Insecure S2 Ep4
I watched seasons 1 and 2 of Insecure last fall and took notes, but hadn't gotten to writing any SSL Reviews until this past September. Much like that first Insecure SSL Review, this SSL Review will not be given a high Vulva Rating. Again, this scene was a really basic - and terribly unrealistic - sex scenario were a dude bangs a woman and she orgasms with no clit thought at all. There are really a lot of scenes like this in Insecure, except most of them cut before we see anyone orgasm. We're just left to assume that what they were doing, which is ramming a P into a V with no absolutely no clit stimulation, was supposed to be orgasmic for both parties. I mean, that's pretty much the status quo for sex scenes in general whether they be on TV, movies or porn, so it's not surprising, but like I said in that other post, I was hoping for better.
SSL Reviews
As a quick reminder, SSL Reviews are depiction or discussions of female orgasm and/or masturbation and/or the clit. Only those specific things are reviewed - other discussions or depictions of sex or sexuality not within the above confines are for the most part not of interest to me. In these reviews, I critique the realism (for instance, were the physical things happening to that women while she orgasmed things that could realistically cause orgasm for a woman?) and also speak on what the depiction/discussion reflects from and adds to the larger cultural discussion around lady-gasms and female sexuality.
You can see all the SSL TV Reviews HERE (and as always you can find all the movie SSL Reviews HERE).
So again, I'm not going to use any names here because if you haven't seen this show, I don't want you to get any spoilers, but for my purpose, names aren't needed for this anyway. I would like to give you some context though, because besides the lady-gasm element, this scene has important elements related to race and gender/masculinity.
So, there is a black, male, regular character in here that I'll just call Dude. There are also 2 young, non-black (probably both white), female, non-regular characters. We'll call them Lady1 and Lady2.
Dude forgets his credit card when buying some things for a night out with friends. Lady1 and Lady2 are behind him in line and kindly buy his stuff. In the parking lot, they convince him to go back to their place. When they get there, the women turn on The Weeknd and start dancing seductively on him. It becomes, not unexpectedly, a threesome, ya'll.
We see Dude lying in the bed on his back with Lady1 on top of him, bouncing up and down cowgirl style. Her body is largely perpendicular to his, as opposed to her leaning forward on him, so her clit area is not pressed against him. Also, none of the 6 possible hands are anywhere near her clit. She says to him at one point during this, "Your black cock feels so good in my white pussy!" He's taken aback, but continues on. They both come audibly.
Lady2 then says it's her turn, but Dude is all like...uhhh I just came, I'm gonna need a second. The women immediately get bored and kinda annoyed, saying they've been with plenty of other black guys that were able to come and keep going. They move on to talking about dinner and later plans for the night, and Dude leaves a bit deflated.
The SSL Review
The Lady-gasm
First things first - Lady1's orgasm was super unrealistic. It was just her bouncing on a dick. There was no clitoral stimulation from hands or body friction. Stimulation on the inside of the vagina is simply not a realistic (or scientifically observed) way that women can orgasm. Clit stimulation, just like penis stimulation for men, is needed. Sadly though, a depiction of a woman orgasming from the same thing in intercourse a man orgasms from (a penis moving inside a vagina with no additional clitoral stimulation) is common. It's so common in fact, I would say it is kind of the way sex and orgasm is depicted.
So this scene is another of so, so, so many scenes out there that incorrectly reinforce to all the viewers that women can, maybe should, orgasm from getting nothing more than a good banging. It further cements the idea that intercourse should be as orgasmic for women as it is for men, and it helps to keep the clit largely invisible to female sexuality.
The vagina? Very important. The penis? Obviously needed. The clit?...um well, actually were is it exactly? I know it's also kinda important, like in the foreplay, right? Women can come from clit stuff too, right?
Like for real, people just don't get to see the clit involved in male-female sexual encounters very often at all, and almost never in male-female intercourse.
