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San Francisco Bay Area filmmakers Wendy Slick and Emiko Omori have taken on the battle for women's orgasm and placed it in a fascinating and bizarre historical context. Passion and Power: The Technology of Orgasm is a powerful new documentary about female pleasure, feminism, and vibrators. Taking as its starting point Rachel Mainz's book The Technology of Orgasm: Hysteria, the Vibrator, and Women's Sexual Satisfaction, Passion and Power covers the development of the vibrator in the 1800s as a physican's tool to "treat" women suffering from any number of maladies from arthritis to nervous tension to depression and malaise. Turns out it worked pretty well.
Webb's case became a cause celebre for sexual liberation activists across the nation; unfortunately, it's also an ominous and in some ways bizarre warning that women's orgasm is still the possession of the state. Since charges against Webb were dropped, no precedent was established, so the Texas law remains on the books. Through interviews with Dr. Mainz, Betty Dodson, Eve's Garden founder Dell Williams, performance artist Reno, Joanne Webb, and others, Passion and Power takes on the Texas case and the broader history of vibrators with equal gusto, forming a funny, scary, and inspiring portrait of the battle for women's orgasm. The film has its West Coast premiere at the Mill Valley Film Festival on October 6, and also plays October 13. We caught up with filmmaker Wendy Slick for a chat about the film and the politics surrounding it. Eros Zine: How did Passion and Power get made?
Then in 1999 we were at Sundance, and the book had just come out, and we read it and just couldn't believe it. So we said "we should option this book and make a film about it." We thought it would be really easy to make and really fun. So we bid on it; there were thirteen other entities that bid on it -- Italian television, BBC, and a lot of other independents. We won -- I guess our bid was the funniest. So we got the bid and then we started making the movie and it took a long time because we were self funded. except we got one grant from the Robeson foundation, who I think saw the political nature of it. From the time we optioned it till the time we released it was like seven years. But we didn't work on it all the time. Plus, the Texas story came to us, which was just fabulous, so it brought it up to modern times. Eros Zine: You were already making the movie when the Texas incident happened. Wendy Slick Yes. We had already filmed Rachel, and I woke up one morning and was just drinking coffee and reading the newspaper and saw that this woman had been arrested and we called her lawyer, and Emiko and I went there like three days later. She was on Prime Time the next night. Eros Zine: How difficult was it to get all those women you spoke to involved in the project -- were they all excited about it?
And then a friend of mine from New York had known Reno, and she came out here to do a show, and I went to see the show with Emiko, and Reno mentions her vibrator in the show, so we filmed her at Jelly's. Catherine Young was very happy to be in it. The Passion Party president and CEO was more than delighted to talk about what they've done. With Joanne, that was the trickiest. Because she was in the middle of this case, and I think it was very hard for her to have all this media attention and we just really talked to her and we promised there would be certain things we wouldn't talk about, and her lawyer was right there -- so we couldn't get into anything that would hurt her, which we didn't want to do anyway. So that was the only tricky thing -- it wasn't that she didn't want to do it, it was that we had to be really careful because of the court case.
Wendy Slick Well, I thought things were getting better; now I'm not so sure. When this case came up -- you can call it a tempest in a teapot, however, it is a civil rights issue. And it's a women's rights issue. I think you can start eroding rights in small ways, and this is hitting at an area that no one really wants to talk about. Sexuality is not talked about openly in this culture. Even though there's a lot of it out in the media. You can have really lurid sexuality and really academic, but right in the middle where there's an intelligent discussion about it, it's often very uncomfortable for people. So it's not about sex and vibrators -- it's about our comfort with ourselves and our own beings, and how we feel. Betty says in the film: Independent orgasms lead to independent thought. I think it's about independent thought. Women have been defined, and we didn't even know it. I don't think men even know it!
Eros Zine: It's extralegal -- it's law enforcement being able to do what they want, ruin someone's life without being able to obtain a conviction. Wendy Slick Yeah! You just extrapolate out from there. It's happening, and our rights are being taken away like crazy. Eros Zine: Have there been any subsequent cases of people being arrested for possession of sex toys? Wendy Slick We haven't encountered any. Rachel's the expert in it. ABC News is doing a whole story on the whole legal aspect of it. So I think it's still on the books and there are still cases; I don't think one as sensational as this one. If so we haven't heard of it. It's still on the books and a lot of people are very outraged about it. Eros Zine: And it's still on the books because there was no judicial rulilng-- because the charges were dropped, no judge's ruling was issued, so it couldn't either overturn the law or uphold it and therefore be appealed on constitutional grounds to a higher court. The law is still there and can be enforced at any time at the discretion of the DA. Wendy Slick Right. If they had kept going with it, I think Leanne probably would have won her case. But it didn't. I think they saw they were making fools of themselves.
Wendy Slick I don't think Leanne or her lawyer pursued it any further. But the ACLU has a lot of cases in the states where there are laws saying vibrators are illegal. And Rachel testified for the ACLU. Eros Zine: The ACLU does pursue that proactively? Wendy Slick Oh yes, because it's a civil rights activity. Eros Zine: But technically anyone who is giving a pleasure party or operating a sex shop in Texas is in violating the law, unless they only sell five vibrators at a time. Or does the law not apply to sex shops, only to individuals. It applies to sex shops as well, but they have ways to get around it. Like what Leanne was saying about a cake decoration or a novelty item; there are different ways to get around it. It's such social camouflage. Eros Zine: So somebody who's actually willing to acknowledge what this product is actually used for is going to be the one who's singled out. Yes, it's so unfair. Eros Zine: Say a woman stumbles across this film at, say, the Mill Valley Film Festival. And maybe she might feel, "This is about vibrators; I don't really use vibrators; that might be interesting but I'm not really into it." What would you want her to take away from the film about this struggle or this incident -- about the development of vibrators, about the legal case in Texas? Is it greater than itself, or does it not need to be greater than itself? Wendy Slick Oh, it is greater than itself, and that's one of the reasons we did it -- because it's not just about vibrators. We even say a few times in the movie: This isn't just about sex, it's really about women's rights, and how we're viewed. And because of how we're viewed, how we view ourselves. So it's a self-confidence issue. It just goes beyond sex and sexual satisfaction and vibrators, which is all fun, and is part of it, and it's a great way into this. As a sixties kid, and a baby boomer, I didn't really stop to think about how even sexuality is kind of a feminist issue. We just didn't see it then. Now, looking back, we start to see how it's all ingrained in what we were going through and who we were, and who we are now, and what young women are now. I've had 20-30-year-old women come up after seeing this and say, "Oh, thank you, we knew about the sex toys, but we didn't know about the history and the story, and what you guys have done for us." One reviewer said she felt like she'd been riding on our shoulders. And that feminism had taken a different turn. So it really has some substance that women can take away, and men too. It's about communication and opening up. If we don't define each other, that's better for both sexes. Eros Zine: Thanks, Wendy! Passion and Power: The Technology of Orgasm has its West Coast premiere on Saturday, October 6, 2007 at 2pm as part of the Mill Valley Film Festival, and also plays Saturday, October 13, at 2:15pm. For more information about the film or the filmmakers, visit technologyoforgasm.com. It can also be Passion and Power: The Technology of Orgasm purchased on DVD.
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