Sex Gets Real 266: Threesomes, men having boundaries, & becoming a sex educator

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Your pleasure matters.

1. Join the July cohort of  my 5-week online Power in Pleasure course. Check out details and enroll at dawnserra.com/pleasurecourse.

My chat with Sinclair Sexsmith and rife got postposed, so this week’s episode is just me and you.

First up, I share about three new articles/resources that came across my feed this week.

The first is a piece in Fatherly about why striving for a 50-50 marriage won’t work. It explores why counting tasks and striving for equal contributions based purely on numbers isn’t helpful. We need to consider what  kinds of work is culturally valued and what we’re all incentivized to want more of.

Then, there’s this awesome piece in Vice titled, “Bisexual Women Explain Why They Hate Being ‘Unicorn Hunted’ for Threesomes.” We need to talk about the bait and switch that far too many couples use to try and trick bisexual women into threesomes and what we can do instead that is less abusive and objectifying.

Finally, adrienne maree brown compiled a list of resources for men on Relinquishing the Patriarchy. There’s a lot of really good stuff here for all of us to sink our teeth into.

Then, we dive into two important questions from listeners just like you.

Peter is a cis man who is a virgin. He has been listening to older episodes of the show and was confused by a conversation I had with a Dirty Lola in response to a cis woman who was a virgin asking about boundaries. Peter feels he shouldn’t have boundaries if he ever meets someone who is willing to have sex with him in order to actually, well, have sex. Should he have boundaries or not?

I offer feedback all about the importance of boundaries not only for our own pleasure but as a way to build trust with potential partners and because consent requires us to openly communicate our needs so that others can choose for themselves based on as much information as possible.

Then, Allison is thinking about becoming a sex educator and wants to know what programs I recommend. Gosh, do I have thoughts!

Because I get this question all the time, I share my thoughts about how most programs won’t really meet anyone’s needs if they want to become a sex educator and what I do see as the future of this field and what I think it will take to be a part of where we’re going rather than where we’ve been.

Patreon supporters, this week you get exclusive access to my hour long and very intimate conversation with Isabel Abbott from Explore More Summit 2019. It’s MAGICAL.

Follow Dawn on Instagram.

About Host Dawn Serra:

Listen and subscribe to Sex Gets Real

1. Listen and subscribe on iTunes
2. Check us out on Stitcher
3. Don’t forget about I Heart Radio’s Spreaker
4. Pop over to Google Play
5. Use the player at the top of this page.
6. Now available on Spotify. Search for “sex gets real”.
7. Find the Sex Gets Real channel on IHeartRadio.

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.

Hey, you! Welcome to this week’s episode. So, I was scheduled to chat with Sinclair Sexsmith and their partner, Rife, for this week’s episode but just a few minutes before our interview is scheduled, their internet went down. We had to reschedule, which means it’s you and me and all sorts of goodies today. Sinclair and Rife will join me for an episode over the next couple of weeks.

Dawn Serra: I also just wanted to mention that the July cohort for my online course Power in Pleasure is enrolling. We’ve already got a handful of awesome folks signed up. It’s five weeks of exploration into your pleasure, desire, hunger, food, body. The April cohort had awesome things to say which you can read if you go to dawnserra.com/pleasurecourse. That’s where you can get more information and enroll. It’s such a vulnerable, rich experience and we all leave – me included – feeling so seen and heard and full of new questions to ask, new stories to feel into, new ideas around our pleasure. The next group kicks off July 22nd and space is limited. I’m keeping the groups purposely intimate so that we can go really deep and really build some space together. If you’re thinking about it, sign up soon! Check out details at dawnserra.com/pleasurecourse.

Before we get to some of your questions, I also wanted to share that there is a new listener question for $5 Patreon supporters which allows you to help me answer listener questions. If you go to patreon.com/sgrpodcast, you can check it out and share your thoughts and stories and I might read it on a future episode. This particular question is about someone who is really ashamed of their vulva. So, I’d love to hear from some of you and we can help field this question together. If you support at $3 a month and above, this week’s bonus is my hour-long conversation with Isabel Abbott from Explore More Summit 2019. It’s one of the most impactful conversations I’ve ever had and I want every human to hear it and to grapple with it and to feel into the extent of what Isabel has to share about healing and pain and vulnerability and desire. It’s so powerful and beautiful. If you support the show, you can go to patreon.com/sgrpodcast. If you don’t yet support, if you support at $3 and above, then you get to hear that amazing conversation.

