Sex Gets Real 287: Darcey Steinke on menopause, changing bodies, & a new way forward

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tl;dr Darcey Steinke on menopause, changing bodies, & a new way forward

MENOPAUSE! It’s a thing loads of us go through that’s fraught with misinformation, silence, shame, and PATRIARCHY.

So, this week, I’m chatting with author Darcey Steinke about her new book, “Flash Count Diary: Menopause and the Vindication of Natural Life”. I had a chance to read the book and chat about it with some friends in a queer elders book club I’m in.

Darcey and I dive into the ways menopause is vilified by the modern medical industrial complex, the stories we don’t have, and what she discovered along the way around pleasure, sex, and changing bodies.

We acknowledge that this episode is cis and hetero centric as it’s a largely about Darcey’s memoir. If you’re looking for some resources for other kinds of bodies and genders, here are some articles to check out:

• “The menopause and me – when you’re gender neutral” in HELLO! Magazine
• Read an excerpt from “Flash Count Diary” about gender and being ungendered by menopause.
• A short missive by someone who is Autistic and menopausal.

You can grab “Flash Count Diary” wherever books are sold.

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Episode Transcript

Dawn Serra: You’re listening to Sex Gets Real with Dawn Serra, that’s me. This is a place where we explore sex, bodies, and relationships, from a place of curiosity and inclusion. Tying the personal to the cultural where you’re just as likely to hear tender questions about shame and the complexities of love, as you are to hear experts challenging the dominant stories around pleasure, body politics, and liberation. This is about the big and the small, about sex and everything surrounding it we don’t usually name. The funny, the awkward, the imperfect happen here in service to joy, connection, healing, and creating healthier relationships with ourselves and each other. So, welcome to Sex Gets Real. Don’t forget to hit subscribe.

Hey, you. Welcome to this week’s episode of Sex Gets Real. A couple months ago, I read an article about menopause that really excited me. It was a different perspective that I hadn’t seen before, and that I realized I was hungry for; especially after having talked to so many people over the past couple of years about the silence around menopause. The author of the article that I enjoyed was Darcey Steinke. And it turns out, Darcey had just recently released a memoir/nonfiction research book that’s an exploration of menopause called “Flash Count Diary: Menopause and the Vindication of Natural Life.” 

Dawn Serra: So I reached out to the publisher and asked if we could be connected. And just after I got the book, which was kind of fantastic timing, I learned that a queer elder group that I’m in had chosen “Flash Count Diary” as their next book selection. So I immediately dove in. I was so excited to explore menopause, to chat with really rad queer folks all about it. We had our book club a couple of weeks ago and really unpacked so much of the book, and what we were still hungry for as far as trans, non-binary, and queer experiences. Then after that, I got connected with Darcey and invited her on the show. So that is this week’s episode. My chat with author, Darcey Steinke on menopause and changing bodies.

So you’ll hear in this episode, Darcey writes to figure things out. She loves writing about the body and it was really her own hot flash diary and experiences with menopause, and journaling those things that led her to write this book. She was hungry for hope and to find someone who was grappling with menopause in a way that really honored the power and the intensity, and the animalism of it all – without trying to make it shiny or heroic or something to avoid or to deny that we were going through. Over the course of “Flash Count Diary”, Darcey attends a medical conference on menopause – you’ll hear us talk about that in this episode. She spoke with over 100 women about their experiences of menopause. And she connects deeply, deeply with one of the only other mammals on Earth who not only goes through menopause, but who thrive and become more powerful afterwards – and that’s killer whales or orcas.

Dawn Serra: So all of that is to say that Darcey is not an activist or a therapist. She’s not trans or queer. She’s a thin, white, cis, heterosexual woman writing about her personal journey and struggle through menopause. The book is deep and challenging. It’s raw and complicated. And ultimately, it really did give me a sense of hope and excitement about this powerful change that some of our bodies are capable of. And whenever my time comes, I feel like I have a beacon of hope that’s quite different from most of the dialogue that we see about menopause.

I just want to name, though, that it does mean that this conversation that we’re about to have centers around Darcey’s experience of the world and her body. So our conversation centers cis bodies and heterosexual experiences. And you’ll hear language like female and woman, whenever vaginas or vulvas are mentioned. I just trust that we can all hold that there are other experiences of gender and genitals in the world, even if they’re not captured in this singular conversation. We all get to be at different points of discovery and patriarchy dismantling, especially around something as vilified and threatening to patriarchy as menopause.

Dawn Serra: I also want to mention that for Darcey, hormone replacement therapy didn’t feel like the right choice for a number of reasons which are really beautifully explored in the book. She’s passionate about naming the ways patriarchy and misogyny have long been the reasons that doctors are looking for a “cure” in for menopause, which is a natural system and experience of the body. Although, sometimes, it is a very uncomfortable one, especially in a culture that does not value aging bodies and feminine bodies.

