5.31.2014

Random Hite Report #8



Hello! Today you get more RANDOM HITE REPORT! As you may or may not know, this is where I take one random page, and one page only, out of this super important book from the 70's, and transcribe it for you here on the blog. This book is women answering detailed questions about their sex and love lives, and it's incredibly interesting and insightful. Here ya go..



 The following is from the section "Feelings About Sex and Intercourse" in the chapter called "Sexual Slavery" This begins with some of the answers to the question "Do you like vaginal penetration/intercourse? Physically? Psychologically? Why?"


Pg. 425 The Hite Report Dell. 1976.
   "I love the intimacy of it because for those minutes the man is totally mine and I am loved, happy, fulfilled, high---and sometimes adored."
   "The greatest pleasure in sex is simply feeling very special and very close with someone. The greatest displeasure is anxiety about the relationship."
   "I like intercourse because it is a time when I get his undivided attention, and feel very loved and secure."
   "Intercourse shows my husband wants and loves me."
   "The greatest thing is the security I feel when I'm in bed with a man. I feel loved and wanted and powerful."
   "Yes, during intercourse I feel a sense of Euphoria-I am successful, competent, beautiful!"
   "I feel that when he's inside me, I really 'have' him as opposed to always wondering if he cares or what/who he's thinking about." 
Similarly, answers to "Is sex important to you? What does it mean to you, and what part does it play in your life?" contained references to the reassurance sex gives about the over-all emotional relationship. 
  "Our sex life together is important because it makes me feel secure and wanted, and proves he loves me."
 "Sex is to please him. What I like is the feeling of security I get when he hold me tight after. It makes me feel accepted and attractive."
   "Sex makes me feel I am a woman to my husband instead of a live in maid."
   "I get self-confidence because my husband desires me."
   "Sex is the biggest part in a relationship with a man. If he doesn't want me, I feel something must be wrong with our relationship."
   "It reassures me I'm desirable, gives me a deeper bond to a relationship."
   "My entire marriage revolves around making love to my husband. It makes me feel loved and wanted."
   "It keeps me close and affectionate with my husband, and gives me a feeling of security."
   "Maybe I like it because when I have sex the other...

5.25.2014

Blue is the Warmest Color - The SSL Review



So...Blue is the Warmest Color. Have you heard about this movie? It's a 3 hour long, kinda artsy foreign movie that follows a lesbian relationship, and it probably didn't play in a theater close to you or at least didn't play for more than a week, so you likely didn't get a chance to check it at a theater, but you might have caught it on Netflix or something. If you did catch it, then you also probably had heard about some of the controversy surrounding it.



Controversy/Background

1. There was a lot of talk about the long graphic sex scenes between the 2 main characters - was it necessary? was it too porny? was it lesbian enough? was it deep meaningful art?..etc...etc...

2. The director seems like he just might be a huge, raging asshole. Those two actresses playing the main characters later said in a Daily Beast Article that the director was horrible on set, that doing the sex scenes sucked a whole hell of lot more than it should have, and that they would never work for him again. The crew on that movie also had lots of bones to pick with the director over bad working conditions and pay.

So all that to give a little background because I think it's useful context for doing this SSL review; if you read the interview I linked above, you'd find that these two leading ladies were not lesbians and didn't feel they knew anything about how lesbians might have sex. They shot these sex scenes (and every scene, really) like a thousand times, forever and ever, with an asshole director, and they were not choreographed. Oh and also, they had prosthetic vulvas in these scenes.  So, just know going in that the intention about how and where orgasms are depicted are within this context.

Depictions of Female Sexual Release

Obviously, there were several depictions and discussions of female sexual release in this movie and thus it must, I say must, be SSL reviewed. So now let me just get into it. And by the way, I liked the movie. I thought there were elements that were really fantastic, and I would definitely recommend it to people who like a long slow artsy foreign movie - I mean, I know it's not for everyone, but if it's your cup of meat, you should watch.

Sex Scene 1 - Doin' a Dude!

Adele is the youngest of the 2 main characters, and at the beginning of the movie, she hasn't made her way to the lady train just yet, and is somewhat reluctantly experimenting a bit with the dude express. So we happen to see her first (and only in the course of her life during the movie) sexual intercourse with a guy. It's probably meant to show that sex with this guy didn't excite her the way we will see it does later with Emma, but I think her reaction to the intercourse was so very normal for how we see women react to sex in movies that I wasn't completely sure how to read it. I honestly cannot be sure of the director's intention. Here's the deets.

