‘I didn’t expect to come to a sex party and leave thinking about my relationship with my mum,” sighed 26-year-old Yewande Biala, half way through Secrets of the Female Orgasm (Channel 4), a tender documentary about female sexual pleasure. But, raised in a conservative, Nigerian household, the former Love Island contestant came to suspect that the “shame, guilt… from my religion, my culture, my family” had short-circuited the connection between her mind and body. Biala’s mother had never discussed sex with her and raised her to feel that the subject was taboo: once grounding her for a year on suspicion of sexual activity aged 16.
Although viewers might have expected a woman who’d once signed up for a reality TV show that required her to strut and flirt in a bikini to be supremely sexually confident, it transpired that sweet, smart, stunning Biala was sexually adrift. Despite having a couple of sexual partners, she’s one of the 10-15 per cent of women who have never experienced an orgasm. As a successful scientist, she was conditioned to look outward and assumed the cause was physical.
In the bold spirit of scientific quest, Biala invited cameras to follow her into an intimate medical consultation and a sex shop where a kindly sex therapist filled her basket with high-tech gadgets and her mind with a to-do list of masturbation techniques. All of which left our poor heroine feeling embarrassed and in physical pain. Biala’s sense of inadequacy was confirmed by a trip to Essex University where researchers popped her into an “arousal booth”, showed her some porn, and confirmed that her vaginal pulse had not responded normally.
At an all-female sex party, however, attendees suggested that the lack of orgasm with men was because of trust and empathy; the issues are psychological, not technical. This encouraged Biala to speak to her mother, who bravely went on camera to concede that while she believed sex was “a personal thing” she did feel guilty about the fear of it that she had instilled in her daughter.
The frankness of this scene and the important awkwardness of others compensated for some of the film’s cheesy imagery of volcanoes exploding, oranges being squeezed and matches being struck. Biala came across as a brave, thoughtful woman. A straight-A student who admitted that she’d worked so hard to please others she had no capacity left to please herself.
I hope that public opinion gives her permission to reconnect with her body.
