Mothers Day Advice for Raising Clit-aware Kids

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This, my friends, is the (mostly) annual Mother's Day edition of the SSL blog post. I am not a mother, but I have a mother, and I love a lot of mothers, and I also love and deeply care about a lot of children who are currently learning from mothers. I have strong feelings about the seriousness of raising children - in all the ways people do that - being a biological or adoptive or step or grand or great grand mother are just a few of those, but really anyone who comes in contact with a child has a part in their raising. Even very small interactions with children can leave lasting affects, and the more thoughtful and responsible we can all be in those interactions the better off the next generation will be. Granted, life is life. One couldn't possibly don't know the "right" answers for how to raise a child, and people don't always have the right skills at the right time to make the best choices - and even if you do, mistakes happen. 

So first, if you are taking any part in raising a child out there, give yourself some slack because there are no perfect answers. If you are doing your best to be kind and thoughtful and consistently 'there,' though, you're doing better than most, so give yourself a hand. The work you do is incredibly necessary and important. 

Second, I'm going to some unsolicited advice to trusted and responsible guardians out there. 

Unsolicited Advice #1

For the love of all things good and right in the world, don't start telling your kids that boys have penises and girls have vaginas. 

First, trans and intersex children very much exist, and so it's important to let them know body parts aren't what decides if you are a boy or a girl. Second, say vulva not vagina. Vagina is the hole. It gets too much glory and it is wrongly assumed to be the most important part of female sexual pleasure. It surely is not. 

Orgasms do not arise from stimulating the inside of the vagina - seriously. Like for real. This whole blog and my whole movie is based on that very truth that our culture refuses to believe. The clit, the clitoral glans area specifically, is the orgasmically important part - it's as important to female orgasm as penises are to male orgasm. So, really one might just say that some people have penises and others have clits - ya know, because we need more Cliteracy. The more young people hear the word clit, the more they might remember it in their future sexual endeavors and the better for Orgasm Equality.

But, actually the better thing to say is that some people have penises and some people have vulvas - but then describe them. Alix Kates Schulman wrote a badass essay back in the 70's called "Organs and Orgasms" that sums up how to describe these parts to children. She describes the penis as having 3 different uses in 1 organ; peeing, pleasure and also making babies. She describes the vulva as containing 3 different parts for 3 different uses; the clit at the top for pleasure, the urethral opening below it for peeing, and the vagina below that for making and birthing babies. 

It's such a simple way to clearly indicate what differentiates genitals and what's accurately going on in the vulva area. Imagine how that early focus on the clitoris as pleasure might have changed your sex life. Imagine how you might have better been able to visualize your own genitals or your future partner's genitals. Honestly, I feel like I was a comparatively sexually aware young person, but I was in college before I realized that my pee didn't come through my clit. That sounds insane, but I don't think it's that uncommon. At least I knew where my clit was. I had more than 1 friend in college in the 2000's that wasn't sure where her clit was. That's detrimental shit, and just a little info in the early years could counteract it. It seems small compared to all the terrible sexual information we get in our culture, but I think it would make huge differences.  

Unsolicited Advice #2

Be fucking cool about masturbation. 

You do not need to tell a kid to masturbate or how to masturbate or show them people masturbating or tell them about how you masturbate. You just need to not poo-poo it, and let them know that it's something people (all people of all genders) do. Let them know you acknowledge and aren't disgusted by it. That's the least you can do. 

What would be even better though, is when the time comes to talk about sex (which most people agree is something that should happen at some time in some way) let them know that they, not someone else, should be the first person to explore their body in a sexual way. 

Unless you think masturbation will send your child to hell, there's no downside. Masturbation, unlike sexual contact with others, doesn't risk disease or pregnancy. They also know you think understanding their own body and sexuality is more important than another person doing it (which it most definitely is), and that gives them at least half a chance in future relationships - both in expecting and understanding how sexual contact can and should be pleasurable (this is real important for the kids with clits) and also in understanding the difference between love and lust so they don't confuse the excitingly new sensations of sexual touch with an emotional connection. Many a person has been locked into harmful relationships by incorrectly assuming that pleasurable sexual touch is the same as emotional/relational pleasure. Don't set a kid up for that horseshit. 

Unsolicited Advice #3

Make sure, when the time is right, you let these kids know that sex in porn and movies and TV and romance novels are often straight up fake in the weirdest way.

That weird way is that the women are very often depicted as orgasming simply from a penis moving in and out of the vagina - which in reality is not at all likely a way to make a women come because the stimulation of the clitoral glans area is needed for females to orgasm as much as penis stimulation is needed for males to orgasm. These weirdly unrealistic depictions are basically a woman orgasming without stimulation of the clit/vulva area and is no more likely than a male orgasming from stimulations that is close to but not on the penis. 

Also, the truth is that in real life over 70% of women say on surveys that they never orgasm during intercourse ever. That's most women, and the women that say they do sometimes or always come during intercourse, well, they tend to find ways to get additional clitoral stimulation during the intercourse (hands, vibrators, grinding, etc.). Although there are small numbers of women out there that say on surveys that they can come from nothing more than intercourse (with no additional clitoral stimulation) there is absolutely no physical proof in all of scientific literature that any women actually can (read more about that percentage stuff here). Seriously. 

So, probably assume intercourse alone is not a way to achieve orgasm unless you have a penis.  Feel free to further discuss with your young person why you think there is so much faking and ignorant female orgasm depictions out there (because moving a penis in and out of a vagina IS orgasmic for penises, maybe?). Just make sure there is mention of this unrealistic depiction phenomenon because without that, these depictions can really fuck with a person's mind and make them think things are a way they are not.  

**If they ask about the G-spot or the 'inner clit' causing orgasms during intercourse (maybe from any sexpert advice on the internet or from something they read in a women's magazine or sex advice book), assure them that's a bunch of bullshit that is unfortunately believed and spread by trained, well-meaning, and even progressive sexual educators. Then have them read this blog post to further explain.

Unsolicited Advice #4

Finally, make sure you talk to your penis-bearing kids about clits as much as you talk to your clit-bearing kids. 

