Subjectified

I recently finished the 2024 book Subjectified. It’s got plenty of lady-gasm related tidbits, so obviously, I had to do a write-up.

Subjectified by Susannah Weiss from Polity Press - an overview
This book, in general, is about doing rather than being done to, asking rather than being asked, taking rather than being taken. It’s about being the subject instead of the object of our lives. Girl meets boy, rather than Boy meets girl. The author, Suzannah Weiss, comes at this book as a journalist talking to people and trying things, as well as recounting and reflecting on her personal experiences and how she made her way, at times, to being the subject instead of the object in a variety of situations - something that our world doesn’t make so easy for women. There’s many a discussion in Subjectified that might just give the ol’ perspective a gut punch in the best of ways. I for one, will be more closely watching who is the subject and who is the object in my writing from now on.

It’s also, in my humble opinion, well worth a read specifically for the way is re-frames certain progressive or feminist discussions in a way that allows them to be unpacked a bit more critically - something I very much appreciate.

“I am not trying to tear down the movements I critique but to expand them. You can think of this book as a ‘yes, and,’ not as a ‘no, but.’ Most people I describe here are doing good things. And we can do even better.” (Subjectified p vii)

I love this quote from the beginning of the book, and I am super on board with the ‘Yes, and’ model of feminist sex discussions. My particular brand of activism includes pointed criticism about some very specific orgasm related discussions. This is true even about work that I otherwise really love and that I believe has incredible positive value. I often struggle with how to criticize while also lifting up, and although I try my best to come at it from a ‘yes, and’ way, that doesn’t always mean that’s how it feels to the receiver, which I don’t love, but I’ve come to terms with because I believe in the value of critical pushback. All that to say, I have a lot of respect for thoughtful criticism. I think it’s necessary for quality activist work, and I appreciate that Weiss discussed the positive intent of criticism in her intro.

Another big plus for me is that overall I didn’t find the all too common an-orgasm-is-whatever-you-say-it-is talking points in this book, which was a breath of fresh air compared to most contemporary sexpert writing. Weiss actually had incredibly on-point statements about how quickly, easily, and reliably females can orgasm when the clit is stimulated appropriately - and about how stupid and bonkers it is that our culture regularly acts as though the female orgasm (but not male orgasm, of course) is some kind of complicated mystery that women need other people or products to attain properly. She had some great points related to this that I will talk about below.

Now, there was slight discussions of birth-gasms that I find mildly irritating - not in the ideas behind it related to having a more pleasurable and centered birth process - I LOVE that, but in the language that makes it seem like it’s just one more type of ‘gasm’ women should/could be achieving. There is a tendency in sexual literature (both thoughtful, feminist, progressive, scientific stuff as well as thoughtless pop write-ups) to write and talk about female orgasm as if it is infinite in its power and in its ‘types'; as if compared to men, women are multi-facetted, wildly diverse, magical sexual goddesses that can have all kinds of different orgasms. The truth, however, is that the only actual ‘type’ of orgasm physically recorded in women in all of scientific literature, the only medically/scientifically understood ‘type’ with an actual physical marker, - is the same plain ol’ clitorally/penile stimulated orgasm men have.

My point is, regardless the intention behind it, I generally find the practice of attaching ‘gasm' qualities to all kinds of sexual or feminine pleasures to be confusing, misdirecting, and ultimately harmful for ladies and lady-gasms. Talking about different types of pleasures is fine and dandy. Aligning/equating all sexual pleasure to an orgasm is confusing as fuck - even if it’s non-intentional. The culture already barely acknowledges the existence of a realistic, clitorally stimulated orgasm in women. We don’t need added confusion and pressure to make our bodies have sexual reactions that are more ideas rather than actual bodily reactions. However, I thought this birth-gasm discussion was better than most. I think it was somewhat clear that the ‘gasm’ part of birth-gasm was a very broad idea of pleasure and fulfillment, and not necessarily an actual orgasm, but I’m me, and I will always point out when ‘gasm’ qualities are being thrown around to women in a confusing way.

Okay, so on to the details. There’s lots of great non-sex/orgasm content in this book. Definitely give it a read for all that too. However, my write-ups focus specifically on lady-gasm, female masturbation, or the clit, so those are the parts of the book I will discuss below. There’s actually many mentions of those things in the book, so this isn’t completely comprehensive, but I think I’ve touched on all the major related points.

