Sex Gets Real 239: Virginity, exploring non-binary gender, & being a cis man

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It’s you, me, and your emails. We’re tackling gender, virginity, & being a man.

First up, I came across this super helpful article in The Advocate titled “15 Signs You’re a Gay Misogynist”. Misogyny in gay men’s spaces is rampant, so if you’re a gay dude, you might want to check out this list and start having some conversations with your friends.

Becky wrote in with a really sweet and supportive note about the show. THANK YOU, BECKY!!!

Mary is 39-years-old and questioning their gender. How can Mary find some resources for learning about what it means to be non-binary and how to unpack it all?

To start, I recommend Mary check out Sage Hayes, Jacob Tobia, Them magazine, ALOK, Sarah Thompson, this great interview between ALOK and Mia Mingus, and this activist list of trans and non-binary folks.

Oh, and register for Explore More 2019 now!!!

Anonymous wrote to me on Instagram wanting to know if it’s normal to be a 23-year-old virgin and how to get a guy to like them and have sex with them. Help!

Let’s unpack virginity, desirability, and focusing our lives on what brings us to life (rather than “hooking” a partner).

Find what lights you up and brings your life the most joy. Let that be a beacon to potential friends and partners. Hire a professional. Work with a coach (who isn’t all about reinforcing shitty gender norms and playing games to ‘hook’ someone).

Polymedic is a cis man. He is struggling with how much men suck. Both of his partners have been sexually assaulted, and both of his daughters. How can he raise his sons to be different? How can he even be in the world when he feels ashamed of even being a man and being part of the problem?

Men Can Stop Rape is a group that might be worth looking into. Also, “The Mask You Live In” documentary is a great one. Cory Silverberg’s “Sex is a Funny Word” is a book I cannot recommend highly enough.

Follow Dawn on Instagram.

About Host Dawn Serra:

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Episode Transcript

Dawn Serra: You’re listening to Sex Gets Real with Dawn Serra, that’s me. This is a place where we explore sex, bodies, and relationships, from a place of curiosity and inclusion. Tying the personal to the cultural where you’re just as likely to hear tender questions about shame and the complexities of love, as you are to hear experts challenging the dominant stories around pleasure, body politics and liberation. This is about the big and the small, about sex and everything surrounding it we don’t usually name. The funny, the awkward, the imperfect happen here in service to joy, connection, healing and creating healthier relationships with ourselves and each other. So, welcome to Sex Gets Real. Don’t forget to hit subscribe.

Welcome to this week’s episode of Sex Gets Real. It’s just going to be you, me and emails. We’ve had so many interviews over the past couple of months. I’ve got some wonderful emails from all of you that I wanted to make sure we made time for on this week’s show. So we’re going to explore all kinds of yummy things. 

Dawn Serra: For the Patreon bonus this week, I got an email from someone named Jenna who’s got questions about disclosing a fantasy to a partner and specifically, all around having their ass eaten. So the Patreon bonus is going to be not only about disclosing a fantasy that you’re scared to share that someone else might think is dirty, but also, just some basics around analingus and having your ass eaten. 

If you support the show at $3 and above, you can hear that weekly bonus plus all of the others that I do every single week at patreon.com/sexgetsreal. Plus, if you support it $5 and above, you can help me field listener questions. I got some input on the listener question recently, so that’ll be coming up on a future episode. Stay tuned for that. If you want to be able to weigh in and share your advice on some of the questions, you can support it hat $5 level. But to hear the bonus about the eating out of the ass and sharing fantasies that you think a partner might find dirty or gross, that’s what we’re going to be covering this week. patreon.com/sexgetsreal. 

Dawn Serra: One of the things I do on social media is share articles and one of the articles that I recently shared that I just wanted to mention here on the show – I’ll link to it in the show notes – is an older article. It’s about two years old, but it’s making the rounds again and it’s 15 signs that you’re a gay misogynist.

Some of the most misogynistic spaces that I have been in have been gay men’s bars. There is so much misogyny, so much misogyny and toxic masculinity in gay male spaces. Someone wrote an article for The Advocate, which is a gay magazine, all about misogyny in gay male spaces. 

Dawn Serra: So there’s 15 signs that your a gay misogynist and I’m just going to share a couple of them that we can roll around in them. So the first one is your Grindr profile says masc for masc. The article says, “When you’re filling out your Grindr or your Scruff profile, please place your politics and prejudices front and center, so it helps me know who to block. If you write ‘MASC 4 MASC’ – meaning masculine for masculine – you’ll lose the guys who have let go of internalized phobia and the fem-shaming that goes along with it.”

