August 15, 2018 • 50 mins
Research shows women are having bad sex. Here's what it means.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hi, this is Annie and this is Bridget, and you're
listening to stuff Mom never told you. Okay, So, a
couple of weeks ago, we released an episode about painful sex,
(00:25):
and this episode that we're doing today, bad sex, is
sort of a compliment to that one, So go check
it out if you haven't listened yet. But bad sex,
we need to talk about it, Bridget, We definitely do.
Even before I dove into any of the research for
this episode, just anecdotally, I had a feeling that a
(00:46):
lot of us out there we're putting up with some
bad sex and probably not being very vocal about it,
and that research proved me correct. Yeah, spoiler alert. As
it turns out, men and women are working vastly different
definitions of what constitutes bad sex, and because of that,
(01:07):
it might be a disconnect when we're talking about the
me Too movement between how men and women understand it,
because when a woman says bad sex, she is thinking
of one thing and a man is thinking of something
else completely different. Yeah, that's true. And I think because
we don't talk about this, we have been conditioned to
(01:30):
not really talk about these things, not to speaking about
these things. Neither party sort of is communicating these feelings
to each other. Yeah, and before we dive into the
basics of bad sex. Uh, shout out to listener Alexandra
for sending as a link to an article from the
week about this called The Female Price of Male Pleasure,
(01:52):
which was super helpful and putting this together. I also
drunkenly brought it up at a party like a week ago,
and probably every one at the party was like, Oh, no,
I'm the bad sex girl at that party. Now, did
it win you any suitors? You know? Somebody did ask
me out after that. I'm not sure how much he
was around for that discussion. Though this girl knows a
(02:14):
thing at you about bad sex in her home. She
sounds like a hoot. Okay, so let's do some basics here.
If you took a poll of men versus women and
you asked what does bad sex mean? From the men,
you would probably hear that it was boring or that
the orgasm wasn't the best orgasm they've ever had. For women,
(02:39):
bad sex usually means coercion, emotional discomfort, or physical pain.
That's very different. So yeah, we're already kind of working
under two real, real different understandings of what bad sexes.
That reminds me so much of that old, that old
adage on a blind date. Men are worried that their
(02:59):
day it will be ugly or unattractive or heavy or something,
and and women are worthy, they're going to end up murdered. Right,
we have very different we're working on very different standards.
Are bars different with that way, Yes, very much. According
to Debbie Herbernick, professor and a researcher with the National
Survey of Sexual Health and Behavior, she told the author
(03:21):
of this article that we're talking about Leahlye loof Borrow.
When it comes to good sex, women often mean without pain.
Men often mean they had orgasms, and that just sad.
That's very sad. It is sad. Similarly, Professor Sarah McClelland,
one of the few folks has done some serious research
(03:41):
into this, found that quote. While women imagined the low
end to include the potential for extremely negative feelings and
the potential for pain, men imagined the low end to
represent the potential for less satisfying sexual outcomes, but they
never imagined harmful or damaging outcomes for the selves. Yeah,
that just goes to show how divided this issue is.
(04:03):
Is that men aren't even it's not even in their
understanding that the sex could be painful or intensely emotionally damaging.
It's just not great. Yeah, And it sort of reminds
me of how in our Why do Men Expose Themselves episode?
Some men don't see exposing yourself as harassment. It seems
(04:24):
like we are working off to extremely different scales. I
mean we are, Yeah, we definitely are. I hate this
that attitude of men and women are so different. I've
often thought that we're more similar, but there are some
things where it is couldn't be more clear that we
are see that we experienced the world differently. Yeah, And
going back to our episode on women's pain, of women
(04:49):
surveyed report pain during vaginal intercourse, report pain during annual intercourse,
and quote large proportions don't tell their partner. That really
makes me angry because you know, when you have sex
with someone, you are kind of giving them part of
(05:09):
your body. I mean it's a very intimate thing, obviously,
and the idea that people are experiencing pain and not
speaking up. And I think why it makes me angry
is because I've been there. I've been the person who
will let someone do something to me sexually, and not
only am I not enjoying it, I am actively in
pain while it's happening. And rather than say I don't
(05:31):
like this, can be stopped, can be changed something, something
in my brain tells me it's better to just continue
to have this not just not pleasurable, but actively unpleasant
experience and not say anything like. It makes me. It
makes me angry because I think about younger bridget who like,
would allow someone to do something that was that hurt,
(05:52):
and I would just and I would not even that,
I wouldn't say anything. I'd pretend to enjoy it. Yeah,
and there is some research on that about the socialization
and of of women in our society that we're going
to talk about a little bit more. But yeah, it's
it's more difficult than just saying like, well, you should
speak up. There's more at play than that. Earlier this year,
(06:15):
Andrew Sullivan published an article in The New York Magazine
arguing that Me Too had gone too far because it
ignores the biological realities of male bodies and their needs,
to which Colin Dickie had an excellent Twitter thread where
he rattled off a bunch of examples of sex and nature,
like how the oldest male clownfish will spontaneously change sex
(06:37):
when the dominant female dies. Are how the sea hair
is hermaphrodite species that reproduces in a chain. Where does
the male and one coupling and the female and another,
or the male mantis has better sex when his head
is removed from the body quote one of the most
wondrous things about nature that is not here for your
(06:59):
heteronormative bulls. I love that the animal kingdom is basically
like San Francisco in the seventies. How kinds of get downs,
headless everything, anything. It's a cornucopia. I am such a
nerd for there were so many examples and I only
listed three, but I I almost just included all of
(07:21):
them because I thought it was so interesting nature fascinating. Agreed,
But back to the human species. In our society, male
biological needs are the ones that we care about, not women's.
It's the one that we consider. If we're going to
talk about male pleasure, then we need to start talking
(07:42):
about female pleasure or female pain that is usually the
price women pay for male pleasure. In our Women in
Pain episode, we gave example after example of studies that
ignored women or treated the female body as the same
but basically in extension of the male body like must
be the same. There's no point studying it, right. One
(08:04):
stat we didn't mention in that episode. Pub Med has
three and ninety three studies looking into die sprenaria, forty
three looking into volverdenia, and ten into vaginice miss all
conditions associated with painful sex for women, among other symptoms.
Guess how many studies pub Med has on erectile dysfunction.
(08:26):
I'm gonna say it's a lot more, almost two thousand,
one thousand. And that's just so men can keep enjoying
the pleasure as opposed to women who have this this
painful sex and other like pain symptoms. Let's not study that.
That's we need to look about these things. Yeah, and
(08:48):
also the idea that a man can pretty easily go
in and get viagara, and for a woman to even
just get a diagnosis for something like endometriosis or pcos,
I mean, it takes so long and you go through
so many different doctors, and you pay so much money.
It's such a big discrepancy. It makes me really angry. Yeah,
and probably viagra is in here in the US covered
(09:09):
by insurance, the average weight to get intometriosis diagnosed is
ten years, and insurance companies are less likely to cover
issues surrounding female bodies like birth control. For example, according
to a study published in called is Adam worth more
than Eve the financial impact of gender biased and the
federal reimbursement of gynecological procedures, male only surgeries were forty
(09:34):
more likely to get reimbursed. That's so upsetting. I can't
remember who I saw tweet at this, but if you
remember who it was, shout us out. But somebody was
explaining on Twitter trying to trying to get a diagnosis
for endometriosis, and she wrote, I spent ten years, got
three incorrect diagnoses, and I paid thousands of dollars out
of pocket for the pleasure of all of those misiagnoses
(09:56):
just to find out I had endometriosis. Like, the amount
of hoops that jump through, the amount of money that
you pay just to take care of our female body
is absurd. Yeah, it's infuriating. And another infuriating thing that
we're going to talk about is the way that women
are socialized to hide this pain. But first we're going
to stop for a quick break for word from our sponsor,
(10:28):
and we're back, Thank you sponsor. Okay. So, yes, women,
at least here in the US, and I would say
probably in a lot of places, are socialized to hide
our discomfort. We grant and barratt. We want the people
were with to have a good time, and if that
comes at our expense, if that means pain, and so
(10:49):
be it. I have a lot of friends who talk
about and not necessarily sex related, but just like seeing
their mom going so far out of their way to
make sure that everyone else was happy, other than themselves.
And I think we do learn from that, and we
do internalize it, and if that does mean physical pain,
(11:12):
then so be it. And this relates to something known
as relative deprivation, when groups of disenfranchised folks, since they've
been conditioned to expect less, still report experiencing the same
amount of satisfaction as those better off than them. So
we've normalized female sexual pain all for the sake of
(11:32):
male sexual pleasure, which our society treats as a right.
Hence the ease of obtaining viagra versus the difficulty women
face getting their pain taken. Seriously, Yeah, and when you
think about the fact that we're like, when you really
drill down, the fact that we're talking about men's pleasure
versus women's pain. I mean, we're not even having the
conversation about women's sexual pleasure. What we're thinking about in
(11:55):
terms of leveling the playing field is men should be
able to feel pleasure and women should be able to
not be in excruciating pain. We're not talking about men
and women both experiencing sexual pleasure. We're talking about one
of them not being doubled down and discomfort. Right, and
and going back to what we were talking about earlier
and how right now, with all of this conversation about
(12:17):
sexual harassment and the questions of how has has been
going on so long, why haven't you spoken up ladies,
and all of the comments about how women are too
sensitive about how sad it is that men can't hit
on ladies in a professional setting. For so long, we've
only considered men at the expense of women. I'm just
(12:38):
like at a loss. So so I'm getting angry. Yeah,
that's absolutely true. And so if I sound like I'm
a stammering idiot, it's because I'm really angry, and I'm
almost sort of angry at society. But mostly I'm angry
at myself because I think back to the early my
formative sexual years, how many of the encounters I had
with with men were scary, We're coercive, we're painful, were unpleasant,
(13:04):
and I didn't know that I could speak up and
say I don't like this, I don't want this, to
do this, not that. And of course it's society. It's
it's it's exactly what you describe. It's this culture that
says that women shouldn't speak up, that the man, heaven forbid,
he feels like he's not a macho man while he's
basically stabbing me with like dirty nails, and I'm really
(13:26):
it's like really unpleasant, and I'm just sort of like, Okay,
well this feels great. Please keep stabbing me with your dirty, unwashed,
jagged fingernails. This is great, Like who wouldn't enjoy this?
