Speaker 1: The nineties was a decade bookended by Anita Hill and
Speaker 1: Monica Lewinsky. It gave us MTV's Boxers or Briefs moment,
Speaker 1: popularize the concept of the milf, and spawned the first
Speaker 1: ever sex tape, once Stolen from the home of Pamela
Speaker 1: Anderson and Tommy Lee.
Speaker 2: It was an era that.
Speaker 1: Inspired a decade of boob jobs, popularized restaurants like Hooters,
Speaker 1: and gave us girls Gone Wild. But what did all
Speaker 1: of those things really teach us about love and sex?
Speaker 3: Back then?
Speaker 2: And now? We ask a sex expert.
Speaker 3: In twenty nineteen, Gwyneth Paltrow did not know the word vulva.
Speaker 3: She did not know that her volvo was not her vagina, which,
Speaker 3: as I say in come As, you are calling your
Speaker 3: vulva your vagina is like calling your face your throat.
Speaker 1: I'm Jessica Bennett and I'm Susie vannacaarm And this is
Speaker 1: in Retrospect, where each week we revisit a cultural moment
Speaker 1: from the past that shaped us.
Speaker 4: And that we just can't stop thinking about today.
Speaker 1: We're joined by sex educator and best selling author there
Speaker 1: Emily Nagowski.
Speaker 2: Her new book Come Together is out this month.
Speaker 1: So I've listened to your podcast, and I know that
Speaker 1: on your podcast, which I think was a limited run,
Speaker 1: you talked about how you know you weren't that into
Speaker 1: pop culture as a young teen, But in fact I
Speaker 1: love that on.
Speaker 2: One of my all time favorite.
Speaker 1: Shows, sex Education, your book actually makes an appearance, which
Speaker 1: was huge for me.
Speaker 2: Anyway.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I found out about that because everyone sent me
Speaker 3: the little clip of it happening. But we don't have Netflix.
Speaker 3: That's not a flex. We have like lots and lots
Speaker 3: of everything. We just don't happen to have lost it.
Speaker 2: I've never seen the show and never ever, not even
Speaker 2: your episode.
Speaker 3: Nope, I've seen like the five seconds oh so funny,
Speaker 3: the person saying you should read come as you are.
Speaker 1: I mean, I feel like they do an amazing job
Speaker 1: of breaking down some taboos and talking openly about sexuality.
Speaker 2: Though, when I was.
Speaker 1: Talking to my therapist about you yesterday in our session
Speaker 1: as happens, she was like, well, okay, but in the
Speaker 1: first season of Sex Education, they really confused the vagina
Speaker 1: and the vulva, which I had totally missed.
Speaker 3: So what do they do well? What makes you just
Speaker 3: feel like, oh, this is better than it has been
Speaker 3: in the past.
Speaker 1: I guess I like that it doesn't feel so heavy handed,
Speaker 1: like sexuality is.
Speaker 4: Just a part.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's the plot of the show, but they're
Speaker 1: not making it like they're forcing it down your throat
Speaker 1: or trying to teach you. And I guess one of
Speaker 1: the things I remember from growing up in the nineties,
Speaker 1: which is what we're here to talk about today, is
Speaker 1: that everyone was portrayed, or at least the teenagers I
Speaker 1: watched on television and movies seem to be portrayed as
Speaker 1: these like sex hungry maniacs, where that was absolutely the
Speaker 1: only thing that they could think about. And I'm curious
Speaker 1: if you had that experience too. What were you consuming
Speaker 1: in the nineties.
Speaker 3: I mean, what was I consuming in the nineties. I
Speaker 3: have never been anyone's target audience. We literally didn't even
Speaker 3: have cable television. I didn't have cable television until I
Speaker 3: was I didn't either there, so I didn't see any
Speaker 3: of the things that people saw.
Speaker 1: What are the things you saw that other people didn't see?
Speaker 3: I mean I watched a lot of PBS. Okay, when
Speaker 3: we finally did get the beginnings of cable in nineteen
Speaker 3: ninety three ish I watched a lot of inside the
Speaker 3: actors studio, okay, but I read a lot. So my
Speaker 3: primary sex education came from a combination of women's magazines,
Speaker 3: especially Glamour magazine and romance novels.
Speaker 2: Okay, and what did those teach you?
Speaker 3: So I remember very distinctly reading an article in Glamor
Speaker 3: magazine where I learned that men really like it when
Speaker 3: women appear to be enjoying themselves, and so you should
Speaker 3: make a lot of noise, and you should touch yourself,
Speaker 3: like touch your own breasts and your own body, and
Speaker 3: you should say how much you like it, because men
Speaker 3: really love it women appeared to be enjoying themselves. So
Speaker 3: by the time I got to sexual relationships, my assumption
Speaker 3: was that it was my job to perform pleasure without
Speaker 3: any reference to whether or not something actually felt pleasurable.
Speaker 1: Right, Right.
Speaker 3: It took some time for me to recognize that I
Speaker 3: was doing this stuff that they do in romance novels.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: So, basically, there's a script. You start with the face stuff,
Speaker 3: boob stuff, You follow the bases, you get to the genitals.
Speaker 3: Your genitals get hungry to have something inside them. Your
Speaker 3: knees fall apart, you're duh, you'd want penetration, and penetration happens,
Speaker 3: and you spiral upwards, enveloped in a cloud of ecstasy.
Speaker 2: So exactly how it happens.
Speaker 4: It turns out.
Speaker 3: That's not how it happens. I was shocked to discover.
Speaker 3: So I was doing the things that the romance novels
Speaker 3: told me I was supposed to do in terms of behavior.
Speaker 3: I was acting like a person who enjoyed those things.
