Crazy Ex-Girlfriend S1 Ep 4 & 8 - The SSL Review

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Crazy Ex-GirlFriend
I do quite enjoy this show. It's a wild ride. I respect that. I also love the creator and star, Rachel Bloom. She is an Orgasm Equality advocate, ya'll. She dropped some truth bombs on Twitter, and I loved it. I wrote a post about it and made her an official Orgasm Equality Ally She also drops in subtle accurate, realistic depictions and discussions of lady-gasm stuff in her show, which honestly, is my dream of dreams. If all shows did this, we wouldn't have much of a problem anymore.

Anyway, it's a network show so there's not a ton of orgasm, masturbation, and clit stuff being thrown around for obvious reasons, but there are things from time to time that are SSL Reviewable. 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. I have 2 simple ones from Season 1 to talk about here.

Please, my friends, do enjoy more SSL Reviews for MOVIES and TV SHOWS.

S1 Ep4 - Dirty Hippie Dudes
Rebecca, played by Rachel Bloom, ends up having a one night stand with this unkempt hippie-style guy. After they have sex, the dude gets up.

Hippie Dude: "What do you want me to do with these 2 condoms you made me wear."
Rebecca: "Uh trashcan in the bathroom"
Hippie Dude: Cool. Hey by the way, you finished right?
Rebecca: Oh yea. I finished a bunch.

The hippie dude is satisfied with that, and she gets him out of her apartment quickly.

She definitely did not come 'a bunch.' She's clearly being sarcastic in this scene. The audience has no idea about what physically happened during the sex, but we can assume that the dude must not have been that interested in her orgasm during the act since he asked as an afterthought. We can also suspect he's not very perceptive since he was fine with her clearly sarcastic answer,. That's real. They probably just banged. He came. She didn't. That's about as typical a hook-up as one can imagine.

So, this scene is not super progressive or anything, but I like how it mirrors the female reality of shit one-night-stand sex that includes intercourse but no lady-gasms...because frankly hook-ups, for a variety of reasons, are just not all that great generally for the clit and thus the female orgasm.

I think the simple act in media of pointing out that sexual encounters are often not orgasmic for women is a small but important task. In order for our culture to begin really caring about actual female orgasm and to embrace the idea of clitoral glans stimulation as main-course fare (as opposed to intercourse as main-course fare), we all need to really get the point that what we tend to do currently in sexual encounters is not working all that well...like we need to really get that. We need to for real understand that a penis moving in the vagina does not a lady-gasm make.

Little pokes like this scene are poignant, and I appreciate that.

S1Ep8 - Frigid 
This is flashback of Rebecca as a kid trying to please her mom. She tells her that her principal said she was the youngest and prettiest of all the moms in her grade. Her mom retorts back,

Mom: Just in your grade?
Rebecca: Oh no in the whole school.
Mom: I don't know why you're even talking about him. He's married...but I heard his wife was frigid. Go on.

Frigid. It's not actually used much these days. It was used a lot from the 40's into the 80's. It is a Freudian word specifically meaning a woman that cannot orgasm from vaginal penetration. She may be able to orgasm from clitoral stimulation, but that was immature. She was frigid unless she orgasmsed from intercourse. In pop culture it also seemed to kind of grow a less specific meaning in that it referred to a woman that was just not able to orgasm at all or was not generally that interested in sex or not easily aroused. It was always seemed to have a derogatory, bad feel.

I'm not sure, off the bat, how to place this scene in the sexual culture. I do know Rebecca's mom is clearly mean and vindictive in this show, and her saying that about another woman shows it to be kind of a shitty and maybe gossipy thing to say. I guess though that bringing up frigidity at all and the derogatory feel surrounding it about a woman's ability to orgasm or to orgasm in the right way, is not real positive - especially if it's left unaddressed. Women's insecurities about our orgasmic capabilities are deep and strong (women's magazines know that...that's why every issue gives us tips about how to be correctly orgasmic), so little mentions of frigidity, even if made by a clearly vindictive character, can add onto the pile of other media mentions that remind and reiterate to that women we aren't orgasming right or enough.

The Vulva Rating
I loved the realism about lady-gasms the show put out there in Rebecca's answer to the hippies question about her 'finishing.' I think that's a solid and intentional schooling on the realities of sexual encounters for females. The frigid statement was just a joke about her mom's vindictiveness, but if I want to be picky (and I do often want to be picky) I do think bringing up derogatory concepts like that without speaking to their ridiculousness leaves them to just fester there with all the other similar mentions in the media we watch. It's an unintentional reiteration of the fears women already have.

So, This will not be a perfect score, but it won't be bad either. I will give this a 3 1/2 out of 5 vulva rating.

(!)(!)(!)(!

Frigidity, Kick-Ass Colombian Journalists, and Some Thank Yous

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I woke up Tuesday to a tweet from a lovely woman named Patricia Sulburan who is an international editor for a big Colombian radio chain called W Radio. She was interested in doing an interview, and after I realized she meant the country and not like Columbia University or something, I wrote back and she asked me to do a live radio interview the next day. I'll be honest, I don't feel like speaking is my forte. I'm much better at writing, so I was super nervous and I was practicing in my car and trying to figure out what they'd ask, but in the end it was actually really fun. Patricia was my translator and Claudia Palacios and Rafael Manzano interviewed me (You can hear it HERE...I didn't realize till later that something I think might be The Love Boat theme played behind the whole interview...which is about as awesome as I could imagine). How many times are you interviewed on Colombia radio, am I right?...so I was really stoked that I got that opportunity, but I wasn't quite sure how they heard about the movie and why they wanted to interview me. Turns out a Colombian journalist named Paola Ochoa wrote an editorial in the the largest circulating newspaper in Colombia, El Tiempo, about Science, Sex and the Ladies.

