The orgasm gap is a terrible idea, scientifically, personally and politically

I have wanted to write about the orgasm gap for a long time. However, the subject seemed rife with political landmines. As a neuroscientist specializing in pain and sensations, I gathered many scientific papers on sexual pleasure and orgasm. Female orgasms are so complex, so controversial and so ideologically loaded that they seemed impossible to tackle in a short article. Nevertheless, I am giving it a try, leaving a lot of information for future posts.

The ‘orgasm gap’ can be understood as two interconnected ideas:

1. Women have fewer orgasms than men during sex.
2. Men are to blame for this.

You may object, saying that the orgasm gap is only the first idea and that the second is a strawman. However, since its inception, the orgasm gap always referred to men as the culprits of women not being able to reach orgasm [1].

Although the orgasm gap is presented as a call for women being more aware of the inequality they suffer during sex and as the remedy to this inequality, I think that it achieves exactly the opposite by perpetuating some wrong ideas about the female orgasm and how to achieve it. Not only that, this idea damages feminism by increasing the divide between women and men.

The ‘orgasm gap’ idea is wrong scientifically

I am not contesting the idea that women achieve orgasm less frequently than men during sexual intercourse. That is a statistical fact [2-4]. However, an idea can be wrong scientifically even when based on fact: when it provides the wrong conceptual frame to understand a problem. The ‘orgasm gap’ idea does that by looking at orgasms through only one variable, their frequency, when in fact orgasms are complex phenomena in which intensity, quality, and emotional impact are as important as frequency. When we consider these crucial properties we come to realize that there is, in fact, another orgasm gap in the opposite direction: female orgasms are often more intense, more enjoyable and have a greater emotional impact than male orgasms. Of course, this second orgasm gap is not to be blamed on women but on some basic physiological differences between the sexes. This is not a new finding, people have been aware of it since antiquity, as I humorously pointed out in my article The Orgasm Gap According to the Ancient Greek.

Of course, if you do not reach orgasm at all it does not help that it would have been better than a male orgasm. Here we are faced with a third orgasm gap, one that exists between women: some women are multiorgasmic and cum easily, others are anorgasmic, and most are between these extremes with different levels of difficulty in achieving orgasms. To complicate things even more, the ease, frequency and intensity of female orgasms change through life, notably after menopause, but also depending on factors like childbirth, motherhood, emotional health and quality of romantic relationships. Emotions like anger, indignation and shame have a great impact on the ability to orgasm and orgasm quality.

The other way the ‘orgasm gap’ is wrong scientifically is in its second part. It discusses orgasms as something that happens only during sex with another person, ignoring orgasms achieved through masturbation. However, the inability of a woman to achieve orgasm through masturbation is a different problem that her inability to get it with a sexual partner. The first could point to a serious physiological or psychological disorder, whereas the second may or may not be caused by her sexual partner. By framing female orgasms as something exclusively related to sexual interaction, the idea of the orgasm gap may direct women in the wrong direction to solve their problem.

Approaching sex with an ‘orgasm gap’ mentality is bad personally 

Many people come to sex with a lot of emotional baggage. They may have grown up in a sexuality repressive culture that has left them filled with sexual guilt and shame. They may have been abused sexually. They may come from previous relationships with people that disregarded their sexual needs or that were sexually incompatible with them. And yet, for sex to be fulfilling, healthy and fun we have to leave that baggage behind and try for a fresh start. That may not always be possible, but at least we should be aware of our problems and not blame them on our sex partner. Here, an ‘orgasm gap’ mentality is likely to increase instead of remedy our previous problems. It makes women look at men with suspicion, which is a bad place to start. Even worse, it presents sex as a transactional act: “I give you pleasure if you give me pleasure”, when sex should be an act of generosity. A fundamental thing to understand about sex is that giving pleasure IS pleasure. Pleasure is not just the sensations arising from our genitals, is the whole emotional feedback, the upward spiral of ‘I enjoy that you enjoy that I enjoy that you enjoy…’.

In my experience, the biggest obstacle to orgasm is anger. That’s why I think the revindicative approach to orgasm brought by the concept of the orgasm gap gets it completely backward. If you start having sex with the frame of mind that you are going to blame your partner if he doesn’t give you an orgasm, most likely you are not going to get one. You may add other negative emotions to anger, shame and craving, for example, but nothing drives sexual pleasure away as effectively as anger. There is no amount of sexual expertise that can overcome those walls in your head.

