Ginelle Testa sought connection in chat rooms as a kid, which led her to webcam for coins and validation. Nancy Jo Sales was “very sexualized” in childhood, too, then experienced common and related challenges while using dating apps as a middle-aged woman.
Both women wrote powerful memoirs about their experiences – Ginelle’s with addiction and seeking belonging; Nancy Jo’s with online dating. And they both have a lot to say about self-acceptance, cultivating healthy relationships and pleasure – in and outside of the bedroom. (Nancy Jo’s story was originally released in a 2021 episode.)
This episode touches on sensitive topics, such as abuse and eating disorders. Please take care of yourself while listening.
Learn much more in the new Girl Boner Radio episode! Stream it on Apple Podcasts/iTunes, iHeartRadio, Amazon Music, Spotify or below. Or read on for a lightly edited transcript.
“Dark Spaces, Sexploration and Self Worth: Ginelle and Nancy Jo”
a Girl Boner podcast transcript
Ginelle: I think that feeling like I was bad and broken…made me feel like I needed to seek out external validation.
I was trying to find my sense of self worth. I was trying to find my sense of contentment. Who I was outside of me instead of looking within to be like, Hmm, well, what do I think? What do I feel? Am I enough?
Nancy Jo: I don’t think that I should stay silent about it. I am not ashamed of things that have happened to me or things I’ve done…A lot of this shit was not my fault. And I stood up for myself, and I’m standing up for myself now.
[acoustic, encouraging music]
August/narration:
It’s hard to put into words just how much digital technology impacts our sex lives and relationships. There are obviously tons of perks — things like having some actually helpful sex ed information at our fingertips. And there’s a dark side, where trolls and sexual predators lurk.
Today you’ll hear the stories of two women who’ve experienced the bad, while seeking meaningful connection. Both of their stories involve so much more than that.
As a heads up, this episode touches on sensitive topics, like abuse and eating disorders. Please take care of yourself while listening.
First, queer content creator and writer, Ginelle Testa’s story.
[encouraging, acoustic music]
Ginelle: Honestly, the earliest memory I have of sex and sexuality is the chat rooms.
August/narration:
The chat rooms. Early in her memoir, Make a Home Out of You, Ginelle talks about being bullied at middle school, rushing home and then being hassled by her mom — when all she really wanted to do was escape to those rooms to find some connection.
Ginelle: I was going in just to chat, just to dress up. And I learned that people were talking about things that I had sometimes heard about on AOL and AIM chat.
August/narration:
Things like sex. And quickly, many of the connections she made became sexual.
Ginelle: It was this website called The Doll Palace where you dress up as an avatar and I learned that the sexier your avatar, the more attention you got from men.
August/narration:
Looking back, Ginelle said, she sees she was seeking validation through how she looked, even as an avatar. So she started “dressing” the part.
Ginelle: I chose a redhead with red boots. And I just chose one that had skimpy clothes on.
But I remember going into the room and seeing like dolls in different corners and you would like to find a corner and start talking to people and you would see their text bubbles pop up next to their avatars.
They were just talking casually, but it eventually would seem to always lead to someone being hit on or someone saying something inappropriate.
August/narration:
That led to webcamming.
Ginelle:
Where I was using a webcam to get further validation and attention from men, and I was trading it for game coins, like I was trading it for monetary value in the game website that we were playing.
This was a different website. It was called Gaia Online. That was the next step after Doll Palace, and I started to do that. And it’s just really sad to think about in hindsight, a 13-year-old doing that.
August/narration:
Meanwhile, she was struggling with anorexia. There’s a ton of crossover between those eating disorders and being sexually objectified – and connection Ginelle knows too well.
Ginelle: I really, really wanted to be thin and then these men were complimenting me on how thin I was and how beautiful and skinny I was and so it definitely played into that spiral of like I need to be as thin as possible in order to be lovable.
August/narration:
The internet fueled her eating disorder in other ways, too.
Ginelle: It was the Tumblr era. So there were pro-anorexia pages that were really popular, you know, saying nothing tastes as good as thin feels and a moment on the lips, a lifetime on the hips, those sort of tag-lines were all over my Tumblr pages.
And so were thin bodies and protruding hip bones and, you know, the internet was just a toxic place for me as a kid. Like I think I should not have had access to the internet at least unsupervised, because I was just dealing with a lot of stuff and it was a toxic outlet.
August/narration:
Some of that stuff involved physical abuse at home, which flared up as she grew into a “feisty teen.”
Ginelle: My mom and I have a much better relationship today. It’s not perfect, but you know, there was abuse.And I think that it contributed to me finding this solace online. I think that feeling like I was bad and broken, which is the way that I felt when I was being abused, made me feel like I needed to seek out external validation. And I hate to draw a direct parallel, but it’s the reality.
