The French Response The study sparked an international outcry. In the U.S., a Daily Beast op-ed proclaimed Yes, There Is a G-Spot, while French gynecologists attacking the accursed "Protestant, liberal, Anglo-Saxon" approach towards female sexuality. This last was reported in The Guardian along with other choice quotes from French experts meeting to rebut the study. Even choicer quotes appear in French publications like L'Express. (Key phrase: "polemics of the vagina.") Of course, the French think little more of American sexuality. Odile Buisson, the source of the "Protestant, liberal, Anglo-Saxon" quote, says "the last study done in the United States showed that about 65% [of women] knew how to find their G-spots. In France ... the number was at least 80%."
The British Counter-Attack "There are a handful of subjects," reports Lizzy Davies beginning her Guardian piece on the subject, "among them cricket, the weather and the art of downing pints through a funnel--on which the French deign to allow the English a degree of authority. Sex, however, is not one of them." Suzanne Moore in The Daily Mail is more pointed.
The French have called British research based on genetics and observation too absolute. Theirs, of course, is much more mysterious. We can't find our collective G-Spot also because of our Protestant pragmatism. We have the wrong attitude towards sex.
It's not the British who are being anti-female, argues Moore. It's the
French; all this talk of the G-spot reduces female
sexuality to "a button to press." Moore's suggestion:
Women of Britain, find your mythical G-spots, rise up and let's show the French what we are made of, even though we aren't quite sure. We could have a war. Or we could just lie back and think of England. And understand that the obstacles to female pleasure may involve more than location, location, location.
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Heather Horn
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