10 things you didn’t know about…

… orgasm. Yes, there is someone out there that actually made some serious research about this theme

In 2009, Mary Roach gave an amazingly funny and also serious talk on TED (http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/mary_roach_10_things_you_didn_t_know_about_orgasm.html). During this talk she mentioned a few examples from her research. Some have caught my attention and I would like to share them with you

“Orgasm is a reflex of the autonomic nervous system. Now this is the part of the nervous system that deals with the things that we don’t consciously control. Like digestion, heart rate, sexual arousal. And the orgasm reflex can be triggered by a surprisingly broad range of input. Genital stimulation. Duh. But also Kinsey interviewed a woman who could be brought to orgasm by having someone stroke her eyebrow. People with spinal cord injuries, like parapeligias, quadraplegias, will often develop a very very sensitive area right above the level of their injury. Wherever that is. There is such a thing as a knee orgasm, in the literature.

I think the most curious one that I came across was a case report of a woman who had an orgasm every time she brushed her teeth. This was something in the complex sensory-motor action of brushing her teeth was triggering orgasm. And she went to a neurologist who was fascinated. He checked to see if it was something in the toothpaste. But no, it happened with any brand. They stimulated her gums with a toothpick, to see if that was doing it. No. It was the whole, you know, motion. And the amazing thing to me is that now you would think this woman would like have excellent oral hygiene. Sadly she — this is what it said in the journal paper — “She believed that she was possessed by demons and switched to mouthwash for her oral care.” It’s so sad.”

“One fine day Alfred Kinsey decided to calculate the average distance traveled by ejaculated semen. This was not idle curiosity. Doctor Kinsey had heard — and there was a theory kind of going around at the time, this being the 1940s, that the force with which semen is thrown against the cervix was a factor in fertility. Kinsey thought it was bunk. So he got to work. He got together in his lab 300 men, a measuring tape, and a movie camera.  And in fact he found that in three quarters of the men the stuff just kind of slopped out. It wasn’t spurted or thrown or ejected under great force. However, the record holder landed just shy of the eight foot mark. Which is impressive.  Yes. Exactly.  Sadly, he’s anonymous. His name is not mentioned.

In his write up of this experiment in his book, Kinsey wrote, “Two sheets were laid down to protect the oriental carpets.”  Which is my second favorite line in the entire oeuvre of Alfred Kinsey. My favorite being, “Cheese crumbs spread before a pair of copulating rats will distract the female, but not the male.”