Good Luck To You, Leo Grande: The SSL Review

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Good Luck To You, Leo Grande

To begin, I do recommend this movie, and it will get a good SSL Review - just FYI. This movie is about Nancy Stokes (Emma Thompson), a late middle aged woman, who hires Leo Grande (Daryl McCormack), a male prostitute, 2 years after her husband dies. She reveals (early in the move - I'm not spoiling anything) that she had never been with anyone sexually but her husband, never had anything but basic missionary intercourse, and never orgasmed. She wants to do some of these things she's never done. Clearly, this is a movie of interest for an SSL Review.

An SSL Review (for those that don't know about them)

Only depiction or discussion of female orgasm and/or female masturbation/cunnilingus and/or the clit are eligible for SSL Review. Nothing else counts, including plain 'ol sex if it doesn't include anything listed above. I specifically 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 movie Reviews HERE (and as always you can find all the SSL TV Reviews HERE).

The Orgasm Scene

So, I don't think telling you about her journey towards orgasm will spoil this movie, but if you like to know nothing about a movie before you watch, I suggest you check it out and then read this review...because I do recommend you watch this movie. I will overall try not to reveal too much, though.

Long story short, she does orgasm. She does it by herself with her own hand. She is lying on her back after a variety of sensual and arousing but not orgasmic (for her) sexual acts with Leo. He gets up to get a drink and a sex toy that "usually works" to help aid her in trying to come. We know it's a vibrator because he calls it the little buzzer, and we see the little thing later when he turns around after finding it. It's buzzing in his hand. 

But back to her situations. When he goes to get the buzzer she tells him no need. She thinks she's done. She's laying there all flushed and exhausted-looking from the sex they were having, but then she starts watching his naked body and moves her hand sensually down her chest to rub her vulva area. There's not a lot of detail here - and we can't specifically see what her hand is doing, in fact we don't even get much indications through shoulder movement. It is obvious that she is not doing a penetration, in and out type movement though. It's an on-the-vulva, not an in-the-vagina situation. It's about 11 seconds from when she gets to her vulva to when she comes, and when she comes, I think it’s clear that she does so. However, we don't see the wild vocalization and movement that is so common of orgasm depiction in women (but not men). Instead, it's a head back, intake of air and quick breath out, and then a stillness. There's a quiet intensity and focus that feels very real to me. 

The Good Stuff

If you know this blog, you know I'm incredibly happy with this depiction. Here are the 4 major reasons why - in true overly explainy SSL fashion.

1 No one 'gave' her a first orgasm. I love this because I think it’s incredibly important we see more depictions of women figuring out their own orgasm. We need to normalize this because it's really a must if a woman is to become an active, experienced and knowledgeable party to an orgasm with a partner. Ladies need to be their own first partners, just as men need to be their own first partners (and they tend to be - way more often than women). 

Now, a first faked orgasm or a first I'm-assuming-this-is-when-I'm-supposed-to-orgasm-so-I'm-gonna-go-with-it orgasmy sounding vocalization...well, those I assume are almost always with a partner. However, a first physical orgasm (the rhythmic release of pelvic muscle tension that both males and females and all in between have during orgasm) – those do tend to be home grown just as Nancy's was in this movie. I mean, it's not unheard of for a woman's first physical orgasm to be because someone else was stimulating her, but it's certainly not common (Check out all the women's stories in The Hite Report), and it’s BS that we so often see it that way in all kinds of media from porn to romance novels to TV.

Constantly seeing ladies be ‘given’ that first orgasm is an unrealistic and ultimately harmful way to depict a lady’s first orgasm. It sends the message that women are not in control of their bodies or desire or arousal; that they are a vessel waiting for male sexuality to awaken them; that their orgasm is given instead of taken. 

And as selfish as it sounds, having orgasms is an active process from the orgasmer. A collaborative interaction with a partner could move that experience more towards a sort of 'given' orgasm, but it would, I think, be rare for the receiver to be a completely passive recipient. Plus, if a person does not know what their body needs before working on their orgasm through collaboration with a partner, it would be real unlikely they just happened into the movement and stimulation needed to get themselves there. More likely, they helped get themselves there with some experience and knowledge of how their body needs to move and what needs to be touched in what ways. We expect this active participation in orgasm from men, and we should expect it from women as well. 

Depicting first-orgasm scenarios for ladies thorugh masturbation instead of through the actions of a partner is a solid step in the right directions. Well done, this movie. 

2 The physical actions happening during the orgasm could sensibly and realistically be assumed to cause orgasm in an actual lady. Basically, there’s a hand on the vulva. We didn’t see the detailed movements, but that’s the basic way the majority of women masturbate to orgasm (again check out The Hite Report among almost every other study on how women orgasm). It’s important to see ladies orgasming through stimulation of the outer vulva/clitoral area because that is basically THE way physically recorded female orgasms have happened to date in all of scientific literature. Although there are so many depictions of women orgasming from penetration by a partner, it’s just not something that has ever actually been observed to cause orgasm. For real. 

I will say I'm not surprised they did the physical masturbation realistically. In general movie and TV depictions of female masturbation does tend to be realistic - with outer clitoral/vulva stimulation, so the realism in Nancy's masturbation technique isn’t particularly surprising or revolutionary, but it’s still nice. Honestly, it’s orgasm with a partner where media depictions fuck up. Besides a sprinkling of cunnilingus scenes, which I'm all for and are usually not bonkers ridiculous, partner lady-gasm depictions generally fall back into showing penetration making ladies come - just your basic not-clit-touching in and out. It is a rare situation where you see active stimulation of the clit during penetration, which is a damn shame because it's a quite sensible way for a lady to come with a partner. I always point that out because, man, I’d love to see more of that clit stim during a banging in my media. 

Also, I don't think this is an unrealistic depiction in this situation, but I should speak to how fast it is from the time she starts stimulating herself to the orgasm - we're talking around 11 seconds. I realize in TV and movies, time-to-orgasm is always a bit quick just because they aren't usually trying to waste a bunch of time showing the process. 11 seconds is quick though - but only if you are going from zero to orgasm in that time - from absolutely unaroused to popping off. This is because the building blocks of orgasm are in creating that physical arousal in the body, the pelvic muscle tension and blood congestion that the orgasm physically releases. One needs a little time for that, but only a few minutes, really. Averages in studies usually come out somewhere between 3 and 10 minutes. In Human Sexual Response, Masters and Johnson found that men and women masturbate to orgasm in around the same time - women averaged a bit longer but only a minute or two. Subsequent studies found similar results including this study that didn't find any significant difference in duration of self-stimulation between men and woman.

So, I'm saying she realistically only needed a few minutes to get from zero to orgasm. However, she was not at zero. She had just had a lot of sexual things, including cunnilingus, happen to her. She could very likely be almost to the edge of arousal, ready to drop off into orgasm. She was also flushed on her neck and chest when she moved that hand down. I'm assuming that was an intentional make-up choice on the set because for more light skinned people, a visible-to-the-naked-eye 'sex-flush' often occurs on the neck and chest. It would indicate heavy arousal. Point is, with all that was happening in this scenario, 11 seconds of direct clitoral stimulation doesn't seem too short a time for her to get to orgasm from where she was starting.  

Anyway, all that to say that someone watching this move and trying to figure out how they themselves might make themselves actually come, would not be led in a incorrect direction (as they would with a penetration orgasm depiction), and I appreciate that.

3 She didn't scream and shout and moan and move around all wild and sexy like. She just came. Watch dudes in porn. They are almost always actually coming. They, mostly, don't scream and shout and moan and move around a bunch when it happens. They tend to concentrate and get quiet, focused, intense, and deeper into the movement that was getting them there. That's what this woman did. It's realistic, and as a culture, we need to normalize that this is a way a woman's orgasm can look. We see so much wild faking from women, it skews women and their partner's expectations.

4 It shone a positive light on a vibrator helping a lady come. Leo got up to get her a vibrator to help her come, when she figured it out herself. That's a sexually experienced man not only being fine with a woman using a sex toy, but also encouraging it. It's a man saying, 'hey, if you wanna come, a sex toy is a good option'. Vibrators are, in fact, great options alone and in partner sex for lady-gasms. Yet, there is still a sense out there that it means the man has failed or it's a distraction from the couple sex. That's a bunch of bullshit, and the more vibrator use is normalized, as it is in this movie, the better.

