The CLIT Talk podcast hosts weigh in on their sexual self-discovery journeys and common clitoris myths worth debunking! I had a blast connecting with Lindsey, Katie and Sugar for this week’s Girl Boner Radio episode.
Stream the episode on Apple Podcasts/iTunes, Spotify, iHeartRadio or below! Or read on for a lightly edited transcript.
“Clitoris Myths and Empowerment with Lindsey, Katie and Sugar”
a lightly edited Girl Boner Radio transcript
August (narration):
A friend texted me a few months ago with a link to a podcast called CLIT Talk. Based on the title alone, it seemed essential that the hosts and I meet. How we met seems appropriate, too: in virtual recording booths for our respective shows. And as it turns out, the hosts and I share more than our edgy, fun show names. We are all pretty gaga about sexual empowerment.
Katie, Sugar and Lindsey are the hosts of CLIT Talk, which started as a bookclub and has since evolved into conversations with CLITs. Not actual clitoreses (as fascinating as that would be), but people who fit the acronym they came up with: Creator, Leader, Innovator and Teacher. They want folks to know that clit is not a bad word and they share the voices and wisdom of folks they consider CLITs so that others can lead more empowered lives.
The three hosts share this mission, and just like clitoreses, each of them is completely unique. I actually love the contrast between their personalities. Take it from the ways they introduce themselves at events:
Katie:
I’m Katie. I’m a registered nurse, a new mom and a sex and empowerment communication coach.
Lindsey:
So my name is Lindsey. I am a professional singer, vocal coach, and sex and empowerment podcaster and jumping into the realm of communication in the realm of sex empowerment.
Sugar:
Well, it depends on the day. And what my pussy has to say. Um, I believe context is everything. So depending on the context in which I’m meeting somebody, you know, it could look something like,
August (narration):
“Hey, I’m Sugar. I’m part of a podcast called CLIT Talk.”
Sugar:
Or it could look like, “What’s up? Nice to meet you. I’m Gangsta Bitch Barbie. Take a seat at my show,” [laughs] you know, or it could just be like how it usually is and just say, “Hey, I’m Madison. I was born and raised in Southern California, ah, Venice Beach and Calabasas so that explains what you’re looking at. What’s your name?”

August (narration):
Before we got to debunking myths about the clitoris, I spoke to each of them about their early sexual discovery journeys, starting with Katie:
Katie:
The thing that comes up for me first is I was an aunt when I was three and a half years old. And there was always this big scary conversation to never get pregnant because kids will ruin your life.
That’s not necessarily like me connecting with my body but it made me very closed off to my sexuality, I think, and it, exploring it.I was also raised Catholic. So there was just a lot of things that I’m still putting together as an adult of the repression and the shame. And as an adult, it was really uncomfortable for me to have any sort of intimacy in public, like holding hands, like you would never kiss me in public or in front of my family. Like that was just a really hard thing to overcome, and I’ve since done that.
But, you know, I never masturbated until I was 32 years old. I didn’t know that women did it. No one ever talked to me about it. I remember when I was going to have sex for the first time, or I wanted to, and I asked my mom for birth control. It was like as if I was in trouble. And, you know, she wanted to get it for me because she didn’t want me to get pregnant but we like weren’t telling my dad.
August (narration):
Katie said there was just a lot of negativity around the impacts of sex. Things have changed a great deal for Katie since then, and for her mom as well. One good example was illustrated the time she, Sugar and Lindsey had their moms on CLIT Talk for a Mother’s Day episode. Katie said her mom had the “most vulnerable share,” that made her so proud to be her daughter.
Katie:
But she didn’t know that women masturbated and sex was her duty to her husband. Her whole life has completely transformed in her later years. And she’s so grateful for the work that I’m doing with the other women at CLIT talk.
August:
That’s beautiful. Had you ever talked about sex with your mom before?
Katie:
No. No, we never talked about sex. We just went and got me birth control. [laughs]
August:
Yeah, which is something at least! [laughs]
Katie:
Yeah! It was something but it was something that she also wasn’t necessarily comfortable or even knew how to have a conversation. And now we get to talk about it a lot.
August (narration):
Looking back on her own early years, Katie told me that the first positive shift in her sexuality took place once she graduated from college.
