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This is a paid message from GoFundMe. Meet Juan Naula. When his son was hospitalized for a viral infection, Juan started a GoFundMe to pay for medical expenses.
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It was 5k to pay the bill for my son and I needed only 22 hours. It was amazing. People really trust on GoFundMe.
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How did Juan raise $5,000 in less than a day? He posted a short video on GoFundMe telling his story in 30 seconds.
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Start your GoFundMe today at gofundme.com that's gofundme.com gofundme.com this message reflects one person's experience. Welcome to youo Are Not Broken. The podcast that challenges everything we've been taught about midlife hormones and sexuality. I'm Dr. Kelly Casperson, board certified urologist, author and a leading voice in women's sexual and hormone health. Enjoy the show. Hey everybody. Welcome back to the youe're Not Broken podcast. Today I am with Nicole McNichols and we are going to talk about sex and desire. And basically I'm just hoping to have like a full hour long podcast about heated rivalry. So.
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Oh my God.
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B
Welcome to the you are Not Broken podcast.
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A
You will not get me off that topic if you open that can of worms.
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Let's just make that the biggest can of worms yet. If. If you don't know, you will. You should soon know about heated rivalry. And. And the women. And the women who love it. Who love it.
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The straight millennial woman. All demographics who are obsessed. Yep.
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Obsessed with heater rivalry. So you're in the middle of the book tour. Where are soul sucking work of book promotion.
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A
Exactly. So the book came out February 3rd. It's been out For a couple weeks, it's been a blast.
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B
Congratulations. It has a great title. Great cover. You could be having better sex.
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A
Thank you.
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B
Are people, like, really, could you be having better? Like, are people challenging your book title?
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A
There's two questions really, that come from the book title, right? And the first is because a lot of people who are interested in this topic are in long term relationships and are interested in how do you keep the spark alive.
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B
Heated rivalry.
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A
Heated rivalry, exactly. Dress up like a hockey player. But there's also just this question of what is better sex, Right? Because I mean, that's really the premise of it. And we live in a world where there's so many ideas around performative sex that everyone wants to kind of know. Like, well, does better sex mean that it has to be 8 million style Olympic positions and that you need to be dressing up in role play every night and that there need to be chains and whips? I have chapters on all of that in my book, if that's what you're interested in. But the central thesis of this book is that better sex is connected sex, meaning you're showing up to these experiences authentically. You're tied into your own desires, you're understanding your own pleasure cycle. You're able to communicate exactly what it is that you want. And you're able to say, look, there's so many messages about incredible shame and discomfort and stigma around this topic that you're able to say, no, I'm gonna reject that. I'm gonna reject all these scripts that I'm seeing in porn or Bridgerton or whatever else it is that's giving you this standard in your head of what sex and bodies are supposed to look like. And you're showing up for it authentically, right, With a growth mindset, knowing that even bad sex can teach us things about how to have better sex. So I love it.
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B
I'm like, this is like, this is what this podcast is like 101, when you get to the basics. Cause I, I think like, when you're like, it's about communication. And I'm like, a lot. I'm like, do we just have to effing start talking about sex? We just have to start talking about sex. And it's like, it's such an unsexy answer to a sexy thing that people are kind of like, wa, wa, wa. Communication. But you're like, yeah, like, don't knock it till you try it, man.
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A
Exactly.
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B
It's. It's what all everybody like, it's hot of like, what do you want what don't you want? When do you want it? What does it mean to you? What does it mean to me? What am I good at? What are you good at?
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A
Yes. And then doing the work beforehand to know that when we're looking at our level of desire, there are all those forms of communication that happen in our relationships with our partner where we're communicating what we want. But so often a major challenge we face is not knowing what we want to begin with, right? Not understanding our bodies. Especially women who have been shamed about masturbation or any kind of, you know, using a sex toy to figure out what feels good and how you like to be touched. Because the reality is we're all different, Kelly. Right? Like, we all have slightly different sizes and shapes and positioning of anatomy. And then so much of desire is into the types of emotional states that we like to bring to sex, whether it's nurturance or excitement and adventure. You know, what is it that we wanna feel in that sexual experience?
