British attack on G-spot touches nerve

There are a handful of subjects — 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.

There are a handful of subjects — 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.

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Today, just three weeks after scientists at King’s College London declared that the elusive G-spot may be a myth, a group of gynaecologists gathered in Paris to launch a counter-attack on what they called a “totalitarian” approach to female sexuality.

Denouncing the study carried out last year by British researchers as fundamentally flawed, the French scientists insisted the fabled erogenous zone did exist in many women — around 60% according to Sylvain Mimoun, the organiser of the conference.

But, they said, it had fallen victim to an Anglo-Saxon tendency to reduce the mysteries of sexuality to absolutes. This attempt to set clear parameters on something variable and ambiguous, they said, was characteristic of British scientific attitudes to sex.

“The King’s College study ... shows a lack of respect for what women say,” said Pierre Foldès, a leading French surgeon. “The conclusions were completely erroneous because they were based solely on genetic observations and it is clear that in female sexuality there is a variability ... It cannot be reduced to a ‘yes’ or ‘no’, or an ‘on’ or an ‘off’.”