Sex With Emily - Untrue Sex Stats & Pleasure Facts with Dr. Wednesday Martin

Episode Date: May 29, 2019

On today’s show, Emily is joined by social researcher & best-selling author Dr. Wednesday Martin to talk about her book, Untrue, – because we’ve got a lot of unlearning to do. They talk about the misinformation we’ve been taught about female sexuality, why we aren’t necessarily meant or designed for monogamy, and how there isn’t just an orgasm gap – there’s an everything gap. Thank you for supporting our sponsors who help keep the show FREE: Woo Freshies, Magic Wand, Veritas Farms, SiriusXM, We-Vibe Moxie.   Follow Emily on all social: @sexwithemily For even more sex talk, tips, & tricks visit sexwithemily.com For more info on Dr. Wednesday Martin, click HERE. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Thanks for listening to Sex with Emily. On today's show, I'm joined by a social researcher and best-selling author, Dr. Wednesday Martin, to talk about her book, Untrue. Because hey, we've got a lot of unlearning to do. Topics include, all the things you thought were true about female sexuality, turns out there's a lot of misinformation. While we aren't necessarily meant or designed for monogamy, despite the narrative we've been told. Okay, so I've talked about the orgasm gap, but guess what?

There's an everything gap. And if you're looking to open up your relationship, how do you do it correctly? All this and more, thanks for listening. They're the eyes of a man obsessed by sex. Eyes that mock our sacred institutions. Betrubized, they call them in a fight on day. Hey, Evelyn, you got a boyfriend? Because my man E here, he just got his heart broken, he thinks you're kind of cute. The girls got a hair stand. Oh my!

The women know about shrinkage. Isn't it common, not only? What do you mean, like laundry? It shrinks? Can we not talk about sex so much? Are you kidding me? Oh my god, I'm so proud. Being bad feels pretty good. But you know Emily's not the kind of girl you just play with.

You're listening to Sex with Emily. We're talking about sex, relationships, and everything in between for more information. Go to sexwithammy.com. Check out our website because it's awesome. We got posts and blogs and everything on there to help you have better sex and relationships. We love when you comment, subscribe, or every listen to the podcast.

iTunes is awesome or Spotify, Google Play, I out radio for everywhere now. Oh, also you can find me on Series XM Radio, stars channel 109. I am there Monday through Friday, 5 to 7 pm Pacific. How great is that? You can just call in. You can ask questions. It's awesome. You can get a free 30 day trial at sexwithfamily.com slash SXM. As always, following all the social media, it's at Sex Family Cross the board. We always have great contests, especially this month, masturbation month, just a few days left to enter our contests.

You could find more information about that on our site. All right, guys, I hope you enjoy this show, enjoy the interview with Dr. Wednesday Martin. Really excited for my guest. Hello, Wednesday Martin. Hello, I'm the excited one. You, Dr. Wednesday, really? Yes. I'm more excited. I don't know if that's possible,

but I worship at the altar of sex with Emily. No. That's how I feel about you. Oh, of course. Like, look what you're doing. Mm. Getting people to talk about sex with Emily. That's how I feel about you. Oh, of course. Look what you're doing. Getting people to talk about sex. Educating them in a fun way. Yeah, it is fun.

And I love the way you do it too though because you are breaking down stereotypes and you are actually doing the research that people need to hear. Because it's all the things that we know. So let me just tell you guys real quickly. She's a best selling author. She's written a few books. Her most recent one is untrue. And all my sex friends are like, have you read untrue? Did you read untrue? Oh yeah, like last year when it came out. Oh great. I know it's like, but I have to say that like I just, I read about you. I read it and now I'm like

obsessed with it. I'm like halfway through and read all the studies on it. And I know I read all your other things. So the point is she's written about her own true because I can't lie and be like, I read the whole thing, but I'm going to refinish it on the point. I'm not telling a lie to a woman in a red book called Untrue. Exactly. Do thank you.

