Black Boomer Besties from Brooklyn
This is what the world needs now: two free-thinking “seasoned” Black women speaking their truth and inspiring others to do the same. Shaped by 45 years of friendship that began at the prestigious Brooklyn Technical High School through the Ivy League, medical school, marriages, divorces, triumphs, parenting queer children, life-threatening illness and many many amazing adventures. Each week, besties Leslie Osei-Tutu and Angella Fraser will push against boundaries in love, culture, careers, faith, politics and out-dated assumptions about women of a certain age. Remember, you’re never too old to change your mind…or your hair! (but more on that later :-)All views are our own and do not reflect the views of our institution/company. Information provided is not intended to serve as medical advice.
Black Boomer Besties from Brooklyn
Ep 43 S4/7 Clitoris 101
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Clitoris. Say it out loud: Clit-o-ris. That glorious organ of the female/traditionally female body has been a topic that Angella has brooded over since listening to Maria Rosok’s TED Talk and learning about Sophia Wallace’s Cliteracy movement (no pun intended), a couple of years ago.
In her then 58 yrs, she had never learned anything about the significance, size, or sensitivity of this important part of her body. She felt robbed. She was angry! Of course Leslie heard all about this outrage. To add insult to injury, Leslie recalled that the clitoris was never mentioned in anatomy class in medical school. But the stars aligned and as it turns out, Leslie’s colleague had done extensive historical & anatomical research on this amazing pleasure center.
In this long awaited episode, the Besties talk with Princeton NJ based gynecologist Dr Maria Sophocles. Dr Sophocles has a thriving medical practice where her 25,000+ patients come from all over the country to receive gender and culturally affirming gynecologic care.
Angella, Leslie and Maria discuss the patriarchal biases and restraints placed on the clitoris specifically and female genitalia in general, and how these constraints permeate society. Lean in as the Besties explore all things clitoris.
Dr Sophocles’ Practice - Women's Healthcare of Princeton
Sigmund Freud’s theory on vaginal orgasm debunked
Visit Black Boomer Besties from Brooklyn website for behind-the-scenes extras.
Well, hello. Hello. Let's do a doubt, Mrs. Doubtfire. Hello.
SPEAKER_02Look at us. Here we are again. And I'm so excited. I'm always excited. Actually, excited is my baseline. So I'm at my baseline excitement. No, I'm a little bit above that, actually. So welcome to another episode of Black Boomer Besties from Brooklyn. Brooklyn. All right, ask me why I'm excited, Ange.
SPEAKER_00Um, Leslie, why are you excited?
SPEAKER_02Because I have a gorgeous young lady here that is our guest today, and she's going to excite us in a way that, oh, that was an interesting choice of words.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Pun intended. Pun intended.
SPEAKER_00And I'm going to tell you why I'm excited, but later, because I am, I think, doubly excited. Okay. So you'll hear.
SPEAKER_02All right. Just no funny noises from that corner.
SPEAKER_01I can make as many funny noises as I choose. It is. It's I'm a grown-ass woman. Okay, go. That's true. That's true. Okay.
SPEAKER_02So the beautiful lady in the coral shirt is Dr. Maria Sophocles. You're going to find out about her and you're going to love her as much as I've loved her for well, I know it's well over 10 years, but it could be about 14 years that we've been working side by side together.
SPEAKER_03It's felt like two years. Oh, well, yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And and you and I have a psychic connection that I'm going to mention also because I was thinking about it earlier. But I'm going to read your bio a little bit. Uh, Dr. Maria Sophocles is a board-certified OBGyan with more than 25 years of medical experience. She is the medical director of Women's Health Care of Princeton, a progressive and innovative women's health practice in Princeton, New Jersey. That's an understatement. Dr. Sophocles understands the spectrum of issues women face from their teens through post-menopause. Women of any age want a physician they can trust, Dr. Sophocles says. I spend time with my patients so they can share intimate issues and complex problems. That's just a tidbit of who she is and what she does. So let me just set the stage when you walk into her office. It's a beautiful women-led and forward office with warm, soothing colors. It does not look like a medical practice at all. And there are these giant photographs of women of all stages, races, diversity, there's and and colors, and just the mood is just calm and so inviting. Very special. So I'll turn it over to you to introduce yourself and say a little bit about who you are and what you do.
