Female pleasure isn’t a puzzle. But you could be forgiven for thinking it was based on most popular coverage of the topic. Every day articles proliferate introducing “new” sex positions that will guarantee orgasms or offering mold defying ways to channel female sexuality. But as smart sex writers have been pointing out, they distract us from an important reality: clitoral stimulation is a really reliable way for most women to orgasm. To acknowledge this reality would be to acknowledge that much of our conception of sex fails to center or even take seriously female pleasure. Instead we dissemble, suggesting that women just need to contort their bodies or arguing that the clitoris is difficult to find. UNTRUE. Thanks to educator Sheri Winston and others, we know know quite a bit about the "female erectile network." And all signs point to it being perfectly designed for its job. It turns out that women have as much erectile tissue as men! And that we wake up with wood, and get hard ons when we're turned on, not unlike men. What we have come to know as the clitoris is actually connected to a large system of inner structures or internal clitoris, which when fully stimulated “becomes like a snug and stretchy cuff of delightfully responsive equipment.” This contradicts the common understanding that women aren’t “built” for sexual pleasure. Hopefully, as more women (and men) become aware of this, we can begin to reconceptualize our ideas around sex and stop calling the things that get women off as “foreplay.” Some educators and entrepreneurs are already pointing the way forward, offering tools to increase our collective cliteracy. And why not, pleasure is serious business. As Cunni co-founder Alison Tan Ka-kei puts it “one of the greatest acts of sexual empowerment we could do as [women] is to not sleep with people who don’t care about our pleasure.” Seconded, it’s time to close the orgasm gap!

To learn more and raise your own cliteracy, order a copy of UNTRUE!