#8: Queer Women (The Pleasure Episode)
COMMUNITY VOICE: Jessica Halem | HEALTHCARE EXPERTS: Lourdes Dolores Follins, PhD LCSW-R; Anne Garment, MD | COMMUNITY REVIEWER: Annalisa Plumb
SHOW NOTES
What’s in a (queer woman’s) name – we mean, identity label?
Some terms that are used to describe the community of queer women:
WSW, or women who have sex with women: a medicalized term that focuses on behaviors, not people
A public health term that focuses on behaviors (e.g., sexual acts) rather than identity
Not a term most (if any) would use to describe their sexual identity
Implies cisgender women having sex with cisgender women (which is not inclusive of the entire queer women’s community!)
Lesbian, bisexual, and pansexual women
Not medicalized. These are identity terms, not terms that focus on behavior
Notably, these terms aren’t all-inclusive, and don’t capture everyone in the community
Ultimately, there is no perfect label neatly who the episode is “for”
Focusing on behavior (“WSW”) erases identities and stigmatizes behaviors
Focusing on identities (lesbian, bi, pan) can exclude folks
Lastly, other elements of identity (e.g. race, ability) often factor into gender expression and sexuality in ways that are complex, numerous and expansive
Besides, language is fickle and changes with time!
Mythbusting queer women’s sex
Scissoring: is a thing, though over-represented within the straight conceptions of queer sex.
It hurts Jessica’s back, and (based on anecdotal evidence) doesn’t seem like a common sexual act
In contrast, tribadism is more common face-to-face body position where genitals are rubbed together
Penetrative sex
Is not off the menu for queer women, should they want to incorporate it into their sex lives
Very much an individual preference (the overall theme of this episode!)
Topping and bottoming
Some folks may find more satisfaction in giving sexual pleasure (tops), others in receiving (bottoms)
But these dynamics are…well…dynamic, and can vary with time or sexual partners
User beware: often we retrofit stereotypes (e.g. tops and bottoms) onto how folks find pleasure
Orgasms
Not a necessary component of a sexual experience
Do not need to happen for pleasure to also happen
Death to “Bed Death”
Lesbian bed death
A sexist, pathologizing and inaccurate trope in which two women in a long-term relationship will eventually stop having sex altogether.
May be rooted in a different context within queer history - one where queer women felt pressure to stay together in order to subjugate their own desires for the wellbeing of their larger community.
So, what’s actually going on?
Dips or lulls in one’s sex life can be normal, though many folks might feel they “should” be having more regular sex due to external societal standards and pressures.
Your mind and body have a relationship! Stress (capitalism, homophobia, emotional disconnect with your sexual partners) can take away from sex drive, which - let’s just say it again - is totally normal.
All that being said, some challenges with sex may be medical in nature (for instance, vaginal dryness) - in which case
Centering pleasure, joy and ecstasy
Get specific
Kink - an umbrella term that includes (but isn’t limited to) BDSM fetish, voyeurism, exhibitionism – provides a model for how folks can use language to communicate what they want (or don’t want) to their sexual partners
“Brakes” and “accelerators” can be useful vocab to identify things that push pleasure forward or slow it down (but do not negatively impact)
You’ve got resources
Healthcare providers - particularly within primary care specialties like OB/GYN, internal medicine and family medicine - can be a great first-line option for those who are open to it
That being said, we acknowledge that not all folks will be comfortable or able to talk to their providers about their sexual satisfaction. Other professionals - such as pelvic physical therapists, psychologists, or social workers - may be better fits.
It can be tough to have these conversations, but the payoff may be worthwhile
TRANSCRIPT
Jessica Halem: If you are a woman who has sex with other people, born in the category of hated woman-ness or lives in the category of hated women, and you are two people who find each other and are able to. Help each other. Enjoy pleasure. Give each other pleasure for me, that is a revolutionary act revolutionary act to achieve and feel pleasure in a world that is trying to kill us.
[QHP THEME MUSIC]
Gaby: Welcome to QHP. We're a podcast about queer health topics for sexual and gender minorities. My name is Gaby, and I use she her pronouns.
