Photo Credit: "Black and White Woman 1" by Linda Terry
Last Thursday I went with my friend Kim—not our Kimmie—to a special showing of “Orgasm Inc.” by the filmmaker Liz Canter at Quad Cinema, a Village institution, six little shabby rooms with screens so small that a wide screen TV could take them in a turf war. But we love The Quad, don’t take it away from us. In the Q/A following the film, Canter told the audience that she’d worked ten years on bringing her project to the screen—which explains why it seemed a bit dated, though interesting and sometimes very funny. She began making a documentary on Vivus, one small pharmaceutical company, and their race against the big guys to create “the female Viagra” in pill, cream (Vivus), patch or nose spray—and she ended up articulating a position on their endeavors and taking on Big Pharma, the pharmaceutical industry; Dr. Laura Berman, Oprah’s anointed national sex therapist; American sex education; vaginoplasty, scary and problematic cosmetic surgery to create designer vaginas—and more. Because we already know that every version of The Great Pink Hope yet produced has failed to earn FDA approval, there wasn’t much drama. (I blogged about the quest for the pink pill in three parts, "Do We Really Need a Pink Pill?", "A Little Pink Pill Can't Restore Lost Desire", "The Little Pink Pill Vetoed by the FDA."
Canter’s position is not a novel or new one: She blames Big Pharma for turning women’s sexual issues into a disease, Female Sexual Dysfunction (FSD), and creating a consumer demand for lifestyle drugs like sex pills through direct-to-consumer prescription drug ads—“drugs for the healthy and wealthy while research on real diseases doesn’t get done.” All the blame for creating that new illness, FSD, is piled on the drug makers—much as some folks insist cyberporn is responsible for sexless marriages. In America, we have trouble remembering the past, unless, of course, we’re re-enacting the Civil War. It’s as if every problem sprang up anew in the current TV season.
Full disclaimer: A member of my family is an executive with a big pharma company. One tends to look more kindly on the employer who feeds one’s relatives. Even so, I think what I think—
And it is simplistic to place all the blame for the pathologizing of female sexuality on the pharmaceutical industry—good corporate capitalists who perceived, defined and are attempting to seize a market. Before anyone thought of pills for sexual desire, there was a nasty medical diagnosis called “frigidity.” Women who were turned off to sex for a variety of reasons, grandmothers of the women now labeled FDS, were “frigid”—and a man with a frigid wife had social carte blanche to cheat on her. “Nymphomania” was another pejorative medical term, this one applied to women who liked sex too much, even inside marriage. Other women who likely were getting aroused but not reaching orgasm (because they had no idea how to do that) were diagnosed with “hysteria” and treated with early vibrators. Yes, doctors actually brought women to electric orgasm in their offices without mentioning the word “clitoris” or suggesting the power of touch.
Before female sexuality was pathologized, it was demonized. Histories of the witch trials in this country are fascinating for the insights to be gleaned into how repressed sexuality can burst into flames. Women (and sometimes men) claimed they were visited by the witches who flew into their beds at night and drove them into a sinful state of sexual frenzy. Caught masturbating? Blame the neighborhood witch.
Today the root of the problem is still sexual ignorance, a cultural failure to educate men and women, much less teens and younger children, on how their bodies work and other physical, emotional and intellectual aspects of sexual function and behavior. Just last weekend the Republican-led House of Representatives voted to defund Planned Parenthood altogether, their predecessors having nearly eviscerated it under Bush. For decades, we have been hamstrung by ridiculous right wing Christian beliefs like abstinence-only sex ed in the schools and Just Say No to abortion and,by the way, to providing food and medical care to those babies whose mothers can’t really afford to raise them alone. The underlying thread of illogic holding these beliefs together is a fierce and fearful disapproval of sex, especially female sexuality.
American culture gave us FSD, in one form or another, hundreds of years ago, long before TV and prescription drug ads with the obligatory lists of possible side effects read in double time in order to get them all in. We have colluded in our victimization. Women believe we should all have orgasms the way female characters in the novels, mainstream movies and porn films do—via vigorous intercourse following a little heated foreplay (or not). Possibly, women have believed this since cave drawings pictured us screaming and shaking in delight while being mounted and pounded.
In addition to spreading the “blame”—Has Canter never read women’s magazines?—she should have more plainly acknowledged that some women do need medical intervention to restore, which is not the same thing as create, their desire, arousal and ability to orgasm. Hysterectomies, cancer treatment, anti-depressants and other prescription drugs, lifestyle issues like work overload, stress, overweight, sedentary habits—all have taken away what many women once had, sexual desire. Few questioned whether or not the man who couldn’t get a decent erection for physical reasons should have Viagra. Female desire and arousal are more complex than male—or we would already have the pink pill to put into the hands of women who medically need the help.
Can we dismiss drugs that might accomplish something as important as the restoration of sexual functioning—male empowerment, female empowerment—with the phrase “lifestyle drugs for the healthy and wealthy?” Is sex of so little value and importance in our lives?
Rather chastise everyone who believes that a miracle sex pill can work against all odds. The woman who isn’t turned on by her husband because the sex isn’t satisfying, or is shamed or embarrassed or too damn ignorant to know how to stroke herself during intercourse, or mistakenly believes that having a fantasy about another man means she is no longer in love with her husband—these and other women won’t be helped by a drug.
Give Dr. Laura Berman the benefit of the doubt when she says some of her patients have been helped by the male Viagra because they need the stimulation of increased blood flow to the genitals just as men do. Does encouraging this off-label Viagra use, and apparently accepting payment from the manufacturer as a consultant—negate her findings?
Finally, how can you make a documentary about questing for orgasm without spelling it out for women, not merely hinting here and there, hit and miss: Masturbate, stimulate your clitoris during intercourse, use vibrators? The middle-aged woman who submitted to an orgasmatron planted into her spine—with the only result being her leg jerked when she turned it on—was granted little dignity, certainly less than the opponent to every drug, Dr. Leonore Tiefer. An older woman craving a sexual experience that is also avidly desired by young women, a no-hands orgasm during intercourse, that brave woman willing to try anything seemed almost an object of amusement to the filmmaker. Inject a little empathy into your humor segments, Ms. Canter because the one thing you will assuredly be unless you die young is older. Laugh with her at the jerking leg, not the desire for pleasure that led her to submit to the surgery.
There is still much to like and enjoy in “Orgasm Inc.” See the film, then do your own research and draw your own conclusions. I do so hate reflexive genuflecting. This film already smells like a feminist sacred cow; and I eat cheeseburgers in India. You just have to know where to buy them.
This weekend, I want to re-introduce you to The Orgasm Loop, the no-fail, no-hands technique I created for women who want an orgasm on intercourse alone. I’ve kept O Loop's light under the basket for too long. Many colleagues have been after me to conduct workshops, make a DVD, take private clients, get the word out beyond the books. (O Loop is also featured in The Sex Bible for Women and The Little Book of Big Orgasm).
My new motto: Teach O Loop and prevent possible spinal cord damage.
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