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SMNTY Classics: Cliteracy · Stuff Mom Never Told You

0:05
Speaker 1: Hey, this is Annie and Samantha, and welcome to stuff
0:07
Speaker 1: one never told you, but actually I heart radio and
0:18
Speaker 1: today I come with new Samantha. Oh my god, I'm
0:21
Speaker 1: ready give me that. Yes, so we might come back
0:29
Speaker 1: and do a whole episode on this. But you probably
0:31
Speaker 1: saw recently there were headlines about a news study around
0:37
Speaker 1: the clutterest, yes, and some updates, and it was kind
0:42
Speaker 1: of it started a conversation which you and I have
0:45
Speaker 1: a lot on this show about how a lot of
0:48
Speaker 1: medicine and a lot of science is still sexist because
0:51
Speaker 1: there's so much we don't know about the clutterest. In
0:52
Speaker 1: a lot of ways, it is still misunderstood, um, a
0:56
Speaker 1: mysterious thing. Meanwhile, we have like untold studies on the penis,
1:03
Speaker 1: like so many penis. Yes, there is a huge scientific
1:09
Speaker 1: gap on studies on scientific studies when it comes to
1:12
Speaker 1: the penis versus the clitterest, and there's a huge knowledge
1:15
Speaker 1: gap between it. Um that I think I I can
1:20
Speaker 1: speak from personal experience. I still I didn't know a
1:24
Speaker 1: lot until I started working on this show, and I'm
1:27
Speaker 1: still learning. So uh yeah, we're still learning more about
1:33
Speaker 1: the clitter ist. And I just want to briefly run
1:36
Speaker 1: through what they found in the study. But like I said,
1:40
Speaker 1: we'll probably come back and talk about it more in
1:41
Speaker 1: depth later. But more than ten thousand nerve fibers enabled
1:46
Speaker 1: the pleasurable sensations created by the human clitterest And this
1:50
Speaker 1: is according to new um research from the Oregon Health
1:54
Speaker 1: and Science University. So this was the first known count
1:58
Speaker 1: of human culatoral nerve tiss you and that's I thought
2:01
Speaker 1: I had heard eight thousand previously, I believe. Yeah, it's
2:04
Speaker 1: often quoted as eight thousand nerd fibers and claris, but
2:08
Speaker 1: this is even more. I've just heard thousands, and I
2:12
Speaker 1: never knew the range because that's a difference between a
2:14
Speaker 1: thousand to ten thousand for sure. Yes, and it's way
2:17
Speaker 1: more than the penis. Everybody. Yeah, And just again to
2:28
Speaker 1: to drive this point home, that eight thousand number came
2:31
Speaker 1: from studies on livestock animals, not people. It is just
2:38
Speaker 1: to reiterate this as well. The only known organ where
2:42
Speaker 1: the whole point is pleasure. Uh again, take that penis
2:48
Speaker 1: and you all know, because I won't shut up about it,
2:51
Speaker 1: that's primarily when I masturbate, it's all clatoral because that's
2:55
Speaker 1: where it's happening. Why am I not recording those because that?
3:02
Speaker 1: Oh my god. I was like, we're just gonna do
3:03
Speaker 1: an update. We don't need to record this sorr. I'm
3:09
Speaker 1: always like, should I give me content? Worry? I don't
3:11
Speaker 1: feel feel like the episodes is about the clitterest. You
3:13
Speaker 1: should know anyway. Oh my god, it's amazing. Yes, that's
3:20
Speaker 1: always with the T and mine from me on that one.
3:22
Speaker 1: But this is really fascinating, interesting news. I'm glad we're
3:26
Speaker 1: we're looking into this. I'm excited interested to see what
3:29
Speaker 1: else we can learn. Uh and yeah, well we'll come
3:32
Speaker 1: back and revisit it in the future, but in the meantime,
3:34
Speaker 1: please enjoy this classic episode. Welcome to Stuff Mom Never
3:42
Speaker 1: Told You from how Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and
3:49
Speaker 1: welcome to the podcast. I'm Kristen and I'm Caroline, and
3:53
Speaker 1: we are going to talk all about the Clitterest today,
3:56
Speaker 1: Ladies and gentlemen, Everything you never knew that you wanted
4:00
Speaker 1: to know about the clitterest will be revealed in this podcast.
4:05
Speaker 1: That's right, in a safer work format, very safe for work. Yeah,
4:09
Speaker 1: Caroline and I learned lots of stuff along the way,
4:12
Speaker 1: and I think it's important for everybody to learn more
4:17
Speaker 1: about the clitterest, which, by the way, can we just
4:21
Speaker 1: start off with one fascinating fact please? The clitterest itself,
4:25
Speaker 1: just just the visible part of it outside of our bodies,
4:29
Speaker 1: contains eight thousand nerve endings. That's more than twice on
4:34
Speaker 1: the head of a penis s guys, not to not
4:37
Speaker 1: to make you jealous, but not to toot our own horn.
4:42
Speaker 1: I feel like this podcast is going to be full
4:43
Speaker 1: of euphemisms. It might be. It might be, but let's uh,
4:49
Speaker 1: we got a long way to go before we get
4:50
Speaker 1: up to those eight thousand nerve endings. Let's go back
4:54
Speaker 1: in time, Caroline, shall do? Yeah? We we first want
4:59
Speaker 1: to talk about where this word came from, what does
5:01
Speaker 1: it mean? And it actually didn't originate until the seventeenth century,
5:04
Speaker 1: which is interesting. This word has not been around forever,
5:07
Speaker 1: but it was coined from the Late Greek word clay torris.
5:13
Speaker 1: And I assume that we will get some correction letters
5:16
Speaker 1: if we mispronounced the following Greek words that were about
5:19
Speaker 1: to say, because you might not know this, but I
5:21
Speaker 1: am not Greek, yes, and nor am I Caroline uh,
5:25
Speaker 1: and that's clear us with a K and there's a
5:29
Speaker 1: word clayenne in Greek which means to sheath, also to shut,
5:33
Speaker 1: so something it might come from that because of the
5:36
Speaker 1: reference to the clitterest being covered by the laby a menorah.
5:40
Speaker 1: And then there's also though a related Greek noun form plice,
5:44
Speaker 1: which has a meaning of a key, latch or hook
5:47
Speaker 1: to close a door. And then there's another Greek word
5:51
Speaker 1: that it could come from that is a variant of
5:54
Speaker 1: the word meaning side of a hill. It's related to
5:57
Speaker 1: the verb to slope, from the same a root word
6:00
Speaker 1: as climax caroline. I think that one is my favorite,
6:04
Speaker 1: although there are some ancient medical sources that also say
6:09
Speaker 1: that there is a Greek verb clyde ri izing that
6:14
Speaker 1: means to touch or to late lasciviously, to tickle well kristen.
