Trust Women Book Club: All Women Want
with Alyx Gorman and Georgia Grace

On Monday 2 June 2025, the Victorian Women’s Trust proudly presented a Trust Women: Feminist Book Club webinar on All Women Want by Alyx Gorman.

Alyx groundbreaking book gets to the bottom of the pleasure gap — why so many straight women aren’t satisfied in the bedroom — and what to do about it. Drawing from over 130 interviews and ‘field reports’, she cuts through the moralising, marketing, and misinformation to reveal sex as it really is, not as we’re told it should be.

Joining her in conversation is Georgia Grace, sexologist and author of The Modern Guide to Sex. Together, they explore what pleasure means for gender equality — and how we can all demand more.

All Women Want is available now. Published by Harper Collins.

Featured speakers:

• Alyx Gorman, journalist and Guardian Australia Lifestyle Editor
• Georgia Grace, sexologist and author

Further Resources

• All Women Want (book by Alyx Gorman)
• The Modern Guide to Sex (book by Georgia Grace)
• Come As You Are (book by Emily Nagoski)
• Savage Love (book by Dan Savage)
• Three Minute Game (sex therapy activity)

Transcript:

This transcript has been edited for clarity. 

Georgia Grace:
Hello, everyone. It’s great to be joining you this evening. My name is Georgia. This is Alyx. I’ll do more of an intro to both of us in a moment. But before we begin, I would like to acknowledge that Alyx and I are both joining from the unceded stolen lands of the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation.

Alyx Gorman:
And the Borogegal people for me.

Georgia Grace:
Thank you. Thank you. And I would like to, we would like to extend our respects to elders past and present, and acknowledge that it always was and always will be Aboriginal land. I am conscious that perhaps there will be people joining from all over Australia, and it would be really great to hear whose land you’re joining from so that we can extend that respect as well. So if you could post in the chat, it would be really great to hear from you.

We are both really excited to be here. Awesome to see that coming in. Thank you everyone. We’re excited to be here for this amazing free webinar run by the Victorian Women’s Trust. And there are so many great webinars and panels that they are offering that are free and accessible and online. But tonight, for this feminist book club, Trust Women, we are going to be looking at pleasure with a specific focus, as Alyx has chosen, on the ways in which capitalism impacts and affects our experiences of pleasure. And also gender and pleasure, equality or inequality, which we may get to based on Alyx’s findings.

We will also have a Q&A towards the end. So if everyone could think about your burning questions and post them in the group chat. We’ll moderate that and hopefully get to all of those questions at the end. I will remind you, throughout the evening, but if anything comes to mind or if there’s anything you want to share or anything you want to add, we’d love to hear from you. Because I’ve got a lot of questions, but I’m sure you all have a lot of questions too.

So who are we? This is Alyx Gorman and I’m going to read Alyx’s bio. Alyx Gorman is an editor and journalist. She has worked in digital and print lifestyle media for 15 years in Sydney, Melbourne, New York and London. Alyx is currently the lifestyle editor of Guardian Australia and has been writing on the topics of sex, relationships and dating her entire career. She’s also the coauthor of a weekly pop culture newsletter, Saved for Later. Alyx is a frequent guest across ABC’s radio network, and has worked as a moderator and panelist for Sydney’s Writers Festival, Vivid Ideas, the Powerhouse Design Conference, Semi-permanent and more. Alyx holds a bachelor of social…

Alyx Gorman:
This is boring, we don;’t need to keep going. Sorry I should have abbreviated my bio.

Georgia Grace:
Okay, good. It’s always such a clunky feeling when you’re like, stop doing the bio. Basically, Alyx is an incredible writer and editor, and has a lot of experience in speaking with people about sex, dating and relationships. Alyx also edited one of my pieces, and she just made it so much better.

And my name is Georgia. I’m a certified sex and relationship practitioner. Somatic therapist and author. I work out of a practice here in Sydney. I’m the co-founder of a sexual wellness company and do a few other things as well. But enough of the bios because they are long and boring. Let’s get into it.

So Alyx has written an incredible book. It is amazing. And I have been recommending it and referring it to a lot of my friends and peers, but also my clients. But I think the interesting part of your work, Alyx, is that you spoke with 60 women about their sex lives for this book. And I can imagine with that, there are so many differing perspectives you would have learned or received or heard. Were there any surprising or common themes throughout these interviews?

