#191: It's Called The Clitoris with Nina Deep, MD

Hey, this is Melissa Parsons, and you are listening to the Your Favorite You Podcast. I'm a certified life coach with an advanced certification in deep dive coaching. The purpose of this podcast is to help brilliant women like you with beautiful brains create the life you've been dreaming of with intentions. My goal is to help you find your favorite version of you by teaching you how to treat yourself as your own best friend.

If this sounds incredible to you and you want practical tips on changing up how you treat yourself, then you're in the right place. Just so you know, I'm a huge fan of using all of the words available to me in the English language, so please proceed with caution if young ears are around.

Melissa Parsons 

Hello, beautiful humans, welcome back to Your Favorite You. I am so glad that you're here because oh my goodness, do I have a treat for you and for me? Okay, I'm going to start with a question and I want my listeners to really think about this. How many years of formal education did you have? Grade school, high school, college, maybe graduate school, professional school, most of my listeners have gone to many, many years. So I want you to add it up and then I want you to think about in all of those years across all of those courses, was the clitoris ever mentioned? Was it actually named, discussed, explained? For most of us, the answer is no. And today's guest is here to talk about exactly why that matters and what we're going to do about it. Dr. Nina Deep is an award-winning physician, a nationwide speaker, a fellow person from Columbus, which I love. She has built an entire mission around one radical idea that women deserve to understand and know their own bodies. She's a board-certified internal medicine doctor. She's been running her boutique medical spa, Nina Deep MD Aesthetics here in Columbus for over 20 years. And she's the founder of a speaking platform with possibly the best name I have ever heard in my life. It's called the clitoris. Now, how did she get here? A TV station censored her commercial about vaginal rejuvenation. She pointed out to that station that they happily ran commercials about erectile dysfunction treatment without batting an eye and they didn't budge. So she decided, fine, I'm going to talk about this everywhere to everyone for the rest of my career. And this is the kind of energy I want in my orbit. And so I'm so excited to have you here today, Nina. Welcome to Your Favorite You, Dr. Deep. 

Nina Deep 

Thank you so much. What a nice introduction. I love that. And I am so thrilled to be here. Yeah, amazing. Yeah, everything you said was exactly right. And I think if people really think back to the fact that if you're a woman, and you realize that you have never been taught the anatomy of your body, it's rather shocking. And perhaps it's shocking to everybody, but even more so, if you're a physician, and you haven't been taught the anatomy of the human body, which for me was such a moment of disillusionment, when I realized the extent of lack of knowledge that I had had even as a physician. And then, you know, to understand that me, when you describe me having vaginal rejuvenation as a procedure, I had this lovely commercial that I was so proud of creating, because it was a little bit humorous, and it really allowed women to seek out help for complaints or problems that they might have. And it's really hard for women to discuss these things. Urine leakage, vaginal dryness, wanting to improve their sexual function, those things are things that generally are topics that women just will accept and not seek help for. So it was quite a shock when that commercial was answered. 

Melissa Parsons 

Yeah. Yeah. Fuck censoring any of us. Like, I'm just like, fuck it all. 

Nina Deep 

I know. I totally agree. And it was such a discrepancy of such a disparity between what's fair for men and what's fair for women. And, you know, to be honest, I had started that commercial in 2018. And, you know, just to give you a brief overview, the words of the commercial are just, 50% of women struggle with urine leakage and many more struggle with vaginal dryness. If you're one of them, there's this great procedure called the V treatment, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. At the end, I say, side effects include increased orgasm and enhanced sexual sensation, which was good. Who doesn't want that? And he doesn't want that. And it was such a great way our patients would call the office. They wouldn't know, you know, what it was called, but they would be giggling and they would say they wanted to have that procedure for urine leakage. They actually would never say vaginal dryness or that they wanted to have an improvement in their sexual sensation. But when they came to see me, often that was the kind of complaint. Yeah. But women in general are just embarrassed by those topics. So humor was a great way to get them to initiate, you know, to seek treatment. We just had so many fantastic years of treating patients. And I was running that actual commercial. And when I switched advertising stations was when it was censored. And that was what was so shocking to me, too. 

Melissa Parsons 

Well, and it's so interesting, right? Because let's run all these commercials for erectile dysfunction and have these men being able to have sex for days.

Nina Deep 

And also, it's just been so normalized for men that there are abbreviations. There's ED. And there's many different companies. And even grade school kids, I bet, know the phrase, if your erection is lasting for more than four hours. We all know it. It's just so normalized that when the TV station wanted me to change the commercial, I actually understood why they, I got it. It was so shocking for them. And they just could not get around the idea that women were allowed to be sexual beings. We can be sexualized, but we can't own our own sexuality.

Melissa Parsons 

Yeah. That's right. Okay. So let's back up a little bit. I've got a ton of questions for you, but I don't want to let you get past my favorite question for all of my guests, which is, please tell our audience about your favorite, Dr. D. 

