I admit it. I have been waiting all my life (okay, maybe just the last 10 years) for someone to make a quality film about the incredibly interesting history of vibrators. Really. I’m not kidding.
And finally, someone is doing it. (Well, I can’t actually vouch that it’s quality, but it is a real film). Maggie Gyllenhaal, the beautiful, feisty, funny and sexy chick from Secretary (another blog post on the feminist aspects of BDSM in the future, I promise) is going ahead and starring in a movie called Hysteria, about vibrators. Imagine a rom-com about the vibrator history. Someone order the popcorn!
So why do I feel like somehow the world is really not complete without a movie about vibrators? Because in my heart of hearts I believe that the vibrator is to the over-30 clitoris what eyeglasses are to over 15-year-old eyes. They can change your life. They make things easier, clearer and more beautiful.
Here’s the real deal. We live in a ridiculously androcentric sexual universe. Put another way, we have allowed men and the media to define sex as vaginal intercourse. If you asked a typical person on the street (male or female) to tell you what the basic requirement or ingredients of “sex” are, no doubt you’d hear something like “man put penis in vagina. Man ejaculates.” Hmmmm… Why would the answer not be “partner massages vulva and clitoris until the women reaches orgasm.” But let’s just be honest, one in 1000 people would answer that way and the one person would probably turn out to be me, a member of our staff or my family. No one answers that way! Worse, no one thinks that way.
So, if say, we were to flip that way of thinking onto its head and suggest that perhaps a woman’s orgasm should be an actual primary component of our sexual definition, well then that changes the equation – totally. Intercourse is, without question, one of the least efficient and effective means of women achieving orgasm. 33.3 percent (that’s 3/10 women for those of you with math challenges) actually can have an orgasm from vaginal intercourse alone. Compare that statistic to 96.5%… the number of women who can achieve orgasm with a vibrator.
So, if you were a professional dealing with that statistic daily, wouldn’t you want there to be more understanding, acceptance, and use of perhaps the best invention since the light bulb?
Perhaps a mainstream movie might accomplish what is so hard for so many of us professionally in the field. Perhaps there will be just a little nudge in the direction of understanding and accepting female sexuality in all its complicated and misunderstood glory.
