← You Are Not Broken
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- [00:01]
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Hey everybody, it is Kelly and welcome back to the you are not broken podcast. Today we are going to give you chapter one of the you are not stop shoulding all over your sex life book. This is releasing September 10th so pre order it. If you caught this podcast before then, we've got about a week of pre order left and pre order on Amazon. Really helps the sales ranking and tells tells all the people how lovely this book is. And if you are catching this podcast afterwards, no worries. Thank you for being here and go out and get your book. So currently on Barnes and noble.com and Amazon.com and I know it's going out to some bookstores. So catch me in Chicago for the Menopause Society meeting. I'm going to be doing two book events. They are both sold out so sorry if you missed that. Follow me on Instagram if you want to actually know where like in real time where I'm going to be. So on the September 12th and September 13th I will be in Chicago having two book events. One's a more formal sit down dinner and one is a cocktail mocktail event. And then the next week I will in New York City doing some book events. On September 16th I will be doing a book event with the swell, the amazing elisa Volkman and Dr. Rachel Rubin. We'll be talking about all things sexual health and sex medicine the evening of September 16th likely at the Chelsea Hotel. So follow me again on Instagram to find out more about that. And then on the 17th I'm doing an evening book event sponsored by Addie and Midi, which are two amazing companies helping midlife women with both their hormones and their sexual function. That is going to be at the Fenwick event space and I can't wait. That's a Broadway in New York. On Broadway in New York. So that is it. Oh one more thing. Watch for this too. This is not out yet. On September 15th Holly Ringler is a amazing fitness midlife enthusiast who is in Tribeca in Manhattan and we're going to do an event where I think we're going to do some. We're going to work on some form, maybe lift some weights and then drink some coffee and talk about the book. You are not broken. So that's going to be awesome. That is all I have. More down the line. The menopause documentary on PBS is going to be out in October, so more on that pretty darn soon. So the T I wanted to read the table of contents to this book. So part one is called it's not your fault. How Society got it wrong. And then part two is sex positive sex ed for adults. And then part three is is it actually low desire or something else entirely? So those are the exc things about the adult sex ed you never got. So I wrote a book and I started a podcast and thank you for listening to YOU Are Not Broken. I love you guys.
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Welcome to the you Are Not Broken podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Kelly Casperson, a board certified urologist, thought leader and conversation starter on midlife living, hormones and sexuality. Enjoy the show. Chapter one Society Got It Wrong
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why
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do women find themselves so confused and ambivalent about sex? I blame the mixed messages sent by society, religious traditions, the media and other institutions that both want our attention and to control us. I see that power play played out in many ways every day. We live in a patriarchal society defined as a social system in which men hold primary power and are the dominant force in leadership, moral authority, and social privilege, where a woman's value is in her desirability and a man's is in his ability to desire. Men are supposed to be sexual and women are supposed to be desired. They get to be active while we're expected to be passive. Desire is both a noun and a verb. As a noun, it means an impulse towards something that promises enjoyment or satisfaction in its attainment. As a verb, it means to strongly wish for or to want something. That's heavy. And it just gets worse. Society also tells us we should be sexy while passively waiting to attract Prince Charming, but that once he finally gets here, we can't actually want to have sex with him because then we're considered slutty and loose. Well, that is until we marry him, at which time we should want to have sex with him all the time. And if we don't, then we are frigid and broken. Why would our culture tell us men should desire women because of our sexual desirability and then not allow us to be sexual without shaming us? Why does our value change depending on that availability instead of being based on our intrinsic value as a person and a partner? I'd like to see a world where we're valued for who we are as a human being and be able to express our own sexual agency. Sadly, there's more. We're not supposed to desire anything of our own. We shouldn't desire beauty because then we're vain. We shouldn't desire having a job and kids because we couldn't possibly do both well. We shouldn't shoot for the C suite because no man wants to marry someone more successful than he is. We shouldn't excel at sports because then we're too competitive. We aren't allowed to desire anything. Then we feel broken because we don't desire anything. It's a trap. When was the last time you were curious about something? We kind of forget this as an adult. Kids are curious. They explore. Then they fall down and get back up. They don't beat themselves up over failing and trying again. Get curious about more desire in your life. What is it you actually want in this one amazing shot at being human, you deserve to desire When I ask women in my clinic what they actually want, I'm often met with a curious blank stare. They don't even know at this point. That's not surprising given the confusing, conflicting messages women get from society about women owning their desires. We're taught to believe our desires make us undesirable and that it's selfish to want