Sam: I'm Sam, I made a Liza Minnelli reference that didn't make the final cut and my pronouns are he and him
Richard: and I'm Richard and I use he and him pronouns.
Gaby: We're all queer primary care doctors in New York City.
Richard: And you're listening to QHP episode eight, all about queer women's sexual pleasure.
[THEME MUSIC ENDS]
Gaby: At the top of this episode, you heard from the unmistakable Jessica Halem.
Jessica Halem: Well, hello, my name is Jessica Halem. I use she and her pronouns. Most recently I left Harvard medical school I was the inaugural LGBTQ outreach and engagement director. But before that I've spent 25 years in the LGBTQ health movement, as both an advocate, and an educator as well as, a cultural expert, which I'm going to talk about today.
Gaby: Today, Jessica, alongside a few other queer health experts who we'll introduce soon, are going to take on the subject of sexual pleasure for queer women.
Sam: This is the queer sex ed you almost definitely never got in high school and maybe didn't even know you needed or wanted.
Richard: But before class gets in session, let's take a second to be really intentional here. Queer women is a broad and really vague term. Who's really our audience for this episode?
Sam: Judging by who's on my Zoom, I'm going to say people who wear flannel and have a farm share.
Gaby: I mean, that could also be me just having gone to a liberal arts school in new England. So it's really hard to tease apart the stereotypes (laughter). But to Richard's initial point, I'm going to admit that I've had a lot of trouble clarifying the audience for this episode.There are so many identity terms and labels that are claimed by the community that we're hoping to speak to. And so the title for this episode, so it has gone through a lot of edits. Initially working name for the episode was sex for WSWs, which stands for women who have sex with women. But, well, let's just have Jessica weigh in on that here.
Jessica Halem: Nobody says that nobody says WSWs. I dare you to show me an EHR that someone input WSW. What else do we say? Rug munchers. (laughter) Put that in your EHR.
Gaby: And she's not the only one who bristled at WSW.
Dr. Follins: It's a medicalized, no shade to you, but it's a medicalized public health term that focuses on behaviors as opposed to people. and also most members that I know of these communities hardly ever use these terms to describe their actual identity.
Richard: This is Dr. Lourdes Dolores Follins.
Dr. Follins: My pronouns. Are she her hers. I'm a black queer femme psychotherapist in private practice. And I focus on the needs of LGBTQI same gender loving and gender diverse people of color as well as kinky people of color and people of color and consensually non-monogamous relationships or considering consensually non-monogamous relationships. And I've written about conducted research with and worked with LGBTQ I same gender loving and gender diverse people of color for over 20 years.
Richard: Dr. Follins hits the nail on the head. The term WSW is predominantly used in public health or medical domains. It can be useful when the goal is to focus on sexual behavior rather than identity labels. Since there is so many identity labels and the definitions are all pretty varied.
Sam: But the term WSW can feel stigmatizing for starters, WSW often implies cis women having sex with cis women, which is limited and doesn't include everyone. Secondly, WSW just ends up framing certain sexual practices as a risk factor.
Gaby: So WSW may be good for a study on what health risks come with. Specific behaviors like rug munching, to use Jessica's phrasing... a term I never thought I would be using in a podcast but here we are. But yeah, it isn't a term that resonates with the community.
Sam: So if we're going to focus on terms used by the community, should we be calling us episode sex for lesbian, bisexual, and pansexual woman?
Richard: But it feels like it falls a little short. I mean, after all, not everyone identifies with those terms either.
Gaby: Which is why this whole situation is a catch 22, because if we use the term WSW, then we only define people by the potential risks of their behavior, which means we focus on that behavior as unhealthy or moral. But on the flip side, if we use identity labels like lesbian, bi or pan in order to capture something more complex than just sexual risk. Then we don't zoom in on the more relevant, specific health information. Plus on top of that, we just end up stigmatizing the identity label by bringing it into a healthcare space where it's going to inevitably become synonymous with a quote "risk factor".
Richard: We also left off queer, which happens to be in the name of our podcast, which some folks don't identify with either
Gaby: True.
