June 6, 2011 • 17 mins
There are tons of stories about the horrors of sexting. But what role does sexting play in consenting, adult relationships? Join Molly and Cristen as they explore the positive -- and negative -- aspects of sexting.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stump Mom Never told you?
From house top works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Kristen and I'm Molly, So Molly. I
(00:21):
wrote an article for Discovering News not too long ago
about adult sexting behaviors sex sexting, sexting. That's right. I
kind of jumped on that word. They're sexting because most
of the headlines that we see about sexting have to
do with teen sexting behavior because a it terrifies people
(00:42):
to think that young kids are taking neuty picks themselves
and sending it to their friends via cellular telephone, and
b because some of these kids have been arrested since
those neuty picks can be legally deemed child pornography. So
it's sexing has just been this kind of cultural phenomenon.
(01:03):
People have been freaking out about it. Are your kids sexting?
What you can do to stop your kids from sexting? Meanwhile,
a lot of adults are sending spy cy six two.
So the point of the Discovery News article was to
look at the frequency of adults sexing and maybe why
we do it and if there's any danger at all,
(01:24):
because it's always painted in the media as this negative
kind of thing, but come to find out a lot
of us are doing it and there's really not much
harm to it. Yeah, I mean, I think that, you know,
the adult factor is something that isn't really brought up,
I guess because most people can assume it's too consensual adults, uh,
you know, texting. But I think that you uncovered some
(01:45):
really interesting things about the psychology of sexting. Yes, And
before we get into the psychology, let's just toss out
some statistics. So the people the age demographic that sex
the most, that's such a hardware really is sex and
we kind of use it as a verb band as
a Now, so the demographic that sends sexy texts most
(02:08):
is eighteen to twenty six year olds and according to
some preliminary research from Indiana University and Purdue University, anywhere
from to seventy seven percent of college age kids in
committed relationships. And that's key right now, committed relationships have
(02:29):
sent either sexually explicit pictures or messages to their significant other.
This does not take into account people in casual sexual relationships. Okay,
so a lot of us are doing it. And to
follow up on that, a recent poll commissioned by Playboy
found that sixteen percent of adults say they sent sex
(02:52):
there it is again sex before and six obviously much
lower than that college age survey, but that might be
because the Playboy survey took in a larger a wider
range of ages, so it bumped down that percentage. But nevertheless,
a lot of us are sexting. And the from the
people I talked to, everyone said that, you know what,
(03:15):
it's time for this to stop being a trend piece
because this has become a normalized part of our dating culture.
Well think how normalized, you know, using your phone for
twenty four hours a day. It's become you know, we
all do have our phones just sort of you know,
always there. So I think it makes sense that a
lot of people do it just because it's so easy,
so easy. Just you know, think how often you send
just a regular text message during the day. I'm texting
(03:36):
you right now, you are. It's kind of distracting. Um
and and so if it's so easy to do, then
you know, it seems like this would be a really
great way to sort of supercharge a relationship, maybe jump
start something that's ailing. And that's you know, you sent
me one article from the a r A a r
P formerly American Association of Retired Persons UM where marriage
(03:58):
counselor said, you know, it's good to tech in a
long term relationship because it can get you know, the
fire sparking again. Yeah, you can say a little spicy
something or other during the workout. Yeah, get get those
wheels of turning upstairs to get the wheels of dirt
and downstairs, or you know what I mean, And I
think you can do so, I'm not sure. I apologies
(04:23):
for that. So the thing about sexting among yes to
consenting adults, we're gonna keep saying that over never agetting
to consenting adults and also to consenting adults in committed relationships,
because that really helps things out. Is that there's nothing
wrong with sending the sex, but if you find yourself
(04:43):
habitually sexting, it might be a cue that there's some
underlying psychology at work that could be a red flag
in a relationship. That's right, and you break this down
into anxiously attached women and avoid we attached men. And
I think that you can sort of, you know, garner
(05:04):
a picture of what these kind of people look like,
and you're having you here anxiously attached woman, a woman
who might be sort of insecure about where the relationship is,
and an avoidantly attached man, that kind of guy who
you have trouble maybe pinning down for his weekend plans. Yeah,
he avoids the avoids intimacy. So apparently these are sort
of the two um red flags you might watch for
if you're a frequent sextor to find out if you're
(05:26):
this personality type, because it might affect or might indicate
the health of your relationship. Right, these preliminary This preliminary
research that we mentioned from Indiana and Purdue found that
the people who sex the most are anxiously attached women,
and there was a gender breakdown and that it was
it was the women sending most these sex and it
(05:47):
was those avoidant men who were receiving a bulk of them. So,
if you find yourself feeling the need to constantly send
a sex in order to validate or reconfirm someone's attraction
to you, uh, you might want to work on your
face to face time because among these relationships, people were
sexing more than they were having face to face sexual conversations,
(06:09):
not necessarily sexual encounters, but sexual conversations um, and even
more than something like phone sex. And it's because uh,
sexing is a low commitment form of communication. Um. In
the words of the psychologists I talked to, it's much
easier to say, take your shirt off if you're alone
in your room and take a picture of it and
(06:29):
send it that it might be to take your shirt
off in in front of someone. Yeah, And I think
that that's a key thing that comes out of this
is it can kind of make you feel a relationship
is farther along than it might necessarily be. You might, um,
you know, because you've sent all these racy pictures to
a fella, you might think that he has uh that you.