Speaker 3: And within about six months I started getting really clear
Speaker 3: that there was a very big difference between the things
Speaker 3: I was doing that I was told were pleasurable and the
Speaker 3: things that actually were pleasurable. I got to college in
Speaker 3: nineteen ninety five, and one of the very first things
Speaker 3: I did was ride my bike to the library and
Speaker 3: go to the sex section and read the HEP Report.
Speaker 2: Ah.
Speaker 3: It took me three or four days, but I read
Speaker 3: as much of it was there. There were literally pages
Speaker 3: cut out with scissors.
Speaker 1: Really, what, yeah, is this University of Delaware, Okay?
Speaker 3: Born and raised in Delaware. My one true claim to
Speaker 3: fame is that Jill Biden was my tenth grade English teacher.
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, really, yeah, Delaware is a very small stage.
Speaker 3: So there's only one copy of the height Report. Many
Speaker 3: like a big chunk of pages had been cut out.
Speaker 3: Notice that I went back to the library over and
Speaker 3: over to keep reading this very large book because I
Speaker 3: was too embarrassed to check it out.
Speaker 2: How did you know about the hype Report.
Speaker 3: I didn't. I just looked for the large just book
Speaker 3: in the sex section.
Speaker 1: Okay, okay, And turns out everyone else had done that too.
Speaker 3: Somebody had taken a bunch of pages with them.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: And to back up for a moment, you are a
Speaker 1: sex educator, but you at this point I don't think
Speaker 1: knew that you wanted to be a sex educator.
Speaker 3: Not at all. You know, I was a big nerd
Speaker 3: by the time I got to college. All I knew
Speaker 3: was that I wanted to go to grad school for something.
Speaker 3: And I thought, Oh, you need volunteer work on your
Speaker 3: resume so that you look like a good candidate for
Speaker 3: graduate school.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 3: And a guy living on my floor in my residence
Speaker 3: hall was pre med and he said, oh, come be
Speaker 3: a pure health educator with me. So you go into
Speaker 3: residence halls and talk about like all kinds of health. Yeah,
Speaker 3: that includes sexual health, which is mostly condoms, contraception, and consent,
Speaker 3: and I was like, I like health, why not? So
Speaker 3: I applied and I got accepted, and I got trained
Speaker 3: to be a health educator for my fellow undergraduates at
Speaker 3: the exact same time that I was being trained to
Speaker 3: be a sex educate. My very first year in undergrad
Speaker 3: nineteen ninety five ninety six, I got into my first
Speaker 3: sexual relationship, which ended up being abusive. He became my
Speaker 3: stalker and I'd called the police and it was very
Speaker 3: bad news. So at the same time that I was
Speaker 3: having my first experience in that kind of relationship, in
Speaker 3: any kind of sexual relationship with someone who wasn't me,
Speaker 3: I was also learning all this stuff about sexual communication
Speaker 3: and sexual health and how periods work and the whole enchilada.
Speaker 3: So I feel like it was an incredible privilege to
Speaker 3: be learning what it's supposed to be like while I
Speaker 3: am doing it. I mean, I made every mistake. I
Speaker 3: did everything wrong, like what Unlike the students I taught.
Speaker 3: When I was teaching undergrad, I didn't know as an
Speaker 3: undergrad that your early relationships are very likely to recapitulate
Speaker 3: the dynamic of your family of origin. I didn't know
Speaker 3: that As a child, your body learns what love looks
Speaker 3: and feels like. So if you think back to what
Speaker 3: your family was like when you're, you know, approximately four
Speaker 3: years old, the relationships of the adults around you when
Speaker 3: you're four, would you love your life if those were
Speaker 3: similar to the relationships you have as an adult.
Speaker 1: No.
Speaker 3: If you answer yes to that question, then your earliest
Speaker 3: relationships are probably going to be kind of great.
Speaker 2: Okay, Okay, Oh interesting.
Speaker 3: I did not. My early relationships were not kind of great.
Speaker 1: Okay, So this is ninety five. What was happening politically
Speaker 1: in sex education? Like, set the scene a little bit
Speaker 1: for me from your expert perch about what was happening
Speaker 1: in the culture then around us.
Speaker 3: I mean, we were just coming out of the AIDS crisis.
Speaker 3: Effective medication for controlling HIV were brand new, which means
Speaker 3: that everyone was really eager to forget as soon as
Speaker 3: they possibly could. I didn't know the term GLBT on
Speaker 3: my campus in nineteen ninety five. It was GLBT, yeah,
Speaker 3: which it would soon change to LGBT in honor of
Speaker 3: the role that the lesbian community played in caring for
Speaker 3: the gay community, who were much more heavily impacted by
Speaker 3: the AIDS crisis, So I heard lesbian and heard bisexual
Speaker 3: for the first time in nineteen ninety five because it
Speaker 3: was on college campuses that those conversations were happening. Had
Speaker 3: nothing of that in my high school or junior high
Speaker 3: sex education. I did get enough sex education in Delaware,
Speaker 3: a comparatively progressive state. In the eighth grade, I learned
Speaker 3: that HIV could not be transmitted through a drinking straw,
Speaker 3: or by sharing a can of soda, or by sitting
Speaker 3: on a toilet seat, which was great. I remember correcting
Speaker 3: my grandmother, who wanted us to squat over public toilets
Speaker 3: so that we didn't get AIDS. Oh wow, And like
Speaker 3: I could tell her because I had had some sex education,
Speaker 3: that you can't get HIV that way. She did not
Speaker 3: believe me. Okay, well, but she was my grandmother. She
Speaker 3: was raised in the depression and changes slow.
Speaker 1: To what extent did you learn about your own body
Speaker 1: or about women's sexuality, if at all, in your sex
Speaker 1: education courses.
