Inherent Vice - The SSL Review

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Inherent Vice

I'm a fan of this directors movie's, PT Anderson. I'll watch anything he turns out. Punch Drunk Love, There Will be Blood and The Master, are probably my faves, and this one is probably my least fave. I saw Inherent Vice in the theater when it came out in 2014ish, and I wasn't too excited about it (although, I do think Joaquin Phoenix kills it within this role). I actually kept getting it mixed up in my head with a similarly themed movie, The Nice Guys , which came out about a year later. Anyway, we revisited it again a couple nights ago, and it still feels generally the same except that I discovered something bothersome to me in a sex scene that is also, lucky us, SSL Reviewable, and thus here we are. There's actually 2 SSL Reviewable scenes. The first is super simple and the 2nd is the one in question.  

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).

Pussy Eater's Special - $14.95 - the first SSL Reviewable moment

Joaquin's character Doc, a 70's P.I., steps inside a trailer, home of a clearly sex-friendly massage parlor, "Chick Planet." Jade, the lady behind the counter, offers him up the Pussy-Eater's special for  $14.95. I'm not sure how to take the price. It seems low, right? But also it's maybe one of the more preferred menu items for a lady sex worker - to have her pussy ate out? On the other hand, dudes could be real gross and terrible at it, and it might end up some kind of terrible chafing on the pussy lips situation, and so maybe it's one of the worst menu items. It was also the 70's. I don't know. It just seems terribly inexpensive. 

Anyway, he doesn't partake because he's there for a reason - to ask if she's seen a certain man recently. She kinda avoids the question and calls her co-worker Bambi out, and they immediately drop to the ground behind the counter, seemingly with some pussy eating.  It was a distraction, turns out, and Doc gets got. 

This is SSL Reviewable simply because of cunnilingus. There's no orgasm or anything, just mention and insinuated behind-the-desk pussy eating. I'm always a fan of any mention of it simply because it's a sensibly realistic way a woman could get to orgasm during a sex act. There's also far too much dick sucking (both discussed and physically insinuated) in mainstream media, so just for fairness and equity, any mention of eating out gets a thumbs up from me (the oral sex gap and all). Also, I just kinda liked that the sex menu item offered up in this was one that focuses on the lady's organ of sexual pleasure and not the dude's. For originality sake alone, it's nice to see that in a movie, but also it's good for business - that business being making people think about cunnilingus as an integral, stand-alone sex act as much as people think of dick-sucking as such.

Fuck me like I'm nothing, and other things women love! - the 2nd SSL Reviewable moment

It's funny how I'll watch something that I saw years ago, but see things with completely new eyes. You know, like re-watching the original Ghostbusters and seeing how incredibly rapey it is. I didn't notice that at all the times I'd seen it before. 

This has a scene that didn't strike me when I saw it a mere 8 years ago either. The fact that just before this re-watch I had just finished reading a long Rolling Stone article about the many abuse accusations against Marilyn Manson, probably helped highlight the issue.

My gripe goes a little something like this. Can we stop depicting fictional women that truly get off on being treated like shit during sex? Women who love to be used up in aggressive and fucked up ways by powerful men? Can we stop depicting women that act as if the mere power a man gives off is enough to make her come? 

Outside of all the harmful, abusive tendencies this reinforces in an already abusive-leaning sexual culture of how masculinity manifests in sexual situations, I also call a loud bullshit on the pleasure part of this scenario. It's completely ridiculous to assume a person would physically orgasm from things that do not include the stimulation of their organ of sexual pleasure. However, we do that all the time with women in a way we don't for men. Even progressive contemporary sexperts will say crazy ass shit about women coming from things like bites on the neck, giving blow-jobs, a spank on the ass and other nonsensicalness. Here's the deal. Coming from a spanking on the ass or bite on the nipple is bullshit. And for the love of god, coming from the intensity of a man's powerful presence is bullshit. And contrary to popular belief, coming from intercourse alone (the vagina is not the organ of sexual pleasure - the clit is - and ya ain't stimulating it by banging a penis in the hole), is bullshit. The clitoral glans area people. The clitoral glans area.

Now, if you're mad at me for 'yucking somone else's yum' as the sexperts like to say these days, sorry not sorry. We've had far too much of these getting-off on aggression depictions out there. It ain't like you can't find it if you want it. And if someone wants to depict a submissive sexual kink, then do it more responsibly. We don't need any more of these blanket, powerful-aggessive-men-that-take-what-they-want-get-women-off-best depictions. It irresponsibly reinforces an already problematic understanding of  power in sexual situation. Not to mention it reinforces stupid, unverified, unrealistic ideas about women being able to get off from non-physical or non clitoral means.

