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I wanted to open this week’s episode with a note about racism and white supremacy in light of the Charlottesville crap that’s recently unfolded. I mentioned a bunch of places where you can donate money to help fight racism and support the folks on the ground doing the work. Find them here and here.
On to this week’s episode… This week I’m joined by author Rachel Hills and model Jennie Runk to talk about Rachel’s book “The Sex Myth” and the new play by the same name starring Jennie that will run for 5 days in New York this week.
We talk about all of the cultural myths that are keeping us trapped in pain and shame around sex. I particularly love Rachel’s analysis on the myth that our worth as a human is determined by how other’s see us sexually. This is a huge part of why we are all performing so hard to be seen as sexy and adventurous and wanted.
Jennie also talks about being a plus-sized model and exploring her identity as a lesbian in the stage production of The Sex Myth.
Follow Dawn on Instagram.
In this episode, Rachel, Jennie, and I talk about:
- The Sex Myth and why I felt so seen as I read it. We’ve moved from a super sexually conservative narrative to the illusion of sexual adventure and sexual openness, but it’s just as constrictive and conformity that keeps everyone performing.
- The myth we have that your worth as a human being is tied to whether OTHER people find you sexually desirable and the damage that does, especially to young people.
- How we think something is wrong with us if people don’t want us, or if we aren’t dating a bunch of folks.
- All of the mental energy we put into whether we’re having enough sex or the right kinds of sex, and how that takes away so much energy and time from other creative endeavors in our lives. Culturally, we’re taught it’s normal to worry about these things, but is it?
- Disney movies and how we’re taught from very young ages to place higher value on romantic relationships than any other kind of relationship.
- Why so much of what we believe and perform about sex isn’t about our pleasure, it’s about performing what other people will think, or say, or believe about us. External validation drives so much of what we do.
- How the ways we should be sexual, the ways we should act and present ourselves are sort of like a black hole. It’s more about what’s not there than what is.
- The Sex Myth play which runs for 5 days in New York City starting this week. It’s full or rich, personal stories about sex and sexuality, so if you’re in the area check it out!
- What it’s like to tell a vulnerable story about yourself and your journey on stage for a live audience. Jennie Runk has so much beautiful perspective on all of the weeks of rehearsal and sculpting that happened as they prepped for The Sex Myth play.
- How Jennie got to a place of not letting the fat shamers and haters who attack her online bother her. We talk about why being visible, when you have the privilege of being visible, is super important.
- The biggest turn off in sex.
About Rachel Hills
Rachel Hills is an Australian journalist, TED speaker, and writer based in New York. Her critically-acclaimed book The Sex Myth is a call for a generation to question how systems of power pull at the strings of our sexual experience. A devised play based on the book will debut in New York City in August 2017.
Follow along with The Sex Myth’s updates and play at thesexmyth.com, and over on Instagram and Twitter @thesexmyth.
You can also find Rachel on Instagram and sign-up for her Tiny Letter.
About Jennie Runk
Jennie Runk is an American model represented by JAG Models in New York. Born in Georgia and raised in Missouri, Jennie was discovered in a Petsmart while volunteering for a cat adoption service. A proud (and recently married!) member of the LGBTQ community, Jennie is passionate about inclusion and empowerment for all people. Considered plus-size by the fashion industry, Jennie starred in the H&M summer swimwear campaign, graced the April cover of Marie Claire France and stars in the Straight/Curve documentary where she shares her compelling perspective on the future of her industry.
You can stay in touch with Jennie on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter @jennierunk.
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Episode Transcript
Dawn Serra: You’re listening to (You’re listening) (You’re listening) You’re listening to Sex Gets Real (Sex Get Real) (Sex Gets Real) Sex Gets Real with Dawn Serra (with Dawn Serra). Thanks, bye!
Hey, everyone. Welcome to this week’s episode of Sex Gets Real. I want to start by talking about some current events that are going down in the U.S., specifically in Charlottesville, with the Nazi, white supremacist, domestic terrorism rally that unfolded and led to unfortunately, a whole bunch of violence. The first thing I want to go on record at saying is, this show is about overturning oppression at every intersection, that includes overturning racism. I am doing so much work to educate myself about white supremacy. The fact that I grew up benefiting from white supremacy and the fact that we cannot have sexual liberation, we cannot have a sexually free society, we cannot have a society built unhealthy relationships, or body sovereignty, or body autonomy or emotional intelligence, the way that we all want and deserve, if any system of oppression is in place. So whether that’s racism or ableism, or sexism or any of the other isms, we’ve got to do the work to overturn that; and that means getting really uncomfortable.
Dawn Serra: So if you’re white, and you’re wondering, what can you do – I will be linking to two different articles that are both in the show notes for this episode, as well as at dawnserra.com/ep174 for episode 174. Both of these articles list specific places where you can donate your money to help with preparations to help support people who are doing the work on the ground. This is not a new phenomenon. We have never, since the colonization of the United States or Canada, for that matter or anywhere else that has had colonization – we have never had a time that was not based on white supremacy. We have never known liberation. We need to be using our voices, and our time, and our energy, especially if we are white, to be doing the work to overturn racism. This is not on black people to do. They should not be educating us. They should not be the ones doing the labor around racism. It is our job as the privileged white folks to do this work, just like it is the work of men to be undoing sexism, and it is the work of non-fat people to be overturning fatphobia, and it is the work of cis people to be overturning transphobia.
