UCLA Center for the Study of Women

The Sex that Speaks, also known in English as Pussy Talks, relates the story of a woman whose vagina inexplicably starts talking and reveals a voracious sexual appetite. In The Indiscreet Jewels, the “jewels” of several women start talking as one man, curious about female sexuality, interrogates them. In both cases, the talking sex is always female and it consistently delivers a uniform message of women’s sexual promiscuity. It is this recurring curiosity, as well as the uniformity of the message about female sexuality, that I would like to explore here through the case of The Sex that Speaks. I would like to ask why, while seemingly giving womanhood a voice, talking vagina narratives systematically restrict their discourse to the tedious expression of an insatiable sexuality. Also, why does the vagina discourse consistently alienate and antagonize women? In particular, I would like to ponder why talking vaginas are repeatedly given more credibility than the women themselves. Ultimately, I want to demonstrate that the talking vagina motif is an attempt by male ventriloquists – in the form of writers and filmmakers – to cope with their own vulnerability in the face of an assertive female sexuality. The production of these narratives could then be understood as a response to male anxiety and as an effort to tame a threatening female sexuality.