Parts of the Clit: the foreskin and glans

The clitoris you see on the outside is made up of two parts - the foreskin and the glans. The foreskin is the stretchy layer of skin that covers the glans. The glans is the small round piece of flesh found under the foreskin. The foreskin rolls comfortably back and forth over the glans, just like the foreskin and glans of a penis.

Figure 6. Parts of the clitoris (click to enlarge)

The foreskin of the clitoris is touch sensitive. This means it responds well to light touching and stroking. Just about all the skin on your body is touch sensitive. The clitoral foreskin responds to light touching by giving its owner warm feelings of sexual pleasure. Try it:

• Exercise 10: stroke her foreskin

  Place the very tip of your finger onto your partner's clitoral foreskin and lightly caress the surface. Don't press into the flesh, just gently brush the skin ever so lightly like a painter with a paintbrush.

The feelings of pleasure come from thousands of tiny nerve endings in the foreskin which respond to gentle, light stroking. If you are male, you can experience the same feeling for yourself by lightly stroking the foreskin of your penis, which is also touch sensitive.

The Clit Glans

The glans of the clitoris, on the other hand, is pressure sensitive. It responds well to deeper massaging, pressing and kneading. Beneath the surface, the pressure sensitive nerves get stimulated by a fingertip pressing gently into the flesh and rolling it around. How hard you press must depend on what she prefers - so ask her.

• Exercise 11: massage her glans

Place the tip of your finger onto her clit. This time press slightly deeper into the flesh and massage her glans as well. To begin with use small, gentle massaging motions. Feel her glans underneath, feel it slip around beneath her foreskin. Get a feel for the shape and size of her glans.

If your finger keeps slipping off her clitoris, or gets mixed up in her labia, try this: to find her clitoris again put your finger onto her pubic bone (the bone that juts immediately above the genitals) and slide it downwards until you find some flesh. The first thing you come to should be her clitoris. The labia are found further down.

See the Clit

It may help to actually take a look at her glans. If you gently pull her foreskin a few millimetres up towards her pubic bone (see diagram below), her glans will now be exposed and you can see its shape and size. Again this will be much easier if her legs are apart. The glans is the small, round piece of flesh that sticks out from underneath the foreskin.

Figure 7. Gently pull her foreskin back to see her exposed glans (click to enlarge)

Don't touch the bare clit

However, don't touch her exposed glans. The clitoris is naturally designed to be stimulated with foreskin covering the glans. Touching her exposed glans will actually cause more pain and discomfort than pleasure because the glans is not touch sensitive. This means it won't respond to light touching or rubbing.
Foreskins (of the clitoris and the penis) are touch sensitive; the glanses (of the clitoris and penis) are pressure sensitive. The foreskin protects the glans from uncomfortable direct friction. It also gives the glans pleasure by letting a finger or hand massage it.

To understand this discomfort you can do the same thing with your penis. Pull your foreskin right back and lightly rub your finger on the top of your glans (head of the penis). Make sure your glans is dry. Not nice is it? This is cos the glans of the penis, like the glans of the clitoris, is not touch sensitive. Rubbing the exposed dry glans lightly usually causes pain or irritation. The same goes for the clitoral glans. Pull her clitoral foreskin back to get a look at her glans but don't touch it.

Having said all of that, there are some times when the exposed glans can be touched and stroked - usually when its well lubricated. This depends on your partner's preference. She may enjoy having the tip of her exposed glans stroked lightly if it is nicely lubricated with saliva, with fluid from her vagina or some other lubrication. If you try this make sure to ask if she enjoys it.
The same applies to the penis: you can probably enjoy pulling back your foreskin and running your hand up and down on your exposed glans, but only if its well lubricated. In both cases the lubrication acts as a substitute for the foreskin, preventing direct friction to the glans but still allowing a deep massaging sensation.

The Full Clit

The clitoris you can see and touch is the tip of the iceberg. The full clitoris extends 3 or 4 inches inside the body. It consists of 4 'bulbs' hidden beneath the surface which wrap around the vagina, 2 either side. These bulbs fill with blood and become firm and erect during sex excitement, just like the penis. The clit erection helps the vagina and penis work better together during sex. The bulbs help guide the penis in and out. This is one of the reasons why foreplay is important before sex.
So, the clit is much larger than what you see on the outside; most of its body mass is on the inside. With the penis, the most pleasurable area for sexual contact is the glans (head) but the warm feelings of pleasure are felt thruout the entire penis, head and shaft. The same is true of the clit: when the clit glans is stimulated, pleasure is felt thruout the full clitoris, glans, shaft and bulbs, inside the body.
The similarities between the clit and the penis go on. In a human fetus up until about the 7th week after conception, the female and male genital structures are identical. They both look female with a tiny clitoris and labia. The female groundplan then grows into normal clitoris and labia in a female fetus but grows into a penis and scrotum in a male. Each part of the female genitalia has its equivalent in the male. They tend to have the same type of sensitivities: foreskins both touch sensitive, glans both pressure sensitive, the labia and the scrotal sac (embryonic equivalents) both touch sensitive, and so on. If you look at an adult scrotal sac there is a line running down its centre. This is from development in the womb where the tiny labia of the male fetus fuse together to form the scrotum. The adult female and male genitals differ in size and arrangement but come from the same initial groundplan.
Women and men may not be able to feel what the other is experiencing, but we can safely assume that the pleasures gained from the clitoris and the penis are very, very similar.

:: : a magic sex pleasure button for women
:: press here for pleasure::

>> go to part 6: Female Orgasm