Alyx Gorman:
Yeah. I mean, one of the, most kind of disheartening common themes throughout these interviews was how many like, to make it really clear. I briefed every woman that I spoke with that I was writing a book about pleasure, not trauma, and that I like that they didn’t have to disclose any of their trauma histories to me if they didn’t want to. But of course, that if they did want to disclose that I was there to receive that. But not talking about like truly traumatic experiences, but the common thread of just mediocre sexual experiences could be traced from every single person that I spoke to.

With one exception, who was a 22 year old woman who lost her virginity to her partner, who she’s still with, at 20. And they had had really open, communicative sex from the very, very beginning. And she had only had sex with that one person. And her, she’d never had a bad sexual experience because she had one partner and he was great.

Georgia Grace:
Wow.

Alyx Gorman:
59 other people that I spoke with had, could all sort of relate to the idea of having sex that just wasn’t that exciting, that felt either obligatory or boring or painful or maladroit in various ways. Most of the women I spoke to when they’d had mediocre sexual experiences weren’t necessarily that comfortable speaking up. And the women that did kind of try and speak about the sexual experiences that were not thrilling for them quite often received, like, quite hostile responses from their partners when they tried to talk about how they might be able to improve their love lives. So that was one of the kind of more disheartening comments.

Georgia Grace:
Yeah, it is disheartening but also not surprising.

Alyx Gorman:
Not surprising but I think that was one of the more common experiences. Not surprising but I think that was one of the more common experiences.But one of the more heartening and wonderful common threads from women was that when they spoke to their girlfriends about sex and about pleasure, how different their own relationship with their sexuality became. So for a lot of women, when I asked them, about something that had happened in their lives that had really changed the way they think about desire and pleasure, that thing was a conversation with friends or a conversation with other women. And knowing that being able to reach out and talk to women about how you’re feeling and where your sex life is at, and that that can be received in a way that’s positive and not shameful, and that that can be something that you can kind of take back into your own life and learn that you’re not alone or learn from, like other people’s experience. That is a really powerful and incredible thing, I think.

Georgia Grace:
And it’s kind of the antithesis of what we’re all taught or I guess, what we’re striving for, which is like to be an expert. It’s this thing that you have to figure out on your own, and it’s just a gift that you’re given. And it should be natural, but actually it is being in communal or community spaces and learning from others that we can improve our sex lives or just feel more comfortable during sex. What about the most sexually satisfied? Were there any groups of people who you found were having really good sex?

Alyx Gorman:
So the women I spoke to who kind of demographically could be grouped together, who were having amazing sex were divorced women in their late 40s upwards because they just didn’t care what anyone else thought. They had really great senses of self.

I think that there was also a bit of a selection bias going on where, particularly for that demographic. The women who wanted to speak to me were the ones who wanted to be like, I was married for many years and my sex life sucked. And now I’m divorced and my sex life rules. So sort of did seek me out.

But the, it was quite amazing how many women told me the same story of, oh, I was never that interested in sex or the sex in my marriage was all for him. Or we completely stopped having sex. And then I got divorced and everything changed. And now I feel more desire and have explored my sexuality in more ways than I ever thought was possible.

Georgia Grace:
Yes.

Alyx Gorman:
The thing that’s like, quite lovely about this is that you don’t necessarily have to go through the journey of the bad marriage and the return to self-discovery to learn from what these divorced women in their late 40s upwards learned the hard way, which is you have great sex when you have a really strong sense of who you are and what you want, and are not worried about disappointing others or what everyone else thinks.

Georgia Grace:
That’s so interesting. When you said that when we were on a panel together, I was like, wow, I can really place that with a lot of the conversations I’ve had with people who have left a marriage or a marriage has ended.

I guess I have to ask this as a queer woman myself, and I’m guessing there may be some queers joining us this evening. Why the focus on straight women alone?

Alyx Gorman:
So I focused on straight women alone because I think that looking at sort of majority culture through a critical lens is something that we don’t do enough. There’s actually a university in the US that recently launched a kind of critical heterosexuality studies program, and I was like, oh, that’s the thing. That’s the thing I want to do. Because I think when you assume something as a default like straightness, then you don’t necessarily examine the sort of intricacies and weirdnesses about what it is to sort of be straight.

And to be fair, a lot of the women I spoke to were queer themselves. But they were women who have sex with men. So I was talking about that kind of like specific heterosexual dynamic. I was really interested in focusing on that because that is the kind of majority. It is the assumed default. I also didn’t feel like I could accurately talk about all the things I wanted to talk about while trying to be inclusive, because a lot of the sexual wellness industry and like, absolutely not your corner of it Georgia. But many other elements are not really that inclusive of gender expansive folks or queer folks, even though sometimes they might sort of make vague motions towards it. You know, like post up a Pride Month Instagram square.