Katie:
I got this job on the Vans Warped Tour. I was in a relationship at the time going into it but I was running a free skin cancer screening initiative and we had a band. And we were on a tour bus for two months, over the summer, traveling the US, and I actually had this moment. It was as if the skies parted, and I knew I needed to be single. And I knew I needed to take this opportunity to have a really good time.
And at the time, I had had probably five sexual partners. I was a serial monogam-er. Like everything had to be very serious and intentional. And that summer I just kind of let myself be free. And I had sex with guys who were covered in tattoos and totally kind of ran the gamut. I ran into one of my high school flames while we were on tour. I just had the best time. And I didn’t feel like I needed to be a good girl all of a sudden. I was really sexually liberated.
August (narration):
When Katie and her co-hosts launched their show, she said she was in what was probably her lowest place, as far as her sexuality—but she didn’t realize her challenges had anything to do with sex.
Katie:
So I’m a nurse, and I’m very healthy health driven. And for the first time in my life, I was a patient.
August (narration):
It started with breaking her foot.
Katie:
And then it turned into my hip and then my disc tore after that. And then I got a kidney stone and then I had a concussion the day that we recorded our first episode the night before. And it was all on the left side of my body.
August (narration):
The side of her body she now considers the feminine side.
Katie:
So something that I would really be doing that I reckon recognize now is muscling through my life and really letting my masculine energy drive the show. I would just try to power through these injuries but that kept happening. So like my body was trying to tell me something.
And we started CLIT talk as a book club, reading Regena Thomashauers’ book, Pussy: A Reclamation. And it was the first time anyone had mentioned self pleasure and masturbation. And I didn’t start doing it right away. Like it wasn’t until we started having a conversation on CLIT Talk where I’m like, Okay. Like, I’m doing this show. I have to have something to talk about. [laughs]
And I started to get better when I started masturbating. My back pain started to go away. My sense of ease, with my anxiety, started to dissipate. And then what started opening up was so much creativity, and I started writing scripts. I was – I’ve been an actor for a really long time. And I really had a slow time. I couldn’t work when I was injured like that so it was about a year. And I started really discovering myself as a writer and really recognizing, Oh, I don’t need to be seen. I just need to be heard.
And now I’m really discovering what I want to say, because I always just wanted to make a difference in the world.
So my whole world changed. My fears of becoming a mother, my son is now turning two, and it’s been the best thing I’ve ever done in my life, and all the things I was afraid of happened, you know, but it didn’t matter because my life just is filled with so much more joy and acceptance and compassion. And I’m so much better for all of this work.
[encouraging, acoustic music]
August (narration):
Lindsey’s sexual discovery, and self/exploration, started before she began kindergarten — with a bit of inspiration from a sibling.
Lindsey:
My older sister is nine years older than me. So when I was four years old, I walked in on her because her and her friends were, you know, 13, I walked in on them watching porn. So I was sexually awakened at a very young age, and I started masturbating at like three, four years old. And I had such an incredible mother—she was a nurse.
When my mother discovered me masturbating, she actually did not shame me at all. She lovingly encouraged it. And I was so open in my household—like thinking about this now it’s a little embarrassing—I was like, “I’m gonna go touch myself.” And my mom’s like, “Let’s come up with a code word for it.” She’s like, “Let’s call it riding the pony.” So because I had such incredible parents, I felt so free in my masturbation practice, I would just announce it. I’m like, “I’m gonna go ride the pony.” And they were like, “Go have fun!”
One of my biggest commitments is enlightening and encouraging and sharing what a difference that made for me as a child so that the next generation of parents, people like me, can be that for their kids because it made such a difference for me.
August (narration):
Another way the CLIT Talk trio varies is in their relationship styles. Katie is monogamous, Sugar is polyamourous and Lindsey is somewhere in between. That’s been a gradual change for Lindsey, and one that you can hear in detail throughout their podcast.
Lindsey:
I started the podcast in a monogamous relationship with a divorced man who had three children. So I was really fulfilling the role of a stepmother, very deeply loved the children and was still very committed to having children of my own. And through the podcast you hear I go through a breakup.
Well, before the breakup, he cheated on me. [sardonic laugh] And then basically demanded non-monogamy. And I’m an open person; I have a lot of space so I did it. We went to sex parties. We had threesomes; we did the whole thing. And then I ended the relationship because one day he came home and said he didn’t want to have kids. He had changed his mind four years into the relationship. And now I’m in my early 30s, right?
