black holes and gray matter. in one thousand tangos.

             

Making Love in the Movies

“One critic wrote that the lengthy lesbian sex scenes in this year’s Palme d’Or winner Blue Is the Warmest Color were “crucial” for establishing the narrative in this “shattering masterpiece.” But a Times critic, Manohla Dargis, called the film “wildly undisciplined,” and its sex scenes to be more about the director, Abdellatif “Kechiche’s desires than anything else.” Critics and audiences can disagree, of course. But when it comes to sex scenes, is there a way to distinguish between the good and the bad?”

“Cinematic portrayals of sex between women have often been seen as voyeuristic and exploitative. Unlike sex scenes between men, lesbianism is assumed to have wide appeal — straight women are curious, and straight men will apparently line up in any weather.”— Elisabeth Ladenson

“Blue Is the Warmest Color is a mediocre film that features some well-choreographed, lengthy and occasionally tedious lesbian sex scenes. Yet when I had the chutzpah to write a piece for The Daily Beast that challenged several critics’ assertions that these scenes were voyeuristic, sexist abominations, I was accused of coasting on my ‘male privilege.’” — Richard Porton

“Blue Is the Warmest Color, still raised eyebrows when it recently had its premiere in Cannes. Presumably, this is because it’s one of the first art house movies to so explicitly portray same-sex female copulation. The fact that a heterosexual man directed it drew the ire of certain critics, who challenged its perverse “male gaze.” Yet the beauty and verisimilitude of “Blue’s” sex scenes would be worthless without their meaning within the greater context of the story, which involves a young girl’s sexual awakening clashing with the hard realities of class and culture. They are good – even great – sex scenes because they go extremely far to show that sex always has its limits.” —Jordan Mintzer

“There is a self-congratulatory tendency in American films to separate sex from everyday life, which usually reduces sex scenes to nude “money shots.” A bad sex scene divorces eroticism from its characters’ emotions while a good sex scene brings emotion into the physical act. For that reason one of the best sex scenes ever filmed occurs in Max Ophuls’s “Earrings of Madame De…,” in which the fully clothed waltz by Vittorio DeSica and Danielle Darrieux comes complete with their mutual erotic attraction and its palpable emotional risks. Few other sex scenes match that one sequence; it should be a case study for every filmmaker.” —Armond White

“I do have one cautionary concern. We now know a lot about addiction to pornography and games. Addiction creates consumers but hurts their health and families. The film “Shame” reveals the isolation of a sex addict and how far he is from normal feelings. We need to be aware of how vulnerable humans are to manipulation. Before we find ourselves out on a limb of numbness we should be responsible about how far we push the audience when raising sensation over content.” —Martha Coolidge

“Sexual representations in movies must be seen as part of political discourse, and many of the portrayals today treat sex as a social danger. Sex educators, therapists, activists, scholars and sex workers have said time and again that sex education in our country is a public health crisis. Our national commitment to sexual silence – in the form of abstinence-based education, censorship and criminalization – means that we have no way to understand and teach young people about how to give (or not give) consent for sex, how to not be a silent witness to sexual violence, and why the culture of “slut shaming” must end. Moreover, our culture’s anxiety around sex leaves us with no language and skills to understand what we see on screen and to decide for ourselves what makes a good sex scene or a bad one.” — Mireille Miller-Young

Read on. 

