the undiscovered – Pike & Hurricane

The Undiscovered Female Orgasm

Ana Carvalho — Tue, 26 Feb 2019 19:46:21 +0000

The title of this article suggests three things: 1. a secret will be revealed to the readers, 2. these article will involve women, 3. some may shy away, others may roll their eyes. But, in any case, we are going to talk about sex. I would like to begin by saying that I am by no means a feminist, nevertheless, for the purpose of writing this article I will use gender lenses and capture an issue that is seldom talked about: the female pleasure.

While 90% of the men said they always orgasm during heterosexual intercourse, 70% of the women said they did not orgasm during heterosexual intercourse. However, scans of the brain during sex show that both man and women have a similar sensory experience of orgasm, are able to perform it at the relative same speed and share the same response when masturbating. So, why do views on gender sexuality differ so much and why does it seem so hard for women to orgasm? And how does the female orgasm differ from the male orgasm?

Science behind orgasm

According to Medical daily, there are four types of nerves connected to the orgasm. The hypogastric nerve sends a signal from the uterus and cervix of women, and the prostate of men to the brain. The pelvic nerves transmit signals from the vagina and cervix. From the rectum for both sexes, the pudendal nerve transmits signals from the clitoris in women and from the scrotum and penis in men. Finally, the vagus nerve transmits the signal from the cervix, uterus, and vagina in women. The point that I’m trying to make here is that there should plenty to choose from when looking for stimulation!

The first stage during this stimulation is called excitement. For women this is characterized by an increase on the blood flow to the genitals, including the erection of the clitoris and the lubrication of the vagina. Produced by the Bartholin glands, located on either side of the vaginal opening. The second stage, plateau, the clitoris becomes hypersensitive and retracts under the clitoral hood. The heartbeat and breathing increase and pleasure signals are sent to the brain, releasing dopamine, producing a similar effect that heroin. During the orgasm the lateral orbitofrontal cortex shuts off, part responsible for feelings of fear and anxiety. John Bancroft, researcher at the Kinse y Institute, described orgasm as the “combination of waves of a very pleasurable sensation and mounting of tensions, culminating in a fantastic sensation and release of tension.” Finally, in the last stage, resolution, the hormone oxytocin which is responsible for feelings of bonding and sleepiness is released. Most men usually are not able to achieve sexual arousal and orgasm for more than a couple of minutes, while women can experience multiple orgasms. Wouldn’t this mean that women would have more chances at having orgasms?

Issues in society

Studies refer the problem to a more general and social sphere issue. The way society constructs the idea of female and male sexuality in countries where conservative or fundamentalist values are adopted, the connection between sexuality and state matters are usually more clear. For instance, rituals such as female genital mutilation are still observed in some cultures, and a whole article could be written about what changed in India from embracing sexuality and the kama sutra, to the mystification of “women’s first sexual experience”, and sex in general. This led to the objectification of women, high rates of human trafficking and STDs. This mystification of women’s pleasure is still predominant- even in the west.

In episode three, of Vagina dispatches, Mona and Mae, journalist and film-maker of The Guardian, discuss the female orgasm. One of the most striking observations was when they compared a woman that orgasmed for the first time at 28 to a man in the same situation. For the man, something must be seriously wrong and a hundred studies would have been written about this bizarre case. Nevertheless, for the woman, it would have been unsurprising that even though she was sexually active for a long time, she might not have had an orgasm.

Passive sexual actors

Regarding male pleasure, journalist Shannon Bledsoe pointed out: “As a society, we accept this premise fairly easily when it comes to men and they learn it at a young age. (…) There are endless nicknames for male anatomy and jokes about masturbation; and TV shows, movies, advertisements and porn all cater to their fantasies. “ She goes on talking about women: “Women, on the other hand, appear mostly as the object in these fantasies rather than as subjects.” The fact is that words like man and pleasure are acceptable and sustained in our society but when we put together women and pleasure, we assume that a third party (usually male) is necessarily there. Studies find that women want to “ (…) experience orgasm in this way for the sake of their male partner.” By this I don’t mean to say that orgasm should be the ultimate goal, either for men or women, during intercourse when there is obviously more to it in the underlings of a relationship. The issue that I am presenting here is that women, themselves, prioritize their partner’s pleasure and seem to forget about their own.