Sam: Exactly. And all of that just gets to the point about this tension between acts and identities in trying not to stigmatize either of those in the medical space. And then , there's sexuality and gender, which is so much more complex and rich than just your pronouns and who you're attracted to. Here's Dr. Follins talking about an article that speaks to just that. How her identity as a black woman also relates to her gender expression.
Dr. Follins: I think it's called Black is My Gender. And what this person does is they take you through a series of, explanations and discussion or exploration around how, at least in the us, for black people or people of African descent, because we were people of African descent and othered, our, our gender identity was put on us. We weren't presumed to have one. And so what's feminine might look different for someone who's not of African descent. What's masculine might look different for someone who's not of African descent. And that's for the persons. Individual gender identity as well as then what society says is okay for you as a person of African descent.
Gaby: You know, so maybe naming the actual labels, isn't that important because they're subjective, they're intersectional. And they're also liable to change:
Jessica Halem: in my very, very short lifetime, that feels like almost 50 years, the language I have even used to describe myself has changed, and the language I use to describe, my lovers has changed. And the language my lovers use has changed. There is a very important part of language, which is: are the words you're using to describe yourself, helping you to attract the kind of people you would like to attract? For me, what's always been like, like the hard part about this conversation in medicine and even in the community, is that there becomes these lines, you know, oh are they lesbians or are they trans men? Are they butches or are they this? And I'm like, I have had sex with all of them. And we have more in common than we are different. And it's my vagina. That is what we all have in common is that trans men lesbians, butches, BI sexuals, all love my vagina. It's a great vagina. It's a great vagina.
Richard: if there's one undeniable truth about this subject, that may be it. In other words, long story long, this episode is for anyone, for whom the term queer woman resonates.
Gaby: Maybe that should have been the title of the episode, queer women and sexual pleasure, a long story long.
[TRANSITION MUSIC]
Gaby: All right, now we're getting to the moment of this podcast that everyone has, has been waiting for.
Sam: Gaby. I already introduced myself. But what moment are you talking about?
Gaby: Where we talk about what queer women actually do bed together.
Richard: Oh my God. That's like the best kept secret in the queer community. Cause the boys can't keep their mouth shut
Gaby: that is the best double entendre. (laughter) Okay, but it does kind of feel like a secret, to be honest, I feel like there are so many queer women. I know who have stories of people coming up to them in dark corners of bars, asking them what quote lesbian sex is. There's this kind of unspoken, taboo around the subject.
Sam: Right sex without a penis, just isn't legible to people.
Gaby: Shocker.
Sam: And to formally name what we're saying here, thanks to things like, well, the internet and the pornography, there's a pretty widespread cultural fetishization of queer women's sexuality.
Gaby: Exactly. And mainstream media has done a pretty good job of capitalizing on it. So there's the scene from American pie. There's the Britney Spears-Madonna kiss at the VMAs. You know, my sister just texted me again about Dua Lipa and St. Vincent at their Grammy performance I could go on. But my point is those cultural moments aren't out there because someone wanted to win a GLAAD award. They aren't designed to increase queer representation. There's absolutely no emotional intimacy, or usually even genuine chemistry. They're attention seeking, manufactured to satisfy the straight men who are watching.
Richard: And surprising, no one, these media representations of queer women that appeal to the male gaze, aren't really accurate.
Jessica Halem: Dear listeners, no one prepares you in the movies. All sex in the movies is terrible, but no one really prepares you for how long it can take someone with a vagina to come just with a face. On their vagina. Like, as I used to joke, you know, the reason why dolphins and whales are so important to lesbians is because they have the ability to breathe through a hole in their head. I have eaten some pussies where I thought I was gonna suffocate and die. And we've all had that lover who you really want to please them. And you thought there is a chance I might die. There is a chance I might die.
Richard: “Eat pussy like you have a blow hole”, an autobiography by Jessica Halem.
[TRANSITION MUSIC]
Gaby: Okay. So here is another queer women's sex thing that we can mythbust: scissoring.
Richard: Huh?
Sam: Wait – by scissoring, do you mean cutting your hair shorter? So you just kind of have a bob cut.
Richard: Next comes the wall hair trimmer
Gaby: Honestly, don't tell me
Sam: Gaby that was your first hair joke at you. So, shechehiyanu. I am next.
