Sex educator Deborah Sundahl travels to Europe for six months each year teaching women and couples about women's sexuality. Author of Female Ejaculation and the G-Spot, Deborah brings the science of the G-spot alive in her lectures and hands-on workshops, helping women and couples to discover and delight in the fullness of their sexuality.
In a free-flowing conversation, Deborah Sundahl talks about how she came to travel six months each year to Europe and Scandanavia giving lectures and workshops about women's sexuality--a second career born of a need to promote her book about female ejaculation and the G-spot. She discusses what happens at her hands-on workshops, which serve women in their 40s who are discovering their true sexuality, some for the first time.
Other topics range from a discussion of On Our Backs, the lesbian magazine Deborah co-founded in the 1980s, to AIDS and what women learned from gay men and the BDSM community, to writing a book about female ejaculation and the G-spot--a gamble that went from passion project to a whole new profession as a traveling sex educator and lecturer.
About Deborah Sundahl
Deborah Sundahl (https://deborahsundahl.com/) is a pioneer in female sexuality with 35 years’ experience. Her groundbreaking book is Female Ejaculation and the G-Spot (“not your mother’s orgasm book”). She has produced many videos on female ejaculation and G-spot sexuality (available at her store, https://deborahsundahl.com/shop/). A master sexuality teacher, lecturer and sex educator, Deborah travels throughout the U.S., Scandinavia and Europe teaching women and couples her unique, effective method for discovering and loving the G-spot. She is an advocate for adult sex education and sexual wellness.
Sources for More Information
The Human Female Prostate: From Vestigial Skene's Paraurethral Glands and Ducts to Woman's Functional Prostate. By Milan Zaviacic. Slovak Academic Press, Bratislava, Slovakia, 1999
“Clinical Significance fo the Paraurethral Ducts and Glands” by John W. Huffman, M.D. (Chicago), May 1951
Abstract: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamasurgery/article-abstract/549701
Regnier de Graaf, 1641 – 1673
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regnier_de_Graaf
Alexander Skene, 1837 – 1900
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Skene
Ernst Gräfenberg, 1881 – 1957
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernst_Gr%C3%A4fenberg
On Our Backs
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Our_Backs
The Human Sexuality Collection, Cornell University
https://rare.library.cornell.edu/human-sexuality-collection/
Susie Bright Papers and On Our Backs Records
https://rmc.library.cornell.edu/EAD/htmldocs/RMM07788.html
Human Sexuality Collection on Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/CornellSexCollects/
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Music by Eve’s Blue
Contact: christi@movingalongpodcast.com
Website: https://movingalongpodcast.com/
[00:00:00] Christi: Deborah Sundahl is a sex educator who has spent her adult life working with women and couples to fulfill and enhance their sex lives.
She is the author of Female Ejaculation and the G-spot. And I think it's been through two editions published by Hunter House. It has been continuously in print since it was first published. What about 10 years ago?
[00:00:30] Deborah: 2004. 2004. Almost 20 years.
[00:00:34] Christi: Almost 20 years since Female Ejaculation and the G-Spot came out. That is amazing. Plus, she is the producer and star of numerous DVDs, videos for women and couples to discover their G-spot. Discover the power of amazing female orgasm and. She travels around Europe six [00:01:00] months a year teaching women and couples in person how to find fulfillment in their sex lives.
Welcome Deborah Sundahl thank you for joining us here at Moving Along today. This is the first time we've done in person interviews. Well since before the pandemic nobody was doing in person. And here we are doing in person.
[00:01:27] Deborah: Thank you, Christi I'm, This is thrill. I'm thrilled to be here with you. . It's fun, isn't it? Because we know each other really well. It's fun to do this. It is, yeah. Office here in person. Yes. As you said, after the pandemic. Great fun.
[00:01:45] Christi: Okay, so Deborah, you just got back from six months in Europe. Teaching sexuality workshops Well, the pandemic has kept you away from Europe for a couple of years [00:02:00] now.
So this is your first stint back. You went back for six months to Scandinavia and Europe doing workshops, and you teach teachers as well as. Women and couples, right?
