Sex test trend to improve understanding of pleasing women

This underacknowledged part of the female anatomy needs to be promoted to a starring role following years of being dismissed.

Just two decades ago, no one really knew what the clitoris looked like, or how it functioned.

The small, button-like spot above the urethra was treated mostly like an ornamental part of the vulva.

On-screen representations of female sexual pleasure indicated women reached climax (usually quickly and theatrically) via penetration.

Those of us who didn’t experience the penis as a kind of magical spontaneous orgasm-giver were left feeling defective, or else reminded in not so many words that, “women don’t really like sex much anyway”.

But in 1998, Melbourne urologist Helen O’Connell published a groundbreaking paper based off pelvic examinations of female cadavers, and that ideology began to shift.

Nadia Bokody shares about a sex test that has women cheering. Picture: Instagram/Nadia Bokody

Thanks to O’Connell’s research, we learnt that pea-sized bump that felt really (reeeally) good to touch was just the tip of a sexual organ not dissimilar in size to the penis.

We now know the clitoris is actually more of a wishbone shape, with long arms of highly sensitive tissue that run deep into the vagina and become erect when aroused, much like the penis.

We also now know that, despite what Hollywood sex scenes and porn have told us, the majority of people with vulvas don’t actually reach orgasm thanks to a penis (sorry, guys). A 2017 study published in The Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy revealed a mere 18 per cent of women can get to climax via vaginal penetration alone.

Today, there’s little argument among academics it’s the clitoris that’s key to unlocking intense pleasure and closing the orgasm gap for women.

Nadia said the test is like the Bechdel test for sex scenes. Picture: Instagram/Nadia Bokody

But even as research is catching up to the fact women can have really (reeeally) great sex too, media representation of the significance of clitoral stimulation for people with vulvas is lagging.

The prevalent portrayal of sex, particularly between hetero couples, is one in which penetration equals a woman promptly reaching a back-arching, bedsheet-grabbing, headboard-rocking climax.

This trope perpetuates problematic mythology around female sexual pleasure, conditioning women to resign themselves to having the kind of sex that doesn’t actually get them off.

Instead, women learn to view intimacy as a performance in which they’re obligated to build to a faux grand finale, a ’la Meg Ryan’s iconic diner scene in When Harry Met Sally, which Ryan’s character Sally points out is something, “all men are sure [has] never happened to them and most women at one time or another have done it, so you do the math.”

And she’s not wrong.

Nadia Bokody lifts the lid on female pleasure. Picture: Instagram/Nadia Bokody

Research suggests up to 80 per cent of heterosexual women have faked it at some point, with the most common reason for doing so being to protect a partner’s ego; a phenomenon that doesn’t carry over to lesbian women, who, incidentally, besides being less constrained by cultural imperatives around sex, tend to report engaging in more acts which involve the clitoris.

It’s compelling evidence like this that prompted UK women Frances Rayner and Irene Tortajada to launch ‘The Clit Test’ campaign in 2020 – a movement that’s since gone on to become referred to as “the Bechdel Test for sex scenes”.

In short, The Clit Test champions sex scenes that reflect the central role the clitoris plays in sexual pleasure for most women.

Passing the “test”, according to the campaign’s website, means “showing, mentioning or even heavily implying clit touching, cunnilingus (oral sex for women) and women masturbating,” which can even be achieved by “a head disappearing under the covers”.

On-screen depictions that get the test’s tick of approval include Netflix’s Bridgerton, which features plenty of oral sex and hand involvement, Ginny & Georgia, which openly discusses oral sex being performed on women as well as depicting female masturbation and more recently, Olivia Wilde’s Don’t Worry Darling.

Wilde told Vogue in a 2021 interview she felt it was important to make audiences, “realise how rarely they see female hunger, and specifically this type of female pleasure”.

Though The Clit Test’s founders posted a farewell message to their Instagram page earlier this year, explaining, “We’re wrapping up the campaign. We wanted to get to a point where P-in-V-only sex scenes were a bit passe and embarrassing and we think we’re there,” the test itself has gone on to become a mainstay in sex-positive feminist film and TV circles.

It may have taken centuries for anyone to fully recognise the clitoris, but the work revolutionaries like O’Connell, Rayner and Tortajada have done in giving it the attention it deserves should offer people with vulvas reassurance that, if sex isn’t working for them, it’s not because they’re defective, or because “women don’t really like sex much anyway”, it’s because their partners haven’t passed the test.

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