#Female Pleasure

Swiss director Barbara Miller profiles five women from different backgrounds who are all advocating for women's sexuality. Deborah Feldman grew up in a Hasidic household in Brooklyn, where women were discouraged from reading books. Her grandfather says it was because they ask too many questions. She entered into an arranged marriage at 17 with no knowledge of sex. When she left her husband, her family disowned her. She wrote a book, Unorthodox, which formed the basis of a Netflix miniseries. As a young woman in India, Vithika Yadav experienced sexual harassment on a regular basis. She had no one to talk to about it, so she created a website for women to discuss love, sex, and female pleasure. She was the first woman in her family to marry a husband of her own choosing. Rokudenashiko, a manga artist in Japan, uses molds of her vagina in her work. Her attempt to de-stigmatize female genitalia has resulted in controversy and criminal charges, but she remains undeterred, not least because Japan's phallocentric fertility celebrations aren't subject to similar censure. London therapist Leyla Hussein, who grew up in Somalia, speaks out against female genital mutilation. "It's not your body that you lose," she says. "You lose trust." Doris Wagner, a German nun, was raped by a priest while based in Rome. Her attempt to file a police report was met with silence and dismissal, a lack of support that led her to leave the Church. She has since become an author and a theologian, as well as a wife and mother. Miller treats all of these stories with the respect they deserve in a documentary sure to spur conversations about female autonomy and structural patriarchy. Recommended. (K. Fennessy)