YET THE CLITORAL GLANS IS THE ORGAN OF FEMALE SEXUAL PLEASURE. FEMALES NEED IT TO ORGASM IN THE SAME WAY MALES NEED THEIR PENISES. IT'S LIKE SHOWING MEN ORGASMING WITHOUT THEIR PENISES INVOLVED. IT'S BONKERS, YET SOMEHOW WE ALLOW AND NORMALIZE DEPICTIONS OF NO-CLIT ORGASMS FOR WOMEN.
How the young woman in the scene orgasmsed, however, I think was an afterthought, as much lady-gasm depictions are, and so I imagine it was like it was because it's just the normal way we see women orgasm. So, I want to say I realize the failing in this scene is about lack of thought more than intentional lady-gasm hatred or anything like that. It's just the norm. I also want to say that these shitty lady-gasm depictions will not change until more people start realizing that lady-orgasm scenes deserve some thought....just putting that out there for you creators out there.
The Masculinity Stuff
The other part of why the lady-gasm depiction was a status-quo after thought is that his scene was not really much about Lady1's orgasm. It was about 1. Dude's experience with a sexual encounter focused strangely around race and particularly around the fetishization of his black body, and 2. Dude's masculinity (and particularly a specific idea of black masculinity) coming into question because of how he 'did' sex.
As a culture we often expect a dude to be able to keep orgasming over and over or to be able to stay hard after orgasming, or to be able to stay hard but not orgasm for a long time until after he's 'banged the woman into orgasm.' These are dumb, incorrect expectations of men and sex, but it's important to remember that they are deeply related to our misunderstandings of how females orgasm. Because we don't really understand what causes a woman to orgasm and because our culture is obsessed with the idea that intercourse should be as orgasmic for a vagina as it is for a penis, we tend to believe that:
1. women can be banged to orgasm
2. it takes a long time for women to orgasm NOTE: It doesn't take women any longer on average to masturbate to orgasm than men (because she'll actually be stimulating her clitoral glans in a way she likes)...but yeah, if she's just getting her vagina banged and her clit is barely being touched, it might take her a shitlong time - IF it happens at all
3. It's men's responsibility to give women orgasms
Here's the deal, when men believe their penises during intercourse are responsible for women's orgasms and women believe men are responsible for women's orgasms, so much terrible lady-gasmless sexual encounters happen it's just not funny. As we've discussed above, penises don't give women orgasms. Penises give men orgasms. Clits give women orgasms. Trying to make penises stay hard forever to bang women's vaginas into orgasm is like trying to stick a square peg into a round hole, and no one wins. Here's the big problems with that mentality
- Women are left getting tons of stimulation that doesn't even help get them to orgasm
- Men don't want to stop banging until women have orgasmsed...because manliness and niceness and all that...so it's ripe for women to fake...because femininity and niceness and all that
- Men carry a lot of stress and mental acrobatics related to the awesomely orgasmic stimulation of intercourse (for men at least) vs. the need to not be orgasmic until much later in intercourse.
- The shame men feel for failing to hold off long enough can be problematic for their and their partner's sex lives in so many ways
- Women and men are both missing out on other ways to have sexual encounters that allow both parties to orgasm when and how they want
- Women feel they must rely on men for orgasm and don't put the time and work in to give themselves orgasms alone or with a partner
All that to say, I think there is a lot to unpack about the fact that Lady1 and Lady2 both expected Dude to give them orgasms with his never-endingly hard penis in their vaginas. It speaks to so many of the problems and misconceptions surrounding female orgasm I write about in this blog, and it also has so much to say about the failure of masculine and feminine expectations in regard to sexual encounters between men and women.
The Vulva Rating
Obviously, I'm not a fan of this lady-gasm depiction. It, like so many before and after, is physically unrealistic and reinforces incorrect ideas about how women orgasm. Also like so many other depictions, it's not created out of malice towards the female orgasm or women, but out of laziness and an adherence to the status quo. It's harmful to women, men, sex, and orgasm equality, but it's unintentionally so.
However, this scene also weighs in a bit on the harmfulness of stereotypical ideas of male (particularly black male) sexuality. It doesn't dig deep and doesn't make the connections with female orgasm misconceptions that I find so important, but it at least brings up something we don't always get to see. That makes me feel a little kinder in my rating.
I give this scene 2 out of 5 vulvas.
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