The G-spot is an elusive pleasure zone that some women swear provides them with an intense sexual experience and some researchers doubt even exists. While it has never been definitively located, many women believe they have a small area in the front of their vagina that, when stimulated, results in an intense orgasm. Though researchers still are divided on whether it's real, try telling that to women who claim they have better orgasms because of it.
The so-called G-spot is named for Ernst Grafenberg, a German gynecologist who identified it more than 50 years ago. More recently, a large study on the much touted spot took place in Britain. When British researchers looked for the G-spot in a study that was reported in the Journal of Sexual Medicine, they found no proof of its existence.
The research, by a King's College London team, involved 1,800 women, all pairs of identical and non-identical twins. All the women were asked if they had a G-spot. Theoretically anyway, it would be expected that identical twins having the same genes would either have it or not have it.
In the study, though, the identical twins were no more likely to have a G-spot than the non-identical twins. The researchers concluded that the female hot spot may just be a figment of women's imagination. "We postulate...that the reason for the lack of genetic variation is that there is no physiological or physical basis for the G-spot," wrote the study authors in the Journal of Sexual Medicine.
Beverley Whipple, a sexologist who according to BBC News has helped make the G-spot theory popular, said the study is flawed because researchers hadn't accounted for the sexual experiences of bisexual and lesbian women. Whipple also noted that having different sexual partners with different lovemaking techniques could influence the study's outcome.
Ian Kerner, Ph. D., the author of She Comes First: The Thinking Man's Guide to Pleasuring a Woman, notes that clitoral orgasms are frequently criticized for being "quick and light-hearted." G-spot orgasms, he explains, are labeled more "serious and substantive." Yet, Kerner contends, a study of anatomy reveals that all orgasms are clitoral. So is it all that important to know whether the orgasm originates in the G-spot or the clitoris? As Kerner says, "Irrespective of anatomy, it would be hard to dispute this area's erogenous potential."
Whether or not the G-spot actually exists isn't all that important, says marriage and family therapist Cathie Helfand, MS, and women shouldn't worry if they can't find it.
"A woman's goal of sexual arousal is much more important than whether there is a spot or not," she says. "If a woman does something and it feels good, that's what is the most important, not a part of anatomy that has a name."
Sources
Burri, Andrea, Cherkas, Lynn, and Spector, Timothy D. "Genetic and Environmental Influences on self-reported G-spots in women: A Twin Study." Journal of Sexual Medicine. Published online 4 January 2010.
"The G-spot 'doesn't appear to exist,' say researchers." BBC News online. 4 January 2010.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8439000.stm
