Busy As A Bee!
It’s a powerful organ of sexual pleasure that comes complete with a surprising number of fun facts. You’ll be surprised by how much this tiny organ’s got going on under the hood. Here’s a list of our top picks. (For more amazing info, “Woman: An Intimate Geography” is a great resource.)
It’s Exquisitely Sensitive
The clitoris contains at least 8,000 sensory nerve endings. To put that into perspective, the penis has about 4,000. That makes this tiny area the most sensitive part of a woman’s erogenous zone. And while the clitoris is quite small, its powerful sensations can spread across a woman’s pelvic area by affecting 15,000 other nerve endings!
It’s Bigger Than You Think
Did you know that Marie Bonaparte - great grand niece to the Napoleon Bonaparte - had her clitoris surgically moved? Not removed (thank goodness), but moved. Closer to her vagina, that is. The reason was simple. Like many women, she couldn’t orgasm from vaginal sex. At the time there was - and still is - evidence that if the space between the clitoris and vaginal opening is less than an inch, a woman is more likely to be able to orgasm through penetrative sex alone.
The sad part, for Bonaparte at least, is that the surgery didn’t work.
Here’s what she didn’t know: Only one quarter of the clitoris is visible. The rest of it is inside the body, which means this organ can’t really be picked up and moved. The clitoris is made up of many different parts, including the clitoral head, the hood the clitoral shaft, the urethral sponge, erectile tissue, glands, vestibular bulbs and the crura (or the clitoral legs). Only the clitoral head and the hood are located outside the body. (If you want to read more about Marie Bonaparte - along with an array of other amazing sex studies and facts - check out “Bonk.” You will laugh, you will cringe and, boy, will you will learn a lot of fun and unexpected facts about human couplings.)It’s a Lot Like a Penis
Yeah, there’s the whole “men are from Mars, women are from Venus” camp, but in reality, men and women are a lot more alike than most of us realize. Or, at least we start out that way. In fact, all babies, upon conception, have the exact same genital tissue. At about 12 weeks, each baby’s genitalia begin to differentiate into a penis or labia. So, in a sense, the clitoris and penis are the same materials put together in a different way. The clitoris has a glans, a foreskin (also known as the hood), erectile tissue and a teeny-tiny shaft. It even swells when it’s aroused! Good thing it’s mostly hidden - it saves the ladies from having to measure and compare with their friends … (Check out some other amazing facts about the female anatomy in 10 Things You Don’t Know About Vaginas.)
It Grows
The clitoris actually grows during a woman’s lifetime. No, it isn’t getting stretched out from too much sexy fun. The growth occurs as a result of hormonal changes in the body. When a girl’s puberty begins, the clitoris will start increasing in size. By the time puberty ends, the clitoris will be about 1.8 times larger. By the time a woman is 32 years old, the clitoris will be almost four times as big as it was at the onset of puberty. It doesn’t end there. After menopause, the clitoris will be about seven times larger than it was at birth! Don’t freak out - this is still a very small area, so the change in size won’t be very noticeable. And hey, it might help to explain why older women often report such hot sex!
It’s Only There for the Sex
A woman’s body includes a number of super-hot erogenous zones, but you might say many of those are sort of, well, incidental. Not the clit. It’s there for fun. Yup, that’s right. The clitoris is the only part of the body designed solely for pleasure. So, while other body parts used for sexual pleasure have at least one other purpose to them, your clit is just there to get you off.
Every Female Has One
Every female mammal has a clitoris. However, we humans are one of the few species that has evolved to actually use the clitoris for sexual pleasure. That doesn’t mean female mammals cannot orgasm - there’s some science to show other mammals experience sexual pleasure too - but most don’t seek it out like we humans do.
It Can be an Orgasm Deal Breaker
Vaginal orgasms do exist, but they’re tricky for a lot of women to achieve, and only 30 percent of women are able to reach orgasm through penetration alone. The rest require direct clitoral stimulation. Rubbing, licking, sucking or sex toys will all do the trick, although each clitoris has its own preferences. (Check out Adam & Eve’s selection of more than 200 vibrators just for this purpose here.)