If you are trapped in anorgasmia, the way out is in not to find a man that can ‘give you an orgasm’. Barred a medical or psychological problem, the path to better orgasms is creative masturbation. You should be able to give yourself orgasms, and in the process map out the places in your body, the touching, the rhythms, the fantasies, the words and the sounds that get you off [3]. Only then you will be able to tell them to your partner, so you can travel together on a landscape of pleasure. And remember, orgasms are only one more feature in that landscape.

Regarding men's behavior, there is an issue regarding female orgasms that has been ignored by the orgasm gap warriors. As analyzed in the book A Billion Wicked Thoughts [5], many men do seek to give women orgasms with single-minded determination. However, they do not do it in the spirit of good, giving and game (GGG) sex, but because they consider it an act of conquest, a personal achievement demonstrating their sexual skills. Here the giving of pleasure comes from the ego, not from a place of generosity. The ‘orgasm gap’ ideology encourages this, adding to the ‘making her cum’ ego boost the additional reward of being politically correct.

Genesis did a great satire of this attitude in their song Counting Out Time:

I'm counting out time, hoping it goes like I planned it,
'cause I understand it.
Look! I've found the hotspots, Figures one and nine.
Still counting out time. Got my finger on the button.
"Don't say nuttin' just lie there still
And I'll get you turned on just fine".
Erogenous zones I love you!
Without you, what would a poor boy do?

The ‘orgasm gap’ hurts the political goals of feminism

I have always defined myself as a feminist, but I look at modern trends in feminism with increasing unease. Some feminists seem to be hell-bent in starting a gender war. This is not new, of course. There is an undercurrent of misandry (hate of men) in some forms of feminism that goes back to the 70s. In particular, anti-porn feminism tried to condemn male sexual desire as inherently violent, exploitative and objectifying of women (culminating in the “penetration is rape” nonsense). I suspect that the ‘orgasm gap’ comes from this ideological current in a last desperate attempt to fend off sex-positive feminism. After all, this idea is consistent with a view of male sexuality as being inherently selfish.

However, if feminism is to succeed, it needs to recruit men to its cause instead of alienating them. And this is what the ‘orgasm gap’ idea does when it blames men from the sexual problems of women. Of course, there are some selfish men who only seek their own sexual pleasure. More often, however, men fail at giving pleasure out of ignorance and lack of skill. As the practice of casual sex becomes more common, pleasuring women is not an easy task because their sexual responses vary enormously [2, 4, 6]. And no, it is not as easy as stimulating her clit; many women do not like their clits to be directly stimulated. And yet some others do. Others vastly prefer vaginal stimulation and do not care if this is politically incorrect. There are submissive women who fall on their knees and beg to be used for your pleasure. I’ve met sadistic women who were much more interested in my pain than in their own pleasure. Every woman is different, so go figure! As sex adviser Dan Savage once said, sex should be like a five-page dinner menu where each person gets to pick their favorite dish, and then share it.

Just like in a relationship, sex should be the glue that binds women and men together to fight for progressive political causes. Including, of course, women equality. Tossing blame and shame back and forth across an artificially-created gender gap is foolish and counterproductive. Equality is not a zero-sum game, and nowhere is this truer than when it comes to sex.

References:

[1] E.A. Armstrong, P. England, A.C.K. Fogarty, Accounting for Women’s Orgasm and Sexual Enjoyment in College Hookups and Relationships, American Sociological Review, 77 (2012) 435-462.
[2] K.L. Blair, J. Cappell, C.F. Pukall, Not All Orgasms Were Created Equal: Differences in Frequency and Satisfaction of Orgasm Experiences by Sexual Activity in Same-Sex Versus Mixed-Sex Relationships, The Journal of Sex Research, 55 (2018) 719-733.
[3] D.A. Frederick, H.K.S. John, J.R. Garcia, E.A. Lloyd, Differences in Orgasm Frequency Among Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Heterosexual Men and Women in a U.S. National Sample, Arch. Sex. Behav., 47 (2018) 273-288.
[4] J.R. Garcia, E.A. Lloyd, K. Wallen, H.E. Fisher, Variation in orgasm occurrence by sexual orientation in a sample of U.S. singles, J Sex Med, 11 (2014) 2645-2652.
[5] S.G. Ogi Ogas, A Billion Wicked Thoughts: What the Internet Tells Us About Sexual Relationships.
[6] R. King, J. Belsky, K. Mah, Y. Binik, Are there different types of female orgasm?, Arch Sex Behav, 40 (2011) 865-875.

