Gird Your Loins: Dr. Celeste Holbrook Delivers the “Sex Talk” You Never Had but Deserved

For The Love With Jen Hatmaker Podcast

Jen Hatmaker

Relationships, Society & Culture

4.6 • 6.3K Ratings

🗓️ 20 August 2025

⏱️ 66 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Description: Today’s conversation might have you clutching your pearls and purity rings. Jen and Amy sit down with Dr. Celeste Holbrook—sexologist, educator, and author of Missionary Position: A Slightly Irreverent Guide to Sex After Purity Culture—for the candid, hilarious, and healing “sex talk” you never had but always deserved. From busting purity culture myths to unpacking women’s complicated relationship with pleasure, Dr. Holbrook shares the four “inner missionaries” that shape our approach to sex, why sexual shame runs so deep, and how to reclaim intimacy as the joyful gift it was always meant to be. Highlights include: Unpacking women' s complicated relationship with pleasure Dr. Holbrook prescribes the best sexy-time soundtrack Review of the four inner missionaries (the Analyst, the Assassin, the Healer, and the Explorer) – the archetypes that define our individual approach to sex Celeste reveals a surprising fact that both golf carts and ejaculate have in common How the combination of purity culture, patriarchy and capitalism are the oppression cocktail for sex And the conversation veers off course when the trio discusses an exercise that uses Jason Mamoa to evaluate their sexual ethics Thought-provoking Quotes: “When I say sex education saved my relationship, I am not being bombastic. It really did help me find myself.” – Dr. Celeste Holbrook “We view sex through a patriarchal lens. Media tells us how to feel about sex and what is sexy. So what is sexy has been historically white, thin, able-bodied, young… And the way that we view ourselves then says, well, what if I'm not all of those things? Am I still sexy? Is my body still OK?” – Dr. Celeste Holbrook “The work for us, especially as women, is to anchor into our body to experience sensuality in order to experience sex instead of perform sex.” – Dr. Celeste Holbrook “We need to be inside the system in order to take down the system.” – Dr. Celeste Holbrook Resources Mentioned in This Episode: Jen Hatmake’s Sex MeCourse: SexEd For the Rest of Us - https://shop.jenhatmaker.com/products/sex-101 Pantsuit Politics - https://www.instagram.com/pantsuitpolitics/ Missionary Position: A Slightly Irreverent Guide to Sex after Purity Culture by Dr. Celeste Holbrook - https://amzn.to/46StjOa For the Love of Men by Liz Plank – https://amzn.to/41JtRSS Say Yes to Pleasure: How to Talk About Sex and Rekindle Intimacy in Midlife with Vanessa Marin – https://jenhatmaker.com/podcasts/series-64/say-yes-to-pleasure-how-to-talk-about-sex-and-rekindle-intimacy-in-midlife-with-vanessa-marin/ A Tribe Called Quest – https://atribecalledquest.com/blogs/discography The Pleasure Club - https://www.drcelesteholbrook.com/https/thepleasureclub Guest’s Links: Website - https://www.drcelesteholbrook.com/ Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/drcelesteholbrook/ Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/DrCelesteHolbrook/ Connect with Jen!Jen’s Website - https://jenhatmaker.com/ Jen’s Instagram - https://instagram.com/jenhatmakerJen’s Twitter - https://twitter.com/jenHatmaker/ Jen’s Facebook - https://facebook.com/jenhatmakerJen’s YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/user/JenHatmaker The For the Love Podcast is presented by Audacy. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey everybody. Welcome to the For the Love podcast. Welcome back. I'm happy to see you. We've been on a like a summer break of sorts, largely. And kind of a slow roll back in. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Because you're, you've got some other work. You're doing. You do too. We got stuff. I'm laughing today, speaking of break, because we've got a sex educator on the show today. And the reason is because of you guys, by the way. So perhaps if you guys would stop downloading all of our sex content
0:38.6	at like five times the normal rate, we might like knock it off. But you're letting us
0:44.2	know your deal. But anyway, this reminds me so much because when I was in Oregon for Meekamp
0:52.4	and you know, okay, so let me frame this up quickly.
0:59.1	I was doing a lot of cooking because I had this time, I had this big kitchen.
1:04.8	I was doing some test kitchen stuff for my next cookbook.
1:07.5	So that was all a part of the plan, but I texted my host that I was renting from and said,
1:14.4	look, I am one person cooking enough food for six people twice a day. I need something to do.
1:22.5	I cannot throw this food in garbage. I physically cannot do it. It's like I was born in the Great
1:26.5	Depression. And so I said, you know, It's like I was born in the Great Depression.
1:32.5	And so I said, you know, would you be willing to give me the name of a neighbor before I just go knocking on doors, you know, like an absolute sociopath? So she gives me, you know, my neighbor, Don
1:38.8	Grauth, who is one house below me and she gives me his cell number. So Don Grauth is 78, as is his wife, Betty.
1:49.2	And so, you know, I start texting him. And I was like, I know this is strange. Do I do?
1:53.7	I am a person who will live here for the month of July. I am a person who's cooking. Is there any way,
2:00.4	in a normal way, that you would be okay with me just bringing you
2:04.3	basically containers of food every day?
2:07.4	I can't put it in the trash.
2:08.7	I cannot eat it.
2:09.5	I'm just the one person.
2:11.7	And so that is how I met Don Groh.
2:14.4	And so first of all, real cute.
2:16.9	Like he would eat the food and then give me lots of notes, which was the cutest.
	...

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