It cuts to the couple. He's naked, and she is too, except for the panties she's pulling off. She gets on top cowgirl style and puts it in -the dick, that is ;), and then moves up and down on it breathing hard and urgent. She falls forward onto him, and continues writhing. In this forward, woman on top position she could easily be grinding her clit on him, and it could almost seems like she's orgasming with the way she's breathing and getting intense, but I can't be sure.

She then gets on her back and they continue the ol' intercourse. At this point we see her face looking towards the camera and she seems a little more bored even though her breathing seems like she's getting close to orgasm sometimes. In the end, after he seemingly orgasms and the sex stops, it seems pretty clear that it wasn't like the best thing in the world from the disinterested look we see on her face. I, coming from the starting point I do, would see this as a non-orgasmic experience for this gal. However, my obsessed-with-female-orgasm-misinformation perspective is not the norm, and I think it could be just as easy for someone to conclude that she did orgasm in this situation, but that the connection and intensity with her partner simply was not there, and that is why she seems disconnected when it's over (cause she's a lesbian, right?).

I mean, the default in life and in cinema is to assume intercourse is orgasmic for women (even though it is well known that it's not at all orgasmic for over 70% of women). So, it wouldn't surprise me to know that the director and actors just assumed that orgasm might happen. Luckily, though, if the director meant for this sexual experience to be seen as one in which she orgasmsed, then at least it seemed like she could have rubbed her clit against his body to make that happen. (Cause you know, every 17 year old orgasms their first time, since ya know, it's obvious that they should be stimulating their clit along with it, right?)

Second Sex Scene - First Time with a Lady!

This is a long ass scene. It's these two women buck naked on a bed with candles behind them for about 6 or 7 minutes, I think. Although you don't see any straight up pink of the puss or any actual insertion, it is quite graphic, and I will say that it looks like these women want to eat each other alive. There is passion, and it's certainly meant to give the viewer some realism. However, it is crazy to me how dry this scene is. There's no wetness on their hands or their thighs - and the shit that is happening in this scene would have pussy juice all over the damn place. Now maybe that's just a little too graphic for a major motion picture, but there is not even a sweat gleam on these women. It is insanely dry, and there is so much moany, breathy vocalizations. It looks and feels so much like soft core porn that it's hard to look past that sometimes. The author of the original book from which the movie was adapted wrote a really thoughtful blog post on the movie adaption. She is actually a lesbian and did mention that what these sex scenes missed was, well, lesbians. Check it out HERE (she is French, so there is a pdf of the post in English at the top of her blog). Okay - on to the details. I'm just going to describe the times that I assumed orgasms were being depicted.

Orgasm 1
Adele comes while laying on her stomach. Her hands are up by her face and her back is arched so her butt's up in the air. Emma is above her, facing down with her mouth between Adele's legs. The angle and position could not possible place Emma's mouth on the clit, more like the vaginal hole/perineum area, but it does seem like Emma's arms are wrapped around Adele's hips in a way that could allow Emma's hands to be manipulating Adele's clit. So I think that's a fine depiction, but then Adele seems to come more and harder as Emma's hands come up and are slapping Adele's ass cheeks, so there is simply no clit stim, given that her hips are up (no grinding on the bed), no hands are on it, and Emma's mouth is closer to the butthole than the clit. So this O is a mixed bag.

Orgasm 2
Emma gets her orgasm also on her stomach, with her hands down under her body in her vulva area while Adele is on top finger banging her. Emma comes, which is totally sensible given that Emma is obviously able to diddle her own clit.

Orgasm 3
Later there is another Adele orgasm again while on her stomach with her butt in the air. Emma is finger banging her kinda from behind and over the top of her butt. There was clearly no manual clit stimulation or clit grinding against something. This was an orgasm via finger bang. I'd be totally fine if the depiction here was of an ejaculation via finger bang, but squirting did not seem to be part of this, and her vocalizations were pretty much telling us there was an orgasm happening. So, I think this one was pretty unrealistic.

