Podcast: Play in new window | Download
What a week. Between moving from DC to Salt Lake City and the U.S. election, I’ve had so many big emotions and huge feels.
This week’s episode is a little different. It’s not everyday we have an election and a public response like the one that happened a few days ago. So, instead of a big interview or an hour of answer questions, this week is a short, vulnerable little note from me to you about the world we live in.
Specifically, how our sexual freedom and the way we love and do relationship is so deeply tied to racism, sexism, transphobia, ableism, and all systems of oppression. (Shout out to Conner Habib!)
It’s short. It’s political. It’s me laying in bed, feeling exhausted, and sharing some thoughts about the world and the work we need to do.
Follow Dawn on Instagram.
Resources from this episode
CodeSwitch – an NPR podcast by journalists of color
Sporkful’s “Who is this Restaurant For?” series on race and eating out
About Dawn Serra
Dawn Serra is a therapeutic Body Trust coach and pleasure advocate. As a white, cis, middle class, queer, fat, survivor, Dawn’s work is a fiercely compassionate invitation for each of us to deepen our relationships with our bodies and our pleasure as an antidote to the trauma, disconnection, and isolation so many of us feel. Your pleasure matters. Your body is wise. Dawn’s work is all about creating spaces and places for you to explore what that means on your terms. To learn more, visit dawnserra.com or follow Dawn on Instagram.
Dawn is also the creator of the annual Explore More Summit.
Listen and subscribe to Sex Gets Real
- Listen and subscribe on iTunes
- Check us out on Stitcher
- Don’t forget about I Heart Radio’s Spreaker
- Pop over to Google Play
- Use the player at the top of this page.
- Now available on Spotify. Search for “sex gets real”.
- Find the Sex Gets Real channel on IHeartRadio.
Episode Transcript
Dawn Serra: Hey, listeners, Dawn Serra here. I want to take a couple of minutes to say holy shit what a week. I, on a personal level, spent the entire week closing on my house, which I had for almost 16 years; and packing everything that I owned up, and then driving from DC to Salt Lake City, Utah with Alex and two very unhappy kitties. It was exhausting, which you can probably hear from my voice. While all of that was happening, the U.S. election also happened. And while I don’t want to spend a lot of time actually talking about the candidates or the election season, what I do want to say is I am scared and tired and heartbroken and grieving. I know that a lot of you are too. I mean from the KKK feeling, not only bold enough to endorse a presidential candidate, but to now post election, be publicly planning gatherings, to a friend of mine having to pull down her rainbow flag that she’s been flying outside of her home for many years because someone, the day after the election, went through the neighborhood and set a bunch of rainbow flags on fire – to some of the horrible things I’ve been reading about children doing to each other. One child in California brought deportation letters to school the day after the election and handed it to all of the kids who were LatinX and Hispanic and Mexican. It is sad that we are seeing so much hatred and violence erupt, because it feels like permission has been granted.
At the same time, I’ll say that it’s nice to finally see some folks with privilege realizing how prevalent racism and sexism and misogyny still is. It’s been invisible to certain people with tons and tons of privilege. Now, because all of this is being made visible, I think people are feeling a little shocked and dismayed if they aren’t part of marginalized communities. So I just wanted to take a couple of minutes to say that I want to make it crystal clear that this show is anti-racism, anti-sexism, anti-misogyny, anti-transphobia. I and this show are in no way impartial to what’s happening around us. I specifically will not invite guests on the show who use harmful narratives around gender or race as part of their work – no matter how popular they are. I do my best to try and ensure that the people who come on this show are actively fighting against oppressive systems in one way or another.
Dawn Serra: I also just want to go on record and say that I am a racist. As a white American, who has spent my life benefiting from white supremacy because we live in a white supremacist system, it’s unavoidable. It’s virtually impossible for me, as a white person, to not be racist. I am working daily, if I can, to undo that and to confront that in myself. I just want to say that when I first started actively trying to peel back and understand my own racism, it was so uncomfortable, and I had so many hissy fits. I thought so many of the things that I was being told because it made me so uncomfortable. And it’s gotten a lot easier. But even now, I mean, I’ve been doing this for years now – purposely putting myself into spaces where voices of color were being centered, so that I could listen and observe, and learn and confront these really horrible, uncomfortable things in myself. I still have so far to go.
I still say the wrong thing all the time. Yesterday, I just asked Alex this racist question, and five minutes later, realized what I had done and felt so much shame come up. But I’m learning and so I have to forgive myself for that. Luckily, I have people in my life who will call me out, but at the same time, love me and forgive me. I am doing my best to listen to voices that are marginalized, to elevate voices that are marginalized – both in my personal life and my professional life. I think that this election is really showing us how prevalent racism and sexism really still are in our culture.
Dawn Serra: So, you might be wondering what any of this has to do with sex and relationships and love since that’s what this show is about. And I just want to say it has everything to do with it. Connor Habib, when he was on this show had so many eloquent things to say about these things. The two things that I want to remind us is he said that, “If we want to be truly sex positive, we have to have radical politics.” He also said, “We cannot be free of sexual oppression without eliminating other systems of oppression.” So we can’t be in a world that embraces all types of bodies and all types of sexual needs, and all types of kinks and all types of love – if we aren’t also in a world that is actively, not passively, not thinking about, but actively also working to overturn racism and sexism and violence and transphobia. So, that means that if I’m not personally fighting against racism, if I’m not actively seeking to hear voices of color every single day, if I’m not listening to women, and trans folks, and queer folks, and folks with disabilities, if I’m not challenging my ableism, if I’m not confronting my own fatphobia and my own stories about consent, then I’m not actually truly committed to a world without sexual oppression. And that’s what I want to do with this show.
