Black Boomer Besties from Brooklyn
Black Boomer Besties from Brooklyn
Beyond the Tip: Discovering the Full Anatomy of Female Pleasure in Our 60s
The Besties are still on their vacay so here’s another blast from the past. Originally aired in October 2023, our guest
Dr. Maria Sophocles, a Board-Certified OB-GYN and Medical Director of Women's Healthcare of Princeton, unveils shocking truths about female sexual health and pleasure that have been systematically ignored by medical education for centuries.
Angie was aghast by the fact that there is so much her generation was never taught about this unique part of our bodies:
- full anatomy of the clitoris wasn't correctly included in medical textbooks until 2005, reflecting how patriarchal values have influenced medical science
- It’s not a “tip” but an eight-centimeter organ with 15,000 nerve endings
- It is an organ solely designed by The Creator for pleasure
Tune in for even more “who knew!” revelations with Ang & Les, your favorite Besties!
More from Maria:
TED: What Happens to Sex in Midlife? A Look at the “Bedroom Gap” | Maria Sophocles | TED
https://youtu.be/alYBnyxMuPk?si=LxqY1IuXm71BSNbk
Get Angie’s eBook:
We’re Too Old for This Shit! The Inquisitive Older Woman’s Guide to Joy http://joystrategy.co/ebook
FOLLOW BLACK BOOMER BESTIES FROM BROOKLYN
PODCAST:
Black Boomer Besties from Brooklyn Podcast
Visit our website www.blackboomerbesties.com
IG: https://www.instagram.com/blackboomerbestiesfrombrooklyn
FB: https://www.facebook.com/BlackBoomerBoomerBestiesfromBrooklyn
Subscribe Here: @blackboomerbestiesfrombrooklyn
Patreon:
https://patreon.com/user?u=83534204
Visit Black Boomer Besties from Brooklyn website for behind-the-scenes extras.
Hey Ant.
Speaker 2:Hey, les, listen, guys, we are going to be taking a little break, we need a vacation, and so we thought we would bring back some early episodes that you've enjoyed. So we're going to bring back some episodes from our season two and season four. The first one let me just give you a warning we're going to be talking about a part of the body that a lot of people associate with taboos and shame, and also pleasure and intimacy, and we see it as a part of the body, just like all the parts of the body, as being God-given.
Speaker 2:And so Leslie's going to talk about the guests that we had on for this episode. Who did we have on us?
Speaker 1:So we introduced Dr Maria Sophocles. She's a board certified OB-GYN physician and I've actually known Maria probably upwards of 20 years by now. Um and I came to know her and we became close to the point where we're really good friends. And Maria over the years has really, in addition to a thriving um medical practice in Princeton, new Jersey, she has really transitioned her career and developed her career into a very niche area. She talks about women's female sexuality after 50, perimenopausal sexuality, and she also is very direct and intentional about teaching about female pleasure. Yes, female sexual pleasure.
Speaker 1:So you can only imagine the wonderful conversations that she and I have while I'm providing anesthesia and she's doing dying procedures in the office. In fact, she has been in with one of the early developments of a line of vibrators and sex toys which are proudly displayed in every room in her office. So it's a very interesting place to be and very female centered and empowered. So this episode we talk a little bit about the clitoris and my co-host here.
Speaker 3:I've got a couple of things.
Speaker 1:She hasn't calmed down about it yet. Just a little bit, so we hope you enjoy the rewatch of this episode and be sure to leave comments and let us know what you think now. Thank you Well, hello.
Speaker 2:Hello, let's do a doubt, mrs Doubtfire. Hello, let's do a doubt, mrs Doubtfire.
Speaker 3:Hello.
Speaker 1:Look 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, brooklyn. All right, ask me why I'm excited, ange.
Speaker 2:Leslie, why are you excited?
Speaker 1:Because 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, that was a good one.
Speaker 3:Yeah, pun intended, pun intended.
Speaker 2:And I'm going to tell you why I'm excited, but later, because I am, I think, doubly excited.
Speaker 1:Okay, so you'll hear that story, all right. Just, no funny noises from that corner. I can make as many funny noises as I choose. I'm a grown-ass woman. Okay, that's true, that's true. Okay, so the beautiful lady in the coral shirt is dr maria sophocles. You're gonna find out about her and you're to love her as much as I've loved her. For what I know. It's well over 10 years, but it could be about 14 years that we've been working side by side together it's.