It's all good and well if you raise someone that understands and can work their own clit to orgasm, but if someone with a penis comes along that doesn't know shit about clits (and it's likely they will come along if things don't change), at worst, I assure you're their sexual encounters will be crap (for the clit - not the penis, of course). At best,  it'll take a lot of time, effort, courage, and confidence of the clit-bearer's part and a willingness to listen and change, some patience, and empathy from the penis bearer before the sexual encounters become equally orgasmic. It shouldn't be so hard, and both partners in a sexual situation should be expected to have a basic knowledge about each other's genitals (i.e. banging a dick into a vagina is for penis orgasm and possibly reproduction, but not for female orgasm). 

but I digress

I'm sure there are plenty of other things that one should be discussing with children about their sexuality, sexual health,  and sexual relationships. There's lots of other places that discuss those things better than I would. I focus on ladygasms, so my unsolicited advice here really just focuses on helping the future generation have more ladygasms - on Orgasm Equality. And of course, you have time to relay these things. For now, on this upcoming Mother's Day, just enjoy the young people in your life and take a little pride in whatever part you play in their raising. 

Love to you all.

And for your viewing enjoyment a picture of me and my mother. I lost her a couple years ago, and I think of her often. She worked for a teen parenting non-profit when I was young and always got me pamphlets about sex and puberty that I showed my friends at slumber parties. I saw clearly where the clit was in one of those. She also took the opportunity when we were watching SHAG where some teen boys threw a condom balloon filled with water at a car to tell me about condoms. She also took an opportunity when I was watching the local news with her and my dad. A story came on about a teacher that showed a video about masturbation during sex ed and the parents were outraged. She asked if I knew what masturbation was. It was embarrassing, and I said yes sheepishly to end it. I did know, though. I quite liked masturbating, and I guess from then on I knew my mom knew what it was too and wasn't worried much about it. She was also in my movie about female orgasm...and made lunch for the cast one day. Much appreciated, mom.

 

Sleeping With Other People - The SSL Review

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Sleeping With Other People
It's hard to decide what movie to watch on the streaming services. There's tons, and you don't usually have an idea of what you want when you go in. It's kinda like walking into Blockbuster back in the day. You circle the outside wall, looking at all the new releases in alphabetical order, and you get to the end and still have no idea what to watch. Do you go into the middle for the older movies? Do you take another loop? Maybe you missed something awesome. It's hard stuff. I have a little secret that helps me sometimes though. I make it a point to specifically find movies directed by women to watch. It narrows down the field, and I have a sense of adventure about it - like, don't care what it looks like, just try it out and see what happens. That's how I ended up watching Sleeping With Other People. It's a great romantic comedy. It's a bit When Harry Met Sally-ish, and I thoroughly enjoyed watching it.

However, I wasn't all that happy about the lady-gasm stuff in it. I always hope for better when it's a woman director, but I'm definitely disappointed on that from time to time. The whole world has weird ideas about lady-gasms, which includes women. If it was just a situation where men didn't get it, and women totally got it, this whole orgasm gap would have been fixed a long time ago, but that's not the case. Women have a much better chance of getting it because we have our own bodies to explore on, but you take all the crap info we get; stuff like our sex ed that ignores the clit, also all the TV, porn and movies we all watch that ####very incorrectly#### shows women coming by being boned with no additional clit stimulation, plus all the bad sex advice and bad sex studies that tell us things like cervix touching and g-spot stimulating will cause orgasm (####completely unverified in scientific literature####). Take all that nonsense and it's no wonder we women just sort of make up our own ideas about what our bodies are doing in relation to our sexual pleasure because the cues and information we get about it are shit and often conflicts with what our bodies are telling us.

Some women might get through all that with an okay sense of their orgasm and sexuality, but most of us don't. Some of us end up calling our arousal an orgasm. Some of us can masturbate just fine, but can't seem to make our orgasms work with a partner or only sometimes with a partner. Some of us go for years with arousal and no orgasm during sex and we might justify it by trying to convince your partners (and yourself) that you enjoy sex for sex sake and don't need an orgasm. Some of us have never orgasmed into our adult years, and some of us fake our orgasms for our partners and sometimes to ourselves. Most of us, all in our own way, eventually feel the insecurity and confusion and sadness of being #### culturally gaslighted#### about how our orgasm works and about how sex is supposed to be for us.

My point here is that just because we're women doesn't mean we understand or can identify the female orgasm any more than we understand other bodily functions we don't have good information and/or conflicting information about. I mean, do you expect someone to tell if they 1. tore their ACL, 2. have bursitis, 3. a dislocation, or 4. have a tendon tear? I mean, we can really only safely assume they feel what they feel and can really only confidently say that something is going on in the knee area. Now, just like you need educated knowledge on knee injuries to really understand what happened to your knee, you also need lots of realistic, practical, accurate, non-conflicting information about what orgasm is physically to know if the sexual/arousal/excitement stuff you are feeling in your body is physically an orgasm. This education could just happen through basic cultural education during early life - similar to how males learn this, but that's not what happens for women. We ladies instead are bombarded with conflicting and downright incorrect physical information, and thus it's important to remember that just because we are women doesn't mean we're experts on female orgasm.

With that, let me just get right into the SSL Reviewable scenes, so I can start talking about this specifically. An SSL Review, for those that need a little refresher, is a review specifically of any discussion or depiction of female orgasm, female masturbation, or the clit. I critique the realism of the depiction/discussion and also write about what the depiction/discussion says about and/or adds to our cultural understanding of female sexuality and orgasm. I try my best to just stick specifically to those SSL Reviewable moments, so it usually stays pretty focused on those moments in the movie only, but sometimes I like to digress.

So here we go. I have tons of these reviews btw. You can find all the other movie SSL Reviews HERE and the TV SSL Reviews HERE.

