Secretary – Bitch Flicks

Sex Positivity: The Roundup

Check out all of the posts from our Sex Positivity Theme Week here.

Virtue, Vulgarity, and the Vulva by Erin Relford

The equality of men and women on the basis of healthy and consensual sex is sex positivity according to the Women and Gender Advocacy Center. Thus, to desire sex positivity is to be inherently feminist.

Clitoral Readings of The Piano, Turn Me On, Dammit, and Secretary by Brigit McCone

But how can female arousal be visually expressed? If women stereotypically prefer to read literary erotica over watching porn, with erotica’s descriptions of the interior sensations of female arousal, is that because many women imagine that female performers of porn are uncomfortably simulating their pleasure? Can there be a clitoral cinema of female arousal, and what would it look like?

Let’s Talk About Sex (Positivity for Women) in Animated Comedies by Belle Artiquez

There are animated shows that do present female sex positivity and appear to subvert the current patriarchal control of female sexuality in media. Archer and Bob’s Burgers are both refreshing examples of portrayals of positive female sexuality.

Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries: Killing the Stigma of Sex by Emma Thomas

Besides occasional sex jokes, Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries features episodes about vibrators, abortion, and women’s rights. It also highlights a wealth of one-night stands, and while the men are attractive, the camera glances over the bodies of Miss Fisher’s lovers as lovingly as it does her gorgeous outfits. It is, in an odd way, the perfect combination of the male and female gaze.

Yas Queen!: In Praise of Female Friendship and Sex Positivity on Broad City by Alexandra Shinart

As emerging adults, Abbi and Ilana are free to explore their sexuality as they choose. Choosing to be sexually active means the women have the possibilities of exploring love and sex, casual or within a relationship, in a way that best serves them as 20-something single women. Although Abbi and Ilana each explore their sexuality differently, the women share a common mentality- that they will embrace the many sexual adventures they embark on and support and empower each other every step of the way.

The Audacity of Sex and the Black Women Who Have It by Reginée Ceaser

Being Mary Jane provides the dialogue and the safety net in saying out loud ,”I see you, I’ve been there too and you are not alone.” The embracing of positive sexuality of Black women on television is not progressive feminism. It is the hope that future depictions of such will not be labeled progressive, but just as common as the stereotypes that have lingered for too long.

Slaying Dudes and Stealing Hearts: The Tell-All Sexuality of Mindy Lahiri by Shannon Miller

Sex positivity, for instance, is frequently presented in an oversimplified, inaccurate package of rampant promiscuity and generally assigned to a side female character, like a free-spirited best friend or sister. Meanwhile, the main character frequently serves as the antithesis to said behavior who is later rewarded with “true love.”

The To Do List: The Movie I’ve Been Waiting For by Leigh Kolb

And then I saw it–a film that extols the importance of female agency and sexuality with a healthy dose of raunch, a film that includes a sexually experienced and supportive mother, a film that celebrates female friendship and quotes Gloria Steinem, a film that features Green Apple Pucker and multiple references to Pearl Jam and Hillary Clinton.
Yes. This is it.

Concussion: When Queer Marriage in The Suburbs Isn’t Enough by Ren Jender

This film about a queer woman is, unlike the same year’s Blue Is The Warmest Color, directed and written by a queer woman (Stacie Passon who was nominated for “Best First Feature” in the Independent Spirit Awards and will be will direct an episode of Transparent this coming season), and in many aspects is the answer to those who dismissed Blue as a product of the male gaze.

The Day Mindy Lahiri Ate Seashells and Called Me Immature by Katherine Murray

I like Mindy Kaling and I like her show, but the season premiere demonstrates how, like many series, The Mindy Project has ambivalent feelings about what kind of sex is OK.

To Boldly Go: Star Trek: The Next Generation Explores the Limits of Sexual Attraction in “The Host” by Swoozy C

Once Beverly decides that so little of her attraction to Odan was wrapped up in his host body, the floodgates of sex, sexuality, gender, and physical attraction were wide open.

