The Orgasm Gap [Luminescence Podcast]

It's Jeff, and I'm super excited to share something really special with you today. A look into the very first season of the New Luminescence Podcast, hosted by the mother of my three beautiful daughters and my better three quarters. Skylar Grant. This first season features round table discussions hosted by Skylar with three extraordinary women doctor Julian Brighton, doctor Marisa Snyder, and Rosie Acosta. It's an informational and occasionally

spicy look into women's health. We launched Luminescence last year as an in person gathering, creating space for long overdue conversations about women's health, and through our work here at Commune it's become exceedingly clear that women need more than fragmented information. They need education, context, and real community.

all in one place. And that's what luminescence is about, not only through live events, but now through this weekly podcast. So I'll be featuring a handful of episodes here, but I encourage everyone to head over to their favorite podcatcher and subscribe directly. to the luminescence pod.

We are failing women at every corner here. It's not even a choice. It tends to be just anatomical. We're not even taught that we're able to have orgasms. So we're changing that right here. Right now. Such a revolutionary act, but also dream gasms. Dream gasms. You're just like, Oh, hey, okay, it's happening to me. This is what everyone was talking about. I didn't leave my bedroom. Welcome to the Luminescence Podcast.

This is a show for women by women. So we created the show for one simple reason. Our health and our well-being have been drastic. Drastically underserved. For most of medical history, women's bodies were either studied only in the context of reproduction. Or women's bodies were just looked at like little men. And then even when the attention shifted to women's bodies in the twentieth century, our health concerns were either labeled anxious or hysterical.

The landscape has improved, but medical research and clinical funding for women's health has lagged so far behind men's needs, men's health. And even out here in the wild, we are not having enough meaningful conversations about our own health. Over the course of this season, we're gonna dig into three of the things that matter most for women's health. Sex, hormones, and intimacy. And in this first episode, we're gonna get right to it. Pleasure and the orgasm gap.

But uh first I should introduce these three incredible women I have here with me today. You're gonna be spending time with Dr. Jolene Brighton. So so happy to have you here. Your legend precedes you. You're a naturopathic endocrinologist, you're a clinical sexologist, you are one of the leading voices on women's hormone health. You are a best selling author of multiple books. Is this normal which is

such a fantastic resource. I've giving it to all of my girls. And then of course your pill book Beyond the Pill, which we will be getting into in certainly deeper in this in this um season. And you run this podcast that answers so many questions about women's sexual health. And I I I just can't wait to to get your advice and wisdom and

Humor. Dr. Marisa Snyder. So Dr. Marisa Snyder is a functional wellness practitioner, a women's hormone health expert, and you're the best-selling author of eight books. Rosie Acosta is the host of Radically Well, your amazing podcast. You're also an author of the book You Are Radically Loved. She's a holistic Wellness coach, meditation, yoga teacher. Pertinent to This podcast is you have brought the struggles that you had growing up to

everything you teach now and also your personal struggles with paramenopause and menopause into all of your teachings. So I'm so grateful to have you here. I'm always happy to share a room with you. All right, so the way this show will flow is that I will give you a little context for the topic at hand, and today of course is pleasure and the orgasm gap.

And then each of my co hosts will bring their experience to the discussion and then We'll answer some questions from you, dear listeners, and finally we'll wrap up with any lingering questions that we still have, which we'll then use to seed the fertile ground for future episodes. This is the core of it. To me, the female body and the female psyche is basically a never-ending series of questions. And in that spirit, we offer you inquiry as much as we hope to offer some answers.

So let's get to it.

Why aren't women orgasming as much as men? Jolene, you take this away. Well, I first want to say it's false that women orgasm less than men. In fact, research shows us that when a woman is self-pleasuring, she can have more orgasms. There's something called the refractory period. This is where being a woman is just so kick-ass because

we have a shorter refractory period. So when a man orgasms, it's usually one and done. When a woman orgasms, she can have multiple. So women can have more orgasms when they're self-pleasuring or when they're with a partner that knows what they're doing. They also get there faster. We are in the Luminescence Podcast. I think this is a perfect, perfect name.