Classic Desk Bang
The female lead is Lainey, and she is having an affair with a doctor that is kind of an asshole. She goes to his office and in between patients, fucks him on his desk. It's pretty standard movie desk-fucking. She's in a skirt. They are standing and kissing for a hot second, and he moves her to her back to the desk. Her legs are up, and he is standing in between them. They quickly start unbuttoning, etc. down there. It cuts to the door for a sec, and when it cuts back, he presumably penetrates her and says, "Is this what you wanted, Elaine?" and she says, "Yes, I want it all the time. It's all I think about." From there, he starts banging into her slowly. She gives a lustful 'uh' with each thrust. He stays close to her (his head is close to her head). We are looking at them from the side from the waist up. All their hands seem accounted for, and not touching her vulva area. She is tensing her neck and face, arching her back. After approximately 40 seconds, he gives a final orgasmic 'uh' and kinda collapses in post-orgasmic bliss. At the same time, she leans her head back, opens he mouth and gives her orgasmic 'uh' as she's sort of banging on his arm with her fist.

They had a simultaneous 40 second, intercourse orgasm, ya'll! It's the gold-standard of media intercourse, and...it's pretty damn unlikely given that intercourse is such a shit way for women to orgasm (seriously - stimulation inside the vagina has never been shown to cause a physical orgasm in scientific literature...like for real). I will say - at least he was bent forward against her which could possibly make his pelvis pressed against her clit/vuvla area instead of being upright at a right angle to her with his pelvis definitely not against her clit area. That gives a small chance of her getting some clit stimulation, but honestly, she wasn't really like grinding against him or anything like that which, I think, is a sensible ingredient for a woman having an orgasm during intercourse related pelvis-against-clit friction. Otherwise, assuming she came from 40 seconds of his intermittent pelvis touching on her clit as he was banging her is pretty far-fetched.

So, this scene is the most classic, and I think harmful, of intercourse scenes because it shows a woman getting off from a quick bang with very little likelyhood of sustained, appropriate clitoral glans stimulation. It sits with all the thousands of scenes like it and feeds into the incorrect assumption we've all probably had at one time or another (and probably still do deep inside us), that intercourse is as orgasmic for a woman as it is for a man; that encompassing and fully stimulating the penis is as orgasmic as stimulating the inside of the vagina with a cylindrical object. It is not. Penises get very well stimulated during intercourse, and clits, as a rule, do not - at least without some added special attention. Scenes like this are why 16 year old girls have sex for the first time and wonder what the fuss was all about. Scenes like this both reiterate already deeply-held yet incorrect cultural assumptions about intercourse and also propel those myths into future generations.

Yet it seems so, so, so normal of a scene, right? And that, my friends, is why we have such a problem.

Dudes Teaching Ladies How To Masturbate
Listen, I have no problem with the principal of a dude teaching a woman how to masturbate. If a dude knew the physical realities of lady parts and lady-gasms, he might be a pretty good teacher, given that stimulating the penis to orgasm and stimulating the clit to orgasm is not really that different. In a way, I think men and women could learn a lot from each other on this front. All that to say, my problem with this scene is not that a man is teaching a woman how to masturbate, but that it's got some problematic info about orgasm and the cervix and G-spot. It definitely has some good tips in there, but the focus on the inner vagina confuses the good points, So in the end, the overall takeaway is basically the confusing shit society is already teaching us; that the inside of the vagina, the G-spot, and the cervix are as important as the clit. They are not. They don't cause orgasm and the clit does. I think the intention with this scene was good, but I don't think it comes out right. I don't think it gives the right clues, and I don't think it does much more than reiterate the status quo when it comes to creating understanding about what physically causes orgasm in women.

Here's the scene.
The male lead, Jake, hooks up with this women and there's a scene of them having sex in lots of different positions. It's hot, and they are both vocal throughout, although we don't see the 'orgasmic' final vocals. It just cuts and they both fall back into the pillows exhausted.

Jake is going on about how great it was and he says,

Jake: did you, uh...
Thea: No...but don't take it personally. I don't Orgasm during sex that much.

Jake looks sooo confused and the it cuts to him talking with Lainey at a store. These two lost their virginity to each other, and many years later met up again and have become platonic friends.

Lainey: So? Lots of women don't come during sex.
Jake: So? No no no, that has never happened to me before.
Lainey: Well, what positions did you do?
Jake: Mmm no, we did everything. Why, what's your favorite position?
Lainey: I don't know. The regular one.
Jake: The regular... Come on.
Lainey: From behind (quietly) 

Jake: Exactly. 'cause you hate your dad.
Lainey: Oh my God. Mouse trap (mouse trap is their safe word for when it's getting too sexual)

They have to deal with the cashier and stuff and then it cuts to them in her apartment putting together the thing they bought.

Jake: You know, it's like, when do you orgasm? I mean like when does that happen for you?
Lainey: When I'm with Matthew (that's the doctor she desk-fucked)Jake:  Yeah yeah, okay.
Lainey: That's it.
Jake:  That's it!? Okay, well that just explained everything. That that's...I mean you haven't had an orgasm in a year!? Come on, that's bullshit. Not even when you masturbate?

