Best of: Women, Lust & Infidelity w/ Wednesday Martin

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People in Don't Ask, Don't Tell relationships or monogamous relationships in one study reported the highest level jealousy, whereas people in polyamorous relationships and swingers I Love Swingers reported really low levels of jealousy and very high levels of sexual satisfaction.

You're listening to Sex with Emily. I'm Dr. Emily and I'm here to help you prioritize your pleasure and liberate the conversation around sex. Women cheat for emotional connection and men cheat for sex. Men are horn dogs. Women are frigid. Heard any of this before? Did you know these are factually untrue? In this fan favorite episode, cultural anthropologist and best selling author Wednesday Martin joins me to talk about female sexuality research findings now that more females are entering the field of sex research. And believe me when I say her revelations will change your life. Wednesday's book why Nearly Everything We Believe About Women, Lust and Infidelity is Wrong and How the New Science Can Set Us Free was a major conversation starter and it's probably one of the books that I quote most often. Today we're more open to alternative relationship models and a huge Part of that is because of Wednesday. In this conversation, she debunks the lies we've been told for decades about female sexuality, including men just wanna spread their seed while women wanna protect their precious eggs. Wrong. Turns out monogamy is pretty rough on female desire. Or how about this one? Women cheat because they crave emotional care. Nope. Sometimes women just want sex with someone new. Finally, how did these lies get started in the first place? Wednesday walks us through the faulty science that got us here and how accurate measures of female desire are radically changing the way we understand sex for all genders. All right, Intentions with Emily for each episode Join me in setting an intention for the show. I do it. I encourage you to do it well. My intention is to clarify the truths of female sexuality so that no matter what your gender is, you can have more empathy for yourself and the women in your life. Please rate and review Sex With Emily wherever you listen to the show. My new article, the top sex myths you need to stop believing and holiday gift Guide is up@sexwithemily.com also check out my YouTube channel for more sex tips and advice. If you want to ask me questions, call my hotline 559-talk-SEX or 559-825-5739. Just leave me your questions or message me at sex with emily.com askemily all right everyone, enjoy this episode.

Wednesday Martin is the best selling author of Untrue why Nearly Everything We Believe about Women Lost in Infidelity is Wrong and How the New Science Can Set Us Free. She's a cultural anthropologist, writer and social researcher and the author of several books including the number one New York Times bestseller Primates of Park Avenue, Step Monster and Marlene Dietrich. She received her doctorate from Yale University where she went on to teach cultural studies and literature and is the co host of the True Sex and Wild Love podcast with Whitney Miller. Find more Wednesday@WednesdayMartin.com on Instagram @WednesdayMartinPhD and Twitter WednesdayMartin. You've debunked so many myths that my head is spinning. I wish when in my 20s I was like you in the sense of I was going in relationship, go in relationships and I monogamy didn't suit me.

Monogamy does not suit so many women. And there is some new thinking in anthropology and evolutionary biology that if one of the sexes evolved for promiscuity, it is there's a very good case to be made that it was women. But yes, here we were in our 20s, right? And we would I know what we did, we would get into a relationship. The sex would be great, the relationship part would be great, everything would be fun. And then usually within one to three years, all of a sudden, bam. Our libido went down, down, down, down the mountain. And we thought, there's something wrong with me because this guy or this woman is so great. I want it to be like it was before, though. I want the sex to be so hot. Guess I better find somebody else.

Exactly.

Do you know why that happened to us?

Tell me why.

Because nobody told us the truth. Right. We were fed a steady diet of lies about female sexuality, including that women are from monogamy and men are from promiscuity. Nothing could be further from the truth. We now have longitudinal study after longitudinal longitudinal study showing us longitudinal studies from Germany, Finland, England, the United States, showing us that in the aggregate, women get bored faster than men do in a long term relationship. Thank you. And that monogamy is a tighter shoe for women in the aggregate than it is for men.

Such a tight shoe never felt right.

There are exceptions, but in general, monogamy is harder for women than it is for men. And like I said, we have the longitudinal studies to show it.

The studies show it. So then where did it go wrong? Why did we believe this to be true?