Dawn Serra: This week, some really awesome articles actually popped up in my social media feed and I thought, “Oh. I would love to share that with you.” You can get links to read the full articles themselves at sexgetsreal.com/ep266 for Episode 266.

First up, Lauren Vinopal wrote a piece for Fatherly called “Debunking the Myth of the 50-50 Marriage”. It’s short but I think it does a really great job of exploring why scorekeeping and trying to achieve this precise equality of tasks inside of our relationships just really doesn’t work. One paragraph that really stood out to me and I want to acknowledge that it is very cis and heterocentric was this: “While women have lots of incentive to advocate for access to high prestige educational and professional positions, men have less incentive to advocate for access to more devalued care work,” Alexandra Killewald, author of a Harvard study, told Fatherly. Until work in the home is similarly valued socially, couples looking for a 50-50 marriage are putting a false premise on a pedestal.”

Dawn Serra: That was from the article and Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, who is a disability justice activist and a poet, talks about this a lot in her writing and her books – the ways that femme and feminine labor is devalued and invisibilized in our society. So, the incentive within our culture is very one-sided.

I think that a glaring example of this is the way that dads are so often lauded for being great dads or sexy dads or cute dads or dad goals for doing things like taking their kids out for a walk or playing at the park or dressing up with them and having a tea party but we don’t see similar narratives about how sexy and how great and how sweet it is when a mom does those very same things.

This particular article closes with some really helpful practical suggestions about what healthy relationships tend to do around balancing and negotiating the constantly changing needs that we all have and recognizing that a lot of the things that happen in running a household and in keeping our relationships going is also invisible emotional labor. If you want to check it out, again, the link is at sexgetsreal.com/ep266 for Episode 266.

Dawn Serra: Vice also had an awesome article this week that a bazillion sex educators shared and it’s titled, “Bisexual Women Explain Why They Hate Being ‘Unicorn Hunted’ for Threesomes.”

I have received so many questions about threesomes, specifically, couples looking for that magical mystical third. I really hope everyone gives this article a read. I’ve heard countless versions of the “unicorn hunting” question on every other sex podcast I’ve listened to. So, I know it’s not just this show. This is a very widespread thing. I know colleagues who teach about threesomes often find that the classes are filled with couples looking for how they can find that “unicorn.”

Dawn Serra: Here’s an excerpt from the Vice piece: “This kind of treatment has left much of the queer community with a sour taste surrounding ‘unicorn hunting.’ ‘A couple looking for someone together isn’t inherently problematic,’ says Zoë – someone who is bisexual and has been “unicorn hunted” a bunch – ‘but the idea that: ‘This is my partner and this is someone I’m just fucking who I don’t really give a shit about but is fulfilling my needs right now’ – that makes me uncomfortable, the idea that people are disposable in relation to this primary relationship.’ She says the dynamic often relies on the unicorn’s “passivity” and “strong restrictions” being placed on their desires, behaviours and emotions. In essence, Zoë says, often “these couples are looking for someone who is ostensibly doing sex work but they don’t want to pay for it.”

There is so much homophobia and bi-phobia and couple’s entitlement inside of “unicorn hunting” – in wanting to find that perfect woman to be your third. I think, more often than not, it’s also about the couple wanting to spice things up or tiptoe into non-monogamy which means that the third is more about being an object upon which their fantasies are projected. Then, they’re kicked out or dismissed as soon as the couple has what they were looking for or as soon as they learn or whatever it is that they wanted to learn about themselves.

Dawn Serra: Luna Matatas, who has actually been on the show, was quoted in the Vice article. It says, “Luna urges couples who want to find someone to join them for a threesome to use appropriate apps, to have a shared profile that includes photos of them both. She says it’s important the couple only seek out people whose profiles specifically say they’re interested in threesomes and that, while communicating with the third, they’re able to openly discuss everyone’s desires and needs equally. Basically, to remember that “the other person is actually a human and not just another body they’re adding into their fantasy”.

And, I think, if a couple would prefer someone to enact their fantasy, maybe they should consider paying a sex worker rather than asking women on apps to do it for free and then, having them come in and really be that object again.

There’s even this Facebook group – I didn’t know this – that has over 9,000 members which are just people who have been “hunted” by couples online and offline where they can share their stories and find support.