You know, you both see the relationship in the same way.
(06:50):
Whereas you know, since the book of people who book
of men who received the text are these avoidantly attached men,
it's sort of a way for them to avoid having
that face to face conversation or face to face sexual
conversation about where exactly exactly the relationship is. And it's
gonna be interesting to see how these same findings shake
out for casual sexual relationships because all of this is
(07:12):
still focused around committed relationships. I think the average duration
was something around two years, so these people have been
together for a while. So we're not sure whether or
not UM people who are anxious and preoccupied might actually
be more hesitant to sex someone UM that they are
interested in or not. But if you are in a
(07:32):
relationship and you find yourself sexing all the time, then
you might want to watch out for it. But here
is an interesting little side tidbit about teen sexting, and
because the major risk involved with sexing is the permanence
if you send someone, especially if your face isn't it
you send someone a nude picture and it's just there
(07:53):
and anyone can see it. I from personal experience, have
seen sex that you know, sent to guy friends of
mind that I did not want to see, but they
was just there and you know that's that's it's terrifying prospect.
So why do we take these risks? Well, some neurobiologists
think that it has to do with the developing frontal
(08:14):
cortex because it develops UM into your twenties and this
is a part of your brain that manages impulse control,
so they think that younger people tend to sext more
because we are more prone to risk taking. Since our
friendal cortex is haven't really developed um enough to say,
whoa hold on, let's sload down and think about this.
(08:38):
And if I may recommend an article on how stuff
works dot com that deals with this very phenomenon Christen,
It's is teenagers are teenagers brains different than adult brains.
And I don't want to brag, but I wrote it,
well it must be, it must be grade A plus.
But yeah, it deals with this fact that, you know,
how many risking behaviors can we attribute to teenagers And
it does come to this fact that teenager brains are
(09:00):
still developing this idea of you know, risk control and
measured risk. Um. You know, but we've seen plenty of
adults in the news lately that you know, should know
better and get caught in these uh sexting scandals, and
you know, the permanence isivic thing. But also just remembering that,
you know, if you're an anxiously attached to avoidantly attached
(09:21):
person receiving or sending the text, A person who sends
its sex is probably assuming that it's for one person's eyes,
all right, And that seems to be where the trouble
starts with that assumption, because it seems like a lot
of people received the sex and go whoa look at this,
or forwarded onto a hundred friends and after you break
up and sex or fair game. Yeah, So I think
(09:43):
that that's that's sort of the big thing. I think that, um,
you know, because it is so easy, and because it's
such an easy way, like you said, to test the
waters of where you are in a relationship. It's really
easy just to send out a sex to someone who's
new in your life. But remembering that you know you
may not know them and you may not know what
they are inclined to do with that, you've gotta you've
gotta be really careful. Yeah, And I think we want
(10:05):
to underscore the fact that no one is saying that
sexing is wrong or it is bad, or it's something
that you shouldn't do. In the words of James Lipton
from Inside the Actors Studio, who recorded a Great p S,
a series um urging teens to chill out on sexting,
he said, just give it a ponder before you sex,
(10:26):
and that's good advice for adults and kids. Absolutely, but
let's um, you know, we we didn't want to kind
of dwell on this fact that teen sexting is such
a scary thing. We wanted to talk more about this
adult psychology within committed relationships. But I think that you
can learn a lot of lessons from the adults and
apply them if you are a teenager out there listening.