The Fosters, Sexuality, and the Challenges of Parenting While Feminist by Stephanie Brown

In Stef and Lena’s case, they face the much more complicated question of how to talk to their kids about sex in a way that balances their feminist ideals of sex positivity with their parental need protect and discipline their kids. Two scenes in particular stand out to me as exemplars of the ways in which Lena and Stef strive to make sure their kids are not ashamed of their sexuality while simultaneously conveying the importance of being safe, ready, and responsible.

Starlet and Tangerine: A Look At the Sex Work Industry Through the Lens of Chris Bergoch and Sean Baker by BJ Colangelo

Sean Baker and Chris Bergoch are spreading an important truth with their films: that sex does not have to be definitive. Tangerine and Starlet are two monumentally groundbreaking films, and they should be required viewing for all.

“I Want to Slap His Hideous, Beautiful Face”: Sexual Awakenings and First Crushes in Bob’s Burgers by Becky Kukla

Honestly, Tina Belcher is the role model young girls have been waiting for, and I’m so glad she’s finally arrived. However, “Boys 4 Now” – the episode that made me really believe Bob’s Burgers is *probably* the best show I’ve ever watched – deals with Louise getting her first crush. Rage-filled, insane, absolute genius Louise gets a crush on a boy. Unsurprisingly, she does not take this news well.

How the CW’s The 100 Is Getting Sex Positivity Right by Rowan Ellis

In fact, it’s the aspect of love and intimacy, rather than lust and sexuality, which makes Clarke’s part in Finn’s demise so difficult–the show plays with the idea that human connection, whether it’s through friendship, family, alliance or romance, is painful because it matters, not because it is fundamentally wrong.

Sex Worker Positivity in Satisfaction by Cameron Airen

Normalizing all sexual fantasies seems to be one of the main themes of the show. ‘Satisfaction’ offers a lot of varied sex positivity onscreen that centers on women. The show sets an example for what more television shows and films could portray when it comes to women, sexual desires, and sex work.

The Honest Sexcapades in You’re The Worst by Giselle Defares

Gretchen leaves Jimmy and states, “Well as my grandma used to say, ‘It’s only a walk of shame if you’re capable of feeling shame.’ See you later, thanks for doing all the sex stuff on me.”

Unity Through Differentiation: The Radical Sex Positivity of Sense8 by Emma Houxbois

The net effect, woven throughout the series, is a sex positivity that both embraces differentiation and recognizes the universal experiences that can work to close gaps of gender, orientation, and race that routinely stymie the discourse.

Living Single and Girlfriends: The Roots of Sex Positivity for Black Women on TV by Lisa Bolekaja

There were never any shows that centered happy, single, child-free Black women that prioritized good sex as part of successful living. That is until two television shows came on the scene, Living Single (1993-1998, created by Yvette Lee Bowser) and Girlfriends (2000-2007, created by Mara Brock Akil).

Clitoral Readings of ‘The Piano,’ ‘Turn Me On, Dammit,’ and ‘Secretary’

Written by Brigit McCone as part of our theme week on Sex Positivity.

In Lisa Cholodenko’s The Kids Are All Right, a lesbian couple justify their preferred choice of pornography – gay male porn – by the fact that erections make desire excitingly visible and unarguable. The essence of sex positivity is shared arousal, yet, as Nora Ephron and Meg Ryan famously reminded audiences of When Harry Met Sally, female arousal and orgasm are easy to visually fake. Male craving for confirmation of orgasm in their own porn-watching leads to the “cum shot” becoming a standard trope of male-oriented pornography. But how can female arousal be visually expressed? If women stereotypically prefer to read literary erotica over watching porn, with erotica’s descriptions of the interior sensations of female arousal, is that because many women imagine that female performers of porn are uncomfortably simulating their pleasure? Can there be a clitoral cinema of female arousal, and what would it look like?

I would like to investigate that question using examples from three female-authored films: The Piano, Turn Me On, Dammit!, and Secretary. Judged only by their premises, they appear to be the height of exploitation – The Piano explores the sexual blackmail of a mute woman, Turn Me On, Dammit explores the lustful fantasies of a slender, blonde Scandinavian teenager, and Secretary explores an inexperienced young woman’s desire to be spanked and dominated. Yet, by making the female erotic imagination and self-stimulation central to their aesthetic, each of these films became erotic classics for female audiences. How?

