Jean Kittson (Part 2): Midlife, Money, Hormones and having a Libido for Yourself

In Part 2 of my conversation with Jean Kittson, we get into the real mechanics of midlife—beyond the punchlines (although there are still plenty of those).

We talk about the juggle of full-time work, mortgages, and the mental load of budgeting in a phase of life that’s meant to feel “settled”… but often doesn’t. Jean shares her perspective on working in midlife—what shifts, what matters more, and what we’re no longer willing to tolerate.

We dive into perimenopause. The symptoms you expect, the ones you don’t, and how the people around you might be experiencing it just as much as you are. From brain fog to rage to “is this just who I am now?”, we unpack the invisible ripple effects on family, relationships, and identity.

Then we go there: HRT, longevity, and the idea of having a libido for yourself—not just sexually, but energetically, creatively, and personally. Why are men handed solutions like Viagra without question, while women still struggle to access testosterone? And what does that say about how we value women’s pleasure and wellbeing?

We round things out with a refreshingly honest chat about sex, sex toys, and reclaiming desire in midlife—on your own terms.

It’s smart, funny, slightly rebellious—and exactly the kind of conversation we should be having more of.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

And speaking of sex and and a young woman was telling me so she lost her she had cervical cancer and then sex is really painful and and then y but she's she's trying to educate other young women how to get their sex drive back and she goes into sex shops which are really, really great apparently and but she said you have to know which sex toys to get because if your skin is fragile, if you haven't got estrogen, um nourishing your vagina and your labia and everything like that, your genitals, and you use the wrong sex toy, you can it can be really painful or on your clitoris and things.

SPEAKER_03 0:39

So you're listening to On the Moons, where we have conversations about hormones, midlife, and the moments that make us wonder is it just me? I'm Kate, I'm a 48-year-old pharmacist and newly minted perimenopausal oversharer. This is where we talk openly about the changes we aren't prepared for, so we never have to feel alone in them again. I acknowledge the Camaragle people of the Eora Nation, the traditional custodians of the land which I am recording today. I pay my respects to elders past and present, and I extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples listening. Always was, always will be, Aboriginal Land. Hello friends. Welcome back. This is part two of my conversation with the amazing Jean Kitchen. If you haven't listened to part one, go back and start there. We cover her career, comedy, and some brilliant life reflections. In this half of the conversation, we shift gears into midlife, work, hormones, relationship, sex, and everything that doesn't get talked about nearly enough. Oh. And there's a surprise visit from the little fat dog Horace. Certainly I don't think anybody's, you know, they've got that um, oh, that quote or whatever, and it says, you know, nobody's dying and thinks, gosh, I should have spent more time at work. Yeah, yeah, of course, of course. Of course. But I just feel like when you're doing it, you've got it, you've gotta do it. You know, you just uh uh you don't okay, that's not what I mean. I don't mean you have to do it. I mean w when you are grinding through it.

SPEAKER_02 2:19

Yeah, your mortgages and everything you have to pay, and school fees, and medical bills, and you grind you have to cover all that. You have to take all that into consideration. You're constantly counting the dollars and you're constantly wondering whether you know this bloody mortgage was worth it, but you're gonna have a mortgage wherever you go now, and it's like it's just this terrible pressure, and I see it, and anxiety and conflict between partners, you know, and and you know, and I see okay, no more coffees out, because that's gonna cost us seven or eight dollars a coffee now, and especially if you have almond milk or something. So, like forget that five of those a week is gonna be 35 bucks and you multiply. I see all this, you know, micro um, micro managing of finance having to happen because every penny counts. And so it's a l it's a lot of pressure. So I'm not I would never like you know, like my youngest daughter goes, judgy judgy, mum, if I say anything about anything that's you know, judgy judge, yeah. Oh well I judge, okay. But I also um everyone has to come to their own arrangements and do it the best way they can. But we can get caught in a cycle. What I see with the younger generation, like the 20s, is they're getting a really good balance in their lives. They're really making sure they maintain friendships because often you don't you let friendships go and everything.

