Masculine/Feminine Stereotypes + Being True to Yourself: Suzannah Weiss

 

“Masculine/Feminine Stereotypes + Being True to Yourself: Suzannah Weiss”

a Girl Boner podcast transcript

Suzannah: One idea of femininity I often hear is that, you just receive. You don’t go out and get what you want, you just attract it. Which kind of sounds like it’s depriving women of agency.

[encouraging, acoustic music]

August/narration:

“I remember just what it was like to be a child.” That’s how writer and sexologist Suzannah Weiss starts her new book, Subjectified: Becoming a Sexual Subject. “All people begin life as subjects,” she writes. “A child’s eyes are globes.”

During adolescence, though, she started to realize that she’s an object. That girls and women are. A “coordinate inside others’ globes.”

As a result, she started to hate her body. She said she could not love her body because it felt dangerous to live there — something she understands more fully in hindsight.

Suzannah: At the time it just presented as a hatred for my body and a desire to cover up my boobs. That was really all I was aware of as an early teen. And just this anger, this rage that I was suddenly seen as a woman and all these feminine ideas were projected onto me, like that I was a sex object or I was motherly and nurturing or I was emotional and hormonal.

There was a lot of rage toward suddenly being seen that way. It felt like puberty was the point when I lost control of how I was seen and society ushered me into this role of woman that I did not consent to.

August/narration:

Along with the rage, she developed an eating disorder, and entered treatment.

Between high school and college, during a family beach house vacation, Suzannah had her first hookup. It was game-changing, in a really positive way.

Suzannah: At that time I had never been on a date, I had never kissed anyone, nothing of that sort.

I had just gotten out of eating disorder treatment for what was mostly anorexia and I was doing well but not completely recovered and I had this discomfort in my body which I believe looking back came from being objectified as a woman and feeling like I was an object of male attention, wanted or not. And that was scary.

When my friend and I were on the beach one night, we met two guys. One of them and I hooked up. We just made out and he went down on me and fingered me. [sensual awakening music]

August/narration:

The whole experience consisted of Suzannah receiving pleasure. She wrote, “I snuck back to the beach house and tucked myself under the covers with a beam on my face.” She told me she was amazed that that was what sex could be – because she’d thought it was “this thing that men took from women,” that it was violating.

Suzannah:…for a woman to engage in sex with a man and it just changed how I looked at my body.

I saw it as a source of pleasure rather than being there to provide others with pleasure. That helped my eating disorder recovery a lot. It helped me appreciate my body for what it could feel rather than what it looked like. And it helped me be more in my body rather than an observer looking in from the outside.

August/narration:

And that is when Suzannah started to put the pieces together – and understand what had fueled her angst, anger and body hatred.

Suzannah: Because I saw what it felt like to have a different way of thinking and to see myself as a subject.And that was when it started to click that I had previously objectified myself. That I had seen myself as an object.

August/narration:

Because of those super wonky messages around sex and gender.

Suzannah: And that even though I had not had many, or any, sexual experiences early on, I still was made to feel like I was there for men’s pleasure, just from little comments, like men being like, “You look developed,” or “You have a nice ass,” or talking about other women.

Those things had let me know that my body was not my own, and that started to click, I’d say, once I started to experience something different.

August/narration:

Imagine if we didn’t grow up with those things. Can you even imagine that?

August: Yeah. And you mentioned a word that I’ve been thinking about since reading your book, which is developed. So often when I speak to women about their journeys, they say things like “I developed late” or “I developed early,” and it’s all talking about growing breasts, or their breasts becoming larger. And, I’ve always felt so strange about that term because…you know, film develops. It’s a nothing, and then it become something beautiful, right? What if we don’t develop breasts and we’re female, does that make us not existent?

And then that we don’t have the term for boys and men. We don’t say, “Oh, I didn’t develop because my voice didn’t change or whatever.”