The Piano

Written and directed by Jane Campion, The Piano contains some equal opportunity nudity and straightforward sex scenes, but it also disrupts the male gaze and centers the female spectator at key moments. Consider the scene in which Harvey Keitel’s Baines is examining Holly Hunter’s Ada from every angle, with casual male entitlement, as she plays her piano. Lying on the floor, he discovers a small hole in her thick, woollen stocking. The hole is symbolically clitoral to the female audience, as Baines circles his finger slowly over the little patch of heightened sensation and Ada gasps, but for the male audience it offers no spectacle. It is, rather, an evocation of the sensation of clitoral stimulation, in the same way that a woman licking an ice-cream may evoke oral sex to a male sexual imagination.

With Ada reaching through a crevice of wood to play secretive piano notes, Campion portrays the instrument as inherently sensual. Later comes a lovingly lit shot of a naked Baines caressing and rubbing the piano itself with a cloth. The hetero-female audience can take pleasure in both the spectacle of his body, and the suggestive quality of his attentive and caressing touch, but the female body is removed from the realm of spectacle. Instead, Baines is caressing the piano as a symbol of Ada’s voice and will, representing his deeper appreciation for her. Some critics (including Bitch Flicks) have said that it is problematic for Ada to fall in love with a man who is sexually blackmailing her. I would suggest, however, that, in a society that normalizes the purchase and conquest of women, it is Baines’ initial desire to negotiate, and his eventual total rejection of models of ownership,to request that Ada shows active desire for him, that marks him as her chosen mate.

Sam Neill’s controlling husband Stewart voyeuristically peers through a chink in Baines’ cabin to see his sexual play with Ada. At the moment at which Baines performs oral sex on Ada, Stewart’s gaze is distracted by his dog licking his hand. If Stewart carries the male gaze and male identification in this scene, then Jane Campion playfully interrupts that gaze to turn the man’s own hand into a symbolically clitoral site, vividly evoking the sensation of being licked for female audiences. The Piano, and its reputation as peculiarly erotic to women, is perhaps the strongest evidence that the female imagination responds to clitoral symbolism on a level that equals male susceptibility to phallic symbolism.

When Neill’s Stewart submits to Ada’s exploring his naked body with her hands, the male body becomes available to woman as spectacle and tactile pleasure while the woman herself remains clothed. If the male audience is uncomfortable with this passivity, they can identify with Stewart’s own discomfort, which explodes when Ada reaches the taboo territory of his backside, and he pulls up his hose and dashes from her, eyes averted. Just as his relationship with the Maori is colonial and acquisitive, Stewart’s only model for sex is male conquest and female submission. Just as Baines has surrendered to Maori language and culture, so his model for male/female relationships is a negotiated dual surrender and an attempt to learn the meaning of Ada’s piano language. The film’s finale rewards Baines’ model of negotiated interdependence and dual surrender over the Stewart’s domineering conquest model, with clitoral cinema triumphant.

Turn Me On, Dammit!

Depictions of female masturbation as erotic spectacle tend to focus on a woman moaning softly as she caresses her face, breast and thighs, running her fingers through her hair. The clitoris, effectively, becomes dispersed and distributed across any secondary sexual characteristics that the male audience happens to find attractive, hence the weirdly clitoral scalp of compulsive hair caressing. Female writer-director Jannicke Systad Jacobsen of Turn Me On, Dammit!, by contrast, opens with her teenaged heroine lying clothed on the floor, her hand jammed down her panties, frantically rubbing her clitoris, breathing rapidly and screwing up her face in unphotogenic arousal. This realistic depiction of masturbation immediately establishes the woman as sexual agent, not object. Because it is solitary and largely unphotogenic, masturbation has no function but to be the expression and release of female arousal.

