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Your questions. Answered.
Ana just started graduate school. She’s working on becoming a sex educator, and needs a side hustle to make more money. She was thinking about a sex toy party business, but wants to find a company that is ethical and offers body safe products. Any recommendations?
Anonymous wants his wife to have more sexual pleasure, but she doesn’t masturbate, she doesn’t like oral, and he bought her a vibrator that he wants her to use. How can he introduce it to her?
To which I say, WHHOOOOAAA. You’re putting the cart before the horse on this one. Here’s where he should really start.
Sam wrote in scared that his closeted gay relationship is about to end. In the beginning, he and his boyfriend had the most incredible NRE (new relationship energy). But things have been fizzling and his boyfriend is about to move 4 hours away. Is the relationship over?
Sometimes people email me and I sit on their email until I feel resourced enough to reply. Joseph wrote in a few months ago with an email that made my blood boil, so I’ve waited until now to field it. His question? How can we possibly be sex positive when the differences between the genders are just SO HUGE?
Anyone who listens to this show knows I’ve got some big feelings about gender, so here we go. Soapbox time.
WiltingTulip has a heartbreaking email and needs support. Her partner spends hours a day downloading, categorizing, and watching porn. For seven years, there have been tears, fights, guilt, and shame. She feels like it’s destroying their relationship and she doesn’t know how to be more pro-porn when it feels so awful. Especially because the women he watches look nothing like her. Is there any hope?
I’m actually quite proud of my answer for this one and I hope you’ll give it a listen. I think the answer may surprise you and give you something yummy to think about.
Follow Dawn on Instagram.
About Host 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.
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Episode Transcript
Dawn Serra: This episode is brought to you by the “True Freedom Symposium.” The soul-sucking fluorescent lights, the endless meetings, the growing dissatisfaction, it is hard to get good information about entrepreneurship. Everything’s either pie in the sky, get rich quick bullshit, which I have actually bought into before or it’s so vague that it’s not even remotely helpful. Well, the “True Freedom Symposium – where I am actually a speaker – The When, What, Why, and How to Quit Your Day Job and What’s Really on the Other Side” is a five-day free virtual online training featuring 21 entrepreneurs who have all left their day jobs and created very successful businesses.
You’ll hear from people like Ed O’Neill of “Modern Family” and “Married… with Children,” Paul Gilmartin – who is the host of the 16-year long show on TBS, “Dinner and a Movie” and now hosts the “Mental Illness Happy Hour” podcast – Pam Slim, author of “Escape From Cubicle Nation” – her talk is actually one of the best for the entire thing – Sark, so many of you know Sark of “Succulent Wild Woman,” and me! I am one of the speakers.
Dawn Serra: So if you’ve been thinking about starting a business or you have started a business and you’re looking for ways to level up, this is a free online event starting Monday, May 14, that runs through May 19. All about how to start a business, how to leave your day job, how to work through the feelings and being really successful at sales and marketing. If you want to check it out, you can use the link of mine. It’s an affiliate link, just so they know you all came from Sex Gets Real. That’s in the show notes and also at dawnserra.com. Check out the True Freedom Symposium and join us.
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!
Dawn Serra: Hello, you! It is– Well, it’s actually a lot of things today. If you’re listening on the day that this drops, it is Mother’s Day. For those of you who celebrate and enjoy it, I hope you have a wonderful day. For those of you who don’t, for a variety of reasons, I hope you self-care and do something that feels wonderful for you. It’s also my two-year wedding anniversary today. Two years ago, Alex and I were in Iceland getting married on a blustery Viking farm. That’s kind of\ amazing. But, yeah. I’m super excited to be here with you this week.
The Patreon bonus this week is all about masturbation and the ways that it’s portrayed in pop culture and also just some memories of mine around masturbation. It should be fun because, you know, masturbation. So be sure to check that out. If you go to patreon.com/sgrpodcast, you can pledge to support the show, which helps me keep the lights on. It’s really hard getting advertisers on a show all about sex, especially when I won’t let just anyone advertise. I don’t want people with shitty products and shitty ethics. So it means your support literally, actually makes this possible and helps me pay for all the things that go into it. If you support at the $3 level and above, you get access to my weekly bonus content, which usually involves extra interviews and readings and all kinds of stuff. So Sex Gets Real is patreon.com/sgrpodcast. You can’t search for it because we are labeled adult content. You actually have to type it into the URL. But this week, the bonus is going to be all about masturbation. Whoo, whoo.
Dawn Serra: This week’s also going to be more of your questions. I have been so unbelievably busy. Actually working 12, 14, 18 hours a day, for the past three weeks, because I’ve had these massive conferences that I’ve been putting on for other people and other industries. It means I have not had a chance to conduct any interviews or do anything at all other than just know I was going to get to talk to you again this week. So yay! That’s a good thing because it means more of your emails are going to get answered.
