Jim Florentine and Louis C.K, or how assumptions about women batter female desire and create creeper men
Comedian dudes are gross
In case you missed it, there was a New York Times article exposing what seems to have been an open secret about Louis C.K. masturbating in front of women in inappropriate ways. Five women went on record for the article. He then admitted it was all true and wrote a pretty good apology- as apologies for being an asshole go. Anyway when this hit the news about a week ago, I immediately thought of a story I had heard not a week earlier from comedian Jim Florentine on a season 2 Inside Amy Schumer segment called Amy Goes Deep.
He said he had a line that almost always works, but let me let him explain it:
I would play some crummy gig in the middle of Pennsylvania, white trash girl. I'd go, "Hey come out to my car." We'd sit in the car. I would just go, "Look, do you mind if I masturbate while we kiss." I'd go, "I got a long ride home. You don't have to touch it." Nine out of ten times, within one minute, they had their hand or their mouth on it.
I'm gonna let that marinate for a sec.
So, Amy Goes Deep is a short segment where Amy talks to some person(s) about something. It's comedic like all her segments, and this one happened to be her talking to 4 of her male comedian friends (Jim Florentine, Bobby Kelly, Jim Norton, Keith Robinson) and 1 of her female comedian friends (Rachel Feinstein). She describes the men as her good friends as well as the most morally bankrupt human beings on the planet. They don't disagree. From the beginning they are all gross in their own way. Granted, these are all friend comics, shooting the shit. They're playing it up to be funny, and so there is that they're-just-being-comics element to consider, but I think this dialogue is still telling and worth consideration outside of that.
So, Amy asks them if they get a lot of pussy as comedians, and they are all super admit like, 'bitch please, of course we do. There's not other reason to do comedy.' Keith Robinson is called out by Rachel for always talking about sex by saying 'I've got 3 pumps for ya.' She rightly says it's stupid, but Robinson says he can make a woman "do what she needs to do in three pumps." I don't know what it is he thinks she needs to do, but it's clearly not orgasm. Bobby Kelly asks Amy, "What would you rather do - kiss, have sex or blow with Keith?" Amy quickly returns with the only appropriate answer, "How about 'D,' sit on his face and read my tweets?"
Florentine's masturbation story comes toward the end when Keith prompts him to talk about his line that he says always works. After he tells it, Amy and Rachel look absolutely disgusted and then, the comedians they are, they start joking about it.
Rachel: What woman gets jealous when they see a guy masturbating?! It's not like, it's not like, 'Wait, there can be dick?' That's not like an exciting prospect. We're pretty...we all know the dick is availible.
Amy: We know there will be dick.
But luckily, Bobby Kelly is there to defend his friend and explain how sensible this is.
Bobby: The psychology behind it is that you - like we like vagina. If you took your boob out or your vagina, we'd be like "Oh my god, we love that."
Amy: (sincerely) oh, thank you. Thank you
Bobby: You're welcome. If you see a penis, you like that too.
Amy and Rachel, however, mention he might be a little offbase.
Amy: You're wrong. You're. wrong.
One of the 4 male comedians off camera: You see it and you feel obligated.
Bobby: When you see a penis, you don't go, "Wow, I wanna put it in my pussy?"
Amy:: Nooooo. No. (Rachel is shaking her head no as well).
Bobby: Really? (looks genuinely surprised)
Rachel: That's why a dick pic is not exciting
Amy: yeah
Rachel: to a woman
Amy: No one wants a dick pic.
Most of the guys: That's wrong.
The strong male reaction against that had Amy and Rachel putting out their hands like, chill dudes.
Amy: No, they're lying to you.
One of the 4 male comedians off camera: noooo. no. (like 'you're wrong')
After this the segment pretty much ends. What didn't end was my general sadness about how often men's need to get off takes precedent over women's feelings or desires or comfort.
