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Getting to know the sex organ most people are woefully ignorant about

Jenny Noyes

It's big, it's shiny, it's gold and sparkly, and it's all for pleasure. So, what is this thing?

If you find yourself struggling to guess, you're not alone. It is, in fact, a clitoris. Of course, most aren't quite as big, gold or sparkly as the sculptural 'Glitoris' created by Sydney artist Alli Sebastian Wolf. But all of them are roughly this shape (most of which is internal); and all exist simply for pleasure. 

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It's big, gold and all for pleasure...

Most people couldn't name this intimate body part. Artist Alli Sebastian Wolf is aiming to educate them.

"It's the only organ that we know of in the whole of existence that does nothing, has no practical purpose other than to provide pleasure for the people who have one," Wolf explains outside the bathroom of The Bearded Tit in Redfern, where her artwork has currently taken up residence until February 25th. 

Wolf built her 100:1 scaled "anatomically correct" model to do more than give audiences pleasure, however.

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She also wants to educate people about the female sex organ which was not even fully recognised in modern medicine until the late 1990s, when Australian urologist Helen O'Connell published her findings on both the external and internal anatomy of the organ, including its nerve endings which more than double that of the penis. 

"I wanted to make something that was really fun and tactile and celebratory about the clitoris because it's just not something that we talk about. Everyone is so ill-informed about what it actually is, including myself."

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Wolf admits that she had no idea about the true size and shape of the organ until her mid-20s, when she happened across an article online. 

"I had no idea it was this incredible shape happening beneath the surface. It's not in our sex education, it's not in our culture," she says. "It's really only in the last 20 years it has started to come into medical understanding and then from that it's just slowly started to trickle down into the rest of society."

This trickling down of information has recently become a steadier flow, thanks to the internet and in particular feminist artists and creators who have taken up a cause that has largely been ignored by educators and the medical community. New York conceptual artist Sophia Wallace calls this movement "Cliteracy".

For Wallace, getting "cliterate" is a matter of human rights – and it's been the focus of her multi-media art practice for more than four years. She's given a TED Talk on the subject, and used the clitoris shape as a motif in artworks from wallpaper 'damask' to street art, sculpture and even a rodeo ride. 

Fellow New Yorker Penelopi Jones is a jewellery designer whose creations have one thing in common: They're all inspired by the clitoris shape. And she counts feminist icon Gloria Steinem among her customers.

And singer-songwriter Amanda Palmer, former frontwoman of the Dresden Dolls, was so excited when she saw Alli Sebastian Wolf's Glitoris on Instagram she had the artist join her onstage at the Sydney Opera House last weekend for an impromptu sex-ed lesson. 

But it seems the world outside feminism and art is also beginning to catch on.

Last year, French socio-medical researcher Odile Fillod made global headlines after developing the blueprint for a 3D-printable model of a clitoris to be used in the classroom. She told The Guardian at the time that it's important women "have a mental image of what is actually happening in their body when they're stimulated."

While Melbourne-based sex therapist Cyndi Darnell agrees that learning about the anatomy of the clitoris is important, she says that alone will not change how people talk about and experience sex. 

"Where everyone is getting excited about the clitoris, that's great. But just knowing more comprehensively the anatomical structure doesn't place it in a cultural context. 

"The bigger issue is that [female pleasure] is not taken seriously," Darnell says. So she's created 'The Atlas of Erotic Anatomy & Arousal', an online resource for adults "designed to give you all the info you should have received at school about sex and pleasure, but most likely never did."

For Wolf, learning about and celebrating sexuality "can be a revolutionary act", and she hopes her golden Glitoris will inspire people to read up and start talking to their friends and lovers about it. 

"I want to help spread that message so people could be more in touch with their own pleasure and other people's pleasure, as kind of a way to make the world a better place."

Five facts you might not know about the clitoris:

  • Like an iceberg, most of the clitoris is below the surface and invisible, wrapping around the vaginal tunnel and extending out towards the thighs. What is popularly understood to be the clitoris is in fact just the tip. 
  • ​It ranges from 7-12cm in length and swells by 50 to 300 per cent when engorged.
  • G-spot and penetrative orgasms are clitoral, coming from stimulating the internal parts of the clitoris.
  • The full clitoris was only anatomically 'discovered' for the first time in 1998, by Australian urologist Helen O'Connell.
  • In some forms of gender confirmation surgery, the clitoris can be enlarged with androgenic hormones to form a penis. Likewise, the penile glans can be reduced in size and relocated to create a clitoris.

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