Talking to Strangers About Sex, with Julia Rothman and Shaina Feinberg

“Talking to Strangers About Sex, with Julia Rothman and Shaina Feinberg”

A lightly edited Girl Boner Radio episode transcript

August (narration):

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to talk to strangers about their sex lives? If you’ve listened to this show from the beginning, you know that’s how partly how I started. I walked around a busy area of Los Angeles, asking people—very excitedly—what they thought a Girl Boner was. Here’s a little excerpt:

August: So how would you define Girl Boner?

Pedestrian: I have no words to describe that.

August: Indescribable! I like that.

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August: So tell me what a Girl Boner is.

Pedestrian: Something involving the chest area.

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August: What, in your opinion, is a Girl Boner?

Pedestrian: A girl that has an erection or something? 

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August: What do you think a Girl Boner is?

Pedestrian: Something like a present? 

–

August (narration):

In the years since, I’ve received so many questions from readers and listeners. And pretty often, people ask me what it’s like talking to so many different people about sex. Today’s guests, author and illustrator Julia Rothman and writer and filmmaker Shaina Feinberg, have created an absolute treasure trove that, in many ways, answers that, while giving folks who don’t have the same opportunity a front row seat.

Their coauthored book, Every Body: An Honest and Open Look at Sex from Every Angle, is full stories from collaborators, essayists, sexuality experts, illustrators, graphic artists and everyday people they met on the street or who submitted their thoughts online. 

Booklist gave Every Body a starred review, calling it “boisterous and beautiful,” “visually stunning,” and a book that “will make readers laugh, cry, and cheer.” 

I spoke with Julia and Shaina about their journey with the book, including what it was like to talk sex with total strangers, and what we can all learn from the results. 

[a few bars of acoustic music]

Julia first came up with the idea for Every Body, for very thoughtful reasons.

Julia:

First off, it felt like this book didn’t exist in the world. And there are a lot of books that have a lot of information and that are great and are very technical or teach you a lot of stuff. But I think what I respond to the most is stories from real people where I can say, “Oh, this is an actual person who had this experience.” And if I hear that, then I know I’m not alone because there is another person out there feeling the same thing I’m feeling. 

August (narration):

Julia told me she read Our Bodies, Ourselves when she was a kid. A group of women put it together in 1969, after a workshop called “Women and Their Bodies,” in which they all shared experiences with doctors and their frustrations around how little doctors seemed to know about folks with vulvas and how their bodies worked. Nine editions have since been published and many people credit it as one of the first helpful guides around sexuality they had access to. Julia appreciated the book, and especially the short stories and anecdotes sprinkled throughout. Those were what she most responded to when she was young, and the parts she read over and over.

Julia:

So I always had this idea that I wanted to make a book of only that and more, as much as possible. It’s kind of like when you watch a movie and at the end, it says, “This is based on real people.” And then you’re like, “Wow! These were real people.” It’s kind of like that. It’s like all these real people telling all this stuff. They’re actually out there living their lives and you feel less alone. And I guess I wanted to feel less alone.

August (narration):

In the very early stages of Every Body, Julia read an op-ed Shaina had written for the New York Times and suggested she write a piece for the book. That gradually turned into far more, as they ended up deciding to complete the entire book together. And like many successful teams, they compliment each other really well. 

I asked Shaina what went through her mind when Julia asked her onboard.

Shaina:

I’m a writer and a filmmaker and so what could I bring to the project? I’m a very outgoing person. So I think that’s something that Julia has talked about. When I came on, it was like, “Okay! We can go to the streets, now. Let’s go together.” 

Every single time we went out, it was so fun to connect with people. And it was such an energy exchange. 

In some ways, our column grew out of that. Because, for our column, we do talk to people a lot on the street, not every time, but we have done that. And so it’s just sort of like a thing that we got into doing.

August (narration):

That illustrated column, called “Scratch,” runs in the New York Times. It’s about “money—and the people who deal with it.” They’ve featured a bra fitter who wants you to dance in her shop and people who’ve been speed-dating or matchmaking during the pandemic and more. Much like their column, Every Body is full of really rich and colorful illustrations, which tell the stories as much as the essays and anecdotes do.

Julia:  

Like Shaina was saying, I brought her on because of the things I thought I was lacking, which she has a lot of. I’m very visual, and I can make things look good but she can do the—I can’t even find words. See? That’s my problem. I want to be able to articulate better and she is so good at that. And so, it translates to having conversations with people on the street, too; like when we stand out there, she’s the one who’s like, “Hey, want to talk to us about sex?” And I’m just hiding behind the sign, basically, waiting to listen, because I just get nervous with things like that. 