I am interviewing Dr. Willie Parker, who is an abortion doctor and an incredible human being, this week. So next week’s episode is going to be me talking with Dr. Parker and I am really excited and super nervous. He used to actually be a part of a book club that I ran – the Pro-Choice Book Club in DC – many years ago. I don’t think he remembers me. But he was there for several months and it was fantastic hearing his perspective on all these books we were reading. So I’m looking forward to chatting with him again. Stay tuned for that. And that’s it. Let’s jump in and see where we go. You all have such great emails all the time. I love it.
Dawn Serra: Okay. This first email comes from Ana and the subject line is “Pleasure Parties.” “Hi, Dawn. I’m happy to say I was recently accepted in graduate school and I’m well on my way to becoming a sex educator. I’m so happy, but also nervous because grad school isn’t cheap. I’ve been looking into ways to earn a little extra cash on the side with the little time that I have left after school, work, commuting, homework, family responsibilities and self-care. I’m curious about pleasure parties because they obviously are all about pleasure and sex and because they can be another form of income. My only reservation is the quality of the products they are selling. I don’t know anyone who is into this kind of work and I’m curious to know if you have any experience and/or insight on some of these companies – their ethics and their products. I will not work for a company who sells shitty products just to make an extra buck. Please help. Thanks.”
I used to do– Well, the company’s not around anymore. I think it was actually absorbed by Pleasure Parties. But way back in the early 2000s, I used to do in-home sex toy parties. It’s actually what got me started on this career path. At the time, I didn’t know, really, any of the things that I know now. I knew how to talk about sex. I knew how to make it funny, but I did not have the information that I have now about body safe products and any of those things. We sold so many jelly toys.
But it was such a phenomenal experience. I had a chance over the couple of years that I did it to meet with thousands of women one on one, to talk about their insecurities and their fears and their shame and to get them excited about things that would bring them pleasure. So I think it could be an awesome way to make some money on the side, if that’s something that feels aligned for you.
Dawn Serra: There’s two companies that I know of that have ethics, that friends of mine have been involved in and said they really support. So they sell body safe products. They’ve been really deliberate about the ways that they’ve created their businesses. Those two are “My Secret Soiree” and “Athena’s Home Novelties.” Both of those came up from some friends when I asked about it and they both said these are really great companies, only body safe products, lots of education focused. I would recommend checking both of those out to see if it’s a good fit for you.
I would also make sure sure that you ask questions about gender inclusion. Back in the day, when I did mine, the rule with the company that I worked with was that it could only be cis women and there could not be men or children in the house. They actually had to completely leave. That it was supposed to primarily be for straight women, but if it was going to be for gay folks, then it had to be for lesbians only. It was not gender inclusive. Of course, I broke the rules all the time and let gender queer folks and couples come because it was important to me to have those kinds of conversations and relationships and spaces. But I got chastised for it and people got fired all the time for not following those rules.
Dawn Serra: I would also look at the language that they make people use. The company that I used to work for, we were not allowed to use words like clitoris or vulva or anus. We had to use really ridiculous little phrases like man in the boat or pleasure pearl or back door because they wanted us to use language that didn’t make people feel “uncomfortable.” So we weren’t allowed to use the proper names for body parts because they felt like that was too serious and unsexy. That should have been a red flag to me, but I really was super new at the time and just had no clue.
So make sure that they’re education-based, that you can use proper names for body parts, that they’re inclusive of trans and gender non-conforming folks and that the products are body safe. I would check out “My Secret Soiree” and also “Athena’s Home Novelties,” and then see what you can find from there. I hope that’s helpful and good luck in grad school. Thank you so much for listening, Ana.
Dawn Serra: This next question came from a person who used their real name in the from and didn’t sign it with anything. So I will just be calling them Anonymous, just to be on the safe side. The subject line is “Toys in bed. Question from husband.” “I hope all is well, Dawn. I love my wife very much, but our sex life has been very bland for the most part. She’s very uncomfortable with herself in enjoying her body in general. A prime example of this is that she doesn’t masturbate at all and doesn’t enjoy oral sex. However, as of late, she has been a bit more willing to enjoy herself. She gives more positive feedback regarding nipple play and has let me touch her anus a few times. Since she seems to be a bit more open to things, I bought her a vibrator to use. I would love to use it with her, but if she wanted to use it alone, I’m 100% okay with that. My ego is in check. I don’t care if I’m giving her an orgasm or if her vibrator is. I just want her to enjoy her own body. How do I respectfully introduce it to her? Thank you in advance for any advice.”
So I want to start by saying, I’m so glad you love your wife. I love that you’re supportive and want her to experience pleasure. That said, I think you’ve put the cart before the horse. I think buying a vibrator without her input, in a situation like this where sex for her and pleasure for her are uncomfortable, is probably just going to make things worse. Now, there’s a way I’m sure that you can introduce it, that would be okay. But I think you need to start about ten steps back before you get to that place.
