I’m Dani Faith Leonard, a filmmaker, writer, and performer. A while back, I started to ask myself a question: why do we think what we think about sex? Expect investigative articles, weird sex history, and sharp humor, delivered to your inbox every week. Ready to plug the holes in your education? Okay, let’s go!

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For the second year in a row, August is Say Vagina Month. But why would we need a whole month dedicated to saying the anatomically correct name of an organ?

Saying, or writing, the word VAGINA online can get you shadowbanned, suppressed, and restricted on the same platforms where it’s very much OK to be a literal Nazi. For sex educators, doctors, or anyone else who tries to market anatomically correct products and content aimed at women, that makes things very hard. What we end up with are hoo-has, nether regions, cooters, pleasure places, doo-dahs, and other terms that make you sound like Ariel from The Little Mermaid went into porn.

Medical professionals who use the word penis online face far less digital backlash, and erectile dysfunction ads have been running basically everywhere for years. Offline, using proper terminology helps patients communicate clearly with medical providers, leading to better diagnoses and breaking through feelings of shame or embarrassment, which is harder to do when you’re used to describing your organs as “down there.”

We can learn a lot about the evolution of cultural attitudes about women, bodies, and sex by exploring the history of slang. I did a deep dive on the history of euphemisms for the vagina for a live show I hosted in 2019 and published it here. There were many more euphemisms for female body parts than male body parts because they’ve always been taboo, preventing honest conversations about women’s health for millennia.

The slang timeline starts with a word much maligned and much celebrated—cunt. If you think it’s particularly edgy, please be advised that this slang term has been around since the 1200s, and our moms have been yelling at us ever since. It’s probably the most taboo slang term for vagina in the U.S., but an ironic term of endearment among close friends in the UK. It’s social-media-ban-worthy, unless you’re a groyper sending a woman a DM.

My favorite slang term for vagina from the 1300s and possibly of all time is a quaint. It’s sounds so dainty and conveniently rhymes with taint! By the turn of the 16th century, things were a little less genteel and vaginas were often compared to receptacles:

trench, dock, oven, leather purse.

Later in the 1500s, we’ve reached our playground phase. Likely to get you kicked out of my bed are the words:

pleasure place, bung hole, nonny nonny

By the 1600s, vaginas again sounded like they were named by Ariel in The Little Mermaid:

what-do-you-call-it, you-know-what, flapdoodle, crinkum-crankum

She’s a bit of a twat, which came into the English language in 1656.

In the 1700s, this country’s founders were locking up ownership of the new nation, and people on both sides of the pond were super into real estate:

tenement, cock loft, cock lane

By the 1800s, the only thing that was clear was that the vagina was much enjoyed, but you might get trapped:

man’s pleasure garden, cock trap, pleasure pit, the enemy

The enemy?!

In the 1900s through today, many of the new slang names were rooted in entertainment, like:

stairway to heaven, breakfast of champions, orphan annie, golden doughnut, Hairy Potter, and the batcave.

The euphemisms weren’t always given to the vagina as a whole. Nicknames for a vulva include bits, penis fly trap, pink taco, and beef curtains. I pointed out in Discovering the Clitoris that the clit received euphemisms of her own, like bean, nubbin, love button, sweet spot, and the devil’s doorbell.

What’s crazy to me isn’t that someone called a vagina a golden doughnut and possibly still got laid. It’s how consistent the slang has been over time. While the euphemisms for a penis through time have often been some kind of weapon or useful tool, vaginas have often been infantilized or compared to receptacles, homes, or holes.

There’s no excuse for an anatomically correct term for a body part that more than half the world has to result in online restrictions. Some of these nicknames are fun as hell, but when a gynecologist starts a TikTok account to combat the false information spread on the internet, they should be able to shout the word VAGINA and not resort to Sigourney Beaver (OK, that’s a personal favorite of mine).

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A few weeks ago, I wrote about the Trump Administration’s new plans for sex education. If you don’t feel like reading through it right now, here’s a summary: The Department of Health and Human Services is canceling millions of dollars in teen pregnancy prevention grants and redirecting that funding into programs that align with the president’s priorities. What must sex ed programs for teens focus on to tap into these new federal funding streams? Boys are going to be taught the masturbation myth that “artificially stimulated arousal” can “affect neural development and behavior over time.” Teenage girls will be asked to attend counseling sessions to discuss their childbearing goals.

In addition to the counseling sessions that sound like a Handmaid’s Tale fever dream, sex ed for girls will stress that the only way to prevent pregnancy is through abstinence, reminiscent of the abstinence-only sex ed that was pushed in the ’90s. The new guidelines take this a step further and encourage teens to forgo contraception entirely by positioning birth control as dangerous. Specifically, they’ll learn about the “disadvantages of ovarian suppression.”

I love researching sex history because it always illustrates just how wrong we are whenever we assume that any conversation about sex is a new one. People have been debating, dabbling in, and inventing forms of birth control since the beginning of time. The first piece I ever wrote for this newsletter in 2023 was about the long history of birth control. If you’re a more recent subscriber, here’s what you missed:

Birth control methods have been around since the beginning of recorded history. There was a widespread belief in several ancient cultures that men were not supposed to "spill their seed," an idea that has persisted for thousands of years. In the Bible, God killed a man for wasting sperm—it was apparently better to do something ridiculous with it, like impregnate your sister-in-law, than to waste it. In ancient China, some men were encouraged to preserve their semen by bending forward and trying to ejaculate into their own buttholes. (If you walk away from this newsletter with one image in your head, I hope it’s that one.)

Also prevalent since ancient times: the belief that preventing pregnancy is a woman’s responsibility. And women in ancient cultures had some methods that still work today.

Ancient Greek women made sperm blockers from pomegranates, while Egyptians inserted a paste made of crocodile dung and honey. Crocodile dung is alkaline to a degree similar to some contemporary spermicides, and the paste also acted as a physical barrier. They were literally willing to stuff shit inside themselves to avoid getting pregnant, in case you were wondering how much this mattered to them.

The Talmud, an ancient Jewish text, recommended that sponges be soaked in vinegar and used to prevent pregnancy. Sponges are still used today, and they also set the scene for one of my favorite Seinfeld episodes.

Native Americans used plants such as stoneseed as oral contraceptives hundreds of years before the pharmaceutical industry developed birth control pills.

Guess what?

WHEN MEN CREATED BIRTH CONTROL, IT WAS USUALLY POISON.

Soranus was a second-century Greek gynecologist with a truly perfect name. He told women to drink the water that blacksmiths used to cool their metal. Centuries later, during the Great Depression, Lysol advertised itself as a feminine douche to prevent infection and odor while subtly hinting that it could also prevent pregnancy. Not surprisingly, some women died from using it—but they smelled lemony fresh.

Cut to today. The IUD dates back to the early 1900s, and the hormonal birth control pill has only been around since 1960. But it’s worth noting that Indigenous and ancient peoples invented methods of birth control that are still considered effective today. Whenever there’s an argument over access to birth control, it’s worth remembering that people have been trying to prevent pregnancy since the beginning of recorded history. And whenever someone tries to make an excuse about wearing condoms, you can remind them that the ancient Egyptians literally used shit.

So which era are the new guidelines taking us back to? I’ve seen some writers compare them to the sex ed of the ’90s, which sometimes included purity pledges. It was the era of purity rings and purity balls, where fathers “married” their daughters and teenage girls pledged to belong to their dads until someone else eventually deflowered them. But the misinformation about birth control might take us back even further.

Please don’t break out the Lysol.

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Originally, a “body count” referred to the dead after a war. Today, it often refers to the number of people we've slept with. Somehow, we've turned our most intimate relationships into casualty statistics. There’s no shortage of men discussing a woman’s “body count” on the internet, even though I’ve never had an actual human male ask me about mine.

In the 2026 Netflix documentary Inside the Manosphere, figures in the online space frequently emphasize that women should remain monogamous and express active disdain for women with high "body counts." Imagine discovering that someone you once slept with now thinks of you as a number? That's what body count culture does. It turns people into statistics, which is a strange way to talk about the people who helped shape our lives.

But what if we thought about our past partners differently? What if relationships weren't a scorecard, but a map of who we've become?

I recently spoke with Kirra Cheers, co-host of The List podcast alongside Elvira Lind. In each episode, a guest submits a list of people they've slept with—not to tally a score, but to revisit the stories behind each relationship. Produced by Mad Gene Media, the podcast treats every lover as a chapter in a larger autobiography.

Each list becomes a roadmap through the guest's life, allowing the hosts to revisit the people and experiences that shaped who they became. As Kirra puts it, "Body count culture strips people down to just data, and we're all about focusing on the stories. Your partners can often be a mirror to yourselves."

Kirra has spent a decade interviewing people about their lists and their sexuality. Before it was a podcast, The List was a photography book and then a play, and now she’s teamed up with Elvira and turned it into the podcast.

