Crickets, or the Whispers of the Clitoris

There is a track on my team’s music album on women’s anatomy and – the three words that are very taboo across the world – female genital mutilation (FGM) called, “Crickets”. Crickets is an interlude, a bridge between two different songs. It is a poem delivered through spoken word. Cricket sounds play in the background. We chose to call this track, Crickets because that is all one hears when one opens the subject of anything to do with women’s anatomy that does not address men’s anatomy (considered quintessentially unproblematic against any discussions of women’s anatomy) or insemination and reproduction (though birthing is largely taboo for reasons we will not explore here).

To give one example of the perceived insignificance of the clitoris, PsychINFO found that the psychological literature from 1887-2000 mentioned the clitoris X times, the vagina 5X times, and penis nearly 18X times (Ogletree and Ginsburg, 1999). Because the clitoris is widely neglected, it is invariably misunderstood, it whispers its truths, but is not heard. Although the clitoris arises from the same fetal genital ridge as the penis (around 12 weeks gestation, these structures differentiate) (Algier, 1999), Ogletree and Ginsburg found that social discourse widely treats the vagina as the female counterpart for the male penis.

Sigmund Freud played a role in what’s called the ‘critical clitoridectomy’ (critical clitoral removal) by suggesting that women depend on men for sexual pleasure through vaginal intercourse. Having internalized fem-disempowering discourse and lacking sexual knowledge about their bodies, college women were found in an Ogletree and Ginsburg (1999) study to be more likely than college men to falsely believe that the inner vagina is the most sexually sensitive part of the body. Many women don’t explore their bodies, so they don’t know what gives them the most pleasure and this happens in large part because there is so much shame around women’s anatomy. Addressing the practice of clitoridectomies in the United States in the 1800s to curb masturbation in young children, the authors note that clitoral cutting affects women’s sexual pleasure; however, societal silence regarding the role of the clitoris may act similarly as a symbolic clitoridectomy.

Algier (1999), in a deft volume, Woman: An Intimate Geography, deals with the matter of the clitoris’ social insignificance:

A woman doesn’t pee or ejaculate through her clitoris, of course. No urethra runs through it. She does nothing practical at all with her clitoris. The clitoris is simply a bundle of nerves: 8,000 nerve fibers [11,000 known today], to be precise. That is a higher concentration of nerve fibers than is found anywhere else on the body, including the fingertips, lips, and tongue, and it is twice the number in the penis. In a sense, then, a woman’s little brain is bigger than a man’s. All this, and to no greater end than to subserve a woman’s pleasure. In the clitoris alone we see a sexual organ so pure of purpose that it needn’t moonlight as a secretory or excretory device. For this reason, maybe it’s best that the clitoris normally is hidden within the vulva cleft: it is, in its way, a private joke, a divine secret, a Pandora’s box packed not with sorrow but with laughter (58). 

What are we to make of this state of affairs wherein women’s bodies and their anatomy are the subject of intense fascination, constantly under the social microscope, and yet one of the least understood topics in the world? Why is it that there is such well-established science around reproduction, but so much well-established silence around women’s sexuality? What do we make of the silence around women’s embodied experience and expression? Olgetree and Ginsburg (1999) write that the clitoris is shrouded in silence:

“Because the clitoris has no reproductive function [this claim has since been debunked], it can be easily neglected in a society that teaches women to be sexy but not sexual. Reclaiming the clitoris may help women actively discover their own sexual pleasure and be more independent in the sexual choices that they make” (925).

The Crickets track in the Budding Orchid Apartheid album (to be released in 2024) is really exploring and breaking through the noise of the non-noise and finding out why the clitoris is shrouded in silence. What is the silence of this neglect? On the one hand, silence can reflect power. People can be silent and invoke incredible power; silence that invokes power-as-resistance includes standing up to authority by refusing to speak when demanded. One classic example of silence as power is when a prisoner is being tortured for political secrets and refuses to reveal any information (Archetti, 2019). There is a resistance in the clitoris because it is small, the little engine that could (though its bulbs extend 9 centimeters below the pelvic surface [Gross, 20202]), and like the stalwart prisoner, it keeps its many secrets hidden under its cloak. It is the greatest nerve center of the human anatomy, the mechanism to increase the blood flow and secretions for greater sexual pleasure for both partners, and its stimulation lifts the pelvic floor to ease the flow of sperm to the ovum, but its powers are silenced because they are eclipsed by the more outwardly apparent powers of the popular penis.

Drawing on Archetti (2019), I would like to theorize the symbolic clitorectomy in our society by theorizing our silence around this indelibly amazing bundle of nerve fibers. Silence can be found in resistance; it can be the refusal to reveal secrets. It can be power. Silence can also be a lack of power. When something is undesirable, there is a lot of silence around that thing. If the penis is pre-eminent, all other anatomical features of human life are secondary in importance. Sometimes the clitoris is so undesirable to an individual and society that they create walls of silence around it. The word for clitoris in Somali, as I have mentioned before, kintir, is so taboo, it is a word that cannot be named. Unsurprisingly, that which cannot be named is also intolerable, it vulnerable to being effaced entirely. The FGM prevalence rate in Somalia is among the highest in the world at 98% and is conducted through the most severe of practices: infibulation. That which is silence or silent cannot make its experiences known and cannot influence the course of events or history. Whereas the penis has been the main character or the inspiration of the main character in a myriad of hero myths (e.g., Drukpa Kunley and Kokopelli), and the vagina has some hero myths (e.g., Hine-nui-te-po), the clitoris can make no such claim. Much of what is silent is invisible, or "invisibilized" and thus rendered so unimportant as to be unseen and unheard. Given its small stature, the clitoris often lives like a hermit under its hood. Silence is not getting one’s needs acknowledged. Based on women’s self-reported pleasure alone, the clitoris is a highly under-served part of the human anatomy. Stomachs require food. The heart and lungs require oxygen. Clitorises live for stimulation and are often left without it. 