I think that a lot of it got started in the latter half of the 19th century with Charles Darwin, who wrote in his book about sexual selection and in his other book about natural selection that based on his observations, he asserted that females of most species were sexually coy and reticent and retiring, whereas males of most species were pugnacious and aggressive and more sexual. Right? And then in 1948, this English geneticist named Angus Bateman did these studies of fruit flies. And he said, oh, guess what I found out. The males really benefit from mating. Multiply. They mate all over the place. Their reproductive success goes up, up and up. But the females really only benefit from mating once. If they mate, multiply, it doesn't really increase their reproductive success. Okay? Darwin laid the groundwork so that when Angus Bateman came up with this with these fucking fruit flies, people were ready to generalize it to every other species, including humans. And they said, yeah, look, men, of course, they want to just spread their seed and shoot it all over the place. And women just want to be all choosy and coy with their costly little egg. Guess what? There are all kinds of benefits. We found out after women became field scientists and studied what females of different species were doing actually. And they said these Females of all these different species are really promiscuous, many of them more promiscuous than the males, especially non human female primates. So why are we still holding onto this narrative? Right, so basically I'm blaming a lot on Darwin, who is also a great hero.

But we're not here.

What we needed is he's not here. You know what? So we needed all these amazing female scientists to come in and to bring their own forms of empathy and curiosity to the sciences to improve them. And what they all discovered is. Hold on. Females also benefit from mating, multiply. Let's deal with female promiscuity in many species, including humans. And I'm not using the term promiscuity in a negative way, if it's even possible to take the negative out of that. Right. That word has a lot of sting, doesn't it?

It does. Or women who want to have multiple partners.

Let's just say multiple consortships.

Exactly. That's great. Whatever.

Make you feel good.

We don't want to offend anybody here, but is that kind of what drove you? When you're saying women scientists, I mean you. And you are a doctor. Anthropologist. What do you do? You've done so many things, everything.

I have a background in anthropology and primatology. I got my doctorate in cultural studies. I wrote about the history of anthropology and psychoanalysis. And I've been obsessed with female sexuality. Have we not fit to 25 years? I don't know. I guess New York's a really big town.

Yeah, it is. But I live in LA and I was in San Francisco.

That explains it even better.

But I feel like we just. I was like listening to your stuff, like screaming, running around going, yes, yes. Because you're like, why don't. Why were we fed this notion?

So what do we do now?

Because we believe all the stuff that we've heard that women, they're libidos, we just no longer want sex.

Here's what I like to say about that. When people say, how can it be that monogamy is harder for women? And a lot of times men or women will say to me, you know, my girlfriend is the one who's just not interested in sex. And it's really hard not to say, oh, she's interested in sex, she's not interested in sex with you. Again and again and again and again without mixing it up a little bit. Because women need variety and novelty and sexual adventure. Study after study in untrue. Show us at least as much as men do. Exactly.

You gotta keep it Interesting. And keep it hot.

It's one of those things where the science, when you tell people the science, so many women say, oh, my God, wait, are you saying that I'm normal now? Imagine. Yeah, imagine if we shared it with people. We're not telling couples you have to break up. We're not telling women you have to, you know, step out or open up your relationship or do it. We're just saying, let's get these facts to couples. So that when women have the typical drop off in years one to three, if they're having sex with the same person over and over, everybody's aware of it. And instead of the woman and the man, or the woman and the woman saying to each other, or the people saying to each other, there's something wrong with me, there's something wrong with our relationship, there's something wrong with my partner, they could instead say, oh, no, Emily's just a normal woman being a normal woman. We know this from the sex research. Let's not flip out. Let's figure out how to get her some variety and novelty and adventure. Maybe we remain monogamous, maybe we don't. But there's so much new science now, and we just need to get it into people's hands. For example, I was just at star, the Society for Sex Therapy and Research annual conference in Toronto. Meredith Chivers, the amazing badass sex researcher from Canada, has recently been working on a way to measure female desire, which tends to be triggered or responsive desire rather than spontaneous desire. So we knew, thanks to Rosemary Basson, that female desire sometimes works a little differently from male desire.

Talk about that. People talk about spontaneous and responsive.

Yeah, spontaneous desire.