August (narration): 

To collect stories on the streets of New York City, Julia bought one of those signs that you can slip the letters into to spell out sentences. It was big and heavy and they carried it onto the subway and to a park where they would sit on a park bench or stand somewhere, holding it. It read, “We’re making a book. Tell us your anonymous sex stories.” The sign has limited space, so – 

Julia:  

It actually wasn’t a complete, accurate sentence because people kept saying, “I don’t have any anonymous sex stories.” It was funny because some people would try to be clever and correct our grammar there. 

So we had this huge sign, and we’d stand out there and Shaina would be like, “Hey, can you come talk to us about sex?” And I was very surprised with how many people said yes.

I would say at least half or so of people walking by would stop for a second and at least be curious and ask, “What are you doing?” And then we’d tell them and then they would say, “Oh, I got something for you or they’d say, “oh, I don’t know if I have anything.” And then we had brought a page of questions that in case they didn’t have a particular story they want to tell that we could reference and say, “Is there anything from this list?” 

August (narration): 

One question they always asked is similar to one you hear me ask guests often here: How did you first learn about sex? Julia and Shaina found that to be a question people could answer without revealing much about their personal lives.

Their book starts that way, too, in a section of stories featuring some people’s responses, called “Learning About Sex.”

Here’s a little snippet: “I learned about sex from this goth chick with huge tits in the seventh grade. She told me everything I needed to know and showed me the way… My parents still think I’m a virgin—and I’m 28!”

Another person described having “highly sexual” parents. One day while they were sitting on a waterbed watching a movie, the dad asked, “Are you having sex?” in front of the whole family. But Julia and Shaina told me that stories from most people they spoke to could have fallen under the headline, “There is no sex ed.” In the rare case, someone gets lucky. Well, you know what I mean. Julia falls into that category.

One of her first sex-related recollections involves sitting for a chat with a parent, too.

Julia:

My mother sat me down on the bed and said, “Julia, you can ask me anything you want about sex.” I don’t think I had any questions or anything in mind but it just opened up this door where I felt safe that I could ask her things that I was curious about or worried about or nervous about. I think it was a wonderful thing that she did. She doesn’t remember actually doing that. She just got the book. And she hasn’t seen any of it yet. And she’s like, “Did this really happen?” And I was like, “Are you nuts? This helped me so much. You don’t remember?”

I think the reason she was like that was because her mother was not like that. And she thought, I’m gonna do it the way I think it should be, where we’re open about things. We’re talking about them. And we’re not ashamed of anything. And so I think she just did the opposite of what happened to her as a kid. I lucked out for that.

Shaina:

My parents never had the talk with me. I don’t know if it’s because I had a much older sister so, by the time I came around, they were like, whatever. She’ll figure it out. But I do remember asking my dad about blow jobs. It was very hard for him to talk. He was like, “Well, it’s a private thing that happens between a person with a penis and the person with a mouth.” He didn’t really know how to explain it. Although, you know, now that I think about it, that’s exactly what it is. 

My parents were just kind of hands off about everything. But I also think how much growing up—I grew up in New York City and so did Julia—how much you learn from the kids around you. And they don’t know anything, either. I remember someone telling me this is another word for condom, and it was just some made up word. It wasn’t even a slang word; it was just totally made up. Everything was sort of like we were all figuring it out together.

August (narration):

I asked Shaina and Julia to share what struck them most about particular sections of the book, starting with “Masturbation Stories.”

Shaina: 

Something I’ll say is that so many people are using hairbrushes. That was a huge thing that we realized.

Julia:

When they were young and they first started. That was the thing they went to, it seemed like.

Shaina:

That was something that was an interesting find like Oh, okay. Cool! You know?

Julia:  

I mean, I think the people with penises found toothpaste and olive oil and household things to lubricate themselves with. One of the stories is about how somebody used toothpaste and then it hurt and that was their first experience. A lot of it also was about shame and how they did that and then felt guilty about it after and then learned that it was okay. I think the resourcefulness was the surprise.

August (narration):

In addition to anonymous stories and illustrations, Julia and Shaina decided to collect and feature expert insight and essays. High on that list of experts they had in mind was the late and incredible Betty Dodson, the iconic longtime educator known as the “mother of masturbation,” who died last Halloween at age 91. 

Shaina:

Through a friend of mine, I was able to score an interview with Betty. It was a very long interview; I spent an evening with her.

Every other interview that we did with experts was very cut and dry, you know, ask them questions and they answered… I had to go to her apartment in Koreatown. And once we got there, she didn’t have her hearing aids in so she didn’t hear the doorbell and it was the middle of July. So, I just waited in this sweltering heat for a long time until she finally realized what time it was and let us in. She was 89—about to be 90—she was really old. 