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B
Yeah. How do you wanna feel?
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A
How do you wanna feel? Exactly. So I think a lot of times we might fall into this trap of thinking, okay, sex, I must not be attracted to my partner anymore. And it's first recognizing maybe I've stopped feeling attracted to myself. And how can I get myself back to a place where I feel strong, I feel excited about things in my life, I feel confident, I feel in touch with my body. I feel like pleasure isn't something that's just superfluous or a treat, but that really is my birthright, and that it is important both to my own psychological, mental and physical wellbeing, but also to my relationship, also to my experiences with other people.
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B
I love it. I love it. I think it's very hard, especially for women, to people be like, well, what do you want? I love the metaphor of, like, if you were just at, like, a restaurant that only served chicken, right? Your whole life there was just chicken. And then people were like, but what do you actually want? You could have whatever you want. And you're like, I don't know. I only know chicken, right? Like, it's actually like, a very daunting question to be like, I know you don't know anything besides chicken, but what do you want? I find, like, I want your tips because I find reversing it to be like, what don't you want? And you reverse engineer that of like, I don't want to be cold. I don't want to be underappreciated. I don't want to only have you have an orgasm, right? Because then you can be like, okay, so what you want is orgasmic equality, warmth, connection, blah blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So how do you help people with the what do you want question when they've only seen chicken in Hollywood films, Right?
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A
Exactly. Or if they've been eating tacos and they love tacos, but nobody wants to have tacos every single fucking night for dinner, Right?
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B
But they might be married to somebody who loves tacos. They're like, tacos till I die. Just loved love tacos.
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A
And what a lot of people don't realize is that in long term straight relationships, women actually lose their taste for tacos, metaphorically speaking, faster than men do. In other words, there's more novelty, plays more of a role in the maintenance of sexual desire for women in straight relationships than men. So. And yet we have not been given the permission to explore what else we want to try besides the chicken.
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B
And women have been punished for wanting something other than tacos because we've normalized tacos. We're like, we've got Hollywood movies about tacos. We've got top 10 country hits about tacos. We've got a man saying, tacos are fine, honey, I'm fine with tacos. Why aren't you fine with tacos? So she feels broken for not desiring tacos.
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A
Exactly. Or thinking that she should be having multiple orgasms to tacos when only 18% of women can orgasm from a fucking taco.
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B
I love how long we've kept this going. Now we have now officially talked about tacos more than heated rivalry. But I gave a talk, like, years ago with this amazing woman who was all about tantra. And she was like, I'm gonna tell women about the 17 different ways to an orgasm. And I'm like, please don't, though. They can't have one orgasm right now. And if you tell them there's 17 that they're missing, there's like a shame, competitive. Check the box. And I'm just like, let's talk about one orgasm first.
- [09:14]
A
I literally talk about that right in the beginning of my book because on the one hand, we are, you know, making progress in talking about the importance of female pleasure and explaining that there's different ways we can experience pleasure. But at a certain point, it becomes imprisoning if all of a sudden we have these goals of all these different things, K spots and Z spots and B spots. But I want to go back to this really interesting question that you raised about, okay, so how do we figure out what it Is that we want. Right. And yes, absolutely. Figuring out, okay, I don't like it when you initiate sex by grabbing my boobs. I don't like it when I'm cold. Right. I immediately thought of that study where women who are wearing socks in the MRI were more likely to orgasm than women not wearing socks. Being cozy is important.
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B
Yeah. Well, I think it comes down to, like, safety at the end of the day with that one.
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A
Well, that's true. That's true. And then also it's, you know, maybe having sex late at night after, you know, if you've got young kids and you're just exhausted and touched out is not the right time of day. So maybe you don't like that. But what's equally important, I think, and what I often advise people to do, is with your partner, think about the absolute best sex that you've ever had. Right. And this can be a fun conversation to have with your partner with your clothes on. Not in a place where you're feeling vulnerable. But just think back about what those positive experiences were. What did you do? How were you feeling? What was the emotional state? Like, maybe you were on vacation and in a different place. Maybe you were not feeling stressed out and had had a chance to unwind during that day and close your laptop or, you know, earlier or take a bath. Maybe it was that you had just had a conversation with your partner about things that you were really interested in and things that you were sort of your hopes and dreams and what your goals were. Maybe it was just that you were laughing and it had a moment where you were play wrestling on the bed and it was just playful and whimsical. Right. But I think that if we can, you know, end. Or maybe it was that amazing thing that they did with their tongue.