August/narration:
In her memoir, Ginelle calls her maternal grandmother, her nana, her saving grace.
Ginelle: She and I were just so close and she was just really special to me. She was somebody that I always felt safe with. Someone who was really kind to anyone she met. She was really a lovely person and easy to talk to. Um, But if you crossed her, she was really feisty. You know, she kind of held grudges sometimes, but she never held a grudge against me. If I did something wrong, she was able to forgive me and move on.
August/narration:
By then, drinking alcohol was a part of Ginelle’s life, too. And her first romantic relationship was with a boy she calls Anthony, when she was 15.
“Before I met Anthony,” she wrote, “I had been making a home in booze… He became my home, and I felt high from having someone in my life who loved me.”
August: When I got to that part of your book, I felt like a whole body exhale at first, because it seemed like things were really good for you finally. But they didn’t stay that way.
Ginelle: He was, yeah, really lovely at first.
He seemed like somebody just that would accept me as I was. He never said anything about my eating disorder. He never discouraged it or encouraged it, but he just sort of let me exist and do my thing, um, so I felt very supported by him in that way, for better or worse, I don’t know, but yeah, there were a lot of ways that I just felt like, finally, like I could breathe again.
August/narration:
Even early on, though, there were signs that things weren’t as great as they seemed.
Ginelle: I remember like he threw my shoe in the trash when we were at the bowling alley, and I was like, okay, that’s kind of mean. But maybe he’s flirting with me.
August/narration:
Soon, the abuse was obvious.
Ginelle: It started with throwing things and kicking things in my room, and then it escalated to hitting me or pushing me up against the wall or choking me with a seatbelt. Yeah…it was really bad.
August/narration:
Ginelle fought back.
Ginelle: I got violent back with him. I remember one time I threw a computer monitor at him. It was both ways. I mean, he initiated it and obviously he was stronger than me, so it was pretty brutal. But I think it was just a really unhealthy relationship to start with.
August/narration:
Within a year or so, they reached a breaking point.
Ginelle: It ended with him threatening to kill me after choking me with a seatbelt and He, yeah, he said he was gonna kill me and bury my body behind a restaurant nearby. So I was like, this is, this is not okay. Like this has escalated so far that I don’t even know what to do.
So that’s when I called Nana and Nana was like, “You need to go upstairs and lock your doors and potentially go to the police.”
August/narration:
It can be tough to end abusive relationships at any age, partly because the abused person often still cares about the abuser. But lingering feelings and all, Ginelle was finished.
Ginelle: That was my reality, that he was bugging me at school and calling me and trying to make contact and I was just done.
I did still think, oh my god, what if he’s my person and I’m messing this up? But I was just so scared and so done that it wasn’t worth it anymore.
August/narration:
A year later, Ginelle started therapy – getting emotional support she had long needed. What prompted that was dark.
Ginelle: The final straw for therapy for my parents was my drug overdose, when I did a lot of acid and mushrooms at the same time and ended up hallucinating and having to go to the hospital.
August/narration:
She wrote about the experience like this: I slammed the bathroom door behind me, turned my head toward the mirror, and saw two scaly demons hovering over me. They appeared to be about six feet tall and about three inches off the ground. They were grayish-green with slimy skin, like gooey aliens that had just hatched from a monstrosity of an egg. The worst part was the piercing red eyes that seemed to be able to see right into my soul.
She feared the demons would kill her. When she had the wherewithal to seek help, she called her nana. Shortly after, Ginelle was on a gurney, headed for the hospital.
That’s when a family friend told Ginelle’s mom to take her daughter to therapy.
Ginelle: And my mom did. So of all my mom’s flaws, she did take me to therapy when I was 16 and she did do therapy with me for almost a year.
August/narration:
It was a type called dialectical behavioral therapy, or DBT.
Ginelle: Yeah, it was wildly helpful. One of the things that was most helpful was the emotion regulation piece. I was actually given tactics to deal with the emotional reactions I was having.
August/narration:
Later, Ginelle would be diagnosed with bipolar. But back then, even without having a clear understanding of her mental health specifics, the exercises she learned made a big difference.
Ginelle: For example, I would be taught to like to hold a frozen orange or to take a hot shower or go for a walk. I was given these practical things to do to deal with my angst and all like the mental health concerns I was having and I was better able to cope, I think.
August/narration:
She also started to unpack the trauma she was carrying.
Ginelle: I didn’t realize I had trauma. It was really validating and really scary like naming it for what it was but at the same time it was like shedding light on it.
August/narration:
Today, Ginelle identifies as queer. But back then, she didn’t.
Ginelle: I definitely identified as straight, but in early days on the forum, sometimes I would pretend to be a guy so that I could talk to girls. Like, I would send fake pictures and be like, yeah, I’m a guy because I wanted to talk to women, which is so confusing.
