sprawl reading series

sprawl reading series, hosted by tracey rosenthal. readings and performances by diana arterian, jamora crawford, henry hoke, michael molitch-hou, and marlene nichols.

what is this strange privilege? four days free from work, school, car pooling. i get drunk off gin gimlets, smoke too many cigarettes shivering on the sidewalk watching the same two teenage girls wait for the bus, eat flamin hot cheetos, clean out their hairbrushes, clots of blonde hair floating in the gutter water. read all morning about anais nin and gershon legman’s three week fuck during which he also edited and sold her erotica to “the collector” in oklahoma. in private legman describes anais as very oral, but “one of those women...who sometimes have a marvelous experience when you’re making love to them...but the experience is not with you.” read also about the 1975 deep throat obscenity trials, the prosecutor insouciant, turning to face the jury: "a woman seeing this film may think it is perfectly healthy, perfectly normal, if you have a clitoral orgasm. that that is all a woman needs. she is wrong. she is wrong. and this film will strengthen her in her ignorance.” apparently bill mahr discovered the clitoris while watching deep throat. for doris lessing, it was balzac: "i learned of the clitoris from Balzac - not of its existence or its uses, but that it was part of the lexicon of love, with a status." in the evenings, i am mostly addicted to watching old political documentaries, or stoned on a rooftop lit by a single wind-chapped tiki torch with C who is in town (from atlanta) for two nights only. C. who is at all times concerned with not being concerned about anything. we talk little, sometimes kiss, eat delivery pizza. although i have not seen her in five years, if ever the conversation should venture beyond so nice to see you or that’s intense, she ends it abruptly. her willful, almost forced chill. no matter that i have so many things to ask her! back to back blunts. when, in a way, just sitting next to her is enough.

baby, i don't care

rita hayworth & robert mitchum, 1957

Feminaissance Blog Project

I asked five writers to respond to Les Figues title Feminaissance without placing any limitations on the content, length, or form. Throughout the week, read responses from Allison Carter, Evelyn Hampton, Claire Donato, Amy King, and Tisa Bryant. My introduction has some fun clit facts.

excerpts from Letters to Wendy's by Joe Wenderoth

August 28, 1996

Moving my bowels at home I feel a great recognition arising: good old me. Today I had to shit at Wendy’s. As I let it go, I felt zero recognition—the good old me was nowhere to be found. To my surprise, I felt somewhat relieved, even joyful, to sense anew the careful absence of where I’ve come from. To be alive is to shit into a strange place.


September 12, 1996

I seek respite from tolerance, in every sense. Stop giving me what I want! Say to me, “This has gone far enough!” Put me under arrest, take me to the other side of the register! Take me back into the manager’s tiny office and explain to me the gross error of my design! Mange me! To manage—what is that? To not let be.


September 18, 1996

I don’t think Wendy’s coffee has such a good taste. This is not to say I don’t like it. I like it very much. Its poor taste keeps my intentions clear; I drink coffee for the enthusiasm-prod, not for the taste. The taste, then, when it is too pleasant, can distract one from what matters most — the deep writhing jolt. Of course, some taste is necessary so that the jolt seems, at bottom, inadvertent.


September 20, 1996

Today I had a Biggie. Usually I just have a small, and refill. Why pay more? But today I needed a Biggie inside me. Some days, I guess, are like that. Only a Biggie will do. You wake up and you know: today I will get a Biggie and I will put it inside me and I will feel better. One time I saw a guy with three Biggies at once. One wonders not about him but about what it is that holds us back.

September 23, 1996

Gangbang weather for the first time in weeks. Makes me want to behave. Just go out and behave in the stinky sunlight. In my biography, they’ll say that I never behaved at all, and that the sunlight was no stinkier than usual. But that is the business of biography; biography is the dream of misbehavior that is able not only to endure the stinky sunlight, but to forget it. Its incalculable insistence.


September 24, 1996

I love to watch a dick slamming in and out of a cunt or an asshole. The only way t.v. could enhance Wendy’s is if it was confined to showing nonstop hardcore pornography without sound. No ridiculous assertion of plot or personality. Just the real pleasure of lacking language. Just a reassuring view of the signifier itself as it finds its way to its ancient hiding place in broad daylight.