For what we need to do. We have to turn up the lights. We have to illuminate all of the things that have been hiding in the shadows, have been kept in the dark and making us feel ashamed. Now, with that said, many of our listeners right now. They're gonna wanna dip out, they're gonna wanna shut down, and they're gonna wanna stop listening because that is what society has told us we should do when we get uncomfortable and we hear about sex. So I'm gonna challenge everybody.

I want you to take what you need, leave what you don't, and ask what's true for you, but stay with us here. So I think that's a really important way to frame this conversation because. What we understand about the orgasm gap is there's about a 30-point differential between who gets to come in a heterosexual relationship. Men are orgasming 95% of the time. Women are orgasming sixty five percent of the time.

Now this is where I've had a lot of men approach me and they say, well, it's just so hard to make a woman orgasm. Okay, false. Research shows us some women can hit it in four minutes. Okay.

Well, it's the myth that they've been told, which contributes to this as well. There's so many myths around sex. So I think it's really easy to be like, Men suck and they don't wanna pleasure a woman but no, actually because if you're in my DMs Many, many w men are very interested in wanting to pleasure women because they've also got a pressure of like they've got to be. Stallion, right? Every woman wants to ride this pony like

There's a lot of pressure on them as well. And so I think often when we enter in these conversations, we hear about this orgasm gap and it's like women only get to come sixty-five percent of the time and you're like Men are the worst and it's like, well actually there's a lot to unpack in this. So

Women can orgasm on their own. Women in a same-sex relationship orgasm about 85% of the time. People will be like, whoa, but that's still not 100%. Pleasure isn't about orgasms. Satisfaction in sexual intimacy isn't about orgasms. And sex itself isn't penetration, which is part of the problem, is that we have rigidly defined this for everyone. And it's really what sex is gets to be defined by you as the individual.

And we're gonna talk about paying with sex in a future episode, but I think this definition of Sex is penetration. One makes some women feel broken, and two, makes it so women can't orgasm. You know, in fact, only 18% of women report that they can orgasm with vaginal penetration alone. now, I would still challenge their clitoral involvement because the clitoris isn't just this little nub sitting on the outside. It is this giant, um

like half octopus is what I like to think of it. It looks like it's got four arms and it's in the vaginal walls as well. So, but this idea that like everything we do has to arrive at penetration also is keeping us from being able to orgasm. So I Jolene, I love for you to go back and actually

map that out a little bit because I know I mean, I feel like somebody who who knows a lot about their body and is, you know, sort of like fairly clitorate. But I I remember it wasn't until maybe five or ten years ago that I saw the an one of those amazing renderings of the clitoris and how massive it is behind the veil of the clitoral hood. Okay. Down into the so j I mean, for anybody who A, the, you know,

This is a wonderful use of Google. Go out and look at this because it is incredible to see. how big it is, how it maps onto male anatomy and how much more men and women share anatomically than we think. And but anyway, if you don't mind just doing a a little mapping for for our listeners, it'd be great. Hey, it's Jeff. And if you're a regular listener to this show, then you know that getting great sleep is one of the most important things that you can do for your body and for your mind.

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We gotta talk about the clitoral conspiracy. Okay. Let's have it. This is what I call it and is this normal? So the clitoris was actually First discovered, they begin dec dissecting it out. This was in Hippocrates' time. So we're talking about like 460 BCE, like way back in the day. Grey's Anatomy comes along and they're just like Oh, you know what? We don't need to put a clitoris in an anatomy book. The French, they actually named the clitoris a shameful member. I can't speak French.

So I can't tell you the word, but that's what they named it. It's like membre en to or something. Yes. Oh my god. I put that in my book, such a mistake, because then when I had to read the audiobook, I'm like, oh So men saw this as a threat, and men had taken midwives out of the equation, co-opted medicine, and decided they were the experts of the female body, which was inferior to the male body. So why bother even studying it?