Lainey shrugs

Jake: Lainey, you've got to be kidding me. What? You don't masturbate? Why not?
Lainey: What? - I don't kn...I mean I've tried to. I try. I just..I don't know. I ...I get bored.
Jake: Bored? How's that boring???
Lainey: But I feel good when I'm with Matthew. I don't. I don't know how to recreate that myself.
Jake: Okay, well, fuck the tv. I'm gonna teach you how to finger yourself today. Right now. Okay?
Lainey: What?
Jake: It's go time sister. Alright, let's go. Alright?
Lainey: Okay
Jake:  No no this is a good thing.
Lainey: O boy. (exasperated)
Jake:  It's about time. Get it out. (Empties a jar). For the purposes of today's tutorial your vagina will be played by this former bottle of green tea
Lainey: Looks just like it.
Jake: Okay... Good to know. So, here's what we do. First thing, you, you take this guy, (Shakes index finger) this uh index finger and you're gonna uh, slide it in the like that, okay, and you're gonna curve it up a little bit, and I want you to tap the roof like that. You see that? That's your g spot alright? You got that?
Lainey: Yeah, I'll check it out. (kinda uninterested)
Jake: Okay, good. Alright, next move. You're gonna take the middle finger here, alright? And you know, the bad boy, right? You're gonna have to pop that in as well, and you're gonna have that one tapping the roof, and this one, the middle finger is going to be, you know, sorry if circling uh this uh just like fleshy gap area.
Lainey: My cervix? Jesus!
Jake:  Yeah sure. You know what it's called. Wonderful. Good for you. Okay, yeah, so you're gonna go after the cervix here, so you're gonna mind the gap. Right? Tap the roof.
Lainey: Mind the gap, tap the roof.
Jake:  You got it. Alright at this point you wanna start thinking about something, uh, arousing. You know, like, uh maybe you wanna think about the guy you lost your virginity to perhaps?
Lainey: Gross.
Jake:  Okay, and then you're gonna start to get wet. You're gonna start to get wet and then you're gonna start to feel some, uh, contractions in your vagina, alright? At that point you're gonna want to squeeze your vagina harder than it wants to go, okay? And that's called k...
Lainey: Kegaling
Jake: We'll it's pronounced kegaling, but it doesn't matter.
Lainey: Uh I got into med school. I think I know how it's pronounced. 

He congratulates her on med school (He didn't know she'd been excepted.) and they talk about it for a minute. Then she tells him to keep going.

Jake: Okay, so, do you know what a dirty DJ is?
Lainey: No.
Jake: You don't? Okay great. Okay, so the biggest misconception that guys have about the clitoris, uh, if they can find it, is that they're too nice to it. Okay?
Lainey: Mmhm (skeptical)
Jake: Like, that's the problem. I mean the trick is to be a little rude to the clitoris, okay?
Lainey: Oh, really?
Jake: Yeah, just go to town on this little mother fucker here. You just, like...you just tweet, tweet tweet (rubbing top of the jar hard like a DJ). You know, so that's the dirty Dj. You know, like you're scratching a record. You know this... ( And continues doing it and saying DJ things). And you just really wanna work that little bugger. You remember like the old IBM think pads?
Lainey: Mmmmhmmm (looks pained)
Jake: And that little nub, right? Okay so you just really go after it like that. Just like this.
Lainey: Fueeew, yeah. (she's getting more interested and excited)
Jake: Right, so uh you have that. That's phase 3.
Lainey: Mmmmhmmm (She starts doing these things to the bottle - she's getting progressively turned on, and so is he)Jake: So again, you know. (He's intently watching her pushing her finger in and out of the bottle with her thumb on the top 'clit' area). Yeah perfect. Natural. Okay? Yeah so tap the roof.
Lainey: I know.
Jake: Mind the gap. Oh see. Okay, yeah, work all three. Look at that. It's like you're doing...
Lainey: Right there?
Jake: Oh boy oh boy. It's like I feel like Anne Sullivan teaching Helen Keller about water. This is amazing. What a break through.
Lainey: Mmmhhh (still poking her finger in and out of the bottle, She's pretty much stopped touching the outside of the bottle).
Jake: Yeah that's it.
Lainey: Like that? (She's poking the bottle intently)
Jake: Yeah, you know, just like take a night. Crack open a bottle of rose and just have multiple orgasms if you want. You know... You know... 

At this point it just looks like she has a finger in the bottle and is kinda rubbing the g-spot roof area. There doesn't seem to be any outside play at all. She's very turned on and intent on stimulating that bottle's g-spot 

Lainey: Uh primotologists actually believed that women evolved this way so that, uh, they could mate with as many men in one session as possible...
Jake: Fucking awesome.. you know... That's neat...
Lainey: Multiple orgasms for multiple partners...
Jake: Yeah...
Lainey: Gang bangs and such...
Jake: (gets a clear head suddenly) Yeah...I'm gonna go home.
Lainey: (her head suddenly gets cleared too - She's a bit flustered) Yeah me too.
Jake: No you live here.
Lainey: Yes I do.
Jake: Bye. 

It cuts and she's out with a friend that says, "I think it's a little weird that a straight dude had to tell you that." to which she responds, "I think it;s sort of great." Then they start talking about something else.

The Dirty DJ
Here's the final scene I need to tell you about. Lainey's with a dude in bed. They are doing it from behind on all 4s. She looks kinda bored, then she sits up and moves his hand down to her vulva area. She says, "be rude to it." So he starts going to town on it in circles - the soundrack has some DJ scratching. It then cuts to them both falling back into bed satisfied.

My Thoughts
Clearly the scene where Lainey adjusts her sexual encounter in order to get hers is a big Fuck Yeah for orgasm equality. She asks for and gets clitoral glans stimulation ####(something that realistically will cause orgasm in females)#### in order to come. Bravo. I love seeing manual clit stimulation during intercourse. It's a rare thing to see, so this scene gets big ups from me.

