59. The Sexual Revolution of Motherhood

“We become mothers in the womb of society. A mother’s relationship with sex can’t be disentangled from how she feels about herself, how she feels about her partner, as well as how society impacts and constructs her worldview.” Sarah Forbes. This episode is with Sarah Forbes, a curator, sexual culturalist and author who has been dubbed a ‘sexpert supreme’ by Cosmopolitan Magazine. Sarah is trained as an anthropologist and spent a decade as the Curator of the Museum of Sex in New York, captured in her memoir ‘Sex in the Museum’. She is now working on her second book ‘Mama Sex’, an anthropological look at motherhood and sexuality. In this conversation Sarah explains how modern relationships and the mental load placed on mothers is representative of an anti-aphrodisiac cultural tsunami. This dive into motherhood and sexuality is framed by both individual questions of self and identity, as well as broader sociocultural and historical questions about how context shapes individual experiences. Sarah shares powerful insights into the potential that motherhood has as a pathway to sexual revolution. She speaks to the barriers and obstacles mothers face in their sexual fulfilment - leading to the ‘orgasm gap’ - and offers advice for how we can rebuild and strengthen our own relationship with our sexuality, without it having to be another thing on our to-do list. Head to Sarah’s website https://www.mamasexbook.com/ take the ‘Mama Sex’ quiz, and follow her at @mamasexbook and @curatorofsex