Dawn Serra: I was really thinking about this. It’s come up before in the past but this article is just getting so much attention. I think it’s worth diving into. It’s a very abusive way to treat another human being especially the bait and switch that is really common in “unicorn hunting,” of not being up front about that’s what you’re doing. So, sending the woman in to befriend the other woman, maybe even dating her a little bit, then suddenly bringing in this guy and wanting sex to happen or wanting this person to be okay with this sudden addition that wasn’t discussed right upfront.

Definitely give this piece a read if you are a couple that’s considering threesomes or if you’ve been hunted and you want to connect with that Facebook group. The link is at sexgetsreal.com/ep266.

Dawn Serra: There’s also another awesome resource that adrienne maree brown shared this week called “Relinquishing the Patriarchy – a resource list for men.” The footnote reads: “This list was requested by Leah Penniman, of Soul Fire Farm. adrienne maree brown put the call out and the community responded! Many thanks to Joe Sweeny for formatting the list.”

It’s a list full of people, groups, resources, websites that are doing a variety of work to overturn patriarchy and confront toxic masculinity. Now, that said, there are a couple of things on the list that I would not recommend like the Good Men Project. I’ve seen a lot of deeply problematic stuff on that site. There are certainly some good contributions but as a whole, I don’t think that it’s particularly radical and I don’t think that it’s as feminist as it claims to be. There’s certainly a lot of fatphobia and hyper-individualism and all the other bullshit wrapped into so many other pieces. But, overall, this list that adrienne maree brown shared is a phenomenal resource. I’ve got a link on the Sex Get Real website as well. You could go check that out. There’s all kinds of great stuff.

Dawn Serra: Let’s jump into a few questions from you! Speaking of which, I love hearing from you. Each and every single one of your emails is such a gift and I treasure them all, even though I don’t get a chance to respond personally to every single one and not all of them make it on the air. Some of them make it on the air but years later. If you have a question, if you’ve been feeling stuck or confused or scared, if you want to know more about something because you’re curious, write to me! I would love to hear from you. info@sexgetsreal.com is the show’s email address or you can head to sexgetsreal.com if you want to email me anonymously using the contact form. So, totally do that.

First up, Peter wrote in with a subject line of “Can a male virgin be an asshole about his limits and desires?” Peter shares: “I recently found your podcast and I’ve been listening to various episodes. It’s been great. But, one of your episodes confused me.

Dawn Serra: In episode 102, you and Lola discuss how a young female virgin can explore her sexuality and possibly find someone she could experiment with. While discussing this, you both were adamant to be an asshole about one’s limits and desires, making them explicitly known and requiring respect for them. My confusion comes in from the fact that I am a cis, straight male virgin in my mid 20s. I’ve never even been kissed. I’ve thought about what I should and shouldn’t do if I ever do get to have sex and generally, I’ve figured that if a woman trusts me and desires me enough despite my being a virgin (in addition to being fat and fighting depression) to be that vulnerable then, I should honor that by letting her set the limits on what will and will not happen especially if it has the potential of being a long term relationship. In other words, not being an asshole with my wants and limits. I figure that since it is so unlikely to find a woman who could be attracted to me, who is open to trying things, I am more enthusiastic about than her and  fine with leaving out things she likes but are a hard no for me. I should suck it up and accept whatever she wants and not bring up anything I might want or need that she doesn’t.

So, I was confused by your “be an asshole” instruction. On the one hand, you and Lola spoke very generally in that part of the episode, with nothing gendering that specific advice as far as I could tell. On the other hand, it was directly in response to and addressing the concerns of a female virgin, who unlike me, would also need to worry about safety and ensuring it is pleasurable for her if she were to have sex with a male. So, being an asshole with her wants and needs would be crucial. So, is the asshole rule a principle to be followed by everyone and my previous thinking is flawed? Or, does it not apply to older, virgin, cis men? So, sorry for bothering you.”

Dawn Serra: Oh, Peter! Well, first off, thank you for listening to the show. I appreciate it. I have to laugh because when I listen back to some of those older episodes… Oh my God!.I will say compassion has always guided me but like most educators and all the other humans in the world, I have learned so much and changed so much over the years. I definitely wouldn’t use that language now.

I think what I will say is that a colleague of mine shared a meme the other day and it did not have the person’s name attached to who said the thing so I don’t know who to credit but it read, “The moment you put a stop to people taking advantage of you and disrespecting you is when they define you as difficult, selfish or crazy. Manipulators hate boundaries.”

