Stephanie Welch on Sex, Society, and Self (Part 1)

Hello friends, welcome back to Everyday Ancestral. I am your host, James Barry. Today, our guest is Stephanie Welch. I've known Stephanie about 3 or 4 years now. We met through the Weston A. Price Foundation. Stephanie is a self-described disruptive anthropologist, ancestral health advocate, and a pioneer of evolutionary feminism. She personally dedicates her life to exploring the boundaries of relationships and sexuality and using an evolutionary lens to examine and challenge many commonly held beliefs and taboos that prevent us from attaining our full human potential. She brings a highly multidisciplinary approach to promoting human flourishing. She highlights how her career as a massage therapist taught her discipline and the impact of desexualization in professional settings. And she introduced the idea of ancestral health as a framework for understanding societal mismatches in gender norms and personal relationships. So please enjoy Everyday Ancestral and our guest, Stephanie Welch, episode 1 of 2. Enjoy. Let's start with the question that is on everyone's lips. At the age of 19, you overcame extreme nail biting. How did you do it? How did you do it?

Okay, well, I think, I think 18. It was at the, at the end of high school. It was at the encouragement of my aunt, actually. She was a very Very important person in my life, almost kind of like a second mom to me. And, uh, this, this was a habit that plagued me all of my childhood. Uh, you know, it was just—

Like, when did it start, you think?

As early as I know. I don't, I don't remember this ever not being an issue. You know, I would just chew them down to nubs, tear, shred. They looked awful. It was a huge embarrassment, right? So it was one of the things that I felt like, you know, contributed among other things to my being a little bit of a late bloomer in early life was just how I presented myself. And let's see if you can see now. I take—

Yeah, look at those. Now those are, those are not fake. Those, that's your actual nails.

No, they're nails. I mean, I use a, I get gel polish, so it's, you know, it's very durable. But they're, they're natural nails. So yeah, I just—

Beautiful.

I overcame that and, uh, and, and take very good care of them now. And, um, that, that did change, uh, when I was a massage therapist. The very first day of massage school, they said, um, fingernails are no longer part of your life. And I was actually a little bit like concerned, you know, thought, you know, what have I done? This was something that was Uh, you know, so important to me, but I thought, you know, this is, this is a path I want to take in my life and it's more important to, to, to follow this than to hang on to this idea that I need my, my nails.

So, um, now, did you do anything specific mindset-wise? Like how, how did you actually stop biting your nails? Because I, my, my two, my two daughters do. And so I would, I mean, I would genuinely want to learn, was there a trick? Is it, was it just mindset of like, okay, I'm going to stop doing it? What did you actually do to stop yourself?

You know what? I think it's a very tactile habit because for me, the thing that made the biggest difference was just taking care of them. So I had to learn to file them super diligently. And I also, you know, started using nail polish as something to kind of protect them and, and, you know, coat any possible imperfections. Later on, diet helped as You know, when I shifted to more paleo nutrition, the quality of the nails actually improved, but I did take care of them. And really it was being very, very dedicated to filing them very carefully so that there was no rough edges, anything like that, because it was the, you know, the sensation of some imperfection, some roughness, some jagged bit that would, that would cause me to just, they just went to my mouth and I would have— It would, you know, in an attempt to remove that roughness or whatever it was.

So as they were smooth, as you've kind of smoothed them out, then you didn't have that inclination to do that.

Yeah, so it was keeping them perfectly cared for, manicured, smooth. And, you know, I did that myself, just bought some, you know, emery board and files, small clippers, and took very good care of them and got in the habit of, like I said, putting a little Just a coat of nail polish, anything on there to keep them smooth. And, and yeah, that made a huge difference. If I, if I got started now. Yeah.

Yeah, go ahead. If you got started now.

If I, if it, if it happened again, I have a terrible time keeping them out of my mouth, but I know I'm so, I'm dedicated to fixing it as quickly as possible.

Oh, okay. Interesting. But now you mentioned that you saw yourself as a late bloomer. You labeled yourself that. Now, what, how much, Like, what makes you say that? What is a late bloomer in your, your experience?

I was definitely the, like, dorky nerdy kid, um, all throughout elementary, middle school, high school. Uh, so, you know, I, I had a terrible time. Uh, you know, I didn't, I didn't believe my, uh, my dad when I was a kid and he said, one day, you know, you're going to be interested in boys. And I was like, nah, that's never going to happen. Right. Uh, but oh, it happened big time. Uh, you know, puberty kicked in and I was, you know, I had crushes every single year. I can remember like in, in middle school and in high school, I would have my big crush of the year and I would like follow them around. I would try to sit near them all year and finally I would try to get up the courage to like ask them out by the end of the year. And I got rejected every single time.

And so you did, you did the asking out.

