Screwed: How Women Are Set Up to Fail at Sex
$8.69 (Kindle)
from Amazon
You wouldn’t necessarily think that a book about how society sets women up to fail at sex would be fun, but you might be wrong. “Fun” may not even be the right word to described Screwed, but it was a real page-turner, and I found myself eager to pick it back up after a break and reluctant to put it back down. This was a surprise, considering that the book hadn’t even been on my radar before I picked it up.
Screwed would be a brisk read for anyone at fewer than 160 pages, of course. But the content within those pages is shrewd in its wisdom and well-timed, at least, as well-timed as it can be considering that not everyone has pondered these things before. Sex, while it can be great, is generally less good for women than men, especially when the desires and even consent of those women is ignored and when those women are not taught how to get what want — and deserve. Screwed tackles all of this.
The book is written by Lil Boisvert, a French-Canadian and host of the show Sexplora, a six-episode documentary, which is “thirty minutes of orgasmic television focused on sex and IQ.” Unfortunately for me, it’s in a mix of English and French, which I haven’t studied in over 15 years. Fortunately, Boisvert brings the same IQ to her Screwed.
Lili actively avoids staying into telling the reader what to do. There are plenty of resources that do this (including Becoming Cliterate and Better Sex Through Mindfulness). Screwed’s focus is how we got to where we are as a society and not how individual women must remedy that to (re)claim their sexualities. Lili Boisvert is transparent about this from the very start. Her warning prefaces the book, stating what it is not and what it is. That includes a note that the slant is heterosexual because it’s the different ways society handles sex in regard to men and women that is so often the problem.
With that in mind, Boisvert jumps out of the gate, explaining how sex in western society is something done for and originating with the man and being done to the woman. This, she says, is the “cumshot principle,” and she’ll references it many times before the end of the book. She quickly breaks down the different roles that we have been taught: how women are the gatekeepers of sex that they “possess,” how men must make the first move even as women seduce (and must be visually appealing to do so), how women must remain passive, and how women must simultaneously fend off unwanted interest and advances from men while also appearing receptive if they do not want to offend. Boisvert even breaks down how women are expected to act in the bedroom. From here, she segues to a reflection on how this impacts a woman’s libido — as the “prey,” she isn’t allowed to focus on her desires the way a man is. Of course, this all paves the way for rape culture, and the author wraps up the chapter with an analysis of that.
It might sound like this first chapter of Screwed covers a lot, but it set the foundation for all of the arguments that follow. Boisvert paints a picture of the cumshot principal and the hunter/prey dynamic as the string that ties the greater mistreatment of women’s sexuality together.
From here, Boisvert jumps into a critical examination of why young women are prizes the way they are, Cougar culture, and whether those arguments that these preferences are all based in biology hold any water. The author continues her forward charge as she takes on the idea that a woman/girl must be pure and that a sexually promiscuous woman is immoral. Boisvert even examines why other women contribute to slut-shaming, including policing the bodies of girls and women.
We’re halfway through the book, now, and Boisvert isn’t nearly finished. She moves from policing of bodies to the way that the sexes are segregated, starting with clothing and moving on the cosmetics, hair, and body hair. It’s here that she swings at feminity, itself a prison that keeps women objectified.
From there, the author deconstructs the very reasons why women, as a whole, cannot objectify men, as a whole. She argues that men are subjectified while women are objectified and examines the way this unfolds every day. Of course, Boisvert comments on how porn upholds these views.
Perhaps the most contentious claim that Boisvert makes comes in the next chapter, where she explains that women who engage in casual sex are not playing on an even playing field because of the way that women have been socialized to seek love and men sex, and everyone is taught that the other team is only out for their single-minded goal. Yet I do not disagree with the author’s reasoning; it’s absolutely true that we are taught these things. Yet, Boisvert breaks down how this is not actually the case, using science to back up her argument. But even when that isn’t the case, Boisvert continues, these lessons color our sexual interactions and often result in women getting less out of sex than men.
Boisvert is no more fired up than she is in the final chapter, perhaps her coup de grace. What might be the ultimate result of this uneven playing field? That’s right, the orgasm gap. The author rails against the continued prioritization of men’s pleasure over women’s and penis-centric sex, which can make many women wonder what’s wrong with them when they do not orgasm easily (or at all) from vaginal penetration. She takes umbrage with Freud’s persistent teachings that clitoral orgasms are lesser than vaginal ones, which has, perhaps, lead to an over-emphasis on finding and stimulating the G-spot. In this final chapter, Boisvert gives a brief anatomy lesson that so many people dearly need before neatly wrapping up the book with a reminder that advice for women to explore their bodies may be misguided until we deal with sexism in sexuality (and life) on a large scale.
I did not intend to summarize Screwed as I did, but the structure is thoughtful, and the argument only picks up more speed and becomes fiery as the book presses on. While the book isn’t especially long, Boisvert manages to be articulate and pragmatic about complex topics in a way that’s accessible without being too daunting or minimizing. It is a book I wound encourage my teenaged sister to read as she considers becoming sexually active and one that I would recommend to any feminists, not to mention a primer on why so many women find sex to be bad or, at the very least, disappointing.
There are very few things that I didn’t love about Screwed; one of them is the tagline. Women don’t fail at sex; society fails women when it comes to sex. and I think “How society fails women when it comes to sex” is just as pithy and perhaps less open to misinterpretation than the tagline we actually got. However, this is really a small thing to pick at when considering the book overall.
Secondly, I was a bit surprised that Boisvert didn’t take on the issue of spontaneous versus responsive desire more thoroughly. She could have if she wanted to. As it stands, she mentions it but perhaps not to the extent that would impress upon the reader how much it impacts sexual frustation between men and women. Perhaps this would treat too far into the territory of telling women what to do individually, rather than criticizing how society views sex. Unfortunately, Screwed doesn’t include a list of resources or recommended reads, but it wouldn’t hurt if it did.
Still, what Boisvert says in these pages remains valuable, and for many people, the book could open their eyes to these issues and start them on their journey to doing better, learning more, and having better sex, even if the intent of the book is to illustrate the way that women are collectively failed when it comes to sex.