Dawn Serra: I also think that whenever sex toys do get introduced, it needs to be about her agency and her feeling like she has the power in the situation to choose this for herself, rather than you choosing it for her and it coming with a whole bunch of expectations around your stories for her body. So that’s kind of where I want to start.
I think it’s really interesting that you said she doesn’t enjoy oral sex as a way to indicate she’s uncomfortable with herself. Lots of people don’t enjoy oral sex who love all kinds of other pleasure and sex. Some people think that it’s not for them. Some people are meh about it. And some people do think it’s gross, but think lots of other things aren’t. So just a note to everybody, there is nothing wrong with someone, especially if they have a vulva, if they don’t enjoy oral sex, because there’s actually a million other delicious sexual things to do and that is in no way a marker of any kind of sexual evolution or sexual liberation. It’s just we all enjoy different things.
So what I want to offer is, pleasure can be really tough for a lot of us for a lot of different reasons, especially if we have complicated feelings about our bodies. Add to that, all of the pressure that is put on women to have bodies that look a certain way, to perform their sexuality for the consumption of men and for others, we’re trained growing up that our pleasure and our bodies are not our own, that other people are responsible for our pleasure. That can be really, really disempowering and disconnected.
Dawn Serra: I think a better place to start than all of this pressure around sex is to go back to basics of just, how can we touch each other that don’t involve all of these charged areas of our bodies and just find out what feels good? What kind of hair caresses, what kinds of shoulder massage or hand massages or foot massages or back rubs feel really good? What kinds of hugs feel good?
Betty Martin has this incredible game called the “Three-Minute Game.” It’s super simple. You just ask each other two questions. It helps you to start finding some of the language around the things that you want to give and the things that you want to ask for. Even for me, this is my job. This is what I do for a living. Whenever Alex and I sit down to play this game, I get really uncomfortable. Because knowing what I want, when it’s outside of that sex escalator can be really difficult for me to find those words. So that practice is important.
I think for you, listener who wrote in, that really needs to be the place that you’re starting. If she’s uncomfortable with herself, then expecting her to be super open about sex and super adventures around sex is putting lots of pressure on her. That’s super not fair. You’re projecting your expectations of her body, her lived experience, her pleasure. You’re dictating what you think her experiences should be. That is deeply disempowering and completely takes away her agency.
Dawn Serra: So I think a better question is, what are all of the conditions that you can create that collaboratively help her to feel more present in her body? To feel less stressed? Maybe she’s doing a lot of emotional labor in the relationship. Maybe she’s doing the vast majority of the chores around the house and that’s exhausting. And so she’s disconnected from her body all the time. Maybe she has trauma. So what are all the ways that you can contribute to the relationship in a way that reduces her stress, her disconnection, her frustration and that invites more dialogue around the things that you both enjoy? What are her favorite foods? What are the things that she hasn’t treated herself to recently? What are her favorite smells? What are her favorite sights? How can the two of you create a space that is just full of sensual delights, where she just feels at ease and present and safe? Because if she knows you think she’s not sexual enough, if she feels you’re constantly pressuring her to find sexual things that she enjoys, that’s going to feel very unsafe.
So how can you create an environment where she not only feels safe, but she feels like she’s got some agency to say what she does and doesn’t want to do, which may include, “I really don’t feel like having these sexual exchanges with you right now. I’m just trying to figure out how to be in my body and be okay with it.” And then as you practice with all of these non-sexual experiences and finding the language for it and helping her to feel like she can take up that space and she can experience her body on her terms, then maybe you can start moving towards exploring things that feel sexually enjoyable for her. But it has to start way before you’re buying vibrators for her.
Dawn Serra: When it does get to a point – if it gets to a point – where the two of you think it would be really fun to do a little bit of shopping, let her be the one that’s choosing the toy, that’s asking the questions, that’s deciding what looks like a good fit for her body because the more that she feels she’s got that agency and sovereignty around her pleasure and her body, the more likely it is she’s actually going to really enjoy it. Because if she’s struggling this much and you present her with a vibrator, then it’s clear the expectation is you think she needs to be more sexual and you think she needs to be doing things that you think she should be doing. There’s nothing more disempowering than feeling like everything you’re doing isn’t good enough and that someone wants you to change.
So start way back in the beginning and getting good at the two of you creating circumstances where pleasure is centered, where she’s allowed to say, “Let’s try these things and see what I like.” You set aside time to just connect with the edges of her body that are non-sexual, non-genital related and see how that goes. Of course, that’s going to take a lot of time. She’s going to be unlearning and unpacking many decades worth of story and potentially shame and guilt and disconnection. This is a process that we all have to go through to one extent or another at some point in our lives as our bodies change, as our values change, as our relationships change.