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B
But what if it was with a different partner a long time ago? There are people like, I don't wanna talk about that. Cause what if it wasn't with my current partner?
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I know it's amazing. Sex with your current partner because that's what you're building on. Right. And that is an important clarification. Because if you're thinking about, first of all, the best sex you had with a different partner, we are so skilled at building up in our mind.
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B
You've got Greener syndrome. Remember when I was 17 and everything was perfect and they were like. But things weren't perfect when you were 17.
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A
You were actually a hot mess. Right, Exactly. It was a disaster. Yeah. And it's, you know, what we have. And I mean, this is Another reason why I think that this world of dating has just really messed with people, because if you're thinking about all of these dates and people that you're interacting with through a dating app, who you have very little information. The human brain is extremely skilled at filling in the blanks. And what do we do? We fill in the blanks of people we don't know that well, but who we might be a little excited about with, with every trait that we can think of that comprises our list of what the ideal partner is. And so don't compare the sex that you have in front of you that is real with the real person with all of their amazing, incredible faults and flaws the way all humans have. Don't compare that with the sex that you are having with that other person, because that's not real. You're coloring it in a way that it wasn't. So think about. Right. Maybe it was early on in the relationship. Maybe it had to do with just feeling really, really seen. The conversations I've had over the years with the Gottmans is just this idea that we tend to think that in order to have hot sex, we need to have all of this mystery and desire. No, we need to have love maps.
- [13:23]
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- [13:51]
A
We need to see each other. We need to be curious about what the other person is interested in, what they want, how they're feeling. You know, if your partner is making bids for connection and is interested in. You know, I got really. I'm sort of a nerd. So a few months ago, I got really excited when they discovered that there were those molecules on some other planet that could signal life. My husband, I don't know that he cares that much about that, but he saw eyes, was excited, so he got excited. And that helped me feel turned on. Right. We don't think these things that exist outside the sexual domain play into our sex life, but they do. Right? Our sense of desire, it's not just about the positions and the places. It's feeling really seen and feeling emotionally connected with our Partner and figuring out how do I get to a place where I can experience that.
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B
I see this a lot and I feel like it's not talked about very much. Is again stereotypically because we stereotype in these sort of conversations. But women want to be desired and they don't wanna be used. And sometimes that's a fine line.
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A
Yep, exactly. Which actually is kind of the perfect segue into heated rivalry.
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B
Because
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A
if we look at that show, right? I mean, I heard about that show literally the second it dropped because my students came to me and said, oh my God, you have to see this, we need to know what you think. And so I was sort of expecting it to be non stop sex. But if you actually watch the show. Yeah, I mean, there are some really hot sex scenes. But what that show is really about is what you just mentioned, that sense of wanting to be desired. Right. It's about that longing that we see that is just such an incredible turn on. But the other thing you mentioned that's so important too is that element of wanting to feel that sense of desire, but not wanting to feel used, not wanting to feel like you're taken for granted. Which is another reason that I think heated rivalry has taken off. Because we're so used to seeing these love stories between the stereotypical man who's withholding and can't express his emotions and is closed off and the woman who's desiring him and his emotive and wants and sort of that unequal power dynamic. Whereas in heated rivalry you have two really hot guys who are equally successful in their careers, equally rich, there's this level of egalitarianism between it, which actually is really sexy. Because when you have equal power, when both people are really interested in each other, are really curious about each other, then that's gonna prevent one person from being felt like they're just being used. Right. I mean, not to get crass about this, but if you go into a sexual experience and it's just about what one person wants, what one person feels, what one person's turn ons are, it's really easy for the other partner start feeling like they're just a masturbatory sleep. I mean, sorry for that image, but that's what sex becomes reduced to when we have those really unequal power differentials.