Nina Deep 

Yes, I should have had this fully prepared, but now that you're actually asking my favorite me, my favorite me is continuing to push comfort level and boundaries for things that I truly am passionate about changing the status quo. And I would never have thought that just, I started this vaginal rejuvenation device. I wouldn't have thought I would have to be an advocate for women's sexual health out there in the big bad world because I'm okay to do it in my little corner, but it was profoundly necessary at this point, really. It was, I actually was so shocked because my commercial, I'm in a lab coat and they said it was okay that they could play me in the middle of the night, just like they do the lion's den commercials. And I thought, you know, there's nothing wrong with lion's den, but I'm literally a professional trying to help women and you're censoring me in a way that is gonna inhibit women from seeking care. 

Melissa Parsons 

Well, and making it seem dirty. 

Nina Deep 

That's right. And they believe it's dirty. That's the problem. They really do. They need to go to therapy. 

Melissa Parsons 

That's right. That's right.

Nina Deep 

So yeah, continuing to live in my truth, I suppose, is my favorite part of me. 

Melissa Parsons 

Yeah, even when it's uncomfortable. Right, especially when it's uncomfortable because that's when it actually starts to help people. 

Nina Deep 

Right, because when I first thought about even bringing the vaginal rejuvenation device into my practice, I had to pause and think about it. Like, I'm giving women Botox and, you know, laser rejuvenation procedure, right. And all of a sudden, I was going to, even though women's health has always been a focus of mine, I thought, I wonder if my patients are going to want to come to me for this procedure rather than going to their gynecologist, for example. But no one is offering it. Like, at this point that I was doing it, that kind of care, they just, it's, I am actually the right venue for it. And then when I brought it in and I first wanted to advertise for it, I honestly, even myself, was using the words intimate parts, like euphemistic language by myself. And it felt so wrong. So it took me a minute to get to, I'm allowed to see all of that. And so that all learning experience for me has been so transformative, and it has been just such a gift to be able to be open about it and to be able to lecture about it. And then to have everyone so feeling so empowered after learning this information, that I hope it does change the way that they talk to their kids and their friend. 

Melissa Parsons 

Right, right, right. Oh gosh, yeah. I mean, back in my pediatric days, you know, I mean, I would talk to the kids, young men, young women, about all of it, right? And, you know, I think that they were so, they felt so safe with me because we had built up this relationship over the years and that type of thing. And I didn't shy away from any of it. And they knew that they could talk to me. And it's one of the greatest, you know, prides that I have from my pediatric practice days of just making, you know, sexual health not be taboo. Even in that safe space.

Nina Deep 

Yeah, for boys and girls. 

Melissa Parsons 

Yeah, yeah, because I mean, we're sexual beings. Quite a young age. Yes. And I think taking ownership over that, especially as young women, helps us to not be victimized or to know when we are being victimized. 

Nina Deep 

Yeah, I know you talk about being a recovering Catholic. Because I always think to myself, I do feel like that. Yeah, I was raised in Dayton to an immigrant family from India and my parents, I think they came here believing that their daughters were going to adopt a value system that wasn't similar to theirs. So they were going to lose that, you know, that they were going to become shameless hussies is what my mom would say. And it's not, I don't think it's that uncommon that people would think, especially immigrant families, but maybe anybody. And she very much worried that we would get pregnant, you know, and it's just a normal, I get it. It's a normal fear that you have. But boy, did I internalize all of those ideas that being at all interested in sex was a very bad thing as a girl that our sexuality was dangerous. And I was such a good girl, intentionally. And it really, I'm surprised actually, that I was able to go to college, go to med school, get married to my husband and have such a great sex life with my husband. Like I actually am surprised by that because of all of this internalized shame that I truly did have. And it really wasn't until 2018 when my patients started to, so I did this vaginal rejuvenation device I brought into my back. And I had the procedure myself, of course, and I didn't have urine linkage that much. Like, yes, you know, a little bit, if I was gonna go for a run, I might think, oh, I better not run too far because I have to go back to the house and, you know, take a potty break. But I didn't have vaginal dryness, but I also was like, hmm, an increase in my sexual sensation, that would be pretty fantastic. And so this transformative event happened after I had the procedure and I didn't expect it. But I went into every intimate encounter with my husband after that with this completely different mindset. I thought that the whole thing was about me, which, you know, maybe we all should go into it that way, but I had never done this. I always felt like my virginity or my sexuality or these sexual encounters, it was basically these gifts that I was giving to my husband. I just went into this intimacy with the idea that, you know, men want it and women give it. 

Melissa Parsons 

Yeah, it's a transaction. It's a transaction. 

Nina Deep 

And it never encouraged me that it should be different. I'm not saying it wasn't fun. We had a good sex life. But when I had that procedure, my mindset shifted. I was paying attention to my body in a way I never had. I communicated more, like, ooh, that feels good. I was so curious about, oh, is this better? Like, what is it? What's going on down there? And I felt so different in my body that over like the six months, because it's six weeks to six months, your sensation is supposed to be better. It did get better, of course. But my whole approach to intimacy with him shifted, meaning I initiated it more often. And when we were intimate, I was so much more open and I like lost that shame. I almost felt like I just didn't have to apologize for being me and that I was a sexual being. I could embrace it. And then over the six months, I think, I started to put down all these boundaries in my personal life. Like, so things in the bedroom changed, but it transitioned and translated to my life. And I just, yeah, I was putting down boundaries with family and friends. I like let go of relationships that no longer served me. I became a better boss, a better leader. All of a sudden, my decisions, I felt more confident in them. And really my whole kind of like confidence shift. I'm a confident person, but it shifted in a way that if I felt like something was right, I just listened. 