Dawn Serra: I appreciate the sentiment of wanting her to experience pleasure, but it sounds pretty selfish. You’re wanting it for you because you’re wanting more sex and different kinds of sex and that by her getting her jollies, it means you get closer to the things you think she should be doing. So take a step back and just really think what are all the ways that I can help her to feel she’s got choices rather than this huge burden of expectation? And then do whatever the two of you can to create conversation and circumstances of joy and delight. That might include you doing more dishes. It might include you taking a backseat and more situations around like emotional labor. That might not sound very sexy, but that’s probably going to create much more lasting results around the two of you being able to really openly communicate and for her to find out who she is and where her edges are.
So good luck. I know that was not the answer you were expecting, but it’s the answer you got. Enjoy the journey. Enjoy that journey of discovery and her really taking up that space and you can’t want it for her. She has to want it for herself. The two of you need to decide where is the level of curiosity and safety and play in that zone for a long time before you start to try and nudge the edges. But it sounds like there’s a lot of work that has to happen before you get to this place. So good luck. Thanks for listening. I hope really fun, pleasurable things happen for you over the next couple of months and years.
Dawn Serra: So Ana, who wrote in at the top of the show, who was looking for sex parties who had body safe products. Of course, that spoke to my heart because I love body safe products for our genitals and for the sex that we have. I am super excited that Lola, who has previously been a sponsor of the show, they do organic cotton tampons and pads subscription services. They have a brand new thing that they’ve launched called “Sex by Lola.” I’m ridiculously excited about this because not only can you just do one off purchases, but you can also get subscription services for this. They now have condoms, personal lubricant and wipes that are totally body safe. I am tickled. So they’re sponsoring this week’s episode.
I remember way back in the day, Dylan had recommended a lube that was aloe vera-based. And guess what? Lola’s lube is water-based and made with aloe vera. So amazing glide and incredible, incredible body safe ingredients. You can get condoms. They’re ultra thin, lubricated latex condoms, which I love. They have personal lubricant. It comes in a 1.7 ounce bottle. So totally check that out because it comes in a mess-free, one-pump system. That’s just like pump and then you got everything that you need. Then they have wipes. The lube and the wipes are both gynecologist approved.
Dawn Serra: One of the best things about Lola, of course, is not only is it body safe and women-founded, but they just mail stuff right to your door. You don’t even have to go to the store and look for the things. It just shows up. And listeners, you get 40% off your first order. If you want to take advantage of this body safe condoms, body safe personal lubricant, body safe wipes made with all natural ingredients – Yes! – all you have to do is visit mylola.com and enter promo code SGR – for Sex Gets Real – 40, because you’re getting 40% off your first order when you subscribe. That’s mylola.com and enter code SGR40, when you subscribe, to get that 40% off. Yay for companies who are invested in body safe products expanding into the sex market! Because we love that!
So if you’re looking for a really great water-based lube that has a really nice glide to it, totally check out Lola’s personal lubricant. Then condoms and wipes. Got to love that. So thank you so much to Lola for supporting the show. Go throw them your money because we need more body safe, women-owned, feminist-supporting businesses out in the world.
Dawn Serra: Sam wrote in with a subject line of “NRE.” I get lots of emails about NRE. Okay. So this one says, “Hi, Dawn. I have been in a closeted gay relationship for just over a year now. At the beginning of the relationship, it was full of NRE, getting to know each other, lots of energy. For the last couple of months, I felt that the NRE has disappeared and we have become disconnected. My partner recently found out that he is going to be moving for education purposes about four hours away from me. I feel he’s skeptical about our future. I recently tried to recreate date nights to relieve the NRE. However, I’m worried. Is this a closing chapter? Have we come full circle?”
Well, Sam, I can’t answer that for you. Only you can. I’m not in the relationship. I don’t know what’s changed. I really can’t tell you. If you’re worried, then I think you probably need to have a conversation with them. Depending on the kind of relationship that we have, new relationship energy goes through all kinds of different phases. It takes a lot of work to maintain that fun, playful curiosity. Most of us, as soon as it starts becoming work, either give up or we feel like it’s just run its course. A lot of people don’t like the work part of relationships. So they just love that high of being in a new relationship, and then when it fizzles, they move on.
Dawn Serra: All I have to say is, you have to just take what you can from this relationship of what was really great about it, what didn’t work, How can you learn and grow from the experience? So that the next time you end up in a relationship, you can show up with these new skills and these new understandings of self and what you need and do better.
If this relationship does continue, then I think that reflection is still really important. Where are the places where you started getting disconnected? What are the things that you two started taking for granted? What kind of work are you willing to put in? And what kind of work is he willing to put in in order to make the relationship continue to thrive? Don’t stay in a relationship that you’re just tolerating or where the other person is just tolerating you. You deserve more than that. In my opinion, I would much rather be single and getting to just experience life on my terms and having an incredible time with friends and traveling and doing whatever it is that I want to do. I have loved the times in my life that I’ve been single than being in a relationship with someone who’s really tolerating me or just waiting for it to end. That is a terrible, lonely place to be. I think the two of you just need to have some really, really tough conversations.