And I just feel like, on the one hand, I
guess those encounters perhaps did help me get to where
I am today, but I just looked back and I
wasted so much time on people who really didn't deserve
(13:47):
to have my body, and like I I look back
and it makes me very sad that I felt so
disempowered and I just wasted so much time on people
who did not deserve to be intimate me in that
way because I thought I had to because I didn't.
I did not see any other way, And it makes
me really angry at myself in a lot of ways. Yeah,
(14:09):
I think a lot of us can relate to that
at the same time, at least in my In my case,
I didn't. It's almost like I didn't know that was
an option for me, and that sounds kind of ridiculous,
but it didn't even occur to me. So it is sad.
It's it's really sad, and I hate to think that
(14:30):
that this is still happening and they're young people out
there still they're going to have similar experiences. On the
one hand, I do feel like if I had not
had those experiences, like I feel like they were in
some way helpful for my sexual understanding. One they helped
me understand that I didn't really want to spend my
entire life only having sex with men because a lot
(14:51):
of them weren't that good at it. And I probably
would not have come to that realization if I had
not had those unpleasant experiences. But what you just said
makes me feel very sad because I do know that
they're young people out there, particularly women and girls who
feel like they have to put up with things sexually
that that that you just really do not have to
(15:11):
put up with. Like again, looking back, I wish I
could go back to eighteen year old bridget who was
in cutoffs in North Carolina at college, and say, if
a guy doesn't take the time to ask you what
you want, if a guy doesn't care that you're not
enthusiastically into this, if a guy is not asking these
basic questions about what you like and don't like. If
(15:33):
a guy doesn't take the time to get enthusiastic consent,
he does not deserve to be up in that party
bedroom with you. He does not deserve it. Like, find
someone who does deserve it, because those people exist. But
don't just go along with this because you feel like
you have to. You want to be cool, you want
them to like you, you you want to be popular. Whatever.
I wish I could go back to eighteen year old
me and be like, listen, you may feel awkward, but
(15:54):
you are hot, and people around you if if they
are lucky enough for you to even look at them,
that is a privilege, and if they don't know how
to act, you need to kick them to the curve.
Because I spent so much time being quiet about my
pain and not speaking up, and I just wasted so
much time feeling like I had to do that and
I really didn't. And I just I hope this is
(16:16):
useful for someone who's a young person out there who
feels like they have to put on this mask. It's
almost sort of related to being a cool girl, because
no one wants to be the person that says, yo,
this is actually uncomfortable, let me show you. It will
be a better way. And I think part of it
is that I didn't know my own body. I didn't
know that I was clear. I didn't know that what
I liked because I was really disconnected from my own
(16:38):
body and it was just a whole mixed bag of
shame and confusion and weird feelings around sex and my
body that just really went unresolved for a long time.
This is a rant. I'm sorry. It really makes me
angry because I know that as women, part of me
feels like this is just our cross to bear, and
(16:58):
I hate it. Yeah, there is some research on this
that we're going to get into a little bit later,
but I mean in the United States, we don't have
sex education, right, so most people when they have sex
for the first time, like have no idea what they want.
And also as a woman, you're told, hey, it's gonna hurt.
(17:21):
That's how you enter like your your first sexual experience,
knowing this is going to be painful. That's what we
tell women and girls. So we're going to talk about
that a little bit later. I love this thing from
the Weak article where the author was talking about how
if we look at straight women trying to attract straight men,
these women are probably in shapewear, probably wearing high heels,
(17:44):
probably waxed. Possibly injections like botox are involved. These are
painful things. They might be depriving themselves of food. If
not in general, then at a party where they're in
super form fitting dress. Men are not in this discomfort
and looking women. You wouldn't know it because we've been
trained to hide it. And I love this quote. Next
time you see a woman breezily laughing and a complicated
(18:07):
and revealing gown that requires her not to eat or
drink for hours, no a that you're witnessing the work
of a consummate illusionists acting or heart out and be
that you have been trained to see that extraordinary Oscar
worthy performance as merely routine. That is so true. Oh
my gosh. It actually reminds me when I was in
(18:27):
New Orleans recently. I was being hit on by someone.
And what's funny is that I was pretty drunk and
I wasn't super interested. So I was like, oh, let's
just have on with this encounter and see what happens,
you know, like, let me just torture this poor guy
for a night and see what happens. And like, I
was wearing a tank top and he was like, oh,
you know, I noticed you don't wax. I was like, no,
I don't do any of that. And his reaction owning
(18:51):
that I wasn't going to do things that were painful
or unpleasant to learn the attention of straight men, and
I basically just said that seeing how that was like
a really surprising thing for him, he could not sort
of wrap his head around. It made me realize, we're
out here putting in a lot of not just uncomfortable stuff,
a lot of money into giving men, heterosexual men this
(19:15):
sort of fantasy, and we're pretending that it's nothing right, Like,
you don't see the gears and the machine sort of
turning and the inside. All you see is this presentation
of effortless hotness, but you don't see the money that
goes into that, the discomfort, you know, shapewear, waxing, lasering, this, that.
And so as someone who was like not entirely but
like largely as I've gotten older, just opted out of that.
(19:38):
And if you don't want to be fine seeing how
many men who are who are otherwise progressive and with it,
it's that clear that they are still buying into that
lie and they have not taken the time to unpack
it or analyze it. Yeah, it's kind of like, Um,
I have a really funny memory of being on acting
in this thing and the director really had no idea
(20:01):
of He said, I just want that all natural look
and that took for for me about two hours. And
the dudes, I was so mad for them. It took
like thirty seconds for us to be natural looking. I
was so infuriated. They're getting to like practice their lines
or hers and I'm sitting there like still in hair
(20:23):
and makeup, and this is a mindset that does not
disappear when it comes to sex, right, So like when
it comes to women faking orgasms, which we did touch
on in our episode on woman's pain. One of the
number one reasons women gave for doing faking orgasms is
to quote, not hurt their partners egos, and then pleasing
(20:45):
your partner was another one. If you're in pain, you'll
get the sex over with more quickly. But that's something
we ignore as a society. And that same study looking
into why women might be faking orgasms didn't even offer
as an option that it might be pain. It was
sort of like, had twenty different choices and that wasn't one. Yeah,
(21:06):
and since beauty is how we measure women's worth and
our culture, and women are taught that how people perceive
them it's more important than any of their actual feelings,
then yeah, it might not just be as easy as
stopping sex when it's painful, or leaving or telling your
partner that you're in pain. There's all this other stuff
tied up in it. Yeah. I actually have a very unpopular, unwoke,
(21:30):
possibly unfeminist opinion about faking orgasms. I think orgasms are important.
I think it's part of self care and I think
that people should be having them. But if you've ever
had sex with a man, you know that men sometimes
don't understand all of the different things that sometimes have
to go into a woman having an orgasm. And sometimes
you have sex and you don't have an orgasm, and
(21:50):
so I don't know. I guess what I'm saying is
that sometimes it's not gonna happen, and there's like nothing
your partner can do that's not gonna happen. And I
guess in an ideal world, you'd be in a situation
where you could just tell your partner or I still
want to have sex, I just might not have an orgasm,
So like, don't numb me out trying to give me
an orgasm. That's not gonna happen. I guess what I'm
saying is that sex, it's okay to have a sexual
(22:10):
encounter and still enjoy it if you know you're not
going to have an orgasm. And I think that for
if you're like early on with someone, if if if
it's your first time having sex with someone, you might
not have that communication where you can say I still
want to have sex, I might not have an orgasm,
it will still be an enjoyable situation if we have sex,
and so sometimes you can fake it and that sort
of accomplishes it. And it's not ideal obviously, but I
(22:33):
think that sometimes it's harder to have that conversation with
someone that you maybe don't know that well, Am I
making sense? Like? Maybe I sound like I'm saying fake it, ladies,
and not what I'm saying. I'm saying that sometimes you
just want to watch your shows, right. You know, it's
someone that you are communicative with that you can say
this and they'll understand and they'll get it. That is
one thing. But maybe it's someone that you're sleeping with
(22:54):
for the first time and you you're not there yet,
you know, and I think you should acknowledge that, Like
it would be great and an ideal world that you
could say, you get what I'm saying? Right, Am I sounding?
Am I making sense? I don't know you are making sense.
I think what this article was trying to focus on,
and in general, like studies have been trying to get
to the heart of, is that so many women are
(23:15):
faking orgasms. Why is the number that high? And then
a lot of men will say, well why, And I
think that we just don't talk about it and looking
at reasons, they are totally a lot of reasons why
women might fake it, right, But two men, it's almost like,
what why would you do that? Don't you want to orgasm?
(23:36):
This reminds me so much of this classic Signfeld where
Elaine admits Jerry that she faked it during their relationship,
and all the women that she talks to they of
course they've all faked it. And then if you're listening,
I think every woman is probably faked it at some point.
So if you're listening, somebody's probably faked it with you.
I hate to be the bearer he was breaking it
down for you. I'm sorry. It's just the research that
(23:57):
you just said. If we're all out here faking it
at some point, if you are a man who has
Texas women, a woman somewhere us faked it with you,
that's just numbers. By the research that we have found,
it just makes sense. But when Elaine is talking to
her friends about why they fake it, their reasons are
really funny, but they're all like very similar. It's like
if we went to the theater and he got good seats,
or sometimes you just want to get some sleep, you know,
(24:19):
I had to admit part of me identified with that. Yeah, no,
I totally get it. Going back to that other thing
we were talking about about losing your virginity, that's another
point this article drove home about how we tell women
and girls that losing your virginity is going to be
this painful experience. And I definitely heard that one when
I was young. And also I seem to recall It's
(24:40):
been a long time since I've watched the show, but
I seem to recall on True Blood this was a
plot point when the like the one female vampire that
was young and she had long red hair I think
her name was Jessica, had sex for the first time
and it hurt like hell. She was so excited to
have it again, but it turned out she was forever virgin,
because I guess that's how vampires work. I know you
(25:03):
brought this up because this is your side interest of
horror movie, horror TV shows periods, loss of virginity sex.
We need to do a whole series on this because
you have a lot of thoughts. I really do you
see right through me? I was like, I know where
this is coming from. Annie, You're not slick, not fooling
bridget all right, Okay, vampires aside, in the context of
(25:25):
this episode, if you're told from a young age that
sex is going to hurt and that's normal, then that
can be hard to shake. That can just become like, well,
I guess if it hurts the first time, why would
it not hurt the second time? And so on and
so on, And we do have some research about that.
