#199: It's Still the Clitoris (We're Back) 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, my beautiful humans. Welcome back to another episode of Your Favorite You. I'm so glad you're here because today we're doing something that I have actually never done before. We are re-interviewing one of our amazing guests. After my conversation with Dr. Nina Deep a few weeks ago, two things happened. The first was that sweet Nina said, there are so many things that I wanted to say that I didn't get a chance to say. And I said, don't worry about it. We'll do it again. No problem. And then the inbox and my DMs lit up with questions and feelings and confessions from people. And here's the thing that kept coming up, Nina, that made me reach out to you. Several women reached out and said, okay, but wait, so does the G-spot exist or not? Like tell us exactly. So I called you back. We're not going to leave the people hanging. For those of you who didn't hear the first episode, please go back and listen. I believe it was episode 190. See Nina knows. Day 91, go listen. But Dr. Nina Deep is a board-certified internal medicine physician, founder of a speaking platform called It's Called the Clitoris. And honestly, one of my favorite guests that I've ever had on the podcast. Thank you. She's back today to answer your questions, to pull on some of the threads that we might have left angling, and of course, to continue to blow our minds. So welcome back to your favorite, you Nina.

​

Nina Deep

Thanks so much, Melissa. I am so happy to be here.

​

Melissa Parsons

Yeah. So tell me if you don't mind, what were some of the things that you were like, Oh, I wish I had said that you didn't talk about or

​

Nina Deep

I know, I know. So I think I really wanted to make clear that there's so many ways that in medicine our language has really not taken into account women and really been very biased. Our language in medicine has been really biased much more than I realized before I started doing like really looking into it and I feel like I was very naive before trusting and yeah and I just didn't quite understand the implications. So as I like really delved into this and understood that I was never taught the true anatomy of the clitoris which sounds like it's just one thing but it's so much more broader reaching and the implications of it are just so much more fast because if you as a woman aren't taught the anatomy of your body if that body part is minimized and dismissed if it's not included in your teachings if it's allowed to be erased from medical texts if it's not studied then you know we are at risk for surgical harm we don't understand our bodies as women as children and as girls and even boys don't understand women's bodies so it's so much more broad than that and I think when I recognized how the bias in medicine had like unveiled the shame that I was carrying because it all ties together that women are socialized to feel shame about their sexuality and as a result we don't know anything about our bodies and as a result we are kept silent and pliable and good as we had talked about before and it's almost like it led me into this whole unraveling of these messages that I've been taught my whole life.

​

Melissa Parsons

Yeah, that's so interesting. I just saw somebody that I follow. There are so many people that I follow, and I'm not going to be able to attribute it. But the language, like you're saying around women's health, like when we have a uterus that doesn't clamp down after we give birth to our babies, it's called a lazy…

​

Nina Deep

A failure. So I'll give you just one example that kind of blew my mind and tell me if you know this, because as I was looking into this, this was news to me. The word vagina is a Latin word. And the literal definition is sword sheath.

Melissa Parsons

Ew. Ew.

Nina Deep

Right. So well, this means that women were perceived and probably are still perceived as objects to be used by the sword holder. We're inanimate objects to be used with or without consent. We can't even give consent if we're just sword sheaths. And I mean, how could we not know this? How could you and I not know this?

​

Melissa Parsons

Well, and how many times have we felt like a sword's sheath and not verbalized it?

​

Nina Deep

It's like so embedded in our language and in the attitudes that are accepted by women and it's…

​

Melissa Parsons

Yeah, enraging, enraging.