I tried. Nobody ever asked me out. It was a, I mean, yeah, non-starter. Um, but I, you know, I didn't know how to kind of communicate. I didn't know how to present myself. And so I'm, I may, I may be a little bit autistic. I've never been tested for that, but countless people have assessed that as part of what's contributed to my personality. Over the years. So yeah, so I could not get a date for the life of me in, you know, up through high school until my first year of college. And, and that was, that was the case up until that point. And I, I overcame quite a few things that I think helped me end up in relationships for about the next decade after that. And then I regressed into some of the things that In terms of how I presented myself in the world, that I stopped doing some of the things that I learned. And I had another period in around 2014, '15 into '16 where I struggled with that again. But so I have a lot of familiarity with the common male perspective of rejection and having difficulty Finding and getting into relationships. And so it's one thing that gave me a lot of empathy for people over the years is being in that position myself.

What would you say? So when you at first were feeling rejected, and then you said you kind of found some things that you changed right before college, you mentioned one of those previously to me was like you got contacts. Like, so where, where is it? Was it just aesthetic things or what, what actually changed? And then what was it later that you realized, ah, this isn't working for me anymore. And that, you know, so what did you initially change to kind of get, find that, that physical connection with men? And then what did you eventually change to find that connection within yourself?

Yeah. Well, you know, I'm sure that some of it had to do with behavior and personality and trying to learn how to connect with people. better. But aesthetics has played a big role for me. Certainly that, that has been something where, you know, as I said, as a, as a, as a kid, I didn't know how to present myself. I had some of these things working against me in terms of the, you know, I wore very thick glasses, I had my nails were unpresentable. I didn't know how to dress or just present myself in a way that exhibited cues of femininity. And I started figuring some of those things out in terms of, yes, I got, I got contacts. I stopped biting my nails and I learned a little bit about my hair, um, right around the end of high school, just getting into college. So I started putting some of those pieces together and it definitely helped, you know, obviously that's not the only factor going on, but that was a puzzle piece that Definitely contributed, uh, beneficially in my case. And then one of the, as I mentioned, when I got into massage school, the nails, which is the first thing you asked about, that was the first thing to go again. And this was around 2009 to 2010 as I was in school and beginning my massage therapy career. Um, the nails went first and then kind of immediately the jewelry. Because if you're massaging somebody, you know, you can't have things, you can't have like, you know, things on your hands, arms, wrists, that's going to be getting in the way of giving someone a massage. And of course you don't want anything that's going to dangle and touch the person on the table. You can't have hair falling on them, right? So if you're going to have long hair, you have to wear it back or up all the time if you're working. And it is a lot of work to take care of long hair. I don't know if you've ever had to, you know, do this yourself, James, but But it takes a lot of—

it's surprising, but I did at one point, at one point.

So, so it's a lot of time and energy and products and styling and washing and waiting for it to dry, or, you know, anyway, it's a lot of work if you're not going to wear it down. Uh, it's hard to justify having, you know, putting the effort into having long hair. So I started cutting my hair shorter and shorter. And of course, you know, the massage therapy profession The regulation of it largely exists to legitimize it and to differentiate it from anything that could remotely be misconstrued as prostitution. And so there's so much in it that is oriented around desexualization of both the treatment and in many ways the therapist. And so that was something where, of course, you know, so you, for example, you dress modestly because you don't want to give somebody the wrong impression. And, you know, so you're there, like, that was another thing, you know, my clothing started becoming the most kind of simple, basic, modest, nondescript, boring, completely non-accentuating, um, kind of clothing. And so like every aspect of how I was aesthetically presenting myself started to dissipate from around that time when I started my massage career. And around 2014, I was in the process of transitioning out of a relationship and trying to date again. And I found myself right back in that same position I was in, that nobody would go out with me. And if, uh, you know, I kind of looked in the mirror at one point and I thought, well, I kind of look like a boy at this point. And I just know that that is not helping me here, right? Again, so I, you know, I'd been at that point, I'd had relationships for, you know, at least 10 years at that point. I was consistently in long-term relationships. So I knew that it wasn't only personality factors. I knew there was something that was that, you know, that I had the capability to be in a relationship, but, um, but there was something that was not working for me in dating and that That kind of prompted my sort of quest for reclaiming femininity and, you know, starting with what are these sort of external indicators of aesthetics and attraction that I can present and that might make a difference. And, you know, I realized at that time too, that this really aligned with my perspectives on ancestral health. Because, you know, we've, we've talked about many aspects of ancestral health and evolutionary mismatch. And I saw that in many areas of life. Obviously nutrition is one of them that, you know, we understand that an ancestral perspective on diet is more helpful than much of the conventional guidance that we have had. But I saw the same thing when it came to concepts of Masculinity and femininity and relationships. And much like the conventional guidance had shown up in terms of nutrition, which we had to kind of overcome the sort of FDA guidelines and the food pyramid and all that. When I was in college, I was also getting all of this teaching kind of from a gender ideological perspective that diminished the sex differences between men and women. And I sort of got this impression from a variety of gender studies classes and like gender in art that, that everything about, uh, that gender was just completely socially constructed and that, you know, there's, there's really no difference between men and women except this incidental, you know, genitalia differences. And that was just another thing that I started to really question as I was using an evolutionary lens to understand the world, that is that really the case? And, you know, is denying differences in our biology and physiology and psychology, is that helping us in the realm of pursuing human flourishing? Or is this another area that we really need to consider from an ancestral perspective? So I started to think about that, I think, One of the most influential books I read around that time was, uh, was Sex at Dawn. Is that one— are you familiar with, uh—

