I’m a fifteen-year-old girl, and I have a pretty great relationship with my parents, but I’m nervous to tell them that I have an enlarged clit. I know this is a medical problem, but I’m seeking relationship advice with my parents. Should I trust them enough to ask them to see a Gyno? In the past, they’ve seemed reluctant to talk about it. The internet seems to think that it could be caused by an excess of testosterone. Is that why I seem so much more sexually inclined than the other girls my age? Is this weird? I’ve been making excuses not to have [safe, of course] sex with boys, not because I don’t want to, but rather because I’m scared they’ll think I’m a freak.
Concerned Like Intensely Terrified
I passed this question along to regular “Savage Love” guest expert and friend-of-Slog superstar Alice Dreger, a member of the Medical Humanities and Bioethics program at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine and a patient advocate for people born with “different-than-average sex anatomies.” Dreger responded at length to CLIT’s letter, fisking-style, and you can read Alice’s brilliant advice after the jump.
I’m a fifteen-year-old girl, and I have a pretty great relationship with my parents, but I’m nervous to tell them that I have an enlarged clit. I know this is a medical problem,
A big clit is NOT a medical problem unless you are going around accidentally poking somebody’s eye out with it. (And then it is that person’s medical problem, not yours, though I guess you might be liable.)
A big clit CAN indicate an underlying medical problem. In that sense, it can be a symptom of something that needs treatment, but don’t confuse the two. It can indicate that you have a hormonal imbalance which may need treatment for you to stay healthy.
but I’m seeking relationship advice with my parents. Should I trust them enough to ask them to see a Gyno? In the past, they’ve seemed reluctant to talk about it.
Your parents are probably dealing with their own issues of confusion, shame, and fear. The best thing to do would be to find a trusted adult (ideally someone who is a social worker, psychologist, or some other kind of counselor who works positively with families) who can sit with you and your parents and talk about all of this. The problem is, I know of only about three people, truly qualified to do this, in North America. I mean that’s how many people are qualified to understand the biology, the sexuality issues, and family dynamics in a way that is sex positive and loving.
Most docs don’t know diddly about sex variations like yours and they will fumble and freak out. That’s not going to help you. You want a doc who is sex positive, who treats you as a young adult, and who understands the difference between a big clit and a medical issue. Contact me and tell me where you’re located, and we’ll try to find you a good doc. Or, if you have a good family doc, use that person and have him or her contact me so I can put that person in touch with the experts so that you combine decent, humane care with biological expertise.
It’s most likely, by the way, that you’ll end up with a pediatric endocrinologist, so you might just start there. But again, you want someone who is decent to you and doesn’t confuse your big clit with a medical problem.
I’m afraid for you. Too many docs in this country will still treat you in a way that is backwards, against the evidence, and sex-negative. They’ll parade in a bunch of medical students and residents to look at the specimen. They’ll offer you surgery you don’t need, implying there’s something wrong with your genitals when there isn’t. They’ll worry your parents and make them feel unnecessarily guilty.
The internet seems to think that it could be caused by an excess of testosterone.
Excess of androgens, actually (testosterone is one kind of androgen).
Is that why I seem so much more sexually inclined than the other girls my age?
Could be, yes. Or maybe you’re just ahead of the curve.
Is this weird?
It’s statistically less common than the more boring kind of clit, but I would do what most women with big clits do: think of it as NORMAL FOR YOU. It is normal for you. A word of advice: A lot of girls find their genitals strange, even when they have the kind that looks more like the gyn’s wall diagram. I’m trying to avoid references to canned ham, here, while making the point to you that you’re not alone in feeling some anxiety about your genitals. The difference is that you have something that stands out, so to speak, and I don’t want to minimize that (rhetorically or surgically).
I’ve been making excuses not to have [safe, of course] sex with boys, not because I don’t want to, but rather because I’m scared they’ll think I’m a freak.
You need to understand your own situation before you have sex with boys, so that you can explain to them what’s up in a way that indicates some level of comfort and confidence. Practicing talking about it with a sex therapist playing the role of a boy would be good. And then try to find boys who are decent enough to get that variations in sex anatomy can be fun. (God knows a lot of teenage boys would be helped by a clit big enough to find easily.) Not all guys like giant boobs, not all like small boobs. Many guys are perfectly comfortable with variations on boob size. They can be educated about the fact that clit sizes vary.