Some Women Won’t Leave It Alone
Women don’t talk about it, but some of them go under the knife to alter their clitorises. There’s clitoral unhooding, a procedure in which excess tissue in the hood is removed to heighten sensitivity. The size of the clitoris can also be reduced or enlarged. According to the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, more than 2,140 U.S. women underwent “vaginal rejuvenation” surgery in 2012. However, while some surgery can be used to correct problems that cause women pain and discomfort, most experts don’t recommend going under the knife for any other reason. You may go in to improve your sex life and emerge with scarring or an infection that could mean no sex life at all. (Learn more about genital surgery in Can Plastic Surgery Lead to Better Sex?)
They’re All Different
Some are small, some are big, some are hidden and some protrude rather a lot. Some increase in size when aroused, and others hide under the hood. Some require a lot of pressure, others prefer a very gentle touch. Each clitoris as unique as the woman attached to it. That’s important, too, because getting to know how it works and how to use it to produce pleasure is just a part of getting to know yourself, or your lover.
The clitoris never ages. Once it matures, it maintains its sexual peak for the rest of a woman’s life. So, if you aren’t on good terms with the clit in your life, it isn’t too late to start getting acquainted.(me: how is that image even related to anything clitoris? and…..i feel there’s information missing. But guess there is too much to say about the clit…)
we shift from feeling fear because of some threat, to having a fearful attitude towards life itself.
fear creates its own self-fulfilling dynamic - as people give in to it, they lose energy and momentum.
the knife’s edge separates failure from success in life. that edge is your attitude, which has the power to shape your reality. it is unnatural to not feel fear. it is a process that requires challenges and tests.
our days are numbered ad so it is best to make every moment count, to have a sense of urgency about life.
trying so hard to please people can actually end up pushing them away - it is hard to respect someone who has such an ingratiating attitude.
the key to possessing this supreme power is to assume the active mode in dealing with your fears. this means entering the very arenas you normally shy away from: making the very hard decisions you have been avoiding, confronting the people who are playing power games with you, thinking of yourself and what you need instead of pleasing others, making yourself change the direction of your life even though such change is the very thing you dread.
you know which battles or positions to avoid because they don’t advance you towards your goal.
your increasing powers of observation must occasionally be aimed at yourself.
true ownership can come only from within. it comes from a disdain for anything or anybody that impinges upon your mobility, from a confidence in your own decisions, and from the use of your time in constant pursuit of education and improvement.
we have layers of support that seem to prop us up. but these supports are illusions in the end.
you are more alone than you imagine.
dependency is a habit that is so easy to acquire.
never be a minion, always be an owner.
you are one of a kind. your character traits are a kind of chemical mix that will never be repeated in history. you must not be afraid of your uniqueness and you must care less and less what people think of you.
i love all these foods! so to hear this….thank god!
i was in the gym today, watching 2009 star trek, as my eyes begin tearing up. now you can call me emo cause i’m a chick. or i’m hormonal cause i’m getting old. but something about that movie almost makes me cry every time i watch it. it feels like i’m saying goodbye to old friends. i think having leonard nimoy in there is like saying goodbye to the original cast while cementing the new cast. was a very fitting feeling, in my opinion, given that it’s new year’s day 2013. goodbye to the trouble with tribbles crew and hello to the “red matter” era! even though they were reruns by the time i first saw them, i will always be a trekkie! live long and prosper!
I might need some explanation for this new fashion trend of wearing your underwear inside out, pants low and two different sneakers (not pictured)
trendsetters are all around me today.
Hahaha!
(Source: lickypickystickyme)
A few things you won’t hear about from the saturation coverage of the Newtown, Conn., school massacre:
Mass shootings are no more common than they have been in past decades, despite the impression given by the media.
In fact, the high point for mass killings in the U.S. was 1929, according to criminologist Grant Duwe of the Minnesota Department of Corrections.
Incidents of mass murder in the U.S. declined from 42 in the 1990s to 26 in the first decade of this century.
The chances of being killed in a mass shooting are about what they are for being struck by lightning.
Until the Newtown horror, the three worst K–12 school shootings ever had taken place in either Britain or Germany.
Almost all of the public-policy discussion about Newtown has focused on a debate over the need for more gun control. In reality, gun control in a country that already has 200 million privately owned firearms is likely to do little to keep weapons out of the hands of criminals. We would be better off debating two taboo subjects — the laws that make it difficult to control people with mental illness and the growing body of evidence that “gun-free” zones, which ban the carrying of firearms by law-abiding individuals, don’t work.