SPEAKER_03Well, first, thank you so much, Leslie and Angela, for having me. Um, I'm not from Brooklyn, and I wish I was uh uh a black bestie, but I am a kind of a boomer. So, you know, I hit two of the four, and I'm just so happy to be here. I I love um the woman connection. I love that I think this is a forum for open, honest conversation. And boy, do women need that. Boy, have we been put into boxes and told to behave and be quiet and be nice. And um, you know, I know the phrase, you know, good nice women rarely make history. And but there's nothing wrong with being nice, but there's also nothing wrong with advocating for yourself and for feeling like you want to hear from others who are going through the same thing or who or just to learn something. And that's always been the mission of my practice. Women's Healthcare of Princeton is a progressive place for open communication, uh, where there is no judgment based on race, religion, gender identity, anything like that. So it's a place women have felt safe to come be themselves, express themselves, find out who they are, or redefine who they are. Um, and I've been so luckily, lucky to know Leslie for so long and watch her just, you know, weave her clinical magic. And uh, you know, you all think of her as a podcaster, but I know her as this spectacular and empathic anesthesiologist who takes people at their most vulnerable and their most terrified and makes them feel they're safe and they're cared for and lets me be able to do my thing with them and help them. And so she's just been a lovely colleague for me, but you know, more like a clinical sister, really.
SPEAKER_02Um yeah, we've been a really good team, and and and the patients um say all the time how helpful it is. Let me just give you a little tidbit into her office. When you come in and you know how in a um in an office you need to disrobe, you'll get a warmed robe in the practice.
SPEAKER_00No way, yeah. I've never had that.
SPEAKER_01Why would you not want that?
SPEAKER_03Why would you not want that? Unheard of. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01But why wouldn't you?
SPEAKER_03Now that you've said it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Well, I always think about what would I want? And they're cold. Offices are cold so that they're clean. Uh, but cold just adds to your anxiety. So I feel like warmth is such a simple, soothing thing. Um, we tr we try to let them listen to the music they want, so we have little uh speakers that they can speak into to get the music they like. And I remember one woman came in covered in tattoos and and nose ring and earrings, and I thought, oh, I wonder what music she'll choose. And she said, I'm really nervous. Could I could I get Frank Sinatra? And I said, Really? Okay. Absolutely. I didn't mean to be so judged. You cannot judge a book. You cannot judge a book by I did it. I was so ashamed of myself. She said, I I just need some Frank Sinatra. I said, Okay. Um, but thanks. We we love it. Uh I it's been there 15 years. We have 25,000 patients from all over the country, but mostly from the Northeast. Um, women come from far away because we don't do any obstetrics, it's only gynecology, and it focuses on the things that fall under the radar in a traditional OBGYN practice, such as pediatric and adolescent gynecology. You know, kids and teens need help too sometimes, and their pediatricians often don't know how to help. Menopause is, of course, the biggest deal for that you deal with. Yes. And in our office, we pioneered the use of a laser that regenerates vaginal tissue. It was the first office in the country to have this. So women find that out. So they come to have bladder help or sexual discomfort helped, um, skin diseases of the vulva helped. We take care of urology, we take care of geriatrics and pelvic pain, terrible pain syndromes that really need time. Um, so I decided just to collect all those little things that a regular practice doesn't want to do in depth, and just train for a gosh, I probably spent a decade going around the country training with the experts and all these things, and then bringing that back to Princeton, and then training six women under me to do it too. So it is different. I mean, we do regular Paps mission checkups, but we we like to focus on these little things.
SPEAKER_00I wonder you have 25,000. I mean, yeah, 25, let's call that 25,001, because I will oh I will be reaching out to you.
SPEAKER_03I forgot to tell you that. No, no, it's a very special, it's a very special place, and I'm not modest about it at all, but because we hear every day, and Leslie hears this too, you know, thank you. I've been to five doctors, or thank you, I'm a trans woman, and I was actually excused from three practices, or thank you, I have severe pain, and I've just been told it was a yeast infection for 10 years. So it's really gratifying to not dismiss and brush off and to listen and to give people permission. I mean, those are the two things that are are critical, I think. Um, so it's yeah, it's been a journey for me. Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02There's um a room in her practice that has a showcase full of um dildos and um stimulation um toys. Sex toys, sex toys. Yes.
SPEAKER_00And were you trying, excuse me, Leslie, were you trying to package it? Were you trying to package that into little okay, okay? If I may, if I may, let me jump in and explain um how, at least um from my vantage point, how this all came to be, because there was this cataclysmic uh occurrence that um brought you to be here, Maria. Um so maybe a year, uh maybe a year or two ago, I was doing some research uh and and trying to pull together um information for women in my age group to push their uh comfort around their sexuality a bit. So one of the places that I ended up is is um the the TED Talks site, and I stumbled upon this um this TED Talk um by um Maria Russick about the clitoris. And let me tell you, when I first saw that organ, not the tip of the organ, but the entirety of the organ, I got so angry that in my at that time, 58-59 years on the planet, that that was withheld from me in all of the education that I've had, being a mother, all of those things, uh, times three, that that had never been shown to me. I was so angry. I was so angry. And Leslie, of course, heard about it because I speak to Leslie at least. Often about it.