Alma is masturbating to a phone sex hotline, where a male voice describes a hot encounter in the imaginary realm, like narrated literary erotica. Despite its sexed-up publicity, Turn Me On, Dammit! features only one brief, confusing sex act, as Alma is poked in the thigh by the naked erection of her crush, before he immediately withdraws. Instead, the film is saturated with Alma’s erotic imagination as she narrates imaginary encounters over fragmented photographs, ridiculous surrealism and vivid close-ups. Fragmenting the encounters in this way evokes the partial and inadequate imagination of a sexually inexperienced girl, attempting to project what sex might be like. Her fantasies include older men to whom she is not attracted, as well as female rivals, capturing the wide ranging of a horny teenager’s exploratory imagination. By combining fragmented visuals with Alma’s own narrated voiceover, the female viewer never feels an intrusive male gaze. The teenaged female voice of desire and sexual curiosity dominates and narrates throughout.

Secretary

Although the film is directed by Steven Shainberg, he is sensitive to the female origins of his story, adapted by Erin Cressida Wilson from a short story by Mary Gaitskill. Determined to portray the sexual awakening of a submissive woman, rather than the focussing on the pleasure of a dominant man, Secretary harnesses many of the same techniques used by the fully female-authored The Piano and Turn Me On, Dammit. Where Baines demonstrated his attentive, caressing nurture by lovingly wiping Ada’s piano, James Spader’s Mr. Grey demonstrates attentive, caressing nurture to the delicate, vulva-reminiscent orchids in his office. The flowers symbolize burgeoning arousal and desire explicitly in the heroine’s own fantasy sequence, as giant blooms burst open behind Mr. Grey. This fantasy sequence is alternated with shots of the heroine’s frantic, realistic masturbation. Like Turn Me On, Dammit!‘s Alma, Secretary‘s Lee is fully clothed during her masturbations, emphasizing that they are expressions of arousal rather than spectacle. After the film’s most potentially degrading act of domination, where Lee is required to bare her ass while Mr. Grey masturbates over it, the act is reclaimed for audiences as having been arousing for Lee, by her immediate withdrawal into the bathroom to masturbate over the memory of it. A middle-aged woman in a neighbouring stall is shown overhearing her masturbation with a look of compassionate understanding that emphasizes the universal female experience of arousal and desire. Finally, however, it is Lee’s own narrating voice, like Alma’s, that owns the film and challengingly asserts her active role in submitting.

So, can we say that these three films – The Piano, Turn Me On, Dammit! and Secretary – are sex-positive films? I would argue that their clitoral aesthetic of female-authored desire and imaginative sensation make them sex-positive for their female audience. However, in the world of the film, its men are still technically committing acts of sexual harassment where the woman consents by her imagination rather than her voice. This harassment is reclaimed for the female audience by our insight into the heroine’s desire. Can we assume that the male heroes are aware of the women’s desire, because they’ve read it on her face or in her subtler physical responses? We are still a long way from a society that takes it for granted that women should voice their desires, and that sex should be openly negotiated. But recognizing and developing a clitoral aesthetic of film is a step in the right direction. A cinematic language of female desire can be harnessed to support conversations about female needs and sensitivities.

Brigit McCone became obsessed with Harvey Keitel after seeing The Piano at an impressionable age. She writes short films and radio dramas. Her hobbies include doodling and reveling in trashy romances.

Representations of Female Sexual Desire: The Roundup

Check out all of the posts for Representations of Female Sexual Desire Theme Week here.

Love Isn’t Always Soft and Gentle: Female Sexual Desire in Secretary by Jenny Lapekas

Sex and sexuality are complicated, whether we believe it or not. Most of us have experienced some type of same-sex attraction or participated in some kinky activity in the bedroom. Movies often help us to make sense of these feelings and experiences. However, too often, female sexual pleasure and arousal are still deemed unfit for viewing by mainstream film and television. America has a bipolar and hypocritical relationship with female sexuality. Our culture consumes copious amounts of porn and then doesn’t hesitate to slut-shame the women who create and act in pornographic films. Is this because pornography can be seen as objectifying women, while mainstream film humanizes them? Why does the marriage of sexuality and human intimacy feel so dangerous?