There is an assumed fundamental sexual difference between women and men that's a bunch of B.S
Florentine's story is not exactly the same, but it fits in the general realm of Louis C.K.'s and others. I think the spirit of both these men's actions are the same, and I'd like to take a bunch of steps way back and look at all this through the lens of our cultural misunderstanding of female orgasm and thus our misunderstanding of female sexuality in general. It's the lens with which I look at pretty much everything for this blog because frankly I think basic misunderstandings about female orgasm are at the root of a lot of nefarious cultural problems falling on women's shoulders, including this kind of wierd gray area of male sexual advances on women that are rude, bully-ish, bad mannered, and abusing of one's power...but maybe not technically illegal.
So to be honest, I'm still kinda playing with all this in my head so this whole post might be a little screwball, but I want to get it out, so this is what you get. I'll start with a super quick version of the connections I want to make:
I think that the actually quite sensible way women react to our experiences in this pretty fucked up sexual culture nevertheless make our sexuality and our reactions to sex seem very foreign to men because they (and we ourselves, actually) are judging us from a perspective that assumes things for women in sex are like they are for men. They are not, but since we don't actively as a culture understand that they are not, and because we as a culture don't like to inconvenience men regarding sex any more than we absolutely have to, we have created stories about women's sexuality that explain the weirdness, but that don't rock the boat of our male-centric sexual culture too much.
That was a lot, and it needs a lot more explaining. I know, but stay with me for a minute. I think men view women (and women sometimes view ourselves) as fundamentally different from men when it comes to sex. People express the nature of the difference they perceive in a number of ways. Maybe it's that women have a natural ability to control their sexual desire that men don't, or that women are just plain biologically not as much of a sexual being as men are. Maybe it's that women are less in tune with or less sophisticated about their sexuality due to either culture or evolution. Maybe women, through evolution, are drawn to protect and use their sexuality as a bargaining chip with men. However you slice it, whether it's hardcore alt-righters assuming women are out to fuck them over with their feminine wiles or a normal and generally respectful dude considering how to engage his wife or girlfriend more in sex, there is this idea that when it comes to sex women are different, specifically different in that we ladies have a sort of veneer that must peeled, a code that must be cracked before she will give it up.
Different men and the same men in different situations can be more or less menacing in their thoughts and approaches in how to crack that code. A lot of the 'code-cracking' can be pursued out of love or with the best of intentions, but I think almost always there is a real feeling that one has to overcome some obstacle to get to the sexual part of a woman. Men, however, are not assumed to have this same veneer. Men are assumed to be more transparent and open (and many would say more noble, if not also more animalistic) in regard to their sexuality. Men and women are viewed as fundamentally different in this way. I'd argue it's one of the very strongest perceived gender difference people cling to.
Men assume they must perform the correct code for unlocking women's sex
When one says 'breaking women's code' for sex, it seems particularly malicious, and it's true, that type of direct language tends to exist mostly in more crude circles (like pick up artist theory), but in gentler, more subtle words, that basic idea is a huge part of how we discuss women's sexuality in almost all circles.
There's lots of ways that have been said to 'unlock' a woman's sexuality.
Pay her directly for it (this is the cut-to-the-chase unlocking method)
Pay her indirectly through a date or through your time and energy (classic, right?)
Romance her with flowers and sweet talk and candle-lit dinner
Marry her (super old school access to lady sex)
Do some of the fucking housework for once (for unlocking the tired wife)
Loosen up the situation by going to a place where she will be doing drugs or alcohol
Hell, give her the drugs or alcohol yourself (lock hacking for the rapey type)
Be the kind of Alpha male that all women really desire (the unlocking method for dudes who are definitely not cucks - but seriously, this is pretty much the core for all pick-up artist theory)
Be rich or famous or powerful (like the dude comics up there saying they really only do it for the pussy...I mean even a tiny bit of vague fame will unlock a lot!)
Massage her back (unlocking for the tired girlfriend or creeped out co-worker)
Try to control her environment, ultimately to get her alone (could be for the rapey type, but also a classic unlock disguised as creating the right environment. Getting her in a situation where it's hard to leave is particularly effective because it gives you time to break down her shell too!)
Let her know you're good at sex (a bold and tricky unlocking method)
Make a bold, unorthodox sexual move on a woman (like, I don't know, pulling your dick out in a weird place and masturbating). It will surprise her. She won't know how to react because she's never encountered it before, and it'll throw her off her game - a great way to help break through her veneer.
