In her latest podcast episode, the penultimate in her Archetypes series, Meghan Markle has delved into that most pervasive of limitations holding women back: the sexual double standard.
In it she speaks to a woman who played no small role in the expansion of women’s sexual agency in the 90s, author Candace Bushnell, who wrote Sex and the City, as well as Golden Globe award winner actor Micheala Jay Rodiguez, who spoke about existing as a trans woman and embracing her ‘feminine divine’ from a young age.
The fact that it’s taken Meghan up until her ninth episode to explore topics like sexuality and sexual identities could be down to the fact that, as a member of the royal family, these subjects have traditionally been way off limits. But she’s also a prominent feminist and in a successful podcast breaking down stigmas associated with womanhood, she’d be remiss not to include frank discussions like this.
Speaking to Candace, whose original Sex and the City columns features in the New York Observer magazine presented a picture of what single women’s sex lives in the 90s actually looked like, as opposed to the cookie-cutter template they were expected to follow, Meghan said, ‘I don't understand what it is about the stigma surrounding women and their sexuality, the exploration of their sexuality that is so much more vilified than for a man.’
And of her writing process, Candace said, ‘I wrote for women's magazines all through the 80s around a lot about relationships, sex, you know, and I really analyzed it. Why do we behave the way we do? And one of my theories [is] because I grew up in the 60s [and] women were told what your sexuality is supposed to be like, you know, you're only supposed to want to have sex with one person and then you're supposed to want to just have sex with that one person for the rest of your life.
‘And the women I know just weren’t like that.’
In her conversation with Micheala Jae, who was nominated for an Emmy for her role as Bianca Evangelista in Pose, Meghan wanted to know what the experience of coming out as a trans woman was like for her.
‘I was always wondering about that simply because of the lived experience that we have with men in general,’ Micheala told her. ‘So we simply just want to live and exist and move through the world just like any human being should.
'But unfortunately a lot of trans women are not allotted to have or be in the space. I was there at one point in my life too and it's just unfortunate that there's no spaces held for bodies like ours.’