S2 08 Pleasure, Orgasm Equality, and Empowerment with Dr Laurie Mintz

I had the absolute pleasure of sitting down with Dr Laurie Mintz, a sex therapist, professor, and author of Becoming Cliterate. We explored the cultural narratives surrounding female pleasure, the "orgasm gap," and practical ways to empower women to embrace their sexuality.

Episode Summary

Dr Laurie Mintz shared how her experience teaching human sexuality at the University of Florida revealed a shocking lack of knowledge about female anatomy and pleasure. This inspired her to write Becoming Cliterate and help women close the "orgasm gap." 

We covered loads of ground in this episode, including:

• The cultural myths and taboos that hold women back from embracing pleasure.
• Why understanding your anatomy is so important for empowerment.
• The difference between spontaneous and responsive desire, and how to reignite intimacy.
• Practical ways to prioritise pleasure and create a fulfilling sex life.

This conversation is packed with humour, actionable advice, and relatable insights for anyone looking to reconnect with themselves and their relationships.

Key Takeaways

1. You're Not Broken: Struggling with desire or orgasms is common and can be addressed with the right tools and mindset.
2. Responsive Desire: You don’t need to wait to feel "in the mood" - desire often follows arousal.
3. Prioritise Pleasure: Schedule time for intimacy and create an environment that feels good for you.

Resources & Links

• Becoming Cliterate by Dr Laurie Mintz
• A Tired Woman’s Guide to Passionate Sex by Dr Laurie Mintz
• Connect with Dr Laurie: www.drlauriemintz.com
• Follow Dr Laurie on Instagram and Facebook: @DrLaurieMintz 

• Find out more about Juliette Karaman here: https://feelfullyyou.com
• Follow Juliette on instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/juliettekaraman/
• Follow Juliette on Facebook here: https://www.facebook.com/juliette.karamanvanschaardenburg

Don't forget to Rate and leave a review so more people can tune in and the ripple effect spreads further.

Transcript

Juliette Karaman: [00:00:00] Good afternoon and welcome to the Scrumptious Woman Podcast. I have with me Dr. Laurie Mince. So I absolutely loved looking at your book Becoming Cliterate. I'm gonna let you speak a little bit about you, what you do you're obviously here helping woman, but I really would love to hear a little bit, how did you come about this and introduce yourself 

Dr Laurie Mintz: a tired woman's guide to passionate Sex and why Orgasm Equality matters and how to get it. And in a nutshell I'll start with this book since it's what we're gonna focus on, whether than how I became a sex therapist and all that whole long story. But I was teaching the psychology of human sexuality at the University of Florida. And I discovered that the young women in the class were not having orgasm. They didn't know about their clitoris. It [00:01:00] was like a whole generation of knowledge was lost to these women. So I started, yeah, it's really crazy. And I started teaching to the orgasm gap to women's pleasure and I would get notes from students thanks to your class.

I'm orgasmic thanks to your class. My girlfriend's orgasmic, and it was so wonderful and I decided I'm not keeping this in my little classroom. I'm gonna write a book. To empower to expose why women aren't orgasming at the, and then to give solutions to that problem both culturally and in the bedroom.

Juliette Karaman: Which I love because you're also touching on the thing culturally, right? What have we been taught about it? Then the different cultures that it's not even okay to talk about this and to want more and to even want pleasure. Pleasure is [00:02:00] such a loaded word that people are like, oh, it's frivolous, and, but I really feel that.

Pleasure is how we change the world. All right. So for me, I really stand that, yeah, there has been so much sexual assault that if we can change that and if we can change how, if we can heal. It in ourselves, how it heals the whole world and how we can bring this into cultures, how we can bring this into companies.

So I love that you are speaking about pleasure orgasm and actually seeing how that impacts not only ourselves, but a larger. A larger ripple. 

