Language of Love with Dr. Laura Berman - Why Orgasm Equality Matters with Dr. Mintz

Episode Date: May 18, 2022

On this episode of “The Language of Love,” I sit down with Dr. Laurie Mintz. Dr. Laurie is a sex therapist and a professor who has written two amazing books about sexual pleasure: “A Tired Woman’s Guide to Passionate Sex” and “Becoming Cliterate: Why Orgasm Equality Matters and How to Get It.” I was thrilled to sit down with Dr. Laurie because we have a lot in common: Like me, she originally was going to school for psychology, but when she became her studies, she realized that there was a huge lack of focus on sexual pleasure. Also like me, she grew up in a house where sexuality was not a shameful topic or something to be afraid of, and so she was innately comfortable tackling these topics with her clients and being a trailblazer in what was then a very new field. On this episode of the “The Language of Love,” Dr. Laurie and I will help you discover: • What Orgasm Equality Means (Hint: It’s the exact opposite of the Orgasm Gap) • Why Orgasm Equality Can Lead to Gender Equality Outside the Bedroom as Well • How Women Can Begin to Find their Orgasmic Power • Why I Believe that We Won’t Have Political Equality for Men and Women Until We Can Have Orgasm Equality in the Bedroom First If you’re struggling with orgasm or any love, sex, and relationship issues, please reach out to me. I would love to help you begin your journey to feeling more empowered in the bedroom. Send your questions here or reach out to me on social media (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok), or email me at [e-mail]. You can also leave me a voice message on Speakpipe, or book a private appointment with me at [e-mail]. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, I'm Dr. Laura Berman, a sex and relationship therapist. And for the past three decades, I've been helping people learn how to love and be loved better. That's what we're doing here on The Language of Love, where I get to answer calls and emails from people just like you. My goal with The Language of Love is to help you discover more meaningful emotional and physical intimacy, and to help you build more awareness of how precious and sacred your sexuality really is. Be sure to email me or reach out with your very own love sex relationship

questions, and I might just answer them live on the air. It's time we all become fluent in the language of love. Thanks for joining us this week on the language of love. I am excited to share with you, Dr. Lori Mintz. She is a tenured professor at the University of Florida. She teaches psychology of human sexuality to all the undergrads there. She's a researcher. She does a lot of professional training and she's the author of two popular books. Actually, both of them I want to dive into with you. But the first one is called Becoming Clitorate, Why Orgasm Equality Matters and How to Get It. And the other book is A Tired Woman's Guide to Passionate Sex.

I think most women can relate to that if they're over 20. How to Reclaim Your Desire and Reignite Your Relationship. So thank you so much. Do you like to go by Dr. Laurie, Dr. Mintz? What's your preference? Dr. Laurie is great. Thank you. And thank you for having me here.

No, I'm glad that you're here. So I'm going to start with a question that I get asked all the time as a sex and relationship therapist. And I'm going to ask you too, because I know that you didn't set out in psychology to also address sexuality per se, but you've written two books on it. It's obviously an area of focus in your practice. So I'm going to ask you the question I always get asked. How did you get into this sex stuff? And I get asked that a lot. And I'm glad you asked. And I think a lot of us who are in this space didn't start out wanting to be in this space. I went to grad school a long time ago now to be a general therapist. And for a very long time, actually, I specialized in eating disorders, but, and I had no training in grad school on sexuality or sexual functioning, like, unfortunately, most of us, but I was raised in an incredibly unusually sex positive household. And so it was always just something that I asked my clients about is a routine. Part of the first

session, is this an issue for you that, you know, if it is, we can talk about it. And what I found is by and large, almost every client said, I wouldn't have told you if you hadn't had asked me this, but yes, I'm glad you asked. And there was something going on in that area of life. And I realized how important it was. So I really schooled myself, got myself a lot of trainings and one thing led to the other. And it's just an area I find so interesting. My passion for it never wanes. And also I really find that it's, it's often the driving force behind other problems or it's exacerbating other problems and whether it's trauma, depression, relationship issues, and it's just such an important part of life, right? We know that having a good sex life is