Speaker 3:It's felt like two years.
Speaker 1:Oh well, yeah, yeah and and 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. Dr Maria Sophocles is a board certified OB-GYN 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.
Speaker 1: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 and colors and just the mood is just calm and so inviting. And when I hear from her patients who they become our patients, the things that they say about you are just, it's just wonderful, very special, very special so.
Speaker 1:I'll turn it over to you to introduce yourself and say a little bit about who you are and what you do.
Speaker 3:Well, first, thank you so much, leslie and Angela, for having me. I'm not from Brooklyn. I wish I was a black bestie, but I am a kind of a boomer. So 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.
Speaker 3: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 you know, I know the phrase, you know good, nice women rarely make history. 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 just to learn something. And that's always been the mission of my practice.
Speaker 3:Women's Healthcare of Princeton is a progressive place for open communication 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. And I've been so lucky, lucky to know Leslie for so long and watch her. Just you know weave her clinical magic and 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 more like a clinical sister really.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we've been a really good team and the patients 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 an office you need to disrobe, you'll get a warmed robe in practice no way.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and you'll say I've never had that before. Why would you not want that? Why would you not?
Speaker 2:want that. It's unheard of. Yeah, but why wouldn't you? Now that you've said it, yeah.
Speaker 3:Well, I always think about what would I want. And they're cold. Offices are cold so that they're clean, but cold just adds to your anxiety. So I feel like warm is such a simple soothing thing speakers, that they can speak into to get the music they like. And I remember one woman came in covered in tattoos 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? Really?
Speaker 2:Okay, I didn't mean to be so judgmental. You cannot judge a book. You cannot judge a book by its cover.
Speaker 3:I did it. I was so ashamed of myself. She said I just need some Frank Sinatra. I said okay, but thanks, we love it. It's been there 15 years. We have 25,000 patients from all over the country, but mostly from the Northeast. 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.
Speaker 3:Menopause is, of course, the biggest that's a big deal for that you deal with yes, and in our office we pioneered the use of a laser that regenerates vaginal tissue is 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, 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. 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 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, checkups, but we we like to focus on these little things.
Speaker 1:The different things yeah. Yeah, they won't necessarily get in another place.
Speaker 2:And I 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 3:I'm sorry you have to get 25,000, angel, I 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 to not dismiss and brush off and to to listen and to give people permission. I mean, those are the two things that are critical, I think. So it's, yeah, it's been a journey for me, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:There's a room in her practice that has a showcase full of dildos and stimulation toys.
Speaker 3:Sex toys. Sex toys, yes, and excuse me.
Speaker 2:Leslie were you trying to find a? You package it, Leslie. Were you trying to find a? You package it. Were you trying to package that into a clinical way? Little OK, OK.
Speaker 3:This doesn't all have to be.
Speaker 2:If I may. If I may, let me jump in and explain how, at least from my vantage point, how this all came to be, because there was this cataclysmic occurrence that brought you to in my age group to push their comfort around their sexuality a bit. That I ended up is the TED Talks site and I stumbled upon this TED Talk by Maria Roszak 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, 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, so you did start talking about the clitoris.
Speaker 2:And Les did you know, yes, and then wait, wait, wait, hold on. And then for our Patreon, which is 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 sexual health? I think I may have mentioned clitoris specifically, and that is what was the most thing thing thing asked for, right? And then, leslie, you can take it from here, because that all all happened, and then, okay, go ahead so I told you, maria and I have a cosmic spiritual connection yeah.
Speaker 1: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 yeah, exactly what she was talking about.
Speaker 3:It was like I had just spent the last couple weeks immersed in all this detail. Now I've forgotten it all already. I'm sorry guys.
Speaker 2:No, no, but just a tenth of it that you remember will be more than good yeah.
Speaker 3:Otherwise, everyone will go to sleep.
Speaker 1:So I'm like, and this is big you know it's big.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, it's big. I am so looking forward to this. You, you have. You have no idea, you have no idea.
Speaker 1:Specifically. I'll say what made you angry and is how one that we. This is not an organ that we hear about.
Speaker 2:It's an enemy. Well, when you hear about it, you hear about 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 everything about the penis, and I know everyone. I mean it's in every medical book it's on. You know the, the. I could sketch it out, you, you see how many works of art and how many works of art.