• I also love that we see Jake's hookup getting banged in all kinds of hot sexy ways, but yet we also know that she didn't come. That's realistic, yo. None of the montages of them fucking included clitoral stimulation, so no, she wouldn't come.
• I don't love that Lainey's first question about it was what positions did they do. Unless the answer is Position Number my-hands-and-mouth-all-over-her-clit then it doesn't much matter which way the dick is getting moved in and out. It's still just a dick moving in and out a vag, and that's not great for lady-gasm, yet her asking the question is an insinuation to the audience that the intercourse position is mucho important to whether a woman comes or not. 
• I also don't love that the prop chosen to represent Lainey's genitals was a bottle. A bottle is basicall all vagina and no vulva. All inside and no outside. I mean, they talked about the clit which is on the outside, and I guess the tiny rim was supposed to represent the whole clit/vulva area, but that's B.S. The clit is further from the vaginal opening than that, and where were the lips? The lips are very sensitive, ya'll. Because of that prop, the outside was waaaayyy downplayed, and the inside was waaaayyy emphasized. It should be the complete opposite. Their intentions aside, I think the overall feel of that teaching scene was that you needed to stick your fingers in your vagina to masturbate, and that's how pretty much no women do it (see the masturbation surveys by Shere Hite).
• Seriously, why not use a prop that has an outside. Something that, if not more vulva than vagina, at least has any vulva to it at all. Something like a fruit -a  peach or papaya, or maybe a Kleenex box, or a piece of paper with a hole cut out, or he could use her hand...really anything but a bottle. 
• And can I just say, Lainey was clearly faking it with her doctor lover, Matthew. I mean she's never masturbated to orgasm. How the fuck does she know what an orgasm is?? Seriously. And, when she's trying to explain her lack of masturbation she says, "But I feel good when I'm with Matthew. I don't I don't know how to recreate that myself." She doesn't say she orgasms. She says she feels good. MmmmmHmmmm. Sound like she's mistaking arousal for orgasm because she has never experienced an orgasm. I mean, I know she's a fictional character, and I think it's possible the director actually may have wanted it to seem like she faked with Matthew, but I think the opposite happened. I think the scene of her orgasming with Matthew was so normal and convincing of its sexy goodness and orgasmic-ness that no one would question that she came with him. Most people don't think too hard about these kinds of depictions, and she was never really called on her wishy-washiness about her orgasm with Matthew. So, I think in the end the viewer is left assuming Lainey orgasms with hot intercourse even though she doesn't masturbate, but then she also learned how to stimulate her clit to orgasm as well. So, the movie sort of reiterated our incorrect cultural understanding of female orgasm - that there's different kinds of lady-gasms, vaginal intercourse ones and masturbation clit types. There are not. Clits are where it's at. Vag orgasms are a thing people talk about (probably because our culture desperately hangs on to the hope that women can just come during whatever is happening that makes dudes come) but has never been verified in scientific literature.
• I do love that Jake is appalled that Lainey hasn't masturbated though. He should be. Grown people who are having sexual interactions with other people should be knowledgeable about their own body's wants and needs, and that involves masturbation. Boys don't have quite the same upstream swim to find masturbation that girls do, so this is especially important for girls.
• Dude, don't start hitting the cervix. That shit hurts and it's not gonna make you come. I don't know where this idea that hitting the cervix causes orgasms came from, but stop. It's painful.  I do kinda know where it came from. It's something inside the vagina and vaginal orgasm research enthusiasts are always (unsuccessfully) trying to connect stimulation of something inside the vagina with orgasm. There's this scientific paper relating to orgasm research in women with spinal cord damage that says it proves (but actually for sure does not) that the cervix stimulation can be another route to orgasm for women. It's BS.
• Also, similar to what I was saying above, stimulating the G-spot does not cause orgasms. It can, it seems, for some women cause ejaculation through the urethra, but like in men, an ejaculation is different from an orgasm. Orgasm and ejaculation just usually happen at the same time for men. Anyway, like I said above there's lots of researchers obsessed with showing us that stimulation of something inside the vagina can cause orgasm and the area about an inch or 2 in towards the stomach where the urethra sits against the vagina (which is often called the G-spot) is often the focus for these hopeful but thus far unsuccessful researchers. 
• So...please tell me why Lainy's masturbation lesson is so goddamn focused on the cervix and the G-spot? Sure, touch them if you want, but they ain't gonna get you there. Talking about them so much adds to women's confusion by piling on to the already messy information women get that associates vaginal penetration with orgasms as much or more often than it associates clitoral stimulation to orgasms...making it incorrectly seem like clitoral stimulation is just another way to orgasm instead of the way to orgasm.

The Vulva Rating
This is definitely a mixed bag. There is truly clit and lady-bation love in this move, and I'm all for that. I also think the intentions might be on-point for a lot of these scenes. However, intention isn't enough. In the end, I think that the overall take-away from this movie ends up being that yeah, clits are great, but you can also orgasm from getting banged, and that really a huge part of masturbating for a woman is getting your fingers to work the inside of the vagina. Those are both ways of emphasizing the vagina over the clit when it comes to female orgasm and female sexuality.

That incorrect emphasis (think if we emphasized men's balls over their penises when it came to male orgasm) is a HUGE part of why female orgasm seems so confusing and why so much partnered sex continues to exclude the clit and thus exclude the female orgasm. It's a reinforcing of the already shitty status quo of depictions/discussions/information about the female orgasm, and it contributes heavily to orgasm inequality.

I'm going to be generous with this rating because I REALLY like the scene where Lainey gets her clit rubbed while having intercourse - a rare scene in media where a woman is depicted as clearly getting an appropriate amount of clitoral stimulation in order to come. It's one of the better scenes I have ever SSL Reviewed, but it's mixed in with all the other stuff and it's goodness gets kinda erased in the end. So, this mixed bag, that I'm rating nicer than I might feel because of that great scene gets a 2 1/2 out of 5 vulva rating.

(!)(!)(!

Yana Tallon-Hicks Speakin' That Orgasm Equality On The TED Stage

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A good friend of mine tipped me off to a friend of hers who had a TEDx Vienna talk I might be interested in. It was called, "Is The Porn Brain Our New Sex Educator" by Yana Tallon-Hicks, and by golly, my friend was right. This lady was spittin' some truths. Go check it.




She teaches classes about consent to young people, and she has a lot of good thoughts and stories about that. However, the TED Talk is largely about how the lack of acknowledgment that sex is pleasurable in sex ed classrooms all over the world makes it sensible that young and old alike are flocking to porn as a de facto educational device - even though porn is a pretty shitty sex educator...and that is a problem.

She describes some of the ways that porn fails to be a good teacher -things like the lack of verbal discussion and 2-way communication, stereotypical and sanitized characters and scenarios, and my very favorite - the bad info about lady-gasms.

She begins the talk by describing a past experience that started with her and her boyfriend getting it on to some bargain bin porn she found (she would normally be much more discerning in her porn).

So the woman is about to reach her pornographic climax, and the suave porn guy mutters in her ear, "Do you like that baby?" and Baby says, as she always does, "Ooooohhhhh yeeees. Yeees!" and then as she reaches her climax she yells, "I can feel you going all the way up to the top!" I freeze. "To the top?" I say, and now I'm practically yelling in my poor boyfriend's ear, "To the top? Really? Of where exactly? You know what? This is why. This is why everyone in our country is having such horrible sex!"