How Is The Sex, Masters and Johnson? by Rachel Redfern

The biggest question for the show will obviously be, um, what about the sex? Sex is in the title: the opening sequence bathes in it, and every episode features it. As a big proponent of women’s sexuality I’m pretty much all for it; however, I desperately hope that Masters of Sex doesn’t just become cheap exhibitionism driving up late night ratings; I want to know that Masters of Sex is trying to tell us something in all of the orgasmic moaning (fake or real).

Prom and Female Sexual Desire in Pretty in Pink and The Loved Ones by Ingrid Bettwieser and Steffen Loick

In this piece we focus on “Prom” as a densifying trope for teenage female sexual desire in many cultural representations (think of Carrie, She’s All That, My-So-Called Life or Glee to name just a few). We are doing so by complementing John Hughes’ rather classic romantic-comedy and “Brat Pack” movie Pretty in Pink with the horror/torture movie with comedy elements The Loved Ones directed by Sean Byrne – two examples of female desire as imagined by male writers.

Sexual Desire on the X-Files: An Open (Love) Letter to Dana Scully by Caitlin Keefe Moran

Oh Scully. You beautiful, badass, rosebud-mouthed, flame-haired Valkyrie wearing a blazer two sizes too big for you: what do you desire? We know what Mulder desires. He wants to look at porn in his office. He wants to flirt and call the shots. He wants ALIENS. He does not want to give you a desk.

Enjoyment Isn’t An Item on The To Do List by Scarlett Harris

The sex in The To Do List—which comes about for Plaza’s character Brandy Klark after she realizes she has no sexual experience going into college—was utterly joyless; it was as if Brandy was going through the motions. This is hardly surprising considering the premise of the film is to check off a smorgasbord of sex acts over summer vacation in order to be appropriately sexually educated as she becomes tertiary educated.

Stoker: Love, Longing, Desire and Acceptance by Shay Revolver

In addition to telling a great story, Stoker also shows an open and often eerie portrayal of female sexual desire, longing, perception of love and acceptance of one’s self as an autonomous sexual being. The film doesn’t shy away from pure desire and want as justifiable means to actions.

Bewitched by Bridget: Female Erotic Subjectivity in The Last Seduction by Rachael Johnson

Female viewers may derive psychological pleasure from watching Bridget’s erotic, self-interested shenanigans. It’s exhilarating to see a female cinematic character take sexual control and outwit her male partners. It makes a refreshing change from watching women suffer the pain of romantic love. We know that Bridget will never be a victim. She will never tolerate domestic drudgery or the compromises marriage brings. In fact, it’s pretty much a given that she will always overcome her opponents. Life is a pitiless yet entertaining Darwinian game in The Last Seduction, and Bridget plays it brilliantly.

A Streetcar Named Desire: Female Sexuality Explored Through a Bodice-Ripper Fantasy Gone Awry by Nia McRae

A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), a classic movie based on a Tennessee Williams play presents how society shapes, shelters, and shames female sexuality. Williams’ is well-known for writing plays that dealt with the gender-specific issues women faced, sympathizing with the way women were kept from being whole and balanced human beings.

Room for One: A Positive Representation of Female Sexuality on Bates Motel by Rachel Hock

On Bates Motel, the character of Emma Decody (Olivia Cooke) – a seventeen-year-old with cystic fibrosis. In a show where sex is conflated with violence, male desire, and death, Emma is an oasis of sex positivity, female desire, and life.

Queer Women as Sexual Beings: The L Word and More by Elizabeth Kiy

Today’s media landscape is fuller than ever with queer characters (though most of them are still white and/or male), yet the stories we see are still most commonly either angst-ridden fumbling towards a coming out or pregnancy and adoption dramas. It’s rare to see a fully realized queer character, too old for coming out and too young for children, actually dating and enjoying sexual encounters. It’s rarer still when it’s a woman.

The Sin of Sexuality: Desire in Philomena by Caitlin Keefe Moran

Sex is everywhere and nowhere in Philomena. Sex is the reason that the titular heroine is sent to Roscrea as a young woman, to have her illegitimate baby behind closed doors. Sex is also the reason that Philomena’s son, Anthony, is adopted out to an American family even though his mother is still living.