September 25, 1996

A woman with twins today, aged five or six. Almost perfect replicas. They sit eating, starring off now and then into the mid-air realm. The not-eating realm. They stare out knowing that their mother is there. They stare out from the good of eating. I want to ask them: is that good already not good enough? And do you understand already that there is something more original than a mother?

notes: the hite report

rejecting the very idea of penetration as the sole definition of “real sex,” shere hite’s The Hite Report on Female Sexuality (1976) sought to understand how individuals regard sexual experience and the meaning it holds for them, using the clitoris as her critical lens. “its not specifically just orgasms we are talking about here,” she wrote, “we are talking about a complete redefinition, or un-definition, of what sex is.”

collected from long essay-style questionnaires, the hite report uses the personal stories of women themselves as the main text. its very success lies in this glut of personal accounts.to know that women are sexually frustrated is one thing, but to read page after page of “long foreplay makes me uncomfortable because i worry that i ’m putting my man through too much work, when i know that he could come so much sooner if he let himself" is quite another. in response to the question, how have most men had sex with you?:

“Most of them start kissing, petting, really getting off on the breasts—then the fingers in the vagina a bit, love talk, when we’re ready, cunnilingus and fellatio simultaneously, then I get on top, then he does. This is fairly standard with a lot of guys.”

“I hate the usual pattern—kiss—feel—eat—fuck, simply because it’s usual. I like people to talk to me and moan a lot. I like when people are expressive and creative with me.”

“Foreplay with constant pressure to have intercourse.”

all but 5% of heterosexual couples, hite discovered, followed the “reproductive” model: foreplay (touching, kissing, oral), followed by penetration, and intercourse (thrusting) followed by orgasm (especially male orgasm), usually defined as the “end” of sex. “this is a sexist definition of sex, oriented around male orgasm, and the needs of reproduction,” hite wrote. “this definition is cultural, not biological.”

hite also found that 70% of women did not orgasm from intercourse alone. although she stressed that orgasm was not the sole, or even necessarily, the main pleasure of sex, she asked her readers “why do women so habitually satisfy men’s needs during sex and ignore their own?”

for the majority of women clitoral stimulation is used for arousal purposes but not orgasm. a point hite returns to again and again: through the reproductive model of sex, male orgasm is given a standardized time and place that is prearranged and preagreed during which both people know what to expect and how to make it possible. this places women in the position of having to ask for “extra” stimulation, something “special."

while the 1960’s may well have been, as sex researcher bill masters quipped, “the decade of orgasmic preoccupation,” hite showed that this did not, and still does not, necessarily carry over into women’s actual sexual experiences. that is—an awareness of the mechanics, ease, and potency of female orgasm did not appear to have much effect on the way 70% of women fucked.

“if women couldn’t ask for clitoral stimulation to orgasm, or do it themselves, they were unlikely to get it from the man they were with," wrote hite. “is the answer to the oppression and neglect of female sexuality and especially orgasm that men should lean to give (better) clitoral stimulation? yes and no. of course men should learn these things, but even more important, we [women] should find the freedom to take control over whether or not we get this stimulation.”

“This is not the tired moralist claim that only a native can know the scene. The point I am trying to make is that in order to learn enough about Third World women and to develop a different readership, the immense heterogeneity of the field must be appreciated and the First World feminist must learn to stop feeling privileged as a woman.”

