# Vulva's sensitivity to pain **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [February 12, 2005, 12:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vulvas-sensitivity-to-pain/289734 "2005-02-12T12:45:18Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 12\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![BrotherCadfael](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@BrotherCadfael](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrotherCadfael)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2005, 11:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vulvas-sensitivity-to-pain/289734/21 "2005-02-12T23:24:07Z")
> [@DaveP](#): > > The title says it all really, **does anyone know** how sensitive the vulva (labia, clitoris etc) is to pain? (Bolding added) This struck me as a rather clueless way to state this question. I figure that at least half of the Doper membership is virtually certain to know the answer to this one! ---
**Author:** ![Malacandra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Malacandra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malacandra)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2005, 11:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vulvas-sensitivity-to-pain/289734/22 "2005-02-12T23:43:27Z")
> [@Qadgop the Mercotan](#): > > If you’re ever given a choice between a crush injury to your gonads and a crush injury to your glans, and you **must** pick one, pick the crush injury to your gonads. > > Trust me on this. Of course I trust you. You’re a doctor. However, for anything less extreme than a crush injury (cause unstated) I know which acts up more. I can take and enjoy, and _not_ in a masochistic way, a good hard sustained squeeze on my JT which, applied to the family jewels, would probably render me unconscious or at least wishing I was. Incidentally, I plan on staying out of prison and so not being invited to actually choose between the two. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Go\_You\_Big\_Red\_Fire\_Engine](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/eada6e/32.png) [@Go\_You\_Big\_Red\_Fire\_Engine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Go_You_Big_Red_Fire_Engine)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2005, 11:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vulvas-sensitivity-to-pain/289734/23 "2005-02-12T23:48:46Z")
While I think he’s looking for some sort of study, regarding just _how_ sensitive it is, I will add my $0.02. Had my hood peirced, didn’t hurt much. Goalkeeper, got hit in the ovarian region a lot before I got protectors. The kind of I want to hurl, passing out kind of pain. ---
**Author:** ![chorpler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chorpler/32/2888_2.png) [@chorpler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chorpler)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2005, 11:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vulvas-sensitivity-to-pain/289734/24 "2005-02-12T23:59:59Z")
> [@Qadgop the Mercotan](#): > > If you’re ever given a choice between a crush injury to your gonads and a crush injury to your glans, and you **must** pick one, pick the crush injury to your gonads. > > Trust me on this. Could you expand on that a bit? Is the crush injury to the glans more painful, or more likely to result in permanent damage, or what? Somebody mentioned the ovaries being the analog to the testicles in the sensitivity-to-relatively-minor-bumpings-and-pressures department. I was with my wife when she was having a gynecological exam in preparation for her endometrial surgery, and the gynecologist was feeling her uterus by pushing it up from the inside (using some kind of vaginally-inserted implement) and then palpating them through her abdomen. She was extemely uncomfortable, of course, but she was tolerating it, until he started doing the palpation. Then she shrieked and tried to get away. He apologized and said that he had accidentally hit an ovary instead of her uterus, and said that the ovaries are just as sensitive to bumps and small pressures as the testicles are. Having received a few shots to the groin in my day, I sympathized with her. And she sure reacted like I did when I experienced testicular pain. ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2005, 12:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vulvas-sensitivity-to-pain/289734/25 "2005-02-13T00:20:55Z")
> [@Mathochist](#): > > _Any_ undue pressure on the testes themselves will send a guy hopping away if he’s even able to move. The exact female analogue would be the ovaries; would any woman care to tell me the last time she got kicked in those was? 1985 No, I’m not going to explain. Same damn pair of fools will try out the same position with the same result, and I don’t think it’s ethical to tell people how to hurt themselves or their dates. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2005, 12:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vulvas-sensitivity-to-pain/289734/26 "2005-02-13T00:30:40Z")
When I had my vascetomy operation, the supposedly self-dissolving stitches closing the incision front centre of my scrotum DIDN’t self-dissolve, but just stayed there while the skin sort of grew around them; they were very uncomfortable and the doc refused to do anything (actually, he said “come back in six months if they’re still not gone”). They were causing me considerable discomfort, so I removed them myself; this involved digging away a bit at the skin in order to get hold of the stitches with tweezers and cut them. I bled a little and it was painful, but no more painful than, say, digging a splinter out of my finger. A moderate rap or flick to the testicles, however, is incredibly painful; a kick or hard impact is incapacitating - ladies, the blokes aren’t lying about this one; the scrotum or any part of the penis is not the most sensitive of the dangly bits; it’s the nuts. ---