Dr Laurie Mintz: Yeah. Thank you for saying that. I couldn't agree more. And yeah, women's lacking orgasm happens in a cultural context. What's happening in the world is getting played out in the bedroom and media images and it's a topic that's I feel very [00:03:00] passionately about and I love that you said that.

It's, if we teach women that's like women have gotten messages, right? That sex is painful, meaning intercourse. Even the words we use are messed up. But that's it's whole chapter in the book. But, we teach women that sex is painful, that sex is something we do for men. There's so much sexual assault.

If we teach women, no sex is for you. Your your orgasms are as important as him. It's not supposed to hurt. I think that is a very important and healing and pleasurable thing for women to embrace. 

Juliette Karaman: I love it and I love what you are touching on, that it's not for him. And a lot of us were taught like, oh yeah, this is what you might have on your marriage day, say like, when we didn't have sex before before marriage, and this is what you might expect.

And you just see over the ages how things have changed. [00:04:00] And now with the internet, everyone's oh, we can have this, but you're also expected to perform and I really see where a lot of. I've got four kids, I've got two boys and then twin daughters where when they started be wanting to become a little bit sexual active, it's like what's expected of me?

Mommy and I used to walk around an orgasm expert, and I've got four Muslim kids, so they're like, mommy, not quite sure that was the right thing. But then they would ask me, it's what's expected of me? And. You know what? Anything that's expected of you is wrong. What do you want? Where can we start going into what feels good to you?

What are you curious about? What does you know? What does sex mean to you even? 

Dr Laurie Mintz: Yes. It reminds me of a story of, this was before I wrote my book. I have two daughters. They're both older adults now, but. When my, one of my [00:05:00] daughters was about, she told me, and I had said to her, look, if you know you're gonna have intercourse, please let me know.

She had this serious boyfriend. I was like, 'cause I want to get birth control for you, blah, blah. So she told me, we're planning this. And I said, okay, let's make the appointment. But then I also said, look, all you've seen in the movies is. The man puts his penis in and you're both gonna have pleasure.

I said. And so that's all you know and that's all he knows and that's not gonna work for you. You need to know your own body and you need to advocate. So at the time, the book I gave her, which is still a great book, I said, so here's a book called I Love Female Orgasm. And she was like, oh mom, left with the book.

But then I would hear her and her friends like in the room, like giggling about this, but it's like women aren't given information about their [00:06:00] bodies and that, so it's just these young women and young men are imitating what they see in movies and porn, and that's not gonna result in orgasm for women, and it's likely to result in pain.

Juliette Karaman: Yeah, isn't it? And that's just the interesting bit where it's still not taught, we're still not taught female anatomy people. Like I had someone on the podcast that until she was 29, did not know where her clitoris lived. And I was like, what? You rediscovered? She's no. I discovered my glits at age 29.

I'm like, whoa. Okay. 

Dr Laurie Mintz: Yeah. It's so interesting, Juliet. I am so immersed in this and you are too. So I don't know if. Every once in a while, I think, oh, like everyone knows this, like I'm obsolete. What I'm doing is I'm not needed anymore. And then I hear so many stories like this, and no, of course women, where [00:07:00] are they gonna learn this?

'cause in school, all they're told is. The boys are separated from the girls often if they have sex ed at all, and the boys are taught about wet dreams and the girls are taught about their periods. That's that has nothing to do with female question. 

Juliette Karaman: Isn't it crazy? I was talking to my twin daughters about this the other day, and one of them, because I live in Britain, so oftentimes the schools are single sex.

So four kids, they all went to very different schools very different abilities as well. So as a mother, that's just. I'm Dutch, so we're quite open about this. My, my ex-husband's Lebanese also quite open about it, there were mixed signals a little bit, and then one of them was, one of my daughters knew, was saying it's oh, mommy.

Actually in our second school when she was 12 or 13. They all were given mirrors and were told to check and actually had anatomy [00:08:00] lessons. It's this is your outer lib, your inner libia, and actually you need to check to see that everything is okay down there. And I was like, oh. She said, I never told you that because it was so embarrassing when I was 13, but now I like it.