But first we're going to pause for one last break
for a word from our sponsor, and we're back, Thank
(25:57):
you sponsor. Recently, this was very fortuitous um TED talk
popped up in my feed called What Young Women Believe
About their Own Sexual Pleasure, and this was a TED
talk by Peggy Ornstein. For three years, Ornstein interviewed women
and young girls between the ages of fifteen to twenty
(26:17):
about their sexual experiences, and what she found was that
while a lot of the girls she spoke to did
feel entitled to sex, they didn't feel entitled to the
enjoyment of it. One young woman she spoke to described
herself as a loud, strong, smart feminist, that her mother
and grandmother were the same, but that she'd only had
(26:38):
a series of disappointing sexual encounters saying, I guess we
girls are just socialized to be these docile creatures who
don't express or wants or needs. And when the discrepancy
there was pointed out to her, the young woman said
she was never taught how to translate the loud, strong,
smart female thing to sex. Oh man, I had identified
(27:00):
with that so much. I know, I keep going back
to eighteen year old college bridget. But I was that loud, smart,
uber feminist girl on campus with you know, the approach
voice poster in my dorm room and I need to
Franco shirt. I projected that outwardly, but when it came
to sex, I just did not feel entitled to ask
(27:22):
for what I wanted. I didn't know how. It was
like I didn't have a voice. I had a voice
and all the other ways, but I didn't have a
voice when it came to my own sexuality and my
sexual needs. Yeah, and I think a lot of young
women feel that way. And or in Stein went on
to explain that if you look at the numbers, young
women these days are not engaging in more penetrative six
(27:43):
than their counterparts years ago, but they are more likely
to engage or to report, perhaps in other things, particularly
oral sex, and when asked about why they would perform
oral sex, most young women responded with a sort of strug,
no big deal. Maybe they said they felt powerful. A
(28:03):
lot of my friends and my own experience told me this,
or maybe it was a social status thing, although we
all know that's a double edged sword, or to get
out of an uncomfortable situation. A lot of them reported that.
One respondent said, quote, a girl will give a guy
a blowjob at the end of the night because she
doesn't want to have sex with him and he expects
to be satisfied. So if I want him to leave
(28:24):
and I don't want anything to happen and she trailed off, Yeah,
that is sad. But again I identify with that. You
couldn't just say I've had a lovely time, i'll see
you tomorrow, please leave, and you're like, well, what's one
blowjob in the scheme of things? You know, that's such
a I felt that way myself, you know, and it's
(28:44):
a sad way to feel. And also men aren't thinking
of that, Like, I don't know the numbers of this,
but I guarantee that men are not giving oral sex
to women at those same rates that from a pretty
young age or socialized that this is something that you
just do. You know, for all the reasons you just listed,
I'm sure that men are not being told the same
thing about giving oral sex to to women. Yes, And
(29:07):
actually Ornstein looked into this because, of course, here comes
the shame our society has around female bodies and that
so many of us women have internalized. She was trying
to get to the reason women would participate in one
sided oral sex and not expect or even want that reciprocated.
And the women expressed a feeling of shame around their
(29:29):
own bodies and their genitals. And we talked about this
a bit before on the show a long time ago,
Christen and I made a video about it, how for
some women it's so hard to turn off the shame
you feel around your body, that that's what you're thinking
about when you're having sex. You're thinking about how unhappy
you are with your own body, how ashamed you are
(29:50):
of it. And you're not going to enjoy sex if
that's what you're thinking, if the whole time you're just
it's like your skin is crawling. And I tried once
to get one of my ex boyfriends to understand this,
and he could not grasp it. It made no sense
to him. Yeah, that makes me sad, but it's so
so true. It's so true, and kind of does go
(30:12):
back to this idea of women and the burden that
we have. How can you feel your sexual best if
in your mind? If there anything like me, your mind
is racing with a million anxious thoughts all the time
anyway on a good day. But then add into that
these like shame filled thoughts about your own body. I remember,
this is going to be one of my like t
M I things. But years and years and years ago,
I was dating somebody that I actually really liked. But
(30:35):
one problem was whenever we had a sexual encounter that
involved him putting his hands on my on my genitals,
didn't he had this horrible, filthy habit of not washing
his hands, And so basically every time we did that,
I knew I was gonna get a yeast infection, like
I knew it, and I, you know, I was pretty young,
and so I couldn't have that conversation of did you
(30:57):
know that bodies are delicate ecosystems and when you put
your dirty fingers that have been touching your xbox all
day inside of someone you are actually gonna risk giving
them a U. T I or East infection. And that's
actually a totally normal biological response to you putting dirty
fingers inside of me. So actually, if you wash your
hands thoroughly before, it would help me out. Like I
(31:18):
could not have that conversation at nineteen, so I just
broke up with him for no one else to do um,
and it sucks, Like, honestly, there are so many little
things that I wish that people knew. P s A.
For anybody out there, if you are putting your mouth
on someone's buttle, you need to rinse your mouth out
with listerine with that has actual mouth wash before you
(31:39):
put that mouth on a vagina. Otherwise that person you
can get an infection. And infections are not sexy. Like
we don't have basic sex said, let alone someone that
is telling you how to have you know, healthy sexual
body practices, and so that just sort of gets wrapped
up in a snowball of shame and we're not talking
about it, and it's aim. It's lack of communication. It's
(32:03):
women being felt to endure things, to not have the
board in themselves with that, so many bad things when
sex is supposed to be good. Yeah, it makes me
think of a second sitcom that I used to watch, Scrubs,
and there was a joke on there where Carla said
she couldn't figure out why this one patient didn't get
erections when she came in, but did when every other
female nurse our doctor came in, and she said to him,
(32:27):
I can look at my body in the mirror for
ten seconds naked. That's more than most women I can
think about. That kind of relates. And more than seventy
of women in college remove all of their pubic hair
sometimes and over into it regularly, which is totally cool
if you're doing it for yourself, but a lot of
women interviewed relented that they did it because they thought
(32:50):
dudes would be grossed out if they didn't. On top
of that, the fastest growing cosmetic surgery among young teenage
girls is labia plastic, which is trimming of both the
inner and outer labia, and overall this procedure jumped eight
(33:10):
and the most popular option is called the barbie. Oh
my god, that's so upsetting. But also, I mean, for
any listeners who are women who sleep with other women
can tell you, I mean It makes me sad that
people are out here trying to get this perfect Barbiegina.
There is no such thing. There are so many vaginas
(33:31):
are snowflakes, like, no two vaginas look the same. Yeah,
and what makes it worse to me is that there's
no proof that it's safe. It could also call scarring, desensitization,
and pain, among other things. Enough women are seeking it
now for non medical reasons, because sometimes you can need
it for medical reasons, but enough people are seeking it
(33:52):
for non medical reasons that the American College of Obstetricians
and Gynecologists released a statement about it, saying, yeah, proof
it's safe. And if you're getting it for cosmetic reasons
and it does cause pain and lack of sensation, you're
basically risking your own sexual pleasure to project this fantasy
of a perfect Barbie vision as that really doesn't exist.
(34:14):
No psychologist at the University of Michigan, Sarah McClelland, uses
this term when talking about everything we've discussed here, intimate justice,
or the political and personal aspects of sex, of who
is entitled to enjoying sex, what's the scale for bad
sex for each partner, and what's the scale for good sex,
(34:35):
and through her research, McClelland found that women far more
than men rated sex based on the pleasure of their partner.
Men rated it by how good their orgasm was. So
in that way, we're rating the sex based on the
enjoyment of someone else, of the man, probably in this case.
Ornstein said of this mismatch over bad sex quote, if
(34:56):
a girl goes into an encounter hoping that it won't hurt,
wanting to feel close to her partner, and expecting him
to have an orgasm, she'll be satisfied if those criteria met.
And there's nothing wrong with wanting to feel close to
your partner, are wanting him to be happy. And orgasm
isn't the only measure of an experience, but the absence
of pain. That's a very low bar for your own
(35:17):
sexual fulfillment. Here here she completely encapsulated all the things
I feel. You are entitled to not be in pain
if you don't have to be, you know, like that
that should be the bare minimum that you owe yourself,
if that's something that you can attain. Yeah, And she
also talks about how less than half of teenage girls
between fourteen to seventeen have masturbated. And here's an embarrassing
(35:40):
fact about me. I didn't know it was possible for
girls to masturbate before college college I did. Well. Good
for you, bridget No, I mean it's it's true, but like,
it doesn't surprise me. I mean, I'm teasing you, but
it doesn't surprise me that you didn't know. Because in
high school we watched the movie I'm American Pie, where
(36:01):
Jason Biggs literally have sex with a pie while masturbated.
Where is the movie about how women get off or
girls get off? There isn't one. I had to figure
it out on my own. When I discovered masturbation, I
thought I had invented it. I was like, oh my god,
the secret new thing that only I know about. We
don't have a culture that tells women that they can
do this. And it doesn't surprise I'm teasing you, but
it doesn't surprise me that you didn't know. Yeah, And
(36:23):
when I was thinking about it, what do you think
the stat is for boys fourteen to seventeen not knowing
masturbation is a thing. I already know having lived with
a boy fourteen to seventeen, I already can tell you
they have figured it out. They have all figured it
out well. And that's kind of the thing is a
lot of girls are going into their first sexual encounter,
maybe not having any idea what they like. Have never masturbated,
(36:45):
whereas the boys certainly has, and in the back of
your head you're thinking that the sex isn't meant for
them to enjoy, that it's supposed to hurt. That's pretty
messed up. It is messed up, and it's all the
more messed up that we're telling them that's at such
a young and formative age, Like those years kind of
put you on the pathway of who you become sexually.
(37:06):
And if the message that you are receiving is that
it's always going to hurt and it doesn't matter if
it feels good for you or not. But it does
matter if the boys having a good time and it's
always going to feel good for him. If that's what
you're absorbing, that that can stick with you for life.