Speaker 3: I feel sure that I learned more than most people
Speaker 3: do because I was really curious without knowing why I
Speaker 3: was curious. But in the sixth grade, there was a
Speaker 3: like a book giveaway of like, here are all these
Speaker 3: textbooks we're no longer using. Oh, if you want to
Speaker 3: take these textbooks, children feel free. And I took all
Speaker 3: of the reproductive health books you did get my hands on.
Speaker 3: I was very interested.
Speaker 1: So there were a lot of signs of your future profession.
Speaker 2: You just didn't know them yet.
Speaker 3: I had no idea why I was interested. But it
Speaker 3: was all biology. It was all the menstrual cycle and
Speaker 3: nocturnal emissions, as it always is. The sixth grade we
Speaker 3: got divided by group. I had already started having my
Speaker 3: period by the time we had that, so I was
Speaker 3: just like, neither of this is describing what it's actual.
Speaker 1: And what was happening politically at the time, Like I
Speaker 1: just keep thinking about Okay. So the nineties was bookended
Speaker 1: by the Clarence Thomas hearings, which are typically referred to
Speaker 1: as they need a Hill hearings, but he was the
Speaker 1: one that was being questioned. And then the Bill Clinton
Speaker 1: Monica Lewinsky scandal, which was in ninety eight and which
Speaker 1: was I think for me a real sex education. I
Speaker 1: specifically remember reading the Star Report in high school sort
Speaker 1: of like sneaking behind the lockers and like, okay, I
Speaker 1: mean yeah, Seattle and the nineties. Man, so yeah, we
Speaker 1: were reading the Star Report. But like the cigar I mean,
Speaker 1: I let that's like I learned that, yes, that was
Speaker 1: your hyper and yes, exactly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, learning that a cigar could be inserted into a
Speaker 3: vagina and people might think that was a sexy thing
Speaker 3: to do.
Speaker 1: Right, And I think that I only know this because
Speaker 1: I then later profiled Monica Lensky and I've done a
Speaker 1: lot of research on it.
Speaker 2: Cigar sales went through the roof. Yeah, yeah, but.
Speaker 3: So you know how you're talking about how the sort
Speaker 3: of representation of teenagers in the movies was that teenagers
Speaker 3: were all super horny.
Speaker 5: Yes.
Speaker 3: I think of the nineties as sort of the transition
Speaker 3: from second to third wave feminism, and there was this
Speaker 3: sort of cluging around sexuality which never really got resolved.
Speaker 3: In second wave feminism, there were the sex wars, and like,
Speaker 3: we never really figured out a position to have about
Speaker 3: sex as like a good or a bad thing, porn
Speaker 3: as a good or a bad thing. I have so
Speaker 3: many things to say, but I think what happened in
Speaker 3: the nineties is that popular culture took the idea that
Speaker 3: sex could be a good thing for women it took
Speaker 3: the sort of sexual revolution as far as it had
Speaker 3: gone so far, and said, okay, so teenage girls are
Speaker 3: just as horny and wacky as teenage boys, because in
Speaker 3: order for men and women to be equal, women had
Speaker 3: to be like men. And so the way teenage girls
Speaker 3: sexuality got represented in the media was as if it
Speaker 3: were the same as every teenage boy's fantasy, which is
Speaker 3: to say, just the same as theirs. Easy, fast, vaginally
Speaker 3: oriented American pie gets talked about a lot, Thank the
Speaker 3: Good Lord for Eugene Levy.
Speaker 1: But so the flute scene, okay, please, because okay, this
Speaker 1: came out in nineteen eighty nine, so I was a
Speaker 1: junior in high school.
Speaker 2: We all obviously watched it.
Speaker 1: People were talking about it, the pie seeing it like
Speaker 1: he masturbates with the pie, like everyone now knows this.
Speaker 1: I feel like so many things came out of this movie,
Speaker 1: including the popularization of the term milf, which was Stiffler's
Speaker 1: mom that.
Speaker 3: I did not realize.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't think the term originated there, but
Speaker 1: like that's when I learned it, and it was played
Speaker 1: by Jennifer Coolidge, and so anyway, that's another thing that
Speaker 1: came out of that but I.
Speaker 2: Was in the orchestra.
Speaker 1: I played the violin, And there is the scene in
Speaker 1: American Pie where we learn that the flute player has
Speaker 1: masturbated with her flue.
Speaker 3: Did she masturbate with it? Because here's what I remember
Speaker 3: her saying is that she put her flute in her vagina.
Speaker 5: Mm.
Speaker 2: Interesting, yeah, actually bare point.
Speaker 3: And as a sex educator, I hear that, and I
Speaker 3: do not hear masturbation. I hear experimentation with a like, huh,
Speaker 3: Foullis shaped object when I know that only very roughly
Speaker 3: ten percent of people with vagina's masturbate with vaginal penetration.
Speaker 1: So interesting, That's so I think she was just like
Speaker 1: I need. Yeah, she was messing around. But of course
Speaker 1: that then became the thing that, like, I could never
Speaker 1: go to orchestra again without like all of the guys
Speaker 1: snickering every time one of the women would play the flute.
Speaker 3: Yeah, of course, of course, because the whole function of
Speaker 3: that story is not to talk about her sexual experience
Speaker 3: or her sexual pleasure, but to create a visual image
Speaker 3: for the boys to masturbate too. I mean, just like
Speaker 3: what I learned from Glamour magazine in the nineties, women's
Speaker 3: sexual self expression exists for the pleasure of men.
Speaker 1: I was just talking to one of my editors about Glamour.