That, yes.
Mm-hmm. , well talk about your workshops. How do you, how do you set them up? How does it work? Where do you hold them?
[00:02:21] Deborah: You know, I have organizers in Europe who in each country find the retreat places and have a list of people that they contact. Sign them up. Retreat places are residential, not always, but often in Europe, and they're usually very pretty places. One we had in France in the countryside, South French countryside.
[00:02:52] Christi: Do you speak French? Do you do the workshops in French when you're in France?
[00:02:55] Deborah: I have translators
[00:02:58] Christi: that helps ?
[00:02:59] Deborah: Yes, it [00:03:00] does. Swedish, Dutch, German, French, Polish, Hungarian translators.
[00:03:09] Christi: Wow. And you were, you were in Lisbon this year too, right? And
[00:03:14] Deborah: I had. Portuguese translate? No, actually that was all English speaking. Oh, and the Portuguese, especially in Lisbon are not going to be surprised when I say that. Yes. A lot of English people have moved into Portugal and so there you have that.
[00:03:38] Christi: What were your were your workshop people? How do you say Portugal? Not Portugal like we do here. Portugal. Portugal. Were they mostly Americans or English? English from the uk or there
[00:03:53] Deborah: was some Americans there and some English people.
[00:03:58] Christi: And you did one [00:04:00] in Spain this year too?
[00:04:02] Deborah: No, not this year in Spain. Next year I get to go to Spain for the very first time. Oh, nice, nice. Mostly I've been north of a line. That was north of Italy.
[00:04:15] Christi: And how many workshops do you do on average over the course of six months? You do like one a week or
[00:04:22] Deborah: about six of them in a two month period. So not quite one, one every weekend. They're three to four days long over the, the weekend.
[00:04:33] Christi: Oh, so, so these are weekend getaway workshops.
[00:04:38] Deborah: They are, yes. And we've made them more fun by opening up the workshop to in one case a tantra body work in another. Taoist sexual energy work in another breath work and in another strip tease
[00:04:57] Christi: strip teases. That's part of the [00:05:00] workshop, huh?
[00:05:00] Deborah: Yeah. The women love that. So this addition helps. To have more fun with the workshop to relax a little bit. It's also very integrating each one of those things.
[00:05:12] Christi: What do you mean by integrating? That
[00:05:16] Deborah: is a workshop term for getting a lot of information, which you have to integrate not only into your body, but into your psyche. Usually that. Happen in stages and levels. So could be overnight or could be, you know, months from now. Because this work is about the body, we work on the body, I don't just talk about it. Women work on their own body. Couples work of course, in their couple. We practice locating the G-spot what does it look like? You can see it. You can see it, and it's the female prostate. It surrounds. The [00:06:00] urethra starts at the outside opening of the body, so you can see that 'cause it hangs down through the roof of the vagina.
[00:06:09] Christi: So tell me, what is a typical workshop? How does it work? How many people do you usually have?
[00:06:16] Deborah: Between 15 and 20.
[00:06:20] Christi: And so you start on a Friday afternoon and say, Welcome, take off your pants.
[00:06:27] Deborah: No, actually no. I have a 90 minute PowerPoint and that is where people get to know me. They sit in a group, they get comfortable with their environment and the people around them while they hear fantastic information. That makes them very interested and excited. So that's the icebreaker. Then there's dinner. They usually start about four. Dinner's very late in Europe, [00:07:00] so now we usually start, I don't know, five. We're done at six 30. We have dinner at seven and then often at eight 30 to 10, these workshops go late. There's body work, so perhaps massage, another teacher comes in and teaches Soothing exercises,
[00:07:21] Christi: so that's like a little bonus. Oh, by the way, you also get a massage? I
[00:07:26] Deborah: think so. Mm-hmm. ? Mm-hmm. . I'd call it a bonus for sure.
[00:07:30] Christi: Do they get homework?
[00:07:32] Deborah: No, because the women practice that in a group.
[00:07:35] Christi: Oh. Does that start the next morning, ?