But I’m a Cheerleader: Stripping Away the Normalcy of Heteronormativity by Abeni Moreno

But I’m a Cheerleader literally queers the stereotype of the popular cheerleader going steady with a handsome football player. The film’s overt display of oppression over queer sexuality speaks to the dominant patriarchal society that strives to eliminate all non-normative ways of living.

Feminine Fire Burns Behind Mad Men by Danielle Winston

However, female desire occasionally lives in the subtext of Mad Men like fire ants fighting to dig themselves out of a mountain of sand. The show’s complex female characters are regularly lusted after, and at times brave leaps are taken into the sea of their cravings. Other times, their behaviors appear inconsistent, and it seems we’ve been cheated out of crucial discoveries that lurk just beneath their surfaces.

Catherine Breillat’s Transfigurative Female Gaze by Leigh Kolb

The grotesque is enmeshed with sexual pleasure and violent death–all images and storylines that patriarchal cultures have been weaving together for centuries. A woman’s sexual desire and her actions stemming from those desires are often presented as horrifying and punishable: “unwatchable.” Much of what Breillat shows supports the reality that female sexual desire is real, and the societies in which we must function are at best, uncomfortable with that desire, and at worst, violently hostile.

Of Phallic Keys and Ugly Masturbation: Let’s Talk About Mulholland Drive by Katherine Murray

That’s right, you guys. I’m gonna try to analyze Mulholland Drive for sexual desire week. I do this partly out of love for you, and partly out of hate for me. Let’s get this party started.

The To Do List: The Movie I’ve Been Waiting For by Leigh Kolb

Wish You Were Here Sex and Obscenities By the English Seaside by Ren Jender

In the words for women that have no male equivalent–like “bitchy,” “slut,” and “hag”–we can easily discern sexism, but we can also see it in words and phrases that mean something different when applied to men than when applied to women–or when applied to boys rather than girls. A boy who is “acting out” is often a euphemism for a boy who is physically threatening or harming others or (less likely) himself. A girl, especially an adolescent girl, who is said to be “acting out” is sometimes harming herself (and even more rarely harming others), but is more likely behaving in ways that, in a bygone era, would have been called “unladylike” (when no one ever used the word “ungentlemanlike”). She’s loud; she’s crude; she’s inconsiderate–all things girls and even adult women are rarely allowed to be. When she is seeking out her own pleasure she is “acting out sexually,” another phrase with no male equivalent.

Sex, Love and Coercion in The Americans by Joseph Jobes

The tension of the spy antics in The Americans really gets my heart racing in the climax of most episodes. Besides that phenomenon, though, there’s another aspect of this show that puts me on edge: I cannot tell if I think the way that The Americans portrays sexual and romantic relationships in a progressive way, or in a, for lack of a better term, creepy and abusive way.

Love Isn’t Always Soft and Gentle: Female Sexual Desire in ‘Secretary’

Written by Jenny Lapekas as part of our theme week on Representations of Female Sexual Desire.

The depiction of female sexuality and sexual desire in the offbeat romance, Secretary (Steven Shainberg, 2002), is central to its themes of dominance and submission. Lee (Maggie Gyllenhaal) can be read as “sexually uncontrollable” by some viewers and critics, but her sexuality complements Mr. Grey’s (James Spader), which is structured and contained. Lee finds she cannot be sexually aroused or satisfied by the traditional man she’s set to marry; not only is their sex centered on his laughable spasms on top of her, Lee can’t even pleasure herself while his photo sits by her bedside. We may say that he’s so bad in bed, he interferes with Lee’s orgasms even when absent.

Lee has just been released from a mental hospital, and she struggles to gain some independence as she moves back in with a hovering mother and a drunk father. Among her masochistic tools, we find a hot tea kettle and the sharpened foot of a ballerina figurine, a rather melodramatic image as she sits in a bedroom that is reminiscent of early girlhood, rather than that of a 20-something young woman. It’s no mistake that Gyllenhaal’s character has an androgynous name; when we meet her, she is not sexually realized, and the way the camera maneuvers around her small frame and conservative clothing communicates this very clearly.

Lee is giddy over her new title of “secretary.”