Speaker 1: I was working on a piece about Britney Spears and hair,
Speaker 1: the politics of hair, because she talks in her new
Speaker 1: book about thrashing her hair and when she shaved her
Speaker 1: head and how it made her ugly and for the
Speaker 1: first time in her life she was not sexualized. But
Speaker 1: we were talking about remembering some of those sex tips
Speaker 1: that we learned from magazines like Glamour, where they would
Speaker 1: tell you to use your hair during the sex act
Speaker 1: like either twirlet or like you know, run it down
Speaker 1: a guy's chest or something, which is just so hilarious
Speaker 1: to think about now, But back then we didn't have
Speaker 1: the knowledge or experience to note that that was anything
Speaker 1: but a weird thing head made up.
Speaker 2: I mean, I guess, like, if you're into that, go
Speaker 2: for it.
Speaker 3: But the brushing of the hair, like your partner's body
Speaker 3: might respond well to the sensation of your hair brushing
Speaker 3: against them until the right circumstances, is not the same
Speaker 3: as like play with your hair, perform your hair area
Speaker 3: for the other person to witness.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: This is one of the things that I find so
Speaker 1: refreshing about your work is that you take these commonly
Speaker 1: held assumptions or things that we have heard, and then
Speaker 1: you basically debunk them or unravel them to reveal what
Speaker 1: is actually going on.
Speaker 3: It's one of the reasons why even now, when I
Speaker 3: have lots of different channels for viewing pop culture, kind
Speaker 3: of don't watch a lot of it because when it
Speaker 3: involves sex, like, the thing goes off in my head
Speaker 3: and I have to be like that it has not
Speaker 3: how that works.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like we need the annotations from you while
Speaker 1: we are watching the thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like, ps, this is fine. And also just know
Speaker 3: that it's actually really rare for a person to be
Speaker 3: able to go instantaneously from being very stressed out to
Speaker 3: feeling very turned on. For most people, that's not how
Speaker 3: it works.
Speaker 1: What are the things that you remember consuming in the
Speaker 1: nineties that made you think twice or as an adult
Speaker 1: you realize that that's actually not an accurate representation.
Speaker 3: There's something about Mary.
Speaker 2: Oh Jesus, what bothered you about that one?
Speaker 3: Yeah? So the thing from There's Something about Mary is
Speaker 3: that Cameron Diaz uses ejaculate that is dangling off of
Speaker 3: She's like, oh, it's hair gel, and she puts it
Speaker 3: in her hair. Yeah, anyone who is actually touched, touched
Speaker 3: any ejaculate knows that it just does not bear any
Speaker 3: relationships the texture of hair gel. Like it's a silly idea,
Speaker 3: but as a nerd, I just find it totally unbelievable
Speaker 3: and it reflects negatively on the intelligence of Cameron Diaz's
Speaker 3: character that she could possibly mistake the texture of ejaculate
Speaker 3: for the texture of hair gel. And also can she
Speaker 3: not smell it? Like, it doesn't smell like hairjel. There's
Speaker 3: no hair gel. It is ejaculate scented fresh scent. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Wait, you mentioned Eugene Levy earlier.
Speaker 1: Do you have some fun fact about Eugene Levy in
Speaker 1: American Pie?
Speaker 3: Well, so, from what I've heard, he was initially not
Speaker 3: very interested in playing the father, and he worked with
Speaker 3: them pretty intensively to shape the character into what like
Speaker 3: a father might actually do. And I love the way
Speaker 3: as a dat he does not play into like, yeah, son,
Speaker 3: go get as much of that blussy as you can get.
Speaker 3: But he also doesn't dismiss his son sexuality. He wants
Speaker 3: to protect him from the inevitable embarrassments of being a
Speaker 3: teenage boy, like, we'll just have to tell your mother
Speaker 3: we ate the whole thing, and like brings him porn, which,
Speaker 3: you know what for the mid nineties, fairly progressive to be.
Speaker 2: Like here, yeah, here it is.
Speaker 3: This is a normal part of life.
Speaker 4: This is hustler, and this is a much more exotic magazine.
Speaker 1: Are there common sex myths that you still come across today?
Speaker 1: I don't think are you teaching at the moment, but
Speaker 1: I know that you are generally teaching, and so I'm
Speaker 1: sure that this comes up in class.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So, Over the last few since the pandemic, in particular,
Speaker 3: I have spent more time training professionals, training therapists, and
Speaker 3: it is sometimes distressing how many of the same misunderstandings
Speaker 3: and myths stay in their minds as I meet within
Speaker 3: college students. Several years ago, I talked to a woman
Speaker 3: who was recently out of college. She came to a
Speaker 3: talk and she said, so, this thing I learned in
Speaker 3: high school was that if you masturbate, if you teach
Speaker 3: yourself how to have an orgasm by yourself, you won't
Speaker 3: be able to have an orgasm with a partner. And
Speaker 3: she's like a full grown adult and is asking this question.
Speaker 3: I was like, yeah, it's the opposite of true. Actually,
Speaker 3: if as a young person you learn how orgasm works
Speaker 3: in your body, that means you know how orgasm works
Speaker 3: in your body, so that when you're with another person,
Speaker 3: which is a much more complex situation where part of
Speaker 3: your brain might be tuned into what's happening in your body,
Speaker 3: but part of your brain is also tuned in to
Speaker 3: what's going on for your partner, and so HM, with
Speaker 3: your attention split like that, it's actually more difficult to
Speaker 3: focus on pleasure and let your body have an orgasm.
Speaker 3: So it's great if you've already got the groundwork laid,
Speaker 3: so to speak, for knowing like what the path is
Speaker 3: to get to orgasm in your body, then you can
Speaker 3: teach your partner how to follow that path. Okay, And
Speaker 3: I got asked almost exactly the same question by a
Speaker 3: therapist and a training five years later.