Melissa Parsons 

Yeah, so cool. I mean, I am a huge fan of Kelly Casperson. I've had her on the cast. I am, too. We're both in the Kelly Casperson fan club. Yes, yes, yes. And, you know, she says and I don't know if she's the person to say it, but she's who I quote, you know, our brain is our biggest sexual organ. So, you know, if you're taking this new mindset into the bedroom, it makes sense that you would start having different experiences. I agree that would be able to translate into other areas of your life. 

Nina Deep 

And I think as physicians, and I don't know how you felt, but I always felt like my patients needed to be physically, mentally, and spiritually strong. Those were like the three pillars that I was like, let's make sure they've got all that going on. But their sexual health history was really just a, are they at risk for sexually transmitted? It wasn't too much about are you embracing your sexuality? Is that a core pillar of who you are? But after I had this procedure and I let go of that shame, I realized how much shame can disempower you. Even if it's something you don't realize you're carrying, by releasing that, I felt so much more empowered. I felt like I was the woman I should have always been. 

Melissa Parsons 

Yeah. So interesting. And what I'm hearing you say, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, is that your parents worrying about you guys becoming pussies made it so that you were a good girl. So you didn't experiment in that type of thing when you were younger and you, you know, who knows, you don't have to give me the whole thing. And you still carried the shame into this relationship where I'm sure your parents as soon after you got married were like one of the babies coming. Exactly. All of that. They expect you to flip the switch where, you know, I'm not a sexual being at all to all of a sudden it's my job to make babies. That's right. But I'm here to tell you that even those of us who were sexually active when we were younger, and like I'm talking about everything except, you know, penis and vagina sex. As a schoolgirl, I certainly did not want that to happen, but like the shame of those experiences and even sometimes the shame of, Oh my God, to it, like all of that. And like, Oh, you know, I don't want to name names, but poor so-and-so, like I was such a tease. Like, you know, I mean, even that shame of, you know, he never did get to insert his penis into my vagina.

Nina Deep 

Exactly. I know. I know. And I'm not saying I'm not saying we didn't have premarital sex. I'm just saying that it was, it was, you know, it was limited everything. And the shame I carried, even if that, you know, that having this before we're married, which now, you know, doesn't make it. 

Melissa Parsons 

Well, yeah, now I'm like, oh, I wish I had had more sexual partners. That's right. Oh, I was talking to my Indian friend, one of my Indian friends, not Bonnie. And she was saying how she didn't want her daughter to be having sex with her boyfriend or whatever. And yeah, I was like, you do realize that there are some of us who are in our 50s and wish we had more sexual partners, right? She was like, what?

Nina Deep 

Exactly. I know. Isn't that so funny? Yeah. I totally know what she's saying. I often say kind of in a just funny way. I used to believe that fairy tale that one day my Prince Charming would come and then so would I. It was almost like I just would that's what I believed. I was I was just like thought that my entire sexual being rested in the hands of my future husband and that he was going to, you know, be the end all be all know and lock the key.

Melissa Parsons 

Wow. Yeah. So interesting. 

Nina Deep 

So to have this vaginal rejuvenation procedure, to feel how much it transformed me only because I let go of the shame. And then to be able to talk to patients who actually were so concerned about feeling broken. There's so many other ways that, you know, perimenopause, menopause can change your libido, but they physically felt broken because they were not having orgasms with vaginal-penetrated sex and felt that they should be. They felt like they're, you know, that, and they had been taught that. And I think a lot of men have been taught that. And so I started to research how to talk to my patients about their sexual function, pre-procedure, post-procedure. And there was such a dearth of actual, like, questionnaires and ways to really quantify this. But anyway, as I was researching it, I came across Sophia Wallace's TED Talk. And Sophia Wallace is this wonderful artist. And she had these six-foot tall gold statues of what she was calling the clitoris. And I was looking at that thinking, oh, it must just be her artistic representation of the clitoris. This is 2018 because I still didn't know. 

Melissa Parsons 

Yeah, you thought it was just a little love at the time. 

Nina Deep 

I thought it was just a little thought. That's what I had been taught, I thought. 

Melissa Parsons 

That's that's what we were taught in medical school. We did not dissect out the bulbs of the clitoris. 