So I name that because if you or someone you know decided to go on hormone replacement therapy for menopause, it’s a valid choice. It’s an okay choice. We all get to decide what to do with our bodies. And even if the choice to seek hormone therapy was because you didn’t want to be seen as old, or as aging, or as becoming invisible, meaning it’s more about the male gaze than anything else. That’s OK. The world is a tough place to navigate, especially in an aging body, since we have such a cultural obsession with youth and childlike qualities. So I just want to name that no matter what choices each of us make, those are the choices that we get to make because these are our bodies.

Dawn Serra: It’s really interesting, over the years I’ve had so many conversations with people who are either entering perimenopause or menopause, who are feeling really scared or frustrated by the cultural silence and the lack of resources, and the fact that we often really do use menopause as a punch line. And while I can’t recap the entire book here, there is some fascinating anthropological research on why menopause actually contributes to the longevity and the health of indigenous tribes. And, there’s this theory called The Grandmother Theory that posits one of the main reasons humanity survived and thrived the way that it did, is because of postmenopausal elders.

I also saw this really interesting video with a doctor, recently, who was talking about menopause And he said one of the things that he has trotted out all of the time, is that we didn’t live as long in the past. And so menopauses are rather new thing. He actually pushed back against that and said, “That’s not true. We’ve been living into our 70s and 80s for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years. Menopause has always been around for humans.” And that statistic around shorter lifespans really is an oversimplified picture of age. Because they were taking the average lifespan, along points of time and history, and mortality rates of infants were very high. 

Dawn Serra: So a couple hundred years ago, over 50% of infants didn’t live past one or two years, which means if you’re taking an average and 50% of people were only one or two years old; that’s going to make the average lifespan for people in, say, the 1700s seem like it’s in the 40s or 50s. When in fact, it was just a much wider variety and the numbers were skewed. So I thought that was also really helpful to think about for time immemorial, menopause has been happening on this planet. And, there’s tremendous wisdom that’s been lost because of colonialism and white supremacy, and specifically white cis men and the medical industrial complex; asserting that they know how to fix bodies that are changing in ways that don’t serve cis men in power. 

I’m sure that there are all kinds of indigenous wisdoms from around the world and throughout time. That position menopause as something else entirely a transition, a powerful change, a doorway to a new way of being. Some of those traditions are still around, but finding them via Google search is challenging. So that’s not to say they don’t exist, but that I struggled in finding them. And so often, everything that we see about menopause is really about the terrible symptoms like mood swings and vaginal dryness. But there’s some really cool research that shows that hot flashes actually increase the elasticity and strength of the brain. That we’re better able to tap into really somatic experiences like anger and clarity around the world and our bodies. And this really intense metamorphosis happens that brings us into a new phase of life. And for me, that sounds kind of exciting.

Dawn Serra: I really, really wanted to offer some resources on trans bodies, non-binary bodies, and menopause. And the first thing that I’ll say is, most of the research that I found at a variety of different websites was that for trans folks who are on gender affirming hormones, menopause either may not happen at all. Because essentially, they’re on hormone therapy or it may be significantly reduced and delayed. Hormones don’t work the same on all bodies and you’ll hear actually Darcey mentioned this in the episode. But cis women who seek hormone replacement therapy for menopause report a mixture of results – not everybody has the magical experience that a lot of doctors will sell you on around hormone replacement. 

So I would venture to guess that as our bodies age, regardless of gender, taking hormones is going to have mixed effects. And thinking about hormones, wouldn’t it be amazing for us to be able to turn to trans elders who have a lifetime of experience of moving through hormonal changes to offer us guidance about menopausal hormonal changes. I think that sounds like a pretty rad pleas for some books and some resources, world.

Dawn Serra: I also just want to say that it’s so important for us to hold that stories and resources about menopause for people who are gender diverse, especially non-binary, agender, and gender queer folks are woefully missing. You’re going to hear Darcey and I talk about the fact that we really hope that Darcey’s vulnerable, raw memoir, and how well it’s done in the world, will help open doors so that more books, more memoirs, more stories by trans and queer and gender diverse elders can emerge, especially around menopause. 

I was only able to find one article. And I went through probably 10 pages of Google. One article about a non-binary person and their experience of menopause. That’s it. In that search, though, I did find some other cool stuff like a piece by someone who has autism and menopause. I found a piece on BuzzFeed that’s a big excerpt of “Flash Count Diary,” where Darcey ‘s actually really grappling with gender and what it means after menopause, and how she experienced this ungendering or this third way that’s outside the binary. I’m going to link to all of those articles at dawnserra.com/ep287 for episode 287. So be sure to check those out.

Dawn Serra: Finally, before I read Darcey’s bio and share my conversation with Darcey, I want to read my favorite passage from “Flash Count Diary” to anchor us into this conversation a bit. It says, 

“Hope is essential. The wild matriarchs have given me hope. No one calls the female whales roadkill or dried up cunts. No doctor offers hormone therapy or vaginal rejuvenation. In the matriarchy they’ve created, children stay with their mothers for life. Menopausal females move into leadership roles and the older post reproductive females train the adolescent males in sexual technique. While the female whales face nearly insurmountable environmental challenges, each year brings more badassery. They demonstrate to me what no human woman could, that it is not menopause itself that is the problem. But menopause as it as experienced under patriarchy.”