Speaker 2: Was this a sex therapist?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 3: No, no, no no, So this is like marriage and
Speaker 3: family therapist, couples therapists like it makes you feel slightly
Speaker 3: about her, but like you do worry?
Speaker 1: Right, are there other things that you remember consuming in
Speaker 1: the nineties. I think you mentioned the X files.
Speaker 4: Oh, yeah.
Speaker 3: So probably one of the very best episodes of The
Speaker 3: X Files is Small Potatoes, which is an episode about
Speaker 3: a shape shifter. Sunday got in all New X Files.
Speaker 3: How do you find someone?
Speaker 1: We're looking for a man who can appear to be
Speaker 1: his own father or anyone else.
Speaker 3: Who can transform him. So is everything okay into anyone
Speaker 3: who these days would be called an in cell okay,
Speaker 3: except that he was not celibate because he would shape
Speaker 3: shift into the forms of more attractive men who had partners,
Speaker 3: and he would have sex with them the women and
Speaker 3: he got found out because they were having babies with tails.
Speaker 3: Now this is actually, on reflection, a story of serial rapist,
Speaker 3: and it is treated as comedy, right, I mean it's.
Speaker 2: A farce, right right right In the nineties when I.
Speaker 3: Watched it, I just all all I focused on was
Speaker 3: the comedy because that is how they framed it. And
Speaker 3: in retrospect, uh like, actually violent sexual perpetrator yikes.
Speaker 1: Right right, I mean there's so many examples of that, right,
Speaker 1: Like if you look back, we just did an episode
Speaker 1: on Dawson's Creek.
Speaker 3: Which I have never seen.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's a terrible more power to you like
Speaker 1: it wasn't great, then it's not great on rewatch, so
Speaker 1: I know there are a lot of fans and I
Speaker 1: did watch it. But there's this one storyline where Pacey,
Speaker 1: who is the off lead character, he's the best friend
Speaker 1: of Dawson, who the show is named after, begins a
Speaker 1: relationship with and loses his virginity to his English teacher
Speaker 1: and oh right, yeah, grown woman, and it's just portrayed
Speaker 1: as super hot, and I remember as a teenager being like, oh,
Speaker 1: I want to see what happens with this relationship, like
Speaker 1: that's so hot, and obviously in retrospect that was a
Speaker 1: statutory rape, right, So.
Speaker 2: Many portrayals like that.
Speaker 1: But I was even thinking back to just like basic
Speaker 1: things that I internalized in high school that it took
Speaker 1: me years to realize we're not true. So I just learned,
Speaker 1: I think in the last six months from Twitter. Thanks Twitter,
Speaker 1: I guess that blue balls are not real. When did
Speaker 1: you just learn this, like five seconds ago? Oh and
Speaker 1: I'm married to a man.
Speaker 2: And he was like, Babe, like, yeah, of course they're
Speaker 2: not really, it's so here And I was like, uh wait,
Speaker 2: what I.
Speaker 3: Would be interested if you could find out where you
Speaker 3: learned it, because I don't remember where I learned of
Speaker 3: it either.
Speaker 1: I mean maybe just like people talking about it or
Speaker 1: like being in sexual contexts where you but I don't
Speaker 1: even think some a guy would have said it. I
Speaker 1: think it was like, oh, we all knew that, like
Speaker 1: it was going to be so so painful for a
Speaker 1: man if you somehow aroused them and then didn't finish it.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So again, I had the good fortune of being trained
Speaker 3: as a sex educator even before I started being sexual myself,
Speaker 3: and I explicitly remember being told that, like some guys
Speaker 3: will try to use this narrative of blue balls as
Speaker 3: justification for trying to persuade a partner. No, they have
Speaker 3: to continue doing a thing or else harm will come
Speaker 3: to them. And so like the deal is, no. Can
Speaker 3: it be uncomfortable to be aroused for a very long
Speaker 3: time and not have an orgasm? Yeah, there's a reason
Speaker 3: why those vagerate commercials say if your erection lasts more
Speaker 3: than four hours, seek medical help, because it can be
Speaker 3: really uncomfortable. Nothing bad happens to you, there's nothing dangerous
Speaker 3: about it. It's a little bit like getting a Charlie horse.
Speaker 3: So it's not real comfortable. But the underlying narrative behind
Speaker 3: it is that boys have a sexual imperative, a need,
Speaker 3: and because it's a biological need, they are entitled to
Speaker 3: have that need met or else something bad could happen
Speaker 3: to them. This is a narrative that has been in
Speaker 3: place for very long time. If you go back and
Speaker 3: read sex manuals from the late eighteen hundred of the
Speaker 3: late nineteenth century, you'll begin to see the split between
Speaker 3: the people who say, then have a biological need for
Speaker 3: sexual release, and they use that as an argument in
Speaker 3: favor of legalizing prostitution as a matter of fact, in
Speaker 3: order to spare all these men's wives having to have
Speaker 3: all the sex that men need or else. And then
Speaker 3: you have on the other side, right at the turn
Speaker 3: of the century, you begin to hear from sex educators
Speaker 3: who are like, it is not a biological need, nothing
Speaker 3: bad happens to men if they don't have any sort
Speaker 3: of sexual release. Men just need to learn how to
Speaker 3: control themselves, and they use it as an argument in
Speaker 3: favor of abstinence only.
Speaker 2: Until marriage, right right, right right.
Speaker 3: And you do kind of look back and wish that
Speaker 3: either side could have found something better to do with
Speaker 3: their time. So biologically it is not a need. I
Speaker 3: don't think that that's an argument in favor of abstinence
Speaker 3: only before marriage. So if you've read Girls by Peggy Ornstein,
Speaker 3: her book Girls and her book Boys are both raw.
