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During the pandemic, when we were all stuck at home every day, I realized that we, too, were in captivity. And just like Mei Mei, I, too, stopped wanting to have sex. And the only thing that carried me through this dark time was believing that there were other miserable and sexless folks out there who felt the same.” She started hosting Zoom sex workshops, sharing her research, her discoveries. Clips from her workshops went viral, and by the time the pandemic was over, she had helped millions of people around the world want sex again. “What we’ve learned from studying pandas in captivity is that they are, essentially, trapped in paradise. There is too much leisure, too much comfort, too much bamboo. Too much ESPN, if you know what I mean.” Suz nods knowingly. “The males stopped trying and the females no longer rubbed their anal glands over nearby trees like they did in the wild,” the Sex Woman adds, and Suz stops nodding. “All their needs were met. There was no flirtation, no foreplay, no delicate dance, because through captivity, we eliminated almost all of the natural Darwinian factors in panda mating. What we know now, what we all know now, is that we can’t just put two animals in a room and expect them to have sex. We can’t even expect them to want it. So why do we expect this of ourselves?” The Sex Woman, and her colleagues, spent years teaching the pandas how to remember to want it. “We showed them videos of other pandas mating,” the Sex Woman says. “Videos to stimulate them.” “Like panda porn?” Suz asks. “Yes.” “Do pandas actually get turned on when they watch other pandas have sex?” Nat asks. “Of course.” “That’s kind of beautiful,” Suz says and looks at the rest of the group. But Lila is unmoved. “It’s not beautiful,” Lila insists. “It’s porn, Suz.” “Yeah, but panda porn.” “Porn is not suddenly beautiful just because two bears are doing it,” Lila says. “Are there … like … panda storylines?” Marla asks. “Two pandas, one a billiards champion and the other needs to learn,” Nat says.
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