It's not going to end well. But let me tell you, because people are I appreciate your honesty. OK, it's why nearly everything we believe about women lost and infertility is wrong in how the new science can set us free. We want to set people free, right? That's what we're going to do tonight. We are setting people free because...

You already are. Thank you. And you guys just so you know you can find her at Wednesday Martin. On Twitter, it's at Wednesday Martin, PhD, and Instagram and WednesdayMartin.com is your website. And this will all be on our show notes. If you go to sexelamy.com, show notes, we're going to have the links to everything. Thank you.

Your book, like, you've debunked so many myths that my head is spinning. I wish when I'm in my 20s, I was in like you in the sense of I was going in relation to 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, 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 the 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 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. So tight. So tight shoe are never perfect. There are exceptions. Of course. 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 study show, it's with it, where did it go wrong? Like, I mean, I always say it's at 19. I said, having sex with one person just seems awfully boring. And I thought, oh, I'll change my mind eventually. I'll, no, never did. Just felt bad. Like, it was weird and then trying to talk myself into people that I'd never longer, because

they're such a great guy. So 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 made all over the place. Oh, the reproductive success goes up and up. But the females really only benefit from mating wants. If they mate multiply, it doesn't really increase the reproductive success. OK, Darwin laid the groundwork so that when Angus mate flies, this would be 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 choosing 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, um, 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 on to this narrative? Right? So basically, I'm blaming a lot on Darwin, who is also a great hero, but we're here. What we needed is, we need not here. 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 multiple. 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 consorthips. Exactly, that's great. Whatever makes you feel good, we don't want to offend anybody here, but is that kind of what drove you when you're saying women's 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 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. I guess it works a really big time. Yeah it is, but I live in LA. And I was in San Francisco. But now it's even better. But I feel like we just, I was like listening to your stuff like screaming, running, like yes, yes, because you're like, why don't why were we fed this notion? So what do we do now because I feel like there are so many we believe all the stuff that we've heard that women

Ler libidos we just no longer want sex or that whole thing about women are women are you know Don't want it whether and men are yeah 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 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, and probably more. You know, we do exactly. Yeah, 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 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 a 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 for male desire. People talk about spontaneous and responsive.

I'm, yes, spontaneous desire. It's so important. Guys, I hope you're listening to this because this is going to change your goddamn life. Well, we're going to try to make it not boring either. Well, that's what I love about you. You're so these boring person on the planet and you're brilliant. Let's get fun and like candy, right? Yeah.

Like the cover of my book on truth. So on the true 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 Chiffers is working on developing a way to measure triggered or responsive desire. So that we're gonna 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 levitos at certain times, the difference between the male and female levito is negligible.

This is interesting. We need to tell women that they have sexual desire and 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, okay, so you know like when your husband comes home, and he sees you in the kitchen,

or let's see if he's with 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. And then you're like, and then you're like, you're a Q-ass, and he's like,

oh, and that was so like the 50s housewife, I'm sorry, I can't fucking out, but I just did that example. I'm not gonna correct it, because she came to me. It's not gonna be a good, be kinky, a little flinch. She's not really gonna cling

because they have a housekeeper. He was the 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, 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 saying you're doing the dishes and I was still my phone, I wasn't ready to roleplay 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 primatologists and they observed the behaviors of female bonobos

and female chips and female macaques. And they said, you guys, the males aren't just mounting these past 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, 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 bringing you know, bringing different forms of curiosity. Right. Because it was all men studying other men. Yeah. Even with medications, we're realizing, like, there's so many things that we're just men, we're just being researched or being studied.

That's right. So we need to find out we're so, we're all men and women the same. No, we're not the same. Right. So many things. And, you know, and the really fascinating thing for me has been how many lies we've been told about. I mean, I just took out more of the, because your book is called Untrue with the whole thing is on lies.

