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Passion and Power
We all have times in our lives when we learn something about the world that profoundly changes the way we think about it - something that just kicks us a bit and we wind up in a slightly different spot than we were before looking at the world from our new perspective.
I remember vividly the day that I learned that welfare was created to keep the poor from rising up and overthrowing the rich. No good intentions, no benevolence - just money and power and a desire to keep them despite who had to suffer.
I also remember the day that I learned how women’s sexuality and bodies have been treated throughout history. It was the day I read the Technology of Orgasm. This fascinating book traces how women’s orgasms have been hidden, forbidden and manipulated throughout history and chronicles the rise of the vibrator as a medical device. It turns out that rich people want to keep their money and doctors don’t want to have to masturbate their female patients to orgasm manually when they can just get a machine to do it.
This fantastic book has just been made into a movie called Passion and Power. I haven’t seen it yet but I plan on getting my hands on a copy as soon as possible. I would suggest inviting over your friends, having a screening and a discussion afterwards. I bet you will learn things about the world you never knew - both from the movie and your friends.
UPDATE: Rachel Kramer Bussel has written a fantastic review of the film with tons of detail over at Alternet: check it out.
September 5th, 2007 at 12:00 pm
That’s what never fails to amaze me these days, how free so many women are with their bodies, and how incredible so many are expressing themselves sexually. Particularly on amateur websites; the amount of energy they put into and get out of their pleasures is a huge turn on. No wonder just about all women’s sexual kinks are seen so permissivly (while I feel that men’s are put down or ridiculed). Any thoughts on that?
September 6th, 2007 at 8:13 am
Cormac,
I think part of that comes from who controls sexuality (esp the porn industry). Men are making porn for the most part and thus are in a position to decide what is hot and they seem to have collectively decided that for the most part, men’s sexual kinks aren’t as interesting as women’s. Or, that men wouldn’t want to watch that in their porn movie.
One example of a porn that does have a fair amount of both female and male kinkiness is Fashionistas. I appreciated seeing men get spanked, flogged and tied up in that film.
Lastly, when kinks involve submissiveness, I would also argue that gender roles in our society make it acceptable to watch women being submissive but certainly not men. Women are “supposed” to be submissive, not men, so we don’t see submissive males represented as frequently by the industry.
Anyone else?