So important. Guys, I hope you're listening to this because this is gonna change your goddamn life.

Well, we're gonna try to make it not boring either.

Well, that's what I love about you. You're so. You're the least boring person on the planet. And you're brilliant.

Let's love having fun and like candy, right? Like the COVID of my book Untrue.

So Untrue is the book, you guys.

So when male sex researchers were in charge of sex research, they measured sexual desire one way. You know that feeling when you're just sitting there and suddenly you want to have sex? Like you want to have a hamburger. Oh, wow. Look what's happening. That's called spontaneous desire. When we only measure spontaneous desire, men seem to have much stronger libidos than women. Along comes Rosemary Basson, a Canadian sex researcher. I like to say there's something in the water up there. And she goes, wait, I think there might be different kinds of desire, different desire styles. And she discovers that often women are experiencing what we might call triggered or responsive desire. They're not interested in sex. And then suddenly somebody touches their arm and they say, hmm, that's a good idea. Or maybe they start fooling around, then suddenly they're interested. So this is called the circular model versus a linear model. Meredith Chivers is working on developing a way to measure triggered or responsive desire so that we're going to have a really good sense. We do know that when we consider triggered and responsive desire, not just spontaneous desire. And when we measure women's libidos at certain times, the difference between the male and female libido is negligible. This is a new thing. We need to tell women that they have sex, they have sexual desire, and they. They think they're freaks. Right? So we just.

Did we just. Let's break it down. What I always say to them, I say. I say, okay, so you know, like when you're. Let's say your husband comes home and he sees you in the kitchen, or let's see you in the kitchen and you're doing the dishes and he comes up behind you because you look so sexy there. Whatever you're doing, you're doing something.

Because you have a cute ass. Cause you have a cute ass.

And he's like, oh. And that was so like the 50s housewife. I'm sorry. I can't fucking help it. I just did that example. I'm not gonna correct it, but. Cause you guys know what I mean.

It could be kinky, though.

It could be kinky. She was wearing, like, little French. She's not really gonna clean. Cause they have a housekeeper or he doesn't want to cleaning. But that was the hot thing that she was gonna be the French maid. So she was wearing the French maid pretending to do dishes. No, but he came up behind her and she was like, I wasn't ready yet. I didn't see you. But he saw her ass and got a boner. And she's like, what? I'm just sitting here doing the dishes. And I was still on my phone. I wasn't ready to role play yet, Bob.

Right.

Most men are more typically. They have more of the spontaneous.

They might, they might. We're thinking that it's like when women became PR and they observed the behaviors of female bonobos and female chimps and female macaques. And they said, you guys, the males aren't just mounting these passive Females. The females are, like, orchestrating the whole thing. They're like, hey, come on over here. They're tapping the ground in a way that says, like, let's do it right now. It took female researchers bringing those new forms of curiosity and even identification to go, wait, we need to look at the picture in a different way. They changed up primatology in the same way female sex researchers are changing up sex research by just, you know, bringing different forms of curiosity. Right.

Because it was all men studying other men. Even with medications, we're realizing there's so many things that were just men were just being researched or being studied.

That's right.

So we need to find out. We're so different. Are men and women the same? No, we're not the same.

So many things, you know, and the really fascinating thing for me has been how many lies we've been told about. I mean, I just talk about more.

Because your book is called Untrue. The whole thing is on lies. What's some of your favorite lies?

Oh, one of my favorite lies was is that the female libido is a shrinking violet compared to the male libido. Untrue. We just talked about that. Measure it the right way, people, and you will see that the difference is.

So there's nothing wrong with women feeling broken and feeling, I felt broken. Why can't I do monogamy? And why can't I?

You can't do monogamy because you're a normal woman being a normal woman. If you can do monogamy, you're also a normal woman being a normal woman. But stop with the lie that monogamy is easier for women and harder for men. The data blows it out of the water. Then we have the thing about the libido. Let's go to another one. I like to look at infidelity because I think it's like the sort of radical test case of how we feel about gender parity. Right? We can say, oh, I believe women should get equal pay. I believe in gender equality. And then you show people a woman who is stepping out or who is openly refusing monogamy, and people say, oh, no, not that. So infidelity sort of shows us how do people really feel when women seize a privilege that has historically in our culture, belonged to men? So that's the reason that I'm so obsessed with infidelity. It tells us so much about our feelings about gender. One of the big lies has always been that women cheat for emotional reasons and men cheat for sexual reasons. Now, one of my favorite Things that I learned at Stern was I looked at. I met one of my heroes, Sarah Hunter Murray.