Hack the code and go straight to brute force (we're getting into Alt Right women-hating, hack-the lock theory here)
Or maybe the nicest of these - foreplay her (hopefully to orgasmic completion) before you get to stick your dick in
Granted, some of these things are just things that could naturally happen when people are together, but they are also all things that someone, somewhere thinks, when intentionally pursued, will unlock the sex code in a woman, and I'm calling it a code because these things are more than just unassuming niceties or tricks. These are things that get directly related to whether a woman will or should put out. Whether she freely and openly desires to engage in sex isn't really even a consideration. It's more like sex is a thing all women would want to do IF you assemble the correct logistics to unlock her sex....like an actual lock.
Common approaches men have for getting a woman into bed really are just attempts at hitting all the right buttons so that it happens. Sometimes it's heavily calculated. Sometimes a single attempt to crack the code is expected to yield results and sometimes guys just try anything until it either unlocks or they strike out. Here's some examples:
(This one's a little oldschool but actually not too far off from a lot of men's modern sentiment). If you buy a woman lobster, that is the key to her lock and you get to fuck her.
If you have power or money or fame, those things in and of themselves, are keys to lady sex. Men with these things have necessarily broken at least the first part of any lady-sex-code just because the men put the time and energy into getting that status. Some expect it should always unlock in and of itself. (We'll come back to that because it clearly has relevance to comedians and men in the entertainment industry).
Go to a bar, find a woman who's drinking (lower her inhibitions, check), make out with her (create an understanding that it's a sexual relationship, check), find a way to get her kind of alone (create an environment for the possibility of sex, check), pull your dick out (be bold, check) and when she says she should go, whine and nag and make her feel sorry for you until she jerks you off (appeal to her niceness, check and orgasm success!)
Okay here's maybe a more familiar and less nefarious example: I'll call this the pre-work unlocking. A husband does the dishes, sends his wife love notes and texts during the day all week. He makes sure the kids get to bed early, brushes his teeth real good and uses mouthwash, and then when he starts poking his erect dick at her pajama'd butt in bed Friday, he expects that he did all the things right to unlock sex that night.
Most of those are gross, entitled, and particularly shitty, but I see very little difference in the spirit of the last one - which could easily be a piece of advice he got from a respected sex adviser. Granted all the things he did were done to 'get her in the mood,' so on the surface it might seem very unselfish. But although he as a person is well meaning and gentle about this, the cultural structure from which he operates is male centered and toxic because she and her desire isn't as central to when she has sex as obligation is. It's more about the time and energy a man puts in to unlock her.
Women don't need unlocked, but we would like good, orgasm-ful sex that nurtures our desire
So, I'm going to pull back further and investigate what's up with women that we must be obligated into sex, because it's worth asking: Why aren't women, in general, more open and transparent about our need for sex like men are? It actually does sound like women are fundamentally different. I mean, why wouldn't any person want sex (as long as contraception is used, of course)? It's fucking great. Maybe one of the greatest parts of life.
And that's where you're wrong. We're all wrong, really - the whole culture. We assume that women physically enjoy "sex" as much as men but the truth is women as a group just don't. And it's nothing biological. There's no reason to believe women don't have every capability for strong sexual desire just like men, and women can orgasm as quickly, easily, and reliably as men do. The problem is not due to a fundamental difference between men in women but to our sexual culture . Literally the way we have sex stifles both desire and orgasm for women in a way it does not for men. Let me explain that further because in our world this is not a concept that aligns to our normal conversation and depictions of sex, so it's not obvious.
I'll say the big thing straight away. The most common and accepted sex act of them all (we just call it "sex" most of the time) - Penis in Vagina (PinV) intercourse - is terrible for female orgasm yet absolutely fabulous for male orgasm. In all of scientific literature, there has never been physically observed an orgasm caused only from stimulation inside the vagina. Seriously. And the research community has had decades to get these observations, to observe the elicit 'vaginal orgasm' and they just have not been able to (probably because it is not a thing).