The people that are suffering the most from oppression should not be the ones responsible for fixing the system. So if you actually want to do something, and you can’t physically put your body in the place where racist rallies are happening, then we all need to put our money where our mouth is. I’ve already donated $100 to the NAACP in Charlottesville. These two articles that I’m going to link to include links to an anti-racist legal fund for helping folks in Charlottesville, to the safety pin box that provides funds to people fighting on the ground, to Black Lives Matter in Charlottesville. And there’s another article from refinery 29 that links to the Charlottesville chapter of the NAACP, Charlottesville pride, a community organization, Legal Aid Justice, and a couple of others. So please check those links out. Please use your voice to be talking to relatives that make stupid, horrible, violent, racist comments, even if they seem like a joke. We need to be having these conversations and it is on us if we want to live in a place where we can love how we want and be in our bodies without violence, and have the kinds of sex that we want; none of that as possible until we’re undoing all of these frameworks of oppression.
Dawn Serra: So now let’s dive into this week’s episode. I have two people here with me this week, Rachel Hills and Jennie Runk, the three of us geek out all about thing called The Sex Myth. Rachel wrote a critically acclaimed book called The Sex Myth that examines the myth and all of that outshoots of that one myth that inform the way we perform sex in our culture based on the most recent iteration of how sex is unfolding in our society. That book has been turned into a play called The Sex Myth that Jennie Runk is starring in in New York all this week. So if you’re near New York, be sure to check out the play. It’s only running for five days. But we have this fantastic conversation about sex myths that have held us back and cultural expectations around pleasure and relationships. It’s a really fun conversation. Jennie talks about what it was like for her to grapple with her story of coming out as a lesbian. She also talks about being a plus size model and what it’s like to inspire people through that, and to also be the recipient of endless hate, because she’s in a plus sized body.
So let me tell you a little bit about Rachel and Jennie, and then we’ll jump into the episode. Also, don’t forget that my every other week call, the Sex is A Social School call, is a super fun way for all of us to just kind of sit around and geek out. It’s kind of like sitting in a coffee shop and talking about things that matter with a whole bunch of other really rad folks. But we do it virtually online, using video and hanging out and talking about really cool stuff. So if you want to join me, there’s a link also in the show notes and at dawnserra.com. So check that out because I’d love to have you there.
Dawn Serra: So Rachel Hills is an Australian journalist, Ted speaker, and writer based in New York. Her critically acclaimed book, The Sex Myth, is a call for a generation to question how systems of power pull at the strings of our sexual experience. A devised play based on the book will debut in New York City in August 2017, which is actually this week. Jennie Runk is an American model represented by Jag models in New York. Born in Georgia and raised in Missouri, Jennie was discovered at a PetSmart while volunteering for a cat adoption service. A proud and recently married member of the LGBTQ community, Jennie is passionate about inclusion and empowerment for all people. Considered plus size by the fashion industry, Jennie starred in the H&M summer swimwear campaign, graced the April cover of Marie Claire, France, and stars in the straight-curve documentary, where she shares her compelling perspective on the future of her industry. So here is the three of us talking all about The Sex Myth.
Welcome to Sex Gets Real, Rachel and Jennie. We’ve got a little group chat going on today.
Jennie Runk: Thanks so much for having us.
Dawn Serra: You’re so welcome. I just finished reading your book, Rachel, The Sex Myth, which is also a play that, Jennie, you are in. Reading your book felt really validating. It’s basically what this whole show is about. It’s deconstructing so many of the myths and the cultural expectations that we have that are causing so many of us distress and pain, and othering. I was so excited to see you put words to things I talk about all the time, but in a much more eloquent way. So thank you for that.
Rachel Hills: That’s awesome. That’s what I want when people read the book – for them to feel seen and understood, and to maybe understand themselves a little better.
Dawn Serra: Yeah, something that really stuck out to me, as I was reading, the irony of how we’ve moved out of a somewhat sexually conservative cultural soup, where sex looked a very specific way and it was only had within the context of marriage. We had these very stuck stiff rules for everybody to abide by into another cultural soup that has the illusion of freedom and choice and liberation. But it actually has just as many rules for all of us to follow in order to fit in and be seen as normal; and that is to be very sexual, very adventurous, very open about our sexuality to talk about how empowering it is. Yet it still has this undercurrent of control and, and conformity.
Rachel Hills: Yeah, exactly. I think the interesting thing is that those two cultural soups coexist at the same time. So in the book, I tend to focus more on the latter kind, because I guess that’s what I personally felt more affected by, particularly when I was younger and that was the standard that I was measuring myself against, and feeling inadequate when I compared myself to it. But I think that those old rules about what not to do definitely, obviously, still exist as well.
Dawn Serra: I’m wondering for you, Jennie, I saw a picture that you uploaded on it was either Facebook or Twitter, reading The Sex Myth. I’m wondering for you, what was it like to kind of read the book, did you find some validation and things you’d experienced or did it raise big questions? What was that like?
Jennie Runk: I learned a lot reading the book. Actually I read it through twice. I read it through the first time and then the second time I read it through with a pen and was marking pages, and circling things, and making notes. The whole time that I was reading it, I was just thinking, “This is amazing. I’m so happy that this is a thing that’s in the world that people can read and get so much validation from hearing other people’s stories about how they don’t really feel normal, or they don’t think they’re normal, or they’re worried about being normal.” When in actuality, all of those thoughts and fear, not only does everybody have them, but they’re completely unfounded because normal doesn’t exist.