So we get this uh, you know, Dr. O'Connell in the 1990s discovered the clitoris. No, the clitoris was acknowledged and then we had better mapping, but we always knew about this structure. Now, here we are sitting. At this moment, it is 2025. The majority of medical textbooks do not even have accurate representation of the clitoris. This is why when I know today. Wild, right? This is A travesty. Yeah. Well I'll tell you, in the in my book is this normal there's three

three diagrams of the clitoris. Okay. And my editors were like, do you really need to have three? I'm like, if medical textbooks have zero, I gotta make up the difference here. And what's really important for women to understand, especially in the age of labiaplasty, Most surgeons are not actually trained. On the clitoris, let alone nerve innervation. This is why I'm like, you only mess with like.

the women in neuropelveology who are the experts in like the nerves of the pelvis and actually understand this and fight gynecologists every day on the misinformation they perpetuate. So That's the first thing you need to know is if you don't know about your clitoris, this was on purpose. So just the fact that you're listening to this is such a revolutionary thing. It's such a revolutionary act. If you can share this.

Ho ho ho you're my favorite kind of troublemaker because you're disseminating the information that literally men across the ages have tried to withhold from us. So the clitoris. The little nub that you see on the outside. That's sitting above the urethra actually dives deeper, and it's got four legs that actually span the vaginal canal. Now, what do you need to know about the clitoris other than just We can also talk about how most women like the clitoris stimulated if men are listening.

based on the research, not just what I say is true. But what you need to understand is embryologically speaking, we all started out down the female track and that was gonna be awesome. Like you were gonna have the best anatomy and then You had a testosterone wash, the SRY gene has to be present, that kicks on, and now you differentiated from the beautiful female anatomy and you went penis scrotum.

And what is that? That is the same tissue as the clitoris. So this, you'll very rarely hear me say take a male study and apply it to women and it works out. But when we look at the penis, which we study greatly and not the clitoris. We can actually apply these things because they are the same tissues and they respond in the same way. They get engorged.

You have an erection, your clitoris becomes erect. Like while they look different, they behave the same. So why does this matter? Because we understand things like in men's research that cardiovascular disease, insulin resistance, stress, All of these factors we know can lead to erectile dysfunction can lead to clitoral dysfunction. I kinda hate dysfunction. I want everyone to know that. It's just what suboptimal orgasms. Yeah.

So I think that's one of the most important things that women can take away from the clitoris is that understanding that. We've all been taught, right? Cosmos like how to please a man on every single freaking cover for like decades on end. You know, we have to understand we don't have a great deal of information, but this is the one of the areas in medicine where we can actually start to apply what we know.

about the penis and its function. But here's the wild, crazy, most amazing thing of being a woman. I'm gonna say this about like literally everything because you're so badass, is that a penis also has to ejaculate. it has to urinate and it hangs out on the outside of the body. So it cannot have as many nerve endings as we do. It cannot be as sensitive as the clitoris is, because could you imagine walking around with your clitoris highly exposed, rubbing against your genes all day like

have a great time, but we would get nothing done, right? And so the coming all day. Yeah, just coming all day. We would be so used to be a hundred percent. I'd be like, I'm not thinking it works. All day, every day. So I mean that's also why it's like, no, actually like women have more orgasms. It's very easy to make a woman orgasm. You just gotta know what you're doing. Gotta do.

What Dr. Ian Kerner coined as clitorate, where he actually wrote a book and he encouraged men to start with oral sex, to start with like, Like the book is she comes first. If you start there and you're not just trying to get at penetration, which statistically speaking can be harder for women to orgasm unless There are other things happening, or, and here's the thing about it: the 18% orgasming, it tends to be just anatomical. It's the way you were born.

So it's not even a choice whether you have an orgasm vaginally or not. And I think that's important for women to hear as well because

Majority of women need clitoral stimulation, whether they're having penetration or not, to have an orgasm. Now that being said, I do want to acknowledge for people who have like spinal cord injuries. You know, they they're they're not feeling anything below the waist. And this, I think, everybody needs to know, and it sets like everything that Dr. Marisa and

uh Rose you're gonna talk about is gonna be so important is that your nervous system will reroute nerves for pleasure. If you can no longer f experience pleasure by the clitoris or the penis. your spinal cord will prioritize that. It tells you how important. pleasure is to the human experience and to our well-being, that your nervous system will say, we're gonna get at it another way.

And then plasticity. Yeah. All the way. Brilliant. Rising. And then I do want to acknowledge some women can think off, right? They can just think about sexual things and have an orgasm. Uh some people, you know, they can ha there's so many ways to have orgasm. Inadvertently just by adapting. Like squeezing their inner thighs.