6:19
Speaker 1: Speaking of tickling, the Germans have my favorite slang word
6:26
Speaker 1: for the clitterest, which is der kitzler, which means the tickler, yes,
6:32
Speaker 1: indeed yeah. And even just the slang clit originated in
6:35
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties, although I have a feeling that whoever
6:39
Speaker 1: was in the nineteen fifties saying the word clit was
6:41
Speaker 1: probably just scandalizing everyone. So scandalous. So there there's a
6:47
Speaker 1: little background on the word clitter iss why we call
6:50
Speaker 1: it the clitterest. But let's go back in time as
6:53
Speaker 1: well and cover some CLIs story. How did we even
6:56
Speaker 1: figure out what this terrist is all about? I mean,
7:01
Speaker 1: obviously women were probably figuring out what this clitterest was
7:04
Speaker 1: all about for a long time, but women weren't exactly
7:09
Speaker 1: prominent members of the medical field until more recent history.
7:13
Speaker 1: So let's start in fifteen fifty nine with with one
7:19
Speaker 1: of my favorite characters in this episode, an Italian anatomist,
7:23
Speaker 1: Roaldo Columbo. Yeah, so of course a man would claim
7:27
Speaker 1: to have discovered the clitterest. And I like that his
7:30
Speaker 1: last name is Columbo Kristin because if his name were
7:34
Speaker 1: in English texts around that time, it would have been Columbus.
7:37
Speaker 1: And so I just liked the idea of the parallel
7:40
Speaker 1: between like Christopher Columbus claiming to have discovered the New
7:43
Speaker 1: World when really there were already people there, and then
7:46
Speaker 1: you have Rialdo Columbus claiming to have discovered the Clitterest
7:50
Speaker 1: when plenty of women were already there. So he's the
7:53
Speaker 1: Christopher Columbus of the glitters Clistopher Columbus. Yes, God, I
7:58
Speaker 1: wish we had art to accompany this episode of these
8:01
Speaker 1: explorers and these scientists. But anyway, so, yeah, he's this
8:05
Speaker 1: anatomist who says that he discovered it, and there were
8:08
Speaker 1: some researchers at a New Zealand university who were like, no,
8:12
Speaker 1: it was already quite known to Greek, Persian and Arabic
8:15
Speaker 1: writers on medicine and surgery all about, albeit with misconceptions
8:19
Speaker 1: about its function, which I also think is funny because
8:22
Speaker 1: it's like, why are we talking about a body part
8:25
Speaker 1: in terms of who knew it first. But that's not
8:29
Speaker 1: to say that Colombo slash Columbus didn't actually make some
8:32
Speaker 1: sort of contribution to the understanding of what it was. Yeah,
8:36
Speaker 1: he was an anatomist, and he did provide these really
8:40
Speaker 1: detailed drawings based on human dissection of the clitterists, and
8:46
Speaker 1: he was one of the first to describe its physiological properties.
8:50
Speaker 1: And although he did think that it produced a type
8:54
Speaker 1: of female sperm, and he did, he wasn't really a
8:59
Speaker 1: big fan of the literas he called it, the more venerous,
9:02
Speaker 1: meaning like the mound of love. So he was also
9:06
Speaker 1: very much focused on the pleasurable aspects of the Clitterest. So,
9:13
Speaker 1: although Colombo did mistakenly claim that he was the first
9:18
Speaker 1: one there, at least he liked it. Yes, not everybody
9:22
Speaker 1: can say that he liked it, but I mean, I
9:24
Speaker 1: think his whole person well, he was far from the
9:27
Speaker 1: only person who thought or positive that the clators produced
9:30
Speaker 1: some type of female sperm or or played some role
9:33
Speaker 1: in procreation. Um, but I think he's unique in the
9:37
Speaker 1: fact that he also really dug it. Yeah, other other
9:40
Speaker 1: medical or scientific writers at the time we're like, well,
9:43
Speaker 1: we think that it could produce sperm and contribute to procreation,
9:47
Speaker 1: but we don't like it. Well, if you go way
9:50
Speaker 1: back before Colombo to say Aristotle, they I mean, he
9:56
Speaker 1: wasn't really talking all that much about the clitterest. But really,
10:00
Speaker 1: this is when you have the idea of women being
10:06
Speaker 1: just mutilated men are clitterest is really just a vestige
10:10
Speaker 1: of what should be a penis. Yeah, it makes me
10:12
Speaker 1: think of that song from a Little Mermaid, Poor Unfortunate Souls,
10:16
Speaker 1: Like that's kind of how Aristotle and Hippocrates saw women.
10:19
Speaker 1: So yeah, Aristotle just thought that there were adverse uterine
10:23
Speaker 1: conditions that basically turned what should have become a beautiful
10:27
Speaker 1: functional penis into an underdeveloped and sterile stump of a clitterest.
10:32
Speaker 1: And Hippocrates, the old Greek father of medicine, described women's
10:38
Speaker 1: genitalia on the whole as just our shameful parts. So
10:43
Speaker 1: thanks a lot. And he acknowledged that the clitterest existed,
10:46
Speaker 1: but he just thought it was a random protrusion. He
10:51
Speaker 1: referred to it as the colamela or the uvula, possibly
10:56
Speaker 1: because it resembles the uvula in our threat. It's a
11:00
Speaker 1: little punching bag and you see if you open open
11:03
Speaker 1: your mouth. Well obviously, I mean, the uvula definitely doesn't
11:06
Speaker 1: contribute to sex or procreation, so why would this tiny
11:10
Speaker 1: protrusion have anything to do with it either. Um. Greek
11:14
Speaker 1: physicians Serranos of Ephesus also does acknowledge the clitterists exists. Um.
11:21
Speaker 1: He has a different description for it, other than the
11:23
Speaker 1: shameful parts, thank god. Uh. He says. The small formation
11:28
Speaker 1: is called the nymph because it is hidden underneath the labia,
11:31
Speaker 1: such as young brides under their veils. Well, isn't that precious?
11:35
Speaker 1: So precious little nymph is. But I think it should
11:38
Speaker 1: be noted though, that while these guys essentially we're seeing
11:42
Speaker 1: women as sort of the mutilated men. We we should
11:46
Speaker 1: we could have had gorgeous penises, but instead we ended
11:49
Speaker 1: up with tiny nymph siding under veils. Because it wasn't
11:53
Speaker 1: until in fact, the eighteenth century the European scientists started
11:57
Speaker 1: seeing men and women as distinct sexes. This was really
12:02
Speaker 1: just the line of thought that like, Okay, we have
12:05
Speaker 1: a guy here, so we're going to figure out women
12:07
Speaker 1: based on what she doesn't have, based on his body.