Okay.

She did a study, one of the longitudinal studies I referenced, about how monogamy is harder for women. But now she's working on this research about what she calls the ever. The myth of the ever ready male. This myth that men always want sex and that when they're cheating or stepping out, it's only for sex. And they're always ready and they always want to go. And she's saying, wow, when we profile men this way, we're damaging men. Yeah.

Same expectation for men. We're like, well, I didn't want to go and now I feel less like a man.

That's right. So bad science about female sexuality is also bad for men. It's bad for all people. So this idea that women cheat for emotional reasons, when I wrote on True, I got to interview this great sex researcher. Everybody should know about her. Dr. Alicia Walker. And she did a big study on women using Ashley Madison. And guess how they felt about their marriages. How they liked their marriages a lot.

They just wanted some variety.

They just wanted some variety and novelty. They liked everything about their marriages except they weren't getting the sex they wanted. So they used infidelity, Dr. Walker says, as like a workaround strategy. They wanted to not blow up their marriages. They went on Ashley Madison. Oh, they auditioned these guys. We can't get into it, but they were pretty cold hearted. And anybody who reads about this study, we'll see. Female sexuality is not what I thought it was. It's not the way it's been represented. And also, women certainly don't just cheat for emotional reasons.

We want to.

Yeah. And plenty of men are cheating for emotional connections. So it's like Alicia Walker and Tammy Nelson Tell us. Dr. Tammy Nelson tells us our motivations for refusing monogamy. Men and women are very, very similar. So those are some of my favorite, favorite lies to just blow up.

I love blowing up. Because what I hear too, from friends who are like. Well, like friends who are just going through divorce or they're breaking up with someone.

Like, well, I.

Every time I have sex with someone, I just fall in love. Emily. I can't just. I can't just date randomly. And I don't. I feel like that's something that they've told themselves or they've. They've been told over time. I'm like, no, you could learn to not. If you go out there, it's for your pleasure and you learn to other things.

Listen, if the Whole world were telling women all the time, you are such a dog. You just like to go out there and hit on it like you would. You, you'd hit that, you hit, you'd hit anything because you're female. Eventually that social script would get into your head and it would give you permission, if you wanted to do that, to do it. So this, you know, the, the sort of gendered social script that monogamy is easier for women is affecting us on a very deep level. I also want to say, like, for some, for some of us, monogamy is absolutely great. But, but as you know, as a sex researcher, monogamy for an entire lifetime, true, actual sexual monogamy does not conform to any model we have for how we habituate to a stimulus over time to how we're desensitized.

Yeah. Like, why would it work if we get bored with everything is what we're saying. We're habituate. Right. Like literally and especially now our.

While that Diet Coke is just boring everything.

It is though, if you had one every day or your house, you want to change your furniture after a while. Like, we get bored of everything. Why can't. You can't swap out your maid after 50 years.

Maybe, maybe. Let's not fetishize monogamy and presume that women are the guardians of monogamy and it's our fault and, you know, we're more invested in it. But hey, if monogamy works for you, that's awesome.

It does, right?

Here's the lesson of anthropology, which is the way I look at the world. We evolved as very flexible social and sexual strategists. We can thrive in polygamous relationships. We can thrive in polyandrous relationships. Right? Which is where women have more than one husband, which happens in Tibet, China and some places in India. We can. Some of us are asexual, some of us are. We identify as pansexual. Some of us, especially women, might be straight for a long time. And then all of a sudden we say, I'm in love with my best friend and I'm in a like, long term, serious, committed, sexual emotional relationship with her. And then we might change back again. All that through the lens of anthropology, through the lens of us being very flexible sexual strategists. All that is completely normal. So I just like to say to women struggling with monogamy, you are just a normal woman being a normal woman. I don't ever want to hear a woman say to me again, you don't want to talk to me about sex, because I'm really unusual because I have a really strong libido.

