Trailblazing sex therapist and author of The G Spot was ‘a force of nature,’ says daughter

Alice Kahn Ladas was helping her clients live their best lives right up until the day she died at the age of 102, says her daughter.

Ladas, a psychologist, and psychotherapist whose career centered on women’s pleasure and reproductive health, died on July 29 at her home in Santa Fe, N.M.

She was an early and passionate advocate for breastfeeding and Lamaze, a childbirth method that involves breathing and relaxation.

But she’s best known for her groundbreaking and controversial bestseller G Spot: And Other Recent Discoveries About Human Sexuality, which she wrote alongside nurse and sexuality researcher Beverley Whipple, and sexologist John D. Perry.

Publisher Macmillan Books hails The G Spot as “the first book to prove the existence and define the location of the Gräfenberg spot, a patch of erectile tissue that can be felt through the front wall of the vagina, directly behind the pubic bone.”

Many in the medical community were critical of the book, which featured interviews with women about their bodies and experiences. While the G spot is much more commonly accepted today, experts still disagree on its size, location, ability to stimulate orgasm — and even existence, according to a 2021 review of existing research published in the National Library of Medicine.

Ladas stood by her book, but in 2010, she told the Santa Fe Reporter that people’s focus on “finding the G-spot” was “silly,” and her true message was about the importance of “being able to communicate, to enjoy your body.”

She is survived by two daughters, Robin Janis and Pamela Ladas. Janis, a yoga instructor in Los Angeles, spoke to As It Happens guest host Paul Hunter about her mother’s life and legacy. Here is part of their conversation.

Robin, first of all, I want to say I’m sorry that you’ve lost your mom. She was a force. She was a pioneer. But she was also your mother. First off, what was she like as a person?

She was, like you said, a force of nature, extremely social and interested in so many aspects of life, and deeply committed to her work. Until her dying day, she was fully engaged in her work and in helping her clients, and in trying to be a force of good in the world.

She loved so many aspects of life — children, novel ideas, animals, regenerative farming, organic food, and clean water.

Her last iteration of work, her evolution of work, was leading her to understand how our early coping mechanisms as children affected the rest of our lives. Because of what we did when we were young to feel safe, we continue to do this as a pattern throughout our lives. And she was excited about bringing this understanding to her work and her clients.

What a life. 

She just was a powerhouse and truly unstoppable. So I felt like I was shocked by her death because, to me, she was my mom that was just going to keep going on. Because she just kept going on.

When The G Spot came out in the early 1980s, as you well know, it made a big splash. How did people react to this idea that she was putting out there, that there was this spot on the wall of the vagina that could stimulate sexual pleasure? 

It was very controversial, because it was new, and it was novel, and it hadn’t been talked about much.

And I think, for women, it was exciting. And it explained that certain areas of our anatomy are highly pleasurable and, when stimulated, can lead not just to climax or orgasm, but actually to what my mom wrote about in the book, female ejaculation, which was very novel at that time.

How did your mom respond to criticism of what she was talking about? 

She didn’t take that to heart. Because I think if you were to interview women and they were, to be honest, and they had done some exploration on their own and had some experience, I’d say it’s incontrovertible. It’s just there. I mean, you can say whatever you want. You can say that it’s not true, but that doesn’t make it not true.

It, in some ways, sold more books because it was so controversial. But I think what made it a bestseller is it was true, and it gave supportive information, not just of women, but also of men and how to give pleasure to their partner and how to mutually enjoy it together at a heightened level.

Her real focus was opening up the field of belief around sexuality and around sexual connection, so that more people could feel like they were able to express themselves in the way that felt right for them and felt good for them.– Robin Janis on her mother’s work

What did she hear from others? What did she hear from other women about it? 

Oh, highly supportive.

It put her at kind of the cutting edge of feminism in the best sense — not radical feminism that excluded men or was rising strongly against the patriarchy but was trying to bring people together, that everybody has a unique sexual response and no response is wrong. None is right and none is wrong.

I think her real focus was opening up the field of belief around sexuality and sexual connection so that more people could feel like they were able to express themselves in the way that felt right for them and felt good for them.

And so I think she was very excited that it got so much attention because it opened up dialogue and opened up perspective.

When the book came out, you were a teenager. I mean, and that’s your mom, right? So what was that like for you when you were growing up to have a mom who did all this work around women’s sexuality? 

On the one hand, cool. On the other hand … she would, like, walk down the beach with a shirt saying, “I found my G spot a view,” and I’d be like, “I don’t even know this woman.”

But it seeded in me an interest in sexual expression that wasn’t conventional.

Later on in my life, I did my exploration and I shared it with my mom, which was kind of the next phase.

Your mom took part in a storytelling event not long before she died … [and she said she had] “a great life,” Robin. What do you think when you hear that? 

To me, her shining star quality was that she loved life, and she was deeply engaged and deeply interested and continually evolving her understanding and expanding her interests.

She loved her clients. I had the wonderful opportunity to speak to the last client or patient that she had at 3 o’clock the day before she died… He said, “I’ve never met anybody more focused than her with what I needed and what I could assimilate and take in that was new that could help me in my life.”

That was 24 hours before she passed.