Sex Scene 2

This time they are scissoring and clits are surely being stimulated when they come, so that is realistic. However, I have to point out that it kinda sounds like they are constantly orgasming - which is kind of annoying, unrealistic and porny. My biggest beef with this scene, though, is the volume of their encounter. They were at Emma's parents' house while her parents were home, and they were being way the fuck too loud for that situation. At least there was clit stim, though, and I do like to say scissoring.

Sex Scene 3

In the next sex scene, Adele's on her back and her orgasm seems to be ending as Emma comes up from below. I think it's safe to say Emma was eating her out hard core, so some tongue on clit action is certainly a realistic way for ladygasms to happen, so that's a good depiction. This time they're at Adele's parents house. Luckily there is clearly a concerted effort to be quiet, so I appreciated that. However, they also fall asleep on top of the covers buck naked and entangled. I mean really, are you gonna take the risk that maman comes in to do something early in the morning. Maybe French teenagers have locks on the door, but I never did, so that just seems risky as hell.

Orgasm Discussion

This is at a party for Emma's college graduation later in the movie. People are eating and talking at a table. The guy speaking is not a main character, just really some art friend of Emma's. We'll call him French Art Dude. *all these were taken from subtitles of a, let's say, early copy of the movie, and I don'r speak French

French Art Dude: ...between the sexes, a quality of pleasure so different that we attain different realities. Over and above orgasm.
Emma:  I'm curious. Why do you think that?
French Art Dude: Because...
Emma:  We make faces? (laughs)
French Art Lady 1:  We make more noise? (laughs)
French Art Dude: A big difference! Each time I slept with a woman I noticed something that's not...
French Art Lady 2:   She enters another world?
French Art Dude: That's it.
French Art Lady 1:  Orgasm is an outer body experience
French Art Dude: Our orgasm is limited.
Emma:  For you, female orgasm is mystical.
French Art Dude: I'm totally sure of it. In so far as I'm a man, everything I glimpse is frustrated by the limits of male sexuality. Even though I've done it with men and women, when I recall the story of Tiresias who was lucky to be a man, then a woman, then a man again....when he was asked who gets more pleasure, man or women, he answers categorically, women get nine times more pleasure than men. Ever since women have been shown in paintings, their ecstasy is shown more than men's whose is shown via women. We see women bathing, we see The Origin of the World. Men try desperately to depict it - meaning they saw it.
French Art Lady 1:  or imagined it or wished for it. It could be their fantasy, so it's based in...
French Art Dude: Look in their eyes. That gaze into another world. Art by women never tackles female pleasure..........(time passes and viewers, at least non French speaking ones, don't really hear what's said in between)...You see Emma, your paintings of Adele seem to illustrate this. I know I'll never experience that because I'll always be a man.

So, this is just me being me and speculating here, but I feel like French Art Dude's words are straight from the director's mind. I could be way off base, but I think the director seems obsessed with the overflowing sensuality of femaleness - which is totally gross to me. It makes me want to throw up in my mouth when people (men and women both do this) start talking about the mystery and inconceivable nature of female pleasure and sensuality. It might seem like it's some kind of compliment to the fairer sex, but all I can see is the reality of the female sexual experience being ignored for a much easier and surface gesture of putting ladies on pedestals.

Plus, there's that whole complete dichotomy in our culture between women being seen as somehow advanced sexual being and also clearly being seen as the gender with lower sexual drive. Plussss, I'm not one for mysticism and spiritual gobblity gook. It's way not my cup of tea. And why, French Art Dude, is it okay to base your argument about female pleasure on a fictional character from Greek mythology who was both fictionally male and fictionally female. It's just dumb, but it's not an uncommon type of argument to hear. Can we all just stop the bullshit and acknowledge women are not more complex in our innate sexuality than men? We're all a little complex, sure, but we all have junk that gets aroused, and we all can orgasm when you stroke our clit/penis right. It's not that big of a deal, except that the way our culture talks about, depicts, teaches, and experiences sex, sets up a situation where it's totally easy for a man to come and totally not easy for a woman to come. If we acknowledge that, then probably lady-sexuality won't be both so mysteriously awesome but so lesser at the same time...and we can stop using fictional Greek mythology character to try and describe it.

Anyway, I digress. I like that the scene has some ladies at the table being voices of reason, but like I said, my gut tells me that the director wants to get the dude's point across, and it's a little irritating to me.