The project began with an accidental discovery: Kirra received a panicked call from a friend who had discovered her boyfriend's list of more than 300 past sexual partners while cleaning. But instead of focusing numbers, Kirra became fascinated by what the list represented: “Each name really represented a chapter in somebody’s journey. And then I started to think about how do the people we meet influence our journey and influence our identity and who we become?”

According to Kirra, a surprising number of men keep spreadsheets. (How Type A do you have to be to maintain a sex spreadsheet?)

I asked Kirra about the podcast story that surprised her the most. The story that stayed with her most belonged to a young football star who was shot nine times in the back. In the hospital, he found out that he was going to be paralyzed.

“A girlfriend starts coming to visit him, not someone he’d been intimate with, but just a friend. And they develop a connection. And then he confesses after several months that one of his greatest concerns is that he’s not going to be able to get an erection and have a family and leave a legacy. Having sex in the hospital bed gave him the will to live.”

On paper, she would increase his "body count" by one. In reality, she gave him a reason to keep living. That's the difference between counting bodies and telling stories.

On the podcast, a list of lovers is a tool for self-discovery. Instead of the body count conversation, your own list of lovers can illuminate things about yourself, and represent key moments in the story of your life. Of course, we all have at least one name on the list that makes us think, What on earth was I going through? But those chapters belong in the story too.

Our past relationships (even if they lasted three minutes) deserve better than being reduced to a statistic. They're stories. And stories are far more interesting than numbers.

Find out more about The List.

Listen to The List here.

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In the past several weeks, two countries revealed new, but very different plans for sex education.

In the UK, new guidance for the Relationships, Sex and Health (RSHE) program will help teachers tackle the “growing influence of the manosphere and incel culture.” How will the new guidance do that? By explicitly warning students that strangling or suffocating a partner during sex constitutes an imprisonable offense. These government-backed materials are intended for 14- and 15-year-olds, and the fact that they need to exist is appalling. Still, they’re confronting the issue head-on.

Across the pond in the United States, there’s been a very different sex ed update. The Department of Health and Human Services is canceling millions of dollars in teen pregnancy prevention grants and redirecting that funding into programs that align with the president’s priorities. What must sex ed programs for teens focus on to tap into these new federal funding streams? Read the requirements here if you wish, but I’ll lay out some of details below.

For girls, there’s no mention of birth control. Instead, they’ll learn about “the advantages and disadvantages of ovarian suppression.” In other words, medical misinformation about how dangerous the birth control pill is. Teenage girls will also participate in very special counseling sessions: “In addition to biological education, programs supported under this initiative are expected to incorporate reproductive goals counseling that helps adolescents reflect on their goals related to relationships, childbearing, career, and future family formation.”

I had sex education at 15 years old and was in no way ready to discuss my childbearing goals.

If the sex ed goals for girls sound like a Handmaid’s Tale fever dream that somehow includes zero pregnancy prevention, don’t worry—the boys may actually have it worse. “Programs should also address how repeated or artificially stimulated arousal may affect neural development and behavior over time.” Your grandmother may have told you that masturbation would make you go blind, but telling teenage boys it might permanently fuck up their brains is a bit more intense.

For what it’s worth, this is what ChatGPT thinks RFK Jr. would be like as a high school sex ed teacher:

None of this is exactly surprising. RFK Jr. is notably obsessed with men’s testosterone levels and sperm counts, claiming on more than one occasion that today’s teenage boys have half the sperm count of a 65-year-old man (there’s no evidence to support this). Far-right commentators have been pushing the “NoFap” movement for years, promising to help people overcome addictions to porn and masturbation.

There’s an actual NoFap website that promises to help you “get a new grip on life,” which is hilarious but, unfortunately, not a parody. On the homepage, one user writes, “Amazing that a forum like this exists as a support group for people without even having to leave their homes.” I assume that if you’re struggling to stop jerking off to porn, having to leave your home would actually be a plus.

If you want to lose every boner you might ever have, you can watch a conversation between Andrew Tate and Tucker Carlson about the NoFap movement (I won’t link to it). In that interview, Tate defines the goal of abstaining from masturbation as the pursuit of “male excellence.”

In many ways, this is actually a return to the original roots of American sex education. As I wrote in The Complete History of Sex Ed in the U.S. (abridged), one of the earliest iterations of sex education emerged in the 1830s, when religious leaders like Reverend Sylvester Graham traveled the East Coast on anti-masturbation lecture tours.

Does that sound fun?

Fun fact: Graham also invented the graham cracker, believing that bland food would prevent people from cracking one off. This was a surprisingly popular theory at the time, shared by the equally problematic health guru John Harvey Kellogg, inventor of Corn Flakes. May we all finish into a bowl of bland cereal in their honor.

All of this goes waaaay back. Early Jewish and Christian theologians linked masturbation to the end of the human race. Onan, the second son of Judah, makes a brief but memorable appearance in the Old Testament. God commands Onan to have sex with his dead brother’s wife, but he’s not into it. He pulls out and ejaculates on the ground, so God strikes him dead.

Onanism didn’t just apply to men, of course. At various points throughout history, people believed that women also produced a reproductive “seed” that was ejaculated during sex. Before doctors decided that jilling off was the cure for hysteria, many believed female masturbation might bring about the end of civilization itself.

Fortunately, most medical professionals agree that masturbation is a completely normal part of life that won’t fuck up your brain development. Whether you’re a lady who likes to flick the bean, glaze the donut, or buff the muffin, or a gentleman who likes to whack off, beat your meat, or receive a visit from Pamela Handerson, you’ll be just fine.

Hopefully the kids in these new federally funded sex ed programs will be, too.

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I’m Dani Faith Leonard, a filmmaker, writer, and performer. A while back, I started to ask myself a question: why do we think what we think about sex? Expect investigative articles, weird sex history, and sharp humor, delivered to your inbox every week. Ready to plug the holes in your education? Okay, let’s go!

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I teamed up for a Substack Live yesterday with Danielle Bezalel from the popular podcast Sex Ed with DB to talk about The Invention of “Female Problems.” For centuries, women have been sold products they never needed.

What does advertising have to do with sex ed? What is a “female problem”? What’s the history of marketing things like pads, tampons, and douches?

As you know, digging into history is a passion of mine. This was a really fun way to kick off the summer and I loved interacting with you in the chat. Here’s a replay:

This Summer, I’d like to experiment more with the format of Adult Sex Ed. Of course, I’m working on some new topics, including a dissection of “bodycount” culture, and a deep dive into an historic medical procedure. I’m also adding a few new articles into the Extreme Sex series on the overlap between sex and extremism (if you missed that, you can read the first one here).

What would you like to see? Please cast your vote in the poll below or feel free to leave a comment.

I’m going to take the next week off and we’ll be back on July 15th!

Dani

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I’m Dani Faith Leonard, a filmmaker, writer, and performer. A while back, I started to ask myself a question: why do we think what we think about sex?

For centuries, women have been sold products they never needed. JOIN ME TODAY for a Substack Live with Danielle Bezalel from the popular podcast Sex Ed with DB called The Invention of “Female Problems” to disect this topic!

What does advertising have to do with sex ed? What is a “female problem”? What’s the history of marketing things like pads, tampons, and douches? And has any of this gotten better in modern times?

We’ll be live at 12PM ET / 9PM PT at the link below, ready with a presentation you’re NOT going to want to miss, and access to our chat as we go!

RSVP or Join Here at 12PM ET

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I’m Dani Faith Leonard, a filmmaker, writer, and performer. A while back, I started to ask myself a question: why do we think what we think about sex? Expect investigative articles, weird sex history, and sharp humor, delivered to your inbox every week. Ready to plug the holes in your education? Okay, let’s go!

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This week, I’m resharing an updated history of one of my favorite quacks.

When we think of quack doctors and the people throughout history who misdiagnosed women for their own personal gain, the mugshot that frequently comes to mind is that of a man. And usually, that was the case—women were diagnosed with “hysteria” from ancient Greece through the 1950s.

For centuries, women have been sold products they never needed. On June 30th at 12pm ET, I’m co-hosting a Substack Live with Danielle Bezalel from the popular podcast Sex Ed with DB called The Invention of “Female Problems” to disect this topic! RSVP here.

But it wasn’t only men who preyed on women with dubious products. Enter Lydia E. Pinkham: marketing pioneer and owner of one of the most popular patent medicines of the 19th century.

In recent years, Instagram influencers and celebrities like Gwyneth Paltrow have used their platforms to promote vaginal steams, coffee enemas, jade eggs, diet cleanses, and rectal ozone therapy. I’m not a doctor, but most doctors do take issue with blowing ozone gas up your butthole. Some of these methods have been around for a while: vaginal steaming has been around for centuries in several cultures as a home remedy, but not an expensive spa treatment. Other recently marketed products include Lemme Purr Probiotic Lollipops—pineapple flavored lollipops for your vagina sold by Kourtney Kardashian—and I recently saw an ad for Vipstick, which is lipstick for your “other lips.” There’s yoni candy, flavored wipes and a deodorant called “Happy Hoo-ha.”

