Gillian Anderson: How to Get What You Want (in Bed and in Life)
October 29, 2024
Glennon Doyle:
Hi, Pod Squad. This is Glennon, and Amanda, and Abby, and you are going to want to listen to this conversation today because it is with the Gillian Anderson.
Abby Wambach:
The icon.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah, the icon. The first thing Gillian did on this interview was to come on and say to us, “Congratulations on your sex,” so you’ll have to listen to figure out what she meant by that.
Abby Wambach:
Yes.
Glennon Doyle:
I’ve never been congratulated on my sex before, and I feel finally seen-
Abby Wambach:
Yes, you have. Yes, you have.
Glennon Doyle:
Okay, so that…
Abby Wambach:
Yes, you have.
Glennon Doyle:
Why did Gillian congratulate us on our sex? Gillian also cried during this interview, got very emotional, made us all very emotional. You’re going to want to listen for what made her feel so deeply. You’re also going to hear what our sexual fantasies mean about us, and not just about us, but about our entire culture. Gillian also, in this interview, helps us figure out why all of us to some level need to say F you to wellness culture.
Abby Wambach:
God, her rebellion is intoxicating.
Glennon Doyle:
Oh, my god.
Abby Wambach:
I’m like, “Yes, that is how I used to feel.”
Glennon Doyle:
Yes. Yes.
Abby Wambach:
That is how I used to feel.
Glennon Doyle:
When I felt things, that’s how I used to feel.
Abby Wambach:
That is how I used to act. I like it.
Glennon Doyle:
Before I was beaten down by this world, I too was Gillian Anderson, and I hope you were too. This conversation’s going to make you freer.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah, it’s good.
Glennon Doyle:
Enjoy.
Gillian Anderson is an award-winning film, television, and theater actor, producer, and director. Among other honors, she has won two Emmys, two Golden Globes, and three SAG awards. Gillian is also an activist, a charity campaigner, and co-authored The Sunday Times bestseller, We: A Manifesto for Women Everywhere. In 2023, Gillian founded the wellness drinks brand G Spot, which are just actually completely delicious.
Abby Wambach:
Very delicious. Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
In 2016, she was appointed in honorary OBE, Order of the British Empire-
Abby Wambach:
Damn it.
Glennon Doyle:
… For her services to drama. I know, you want to be an OBE, don’t you?
Abby Wambach:
Yes. That looks so cool.
Glennon Doyle:
She lives in London with her three children, and her latest book, Want: Sexual Fantasies by Anonymous, is available now. Welcome, Gillian.
Abby Wambach:
Hello.
Gillian Anderson:
Wow.
Amanda Doyle:
Hello. Oh, my God.
Gillian Anderson:
Wow.
Glennon Doyle:
Oh, my God. What a treat.
Gillian Anderson:
Hi, guys.
Glennon Doyle:
If this interview ended right now, I would still be so excited and consider it a raging success.
Gillian Anderson:
Sorry, I’m going to take a picture with this silly thing right now, because I was given one of these, although that’s not very helpful, because… Hang on, hang on. Let me get this right. How do I? How do I? This old-fashioned thing, which I am behaving like I’m 150.
Glennon Doyle:
Hi.
Gillian Anderson:
So cool. I’m so pleased to meet you guys, so pleased. Congratulations on your sex, on your sex. Congratulations on your sex.
Glennon Doyle:
No one has ever congratulated us-
Gillian Anderson:
I’m so happy for your sex.
Glennon Doyle:
… On our sex before-
Amanda Doyle:
I’ve worked so hard for my sex.
Glennon Doyle:
… If anyone is going to do it-
Amanda Doyle:
So I appreciate it.
Glennon Doyle:
… It’s you.
Abby Wambach:
That’s so good.
Gillian Anderson:
I don’t know what I came from. I didn’t have sex on the brain yet, so it’s very strange that it just popped in there. Congratulations on your podcast, your success, that was the world, success.
Abby Wambach:
That’s usually how it gets mixed up.