That's what all the women in your book said. You said they all came to you. So you, you interviewed tons of women?

I did. I interviewed four, 30, 31 experts. Right. From all kinds of fields from anthropology to primatology to psychology, sociology, medicine. And then I interviewed 30 women between the ages of, I believe 21 and 93 about infidelity. They all talked to me about it and one of my favorite interviews was the 93 year old woman who was one of the original Kinsey interviewees.

You just found her.

She was like, oh, I did this through the grapevine. Yeah. So she participated in Kinsey's.

What did you find then? What was your. I mean, I found you interviewed 30 non monogamous women of various ages too. So was there anything that you found non monogamy?

Yes. Well, first of all, the other thing I did is I reviewed over 200 studies about women and infidelity or infidelity and different species, females of different species. So that's how I write all my books. I do some fieldwork. So I also went to like sex parties and I went to polyamory cocktail parties that my friend Misha Lynn from Open Love New York. I love you. Open Love New York.

That's so fun. Wait, Open Love New York? What's that? It's an open.

So that's a support group for and an educational resource for people who are interested in being polyamorous. And it was co founded by Misha Lin and a wonderful woman named Chrissy is the president of Open Love New York. If you are thinking about polyamory, if you're having a hard time with monogamy and you want support, if you want to play board games with some polyamorous people, if you want to go to a cocktail party with some polyamorous people so it works or go to people don't believe it works group. They're a wonderful. I love Open Love New York. They're a wonderful resource.

Get some more information about it because people, I think it's getting better. I do feel like people are more open to the open relationships. Like people like I've been doing this for 14 years, talking to people and researching and I feel like at the beginning people are like, no way, it could never work. And I've noticed now in the last few years there's just a little bit more information and people are like, well, we're thinking about it. Even tonight we got a call, we're thinking about opening up and it's, it's definitely changed in the last three to five years.

See about how people are flexible sexual strategists. Yes. They get bored and like we evolve to be like, get a little bored. What can I do with it? So when you change the cultural container, right? When you have shows like Wanderlust or Insecure, when you have people like Emily Morse talking about non monogamy, suddenly the brush fire starts. That's a bad analogy.

Nobody get it.

But suddenly you're changing the language that people have access to and the thinking they have access to. And then that flexible sexual and social strategizing kicks in and people say, huh, that's kind of interesting. Maybe I could. Of course there's some people who are like, absolutely not. But can I say something? Amy Morris did this fabulous study. I love her.

I want all these women. This is our garmy, our girl army of these women.

You need to add Amy Morris to your garmi. She is a sex researcher who's very interested in consensual non monogamy, just like Terry Conley is and has done great research. So Amy Morse did this study and she decided, discovered that over a 10 year period, people's Internet searches for terms like open relationship and consensual non monogamy over basically the last 10 years increased exponentially. So I like to say that Americans are married to monogamy, but when it comes to our Internet habits and our television viewing habits, our porn habits and our listening to Emily habits, we are curious about our options.

We are curious about. We're going to take a quick break, but stick around. When we get back, Wednesday is going to share how practicing non monogamy can actually bring you closer to your partner.

So what would you say is the thing that people misunderstand the most about non monogamy, how it can work? People just think, nope, it could never do it.

Shut down. I'm like, well, you asked me what the people that I interviewed told me and. But one thing that those who were consensually non monogamous said was that very counterintuitively and experts said this as well, that the consensual non monogamy improved their couple bond, like hugely. So many women said to me, I love my girlfriend so much more because we agreed to have adventures. And I never thought I could have sex with somebody in front of my girlfriend. A woman would say, but we went there and we had to communicate so much better. That forces it. And then it sort of made us like hot and new to each other and I saw her in a new way and she saw me in a new way. Okay. Really? Before I wrote this book, it never would have occurred to me that having sex with someone other than your partner could improve your bond with your partner. I have to say that was very counterintuitive to what you thought before you started.

Untreo. Yes.

But I heard it again and again from the people I interviewed and I heard it from experts like David Lay. He writes about hot wife.

Yeah. And cuckolding. He writes about cuckolding a lot.