correlated with better relationship health, better self-esteem, and it's a real disservice that therapists ignore it. Yeah. It's so funny because our stories are really similar. I was in graduate school becoming a general therapist, same thing, raised in a similar situation, really comfortable with it. My professors and supervisors acted like I was some sort of perv when I would say, well, this couple, you know, you go to supervision and I would say, well, this couple has this sexual issue. Now, what should I do? Because the supervisor, when you're going through your training, just for those of you listening, will sort of give you guidance each session so that you're sort of being supervised while you're being a therapist

in training. And they would look at me like I was crazy. They're like, well, we don't know what to do. Well, we never get asked that. And it was because I was asking or just because they sensed that I was kind of open to it. So I ended up doing my doctoral dissertation on what predicted for clinicians to actually ask people about their sex lives. And it was definitely more than any, a lot of it had to do with their comfort levels and other things. But most of it was that they didn't really get that encouragement and that support from their clinical community, whether it was the clinic they were working in or their colleagues or whatever. So I went to graduate school a long time ago, too. I think a lot has changed. But most of us at our age and stage who

are therapists, who work with sexuality, among other things, had to kind of piecemeal our training together, right? We had to figure it out as we went. There weren't really concrete programs. And you are certainly one of those pioneers as well. So I remember giving this talk, I think it was at the California Governor's Conference. And I had this slide and I was really young at the time. I think I was just kind of, I think I'd written my first book and I was making slides and I wanted to really have an impact. So I had female orgasm equals, and then I had a woman doing this like jump in the sky

in front of the White House. because what I was saying to them is that once we really claim, women really claim and feel they deserve and are entitled to their orgasm, not even just orgasm, to their sexual pleasure, whether that is orgasm or not, and their sexual empowerment, that's when we will see a woman in the White House. And I still believe that. And that's why I think it's so cool, your title of your book,

Becoming Clitorate, Why Orgasm Equality Matters and How to Get It. So can you talk to us about orgasm equality? I sure can. But first, if I could say, I so resonate with that point you just made. And I've literally had many women who've read my book tell me, once I became empowered in the bedroom, I was more confident outside of the bedroom and it helped me work. It helped me with my relationship with my mother and standing up to her. So I totally resonate with that.

So what is orgasm equality? it's the exact opposite of the orgasm gap, which is what we have now, which is a huge discrepancy in orgasm rates between cisgender women and men when they get it on. And in case for listeners who don't know the term cisgender, it's basically people who are born with a vagina who identify as women. And so I'm going to use the term women and men in that way for the rest of this talk. But so for example, as an example, in one study, long time ago, but it was the first time the word orgasm gap was used in the literature. And the first study that studied this found that 31% of women versus 91% of men said they usually orgasm during a sexual encounter. Whoa, huge gap. That study didn't ask about the context of the sex. Was it hookup?

Was it relationship? But all subsequent studies have found that the gap is the largest in hookup sex. It gets smaller with friends with benefits. It gets smallest in relationships, but it never closes all together. Women are having substantially fewer orgasms than men in heterosexual encounters. and a lot of people say oh that's because women's orgasms are difficult or elusive our bodies are difficult but other pieces of research really tell us no it's it's not our bodies it's the culture women have more orgasms when they have sex with each other than with men and when we pleasure

ourselves 95 percent of us orgasm easily and within minutes so it isn't our bodies and it's not men's fault but it's culture's fault i blame culture for the orgasm gap okay so i want to talk about what you blame the specifics of how you hold culture culpable in this and i certainly agree with you but i do think it's interesting because there's not only the orgasm gap but related to that the arousal gap right so we know that like when they timed it and analyzed it your average man takes seven and a half minutes to reach orgasm and your average woman takes 20 minutes if she's assuming she's orgasmic takes 20 minutes to reach orgasm so even with two partners who are committed and and he's going to do everything he can to help her get there and she's empowered

and feeling good about it just physiologic arousal process you start off with a gap and i think that's something, you know, just takes women longer than your average man. And that also probably has a cultural reason as well as a physiologic one, as well as a neurologic one. But I wanted to just mention that because I think they're related. So give me your thoughts on that. But then also let's talk about the cultural piece and how you think that plays a role. The whole arousal gap, you know, it's really interesting. I think that whole area is so complicated and interesting because a lot of those timing studies, or at least the original timing studies, those were conducted with women who could orgasm from penetration. And they're

