What I Might Change About 'Science, Sex, and the Ladies' (the movie) Now All These Years Later
Hello my lady-gasm activist friends. As is the theme for my blogging the last few years, I'm more behind than I would like to be. There are tons of articles on everything from the Female Sexual Dysfunction questionnaire that is most commonly used in studies as well as therapy to assess a woman's, ya know sexual dysfunction to female ejaculation related stuff to post gender confirmation surgery functioning to old strange studies to just about everything - anyway, there are tons of those studies I want to summarize (and dish on if need be) in the ol' A Journal Article I Read series (which are all HERE). There's also tons of TV and movie depictions of lady-gasms or lady-gasm talk, or clits or cunnilingus that I need to review (all the TV ones are HERE and the movie ones are HERE), but to be honest, these are a little lower on my priority list, I'm more vibing with the journal articles right now, but I get the urge to review some shit orgasm depictions from time to time too. All that to say I don't have anything super big, but I wanted to post something, and it just happened that something sparked my need to write here a little.
Last night me and Charlie re-watched Science Sex and the Ladies
with a good friend last night, and it was fun, but I was thinking about some things. First, I still like it. I think it's weird and what-the-fuck-enough to continue getting laughs into the future. Second, this was shot 13 years ago and released 8 years ago (it was a lot of post production work and mostly just Charlie doing it....it takes time), and there are is content I would do a little different. I still stand behind it 100%, but I've been continuing the activist work from that movie through this blog since 2009. I have more and deeper insight now. I mean shit's still pretty much the same and the problems are still pretty misunderstood in the same way, but there's been some progression, and the way I talk about some things has changes with more knowledge.
So, below, I just thought I'd quick mention the updates I'd make, I've written about this in different ways before, but it's fresh for me right now and it's nice to pop it up every now and then.
1 I'd talk about the idea that the 'inner clit' is responsible for orgasms-from-intercourse (or what people might call vaginal orgasm) and shit all over that fake news like I did the g-spot-as-a-vaginal-orgasm-giver fake news.
The current progressive, sex positive, sexually educated (often very educated) crowd is big on the idea of the 'inner clit' or the 'clitoral bulbs' or 'clitoral legs'. It's the part of the clitoris that is deeper in the body - more than the clitoral glans that pokes out or the clitoral body you can feel under the skin just above the clit (before it bends down and separates into the larger 'inner' structure of the clit). They tout this 'inner clit' as a previously unknown or misunderstood part of female anatomy that is actually what causes orgasms. It is neither previously unknown/misunderstood, nor is it something that causes 'vaginal orgasms.' However, just like the now out-of-vogue-as-vaginal-orgasm-givers -the vaginal canal itself and the g-spot- the inner clit is a new, hip way experts try to explain why a woman might orgasm from nothing more than getting banged. Truth is there is not physical evidence in all of scientific literature of a an orgasm happening from nothing more than the stimulation of a penis/dildo in the vagina (for real - I explain more HERE), but that doesn't stop the sex research/sexpert world from desperately clinging to some piece of anatomy that might, maybe cause this type of orgasm, that actually doesn't seem to exist except for in faked bedroom activities and answers on surveys.
This was true when the movie came out and is still just as true. It's just that the scapegoat in pop sexperting has moved from the g-spot to the inner clitoris since then, and so it's not really addressed properly in the movie. I would like to have it in there because I worry contemporary watchers might disregard the whole thing because they think we missed the inner legs info.
Anyway, more specific info about why the inner clit is not some new discovery and not the cause of 'vaginal orgasms' is HERE.
2 I'd have added some info about male multiple orgasms.
Most of the details about male and female orgasm and physical arousal in the movie are pulled from Master and Johnson's groundbreaking late 60's research. It's still super relevant on the physical detail level, but there are later papers that confirmed and also expanded on Master and Johnson's work. I would add more of that to modernize some of the terminology, etc. Mainly, that would mean there would be some info about physical evidence of males that can orgasm multiple times, similar to some women, until they ejaculate with their final orgasm. I'd tighten up that physiology of orgasm/arousal section with papers and info I've reviewed and read while writing this blog. Oh - here's an article with the male multiple orgasms.
Alright - that's the big ones. There's of course some scenes we would tighten up too- I mean sometimes things happen by necessity, and we'd have preferred something a little differnt, but overall, I like that crazy movie.