February Was a Solid Month of Sex
(We Thought that Might Grab You)
Some comedian on Twitter recited the old rhyme about the months of the year: “Thirty days hath September, April, June, and November” … concluding with “But February that’s the one that has 9,487,637 days.” And it doesn’t get any shorter in a pandemic.
I can’t explain why all of our podcasts this past month ended up being about some aspect of sex — maybe because the alternative was sleeping through the whole damn month? But we kicked it off with the brilliant Katie Herzog bemoaning the decline of lesbian pick-up bars (part of the larger trend of the decline in lesbianism in general) and finished it with a robust and scientific inquiry into female sexuality with noted sex therapist Dr. Bat Sheva Marcus. And there was lots more in between. LOTS.
Let’s unpack it all …
You Make Me Feel Like an Unnatural Woman
Katie Herzog is co-host of the Blocked and Reported podcast with Jesse Singal. She’s a thoughtful and outspoken critic of the movement to erode the concept of biological sex and the rise of “non-binary” and other riffs on human sexuality. As she’s noted,
There’s been no clear polling on the shift from “lesbian” to “nonbinary,” and so my sense that the lesbian is endangered is very anecdotal. But there are plenty of anecdotes. It’s not cool to be a lesbian in the same way that it’s cool to be queer or trans or nonbinary.
As a lesbian herself, Katie’s been left to question what it means to be a woman and to love other women as women in a world where a woman once might have been a man. Or, as it may be, a “tomboy” or “butch” lesbian who decided to transition in the other direction. It was a fascinating conversation, made more so by being joined by beloved co-splainer Christina Hoff Sommers. Here is a snippet of that discussion from our YouTube channel.
How to Find Love (Even in a Pandemic!)
Superstar dating coach Evan Marc Katz returned to the pod for our Valentine's Day Special with fabulous tips to help you find The One. He also told us how Covid dating plays to women's advantage: there are no easy or fast hook-ups if you’re staying safe, and more time to engage at a human level. Katz has been advising women since the dawn of the Internet (he began his career re-writing dating profiles on the early matchmaking sites, like a 21st-century Cyrano). With more and more apps offering less and less content about potential mates (on some merely a photo), Katz says this trend only increases the tendency to “commodify” dating like online shopping. One of his most important tips? Once you’ve matched with someone, engage them off the app: via text, FaceTime, or even an old-fashioned phone conversation. Don’t even think about meeting up until you are sure you have a deeper connection beyond your moving thumb. Here’s a quick outtake from that conversation.
Can You Please Talk to My Face?!
With apologies to our male listeners -- sorry not sorry -- we decided to devote an entire episode to one topic: Boobs. Yes, boobs.
Our inspiration was a new book called A Boob’s Life: How America’s Obsession Shaped Me — and You by Leslie Lehr. Leslie is a prize-winning author of seven books and an essayist for The New York Times “Modern Love” column. According to her author’s bio, “After being size AA to DDDD, through breast envy, breastfeeding, breast implants, and breast cancer, she realized she’s obsessed with breasts. Turns out, she’s not alone.”
Leslie’s book is part memoir, part cultural history, part analysis of our own love-hate relationship with our boobs and why men in particular find them especially obsessing. (Leslie even offers up a few good boob jokes along those lines. I liked this one by comedian Rita Rudner: Some people think having large breasts makes a woman stupid. Actually its quite the opposite: a woman having large breasts makes a man stupid.)
But to any woman reading this book, I think she’ll identify especially with the memoir aspects of it. I think there are two defining markers of female adolescence: How old you were when you got your period. And at what age did your breasts develop.
If you were a slow developer like I was, you’ll remember your teenage years as an excruciating waiting game -- combined with experiments with cotton balls, other types of padding, so-called “training bras” and devices you ordered from the back of your Archie comics that promised to make your breasts grow. Like Sea Monkeys, they unfailingly disappointed.
The writer Nora Ephron, in her famous essay called “A Few Words About Breasts” -- published in 1972 -- described her own agonizing experience as a flat-chested teenager. She wrote,
Here are some things I did to help:
Bought a Mark Eden Bust Developer.