What's some of your favorite lies? Oh, one of my favorite lies was is that the female levydo is a shrinking violet compared to the male levydo. Untrue, we just talked about that, measure it the right way people and you will see that the difference is that. So there's nothing wrong with women feeling broken, 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. Thank you. 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 women. The data blows it out of the water. Go on my Twitter or go on my website, read my article, Women the Board sex in the Atlantic for people who are resistant to the side. Women the Board sex. Hey, we're going to put that on the show notes too right now. All things went in the market. So there's tons and tons of data showing that monogamy is actually in the aggregate more difficult for women. Then we have the thing about the libido. Let's go to another one. Yeah. 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. Oh, I believe a woman should be president unless, you know, she really wants to do it and she's Hillary Clinton. Right. Oh, I believe, you know, 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 sees a privilege that has historically in our culture belong 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 Star was I met one of my heroes Sarah Hunter Murray. 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. 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 doctor, 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, it's like a work around 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 cool-hearted. And anybody who reads about this study will 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 do want to have time. 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 lines

to just blow up. I love blowing up. Because why I hear two from friends, we're like, well, like friends who are just going through divorce or they're breaking up with something, they're like, well, every time I have sex with someone, I just fall in love, Emily, I can't just date randomly. And I don't, I feel like that's something

that they've told them, suffer. 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. If the whole world were telling women all the time, you are such a dog, you'd just like to go out there and hit on it.

Like you would, you'd hit that, you hit, you'd hit anything because your 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 the, you know, 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 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 work if we get bored with everything

is what we're saying for her bit to it, right? Like literally in such an hour, while that diet coke is just boring, everything. It is though. If you had one every day, your house, you wanna change your furniture after a while, like when you get bored of everything, why can't you can't swap out your maid

after a few years? 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. 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 and China, in 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 in a 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 strategist, all that is completely normal. So I'd just like to say to women struggling with monogamy, you're 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 all that. So you interviewed tons of women. I did. I interviewed 31 experts 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 interviewers I know you just found her she was like oh, I did this Through through the great find so yeah, so she participated in Kinsey's original

Like you like what were the, you said here, you interviewed 39 monogamous women, a very age as two. So what, what did you, do you have anything that you found? Yeah, I found. 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 field work. So I also went to like sex parties and I went to polyamory cocktail parties that my friend Michelin from Open Love New York. I love you, Open Love New York. That's so fun. We open up 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 Michelin and a wonderful woman named Chrissy, the president of Open Love New Yorker. 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, if you want to work or go to a discussion group, they're a wonderful, I love open love New York, they're a wonderful resource for people. It's 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 people and research again I feel like it's big in there people are like no way it could never work and I've noticed now last few years There's just a little bit more information and people like what 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 strategies. Yes We are and like we evolved 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 Moore's talking about non-monogamy. Suddenly the brush fire starts, that's a bad analogy. No, but they 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, of course, there's some people who are like, absolutely not.

But can I say something? Yeah. Amy Moore's did this fabulous study. I love her. I want all these women. This is our girl army of these women. You need to add Amy Moore's to your girl. She is a sex researcher who's very interested

in consensual non-menogamy, just like Terry Conley is. And has done great research. So Amy Moore's did this study, and she 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 and our porn habits and our listening to Emily habits, we are curious about our options. We are curious. Alright, we're going to take a quick break and we come back more Wednesday, Martin. So what would you say is the thing that he will misunderstand the most about nominee? How can it work? People just think, nope, we could never do it shut down. I think, well, you asked me what the people that I interviewed told me. Yeah.