And one is that sometimes, as we've said, sexting can
(10:48):
be a red flag for how the relationship is going.
If you're sending a sex to try and prove yourself
to someone of the opposite sex, you know that's it's
a red flag of the relationship is maybe not where
you want it to be. Before you start sending out
racy messages or nude pictures, Yeah, maybe think about would
you do this in a face to face scenario, and
(11:09):
I the answer is always no, Then maybe you're doing
something that you aren't actually comfortable with because this is
sex thing really just lowers the barrier of intimacy, and
it also escalates um or accelerates i should say, the
speed at which we are entering into these kind of
intimate communications. And maybe we just need to take a
(11:32):
little more time, give it a little more pondering and
sex if you want to. If you're in a great, secure,
committed relationship. I think Dan Savage would agree with us
and say, yeah, I go ahead, sind send the saucy text,
but just realize that it's permanent and think about um.
If you find yourself doing it all the time, maybe
stop and ask yourself why. Remember that you know, the
adult studies have always dealt with consenting. People don't feel
(11:55):
pressured into doing it even though it seems like everyone's
staying it because you eat all these horror newspaper for
stories are like, oh my god, uh, you know, it
doesn't have to be something that everything everyone is doing
and yourself and will Stoll be there in a month
if you just want to chill. And one thing that
we haven't touched on is the role of sexing and
long distance relationships. I can imagine that this that our
warnings might change a little bit if your beloved is
(12:17):
living across across the country from me or something. So
I would be curious to see, you know, in a
in a very PG kind of way. If we have
listeners out there who were like, well, this is our
only real way to um engage in these kind of
this kind of sexual communication, because now sexing his eclipsed
phone sex, which I think is very interesting. So anyway,
(12:38):
no one talks anymore. Nobody talks anymore, especially not certainly
not face to face and now not even over the phone.
Uh So what if we release the whole podcast of
us just texting each other? I think that would be
incredibly boring because how would people understand my accents and
verbal inflections. So that's one one reason at least right there,
that that texting and sexing should not become a dominant
(13:01):
form of communication. It should be an aid to a relationship,
but not the whole thing. Yeah, kind of like emoticons sing,
sing and give him a ponder in professional situation, please
unless it's the winking one, in which case send away.
So if you have any thoughts to add to this
sext and conversation, send us an email. I'd say Texas,
(13:23):
but I'm not giving you my phone number. Our email
Jose's mom stuff at how stuff works dot com. And
in the meantime, let's read a couple of emails. All right,
I have an email here from Sarah and it's about
the mail doctor versus Female Doctor podcast, and Sarah has
a really great perspective on this because get this, Christen.
She has a female doctor married to a male doctor.
(13:45):
So best of both worlds here, and they're both a optometrist.
And Sarah writes, I wanted to touch on the topic
that you did not delve into patient perceptions of doctors.
I am a young looking, blonde haired, blue eyed female.
I am not the stereotypical eye doctor. There have been
any times that people ask me when the real doctor
is coming in. As I age, this happens less people
question my qualifications and decisions. I get the occasional patient
(14:07):
complaint about my demeanor because people think I am rude
from my questions or medical advice. I'm a very good doctor,
and I've learned not to take it personally. I've also
learned to laugh it off. My husband is also young
looking and handsome. Lucky me, she writes, he has never
been asked when the real doctor is coming. He never
gets his qualifications or decisions questions. He also never had
a patient complain about his bedside manner, comments or care.
(14:30):
He gets away with saying much more probing, directive, almost
mean things that I would never even attempt. This is
an example. When someone says I want glasses or contacts,
but I cannot afford them. He will say, stop smoking
that half pack per day and you can afford in
one month. They laugh when he says it. They almost
lunge at me in anger if I say the same thing.