Speak it. You see, this is the stuff that I get excited to hear because it acknowledges how insanely off-base porn (and really all media and our culture in general) is about the basic mechanics and physical realities of female orgasm. It's something I actually don't hear often. I often hear criticisms about how porn doesn't reflect the real emotional connections and goofy, messy reality of real life sexual interactions. However, that almost every female orgasm is faked and the actions done to get there are ridiculous and unrealistic while almost every male orgasm is real seems to somehow get lost in the porn-criticism shuffle. So, big props to Yana for leading with it.

But even bigger props for getting to the heart of the situation - that ladies need clit stimulation like men need penile stimulation, and it's absolutely insane that our culture still holds so tightly to the idea that a penis pumping in a vagina is going to be mutually orgasmic.

Yana tells us that as a sex columnist the biggest question she gets is from women who try and try but just can't orgasm. They think they're broken, but they are not broken, she tells us. The information they are getting is broken. She goes on to crush it by saying,

Over 75% of women require direct and consistent clitoral stimulation in order to have an orgasm - over 20 minutes of it, and yet P in V, penis in vagina penetration, is they way we're taught sex works. So when I hear a porn performer attributing her explosive orgasm to her partner pounding his way all the way up to the top...of wherever that is...it infuriates me.

It infuriates me too. Let's start a goddamn revolution! I am officially adding Yana Tallon-Hicks to the ever growing and ever so prestigious list of Orgasm Equality Allies!


And just for fun, here are some bonus quotes from this talk:

"The main dilemma we face now when we're watching porn is which hand should I use to hold my phone and which hand should be on my junk?"

"When suave porn guy says, do you like that baby? Baby never says...actually you're nowhere near my clit, let me show you how to do this."

On-Point Discussion About Better Sex Ed In the Muslim American Community

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Searching through Twitter as I do, I found an article by Sarah Harvard called A Young Muslim Woman Details How Her Parents Avoided The Sex Talk: And Why That Needs To Change In Her Culture. It's a thoughtful read in Teen Vogue, and it's pretty funny too. Seriously - check it out and check out some of Sarah's other writing too.

She talks about her own familial and cultural experiences of silence (and when inevitably forced into their lives -awkwardness and shame) in regards to sex and puberty. But, she also talks about how the Qu'ran does not reflect this same silence and reminds the reader that young Muslim Americans' experiences in the future don't have to be like hers. The article ends with this:

Islam, like many other religions, is frank about sex. It’s a part of our livelihood as human beings, and while many of the older generations are culturally keen to sexual repression, it’s up to the next generation — our generation — of Muslim Americans to encourage a healthy, positive, and religiously compliant attitude towards sex. How can we do that? Easy — let's just talk about sex.

I love that she took time to write about this subject. She largely writes about politics, Islam, and world events (I've been creeping through all her stuff). She's creating important work about large issues with a fresh young voice, and I think it's poignant that this lack in her sexual education seemed important enough for her to discuss. This is the kind of honest and hopeful article that I love to feature in this blog, particularly because the author pointed out some specifics about her lack of education that I think is incredibly important .

As Wajahat Ali pointed out in The Guardian, Muslim Americans are forced to go 0 to 100 real quick when it comes to sexual activity. We’re forced to cover our eyes when there’s a kissing scene on television — despite the fact it’s an everyday occurrence in middle and high school. We're then expected to get married in our early 20s and 30s, and bear two to four children soon after without even knowing what foreplay is or how to find our clitorises. (For example, I didn't know what a clitoris was until freshman year of college.)

The clitoris is the organ of female sexual pleasure. Stimulation of the clitoral/vulva area is necessary for orgasm, and intercourse is a terribly inefficient way to get there. The author mentioning that she didn't know what a clitoris was until college is both unfortunate, and at the same time, an extremely common experience.  It's a poignant example of how much silence and ignorance about the clit and thus the female orgasm exists. It's not unique to immigrant Muslim American families. It's a larger cultural phenomenon, but I can only imagine that there is a strength, a depth, and a quality to the silence in that community that is quite unique. In fact, I imagine all different communities have unique hurdles and hang-ups when it comes to fighting the silence and ignorance on the topic. Happily married hetero people probably need to hear different things than single lesbians, and different religions and races and age groups and people from different parts of the world and of the country would probably find a more inspiring discussion of the subject, at least at first, with people speaking on it honestly within their own community. So, I love that Sarah Harvard spoke on it and has put the call out to her community to speak about it. It is a simple but an efficient way to begin change for the better

People like Sarah Harvard are exactly the types that will inspire Orgasm Equality change in a wider population. She's not a sexologist, internet sexpert, sexual health worker, or sex-positive advocate. She's just a woman talking honestly about her experiences and hopes. She didn't have to speak up, but she did anyway, and that's why I'm adding her to the Orgasm Equality Allies List. Keep bein' awesome Sarah Harvard.


***P.S. Sarah's last quote up there reminds me of Sophia Wallace's Cliteracy Law #30 "Terrorism is having sex your whole adult life, giving birth to 6 children and never experiencing an orgasm." Because, I mean that's a possible outcome of the situation she described up there, isn't it?...and that isn't any fun for a woman or the man she's making children with. I'm with Sarah - I think we can do better.

Teaching Boys to Masturbate the Unintentional Way!

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Just sitting here considering masturbation and the differences between the male and female rubbing-off experience. So, I'm going from the premise that there are more women in America unsure of how to masturbate than there are men. I have no stats on that. It's just a gut feeling, so don't go quoting me about that. Let's just say that's true though and consider why that might be. Here's my thought: during the time we are all growing into sexual people, men have plenty of non-intentional chances for learning that women don't. for instance:

Watching Porn
Males: I mean it's pretty likely it will end with a dude rubbing one out onto any number of female body parts

Females: good luck finding an actual female orgasm at all, much less an actress rubbing her own clit in a way that might elicit one (although I feel that's happening a bit more now - cross my fingers!)