And the cuckold lifestyle.

People are more into cuckolding now. That's a side note. We have tons of calls about it.

We should get back to that. Yeah.

Experts like David Ley and Justin Lemiller and other sex researchers like Tammy Nelson all told me that their patients report that consensual non. And what they see among. They see that the couples become great communicators and they see that their couple bond is really strong and that they report higher levels of sexual satisfaction than people in monogamous relationships. And guess what? Guess who reports the lowest levels of jealousy.

Probably non monogamous people in people in.

Consensually non monogamous relationships. So people in don't ask, don't tell relationships or monogamous relationships in one study reported the highest levels of jealousy, whereas people in polyamorous relationships and swingers, I love swingers. Reported really low levels of jealousy and very high levels of sexual satisfaction.

But okay, so that, that makes sense to me. But could it also be because of the way they were raised that there's certain, like, things that could have happened that people who are drawn towards that lifestyle.

You know, I just heard a paper at Star about.

Personality attachment style and how you will do with consensual non monogamy based on your attachment style. And it makes total sense. Right. Attachment is just the way you felt about your first primary caregiver. The person who looked at you and you either saw from the look in their eye that you were enough as you were, or you saw like the person saying, I might leave the room and never come back.

And that's like the age of four before the age of four, right?

Yeah. It's when you're really little.

Your parents can do this at a young age.

Might want to dig into some of the research about attachment style and consensual non monogamy. We know that people who have an anxious attachment style, it makes sense that consensual non monogamy might make them pretty anxious.

Yeah. Yeah.

Oh, okay.

Sorry, I was going to get excited. I'm avoidant.

Oh, you're avoidant. I do believe that there are several different avoidant attachment styles. And one of them did okay with consensual non monogamy.

Anyway, I think it's very interesting to look at that.

But also.

So what about the people listening now are going, yeah, Emily, whatever. But I'm in this. That's crazy talk. I'm monogamous, but I just. I want to have sex my partner again, and I don't want to. It's been 20 years and we were together for 20 years, and my partner does. It's usually man or woman. Woman, Whatever someone doesn't want anymore.

Okay, first of all, you're a normal person being a normal person. It doesn't mean that you don't love your partner. It doesn't mean that you're not in a great partnership. It means you're sexually bored. And that's not a referendum on you or your relationship or your partner.

Yes.

It's just not. So knowing that and then finding another way. Maybe you don't want to have sex with other people. Okay, so watch porn and pretend your partner's another person. Go watch some people. You don't have to do it. Go watch people in real life having sex together. You can pay people for stuff, though. You can also just go to a sex party and enjoy it for free. You don't have to do anything. I know this sounds boring, but lingerie can be super fun. You know what? Do you remember Marta Miana, the sex researcher?

Familiar?

Okay. She wrote a great, dynamite paper. She's at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, which I'm always like, that must be a really fun place to be.

Okay. We both went to the same school. Oh, we're from Michigan. Both of us, and went to Michigan. Not to cut you off.

No, that's okay. But I believe I. Amy Moore's was. Or is it Michigan? And so was Sari Van Anders, who recently left. But the University of Michigan has some great sex researchers. So. Martin.

Las Vegas. Las Vegas.

Okay. So Marta wrote this really funny paper called it's not you, it's Me. Because here's what she did. She did a study. She said, wow, women are getting sexually bored. What turns them on? She did a great study called why Did Passion Wane. Okay. This other study called it's not you, It's Me. She's been talking to all these women about how monogamy is killing them. They love their husbands, but they're just not turned On. And then she's noticing that. But female sexuality has this kind of autonomous quality to it that she hadn't really thought about before. She said, wait a second, let me follow up on this. She says to the women, listen. She says to the women, if you were having sex with your partner in front of a mirror, how much of the time would you be looking at yourself? And how much of the time would you be looking at your partner? And the men are like, what are you talking about? I'd be looking at my partner? And she said to the women, same question. How much of the time would you be looking in the mirror? And how much of the time would you be looking at your partner? And the women were like, I'd be looking in the mirror. Like a lot. Yeah, like a lot. A lot, A lot at myself.

Myself.

