‘O’ comes after ‘G’

The curtains of shame, guilt and pornographic resources so cloak the truths of our erotic lives that we must constantly strive to push away the myths and unveil the reality behind them. And while the quest for truth is a noble one, solving this particular riddle breaks down, more or less, to our longing to simply be better in bed.

For any guy not stuck in the Stone Age, the desire to please a partner is equal to, if not more powerful than, the urge to satisfy one’s own carnal needs. At least that’s what we tell ourselves. And there’s nothing a guy loves more than an easy shortcut.

Enter the mystical Gräfenberg Spot—popularly known as the G-spot. Named after the German gynecologist, Ernst Gräfenberg, this spot, purportedly found on the front of the vaginal wall, is supposed to be the secret to absolute pleasure for women. Gräfenberg described the area that we call the G-Spot as located on the “anterior wall of the vagina along the course of the urethra” and as a constant “erotic zone” in his 1950 opus “The Role of Urethra in Female Orgasm,” published in the International Journal of Sexology.

Despite his exploration of this area, which some call the “urethral sponge,” many in the medical field remained skeptical. A scan of gynecological and anatomical field guides such as The Merck Manual, New Harvard Guide to Women’s Health and Grant’s Atlas of Anatomy reveals no mention of the G-spot or it’s reported sexual benefits.

“I do not teach about it. It’s not in our textbooks. It’s not in any of the textbooks I know of. Based on that, and the way the nerve-endings are down there, there’s no evidence I’ve seen for it,” says Dr. Jennifer Hollander, anatomy professor at the University of Nevada, Reno and PhD in biology. “But I’m not an expert in the subject,” she says.

A 2006 study from the Division of Urogynecology and Reconstructive Pelvic Surgery at the Good Samaritan Hospital in Cincinnati reported on the prevalence of nerve endings throughout the vagina in 21 patients. The results of 110 biopsy specimens showed “no site consistently demonstrating the highest nerve density.”

But this doesn’t stop people from searching for this sexual Shangri-La. Dip into the Self Help section of a bookstore and you find treasure maps to the G-Spot. The game plan provided by these “how to love yourself” guides involves inserting a finger one to two inches inside the vagina and enacting a “come hither” motion. Stimulating this area will lead to a deeper vaginal orgasm that can’t be obtained through clitoral stimulus alone. If you can’t read a map, Pure Fun LLC has built a sexual aide to allow the penis to hit the G-Spot during intercourse. Christened the GPilot, the device can only be described as a vaginal shoehorn. Once the GPilot is inserted into the vagina, the gentleman caller can guide his penis down the slope like a perverted water slide. However, with the help of a Valentine volunteer, a test of the GPilot found it ineffectual because the rigid plastic was too uncomfortable–and much like the water slide it resembles, some larger riders may not fit down the chute.

Whether the G-Spot is fact or fiction, or a little bit of both, the conceptual idea is an important one. Sure you may not be able to push a button and send your partner to the moon, but that doesn’t mean you should give up messing with the controls. Despite the previous metaphor, it’s not rocket science, either. Explore. Communicate. Pay attention. Have fun. It’s the only way we’re going to continue to pull the sheets off of sexual secrets.