Like I know women who when they're much much older
have kind of figured out that they've absorbed some pretty
toxic bit about their own bodies and have to do
(37:29):
that work when they're like fifty six seventy to have
a better relationship with their bodies. Yeah. Absolutely, And Ornstein
also has some data on same sex relationships. Yes, it's
they're refreshing and lesbian relationships, the focus on your partner's
pleasure remains, but this means that both are invested, both
(37:51):
are focused on the partner's pleasure, and both are more
likely to orgasm on having sex as opposed to it
being once cited. Also interesting, she said that lesbian by
girls are redefining what it is to lose your virginity
and the pain that hetero girls just expect and accept
when it comes to the first time. There are so
many ways to be intimate and even more intimate that
(38:13):
can vary from couple to couple, and I love this.
One gay respondent said she defined losing her virginity as
the first time she orgasmed with a partner, and if
that was the definition, a lot of us would have
to rethink when, if ever, did we lose our virginity. Yeah.
I hate the idea of virginity quote losing your virginity.
(38:34):
I hate that. I am all for new and healthier
models of what virginity quote unquote looks like. If our
sexual milestone was not what a penis enters agina. If
that was not our sexual milestone, what could it look like?
The way that we prioritize men in terms of sexuality
is really striking. Yeah. And something else that is pretty
(38:56):
striking is this comparison or Instain did between studies of
Dutch female students and American female students, and she found
that the Dutch students had more positive sexual outcomes and
that a lot of the difference between the groups could
be attributed to education and having someone to talk to
you openly about your body and about sex. Parents of
(39:18):
the Dutch students talked to their daughters about responsibility and joy.
American parents talked about disease and pregnancy prevention. And I
love that joy aspect of it. I remember reading I
think it was an American parent describing how he had
never thought to include that that that it could be
(39:39):
a pleasurable experience for apps and should be. So we
need to teach girls and women responsibility, yes, but also
that they are entitled to enjoyment. And we need to
even out what bad sex means for both men and
women so we can have a dialogue coming from the
same place, and so that we can have these conversations
(40:00):
around me too, and we can start to unpack why
women don't just leave when bad sex is going down,
and so that we can have better sex for everyone. Yes,
I completely agree orgasms should be a human right, and
I agree I think that we just need to talk
about these things. And you know, I went to Catholic
school where no one told me that sex was supposed
(40:22):
to be pleasurable, you know, and I want people to
know that it's supposed to feel good, its supposed to
be a good experience. Yeah, I did not get that
talk either, So I hope that we can we can
start to move this way and have these conversations and
have better education, especially here at least in our experience,
better education because I didn't. We had one all about
(40:43):
me day in fifth grade and all it was was like,
you're gonna bleed and you're gonna get hair. That's it. Um. Well,
going to Catholic school, we got presentations that said condoms
are full of holes and then don't so people were like,
don't use condoms, they don't work. The only thing that
works as abstinence. Until I was twenty, I thought that
(41:04):
you couldn't get pregnant if you were on top. I mean,
come on, oh my god. We yeah, we had abstinence
only in my high school, very briefly, but a lot
of us got pregnant. A lot of us got pregnant.
Well that's true, but a lot of us women. So
they had these absence only posters we put up kind
(41:25):
of the jokey, it's just here's protection, but insert pun
about it here next to them all over and they
sort of gave up. So I love it. I love
the resistance. Yeah, so here's hoping for for more of
that resistance than having, if not an equal playing field
when it comes to bad sex, at least an understanding
(41:47):
that we're saying we're talking about different things. Yes, yes,
this brings us to a listener. Mail and Marie wrote,
it's been a few years since my favorite series of games,
The Elder Scrolls, came an online RPG game instead of
a series of consoles storyline games. RPG is role playing game,
by the way, and I've never gotten over it. I
(42:09):
grew up thinking that I wasn't good at any video games,
with two loud boy cousins who owned consoles, beating me
at Mario Kart and lacking the patients to teach me
first person shooting. When I got married, however, we were
gifted in Xbox and Elder Scrolls Oblivion, and I soon
found myself playing more than my husband did. I devoured
the game and then Assassin's Creed when it came out
(42:31):
as an aside, I scoffed when I heard you quoted
the Ubisoft is zek who said it would be too
much work to animate a woman for that franchise, since
they made their splash recreating ancient cities and landscapes with
the varied cultures of a Crusase era occupied Jerusalem as
the game centerpiece, but a woman whoa The most recent
(42:51):
games have had an okay and improving female characters to play,
but they still don't feel like they've been written as
thoroughly with as much depth. Back to Elder Scrolls, I
absolutely loved the next game, Skyroom, and it was a
huge hit. When I saw a new game was coming out,
I was so excited until I found that I didn't
understand most of the announcement. My husband translated the acronyms,
(43:13):
and I was really nervous. I didn't actually understand why
I was so nervous about an online game until I
listened to your episode about sexual harassment. I don't interact
with other gamers because I am an introvert with major anxiety,
a survivor of childhood sexual assault, and I spent middle
in high school putting up with sexual harassment that was
never punished from boys just being boys. I knew on
(43:35):
some gut level that even though I put a lot
of hours into gaming, the loudest voices in any online
game would be the people who put in. As Kristen
Caroline put it a part time job's worth of time
into the game. I tried the online game, but I
was playing on a Mac and I wasn't going to
invest in extra gear for one game. I wasn't willing
(43:56):
to play in groups or get on a mike. I
hated the gorgeous scenery and beautiful scenes and characters of
the world. I knew that they had been compromised so
that the game could become an online RBG. My point
is that when they made this move, but Thesda, which
is the company that makes the game, left out a
lot of people like me who escape into beautiful stories
(44:16):
with dragons and elves and magic and long winding, varied
past to the end of the plot because we need
that escape. I deal with debilitating mental illness, and I
can't work because of the anxiety and depression caused by
complex PTSD. I now play Minecraft with my five year
old son and we have a blast. I do still
enjoy the Assassin's Creed games, but I most certainly cannot
(44:36):
afford to risk harassment of any kind by joining an
online community that may turn hostile. I still get so
emotional about it. I really only get this emotional otherwise
about books that I love. If the next book and
a series I loved were somehow unavailable to me because
of a disability I had and would forever remain unavailable
to me, I would perhaps feel something similar, but I
(44:57):
would have somewhere to go to complain in that case
and feel a sense that I had a right to
be angry. In this case, I still feel a sense
of shame that I can't quote get over it and
be more of a joiner, even knowing that I'd potentially
face har assment. Sure, they claim that the game can
be played solo, but there are things that are nearly
impossible to do alone. It feels like a betrayal. Yeah,
(45:19):
I relate to a lot of this, and it makes
me so angry that this is something we have to
consider it all that I can't do this because I'm
probably going to be her ass like that avenue is
close to me. This thing that was supposed to be
fun that we use to escape is instead a source
of stress and harassment that we will just askew rather
(45:43):
than risk that happening. It is sad, and I think
this letter really drives home that what women lose, it's
not just a game. You can lose a lot, you
can sacrifice a lot. It's upsetting. I think this letter
really illustrates what's at stake. Yeah, I do too. Mel wrote,
I'm listening to the Miss America episode and I have thoughts.
(46:04):
I'm certainly glad the swimsuit and evening gowns are gone
and an emphasis is being put on social service and ambition. However,
I agree and I doubt this means that women who
are different sizes, shap's ability, and gender identity will be included,
which has me wondering why do women publicly compete for
a crown and a scholarship. Why don't we have competitions
or men dressed nice, smile, pretty, and publicly face the
role to talk about serving others. Why does it seem
(46:26):
normal for women to publicly grobble for position or scholarship?
I guess well, there doesn't seem to be an equivalent
for men, especially one that is a popular television entertainment
Who doesn't want to see a newly crowned Mr America
with tears streaming down his giddy face? Why don't we
parade the quote ideal man across the stage? Why are
there not YouTube videos of Mr America contestants saying publicly
ridiculous ditzy stuff. I know Miss America, and I know
(46:49):
these pageants in general have their defenders. I just don't
see the point and making women publicly compete in this
way for entertainment, I don't see value in it. Other
scholarships exist, and they don't require you to go through
a gendered public judge. Thank you for this letter, Mel.
It's funny I actually happen to know that male pageants
do exist. They are clearly much much much less popular.
(47:12):
They're much much much less part of our sort of
cultural lexicon. Like it's not like you little boys aren't
growing up saying I want to be Mr. World. I
want to be Mr America. But there actually is a
Mr America. There is a Mr. World. The reason why
I know this is one because I think I mentioned
I did a little bit of pageantry back in my day.
But to the current Mr World is this really really
(47:34):
really hot guy that I'm like semi obsessed with. So
I happen to know that he exists. Look him up online.
He's he's Mr India. He's just very handsome. We'll put
it that way. Um, And but it's true, right, you know,
it's much more of a public stage for the women
and the men do it, but it's kind of a
niche thing if it does not have the same cache
(47:54):
at all. And what would it look like if a
we MISSI had a society where women where no one
had to parade themselves in this way or be everybody
did it and it was just a thing where it
was just as popular for the men as the women, right, Like,
what would that society look like? Like? What would a
more equal understanding of parading yourself around in this way
look like? Although I have to say that for these
(48:17):
male competitions, the question and answer portion is trying to
demonstrate whether or not they have intellect, but the questions
they asked for like the questions that you would ask
like a fifth grader. So I mean, you do. You
do get some beautiful yet dizzy guys, but in no
way do they get the same level of public scrutiny
that the women get at all. Do they have a
(48:38):
swimsuit portion they have like a muscle, They have an
evening wear portion where they're in suits, and they have
like a portion where they're showing off their muscles if
you want. If you're curious who the current Mr World is,
his name is Rohit Kwandal. He is born so he's
a young in He was Mr India two thousands fifteen.
He's the first Asian to ever be crowned Mr World
(48:59):
in twenty six teen. And he is gorgeous and I
would marry him. He did a Ted talk once, call
me RoBeat. I'm totally objectifying him, but he also seems
smart and cool, so that is well, we'll teg that
on there. I love that you know those bridgets. You've
made my day. It's embarrassing. I'm not a follower of
(49:21):
male pageants. I just happened to see this guy's Ted
talk and I was like, he is gorgeous? Who is he?
And then it took me down a rabbit hole of stuff.
We'll leave it vague. It's stuff, well, we'll leave that
to the imagination of listeners or not. Um Thanks to
(49:41):
both of them for writing in. If you'd like to
write to us, you can. Our email is mom Stuff
at how stuff folks dot com, and as always, we
can meet that on Instagram and Stuff I've Never Told
You and on Twitter at mom Stuff Podcast. And thanks
as always to our producer Kathleen Pilly. Oh don't
Hi, this is Annie and this is Bridget, and you're
listening to stuff Mom never told you. Okay, So, a
couple of weeks ago, we released an episode about painful sex,
(00:25):
and this episode that we're doing today, bad sex, is
sort of a compliment to that one, So go check
it out if you haven't listened yet. But bad sex,
we need to talk about it, Bridget, We definitely do.