Dawn Serra: For me, for a long time, and the listeners are very familiar with this story. So I’ll say the super fast version. But for me, I spent so many years feeling like I was not going to ever find someone or never be good enough to find the kind of person I wanted to find, because I was in a fat body. The story we’re told, of course, is that to be a woman and to be sexual and sexually desirable, is a great thing, but only if you fit in certain types of ideals of being young and thin and white and upper class. And even then, of course, there’s lots of stumbling blocks, but I kind of felt like I should just settle for whatever came my way because I was fat, and if I held out too long, then I was never going to find anyone. Of course, kind of the myth under that is that you have to be with someone in order to be worthy and to have a life well lived, which is a whole different myth.
But I’m wondering for both of you, what myth do you feel like drove you or that you clung to that that you really needed to release and/or you’re still working through, as I am, that you’re still working through, that can offer you that sense of “Maybe I don’t have to tell this story anymore.”
Rachel Hills: I think for me, like for you, is very much tied to these ideas of female desirability, that it’s so much tied to what The Sex Myth is about. It’s this idea that not only is your desirability tied to the way that you look, which, of course, is not so much true in practice. But this idea that your worth as a human is tied to whether or not other people desire you, and to whether or not people desire you in a sexual way. For me, I spent, basically the first half of my 20s and my late teens single, which now that I’m in my mid 30s, seems like not such a long time to be single at all. But of course, when you’re in your late teens and early 20s, it feels completely interminable.
For me, as I read about in the opening pages of the book, I felt this real contrast – this conflict where on the one hand, I knew I was a nice person, a fun person, somebody that people enjoyed being around. I also knew that I was working really hard at that time on being seen as being attractive in a conventional way. I mean, probably to the detriment of my actual attractiveness in retrospect. I spent a lot of time doing my hair, dieting, and trying to make myself into this hot woman. And despite being a likable person, and despite trying really hard to be hot, I didn’t have very many partners, very many romantic opportunities. So I felt like it signified that there was something deeply wrong and deeply undesirable about me, and made me feel really terrible about myself.
Dawn Serra: I feel like many of us can empathize with those feelings that have been there and/or are there. What about for you, Jennie?
Jennie Runk: I think that I definitely, when I was younger, I definitely paid more attention to those myths surrounding what women should be or shouldn’t be. Especially before I started modeling, before I even knew that plus size modeling existed, I was constantly comparing myself to other women and women in magazines, especially. And they were all way smaller than me, visibly smaller than me. I was always wondering, “Why don’t I look like that?” “Why can’t I look like that? What’s wrong with me?” And it wasn’t until I started plus size modeling and I was exposed to this world of all these women who are modeling and super successful, and confident and they were above a size 12 just like me, that I realized that there’s more than one way to be beautiful. Just because there’s this one idea of beauty that we see over and over again, that doesn’t mean that’s the only way to be beautiful. That’s just not true.
Dawn Serra: Yeah. Something that comes up a lot on the show here, because I take listener questions and answer them. I’ve gotten probably thousands of questions at this point. But there is this cultural distress that I constantly see for people who are in relationship around a fear of not having enough sex and/or not having the right kinds of sex. Then feeling this great deal of pain in not knowing how to navigate, wanting different levels of sex than a partner, or wanting to have kinkier sex or less kinky sex than a partner. I think it’s really interesting how the sex that we are or not having seems to take up an awful lot of our time and energy culturally.
In our personal relationships, I think it also is a deep source of pain, to the point where we often forget that there’s lots of other things being offered to us by the relationships that we’re in. And I thought that was something else that was really wonderfully highlighted by your work, Rachel, around how we’re culturally conditioned, you talked about Disney movies, to see romantic attraction and romantic relationships as the superior peak experience of relationship. That we need to value romantic relationships above friendships and family relationships, because that is what we should all be striving for. Then, of course, the unspoken rule is if you don’t have that or if you don’t have the right kind, you’re missing out somehow on living your best life – to co-opt Oprah’s phrase.
Rachel Hills: Yeah.
Dawn Serra: I see so much pain and I wonder how much of this pain is actual pain, from our internal experiences, and how much of it is pain because we’ve soaked up all of these stories around what we’re supposed to be doing and how often we’re supposed to be doing it, and then internalize so that we believe that it’s actually self driven when it’s more culturally driven.
Rachel Hills: I mean, that’s absolutely the billion dollar question, isn’t it? I choose billion dollar rather than million dollar because there are a billion dollar industries that make their money off us being anxious about these questions. It’s kind of impossible to tell the difference between the two, to be able to differentiate what are our genuine anxieties that are attached to what we personally want as individuals, and one of the culturally created anxieties. Because, if there’s anything that’s innate to human beings, it’s the fact that we are social and cultural creatures and that we make meaning out of things. We do that individually and collectively as well. But that idea that sexual relationships are the most important, the most intimate, the most fulfilling is very much at the root of the sex myth. But I think what’s also at the root of that, and I know I’m totally preaching to the converted here talking to you, is this idea that even within these romantic sexual relationships, it’s this particularly in heterosexual relationships, it’s just one act that defines your intimacy. So it’s not how often you’re kissing or touching each other or cuddling or having our manual sex, it’s how often a penis is going into a vagina. And if that isn’t happening a certain number of times a week, then oh, no, your relationship must be in trouble.