Speaker 2: Dropping girls and sex, Girls and.
Speaker 3: Sex and boys and sex, Thank you very much. One
Speaker 3: story that I remember from Girls is from a teenager
Speaker 3: that she interviewed who said, this guy came over to
Speaker 3: my house and we were making out and that was
Speaker 3: sort of all I wanted to do, but he wanted
Speaker 3: to have sex, and so like I gave him a
Speaker 3: blowjob so that he would leave my house. Yeah, And
Speaker 3: on the one hand, like, hooray for survival strategies, hooray
Speaker 3: for finding a way out of that situation where she
Speaker 3: was not putting herself in the path of physical harm,
Speaker 3: which is a potential thing.
Speaker 2: Did she feel in danger were she to leave or
Speaker 2: did she.
Speaker 3: She felt like she had no other way to get
Speaker 3: him to leave the house. She wanted him to go.
Speaker 3: He kept saying, no, I wasn't gonna go. He wanted
Speaker 3: to have sex, all come on, all that stuff, Like
Speaker 3: the only way to get him out of the house
Speaker 3: was to give him something. But on the other hand,
Speaker 3: like that's that's like deeply not okay, and none of
Speaker 3: us would want a daughter of our own to be
Speaker 3: in the situation.
Speaker 1: I mean, that reminds me of another lesson that I
Speaker 1: think I learned and internalized as a teenager, which was
Speaker 1: no does not mean no, No means convince me. And
Speaker 1: the number of times that played out, and I think,
Speaker 1: you know, I think that that was very prominent in
Speaker 1: like teen films at that time, like even It's Super Bad.
Speaker 1: I think the guys there are talking about, you know,
Speaker 1: if you if you get here.
Speaker 2: Drunk enough, she'll she'll say yes.
Speaker 1: But another one of those lessons, I guess I'm curious
Speaker 1: how much of your work is almost about re education,
Speaker 1: like re educating us on how things actually work after
Speaker 1: years and years and years of being misinformed.
Speaker 3: Ninety eight point nine percent of my work is simply
Speaker 3: like that thing you learned before, that's not true. I
Speaker 3: understand why you believed it. It was the thing you
Speaker 3: were taught, and why wouldn't you believe the thing that
Speaker 3: you were taught. So some of the things are about facts,
Speaker 3: like blue balls. That's just like a biological reality. Is
Speaker 3: that no tissue damn which occurs to a human in
Speaker 3: the absence of sexual release, right, Like, that's just a
Speaker 3: fact when it comes to things like no means no, yeah,
Speaker 3: And if you have sex with someone who's drunk, that's
Speaker 3: sexual assault. That's like a cultural relearning where you're shifting
Speaker 3: people's norms, even people's morals, in their understanding of what
Speaker 3: it means to be a sexual person, how to be
Speaker 3: a good sexual partner. And ultimately it's deconstructing this gender binary, right,
Speaker 3: like rejecting the whole idea that like men have one
Speaker 3: sexual script and women have another sexual script, and those
Speaker 3: are the only sexual scripts that exist, and you have
Speaker 3: to follow the one that you've been given. And there
Speaker 3: is a complexity here because on the one hand, no
Speaker 3: means no, and having sex with a drug person is assault,
Speaker 3: and because the script for girls is that you're not
Speaker 3: allowed to initiate even though you're supposed to really enjoy
Speaker 3: sex and you're supposed to you have a great time
Speaker 3: when you have sex, and you're supposed to be a
Speaker 3: sexual person who is good at the sex, you also
Speaker 3: are supposed to not want sex. You're not supposed to
Speaker 3: initiate sex, and you were not supposed to say yes
Speaker 3: because wanting it and liking it are not very feminine.
Speaker 3: We have both of these competing scripts simultaneously. And so
Speaker 3: for a long time, girls in real life who are
Speaker 3: exploring their sexuality, trying to find out what it is
Speaker 3: they want in life didn't feel cultural permission to go
Speaker 3: ahead and say yes to the things that they wanted
Speaker 3: and liked, right, And so maybe they would say no
Speaker 3: and do things that they wanted to do, but they
Speaker 3: were saying the no they felt they were supposed to say. Like,
Speaker 3: I think there has been a complexity and a grayness,
Speaker 3: Like there's been controversy over the Christmas song Baby It's
Speaker 3: called outside, Yeah Yeah, where like she's saying no, but
Speaker 3: she's saying no because she feels like she's not allowed
Speaker 3: to say yes, and she actually like really wants to
Speaker 3: say yes.
Speaker 2: Yep, yep. Wait, what are the lyrics?
Speaker 3: I really can't stay it's cold outside. I gotta go away.
Speaker 3: It's cold outside. This evening has been so very nice
Speaker 3: and warm. I ought to.
Speaker 2: Say no, no you at least I'm gonna say that.
Speaker 3: I wait, but it's cold outside. She sings it too,
Speaker 3: but it's cold outside, So there's ambiguity.
Speaker 1: You're describing cultural scripts which of course are an important
Speaker 1: part of this. But it's almost as if the more
Speaker 1: factual things you're discussing, the things that we learned in
Speaker 1: the wrong way.
Speaker 2: Get talked about less.
Speaker 1: Yes, in reading your book, Come as you are, I
Speaker 1: was so struck by how many basic facts I was
Speaker 1: learning for the first time or relearning for the first time.
Speaker 2: And so while you think that those would be easy.
Speaker 1: Things to reteach or correct, it's almost as if we're
Speaker 1: talking about, you know, the patriarchy and cultural scripts and
Speaker 1: what consent means much more often than we're talking about
Speaker 1: these literal facts.
