Liz Canner, award-winning director of Orgasm Inc. visited Dartmouth to talk about the plot by big pharm to sell women on the idea that they need their drugs. Image courtesy of http://orgasminc.org/.
Ah yes, the weird and wonderful world of woman’s sexual health!
On Wednesday, award-winning director Liz Canner returned to Dartmouth College to present her first feature documentary, Orgasm Inc. For an artist who has already won the Visionary Award of the College, Canner has presented an insightful look into the way women feel about themselves (or feel themselves).
In the film, Canner exposes the pharmaceutical companies’ plot to create a new disease, Female Sexual Dysfunction (FSD) in order to create a brand new market for female sex enhancement drugs. Canner started this project hoping to film a piece on pleasure.
She took a job at a small pharmaceutical company editing erotic videos for drug trials. However, her interest shifted from porn to pills when she realized that the company’s efforts were just another drop in the bucket for America’s culture of excessive medication.
Shortly after Viagra was developed as a self-help sex-help for men, there was a rush to find an equivalent drug for women. Medical celebrities like Dr. Laura Berman used feminist language on Oprah and other media outlets, urging women to take hold of their withering sex lives and demand their own pill. Their intentions seem pure, but there is a catch. Said figureheads receive oodles of cash from pharmaceutical companies every time they mention the ills of FSD, and FSD is nothing more than a big pharma fairy tail.
Today, while people like Berman are still out there campaigning for a “pink Viagra,” the pharmaceutical companies are in a mad rush to find “the cure” that will generate billions of dollars. However, they are trying to “cure” a “disease” that exists only because of a mass misconception of women’s mental and sexual health.
Whatever “cure” big pharma concocts will at best, be ineffective, and at worst, endanger women’s health and possibly their lives.
Canner’s eye-opening film captures how the pharmaceutical companies are willing to cater to American sexual insecurities, take advantage of innocent women, and invent new diseases, all to earn a quick buck
Where should women look for help with their sexual problems? Not in the doctor’s office it seems. Doctors are paid for the number of patients they see and the number of prescriptions or procedures they order. Most doctors aren’t trained to sit down and slowly work with women (and men) with seemingly non-medical sexual problems. They just want to give you a pill, move on to the next patient, and maybe see you next month if that pill doesn’t work out. And doctors can’t give you a pill if big pharma hasn’t manufactured it yet. And big pharma can’t give you a pill if it hasn’t convinced the FDA that there’s a new disease to treat.
If women can’t go to the clinic for sex help where can they go? For one thing there are many non-medical experts who can help women rejuvenate their sex lives.
Psychologists are always good sources since most sexual hang-ups can be linked to things like stress or more serious problems such as abuse.
The bulk of the mental problems linked to poor sexual performance can also be traced to the media’s emphasis on perfect bodies, happily-ever-after hook-ups and wild, rip-roaring sex. If a random sampling of woman and teen magazines is any indication, society has unrealistic expectations for sex and the women who engage in sex. Women put down the glossy pages thinking they’re abnormal if they can’t orgasm on command, for God’s sake!
Those who believe they can’t compete with whoever is on the cover of Vogue will feel bad about themselves and their sexual ability. And those who feel bad enough will be willing to endanger their lives with whatever new designer drug is on the market.
Orgasm, Inc. is a great documentary if you want to know why women shouldn’t need a pill to have an orgasm. Instead of financing pharmaceuticals, money should be funneled into programs to help women learn to love themselves and learn about what turns them on. Such an approach would be a great alternative to a flawed sex education system that, for the most part, only preaches abstinence until marriage and leaves it at that.
Systematic ignorance has allowed women to be exploited for long enough. Society shrouds female sexuality in mystery and taboo but a pill is not going to help women understand themselves any better. If there’s one thing Canner focused on, it is that women must be allowed to understand themselves if they are ever going to have better sex and reach that coveted orgasm.