​

Nina Deep

And I'll give you another example that it's a little complicated, but I'll just explain. So if you are reading about the genitals, the genitals can be described as the pudenda for women. And originally when that word was coined, this is way back 600 years ago, but when it was initially coined, it was referring to both female and male genitalia, but very quickly it only became written about and referred to when describing women in women's genitalia. So you could see something written in medical texts that say the pudenda women, and there's a pudendal nerve that supplies the genitals, but pudenda literally means to be ashamed. And it's only used to refer to women's genitals, and that's still used in medicine. There's been movement to get that erased or changed, but it didn't go anywhere. What do we do about it? It's been apparently too hard to change that. I think like education, I think what you're doing, just bringing these things to light is what I feel like we can do. Because when you have that knowledge, you can't unsee it. Like you really, it is like opening your eyes and turning on the light. I think that's what happened to me during this last, you know, eight years of kind of delving into this. And I think that's why I'm so passionate about letting other women know that these are, this is like we are medicine in this patriarchal, much more than I realized. And some other examples that even just recently came up, this doesn't happen to you with my talk, but I'm thinking about it because it's in medicine. You know, all of our resuscitation dummies are gender neutral and they're flat chested. And so it makes everyone more uncomfortable with how to actually treat women when they're in cardiac arrest. And my daughter was taking this BLS re-certification course online and she screenshot one of the questions that she and her friends had all gotten wrong. And it was the American Heart Association. So this is their test. And it basically says when a woman is in cardiac arrest, should you remove the bra completely so that you can have good pad adherence for the different later pad? Or should you just scooch the bra aside in order to have a better chance? If you can, can you just scooch the bra aside instead of removing it? And the answer is scooch the bra aside.

​

Melissa Parsons

Get me naked and save my fucking life.

​

Nina Deep

Exactly. So this is a problem.

​

Melissa Parsons

Mm hmm. Are you a fan of The Pitt? Did you watch the pit? I have watched it some with my kids. There's an episode in the pit where a woman is brought into the emergency department and she's having a myocardial infarction and the medics have not placed the leads correctly. So they don't pick up on the fact that she's having a heart attack. And Dr. Robinovitch basically rips them a new one and says, like, you have to move the breast and like you can't pretend that the extra tissue is not there.

​

Nina Deep

Right? But our medical education isn't helping. It's not helping even train there aren't 50% of, you know, resuscitation dummies are not female. And there's no female skeletons, like even in our anatomy class, apparently 99.9% of the skeletons are just females. So like, we're not even learning it from medical school and then it continues even up into the American Heart Association. I know, because I've read the question really carefully. And then I researched it a little bit. I know what they were trying to get at. They were saying that embarrassment is killing women, that people who are trying to respond in a public setting are nervous about removing a woman's shirt. They're worried they're going to be, you know, screamed at and they're exposing women and they're going to get in trouble for it. And so they're trying to say, don't worry so much. You know, don't worry about it. It's okay. But this goes along how women are so shamed to their bodies are shamed from the beginning, you know, we can't, in the United States, we can't breastfeed in public. Like, you know, men can go out shirtless, women can't go out shirtless feed their babies. Yeah, even if it's to sustain life. So it and that it's all part of the same problem. And it's it's hurting women medically. And it's killing women in the end. And it's all based on this shame idea. And it stems from medicine, which I didn't realize how patriarchal medicine was. But it's so much of it is, there's another example that I, I think, you know, in medicine, hot the hymen is supposed to denote virginity, right now. And this is just a medical myth. The hymen doesn't denote virginity. The hymen is just a flexible piece of elastic tissue that can exist or not exist, it can be there or not there, it can stretch or not stretch, whatever. But there's this myth that we have, and that we've all been fed, that kind of has been gaslighting women. And they believe that they should have this, you know, intact piece of tissue, and they may or may not. And it's just a remnant of embryology, just like male nipples, it has no use in the human body. It's just that this idea has been put upon it. Yeah, now we all believe it. And even in some cultures, you know, doctors are expected to examine the patient to check for virginity.

​

Melissa Parsons

Well, yeah, it's a way to control women. And if we believe that somebody's going to be able to tell by looking at our genitals, whether we've had sex or not, or whether we've had panty trail insertion, that's right, into our vaginas, right? Then, you know, if somebody is going to be able to tell by looking, then we better keep that area intact, which I mean, as a pediatrician, I can tell you, I don't know that I've ever, I mean, I have looked at tons of genitalia throughout my career as every good pediatrician should be doing at every wellness visit. Just FYI, somebody should be looking at your children's genitals every year to make sure that they're healthy and that, you know, nothing is either happening to your child or there isn't some medical problem that we can diagnose way earlier. If we see, for example, perianal polyps or something like that, that would denote that your child actually has Crohn's disease, that we can, I can go down the whole. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But I can tell you for sure that I cannot tell by looking at someone's genitals, whether or not they have had penetrative sex.

