At the same time, the idea that women should be shamed out of sexual pleasure or desire had begun to permeate not just gynecology but other areas of medicine, including the burgeoning field of psychoanalysis. Sigmund Freud led the charge here, with his theory of the so-called vaginal orgasm: “Whenever a woman is incapable of achieving an orgasm via coitus . . . and prefers clitoral stimulation to any other form of sexual activity, she can be regarded as suffering from frigidity and requires psychiatric assistance.” In Freud’s view, clitoral orgasms were the hallmark of an immature,
...more
