On this week’s episode of Alec Baldwin‘s podcast, the actor interviews comic/actress/writer Amy Schumer about her life, career and sex. The discussion turns to Amy’s popularity with women and sexual fluidity about half-way through. Here’s the exchange:
Alec Baldwin: Being as funny as you are, being as sexually liberated you are, and as warm as you are, and likable, you must have women throwing themselves at you as well.
Amy Schumer: That’s a very good observation. Yeah, women, I think, get confused around me.
Alec Baldwin: Go ahead.
Amy Schumer: [laughs] Have I got your attention? I think women, they want my attention, they like me. They don’t know-they’re confused about their feelings for me. I’m straight, but they sometimes deal with me the way they would a guy that they’re attracted to. Like, this kind of flirty-I remember this model, we were following each other on Twitter, and she like wrote me a message and was like, “I just woke up from a nap” and she was like-the way that she wrote it was like it’s what you’d send to a guy so that they’d picture you in a cute environment, like “Mmm.” I’m not like trying to have sex. So girls just get-some women, I feel that energy from them. They look at me like they don’t know what to do. [laughs] But how did you observe that? No one’s ever said that to me.
Alec Baldwin: People who I work with who are young who shall remain nameless who are listening to this recording right now, they will talk about how people are on a spectrum.
Amy Schumer: Of sexuality?
Alec Baldwin: Yeah, where you don’t sleep with-as my daughter said to me, because she had a girlfriend for a while, and she said to me, “You don’t sleep with a man or a woman-you sleep with the person. I’m attracted to that person.” So she slept with somebody who was a woman. And I was like, “Wow.” I’ve met men as much as I loved anybody in my life, but I wasn’t built that way so I think to myself, “That doesn’t interest me.” I’d rather be with a woman that I want to set on fire and throw off a cliff than be with a guy who was the greatest human being I’ve ever met, who is like Abraham Lincoln meets Montgomery Clift.
Amy Schumer: Oh my god, seriously, you wouldn’t even let Lincoln blow you?
Alec Baldwin: Well? I wouldn’t. I’d have to deny him.
Amy Schumer: Oh my god, if I could get Betsy Ross to just go down on me for five seconds. …. Yeah I don’t know if I’ll ever sleep with a woman. I hope so.
Alec Baldwin: You do hope so?
Amy Schumer: Yeah, at some point.
Alec Baldwin: Just to know what it’s like?
Amy Schumer: Mhm.
Alec’s daughter, Ireland Baldwin, is an out model who had a public relationship with rapper Angel Haze, and it sounds like her father is on board with the idea of sexual fluidity, supporting her and her identity. Despite his saying he prefers a woman he’d want to kill over having sex with a guy (which was a little hyper-hetero, in my opinion), it does seem that he has an ability to understand some people’s same-sex attraction and interested in discussing it on his popular podcast. Salon sees this as part of a growing number of parents who are reacting positively to queer and gender-non-conforming youth, and their children being sexual beings in general.
That kind of mentality also frames the conversation around sexuality and women differently, which is why Alec’s asking his guest about women’s sexual interest in her came off way less creepy than is generally par for the course. Instead of wanting to be salacious, it is more of a discussion on attraction and desire versus a search for titillating tidbits. And to Amy’s credit, she’s not dismissive of women’s feelings for her. Like a lot of straight-identified women, she isn’t necessarily closed off to the idea of a sexual relationship with a woman if she met one she was attracted to. And for a lot of other women who feel similarly, Amy Schumer is that woman, largely for the reasons Alec Baldwin brought up, and also because Amy is a liberated woman who isn’t afraid to be open about her interest in sex.
On her HBO stand-up special that aired last month, Amy made a joke about how she’d fail at going down on another woman:
“I could never go down on a girl, though. If a pussy were ever in front of me and it was go time, it would be like I was trying to jump into double dutch. I’d be like:”
“Ah, I can’t! You’re a beautiful girl. I’m so sorry, I can’t! Thank you for braiding my hair.”
It’s likely we won’t see Amy with a girlfriend anytime soon, but as a recent study found, women are often sexually aroused by both men and women. Sexual fluidity is real, and it’s great to see it as a topic of conversation in a forward-thinking fashion.
