House of Cards Episode 1 - The SSL Review

As I've said before, I'm kind of a TV follower. Plus I just like TV, so despite my somewhat irrational dislike of Kevin Spacey, I finally started watching House of Cards.

So..quite early in the episode we hear a woman making the sounds, I do say the sounds!, of sexual release. That, as luck would have it, is an SSL review-able moment, so here I am, SSL reviewing it.

The camera pans into the bedroom and a dude is on top of a woman jackhammering (it was definitely jackhammering) with her legs up in the air. She is coming with the sounds of a porn star and then they finish up and get some wine, I think.

Anyway, it was a classic media representation where we, the audience, see a quick scene of sex...sex that involves a woman orgasming as a man pounds into her. There is no noticeable sense that the clitoris is being stimulated, certainly not with anyone's hands, nor a vibrator, and normally (as in the case with this scene) the clear in-out movements don't leave one with the sense that she's cumming due to some hard-core self-directed clit grinding. No, the sense is that she's getting fucked into that screaming, moaning 'gasm.

Despite the fact that no less than 70% (and I'd argue even more) of women readily admit on surveys to never having orgasmed from intercourse, it absolutely boggles my mind that these images of women getting banged into ecstasy are so pervasive. These images are so simple, so a part of our mind's visualization of sex, yet so incredibly unrealistic for the vast majority of women. If that ain't bullshit, I don't know what is.

I think this scene was created not out of meanness or anti-orgasm equality sentiments (that's a thing - I call it) but simply out of laziness and general widespread ignorance about the terrible state of our media's representations of female orgasm. The creators just didn't think much about it and probably just did it that way because it was the way they imagined how that sex might go. Media images feed more media images...

Despite this terrible sex scene and Kevin Spacey's smug permacharacter, the show is growing on me, and I have to give thanks to SSL's composer, Nathaniel Blume for urging us to watch. It gets a no vulva rating from me though.