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B
I think the power differential is not brought up. I'm to the point where I'm like, the power differential has to be brought up daily at this point because it's so not brought up. And you know, if you look At Terry Van Anders work, the heteronormative theory of living desire.
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A
I love her. I have a shrine in my heart.
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B
You know, she was on my podcast years ago.
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A
She was. I need to write her. I write all about her work in my book. I also love her book on sexual configurations theory.
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B
You're like, and now we're gonna nerd.
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A
Yeah, and now we're back.
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B
Now we're gonna nerd back.
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A
Yeah, exactly. But she actually gave. Read my, my manuscript and gave some feedback. I mean, I literally worship her so much. But her heteronormative theory of sexual desire in women, groundbreaking.
- [17:49]
B
And we need to talk about it every single day.
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A
Yes, exactly. We need to talk about it every single day. Kristin Mark has also done some really brilliant work in this area. Looking again at what are not just the factors that are happening in terms of communication, but also just the socio cultural factors, like the fact that as Van Anders points out, there is so much exhaustion being experienced by women in midlife today. Because when you look demographically, yes, women are out earning men, their careers are advancing at a faster pace, they're being educated at a faster rate. I mean, do you know how hard it is to get into college nowadays? If you're a woman, it's actually you're being held to an entirely different standard. But the reality is, at the same time, the proportion of household labor that women are doing, even if they're making more money, has doubled. And it's doubled. And it's almost like I've wondered why that is. And we can only speculate, but I mean, part of me wonders, do we feel the need to double the amount of household labor that we're doing so that we're not making our male husband feel emasculated by the fact that we're out earning him? I don't know what it is.
- [19:03]
B
I think it's so many different layers. One layer that I think is society telling women, your standard for a house is different. Like a dude's, like, I'm fine with this shit here. Right. But it's like, look at every single cleaning product, marketing. A woman's standard for what okay is. Is different than what a man's standard for what okay is.
- [19:26]
A
It is. And especially yes. And when you look at social media and all these influencers of these, you know, mom influencers and house influencers.
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B
Oh, and by the way, I just redid my kitchen by myself.
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A
Right, right, exactly.
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B
It does.
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A
I did it myself. Yeah, exactly. What's insane?
- [19:40]
B
And don't forget to have spontaneous sexual Desire though for your partner who has different standards about how a house should be run because he's not socialized to be Superman.
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A
Exactly. And that's the problem is that we have been socialized to think that it is. We should just be so grateful that now we have the opportunity to be Superwoman when nobody's really talking about the exhaustion that that brings with it.
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B
Well, and I think the other thing, you know, tying it into spontaneous sexual desire is like the exhaustion. And the sympathetic nervous system required to go, go, go, go, go is like the frontal lobe of high functioning strategic planning is very different than the brain which is rest, digest, orgasm, pleasure, present moment, parasympathetic. Right. And so we have to shift nervous system states to have good sex.
- [20:34]
A
And that's why, you know, I really, when you look at the literature, and yes, it does suggest that planning sex, and that is something that comes up again and again as a recommendation among sex therapists. But we can't just expect ourselves to be unloading the dishwasher at 8pm at night and hop into bed and think that we're just gonn get turned on and have multiple orgasms. I recommend a rivalry episode at least.
- [20:58]
B
At least. Dude, he like heated rivalry. I was just like texting girlfriends like, it's like Valium but better because it promotes sexual function instead of dysfunction. And I mean it's slightly addictive, but it soothes your nervous system for so many women. Like, like you're like, I need to just chill out and watch you to rivalry real quick.
- [21:16]
A
Yes, Exactly. And also, you know, even if we look at other shows, like seems on the surface like it is a completely different storyline, which it is. But the obsession with the Summer I Turn Pretty, which again was not just a teenager show. Older women were watching that too and getting very drawn up in the love story. It's almost just the inherent optimism that it brings. Right. And so again, it's that lightness.
- [21:40]
B
There's a lightness to it which is regulating your nervous system.