And by the way, the only reason people DON’T commonly know that clit sizes vary is that most women who were born with big clits unfortunately had some surgeon who cut most of it off when they were babies. The docs feared exactly the situation you’re in—having to deal with the social awkwardness of a size that doesn’t meet typical expectations. Believe me, you are fortunate to still have yours—I’ll bet it works. The surgery often leaves people with diminished sexual sensation (you still have the urge, but you can’t get off), with scar tissue (try explaining THAT to a new lover), and with a permanent sense of shame. A study of adult women who had their clits reduced when they were adults found that they did not benefit in the ways they wanted; that is, the surgical reduction didn’t reduce their fears and concerns. It just left them with all the “side effects” of surgery.
Finally, beware fetishists. These are guys who are into your clit, but not into you. You want a guy who is into all of you.
How to find a sex therapist: http://www.aasect.org/
How to find a pediatric and adolescent gynecologist (much more likely to understand these variations than the average gynecologist): http://www.naspag.org/
Alice
I’m intersexed with a condition called Partial Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (PAIS) and am lucky enough to have survived childhood and adolescence with my large clit intact. For years, it was a source of a lot of angst and made me feel like a total freak to the extent that I was isolated and suicidal for a long time. I avoided all intimate relationships because I was so terrified of the reaction I would get if I was found to be different.
Since then I’ve finally gotten all the pertinent information about my condition and am even more fortuitous to have found support from amazing women with the same and similar conditions. I think knowing you are not alone in the world is absolutely the most important thing. Since finding that support and at last allowing myself to be intimate, I’m happy to report that no one has had a problem with my large clit and I love the extra sensation and the ability to do a few things in bed that not everyone else can do. My loving partner absolutely adores my clit and wishes she were intersexed too!
I hope this young woman finds some proper medical care and also the support she needs. It is hard being different sometimes, but it is also wonderful. Alice’s advice is awesome, and I really appreciate Dan’s sensitivity to the subject. I think she should be careful selecting the right doctor, but getting good medical information and a proper diagnosis is critical and can be quite empowering as well. I wish at 15 I had been brave enough to ask questions and get the information I needed, and I wish her the best of luck!
I just wanted to thank all the wonderful people here who have offered this girl support and advice. The peer support is especially the most valuable! Dan has amassed such a beautiful collection of good souls who help out others — it makes me really proud and happy to be part of his crew.
Sometimes the Internet causes people problems, but it is comments sections like this one that provide critical peer support and positive feedback that really remind me how the the Internet can be used for so much good.
Thanks, all of you who have helped this girl and who are helping other girls like her reading this.
Unless it’s bigger than his, you’re fine (hell, even if it is). Guys don’t know, and guys don’t care. There is no clit standard, anyone who tries to tell you that is a tool.
Also, I’m pretty sure having a large clit makes it a lot easier to orgasm, especially from penetration alone – anyone else have any thoughts on that?
@21: 20 at the latest? What, are girls’ vaginas ticking timebombs that will go off if you don’t swish cocks around in them? Your advice is positively Hippocratic.
Miss, have sex when you feel comfortable and confident. Whenever the hell that is. Meanwhile, though, do not skimp on the masturbation and figuring out what you like.
@55: From my observation, waiting too long can cause problems just like not waiting long enough. Friends who waited past 20, or 25, or 30 told me sex started to loom too large in their minds, and kept screwing up their relationships. My advice was not vagina-centric, I said that it goes for boys, too. And for boys who like boys, and girls who like girls. Don’t start too early, and don’t wait too long to fully get it on!
Hippocrates was half right: Sex is good for what ails you, no matter what equipment you’re packin’.
@56: I “waited” until 22 (although to be fair, had done almost everything else except sex), and I’ve been with that boyfriend for over three years now and living with him for one. We’re all right.
If someone *wants* to wait, sex won’t start to “loom too large” in their mind. It sounds more like your friends didn’t want to wait as long as they did, so it started bugging them. It wasn’t some kind of inherent condition of their age.
I guess my main problem here is you picking a number. I get what you mean — don’t wait for the sake of waiting, especially if you know you’re mostly ready (a lot of people are never totally “ready”), and *especially* if there’s someone you like, and don’t make sex so important that you keep putting it off in some misplaced fear of facing it or messing it up. But what if I just don’t get the opportunity? What if I don’t really meet someone I like or trust enough? What if I don’t meet someone that likes me enough? Hey, some of us don’t enjoy the luxury of getting to say no that often.
I think imposing some kind of age expiry like 20 just induces the same kind of anxiety as telling someone that they’re not having sex soon enough. How weird I still feel for knowing I lost my virginity at 22 when people here think 17 is old-fashioned.