He has perceived as funny and charming. I am perceived
(14:51):
as a word that runs with which although she wrote
the actual word. Well, I've got one here from Sam
and this is in response to our podcast on cat
calling and street harassment and really fast, I want to
give a shout out to Emily May from Hallaback. Apparently
she's a stuff I'm never told you fan, which is
so exciting. So onto Sam, who is part of a
(15:15):
fraternity in a downtown major city. He says, as a
result of our location, we have a decent number of
women walking past our house on any given night. As
you said, I think cat calling has much more to
do with impressing the guys that accompany the cat caller
than it has to do with the target herself. Further,
in my experience, the guys that yell out seem to
have lower self confidence in the rest of the bunch,
(15:35):
so perhaps start trying to prove something regardless, I think
it's something that should not happen. I try to deter
my friends from doing it whenever it happens, partly for
the selfish reason of trying to preserve the reputation of
our fraternity, but also because I would hate to think
of any of my female relatives being treated in such
a way. I've witnessed women being flattered by cat calling,
but I've also seen too many instances where it clearly
(15:56):
makes them uncomfortable. For one, it instantly reduces them to
purely set actual objects, and I can imagine it's difficult
to stand up to a group of rowdy, drunken guys
when you're one woman alone on the street. Cat Callers
are basically the trolls of real life, hiding behind the
shield of anonymity in order to in order to deliver
their crude, callous comments. I can't think of any great
(16:16):
solutions to the problem, but I'll still try and persuade
my drunken friends to give those lady passers by a break.
So this is my favorite email from a fraternity member,
because Sam, thank you for in one pill swoop just
challenging so many stereotypes about UH fraternity's that that circulate.
It is wonderful to know and I know that this exists,
but it's still wonderful confirmation that there are plenty of
(16:39):
great Greek guys out there. So keep your emails coming.
We address his Mom's Stuff at how stuff Works dot com.
We'd also love to hear from you on Facebook, so
you can interact with other listeners as well. Where on Facebook,
head over there and like us. You can also follow
us on Twitter at Mom's Stuff podcast. And finally, you
can head over to our blog It's stuff member told
you you can find at how stuff works dot com.
(17:06):
Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff
from the Future. Join how Stuff Work staff as we
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(17:27):
twelve camera. It's ready, are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
It's ready. Are you welcome to stump Mom Never told you?
From house top works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Kristen and I'm Molly, So Molly. I
(00:21):
wrote an article for Discovering News not too long ago
about adult sexting behaviors sex sexting, sexting. That's right. I
kind of jumped on that word. They're sexting because most
of the headlines that we see about sexting have to
do with teen sexting behavior because a it terrifies people
(00:42):
to think that young kids are taking neuty picks themselves
and sending it to their friends via cellular telephone, and
b because some of these kids have been arrested since
those neuty picks can be legally deemed child pornography. So
it's sexing has just been this kind of cultural phenomenon.
(01:03):
People have been freaking out about it. Are your kids sexting?
What you can do to stop your kids from sexting? Meanwhile,
a lot of adults are sending spy cy six two.
So the point of the Discovery News article was to
look at the frequency of adults sexing and maybe why
we do it and if there's any danger at all,
(01:24):
because it's always painted in the media as this negative
kind of thing, but come to find out a lot
of us are doing it and there's really not much
harm to it. Yeah, I mean, I think that, you know,
the adult factor is something that isn't really brought up,
I guess because most people can assume it's too consensual adults, uh,
you know, texting. But I think that you uncovered some
(01:45):
really interesting things about the psychology of sexting. Yes, And
before we get into the psychology, let's just toss out
some statistics. So the people the age demographic that sex
the most, that's such a hardware really is sex and
we kind of use it as a verb band as
a Now, so the demographic that sends sexy texts most
(02:08):
is eighteen to twenty six year olds and according to
some preliminary research from Indiana University and Purdue University, anywhere
from to seventy seven percent of college age kids in
committed relationships. And that's key right now, committed relationships have
(02:29):
sent either sexually explicit pictures or messages to their significant other.