Richard: Welcome to the pantheon, Gaby.
Gaby: Okay guys. Um. Here I am live explaining scissoring on a podcast in 2021. Dreams do come true, everybody. So basically scissoring is what is thought to be the thing that queer women do in bed together. And to give you a visual of what this is, if you take your hands and you create two V's with your fingers and you put them as though they interlock, that is in theory, what scissoring is. So it's genitals mashing up against each other. And the heads of the two people involved are in opposite directions. And I couldn't find any studies on this, but it is not at least in my circle of queer women, friends, what most queer women do in bed.
Jessica Halem: I have scissored I will admit it's actually a lot harder than it looks. And now that I'm almost 50. I do not think I could do it. Like my, my show ass. Like it's all about the psoas muscles. But I did scissor in the beginning.
Sam: As someone whose internet searches, haven't geared towards the women performing for the male gaze in quite some time. Tell me more about this.
Gaby: What a lot of queer women do do is something called tribalism ism, which is, it's kind of like, you can think of it like dry humping, right? And so the idea is that people are usually face-to-face and they're grinding on each other. But the beauty is that I can't actually tell you more, at least not in a broadly applicable generalizable way, because sex looks really different for every single queer woman.
Dr. Follins: Unlike cishet women, because we're queer because we're outsiders because we're sexual outsiders, we have an exciting place. Like we have an exciting opportunity to decide what fucking looks like, what sex looks like, what love looks like, what, you know, what humping looks like, what all of it looks like. And that's without being kinky. I think, you know, when we think about and what we'd let our patients and clients know that, “Hey, I understand that the larger society says women's sex and sexuality looks like this”. And then as a queer woman, well, you shouldn't be doing that anyway or you don't exist or what can you possibly do? You know, all these myths and stereotypes and, and demeaning things and stigmatizing comments. If we let them know that they actually have lots of power and lots of agency, regardless of what society says, you can choose. What your sexuality looks like and what your sex life looks like,
Richard: I love this because it captures one of the most beautiful things about being queer, the freedom and the opportunity for self discovery that comes when there's just no societal script written for how you can love or how you can have sexual intimacy or how you can orgasm.
Gaby: Because if you have to write your own script, then the end result is probably going to be better than anything you see on TV or in movies, because it's by you and for you
Sam: And without those pre-ordering expectations of what should and shouldn't happen during sex pleasure becomes well, the only thing that matters.
Richard: And as Dr. Follins points out, putting your pleasure front and center is exactly what a kink – an umbrella term that includes, but isn't limited to BDSM fetish, voyeurism, exhibitionism, et cetera – is all about.
Dr. Follins: Kink gives you language that most non kinky people don't have. There's something about kink where there's a structure and it's understood that you're expected to figure your stuff out because we're going to play. Or if we're going to fuck, we can't do anything unless you know what you want, unless you know who you are and unless you know what you like. and so what I've noticed is that a number of my clients, particularly millennials, not necessarily generation X folks, but millennials, at least the folks that I work with, there's a level of openness to the structures that the kink worlds and the CNM worlds provide as far as language and self exploration, which has been incredibly freeing for them.
Richard: So for those not in the know, CNM is consensual non-monogamy and agreement between anyone in a relationship about having sex with people outside of their relationship, with the rules being defined by those people in the relationship.
Sam: It's worth acknowledging that while pleasure is central, we don't talk about the pleasure of all folks in the same way. Dr. Follins pointed out how a lot of folks are frequently excluded from narratives around sex and orgasm because of cultural assumptions about how other parts of their identity impact their desire and how it's perceived.
Dr. Follins: sexuality of queer women. That are cis and differently abled – whether it's physically, cognitively, emotionally – hardly gets talked about, or if it does it's, it's not with medical providers, or even mental health providers. Also the sexuality and sexual satisfaction of cis women that are queer over the age of 45. Women that are religious and observant and queer, as well as how being a person of color who's queer and cis impacts what society as well as partners think you should do or should not be doing
Gaby: And it's all culturally constructed bullshit, right? Because. No matter who you are, you're capable of and deserving of wonderful orgasms,
Sam: Thank you so much, Gaby. And for what it's worth for Jessica sex has only gotten better as she's gotten into her forties.