Dawn Serra: I also think that being in a closeted relationship can put a lot of strain on people. It can be really, really difficult to not be out for a variety of reasons. Also, just know that if being closeted is important to you, that can be really tough for a lot of people. So take a minute and just appreciate what has been, think about how you want to approach a conversation with him about what the possibilities are, whether it’s trying to bring some new, fun energy into the relationship. Maybe the distance could be great for that – hot Skype dates and sexting and only seeing each other on weekends. That can really work for some people. If he feels kind of lukewarm about it, then I would say don’t cling to it. Don’t try to make something happen. Because if he stays from a place of guilt, that’s a really, really unhealthy relationship dynamic to be in. It’s going to feel even worse down the road.
So sit with it and reflect and think about all of the potential of what’s ahead, whether it’s in this relationship or not. And know it’s going to hurt if it ends. That’s just how it is. But it doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve done anything wrong or that it was a bad relationship. Most relationships run their course in our lifetimes. We cycle in and out of different types of friend relationships and colleague relationships and neighborly relationships and certainly romantic and sexual relationships.
Dawn Serra: Just care for you however you can and if you need to grieve and be sad that things have changed, that’s okay. But I think the only person who has the answer is you and this person you’re in a relationship with. It’s certainly not me. So good luck, Sam. Thank you so much for listening and for writing. I wish you the very best. I know you’re not alone in feeling that lost, wondering feeling as a relationship transitions. We have all been there at least once.
Every once in a while, I get an email that makes my blood boil. Sometimes I sit on them for a little while because just coming on air and screaming, I try to keep that to a minimum. It happens, but I try to give myself a little bit of space. I got this email a few months ago. Every time I do a listener email episode, I pull it up and I read it and I think, “Not today.” But, today, I opened it and thought, “Yeah. I think I’ve got the spoons for this one.” Part of me wonders, did this person right this email from a place of knowing it was going to get me all riled up and that was the goal? Or, do they genuinely believe what they wrote? Because I’m probably just so disconnected that– I don’t know. It would just baffle me to… I don’t know. You’ll hear. You will hear. You’ve been listening to the show for a while. You’re going to already know my response as I start with reading it. But here we go.
Dawn Serra: Joseph wrote in about inequality and sex. “Hi, Dawn. I am Joseph, a 50 plus male. I’ve been listening to your show for about a year and I’m hooked. So many good comments and discussions. Not just about sex, but about life–” Which I just want to say, if you’ve been listening to the show for a year, you already know the answer, which is why I think this email was just meant to rile me up. Back to Joseph’s email. “I have one big question, which is an issue I’ve been struggling with for most of my adult life. How can we have a sex positive lifestyle when there is such a big difference between the genders?” – Okay, I’m struggling. Okay. Here we go. – “I mean, males are supposed to be always–” I shouldn’t read that word for word. It’s not quite right. “Males are supposed to always take command. Males are supposed to always take the initiative. Males are supposed to not take no for an answer. Male sexual values are supposed to be zero. The general opinion is that an adult woman can’t rape an adult man. Males are supposed to be winners. Females are supposed to wait for the question. Females are supposed to choose which suitor is good or bad. Females are supposed to be constantly making themselves beautiful. Female sexuality has value and is therefore, “given or stolen,” as opposed to male sexuality which can’t be stolen because it has no value. Females can say yes or no to sexual invitations, but they are always punished if they “give away” their value too freely. Females should always wait for the question. So what is your view on this?”
Well, that it’s crap. I mean, yes, we have cultural scripts that teach us that real men behave in a certain way and that women are supposed to be this very specific way. We also know that that’s a deeply harmful. Toxic masculinity has literally contributed to pretty much all of the mass shootings in this country. We know that masculinity myths are violent and harmful. We also know that the stories we have about what women should and shouldn’t be are entirely based on – I was going to say cockamamie. I don’t know where that came from – bullshit, puritanical, patriarchal values. I’ve talked about that many times on the show.
Dawn Serra: I’m not sure what your question is, Joseph, other than what’s your view on this? You know it’s crap, if you’ve been listening to this show for a year. You know that my position is that gender is a social construct and that gender is something that came with colonization and violence and organized religion. I think what’s really interesting is your first question, which is, how can we have a sex positive lifestyle when there’s such a big difference between the genders? Which makes me think you’re speaking about your values that you have bought into the stories, that there is a big difference between the genders.
There isn’t a big difference between the genders, but we’ve been taught that there is from literally the moment were conceived. Parents start ascribing gender expectations to fetuses as soon as they do those gender reveal parties. All of the stories of everyone around that baby are now solidified. They will treat that Baby in a very specific way. The baby didn’t choose it. The baby never said, “Here’s how I would like to express myself.” It’s all of these adults with all of these stories that they’ve bought into prescribing that experience to this new human who never had a chance to choose for themselves. And we perpetuate that over and over and over again. If you go back to so many different indigenous cultures throughout time, there were often multiple gender options, third gender options, all kinds of trans gender expression in many different communities and tribes throughout the years.