SPEAKER_03 3:50

You haven't got time. No, you just can't if it muster the energy after a huge week at work. Yeah, I I'm I wonder about I mean I don't know if my parents worried about me in this way. Maybe they did, maybe I should ask them. I worry about my 20-year-olds. I've got a 21 and a newly minted 18-year-old two days ago. Oh and lovely. I they are lovely. They are lovely. I love their energy and um and their company. They're they're wonderful company, but I do I do sometimes think, oh how are you gonna live?

SPEAKER_02 4:22

Oh well, there was an article in the paper where this dad um s uh worked out through AI which of the jobs were that were going to um for his daughter, who is choosing subjects for the HSC, which jobs would be um still available in 20 years, which jobs had the most longevity that weren't going to be impacted by AI. Is it plumbing? Um probably plumbing and also policy, government policymakers, because anything that requires a relationship with another person. So my younger daughter who's speech pathology, that's apparently pretty safe. I haven't read the article, we were just talking about it this morning and she sent me a copy. But if you want to drill down and if you really want to plan the future and go, well, is there do I have, you know, am I going to throw all this energy? I mean, it seems crazy that we have to speak like this because once you just sort of choose what you were interested in and what you were good at.

SPEAKER_00 5:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 5:22

Oh God, I'm good at this. You know, that's how my career evolved. I was just better at doing some things than others. And I was better at performing than I was at teaching, and I was better at making jokes than I was at being serious, and I was better at writing than probably I was performing, but when you when then I fell into comedy because you do both.

SPEAKER_00 5:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 5:45

So, you know, like you just it's just in the end for me. I mean, I was still living in a communal house when I was 35. So when kids get really worried about their careers and start going, I've got to have goals, and I'm thinking, I'd never I wouldn't know what a goal was. I would never have imagined if I had a goal. Here's the dog. I told you you would come in with great that is a beautiful dog. Look at the colour of you.

SPEAKER_03 6:13

I had actually asked my daughter to intercept that, so she's done a great job. She's done a great job, Audrey, of intercepting. It's okay.

SPEAKER_02 6:23

I love you. What's your name?

SPEAKER_03 6:25

His name's Horace.

SPEAKER_02 6:26

Horace. So lovely, that's a very traditional. What is that sort of name? It sounds literary or something.

SPEAKER_03 6:32

So Horace was named after. So my my daughter's Audrey. Here she comes. So Audrey was named after my grandmother, Audrey. And Audrey's Hi Audrey.

unknown 6:44

Hi, I didn't hear a comment.

SPEAKER_03 6:45

No, I know, I was just saying you did a great job of intercepting.

SPEAKER_02 6:50

We don't mind, we love dogs. I've got a dog, Pablo. Well, it's not really mine, he's my daughter's dog, but she's taken him with her when she moved out. But we love dogs. I spent all morning with the dog, so he probably wants to smell me. You probably smell divine. Yeah, I smell like a um, what was the dog I was in, like cavuto or something like that? Amazing. But he just he just had a bath apparently, so it shouldn't smell. I shouldn't smell too much.

SPEAKER_03 7:16

I'm sure to us he's a truffle dog, this one, so I think he smells things that oh, is he? Yeah, he's an Italian truffle dog. And he um is so Audrey was named after Grandma Rudrey, and then Audrey's husband's name was Horace. Oh, that's your grandfather. That's my grandfather. And when I had a son, I really, really wanted to call him Horace. And everybody told me that he would have no friends. So I didn't. I bowed to the political pressure of not calling him Horace, and he ended up with Willoughby. And then we got this little dog and thought it's oh you've got to be really careful of names. I thought I was pretty safe with Horace.

SPEAKER_02 7:56

No, he'd get horror. Yeah, wouldn't he? Didn't everyone say that? He'd get Hori, horror. Hori's not bad. Hori. Hori's good, but he might get horror if he was, you know, they were mean boys. That's true. I don't know. Mean kids. I didn't think it through.