Masturbation

In Chapter 8 “I Touch: Feeling Myself, the Other,” (all the chapters are named with I phrases), she pushes back on the idea that, just because our genitals are not as ‘out there,’ women are at a disadvantage for ‘discovering’ masturbation. She rightly points out that there’s no sensible innate reason that girls are less exploratory and aware of their bodies, and in fact there are many girls that learn to masturbate long before they even know the word.

Weiss has a different thought about what puts us ladies at a masturbation disadvantage (meaning as a group we tend to start later and do it less),

“Objectification, evident in the very notion that a women would possess less independent self-knowledge or desire than a man, puts us at a disadvantage.” (Subjectified p115)

Weiss also makes some really poignant statements about how strange it is that one common talking point about female masturbation in our culture is that it’s empowering. This is not a talking point for male masturbation in the same way at all. And, she’s right. It’s fucked up because it shouldn’t be that deep. It’s just masturbation. It’s just a person manipulating their own body to elicit an orgasm - something that’s available to all healthy bodies from the time we are small children. It’s fucked up because at its heart, it’s a reminder about how very not conducive our culture is to girls and women feeling ownership over their own bodies and sexuality.

“Women are the societal “other” - the group catagorized as lacking selfhood and subjectivity, as different from the default people, men - and so we become the other to ourselves. Hence the trope of a woman feeling liberation in discovering her uncharted sexual territory, uncharted even though it is hers,” (Subjectified p116)

She also spoke of a less than stellar experience at one of Betty Dodson’s workshops. Dodson is an esteemed, and now deceased, lady-bation advocate of the 70’s that famously led classes where women looked at their vulvas in mirrors and masturbated to orgasm in a circle with Hitachi Magic Wands. She was leading these classes into her 80’s and up, which is when Weiss took her workshop. I got to interview Betty Dodson, and absolutely loved talking with her. I love what she’s done for orgasm equality. She’s a woman that’s lived a full-ass life (I’d highly recommend reading her Sexual Memoir My Romantic Love Wars: A Sexual Memoir), but I also totally see her being shitty to someone in her class that wasn’t engaging the way she wanted them to engage…or being shitty for a variety of other reasons - lol. I’d say she runs hot.

I also completely see and really appreciate the criticisms Weiss had of this class. You should read Weiss’ story about this. It’s pretty fun, but overall her critiques centered around a couple things: the focus on beauty and femininity and the focus on sort of ‘making a show of’ the masturbation process. Weiss points out how this focus pulls away from a woman’s simple desire and action of stimulating herself to orgasm - something she can do with her own body, timeline, and style - and aligns more to something we ladies and our actions always seem to get realigned to - how we look.

For an example - loosely from the book: The beginning of the workshop always starts with a vulva show-and tell, so everyone can admire the beauty of everyone else’s vulvas. Dodson’s whole thing is that all vulvas are different but equally beautiful, so it’s helping women feel that they are not gross down there, but like, why does it need to be beautiful to be worthwhile? Saying that ‘every body is beautiful’ is nice. I get that it expands the restrictive beauty standards of the past and why it’s a type of advocacy, but it still centers worthiness (aka women’s worthiness) in beauty - how we are perceived- and it’d be nice if we could move beyond that and really know that we are worthwhile just. by. existing. Weiss also has some more great thoughts along this line in her sections about body positivity and beauty that really resonated with me.

Anyway, when it came time in the workshop to masturbate, Weiss did so - quietly- and then was done. Some women around her were vocalizing, expressing deep emotions, and really playing the build-up - all things that were encouraged. Weiss felt a bit unfeminine or like she didn’t get it or fit in, and let’s just say Dodson didn’t make her feel any better. Another woman at the workshop seemed to have a similar feeling to Weiss about masturbation being more like a simple release. All that to say, the focus in these workshops on femininity and of expressing masturbation in a feminine way (which was very much contrasted to a simple, less sensual, utilitarian masculine way) was off-putting and didn’t ring true for Weiss (and I would agree). It was as if even in masturbation, when it’s just women perceiving themselves, there was still a sense that being feminine is about being watched and enjoyed.