One of the things that misogyny and toxic masculinity do is valuing a certain kind of masculinity and seeing anything that is feminine or not masculine as being lesser than, as being a joke, as being inferior. So having this hypermasculinity valuing, both of yourself and have other men, is just another way to reinforce sexism, patriarchy and misogyny. 

Dawn Serra: Another one that I have heard a thousand times in the bars and the circles that I used to run in, especially in Washington DC, was you act disgusted at the mention of vaginas. The article says, “When I was a baby gay, I used to make gagging noises when people talked about vaginas, I thought it was funny. Eventually someone called me out on my bullshit. ‘What’s so ugly about vaginas?’ she asked me. ‘I don’t act revolted at your body parts. Why is my vagina so gross?’

They go on to say, “I got schooled and I’m grateful for it. Vaginas are weird, but they’re also interesting and awesome. Vaginas are not weirder, more interesting or more awesome than penises. Human bodies in general are very weird, interesting and awesome. They are lovely machines evolved to do incredible work. Don’t disrespect vaginas.”

Dawn Serra: One of the things that I have heard from so many of my gay male friends over the years, not all, but many of them have been this like, “Ew! Gross vaginas.” This is just one, reinforcing the gender binary and two, reinforcing that anything that has to do with femininity or anything that is not ascribed to hypermasculinity is less than gross, dirty, confusing, icky. There are lots of gay men out there who have vulvas and vaginas and there are lots of people who are intersex and non-binary who have a variety of parts. And really being able to make space for that is an important part of deconstructing so much of the toxicity that we see in gay male culture. 

So if you want to read the rest of the article, there’s a whole bunch of really, really awesome things in here around like using feminine pronouns in a derogatory way, thinking that trans guys are cool but trans women aren’t. If you have certain ideas about how feminine women should be, every single thing on this list is something I’ve encountered and I really love that someone is calling it out and making it really easy to understand why all of these things contribute to the violence that we see in the world right now. Gay dudes, if you’re listening, this might be a good one for you to checkout and then share with your friends and discuss and just see where you fall on some of the things that you do that might be perpetuating sexism and misogyny within gay culture.

Dawn Serra: Let’s dive into some listener emails. The first one that I got is from someone named Becky and the subject line is “Finally I found it.” “I have been looking for a podcast that deals with women’s sexuality, sensuality, feminism, all in the context of real life. I’ve been listening to various podcasts for months. Some of them are good, some are not, but your podcast is absolutely beautiful. I just listened to the episode with the person who did the sensuality challenge and literally had tears streaming down my face. It’s so validating and real and beautiful. Every episode speaks to me and I would like to thank you for doing what you do. 

I’m 39 years old. I’m tired of the feeling of oppression and shame. I’ve had my entire life as a woman in this culture. I’m struggling with my partner because he has just never been exposed to the kind of feminism that activates me and supports me as a strong woman. It isn’t anything even radical. I’m working hard in healing my life from some terribly unhealthy coping habits and some mental health issues, including an eating disorder because of trauma, including oppression, trauma from my family. I just really wanted to find a positive, supportive, authentic podcast to listen to and I have found it. So thank you. Becky.” 

Dawn Serra: Oh. Thank you so much for writing this Becky. The day that I got it, oh, it was a wonderful day indeed to open my email and to see this waiting for me. Thank you so much for not only writing in and letting me know about your experiences and the things that you’re struggling with, but also the ways that the show is impacting you. I’m glad that it’s resonating and that it’s validating and that it’s offering you something that you really were looking for. That feels incredible to receive. And I hear you on struggling with your partner around dealing with some of these issues.

I have several friends who are in relationships with cis men who their partners just kind of don’t really get a lot of the things that they’re trying to unpack and are struggling with because of the privilege that they have and the way they move through the world. And, there is a lot of frustration inside of the relationship because of that. 

So I hope that even though it’s a struggle that the two of you find a way to find some shared language and you can find some ways to ask for the support that would feel really nourishing for you and hopefully, your relationship can grow towards that together rather than this becoming a wedge that drives you apart. So I hope there’s some things that you can share together that connect. Thank you, Becky, so very much. 

Dawn Serra: Mary wrote in with a subject line of “Questioning my gender.” “I want to start by saying thank you Dawn for the Sex Gets Real podcast and the Explore More Summits. When your first summit released, I was in the midst of a depression relapse and I actually looked forward to the email every morning telling me what the day’s interviews would be. I absolutely loved your Bodies edition of the summit. I started with fat activism before I knew about sex positivity, so thank you. 

