“The most important sex you can be having is sex with yourself”
Samantha Mann’s essay collection, ‘Dyke Delusions’, tackles queer parenthood, Southern sororities, horny moms and loving how one's body can cause chaos.
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As
explains in the introduction to her new book of essays, Dyke Delusions, she was “introduced to a new type of woman,” while at Girls Scout summer camp when she was 11 years old around 1999/2000. Dykes were super women in her young eyes. It was only later that she learned the word could be hurled as an epithet and a weapon and something to be feared.We spoke about that and a slew of other topics recently—from parenting to masturbation, gay marriage and shopping for sperm, being raised Jewish in the South and how the emotional intelligence of boys and men has been stripped away by society.
Talking to Sam is a lot of fun! And I hope you enjoy reading our conversation as much as it was having it.
This interview has been condense and edited for clarity.
Jerry Portwood: OK, let's start by talking about the word dyke, because you go into that in your introduction, which is great because many people are still very confused by this word. As you explain, you left for college to explore your sexuality, equipped only with one secret lesbian date and the “first four seasons of The L Word.” The word dyke was to be “avoided and eradicated, and that even the word lesbian felt like an STI.” So tell me about your relationship to the word and why Dyke Delusions was the perfect title for this collection of essays.
Samantha Mann: I mean, like most women, I have really gone back and forth throughout my life with the word. But I think, before I knew the word dyke, I understood what a dyke was, and I had such a positive, loving relationship to that idea without the word. So I've always kind of had that in my back pocket. These are clearly women to be revered and emulated. This is not a scary thing. The depths of myself have always known that. But culturally, we get so much messaging around dykes being bad and scary and violent.
As queer people, a lot of us recognize very early on that it's not so much about same-sex relationships as it is about gender expression. And I happen to be somebody who feels more comfortable as a pretty typical, boring female. I felt a superiority as a teen of, like, “Well, at least I’m not a woman who has to look like a boy or a man.” But that was all externalized fear-based stuff that was given to me, and I think, like lots of people, it's taken a long time to work through that. But as I quickly worked through that, as so many of us kind of sped up through Covid—really so many people quickly moved through things that I think would generally take decades, whether it was their orientation or their gender expression.
So, suddenly, it was so clear to me how everything that had been given to us had been wrong and the things that we had known to be true were, of course, not true. So, “delusions” is really this idea that a lot of people, myself included, were brought up to feel delusional: about our innate feelings, whether it was our sexual feelings, the way we wanted to express ourselves in the world. We were told that those things were delusional and bad, and who was really the delusional one here, like, wasn't us, right?
JP: As you state in the book, this is partly about exploring your intuitive side, of remembering how you related to yourself and your body, as opposed to how pop culture and society changed you. I love that you're connecting it to what happened during the pandemic, because I feel like there's been this collective amnesia about those years. At first, that's all everyone was writing about, and then now no one wants to ever talk about the fact that we did change, and we did go through a change. So this book, in a way, you're saying, is also a result of that time?
SM: Yes, I think something about Covid really helped me heal parts of myself that I was healing towards a lot faster. Like, everything became crystal clear to me. I had gotten to a point in my late twenties, where dyke wasn't a scary word to me. I could use it in a fun way with my friends, but all of a sudden, it felt so comforting and homey and something that I really wanted to have for myself. To take back for myself. I think during that time, people were reclaiming themselves all over the map and finding comfort and strength in places that everybody was surprised by. But again, it's back to that delusion I had learned as a young girl. Dykes are fucking awesome, and I was told that that wasn't true. So, in a time of need, it was a thing that made sense to go back to, but to give it to myself as an adult.
JP: In one of the essays, you talk about an aunt who gives you this lesson that sex can be many things, but it doesn't need to be related to love. You explore that idea several different times, in different ways, in various essays—ideas around sex and what the sex means, and what sex with men and boys means, versus sex with women. By the end, there's an essay in which you ponder the question: “If there's no desire with sex, what is that?”
I thought that was really good, because I’ll tell you, as a man who's had sex with lots of different men, there's been moments that I have not had desire. It’s been very mundane, and you just feel like I'm going to get through it. I think many women understand that feeling, but many men don't admit to that feeling. So tell me about that as well—this idea of, I guess we'll say, “bodily feelings” versus “emotional feelings.”
