Ah clitoris, you unsung hero. ‘Hooded lady’, ‘man in a boat’, ‘love button’, ‘joy buzzer’, ‘door bell’ – we have all kind of names for this incredible organ, but the shame is we hardly ever talk about it. In fact, many of us are hard-pressed to even find it.
How did that happen? Answering that question is “Le Clitoris” (2016), a short film by Montreal-based creator Lori Malépart-Traversy. Not only is the animation and storytelling unreasonably adorable, it’s also a massive revelation. Centuries upon centuries of stifling women’s sexual pleasure and agency has also meant systematically snubbing the existence of the clitoris. We’re never told about how this nifty apparatus has over 8,000 sensory nerve endings, or that it actually grows in size as you age. In fact, we’re not even told that between a clitoral orgasm and a vaginal one, the former is better, stronger, and actually achievable. None of this is an accident of course, as the film points out. There’s a reason women and those assigned female at birth are constantly being denied pleasure that their bodies are literally equipped to have.
It’s these and other things that the film brings up in a humourous and easy to understand way. So it’s no wonder the film has gone on to win numerous awards, and has been screened in film festivals across Europe and the Americas.