But then it was amazing. It was incredible to go in. There was a huge, huge bowl, a silver bowl, of all these Hitachi Wands. It was just an incredible experience, interviewing her. She’s just very stalwart in her opinions about self-pleasure and masturbation setting us free and all that stuff.

August (narration):

In the section of the book based on that interview,  called “Professional Masturbator Betty Dodson,” Betty talks about her solo play passion. In particular, she praises the group masturbation format she’s famous for teaching and encouraging. 

She said, quotes, “The orgasm you have in those groups—it’s heavenly. Because the energy in the room is incredible. Listen, I’m almost ninety and I still masturbate, but I’m done with having sex in a couple—once you teach masturbation to a group of people and masturbate with them, having sex in a couple is boring.”

Before each section of the book, you get to read a mini introductory conversation between Julia and Shaina, usually just a couple of sentences from each writer. They make for a really personal feel, especially given that what they share tends to be really personal. They aren’t addressing these topics as experts on sexuality and bodies, but as folks who relate. That seems especially true about the “body acceptance” section of their book. At the start, they both reveal ongoing personal struggles in this area.

Back when Julia first approached Shaina about the book, Shaina had in mind an essay about body dysmorphia, which she’s struggled with for a long time. It’s a mental health disorder in which you can’t stop thinking about one or more perceived flaws in your appearance, something that’s really minor or can’t even be seen by others. It’s common and can be pretty debilitating.

Shaina:

For me, the most personally life-changing aspect of working on the book was to hear so many people’s stories about losing their breasts or being chubby or being too hairy, going bald in one place and having hair come somewhere else. For me, it was really just very eye opening and sort of mind opening to hear all these different people talking about their bodies—all these different kinds of bodies— everyone has thoughts about their bodies. 

I think we’re taught to feel so much shame about our bodies or that there’s certain ways to look. Everyone internalizes that to a different degree like people who struggle with body dysmorphia, I think, internalize it more. But listening to all these stories, you hear that people just internalize it anyway, and it just feels very leveling. It feels like everyone is human. I really loved hearing all those stories and it also just made me appreciate my own body so much, like being able to move it or like having my boobs or whatever it is. Things that you really take for granted. I felt really moved by that. 

Julia:

Well, I guess for me and my body it’s always been pretty simple as like, “Oh, am I too fat or not?” You know, that’s been my thing. But people worry about so many things. 

There’s one story about the person worries that their vagina lips hang too long and that they spent so much time thinking about it and being embarrassed for anyone to see them down there because they just think something’s wrong with them. They’re Googling it all the time and finally asked a doctor about it and then still doesn’t feel okay about it, even though hearing the answer that’s normal, it wasn’t enough. 

Everybody’s having these things all the time about all these small things. And, you know, you look at a person and you would never notice that thing about them. That there’s this internal struggle they’re having is just a bummer.

August (narration):

Shaina’s essay ended up being about, well, acorns—although it ties into body dysmorphic disorder. 

Shaina: 

I also think it’s like this idea of sort of zooming out, which is like what my end essay wound up being about. There were all these acorns and it’s like this sort of zooming out and zooming out and zooming out that you can just kind of see that we’re just bodies, you know, and those bodies are constantly changing, and it shouldn’t matter so much.

August (narration): 

Another source of sexual shame that became a running theme for a section of the book involved religious messaging.

Julia:

I think that religion is stopping a lot of people from feeling okay about having sex. 

August (narration):

But not all of the stories involving religion were sad. One in particular is pretty endearing. 

Julia:

Well, we had Elna Baker write an essay. She’s a Mormon and she went on her own Rumspringa type of thing where she went out and tried having some sort of interaction with a male and what that was like. It’s hilarious. It’s a great essay. It’s like the first time she touches a penis and what happens.

August (narration):

In the essay, Elna talks about confiding in the man, a fellow Mormon, about her “break” from the religion’s rules and shares that she hasn’t yet had sex or seen a penis yet. And when he unzips his pants to show her, once she indicated she was ready, she blurted out, “It’s so big!” And the man replied, “Wow, you’re really good at this.” What unfolded after that was part sexual fun and exploration, part anatomy tutorial. When she touched his balls, with permission, she remarked, “They’re so soft, like a baby bird.” [chirp, chirp, chirp] I mean, how sweet is that? Bittersweet, I should say, because the context, before and after, wasn’t as positive. Julia noted:

Julia:

…how much shame she felt after she did that and how much struggle it took to get to that place even as an adult doing that.