So she said, let me dig into this a little further, like a good sex researcher. And so then she asked them, you guys, to the men, would you have sex with yourself? And the men said, I'm sorry, what? They just really didn't understand what she was saying. And she asked the women, would you have sex with yourself? And a lot of them said, oh, hell yes. And Marta Miana said, as if they already had. So there's this quality of female sexuality that we need to dig into a little bit more, that women are really getting off on watching themselves have sex. Who knows why, but buy a mirror if you're bored.

So true.

We always talk.

Put a mirror in the bedroom.

Yeah, look. And now we have. Now we have the research back to you.

Look at your vulva, too. As long as you're doing it, put a mirror up to that. People, women don't often look at themselves.

Yeah, not often enough. No.

But put a mirror when you're having sex. It is so hot.

Okay, so I went to Star, the Society for Sex Therapy and Research.

I'm having fomo.

You're coming next year. We're gonna be roommates. Okay.

Yeah.

All right. So Laurie Mintz, who I love, who wrote Become Incliterate, she's wonderful. She wrote a book called Becoming Clitorate about the orgasm gap. And then after she spoke, Debbie Herbinek, who is a Kinsey fellow and a sex researcher, reported some findings from a 10 year representative sample study of thousands of Americans. And Debbie Herbenick said, it's really important that we deal with the orgasm gap. I want to talk to you guys about something called the Everything Gaffer. And everybody went, what is this gonna be about? So the everything gap basically shows that when it comes to sexuality, there is a very wide difference between male and female experience. Let me tell you some of the facts from the everything gap. Women were twice as likely to have sex when they wanted it. Only a little bit or not at all with a guy. Okay.

Might as well finish. Yeah.

Listen to this one. Women were more than three times as likely as men to have had sex that was not at all pleasurable. That's really upsetting. Okay, what about this? Who was more likely to have sex that was not at all arousing? Women were like 15 times more likely to do that. 15. Yeah. And then how about this one? Painful sex. Okay. Women were like 20 times more likely to have had painful sex. I'm sorry, I don't have my glasses on if I don't get this exactly right. It's on my Twitter feed. And what about this? Have had scary sex. 12% of men, 21% of women. That sounds close, right?

Yeah.

How did men describe. How did women describe scary sex? That somebody choked me, that somebody threatened to kill me, that somebody raped me. That's how. Women described that they had had a scary sexual experience. 21% of them. Or an assault men. 12% said they had a scary experience. How did they describe a scary experience for men? A scary experience was a woman was going down on me, and suddenly I thought that maybe she had had sex with a friend of mine the day before. Right. Or I was afraid that I broke the condom. So there was a big gap between how men and women described scary experiences. And so we have this everything. The orgasm gap is the tip of the iceberg. We have an everything gap in our culture when it comes to sex between men and women. And we have to close the everything gap as well as the orgasm gap. And, you know, one of the reasons we have an everything gap is we fetishize. For heterosexuals, we fetishize intercourse. Why do we fetishize intercourse?

I don't know. Because it's all we see.

Because it gets men off. Look how men masturbate. They go like this, right?

Up and down, up and down.

I'm doing this with my finger. For the viewers on the radio that can't see me, I'm fucking my.

She's right. It's like she's doing that thing. When you look at your ex men.

Intercourse is exactly like how they jerk off. How do women get off from clitoral stimulation? Right. So when we fetishize intercourse as sexual, and most of us think of sex as intercourse, except the people that you've Educated. We're fetishizing male pleasure until we become obsessed with female pleasure, until we care about it and value about it as much as we value male pleasure. Women are going to be having painful sex, women are going to be having scary sex. Women are going to be having sex that they're not as interested in having. So the everything gap just speaks to this enormous chasm and experience and how we are just valuing male pleasure so much more than we're valuing. That's it.

Like male pleasure. Because every night I'm teaching someone, no, no, no, it's okay that you can't orgasm during intercourse. Most women can't. Every night there's someone who's like, oh, I didn't know that. I mean, all ages, all.