SSL Review Conclusion

So, there is a lot here to SSL review. Yes there are times when, as is so common in movies, women orgasm while no clitoral stimulation is happening. (Imagine if most depictions of male orgasm happened without anything touching of the penis at all - that would be insane, right?). There are also times when the women tend towards moany-breathy-porn-style-perma-gasms. But there is also clear moments where the orgasms are happening due to realistic sexual actions - which is fairly rare in cinema. On the other hand, I thought the table conversation tended too much towards placing female orgasm into the realm of mysticism, which is terribly counter productive to achieving orgasm equality in our society. We must have a fact based understanding of female orgasm before we can ever really incorporate it into our media, education, and sex lives. Blue is the Warmest Color ends up being a mixed bag when it comes to how accurate and progressive its depictions and discussion of female sexual release are, so I'm going to give this movie 3 vulvas.

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5.21.2014

Science, Sex and the Ladies Got a Write-Up!



We got a write up! It's in Entertainment Magazine Online (which was an Arizona Newspaper that went online in the early days of the internet and has since branched out a bit). One of the writers, Madelyn Ritrosky attended a pre-screening of SSL and, well, wrote about it. It seems she's into sexual equality also and has a book and short film coming that also deal with that subject, so I'll be on the look-out for that.



There is also a Q&A with me at the end. The article is called "Science, Sex, and the Ladies, Oh My!" so go check it out!

Here's a quick preview below - oh, and did you like our official movie troupe headshot? We call it our AnC selfie.

We are so used to accepted, traditional notions and images of female and male sexuality – and the enmeshed power dynamics – that most people don’t question much of what they assume is innate biology and gender roles.  Yet when you look closely, socialization and the ideological environment loom large in our cultural “education.”   
As Trisha, Charlie, and Barnaby put it, there is an “orgasm disparity between women and men that is culturally created, harmful, and in no way inevitable.”  Both women and men are responsible, and both need to make changes for progress to be made.  
The filmmakers call the film’s format “a new form of non-fiction cinema, the visual essay.”  While it is thoroughly researched and even puts citations on-screen, like research paper footnotes, they present their case primarily through quirky vignettes and skits.  The filmmakers appear in some of them.  It truly is innovative.  It’s also entertaining.  
Check out the full article and Q&A HERE 

5.17.2014

Butler University Magazine and Me



One of my 2 friends from college (Sooory, it's just that I didn't live on campus, so it was hard to meet people - or at least that's what I tell myself.) texted me the other day with the following picture.



That's right, ya'll. Looks like I made it into Butler University Magazine! I had sent them a press kit before our cast preview screening, as I did with several media outlets around Indianapolis. However, they didn't respond at all (like every other place I sent it too except for 1 cool reporter at Nuvo), and it's been a couple months ago, so I hadn't thought about it. I guess they threw it into the "What are these graduates doing now" file and moved on with their lives. So I thought this was fun - and also probably the lamest of all possible pieces of media coverage one could have.

However, I thought I'd just mention ol' Butler University here because Science, Sex and the Ladies includes a strangely large amount of people who went to Butler but didn't meet there. That's why I actually sent the press kit to Butler University Magazine in the first place - because I thought this weird Butler grouping might interest them.

Here's the line-up. I have a Chemistry degree from there. Nathaniel Blume, our composer has a degree in music composition from Butler.Our choreographer, Heidi Keller Phillips, who also acted in the movie, was in the prestigious Butler Ballet program. (Unfortunately, the dance scene that was scored by Nathaniel, lyrics by us at AnC, and choreographed by Heidi didn't make the final cut. It was one of the first parts of the movie we created, and a part I most dearly loved. Sadly, in the end though, it didn't work with the feel of the rest of the movie. Plus we didn't have any experience with creating a musical number up to that point, and we made some mistakes in the shooting and planning that couldn't be overcome in a way we felt completely comfortable with. However, we loved the processes, our collaborators, and musical numbers in general, so there will be another musical number in an AnC movie. Mark my words.) Also, at least 5 of our actors graduated from the Butler performing arts college. Some of the actors definitely knew each other, but other than that, we all just ended up together, and we think it's real sweet.