Basic School Sex Ed
Males: boys are able to correctly extrapolate from the only pleasure related thing that is taught (unintentionally of course, but taught none the less) in sex ed. The penis goes into the vagina and ejaculation takes place (it's integral to reproduction so everyone has to learn that). It's safe to assume that encompassing the penis with something and making movements will cause orgasm (since ejaculation is closely associated with male orgasm), which is true for males (yay for them!).

Females: Unfortunately there's simply no basic sex ed discussions of anything associated with female orgasm. I mean the word clitoris probably isn't even uttered. So if we can assume anything at all, it's probably that we should orgasm from intercourse like men do and like women in media seem to always do. The problem is that assuming putting something in the vagina and moving it around will causes orgasm is a bad assumption and ain't gonna help us figure out masturbation.

Movie Masturbation
Male: There's not a ton of masturbation depicted in movies, but we sometimes see men doing it. We don't usually get to see the details like in porn, but I've never seen the discussion about it or the basic arm movement and hand placement be off base for what might cause orgasm. It all leads to the assumption that the dick is encompassed in something and there is movement, which is about right.

Females: Women masturbating is much more rare in movies (again, no stats here, just a gut feeling, but an educated gut feeling because I have pretty much written a detailed SSL Review for every movie I have seen the last 7 years that had female orgasm in it). If you do find it, I feel it seems to be in more indie, artsy, or NC-17 rated movies. So not only are there less of them to happen upon in your teen years, but sometimes they straight up insinuate the wrong thing about it - that it is all about sticking something up the ol' vag and mimicking intercourse.

Diagrams 
Males: I mean, if you are ever to look at the diagram of the male genitals, it's really just the basic penis and balls. Whatever direction we're looking from, the whole stick and berries thing is pretty clear. By about the age of 3, it's clear to anyone who has ever watched television or movies that the balls are only there to be in pain when someone touches them in even the slightest of ways. So, with the balls off the table, so to speak, as things you might want to touch, the only thing left is the penis, and that's a good bet if you want to masturbate. Plus, a boy can look down and see something that looks pretty much like the diagram, so the penis is easy to find.

Females: Diagrams be crazy. First, it seems like lady diagrams are always showing us from the side so all the reproductive shit and none of the important pleasure stuff is in view. If we do get a full frontal view that shit don't look anything like our flippity, flappity junk. It just looks like some ovals inside ovals and a few dots. The clit may or may not be labeled, and frankly, if you're a kid when you see this, you literally may never have even heard the word clit uttered ever in your whole life at that point. Plus, if we look down, we can't see all that, and it's not easily clear where all that stuff in the diagram is supposed to be.

I mean, I know these are all small confusions that can be overcome, and that you don't need to know the names of what you touch in order to start touching them. However, things like not hearing clit much but penis a lot and seeing more male masturbation in our media than female are not just things that make it hard for girls to figure out how to masturbate, they are also indications that we live in a culture that prizes male pleasure and is too often silent about female pleasure. So, when you hear someone say something like, "no-one ever teaches boys to masturbate but the still do. Girls must masturbate less just cause they're less sexual or something," remember that boys actually are taught to orgasm in ways that girls are not.

What Last Week Tonight's Sex Ed Got Wrong

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First the BBC. Now John Oliver. We Midwesterners don't mind schoolin' the Brits about lady junk if we have to. Here's the deal. Barnaby Aaron, one of the co-directors of Science, Sex and the Ladies, happened to see some problematic choices in an otherwise top-notch piece of work about Sex Ed on Last Week Tonight. It happened in the segment where they decided to create their own funny but more accurate sex ed video. Unfortunately there was some not-so-accurate parts that both reflected and reinforced a rampant, deeply ingrained, largely ignored culture ignorance about female orgasm and female anatomy. I'm not just shitting you here. There really is a large, deeply ingrained problem with how female orgasm exists in our discussions, our science, our media, and yes, our structured education. In fact, it's so fully a part of our culture that it's kinda invisible, and that's why even progressive, smart, thoughtful people like John Oliver and his staff didn't seem to notice these problems.

However, we here at AnC can't help but see problems like that. We made a crazy-ass documentary about it (and that bitch took us 10 years to finish), and I've been writing about the subject on this blog for over 6 years. So, when these particular errors were caught, Barnaby got worked up enough to write me the basis for this post, and Charles, another co-director (don't worry, there's only 3 of us) of Science, Sex and the Ladies, starting taking screen shots and making gifs. This is what came of it. Please enjoy.

Something Barnaby Noticed...
On Sunday "Last Week Tonight” did a story on the poor and inconsistent sex education that is taught in this country. Like most things I’ve seen on this show it was very funny, insightful and well researched. However, at the end of the piece they presented their own mock/serious attempt at some basic sex education and this is where they presented some misleading information. Tell me - what's wrong with this picture?

Vulva or Vagina?
There is one of two possible problematic situations happening in that diagram.

1. It is a picture of a vulva with an arrow pointing to the the vaginal opening and labeling that as "vagina." Problem is, the arrow doesn't really point at the vaginal opening - it's closer to the pee hole, maybe. Plus, later it's mixed in with a group of other images that are labeled as whole things rather than labeling parts within the things, as you can see below. So I actually don't think it was meant to be taken as just pointing out the vag-hole.  I tend to think it's the 2nd situation.

2. That is a picture of a vulva, but it's being called a "vagina." You might say, “well, same thing, what is the big deal?” Barnaby would like you to know he used to think that way too - "I used to have this attitude. I remember when we first started discussing these issues I would say the word vagina when I meant vulva and Trisha would point out that they were two different things, that the vagina was just the tube that cylindrical things went in and babies came out of. I would roll my eyes and say, 'Yeah, same thing, you know what I mean,' and move on. But over time I realized it is a big mistake to equate the vagina with the vulva even if there is no malicious intent behind it." He has evolved, and others can too.

There are a few inherent problems with describing the vulva as a 'vagina.' If the vulva is called the vagina, but the vagina and vaginal opening are also called the vagina, it's confusing, and leaves little room for understanding the other parts of the vulva - which are pretty good parts. The clitoral glans, the clitoral hood, the labia, and the pee hole: if it’s all just “the vagina” these features get left out. Yes people refer to it as the 'vagina' all the time, but that doesn't mean it's a good idea.

