The Gräfen­berg Spot, or G-Spot, has been surrounded by contro­versy ever since its ‘discovery’ only decades ago. Some women may have one about an inch or so (2-5cm) up in the front wall of the vagina.

The G-spot is believed to be an erogenous zone which when stim­u­lated can lead to high levels of sexual arousal and powerful orgasms. Despite all the hype many couples struggle to find any evid­ence for its existence.

A recent (2010) study of 1,800 women in the Journal of Sexual Medi­cine has found no proof for it. The research team at King’s College, London suggest the G-spot may be a figment of women’s imagin­a­tion, encour­aged by magazines and sex ther­ap­ists. So what does that leave us with?

Let’s take a look at our pelvic anatomy by focusing on the simil­ar­ities between men and women. First, let’s tick off the anus. Men and women are identical here and both sexes can enjoy anal stim­u­la­tion, given appro­priate lubric­a­tion and a sens­itive lover.

Next, we both have genitals (penis/clitoris) so oral and manual masturb­a­tion tech­niques can be effective for both sexes (note: mental arousal is needed before phys­ical stim­u­la­tion can lead to orgasm — this is crucial to under­standing female sexu­ality since women’s sexual arousal is not as auto­matic as men’s tends to be).

There is also a differ­ence in size of the genital organs. The male genitals — at least the parts we can see outside the body are much bigger. A man’s penis (when erect) must be a hundred times bigger than a woman’s clitoris…

Of course, inside is a different story. Both organs reach back into the pelvis and include muscles of the pelvic area of the body (basic­ally in between the hips). When you are sexu­ally aroused, the external organ becomes erect but also you have an erec­tion of the muscles internal to the body (erectile tissue) that become engorged when a person is sexu­ally aroused.

If you were to stim­u­late the person in this pelvic area when they are already engorged and phys­ic­ally aroused, this would stim­u­late their internal erec­tion. For a man you have to stim­u­late his internal erec­tion through the anus because there is no other opening. In fact, there is also a male G-spot, which is the prostate gland and access­ible by penet­rating a man anally. Some women do enjoy sharing phys­ical intimacy with a partner but even so I wonder how many women explore that one…

For a woman, you have two options. The anal option is similar to that for a man except women don’t have a prostate gland. There is also the option of stim­u­lating her internal erec­tion through her vagina. The vaginal opening is the one abso­lute differ­ence between the sexes. However, unless you want a baby there is no need to be overly distracted by the vagina.

“The vagina of the female is not matched by any func­tioning struc­ture in the male, but it is of minimum import­ance in contrib­uting to the erotic response of the female. It may even contribute more to the sexual arousal of the male than it does to the arousal of the female.” (p592 Sexual beha­vior in the human female 1953)

The vagina is part of the birth canal and so it has very few nerve endings. A woman is unlikely to be able to feel a man’s penis inside her even if he is built like a horse.

I have only become aware of my own phys­ical arousal (swollen and moist) since around my mid-thirties. I have also around this time exper­i­enced phys­ical orgasms from vaginal fisting and from anal sex. Both would stim­u­late an internal erec­tion and these exper­i­ences are the closest I have ever come to what other people may be calling a G-spot orgasm.

Vaginal fisting is a misleading term since, for me at least, it does not neces­sarily involve putting the whole fist inside the vagina. My partner uses the fingers of one hand to penet­rate my vagina. Some women orgasm during child­birth, which is presum­ably a similar exper­i­ence to vaginal fisting.

The success of the G-spot myth is not simply down to men’s enthu­siasm for inter­course. To explain their orgasms during inter­course, women have also leapt on an altern­ative to the clit­oris. This illus­trates just how few women identify with clit­oral stim­u­la­tion and female masturbation.