By Seven Graham
Images by Jennifer Dominguez.Styled by @soniayoungstyle
I don’t mean to boast, but I have a big clitoris. A really BIG CLITORIS.
Sure, everything is relative, and the ‘average’ visible part of the clit—the clitoral glans or glans clitoridis, to give it the respect of its proper name—is about the size of an English pea. Mine is less pea and more baby carrot. No, scrub that image: baby vegetables are cute and sweet, but they aren’t sexy! My XL clitoris is hot AF! And that’s not me being a big head (pun on my huge clit? Absolutely intended).
I’ve been finding out that when I get really honest and put it “out there,” my big clit’s biggest fans are cis straight men. As a general principle, it’s fair to say that as long as their penis is bigger, my clit can be any size. Which is good, as Moby Clit (or Baby Cobra as I sometimes call her) is still growing bigger. All clits do. Mine just much more noticeably so. Who knew that Big Clit has an enormous dick following? Um, Pornhub did! And all the people who try to catfish me for pics. But no signed pictures exist! This clit is still a bit shy. It’s a private view and strictly invite-only.
My clitoris is not at all hard to find. When I’m turned on, it’s visible to the naked eye. From space (just joking). If I really like you, it could poke your eye out. Some doctors think clitorises like mine are totally unacceptable and will “stop a girl ever finding a husband.” Well, I’ve got two ex-wives. So they might be right?
Salty readers, this is just between us: I haven’t always been this confident about my body, shouting from the rooftops, “I’ve got a clitty whopper,” or taking the stage at The Comedy Store in LA and proclaiming proudly, “It’s a huge clitoris, not a penis. Do you want to see?” Then unbuckling my belt and zipper until the audience look horrified (Americans are so easy to shock).
It used to be quite the opposite. Throughout my twenties, I had to be really drunk or high (ideally both) for a woman to put her hand “down there” (is it third base in your pants? For a Brit, the Queen’s English is a whole different ball game. We score. Get a result. And shagging is still a thing).
But last year was my—as Her Majesty The Queen would say—annus horribilis (not as fun as it sounds). A very close friend my age died suddenly and, aged 49, I was getting divorced (#2) and begrudgingly back on the dating apps. I was also realizing that the sex, dating, and relationships world had changed dramatically and I hadn’t (except for being older!). Excuse me, Internet, but when did ass-eating get put on the entrées? It used to be Special Order!
Although I was loving being a Brit in sunny LA, very grateful for a green card, and Living The Dream studying acting, improv-ing at The Groundlings, and performing stand-up comedy to bigger and bigger laughs—I was simultaneously sinking deeper and deeper into depression. Keith’s very sudden death was a huge wake-up call. Why was I retreating from daylight, struggling with making real LA friends, and spending so much time alone in a dark bedroom obsessively watching USA stand-up from Richard Pryor on, with rare breaks for my only two sex partners (a cordless Magic Wand and a teal Lelo INA Wave, the best $200 you will ever spend)?
After another “failed” marriage, having sex with real humans seemed almost impossible. Even a little kiss was now anathema. I had such a severe case of social and sexual anorexia (Google it!). This important concept unlocked the welded-shut door to my heart and desires. I could really relate to consciously starving myself of love to enjoy the familiar pain of loneliness; just as a food anorexic pushes away food.
Just thinking about trusting and being vulnerable in relationships again made me cry, “No, never again!” The portcullis was down. I went into the Dark Night of the Soul cocoon as Sarah and emerged as a new whole person called Seven; with they/their pronouns!
It says “female” on my birth certificate, and I was born with a vagina, but I always had gender dysphoria. Mentally, I felt more male as a child, but I didn’t want to be a man. Both the pink & blue cis sexes & binary genders felt alien to me. This finally made sense when, in 1994 aged 25, I discovered I was intersex. I also found out that the “cancerous ovaries” I’d had cut out of my abdomen as an 8-year-old child were actually healthy testes. The surgeon lied to me AND my parents.
Doctors believe intersex bodies are disorders of sexual development and that clits as big as mine need to be reduced in size through cosmetic surgery or even removed completely, so a baby girl can look “normal.” Not fucking joking. Sex after that? How can anything in life be normal after you cut off somebody’s clitoris? The possibility of a child choosing to be intersex and non-binary is not even on the list of options; and it takes educated, resilient parents to resist the doctors’ scalpels.
Despite being sober 17 years, spending over $50,000 on three rehabs, fellowship meetings regularly, eating healthy, cycling everywhere, therapy weekly, and even after doing a thousand affirmations of “I love myself, I accept myself,” the very opposite was still true: I didn’t really love or even truly accept myself. My childhood medical trauma was still affecting my relationships. I massively feared my sexuality, especially my suppressed desires for cis men. Together with the risk of rejection and/or violence and/or abandonment, past trauma, active PTSD, and sexuality/gender-based shame were running my life.