A lot of the traditional aspects of the way that women’s sexuality is sold is really only sold to straight women. And so if I tried to make this not about heterosexuality and bring everyone in, it would have ended up being a less rich text that was actually more exclusionary because it just didn’t tackle the issues that non majority sexualities experience. So I thought it would be more inclusive for me to like really define my group and talk only about them.

Georgia Grace:
Yeah. And it is a really interesting and fascinating book because of that approach. And I love the way you framed it at the start. Your book is split into three sections what we have, what we buy and what we need. Why did you want to structure it in this way?

Alyx Gorman:
So when I was originally beginning to write the book, it was actually only two sections just what we buy and what we need. And, after I done maybe 20 or so case studies and had spoken to a lot of women for whom like their own sexuality was quite mysterious to them. They sort of would say, I don’t really understand why this happens, but this happens. Or what’s going on with this. Or who would just kind of tell me, like very confidently, misinformation. That was probably like… I used to work in women’s magazines. It was our fault. They would tell me misinformation that was 100% the fault of people who worked in women’s magazines.

Georgia Grace:
Yeah.

Alyx Gorman:
Like it was the truth. And then the only women I spoke to who seemed to kind of have a really robust grasp of their own sexuality, and who would sort of understand why things would change, why things were fluid, were the women who have read a book called Come as You Are by Emily Nagoski. Now, I’m sure if I was doing these interviews again seven months later, it would be the women who had read your book, The Modern Guide to Sex, who would know what was actually going on with themselves.

But I realised that the state of sex education in Australia and abroad is so dire that we really have no idea what’s going on in our heads or in our bodies when it comes to having sex. And so I had to add an entire, like, first part intro that was just sexuality 101. So that I could talk about the things that I actually wanted to talk about.

Georgia Grace:
Yeah. Yeah. And I think that often when you exist in these spaces, as you have written about sex for 15 years, I can imagine you kind of get in this world where you’re like, I’ve covered this. I’ve been speaking, I’ve been writing about this for so long, surely this isn’t still necessary or essential, but because so few of us have had access to sex education. Thorough, inclusive, supportive sex education. The majority of people don’t have this information. Or don’t know where to get it.

Alyx Gorman:
Yeah, and I think I kind of existed in this sort of sex positive bubble where I assumed like, oh, well, of course everyone has read the same, like Guardian article from 2020 about how we only discovered “discovered” only kind of anatomically described the clitoris in 2005. Of course everyone grew up reading Savage Love. It turns out, no, we absolutely did not.

Georgia Grace:
No.

Alyx Gorman:
Most people have not been lucky enough to receive the kind of sex education that I was lucky enough to receive.

Georgia Grace:
I think one thing that I was really able to and wanting to geek out in your book was the way that you approached capitalism and sex and essentially paying for sex and the state of the world. What impacts do you feel capitalism has on sex? And I guess this may be a completely different question, but why are we so desperate and eager to pay to get that quick fix?

Alyx Gorman:
So the whole reason I wanted to write the book was because as a lifestyle editor, I get sent pitches from companies every day who want me to cover their products so that they can sell more things. And over 15 years, the thing that I have noticed has grown the most is the sexual wellness industry. It used to be that products that were about female sexuality, maybe unless it was lingerie, I would get an email once every few months. Like maybe Sexpo is in town. Then, particularly just before the pandemic and then explosively over the course of 2020. Suddenly it seemed like everyone was selling female pleasure. And that was fascinating to me.

So I really wanted to figure out what was behind that. And what I’ve sort of come to realise through researching the book and also looking at the way that capitalism has intersected with male sexuality since the sexual revolution of the late 1950s, early 1960s, is that one of the things that kind of turning sex into a for profit enterprise does. Is it can really flatten our imaginations.

So I think that we see this with mainstream pornography, which is made not to create like even the best or most entertaining sexual viewing experience, but to create the most profitable sexual viewing experience. And what is the most profitable has changed over time.So now it’s like very algorithmically driven. This profit motive is so contrary to what is actually going to be the most pleasurable and most enjoyable experience in many instances. So it is much easier to sell someone something that seems really easy. And a lot of what can be really great about sex, is not necessarily easy. It’s highly specific and complex and about kind of relational issues.

Georgia Grace:
Yeah.