Over the last several months I’ve been questioning my gender identity. I saw someone on Instagram who said their pronouns were she/they and it’s like something clicked. I haven’t seen someone claim something other than he/him, she/her or they/them. This might also show how little I know since that’s what I had mostly seen. I am now wondering if I’m in a questioning phase of my identity and at 39 years of age, this is new to me. Though I can recall times when I was a kid in elementary school and didn’t want to have to choose. 

Dawn Serra: The day I started biting my fingernails was the day someone in school lunch line told me I had nice nails. I associated that with being “girly” and I didn’t want it. Yet, I also wanted all the horse and unicorn sparkly things. I also wanted to love the shows that were geared towards my little brother. I don’t know how to hold this questioning part of myself. It feels like a coming home and yet it also feels terrifying because for years, I have thought I had to identify as a cis woman and now I don’t know. 

Do you know of any resources where I can listen to others who have questioned their identities? I feel confused because I don’t feel comfortable with the term trans, but I also don’t feel entirely comfortable of cis either. Thank you for any thoughts you may have.”

Dawn Serra: So first of all, Mary, thank you so much for not only listening to the show but for being part of Explore More. For everyone tuning in, Explore More 2019, you can register for it now. It’s totally free and it’s going to be happening the very, very tail end of February and beginning of March in 2019. I am working with all the speakers right now to get the interviews scheduled and recorded. Very exciting and also very stressful time. I am so happy to hear, Mary, that you have been a part of it since the beginning. It is one of my favorite things to create every year. 

As for questioning your gender identity, I love that you had this feeling of something clicked. You’re giving yourself permission to even ask this question. It’s huge. Someone that I admire very much who has a very fluid gender identity is Sage Hayes. Now, Sage was a speaker at Explore More Summit 2018 and Sage does trauma work through somatic experiencing. They are incredibly wise and the way they show up in the world is such a gift of light and healing and just beauty. And sage uses he, her, they them pronouns. Sage feels like however they kind of show up to you the pronouns that feel best for you work for them. All of them feel like a fit depending on the context. So I really appreciate that about Sage. 

Dawn Serra: For Sage, choosing isn’t something that they feel like they have to do. It’s an option of maybe for one person Sage appears as a he/him and maybe for another person they read Sage as a she/her and maybe still somebody else kind of gets a they/them/ in between/all-of-the-things feeling. So Sage moves in and out of all of those different pronouns because their experience of gender and their body is just that fluid. There are some incredible non-binary, gender non-conforming folks out in the world who are talking all about what it means to be non-binary. It sounds like Mary, that might be a really interesting place for you to explore.

I know that ALOK, who is also a speaker at the summit, does a lot of work around unpacking gender and being non-binary. Isobel O’Hare, you can find on Twitter @isobelohare. I-S-O-B-E-L O’Hare, O-H-A-R-E is a queer, non-binary fem and Isabelle does a whole bunch of writing about identity and gender as well as sexual assault, harassment and the Me Too movement. Isabel is an intersectional feminist and writer. So lots of activity on social media and in creating pieces that we can all follow along with. So Isabel is non-binary. 

Dawn Serra: Sarah Thompson, who I recently had on the show over the summer, is someone who just recently came out as non-binary and they’ve been exploring what that means to them on Facebook and also in their blog. Sarah does a lot of work around like eating disorder recovery and fat activism. Now also, they’re exploring what it means to be someone who identifies as non-binary and he uses they/them pronouns. So if you find that Sarah Thompson episode of the podcast, there’s links to their blog, which is Resilient Fat Goddess, and you’ll find some things they are and on Sarah’s Facebook page about this new coming out process. There’s also a whole bunch of other amazing non-binary people in the world. If you Google non-binary activists, you’ll find a rich slew of people doing work around this. 

Dawn Serra: But Mary, I think that finding some people both on social media and who are authors and writers who are exploring what it means to be non-binary is probably something that’s going to feel really interesting and nourishing to you. It’ll give you an opportunity to see all the different ways that people explore what it means to be outside of the binary, to not feel like they’re a woman or they’re a man, maybe trans isn’t the right fit. So there’s something else happening – gender non-conforming, gender queer or non-binary. It’ll give you an opportunity to find some language and some community and what that means for you. 

I’ll post a link to an article that’s got some activists who are non-binary in it that you can check that out and get that as a starting point. Then I think really anything that takes on gender is going to be potentially interesting for you. “them.” is an online magazine that focuses on non-binary and trans folks. One of the people that you’ll find writing a lot for them is Jacob Tobia. If you Google Jacob Tobia – it’s T-O-B-I-A – you’ll see Jacob has done lots of interviews and lots of writing about being gender non-conforming. 