Dawn Serra: As someone who is going to be entering perimenopause in the next few years, if I haven’t already – it’s kind of a fuzzy, blurry space. This gives me hope and this fierce sort of “yes” about this wise, amazing, complicated, scarred, pain-filled fat body of mine, and what could be on the other side of this transition?

Anyway, here is a bit about Darcey. And then, we’ll dive right into the chat. Darcey Steinke is the author of the memoir, “Easter Everywhere,” and five novels: “Sister Golden Hair”, “Milk”, “Jesus Saves”, “Suicide Blonde”, and “Up through the water”. Her books have been translated into 10 languages and her nonfiction has appeared widely. Her web story, “Blind Spot” was a part of the 2000 Whitney Biennial. She has been both a Henry Hines and a Stegner fellow, and a writer in residence at the University of Mississippi. She has taught at the new school, Columbia University School of Arts, New York University, Princeton, and the American University of Paris. She lives with her husband in Brooklyn. Here is my chat with Darcey Steinke.

Dawn Serra: Welcome to Sex Gets Real, Darcey. I am really excited to talk to you today on the show all about menopause.

Darcey Steinke: Thank you so much for having me. I’m looking forward to talking about menopause. 

Dawn Serra: Yes. So, for people who aren’t familiar, I just had the pleasure and the honor of getting to read your new book, “Flash Count Diary: Menopause and the Vindication of Natural Life.” And here’s where I would love for us to start: so much of what we know about menopause, which, frankly, isn’t much is really based in pop culture, using menopause as a punch line, or the medical industrial complex, wanting to find a cure for it. 

Over the course of the book, one of the things that becomes really clear is, you aren’t looking for a cure, but rather you’re looking for a way to reframe this experience that so many of us go through. And you even close the book with, “Sometimes I think how silly, how human it was to feel I needed an antidote for menopause.” So many people when they think of menopause, think of managing the symptoms, wanting to turn back the clock, wanting a cure. And now that you’re on the other side of writing this book and really asking some big questions, I’d love to start with – if needing an antidote for menopause isn’t where you ended up, what do you think your relationship with menopause is now that you’ve done all this research and asked all these questions?

Darcey Steinke: Now, I think it’s almost like a marginal thing. I mean, I do feel like I’ve sort of gone through it. I’m having less hot flashes, I’m having less of these symptoms. But I also think, I sort of wonder if the research I did and learning about menopause. I’m learning how little the medical world knows about it and starting to see it as a spiritual transition – if that doesn’t, in some ways, help me also move through my symptoms. I’ve been thinking that lately. I wonder if the writing of the book, learning that it’s natural, learning not to trivialize it– Taking it back as a personal and a physical experience and a spiritual experience didn’t, also, help me get out from under some of these symptoms that the culture tells you that you have to have. These negative symptoms that you must have. I mean, once I realized, “Okay, maybe I’m going to get hotter than I was. My thermostat is sort of set a little bit higher. Maybe sleep is going to be different for me, I can adjust to that.” 

Once I saw these things as changes that weren’t really negative or positive, they were just changes. Once I came to terms with those, I felt in these later years, moving through menopause – moving toward being 60, I just felt really at peace with it. I’ve also felt like the strengths of it are more marked than the negative. Menstrual cycles can be a big fucking drag. You know what I mean?

Dawn Serra: Yup.

Darcey Steinke: I mean, it’s not just like all like, “Oh, it’s great to be fertile.” No. It’s like you’re in the cycle – your hormones are up, your hormones are down. So I find a steadiness outside of cycling that I really like. That’s one thing I’ve gotten to really appreciate. It’s sort of a wide open feeling. It’s like you’ve cleared – the month has been cleared away from that idea of like, “Oh, now I’m getting my period.” “Oh, now I’m a week before my period.” Now, it’s just wide open. It’s very spacious and beautiful. 

So there’s, there’s things that I noticed about myself and my way of being in the world that seemed positive to me and not negative. The way I started menopause was very much like everybody starts menopause, I think. Unless you’ve had a really good mother that was positive about it or yourself. You somehow know that it’s not this terrible transition. But I was in a pretty bad place at the beginning. There was a lot of shame. I was worried. I was confused about what was even happening. But having written the book, I feel like I’ve come out – I really come out in a place that’s… I sort of wrote myself through to this more stable and sort of lovely place. 

Dawn Serra: That confusion is something that I see so much of. And even that I’ve experienced myself in asking my mom about her experience and talking to friends who are just starting to either go into perimenopause or menopause. There’s this confusion and also this odd silence. I find it so interesting that more and more people are finding language to talk really openly about their sex life and their sexuality, their gender, their kinks – the different things that help either bring them pleasure or that they’re interested in exploring. But around menopause, they’re still this nebulous silence, this confusion.

