Crave Releases Short Film on History of Women’s Pleasure

SAN FRANCISCO—A new short film from pleasure products manufacturer Crave examines women’s pleasure through a historic lens. “They say we study history so that we don’t release past mistakes over and over again,” the company said in its description of the film. “When it comes to women’s bodies, somebody missed that memo.” The 3-minute, 30-second film, available on the company’s Facebook page, is titled This Is About the History of Women’s Pleasure* (*and how it has been suppressed for centuries). The initial plan was to create an interesting story for Women’s History Month, company officials said. “But something strange happened,” a rep said. “The more we dug, the more we learned that the history of women’s pleasure is mostly a story about how society has sought to negate women’s pleasure and control women's bodies for centuries. “Sound a little too familiar?” From the Greeks’ beliefs that the clitoris was an inverted penis, to Freud’s teachings that a clitoral orgasm was “immature,” the film traces man and medicine’s misunderstandings of the female body and its pleasure capabilities. It also touches on how politics today are being used to shame and even criminalize women trying to take their pleasure into their own hands. “At Crave, we do more than make sex toys,” a company rep said. “We have a vision for the world where everybody is empowered to own their pleasure. And that vision cannot possibly come to pass in a world where half the population has its bodily autonomy challenged and threatened.” To view the video, visit Facebook.com. For more, visit LoveCrave.com.