Dawn Serra: Your process of questioning your gender doesn’t have to be something that you take public. There is this coming out narrative that we have in our culture that places a tremendous burden on the person who is experiencing a non-normative identity. I think it puts a lot of stress and a lot of shame and a lot of fear on us that we feel like it’s out of integrity if we don’t come out. And that’s a very personal experience. 

You can question your gender and do all of this investigating and see how you feel in your body and you don’t have to share it with anybody if you don’t want to. If you do want to share it with people, but just a select few that you feel like are beacons of permission and are safe to do that, then you can do that. And it’s not a betrayal of anything. You’re not doing anything wrong if you don’t come out with non-binary, all the things and putting your pronouns on all your social media channels. You get to do this in a way that feels aligned for you.

Dawn Serra: So rather that’s just a really internal gaze of examining how gender works for you and what it feels like in your body to try different pronouns. Or if maybe it’s just having a couple of selected people around you who maybe experiment with different pronouns with you to see how it lands over the course of time. Or if you want to become the biggest, most vociferous activist in the world, that’s also an option such as, no, you get to really take this at your own speed. 

You don’t have to do it on anybody’s timeline. You don’t have to rush through this and try and figure it out over the next couple of months. It can be a really gentle unfolding of questioning and sitting with and watching and observing and learning. You can change your mind too if right now the she/they is feeling like a really yummy fit and over the next couple months and years you want to stay in that space and then something shifts down the road and you want to be they/them all the time or she/her all the time. None of those things are a betrayal to your truth or who you are. You get to constantly be becoming. 

Dawn Serra: So thank you so much for writing in and for asking this question. I know there’s more and more people who are really starting to question gender because as we have more representation, as more and more people are being visible and out and talking about the options, it gives all of us permission to really start even asking what is gender? There’s so much more than the binary that most of us were given when we were born. We can fall anywhere on that spectrum and we can move along that spectrum many times throughout our lives. None of it is right or wrong because it’s a completely and totally personal experience of how you feel inside and what feels like a good fit for you at any given time. More people are identifying as non-binary and more people are identifying as trans.

I think one of the things that’s really exciting is when you really do sit down and have a conversation with someone who really gets these kinds of conversations and you start unpacking what does it mean to be a man and what does it mean to be a woman? And what is gender even mean? It completely crumbles under scrutiny. That to me is really exciting because it means that down the road, I think we’re going to have even more language for even more nuance and variety. That feels exciting because it means we’ll get closer and closer to feeling like we can be utterly ourselves without feeling like we’ve got to not play with those toys or those cartoons that are maybe geared towards our little brothers and not feeling like we have to be “girly” just because we’ve got a certain body part.

Dawn Serra: Oh! There’s this new article on “them.”, which also be sure to check out “them.” But there’s a new article on them that I’m obsessed with. It’s an interview that ALOK did with Mia Mingus, who’s a disability activist. The title of the piece is “Why Ugliness is Vital in the Age of Social Media.” It’s so fantastic and one of the things that Mia unpacks is how gender and ability are really bound up together. The ways that we’ve learned to express gender is really through our ability – the way we stand, the clothes and shoes we wear. So what happens when people are in disabled bodies and when the bodies that they’re in can’t express in the way that able-bodied gender typically is. 

Gender becomes very complicated when we think about it in the context of fat bodies, disabled bodies, older bodies. Again, gender crumbles very quickly under scrutiny. But I will link to the piece of Mia Mingus and ALOK from “them.” because then that’ll get you to them around why ugliness is vital in the age of social media. 

That should get you a nice jumping off platform for just doing some investigating and following your urges, following your pleasure, following the things that feel like a yes and see where you end up. Because wherever it is, it gets to be totally and completely for you. It doesn’t have to look like the way anybody else is doing it. I think that that’s a really, really exciting thing that’s available to us right now. Mary, thank you so much for writing in and to anybody else who’s starting to say, “What the fuck does gender even mean?” These resources that you’ll find in the show notes might be a really great jumping off point for you as well. 

Dawn Serra: I recently got a message on Instagram from someone. It’s a short, sweet little question bubble that I received and it just says, “Hi! I’m a 23 year old female and I’m still a virgin. I have never even been kissed or dated anyone. I don’t know how to get a guy to like me or have sex with me. Am I going to be a virgin forever? Is it normal for someone my age to still be a virgin?”

Oh, man. The things that we do in our culture to make people feel broken is just so utterly fucked up. The stories we have about virginity and the value that it gives us to a certain point and then the ways that we see that is being a bad thing, total mind fuck. Also, what even is virginity? The stories that we have around the ways we interact with other humans and how certain types of interactions are valued more than other types of interactions totally fucked up. Oh man, it causes so much distress for so many of us. 