Dawn Serra: Yeah, something else that I found really powerful about this myth that you’ve written about extensively, and we’re going to talk about the play in a few minutes, too which I’m so excited about. Something that really struck me was you were talking about how so many of the stories that are coming out now around the sexually liberated woman, specifically, of these erotic memoirs that had become very popular in sex blogs and being very out about our sex lives, is that it’s less about our pleasure and more about this empowerment of being able to sell ourselves successfully – to get people interested in our stories, to show that we are successful in finding partners, that we are successful in trying all the things and being really adventurous. That it seems to be much less about – we just really wanted to genuinely have this experience, and to be in the experience and allow it to be a part of our lives, and then to move forward from it, and more about, “I need to show you all the ways that I am the most forward thinking, the kinkiest, the most adventurous,” whatever it is, and then the more people that consume it, the more successful I am.
Rachel Hills: Yeah. I mean, those words “selling” and “consumption” are really interesting because when I talk to people about these things, they normally jump to thinking that we’re talking about sex work when we talk about selling ourselves through sex. But actually, as you said, we’re talking about the creation of self. So the creation of a self, both within our own minds like who we perceive ourselves to be, but then also who we’re telling other people we are in the world. Of course there are other ways that we do this. We do it through our clothing, we do it through the way we talk, we do it through our conversation, through the pictures we post to Instagram in the holidays and vacations we go on. But we also do that through the stories that we tell about our sex lives, in particular, as much as we do through the sex we are or are not having.
Dawn Serra: The first time I really encountered that disconnect was, I don’t know, in the early 2000s – I was doing in home sex toy parties. It was with a terrible company that had problematic products, which I didn’t know at the time. But it gave me an opportunity to interact with thousands of women one on one. It was fascinating to me how in the group setting during the party, everyone, for the most part, there would usually be a couple of shy people that everyone kind of knew, where they were showing up to be with friends, but they were a little nervous about the sex part. But for the most part, it was about being loud and boisterous and talking about all the sex you’d been having or that you’ve been fantasizing about – being very like Sex in the City-ish about sex. But then in private one on one ,over and over and over again, I had women telling me they hadn’t had sex in years. They’d never had an orgasm. They didn’t know until I told them that it was okay to masturbate or to bring a toy with them into the bedroom. There was so much pain and fear, and just feeling utterly alone and unseen because it wasn’t okay to be seen in that way. That’s when I really started seeing some of this performative cost that we were having, especially as women.
I think we know that there’s a big cost for men, too, around masculinity and being required to perform in a certain way to be seen as a real man. But even around sex seeing over and over and over again, women behaving one way in front of their friends and then in private, so desperately needing someone to see them and say, “It’s okay, you’re not broken.”
Rachel Hills: Yeah. And this is absolutely something that I did a lot myself, and probably still do to an extent. But I remember at my 22nd birthday party, a gay guy I was friends with gave me a birthday card which had a picture of a naked man on it. The inscription on the inside was something like, “Rachel, some people would be offended by this, but not you.” Which is true. I wasn’t offended by it. But I think it showed that he saw me as being this confident body, very sexual woman, which was definitely how I was presenting myself and in some ways who I was. But on the other hand, at that stage of my life, I was also still a virgin, and was desperately insecure about my desirability. It was a realization that I had as I went into my mid 20s, and started working on this book, that so many other people were carrying around, not necessarily the same insecurities, but their own insecurities about not living up to that ideal – that drove me to want to start working and researching this area, because it was both freeing for me to realize I wasn’t alone, but also fascinating to explore.
Jennie Runk: We talked a lot about these kinds of things in the first couple of weeks of rehearsal. As we got started more understanding the theories in the book and understanding what we were talking about, what we were doing. And as we were talking about these things, and our own stories, and the way that we each felt about how we should behave and how we should be, and how we shouldn’t behave and how we shouldn’t be – every single one of us came to this conclusion that it was way, way easier to come up with a long and detailed list of ways we should not be, than any idea of how we should be. It seemed like every idea of normal that we had, it was just easier to say, “Don’t do this, you shouldn’t be like this.” “You shouldn’t act like this.” When the question was reversed, like, “Okay, so then what should you be?” It was actually kind of hard to come up with an answer.
Dawn Serra: I think that’s so powerful. What we often find when we start making those lists of all the things we shouldn’t be, is they’re so deeply contradictory. We should both be pure and innocent, and at the same time sexually available, or we shouldn’t want too much sex, because then we have some type of sex addiction, but we should want sex enough that it’s kind of meeting some type of superficial bar around, the frequency that we’re having. Otherwise, it’s sad and something’s wrong, and we need medicine, or we’re undesirable. So I love that. I love that in talking about what is normal, and how do we actually fit in. It’s not actually a thing. It’s more all the things that it shouldn’t be. It’s like looking at a black hole. It’s what’s not there is actually what defines the thing, which I think is really, really interesting.
Rachel Hills: Yeah. I talk about that in the book in my chapter on normality, I talked about how every person I interviewed, I would ask them the very difficult question of what is normal? And people would always struggle to answer that question or they try to answer it in a progressive kind of way like everything is normal, or there’s no such thing as normal. But then when I asked them, “Okay, well, what’s abnormal, then?” People found it very easy to answer that question. Then when I asked them, “Have you ever felt abnormal?” The vast majority of people would say yes.