I’m so glad that you use that word. Because I think, because we don’t talk about it, because we don’t have mythology, because we don’t have ritual – it’s kind of this thing we stumble into. And then once we’re in the middle of it, we’re like, “Holy shit, how did I get here?” 

Darcey Steinke: It’s very disorienting and you also feel very alone in it. And that’s a part of – there’s a lot of loneliness in it, I think. That’s not really necessary. I mean, we can talk. I mean, if there can be less shame around it, we can talk to our friends about it. Maybe we can even – female and male friends. There’s a way in which it could be, “I’m moving through this passage. I’m changing. And that’s not necessarily a negative thing I just changing. I’m changing into a new kind of creature.” 

Dawn Serra: Yes, yes. And that is really one of the things that stood out to me so much in your book was, not only that you’re becoming this new kind of creature, that you’re going through this metamorphosis, but that there’s power and intensity inside of it.

Darcey Steinke: Yeah, I definitely have felt more powerful. I mean, once I figured out what menopause was, which is a transition and once I also found out the roots of it– I mean, as far as science goes, menopause has been this big evolutionary puzzle because we’re supposed to breed to the end. Creatures have this thing called fitness. And that means they’re supposed to have children right till the end of their lives, so just the way most creatures do it actually. So menopause confuses scientists. But we’re finding out more and more that we wouldn’t even have human civilization without menopause because menopause allowed women around 50 not to breed anymore, but to help their community, help their children, help their grandchildren. This allowed for civilization to be able to adapt to new landscapes more easily. It allowed childhood which is such an important thing for our brains to grow, for the humans that we are. 

I mean menopause, in some ways, is what made humanity possible. So once I learned that, I was like, “Okay, this is just ridiculous this rapid has. This is just completely and totally wrong.” So I felt really angry. Now that we’re learning about the roots of it, the historical roots of it, I felt really angry about the way that it’s been culturally framed.

Dawn Serra: Yes. 

Darcey Steinke: It’s so negative, you know?

Dawn Serra: Okay, so speaking of anger. A couple of years ago, listeners have heard me rant about this before. But a couple of years ago, I attended a medical conference in San Diego all about sexuality. I was totally dismayed and really frustrated with how misogynistic and limited and hetero-normative it all was, the people who were leading the pack. And, I know you attended a conference on menopause in Amsterdam over the course of writing the book, and I loved so much of what you had to say about it. 

I think this one little bit sums it up really beautifully. We can talk about it some more, but you were talking about a doctor who was talking about hormone therapy. And then you said, “All his descriptions explain how the vagina might feel to an incoming penis. The vagina is a viable penis holder, not how a vagina might feel to the woman it belongs to.” And so much of that was echoed in the medical conference that I went to as well. I’d love to hear more about what you experienced at that conference. 

Darcey Steinke: I mean, it was hard because I was excited to go. I was thinking like, “Oh, maybe the Europeans are a little more ahead than we are here.” I thought I was going to learn about alternative therapies and there would be cool sex therapists like yourself. I just thought it was going to be this big open celebration of menopause. But that was not at all what it was. I mean, it was mostly male doctors. There was a lot of gynecologists – mostly male doctors. Really talking about how to keep the female body young. Whether it’s the body itself. There was a lot of skin tone talk, whether it’s the vagina. So, that was really hard for me. 

I mean, I was really surprised, you know? I can remember that I had, just on a personal level, I’d flown there I had a little bit of jet lag and I went the first day. I was all excited and even in the first few sessions, because I saw in the lobby, there was all these – the entire conference was paid for. I’m not sure if it was paid for in full or partly by these vaginal rejuvenation machines. Companies like MonaLisa Touch and all these things. So right away in the atrium of the conference center, you have all these salesmen trying to sell these magical rejuvenation lasers to the gynecologist. So that was very dark to me. I mean, the videos they had on were just mind blowingly misogynist. 

Darcey Steinke: I remember there was one where it showed a woman complaining about aging, and then it showed the actual picture of a dead rose. 

Dawn Serra: Oh my god. 

Darcey Steinke: And then in time lapse photography, as it talked about how great the laser was, the rose went back to being like a beautiful little bud – like a little rosebud. And I was just like, “Fuck you.” So that started to really, really bother me and then I actually had trouble even getting up in the morning to go. I found myself getting so depressed by it. And I did talk to– I tried to talk to some of the doctors separately and some of the people there. I mean, it was definitely a hormone… 

In Europe, they’re very hormone-forward. They really do think that hormones are the way like when it comes to menopause. Some of them were were nicer than others. But there was a way in which, there was really no way to talk about the actual female experience of the body, of the sex life, of the power, of the change, of the power of the change. It was all about treating symptoms. And on one level, I sort of understand that. I mean, that’s what doctors do, right? You go to the doctor, you tell them your symptoms – they try to cure your symptoms. So part of that problem is the way we, ourselves, talk about menopause as a problem, as symptoms to be cured. You know what I mean? So, it was a wake up call. It was also very hard for me to write that chapter at first. 