Dawn Serra: I think that’s essentially what Lola and I were communicating in that older episode around boundaries. Folks who are not cis men are generally socialized to be accommodating, supportive, caring, nurturing, agreeable, to be afraid of being too much, to be afraid of taking too much space and some of the ways that we’re controlled around that is with threats of being labelled crazy or high maintenance or dramatic which is equated then to being unwanted and unlovable.

There’s a whole lot of people out in the world who have a really big problem with folks who aren’t cis men setting firm and unapologetic boundaries. When firm boundaries meet entitled cis men, it often gets labeled as being a bitch or as being cold or as being standoffish when in reality, it’s just a human being saying, “Here’s what I will and won’t accept.”

Dawn Serra: I think what’s important for us to know is boundaries are not gendered. I use Cristien Storm’s definition of boundaries – that boundaries are just how we exist in the world. They’re our yes, our no, our desires, our wants and the things that we don’t want. The thing that is gendered and racialized and tied to so many other identities is the way the world is taught to respond to different people’s boundaries.

Who is believed? Who gets defaulted to? Who gets to state a need or an opinion without having to justify it or make sense of it or prove that it’s rational and who is seen as irrational or emotional or even criminal?

Dawn Serra: I think one of the things that’s important for all of us to remember is that the more clearly we can communicate our boundaries – both our yes and our no – the more room there is for living in a way that feels yummy for us. There are many things we might want that may not be possible or available to us for a variety of reasons. We can validate that without shrinking or constricting around them. I might want to live in Iceland and I’ve dreamt about it for years and I think it would be amazing. I’ve been there many times and it feels like home to me in so many ways. But, everything that it takes to make that happen probably means that this is just a desire I have that I can honor and validate as true and valid but also hold that it’s not really going to be something I can ever actually do. Someone might want to have sex with an alien. Maybe that’s how they get off best. They can honor and validate that desire and that fantasy as true and valid and real while also then finding creative adjacent ways to play with that knowing the actuality of it probably isn’t going to come true.

So much of what I’m reading in your message too, Peter, is fear and self-doubt and hurt and scarcity. For a long time, I really didn’t  understand what it meant when I’d hear people around me say, “I can’t trust your yes, if I can’t trust your no.” I think that might be something important to sit with as you think about your boundaries. If someone does express interest but they sense that you are just going to go along with things because you’d rather have something happen even if it’s not great than nothing, more than likely, that person is not going to want to engage with you because they can’t trust you to take of yourself, to be honest and to share what it is that you do want and what you’re not really into.

Dawn Serra: I think that that’s really scary for potential partners because things can go wrong really quickly when someone can’t be honest about their needs. It also raises red flags that you might be withholding some really important other information. If it’s too hard to say, “I don’t want to do this thing that you’re asking me to do.” then, what are the chances you’re not telling them other information that might be really important. How can they trust you about your STI status? How can they trust you about anything else that you’re sharing?

I think, also, how can someone consent to something with you if you aren’t being honest with them? If you pretend to be into something when you’re really not, can that person actually be consenting to the exchange by not sharing that thing you know? You know, it’s different. Sometimes we don’t know if we’re into something or not. We’re not clear on what our wants and needs are. But, if you know… “I’d really like to do this thing but not this thing. I’m not going to say. I’m not going to do the thing because I’m afraid that she’s going to stop.” That sucks because you’re trying to control the situation from a place of manipulation and coercion because you so want the thing. But, most people don’t want to do sexual things with someone who really isn’t into the thing because sex is about pleasure.

Dawn Serra: Part of being a responsible sexual partner is being as honest and as clear as we can be so that everyone involved has a chance to opt in or to opt out, to change their mind and to make decisions that are as informed as possible.

I just want to say, being a guy who is a virgin really isn’t a huge deal. To the folks who think that it is, it’s because they’re deeply steeped in toxic masculinity and patriarchy – which is not everyone but it is common. Also, sexual activity absolutely doesn’t define someone’s value whether or not you’ve had it or not .

Dawn Serra: I also just want to point out that sometimes, especially for men, we build up what sex means. We build it up to be this mythical, magical experience or beast that will somehow save us from ourselves or our feelings or these fears that we carry. It just can’t be that thing. Sex is not the only way to connect with other human beings – to feel seen, to feel joy, to feel pleasured, to be touched. There’s so many ways for us to experience those things and sex is just one small piece of a much bigger puzzle of what it means to be human and to feel all those lovely things that we want to feel that often sex then becomes that stand in for.