Alyx Gorman:
In terms of the second part of your question, why we’re so keen to pay for a quick fix, I think it comes back to that sort of poverty of imagination in a way. Like, we are sort of told that the easiest way to change something is to buy something. And in sexuality, it’s really interesting because novelty is so, so critical to many people’s erotic lives. Like, that’s just how we’re wired. For a lot of people, something new and shiny is going to be a big turn on. And we’re not necessarily told how to create newness, how to generate something that’s new and shiny that doesn’t involve spending money on something, whether it be a new outfit or a dirty weekend away. Coming up with novelty without like, it being a financial transaction is something that I think many of us have never been taught the art of.

Georgia Grace:
Yeah, and it can be quite scary. Or, it can feel really vulnerable to turn to ourselves and to spend time with who we are as a sexual person and to figure out what that means for us. Because so much of what we, or how we’ve understood sex is from these depictions that we see.

And I’ll hear it in session a lot as well, that when people come into session, say for desire, they will say, I’ve tried the libido pills, I’ve tried everything. I just, I’ll take anything. I’ll do anything to to work on it. But then when it comes to doing homework or at home practices, more often than not they won’t do the work that they’ve been assigned in between sessions. Because that’s the more vulnerable part where we need to look at what’s getting in the way of us actually wanting to try this.

You know, often people say, I just don’t have time for it. But it’s not just that they don’t have time. It’s that what they need to do in that time is going to feel exhausting or scary or vulnerable.

Alyx Gorman:
Yeah. And the time that you need to be able to do something exhausting and scary and vulnerable isn’t actually just the time to do the exhausting, scary, vulnerable thing. It’s also all of the preloaded time of getting yourself into the headspace where you can do something scary, and then it’s all of the aftercare time as well. So I think when people say like, oh, I don’t have time for this, they’re probably not wrong. Because like, their life might not allow them the space at this moment to do something like, for instance, the three minute game, which is quite a common sort of sex therapy thing. And like a great tool to learn about your partner.

It is so awkward and intense and scary to spend three minutes telling your partner exactly how you want to be touched the first time you try that. Like, it takes a lot of emotional energy to get into that space.

Georgia Grace:
It does. And it’s also the risk of it not feeling like a connecting practice that if we’re going to go into that and I leave feeling more disconnected when I’m so desperate to feel connected to my own pleasure or my body or my partners. It’s the risk that often gets in the way of us trying it. I think that it I’ve also sort of seen, over the past decade or so, the ways in which capitalism is affecting does affect our pleasure and does affect how we can access it. And I think at the start of my career, I’m often what I was doing was talking about the benefits, and the benefits are often it eases stress and, you know, it boosts all of the feel good neurochemicals.

And it’s so good. And you can be a more efficient and more effective worker, like trying to get people on board with this idea that orgasms are good for you. But in interrogating that approach, it really did seem that you know the ways in which people could get on board with masturbating more. Having more orgasms, was to give them a benefit at the end of it, which is, of course, like capitalism getting its fingers on our orgasms and on our pleasure. How do you feel it has affected not just sex, but how is capitalism affecting our orgasms?

Alyx Gorman:
I think like, and when I interviewed you for the book, you’re kind of grappling with that sort of orgasm as optimisation culture was really fascinating. And I think that female sexuality particularly has now been in many ways sort of girlboss so far.

So it just becomes like being the right kind of orgasmic, the right kind of sexually adventurous woman is just part of a general package and self-concept that we’re meant to be like, constantly working at in order to better market ourselves, whether it be in, like dating market. So yeah, “I’m so easily orgasmic and empowered so I can find a man” or whether it’s kind of about like “It makes me more productive. So like a better career woman, like, can take charge of what she wants wherever she wants it.” Like these concepts of, like, feminine consumption have definitely come after sexuality and has done so quite recently. And I think that the reality is, like, the more that we can get women to orgasm, particularly by themselves, probably the better.

Like masturbating is a very healthy, helpful, empowering thing. But if you’re masturbating to make yourself like somehow a better person rather than because it feels good and you like it, then suddenly it’s being consumed by the logic of the market. Like when we talk about pleasure, it should be its own sort of virtue. And having to package pleasure as contributing to other more like, let’s say, kind of Protestant work ethic type virtues, like it’ll make you more efficient, it’ll make you sleep, it’ll make your skin look better is one that I’ve seen a fair bit of, which is sort of horrifying. Like, oh, let’s just like throw beauty culture in here. It runs contrary to the point. Like, the point is that pleasure should be a virtue in and of itself. Like it doesn’t have to be productive. It doesn’t have to be good for anything, because it is good.

