Grabbing It Head-On: Netflix’s ‘Sexify’ Raises Pertinent Questions Around Women’s Pleasure
If you logged on to Netflix in the past week, chances are you would’ve noticed the number one series trending in India right now — Sexify. With a splashy title, there’s no wonder then that this Polish show has garnered international attention. While the coming-of-age comedy drama revolves around three undergraduate students on a hunt to optimize female orgasms, it is the intersection of sex, morality, and technology that raises pertinent points about how women’s pleasure still takes a backseat in the 21st century.
Sexify features three undergraduate students pursuing science, which comes as a welcome move to improve the lack of representation of women in STEM in mainstream media. However, it does dip into certain stereotypes like the protagonist Natalia who completely embodies the trope of what “nerdy women interested in science” are assumed to look and be like. She’s driven but socially awkward, astute and disinterested in the world outside of academia.
After her graduation project on the science of sleep is scrapped, she is asked to pursue something more “sexy”. In a surprising turn of events, Natalia who has yet to make her ‘sexual debut’ decides to create an app that optimizes women’s pleasure and orgasms.
Historically, science and medicine have cared very little about women’s health and especially women’s pleasure. So much so that “female hysteria” was once a common medical diagnosis for women. Its symptoms were synonymous with normal functioning female sexuality, but doctors who were mainly men at the time, failed to recognize the needs of women and even went to the extremes of sending such women to insane asylums or make them undergo a surgical hysterectomy.
Even though centuries have passed, the morality tied to women’s sexuality has not faded significantly. Although the show is set in Poland, which could be seen as a progressive country, Sexify shows how the protagonists’ interest in researching women’s pleasure is seen as lascivious and not as a scientific endeavour worth pursuing.
The intersection of pleasure and righteousness
Through the course of the show, we see Natalia and her friends eventually realize that they need data from several women for their app. This leads them to set up a “copulation station” where couples can engage in sex, followed by filling out a questionnaire about their wants and needs. Even this act of setting up a scientific inquiry is seen by the school as ‘setting up a brothel’ and the characters are left to face the consequences.
Everyone involved in the experiment were consenting participants who were essentially just looking for a safe space to enjoy sex. Many young Indians would relate to this struggle too, especially those living in crowded spaces or at home with families. Even in our country, any place where young people go to get away and enjoy consensual sex is still seen as suspicious and comes under the radar for not just the moral police but also the actual police.
It is also this morality attached with sex that often adds guilt to an experience that is supposed to otherwise be pleasurable. We see this play out with Paulina’s character who wants to explore and experiment in her sex life but at the same time struggles not just with “Catholic guilt” but also with communication with her partner.
The characters eventually realize that communication is a key part of the sexual experience that is not always easy for women and thus try to integrate it into their app to make it better. While the app may be fictional, the struggle is not. Orgasm inequality is huge, only 65% of heterosexual women usually orgasm compared to 95% of heterosexual men and this is largely due to a lack of understanding of their own bodies or being unable to explain their needs.
Even in India where sex education is still a rarity, Indian women have battled with their own needs and wants for centuries now. Many sex educators are now creating content to help them not just get over the physical constraints but also overcome the mental and emotional challenges that the stigma attached to sex causes.
In the show too, we see the Sexify app try to thread all these intricate aspects of the overall sexual experience and lead women to the ‘elusive O’. With media like this that celebrates female sensuality, liberation, and independence, we can only hope that people start some much-needed conversations about women and extricate unnecessary morality from our most primal needs.
