Ask ten people to draw the clitoris and you’ll get a tiny dot ten times. A small button, somewhere at the top, and that’s where the knowledge ends.

That dot is about a tenth of the whole.

What it really is

What you see on the outside is the glans: the visible tip, the size of a pea. The rest lies under the skin and extends deep into the pelvis.

From that tip, the organ splits into two legs that run backward like an inverted V, along both sides of the vaginal wall. Next to these lie two vestibular bulbs. Altogether, the structure is about eight to ten centimeters long — roughly the size of a small banana, not a pea.

That tissue swells during arousal, just like in a man. It just happens mostly on the inside, so you don't see it.

Why almost no one knows this

Because for a long time, it wasn’t in the books. The complete structure was only carefully mapped in the nineties by Australian urologist Helen O'Connell. Until then, many anatomy books didn’t mention much more than that dot — if they mentioned it at all.

By comparison, the anatomy of the penis has been described in detail for centuries. This difference in attention is no coincidence, and it still affects what people learn in school.

What that means in practice

The inside and outside are not separate. Because the legs of the clitoris run along the vaginal wall, you are also stimulating this tissue when stimulating from the inside. What people call the G-spot is largely this.

That explains why toys that work on the inside and outside simultaneously are so popular: they touch two parts of the same whole.

Direct is not always better. The visible tip has thousands of nerve endings in a small area. For many women, direct pressure on it is too much, especially at the beginning. Working around it is often more pleasant than working on it.

Time is not a minor detail. The tissue needs time to swell, just like in a man. It just takes longer on average, and you can’t see it from the outside. That is the main reason why things "don't work" that would otherwise work perfectly fine.

Suction versus vibration

Vibration causes the entire area to vibrate. Suction works differently: it pulls on a small surface with pulsating pressure without touching it directly. For those who find direct pressure too intense, that is often a revelation.

It is also the reason why suction toys have become the most popular category in recent years. Not because they are new, but because they solve a problem that many people had without being able to name it.

In conclusion

You don't need to study anatomy to have fun. But knowing how something is put together saves years of trial and error — and it explains why something that works for one person does nothing for another.

At an Amorouge evening, this is invariably the moment when it goes quiet, followed by everyone talking at once.