like, how much penetration does it take? And the flaw of those studies is that most of us don't orgasm from penetration anyway, even less. I can get into that if you want. But the other thing is that also a lot of times what happens is we're up in our head. Do I look okay? Do I smell okay? Am I taking too long? Oh my gosh. What's happening downstairs? Are the windows closed? Oops, I forgot to turn that email. Multitaskers. And that we know you cannot be in your head distracted about your email, your TAS or your body or whether you're going to come. And we have a lot more self-consciousness and it takes us much longer, especially with new partners to get into the relaxation mode, the lack of self-consciousness mode. So I think there's biological and cultural reasons for that arousal gap.

And it's also that arousal gap. I know that's not our focus here, but that's also the cause of another problem that many women are experiencing is sexual pain. because they don't allow themselves the time to become aroused. They allow penetration, but just because he's hired doesn't mean it's time to let him in. And they have penetration before they're aroused. And 30% of women are having sexual pain. So anyway, why is culture... Just because he's ready doesn't mean it's time to let him in, girls. Exactly.

There's one little referral for you. So from the cultural perspective, you were saying that it's really the culture's fault, this orgasm gap. Talk about that. Okay. So you just said 30% of women don't orgasm from penetration. When we break that down, really recent studies that say penetration alone without any clitoral stimulation at all, it's more like 15% to 8%.

And when I've done research in my own research, I take out the word, can you orgasm during intercourse? Because we think we should. So there's this like desirability effect. And I just ask, what's your most reliable route to orgasm? Only 4%, say penetration alone, 4%. But what does the culture show us? Porn, mainstream movies, very little fooling around.

He puts his penis in her vagina and she's instantly having an amazing orgasm. And if she's out there watching porn, he ejaculates on her face and she has an orgasm. He's not even near her clitoris or vagina. Exactly, exactly. And so it's our cultural, I think there's a lot more reasons, but the main reason for the orgasm gap is our cultural ignorance of the clitoris, which is women's most reliable route to orgasm, either alone or coupled with penetration. And even the words we use reflect this problem. We use the word sex and intercourse as if it's one in the same. We use the word

foreplay as if it's just to lead up to this main event, even though the main event is not the one where women are most likely to orgasm. I'm fond of saying that if we overvalued women's orgasms, we call foreplay sex and intercourse. We would. That's a good point. I often share with people that, you know, in general, right, you were saying it's even lower when it's penetration only, right, with no other direct stimulation of the clitoris. But I always say that only 30%, which is always shocking to the guys, but I always say that only 30% of women can reach orgasm during intercourse, even though that's the holy grail, according to, you know, if you watch in the movies or people somehow think they're lacking if they don't have that or whatever, but only 30% of

women actually have orgasms during intercourse. And if they do, it is almost always because they're having some form of clitoral stimulation at the same time. And then I'm curious what your answer to this is. Then people say, well, why did nature make us this way where the clitoris is not in the vagina you know like there's a g-spot right and there's other aspects to this obviously we're simplifying things but i'm curious what you're i'm sure you've been asked that before i get asked that a lot um my answer is there's a whole bunch of theories on this we'll never really know the answer but i always like to cite my two favorite theories one is a pretty recent theory that our clitoris used to be in our vaginas. And it has to do with, there are some

mammals who the clitoris is in the vagina. And when they orgasm, it causes ovulation. And the theory is ours used to be in our vagina. But when we started living in groups and having a lot more sex, it got a little wonky to be ovulating all the time. So our cycles moved to a monthly cycle and our clitoris migrated out. We'll never know if that's true, but I think that's a fascinating theory. But my real favorite theory is all the questions about what is the function of the female orgasm, because we don't need it, procreation, et cetera. There's a feminist anthropological theory that says we're actually asking the wrong question. And instead of asking, we should be asking why is it adaptive for women not to orgasm during intercourse and the answer

that they give is because a partner who actually takes time and cares about your pleasure in the bedroom and isn't just focused on his pleasure and wants to give you clitoral stimulation is going to be a better partner out of the bedroom so it helps us pick so picking a clitoral imperative. And I do think also that I subscribe a lot to anthropology and archaeology and physical anthropology and evolutionary psychology. And I just find it fascinating. And I do think when they talk about the evolution, for instance, of monogamy, that a lot of that started happening. Those parabons were not monogamy for life. It would be monogamy until the baby was like old enough to throw on the mother's back and she was more self-sufficient. But there were these