Georgia Grace:
Yeah. Like that’s the hook to get us in. Because it feels good.

Alyx Gorman:
Yeah. And, like, something feeling good should be enough. But, like, when we talk about the ways in which capitalism affects pleasure, that’s the biggest way. Feeling good is never enough.

Georgia Grace:
Yes, yes. Because it’s not valuable to feel connected to our bodies, because it’s more valuable for us to completely disconnect so that we can be a good worker and have our quick lunch break and be in the fluorescently lit office space and do it over and over again. And spend all of our money on other things and other products and fuelling it.

Alyx Gorman:
Yeah, feeling great does not does not contribute to GDP.

Georgia Grace:
Yes, yes. Your your note on efficiency I think that I’m interested in a parallel here maybe between like, the the capacity to stay present during sex. And often when I speak with a lot of women, straight women, they’ll say that they find it really hard to get out of their head and into their body and to connect with what they’re feeling and what feels good, and even to stay present. And a lot of the time they’ll say that it’s because of all the other things that are going on in their head. Of course, we know, you know, the mental load is a big thing. But also what they will say is that this isn’t an efficient use of my time. I could be doing all these other things.

What did you notice in your interviews? Did this idea of sex not being an efficient use of my time, I should be prioritising other things? Did this ever come up?

Alyx Gorman:
I think, the idea of maintenance sex, which is kind of a more interpersonal thing, certainly came up. So women who didn’t have the time to have an actually, like, pleasurable sexual experience themselves would go for like the most efficient route that they could find to sexually satisfy their partner.

So in that respect, like sex as a chore on a very long to do list was certainly a recurrent theme in several of my interviews. And then for other women it was kind of a feeling of “I have so much going on right now, sex is going to be a waste of time I don’t have. So I don’t want to try and go into that space because I know that there’s too much else happening for me to be able to access it.”

And the thing is, I think that those women who told me that, who said, like, “I don’t ever really feel like having the kind of sex that I want to have because my life has all these things happening in it.” I think that they were making an accurate assessment of where they’re at in that moment, because, you know, if you’ve got 2 or 3 kids who are still like younger than primary school age, primary school aged, who need quite a lot of time and attention, and you’re working and your partner is working. The amount of time that is left at the end of that, especially if you don’t live near family so you’re not really getting that much help with childcare, is so little that I think that scanning your emotional and temporal resources and going “good sex, like, does not fit into this picture” is a really reasonable outcome. And the unreasonable thing is expecting someone who is in that sort of chaos, particularly of early parenting, but it could be a number of other sort of, often caring obligations as well, like, looking at that person and going, “Guess what? You have to do it anyway.” Like, that is the unreasonable thing.

Georgia Grace:
Yeah. Yes. Just a reminder to everyone about the Q&A. So if you have any questions, we’d love to hear from you. I’ve got heaps of back up questions, but I think they’ll want to hear from you.

So we probably couldn’t talk about pleasure and capitalism without talking about sex toys and lube. And I think that, I don’t know if anyone, or I think I mentioned that I’m also the co-founder of a sex toy company, and these are things that I’m often thinking about. What people will say is that they, while sex toys and lube are essential for many people, they’re often their first… like, I guess they’re different categories as well. But like a lot of people have had their first sexual experience with a sex toy and it’s allowed them to experience more pleasure. And I would say that actually lube is to be considered a sex essential. However, I think a lot of people still see sex essentials or tools as cheating.

How, Alyx, do you think we can have a more nuanced conversation around these tools, but also examining the influences of capitalism and these tools?

Alyx Gorman:
Yeah. So I think like in terms of having a more nuanced conversation, it should begin with like very basic anatomy lessons. Like, the clitoris isn’t just this tiny little button. It is this very expansive organ made purely for pleasure. And a lot of it is like deep under the surface. Depending on how you’re wired, sometimes the way to hit all the nerves that are deep under the surface is like very powerful vibrations. Maybe you would get RSI if you tried to, get there just with your hand. And then you throw in a magic wand or a Normalco vibrator. And suddenly, instead of walking from Melbourne to Brisbane, you’ve caught a plane.

Understanding female anatomy suddenly like why vibrators are really effective and helpful for a lot of women to access pleasure and also for their partners too. Like, it just makes sense. It’s like, oh yeah, well, like if you’re trying to kind of, think about a massage. Like, if you’re trying to have a deep tissue massage, like soft patting, lymphatic drainage motion is not going to hit the sore spot on your glute. Like, you need one of those Theragun type pounding things. So that is very helpful.