Jessica Halem: I just want to say this. It is so true about women's orgasms. I thought that was like some like weird, like, I'll wear a purple hat when I grow older and my orgasms will be better, but it's so true. My orgasms are amazing. Uh - of course sex changed. I absolutely don't have sex as much as I used to have sex. I mean, I used to have sex sometimes three or four times a day and I would have a UTI tomorrow. You know what I mean? Like now I have sex and I'm like, I'm gonna take a hot bath. I got to clean up. I'm going to put on some clean pants. Now I'm going to take an acidophilus. I'm going to drink a lot of water.
Richard: So long story long queer women's sex is about pleasure and everyone has a claim to that pleasure, no matter what identities they might hold.
Gaby: And so to answer the question asked by so many problematic cis straight men in bars, queer women's sex looks like whatever we fucking want it to. You Pun fully intended. And so, yeah, it's hard to generalize because it's going to be really different depending on what everyone likes and what parts are involved. The menu is wide and varied and can include toys, oral sex. rimming, external stimulation, penetration
Richard: Let's pause for a second and repeat that point.
Dr. Garment: Newsflash, there are plenty of women who have sex with women who do enjoy penetrative sex. So being a lesbian does not mean that penetrative sex is out. If it's something you're interested in, there's lots of that can be done to make it more enjoyable that you can engage in a conversation with your healthcare provider about.
Richard: That is the wonderful doctor Anne garment,
Dr. Garment: Pronouns. Are she/her. I'm a primary care provider here at Bellevue Hospital.
Richard: She's an expert in women's health and addiction medicine, and a fabulous Broadway belter. Anyway, I just want to underline the point that she makes.
Sam: Because there are some women who may feel that their queerness means penetrative sex is not an option for them because a lot of people associate penetrative sex with vaginal penetration or straight sex only, but really at the risk of sounding like a broken record, it's all about what feels pleasurable.
Gaby: which actually brings me to an important followup point. There's no secret to being good at giving other women pleasure. There's no special technique that unlocks the orgasm. You don't have to write the alphabet with your tongue or whatever other rumor you heard in middle school from some boy it's at the end of the day, just about communicating with your partner and paying attention to whatever makes them feel good.
Richard: Gaby busting myths.
Sam: And on the subject of giving pleasure, this is also a create your own adventure situation. Some will be interested in both giving and receiving pleasure. Others will be more interested in performing just one aspect of those parts of sex,
Richard: which if we translate that into queer lingo is getting into the subject of topping and bottoming.
Gaby: So I think I'll start off by just saying that these terms can feel exclusive and they can make you feel like you're less than queer or not queer at all because you don't know them. And then I'll share that when I was a baby gay, I was very confused by these terms. And I actually felt so embarrassed that I didn't know them, that I didn't ask anybody what they meant. So I remember very distinctly. I was on a date with the girl I was with and she opened a door for me. And I think, I thought, “Oh my God, is this it?Is this how I know? Am I a bottom?”
Sam: But Gaby, it's not about who opens the door. It's about how they let it close.
Gaby: Oh, that's right. I forget. It's all about whether they round house kick it closed with their platform, Doc Martins, or whether they just let it click shut behind their neatly polished Oxfords.
Richard: I would watch that lifetime movie (laughter)
Gaby: All of that aside, I do think the terms are confusing.
Richard: I feel like some of the confusion is that a lot of folks know the terms as they're used within the world of cis gay men. Right?
Gaby: Absolutely. But it's also probably because the terms aren't clearly defined or use consistently. And also, a lot of people start to retrofit personality traits to those who top or bottom, which if you're on Instagram is really fun for the internet memes, but someone can have big top energy in the world and then end up having really different preferences when it comes to sex.
Sam: But let's get back to why I'm a fan of how Jessica defined these terms, where it's about the direction of pleasure in the bedroom and not whether you're holding doors open or what type of shoe you're wearing. So a top would be someone who's very interested in giving pleasure.