Gillian Anderson:
That’s the word. Congratulations, man. I’m very happy for you guys.
Glennon Doyle:
Gillian Anderson, congratulations to you-
Abby Wambach:
For real.
Glennon Doyle:
… For being such an incredible icon for so long. You are so unbelievably talented, and such a trailblazer. Well, first of all, can you just talk to us about being named in high school most likely to get arrested, and most bizarre? Even on top of all of the iconic… Well, it’s not just the characters you play, it’s like what you bring to it.
Obviously, it’s like this chemistry thing that happens, which has solidified you as one of the most, I don’t know, revolutionary, inspiring, but the senior superlative is really what made me understand, you are not new to this. You’re true to this. Okay. Why were you named most likely to get arrested and most bizarre? What were your fellow students thinking and seeing in you?
Gillian Anderson:
I was always and always have been a bit of an outsider, not a bit. I have been an outsider, and didn’t really make a lot of friends in high school. My hair was always not unlike it is right now, ratty and not curled, and straight, and combed, and pretty. Then I started wearing oversized thrift clothes, cinching it with a belt, pointy black boots with buckles, and I started to shave my head and have a Mohawk.
Then my boyfriend, when I was 15 was 21, but that’s another conversation. Also, by then, I’d had a lesbian relationship that they all knew about and teased me about. I was kind of on the outside. Then true to form, on graduation night, I was actually arrested, because I tried to break into the high school with my then boyfriend and glue the locks shut.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah. Oh, God, you’re so cool. We have been really immersed in your new book, which the Pod Squad needs to understand. Well, actually, you described to us what, I’ve read the whole thing.
Gillian Anderson:
Have you?
Glennon Doyle:
Oh, yeah, beginning to end.
Gillian Anderson:
That’s really, really sweet of you. It is called Want. In the seventies, there was a book by Nancy Friday, in 1973, she had asked a community of women to write in anonymously to about their sexual fantasies. She published that book, and it was apparently a huge success. Women carried it in their purses and had it on their coffee tables, and it was in every household. It was risque, and shocking, and sold millions of copies.
My book agent came to me at one point and said, “I’ve had all these requests for you since you did Sex Education, but the only one that I feel you might be interested in is this.” She suggested us doing a version of anonymous letters, sending it out broader, on the one hand, to take a look at the degree to which things may or may not have changed for women since the seventies in terms of what we think about. That really made sense to me. I was really curious about what that might look like.
It made sense as to why I should do it based on having done Sex Ed, and based on my socials feed, and how I interact with people. I started this drinks brand called G Spot, and because of also leaning into that messaging, and inclusivity, and diversity, and acceptance, and health, and making choices for oneself about one’s own body, and how one feels, as opposed to what the wellness industry is telling us we should do and should feel.
It was all this big conversation that was happening and I thought, “Okay, it makes sense that it would be me that would do this book.” I put the call out to women from around the world. In my imagination, I was thinking we’d get letters from the trans community, and from differently abled people, and from non-binary, and from anyone who identifies as being a woman, and that they would come from the far reaches of the world. Even because we’ve set up a portal that will be protected and be anonymous, that we’ll get women from Iran, and we’ll get women from Saudi Arabia, and we’ll get every representation of a woman.
To a large degree, we did. We’ve got a wide range of voices in here, and we whittled down over a thousand letters to 174. It’s every woman. It is. It’s tender and touching, and moving, and beautiful, and sad, and painful, and heart-wrenching, and sexy as fuck. There’s some really good writing in there.
Amanda Doyle:
There is.
Gillian Anderson:
It’s raw and honest. I feel like this isn’t my book. This is every woman’s book who pitched in, everyone who worked on it at Bloomsbury and the other publishers. It belongs to everyone. It’s starting a much bigger conversation too. What’s happening is we’ve asked women when they’re reading, they’re asking themselves, “Do I get what I want in the bedroom? If I’m not, have I asked for it? Am I complicit in not getting what I want? Can I ask for it? If I can’t ask for it because of either it’s feeling too awkward and taboo in the relationship, or I feel like my partner will get angry at me and feel judged for not doing what I want,” all those questions start to come up.