So to the person who wrote in with this question, the first thing I want to say is yes, it is normal for someone your age to still be a “virgin.” Again, whatever that means. You might be defining it as intercourse or as any sexual activity at all. It’s a kind of nebulous thing for lots of people and we use it as a catch-all, but it is totally normal to be 23 years old and to have not engaged in sexual activity or to still be a virgin.

Dawn Serra: More and more young people are actually delaying sexual activity. There was several articles that came out over the past year about it and a big one that just came out a couple of weeks ago talking about why young people are having less sex than ever before. There’s many reasons for why. Hopefully, more information is one of them, age and the ways that we interact with each other. I mean there are so, so, so many people who don’t engage in sexual activity until their mid twenties late twenties early thirties and for a variety of reasons. Some people are super busy. They’re in all kinds of school and going through a graduate program or a doctoral program and just really focusing on that. They have a really high intensity job. They’re in a culture where conservativism and dating and sex are highly monitored and prized. You might be traveling. You might’ve been ill. You might have disabilities. 

I mean, there’s so many different reasons and those reasons don’t have to have anything to do whatsoever with your value and your desirability. So one, yes, it is normal. There are people who start engaging in sexual activity when they’re 12, 13, 14, 15 years old. There are people who are in their twenties, thirties, forties and beyond before they find someone that… or people or situations where sexual activity feels like something good or something they want to do or like something that’s accessible to them. So one, yes, that’s normal.

Dawn Serra: Two, are you going to be a virgin forever? That’s up to you. Some people want to not have any kind of sexual activity for their whole lives and that is super normal. People who identify as asexual, many of them don’t want a sexual relationship with another human being. They just want to have a relationship with themselves that’s sexual or not even that. That is totally normal and common and okay. There are other people who really want to be engaging in sexual activity and for whatever reason, it’s not accessible to them at the particular time and space where they are in in their lives. That can feel really frustrating and disappointing. But again, it doesn’t necessarily mean something is broken or wrong. 

The thing that really I thought was interesting was “I don’t know how to get a guy to like me or have sex with me.” That phrasing is just a beautiful example of the ways that culture influences how we view intimate and sexual exchanges and the value that they bring. There is this feeling that we have to get someone to like us, that we have to do something in order to hook them or to be likable, to get them to have sex with us as if there’s some sequence or some ways that we change ourselves or manipulate the situation in order to make these conditions true. That absolutely comes from desirability politics and how we have such a narrow, narrow, narrow definition of who gets to be desirable and wanted in our culture that leaves most of us out. It’s totally fucked up. Ableist and sexist and racist and all the things. 

Dawn Serra: So the thing that I would offer to you is you don’t have to get a guy to like you or to have sex with you. I think one of the most powerful things that we can do is to find ways to honor ourselves and then to broadcast that version of ourselves to the world. When are you happiest? When do you feel most creative and alive? When did you feel most challenged and full of hunger and thirst for what’s next? When you can put yourself in situations where you get to really be in your zone of genius, when you get to be living your passion, when you feel lit up from the inside, whether that’s reading books or writing stories and poems or making pottery or doing something that’s activism-related or being part of a sports team or cooking, whatever it is– being a dog walker. 

The things that light you up are the things that draw people in. That’s important for a couple of reasons. One, drawing people in who have similar passions and similar excitement is such a beautiful way of having a really solid foundation of connection, of a place of sharing ideas and conversation and feeling super supported because someone gets you. So rather that’s a sexual or an intimate romantic relationship or it’s a friendship that’s platonic or a colleague, those relationships can be so rich and fulfilling for us. So I want to start with that. It’s less about becoming something that would hook a guy. We don’t want to live out all of those really tropey 1990s rom coms that we saw where she’s all that or where there’s some big makeover and then suddenly you’re beautiful to the person you’ve had a crush on. Those are fantastically shitty and manipulative storylines that basically teach us that we have to be something other than ourselves in order to be seen as worthy and wanted.

Dawn Serra: What tends to happen is when we feel not enough, when we feel broken, when we feel insecure – all things that are normal and natural – we also tend to cut ourselves off from the things that make us feel most alive and we tend to make our worlds really small. 

So if there’s a way for you to tap into the things that make you feel most you, that make you feel most excited and most alive and most connected with the world – gardening or being with animals or traveling or joining a book club or volunteering at a library or a homeless shelter, whatever it is – the more that you can honor you, the more it gives the people around you to see who you are and how they can connect with you, and then you can connect with people who really value that version of you. It might mean taking more time and it might mean the pool is a little bit smaller, but the quality is going to be so much higher.