Now she's 23, right? 

Dr Laurie Mintz: Where is this school? I want every young woman to. Oh my God. See, I'm in the US and things are terrible and they're gonna get worse. Yeah, they are getting worse. And that's like unheard of. Even here, gynecologists don't, only some do that. They cover you with the drape. Oh, you don't wanna see your own dirty parts.

Like that's amazing 

Juliette Karaman: isn't it beautiful? And it's one of the things that I like doing in my retreats. It's like giving everyone a mare and just starting to recognize what it looks like and all the different labia and all the way that we, our bodies, how we are all similar and yet very different shapes.

And there's no wrong, there's no right. It's just how we are. [00:09:00]

Dr Laurie Mintz: Yes. It strikes me something I heard someone say once. People should not have different knowledge of sex in their bodies because they go to different schools. It's like someone could grow up in one here in the US one state and know a lot more than someone who grows up in another state.

It's just, , I don't think people. It across the world. I do think people learn that one and one is two, or two and two is four but it's, when it comes to sex, it's so culturally and locally bound. 

Juliette Karaman: It completely is. I remember moving from Geneva with my two sons and my husband's cousin had gotten the boys into into school, and then I got pregnant with twin daughters.

And she has three daughters. So I said, so what do you call, the vagina? What do you call that with your girls? And she's oh, front [00:10:00] bottom. And I'm like, what? Front bottom? I'm like what? What's, and she's yeah, bottom and front, bottom. I was like, oh, that's confusing. So I was just like, it's really confusing.

So I remember talking to a journalist about this a few years ago. I said, it's so confusing when the parents can't even give it a proper name. And then in school you don't get taught. How about these children that grow up and they're like, I've got a bottom and I've got a front bottom. So it doesn't quite work.

Dr Laurie Mintz: No. And in fact, one thing I really like, the outside area, you know this, maybe your listeners don't, obviously the outside so I'm saying it the outside area where the clitoris and the inner labia, which are the most sexually responsive parts. Are called the vulva. Yes. The canal where babies can come out, penises and dildos and fingers can go in.

Is called the vagina. [00:11:00] Yeah. But very few women orgasm from vaginal stimulation. Absolutely. We call our entire, at least in America, people call the entire genitals of vagina. And by doing so, we are linguistically erasing the part of ourselves that gives us the most pleasure, and we're calling our genitals by the part that's more useful to men than to women themselves.

Juliette Karaman: Wow. That actually really hit. We're calling it what's more useful to men than to ourselves, because a lot of women, we don't get, we, we may not experience as much pleasure from just penetration. This is one of the things I am. I had this this VIP couple over to do part recording for their show.

And I said, do you realize that it may take up to 40 minutes to be [00:12:00] enough aroused enough for penetration? And he's just I don't have time for that. I was like, okay. But really to recognize that, I got my puppet out, my vulva puppet out. I have one too. Do the show right? We all have some kind of vulva puppet just to show what are they what are the parts what are the parts called?

And just to not have any shame about it to say, this is who I am, this is what I have. 

Dr Laurie Mintz: That not enough time for it reminds me, I was talking to a reporter about a sex scene in a movie. A very, and it's a very erotic scene, says everyone. And she wanted to know what I thought of it.

The woman orgasms with no warmup because I hate the word, I won't use the word foreplay either. 'cause that implies it's just a lead up to the main events sex penetration. So I don't use those words 'cause they're also male privileging. But I. I said like it's not realistic. [00:13:00] She orgasms with just no warmup and a little penetration.

And she said, the reporter said you have to understand they only have five to 10 seconds to film that. And I thought, I said that doesn't really convince me because there's other things that can be shown in five to 10 seconds. Like, why do we choose that? Is. That would be like if we overprivileged female pleasure, we'd be showing a man orgasming from going down on a woman.

We don't do that. 