Darcey Steinke: When I came home, I remember telling my husband like, “Oh god, that was awful. So glad to be home.” I live in Brooklyn, I’m so glad to be back in Brooklyn. It’s like, “Ugh, those people.” And I’m like, “I’m not gonna write about that. That’s just all darkness.” But then as I wrote the book, I’m like, “I should really find a way to deal with my feelings about what happened there.” So it was hard for me, though. It was a hard chapter to write, because I really had to deal with my feelings about men’s hatred of the female body or man’s misunderstanding of the female body or man’s control of the female body. There’s a lot of sadness because I’ve loved a lot of men, I have brothers. But there’s a lot of sadness when you have to really face that directly. That felt really sad to me to really say, “This is a real thing.” 

Dawn Serra: Yeah. And I think it’s also so important that more of us have the opportunity to really sit with that, and to think about it. And to be able to then go into appointments with the medical professionals who support us, knowing what we don’t want to talk about, how we don’t want to be treated, and how we do want to be treated.

Darcey Steinke: Right, exactly. I mean, some doctors will still try to force women on to hormones. And that might be okay for some women, but it also might not be okay for some women. So it’s important to have that choice, I think. I mean, I was on a radio show – public radio show a couple weeks ago. And I was on with this, I think it was a nurse who’ve been trained in special menopause stuff. Before we got on the air, she said to me – I have to say, in a very condescending way – she said to me, “I’m so sorry, Darcey, that there wasn’t someone to help you through your menopause – some medical person.” And I was like, I want to push back on that. I’m fine. I found these answers myself. I didn’t necessarily need somebody to hold my hand through the thing and offer me medicine from Big Pharma. You know what I mean? So I felt really, I don’t know, that frustrated me. 

There’s another problem, too. I’ve noticed where somebody like Oprah is very pro-hormones. That’s her decision, I know. The way she kind of looks at it is – she actually looks at it like if hormones are kept away from women, that’s what’s really holding us back. She sees it as like, all women should be able to go on hormones, and then we’d all be freer. She doesn’t really see it as hormones are a way to sort of control the female body. She doesn’t see it that way. There’s a lot of different ways to be angled at it. Questions like the questions? 

Dawn Serra: Yeah, yeah. I think what is so often tied up in that is this very real fear that if I don’t go on hormones, if I do experience these changes, if it is confusing and hard and intense, if I am aging – do I become obsolete? Do I become invisible? Do I become unwanted? That’s scary. So, of course, people want to try and find an antidote to that. 

Darcey Steinke: Of course, of course. I mean, I do think that sometimes – I interviewed a bunch of women, and sometimes hormones don’t work for them at all. They don’t. They don’t do the things they promise. And then also, I always think that one of the main ways that you get complimented, as you age as people say, like, “You’re looking good.” “You look young.” “You’re looking really youthful.” And there has to be a way that we can acknowledge beauty – beauty and health without always attaching it to youth. That’s something that really bothers me and I find it to be a part of this whole – I find it to be a part of this whole hormone menopausal debate. 

Dawn Serra: Yeah, there was something else that struck me at the medical conference that I went to, which was that so many of the researchers and the doctors were really talking about how to prevent pain. And that seems to be the end point. If we can just make this not painful or less painful then we’ve done our job. And in the current medical model, that does make sense – you’re just trying to prevent that and it’s not necessarily make goodness. But it was clear to me how absent pleasure was. That there wasn’t this desire to help people find and increase pleasure. It was more about, “How do I minimize or just remove pain and call that a win?” 

Darcey Steinke: I know. I mean, I talked to one doctor – she’s a hormone doctor like in the West Village that, I think, has mostly probably wealthy female clients. And she said – she actually said to me, “My clients don’t necessarily want to enjoy intercourse. They just don’t want it to hurt.” And I was just blown away by that. That just seemed unbelievably sad to me, you know? But I think that’s the thing is, the idea of having sex by this old sexual script, that maybe in your 20s, 30s, 40s your partner and you were used to doing certain things that have to do with penetration. Maybe you liked them, maybe that’s what you actually desired. 

My feeling is, I can speak from personal experience, as I’ve moved through menopause, I’ve been less interested in intercourse. And I think that’s because my hormones are less. I’m not fertile anymore. As you said, the sex sack that made a baby. You know what I mean? As you all – very important. We wouldn’t be talking right now if it didn’t exist, probably right? But that sex act is less interesting as your fertility goes away. I think that seems very normal to me, you know? I mean, not that that’s true for everybody, but that was true for me. That was true for a lot of the women I talked to too. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t – I’m lucky to have a good sex life that I really hope to hang on to. And it’s less focused now on that. It’s less focused on penetration. That comes from my actual desires and from conversations with my partner about what we both want to do. It comes from a more authentic place. 