12:13
Speaker 1: But then, I mean, things also got pretty intense in
12:17
Speaker 1: the Middle Ages, understandably because it is the Middle Ages, right,
12:21
Speaker 1: a lot of superstition flying around, and you know, despite
12:25
Speaker 1: the relative and and minor advances and understanding what this
12:29
Speaker 1: nymph is during the preceding centuries, the physicians in the
12:33
Speaker 1: Middle Ages relied more on fear and superstition. Uh. They
12:39
Speaker 1: did also think that it was responsible for creating female sperm.
12:43
Speaker 1: But in fourteen eighties six, the Malleus Maleficarum, which was
12:47
Speaker 1: a guide to finding and detecting witches, called the clitterest
12:51
Speaker 1: quote the Devil's teet, through which the devil sucked out
12:55
Speaker 1: his victim's soul. So yeah, we are women are just
12:59
Speaker 1: no matter what we do of just being aligned with
13:01
Speaker 1: witchcraft and evil and the devil's teet. I don't even
13:06
Speaker 1: I When I read that, Caroline, and preparing for this episode,
13:09
Speaker 1: I just had to stop for a moment because the
13:13
Speaker 1: images coming to my mind were quite intense. But moving
13:17
Speaker 1: out of the Middle Ages and into the nineteenth century,
13:22
Speaker 1: we were in one of the history books that we
13:24
Speaker 1: read focusing on the history of the Clitterest. The author wrote,
13:29
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century really should have been the Clitterests century,
13:35
Speaker 1: and that the Clitterest century. I'm not making that up
13:37
Speaker 1: that as a direct quote, because in eighteen forty four
13:42
Speaker 1: we have this German guy G. L co Belt draw
13:45
Speaker 1: a detailed Clitterests, not just the external clitterest but also
13:49
Speaker 1: the internal structure of well as well, which included the
13:53
Speaker 1: erectile tissues that we'll talk about more in a little bit.
13:57
Speaker 1: And this was probably the very first accurate depiction of
14:03
Speaker 1: what the clitterest in total looks like. But it turns
14:07
Speaker 1: out that the nineteenth century and moving into the Victorian
14:10
Speaker 1: era was not such a great time for the clitters well.
14:14
Speaker 1: I mean, you also had to grapple with the general
14:16
Speaker 1: fear that people had about women in general, specifically and
14:19
Speaker 1: especially women's sexuality, because God forbid a woman actually want, crave,
14:25
Speaker 1: or enjoy any type of sexual behavior. So it was
14:30
Speaker 1: also kind of just assumed that in general, women were passionless,
14:33
Speaker 1: they didn't have a sex drive, they were just basically
14:35
Speaker 1: sperm vessels, um, and that if a woman did have
14:39
Speaker 1: a sex drive, she was considered hysterical and she didn't
14:44
Speaker 1: have to go to see a doctor and get treatment,
14:46
Speaker 1: and that treatment was a vibrator. Yeah. The the vibrator
14:50
Speaker 1: technology started to take off in the eighteen fifties, and
14:54
Speaker 1: in extreme cases of nymphamania, wherein you have a woman
15:00
Speaker 1: who actually enjoys sex and might even masturbate from time
15:04
Speaker 1: to time, you would have doctors cauterizing or removing the
15:08
Speaker 1: clitterest entirely. There were a lot of methods out there
15:12
Speaker 1: for curing in quotes, hysteria through clar ectomy. Ees. Yeah,
15:17
Speaker 1: I mean, I think that's such a scary but very
15:21
Speaker 1: clear illustration of how women's sexuality was viewed. The fact
15:25
Speaker 1: that it's like it's so abnormal for a woman to
15:28
Speaker 1: like or want sex that it's like if she does, oh,
15:31
Speaker 1: we better take off the parts that make or enjoy
15:34
Speaker 1: it well, and there are still there's still cliarorectomies that
15:38
Speaker 1: are going on as well in different parts of the world.
15:41
Speaker 1: You hear about this when people talk about female genital
15:43
Speaker 1: mutilation or female circumcision. This was also we we we
15:47
Speaker 1: usually today probably in the US, think about it happening
15:51
Speaker 1: in far away countries such as Sedan, but this was
15:53
Speaker 1: happening also in Victorian era America, right. But during this
15:58
Speaker 1: period some people were all about the clatorus. They understood
16:03
Speaker 1: that it served a great purpose. In eighteen fifty two,
16:05
Speaker 1: for instance, Dr Jules Guillot wrote a book about sexuality
16:09
Speaker 1: that wasn't actually published until eighteen eighty eight, ten years
16:12
Speaker 1: after his death, because it was so scandalous, and he
16:15
Speaker 1: wrote that there exists an immense number of ignorant, egoistic,
16:19
Speaker 1: brutal men who do not bother to study the instrument
16:23
Speaker 1: that God has entrusted to them well. And one of
16:27
Speaker 1: those arguably egoistic and brutal men was likely Dr Isaac
16:33
Speaker 1: Baker Brown, who was president of the Medical Society of
16:38
Speaker 1: London in the eighteen sixties, and in eighteen sixty five
16:42
Speaker 1: he published what became a widely circulated medical book that
16:48
Speaker 1: put forth his ideas for curing insanity, epilepsy, hysteria, and
16:53
Speaker 1: catalepsy all through clitter ectomy. Ees. Yeah, And it's interesting
16:59
Speaker 1: too to read about people's views from this time period
17:03
Speaker 1: because we have Dr Pierre Garnier, who was definitely not
17:08
Speaker 1: a fan uh and didn't believe that the clitterest could
17:13
Speaker 1: or should contribute to any type of like sex life
17:17
Speaker 1: between people or solo sex lives at that He said
17:21
Speaker 1: that to claim that this minuscule apparatus, which is most
17:25
Speaker 1: often an insensitive little button so long as it has
17:28
Speaker 1: not been touched or artificially manipulated, is the most active
17:31
Speaker 1: erogenous center is to implicitly accuse all girls of once
17:37
Speaker 1: having resorted to masturbation or of one day becoming debauched.