--Gayatri Spivak, French Feminism in an International Frame

bogart: notes

A PERCEIVED SENSE OF CONTROL IS DANGEROUS:

in the maltese falcon (1941), humphrey bogart plays sam spade, a private detective whose sense of knowingness is forever suspect. what unfolds is a brilliant, complex tale: three men and one woman on a ruthless search for a jeweled falcon, all seemingly unaware of the other’s connections to spade, all equally dangerous.

the film opens when a new client, ms. brigid o’shaughnessy (mary astor), tells her story to spade. Iit does not involve the falcon, but rather, her sister’s dangerous fiancé, thursby, who must be tracked. for spade’s services, she offers a large sum of cash. bogart nods, rolls a cigarette. ms. o’shaughnessy figures him her idiot—he believed! not until their next meeting does it become clear that not only did he not believe her, he understood the exact extent of her fibbing: “you paid us more than if you had been telling the truth and more than enough to make it alright.” when Spade mentions that his partner, archer, was killed while tailing thursby, she says something to the effect “how sad.” without pause bogart replies, “stop it. he knew what he was getting into. those are the chances we take.” spade already knows that a perceived sense of control is perhaps most dangerous of all.

although the film was made twice prior, neither version achieved critical or box office success. the 1941 john huston production excelled for two main reasons: the script’s adherence to dashiell hammett’s original text and humphrey bogart. bogart was not warner’s first pick; studio politics had already selected george raft. when raft refused, huston hired bogart. after viewing early footage, warner head hal wallis urged huston to re-shoot. the problem: bogart was playing spade with a “leisurely, suave form of delivery.” wallis’ advice: let bogart be bogart.

a similar situation had occurred during the casting of Bogart’s breakout role in The Petrified Forest (1936) as unhinged outlaw Duke Manatee. Primarily a character actor, Bogart often played the violent sidekick of stars like Edward G. Robinson, Paul Muni, and James Cagney. “The audience was trained to dislike him,” writes David Thompson, “...a guy you could not trust to trust.” Leslie Howard, the star of The Petrified Forrest, wanted Bogart specifically for the role of the volatile Manatee: “No Bogart, No deal?”

in 1941 bogart hardly resembled hammet’s description of spade: blonde hair, over six feet tall, widow’s peak, shifty as the devil incarnate. Instead, he was in his early forties, balding, face puffy with drink. unlike the uber-manly james bond of the future with his impeccable, phlegmatic cool, when bogart gets hurt, he really gets hurt. and, more importantly, he is aware that there is not always a way not to get hurt. in the maltese falcon, bogart, or the he pioneered, realizes that to be smart requires a degree of fallibility: you never know what the other person in the room is thinking, will do; to be triumphant often requires degradation.

my favorite moment: when spade says to joel cairo—a gun-toting, immaculately coifed, gunsel for the villainous Fat Man—“i’ll slap you and you’ll like it.” bogart smacks cairo (peter lorre) almost playfully then takes his gun, shuts him up. gun fights aside, the pair agrees that spade will find the falcon, no questions asked, for a steep fee. however, this will not be their last confrontation. in fact, it is through bogart’s dealings with the fat man, and his hired help, that the viewer understands the extent to which bogart outsmarts nearly everyone he encounters.

directly after his visit with cairo, bogart meets the fat man’s second, still green, lackey wilmer (elisha cook jr.) on his way to ms. o’shaughnessy’s apartment. assigned by the fat man to follow spade, it takes spade only a minute or two to lose him. after hoping inside a taxi, bogart instructs the driver to stop at a random apartment. once inside the building, bogart presses every number on the call box then waltzes out the back door only to watch from the street a befuddled wilmer toiling over the call box. spade equally outwits the master himself, the fat man (sydney greenstreet). during the pair’s first meeting, the fat man pours spade a drink, asks, “are you a closed-mouthed man?” “no, I like to talk,” says spade. the fat man raises his glass: “i distrust a closed mouth man...here’s to plain speaking and clear understanding.” despite his colloquialisms, the Fat Man rarely speaks clearly or directly, and the pleasantries dissolve when a raging bogart stands to his feet, smashes his glass, and delivers the Fat Man an ultimatum: if you are interested in my services, get me the money and details by 5:00 pm the following evening. here, as elsewhere, bogart’s upperhand relies on a plausible bluff: if the fat man believes spade knows the falcon’s whereabouts, he will not kill him or intimidate him too brutally. his sense of control, his “smartness” is only an appearance, an educated guess, a gamble. as soon as he shuts the door to the fat man’s apartment, he grins as he walks insouciant down the hall. the viewer is led to believe that his rage was merely an act, that spade played the fat man, and played him hard, which was his plan all along. But this is wrong. waiting for the elevator, bogart looks down at his hand, which is shaking violently, and when he smiles at his own hand, it is not a gesture of smug self-approval, but rather, a kind of stupefied disbelief that he actually pulled it off, nerves and all.