[00:07:39] Deborah: Yes, it does. Fresh. Fresh right out of bed after breakfast. Here we go. See your G-spot.
[00:07:49] Christi: Do you give them speculums
[00:07:50] Deborah: or No? You can see it with your mirrors or mirrors. They each get a mirror. Mm-hmm. .
[00:07:58] Christi: Spread 'em, ladies. Let's take a [00:08:00] look.
[00:08:00] Deborah: That's right. A mirror. And oil. And oil. Okay. A flashlight. And a flashlight. Okay. Although if it's morning. and the rooms u usually these rooms have windows. You don't need the flashlights, you have the light of day.
[00:08:16] Christi: So what are some of the reactions from your workshop participants?
[00:08:21] Deborah: The reactions are you know, pretty profound. How can I be a mother of three and be 45 years old and not know I have a prostate in my body that I can see, or there'll be tears of relief because they thought something was wrong with their vulva. This is more common than you might think. I'm here to tell every woman in the world, nothing is wrong with your vulva. It is beautiful and unique and you just need to spend time with her self care, beauty, care, make friends. So it's [00:09:00] really, really quite lovely
[00:09:02] Christi: Would you say half of the workshops you do are with women only and half are with couples? Or how does that work?
[00:09:08] Deborah: No, the majority is women, 85%. I don't do that. That many couples workshops?
[00:09:15] Christi: Because there's less interest, or
[00:09:18] Deborah: I think the organizers, I don't really know. Just kind of focus on the women. Now and then there seems to be a need for couples one, and so someone will organize that.
[00:09:30] Christi: So they spend the first full day of the workshop actually taking a look inside at their bodies at their. G-spots, right? Or you call it the prostate. It's seems to me that the prostate is such, it's owned by men. 'cause there's only one thing that's a prostate. But you claim female prostate for women, right?
[00:09:59] Deborah: [00:10:00] Yes.
[00:10:01] Christi: And how did you come to that conclusion?
[00:10:03] Deborah: Dr. Milan Zaviacic is Bratislava University, did a 20 year study, a cellular study of the female prostate, and his book is published full of dozens of colored pictures of the cellular structure of the female prostate. And in fact, The name of his book is called The Female Prostate, and the subtitle is From Vestigial Skene's Paraurethral Glands and Ducts to Woman's Functional Prostate.
[00:10:41] Christi: Oh my ?
[00:10:43] Deborah: No, if that isn't a banner slogan, I don't know what it's, So that was a statement and he made it right on the cover, and then he shows the female prostate that was a wax model done in the year [00:11:00] 1945 by Huffman. He put that on the cover. So there's a wonderful history on the female prostate, which I actually have talked about for, you know, going on 20 years.
Last winter I decided to read up on these people a little deeper. I've been talking about for so long, and I was absolutely fascinated. I found their pictures, I've inserted their pictures into the PowerPoint and now I know a little bit about their history, like Regnier de Graaf turned out he was doing astonishing thing, new things.
He knew about the female prostate and he knew about female ejaculation. His quote is "In lusty women flows out at the sight of a handsome man." And you see his picture he's this handsome man, you know,
And, and when I read about him, he was happily married. Him and he children, they were [00:12:00] young.
I just felt like the house was overflowing with happiness and ejaculate and probably everything he knew about it was from his wife. And he just got this wonderful. Effervescent, you know, And then 200 years later you got Alexander Skene, the heavyweight Victorian, who comes in and lays a cold blanket on everything.
And I mean, and says, No, there's no prostate. It's just two glands sometimes become obstructed.
[00:12:35] Christi: Wait, so was the first one you mentioned is that Gräfenberg or de Graaf is, That's the name.
[00:12:41] Deborah: de Graaf.
[00:12:42] Christi: That's how the G-spot got its name?
[00:12:44] Deborah: G-spot not from, because he's from de Graaf. Is Dutch, Gräfenberg was the year, 1930. After Skene,
[00:12:54] Christi: So in between the lusty lady and the Gräfenberg, the [00:13:00] G-spot, as we know at the modern day G-spot, we have the big Victorian wet blanket. Right?