Dawn Serra: It’s interesting, because I think, too, I’ve had Connor Habib on the show, who is a porn performer and very much a modern day philosopher, and he thinks unlike anyone that I’ve ever met. But he’s a really big fan of thinking about what does the future look like outside of all of the existing paradigms, like if we don’t like the current structures we’re living in that are based on oppression and conformity, then what does a world look like without those things? So very forward thinking and sometimes scares the heck out of me with where he’s going. But one of the things he’s talked about is how – we still have a very sex negative culture, but there has been a swing that is growing of sex positivity, of accepting basically that you can be sexual or asexual, that you can be gay or straight or trans. And that as long as we just validate each other’s identities, it’s all okay and there’s no wrong way to have sex.
Ultimately, that swing is still on the same pendulum. So we’re not actually breaking ourselves free of any paradigm, we’re simply responding to the paradigm which actually, in turn, then keeps us trapped in that same paradigm. I think so much of what you talk about is that same thing around, now we’re performing, that we are very sexually free and that this is about empowerment and that there is no normal or abnormal, everything’s okay. But then when you start scratching the surface, there’s actually a lot of rules that we’re still operating under. So we’re all still trapped in a paradigm that’s causing all of us a lot of confusion and constantly worrying like, we’re right on the brink of something going terribly wrong. So we have to constantly self monitor and self compare to try and stay okay and normal, and not be the ostracized one, right?
Rachel Hills: Yeah, absolutely. I think that’s something I probably still do, too, to some degree.
Dawn Serra: Yeah. I’m wondering for you, Jennie, I know that you’ve been working on the play, The Sex Myth, and working with others, and in developing stories and how you’re going to present this really powerful piece to an audience that might not have any clue about the sex myth that we’re all living in. They might not listen to podcasts like this. For you, how has it changed the way that you’re moving through your life and in the way that you’re either hearing other people talk about sex or the ways that you’re even approaching your own body, and the way you experience your pleasure and sex. Have you found you’ve started asking more questions or just noticing things more than you had before?
Jennie Runk: I think my biggest takeaway so far from this has just been – this is such an incredible learning experience for me because not only am I talking about my own identity as a lesbian and my journey in discovering that, not only learning how to be a woman, how to be an attractive woman, but then how do I be a lesbian? When I came out there, I didn’t really have any homosexual role models on TV. I didn’t really know what that looked like. There was no guidebook for that. I had no idea what I was doing. So then I had this second hurdle of like, “Okay, I’m still trying to figure out how to be a woman, now how do I behave as a lesbian? How do I present as a lesbian? What am I supposed to do now?” And talking about my own story, my own self-discovery in that way, and then also sharing with all of the other cast members, all of their stories and how they had – each of them had their own moments in their lives when they had to come to terms with them with their identity and themselves. It was just noticing a lot of parallels.
Every story is completely unique and totally different and offers a really, really interesting window into every different narrative. But at the same time, there were definitely parallels. At the same time, I think all of us had a moment where we were like, “Am I normal? Am I okay? Is this what I’m supposed to be doing?” And had to find our own way of coming to terms with that.
Dawn Serra: Yeah. In my experience, it’s like a continuous grappling of, “Does this still work for me? Is this still my identity? Does this still feel okay?” And, trying to give myself permission and forgiveness to not always be 100% certain and to sometimes just say, “I’m figuring it out.” Even if I don’t have the answer, that’s still okay. I think that’s also a tough place that we have to come to when we start actually realizing maybe our identity differs from how everyone perceives us and what we’ve been told we are.
Jennie Runk: I think, definitely, the way that we see ourselves is totally different than the way other people see us. I think that that goes for everybody. In my scene, in the performance, I talk a lot about that – how I tried to align my self-identity with the way I thought people were seeing me or the way that I thought people were thinking that I should be. And first trying to figure out what people thought I should be and then trying to figure out how to fit into that, whether it felt natural or not. Until I finally, hopefully, came to a time in my life where I just don’t care anymore. I am who I am, and that’s fat.
Dawn Serra: Yeah. So we’ve tickled listeners, a little bit, about the play. I had an opportunity to review the playbook and it sounds phenomenal. This very collaborative audience involved space where the performers get a chance to share stories around their own sexual experiences, and to offer the audience a chance to start actually asking different questions, and how that can be really confronting for audience members. So I’d love to hear a little bit about how this came about and what it’s really like to actually birth this thing, and put it in front of people who maybe don’t know what they’re getting into when they walk in the door.
Rachel Hills: I’ll talk about how it came about and then, Jennie, you can talk about what it’s like to birth it. So it came about because – I do a lot of speaking on college campuses since the book came out. One of the first college campuses I spoke at, in 2015, a young woman called Hannah Lawson, who is now the director of the show in New York, came up to me afterwards and we had a chat. Then a few months later, she got in touch with me, asking me if I’d be open to her turning the book into a play, so this would have been early last year. At that time, she was still a university student at Northeastern University, and she wanted to put on a show on her campus. I said yes, because the idea of The Sex Myth being turned into a play was like a little secret dream that I had harbored. I went up and did a workshop with the cast members and I saw the first version of the play in Boston in June last year. I just thought it was absolutely fantastic to see the ideas that I talked about in the book translated by other people was just phenomenal; and to hear they’re beautiful, complex, powerful stories, which was so different to my own, which I think is part of the magic of the show that everybody’s story is different. But yet, in that diversity, we find something so human that we can really relate to.