Speaker 3: Yes, literal actual just biological facts about the lack of
Speaker 3: correlation between how your genitals are behaving and how you
Speaker 3: personally feel.
Speaker 1: Are there a few basic facts that I should have
Speaker 1: you debunk for us right here while we have you like,
Speaker 1: what are the most caught What are the things we
Speaker 1: need to know?
Speaker 3: Can we start with virginity since we were talking about
Speaker 3: American pie Whease virginity is not it's not a biological thing,
Speaker 3: biological fact of any kind. It cannot be like, what
Speaker 3: the heck? What the heck is virginity?
Speaker 2: The idea of the cherry.
Speaker 3: And in biolog turns the hymen. The hymen is a
Speaker 3: fold of tissue. It is like all of our tissues.
Speaker 3: If it gets damaged, it heals. Hymen can be stretched.
Speaker 3: But there are people who have given birth who have
Speaker 3: intact hymens. My husband laughingly calls it a freshness seal,
Speaker 3: like just that whole thing, all of it derives from
Speaker 3: several hundred years ago, medieval biologists medical practitioners looking at
Speaker 3: a fold of skin sort of over the mouth of
Speaker 3: a vagina and deciding because they live in a culture
Speaker 3: where a woman's body is literally a man's property, and
Speaker 3: her lack of having had a penis in her vagina
Speaker 3: yet matters insofar as a man wants his property to
Speaker 3: be in good condition. He wants not to invest his
Speaker 3: resources in raising someone else's offspring. And like you never
Speaker 3: can fully get can control over a woman's sexuality, but like,
Speaker 3: at least that fold of skin is some assurance that
Speaker 3: that vagina is fresh, right with all biological nonsense, because
Speaker 3: you can't tell based on the presence of absence of
Speaker 3: a hymen whether not anybody has ever had anything put
Speaker 3: into their vagina before.
Speaker 2: Okay, so that's virginity. Yeah, what's another common one.
Speaker 3: Blue balls, of course, would definitely go on the list
Speaker 3: of like this. This is not a thing attached to it.
Speaker 3: The idea of sex as a biological drive, like hunger
Speaker 3: is a drive. If you don't have adequate energy intake,
Speaker 3: you can literally die. First biological drive. If you have
Speaker 3: inadequate balance of water and sodium, you can literally die.
Speaker 3: Sleep is a drive. If you do not get adequate sleep,
Speaker 3: you can literally die. Sex is not one of those.
Speaker 3: Sex is an incentive motivation system. And no, I'm not
Speaker 3: under a delusion that we're all gonna stop saying the
Speaker 3: simple and easy sex drive and start saying sexual incentive
Speaker 3: motivation system. But if we could all just get real
Speaker 3: clear that we do not mean that sex is a
Speaker 3: biological need without which anybody will die, that would be
Speaker 3: super good.
Speaker 1: Is there one sex myth that if you could just
Speaker 1: do one thing and eradicate it?
Speaker 3: Can I choose a cluster of myths around what I'm
Speaker 3: going to colloquially call women's orgasm? Please, So the research
Speaker 3: here's my gender caveat. Virtually all the research on women's
Speaker 3: orgasms is done on cisgender women. So I see no
Speaker 3: reason why all of this doesn't apply to anyone who's
Speaker 3: a woman, but know that the research is talking about
Speaker 3: sisgender women.
Speaker 2: That's the caveat yep.
Speaker 3: First of all, as I said, only about ten ish
Speaker 3: percent of women who masturbate do so with any kind
Speaker 3: of vaginal penetration. That's been shown in study after study
Speaker 3: after study for the last fifty years. Only a quarter
Speaker 3: to like maybe a third of women are reliably orgasmic
Speaker 3: from vaginal penetration alone, or as it's called in the research,
Speaker 3: unassisted intercourse, one of my favorite technical terms. The remaining
Speaker 3: two thirds to three quarters are sometimes rarely or never
Speaker 3: orgasmic from vaginal stimulation alone. And the only reason why
Speaker 3: I still get asked like, how do I have an
Speaker 3: orgasm during sex? Is the way people say it. They
Speaker 3: mean during penal vaginal intercourse. How come I'm not having them?
Speaker 3: The reason you're not having them is because approximately two
Speaker 3: thirds to three quarters of people with vaginas, that's not
Speaker 3: a very good way for them to get the kind
Speaker 3: of stimulation they need to get to orgasm because the
Speaker 3: vagina is pretty far away from the glitterists, which is
Speaker 3: for most people, not all, but for most people, the
Speaker 3: most efficient path to getting to orgasm and The only
Speaker 3: reason people still care about this is because I think
Speaker 3: of freakin' freckin' Freud, whose influence on psychotherapy will not die.
Speaker 3: Saying that clteral orgasms are immature and vaginal orgasms are mature.
Speaker 3: That is an extremely convenient line for the patriarchy and
Speaker 3: the misogyny, and a world in which men would really
Speaker 3: benefit from women being orgasmic, from the kind of behavior
Speaker 3: by which heterosexual men are very reliably orgasmic.
Speaker 1: It's so interesting, though, because, Okay, for people who haven't
Speaker 1: studied fraud, these myths persist, Like why do they, I mean,
Speaker 1: besides the patriarchy, why do they persist?
Speaker 3: Sex is a big deal, and women's bodies in the
Speaker 3: world of the gender binary have to be controlled because
Speaker 3: a whole lot of the genetic destiny of our species
Speaker 3: happens inside of uteruses, and so we have to control
Speaker 3: the uteruses, which means we have to control the women,
Speaker 3: which means not only making laws about it, but havingultural
Speaker 3: narratives about right and wrong, about beautiful and ugly, about
Speaker 3: disgusting and perfect that train us all to be good
Speaker 3: from very young, to be good at being the right
Speaker 3: kind of sexual person.
