Chewing Gum S2 Ep3 - The SSL Review

Chewing Gum!

Like I said in the first SSL Review I did on this, you should check this show out on Netflix. I continue to love the shit out of it in the 2nd season. It's a top-quality comedy that you should definitely watch. It may have a tricky British accent to follow, but turn on the captions and get on with watching it. It's great. It's also progressive in the ol' female orgasm department, and I feel like it has a unique perspective - not just because her gender or color or anything like that, well it is a lot of that, but I don't think the way a writer or director identifies is enough to bring a truly unique voice to a work. It's how they use their craft as well. To me, it seems like Michaela Coel (writer/star) really unabashedly dives into her own perspective and brings things into her story that are new and unexpected. In short, she's just a great creator and people should watch this show.

Michaela Coel - Chewing Gum creator, writer and main actress

And it's SSL Reviewable

This means I will be critiquing only discussions or depictions of female orgasm, female masturbation, or the clit. For these reviews I'm mainly interested in physical realism (like are the things happening to the woman's body actually things that would realistically make a female orgasm?) and about how the depiction/discussion plays in the larger cultural conversation about female orgasm and women's sexuality.

Please, my friends, do enjoy more SSL Reviews for MOVIES and TV SHOWS.

S2 Ep3 - Boy Tracey

There's only 1 SSL Reviewable scenes in here, so I'll describe it and then give you my take.

Boy Tracey is Tracey's (the main character's) male cousin with the same name. They are kinda like childhood BFFs, but then the next time she sees Boy Tracey, he's obsessed with sex and girls...and there's other stuff too I won't ruin for you. Anyway, Boy Tracey is chilling in Tracey's room, and Tracey kinda wants Boy Tracey to talk about a particular thing, but he just isn't, and it's annoying her. Then Boy Tracey randomly says:

Boy Tracey: Do you think girls like stimulation via the clitoris or the vaginal itself? Or are all girls different?

Tracey: [scoffs] I wouldn't know Trace.

She changes the subject - less because it's a weird thing to say to your cousin and more because she's annoyed that Boy Tracey isn't speaking about what she wants him to. So, his question is just kinda left in the air.

My Thoughts 

This is a pretty small scene, and I'm not really sure what it puts out there in the world about lady-gasms. The thing to know is that both Tracey and Boy Tracey are super incredibly sheltered, naive, and inexperienced with sex - Boy Tracey more so, and that's saying a lot because Tracey is pretty damn naive herself.

Clearly, his question carries the baggage of clit vs. vaginal orgasm debates that are still very much alive. The modern form of this debate takes a bit of a different form than it did in Freud's time when he was telling the world that women who cannot orgasm from vaginal stimulation alone are psychologically immature.

Now no one now is saying that women who cannot orgasm from vaginal stimulation are immature...um that's not true. There are people that still say that. In fact a scientist named Stuart Brody regularly gets shitty scientific articles that say that exact thing published in respected peer reviewed journals - seriously. But largely that's not how people think any more. Instead, that sentiment lies in subtleties and subtext.

There is an underlying feeling that if a woman can't orgasm from getting boned, she's missing out. She's emotionally or hormonally broken, or she's just not naturally that sexual, or she's just a bit lesser than. It stems from the long history of glorifying penile-vaginal sex as the ultimate in pleasure, from the vast amount of depictions in our media of P-in-V sex causing orgasm for women with no additional clit stimulation, from the lack of basic anatomical, physiological lady-gasm knowledge in education, sex advice, and even -sadly- a fair amount of sex research. It stems from basically the whole of how our sexual culture approaches female orgasm.

I guess what I'm saying here is that although sexperts today would like to say that our culture is no longer worried about the clit vs. vaginal stimulation debate of Freudian times, they are wrong. We are very much worried about it. We just don't speak about it the same way we used to, but it's definitely in the air of our sexual culture, and I think the fact that the character, Boy Tracey, asks about it means it's something that people still hear about and worry about. Boy Tracey's question carries a lot of baggage, in the show it goes unanswered, just as it does in the sexual culture at large.

Just to be clear though, It's not an unanswerable question. There are answers. Now, I'm not able to answer what any one person 'prefers' sexually, but if Boy Tracey was getting at how he could make a woman orgasm, then clit stimulation is the only sensible and scientifically backed answer. Period. Females need clitoral glans stimulation to orgasm just as males need penile stimulation to orgasm. It's not the popular answer (believe me - I made a movie saying this that straight up pissed a lot of people off), but it is the one backed by scientifically sound evidence.

Vulva Rating

I don't know exactly how to review this because it just put the question out there without comment really. I guess the fact that both the Tracey's in this discussion are so naive about sex, sometimes hilariously so, would indicate that the question is a bit naive. And it is. It's a silly question because clearly clits are most important just like it's clear penises are most important to males. Yet it's also a completely sensible and normal question to ponder because we as a culture are so confused and silly about female orgasm.

I guess I kinda like the way this question sits out unanswered and sorta reflects the way that same question sits out there seemingly unanswered in the larger sexual culture. However, it's not progressive, it doesn't really add any scientific wisdom or female-centric insight to that question, but it doesn't add anything incorrect about it either.

I am going to give this episode a completely middle-of-the-road 3 out of 5 vuvla rating because it's a very neutral scene.

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