It’s not just in the bedroom, it’s also women are starting to say, “Actually, am I happy? Am I happy in my life? Am I getting what I want in my life? Have I actually really put myself out there?” I’m now 62 years old, and this book is encouraging me to ask these questions, and really investigate whether I am living my best life, and what would I need to do in order to shift that for myself? Maybe that’s leaning more into the relationship and the intimacy with your partner, your husband, your wife, your other, and maybe it’s not. Maybe it’s saying, “I deserve better than this.” I don’t know. It’s just starting a big conversation.
Glennon Doyle:
I want to take us back to the sexual fantasies, please, because-
Gillian Anderson:
Okay. Yes, yes, yes, ma’am.
Glennon Doyle:
I have many questions.
Amanda Doyle:
Congratulations on your sex.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah, congratulations on your sex. While you were talking, I was thinking, you know that quote about everything in the world is about sex except for sex, sex is about power? I think about that all the time. There’s something, I read the book, and at first, there was many times where I was like, “Oh, my God, oh, my God, why is this okay to be reading?” It’s very, very sexy, but there’s something about it that actually had nothing to do with sex for me.
I love women. I’m not talking about it sexually, although that too, but maybe why Nancy Friday called her book My Secret Garden, there is a part of us that we don’t share with each other. With the women that I know, that’s the only part that we don’t share with each other. That’s it. When I was reading your book from beginning to end, the deeper tingle or beauty for me had nothing to do with the actual fantasies.
I felt like I was sitting at a slumber party with all different kinds of women, where we were finally saying the thing we don’t say. Having nothing to do with sex in particular, I felt so close to other women. I felt like, “Oh, my God.” I feel when somebody says the really hard thing that they think no one else is going to relate to, and it doesn’t matter if you can’t relate to it, it matters that they said. It makes you feel so connected.
Gillian Anderson:
Yep. Just in the writing in, they feel seen and heard, which is interesting, because they’re anonymous. It’s the act of actually doing what you’re saying, which is speaking to some of our inner truths in a safe space.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah.
Gillian Anderson:
This is the conversation that seems to be taking place around this, which is, is women coming together as a community and offering that space to each other to have these conversations about your innermost thoughts, and feelings, and fears. I think we have, obviously as women, we have a tendency to do that anyway, but there’s also such a culture out there. I don’t know why I’m getting emotional, but there’s such a culture out there of women hating on each other, and obviously, exacerbated by social media. Anybody can say anything to anybody, and there are no consequences.
It feels like if there is ever a time for us to come together and just say, “Enough of this fucking shit. Enough of this.” Just even if we’re supporting each other, I don’t care where you’re from, or what your religion, is or what your political party is, or what your anything, what your sex is, your sexual preference, just based on the fact that we are women, we are going to stop hating on each other and just lift each other up.
Particularly, and I also keep thinking this too, and what’s happening in the states and what could potentially happen shortly in the next few months, if we lose our power to make decisions about our own body, if we can’t even do that in the West, how can we be the shoulders that women around the world can stand on in order to lift themselves up? I never get political and I don’t share stuff. I don’t comment on stuff from my socials. I didn’t realize that actually, I felt so strongly about this.
I know that I feel strongly about it, but if not now, when is what I’m kind of thinking. My conversation keeps going in this direction when I’m talking about this now, because it feels like we’re at the precipice. It feels like the conversation around this book is giving women a voice, and it’s a bigger conversation than just the intimacies of what happens in the bedroom.
Glennon Doyle:
It sure is.
Gillian Anderson:
It’s part of the same thing.
Glennon Doyle:
It’s the same.
Gillian Anderson:
It’s the same thing.