So, since rubbing the vaginal canal with a penis doesn't cause orgasm, AND outer clitoral stimulation (the thing that absolutely is known to cause orgasm) rarely happens as a natural side effect of ramming, intercourse leaves women with zilch and men with an orgasm. Direct clitoral stimulation to orgasm through hands, vibes or oral sex does happen from time to time in some hetero sexual encounters, but let's all be honest. It doesn't happen as often as direct penile stimulation to orgasm. I mean have you seen all the women writing beautifully about the oral sex gap? We come up short with all the intercourse people are having, and we don't even get as much of the reach-arounds and tongue action either. It's a sad state of affairs.
You can believe me or not about the lack of female orgasm in intercourse and in hetero sexual encounters in general, but if you don't believe, I'll ask you keep considering it. It's too long and complicated a discussion to address all the questions you probably have about this here, but if you need more convincing about how deeply the incorrect cultural belief of vaginal-penetration-causes-female-orgasm fucks up our sexual culture, our expectations, and our experiences and leaves women with so little orgasms compared to men, then I have plenty more for you to check out. Please watch the movie we made about it. Read my long explanation for why intercourse doesn't lady-gasms make, or explore the hundreds and hundreds of posts in this blog that document how this problem is reflected and exacerbated in our movies, TV, Books/magazines, Peer Reviewed scientific literature, and also feel free to read about the many ways people are fighting and exposing the problem. I'll leave it at that.
Point being: Women's bodies are as capable of fast, reliable orgasms through clitoral glans stimulation as men's are through penile stimulation...but the way we have sex as a culture caters so heavily to male orgasm and specifically PinV intercourse, that women just plain get a shitty often orgasm-less deal in the sexual culture.
Seriously, this unlocking game and disinterest in our orgasm is really fucking with our desire
So, given the situation in this world of ours. Why would it seem sensible that women so often seem reluctant about sex? Why have we created so many games to 'unlock' women's sex, games that in the end are often just ways to make women feel obligated to fuck?
Hmmm- maybe it's because if these games didn't exist, and if women were really left to make sexual decisions based solely on what our bodies were telling us, we would find women just straight up wouldn't fuck around much with fucking: that we just don't often desire it...don't want it.
Before you get all pissy with me for saying women don't have sexual desire, chill. Women have capacity for TONS of sexual desire. We have to. Otherwise even obligation wouldn't make us put up with the all the shit sex we end up having. We just don't have desire for shit, orgasm-less sex, because shit sex is shitty. A sandwich is better. TV is better. The feeling of accomplishment from folding the laundry is better. If the kind of effortless and orgasm-ful sex men had on the table was available to us every time, we'd be desire-mad. That means that women would need the natural, don't-even-have-to-speak-about-it flow of basic "sex" to be as full-proof orgasmic to us as intercourse is for men. It definetly is not, but it could be. Nothing biological is stopping this from happening. Our clits all work. We as a culture just need to acknowledge and fully incorporate consistent, appropriate clit stimulation as a normal part of sex and also give a shit about female orgasm. We don't though. Maybe you and your specific partner do...most of the time...but as a whole WE DO NOT GIVE A SHIT ABOUT WOMEN'S ORGASMS.
You know what happens when you have bad, orgasmless sex? It really lowers your expectation of the next time. Any hetero woman you know have an orgasm her first time? Yeeeeah. That's not the only time she didn't orgasm with a man. Every orgasm a man has during sex reminds him how much fun sex is. Every orgasm a woman doesn't have reminds her how boring or frustrating it is. With exception of the general atmosphere of sexism, body-shaming, and masturbation-shaming that affect girls way more harshly than boys, I'd say theoretically men and women start off with equally high excitement and expectations of their future sexual life. However, from the first time on, the average man and the average women diverge sharply in their desire and expectations. I mean if a woman only orgasmed 75% of the time (faking doesn't count...and there's a lot of faking out there) in the last 10 years (and that is really being generous. I imagine for most women over their lifetime it's much lower), then when she looked at a sexual prospect, she's seeing a 25% chance it will suck - and that's best case scenario where past rape, sexual coercion, or sexual assault aren't there to flood the prospects of a sexual encounter with an extra set of frightening and terrible feelings.
