Half the world has a clitoris: why don’t doctors study it?

That’s the title of an  article this week in the prestigious New York Times that suggests it’s about time this part of the human was better understood.

Writer Rachel E. Gross, author of Vagina Obscura: An Anatomical Voyage, argues some urologists compare the vulva to “a small town in the Midwest”.

“Doctors tend to pass through it, barely looking up, on their way to their destination, the cervix and uterus. That’s where the real medical action happens: ultrasounds, Pap smears, IUD insertion, childbirth.”

But if the vulva is an under-appreciated city, she says, the clitoris is a local roadside bar: little known, seldom considered, probably best avoided!

Gross writes that activists believe there must be a concerted movement to understand and map this anatomy. “And for that to happen, other fields need to recognise sexual pleasure as essential and worth preserving.”