Speaker 3:How many sculptures over centuries and millennia have we seen with?
Speaker 2:a penis, it's you. You would have to be deaf, dumb and blind, exactly so. That is where my anger came from. That is where I can.
Speaker 3: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 learn was aware of the discrepancy between the prioritization of the penis and the clitoris, and it was in 1988.
Speaker 3:I was taking anatomy in medical school and we all were assigned a cadaver, male or female. 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. Wow, 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. Anyway, flash forward to me researching this book and learning that Grey's Anatomy the most esteemed anatomy textbook, that right, leslie, everybody learns Grey's.
Speaker 1:Anatomy.
Speaker 3:Grey's Anatomy this is G-R-A-Y 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. Yeah, yeah, but anyway, probably more. But Grey'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. That's disgusting.
Speaker 2:That's gross. It really is. It really is. That puts so much of how our society is structured into perspective. Just that fact alone, it is.
Speaker 1:It speaks about the patriarchy For sure, because I don't, they didn't miss it, it wasn't important it wasn't important and it wasn't important enough to dissect.
Speaker 3:Like leslie will tell you, when you go through medical school, you dissect everything, everything, part of the except the clitoris, except the clitoris so no one had dissect Except the clitoris.
Speaker 3:Except the clitoris. So no one had dissected the clitoris fully, fully. People had made little thoughts until well, she dissected it in the late 90s, but she didn't really get it right until it 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? 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 than a penis with a scrotum, but ours is all internal. And when I say eight centimeters, centimeters, you guys should know, like, spread your fingers, that's, that's huge. Why that is that's huge.
Speaker 3:Wow, nobody thinks that their clitoris is bigger than their finger tip. Yeah, exactly, but that's truly the tip of the iceberg and the iceberg's almost all underwater, meaning almost all internal. Yeah, but boy, does that have a lot of nerve endings? And that's another crazy story. The full number of nerve endings was published last year, 2022. You are lying, no. And when I tell you what we've been using, no, it was 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. Right the clitoris has closer to 15,000. So it's more than the penis, more than a fingertip and thank goodness for this plastic surgeon.
Speaker 3:Because guess what? The figure that was in all our textbooks right, what? 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 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.
Speaker 1:Yeah, use a cow close enough, I don't even want to go there right with the heifer right with you know what I was thinking we even know about the spleen and I I still.
Speaker 2:You guys correct me whether it's been. It's now understood what purpose the spleen has. When 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.
Speaker 3:Pleasure. Female sexual pleasure has not been prioritized, 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 you know, I don't think they forget.
Speaker 2:I think I think that it that is deliberate, I think that, um, it's one of those things. If there was ever 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?
Speaker 3:bodies Because the damage isn't considered important. Look at female genital mutilation.
Speaker 1:Yes, I was thinking about that.
Speaker 3: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. I know, yeah.
Speaker 1:You have to hide that.
Speaker 2:Sorry to cut you off, but I actually heard that that was practice here until definitely the 20th century, here until definitely the 20th century. Because, you know, 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 considered, 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 discounted or something to be erased because 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 sometimes are aghast at things that happen elsewhere. I was just going to say, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1:That gives us permission to ostracize other cultures if we call it medical.
Speaker 3:Yes, right. Well, do you want to hear something, leslie? Overseas, 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 the families now think they're evolved. So instead of having your aunt do it in a field, I'm going to take you to the clinic so the doctor can sew you up properly or whatever. But like two wrongs don't make a right.
Speaker 2:Sure, sure, absolutely, and that's happening in our country.
Speaker 1:Just I'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 with the area that's just closed and it's just awful trying to do any corrective procedures on people you know.
Speaker 3:Very awful and the emotional trauma is enormous and the stigma and the shame, but that's. I think we're kind of getting to a very dark place.
Speaker 2:Yeah, let's talk about the pleasure part. Can we pivot to pleasure please?
Speaker 3:Yeah, we're going to getting to a very dark place. Can we pivot to pleasure? Yes, yeah, we're gonna pivot to pleasure.
Speaker 3:And we were saying, there's lots of nerve endings. That's good, 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 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 that can have profound effects on libido but also on sexual performance. 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 theoretically an outcome and fewer blood vessels. So it's not. If that's you and 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.
Speaker 3: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 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'm going to 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 dollars.
Speaker 2:Because, of course, our sexual pleasure comes from a man. It comes from penetration.