Darcey Steinke: I mean, I don’t see how women who just get their vagina lasered and take hormones – I mean, I don’t really see how that… Maybe that is attached to their actual pleasure and their desire. But it might also just be fear-based that if they can’t have sex the way they had when they were 25. No one’s going to want them. 

Dawn Serra: Yeah, and we certainly have lots of evidence, culturally and in pop culture, that that is a pretty real fear. I mean, we have so many stories and movies, and all the things about partners leaving for someone younger or the more successful someone becomes, the less they want an equal, because that feels so threatening. And I think that it’s so interesting that pleasure is so easily pushed to the side and not even really being a part of the conversation. It’s like, “I just want to be able to get through this thing without it hurting really bad.” 

Darcey Steinke: I know. But, I think that there’s a lot of fear around female pleasure. There’s a lot of fear around that. What if we become these pleasures – these crazed, slutty pleasures? 

Dawn Serra: Hell yeah. 

Darcey Steinke: Exactly, exactly. I’m completely sex positive, but what if we become these people that are – the idea of the out of control sexual woman. There’s a lot of negativity around that. I mean, whether it’s any of the cougar or the sad old lady that still wants to have sex. Well, of course, she wants to have sex. But, I just think there’s a lot of fear of female sexuality. It’s not connected – that’s not connected to procreation. 

Dawn Serra: Yes, yes. Longtime listeners can attest that one of my favorite things to stress this the importance of all of us having so many more sexual tools in our toolbox, so that sex isn’t just about intercourse and the things that get us to intercourse. But that it can be this creative cornucopia of different kinds of touches and experiences. And I love how you’re sharing that as you kind of moved through this transition, you still have a sex life that’s really enjoyable to you, but that it feels authentic and something that you’ve co-created with your partner; rather than upholding the scripts and then feeling utterly lost when that’s not available to you anymore. 

Darcey Steinke: Yeah. Actually, now that we’re talking about it, I almost feel like when I felt… When I was younger, I would sometimes – I used to cry a lot after sex when I was younger. And now, I think that that’s partly because I didn’t feel like I was just like an actress in a script. You know what I mean? I mean, even when I was more interested intercourse, I remember feeling that sometimes. 

My husband, I’m lucky. He’s very adventuresome. During the whole process, I talked to a lot of sex therapists and women. One of the things that kept coming up with this idea of erotic touch. That you should have a night of erotic touching that in which, you don’t end in intercourse or you have no… I mean there’s no sense that it has to end with some big act. You’re just going to enjoy each other. We started to do that. We got all our various oils and everything, and he ended up really liking it. I mean, by the end of my book – I would say, “I want to make out.” He would be like, “No, let’s just do the erotic touching.”He ended up liking it better sometimes, which I thought was really amazing, you know? 

Dawn Serra: Yes. 

Darcey Steinke: Yeah, was really amazing. 

Dawn Serra: I think one of the opportunities inside of that, too, is so often when our sexual experiences just revolve around getting to intercourse, the quickest route possible – doing the intercourse. And then usually depending on who’s involved, but especially if it’s a heterosexual couple, as soon as a man finishes then it’s over. And how when we do things like erotic massage and erotic touching, or kink or tantra and breathing – and all these other things that can be so sexy and hot. We’re giving ourselves opportunities to be inside the pleasure for so much longer if we want to. 

Darcey Steinke: Right, right. Well, it becomes less linear and more like a whole experience – a whole experience. 

Dawn Serra: Yeah. Also, there was this quote that I loved from Elizabeth Abbott, in her book, “A History of Celibacy.” And I thought the quote was so beautiful that you pulled out. She writes, “Our eroticism is not tied solely to heterosexual intercourse or reproduction. We can reclaim our sexuality without turning the world upside down. We can, through celibacy and masturbation, define our own sexuality and satisfy ourselves.”

Darcey Steinke: Yeah, I love that too. I loved her book. But I also loved – there were many women I talked to who had chosen celibacy and they were so enthusiastic about it. It was kind of amazing to me. It was very exciting because I think it gets debased. I mean, celibacy gets debased in our culture because our culture so sexed up. But celibacy can be a really beautiful thing, I think.

Dawn Serra: Yeah, there’s a woman that I know who is menopausal. She’s in her 60s. And last year, she just said to her husband, “I don’t want to keep doing the same thing that we’ve been doing for the past 30 years. I don’t want to keep having sex. It’s not particularly pleasurable for me. I want us to be able to do other things that feel really connecting. But I’m really feeling like I just don’t want this anymore for myself.” And he felt so lost and betrayed, which is fair. I mean, that’s a pretty big change. But I remember just really thinking how she was admitting, “This isn’t that great for me and I want to really make a choice that’s about how I feel and feeling really good.” And I think there’s a way to collaborate around that. But I feel for her, it felt powerful to be able to really say, “I don’t want to keep tolerating this.” 