The Vulva Rating

This was not only a realistic and much needed depiction of how an actual woman might realistically physically experience her first orgasm, it was also a thoughtful depiction of the emotional, cultural, and experiential roadblock that women face as they explore an orgasm and an authentic sexuality. 

If I had any critique of this movie's discussion/depiction of lady-gasm, it would be that it maybe didn't speak to the expansive cultural issues with lady-gasm that are not unique to Nancy's situation. Specifically, I would have been overjoyed if there was a nod to how very (and unfortunately) common it is that a woman might not have come ever from partner sex, and how the lack of clitoral/vulva simulation in common sex acts (for instance most penetrative sex on its own) is a huge reason for that -  given that the clitoral/vulva stimulation is no less important to the female orgasm than penile stimulation is to the male orgasm. It's not really a criticism, though. Good Luck To You , Leo Grande tells a story about lady-gasm that is rare in media and important, and one can't expect everything from everything. It did what it meant to do well. I'm just saying that if the experienced male prostitute had mentioned that her situation is not actually that uncommon in his experience, and that it might have a bit to do with the fact that her clit was never part of the sex equation...well, that would be nice too. 

Altogether, for all the reasons I spoke about above. This gets a full 5 vulva rating.

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Ramy Seasons 1 and 2 - The SSL REview

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Ramy - Season 1 - 2

So this is a Hulu show, and I'm not sure exactly how we heard about it, but it got a lot of good press since its release in 2019, so it could have been anywhere...or Hulu could have just told me to watch it in the way Hulu does such things. Either way, I'm glad we did. I'll be honest. I like it despite the main character. He acts too much like an actual dude I know, and it's a little annoying, but the surrounding cast, I really enjoyed, and there's some really solid storied in the (so far) 2 season series. 

Anyway, it follows Ramy, a 20-something and his family and friends living their lives in New Jersey (and maybe also in New York sometimes too?). Ramy is a first Generation Egyptian American. He lives with his mom, dad, and adult sister, and he's on a bit of a journey to understand what being a 'proper' Muslim means in his life. 

Anyway, I think it's well worth a watch, AND in the 1st season (there were none in the 2nd season), there were SSL Reviewable moments involving Ramy's mother, sister, and sexual partner. 

An SSL Review (for those that don't know about them)

Only depiction or discussion of female orgasm and/or female masturbation and/or the clit are eligible for SSL Review. Nothing else counts, including plain 'ol sex if it doesn't include anything listed above. I specifically 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).

 

S1 Ep1 - Strangle me while I finger myself

Ramy is a Muslim guy, right? As is the case with most religious people, they ain't supposed to be fucking if they ain't married. We see he does indeed do that, though. We see it happen with a non-Muslim woman earlier, but later he's on a proper date with a Muslim woman. They ditch their escort and have a nice time together talking and such. They get back to her car, and she's into a kiss, but Ramy is taken aback a bit and basically says he just wasn't sure if she did that kind of thing, and she's like, 'Kiss?? Yeah, bro.'

So they do, and they are both into it and making out, and she tells him to get into her car. They continue making out, and when she reaches for his, pants, he's like...'whoa - whoa.' She asks if he's alright, and he says he is, so she asks if he has a condom. He tells her, 'yes, but, umm...' and she says, "What? You don't want to have sex?" So he goes, 'like, yeah, but I didn't know if you could - since we weren't married and all.'

So she tells him she didn't know he was that strict, and mentions possibilities for technically getting around the Muslim requirements while still having sex. He tells her he doesn't think they should, like, try to trick god or something, but that they should take it slow. She's like, 'OH! Cool - there's other things we can do.'

And from there, she straddles him as he's sitting in the back seat. They're still making out, and she says she wants him to strangle her while she fingers herself. He's like, "what?" and she reiterates it. He puts his hands on her neck. She has unbuttoned her pants and seems to be moving her right hand down at her crotch. He's clearly weirded out, and she tells him to for-real press harder on her neck. 

She's bucking her hips with her eyes closed and her hand down at her crotch.(we can't see it clearly, but seems like she's rubbing one out). She seems like she's building herself up to an orgasm for sure.  Ramy is clearly freaked out. In a kind of in disgust, but maybe more bewilderment, he keeps looking from her neck then down at her crotch where she's getting herself off, and then back up and repeat until he can't take it anymore.

He just stops and tells her he can't do it. He's not into strangling. She's disappointed and briefly protests, but quickly unstraddles him.

Lady Friend: God, you're so full of shit.

Ramy: What?

Lady Friend:  It's not the choking that's the problem.

Ramy: Look, it's just our first date, and I feel like this is happening...

Lady Friend: (cutting him off) What? You don't hook up on the first date?

He hesitates.

Lady Friend: Yeah, that's what I thought.

Ramy: Look, this is just, like, throwing me for a loop a bit. I didn't think that a girl like you was gonna wanna...

Lady Friend: A girl like me? Look, we had this like really nice night, and you felt weirded out by the idea of kissing me. I get it. You don't want to have sex, but I'm, like, in this little Muslim box in your head. I'm the wife, or the mother of your kids, right? I'm not supposed to come.

Ramy: (thinking for a minute) Okay, I'll choke you.

Lady Friend: (annoyed) God! just get out of my car.

I love this scene for a couple reasons. 

First, (and most obviously, if you read my blog), this shows a woman asking for a partnered sexual activity that would actually result in orgasm for her - which is basically rubbing her vulva/clit area with her fingers at the same time something else she finds erotic is happening to her - in this instance, choking. Point is, she is stimulating her organ of orgasm which is realistic for a depiction of someone trying to come...just as having something stimulating the penis would be realistic for a depiction of a dude pursuing orgasm. 

I love that this woman knew what could get her off and clearly asked for it, particularly because it is all too uncommon for real-life and depicted women to do this. I think this is largely because the things that actually get us ladies off are not generally the meat and potatoes of a hetero-sexual encounter - AKA any type of intercourse. Which, again you know if you read this blog, intercourse is straight trash for getting ladies off because the stimulation is focused in the vaginal canal instead of the external clitoral glans area (seriously, contrary to popular belief and popular depiction, banging sucks for lady-gasms). 

Point is, asking for things other than intercourse can easily feel ridiculous and 'extra.' Previous partners may have gotten weirded out or uninterested with that kind of ask. Or, given our sexual culture, neither partners may even really understand there are other valid options. So, it was cool to see a valid alternative depicted. I do wish her first go-to wouldn't have been intercourse, though (she first asked for a condom). It makes it seem like intercourse was still the first/better choice for her, even though the reality is that it's a much more shit option for her orgasm. That little ask kind of reinforces the idea that intercourse is still top dog, and everyone likes it and enjoys it the best. I'll give it all a pass, though, simply because it is so rare to even see a depiction of a hetero sexual encounter where a woman diddles her own clit/vulva area, so I'll take it where I can get it.

The second reason I love this scene is because it calls to attention a particular element of the Madonna/Whore syndrome (the idea that a woman can either be sexual OR maternal/good) that exists in the world. Obviously, overall that's a bunch of bullshit that sucks, but there is a specific element about what kinds of sex acts count as whore-ish that I felt was touched on here. Granted, intercourse is the big one we think about for causing a good woman to go bad - and that seemed to be at first where Ramy's head was, but then things expanded a little further, and it could be argued that this woman's focused interest in getting off was maybe even worse to Ramy.  

That she had a strong sexual urge that she needed itched and that really had nothing to do with his body - was maybe even more gross and foreign to him than the idea of a good woman wanting to bang. I mean even a wife and mother must have intercourse from time to time...but rubbing her own clit??? The freak out level that Ramy got to as this woman tried to bring herself to orgasm was telling. And, this was actually a fairly puritan sex act as sex acts go in the religious world. I mean, they weren't having intercourse (the big one, as they say), and he wasn't even having to touch her genitals or her, his genitals.  Her statement, "I'm the wife, or the mother of your kids, right? I'm not supposed to come," is poignant. Sure, women can have intercourse, but only with men they should be having it with. Women having purely selfish sexual desires bent on orgasm, though - desires that do not include the act of a man's penis inside her, don't seem to be that cool in any situation and might be the freakiest shit a woman can do. I don't know if that reading was the intent of the writers and actors in this scene, but her use of the word, "come," gave it that hue for me, and I think that is a nasty aspect of the Madonna/Whore syndrome that deserves more air time, so I appreciate it whatever the intent.