Juliette Karaman: I love that

rights. What have we been taught? That we have to show that it's a certain way and this is what, I teach my couples like, let it not be transactional. If someone, if you want to have a date morning and really just one of you receive, and I'm sure you've talked about receiving and that you don't have to always both be the giver and the receiver, but then it's okay, so one of you maybe want to receive [00:14:00]different kinds of tactile, neurotic blueprint.

Coach as well. So we really look at the ways into pleasure and that sometimes it's so nice to set your timer for maybe 20 minutes. That's, if that's all that you can receive. The capacity to receive is also what we build on. It's and then receive without having to wonder if your partner wants to have a blowjob afterwards or wants to have penetration.

But really just be open to receive that kind of touch. 

Dr Laurie Mintz: I love that. Yeah. I do teach the same thing. Yeah. And one time, but it's so interesting. I wrote on my blog. I wrote about turn taking, and you know how lesbian women have more orgasms? 'cause they take turns giving and receiving. They don't just try to orgasm during the same act of penetration.

But I said here, here's ways to flip the script with turn taking. She comes first, she comes second, blah, blah. But I said, or just one person you could receive and. A man wrote [00:15:00] into the blog and he said, yes, that's my favorite thing. Every Sunday morning I pleasure. My wife and I ask for nothing in return and only she orgasms.

And I had to shut the comments down. People were like, that's weird. That's weird. And I was, but think about it. That is exactly what's happening in heterosexual hookup sex all the time that men are receiving and women aren't, and nobody says That's weird. 

Juliette Karaman: Isn't it funny that we're still questioning female pleasure orgasm climax?

I did this practice called orgasm meditation, which is 15 minutes of clit fiddling, basically touching someone's clit and the only. Aim is to feel something for the person with the clit, for the person who's actually stroking it, and it was such an incredible eyeopener for me that there's no penetration, there's no [00:16:00] exchange wanted afterwards.

This is. You put a timer on, after 15 minutes, it's finished. You just say, oh, at this moment, I felt that. And people, when they first hear about that saying, that's fucking weird. I'm like, yes. And we can also just teach people that for 15 minutes, you can have that amount of attention on a tiny little.

Part without and you'll have all the things that go through your mind, your head going, oh my God, this is crazy. And for the woman opening her legs and being stroked like, this is absolute madness. Someone is stroking my clitoris, what should I do? So we're going through all that conditioning in 15 minutes, which is quite eye opening actually.

Dr Laurie Mintz: Yes. I have never gone to a workshop or given a workshop, but I've certainly read about it. So I know everything you're talking about. And the mind piece is something that's really interesting. It's not just what they're, the women are feeling in their body. You're [00:17:00] emphasising what's going on in their heads, which is generally so important to women's in general.

'cause there's so much going on. Do I look okay? Do I smell okay? Is this taking too long? And, learning to turn that off. And to focus on sensation, is obviously, essential to having pleasure. 

Juliette Karaman: And that's it. So most people don't really know what they like. They know what they don't like, or I don't want you to do this and I don't want you to do that.

I'm like, okay, so let's take those things off the table and let's just start seeing what feels good. Can you. I like working with timers. I like 'em with time constraints so that we can actually just teach people to start having a bit more pleasure, because if you say book at two, two hours, they're like, oh yeah no.

What am I gonna do in two hours if we can't talk about the children, can't talk about our problems? I'm like, no, let's just make it like really short period that you can succeed at. 

Dr Laurie Mintz: I like working with [00:18:00] timers by the. Yeah, when I do sensate focus, a lot of times I'll use a timer. 'cause otherwise people are, it helps people not be up in their head like, when should we stop?

Is this going on too long? It's it gives a, it gives like a container around it, which I think is important. 

Juliette Karaman: Can I ask you, what was your most cringe moment that either a client or your children or when you grew up knowing that this became a passion was, did you have one? 

Dr Laurie Mintz: Yes, I do my most cringe moment and it, I won't know if it would I, I don't know if cringe is the word for me.