I’ll Have What She’s Having ‘What Do Women Want?’ “When it comes to the study of female sexuality, scientists have tended to see what they expect, or want, to see, and there are fewer established facts than you would think. “Despite all the powers of contemporary science,” Bergner writes, “the seemingly straightforward anatomical question, is there a G spot? remains unanswered.” … Female ejaculation has a similar history of discovery, denial, incredulous rediscovery, lingering unknowns. Now, researchers who work with animals argue that female anatomy in fact might be specifically adapted to sex with multiple partners — not just over a lifetime, but in the course of a single sexual episode. The different pace at which men and women build to climax might have the purpose of facilitating sex with multiple men in short succession, which would increase the odds of getting pregnant. Paraphrasing a theory put forward by the primatologist and anthropologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, Bergner writes that the characteristics of female orgasm “could well be thoroughly relevant among our ancestors. Its delay, its need of protracted sensation … was evolution’s method of making sure that females are libertines, that they move efficiently from one round of sex to the next and frequently from one partner to the next, that they transfer the turn-on of one encounter to the stimulation of the next, building toward climax.” If this is true, then female orgasm has played a crucial role in successful human reproduction — even though it is not necessary to conception itself. So where does that leave us? Should we join swingers’ clubs? Have threesomes? Cheat with the piano tuner? Only at our own risk. Bergner acknowledges that people agree to monogamy not because it’s the sexiest possible arrangement but because it seems the best way to have things like emotional stability and trust and therefore long-term companionship, which appears to be something both human males and females want — even if they also want to sleep around. One could imagine a more drawn-out examination of whether monogamy is indeed the best foundation for long-term relationships, given that both men and women (studies now show) sometimes find the strictures stifling to sexual happiness. In reading this book, I was reminded of the columnist Dan Savage’s long-running contention that heterosexual couples would have more stable relationships if they had a less rigid devotion to the ideal of monogamy. But Bergner doesn’t linger on the puzzles of long-term couplehood. The human tendency to become intensely attached to particular sex partners doesn’t figure in here. Instead, the book’s disparate parts are held together by Bergner’s general insistence on the very existence and force of female lust. Bergner proceeds as if the value of being called “animal,” of being considered highly libidinous, were self-evident — as if such charges had never been used against women. The fact that scientific and medical study of women’s reproductive systems has over the last three centuries been a fun house of ethically questionable experiments and misogynistic pronouncements doesn’t weigh as heavily on this book as you might expect. It is with apparently innocent enthusiasm that Bergner describes scenes of women masturbating while hooked up to M.R.I. scanners and having their vaginal blood flow measured by machines.” Read on.

I’ll Have What She’s Having

‘What Do Women Want?’

“When it comes to the study of female sexuality, scientists have tended to see what they expect, or want, to see, and there are fewer established facts than you would think. “Despite all the powers of contemporary science,” Bergner writes, “the seemingly straightforward anatomical question, is there a G spot? remains unanswered.” …

Female ejaculation has a similar history of discovery, denial, incredulous rediscovery, lingering unknowns. Now, researchers who work with animals argue that female anatomy in fact might be specifically adapted to sex with multiple partners — not just over a lifetime, but in the course of a single sexual episode. The different pace at which men and women build to climax might have the purpose of facilitating sex with multiple men in short succession, which would increase the odds of getting pregnant. Paraphrasing a theory put forward by the primatologist and anthropologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, Bergner writes that the characteristics of female orgasm “could well be thoroughly relevant among our ancestors. Its delay, its need of protracted sensation … was evolution’s method of making sure that females are libertines, that they move efficiently from one round of sex to the next and frequently from one partner to the next, that they transfer the turn-on of one encounter to the stimulation of the next, building toward climax.”

If this is true, then female orgasm has played a crucial role in successful human reproduction — even though it is not necessary to conception itself.

So where does that leave us? Should we join swingers’ clubs? Have threesomes? Cheat with the piano tuner?

Only at our own risk. Bergner acknowledges that people agree to monogamy not because it’s the sexiest possible arrangement but because it seems the best way to have things like emotional stability and trust and therefore long-term companionship, which appears to be something both human males and females want — even if they also want to sleep around. One could imagine a more drawn-out examination of whether monogamy is indeed the best foundation for long-term relationships, given that both men and women (studies now show) sometimes find the strictures stifling to sexual happiness. In reading this book, I was reminded of the columnist Dan Savage’s long-running contention that heterosexual couples would have more stable relationships if they had a less rigid devotion to the ideal of monogamy. But Bergner doesn’t linger on the puzzles of long-term couplehood. The human tendency to become intensely attached to particular sex partners doesn’t figure in here. Instead, the book’s disparate parts are held together by Bergner’s general insistence on the very existence and force of female lust. Bergner proceeds as if the value of being called “animal,” of being considered highly libidinous, were self-evident — as if such charges had never been used against women. The fact that scientific and medical study of women’s reproductive systems has over the last three centuries been a fun house of ethically questionable experiments and misogynistic pronouncements doesn’t weigh as heavily on this book as you might expect. It is with apparently innocent enthusiasm that Bergner describes scenes of women masturbating while hooked up to M.R.I. scanners and having their vaginal blood flow measured by machines.”