​

Nina Deep

That's right. I know. And yet we're all led to believe that that's the case. And it's, you know, that we should be ashamed of even having penetrated sex. I mean, I have that distinction this time.

​

Melissa Parsons

Right. Exactly. Oh, yeah. I know. I mean, I think that the last time we talked, you were saying that, you know, releasing your sexual shame didn't just change your sex life, but changed your whole life. And I think that this is probably what the patriarchy does not want to happen. That's right. Because when women start having boundaries and confidence and start becoming leaders. That's right. This is a danger to the patriarchy. Right. Yeah. But I think you and I both know that the domino effect of this for women long term downstream is that maybe this is one of the ways that we turn the tides. And, you know, I don't want to scare anybody and say that we have a complete matriarchy. I mean, it doesn't scare me or any of the people that I love. Right. But I could see how it would scare the people who are benefiting from the patriarchy. That's right.

​

Nina Deep

And I read this one sentence and I thought it was really good. It said, the fight against the patriarchy is not a fight against men. It’s a fight against the ideas that keep women inferior. And when you refer to everything in your genitals as the vagina and you erase the vulva and you minimize the clitoris, that's what we're doing. That's how this relates to it all.

​

Melissa Parsons

Yeah, and I'm always telling my boys, like, the patriarchy is not serving you. No. It's just...

​

Nina Deep

It's terrible for men. Everybody, yeah. For everybody, yeah. I know.

​

Melissa Parsons

I mean, I think that, you know, to answer my own question, and I think you probably agree with me, it's like, as we, one by one, introduce these ideas to people, and one by one, people either start to get inspired or empowered or furious or whatever they need to get in order to have some ability to stand up against it and introduce, you know, maybe their kids or their grandkids or the people that they love.

​

Nina Deep

And I will tell you, even after your last podcast, I had a mutual person reach out to me and say how much it had helped them. And I thought that was fantastic. And I see it in every one of the talks I give, or any time that I just have a patient conversation where I'm talking to them one-on-one about their bodies, I can see it. It is really helpful. I mean, can't minimize how much what we're trying to do helps. I will tell you, okay, this is another thing I wanted to tell you. So part of the problem is what you and I are talking about is not new. What you and I are talking about is something that has been around and I think every few decades, it's like women are trying to reinvent this whole concept. And one of the most fascinating things I learned, okay, so when I first started all of this research in 2018, I saw this Sophia Wallace artist and she had this big gold statue clitoris model stuff on the stage during a TED Talk and I was very confused. But she was talking as if she was the first one to ever bring this to light and she believed it and I believed it actually. And she was very much getting a lot of flack because she was just this outspoken feminist and a lot of her ideas were radical. And then like a year or two or three ago, I was looking at one of her posts and she said that she had just seen this movie called The Disappearance of Cher Hight. And Cher Hight was a feminist in the 1970s. So in 1976, Cher Hight was doing her doctorate work and she published this book and it was called The Hight Report. It was a study of female sexuality. And it was one of the most, it was the third most popular book of all time. Wow. 50 million copies sold. Wow. 1976, this was huge. She was on every talk show. She was, all women were basically reading this book. So she was a big deal. She went on to write many other books, The Hight Report on Male Sexuality and all these other things. And she was eventually run out of the United States because of all the flack that she was getting and she went to retire in another country. But the movie was really, it showed how much she was bringing to light everything that we're saying. That the clitoris is the full structure. This is the sexual organ for women. That penetrative sex is not the way women orgasm because this was all like what Freud had taught everyone in the early 1900s that the great male thrust was all that there was. And if you were, which is terrible for men and women, but either way, she had to unwind that. So in the 1970s, she's unwinding it. In the 1970s, that's right when the birth control poll first came to market. And so just to go back on this and then I'll finish up with Cher Hight. In the late 1800s, there's this woman, her name was Margaret Sanger. Do you know Margaret? Okay, so Margaret Sanger born in late 1800. She was a very born to a very poor family in Brooklyn. Her mom had like 18 kids, seven miscarriages, 11 births and died at 49. And so she herself was like, I have to do something. She became a nurse.