I don't cringe usually, but my most are you oopsie? No. Are you most kidding me? Like this? Are you, so maybe I'm thinking of cringe wrong. No, that's perfect. 

Juliette Karaman: One of the moments that stood out to you. Let's say it that way. 

Dr Laurie Mintz: Okay. So I had a [00:19:00] we were talking about sex ed in my class and and I had a woman, this was not too long ago, raise her hand and say that in her sex.

She was told that if she had, they used the word sex intercourse before marriage, her vagina would mold to the shape of that person's penis permanently, and her future husband would never be satisfied 'cause his wouldn't fit. 

Juliette Karaman: Oh my God. And she believed that. 

Dr Laurie Mintz: Of course she did. She was 12 and the teacher told her that he was an authority figure.

Juliette Karaman: This was a teacher that told her that? 

Dr Laurie Mintz: Yeah, it was in sex ed. 

Juliette Karaman: Oh. Oh my God. I hear about religions saying things like that, or parents driving like the fear of God into children. But this isn't sex ed. 

Dr Laurie Mintz: No. Wow. And wow cringe. I had a cringe worthy moment yesterday actually. Now you'll get me going.

This is a good [00:20:00] question. I wanna ask every sex educator and therapist. What? Oh my goodness. I love this question. I was on a radio show yesterday. It was a call in show and a woman called in and she was 62 and she said, I can't orgasm anymore. And my doctor told me that's normal. I shouldn't worry about it.

That's just what happens to me. Oh, my answer of course was that's not true and you need a new doctor. But that was like, that was also cringe worthy. 

Juliette Karaman: But isn't it sad? Yeah, I'm postmenopausal after four kids. The baby factories definitely closed. . I see so many people go through the menopause and the pains that they're having and just recognize thinking like, oh, I'm never gonna get my sex life back again.

This is just what happens to us. I'm like, no, it's not. And stop. And stop and actually inform yourself and let's get this on the road, baby. [00:21:00] You can have a hell of a lot of pleasure and it doesn't always need to end in a climax. You can have fun and have pleasure in a completely different way than you used to.

Maybe have it with your husband or partner before. 

Dr Laurie Mintz: Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So lots of authority figures giving a lot of bad messages out there. That's cringeworthy. 

Juliette Karaman: Completely. What are three of the things that people come to you with most? What are the complaints, worries, questions they have? 

Dr Laurie Mintz: Diminished desire is probably the number one.

Yeah, women over 35. Inability to orgasm during partner sex. Mismatch and mismatched sex drive. And my partner just isn't doing it for me. Those are the top ones. Yeah. 

Juliette Karaman: It's sad, right? And. If you could give our listeners [00:22:00] just like three easy to implement tips for any of those questions.

What, or any of those topics 

Dr Laurie Mintz: you want me to really something that All of em or just one of them? Just 

Juliette Karaman: one of them. Just choose one of them, just choose one of them. But like what? What are some of the things that they can do from listening to this podcast that they can take away and oh, I'm not broken.

Dr Laurie Mintz: Yeah. First of all, no one is broken, but so many women think they are. Course, yeah. Okay. Let's talk about diminished desire, because I think there's some real easy steps here. So when we think of desire, we think of being horny, right? Of our genitals tingling, our skin, tingling wetness, and that's the reason to have sex.

It turns out that there is two types of desire. There's spontaneous desire, which is what we're talking about, and there's what's called responsive or receptive desire, which is. I'm, I, sex will [00:23:00] be good when it gets going. It'll be, feel closer to my partner and et cetera. Are many reasons.

And a lot of times women are using that responsive desire, but they're calling it duty sex. And what I want women to know is as you age and as a relationship ages. You stop feeling. Most women really pretty much stop feeling spontaneously horny, and there's biological reasons. I don't wanna get into all of that, but women are not broken when they feel that way.

When they stop feeling horny and so many women feel they're broken, but what you need to know is. Arousal can come before desire, that you can reverse the equation and you can have sex to get horny rather than waiting to be horny to have sex. And so you can schedule sexual encounters. I like to call them tris 'cause that's a lot [00:24:00] sexier than scheduled.