Nina Deep 

Absolutely not. And so when I saw her talk and I realized, okay, so then I just kept digging and realized, Oh my gosh, this artist knows more about female anatomy than I do. And then I really realized, no, I'm not alone. Actually brought home these little, this little girl statue. And I showed it to my husband and I was like, and he's a physician. So I said, and I think I was probably a little angry. I'm like, do you know what this is? It's a life sized a part of our bodies. And, you know, he didn't know. It's our clearest. It's the clearest. And then I thought, Oh wow, nobody knows this. Like, this is just not known to physicians in general. And then, you know, looking at, um, at how, if we don't know this, then how is it impacting our health as women and hearing stories about women being surgically harmed? Because with the advent of the digital age and I guess the plethora of videos and pictures and pornography that has come up, this has caused women to want to go have labiaplasty procedures. So they think they're supposed to look like Barbie, which means they think they're labia majora or labia minora are too large and they want to have it all surgically changed. And when that happens, surgeons don't have no idea that there are dorsal clitoral nerves that are inside the clitoral hood. And so they're actually causing surgical harm. And then women are either having chronic pain afterwards or inability to have orgasms because their dorsal clitoral nerves are severed and they don't know that the labia minora are part of our, they have sensation. They have erectile tissue, they get engorged with arousal. And they're important to our sexual functioning. So they're just removing them because they don't know. And even when women have other surgical procedures like lumbar spinal fusions, they can have permanent inability to have an orgasm afterwards because their clitoral nerves are impacted. And so I was giving, gave this talk and a woman came up to me after and she said, I had a lumbar spinal fusion 10 years ago and now I think I couldn't orgasm after and I went to my surgeon and I asked my surgeon what happened and he didn't, he said it was unrelated. She said, but now I think it is related. And from her story, my literature search revealed that if you have a lumbar spinal fusion, there are a million ways you can map out how to preserve male sexual function and prevent retrograde ejaculation for men, a million. And there's so many studies, but there's none about women and female sexual function and impacting the ability to, for women to have an orgasm after that. And that's just one procedure. Yeah. I mean, it's so sad. So in so many ways this talk has really, it's made me want to show women, number one, we have to know our bodies and we have to know the names of our genitals. We can't refer to everything as vagina, which we tend to do. And even I did that. You used to say my vulva. I mean, who says that? We should say it. 

Melissa Parsons 

I taught all of my patients. I'm so proud.

Nina Deep

Oh, you did? Yay.

Melissa Parsons

Yeah, because they would call it their vagina or their kitty.

Nina Deep 

I know. Yes. Yes. All of those teaching names. Right. We're going to call it the vulva. Well, what do we teach? I mean, in general, I think it was my neighbor who said to me in her very, she has little boys and girls. And she said, you know, I was so happy. I really use anatomical terms when I'm telling my kids what their body parts are. I say, boys have a penis, girls have a vagina. And I said, I know, but boys have a penis and girls have a clitoris. That's the anatomical homolog. Yeah. And that is nothing I've ever heard before. 

Melissa Parsons 

Right. 

Nina Deep 

Right. Like, because the eonachymal cophomologue is the penis and the clitoris. They come from this embryological tissue, they actually serve the same functions, actually. Right. 

Melissa Parsons 

Although the penis has more functions than the rest. 

Nina Deep 

It needs to urinate and it doesn't need to ejaculate but we don't think of it that way. I mean we truly believe that our vagina encompasses all of our female sexual organs and really the vagina is our birth canal. 

Melissa Parsons 

It doesn't do much. It doesn't do much. 

Nina Deep 

And there aren't very many nerves in there because if there were, we'd never be able to give birth. But it's interesting because I really did grow up believing that exact fallacy. Like I just never thought about it in the terms that I now think of it. And it makes the lack of our knowledge so glaring that if you look at what we learn in middle school, sex ed, and you just look at the penis diagram and the testicles and what you see is the uterus, the ovaries, the fallopian tubes, the vaginal canal. And nowhere on that diagram is the clitoris. And so at that young age, when we're all really trying to learn about our bodies, the female sexual organ is completely omitted. And I have a new diagram that's very pretty and it has the clitoris on it. And it's so shocking to look at it, if you look at it, because you realize how much better it would have been if we had learned it that way, as if it was no big deal. Right. 

Melissa Parsons 

that we're supposed to and pleasure is supposed to be a part of life and we wouldn't have this part if we weren't supposed to. That's right. 

Nina Deep 

And we can't say the word clitoris without the whole room being in shock. In fact, my original talk, so my website is called, it's called theclitherest.com, which I love, love, love. But then when I tried to get speeches, they didn't want to have that as the talk title. Do you know what I mean? Even I forgot that it's taboo when I would try to change it, which is fine. Yeah, right. 

Melissa Parsons 

change it so you can get in the room and you can say whatever you want. 

Nina Deep 

Yeah, they wouldn't write it like on the hotel, like where the, you know, they do all the yeah, the drugs. Yeah. Nope, all of that stuff. That's so funny. 

Melissa Parsons 

I'm thinking I'm so glad you got censored. I know at the beginning, like I said, that's exact. It just like, thank goodness it led you down this. And I'm going to call it a rabbit hole, but I mean, it led you down this vaginal tunnel. Perfect. Yes, exactly. Pop out of the vaginal canal and there you are. That's right. 

Nina Deep 

Yeah, no, I'm so glad to because I think that the more that women know about their bodies and they can use the right anatomical terms and they can teach those terms to the next generation. Right. That's going to start, you know, interrupting this, this shame, ignorance and silence cycle. Because when we don't know what we're talking about, we feel shame, when we feel shame, then we feel ignorant about what we're talking about. And it is just a shame, ignorance, silence, yeah, cycle. And if we, if we continue to refer to everything as the vagina, then we are not giving ourselves the permission to be sexual beings. 