SM: And I would say also in that list, sex with yourself, which is so important, like, the most important sex you can be having is sex with yourself.
JP: Yes, you have an essay about masturbation that I thought was great, too.
SM: Yes! I mean, so important! Again, I think sex is one of those things that, like, if it wasn't for culture—the negative parts of culture and society—we would kind of get through it in a more interesting, fun way. And I think a lot of us, as young children, are kind of on our journey to that.
I remember being very curious about other boys, like little bodies. I remember being very comfortable snuggling with boyfriends and playing house as a little kid. I remember the excitement of sex as a preteen. It was the thing that me and all my friends talked about. So you would talk about sex with your friends and wonder about it together before you were having sex yet, and then everybody goes home and, like, masturbates like crazy!
So those were all starting with these positive connections. And then it gets a lot stickier and trickier, depending on your orientation, your early sexual experiences. You know, I was a closeted lesbian who had been molested as a young person. So that was extremely confusing. For a long, long time, I thought that I didn't like having sex or even hooking up with men and boys because I had been molested. So it was this thing I was always trying to overcome. Like, I gotta get this right. You can do this right!
JP: Yet, you do say that you fell in love with your body's ability to cause chaos because you're flashing people and things like that. There's that ability to recognize that and what that's connected to. You were sorting it out.
SM: Yes, I've always been very connected to what's going on with my brain and my body. Experiencing the world with my body, and I think that's so complex for everybody. So even as a teenager, during college student times, I would be hooking up with a guy and enjoying the physicality of it and enjoying the exchange of it. I think it is nice for a lot of people to feel wanted and desired, and to have that play off as some sort of social currency is exciting and fun.
Then the emotional parts of it, if you're lucky enough to get that later, is also awesome. So I think, many parts of society—like gender, sexuality—it would all be a lot better if we didn't have so many rules, if it wasn't so rigid, and we didn't need to be in such a box. I certainly identify as a lesbian in my heart and soul. Does that mean I couldn't have sex with a man and get off? Probably not. It doesn't mean anything. So I think we've all gotten, like, a little bit too serious, even in our own community, about labels and identity. I just think more is better.
JP: I think that's what some people would get confused by: You obviously have had sex with men and enjoyed it, and yet you don't identify as bisexual…
SM: Yes, and I would say I have enjoyed it physically. I haven't enjoyed having sex with men in, like, a big, emotional way, right? Feels great; I'm not a zombie. When my family—my wife and my son and I—have been at a hotel and, like, an ugly dad has bought me a drink at a hotel bar. That feels incredible! It's nice to know that you still got it.
JP: Validation!
SM: Sexual validation is just a normal part of humanity.
JP: So to pivot a bit, growing up in the South, being raised Jewish, I know that that must be a very othering experience in itself, even before putting in the lesbian element. Tell me a little bit about that, because you don't go into it a lot in these essays, but that must have been a formative part of your growth as well.
SM: Yes, in Richmond, Virginia, where I'm from, it’s kind of split by the James River. So on one side of the river, there's no Jews, and on the other side is where all the Jews are. So I lived on the side, where me and my best friend were the only other Jews in our elementary school, middle school, high school; there was two of us. But my synagogue was actually down Monument Avenue. I didn't even understand how Southern it was. Remember during Covid, when you saw that statue of Robert E Lee getting destroyed in Richmond? I drove past that every Sunday on my way to Sunday school, as if it was nothing. So, yes, it was weird. I spent most of my education lying and telling people that I was half Jewish, which isn't a thing.
JP: So then—I'm trying to create a linear story, although I know you didn't want the book to feel linear—you meet Alyssa while you're in a sorority, Sigma Kappa.
SM: Yes! Shout out to sigma Kappas across the country!
JP: So tell me about that, keeping that secret, the budding romance that you had.
SM: I mean, the beginning of sorority life, I have to say, was awesome. If you are somebody who wants to do an excessive amount of drugs and alcohol and be promiscuous, you can just blend right in. Nobody's questioning you. If anything, you're getting praised for all your self destructive behavior. So that was great.
Then, meeting Alyssa was wonderful—to fall in love. At the beginning, having a secret was really fun; we both found it to be thrilling and fun. It was something that we didn't have to share with anybody. A big part of Greek life is talking about your love life and having it picked apart.
