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Sometimes I get intimidated or nervous about speaking with a guest. Other times I feel excited to dig in with a colleague or friend. But this week? The only word I had was delight.
Karen BK Chan delights me with her words and thoughts and ideas. The way she questions our cultural stories and makes sense of them astounds me. I could listen to her talk for hours, honestly.
So, when she agreed to come on the show, I didn’t know what to do with myself. How do you talk about all the things when you only have an hour?
We go deep in this episode. Where we start off talking about kindness and consent, we quickly end up eyeball deep in discussions around the masks we wear to protect ourselves from rejection and being consent violators ourselves and finding those places within ourselves that are invested in perpetuating our stories about who we are.
From rejection and emotional intelligence to a new approach to consent and digging into rape fantasies, it’s a packed show that left me brain boner-ing for days.
Follow Dawn on Instagram.
In this episode, Karen BK Chan and Dawn talk about:
- BK’s version of teaching consent, which is pretty extraordinary. Norms and expectations are changing, but consent education hasn’t gotten to a place where it’s doing what it’s supposed to do.
- Acknowledging that all of us have the potential to violate someone’s consent, and in fact many of us have. It may not be sexual in nature, but we have all crossed someone’s boundaries at some point. So, how can we be less about painting people as evil and more about doing better as we look ahead while also holding space for the trauma?
- Why sometimes BK feels like she is selling goods that people have not asked for in trying to change the cultural narrative around romance, sex, relationships, and consent. When you are so entrenched in the cultural narrative of how sex and relationships happen, based on what you see in Hollywood and the media, it can feel really foreign and threatening for an educator to come in and say there’s a different way to move through life.
- Rejection resilience and how to get better at tolerating rejection. BK shares how if someone cannot stomach the possibility of rejection, they’re very likely to violate consent because they will avoid the possibility of rejection at all costs. So what can we do? BK explains some basics about emotional intelligence which helps cultivate resilience of all uncomfortable emotions.
- Desirability being part of capitalism and how we’re being sold on a certain version of worthiness and lovability which then drives our beliefs and behaviors around rejection and sex.
- How we are all invested in different stories we tell ourselves about who we are, and we will lie, cheat, and make poor choices in order to ensure those stories stay true.
- A listener question from Natalie on how to talk to her wife about sex. Her wife always gives her tons of orgasms, but never cums herself. Natalie needs help in how to talk to her about that. BK and I dig in.
- The difference between talking about sex and talking about sex between two specific people and why starting with one is less scary than starting with the other.
- Pushing your partner into scary places and why Dawn thinks that is so yummy.
- Rape fantasies – why they’re intriguing and why sadists get pleasure from other people’s pain.
Resources discussed in this episode
BK’s Jam video on YouTube
About Karen BK Chan
Karen B. K. Chan is a sex and emotional literacy educator in Toronto. She has taught sex education and emotional literacy for 18+ years. Karen (aka BK) is dedicated to sex education that is plainly spoken, emotionally honest, and grounded in justice.
Known for her accessible style and easy sense of humour, BK speaks internationally in classrooms and at conferences, to children, parents, and professionals. BK integrates curriculum content into stories, and theory into practice.
Her 5-minute YouTube video “Jam” (which likens sexual experience to musical jamming) is used as a teaching resource internationally, and her chapter on sex and creative play was part of the AASECT Book of the Year in 2014. BK’s writing has appeared in publications like Sexology International, the Tete-a-Tete, SimplySxy.com, and national education manuals. In 2014, BK was named “Service Provider of the Year” by Planned Parenthood of Toronto for her work in sexual health.
You can find BK over at karenbkchan.com and on Twitter @karenbkchan.
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Episode Transcript
Dawn Serra: This is going to be short and sweet so that we can jump right into this hour plus episode with Karen BK Chan. I am getting ready to create a couple of online courses and webinars. Some of them will be free. Some of them will be very low cost to make as accessible as possible, with replays available. But I need to know from you, if I could teach you about anything, what would it be? I want to hear from you. So tweet at @SexGetsReal, and let me know what kind of lesson you would love to see from me. Do you want to learn about anatomy in a super geeky way? Or, blow jobs or kink or anal sex or communication techniques that make talking about sex easier? Anything and everything goes. But I want to hear from you, what you would absolutely love to sign up for if I were teaching it. So pop over to Twitter at @SexGetsReal. You can also go to Facebook on the Sex Gets Real page, and leave a little note on the wall letting me know what you would love to see me teach, what you’re so eager to learn about, and I want to make that happen for you. On with the show.
Hey, everyone. It’s Dawn Serra with Sex Gets Real. On the line with me right now is someone who I completely adore. She was part of the Explore More Summit, and was actually one of the most loved talks from everyone who listened to the summit. I think you’ll find out why very quickly. So I’d love to welcome you to the show, Karen BK Chan. Hi!
Karen BK Chan: Hi, Dawn. You’re also someone I adore. So that makes this conversation very nice.
Dawn Serra: Yes. We can just be super awesome together. For those of you that don’t know BK, I’m going to tell you a little bit about her, and we are going to have what I suspect is going to be just a delicious conversation. I have so many things I want to talk to you about. Then we have some listener questions that hopefully we’ll have time for. So we’ll see where we go.
But Karen BK Chan, for those of you who are new to her work, is a sex and emotional literacy educator in Toronto, Canada. BK has taught and written about sex, sexuality, and emotional intelligence for over 18 years. She’s dedicated to having conversations about sexuality that are real, transformative, and kind. I love that you say kind in your bio about talking about sexuality. I think that’s so important.
Karen BK Chan: In fact, one of my favorite quotes that I just came upon last week that has described the last, let’s say, 20 years, is that when I was young, I used to admire clever people. Now that I’m old, I admire kind people. I don’t particularly identify as old, but it feels like that evolution is important.
Dawn Serra: Yeah, I agree. That’s actually one of the things that I wanted to do when I very first started this podcast two and a half years ago, was I felt like there was a lot of sex advice in podcastland, from people who had very strong opinions, often to the point of being really cruel or judgmental. I really felt like this space needed some more empathy and kindness in the advice realm. And it’s something that I’ve just tried to do. I think that’s one of the things that comes across in your work so much is just empathy and kindness. I think that’s just such a beautiful way to draw people in and to help people open.
Karen BK Chan: Thank you. Likewise. Absolutely, likewise.