Slept on my back for four years.
Splashed cold water on them every night because some French actress said in Life magazine that that was what she did for her perfect bustline.
Leslie’s book wonderfully captures much of this teenage (lifelong?) angst. And I should add it’s been going to be adapted to a series for HBO Max by Selma Hayek. Here is Leslie chatting about … boobs:
How to Transform Your Sex Life (Or to Answer Your Question: What DOES Woman Want?)
When Hachette sent me a book called Sex Points: Reclaim Your Sex Life with the Revolutionary Multi-Point System, I assumed it might be as useful as my Archie comic/Mark Eden breast developer. It didn’t help that the back cover of the book introduced the author, Dr. Bat Sheva Marcus, as the “Queen of Vibrators.” Turns out Dr. Marcus, who is founder and director of the Maze Women’s Sexual Health Clinic in New York (the largest independent women’s sexual health center in the country), has written one of the most important books about women and sex since, well, William Masters and Virginia Johnson.
As Dr. Marcus notes in her first chapter:
If you’ve been told [as a woman] it’s natural to lose your sex drive as you get older, or all you need is a glass of wine to relax, or it’s all in your head, I want you to know your problems are fixable. If you’re in pain or are ashamed of your fantasies. Or are thinking sex should be good because you’re young and in love, you shouldn’t be.No matter who you are I want you to know that you can have good sex.
Dr. Marcus brings a doctor’s medical knowledge, a therapist’s listening skills, and years of clinical experience with thousands of women to resolving all kinds of sexual issues, from psychological to hormonal imbalances and more. I truly think this is one of the most helpful and useful podcasts we’ve ever recorded. As Dr. Marcus insists, whether you are 18 or 85, there's no reason you shouldn't be having great sex.
And gentlemen, you will find this educational as well! The reason your partner may be turning away from you in bed might have little to do with her feelings for you, and more to do with underlying but highly treatable issues.
Here is Dr. Marcus dispelling yet another myth about female sexuality:
A Big Welcome a New Member of Our Femsplainer Family
After a nation-wide talent search for an intern (okay, we used Indeed), I’m thrilled to announce I finally have help behind the scenes. Cai Pigliucci is seeking her masters degree in journalism at The Craig Newmark School of Journalism at CUNY. She’s also awesomely over-qualified and more educated than I am: Aside from being fluent in Italian, as her name suggests, she speaks French and Italian. She’s a skilled photographer and has interned previously as a correspondent at the United Nations. Most important: Her favorite cocktail is a Negroni (natch). Welcome … and cin cin Cai!!!
How About Some Retail Therapy from Our February Sponsors?!
We're thankful to all the sponsors who support our podcast -- and even happier to pass along savings on great products to our listeners. And don't forget, every time you purchase from one of our sponsors you help support the podcast too! Links in italics.
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Incoming: Our March Femsplainers
Rosa Brooks, Nicole LaPorte, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Sylvia Foti.
March will be something of a fabulous authors month:
First up, Georgetown Law professor Rosa Brooks, daughter of feminist Barbara Ehrenreich, shocked her left-wing family by deciding (in her forties!) to join the Washington, DC Metropolitan Police Force. She recounts her tales working the capital’s poorest and most dangerous precinct in a wonderful new memoir, Tangled Up in Blue: Policing the American City.
Next, we can’t wait for global human rights activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali to return to the podcast. She’ll discuss her latest book, Prey: Immigration, Islam, and the Erosion of Women’s Rights.
And as high school seniors and their parents nervously await news of college acceptances, we thought we’d revisit the Varsity Blues college bribery scandal. Investigative journalist Nicole LaPorte will join us to talk about her new exposé, Guilty Admissions: The Bribes, Favors, and Phonies Behind the College Cheating Scandal.
Last up on our barstool for the month will be Sylvia Foti, who discovered her Lithuanian war hero grandfather turned out to be a Nazi war criminal. She recounts her grim discovery in The Nazi’s Granddaughter: How I Discovered My Grandfather Was a War Criminal.
Don’t say we dislike variety!
Speaking of Sex, How About Becoming a Friend with Benefits?
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Thanks all!
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