anything for ourselves. So we tamp down our dreams and start to accept that it's okay not to have any desires at all. To cap it all off, we think we're broken because we don't desire the one thing we're told we're supposed to desire. Which, remember, is hot, lusty passion. Every day once we are married in one style of defined penetrative sex for all of our lives. I know it's effed up. Don't get me wrong, I'm very thankful for the gifts and privileges I have been given, but to not desire more because I should just be happy with what I've been given is a passive, disempowering way for anyone to live. Women have to deal with both slut shaming and prude shaming. Even our language is stacked against us. A man who sleeps with a lot of people is called man whore, but there's no such thing as a woman whore, implying the word is inherently for women. I'm often referred to as a female doctor, but guys aren't called male doctors. So men get to be the default doctor and women get to be the default whore. Raw deal it comes as no surprise that the fake news we are fed about sexual comes from the male perspective. What I mean by that is men are still making most of the movies, news shows and content, which means the narrative is written by people who don't know the facts about women and who tell the story from their perspective. What gets them off and what they desire. Reese Witherspoon recently commented that Hollywood is outdated and it's repetitive and narrow stereotypes and I agree with her These stereotypes aren't our reality, but we accept them just the same. Think any of this is new? Nope. Aristotle once wrote that women are defective by nature. A female is an incomplete male. Or, as it were, a deformity. We've endured inferior treatment since the Greek and the Roman times, and probably even before then. It's time for a cultural upgrade. It's time for a female narrative. This is how society tries and often succeeds to control our sexuality. And I'm here to point that out because we don't often see the water we swim in. It's time to take back our power. You have every right to want more than you feel you've been given permission to. It's time to lay claim to your sexual life, undoing the damage. We can start by throwing pretty much all of what we learned about sex out the window. Everything society taught us is wrong. Wow, that's a big claim. Everything is wrong. Well, at least close to it. Okay, maybe not. The sperm reaches egg and baby is made part. But the rest of it is. Yes, society tells us that a penis in the vagina equals sex, and everything else isn't sex. From now on, I'll call it PIV sex. And no, I didn't invent the term. Remember when President Bill Clinton denied having sex with his intern? This incredibly narrow definition of sex is what allowed him to make such a preposterous claim. PIV sex focuses on the male pleasure experience, while men tend to orgasm three to five minutes after vaginal penetration. Omg. Yes, people do actually research and time this stuff. Women only ever orgasm 20 to 30% of the time with PIV sex, and certainly not in under five minutes. This doesn't mean we're broken. It means we're women living in women's bodies, needing a different kind of arousal and sexual experience. We have different hardware that actually works very similarly to men's. Unfortunately, we aren't taught to prioritize and stimulate it during our sexual activity. And if we aren't taught this, obviously the penis owners missed the memo too. So let's start with the basics. The clitoris is our organ of pleasure. Women orgasm with the clitoris, not the vagina. When orgasms actually do happen during PIV sex, it's because the clitoris has been stimulated through the vagina. More on this later. PIV sex without added clitoral stimulation is sex that prioritizes male pleasure and leaves women with less pleasure. Now, not to jump ahead to advanced orgasm graduate school, but some women have been able to orgasm by just thinking their way there or by stroking a nipple, earlobe, or other body part of choice. But that, number one, is beyond the scope of this book. And two, only goes to prove that the brain is very important when it comes to sex. Are the psych majors among us thinking about Freud right now and how he said vaginal orgasms were mature and clitoral orgasms were infantile? The fact is, the only women having vaginal orgasms are having them because of clitoral stimulation. Yet women back then actually had surgeries to move their clitorises closer to their vaginas because Freud said they were deficient for not orgasming. With vaginal penetration, not only was that painful and unnecessary, but it was downright dangerous because there were no antibiotics to treat the inevitable resulting infections. No one, especially Freud, should lie to women and men by telling them their bodies should work in ways they don't. While we're on the topic of female orgasm, unlike the speedier male experience of three to five minutes after vaginal penetration, it takes women anywhere from 13 to 50 minutes, depending on the study, to orgasm during partnered sex. Those orgasms happen far more consistently through oral sex, hands and toys than PIV sex. Why? Because all those tongues, hands and toys are focusing on the clitoris. A recent study focused on how long it took women to orgasm after already being intensely aroused. Defined as an intense desire for sex in presence of erotic stimuli. Results showed the average time frame then was 13.4 minutes, plus or minus 7.67 minutes. In that research, 68% of women said intercourse alone was insufficient to reach orgasm. In case you're wondering, yes, women orgasm much faster when doing it alone. Sex researcher Alfred Kinsey discovered it takes women about four minutes to orgasm through masturbation. I personally know women who can do it in less than a minute. Why is that? Because women know what works for them when they are alone. It's a myth that women take longer. It is a truth that women take longer when their pleasure isn't prioritized, usually in a heterosexual scenario. Side note, rushing