​

Nina Deep

She became what they would technically say as an OB nurse, but whatever she opened up this clinic and she wrote this stuff called The Rebel Woman. And it was basically how do we help women who are struggling with multiple pregnancies and then not having the money to afford it or being physically ill and not having the health to even support a pregnancy. Shouldn't we just educate them on their options? And that was her whole purpose. So eventually this led to Margaret Sanger opening Planned Parenthood, which is today. But in the same time, this other woman, Catherine McCormick, this is the introduction of the pill, but Catherine McCormick was this late 1800s, a woman born to a very, very rich family. She ended up going to MIT and getting a degree in biology and then promptly getting married and not doing anything with that degree, but still having a high degree of passion about women's health and women's rights. So she became a suffragette. She fought for the ability for women to vote. And then she and Margaret Sanger hooked up. And this hooked up in a way that they were gonna help each other. So for 40 years they were talking and Catherine McCormick married this very, very rich man who then developed schizophrenia. So Catherine said, I'm never gonna have kids. So they both had this idea about women and their reproductive rights and how do we help women by helping their reproductive choices. And they wanted to bring a pill that could magically give women control over their own bodies and their own reproduction. So they worked and they worked with some Harvard doctors and they eventually brought the birth and 12 pill to market. When it came to market, those ladies were in their 80s. But their whole lives, they either contributed to it financially or they were dedicated to it for many, many different ways for women's health and women's rights. They brought that birth control to the market. When it first came to market, it was super high dose pills and it was very fraught with side effects. Lots of side effects, yeah. And it was marketed as a method to help with menstrual irregularities because the Catholic Church was really strong and the Catholic Church didn't want it to be for any kind of birth control. So, but it came to market. And if you were a married woman and you had the consent of your husband, you could get it. Eventually, you couldn't even get it if you were a single hussy in the mid-1970s. It takes forever. And I was born in 1970. Like, I grew up thinking the birth control bill was no big deal that had been around forever. But why didn't we learn all about these women in our history classes in school? I don't know. I didn't know about them at all. So anyway, my only point in saying all this is that decades go on. We seem to understand that women need to have rights. They need to know about their bodies. They need to have autonomy. And then we forget about it because this Cher Hite woman was certainly popular in 1976. She wrote this huge book. Then we have like the artist, Sophia Wallace, in the early 2000s or mid-2000s, whatever, like 2010, 2015. She thinks she's the first one to talk about the clitoris openly, which she wasn't. And she didn't know that because she hadn't learned about Cher Hite or anything else. And like, I feel like we're doing the same thing. It's like we're spinning our wheels. We're just re, we're saying the same thing. There are so many movies and documentaries that say exactly what I'm saying. And they were 20 years ago. Right.

​

Melissa Parsons

And I think, is it that we forget about it or is it that it gets squashed down? I think both.

​

Nina Deep

I don't know. Like, how do we get this word out there?

​

Melissa Parsons

Keep talking about it on my podcast and share it far and wide and we ask people to share.

​

Nina Deep

That's right. It's fundamentally so important to women to understand how we've been so deeply socialized to feel shame. And that's what it comes down to. So we have to start using the right language, right? Right. You have to name our body parts. We cannot say vagina. Yeah. To refer to everything anymore. We have to say vulva. We have to know where our urethra is, or just at least know that your urethra is different than your vaginal canal. You know, know that your clitoris is different than your urethra, which is different than your vaginal canal. Just right down there with a mirror. Yeah.

​

Melissa Parsons

Please, please look down there with the mirror. If you have not done that for yourself, if you're driving your car, maybe don't do it right now. But if you're at home, pause the podcast. Go. Get a mirror. Check it out. Look at yourself. See all. There should be no shame. And I mean, a lot of people are like, it's gross. It doesn't look pretty. I know. Have you looked at the male genitalia yet? It also is not pretty. Exactly. And it's functional. That's the important part. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, there have been so many. Of course, I think my algorithm knows me well. And after our podcast episode, and I know my phone is listening to me right now. Because if I say, hey, S-I-R-I, it will light up. And so anyway, it sends me stuff after I do these types of podcasts. And there was a video of the reporter on the street going out and asking men and women. Yes, questions. Can you urinate with a tampon in? That's right. That's right. Can you have sex when you have your period? And when did that become shameful and wrong and gross and such a lack of knowledge? I mean, yeah.