Now we ladies don't look at the oncoming possibility of a sexual encounter Excel spreadsheeting the orgasm odds and listing the sexual wrongs against us, but our bodies know it in our bones and reflect it in how or if we desire.
Lack-of-orgasm connects to different experiences connects to different reactions connects to all kinds of rationalizing
So, guys want orgasms, like we all do, and lucky them, the norm of sexual interactions is bent towards their needs. They don't realize it's bent sharply away from women's needs, and also lucky them, the whole of our culture, including women themselves don't actively realize it most of the time either, so men don't have much pressure at all to change their norms and bend the norms of sexual interaction to fully include lady-gasm stuff. But, not lucky them, this all makes women way less interested in engaging in sexual interaction than they would like. But...men still really want women to engage in sex with them, and given the cultural blind eye to the sad state of sex for women, everyone, including women themselves logically assumes women should also want sex as much of men....yet they don't. WHY!!???
Well, like I said above, we all kind of rationalize this by assuming women are fundamentally different about sex and imagining that there are tricks, codes, and hacks that need to be mastered to get the sex out of women that men want. This way of viewing women
1. forces no change in the male-gasm centered nature of sexual interaction, lucky men
2. provides a good-enough explanation for why so many women don't show open, transparent desire for sex the way most men do
3. maintains male access to lady sex despite there being a large amount of female resistance. It does this by still assuming that under their veneer, women actually do want and/or will allow sex, and
4. (bonus!) Allows men to rationalize coercive, manipulative, bullying, entitled, actions towards women by placing them in the category of the necessary steps to breaking through the female veneer.
The thing is that the tricks, code combos, and hacks often do end in sexual interaction from women but often not for the reasons men tell themselves. The nice way to think of this, and what I assume men would like to think, is that when the code is cracked, women's inner sex-goddess is allowed to shine, almost like men are doing women a favor by facilitating women's blossoming. Like Bobby Kelly up there assuming that when a guy pulls out his dick, he is facilitating an arousing opportunity for the woman he's with. There is a sense (at least in the less nefarious situations) that if a man can just crack a woman's code, she's gonna enjoy herself. We know that's actually not often true, and furthermore, obligation (as one unidentified comic above correctly pointed out), guilt, and 'getting it over with so I can go on with my life and you stop bothering me' are much more common reasons men's 'breaking of the code' ends in sex than men are willing to admit to themselves.
Comics are dudes with fame and dudes with fame think they have a magic key to do sex stuff at women
So I took a long diversion there, but here's my connection back to Louis C.K. and Jim Florentine. They got some fame (a lot of it plus power and money for C.K.) and saw that as an ever present key to at least one lock for any woman around them. Their time and energy expended to get them where they are entitles them to this. Everyone knows this. It is a standard male fairy tale. Get the money, the win, the access, or the fame and you get the girl.
Now, every rich, famous, or powerful dude is different. with different moral grounding, sexual interests, and levels of boldness so they all approach their use of this anointed key differently, but I bet ya they almost all wield it to some degree. And why wouldn't they? This idea of unlocking her sex is how men approach sex with women. These rich famous dudes just have better resources than everyone else for code breaking. They'd be crazy not to partake, amIright?
Now, just because I describe this unlocking mentality as something that's a somewhat organic result of our larger cultural misunderstandings about women, don't think I'm giving men a pass on rude, bullying, bad mannered, and abusive interactions with women and sex. I am absolutely not because despite how common this is, we all know it's shady as fuck. It's steeped in arrogance and desperation for something men think they deserve, and rationalized with ignorance about the female experience. The truth is, a person can tell you are doing something that is uncomfortable for someone or if you are making someone feel obligated to do something. If you care to notice and care to not do that, you can stop. You can avoid doing it next time. It's not that hard. The problem is they don't care, and it's easy to not care because the whole mentality of 'unlocking' women's sex focuses the process of sexually interacting with women of making them do it - even if it is in gentle nudges. If they seem to feel obligated to do it, well, that's not unexpected.