5.14.2014

Inside Amy Schumer S2 Ep2: The SSL Review



Speaking of Amy Schumer (since I wrote about her in my last post too), she said something in one of her Inside Amy Schumer episodes that I liked. Technically, she didn't depict or discuss female sexual release or masturbation, so it's really not eligible for an SSL review. However, she did say clit...and she did connect it as something she likes getting attention to when it comes to the ol' nasty business, so I'm just gonna call it an SSL review anyway. I mean, anytime a woman or man is talking about sex and specifically mentions the clit as a good part of it, it's kind of like that person is insinuating ladygasms need clit action. So, long story short, that's not a common way people talk about it, and I think it was kinda an important Orgasm Equality moment, and that's why I'm SSL reviewing it.



As part of the show, Schumer will interview someone in a segment called "Amy Goes Deep." Usually it has to do with sex in some way (stripper, sex phone operator, etc,) but not always. The one I'm talking about was in the episode "I'm so Bad," and it was with Mandy, a sex columnist. Here's what was said.
Amy: How many of your suggestions have you actually used yourself?
Mandy: I wrote something about putting lipstick and like circling the parts that you want attention to, ya know.
Amy: Mine would just look like wax lips around my clit. 
Funny story, the word "clit" is actually bleeped out (I guess I can't be sure that's what she said, but it's pretty clear from the sound of it and her hand gestures that's what she said). I just heard on a Joe Rogan podcast with her that Comedy Central allows them to say "pussy" without bleeping it out, so why not clit, people, why not clit? Now that I think of it though, I watch these on Hulu, so maybe clit wasn't bleeped in the original airing, and they just bleep a lot more stuff on the internet. If you know about this, let me know.

Also, later in the interview she was flabbergasted to hear that this sex advice columnist doesn't like to get oral sex. I too was flabbergasted because getting ate the hell out is THE BEST, and if you aren't into it, I'm pretty sure I don't want to read your sex advice.

Okay, for bringing up the clit as the place you want to attention during sex, this episode gets 5 out of 5 vulvas. Ms. Schumer is on an SSL Review roll.

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5.09.2014

Amy Schumer on the Joe Rogan Experience Podcast: An SSL Review




Hello there. A fantastic friend introduced me to Inside Amy Schumer, and I pretty much liked it a whole lot. It's pretty funny shit, and it's got that feminist edge, ya'll. I'm sure you've heard all that before since I'm apparently the last feminist on earth to suck her labes on my blog. However, you probably haven't read an SSL review of her on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast (if you have that would be insanity, so let me know about that). Charlie listens to it every once in a while, and after hearing her, he told me I probably needed to give it a listen and an SSL review. He was on point cause there was some good shit in there that made me want to kiss Amy Schumer's asshole even more.



If you don't know Joe Rogan, you probably don't watch UFC or aren't at an age or temperament where you watched him on News Radio or hosting Fear Factor. I actually didn't realize he is also a working stand-up comic, so that was new to me. He's a dude, through and though, but I find him kind of endearing. His podcasts are almost 3 hours, and sometimes, maybe often, everyone in the studio is high, so they can be pretty fun. Anyway, Amy was on 4 different podcasts, but I've only listened to the first 2. Here's the SSL review so far.

Episode 188
The part I want to bring up about this one involves Amy trying to call bullshit on a pretty common thing people spout off about. It started because Amy was telling a story about a douche bag dude that was working a comedy club that she was headlining, and he was acting all alpha-it-should-be-me-headlining the whole week, and part of that included him being extraordinarily loud while banging this waitress in the room next to her (They were in a comedy condo- which I guess are these crappy places where comedians can stay cheap/free? when they come into town to do a show). So her meaning while telling the story got all confused for a minute and Joe started talking about how dudes are just plain driven by sex, and either he or his producer Brian also said something like, "you just don't know what it's like to have a dick." So people talk like this all the time, like guys are so insanely driven by sex in a way that women couldn't possibly understand. Like there's some, girls-not-allowed, dick-having club where people are in touch with their seed-spreading, neanderthal, getting-off-above-all self. It's bullshit for many reasons (mostly because we base this very common idea off how women relate to intercourse and male focused sexual media and neither have much to do with women getting off at all - even though everyone acts like it does, but I digress. Watch my movie to hear more.)