17:43
Speaker 1: So I mean, right there, you have this doctor who's
17:45
Speaker 1: basically saying, like the fact that you were even insinuating
17:49
Speaker 1: that it is part of sex, part of sexual activity
17:53
Speaker 1: can make someone enjoy sex. That's implying that our beautiful, fragile,
17:58
Speaker 1: angelic nymph like women that they're debauched. Well, it's telling
18:03
Speaker 1: to that that quote came in eighteen ninety one, which
18:07
Speaker 1: is a few years after something really important happened in
18:12
Speaker 1: the history the medical history of the clitter ist because
18:15
Speaker 1: in eighteen eighty four doctors were able to see procreation
18:21
Speaker 1: the sperm fertilizing the egg on a microscopic level for
18:25
Speaker 1: the very first time, and they realized that, okay, there's
18:31
Speaker 1: no such thing as female sperm, Like the lubricant in
18:35
Speaker 1: a woman's vaginal canal has nothing to do really with uh,
18:41
Speaker 1: it doesn't have any kind of fertilizing qualities, and it
18:44
Speaker 1: doesn't come from the clitterest. And oh my god, the
18:47
Speaker 1: clitterest has absolutely nothing active lead to do with reproduction.
18:55
Speaker 1: So why should we even care about it? Well, why
19:00
Speaker 1: should we care about it? But also, oh god, you
19:02
Speaker 1: mean women have something on their bodies that is just
19:05
Speaker 1: for sexual pleasure exactly. And so not only did they
19:09
Speaker 1: demonize it because that means if you're messing around with
19:13
Speaker 1: your clarteris that is because it gives you sexual pleasure.
19:17
Speaker 1: Therefore you are debauched, as Guardier wrote, and then also
19:21
Speaker 1: medically they were like, oh, well, we don't really even
19:23
Speaker 1: need to study it because it is it's useless. It's
19:26
Speaker 1: like the appendix of the vagina. Thank god, it can't explode.
19:33
Speaker 1: Um ideas about women's sexuality, though it's not like they
19:37
Speaker 1: were so much better. When we get into the twentieth
19:39
Speaker 1: century um around World War One, there was this case
19:43
Speaker 1: of a dancer named maud Allen who was essentially attacked
19:48
Speaker 1: for existing outside social norms sexual norms, and of course
19:53
Speaker 1: by that I just mean, you know, she had sexuality
19:57
Speaker 1: and danced. She was an exotic dancer who attracted a
20:00
Speaker 1: lot of attention because during this period that was very scandalous.
20:04
Speaker 1: It also so happened that she was a lesbian, and
20:08
Speaker 1: this sensational libel trial in Britain exploded around maud Allen
20:14
Speaker 1: when she brought a libel suit against this guy named
20:18
Speaker 1: Noel Pemberton Billing, who was an editor of a right
20:21
Speaker 1: wing journal, The Imperialist, and the Imperialist was claiming that
20:28
Speaker 1: there was this black book of forty seven thousand World
20:34
Speaker 1: War One British turn coats who had been turned gay
20:38
Speaker 1: by the Germans. And since maud Allen was a lesbian
20:44
Speaker 1: and was also performing in Oscar Wilde salam Ay, there
20:49
Speaker 1: was this item in The Imperialist about if you went
20:53
Speaker 1: to see maud Allen, dancer highly erotic at the time,
20:57
Speaker 1: dances in this production of salamy that you would be
21:01
Speaker 1: among some of those British turncoats. And he headlined this
21:06
Speaker 1: little news item the cult of the clitteris Yeah, which
21:11
Speaker 1: is funny to see this anxiety, this deep, deep anxiety
21:14
Speaker 1: which I get social norms, gender norms wore all of
21:17
Speaker 1: this good stuff going on. It's quite a melting pot
21:19
Speaker 1: of of you know, all these things getting stirred up.
21:22
Speaker 1: But she maud Allen was so popular that they had
21:27
Speaker 1: to continue adding shows. And she was so popular, and
21:30
Speaker 1: not just with gentlemen who were coming to watch her
21:33
Speaker 1: dance in such a seductive fashion. I mean women, socialites,
21:36
Speaker 1: mothers were bringing their daughters to see this woman perform
21:39
Speaker 1: with their own set of binoculars to further examine her dances. So,
21:46
Speaker 1: I mean, that's got to be anxiety inducing for a
21:48
Speaker 1: guy like Pemberton Billing, who you know, he's like, oh
21:51
Speaker 1: my gosh, society, it's changing. Women are going to see
21:54
Speaker 1: women dance. Well. It's interesting too that in this five
21:59
Speaker 1: day t aile that ensues a lot of Britain's didn't
22:03
Speaker 1: even know what clitterests meant, right, because he assumed that
22:07
Speaker 1: when he made that headline the cult of the clitterest,
22:10
Speaker 1: and he was right. You know, not a lot of
22:12
Speaker 1: people would know what it meant, but if you did
22:14
Speaker 1: know what clitterists meant, then that meant he would deviant, right,
22:19
Speaker 1: And so Billings actually cited Alan's familiarity with the term
22:24
Speaker 1: clitterest as evidence that she was a deviant. He said
22:28
Speaker 1: that it's an organ that, when unduly excited, possessed the
22:30
Speaker 1: most dreadful influence on any woman. And so just this
22:34
Speaker 1: combination in his mind of her being a lesbian, an
22:38
Speaker 1: exotic dancer, and someone with knowledge of such an esoteric
22:42
Speaker 1: term as glitterest, she's got to be a sexual deviant,
22:44
Speaker 1: and she's got to be somehow in cahoots with the Germans. Well,
22:48
Speaker 1: and if we step back a little bit to nineteen
22:52
Speaker 1: o five, we have Sigmund Freud coming in dealing yet
22:57
Speaker 1: another blow to the litteralists, because this is when he
23:03
Speaker 1: puts forth the idea that if you are a woman
23:07
Speaker 1: who is having clitteral as opposed to vaginal orgasms, then
23:12
Speaker 1: that means that you are not developed, that you're like
23:17
Speaker 1: stuck in adolescence. Yeah, he was one of many physicians
23:22
Speaker 1: and clinicians and psychologists who didn't deny the existence of
23:26
Speaker 1: the clitteral orgasm, but said that that is something that
23:30
Speaker 1: adolescence do. Children do adult mature women only have vaginal orgasms,
23:37
Speaker 1: and um, a woman who could not orgasm through vaginal
23:42
Speaker 1: intercourse was obviously frigid. And that frigid was a term.