What if I told you there was an original snake-oil saleswoman who revolutionized marketing and set the stage for the likes of GOOP and Dr. Oz? Her name was Lydia E. Pinkham and researching her life was a complete joy.

Lydia was born into a family of strongly abolitionist and anti-segregation Quakers in Lynn, Massachusetts. Frederick Douglass was a neighbor and a family friend. Lydia worked as a schoolteacher before getting married to a husband who never found his own financial success, so the earning fell to her.

In the 1800s, the reputation of the medical profession was very low. Medical fees were too expensive for most Americans to afford except in emergencies. Sound familiar? Many preferred to trust unlicensed "root and herb" practitioners, and especially women who were prepared to share their domestic remedies. Like many women of her time, Pinkham brewed herbal potions for ailments. 

Her remedy for "female complaints" became very popular among her neighbors to whom she gave it away for free at first, like a sucker. Lydia would claim that her feminine compound cured headaches, constipation, menopause, insomnia, depression, cancer, tumors, women's diseases, flatulence, menstruation, and fertility. By the early 1870s, the Pinkhams had been ruined financially, and in 1875 the idea of turning the remedy into a family business was born. 

So, what’s in this magic compound? The original recipe, created by Pinkham in her home kitchen, contained black cohosh, life root, unicorn root, pleurisy root, and fenugreek seed. The unicorn root allegedly gave energy to the uterus, like Jason Momoa (if that’s your taste). The pleurisy root allegedly helped cure a prolapsed uterus, which I’m sure is completely legit. Black cohosh is still used today to treat symptoms of menopause. Most importantly, her elixir contained 20% drinking alcohol, which solves literally anything.

Mass marketed from 1876 on, Lydia E. Pinkham's Vegetable Compound became one of the best-known patent medicines of the 19th century. Sure, the medicine was special. But what was really extraordinary about Lydia was her flair for marketing.

From the start, her product was marketed as for women, by women (FWBW?). One of her sons recommended that she use her face on the packaging, so the company made history as the first to use a woman’s likeness in advertising. That sounds crazy, but even the women’s products at the time were created by men. Since Lydia’s was the first face on an advertisement, she was also the first to be trolled. She was inundated with body-shaming hate mail slamming her 'cast-iron smile' and 'nightmare face.' But Lydia was laughing all the way to the bank.

Lydia established herself as Ann Landers meets Doctor Ruth and declared herself the “savior of her sex” in advice packets she created and published, which were innovative in their frank sex-ed advice and in their use of testimonials.

Lydia’s advice packets explained menstruation and childbirth in very frank terms. Some of her advice packets were health-related, but she also released cookbooks and advice on finances and relationships. While the information was revolutionary, the pamphlets contained tons of misinformation and were filled with sexist tropes in line with the times. No matter what your personal ailment, the cure was always “Lydia E. Pinkham’s Vegetable Compound.”

Lydia’s “medical” textbook, A Private Textbook on Ailments Peculiar to Women, was the first of its kind to be given out for free. I purchased an original decrepit copy on eBay. The book starts by explaining menstruation, motherhood, and menopause. But halfway through the book, Lydia explains some of the other ailments that a woman might have. Is your womb falling out of your body? She has the cure. It’s Lydia E. Pinkham’s Vegetable Compound. Strange discharge? Drink the compound. Have a tumor? Definitely the vegetable compound. Are you hysterical or psychotic? Drink up!

Her use of testimonials in her pamphlets was legendary. Women were urged to write to Mrs. Pinkham and she corresponded with many. My favorite testimonial was in between recipes in Lydia’s cookbook:

AS IF I MUST SCREAM. I was a nervous wreck and I just had to force myself to do my work. Even the sound of my own children playing made me feel as if I must scream if they did not get away from me. I could not even speak right to my husband. The doctor said that he could do nothing for me owing to my condition. My husband's grandmother advised me to take Lydia E. Pinkham's Vegetable Compound. I was able to do my work once more, and it was a pleasure, not a burden. MRS. EMILY DAVIS

Well, since the dosage is once every four hours, Mrs. Davis was shitfaced!

Women continued to write and receive answers to their questions for decades after Pinkham's own death. In 1905, the Ladies' Home Journal published a photograph of Lydia Pinkham's tombstone and exposed the ruse.

In the years following Lydia’s success, companies that made menstrual pads and tampons published booklets for pubescent girls that promoted their own products. Lydia’s marketing tactics are still used today by self-help gurus, TV doctors and other health and wellness professionals who have something to sell. 

Though most of the medical claims were completely ridiculous, Lydia E. Pinkham’s vegetable compound is still available today at a Walmart near you. It’s been modified from the original version and it won’t get you shitfaced when you’re on your period, but some of the herbs in the compound are recognized by health practitioners and experts in natural medicine as helping relieve the symptoms associated with menopause and menstruation. There’s a nugget of truth in every scam!

One hundred years before Dr. Oz was slammed for promoting weight loss products and sued for making factually deficient claims about olive oil, Lydia Pinkham created the framework for a bullshit TV doctor! She will go down in history as a marketing genius so legendary that she was memorialized in a folk song called The Ballad of Lydia Pinkham. During the Prohibition era, the medicine had a particular appeal as a readily available 40-proof alcoholic drink, and it is likely that this aided the song’s popularity.

Then, in 1968, the song was reimagined as a drinking song called Lily the Pink, which was recorded and released by the UK comedy group The Scaffold, and it reached No. 1 on the UK Singles Chart. Backing vocalists on the recording included Graham Nash, Elton John (then Reg Dwight), and Tim Rice; while Jack Bruce (of Cream) played the bass guitar. Lydia would have been so proud. Or at least she would have been completely wasted.

xx

JOIN ME FOR A SUBSTACK LIVE ON TUESDAY JUNE 30TH

For centuries, women have been sold products they never needed. On June 30th at 12pm ET, I’m going live on Substack with Danielle Bezalel from the popular podcast Sex Ed with DB to co-host The Invention of “Female Problems.” We’re going to dive into some weird history and we’d love to have you there.

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I’m Dani Faith Leonard, a filmmaker, writer, and performer. A while back, I started to ask myself a question: why do we think what we think about sex? Expect investigative articles, weird sex history, and sharp humor, delivered to your inbox every week. Ready to plug the holes in your education? Okay, let’s go!

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The World Cup is incredibly horny. It’s the international mingling, alcohol-fueled celebrations, and the intense emotional adrenaline. Coinciding with the Knicks winning the championship, New York City is sizzling. During the 2018 World Cup, research shared by Tinder showed that users enjoyed a crazy 66% spike in matches.

My own horny World Cup experience was in Madrid in 2010, where I happened to be working on a film that summer. When Spain won the World Cup, I was swept out of a bar onto the cobblestone streets. Police officers rolled out kegs of sangria, and cups suddenly materialized. At some point, I lost my shoes. I think I streaked across a field? Strangers were making out at every turn, and I’m sure a lot of babies were conceived that night. According to this study, the birth rate 9 months later proves it.

What if I told you there’s actually a sex ed and soccer overlap too? According to most people around the world, their school’s sex ed was inadequate. But what about taking sex ed out of the classroom? If we learned sex ed outside the classroom, it probably meant we were in the gymnasium learning about diseases from the high school wrestling coach. But in some countries, alternative sex ed programs are being created out of creativity or necessity.

Have you ever asked what sex ed lessons from Ted Lasso would be like? In countries across Africa and in Haiti, organizations are using soccer to bridge the education gap. One of these organizations, Grassroot Soccer, essentially uses soccer as the delivery mechanism for sex education and adolescent health programming. Instead of putting teenagers in a classroom and lecturing them about HIV, consent, or reproductive health, they teach these topics through games, drills (hehe), and coaching relationships built around soccer.

Why does it work? Soccer is one of the most popular sports in the world, particularly in many of the countries where Grassroot Soccer works. Young people are eager to participate, and coaches often hold celebrity or mentor status in their communities. The organization leverages that enthusiasm to get young people talking about subjects that can otherwise feel uncomfortable or stigmatized. For example, a passing drill might become a conversation about communication and trust, while teamwork exercises can open discussions about relationships and peer pressure. Other games teach HIV prevention, puberty and reproductive health, gender norms and power dynamics, and how to seek help when needed.

If only there was an announcer to shout, “¡Gooooooooooool!”

Sports aren’t just about competition, tailgating, getting shitfaced, and getting kicked out of MetLife Stadium for taking your shirt off. They’re one of society’s most effective delivery systems for teaching values, identity, relationships, and, in this case, even sex education.