JP: I didn't know that.
SM: Yeah, just especially, I guess for girls—even if you're not in Greek life—in college, that's what you're doing with your girlfriends: talking about who you're dating or who you're sleeping with. I think a big turn on for gay people is secrecy and what's the word—like wanting something that you feel like you're not supposed to have, right? What is the word I’m thinking of?
JP: Like the forbidden fruit?
SM: Yeah? I think a lot of us kind of have that baked into our desire. So it was kind of checking all of those boxes at the beginning.
JP: Then, once you decided we're going to get the hell out of there, and you moved to New York after graduation, it became about how you were going to craft your narrative. You have a really nice bit about how often we are missing those narratives in queer history and queer lives. So when you decide that you're going to get married, at first you think you're going to keep it quiet, not tell anybody. It sounds like you went through a process of trying to figure that out as well: How important is it for us to be a part of those narratives and create those narratives?
SM: Yes, it was so interesting. We will have been married for 10 years next year. We decided to get married, but it was before it had become legal for the whole country. We didn't really know what that was going to look like, because it wasn't just going to be a civil union. And then gay marriage passed in the summer—exactly a year before we were going to get married, and that really changed our decision. We had initially planned on City Hall and a nice dinner with family. But then, to really be on the front lines of this history: We were, like, “God, we should really do something big! It's very cool to be in the first year or so of couples in our country who could get legally, federally married.
But I'm very overly thoughtful. It really had me spiraling—about how many people might have wanted to do this and chose to just live quietly in their home, an unassuming life with their partner, secretly. So many gay marriages are just left out of everybody's family lore! All the parties that are missing. All the photos and stories.
So I certainly see both sides. We didn't want to do what heteronormative people are doing, but it's also, like, I really wanted to infuse this joyful thing, not just for us, but for our whole family. Now, everybody in our family has experienced a gay wedding and has that in them; they have photos of it. We had a 94-year-old woman there who had a photo of it in her home until she died. So it just felt like like we were doing it for lots of people who never got the opportunity to even consider if they wanted to. So it felt really special.
JP: You also made the decision to have premarital counseling with a rabbi, which I found really special. I wish everybody had something like that. Do you advocate for that sort of thing for other people?
SM: Um, no, that's really up to you. We wanted to get married. Sometimes we joke that—and maybe this is true for all married people—but I feel like we would have a different wedding now than we did then. But we were 28. We wanted to be married by a rabbi, so that was just part of her deal. I didn't love it or need it. Like Alyssa and I have known each other for 1,000 years, and were very open and communicative. So there wasn't a ton that I was like, “Oh, we really needed this check in with the rabbi.”
JP: Especially, when she tells you not to have a Christmas tree.
SM: Yes, which was insane. And I actually can't believe that I chose to not have a tree in my house for a couple of years because of that. No offense to our rabbi. But that was so weird. You don't need to trust your church or synagogue leaders. But I was happy to go to counseling so she would marry us, right?
JP: Then you two decide to “shop for sperm,” as you say, and to get pregnant. I don't want to give away too much, but you went through a lot of soul searching about what it would mean? What is the baby gonna look like; who's carrying the baby?
SM: Yes, Alyssa and I had two very different experiences with all of this, which is so normal. She kind of found the shopping for sperm to be devastating. It really just felt so sad that we couldn't have a baby together. But then I will say, for our daughter, our second child, we ended up using my egg and our son's same sperm donor in her body. So that felt really special to her, because it felt like we did it, we really had this baby together. But it's so interesting parenthood wise.
There's all of this angst that goes into shopping for sperm, and Alyssa is feeling so devastated about the process, because she just wants us to have this baby together. And it's a lot of work. And it's expensive. But now, when you're actively parenting, it's not even a thing you think about. You just have two kids that are in your house, that are both of your kids, and you're busy being a parent. So it is interesting to reflect on it.
There are a lot of decisions to be made, and it is exhausting emotionally. Plus, she got to spend all this gestational time with him. But it's just not a thought now. We are so deeply connected to each other.
JP: You mention that, after the ultrasound, when your wife is pregnant, you realized that you had to start understanding men and boys and that you wanted to raise an “ethical male.” Tell me about raising a son as queer women.