There’s a moment in the podcast where for the first time in my life, I am single and sexually empowered. I’m not slut-shaming myself. I am doing things on my own terms for the first time in my life. And it was a really beautiful moment in my life.
It didn’t last long. Because in my slutty phase, and I say that as a compliment—I think sluts are awesome—I met my now boyfriend. To be totally honest, we met through a mutual friend, and the first time we met, we, like, got a hotel and had sex, and I thought he was just gonna be a fuck buddy but we fell in love. We went to Burning Man; we fell in love. And we were both three months out of very serious relationships.
So we had a very interesting start to our relationship. But what he brought to my life was, I always say he healed me with his kindness. Because I presented myself as this very, like, non-monogamous person, but I didn’t realize I was still swimming in my trauma from my last relationship because I was brought into the non-monogamous world in a very traumatic way. And I had never been loved in the way that I could actually explore what my truth was. So now that’s the place that I’m in on the podcast with my current partner. I’m getting to explore the non-monogamy world not from a place of pressure but from a place of my own personal truth.
[acoustic, encouraging music]
August (narration):
Sugar started exploring her sexuality early on, at the same age as Lindsey.
Sugar:
I was an interesting little character. I was humping my life sized teddy bear at the age of four. You know, I found the Jacuzzi Jets at the age of eight. I was practically leaving masturbation circles for young women at the age of 11.
So I was woke before I even knew it and I didn’t even know what I was doing. I feel like I was a little, like, pussy lightworker who had no idea the education she was bringing to the world, but then was leading these like Secret Circle jerks in Calabasas like. [laughs]
I found my mom’s toys, Hitachi vibrator, you know, all the things in her side drawer, and I knew where they were. I would actually regularly, on occasion, just keep going to just check to just make sure they were still there over the years. Like, that’s still her drawer, right?
[acoustic guitar strum]
August (narration):
I need to quickly jump in here, because this seems like the perfect spot to remind you all to check out the latest specials at The Pleasure Chest. Hopefully we all have a drawer, or closet or, heck, room for our toys. Even if toys aren’t your thing, The Pleasure Chest is my favorite place to shop for pleasure products of all kinds. And yes, they have the Hitachi wand, a favorite for so many vulva owners.
If you enter “Hitachi” in the search window at thepleasurechest.com, all sorts of fun options come up, including the original Magic Wand, a rideable Cowboy toy and the Cowgirl Unicorn Premium Sex Machine – which is, I can’t even describe it. You can see it yourself by heading to thepleasurechest.com. Open the window now so you can peruse after listening, or head to the show notes after the show.
Okay, back to Sugar’s household early on. As a heads up, she talks about some trauma in this next bit—something that to this day, she finds triggering.
Sugar:
So there was sex things happening, you know? It wasn’t so hidden from me. I also actually—wow, a little bit of trauma—I would hear my parents have sex a lot, a little trauma around actually hearing people have sex. I’m actually married and I’m polyamorous. And I have just – I have a very hard time hearing other people have sex, even as a polywoman. It’s one of the weird things that triggers me, is hearing other people fucking when I’m not there.
August:
Yeah. How do you navigate that?
Sugar:
I just notice it; it feels funny in my body. It’s like a weird, turned on feeling. It’s like I’m turned on but I’m also nauseous at the same time. And that was the feeling that I would have when I would hear my parents have sex. I was turned on, but also knew it was wrong because of the, like, incest level going on there, also. There was that element of like, that’s my parents.
I always remember walking in on my parents having sex in the same position. And we didn’t really talk about it as a family or anything. When my parents split up when I was 11 years old, I actually heard my father break up with my mom, in the living room. I was spying on them in the kitchen and I heard it go down.
And I tried to stop it. I was like, “What? Don’t do this. We’re all staying together. What the fuck are you guys talking about,” right? Like this is not happening. And so it was very open, communication-positive house. No one was hiding anything. My dad would come out of his closet with like a whole universe of pot smoke behind him, following him out of the closet like, “Yo, what’s up, [coughs] Madison?” There were open, Southern California vibes in the household.