​

Nina Deep

Both from women and men, surprisingly, you know.

​

Melissa Parsons

Yeah, way more women are grossed out by it. And it may just be that they're like, I already am bleeding, I'm having cramps. Fuck no, I don't want to be a sword sheath right now.

​

Nina Deep

Exactly. That's right. But do they know they have a urethra that's different from their vaginal canal? Like I'm very, I'm hopeful that they do, but I think that a lot of people don't because they never looked. And I know it's easier for us to see men is all hanging out there. I get it. It is a little easier, but it's not, it's so important for us to know our bodies. It's so important for us to not carry that shame. And it starts with words and understanding like visually what you look like. And yeah, I would encourage everyone to take a peek. Yeah, yeah, to take a peek.

​

Melissa Parsons

Peak for sure. Yes. Okay, so we have to answer. Oh, yeah, the question about the G spot because the people that were messaging me, yes, I'm not even kidding. Septogenarians that who were like, you mean to tell me that I have been searching for this for the best, but yeah, 60 years, right, right

​

Nina Deep

It doesn't exist. So let me explain the G spot from the way that the Dr. Gaffenberg, which is where it comes from, G, that the way he first described it was that it was a histologically separate part, that it was like literally a different anatomical structure. That's what he described it as. So that's really what I'm saying, that there is no histological difference. That means there's no button you're going to find. There's no...

​

Melissa Parsons

Most logically, for those of you who are not scientists, just mean that if we look at the tissue underneath the microscope, it doesn't look any different from any of the other tissue that is in your vaginal wall.

​

Nina Deep

That's right. And so they just, even not that long ago, 15 years ago, dissected cadavers, vaginal walls and urethral walls. So when you look at the clitoris, you know, structurally, it goes clitoris, urethra, vaginal wall. So that is the sandwich or whatever. So they dissected the urethral walls and the vaginal walls, and they did it at all the different levels to figure out whether or not there was a G spot because that's where it's been described. Two to three centimeters inside the anterior wall of the vaginal canal. If you put your finger inside the vaginal canal, it is like pointing towards the belly button or the, you know, so that would be where it would be found. And I do think the reason that it has come up is because many, many, many women are heightened, have heightened sensitivity there. And that's true. And the thought is when you look histologically, it is not because there is actually a different cell, a different innervation in the vaginal wall or urethra, it is because that is the confluence of the legs of the clitoral body. And there are so many blood vessels and nerves in that area that it makes it more sensitive. But that's why they're, you know, searching for it, you could have a sensitive spot there, but it's not going to be, it's going to feel different physically, and it doesn't look different under the microscope. So there was more of a semantics, I suppose, there is a spot that can be tender or sensitive and a good way for many women. But it depends on your anatomy, and it depends on whether or not that's a good spot for you or not, but you're not going to physically feel something different with your finger.

​

Melissa Parsons

Yeah, okay, awesome.

​

Nina Deep

Hopefully that clears it up. And if people are really sensitive in that area, yay. Just know that it's probably coming all from the sensations of your clitoral body. Right, right. You are rubbing a place that has a ton of innervation and it happens to be where the forelegs come together.

​

Melissa Parsons

Yeah, so to say it even more clearly, there is nothing wrong with you if you feel a lot of sensation in this area and someone touching this area or you touching this area feels really good and helps you to orgasm. That's right. There is also nothing wrong with you if excessive amount of stimulation causes nothing to happen for you. That's right. Right there.

​

Nina Deep

But it's essentially like tickling the clitoris from the inside is what's happening.

​

Melissa Parsons

So yes, in my experience, tickling the clitoris from the outside is way more effective.

​

Nina Deep

It's right there.

​

Melissa Parsons

Exactly. Tickle me on the outside, babe, or myself, tickle myself on the outside, right? And I think the other thing that we kind of glossed over on the last episode that I want to make perfectly clear for everyone listening is that there is absolutely nothing wrong with self-pleasuring yourself, and there should be zero shame 100% around that.

