6 ms·
Full network of clitoral nerves mapped out for first time
- lentoutcry 6mo ago[flagged]
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- ElijahLynn 6mo agoIronic, from reading the article it actually takes a while to find the research... https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.03.18.712572v1 https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.03.18.712572v1 >>> PDF with the images https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.03.18.712572v1.full.pdf https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.03.18.712572v1...
- Fraterkes 6mo agoDumb question, why do “sensitive” spots on the body need more nerves? Couldn’t you just have the normal touch-sensing nerves and map signals from specific spots on the body to stronger/pleasurable qualia in the brain?
- throwaway27448 6mo agoPerhaps encoding "software" is more expensive in terms of codons? So it's cheaper/more likely to "implement" physically.
- yorwba 6mo agoHaving more independent samples helps filter out noise. If you had individual sensory neurons with outsized influence, then misfiring of such neurons would also have outsized influence.
- Fraterkes 6mo agoThis makes a lot of sense, thx!
- furyofantares 6mo agoSounds plausible at least, but I think the question isn't necessarily making a valid assumption. Why do men have to have nipples? Why is our retina installed backwards? Why do sinuses drain upwards? It's just a path evolution took, it doesn't jump to some optimal design.
- technothrasher 6mo agoCorrect, though interestingly apropos to the discussion is that sex is one of the ways evolution is able to get around local maximums.
- Fraterkes 6mo agoAsking “why” questions about our body / evolution often (not always) gives informative answers. As in the example you gave: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-purpose-of-our-eyes-strange-wiring-is-unveiled/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-purpose-of-ou...
- Shank 6mo agoPage 7 [0] of the report seems to indicate that FGM reconstruction actually seems to have negative outcomes post-surgery. I'm surprised by this. I'm also shocked to see how prolific FGM is too (230 million women?!). [0]: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.03.18.712572v1.full.pdf https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.03.18.712572v1...
- turkey99 6mo agoMale genital mutilation is very common
- telesilla 6mo agoRespectfully, this article is not about the male experience, it's okay to talk about women without putting men in the story.
- zahlman 6mo agoNo, it's important context, and attempting to suppress it does everyone a disservice. Without taking these kinds of points of comparison into consideration, one becomes susceptible to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_rate_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_rate_fallacy , and may become convinced about supposed bias where the evidence doesn't support the claim, contradicts it or even shows the opposite. Another classic example is the discourse around "missing and murdered Indigenous women" in Canadian politics. It was popular enough around a decade ago to be more or less a set phrase. To listen to politicians and wonks discussing the matter, you would imagine that Indigenous men didn't ever get kidnapped or murdered. As a matter of fact, the statistics showed that it happened to them at over twice the rate of the women. (They also showed that it was not an alarmingly high rate compared to other Canadian populations, and that the perpetrators were usually themselves Indigenous — as you'd expect for generally fairly isolated communities.) But you would get silenced in many places (e.g., banned from the Canada subreddit) for pointing to those statistics.
- rdevilla 6mo ago
- wahern 6mo ago> the clitoris did not even make it into standard anatomy textbooks until the 38th edition of Gray’s Anatomy was published in 1995. This seemed surprising, as it hews too close to an annoying meme in feminism and history generally, that people in prior eras were idiots. And it turns out to be wrong. The clitoris was in Gray's Anatomy until 1947, when it was removed by the editor Charles Goss for the 25th edition. See https://projects.huffingtonpost.com/projects/cliteracy/embed/history https://projects.huffingtonpost.com/projects/cliteracy/embed... Indeed, the clitoris had been depicted in Classical medical books. Why it was removed--and stayed removed for nearly 50 years--would make for an interesting story about mid-century culture, if not for a cynical throwaway comment, though it seems nobody knows Goss' actual motivations.
- Fraterkes 6mo agoI don’t know about “idiots” but bias towards women was obviously real and prevalent. Treating the idea that that might have influenced medical literature as a “meme” is slightly bizarre to me.
- wahern 6mo agoThe meme is that before [insert your contemporary period] people were so backwards that they would miss something like the clitoris entirely. The meme isn't that people and cultures were prejudiced or biased, but that they were prejudiced in an idiotic way. If you believe that's how prejudice works, then you'll be utterly blind to much contemporary prejudice. EDIT: Relatedly, The Guardian article sites the statistics about female genital mutilation. And you might think, how could people in this day be so cruel? Well, in some (but not all) of those cultures, such as parts of West Africa, female sexual pleasure is highly valued, a clitoral circumcision involves removing the clitoral hood only, similar to circumcision for men, and is viewed as enhancing female sexual pleasure, specifically for oral sex, an act that lacks any negative connotations. Now, embedded in that narrative might be a deeper, more subtle bias against women, but by not appreciating and grappling with that dynamic you're ignoring and diminishing how many women in those cultures understand feminism, which is its own anti-feminine and culturally centric (i.e. "colonial") bias.
- luxuryballs 6mo ago[flagged]
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- wslh 6mo agoI remember that Matteo Realdo Colombo (1515-1559) [1] described the clitoris. There is a novel about the story [2] which was the finalist on one of the top Spanish literary prizes [3]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realdo_Colombo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realdo_Colombo [2] https://www.amazon.com/Anatomist-Federico-Andahazi/dp/0385491328 https://www.amazon.com/Anatomist-Federico-Andahazi/dp/038549... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premio_Planeta_de_Novela https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premio_Planeta_de_Novela
- moralestapia 6mo ago>Many of the contributions made in De Re Anatomica overlapped the discoveries of another anatomist, Gabriele Falloppio, most notably in that both Colombo and Falloppio claimed to have discovered the clitoris. Lol. Hard to take that statement serious.
- metalman 6mo ago[flagged]
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- echelon_musk 6mo agoThat 4chan pretends its Hacker News thread still lives in my head. I still remember "Show HN: Clitly, my app for finding the Clitoris".
- shepherdjerred 6mo agohttps://desuarchive.org/g/thread/48696148 https://desuarchive.org/g/thread/48696148
- echelon_musk 6mo agoThanks! It must have been the r/programming parody thread I was thinking of as I couldn't find the reference here.
- usui 5mo agoFYI you were not wrong, but it was on a different parody thread here https://desuarchive.org/g/thread/S38087806 https://desuarchive.org/g/thread/S38087806 "Show HN: Clitly - My API for locating the clitoris using Node.js [github.com]"
- glitchc 6mo agoThanks for sharing. Hilarious and somewhat accurate...
- flexagoon 6mo agohttps://archive.is/CEfWE https://archive.is/CEfWE https://periscope.corsfix.com/?https://www.theguardian.com/society/2026/mar/29/full-network-clitoral-nerves-mapped-out-first-time-women-pelvic-surgery https://periscope.corsfix.com/?https://www.theguardian.com/s...
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- DonsDiscountGas 6mo ago> her colleagues used high-energy X-rays to create 3D scans of two female pelvises that had been donated through a body donor organ programme. Would be really interesting to get a few dozen of these and map out the variability. Gotta start somewhere though