My great-grandmother didn’t even know she had a clitoris

We Still Have a Long Way to Go…

I’ll never forget the day we found out my great-grandmother – may her soul rest in peace – didn’t know there was a pleasure organ in her own body. Picture this: a living room filled with family members and her four-generations-strong women+ squad. Apparently, my great-grandmother hated men so much that she only birthed women+, and those women+ went on to have only women+. I’m the fourth generation, and I couldn’t be more proud to be her great-granddaughter.

To this day, I have no idea how we got onto the topic, but somehow we started talking about the female+ body and sexuality. Suddenly, my great-grandmother pointed between her legs and blurted out, “I didn’t even know I had a… uh… what’s that thing called again?”

The room fell silent, and I almost choked on my homemade apple pie. “You mean the clitoris, Grandma?” my mother asked.  “Yes! That thing!”

I couldn’t believe it. She survived a war, raised two children on her own in the ’50s, made it through a terrible marriage, and endured society’s judgment as a single mother and she might never had a fucking orgasm?! I don’t think I truly understood the meaning of pity until that moment.

Of course, being a woman+ in 1929 was a whole different reality. My great-grandmother had a tough life. Growing up during World War II doesn’t exactly lend itself to self-discovery between bomb shelters and food rations. After the war, she went to a Domestic School, where girls were mainly taught how to be good wives, but only the practical parts, of course, not the pleasurable ones. So, as expected, she married a traumatized war veteran, had her first child, and tried to keep the family up and running. I’m guessing orgasms were buried somewhere at the bottom of her to-do list, just beneath “recover from war trauma” and “figuring out how to pay the rent.”

And yet here we are, living in 2025. By now, you’d think everyone would know the clitoris exists, right? Helen O’Connell only mapped the full internal structure of the clitoris using MRI scans in 1998 (thank you, Helen). And even then, it took another 20 years before that knowledge made it into a few schoolbooks.

So many girls, myself included, still grow up being told the clitoris is some kind of mysterious little Where’s-Waldo button. When in reality, the clitoris is an organ that spans 7 to 12 centimeters. I often wonder why this wasn’t celebrated as a groundbreaking scientific discovery, let alone considered worthy of a diagram in every biology book.

Which brings me to my lovely colleague, born in 2002.  As an advocate for female+ sexual well-being, I proudly wear a silver necklace with a clitoris pendant. One day, I left it at work and asked if she’d found it. She had – but then she asked,  “What’s that thing hanging from it?” There I stood, once again full of disbelief – though thankfully without choking on a apple pie. “We still have a long way to go,” I hear my great-grandmother whisper. But I wasn’t about to let another woman+ grow up thinking she only had a hide-and-seek button between her legs. Not on my watch.

It’s become my duty to make women+ aware of their clitoris, so we can catch up on all the orgasms my great-grandmother missed out on in life.

Much love,

Bowi

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Bowi, also known as Bowi's Boudoir. NLP coach with a specialization in sexuality and self-awareness. In her coaching work, she uses Lingerie as a tool and tries to broaden the spectrum of feminity with LingerieTherapie: 'Im not here to tell you what to do or even how do it, but i do want to share my thoughts, lessons and journey in my own persuit of feminity.'

Book a session with Bowi at Lingerietherapie.nl