​

Nina Deep

Yes, and I think that's really important. So 50% of girls aged 14 to 17 will have never masturbated, unlike boys in that same age group, right? 50% of girls that have more than 50% of girls in a very, you know, normal teenage year span will have never masturbated. Because why do they masturbate if they think they're, you know, waiting for their Prince Charming? Right. If they're ashamed of their genitals. Right. So the knowledge that we have of our own bodies is going to be so important, because I'm sorry, how is another human girl or boy, how are they supposed to know your body better than you know your body? So I always encourage patients to explore what feels good for them, and then communicate that to their partner. If they choose. Yeah.

​

Melissa Parsons

And let's make it clear that those 50% of girls are not masturbating because it doesn't feel good.

​

Nina Deep

It's right, it's not because of that. At least that's not what I think, because it does feel good.

​

Melissa Parsons

Of course not, and I will tell you this, my niece who, please God, I hope she's not listening to the podcast, but when she was a baby, we were driving in the car, my sister was driving and I was sitting in the back with my niece, it was dark, and she was in her car seat and making these noises and sweating and kind of racking up against her car seat. And my sister was like, what the hell is she doing? She does this often. And I was like, I hate to be the one to tell you this, sis. She is masturbating against the straps of the car seat. And I mean, this is completely normal human behavior. Like nothing is wrong with my niece. Certainly she had not been taught to do this behavior. She did it because it felt good. And you'll go with zero shame and you'll be in a classroom full of kindergartners. And you'll see, of course, little boys with their hands in their pants because it feels good. And you'll see little girls sitting on the edge of a chair rocking back and forth, pleasuring themselves, self-stimulating, stimming, whatever you wanna call it, it doesn't matter. Because it feels good, there's no shame. They're not thinking about another person. It's not sexual in nature at all. It just feels good.

​

Nina Deep

And so you learn your body, you learn it feels good. And then if you want to communicate that and have a relationship with someone else, you can do that. But if you don't ever learn your body, I think you have a much lower chance of having, being able to have trust and communication and confidence and warmth and connection with another human. I think intimacy. What you want out of sex is this intimate connection and if you can't connect to yourself, I think it's very difficult to connect with someone else. So, you have to develop that comfort. There's this technique called Sense8 Touch. And it's what a lot of sex therapists maybe, perhaps I don't know how popular it is, but I think it's popular. And it really involves getting back in touch with your physical body. And I think that is, so that's why I think masturbation is so important. Yeah. Yeah.

​

Melissa Parsons

I love it. And encourage it in everyone.

​

Nina Deep

Yes, and vibrators, I heard this once. You should never be embarrassed about using a vibrator because it's much better than using a manual saw. Like use an electric saw because it just gets the job done.

​

Melissa Parsons

Faster and more reliable.

​

Nina Deep

So I guess some people have said that they're embarrassed about maybe their partner feels threatened by the use of vibrator or their partner doesn't want them to or is embarrassed or thinks it's like the partner is not good enough if you have to use a vibrator, but power tools just get the job done. So yeah, vibrators. Zero shame. And I highly encourage that.

​

Melissa Parsons

Yeah, for sure, for sure. Yeah. I have to tell you, after you and I chatted the last time, one of my neighbors who shall remain nameless had come over and she didn't know that you and I had even talked, but she was telling me how much she loves being your patient and how she was like, you have, you have to know her, you have to meet her and that type of thing. And I'm like, you're not going to believe this, but she's going to be on the podcast in a couple of weeks and we just talked a couple of days. Oh my gosh, it's so great.

​

Nina Deep

Yeah, so it's such a small world. Columbus is smaller than we think.

​

Melissa Parsons

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. So, so yes, you're out there doing good in the world.

​

Nina Deep

One moment at a time. Yes, exactly.