Darcey Steinke: Right. Totally, totally. I mean, I really think that marriage now is sort of about sex. But that’s only been since the 20th century. I mean, before there was times where marriage was about – it was sort of a business deal or it was a companionship thing, you know what I mean? But sex now is really central to being married, and keeping your sex life alive has become this gigantic thing. I’m not against it but I also think – I think there’s a little too much pressure on it, personally. I feel like there are wide varieties of ways that people can be intimate together. I was watching the first episode of “Mrs. Fletcher.”I don’t know if you know that. 

Dawn Serra: I haven’t seen it.

Darcey Steinke: Yeah. I was bummed out, because it’s the story of empty nester. I mean, her son goes off to college. I read the book, too, which I thought was sort of okay. I read it because it was about a woman in her 40s-50s and her sex life. But I was disappointed because really what it seems like – and it was written by a man of course – and so, the fantasy is that she drops her kid off at college, she goes home, and immediately turns on porn. There’s nothing wrong with porn. But she turns on porn, and she starts to sort of get addicted to porn. And I’m like, “Come on.” There’s so many ways that a midlife woman in her 40s and 50s – there’s so much more than just… I mean, that seems to me totally a male fantasy of what a life of an empty nester.

I really felt angry about it actually. I really feel angry that to be defined– Again, it’s selling the idea like it’s freeing for her. But in a way, again, she’s reduced again to a sexual. Like 90% of her interest and concerns are sexual. And that’s the beauty– I mean, to me the beauty of menopause is that becomes not true anymore. Some women do–

Darcey Steinke: I did interview some women who got even more hyped up about sex after menopause because they couldn’t get pregnant anymore, and they found tremendous freedom in that fact. I also talked to a lot of women that didn’t feel like sex was the center of their marriage anymore. They thought there were other things that were more central to their marriage like companionship and whatnot. And they also felt happy to get out from under a certain kind of sexual obsession.So, I don’t know, I feel like it’s hard to say that in our culture, because everyone’s always like, “Oh, if you’re not having sex then you’re not healthy.” And I really want to push back against that. I just think that’s just not true. 

Dawn Serra: Yeah, yeah. It’s really interesting. I don’t know if you’ve had a chance to see Fleabag yet. 

Darcey Steinke: I love Fleabag.

Dawn Serra: Oh my god, I love Fleabag. 

Darcey Steinke: It’s amazing. I love it. 

Dawn Serra: Yes. And I keep remembering the scene where Fleabag’s in the bar with that older lawyer.

Darcey Steinke: Krisitin Scott Thomas, right? 

Dawn Serra: Yes! And how she’s talking about how menopause is great because she finally gets to be this person who does things, and it’s not just about how flexible she is. 

Darcey Steinke: Yeah, exactly. It’s amazing. I thought that was so wonderful. And also the fact that it was written by a younger woman. I mean, it was just so great. I just thought that was really, really amazing. It’s very nuanced, too, which I liked. 

Dawn Serra: It really was. I’ve been thinking about this a lot since I read the book around how much information, how many books, how many magazines – from Teen magazines, to magazines like Cosmo I had – moving into puberty and starting my period, the celebration around it, the excitement, and how– I just had access to all of these stories and these heroes and people who wanted to talk about their experiences. And it almost felt like I’d entered a club. Even in middle school, being around other girls, that I maybe wasn’t friends with, but being able to ask for like a pad or a tampon, and suddenly you’ve got this intimacy. And how so much of what I’ve been hearing from my friends around menopause involves fear and not knowing. I wonder, now that you’ve had all these conversations, you’ve done all this research. What kinds of stories do you think would be really wonderful for us to have more of around menopause? 

Darcey Steinke: Well, a lot of the oral tradition is is around… I mean, for instance, like the birth story – how you go into labor… I mean, that’s a really important part of the oral tradition, people telling that story over and over again to family and friends and whatnot. And it would be nice if there could be– Before I wrote the book, nobody was asking me, “What’s your menopause like or how are you feeling?” I mean, now people ask me all the time, because I wrote a book about it. But I mean, I think to be able to talk about it maybe more freely to friends and family, that would be something. 

I think that there’s struggle in it. There’s power, but there’s struggle too. Some women suffer more than others. And some women don’t even seem to feel it at all. There’s a wide variety. I just read a book called– it’s a really amazing book by Susan Mattern. She’s a professor of medical history. And she actually makes the case that she thinks that menopause is a syndrome just like hysteria. She actually thinks it’s a bunch of symptoms that have been collected around , that don’t necessarily even go together and they get exacerbated because women are so afraid of it. It was really fascinating. I’m not saying that I agree with that completely. But in some ways, it makes a lot of sense.