SPEAKER_02So you did start talking about the clitoris and Leslie do know. And I think wait, wait, wait, hold up.
SPEAKER_00And then for our Patreon, which is um where our subscribers get extra content through a subscription service called Patreon. I put a question to ask for some topics that they would want to see for this season, our season four. And one of the topic suggestions that I gave is do you want to hear about women's um sexual health? I think I may have mentioned clitoris specifically, and that is what was the most asked for, right? And then, Leslie, you can take it from here because that all all happened, and then okay, go ahead.
SPEAKER_02So I told you Maria and I have a cosmic spiritual connection. Yeah, I don't know where it comes from. She's a white, Greek, beautiful lady. I'm a black boomer from Brooklyn, but we get into these conversations and the similarities, and and we like see each other eye to eye. I mentioned, I said, you know, Maria, you should come on our podcast at some point. My co-host is always talking about the clitoris, and she's saying about this and that and whatever. Maria stops me and says, I just turned in a chapter in a book about the clitoris, like probably days prior to this conversation.
SPEAKER_03Wow. Yeah, exactly what she was talking about. It was like I had just spent the last couple of weeks immersed in all this detail. Now I've forgotten it all already. I'm sorry, gosh.
SPEAKER_01No, no, but I'll just a tenth of it that you remember will be more than it'll be good.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, otherwise everyone will go to sleep. So I'm like, Ange, this is big, you know.
SPEAKER_00This is big. Yeah, yeah. It's big. I am so looking forward to this. You you have you have no idea. You have no idea.
SPEAKER_02Specifically, I'll say what made you angry, Ange, is how one that we this is not an organ that we hear about.
SPEAKER_00It's another well, when you hear about it, you hear about the the almost the smallness of it is something, this little thing, or it's this point, or it's this. I know everything about the penis. I know everything about the penis, and I know I mean it's in every medical book, it's on, you know, the the I I could sketch it out. You you you how many works of art, Ang?
SPEAKER_03How many works of art? How many sculptures over centuries and millennia have we seen with a penis? It's you you would have to be deaf, dumb, and blind not to know. Exactly.
SPEAKER_00So that that is where my anger came from.
SPEAKER_03That is where I can I can take your anger and raise it one because as a woman, I would be angry. As a mother, I would be angry. As a sexual being, I am angry. As a physician trained in women's health, I was livid. So you would think I would have been taught this, right? You would definitely think. But I think the story of when we learned the anatomy of the clitoris bears repeating. And before we say that, I will tell you guys a quick story about when I first was aware of the discrepancy between the prioritization of the penis and the clitoris, and it was in 1988, I was taking anatomy in medical school, and we all were assigned a cadaver, male or female. And the anatomy professor, this buttoned-up white guy, says, now, when we get to the pelvis, if those of you lucky enough to have a male cadaver, please share with the people who got a female cadaver, because frankly, there's not much going on down there. Can you imagine in an anatomy class? So the whole semester, the man never said vagina, he never said vulva, he never said clitoris. He said, move over to the male cadaver and learn from them. So that was 1988. And I mean, that was my first wake up that something's not right. Yeah, why don't why do we not count? We have babies through there.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Anyway, flash forward to me researching this book and learning that Gray's Anatomy, the most esteemed anatomy textbook that, right, Leslie, everybody learns Gray's anatomy. Gray's Anatomy. They made a show about it, not G R E Y, G-R-A-Y. G-R-A-Y, yeah, not the show. Although we could probably learn about the clitoris from that show, too. But anyway, probably more. But Gray's Anatomy, the esteemed textbook, has 40-something editions. I'm gonna say 44, but I could be off there. The correct anatomy of the clitoris was not included, hold this, until 2005 edition. They did not get the correct clitoral anatomy added to that textbook until 2005. Shame for shame. For shame that's disgusting.
SPEAKER_00That's gross. It really is. It really is. That puts so much of how our society is structured into perspective. Just that fact about it is, it's because it's about the patriarchy, for sure.
SPEAKER_02Because I'm I don't, they didn't miss it.