So all of it has to start with our conversations, with ourselves, and understanding our own privileges, and then our conversations at home. It can feel horrible and it can feel scary, and you can be terrified of saying the wrong thing. But sometimes we all have to say the wrong thing and feel that horrible realization of what we just did in order to grow.
Dawn Serra: I know that for a lot of you listening, you get it. For some of you listening, hearing me say these things is going to make you angry, and it’s going to make you uncomfortable. You might even stop listening to the show. That makes me sad. But I know that a lot of people aren’t ready to confront these things in themselves, much less hear someone else talk about it. So I really want to invite all of you to grieve, to feel disbelief, to feel anger, to feel confusion. I just want to say that this show and me, and the work that I do is fighting for the end of oppressive systems, is fighting for love. That’s where true, true liberation is going to come from for all of us. That’s where we’re going to be able to love openly and experience pleasure openly. It’s not when only a few of us can do those things, and the rest of us can’t.
So, I’m sending love to everybody and I want to thank you for being here with me and doing the work that all of you do. I know so many of you who listen to this show are also sex educators and activists, or even just in your personal lives are the black sheep in some way or another. I want to offer one other thing, sometimes it can be tough for white folks, especially, and white, male, super privileged folks to know where to start. And I want to share a couple of options. So if you really want to work to fight the oppressive systems that are at play, because you truly want to move past oppression and into sexual freedom, and body autonomy, and true liberation for everyone, then we all have to become intolerant of intolerance. That means that when someone says something sexist, or racist, or ableist, we need to be able to actually have that conversation and it can be in private or it can be public. But we can’t let those things go.
Dawn Serra: The most important thing you can do is not just say you’re an ally, because God knows allies have such a history of saying their allies, but then doing nothing, and just posting on social media; or saying that they believe in the freedom for all men while at the same time owning slaves. It’s about finding and actively seeking out voices and perspectives that are different from yours specifically from marginalized communities. Since you listen to the show, I know that you’re into podcasts, and I wanted to offer a couple of podcasts that you may have heard of and you may not have heard of.
So the first is NPR’s Code Switch. This is a show that’s done all by journalists of color, and it’s really wonderful and eye opening. The Sporkful, which is a podcast for eaters, did a four-part series called “Who is This Restaurant For?” It’s all about race and eating out. And there are some wonderful things in those four episodes of The Sporkful. 2 Dope Queens with Phoebe Robinson and Jessica Williams. It’s a hysterical comedy podcast, but they talk about race a lot, especially their experiences in dating as black women. Then Phoebe Robinson also has another podcast called Sooo Many White Guys. There’s three O’s in “Soo”, where she talks with performers, musicians, authors, and artists who are people of color, because she’s tired of the comedy industry specifically being dominated by white dudes. So she created this great podcast that centers the voices of people who are doing amazing work with amazing talent and also are people of color. Most of these podcasts and episodes are also centering the voices of women, which is really wonderful.
Dawn Serra: There’s a ton of other podcasts out there by people with disabilities and people who are kinky, and all these other types of intersections of marginalization. But I just want to encourage you to be actively seeking, listening to these voices and letting yourself be uncomfortable, because that’s what we need after this election – discomfort and a fear of it, I think, is the number one reason why the election went the way that it did is lots and lots of folks specifically white women, because their vote was shocking to see, was a fear of being uncomfortable, and a fear of change. So we have to be able to sit in that fear, both in our personal lives and in a larger scale.
So feel free to write in. I know some of you are going to be angry at me for saying these things and taking this position and your anger. That’s just what it takes to make change is sometimes we have to make some people angry and uncomfortable. I also want to say that I was going to air an interview for the rest of this week’s episode. Because of the move and because of how tired I am, and because of life in general, and how hard everything is feeling this week – I’m not going to do that. I’m going to take care of me and I’m going to allow myself to offer you what I’ve offered. And to also thank so many of you who have been writing in. I’ve gotten emails from people who named themselves Embarrassed, and Crazy Daisy, and Jenny, and Shelby – so many amazing questions and emails and feedback and thanks.
Dawn Serra: Next week, we will be back to answering your questions and sharing rad interviews with amazing people. I will be recording from Salt Lake City from now on, at least until my final move up to Vancouver, Canada. But I just want to send love to all of you. Thank you for being patient with me through all of the recent changes and thank you for allowing me a week even though I didn’t ask permission. I’m just going to ask forgiveness for making this episode a rather political one. I really can’t wait for what’s coming up next on the show. I have some amazing interviews that are already recorded and some incredible guests lined up. So I look forward to hearing from you and we will be back to our regularly scheduled program next week.
Until then, be sure to go to dawnserra.com. You can sign up for the newsletter. I have a couple of classes that are going to be online in December that you will not want to miss. You can also get links to all the podcasts that I mentioned today at dawnserra.com/ep135 for this little mini episode. So I will talk to you soon.