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.

Booty shakin’. Thumping beats. Tuck students catcalling from the shadows. Sounds like any another Friday night on the Dartmouth frat circuit, but this time it’s Tabard’s Lingerie Show—one of the most controversial events on campus. As freshmen, we opened our “Lingerie” blitzes blushing and bewildered. Little did we know what Lingerie actually entails—creative costumes, choreographed dance, unchoreographed grinding, and varying degrees of nudity. What?! People get naked at Lingerie? Now informed, we chose to either bolt for a familiar frat basement or stick around and see just how “scary” Lingerie really is. Luckily, I chose the latter.

The Tabard, a Co-ed house located in the Montmartre district of Frat Row, hosts Lingerie every Wednesday before big weekends—Homecoming in the fall, Winter Carnival in the winter, and Green Key in the spring. The show sets the tone for the next three days of indulgence. But Lingerie isn’t just another glorified dance party. It has a purpose. “Lingerie is a celebration of the body. The goal is that everyone leaves the stage feeling beautiful,” says three-time lingerie host George Neptune ’10. Neptune feels that many don’t perform in Lingerie because they fear the audience won’t appreciate their nearly nude form. But heckling is, “not allowed at Tabard.” Indeed, one of the most fascinating aspects of Lingerie is the audience’s observation of protocol. No one is allowed to take pictures, except the official Tabard photographer, and for the most part nobody does. Well, at least they don’t surface on Facebook, which Neptune feels very strongly about “because we’re all friends with our Moms.”

Who even goes to Lingerie? Prospies? Jim Kim and family? The Sun God? Probably. No one can say for sure who’s in the audience, but it doesn’t really matter because they’re all part of the community. As soon as the audience members enter the Tabard’s cavernous theater, they sign an unspoken yet irrevocable contract to support each performer. Abby McCann ’11, who has performed three times in Lingerie, said “It’s interesting. Half of them are there because they don’t know what it is, and their jaws drop, and the other half are people you know. But by the end of the show, it’s much more of a homogeneous crowd. Everyone’s into it, everyone’s totally hooked.” The audience assumes this attitude independently, but it is Neptune’s job as host to get the energy up to the level the performers need to feel comfortable letting loose and enjoying themselves on the catwalk. His approach? “The first few minutes of the show are about me trying to figure out what the audience is about. You almost have to mold their response and find something that evokes a response. This term I found that they responded when I made dirty jokes about them.” The audience is an integral part of Lingerie, because without its energy the performers would wilt. In this sense, Lingerie is theater in its truest form. Christian Brandt ’12, who has performed in Lingerie twice bluntly said, “If there wasn’t an audience, there wouldn’t be any point.” McCann agreed, “When you’re onstage you’re relying on everyone in the audience to support you and not judge you, and if you’re in the audience, you’re completely connected to the performers.”

Dartmouth is a self-obsessed campus where “facetime” can feel like a fourth class. This might be the only place in the world where rainbow hair is a status symbol. Yet, we still blush when we hear that people actually get NAKED at Lingerie. Brandt attributes our embarrassment to an American phobia of nudity, which is more pronounced than in Western Europe. Brandt’s frustration with this taboo influenced his decision to go full frontal at this term’s Lingerie show. He also felt the need to spice up what he perceived to be a somewhat bland show: “The rest of the acts were more or less the same. What sets you apart is choreography and actual nudity. People have such an ‘issue’ with nudity that they don’t think people are actually gonna get naked, especially penis! Because there’s more of a taboo against genital nudity.” Continued Brandt, “I could have stripped naked in the basement of Tri-Kap, but nobody would have appreciated it.” For many, Lingerie is a release. It is their single chance to go buck wild in public and still be accepted at Dartmouth. Neptune echoed Brandt’s sentiment; saying, “if you’re going to make facetime, might as well make some asstime too!” It’s fantastic that Lingerie can provide individuals with such a confidence boost, but is making asstime at Lingerie the only opportunity we have to express ourselves fully in the Dartmouth social scene?”

McCann recounted her first experience performing in Lingerie: “[It was] terrifying, I was wearing these booty shorts and we had to bend over, and I was so worried that I was going to show everything to the whole world. But then I just got up there and I totally lost all my inhibitions. That’s what Lingerie is all about. The audience is screaming and the lights are all on you. And you feel totally safe even though you’re putting your body out there.” McCann feels that, particularly as a woman, to feel sexy and safe in a social space at Dartmouth is extremely rare. She attributes this contrast to the fact that Tabard is a Co-ed: “Especially as a woman, if Tabard were a fraternity, I would feel like I were performing for men, like in a real strip club. The fact that Tabard is a co-ed also encourages everyone to get up there and perform—same sex couples, same sex groups. I think also it would be hard for a fraternity not to advertise it as kind of a skeevy thing.”

Perhaps the embarrassment with which some students regard Lingerie stems not only from American cultural taboos but also from Dartmouth’s frat culture, which thrives on segregation of the sexes, unquestioned ritual and secrecy. Brandt remarked on the hypocrisy of Dartmouth students criticizing nudity in the Lingerie show, saying “People don’t seem to have any conception of how inappropriate or appropriate sex is in frat basements. People gratuitously make out in a basement, but then go to Lingerie and are like, ‘That’s gross!’” There is a lot of shame inherent in a society that appreciates sex and the human anatomy only in certain basement corners, only on certain weekends, and only after a certain amount of alcohol. Maybe if we appreciated each other’s bodies every day the way we do during Lingerie, campus date rape statistics would go down. Maybe we’d be one step closer to doing away with our Greek system.”