With lubricant as well. Especially like, if when you get older, oh, the walls of your vagina are going to thin. That is a natural consequence of menopause. And post-menopausal sex is still great and awesome but lube is essential. Sometimes you will be turned on mentally but physically, like your body might not respond. That is totally normal. It happens a lot. Lube can help. If you would like to give someone with a penis a handjob and not use lubricant, that’s not going to be very nice for them. Or if you would like to use some lubricant suddenly, instead of being a sort of adolescent weird fumbling, that will actually be a pleasurable experience worth having for both of you.

Really, really basic like, biology, means that we can understand what the purpose of sexual tools are.

Georgia Grace:
Yes. That being said.

Alyx Gorman:
And you, Georgia, you’re the first person who told me about this. And then I looked into it a lot more. Sex toys and lubricant are staggeringly underegulated in Australia. Like, very frighteningly so. And I think a lot of that has to do with shame. Like, no one at the Therapeutic Goods Administration wants to put their hand up and go, like, “Should we revisit the fact that we consider sugar a safe ingredient to include in sexual lubricant?” Because there aren’t that many people who work at the Therapeutic Goods Administration, and that is a really scary conversation to have in the office. And so it means that there are all sorts of like, fairly extravagant claims being made about sometimes quite unsafe products.

Like things like arousal oils that are packed full of irritants that are going to give you a rash. Like that is very alarming to me. And I think that through shame and a lack of talking about the sexual wellness space. Even as it significantly increases in size, we have sort of opened this gateway for bad operators to come through unimpeded.

Georgia Grace:
Yeah, it’s kind of horrifying. Yeah. How unregulated it is. I remember I was speaking with an unnamed, they will remain unnamed, male founder of an Australian sex toy company. And they didn’t know where the clitoris was. They didn’t they were making sex toys but they essentially, you know, went into a factory and they were like, “We want to make some money. What should we do?” And they decided sex toys and they couldn’t point to a clit on an anatomy diagram. So, yeah, it is…

Alyx Gorman:
You’re not the only woman who makes sex toys who has told me a story like that.

Georgia Grace:
Yeah, yeah, it’s kind of horrifying. Okay. What, you obviously looked at a lot of products. What was the most fucked thing that you saw? The most concerning or, yeah, dangerous or horrifying thing that you found?

Alyx Gorman:
So, the most, like, viscerally horrifying things that I found were very much at the intersection of sex and medicine. So there is, and fortunately it’s not that much of a thing in Australia, but I’ve seen it pretty widely marketed in the US and increasingly in the UK. There is this thing called the G Shot. Which is, it costs $10,000 and it is a, like, shot of plasma, like your own blood plasma, into the upper wall of your vagina. In order to, like, enhance or boost your G-spot.

Now, there is no consensus in modern anatomy whether or not the G-spot exists. Probably doesn’t. Probably just part of the clitoris. And if the G-spot did exist, which it probably doesn’t. Why would injecting plasma into it do anything? Aside from come with a huge host of potential health risks. Like infections, getting the injection into the wrong space. Like, so incredibly high risk, incredibly high cost, no chance that it’s going to do anything.

Except that placebo effects are real. If you tell someone something is going to work, especially when it comes to something that requires such a body mind connection as sex. Like, thinking that it’s going to work is enough to make it work a little bit. But paying $10,000 for a made up injection is probably not the best way to access the placebo effect.

Yeah. That was the most alarming. And then even, sort of on a more day to day level, the number of pelvic floor training devices that I’d see advertised on Instagram. A place where it is much harder to advertise an actual vibrator. So these training devices being marketed to kind of strengthen your pelvic floor or help you with Kegels so you have more mind blowing orgasms that are absolutely inappropriate for huge numbers of people to be using, and should really only be used if you’ve been to a pelvic floor physiotherapist who has told you you should use them.

Like, I’m seeing this more and more, pelvic floor training devices. And essentially they’re just kind of a slightly more dressed up, slightly more kind of medicalised version of Gwyneth Paltrow’s jade egg. Which she got fined $150,000 for misleading advertising for in the state of California.

Georgia Grace:
Yeah. On the topic of crystallised products, I think my, the the product that I’m finding so infuriating at the moment is the space of the sacred sexuality folk. Particularly certain sexologists who are out there spruiking their jade wands that promise to cleanse and heal your vagina from your past lovers. And you know that it’s just riddled with slut shame and sex shame and it’s just dressed up differently.

Alyx Gorman:
And also the irony of promising to cleanse and heal using a surface so porous that it literally can’t be sterilised.