SPEAKER_03 8:11

I went to a lovely all-girls school.

SPEAKER_02 8:13

Oh yeah, all my friends who went to girls' schools just had such a different experience.

SPEAKER_03 8:19

Oh girls can be mean, that's for sure. But yeah, um no, I anyway, so that's that's where horrors can they all work out in the end.

SPEAKER_02 8:27

Yeah, yeah. As they get older.

SPEAKER_03 8:28

I think so.

SPEAKER_02 8:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 8:30

Well, anyway, now you've met Horace, and that's just completely that was random and lovely.

SPEAKER_02 8:36

That was a beautiful for those of you who listen, he's a beautiful, fluffy, big, fluffy dog. He's a lovely dog. He looks like he's a designer dog, but he's a purebred truffle hunter. Thoroughbred he is. What's he called?

SPEAKER_03 8:48

What sort of breed? He's a Logotto Romagnolo. A Logotto Romagnolo. I will look it up. Oh Barack Obama. So they're not meant to be quite that big when you look them up. They're meant to be meant to be a little bit slimmer and a little bit shorter. And he um so Barack Obama had uh a Portuguese water dog and he's an Italian water dog.

SPEAKER_02 9:08

Oh why are they water dogs?

SPEAKER_03 9:11

Um They like the water because truffles aren't water. That's true. No tru truffles aren't in the water. I don't know, I don't know the answer to that. I mean, a any any puddle when we go for a walk, any any puddle, he has to be in it, d regardless of the size. He's loves swimming. Um but I don't know if you there's been actually an Italian movie made about um truffle dogs. And yes, anyway. Amazing.

SPEAKER_02 9:37

Yeah, if only he could if only you had a truffle, a truffier. That's it. A truffier just out the back. I could be with all your angropers. That's right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 9:47

Then he could give him ki give him something to do. It would, and it would probably be very good for him, for his brain.

SPEAKER_02 9:53

Take him down to Tasmania, that's where the truffles come from, don't they? Oh, do they? Yeah, and and um what's that place, that lovely place up north Musselbrook, is it? Or oh well, there's more truffles up there. Because I might once met someone who lived there. Starts with M Musselbrook um anyway, there was a m a quarry nearby that quarried lime, and the and it would it had like an overhead cable car with buckets full of lime that would go from the quarry to wherever it got to, you know, the m the machines, and it would pass over this man's farm where he had truffles, and the lime would just blow off and sprinkle all over his truffles, which is exactly what truffles need, apparently. Wow. So anyone listening who's uh got agricultural experience will probably say I'm completely wrong. That's the way I heard the story. That sounds lucky for him. Mudgy. Mudgy. We knew that. We did know that.

SPEAKER_03 10:49

That's our um that's our menopause brains not being able to find that word.

SPEAKER_02 10:53

Yeah, but do you think that's true for the brain? No, I don't oh yeah, maybe I think it's true for some people. I don't think it's true. I think it's sleeplessness because you wake up and you're hot and you you know, and you're constantly having people with night sweats having to change three or four times a night. That's why I, you know, I know you'll be spreading the word how important if you've got severe symptoms that HRT is, and how safe it is now. And actually, my you know, bones and brain and colon and heart, yeah, you'll be up on the latest.

SPEAKER_03 11:26

So certainly I've been having this uh conversation with my girlfriends because we're all the same age, and I didn't think I had any symptoms, but I went for a DEXA scan and I was osteopinic in my spine, which really pisses me off because I do lots of exercise anyway. What else? Um so my wonderful GP said, Well, you need to start on estrogen, and because you have uterus, you need to start on progesterone. Yeah. And um, I've been having this conversation with with my girlfriends because I started on the hormones, and then a couple of months later I just went, Oh, I just feel I I feel better. I didn't know I didn't feel okay, because I guess it's a sl you know, you you get used to the new status quo. I feel so much better. But I was sitting at this table and we were having dinner, so you've met Audrey Willoughby was on the other side, and they love nothing more than to tell me, you know, they're very verbal about when I'm wrong or if I've got, you know, I'm not doing something anyway. We're sitting here and I said, not good, but I mean, you know, like no good.