And when it comes to formalized sex education, I was given the pretty much the the basics, which is abstinence or use a condom, don’t get an STD, don’t get pregnant and don’t die, right? That’s basically what they teach us. But I was intuitive.I really feel like I was put on the planet already intuitively being one of these little pussy activators on the planet. [laughs]
It wasn’t like I lived in a sexless household. It was quite the fucking opposite. I saw my dad’s porn videos. I knew where the sex toys were. I was getting caught masturbating every other day. But the sex education that I got mostly came after my experience as a middle schooler, as someone who is sexually active now with social media and having to navigate it in real time and learning in real time like those consequences after, you know? I learned more about STDs after I got all of them. [laughs] Fun times.
August (narration):
One reason sexual empowerment is so important to Sugar is because she was slut-shamed on social media in the 7th grade.
Sugar:
And by the time I was in eighth grade, everybody and their mother, brother, cousin and father knew who I was. And that weighed very heavy on my heart, on my pussy and everything I knew that there was to be.
So I was told that I was a lesbian by all the good girls. All the cool, good girls I was friends with said, “Everyone thinks you’re a lesbian because you play basketball.” And I was the MVP in my grade amongst the guys and the girls. It’s not something that I was trying to be the best at. It was just a passion. It was part of my life with my dad. My dad was my coach.
And so when I was told this, I learned a couple things: that that was wrong and that being a lesbian was bad. I didn’t even give myself the space to think, Am I a lesbian? I just was like, Oh, that’s bad, freely expressing our passions, especially sports, if they’re not girly, that’s bad. And so I made a lot of key decisions there.
And that’s when I got interested in guys and I started hanging out with the naughty popular girls and things didn’t go that well. And those were the girls that ended up hacking my My Space and spreading some really intense rumors about me. All these rumors that came out of just me exploring being with guys because I was told I was a lesbian. So it was this really intense thing. It was like this slut-shame whiplash experience at such a young age.
So I was called all sorts of nicknames from Tits McGee to M Slut, Madison Sloan, M Slut, all sorts of just little cheeky names that kind of poked at my sexuality and my very openly nature around expressing my sexuality. I was more voluptuous, I had more curves, I had boobs. As I mentioned, I was called Tits McGee.
I’m 27. I started CLIT Talk when I was 23, and I came up with this acronym when I was 24. In retrospect, and around 24, is actually when some of my real sexual trauma actually resurfaced. Because I had dedicated myself to this conversation where I started to brace my body to be ready to remember trauma that I wasn’t ready to heal before.
So for me this CLIT acronym—Creator, Leader, Innovator, Teacher—is who I’ve been being and walking since age 11. And the girl that said, you know, “I like basketball,” to the girl that said, “Okay, I’m going to try new things and I’m gonna put myself out there sexually.” To every person we interview on our show, me, Katie, Lindsey, ourselves, the women we surround ourselves with, we look for this Creator, Leader, Innovator, Teacher archetype, and I think it’s really the one who knows that their truth is the truth.
[acoustic, encouraging music]
Clitoris Myths
August (narration):
While the anatomical clit isn’t the focus of CLIT Talk, Katie, Lindsey and Sugar definitely embrace all-things-clitoris. So together we explored a few common myths about the clitoris, starting with this biggie that Katie pointed out.
Katie:
I would say the biggest clit myth is that it’s small.You don’t see it. I actually didn’t know that the clit was any more than the little, you know, pea-sized kernel that you see on the outside of my body. And being able to play with that erectile tissue that’s in my body and really discover those types of sensations has been a really fun exploration.
August (narration):
The clitoris is wishbone-shaped and often around 4 inches in size, and grows larger when erect—with every boner. Penises come from the same erectile tissue and on average, not that size matters, are about ½ inch smaller than the average clitoris.
Another common myth is that the clit is “mysterious” and impossible to find. That mysteriousness tends to be culturally-driven, given that so much about the clitoris has been hidden or not even considered until recently.
If you have a clit, Katie said it’s important to know where yours is, first and foremost.
Katie:
It’s not hard for anyone to find, if you know where your clit is. And also your clit gets engorged. So whether you have a small clit, a medium sized clit or a large clit, whether it’s hooded or unhooded, it is there on the upper side of your vagina. So I don’t think it’s hard to find. I think that people don’t have the education to know really what to do with it.