A lot of women think that. We know that. It's a minority of women, right, who can come from intercourse alone. And if you're coming from intercourse, probably it's because you're one of those women who doesn't have a distal clitoris. Right. You just happen to be. Oh, listen to this. Here's a rule of thumb. Literally, if the distance, the distance from the. If the distance is less than the width of your thumb, you are likely to come. If the distance from the glands of your clitoris to your vagina is less than the width of your thumb, then you're likely to come from intercourse. Most women, That's Marie Bonaparte. Okay, yeah, she did that study. And then later a primatologist just anatomy redid the study. Right. So if the distance is less than the width of your thumb, you are one of those very, very lucky women who can have an orgasm from intercourse, but it's just because your clitoris is close to your vagina.

That's it.

By the way, it tends to be petite, small breasted women. I'm just saying. Most of us, though, cannot have an orgasm.

Is it really petite, small breasted women? Because that's me and that's not where my clitoris is.

Okay.

I don't think I'm literally gonna go back and measure you.

Well, I've never. But I should.

Your boyfriend or husband or girlfriend might be like, why is there a tape measure here? What are you measuring?

They wouldn't be surprised. They come into my bedroom. Whoever comes in, they don't know what the hell they're gonna find.

That's what happened to the author of Bonk. I can't remember who.

Mary.

Mary from Mary Roach. One of the funniest.

It's amazing.

She writes about how she learned about Kim Whalen And Elizabeth Lloyd's research about the distal clitoris. The distance. So she decided to measure the distance. And her husband came in and saw tape measure and said, what are we doing?

Right. What's going on here, babe? Right.

Well.

Which is so amazing.

So most women cannot have an orgasm from intercourse. But we keep telling them that. And it's not like we tell them explicitly. Intercourse is the shit.

Nope. But it's all we see.

It's all we see. Why? Who's making porn? Men. So men in the. More women making porn.

I love Erica Lust. Is there any other site that I don't. Is there anything I don't know about? Because that's all I talk about.

I love Cindy Gallop so much.

Oh, I love Cindy Gallop. Big love, not porn.

Amazing to do that too. And Erica Lust. But look, we used to have Candida Royale. Right?

Oh, I love Candid.

Yeah. We need. We need a female porn revolution.

I. I get so inspired.

That'll fuel the female pleasure revolution.

Well, that's what we need because we're saying, how do we get back to. To female pleasure? I know you have two sons.

I do.

And so I just want to say, are you starting the revolution with them? Are you talking about female pleasure?

Boy, have they seen, I can imagine, the 3D model of the internal female clitoris. They know exactly what they can tell their friends. They say, do you know what? Yes, mom, it's the internal clitoris.

I love that.

So I'm just trying to do it in schools. Yeah. And then sometimes they'll say, is there anything you want to talk about? And they say, no, no, not at all. But I just keep trying to keep the conversation going. I offer to my 17 year old all the time. Like, honey, maybe I could come to your boarding school and give a talk about female sexuality. And wow, then he just behaved so well.

Do you want mom to show up with her 3D clitoris?

Don't make me bring my clit to your school.

I got a vulva puppet in one hand. I got the 3D clitoris, and I'm coming in unless you do the dishes.

You are a teenager's nightmare. Parenting with Emily, I can't even imagine.

Oh, my God. Wednesday. Martin, you are such a dream. You're a delight.

You are.

You're brilliant. All the work you're doing. Untrue. Check out her book. Wednesday, Martin. We're gonna put all this in show notes. It's wednesdaymartin.com. anything else you want them to find you?

No, I just want women to find their clitoris and show everybody where it is. We are a good fight.

So are you. Thank you so much.

Thank you Emily for everything you're doing for having me. It was great.

Thank you.

That's it for today's episode. See you on Tuesday. Thanks for listening to Sex with Emily. Be sure to like like subscribe and give us a review wherever you listen to the podcast and share this with a friend or partner. You can find me on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. Exwithemily oh, I've been told I give really good email, so sign up@sexwithemily.com and while you're there, check out my free guides and articles for more ways to prioritize your pleasure. If you'd like to ask me about your sex life, dating or relationships, call my hotline 5592-talk-SEX. That's 559-825-5739 or go to sexwithemily.com askemily Special thanks to Acast for powering the Sex with Emily podcast. Was it good for you? Email me feedbackexwithemily.com.

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