Even before I dove into any of the research for
this episode, just anecdotally, I had a feeling that a
(00:46):
lot of us out there we're putting up with some
bad sex and probably not being very vocal about it,
and that research proved me correct. Yeah, spoiler alert. As
it turns out, men and women are working vastly different
definitions of what constitutes bad sex, and because of that,
(01:07):
it might be a disconnect when we're talking about the
me Too movement between how men and women understand it,
because when a woman says bad sex, she is thinking
of one thing and a man is thinking of something
else completely different. Yeah, that's true. And I think because
we don't talk about this, we have been conditioned to
(01:30):
not really talk about these things, not to speaking about
these things. Neither party sort of is communicating these feelings
to each other. Yeah, and before we dive into the
basics of bad sex. Uh, shout out to listener Alexandra
for sending as a link to an article from the
week about this called The Female Price of Male Pleasure,
(01:52):
which was super helpful and putting this together. I also
drunkenly brought it up at a party like a week ago,
and probably every one at the party was like, Oh, no,
I'm the bad sex girl at that party. Now, did
it win you any suitors? You know? Somebody did ask
me out after that. I'm not sure how much he
was around for that discussion. Though this girl knows a
(02:14):
thing at you about bad sex in her home. She
sounds like a hoot. Okay, so let's do some basics here.
If you took a poll of men versus women and
you asked what does bad sex mean? From the men,
you would probably hear that it was boring or that
the orgasm wasn't the best orgasm they've ever had. For women,
(02:39):
bad sex usually means coercion, emotional discomfort, or physical pain.
That's very different. So yeah, we're already kind of working
under two real, real different understandings of what bad sexes.
That reminds me so much of that old, that old
adage on a blind date. Men are worried that their
(02:59):
day it will be ugly or unattractive or heavy or something,
and and women are worthy, they're going to end up murdered. Right,
we have very different we're working on very different standards.
Are bars different with that way, Yes, very much. According
to Debbie Herbernick, professor and a researcher with the National
Survey of Sexual Health and Behavior, she told the author
(03:21):
of this article that we're talking about Leahlye loof Borrow.
When it comes to good sex, women often mean without pain.
Men often mean they had orgasms, and that just sad.
That's very sad. It is sad. Similarly, Professor Sarah McClelland,
one of the few folks has done some serious research
(03:41):
into this, found that quote. While women imagined the low
end to include the potential for extremely negative feelings and
the potential for pain, men imagined the low end to
represent the potential for less satisfying sexual outcomes, but they
never imagined harmful or damaging outcomes for the selves. Yeah,
that just goes to show how divided this issue is.
(04:03):
Is that men aren't even it's not even in their
understanding that the sex could be painful or intensely emotionally damaging.
It's just not great. Yeah, And it sort of reminds
me of how in our Why do Men Expose Themselves episode?
Some men don't see exposing yourself as harassment. It seems
(04:24):
like we are working off to extremely different scales. I
mean we are, Yeah, we definitely are. I hate this
that attitude of men and women are so different. I've
often thought that we're more similar, but there are some
things where it is couldn't be more clear that we
are see that we experienced the world differently. Yeah, And
going back to our episode on women's pain, of women
(04:49):
surveyed report pain during vaginal intercourse, report pain during annual intercourse,
and quote large proportions don't tell their partner. That really
makes me angry because you know, when you have sex
with someone, you are kind of giving them part of
(05:09):
your body. I mean it's a very intimate thing, obviously,
and the idea that people are experiencing pain and not
speaking up. And I think why it makes me angry
is because I've been there. I've been the person who
will let someone do something to me sexually, and not
only am I not enjoying it, I am actively in
pain while it's happening. And rather than say I don't
(05:31):
like this, can be stopped, can be changed something, something
in my brain tells me it's better to just continue
to have this not just not pleasurable, but actively unpleasant
experience and not say anything like. It makes me. It
makes me angry because I think about younger bridget who like,
would allow someone to do something that was that hurt,
(05:52):
and I would just and I would not even that,
I wouldn't say anything. I'd pretend to enjoy it. Yeah,
and there is some research on that about the socialization
and of of women in our society that we're going
to talk about a little bit more. But yeah, it's
it's more difficult than just saying like, well, you should
speak up. There's more at play than that. Earlier this year,
(06:15):
Andrew Sullivan published an article in The New York Magazine
arguing that Me Too had gone too far because it
ignores the biological realities of male bodies and their needs,
to which Colin Dickie had an excellent Twitter thread where
he rattled off a bunch of examples of sex and nature,
like how the oldest male clownfish will spontaneously change sex
(06:37):
when the dominant female dies. Are how the sea hair
is hermaphrodite species that reproduces in a chain. Where does
the male and one coupling and the female and another,
or the male mantis has better sex when his head
is removed from the body quote one of the most
wondrous things about nature that is not here for your
(06:59):
heteronormative bulls. I love that the animal kingdom is basically
like San Francisco in the seventies. How kinds of get downs,
headless everything, anything. It's a cornucopia. I am such a
nerd for there were so many examples and I only
listed three, but I I almost just included all of
(07:21):
them because I thought it was so interesting nature fascinating. Agreed,
But back to the human species. In our society, male
biological needs are the ones that we care about, not women's.
It's the one that we consider. If we're going to
talk about male pleasure, then we need to start talking
(07:42):
about female pleasure or female pain that is usually the
price women pay for male pleasure. In our Women in
Pain episode, we gave example after example of studies that
ignored women or treated the female body as the same
but basically in extension of the male body like must
be the same. There's no point studying it, right. One
(08:04):
stat we didn't mention in that episode. Pub Med has
three and ninety three studies looking into die sprenaria, forty
three looking into volverdenia, and ten into vaginice miss all
conditions associated with painful sex for women, among other symptoms.
Guess how many studies pub Med has on erectile dysfunction.
(08:26):
I'm gonna say it's a lot more, almost two thousand,
one thousand. And that's just so men can keep enjoying
the pleasure as opposed to women who have this this
painful sex and other like pain symptoms. Let's not study that.
That's we need to look about these things. Yeah, and
(08:48):
also the idea that a man can pretty easily go
in and get viagara, and for a woman to even
just get a diagnosis for something like endometriosis or pcos,
I mean, it takes so long and you go through
so many different doctors, and you pay so much money.
It's such a big discrepancy. It makes me really angry. Yeah,
and probably viagra is in here in the US covered
(09:09):
by insurance, the average weight to get intometriosis diagnosed is
ten years, and insurance companies are less likely to cover
issues surrounding female bodies like birth control. For example, according
to a study published in called is Adam worth more
than Eve the financial impact of gender biased and the
federal reimbursement of gynecological procedures, male only surgeries were forty
(09:34):
more likely to get reimbursed. That's so upsetting. I can't
remember who I saw tweet at this, but if you
remember who it was, shout us out. But somebody was
explaining on Twitter trying to trying to get a diagnosis
for endometriosis, and she wrote, I spent ten years, got
three incorrect diagnoses, and I paid thousands of dollars out
of pocket for the pleasure of all of those misiagnoses
(09:56):
just to find out I had endometriosis. Like, the amount
of hoops that jump through, the amount of money that
you pay just to take care of our female body
is absurd. Yeah, it's infuriating. And another infuriating thing that
we're going to talk about is the way that women
are socialized to hide this pain. But first we're going
to stop for a quick break for word from our sponsor,
(10:28):
and we're back, Thank you sponsor. Okay. So, yes, women,
at least here in the US, and I would say
probably in a lot of places, are socialized to hide
our discomfort. We grant and barratt. We want the people
were with to have a good time, and if that
comes at our expense, if that means pain, and so
(10:49):
be it. I have a lot of friends who talk
about and not necessarily sex related, but just like seeing
their mom going so far out of their way to
make sure that everyone else was happy, other than themselves.
And I think we do learn from that, and we
do internalize it, and if that does mean physical pain,
(11:12):
then so be it. And this relates to something known
as relative deprivation, when groups of disenfranchised folks, since they've
been conditioned to expect less, still report experiencing the same
amount of satisfaction as those better off than them. So
we've normalized female sexual pain all for the sake of
(11:32):
male sexual pleasure, which our society treats as a right.
Hence the ease of obtaining viagra versus the difficulty women
face getting their pain taken. Seriously, Yeah, and when you
think about the fact that we're like, when you really
drill down, the fact that we're talking about men's pleasure
versus women's pain. I mean, we're not even having the
conversation about women's sexual pleasure. What we're thinking about in
(11:55):
terms of leveling the playing field is men should be
able to feel pleasure and women should be able to
not be in excruciating pain. We're not talking about men
and women both experiencing sexual pleasure. We're talking about one
of them not being doubled down and discomfort. Right, and
and going back to what we were talking about earlier
and how right now, with all of this conversation about
(12:17):
sexual harassment and the questions of how has has been
going on so long, why haven't you spoken up ladies,
and all of the comments about how women are too
sensitive about how sad it is that men can't hit
on ladies in a professional setting. For so long, we've
only considered men at the expense of women. I'm just
(12:38):
like at a loss. So so I'm getting angry. Yeah,
that's absolutely true. And so if I sound like I'm
a stammering idiot, it's because I'm really angry, and I'm
almost sort of angry at society. But mostly I'm angry
at myself because I think back to the early my
formative sexual years, how many of the encounters I had
with with men were scary, We're coercive, we're painful, were unpleasant,
(13:04):
and I didn't know that I could speak up and
say I don't like this, I don't want this, to
do this, not that. And of course it's society. It's
it's it's exactly what you describe. It's this culture that
says that women shouldn't speak up, that the man, heaven forbid,
he feels like he's not a macho man while he's
basically stabbing me with like dirty nails, and I'm really
(13:26):
it's like really unpleasant, and I'm just sort of like, Okay,
well this feels great. Please keep stabbing me with your dirty, unwashed,
jagged fingernails. This is great, Like who wouldn't enjoy this?