Glennon Doyle:
It’s undeniable, the timing. That’s what kept freaking me out about this whole project is that Nancy Friday, the origin of her book was fascinating, where she had written a different book, a novel, and it had a sexual fantasy in it. The publisher was so aghast that it had a woman with a sexual fantasy that they shelved the book, not only because it was so anathema that you would ever print a woman’s fantasy.
They actually didn’t believe women’s fantasies existed. They shelved it. They were like, “That’s a bridge too far. That’s nuts.” She writes this book, and she writes it in 1973, which is when Roe became law. You start your project in 2022, which is when Roe is overturned.
Gillian Anderson:
Oh, don’t. Oh, don’t. I didn’t actually make that connection.
Amanda Doyle:
Crazy, right? What about that is this?
Gillian Anderson:
Wow. It’s just what we were just talking about. It’s being seen and being heard, and also the community of it and supporting each other. It is, it’s just saying, “Enough is enough.”
Amanda Doyle:
And choice. When we say we’re pro-choice, the power comes from the ability to make a choice. The idea of fantasy, is there power in saying, “I have a choice, I have a preference?”
Gillian Anderson:
Oh, yeah.
Amanda Doyle:
Is there power in being like, “I have the right to feel pleasure?”
Gillian Anderson:
Yep. Pleasure has been a dirty word. People think of pleasure as being a frivolous thing, and it’s not. It’s really important, and it’s also important to lean into it. It’s important to embrace it, and to give oneself permission to feel it, to ask for it, to give it to oneself, to identify what it is that gives one pleasure. It brings joy. It’s a joyful thing, whatever one’s version of pleasure is. Even if one’s version of pleasure is sitting on the sofa, and eating ice cream, and watching your favorite, there’s a noise that I make, me and my partner make whenever we’re under a duvet or watch…
When we finally have let go and are sitting, doing something, because we work really fucking hard. If we give ourselves that moment where we’re either under a duvet or on a sofa about to watch a documentary or something, we go, “He, he, he, he,” and that’s our moment of pleasure.
Amanda Doyle:
It’s like you’re a little trickster.
Gillian Anderson:
It is, there’s something mischievous in there. There’s all such great stuff to embrace, and enjoy, and take ownership of, and identify for ourselves. It’s important…
Glennon Doyle:
That energy, it’s trickster energy, because-
Gillian Anderson:
It’s a little witchy.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah, it’s witchy. It reminds me of the feeling that you get when you’re out of the talons of something, like when you have escaped your grind, your work addiction, the capitalism, all the talons that are in us all the time, the freedom from that, the under the duvet is the same thing as fantasy. It’s when you are free from the talons of all the other things. I think that’s why it’s so scary when I read all these and I am thinking, “Oh, my God, I’m connecting. They’re so human. Everybody’s so human.”
That is what the people who want to control our bodies cannot abide by. They cannot abide that we would have trickster energy that is full of agency, that is full of imagination. When you think of imagination and sexual fantasy being similar, they’re the only things that are free from power and control. That has to be squashed, because they cannot consider the fact that we may be as fully human as they are, and deserving of equal human rights.
Abby Wambach:
It’s exactly how I feel when I take an afternoon nap.
Glennon Doyle:
I know you do.
Abby Wambach:
I think it’s exactly reason why I take my afternoon nap.
Amanda Doyle:
Yeah, you’re out of the talons.
Abby Wambach:
Just like, “Fuck everything that’s making me think that I should do something different.”
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah.
Abby Wambach:
I’m going to go [inaudible 00:18:19].
Amanda Doyle:
Actually, Gillian says that.
Glennon Doyle:
It’s a slippery slope when you start breaking the rules. What’s next?
Gillian Anderson:
It’s true. It’s true.
Glennon Doyle:
This is connected completely. Tell us about, we read that you had a point in your life where you had never exercised and that you said, “Fuck you to wellness culture.” I almost started crying when I read that one sentence. Can you talk to us about how wellness culture has its talons in us?
Gillian Anderson:
Well, I think as I said, that that same part of me that grew up bordering in the punk world, and flipping the bird on the streets of Grand Rapids, Michigan, where I moved from London when I was a kid, it was that same kind of energy that went into the rest of my life, refusing internally to do the things that I felt people were telling me that I should do.