I have to go finish watching the Argentina match. Congrats to Messi on the hat trick.

JOIN ME FOR A SUBSTACK LIVE ON JUNE 30TH

For centuries, women have been sold products they never needed. On June 30th at 12pm ET, I’m going live on Substack with Danielle Bezalel from the popular podcast Sex Ed with DB to co-host The Invention of “Female Problems.” We’re going to dive into some weird history and we’d love to have you there.

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I’m Dani Faith Leonard, a filmmaker, writer, and performer. A while back, I started to ask myself a question: why do we think what we think about sex? Expect investigative articles, weird sex history, and sharp humor, delivered to your inbox every week. Ready to plug the holes in your education? Okay, let’s go!

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There’s no new topic this week, just an invite and a summer catch-up reading list.

Last week’s newsletter generated more private messages than any newsletter I've published before. In case you missed last week’s newsletter, it was about achieving a vaginus maximus—in other words, a “perfect” vagina. Vaginal opitimization is the latest trend being sold to women. If you missed it, you can read it here.

JOIN ME FOR A SUBSTACK LIVE ON JUNE 30TH

For centuries, women have been sold products they never needed. On June 30th at 12pm ET, I’m going live on Substack with Danielle Bezalel from the popular podcast Sex Ed with DB to co-host The Invention of “Female Problems.” We’re going to dive into some weird history and we’d love to have you there.

Sign up here

CATCH UP ON ADULT SEX ED

We’re entering the summer season, which is a great time to catch up on the reading you may have missed. Here are five standout newsletters from the past six months that received the most feedback:

• Introducing: EXTREME SEX - a newsletter to kick off a new series on the intersections of sex and extremism

• Making Clitstory - the origins of historical knowledge about the clitoris

• Return of the Douche - a deep dive into the history of strange feminine hygiene

• Why You Need to Know the Case of Henrietta Lacks - A lawsuit finally settled this winter reveals a lot about extremism and sexual health

• PCOS Was Never Just About Ovaries - Why it matters that PCOS has a new name and the long history of women’s health blind spots

Enjoy the rest of your week! We’ll be back next week with a brand new topic.

Dani

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I’m Dani Faith Leonard, a filmmaker, writer, and performer. A while back, I started to ask myself a question: why do we think what we think about sex? Expect investigative articles, weird sex history, and sharp humor, delivered to your inbox every week. Ready to plug the holes in your education? Okay, let’s go!

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Last week’s newsletter was about the obsession with penis size, which has reached new heights—and girths, I guess—due to a series of internet trends. So I thought it would be appropriate if this week was all about a new obsession with optimizing the vagina. Achieving a vaginus maximus.

By the way, in this context vaginus maximus refers to the greatest vagina, not the largest (vaginus optimus just wasn’t as funny). The woman often cited as having the largest recorded vagina was a Canadian woman named Anna Haining Bates who stood at 7’11” tall and was reported to have a vaginal circumference of 19 inches. She once gave birth to a 23 lb. baby who sadly didn’t survive. That’s something, eh?

Vaginal optimization was the talk of the internet briefly last month when tech entrepreneur and anti-aging biohacker Bryan Johnson made headlines by posting the results of his girlfriend’s vaginal microbiome test. He bragged that the results placed her in the “top 1% of all vaginas.” Delivered like a quarterly earnings report rather than a compliment to his partner's sexual magnetism, the announcement irked people, but also revealed something important. There are women obsessively testing their vaginas in pursuit of a particular standard of perfection.

From a sex-history perspective, there's a fascinating irony. Historically, the vagina was often portrayed as unknowable and mystifying. Ancient societies knew so little about vaginas that women were diagnosed with conditions like wandering womb and hysteria whenever a problem arose. There were pervasive myths, like the vagina dentata: the magical twat with teeth. The historical figures rumored to have “powerful” vaginas and sexual prowess, like Cleopatra and Catherine the Great, were also seen as mysterious.

Today, the vagina is increasingly portrayed as knowable through microbiome hacking, biomarkers, and health-tracking technologies. The superior vaginas are now the most knowable, not the most mysterious.

The vaginal microbiome is a real and important area of scientific research. Researchers are learning more about how the microbiome relates to conditions such as infections and fertility. But the science is still developing, and many commercial products and influencers move much faster than the evidence. Organizations are also worried about the lack of regulation of companies selling microbiome-based tests. Testers often send in a swab of vaginal secretions (least sexy sentence ever). What are all of these companies doing with all of this pussy data? I cun’t tell ya. (Sorrrrrrryyyyy.)

The question isn’t whether the science is real, but why every era seems to develop its own vision of the “right” kind of vagina. Achieving this ideal usually comes with purchasing the right products. In the 20th century, advertising and popular culture promoted ideals of cleanliness, freshness, and attractiveness, so flowery douches were the rage to solve a “problem” that women never had. Microbiome hacking represents a modern version of a very old pattern: transforming normal variation in women's bodies into something that requires constant monitoring and spending.

Instead of asking whether a vagina is “clean enough,” the question becomes whether it is “optimized enough.” It’s probably no surprise that at-home microbiome tests aren’t cheap. Most of the ones available online cost between $150 and $250. Test if you want to, but obsessive testing can take a mental toll, especially since doctors have noted that the microbiome changes throughout the menstrual cycle.

Can we just agree that the optimal vagina is in the eye of the beholder? Can we unfuck our algorithms so we’re not constantly being sold the latest vaginal trend? I think it’s fair to proclaim that you have a top 1% vagina with absolutely no evidence. You too can have a vaginus maximus—no obsessive testing required.

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I’m Dani Faith Leonard, a filmmaker, writer, and performer. A while back, I started to ask myself a question: why do we think what we think about sex? Expect investigative articles, weird sex history, and sharp humor, delivered to your inbox every week. Ready to plug the holes in your education? Okay, let’s go!

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A quick housekeeping note: I’ve had to postpone June’s live show, and it will now take place on Wednesday, October 14. If you already purchased a ticket, you should have been notified. You can get tickets to the October show HERE.

One of the joys of writing this newsletter is that when a particularly fun news item comes out about sex, at least 15 friends send it to me. That’s exactly what happened yesterday when New York Magazine published a feature called “The Big Little Penis Panic.”

Through interviews with several men, the article argues that anxiety about penis size is intensifying because of social media, porn, and the “looksmaxxing” trend. Just like women, men are comparing themselves to the curated images they see online. Most of the men in the article don’t see many “normal” penises in person, so their view of their own size is distorted too.

The article introduces a fun TikTok trend called “catching print.” The trend encourages people to guess penis size based on how someone looks in clothing. While dating coach Anwar White says he came up with the method as a way to empower women, the trend is singled out as worsening the insecurity.

In case you haven’t heard of “looksmaxxing,” it’s an internet subculture focused on extreme appearance optimization. Some men are pursuing risky or obsessive routines, including controversial penis-enhancement practices, to try to improve attractiveness and status. Cosmetic procedures related to male genitals are becoming more common, including injecting filler into the shaft for girth, and sometimes the balls too. This particular quote from the article really stuck with me:

“[T]he so-called looksmaxxer Clavicular, who was once accused by Drake of having a micropenis, shared that he’s recently started doing “dick-ups”: wrapping a shopping bag filled with books around his wrist and using the weight to tug on his penis.”

As several commenters on Reddit wrote: are men ok? Probably not.

It’s not a coincidence that looksmaxxing grew out of a larger far-right misogynistic movement online. What a wonderful way to control men. It’s been well known throughout history that harmful beauty trends have greatly affected the lives of young women. Now, it’s clear that modern trends are distorting cultural expectations around masculinity and body image. The thing is, these concepts aren’t new at all.

The concept of cock and balls filler reminded me of a specifc period in history that I’ve written about frequently. Exactly a century ago, in the ‘20s, there was a concept floating around that men may be able to rejuvenate their health by getting a new set of balls. Or by adding another set of balls to the set they already had.

A physician named John Brinkley became known as the “goat-gland doctor” after he implanted goat testicles into male patients. Goats snowballed into human cadavers, and then things escalated to live humans. Men were getting kidnapped in Chicago, drugged with chloroform, and waking up with empty scrota. According to some medical historians, this actually marks the beginning of modern organ trafficking, which most people associate with kidneys, not testes. Newspapers went wild, calling it “Gland Larceny.” All of that work to be more “manly.”

Much earlier than that, in the Stone Age, people started drawing lots of big dicks in their cave drawings. The large phalluses usually signified fertility. In Ancient Greek art, smaller flaccid penises became the norm. Christianity adopted small penises in religious art too—can you imagine the Sistine Chapel with big ol’ dicks on the ceiling?