[00:13:05] Deborah: That's what we totally do. Took a deep dive downward and to obscurity. Absolutely.
[00:13:14] Christi: So do you think that women in Victorian times didn't have as much fun?
[00:13:19] Deborah: I kind of think they did
[00:13:21] Christi: Under the wet blankets, .
[00:13:24] Deborah: I don't really know actually. I know they developed the vibrator then in Victorian times. I think Freud and was. You know, they were handing them out saying, You probably need some of this for the hysteria. ,
[00:13:41] Christi: I forgot about the hysteria. Oh, I, I love that. This is kind of our history as we, take for granted, you know, sex shops and lube and dildos of every size, and bringing us right back to your [00:14:00] workshops, which are pretty radical in their own right. But I'm going to pivot back for a second and say, you've been a radical sex educator from the beginning, from all of your adult life. Do you wanna talk about that a little bit?
[00:14:17] Deborah: Well, right outta college, University of Minnesota, where I studied women's studies. That's the history of, women, not only the history, but women's studies looks at every aspect of life and talks about women's contributions. Which in 1982 was new news to a culture that was really male dominated.
Just remember that in 1982 there was maybe two doctors that were female. Okay. They did not exist.
[00:14:57] Christi: Not like they do now. That's
[00:14:59] Deborah: true. [00:15:00] Exactly. The changes have been amazing in two generations. So,
[00:15:05] Christi: Well, on the heels of the second wave of feminism, right in the seventies. Mm-hmm. . Mm-hmm.
[00:15:11] Deborah: And when I finished, I was like, Well, nothing's going on in sex with women. there's Playboy and that's it. Where is the women's magazines? So I created a, a magazine with many other wonderful ladies from San Francisco.
[00:15:31] Christi: It was quite notorious On Our Backs.
[00:15:33] Deborah: Right. Well, it's really not notorious, I think. Not for a general population. ,
[00:15:40] Christi: Right. You don't think it was, It was notorious that it's, at the time,
[00:15:45] Deborah: I think at the time it was more than underground.
Right.
[00:15:49] Christi: And now, so many years later. The archives of that magazine are at Cornell University in the Human Sexuality Archive. That [00:16:00] must make you feel pretty proud.
[00:16:01] Deborah: Yes, it does. It's quite amazing, and that's a huge archive of sexuality material. Most of it from the sixties, seventies, and eighties and nineties when it was really gay men on the forefront of that sexuality movement.
Lesbians were, we were influenced by the gay movement for sure. As women coming out and supported by that. Understood by that.
[00:16:29] Christi: Influenced and would you say to a certain extent, inspired
[00:16:33] Deborah: they took sex out of the closet and they made it public and they made it sexy. Mm-hmm. , I mean, men were not sexy.
Right. Well, I never thought, well,
well, they weren't, didn't have too much to offer straight women either.
you know, it was gay. Men looked were, they were sexy, they got in touch with their sexual [00:17:00] chakra and let it rip. Was really nice. , they expressed it. It just wasn't some act in the dark. No, they gave it a lot of expression from costumes to, parties to political articles and journals that were top notch.
They broadened the topic of sexuality tremendously, and they really did set the standard. , which we as lesbian women creating our magazine were more than happy to follow in their footsteps and that way and so we too created images that had never existed before in modern times.
[00:17:44] Christi: And they were sexy. That's for sure.
[00:17:46] Deborah: They were sexy . And so were the butches in there. They were sexy too.
[00:17:51] Christi: Yep.
[00:17:53] Deborah: We are really getting off on this on our back sexuality.
[00:17:57] Christi: Well, I was gonna say, the next thing you [00:18:00] know, and then we come to AIDS and I think a lot changed then no matter what kind of sex you were into, whether you were straight or gay, the whole world changed with AIDS it seems like to me. But you were in the, thick of it, in the world of sexuality. You were in the
[00:18:15] Deborah: thick of it with the magazine because the magazine was just getting started.