And one thing that those who were consensually non-monogamous said was that very counterintuitively an expert 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 You know we went there and we had to communicate 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. 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 in jail. But I heard it again and again from the people I interviewed and I heard it from experts like David lay Who works with people? Oh, yeah, I know David lay in his show years ago. We should have David lay on the show again Yeah, he's really in hot white thing. He writes about hot white and cuckolding and the right about cuckold in a lot Cuckold lifestyle people are more into cuckolding now that's side no Back to that. Yeah In the cuckold experts like David Lay and Justin Lemiller and other sex researchers like Tammy Nelson all told me that their patients report that can central and not what they see among

these couples. Yeah, what do they see? 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 not. People in people in consensually non-monogamous relationships. So people in don't ask, don't tell relationships. Oh, that's... 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 makes sense to me. But could it also be because of the way they were raised that there's certain things that could have happened that people were 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.

Or before they before, right? Yeah, it's when you're really little. So parents can do this at a young age. So people 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, oh. Okay, sorry, I was going to be out of sight. I'm avoidant. Oh, you're avoidant. I do believe that one of the, there are several different avoidant attachment styles and one of them did okay with consensual non-negamy.

Um, anyway, I think it's very interesting to look at that, but also, so what about the people listening, and we're going, yeah, Emily, whatever, but I'm in this. That's crazy talk. I'm a no-gamous, but I just, I want to have sex, I partner again and I don't want to. It's been 20 years and are, yeah, for 20 years. And my partner does, it's usually man, woman, woman, whatever. Someone doesn't want to. It's been 20 years and our, we've been together for 20 years. And my partner does, it's usually man, woman, whatever. Someone doesn't want it. Okay, first of all, you're a normal person, being a normal person.

No, no. 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 is 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. Okay. 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 Mianna, the sex researcher? I'm 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.

Oh, we both went to the same school. Oh, we were fun Michigan, both of us, and went to Michigan. Not the cut you off. No, that's okay. But I believe I got to say more is Michigan and so was Sarah Van Anders, who recently left at the University of Michigan, has some great sex researchers. But so, Mar-to-Me, yes.

Biggest Las Vegas. Okay, so Mar-to-Me, yeah, 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? But 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 desire wane?

Look it up if you're a woman and your board. We can put in show notes too. Yeah, okay. 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 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 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 at the mirror and how much of the time would you be looking at your partner and the women were like, I would be looking at the mirror like a lot, like a lot, a lot, a lot. And myself. And 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 Mianna 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 and watching themselves have sex. Who knows why, but buy a mirror if you're bored. It's so true. We always talk about the mirror in the bedroom. Take a look. And now we have the research back in the room. Look at your fault, 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 in your having sex. It is so hot.

Oh my gosh. I agree with you. Wait, now I have something to do tonight. I was wondering. There you go. I'm with you. Wait, now I have something to do tonight. I was wondering, I'm just gonna go. There you go. I'm right in the mirror. It's just gonna go watch beep. Not gonna like, totally. I love that. I am too. I'm gonna go tell her we got lots of great mirrors in our hotel.

Yeah, that's one of the shower, I have a suite. Oh, we got a suite. I'm just gonna go have a suite. I'm gonna go have a suite. Very excited. I didn't even, I'm so inspired. It's a great thing to do. Hey, do you have a squish yet?

I swear they don't pay me to do this. No, what's a squish? But that's okay. On Vave says this new toy called the squish I've heard about it. We love on that but you know how you're always using sex toy and when they're hard and you're like yeah, I get this hard thing and my the squish is soft Okay, and it's also got it's a smart toy So it remembers what you like. And also the harder you push it, the more it vibrates. And then if you let up on it, it vibrates less. It's so ingenious. It's like the iPhone of sex toys. Okay. So I went to star the society for sex therapy and research. I'm having such a photo. You're coming next year. We're gonna be be roommates. OK. All right. So Lori Mints, who I love, who wrote me coming

Cliterate, she's wonderful. She wrote a book called becoming Cliterate about the orgasm gap. And then after she spoke, Debbie Herbeneck, who is a Kinsey fellow and a sexist researcher, reported some findings from a 10-year representative sample study of thousands of Americans. And Debbie Herbeneck said, it's really important that we deal with the orgasm gap. I want to talk to you guys about something called the everything gap.