Patricia Sulburan - International Producer Extraordinaire!

Paola Ochoa - Journalist Extraordinaire!

Feel free to Google translate this article...oh wait, I already did, and ya know, it kinda made sense. From what I could tell it had a really fight-the-power, let's-start-a-revolution kinda tone to it. She started out talking about how far women have come and how many amazing, important things women have done this year, but then she says some really, really, really nice things about Science, Sex and the Ladies.

I'm quoting this below as a Google translation of Paola Ochoa's article, so it's not great English, but I didn't want to try and clean it up and misrepresent something she was trying to say, so just take it for what it is...a bad translation (and BTW, Google Translate doesn't really do gender pronouns right...it's a gender revolutionist I guess). ***Edit - I found out the article is in English on Ochoa's Tumbler. Check it out HERE

But if something has seemed truly representative of the new feminine power is a much talked about documentary females (see the trailer at this link: https://vimeo.com/32292858). Lasts 1 hour, 40 minutes, and it is a phenomenon in Apple TV. Trisha Borowicz his production is a brilliant scientist biologist who has dedicated his life to studying the female orgasm, tired of so many bad powders. 

With a fabulous visual narrative, Borowicz achieved what seemed impossible: 2,000 years of sexism shake off and demonstrate scientific evidence that there are no frigid women. On the contrary, that there are ignorant men or bad lovers. 

The documentary is awakening a quiet revolution. And nothing reveals more women on the planet that the topic of anorgasmia. We all at some point in life we ​​are unable to have an orgasm. We feel a huge embarrassment and even think we are factory defective. And then we pretend. And then we lie. All because of the alleged frigidity, the lapidary notion that men invented to hide their own incompetence lovemaking. 

Borowicz manages to remove that plaque off and testing with several scientific studies, frigidity is not a problem of the genital organs of women. Frigidity does not exist. It is a term that men invented to maintain appropriate misogyny of Aristotle and Augustine for another couple of centuries more. It is the most powerful weapon of machismo and, simultaneously, the most power over us.

She goes on to discuss in a very hopeful way that men have had control of women's sexuality for years, and they are still very much in control of the imagery in porn, but we ladies dominate most social media. We have a place now to discuss our sexuality freely and take back control of our own sexuality and our own sexual images. She ends with this (in bad Google Translator speak)...

Fortunately, women are facing a new world that empowers us. Thanks to the freedom of social networks, we have a space where our opinions are expressed without male issue. 

It is time to take away the yoke off. Finally we have a voice. And finally we have also the ultimate proof that the best orgasm is only in our hands: Science, Sex and the Ladys; True Story About the Female Orgasm.

I mean, this was a little overwhelming. I am so thrilled that SSL made her feel this way and excited to see that there are women all over the world that are ready for a change. I also think that Paola is totally brave and bad-ass. From what I can tell from her article, from the comments on the article (I google translated them too..and people are just as ass-hole like in Colombia as they are in USA in case you were wondering) and from the interview I did on the radio, Colombia has all the same problems and misunderstandings about female orgasms and female sexuality that the U.S.A does, but that maybe the idea of women being frigid is a little more ingrained in their current culture.

Now, I say that with hesitance, because in the USA the idea that women should orgasm from only vaginal stimulation and that if she doesn't she is lesser in some way, is very much alive and well.  The word Frigid, which is a Freudian term for women that cannot orgasm vaginally and thus have not matured fully, is used sometimes in the USA now, but more with a connotation of just a not very sexual woman. In the USA in the 70's, frigid was still very commonly used in the Freudian way. I see it all the time in books about female orgasm from the time. However, just because frigid isn't used in this way doesn't mean it has left our culture. Saying a woman is frigid is a very straightforward way to say a woman is broken sexually, and that is not common in the USA, but saying women are sexually broken in all kinds of backhanded, subtle ways is very, very common. We say women who can't orgasm during intercourse are hormonally imbalanced, too stressed, not very sexual, or emotionally distracted. We still act as if it is their fault they can't orgasm this way, and if they just tried harder they could do it. So the more subtle ways we speak about women being sexually broken in the USA seems less harsh, but it is no less harmful.

But, I think the word "frigid" hold more power there. In my radio interview, the journalists kept asking about if women were frigid or not. They wanted a clear answer, and I guess I didn't realize until then how new saying women weren't frigid was. And knowing that now, I feel like Paola's article is even more revolutionary. She straight up said that women are not frigid and that it's bullshit that women were ever even made to endure that title.

To Paola Ochoa: Thank you, thank you thank you! You introduced the ideas from Science, Sex and the Ladies to a huge group of people who may have never heard of them. You were bold and straightforward and honest, and I could not agree more with you that this inequality that exists between women and men due to misunderstandings about female orgasm and female sexuality is the most powerful and has the most power over us. That is why it is so hard to confront but so important. You are awesome, and a true Orgasm Equality Hero!

To Patricia Sulburan: You didn't have to take Paola's article seriously, and you didn't have to find me and do all the work it takes to get this story on the radio, but you did. You brought the message about Frigidity being bullshit to lots more women.  I want you to know it means a lot to me and to the Orgasm Equality Movement. You also are an Orgasm Equality Hero!

*Oh - and I actually didn't realize you could get the movie on Apple TV. It's only available on Vimeo On Demand. I guess you can access that through Apple TV, but I'm not sure. Here's the actual link to the movie at Vimeo On Demand  https://vimeo.com/ondemand/26160