“Betty’s website evoked the same binary I’d encountered in magazines and on screen: While male masturbation was a straightforward way to keeep a guy’s sex drive in check, female masturbation - like women themselves - was languid, soft, wild, emotional, and, of course totally hot to witness. Betty’s videos and blog posts were created to dismantle patriarchy, yet it felt like they were ever so subtly projecting a patriarrchal fantasy of my sexuality onto me. This projection was better than the social message Betty was fighting: that it was abnormal for a women to be sexual. The idea that self-pleasure was healthy for women was radical when she started her workshops. She was a pioneer by discussing masturbation at all. Today, we can do better in how we discuss it.” (Subjectified p120)

Gender in Some New-Age Spiritual Sexual Practices

Weiss also speaks in the chapter, '“I Define: Embody Your Divine Self,” about a variety of what I’ll call new-age spiritual sexual practices. This was particularly interesting for me because I’ve recently been seeing much more of this coming into my media feeds, and I’ve been looking into them more. I will not go deep into all the stuff Weiss wrote and experienced here, but I will say that she said a couple things that made me pump a fist.

She first discusses a practice taught by the company OneTaste, called Orgasmic Meditation (OM). The quote below is about what her OM teacher told her:

“We typically think of an orgasm as a climax, she said, which is a sharp peak and release of tension. However women’s orgasms did not work this way. Women’s orgasms, like their energy, were rollarcoasters, including many peaks and troughs of pleasure but no clear beginning or end. ‘Orgasm,’ she elaborated, was the ‘activation of the involuntary systems in the body.’ It includes processes such as flushing of the face, shaking of the legs, and sweating. In other words, a ‘feminine’ orgasm spanned the whole arousal process and could go on indefinitely. Men typically had climaxes, while women had ‘expansive orgasms,’ which could be elicited through this ritualized stroking of the clitoris’s upper left quadrant. Most people saw orgasm as equivalent to climax because of patriarchy’s male centered mentality, but OM was here to shine the light on the feminine form of pleasure.” (Subjectified p132)

Weiss said she’s heard this style of argument about gender inequality before, and sometimes it had merit. However, she quite rightly in this situation says,

“Mostly, though, the argument devolves very quickly into gender essentialism backed more by social norms than science.” (Subjectified p133)

I couldn’t agree more. In fact the more I had been reading about the new-age spiritual discussions of orgasm, the more I saw a couple trends:

• It was wildly gendered - in like a 1800s conservative religious way, but with hipper language.

• There was constant shade given to a woman having a a basic, clitorally stimulated orgasm - like everything from calling it junk food (in comparison to the lovely and nutritious meal that is their favored feminine type of ‘orgasm’ or ‘climax’), to saying that it’s straight up a masculine way of engaging in sex and it isn’t good for 'the feminine sexuality.

Weiss’s experience with this OM and some other groups she looked into aligns right in there, and I appreciate that she calls bullshit on this. She focuses largely on the wildly gendered aspect and all the problems assocaited with that - it’s a good thoughtful read.

For my part, I’m more focused on how eerily similar these lady-gasm conversation are to the frigidity discussions of the early to mid 20th Century, and how harmful, I believe, they are to the culture of female orgasm.

The reality is that women can orgasm (what the OM teacher up there calls Climax) as quickly easily and reliably as men. Apparently it’s fine for men to casually and realistically enjoy basic sexual release the way their bodies are able, but for women, it’s not good enough. It wasn’t good enough when ‘mature’ women were supposed to be having vaginally stimulated orgasms from penis-in-vagina sex, and it’s apparently still not good enough now because women, I guess???, are deeper, more complex spiritual beings that can basically use energy flow or something to have a forever-gasm. I mean what we ladies are supposed to be achieving and what is specifically supposed to be happening to our bodies by OM “orgasming” (instead of the basic male-style climax) is not clear. What is clear, though, is that the continued storyline is that women’s bodies are complicated and beyond basic physicality. We are not fully feminine until we achieve some higher level of sexuality that, of course, takes plenty of extra time and energy (and money…for workshops, classes, therapy, doctors appointments, hormone therapy, whatever).

And really, what exactly is this higher level ‘gasm’ thing women are supposed to achieve. Despite what might be purported by these ‘gasm’ advocates, there’s not much of an actual physiological definition (whether that be an OM “orgasm,” an energy orgasm, cervical orgasm, or a good ol’ vaginal orgasm - ‘cause find one of these physically recorded in all of scientific literature. Ya can’t. Seriously.).

I mean, by all means, do any ol’ sexual/spiritual thing you want to find pleasure in your life, but this continual insistence that any physical (male-type) orgasm is lesser or even harmful is some BULLSHIT. And it’s extra bullshit because just as having a vaginal orgasm has the added benefit of ‘happening’ during P-in-V intercourse - which is a fabulous way for a male to have a basic ol orgasm (strange coincidence, huh?); the new-age spiritual versions of this also often (at least in what I’ve been looking at) focus on the receptive nature of the vagina to the penis or the stimulation of the cervix by a penis during intercourse. So basically, we’re still just telling women that they are not whole in their sexual pleasure until they can have an explosive, mind-bending ‘feminine’ reaction - probably from getting banged.

