Alanis Morrisette & Sex With Women

Howard Stern wants details now, damn it!

by Jessica Wakeman

alanis morrisette I’m so naive…I thought Alanis would play a song.

Instead, I cringed through this smarmy “Alanis Morissette Discusses Her Lesbian Days With Howard Stern” clip on Gawker. Howard hammers on about Alanis’ hookups with women and tries to box her into easy-for-straight-folks-to-understand stereotypes, like when he asks, “What type of women were you attracted to? Ultra-femme? Or butch?” Alanis just laughs at him.

True, Howard asks very personal, raunchy questions of all his guests. And I’ll confess this interview made me particularly defensive because I love Alanis. But I think Howard deserves to have none of his stupid questions answered: When he calls her hookups with women “your lesbian phase,” Alanis giggles and says, “It’s funny you call it a phase…it’s a self-defining thing.” He then asks, “I want to know what brought you to a woman. Were you fed up with men?” and she laughs at that, too.

Alanis does a pretty great job of razzing him right back, I’ve got to say. “I think it’s a rite of passage to experiment with your sexuality at some point,” she says, and Stern insists, “I’m not experimenting with a dude!” Then Alanis points out, “Well, it might be different for a guy, there’s more homophobia going on.”

It’s hard to tell if Alanis laughed at Howard so frequently because of this rather awkward “frank sexual discussion” in front of her bandmates or because she thought (like me) that his line of questioning dense. In any case, Alanis is a good sport, and the Stern folks are clearly on her side regarding her breakup with actor Ryan Reynolds. So I just rolled my eyes at the whole thing.

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2 responses so far

1 Mitch // Jul 1, 2008 at 9:57 am

Having listened to Howard for years, although not recently, it is my pleasure to defend him.

I don’t think there is a better interviewer in the country. He asks tough, to the point questions. While I understand that he is perceived as a misogynist, the fact is that he would ask the same question of a man as a woman…isn’t that equality?

I ask questions to help me to understand people. Sex and relationships are important topics, that we should be able to discuss in candid direct terms. Terms that we all would use when talking to our friends.

All Howard does that is different, is to ask them on the radio and in this case it was about lesbian sex. I have heard him go after people who are hypocrites and unlike many interviewers, he doesn’t allow spin to be the final answer.

Who else would have asked Gennifer Flowers at her press conference, “Do you plan to sleep with any other presidential candidates”?