The octopus fisherman

[Trigger Warning: Childhood sexual abuse]

I woke up earlier than usual. Little sunbeams filtered through tiny cracks in the blinds, announcing a beautiful summer day. I slid down from my top bunk and, not wanting to wake up my brothers, dressed up quietly. Just my swimsuit, a T-shirt and beach slippers.

I was thirteen.

The sun was still low over the pine trees. The bay was calm, an incipient breeze changing its color from silver to deep blue. It was going to be a hot day. Nobody was up yet, so I decided to go for a stroll.

I wandered through fields of cabbage and corn till I came to the rocks on the shore. Not far on the water, in his wooden boat brightly painted white, brown and blue, was the octopus fisherman.
Octopus is a delicacy in Galicia, sort of a national dish. It is served boiled on thick wooden plates, seasoned with olive oil, coarse salt and spicy paprika. I loved to eat it but was also fascinated by the animal itself. I had learned to catch it. With my mask, snorkel and fins, I would swim over the sandy bottom looking for odd objects: an old rubber boot, a pot, a tire. Then I would dive down and check inside for octopus. More often than not I would find one, which then I would wrestle to the shore, kill and proudly present it to my mother to cook for lunch.

The old fisherman used completely different methods to catch octopus. He would never get in the water; like most Galician fishermen, he probably didn’t even know how to swim. He carried long poles with a hook at the end. When he spotted an octopus in the bottom he would quickly get one on his poles, hook the octopus and haul it into his boat. Sometimes the octopus would get into a crack in the rocks and stubbornly held to it with all the considerable strength of its tentacles and suction cups. Then a fight would ensue, the fisherman pulling with his pole this way and that and the octopus holding on for dear life.

* * *

One day I witnessed one of these struggles while lying lazily on a towel on the beach. The fisherman fought for over half an hour and still couldn’t get the octopus. I grabbed my mask, snorkel and fin and got in the water, wanting to take a closer look at the struggle. There was a large rock on the bottom and the hook of the fisherman’s pole keep going under it. There must be an octopus under there. I asked him if he needed help, but he just muttered something incomprehensible in Galician. Finally, I couldn’t stand it anymore. I took a deep breath and dove toward the rock. Bracing with my knees on the bottom it was a simple matter for me to turn over the rock. The octopus came out and took off swimming at full speed, opening and closing its tentacles, looking like a little ghost. I went back to the surface for air. “Now I’ve done it!” I thought, “I have lost this poor fisherman his catch.” Desperately, I swam on the surface following the octopus, which was heading for deep water. I dove again. If the octopus were as smart as some people think it is, it would have just keep on swimming and I would have not been able to catch it. Instead, it opened its tentacles on the bottom and waited for me. I grabbed it and head back to the surface. It was a big one. It wrapped its tentacles around my arm all the way to my neck, pulling hard to slide between my fingers. I knew it just wanted to get away, but I started to get scared. Then I looked up and saw the fisherman in his boat. He grabbed the octopus and peeled it off me.

“I’m glad I could get that octopus for you,” I told him after I climbed into his boat.

“That’s your octopus, not mine,” he said. “Take it home and ask your mom to cook it.”

* * *

I used to ride with the octopus fisherman in his boat, watching him peer into the water to see an octopus where I could see just rocks. Another way he had to catch his prey was to drag a line to which he had attached a small rock with a crab and hooks tied on top. The octopus would try to get the crab and get hooked. He taught me the names of all the beaches in the bay and a lot of things about the sea. At the end of the morning, he would pull his boat to the beach and the beachgoers would gather around and bid for his catch.

So when that morning he called me and rowed his boat backward to the rocks to let me in, I didn’t think twice. I went and sat of the prow as he rowed back out on the bay.

I was starting to ask something about octopus when something really weird happened. The fisherman pulled the oars in and came to where I was. Then he started touching me over my skimpy swimsuit. I couldn’t believe what was happening.

“What are you doing?” I said.

“Whoa, you have a big one!” he said.