S1Ep6 - Showerbation

This is a simple scene of laby-bation-interuptis. Dena, Ramy's sister, was in a situation that was a bit sexy and/or exciting, and in the next scene she's at home taking a shower. She's in one of those sweet ass showers that I sometimes dream of where the water can come from more than 1 shower head at the same time. Anyway, it's a nice shower, in my opinion. So, there's the overhead one, and then there's a removable showerhead that can also be turned on, which she does, and guess what? She moves that shower head down towards her crotch and backs up to lean against the shower wall. She tilts her head back, and although we are only seeing shoulders up, it's clear she's working the clit/vuvla area and it's working her up towards an orgasm. Unfortunately, family knocking on the door and telling her to hurry up makes her stop before any orgasm, but it's still a clear and realistic depiction of a way someone might masturbate to orgasm.

I want to nitpick here a sec and say that the showerhead water pressure she used seemed ridiculously low to me, like really pathetic. I mean it was like, if I had to use that pressure to merely rinse off my body, it would be annoying as shit. Granted, shower heads are not a way I masturbate, so I may not know the finer details of it, but I imagine water pressure is important...unless she rubs the shower head against her vulva so it's getting both the feel of the water coming out and the actual pressure of the head itself???...instead of using the showerhead close to the vulva, but not touching, and letting the water pressure alone do the work??? Who's to know? Either way, though, the mechanics of this are sensible and realistic for the possibility of masturbating to orgasm - because either way there is the clitoral/vulva area simulation which is what a lady needs as much as a dude needs penile stimulations. 

Obviously, I love this scene because it is one more lady-bation scene, and every new one helps to normalize the idea that women masturbate. The more that is normalized, the more women will masturbate, the more likely it will be that a lady had masturbated to orgasm before ever having sexual interactions with another person, and the more likely she will be able to figure out what she needs in order to orgasm with someone else (i.e. that intercourse itself ain't gonna do it, and that her clit needs as much attention as any penis might).

S1 Ep9 - Hot mom and dad couch sex

This is a classic sex scene. Ramy's mom and dad are on the couch. Something gets them hot. They furiously begin kissing. They un-clothe only enough to get the dick in the vag, and she straddles him as he's sitting. The dick goes in immediately it seems, and she is furiously bouncing up and down. Her hands are around the base of his head. They are both panting to a boiling point and then they collapse on each other, out of breath. It was 35 seconds from beginning of the kiss to post-orgasmic collapse. There was no indication that either of them had hands stimulating her clit/vuvla area. There was no vibrator brought out to press against her clit/vuvla area. The bouncing she was doing was straight up and down, and their bodies were not angled or pressed against each other in a way that would indicate continuous (or really any) contact between her clitoral/vuvla area and his body/pelvis - no grinding against him at all. In other words there was no indication that anything other than the inside of her vagina was getting stimulated. However, because of the way both their vocalizations crescendo and then finish at the same time, it seems as through we are to assume they had an incredibly quick, passionate, simultaneous orgasm through intercourse. 

It's such a classic type of scene because it's how so much "passionate" sex is depicted - an incredibly intense, quick move from zero to bouncing on a dick to collapsing on each other in orgasmic bliss. 

It's bullshit. 

At least for the dick-less person. Like I said above, a penis stimulating the inside of a vagina does not an orgasm make...seriously. Contrary to very popular belief, there's not some magical spot in the vagina that causes orgasm when stimulated - at least no orgasm has been recorded from stimulating any of these "spots" in all of scientific literature; not the G-spot, the c-spot, the vaginal walls themselves, the cervix, the inner clitoral legs through the vaginal walls - none of these things people like to talk about as reasons intercourse can cause orgasms are backed up with any real physical proof. As close as it gets is that G-spot stimulations may cause ejaculation/squirting, but that is different than orgasm (in both males and females). Point is, this act described above is a super realistic way for a person with a penis to orgasm (and ejaculate - usually happens simultaneously for males) but absolutely not a realistic way for a person with a clit and vagina to orgasm (or even ejaculate - which is not that common anyway). It's an incredibly common depiction that makes it seem as if what is happening is equally orgasmic for both people, but it is not. It both perpetuates and substantiates the great lie that intercourse is as orgasmic for the ladies as it is for dudes.

We need less of these scenes. The more of them we see, the more we all assume this is the way to have a mutually orgasmic sexual encounter, the more abnormal sex acts that specifically include clitoral/vuvla area stimulation seem, the more ridiculous ladies will feel when they ask for that specific clitoral/vuvla stimulation, the less dudes will know that clitoral stimulations is necessary and not an extra cherry on top, and ultimately the less women will actually orgasm in partnered sexual situations (actually orgasm...not some level of acting out orgasm). 

The Vulva Rating

This is a mixed review. The first scene depicting a woman using manual clitoral area simulation to get herself off with a partner is unusual and refreshing, but the insinuation in the overall scene that it is her 2nd choice after intercourse softens its power. The masturbation scene is on point and a solid addition to the whole of media. The scene depicting Ramy's mom orgasming from intercourse that is realistically very unlikely to actually induce lady-gasm is a negative addition to cultural knowledge of lady-gasms, but it is not an uncommon type of scene or one that is outside the norms of our cultural understanding of lady-gasms (wrong as these understandings may be). 

The truth is when it comes to masturbation or a woman on her own, media depictions of lady-gasm tend to be more realistic, but when a women is in a partnered sex situation, depictions tend to be intercourse focused and incredibly unrealistic. Ramy follows those norms. In many ways, I feel like this overall depiction is the status quo. It doesn't take us back, but it doesn't put us forward either. So, in that way, I am giving it a fairly neutral rating. Ramy Season 1 and 2 gets 3 out of 5 vulvas.

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The Broken Circle Breakdown - An SSL Review

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The Broken Circle Breakdown

I've seen a bunch of movies lately where we see a lady come from nothing more than a dick moving around in her vagina; the ol' intercourse-only orgasm, aka vaginal orgasm. I mean, these albiet unrealistic depictions aren't uncommon scenes to find in a movie, but I feel like I've had a run on them recently. It started with What's Love Got to Do With It? It's a great movie despite the unrealistic lady-gasm depiction, and you can see that SSL Reviewed HERE. This second one is The Broken Circle Breakdown, a 2012 Belgium movie. There will be more to follow.  

Like I said in the What's Love Got to Do With It? review, which is about a 30 year old movie, these unrealistic lady-gasm scenes can't be blamed on age. Nothing much has changed. The Broken Circle Breakdown was made about 20 years later and has 2 equally unrealistic sex scenes. They will be described and discussed below.

The SSL Review (for those that don't know about them)

Only depiction or discussion of female orgasm and/or female masturbation and/or the clit are eligible for SSL Review. Nothing else counts, including plain 'ol sex if it doesn't include anything listed above. I specifically 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 movie Reviews HERE (and as always you can find all the SSL TV Reviews HERE).

 

Truck sex: orgasming with her feet behind her ears

The first SSL Reviewable scene is in the back of a truck. Didier and Elise are having sex - intercourse specifically. At first she is on top, sitting mostly perpendicular to him and by the sound of it, she's enjoying herself quite a bit. She's not completely bouncy, there's more of a grind to her movements, but her body isn't at an angle to his that would indicate her clitoral area would be making contact with anything but air. As far as hands, we can't see specifically, but there is no indication that either her or his hands are anywhere near her clitoral area. 

From this position they stop the action a bit and talk, and then she tells him to continue. And he does. He flips her over so she's on her back and he's on top of her. He pushes her legs up over his shoulders as he leans down toward her, having her feet almost over her head, and he's pumping into her. Again, there is no indication any hands are down near her clit area, and the angle and folding of her body would not likely allow any contact between his body and her clitoral area. All to say her vaginal canal is getting rammed a lot during this scene, but her clit area, the part a female needs stimulated to orgasm is not getting really anything from this sex. 

Yet in this scene, her verbalizations make it for sure clear what we are to assume happens. She comes with gusto on her back with her feet up around the her head. 

Cowgirl style sex and a cry

In a later scene, the two are on a bed. He is laying on his back and she is on top of him, facing him, straddling him, and perpendicular to his body. She is moving up and down, presumably, on his dick. These are definitely not bouncing up and down movements, but circular hip movements up and down - a bit grindy, but given her perpendicular angle to his body, not in a her-pelvis-grinding-against-his-pelvis way, but in a her vaginal canal moving down in a more circular fashion on his dick as opposed to moving straight down on his dick sort of way. So, like the scene before there was no indication that her clitoral area could have been stimulated and there was also no indication of hands down that way working on the clit area.