Suzannah: That’s so funny. I never thought of that. We never say that boys develop because we think of women as these flowers that blossom and then are beautiful to the sight. Yeah, I was telling my friend that story about an older man telling me I look developed and he’s like, does he not realize that means boobs?

It is kind of icky. It feels a little bit objectifying because to define a woman as developed or undeveloped is basically defining her by like having boobs or being flat chested.

August: Yeah.

August/narration:

In Subjectified, Suzannah writes about her sexual exploration, including ways her ideas around them, versus those of others, were challenged along the way. One prime example was the time she attended a BodySex workshop at Betty Dodson’s apartment.

Others have talked about Betty here before -and the hands on, naked self-pleasure workshops for women she held in her apartment for decades, before she died in 2020.

Like writer, educator, and performer Laura Zam:

Laura: She reminded me of cab drivers, like the blue collar people I grew up with in Brooklyn. She’s like, yeah, “Take off your clothes, hang them up!”And so I’m like, ah, but the next moment was really transformative and terrifying in a whole new way.

Because I walk into the living room and there are all these backjack chairs. And there are just a handful at that point, a handful of women who are arranged in a circle and everybody’s naked. And I’m naked.Everything that could possibly come up in terms of body insecurity comes up. And then, it becomes normalized. It’s the weirdest thing.

August: narration:

Then there was Ryn Pfeiffer:

Ryn: There’s a part of it that is called genital show and tell, and you sit down, she’s got her arm around you and there’s a mirror between your legs and a light.

And she’s basically describing your vulva, your pubic hair and what it looks like in the color and the shape and all this. And I sat down, I was like rocking full butch at the time.

August: Betty took one look and said.

Ryn: “If that thing could have teeth, it would. It’s so feral, and it’s so fierce!”

August: Rin just busted out laughing.

I just remember sitting in that circle later that day and making eye contact with her as I was masturbating on all fours. And her making eye contact and just going, “That is so fucking hot.”

August (narration):

Betty took one look and said-

Ryn: “If that thing could have teeth, it would bite. It’s so feral and it’s so fierce!”

August (narration):

Ryn just busted out laughing.

Ryn: I just remember sitting in that circle later that day and making eye contact with her as I masturbating on all fours and her making eye contact and just going, “That is so fucking hot.”

August/narration:

Betty was a sex educator and artist in New York City, credited for pioneering the pro-sex feminist movement. She’s also been called the “Mother of Masturbation.”

Suzannah had wanted to attend one of her workshops since reading the book Buzz, by Hallie Lieberman.

Suzannah: They arose in the 70s and it was a sexual awakening for many women to see other women masturbate… I was like, I need to try that.

August/narration:

So, she signed up. The date came and she arrived at the workshop.

Suzannah: There were little chairs. They were kind of like chairs without feet, like these fold up chairs around in a circle. So everyone sat in one. There were maybe a dozen women. I remember there being an arrangement in the middle with candles and at various times there were chocolates and fruit. And people were naked when they got into the circle, so people were undressing in the hallway.

Carlin, who’s Betty’s assistant, who’s still running the workshops, greeted us and she was very friendly and helped to put us at ease.

August/narration:

Suzanannah really respects Betty’s work and legacy. She sees a lot of good in it.

At the same time, some of the central ideas didn’t sit quite right with her. The way Betty talked about women’s sexuality being in opposition to men’s left her feeling a bit alienated. Like she didn’t fit in with the gals. In her book she says she felt “left out of the female tradition.”

I found that so interesting, and related in a way. Though I mostly feel irritated and sort of heated when sex is gendered in those ways.

Suzannah: When I was in there, I felt a bit uncomfortable. I mean, partly just because it was a very new situation, and yeah, there did seem to be a little bit of an assumption that we are women and we’re getting together to be feminine.

August/narration:

“Feminine” in societally defined ways.