Speaker 3:It's the only way, right what?
Speaker 2:else is there? Wasn't it Freud who said that if women don't have an orgasm that way, something's wrong with them, literally, I think?
Speaker 3:he said they were crazy. Yes, freud said us that back more than almost anyone, because he said you have to have a orgasm only from vaginal penetration or you're not a mature, evolved woman.
Speaker 3:So let's just call bullshit on that right now I'm sure he, you know, made other amazing contributions to psychiatric 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 20 percent of women who do have vaginal orgasms are actually stimulating the clitoris through the vaginal walls, so they're all clitoral.
Speaker 2:Even vaginal orgasms are clitoral.
Speaker 3:So sorry, siggy, you are so wrong about that Sorry.
Speaker 1:Siggy. No, you did not say that. That's going to be like hashtag.
Speaker 3:Sorry, Siggy like hashtag, sorry, sorry. Well, 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, 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 going to worry about what happens with my partner. I'm going to take a shower or a bath and I'm going to touch myself and figure out what feels good, what doesn't and what feels good and how does that feel?
Speaker 3: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 to your black boomer bestie and say this is a practice, you got to practice. Yeah, I, I. You know you're not complaining and you're not going to hurt anybody's feelings. A smart man wants you to have pleasure and say this is what feels good and this doesn't. 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 1:Right, right.
Speaker 3:And 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 sex. Well, I've heard this a hundred times. When we 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 God, you know, like brace yourself. Okay, we got to do better than that.
Speaker 1:And doctors, have to do better, and doctors have to do better, because if people come to us for help, it's up to us then to get the information if we don't already have it. You're right to us then to get the information if we don't already have it. 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 cadaver. Yeah, it wasn't stressed, you know, because that part is not important, right?
Speaker 3:And 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 1:And that's why you have to create practices like yours.
Speaker 3:I wish there were more yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think women have to demand it too, right? Yeah, I'm not, I'm not going back to you. I found this other place that treats, treats my entire body.
Speaker 3: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 I mean, heck, that's a good reason to have an active and prolonged sex life.
Speaker 2:We're all looking at health optimization, right, and 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.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:However you want, with help or without, you can do it. You can do it.
Speaker 3: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 I used to do this for a Swedish company and it's really fun and one of the trends is that you used to do what for the Swedish company I used to design, were you a? Demonstrator. No, I was a designer.
Speaker 3:Well, you're the model my husband was wishing I would bring them all home. I think my husband was wishing I would bring them all home, 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 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 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 yes. Yeah, for that you know sure, sure that's another hashtag.
Speaker 3:Derated masturbation yes, for sure.
Speaker 1:Now that reminds me like this type of thing would be so helpful for those patients of ours that come in where their cultural beliefs dictate that they are not supposed to. Now, this is now. We're 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.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't know where that is in the case, Les.
Speaker 1:So gynecologic exams are difficult for them and anxiety provoking, as you can imagine.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you know, it's like anything below the waist is taboo.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but, les, I mean we've, we've. Well, I grew up partially in Jamaica and partially in the United States. I think that that is so absolutely here also, it's not, it's not an other thing, it's this, that's how, that's how I was raised, that's how I felt, you know, there's nothing. I've lived 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. Do you think that that is not so in america?
Speaker 1:it is no, that's, but we don't want to admit that we're going to admit it here.
Speaker 2:We're not going to, just, you know, use that crazy talk.
Speaker 1:We're going to do crazy talk.
Speaker 2:It's like go get it together. Can't you all catch up to America? Hell, no.
Speaker 3: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 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 1:So how do you undo that type of damage?
Speaker 2:Wow, oh no.
Speaker 3:Yeah no no, 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, I said now, would God design something whose sole function was pleasure? Yes, if pleasure was bad, right, she said was pleasure. Yes, if pleasure was bad, right, she said.
Speaker 3:You know, I guess not exactly she said I guess that pleasure is part of god's plan. I said yes, it is, because he allows pleasure for men.
Speaker 2:And I was um, I was desperate, desperate to help her, so I had to think about what is exactly true what would click, you know?
Speaker 1:yeah, 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 you know it's funny.
Speaker 2:You mentioned Catholicism and I'm going to broaden it to Christianity. What the Bible does talk about is male masturbation being because it's it's wasting the it's wasting. Let's say so. That's their issue. That's that's not our issue, Even in the Bible. That's not our issue. All the other stuff is is man's stuff that is put upon um women? Um, it is, it is not.
