X Marks the G ... Maybe

WARSAW, Poland—For those assuming that James Cameron would get there first, it turns out that someone else may have been first intrepid explorer to establish the exact location of the elusive G-spot. Typical of all such scientific claims, however, the meaning of the "discovery" is being hotly debated, and doubted. According to the Los Angeles Times, Dr. Adam Ostrzenski, a semi-retired Florida gynecologist, traveled to Poland, where he " conducted a postmortem examination of an 83-year-old woman in Warsaw Medical University's Department of Forensic Medicine." Unlike the United States, which strictly regulates the research use of cadavers, Poland allows the dissection of human remains soon after death, when fine distinctions in tissue remain easy to see. "Inspecting the six distinct layers of tissue that make up a woman's vaginal wall... [the doctor] uncovered small, grape-like clusters of erectile tissue housed in a sac less than 1 centimeter across — 'a deep, deep structure' nestled between the vaginal wall's fifth layer, the endopelvic fascia, and its sixth, the dorsal perineal membrane." "I have finally found the G spot!" was not the doctor's cry as he surveyed the startling results of his 7-hour dissection, but he would have been forgiven if he had done so. If further examinations reinforce his discovery, the finding could help rewrite the textbooks on the female anatomy. Not bad for a Poland-trained Florida gyno. "No, there is not an 'it'," responded Rutgers University sexologist Beverly Whipple, who adding, "It is not one entity." Whipple is well-versed in the issue, having popularized the term "G-Spot" in her 1982 book, The G Spot and Other Recent Discoveries About Human Sexuality. The first published mention of the G-Spot, shorthand for Gräfenberg Spot, was made in a paper by Whipple published in 1981, and figured prominently in the 1985 Ginger Lynn movie, The Grafenberg Spot, from the Mitchell Brothers. As far as Ostrzenski's claims go, the Times reported, " Whipple and two of her colleagues have already drafted a critique of the study, which she hopes to publish in a future issue of the Journal of Sexual Medicine. In the critique, the three fault Ostrzenski for failing to show that the 'G spot' he discovered has nerve endings; that it is, as he claims, erectile tissue; or that it has any role to play in female sexual arousal." But Ostrzenski defends his initial conclusion by acknowledging, according to the Times, that he never "detailed exactly what type of tissue makes up the G spot or how it works its magic, in part because the Polish regulations that govern dissection of fresh cadavers prevented him from taking samples for histological testing, he said. And he said he makes no claim that the G spot he has found will be in the same place, nor that it will have the same powers, for every woman. "'Absolutely, there will be variation,' he said." The doctor also has his supporters. "Dr. Irwin Goldstein, editor of the Journal of Sexual Medicine, said he's not sure what the fuss is about," reported the Times. "Despite its name, the G spot 'certainly doesn't have a flag on it, like X-marks-the-spot,' he said. The fact that Ostrzenski may have found one of many potential organs of female pleasure does not diminish the discovery, he added." Don't tell that to any number of sex toy manufacturers, who spent untold amounts of money designing G spot stimulators that are marketed with the understanding that X does mark the spot. And don't try to tell Good Vibrations that a G spot does not exist. The company celebrates G Spot month every year as a way to "help dispel the mystery." In-house sexologist Dr. Carol Queen even offered her personal and professional experience to explain the anatomy, history and function of the G-spot. “While every woman probably has one," she has said, "surprisingly few women or their partners know where the G-spot is, let alone how best to stimulate it. Without an understanding of how it functions, the G-spot does indeed seem to be missing from many women's anatomy—but the problem is with our sex information, not our bodies, and if you have the right map it's much easier to find!" Not yet ready to help draw such a map, Ostrzenski heads back to Poland next month to conduct more post-mortems. "This time, he said, he hopes to gain permission to remove and conduct lab studies of tissues he finds in the vaginal wall." He added that he will not be bringing along James Cameron and his 3D cameras to document the next phase of his search for the G spot. Too bad, because it would have made an invaluable porn parody.