No, I'm not familiar with that one.

Yeah, it's by, uh, by Chris Ryan. And, you know, it talks about, um, it talks about many aspects of sexual dimorphism and how it contributed to different behavior patterns between men and women for our reproductive strategies and And how that affects us now. So it's kind of, it's known for providing kind of an evolutionary argument for polyamory. And so, which was something I had actually gravitated towards a long time before I encountered it as an evolutionary perspective. So those things were tying together to me that, uh, that the, the ancestral perspective on men and women and masculinity and femininity and relationships.

Mm-hmm.

And, you know, how we express ourselves, that, that might be a really key part of another aspect of human flourishing that goes beyond just nutrition and fitness and other aspects of mental health.

How would you define femininity?

How would I define it? Um, let's see. I haven't really tried to do this. Uh, I guess Let me think about that. Um, and I'd probably have to cut, uh, uh, think about it longer to give you a better definition.

That's okay. Just, just like what's kind of your elevator pitch of like, if someone said, well, what is femininity to you?

Would it would be, um, exhibiting characteristics that are aligned with our evolutionary expression of of female versus male kind of biology, physiology, psychology. So I look at it in terms of, again, how I present myself aesthetically is just one piece of the puzzle. Of course, we get a lot of information about one another from visual indicators, but also a lot of psychological aspects that women have Certain motivations that are influenced by our biology, for example, towards cooperation and sharing of resources, you know, as the sex with the much greater obligatory investment in offspring, which is referring to kind of the fact that we do the gestation of offspring, you know, the 9 months plus breastfeeding and so on amount of care that is obligatory to the female sex. Um, that has also produced related psychological tendencies, including the need for cooperation because the, the risk level is so high given how much we have, how much energy has to go into every single offspring that we produce. If something were to happen to us, there's a very, very high risk to our children if, um, If something happens to us, there's a need to have more caretakers who are invested in the well-being of our offspring. So there are tendencies that are more feminine towards cooperation in— I actually like to think of the female psychology as a little bit more socialist and the male psychology as a little bit more capitalist and opportunistic.

Mhm.

In terms of how we exhibit ourselves. So there's some of that. So another example, I live— rather than living with a romantic partner, I currently live with a female housemate, and we support each other in terms of sharing of resources and responsibilities and things. So that's part of that kind of cooperative nature that we have. There's also kind of the sense that femininity is more associated with Being, and masculinity is more associated with doing. So there is something that we, you know, kind of express in that way in terms of the, you know, as a woman, my presence and the care and nurturing and just qualities that I contribute just from the kind of essence of vitality has a certain value that I bring to the equation. And it's beneficial, or it can be beneficial, to recognize the alignment of that, that that is something that we as women, from a perspective of femininity, contribute kind of the value in our just life and vitality. And it's a more masculine approach to be more oriented towards action and outcomes and results and Delivering on things. So if we look at those as things that we can be attracted to as well, as a woman, I'm attracted to men who are very effective and get things done, and if we see that as something that we can align toward positively rather than something that we need to fight against, then that can be helpful. So I would say one of the— when I think of evolutionary feminism is a term that I've used, and it's the idea that rather than try to have women make progress by becoming more indistinguishable from men, from modern men, we have more to gain by becoming more similar to ancient women. So in terms of some of it would be kind of the roles that we play in terms of nurturing and domestic contributions and just kind of the complementarity of the kind of male and female, um, again, ways that we exhibit biologically, physiologically, socially.

So, um, well, I definitely want to explore that, the difference between Kind of femininity in the past versus how we see it play out now. But before we fully go there, do you think that femininity and masculinity equally share their contrasts? And what I mean by that is that it seems to me that usually femininity is defined by masculinity, but is masculinity defined by femininity? Because it doesn't seem like it. It's Particularly while we've been in such a patriarchal age, you know what I mean? That a lot of times femininity or what it means to be a woman, particularly in very specific sections of our society. So let's just say like executive world or, or within entrepreneurship, like femininity and the power of a woman sometimes seem like they were Being defined by how they compared to their male counterparts and almost like the woman had to be like the man in that position. But I know that you don't look at it like that. So I would love you to kind of share, well, what, like, like, what does it mean to be a feminine woman? Let's just say in an executive or entrepreneurial capacity, like, How is femininity? How can we define femininity without comparing it to masculinity? Well, can we?