Darcey Steinke: I think the biggest thing is no shame. And if you’re having a hot flash, you should just be able to say, “I’m having a hot flash.” Not hide it or be embarrassed or whatever, you know what I mean? You should be able to go through the processes without worrying about being made fun of. I mean, that would be the first step, and then the stories could come. I mean, I always worry about things that are too heroic. So I like to stay myself in my own writing and even in my own self, I like to stay in the struggle. I feel like there’s more realness in the struggle than the idea of the heroic sort of ending. So, I would be for stories that show the struggles, show the journey, and the fully engaged journey. Not just the I medicated. I mean, “I medicated and that’s how I solve the problem.” But it would be nice to hear about the transition, about how different women handled the transition in a variety of ways. 

Dawn Serra: Yeah, I really appreciate it. I think one of the things that, for me, just drew me in so deeply to your story was the messiness of it. Allowing it to be imperfect and hard, and for those hot flashes to be driving you outside at night, and for the anger to be something that started taking up more space. I mean, there was such real vulnerability inside of that and letting us see that humanity instead of the glossy, shiny version that often happens in story. 

Darcey Steinke: I mean, when you think about it, there’s a whole literary genre like the coming of age novel that deals with, women coming – I mean women and men – but women coming of age, coming into sexuality. I found there was one sort of menopausal novel that I really love by the writer Colette called “Break of Day” where she meditates on menopause and her changing feelings about things and her love of her pets. And she sort of thinks about if she wants to take a young lover or not. It’s very wonderful, open, and beautiful. But there aren’t many. There aren’t many books about women who are are moving from fertility into what people call “The Crone Stage”. 

Dawn Serra: Yeah. You and I were talking before we got on but I think that it’s just worth repeating. Your book, I think, is a very different perspective on menopause. It’s very personal. It’s very raw. There’s a lot of spirituality and longing inside of it. And, I’m so grateful that we’ve got this type of a story available now. Because I do expect that we’re going to start seeing more people being willing to explore and unpack their experiences with menopause, including non-binary folks and trans folks and people in all different kinds of bodies and genders. 

Darcey Steinke: I’m hoping. I’m hoping for that.

Dawn Serra: There’s so much for us to still learn and to honor, and to grow through together. And this is just the beginning. 

Darcey Steinke: Yeah, I mean, I was really inspired. I read a lot of trans memoirs for my book and I was very inspired by them. The idea that a hormonal passage is exciting. I mean, on my end, my hormones were decreasing. On their end, their hormones were increasing sometimes. It’s very inspiring to see it as an adventure and a journey instead of just this big, negative, terrifying thing.

Dawn Serra: Also the opportunity to be in relationship with body in a different way. I have several friends who are micro-dosing testosterone. So the plan isn’t to transition, but the plan is to find a middle way or a third way that allows them to be in their bodies in a more gender affirming way. And, I think it’s so interesting getting to learn from them and hear from them about the changes they’re experiencing, and how some of them are uncomfortable, and some of them are new, and some of them are really exciting and affirming. I saw so much of that echoed in your journey through menopause of it’s scary and unpredictable, but I’m getting to actually be in dialogue with my body and to hear what it has to say each day. 

Darcey Steinke: Yeah, right. I like that. I mean, part of the joy for writing “Flash Count Diary” for me was that I’ve always liked to write about the body – that’s something I’ve written about, really, throughout all my books, novels, or my nonfiction books as well. As you get older, it’s harder to write about the body. I mean, the publishing world seems much more interested in in the body of a 20 year old or a 30 year old than a 50 or 60 year old. So, writing this book was a way for me to write about the body again. So that was very exciting for me to be able to connect, again, to my own body, my own sensations and write through them. I’ve always wanted to do that and it was nice to get to find my way back to that – to my 57 year old body.

Dawn Serra: Well, there is so much more I would love to talk to you about, but I would love to respect your time and everybody else’s time. And you and I get to continue chatting for our Patreon bonus. So before we do that, could you share with people how they can find you online and get a copy of the book? 

Darcey Steinke: Yeah. Well, you can go to my website, darceysteinke.com. I’m on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, all my tags are there. You can get it through Amazon, but I like it when people buy it in they’re independent bookstore. But you can get it online. There’s many places to buy it. 

Dawn Serra: Great. I will have links to your website and your social media, as well as a link to the publisher. So people can check out the book in the show notes. For everyone who tuned in, be sure to check that out. Darcey, I want to thank you so much for coming here and rolling around in menopause with me. I know everyone listening is very curious. 

Darcey Steinke: Thank you so much. 

Dawn Serra: Yes. For everyone who tuned in if you support the show on Patreon, be sure to pop over there next because Darcey and I are going to go record a little bonus chat just for your ears. And we will see you over there. Until next time, I’m Dawn Serra. Bye

Dawn Serra: A huge thanks to The Vocal Few, the married duo behind the music featured in this week’s intro and outro. Find them at vocalfew.com. Head to patreon.com/sgrpodcast to support the show and get awesome weekly bonuses. 

As you look towards the next week, I wonder what will you do differently that rewrites an old story, revitalizes a stuck relationship or helps you to connect more deeply with your pleasure?