Anyway, at the very least it's annoying - as a woman who feels driven by these same getting off urges but also knows that the urges don't quite fit into the male shaped box our culture has carved out for them - to hear that. The annoying part about it is not an easy explanation or even an explanation that most women feel equip to articulate, but it is annoying. I feel like Amy had at least a spark of this annoyance cause she was like, "I don't know, I think I'm driven by sex." She said it a couple different ways, and then the subject kind of changed, but I like that she spoke up even a little.

So I know that wasn't strictly SSL review material. It didn't specifically discuss or depict female sexual release or masturbation. However, I think it related so closely to our cultural misunderstanding of orgasm that I'm going to let it slide. Plus, I hate when people insinuate that women are just naturally incapable of understanding the male sex drive. It's bullshit.

I'm
Episode 204 
So this was her second time on the show. This part is directly related to female orgasm, and Amy knocks this out of the park, comedy-wise and in like a feminist existential kind of way, man. It was way deep because it kinda summed up what I think about 95% of ladygasm advice and discussion that exists out there in the world. It was pretty badass.

I've just transcribed the conversation below. Be aware that a lot of the lines are a bit over each other, so maybe read it like that or something. Also, I might have mixed up Brian and Joe's lines because they are hard to tell apart for me in some cases. Oh, and I might have added a couple comments in there.

Joe: Did you know that a lot of women are admitting now - there was a study done on it - that a lot of women are achieving orgasm during strenuous exercise.
Amy: What?
Brian (producer): Yeah, very common.
A: That sounds great. What are they doing?
B: looking at me
J: I'll Google it here....study shows
A: I was so sick in the hospital I haven't like masturbated in like a week.
B: Really?
A: Yeah, I like forgot about it. That's how sick I was.
B: You haven't mutually masturbated with another guy like for real?
A: Yes, of course.

Fucking A, Amy. Admitting to masturbation and mutual masturbation, gets you like extra points on the SSL review vulvameter.

J: That's just stupid. Why not just fuck?
B: Yeah.

Not yeah. Mutual masturbation is THE BEST, and it's a much better way to get off for us ladies than a screwfest, so maybe take note Joe and Brian.

A: Well, I guess cause when you're together a long time you're trying to make things fun.
J: Women have orgasms at the gym study shows.Wow, yeah that's really true.
A: What are these women doing at the gym?...fucking their trainers.
J: Findings add qualitative and quantitative data to a field that has been largely unstudied. A field? Yes!
B: What really makes the vagina go pop pop pop? That's my field. I'm in the orgasm field. A field? Has women's orgasms been a field?
J: It's largely unstudied according to Debby. Oh Debby you silly bitch.
A: Oh Debby, always thinking about her clit, Clit deb.
B: Debby probably loves pussy.
J: Oh deb Debby probably has a fleshlight and she licks it sittin' in the office like woa woa... pussy is so awesome. This is my field. I'm doing research in my field.
A: Debby's in the field you guys. She can't talk.
J: Thank you for your work...Co-director of the Center for Sexual Health at Indiana University. For instance Alfred Kinsey and his colleagues first reported the phenomenon in 1953 saying that 5% of women they interviewed mentioned orgasm linked to physical exercise. Wow, that's fucking awesome for those 5 chicks.
A: What is this Brian?
J: The report of so-called coregasms named because of their seeming link to exercises for core abdominal muscles have circulated in the media for years according to researchers. So, apparently it's working your core. So getting on the knees and tightening up the pussy shit's real.
B: Yeah
J: So what you want to do is get on your knees,
A: Okay
J: and then I want you to rock your ass back to your heels,
A: Okay
J: and pull yourself up with your abs while you're squeezing your pussy.
A: okay, why don't I just rub my clit. What?...Like why all the...why all the work?

Indeed, Amy, indeed. Why the fuck are we always being told about these great ladygasms that you have to get to from exercise or weird positions called things like Nancy's Twilight Reign or some shit like that? Why do we have to do things like slowly slide the puss down the cock then kinda corkscrew our body as we move up then let the dick pop out and slightly glide against the clit then go back down or some stupid complicated dumbass thing like that? Dudes get to just find a way to get their dick encompassed and rubbed. Simple. Can we not just get to a point where ladies can just find a way to get their clits rubbed. It's honestly, truly, for realz, that simple, and the fact that all this stupid complicated advice fills our culture, means we clearly don't know that yet.