​

Melissa Parsons

I know. Okay. I want to ask you this and we've kind of talked around it a little bit, but, you know, a lot of, you know, I got the messages from the septuagenarians about the G spot, but a lot of our listeners right now are, are women in their forties, fifties and obviously beyond. And you know, around men of menopause or maybe even on the other side of it, and they've really spent decades in a body that they never were fully introduced to. That's right. Besides looking at their body parts, besides maybe buying a clitoral stimulator, you know, what is, or just manually masturbating, whatever, what is starting now look like in your, in your eyes?

​

Nina Deep

So, you know, I kind of meet the patients where they are. Sometimes they've never, they don't even know where their clitoris is and they would never dream of masturbating. So if they're at that place, it has to be a really gentle exploration and I often will give them some resources and ask them to come back and maybe then we can discuss how they feel or I'll see if they wanna see a specialist, like a sex therapist that can work with them one-on-one because I do think it's so different. Sometimes you can just give, you can just have a conversation with your patient and they're like, oh, okay, since you told me to do that, I'm just gonna go do it. But sometimes there's just, like you said, it's been decades and they are really uncomfortable with their bodies and honestly, it might have to start with something as gentle as touch your knees and your thighs, like don't even go towards your genital areas. It just has to be get into your body in that present moment so I tend to refer honestly to a sex therapist because I feel like it's a little bit longer of an unwinding but some people, I just ask them to read certain books that I think are really helpful.I don't know if you've heard of Emily Nagoski. So yeah. I love Emily Nagoski. So I think her books are really great and then there are many books I've read I think Becoming Clitererate by Laurie Mintz or Come As You Are, was that Emily? That's Nagoski. And then the other one by Ian Kerner that She Comes First. I think that's a really, really good how to guide on oral sex for women written by a man who struggled initially. He had premature ejaculation issues at the very early stages of his life so he became really good at the Nalingas, just really good at doing that so that he was like able to. And then he just, he's a therapist and then he just wrote this book that actually has been around for like 40 years and it's still a great one. I gave it to all my nephews last Christmas. Amazing. So I think it's like books that can get people off on the right start. I think books are sometimes less, people can absorb it at their own rate. Though books are good, I think listening to podcasts are great, it's great education.And then if they want, they can see a therapist. I depends on where the patient is in their job.

​

Melissa Parsons

Yeah, well, we talked the last time you talked about the shame, ignorant, silent cycle. And I think that a lot of people are in one of those phases and, you know, like keep circling back and that type of thing.

​

Nina Deep

What do you tend to like recommend to people if they're kind of in that state?

​

Melissa Parsons

If you could see my bookshelf. I don't have She Comes First. I might need to get it and read it. But yeah, I love Nagoski's books. I love her workbooks. Yeah, I have become illiterate. Yeah. You know, and I'm just like, there's a woman-run website called bellesa.co. Okay, that I send people to that is.

Nina Deep

Oh my God, yes.

Melissa Parsons

Oh, yes. Yes. Yeah. Thank you for remembering that. Because I, that was in my brain, but I couldn't think of the, the name of it. Yeah. I mean, it's such a cheap thing to pay for.

​

Nina Deep

Like I think people can start exploring it. There's such a, there's like so much information out there and it's so easily available now. Yes.

​

Melissa Parsons

And I mean, I think that some people might go Googling and end up places that they don't want to necessarily be where there are people being exploited and that we obviously do not want to contribute to. But yes, I will link all of these books and these websites in the show notes so that people can find them.So, okay. Once again, such a great conversation.

​

Nina Deep

I know, I'm so excited to be here. Let me see if there was anything I wanted to say. Yeah, make sure, please, please. I did see this one thing that I thought was so great that just highlight to me how much we don't think about the way we're socialized. So there's this little statement that says, I now pronounce you woman and husband. And I thought, I now, and I couldn't even understand it for a minute. I'm like, woman and husband. But then I was like, oh my gosh. Like, you know, now pronounce you man and wife. Yeah, so the socialization goes really deep. So interesting. I think those were all the things I wanted to say.

​

Melissa Parsons

I want to ask you, Nina, like you said you gave this book She Comes First to all of your nephews for Christmas. How was it received by them?

​

Nina Deep

So great. I was actually a little bit nervous about... I didn't want them to be reading it thinking of me. I was like, Alice is going to come across. But they were so excited.I actually ended up giving it to the girlfriends. So it was a, here it is, it's for you so that you can be empowered to enact this in your future relationship. Because I felt like it is up to us. But the boys were all reading it. They were so excited about it. It was exactly what I would have wanted.

