Rachel Bloom is many things: the creator, writer and star of the hit CW show Crazy Ex-Girlfriend; a Golden Globe award winner; absurdly talented and hilarious. Now, she can add sex education advocate to that list with a recent Twitter storm that took on the orgasm gap, the lack of conversation about female pleasure, and lack of education about the clitoris.
On Twitter late last week, she shared a link to a CNN article titled “Who orgasms most and least, and why.” As you might guess, the answers are most = men, and least = women. (Though is true for men and women of all sexual orientations, the “orgasm gap” is widest between straight men and straight women, unsurprisingly.)
Bloom tweeted:
“This article doesn’t mention the clitoris until halfway down, but ALL FEMALE ORGASMS COME FROM THE CLITORIS. Growing up, nobody told me that most women can’t orgasm from only vaginal penetration, yet by high school I knew 20 euphemisms for fellatio. Girls should be taught in sex ed that if they want to orgasm with penetration, many of them will need to also stimulate the clitoris. And women: TELL your partners how to get you to cum. Use your mouth and TALK. LEAN IN ON YOUR ORGASMS. And men: study the clitoris like you’re taking a class on it and the final paper is due tomorrow and you’re super behind. And also: you don’t need to orgasm to achieve pleasure. Some women physically cannot orgasm and that is OK. Lay off of them.”
In a follow up interview with Mic, she added, “For many years, I, as a feminist who went to school for theater, I was immensely insecure about the fact that I cannot orgasm without clitoral stimulation.” Now, she said, “I am fine saying that because it’s not a defect”—but too often, articles like the one she shared ‘[talk] about women’s inability to orgasm from penetration like it’s a problem,” when the REAL problem is “the fact vaginal penetration does not necessarily stimulate the clitoris in that way, and we do not teach young girls, or young men, about the clitoris.”
Bloom added, “I wish I would have talked about masturbation more with other girls. I’ve been masturbating since I was 11, 11-and-a-half.” She added that she started masturbating because she learned about the clitoris in educational books about puberty: “They literally said ‘women can masturbate by stimulating their clitoris.” But female masturbation is so stigmatized that she didn’t start talking about masturbation with friends until her late teens.
Sex, she says, is just one way women are overlooked. “We put so much emphasis on the male orgasm. And so the idea that a woman’s orgasm or a woman’s pleasure is in any way secondary. … If we are de-emphasizing a woman’s essential pleasure … what else are we delegitimizing with women?”
Bloom’s got it right, and her advice is excellent. And because it’s a snow day, here are a few Crazy Ex-Girlfriend songs to pair with it:
Top photo: Crazy Ex-Girlfriend
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