Dawn Serra: So this very much is about patriarchy control and forcing– I mean, I interviewed ALOK, who is this beautiful, beautiful trans artist and performer for Explore More. They said something that I think drove this home, which is, we fundamentally understand the complexity of the human experience. That we are constantly shifting and changing and growing from the experiences we have and the people that we know. That we are so deeply complex in the cultures we create and the ideas that we have. If there’s seven plus billion of us with this intricate, complex, moving constantly, shifting experience and yet we’re supposed to fit all seven plus billion people into two boxes. That’s bullshit when you really think about it.
I mean it completely ignores the fact that intersex people are as common as redheads, which is to say, pretty damn common. And then ignores the fact completely of gender non-conforming people and people who don’t feel like they fit in any box. But, culturally, the story is that check one or check the other. It’s a binary. That might be convenient for computers and for algorithms, but it’s certainly not convenient for the lived experience of being human on this planet.
Dawn Serra: So how do we live a sex positive lifestyle? Well, one of the ways is to recognize that gender is completely fluid. Also, that gender is a social construct that has been forced upon us in a very violent way. That many of us gave up parts of ourselves in order to conform and to fit in because we didn’t know we had a choice. People are starting to unpack that and push back against it and change it. I think that’s really exciting. But I fundamentally believe that in order to be sex positive, is to say, these gender rules are suffocating us and they’re unfair and I am not going to force myself to fit into something and I’m certainly not going to expect others to force themselves into something.
Because sex positivity is fundamentally, at its core, about living our lives true to ourselves and choosing the ways that we experience our bodies and connect our bodies to other, if we even want to. And that has to fundamentally include gender expression and recognizing that gender is a spectrum and it’s something that we have created through very violent means. So if you subscribe to “men are supposed to do these things and women are supposed to behave in this way,” then I think you’re probably not sex positive. I think you’re too invested in old stories. That is just a place where you have a lot of work to do in unpacking.
Dawn Serra: I’m sure listeners of the show for a very long time knew that was going to be my answer. I feel like I need a little picture of me smiling with a little “bing” of glimmer on my teeth. But, yeah. I mean, these gender stories are completely ridiculous. Thankfully we have incredible people who are willing to put themselves out in the world to help us see how gender is a cis construct and a patriarchal construct. We can be deeply, fundamentally ourselves and feel, “Yes. We are very male,” or “We are very female.” But when we really start unpacking those things, they start falling apart pretty quickly. Because what does it mean to be feminine? To be soft? To be caring? To be warm? Well, I know a lot of men who are soft, caring and warm. If we were to say masculinity is power and strength and boldness, I sure know a lot of people who are feminine who are all of those things. So it starts to fall apart pretty damn fast. If you want to ascribe gender to genitals, well, that’s a whole different conversation because I can tell you, no matter what’s between my legs, my human experience is a fuck ton more complicated than just that part of my body.
Joseph, I’ve been sitting on this for a while because I couldn’t decide if you’re trying to make me mad or if you genuinely bought into this. Either way, a soapbox was going to happen. So there we go, listeners. Enjoy!
Dawn Serra: I’m going to do one more question and then we’re going to wrap up because I’m trying to keep it short because I have a bajillion things to do between now and my Dr. Parker interview and all the other things that I have going on. This final question comes from WiltingTulip. The subject line is “Seven year cloud.” “I don’t know where to start or even if I have a question. My love and I have a cloud, if you will, that looms over our relationship and when it rains, it pours. The cloud is called porn. Since listening to your show, I have noticed how porn positive you are. I wonder if I could ever be like that for my partner.
So here’s a little backstory. When we first met, he had what I refer to as an obsession with porn. He had a neatly organized external hard drive full of it. The biggest they came and it was chock full. He would spend hours in a day downloading, searching and organizing. I became jealous over time and insecure. The women he would masturbate and obsess over looked nothing like me – thin, fake boobs. Like every other typical white girl that was glamorized in Hollywood.
Dawn Serra: I grew angry and being the wonderful and amazing person he is, he stopped cold turkey. But every so often slip up and we would start all over. Oh, yeah. Every so often, he would slip up and we would start all over – tears and arguing and him feeling horrible and disgusted with himself and me feeling horrible because I am making him feel this way.
Now, I’ve tried allowing porn back into our life, years later. I couldn’t even make it a day without feeling sick about him pouring his time and his love back into these women, especially when my body is changing due to PCOS. I don’t know what to do. I hope you have some insight for me. I’m sorry. I have no real question. I just need guidance and help. Thank you.”