Georgia Grace:
Yes, yes. Yeah, yeah. It just yeah, it just, and I think like even the word porous, like a lot of people wouldn’t know that there are certain materials that actually can be more dangerous or harmful to use because the bacteria can stay in those materials as well.

Alyx Gorman:
But that’s because if you keep re infecting yourself with bacterial vaginosis, because you’re using a crystal dildo. The Australian competition and consumer watchdog is unlikely to find out about this product problem.

Georgia Grace:
Yeah. Because that not a lot was known about BV until recently. Now that they’re classifying it as an STI.

So you mentioned the role of both marketing and morality in shaping how women see themselves sexually. How does marketing and morality play off against each other?

Alyx Gorman:
I think marketing and morality kind of play off against each other because the moral message is one of shame and purity and that you should just never have sex until you’re married.

And if you do anything else you’re… this is the message that women get specifically. Like, if you do anything but wait and conserve yourself, then you’re a slut and you’re terrible and you’re going to hell. The marketing message is more is never enough. You should be having more of everything all of the time. And hearing these two messages at once is profoundly confusing because it ends with, ends up in that kind of, the speech that America Ferrera gives in the Barbie movie. Be sexy, but not too sexy. Be experienced, but not too experienced. Like you’ve being told to exist as both Madonna and whore. And that is something that is completely bamboozling.

And frankly overabundance, constant consumption, more is more is more is not a healthy or great way to kind of like mindset to be putting yourself in when it comes to your sexuality or anything else. Like for sure, excess in moderation is fantastic. Go for it. But if you’re constantly chasing the next high, then that’s not necessarily what is going to bring you inner peace. But at the same time, total asceticism, complete denial, which is what we’re told from a moral standpoint is the only kind of pure and righteous thing to do is not helpful either. And there’s not really an in-between voice being like, “Could you not just do what you want to do and nothing else?”

Georgia Grace:
Yeah. And I guess the ways it also then blends into this idea of who is deserving of sex and pleasure and what bodies are deserving of sex and pleasure based on the images that we see.

And I really loved in your book where you, and sorry if I butcher it. You can retell it if I do. But it was something along the lines of, you know, all of these messages that we get around these beauty products and looking a specific way. But when you speak to women about their practices and what they want to do before sex is often having a shower. Which is like removing all of these products that are like, you know, mascara that’s called Better Than Sex, and the lip gloss that’s like an orgasm blush or whatever. And yeah, how they don’t exist together.

Alyx Gorman:
No they don’t exist together. But they do like the way that hypersexual marketing is used really does define like who gets to be sexy and therefore who gets to have sex. And it presents this idea that the only people who get to be sexy and therefore get to have sex are young, thin, possibly white, or it contributes to the kind of historic eroticisation and othering of like black and brown bodies. It’s this very narrow cast idea of what sexiness is and therefore what hot sex is. That is just like, does not map on in any way to the reality of who was having amazing sex, which. I think the moral message does the same thing. Like it highly constricts who gets to have sex too. Men and women, with each other, only in marriage.

Georgia Grace:
Yes, yes. And these oppressive forces of racism, or ableism, fat phobia, transphobia, homophobia that the more we dislike ourselves or the more we hate ourselves, the more money we will spend to fix or change ourselves, and the more time we will be spending focusing on those problems rather than with our bodies, or rather than with collective change.

I’m conscious that we have got ten minutes left and there, I’ve seen some good questions come through. So I might jump to that. And then if anyone has any other questions, please, jump in. Susie says, “I’m curious if you found in your interviews any correlation between sexual satisfaction of women and relationship styles, i.e. non-monogamy versus monogamy?”

Alyx Gorman:
I found women in both non-monogamous and monogamous relationships who were very satisfied and also who are very unsatisfied. I guess if we’re talking about relationship styles, it’s the relationship style where you have like clear and open communication with someone or someones that you actually really, really like that produces relationship satisfaction. And any configuration, monogamous or otherwise, that does not involve clear and open communication with someone you actually really like or someones you actually really like, who like your back and treat you well, is not going to promote relationship satisfaction.

I spoke to people in open relationships that were really unhappy, and the open relationship was not going great. And people in open relationships that were really happy and that having multiple partners was exactly what they felt they needed. And it was the same for the monogamous folks. Like some people were very happily monogamous. And other people were very unhappily monogamous.

Georgia Grace:
Yeah. Interesting. A question from Rachael saying “Sex education has improved since a lot of us were in school. But how can we send the message to younger women and gender diverse people that sex should be pleasurable as well as safe, especially when backlash to books like Welcome to Sex is so prominent?”

