a film about female pleasure

It all starts with drawings. Two young women try to represent the clitoris, this organ which gives pleasure and which is used only for that in the female anatomy. The exercise seems perilous and introduces a long discussion with several young women, facing the camera. They dialogue around the theme of sexuality and all the reflections it encompasses. My name is clitoris, directed by Lisa Billuart Monet and Daphné Leblond, highlights authentic and incredibly touching women. Their freedom and their courage are communicative. They really make you want to change the world and the way our patriarchal society looks at female pleasure. After all, male pleasure has never been taboo. He has even governed many of us since childhood. My name is clitoris is a film that wishes to be beneficial, educational, liberating from the constraints and taboos that surround the position of women in the world. The veil is lifted.

Uplifting and universal testimonies

What stands out from these testimonies is the way in which these young women, initially on the reserve, are engaged. If they evoke personal experiences, specific to each, their speeches are universal. This is the strength of this film: it is inclusive. There is not one female sexuality, there are several. There is not only one relation to the female body, there are several. It was something important in the eyes of the two directors: "It was essential, we would have liked to be more. We thought from the casting to include different profiles, by diversifying the sexual orientations, the bodies, by including racialized people. On the other hand, we know the limits of the film , and some people will not feel rightly represented. This gives us room for improvement for the future. " they tell us.

It is obvious to us that the film concerns everyone!

However, this film is not only a documentary made by women and for women. Quite the contrary. For the directors, this is a film about our society and the mechanisms of domination in which we are all, without exception: "It allows us to reflect, including as a man or as a non-binary person, on where we stand on the complex chessboard of domination." As white women, they also saw the importance of this inclusiveness by documenting: "By analogy, it was absolutely crucial and more than necessary for us, who are white, to see for example Amandine Gay's film, Opening the Voice, which gives voice to black women." Thus, the sorority and the beginnings of a new world to think together is the pillar of this very successful documentary: "More broadly, the film shows a set of realities with which it is possible to identify: emancipation through speech, intimate testimony, its political dimension and its revolutionary potential."

Misconceptions about female sexuality still as stubborn

The diversification of these testimonies sheds light on the stereotypes of which women are still victims today through their sexuality. First of all, there is this myth around penetration. It is still seen as the only option for having sex. According to general thought, practices outside penetrations would therefore only be "foreplay". Through certain testimonies and experiences of the film, we see how even the medical profession suffers from these preconceived ideas and the first to pay the costs seem to be homosexual women.

Then there is the notion of desire which, for collective thought, seems not to be deserved by everyone. Disability, obesity, hairiness are unjustly put aside in the area of ​​sexual desire. The directors deplore this received idea: "Fat people, with disabilities, hairy, coming out of the canons of Western beauty would be systematically less desirable. And because of this, to compensate for this tragedy, they would also sometimes be more readily sexually available!" All this is without counting the desire and female pleasure, supposedly less present in women. They are seen as something unattainable, even complex, while viewing male pleasure as "inferior".

The need for consent during sex education

So what are we waiting for to introduce more qualitative sex education? What stands out in particular from this testimony is the importance that these young women attach to the concept of consent, which is completely absent from sex education classes today. Lisa Billuart Monet and Daphné Leblond explain how these interviews shed light on a real problem around this crucial subject: "We always asked them the same final question: do you have something more to say? And three times out of four, they talked to us about consent, the importance of talking about it as early as possible (during classes 'sexual education for example), to ask and know its limits … The fact also that one can be consenting, then no longer be, and that even during the sexual act it is still possible to change of opinion. "

We are ready to go to the National Assembly

So what the activist directors of My name is clitoris, it is a real action. This film, this initiative, they made their fight. It is a fight that does not seek only to lift a taboo around female sexuality. It is also political according to them: "We are ready to go to the National Assembly to open the debate as we did in the Brussels French-speaking Parliament, if the invitation comes! The demands must have a concrete political impact: new laws, budgets for the Sex education educators (often voluntary, which is dramatic!) The law of July 4, 2001 stipulates that 3 sex education courses are compulsory per year since elementary school. What are we waiting for to enforce and sanction establishments? who don't respect it (that is to say almost all)? "