Like we didn't just show, here's my example. Like we didn't just show up the same time to record this podcast. We said it's important to both of us. We made time for it. I don't of course show up at my yoga classes. I put them in the schedule 'cause they're important to me. And you can do, can and should do that with sex.

And use that time. Build the arousal. Don't rush through it. Be mindful. That's another tip. A lot of times women are having bad sex 'cause they're up in their head. Do they look okay? No. Okay. And one thing that's really helpful is to learn to focus on sensation. And you can do that by meditation. You can do it by yoga.

You can also just do it in your daily life. The next time you brush your teeth, really focus on how that feels and when your mind wanders and it will, because that's what minds do. Yep. Bring it back to the sensation and [00:25:00] practice that. And give up the myth of spontaneous sex. 'cause it never was.

Think about when you went out on a date, you got dressed, you put on perfume, you. Flirt it all night. Oh, the night ended in sex. That's genius. That's well orchestrated. So for women with diminished desire, first of all, see a doctor, see a sexual medicine physician, make sure everything's okay.

But it's, and there are medicines that are, at least in the US you can take, but the other thing you can do is prioritize it. Give up the idea that it should have to be spontaneous.

Lead you to the desire versus.

Juliette Karaman: I love that so much. I would add to it, what I tell my couples is schedule it in and schedule it in for a time when you're not tired. So first thing on a Sunday morning or so, make sure that the kids are away 

Dr Laurie Mintz: and actually not, yes, [00:26:00] absolutely. Great addition. Thank you. I say that too. Yes. 

Juliette Karaman: But get dressed up for it.

You, you, this is not, this didn't just come out of nowhere, right? It's get dressed up, breath dressed up, take a shower, create a beautiful atmosphere for it. Put all the dirty socks away that are on the floor that might get her out of her pleasure. What are the things that put you in pleasure?

What are the things that take you out? And then just as soon as you start becoming aware of that, then just set yourself up for success, both of you. 

Dr Laurie Mintz: Absolutely. The only thing I would contradict is if, unless dressing up doesn't turn you on, if you like being in your jammies, that's fine too. 

Juliette Karaman: Oh, completely.

What I meant just take a shower. Take a shower, brush your teeth, like brush your hair, get get like in the mood that way as.

Yeah and no, absolutely no pressure. You don't have to look all the part, it's just just what did you used to do? What are the things that you like doing for [00:27:00] yourself, right? Like I put on silk and satin shirts because I like the way it feels on my skin, not because, 

Yeah.

Probably also how they look, but it's more, for me, it all about feelings. 

Dr Laurie Mintz: Absolutely. I love that. 

Juliette Karaman: Textures and yeah and fun things. This has been an absolute delight. Would you please let our listeners know, and it will all be in the show notes, how to contact you what's new in your world, where to get your books, et cetera.

Dr Laurie Mintz: Yeah. Thank you so much. So you can find me online at my name, www dr. D-R-L-A-U-R-I-E-M-I-N-T-Z com. You can buy my books on Amazon, indie bookstores, Barnes and Noble. Anywhere books are sold. I am active on social media, especially Instagram and Facebook with that same handle at. Dr. Laurie Minz and stay tuned on my Instagram for some news.

I'm starting my [00:28:00] own podcast, which I'll be talking about at some point. I have a new book contract, but that one's top secret. I won't talk about it except to say it's happening and Oh, exciting. It's been a delight to speak with you. We definitely teach things very similar and I really. Appreciate all you're doing to enhance people's sexual pleasure, and I appreciate you having me on the show.

Juliette Karaman: Oh, it's been absolutely fun. And I love that you just also just take a bit of humor to it, right? It's, it can be such, otherwise it's such a heavy topic. But I love that, that you're teaching women, children, everyone, and that you have taken this passion and are just putting it out in the world.

So thank you