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↓ In today’s email:
- This week’s inspiration: 1950s sex and other topics
- Latest blog post: Do You Find It’s Hard to Ask for Help?
- What I watched this week: The Disappearance of Shere Hite
This Week’s Inspiration: 1950s Sex and Other Topics
Just before getting married, my grandmother offered some unsolicited advice.
She said, "When it’s time to go to bed with your husband, even if you don’t want to, it’s probably a good idea to satisfy him."
I looked at her with pure incredulity. My grandmother, with the brains of Einstein and the physique of Yoda. I could not believe she was telling me to put out.
She said it with all the enthusiasm of washing clothes on a washing board in her basement in Newton, Massachusetts. It was abundantly clear. Sex was a chore that just had to get done, like the laundry.
Two decades later, this is still an awkward moment to think back on. It gave me a certain kind of pause.
All of which leads me to my recent interest in the Hite Report, and the documentary about it that I’m reviewing further down. Stay tuned.
On a slightly different note, I’ve also been wondering why we give away energy that we don’t even have, all the while feeling some resistance to getting people’s help when we need it most.
Is learning receptivity something that we can work on? Will it further elevate our life and relationships?
Let’s find out and dive in.
Latest Blog Post
Do You Find It’s Hard to Ask for Help?
Here’s a test. If a friend needed you to make dinner, you’d happily help. You’d probably make more than they asked for. But if dinner arrived at your door, unannounced and still warm, out would come one of the two sentences we all have memorized: "Oh my god, you shouldn’t have," or "I’m so sorry you had to go out of your way." Both of them are apologies. Somebody hands you a gift and you say sorry.
The post gets into where that reflex comes from, what researchers found when they watched what people actually do when help is offered, and the week I spent practicing on the receiving end. That photograph above is from it.
What I Watched This Week
The Disappearance of Shere Hite
Mary Beard, in her book Women & Power (she also famously wrote SPQR), says the first time in literature that a woman is told to shut up is in the Odyssey, when Telemachus tells Penelope to go back upstairs; out of the realm of men, back to her weaving. What was said in public, and who was allowed to say it, belonged to men. Three thousand years later, right up into the 1970s and '80s, perhaps that was still the case.
This has been on my mind since watching The Disappearance of Shere Hite this week. An erudite sexologist speaking up, being listened to, and also silenced.
For those who don’t know her, and I think that’s most of my readership, Shere Hite was an important, albeit polemical, figure of the late '60s, '70s and early '80s. She also wrote the 30th most successful best-selling book of all time, one that most people have never heard of. For it, she sent out hundreds of thousands of anonymous questionnaires about the sexual experiences of women, everyday people across many demographics throughout the United States. The documentary is a biopic, a glimpse into a previous time, and also the firestorm that came in its wake.
With a first-rate mind and an appearance like Greta Garbo, she spoke the truth. And what happens next? You’ll find out when you watch.
Rotten Tomatoes has given it a 100% approval rating. Let me know if you agree.
Just an fyi: this one is not for young and/or impressionable audiences.
Report back.
Happy week to come. Talk soon!
Dr. Catherine