And that I think is why Florentine doesn't mind talking about it, and his male comedian friends don't mind throwing out excuses for it. In Louis C.K.'s apology he explained that he rationalized what he was doing as okay because he always asked first before he masturbated in front of a woman, but that he now realizes that the power dynamic involved didn't always give the women much of a choice. His point about the power dynamic is true, but I think he probably did know that when he was doing it, he just thought it was okay because power is a legit way to unlock what you want in women.
Florentine also describes himself asking first, but dude, come on, that's skeezy as fuck and you know it. Amy and Rachel's faces alone could have given him a clue. He used his fame and a bold move to unlock handies, blowjobs, and probably some intercourse from time to time. It worked sometimes, but just because you get the result you want from something you did does not justify it. It doesn't make it less manipulative or less mean.
Also, wouldn't it be nice if women could just admire a man without him seeing that as an opening to coerce her sexually. Like, wouldn't that be cool?
Let's step back one last time and remind everyone that when a dude admires a straight dude and approaches him about that admiration, the admirer doesn't have to deal with the assumption that the admiration equals willingness to fuck him. Like a dude could go up to some famous straight dude and if they had a common interest could talk or have a beer or something and when they part the dude would be happy to know that someone he admired thought something well of him too. It's a nice feeling.
You know what is a shitty feeling? When you're excited that a dude you admire takes an interest in you or what you're saying, and then the shoe drops and you realize that he really just wants to fuck you and that's really all he's been aiming towards with you. It's even worse when you are hoping to network with this man in your line of business as a way to make connections and further your career or development in the business. You were all on cloud nine thinking someone you admirer thought well of you and was interested in you, and then the drop to feeling like you as a person were of no interest to this dude or that you will never have a non-sexual chance with this dude is a sickening drop that I have had a couple times in my life and most women have had at least that. Maybe if we stopped viewing all women as sexpots wrapped in a locked veneer that can only be opened by doing the right things, then maybe men would start focusing on what the particular woman in front of him seems to desire and be interested in instead of figuring out what combination of keys he needs to unlock her.
I don't know, that would be nice.
This is fucked up and it needs to change. Like for real.
Let me end by saying this. I've already talked about how battered women's desire already is from all the crappy orgasmless sex and all the coercion, nagging, and obligation that leads us into sex we never desired to have. It weighs on women and it affects our capacity for desire. Even if sex gets better over the years, our bodies remember the history and desire, and arousal can remain affected. So, congrats to all you men out there with some level of fame, using it to get orgasms near or on women in selfish, thoughtless ways. You should be happy to know that you have done your part to lower those women's desire for future sexual interactions. You helped make the sight of a penis less than arousing for so many a hetero women. In general, by ignoring women's desires and adding to her shitty sexual interaction list, you've lowered the chance for the good, healthy mutually orgasmic sexual interactions for her and all future partners. You were one of our past experiences that our body cannot seem to forget. Congratulations on hacking the lock to all the pussy. You must be proud of yourself.
As for all you non-famous men out there too. You run this 'unlocking' game too. You scheme. I'll be honest, we all play into this game because it is so deep a part of our sexual culture. It's fucking complicated, and I won't pretend to give you specific answers for being better or for how to navigate women without thinking about them as a lock. To be honest, women are as confused as you are most of the time, and we all need to be part of change. I will say this though. Pay attention to women. Listen to them, notice small cues. Ask them questions about their experience and desires and be patient. Remember that all women are not available to you sexually as long as you crack their code. Remember that obligatory sex is shit sex. Remember that women's sexual histories are different than yours and that you can't interpret their actions from your experiences. Remember that the clit is where orgasms come from - not from their vagina- and your ramming dick is not exactly a prize. Remember that you can be a friend to a woman or enjoy a woman's company and not be scheming to have sex with her - seriously, if you can't do that you're an ass. Also, if you just learned that clits cause orgasm, please don't use that as your new unlocking method. Don't go around grabbing women by the pussy. It's not a good look on Trump and it won't be a good look on you.