It hasn't happened to me, but I'm just saying. I w I wanna tell you I had a corgasm before. If people don't know uh what that is, it's basically contracting your cores and bec your core muscles and because of how it all innervates and the terminal ends of some of these muscles are in the pelvis that can stimulate the clitoris. Some of you may have had pea gasms. That's when you hold your pee at night.

Um you're not doing it on purpose. You're sleeping and you wake up and you're having an orgasm. But also dream gasms, right? Dream gasms are like a fun time, right? Yeah. It it teaches you that does. I mean when you think about the fact that women also have wet dreams. Like it it is in your head. Again, we got the best anatomy. You can't tell me otherwise. I mean I'm biased, but uh but you know, the thing about the Corgasm

I went through endometriosis excision surgery. And um a lot of women are afraid of that because uh if you don't have the right people, they can't mess with your sexual function. My shout out to Dr. Anna Sierra, who is the top trained neuropalveologist in the world, the only female trained at the level she is to actually do excision of pelvic nerves. Anyhow, I messaged her on Instagram. She's a friend of mine. I was crying. I was like, if I can never have an orgasm again.

I don't know what I'll do. You have to be at this surgery. She shows up. Girl shows up at like 5 a.m. for me, holds my hand all the way down. I was like, oh my God, I love you so much. I go through pelvic floor physical therapy. Okay, so I've had it before because I've had children, but following this and and working on my pelvic floor and and the musculature there.

Now I have to be careful when I work out because it happens so frequently that I have a qu of a corgasm. I'm not mad about it, but it is at times like a little off-putting, right? Because you're working out with other people and then you're just like, oh, hey, oh, something, okay, it's happening to me. I'm telling this story because I want to normalize conversations about things that are normal about the human body that in the moment I was the first time it happened, I was like.

Whoo, what is happening here? And like, oh we I know what's happening here. But like if I was in a gym setting I'm like that would have been

probably a little bit awkward, but it is completely normal. I think we do need to bring up something that's really important because there's a practice that women have been doing that has put men into disservice from learning what they need to learn. And puts us at a disservice, which is altruistic deceit. We are faking orgasms. Uh, estimates say that.

Anywhere from sixty to seventy five percent of women have faked orgasm at one time or another. Men immediately say, Women are liars and what I want men to know and hear is what the research tells us is it's altruistic deceit. Women understand your ego and not like you're egotistical, but how you feel about yourself is so important that they will fake an orgasm to make you feel better about yourself. Then there's a subset of women

Who will fake an orgasm because they need it to be over. And that's often due to pain, which is why our upcoming episode is one that everybody needs to tune into because. Statistically speaking, at some point, every single woman will have pain with

Or boredom. Well, what's really interesting Roll over and grab a vibrator, guys. Well, it's interesting, like being able to get to this place of of education. You know, we're not even taught the female anatomy. We're not even taught that we're able to have

orgasms. Like I wasn't taught about sex being important for me. You're always taught sex is important for your partner, right? Especially, you know, growing up for me was growing up in a very uh devout Catholic household sex did not come up at all. Like I didn't even learn about having an orgasm until I was in my twenties. Like Twenties. Yeah. And I was having sex prior to that. What if your only resolution this year was to get better sleep?

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So if you're ready to start the year off right, go to cbdistillery dot com and use my code commune for twenty five percent off. That's cbdistillery dot com. Code commune. Yeah, you know they've done they've done studies on different sex ed programs and in sex ed programs that prioritize teaching pleasure as part of the curriculum. Unwanted pregnancy and STDs go way down.

Wow. That makes sense. Which totally makes sense. Yeah. Exactly. Also for parents who are listening, like the main goal of sex ed in the US is to scare the bejesus out of you so that you don't want to have it so you don't have it younger. So what you're referencing is the studies out of Germany and the Netherlands. And what we have found is that sex, the first time people have sex, is actually later.