agreements that were made, look, I can guarantee you I'm not having sex with anyone else. So this baby you're helping protect is definitely yours. And in exchange, you have to invest your resources, hunt for us, protect us until I can protect ourselves, right? And so there was sort of this sex contract made as the anthropologist Helen Fisher would talk about it. But I've thought about this because a lot of that literature is about, which makes sense, is about the extreme high stakes that getting pregnant had. It's not like getting pregnant today. Your life was at risk. You were at risk for predators. You were really at risk and probably very likely going to die if you got pregnant. So I sometimes wonder, and I don't know where this fits into the theory,

there's two benefits to female orgasm. One is that it makes us want to do it more because it feels good. And two, it actually causes the uterus to contract. So it kind of sucks up any semen in there and gives the sperm a running start. If the uterus is contracting, it kind of sucks up the semen and gives the sperm a running start to make it to the end. But I sometimes wonder, maybe it's harder for a woman to have an orgasm from an evolutionary perspective. Because if we found it that easy in the caveman times, not today where we have birth control, we would have been putting ourselves at risk for pregnancy all the time. It's really interesting. I think it's really interesting. I'm sure you read it, The Case of the Female Orgasm by Elizabeth Lloyd. And she takes

all of those evolutionary theories. And I think there's one in there like that, but I might be misremembering. And she debunks them all. And she concludes, it's kind of like, why do men have nipples. It's just like a fantastic bonus of development. I don't know. Why would a fantastic bonus be the place that we really should be putting our attention? That's the biggest hurdle for me when I work with couples with your run-of-the-mill orgasmic issue between them. It's just like helping them get over this fantasy that an orgasm is supposed to automatically happen with intercourse and to like really focus and that having an orgasm outside of intercourse is somehow not as good or that we're supposed to have this

simultaneous orgasm just to make you know and during intercourse just to make it more complicated has to happen in exactly the same moment to kind of debunk those myths that we've been talking about are those cultural things. But I do think that the clitoris, it gets mixed up with all those stories about what's good sex is supposed to be. Yes. There's like this orgasm hierarchy. If you have it with just penetration, you won the lottery. And I also, I really hear women say, oh, I'm one of the lucky ones, which really reinforces all of this. Then it's like, okay, well, if you have to stimulate your clit during intercourse, second best, but straight up clitoral stimulation you're like the loser and that's just so sad to me and upsetting because and it is such

a myth that we have to debunk and to help people have better sex because this doesn't benefit men either because during intercourse a lot of times they're like okay I gotta last heart I gotta thrust you know I gotta make her come instead of just reveling in their own joy and sensations and i'm on your page we are trying to give this message you know yeah let's talk about the guys for a minute because i do think and i say this to men often and to women you know for guys most of whom i mean let's just work with the guys who are otherwise sexually healthy and reach orgasm to them orgasm is the punctuation mark like how can sex be over until the orgasm happens and they too are subscribing to the cultural stories of how orgasm is supposed to happen and

I always say to guys, you could be with a hundred women. Unless you educate yourself or one of them shows you what to do, you're still not going to know how to help a woman reach orgasm. And then the women perpetuate this because they do what I call mercy faking. He's trying so hard with intercourse. I know it's not going to happen because I'm not going to reach an orgasm this way, but I don't want him to feel bad. And I also know that this isn't going to end until I reach orgasm. So I'm going to mercy fake. And then he rolls over all pleased with himself and she's unsatisfied and it kind of builds over time. And then of course, if she eventually wants to confide in him, what's been happening to address the issue, he's like mortified and can't believe

what a good liar she was and worried what else she lied about. And this is this whole relationship issue. But I do think that it often, and I want you to speak to the guys a little bit about sort of broadening there. I think women are going to be, are much more on board with like, oh yeah, I'm not about, you know, yes, spend some time on the clitoris. It's like, how can I convince my partner? There's nothing wrong with him. This isn't about him. And that if we take care of my orgasm in these other ways, then we really are just having this intimate, beautiful, and maybe there'll be another orgasm. Maybe there won't, but at least we have this one, we can just be in flow with the intercourse thing. We don't have to be putting all this pressure on ourselves.