to orgasm isn't the goal in general. In case you missed the point, it's not a race. Allow your partner to spend the appropriate amount of time focusing on your pleasure and you'll be amazed by the results. If you hate the term masturbation, maybe you were taught it's wrong for many reasons. One being that women are supposed to save their sexuality for their partner. Or if you touched yourself, you'll end up in hell or just be a bad girl. Perhaps you'll prefer this term for self cultivation. Sounds fancy, right? I got it from one of those Woo woo books like you're getting to know your body and mind, which you are like you are indulging in some well earned self care. If that's the case, don't masturbate Self cultivate. Also, self cultivating is something you do alone. Nobody's watching you or judging you. No one needs to give you permission to self cultivate. It is natural and healthy. Many studies have been done on this. But if you need permission from a doctor, Gotcha. Permission granted. In his 1953 report Sexual Behavior in the Human Female, Kinsey wrote, there is widespread opinion that the female is slower than the male in her sexual responses, but the masturbatory data do not support that opinion. The average male may take something between two and three minutes to reach orgasm unless he deliberately prolongs his activity, and a calculation of the median time required would probably show that he responds not more than some seconds faster than the average female. It is true that the average female responds more slowly than the average male in coitus, but this seems to be due to the ineffectiveness of the usual coital techniques. Sherry Height echoed his conclusion in her groundbreaking 1976 book the Height Report. It is obviously only during inadequate or secondary insufficient stimulation like intercourse that we take longer and need prolonged foreplay. Women don't need foreplay in masturbation to orgasm. See what I told you about none of this being new information. Kinsey was telling people way back in 1953 that PIV sex doesn't do it for most women. Haidt came along and reiterated that in 1976 and both agreed that the fact that that women take longer to orgasm than men is actually just more fake news. We only take longer in heterosexual relationships that prioritize PIV sex over all other methods and his orgasm over hers. Otherwise, no, we are not inherently less arousable or more difficult to please. So stop shoulding on yourself for not having orgasmic pleasure fast or at all. With PIV sex. On my Instagram lives, women often ask me, why can't women just have orgasms faster during sex? The answer is because we don't have penises we're putting in vaginas. If you're in the mood for a quickie, self cultivate. Teach your guy what works for you after you have figured it out yourself by trial and error and compassionate curiosity. Or bring toys into the bedroom to help you both along. Also, why is this a goddamn race? Oh America, Land of the five minute home loan. Sigh it's in our blood. Why are we trying to rush this experience like a to do list? What's wrong with taking more time? What's wrong with more pleasure? Orgasms are easier when we are enjoying the process. When time management is the goal instead of pleasure, don't wonder where your orgasm went. And as for the follow up question, well then why aren't we built to have orgasms with penises in our vagina? One theory why our pleasure bits are on the outside is that the woman needs to feel good and willing to put something in the vagina which is what allows us to reproduce. Basically, we evolved to get our pleasure first. Modern people seem to have forgotten this fact and rush into what we've been taught sex is too quickly. In another recent study, participants were asked to focus on the woman and her pleasure for at least 20 minutes. Here the rate of female orgasm goes up to 90%. Women's bodies need a little bit more time in partnered heterosex and do just great given that time. So why do we keep striving for a graduate degree in in penis in the vagina sex? A PhD in PIV HA yeah, I know. Hopefully you're feeling loved and feeling seen and we've just gotten started. If you are upset or bothered by not having an orgasm through vaginal penetration, it does not mean that you have sexual dysfunction. It means you didn't get an education that kindly told you that the clitoris is why women orgasm. And sometimes the clitoris is activated through the vagina, but that isn't the only or gold standard way. You also didn't get told that about 70% of women don't orgasm through vaginal penetration alone. So you don't need a pill and you should immediately stop taking on the burden of feeling crappy about yourself when in fact it is society that did a crappy job of 1 not teaching you in the first place and 2 allowing you to feel like you need to be fixed. You can still have an orgasm with PIV sex, but make sure to play with the clitoris and the tissue under the labia majora which is also part of the clitoris. First, get your erectile tissue involved. Experiment to find out what positions work better than others and get hands, mouth, lube and or vibrators involved. You're more than enough and never too much. In society, women are constantly bombarded with people telling us we're not enough. That can have a devastating effect on our confidence and self worth, especially when it comes to sex. For example, I recently had a patient come to see me at my urology clinic before I started my exam. She apologized profusely. She said, just so you know, it's really ugly down there. I'm so sorry you have to look at it. I told her I look at labias every day. I've probably seen thousands at this point. I'll be happy to let you know where you land on my labial bell curve. I did the exam and found her labia to be very average, boring, middle of the road, happily forgettable. There was nothing abnormal there. There wasn't even anything interesting about it. I told her, you are wonderfully average. Top of the bell curve for you. Her husband said, see, I told you. It's absolutely