When Mr. Grey (50 Shades, anyone?) is “interviewing” Lee, he forwardly observes, “You’re closed tight.” Lee is so willing to do anything and everything Mr. Grey tells her that he cures her of her cutting simply by telling her that she is never to do it again. We may be tempted to label Mr. Grey rude or offensive, but his character is much more complicated than that, and Lee depends on his behavior to further develop throughout the film. He is seemingly cruel as he explains that her only tasks are typing and answering the phone, and yet she is incompetent since she routinely makes spelling errors and answers the phone without gusto. Lee wants desperately to please Mr. Grey. The film contains two masturbation scenes where we watch Lee climax at the memory of doing exactly as Mr. Grey tells her. Considering some of the recent controversy surrounding the censorship of female sexual pleasure on television, it feels daring and refreshing to find these scenes in a film. Gyllenhaal has also received criticism for playing the love interest in The Dark Knight (Christopher Nolan, 2008) since viewers find her “cute,” and not “sexy” enough to take on such a role, which makes her portrayal of a sexually adventurous young woman all the more empowering.

Lee looks like a little girl playing dress-up as we watch her apply the eyeshadow anther woman at work leaves in the bathroom.

While Lee is shown to be a sexually submissive woman–parallel to the sexually dominant Grey–she discovers her own agency as she blossoms into a more complete person. She dramatically leaves her fiancé, Peter, and, while wearing her wedding dress, professes her love to Mr. Grey. She also slaps Mr. Grey across the face as he fires her and successfully fights off Peter when he interrupts her sit-in. Although Lee gets off on being subservient, she makes it clear that she isn’t afraid to let others know what she wants outside the bedroom; Lee literally runs to Mr. Grey and then screams at Peter to get out. Paradoxically, Lee’s emergence as a “submissive” accompanies the forming of her newfound independence.

Upon doing what she's told, Mr. Grey asks Lee if she's afraid he's going to fuck her. — Upon doing what she’s told, Mr. Grey asks Lee if she’s afraid he’s going to fuck her.

What this film shows us is that sexual submission is a legitimate practice of men and women alike. During Lee’s “sit-in,” we even see a women’s rights scholar (most likely a local graduate student) visit her to lecture about her apparently anti-feminist choice to obey Mr. Grey by sitting and waiting for his return. I think it’s unwise to dismiss Lee’s portrayal of a “sexual submissive” as inaccurate or ineffective since this is not an archetype we see very often on the silver screen. This film is subversive, transgressive, and feminist in its message, its imagery, and its challenging the popular belief that feminist sexuality is a one-size-fits-all cloak we all quibble over and clamber into when it’s time to play academic dress-up. We watch Lee masturbate, fall in love, and cure an alienated man of his debilitating need for space and order, so I think it’s safe to say that the more Lee embraces her desire to be dominated, the more she controls the events of her own life and discovers agency.

Mr. Grey finally admits he loves Lee by undressing her and bathing her.

The desire to be told what to do or to obtain permission to do particular activities is undoubtedly linked to sexual arousal and gratification in both men and women. Although Lee is sexually submissive, she alone pushes Mr. Grey out of his toxic bubble of isolation and shame; she declares her love for the brooding lawyer and kindly informs him that they are a match and can be themselves, together, every day, without embarrassment that their sexual preferences may be considered perverted or taboo by the dreaded status quo.

While this brand of complex female sexuality may not be readily understood by most, it would be reductionist to dismiss Secretary as a misogynistic film, especially when Gyllenhaal’s performance reflects a multi-layered persona and a powerful sexual identity that remains obscure in mainstream cinema. Lee finds sexual agency, and we stand by to watch and enjoy the pleasure she finds, along with the man who becomes her husband. The binary of dominance and submission, along with its negotiation of sexual boundaries, is what makes Secretary work.

Recommended reading: Thinking Kink: Secretary and the Female Submissive

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Jenny has a Master of Arts degree in English, and she is a part-time instructor at Alvernia University. Her areas of scholarship include women’s literature, menstrual literacy, and rape-revenge cinema. You can find her on WordPress and Pinterest.