Furthermore, we tend to refer to boys' junk as their penis and girls' junk as their vagina. This creates a false equivalence between the two. If we're talking about sexual pleasure, then we should be saying penis and clitoris because guess what? Contrary to popular belief, clit and penis rubbing creates orgasm, but vaginal rubbing does not...seriously it really doesn't. If we're comparing the male and female genitals as a whole, though, we should be saying 'penis' and 'vulva' because the vagina is only 1/3 of the package.

There's a good way of thinking about this that we discuss in the movie. It's from a 1970's article called "Organs and Orgasms" by Alix Kates Shulman. She's describing how to talk to kids about their genitals. She says says girls have 3 parts to a boy's 1. Boys have a penis for sexual reproduction, urination and sexual pleasure. Girls have a vagina for sexual reproduction, a urethral opening for urination and a clitoris (clitoral glans) for sexual pleasure...and that's all located on the vulva. So, yes to penis and vulva. No to penis and vagina - I mean, why leave out the pleasure and peeing part for the ladies, right?

Pin The Clit On The Vulva

I'm glad they talked about the clit. I'll give them credit for that, because it really is largely left out of standard sex ed. But, is that arrow really pointing to the clitoris??? It looks like they labeled the very top of the outer lips as the clit, like where all the pubes start. It also seems to have 3 levels of lips. It's kind of just a bad drawing.

Maybe I'm looking at this all wrong, but it seems like the clit is drawn in there but the arrow they drew is not pointing to it. Given that the clitoris is the organ of female sexual pleasure, I feel like it should at least be placed correctly in a sex ed drawing. It's pretty important. Here's a little better yet still quite simple drawing.

Doesn't The Clit Get To Have Any Fun?
Relating the penis to males in the same way the vagina is related to females reinforces the assumption that the penis and the vagina are for sex and therefore create orgasms. However, the clit is the one that creates orgasm. The clit, however, gets left out - not just in most sexual acts all over the world, but also in the fun little example of sex combinations showing that people can get their sex on in any way that feels good. The possibilities include a penis, testicles, a hand, a mouth, a butt, and...a vagina.

The clit gets left out in the cold, which is a shame because the clitoris might really like to rub up against a good taunt butt cheek. *edit: taut - not taunt, actually....*

Even if I give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they meant 'vulva' when they wrote 'vagina' (so technically they meant to include the clit), why do dudes get to have their sensitive parts discerned - the penis for orgasms and the balls for a variety of good feels. Couldn't the women get their genitals discerned too? The clitoris for orgasm and the vagina for a variety of good feels?

A Second Try, Maybe?
I know that this is a comedy show, but the actually quite bold oversights I just described, hidden in plain sight within a piece created to humorously correct common problems within standard sex ed, is actually quite indicative of a culture that thinks very little about the clitoris and how women actually orgasm. Using correct language has to be the first step. By implying penis=vagina and vagina=vulva we perpetuate the idea that the vagina is the main organ for female sexual pleasure. This lazy and unintentional mistake might not be malicious, but its effects are fundamental in our misunderstanding of female orgasm and anatomy.

We know you didn't mean any harm, Last Week Tonight, so if you're up for the challenge, we'd love to see a little adjustment to your proposed sex ed that includes all the love and warmness we know you all have for the clit and the lady-gasm!

BISH! A Good Website And A Kickass Video About P in V Sex

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An awesome reader turned me on to a video called "Why (Penis in Vagina) Sex Can Be 'Meh'" and as always, that awesome reader was awesomely on point with the suggestion. It's a 3 minute video, and it says exactly what should be said...the male organ of sexual pleasure is stimulated, but the female organ of sexual pleasure is not, and that makes women not orgasm, men feel too much pressure to make a woman orgasm not realizing that the act is super bad for that, and everyone feel kinda shitty because what they expect is not what is.


It's from a UK website called BISH, which I also checked out and give full approval for (because nothing can happen without my approval). It's geared toward young people and created by a guy that has been in sexual education of young people for a good while. It seems that the website recently got an update with the help of a donation from Durex condoms - although the guy still has full editorial control (and it doesn't seem to me like the site is a big Durex condom ad by any means). Anyway, it has lots of good info for young people (and really anybody - I mean let's be honest - just cause someone is older doesn't mean they are that much smarter about sex), and I like the tone. Some of the highlights...

The Guide To NO - I particularly liked how it acknowledged that there is more to this than, "say no if you don't want to do something," and "stop if you hear no." Actually saying "no" can be hard, but if saying "no" to someone else means saying "yes" to ourselves, we should pat ourselves on the back for doing it even if it wasn't easy...and at the same time, we shouldn't be too hard on ourselves when we couldn't do it as forcefully as we would have liked. (Seriously, that is not just advice for teens). Also, it rightly emphasizes that people say no non-verbally and that those cues should be recognized and accepted.

What is Love? - This is an 8 minute video that reminds us love is complicated, and that the idea of "the one" is kinda bullshit, and that we need to make our own love stories and not compare ourselves to what we see and hear love should be, and that "love" is not some kind of strange energy that strikes us and takes away all our control - that too is bullshit. Again - not just for the teens.

Porn - An Educational Guide - Porn involves acting. Some things are very commonly depicted that actually aren't really that interesting/sexy/not-terrible for many people. Bodies in porn don't always look like you or your partner's bodies. Porn is largely created for hetero male fantasies. These are all things that should be clear, but truly are not, and it's a good article. I would probably add a bit more in about the huge amount of faked female orgasms as compared to the huge amount of real male orgasm, but that is because the whole terrible misinformation about the female orgasm situation is pretty much my obsession.

Anyway, check out BishUK.com, for yourself and your young folk - if you have them in your life. I love what this guy (his name's Justin Hancock btw) is doing. That darn video he made about something that so should be obvious about PinV sex, but so isn't is top notch - and he, my friends, is an Orgasm Equality Hero!