That was completely ridiculous. I haven’t reached puberty yet, I had the penis of a child. It didn’t even care if it was big or small.

“Do you want to touch mine?”

I couldn’t imagine anything more repulsive than to touch that old man’s cock.

“No! Stop! Leave me alone!”

“Do you want to go to shore?” He said in Galician. But he wouldn’t stop touching me.
Go to shore and do what? Go to a hiding place so he could continue touching me? Anybody looking out from the beach could have seen us. But there was nobody.

“Stop! Stop, or I’ll jump in the water!”

He took a step back, considering what I had said. Then he started again.

I quickly took off my T-shirt and my slippers and dove head first in the sea. The water was cold. I come to the surface and looked at him. He could row his boat much faster than I could swim. Would he fish me out of the water like I was an octopus? But he just stood there, looking at me with apparent indifference. I swam in a perfect crawl straight to the beach.

I wanted to slip quietly back into my room and change, but my mother saw me walking in, barefoot and wet.

“You have been swimming already?”

“Yeah, the water is nice,” I muttered and went upstairs.

* * *

What was that old man thinking? How could he dare? He was just a poor man, my father was a local authority. If I told, I could get him into a lot of trouble. He would probably wind up in jail. But I couldn’t stand the thought of that free spirit in jail. For me, he symbolized the freedom and wildness of the sea. Even what he had done to me represented that wild freedom. Those were still the dark years of the Franco dictatorship. I didn’t know anything about sex, nobody had told me. Obscure desires had started to awaken inside me, like the strange excitement I felt when I watched my classmates getting a spanking. I didn’t understand any of that. It scared me. The priests told us something about it, but it was always unclear. It was shrouded in secrecy and sin. Perhaps the old fisherman could explain it to me, the same way that he explained the way of the octopus. But not if he was going to touch me like that again.

It slowly dawned on me that I could never ride in the old fisherman’s boat again.

* * *

Later on that day I saw the fisherman pulling his boat on the beach. He had a system to pull his boat out over the tide line. He lay the oars over the sand, then put a round log across them. Then he rolled the boat over the oars using the round log as a wheel. He repeated the process until the boat was on the white dry sand. Some beachgoers always helped him, although he was perfectly capable to do it on his own.

While the bid over the catch started, I quietly grabbed my slippers and T-shirt from the boat and walked away.

* * *

He must have done other boys. One day, I was walking on a beach that could only be reached by hiking through thorny gorse and blackberry bushes, or from the sea. Then I saw him, walking out of a shack with a teenage boy. I pretended that I didn’t see them.

The locals never talked much about him. He had no wife, no children, no family that I knew of. He seemed content and self-sufficient. He looked as old as the world, with his short white hair and his wrinkly face, but there was no way to know how old he really was. Perhaps he didn’t know himself. I saw him once dancing at a local fiesta, alone. He jumped and pranced with a vitality and abandon that I almost envied.

* * *

I may have been already in college when I heard that the octopus fisherman was dying. Stomach cancer, they said. I made discreet inquiries and found the way to his place. It was an old stone house surrounded by an unkempt garden, but there were peach trees and fig trees and plum trees, the fruit still green in the early summer days. I knocked on the door, called, then walked in.

The inside of the house was just a large single room, with a high ceiling, a wooden floor and walls of naked granite. There was a large bed in the middle. The old fisherman was laying on it, his belly swollen.

I sat by him and asked him how he was. He knew he was dying. I asked him if he was afraid of death. He said he was afraid of the pain. We must have said other things, but that’s all I remember. I’m pretty sure I didn’t mention the incident in the boat.

A few days later my father told that the octopus fisherman had died. He asked me if I wanted to go to his funeral. I said no. I had already said my goodbyes to the old man.

The virgin/whore complex

Some men dream about a woman that is pure and chaste. She has been waiting all her life for him, rejecting every man in her path until his arrival because he is her special one, the one she will love and cherish for the rest of her life. Once she is with him she will not flirt with anyone, not even look at them. She will protect her modesty and save her charms only for him. She is his virgin, if not in deed, at least in her deepest heart. She is also ready to step in the mother role, to build him a home that will be his castle, to take care of him and eventually of his children.