Dawn Serra: I know one of the things that you talk about a lot when you go to college campuses and talk about is consent and sexual communication. What’s your draw in talking about those topics? Why is that something that you’re passionate about and that you love presenting over and over and over again?
Karen BK Chan: Well, part of the draw is that it’s being talked about a lot, as with many things. It’s why I’m not really feeling like I’m in the flow with the mainstream flow. That I feel, ”OK. Now, I’m going to say something.” I really appreciate a lot of the fervor around sexual consent and how I do feel like we’re a part of a time that’s changing, where our norms are changing, where expectations are changing, where how we treat survivors is slowly changing. At the same time, I don’t know if consent education itself has gotten to a place where it’s actually really doing what it’s supposed to do – that is it’s helping people feeling empowered to practice consent, to experiment with consent, to give and receive and not give consent.
So it’s actually out of some dissatisfaction that draws me. My dissatisfaction comes from how often consent education comes from a place of rules and policy, and “Don’t do this or else you’ll get in trouble,” or “Don’t do this. It’s against the law.” It feels like the step that one would take in the beginning of feeling empowered. Like, “No. You can’t do this to me anymore,” or “You can’t take this for granted anymore.” But my dissatisfaction comes from the place where that’s a nice place for people who’ve been disempowered to get to. But that’s not the actual place where potential perpetrators, potential people who might violate other people’s consent, could actually hear the message.
Dawn Serra: That’s really powerful. It sounds like part of why you want to have these conversations the way that you have them is to not only help empower people who feel like they don’t have power or agency, but it’s also to speak to the people who may be doing things that end up being abusive or traumatic, so that they can have a different perspective or a different vocabulary around this.
Karen BK Chan: I feel like sometimes in our excitement, our empowerment to say how wrong it is to take agency away from someone, to be entitled to their needs, to actually physically and emotionally and mentally and spiritually hurt someone, that perpetrators, violators, offenders become… That, basically, we have to really make the act of that violation so evil because we’re trying to say this was very bad. But in the act of doing that, we make perpetrators and violators evil. By doing that, we actually are alienating people from identifying themselves as possibly those violators. I don’t know if I’m making myself clear, but–
Dawn Serra: Oh, yeah.
Karen BK Chan: Right? So the message that we give is don’t be evil. Most people can look you in the eye and say, “I’m really, truly not evil.” So then the messages are for someone else. They’re for really bad people. They’re not for me. I’m hoping that the conversation can widen so that we can all see that, for a myriad of reasons, we are all sometimes tempted to, or inadvertently or even purposefully, unconsciously violate other people’s boundaries. That’s much more likely to lead to actually a change in behavior when I can acknowledge that I might be that person.
Dawn Serra: That’s really, really interesting. I’m so happy to hear you say that because I just had this really interesting experience. I was an observer of it in a session on embodied consent at the Woodhull Sexual Freedom Summit. We had had this very rich discussion about embodied consent and rape culture and toxic masculinity and empowering people to learn what it feels like to be embodied in your yes and your no. This comment was made by one of the speakers that said, “One of the things you can do is go in with a plan.” If you feel like you’re not good at saying no in the moment, then perhaps one of your plan items might be, “If I’m unsure, I’ll excuse myself to get a glass of water.”
This cis white gentleman in the back raised his hand, and I thought that he shared something really brave in a room that was primarily cis women and queer folks. He said, “Twenty years ago me would have seen someone excusing themselves to get a glass of water as, ‘Oh. She wants me to keep doing this sexual thing. She’s just thirsty, so when she gets back, we’ll continue.’” I thought that was a really, really interesting share and a vulnerable share on his part to admit that there was a time in his life when he just would have assumed the activity is going to continue exactly as it’s been. This person just needs a glass of water. Instead of actually thinking, “Maybe this person’s getting a glass of water because they need a little bit of space and checking in.”
Dawn Serra: And instead of honoring that vulnerability and pointing out the way that people can change – and that’s a big part of the conversation that’s missing – everyone in the room jumped on him and saying, “No, that’s not consent. That’s not consent. Silence isn’t consent.” It turned into this very passionate and almost angry attacky conversation that was focused on a behavior that was hypothetical from the past. I thought that was such a miss, in that we do so often fail to give people space to say, “Wow! Yeah. I’ve totally been in a place where I did something that hurt someone,” or “I’ve come so close to doing that.” When we create that attack space, where we’re all so revved up around proving what’s right and saying how to do things, I feel like we’re just shutting people down, and that closes the conversation.
Karen BK Chan: Yeah. I really resonate with you on that. I’ve been in instances like that where I feel like I understand why this is happening when we feel so strongly about this. This is the world we’re trying to build so passionately. And it’s the only world we want to accept. The one where there are no gray zones. There is no, “Silence is consent,” not even implied. But, yeah. I’m looking for that balance so that we can be really failingly human, and at the same time, have really big ideals and aspirations.
Dawn Serra: That approach just feels good to me to hear because I think you’re right that we have this tendency to just other people, instead of talking about the behaviors, and how sometimes good people make mistakes. Sometimes good people misinterpret body language because not all consent is verbal. Just going back to the conversation we had at the summit, how even in non-sexual situations, we’re culturally trained to constantly push against people’s boundaries, and to convince them for that last drink or to convince them to dance when they said no, and this kind of social expectation around pressuring people to change their mind to make ourselves feel better and not realizing how that behavior so easily translates into feeling like it’s OK to do the same in the bedroom.
Karen BK Chan: Totally.
Dawn Serra: What do you think is the number one question or the main type of resistance that you experience when you’re presenting around consent and sexual communication?
Karen BK Chan: What I perceive to be the biggest challenge is a mixture of shame and embarrassment and a drastically different way of living life that sex educators are promoting. So it just seems so far-fetched, some of the ideas. So often… I’ll share something quite simple. One of my favorite/least favorite things that happen in PG movies is how kisses happen. I remember a time in my life when I was a bit younger where it used to just feel very romantic when one actor would force themselves on another until the other submits or gets the point or finally arrives. Then it started getting less and less romantic and less and less of a turn on. Now, most of these scenes actually just feel really yucky.
