Women Don't Have a Desire Problem
For decades, women have been told some version of the same story:
You're too much - too stressed, too busy, too hormonal, too complicated.
Maybe you just have a low libido?
But what if women don't have a desire problem at all?
What if we've simply inherited a version of sex, relationships, and culture that was never really designed with female pleasure in mind?
This week, Lilly and Tolly dive into one of the biggest myths in sexuality: the idea that women are naturally less sexual than men. From the surprisingly recent mapping of the clitoris to the emotional labor of modern relationships, they explore why so many women feel disconnected from desire and why the answer may have far less to do with hormones than we've been led to believe.
Along the way, they discuss hockey romance shows, Nicole Kidman's unforgettable orgasm scene in Babygirl, the weirdness of female pleasure on television, copyright law drama involving drag queen environmentalist Patty Gonia, and why "taking more time" might be the single best piece of sex advice anyone can give.
In This EpisodeWhy Female Orgasms Still Look Fake on TV
- The difference between depicting female pleasure and understanding it
- Why Off Campus felt emotionally safe but sexually sanitized
- What Babygirl gets so right about desire, awkwardness, and power
- Why women don't just want permission to orgasm—we want permission to be weird.
The Female Gaze Is Stranger Than We Admit
- Why sexual energy is often messy, animalistic, and a little ugly
- The difference between "hot" and "authentic"
- Why female pleasure often gets sanitized even by women creators
- The cultural discomfort around women taking up erotic space.
The Female Libido Myth
- Why so many women think they have low desire
- Are women broken, or have we been set up to fail?
- The orgasm gap, education gap, and empathy gap
- Why the clitoris wasn't fully mapped until 2009.
The Things Nobody Taught Us About Women's Bodies
- The internal structure of the clitoris and why it matters
- Why arousal is more than "finding the clit"
- What female erections are and why they're important
- Why so many women have spent years having sex before they were physically ready for it.
Emotional Labor Is Not an Aphrodisiac
- Why caretaking can crush desire
- The emotional custodianship many women inherit in relationships
- Motherhood, burnout, and losing your sense of self
- Why feeling supported changes what happens in the bedroom.
Midlife Women Are Leading a Sexual Revolution
- Why women in their 40s, 50s, and 60s are changing the conversation
- Menopause, pleasure, and reclaiming sexuality
- The surprising fact about the clitoris after menopause
- Why sexual energy isn't the same thing as reproduction.
The Best Sex Advice We Have
- Take more time.
- Pay more attention.
That's it. That's the list.