Here's the scene I pulled from the script. 

SHASTA 

Mickey... Mickey could have taught all you swinging beach bums a thing or two. He was just so powerful. Sometimes he could almost make you feel invisible. Fast, brutal, not what you'd call a considerate lover, an animal, actually, but Sloane adored that about him, and Luz -- you could tell, we all did. It's so nice to be made to feel invisible that way sometimes... 

DOC 

Yeah. And guys love to hear this shit like this. 

SHASTA 

He'd bring me to lunch in Beverly Hills, one big hand all the way around my bare arm, steering me blind down out of those bright streets into some space where it was dark and cool and you couldn't smell any food, only alcohol -- they'd all be drinking, tables full of them, in a room that could have been any size, and they all knew Mickey, they wanted, some of them, to be Mickey... He might as well have been bringing me in on a leash. He kept me in those micro minidresses, never allowed me to wear anything underneath... just offering me to whoever wanted to stare. Or grab. Or sometimes he'd fix me up with his friends. And I'd have to do whatever they wanted... 

DOC 

Why are you telling me all this? 

She drapes herself over him and plays with her pussy. 

SHASTA 

Oh, I'm sorry, Doc. Do you want me to stop? If my girlfriend had run away to be the bought-and-sold whore of some scumbag developer? I'd just be so angry I don't know what I'd do. Well, no, I'm even lying about that, I know what I'd do. If I had the faithless little bitch over my lap like this 

-- And they're fucking. 

CUT TO:

It moves onto another scene after this. I'll fill in a little that isn't obvious from the script. When she drapes herself over Doc, he is sitting in the middle of a couch, and she lays face down across the couch with her butt right on his lap. From the angle, it isn't obvious that she's touching her pussy. I'm not sure that actually happens in the final movie version. Also, in the movie, "--And they're fucking" actually plays out with Doc spanking Shasta's ass really hard. He then aggressively rolls on top of her, and immediately fucks her hard and fast from behind to a quick completion. 

Now, does she orgasm during this? I say the insinuation is there. She doesn't do the moaning vocalizations - which are normally the bullshit-fakey, but nevertheless common way lady-gasms are depicted, but she is clearly finding pleasure in it. Her eyes kinda roll back and there's gentle panting, and I think it's enough to insinuate to your average viewer that she orgasmed simultaneously with him - or at least got what she wanted out of it. Either way, a woman depicted as being pleased at the end of sex might as well be a depiction of orgasm because lady-gasm and general pleasure or satisfaction are so conflated it's hard to even discern what's intended in depictions and discussions of the topic. 

So all that to say, this scene was basically a woman describing, in more than a few ways, the kind of abuse that women in the Marilyn Manson case were alleging as abuse, but in this case, she was describing it as the height of pleasure. I also should add, that even though Doc gives a sarcastic, "Yeah. And guys love to hear this shit like this," as if he's above it, he, in the end proves that they do in fact love it. He basically can't stand the hotness of it anymore and simulates punish-raping her - which she loves. So...lesson learned - wanting to be aggressively sexually used is a great way to turn a guy on and aggressively using a bitch will get her off. Got it.

Taking exactly what you want sexually from a woman, using her for your own pleasure with no interest in hers, is not only powerful and sexy, but it's actually the best way to get a woman off. - That's the big takeaway here, and it's not just a one-off, essential character-building  quirkiness in a work of fiction. It's bigger than that. It's the most basic of assumptions that looms over all of our sexual culture. So, it's not cute or edgy. It's basic and dark. If you start looking, you'll find it all over the place, and continuing to give that message a fun voice is irresponsible.

Vulva Rating

Although I do like the fun addition of pussy-eating as the main menu item at a massage parlor, I did not like the irresponsible sex scene; reinforcing some of the darkest and sadly basic assumptions about what women want and how men should act in a sexual encounter. Also, she 'came' from nothing more than 10 seconds of getting banged from behind, which is unrealistic bullshit because lady-gasms needs clit stimulation and that ain't realistically how to get it. 

I'm feeling nice because of the $14.95 Pussy eating, so this will get 1 vulva out of 5.

(!)

