Modern Studies of Female Sexuality
In the modern age, psychologists and physiologists engaged in the task of exploring female sexuality. Sigmund Freud propounded the theory of two kinds of female orgasms, "the vaginal kind, and the clitoral orgasm." However, research, such as that done by Masters and Johnson (1966) and Dr. Helen O'Connell (2005), reject this distinction.
Ernst Gräfenberg was famous for his studies of female genitalia and human female sexual physiology; he published, among other studies, the seminal The Role of Urethra in Female Orgasm (1950), which describes female ejaculation, as well as an erogenous zone where the urethra is closest to the vaginal wall. In 1981, sexologists John D. Perry and Beverly Whipple named that area the Gräfenberg Spot, or G-Spot, in his honor. While the medical community generally has not embraced the complete concept of the G-Spot, Dr. Sanger, Dr. Kinsey, and Drs. Masters and Johnson credit his extensive physiological work.
Some researchers challenge the notion that women only want sex for the physical closeness or cuddling, by identifying the characteristics of highly sexual women. These women characterized as "highly sexual" held more favorable attitudes toward casual sex, fantasized about sex often and enjoyed sex outside of a committed relationship. These findings support the view that the importance of sex or cuddling is not solely based on gender.
Read more about this topic: Human Female Sexuality
Famous quotes containing the words modern, studies and/or female:
“These modern ingenious sciences and arts do not affect me as those more venerable arts of hunting and fishing, and even of husbandry in its primitive and simple form; as ancient and honorable trades as the sun and moon and winds pursue, coeval with the faculties of man, and invented when these were invented. We do not know their John Gutenberg, or Richard Arkwright, though the poets would fain make them to have been gradually learned and taught.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“His life itself passes deeper in nature than the studies of the naturalist penetrate; himself a subject for the naturalist. The latter raises the moss and bark gently with his knife in search of insects; the former lays open logs to their core with his axe, and moss and bark fly far and wide. He gets his living by barking trees. Such a man has some right to fish, and I love to see nature carried out in him.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I have the strong impression that contemporary middle-class women do seem prone to feelings of inadequacy. We worry that we do not measure up to some undefined level, some mythical idealized female standard. When we see some women juggling with apparent ease, we suspect that we are grossly inadequate for our own obvious struggles.”
—Faye J. Crosby (20th century)