Read on.

The truth about female desire: It’s base, animalistic and ravenous

A new book on women’s sexuality turns everything we think we know on its head

“There is a conspiracy theory at the heart of this book. Even to the most casual observer of human history, it isn’t news that women’s sexuality has been feared, suppressed and lied about. But What Do Women Want?: Adventures in the Science of Female Desire by journalist Daniel Bergner uses groundbreaking sex research to show the ways in which our supposedly enlightened society still has female sexuality backward — completely, utterly, profoundly.”

You should probably read on.

“People will lie about their sexual behavior to match cultural expectations about how men or women should act – even though they wouldn’t distort other gender-related behaviors, new research suggests. … But when it came to sex, men wanted to be seen as “real men:” the kind who had many partners and a lot of sexual experience. Women, on the other hand, wanted to be seen as having less sexual experience than they actually had, to match what is expected of women.”

Men, Women Lie About Sex to Match Gender Expectations

The Truth About Sex -- at Any Given Moment

“In 1068, a group of Norman women demanded that William the Conqueror release their husbands from military service so that they could return home and satisfy their wives’ sexual needs. Four centuries later, the Catholic Church determined that the Virgin Mary had conceived her son through her ear and decreed therefore that this organ be covered in public. Sex is a function of its time. Throughout these thousand years, views on woman’s sexuality have reflected the ebb and flow of morality, science and religious thought. Some of the following observations will seem remarkably advanced, some familiar, some bizarre. But when it was proclaimed, each rang with the confidence of truth.

A woman experiences ”three delights in intercourse: one from the motion of her own sperm, a second from the motion of the male sperm and a third from the motion or rubbing that takes place in coitus.” — From ”The Canon of Medical Knowledge,” a compendium by Avicenna, the Arab physician and philosopher, circa 1030 (translated into Latin in the 12th century)” ”Woman is defective and misbegotten, for the active force in the male seed tends to the production of a perfect likeness in the masculine sex; while the production of woman comes from a defect in the active force…or influence.” — St. Thomas Aquinas, 13th century

”If the suffocation [of the uterus] comes from a retention of her sperm, the woman should get together with and draw up a marriage contract with some man. If she does not or cannot do this, because she is a nun…or because she is married to an old man incapable of giving her her due, she should travel overseas.…” — John of Gaddesden, of the faculty of medicine at Oxford University, 14th century

”In order to enter, the man must give many caresses…and consider the readiness of his wife; then, he must move in and out, in this way he will succeed. Then he must attempt to release all his sperm in one burst, not in dribbles, nor must he raise or lower himself, as is commonly done for pleasure, but instead remain fixed in the hole so that the air cannot enter and corrupt the seed.” — From the Italian physician Michele Savonorola’s guide to pregnancy, 15th century

‘Ohime! The devil knows how to do so much between husband and wife. He makes them touch and kiss not only the honest parts but the dishonest ones as well. Even just to think about it, I am overwhelmed by horror, fright and bewilderment.… You call this holy matrimony?’ — From ”Rules of Married Life,” by Brother Cherubino da Siena, 15th century

”Let’s not even mention wives who constantly ask for payments on the conjugal debt.…We’re talking about women who want to grind night and day, all the time, who in the end unwittingly lead us to acquire the virtue of temperance.” — From Grappa, the nom de plume of an Italian writer, lampooning the tyranny of conjugal debt, 1545

‘Womb-Furie is a sort of madness, arising from a vehement and unbridled desire of Carnal Inbracement, which desire disthrones the Rational Faculty so far, that the Patient utters wanton and lascivious Speeches.’ — Lazar Riverius, a French authority on anatomy and medicine, describing what came to be known in later centuries as hysteria, 17th century

”The clitoris is a sinewy and hard body.…This is that which causeth lust in women, and gives delight in copulation, for without this a woman neither desires copulation or hath pleasure in it, or conceives by it.” — From ”A Directory for Midwives, or a Guide for Women in Their Conception, Bearing and Suckling Their Children,” by Nicolas Culpeper, an English herbalist and medical authority on rearing children, 1651”

Read ON

©2011 Kateoplis