SPEAKER_03It wasn't important, it wasn't important, and it wasn't important enough to dissect. Like Leslie'll tell you, when you go through medical school, you dissect everything. Everything, everything part of the except the clitoris, except the clitoris. So no one had dissected the clitoris fully, fully. People had made little thoughts until uh the well, she dissected it in the late 90s, but she didn't really get it right until um was 2005. An Australian urologist, the first urologist in Australia, was a woman named Helen O'Connell. You can Google this, it's an amazing story. And she was like, This is weird. How come nobody knows what the what's behind the little nub? It's gotta be something. So she did MRIs on cadavers, and the MRI showed her that there is an eight-centimeter bilobed penguin-looking shape with two arms and two bulbs, not so different than the bulb than a penis with a scrotum. But ours is all internal, and when I say eight centimeters, you guys should know like spread your fingers. That's that's huge. How wide that is, that's huge. Wow, nobody thinks of their clitoris as bigger than the Xander tip. Yes, exactly. But that's truly the tip of the iceberg, and the iceberg's almost all underwater, meaning almost all internal. But boy, does that have a lot of nerve endings. Yes, and that's another crazy story.
SPEAKER_04Right.
SPEAKER_03The full number of nerve endings was published last year, 2022. You are lying. No, and when I tell you what they've been using, no, it was a a gay male plastic surgeon finally did microscopic evaluation and found that the fingertip, which we all know is full of nerve endings, has 4,000 nerve endings. A penis has, I think I want to say 10, 8 to 10,000.
SPEAKER_04Right.
SPEAKER_03The clitoris has closer to 15,000. So it's more than the penis, more than a fingertip. And thank goodness for this plastic surgeon. Because guess what? The figure that was in all our textbooks, right, was okay. This is the mic drop thing, was not even from humans, it was from the clitoris of cows. That the textbooks were using a figure from cows. So I but no, yes, I'm not kidding. If that doesn't tell you that that the patriarchy in medicine hasn't even valued us enough to use human tissue, just stick it in the stick it in the textbook. Nobody's gonna know. Yeah, use a cow close enough. I don't even want to go there. Right.
SPEAKER_02That would be the with the heifer.
SPEAKER_00Right, with the hefe. You know what I was thinking. We even know about the spleen. And I I still, you guys correct me whether it's been it's now understood what purpose the spleen has.
SPEAKER_03When I learned about it, it had, but we knew about the fucking spleen and not about the organ that brings women and people with vaginas pleasure, pleasure, and that's the other thing that this all means is that female sexual pleasure has not been prioritize, has been deprioritized, not for 10 years, not for 20, for millennia. For millennia, so these are messages passed down century after century, that sex is for number one, procreation. We're the vessel for that. Number two, male pleasure. Penis and vagina ejaculate male pleasure. Easy. And it's like they forgot the rest of the story.
SPEAKER_00I don't think they forget. I think I think that it that is deliberate. I think that um it's one of those things. If there was ever a some discovery of it, they just covered it up. I I can't imagine because if you're doing surgeries down there and you guys tell me if I got this what what is to make sure that you're not cutting or what is to make sure that you're not in some way damaging this organ if you don't even recognize its existence as a part of our an important part of our bodies. Because the damage isn't considered important.
SPEAKER_03Look at female genital mutilation. Yeah. There are 200 million women worldwide who have been mutilated as of 2023. That is an enormous, that is not a rare thing. That's enormous. And the fact that all those women are intentionally having those nerves destroyed tells you that female pleasure in some cultures is actually maybe a threat.
SPEAKER_04I know beyond.
SPEAKER_00Sorry to cut you off, but I actually heard that that was practiced here until um definitely the 20th century, because um, you know, the just like other parts of our body, like the penis, for example, different shapes and sizes, right? They all basically are the same, but they have different shapes and sizes. Same with the clitoris. And when they were um considered bigger, I'd read that they thought those people were hermaphrodites and they they would cut them. So it's it's it may have been a cultural practice, um, it may be a cultural practice, but it was not off the table in the United States of America either as something that was um was discounted or something to be erased because it it doesn't have value. So I just probably in the last few months read that. So I just wanted to insert that there too, because you know, we um we sometimes are aghast at things that happen elsewhere. I was just gonna say you know what I mean. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Well that gives us permission to ostracize other cultures if we call it medical. Yes.
SPEAKER_03Right. Well, well, do you want to hear something, Leslie? Overseas, uh mostly in Africa, but in the Middle East as well. A huge percentage of the female genital mutilation is done by clinics or clinicians, not because it's medical, because it the families now think they're evolved. So instead of having your aunt do it in a field, I'm gonna take you to the clinic so the doctor can sew you up properly or whatever. But like two wrongs don't make a right, sure. Absolutely. And that's happening in our country.