This does not take into account people in casual sexual relationships. Okay,
so a lot of us are doing it. And to
follow up on that, a recent poll commissioned by Playboy
found that sixteen percent of adults say they sent sex
(02:52):
there it is again sex before and six obviously much
lower than that college age survey, but that might be
because the Playboy survey took in a larger a wider
range of ages, so it bumped down that percentage. But nevertheless,
a lot of us are sexting. And the from the
people I talked to, everyone said that, you know what,
(03:15):
it's time for this to stop being a trend piece
because this has become a normalized part of our dating culture.
Well think how normalized, you know, using your phone for
twenty four hours a day. It's become you know, we
all do have our phones just sort of you know,
always there. So I think it makes sense that a
lot of people do it just because it's so easy,
so easy. Just you know, think how often you send
just a regular text message during the day. I'm texting
(03:36):
you right now, you are. It's kind of distracting. Um
and and so if it's so easy to do, then
you know, it seems like this would be a really
great way to sort of supercharge a relationship, maybe jump
start something that's ailing. And that's you know, you sent
me one article from the a r A a r
P formerly American Association of Retired Persons UM where marriage
(03:58):
counselor said, you know, it's good to tech in a
long term relationship because it can get you know, the
fire sparking again. Yeah, you can say a little spicy
something or other during the workout. Yeah, get get those
wheels of turning upstairs to get the wheels of dirt
and downstairs, or you know what I mean, And I
think you can do so, I'm not sure. I apologies
(04:23):
for that. So the thing about sexting among yes to
consenting adults, we're gonna keep saying that over never agetting
to consenting adults and also to consenting adults in committed relationships,
because that really helps things out. Is that there's nothing
wrong with sending the sex, but if you find yourself
(04:43):
habitually sexting, it might be a cue that there's some
underlying psychology at work that could be a red flag
in a relationship. That's right, and you break this down
into anxiously attached women and avoid we attached men. And
I think that you can sort of, you know, garner
(05:04):
a picture of what these kind of people look like,
and you're having you here anxiously attached woman, a woman
who might be sort of insecure about where the relationship is,
and an avoidantly attached man, that kind of guy who
you have trouble maybe pinning down for his weekend plans. Yeah,
he avoids the avoids intimacy. So apparently these are sort
of the two um red flags you might watch for
if you're a frequent sextor to find out if you're
(05:26):
this personality type, because it might affect or might indicate
the health of your relationship. Right, these preliminary This preliminary
research that we mentioned from Indiana and Purdue found that
the people who sex the most are anxiously attached women,
and there was a gender breakdown and that it was
it was the women sending most these sex and it
(05:47):
was those avoidant men who were receiving a bulk of them. So,
if you find yourself feeling the need to constantly send
a sex in order to validate or reconfirm someone's attraction
to you, uh, you might want to work on your
face to face time because among these relationships, people were
sexing more than they were having face to face sexual conversations,
(06:09):
not necessarily sexual encounters, but sexual conversations um, and even
more than something like phone sex. And it's because uh,
sexing is a low commitment form of communication. Um. In
the words of the psychologists I talked to, it's much
easier to say, take your shirt off if you're alone
in your room and take a picture of it and
(06:29):
send it that it might be to take your shirt
off in in front of someone. Yeah, And I think
that that's a key thing that comes out of this
is it can kind of make you feel a relationship
is farther along than it might necessarily be. You might, um,
you know, because you've sent all these racy pictures to
a fella, you might think that he has uh that you.
You know, you both see the relationship in the same way.
(06:50):
Whereas you know, since the book of people who book
of men who received the text are these avoidantly attached men,
it's sort of a way for them to avoid having
that face to face conversation or face to face sexual
conversation about where exactly exactly the relationship is. And it's
gonna be interesting to see how these same findings shake
out for casual sexual relationships because all of this is
(07:12):
still focused around committed relationships. I think the average duration
was something around two years, so these people have been
together for a while. So we're not sure whether or
not UM people who are anxious and preoccupied might actually
be more hesitant to sex someone UM that they are
interested in or not. But if you are in a
(07:32):
relationship and you find yourself sexing all the time, then
you might want to watch out for it. But here
is an interesting little side tidbit about teen sexting, and
because the major risk involved with sexing is the permanence
if you send someone, especially if your face isn't it
you send someone a nude picture and it's just there
(07:53):
and anyone can see it. I from personal experience, have
seen sex that you know, sent to guy friends of
mind that I did not want to see, but they
was just there and you know that's that's it's terrifying prospect.