It was really powerful to see how, by translating the book into a theater experience, we created something that was both more powerful for the performance because they go through this six to eight week process of developing that monologues and really exploring these issues. But we also create something that is really powerful for the audience, because particularly on that college level, where it was happening – you’re hearing stories from people within your own community, which means that you’re confronted by it in a really wonderful way.
So it’s not just some abstract story of somebody else. It’s somebody that you may know, or who knows somebody that you know. So I loved the play so much that I decided that it had to spread, and I started working with Hannah on the playbook that you read, which is designed to help people put on this show in their own communities, on a grassroots level; and started working to raise the money to put on the show in New York this year, which will be going up in two weeks at HERE Art center on August 16.
Dawn Serra: Yeah, that’s so exciting.
Rachel Hills: We’re pretty excited.
Dawn Serra: Yeah, I can imagine. I’m a book lover, so just being in a book for me is an experience. But I think there’s something really powerful around getting to see people share their stories, and for those stories to be really personal. It’s not a fictional character, it’s not a fantasy world. It’s like, “Here are my lived experiences and you get to sit in that place with me. And it might be really uncomfortable. It might be really funny. But, let’s be in each other’s stories for a while.” That’s a pretty rare experience for an audience.
Rachel Hills: Yeah, and it’s really moving. I mean, just as in the Boston production, none of the stories in the New York production reflect my own – in the most obvious ways. But as I heard each of them, I was so moved, and I could relate to the underlying emotion. Jennie, I remember I heard yours as a couple of weeks ago. Even though I wasn’t supposed to be giving professional feedback, I had to give audience feedback because I was just so moved by Jennie’s performance, and I could relate to so much of it, even though our stories, on a surface level, are so different.
Dawn Serra: So, Jennie, what has it been like to be involved in a performance piece where the whole point is for you to bare yourself and to be vulnerable in a way that, I think, is both really beautiful and brave. And at the same time probably a little bit scary and nerve wracking. What’s that been like for you?
Jennie Runk: I think, because I went to school for creative writing, and I was very passionate about poetry. When I first moved to New York, I did a lot of performance poetry. So I had a little bit of experience in writing something very, very personal and then sharing it on stage with an audience. Thankfully, I had a little bit of experience with that because it’s terrifying. It’s actually very terrifying. And it’s, it’s really, really hard.
The first few weeks that we got started in rehearsal, before we had a performance to actually rehearse and perform and memorize, we were doing a lot of talking about our individual stories and how The Sex Myth has affected all of us, and as I was saying, our struggles with finding normalcy in our own lives. The first few weeks, I think almost every single time we met, at least one or two people were crying at one point or another. Because you’re not only looking at these things yourself, but you’re sharing them with a group of people you just met. But at the same time, everybody in the group is doing it. So, in some ways, it felt a little bit like being in school again. It felt a little bit like class and then in other ways, it sort of felt like group therapy, because we were talking about such deep and personal issues, and all supporting each other throughout this process of reflecting on ourselves and preparing to share such a deep and personal experience with people we just met; who are becoming our friends, and eventually sharing it with an audience of complete strangers. I mean, it’s been very moving. It’s been very powerful. I love it. I was not prepared for how hard it was going to be, but I’m loving every minute of the process.
Dawn Serra: I’ve done some live storytelling events like The Moth. And, certainly I do some of this on the podcast, where the act of storytelling means you have to make small changes to the truth in order to keep things moving for there to be a thread that people can cling to so that there’s some cohesion. So, simply by the act of telling the story, there’s an element of performance to it. Have you found that over the weeks as you’ve been exploring the story, you’re going to tell that it’s been growing and breathing, and living and becoming something a little bit different so that you can really offer something moving and powerful to the people who receive your story?
Jennie Runk: Definitely. Each of our monologues started as some journal entries that we did within those first few weeks of talking about this and learning about this, and going through all of that. So from the very beginning coming from pages and pages and pages of very messy journal entries into a five minute scene, there’s obviously a lot of changes. A lot of it is cutting out parts of the story that I would like to tell, but there isn’t enough time for and there’s another part of the story that’s more powerful, or that makes more sense in this piece where that would speak to a wider audience. So you have to sort of pick and choose which details you want to keep in which details you can afford to throw out. But I think anybody with experience with storytelling knows that process for sure.
So now that it’s in a concrete scene form, it’s a little bit easier to distance myself from it because it’s they’re lines on paper that we’re all memorizing and it’s a scene and, I’m playing a character even though the character is me and it is my story, rehearsing it over and over and over again, it’s starting to feel more like, “This is the character I’m playing.” It’s me throughout – from the time I’m 14 to the time I’m 28.
Dawn Serra: I hear from listeners, often, and a lot of them share themselves with me because it feels like a safe place that has very low risk in being able to say, “Hey, me too,” or “Here’s my deepest source of shame.” But I also hear from people who are angry. I’ve had the very fortunate experience of – a very unique experience of having a show that’s grown tremendously, and I’ve never really received a piece of hate mail. But I do hear from people who feel upset or angry because the things that I talk about making them feel defensive or uncomfortable. And I know that there’s an audience participation point in the play.
So there’s definitely probably going to be people who see this and feel defensive because things about themselves are being highlighted, that they didn’t want other people to see. Then there’s going to be other people who feel wildly validated and held, so how are you all preparing for holding that space for the audience to have their reactions?
Jennie Runk: For me, I think that I have plenty of experience with people having negative reactions to my existence alone – as a plus size model, as being a woman who dares to be visible above a size four. I’ve gotten it, I’ve received it and I don’t listen to it anymore. It just falls on deaf ears. So I’m not really worried about that at all.