SM: Yeah, I have a boy who I have to deal with. It's not that I've hated men. I mean, as a person who's experienced multiple sexual assaults, I've certainly gone through periods where I hated men and am scared of them or whatever. It's a very popular phrase for women to say to other women, “decenter men from your life.” But men have pretty much always been decentered from my life, not in a joking way.
I am a lesbian, and I work in a very women-heavy field. All my closest people are women. I have a brother; I have a dad; and I have a father-in-law who I'm close to, that's three men. My brother's bisexual, so there's even that. All my doctors are women. I just don't have a life that considers men. I don't have men that I'm super close to, so it's something I kind of just put on a shelf.
And especially during the time of #MeToo, I felt like I don't need to educate men. This is not my issue. Men can fix themselves if they want to fix themselves. This has nothing to do with me. So then to have a boy… I was like, “Oh shit, you are going to have to tap into this and be present for this and be positive for this.”
What I learned so quickly is that little boys, if you're ever been around a preschool with three- to four-year-olds… Well, the little girls are already kind of bitches. And at drop off, they don't want to hug their moms. They're very prissy, already getting into cat fights in preschool. The boys are so loving and nurturing and creative. So you really see how wonderful boys are and how much our society has just crushed them. It's so upsetting. So now all I can see is how much our system has taken away from men.
Of course, most of the conversation is about how patriarchal systems are bad for women, which is true, but women still have the ability to do things like hold each other and cry, hold hands on a walk, take a walk with your friends, snuggle on a couch together, talk about our feelings. Men are stripped of so much of their natural humanity. So that's devastating for me to know now.
JP: This is maybe connected to the other part of your life that you don't go into much detail, which is that you are a trained psychologist, correct?
SM: I'm a trained behavior analyst, which is a type of behavioral psychology. So I mostly work with young people who have autism, developmental delays, a variety of diagnoses, who have what we call maladaptive behaviors.
JP: Well, you mentioned that you really like statistics or really like to have facts and yet you're a person who is also excavating emotions. You even have an essay about moms being horny that’s a different style, it’s—
SM: That's a full research paper. So I think let's call it that. That's like what I did in grad school. I did a lot of social psychology research.
JP: That's not what you normally see in a collection of personal essays.
SM: No, it's not. But I am such a know-it-all that a factor or figure is a great way to be like, “I told you so!” With the research project, you never know how the stats are going to shake out. And those stats, I will say, shook out even better than I hoped.
JP: In the Motherland section, you wrote about something that really stuck out to me and probably in a way that you might not expect. You wrote: “What do you call a woman who wants to be a mother, but who doesn't want to be pregnant?” And I have to say, the reason why it sprung out as a great observation is I also think that there are gay men who wonder what do you call a gay man who doesn't necessarily always have sex or penetrative sex, is he still a gay man? Obviously, it's not quite the same, but it's like, we have these words and labels. And if you aren't following certain guidelines, as you're saying, what do we call these people? Are you still gay? Are you still a woman? Of course you are, but what does this mean?
SM: Yeah. And I think that's actually such a nice connection because I think what is missing are huge conversations that are normalizing all this stuff. I'm not the only one. For me, it's even an easier conversation because I'm married to a woman. I think about so many heterosexual women who don't want to be pregnant but don't want to be mothers, and it's not even a conversation. I think we are often lacking language for these adjacent experiences.
JP: One last thing, I want to applaud you because you wrote something very simple, but important about personal essay writing. You wrote: “personal essay writing is seeking truths of one's personal past.” I was like, “Oh yeah, that's true.” I often question, “Why do I do this thing?” So I wanted to just thank you for that because it helped me.
SM: And I do think there's this other thing: It's just this the thing that we do! There are some people who write about their own personal experiences for themselves and for others, as a way to digest their own lives, to help you to digest your life. It's not that deep. I do think there's too much conversation about, “What's the importance of this? Why are you writing about this?” Like, even if you write something silly about your life, like David Sedaris so often does, it is a worthwhile endeavor. If you have the itch to write about something in your life and explore that and connect it to something else, that's enough.
JP: Absolutely. Thanks for that, Sam.
Dyke Delusions is available to buy now. Read more by Samantha Mann here.
Thanks for this 🩷