Dawn Serra: I would much rather only have two or three really, really deep, intimate, awesome friendships and relationships than have dozens where I have to perform or I have to pretend where I have to manipulate and coerce in order to get my needs met. That’s an exhausting, shitty experience that just even drives those feelings of unworthiness even deeper. 

I know we have all these cultural narratives that tell us you should have had certain markers and experiences by a certain time, but all of that is part of one, enforcing conformity and two, selling us on the fact that if we don’t have these peak experiences, then were broken and we’re going to put money into a system that tries to fix us – “fix us.” 

Dawn Serra: My number one piece of advice is one, just do the things that bring life to you, that make you feel nourished and thriving and excited and creative and seek those things out. Make a life where being utterly yourself feels wonderful and that might not be in public places. It might not be safe to be utterly yourself. You know a lot of trans people can’t do that. But maybe in your own home or in small groups with small community, where you can really stretch into those edges of what it means to feel lit up. Then as you do that and you start finding people, shared interests and shared values, you’ll start to find your way into community and platonic relationships and professional relationships and potentially, even romantic or sexual relationships. It’s also not off the table and there’s nothing wrong with you, if you do want to have a sexual exchange with someone to hire or professional. 

It doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong or abnormal with you. It just means you want to cultivate an experience and hiring a professional to help you do that is great. Your friends might be able to give you an okay massage. But if you really, really, really want to be able to let go and work out some of those knots, just have a totally surrendered experience, you’re probably going to want to pay a professional to give you that incredible massage experience. No different when it comes to sex. Also, working with a coach, if you can find one that isn’t all about selling you on all of these “tips and tricks and guarantees to hook the perfect guy.” All of that stuff just feeds even deeper into gender bullshit and insecurities and lies and perpetuates so much harm. But if you can find someone who can just support you into finding more of who you are and what makes you feel alive, I think you’re going to find so much more nourishment and a life like that.

Dawn Serra: So it’s not abnormal to be a virgin at 23. You can hire a professional. You can go to play parties. You can do all kinds of stuff. Just see what feels like a good fit for you and just focus on cultivating a life that feels rich and alive and creative. 

Maybe you don’t have lots of sexual partners in your life, but maybe you have some of the most deep, profound, intimate, beautiful, soul-healing, platonic relationships than any human being on the planet has ever had. I think that’s worth so much more in so many ways. So thank you so much for writing in. No, you are not alone in these fears and in asking these questions. Also, almost all of the worry and the fear that you’re having is because the culture around us sells us on scarcity and sells us on these really narrow desirability politics that are just total and complete violent bullshit, but way too many of us succumb to. And that you get to cultivate a life and a series of experiences that feels yummy for you and that can include working with professionals both sexually and with people who just help you unearth some of the truths and the marvel and the wonder that is you. 

Dawn Serra: So Polymedic wrote in. They asked that I not read their email in its entirety, so I’m just going to read a couple of tidbits and get to the question and then we’ll see where we end up. It starts with, “I recently found you and I wanted to say that this is very educational. I enjoy listening to you on my way to and from work. You are a great resource. I’m a 38 year old male who has been a paramedic for 11 years and an EMT for nine years prior.” 

There’s some things that are disclosed about relationships that he’s been in and he said that he’s currently in a closed triad and that both of the women that he loves have been in both physically and sexually abusive relationships in the past. Then he says he has two young daughters, one of which is 19 and she was sexually assaulted in her teens by a boyfriend, His 13 year old recently came to him after being assaulted a little over three months ago. Then he says, “Men fucking suck.” 

Dawn Serra: He goes on to say that he’s trying to teach his sons how to be good men, although he’s not what he would consider a masculine man. He enjoys pink and purple. He lets his daughter’s paint his toenails and he identify as demisexual. 

His question is how do I continue to attempt to teach my sons and even how do I continue to have satisfactory relationships when I almost hate myself for being born with a penis? I know you touched on this briefly with the whiteness aspect on a recent episode. I understand that being born male and white and being “heterosexual” comes with privilege, but I just need some help and resources. 

Dawn Serra: Basically what Polymedic is sharing is that the two women he’s in a relationship with have been physically and sexually abused and that both of his daughters, one of which is 19 and one of which is 13, have been sexually assaulted and he’s feeling a lot of distress around the harm and the violence that men do in this world. He’s trying to teach his sons how to be good men and he’s not sure how to continue to do that, both for his sons and for himself, when he almost hates himself for being born with a penis. 