5 out of 5 vulvas for you Ms. Schumer.
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5.06.2014

How to Tell Him You're Faking Orgasms...Or Things That Are More Complicated Than We Let On



I was Googling around about orgasm faking, and found How To Tell Him You've Been Faking It on the Cosmopolitan website.  

So this is an old article from Cosmo. It talks about November 4th being Cosmo's International Don't Fake It Day. I think this post was from 2013, but I'm not sure. Anyway, point is - I am not writing this on Cosmo's International Don't Fake It Day, I'm actually writing it on Cinco de Mayo - so Happy Cinco De Mayo!

Back to not faking it. I can get behind a not faking it day. Part of an Orgasm Equality Movement would be for women to "come out of the closet" about our orgasmic/non-orgasmic experiences - for women to be honest to ourselves, our partners, and in the media. 

I actually think the article is fine. It starts talking about an Indiana University Kinsey Institute study where 89% of the men said their lady had an orgasm last time they had sex, but only 64% of the women said they did. The conclusion was that there is a definite gap between what is actually happening with the ladygasms and what men think is happening. I don't know much about the actual study, but I think it's pretty much established that women do, in fact, say or insinuate they orgasm sometimes when we don't, so I'm cool with that conclusion. 

The sexpert for the article is IU's own Debby Herbenick. She's there to advice how to come clean without hurting his feelings, and she has some good advice. Emphasize your role in it so as not to be so blame-y blamey. Reassure him that it wasn't all bad and that you've enjoyed stuff without orgasms also. Be specific about what you want to get you there, and my favorite piece of advice - talk about using a vibrator during sex (vibe that clit, ya'll!). It's good advice, and even though there is a kernel in me that feels like, "fuck a dude's feelings. He's not the one who's been having sex with no orgasms for months/years/decades." I also know that we often love these dudes, and they love us. They (if they're not assholes) want the best for us,and it probably hurts them to know that something so lovely for them has been such a source of stress for us. It's hard to find out your partner has not been completely honest. More than that though, they have probably just been doing the best they can with the information they've been able to get, just like we ladies have been doing, and it's just terrible information. These dudes aren't to blame, we ladies aren't to blame, but at the same time we're all to blame, and we all have to get our shit together to solve it. So, it's delicate and complicated, and the advice here is fine.

However, I just want to point out how complicated and tricky this whole faking situation is for women. It's not like we just outright one day declare to ourselves that we're going to fake it, and then boldly and brashly do so. It's not usually like that. It just happens - maybe because we didn't know what to do that first time when we expected one and there was clearly no way it was gonna happen. Maybe it was because we just made sounds we thought we should make, and they got misconstrued. Maybe we had no idea what an orgasm was until we masturbated on our own 3 years later. Maybe we kinda thought we were orgasming - like a different kind of intercourse orgasm thing. Who knows, but it's just plain not simple. We can fool ourselves. We may come clean, but we also may have no idea what to tell them to do to make us actually orgasm. We may be really confused because what we need doesn't look like anything we've seen in porn or romance novels. There is more self-doubt, and ignorance, and confusion that we'd like to admit. 

Herbenick approached this when she pointed out from her research 
that women are much more likely than men to indicate that they’re “not sure” if they had an orgasm during their most recent sexual experience. Men almost always know because there’s physical evidence, but women (especially younger women) routinely express confusion and ambiguity."
She goes on to say 
If this sounds like you, Herbenick recommends telling your guy: “I was reading in Cosmo that women don’t always know when they have orgasms, and it got me thinking. What we do feels incredible, but I think that if we try something a little different, I might be able to experience something more intense. I’d love to try that with you.” This way he won’t think that everything he’s been doing is wrong... and he might be intrigued by the potential to bring you even greater pleasure. 

Again, not bad advice, but I think we could look deeper into this issue. Why are women so much more confused about whether they have had an orgasm or not? Is it really just that there's not ejaculate that visibly signifies it? I mean, I'd venture to say that the feeling of an orgasm  may not always be what you'd call mind-blowing, but it's not like it's always super hard to tell that it occurred. Maybe, just maybe, this confusion Hebernick is seeing in her research also comes from the disjuncture between our culture/media/sexed/etc. convincing us (and our partners) throughout our whole lives that intercourse should make us orgasm and our actual experience where we don't have an orgasm when we have intercourse in real life. 

