Match - The SSL Review

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Match - The Movie

So, I wouldn't blame you if you hadn't seen this move. It was pretty independent and low budget, and it's based on a play, so it's one of those movies that were obviously a play because it has like 2 sets and a lot of dialogue. 

All that said, I was into it. And, it's not just that it stars Jean-Luc Picard of the USS Enterprise, who I've had a heavy crush on since the 80's when I started watching him and Data and all the fab starship crew. It helped, obviously, but I actually think Patrick Stewart usually for real brings it to a role. Anyway, I liked the movie, and he said one thing in it that makes it SSL Reviewable. It's super simple and barely SSL Reviewable, but I just wanted to write about my Jean-Luc saying something I would like to think he actually says in real life. Also, somewhat recently Patrick Stewart married a brunette white lady, who is not famous and my age, so I feel like I missed out on my true path somehow. 

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).

 

Eat ME Out, Captain

So, I won't give away anything about the plot of the movie, because I don't want to spoil anything. It's that kind of movie. What I can tell you is the my Jean-Luc plays Tobi, a high-end ballet teacher at Julliard that back in the day used to live the good dancer life. He tells some stories of the old days, and in one he says:

Tobi Powell: God, I used to love to perform cunnilingus. Sorry, too much information. 

Lisa Davis: Uh... no. 

Tobi Powell: I was actually quite good at it. A little like the slip stitch knitting that I would later take up, over and under... mark thumb placement in the gap between needles, [both laughing a little] 

Tobi Powell: break yarn, thread tail, draw up, fasten off...I've offended you. 

Lisa Davis: No, uh... just catches me a bit off guard. 

Tobi Powell: Well, most good cunnilingus conversations do.

I mean, I'm gonna give this a good vulva rating - not the very best, but good. It wasn't like anything super amazing was said here. It wasn't like there was an incredibly progressive discussion about how banging a vagina was not a good or even slightly sensible way to get a lady-gasm. It was just a dude talking about how he enjoys eating out pussy, but ya know what? We could use more of that, so I will celebrate it a little. I do believe each year the idea that pussies (or if you want to call them by their proper name, Vulvas) should be eaten as much as dicks are sucked, grows the tiniest bit, but we still have a long, long way to go. The Oral Sex Gap is sadly very much still alive and well, and certainly a no small part in the overall Orgasm Equality Gap. 

The more we hear people in the media say they like cunnilingus; the more we hear women saying they masturbate; the more we see the clit being rubbed out or a vibe used on the vulva during a fuck; the more we hear a woman say she expects her clit to be as involved in the sex act as much as the penis is, the more normalized all those things will be, and that's a big part of what's needed if we ever want lady-gasms to be as prominent in sex as dude-gasms. 

So, thank you Jean-Luc. I'm going to masturbate tonight to you cunnilingussing me. 4 out of 5 vulvas from me.

(!)(!)(!)(!)

Rejuvenation of the Orgasm Equality Spirit, My People

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Hello out there. As you are aware, and as I point out in pretty much all of my recent posts, my activity on this blog has slowed the last year or so. This is not a lack of interest. It's more a prioritization to accommodate my life in its current form. 

So, I am not here with some sweet (they are sweet to me at least) scientific journal article summaries, even though I would love to be working on one at the moment. There are plenty to read HERE, though, if you are jonesing for one. 

This is also not not an SSL Review  - otherwise known as in depth review of a depiction or discussion of the female orgasm, the clit, lady-bation, or cunnilingus. Although, to be sure, there's a shit ton of past reviews for both TV and Movies if you need some of that in your life right now. Spoiler alert: Slums of Beverly Hills and Diary of a Teenage Girl are in the top tier of 5 vulva rated movies (!)(!)(!)(!)(!), but The 40 Year Old Virgin and The Overnight are some that have a big fat zero vulva rating. :( ...And if you want to know what's currently sandwiching the list, 20th Century Women got the only coveted 5 1/2 vulva rating, while strangely enough, Hysteria, a movie about the invention of the vibrator is trailing the pack with the "-1 vulva rating" - something I made up special due to my utter disappointment in what it could have been vs. what it was. 

This post is not those things. What it is, is me waking up just feeling particularly excited about this work and wanting to post about it. I'm always kind of excited about his. It's truly something I want to leave in this world when I'm gone, but you know, within that there are frustrating times and disappointing times as well as exciting times and vibrant times. I just happened to have a little touch of excitement last night at a sweet sculptural art opening. I talked with a fab artist and cool lady (who has introduced me into a group of fab women and I am incredibly grateful to her for that) along with some other super cool people there, and I was able to engage about this work. 