Orgasm Products

Weiss discusses, in the chapter '“I Care: Sexual Empowerment Sells,” the mountain of products out there that tell us they are helping to close the orgasm gap - everything from condom companies to vibrators to cosmetic surgery.

“‘Men are able to have three orgasms in the time a woman can achieve one,’ echoes an email I received from the VSPOT’s ‘vag empowerment’ spa about the O Shot, a vaginal shot that purports to increase women’s sensitivity. I’m unsure where that statistic came from, as women can orgasm as efficiently as men when they receive clitoral stimulation - and are more likely to have multiple orgasms within a short time frame (12). Sex brands do not need to provide physical solutions to the orgasm gap because there is no biological gap to solve. On the O Shot’s website, VSPOT founder Cindy Barshop states that women who get this shot are ‘having orgasms just like a man does’ (13). As if there’s something masculine about having orgasms. As if the penis functions optimally without assistance, while the vulva is an incomplete organ.” (Subjectified p189)

Weiss is correct. The VSPOT is truly out of pocket with those assertions. I’m honestly flabbergasted at how much inaccurate and non-scientifically backed information gets spouted off about female orgasm even from actual medical doctors (wildly/sadly, it’s really not so different in the female orgasm research world - check out some of these oft cited journal articles I’ve summarized and critiques). VSPOT just keeps spouting off, though.

“I received this kind of message myself from VSPOT, which offered me a complimentary O Shot when I was twenty-five, alleging it would alleviate my struggles to orgasm with partners and allow me to orgasm through intercourse. The gynecologist told me that if the shot didn’t work, I might want a ‘clitoral dehooding’ to make my clitoris more accessible, as its hood was purportedly too big for optimal pleasure. Rather than gain sexual confidence promised by the ‘vag empowerment spa’ - or the increased vaginal sensitivity - I left with a sense of my own deficiency.” (Subjectified p191)

I assure you that there is no good and sensible studies out there giving any credible measurement criteria for clitoral hood that are better vs. worse for ‘optimal pleasure.’ That’s a WILD assertion.

Weiss also discusses the sense that women NEED vibrators for their sexual health - as if men are able to orgasm without devices, but women cannot. I think that’s a super interesting take on this because our culture really does give us a sense that women are just generally less capable of orgasm - so of course they need technology specially made for that.

I mean the truth is, even though study after study shows that physically women can orgasm as easily, quickly, and reliably as men, the whole way women have been made to exist in the world and the absolutely shitty-for-female-orgasm norms of partnered sex, do make it harder for women to have orgasms, and vibrators (with their possibility for particularly intense stimulation) do help break though all that circumstantial arousal and orgasm stifling crap. So it’s fair to say vibrators are ultimately helpful for our current lady-gasm situation. However, Weiss’s point is important. Women are not biologically lesser when it comes to having orgasms using only their own bodies.

Also a side note on vibes - the book The Technology of Orgasms - goes into this issue in such beautiful depth. I mean basically one might say vibrators are so prevalent and important in the society because of a long history of men not wanting to be bothered with the clitoris and female orgasm during intercourse (which, surprise surprise, happens to be incredibly conducive to the male orgasm but not the female orgasm). I mean that’s a super simple, surface take there, but it’s a great and thoughtful book if you want additional thoughts on this.

Orgasm Advice

Weiss, in the Chapter “I Like: You’re Just Not That Into Them” talks about how popular orgasm advice still often focuses on how valuable your orgasm is to his pleasure - how hot it is for him, how much it makes him feel good/masculine/accomplished, how cool it is for him to watch you come. She specifically mentions Cosmo - which she’s written for but avidly tries to avoid making those types of him focused statements.

“The irony is, 32% of Cosmo’s readers reported in a 2015 survey that when they could not orgasm, it was because they were in their head or focused on their looks (7). Articles about how attractive women are in bed probably aim to combat such insecurities. Yet the way out of this self-consciousness is inward, not further outward. The way to feel more pleasure is to focus on your own sensations, not your partner’s arousal or ego.” (Subjectified p218)

Final Take

Read this book. Give it to another woman or girl in your life. It’ll give you some thoughts to mull over, and it isn’t filled up with wildly speculative assertions about female orgasm. That’s a win.