Suzannah: And how women are softer and slower and more sensual and perhaps more emotional in their sexuality. So there was a bit of discomfort with this feeling.

I hate when anyone tells me what I am so there was this little bit of concern. What if I don’t match Betty’s idea of a woman or of female sexuality?

August/narration:

There are plenty of people who stereotype far worse, she said. Those ideas spread far and wide.

Suzannah: In terms of sexuality, I think there are stereotypes that women’s sexuality is more based on emotions, more based on romance, and it can go either way. I think that women’s sexuality can be very simple and very uninvolved, like masturbating as a woman can just mean like taking a break from work and rubbing one out and getting back to work.

It doesn’t always mean lighting candles and playing music and showing your body love. Not that that’s a bad thing. And I think that could be something that men could enjoy as well. But there is this binary we see men’s and women’s sexuality.

August/narration:

Here here.

Another time, Suzannah explored orgasmic meditation, through a now controversial group called OneTaste. The group didn’t invent meditative, erotic pleasure sessions, but the one they taught became popular.

Suzannah: So orgasmic meditation is a practice where someone, usually a man, strokes the upper left quadrant of a woman’s clitoris for 13 minutes. She is only naked from the waist down. He is fully clothed. She’s in this special nest of pillows. And he has a timer to make sure. After 13 minutes he stops stroking and then he presses on her pussy and her legs to ground her back to reality.

August/narration:

She didn’t want to get into the legal claims without the facts in front of her, but,

Suzannah: I know that there was an FBI investigation for sex trafficking and violations of labor law and sex trafficking. I know two of their leaders were indicted.

August/narration:  That’s what the latest legal action involves, along with claims from a former employee who said she was forced to have sex with coworkers as a way to solve workplace problems. Rolling Stone reported on it late last year. Nicole Daedone, who founded OneTaste, and her head sales person, are accused and they’ve denied it all.

None of that had surfaced back when Suzannah met Daedone, who she found mesmerizing. [celestial music]

Suzannah: It was hypnotizing speaking to her. She spoke about this idea of the orgasm state, which is different from having an orgasm.

It’s this state that you can achieve through this practice where your mind is at peace and your body is in this involuntary state where you are just Responding to your environment from your intuition. The way she described it, it was like I could feel it. I remember thinking the women she worked with were smiling so wide. I could see the whites of their eyes.

August/narration:

Suzannah thought, I will have what she’s having.

Suzannah: And I just remember feeling like, I will have what she’s having. And that’s what inspired me to sign up for an intro to OM class later that summer.

August/narration:

She wasn’t thrilled when they started out with more wonky things about sex and gender. Way more than Betty Dodson taught.

Suzannah: The teacher of the class drew on a piece of paper a straight line and then a squiggly line and she was like, “This is masculine energy, this is feminine energy. Masculine energy is like a line and feminine energy is like a roller coaster which is why women are insane.”

It went with all these ideas about men’s and women’s sexuality. It was like men have a direct linear path to climax. They start stimulating themselves. They orgasm and that’s it. Whereas women are just unpredictable. You touch them and you don’t know what’s going to happen. She could feel pleasure. She could feel pain. She could like, go up and up and up and then back down and then back up.

August/narration:

Once again, she felt alienated.

Suzannah: That same feeling I had when I was 13. I am being defined as a woman and a very specific idea of what a woman is, and that was uncomfortable.

August/narration:

Those frustrations aside, the orgasmic meditation itself? She said it was really fun.

Suzannah: I’ve continued doing that occasionally. I haven’t in a while, but basically you just lie down where a guy rubs your clit and it’s kind of nice because you don’t have to reciprocate, you don’t have to have an orgasm. You don’t have to do anything. You just receive the pleasure.

I’m hesitant to even talk about the practice because of what’s happened with the company, but the practice itself is actually great. It helps you to relax and not think about a destination and to tune into your body and notice what it’s doing.