I didn’t really know why I was doing that. And then as I got older, I started to kiss girls when I was drinking. So I thought I was straight and I thought that was just things that had happened, but like, foreshadowing! [laughs]
August/narration:
During college, Ginelle came out to her therapist.
Ginelle: I was just like, “I’m ready to start dating women.”
I went to college that had a lot of queer people. It was a Catholic private university, but for some reason there were a lot of lesbians and queer folks.
So I was like, wow, they’re really comfortable with themselves. Maybe I could do something like that.
August/narration:
That night, she decided to come out to her Nana, too. Pacing around her dorm room, internal butterflies swirling, she called her. She wrote that it came out almost incoherently, and she had to pause to regain her composure.
“I’m… I’m… bisexual.” There was a pause on the other end, and she thought, Oh my gosh, I should not have told her.
Nana was Catholic, after all, and even though she knew she wouldn’t hate her, she still thought she would reject her in some way.
But instead, when she came out to her, Nana said:
Ginelle: “I’ll dance at your wedding, whether it’s a man or a woman.
So I was really happy about that.
August/narration:
Confidence boosted, Ginelle was ready to explore.
Ginelle: And I found a girl on a dating app.
August/narration:
Her name was Penny. They chatted off and on for a few days, then planned a date.
Ginelle: She had lived like a half hour from me in Massachusetts, I was in New Hampshire. We met about halfway at the beach.
August/narration:
Penny smelled like Old Spice, Ginelle wrote, and wore an orange tee that hugged her thin frame. Her hair was tied up with athletic wrap.
Ginelle: And I just remember we were walking along the beach, and we stayed until the sun went down. I definitely remember holding hands, and just being like, Wow, this is really nice to not be in the dark.
August/narration:
After they shared a kiss under the moonlight, Ginelle pulled away, and said, “Wow,. It’s really nice to do that sober.”
Penny and Ginelle went on to date for close to a year – a relationship with ups and downs and brand new kinds of sexual exploration. Going down a girl, she wrote, was out of her comfort zone. If she hadn’t figured it out yet, was she even queer? At the same time, she experienced new kinds of intimacy and pleasure…Ultimately Ginelle decided she wanted only friendship with Penny.
A few more relationships followed, and Ginelle struggled with every one. At one point, while she was dating a guy exclusively, she made out with her ex, Anthony, at a bar. Everything after the makeup session was blank; she had blacked out. And felt utterly lost.
So she joined Alcoholics Anonymous, worked the steps and got sober, figuring sobriety would fix her relationship challenges.
Ginelle: And it didn’t. I still had stuff to work on.
August/narration:
Case in point, the time she got involved with a married colleague.
Ginelle: Just emotionally, and it got to the point where I was like, I will sleep with this person if he lets me. And I was like, that feels terrible.
August/narration:
She confided in a friend, who suggested she join Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous, SLAA or “slaw.”
Expert views are mixed on whether sex and love are truly addictive — I’ve talked to marriage and family therapists who treat both as addictions and sex therapists use different terms focused on behaviors, like sexual compulsions.
As I’ve shared before, I care less about the terminology and more about people getting the support they need. And Ginelle found SLAA deeply helpful. She said it started to heal her life beyond just drinking. And she started to see patterns in her life.
Ginelle: I either felt like too much or not enough. That was the basis of it. And when I started to get sober, I started to really heal my relationship with my body, too. so the eating disorder stuff sort of worked itself out because I got a dietitian and I got the help that I needed.
August/narration:
A health at every size dietitian, she noted.
Ginelle considers the hardest part of her healing work the work she did through SLAA, partly because the program advised against any dating for the first year.
Ginelle: It was challenging because I had tried not dating in AA. And I did that for a year, but I was like white knuckling it like I was miserable the whole time. It took me a few years to be willing to do that in SLAA like I was pushing back against it. I was like, I don’t really need this. This is too dramatic. Like these people are trying to throw away masturbation… I just didn’t want to do what they were telling me to do and eventually got to a point where I was like, I’m willing to take a break. I’m ready to take a break and I did it.
August/narration:
That was five years ago, when her deepest healing began – which, interestingly, is right where her memoir ends.
Ginelle: People are like telling me, “I wish there was more to your book!” I’m like, “Well, I guess you just have to wait for a sequel.”
But I started to heal in 2019 when I took that year off from dating. And then I started to learn to date in a healthy way. I had my first healthy relationship. And since then, it’s just been continuous healing and feeling more peace in that area of my life.
August/narration:
Ginelle told me her latest adventure has been healing codependency – a challenging dynamic where one person needs the other person; who in turn, needs to be needed in order to feel valuable.