23:46
Speaker 1: It wasn't just like an insult thrown around. I mean,
23:48
Speaker 1: that was a term used to describe a whole slew
23:51
Speaker 1: of women. Yeah. And there is a paper that we
23:55
Speaker 1: were looking at called Waking Sleeping Beauty the pre Marital
23:58
Speaker 1: Pelvic Exam and had her sexuality during the Cold War,
24:02
Speaker 1: and it talked a lot about how doctors at this time,
24:08
Speaker 1: i mean leading all the way up to you know,
24:10
Speaker 1: and during the Cold War, as the title of the
24:11
Speaker 1: paper implies, vaginal orgasms were considered to be the hallmark
24:17
Speaker 1: in the bedroom of a stable marriage and thus of
24:21
Speaker 1: a secure community. Yeah. So more, you know, just more norms,
24:26
Speaker 1: norms everywhere, Kristen. So, now that we are into the
24:42
Speaker 1: Cold War, by way of this paper that Kristen decided,
24:45
Speaker 1: we obviously have to bring up famed sex researcher Alfred Kinsey,
24:49
Speaker 1: who in nine publishes Sexual Behavior in the Human Female,
24:55
Speaker 1: in which he dismissed the vaginal orgasm and pointed to
24:58
Speaker 1: the clitterest as the source of pleasure. He wrote that
25:02
Speaker 1: the vagina walls are quite insensitive to the great majority
25:05
Speaker 1: of females. There is no evidence that the vagina is
25:08
Speaker 1: ever the sole source of arousal, or even the primary
25:10
Speaker 1: source of erotic arousal in any female, which was groundbreaking. Yeah,
25:16
Speaker 1: and then masters of sex fans might be aware of
25:20
Speaker 1: William Masters and Virginia Johnson's research that happens in the
25:25
Speaker 1: mid to late nineteen sixties. And it's in sixties six
25:29
Speaker 1: that they published their work on the phases of sexual stimulation,
25:34
Speaker 1: and they observed that both vaginal and clitteral orgasms had
25:38
Speaker 1: the same stages of physical response and argued that clteral
25:42
Speaker 1: stimulation was the primary source of both kinds of orgasms.
25:46
Speaker 1: So finally, finally we have people saying, you know what,
25:52
Speaker 1: the clitter is ist is not so bad. In fact,
25:57
Speaker 1: it is in many ways good. It is in many
26:01
Speaker 1: ways good. And then two years later, in nineteen radical
26:05
Speaker 1: feminist and Coat writes the myth of the vaginal orgasm
26:09
Speaker 1: and say, what right does the main Caroline She basically
26:14
Speaker 1: attacked as fraudulent the idea that women could only orgasm
26:21
Speaker 1: through vaginal intercourse. She said that the idea that idea
26:24
Speaker 1: created psychological problems for women, and it served as a
26:28
Speaker 1: critique of heterosexuality in general. And she said that sex
26:32
Speaker 1: had been defined for so long from purely a male
26:35
Speaker 1: fellow centric perspective. And it's not that she's necessarily wrong,
26:40
Speaker 1: but I think Masters and Johnson were way more on
26:44
Speaker 1: the nose as far as how orgasms work, because so
26:49
Speaker 1: Code is writing that, you know, the vaginal orgasm is
26:51
Speaker 1: a total myth that never happens, whereas before people like
26:55
Speaker 1: Freud were saying vaginal orgasms are the only way to go,
26:59
Speaker 1: when in reality, if we start talking about anatomy, which
27:01
Speaker 1: we will hear in a second, there is a whole, beautiful, complicated,
27:06
Speaker 1: wonderful internal c literal structure that is stimulated by a
27:12
Speaker 1: vaginal intercourse. So it's really not either or, and you guys,
27:15
Speaker 1: we don't have to fight about it. We don't have
27:18
Speaker 1: to fight about it. But I will say that it
27:20
Speaker 1: is worth considering. And I think that this is a
27:22
Speaker 1: lot of what Coats theory is getting at in terms
27:25
Speaker 1: of the fallow centrism that for so long and even today,
27:30
Speaker 1: just the word sex. When you think of sex, it
27:32
Speaker 1: is implied that it is a penis going into a vagina,
27:36
Speaker 1: and so, in say Freudian terms, in order for a
27:40
Speaker 1: woman to be you know, a healthy and adjusted in
27:44
Speaker 1: the correct psychoanalytic phase or whatever of her adulthood, that
27:48
Speaker 1: requires her achieving orgasm through vaginal penetration with a penis
27:54
Speaker 1: with a penis. So then things are coming around to say, oh, well,
28:00
Speaker 1: penis not necessarily required, but there are, like Caroline said,
28:06
Speaker 1: there is a lot more to it on the inside,
28:10
Speaker 1: which we're going to talk about in glorious, glorious detail
28:14
Speaker 1: when we come right back from a quick break. Kristen,
28:19
Speaker 1: you know that feeling you get when you can get
28:21
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28:24
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Speaker 1: the top of the homepage and type in stuff that's
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Speaker 1: stamps dot com and enter stuff. And now back to
29:21
Speaker 1: the show. Alright, So Kristen and I hinted at the well,
29:27
Speaker 1: didn't hint, We told you flat out, but there is
29:29
Speaker 1: there's a fabulous internal structure going on with your clitterest.
29:33
Speaker 1: And you know, I my my whole attitude reading about this,
29:38
Speaker 1: the history of the of the study of the clitterest,
29:42
Speaker 1: in the in the history of the science of it,
29:44
Speaker 1: I just I'm like this, this poor this poor body part.
29:47
Speaker 1: It gets no attention. And it's really not until the
29:50
Speaker 1: late twentieth century that people even start going should should
29:55
Speaker 1: we look inside there? Should we should we figure out
29:58
Speaker 1: what's going on up in there, because it turns out
30:01
Speaker 1: that all we see on the outside with the hood
30:06
Speaker 1: and the glands, that's gland, not gland with a d is,
30:12
Speaker 1: but the tip of an iceberg inside of us. Although
30:16
Speaker 1: iceberg might not be iceberg kind of lends itself to frigid,
30:20
Speaker 1: so that might not be the best analogy. It's the
30:23
Speaker 1: tip of something fabulous about that, that's right. So in
30:30
Speaker 1: the nineteen nineties researchers performed an m R I that
30:33
Speaker 1: revealed a very elaborate structure to the clearest, most of
30:37
Speaker 1: which is internal, and urologist Helen O'Connell described the quote
30:42
Speaker 1: clteral complex, the important internal clteral structures and their dimensions
30:48
Speaker 1: in a groundbreaking Journal of Urology paper. And it should
30:52
Speaker 1: be noted too that there had already been m R
30:56
Speaker 1: s of the internal structures of penises that had been
31:00
Speaker 1: done in the seventies. And finally O'Connell's like, oh, can
31:05
Speaker 1: we please apply the same technology to look inside the
31:10
Speaker 1: vaginal structures to see what's in there? Because oh surprise,
31:14
Speaker 1: there's all of this stuff. Yeah, And in a two
31:17
Speaker 1: thousand five paper, O'Connell criticized typical textbook descriptions and illustrations,
31:22
Speaker 1: saying that there is no way that you can give
31:25
Speaker 1: an accurate portrayal of all of the amazing things that
31:27
Speaker 1: are going inside going on inside a woman in their
31:31
Speaker 1: c literal structures by just showing a single plane. You know,
31:34
Speaker 1: you've seen this in textbooks. It's just like the side
31:37
Speaker 1: cut of like here's the uterusm here in the overason,
31:40
Speaker 1: there's the vagina in the butthole. But there's I mean,
31:44
Speaker 1: there's a whole like amazing sculptural structure going on inside us.
