Researchers Asked Over a Thousand Women How They Liked Their Genitals Touched
And they got REALLY specific. So I created diagrams.
In 1925, the great-grandniece of Napoleon Bonaparte, Marie Bonaparte, had lost her orgasm. She was determined to find it.
Marie believed that she could not orgasm from penetration because her clitoris was too far from her urethra. (She wasn't wrong. A shorter distance between the urethra and the glans clitoris correlates with more pleasurable penetrative sex.)
She partly got this hypothesis from her buddy Sigmund Freud who convinced her that women who only orgasm from direct clitoral stimulation were misdirecting excess masculinity. Freud taught that the correct way for ladies to find pleasure was through penetration because it involved the "mature" vagina and not the "immature" clitoris.
So Marie underwent a surgical procedure to move her misplaced clitoris to the correct location.
As you can imagine, it didn't go so well.
A century after Freud, researchers finally decided to ask women what they want when the penis is left out of the party. In a crossectional study published in the Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy, researchers surveyed 1,200 women and asked them where and how they like their genitals touched.
Here's how to learn your partner's sexual touch manual.
First, a note on anatomy
I am using the term "clitoris" to refer to the "glans clitoris" and not the whole enchilada. Some of the examples in this study are hitting the clitoral network that is not visible. Unfortunately, I don't have the energy for 3D drawings…yet.
Where to touch her
Let's start with the basics — a roadmap of her vulva's pleasure zones.
The results:
A. Directly on clitoris" —66.6%
B. On the skin around the clitoris — 45.3%
C. Occasionally brushing over the clitoris but not applying pressure to it — 25.2%
D. On vaginal lips (labia minora or labia major) — 20.4%
E. On the mons pubis— 7.8%
Nearly two-thirds of respondents preferred to be touched directly on their clitoris. Shocker.