the maltese falcon is one of hollywood’s greatest films, not only because of the fantastic dialogue, lifted more or less directly from hammett’s original text, or its pared down, harshly lit, direct cinematography, but for the questions it raises: are knowledge and power the same thing? and if not, what is the nature of their relationship?

towards the end of the film, the fat man invites spade to his office and mixes him a drink. spade is aware that the drink is probably spiked. unwilling to blow his cover, the entire case, to avoid a single moment of degradation, bogart swallows the drink, falls to the floor. wilmer, still roiling from spade’s merciless taunts and evasions, kicks him not once but twice in the face. bogart knew this would happen. but to be sprawled on the floor, kicked in the face, to be drugged does not make him weak or stupid or any less triumphant: it happens to him—is out of his control, a natural occurrence if one is to venture into the wild. while it is logical to assume that the fat man will not kill or otherwise physically maim him while drugged, it is only an assumption, an educated guess, gamble taken under the false assurance of “facts” and “logic.”

if the fat man had murdered him, it would not have made spade any less suave or shrewd. knowledge is invaluable insofar as it can help lessen, if not always prevent, the brunt of the wild instant. spade’s greatest strength is his awareness, and acceptance of, personal fallibility. you can never know what someone will do to you. you never possess full control. bogart takes the kick in the face, but he does not forget it.

the misfortunes of virtue

here's a video of economist milton friedman, excerpted from a 1979 interview with phil donahue. if you were to condense the most basic political message of the sade's justine you’d get friedman: “and what does reward virtue?"

THESIS 2010 @ calarts

there is so much i miss in books on the first read. for instance, in lady chatterley’s lover, d.h. lawrence describes the clitoris as a bird’s beak waiting to attack: “....she got harder and harder to bring off, and she’d sort of tear at me down there, as if it was a beak tearing at me. By God, you think a woman’s soft down there, like a fig. But I tell you [they] have beaks between their legs, and they tear at you with it till you’re sick. Self! Self! all self! tearing and shouting!...And it came back on her like a raving necessity, she had to let herself go, tear tear tear as if she had no sensation in her except at the very top of her beak, the very outside top tip, that rubbed and tore. ”

big clits: notes

in his book making sex, historian thomas laqueur writes, “more words have been shed, i suspect, about the clitoris than about any other organ, or at least about any organ its size.” any organ its size. although it seems like an odd qualifier, laqueur is merely following the focus, since antiquity, on the size of the clitoris. whether emphasizing its smallness (i.e. insignificance) or largeness, the size of the clit is irrevocably linked to the way its read both culturally and textually. in the case of the “enlarged clitoris” this is especially apparent in the literature surrounding the writings of marquise de sade and modern research on the female spotted hyena.

in literature male genitals are often described in detail while female genitals are either eschewed entirely or presented in vague terms, almost never mentioning the clitoris. not so in the writings of marquise de sade. as angela carter argues in the sadeian woman (1974), he is a “moral pornographer” who “made space for woman.” Sade was very much aware of the clitoris as a site of pleasure. In 120 days of sodom (1789), the priest shows Dulcos how to pleasure herself: “what you behold down here…is called a cunt, and this is what you do in order to awaken very felicitous sensations in it. With one finger [...] rub this little protrubence you feel here. It, by the way, is called the clitoris.” in this text, as well as Juliette and Justine, there are countless scenes in which women show their partners how to stimulate their clitoris and vice versa. in Justine, Madame De Sainte-Ange instructs Dolmance: “frigging, my pet, giving oneself pleasure [...] examine my cunt...thus is named the temple of venus. this elevation you notice above it called the mound, which is garnished with hair [...] here above is a little tongue-shaped thing—that is the clitoris, and there lies all a woman’s power of sensation. it is the center of all of mine.”