August (narration):
Lindsey wanted to debunk this myth: that all clits are basically the same.
Lindsey:
When you came on our show, we talked about the five different types of clits. I’m very passionate about small clits because I have a small clit. Once I had this information, it was really freeing for me. So overstimulation makes me go numb super easily.
I literally need as gentle of a stroke as like if you just lightly touched your eyebrow. So don’t be afraid to ask for “more gentle, please.”
August:
That ties in so well with the myth that every clit needs faster, harder. And I think that it comes from a good place. A lot of times people want to please their partner so they try to replicate a vibrator because they’re like, “Oh, you like the vibrator? I’m just going to be the vibrator.”Is there a type of clit that really appreciates harder, faster?
Lindsey:
Yes, actually. So the the five different types of clits: there’s small, which is like the size of a grain of rice; there’s medium, which is like the size of a pea or like a corn kernel. And then anything larger than that is considered a large clit.
August (narration):
She’s talking about the glans, the part of the clitoris that you can see from the outside.
Lindsey:
And my partner actually, a previous relationship with him, he had a girl who had had some hormonal stuff as a younger girl, and she had a very large clit, and he actually intuitively discovered –
So a large clit does like to be sucked almost like a dick, like sucked hard and fast. A large clit really appreciates that because the 8000 nerve endings are more spread out than a small clit, when they’re like all bunched together so that it goes numb easily. So yes, hard and fast works for some women and not for others.
So there’s the three different sizes and there’s also hooded or unhooded, right? So it’s either covered or uncovered, which also has an effect on how to stimulate it. Really educate yourself on all the different ways and observe the clit.
One of the things that made a huge difference for me is, I’ve been accused of being bossy in bed in the past.
August (narration):
That really impacted her and she tried not to speak up. But now, with her new partner –
Lindsey:
He’s like, “Can you please tell me what you want?” And he’s like, “It’s just information. I love it.” His ego is not burst by it at all.
So I would encourage people to look at it as information and it’s not that you’re doing it wrong. Because everybody’s body is different. It’s just information. If a woman knows how she likes to be stimulated, count your lucky stars, cuz you’re ahead of the game.
August (narration):
I asked Sugar about another clit myth you may have heard: that all you have to do is draw the ABCs with your tongue to drive one wild.
Sugar:
When in doubt, we always have one of those: just up and down and to the right and upside down and loop de loop. You know? Like what the fuck?
August (narration):
A myth Sugar brought up ties into this: all partners will know exactly how to stimulate a clit to orgasm.
Sugar:
Like no, we need to take the time to learn about what feels good to our clit.
So I feel like if this is sex education, right, if maybe like we all learned a thing or two about this, we could be more intuitive lovers with each other. And we need to get curious as to why, scientifically, that is. Like what is going on in that sense so we can really understand not just why but then why we should do it, right? Why we ought to care about being curious about someone’s pleasure or curious about our own pleasure.
August (narration):
There aren’t only different sizes of clits, and hooded or unhooded, but a huge variety of personal preferences, and ways what feels good in the moment changes, due to things like hormones and where a menstruating person is in their cycle.
To learn more about the clitoris, scroll back in your feed to the episode called Unforgettable Clitoris Stories. There is always so much to learn about the body, our sexy parts and ourselves.
If you’re a woman and want to discover a whole lot more about your sexuality, your desires, your pleasure, or grow in your journey with the support of women who get it, you may want to consider signing up for the 7-week sexual empowerment course the CLIT Talk team put together, which launches at the end of this month. You’ll have access to all three hosts throughout. Here’s what Katie said about it:
Katie:
We have done over 170 episodes of CLIT Talk. And at the beginning of this year, Lindsey, Sugar and I sat down and we’re like, “What are we actually doing from all of these episodes that we’ve done, all of these experts and doctors and porn stars and all these people that we’ve learned – What are we actually doing? And what do we want to be doing that we’re not doing that we said that we would do?”
And we all, Lyndsey, Sugar, and I, all met in a communication leadership year-long program. So we’re communication coaches. So, basically, we put the two together and teaching sex and empowerment through that lens with communication because that’s where the empowerment comes through is when you’re actually able to communicate your needs and desires. So it really starts with connecting and healing yourself, knowing you can be responsible for your own pleasure. It’s actually no one else’s responsibility to bring you pleasure and that you’re capable of doing it.