They tend to be more closer to adult, if not adults, and they share the experience with their parents and they don't report shame, remorse, or that there was any kind of trauma around it. They say it's pleasurable and yet In the US, everything is completely opposite. So we have to re examine this. Yeah. And I think it's also a matter of

you know, feeling empowered and growing up feeling a sense of security, you know, especially if there is any type of sexual abuse or sexual trauma. You don't really that's not really an area of focus for for women. Yeah, I'm sure for for men as well.

w that you focus on. It's like this this area of my body did not give me pleasure, right? So now how then do I grow up exploring this center that is designed very perfectly, as Dr. Jolene's saying the only organ in the human body designed solely for pleasure. shame and cultural repression around this pleasure-seeking part of the body. So Rosie, wanna tell us a little bit about about all of your work. Yeah, I mean I I feel like for me a lot of what I have done in the last twenty years has been

Having conversations like this to try and dispel the the myths and the shame around talking about sex. I remember getting my period when I was 11 and you know, I would like throw away my underwear in the trash because I I didn't know what to do with it. And I think my mom found them or something and then the next day she put like maxi pads on my bed and that was the talk. That was the conversation. There was no here's how you use it. It's gonna last this amount of days, you know. And it

Gonna feel like this. There was no conversation. So by the time I started having sex and I was having underage sex, obviously. it it was something that brought a lot of shame and anxiety around this specific topic. So once I got older and I did my own research, I was dumbfounded at how much information was out there that we weren't taught in sex ed, right? We're not taught, oh, for women, you get to have pleasure too. It's not just this thing entering and you're waiting for it to be done.

You can actually enjoy this. It's really important to be able to talk to your daughters, talk to your sons, talk to your kids about. sex and and what it is, there's just so much stigma around it still, you know. So I try to bring it in.

from a mindful place where, you know, you're having conversations about prevention, prevention of STDs, prevention of you know, unwanted pregnancies and it is a very slippery slope when you start to talk about, you know, birth control with with people that might find it uh going against their religion or against their cultural beliefs. And I agree with you 100%. How do you start to implement that to

Uh and look, and not all of it is gonna be accepted, right? As as a communal thing or or i within a community, especially if there is a lot of rigidity within the community. You can't just be like, let's go stare at each other's yonis right now or and just, you know, explore. There there is no framework for that, you know. So you do it very mindfully, very carefully, very respectfully to educate people that, you know, there are ways to

practice a deeper form of intimacy. So it's really about, to me, I I frame it in in the work of self-love and self-compassion. It's like, okay, this is what your body's capable of doing. It's designed to do this really incredible thing. I would also say, you know, the work you do as a yoga teacher and a meditation teacher and a breath work teacher.

those kind of modalities, anything that we do that is really somatic helps us to feel and expect is not quite the right word, but to to inhabit pleasure in our bodies and to to to feel your breath, yeah, to feel your body in shapes, to to be an emb an embodied being is such a huge part of satisfying sexuality. And so, you know, I mean for somebody who

feels so divorced from their sexuality, who doesn't really you know, is isn't gonna start with a mirror or with masturbation. Maybe they need to start by just Like having a relationship with their body, not going to the gym and pounding it out on a stairmaster, but actually like feeling into themselves. Yeah. Well obviously somatic practices like yoga, dance, meditation, breath work.

being able to do that type of movement that it it's really interesting hi in Hispanic cultures because we dance, right? Like that is and really sexy. And you can go and do like the sexiest of sexy dances, but then it's like, don't talk about sex. Exactly. It's like don't talk about sex. So so to me, can we reverse engineer that and say, okay, so your body's capable of feeling pleasure and going into these somatic places of release and

feeling satisfaction. So exactly like you're saying being sexy yourself and sexy with another person and that interplay. Yeah. We have these internal narratives that we have repeated over and over. And just like we trained ourselves into them, we can train ourselves out of them. So that's that's the work, that's the reframe. I agree. I think that there's a huge I know we're talking about the orgasm gap and the pleasure gap, but it's a knowledge gap.

I think we can all go back to being lit all a lot of Latinas here in the room as well. No, we're all vibers. Latina game. My menstrual cycle was a curse. Um, the thing between a man's leg was the devil. Like this was the language that I grew up with. And that women were designed to suffer. That was the the narrative. And so that there was the cultural narrative that was happening behind the scenes. I think about the the biopsycho-social part. That was the social part.

But then I think about the education. the knowledge the knowledge gap for both men and women when we were going through high school or I think it was high school of all of us and getting the education and it was mostly male physiology. I remember there's a very small piece about female physiology and really more so about reproduction. Um, but then it was, you know,'cause bab we're baby making machines. That's that's all we're here to do.