Interviews to a group study by Salisbury and Fisher, also showed that women believe it to be man’s responsibility to physically stimulate the female orgasm while woman’s responsibility is to remain in the proper mindset. This would not only bring all the responsibility to the male partner but also make women passive characters in their own sexual lives. Jackson and Scott also remarked that: “male orgasm is… seen as “natural” and inevitable… that of women requires work and, in keeping with the idea of female sexual passivity and male sexual expertise, women’s bodies need to be worked on by the male virtuoso in order to produce orgasm.” This expertise is then translated from “the bed” to society affirming men as the only actor with the necessary skills to govern prosperous society. This in turn generates a male-centric community reproduced from generation to generation.

How to bring down the patriarchy?

In that case, how can women become a more active actor in their sexual lives and, in consequence, in their society? Salisbury and Fisher’s studies highlight three solutions:

Manual clitoral stimulation: Contrary to what women believe, men find manual clitoral stimulation quite encouraging (regardless of who it is performed by).
Communication with the partner: Men have also indicated that communication about lack of female orgasm to be very important. Findings show that the female orgasm is as important for men as their own orgasm and that men are willing to communicate about what arouses their female partners and happy to indulge them.
Women need to focus on their pleasure: The view that a partner has to be a skillful lover in order for the orgasm to occur has negative effects on their self-esteem. With that in mind, women fake orgasms because they are too worried about their partner’s ego. Instead they should focus their attention in the sexual moment and erotic aspects of it, producing fewer cognitive distractions and increasing the likelihood of orgasm.

Who would have thought that the solution for patriarchy would be in loving, knowing and respecting our bodies and on dis-mystifying female sexuality?

by Ana Carvalho

Photo Credits

2 Boticelli, Birth of Venus, Steel Wool, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

illustration by Lucy Han ( in TeenVogue)

artist Stephanie Sarley (taken from Huffpost)

Adam and Eve, by Tamara de Lempicka, 1932, Petit Palais Geneva, Switzerland (from JuaanCaarlos slideshare)

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The Nazi Treasure

Maya Diekmann — Tue, 26 Feb 2019 19:42:33 +0000

When my sister was living in Argentina a few years back, she, more than once, encountered the myth of the Nazi-Treasure. Does she know where to look? Does she know what exactly to look for? She is German, she must know something. And although South and Central America are known to be popular destinations of refuge for accused Nazi criminals, it turns out their treasure never made it over the big pond. In fact, it never even made it out of Germany.

In February 2012, German authorities made a spectacular discovery. What started out as an investigation for tax evasion against Cornelius Gurlitt, resulted in the finding of over 1,400 works of art that had disappeared over the course of the Nazi art theft. Although an official inventory was never published, the findings include pieces by renowned artists like Picasso, Monet, Liebermann, Matisse and Dürer. A minimum of 300 pieces were declared to belong to the body of Nazi “degenerated” art. The question is, how did this collection of Nazi stolen art art, worth hundreds of millions of dollars, end up in a small apartment in Munich?

An Expensive Ingenious Idea

It is commonly known that Adolf Hitler had a thing for art. Rejected as an artist by the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, he understood himself to be an unrecognized genius ruling both politics and culture with the power of a true artist. The notion of the genius and the Ingenious Idea, which Hitler largely adopted from philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, would become a major influencing factor on the Nazi’s disdain of modern art. According to Schopenhauer, the genius perceives an idea from the phenomenal world. Through technical skill he will manifest this idea into a piece of art and thereby help the ordinary person embrace the idea that is invisible to him normally. Vice versa, in Hitler’s opinion flawed and inferior ideas could also be worked into a painting or sculpture and consequently be internalized by the observer–something that would cause great harm to his perfect Aryan population.

