Guest lecture by Dr. Eeva Sointu (York St John University)

The cultural clitoris – reflections on work in progress

8.11.2024, 13–15
University of Turku, Calonia, Caloniankuja 3, 20500 Turku
Room: Calonia 2

The primary purpose of the clitoris is pleasure; there is no further evolutionary significance to this extraordinary organ. While it may be tempting to consider contemporary clitoral knowledges as the pinnacle scientific progress, knowledges of the clitoris, and of its role in female sexual ‘delight’, have always existed. Today, a new age of clitoral knowledge is dawning. This knowledge entwines with social ideas about gender, bodies, intimacy, and sexual entitlement. As such, even though the clitoris is not a prerequisite for being a woman, it remains caught in ideas of appropriate femininity. As people with a clitoris are encouraged to develop the skills and confidence needed for successful clitoral explorations, good sex gets framed as an individual achievement resting on personal work done to discover and assert empowered sexual subjectivity. In a ‘sexual meritocracy’, through an emphasis on personal responsibility, good sex comes to be understood as an individual responsibility and achievement. In this talk, I want to talk about my book The Clitoris: A Cultural Study, that is currently in progress. The book charts understandings of the clitoris in the past, before turning to social and cultural ideas shaping representations of the clitoris and good sex today. Social ideas of pleasure, intimacy, responsibility, and entitlement suffuse ideas of good sex. While knowledge of the clitoris entwines with pleasure, lack of insight into the social in sex risks erasing advances made possible by growing anatomical insight. It is through examining the cultural clitoris that we gain a deeper understanding of the social in sexual anatomy. 

Dr. Eeva Sointu is a sociologist working at York St John University in the UK. Before landing at York St John, she worked at Smith College in the United States. Her PhD (in Sociology) is from Lancaster University. She originally hails from Rovaniemi. Her research interests feature study configurations of power, representation, legitimacy and meaning in the domains of gender and embodiment, health and wellbeing, and medicine and medical education. She is captivated by the manner in which gendered and sexual bodies are represented, and by the ways in which social and cultural ideas entwine with embodied experience.

The guest lecture is organized by IDA Intimacy in Data-Driven Culture -consortium (Strategic Research Council 2018–2025), the unit of Gender Studies and the Department of Sociology at University of Turku

 Queries: anu.koivunen (at) utu.fi, suvi.salmenniemi (at) utu.fi