Do you say bread boxes? Bread boxes. Just pushing out loaves of bread. Bacon all day. Bacon bacon bread, yes, absolutely. But that that knowledge gap is for yeah, mm both men and women, b girls and boys. And I remember it just being it was abstinence. keeping us off the pole, let's be honest, keeping us off the pole. Um, and it was also STDs. Those that was the piece. And I'll never forget, you know, going through high school into college, and I went to a private woman's college.

Um until I was surrounded. Yeah. You just like kept dishing it back to yourself.

I didn't have an orgasm until I was in college. Um I was so you know, again, you you grow up with this culture, you grow up with this lack of education and and you're you're hearing whispers. You're hearing Yeah, did you think you were missing something? Yeah, I knew I was missing something. I also I thought I was broken. I thought I was broken for so long. I thought there was I just I don't orgasm. That's the deal. 'Cause it was all penetrative sex is what it was.

And there was no cl I mean, I don't think any uh my partner knew about where the clitoris was or how to stimulate the clitoris. We're we're rolling this back to two thousand and two or two thousand and four. And so I remember being in college and the vagina monologue. had come to the Bay Area. And I was so excited. I remember sitting in the um in the theater to watch it. I actually had I left.

Because I was I was ashamed of what I was learning in the vagina monologues. Like I was like, this was this was a lot. And about it. Was it like the anatomy talk? Well, I'm just curious. I'm fascinated by your stuff. Yeah, I know, I know. It was it was defin no, I don't think it was the anatomy because I was in biology at the time. I was I was pre-med. in college. So it was into the anat and again, we were still stunted in terms of the anatomy for women, but

It was it was the the honest and open conversation about sexuality. And um and so that I think that'cause you just don't talk about that. You just do the deed and you get it over with and you move on.'Cause it's dirty. Yeah, it's yeah. Well it was it was super dirty and so I was like I'm supposed to do this.

you know, and you know, do this thing and then like go back and do the dishes. And so I went back, it was at my school for like a couple of weeks, went back and I fully watched it and then one of my best friends became one of the producers for the show. And I ended up being in the vagina monologue a couple of years later. So I remember sitting um big circle, the fifty women,'cause all women in the show, producing the show, it was all women's show, all women school. Like I've I've

I always say I serve everybody by serving women. And I remember sitting at the end of one of our rehearsals and there was a question that went around the room to all of these fifty and mind you, a lot of these women were oh like in perimenopause and menopause. So not like I would say half half twenty year olds. 30, 40, 50 year olds. And we go around the room. And the question is would you choose orgasms or cheese?

You had to choose one or the other. Have you been to France? Let's just say seventy to eighty percent of the room chose. Cheese. No Oh my god was an honest answer? I know this these were these were women that were married with children. These they were like cheese. So many of them, I would say major I was amazed because it opened up and it deepened the conversation about are we even having orgasms in this room? So majority of the women were not having orgasms, um, although they had children.

um that they they did not enjoy sex, that it felt very performative. Um, they felt like they were broken. And I remember being I was twenty two years old and I remember listening to these women who were in their thirties and their forties, maybe even their fifties, and I thought, oh my gosh, like We are failing women at every corner here. Like these women have just retired out of sex at this point because they don't enjoy it. It's not pleasurable. And so I was like on a mission.

I'm like, I have gotta figure out this gap for myself'cause I had not had an orgasm. I'm twenty two now and I'm thinking I've gotta figure this out and so I inc I go get the magic wand. Yeah that is OG. Lug this sucker into the wall, like I want the full G's experience. And oh my goodness, I was like, this is what everyone was talking about? Yes. I remember I didn't leave my bedroom.