SPEAKER_02I've had a couple of patients, um, I believe they were from Africa who've had the um clitoridectomies. And the degree of scarring and mutilation and the um difficult menstruation um with the area that's just closed. And yes, it's it's just awful trying to do any corrective procedures on people, you know.
SPEAKER_03Very awful. And the emotional trauma is enormous and the stigma and the sh. But that's I think we're kind of getting to a very good thing. Yeah, let's talk about the pleasure part.
SPEAKER_00Can we pivot to pleasure, please?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, we're gonna pivot to pleasure, and and we were saying there's lots of nervousness. That's good. Um, I think an important thing though, because pleasure eludes a lot of women and for different reasons. Okay, I get women coming in every day saying I can't have an orgasm or I've never had an orgasm, or I'm in menopause now, my orgasms are wimpy, they're a thing of the past. So I think it's kind of important to understand a couple things. One is that the clitoris is responsive to testosterone. It's a it's the homologue of the penis, right? So believe it or not, as we lose estrogen and menopause, we lose a little testosterone as well. We don't have much testosterone, we have about a tenth of what men have. But when we lose that little smidge and it goes from a little bit to a smidge, um, that can have profound effects on libido, but also on sexual performance. And the and then when we lose estrogen as well, there are estrogen receptors all around the clitoris as well. So the clitoris actually has fewer nerve endings, so less pleasure is possi is theoretically an outcome, and fewer blood vessels. So it's not if that's you, and if you if you feel that your orgasms have changed to just become, I call it wimpy, but more faint or take longer or something, there's nothing necessarily wrong with you. That's the biology of aging. The good news is a little topical estrogen can help that, and it's perfectly safe. It does not cause cancer. Topical estrogen has been around since 1946, has been studied since 1946, and it's hard to say the word never in medicine, but I can say it here. It has never been shown to be associated with breast cancer or any cancer. Now I'm talking about topical vaginal estrogen. I'm not talking about pills and something systemic. Um, and it takes about three months, but it's helpful. And if that's not enough help, there is, and this is another patriarchal, horrible, obvious thing, there is no FDA-approved testosterone for women in this country. I ask you that. Now there is in other countries, but in our country, we do not have it, it doesn't exist, and it's so expensive to get a new drug to market, and no one seems to want to invest the probably several hundred million dollars.
SPEAKER_00Right. Because of course, our our sexual pleasure comes from a man, it comes from penetration. That's the only way, right? What else? What else is there? Wasn't it um Freud who said that that if women don't have an orgasm that way, something's wrong with them? Literally, I think he said they were crazy.
SPEAKER_03Yes, Freud set us back more than almost anyone because he said you have to have an orgasm only from vaginal penetration, or you're not a mature evolved woman. So let's just call bullshit on that right now. I'm sure he, you know, made other amazing contributions to psychiatric uh literature, but that was he had his own issues with women. And here's the irony: what Freud didn't know is that because the clitoris anatomically is all behind and wrapped around the vagina, the the 20% of women who do have vaginal orgasms are actually stimulating the clitoris through the vaginal walls. So they're all clitoral, even vaginal orgasms are clitoral. So sorry, Siggy, you are so wrong about that. Sorry, Siggy.
SPEAKER_02No, you do not think that's gonna be like hashtag. Sorry, sorry, Siggy.
SPEAKER_03Well, he did a lot of damage because women then felt they were broken if they couldn't have an orgasm vaginally. And that's another myth we have to bust today. Have to on this program, bust that you not having an orgasm from penetration does not mean something's wrong with you. It means you're in the group of 80 plus percent women on the planet who can only have an orgasm from clitoral stimulation with a finger, a mouth, a vibrator, a strap on. I don't care. And it doesn't matter. Um, but there's nothing wrong with you. And if you feel you're struggling to climax or struggling to have what you want to have, I think it's okay to go back to basics. It's okay to say, I'm not gonna worry about what happens with my partner. I'm gonna take a shower or a bath and I'm gonna touch myself and figure out what feels good, what doesn't. And what feels good and how does that feel? Is it pressure? Is it water? Is it my finger? Is it something? And find the courage, maybe talk in the mirror first, or do your black woman or bastie, and say, this is practice, you gotta practice. Yeah, I I I you know, you're not complaining and you're not gonna hurt anybody's feelings. A good a smart man wants you to have pleasure and say, This is what feels good, and this doesn't. Um, if you're not sure and you think something's wrong, you know, you can go to an OBGYN to check it out. Although now we know many OBGYNs are not well trained in sexual health.
SPEAKER_02Right. Um, right.