Ginelle: And I’m in a new relationship where he’s not codependent at all. He’s the first person probably I’ve ever dated that isn’t. And I’m learning my tendencies that I thought were healed, I’m learning to tackle those.
For example, last night I was having a hard time. I’m struggling with the vulnerability of this book and releasing it and knowing that the whole world is going to read, like, all my deepest darkest secrets.
And I was just having a night where I was spiraling a little bit and instead of being like, I need you to fix it, partner, I told him I was struggling. We talked about it for a few texts back and forth. And then I called a friend and I journaled and I took a shower. I did some mix of leaning on others, but self soothing. And I think that’s something that codependency didn’t allow me to do because I would just be like, my partner needs to fix how I’m feeling right now.
And instead I was able to say, I’m going to do this on my own. And with a little bit of help, I made it through the night. I felt better this morning and yeah, it’s all good.
August/narration:
Ginelle’s relationship with her sexuality and her body have continued to grow, too.
Ginelle: I feel like I finally got to a place where I…like, right now I’m the fattest I’ve ever been and I’m the happiest I’ve ever been with my body and I feel like that’s been the case for a couple years and I can just exist.
I don’t have to try to change my body. I don’t have to try to be different than I am. I don’t have to worry about if I’m enough for another person. I know that I’m enough and I only seek out people who also believe that. And so our sex is not contingent on whether I look a certain way. It just is because we like each other and we’re attracted to each other and that’s it.
August/narration:
Ginelle has evolved so much since her early days, back when she sought validation in chat rooms. Today, she uses the internet very differently. She told me she’s found such vibrant and supportive community through social media, one that’s elevated and held her through my body-acceptance journey.” Her reels about body acceptance reach and resonate with so many people.
Those messages ring true in her book, too, which is so aptly named. I asked her about the title.
Ginelle: Make a Home Out of You came to me randomly, it seemed almost, in a magical, almost spiritual way. I was brainstorming and asking people and all I did was give it a little bit of space and like the idea came in and then I realized it made sense across the whole storyline that I was trying to make a home, in substances, in people, in behaviors, instead of in myself.
I was trying to find my sense of self worth. I was trying to find my sense of contentment. Who I was outside of me instead of looking within to be like, Hmm, well, what do I think? What do I feel? Am I enough? I think by the end of the book, I find that contentment and it’s only the beginning of the journey.
It’s like I said, some people are like, “Oh my God, we just want to know what happens next!”
August: You’re like, so do I!
Sponsor fun:
Did you know that sex toys can make orgasms last longer? They also make Big Os more likely, if you’ve struggled in that department. Whether you use a toy alone or with a partner, I highly recommended having at least one you love in your pleasure toolbox. If you want to stock up on toys or your favorite lube, you can get free — always discreet — shipping on orders over $75 at The Pleasure Chest. Simply head to thepleasurechest.com and search by category, for vibrators, strap-ons, kink accessories and more. Again that’s The Pleasure Chest at thepleasurechest.com.
August/narration:
I’ll share some related advice from Ginelle in a bit. But first, Nancy Jo Sales’s story. I first shared it in 2021 after reading her compelling memoir. And I thought about it a lot while working on Ginelle’s story.
Find Nancy Jo Sales’s story transcript here.
August/narration:
If you related to Ginelle’s story, and her quest to feel a sense of home and ease inside herself, she wanted you to hear this:
Ginelle: I think I’ve set up my life recently so that I have practices that influence my belief. Something as arbitrary as journaling on a daily basis influences my sense of self, and influences how I feel about myself. You know, I do yoga, I have communities, you know, I make sure I get enough sleep, I have a healthy diet for me, and I don’t use healthy in the diet culture way, but what works for me.
I feel like it’s all about the patterns that you set up in your life. Everybody has different energy and different resources, but like doing the best that you can with those and like, building your life around you. Yeah, that’s what has helped me to build a sense of self that I feel good in. From there, thought patterns can change. Because if I’m not eating, if I’m not sleeping, if I’m not, like, journaling or taking care of myself, then my thought patterns are in the dumpster. You know, I’m really spiraling, or like, I’m out of it. And so I think I just try to take really good care of myself maybe is the summary of that.
August/narration:
Find Ginelle’s book, Make a Home Out of You: A Memoir, most anywhere books are sold. Follow her on Instagram @ginelletesta, and learn more about her work at ginelletesta.com.
Nothing Personal: My Secret Life in the Dating App Inferno, by Nancy Jo Sales, is also available at most independent and commercial booksellers. Check out her documentary “Swiped: Hooking Up in the Digital Age,” is available on HBO or Amazon Prime. and learn more at nancyjosales.com.
If you’re enjoying Girl Boner Radio, I’d love it if you’d share links with your friends or post a rating on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. Thanks so much for listening.
Leave a Reply