SPEAKER_02 12:30

A bit of batch cat of just well, discussion, right? It's good.

SPEAKER_03 12:33

I think it's not fear. No, definitely, definitely they're not fearful. But I was sitting here and I said, but I'm so lucky because I had absolutely no symptoms. I didn't have any mood swings, and I didn't have any, and they they I caught a glance between them that I clearly wasn't meant to catch. And I think it was I think it was Audrey who said, Is that what you think? Really believe, mum? And I went, What do you mean? I had I've been totally mood stable. And my son went, Oh, so do you remember that time I didn't instantly wash that pan and you went and you put it on my pillow and it had all the fat and everything? Do just wondering if now looking back, you you think that might have been an overreaction. And then of course I was like, no, hang on a second, that's not an overreaction. I would do that again. I would do that again. I would do that again pre-menopause. Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 13:29

Pre-perimenopause.

SPEAKER_03 13:31

That's right. Also, you should be anyway, but so I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 13:34

I know it's it's it's true. Uh I've I've I've talked to families with exactly that reaction where the the mum, the the mother has gone, oh, I didn't have any symptoms, and you just see this sort of freeze on the face of the family. They're trying to hold a smile and not give anything away, but they're just thinking, What? Well, you don't really know, it's just incremental and you think, and as I said, a lot of it I think is sleep deprivation and but your hormones, we don't understand. Well, my we didn't understand that your hormones have affect every single part of your body. That's right. You know, whether whether it's your skin or your or your moods or your eyes or your the way you're thinking, or uh your emotional reaction to things and and not that I think that um uh menopausal w I mean we're at our prime. I think we make really and there's a lot of research that says w menopausal women, women in the workforce are more focused and um have a clearer idea of where they want to go because the kids are older and they're not worried about all that, all the things we were talking about earlier have passed, all that managing young children and all that. We're at um we're often at a really good part of our career when we're looking ahead, we've got experience, we've got knowledge, we want to apply it, we're more we're loyal, you know, we're committed to our jobs and we want our jobs to work. So we're really great employees. Or we're, you know, or leaders, and uh I'm c I'm not saying employees as in worker bees, I'm just in any in any role, whether you're in a cafe or you're an executive in a big bank, that's you know, we're at it at our peak. But it's really hard to maintain that if you're not sleeping. Yes. Or you're getting a hot flush and you have to hide it at work because you think you're going to be judged. Oh, you know, oh, you know, the boss yelled at me for burning down the warehouse, you know, she you she must be on the rags, which is what we used to get when we were we were younger. Or she must be menopausal. No, you know, you're just an idiot and you're incompetent, and she yelled at you, but you don't want to put yourself out there to be criticized because of something you might be going through biologically. And that was another thing about the feminist movement in my day in the 70s and 60s, 70s and 80s, was that we did we wanted to be equal, so we denied our biology. So we would never really, we didn't we didn't need anything special because we were equal to the guys and we could, you know, do everything a guy could do. But actually, things change for us. We get pregnant. Yes, you know, and we get menopause, and we do there are these are parts of our lives that we have to manage and we have to understand, and we if if for the third of women who have severe symptoms, we need some medication for it. And I've I've got a friend who's she's probably 79, a different friend to the grey hair friend we were probably talking about before we even recorded, but however. Um, and she's been on HRT for like 30 years because she likes she likes what it does to her mojo. Yeah, yeah. She said, I she said it gives me a sex drive. She said, I live on my own, so I'm driving nowhere, but I love the feeling it gives me. And she said, I like having a libido. And she said, My libido is my I don't have a libido for a man, I have it for myself. And she said, No amount of like adult pottery classes could give it the same thing. So knowing that we can get treatment for things that um we may be missing or maybe affecting us and how we relate to each other and ourselves, you know, it's really important to know your choices and be informed about it.