SPEAKER_03And that brings up another question. What if you need more than a gynecologist? Or what if your gynecologist is kind of lame and says, I don't know, drink wine. Yeah, you know, there are sexual sexual hilarious. Well, I've heard this a hundred times. Women come in and say, My GYN said he just tells his wife to drink wine before sex. And I thought, oh my god, where do I start? First of all, not medical, not clinical, insult, disrespecting. It's like Mrs. Doubtfire. Remember, Mrs. Doubtfire, she said, Mr. Doubtfire's idea of foreplay was Effie, brace yourself. Remember that? I love that. I mean, like, God, you know, like brace yourself. Okay. We gotta do better than that. And we gotta do better than that. And doctors have to do better.
SPEAKER_02Because if people come to us for help, it's up to us then to get the information if we don't already have it. And you're right, obviously in medical school, I too did not learn about the clitoris, not much about the vagina. I did definitely had a male um uh cadaver. Um, yeah, it wasn't stressed, you know, because that part is not important.
SPEAKER_03And you know, as of today, 2023, two-thirds of all training programs still don't have a single lecture on menopause, much less sexual health. So we're failing. We've got to revamp this.
SPEAKER_02And that's why you have to create practices like yours.
SPEAKER_00I wish there were more.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Well, I think women have to demand it too. You know, I'm not I'm not going back to you. I found this other place that treats treats my my entire body. Um, not my entire person too. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03Yes, sexual health is part of human health, and it's never been considered that. It's been considered some private thing or fun thing. And we know there are plenty of studies that show that sexual health promotes, reduces depression, reduces heart disease, increases longevity. I mean, these are real studies, these are real medical studies. And um, I mean, heck, that's a good reason to have an active and prolonged sex life. We're all looking at health optimization, right?
SPEAKER_00And remember, women, as we've just heard about all of these nerve endings, that can happen with or without a partner. You don't have to only get these benefits with someone alongside you, you can get them on your own. Yeah, however, with women, divorced widowed, you can do it.
SPEAKER_03You can do it. And sex toys have really come back in vogue, they kind of tend to come in and out of favor. There has been an explosion of companies designing and selling all kinds of sex toys. And the and I used to do this for a Swedish company, and it's really fun.
SPEAKER_02And one of the trends is to do what for the Swedish company.
SPEAKER_03Were you a demonstrator? No, I was a designer. Well, you're the model. My husband was wishing I would bring them all home, I think. But um, but but the point is that they used to all look like penises because they were all designed by men. Now many sex toys are not so threatening looking, they they puff air or they vibrate or radio waves, and they're for the clitoris, but they're also for the vulvas, for the breast, for the thighs. So I tell patients, if you're intimidated by that, I I give them homework. I say, I want you to do G-rated masturbation. They say, What's that? I say it's non-genital. I want you to take that little vibrating thing that looks like a mouse for your computer, because they don't look like penises, and in the shower, use it on your legs or your arms and see what feels good. And don't give yourself the pressure of, I have to have an orgasm. That's confer that, you know.
SPEAKER_02Sure, sure.
SPEAKER_03That's another hashtag, Z-rated masturbation.
SPEAKER_02Yes, for sure. Now that reminds me, like this type of thing would be so helpful for those patients of ours that come in, um, where their cultural beliefs dictate that they're not supposed to. Now, this is now women now internalizing it, because I guess they've been grown up or taught this or whatever, that they're not supposed to experience pleasure from yeah, I don't know where that isn't the case, Les. So gynecolic uh gynecologic exams are difficult for them and anxiety provoking, as you can imagine. Yeah, you know, it's almost like anything below the waist is taboo.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. But Les, I mean, we've we've well, I grew up partially in Jamaican, partially in the United States. I think that that is so absolutely here, also. It's not, it's not another thing. It's this, that's how that's how I was raised. That's how I felt. You know, there's nothing I um I'm I've lived in America for almost 50 over 50 years now. So it's it's it's it's a part of our um how we are socialized, also, very much so. I don't think would do you think that that is not so in America? It is. No, that's we don't want to admit that. You know, we have to admit it here. We're not gonna just, you know, use that crazy talk. It's like go get it together. Can't you all catch up to America?
SPEAKER_03Hell no. Yeah, I had a patient who was Catholic from Ireland. Yeah, this isn't casting judgment, it's just giving color. And she told me in Catholic school, they were taught that the girls were taught, not the boys, they separated them for this lesson because the boys' masturbation is fine, it's just what boys do. But for the girls, they were taught masturbation was a bigger sin than murder. Murder to little girls, they told that.