Despite the detour in art, bigger penises have always been associated with “manliness” and “manhood.” Competitions between men are called “dick-swinging contests.” Long before the current president, commenting on penis size was fair game in elections. During the election of 1800, Jefferson’s friend James Callendar, an influential journalist at the time, accused John Adams of having a “hideous hermaphroditical character, which has neither the force and firmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman.” In other words, he was accusing Adams of having a small, deformed dick.

How can men today not be anxious? This size anxiety isn’t new at all. It’s entirely historical. But Thomas Jefferson didn’t have an iPhone, and it’s going to be hard to cut through the shit online to remind men that size isn’t everything.

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I’m Dani Faith Leonard, a filmmaker, writer, and performer. A while back, I started to ask myself a question: why do we think what we think about sex? Expect investigative articles, weird sex history, and sharp humor, delivered to your inbox every week. Ready to plug the holes in your education? Okay, let’s go!

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A quick housekeeping note: I’ve had to postpone June’s live show, and it will now take place on Wednesday, October 14. If you already purchased a ticket, you should be notified soon.

May is Sex Ed for All Month, an annual national awareness campaign advocating for the right of every young person to receive comprehensive sex education. That should include medically accurate sex education, but as I mentioned in my last post about it, only 26 states currently require sex ed to be medically accurate. That’s why I watched Philadelphia in class and learned that if you have sex, you’ll get AIDS, and if you get skinny in Hollywood, you’ll win prizes

Sex education has been historically limited, whether due to strict religious beliefs, sexism, or both. Most of the written history of sex was contributed by men. The outliers, the women who broke through throughout history and were able to deliver sex ed to the masses, are usually referred to as the “Dr. Ruth” of their time. This is also a testament to how impactful the famous sex therapist Dr. Ruth Westheimer was, of course.

When I’ve spoken about sex information in Ancient Greece, the figure most frequently mentioned is Greek physician Soranus of Ephesus, considered one of the fathers of gynecology. He wrote a treatise on gynecology that included groundbreaking information on female anatomy, pregnancy, and labor. Unfortunately, he also told women to drink the water blacksmiths used to cool their metal as a form of birth control. Ancient Greek women were also fumigated to treat a nonexistent disease called hysteria.

Centuries before Soranus was giving women heavy metal poisoning, there lived a woman named Philaenis of Samos, the Dr. Ruth of her time—at least, probably. Like her name suggests, Philaenis was said to be a woman from the island of Samos, possibly living sometime between the 4th and 3rd centuries BCE. Historians are not sure whether she was a real historical person, a pseudonym, or a literary invention.

In ancient times, the island of Samos was famous for its expensive hetairai, or elite courtesans. In case you’re curious, the place with the most expensive prostitutes in the U.S. has frequently been identified as Boston. I would charge a ton of money if I had to hear “Get in the caaaah” all day, too.

The name Philaenis comes from the Greek word philos, meaning love. Some historians believe that this was a common name given to prostitutes and therefore, it’s possible that Philaenis is a prototype of a person, rather than a real individual. Whatever the case is, she became famous (or infamous) for a sex manual that was revolutionary for its time, like a Mediterranean Kama Sutra.

Only small fragments survive, discovered among the Oxyrhynchus Papyri (don’t even attempt to pronounce it) in Egypt and published in 1972. They suggest the text discussed courtship strategies, how to flatter women, the art of seduction, and possibly sexual positions and techniques.

Over centuries, she became less a person and more an archetype of the dangerous, experienced woman. Ancient male writers often used her name as shorthand for sexual excess or female promiscuity. By the Roman era, “Philaenis” had evolved into a cultural symbol. The poet Martial used “Philaenis” as the name of an aggressively sexual female character in his epigrams. Christian writers later condemned works attributed to her as immoral and corrupting.

Not every woman who brings sex ed to the masses is a saint. In the late 1800s, Lydia Pinkham provided sex ed through pamphlets that contained many inaccuracies, including that a woman’s uterus might fall out if she danced too hard. It was all to sell her medicinal compound, which she claimed cured anything from headaches to menopause to cancer. Her elixir, the most popular patented medicine of the 19th century, actually contained 20% drinking alcohol, which to be fair, solves a surprising number of problems.

The story of Philaenis, one of the earliest known figures linked to written sex education, reflects an ancient anxiety about women possessing sexual expertise publicly. This is an anxiety that still exists today, especially reflected in online spaces (ask any woman who’s spoken about sex on the internet). Dr. Ruth faced significant opposition from conservative religious groups, politicians, and anti-porn advocates who objected to her candid discussions about sexuality. From Philaenis to Dr. Ruth, the backlash has always been part of the curriculum.

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I’m Dani Faith Leonard, a filmmaker, writer, and performer. A while back, I started to ask myself a question: why do we think what we think about sex? Expect investigative articles, weird sex history, and sharp humor, delivered to your inbox every week. Ready to plug the holes in your education? Okay, let’s go!

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I had to take a little time away from writing, but we’ll be back to the typical Wednesday schedule next week. While I was out over the past week and a half, several headlines caught my eye. Earlier today I found out that the doctor leading the United States’ respondse to hantavirus is a far right penile implant spcialist. But it’s a different headline that I want to focus on today.

But it’s a different headline that I want to focus on today.

Earlier this week, it was announced that P.C.O.S., a condition affecting 10–13 percent of reproductive-age women, is getting a new name: P.M.O.S.

The old name stood for Polycystic Ovary Syndrome, but many people with the condition do not actually have ovarian cysts. Common symptoms include hair and skin changes, insulin resistance, inflammation, cardiovascular risk, metabolic dysfunction, and mental health effects. The condition extends far beyond the ovaries. The renaming follows a years-long international effort aimed at helping patients and doctors better understand the condition.

The new name, P.M.O.S. stands for “Polyendocrine Metabolic Ovarian Syndrome.” Breaking that down:

• Polyendocrine = involves multiple hormone systems

• Metabolic = affects metabolism, insulin, weight regulation, blood sugar, cardiovascular health

• Ovarian = ovaries are still involved, but not the entire story

• Syndrome = a cluster of related symptoms

The online reaction has been intense because many patients feel the old name actively obscured what they were experiencing. Medical professionals have stressed that the addition of the word “metabolic” is the most important part. Because medical education around the condition focused so heavily on the ovaries, it was often taught only within gynecology.

There’s another important element to consider: if a condition falls under the banner of gynecology or reproduction, research dollars are limited. Between 2019 and 2023, erectile dysfunction-focused startups received roughly $1.24 billion in funding — about six times more than investments in endometriosis, another condition affecting millions of women. In 2020, only one percent of healthcare research and innovation was invested in female-specific conditions beyond oncology, according to this study.

In ancient times, misinformation about women’s bodies persisted well into the 1900s. So why are our medical assumptions still reflecting that era? Hippocrates, often called the father of medicine, wrote extensively about a condition in which a woman’s uterus would supposedly wander throughout her body. The “wandering womb” was believed to cause symptoms depending on where it traveled, putting pressure on organs and even causing suffocation.

So what was the prescription for a womb that wouldn’t stand still? Put a baby in it, naturally. Frequent pregnancy was recommended so the womb wouldn’t “get bored.” A disease in which the womb affected the rest of the body may resemble what we now recognize as endometriosis, and even today, women are still told that pregnancy may relieve their widespread symptoms.

What Hippocrates accidentally got right is that diseases are not always limited to a single organ. The new name, P.M.O.S., doesn’t remove the ovaries from the equation. It simply acknowledges that this condition affects the entire body. When medicine changes the language around a disease, it also changes who gets taken seriously (which is furstrating, gross, infuriating, etc.). A name change alone won’t fix women’s healthcare, but it’s a reminder that language shapes what medicine chooses to see.

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I’m Dani Faith Leonard, a filmmaker, writer, and performer. A while back, I started to ask myself a question: why do we think what we think about sex? Expect investigative articles, weird sex history, and sharp humor, delivered to your inbox every week. Ready to plug the holes in your education? Okay, let’s go!

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This week’s newsletter is a quickie. Last month, I performed at a friend’s comedy show, where the host happened to be pregnant. Naturally, a lot of the material circled around just how little we actually know about it. We spend years learning how not to get pregnant and almost no time learning about fertility or pregnancy itself. That’s why I was surprised, during a recent internet deep-dive, to discover that ancient women may have known more than we think.

Am I pregnant? It’s a question that women have been asking since the beginning of time. In 1350 B.C.E., 3,375 years before you could DoorDash yourself a pregnancy test, Ancient Egyptians were learning that you can pee on certain items and learn a great deal. According to an unearthed papyrus studied at the University of Copenhagen, Egyptian women were encouraged to urinate on bags containing wheat and barley. If the grains sprouted, this indicated a pregnancy.

This testing method might seem strange, but it persisted for thousands of years. Variations of this same test were found in Greek and Roman medicine, and during the Middle Ages in the Middle East.