I'll be honest, talking about my work has been a journey and a struggle full of learning and eye-opening responses. I think I've honed how I speak of it better over the years, but it's still a thing that makes me a little anxious for a variety of reasons - especially to new people. I'm truly a natural bull-shitter. I feel pretty comfortable talking with most people about life and feelings and dumb shit. However, speaking about things I have a real stake in, things that I really want to verbalize correctly is a whole different matter and something I do not naturally do well. All that to say, I really felt good talking to these people, and I really loved their engagement and their thoughts, and it was just an overall good experience that, I guess, upped my overall blogging motivation. 

You know, I think moving to a different city 4 years ago changed my culture around this work and although I hadn't thought of it this way before, maybe was really demotivating. I still had the bad-ass women on line that are in this fight too. They have continued to be great, and I even met a super amazing new one while I've been here too. However, I suddenly didn't have a lot of interactions with people other than workmates, and new co-workers are not the people you want to just start talking about lady-gasms to. Overall it was a struggle to find new friends, and then the pandemic happened, and I just recently started feeling like I'm finding a culture and a social life here, and so last night was nice and rejuvenating, and I'm grateful to those people I was with.

That's what I wanted to say. Be well all my friends out there!

For your extra enjoyment, here are some stills from the OG movie to this blog, Science, Sex and the Ladies.

What I Might Change About 'Science, Sex, and the Ladies' (the movie) Now All These Years Later

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Hello my lady-gasm activist friends. As is the theme for my blogging the last few years, I'm more behind than I would like to be. There are tons of articles on everything from the Female Sexual Dysfunction questionnaire that is most commonly used in studies as well as therapy to assess a woman's, ya know sexual dysfunction to female ejaculation related stuff to post gender confirmation surgery functioning to old strange studies to just about everything - anyway, there are tons of those studies I want to summarize (and dish on if need be) in the ol' A Journal Article I Read series (which are all HERE). There's also tons of TV and movie depictions of lady-gasms or lady-gasm talk, or clits or cunnilingus that I need to review (all the TV ones are HERE and the movie ones are HERE), but to be honest, these are a little lower on my priority list, I'm more vibing with the journal articles right now, but I get the urge to review some shit orgasm depictions from time to time too. All that to say I don't have anything super big, but I wanted to post something, and it just happened that something sparked my need to write here a little.

Last night me and Charlie re-watched Science Sex and the Ladies with a good friend last night, and it was fun, but I was thinking about some things. First, I still like it. I think it's weird and what-the-fuck-enough to continue getting laughs into the future. Second, this was shot 13 years ago and released 8 years ago (it was a lot of post production work and mostly just Charlie doing it....it takes time), and there are is content I would do a little different. I still stand behind it 100%, but I've been continuing the activist work from that movie through this blog since 2009. I have more and deeper insight now. I mean shit's still pretty much the same and the problems are still pretty misunderstood in the same way, but there's been some progression, and the way I talk about some things has changes with more knowledge.  

So, below, I just thought I'd quick mention the updates I'd make, I've written about this in different ways before, but it's fresh for me right now and it's nice to pop it up every now and then. 

1 I'd talk about the idea that the 'inner clit' is responsible for orgasms-from-intercourse (or what people might call vaginal orgasm) and shit all over that fake news like I did the g-spot-as-a-vaginal-orgasm-giver fake news. 

The current progressive, sex positive, sexually educated (often very educated) crowd is big on the idea of the 'inner clit' or the 'clitoral bulbs' or 'clitoral legs'. It's the part of the clitoris that is deeper in the body - more than the clitoral glans that pokes out or the clitoral body you can feel under the skin just above the clit (before it bends down and separates into the larger 'inner' structure of the clit). They tout this 'inner clit' as a previously unknown or misunderstood part of female anatomy that is actually what causes orgasms. It is neither previously unknown/misunderstood, nor is it something that causes 'vaginal orgasms.' However, just like the now out-of-vogue-as-vaginal-orgasm-givers -the vaginal canal itself and the g-spot- the inner clit is a new, hip way experts try to explain why a woman might orgasm from nothing more than getting banged. Truth is there is not physical evidence in all of scientific literature of a an orgasm happening from nothing more than the stimulation of a penis/dildo in the vagina (for real - I explain more HERE), but that doesn't stop the sex research/sexpert world from desperately clinging to some piece of anatomy that might, maybe cause this type of orgasm, that actually doesn't seem to exist except for in faked bedroom activities and answers on surveys. 

This was true when the movie came out and is still just as true. It's just that the scapegoat in pop sexperting has moved from the g-spot to the inner clitoris since then, and so it's not really addressed properly in the movie. I would like to have it in there because I worry contemporary watchers might disregard the whole thing because they think we missed the inner legs info. 

Anyway, more specific info about why the inner clit is not some new discovery and not the cause of 'vaginal orgasms' is HERE.