Dawn Serra: That’s good.
Rachel Hills: It’s something I’ve been thinking about as we prepare to do the talkback. So as you said, Dawn, after every show, we’re bringing on a guest, who’s someone who has some specialization in the field of gender and sexuality. And they’re going to talk about how their work connects with the themes in the show. But also, then we’re throwing it out to the audience. And when we’re sending our newsletters to our supporters, I’m writing, “This is your opportunity to talk back and show what you think of the show.” Then I think to myself, “What if it’s a really horrible person in the audience, who says something horrible to our actors?” And because you people are sharing such vulnerable material in the show, particularly in some cases, the last thing I want is for that sense of safety and compassion, and vulnerability to be compromised. So I’m going to talk a bit to Hannah, our director, about that. But I imagine we might try to frame that conversation before it starts, to say that while this is your opportunity to get feedback on the show, really, the point of the talkback is to continue that spirit of discussion. So we’re talking about the issues or about the emotions rather than, “Did you hate this scene?”
Dawn Serra: Yeah, giving people boundaries to play within, I think, sounds like a really great way to help direct the conversation so that it’s a little bit more productive if anybody’s having big feels.
Rachel Hills: Yeah, exactly. People would be within their rights to have feels, I’d say, because there is some material in there that I think – perhaps does need a trigger warning.
Dawn Serra: Well, I think that’s something that is so – I think that’s something that’s just so needed, of, we are a culture that only values certain types of emotions and then we see all other emotions as bad. So we’re all hungry for places to actually have our feelings. So I think there’s something really beautiful in being able to give, not only that performers’ permission to go places that might be really intense or really painful, or maybe even really ecstatic. But then to also know that in doing that, the audience is going to potentially have a really intense emotional reaction. I don’t know – My hope is that the audience receives that as a permission slip of “This is powerful, and I’m allowed to have these feelings even if they’re really uncomfortable or I wasn’t prepared for them. But let’s be in these feelings together. Because this is important.” These stories are important. So I hope that’s how it’s received, because I think in my experience, at least people are hungry for places where they can actually safely feel big scary things.
Rachel Hills: Yeah, it’s true.
Dawn Serra: So, Jennie, I’d love to circle back really quickly. I know you just mentioned how daring to be a woman who is also a plus size model that is very visible. You are very used to receiving all kinds of comments from people who feel like they have a right to comment on your body. It’s something that I’ve talked about on this show at length of, we have this bizarre culture, especially with social media, of feeling like we have a right to comment on other people’s bodies or to tell them exactly what we think about them without even knowing them. I think that so many people out there, whether they’re trans or people of color, or queer, whatever it is, have a similar experience of being terrified that, “If I step out,” “If I make this video,” “If I actually share myself with the world, then it’s going to be met with so much vitriol and negativity and hatred,” because the internet as a general rule is not a very safe space for most people.
So I’m wondering, how did you get to a place where you were able to actually say, “This really isn’t about me. This is just about the people who are saying it.” I mean, what was that journey like for you?
Jennie Runk: I think mostly it just comes back to for every one negative comment, I probably get 100 or more comments from people who are saying, “Thank you for being who you are.” “Thank you for sharing your insecurities.” “Thank you for being visible.” “Thank you for everything that you do. Because, I saw a picture of you in a bikini looking like you were just enjoying yourself and super confident and it made me feel better about myself.” A lot of people have told me that because of some swimwear campaign that I’ve done that they saw me in, they had the confidence to wear a bikini for the first time in years. I’ve had comments from mothers who are thanking me for giving their daughters permission to exist. So for everyone nasty comment, or somebody who’s like, “You need you to eat a salad.” I get hundreds of really, really amazing, powerful feedback. And I think that it, to me, means that it’s worth it.
I think that if you are any sort of person who doesn’t fit that definition of normal that we talk about, and if you can, and if you have the capabilities, if you have the – it’s not easy, but if you’re strong enough person and you can make yourself visible, it’s 100% worth it. Because people who don’t fit that normal idea need those role models. They need that inspiration. They need that visibility. So if you’re able to give it, it’s worth it. 100% and it gets easier and easier to ignore the haters.
Dawn Serra: I love that you said that because it’s so true in so many different ways – that having visibility and allowing the world to see people in a variety of identities and bodies living their lives, and having ups and downs but basically existing and being okay with existing, that they’re out there. Because we’re kind of told that people in certain identities are sad and lonely and depressing, and no one should want to be like them. So I love that simply by you, stepping into the spotlight and allowing people to see you as you, that gives other people permission. I know, for me, when I first started really confronting my fatphobia, one of the first things I did was I started following other people who were doing super rad work and being in fat bodies, just so that I could see there’s other people out there who aren’t sad and in a hole under a rock, just because they have a body like mine. They’re actually doing really rad things. And they have friends that love them.
I had a chance to be at a talk with Chelsea Poe, who’s a trans woman porn performer. She’s talked about how, despite all of the gross stuff that she gets, it’s worth it because she hears from so many other trans women who basically say, “I was going to end my life” or “I felt like I was going to be alone forever until I saw you being so unapologetic and visible, and living in your body on your own terms.” So we need more of that. We need to see the variety in what’s possible. I love that you have found a way to be resilient around all the crap so that you can continue to show up for people and let them know, “It’s okay to be you.” I’m wondering for both of you, what piece of the myth or what kind of myth that you know would you most like to see eliminated? Most people realizing, “Maybe this isn’t true.” What’s the thing that you’d love to see people letting go of?