So why do we take these risks? Well, some neurobiologists
think that it has to do with the developing frontal
(08:14):
cortex because it develops UM into your twenties and this
is a part of your brain that manages impulse control,
so they think that younger people tend to sext more
because we are more prone to risk taking. Since our
friendal cortex is haven't really developed um enough to say,
whoa hold on, let's sload down and think about this.
(08:38):
And if I may recommend an article on how stuff
works dot com that deals with this very phenomenon Christen,
It's is teenagers are teenagers brains different than adult brains.
And I don't want to brag, but I wrote it,
well it must be, it must be grade A plus.
But yeah, it deals with this fact that, you know,
how many risking behaviors can we attribute to teenagers And
it does come to this fact that teenager brains are
(09:00):
still developing this idea of you know, risk control and
measured risk. Um. You know, but we've seen plenty of
adults in the news lately that you know, should know
better and get caught in these uh sexting scandals, and
you know, the permanence isivic thing. But also just remembering that,
you know, if you're an anxiously attached to avoidantly attached
(09:21):
person receiving or sending the text, A person who sends
its sex is probably assuming that it's for one person's eyes,
all right, And that seems to be where the trouble
starts with that assumption, because it seems like a lot
of people received the sex and go whoa look at this,
or forwarded onto a hundred friends and after you break
up and sex or fair game. Yeah, So I think
(09:43):
that that's that's sort of the big thing. I think that, um,
you know, because it is so easy, and because it's
such an easy way, like you said, to test the
waters of where you are in a relationship. It's really
easy just to send out a sex to someone who's
new in your life. But remembering that you know you
may not know them and you may not know what
they are inclined to do with that, you've gotta you've
gotta be really careful. Yeah, And I think we want
(10:05):
to underscore the fact that no one is saying that
sexing is wrong or it is bad, or it's something
that you shouldn't do. In the words of James Lipton
from Inside the Actors Studio, who recorded a Great p S,
a series um urging teens to chill out on sexting,
he said, just give it a ponder before you sex,
(10:26):
and that's good advice for adults and kids. Absolutely, but
let's um, you know, we we didn't want to kind
of dwell on this fact that teen sexting is such
a scary thing. We wanted to talk more about this
adult psychology within committed relationships. But I think that you
can learn a lot of lessons from the adults and
apply them if you are a teenager out there listening.
And one is that sometimes, as we've said, sexting can
(10:48):
be a red flag for how the relationship is going.
If you're sending a sex to try and prove yourself
to someone of the opposite sex, you know that's it's
a red flag of the relationship is maybe not where
you want it to be. Before you start sending out
racy messages or nude pictures, Yeah, maybe think about would
you do this in a face to face scenario, and
(11:09):
I the answer is always no, Then maybe you're doing
something that you aren't actually comfortable with because this is
sex thing really just lowers the barrier of intimacy, and
it also escalates um or accelerates i should say, the
speed at which we are entering into these kind of
intimate communications. And maybe we just need to take a
(11:32):
little more time, give it a little more pondering and
sex if you want to. If you're in a great, secure,
committed relationship. I think Dan Savage would agree with us
and say, yeah, I go ahead, sind send the saucy text,
but just realize that it's permanent and think about um.
If you find yourself doing it all the time, maybe
stop and ask yourself why. Remember that you know, the
adult studies have always dealt with consenting. People don't feel
(11:55):
pressured into doing it even though it seems like everyone's
staying it because you eat all these horror newspaper for
stories are like, oh my god, uh, you know, it
doesn't have to be something that everything everyone is doing
and yourself and will Stoll be there in a month
if you just want to chill. And one thing that
we haven't touched on is the role of sexing and
long distance relationships. I can imagine that this that our
warnings might change a little bit if your beloved is
(12:17):
living across across the country from me or something. So
I would be curious to see, you know, in a
in a very PG kind of way. If we have
listeners out there who were like, well, this is our
only real way to um engage in these kind of
this kind of sexual communication, because now sexing his eclipsed
phone sex, which I think is very interesting. So anyway,
(12:38):
no one talks anymore. Nobody talks anymore, especially not certainly
not face to face and now not even over the phone.