Alyx Gorman:
That is a really tough and really good question. I think when it’s younger women and gender expansive folks like look to your sphere of influence first. Like if big public campaigns encouraging people to embrace pleasure, are going to catch the attention of a reactionary conservative press and get the people talking about them trolled off the air, then start whisper networks.

It’s about handing resources that promote pleasure to the young folks in your life. Like, have open conversations and be a resource that people can come to, to ask those questions. And when you’re around young folks like, encourage them to advocate for not just their body or bodily autonomy, but their right to enjoy their bodies.

Georgia Grace:
Yeah. Yeah, it’s a particularly important conversation at the moment. We were speaking before as well, how it feels like we’re kind of stepping back a bit, there is this sort of regression. It feels yeah, like there’s this fear mongering that’s coming in. And I’m also really thinking about these conversations that we’re going to be having with young people. And, Alyx, I think this whisper network is just what, It needs to be accessible.

Alyx Gorman:
And I think that the way that we should talk to young heterosexual men about sex and pleasure is a little bit different from the whisper network. Being quite loud about the message that a traditional masculine approach to sex will make most girls think you’re a dud root. I think it’s quite helpful to put out there.

Georgia Grace:
I mean, it is really interesting to see the fan base for the likes of Pedro Pascal, who is, you know, openly in support of trans and queer rights and is, you know, really vocal on all aspects of humanity and human rights and how so many straight women and maybe not just straight women are getting behind that image of the, you know, new sexual man. Hopefully he can become what everyone can live up to.

And then I’ve got a question from Justine. “Can I assume that women who have sex with women, since they’ve had the practice in experimenting in the taboo and learning more about the female body, might have more pleasurable sex? Or are there just as many challenges?”

Alyx Gorman:
Georgia, I think that you could probably speak to this as a gender expansive therapist more. But in the interviews that I did, having had great sexual experiences with women was no guarantee as a woman that you would then continue to have great sexual experiences with men. So the, kind of bi or more fluid women that I spoke to would actually quite often opine how they couldn’t translate the amazing queer sex they were having into the heterosexual sex they were having. But like the conversations felt different that tried to translate, that felt different. So from that perspective, like. Not necessarily. Particularly if you’re having sex with both women and men.

Georgia Grace:
Yes.

Alyx Gorman:
But please, go for it.

Georgia Grace:
But if you are having sex with just women, then yes. Statistically, research consistently proves that lesbians are more sexually satisfied than straight women. And I think that Justine, that was a really interesting way that you framed the question, which is like the element of the taboo. And I think that we can learn a lot about sex from queers and a lot about our experiences of understanding identity from queers because often queers have had to spend a lot of time thinking about it, processing it, finding community, going to therapy. Like, moving beyond normative ways of thinking about who they are to really discover themselves. And the same goes for sex as well. They’ve had to move beyond these normative ideas of a penis going inside a vagina. And instead they’ve had to figure out what is pleasure and to get creative with that.

Alyx Gorman:
And even just very basic things like turn taking that is just an inherent part of lesbian sex is something that also works better for straight people. Like, straight sex, part of the kind of script and narrative of straight sex is that when you orgasm, it’s going to be simultaneous and from penetration. Like, you’ll both climax at once. And we see this in Hollywood movies quite often. It’s sort of in soft porn you see the like simultaneous moaning. That’s almost like… it can happen. If it does, great. But like almost all of the time, that is not how it happens. And taking turns with the thing that feels good for you. And then the thing that feels good for me is a much more likely path to a really mutually satisfying sexual experience. And that is how lesbians have sex.

Georgia Grace:
Yes, yes, ain’t that the truth.

So we are at time. Alyx’s book is amazing. As I said, I’ve been recommended it to everyone, who will listen to me. So go get it if you haven’t, or if you’ve read it, read it again. I also have a book that, I think Rachel very kindly put both the links to our books and in the chat.

I wanted to say thank you to Alyx. Thank you for coming and speaking with us and sharing all of this knowledge. You’re so brilliant. And I feel so lucky that I’m living in a time that your book has emerged. So thank you for, yeah, sharing your wisdom with us this evening.

Alyx Gorman:
Thank you so much, Georgia. It has been an absolute pleasure to be moderated and interviewed by you, although a very like weird table turn for me.

Georgia Grace:
Yes.

This event was proudly presented by the Victorian Women’s Trust, as part of Trust Women: Feminist Book Club, a free literary series.