As before, she auditorily works up to it and then orgasms. Then she begins crying for reasons related to other parts of the story.

Clits need stimulation to orgasm as much as penises do

Let me just reiterate that. External clitoral area stimulation is as important to female orgasm as penile stimulation is to male orgasm. For real. If you imagine there is good scientific investigation out there that proves physically that women (or even some women) can orgasm from nothing more than a penis or dildo moving inside their vagina, then you are wrong. You're not alone in thinking that, and I couldn't blame you for imagining that is the case in this fucked up, misinforming sexual culture we live in, but it's just not true.  

So on that note, the two scenes above are really no different than a scene where a dude orgasms from rubbing his inner thigh in a very sexual manner. The only real difference is filmmakers don't see any problem making scenes like the two in this movie and viewers don't see anything weird about accepting those scenes as the way things are (or at least could be for at least some women).  On the other hand, a director would not sensibly assume they could create a scene with dude coming from leg touches unless it was comedy or absurdist in some way.

To sum up, we live in a world that basically doesn't get how females orgasm physically...but thinks we do, and basically does gets how males orgasm, physically. It's a problem because scenes like the two above reiterate the misconception that intercourse all by itself should be as orgasmic for women as it is for men. Scenes like these, and there are SOOOO many like this in all types of media, stick in our heads. They inform how we negotiate and play out our sexual experiences. They curve our expectations of female orgasm towards acts that are geared not towards female orgasm, but towards male orgasm, and worst of all, maybe, they make us confused, ashamed, or feel insufficient when the reality does not match our expectations. You know,  maybe even worse than that, they may influence us to fake or twist our experiences to match the expectations so that we are able to feel normal and appropriately sexy/sexual. 

It's messed up really, and no one seems to care or even notice much.

Vulva Rating

These 2 scenes and the scene in What's Love Got To Do With It? are all of the same basic kind. They show intercourse alone, with no stimulation focused on the clit area, as causing a female orgasm. They are all equally ridiculous and equally steeped in deep cultural ignorance and misconceptions about how females physically orgasm. I'm going to give this movie a slightly worse Vulva Rating though. 

It may not be completely rational, but it's because I feel like this movie was trying to be more progressive and failed, while What's Love Got To Do With It? was 20 years older and felt like it was simply trying to make a basic sex scene. It seemed to me in the Broken Circle Breakdown, Elise was meant to be a sexual woman that knew what she wanted and went for it. I think that's why she was often shown on top during sex and as grinding instead of bouncing her vagina over his dick. It aligns to 2 common misconceptions. The first is that banging with a circular motion is more lady-friendly, as if the penis stimulating the inside of the vagina in a circular motion is better than a straightforward motion (which I believe is a misunderstanding and twisting of the idea that grinding the clit against the partner while the penis is inside the vagina is more female friendly - which it is because that type of action acknowledges the need for consistent clitoral simulation in order for females to orgasm) . The second is that a woman simply being on top during intercourse is enough to get her an orgasm - as if her control of how the vaginal canal moves over the penis is somehow more orgasmic than his control of how the penis moves in the vagina. Granted, her control of the intercourse situation might be more fun and may be more pleasurable, but it doesn't change the fact that the focus is still on the penis and vaginal canal instead of where it should be when we're speaking of lady-gasms - on the external clitoral area. 

Anyway, that lady-on-top and the circular motion pumping advice that ignores the real, actual needs of lady-gasms is something that is common in progressive contemporary sex advice, and it annoys me, so that's why I'm lowering the Vulva Rating.

The Broken Circle Breakdown gets a 1 1/2 Vulva Rating.

(!)(!

What's Love Got To Do With I? - An SSL Review

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What's Love Got To Do With It?

If you've never see this biopic about Tina Turner, I do suggest it. I hadn't seen it since back in the early 90's around when it came out on video, and Charlie had never seen it, so we just checked it out a few weeks ago. It didn't lose much for me in the 30ish year gap between viewings. However, this time I noticed the lady-gasm part because that's what I do these days. 

So this Tina Turner biopic has a very small depiction of orgasm, and here we are - doing an SSL Review. It's not a top notch SSL review, but the movie itself is quite good. 

The SSL Review (for those that don't know about them)

Only depiction or discussion of female orgasm and/or female masturbation and/or the clit are eligible for SSL Review. Nothing else counts, including plain 'ol sex if it doesn't include anything listed above. I specifically 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 movie Reviews HERE (and as always you can find all the SSL TV Reviews HERE).

 

The Scene in Question: Her First Time

The scene is, unfortunately, a pretty common first time scene from a movie. Tina is quite young, and Ike is a grown man with a wife and a couple kids. They are in missionary position in a bed. She's nervous, but excited ('cause you know, he's a charming established man and she's naïve to the world and sex is fresh and all that). It's not rough. There's a bit of gentleness to it, but he is clear in his intentions and moves forward with decisiveness. 

The couple is covered mostly, so we only see the insinuation of insertion and gentle pumping of the hips. Tina seems largely motionless in her bottom half - as in she is getting pumped into and not working to control the pelvic movement or how their bodies are moving together. There is also not manual (by her or him) or oral stimulation to her genital area either before or during the intercourse. All that to say, the only stimulation that we can sensibly assume she is getting is the stimulation of a penis inside her vaginal canal.

We are not seeing her clitoral glans area getting any love; no hands, no mouths, no sense of grinding of the clit area against his pelvis (given the in-out movement by him and the seemingly lack of pelvic movement from her). Because for real - if a lady ain't taking some action during the intercourse movement to get her clit against him and consistently keep it there for grinding purposes, I dare say that her clit will be left in the cold. At the very best, if she isn't putting the effort in to keep her clit grinding against something during the intercourse, that poor clit might get the rare privilege of getting grazed from time to time but little to no hope of consistent friction or pressure. All that to say, Tina had no sensible stimulation to cause her orgasm in this scene.

And yet, she seemed to orgasm in this scene at the same time Ike did. Ike, of course, is getting the stimulation he needs to come. His organ of sexual pleasure, his dick, is fully encompassed by her vagina. So his orgasm makes sense, but her organ of sexual pleasure, her clitoris, is not, so her orgasm makes no real sense on even a basic anatomical level (Seriously - contrary to popular belief, the vaginal canal is not the organ of female sexual pleasure and stimulating it - i.e. intercourse alone- has never caused a recorded orgasm in all of scientific literature. Seriously.)

I won't say that the scene made a big show of her orgasm. It was subtle moaning that sort of came to a point at the same time he seemed to subtly climax and then subsequently stop the pumping into her. It honestly could be interpreted as simply moaning that followed his lead or a gentle faking, but nothing about that scene or the subsequent scenes made one feel she was dissatisfied with the sex. The overall feeling was that she enjoyed it and that her moaning came to a point during his orgasm which all together gives the feeling that this sex act was as orgasmic for her as it was him.

An Unrealistic, Sadly Normal Scene that Reinforces Ingnorance and Keeps the Sexual Culture Fucked Up for Female Orgasm 

And that, my friends is the problem with this scene and all the many scenes like it. Despite there was no indication in the scene that her clitoral area was getting any stimulation at all, the scene was set up in a way that an orgasm was indicated and we the viewers likely assume a female orgasm happened. It's actually really ridiculous. It's no different than a scene where a guy is getting his balls tickled without the penis ever getting touched. Yet, he seems to orgasm and not only that, but both the characters in the movie and the viewers take it at face value, as if it is completely expected and normal that he came. As if his ball-tickle orgasm wasn't ridiculously unrealistic or some weird fluke played for comedy. 

Point is, our culture understands how males orgasm - basically - and we expect some realism in the depictions (or assume ridiculous depictions are comedic). We as a culture do not have a realistic understanding of how females orgasm and so we blindly accept (and creators blindly create) scenes like this that subtly reinforce the unrealistic assumption that women should be as orgasmic during pure intercourse as males should. 

It might seem like a small thing, but these types of scenes permeate our media and our minds; adversely affecting male and female expectations of sex and pushing the cultural norms of sex towards acts that are orgasmic for males but simply are not for females...but with the added fuckery of people not consciously realizing how very not orgasmic intercourse alone actually is for females. 

It's kind of a mess, and you might think that this 30 year old scene is a sign of old-school depictions of sex, but it's not. at all. It's as common and accepted now as it was then. Those cultural norms and expectations haven't changed much, but I believe changing media to be more realistic could help. And that's why I keep SSL Reviewing this shit.