I’ve never been good at doing shoulds. I know that I have enough shoulds in my head, and they’ve, at various points in my twenties when I became very famous young, there were certainly shoulds in terms of feeling bad about myself and my weight going up and down, and certainly had a lot of that in my head.
Despite all that, there’s always been this part of me that has stood kind of on the outside, looking at all of the wellness doctrines, and watching the trajectory of impact that whether it starts with Jane Fonda and when she started the aerobics and all of that, just viewing all of that slightly from the outside, and seeing the pressure and the beating up that women do to themselves when they don’t conform and do the thing that they’re told on the outside, now through social media and everywhere about what they should not do, what they should and shouldn’t look like.
I think I’ve always had that in me that said, “No, fuck off. That’s just not me. I’m not going to do that. If you tell me to do it, I’m more likely not to do it.” Then recently, in the last couple years, when I realized that I wanted to look at that again and take ownership and say, “Okay, hang on a second.” Instead of to what degree of my rebelliousness is that actually harming me? Can I reframe this and say, “Okay, here’s the deal. I know that I still want to be lifting grandchildren up. I know I want to be able to put my wheelie bag up on the top in the airplane. I know that I want to be able to walk up the steps,” all those little things that of course, now we take for granted.
What can I do for myself by choice, but not, God damn it, by anything that anybody’s telling me that I have to do, that I’m just going to for myself, look at these things that I can start doing, and not feel like I failed? I gave up sugar last year and I hated, all of a sudden, I realized, because most of my adult life, I’ve said, when people say, “Is there anything you don’t eat, or do you have any meal restrictions or whatever?” I’m like, “No, no, no, it’s fine. I’m fine.”
Then suddenly I started to say, “Well, I’m not doing gluten and no sugar,” and I hate saying that. I feel like that part, that that is-
Glennon Doyle:
Right, yes.
Gillian Anderson:
Like I’m suddenly that actress. I’m that actress-
Glennon Doyle:
Like you’re succumbing to the-
Gillian Anderson:
… Suddenly I’m succumbing to the… I cannot stand it.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah, I see that.
Gillian Anderson:
I want to qualify it, and I’ve let go of that and I just say it anyway, but it was interesting what happened when I started to say those things. I have an issue, but I’m okay with my issue.
Glennon Doyle:
You seem to be someone who lives from the inside out and not from the outside in.
Gillian Anderson:
Oh, yeah. Yeah, definitely.
Glennon Doyle:
You said, “I want to be able to pick up my grandkids. I need, I want,” which is different than you should. There’s this outer structure. It’s just another religion, another bunch of rules you can live by to keep yourself safe, and trying to match yourself to the outside structure is different. It’s like the difference between porn and sexual fantasy. Sexual fantasy is from the inside. It’s something that rises up. It’s a want and a need, and then perhaps manifests on the outside, instead of a structure from the outside that you are trying to get inside your body.
Gillian Anderson:
Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
I think even deciding what feels good can be tricky, because I was on a walk when I heard your thing about fuck wellness culture. I had just finished my red light therapy. I had done my infrared sauna for the day, and I was on my walk with my little weighted vest on. Okay, because this is something I was told I need to do. What I realized is I was listening to you say fuck wellness culture. I know that.
I know it, I know it, I know we should fuck wellness culture, but my first thought was, “But this makes me feel good.” Then I thought, “Wait, does this make me feel good, or does it just make me feel obedient?” I think that even what feels good can have a layer of dogma in it. Do I feel good in my body, or do I just feel like I did the things I was supposed to do that day, which makes me feel safe?
Amanda Doyle:
Yeah. It’s like, do I feel good, or do I feel like I am good?
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah.
Amanda Doyle:
Does this make me feel like I’m a good person, or this make me feel good in my body?
Gillian Anderson:
That’s so interesting.