SPEAKER_03 17:27

It is. I mean, so I found this mm this blew my tiny mind, but it's it's your hormone levels post-menopause are akin to being castrated. Right? They're so low. They're they're so low as to be negligible. And I just I found that incredible that you with with that happening, and they're neurotransmitters, so they're not just as you say, working in your ovaries and your uterus, but they're working throughout your throughout your entire body. How how how could we possibly think that 50% of the population, because every every female is going to go through it if you live long enough, you're gonna go through menopause. So 50% of the population it's gonna happen to, they're gonna be almost castrated in terms of levels of hormones. Just carry on. Don't nothing's changed, you know, just carry just carry right on. So, and and the other thing I didn't understand was we seem completely okay with teenagers going through puberty. That's fine.

SPEAKER_02 18:31

So we can make allowances for that, but not seem to understand that yeah, we've and we could put our kids on the pill if they you know they're getting grumpy or they want their skin to clear up or contraceptive or whatever the reason is, we happily give them hormones. Yeah. Happily. No one questions it. No, nobody questions it. We're not. But if it's like Viagra, Viagra took six weeks to be approved by the oh, you would know this more than me.

SPEAKER_03 18:58

Oh no, I so I've I I mean you've you've just opened oh I've I've got you've got me started now. Because we were talking about hormones and there's of course testosterone, and women have more testosterone than we do estrogen. Estrogen is aromatased from testosterone, so we have cholesterol, we make there's a cascade, there's testosterone, and then it gets aromatase to estrogen.

SPEAKER_02 19:20

What does aromatase do?

SPEAKER_03 19:21

That's the enzyme that changes the it's cleaving off a carbon. Yes, it's the enzyme that changes the testosterone molecule into a estrogen molecule.

SPEAKER_02 19:32

Oh, right.

SPEAKER_03 19:33

So if you have breast cancer, you may have heard of aromatase inhibitors, which stops that part of the cascade happening. So Yes, what was I telling you? Yeah, so but to get testosterone replacement for a woman, you have to have hypoactive sexual desire disorder, which is distressingly low libido for a period of over six months. To get a PDE5 inhibitor, which is sildenophil or tidalophil, so viagir or cialas, so 50% of men over 50 have erectile dysfunction, 60% over 60, 70% over 70, you know, you get the point. 100% of women after their menopause date will have erectile function. Well, erectile dysfunction. Will have, you know, castration low levels of hormones.

SPEAKER_02 20:17

Right.

SPEAKER_03 20:17

But to get Viagra, you go and say, I, you know, can't maintain an erection. Here it is. Here's Vira. But not to get testosterone. To get testosterone, you have to prove you've been distressed for over six months and then you have to jump through all of these hoops. And I guess I was I was laughing with a friend of mine who's a GP, and she's like, Oh, it's just got all these lonely erections walking around because the men can solve that problem no problem like easily, but for the women it's lonely erections.

SPEAKER_02 20:44

It's just well, it's like uh well, I haven't I didn't understand that you lost so much of your libido um that it was quite so cut and dried. I thought it maybe varied because often I think libido is psychological too. You know, like you can turn yourself on.

SPEAKER_03 21:03

Oh yeah. Well for yes, so certainly for a woman it's a lot more it's a lot more psychological than it is for a guy. Absolutely, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 21:12

But you know, I I knew about the the fact that Viagra got passed by the TGA, is it the TGA in Australia? Yes, yeah, TGA. Um, in about six weeks. And they had a testosterone spray for women, a spray to improve their libido, and two years later it still wasn't passed, and in fact they passed it in America with their drugs what what's it called in the FDA? The FDA in America, before they even passed and it was an Australian invention. So, you know, women aren't supposed to have a libido. I think the old daisy scientists thought it might you know break free and take over the world. I don't know.