Yeah. So that's an interesting question. And I think if we're, you know, if we're talking about a role of CEO and how someone is going to express masculinity or femininity, um, I think there's something somewhat inherent in that type of a role that is a more masculine expression. Which could be embodied by someone who's either male or female. And so when I mentioned evolutionary feminism, in our ancient past, there was a huge value that was seen in women as being in the roles of domesticity and child-rearing and motherhood and things like that that we've actually devalued. So, you know, in the attempt to pursue kind of independence for women, this is where we've done this thing where we sort of decided that the way to make women independent was to model what men have done in terms of going outside the home and getting into the labor force as a way of acquiring money and resources. And, you know, so a CEO role is essentially doing that. It's, it's not a, an aspect of kind of domestic or child-rearing contribution. It, it's something, uh, external to that. And in the process of, of encouraging women to pursue those kinds of roles, which is not in itself a bad thing, but what it has done is it's actually devalued the, uh, the contributions of things like domestic labor and childcare. Because those used to at least have some kind of monetary representation when it came to a single-income family, say, where the husband was going out to work outside the home and bring in the money, and then pay for the needs and expenses of the wife and children. The work that she was putting in was financially represented in that agreement by the fact that he was bringing in the money and, you know, paying for her expenses. But we took this view where we wanted women to become independent again, which is in itself a great thing, but we chose this model where the only thing that has a monetary value is work outside the home. So that's one of the things that I think has actually been somewhat detrimental is that we have devalued all of the things that relate to, you know, taking care of a domestic environment, uh, you know, cooking, childcare. You can, you know, you can get paid for cleaning someone else's house. You can get paid for, uh, babysitting someone else's children or for cooking someone else's food if you're a chef or something like that. But we've just sort of eliminated the value of these things in our Monetary representation. And a friend of mine once said, I don't know where—

That's such a good point. That's so interesting. You're right.

I don't know where this, if this is a real statistic or just a, or just a generalization, but she said, you know, if you counted all of the, the contributions that women make inside the home, our GDP would double. And, you know, we just, we don't think of it that way.

Right. Absolutely. Now, now what's interesting though, is we have a very big movement happening around tradwife. Or trad women. Have you heard about that? So people are looking for more traditional femininity, traditional women, a lot of men or boys to a degree, because it's a lot of young men, I guess I should say. So what do you think that's about? Do you think that in a sense that is an example of ancestral times stepping, us kind of almost Rubber banding back to ancestral times and realizing actually we've lost our way and that this is something that's more desirable. Do you think that's more that evolutionary feminism and, or, because some, some people would argue that it's actually going back, it's backstepping, but I don't, I don't gather that that's how you would look at it.

No, I'm inclined to see it as kind of a rebound that we, we took a step in a direction that is less less akin to our nature. And people are seeing that, yeah, it doesn't— it's not always working out for them the way that they might have imagined. And they actually do have a desire for a certain degree of greater differentiation between the sexes and for a greater return to certain division of labor that has actually been very effective. And You know, I'd say somebody who I hear talking about this a lot is Jordan Peterson, and he always gives an example, a couple of examples. One is that in countries with the greatest amount of sexual equality, you find the tendencies between men and women to gravitate towards different types of employment are more gender-differentiated than in other places. So More women tend to be nurses, more men tend to, you know, other kind of like mechanical and labor pursuits and things like that. When given free rein, we actually have tendencies to move in these directions. And so it's, you know, it's not necessarily a bad thing to recognize that these are Um, things that we're, that we're good at and that we maybe have moved away from and that there's value, uh, into coming back, you know, towards that.

Yeah. Well, you meant, so you mentioned like you, you, you, well, you sort of mentioned it, but I'll go into it a little bit more. So you actually got a master's in art history. So clearly that kind of, that like bug towards studying the past was really strong in you.

Yeah.

But then you quickly switched to a more physical, very, like, body-centered career, which is the massage therapy. And then, of course, you've mentioned, you know, your interest in nutrition as well. What was it like? What is it that has drawn you? Because now, I mean, we're kind of segueing into kind of some of the work you're doing now. But, and what led you to that, but like, you're now even, you know, you're delving into exploring what sexuality is and intimacy, physical intimacy without sexuality. Like, you're, you're kind of exploring the whole realm of physicality, in my judgment. So what, why do you think that became a focus? Like, was, did you feel like this was missing from, you know, current society?

