Scientifically certified orgasm actually patriarchaly certified orgasm

Excelent news from the twiterverse today! A new study of (abut 1000 individual) female('s) orgasms conducted by someone in a white coat and sensible shoes from The University of West Scotland has found that vaginal orgasms are more frequent when a woman's partner has an unusually large, quivering member! Call me a shrieking feminazi, but I think this sounds kind of familiar? Also sorry about the run-on sentence.

As my beloved, pinko ABC points out there are criticisms that various Australian scientists have of this study (fancy that!) Including worries that the methodology (participants self-reporting) isn't the most scientific thing ever and that pressure from pharmecuical companies means that studies of human (especially female) sexuality is rarely unaffected by corporate pressure to pedal female viagra etc. But my favourite part of this article has to be the following gem:

The study also claims that women who have experienced vaginal orgasms "have a greater satisfaction with their sex life, mental health, relationships with both partners and friends, and life in general."

But Associate Professor Rosemary Coates, also of Curtin University of Technology and president of the World Association for Sexual Health, believes that such assumptions are "reverting back to Freudian assumptions about female sexual responses," saying that "some form of clitoral stimulation is almost always required to trigger orgasm."

The study authors dismiss this view as "clitorocentric" and blame it for the "destruction of human pleasure."

The destruction of human pleasure? Seriously? Women who experience clitoral orgasms exclusively and don't get on the vaginal stimulation of a cock are somehow responsible for the misery of the human race now? To call a spade a spade: this is just patriarchal policing of women's sexuality dressed up as a scientific study. Women ought to be sexually passive and the penis is of ultimate importance during sexytime. If a woman's orgasm isn't the accidental by-product of male orgasm then it is EVIL! Labelling women who achieve orgasm clitorally as sad, mopey bitches is old-school. Cry me a fucking river, study, because you're destroying human pleasure by perpetuating a hierarchy of pleasure and trying to make women who don't achieve orgasm through your heteronormative, phallocentric Approved Method feel insecure.

Give a girl a chance, obscure scientists! Not only do we have to battle the slut-shaming if we're not appropriately coy in seeking out sex (hint: you can never be coy enough, girls), and the cultural norm of objectification and rape influencing the sex we do have, your study implies that if we do get off (difficult considering those last two factors) it has to be a man who brings our passive, frail lady bodies to orgasm. Not us actively stimulating ourselves! Oh no that's so obviously about orgasm, and ladies have to pretend that that's just a side-dish and that the main course is the "emotional intimacy" of holding our man close. Not us actively, unabashedly communicating what feels good to our partner. Heavens! That might make a d00d feel bad and give him the impression that we're better at getting ourselves to orgasm than he is! No, the one, Scientifically certified mode of achieving orgasm is dick penetrating vadge. Clitoral stimulation is selfish.

Thanks for clearing that up, medicine man!

Join me next week as I write a letter to The Enlightenment to break the news that science & rationality didn't actually deliver us from ignorance after all!

I'm so angry 'Violent Femmes' is already taken. By dudes!

Just so you know, this one isn't so much gin & tonic as break-your-arm-in-the-mosh-pit & break-someone-else's-trying-to-get-out. Which is great if you like that sort of thing. Which I do. I love it.
If you don't just skip to about 2:30 for the breakdown.



I found Walls of Jericho while compiling my Hottest 100 Women list this week. I've been going out of my way to find and include female-fronted hardcore and metal bands. Not just the punk Riot Grrrrls (that I love), but bands who are making music now or have been in the past few years.

I love this kind of music. I love bands like Parkway Drive, Norma Jean, Gallows, Carpathian, Refused and Enter Shikari. I love the shows they put on (when I can be fucked to get to them). I especially love the aggression and energy these bands bring to songs that are technically complicated and require a lot of leet skilz (oh, I went there!) While it's not something that ever made me feel unsafe, this scene is pretty dude-heavy and often actively marginalises female fans and musicians.