**Author:** ![Lockz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f4b2a3/32.png) [@Lockz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lockz)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2005, 12:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vulvas-sensitivity-to-pain/289734/27 "2005-02-13T00:42:28Z")
> [@Broomstick](#): > > 1985 > > No, I’m not going to explain. Same damn pair of fools will try out the same position with the same result, and I don’t think it’s ethical to tell people how to hurt themselves or their dates. Please explain. I’m sure there’s many people here who are not going to use this to hurt someone, but how to _avoid_ hurting someone! By the sounds of it you and your accomplice tried out a position, and found that it hurt a lot. I’m going to guess that there’s other people here who will get the same bright idea you did, except they might have read this and remembered that it’s not such a good idea after all. ---
**Author:** ![Chotii](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/71e660/32.png) [@Chotii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chotii)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2005, 12:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vulvas-sensitivity-to-pain/289734/28 "2005-02-13T00:58:43Z")
> [@aeropl](#): > > Okay, but the first time I saw that illustration I thought (as I am thinking now): why isn’t the genital area huge? That area seems even more sensitive than lips and fingers. At the risk of opening up a whole 'nother can of worms, possibly because the kinds of sensations that can be felt by the genitals are fairly specific, and (in the case of men) may have been surgically diminished at birth or later. I mean honestly, we don’t explore the world with our genitals. They are wired to experience certain specific sensations…but I’ve heard of blind people who had no hands, learning to read Braille with their tongues. I really doubt (ahem) a blind man with no hands could read Braille with the end of his penis. Sensitive, yes, but it’s just a different kid of sensitivity. ---
**Author:** ![astro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9dc877/32.png) [@astro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astro)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2005, 3:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vulvas-sensitivity-to-pain/289734/29 "2005-02-13T03:03:23Z")
> [@aeropl](#): > > Okay, but the first time I saw that illustration I thought (as I am thinking now): why isn’t the genital area huge? That area seems even more sensitive than lips and fingers. [From here with a similar discussion](http://jwz.livejournal.com/422384.html) > [@](#): > > The mapping represents amount of sensory cortex, which I think translates to resolution better than intensity. The penis/clit has lots of nerves, but I don’t think either one has very good spatial resolution. ---
**Author:** ![Kaitlyn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/73ab20/32.png) [@Kaitlyn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kaitlyn)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2005, 7:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vulvas-sensitivity-to-pain/289734/30 "2005-02-13T07:00:44Z")
> [@Qadgop the Mercotan](#): > > You’ve obviously never had a scrotal laceration or bite wound, or you would **not** dismiss scrotal pain so lightly. 😃 Child’s play my good man, compared to electrolysis. And I can testify from personal experience that the scrotal sac is indeed quite sensitive to pain even in the absense of testes. ---
**Author:** ![Vision\_of\_Love](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/5f8ce5/32.png) [@Vision\_of\_Love](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Vision_of_Love)\ **Post date:** [February 13, 2005, 7:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vulvas-sensitivity-to-pain/289734/31 "2005-02-13T07:22:19Z")
> [@whiterabbit](#): > > Once, when I was twelve or so, for some reason I was riding a friend’s brother’s bike. And then I slipped off the seat somehow, landing on the bar. > > OWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!! Happened to me too, 'cept I was maybe around 5 or so and it was on my grandpa’s (or was it my uncle’s?) bicycle. It was really painful. Much worse though, is the pain of breasts getting hit. My mom was hit on one of her breasts with a round doorknob when she was a young adult. I’ve hit myself there by accident before (though the impact was nowhere near as strong) and it was painful in a way that would make me shudder at the mere memory of it. I actually cannot imagine getting hit in the gonads to be any more painful than getting hit in the breasts. Have any fellow females here bumped into a doorknob or anything? Wasn’t it painful? ---
**Author:** ![Mathochist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c89c15/32.png) [@Mathochist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mathochist)\ **Post date:** [February 14, 2005, 1:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vulvas-sensitivity-to-pain/289734/32 "2005-02-14T01:16:36Z")
> [@Vision of Love](#): > > Much worse though, is the pain of breasts getting hit. This makes sense to me, especially as compared with injuries to the glans (penis/clitoris). Testes and breasts are (at least in part) gland tissue which needs to be preserved and it makes sense that your body would warn you strongly “don’t hurt that!” [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/vulvas-sensitivity-to-pain/289734.md?page=1)