 It is confusing when you think something should happen but it doesn't. It's like that test when people are asked to taste a fruit flavoring and the expected color doesn't match the taste. People get confused and actually convince themselves that they are tasting the wrong flavor

Anyway, I'm all about coming clean with faking, but there is a bigger conversation here. This shouldn't be discussed as a simple personal choice/personal problem issue. This is a systemic, complicated problem, and we need to start digging deeper or nothing is going to change. 

5.02.2014

Live With Siri on Vivid Radio - Awesome 1st Time Story



Clearly I'm using my free XM radio subscription to listen to Vivid Radio too much. I can't stop, but I'll get into that in another blog. For now, I'd just like to tell you about a story that Siri, who is one of the porn star hosts from this channel, told at the beginning of her show I heard on 4/30/14.



But actually, I want to make it clear that I'm pretty sure it was from "Live with Siri," but I'm not positive. I've tried to search around to confirm that this was from her and not another show, but I couldn't find anything to confirm or deny this - mostly because I am Twitter illiterate, I think. Anyway, if it's not, and you know this, let me know. I would be happy to correct this. I do know that it was a porn star on that station. *update: I've confirmed it was in fact Siri, from the woman herself - thanks!*

So, she was asking people to tell her about first times, and then she told the story of her first time since it was a pretty funny one, or at least really interesting one. So, apparently she finally decided to have intercourse with her boyfriend. They do it, and the actual deed only lasted a couple minutes, and then it was done. Pretty normal first time experience, I think, but here's the interesting part. She says she didn't have an orgasm (also completely normal), and her reaction to that was, "Well, I guess I'm a lesbian." She then goes on to have girlfriends and so forth for the next few years.

I will confess that I didn't hear any more of this show. I had to get out of the car, so I don't know if there are other details she later told that are important, but I'm just going to write from what I heard. So, maybe she later blames this on his quickness, or maybe (I hope this is the case..:).) she later learned she needs to work the clit. I don't know the rest of the story, but I do know that vaginal canal stimulation does not an orgasm make, and that not orgasming during intercourse is, at the very, very best (as ladygasm is concerned) not orgasmic at all for the vast majority of women.

So, anyway, I love her story. I think this is such a great example of the strange disconnect between what we women expect from sex and what we actually experience. She goes on to say that she had had tons of hot orgasmic sex in her mind up till that point. What actually happened was not what she was expecting. I'm with her, and I think many other women are too.  I mean it should be orgasmic, but it's just not. It could be if we add some accouterments, like a vibrator, or some manual clit diddlin', or some focused grinding of the clit on the dude, but how are we supposed to know things like that? Our culture never tells us that. Instead it lies to us with its movies and TV shows and songs and porn and sex ed and churchy ideas of marital love that when we are ready and have sex with someone, it will be AMAZING (i.e. orgasmic). We have to find the truth out in the form of a terrible surprise after we get layed the first time.

This whole situation is a lot for a young woman to process, and I've always thought that we ladies process and deal with this confusing sexual fate in wildly different ways. Some of us just go along and don't give it much thought, some are disappointed but looking forward to find a solution, some are just so in love/excited/horny/hard-headed/gullible/ or whatever - who knows why it happens  - but we just kinda make ourselves believe we are having orgasms (I would be in this category), some blame themselves, some blame their partner. Some have had orgasms from masturbation, oral, or manual before to compare to. Some haven't. Whether any of us can fully articulate it or not, there are just so many possibilities for how we use our experiences and personality to comprehend the bullshit-ness of this grand lie and how we go about our sexual lives from then on.

What I love is that I hadn't ever thought about the possibility of the reaction Siri had. It's as if all this new information just beep-bop-boop computed and popped out the conclusion that dick just didn't work on her the way it does for hetero women. It just shows how fucked up this completely common situation is and how many ways there are to rectify it in one's mind. It also points out how deep and integral the assumption is in all of us that a dick in a vagina is supposed to make a woman come. Siri's computation didn't even consider that the sex act itself was the part that wasn't working, it must be something about her that made this clearly orgasmic act not work correctly.

I honestly don't know much about Siri, but I would love to know more, and I would love to hear her thoughts on my thoughts. Rock on Siri and thanks for sharing such an bad-ass first time story.