I think it's due largely to physicality and aggressiveness still being seen as not ladylike, or something that women can't pull-off convincingly. In my experience there's an assumption amongst the people who listen to this music that girls who go along to shows are primarily interested in dressing up and catching themselves a boy with lip piercings and a fringe rather than the music.* It's not exactly an innovative to try an exclude women by telling us that we're fundamentally incapable of appreciating or participating in an activity. It's the same excuse that's been used historically to dismiss women from engineering, maths, formal logic and, yep, Triple J's Hottest 100 of All Time. Neither is it surprising that female screamers are dismissed as poor substitute for a person with a big, swinging dick. Our society has a proud history of telling women to fuc of back to the kitchen and let the boys deal with things. I'm not suprissed, but I am angry.

I wanted to find more angry, screaming front ladies for a couple of reasons. One- contrary to a lot of the excuse-making that went on just after the Hottest 100 list was released, women don't just make pop music and cutesy indi love songs. Women rock the fuck out. We've got a lot to be angry about and that anger ought to be listened to and honoured, not caught at the 'bitch filter' or dismissed as over-emotional crap.

Two- Telling women to sit, waiting for the opportunity to catch a husband, on the side line of any activity is not on. Ever. The heteronormative, narrow definition of womanhood restricts us all even if we don't adhere to it and every single person we interact with knows we don't adhere to it. In our world, our sex and gender precede us and shape our experiences. It doesn't matter if we manage to escape it as individuals, it' still there on an institutional and systemic level.

Three- Telling women to play by a different, more restrictive set of rules than the boys becasue we're wired differently or need protection is not on. Ever. As a young woman I'm insulted when I hear people saying that I don't have the brains or balls to appreciate or participate in something because I'm too fragile/ vain/ passive (which would be that pesky sex/gender thing preceding me, btw). There are some things I need protection from, like rape and unconscious bias or systemic inequalities in hiring practices. I don't, however, need protecting from my own taste in music, or from my anger.

I fully appreciate that some people (male or female) won't be into this noise. I get it. It's all loud and confusing and the vocals are basically (well controlled) screams. that's cool. I'm not saying women who rather heels to hardcore are dupes of the patriarchy. I'm saying that drawing the line between people who can appreciate hardcore and metal and people who can't along gender lines is sexist, problematic, annoying and makes me wanna front my very own aggressive metalcore band.

*As an aside, the implication that hardcore dancing is used as a way for girls to pick a dude is kind of disturbing. The undertones of ye olde "women like a violent man", whether intentional or not, don't help the fight against rape culture. Especially when there's an attitude, from some, that girls ruin the pit and ought to hang back an be eye candy/ groupies.

STI capaign; baby incubators get fearful, lesbian/ bi women get erased.

Readers, I have some terrible news for you. It pains me to reveal that despite our attentive policing of women's sexuality, some girls are actually acquiescing to dudes putting the penis in the vagina. Or in the mouth. Or in the anus. It's all about the penis, hear people. No sexy times without it.

Now, don't be alarmed, I too was shocked, but, our friends in the public service have helpfully provided us all with an STI advertising campaign to alert us of the dangers involved with sex. Unfortunately it's really vexing me. You see, it's obsessed with dick-centric sex, erases sex that doesn't involve penis and has this annoying aftertaste of female sexual submissiveness and a vague "SHE'S IMPURE! THREAT! RED ALERT! NON-VIRGIN WOMAN!" thing that I really don't dig.

I'm not against getting this information out to young people, in fact I've written about how important sex education is in the past, but by pitching condoms as an STI panacea as the STI Questions section of the website does, this campaign invalidates young women engaging in same-sex lovin and puts them in jeopardy by withholding facts about how to have safer lesbian sex (hint: barrier methods like dental dams, cutting fingernails). That whoever put this campaign together failed to include this information is mind boggling and makes me really fracking angry.

Even the answer to the question If I only have oral sex can I get an STI? fails to mention barrier methods pertinent to women getting eaten out; seriously- you're already talking about sex here, is there really a special level of obscenity-hell reserved for women being pleasured by their partners orally? Plug your ears and sing la-la-la for this next bit if you're squeemish about female orgasms- but cunnilingus happens. In fact it's probably happening in a relationship near YOU! Straight or otherwise! Shocking hey?

