Despite advancements in science and modern technology, female sexuality is still wrapped in an air of mystique and unsubstantiated misinformation. This was recently seen when a digital fire erupted on the internet following the August 2020 release of “WAP,” a collaborative musical single from hip-hop artists Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion. “WAP,” a celebration of female sexuality and pleasure, was notably criticized by conservative commentator Ben Shapiro, who claimed that after listening to the lyrics graphically describe natural vaginal lubricant from female sexual arousal, his “doctor wife,” Mor Shapiro, had diagnosed the musical artists with “bacterial vaginosis, yeast infection, or trichomonis [sic].” 

It is not new that physicians, both male and female, distribute patriarchal, morality-clad disinformation. In the history of science, women have often put the patriarchy before their own health and pleasure. Gendered biases within medicine, stacked against both patient and practitioner, have created a complex environment that women must navigate at the risk of their own health. A century before Ben Shapiro felt the urge to quote his “doctor wife,” Princess Marie Bonaparte, a Freudian disciple who helped introduce psychoanalysis in France, became so enraptured by Sigmund Freud’s now discredited theory of female frigidity that she sought out to surgically move her own clitoris in hopes of remedying her inability to “correctly” orgasm vaginally.

The great-grandniece of Napoleon Bonaparte, Marie was born in Saint-Cloud, a wealthy Parisian suburban commune. Her mother, Princess Marie-Félix Blanc, succumbed to an embolism the month following her birth. She was a child riddled with phobia, deeply afraid of contracting viral infections from overcrowded rooms and stalwart in her conviction that she would inherit her mother’s own illness. These fears contributed to her study of medicine, an academic pursuit unsupported by her father but one that would drive her curiosities and research for the remainder of her life. 

At the age of 25, Marie was married off to Prince George of Greece and Denmark on November 21, 1907. Although they had two children together, Prince Peter in 1908 and Princess Eugénie in 1910, the couple’s intimacy was cold and unsatisfying. This disconnected intimate relationship, and by extension Marie’s own self-diagnosed frigidity, has been credited as the catalyst for Marie’s most famous psychoanalyst research on clitoral to vaginal distance and its propensity for orgasming vaginally.

In his 1905 “Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality,” Freud suggested two ways a woman could reach climax: vaginal, which was deemed “mature” and “healthy,” and clitoral, which was deemed “immature,” “infantile,” and evidence of a mental disorder. He posited that female sexuality was elusive and that sexual frigidity was “sometimes psychogenic in nature.” These theories, borne on the precipice of the original sexual revolution of the 1920s, are now viewed as outdated and incorrect. But a century ago, these theories on frigidity were pivotal in Marie’s susceptibility to Freud’s influence and became a core tenant of her own research. The two met in 1925, and their friendship became so strong that Marie was nicknamed “the Freudian princess.”

Driven by her inability to orgasm, both with her husband and her own multitude of lovers, Marie engaged in research that ultimately culminated in a study published in the journal Bruxelles-Médical in 1924 under the male pseudonym A. E. Narjani. Documenting the physical distance between the clitoris and the vaginal opening of 243 women, Marie postulated that women with a short distance, less than 1 centimeter, between the two sex organs, labelled as paraclitoridiennes, were the most likely to achieve “mature” vaginal orgasms; women with a medium distance, 1 to 2.5 centimeters, between the two sex organs were labelled mesoclitoriennes and determined to have mixed orgasms; and women with lengthy distance, 2.5 centimeters, between the two sex organs, labelled as téleclitoridiennes, were determined to have difficulty achieving, if not total obstruction from, “mature” vaginal orasgmic release. Marie categorized herself in the latter group

Marie reported her findings on five individual women who underwent surgical procedures to “close the gap” between the two organs in hopes of achieving mature orgasms thus curing themselves of their frigidity. Of the five surgeries, only two were initially reported as successful. This was later contested, however, when the findings from the two “successes” proved to be mixed: Patients experienced a continuation of “immature” clitoral orgasms in addition to claims of climax via vaginal intercourse. Eventually, these reports were deemed unsubstantiated.