@57: I’m being a little cheeky when I state those ages as absolutes. It’s like the half-your-age-plus-7 rule. We could open the window up to 22, even 25, even 30. As long as your not doing it because you don’t want to, not because you think you shouldn’t. Though I really don’t think kids under 17 should be doing it. There’s a firm line somewhere at the young end, at least.
Thank you Alice and Dan–great advice. Just wanted to add my $.02 and let this young woman know that she does not have to “make excuses” for her decision to not have sex. For ANY reason. At ANY age. It’s okay. Really.
Jesus – you just told her that there are only three people in north America who could possibly handle her situation! I bet she feels totally normal and accepting of her body and comfortable to discuss it with parents/doctors now!
I agree with all the naysayers! This advice might well be really great advice, if indeed this girl does have an extremely large clit. However, the advice doesn’t take into consideration that a lot of women out there who have perfectly ordinary sized clits that are slightly larger than the average pornstar clit feel that theirs is huge, when in fact it’s perfectly normal. The sort of perfectly normal that Alice could have reassured her about, and perhaps a quick trip to the GP or secual health clinic could have confirmed.
Implying that this girl needs to be very careful about which doctor she shows her clit to for fear they’ll hack it off might be cautious, but it’s also suggesting that she has got something really out of the ordinary. And although something out of the ordinary might not be anything to be ashamed of, for a 15 year old girl it’s really going to sound like something to worry about.
If she has no other symptoms of hormonal imbalance it’s most likely that she just has a kinda large clit. I think some gentle encouragement and reassurance would have been better than this alarmist response.
Also, her question was not just about her clit. She wanted to know how to broach this question with her parents *who she has a great relationship*. Them being a little reticent to talk to their tennage daughter about seeing a gyno does not imply that they’re crazy sex-phobic nutjobs who are desperate to mutilate their daughter!
I think she should find some non-porn images of a wide range of women’s genitalia to make sure she has a sense of what’s usual and what’s unusual (I think Betty Dodson draws vulvas somewhere..) And she should know that some women pump their clits to make them big on purpose, because it enhances sexual pleasure and they think big clits are great etc.
And if she’s still worried, she should call her local Planned Parenthood who would probably be able to arrange a check-up to make sure she’s ok/reassure her.
No?
Huh. Dreger’s a hack — a “professional academic troll”. Quoted from conclusion portion of this preceding link:
“Looking beyond her ridiculous personal vendetta against me, I do hope I can assist those questioning Dreger’s disease model of intersex, just as I question disease models of gender variance (James 2004). Discrediting bad ideas and bad scholars will lead to empowerment for those who should be speaking for themselves. She can’t hurt me, but she can hurt a lot of intersex people in the long term” [James 2007].
With winners like Dreger on your side, Dan, what’s the point in adding losers?
“And by the way, the only reason people DON’T commonly know that clit sizes vary is that most women who were born with big clits unfortunately had some surgeon who cut most of it off when they were babies.”
I don’t believe that at all without stats to back it up. This isn’t Uganda, this is the United States, in 2009– prove to me that doctors routinely do this to *female* newborns.
Also, the advice is good on its face, but really, there’s no reason to think that this girl’s parents wouldn’t understand her concerns. Unless you are dealing with truly abusive parents– and that is a rarity– she’s dealing simply with “I don’t want to have an awkward conversation with my parents” syndrome. Which isn’t life-threatening, nor genital-endangering.
The first advice to any child should never be “talk to a total stranger/medical professional/kook who has a fake degree in ‘human sexuality'”– it should be, “Have you tried to talk with your parents? Have you tried *again*?”
Because if there *is* a problem here, she’s going to need love and support from her family. If there isn’t a problem here, she’d still be much better off having an honest and open relationship with her parents.
http://www.isna.org/faq/concealment
You can also get this information in a first year psychology class.
@61 and @62 and @63
you make it seem so easy. Tell me, are you intersexed? Have you gone through any of our experiences that left us bleeding, scarred and numb?
I am intersexed. My parents are not malicious, but they’re also not the type to hop on the computer and do extensive google searches to tear down respected people in the intersex community, such as Alice Dreger. My parents on the other hand were hard workers and didn’t have the privilege of a college education. So no, they couldn’t just sit in a psych 100 class and “get this information.”
My parents, like most parents (EVEN IN 2009) were bullied into surgery and hormones for me because they wanted what was best for me.