It was going on year two. We started in 84 and I think 86 AIDS really. So we barely got out the gate and we're like, this is gonna shut down our entire effort here to make sex public, to make it positive, sex positive, you know, to have people talk about it and, engage with sex. Meaning, you know, have sex parties if you want, explore, experiment.
It's okay. You learn so much doing that about yourself and about others, and you learn sexual tolerance you might not like that, but others do [00:19:00] and what you'd like, others might not like, but you just learn tolerance. There's just incredibly rich, fertile ground there. So what we came up with to was safe sex.
And of course the CDC wasn't talking about lesbians and safe sex cause lesbians didn't exist.
sexual beings. So we, we came up with everything. We got the dental dams and did all this. I remember we did a strip show once and. Dance to a song and passed out. Dental dams I mean, you know, we did promo around it too.
That's great. This was a, I mean, there was a lot going on there
[00:19:48] Christi: On Our Backs. Was very influential. Oh. To the whole lesbian community. And your role in it, in promoting safe sex and the videos [00:20:00] and, magazine while you're at it. Right? Right. But it sounds to me like from what you're saying is that was really a formative way of thinking about.
Sex and learning about sex, learning about sexual pleasure, and it sounds to me like that's still your credo, if you will. Your basic belief is like, yes, do it in groups. Yes. Learn by doing. That's the only way you're really gonna do it. And that it's still a fundamental part of your workshops.
[00:20:36] Deborah: Yes. and let's add communication to the list that you just said.
Communicate how to tell your partner what you want. First of all, you gotta know what you want. Number two, that takes some work. And then how do you communicate it? How do you get those needs met? And that brings in consensuality, [00:21:00] which of course now you know, is a big deal with #MeToo movement. But the fact of the matter is that the, the gay S and M community in San Francisco had were the very first people who had drawn up consensual rules for S and M play.
Nobody knows that history, but we knew it at On Our Backs. We were completely influenced by that. It's just, it's sex is consensual and you have rules and you have safe words, and if somebody says a safe word, you stop, period. You don't mess around with that. So this is how I was schooled. You know, I was schooled by the gay community who were also doing SM They were doing it all, drag everything, and that's the lesbians followed in the footsteps.
We did SM we did drag, we did, you name it. Mm-hmm. , right? Yeah. Swinging all of [00:22:00] it. strip tease.
[00:22:01] Christi: Somewhere along the line, you got very interested in female ejaculation, although I think it's always been there because some of your earliest videos, the sex, the sexy lesbian videos have some wonderful shots
if I could be so punny there making a pun. You've always promoted female ejaculation is a wonderful sexual experience and showed it to women who are watching these videos.
[00:22:34] Deborah: Yes, that's true. And that whole time period there from 84 to 94 was just sexual experiment and creating new images of women being sexual.
So the ejaculation was just one of many other images. But it was there initially with everything else. Yeah.
[00:22:57] Christi: You started writing [00:23:00] Female Ejaculation and the G-Spot.
[00:23:03] Deborah: 2004,
[00:23:04] Christi: that's when it was published. The book? Yeah. But you started writing
[00:23:08] Deborah: it before that? Only 2002.
Really?
[00:23:11] Christi: Oh, pretty good. Mm-hmm. . So that was kind of a passion project to write that book.
[00:23:16] Deborah: It was. It was also a transitional project because, I stopped being involved in the magazine in 1994, my book came out 10 years after that.
[00:23:27] Christi: And what was the life transition happening in between?
[00:23:30] Deborah: It was midlife crisis, age 40. Oh, what am I gonna do now? Maybe I. Of all those things we did in On Our Backs, maybe what's so the one I want to focus on in this G-spot? That sounds like a good, I think the G, it was a bet I took with myself. I bet the G-spot has some life in it. to take [00:24:00] me another 20 years.
And it did. Mm-hmm. , definitely.
[00:24:05] Christi: So you wrote the book, you did more videos, you did Female Ejaculation for Couples.
[00:24:11] Deborah: Yes.
[00:24:12] Christi: You did How to Female Ejaculate first. Right. Came first. Mm-hmm. . Then you did
[00:24:20] Deborah: Tantric Journey to Female Ejaculation. Mm-hmm. that came after that, and. Female Ejaculation for Couples and then Female Ejaculation: The Workshop which was shot in Paris.
