my whole body can become an erogenous zone when I am relaxed and loving with my partner.
However, like many other women, if I am feeling unloved or unlistened to, it takes a lot to turn me on.
I believe that if the G-spot cannot physically be felt, it is because the woman is simply not relaxed or trusting enough with her partner.
Clearly, a lot of healing needs to go on for many women to feel safe enough to enjoy their G-spot — and any other part of our bodies that give us sexual pleasure, whatever we might call them.
CONSPIRACY THAT DENIGRATES MEN
Brian Viner, film critic
‘It seemed like a conspiracy to make men feel inadequate for not finding it’, says film critic Brian Viner
After 25 years of marriage, my wife Jane and I are, in all honesty, far less preoccupied with the G-spot than the damp spot.
There’s a patch on our kitchen ceiling that keeps staining when the shower sealant lets water through in the bathroom directly above.
My search for the precise source of this leak is passionate and all-consuming. I do it about three times a week.
As for finding the G-spot, I can’t pretend that I have ever embarked on what you might call an odyssey. It’s very Eighties, isn’t it, looking for the G-spot?
I seem to remember, back then, with Margaret Thatcher in Downing Street and Bananarama in the charts, no end of magazine articles saying how maddeningly elusive it was.
To me, it seemed like a conspiracy to make men feel inadequate for not finding it and women disgruntled with us for not having found it.
Even then, in my 20s, I was a G-spot conspiracy theorist.
Moreover, it was named after a German gynaecologist. What could be less sexy than searching for something named after a gynaecologist from Lower Saxony?
I don’t think I ever tried and, thank goodness, now we know that it’s as mythical as Medusa, the monster of Greek legend whose stare could turn anyone to stone.
Jane can summon a pretty fierce expression, too, when she wants. But not because I haven’t found her G-spot.
She, like me, has always been a G-spot sceptic.
But let’s just say we both believe in erogenous zones.
I’D NEED A HI-TECH GPS TO LOCATE IT
Shona Sibary, writer and mother-of-four
‘The last thing on my mind is searching for some elusive part of my anatomy that might or might not be the key to mind-blowing ecstasy’, says writer and mother-of-four Shona Sibary
Does it exist? Doesn’t it? Could it be that I might just be lucky enough to have a Meg Ryan moment if my husband moves a little bit to the left and three millimetres over?
Frankly, who cares? Most of the time the only thing I’m wondering how to find when I’m in bed with my husband, Keith, are all those blasted odd socks that disappear off the face of the planet whenever I do a wash.
Trust me, the last thing on my mind is searching for some elusive part of my anatomy that might or might not be the key to mind-blowing ecstasy.
And, frankly, as someone who got a big fat ‘F’ in human biology, I’m going to need a very sophisticated GPS to locate my more remote nether regions.
For me, sex has always been about intimacy and closeness — the journey, not the destination.
As many women will probably agree, it’s a head thing.
If Keith has made me laugh over dinner, rubbed my feet while we watch television or, God forbid, finally taken that pile of rubbish in the shed to the dump, I am far more likely to be in a receptive mood.
Sad, I know. But proof, surely, that sexual pleasure has got nothing to do with the existence of the G-spot and everything to do with who has emptied the dishwasher.