by TRACY CLARK-FLORY
Susie Bright
Susie Bright talks about her sexual awakening, feminist hypocrisy — and where the sexual revolution went wrong
When did you first become aware of the lack of awareness or concern about women’s pleasure?
My dad gave me a subscription to Ms. magazine when I was 12, which just delighted me to no end. I remember seeing an advertisement that used the word “masturbate,” and the moment I saw that word in context I knew what it meant. I knew that suddenly this was an objective reality and that Satan was not in my underpants. Just one word opened the truth to me.
I became alert to the hypocrisy around women’s sexuality. I came of age at the height of women’s liberation. There was all this material in the news. You had “The Hite Report”; I had read the whole thing front to back and I hadn’t even kissed anyone yet. At that time there was a lot of outreach to young people where I lived in Los Angeles about the free clinic and you could very quickly get a crash course in birth control and pap smears. At the same time, the feminist women’s health centers were creating this movement to start your own health group where you’d get out the speculum, open your legs and everyone would take a look at everyone else’s cervix. It was the first genuine science education I’d ever had.
Before that point I remember just reading stuffy books that said, “Young men largely masturbate but only a minority of women do,” and I thought to myself: I bet that’s not true. If a square, sheltered dumb-dumb like me is doing it I just can’t imagine that I’m some bizarre minority.
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