- [21:43]
A
Yes. Which comes back to the importance of pleasure. Right. Because pleasure regulates your nervous system. We tend to think like we have to like work really hard before we deserve sexual pleasure or dessert or any other kind of sweetness in our life. But the reality is that that pleasure is critical to our well being. It's critical to our ability to relax, sit within our bodies, feel embodied and yes, get into the mood for sex. And that's why, you know, I think, you know, back to this idea of planning sex. It can't just be planning the physical act of sex. Put something called an intimacy date on your calendar. Right. Put a plan where you're not gonna just expect yourself to go from that worker productivity mental state into this embodied connected central nervous system state. You need to be touching your partner, engaging in non sexual touch, cuddling, talking,
- [22:40]
B
just enjoying your partner in a non sexual way. Instead of like, we run a household together and we try to have sex sometimes.
- [22:47]
A
Right? Exactly. Like it's just something where it's, you know, you're a team, which is great, but then just, just expecting that your sex life is just gonna be one of those obligatory things that comes into your teamwork together. No. Right. Your sex life, your erotic life needs to be a place that you travel with, with your partner and get to experience all of these different emotional states and become and act out different people in your mind. Whether, you know, whether we're talking about acting out in terms of role play or just exposing sides of yourself that are just unique to what you show your partner. Right. And that represent that, that land that you get to escape. We can't expect ourselves to go from folding the laundry to immediately, you know, to nursing the kids to sleep and then immediately into bed doing that. It's not going to happen.
- [23:34]
B
Planning a trip to go see the in laws and then being like, I, hey, I don't desire, I don't spontaneously desire sex anymore.
- [23:40]
A
No, I don't think there's anything that makes me more dry than a trip to my.
- [23:44]
B
I read this stat and I have not fact checked myself on this in a while. But a stat was like, for, for eons of human marriages, the average marriage lasted seven years before somebody died.
- [23:57]
A
Wow.
- [23:58]
B
Because average life expectancy was like 47. And so here we are, 25 years into a marriage and we're like, why don't we have spontaneous sexual desire anymore? And you're like, this is brand new stuff, people. Brand new stuff. We're trying to figure out it is.
- [24:12]
A
And you know, if you look at anthropological evidence, we're meant to kind of have this strong connection for maybe the first couple of years and then it dies out. And why is that? You know, anthropologists think maybe it's because if you think, think about the typical life cycle of a relationship. In procreation, the couple has sex, they have a child. By the time it's two years old, that's when it can walk and the mother doesn't have to be carrying it and she's not as vulnerable. What's the evolutionary advantage of that point? It's to find another Mate and to increase biological diversity and increase the diversity in the gene pool so you have sex with somebody else. But that doesn't mean, right, that we can't create that novelty in long term relationships. Right. And you know, I mean, I've been married for 22 years, years. And at the risk of TMI, I will say that my sex life is better than ever. But it's because I gave it the attention that it needs. And we found ways to create novelty and to continue understanding each other and to address the household labor in ways that make both of us feel equal and where we've designed our lives so that both of us feel like we have our dreams that are being supported because that's what's really critical. But I do think, you know, specifically, you know, when you look at, you know, relation, long term couples and you look at, okay, if we interview, you know, if we look at surveys. David Frederick did, you know, beautiful work on this, looking at thousands and thousands of couples and saying, okay, what are the secrets of the ones that report the highest levels of sexual satisfaction? It's things they do inside and outside the bedroom. They're having oral sex because back to our taco metaphor, they're finding that there's better ways to have an orgasm for most women than penetrative sex. So in other words, that just correlates with the fact that they're trying new things, they're engaging in novelty. But one of the beauties of this research is that when he looks at this graph of how much novelty is needed for those high levels of sexual satisfaction, it kind of plateaus at about 12 times a year, which is like once a month. Meaning you don't need to be having wild different sex every single time to have that novelty. It might be as simple as trying something like lifted missionary and putting it a pillow underneath the woman's pelvis to increase different types of angles that stimulate the clitoris from the, you know, internally. It could be trying out, you know, different types of sensation play. It could be having sex at a different time of day. It could be getting a hotel room in the same city that you live in. Because when you had that conversation about the sex, best sex you've ever had, it turned out it was while you were on vacation. So go recreate that right? Put that effort into it.