But that was a good 20 year journey for me. I’m invested in that journey. I feel like for a lot of folks, I forget what it’s like to be them. What it’s like to see those images and feel like, “That is actually a picture of sexual seduction I want for myself or I want to see happen to me?” I feel like sometimes I’m selling a good or selling goods that people have not asked for. So that’s the biggest challenge. I feel like people are perceiving that I’m from outer space where I say, “You just have to say, ‘God, I would love to kiss you sometime.’” I get a lot of resonance back when I say, “Do you think I’m being ridiculous?” And that’s when I feel like I’m in alignment with the room oftentimes is when I tell them that I know they might think that I’m being ridiculous, as opposed to insisting that, “No. This is really the only way to do things, guys. Just check yourselves.”
Dawn Serra: That’s really interesting. I love that you share that. That oftentimes, what we’re presenting feels like a total paradigm shift or really radical. Because so many of us as sex educators have been really thinking about this, and it’s our lives for years and years and years. We’re coming to people who are on step one or just a few steps in, and they’re, “There’s no way in hell I’d ever be OK doing that.”
Karen BK Chan: Yes. And why would I want to be?
Dawn Serra: Yeah.
Karen BK Chan: I get sometimes that the sex educators, to a lot of public, regular, civic, folk, are hard to understand, like, “Why are you like that? Why are you so out there?” So I’m into this idea of really honoring the journey that people have to make in order to do the things we want them to do. I would like for them to have some company in that journey, as opposed to just wave at them from really far, and say, “You got to be over here.”
Dawn Serra: Being able to walk with someone and talk to them about the places where it’s easy to get stuck or, “Yeah. That can feel really bad. It can feel really hard to be here.” Or, even sharing the ways that we ourselves have really messed up or the times we’ve felt really terrible or insecure, so that it feels less isolating, and it feels less dramatic. I think that’s a really beautiful approach.
I actually gotten to a Twitter fight a couple of days ago with a gentleman who was telling me that to convince someone to have sex with you is consent if ultimately they end up saying yes. We went back and forth and back and forth and back and forth. I just started realizing he’s trying, but he’s not understanding the nuance. I’m using this very, “Absolutely not. Your wrong,” language. So I started shifting it a little bit to soften it and using some examples. And we actually came together a little bit in what we were saying. In the end, he was like, “OK. I’m starting to get what you’re saying.” But it was definitely one of those moments of realizing, “He’s doing the best with what he’s been given. Now, I’m asking him to do even more without a whole lot of information or space,” because on Twitter, it’s so limited. It just really highlighted that for me.
Karen BK Chan: That conversation that you just talked about, I’m also thinking maybe it’s already so explicit. It’s not just implied. He’s not just arguing for– I mean, I wasn’t part of this conversation. I don’t know what conversation you’re referring to. But he’s not just arguing for philosophical consent concepts. He’s also talking about things he might have participated in his whole life. That’s so hard to be like, “OK. here I am. I’m going to talk to Dawn Serra, and if she wins, then I’m a rapist.” That’s hard.
Dawn Serra: It is hard. Yeah. I think that that’s a place where we fail a lot as educators, as advice givers, as writers. I see so many really beautiful articles coming out of very radical online spaces, like the body is not an apology or everyday feminism, but often those articles are really saying, “If you’ve done these things, you’re one of the bad guys.”
Karen BK Chan: Yeah.
Dawn Serra: Yeah. That’s a space where I feel like the internet really is failing is giving space to say, “You may have done these things in the past, but here’s a better way. Let’s all do better and heal together.” Also, I think it’s so important. I think I’ve mentioned on the podcast before, there have been a couple of times when I’ve definitely violated someone’s consent and in no way was it intentional, in no way was I trying to harm them. I just thought I was doing the right thing by touching someone without asking because we were kissing, and so the next thing you do is you touch someone after that. Then realizing afterwards, they were really uncomfortable. That doesn’t make me a bad person. It means that I had this learning moment, and now I can look back and say, “Well, I don’t ever want to feel like that again.”
Karen BK Chan: Yeah.
Dawn Serra: I know one of the other things that you do a lot of work around and talk around is rejection resilience. I think that’s a space where a lot of the people who are listening today have a lot of interest and curiosity, and how to cultivate that within themselves. I’ve talked about it – some – but I would love to roll around in that a little bit in just, for you, what rejection resilience means, and then how we can start cultivating that in ourselves and making space for those feelings?
Karen BK Chan: Yeah. Great, great question. It’s one of the things I love thinking about the most lately. I think of it alongside resilience of all kinds, in terms of stomaching all kinds of emotions. Rejection, to me, feels so basic that if I can’t stomach that as a possible outcome, then I’m not going to do whatever could lead to that outcome, which might be to ask for consent, to seek something where there’s an answer. So, yeah.
To me, if a person is not able to accept or deal with a rejection, then that person likely wouldn’t seek consent at all, and the whole point is moot, regardless of how many scripts we give them, and how much they understand the law. That emotionally, it just becomes too huge a hurdle. So I’m really invested in working with people about rejection and how it feels. There’s not a lot, I suppose, we can do as an educator or a speaker or even a clinician working with someone to make someone like rejection. But I find the basic tools of emotional intelligence really helped – this naming it – so that, for some people, it actually becomes clarifying that, “Oh. That’s rejection. I’m not actually angry. I’m feeling really rejected. I’m not feeling suddenly disengaged and disinterested, or I’m not suddenly in a rage. For no reason, I’m actually feeling rejected.”
Karen BK Chan: And it’s not easy to feel rejected. It’s really not. I feel like, socially, in many gender scripts, there’s just so many things available to us – emotionally, socially, relationally – to prevent the feeling of rejection. So often, the things that are mistaken for being rejection are actually disguises or masks for rejection. They’re shielding us from actually feeling the rejection.
Dawn Serra: Yes. Oh, I think that’s so powerful. Specifically around the disguise, I feel like that’s where so often we get the competition around not being the person who texts first or not being invested if someone just disappears because we couldn’t care. And, yeah. These personas that we put on that, ultimately, what they do is they completely shut us off from vulnerability and connection.
Karen BK Chan: Yes. The word vulnerability is one that’s embraced by a number of people. But I don’t think, in the wider circle, that’s a good word, that’s a nice word. And certainly not rejection. So there are just no ways to talk about feeling rejected without seeming like a loser, seeming like a failure. It’s so much tied in to masculine scripts, specifically, but really, to everyone’s scripts.