​

Melissa Parsons

My sons don't listen to the podcast, but I can I can imagine them being like, Mom, do not get any ideas.

​

Nina Deep

Oh, it's a great gift. Yeah, it really is.

​

Melissa Parsons

Listen, what they don't know will not hurt them.

​

Nina Deep

Yeah, it's a great gift to women and men, because I think it was very reinforced, what I thought. And then I think really men aren't taught these things. They really don't learn that. I don't think. And this is like a literal how to guide.

​

Melissa Parsons

Yeah, this is  interesting because I'm thinking about to some of back to some of the parts work that I have done with my therapist around sex. Yeah. And because I was socialized to believe that it was shameful. And a lot of the work that I have done has been to be able to enjoy myself without rushing. And I think that one of my parts is like, we got to hurry up because we're going to get caught. Even after having sex with my amazing husband for the past 30 years, you still carry that. Yeah. And I mean, I think that, you know, when the kids were little and still in the house and that type of thing, there was that like, yeah, like we got to hurry because, you know, they're going to wake up or walk in or whatever. But it went way beyond that. And like, even after they've been out of the house and that type of thing, it's like, Oh, wait, like, no, this is…

​

Nina Deep

You have to unwind all those thoughts. You have to find them and then dismantle them. And it's an active process because if you don't know that it's there, then you need to feel ashamed and uncomfortable and inhibited. And so yes, it may take active work with your therapist to dismantle every one of those thoughts. That makes you not feel comfortable in your own body and the ability to fully enjoy your sexuality as a woman.

​

Melissa Parsons

Mm hmm. Yeah. And I mean, just also the thoughts of like, only hussies do this. And, you know, I mean, we kind of talked about it last time. Like just finding all of those little sneaky parts that have these beliefs.

​

Nina Deep

It’s an active process of like, unlearning those messages because they've been so deeply ingrained. And I think that's what, not learning the clitoral anatomy, that is, this is the tip of the iceberg, should I have to speak? I mean, even though we, yeah, we described the clitoris as being the tip of the iceberg and the whole thing is underneath really, but that really started my unraveling of these just thoughts that I myself had had. And I think I'm gonna share.

​

Melissa Parsons

Well, and listeners of the podcast will know that one of my big ideas is compassionate unlearning. So, I'm learning all these things that we've been socialized to believe and think and live.

​

Nina Deep

And have grace for that younger you that believed it. Right.

​

Melissa Parsons

And even if you can, like some compassion for the people who taught you these things and who believed it themselves too, and thought that they needed to pass it on, that type of thing.

​

Nina Deep

Yeah, I mean, they were doing the best they could. So I gave this lecture to the Indian community that I grew up with, and I didn't realize how many of the older community members would be there, men and women. And it was a little, I was actually a little bit like, ooh, I cannot wait. Activated. Yeah, and then it was such a joy to see them come up after me, these are people in their 70s and 80s, and just say, I wish I had known this my whole life. Wow. And it was, yeah, so it's never too late to unlearn all of these things.

​

Melissa Parsons

Yeah, as long as you're still here. Yeah. May as well start now.

​

Nina Deep

Never too late. Never too late. One, socialized thought at a time.

​

Melissa Parsons

Exactly. All right. Thank you so much for being here. I so appreciate you. I really, really appreciate you having me. Yeah. And just for those who didn't listen last time or who maybe are listening for the first time, listening to this one first before they go back to listen to 191, how do people find you? How can they work with you?

​

Nina Deep

I am at ninadeep.com. I have a boutique medical practice that's non-surgical aesthetics. So in Columbus, that's the easiest way on my website, which also links to my, it's called the clitoris website, which is in itself a different website, it's linked there. And I'm always available to talk to groups big and small about the clitoris, it's a real passion project of mine.

​

Melissa Parsons

Thank you again so much for being here, I so appreciate you.

Nina Deep

Thank you so much.

Melissa Parsons

All right. Have a great day, everybody. I'll be back again next week.

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!