SPEAKER_02So how do you undo that type of damage?
SPEAKER_03Wow. I don't know. I don't know. You you help normalize it, you help them say you're entitled. God, you know what I did. This woman was very religious, so I met her where she was, and I said, Well, God designed your body. She said, Yes, God designed my body, and I had to say that because I knew that's what she believed. So I had to meet her where she was. Yes, and I said, Now, would God design something whose sole function was pleasure? Yes, if pleasure was bad, right? She said, You know, I guess not.
SPEAKER_00Exactly.
SPEAKER_03She said, I guess that pleasure is part of God's plan. I said, Yes, it is, because he allows pleasure for men. And I was um, I was desperate, desperate to help her. So I had to think about it. That is exactly true. What would click, you know?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, man, that's out-of-the-box thinking that is so common in your practice. And as I said, we've been working together way over 10 years, probably about 14. And always, always you just but you know, it's funny.
SPEAKER_00Um, you mentioned um Catholicism, and I'm gonna broaden it to Christianity. What the Bible does talk about is um male masturbation being because it's it's it's it's wasting the it's wasting beliefs, let's say. So that's their issue. That's not that's not our issue, even in the Bible. That's not our issue. All the other stuff is is man stuff that is put upon um women. Um it is it is not that is not biblical, not in the Bible that I've read and read and read. Yeah, yeah. So anyway, um, question about um how did you come to contribute a chapter to a book? And what was the book in its entirety about? Well then talk about the TED Talk.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, so the book is a book written by me. The book is my book, it's not published yet. I'm searching for a publisher, but the book is about sex in midlife and what happens to sex in midlife and what it says about us as a society. Yes, but the chapter I'm referring to talks about the history of the clitoris and how it goes from the Egyptians to the Greeks to the Renaissance, and how even famous anatomists were denying it, you know, and even though their little nobody assistants would sneak in at night and try to dissect it and say, um, um, I think there's something there. And they would say, hush, nothing for women. So I do a little chapter on the history of the clitoris and and why it's been so delayed, and and really what that says about us. So that's within this bigger book talking about um the disparity between sexual expectations and capabilities between men and women uh in midlife that that gets wide. Not accidental. No, it's it's there from the start because of how we learn and what's okay and masturbation and pleasure and all that. And then in midlife, because we lose estrogen, vaginal walls get thin, blood vessels go away, collagen degrades, that gap widens. So I felt this was worthy of a book. I felt there were there are 40 million American women with sexual issues directly related to menopause right now, today. 40 million. 40 million, and globally there are 500 million women with menopause-related sexual issues. So I feel like this is too big a crowd to ignore any longer. Absolutely. So I'm excited to get that published, and maybe y'all come back on once it does, but we'll talk more about that.
SPEAKER_00That would be fantastic. We have um a friend of the show called um, she has a it was uh only a podcast, but it's it's it's it's really blown up her um her um uh mission. Um is is called um um Black Girl's Guide to Surviving Menopause. Um so it kind of first focused on um people who were um experiencing menopause, but now it's become this intergenerational um uh movement, if you will, um, because you know it we don't know that much about menopause. And imagine those younger um uh women who younger people with vaginas, I have to just make sure that I include um non-binary folks also, that um that what are they looking forward to? It's all doom, um gloom and doom. Yeah, well it doesn't have to be a lot of people.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it doesn't have to be if we can educate and be educated, no one's coming down the bike, and it allows us to be uh advocate for ourselves and be sexually more open with our partners and say, look, you know how I liked it like this at 35. Well, now I'm 48, things don't feel the same, and let's get creative together, you know. Um, but instead, women hold all that shame and guilt in, and they come into my office and say, I'm broken, and I'm ruining it for him. They always tell me I'm ruining it for him, and it's a horrible thing to hear.
SPEAKER_00Wow, and that's it. They they had to have felt that for a while to bring it to their physician, you know what I mean? That's right, right, and to feel safe enough to bring it to their physician, sure.
SPEAKER_02Thank God for that enough, yes.
SPEAKER_03Well, thank God I'm hoping it'll it'll help with that. I know I do sometimes I'm a guest on this serious XM show, Dr. Radio. Uh of NYU, right? Yes, so she has me on a lot, and whenever I do that show, the next day the phone rings off the hook in the office. I live in Indiana and I'm getting in the car and driving. And my staff are like, wait a minute, wait a minute. Why they because they feel they haven't been heard, they've been going to their object and getting told to drink wine, and yeah, and they feel like, wait, there is something wrong, and there is something you can do, and they want it. You know, everyone thinks that women just lose all their drive. Yeah, not every woman loses their drive, and some women want to be intimate at 50, 60, 70, 80, 90. They want it.
