G Whiz

Today's post is brought to you - in true Sesame Street fashion - by the letter G.

Following up on the success of my post on The Degree of Gasp, which began with this reference to the gradual disappearance of the g-string (not that there's a great deal to disappear), I call your attention to yet another reference to the hard-working letter G: this interesting article on the unsuccessful 60-year effort to identify and precisely locate the G-Spot.

The so-called G-Spot is named for German gynecologist Dr Ernst Graefenberg, who postulated its existence in 1950 during his study of stimulation of the urethra (don't ask). The G-Spot was said to be a particularly sensitive 1- to 2-centimeter spot on the wall of the vagina which, when properly stimulated, could provide ... um ... intense pleasure to the happy lady so stimulated. His curiosity about the existence of the spot which now bears his name may have been piqued by references to such an anatomical location in the 11th-century Indian Kamasastra and Jayamangala texts.

The G-Spot was popularized in a 1982 book titled The G-Spot and Other Recent Discoveries About Human Sexuality, by Alice Kahn Ladas, Beverly Whipple, and John D. Perry. The book became a New York Times best-seller in 1982, proving that people will read just about anything related to sex.

Now, unfortunately, it seems that 60 years of dedicated (and, no doubt, exciting) study using scans, surveys, and biopsies and a thorough review of 96 published studies (!) have failed to scientifically document the existence of the G-Spot. Dr. Amichai Kilchevsky, a urology resident at Yale-New Haven Hospital in Connecticut and lead author of the review, stated in an article published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine, "Without a doubt, a discreet anatomic entity called the G-spot does not exist." He conceded, however, that the work is not "1,000 percent conclusive," and that other scientists could one day find something his team missed ... although this would require "new technology" (concerning which I will decline to speculate).

I will never look at the letter G in the same way again.

Attempting to claw my way back up to higher intellectual ground, I note that my friend and co-worker Brenda yesterday introduced me to this very interesting blog: The Inky Fool, dedicated to "words, phrases, grammar, rhetoric, and prose." In the blog, I found an exposition on the word bellibone, defined as "A woman excelling in both beauty and goodness. A word now out of use."

One hopes that it is merely the wonderfully mellifluous word bellibone that is out of use, and not the existence of women excelling in both beauty and goodness.

Well, Gee, it's time to get ready to go to work. I must get dressed, take Nessa for a walk, and kiss my bellibone good-bye as she sleeps.

Have a good day. More thoughts, hopefully less prurient, tomorrow.

Bilbo