throughout the majority of sade’s boring, monstrous orgies, the clit is present; however, it is not simply any clit, but following the focus on size, a big clit. In 120 days of sodom, the Four Whores are, in carter’s words “more virile than the libertines.” Madame Champville, for instance, is a tall, fifty-year old woman with a clit that “protrudes three inches when well warmed” and is a self-proclaimed “devotee of Sappho.” sade writes, “her mouth was lovely, still fresh, missing no teeth as yet, she was flat-chested but had a belly which was good…her mound was rather prominent.” Volmar, an inhabitant of the convent where Juliette is educated, is equipped with a three inch long clitoris that enables her to penetrate men and women both vaginally and anally. then, there is Durand, the most fantastic libertine of all. she is utterly luscious, with beautiful breasts, a huge clit, and an obstruction of the vagina and womb, which has prevented her from fucking in the standard heterosexual way her entire life. carter describes Durand as “[...] a virile non-productive mother, who chooses her own children, and seduces them, too. the dead goddess resurrects herself in the form of her antithesis, not as cherishing and nourishment but absence and hunger.” ultimately, Durand can “fuck even nature itself.”

refuting angela carter's feminist analysis—“the women fuck as much as they are fucked”—critic john phillips argues that the aggressive women in sade’s texts are not quite “woman-like,” but rather, “phallic” and “masculinized.” of juliette he writes, “though physically possessing all the usual sadean attributes of feminine beauty, her reproductive potential is underplayed. there is a single reference, for example, to her menstrual periods, and although, she does give birth to a daughter, we are given no details whatever of this event. moreover, she is completely bereft of motherly instincts...” its true sade's libertines glorify non-reproductive sex, often preferring, in phillips words, “the transsexual posterior infinitely preferable to the uniquely feminine vagina.” Juliette is furthermore not “female” because she likes to fuck fuck fuck, sometimes donning a dildo, penetrating both men and women with equal abandon. phillips continues, “in a more general sense, Juliette displays attitudes and characteristics more recognizably male than female: she is promiscuous, goal-oriented, and prioritizes reason over emotion.” more recognizably male. no doubt that Juliette, like all of sade’s women, are products of male fantasy, as manifested in sade, but in phillips interpretation, the symbolic Juliette is stripped of her possible wants and desires; such acts cannot be her fantasies for that might imply that some women enjoy the act of penetration, perhaps preferring it to being penetrated.

the attempt to masculinize women with big clits is not new. the term tribad was often used to refer to women with large clitorises though it could also mean women who actively seek sex with other women, or are mentally ill. large clitorises were perceived as posing a very specific threat: a woman who possesses the physical means by which to penetrate another person in unacceptable in a culture that conceives of the sexually active role as properly restricted to males.

In his two part treatise on gynecology, soranus (1st/2nd century), a physician from Ephesus, advocated the surgical removal (selective clitoridectomy) of a part of the woman’s clitoris if it is “overly large,” a behavior soranus associated with unrestrained sexual behavior. in on acute and chronic diseases, soranus introduces influential idea that tribades were incurable because their problem is rooted in the soul, not the body; he recommends clitoridectomies for women who “behave like men.” aetius of amida, a christian physician writing in greek in the early 6^th century, wrote about women with big clits, using philoumenos, a 2^nd century medical writer, as his source. He describes three main reasons for clitoridectomy: an “overly large” clitoris and to relieve clitoral adhesions as well as release fluid built up within a diseased or cancerous clitoris. like those before him, aetius asserts that an enlarged clitoris will inevitably lead to licentious behavior due to the constant rubbing of the clitoris against one’s undergarments which “stimulates the desire for intercourse.” sinistrari, a roman inquisitor of the early sixteenth century, claimed that women with elongated clitorises could and might rape men, or engage in “sodomy” with other women. in france at around the same time, anatomist claude duval saved a “man” from being burned to death at the stake after he was caught having sex with another woman, a serious crime. After examining the woman’s clitoris, duval rubbed it back and forth until it produced a white substance. Since the clitoris could ejaculate, it was decided that she possessed a penis, was a man, and therefore, no criminal behavior had occurred. In the popular pleasures of the marriage bed (1687) nicholas venette writes: “the lesbian Sappho would never have acquired so wicked a reputation if this part [the clitoris] had been smaller.” Until the late eighteenth century, when clitordectomies were discussed in the West, they were associated with the size of the clitoris. more specifically, an “overly large” or “extended” clitoris believed to be associated with “lasciviousness.” that is—a physical condition (“large clitoris”) associated with a culturally problematic sexual behavior.