Melissa Parsons 

I don't know, there's the beauty of saying vagina even, because even that, I remember when my mom taught me that, my grandfather was so upset. 

Nina Deep 

You're right. So even the word vagina is censored. And in fact, there's a list of the most censored words on meta and the vagina is the most censored word. And there's such a discrepancy between male sexual health and female sexual health ads that are censored in on meta that there's a organization called the Center for intimacy justice and it gathered 60 of them biggest female health companies. And now they have an organization that can then advocate to get the laws changed to help with censorship for female health. And these are companies that might be, you know, sex toy companies, or they could be urinary leakage, you know, lactation specialists or information about sexual consent or period information for, you know, young girls menstruating. But it's just anything that has to do with female sexual health is censored. So yeah, vagina, uterus, ovaries, just anywhere, really lactation, breastfeeding, practically every word you can imagine is censored for female sexual health. And so it's certainly something that needs some advocacy. 

Melissa Parsons 

Mm hmm. I love it. And I love that you're out there doing this work in Columbus. Like, yeah, it is. 

Nina Deep 

It has been received with such, you know, I think awe and people are so shocked by how much they didn't know and in my office on one-on-one with my patients, I'm constantly talking about this and I have these lovely, you know, like little vulva puppets and they're quite nice because you really cannot discuss this without having some sort of anatomical model and we don't have anatomical models that are new level. I literally had to buy them on Etsy. In fact, any sexual health or, you know, even Kelly Casperson, you will see they get all of these things in non-medical sites because that is not where we can get models. You know, you can get models where you can take out the uterus, you can take out the bladder, but there's no model that you can then take out the clitoris. 

Melissa Parsons 

Yeah. 

Nina Deep 

It just doesn't exist. I know. So one woman at a time, we're going to change this narrative and I hope that when they learn about their bodies and they realize how much, even physicians don't know, they're going to clearly advocate for their health in situations that could impact them. So I don't know if you felt this way, but you know, I think a lot of people, but I grew up like revering doctors and thinking that I couldn't question anything. I think they're fallible. There are things they don't know and they're really, they're not. Yes. We are both here to tell you that we didn't learn this. That's right. We didn't learn it. There was no less about this. No. And in fact, in medical school, I remember during physical diagnosis lab, they said during the general exams, they said, don't touch the clitoris. It's way too sensitive. Women are going to be very, you know, bothered by it. But of course we were taught exactly how to examine the penis and pull back the foreskin, you know, just normal stuff that you would do. So Rachel Rubin, who's also a urologist, I don't know if you, so they did a study out and where she is, I don't know where they did the study, but they did this, a study in 2024 that showed that 25% of women actually struggle with clitoral adhesions. So that couldn't cause pain or sexual dysfunction for women. But as physicians, if we're not even examining that, we're never going to detect it. 

Melissa Parsons 

Right, exactly. I see it to know. Yeah, so interesting. You kind of talked about this, Nina, but I want everyone who's listening to hear you for sure say this about the myth of the vaginal orgasm. 

Nina Deep 

Yes, I would love to talk about that. Because this is something that I think people are still unsure about. And even I was met with all of these different theories about orgasm and how there is a initially when I started researching, I read, there are clitoral orgasms and there are vaginal orgasms. And you could have one or both or neither. But now I firmly after studying the anatomy, I firmly believe all orgasms are clitoral. And so if you look at how the clitoris is structured, it has the clitoris itself, the clitoral tip that we're all aware of, then it has the shaft, just like the penis. And then it has four legs that insert two, insert into the pelvic floor. These are the internal parts of the clitoris. And then two that surround the vaginal canal. The two that insert into the pelvic floor contract your pelvic floor with orgasm, which is why you fill your pelvic floor contractions, just like men. I mean, they have the same thing. And then the two that surround the vaginal canal are what you had referenced, clitoral bulbs. And they become very engorged with arousal and they become very, they actually have a lot of erectile tissue in them. And when you're aroused as a woman, it can feel really good to have vaginal penetration. But when you're not aroused, it typically doesn't feel that good. And so all sensation for women, it really centers around the clitoris and what we can call the clitoral complex or the full anatomy of the clitoris. So it's so kind of obvious to me now that the vaginal canal, it certainly feels a lot of sensation, especially in the outer one-third of the vaginal canal that can feel penetration and can feel more of the direct expansion. But there aren't a lot of nerves in the distal two-thirds, just why you can wear a tampon without being really uncomfortable. 

Melissa Parsons 

That's fair. Exactly. 

Nina Deep 

And so it makes sense to me that the area that we all call the G-spot, which is located inside the vaginal canal, so if you're putting your finger inside your vaginal canal about a few centimeters up, if you're trying to touch your belly button from the inside, that area is called the G-spot, and that is the confluence of where all the clitoral legs meet. And so that area has been dissected to see whether or not there's really histologically anything special about that area, and there is not. There is no real G-spot, but it is definitely where all the clitoral legs, you know, come together, and so there's a lot of heightened sensation there. But I think the clitoris itself is really what's responsible for all of orgasms, and this has also been shown in women that have either spinal cord injuries or if they have had female genital emulation. Like, can they have orgasms? I know, and that is a really sad topic, but the ability to have an orgasm is really very clitorally mediated, I guess is my point. 