Well, you know, I think I've, I've spent most of my life trying to understand human nature and What we need in order to live successful, fulfilling lives. And, you know, I, in my teens, I moved away from religion as a helpful method of guidance for how to figure that out. I kind of rejected that. And I'd had this sort of a little bit of an evolutionary mind, Um, but it came, it came into play. Um, and you pointed out, yeah, around the time when I was completing my master's degree. So I went to school with actually no idea what I wanted to do, and I was just studying interesting things. So I had ended up with a master's degree in art history. You know, of course, yeah, stuff from the past definitely was very interesting to me. Um, but the catalyst at that point Was I, I was, um, my second partner that I had, long-term partner, was somebody who was in very poor health at the time. He was not in great health when we met, and it got progressively worse over the course of about 4 years. And, you know, when he was, uh, 28, he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, and that was just halfway through our relationship. And I really started to see that there was that things were deteriorating around me. So that was a prime example kind of in my close sphere that there were, that something was going wrong, that people were suffering, struggling in a lot of ways. And, you know, I was convinced and proved to be right that lifestyle factors were a major, playing a major role in his health. And It started to become important to me to try to understand what was going wrong and how to potentially fix it. Because I didn't want to go down that path.

I knew, um, but you weren't, so you weren't experiencing any issues around your lifestyle or eating at that time?

I was not at that time. So of course there are many factors going into the equation, you know, um, uh, I would say, you know, we were eating similar diets at the same time, but not, uh, not identical, not certainly quantity was not identical and things like that. But I knew I just started to get an interest in nutrition as something that, that, that seemed to be important. And around, it was about 2008 to 2009, I was finishing the master's degree. I was working in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. And I was, was in the basement of the, the Egyptian basement. And I was cataloging ancient Nubian artifacts and things like that. And acting as a research assistant, helping to set up exhibits. And something kind of clicked for me that the work that I was doing there, even though it was interesting, was not that relevant to people's day-to-day lives in terms of the needs that were out there. And again, the health things that I was seeing around me, And I was trying to decide whether or not I should continue on to a PhD in art history, or if I should do something different. And it really, things came together with the idea of going to massage school and getting into the health and wellness space as a way to connect with people and really understand kind of what was going wrong, like what people were struggling with their health. I was at that point, I didn't think that becoming a doctor was going to be the best path, not only because I'd already been in school for a really long time at that point, but I wasn't sure that the traditional medical model was going to be the right answer. So I wanted to continue to learn and explore. And so, you know, massage therapy became the first thing that That drew me in that direction. And of course—

But why the, why the body versus new? Because you even just said I was getting into nutrition. So why didn't you then continue into nutrition? Why did you move towards the body?

Well, they, I simultaneously pursued both of them. So, I mean, I had, I had long thought about massage as something that I was interested in or wanted to study. I had I had done it. I learned to massage myself as a young kid and just feeling, you know, what was going on in my body. So I was kind of attuned to it. The same partner who I was with at that time, I used to massage him all the time to try to address the symptoms that he was having. And there were many, many factors. In fact, I played an online video game for many years.

Mhm.

Of adolescence in which I played a healer character, and, you know, her special power was to be able to touch people and take away their pain and injuries. And so I saw this, and it just kept coming across my, you know, awareness as something that was a viable and quick turnaround career path as well from the art history, and it just seemed like something where I could get into the health and wellness space Readily with a, with a toolkit that I'd already been wanting to enhance for myself that would give me a lot of access to people. And there's, there's, you know, nutrition is just one piece of the puzzle. In my paradigm of recivilization, I've got 7 pillars and nutrition is the first one, but physical health is the second one and, you know, mental health and it goes on from there. So.

Yeah, we're going to come back to those for sure. I want to talk about that.

Yeah.

But so, So, because I think it, I think you, you may, may have nailed it right there. I wonder, because you're saying it was more immediate, like, because, because clearly massage therapy has a much, um, kind of more grounded, clear path of like, okay, I do this and then I can start charging this and making, you know, and you can immediately incorporate the career versus nutrition is very like, how do I make money from this? What do I, what job do I do? So I totally get that, particularly if you're coming off of like art history. You know, being in school for so long and looking for something kind of like very concrete, but then you left massage therapy. And I know you already shared that part of that was about kind of realizing that you were losing your femininity, or at least how you defined femininity at the time and, and wanting to kind of recapture that. And then that took you to Nevada.

Uh huh.

Can you talk about that? Because That to me, while it might verbally sound like a huge jump when people hear it, actually kind of like makes sense in a weird way. But I'd love to hear your thoughts on that.