SPEAKER_03 21:51

We weren't supposed to be turned on by things and but now are we wondering why so many marriages break down in midlife and guys are running off with young?

SPEAKER_02 22:01

Well, you can't it's hard to talk about those sort of things. It's all about well, men think when women turn their back on them or say they don't want sex because they're going through menopause and they don't understand what's happening to their bodies or their sex drive, the men think the women don't like them anymore. I interviewed men for my my book and they just felt that their their wives, you know, and other blokes would go, oh mate, get out of that, she's menopause or mate, just leave. You know, because that was that's how they were talking to each other, and women are going, I I just, you know, I really don't feel like it, and it's painful, and I'm not getting any pleasure, and I'm feeling distressed. So that you know, but they couldn't talk about it. So that's been a really, you know, that's still a big thing. And then if a woman just loses a libido and doesn't want to want, you know, is doesn't miss sex, well then what do you say to your partner? Go and find sex somewhere, but come back home and we'll watch telly together, we'll watch antique roadshow. But you know, like what do you how do you negotiate a change of that intimacy? You just have to um hope that your husband gets erectile dysfunction while you're going through menamor, you know, and then everyone's happy. No one's under pressure.

SPEAKER_03 23:15

But um it's it's very it's actually really, really challenging. I've got a friend who's a sex therapist, and um she we've talked about it a a little bit as well because it's actually it's not it's not talked about. So even within my girlfriends, we don't we don't talk about that. So I was very fortunate that my GP is the greatest GP in the whole world, and she's name, please. Yes, I know. Well, I feel like I can't tell people because I just want to make sure she's uh available to me at all times. Um that she's yes, Dr. Sarah Farrell from Sydney Women's Wellness, and she's the best GP of all time. And she said to me, we're gonna start you on estrogen and progesterone because of your spine, and then she just took that conversation further, and I ended up on testosterone. And so there is a uh there's a TGA um approved product called Andropheme in Australia, which is a cream, which is because it's homeopathic levels of testosterone we're talking about. We're not talking about, I mean, you see me, I'm I'm basically a bodybuilder, right? Yeah, yeah. So it's not anabolic.

SPEAKER_02 24:20

Just cold.

SPEAKER_03 24:21

Look at my biceps, they're ginormous. Um, we're not talking about anabolic steroids that were being abused in the 90s in sport. You know, we're not we're not talking about that kind of level. We're talking about replacing physiological levels of testosterone in women, which is a tenth what the men have. And it's, I would say, been a game changer. It in as part of a whole suite of other things that we also did an upgrade on this on the body at that time, you know, in terms of estrogen and progesterone, but as as part of the whole group, it was amazing. But I don't think that conversation's being had terribly frequently in GP land across the country. Because also, how how much of that are you gonna get through in a 15-minute Medicare rebated conversation?

SPEAKER_02 25:07

And also GPs aren't taught about menopause. And also GPs are barely talk taught about. Taught about women's health. Yeah, you have you you have to get ones that have a particular interest. You you really need a woman who's going through menopause herself as a GP to actually get the right s um treatment and understanding and empathy. But I mean now we've got we're spending 30% of our lives in menopause, whereas um and my mum did too. My mum, when she went through menopause, so when I went through menopause, I go, why didn't mum tell me? You know, she was really open about everything, but she never talked about menopause. So I rang her up and she said, Oh, menopause, it was the worst five years of my life. And first of all, I thought, five years? And then I thought, worst five years? This is a woman who went through, you know, the Great Depression and World War II. Yeah. And menopause was worse. Like, what that? I said, Why didn't you talk about it? And she said, Well, we just never talked about it. And she I said, You worked for doctors when you were going through menopause. Why didn't you why didn't you say to them how you were suffering? And she said, Well, they were all men, and they would have just said it was a woman women's problems. And then my dad, who I thought was watching a Clint Eastwood movie, he said, Women's problems are men's problems. He's very smart. And then he rode off into the sunset. Yes. No, but yeah, it's true, you know, this is this is a joint thing. We we've got relationships, you know. Now we're doing joint parenting and we're doing joint housework, and this is how it should be. But we really need to talk about the different things uh the menopause too. When I when my book came out, so many men bought my book. Oh, brilliant. Yeah, their wives wouldn't buy it. A lot of them emailed me and said, Look, my wife doesn't want to buy it because she doesn't want to admit it, but I need to know what's going on.