We're talking about that ref refractory period, girl. I was pushing up against the wall of that refractory period. I was having orgasms four to five times a day for like months. And you're like, my skin never looked better. And I'll tell you, I had no desire to do this with my partner. Oh. I was like, this is

This is my show. This is for me only. So you had a partner at the time. Did you tell him her? I was and I was like listen I think we was towards the tail end and I was like I just this is mine. This is my interesting. But and and at what point yeah if you don't mind me getting um into detail here, but at what point did you decide with that partner or another like

Okay, actually now I wanna like integrate these things and I you know, I can have both. I can have intimacy. Such a great question. It was after that partner. I think because the inter like the intimacy and the intercourse Was so bad. It was so painful for

long that I just I felt like I was never gonna be able to repair the dynamic was yeah the dynamic was d was was in disarray at that point. You know, especially after the vagina monologue experience between the cheese and the orgasms and I was I I was on the cheese Train two. I was like, cheese. She's like, Give me the cheese. Give me the queso. I have got to tell this r random anecdote that because we're talking about cheese.

So there was there is there is a study done on mice or m r m rats or mice on distraction. And um and like it's really like women's minds during sex versus men's minds. And when the rats were copulating and they put little dribbles of cheese out in front of the male, he did not smell the cheese. He was not distracted. But the female mice were distracted by the cheese. Yeah.

So there's a through line. I mean, cheese has can in the brain have like a bit of a euphoric sense. You'll hear people extrapolate this to be like on social media where they're like Cheese is as addicting as opioids because it can have a bit of that effect. Um I don't think it was really the cheese. I think it was anything that was desirable. I mean, pleasurable? Yes. Anything that was pleasurable because eating is Pleasurable. Right. I found something to replace my old school lube.

Legit pleasure enhancer. If you don't know about Fourier's awaken arousal oil and their other You are So I'm here. See ya. say that I What put in our mouth? You know what I mean? Awaken Arousal Oil? Organic Coconut oil, broad. Extract. Botanical infusions of things like And vanilla. Organic and tinted on animals. Well, test it.

You know, I I I I wanna kind of wrap up with this historical piece that I actually didn't know about until I started preparing for this episode that it just kinda blew my mind and put so many things in context. And it was really what Freud did to and I know you've talked about this, Jolene, but what Freud hater did to women in pleasure.

And he had a theory that vaginal orgasms were the mature orgasm and that a clitoral orgasm was an immature orgasm. It was related to like the the I don't know if he wa if i if he was anatomically taking it back to like the clitoris was related to the penis, but he thought it was more like if a woman had an orgasm f from clitoral stimulation.

It was she was young, she was in you know, it was it was prepubescent, it was pubescent, it was not a a woman's orgasm. And that dogma carried on has carried on Today, I mean, I do think that there is still this narrative that if you're having a vaginal orgasm you are having a better orgasm or a somehow a more complete orgasm and

we just need to let l lay that to rest. It is not anatomically accurate. It is not experientially accurate. And if women were to fully embrace and men, if they're partnered with a man, are to fully embrace the fact that our clit is the same as their penis. Mhm. And that you wouldn't expect a man to come to orgasm regularly just by Diddling around on their belly button, then we would narrow that 30 point gap significantly if we were all just to become cliterate.

Freud's par uh partners faked it. I'm going on the record and saying it. And secondly, like Freud, tell me you don't know how to pleasure a woman without telling me. He had no idea. That was the deal. And I was thinking like the fact that default we would have all had clitorises. if you know the Y chromosome didn't kick in. Like that's this is the default. As you were saying, Skylar, they studied the male body and said just apply it to the inferior baby making model, which is women and yet

We were the pattern. We were the model. Like we are the default mode of existence. And the deviation is the male. Is the male model. And here we have this. We have got the Ferrari of pleasure organs. All right. Well, we could obviously talk about

this forever amongst ourselves, but I wanna bring in a few questions we got from the audience. Let me see. All right. Uh okay, Jolene, I want you to take this first one. This is a good one for you. Uh Ellen asks, um What are some practical tips for orgasming but bl your s with your, you know, self or with a partner? We could this could go on for a whole other episode, but just give us top

Yeah, this is a great question. The research tells us there's three key things that most women like. If you like something different, you're totally normal. But here they are. It is consistent medium pressure. Okay. So medium pressure. Circular motion. And staying consistent. No on again, off again, no up and down, no Mr. Miyagi wax on, wax off. Like just consistent, medium, circular pressure. And that's where you start. And if you're like,

I'm still having a hard time. I want you, whether you are a man or a woman, you're gonna think about your vibrator as your Batman utility belt. And if Batman was fighting crime or trying to get the job done, would he say

Oh no, not this because I don't th I think that like, you know, this thing is inferior or says something negative about me. No. He pulled out whatever he had in his tool belt and in your tool belt should be a toy of your choosing, of your liking that can help you explore and get there.