Vulva Rating

Granted, this is not an unusual scene, but it is a deeply unrealistic one when it comes to the female orgasm. To be fair, I don't think there was any ill intent or trickery from the creators on this. They, like the viewers were just incorrectly educated about lady-gasms, so a scene like this feels realistic even though it absolutely is not. That's a big problem though. So, I give this a 2 out of 5 vulva rating. It's low, but not so low. I'm being nice because there was no ill intention here. Only ignorance - and a wide-spread type of ignorance at that.

(!)(!)

 

Sex and the City S3 Ep 4-6 and S6 Ep 5-8: A Retro SSL Review

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My little segment is back for another round (Here's the others). It's a modified, lazy version of an SSL Review. It's just me transcribing my notes, page by page, on all of the Sex and the City episodes. I watched them all - not necessarily in order - during 2007 and 2008, and I took notes on the depiction/discussion of female orgasm and female masturbation. It was my early attempt at this type of lady-gasm review stuff. Anyway, I never actually created reviews from these notes, but since they exist, I'd like to get them out there on the interwebs before they get burned in a house fire or something...thus this series.

Ramona and my SATC Notes

The fun of this will be that I will transcribe these as word for word as I can while still trying to make it be a sensible read. I'll post a pick of the notes for your reference. I'll do one or more episodes at a time - from the beginning of the notebook to the end. I may add notes for clarification or add my SSL-Review-style comments.

Hopefully the notes I took privately 10 years ago won't make me look like a dumb asshole. I will add them in the TV SSL Review Master List  (of course you are also welcome to check out the Movie SSL Review Master List as well). Here we go.

Sex and the City Season 3 Episodes 4-6, Season 6 Episodes 5-8

Season 3 Ep 4

- naked woman serving drinks

-Carrie kissed girl in spin the bottle at her bi boyfriend's ex gay lover's party where everyone was bi, but she decides it wasn't her thing - the bi stuff.

Season 3 Ep 5

(nothing)

Season 3 Ep 6

-chlamydia - miranda

-Charlotte having sex w/ guy that says dirty things when he comes;

    They are having sex and he says he's scared to come because he'll say it. She says, "oh come on - I'm almost there." She doesn't look like it. It's missionary. He is pumping in and out. -Simultaneous intercourse orgasm insinuated here. 

Season 6 Ep 5

- male naked ass --> Smith in a play

Season 6 Ep 6

(nothing)

Season 6 Ep 7

(nothing)

Season 6 Ep 8

-Sam - "I can't believe you got into a harness w/o even the hope of an orgasm" - about Carrie doing trapeze for story.

- Carrie had bad sex --> he was banging the fuck out of her. "That night me and Jack had sex like we were in high school - meaning he didn't know what the hell he was doing, and I didn't say anything."

-She was telling Stanford about the "jackrabbit" sex and he said, "Oh my god, are straight men still allowed to do that?" (Carrie said) "No they're not. I don't likey."

Modern Day Me's Take

A lot of the things I took notes on for these episodes are not things that I would currently include in an SSL Review. Naked drink serving, lady on lady kissing, chlamydia, a naked male ass - these are all things that do not depict or discuss female orgasm, masturbation, the clit or cunnilingus, so they wouldn't get SSL reviewed. I didn't have specific criteria set up back then. I was just noting down anything sexual, and I was also noting times when women were sexualized and when men were sexualized. I thought I might want to get into discussing the intense disproportion of how and how often the different genders' bodies are depicted as objects of desire. However, in the end, that can of worms was much too big and broad, and I decided to focus on the depictions relating to orgasm. I mean that's what this blog is all about. There's plenty of people out there discussing disproportionate sexualization way better and in way more depth than I could do. 

So, only episode S3E6 and episode S6E8 up there are of particular interest to me. So let me just comment on those quickly. Quickly, because I'm going to go from memory and from my interpretation of what I wrote back then. I'm not going to go back and watch through the scenes in detail. This ain't that kind of review. (I wrote that too soon. It's actually quite long-winded).

Charlotte's about to "orgasm"...I guess

If memory serves me, Charlotte had tons of scenes in this series where she was getting banged in a fairly normal, bangy sort of way and 'came' during it. I mean not as much as Samantha, but maybe 2nd most...maybe. They all did it from time to time, though. Anyway, that's what's happening here. It's a classic scene where a woman is getting a penis pumped in and out of her vagina. There's no additional stimulation from hands or from vibrators or from her pelvis grinding against something - nothing that might allow her clitoral glans area to get any kind of consistent stimulation. Without that chance of stimulation like that, it's pretty ridiculous to assume she was 'almost there.' BECAUSE STIMULATION TO THE INSIDE OF THE VAGINA HAS NEVER BEEN PHYSICALLY OBSERVED TO CAUSE ORGASM IN ALL OF SCIENTIFIC LITERATURE. And that's the truth, even though orgasms simply from getting banged are probably the most commonly depicted types of lady-gasms we see. 

It's bullshit, and if this weren't a show, and if Charlotte weren't just a character, I'd say ol' Charlotte was just 'almost there' to vocalizing and not actually having an orgasm - either because she knew her 'orgasm' would give him the permission to finish up (because on the other hand, moving a penis in and out of a vagina is a GREAT way to make a penis come)...or as is the case, I believe, for many a woman, she is confused about how orgasms are supposed to happen, feels like they should happen during intercourse, and well, kinda fakes them close to an intensity peak of intercourse that is her partner ramping up to and then orgasming. Whether the fake is intentional, or habit, or she kind of believes it, I believe varieties of faking are not uncommon, and faking seems like a much more sensible explanation for what was going on with this no-clit-stimulation bang Charlotte was getting (I mean, ya know, if she were an actual person and not a character written by writers, of course).

Carrie's Bangfest

And that is directly related to Carrie's situation in Season 6 Episode 8. In essence, there was nothing really different at all about what was happening to Charlotte and what was happening to Carrie. They were both getting banged. Neither was getting any kind of clit stimulation, and there would be no reason to believe in either of these scenarios that either woman should sensibly orgasm from what was happening. Yet for some unknown reason we are expected to believe that Charlotte was about to come, but that Carrie had absolutely terrible, fumbling, shit sex - with no orgasm, obviously. 

I would argue the only difference between the two scenes was that the writers decided in one that the story was 'shit sex' and the other that the story was 'normal boyfriend/girlfriend sex.' The first isn't expected to be orgasmic for ladies and the latter is. The reality is that there is such ignorance around how women actually orgasm, that writing lady-gasm into stories is just plain wildly inconsistent and often unrelated to actual physical things happening to them in that story. It's a mess. We wouldn't expect a dude to come from a great session of only ball licking with no penis stimulation. And, we certainly wouldn't depict two different relationship scenarios, both with this type of ball-lick 'sex,' and reasonably expect the audience to blindly accept that one was orgasmic because, I don't know, it was romantical or emotionally connected or whatever it is that makes audiences blindly accept scenes like Charlotte's. It's not just this show, either. It's all too common to depict a woman in a TV series getting pounded against a wall for 2 minutes into an orgasm one episode and the same basic thing happens in the another episode, but it's suddenly shit sex because of her mood or the dude's character or something. I'm not discounting state of mind when it comes to arousal, I'm just pointing out that despite a complete lack of sensible physical stimulation, it's common to depict a woman orgasming just because there is a sense that the sex in the scene should be viewed as 'good' (aka depicted as orgasmic) for her.  

Anyway, Sex and the City was always doing that. Sometimes basic in-out sex was orgasmic and sometimes it wasn't, and there was no rhyme or reason to it. So, if there's an idea out there (and there most definitely is) that female orgasm is unpredictable, deeply contingent on love or mood or the romance of the partner, or that there's not real understanding of how it happens, be sure that these ridiculously inconsistent and physically incorrect depictions play a huge part in that. 

Shit Sex for the Ladies in Shameless: An SSL Review

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Shameless

I'm on the 9th season of Shameless right now. People had been telling me to watch it for a while , and I finally did, and since me and Charlie are champion TV watchers, we've burned through it pretty damn quick. I believe the last season, season 11 is happening now, or will be happening soon, so we're almost through it. 

Shameless has a pretty fair amount of sex in it, and ya know what? Most, close to all really, of the sex is trash. And by trash I mean trash for the female orgasm. 

