Women have erections, penises and clitorises are made of the same tissue and pleasure is the sole function of the clitoris. While we're at it, the clitoris is shaped a little like a sycamore seed, with two distinct arms, two bulbs, a body and a glans.
None of this I learnt in sex ed. Indeed, in the respected and much-republished book Understanding Human Sexuality, the clitoris is depicted merely as the glans. Sex education as it exists in most schools is rife with misinformation.
![3D printed clitoris, developed by French researcher Odile Fillod.](/web/20170130074523im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/q/u/h/i/9/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gqugs2.png/1471474435760.jpg)
France may have sadly blinkered views when it comes to swimwear, but it is on its way to becoming more progressive than many countries in the sex education department. A French researcher has created the world's first open-source, 3D printable, anatomically correct clitoris for use in schools and classrooms from September, reports The Guardian.
The work of sociomedical researcher Odile Fillod, this tiny sculpture will teach French children about what has so obviously been missing from the conversation around sex for all these years - that, essentially, while the penis and vagina go together like, well, exactly that, they are not equivalents in terms of sensation. For females, that job goes to the clitoris.
Fillod created the model - the blueprint of which can be downloaded and used anywhere, but is not part of France's formal school curriculum - as part of her work on a modern sex education video with Toulouse-based V.Ideaux. According to The Guardian, it struck her that the clitoris was never presented correctly in school textbooks. She then developed the 3D model at the Cité des Sciences et de L'Industrie in Paris.
She told the newspaper: "It's important that women have a mental image of what is actually happening in their body when they're stimulated.
"In understanding the key role of the clitoris, a woman can stop feeling shame, or [that she's] abnormal if penile-vaginal intercourse doesn't do the trick for her – given the anatomical data, that is the case for most women... I wanted to show that men and women are not fundamentally different."
The small, oddly shaped organ is only partially visible, so it was sidelined, misrepresented, even forgotten, in sex education. When it comes to teaching about sex - and this goes for adults of all ages as well as children - the penis is the dominant player, the excitable structure that takes precedent in the process.
While Helen O'Connell, the leading urology surgeon from Melbourne, and Suzann Gage, LA author of The New View of Woman's Body, did more for the clitoris in the 1980s and 1990s than many thousands of years of civilisation, their efforts to demystify female anatomy made little impact on the way sex education is approached and understood.
And before that, there was very little mention at all of the clit's true form and function - anatomical renderings of 1800s cadavers, the odd poem and whispers among women, perhaps, of the organ's possibilities.
It's about time both women and men learnt their way around the only organ known to exist for the sole purpose of sexual pleasure, in all its resting or erect glory.
As one French man told Daily Life on hearing about his home country's latest educational aid, "pleasure comes from knowledge".