Jessica Halem: I have been with people who are very serious tops. I've been with folks who identify back in the day, a stone who, you know, absolutely don't want to be touched in any way, who will do all of the work. I love them. I would like to throw a parade for them. they're doing God's work, , have enjoyed every hookup with every, you know, serious top Butch top that I've been with. It's uh, it's uh, just a, just a pleasure. Every from beginning to end soup to nuts, happy customer, you know, a top you know, a service top, someone who's really pleasing, wants to please. Who wants to make you happy. Like those are, those are gifts from heaven.
Richard: And while Jessica had glowing things to say about tops. She had a lot of appreciation for the bottoms out there.
Jessica Halem: I've heard people describe bottoms especially for women who identify in our bottoms, being somebody who is really in touch with what brings them pleasure and able to articulate that and help a partner make that happen. That's a big deal for women. You know, we are talking about a category of people who are sexually objectified, who are sexually, you know, vilified, who have lifetimes of trauma and pain that coming to your sexuality or coming to a positive way of talking about your body and being in your body. That is no small challenge for every woman. I think every person on the planet, but for every woman, it is no small thing to get to a place where you can be happy and, and open in your body and welcoming another person to ravage you in a world that is full of hatred and hostility towards women and their bodies.
Richard: Notice how Jessica doesn't even mention orgasms here.
Gaby: One of the great things about queer sex - and specifically queer women's sex - is that orgasms and a positive sexual experience don't have to go hand in hand, right? So you can have a really satisfying sexual experience and not have that culminate in an orgasm either for you or your partners or all of the above.
Sam: Back to topping and bottoming dynamics, my favorite topic, and the point being that they can vary with partner to partner and throughout college.
Gaby: And it will probably vary with every day of the week and the waxing and waning of the moon and the humidity in the air.
Richard: In my day, we had crystals for things like that.
Gaby: You're dating yourself, Richard. But spoiler alert, a women's orgasm can be a complex thing.
Jessica Halem: To experience an orgasm, like it's not clear cuts there's a lot that can happen down there. And there are so many options and let's just start from there that if there's so many options and it is actually very complicated and it could take a while and let's like create an Excel spreadsheet where , we go into detail about all the different options and all the things that could happen to get to what is actually really fun, which is having an orgasm. You have to be willing to be ugly. I say this all the time, like, “Hey, you know what? It could take a while things could cramp. We might need to take a Gatorade break”. Right. For women. To be able to say, “here's what I need to have happen. And it might be kind of scary. You might have to take a breath, and you might have to hold your breath for longer than you've ever held it”, whatever. and if you want to hook up with someone that should be like an exciting challenge, let's just set ourselves up for, but this is an endeavor that is worth the time and the talking about.
Gaby: Now that we've gotten tops, bottoms and scissoring out of the way, I want to myth bust one more thing: lesbian bed death.
Sam: I would like a good sound for that.
Gaby: womp womp. (laughter)
Sam: And let's be clear: while lesbian is a very specific identity label, the gist behind the term is broad that two women who are in a relationship will eventually just stop having sex altogether.
Richard: Oh, that sexist trope has never sat well with me.
Sam: Or with Dr. Follins
Dr. Follins: I hate it. I absolutely hate it. I've always hated it. I was like, “Oh yes, we need one more label. We need one more thing to pathologize”.
Sam: Or with Jessica.
Jessica Halem: Break up, everybody just break up.
Gaby: I think what bothers me the most about it is that it's presented as the natural course of things. Like it's just astrological destiny. There's nothing you can do.
Sam: This couldn't be an episode about queer women without a reference to (pause) astrology.
Richard: Fortunately, bed death is not in the stars at all. Let's pause here to say that there are lots of queer women partnered or single who have a lot of great sex.
Sam: And if you don't believe us, listen to a literal professional expert on the subject:
Dr. Follins: Sexual satisfaction is usually not a challenge for my clients at all. There are lots of lesbians and other women who partnered with women who are having sex, who are having amazing sex. Who are having sometimes the best sex of their lives.
Richard: All that being said, there are some folks who may experience dips in their sex lives in terms of either frequency or satisfaction or both.
Gaby: And the good news is that this isn't some queer woman's judgment day. There are tons of common reasons why dips like this might happen.