How The Stanford Letter Reminds Us Ignorance Of Female Orgasm Easily Becomes Lack Of Sexual Empathy For Women

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A beautiful letter about the harm of sexual assault and rape culture
I noticed a few postings about a Buzzfeed article that piqued my interest, and so I read it. It featured a letter written by a woman who was sexually assaulted while unconscious on the Stanford campus. She read it in the court room, largely directly to the man who assaulted her, after he had been convicted of the crime and then sentenced to only 6 months with probation. This happened very recently, and her letter was moving and thoughtful, and I highly suggest you go read it. It's not short, but it's worth it.

The man was a Stanford freshman with a promising swimming future, and that element of his life seemed to play heavily in the surprisingly gentle sentencing. She was a grad student and accompanying her younger sister to a frat party that night. She ended up black-out drunk, unresponsive behind a dumpster with this dude on top of her. Luckily this situation was interrupted when two Swedish students on bikes saw what was happening, chased the dude down after he ran, and called the police. He was also drunk that night, clearly not as drunk as her, but even though he was caught in the act, he never really admitted to doing anything worse than getting too drunk and to the "promiscuity" that naturally happens when you're drunk.

That seems to be what really saddened the writer of this letter. This dude never really acknowledged what he did, and that part, plus the leniency of his sentence, seems to make it clear how not so seriously our culture takes sexual assault. She speaks eloquently about how fucked up the whole situation was from his actions that night, right through the trial and sentencing (although she had only lovely things to say about the police and hospital staff that were with her in the direct aftermath).

How female orgasm is involved
I won't do her words justice, so again, read it. There is a lot to chew on in what she wrote. There is all kinds of important discussion to be had around topics like 'rape culture,' the experience of victimization, our legal system and so much more. I'm sure many people out there are tackling those things beautifully. Me, I like to keep my writing here focused on the female orgasm - how it is culturally (mis)understood, and how its misunderstanding affects us, and strangely enough female orgasm does creep into this, in, I think, a poignant way. So, this is just one small consideration within a very complicated and serious situation, but I think it's worth mulling over a bit.

So, as I was reading the letter, this part caught my attention:

On top of all this, he claimed that I orgasmed after one minute of digital penetration. The nurse said there had been abrasions, lacerations, and dirt in my genitalia. Was that before or after I came? 

Why cultural ignorance about lady-gasms matters here
Here's the thing. That she would orgasm in this situation is ridiculous, and not just because she was being touched against her will and being hurt in the process. There is a level of common sense and basic physiologic knowledge of female arousal and orgasm that is missing here, and I think that ignorance causes more harm that we realize.

Now I fully understand that arousal is complicated and that not everything is exactly as it's supposed to be or how we understand it in the scientific literature, so I guess in a larger view anything could happen I guess. However, the orgasm claim from the defendant and his lawyer was very likely a bunch of BS used to put out a sense that there was consent and that she was actually enjoying herself (because since she had no memory of it, they were able to define the narrative). I honestly don't think the defendant and his lawyer would have even thought to create a story like this if the person were a male, because, frankly, it just wouldn't be as buyable. It would seem too desperate and outrageous. I mean it looks that way as is, but sadly not desperate or outrageous enough for the lawyer to think...'hmmm, we shouldn't say that.' I think there is a special problem with cultural ignorance about physical realities of female orgasm that we don't have for male orgasm. I'll show you what I mean with a little exercise.

What if it were a male in the situation instead?
Imagine if the victim in the case were a male - let's call him Ray. Imagine Ray was very, very drunk at the time of the incident. Now imagine the defendant saying that after fingering Ray's anus for a literal minute, Ray orgasmed. I think most people would
1. cringe at having someone finger their unconscious butthole and
2. call bullshit -just from instinct and common knowledge - on Ray orgasming.

I really don't think we have that same instinct about female orgasm, which is unfortunate because what really is the difference between these two scenarios on a physiological kind of level? Let us count the similarities.