And edited in Paris, but all with Parisian crew and team and you know,
and a translator, and the book
publisher. He translated my book and he, made the video.
[00:24:52] Christi: Do you think that's part of why the workshops are still, are perennially, I should say [00:25:00] popular in France because the book exists in, in French and there's a, French connection, if you will?
[00:25:06] Deborah: No. You know, it's, the PowerPoint lectures that keep everything alive. You know, you have to, I mean, I wrote the book and then I'm like, Oh my,
I gotta
sell this. How in the world am I gonna do that Never occurred To me, that's the large part of a book is the marketing. So I, came up with the PowerPoint idea.
I put on a business suit. I got the PowerPoint in my briefcase, and I went to these little erotic boutiques that were owned by and for women.
[00:25:41] Christi: This was in the United States at the time in.
[00:25:45] Deborah: No. In Europe too. Oh, in Europe too. Every major city in the Western world had a women's erotic boutique, they carried only the quality sex toys and still do, and information like books, et cetera.
And their [00:26:00] ethics were to have educational courses in the evening.
[00:26:05] Christi: So you saw an opening there, ? Definitely. I'm sorry, all the double entendres here. , but Well, that's your brain. That's my brain. You saw a business opportunity to sell your book and your videos? Yes,
[00:26:22] Deborah: absolutely. Through the PowerPoint, through the women's erotic stores.
That's how I got my start. Just went to them.
[00:26:30] Christi: And so you went around the US but you also went around Europe. I mean, that seems to me to be a leap that some people. Would be, especially women traveling alone, might feel a little nervous about walking into a retail store with a PowerPoint and saying, Here I am
[00:26:52] Deborah: and you're gonna learn about your prostate.
Hello?
[00:26:57] Christi: Did they welcome you with open arms? Did [00:27:00] I mean, did you have any obstacles along the way?
[00:27:04] Deborah: Well, not really, no. I got on a plane with 40 bucks to my name. I got on that plane and went to London because a store over there had asked me to come over. $40
[00:27:18] Christi: in your pocket? Mm-hmm. ,
[00:27:19] Deborah: Well, even in by the year 2004, you still weren't making a lot of money as a sex educator. If you had a big porn company, yeah. You were a millionaire running around. But that's not what I was doing. You know? I wasn't there doing Hollywood entertainment. In fantasy fulfillment, I was really dealing with what people are really doing in their bedrooms.
And you don't make a lot of money doing that.
[00:27:47] Christi: Did you call yourself a feminist porn company or feminist sex education
[00:27:53] Deborah: I don't know if I ever like the word porn. But the sex education only came [00:28:00] out with my book 2004, really, That you could Google sex education for adults and you would never find anything.
That word hardly existed. Now, a generation later, there's many, many, many sex educators now. Okay. But that did not exist when I went out with my PowerPoint in a business suit to make a political point that, hey, I don't need to wear a slit up to my derriere and my boobs out to make point about sex.
No, I'm going to do this. Really like a teacher classy. That's right.. That went over just fine.
[00:28:43] Christi: Did you present it as feminist?
[00:28:46] Deborah: I told people I was a feminist,
[00:28:48] Christi: absolutely. Did they perceive your PowerPoint, your educational focus as feminist,
[00:28:55] Deborah: No, because my focus was the general population of [00:29:00] heterosexuals at that time who were completely unserved.
Lesbians, had something straight women had nothing .
[00:29:11] Christi: It didn't occur to me. But no, wasn't there some
[00:29:14] Deborah: Playgirl ? Right. Well, by that time there was, Yeah. .
[00:29:19] Christi: So. This population of heterosexual women.
I was gonna say, did they eat it up? Well go
[00:29:29] Deborah: do a hold back if these ent double entendres are coming out, let 'em
[00:29:37] Christi: my pervy brain . So, Seriously. They, they cottoned to it , right? They cotton to your message.