Glennon Doyle:
Yes. I don’t know that I felt better at all. I think I kind of feel like shit. I just spent my whole day in my basement with lights shining on my face. What the hell is that?
Abby Wambach:
Thhen don’t do the things that you don’t get any response from. I would never, and maybe this is just because my athletic background, but the reason why we have that stuff is because of me, and it’s because they do make me feel good.
Glennon Doyle:
You know how to tell when you feel good. All I know how to do is look at a list of things and be like, “Did I do all the things I was supposed to do? I must feel good.”
Abby Wambach:
Check, check, check.
Glennon Doyle:
I must feel good.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah, yeah.
Amanda Doyle:
That is a perfect question to circle back to the fantasies. When you ask a woman, “What do you want for dinner? What do you like to eat?” It’s so often like, “Well, our family likes, well, we do,” it’s like a deference to those for whom you’re responsible, deference to the greater good.
The idea that you would be even making an inquiry to know what makes you feel good, that’s a very radical notion. You’ve taken the time to be like, “What would just make exclusively me feel good in this moment in sex?”
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah.
Gillian Anderson:
What we’re finding is that for my drink, we did a study at one point, asking women how much time they put aside in the week for their own pleasure. I think if I’m remembering correctly, it was about 30 minutes a week max, but also, that they are most likely to reach orgasm outside of the sex that they have with their partner, predominantly heterosexual partner, I would imagine, but who knows? That it’s easier to get there when doing it themselves, which of course begs the question, what if a conversation could be had?
What if the start of that conversation could be about asking oneself, I guess, first and foremost, what it is that would actually make it possible with the other partner there, and radically deciding that it didn’t matter if you might be wasting their time or that you are going to decide to not care whether you were wasting time, that it’s not wasting time because it’s what you want and what you think would help you get there. To say, “Okay, we’re going to have a session today, where I show you actually what it is that would make please.” I know, right? Difficult.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah.
Gillian Anderson:
Really difficult.
Glennon Doyle:
I think it would be helpful if we had two, I need some more words. I need it to not, first of all, I need it to not just be fantasies. I need us to all admit that there’s two categories, okay? There’s stuff I want to do, and stuff I never want to do, but for some reason, lights my brain up like…
Okay, so you’re an actor. My friend told me who’s an actor that sometimes you’re in a scene, and you have to appear to be crying because you lost a friend or something. If you’re a person who has never lost a friend, you imagine something else that has happened to you that gave you that feeling. This is what she told me.
Gillian Anderson:
Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
For me, there are certain ideas or little plays that can go on in your head, if that’s what a fantasy is. It’s like a thought you have that activates sexual energy, but it’s not something you ever want to happen.
Gillian Anderson:
Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
I think one of the reasons why it’s scary to talk about fantasy with your partner is because we don’t have different words for these, is because if I say, “This is my fantasy,” then you might think that that means I want you to invite 12 masc strangers over to our living room. Like, there has to be two words.
Gillian Anderson:
I think what I’m talking about is that in the process of having this joined up conversation about fantasy, we’re actually asking ourselves separate from the fantasies is, “Am I actually getting what I want and I need in the bedroom separate from the fantasy?” There is that version of things, where maybe you allow yourself to explore your fantasy a bit more in order to either be turned on or to help you get in the mood for sex with your partner.
Then there’s the other part of the conversation which is starting to happen, which is, “Am I actually getting what I want period, and can I start that conversation?” It’s not about a fantasy. It’s actually real life. It’s real life asking for what it is that we want and we need. In doing that, we feel heard, seen, empowered. That shows up a lot in the fantasies in this book of just a lot of women saying, “I want my partner to look at me as if they cherish me, as if they love me exactly how I am, who I am, and how I am, and how I should…”
If you’re realizing that in your mind, that’s part of what your fantasy is, you start to ask the question about, “Why is that so, is that such a hard thing to start to explore with my partner in real life, just in terms of finding out whether we still have that together, that spark, that I deserve to be looked at that way?” It’s opening up so many big questions, and so much of it at the end of the day is down to what we feel courageous enough, brave enough to address and look at for ourselves, I think, that knowing that in this moment, other women are starting to ask this question individually and together.