What started out as an ideological move against any non-Aryan artistic idea soon turned into million dollar–or rather Reichsmark–business. Overall, Nazis stole an estimate of one-fifth of all artworks within Europe. Confiscated art, both from museums and private ownership, wasn’t only pilloried but sold to foreign buyers to finance war efforts, or traded for classical artworks Hitler desired for his planned Führermuseum. The business of stolen art caused a boom in the global art market, with artworks confiscated in Germany and German occupied countries ending up in museums and private hands all over Europe and North America.

Monuments Men

The first big Nazi-Treasure was discovered right after the end of the Second World War by the Allied armies’ Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives (MFAA) Program, better known as the Monuments Men. The Altaussee salt mine in Austria contained over 12,500 stolen artworks, including 6,577 paintings, 230 sketches and watercolors, 954 illustrations, 173 statues, 1,200 cases of books and more. The MFAA, after a laborious recovery, soon began the long process of returning the stolen pieces of art to their rightful owners. And this is where the first problem arises–figuring out the rightful owner. Whereas the only appropriate thing to do–ethically and according to the ‘Washington Conference Principles on Nazi-Confiscated Art’–was return the art to those it had been stolen from, things rarely happened that way. Buyers of stolen art, among them Hitler’s left hand Hermann Goering’s family, successfully claimed art confiscated from the family after the end of the war. Museums are often reluctant to give up pieces which have been claimed by their rightful owners. An example is the legal battle between the family of Paul von Mendelssohn-Bartholdy–a descendant from famous classical composer Felix Mendelssohn–and the state of Bavaria. At dispute is Picasso’s ‘Madame Soler’, with an estimated worth of $100 million.

The Burden of the Gurlitt Name

The 2012 Munich discovery hasn’t only revived the legal and historical issues around looted art but also the controversy around the Gurlitt family name. Hildebrand Gurlitt, Cornelius Gurlitt’s father, was one of the four art dealers in the Third Reich entrusted with the business of looted art. Being one-quarter Jewish and an aspiring young museum director with a liking for modern art, his relationship with the Nazis couldn’t be more complex. The chance to protect his family and save modern art from destruction by selling it abroad does not hide the fact that Gurlitt profited immensely from his deals, let alone that he knowingly dealt with stolen art. It’s difficult to pin him down as the good or the bad guy, and it is even more difficult to reappraise his deeds through his son, Cornelius. In an interview with him, German news magazine ‘Der Spiegel’ portray Cornelius as a man whose life “has become an infinite loop of remorse and coincidence”, a tragic figure bearing the consequences of his father’s actions. Whether Cornelius was aware of the full dimensions of his father’s business, remains questionable. What the interview does reveal is the intimate relationship of an 80-year-old man, “the heir of a collection with dubious origins”, with long-lost masterpieces of art. It is cases like these, which illustrate the difficulties that come with the restitution process, going far beyond legal issues. How can you ever truly make past injustices right and what if this involves an unjust procedure in the present?

An undeniably positive effect of the Gurlitt discovery is the attention and publicity it has drawn to the issue of stolen art. The Louvre has started to highlight works in their collection suspected of having been looted by the Nazis and then returned to France and the V&A Museum in London has invested in their provenance research. These little improvements initiated by individual museums, however, don’t release governments, above all the German, from facilitating the restitution process. Only if the government stuck to their obligations under the Washington Conference Principles and systematically identified looted art and encouraged pre-war owners to come forward and claim their property, could there be a chance of obliging museums to return objects of questionable nature to their rightful owners.

Even a domestic law in accordance to the Washington Conference Principles would not solve the problem of looted art as a whole. The Principles only apply to looted art in museums and do not concern private ownership, such as the case of Cornelius Gurlitt. So who knows how many more treasures of long-lost art are waiting to be discovered behind the plain doors of an ordinary apartment?

by Maya Diekmann

Photo Credits

IMG_0470A Pablo Picasso. 1881-1973, Jean Louis Mazieres, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Stolen Art, RV1864, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

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