Clitoris Researcher Wants You to Know Everything This Sex Organ Can Do

The clitoris does a lot more than make sex feel good. And Angela Towne wants it to get the respect it deserves.

Mainstream understanding of the clitoris has come a long way in recent decades. In the 1960s and 1970s, feminists worked to destigmatize sexual pleasure involving the clitoris. 

“It was really important to do that during second wave feminism,” Towne, a sexuality researcher and educator who teaches at Southern Illinois University School of Medicine, told Rewire News Group, but “now what I see is that it’s being used as a reason to disregard” the clitoris. “‘Oh it’s for pleasure, it has no other purpose, so who cares?’” 

Towne’s research on the many functions of the clitoris sheds light on how U.S. society’s male-centered take on sex and gender has affected the traditional dynamics of whose pleasure gets prioritized during sex. That perspective has also skewed what the science shows—biologically—about the clitoris. 

RNG sat down with Towne to set the clitoral record straight. 

This interview was conducted by phone and email, and has been edited for length and clarity.

What else is the clitoris used for, beyond pleasure?

The clitoris has important safety functions. Greater vaginal lubrication lessens the likelihood of micro-tears and abrasion in the vaginal canal or in the outer vulva, which are potential inroads into the body for sexually transmitted infections.

So if I stimulate a clitoris, that stimulation causes greater vaginal lubrication that lessens the likelihood of…viruses and bacteria. … We could include clitoral stimulation in sex education aimed at reducing STI risk because communicating with someone about how they like their clitoris to be touched is going to be protective.

The clitoris has reproductive support functions as well. So along with creating a safer bodily state for the main reproductive method—which is penile vaginal intercourse—there’s also clitoral stimulation, we find, changes the chemical makeup of vaginal fluid. 

For example, vaginal fluid with clitoral stimulation: The vaginal fluid has increased oxygenation. That’s just a way of saying oxygen in vaginal fluid increases … but it decreases the vaginal acidity. And both of these things increase sperm longevity and motility. In other words, it increases fertility. 

Why do you think it’s important to make people more aware that the clitoris doesn’t have to solely function for pleasure? 

There’s this [perceived] danger of essentializing reproduction in sexual activity with a partner. I don’t see it that way. What I see is that the clitoris fully functions without penetrative sex at all, without a penis inserted. It’s functional in all stages of sexual response and when somebody chooses to also have reproductive sex, it supports reproduction as well. 

So, it quite literally gives a clitoris-haver a choice in that I can use my clitoris in ways that are non-reproductive without any loss in functionality, and I can also use my clitoris in ways that are reproductive and get reproductive support. …

We’re living in a culture that discourages female pleasure-seeking. This knowledge has been covered up. But if we include the accurate safety features of the clitoris it could potentially legitimize including the clitoris in more disciplines and more areas of study and health care.

You’ve done a lot of research on the “patriarchal lens” through which we view the clitoris and sexuality. How has this gendered perspective of the clitoris and clitorial anatomy affected how we understand pleasure?

There’s really not some official or objective definition of what a clitoris is. It’s so understudied that different disciplines and sources define the clitoris differently. We may assume that we’re talking about the same thing when we use the word “clitoris,” but in my experience conducting in-depth and interdisciplinary research, that’s not the case.

(Editor’s note: Ongoing debate over the language used to describe the clitoris and disagreement over which parts of the genitalia should be considered part of the clitoris’ anatomy means, for example, that Towne includes an area called the “perineal sponge,” while other biologists might exclude that region.) 

The patriarchal lens means that female anatomy is viewed from the perspective of the male. Because there is such disagreement about what anatomical sites can be included in what we call a “clitoris,” one rationale that has been used to [answer this question] … is to use the penis as the standard for comparison. 

The thinking goes: Because the clitoris and penis arise from the same embryo and fetus anatomy, the sites that we define as the “penis” can be included in what we consider to be the “clitoris.” 

The sexism [here] is that the penis is already considered to be a valid structure, as it has been defined, whereas the clitoris has a validity problem.

And what this does is it takes certain anatomical sites, that from my research are used for pleasure, and says these are not part of the clitoris because they’re not part of the penis. …

So, if the penis is the standard of comparison it actually erases anatomical sites that we can consider scientifically, biologically, interpersonally, and during masturbation for pleasure purposes. It erases things. It erases knowledge. 

Why is it important for people to have inclusive and anatomically correct information about their bodies? 

It helps us to make informed decisions in so many different realms—our body, our health, our safety, sex, relationships, reproduction, and pleasure-seeking. We can better communicate about our bodies to health-care providers, to sex partners, to friends in conversation, to sex researchers like me. 

As a sex researcher, I’m thinking about how [when] I encounter a lack of knowledge, it can cut off information because people don’t have a language to describe their experience. … And there is likely so much information that we’re not accessing as a result of not acknowledging the clitoris at all. …

And so, [saying the clitoris is only for pleasure has] become a way to put it under the rug and stigmatize it, because female pleasure as a whole is stigmatized. So, to get back to your question, it’s important to have more pleasure, more choice, and less pathologizing.

What do you hope is in store for the future of sexual pleasure research?

I would love to see more theory and research about the clitoris. It’s left out of a lot of academic disciplines, it’s even often left out of sex education. I worked as a professor of gender and sexuality studies and it’s left out there. I have so many stories of my research being actively censored in gender and sexuality studies departments. 

There’s a lot more embrace in academic spaces of discussing the removal of the clitoris [than there is of looking at what we don’t know yet]… A lot of the sexuality research in academic spaces that gets done is about the vaginal canal … but there’s not an equivalent interest in the clitoris. 

But also, what about theory? What about looking at the clitoris using an intersectional lens? What about looking at psychology and mental representation of the clitoris? I’m talking about wide-view theorizing of the clitoris. (Editor’s note: Towne uses the term called “clitorality” to describe this broad, intersectional focus on the clitoris.) And I would love to see a ton more research done into intersex, trans, and gender non-conforming experiences of sex and pleasure. 

What do people not talk about when it comes to sex, gender, and pleasure, but you wish they would?

I wish that people talked more about how to communicate with partners about how they like their clitoris touched throughout sexual contact. I would love to see realistic media depictions of that. What I see, and what we see, at least in movies and TV, is people running towards each other and then it flips to the day after. … There’s very little representation of how we communicate with partners about how we want our clitorises touched. 

I asked that question in my dissertation research … and there were no two people who liked the exact same thing. 

So, how does that get communicated to sex partners? I think if it was spoken about more, represented more, and normalized, the pleasure that would be an outcome of that would be transformative.

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