I really appreciate this question. There’s a lot here. I could spend multiple episodes on it. In fact, I have in the past done a lot of work around this in small and big ways.

The first thing I want to say to you Polymedic is I really appreciate the existential crisis aspect of what you’re sharing, of knowing that being born male and white and heterosexual comes with privilege and really seeing the harm that cis men have done to the world, to the people that you care about. Really grappling with the fact that that harm is not going to stop. That the likelihood that the women and your two daughters in your life are going to encounter sexual violence again in the future is very high. That’s something that’s really tough for a lot of people to grapple with. In fact, most CIS men rather than really, really grappling with what it means to be a man with privilege in our culture choose to just shut it down and ignore it and bury their head in the sand. 

Dawn Serra: For men who suddenly feel surprised when they find out their daughter or their partner has been sexually assaulted or raped, that is a perfect embodiment of privilege – to be shocked that something like that has happened to someone you know. When the truth is that something like that has happened to pretty much every single woman, non-binary and trans person, that’s in your life. Probably, more than once. That’s an ugly, hard reality. It’s much like waking up to your whiteness and realizing that to be white in this world is to be violent. There is no escaping it. 

The same is true for men – to be a CIS man, specifically – inside of a culture that is based on patriarchy and toxic masculinity and sexism, is to benefit from privilege. It is to exist in a world where there are certain things that you just cannot see. They’re invisible to you because of the privilege you’re afforded and how you move through the world. 

Dawn Serra: So to answer your question, how do you have relationships and how do you teach your sons? It really has to start with listening. Teaching yourself and your sons how to do a lot of listening is crucial and a place where we tend to fall down, especially those of us who are in privileged identities, is feeling this need to understand. What happens when we try to take an experience that is completely outside of our own and force it into the way that we view the world? We lose a lot of the nuance, we lose a lot of the richness and ultimately, what we’re doing is reasserting our privilege. 

I think sometimes it’s less about understanding and more about simply trusting. That this thing you don’t understand is true. That’s a really difficult skill for a lot of us. I will never, ever, ever in my life, no matter how much I study, know what it’s like to move through the world is someone who is black. I will not, at least in the foreseeable future, ever understand what it’s like to move through the world as someone who is visibly trans.

Dawn Serra: But what I can do is listen and say, “Even though I can’t really understand it – aspects of it certainly – but the entirety of the experience, I really can’t understand because I don’t move through the world that way. But I can listen and I can trust and I can hold those stories as true. I can lift up the voices of people who are more marginalized than me and I can pass the mic.” Those are all really important aspects of grappling with privilege. 

So I would start with finding books and bloggers and social media activists that you and your sons can follow and read and discuss. Being able to have community around this is super crucial. There are number of men’s groups that have come up, specifically that are anti-rape and anti-sexual assault. They have created spaces and groups, both online and in person, where men and boys can get together and really talk about what it means to be a man in this world, what it means to contribute to sexual violence and to patriarchy and to sexism because of the ways that you passively move through the world, how to confront rape culture, how to have better conversations, how to be more supportive of people who are women, who are trans, who are gender non-conforming, how to dismantle toxic masculinity. So, reading books about gender, reading books by feminists is crucial. Reading books by gender activists, trans activists, people who are gender non-conforming and having a place where you can share on these conversations. 

Dawn Serra: Another mistake that so many of us make is when we start to realize, “Oh shit. I have been moving through the world with a whole bunch of privilege and I didn’t realize that women were suffering so much” or he didn’t realize that people of color were suffering so much. When we start waking up, the first thing that we often want to do is rush to those people and then demand answers. That’s just another way of perpetuating violence is to demand that kind of emotional labor for people from people.

It’s important when we are learning about these things that we don’t turn to the women in our lives. We don’t turn to the people of color in our lives and say, “I need to know how to do better. I need to know what your life has been like. Can you teach me how to do XYZ?” That’s just another way of causing harm. So we need to turn to professionals and we need to pay money for their time and for their labor to help us unpack and to unlearn and to tell new stories, both about how we move through the world and all the ways that we’ve maybe made mistakes up until now. 

Dawn Serra: “The Mask You Live In” is a really great documentary that I do think is appropriate for teenagers and maybe even some pre-teens. That might be something for you to watch with your sons and then to discuss maybe even in smaller snippets. There are tons of consent books and sex books and gender books that are out for kids. You didn’t tell me how old your sons are, so it’s a little bit hard to make some recommendations. But Cory Silverberg’s “Sex is a Funny Word,” is a fantastic book that helps kids and the adults that they trust to have some really good conversations about consent and bodies and sex and relationships. 