Jennie Runk: For me, I think that the most important thing that we absolutely have to debunk is that for women it is of utmost importance to find yourself a man. Because so many other problems come from that one idea, that if you’re a woman, you have to go find yourself a man to be happy. So many problems come out of that idea. For one, that leaves anyone who’s not straight completely invisible. For two, it makes you feel as a woman, your happiness depends on somebody else, which it doesn’t. I think that that’s the tip of the iceberg, that idea. Everything else falls out of that.
Dawn Serra: Yeah. I think another one that comes out of that is that it’s my partner’s responsibility, my boyfriend or my husband’s, responsibility to please me and it’s this passive, “I don’t have to know my body or what I like and how to do it, because I can just rely on this other person to figure it out for me. It’s kind of that wordless Hollywood myth of we just fall into bed and automatically know how to do the sex without talking about it. I think it still comes from that place of – you need to find someone and be partnered who understands you, if they love you enough, and then all these magical things happen.
Rachel Hills: Then on the flip side of that this idea that sex is a big part of female duty so that sex is not about pleasure. But instead about something that you do to “keep your man”, which while it seems so outdated, is still, I think, a really current myth at the same time. I think also probably a major killer of heterosexual female libido, because what is the biggest turnoff when it comes to sex and the idea that it’s something that you have to do. But if there’s one myth that I would want to break, I’d say it’s the overarching myth, which is, this idea that the way that you engage with sex determines your value. Whether that’s sex is a barometer of desirability, or sex as a barometer of morality or abnormality. I think that that umbrella covers so many of the anxieties that people have around sexuality, whether that’s about whether or not you feel hot, or about fear of who you’re attracted to, or about fear of not being interesting enough or potentially too interesting or freaky. All of that comes down to this idea that sex defines who we are and whether we’re worth anything.
Dawn Serra: Yeah. I think tied to that, and you definitely touched on this in the book, too, is kind of this myth, which I think is a belief for so many people, that sex is a peak human experience. So if we want to achieve our greatest pleasure, all of that comes back to sex, and not leaving room for – maybe we can have peak ecstatic experiences and transcendence and deeper connections than we’ve ever had before, without it being sexual. I think a lot of people don’t even think that’s possible.
Rachel Hills: Yeah. All of that’s very mechanical view of sex as wel. This idea that it needs to be done a certain number of times a week or that you shouldn’t. These are real things that I’ve read in women’s magazines, or that you shouldn’t repeat the same sexual position twice in a row. Because that’s going to get things stale, quickly. While that stuff is presented as being fun and presented as being free, actually it becomes very, as I said, mechanical, something that’s on your to-do list – pun not intended, rather than something that is actually fun to partake in.
Dawn Serra: Yeah. I think so much of everything that we know about sex is because we’re being informed by all of the sources outside of ourselves. We’re consuming the magazines and the movies and the TV, and the stories that our friends tell which we know our performances, but somehow still wiggle their way in as to the thing I should also be doing. It all comes down to performing what we think sex is supposed to mean and feel like and be, instead of, from the youngest of ages being taught to look within for, “What does my body most want?” “What are my boundaries around this?” “How would I like to be in this moment?” Then allowing that to dictate.
I think that that would be such a beautiful place for us to start being in. But I think that’s also a very scary place for people to be because then you have to rely on self, rather than relying on other and being able to do the comparisons and the judgments, which I think offer comfort to us in a lot of ways.
Rachel Hills: We feel like we have a rule book, then we at least have something we can follow and theoretically get it right.
Dawn Serra: Yep. Exactly. I would love it – how can people find you, learn more about you, see what you’re up to?
Jennie Runk: You can follow me on both Instagram and Twitter. It’s JennieRunk – JENNIERUNK, and also on Facebook. You should also follow and check out my agency jagmodels.com because we’re an agency full of women who are doing incredible things, very supportive agents.
Dawn Serra: Awesome. Just a quick interjection here. We actually lost Rachel at the very end of this call, and so we weren’t able to actually capture her links and her sharing all of the ways you can stay in touch with her on the call. So she asked me to share all of this with you. You can learn more about The Sex Myth at thesexmyth.com. Please check out the newsletter for updates on the project and the play. You can also follow The Sex Myth at Instagram and Twitter for updates there. Then of course, if you want to stay in touch with Rachel, you can follow her on Instagram – @msrachelhills, or sign up for her tiny letter at tinyletter.com/rachelhills.
I will also have links to all of your social media and to Jag so that folks can check out the rad work they’re doing. For anybody who’s listening. If you want to check out The Sex Myth book, I will of course have a link to that. Of course, the play is happening in New York. It’s only for five days. So if you’re anywhere near New York and you want to see this amazing experience, please go check it out. You can learn more at dawnserra.com as well. If you have comments or questions about what we talked about today, and/or something you’d like to cover on a future episode. You know I love hearing from you. There’s a contact form on the website and you can send something anonymously, too, if that’s important to you. Otherwise, I just want to thank you, Jennie and Rachel for being here today. This was so fun. I loved geeking out about stories and stuff.
Jennie Runk: Thank you.
Dawn Serra: Yeah. To everybody listening, thank you so much. I will talk to you next time. This is Dawn Serra. Bye.