SPEAKER_03 26:53

How good is that?

SPEAKER_02 26:54

Yeah. One guy who was a farmer, he was ploughing the paddocks out near Gallagher Bone or something, he just put his tractor on automatic and read the whole book. Well, the pet tractor was famous. Fabulous. I know, fabulous. Yeah. Because I think the men in our lives want to know. They want to know what's going on and how they can you know, support us.

SPEAKER_03 27:14

Well, uh absolutely. And I mean, so I my husband's a doctor, but he's a medical oncologist, so he's not in um women's health. But I've been educating him on this. I mean he has He had no education on it at university and then specialised and then has never, you know, never never thought about reproductive unless they're cancerous again.

SPEAKER_02 27:39

Well, see, that's the other other thing. If we women start going, I'm not going to talk about menopause or I feel embarrassed or it's aging or I'm past my use by date, what sort of message does that give all the young women who go through menopause, medical menopause, because they've had a gynecological cancer and they've had their ovaries or everything removed and they go through menopause and no one tells them they're going to go through menopause. Not no one, but a lot of young women I talk to with gynecological cancer, didn't they were just always focused on the cancer and not the fact that, okay, now you're going to go through menopause. And if we older women are saying, oh, it's the end of, yeah. Like it's really horrible message. It is. It's actually a very liberating time. And if it and it can be managed. And we can wear white again. You know, we can go swimming without fear of attracting sharks. You know, like we can go out without sanitary products, unless you've got a bit of, you know, incontinence, but you can get that fixed too. You know, so the message really has to be that it's natural and normal and a really great part of life. And if you're younger, then you have to be fully supported and be given the choice of how to manage it. And speaking of sex, and a young woman was telling me, so she lost her, she had cervical cancer, and then sex is really painful, and and then but she's she's trying to educate other young women how to get their sex drive back, and she goes into sex shops, which are really, really great apparently. And but she said you have to know which sex toys to get because if your skin is fragile, if you haven't got estrogen um nourishing your vagina and your labia and everything like that, your genitals, and you use the wrong sex toy, you can it can be really painful or on your clitoris and things. So there's so much information we need to just sort of that needs to be accessible. And your friend who's a sex therapist would know all that.

SPEAKER_03 29:44

Yes, she's a she's a wealth of Yeah, I bet. She's a wealth of knowledge. Jean Kidson, thank you so much for joining me. You've spent decades helping us laugh about that. I don't even think I can read it, it sounds so scripted. You've spent decades helping us laugh about the parts of life that many of us struggle through, midlife, metaphores, and the absurd expectations placed on women and the very real experience of caring for aging parents. We didn't get to talk about it.

SPEAKER_02 30:06

We didn't even get to talk about it. Next time.

SPEAKER_03 30:08

Um, thank you for bringing your honesty. I think we will have to edit it all out because I now sound like I'm reading something. I was gonna say, you're still hot to me. Oh, thank you. You're welcome. That was a little in little in-joke there. Gene kids, and you're divine. Oh, you're exactly as divine as I thought you would be. Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 30:27

Thanks, Kate. It was great to speak with you and I really I really enjoyed our conversation. Thanks for spreading the word and helping, you know, helping other women and men understand all this. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 30:39

And now we have to eat a whole plate of cheese.

SPEAKER_02 30:41

Uh, I'm going to. I'll have a great right now. ASMR. That's ASMR.