2 I'd have added some info about male multiple orgasms. 

Most of the details about male and female orgasm and physical arousal in the movie are pulled from Master and Johnson's groundbreaking late 60's research. It's still super relevant on the physical detail level, but there are later papers that confirmed and also expanded on Master and Johnson's work. I would add more of that to modernize some of the terminology, etc. Mainly, that would mean there would be some info about physical evidence of males that can orgasm multiple times, similar to some women, until they ejaculate with their final orgasm. I'd tighten up that physiology of orgasm/arousal section with papers and info I've reviewed and read while writing this blog. Oh - here's an article with the male multiple orgasms. 

Alright - that's the big ones. There's of course some scenes we would tighten up too- I mean sometimes things happen by necessity, and we'd have preferred something a little differnt, but overall, I like that crazy movie. 

 

5 Teen-based Movies #DirectedByWomen

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Forgive me for my continued lateness on these posts. I'm focusing a lot on my day job, but also, let's be honest, on watching Netflix/Hulu. I'm still slowly working on some things. For instance, the badass Scandinavian book called I Accuse by Mette Ejersen. It's on point like a motha fucka. I'm also still thinking about summarizing Masters and Johnson's research in Human Sexual Response. There's plenty of SSL Reviews of TV, movies and advice articles I have in the queue as well. There's also a discussion of the Female Sexual Function Index (FSFI) - a self-reporting questionnaire commonly used to assess female sexual 'dysfunction' in both studies (including many related to female orgasm) and in actual ladies looking to get professional help. My partner in crime mentioned the FSFI as a good topic, and I agree. She also sent some more articles on the use and critiques of it.

BUT...for now, I just need to put something up so everyone knows I'm still at it, and as you might have noticed, the 5 Movies series is a fairly easy one for me to get up, so here we are. That said, I also really like this series because I LOVE movies and I truly believe in getting a variety of lady voices behind our media.

Okay, so to the movies. These are all movies that involve teens and teen stuff. We all love teen stuff, right?

A Little History of These Lists

I started doing this categorized List of 5 movies thing where I showcase movies that were directed by women and that I have actually seen. It all started during the Directed By Women Worldwide Viewing Party in September 2015, and it was pretty fun, so I've continued doing it from time to time.

It's a bit off-topic from my normal fare, ya know, being that it's not specifically about lady-gasms or anything like that, but I think it fits the blog because
1. this blog is also about indie movie-making, and
2. this blog is partially about getting the female perspective of sexuality into our media. So, to me, supporting female voices in our media  means we're creating more room for female voices to speak on all types of things, which sometimes will be sex, orgasms, and sexuality.

You can find all my 5-movie lists HERE.

So, get ready for relationship drama, best friends, angst, sexual experimentation, risky behavior, and figuring out life. I recommend Oreos dunked in milk, Ding Dongs (which were better when they were wrapped in foil btw), chocolate chip cookie dough, Doritos, and Mozzi's cheese pizza - much like me and my BBF Leslie would have snacked on while movie watching in our younger days during one of our many, many, many sleepovers.  

The Movies

1 Booksmart - This was directed by Olivia Wilde. I went to the movies to see this, and guess what? Worth it. This is a good ass teen buddy comedy - funny, sweet, full of lady-friend stuff, and although I haven't done the SSL Review on it yet, it's got great lady-gasm content (high vulva rating folks!). It's not only a great watch, but it's great for orgasm equality, so check it.

2 Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen - This was directed by Sara Sugarman.. I like to watch random teen dramas I find on streaming sights, and this was one I saw recently. It's got a young Lindsay Lohan and is almost 20 years old at this point. If you are looking for PG early 2000's drama - this is the one.

3 It Felt Like Love - This was directed by Eliza Hittman, I'm not sure why I noticed and watched this movie, but I did, a couple years ago streaming, and I'm glad I did. It's a beautiful, poignant movie, and I also loved another of her movies I saw. I'll watch anything she directs. This is the most gritty, realistic, somber teen movie in this list, and although I do very much love me a wacky teen comedy for its own reasons, this one is not to be missed. 

4  Slut in a Good Way - This was directed by Sophie Lorain. It's a 2018 French Canadian romp about, largely, a teen girl, her friends and her sex and love relationships. I'll be honest, I haven't SSL Reviewed this one yet, but it wouldn't be great - there's some classic unrealistic banged to orgasm situations in it. Overall, though, it's a fun black and white indie vibe of a movie.

5 Dude - This is directed by Olivia Milch. I saw this one as soon as I heard about it online. It's a sleeper, man. It's a funny ass teen stoner movie  - easily up there with any of the best ones, and it doesn't seem like it gets the credit it deserves. Anyway - watch it.