Silence can be a form of non-existence or of existence only defined by others. Human beings have had some understanding of the clitoris for 2000 years, however it has only recently been anatomically mapped and shown to have a simple, yet highly unique shape (Gross, 2020).   The clitoris has often been defined by men and by what it is not and that is the penis. Archetti (2019) notes that that which is silence is silent in environmental, geospatial, communal, and personal ways. The ecosystem of the clitoris makes many people, especially women themselves want to run from words. In many parts of the world, it is not allowed to just be. In those places, there is no peace around the vulva, so there is no silence-is-power, but instead there is mostly silence as when one is robbed of power. The symbolic clitorectomy or the silence of the clitoris also has a geospatial dimension: where one resides will determine how deafening that quiet is and how heavily the hammer of being silenced or being forced into muteness is. So many societies are backtracking on FGM, so many are increasing prevalence rates rather than decreasing them. I would classify this matter as beyond a concern for girls’ human rights advocates, it is an existential crisis. The silence around the clitoris is driven by communities and individuals. It is self-initiated by many women to themselves and other initiated by many apparently well-meaning community members. While silence can also be derived from the clitoris in the form of the aftermath of orgasms, silence may also be derived from the exposure of the clitoris to the world, in the form of gaping awe or denigration.

Silence is something that one does and something that is done to someone. We can say that we became silent or that the teacher silenced us. Same with the clitoris, it can vibrate, create morphic resonance, and then go silent and it can be silenced through FGM. Silence is an experience, it is muteness, it is what cannot always be articulated. Can we really capture the clitoris’ importance to humanity? Silence is the gaps between hegemonic discourses. The silence of the clitoris is both in its refusal of hegemonic discourses noted above and in the muted pauses between hegemonic screaming and fear-mongering about it. In these moments, the silence of the clitoris is in its difficulty to express itself, its lost voice, its status as a stigma, in self-censorship, being discredited, falling short of what it ought to be (via-a-vis the so-understood penis ideal), its experience, the way it invokes fear and revulsion, its non-acceptance in the world, its being choked or constricted, in the psychological suffering of the bearer and the shock of the bearer at bearing that which creates revulsion, its being unable to be understood and accepted. The symbolic clitorectomy is in the absence of interactions, absence of messages about it, absence of speaking or uttering anything about it. When the clitoris resonates, silence happens when that resonance isn’t heard, when it is epistemically (cognitively) invalidated, something that is untellable, a form of bottomless disappointment, for example, in the bearer who cannot make the clitoris work for them. The silence of the clitoris is in the affect (emotions) of the effects (consequences) of the dynamics I have just described. 

According to Noelle-Newman (1993), if people believe that their opinion is part of a consensus, they tend to speak out publicly and privately. If they are convinced that they are part of a minority, they tend to be more cautious and even remain silent. This, in turn, weakens the minority position until it disappears or becomes taboo. Archetti (2019) argues that the spiral of silence is not just about the insufficient adoption and promotion of ideas, it is also a so-perceived defective and lacking embodied self holding such ideas. The spiral of silence around the clitoris-as-other is in the non-talking about it, the shame, the secrecy, the coding, the moralism that makes people even more cautious about the topic which weakens it over time rendering it taboo, defective, and an unnecessary part of the embodied self of woman.

Archetti (2019) notes that the body is

“a site of meaning construction. It is the physical bottom line of our personal narratives – the very limit of the kind of stories we can tell about ourselves.”

We make sense of the body’s function or malfunction through collective narratives.

“The body is…enmeshed in a web of meanings through which we read and understand it, which includes expectations about the way it should look and even how it should “correctly” function and perform" (Schilling, 2012; Archetti 2019).

We, as a society, need overcome this need to correct the form and function of the clitoris, we need to talk about it more, and let it whisper its heart song so that humanity may collectively evolve through the experience of it.

I am executive producing an entire music album on women’s anatomy called Budding Orchid Apartheid. Our team’s work is progressing well. We are hoping to deliver this special project to the world in late 2024. Thank you to everyone who has already donated to help us complete this work. 

Works Cited:

Algier, Natalie (1999). Woman: An Intimate Geography. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company.

Archetti, C. (2019). From inside the body to policy: Towards an embodied theory of silence. In International Communication Association Annual Convention, Washington,DC. Vol. 26 (May).

Glenn, Cheryl(2004). Unspoken: A rhetoric of silence. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.

Gross, Rachel(2020). The Clitoris, Uncovered. An Intimate History. Scientific American (March 4). Retrieved from: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-clitoris-uncovered-an-intimate-history/on 30 April, 2024.

Noelle-Neumann, Elisabeth (1993 [1984]). The spiral of silence: Public Opinion—Our social skin. 2nd ed. London: University of Chicago Press.

Ogletree, Shirley Matile and Harvey J. Ginsburg (2000). Kept Under the Hood: Neglect of the Clitoris in Common Vernacular. Sex Roles. Vol. 43. Issue 11/12: 917- 926.

Shilling, Chris (2012). The body and social theory. 3rd ed. London: Sage.