Francesca Dearest, we need to talk

Dearest gentle reader,

Yes, I binge watched Bridgerton Season 4 last week (I accept I am basic), and I couldn’t help but notice the weird Pinnacle scene in episode 3. It goes like this:

John: [rolls off Francesca, presumably having just ejaculated, although we the watchers are left to wonder]

Francesca: sighs with apparent pleasure [we are under absolutely no illusion that she has experienced none]

Francesca: Do you think it unusual we are not yet with child?

John: We are not yet even a year married […and something about being recommitted, whatever that means]

Francesca: Do you think there is anything I should be doing?

John: Look I… well I have heard a woman is more likely to conceive if she achieves her pinnacle.

Francesca: [nods sagely, although clearly doesn’t have a clue what he’s just said]

Ehm. What?!

There is so much wrong with this scene. I can’t even begin to describe it. So I am going to… begin to… fuck it. We’re going to describe it. In ascending order from “that’s pretty bad” to “cataclysmic”. Let’s go.

Issue number 1: The glaringly obvious issue that is just the tip of the iceberg here: Francesca has been having sex with John for nearly a year and has never experienced orgasm. That’s a problem I’ll leave for the rest of the internet (and presumably, the Bridgerton scriptwriters in part 2) to address. But let’s just say the orgasm gap is real y’all, and sadly, despite us living in 2026, still (as Whistledown might decry) frightfully common.

Issue number 2: John, presumably in an attempt to be reassuring, ends up sounding like the World Health Organisation guidelines on infertility. “We are not yet even a year married” sounds a lot like your doctor telling you to “try again for a year then come see me”. Granted, Bridgerton is set in 1813 and they didn’t have fertility workups, let alone any kind of notion of ‘fertility’, so we can let John off the hook for sounding like everyone’s worst nightmare of an OBGYN consult when you’re trying to conceive. Still, it is not 1813. It’s 2026. And if you’re told to “try for one more year” — call us. “Trying harder” isn’t it.

Issue number 3: In asking: “do you think there is anything I should be doing?”, Francesca is immediately owning the problem as hers to solve. Sigh. Despite knowing that male factor contributes to 50% of infertility cases, fertility is seen as a ‘women’s health’ issue. Indeed, women will exhaust every invasive test available before we realise it’s time to *gasp* ask our male partners to do a semen analysis. Research has found that men wait 22.3 months on average before going to a physician with infertility concerns. So, Francesca has another 10.3 months of orgasmless missionary before John decides to check himself… unless the scriptwriters do something about this in part 2. Which, it’s Bridgerton, so obviously they will.

Issue number 4: Alas, we go beneath the surface (unlike John) to the biggest issue of all: the PINNACLE line. Presumably, John is referring to the Upsuck Hypothesis.

The theory goes something like this: female orgasm triggers uterine contractions which creates a “blow-suck” mechanism, (whatever that is) that sucks semen from the upper vagina into the cervix, reducing the amount of sperm lost to backflow.

The theory was first floated by gynaecologists in the 1900s (🫠), debunked by Masters and Johnson in the 1950s, then revived and ‘modernised’ in 1993 by Robin Baker and Mark Bellis in their work on human sperm competition.

Naturally, when two men research sperm competition, the output is confident conjecture on the biological necessity of the female orgasm, because why else would women need to experience pleasure if not to reproduce? The paper was called: Ejaculate manipulation by females and a function for the female orgasm. Of course. Those sneaky, manipulative females and their blow-sucking uteri. How dare they perplex us.

I will point out, on a very depressing note, that 1993 was also the year women were first required to be included in medical trials. How kind of Robin and Mark to celebrate that milestone with a little research of their own. Thankfully, Elizabeth Lloyd debunked the Upsuck Hypothesis with resounding finality in her 2005 book, The Case of the Female Orgasm.

So, no, John. Word on the Ton is that one need not ‘pinnacle’ in order to conceive.

And with that, dearest gentle readers, I bid thee farewell. I do hope you have a pinnacle of a weekend…

Warmly,

Tess

Co-founder & CEO

PS - If the backflow of semen is of concern to John, we literally built the fix. In fact, here is a sneak peek at Bridgerton Part 2… (ok so ChatGPT isn’t quite getting the size right (rest assured the applicator is smaller than that)…