A different kind of SSL Review

Normally I do SSL Reviews (reviews specifically of depiction or discussion of female orgasm and/or female masturbation and/or the clit or cunnilingus) by getting deep into each and every instance of those things. I'll detail what happened, how realistic it was (could the physical thing happening while that character came realistically be something that could cause a female to come?), and what part it plays in the larger cultural understanding of lady-gasms and female sexuality. I like the idea of having these detailed discussions of every scene in a show or movie because I thinks it will be cool some day for someone to look back on. 

I got kinda bored with Shameless though, and the idea of detailing out every bang against a wall where the lady-character kinda screamed and vocalized like she probably came made my ass tired just thinking about it. Plus, I think the whole of Shameless is maybe the more interesting story here because I think it so closely parallels how sex, lady-gasms, and female sexuality are depicted in the larger culture - which is unrealistically. 

All vagina-banging no clit

The main takeaway here is that there's a lot of sexual activity in Shameless and most of it is a dude banging his penis in and out of a lady without any hands or vibrators stimulating her clit and also without a sense that her vulva/clit area is even in a position during this banging that would allow her to grind it against his body or anything else. Sometimes in these scenes they both kinda vocalize in a way that one might assume means they both came simultaneously. Sometimes the lady specifically is depicted as coming, and sometimes it ends before the orgasm part. Very occasionally it seems like the dude came, but she didn't. No matter what though, there was never - NEVER - a scene in which there is some kind of stimulation to the clit/vulva area along with intercourse. 

I mean this isn't uncommon. Intercourse in movies, TV and porn, pretty much ignores the clitoral glans vulva area whether there is a depiction of female orgasm in the scene or not. That's just the way it is. A penis moving in and out of a vagina is depicted as enough. It's enough, in and of itself, as a sex act - no matter what happens, but it's often depicted as enough to get a female to orgasm. The crazy part is, though, that it's a bunch of made-up bullshit. 

Women need clitoral glans area stimulations to orgasm as much as men need penile stimulation. These very normal depictions are like showing dudes coming from rubbing their asses without any penile stimulation...and no one seeming to care or even notice how bonkers it is. Seriously, no orgasm caused from stimulation inside the vagina has ever been physically recorded in all scientific literature. Seriously. And it's not like people (and tons of scientists) haven't been desperately trying to prove once and for all that women can be banged into an orgasm for almost a century now. They've pushed the idea of the G-spot and the 'inner clit' as possible reasons that women might orgasm from inner vaginal stimualtion, but never, ever has anyone ever shown that this 'other' 'vaginal' orgasm even exists. So, my point is, all these very common and very absurd depictions of women getting banged into orgasmic ecstasy both reflect our culture's deeply incorrect assumptions about how lady-gasms work and also help to keep those ridiculous assumptions alive and well in our psyche. 

So that's the bulk of what's happening sexually on the show, but I did take a few notes on a couple more specific interesting situations, which I will describe below.

Dear, let me not give you an orgasm for de-stressing purposes

I think this is one of my favorites because it's so stupid. The character Fiona is in bed with her boyfriend. She's stressed out, and so he decides to give her a sexual gift. He starts fucking her, as in banging her missionary. He tells her to just breath and let him do all the work. So she's just laying there, and he's just pushing in and out of her (their bodies are under the covers, but it's pretty clear what's happening) like his dick is a golden orgasm wand, and then she comes, and he doesn't. What a gift! 

Listen, if a dude wants to 'gift' you an orgasm and he starts banging you, then just know the only gift you will be getting is a dick in your vagina and the chance to fake an orgasm so he will stop. Clits do lady-gasms make, people...not dicks. 

For real, though, if that scene was not a crystal clear misunderstanding of how female orgasms happen I don't know what is. I mean even the idea of asking her not to movie is extra looney. If, perchance, a lady is able to get her clit enough stimulation to come by rubbing it against the pelvis of the person fucking her vagina, she's sure as shit gonna need to be controlling the fuck out of how her clit is grinding - the pressure, the angle. The idea that a dude could just fuck on a motionless lady to make her come is truly bananas. 

The lone lady-bation

This one I like for the opposite reason. It's probably the very best scene for lady-gasms in the whole series. The character Debbie is at some kind of commune. I'll skip the details of why, but she is in a tent for women and an older woman gives her a big ol' Hitachi Magic wand style vibrator to use to relax her. Debbie basically says she's never masturbated before, and the woman tells her it's liberating and leaves her alone to do it. Debbie looks at it. The scene cuts, and then later we come back to her laying back, clearly satisfied from a good ol' orgasm. 

It's a pretty basic scene, but I think it's the only time in this show that a woman or girl explicitly discusses masturbation (I'm not 100% on that, but if I'm wrong I'm not wrong by much). There's plenty of ladies in this show that are VERY sexual and various elements of their sex lives are discussed and depicted, but they are all with dudes or occasionally other women. 

In contrast, I believe every single male main character in this show has explicitly had their masturbation habits discussed or depicted more than once. One teen male character is even masturbating in the opening credits that play in front of all 9 seasons so far. One of the male characters was just a boy...maybe early middle school and had multiple shows with numerous discussions and depictions of his masturbation habits. 

Cunnilingus. 

It does happen on the show occasionally, but unless it's 2 women, it is not a staple. Often, it's something that happens at the beginning of a sex act - as a little warm up, and the dude moves up to fuck before any orgasm is had. I've never seen a female character on the show say anything about preferring it. It's more likely to hear a female character talk about interest in a big dick. Listen, I like that it's in the show at all, but just as in the culture at large, it tends to be just a quick side dish when it's there at all.

Cunnilingus. With a splash.

There is one exception. The character Lip has a girlfriend that he's been fucking. After a few episodes of this, we see him coming up as if he just finished eating her out. She says something like, 'that was great. I wasn't sure if you'd be good at it. Are the sheets drenched?' Turns out she ejaculates when she comes. She says  to him that's how she comes sometimes, and he asks her why she never came with him before. She tells him that she can only do it when she's really comfortable with a dude. He loves it. She loves it. His friends are impressed when he tells them about it. 

I like the idea that female ejaculation is depicted - and in a good light. I even think the way it happens is not unrealistic. Female ejaculation, like male ejaculation, is a different thing than orgasm. Squirting stuff out is not an orgasm, but for males, unlike for the vast majority of females, the two happen mostly simultaneously. There's not nearly enough data about female ejaculations, but clearly there are some women that can get them from manually stimulating the female prostate that sits around the urethra which sets on the outside of the vaginal wall, low and toward the stomach. That's just an ejaculation though (unless you were able to stimulate the clitoral glans area at the same time, and get the ejaculation and orgasm to pop off at around the same time, though). 

That manual stimulation of the prostate area seems to be the most common way female ejaculation happen, but from anecdotal stories in books and papers I've seen on the subject. It also seems like there are some women, and it must be fairly rare, where their orgasm triggers an ejaculation similar to what happens for men. This is what I would imagine happens for this girlfriend character, and that explanations seems sensible enough to me given that she was getting a clit licking that ended in orgasm (as it sensibly could) along with ejaculation.

So, that's all good, but I do feel like also there was a sense in this whole storyline that ejaculating was not just a cool-ass rare thing that happens to this woman when she's stimulated correctly, but that it's a symbol of her higher sexuality and Lip's exceptional prowess as a lover. That feels a little gross to me especially because female ejaculation is becoming quite popular in porn as a 'higher level of female sexual pleasure.' It's often faked, but it, like orgasming from nothing but a penis banging one's vagina, is just one more thing that women are expected to do in order to be properly sexual even if it's simply not something their body is capable of.

Bang me, but do it in circles...Screw me...I guess?

Okay - this one I find hilarious too...mostly because it feels like the writers got their sex advise from a 1950's marriage manual. This is the character Lip again, but with a different woman. He hooks up with her at a wedding. She's drunk, and they do it in a closet, standing doggy with her bent over a deep freezer or something. She pukes during it, and he's maybe a little less into it than he normally is this type of thing. Otherwise it's just a normal in-out bang. 

So he sees her again and asks her out on a real date, but she's a complete asshole and tells him to basically fuck off because it was the worst sex she's ever had. (Honestly, what is she comparing it to - other sex she had that also didn't involve her clit and also didn't make her come. What the hell was she expecting from the non-clit involving doggy fuck she was getting into?) 

So, she tells him it was "jabby" and he just kept jabbing, and he should have fucked her hard. (So the answer to my questions is that like far too many women, she doesn't orgasm during intercourse, doesn't seem to understand that's a problem or how to fix it -I mean most dudes don't either so we're all fucked aren't we? - and so she desperately wants something, anything else from the sex to make her feel wanted and excited and as if the sex was worth it...and what better way to feel that than to have the dude fuck your brains out so hard that you don't even know what happened? - for real though I think that's some real shit women feel but don't realize they feel). 