Speaker 3:That is not biblical not in the bible that I've read and read and read yes, yeah.
Speaker 2: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, talk about the TED.
Speaker 3:Talk, yeah. 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. 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, you know, and even though their little nobody assistants would sneak in a night and try to dissect it and say, um, um, I think there's something there, and they 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.
Speaker 3:So that's within this bigger book talking about the disparity between sexual expectations and capabilities between men and women in midlife. That gets why 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 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 I'll come back on once it does.
Speaker 2:That would be fantastic. We have um, a friend of the show called um. She has a. It was a only a podcast, but it's it's, it's, it's really blown up. Her um, her um mission, um is is called um, um black girl's to Surviving Menopause. So it kind of first focused on people who were experiencing menopause but now it's become this intergenerational movement, if you will, because you know we don't know that much about menopause, because you know we don't know that much about menopause. And imagine those younger women who, younger people with vaginas I have to just make sure that I include non-binary folks also that. What are they looking forward to? It's all gloom and doom, yeah, unless we get the new information about that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, 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 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 be creative together, you know. 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 2:Yeah, Wow, and they had to have felt that for a while to bring it to their physician you know what I mean.
Speaker 1:That's right, right, and to feel safe enough to bring it to their physician. Sure, thank god, that's good enough yes well, my god.
Speaker 3:I'm hoping it'll it'll help with that. I know I do sometimes. I'm a guest on this Sirius XM show, Dr Radio. I know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Out of NYU right.
Speaker 3: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, my staff are like wait a minute, wait a a minute. Why? Because because they feel they haven't been hurt. They've been going to their OB-GYN 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.
Speaker 1:They want it, or that loss of, 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 3:Right, 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 prostorone it's another hormone that does this or an oral medication, ospamiphene, that turns on estrogen receptors in the vagina, or we have a laser that we started in our office.
Speaker 3:It needs more research, 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 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 because who nobody wants to, everybody runs away from pain.
Speaker 1:Yeah right.
Speaker 2:Right, right, well, I am. I am so grateful that you are doing the work that you're doing. I must also say that I am not one of those women who have issues there. I am amazingly able to be pleasure, okay, I have no, there's no. You know, and I want to say that too, for those of us who fall into the to 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, yeah, so, um no, no, but if you are, it is improvable.
Speaker 3:I think yes, and you should seek that.
Speaker 2:You should seek that yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: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 one, doesn't equate either.
Speaker 3: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 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 1:Yeah, we're gonna keep talking about it, that's all. We just have to keep talking about it because people need to hear it and people don't know. I've learned so much in the last 45 minutes. It's like you know, I went through several years of medical school and anatomy class and whatever. Wow, wow.
Speaker 2:I cannot wait. Listen publishers, get to it, get to it. There's a book that we need. We need, yeah, get to it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I agree, I think it will ring for people. I think they will. They will nod and understand it. Ring for people. I think they will nod and understand it. I can't thank you all enough for having me. This has been just great.
Speaker 1:I'm glad that the schedule worked out and we were able to 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, yeah.
Speaker 3:I knew I was getting my Leslie fix this week Exactly. Angela thank you for agreeing with Leslie's idea. I really enjoyed it.
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh, I hope we'll get to meet in person. You were meant to be here. Yes, for sure, you were a prayer answered for me.
Speaker 1:Speaking of prayer answered. I told you that we have a spiritual connection. So, in reaching to the story about the clitoris for me, speaking of prayer answered. I told you that we have a spiritual connection.
Speaker 1:So in addition to the story about the clitoris. I went in 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. 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 3:Wow, and I almost didn't tell you because I'd been hoping and praying for it too and I thought it's not going to happen.
Speaker 1:I 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 she be dreaming about Omari and his kidney, just out of the blue?
Speaker 3:I 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, the dream, but I was afraid it would upset her and so I thought, you know, if her news is really bad, I I'm going to not tell her.
Speaker 1:Yeah, isn't that crazy.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But, I don't believe in coincidences.
Speaker 1:So this has been wonderful. I love you, thank you.
Speaker 2:Love you too, thank you.
Speaker 1:This has been another episode of Black Boomer Besties from Brooklyn, brooklyn.