consider the female spotted hyena, known for its “enlarged clitoris,” extending, during childbirth, up to seven inches from her body. The spotted hyenas live in clans and are a matriarchy. they have sex, urinate, and give birth through their clitoris. in order to attract a female hyena in heat, males adopt submissive behavior. hyena sex isn’t easy: it takes careful positioning for the male to point his penis up and backwards to enter the female’s clitoris; often males must practice for several months before getting it right. most of the medical literature, as well as websites like wikipedia, refer to their clitoris as a “pseudo-penis” with most dominant behavior described as “male-like.” such aggressive behavior is thought to result from an influx of androgen, an “androgen bath,” during the last phases of gestation. the hyena's transgressive nature, however, was known to pre-Islamic Arabic poets. in such texts, hyenas are routinely depicted as breaching a vast array of social woes: killing and feasting upon gracious hosts, menstruating out in the open, laughing all the while; when a pack of hyenas wander upon a dead warrior, they pleasure themselves with his still stiff cock. in the physiologus—written in egypt around 200-400 C.E., translated into greek and latin and widely available throughout the west—the hyena is portrayed as an “alternating male-female...unclean because it has two natures.”

at UCLA, a research team, BHP, led by dr. lawrence frank, has received ample funding to trace the role of androgens in the development of the spotted hyena’s “female phallus.” early in their studies, BHP concluded: “it has become clear that the spotted hyena’s genitals are a result of a prenatal exposure to androgens.” instead of viewing this “androgen bath” as an evolutionary beneficial aspect of the hyenas, BHP tends to interpret it as an evolutionary oops. however, a team of german researchers argue that the erectile clitoris was selected for and that it functions to restrain male control of reproduction: forced copulations are impossible because the spotted hyena has sex via penetration of the clitoris, which requires much patience and precision. females thus gain control over the mechanism of copulation and male mating success becomes dependant on the relationships they develop with females.

this counterargument however, has been largely ignored largely ignored or scoffed at by the medical community as well as popular consciousness. dr. frank refers to it as the “chastity belt theory.” in 1987 Psychology Today ran an article about BHP and the female spotted hyena, referring to the hyena’s clit as a “psuedo penis.” The name of the article was “Boys will be Boys, Girls will be...Female Spotted Hyena look and act like males.” Google search the hyena today and difficult it is to find articles that go beyond “the female spotted hyena has really weird genitals” (livewire, 2006). In actuality, clitoral variation proves the norm, not the aberration. African elephants, moles (except during mating season), and the new world monkey, all appear “superficially similar” to the opposite sex. In the gibbon monkey, the clitoris is longer than the penis. Rabbits also have a “large clitoris” with a length of about 3 cm as compared. a urogenital canal is present in the clitorises of the spotted hyena, many rodents, moles, and the elephant, and some primates. however, as researcher anna wilson has aptly noted, much like women themselves, “the hyena has moved from being the dangerous, unknowable other into a position of that which can be known, studied, and dissected but that is still other.”

les figues press 4th annual auction at LACE

Les Figues Press: 4th Annual Auction
Sunday OCTOBER 17, 2010 @ LACE (Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions)

Emcees: Anna Joy Springer and Matias Viegener
Performers: Tisa Bryant, Martin Glaz Serup, Vanessa Place & Killsonic Women's Chorus