Well, maybe it is too much to be expected from a woman to be a virgin in this day and age, but a man can always dream… And, as a last resource, he can always invoke the old American Redemption Myth that permeates so many of the stories and biographies in the USA. It goes like this… A person is led astray by the “follies of youth”, tempted by sex, drugs and violence. She spirals down in circles of increasing degeneration until she touches bottom. Then she “looks for help” and starts a new life in a magical ordeal of rebirth - she is “born again”. That would be the perfect moment in her life in which her savior, the prince she has been waiting for without knowing in, can ride in wearing shining armor or a cowboy outfit, to “sweep her off her feet” and welcome her into her new life. All the mistakes of the past are forgiven and forgotten. Her virginity is magically restored by the soul-searching and the trials of her rebirth.

However, before making his glorious appearance into the virgin’s life, our knight-in-shining-armor or Malboro man has to entertain himself. He looks for “easy” women to have fun with. They are sexy, hot and funny and he likes to spend time with them. But in is heart of hearts he despises them because he knows what they are: they are whores, ready to fling themselves into the arms of any man. They are unworthy of him, they are soiled, they have lost their self-respect by pursuing the easy pleasures of life instead of the higher goal of Pure Love and dedication to Her Man. Of course, there is always the possibility that they would see the error of  their ways, repent and be reborn as virgins ready to devote themselves to the Just One Man ideal.

Occasionally, after he has settled down with his virgin, our King-Of-His-Castle can feel a pang of nostalgia of his careless past with the whores. He thought the virgin would be all he wanted, but now that she is running around taking care of the house and the kids she is not much fun anymore. She dutifully opens her legs for him every time he asks, but sex has become a boring routine. So, since “men will be men”, he occasionally goes out of his castle to find himself a whore or two. Or maybe he adopts a special one who is always waiting to take him on a wild ride when he feels like it. But let’s not get it wrong, everything has to be in its place: the virgin locked in the castle and the whore waiting by the whoring bed.

Things are no different in the BDSM world. In fact, there are some roles that fit perfectly well with the virgin / knight stereotypes. The submissive can be in fact a super-virgin, one that chooses to carry her dedication to her Master to heroic extremes by being ready to obey his every word and to be punished if she ever strays from the “straight and narrow”. And the Dominant can be the super-knight, the Daddy who knows best and has no other desires than the well-being of his submissive virgin.

Do I really need to explain what is wrong with this picture? The virgin / whore complex is the manifestation of some of the deepest sexist reflexes of our culture. It is misogynistic because it negates the right of a woman to run her own sexuality, putting it at the service of a man’s fantasies and desires. It is sex-negative because it is based on repressing sexual desire and imposing a narrow normative of sexual behavior. Indeed, it reinforces the same old monogamous societal norms based on sexual and romantic exclusivity, and the labeling of “infidelity” as the worse possible transgression in a couple.

Yes, everybody has a right to live their kink as they please. If they opt for the most conservative versions of monogamous Domestic Discipline, that’s fine. But we cannot allow sexist, sex-negative and monogamous societal norms to be imported into the BDSM community and preached as the only valid way to do BDSM. The very nature of BDSM, the vast variety of its practices, lends itself to having multiple partners with whom to experience different forms of play. A desire for variety and experience doesn’t subtract from the intensity of the surrender in D/s; in fact, it adds to it. Furthermore, we shouldn’t take it for granted that complete surrender and obedience to a Dom is always wholesome and sane. The intensity of the feelings involved in submission makes it way too easy to manipulate them for psychological abuse, especially when coupled with social isolation in the name of “fidelity”. The best way of preventing this from happening is to be immersed in a kinky community that can raise warning flags when they are needed and provide advice to the submissive, and even the Dom, when things start to go wrong.

The Feminist Umbrella

(A letter to my daughter on the occasion of her 14th birthday)

 

by Valentina Solenzol

Feminism is a term that most men and women believe they understand…until you ask them to articulate its meaning.  Like Obscenity or “The Situation In Israel/Palestine”, it’s a moving target with unexpected layers of subtlety and nuance that tends to spark overpowering emotions and impassioned controversy.  General explanations that try to be objective are, by definition, desperately oversimplified.  There are entire libraries and Ph.D. programs on the subject.  This letter is intended to give you a starting point, a framework with some vocabulary and the most basic history, for you to build on.

It starts with patriarchy, which is any society (including ours) that gives men most of the power and privilege in law, politics, property rights, sex, religion and so on.  Feminism is a set of ideas, developed and supported by women and men who believe in equality of all people, designed to transform the patriarchal system into an egalitarian society. 