[00:29:51] Deborah: Oh, they did? Yeah, absolutely. They were fascinated where everybody wants to know where the G-spot is. And my PowerPoints [00:30:00] told them, that's what a sex educator does, is I took all the science and I have four pages of science in the back of my book. All done in the 1980s, by the way.
Just sitting there. So I made it easy for people to use this in their bedroom and to understand. And it works for them. But that's me. That's the talent and the effort that I brought to this research was the ability to bring it to the people.
[00:30:38] Christi: What kind of changes have you seen since you first got on that plane with $40 in your pocket
[00:30:44] Deborah: so this, well, this is the 2022, the year after.
Two years, which decimated the workshop business. This was just a
[00:30:55] Christi: cleanup job. about six months going and [00:31:00] make up for lost time. Two years salvage
[00:31:02] Deborah: a salvage job, is what I wanna say. So, like a rusty car trying to get it to move again down the road. And we managed, had a nice workshop in the spring and the summer.
I just relaxed in England and had a good time personally visiting different places in England and Scotland. And then went back into Europe in the fall, and that's when I did four workshops in a row. Now, normally I would have six, and they weren't as big. Right, but that's how you get it going again.
So rebuilding. Rebuilding after all these years, you know, 38 years getting older, still dealing with this economy that just loves to decimate the creative business [00:32:00] people, self-employed, creatives. Just loves to decimate us every 10 years, it seems. I'm still upset about the one that occurred in 2008.
[00:32:12] Christi: I don't think you're alone in that . Right. I suspect that you don't meet as now as much resistance about does the G-spot really exist? I bet you don't meet as much skepticism now as perhaps you did when you started.
[00:32:30] Deborah: That's very true. I don't, because half the women now have learned where their G-spot is.
They've learned how to female ejaculate. It really was like wildfire from the year, you know, 2004 to through 2018. Female ejaculation was sweeping the bedrooms of the Western world and rising exponentially by the month, you know, women were learning. [00:33:00] That's wonderful. So it is, it is, it's a huge change.
Quick change
[00:33:06] Christi: and your book has been in print this whole time, which is really an amazing feat. That means people are buying it, they're still looking for information, they still wanna know, and there's generation after new generation coming up behind mm-hmm. , you know, the original people who were curious about it.
[00:33:26] Deborah: But it's because I'm out there all the time.
For example, the famous book, The G-Spot that came out in 1982, that was the book responsible for putting the word G-spot into our vernacular, into our language. Before that date, there was no word, G-spot, so forget trying to find it. This book sold 30 million copies. Wow. 23 languages. This was a powerhouse.
That's why G-spot is still known around the world [00:34:00] as a term but the book today, I ask people, how many of you've heard of the G-spot book? Cause I talk about it. No one raises their
[00:34:13] Christi: hand. No one, they don't know. They don't remember that book, How
[00:34:20] Deborah: and when I first did the PowerPoint lectures in 2004 and six and eight, oh two-thirds of the people, their hands would shoot up in the air.
So for me to witness that in a generation obscurity, complete blank out on history is terrifying.
[00:34:40] Christi: I'm thinking of a couple different things here. One is these younger women who are coming up, half of whom seem to be committed to abstinence until they get married. , I suspect you don't meet too many of them , but I do wonder, you know, how their sex lives are going [00:35:00] to unfold as. Get older and hit their sexual peaks and wonder where it all went.
I said, I don't know. I don't mean again. who old are the people that you mostly deal with?
[00:35:16] Deborah: They're 40 and up.
[00:35:18] Christi: Really? Mm-hmm. . So you're not getting the ones in their thirties and twenties.
[00:35:22] Deborah: There's always a few. In every group.
[00:35:24] Christi: Why do you think that is?
[00:35:26] Deborah: I think that for the 20 year olds, I think the marketing and just, it's just not in their world. It's not in their coming across their plate, so to speak. Or their social media.
Yeah. TikTok camera going down. Yeah. In a
language and a format that's familiar to them, that excites them, which is what we did in 1984.
