'Bonk' Tells Us Some Amazing Things About Sex

By Don Hazen and Tana Ganeva, AlterNet. Posted April 24, 2008.

It turns out there is quite a bit of variability in the distance between the clitoris and the vagina.

Princess Marie Bonaparte -- great grandniece of Napoleon and an accomplished amateur scientist -- discovered this tidbit of information in her doomed quest for the elusive vaginal orgasm. Bonaparte measured the genitals of 243 women and concluded that women with a shorter span between their clitoris and vagina were more likely to orgasm during sex.

Armed with this information Bonaparte decided to subject herself -- twice -- to having her clitoris surgically moved.

Alas, it was to no avail. As we learn in Mary Roach's new book Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex, the princesses' story did not have a happy ending. (Ironically Bonaparte moved on to psychoanalysis and became a devotee of Sigmund Freud, an arch-enemy of the clitoral orgasm).

If informational nuggets like this turn you on, then Roach's hilarious overview of sex research throughout history is for you. Bonk features hundreds of surprising and amazing facts that Roach gathered in her investigation of the science of sex. Here are just a few eye-openers: In the 1970s, Masters and Johnson observed that homosexuals were far better lovers than heterosexuals, perhaps because of gender empathy; women are more likely to have risky affairs when their hormones are peaking; rhesus monkeys climax within five seconds of entering their partner, giving new meaning to the term quickie; more than a few men throughout history have had animal testes grafted onto their genitals in the hopes of increasing their virility.

Let's be clear, though. Sex research is not an exact science, given the mysterious, unquantifiable factors like emotion, attraction and 'sexual chemistry' that influence sexuality. But some things are pretty obvious, observable, and predictable nevertheless, and we find out what happens in the laboratories of sex throughout history. It is not always a pretty picture, but one that is often hilarious.

Bonk profiles the great pioneers of the science of sex, like Alfred Kinsey and the aforementioned Masters and Johnson, as well as dozens of lesser lights who undertook brave, creative, or just plain wacky experiments in their pursuit of knowledge.

And the best part in reading this book is that Roach is damned funny. Experiencing Roach in Bonk provides the "full monty" of reading non-fiction. You are titillated, you learn hundreds of new fascinating, and sometimes ludicrous things about sex and human behavior, and you often laugh your butt off. Consider the British study that found 351 terms for penis, including "the one-eyed milkman," but only three for the clitoris, which by the way doubles in size when stimulated and is far more erogenous than the penis.

Roach goes everywhere to learn about sex -- far back into history, to foreign lands, and into territory where sex is not usually on the agenda, like among people with incapacitating spinal injuries. Here Roach highlights the pioneering work of Marcalee Sipski, and we learn that men can have sex with catheters in their penises and that orgasm is sometimes achievable in people with the most serious injuries.

We spoke with Roach over the phone about the science of sex.

How has sex research evolved over the past several decades and how has sexual understanding changed as a result?

In the seventies you had researchers like Masters and Johnson doing pure physiological sex research. When the basic processes of arousal and orgasm were figured out, or beginning to be figured out, there was less of that type of research. During the AIDS era there was a lot of research directed toward behavioral surveys and figuring out risk taking behaviors and their connection to the transmission of HIV, so a lot of money went into that area. Nowadays there's a lot more money, and a lot of sex research is devoted to coming up with therapies for sexual dysfunction, whether it's pharmaceutical or otherwise. So that's a general look at how sex research has changed since the '60s.

Much of the first few chapters are about the female orgasm and the persistent myth of the vaginal orgasm. Does the myth still persist? Do men still cling to it?

I don't know if the myth still persists. Hopefully not. It was interesting for me to see how even figures as large as Masters and Johnson came out saying 'No! There's no such thing, it's all just indirect stimulation of the clitoris, and there's no such thing as a vaginal orgasm, the clitoris is always involved.' Then came that study by Alzate where women came in and he was sort of frictioning the front wall of the vagina and reliably producing orgasms without any contribution at all from the clitoris. To me it's silly because there's not ... there are nipple orgasms, there are dream orgasms, there are people who can think themselves into orgasm. Kinsey met a woman who ... stroking her eyebrows made her have an orgasm. Everybody's wired differently. So I hope people aren't still clinging to that particular myth.

What about the G-Spot or as you say "that other erogenous zone?" Is there research about that, and what should the lovers of women know about it?

Clearly the front wall of the vagina is an erotic area and there still persists some sort of discussion about whether there is a separate structure. Can you differentiate the tissue of the g-spot from the rest of the front wall of the vagina? There are people who bicker back and forth about that. But clearly, whether or not it's a separate structure, the front has an erogenous area. If it didn't, those rabbit style vibrators wouldn't be the terrific sales item that they are.

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Don Hazen is the executive editor of AlterNet.

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