31:48
Speaker 1: Who knew? And to give you an idea of the
31:51
Speaker 1: scope of this clteral complex that Caroline and I are
31:54
Speaker 1: about to jump out of our seats with excitement discussing
31:58
Speaker 1: it contains at least eight teen distinct interacting functional parts
32:03
Speaker 1: comprised of muscular, erectile, and sensitive tissues. And this is
32:09
Speaker 1: what in eight eight four g l co Belt had drawn.
32:15
Speaker 1: But it took from then until the late nineties, in
32:19
Speaker 1: the early two thousands for us to come back around
32:23
Speaker 1: to it and really give it its due right and
32:26
Speaker 1: adding to this modern science of the clitter ist. In
32:29
Speaker 1: two thousand nine, surgeons O'Dell Boissan and Pierre full days
32:33
Speaker 1: produced the first complete three dimensional scenography of a stimulated
32:38
Speaker 1: clutters Because this is important too, because there's different stages
32:43
Speaker 1: of our genitalia, if we are aroused or not, or
32:46
Speaker 1: having intercourse or not. Things don't always look the same
32:49
Speaker 1: in one stage or another. So they actually did this
32:53
Speaker 1: research over a couple of years without any major funding.
32:57
Speaker 1: So that should tell you about how people view the
32:58
Speaker 1: clutter ists in women's sexuality and genitalia today as well.
33:02
Speaker 1: Any who. They were actually going in search of this
33:06
Speaker 1: G spot you might have heard of, and they ended
33:08
Speaker 1: up just finding all of this other beautiful stuff during
33:11
Speaker 1: the search. Yeah. And it turns out, based on what
33:15
Speaker 1: we now know about the structure of the clitteral complex,
33:19
Speaker 1: which will go into more detail in just a second,
33:21
Speaker 1: but the G spot might simply be where the anterior
33:26
Speaker 1: vaginal wall makes contact with the internal clitterists. It's not
33:32
Speaker 1: necessarily this magical spot to one spot and and and
33:37
Speaker 1: and that's it, sort of in that two dimensional way
33:39
Speaker 1: that we often think of, but rather it's the convergence
33:43
Speaker 1: of all of this stuff. I wish I had a
33:47
Speaker 1: more elegant word than stuff to describe it going on
33:50
Speaker 1: inside of us. Yeah, So let's talk a little bit
33:53
Speaker 1: about that stuff. So you have we have the glands
33:57
Speaker 1: s glands S, which is what you see on the outside.
34:01
Speaker 1: It's what people call a button, but which is really
34:03
Speaker 1: like an iceberg, but not an iceberg because we're not frigid.
34:06
Speaker 1: It's our little hill. It's our little hill. That's right,
34:09
Speaker 1: the ticula. But so okay, here's here's basically a rundown.
34:12
Speaker 1: We're going to do our best to describe this with words,
34:15
Speaker 1: but I recommend that you look it up for an image.
34:18
Speaker 1: Go to stuff Mom Never Told You dot com. There
34:21
Speaker 1: is a blog post up called a Brief History of
34:24
Speaker 1: the Clitterest and it contains a picture of exactly what
34:27
Speaker 1: we're talking about, and it is safe for work. Excellent. Yes, Well,
34:30
Speaker 1: because the structure kind of looks like an awesome little
34:33
Speaker 1: inner tube with some shoots coming off of it that's
34:35
Speaker 1: around the vaginal canal. It reminds me of an airplane
34:38
Speaker 1: neck pillow. Perfect when you blow it up. Yeah, it's inflatable. Yeah.
34:44
Speaker 1: So the glands, which is what you see on the outside,
34:48
Speaker 1: is attached to that internal structure which we're just crazy about.
34:52
Speaker 1: And that internal structure is made up of two corpora cavernosa,
34:56
Speaker 1: which is a rectile tissue that encircles the vaginal canal.
35:01
Speaker 1: The corpora cavernosa then splits to form to what are
35:05
Speaker 1: called crura or it's more erectile tissue that forms a
35:10
Speaker 1: wishbone shape, and at rest they point toward woman's thighs,
35:15
Speaker 1: and when erect they stretch back toward the spine. And
35:19
Speaker 1: then near each of the crura on either side of
35:22
Speaker 1: the vaginal opening are the clitteral vestibules, and they're actually
35:27
Speaker 1: up under the labia majora, so inside the labia majora,
35:32
Speaker 1: and when engorged, they cause the vulva to expand outward. Yeah,
35:38
Speaker 1: and so you know, this is all a bunch of
35:41
Speaker 1: erectile tissue that does swell when you get aroused, and
35:45
Speaker 1: that basically cuffs the vagina so that a vaginal orgasm
35:50
Speaker 1: is more like an internal clitteral orgasm. And then we
35:53
Speaker 1: can all join hands and be friends and no longer
35:55
Speaker 1: debate a clitteral orgasm versus a vaginal one, because they're
36:00
Speaker 1: all sort of different types of the same thing. It's
36:03
Speaker 1: just different methods to stimulate the same structure. And I
36:08
Speaker 1: do really like how this wrapping around of the structure
36:14
Speaker 1: is often described when it becomes engorged as it giving
36:17
Speaker 1: us a hug. And what a hug. It's a very
36:20
Speaker 1: giving hug. Such a hug. I love that and a
36:25
Speaker 1: lot of people, Uh, there are a lot of artists, activists,
36:28
Speaker 1: people out there talking about the clitterests and women's genitalia
36:32
Speaker 1: in general to sort of bring awareness that hey, we're
36:35
Speaker 1: sexual beings to your genitals, aren't gross, get in touch
36:39
Speaker 1: with your sexuality and that The whole reason behind this
36:42
Speaker 1: push to sort of make more women aware of their
36:45
Speaker 1: anatomy is that so many women report having trouble orgasm ng. Yeah,
36:50
Speaker 1: about one in three women on average has trouble reaching
36:54
Speaker 1: orgasm with a partner. About one in ten has never
36:57
Speaker 1: reached orgasm, whether a own or with a partner. And
37:02
Speaker 1: what often makes it a challenge is this shame often
37:06
Speaker 1: associated with our bodies and with our genitals. There are
37:10
Speaker 1: women that I have known, in fact, who are adults
37:14
Speaker 1: who have never masturbated. Um. There are women who have
37:18
Speaker 1: never looked at their own vaginas, or they looked once
37:22
Speaker 1: and they were so weirded out by what they saw
37:24
Speaker 1: because they didn't know what to expect, or it didn't
37:26
Speaker 1: look like what they saw in pornography that they assumed
37:30
Speaker 1: that it is wrong and it's not the way it's
37:33
Speaker 1: supposed to look, and that's that's not the case at all. Right.