Already a respected addictions therapist in the UK, I intuited to get really out of my comfort zone and sign up for kundalini yoga teacher training. Instead of giving in to the overwhelming feelings of anger and sadness and listening to my frequent suicidal thoughts, through kundalini technology, tools, and practice, I made a new commitment to choose life and accept support from the yoga community.
Last July, after six months of intensive kundalini practice and training, I had finally connected with the real deep trauma of having my male side denied from early childhood, and being literally castrated and having my virility and future fertility stolen. After months of knowing something was going badly wrong and losing mobility, my Achilles’ heels were killing me, and I found the courage to go to the LA LGBT Center’s medical & mental health team.
Their support and love have been beyond amazing. Dr. Angi Magana ran tests and discovered my body was actually rejecting the estrogen hormone replacement I’d been on since I was 12 as alien, a long term HRT+ intersex biology reaction no-one had predicted. With Dr. A’s encouragement and support, I decided to have my first testosterone-shot (#tshot). It felt so right. Within hours, it was a revelation. I felt as if I’d been running on the wrong fuel my whole adult life. Now, I was fully alive again for the first time in 40+ years.
Living in West Hollywood, the gayest city on earth, the time on the clock for being a sexual being was approaching midnight. “Watch out, it’s 11:11pm,” called out the gay male City of Angels choir. I was knocking on the door of the Big 5-0, and there were still so many really basic bitch/butch sexual things I hadn’t experienced.
As my kundalini was rising through the chakras, and the t-shots titrated up, I felt really inspired to write a comprehensive FuckIt List and resolved to confront head-on (pun intended, again, we Brits love risqué wordplay) this crippling sexual shame about having a visibly “special and different” body.
Exactly three days after the first t-shot, I had a Jerry Maguire-
I felt really inspired to write a comprehensive FuckIt List and resolved to confront head-on (pun intended, again, we Brits love risqué wordplay) this crippling sexual shame about having a visibly “special and different” body
Seven Graham
The auditions for Panda’s mission to find a full spectrum and diversity of lovers have been cumming along ah-ahh-AWESOMELY. In the field, car, movie theater, and $20-million Malibu beach house, I’ve experienced everything from XXL BBC penises to the cutest little Girl Boners. All of the participants have proved beyond a reasonable doubt that a BIG clitoris is not a horrible turn-off and will definitely not stop me getting married! I will. I mean, I won’t…maybe I will. Third time lucky?
As my sexual self-confidence has grown through sexual healing and a regular sexercise program (Get Fit Thru Fuckin’), my body is getting hotter and harder, bigger and stronger! My self-love is truly blossoming like this year’s desert bloom after the longest drought. I am expanding Project Panda to be even more multi-layered: the primary aim is still to find my Magnificent 7 lovers across the gender and kink spectrum. Ironically, lesbians and trans men are my most elusive participants now as I work hard through my #FuckItList and seduce and/or get seduced all the way to the climax of amassing a solid hour of material for Netflix/HBO/Prime (🙏🏽) and educating Hollywood studios one dick/clit at a time.
After everything I have seen and experienced in my 50 years on Earth, I, Seven Graham, contend that the clitoris is the real C-word, not cunt, and living in this patriarchal culture—when it comes to our genitals—sexism begins on day one. Even earlier now. At the first sight of a (presumed) penis on an unborn fetus’ ultrasound, the pink and blue labels get attached and The Binary Gender Fairy story begins.
Intersex bodies are still being erased because we take an ax to this binary boxes bollox. We are Born This Way and God/dess made us so; in her/his/their image. Whilst my clitoris is absolutely astounding, it still hasn’t single-handedly toppled the patriarchy…yet, as we recovery people say! Until that happy day comes, I will keep loudly climaxing my scary comedy set with a rousing, full audience participation Clit Chant! That includes you at the back.
Join together now as one: “Clit-or-is! Clit-or-is! Clit-or-is!”
Seven Graham is Chief of Innovation at new production company GapToof Entertainment in Hollywood. They were the Executive Producer of River Gallo’s movie Ponyboi, co-directed by Sadé Clacken Joseph and the world’s first narrative intersex film. As well as doing stand-up, Seven is writing two films: Angels Are Intersex and Peace Girl (about “her” time at Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp). To support their work in LA and help GapToof build New Hollywood, a place where women, POC, queer, trans, intersex, and non-binary can be free and safe to tell their stories, please support 7’s Patreon.