Yeah, exactly. I think you just said exactly what I would say, that to really educate men, no, this isn't about you. It's not about your skill. It's about a false bill of goods you've been sold. And that if you understand the clitoris, you can actually achieve the goal you've wanted to achieve all along, which is to be a good lover, to give your partner an orgasm. But this way you're doing it in the way that works for her. And it benefits you because again, you can revel in your own pleasure. A lot of times I'll hear like, oh yeah, I don't buy that. Or everyone came with me. I'm blah, blah, blah. A lot of women is never contained. right and so how many women fake i've read 70 of women fake 67 and so that's i tell on that and

a great book i often recommend is ian kerner she comes first and the reason is but yeah and may because sometimes i find that hearing it from another man in terms of how important clitoral stimulation is and how it he even addresses this in the book like he has a beautiful quote about like how this is a bitter pill to swallow if you've kind of put your self esteem on your penis. But if you swallow this pill, it doesn't have to be bitter. And in fact, it can make you more of a man, enhance your sex. So that's sometimes I like at least give that paragraph to men. Yeah. Well, I don't know if you have children. I have three sons and I gave them now at this point, the youngest is 16. So I've given them all Ian Kerner's book,

my book, Loving Sex, which is sort of like a guide in general, but a lot of emphasis on pleasing a woman. They're all heterosexual, which is why I focused on that. And the third one was, and now I'll have to give them clitorate, Becoming Clitorate, your book. But the third one was How to Give Her Absolute Pleasure, a book by Lou Padgett. And I would give that, I gave it all to them, and some of them just looked at the pictures and some of them read it cover to cover, but all of them have said that it really came in handy. So I'm mentioning that because I do think the sooner that you get to guys, the younger, I mean, I'm not saying when they're 10, but as they are out there starting to have more sex and starting to have grown-up relationships, that that's a

really important time to educate them about all of this. Absolutely. And that's why in Becoming Clitorate, I actually have a summary chapter for men at the end called Clitoracy for Him. You don't have to have a clitoris to be clitorate. And yeah, they don't have to read the whole book. And there was actually a study published that men who read just that chapter understood women's physiology better and let go of their own damaging myths around their own sexuality. And to answer your question, I do have children. I have two adult daughters. One is 28, the other's 31. And I gave them, my book wasn't around during their coming of age. I gave them, I love female orgasm at the time. So from the same psychologist cloth and the same mother cloth. Exactly. And

Hopefully you didn't. My kids have all told me, well, the youngest one isn't there yet, but the other ones told me that while it was mortifying through most of their adolescence, eventually they realized it was a really helpful thing to have a sexpert as a mama. Absolutely. Same thing. I never understood why they didn't want me at school. They would say, don't come to the concert, don't come. And I realized years later it was because their friends would tease them when I came because they all knew what I did for a living. I had no idea that was the reason.

But anyway, crazy sex therapist mama. So you can relate to that as well. Now, your other book, let's just talk about that for a minute. I mean, I've done a lot. So I know this audience understands. In fact, I think a recent show I just did was tackling a couple of questions about uneven desire. But I know one of your books is about low desire and kind of building desire.

And it's sort of geared toward the exhausted mama or woman, doesn't have to be a mama, just the overburdened, overexhausted woman out there. And when you are burning the candle at all ends, it's hard to gin up the energy for anything, including desire, not to mention hormonal changes and life changes and everything else. So what are some of the pearls you can share with folks just to add to our collection on building better desire and love or in relationships? Yeah, I think, and thanks for that question. And it's such an important topic. I think that the couple pearls that I think are the most useful to help people is the idea of receptive desire. Like we see this model of getting horny. What is

sexual desire? Ooh, I'm horny. My genitals are tingling. I'm lubricating, whatever that might be. what are you 16 exactly bingo and that's what we see and what people don't know is that that spontaneous horny stuff it doesn't last it biologically the longer the older you get and the longer you're in a monogamous relationship the less women feel that and people think oh no something's wrong with me. And I have so many women say, I don't ever feel horny, but I have sex, you know, it's duty sex. And I asked them, well, is it good when it gets going? And they say, yes, it's great. And usually I say, oh, I should do that more often. And I say, well, if it's fun, it's not duty sex. I grew up in Buffalo, New York with the snow. And I use the metaphor of like,