Here, here. Here, here. Here's for your favorite. Yay, vibrators. Get it. Here's to Batwomen. Okay, this next question is I'm gonna give this one to you, Rosie. Okay. Um How do I best communicate with my partner about intimacy? Hmm. Harder than it seems. Yeah, because it could mean so many things. Uh via text. No, I'm just kidding. Um send them a text like I do. I'm like, I'm having big feelings.

Sometimes in the moment when we're feeling really disconnected, we might not have the right words. So I I'm a big fan of communicating in a way that's A little more thoughtful. Yeah, a little bit more thoughtful. Yeah, I'll let can I add something? I think a really good rule of thumb is Telling your partner what you like to do. In bed, Totally legal. What you don't like?

Take it out of the bedroom. Oh, a hundred percent. I think that's a pro tip. Obviously, you've been in a partnership for a very long time. Um and s so have I, and I think that that's uh that's probably the best pro tip. Okay, this is

This is one that I know a lot of women will share. Um, Marisa, you can definitely take this one. So after years of sex and getting herself off successfully in menopause. Things are ch things be changing down there. Like some pro tips there. I would say number one, lube. But lube should be the in our entire lifetime. So yay to lube from our you know early years into our late years, but yes to lube and yes to hormones.

thinking about bringing on estradiol, thinking about bringing on testosterone. I recommend, you know, especially if a woman's in menopause, I mean, we don't necessarily need a test at that point. And women ask me all the time, should I be testing my hormones? I'm like, no, they're

They're pretty low down there, so we just bring we can just bring hormones on. Um and then I would also say Are you a fan of of estrogen cream, even if you're not taking Oh I and we're gonna be getting deep into this conversation into another episode, but uh all vaginas. need estrogen. All vaginas need vaginal estrogen. And um maybe a little DHEA as well. Um and and then even systemic hormones like testosterone and um estrogen. We will go there. Yeah. Oh, we will go there. You best be assured.

All right. Well, um, we're gonna end each show, as I mentioned, just with like any any kind of l nagging things that we feel like maybe we didn't get to or stuff this might have brought up for each of us, if there's if there's anything.

I need to know what cheese you had in mind when you chose cheese over an orgasm. I need to know. We'd have to ask Eve and Um we've got a place for comments. Y'all I need to know. I I think for me it it's the same question that continues to come up, why are we not teaching this in school?

How do we get this into school? Oh god that's a big question. That's the big thing. Okay. I have a I have a I have a question. I wish we got into it this episode, but we'll have to do another one. Um don't answer even if you have an answer. Why are you looking at me? Because I think you have an answer. Um okay. I would I would like to know, and I know other women who who have

spoken to this. And it's come up in their relationships with men, not women who are partnered with other women. But since we've talked about clitoral stimulation a lot. If you are using a vibrator regularly on your clitoris, is there any desensitization for just digital or pressure stimulation? Okay, for another episode. Marisa, anything? I was gonna say same as Rosie, as I'd love to know more about how are we shifting the education, not only in medical school, but also in high school.

So that we are educating more on pleasure and we are really focusing on female physiology. That's what I would love to know if that is moving forward or not and how do we move it forward? I'm afraid we're not in a great administration for that, but here here, let's figure out how we can make it happen. All right, guys. What fun to talk. I can't I can't wait for the next topic of conversation and uh That's a wrap.

Thank you so much for joining this episode of the Luminescence Podcast. Our show is powered by Commune, which is an all-in-one course platform for living a happy, healthy, and for luminescence fans. Many of the almost 200 courses on Commune address women's holistic wellness specifically, including more wisdom from Dr. Jolene Brighton, yoga and breathwork classes.

truly and dozens of other classes with leading female health experts and teachers. So just go to onecommune.com to learn more. That is ON ecommune.com. Also, wherever you're watching or listening to the show, be sure to subscribe and please, please, please leave a comment. You will be helping us to shape the future of this show. All right. That's all for now. I'll see you next week.

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