And I just feel like, on the one hand, I
guess those encounters perhaps did help me get to where
I am today, but I just looked back and I
wasted so much time on people who really didn't deserve
(13:47):
to have my body, and like I I look back
and it makes me very sad that I felt so
disempowered and I just wasted so much time on people
who did not deserve to be intimate me in that
way because I thought I had to because I didn't.
I did not see any other way, And it makes
me really angry at myself in a lot of ways. Yeah,
(14:09):
I think a lot of us can relate to that
at the same time, at least in my In my case,
I didn't. It's almost like I didn't know that was
an option for me, and that sounds kind of ridiculous,
but it didn't even occur to me. So it is sad.
It's it's really sad, and I hate to think that
(14:30):
that this is still happening and they're young people out
there still they're going to have similar experiences. On the
one hand, I do feel like if I had not
had those experiences, like I feel like they were in
some way helpful for my sexual understanding. One they helped
me understand that I didn't really want to spend my
entire life only having sex with men because a lot
(14:51):
of them weren't that good at it. And I probably
would not have come to that realization if I had
not had those unpleasant experiences. But what you just said
makes me feel very sad because I do know that
they're young people out there, particularly women and girls who
feel like they have to put up with things sexually
that that that you just really do not have to
(15:11):
put up with. Like again, looking back, I wish I
could go back to eighteen year old bridget who was
in cutoffs in North Carolina at college, and say, if
a guy doesn't take the time to ask you what
you want, if a guy doesn't care that you're not
enthusiastically into this, if a guy is not asking these
basic questions about what you like and don't like. If
(15:33):
a guy doesn't take the time to get enthusiastic consent,
he does not deserve to be up in that party
bedroom with you. He does not deserve it. Like, find
someone who does deserve it, because those people exist. But
don't just go along with this because you feel like
you have to. You want to be cool, you want
them to like you, you you want to be popular. Whatever.
I wish I could go back to eighteen year old
me and be like, listen, you may feel awkward, but
(15:54):
you are hot, and people around you if if they
are lucky enough for you to even look at them,
that is a privilege, and if they don't know how
to act, you need to kick them to the curve.
Because I spent so much time being quiet about my
pain and not speaking up, and I just wasted so
much time feeling like I had to do that and
I really didn't. And I just I hope this is
(16:16):
useful for someone who's a young person out there who
feels like they have to put on this mask. It's
almost sort of related to being a cool girl, because
no one wants to be the person that says, yo,
this is actually uncomfortable, let me show you. It will
be a better way. And I think part of it
is that I didn't know my own body. I didn't
know that I was clear. I didn't know that what
I liked because I was really disconnected from my own
(16:38):
body and it was just a whole mixed bag of
shame and confusion and weird feelings around sex and my
body that just really went unresolved for a long time.
This is a rant. I'm sorry. It really makes me
angry because I know that as women, part of me
feels like this is just our cross to bear, and
(16:58):
I hate it. Yeah, there is some research on this
that we're going to get into a little bit later,
but I mean in the United States, we don't have
sex education, right, so most people when they have sex
for the first time, like have no idea what they want.
And also as a woman, you're told, hey, it's gonna hurt.
(17:21):
That's how you enter like your your first sexual experience,
knowing this is going to be painful. That's what we
tell women and girls. So we're going to talk about
that a little bit later. I love this thing from
the Weak article where the author was talking about how
if we look at straight women trying to attract straight men,
these women are probably in shapewear, probably wearing high heels,
(17:44):
probably waxed. Possibly injections like botox are involved. These are
painful things. They might be depriving themselves of food. If
not in general, then at a party where they're in
super form fitting dress. Men are not in this discomfort
and looking women. You wouldn't know it because we've been
trained to hide it. And I love this quote. Next
time you see a woman breezily laughing and a complicated
(18:07):
and revealing gown that requires her not to eat or
drink for hours, no a that you're witnessing the work
of a consummate illusionists acting or heart out and be
that you have been trained to see that extraordinary Oscar
worthy performance as merely routine. That is so true. Oh
my gosh. It actually reminds me when I was in
(18:27):
New Orleans recently. I was being hit on by someone.
And what's funny is that I was pretty drunk and
I wasn't super interested. So I was like, oh, let's
just have on with this encounter and see what happens,
you know, like, let me just torture this poor guy
for a night and see what happens. And like, I
was wearing a tank top and he was like, oh,
you know, I noticed you don't wax. I was like, no,
I don't do any of that. And his reaction owning
(18:51):
that I wasn't going to do things that were painful
or unpleasant to learn the attention of straight men, and
I basically just said that seeing how that was like
a really surprising thing for him, he could not sort
of wrap his head around. It made me realize, we're
out here putting in a lot of not just uncomfortable stuff,
a lot of money into giving men, heterosexual men this
(19:15):
sort of fantasy, and we're pretending that it's nothing right, Like,
you don't see the gears and the machine sort of
turning and the inside. All you see is this presentation
of effortless hotness, but you don't see the money that
goes into that, the discomfort, you know, shapewear, waxing, lasering, this, that.
And so as someone who was like not entirely but
like largely as I've gotten older, just opted out of that.
(19:38):
And if you don't want to be fine seeing how
many men who are who are otherwise progressive and with it,
it's that clear that they are still buying into that
lie and they have not taken the time to unpack
it or analyze it. Yeah, it's kind of like, Um,
I have a really funny memory of being on acting
in this thing and the director really had no idea
(20:01):
of He said, I just want that all natural look
and that took for for me about two hours. And
the dudes, I was so mad for them. It took
like thirty seconds for us to be natural looking. I
was so infuriated. They're getting to like practice their lines
or hers and I'm sitting there like still in hair
(20:23):
and makeup, and this is a mindset that does not
disappear when it comes to sex, right, So like when
it comes to women faking orgasms, which we did touch
on in our episode on woman's pain. One of the
number one reasons women gave for doing faking orgasms is
to quote, not hurt their partners egos, and then pleasing
(20:45):
your partner was another one. If you're in pain, you'll
get the sex over with more quickly. But that's something
we ignore as a society. And that same study looking
into why women might be faking orgasms didn't even offer
as an option that it might be pain. It was
sort of like, had twenty different choices and that wasn't one. Yeah,
(21:06):
and since beauty is how we measure women's worth and
our culture, and women are taught that how people perceive
them it's more important than any of their actual feelings,
then yeah, it might not just be as easy as
stopping sex when it's painful, or leaving or telling your
partner that you're in pain. There's all this other stuff
tied up in it. Yeah. I actually have a very unpopular, unwoke,
(21:30):
possibly unfeminist opinion about faking orgasms. I think orgasms are important.
I think it's part of self care and I think
that people should be having them. But if you've ever
had sex with a man, you know that men sometimes
don't understand all of the different things that sometimes have
to go into a woman having an orgasm. And sometimes
you have sex and you don't have an orgasm, and
(21:50):
so I don't know. I guess what I'm saying is
that sometimes it's not gonna happen, and there's like nothing
your partner can do that's not gonna happen. And I
guess in an ideal world, you'd be in a situation
where you could just tell your partner or I still
want to have sex, I just might not have an orgasm,
So like, don't numb me out trying to give me
an orgasm. That's not gonna happen. I guess what I'm
saying is that sex, it's okay to have a sexual
(22:10):
encounter and still enjoy it if you know you're not
going to have an orgasm. And I think that for
if you're like early on with someone, if if if
it's your first time having sex with someone, you might
not have that communication where you can say I still
want to have sex, I might not have an orgasm,
it will still be an enjoyable situation if we have sex,
and so sometimes you can fake it and that sort
of accomplishes it. And it's not ideal obviously, but I
(22:33):
think that sometimes it's harder to have that conversation with
someone that you maybe don't know that well, Am I
making sense? Like? Maybe I sound like I'm saying fake it, ladies,
and not what I'm saying. I'm saying that sometimes you
just want to watch your shows, right. You know, it's
someone that you are communicative with that you can say
this and they'll understand and they'll get it. That is
one thing. But maybe it's someone that you're sleeping with
(22:54):
for the first time and you you're not there yet,
you know, and I think you should acknowledge that, Like
it would be great and an ideal world that you
could say, you get what I'm saying? Right, Am I sounding?
Am I making sense? I don't know you are making sense.
I think what this article was trying to focus on,
and in general, like studies have been trying to get
to the heart of, is that so many women are
(23:15):
faking orgasms. Why is the number that high? And then
a lot of men will say, well why, And I
think that we just don't talk about it and looking
at reasons, they are totally a lot of reasons why
women might fake it, right, But two men, it's almost like,
what why would you do that? Don't you want to orgasm?
(23:36):
This reminds me so much of this classic Signfeld where
Elaine admits Jerry that she faked it during their relationship,
and all the women that she talks to they of
course they've all faked it. And then if you're listening,
I think every woman is probably faked it at some point.
So if you're listening, somebody's probably faked it with you.
I hate to be the bearer he was breaking it
down for you. I'm sorry. It's just the research that
(23:57):
you just said. If we're all out here faking it
at some point, if you are a man who has
Texas women, a woman somewhere us faked it with you,
that's just numbers. By the research that we have found,
it just makes sense. But when Elaine is talking to
her friends about why they fake it, their reasons are
really funny, but they're all like very similar. It's like
if we went to the theater and he got good seats,
or sometimes you just want to get some sleep, you know,
(24:19):
I had to admit part of me identified with that. Yeah, no,
I totally get it. Going back to that other thing
we were talking about about losing your virginity, that's another
point this article drove home about how we tell women
and girls that losing your virginity is going to be
this painful experience. And I definitely heard that one when
I was young. And also I seem to recall It's
(24:40):
been a long time since I've watched the show, but
I seem to recall on True Blood this was a
plot point when the like the one female vampire that
was young and she had long red hair I think
her name was Jessica, had sex for the first time
and it hurt like hell. She was so excited to
have it again, but it turned out she was forever virgin,
because I guess that's how vampires work. I know you
(25:03):
brought this up because this is your side interest of
horror movie, horror TV shows periods, loss of virginity sex.
We need to do a whole series on this because
you have a lot of thoughts. I really do you
see right through me? I was like, I know where
this is coming from. Annie, You're not slick, not fooling
bridget all right, Okay, vampires aside, in the context of
(25:25):
this episode, if you're told from a young age that
sex is going to hurt and that's normal, then that
can be hard to shake. That can just become like, well,
I guess if it hurts the first time, why would
it not hurt the second time? And so on and
so on, And we do have some research about that.