Even just being able to build the foundation for having those kinds of conversations with your son is going to be crucial. Then being able to turn them towards a variety of resources to bring these conversations up, not as if they’re big deals, but as something that’s just normal to do. At dinner, “Let’s talk about this show and let’s unpack the things that we saw that were sexist” or “Let’s unpack the things that we saw in the movie that we just watched that reinforced toxic masculinity.” You know, the man’s man thing. Who gets to be the hero? Who’s the bad guy? What do they look like? What happens between the men and the women in that show or in that movie? So being able to use pop culture is another really fun way to be able to talk to young people about all of these really big things. 

Dawn Serra: But I think it has to start with one, building that foundation for communication. Two, listening, listening, listening, listening. Documentaries, books, social media articles. Just really giving yourself an opportunity to decenter yourself and to center the people who are living with these harms and hearing what they’re asking for. Then finding community with other men who are asking these questions new ways to parent, new ways to show up in the world as men that helps to unpack sexism and toxic masculinity. 

Community is a crucial part of our collective healing. It’s also a way to ensure that you’re not demanding labor from the people in your lives, who are already just trying to survive the traumas and the oppression that they’re experiencing simply for existing in the world as women or as people of color or as people with disabilities. 

Dawn Serra: I love this question and I know it can be so hard to be in that kind of existential crisis place of like, “I hate that I’m a man” or “I hate that I’m white” or “I hate that I’m able-bodied” or “I hate that I’m cis” or whatever it is. We can use that to fuel us actually contributing to change instead of letting it spiral us down into shrinking and silencing and not actually helping with the problem. 

Then when it comes to relationships and having really great relationships, I think the most important thing to do is to have someone who can support you to just really question and unpack your behavior. Having an anti-oppression therapist can be fantastic for that. Someone where you can say, “Hey. Here’s what I’ve done over the past couple of weeks and here’s where I think maybe I made some mistakes. Here’s where I’d like to do better.” Have someone that can really help you process and unpack. That you’re not putting that burden on your partner is crucial. 

Dawn Serra: And doing a lot of work around power dynamics beginning to be able to see the way that power dynamics plays out in our relationships is another really, really crucial way of shifting the way we do relationship, to ensure that there truly is consent, that there truly is the opportunity for someone to voice their boundaries and to express themselves without fearing repercussions or fearing losing resources, those kinds of things. It’s complicated, but there are so many people doing such incredible stuff out in the world and I think there’s lots of places for you to go for your sons and there’s lots of places for you to go for yourself where you can do this unpacking and feel less alone and to actually contribute to social change.

So thank you so much for asking this question and for writing in. I have been there way more than once. Of having that, What do I even do? The problem is so big and I’ve contributed to the problem for so long because my privilege allowed me to.” That’s a place that hurts a lot. But it’s also a beginning to really being able to start shifting things. That to me is really exciting. 

Dawn Serra: So thank you so much for writing in Polymedic. I really appreciate it and I appreciate it that you’re listening to the show. I think that’s something else that’s a really great jumping off point. So many of the speakers I’ve had on this show do activism in these varied spaces. The more that you can follow along with all of them and read their books and check them out on social media, the more resources you’re going to have for having all of these conversations.

Okay. So that’s the end of this week’s episode. I’m going to go record the Patreon bonus, all about eating out someone’s ass and sharing fantasies that someone might find dirty or gross. Also, I have had a number of you reach out for coaching support before the end of the year when my prices go up. I have had the most incredible people reach out to me. I’m so excited about working with all of these new clients. Some of them are in distress and feeling really stuck and some of them are in really healthy relationships with solid foundations and they’re just looking for a place where they can explore a little bit more depth and really take their connections and curiosities to the next level. 

Dawn Serra: If anything in that realm could use a little bit of support, you can head to dawnserra.com to check out my coaching practice. Just a couple more weeks to get in on my rates that I’ve had for the past four years before I raise them in early 2019. So head to patreon.com/sexgetsreal to hear the bonus and I will be back next week. 

Also, your emails, I am desperate for more. I’m going to be doing a whole bunch of episodes at the end of the year that are all of your questions and comments. So please write in with anything that you’re curious about, that you’re struggling with, that you feel really stuck in, that you feel alone or is shamed around, dawnserra.com. There’s a send a note option and I would love to hear from you.

Dawn Serra: A huge thanks to The Vocal Few, the married duo behind the music featured in this week’s intro and outro. Find them at vocalfew.com. Head to patreon.com/sgrpodcast to support the show and get awesome weekly bonuses. 

As you look towards the next week, I wonder what will you do differently that rewrites an old story, revitalizes a stuck relationship or helps you to connect more deeply with your pleasure?