Dawn Serra: I love exactly what you just said around the scripts and feeling like a loser because I think that ties so much into a lot of the issues that we see around consent and rape culture, and just having these really shallow connections – “Because if you reject me, that defines who I am as a person, and I can’t risk that. So instead, I’m going to do something where there’s not even an option for you to reject me.” Instead of seeing the rejection–
I remember, I was probably 22 or 23, and my friend at the time was in his probably mid-30s. I remember him telling me that when he goes to a gay bar to pick up guys, he’ll approach anyone who catches his eye, and he doesn’t care if they say yes or no because it’s not about him if they reject him. There’s lots of other options that he has. So if he’s interested in someone, he expresses that interest. If they say yes, great. If they say no, great. Nothing to do with me. Then he moves on, and he has a great time, no matter what.
Dawn Serra: He was trying to tell me rejection has nothing to do with you and everything to do with the other person and their feelings that day or their biases or whatever. That felt so completely foreign to my experience of rejection that I felt like there’s no way I could ever feel that way about someone telling me no. Because someone telling me no means, “I’m undesirable. I’m unlovable. I’m not wanted,” which reinforces all the fears that I already have about the way that I look. It was this conversation that, for me, is crystallized in my memory because I remember feeling like, “There’s no way I’m ever going to be that kind of person.”
I really feel like one of the reasons that he felt that way is because he had just been rejected so many times over the years and realized he’s still OK. He gets yeses still, too. It was just this practice of, “Well, I’ve been rejected hundreds of times, and I’m still happy and healthy and loved. I have all these great experiences. So I guess rejection doesn’t really mean anything.”
Karen BK Chan: Yeah, yeah. That’s interesting. You’re tapping into this evaluative, this basic value of a human being being presented for evaluation when you’re trying to seduce someone or invite them somewhere or ask them out or proposition them for something. It’s just so interesting to me because that is, at least in this moment in the West, that’s often how sexual desirability is framed is, “What are you? Are you a ten? Is he an eight?” It’s not about compatibility or the relational status. It’s not like, “What’s it like between us?” It’s more like, “What are you? How much do I make? What’s the size of your boobs?” They’re these objective values that we assign. I can’t help but believe that all of these things, alongside this idea of, “Winners are good and losers are bad,” is all part of our capitalist society. I criticize capitalism, and at the same time, love it because it’s fun in so many ways. But I do think it’s part of the ideological framework that we live in.
Dawn Serra: I completely agree because so many of these values around, “Are you a ten? Are you an eight? How hot are you? Are you bikini ready? Are you ready to pick up guys on the beach?” those are all tied to, “I can sell you a cream that makes your face look younger. I can sell you a bikini that’s more flattering, I can sell you alcohol that makes you more appealing.” It really does tie back to–
I mean, almost all of the messages that we have about what’s desirable and sexy entirely come from marketing and Hollywood. I mean, our parents don’t sit us down and say, “Here’s how you decide what’s desirable. Here’s how you figure out for yourself what sexy feels like.” It’s all put on us by marketing agencies and ads and glossy magazines and television shows.
Dawn Serra: I think you’re completely right that all of this is tied together in this really fascinating, but simultaneously overwhelming and toxic mix that is fun to pull apart. But I find that sometimes when I start going down this rabbit hole, it starts to just feel like, “Holy crap! It’s literally everything I’ve ever seen and been exposed to in my whole life, upholds these things I’m trying to fight against and trying to overturn. And it’s quite overwhelming, which I think ties back to why there’s so many people who struggle with consent and sexual communication and rejection. Because when you start to really see that big picture, you’re like, “Well, crap. It’s everything.”
You were talking about how rejection resilience goes with resilience of really anything. I know some of the other things that you talk about is learning how to tolerate fear and uncertainty and loss. So often, I get questions here on the show from people who want to tell a partner something or want to ask them something or want to understand something more about their experience and want to ask somebody out on a date, and they’re asking me how to do it. What I think they’re actually asking is not how to say the thing, but, “How can I do the thing without feeling any of these icky feelings, and how can I say the thing in a way that I won’t get rejected, I won’t get broken up with, and I won’t feel uncertain?”
Karen BK Chan: Yeah.
Dawn Serra: So I’d love to know, what’s some of the work or just some of the ideas you have around how we can become more tolerant of these feelings that can actually be really, really icky when we have to sit with them for a while?
Karen BK Chan: Yeah. Well, naming them is a really big one. I think there’s research– Never quote me on research because sometimes I make it up. But I believe there is research that shows that when you name how you’re feeling it, it transforms the feeling, either sooner or more easily. But, of course, name something not for the purpose of getting rid of it. Just knowing that it helps to help it go wherever it needs to go.
Then I actually do believe in practice. I went to a creativity conference recently called Mind Camp, which I love. It’s so stimulating because it’s so connected to sexuality except folks there call it creativity and the practice of creative problem-solving. I ended up spending many hours in improv classes. While I was there, I learned so much about what is hard to bear for me.
Karen BK Chan: You and me, we’re just talking about not being a loser or not being wrong or not feeling like a failure. I actually felt, while I was in these improv classes… They’re not improv comedy. They’re just improv. They might be words. They might be movements. They might be comedic, but they are also often tragic and sad. All kinds of feelings come up. But the feelings that came up that were really hard to stomach include not being good – not being good at something, not being in control.
One of the exercises was to pick a random word out of a bucket, and then tell a story. You have to start the moment you see the word, and you go for a minute. And I love telling stories. So I’m invested in being good at storytelling, unlike just moving around like a monkey or something. I’m not as invested in being good at that. There’s a moment when I looked into the bucket, one of the pieces of paper was slightly open, and I could spy the word. And it wasn’t my turn, yet. I was holding the bucket because I was next. A part of me really thought about cheating and using that word and starting to think of my story before it was my turn to just get one more minute in there. Then I caught myself and thought, “What are you doing here if not to practice feeling completely destabilized and normalizing this feeling of destabilization?” So I didn’t cheat, and I picked something else.
Karen BK Chan: But the point is, I do believe that practice is the only way. It’s the only way I would make new pathways for how I react to my hot face when I’m embarrassed, when I’m feeling like I want to hide, when I have the impulse to lie or cheat, so that I can look better or so that I can seem more competent than I might be. I think we talked about this last time too on the summit. But this idea of practicing in controlled environments, I’m a big, big fan.