SPEAKER_02Or that loss. Or perceived loss of drive is due to that discomfort and the pain. That's right. So they're like, I guess it's over for me.
SPEAKER_03Right. And so we always start with fixing the pain first. We fix the tissue, make the vaginal epithelium thicker, healthier, stretchier, bring back the blood vessels, bring back moisture. We do this either with vaginal estrogen or vaginal prasterone. It's another hormone that does this, or an oral medication, ospamiphine, uh, that turns on estrogen receptors in the vagina. Or we have a laser that we started in our office. It needs more research. Uh, not, I know it works, but it should have bigger studies to be used more widely. But it's been wonderful. It creates new blood vessels and creates new collagen. And it's been great. So we have like four options uh to really make the tissue better. Once we do that, then we can say, okay, is your libido still rotten? If so, let's talk about how we make that better. And sometimes the libido gets better as soon as the pain is gone. Sure.
SPEAKER_02Because who nobody wants to, everybody runs away from pain.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, right. Of course. Right, right. Well, I I am I am so grateful that you are doing the work that you're doing. I I I must also say that um I am not with one of those women who um have issues there. I am um amazingly um um able to be pleasure. Okay. Okay. I have no, there's no, you know, and I want to say that too for those of us who fall into the category of having a beautiful, pleasurable um body. Um that that that that we're here also. It does not, it's not a a given that this happens with with aging, with aging, even if it happens um you know, the majority of the time, it doesn't have to be that way for you. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03So um no, no, but if you are, it is improvable. I think that's the child. You should seek that, yeah, yeah. And if your mother had breast cancer, that does not mean it's contraindicated for you. I wish I had a quarter for every time a woman said, I wish I could take vaginal estrogen, but my mom had breast cancer, so I can't. That's that's one doesn't place the other. It doesn't. Your mom having breast cancer is a different human being, and even if it raises your breast cancer risk a tiny bit, why is it still okay for you to take vaginal estrogen? Because it's been studied for 70 years and never, ever, ever been shown to be linked to breast cancer. So that if you leave with nothing else today but the knowledge that vaginal estrogen is safe for you, whether you your mom had breast cancer or not, you'll be doing yourself a huge favor in terms of advocating for your own health and sexual pleasure.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, we gotta keep talking about it. That's all. We just have to keep talking about it because people need to hear it, and and people don't know. I've learned so much in the last 45 minutes. It's like, you know, when I went through several years of medical school and anatomy class and whatever.
SPEAKER_00Wow, wow, I I I I cannot wait. Listen, publishers, get to it, get to it. There's a book that we need, we need, yeah.
SPEAKER_03Get to it. Yeah, I agree, I agree. I think it will ring for people. I think they will they will nod and understand it. I can't thank you all enough for having me. It's been just great.
SPEAKER_02I'm glad that we the schedule worked out and we were able to um talk to you, and it was wonderful seeing you. I didn't work with you yesterday, but I was looking forward to seeing you today.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah, I knew I was getting my Leslie fixed this week.
SPEAKER_02Um exactly.
SPEAKER_03Well, Angela, thank you for for agreeing with Leslie's idea. I I really enjoyed it. And uh I hope we'll get to meet you in person.
SPEAKER_00You were meant to be here. You really were.
SPEAKER_02You were you were a prayer answered for me. Speaking of prayer answered, I told you that we have a spiritual connection. So in reaching to the story about the clitoris, I went in um to work with Maria one day. And I said to her, I got news for you. We have a date. Omari's getting a kidney. I'm donating, and Omari's getting a kidney. And Maria said, you know, yesterday I had a dream that Omari got a kidney.
SPEAKER_03And I almost didn't tell you because I'd been hoping and praying for it too, and I thought it's not gonna happen. It's been a long time.
SPEAKER_02I mean, he's been on dialysis for six years. She waited for me to tell her that he had a date, and she said, Yesterday I had a dream about it. Why would you be dreaming about Omari and his kidney? Just out of the blue.
SPEAKER_03I know, and actually, you said I have news, and I said, Well, I have news too. And I said, Go ahead, you go first, because I wanted to tell her about the dream, but I was afraid it would upset her, and so I thought, you know, if her news is really bad, right? I'm gonna not tell her my dream.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03Isn't that crazy?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, but I don't believe in coincidences, so yeah, so this has been wonderful. I love you, thank you. Love you too. Thank you. And this has been another episode of Black Boomer Besties from Brooklyn, Brooklyn.