Dawn Serra: I just want to start by acknowledging WiltingTulip that it’s clear there’s some really, really, really heavy, uncomfortable, scary, painful emotions happening. I appreciate that you’ve trusted me with that. I also appreciate that you want to ask new questions and that you have started listening to the show and you’re wondering, “Can I try different thoughts, different things, even if it’s painful and scary?”
Our culture has some pretty big stories about porn and they come laden with morality and that porn is often portrayed, specifically, by religious lawmakers as the worst moral crisis ever. We all know, because I think porn can be pretty effing awesome, that– I see porn as something that is pretty values neutral. It’s how we use it and how it’s made that really determine what kind of value it has. So porn in and of itself is just a thing. A thing that’s made for entertainment. The ways that it’s made matter and the ways we consume it matter. But, in and of itself, it just is a thing. Some people call it art and sometimes it is art. Sometimes it’s a means to an end. And that’s okay, too. So what I wa–
Dawn Serra: The first thing I want to offer is, I think that finding a sex positive therapist and/or coach could be really crucial. Specifically, I think, in this case, a therapist would probably be a really wise investment. I think you need to do some unpacking around the feelings and the anger and the grief. I think you need to do it with somebody who doesn’t vilify porn or who doesn’t make money off of selling porn addiction programs. Because porn addiction programs are quite lucrative. There are a lot of therapists who have made a lot of money on their programs. And more and more and more research keeps coming out showing that porn addiction isn’t really a thing. Compulsive behaviors, certainly. Maybe that compulsive behavior is tied to porn. But porn, in and of itself, is not addictive based on the research.
I have a lot of thoughts about this. Some of them you might like, some of them might not. I invite you to be as curious as you can be knowing that sometimes, it’s hard to be curious when we hurt. I guess the first thing that I want to offer is it’s up to your love. I don’t think you mentioned what kind of partner they are. Your partner, if for him, it feels an alignment with his values and how he wants to live his life, just spend a few hours a day downloading, searching porn, organizing porn because that brings him joy. Okay. I don’t see a big difference between someone who spends two or three hours on Pinterest pinning all of their favorite craft supplies or searching for all of their favorite favorite recipes.
Dawn Serra: There was a time in my life when I was a vegan cooking instructor and I had a vegan food blog. I would spend hours upon hours a day on Pinterest looking for vegan recipes and organizing them and I had 10s of thousands of followers. I loved seeing that number grow. I loved looking for the recipes. When I found a really good one, it just gave me this rush of adrenaline and joy. Seeing my numbers climb, of my followers, was also deeply wonderful and satisfying. I spend hours doing that every day. That wasn’t contributing to the relationship I was in or even really doing much for my life. It was just pleasurable.
So whether it’s vegan recipes or it’s interior design Pinterest boards or it’s crafting in your craft room and making cards or whatever it is, replace that with porn. The only reason we have big feelings about it is because it’s porn. That feels really threatening for a lot of people. Because we’re so uncomfortable with sex, because we’re so uncomfortable with pleasure, because of all of the morality and the stories we have about porn itself. If you were to replace porn with something else, maybe he was downloading, searching and organizing car pictures or categorizing garden bugs because he was the biggest dirt nerd and love gardening, would you feel differently? Would you feel like it was taking away from your relationship?
Dawn Serra: I think that’s the question that the two of you need to explore. If he was spending a few hours a day downloading, searching and organizing all around flowers or birds or TV shows or being a movie review critic and kicking out about movies all the time and wanting to stay up late to watch his favorite shows that he could blog about it the next day, would that feel different? Would you feel like something was taken away from your relationship and you weren’t getting your needs met, if it was something other than porn? I think that’s a really, really important place to start because it’ll reveal whether the feelings you have are around him not giving you the kind of quality time that you want or being present in ways that you need or if it’s actually just about the porn.
So let’s talk about the porn. It can feel really upsetting for a lot of people, for good reason, because we grew up in a world that told us to look a very specific way in order to be wanted and lovable and to have access to resources like love and safety. When we find our partner is turned on by bodies that don’t look like ours, that can be super upsetting. I think it’s also helpful to just unpack that a little bit. People watch porn for all different kinds of reasons. It might be because they like certain types of bodies. That’s not to say they don’t like yours, though. We get into very binary thinking when it comes to sex because we’re all so unskilled in navigating our feelings and our language around sex. If sex was easy to talk about as our favorite dinner or the movies we watched or the books that we read, we probably wouldn’t feel threatened if our partner was reading thousands of murder mystery novels when we like comedy novels. We probably wouldn’t feel threatened if the characters in those thriller novels all look to a very specific way and they look different from the types of characters we enjoy in our comedy novels.
Dawn Serra: So, again, the sex element often is supercharged because of our own insecurities and because of the culture we swim in that tells us it’s normal to feel insecure and that to masturbate to people who look a certain way is a bad thing. Having conversations with him that are open and curious and investigative, I think, could be interesting. Why does he love these kinds of bodies? What does he get out of it? Does he like the way certain bodies move? Is it something that he’s just always liked since he was a kid? Keep in mind that we might really enjoy chocolate ice cream, but that doesn’t mean that we don’t also savor flan, when we have it available or crème brûlée. Oh, my God. I love cracking the sugar on a crème brûlée.