Dawn Serra: I love how you’re talking about you’re invested in being good at certain things. Because I think, sometimes, we look at ourselves and we say, “Well, I was totally OK with saying no to my friends last week. I was super OK with saying no to my coworker, so I must be really good at saying no,” without realizing that you’re maybe less invested in their opinions or you may have more practice. So I love how you were talking about you weren’t so invested in acting out a monkey. It’s OK to be a failure at that. Because that’s not a super important part of the things that you enjoy and who you are. But in storytelling, because you enjoy that, you want to make sure that you’re good at it, so you can reinforce that story about yourself.
Karen BK Chan: Yes.
Dawn Serra: I think that’s such a powerful moment of self-awareness and being able to articulate that. I had this aha moment while you were talking of just like, “Wow. What am I really invested in that I’m not aware of?” Because that’s going to drive so much of my behavior and the fears that I have, the things that I avoid. I think that that’s so powerful. And I love that you’re saying practice. Do you think there has to be a certain level of awareness that you are practicing in order to practice?
Karen BK Chan: I think it makes it easier, but I don’t think it’s necessary. Because I bet, if I was thrown into improv classes throughout my adolescence, I would have reaped many of the rewards. Just some resilience around saying things that are not funny when I want to be funny or looking not so elegant in my movements. I do think that it can just happen. But knowing makes it easier and makes it more effective. So it’s a good time-saving device.
Dawn Serra: Yeah.
Karen BK Chan: The other thing about the practice that I… I was interested in practicing making “mistakes.” I was not particularly interested in practicing stomaching other people’s guilt and other people’s shame. But I saw a lot of that. I saw other people messing up, and then crushing themselves a little bit, and going through their own motions of dealing with feeling like a failure, feeling like, “Oh, my god. I’m the person who does not belong in this class. Everyone else was good. I suck.” I wasn’t there for that. I ended up witnessing a lot of it. I felt myself compelled, in different moments, sometimes to say, “No, no. You’re amazing. Just so you know.” I wanted to pick them up. Other times, witnessing someone else being ashamed brought up something in me that made me want to get away from them. I found them shameful, too. I wasn’t quite ready to do that work. I wasn’t really that interested, but it happened to me anyway. So I feel like it happens even without conscious, studious effort.
Dawn Serra: Yeah. As you’re talking, I’m starting to get this– The advice that I so often give to people – both on the blog and on the podcast, who write in wanting to make some huge disclosure or ask their partner something really scary – is I usually tell them back up a couple of steps, and get better at just talking about things when it’s easy and fun, when you’re not in the bedroom or asking questions and being genuinely curious to build a foundation where it feels safe to have these conversations where you’re not super emotionally vulnerable and super emotionally invested in the outcome. So that when you get to that stage, then it’s much easier because you’ve built up practice and resilience and you know how to make that container.
It occurs to me as you’re talking, that in doing that, I’m inviting people to practice these uncomfortable things, but in low stakes or more controlled environments, like you said. But also, there is the conscious person who’s going to be consciously cultivating these spaces, and then the person who may not really be aware that they’re practicing the partner because they weren’t part of that conversation, and how it’s still going to happen. The two of them are still going to have these conversations where one person might be consciously saying, “OK. Tonight, I want to ask these fun questions,” and then the partner just plays along. But in the end game, both of them are more skilled and have more information, and now have this new memory together.
Karen BK Chan: Yeah.
Dawn Serra: So, yeah. Oh, my gosh. You’re giving me so many aha moments about myself.
Karen BK Chan: You’re so awesome. One of the things I wanted to jump in on when you were saying you’re wondering what your things are – the things you’re invested in, your stories – one of my favorite versions of “Would you rather?” to play is, “Would you rather be misunderstood for being… Let’s say the question I would ask you, Dawn, would be like, “Would you rather be misunderstood for being unkind or uninsightful?”
Dawn Serra: Oh. As soon as you said uninsightful, I was like, “That one.” That felt worse.
Karen BK Chan: We could go for hours, and I would. I would love to do that with you one day just to keep going on. Like, how do you not want to be perceived? What are the things about you that you would hate to be thought of as. I think saying is misunderstood, you don’t have to then explain yourself and because I’m actually on it. So it allows us to play longer.
Dawn Serra: Oh. OK. We’re going to have to make a date to do that because that game sounds so squeaky and vulnerable and icky. And I love it. I want to find all those little places where I’m like, “Ooh, that feels weird. Oh, I don’t know if I like that,” until I get all those little insights. Oh, my gosh. I love that. I hope our listeners play this game. But I also think I’m a little weird in that I love feeling really awfully vulnerable. When I get that stomach-turny, like, “Oh, shit. Should I be doing this?” I’m like, “I love being here.”
Karen BK Chan: I do think it’s a kind of high. It becomes like really… It’s really self-fulfilling. It’s great. If you can get high from becoming more honest with yourself, then you’re actually doing it for less effort than it would cost most people.
Dawn Serra: Yes. I also think that one of the really powerful things about… I try to display my own vulnerability often. Either through my blog posts, where I share places where things hurt really badly or even on the podcast when I talk about, “Well, that didn’t go the way that I thought it would.” I feel like because we don’t have very many places where we see real, honest vulnerability, that showing it is so important when we have the opportunity to do that.
I think that’s true in our relationships, too. Going back to the disguises that you were talking about, so many of the things that I see happening in relationships is, people wanting to connect with the person that they’re with, but not having to feel vulnerable about it. They want the reward without having to take the risk or take the leap. And trying to demonstrate over and over and over again to people, one of you has to be the one with the courage that says, “All right. Here I am. Here’s the scary stuff. Here’s the thing I don’t want to show you.” Then that grants permission to the other person to say, “Wow. Well, they just showed me that. I guess I can show them my scary bits, my soft parts.” You can’t have that softness without one of you having the courage to go first.
Karen BK Chan: Yes. That’s actually one of the things– I mean, you and I only know each other professionally. But one of the things I loved the most about you is from the very first contact that we had over email, I can sense all of that – that you’re willing to take the first step, you were willing to be the first to put your hand out, and all I had to do was reach half way. So I feel those things are so rewarding once you.. The positive feedback loop is just so strong. The first step in taking the first step might be actually the hardest.
