Inside Amy Schumer
This show makes me laugh, and here's the best part - Amy Schumer tends to bring it when it comes to realism and female sexuality. She brought it in her movie Trainwreck, in The Joe Rogan Podcast, and largely in the other episodes of this show I've SSL Reviewed so far. She has shown a strong willingness to give the clit the glory it deserves, speak some truths about lady sex experiences, rep for actual lady-gasms - all things largely absent in media and also incredibly important to Orgasm Equality. (She could use some schooling and humbling when it comes to speaking about race though - but that's pretty true of a lot of us).
There is plenty to SSL Review in this show. And for those that don't yet know, an SSL Review is a critique specifically of discussions or depictions of female orgasm, female masturbation, or the clit. I focus on that and really only that (unless I want to talk about something else). I'm looking mainly at realism and about how the depiction/discussion plays in the larger cultural conversation about female orgasm and women's sexuality.
Please, my friends, do enjoy more SSL Reviews for MOVIES and TV SHOWS.
The SSL Review
Season 2 Episode 1: A Car Accident
The end of almost all Inside Amy Schumer shows is her doing a piece of her stand-up to a small crowd. That's where we are for this first SSL Review.
She's telling the crowd that she's jealous of how dudes get to come. It seems fun...and not just because they get to spread their funfetti around. She pantomimes dude spreading their cum around like Oprah giving away free cars. No, it's because they're so ridiculously tired, satisfied, and disoriented after - like they were just in a car accident or something.
Then she ends with, "We're not like that. I need more recovery time after a sneeze than an orgasm."
My Comments
First off, I just want to mention that clearly her saying this is funnier than reading my description of her saying it. That's a given. Well... I guess I can think of one incident where hearing a detailed description of a thing was way better than the thing itself - and that was when Tosh.0 gave a 25 minute detailed explanation of the movie Human Centipede. I can only find abridged versions of this now, but if you find the full version, I recommend that over the actual movie.
Anyway, Amy's saying this. She's got gestures and an attitude, and it works for humor. I like the visual of calling dudes ejaculating 'spreading their funfetti.' It's good for a laugh. However, I think if you get to the kernel of this bit, it doesn't hold up for me as the kind of humor-through-hard-truth-telling that really excites me about some of Amy's lady-related sex comedy. She's basically coming at this from - 'dudes get all tired/satisfied after an orgasm and women don't.' To me that kernel doesn't feel necessarily true. I mean I feel like a good orgasm can make a lady just wanna flop down and lay there for a while, ya know.
Also...it's kind of a tired, not-that-perceptive premise for talking about differences between men and women during sex. I feel like I've heard it a lot. I remember a bit I saw some comic do a while ago...I feel like it was Chris Rock, but I'm not sure...about how men fall asleep after an orgasm and women get more activated and start bouncing off walls and shit. Louis C.K. also did a bit where he basically said that men go to sleep and women don't after sex because men actually came and women didn't. I mean he actually never used the word come, he instead speaks about it in terms of women not being 'fucked well' enough to satisfy them - which is of course problematic because 'fucking' a woman is not what she needs anyway. Vag-banging ain't gonna get her there. A lady actually needs clit stimulation to come, and C.K. completely misses that point. However, his basic premise that women don't get all drowsy and shit after sex like men do because they are actually not physically satiated (i.e. they didn't actually come) is not wrong. And, it seems to me a bit more in the humor-through-hard-truth-telling realm than Amy's kind of generic dudes-get-all-tired-satisfied-after-an-orgasm-and-women-don't-and-I'm-jealous thing.
All that to say, I feel like Amy's whole joke here was funny on the surface, and thus not unsuccessful, but also it was kinda stale in that it played on old stereotypes about female sexuality without criticizing or more deeply examining those. I mean, it seems to me that it's worth considering that if a woman isn't as tired-disoriented after her 'orgasm' as her male partner is, then maybe she didn't actually orgasm. Maybe she just faked it or had intercourse (a thing people still very wrongly use interchangeably with 'had an orgasm') and just didn't come. Like, maybe there's a stereotype of women not acting satiated after sex or "having an orgasm" because lots of times ladies literally are not satiated. They didn't come and their male partner did...maybe that's why they seem to act different after. I feel like Amy missed her opportunity to dig into that. And by not digging into that, in essence she reiterated the pretty incorrect idea that women's orgasms are somehow intrinsically different than men's, and completely ignored what I think would be a pretty humor-through-hard-truth-telling avenue of pointing out why that stereotype exists in the first place.
But that's just, like, my opinion, man. Humor is a tricky thing, and I'm being picky. Picky because I respect her comedic work generally on these topics, so really it's just a loving critique to a person who in general does a fab-ass job with this kind of shit. And that's what SSL Reviews are about anyway - being uber-critical...because someone has to be.
The Vulva Rating
So, there is nothing revolutionary or progressive about Amy's joke. In fact it kind of bolstered the idea that women and men are naturally, physically different when it comes to orgasms. At the same time, it's also just neutral. It plays off a tired old stereotype, yet doesn't really make it any worse with extra inaccuracies or anything. It just doesn't question and dissect the stereotype, which does inadvertently reiterate it, but also....what I'm asking is a lot to ask someone to do every time she speaks of lady sex stuff. She does it well most of the time, and I'm heavily appreciative.
So, I'm going to stick to a very neutral 3 out of 5 vulva rating for this episode.
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So, there is nothing revolutionary or progressive about Amy's joke. In fact it kind of bolstered the idea that women and men are naturally, physically different when it comes to orgasms. At the same time, it's also just neutral. It plays off a tired old stereotype, yet doesn't really make it any worse with extra inaccuracies or anything. It just doesn't question and dissect the stereotype, which does inadvertently reiterate it, but also....what I'm asking is a lot to ask someone to do every time she speaks of lady sex stuff. She does it well most of the time, and I'm heavily appreciative.
So, I'm going to stick to a very neutral 3 out of 5 vulva rating for this episode.
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