Melissa Parsons 

So what I'm hearing you say without saying it is if you are having penis and vagina sex or penetrative sex and not having an orgasm, you need to involve your clitoris somehow. 

Nina Deep 

That's right. That is exactly right. And typically, what has happened is that women go into their sexual experiences because this is what they learn as a young woman. They go in not expecting it to be great, at least the first time. Go in with this really low expectation. The bar is pretty low. You just don't want it to hurt. And you don't want to get pregnant. I mean, the two things that we generally are going to these first sexual experience a lot of fear. And most of us, you know, are not having an orgasm during that first sexual experience. And what we really have to understand is we need to advocate for ourselves. So first, you got to know your own body, you have to masturbate, you have to know what feels good, then you have to communicate that to your partner, what feels good. And so women go into sex without the expectation of having an orgasm, but they can change that whole dialogue interaction narrative with the expectation of going into sex and expecting to have an orgasm. Apparently, there's been a study that shows it increases your chances of having an orgasm by 2000%. If all you do is go in with the expectation that you want to have an orgasm. Right?

Melissa Parsons 

Yeah. Again, your brain. Right? It's part of the equation.

Nina Deep 

Yeah, but we go in thinking that we're not going to have one, but men go in thinking they are going to have one. If that's the expectation, everything will find right. So there's this huge orgasm gap that's occurred now. That means that women are not having as many orgasms as men on a general basis. If you are, if you know that person really well, and you're in a committed long term relationship, and as a woman, if you're able to advocate for yourself, and you feel comfortable, and you can relax enough to actually allow yourself to have an orgasm, your chance is about 65% of the time you'll have an orgasm and a man will have one about 95% of the time in that best case scenario. And that's where we live right now. But if you're in a friends with benefit situation, you know them, but you're not in a long term committed relationship, it's about 30 to 35% of the time, you'll have an orgasm as a woman. That's really pretty bad. If it is a first time hookup, you know, you don't know that person at all, the chance that you have an orgasm is less than 5% for a woman. So there's this huge orgasm gap and it has to do with us. Yeah, too. I think it's mainly us. I think this is something women can change. So men learn about sex through the media, movies and pornography. I mean, that is what's teaching them about sex and that is made by men.

Melissa Parsons 

Unless your mother is Melissa Parsons.

Nina Deep 

Right. Unless they're lucky enough. But that's only a few kids in this world. Or their doctor, I suppose you could have influenced a lot of kids. Yeah, so so, you know, men don't know. Yeah, they think it's vaginal thrusting. They're taught that the harder they thrust, the more likely their partner is to have an orgasm. And that's what they learn. And unless we speak up and take it into our own hands, so to speak, or really just vocalize what feels good and actually have to get into, like you said, are at the right headspace. So there's this, you know, lack of attention to women and their sexual pleasure that has been around forever. Actually, I wondered if we had only just mapped out the clitoris recently in medicine, I'd read something on the internet that said, Oh, even though we just mapped it out, like 30 years ago. And I thought, Oh, wow. And so my kids are in medical school. I know. So this weekend that I was so this is kind of like, you know, this is kind of a little bit, probably too much too much detail, but I'll tell you, so that weekend that I got censored, I got this, you know, email and talked with them on a Friday. Well, my daughter was home from medical school with her two of her friends, and they were all graduating that year, one was going into OBGYN, and one was going to up though. And so the three of them got a chance to hear me rant about being censored. And I, I got out my clitoris statue. And I fully expected that in 30 years since I had been in med school, that those three would know everything I was saying, because they have social media, I just figured this was something that was, you know, they knew that I didn't know because no, they didn't know any of it. And I thought, Oh, how? Oh, wow. So then it led me to the rabbit hole. And I realized that the clitoris has been clearly mapped out since the 1600s. And we've seen it in medical texts, they're actually more clearly depicted in medical texts from the 1800s. And they are in medical texts today. And what happened in 1948 is the editor of Gray's Anatomy, Charles Goss, it removed every single mention or diagram of the clitoris from Gray's Anatomy, like what we're supposed to learn. Yeah. We moved it completely. Yes, it made it with its way back, but that he was allowed to do that, that that was okay, that he could just remove a part of the body and say that this was the anatomical Bible for all medical students. And he was allowed to do that is shocking. So I feel like we're still recovering from that. 

Melissa Parsons 

Yeah. Oh yeah. Still recovering from so much. I mean, that's the year my mom was born, 1948. And I just think about all the women of her generation who, you know, had no information about this. And then they were also like double whammy with the Women's Health Initiative and didn't get any HRT. Hormones.

Nina Deep 

Thankfully, we're swinging back, but I will tell you that it is a little bit distressing for me, which is also why I feel like I need to tell, even more so than telling doctors, I feel like I need to tell women about this because women are going to be able to embrace this knowledge and hopefully protect themselves from medical harm, which I think is really important. They can undergo procedures that don't adequately discuss their possibility of having change in their sexual function, and they just need to make sure their doctors, if they're having a surgical procedure, or even just involve our biopsy, are aware of where the clitoral nerves are. I think it's a legitimate question. 