Dawn Serra: I agree. Yup, I totally agree with that. I think that the very first time we try something or we go to do something, we inherently know we’re not going to be very good at it because so many of the things that we do in our lives are a skill. The first time we try– I mean, if I were to sit down at the piano right now and try and make something beautiful come out of it, you’d get some shitty chopsticks. I mean, that’s it. But when I sit down to do it, I know that. I know I’m not going to be doing a Beethoven symphony on the piano that sounds beautiful. But then we expect ourselves to be experts the first time we go to talk about sex or the first time we’re trying to make a relationship work, when we’ve never actually practiced those skills and made ourselves vulnerable in that way. That first time is always like, “I could die. It feels that drastic or it feels that horrible.” Then when you survive it and you’re like, “Wow. It wasn’t that bad,” and you do it again, and then you do it again, now it feels normal after a while. Yeah.
Oh, that’s such good stuff. Oh, my gosh. Oh, my gosh! I just literally want to drive to Toronto right now and get some tea, and just sit with you and talk for 12 hours.
Karen BK Chan: Let’s do that. I’ll meet you halfway.
Dawn Serra: OK. That’s perfect. OK. Well, we have maybe ten minutes left. So I’d love to know, would you rather – different version – talk about empathy and emotional intelligence or would you like to help me answer a listener question that’s about communicating vulnerably around sex?
Karen BK Chan: Question.
Dawn Serra: Yay!
Karen BK Chan: No idea what they are.
Dawn Serra: OK. Perfect. Well, we can fumble through it together because it’s a really, really sweet question. When I read it, I was like, “Oh. I think BK would be great at this one.” So let’s see. We got an email from Natalie. It says, “Hello, Dawn. I love your podcast. I recently found it, and I have listened to almost all of them. You’re really easy to listen to, and you give great advice. I’m a married 23 year old lesbian. My partner and I have been married for almost three years. It has been amazing being married to my best friend.
My question is that my partner and I have a pretty good sex life, but we don’t communicate very well during sex. So I never know what she likes or not. We like to watch lesbian porn together, but I also watch straight and other kinds of porn by myself. And she doesn’t know that. We recently bought a magic wand, and I love it. But I orgasm really fast, and my wife doesn’t get a chance to come because she’s too worried about pleasing me. I guess I’m just asking for help on how to communicate and how to approach certain conversations. Thanks. Natalie.”
Dawn Serra: I love this question. Well, first of all, I love that they’re married, and she’s talking about being married to her best friend, and they have this great relationship. They just seem to be stuck in not being able to really talk about their experiences. So I’d love to know where do you think is a good jumping off point for Natalie if she wants to get better at communicating during sex, but also it sounds like she’s feeling some guilt around orgasming and her wife isn’t because she’s giving. What are the first things that pop up for you on this one?
Karen BK Chan: Well, I don’t know if this is my final answer, but the first thing that popped up was just talking about sex, not about sexual experience with each other. I like to detour a lot in life, including in conversations. I’m not sure what’s happening for both people, and I don’t know what their sexual histories are. I don’t know how comfortable they talk about sexuality, period. So I wouldn’t look right in the bull’s eye and say, “How do you talk about sexual experience between these two people?” But I would ask questions like, “When was the first time you ever saw a naked person that wasn’t yourself?” – things that are close to nothing at all, so that the rapport builds, and that it’s like easing into more scary territory. In those conversations, hopefully, things also come up. Like, “Oh, my parents would kill me if they even know that I saw their videotapes.” Then we get into a little bit more – “Oh. OK. So I didn’t talk about this. I never talked about it. I’ve had other partners, and we don’t talk.” So I’m more into talking about other things. What would you say?
Dawn Serra: That’s actually exactly what I was going to suggest that they start with. Too often, when we try to talk about sex, we have this habit of dictating our experiences and assuming the other person’s experience, and then feel like we’ve had a conversation. Instead, I think it’s so powerful to get really good at asking questions, and just absorbing this other person’s world and experience and the language they use to describe certain things. And genuinely, just being curious without any expectations. Because I feel like that’s how you get some really, really powerful information out of people that can then help you have better conversations the next time and the next time.
So I love like taking a few steps back, and let’s just practice asking each other fun questions about sex. I think fun is another place where it’s easy to forget. This is all supposed to be stuff that we enjoy. It can be a really fun, playful way to connect with someone and ourselves and our pleasure and delight in our bodies. When we feel like we’re not doing something well, because culturally, I think we tie so much importance to being great in bed, that it’s easy to be like, “Well, now we have to talk about the sex.” And it’s got its weight behind it. Instead of, “How can we talk about sex in a new way? What are things I’ve never asked you? What’s something that you wish I would ask you about?” Turning it into something that’s fun and playful and easy. Not to say that there aren’t going to be moments that aren’t serious or painful, but approaching it, I think, from a place of playfulness and lightness, gives you so much more opportunity to also be open and not defensive.
Karen BK Chan: Yeah. I’m with you.
Dawn Serra: The other thing that kind of jumped out at me was, “I orgasm really fast, and my wife doesn’t get a chance to come because she’s too worried about pleasing me.” I’m really curious about that. Because there seems to be this assumption that there’s something wrong with, ”I have a lot of orgasms. My wife gives me lots of pleasure, and she doesn’t get a chance to come.” Is that actually a problem? Maybe that’s exactly what your wife wants out of your sexual connection right now. Can we make space for that, instead of the story you’re telling yourself? What’s the actual story? How can you get more information from your wife about how she feels about it all. But I think that comes once you get a little bit more comfortable just talking sex, instead of, like you said, the actual sexual experiences.
Karen BK Chan: Yeah, yeah. I was going to say that exact same thing, too. I mean, it’s interesting that there is some assumption that we know exactly what we want, and that we want is pretty clear. I mean, I can really relate to that kind of sexual experience where giving pleasure is very safe and secure, and it’s so pleasurable. But receiving it or switching roles might put me in a very unfamiliar place, and I’m not sure if I even want that. So I’m into these conversations where partners can talk about, “What do you want? Is it actually good for you? I’m making some assumptions. I might be wrong,” – to share all of that.
Also, I’m into people pushing each other a little. When you get to that point that it feels comfortable enough to talk about these things, to actually say, “What would happen if I gave you pleasure and you weren’t allowed?” Not just for something different to happen between the two people, but also, instead of seeing sex as the thing to enjoy, but seeing it as actually then a vehicle for these two people to start moving each other in a deep way.