Food by Saehee Cho of The Sprout and The Bean Catering

In a Boat Shed
Robert Creeley

I waited too long
I waited for you forever and ever

the changing unchanging restlessness
of the signs they didn't put up

or down; the boxes of oranges,
rat poisons, barns, a sled with no runners

snow, refreshments, pineapples
the odor of burnt wood, cigarettes

neither of us should smoke,
but do--

I waited for you.

notes: masters and johnson

after reading masters of sex, i am totally charmed by virgina johnson. for whatever reason, i always thought she was a stiff old doc like bill masters. but i was wrong. some notes:

--seated on a leather lounge chair, a woman, naked except for a pillowcase over her head, rubbed the outside of her vulva with a long, plexiglas penis. attached to a small camera with a plate glass optical eye, this “motor powered phallus” could produce high-quality color-motion photographs. sensors fixed to various parts of the woman’s body recorded her heart rate, electrical impulses of her brain, and nearly every other kind of measurement conceivable. nearby sat researchers william h. masters and virginia johnson along with their staff, all clad in white cotton lab coats. when the woman slipped the dildo inside her vagina and climaxed, she allowed researchers a sustained, precise look at her flushed, contracting vagina. over the next few years this basic experiment would be repeated with hundreds of women. the findings proved explosive: the female orgasm in absolute physiological detail.

--a celebrated obstetrician and fertility specialist with a tenured position at washington university, bill masters began his sex research in 1955. during the next twenty-one months, he interviewed 118 female and 28 male sex workers in st. louis and other cities, meticulously recording their sexual and medical histories. he soon began observing the prostitutes with their clients. he stared on, stunned. by 1956 masters had moved his studies into the controlled settings of a laboratory. however, the course of his research changed radically when a female participant asked him "what if I fake it?" masters blinked, said flatly, “i don’t know what you mean.” the woman tried explain: “that’s what I do for a living, i fake orgasms to hurry up and get the man to come...” bill remained dumbfounded, "i couldn't understand her. i'm not sure i ever did."

--within weeks masters hired virginia johnson, a twice divorced mother of two, to be his secretary. at the time, johnson had little insterest in medicine or a college degree. four months later, he promoted her to research assistant. although classically untrained, johnson's ability to gain the trust of a wide variety of male and female volunteers truly made the Human Sexual Response possible. as one female participant explained, "she made me feel that i was not only getting paid but helping my gender."

--less than a year into their partnership, masters made johnson a proposition: by engaging in sex with each other, they could extend their experiments into actual experience; rather than replying on photographic documentation, they could observe the so-called sex flush themselves, allowing them greater insight into the sexual response cycle. although a forced arrangement, according to the their biographer, masters saw it as consensual where as johnson interpreted it as a job requirement. “bill did it all—i didn’t want him,” she later remarked, “i had a job and i wanted it.”

--the overall effect of human sexual response was that it demanded that the clitoris be studied, described, written about. in fact, the study was so alarming precisely because it was so specific, so full of immutable details. although much of their ‘revelatory findings,’ such as the primacy of the clitoral orgasm, had been established by kinsey, masters and johnson were seen as proving these otherwise speculative assumption via "facts," i.e. hard science and technology.

--after observing over 600 men and women, Masters and Johnson devised their four-phase description of orgasm: (1) excitement, (2) plateau, (3) orgasm, and (4) resolution. they found that men responded in terms of basic physiological changes along the same lines as women; in both sexes, there was an increase in heart rate, blood pressure, muscle tension, and in the majority, a “sex flush.” by measuring nearly every aspect of the sexual response imaginable, they uncovered such phenomenon of “vaginal tenting” as well as the source of vaginal lubrication, which is plasma, not glandular secretions, seeping through the vaginal walls.

--echoing kinsey, masters and johnson found that due to the clitoris’s small size, little blood is needed for the clitoris to become erect, and after orgasm, blood quickly floods out, allowing many women to have multiple orgasms. they stressed the clit’s singular, unmatched qualities: “the clitoris is a unique organ in the total of human anatomy,” they wrote. “no such organ exists within the anatomic structure of the human male.”

--the first instance of the word clitoris in playboy in during the 1968 interview with masters and johnson whose research hugh hefner helped fund.