37:37
Speaker 1: There was a study a study in the Psychology of
37:41
Speaker 1: Women quarterly that looked at undergrad college women's attitudes towards
37:45
Speaker 1: their bodies and their genitals that found that greater dissatisfaction
37:50
Speaker 1: with genital appearance was associated with things like higher genital image,
37:54
Speaker 1: self consciousness during physical intimacy, which in turn was associated
37:59
Speaker 1: with lower sexual self esteem, sexual satisfaction, and motivation to
38:04
Speaker 1: avoid risky sexual behavior. So basically, if you think that
38:07
Speaker 1: this important part of yourself is awful, ugly, dirty, shameful,
38:10
Speaker 1: or you're afraid of it, then how can you possibly
38:14
Speaker 1: enjoy sex? And not surprisingly, the researchers concluded that there
38:20
Speaker 1: is a strong relationship between in enhancing the satisfaction with
38:25
Speaker 1: the natural appearance of genitalia with the development of a
38:30
Speaker 1: healthy self concept and long term benefits of sexual safety
38:35
Speaker 1: and satisfaction, because a lot of times when that sort
38:40
Speaker 1: of insecurity over your genitalia happens, or you don't think
38:45
Speaker 1: it looks right like, it usually tends to affect you
38:50
Speaker 1: in the bedroom in the sense of putting the other
38:52
Speaker 1: person's sexual needs and desires over your own. And so
38:58
Speaker 1: not surprisingly there is Urchers and concluded that if you
39:02
Speaker 1: enhance that satisfaction, if women are more comfortable and accepting
39:06
Speaker 1: of what their vaginas and volvas and clitterestas look like,
39:12
Speaker 1: then it usually relates to a more satisfying sex life
39:17
Speaker 1: and also just a healthier sexual self esteem right exactly.
39:22
Speaker 1: And one person who's pushing what she calls cultural cliteracy
39:25
Speaker 1: is Susan Ekberg Spirits, who wrote a paper in ten
39:29
Speaker 1: for the Berkeley Journal of Gender Law and Justice, and
39:33
Speaker 1: she talks about how cultural cliteracy is this thing that
39:37
Speaker 1: denotes what an adequately educated person should know about the clitterest,
39:41
Speaker 1: which we hope we're contributing to right now. But she
39:44
Speaker 1: talks about how the clitterest is quote a despised body
39:48
Speaker 1: part because it is an obdurate reminder of women's independence
39:51
Speaker 1: and power and supports women's liberation. And she talks about
39:54
Speaker 1: how society's shape versions of what is proper adult sexual
40:00
Speaker 1: reality conforming with values that exist in that society, and
40:04
Speaker 1: she says, quote, unfortunately for women, Western culture equates being
40:08
Speaker 1: human with being male. Accordingly, Western culture considers sex proper
40:12
Speaker 1: when it is confined to actions needed to produce children. Yeah,
40:16
Speaker 1: and I mean, I just think that there is a
40:19
Speaker 1: basic gap and understanding, I mean, clearly, as we've talked
40:22
Speaker 1: about in this podcast between simply how female sexual pleasure
40:27
Speaker 1: even works and how girls are educated in that regard
40:32
Speaker 1: versus boys, and how a lot of times our concept
40:35
Speaker 1: of what sex is and what sexual pleasure is usually
40:40
Speaker 1: is based around the model of vaginal intercourse. Not that
40:43
Speaker 1: there's anything wrong with vaginal intercourse, it's just also important
40:50
Speaker 1: for girls and women to understand that we have this
40:54
Speaker 1: part of our bodies that has, like you said, nothing
40:57
Speaker 1: to do with reproduction whatsoever. It is there purely to
41:01
Speaker 1: facilitate pleasure and that's nothing to be ashamed of. And
41:07
Speaker 1: being curious about it is nothing to be ashamed of,
41:09
Speaker 1: and exploring it is nothing to be ashamed of either.
41:12
Speaker 1: And if you want to check out the ways that
41:16
Speaker 1: maybe other women are trying to raise cultural cliteracy awareness, uh,
41:21
Speaker 1: you should check out New York artist Sophia Wallace who
41:24
Speaker 1: in launched a multimedia project called Cliteracy, and it includes
41:29
Speaker 1: all sorts of art installations and even a clip rodeo
41:33
Speaker 1: where you can ride like like a bucking bull at
41:36
Speaker 1: some sort of honky tonk bar, you can ride a
41:39
Speaker 1: giant golden clitter iss. Yeah. And so I do wonder
41:44
Speaker 1: if anybody's actually seen that, like gone to it and
41:46
Speaker 1: participated in this art movement to ride the clitter well.
41:51
Speaker 1: And also, I mean that looking at that, this might
41:54
Speaker 1: sound crass thinking of oh, riding the clitteress, what of that,
41:59
Speaker 1: But the sculpture that she created for this, of that
42:02
Speaker 1: engorged internal structure, will give you a sense of the
42:07
Speaker 1: extent of the size of it as well. Um, I mean,
42:11
Speaker 1: I mean it's not the the external glands is so
42:15
Speaker 1: diminutive compared to it's a nymph. Yeah, it is rather
42:20
Speaker 1: a nymph compared to the powerhouse that is inside of us. So,
42:25
Speaker 1: I mean, if we sound like we're super high on
42:28
Speaker 1: clitter clitterest knowledge, we are because it's incredible to learn
42:34
Speaker 1: about these things inside of us that really it's taken
42:37
Speaker 1: us this long to really begin to figure out. Right, Well,
42:43
Speaker 1: I feel like there's just such a general societal fear
42:46
Speaker 1: of and always has been, of women's sexuality and and
42:49
Speaker 1: independent sexuality and a desire to want to have sex
42:53
Speaker 1: and enjoy it um And I feel like that it's
42:55
Speaker 1: definitely contributed to sort of men being a for aid
43:00
Speaker 1: of learning more or knowing more or caring about women's
43:05
Speaker 1: both both their physical structures and their their sexual excitement.