- [26:59]
B
I love that. I think it also, it correlates with the, the research looking at flow state and like how bringing in Emily Anatomy of Desire book of like, what actually flow state is which sex can become flow state. But if you look at the level of challenge, AKA novelty. Like what's, it's, it's actually a very small amount, right. Like people are like, oh, and then we need to hang by the rafters and have a swing.
- [27:22]
A
You don't, you can, you absolutely can. But the key is you don't want to feel like you need to become a completely different person. Right? In other words, you want to be able to explore aspects of fantasies and emotions that you only show your partner, but you don't need to be having performative types of sex that just don't feel right to you. Right. That feel, you know, and, and again, yeah, like back to that flow state. It's about pushing that challenge so that it's a little bit of novelty, right? And it's maybe, you know, maybe it's a little bit of spanking, maybe it's a little bit of having your hands pinned above your head in a very consensual, pre discussed way. But yet that novelty is maintained in a continuous way. It's also, you know, back to this very idea you mentioned at the beginning, the communication. Understanding that it's not just the communication that's happening at one point, like during the sexual experience, it's looking at communication that's happening before, during and after the sexual experience. Because the reality is that the pleasure cycle we know at a neurological level is not just occurring at the moment we're having the orgasm or, or biting into the chocolate chip cookie or whatever it is that's bringing pleasure. There's a wanting stage, a liking stage and a learning stage. And we need to be communicating during all three phases of that pleasure cycle if we wanna be optimizing the experiences that we're having.
- [28:47]
B
I think, you know, in talking about spontaneous desire again, everybody thinks that the spontaneous desire for sex happens before sex and really like it can actually happen during sex. And oftentimes and it's not talked about, it happens after sex. You're like, that was so good. I always forget, I always forget how good that is. Remind me we should do that more often. That was so good.
- [29:07]
A
Couples tell me all the time, why aren't we, why don't we do this more often? Exactly, let's do this again tomorrow. Yeah. Goes back to this fascinating thing about human beings, which is that behavior and thoughts are a two way street. Meaning sometimes, you know, and look, conversations around consent, which is, have been critically important, you know, have had a little bit of this unintended consequence of, I think, making a lot of women feel like if they aren't totally in the mood and have that spontaneous desire right from the beginning that they shouldn't even try to have a sexual experience. It gets slippery. It gets very slippery. But the reality is that sometimes that pathway from desire to arousal to physiological response is quite circular. And meaning your body needs to to be cuddled up against your partner. You need to be slowly touching, slowly exploring. And you might find that it's only after that touching initiates that your body begins to feel warmed up. And then suddenly your body thinks, oh this, oh yeah. Oh yeah. Okay, let's do this.
- [30:20]
B
I remember this.
- [30:21]
A
This feels amazing. One of my favorite pieces of date shows that you know, although people in long term relationships, when you survey them at the beginning, which do you think is more satisfying, planned sex or spontaneous sex? Everyone's like, oh well, obvious. Spontaneous. Obviously spontaneous sex. When you ask them to keep daily diary studies and rate how satisfying the sexual experience was, they're exactly equal. The people who are reporting that it was planned, that they went into the experience not totally knowing if they wanted it, but gave it a try, got turned on, ended up having lots of orgasms. Those people say that those experiences were just as satisfying. So yeah, we need to get rid of this idea that spontaneous sex is the only way to have a great experience because there are multiple pathways in.
- [31:06]
B
I love it. I love it so much. So you teach young people, college age people, and here we are, the Gen Xers thinking like, oh, young people have it so easy now. They have so much access to everything. They're fine. And I'm like, they're not fine.
- [31:22]
A
They're so not fine.
- [31:23]
B
They are not fine at all. So can you give us some insight into the like college brains right now and sex?