Sam: There may actually be…nothing going on. Lulls in the bedroom can be completely normal and healthy. But as Dr Follins points out, we sometimes get worried about them because we're taught that consistency and regularity are part of a happy sex life.
Dr. Follins: Humans usually like a yes or a no, we can't stand “maybe”. We can't stand “it depends”. We can stand “well on Tuesdays, but definitely not Fridays, but sometimes on Thursdays and every now and then when the moon is blue”. Yeah. We don't like that. We don't like the in between.
Richard: Right. And this whole idea that it's about X number of times in a week or in a month.
Gaby: And as Dr. Garment points out what a happy sex life entails is really in the eye or the orgasm of the beholder
Dr. Garment: sometimes people will say, “Oh, my partner and I aren't having sex as often as we should”. And I'll usually try to unpack that and say, “what do you mean by should?” Right? “Is it something that bothers you? Is it something that you think is wrong? Would you want to be having sex more or are you actually comfortable having the amount of sex that you're having?” I think it comes to, are you concerned about that because you know, you feel like someone is going to judge you, either your partner or society, or who knows what, because you're not having sex often enough or is it something that's truly bothersome to you? And starting there.
Richard: I once was at a conference that I went to a session about sexual dysfunction that was given by a sex therapist. And she explained that people in relationships start to doubt their sexual attraction to their partner, if their desire to initiate sex starts to diminish. The therapist made the point that desire includes getting turned on when someone else initiated sex. So, if you're doing work around the house and you're not feeling so sexy, but then your partner initiated sex and you decide to go for it that still shows desire for your partner.
Sam: And if doing housework is your kink, then we're really into that here at QHP. Dr. Follins talked a bit about how for folks the work may just involve getting in touch with your erotic brakes and accelerators.
Dr. Follins: Emily Nagoski is this, health educator and she is bad-ass – I think she's amazing and fantastic. And she wrote this book called Come As You Are. And it's got this idea of brakes and accelerators. And so in our relationships, you can be with someone who it doesn't take very much for them to shut down sexually, but yet you're someone, if you sneeze you're turned off. But if you don't know about each other's brakes and accelerators, you might think, Oh, we're incompatible or, Oh, there's something wrong with you or, Oh, there's something wrong with me or, Oh, there's something wrong with us. We're not doing it. Right.
Gaby: This concept of brakes and accelerators is absolutely around when you're first starting to have sex and getting acquainted with your partners, but it can apply to more longterm partnerships too. As you grow and develop alongside your partners, what everyone wants or needs may change. And also these brakes and accelerators may vary depending on how connected you're feeling with your partners. Meaning that moments of disconnect may be a brake in and of itself.
Dr. Follins: Let's say there's a conflict with a partner around sex, or there's a conflict with the partner. That's something emotional, but it looks like it's a sex, but it's not sex. It's really about the emotional connection or disconnection.
Gaby: And, you know, yes, we're talking about that point of disconnect as being about you and your partner, but it can also just be about you. It can be about something that you are going through. The point is that your mind and your body have a relationship. And so if your mind is going through some stuff, it may end up impacting your body and how well or how much your body can carry out sex in the way that maybe it used to a couple of days or a couple of weeks ago
Sam: Jessica had her own thoughts on this mind body relationship:
Jessica Halem: I mean, God bless the people that can rub one out with each other and just. Get it done. I mean, there's also just a physical thing that people can do and that's great, but I mean, I think good sex is deeply connected to how connected or intimate you are as a couple.
Gaby: And this is ultimately at the heart of why Dr. Follins is so averse to the whole concept of lesbian bed death in the first place.
Dr. Follins: I think it's a term that fails to take into consideration why partners might stop being in sync sexually and emotionally. Life under capitalism makes it extremely and increasingly challenging. The demands on our time, the demands in our minds, the demands on our spirit and our bodies, that demands also on our finances, make it really difficult for many people to feel aroused sometimes because they're so drained. So you have a job that requires you to do what? Oh, you're on your feet all day. Okay. And your back hurts. Okay. And you might get laid off. Oh, okay. And your housing might be in jeopardy. Okay. Yeah. I can see why you and your partners aren't having sex because it's not first priority anymore. It might not even be fifth priority.