Yeah. To me, to me, it was a very logical progression. All these things, you know, led from one to the next and all, all different aspects again of trying to better understand human nature and what we need for optimal flourishing and success and fulfillment. And yeah, so the massage therapy, I stuck with that for about 7 years, and it was, I was certainly successful. I had a solid schedule, I was seeing lots of clients, and that worked very well, but there were some things that it was kind of running out of steam. I sort of felt like I had on the one hand, learned most of what I needed to know from the work of doing massage. I had come— I had gotten a good handle of, you know, how I understood nutrition. I had gotten a good handle on how I understood biomechanical health from what I learned in that. I had my whole phase of shoes are not paleo. That was my barefoot phase from 2013 to 2016. And that was the first thing that took me For example, to the Ancestral Health Symposium, um, and, uh, you know, promoting those kinds of things. But yeah, there was this process where I had gotten kind of detached from my sense of femininity in about 2014 to 2016 was when I had started to really put some effort into trying to figure that out. And it little by little was, you know, working on some of those aesthetic aspects. I, I started, instead of filing my nails completely away, even though I was keeping them smooth, I started to let them grow a little bit more and maybe do a subtle French manicure. I started to let my hair grow out just a little bit more. And, and, uh, you know, so I started on my own trying to, um, regain some of those, uh, expressions of kind of aesthetic factors. And then 2016, uh, I was the first time where I actually, I managed to get a couple dates of, uh, of people that I was interested in. And I felt like I was kind of, I, I'm starting to get this. I'm starting to figure it out again a little bit. And then at the end of 2016, I was actually, I remember I was home for Thanksgiving and I was just checking my email. And I opened up this newsletter. It was from, uh, some financial guru, uh, Ramit Sethi, I think. And there was an article in there and it said the women who are the best negotiators in, in the US or something like that. I think the article was in Quartz magazine. And the, these women that they were talking about who were these superb negotiators, um, apparently were working in the legal brothel industry in Nevada. And I was like, oh, that's, that's really interesting. Um, and it— I thought, you know, somewhere in the back of my mind I knew that there existed a legal sex industry in Nevada, but I didn't know anything about it at the time.

Uh, is Nevada one of the only states where it is legal?

It's the— is the only state that where it is legal. And to the extent that it's legal, it's within extremely limited parameters. So 99% of what happens out there is not legal. There's only like a tiny little bit that is, that actually follows the very, very specific state and county laws that actually is legal.

Oh, can you just quickly share those? So, so we're talking about legal sex work. And so Nevada defines that as what?

Okay, so that There are certain aspects that are state-oriented. So I think that, I think the state health department has certain things to say about it, but actually what the state does is it gives permission for county-based regulations if they meet certain criteria. So only counties with a certain maximum population are Eligible. So for example, the cities of Las Vegas and Reno are not within legal limits of this. You have to actually be outside of the main cities. It has to be within a licensed establishment. And there are actually, I believe you can't create any new licenses at this point. So there is a limited number of remaining licenses. So it has to be conducted. Within—

but is there any, is there any restrictions on like what it's defined as or what you can do? Uh, so, or is it like, okay, like in terms of, yes, okay, there's regulations on areas and population, but like what, how do they define a legal sex worker? Do they say, okay, you can go all the way, or you could do this, that, or is it like, no, no, you can only go from A to C, but you can't go from D to F?

Okay, so the way the laws are written is, and these are, this is common, like other states have laws like this too, that, that define what, what prostitution is as a crime. And that, that list out, for example, like, you know, uh, doing, um, like offering to, this is not a direct quote of a law, but these are, this is kind of how laws are written. So it's like offering to engage in sexual conduct or sexual contact or sexual intercourse. These are all like defined in the laws, in exchange for compensation or a fee. And so the, and, and, you know, committing this constitutes like a misdemeanor or blah, blah, blah, whatever the case is. So the laws are written kind of like that. And the way that it works in Nevada is you have certain conditions that are the exceptions to the law. So if you meet these specific criteria, so it starts with, you know, what counties can do it. And the counties license the establishments. And then the individuals who are employed there have to go through the sheriff to get a work card. And then, uh, the business has to be conducted inside the house that it applies to. And you have to go basically behind closed doors to negotiate with the clients about the activities and money. But if you meet all of these criteria, Then you are not breaking a law and you won't be prosecuted for engaging in it. So did that make sense?

So it's like, continue, continue then. So you saw this article, you were intrigued, and then, and then how did you, did you just go out there? Like, how did you then embrace this idea?

Well, I would say, you know, going back to the practical considerations, I would say that the first thing that caught my eye was this idea, like, Wait, you're the— this article says they make like half a million dollars a year. Well, at that point I had so much student debt, I was like, huh.

That's not bad at all, right?