Can we maybe even just some tiny, tiny small ways start to think about ways that we can do things that make us feel like we have choice, give ourselves permission to have choice, to declare what it is that we want, to feel more empowered? In working on the drink and writing the intros for the book, I suddenly realized that so much of, I talk a lot about the fact that through my career, I still get nervous. I still, first days, second days, I’m terrified. I think I’m going to be fired.
So many scenes that I have acted in, I have felt internally that I’m not that strong person. I’m not that bossy person, that fierce person. I am those things, but I’m not how to project that as a Thatcher, or as a Scully, particularly when I was young and doing Scully, and I was meant to be the boss of or telling all these other FBI agents what to do, and I was like-
Glennon Doyle:
I know.
Gillian Anderson:
… “I’m twenty-fucking five years old,” and had this squeaky voice, and when I heard myself say these things or argue with Skinner… In order to show up and do those scenes, as every actor does, you have to pretend as if you can. You have to act as if, that’s what acting is, you’re acting as if, and so if I can fucking do it, if I can do it, this five foot two and a half woman who’s now 56, and has always had a bit of a squeaky voice, and the older we get, the less heard we feel, if I can continue for the last 30 years to do this and be in the shoes of really, really powerful women, then we can all stand in those shoes. We can all pretend to be that person.
I think sometimes we feel that we can’t, or how could we? I can’t speak up for myself. I can’t, they don’t listen to me. Who am I to… I don’t think it’s that different for anybody. People in all walks of life get nervous, feel anxious, feel like there’s no way they’re going to be heard or seen. At the end of the day, it comes down to just doing it, just acting as if, just giving yourself permission and the courage. If you have to imagine you are somebody else, there used to be these bumper stickers when I did this series called The Fall that said, “What would Stella do?” That’s it. If that’s what you need to have in your mind, that’s part fantasy too, right? That’s fantasy.
Glennon Doyle:
It really does, and your talking made me think so much about how it all, the personal is the political, and if we’re in our bedrooms with our person who’s supposed to know us the best, who we’re supposed to feel safe with, and we cannot say, “This is who I am, and this is what I want, and I am as fully human as you, and I have needs too,” if we can’t do it there, of course, we’re not going to be able to do it at work, at the voting booths.
It is so much, when I think about the fantasies in the book, it is so much about being known. So many of them seem to be saying, “I know you love sex. Do you love me? I want you to want me because of me, not because you want sex.” It’s like, I remember that feeling from heterosexual relationships, not anymore, but where I felt so interchangeable. It doesn’t matter that it’s me here. You just need somebody here. That idea of just, “Do you even know me?”
That’s why everything’s about sex except for sex. Sex is about being known. Sex is about power. Even some of the fantasies that were about life, I will never forget the one, there was this beautifully written one where the woman was just saying, “I’m married to my best friend. I love my marriage. I’m married to my best friend. My fantasy is that in another life, I’m married to a bad boy.”
Gillian Anderson:
That’s one of my favorite ones.
Glennon Doyle:
I’m married to a guy who doesn’t care about my feelings as much as himself. I’m married to… In my other life, I’m married to her, and we are so tender with each other, and we know every single thing about each other, and then the essay-
Gillian Anderson:
And protective and fierce, and it’s, yeah, and it’s voluptuous, and soft, and caring, and yes-
Glennon Doyle:
Oh, it’s mushy.
Gillian Anderson:
Yeah, I know. Beautiful, so beautiful.
Glennon Doyle:
Then it just ends with, “And I’m married to my best friend.” That sexual fantasy is about fantasizing that life was different, that we didn’t have opportunity costs, that we had a million… My version of that is, “Oh, I wish I could just, I can’t believe I can’t read all the books.” Less sexy, but that’s what people mean.
