The Key To Female Pleasure

Cindy Scharkey RN, BSN walks you through the amazing anatomy of the clitoris. There is so much more than you can see on the surface. Learn about the thousands of nerve endings, all the erectile tissue, and why female arousal takes more than 5 minutes. The truth about the clitoris? It is a whole network... and the key to female pleasure.

More on this topic
The clitoris - it's a network!
Clitoris demo video
The clitoral hood and how to pleasure it
Anatomy 101
Pleasure techniques with penetration

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Transcript

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This is Permission for Pleasure, and I'm your host, Cindy Sharkey. As a registered nurse and educator for over 30 years, I've seen the real need to break the silence surrounding sex, especially for women. This podcast is about opening the doors to healthy conversations about sex. What I've found is that when women have comprehensive education about sex, their self-confidence soars. And when that happens, women can truly express, experience, and enjoy their sexuality. They give themselves permission for pleasure. Welcome to the show. And to this new community at Permission for Pleasure. I am just delighted that you're here, and I'm excited about all that we're going to learn together on this podcast. This episode today is all about my favorite subject, the clitoris, and it is part one of two. So we will spend two episodes talking about the female body and how it is designed with an entire pleasure network. Hopefully, these two episodes will increase your clitorisy. So let's get started. So appropriate because the clitoris is the key to unlocking your sexual pleasure as a woman. The only known function of the clitoris is pleasure. That's its job. That's its function. And the amazing thing about women and their bodies is each is unique. I want to emphasize that here because when it comes to the clitoral network and how it functions for women, there is not an exact one way. Truly, one size does not fit all when it comes to how a woman experiences pleasure. What we do know, even within all the uniqueness of women, is that the process of orgasm for the majority of women requires manual or oral stimulation to the key, to the clitoris, to reach orgasm. What this means is that more than 70% of women, and likely it's more than that, do not reliably orgasm with intercourse or penetration alone. This is one of the number one myths to debunk. So let me say it one more time. Most women do not orgasm with intercourse alone. This is a fact. And this is important information to know as you're learning about your body and your pleasure. Certainly, a small percentage of women do reliably climax with penetration, and they're perfectly normal too. However, as you look at the way in which the clitoral network is organized, it becomes pretty clear that likely it plays a role in most all orgasms, however they're experienced. Because the clitoris is a whole network, my friends. It is composed of many parts. Although the only visible part is the glands or the head, which is approximately the size of a pencil eraser, and the clitoral hood, that is its protective cover, and they come in all shapes and sizes. You know, often people think that this is all there is to this part of their anatomy. However, the glands, clitoris, is just the tip of the iceberg. There is an entire network attached to the glands that you are unable to see beneath the surface. But let's not leave the glands just yet, because it is packed with nerve endings. And for some women, it very may well be the most exquisitely sensitive focal point of their network. For some people, even too sensitive to touch without the protection of the hood over it. All normal. The clitoris includes a vast network of internal erectile tissue. Comparison for you to make it a little bit easier is the amount of clitoris that is internal is as much as a penis externally. So pound for pound, inch for inch, females have a penis worth of erectile tissue. The combined parts of the clitoris have six to eight thousand nerve endings. We talked about the glands being packed with nerve endings, but there's much more. Actually, six to eight thousand nerve endings is twice as many as the penis has. And the great news is that all of this intricate network is available for arousal and pleasure. So let me try to describe what the anatomy of the clitoris looks like and where all of these six to eight thousand nerve endings are. Hopefully, you know where the glands is on your own body. And if you start there near your top of your vulva, think of a wishbone shape. And the glands connect internally to a shaft that is underneath, and that shaft separates into two sort of leggy parts to the wishbone. And those are located underneath and in the tissue behind your labia or your lips. So think of that. The inner lips or the labia connect to both the glands and the hood of the clitoris, which means what? That stimulation to the lips indirectly stimulates the clitoral network. But hold on, there's more. There's more than just the wishbone shape. There are also two internal clitoral bulbs. They're shaped sort of like nice roundish teardrops, and they are connected to the network and they kind of straddle your vagina. So all of this, the wishbone legs, the shaft, and the head, as well as these nice teardrop bulbs, all of this is erectile tissue for pleasure. So if all the inside parts of the clitoris are made up of erectile tissue and the glands has a lot of nerve endings, then ding ding ding, this is where you're getting all of these six to eight thousand nerve endings. So why do I keep mentioning erectile tissue? Because erectile tissue contains capillaries or small blood vessels. And when you are aroused, blood flows to those tissues and it sort of stays there, and that's called engorgement. What does that mean? Engorgement means tissues get fuller and firmer. Think erection. So that's a clitoral erection, the female version of a penis erection, all that engorgement of erectile tissue. As you consider the structure of the clitoris, you can see that it's larger and more involved than most people understand. And likely it plays a role in many or most genital orgasms through direct or indirect stimulation. With so much erectile tissue available, it makes sense that a woman can experience pleasure differently depending on where and how she's being stimulated and experiencing arousal. And let's get clear about arousal. What is it exactly? It is the physiological changes in your body that occur when you're sexually stimulated and excited. So so much erectile tissue available for arousal needs time. Time for the blood to flow to it and for them to increase and engorge and the skin to change color and softening and lubrication. And then don't forget the brain. Brain gets involved and engages much more on that on further episodes. But what I'm trying to describe is that it is normal for female arousal to take more than five minutes that you see in the movies. Truly, it is more like 12 to 20 minutes or more for normal female arousal. All of that tissue we talked about in the network, all of that erectile tissue that can have engorgement and get fuller and firmer, spread out the way it is, it needs time. More time for arousal will most likely lead to more pleasure. So this is a lot of information. So let's just summarize a little bit. The clitoris is your key to pleasure. It's a whole network, not just one pleasure button. Most women do not orgasm from penetration alone. The majority of women need clitoral stimulation to orgasm. This is a fact. The myth that you may have heard that women should orgasm from penetration, or that intercourse is the route to orgasm for women, is false. If you do not experience orgasm with intercourse, you are normal. And you're in the majority. If you do experience orgasm with intercourse, yay you. And likely your clitoral network is involved somehow under the surface, and you are normal. Every woman is unique. How she experiences pleasure is unique to her. But what every woman has is access to a whole network of six to eight thousand nerve endings with tons of erectile tissue for pleasure. I realize it can be difficult to visually picture the clitoral network with just words. So I'm going to encourage you to visit my website at cindysharky.com. Under the blog section, I have a clitoris blog with a 3D rendering that'll give you a good picture of what we've been talking about today. And while you're there, I want to invite you to join my newsletter community. I offer curated sex education once a month, and you can sign up over there on the website. So before we wrap up this episode with a pleasure practice, will you consider helping me to build our community here? When you subscribe, rate, and review the podcast, it truly helps others find their way to us. And I'd love for them to find us. So thank you so much for considering helping us in that way. Now on to our practice. What I'd like to encourage you to do is to look for the things that bring you pleasure. I'm not even talking about sexually. I'm talking about day-to-day small things. I mean really stop, notice, pause, and take delight in the small things. When you allow yourself to experience and enjoy what delights you, it is a good first step toward giving yourself permission for pleasure.