Marie underwent the procedure herself a total of three times following her initial research. She ignored Freud’s protests to undergo the knife herself; one theory is that she may have viewed Freud’s response as originating from a place of unresolved trauma after he witnessed a botched nose operation in 1895 and was being irrationally cautious. None of Marie’s three operations were successful. 

When examining Marie’s quest from a modern lens, it is easy to write her off as a victim of her time and outdated Freudian constructs. It is important to remember, however, that Marie’s research, although rooted in self-mutilation and unsubstantiated pseudoscience, was still groundbreaking in an age when those who claimed to understand the mysteries of female sexuality were almost solely cisgender heterosexual men. Marie’s research focused on female pleasure in an age when female sexuality was viewed as taboo, a duty performed for the sole purpose of procreation and contentment of one’s husband rather than for any self-derived enjoyment. Marie’s research, however barbaric or misguided it may seem to modern sensibilities, paved the way for further exploration of female orgasms.

“Marie’s research focused on female pleasure in an age when female sexuality was viewed as taboo, a duty performed for the sole purpose of procreation and contentment of one’s husband rather than for any self-derived enjoyment.”

Research into female orgasms has seen rapid growth since Marie’s original findings in 1924. William Masters and Virginia Johnson directly challenged Freud’s views on frigidity with a more woman-forward approach to research in 1957. Feminists such as Monique Wittig and Luce Irigaray argued that Freud’s obsession with female pleasure by way of the vagina was a ploy to subjugate women. In 1970, feminist Anne Koedt argued in her paper “The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm” that clitoral orgasms were in fact the only way women might achieve true orgasm, positing that the high rate of “female frigidity” boiled down to men’s ignorance of female anatomy and drive to corral women into prescribed social and sexual roles. It has become widely accepted that female pleasure is not divided into vaginal and clitoral camps but is encompassed within the clitourethrovaginal (CUV) complex, the concept that the dynamic relationship within the vagina, clitoris, and urethra can stimulate sexual release. Female sex drive is not any less voracious than male sex drive, rather it is full of more variables, due in part to the menstrual cycle. We also now understand that one’s ability to orgasm relies largely on one’s neurology; the road to the female orgasm is a varied and unique path from woman to woman. 

Although scientific and social understanding of female sexuality has come a long way in the last century, the lasting results of both Marie Bonaparte’s and Sigmund Freud’s analysis of “acceptable” female pleasure still has its claws in modern women. While it is speculated that 95 percent of male heterosexual encounters end in orgasm, only 25 to 30 percent of heterosexual women report reaching climax consistently. This disparity, referred to as the orgasm gap, has led to a trend in faked orgasms and biased sex education that puts an emphasis on male release. 

Even as sex-positive movements such as the Pro Orgasm Movement are receiving more media coverage, the U.S. has seen a steep decline in the last decade in formal sex education programs that teach contraception and safe-sex practices. Conservative bloggers such as Lori Alexander (“The Transformed Wife”) and the #TradWife and Purity Ball movements have surged in popularity propagating ideals that harken back to “traditional family values” that often reverse strides in human rights and perpetuate subservient sexual roles for women in the bedroom. 

Misguidance when it comes to sex education and sexual pleasure has a long history, and Marie’s research highlights how a narrow, confined definition of sex and female gratification has held sway over medicine and the daily lives of women. Given Marie’s story, it is less surprising that Mor Shapiro, an educated woman, would be so strongly against the pleasure of her own sex. If in 2020 there are still women in science and social commentary propagating falsehoods around female pleasure, slews of women will suffer as Princess Marie Bonaparte did, stuck in an endless cycle of frustration, blame, and lack of release with their partners. 

Further Reading

Bertin, Célia, Marie Bonaparte: A Life (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1982).

Bonaparte, Marie, Female Sexuality (New York, NY: International University Press, 1973).

Gurney, Karen, Mind the Gap: The Truth About Desire, and How to Futureproof Your Sex Life  (London: Headline Home, 2020). 

Pascoe, Sara, Animal: The Autobiography of a Female Body (Faber & Faber, 2017).

Roach, Mary, Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex (New York: W.W. Norton, 2019).

Rowland, Katherine, The Pleasure Gap: American Women & The Unfinished Sexual Revolution (New York: Seal Press, 2004).

Image: Princess Marie Bonparte (Wikimedia Commons | CC BY 2.0)