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corresponding anatomical structure, can be no different than in the male.” Alluding to the abysmal neglect of female sexual anatomy, Kobelt pointed out that at the time of his essay—mid-nineteenth century—the descriptions of certain parts of the clitoris had “completely disappeared from Physiology” Dismissing the eighteenth and nineteenth century views of women’s sexuality as less passionate and rewarding than men’s, Kobelt surmised that descriptions of women’s genital anatomy would be remarkably different “if our physiological textbooks were in the hands of as many women,” that is written by women, “as they are of men.” 25

    DR. FREUD SHIFTS OFFICIAL FOCUS TO VAGINA
    Sigmund Freud, the Viennese father of psychoanalysis, is the hit man who delivered the final blow to the concept of the multifaceted clitoris. Laqueur is certain that Freud was well aware of the anatomy of the clitoris as detailed by Kobelt and others. Yet, in his famous Three Essays on Sexuality , Sigmund Freud insisted that the marvelous clitoris, which provides much unsupervised pleasure for young girls and adolescents, is “like a pile of pine shavings” useful only to “set a log of harder wood” i.e., the vagina, “on fire.” 26 In
    and psychologists perceived women’s sexuality It was as if, for most of the twentieth century, women’s extensive genital anatomy, and even the explosive little glans, was vaporized. Memory of the clitoris gradually faded until it became an anatomical nonentity.
    In Making Sex , Laqueur makes the powerful and chilling argument that women’s place in society is determined not by their anatomy and physiology, but by the way that their anatomy and physiology are defined and perceived. “Bodies, in these [Enlightenment] accounts are not the sign of but the foundation for
    27
    other words, the clitoris is a child’s plaything, while the vagina—the
    civil society.”
    In other words, perceived differences in women’s
    cozy space that has few nerve endings but provides such effective stimulation for the penis—is the grown-up woman’s sexual destiny. This suggests that masturbation or other means of clitoral stimulation is an inappropriate or useless adult activity, and privileges heterosexual intercourse as the only healthy, mature, acceptable form of sexual activity for women. Freud’s demotion of the clitoris and elevation of the vagina as the adult woman’s primary means of giving and receiving sexual pleasure brought the male-centered heterosexual model of sexuality to its phallocentric apogee, and set in stone for the next century that it was not only appropriate but essential for women’s sexuality to be defined in terms of male preferences.
    Freud’s summary dismissal of the clitoris as an important focus of sexual sensation for women had an atomic effect on how physicians
    bodies became the rationale for denying them equal access to the
    social stage, just as perceived differences in their genital anatomy denied them the right to pleasure and orgasm in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Thanks to Dr. Freud, this carried over through much of the twentieth century as well. Practically speaking, this means that as long as women’s genitals are seen as inferior, our ability and right to explore and experience pleasure may continue to be seen as less vital than that of men. If we don’t struggle to achieve equality in the sexual sphere, it is possible that achieving equity everywhere else will rest upon a shaky foundation. In other words, anatomy is not destiny so much as the social construction of anatomy is destiny.

    HAS ANYONE SEEN THE WORM?
    Laqueur ended his investigation with the publication of Freud’s Three Essays in 1905. But the mystery doesn’t end there. Lisa Jean Moore and Adele E. Clarke, two sociologists at San Francisco State University, picked up the trail of the ever-vanishing clitoris. In a wide-ranging analysis of twentieth-century medical literature, Moore