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First, the mental-health issue. A lengthy study by Mother Jonesmagazine found that at least 38 of the 61 mass shooters in the past three decades “displayed signs of mental health problems prior to the killings.”New York Times columnist David Brooks and Cornell Law School professor William Jacobson have both suggested that the ACLU-inspired laws that make it so difficult to intervene and identify potentially dangerous people should be loosened. “Will we address mental-health and educational-privacy laws, which instill fear of legal liability for reporting potentially violent mentally ill people to law enforcement?” asks Professor Jacobson. “I doubt it.”
Gun-free zones have been the most popular response to previous mass killings. But many law-enforcement officials say they are actually counterproductive. “Guns are already banned in schools. That is why the shootings happen in schools. A school is a ‘helpless-victim zone,’” says Richard Mack, a former Arizona sheriff. “Preventing any adult at a school from having access to a firearm eliminates any chance the killer can be stopped in time to prevent a rampage,” Jim Kouri, the public-information officer of the National Association of Chiefs of Police, told me earlier this year at the time of the Aurora, Colo., Batman-movie shooting. Indeed, there have been many instances — from the high-school shooting by Luke Woodham in Mississippi, to the New Life Church shooting in Colorado Springs, Colo. — where a killer has been stopped after someone got a gun from a parked car or elsewhere and confronted the shooter.
Economists John Lott and William Landes conducted a groundbreaking study in 1999, and found that a common theme of mass shootings is that they occur in places where guns are banned and killers know everyone will be unarmed, such as shopping malls and schools.
I spoke with Lott after the Newtown shooting, and he confirmed that nothing has changed to alter his findings. He noted that the Aurora shooter, who killed twelve people earlier this year, had a choice of seven movie theaters that were showing the Batman movie he was obsessed with. All were within a 20-minute drive of his home. The Cinemark Theater the killer ultimately chose wasn’t the closest, but it was the only one that posted signs saying it banned concealed handguns carried by law-abiding individuals. All of the other theaters allowed the approximately 4 percent of Colorado adults who have a concealed-handgun permit to enter with their weapons.
“Disarming law-abiding citizens leaves them as sitting ducks,” Lott told me. “A couple hundred people were in the Cinemark Theater when the killer arrived. There is an extremely high probability that one or more of them would have had a legal concealed handgun with him if they had not been banned.”
Lott offers a final damning statistic: “With just one single exception, the attack on congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson in 2011, every public shooting since at least 1950 in the U.S. in which more than three people have been killed has taken place where citizens are not allowed to carry guns.”
There is no evidence that private holders of concealed-carry permits (which are either easy to obtain or not even required in more than 40 states) are any more irresponsible with firearms than the police. According to a 2005 to 2007 study by researchers at the University of Wisconsin and Bowling Green State University, police nationwide were convicted of firearms violations at least at a 0.002 percent annual rate. That’s about the same rate as holders of carry permits in the states with “shall issue” laws.
Despite all of this evidence, the magical thinking behind gun-free zones is unlikely to be questioned in the wake of the Newtown killings. Having such zones gives people a false sense of security, and woe to the politician or business owner who now suggests that a “gun-free zone” revert back to what critics would characterize as “a wild, wild West” status. Indeed, shortly after the Cinemark attack in Colorado, the manager of the nearby Northfield Theaters changed its policy and began banning concealed handguns.
In all of the fevered commentary over the Newtown killings, you will hear little discussion of the fact that we may be making our families and neighbors less safe by expanding the places where guns aren’t allowed. But that is precisely what we may be doing. Both criminals and the criminally insane have shown time and time again that those laws are the least of the problems they face as they carry out their evil deeds.
— John Fund is a national-affairs columnist for NRO
(Source: nationalreview.com)
Well worth the read - COLUMBINE STUDENT’S FATHER 12 YEARS LATER !! Guess our national leaders didn’t expect this. On Thursday, Darrell Scott, the father of Rachel Scott, a victim of the Columbine High School shootings in Littleton, Colorado, was invited to address the House Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee. What he said to our national leaders during this special session of Congress was painfull
They were not prepared for what he was to say, nor was it received well. It needs to be heard by every parent, every teacher, every politician, every sociologist, every psychologist, and every so-called expert! These courageous words spoken by Darrell Scott are powerful, penetrating, and deeply personal. There is no doubt that God sent this man as a voice crying in the wilderness.. The following is a portion of the transcript:
“Since the dawn of creation there has been both good &evil in the hearts of men and women. We all contain the seeds of kindness or the seeds of violence. The death of my wonderful daughter, Rachel Joy Scott, and the deaths of that heroic teacher, and the other eleven children who died must not be in vain. Their blood cries out for answers.