Shaina:

There was one time when we were sitting there and a person, two people, came up to us. And one of them wanted to tell us a story, and the other person was like, “Oh, I have no, no, nothing, nothing at all. I come from a very conservative Christian family. I have no stories.” And then the other person told his story. And then that person told us an amazing story about having sex on a beach in the waves, while their conservative parents were, you know – 

August (narration):

Just a few feet away from them. That story appears in a section called “Location, Location, Location” and the sex involved the person’s ex-girlfriend. Here’s a short excerpt [with ocean sounds in the background]:

“It was broad daylight. My family was sitting there on the sand. We were in the ocean, so nobody could see anything… It was kind of a hot turn-on, because I was saying Fuck you to my parents but they didn’t know.”

Shaina:

So I was like, oh, that’s so interesting. They just needed to relax into the idea of talking about it. Once they sat there and listened to their friend tell a story for 10 minutes, they were able to be like, “Oh, wait. I actually do have a story, and I’m okay with sharing it.” 

August (narration): 

Gathering people’s stories and putting this book together also had its challenges for the writers. All books are challenging to complete, of course, but Every Body involved some unique ones.

Julia:  

Doing this book was hard because you sit with people and you hear these stories but you can’t react, really. You’re not there to help them. You’re not there to give them guidance or ideas or any sort of judgment. You’re just there to listen. 

So, when somebody told you a story about how lost they were or how sad or how they weren’t in touch with their body and didn’t know how to be, [I] tried very hard not to say anything and to hold that. It’s so hard. I mean, I remember some that came into the website that made me cry. And I thought all night: I wish I could write this person back and tell them it’s okay. Don’t worry, things will be okay. 

And a lot of these people wrote or told us in person I’ve never told anyone else the thing I’m telling you right now. That was pretty common. And a lot of them are about being abused. So it was very hard to be this listener. That’s for sure.

August (narration):

And then there were their own experiences that Shaina and Julia wove into the book, which, like most vulnerable things, prompted a mix of emotions.

Shaina:

On like a more selfish or personal note, what I’ll say is both Julia and I are—I think, Julia, I think of you as a very open person. And I as a filmmaker and writer have shared a lot about myself, because some of my films kind of blend documentary with fiction so I share things, you know, that are vulnerable.

I think there was definitely like, a moment when we were pulling it all together that it was like, it’s going out there! This is all going out there! There are things that I talk about in it—just didn’t like the little back and forth between Julia and I—that are very personal and I had to kind of be like, these other people shared with us, and this is gonna only be better for us sharing these things. And I stand by that. I totally feel that, but I definitely think there was like a moment, at least for me, where I was like, oh, my goodness, that’s gonna be printed a bunch of times. And now that it’s out there, it feels like well, I’m good. I’m glad it’s out there.

Julia:

You just kind of have to be like, well, here’s my truth. We’ll see what happens.

Shaina:

Yeah, I definitely like, when my Mom got it… but I think for me, what’s the big deal? Why should I be ashamed that I had a miscarriage or have dated both men and women. I’m not ashamed of those things. It feels good to just be like, let’s see it in black—is it black and white—or I don’t know what color exactly—

August: Multi-color now. [laughter]

Shaina:

Yeah. It feels freeing to just be like, who cares? I think that will help other people to feel like, who cares? What’s the big deal?

August (narration):

Julia and Shaina each shared one message they wanted to leave you all with that they took away from their whole experience with the book.

Julia:  

I would say talk to people about what you’re going through because it helps and helps to not feel like you’re alone in anything, and usually people are going to open up to you if you open up to them and it’ll feel good.

Shaina:  

I think for me, something I constantly think about is, we did one interview with a forensic sexologist, Eric M. Garrison. Something he said was that of all the thousands of people that he talks to all the time about sex, the thing that they want to know is am I normal. And he wants to take that word out of it, take normal out of it, and make it more about it’s all on a spectrum of natural. 

So, I think that’s something to kind of keep in mind. We don’t have to be normal. What is normal, anyway? We can just be who we are. Maybe that’s someone who’s asexual or polysexual or whatever it is. 

I mean, maybe you want to try pegging. Maybe you don’t. Who cares? It’s all totally fine. I think it’s the keeping it under the bed that makes it seem not okay. And so I think it goes back to what Julia just said about talking to people. Talk about it or read about it or dip your toe in it and see what it’s like.

August (narration):

Learn more about the authors and their work on their respective websites: juliarothman.com and shainafeinberg.com. Find their book, Every Body: An Honest and Open Look at Sex from Every Angle, most anywhere books are sold.

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Stream the full episode, which includes a listener segment with Dr. Megan Fleming on what folks most want others to know about sex or sexuality, up above or on your favorite podcast app! For more Girl Boner fun, join me on Patreon: Patreon.com/girlboner.