When it comes to pregnancy, there are so many pervasive myths and old wives’ tales. A different test that the Ancient Egyptians used was inserting an onion into a woman’s vagina, and if her breath smelled like onions the next day, it meant she was pregnant. I’m sure she was regretting her choice in physician the next day when she was peeing French onion soup. In the Middle Ages, “piss prophets” would mix urine with wine to look for changes in color or cloudiness.

Unlike the vagina onion, the ancient pee tests worked. In 1963, researchers recreated the Egyptian pregnancy tests for a study and found them to be 70% accurate. It was the heightened estrogen that likely caused the seeds to sprout.

Modern home pregnancy tests hit stores in 1978, trumpeted by advertisements as “a private little revolution.” These tests measure the “pregnancy hormone,” human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) in urine. You have to admit, looking at how far back it dates, peeing on a stick does feel a bit primitive.

Here are some other Ancient Egyptian contributions to the history of sex:

Pube trends and hair removal

The use of cannabis in medicine, including childbirth

Contraception

A creation story that involves a god who ejaculated the world into existence

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Don’t Miss This New Show on June 3rd:

WED, JUN 3, 9:30 PM ET | in-person at Caveat 21A Clinton Street New York, NY 10002 | or live-streaming anywhere

Use the code “EXTREME” for $5 off.

Tickets

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I’m Dani Faith Leonard, a filmmaker, writer, and performer. A while back, I started to ask myself a question: why do we think what we think about sex? Expect investigative articles, weird sex history, and sharp humor, delivered to your inbox every week. Ready to plug the holes in your education? Okay, let’s go!

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I watched the new documentary Louis Theroux: Inside the Manosphere, when it launched on Netflix last month. In it, the documentarian follows several male influencers promoting radical views on masculinity, relationships, gender, and Jews. In between, they create content for their many followers, many of which are homoerotic videos of themselves working out. The thing that struck me the most about the documentary is how these influencers are completely fleecing their followers, selling courses, supplements, and bad financial investments to vulnerable young men, while they take a kickback.

None of this is surprising to me—most of the extremist movements in history set their own members up for failure too. Maybe that’s why I didn’t feel inspired enough to write my own think piece about it. There have been many written already, but none of them mention a specific belief that has popped up several times throughout history, which also preyed on men who thought they weren’t masculine enough: the idea that three or more balls are better than two.

A few years ago, Tucker Carlson released an original documentary called The End of Men, which argues that the answer to all of mankind’s problems is testosterone related. In the trailer, buff oiled-up men are featured in various scenarios: chopping wood, firing guns, throwing large tires, and tanning their genitals. Other than the man tanning his nads, the video actually resembles one of Leni Riefenstahl’s Nazi propaganda films of the 1930s.

In an interview, it was clarified that the “tanning” is actually red light therapy, and its inclusion in the documentary was probably clickbait. There’s not a lot of data about how it works, but that never stopped men from trying different remedies to be more “manly.”

Skevis Zervos was a dignified doctor in the Ottoman Empire. In Mary Roach’s book Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex, she tells of Zervos hatching an idea while observing the palace’s staff of eunuchs. Noticing their acquired femininity, he developed a theory that testes were the key to lifelong virility. He began experimenting with rabbits and dogs, grafting testicles from younger animals onto older ones. In 1910, he became the first man to implant an ape’s testicles into a man.

Word spread of the nut graft. Serge Voronoff, a Russian immigrant living in France, transplanted the testicles of executed criminals into millionaire clients, but, when demand topped supply, he started using monkeys instead. Thin slices of testicles from chimpanzees and baboons were implanted inside the patient's scrotum, which would eventually fuse with the human tissue. He claimed that possible effects include better memory, the ability to work longer hours, the potential for no longer needing glasses, elimination of schizophrenia, and prolonged life.

By the early 1930s, over 500 men had been treated in France by Voronoff’s rejuvenation technique. His later work included transplants of monkey ovaries into women. He eventually fell out of favor when it became clear the medical promises he made never came to pass. At one point, he was so wealthy that he occupied and entire floor of a Paris hotel.

In the 1920s, this concept of more balls spread to the United States, and like most things Americans do, they really went balls out. American doctors were promoting an entire extra set of balls. A doctor named John Brinkley became known as the “goat-gland doctor” after he implanted goat testicles into male patients. At first, he claimed that it cured impotence, but later on, he would claim that it would cure a variety of ailments, from dementia to flatulence.

Another doctor decided to experiment on himself instead. Chicago urologist Frank Lydston sewed a cadaver’s nuts into his own scrotum all the way back in 1914. Then, he got one-upped by a prison doctor who had access to lots of balls. Over the course of twenty years, Leo Stanley would perform over 10,000 testicular implants within the walls of San Quentin State Prison. Sterilizing prisoners in the process is terrible, but the same thing would start happening to men on the streets of Chicago.

In 1922, men were getting kidnapped in Chicago, drugged with chloroform, and waking up with empty scrota. According to some medical historians, this actually marks the beginning of modern organ trafficking, which most people associate with kidneys, not danglies. Newspapers went wild, calling it “Gland Larceny.” Find more about this crazy time in history here: The Great Testicle Theft.

Eventually, it was discovered that the substance emitted by the testicles is testosterone, which can be administered on its own, so there was no way these doctors could continue to promote ball grafting. Around the world, people still eat testicles and penises, which believers in ancient medicine promote as an aphrodisiac, or a cure for sexual dysfunction.

Eating some balls, when prepared right, won’t kill you. But you should keep your nuts out of the sun.

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In case you missed my email last week, I’m excited to announce that tickets are now on sale for this brand new show:

EXTREME SEX: HOW EXTREMISM CREPT INTO OUR PANTS AND STAYED THERE

WED, JUN 3, 9:30 PM ET | in-person at Caveat 21A Clinton Street New York, NY 10002 | or live-streaming anywhere

Tickets

Performed by Dani Faith Leonard, this part TED Talk, part one-person show about sex and extremism blends deep research with sharp humor and wildly entertaining visuals.

Dani has spent the past decade studying the history of sex. At the same time, she’s been directing a documentary about extremism in America. Somewhere along the way, she noticed something unsettling—and darkly funny: the research kept overlapping.

From the myth of the hymen to centuries of medical quackery, Dani unpacks how sex has been misunderstood, politicized, and weaponized—especially against women. Along the way, she dives into the so-called “discovery” of the clitoris, the strange history of sex education, and the conspiracy theories that tie it all together—including the claim that Jews invented pornography to make white Christian extremists impotent (they didn’t need any help).

Extremists have a lot to say about what’s going on in your pants. Let’s unpack that together.

Use the code “EXTREME” for $5 off.

Tickets

I hope to see you there!

Make sure you’re subscribed so you never miss a post!

Subscribe now

If you enjoyed this newsletter, please share with friends, so they can be hilariously informed! You’ll get rewards every time you share and can earn a comped membership.

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I’m Dani Faith Leonard, a filmmaker, writer, and performer. A while back, I started to ask myself a question: why do we think what we think about sex? Expect investigative articles, weird sex history, and sharp humor, delivered to your inbox every week. Ready to plug the holes in your education? Okay, let’s go!

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Next week’s newsletter will be out on Wednesday as usual, but I have a fun announcement to share: A few months ago, I started writing about the intersection of sex and extremism (you can read my original post here). I teased that I was writing a new show and I’m excited to announce that tickets are now on sale!

EXTREME SEX: HOW EXTREMISM CREPT INTO OUR PANTS AND STAYED THERE

** New date: WED, OCT 14th, 9:30 PM ET | in-person at Caveat 21A Clinton Street New York, NY 10002 | or live-streaming anywhere

Tickets

Performed by Dani Faith Leonard, this part TED Talk, part one-person show about sex and extremism blends deep research with sharp humor and wildly entertaining visuals.

Dani has spent the past decade studying the history of sex. At the same time, she’s been directing a documentary about extremism in America. Somewhere along the way, she noticed something unsettling—and darkly funny: the research kept overlapping.

From the myth of the hymen to centuries of medical quackery, Dani unpacks how sex has been misunderstood, politicized, and weaponized—especially against women. Along the way, she dives into the so-called “discovery” of the clitoris, the strange history of sex education, and the conspiracy theories that tie it all together—including the claim that Jews invented pornography to make white Christian extremists impotent (they didn’t need any help).

Extremists have a lot to say about what’s going on in your pants. Let’s unpack that together.

Use the code “EXTREME” for $5 off.

Tickets

I hope to see you there!

We’re back with an all new newsletter next Wednesday.

Share

Make sure you’re subscribed so you never miss a post!

Subscribe now

If you enjoyed this newsletter, please share with friends, so they can be hilariously informed! You’ll get rewards every time you share and can earn a comped membership.

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I’m Dani Faith Leonard, a filmmaker, writer, and performer. A while back, I started to ask myself a question: why do we think what we think about sex? Expect investigative articles, weird sex history, and sharp humor, delivered to your inbox every week. Ready to plug the holes in your education? Okay, let’s go!