That's interesting. It's not true, but that's what the article claimed. Um, or I should say, I should say that is extremely atypical. That is very uncommon. Um, but that, that caught my eye and then that, that, that Just, um, what it is, is set me into thinking about all these other aspects. Here I was on this, uh, quest for femininity, trying to understand what it is to be more attractive and, and seductive and, and, you know, create romantic and sexual connections with people. And I'm also on this ancestral health path and I'm trying to understand what are, you know, is this idea of, um, What I was hearing in college in terms of the gender ideology is this idea of social construction. Is that another thing that we need to move away from and better understand our biological, psychological, physiological differences? Which I ultimately decided that really is something I think is important for us to acknowledge and become more aligned with if we want to have the most success in flourishing in accordance with our nature. So, so there's this ancestral health perspective on it that's like, here's this, this environment of sexual commerce where people are not consciously exploring these things, but like, this is kind of the nuts and bolts of like when people are exhibiting their, their most innate desires and drives. This is happening in this kind of environment. And, you know, it's a big deal and people are strongly motivated and driven to pursue this. So there's something really significant going on in this environment of sexual commerce. So I got really curious about that. And then, you know, I mentioned when it came to the massage therapy that it Part of how it exists is to distinguish it from prostitution. And there was, you know, it's great when, say, you know, you're doing sports massage, you've got somebody with a pulled hamstring, like you're, you know, you're trying to help them in a therapeutic way. That makes perfect sense. But there is always something that I thought about this, that like the, the profession talks about itself as being such a holistic practice. And I thought there's, you know, it's— Why is that?

What do you— why is— why do they say that? What do you think? What do you think they mean by that?

In the, in the health and wellness space, massage therapists, we like to look at ourselves as—

Oh, I'm sorry. I thought you were talking about legal, the legal sex industry. You were talking about massage.

This is, this is a contrast that I noticed is that the massage profession purports to treat people in a way that's very holistic.

Got it.

But at the same time, there's this need in everything that we do to sort of pretend that sexuality just does not exist when it comes to clients. So on the one hand, in a, in a practical sense, in our, in a session that you have in a, in a massage session, there's this, there's this box in the middle of the person's body that you just can't go near. You just have to pretend it doesn't exist. And if you accidentally end up there, it's It's, you know, it's a terrible thing.

And did you keep— when you were a massage therapist, did you keep those kinds of strict boundaries or did you ever—

100%.

100%. Now when you were a massage therapist, were you working for yourself or you were working for someone else?

A little bit for myself, but I worked, I would say I did the majority of my work through a couple of different practices. One was a physical therapy company. One was just a group practice of massage therapists So yeah, everything I did, you know, when I signed that like code of ethics stuff from when I, when I got my professional license, that was part of the deal. You know, you will, you will, you know, keep all of this.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I took it very, very, very seriously and, and abided by. So when then you, when then you kind of delved into the sex working and trying that out. Did that feel more free because you weren't boxed in, or were you boxed in in a different way that was kind of unexpected?

Well, there were a lot of things to it, but there was definitely some freeing aspect of that to be— and this varied a little bit depending on the places that I worked. I worked at 2 different places.

Oh, in Nevada you worked at 2 different places?

Huh?

In Nevada, you worked at 2 different places?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I started at one, and it was not as well run as the other. The second one that I worked at, I felt really did a good job of giving me kind of the independence to operate my business essentially to my own freedom and preferences within— well, like I said earlier, the limits of the legal profession are very narrow, right?

Right.

So anything, um, so similarly to the way that I, uh, pursued the massage therapy career, you know, 100% by the books, uh, you know, I, I never, never crossed a boundary. And, and part of the way I just conduct myself, like nobody even propositioned me. So when I, my experience with client services was just having a very clear professional demeanor and, and nobody really ever tried to cross boundaries with me, but, um, but being that way—

What do you mean by crossing boundaries? What's an example of crossing boundaries?

Well, okay. Um, most people ask the question, like, as a massage therapist, do people ask you for more? Do they ask you for a happy ending? Do they ask you to do sexual things with them? That never happened to me in my massage career. And so it's partly just like, again, 'cause I, one, I did follow all the rules. I had all of these steps in my sort of the ritual of the process of, of Having sessions with people and just, just my personal demeanor. Um, so, so I didn't run into people propositioning me anyways, even in the regular massage profession. Um, but the, yeah, the, the constraints of the legal industry in Nevada, uh, is very specific. Uh, again, that, you know, you can only do it in certain places. So, so you could say that's restrictive in a way, but Within those confines, I was basically free to do things the way that I chose. So I did feel that I was able to do that, and it was one of many aspects of— I've mentioned a number of the thoughts that went into my making that choice, but self-determination was another aspect, and being able to say, you know what? I don't I don't have to just abide in— I did choose to abide by all of the guidelines and the regulations that I had in the licensed massage profession. But that's not the only way to look at how to operate in the world. And I didn't— I did feel a desire to not be limited by other people's particular sense of propriety or stigma in terms of things that I might So that, that was certainly a liberating aspect of it. And it was many other things too. You know, when I, I remember from, I would say at least when I was a teenager, thinking about these things and thinking it was very strange to me that it, um, that prostitution was, uh, was illegal anyway, that this was prohibited. Like, why is it between consenting adults that this is something that is that is criminalized. And so I always had this mindset towards decriminalization. And then—

Why do you, why do you think it's criminalized?