But first we're going to pause for one last break
for a word from our sponsor, and we're back, Thank
(25:57):
you sponsor. Recently, this was very fortuitous um TED talk
popped up in my feed called What Young Women Believe
About their Own Sexual Pleasure, and this was a TED
talk by Peggy Ornstein. For three years, Ornstein interviewed women
and young girls between the ages of fifteen to twenty
(26:17):
about their sexual experiences, and what she found was that
while a lot of the girls she spoke to did
feel entitled to sex, they didn't feel entitled to the
enjoyment of it. One young woman she spoke to described
herself as a loud, strong, smart feminist, that her mother
and grandmother were the same, but that she'd only had
(26:38):
a series of disappointing sexual encounters saying, I guess we
girls are just socialized to be these docile creatures who
don't express or wants or needs. And when the discrepancy
there was pointed out to her, the young woman said
she was never taught how to translate the loud, strong,
smart female thing to sex. Oh man, I had identified
(27:00):
with that so much. I know, I keep going back
to eighteen year old college bridget. But I was that loud, smart,
uber feminist girl on campus with you know, the approach
voice poster in my dorm room and I need to
Franco shirt. I projected that outwardly, but when it came
to sex, I just did not feel entitled to ask
(27:22):
for what I wanted. I didn't know how. It was
like I didn't have a voice. I had a voice
and all the other ways, but I didn't have a
voice when it came to my own sexuality and my
sexual needs. Yeah, and I think a lot of young
women feel that way. And or in Stein went on
to explain that if you look at the numbers, young
women these days are not engaging in more penetrative six
(27:43):
than their counterparts years ago, but they are more likely
to engage or to report, perhaps in other things, particularly
oral sex, and when asked about why they would perform
oral sex, most young women responded with a sort of strug,
no big deal. Maybe they said they felt powerful. A
(28:03):
lot of my friends and my own experience told me this,
or maybe it was a social status thing, although we
all know that's a double edged sword, or to get
out of an uncomfortable situation. A lot of them reported that.
One respondent said, quote, a girl will give a guy
a blowjob at the end of the night because she
doesn't want to have sex with him and he expects
to be satisfied. So if I want him to leave
(28:24):
and I don't want anything to happen and she trailed off, Yeah,
that is sad. But again I identify with that. You
couldn't just say I've had a lovely time, i'll see
you tomorrow, please leave, and you're like, well, what's one
blowjob in the scheme of things? You know, that's such
a I felt that way myself, you know, and it's
(28:44):
a sad way to feel. And also men aren't thinking
of that, Like, I don't know the numbers of this,
but I guarantee that men are not giving oral sex
to women at those same rates that from a pretty
young age or socialized that this is something that you
just do. You know, for all the reasons you just listed,
I'm sure that men are not being told the same
thing about giving oral sex to to women. Yes, And
(29:07):
actually Ornstein looked into this because, of course, here comes
the shame our society has around female bodies and that
so many of us women have internalized. She was trying
to get to the reason women would participate in one
sided oral sex and not expect or even want that reciprocated.
And the women expressed a feeling of shame around their
(29:29):
own bodies and their genitals. And we talked about this
a bit before on the show a long time ago,
Christen and I made a video about it, how for
some women it's so hard to turn off the shame
you feel around your body, that that's what you're thinking
about when you're having sex. You're thinking about how unhappy
you are with your own body, how ashamed you are
(29:50):
of it. And you're not going to enjoy sex if
that's what you're thinking, if the whole time you're just
it's like your skin is crawling. And I tried once
to get one of my ex boyfriends to understand this,
and he could not grasp it. It made no sense
to him. Yeah, that makes me sad, but it's so
so true. It's so true, and kind of does go
(30:12):
back to this idea of women and the burden that
we have. How can you feel your sexual best if
in your mind? If there anything like me, your mind
is racing with a million anxious thoughts all the time
anyway on a good day. But then add into that
these like shame filled thoughts about your own body. I remember,
this is going to be one of my like t
M I things. But years and years and years ago,
I was dating somebody that I actually really liked. But
(30:35):
one problem was whenever we had a sexual encounter that
involved him putting his hands on my on my genitals,
didn't he had this horrible, filthy habit of not washing
his hands, And so basically every time we did that,
I knew I was gonna get a yeast infection, like
I knew it, and I, you know, I was pretty young,
and so I couldn't have that conversation of did you
(30:57):
know that bodies are delicate ecosystems and when you put
your dirty fingers that have been touching your xbox all
day inside of someone you are actually gonna risk giving
them a U. T I or East infection. And that's
actually a totally normal biological response to you putting dirty
fingers inside of me. So actually, if you wash your
hands thoroughly before, it would help me out. Like I
(31:18):
could not have that conversation at nineteen, so I just
broke up with him for no one else to do um,
and it sucks, Like, honestly, there are so many little
things that I wish that people knew. P s A.
For anybody out there, if you are putting your mouth
on someone's buttle, you need to rinse your mouth out
with listerine with that has actual mouth wash before you
(31:39):
put that mouth on a vagina. Otherwise that person you
can get an infection. And infections are not sexy. Like
we don't have basic sex said, let alone someone that
is telling you how to have you know, healthy sexual
body practices, and so that just sort of gets wrapped
up in a snowball of shame and we're not talking
about it, and it's aim. It's lack of communication. It's
(32:03):
women being felt to endure things, to not have the
board in themselves with that, so many bad things when
sex is supposed to be good. Yeah, it makes me
think of a second sitcom that I used to watch, Scrubs,
and there was a joke on there where Carla said
she couldn't figure out why this one patient didn't get
erections when she came in, but did when every other
female nurse our doctor came in, and she said to him,
(32:27):
I can look at my body in the mirror for
ten seconds naked. That's more than most women I can
think about. That kind of relates. And more than seventy
of women in college remove all of their pubic hair
sometimes and over into it regularly, which is totally cool
if you're doing it for yourself, but a lot of
women interviewed relented that they did it because they thought
(32:50):
dudes would be grossed out if they didn't. On top
of that, the fastest growing cosmetic surgery among young teenage
girls is labia plastic, which is trimming of both the
inner and outer labia, and overall this procedure jumped eight
(33:10):
and the most popular option is called the barbie. Oh
my god, that's so upsetting. But also, I mean, for
any listeners who are women who sleep with other women
can tell you, I mean It makes me sad that
people are out here trying to get this perfect Barbiegina.
There is no such thing. There are so many vaginas
(33:31):
are snowflakes, like, no two vaginas look the same. Yeah,
and what makes it worse to me is that there's
no proof that it's safe. It could also call scarring, desensitization,
and pain, among other things. Enough women are seeking it
now for non medical reasons, because sometimes you can need
it for medical reasons, but enough people are seeking it
(33:52):
for non medical reasons that the American College of Obstetricians
and Gynecologists released a statement about it, saying, yeah, proof
it's safe. And if you're getting it for cosmetic reasons
and it does cause pain and lack of sensation, you're
basically risking your own sexual pleasure to project this fantasy
of a perfect Barbie vision as that really doesn't exist.
(34:14):
No psychologist at the University of Michigan, Sarah McClelland, uses
this term when talking about everything we've discussed here, intimate justice,
or the political and personal aspects of sex, of who
is entitled to enjoying sex, what's the scale for bad
sex for each partner, and what's the scale for good sex,
(34:35):
and through her research, McClelland found that women far more
than men rated sex based on the pleasure of their partner.
Men rated it by how good their orgasm was. So
in that way, we're rating the sex based on the
enjoyment of someone else, of the man, probably in this case.
Ornstein said of this mismatch over bad sex quote, if
(34:56):
a girl goes into an encounter hoping that it won't hurt,
wanting to feel close to her partner, and expecting him
to have an orgasm, she'll be satisfied if those criteria met.
And there's nothing wrong with wanting to feel close to
your partner, are wanting him to be happy. And orgasm
isn't the only measure of an experience, but the absence
of pain. That's a very low bar for your own
(35:17):
sexual fulfillment. Here here she completely encapsulated all the things
I feel. You are entitled to not be in pain
if you don't have to be, you know, like that
that should be the bare minimum that you owe yourself,
if that's something that you can attain. Yeah, And she
also talks about how less than half of teenage girls
between fourteen to seventeen have masturbated. And here's an embarrassing
(35:40):
fact about me. I didn't know it was possible for
girls to masturbate before college college I did. Well. Good
for you, bridget No, I mean it's it's true, but like,
it doesn't surprise me. I mean, I'm teasing you, but
it doesn't surprise me that you didn't know. Because in
high school we watched the movie I'm American Pie, where
(36:01):
Jason Biggs literally have sex with a pie while masturbated.
Where is the movie about how women get off or
girls get off? There isn't one. I had to figure
it out on my own. When I discovered masturbation, I
thought I had invented it. I was like, oh my god,
the secret new thing that only I know about. We
don't have a culture that tells women that they can
do this. And it doesn't surprise I'm teasing you, but
it doesn't surprise me that you didn't know. Yeah, And
(36:23):
when I was thinking about it, what do you think
the stat is for boys fourteen to seventeen not knowing
masturbation is a thing. I already know having lived with
a boy fourteen to seventeen, I already can tell you
they have figured it out. They have all figured it
out well. And that's kind of the thing is a
lot of girls are going into their first sexual encounter,
maybe not having any idea what they like. Have never masturbated,
(36:45):
whereas the boys certainly has, and in the back of
your head you're thinking that the sex isn't meant for
them to enjoy, that it's supposed to hurt. That's pretty
messed up. It is messed up, and it's all the
more messed up that we're telling them that's at such
a young and formative age, Like those years kind of
put you on the pathway of who you become sexually.
(37:06):
And if the message that you are receiving is that
it's always going to hurt and it doesn't matter if
it feels good for you or not. But it does
matter if the boys having a good time and it's
always going to feel good for him. If that's what
you're absorbing, that that can stick with you for life.
Like I know women who when they're much much older
have kind of figured out that they've absorbed some pretty
toxic bit about their own bodies and have to do
(37:29):
that work when they're like fifty six seventy to have
a better relationship with their bodies. Yeah. Absolutely, And Ornstein
also has some data on same sex relationships. Yes, it's
they're refreshing and lesbian relationships, the focus on your partner's
pleasure remains, but this means that both are invested, both
(37:51):
are focused on the partner's pleasure, and both are more
likely to orgasm on having sex as opposed to it
being once cited. Also interesting, she said that lesbian by
girls are redefining what it is to lose your virginity
and the pain that hetero girls just expect and accept
when it comes to the first time. There are so
many ways to be intimate and even more intimate that
(38:13):
can vary from couple to couple, and I love this.