Subscribe now

Follow me on instagram

Last October, I wrote about praise kink. It’s one of my favorite newsletters and I reference it this week, so please read it if you want to be all caught up. This week’s topic is a fun one: It’s about three different, but related kinks.

A friend of mine messaged me a few weeks ago with a potential newsletter topic: she’s really into hands. I know feet get a ton of play in fetish conversations, so what about hands? The thing is, she wasn’t only into the actual hands (cheirophilia), but what those hands can do. The hand’s owner was a guitar player, and the way his hands moved through a riff made her imagine what they could do to her.

A competency kink involves being turned on by someone’s skill, intelligence, or problem-solving capabilities. Throughout history, people have been attracted to others who aren’t conventionally attractive or desirable but are fantastic at what they do. We sometimes call mild versions of this a “talent crush.” The opposite, which I have definitely experienced, is an “incompetency ick,” when you realize your crush is supremely untalented.

Competency kink’s sibling is praise kink, which I wrote about a few months ago. Praise kink is a type of sexual preference where a person becomes aroused by receiving affirming, encouraging, or approving words from their partner. It’s sometimes known as “affirmation play” or a good girl/good boy kink. For some, this feels nurturing or confidence-boosting; for others, it’s about dom/sub power dynamics.

If praise is its sibling, the dark cousin of praise kink is humiliation. A humiliation kink is less about wanting to be hurt and more about wanting to play with shame, exposure, and power—in a way that’s controlled, consensual, and often surprisingly intentional. Sometimes, humiliation moves into degradation, which leans more toward being reduced or objectified.

If competency/praise and humiliation/degradation are two ends, I’d like to add a third kink into the mix to complete the trilogy—hierophilia. It’s the intersection of all three and feels especially fitting for this week.

Hierophilia is the sexual attraction to religious figures, objects, or settings. Religion and sex are almost always at odds with each other. Many people credit the church or other religious institutions as a source of their sexual shame. Most anti-masturbation, anti-gay, anti-pleasure, anti-gender equality, and anti-sex education views in the United States have religious origins. That’s what makes this philia so loaded—and what makes it so compelling.

Madonna’s “Like a Prayer” music video was banned by the Catholic Church due to its use of religious imagery, including burning crosses, stigmata, and an intimate scene with a Black saint in a church. In “Like a Virgin,” she rolled around in a wedding dress wearing a huge cross, which didn’t fare well either. The Vatican condemned Billy Joel’s “Only the Good Die Young” for even suggesting that Catholic girls start much too late. Jude Law recently played a hot, chain-smoking pope; Adam Brody plays a hot rabbi who fucks.

There’s religious art with erotic undertones dating back centuries. Dr. Anil Aggrawal, a professor of forensic medicine who writes about sexual practices, has pointed out that elements of sexual sadism were present in medieval religious ceremonies involving flagellation. For instance, in an early 15th-century painting called The Flagellation of Christ, those inflicting pain on Jesus appear to be deriving sexual pleasure from their actions. The Song of Songs is considered by many to be a poem about extravagant lovemaking:

How graceful are your feet in sandals, O queenly maiden! Your rounded thighs are like jewels, the work of a master hand. Your navel is a rounded bowl that never lacks mixed wine. Your belly is a heap of wheat, encircled with lilies. Your two breasts are like two fawns, twins of a gazelle. Your neck is like an ivory tower.

Haven’t you ever been sitting in church or synagogue and gotten just a little bit aroused? Someone into hierophilia might use nun and/or priest uniforms or sex toys shaped like religious objects. Maybe they’re into flagellation. If a hierophiliac is Jewish, maybe they’re turned on by tefillin bondage. A string of anal beads is sometimes referred to as a rosary—just don’t make a mistake if you’re trying to buy your mom an actual rosary online. Someone into hierophilia might even fantasize about breaking into a church in the middle of the night, though that’s not legally advisable.

What about combinations of these kinks? Hierophilia has an innate BDSM component due to the power dynamics of the priest and congregant. Someone into hierophilia and praise might play the “good girl” and read from the Bible—maybe dressed like a Catholic schoolgirl or a pious altar boy.

Someone into humiliation and hierophilia might misbehave in “church” and get scolded. If Orthodox porn were a thing (there are barely any options on Pornhub—I ruined my algorithm for you), I can imagine someone doing something extremely not kosher and being shamed. Apropos of this week: I was friends with an Egyptian man who loved attending Passover seders hosted by his Jewish friends. He would ask to read the parts of the Pharaoh because being the villain of the story turned him on. Side note—The Ten Commandments is a very horny movie.

The intersection of all three—hierophilia, humiliation, and praise—is a confession scene: confessing sins and being humiliated, begging for forgiveness, taking the prescribed punishment, promising to be a good girl or boy, and receiving praise. Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned greatly.

I’m personally a little more into praise. No matter what you do this week, I’m so proud of you.

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I’m Dani Faith Leonard, a filmmaker, writer, and performer. A while back, I started to ask myself a question: why do we think what we think about sex? Expect investigative articles, weird sex history, and sharp humor, delivered to your inbox every week. Ready to plug the holes in your education? Okay, let’s go!

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In case you missed yesterday’s post, this week is the three year anniversary of this newsletter! I couldn’t have done it without you. This week, we’re talking about fertility and a very old book about sex that’s getting renewed attention.

This week, I read that a three-hundred-year-old copy of a book so scandalous it was previously banned has been discovered and is going up for auction.

In 1684, this book started circulating quietly through England. It wasn’t sold proudly on shelves. It was passed hand-to-hand, slipped under counters, and whispered about. It promised answers to questions no one was allowed to ask out loud, especially in the 1600s:

• How do you get pregnant?

• How do you not get pregnant?

• Can you control whether you have a boy or a girl?

• And… what actually happens during sex?

The book was called Aristotle’s Masterpiece. The thing is, Aristotle didn’t write it, nor is it considered to be a masterpiece by anyone. It is, however, one of the best-selling books ever published in English on sex and pregnancy. It went through hundreds of editions in England and America and was sold until the 1930s with surprisingly few updates.

In the 17th century, Aristotle was still considered the authority on the natural world. Slap his name on a book, and suddenly it’s seen as actual science. Filled with wild misinformation, the book is like What to Expect When You’re Expecting, if it were written by someone who had no idea what to expect.

Here are some of the craziest conspiracies passed off as science:

Myth 1—What a woman looks at while pregnant can change your baby

If a pregnant woman “fixes her eyes upon any strange or frightful object,” the child may be born resembling it. For example, seeing a rabbit might result in a harelip (a cleft palate). If she saw something monstrous, the baby might be deformed.

This led to accusations against mothers when babies were born with birth defects or disabilities.

Myth 2—You can choose the gender of your baby

The right testicle produces males; the left produces females. Sex on the right side of the bed was also more likely to produce a boy. It supposedly also depended on the timing of the moon and the strength of the male orgasm (more splooge, more boys). Of course, if the baby wasn’t the desired gender, the woman likely did something wrong.

Myth 3—Birthing a “monster” was a moral punishment

According to the book, deformed children arise from “the corruption of seed” or the sins of the parents. Birth differences were blamed on having sex at the “wrong” time, adultery, or even thinking impure thoughts.

Myth 4—Sex advice with a moral agenda

Excessive venery (sex) weakens the body and corrupts the mind. The book frames desire as something dangerous if left uncontrolled. This was also a time when horny women were being diagnosed with hysteria or burned at the stake as witches.

All of these myths had real effects on society. Medical conditions were turned into moral failures, often targeting women. Myths about reproduction persisted for generations because Aristotle’s Masterpiece was wildly confident misinformation. There are remnants of these conspiracy theories today, available wherever you get your podcasts, and possibly even at the current CDC.

The fertility industry is booming—$8.3–9 billion in the U.S. and $36–39 billion globally (2024–2025), expected to grow to $85 billion by 2034—but buying the right supplements, taking the right tests, freezing your eggs, and even doing IVF doesn’t always come with actual education. When I froze my eggs a few years ago, I was shocked by how little education I received and how much was expected of me (my kitchen looked like Breaking Bad). A dear friend of mine who struggled to get pregnant admitted she never learned that women only have a small fertility window each month. Sex Education in the U.S. focuses so hard on pregnancy prevention and avoiding STIs that many of us don’t actually know how to get pregnant at all!

Aristotle’s Masterpiece was a chaotic mix of ancient medical theories, medieval superstition, moral warnings, and straight-up invention, written during a time when women were still being accused of witchcraft. But it filled a vacuum because sex education was reserved for the privileged (and theirs wasn’t much better). When sex education is lacking, something will always fill that void, and it might be myths about monster babies.