[encouraging, acoustic music]
August (narration):
Learn more about the course and sign up at clittalkshow.com or click the link down in the show notes. While you’re skimming the show notes, check out my Patreon community, at patreon.com/girlboner. I’ll be sharing several fun and spicy outtakes from my conversions with The CLIT Talk crew in the coming days. By signing up you’ll also get access to other fun rewards I’ve shared so far and support my missions of building my team and helping more people.
Now I’ll leave you with a sex tip from each CLIT Talk host, starting with Lindsey – with a a practice that she and her partner recently started.
Relationship + Sex Tips
Lindsey:
I call it the state of the household meeting. And it’s an exercise where you come from your commitment, which is like to level up the relationship, to have love and intimacy.And every week you get into communication with your partner and you go through a series of questions. The first question is, what’s working? So you talk about all the things that are working well in your relationship.
Then you talk about what’s not working. And it could be coming from a place of responsibility like, “It’s not working when I do this or it’s not working when you do this,” obviously coming from an empowered commitment.
And then you talk about what’s missing. So what can we put into place to connect deeper to level up our intimacy? And I find doing this on a weekly basis, because so many people just withhold their communication, to set a structure, to have a conversation every week is life-changing for our relationship.
And you can also do this solo. If every week you’re like, What’s working in my life? What’s not working? What’s missing? What can I put into place? Okay, “get more related” to my calendar. Okay, “I want to masturbate three times next week.” And just having that mindfulness practice and if you map in your pleasure first and then make your life work around your pleasure, you’re going to be delightfully surprised by what unfolds.
August (narration):
Katie shared this advice for allowing yourself to accept more pleasure. It’s a breathing technique from Love Your Body, Love Yourselfby Marla Mervis Hartmann.
Katie:
And basically, it’s like you’re breathing through a straw so you purse your lips. [inhales, exhales] And then you start to connect that your pussy opens and releases. [breathing sounds]It’s actually connected.
So when I’m having sex or I want to edge a little bit my masturbation practice, I bring in that breathing technique. And it’s helped me be able to accept pleasure because that was something that I really struggled with with my husband, is I would never let him do oral sex on me because it was too overwhelming. And I brought in this breathing technique, and it just really helps ground and control my ability to accept pleasure.
So it’s like sipping through a straw so [inhales]. Then you’ll feel your pussy opening when you suck in and blow out and it closes up.
August (narration):
Sugar wanted you all to know that whatever you want to experience sexually is worth going for.
Sugar:
So my tip to you is really simple: just do it. If you’ve been thinking about it, take a moment, ask your partner, the person that you’re dating or your roommate, whomever you’re in this conversation with, that you want to create this sort of taboo thing with.
Be playful, also, is the other part of this tip. Say, “Hey, I’d like to set aside a couple minutes to have a tab, somewhat of a taboo conversation with me. Are you interested?” You’re probably going to get a yes, nine out of 10 times on that, right? So showing that little bit of vulnerability right there.
Now you’ve set the time, you have the conversation. They know that you’re there to have a conversation about something a little taboo. And you let them know, “Hey, I want to express my desire. And I just want to say that I am not attached to this desire. I understand this may make you feel a certain way. Or it may bring something up for you. And I would like that to be part of this conversation. This isn’t really about my desire. It’s more about that. And so [big sigh] I’m going to do it.” Then deliver your communication and then stop. Leave space for them to respond.
Now you’re in the dialogue and it’s just trusting the conversation from there. But yeah, anybody who’s been thinking like Dang, I really want to get my boyfriend to do a threesome with me, let’s just say. My tip is just do it! But be playful about it. Honor the person’s time. Create a safe space. And listen.
August:
You’re a permission giver, which I love. Yeah, do you feel that?
Sugar:
[laughs] Oh my god. I do. I feel very seen right now. Thank you so much for saying that. Yeah, I really believe I give permission to just fucking be. Yeah, and I get that I was put in this little fairy body to be ridiculous in it.
[upbeat, acoustic music]
August (narration):
If you’re enjoying Girl Boner Radio, follow the show in the app you’re listening on, give us a rating and review and let your friends know about it. Thanks so much for listening and have a beautiful, Girl Boner-embracing week.
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