One gay respondent said she defined losing her virginity as
the first time she orgasmed with a partner, and if
that was the definition, a lot of us would have
to rethink when, if ever, did we lose our virginity. Yeah.
I hate the idea of virginity quote losing your virginity.
(38:34):
I hate that. I am all for new and healthier
models of what virginity quote unquote looks like. If our
sexual milestone was not what a penis enters agina. If
that was not our sexual milestone, what could it look like?
The way that we prioritize men in terms of sexuality
is really striking. Yeah. And something else that is pretty
(38:56):
striking is this comparison or Instain did between studies of
Dutch female students and American female students, and she found
that the Dutch students had more positive sexual outcomes and
that a lot of the difference between the groups could
be attributed to education and having someone to talk to
you openly about your body and about sex. Parents of
(39:18):
the Dutch students talked to their daughters about responsibility and joy.
American parents talked about disease and pregnancy prevention. And I
love that joy aspect of it. I remember reading I
think it was an American parent describing how he had
never thought to include that that that it could be
(39:39):
a pleasurable experience for apps and should be. So we
need to teach girls and women responsibility, yes, but also
that they are entitled to enjoyment. And we need to
even out what bad sex means for both men and
women so we can have a dialogue coming from the
same place, and so that we can have these conversations
(40:00):
around me too, and we can start to unpack why
women don't just leave when bad sex is going down,
and so that we can have better sex for everyone. Yes,
I completely agree orgasms should be a human right, and
I agree I think that we just need to talk
about these things. And you know, I went to Catholic
school where no one told me that sex was supposed
(40:22):
to be pleasurable, you know, and I want people to
know that it's supposed to feel good, its supposed to
be a good experience. Yeah, I did not get that
talk either, So I hope that we can we can
start to move this way and have these conversations and
have better education, especially here at least in our experience,
better education because I didn't. We had one all about
(40:43):
me day in fifth grade and all it was was like,
you're gonna bleed and you're gonna get hair. That's it. Um. Well,
going to Catholic school, we got presentations that said condoms
are full of holes and then don't so people were like,
don't use condoms, they don't work. The only thing that
works as abstinence. Until I was twenty, I thought that
(41:04):
you couldn't get pregnant if you were on top. I mean,
come on, oh my god. We yeah, we had abstinence
only in my high school, very briefly, but a lot
of us got pregnant. A lot of us got pregnant.
Well that's true, but a lot of us women. So
they had these absence only posters we put up kind
(41:25):
of the jokey, it's just here's protection, but insert pun
about it here next to them all over and they
sort of gave up. So I love it. I love
the resistance. Yeah, so here's hoping for for more of
that resistance than having, if not an equal playing field
when it comes to bad sex, at least an understanding
(41:47):
that we're saying we're talking about different things. Yes, yes,
this brings us to a listener. Mail and Marie wrote,
it's been a few years since my favorite series of games,
The Elder Scrolls, came an online RPG game instead of
a series of consoles storyline games. RPG is role playing game,
by the way, and I've never gotten over it. I
(42:09):
grew up thinking that I wasn't good at any video games,
with two loud boy cousins who owned consoles, beating me
at Mario Kart and lacking the patients to teach me
first person shooting. When I got married, however, we were
gifted in Xbox and Elder Scrolls Oblivion, and I soon
found myself playing more than my husband did. I devoured
the game and then Assassin's Creed when it came out
(42:31):
as an aside, I scoffed when I heard you quoted
the Ubisoft is zek who said it would be too
much work to animate a woman for that franchise, since
they made their splash recreating ancient cities and landscapes with
the varied cultures of a Crusase era occupied Jerusalem as
the game centerpiece, but a woman whoa The most recent
(42:51):
games have had an okay and improving female characters to play,
but they still don't feel like they've been written as
thoroughly with as much depth. Back to Elder Scrolls, I
absolutely loved the next game, Skyroom, and it was a
huge hit. When I saw a new game was coming out,
I was so excited until I found that I didn't
understand most of the announcement. My husband translated the acronyms,
(43:13):
and I was really nervous. I didn't actually understand why
I was so nervous about an online game until I
listened to your episode about sexual harassment. I don't interact
with other gamers because I am an introvert with major anxiety,
a survivor of childhood sexual assault, and I spent middle
in high school putting up with sexual harassment that was
never punished from boys just being boys. I knew on
(43:35):
some gut level that even though I put a lot
of hours into gaming, the loudest voices in any online
game would be the people who put in. As Kristen
Caroline put it a part time job's worth of time
into the game. I tried the online game, but I
was playing on a Mac and I wasn't going to
invest in extra gear for one game. I wasn't willing
(43:56):
to play in groups or get on a mike. I
hated the gorgeous scenery and beautiful scenes and characters of
the world. I knew that they had been compromised so
that the game could become an online RBG. My point
is that when they made this move, but Thesda, which
is the company that makes the game, left out a
lot of people like me who escape into beautiful stories
(44:16):
with dragons and elves and magic and long winding, varied
past to the end of the plot because we need
that escape. I deal with debilitating mental illness, and I
can't work because of the anxiety and depression caused by
complex PTSD. I now play Minecraft with my five year
old son and we have a blast. I do still
enjoy the Assassin's Creed games, but I most certainly cannot
(44:36):
afford to risk harassment of any kind by joining an
online community that may turn hostile. I still get so
emotional about it. I really only get this emotional otherwise
about books that I love. If the next book and
a series I loved were somehow unavailable to me because
of a disability I had and would forever remain unavailable
to me, I would perhaps feel something similar, but I
(44:57):
would have somewhere to go to complain in that case
and feel a sense that I had a right to
be angry. In this case, I still feel a sense
of shame that I can't quote get over it and
be more of a joiner, even knowing that I'd potentially
face har assment. Sure, they claim that the game can
be played solo, but there are things that are nearly
impossible to do alone. It feels like a betrayal. Yeah,
(45:19):
I relate to a lot of this, and it makes
me so angry that this is something we have to
consider it all that I can't do this because I'm
probably going to be her ass like that avenue is
close to me. This thing that was supposed to be
fun that we use to escape is instead a source
of stress and harassment that we will just askew rather
(45:43):
than risk that happening. It is sad, and I think
this letter really drives home that what women lose, it's
not just a game. You can lose a lot, you
can sacrifice a lot. It's upsetting. I think this letter
really illustrates what's at stake. Yeah, I do too. Mel wrote,
I'm listening to the Miss America episode and I have thoughts.
(46:04):
I'm certainly glad the swimsuit and evening gowns are gone
and an emphasis is being put on social service and ambition. However,
I agree and I doubt this means that women who
are different sizes, shap's ability, and gender identity will be included,
which has me wondering why do women publicly compete for
a crown and a scholarship. Why don't we have competitions
or men dressed nice, smile, pretty, and publicly face the
role to talk about serving others. Why does it seem
(46:26):
normal for women to publicly grobble for position or scholarship?
I guess well, there doesn't seem to be an equivalent
for men, especially one that is a popular television entertainment
Who doesn't want to see a newly crowned Mr America
with tears streaming down his giddy face? Why don't we
parade the quote ideal man across the stage? Why are
there not YouTube videos of Mr America contestants saying publicly
ridiculous ditzy stuff. I know Miss America, and I know
(46:49):
these pageants in general have their defenders. I just don't
see the point and making women publicly compete in this
way for entertainment, I don't see value in it. Other
scholarships exist, and they don't require you to go through
a gendered public judge. Thank you for this letter, Mel.
It's funny I actually happen to know that male pageants
do exist. They are clearly much much much less popular.
(47:12):
They're much much much less part of our sort of
cultural lexicon. Like it's not like you little boys aren't
growing up saying I want to be Mr. World. I
want to be Mr America. But there actually is a
Mr America. There is a Mr. World. The reason why
I know this is one because I think I mentioned
I did a little bit of pageantry back in my day.
But to the current Mr World is this really really
(47:34):
really hot guy that I'm like semi obsessed with. So
I happen to know that he exists. Look him up online.
He's he's Mr India. He's just very handsome. We'll put
it that way. Um, And but it's true, right, you know,
it's much more of a public stage for the women
and the men do it, but it's kind of a
niche thing if it does not have the same cache
(47:54):
at all. And what would it look like if a
we MISSI had a society where women where no one
had to parade themselves in this way or be everybody
did it and it was just a thing where it
was just as popular for the men as the women, right, Like,
what would that society look like? Like? What would a
more equal understanding of parading yourself around in this way
look like? Although I have to say that for these
(48:17):
male competitions, the question and answer portion is trying to
demonstrate whether or not they have intellect, but the questions
they asked for like the questions that you would ask
like a fifth grader. So I mean, you do. You
do get some beautiful yet dizzy guys, but in no
way do they get the same level of public scrutiny
that the women get at all. Do they have a
(48:38):
swimsuit portion they have like a muscle, They have an
evening wear portion where they're in suits, and they have
like a portion where they're showing off their muscles if
you want. If you're curious who the current Mr World is,
his name is Rohit Kwandal. He is born so he's
a young in He was Mr India two thousands fifteen.
He's the first Asian to ever be crowned Mr World
(48:59):
in twenty six teen. And he is gorgeous and I
would marry him. He did a Ted talk once, call
me RoBeat. I'm totally objectifying him, but he also seems
smart and cool, so that is well, we'll teg that
on there. I love that you know those bridgets. You've
made my day. It's embarrassing. I'm not a follower of
(49:21):
male pageants. I just happened to see this guy's Ted
talk and I was like, he is gorgeous? Who is he?
And then it took me down a rabbit hole of stuff.
We'll leave it vague. It's stuff, well, we'll leave that
to the imagination of listeners or not. Um Thanks to
(49:41):
both of them for writing in. If you'd like to
write to us, you can. Our email is mom Stuff
at how stuff folks dot com, and as always, we
can meet that on Instagram and Stuff I've Never Told
You and on Twitter at mom Stuff Podcast. And thanks
as always to our producer Kathleen Pilly. Oh don't
Stuff Mom Never Told You News
Hosts And Creators
Anney Reese
Samantha McVey
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