43:09
Speaker 1: But it's also contributed to plenty of women being afraid
43:12
Speaker 1: to learn more about it, And so I definitely I'm
43:15
Speaker 1: glad we could talk about it. Yeah, And I just
43:29
Speaker 1: wanted to add one final note about that surgeon Peerful
43:33
Speaker 1: Days that we mentioned who in two thousand nine, along
43:36
Speaker 1: with his research partner Odeal Bissan, producer's first three D
43:42
Speaker 1: ultrasounds of the clitterest, he pioneered a surgery using this
43:47
Speaker 1: research to treat women who had undergone female genital circumcision,
43:54
Speaker 1: and by understanding this internal structure of the clitterest, he's
43:59
Speaker 1: been able to perform more than three thousand restorative surgeries
44:04
Speaker 1: to give these patients back sexual pleasure that had been
44:09
Speaker 1: taken from them through the clitter ectomys or other kinds
44:14
Speaker 1: of female circumcision techniques. So it's it's it's about female
44:19
Speaker 1: pleasure and us knowing more about our bodies, but it's
44:23
Speaker 1: also about this kind of healing as well, very real
44:27
Speaker 1: physical healing for women around the world too. So with that,
44:32
Speaker 1: let us know your thoughts. I'm curious to know what
44:35
Speaker 1: people are thinking. Do you love your clitterests? Guys? What
44:38
Speaker 1: do you think about the glitter is? There were a
44:40
Speaker 1: lot of letters that we ran across in the process
44:43
Speaker 1: of researching this too, from guys asking sex educators about
44:48
Speaker 1: how to find the clitterest when what do you do?
44:52
Speaker 1: And that's not a question that you should be ashamed of.
44:54
Speaker 1: That's a great question for a straight guy to want
44:57
Speaker 1: to know about his female partner. Oh and also side
45:01
Speaker 1: note to um when it comes to statistics about women
45:04
Speaker 1: reaching orgasm, there was a recent study that found that
45:08
Speaker 1: lesbians tend to achieve orgasm more regularly than straight women,
45:13
Speaker 1: possibly because women might be a little more acquainted imagine that.
45:18
Speaker 1: So with that, I have finally no more final thoughts.
45:23
Speaker 1: Email us mom Stuff at hollow stuff works dot com.
45:26
Speaker 1: You can also tweet us at mom Stuff podcast and
45:29
Speaker 1: messages on Facebook and we have a couple of messages
45:32
Speaker 1: to share with you right now. So we've got a
45:40
Speaker 1: couple of letters here in response to our episode Mama's Boys.
45:44
Speaker 1: This one is from Alex and she writes, I thought
45:47
Speaker 1: I would chime in with some comments about dating someone
45:49
Speaker 1: who is very close to their mother as someone who
45:53
Speaker 1: is friends with his parents, I understand and support being
45:55
Speaker 1: close to your parents. However, there does come a point
45:59
Speaker 1: where it goes too far. My best example of this
46:03
Speaker 1: going too far would be after we had been dating
46:06
Speaker 1: for well over a year. At this point, he was
46:09
Speaker 1: still spending more of his free time and weekends with
46:11
Speaker 1: his mother than he was with me. Yes, I know,
46:14
Speaker 1: great relationship. So this one week, he was only going
46:17
Speaker 1: to be free for one night on Friday, So, after
46:20
Speaker 1: getting off work four hours late, he finally makes it
46:23
Speaker 1: to my house. Not more than five minutes after getting there,
46:27
Speaker 1: he gets a call from his mother, so going into
46:29
Speaker 1: another room to talk to her for fifteen minutes, he
46:31
Speaker 1: comes out and says he has to go to his
46:33
Speaker 1: mom's house. Concerned, I asked, what's wrong this being the
46:38
Speaker 1: one night we will see each other for a week.
46:40
Speaker 1: Apparently his mother had a bad date and his feeling insecure.
46:45
Speaker 1: I could probably dredge up more stories on the same
46:48
Speaker 1: threat as this one, but this is definitely a gem
46:50
Speaker 1: of a story, especially since it hits both of your
46:53
Speaker 1: request for stories about dating Mama's boys, bad stories about
46:56
Speaker 1: dating Mama's boys and the stereotypical game Mama's Boys. Definitely
47:00
Speaker 1: enjoying the podcast and keep up the good work, So
47:04
Speaker 1: thanks Alex. All Right, I have a letter here from Rachel.
47:08
Speaker 1: She says my primary partner I'm polyamorous, is definitely a
47:13
Speaker 1: mama's boy, and even though his mom and I don't
47:15
Speaker 1: really see eye to eye, I'm really glad for his
47:18
Speaker 1: less macho leanings. My partner's mom fled Europe to get
47:22
Speaker 1: away from his dad and raise my partner and his
47:24
Speaker 1: brother as a single mom and immigrant. As should be expected,
47:28
Speaker 1: both my partner and his brother have a lot of
47:30
Speaker 1: love and respect for their mom. One thing I've found
47:33
Speaker 1: to be much more present in my partner and his
47:35
Speaker 1: brother is a willingness to listen to women and an
47:38
Speaker 1: openness to femininity. And they both tend to date strong
47:42
Speaker 1: willed women, which is a part of why I butt
47:45
Speaker 1: heads with my mother and thin she calls her anyway.
47:49
Speaker 1: I've never had my partner's relationship with his mom get
47:52
Speaker 1: in the way of his relationship with me, but his
47:55
Speaker 1: dad being back in the picture has caused a little
47:57
Speaker 1: drama because his dad does and appreciate the avoidance of
48:01
Speaker 1: machismo as much as everyone else does. Of Course, true
48:05
Speaker 1: to form, my mother and Sin has managed to keep
48:08
Speaker 1: her husband in line, and that makes me cackle a bit.
48:10
Speaker 1: So thanks Rachel, and thanks to everybody who's written to us.
48:14
Speaker 1: Mom stuff at how stuff works dot com is our
48:16
Speaker 1: email address and for links to all of our social
48:18
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48:22
Speaker 1: including this one, which also includes all of our sources
48:25
Speaker 1: so you can follow along with us, go to stuff
48:28
Speaker 1: mom Never Told You dot com. For more on this
48:35
Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics, visit how stuff Works dot
48:37
Speaker 1: com