“The first recorded act of violence was when Cain slew his brother Abel out in the field. The villain was not the club he used.. Neither was it the NCA, the National Club Association. The true killer was Cain, and the reason for the murder could only be found in Cain’s heart.
“In the days that followed the Columbine tragedy, I was amazed at how quickly fingers began to be pointed at groups such as the NRA. I am not a member of the NRA. I am not a hunter. I do not even own a gun. I am not here to represent or defend the NRA - because I don’t believe that they are responsible for my daughter’s death. Therefore I do not believe that they need to be defended. If I believed they had anything to do with Rachel’s murder I would be their strongest opponent
I am here today to declare that Columbine was not just a tragedy — it was a spiritual event that should be forcing us to look at where the real blame lies! Much of the blame lies here in this room. Much of the blame lies behind the pointing fingers of the accusers themselves. I wrote a poem just four nights ago that expresses my feelings best.
Your laws ignore our deepest needs,
Your words are empty air.
You’ve stripped away our heritage,
You’ve outlawed simple prayer.
Now gunshots fill our classrooms,
And precious children die.
You seek for answers everywhere,
And ask the question “Why?”
You regulate restrictive laws,
Through legislative creed.
And yet you fail to understand,
That God is what we need!
“Men and women are three-part beings. We all consist of body, mind, and spirit. When we refuse to acknowledge a third part of our make-up, we create a void that allows evil, prejudice, and hatred to rush in and wreak havoc. Spiritual presences were present within our educational systems for most of our nation’s history. Many of our major colleges began as theological seminaries. This is a historical fact.
What has happened to us as a nation? We have refused to honor God, and in so doing, we open the doors to hatred and violence. And when something as terrible as Columbine’s tragedy occurs — politicians immediately look for a scapegoat such as the NRA. They immediately seek to pass more restrictive laws that contribute to erode away our personal and private liberties. We do not need more restrictive laws.
Eric and Dylan would not have been stopped by metal detectors. No amount of gun laws can stop someone who spends months planning this type of massacre. The real villain lies within our own hearts.
“As my son Craig lay under that table in the school library and saw his two friends murdered before his very eyes, he did not hesitate to pray in school. I defy any law or politician to deny him that right! I challenge every young person in America , and around the world, to realize that on April 20, 1999, at Columbine High School prayer was brought back to our schools. Do not let the many prayers offered by those students be in vain. Dare to move into the new millennium with a sacred disregard for legislation that violates your God-given right to communicate with Him.
To those of you who would point your finger at the NRA — I give to you a sincere challenge.. Dare to examine your own heart before casting the first stone!
My daughter’s death will not be in vain! The young people of this country will not allow that to happen!”
- Darrell Scott
Do what the media did not - - let the nation hear this man’s speech. Please send this oout to everyone you can!
Regardless of how you personally view prostitution or pornography, whether or not you think men/women/transgendered persons are being exploited for selling sexual services that they could otherwise legally give away to as many men/ women/ couples as they want; I must ask if you believe that it is MORE important to waste countless scarce and valuable resources and take away the freedom of individuals who may not feel they are in any way exploited, than it is to spend those same resources pursuing, apprehending, prosecuting and incarcerating those whose victims, like the thousands noted below in the FBI statistics, have sought help?
How much police corruption and abuse are you willing to tolerate to impose YOUR social or moral values on others? No matter how well intended a law is which prohibits and punishes the private, consenting adult behavior of others- laws which can only be enforced arbitrarily and selectively - always have and always will engender corruption of every agency which is charged with their enforcement… the cops, the courts, the prosecutors and the prisons. The laws not only destroy the lives of those who violate them, but those laws and the resulting unintended consequences destroy innocent victims of real criminals, the lives of the moral and upright, and the lives of those who enter law enforcement believing they will make a difference.
If this is acceptable to you, then you have no right to claim you are concerned for the physical, emotional or spiritual well being of children or women or the ‘exploited.’ Your concern is solely for your own personal social or moral satisfaction, without a thought about those upon whom you inflict injustice.
When creating, we learn by doing, and we improve by repeating the process.