Uh So what if we release the whole podcast of
us just texting each other? I think that would be
incredibly boring because how would people understand my accents and
verbal inflections. So that's one one reason at least right there,
that that texting and sexing should not become a dominant
(13:01):
form of communication. It should be an aid to a relationship,
but not the whole thing. Yeah, kind of like emoticons sing,
sing and give him a ponder in professional situation, please
unless it's the winking one, in which case send away.
So if you have any thoughts to add to this
sext and conversation, send us an email. I'd say Texas,
(13:23):
but I'm not giving you my phone number. Our email
Jose's mom stuff at how stuff works dot com. And
in the meantime, let's read a couple of emails. All right,
I have an email here from Sarah and it's about
the mail doctor versus Female Doctor podcast, and Sarah has
a really great perspective on this because get this, Christen.
She has a female doctor married to a male doctor.
(13:45):
So best of both worlds here, and they're both a optometrist.
And Sarah writes, I wanted to touch on the topic
that you did not delve into patient perceptions of doctors.
I am a young looking, blonde haired, blue eyed female.
I am not the stereotypical eye doctor. There have been
any times that people ask me when the real doctor
is coming in. As I age, this happens less people
question my qualifications and decisions. I get the occasional patient
(14:07):
complaint about my demeanor because people think I am rude
from my questions or medical advice. I'm a very good doctor,
and I've learned not to take it personally. I've also
learned to laugh it off. My husband is also young
looking and handsome. Lucky me, she writes, he has never
been asked when the real doctor is coming. He never
gets his qualifications or decisions questions. He also never had
a patient complain about his bedside manner, comments or care.
(14:30):
He gets away with saying much more probing, directive, almost
mean things that I would never even attempt. This is
an example. When someone says I want glasses or contacts,
but I cannot afford them. He will say, stop smoking
that half pack per day and you can afford in
one month. They laugh when he says it. They almost
lunge at me in anger if I say the same thing.
He has perceived as funny and charming. I am perceived
(14:51):
as a word that runs with which although she wrote
the actual word. Well, I've got one here from Sam
and this is in response to our podcast on cat
calling and street harassment and really fast, I want to
give a shout out to Emily May from Hallaback. Apparently
she's a stuff I'm never told you fan, which is
so exciting. So onto Sam, who is part of a
(15:15):
fraternity in a downtown major city. He says, as a
result of our location, we have a decent number of
women walking past our house on any given night. As
you said, I think cat calling has much more to
do with impressing the guys that accompany the cat caller
than it has to do with the target herself. Further,
in my experience, the guys that yell out seem to
have lower self confidence in the rest of the bunch,
(15:35):
so perhaps start trying to prove something regardless, I think
it's something that should not happen. I try to deter
my friends from doing it whenever it happens, partly for
the selfish reason of trying to preserve the reputation of
our fraternity, but also because I would hate to think
of any of my female relatives being treated in such
a way. I've witnessed women being flattered by cat calling,
but I've also seen too many instances where it clearly
(15:56):
makes them uncomfortable. For one, it instantly reduces them to
purely set actual objects, and I can imagine it's difficult
to stand up to a group of rowdy, drunken guys
when you're one woman alone on the street. Cat Callers
are basically the trolls of real life, hiding behind the
shield of anonymity in order to in order to deliver
their crude, callous comments. I can't think of any great
(16:16):
solutions to the problem, but I'll still try and persuade
my drunken friends to give those lady passers by a break.
So this is my favorite email from a fraternity member,
because Sam, thank you for in one pill swoop just
challenging so many stereotypes about UH fraternity's that that circulate.
It is wonderful to know and I know that this exists,
but it's still wonderful confirmation that there are plenty of
(16:39):
great Greek guys out there. So keep your emails coming.
We address his Mom's Stuff at how stuff Works dot com.
We'd also love to hear from you on Facebook, so
you can interact with other listeners as well. Where on Facebook,
head over there and like us. You can also follow
us on Twitter at Mom's Stuff podcast. And finally, you
can head over to our blog It's stuff member told
you you can find at how stuff works dot com.
(17:06):
Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff
from the Future. Join how Stuff Work staff as we
explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow. The
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(17:27):
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