Unfortunately though, good intentions aren’t always what’s needed for intersex children and young adults. Alice Dreger is legit. I am intersexed myself. Suffered at the hands of the medical industrial complex that blinds itself to sexual/genital variation in favor of a 2 sex/2 gender binary system.
CLIT, you are amazing and this thread will be a resource for many other young adults and children to come. Thanks for your bravery. Alice, thank you again for being a voice for our community. And as Alice said, please get in contact with her and she can put you in contact with someone like me. I’m 23 and live in Chicago and just graduated from University where if finished my thesis on Intersexuality.
http://stopmutilating.wordpress.com/
@7 That’s interesting… I was an obese preteen and teenager, and I have a very large clit. I’m sure it’s coincidental, but it’s interesting to think about. To CLIT, I love my big clit, and my boyfriend loves it too. Luckily for me, I never thought or even knew that mine wasn’t average size. I’ve always thought of it as mine and just right. Embrace it, and get to know it, very well and very often. It’ll be your best friend for the rest of your life.
I’d like to chime in that 15 is by no means too young to start seeing a gynecologist- you don’t have to be sexually active to want to take care of your reproductive health! If it’s too hard for you to bring up with your parents, that’s what Planned Parenthood is for, (no, not just free condoms and sliding-scale abortions.) They have excellent gynecologist and do sliding-scale annual exams, and even if there isn’t one near you, their website is a great resource. (http://www.plannedparenthood.org/) They even have a page specifically addressing teenager’s (extremely common) anxieties as to whether their equipment is ‘normal’ (http://www.plannedparenthood.org/teen-ta…)
…aaaand two typos prove it’s time for me to get off the internet and get some sleep.
CLIT doesn’t mention any other possible symptoms aside from feeling horny (not uncommon when you’re 15) and maybe having large junk (compared to what?). Shit, when I was 15 I was masturbating several times a day and my clit is so small that it’s hidden entirely. Clits must vary quite a bit in size. Nobody has ever commented that mine is nonexistent (visually speaking), so I doubt most boys will notice or care if you don’t look like a porn star.
If she has a medical disorder related to androgens, she’s going to have other symptoms similar to those of steroid use. She’s most likely perfectly healthy if nothing else is going on. If she’s growing a beard, she could bring that up with her parents instead of her genitals as a reason to see the gyn.
Really now, people- at 15, she’ll be lucky to find a guy that even knows what a clit IS. :)~
Lucky, lucky girl. And when she decides to have sex with her first lover (hopefully, a man or a woman, not just a person with big boy or big girl parts), that person will feel just as lucky. Big clits rock, and the few women who I’ve met whose clits were big enough to tongue-roll have been permanently embedded in my mind. CLIT, you’ve got nothing to be ashamed of in the least, and if someone in your future tells you that it’s “ugly” or “freakish”, make sure to tell them exactly where they can go.
“I would ask CLIT if her big one causes over-sensitivity or even pain if it presses up against clothing or while seated.”
Don’t wear tight panties or trousers. And don’t let anyone cut on your vulva (the whole external thing, including your clitoris). And just WHAT is “OVERsensitivity”?
Its like your another me, im in the same position as you and i am also 15…weird!
Ms Clit,
Speaking from Expierence….Most Men adore a Lady with Generous attributes down there. At Fifteen your mind is only focusing on size of your clit. Revisit this thought 10 years from now and you will probably laugh. You are blessed but please do a little fact finding yourself on the Web. There are a few well known Hormonal disorders that could be, I say COULD BE, brewing so my advice is to do your research and stay informed. You are blessed. Remember, information is power. Research Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome disorders.
I know of two ladys that had an early imbalance of hormones that had very large beautiful clitoris’s. They both had this disorder. Testosterone imbalance can quickly effect Clitoris size. Just go to any Porn site that has muscle women featured.(Steriods used) Be cool, enjoy your best friend, and do not do anything irrational. You will find a partner that will worship it in the near future.
“boring kind of clit,” really? You know, it is possible to reassure this girl that there is nothing wrong with her body without making other people feel crappy about theirs. That just causes more problems.
alice pleaz help me I have big clit too i cant speek english very well i live in iran i marrid(4years)
he dosent know ebout that things (size of clit in every body) but he undrestand it some daye i want to have sergury can i? is it be good?i want to have normal clit can i pragnent?
alice pleaz help me I have big clit too i cant speek english very well i live in iran i marrid(4years)
he dosent know ebout that things (size of clit in every body) but he undrestand it some daye i want to have sergury can i? is it be good?i want to have normal clit can i pragnent?