Melissa Parsons 

What questions should they be asking Nina? So they really need to. 

Nina Deep 

Ask how that doctor is going to protect their sexual function. 

Melissa Parsons 

Okay, that's it. 

Nina Deep 

I think that's a good one because that's not going to offend anyone like they might they may not want to pull out like these diagonals of course you know what risks do you do I have to my sexual function during this procedure and how are you going to protect my sexual function from harm and trust me when I tell you that if they ask those questions they're going to understand whether their doctor has any clue or not not have any clue. 

Melissa Parsons 

Right. And if they're like, Oh, we don't have to worry about that to find a new surgeon. That's right. Okay. Okay. Fair enough. Fair enough. Yeah. I know we don't have a ton of time, but you kind of glossed over how you got rid of your sexual shame. 

Nina Deep 

Yes. 

Melissa Parsons 

Do you want to speak about that at all? And you don't have to tell me personally, but-

Nina Deep 

No, no. So it was, how do I say this? It was by accident. 

Melissa Parsons 

Okay? 

Nina Deep 

And what it took now that I know what I was doing is actually just remaining present in my body. So instead of acting like it was a gift that I was giving to my husband, and when you have that attitude, you don't believe it's for you. And so if you change that and you think this is all about you, and you physically are present in your body in a way that I just hadn't been to that extent before where the entire experience I felt was all about me, my pleasure, my sensations, my body. And so when, I think if you're, I don't know how many other women feel this way, but to really be present and feel that this is, like you're paying attention to your sensations and you're paying attention to what feels good and you're willing to vocalize it, and then it just becomes a lot more fun. And then you realize that being sexual in your body is not shameful and that you're not going to be put down for it or considered promiscuous. I think these were thoughts I had that were just so defeated that to verbalize it, it sounds silly because of course it's my husband and he would never think that. But to actually go through it and to realize that by embracing your sexuality, by living in your body in the moment every second when you're intimate with someone, it is a different experience because you can go through that experience and not be in your body. 

Melissa Parsons 

You can be totally shut down. Yeah. Yes.

Nina Deep 

I won't say I was totally shut down. My husband wants to make sure that I say that we had a great sex life.

Melissa Parsons 

My husband would want me to say that too. So I will verbalize that. I got my clitoral stimulator. We had a great sex life. And after I got my clitoral stimulator, we totally closed the orgasm gap. 

Nina Deep 

And you know that I didn't know that some women cannot orgasm without a vibrator. Like sometimes their clitoral nerves are just the type that really respond to vibration. And so that is a reason that some women may have said, I've never had an orgasm or have only been able to have an orgasm by themselves. 

Melissa Parsons 

Right, right, right.

Nina Deep 

Yeah, I think that it's amazing when you talk to women and you really, many of my patients don't know where their clitoris is until I show them or they have never masturbated whenever I think of masturbating and really I need to encourage them to explore their body even if it's just touching their arms and legs, and sometimes I think having them see a specialist is really great and I definitely encourage that but the shame that they have, that they carry is so deep-seated that being in their body during intimate relationships is just not part of what they've ever done. And I think, I haven't really talked about inclusion here because it is hard because I really am just talking about cisgendered women and then heterosexual experiences but of course all experiences are valid and if we could change the way we view that word virginity because we go in as women and young girls like losing our virginity as if it is something that is taken from us and we give it away and it's something that just the penis entering the vagina is supposed to somehow magically change us and I think the idea of making our sexual debut and changing that verbiage from losing your virginity to making your sexual debut, it might be a kinder and gentler way and to define it, we could define it as the first time you're able to have an orgasm with a partner. That's when you made your sexual debut because that, you know, that basically shows you that you can have trust, intimacy, you know, warmth, connection with another human being, and that's what you want to get out, you know, intercourse. 

Melissa Parsons 

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I love it. And I love it that you brought up the fact that we are totally being...

Nina Deep 

I want to make sure that it's understood that sex can be for anyone, that's right. 

Melissa Parsons 

There is no gender gap in lesbian relationships.

Nina Deep 

Yeah, there is no orgasm gap with lesbian relationships, which I think is so great.

Melissa Parsons 

Yeah. They're winning. All right, sweet Nina. Is there anything that you wanted to talk about that I didn't ask about that we didn't get to? 

Nina Deep 

We got to cover so much. I did want to say one other thing, because I think it's fascinating, and this goes towards women being advocates for their own health. So there's this word hysteria, which has come from the word histra, which means uterus. And the word hysterical has been used to describe women. And it really implies that women are just these emotional creatures that are unable to have leadership qualities and can be, you know, stable. And I internalized that growing up, even though I was in medical school, hearing a doctor, all these things that you would think. But still, I kind of thought, well, you know, men are better leaders. 

Melissa Parsons 

Mmm. 