- [31:30]
A
So many people our age wanna especially understand this because we have kids, right, who are gonna be this age or we're working with kids that are this age. So the dynamics of the sex and dating lives of people and their college age students today, you know, Gen Z is extremely different than the challenges that we're dealing with. You know, first of all, this is a generation that grew up, up mostly learning about sex from porn. When you know, I poll students in my class about their porn use habits, I don't even bother asking them, have you ever seen porn? The question is, how often do you watch it, right? And how early did you start watching it? And the benefit of having such a large class is that what I find polling my own students largely maps onto what we see with nationally representative data, which is that they're all kind of starting to watch it at a somewhat regular frequency around age 13, 14. There's some data showing. I know this figure of 11 gets tossed around a lot. I think that number is more when they maybe stumble upon it accidentally, maybe see it one time at a friend's house. But when they start actively going on to pornhub and looking for it is around 12 to 14. You know, the issue is, you know, we can look at policy that's popping up into place. For example, in Washington state, there's, you know, laws in the legislature right now that are being considered to make it so you have to present an ID before you're allowed to go on to something like pornhub. You know, of course, the danger with that is that then you would limit access to any kind of sex education just because the definition of porn is so fuzzy. But anyway, going back to this, kids today have worse sex education than we had when we were growing up. There's actually more bills coming out now that are limiting access to medically accurate, comprehensive education that includes things about LGBTQIA identities. That is limited in terms of its, you know, explanation of, you know, even just how the mechanics of sex work. It's really poor sex education, it's pretty bad.
- [33:35]
B
Like, medical accuracy is not required in the majority of states.
- [33:38]
A
Can you imagine if we allowed history classes to exist that weren't required to be historic?
- [33:42]
B
They have to be historically accurate.
- [33:45]
A
Just make it up.
- [33:46]
B
Just make it up and spend two hours talking about something.
- [33:49]
A
Or if we show people images of sex or bodies, that it's gonna make them all of a sudden wanna go out and have tons and tons of sex. No, kids are gonna be interested in sex, no matter. So why don't we just give them the information so they can.
- [34:04]
B
We need adults. We need adults to help.
- [34:06]
A
Yes, we do.
- [34:07]
B
Just like anything else. What I. This is, what if I got my way, and. Because now I want to hear your opinion too, but if I got my way, I want no vulva vagina owner to ever put anything in their vagina without being aroused first. I feel like, if I can. To me, I'm like, that's the lowest hanging fruit. If I can just. If I can just instill that your pelvis is like, is this a tampon? Like, what is this? Like? You must be like, we don't talk about arousal at all. And if you look at the stats on pain, pain, desire, you're never gonna want something that hurts. Teaching that pelvises have blood flow and erections and arousal. I'm like, that would go so far as far as helping desire and pain and all that stuff. That's what I was like. That's what I would teach them.
- [34:53]
A
We didn't even map the full anatomy of the clitoris until Helen O' Connell in 2005. I mean, the idea that it actually has these internal struct.
- [35:01]
B
I was joking last week. I was like, I just need to start talking about female erections more. Because people look at you like you have two heads when you say female erection.
- [35:09]
A
They do, but it is. I mean, from the embryonic tissue. The clitoris is coming from the exact same. All of our genitals are arising from the exact same tissue. The head of the clitoris comes from the same tissue as the head of the penis. The inner labia just fused together to form a penis. Yeah. I mean, to form a shaft.
- [35:28]
B
What would you. If you had your low hair fruit for your college classes? What are you. Like, if they just knew this, we'd be in a better place. Honestly.
- [35:36]
A
I think anatomy is a big part of it, But I think if they understood that what they're seeing in porn is not real sex and that it
- [35:44]
B
is should be like a disclaimer at the beginning. Like, there's a director and a sound guy and makeup artists, and guess what's being cut.
- [35:52]
A
Like, the communication, the consent, the failures. Like when it doesn't go wrong. When he loses his erection. Right. When you know that the times when
- [36:01]
B
she gets a hamstring cramp.
- [36:02]
A
Exactly. When she's like, not, you know, or. And do you really think she's having an orgasm from this jackhammering that's going on for an hour that you're watching? Right. So please don't jackhammer. So, you know, and yet, even though.
- [36:17]
B
When are we taking this show on stage, Nicole? Right.