August/narration:

After the workshop Suzannah attended, a OneTaste staff member tried to sell her a $12,000 orgasmic training coach program. She was “almost tempted,” she wrote, but declined.

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August/narration:  If you aren’t into the whole feminist energy/masculine energy tropes, either, you might find what Suzannah learned about the history of the ideas while working on her book interesting. I’ve definitely wondered why Tantra practitioners use those ideas, which seem really modern U.S. self-help-y. Well, there are reasons for that.

Suzannah: I spoke with a woman named Debbie Ward Erickson. She’s a Tantra practitioner trained in Tibetan Buddhist Tantra. And she is the founder of the only government approved Tantra school in Canada. And she was explaining that Neo Tantra is now what most people learn, not original Tantra. But Neo Tantra is a movement originating from British colonialism in India.

So it’s white people taking these concepts and kind of adapting them to their own lives.

August/narration:

And their own belief systems, often shaped by wonky societal messaging. A lot of Western Tantra coaches, and even some sex coaches, teach the same.

Suzannah: People who essentially teach people how to be in their masculine or be in their feminine, how to embody the divine masculine or divine feminine, and it just seems like these same stereotypes.

The feminine is radiant and wild, and she attracts, she magnetizes. She doesn’t pursue it. She just shines her beauty and draws men in, which is of course heteronormative and also very, it just sounds eerily like the Western stereotype of a female object.

There are many different theories about the masculine and feminine and it’s interesting because a lot of people talk about them but they also talk about them in different ways.

But one idea of femininity I often hear is that, you just receive. You don’t go out and get what you want, you just attract it. Which kind of sounds like it’s depriving women of agency. I mean,

August/narration:

If she’s a woman and naturally a go getter, then how is being a go getter unfeminine?

Suzannah feels like those ideas are telling her who she is, who she — and all women — are supposed to be.

Suzannah: And saying, Nuh uh, you’re not being true to who you are. Which is gaslighting at large

And people will often say, “Well, I’m not talking about women. I’m talking about the feminine.” But it’s so obvious that this is based on ideas about women. And feminine embodiment coaches, that’s a title I often see people take on, and they’re not teaching men how to be in their feminine, they’re always teaching women how to be in their feminine.

And so I’m very skeptical that this is a universal spiritual truth. I think the bigger spiritual truth is to stay true to who you are and ignore these boxes people are putting you in.

August/narration:

There is another way, she says. That’s one message I gleaned from her book, and a practice she hopes you, too, will take to heart:

Suzannah: Focus on what you want and what you like, above who wants you and who likes you. I think it’s really important.

August/narration:

Suzannah discusses this in Chapter 14 of her book, and quotes her friend Lindsay.

Suzannah: …who told me one day, “Stop thinking so much about who likes you and think about who you like.” Because so many women, I feel, they’re taught that men are the pursuers, especially straight women, and that it’s up to them to say yes or no to men.

And I talk about that in chapter five, which is about consent. I think women should play a greater role in coming up with the question in the first place and then having someone else say yes or no to them. I just find that when you go after what you want, when you voice your desires, you have so much more success than when you just wait for someone else to come to you or to bring their desires to you.

Like, your life is going to be a random pool of suitors and other people’s ideas until you take control and say I’m going to say specifically what I want and who I want and when I want it and how I want it. And then your life becomes much more tailored to you in the bedroom and outside it.

August/narration:

Learn more about Suzannah Weiss at suzannahweiss.com. Find her book, Subjectified: Becoming a Sexual Subject, most anywhere books are sold. She told me she really tried to balance sex positivity with honoring boundaries and staying true to yourself while making smart sexual choices. And it’s not just about sex. It has chapters about body positivity, periods and relationships, too.

And if you’re enjoying Girl Boner Radio, please take a few seconds to leave me a rating on Apple Podcasts, iTunes or Spotify. Better yet, text a link to an episode you loved to your friends. Thank you so much for listening.