Nina Deep 

I know. Okay. That has been unlearned over many years, but the word hysterical is one of many words that has been used to describe women as being emotionally unstable and incapable of leading. And the data really doesn't support this at all. Women-led countries do better than male-led countries. Women-led companies do better on so many different metrics, but women physicians actually perform better and have lower mortality for their patients than male physicians. Yes. All different types of specialties. And one of the best studies that I think really highlights this landmark study, it came out in JAMA and it really came out just maybe five years ago. Okay. It was by a physician group in Ontario. Christopher Wallace is a urological oncologist in Ontario, Canada, and then their medical system, they can mine charts really easily. So they looked at surgical outcomes of 1.3 million patients and they looked at 3000 surgeons and they looked at, they age matched them. It was a very well-designed study. And they just looked at what happened if you had surgery from a female physician, a female surgeon versus a male surgeon. And they had all these other criteria, but one of the most shocking findings of the studies was that if you were a woman and you had surgery from a male surgeon, your chance of dying over 30 days and one year was 32% higher than if you had just gone to a female surgeon, which is utterly shocking to me. And if you were a male patient and went to a male surgeon, your chance of dying was 12% greater than if you had just gone to a female surgeon. And that, I think it's important for women to know that it doesn't mean that you have to all choose female doctors. It means that you need to communicate with your doctor and believe that you're being heard and then listen to yourself, your gut, your instinct, intuition, listen to yourself if you don't feel like you're being heard. Because there's data to support that, not just with surgery. With surgery, it's like the worst, honestly. It's like the biggest delta between health outcomes. But even in Medicare patient population, they looked at hospitalized patients. And if it was a female hospital that was taking care of that patient, they performed better. That means that about 32,000 patients would have lived in that year that they were doing this study had they been taken care of simply by a female physician. And there's another study that showed that if you walk into a Florida ER, I just think these are fascinating because it really, I think validates sometimes women have intuition that they don't follow. So if you walk into a Florida ER, they did 20 years of history and 580,000 patients. And they said, if you were having symptoms of a heart attack, did it matter if you saw a female ER doctor or a male ER doctor if you lived? And the answer was, yes. If you saw a female ER doctor, you had a better chance of living full stop. It was worse if you were a female minority, you know, the delta is always greater if you're any kind of non-dominant group. But if you were white male, it wasn't that important. You could see a male or a female and you know, you were going to be okay. But anything else. And so that's why I also want to give this talk because I really, really want patients. I want women to know specifically, number one, you can embrace yourself as being a sexual being, and it can make you more powerful as a woman. Number two, we need to start naming our body parts correctly because we got to teach the next generation. And then number three, you have to protect yourself from harm medically because we don't really know, not all of us know. And I don't honestly say most of us don't know this information, not only just about clitoral nerves, but also let's just look at the meta-analyses that have been done for the performance of female physicians, which is just, you know, a phenomenal statistic that actually two of my kids graduated from med school in the last few years. Both of them were taught that, that female physicians have lower mortality for their patients. They weren't taught about the clitoris, but they were taught. 

Melissa Parsons 

Baby steps, baby steps, we'll take it. 

Nina Deep 

Oh, yeah. So that's another thing I did want to talk about. 

Melissa Parsons 

Yeah, I love it. Thank you so much for coming out for being your beautiful self.

Nina Deep 

Thank you so much and I loved your podcast on sexual health and sexual-

Melissa Parsons 

Pleasure. Sexual pleasure.

Nina Deep 

So I know this is right up your alley. So yes, I really do appreciate it. You get a word out. Yep, that's the plan. 

Melissa Parsons 

All right, Nina, if people want to find you, how do they find you? How do they work with you? How do they come to your patient? Tell us everything. 

Nina Deep 

Yeah, I think the easiest way is probably just to Google ninadeep.com, because that goes right to my website. There's a link there to my other website, which is itscalledtheclitoris.com. So if they want to have me speak, I am always willing to speak to large groups and small. Then if they have any other questions about what we do in Columbus, then neenadeep.com is the best place. 

Melissa Parsons 

Yeah, amazing. Thank you so much. I know you're going to help so many of my listeners today and I appreciate it so much. 

Nina Deep 

Well, thank you so much.

Melissa Parsons 

All right, see you all here next week. I can't promise it'll be as exciting as this one, but we'll try.

Hey - It’s still me. Since you are listening to this podcast, you very likely have followed all the rules and ticked off all the boxes but you still feel like something's missing! If you're ready to learn the skills and gain the tools you need to tiptoe into putting yourself first and treating yourself as you would your own best friend, I'm here to support you. As a general life coach for women, I provide a safe space, compassionate guidance, and practical tools to help you navigate life's challenges as you start to get to know and embrace your authentic self.

When we work together, you begin to develop a deeper understanding of your thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. You learn effective communication strategies, boundary-setting techniques, and self-care practices that will help you cultivate a more loving and supportive relationship with yourself and others.

While, of course, I can't guarantee specific outcomes, as everyone's journey is brilliantly unique, what I can promise is my unwavering commitment to providing you with the skills, tools, support, and guidance you need to create lasting changes in your life. With humor and a ton of compassion, I'll be available to mentor you as you do the work to become a favorite version of yourself.

You're ready to invest in yourself and embark on this journey, so head over to melissaparsonscoaching.com, go to the work with me page, and book a consultation call. We can chat about all the support I can provide you with as we work together.

I am welcoming one-on-one coaching clients at this time, and, of course, I am also going to be offering the next round of group coaching soon. 

Thanks for tuning in. Go be amazing!