Miley Cyrus has a few thoughts about sex, and apparently, some people don’t agree with them. In a resurfaced 2020 Call Her Daddy interview that’s now going viral, the former Disney star gets candid about her sexuality, including why she enjoys sexuality more than sex, isn’t particularly interested in foreplay, and thinks “tits are prettier than balls.” Which, to be fair, I thought were all pretty tame confessions. But on X, where a clip of the interview has racked up more than 20 million views, people seem to be losing their minds.
Some users are saying that Miley is a lesbian, one labeled her with “non sex haver vibes,” and one user called her comments “genuinely one of the most depressing things I’ve ever heard.” So what’s causing this intense reaction? Miley is just describing her own experiences with desire, and yet people are acting as if she should be pitied. Likely because her comments seem to challenge some deeply ingrained assumptions about what makes someone sexual, what they should find attractive, and what a satisfying sex life is supposed to look like.
To be fair, even I had to sit with some of Miley’s takes. I’ve always thought foreplay was essential, that you should enjoy looking at a penis if you’re going to have sex with someone who has one, and that your partner should be the most arousing part of a sexual encounter. But again, those are my preferences—not universal truths about sexuality.
So why are we so quick to pathologize someone else’s desires when they don’t look like our own? I asked Dominique Oster, LMFT, an AASECT-certified sex therapist, to break down Miley’s comments—and explain why, actually, they’re perfectly normal. We tend to think about sexuality and the literal, physical act of sex as things that go hand-in-hand.
But they’re two entirely different things. She says that it’s often assumed that people go into sex therapy figuring how to have more sex. But really, the journey is about finding your identity, reclaiming power, unlearning shame, and learning what feels good.
So people might have a lot of things they find in the realm of sexuality that they wouldn’t necessarily do during sex. This might mean watching certain kinds of erotica, exploring tantra, or thinking about fantasies they wouldn’t necessarily want for themselves. Maybe they enjoy being in a sexual environment, talking about sexual things but don’t want to do those things with their body.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