Male vs. Female incident - the similarities

• Stimulation inside the vagina has never been shown in scientific literature to elicit orgasm (Seriously. I don't want to go deep into this now, but check HERE and HERE for more explanation) and neither has stimulation inside the male anus (*I'm actually much less sure of the anus one because I don't study that much, but I feel pretty certain....although less certain than the vagina statement). 
• Stimulation inside the male anus and also inside the vagina could both stimulate the prostate/g-spot and illicit ejaculation, but that seems to be a minority experience for both men and women, and it's never been shown to cause orgasm. 
• There is anecdotal evidence for both vaginally stimulated orgasms and male anally stimulated orgasm, but again neither have been physically verified in scientific literature even after over 50 years of research into it..and even the anecdotal evidence would put both these as a minority experience (I have no data on the anal, but women claim vaginally stimulated orgasms on surveys at around 20-30%, although I would argue it's much less) 
• There are tons of people who find fingers in their vaginas or butts very pleasurable...In fact male butt play is way on the rise!
• This one is my favorite and should be the most obvious. Neither situation involved stimulation of the organ of sexual pleasure - the penis and/or clitoral glans. Seriously, the clit should be as synonymous with orgasm as the penis is.  
• In both situations the person being fingered was really drunk, and frankly the more drunk a person is (and this is absolutely as true for females as it is for males), the less blood flow they get to their genitals (which causes erection in men and lubrication of the vagina in women - and yes males and females will each have a similar amount of extra blood flow down there during sexual arousal - men's is just easier to notice), the less their body will be able to physically arouse (even if they are mentally aroused), which means they will be less likely to orgasm because orgasm in all people is the release of physical sexual arousal through a series of rhythmic pelvic muscle contractions. If there is no physical arousal, then there can be no orgasm because there is no physical arousal to release...So in both situations, the level of drunkness in itself makes an orgasm unlikely.
• In both situations, the hole that is being fingered is probably not very lubricated, so it should bring to mind, well, pain, not pleasure. I mean, the anus doesn't really make it's own lube so there's that, and the vagina sure as hell doesn't make much, if any, lube when you're black-out drunk (even if the woman was mentally aroused). So OW! on both accounts. 

Lack of knowledge = Lack of empathy
Point is, I think this lack of basic understanding about physical female arousal and orgasm makes us all less empathetic to females and sex than it does to males and sex. I think that believing women can orgasm through ways that are super unlikely (if even possible at all) like stimulation to only the vagina, anus, nipples or through fantasy alone, and the sense that the female orgasm is somehow beyond physical limitations and extremely unpredictable is quite harmful. It makes us all a little more open to seeing sexual situations for women that are actually quite unarousing and painful, as possibly more arousing and pleasurable than they sensibly could be.

This woman had abrasions and lacerations in her genitalia. If a man came out of an incident with abrasions and lacerations on his penis, would a court still be going about things as if it were sexual? It would be some masochistic shit indeed. For women, though, it seems pain and genital injury is assumed par for the course. Take the 1st time of sexual intercourse, for instance. It's assumed women will have pain, even though there is no physiological reason that this is inevitable. Baring any injury or illness, it merely means there is not enough arousal, lubrication and comfort, but ladies are expected to power through. If intercourse was hurting a man's penis, I guarantee the intercourse would stop. And what did the defense lawyer say about the significance of this woman's abrasions? (from the woman's letter about the defense lawyer's arguments)

To say, yes her nurse confirmed there was redness and abrasions inside her, significant trauma to her genitalia, but that’s what happens when you finger someone, and he’s already admitted to that.

The lawyer didn't say that injury to the genitalia and inside the vagina during fingering is normal because he was assuming people would completely disagree. He said it because he knew it would kinda ring true - because to some extent we expect there to be injury to women when they have sex.

I think this kind of ignorant blind eye to female sexual pain and boredom, and the easy way we can allow ourselves to transfer those types of experiences into narratives of possible pleasure and orgasm is beautifully paralleled in oh-so-many erotica stories and porn. How often in those stories do we find a woman initially not wanting the sexual aggression and even being initially hurt my his/their penetration and body manipulation, but ending up coming sooooo hard, soooo many times? There's clearly a whole element of women-actually-like-rape narrative in erotica like that and in stories like the one the defendant above told, and it is something people who talk about rape culture talk about often.

However, I think it is often overlooked that at the center of that narrative is a willingness and a cultural permission to believe women can realistically have orgasms from things that just straight up would never cause orgasms in a woman; things that are utterly unarousing, things that ignore her organ of sexual pleasure, things that are painful, and things that simply don't take a realistic and accurate understanding of the body into account...things we don't associate so easily with male pleasure and orgasm.

So, although there are lots of problematic things that should be considered about our culture after reading this woman's letter, I would like us not to forget that the defendant in this case and his lawyer thought it sensible enough to try and insinuate this woman's consent and enjoyment of the encounter by claiming she orgasmed from 1 whole minute of digital penetration while she was black-out drunk...and they thought it was sensible enough to say, because, well, in this world it kinda is -and there is a big problem in that.