Inside Amy Schumer Season1 Episode 4
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).
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. This particular SSL Review will be a big stretch, however. There are no specific discussions about female orgasm, but I think the lack of female orgasm is so boldly written between the lines, that i thought this episode was worthy of a a post.
Please, my friends, do enjoy more SSL Reviews for MOVIES and TV SHOWS.
So here's the scene:
Amy is talking to her friend. they're both sitting on the couch together. the friend says that she just doesn't like the idea of porn, and she's just not into it. Amy, however, says that she really should watch this one because it is different. It feels like real sex. It's literally from the woman's point of view. Her friend reluctantly says okay, and then we get to see this porn.
It's POV of a woman being banged by a sweaty shirtless dude. First she's looking at his chest, then, clearly she was turned over because she's looking at the mattress and her hand that's holding her up. She tries to touch the guy's hand, but he kinda pushes it off. Then she is turned over again, and he's telling her to move down, and she says he's on her hair. He moves a little and then he asks her to call him Adam Sandler (specifically from the movie Spanglish) and asks her if she can bend her leg back more (she says she can't). Then he's all like, 'OK,OK, OK, OK" and comes, then rolls over. She tries to touch him, and he brushes her off, and she turns on the TV.
Then Amy's friend goes, "Did you show me this so I would think guys are gross and lez-out with you?...It worked." and they start making out....which in turn becomes an internet porn clip that some dude is watching and licking his lips.
Big Dick Dikscussion
She starts out talking about how a big dick is like a unicorn. In theory it'd be nice to see it, but then when it's there in front of you, it's just a horse with a weapon on it's head and it's terrifying,.
I went home with guy and he went down on me right away, because he was raised well. I'm thinking of getting his mom's email - give her a shout out. So he's doing that, and then he gave up after a while because he could see I was texting (I'm like, it's about you!). So, and then he presents his penis, like, here it is. And I think he thought that because I was like a substantial gal, that I'd be like 'that ol' thing,' but I was like, 'MOM!!!!' It didn't even register as a cock. It just looked like an animal had latched on....I was not excited. It was just like all fear. I was like What! No! and I know I should have been excited. I know I should have been taking instagram pics with it.All her stand-up has to do with her situation with a guy with a big dick. Even her segment, Amy Goes Deep where she does one on one interviews with non-celebrities, is with a guy that has a big dick. It's not at all about his ability to please a woman with his big ol' schlong. In fact, I think she particularly steers away from that conversation. She just keeps making jokes about a big dick and how painful and cumbersome it can be during sex, and he's, to me, very proud of it and thinks that it is incredibly exciting and pleasing to women, and he begins to allude to that, but she just doesn't let him talk much. Like she asks him about masturbating - if it takes him longer than other guys, and he says he stopped masturbating a good while ago...clearly alluding to the fact that he doesn't have to because he has so many pussies willing to get fucked he doesn't need to do that, but she just kinda cuts him off and asks if it's because it's so big he needs a team of experts like heave-ho-ing on it to get it done. Other than that, she just talks about what his balls look like, asks him if he's tried anal and where that woman is buried, and you know, stuff like that.
My Thoughts
Okay - so like I said above, this post for me is all about looking at things that are SUPPOSED to be hot for women, but actually probably aren't most of the time. And, that to me, at its core, is about how twisted the assumptions about female pleasure and female orgasm are - about how wrong we, as a culture, have it.
The Porn Stuff
There is no actual depiction/discussion of orgasm here, but I feel like the distinct depiction of its lack is important and worthy of a review. There's a lot going on with this skit, but the aspect I want to focus on is it's voice about how boring, gross, unsexy, and unorgasmic sex often is for women. The skit's about porn, but really the funny part is that we're seeing a real woman's POV experience of sex...like totally from her perspective. Its humor arises largely, I think, because it seems outrageous how bad it is, but at the same time, for women it hits home. I venture to say most women have at least once had an experience quite similar. This, my friend, is the kind of thing we need a woman's eye to write because it's not the public face of female sexual experience we're looking at in this skit. It's the hidden untalked about one. Instead of showing the female experience of sex in a braggy, bravado sex-kitten way or a scary rapey way - which is how we often see them depicted, this was about as normal as it can get. Now, let that sink in because IT SUCKED...and yet it's sooo familiar to sooo many..
And, yes people who are indignantly thinking #NotAllSex, I get it. I get that there can be really sexy, hot even orgasmic sex for the ladies out there. It's obviously possible, and it obviously happens. I'm totally down with that, but I'm not down with using #NotAllSex types of excuses to gloss over or ignore the severity and importance of how terrible normal ol' sex often is. I'm not going to pretend like sex described in this skit is just terrible sex in the way you would describe terrible ice cream. We know that most ice cream is not terrible, so this terrible ice cream must be out of the ordinary #NotAllIceCream. We'd like to think of sex in the same way, but really it's only men who get that luxury. For women terrible sex is just an extreme case of the already quite shit sex that is the norm of sex, and even women who are having better sex now have probably had sex like this sometime in their life...because normal sex is too often terrible for the ladies (Here's a primer of how orgasm-less penetration is for ladies, HERE's some writing on how bad normal sex is...and another....and another...and another related to terrible/normal oral sex)
The Big Dick Stuff
So, first we have a send-up of plain ol'sex with dudes. It's something that women are supposed to be all hot for, but the reality is that it's often terrible and often orgasm-less. Now we get the send-up of big dicks. They are supposed to be hot to women. We're supposed to be desperate for them. They're supposed to be lady-gasm giving machines. BUT...the reality is that's a bunch of bullshit, and not just because penises (even big ones) are pretty useless at giving women orgasms (seriously), but also because a big dick might just be too damn big, man.
Amy isn't playing by mythology of big dicks mean virile, manly men that are able to please women. Women know that shit ain't true. We know a big dick hurts like a motherfucker when it hits your cervix or if you're not dripping like Niagara Falls and horny as a mothafucka. We know the orgasmic hope the myth of giant cocks bring melts away into a sad fleeing cloud when were orgasm-less and a little too 'fucked-sore' at the end of it. I mmean I'm not saying a big dick isn't hot to look at and touch, but the realities of that inside you are often far from glamorous.
Amy keeps it real in the stand-up and the interview. Both the man in her story and the man she was interviewing had an idea that women would really be excited about their dig ol' bicks, but she never let's that feeling linger in the air. She just simply doesn't play into that myth, and I think in doing that she takes some of its power away.
The Vulva Rating
I think her perspective on these two things that have a long proud history as lady-gasm givers - intercourse with a dick and intercourse with a big dick - is so on point, so female, and so hidden in our larger culture. I love that she unabashedly trashes these notions, and I think revealing her very female perspective on this lets other ladies know they're not crazy in thinking similar thoughts or experiencing similar things, and all that takes power away from these incorrect myths around how/why women orgasm.
I give this a 4 1/2 out of 5 vulva rating.
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