What's The Big Idea: Wednesday Martin: Nearly Everything We Believe About Women, Lust and Infidelity Is Wrong

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“Pleasure is really a political act.”

Today’s guest: Wednesday Martin

Her big idea: The majority of ideas western culture holds about female sexuality and desire is scientifically wrong, and anthropological data suggests a healthier alternative.

Dr. Wednesday Martin is a feminist cultural critic and #1 NYT bestselling author. Her latest book, UNTRUE: Why Nearly Everything We Believe About Women, Lust, and Infidelity Is Wrong and How the New Science Can Set Us Free was a Kirkus Review “Best Books of the Year” selection. Wednesday is also the co-host of the iTunes top-100 podcast "True Sex and Wild Love.”

Listen to What’s The Big Idea on your preferred platform below:

Key insights Shared:

  • We live in a world that assaults us everyday and pleasure can be an act of political protest.

  • Second wave feminists were right in recognizing that sex and pleasure are powerful and political.

  • Places where women have social, economic and political power are ecologies that prioritize female pleasure.

  • Martin Identifies a compulsion to express unpopular opinions - to be the “bad object.”

  • “Hashtags don't change the world people change the world.”

  • We live in a society that does not value black and brown women, period.

  • Wage discrepancy is still evidence of a male-centric society.

  • Is being a caregiver at home (and putting your career on hold) a choice or a false choice?

    • Capitalism doesn’t provide an opportunity for women to have a family and a job.

  • Where do women fit in the economic equation in terms of rewarding men who take “riskier” careers.

    • How we define risk is relevant, is it just physically risky jobs or risky as a career.

  • Women suffer from impostor syndrome more often then men in the workplace.

    • This is especially evident with studies involving job applications.

  • Women enriched science by bringing new forms of creativity and curiosity.

  • What is the evolutionary background that makes monogamy so challenging? Why isn’t there a cultural discussion about this?

  • The cultural bias that places women has being more suited for monogamy.

    • Myth that men are the sex that biologically demand novelty in sex.

  • Women in monogamous long term relationships were having more orgasms but had much less desire with the same partner.

  • Studies show women experience sexual boredom in monogamous relationships after 1-4 years - faster than men who we typically think are more prone to looking for sexual diversity.

  • Men also need to be “in the mood” sexually.

  • Need to be comforted, tropes in porn about male pleasure have painted men in a corner.

  • As long as we don’t value “femaleness” as much as “maleness” there will continue to be inequality among the sexes.

  • The more we misrepresent men and women the more we will perpetuate a pleasure gap.

  • Statistically a man has 3 orgasms for every 1 orgasm a woman has in monogamous relationships.

  • We only identify intercourse as “sex” because that’s the best way for a man to reach orgasm. When we redefine foreplay as sex, that will be key to crossing the divide.

  • How do you define sex? - Clinton attempted to insist that he didn’t have sex with Lewinsky because it wasn’t intercourse.

    • An ecology that values women includes sex as anything that stimulates the clitoris.

  • What no one’s saying to women: “you don’t dislike sex, you just need variety after a period of time.”

  • Service sex is an epidemic, and it’s a cultural and sexual issue.

  • Cooperative breeding: Rejecting the idea that early humans were reared in monogamous dyads- this has been disproved and now anthropologists believe that groups of people raised offspring cooperatively.

  • Great book about cooperative breeding Mothers and Others.

  • Motivation for infidelity isn’t broken down neatly among genders.

  • A third of women studied who had affairs said their marriage was happy.

  • Female sexuality will morph depending on its container.

  • Bonobos, possibility our closest relatives, have female dominated cultures and the dominate females build power structures by having sex with other females.

  • Men should ask their partners about what they really want: Have an open mind about the data that suggests monogamy is harder on the female libido than the male libido.

  • Your wife or female partner Have a conversation with your partner isn’t who you thought they were and have a conversation about that. Don't expect them to tell you immediately as we’ve been conditioned not to be honest about this.

to learn more about Wednesday and her work:

Communication, Relationships, Sexandrew hornpodcastComment