And everybody went, what is this going to 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 everything got. Women were choices likely to have sex when they wanted it only a little bit, or not at all with the guy.

Yeah, okay. We're like, my's all finished. Yeah, 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 upset. OK, 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. Don't have my glasses on. If I don't take 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. 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 describe scary experiences in life. So we have this everything. It's 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 always, 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 page. Yeah, she's like, I'm fucking my, she's right. She's doing that thing when you look at her exact, the end of the page. For men, intercourse is exactly like how they jerk off. Right. She's doing that thing when you look at your exact... Okay. And her perfect...

For men, intercourse is exactly like how they jerk off. How do women get off from literal stimulation, right? So we're fed... When we fetishize intercourse as sex, 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. 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 about to hit every night. I'm teaching someone. No, no, no, it's okay that you can orgasm during intercourse. Most women can't. Every night there's someone who's like, oh, I didn't know that. We'd all age as 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 from intercourse probably it's because you're one of those women who doesn't have a distal clitoris right we just happen to be oh listen to this here's a rule of thumb

literally okay if the distance we all the distance from the yeah 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, that's studying it. Yeah, and then and then later a Primatologist just an enemy we did the study 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 You are one of those very, very lucky women who can have an orgasm from an intercourse,

but it's just because your clitoris is close to your vagina. By the way, it tends to be petite, small-breasted women, I'm just saying. Most of us, though, cannot have an orgasm in a really petite, small-breasted women because that's me, and that's not where my clitoris is. Okay, don't worry about it. Don't worry about it. I'm really going to go back and measure. Well, I've never... I should

Here you're your boyfriend or husband or girlfriend might be like why is there a tape measure? 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 Bunk I can't Oh, I'm Mary Mary Mary Mary Rouch one of the funnier thing is exciting She's amazing. I love New York. It's amazing. She writes about how she learned about Kim Whale and Elizabeth Lloyd's research about the distal clueless and the disto she decided to measure the distance and her husband came

in and saw the tape measure and said, what are we doing? What's going on here, but right. Well, we're just 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, it's always see. It's always see, we, why?

Who's making porn? Men. It's porn in the middle of this. And if we have 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? Cause that's why I talk about it. I love Cindy Gallup. Oh. I love Cindy Gallup.

Oh, I love Cindy Gallup. She really loves not porn. She's amazing. She's amazing. She's amazing. She's amazing. She's amazing. She's amazing.

She's amazing. She's amazing. She's amazing. She's amazing. She's amazing. She's amazing. She's amazing. She's amazing.

She's amazing. She's amazing. She's amazing. She's amazing. She's amazing. She's amazing. She's amazing. She's amazing. That will fuel the female pleasure revolution. Well, that's what we need because we're saying how do we get back to female pleasure. We have to go in a minute. 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? Yes. Oh, I have. They've seen the three D model of the internal female clitoris. They know exactly what it is. They can tell their friends. They say, you know know what this yes mom It's the internal

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 you try 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 behaves so well He does you want mom to show up with 3d clitoris? Don't make me bring my clip to your school I got a vulgar puppet in one hand. I got that 3 I got that 3D Clitoris and I'm coming in. Unless you do the dishes, you are a teenager sniper.

I'm parenting with Emily. I can't even imagine. Oh my God, Wednesday Martin, you are such a dream, you're delight. You are, you're brilliant. All the work you're doing untrue. Check out our book, WednesdayMartin. We're going to put all this in the show notes. And 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 doing a good fight. So are you. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for everything you're doing. It's for having me. It was great. Thank you. Alright guys, I hope you enjoyed the show. I did. Thanks everyone for for supporting the show and telling your friends and letting them know how the show has helped you and for emailing us and just for staying connected. I appreciate you so much and thanks to my amazing team, Ken, Kristen Michelle, producer, Jamie and Michael.

Was it good for you? Email me. Feedback at sexwithemlead.com. you