Speaker 1: And what about the role of pop culture to perpetuate
Speaker 1: or to teach us healthy sexual habits.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because pop culture is so powerful, because these narratives
Speaker 3: form our framework for understanding how our own sexuality works.
Speaker 3: And I say that as someone who even though I
Speaker 3: have like all this education and all this experience, I
Speaker 3: still find myself falling into the same self critical traps
Speaker 3: of comparing my sexuality to other people's sexuality, or to
Speaker 3: like the cultural narrative of how sexuality works. Like now,
Speaker 3: as a perimount apausal forty something lady married to somebody,
Speaker 3: when my sexual desire isn't like when the spark isn't
Speaker 3: still alive in my marriage, I think, oh no, there's
Speaker 3: something terribly wrong. And like I wrote a whole book
Speaker 3: about how oh no, nothing is terribly wrong, Like I
Speaker 3: know exactly how to fix it, and I still my
Speaker 3: first response is still to a panic that I'm doing
Speaker 3: it wrong, that I'm broken, that I'm an inadequate wife.
Speaker 3: So I think it clearly is very powerful. It embeds
Speaker 3: narratives in our head of how sex is supposed to work.
Speaker 3: And only by having an enormously diverse range of stories,
Speaker 3: only by having a whole lot of different narratives about
Speaker 3: ways that you can be sexual and do sex? Right,
Speaker 3: do we get a liberating pop culture narrative? Is when
Speaker 3: there's dozens of them? Does that make sense?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Absolutely?
Speaker 3: I like had a lot of feelings and then words happened,
Speaker 3: and I don't know that any of them formed sentences.
Speaker 2: No, that's amazing, But.
Speaker 3: I really meant it.
Speaker 2: Is there anything out there you think does it well.
Speaker 3: Of mainstream pop culture? I would be really interested to
Speaker 3: hear from listeners like, what have you seen that you
Speaker 3: feel like does a good job of representing sexuality in
Speaker 3: a way where it shows a world that you would
Speaker 3: want your kids to grow up in or that you
Speaker 3: wish you had grown up in. One of the episodes
Speaker 3: in the podcast that I made with Pushkin was on
Speaker 3: Ted Lasso.
Speaker 4: Mm hmm.
Speaker 3: They picked it because it's one of the few shows
Speaker 3: that I watch, and I feel like that show did
Speaker 3: a pretty darn good job of sexuality. I feel like
Speaker 3: it was extremely silly in its relationships, but the sexual relationships,
Speaker 3: such the little bit that they showed, were pretty great. Actually,
Speaker 3: like the communication was on point. The equality of different
Speaker 3: people to be able to initiate sex and say no
Speaker 3: to sex was really good, but there just wasn't a
Speaker 3: lot of sex in it.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, that's actually a perfect place to
Speaker 1: end it with the call out to our listeners posed
Speaker 1: by you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I can know, like when somebody asks me,
Speaker 3: but what can I watch that's good, that I'll be
Speaker 3: able to be like, here's a.
Speaker 1: List Before I let you go, Could you say a
Speaker 1: few words about the new book.
Speaker 3: Oh sure, it's called Come Together. I was very proud
Speaker 3: when I thought of that title, because it is about
Speaker 3: how couples sustain a sexual connection over the long term,
Speaker 3: couples of all combinations and all structures, whether monogamous or not.
Speaker 3: It comes from the fact that writing and promoting Come
Speaker 3: as you Are diminished my interest in sex to less
Speaker 3: than zero. And when I got done with that project,
Speaker 3: which you'd think writing and thinking and talking about sex
Speaker 3: all the time might make it easier, turns out no,
Speaker 3: I had zero interest for like months at a time.
Speaker 3: So when that was over, I started looking at the research,
Speaker 3: of course, because that's what I do, on how couples
Speaker 3: do sustain a strong sexual connection over the long term,
Speaker 3: And what I learned changed my own sex life, and
Speaker 3: I wrote a book about it to help other people
Speaker 3: in a similar situation.
Speaker 4: This Is in Retrospect. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 5: Is there a pop culture moment you can't stop thinking
Speaker 5: about and want us to explore in a future episode.
Speaker 5: Email us at inretropod at gmail dot com or find
Speaker 5: us on Instagram at in retropod.
Speaker 1: If you love this podcast, please rate and review us
Speaker 1: on Apple or Spotify or wherever you listen. If you
Speaker 1: hate it, you can post nasty comments on our Instagram,
Speaker 1: which we may or may not delete.
Speaker 5: You can also find us on Instagram at Jessica Bennett
Speaker 5: and at Susie b NYC. Also check out Jessica's books
Speaker 5: Feminist Fight Club and This Is eighteen.
Speaker 1: In Retrospect is a production of iHeart Podcasts and The Media.
Speaker 1: Lauren Hansen is our supervising producer. Derek Clements is our
Speaker 1: engineer and sound designer. Emily Meronoff is our producer. Jaron
Speaker 1: Atia is our researcher and associate producer.
Speaker 5: Our executive producer from the Media is Cindy Levy. Our
Speaker 5: executive producer from iHeart are Anna Stump and Katrina Norbel.
Speaker 4: Our artwork is from Pentagram.
Speaker 5: Additional editing helps from Mary Do Sound correction and mastering
Speaker 5: by Amanda Rose Smith.
Speaker 4: We are your hosts, Susie Bannoncarum.
Speaker 1: And Jessica Bennett. We are also executive producers. For even
Speaker 1: more check out in retropod dot com. See you next week.