Sometimes, people look back at earlier times and assume that because people lived closer to nature and could watch animals mate, they must have understood sex better. I guess watching Planet Earth doesn’t prevent teen pregnancies either.

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I’m Dani Faith Leonard, a filmmaker, writer, and performer. A while back, I started to ask myself a question: why do we think what we think about sex? Expect investigative articles, weird sex history, and sharp humor, delivered to your inbox every week.

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Follow me on instagram

In 2018, I launched Adult Sex Ed as a live comedy show, welcoming fantastic guest comedians each month. In 2023, I launched this newsletter as an experiment—what if I committed to one deep dive per week? Would people tune in? It’s been three years and 140 newsletters. I couldn’t have done it without you.

After writing about sex every week for three years, here are my top takeaways:

• Writing a new piece each week is a huge commitment, and sometimes I miss (case in point: last week). Overall, I’ve missed fewer than 10 weeks in the past three years. Making a promise and sticking to it is a fantastic exercise, especially as a writer.

• We still know so little about women’s bodies due to centuries of under-research into women’s health. As of 2023, approximately 7.9% of total NIH grant funding was dedicated to women’s health research.

• Most health misconceptions trace back to myths invented thousands of years ago. Recurring characters in this newsletter include Soranus, a 1st/2nd century Greek physician considered a father of gynecology, who also advised women to drink blacksmith cooling water as birth control; and John Harvey Kellogg, a eugenicist and anti-masturbation activist, who also invented Corn Flakes.

• Speaking of anti-masturbation: sex ed in the United States began as an anti-masturbation movement, and in many places, it hasn’t evolved much. Sex education isn’t nationally mandated, and only 26 states require it to be medically accurate.👀

• As extremism rises globally, it’s become harder to focus solely on weird, fun sex history. Earlier this year, I introduced a new theme: the intersection of sex and extremism. While directing and producing a documentary on extremism in America (I can’t wait to tell you more about that soon), I’ve been struck by how often this research overlaps with what I write here. If you want to explore those posts, you can upgrade to a paid membership.

• I’m also consistently surprised by who reads this newsletter. Friends and family send me topics. Conservative politicians subscribe and forward my emails (and think I can’t see it). I’m grateful for all of it.

We’ll be back tomorrow with our regularly scheduled newsletter and it’s a fun one! Thank you for reading.

Dani

P.S. I’d love to add you to our roster of paid members. Adult Sex Ed is currently fully reader-funded—find out how to upgrade below.

You can upgrade your membership at anytime and if you’d like to find out how to get a comped membership, scroll down!

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In case you’re new here: Adult Sex Ed comedically challenges why we think what we think about sex. I’m Dani Faith Leonard, a filmmaker, comedy writer, and performer. In 2018, I started a comedy show called Adult Sex Ed and launched this newsletter in 2023. Each week, I take a fun deep dive into a topic that I’ve been researching. Ready to plug the holes in your education? Okay, let’s go!

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Back in January, I introduced a new theme that I’m going to explore with all of you: the intersection of sex and extremism. To summarize, for the past couple of years, I’ve been directing and producing a documentary about the history of extremism in America, and I’ve been consistently amused by the ways the research for both of my projects overlaps. Sex ed and Nazis might not seem to have much in common on the surface, but I promise that’s not the case.

In the introduction to Extreme Sex, which you can read here, I shared that I’m putting together the pieces for an hour-long show. The working title: EXTREME SEX—HOW EXTREMISM CREPT INTO OUR PANTS AND STAYED THERE. It’s part TED Talk, part one-person show, with a ton of research and hilarious visuals. I shared the first draft of the show’s introduction, and this week I wanted to share the next section with you.

When I write, whether it’s a newsletter or a film, I usually start with an outline. Last weekend, in a fury of inspiration, I sat down and mapped out the show. It’s more than just an outline; it’s also a kind of curriculum for what I’d want people to learn if they were exploring sex and extremism. In the version below, I’ve also linked to newsletters I’ve written about some of these topics in the past. Take a look, and make sure to leave me a comment below—especially if you think I’ve missed something.

OUTLINE

THE GODS

CREATION

How the creation stories of different cultures shaped views on sex. Ancient Egyptians believed the world was created through ejaculation, literally the opposite of the Adam and Eve story. [Read more in this past newsletter.]

GENDER

Ancient Judaism and other religions recognized multiple genders, which contrasts sharply with many of today’s religious communities. [Read more in this past newsletter.]

VIRGINS & HYMENS

The “wokeness” of ancient religions fades when we start talking about virgins. We’ll explore how cultures treated virginity over time by examining the history of slang for losing one’s virginity. In short, the language of virginity is almost always female. Then, in The History of the Hymen, we’ll learn how the Greek god Hymen was always invited to the wedding. [Read more in these past newsletters about virgins and hymens.]

ANCIENT TIMES

ANCIENT “MEDICINE”

Early gynecologists worked with very little knowledge. When it came to ancient medicine, women were often the guinea pigs. Though considered the fathers of medicine, many physicians believed some very strange things.

HYSTERIA AND OTHER DIAGNOSES

Over time, women were diagnosed with a variety of bizarre conditions, from “wandering womb” disease to “bicycle face.” [Read more in this past newsletter.]

HISTORY OF BIRTH CONTROL

When women invented it, it often worked. When men invented it, it was usually poison. [Read more in this past newsletter.]

MEDIEVAL TIMES

THE HISTORY OF SLANG

How slang for the vagina developed over time—and what it reveals about how society has viewed women. [Read more in this past newsletter.]

WITCHCRAFT

Before the events in Salem, early modern witch trials swept across Europe. A book written by a German Catholic clergyman called Malleus Maleficarum taught the public how to identify witches. [Read more in this past newsletter.]

THE HISTORY OF THE DOUCHE

During medieval times, sex workers used douches to clean between customers. It later became one of many untested products marketed to women throughout history. [Read more in this past newsletter.]

THE QUACKS

JOHN HARVEY KELLOGG

A problematic guru who reportedly shot gallons of yogurt up his own ass every day—tell me more. This anti-masturbation activist helped move extremist medicine into the mainstream. [Read more in this past newsletter.]

GREAT TESTICLE THEFT

One hundred years ago, several doctors convinced men they needed a second set of testicles to be truly masculine. [Read more in this past newsletter.]

LYDIA PINKHAM

She owned one of the most popular patent medicines of the 19th century. An expert marketer, she was among the first to use testimonials to sell a dubious product. Like many remedies of the time, Lydia Pinkham’s elixir was more likely to get you drunk than improve your health. [Read more in this past newsletter.]

MODERN DAY

THE HISTORY OF SEX ED IN AMERICA

Sex education began with anti-masturbation lecture tours. Today, only 26 states require sex education to be medically accurate. [Read more in this past newsletter.]

WAIT—SHOULD THERE BE PLEASURE?

Despite the invention of the vibrator, many cultures still resist the idea that sex should be pleasurable. Let’s explore how different religions think about pleasure.

FEMALE GENITAL MUTILATION

This practice dates back to the Ancient Greeks. [Read more in this past newsletter.]

EUGENICS, NAZIS & HENRIETTA LACKS

Eugenics was a late-19th- and early-20th-century movement that claimed society could be “improved” by controlling who reproduced. In the United States, it led to forced sterilizations, unethical medical experiments, and the belief that certain groups were biologically inferior. The ideology influenced Nazi racial policies and remained widely accepted in American scientific institutions for decades. The nonconsensual use of Henrietta Lacks’s cells reflects this legacy of exploitation. [Read more in this past newsletter.]

DISCOVERING THE CLITORIS

Many male doctors claimed to have “discovered” it, but the full anatomy wasn’t mapped until the 1990s. [Read more in this past newsletter.]

90’s PURITY CULTURE

Purity rings entered the mainstream, and daughters “married” their fathers at purity balls. [Read more in this past newsletter.]

THE QUACKS THRIVE ON THE INTERNET AND BUILD MOVEMENTS

The internet has become a tool for extremists to promote ideas like anti-masturbation software and testicle tanning.

PORN & CONSPIRACY THEORIES

Anti-porn activism often overlaps with conspiracy theories, including the claim that Jews invented pornography to make White Christian men impotent. [Read more in this past newsletter.]

HOW DO WE HEAL?

It starts with understanding history, extremism, and how we got here.

**

Thank you for reading! I’ll be exploring more topics at the intersection of sex and extremism in bonus newsletters exclusively for paid members, in addition to the regular newsletter every Wednesday. These bonus pieces are where I’ll dig deeper into the stranger and more surprising corners of the research.

You can upgrade your membership at anytime and if you’d like to find out how to get a comped membership, scroll down!

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When you use the referral link below, or the “share” button on any post, you’ll get credit for any new subscribers. Simply send the link in a text, email, or share it on social media with friends.

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(1 referral = 3 month comp, 3 referrals = 6 month comp, 5 referrals = 12 month comp)

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