I see feminism as a big umbrella with two ideas printed across it:
1.    Our society systematically oppresses and disempowers women.
2.    Something Ought To Be Done About It.

Under the umbrella, there is a kaleidoscope of competing, cross-pollinating, sometimes mutually exclusive ideas, opinions, philosophies, and agendas. 

In a feeble attempt to tame an overwhelming topic, I’ll limit myself to the US in the last 150 years or so.

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, suffragettes marched, protested and lobbied to get women the right to vote.  Additionally, they fought for other basic women’s rights, such as owning property getting an education; entering “male” professions such as medicine and law; having equal legal claims over their children, and much more.  In retrospect, we call this period First Wave Feminism.

Some people/topics you may like to look up: Susan B Anthony, Margaret Sanger, Emma Goldman

The suffragettes and their political descendants are Liberal Feminists who are focused on women gaining equal rights under the law and within the current system.

The World Wars slowed advances in women’s rights activism.  But with the civil rights movement, the Pill and post-WWII affluence, Second Wave Feminism had its day.  This generation of feminists took on inequalities in the workplace and home, reproductive rights such as birth control and abortion, women’s sexuality, and a wide variety of other issues.

Second Wave Feminism: Simone de Beauvoir, Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, National Organization for Women (NOW), Ms Magazine

The ERA, or Equal Rights Amendment to the US Constitution was supposed to be the jewel in the crown of these activists.  It reads: “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.” It would have taken approval, or ratification, by 38 states to be added to the US Constitution, but it missed the mark by 3 states.

During these decades, feminism flourished and grew in multiple directions. Some activists became increasingly militant in their thoughts and actions.  These Radical Feminists, in contrast to their Liberal Feminist compatriots, believe that it is virtually impossible to overthrow patriarchy from within a patriarchal system.  They see the need for a dramatic transformation of society’s basic assumptions.

While Radical feminism vs Liberal feminism is often presented as the main feminist dichotomy, feminism actually comes in many other flavors. For example, Radical feminists, comprise (among others) Separatist and Lesbian feminists; Marxist, Anarchist, Socialist and Libertarian feminists; Black or Womanist feminists; Chicana, Asian American and Native American feminists. Third World Feminism deals with ethnic issues and racism, since the oppression the American woman experiences is a world away from what women may face in other parts of the world, from routine genital mutilation to denial of education to death by stoning. And that’s just scratching the surface of feminist consortia.

Some Radical Feminists saw violent oppression in the way men relate to women sexually.  In their view, pornography, sadomasochism and prostitution were central to explaining women’s second-class position in society.  Accordingly, they were labeled Anti-Pornography Feminists. A few had a exceedingly antagonistic attitude towards heterosexual men.  Their extreme ideas caught the imagination of the general public, creating the impression that this iconoclastic school of thought was widespread among feminists.  Because of this, many people rejected feminism altogether.

Anti-Porn Feminists: Andrea Dworkin, Catherine MacKinnon

In the 1980s, others under the metaphorical Umbrella of Feminism took exception to the anti-porn approach to sexuality. Positing that sexual freedom among consenting adults is key to women’s liberation, they became known as Sex-Positive Feminists.  They clashed intensely with the anti-porn feminists in an ideological conflict colorfully nicknamed The Sex Wars.  There is still an Anti-Porn/Sex-Positive rift pervading feminism today.

Sex-Positive Feminists: Susie Bright, Carol Queen

Third Wave Feminism is difficult to discuss, because we are still in the middle of it. The children and grandchildren of second-wave feminists have been bringing women’s rights into the 21st century.  They point out that queer people and non-white women have not been well represented in previous iterations of feminism.  They challenge male-female duality, suggesting that gender is much more fluid than previously envisioned.  Many in this generation even reject the label “feminism” entirely, though they agree with the writing on the umbrella.

Most third-wave feminists fall in the sex-positive category.  High on their list of concerns are biases based on race, social class and sexuality, workplace issues (equal pay, glass ceiling, etc), rape and gender violence, reclaiming derogatory terms (i.e. “slut”), and reproductive rights. 

The Vagina Monologues, SlutWalks, Pussy Riot, Riot Grrls

How Third Wave Feminism will develop, and what comes next, is up to you. I know you will make me proud.

With love,

Mama