Anyway, for some inexplicable reason he later does end up dating her even though she is still just the absolute worst asshole, and they end up having sex again in her car. She says it was a 6 out of 10. It wasn't jabby anymore, but it was thrusty. Then she tells him he has to rotate. 

Rotate. Seriously. 

I imagine the kernel of truth that is behind this is that if a woman is going to ever possibly come during intercourse without actually manually (or vibratorly...I'm gonna say that's a word) stimulating her clit during it, it's going to be because she is able to get into the right position to grind her clit against his pelvis while his dick's still inside her. And let's be honest, he's probably gonna have to stop moving and stay fucking still so that she can keep the kind of constant pressure against him she likes and grind it how she needs it grinded without him fucking up her movements. This situation is not the ideal clit stimulating situation, so it's precarious, and him trying to move in an out is a straight clit killer...in my humble opinion at least. 

Anyway, that's probably the kernel of why people may have gotten the idea that grindy or rotatey is better than poundy, but here's the deal. Either way we're talking about him doing the movements and about how the dick is moving in the vagina...which is realistically not going to make her come no matter how you do it. What she should have said was, "it sucked because my clit was not even an after thought. You were just getting your dick off in my vagina, and what needed to happen was something should have been diddling my clit, so I could actually come." But because the world has such strange, backward, misunderstandings of lady-gasm, this lady character is out here telling this dude character that he needed to rotate more. 

The other reason this is hilarious to me is that I know specifically that this rotating advice was something popular in marriage manuals of the 1950's because I learned that when I was doing research for my movie. And recently Charlie and I got ahold of some old 70's porn - like the stuff that was real high budget and in the era when there was hope that porn and mainstream cinema could be merged in a particular way...and all those dudes were rotating as they pounded. Like, there was a distinct difference in the way you see dudes generally pound in porn today, and we both thought it was hilarious because it seemed like they were going off that 50's advice they snuck-found in their parent's marriage manuals when they were teenagers. The women were still not getting their clits stimulated and still faking, but...at least the dudes were rotating more?

The Vulva Rating

This was not a traditional SSL Review, but I am still going to give it a Vulva Rating, and it's not a good one. 

This show is chock full of lady-gasms depicted as happening from physical activity that in no way could realistically give a woman an orgasm. Although this is not uncommon, it is a net harm to women's ability to learn correctly about their orgasm and how it can be achieved in partner sex, to feel empowered in asking and expecting activities during sex that stimulate their organ of sexual pleasure (their clit), and in educating men about what a sexual act that is orgasmic for females actually looks like. 

It's also chock full of men and boys masturbating, but not women and girls, which makes it seem like lady-bation is rare, weird, and that sexual women are sexual because they fuck a lot and masturbation isn't really part of it. Those ideas are already strongly out there keeping girls and women (more than boys and men) from exploring their own bodies and theri own orgasms. This show just reinforces it, which sucks.  

Overall, there are some moments where there is genuinely realist depictions of female orgasm...like when a woman goes down on another woman until orgasm, but they are few and far between. Shameless is a very sexual show that, not unlike our sexual culture as a whole, is informed about and focused on male sexual pleasure, fantasy, and orgasm but deeply and arrogantly misinformed about female pleasure, fantasy and orgasm. 

I'm giving this series 1 out of 5 vulvas. I'm feeling nice because there are at least a few good moments in there. Also, I still have more of the series to go. I, arrogantly, don't think my opinion will change, but if it does, I'll update here.

(!)

Wanderlust S1Ep1 - The SSL Review

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Wanderlust

This is a British TV series, but I caught it on Netflix. I really liked this show, and bonus, it involves a long-time married couple's sex lives, so there are things to SSL Review. Overall this show was on-point about ladygasms. There are maybe a few imperfections, but definitely better than I would expect from a show in general. The first episode got me excited about its treatment of female sexuality, masturbation, orgasms, etc. and this episode is what I'll be reviewing today. Go check out this show. I recommend it.

An SSL Review (for those that don't know about them)

Only depiction or discussion of female orgasm and/or female masturbation and/or the clit are eligible for SSL Review. Nothing else counts, including plain 'ol sex if it doesn't include anything listed above. I specifically 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).

The First Scene: sorry, but this sex is trash

Joy is standing at the foot of the bed looking at her husband Alan. She has a cane and some kind of brace on her arm. It's clear from this and some intercut scenes that there had been a bike accident in her past. It seems like maybe this is a scheduled first attempt at sex after the accident.

Alan: Ready?

Joy: As I'll ever be.

We then see the two in bed, under the covers missionary style. He's pushing in and out of her slowly.

Joy: sloooowwww (softly to him)

Allen nods and continues the slow fucking, but then Joy scrunches her face up in pain, and Alan stops.

Alan: what?

Joy: No, it's good. (unconvincingly)

Alan: Good?

Joy: You know what I mean

Alan: Surely you want it to be better than good?

Joy: You're telling me pal! (with a laugh)

Alan: Joy, come on. (annoyed and a bit exasperated)

Joy: No, I'm sorry, sorry sorry. I'm just. I'm in a lot of pain and I'm really self conscious.

Alan: That makes 2 of us.

Joy: Well if you just, I mean, more of technique to kinda get in that way. (kind of angling her lower body)

Alan: Sorry? Technique? (pissed)

Joy: You know what I mean. (exasperated, but softening)

Alan: Nooo. No, I'm not sure I do, actually. I'm not the one with the problem, Joy. So don't try and needle

Joy: I'm not trying...

Alan: away at my craft

Joy: (smiles - trying to lighten the moment) ...Your craft?..I'm sorry skilled woodsman. You're right. We really need to work on it. (laughs some more)

Alan: You know what? instead of making jokes...

Joy: No -alright, all right (becoming more serious and trying to pacify the situation).

Alan: ...I'd like to finish, please. (Gets off her) I think you've been using all this as an excuse.

Joy: What? (incredibly offended)

Alan: And I think you have been for months. I don't think you want to have sex with me, Joy.

Cuts to alarm ringing in the morning. 

Alan gets up and goes to shower. Joy opens her eyes and reaches down under the covers, obviously masturbating. Her son suddenly opens the door and asks where his shoes are. As one might expect, She stops abruptly. They talk for a second. He's maybe a little weirded out from the what he maybe might have kinda thought he walked into. Then he leaves and the scene ends.

The Second Scene: once or twice a week

Tom, Joy's son, is walking to school with Michelle, who seems to be a close friend.

Tom: Here's a question. How often do you masturbate?

Michelle: Nice.

Tom: I'm interested.

Michelle: Why?

Tom shrugs.

Michelle: Once or twice a week

Tom: You're kidding. I'm at once or twice a day at this point.

Michelle: Well, you're nothing if not thorough

Tom: I think I walked in on my mom having a wank.

Michelle: Shit. I think that means the world has to pretty much explode now.

Tom: I'm just saying...

Michelle: She's allowed to masturbate.

Tom: But I thought old people were supposed to go off sex. It's like Darwin and shit.

Michelle: Your mum isn't that old.

Tom: She's pretty old.

The Third Scene: wanking in office bathroom stalls

So turns out Alan works at a school, and he's talking with Claire, his friend and coworker, who had just that morning walked into an office and found another male coworker with his pants down having an early morning jerk-off session.

They are discussing it and Claire says, "You know. The crazy think is, I don't know why he doesn't just use the disabled toilet like the rest of us."

The SSL Assessment

All the Lady-bation

So, I think the first and most obvious observation is a clear overall insinuation from these 3 scenes that women do in fact masturbate. All the women we're introduced to, all different ages - Joy, Michelle and Claire - we watch them admit through words or actions that they wank (if we're going with the British theme here), and without any real shame depicted in association. I mean, granted Joy's son walked in on her and stopped her cold, but that's just not wanting to rub off in front of your son -  not really a show of shame. Otherwise, from the look on her face, she had been clearly enjoying the masturbation. 

The ladybation admission is important because there is still a stronger, harsher stigma on female masturbation. Masturbation itself doesn't exactly have a stellar rep for anyone, but for boys and men, it is so seen in our media, and it's often depicted as an inevitable part of manhood and maleness. This is not true for the ladies, which is really sad because we ladies need to know that masturbation is a valid part of femaleness, that it's something other women do and that it's not bad or strange. We really, really, really, need to know this specifically because masturbation is a lady's best bet at orgasm in this sexual culture. Of course, masturbation for anyone is the best way to learn what one likes and how to get to orgasm. I mean, of course we should all be our own first partner. 