Dawn Serra: So glad you said that. I have a profile on FetLife. One of the things that’s in my profile is my fetish is intimacy and seeing how deep I can go with people. To me, that’s one of the powerful things about having true vulnerability and intimacy with someone. It doesn’t even have to be a sexual relationship or a romantic relationship. I do this with my friends, too.
When you get to a place where you can truly open yourself up and really share the scary stuff, you can start pushing each other. You can start exploring edges and tiptoeing into those places where it’s like, “Oh, this doesn’t feel so safe, but I’m with someone that I trust and who has my back. So maybe it’s OK for me to question myself. Maybe it’s OK for me to do this thing that I always felt a lot of shame around.” That, to me, is where there’s so much juicy, meaty growth. That’s the life-changing memory stuff that you get of looking back and being like, “That was the first time I did that thing I never thought I would do. It’s because you invited me to do it, and I felt safe.”
Dawn Serra: Oh, I love that so much. That just made all my hair stand up. Yes. Yeah. But you’re right. It takes being able to talk, being able to share, feeling safe, going places that don’t feel safe–
Karen BK Chan: Yes.
Dawn Serra: That’s the power of creating a relationship like this. If you’ve married your best friend and you have this wonderful relationship, then start cultivating that depth and start nudging at each other. Like, “What if you weren’t allowed to touch me all night long, and I was just going to touch you? What would that feel like? And being OK with being like, “Oh, god. That feels so uncomfortable.”
Karen BK Chan: Yeah. I love how you put that – feeling safe to go to places that aren’t safe.
Dawn Serra: Yeah. Oh, my gosh. Oh, my gosh. That felt so good. Well, I hope Natalie that that got you at least a jumping off point for exploring new ways to communicate with your wife about sex. I think that BK’s advice of just starting with questions about sex and making it part of your daily conversations and your regular date nights and when you two are just chatting will help create that foundation that you can build on to then start sharing the more personal stuff and asking the more personal questions. Also, exploring each other’s experiences and assumptions. I think that that’s a really powerful place to be.
OK. We’re right at the hour and I want to know, do you want to go for a few more minutes and answer one more question or do you need to wrap up?
Karen BK Chan: I have time for you. Absolutely.
Dawn Serra: Yay! OK. I got this question from a listener named Lindsay. She sent a jumble of questions, a whole bunch of them. I’ve been answering them piecemeal as I have different guests on. This one, I thought, was a really interesting question, and it’s about rape fantasies. So would you be willing to roll around in this a little bit with me?
Karen BK Chan: Yeah.
Dawn Serra: OK. Lindsey says, “The second question that I have is a little more difficult for me to articulate. I don’t want to sound defensive, and I’m genuinely curious. You’ve talked a few times on the show about sadism and rape play. You even had a sadism expert on the show.” – who was Frozen Meursault.
She says, “I guess I’m still struggling with how these acts are intimate. I can see rape play being empowering for someone who has been raped to now be the rapist in their fantasies or scenes. But how is it helpful or arousing if the reverse is true? A rape survivor being raped again in their fantasy? I also struggle with what causes someone to enjoy or be aroused by seeing someone else in pain or crying. These may be difficult questions to answer, but I’m really trying to understand. Honestly, partially because I occasionally have rape-ish fantasies, even though I’m terrified of rape in real life, and I struggle with why I think of that.”
Karen BK Chan: What a great question.
Dawn Serra: I know. I agree. I love the vulnerability in this question. Lindsay, I love that you’re asking a question that both scares you and makes you uncomfortable, but you still also have this curiosity around it. That’s an attitude that really resonates with me. What are your initial thoughts as we dig into this?
Karen BK Chan: I have so many.
Dawn Serra: Yeah. Me, too.
Karen BK Chan: I’ll pick one, and that is I think rape and sexual violence is so prevalent in every day. We witness it, we watch it in movies. That it affects all of us, even folks who are not survivors. I feel like what healing and what pleasure and what transformation that’s available to go through rape play is actually there for everyone who might have experienced these kinds of violences – directly, indirectly or just somewhere in between. And that the healing and the good things that come out of it is to be able to be in control and recontextualize something that is so intense, so stimulating in that way that it stimulates all of our senses. It triggers all kinds of responses within the psyche, within our spirit, within our bodies, and do it on our own terms. I think that’s puzzle piece number one. What are you thinking, Dawn?
Dawn Serra: Well, I have two thoughts on that. The first is, I really resonate with what you just said about getting to retell the story. As a rape survivor, there is something, for me, very empowering about choosing to give my power away, and being able to play that out with someone that I trust. It’s this retelling of what it means to have either my power taken away or giving my power away. So I really love this perspective that you’re offering around. healing.
The other thing that came to mind was, I recently talked to Princess Kali, who is a massive BDSM expert. One of the things that she said is there’s a difference between a rape fantasy and a ravishment fantasy. Often, what we’re actually talking about when someone has a rape fantasy is actually a ravishment fantasy. The fantasy is someone wants you so much that they can’t be held back by this need, and they just want to consume you and savor you and enjoy you. Just overpower you with this need, versus an act of violence, which is more rape fantasy. Where in the fantasy, perhaps you’re actually being injured and hurt and scared. So there’s, energetically, a difference. If we were to get really intellectual about it, a ravishment certainly is a consent violation, by all means, in so many ways. But energetically, it feels different to me.
Dawn Serra: I think one question is, to Lindsay, these rape-ish fantasies that you have, are the fantasies really about violence and pain – since she’s also asking questions about sadism. I think there’s a possibility of that – or are these fantasies about someone just being so overtaken with your desirability and your beauty and your enticing self that they just can’t hold themselves back? I think there’s some nuance there to dig into.
Karen BK Chan: I can see how both of those hold beautiful possibilities for the experiences of both. It might be interesting to different people.
Dawn Serra: Yeah. To me, one of the powerful things about fantasies that are taboo is that we are giving ourselves an opportunity to play in spaces that help us to learn things about ourselves, that help us to stretch our understanding of our own pleasure and our own experiences.
I think that’s one of the powerful things about fantasies is there’s a vast difference to me about fantasizing about being raped and/or ravished, and actually being raped. In that, my fantasy gets to play out, however I want it to – as violent, as cruel, as mean or as loving and sensual as it does. It’s me controlling the dialogue and the experience. So I’m still coming from a place of power, even if in the fantasy itself, I have none. That’s, to me, I think, a really important aspect of honoring and not shaming ourselves for exploring some of these taboos.