There’s not enough life to go everywhere I want to go, to read every book, to have every marriage I want to have, to be gay, to be straight, to be queer, to be all the things. It’s the fantasy of not having to choose.
Abby Wambach:
Different. It’s fantasy, but different.
Gillian Anderson:
Yeah, yeah, interesting.
Abby Wambach:
The other thing.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah.
Amanda Doyle:
It’s so beautiful.
Glennon Doyle:
It’s enough. It’s like that whole, “But I’m lucky enough, but I should be grateful for what I have. I’m married to my best friend.” The idea that you would have this voracious appetite for life, that’s scary. A voracious appetite for sex to be what I want, a voracious appetite for life, I want that, and also that, and also that. I think it works, like you said, if you can’t even do it in your bedroom, how can we have power outside of it? I think the reverse is true.
Why in the world would someone think that they deserve what they want in their intermost… Nothing’s on fire. If you’re not going to get exactly what you want from sex, nobody’s going to go hungry. No one’s going to… If the actual needs you have, your healthcare needs, your needs to be able to make choices about your own body, if those things are seen as not viable, defendable, valuable needs, why the hell would anyone think that their sexual desires are needs that deserve to be heard?
Amanda Doyle:
Yeah, symbiotic.
Abby Wambach:
Fair enough.
Amanda Doyle:
Yeah.
Abby Wambach:
Yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
Well, Gillian, you’re doing such good work. You freaked us the fuck out, so mission accomplished. You’re so bizarre.
Abby Wambach:
I just want to say this, for all of the lesbians out there, you’ve been an icon, like a North Star for so many of us, and I’m just glad to get to know you a little bit, because it makes me understand it. I just want to say thank you for being that for us all these years.
Gillian Anderson:
Oh, thank you. It’s been a pleasure.
Glennon Doyle:
Yeah, and for the lesbians, it’s not, what would Scully do? The underground is what would Gillian do?
Abby Wambach:
Yeah, for sure.
Gillian Anderson:
So cool. I can’t thank you enough for having me on the show, and you guys are doing great work too. I so, so appreciate it. I’ve started a kind of a media hub called ThisisGeode.com, where we’re continuing the conversation around the book and for women internationally as well, and there’ll be lots of opportunities to come together.
We’ll be doing a lot of live shows with celebrity readings of the book and stuff like that, so hopefully at some point along the way, I will see you maybe at one of those things in person.
Abby Wambach:
Yes.
Glennon Doyle:
You know which one I want to read.
Gillian Anderson:
I would love to…
Glennon Doyle:
The Three Lives.
Gillian Anderson:
Oh, yeah.
Glennon Doyle:
I want the Three Lives one.
Gillian Anderson:
Yes, okay. All right.
Glennon Doyle:
I’m claiming it.
Gillian Anderson:
I will absolutely put your name on that one. It’s one of my favorites. It’s so cool. I’m so grateful to all the women who wrote in, and thank you for being so present, and for being there, and for letting me cry on your doorstep.
Glennon Doyle:
Thank you, Gillian. Thank you, Pod Squad. Bye.
Gillian Anderson:
Thank you, Pod Squad.
Glennon Doyle:
If this podcast means something to you, it would mean so much to us. If you’d be willing to take 30 seconds to do these three things. First, can you please follow or subscribe to We Can Do Hard Things? Following the pod helps you because you’ll never miss an episode, and it helps us because you’ll never miss an episode. To do this, just go to the We Can Do Hard Things show page on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Odyssey, or wherever you listen to podcasts, and then just tap the plus sign in the upper right-hand corner, or click on follow.
This is the most important thing for the pod. While you’re there, if you’d be willing to give us a five-star rating and review, and share an episode you loved with a friend, we would be so grateful. We appreciate you very much. We Can Do Hard Things is created and hosted by Glennon Doyle, Abby Wambach, and Amanda Doyle, in partnership with Odyssey. Our executive producer is Jenna Wise Berman and the show is produced by Lauren LoGrasso, Allison Schott, Dina Kleiner, and Bill Schultz.