Performing in Lingerie is like flying. Underneath the blinding lights it’s just you, your snakeskin banana hammock, your whip, and your co-performer. You might remember your “routine” or you might just let the music and the cheering shape your movement for the next two and a half minutes. This is what it must feel like to be Jesus. The only mistake you can make is to believe that you can actually defy gravity on that creaky wooden box runway. It’s really narrow. Especially in four-inch wedges. But even if you fall, like I have, you’ll still feel sexier than you ever have before. And you know what else you’re not worrying about? Your muffin top. And that’s a beautiful thing. Lingerie is also one of the few activities at Dartmouth in which you can participate without having to go through a rigorous and ultimately demoralizing audition process. As a performer, it reminds you that you are beautiful and beloved by your community. And as an audience member, it reminds you of the fierce love that holds Dartmouth together, underneath the hard guy façade.

“It’s not about you,” said McCann. “It’s about what we’re doing together. It’s not about ego—it’s about glorification of the body.” So, ‘13s, don’t knock it ‘til you’ve tried it. Check out Lingerie next term. But a word of caution, you may soon end up on that stage yourselves. Butt. Ass. Naked.

You know it’s bad when even a crime novelist has been sickened by the amount of violence against women in books. Jessica Mann, a well-known British novelist and a prominent book reviewer, has declared that she will no longer review books that feature “sadistic misogyny,” according to The Observer.

But before you jump to the conclusion about that all those disgusting things are “men’s” concoctions, think again—most of the authors who pen these novels are female. Apparently, women need to prove to publishers that they’re “up to snuff,” literally—a serious consideration for authorship in these publishing houses, since sex, or at least violent rape against women, sells.

Society’s obsession with violence against women is hardly a new development. One website, Women in Refrigerators (http://www.unheardtaunts.com/wir/index.html), catalogues all of the female characters in comic books that “have been either depowered, raped, or cut up and stuck in the refrigerator.” As a society, we’ve been enjoying the humiliation, rape, and slaughter of women for decades. Staid Victorian novels, for all their sexual repression and sanitization, seemed to have no problems with depicting violent murder of women, for instance the murder of Nancy in Oliver Twist.

As popular media has become more liberalized, the amount of violence depicted against women has kept pace with other previously taboo topics. In fact, it has probably surpassed those other topics (such as “generic” sex and violence), which is not surprising considering that it started out with a much firmer base in canonical literature and culture.

What crime mini-series is complete without beaten, raped, or otherwise brutalized or killed women in at least a few episodes per season? (Good trivia question to ask: “What’s the one thing all of the many variants of CSI have in common?”)

In fact, few popular TV shows or movies eschew adding “suspense” in the form of threatened (and usually somehow actualized) violence against one or more women. There is a wide range, but it has been an increasing trend. After all, even Battlestar Galactica, a show that I rather like and respect, includes two fairly graphic cases of rape and abuse of women. Admittedly, these women are “cylons,” but when they look like women, act like women, and scream like women, it makes little functional difference in the portrayal.

Perhaps violence against women is an appeal towards the primal male’s “protective instinct.” But how can we label it “protective instinct” and not male “sadistic tendencies” which form the thriving market for torture porn?

But perhaps “protective instinct” makes a bit more sense than the idea of crime novels being “female wish-fulfillment,” which one publishing director stated in the same Observer article. Her statement isn’t quite as bad as it sounds. It is referring to the enjoyment from being frightened and fulfilling that “wish,” but it’s a rather questionable assertion to say that women enjoy reading about other women being dismembered and disposed of. Visceral fright is one thing. Graphic depiction of violence against women is most likely going above and beyond to achieve that goal, if it does at all.

Violence against women is an age-old concept by this point. This variant of violence against women in media is only slightly more recent. Attempting to eradicate it will undoubtedly take colossal effort and require far-reaching societal changes. With those considerations comes the inevitable question of whether we should do something about violence against women in media at all. After all, in previous social crusades, liberals and conservatives have been one nation united under pornography, protecting it under the auspices of either the First Amendment or private enterprise. Obviously, there is some worth that society puts on seeing chainsawed women. As a publisher once told Mann: “Dead brutalized women sell books, dead men don’t. Nor do dead children or geriatrics.”

But perhaps there is something wrong with putting worth, either social or economic, on the depiction of dismembered and disposed women or the process of putting them in that state. Maybe there is something deeper in our society that is wrong when it becomes a key, indispensable ingredient in best-selling novels and top-grossing shows and movies—a key feature that forces producers and publishers to continue to push the boundaries as their audience becomes increasingly desensitized to the bloody messages.

Voltaire’s assertion that, “I will disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to death your right to say it,” is fine when you aren’t in the group that is being socialized as the victim. When the line has been crossed from political and social discourse to an escalating fetishization of the brutalization, rape, and death of women, it may be time to consider putting aside some of our free speech concerns and take a hard look at the society being built on the tortured flesh, blood, and bones of murdered women in modern media.