fine. My patient was blown away in happy tears. She explained that her ex husband told her it was ugly at the beginning of their relationship and she'd been hanging onto that thought ever since. How sad to realize she'd limited her pleasure and sexuality for decades over a mean comment and by a non vulvar expert who, if he did have a bell curve of his own, was likely limited to a few individuals or media with production quality labias on it. Screw that ex husband and his judgment. My patient and her labia were perfect, as in perfectly normal. And what about the opposite? When society tells us we're too much, a sexually confident woman is equally challenged by the rules. Think Angelina Jolie here. She's so sexy she's seen as almost scary. Society sets us up so we just can't win. One last soapbox moment and I'll stop for now. Our culture and the media make it seem like only hot, young, thin, able bodied people should have sex. The truth is sex is for everyone and that includes the elderly, differently abled, obese, not conventionally attractive, bi, gay, trans, non binary, straight, skinny people with ostomies, neurodivergent and everyone else on earth. All human beings are inherently sexual beings. Technically, researchers think 1 to 2% of people are truly asexual. But I digress. Once you start to see the miseducation women receive and how it affects their relationships with themselves and their partners, you can't unsee it. Understanding and acknowledging how our society treats women and their sexuality is the first step to changing the paradigm. We all have to deal with and reject the thoughts that have been instilled in us by society, religion, our families, and people who don't have our best interests at heart. Are you actually fine not touching your clitoris just because somebody told you not to do it in seventh grade? Break free of wherever that voice came from and make up your own mind what to believe. Be curious. What if there isn't one right way to be sexual? What if there's a different way that makes you feel whole, seen, supported, confident and sexy while receiving or giving pleasure? The answer to all of that is inside of you. Let's go there. The brain is our biggest sex organization, so it has to be included in this equation or everything else is going to fail. Hormones are quite important, but they aren't the holy grail in abstentia of everything else. Supplements, self cultivation and fancy biodegradable, earth friendly vibrators. Yes, they exist. Won't make a difference if we're still thinking the same way about sex. Success will only come when we change our views, what we're worthy of and what we deserve. We can't enjoy wonderful sex until we take back the power and own our sexuality, ask for what we need and accept and love ourselves for the miracles we are. I want you to know it's perfectly okay to feel broken. We come by that easily because of what society tells us. But you didn't get here because you're broken. You got here because of people's unwillingness to tell the truth. I want to help you challenge and throw all those worthless thoughts away and learn new ways of thinking and being. Let's work together to establish a newer, healthier view of sex than the one we received the first time around. Societal lies we all grew up with collective belief systems where a collective belief is adopted by a group as a means to realizing the group's goals. Certainly our society has goals to control a person's sexuality, especially women. How many of these lies did you learn about sex? How many do you still believe? None are real, true or right. It's time to be more open to what sexuality is. Some of these may still feel very truthy to you, but our power is unleashed when we realize these beliefs aren't facts. We are able to become more open, flexible and let the fact y beliefs go. 1. Heterosexual sex is the correct way to have sex. 1. A there's even a correct way to have sex. 2. Monogamy is the only way to be in a sexual relationship. 3. Sex means penetrative vaginal sex exclusively. 4. Men should be sexual all the time and women are not allowed to be. But then when they aren't, they have low desire and That's a problem too. 5. Women should save their sexuality for a committed relationship. 6. There are two genders and no spectrum. Each gender needs to conform fully to the way society says they should act passive sexually or pursuant sexually. 7. People over 50 don't engage in sex. 8. People with disabilities don't have sex. 9. Women can't and shouldn't be too sexual. 10. If women don't want sex, they are frigid. 11. Women should always be available for sex even if they don't want sex right now. 12. Women don't have their own sexual preferences. They should simply like PIV sexual. 13. Women need to just sleep with their husbands because they're married like it's in a job description. Even if they don't want to, saying no results in negative consequences. 14. Teens shouldn't have sex or self cultivate. 15. Masturbation is bad. Well, but not for men. 16. Two people in a sexual relationship should have the same level of desire. 16A and the low desire person is the problem. 17. Sexual needs, desires and fantasies should be stable throughout your life. In other words, what got you off then should get you off now. Boy, did Ethan Hawke get me desirous in Reality Bites. But now that I'm a grown ass woman, I look back at his character and and he smoked, was unemployed, and had a completely crappy outlook on life, which is a total current turnoff. But to redeem the actor, Hawke identifies as a feminist and has criticized the movie business being such a boys club. So circle back to how Hollywood hurts women by depicting sex so poorly and it looks like Mr. Hawke is on our side. Okay, hot again. 18. Fantasies are bad, abnormal and dirty. 19. Women should spontaneously desire sex after a long day when they're physically and emotionally drained. 20. You should always want sex more than wanting sleep. 21. You should desire sex in the months to years after having a baby. 22. Having a good sex life is hard.