We have to move away from the binary. He can absolutely 1,000% adore your body and adore the exchange and the connection that you have and find these other types of bodies attractive. I’m sure you’ve experienced that too, just as much lower stakes situations. You’ve probably seen whatever gender you’re attracted to. You’ve probably seen someone who was tall or fit and thought, “Ooh. They’re hot.” Then you’ve probably also seen somebody who had a very different body and because of their smile or their laugh or the kind of thing or the funny thing that they said, you thought, “Yes. I like you. There’s something about you that just makes me tingly.” It doesn’t invalidate any of them. It’s just, again, part of being a complex human being.
Dawn Serra: I think there has to be a lot of work around the feelings and honoring them. Also, moving through a lot of the shame and the stories. He has a lot of healing that he needs to do and you have a lot of healing that you need to do. That’s why I think getting with a sex positive therapist is probably a really good choice for both of you. Then trying to find ways to extract some of the stories that you’re probably clinging to very tightly because it’s such a scary place to be. Are you feeling unseen and unloved and nurtured? Are you feeling like this thing that he does, which is his hobby, that happens to be sex related? Do you feel like it’s genuinely taking away from the quality of your relationship?
I think that’s the important part. We can tell ourselves stories that it is, but when you really sit back and ask yourself, “Are they there for me when I need it? Do they show up for me every day in ways that feel really good? Are they offering me the love that I like to receive and the love language that I like to receive?” And they happen to have this hobby on the side that they do for however many hours a day. Maybe it’s video games. Maybe it’s board game meet-ups. Maybe it’s porn. Or, “Is this really truly impacting the time we share together? Is it taking away from our intimacy? Is it taking away from me feeling seen and valued?” If so, then focus on those behaviors that you’d like changed.
Dawn Serra: But I think one of the toughest things about something like this is the more we tell someone it’s not okay to do something, the more they’re going to feel driven to do it. It feeds that hunger. It’s like when you tell someone, “Don’t do that,” and, of course, it becomes the only thing they can think about doing. There’s this defiance that runs through so many of us and when we’ve been told you can’t do this thing that you really want to do, it drives it deeper, deeper and deeper into our psyche and into our need to go there and do it. It can take up our entire world because we just feel so desperate about this thing we want to do that someone told us we can’t do. So how can there be some more spaciousness around, “I accept you and I love you and I get that this is important to you and it scares me and it hurts me. Let’s find a way where we both feel seen and valued and loved through it all.”
Honor the feelings. Do what you can to start finding a little bit of curiosity. Investigate the things that you are receiving in the relationship and that you aren’t receiving. Also, unpack that porn story. If this “obsession” was about something other than sex, how would it feel for you? Would it be just kind of quirky and weird and maybe it gets exasperated every once in a while because he was in his office for a little too long again or whatever it would be if it was something that you thought was kind of cute or different or weird? But because it’s porn, it feels a lot more intense. Probably because of a lot of the stories you carry about yourself and your worth.
Dawn Serra: So there’s a lot of things that need to be worked on here. There’s a lot of places you can go with it. But I think going tenderly and lovingly and curiously in the direction of unpacking some of those stories is going to be one of the best ways that you can move forward. Just know you’re not alone and feeling this way. So many people feel this way. Often, it’s just because the messages were surrounded by. To have a hobby around trains or puzzles is cute and to have a hobby around porn is to be morally wrong and to be damaging the people around you. And there’s really not a lot of truth to that. Except that when we hear it enough, we start to believe it.
So WiltingTulip, I wish you the very best. I hope that you find some relief and some support around this. I hope the two of you are able to heal and connect around it and to have it be a place where you’re supporting each other from a place of curiosity, rather than a place of deep shame and hurt. Just know it’s going to take some time. These are big, deep stories that get reinforced every single day about these completely ridiculous news headlines about the porn moral crisis and all that kind of stuff. So good luck. Take care of you. Thank you for trusting me with this. Know that it’s not hopeless, it’s just complicated.
Dawn Serra: To everybody listening, if you support the show on Patreon, head over to patreon.com/sgrpodcast. I’m going to talk a little bit about masturbation. Woohoo! Also, be sure to support our two sponsors for this week’s episode – the True Freedom Symposium with Sam Bennett, where I am a speaker. The link is in the show notes. Click it, click it, click it. Then also, head to mylola.com and use promo code SGR40 to get 40% off that first order of your body safe, delicious lube and wipes and condoms. Because having sex stuff delivered to your door is awesome. Until next week, when I will be talking with Dr. Willie Parker. I am Dawn Serra. I’ll talk to you soon. Bye.