The second disconcerting thing about this campaign is the print material thats been showing up on buses and train stations (and, conveniently, at the top of this post). The women, pictures of heteronormative innocence, are in positions of diempowerment- hiding behind their boyfriend or facing away from the camera. They are passive victims, for example in both the first and third poster one woman is staring moodily out a window and the other is wide-eyed leaning on her male partner. They're also potential carriers of STIs who are scared and ashamed to learn they might be putting their lover at risk (the combination of images and text in the third poster shows this particularly well, she's a damsel in distress who looks like she's about to bust into tears). However in the second poster the text and the images frame the man as an active subject- you see his face, you're told about the pain the STI is causing him (significantly, the pain it's causing his dick- again with that pesky penis-centric notion of sex!). He's almost in that "Thinker" pose and his brow is furrowed because he is actively engaged with, and concerned about, his health.

If you are at all inclined to dash off a note pertaining to the conspicuous absence of safer sex info for Lesbians and Bi women then you can! sti.campaign@health.gov.au

Cock Rock on the Radio

So The Hoydens have a pretty awesome conversation going at the moment about Triple J’s Man Week and the lack of, dare I say it, Cunt Power in the brief history of post 60s music someone-or-other has compiled on their website. Man Week (although creepily named) seems to be mostly something that the triple J news program Hack is doing. They often have weekly themes to stimulate discussion and report on and to be honest this one doesn't offend me that much because some of the conversations they're having are really important like talking about prostate cancer and mental health. I mean, I think we spend enough collective time wringing our hands and worrying about men in what is essentially a male-authored world, but I'm not going to begrudge any person getting info about their health.

But honestly, I do begrudge the exclusion of women from the writing of histories, including pop culture histories. I mean, seriously? Is this list the best Triple J could do to represent the 1960s- 2000s to the youth of Australia, who were not there and probably never find out about it except from them? orlando is thinking of writing a letter, which triple j obviously need to read, but triple J’s defence of this list is inevitably going to be that while female artists have contributed to music since the 60s they were never the avant-guard, and that they always followed the lead of male artists in terms or creative risks and commercial success. No doubt they’ll make some sort of blanket statement about the list being "incomplete" and remind her the judgments made by those who complied the list are subjective, and hey why not vote for yourself! It'll be totally sweet maaaaan. I've seen this defense used by shitloads of academics to defend thier phallocentric history of philosophy and art history, and it's disingenuous and lazy.

Mostly because this list-making business is always necessarily arbitrary and imprecise (very different to subjective), no matter how much you've studied music history. Who is deciding where hardcore ends and metalcore begins stylistically? When glam rock started chronologically and the difference between 'foreshadowing' a genre and it's proper 'beginning'. When grunge became insanely popular did it also become a different genre (popgrunge? I don't know) from underground grunge or not? And why the fuck is the Riot Grrrl movement (presumably) a subset of punk according to Triple J? We're going to tell this story based on the way it's been told before and the way we like to see the world. Genres are lines in the sand, and as such are a pretty imprecise way of drawing up the list. But if Triple J were to do it differently how would they measure it? Rely on the market and collate a list of commercially successful artists? Who the author personally likes? There's nothing objective about this list and in the absence of facts Triple J are just falling back on patriarchal yardsticks.

The problem with this list is that it relies too unreflectively on the way this story has been told before. Living in a patriarchal world means that all the tools we use to interpret and order that world value men over women, white over black, hetero over LGBT, cis over trans, able bodied over PWD. Individuals and institutions not being critical and deliberately mindful of that valuing and ordering is what perpetuates the patriarchy. And phallocentric histories are undoubtedly patriarchal. Even if this list wasn't utterly arbitrary (actually, precisely becasue it is arbitrary) it's such a fail on Triple J's part not to examine why women are underrepresented on it. They could've looked at how they are implicated in the marketing/ consumption of female musicians as either
1) untalented wank fodder (jokes about Brittany Spears)
2) talented women whose sex life is more interesting than their music (BUT WHAT IS MISSY'S HIGGINS' ORIENTATION!!???), or,
3) talented female musicians who are presented as a novelty (Bjork, P J Harvey, on and on).

But of course reflecting on sexism, internalised and institutional, is an inherently feminist thing to do and... opps got left off the list.