Karen BK Chan: I had some clients recently, a man and a woman, both cis folks, who were entering into these experimentations, where they’re exchanging power. Both of them are very feminist and lefty and progressive in thought. They were actually having a lot of struggle when they switch back and forth when the man has the power. When the woman has the power, they felt both quite comfortable because it felt like a manifestation of their politics. That’s how they want to right the world. It’s almost like a response to patriarchy that they felt safe to play that way. But when it’s switched and the man had the power, both of them became quite uncomfortable, although very aroused. It makes me think of Lindsay’s question because so many of these experiences and pleasures are so mixed with the intellectual understanding of the world. That the meanings come in when they don’t necessarily have to.
Dawn Serra: It makes so much sense to me that, intellectually, we love putting the woman in power and flipping this masculine patriarchy system that we’re in. From an intellectual standpoint, that feels good that we’re having sex that way. But then, as feminists, to have this couple, where when the man has power, to feel bad about it, but also to be very aroused. I think that just beautifully captures how so many of us feel about fantasies that really push at the edges of what we feel is right.
Karen BK Chan: Yeah. I have to agree with you that taboos, they’re the opposite of what we should stay away from, the places we want to go. That’s where desire can be very rich. And not all taboos are exciting to all people. But the taboos that excite you, they’re exciting because they’re so meaningful. They hold some kind of importance in your psyche. So I’m really into this idea of giving people permission to look, not just to enjoy and not just to to feel like they have permission, but there’s so much to harvest there to know about yourself. It’s so important to me. I fight for human rights on a daily basis. That’s why what looks like the violation of rights holds so much weight, so much gain for me.
Dawn Serra: Yeah, that’s such good stuff. I want to touch really quickly too, on her question about sadism. She said, “I’m still struggling with how these acts are intimate. And I struggle with what causes someone to enjoy or be aroused seeing someone in pain or crying.” In my experience, which is not vast, I don’t consider myself super sadistic. Maybe a little sadistic, depending on the situation.
But I’ve had folks who really identify as sadists talk to me about this. One of the things that I’ve heard again and again is that there is so much trust and vulnerability required in a space with someone for them to truly reveal to you what most humiliates them, what most scares them, what would be most painful. So from the person who is doing these things to the other person, you’re holding this very, very sacred space of, “This person is being so vulnerable with me, and I get to play in this space that’s so delicate and could be so damaging.” And there’s a tremendous amount of power and intimacy in that exchange.
Dawn Serra: I know that something else that Princess Kali said is, “You can’t humiliate someone over something that they don’t find humiliating.” I’m not going to share my most humiliating fears and experiences with just anybody. I have to really deeply trust someone before I say, :This is what makes me feel most exposed,” Then to let someone poke at me in those ways, for me, at least, I feel like that requires a great deal of intimacy. I’m not going to just let anybody do that to me. So I think, at least from my experience, that’s one way that sadism and sadistic play can be very arousing of just realizing how much someone’s letting you see, and how much power they’re giving to you, and what that feels like?
Karen BK Chan: Yeah. It’s interesting, from my experience, this is reminding me of playing taiko, the big Japanese drums that I played for many years. They’re very loud, and it looks very, very powerful. When we do workshops, often with groups of women, many women will refuse to do certain exercises because they say that they don’t mean to be violent. They have no interest in being violent and showing aggression.
What that highlighted for me was the conflation of power, the conflation of the expression of power with malice, with truly harming someone, of the true sense of violence where we are injuring someone in whatever way. Whereas these power exchanges that might look violent, that might have pain involved, they’re not actually violent. They’re not the definition of hurting someone against their will. That’s the main difference is, I can see why watching someone cry or be impaired – aside from knowing that it’s good for them or that they’re asking for it or that they’re into it and their healing, all those good things – that the surge of power itself is very pleasurable. It doesn’t have to be a bad thing to be very, very powerful, and to overpower someone has been given a really bad rap, actually. But it’s just as pleasurable as giving up power and surrendering. I think these are the ranges of human pleasures.
Dawn Serra: Something else that occurred to me as I was listening to you talk is, I know there are sadists out there who actively giggle and delight in making someone cry. But when we dig underneath that, I think often, what we find is for the person who is crying, they really want this experience. They want to find some way to release these tears or to be embodied, and they are up in their head all the time. So they seek out these experiences or these exchanges, where they know they’re going to be made to cry in some way. They want that for themselves because they get a high from it or because afterwards, they feel this immense sense of relief or because in some way, it’s tied to their pleasure. And because they want it so much, the person making them cry gets to delight in, “I’m giving you this thing. Even though you say you hate it, I know you really want it,” and making that into a game. It can look very mean. Both of them are getting what they want.
Well, I hope, Lindsay, that that gave you some new ways to think about rape fantasies and sadism and your own experience with your fantasies. If you have any other questions, feel free to write back. But I had a lot of fun rolling around in that with you, BK.
Karen BK Chan: Likewise.
Dawn Serra: We are now deliciously past our hour, so I would love for you to first share with our listeners how they can find you online and stay in touch and see what you’re up to.
Karen BK Chan: Cool. I’m at @karenbkchan. That’s my Twitter handle. I’m also at fluidexchange.org. I stopped giving out fluidexchange.org as much because I’m doing more and more emotional work, and a lot of people don’t see the connection. But they’re both going to the same place.
Dawn Serra: That’s really interesting. People don’t really see the connection. That’s all I see. But OK. Well, I will have links to your website and your Twitter on dawnserra.com. For anyone who’s interested, it’s a nice easy click from the podcast website. I just want to thank you so much, BK, for coming on the show and rolling around in all of these amazing topics with me. I feel so enriched from this conversation with you. So thank you.
Karen BK Chan: You’re so welcome. Thank you, Dawn. You’re one of my favorites. I love talking to you anytime.
Dawn Serra: Yay! Well, I would love to have you back at some point in the next couple of months to help me field even more questions, and to see what you’re up to if you’re up for it.
Karen BK Chan: Let’s do it.
Dawn Serra: OK. Well, to everybody who’s listening, thank you so much for joining in. If you have any questions yourself that you want me to field or if you have any comments or stories you want to share, just go to dawnserra.com. There’s a place where you can send me a note. You can also find all of the links from this episode there. I just want to thank you so much for listening. Until next time. This is Dawn Serra with Sex Gets Real.