It's just that for females there is a double whammy of masturbation. First, it's less normalized/seen/accepted which translates to less women doing it, particularly at pre-sexually active ages. Second, masturbation for females is even more important for learning to orgasm than for males because the odds of a lady just stumbling into an orgasm blindly during partnered sex, without having previously taught herself how to get there, ain't great - ain't great at all. I mean, if a boy has basic ol' hetero sex before he ever masturbates, all the correct stimulation should still be there to get him to orgasm. All he or his partner needs to know is that the penis moves in and out of the vagina. They get that right, and that's great orgasm stimulation on the penis. A girl in that same situation, however, does not get the stimulation on her organ of sexual pleasure, the clitoral glans. All she gets in this scenario is stimulation on her vaginal walls, and contrary to popular belief, an orgasm caused by just that has never ever been physically recorded in all of scientific literature - and that's with over half a decade of research trying to prove females can come merely from a penis moving in their vagina. Unfortunately, getting banged into an orgasm simply doesn't seem to a real thing (seriously - like for real, for real). 

So not only do ladies live in an environment that is less conducive for masturbation, but they also have sexual interactions that are less conducive for orgasm...so the ladies get fucked twice, and the boys get a leg up twice. It's not an even playing field, so anything that helps lady-bation feel more possible and normal will up the odds a lady will masturbate, upping odds that she will have orgasmed at all, which should then up the odds she will know how she might orgasm again - possibly even in a partnered situation (spoiler alert: how she might orgasm again in a partnered situation is just by doing the things that made her orgasm alone...but incorporating another person into it).

Sex vs. masturbation: orgasm matters

Okay the other thing I want to point out relates to that first scene. I mean, the high level takeaway from it is that Joy, for whatever reason, wasn't into the sex with her husband, but she was into masturbating. 

The question is why? There's more later in this show that speaks to this, but just from what we saw, one might think that, yeah, she doesn't want to have sex with him, just like he said. One might think that maybe she's being a bitch because she's depriving her husband of the sexual interaction he really desires, but not because she's not into it, but because she's not into it with him...since she does it on her own.

Okay, maybe...but actually no. The only way one could really see it that way is if one were under the incredibly incorrect assumption that him simply moving his cock inside her was in any way equivalent to her masturbating, and they are not. I could forgive someone for seeing it that way because as a culture, we do hold strongly to a stupid and unsupported idea that intercourse is the same type of  orgasmic event for the penis person as it is for the vagina person. It's patently not. It's a sex act that does all the right stuff for getting the penis off and very little if anything for getting the clit off. 

So, let's just put this in a clearer view. A woman that has been injured and has pain, is opening her legs so that her partner can masturbate his penis inside her vagina to orgasm. She is not getting orgasmic stimulation in this situation and she is feeling actual pain. She is having a shit time and he's getting the possibility for orgasm. And that mother fucker gets mad at her? for not being excited enough? for putting her 2 cents in for how it could be more enjoyable? For allowing him to rub his penis inside her even though it's painful? Fuck that guys's face to the moon. He can fuck right off. And, yet she feels bad. When he gets mad, she tries to comfort him and tell him it's fine. I mean really. 

Take this exchange:

Alan: Surely you want it to be better than good?

Joy: You're telling me pal! (with a laugh)

Alan: Joy, come on. (annoyed and a bit exasperated)

Joy: No, I'm sorry, sorry sorry. I'm just. I'm in a lot of pain and I'm really self conscious.

Alan: That makes 2 of us. 

Really Alan? That makes 2 of you? You're both actually in pain, and you're both getting your organ of sexual pleasure ignored because you have a hole that your partner wants to wank into? Nah. Alan, if you want to see something close to what it's actually like to be in the same boat as Joy, then you need to be getting a dildo up your inexperienced ass (no reach-around included) while you vibrate your partner's clit. Then take time and energy to placate her when she gets offended and mad after asking her to be patient with you, telling her an angle you'd prefer, and expressing your pain. Do all that knowing from experience that she's on the road to orgasm and you are not.

I have more to say, but before I move on, I want to dig into the pain part here a touch more.  Joy was doing this even though she was in actual pain. What fucking sense does it make to pursue orgasm while the thing happening that's supposed to cause you orgasm is instead causing you pain? (I swear ya'll better not @ me about S&M stuff). Why would she even try to keep going? I mean, the real deal is she wasn't doing it for an orgasm. She could jerk off if she wanted that. She was doing it to be nice to Alan; to allow him her body in his pursuit of orgasm. Even though we as a society act like we think a basic fuck is a mutually orgasmic experience, I think deep inside we all also know it's not. That's why women push through all kinds of pain during intercourse; from shitty first times to being too dry to getting your cervix excruciatingly banged. We know it's not really about us. It's about that dick getting off, and the person attached to the dick also knows it. It's a secret unspoken agreement that we don't even want to think about. And when Alan gets mad, it's not just about her 'making up the pain.' It's also about her unwillingness to endure whatever pain or bother to get him off inside her, something one can only assume he had been previously accustomed to (and I am aware they are character, not real people). 

Too many sex acts, too little orgasms

But moving on, I really like this Joy / Alan scene because it feels super rich and poignant to me. It hits at the heart of the female experience of sex, particularly in a long-term relationship. The simple, physical truth is that basic intercourse is great for male orgasm and absolute shit for female orgasm. So, please just imagine how many sex acts involve a man coming and a woman not coming. That's a hard pill to swallow, but stick with me here, because now imagine a wife avoiding sex or trying to speak up about other things she'd rather do, or different ways to have sex. It can seem incredibly odd if not completely fucked up of her to do that if one assumes (and we all do to some extent ) that intercourse for her is as exciting and arousing and orgasmic as it is for the person ramming their penis in her vagina. Why would she ever want to avoid that pleasure? Is she fucking crazy, or physically cold and dead inside, or mean and withholding, or dumb? I mean, that's another level in why Alan got pissy and why she got all sorry about it...because her actions don't feel sensible.

But. They. Are. So. So. So. Sensible. It makes complete sense. Ya wanna know why she wasn't into fucking her husband but was into masturbating the next morning. Because she wanted a goddamn orgasm. Given how deep our incorrect assumptions about intercourse are, she, like many a woman out there, may not be able to verbalize that, but that's the real deal. If we open our eyes and see clearly how often women are in sexual situations where they are expected to find orgasmic pleasure, but no way sensibly could attain that orgasmic pleasure given the physical nature of the sex, then so many of women's ambivalent or negative reactions to partnered sexuality make All. The. Sense. In turn, men's negative reactions to women's ambivalent or negative reactions can be seenvas desperately selfish.

Anyway, that's what stuck out to me about that scene. Joy had an actual injury with pain, maybe, but even if she didn't, that interaction was a version of a category of interactions that many a female has had with their long-term male partner. And the roots of those interaction are in the multitude of scars and twists and misunderstanding brought about by thinking ladies can get banged into an orgasm.

Vulva Rating

Clearly, my top SSL highlight in this episode is that it helps in normalizing lady-bation in the culture - and in ladies of a variety of ages. That is well received at this blog, and is helpful to the cause of Orgasm Equality.

I also love the depiction of the couple's sexual interaction because there is some rare intimate long-term couple realism that I appreciate. Although I break this scene down above in a way that probably most viewers would not have any reason to consider, I think there is still some value in an uncritical viewing.  For instance, I think it is certainly played in a way that the husband's reactions, particularly his resistance to adjustment, are not simply set before us without any culpability. 

Overall, we see the words that are said. We see the reactions they elicit, and the viewer takes what they will. A woman might see herself in Joy masturbating after shit sex. She might also see herself in Joy's complete offense at Alan blaming her for not pushing through painful sex. She may also see a woman that she deems negative and unaccommodating to a well-meaning husband. The men watching may also identify in different ways with the couple in this scene. It's hard to know exactly how this scene fits into our communal understanding of ladygasms and female sexuality; how it might change or solidify a person's assumptions and opinions. However, I give it props for just existing, because I think the responsible thread in this scene, despite what any individual may take from it, is that there is realism in how these people act and react in this very intimate situation. 

As for me, I see a depiction of a woman that may not be so excited about getting fucked, but is excited about making herself come...and that's cool enough, my friends.

This gets 4 out of 5 vulvas

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