Sam: And as Jessica points out, queer relationships have additional stressors that are unique to living life in a straight world.
Jessica Halem: Queer relationships have pressure to succeed that we can let go of. I think there was – I think the lesbian bed death stereotype came from a time when we were very desperate to prove our relationships mattered and longevity mattered and building a life together mattered.
Richard: And as if that's not enough on its own, there's the fact that women are subject to social pressures that encourage them to put the good of the collective before their own pleasure or wellbeing.
Jessica Halem: I mean, there's so much underneath that that says that for women it's okay to subjugate sexual desire for the sake of some sort of community buy-in and our relationship. I went to a workshop once run by one of the couples for one of the early California marriage cases who said that the fight for gay marriage almost broke them up. Well, there's actually a lot of stories about those early gay couples that were in the marriage equality cases who are no longer together. You know, they discuss the pressure that they went under, and all the politics and scrutiny.
Gaby: Long story long, there are a ton of normal and understandable reasons why queer women might not be fully satisfied with their sex lives. None of them have to do with fulfilling the bed death manifesto, but all of them are things that you could bring up to your doctor
Dr. Garment: So, it is absolutely within the realm of, being a gynecologist or family practitioner or primary care provider that we should be talking about things like sexual satisfaction. Even if this might seem like something that's not rooted in the biology textbooks, it is so important to our patient's health and, both physical and psychological wellbeing that it should be as much a part of the visit as checking someone’s blood pressure.
Richard: This is absolutely about comfort.Not all folks are going to feel safe speaking to their healthcare providers about their sexual practices.
Sam: Not all healthcare providers are going to be good at having these conversations. But we do think it's a standard that you should hold your primary care provider to.
Jessica Halem: Why shouldn't a doctor be able to have that deeply important fraught, complicated, charged conversation? You talk about poop. You talk about dying. You talk about bodies. Like, you're the group of people who are supposed to be able to talk about anything.
Sam: And to that point: if you don't feel like your primary care provider is a person you can go to in order to center your pleasure, that's not the end of the line. There are pelvic physical therapist, sex therapist, couples therapists. We could go on. The point is: that there's more resources than just your primary care provider in a medical setting for folks who feel like they might want to spend time investing in their pleasure.
Gaby: And yes, these conversations aren't always easy, but as Jessica reminds us, the payoff can be worth it.
Jessica Halem: I just feel like, you know, as women, we have to put our sexual satisfaction, our ecstasy, our joy at the center of our lives. And when you're a woman who puts joy and ecstasy at the center of your life, then it becomes very hard to accept anything less. And I think that's true in our relationships and that should be true in our workplaces. And that's true in our friendships that when we center ecstasy and joy, that it becomes very hard, to, to settle.
[QHP THEME MUSIC]
Richard: QHP is a power-sharing project that puts community stories in conversation with healthcare expertise to expand autonomy for sexual and gender minority folks.
Sam: And as always thank you to our community voice Jessica Halem, and our healthcare experts Dr. Anne Garment. and Dr. Lourdes Dolores Follins.
Gaby: For information on the stuff we talked about in this episode, check out our website, www.queerhealthpod.com. It has show notes, it has those links to resources, and it has a lot more.
Sam: Help this information find a larger audience by leaving a review and subscribing to our feed on Spotify or Apple podcasts.
Gaby: If you like what you heard, follow us. We’re on Twitter or Instagram. Our handles there are @QueerHealthPod, and just an FYI: we've got more episodes coming out about queer women. So slide into our DMS and tell us what you want us to cover on these episodes.
Sam: And thank you to Lonnie Ginsberg for composing the music heard throughout this episode.
Richard: And as always, opinions of this podcast are our own and do not represent the opinions of any of our affiliated institutions. And even though we're doctors, please don't use this podcast alone as medical advice, but instead consult with your own healthcare provider.
[QHP THEME MUSIC ENDS]
Sam: Wait, can bed desk manifesto be our QHP rock band name?
Gaby: I would buy a t-shirt that says that in like the Thrasher font.
Richard: with scissors.
Sam: Of course.