- [36:20]
A
I know we need to go on tour. I'm so ready,
- [36:25]
B
dude. But before we have to wrap up. But I need people to. Because we shared before you came on your journey with midlife hormone therapy. So many people think that women's sexual health is just psychological. Like, it's just. You just need to have better thoughts about sex or you just need to schedule it. Blah, blah. But it's like when the hormones exit, when we live longer than our ovary hormone production, things happen. And sex is something that changes, whether it's just pelvic dryness or desire or the brain or just focusing or being able to get sleep. Right. Like, we can't. I think we can't talk about sex in midlife without talking about hormones. So can you quick just share your journey on that before we wrap?
- [37:07]
A
Couldn't agree more. And just to back that up, yes, my own personal journey is. Let's go back to about five years ago. I was feeling a little bit stuck in life in general, but I was also moody. I was flying off the handle at my kids. I couldn't really focus. I had sort of lost my desire for sex, which, as a human sexuality professor, made me feel like this huge imposter, as you can imagine. And then I started to kind of think, like, maybe it isn't normal to feel like this. And then, I'm not making this up, but I started an Instagram account to try to build up sort of all these educational videos that I wanted to do. And one of these accounts that I found was. Was Kelly Casperson. Have you heard of her? You should totally follow her. You should totally follow her. And I was like, oh, my God, hormone replacement therapy. And then I started hearing about more conversations about this. And I had a friend who took me aside. She's a couple years older and kind of like a big sister and had found. Because, you know, the thing is, Kelly, a lot of these OBGYNs, a lot of them do and are aware of the most recent research, but a lot of them are still scared shitless of that 2002 study that told us all that it was dangerous. And so sometimes you really do need to seek out somebody who has a lot of knowledge and is really up to date on the most recent research. So she did that. She connected me to a health practitioner here in Seattle. Shout out to Dr. Kate Kass, and yay. And, yeah, I'm on oral estrogen, oral progesterone, and I have a testosterone pellet. And it has changed my life. I don't think that I would have been able to write a book and build my career to the level that it is now and have the focus to build a platform and speak my truth if I hadn't had access. And, yes, all of the psychological factors and the unpacking of the sociocultural dynamics that make it exhausting to be a woman today in general, are very important. But we can't have a conversation about female sexual desire without acknowledging the huge important role that hormones play in all of this. So my message to any woman in midlife who is struggling with desire is, yes, focus on those psychological factors. Think about what you want, what drives you, what might be getting in the way of your ability to feel present and mindful during sex, whether it's body image or but also do this in conjunction with the hormone element of it. Because we all need to be having better sex and we can't do that if our hormones aren't balanced. I couldn't agree more. Yes, totally.
- [40:02]
B
All part of it, which makes it such a fascinating topic. I think I could talk to you for hours. And I'm gonna manifest me coming to be a guest lecturer in your class because I really, really wanna talk. I wanna talk to the college kids.
- [40:14]
A
That would be amazing. Amazing.
- [40:16]
B
Ah, let's have a conversation with them. It'll be very good. We'll talk about female erections.
- [40:21]
A
Please. I would love it.
- [40:23]
B
That'd be so good. Well, everybody follow her. You're amazing on Instagram. I love your content. I am sure I owe you some collabs at this point.
- [40:31]
A
For sure. I love it. And go buy my book.
- [40:33]
B
Yes, Having better sex is just out right now. It's available and it'll teach you many things that you never learned. Because sex ed is shitty.
- [40:42]
A
Exactly. Exactly.
- [40:45]
B
Awesome.
- [40:46]
A
Thank you, Kelly. It's amazing.
- [40:50]
B
If you found this episode funny, helpful, insightful, please take a moment to follow rate and share the you are not Broken podcast with someone who might need this conversation. That support is how this information reaches more people. And thank you. For courses, books and my monthly membership and the Casperson clinic information, visit KellyCaspersonMD.com this podcast and all content from Dr. Kelly Casperson is intended for educational and informational purposes only and this is not a substitute for individual medical coaching or psychological advice, diagnosis or treatment. Always seek the guidance of your qualified healthcare professional with any questions you may have regarding your health. Never disregard or delay medical advice because of something you've heard on this or other podcasts. Thanks for being here. And remember, you are not broken.