when I would go to high school, I had to scrape the ice. I had to have my car sit there for five minutes before I could drive it, but then it drove just fine. So I tell women, if you're already doing this, good for you. If you're not, start. Reverse the equation. Have sex to get horny rather than waiting to be horny to have sex. And the other piece that goes hand in hand with that is people say, oh, so unromantic, scheduled sex, which is why I like to use the word tryst instead of scheduled sex. It's sexier. But what we know, like, think about this podcast. You and I are both really pretty busy women. If we didn't put this podcast schedule in our calendar, we wouldn't have like spontaneously happened to be on Zoom at the same time. You're waiting a long

time if you're waiting for spontaneous sex. And there was never spontaneous sex. I like to tell people. Think about when you were dating, you would get dressed, you'd put on your perfume, you'd flirt. Oh my, the night ended in sex. That wasn't spontaneous. It was well orchestrated. Yeah, that's true. And I agree with you a hundred percent. I think this waiting for spontaneous horniness, you're going to be waiting a long time. And if you can source, you're absolutely right that for most women, they're like, yeah, I'd rather be watching Bridgerton or doing something else on my to-do list. But once I get started, I enjoy it. And I think, hey, I should do this more often. But I do think that you can source your desire from a place other than duty to like

from a place of wanting to connect with your partner in a way that is really deep and lands with them, wanting to love them in a really special way, wanting to express your love to them, wanting to feel the closeness, wanting to nurture the connection. I mean, there's so many reasons. Who was that researcher that did like the 300-something reasons, found the 300-something reasons why people have sex? There are so many reasons to have sex. But because, once again, of our cultural conditioning, we think we're supposed to have a physical drive in order for it to happen. And if we don't have that physical drive, we literally just more often than not don't do it. And I also think it's really important to initiate both of you. I think one of the biggest

complaints I get from men is like my wife or my girlfriend or whoever will do it. Sometimes she doesn't seem that into it, but she never invites me. I have to ask. Sometimes I have to beg. So even with this scheduling, if you can take turns or even just once in a blue moon, the one with the lower desire can take the initiative okay i knew we were having sex at five o'clock today but i'm the one that's lighting the candles in the bathroom and saying let's go so i think there are ways you can kind of initiate quote unquote even while you're scheduling absolutely and i agree completely like all everything you said we're on this like those 200 and some reasons to have sex. That's all about receptive desire. It's not just because

it might be fun. I might feel closer, more connected, less stressed out. And those are the, your desire for sex can be theoretical in your mind, but then you leave your body there. And the whole thing about trysts is exactly what you're saying too, that all that, are we going to do it tonight? She doesn't want to, I don't want to, what are we going to do? Like, if you know when it's coming, when you can wrap your mind around it, you can fantasize, you can prepare, and it takes that tension away of like initiating with taking away. But I also agree, if you have your scheduled date on Sunday morning, like do something to show that you're into this and you're the one saying, hey, we've got this date and I'm looking forward to it.

Yeah. Beautiful. Well, I hope this gives everyone a sense of maybe some starting places. Dr. Lori Mintz, her two books are Becoming Clitorate, Why Orgasm Equality Matters and How to Get It, and A Tired Woman's Guide to Passionate Sex, Reclaim Your Desire and Reignite Your Relationship. And they can learn more about you and the work you do on your website. Yes. What is your website, www.drlauriemintz.com so d-r-l-a-u-r-i-e-m-i-n-t-z drlauriemintz.com thank you so much for being with us any final words to share before we say farewell for now sex is important enjoy it have it and thank you so much and thank you so much for the honor of having me on your podcast. Thank you for joining me. Thanks for all the work you're doing in the

world. We're in this together, helping the world fix their love lives through sex, through everything, bedroom per bedroom, right? One bit at a time. So if you have any questions, you let us know. And I'm always here for you on the Language of Love. take you home with me i wanna make a move i wanna make a move but i'm too shy i can't fall asleep without your arms around me