Our format was exciting. It was new and. You know, I used desktop publishing in 1985 on that thing with Macs that were the size of [00:36:00] a cracker box. Right. So, you know, that was the hot stuff then. But you know, I don't even know what they're doing. So anyway, they just, a few brave ones will find their way in. As for the women in their thirties, I think they're really busy with their career or raising the babies.
[00:36:18] Christi: No time.
[00:36:19] Deborah: I think so sex ed. And so by the time they're 40, they're like, Okay, . Yeah. Time for
me. Time for me, time for me and my sexuality. And it comes at midlife crisis. That's what I see and hear all the time.
[00:36:34] Christi: I do have a couple of questions. A lot of it we've already covered. Who do you think you'll ever. Do you God,
[00:36:44] Deborah: do you? Do I think I will ever quit.
[00:36:46] Christi: Mm-hmm. going around giving workshops and talks. I mean, you give talks too, right?
[00:36:52] Deborah: Not just workshops. Yes. The PowerPoint lecture. Mm-hmm. is an evening, hour and a half presentation. Yes. Open to the public. [00:37:00] Mm-hmm. , I'm giving one now. Finally in Austria. Oh. In the spring of 2023.
[00:37:09] Christi: Is that your first one in Austria?
[00:37:11] Deborah: Yes. We had not exactly. I had one 15 years ago. This was a big one. We had 40 people and it was Covid and that got shut down, so that hurt. But it's too bad. We're gonna resurrect it.
[00:37:28] Christi: Great's. Great. So it'll be this coming spring?
[00:37:32] Deborah: Mm-hmm.
[00:37:32] Christi: So your website is
[00:37:35] Deborah: deborahsundahl.com
[00:37:38] Christi: and that's where you put your events and what's forthcoming people can
[00:37:42] Deborah: find? Yes. On my workshop page, my lecture page, they can find the dates there. Mm. And there's links to my store, or I have a shop. You can also shop on there for those videos and my book.
And I have a sex toy that I made, an [00:38:00] effective G-spot sex toy that's on there.
[00:38:02] Christi: What's that like? What's the G-spot sex toy?
[00:38:07] Deborah: You get a toy with a lip on. It looks like a penis lip. So guys, this is a renaissance for the penis. Listen up . Forget the vibrator.
Do not vibrate the G-spot. It is a organ of the body. It's a prostate. Okay. Nobody's died, but you know let's not tax this organ anymore than it's already been. Rammed at,
and you know, slow down. That's what I teach. Slow, slow, slow sex. I mean, see, there's so much to say about it. Do you see how I can talk easily?
An hour and a
[00:38:42] Christi: half. Yeah. I see why your workshops are more than one evening or day. They're two, two and a half,
[00:38:50] Deborah: three days. Can barely fit it in three days. Yeah. Mm-hmm. .
[00:38:55] Christi: So this is a podcast. [00:39:00] Relocation moving travel and life transitions. And I think what we've been talking about is life transitions because this is like life changing.
Discovering your G-spot, discovering that me, me, and my sexuality is life changing for women and per probably for men or their partners as well. Right.
I wondered if you, what, what was on your horizon as do you foresee continuing to maybe hit more secondary cities or go back and, develop new audiences.
[00:39:34] Deborah: I don't feel drawn to any place outside of Europe. I really don't. Mm-hmm. Australia. Yeah. I could see going there.
[00:39:42] Christi: It sounds like you have a lot, I mean, that there's still a whole lot of potential. Totally. And working this market that you have built up and watched
knocked down for a couple years during the pandemic and building it up again here we go, right? Mm-hmm. , [00:40:00] right? Yeah. With a new audience, like new
[00:40:02] Deborah: audiences. Yes. Yes. I mean, it's becoming more and more mainstream. It's no longer niche.
[00:40:11] Christi: No longer a niche. Wow. Well, maybe .
[00:40:13] Deborah: I mean, when we started it, we called it the Sexual Outlaws. It was beyond underground. The magazine On Our Backs and then it became a subculture, which means you can find it on the internet , you know, And now this is more than a subculture. This is really good. Getting out in the main, in the mainstream. Certain areas of the mainstream.