You know, I've actually come across something recently from an evolutionary perspective, and I believe this was an article. I want to say Marty Hazelton was at least one of the authors on this. That there, there are strategies in our history, uh, in terms of how, uh, how sexually restrictive different groups and cultures are and the degree to which they impose their own norms and behaviors on others because it has an evolutionary advantage. And there's a, there's a strong chance that a lot of those tendencies are what has contributed to our current Standards of norms and both around things like prostitution and even around reproductive rights or abortion and things like that. Because if you have a group which uses restrictive sexual strategies, meaning like monogamy, for example, as kind of the basis for Organizing, uh, families and, and resources and childcare. Um, if you, if you have a restrictive strategy in place and then other people in your community don't follow the same rules, it is, um, it reduces the, uh, reproductive fitness of the people who do follow the rules. So if, as, as promiscuity increases in a group that where some of the people are following restrictive strategies, it puts, it creates greater risk for the males to have their wives potentially impregnated by other people or for women to lose their access to resources if their husband decides to leave them for someone else. So there's an evolutionary basis to some of the things that we consider morality. Around these activities. Um, so that I thought was really fascinating as a, an actual evolutionary strategy. But what I'll say, what I actually learned, and this was, um, you know, I, I thought in terms of like, should it be criminalized or not? Well, if I would, if I really want to make an argument about that, one of the best things to support my argument would be to have firsthand experience to draw on. So I thought, well, let me, let me check that out. And I, I did find that. One, I really do think that the negative effects on a given individual are much more closely tied to the circumstances and the stigma surrounding how they have gotten involved into it or how they are remaining involved in it than the nature of the work itself. But one of the more important things that I found is that What it actually does is it, well, let me back up a little bit because one of the interesting things that I found is that I had so many people who would come to me and the clients are almost exclusively male, but they would come and they would say, you know what? I'm not like all the other guys out there. I really care about pleasing a woman. They all would say the same thing. And on the one hand, that's a really, that's a very encouraging thought that like, there's this, you know, major goal is really that men want to please women.

But— That's, but that, but that's kind of bizarre to me that, so they're paying you to pleasure them or to be, have an experience where they climax themselves, but then they're telling you, I'm actually in it for you. Like, what? Like, that doesn't even make sense to me.

It seems counterintuitive. Um, but okay. So, but here's the thing is like, so their, their underlying drive is that they have this desire to please women. Well, what they have typically found and why they're there is because the women, if there are any women in their lives, the women that they have had experience with don't seem to be particularly pleased with them. If they were, they wouldn't be showing up needing, you know, to to find somebody to pay for it.

However, wait, so wait, hold on. So hold that thought because I have lots of questions. So we'll do little bits, little bites. So, so you're, you're kind of insinuating that, that many of the men were actually turning towards legal sex work or prostitution because they didn't feel like they were getting the response from the partner that they had, that it wasn't about Oh, I want more sex. It was more of like, the sex I'm getting is not at the— it's not the reaction. The reaction to the sex I am getting is not the one that I crave or desire.

Well, so it could be a matter of that they're— that they are rejected by women and they had— they have no, you know, women who are available to them. It could be that they are You know, in a relationship or married, but their partner isn't receptive. It could be a variety of situations, but the, the, the takeaway that they have from it is often— this is my sort of conjecture, my way of making sense of this— is that they, they have the impression that most women just don't like sex that much. And so that's why, you know, that the women are not They're not coming to them for sex either because women just aren't— most women just aren't that into sex, or the woman that they're specifically with isn't that excited by sex. Part of the problem, I think, is that they don't look at sexuality and sexual performance and things as skills. They tend to think of it as an innate talent that you're either Good in bed or you're not good in bed. And as an ego thing, nobody wants to conceive of the idea that they might not be good. And so the, the other interpretation of that again is just that, well, it just seems like most women just don't like sex that much. And so their interpretation then is that they need to find a woman who likes sex so much that she would do it as a job. And so that's who, you know, then they're coming to.

Well, thank you so much for joining. That was episode 1 of 2. Coming up in part 2 next week, Stephanie dives into her work with the legal sex trade. She discusses how evolutionary psychology explains patterns in male-female dynamics and the stigmas surrounding sexual commerce. So I'm so excited for you to hear part 2. And until then, stay curious, my friends.