Anne Koedt: Feminist Sexuality, Female Orgasm, and the Fight Against Medical Myths

When you think about Anne Koedt, a radical feminist writer who exposed how medicine pathologized women’s bodies. Also known as the author of 'The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm', she didn’t just write an essay—she tore open the door to a hidden history of control. In 1970, her essay forced doctors, therapists, and even other feminists to face a simple truth: women weren’t broken because they couldn’t orgasm through intercourse. They were lied to.

Before Koedt, the medical world called female sexual dissatisfaction a disorder. Doctors used female hysteria, a fake diagnosis invented in the 1800s to explain women’s anger, fatigue, or desire. Also known as the catch-all excuse for women who didn’t conform, it justified everything from confinement to electric vibrators sold as medical devices. Koedt showed that these weren’t medical facts—they were tools of power. She linked the myth of the vaginal orgasm to the idea that women should be passive, quiet, and pleasing. That myth didn’t come from science. It came from men who needed women to stay in their place.

Her work didn’t stop at orgasm. She connected the dots between how women were treated in bed and how they were treated in the world. The same systems that said women couldn’t climax on their own also said they shouldn’t own property, speak in public, or refuse sex. When she wrote about sexual politics, the way power shapes who gets to define pleasure and pain. Also known as the hidden rules of gender and control, she wasn’t talking about theory—she was naming the real-life silence women lived with. Koedt didn’t just ask for better sex. She asked for freedom.

Today, her ideas echo in every article about the orgasm gap, every woman who says she needs clitoral stimulation to climax, and every protest against doctors who still blame women for their own discomfort. The steam-powered vibrators she wrote about? They’re now sold as pleasure tools. The myths she debunked? They still whisper in therapy rooms and dating apps. But now, more people know they’re myths—and they’re not alone in rejecting them.

Below, you’ll find articles that trace the same path Koedt walked: how medicine lied about masturbation, how Victorian doctors invented diseases to control women, how lesbian history was erased from archives, and why the female orgasm exists even though it’s not needed for reproduction. These aren’t just history lessons. They’re proof that Koedt’s fight didn’t end in the 1970s—it just got louder.