I wonder, Peter, if you’ve considered maybe working with a professional who can help you figure out some of your boundaries, who might help you practice articulating wants and needs from a really genuine place rather than a scared or reactive place, who can help you have some sexual experiences so that you can experiment and figure out the things that you do enjoy and the things you do want and so there’s not so much of an edge.

Dawn Serra: I think one of the reasons people tend to be a little bit worried about engaging with folks who have piled all this meaning and importance on sex is because then, it feels like the stakes are just so high.

Boundaries and being able to communicate them is crucial. Sometimes we are silenced and judged and shamed or hurt or criticized for speaking up for ourselves. That’s true and it’s not right.

Dawn Serra: My advice to you, Peter, is be upfront about what it is that you want, what you’re interested in, what would feel good, what you wouldn’t be into. At least in that moment with that person and ask what they want, what they’re interested in, what would feel good for them, and what they wouldn’t be into. Then, the two of you get to collaborate – two or more of you – to really find something that feels delicious and aligned for the both of you. That is going to set you up for so much more success both in the pleasure department and in the trustworthiness department, which I think is a bigger issue. If people get this sense that you’re just going along or you’re just hoping to manipulate any situation at all into being able to have sex, then it’s going to really make them not feel that they can trust you, open up, collaborate and maybe do some fun, sexy things with you.

The work we all have to do – all of us – is to also have the ability to receive other people’s boundaries without reading it as an attack or a rejection of us. You might want to have intercourse and talk dirty but if a partner that you’re with on that particular day really doesn’t want those things, then it becomes more about finding other things that might be fun or deciding it’s just not a good fit at this time, then trying to force something or manipulating someone into something by not speaking your truth.

Dawn Serra: When it comes to sex – and this is for everyone, not just you, Peter – I will always say this, “No one ever owes us access to their body even if we really, really, really want it.” It’s on each of us to develop the rejection, resilience, to grieve, to feel our feelings without trying to force someone to do something, either by exerting force or by trying to trick them – the way that pick up artists do – and, also, by not being upfront about our needs and desires and our nos in the hopes that by not speaking up someone will do something because we’re so afraid of that rejection.

I hope that helps, Peter! Thank you so much for going back and listening to some of those older episodes even though the way I would give some of the advice is quite different now. I hope that you’re able to get really clear about your boundaries and find lots of ways to practice relating with others by sharing those yeses and those nos. Thank you for listening!

Dawn Serra: This next email comes from Allison. Allison writes: “Hello Dawn! Thank you for working so hard to share information on sexuality! Every time I listen to your show I learn something new. You and your guests constantly drop gems and I feel so rejuvenated whenever I listen. I have been wanting to continue my education and develop a career for myself as a sex educator (maybe eventually a sex therapist). Looking for the right program online has been overwhelming simply because there are so many. Do you have any suggestions on the best online programs? Thank you for your time and I completely understand if this is a question you aren’t comfortable answering. Thank you again for your hard work to bring knowledge and positivity to sexuality! Allison”

Well, first off, thank you so much for listening and writing in, Allison! This is a question I receive a lot. For those of you who really want to dig in and get some really personalized support to actually get to brainstorm based on your particular interests and skills and background, I highly recommend paying sex educators for their time to consult with you. No requests for picking of the brain. Just so you know, I will meet with folks looking for more personal advice on their career and getting into sex education. It’s the same rate as I charge for personal coaching. If you’re interested, you can just go to dawnserra.com. Find the coaching form. Fill that out and then, instead of getting coaching around your personal life, we can use that session for working around your professional life.

Dawn Serra: Back to your question, Allison. You are right! There are a lot of programs out there. And, I would add, there’s a lot of crap out there and it’s a tough space to navigate. Finding just the right program is going to be, frankly, nearly impossible. Even the really great programs typically aren’t going to offer all the things that you need. Such a huge part of being a sex educator is learning from lots of different sources to create a foundation of knowledge and understanding that can serve the folks you most want to work with.

If you’re looking to being a sex therapist then I definitely recommend going to grad school and getting your masters in Social Work or in Marriage and Family Therapy. Then, doing some type of sex therapy certificate on top of that and supplementing it with lots of sex education learning. Most graduate level programs are deeply invested in pathologizing sexuality and mental health. They are heavily reliant on DSM, which I think is just so problematic for so many reasons. If you are at all committed to social justice and rejecting patriarchy and sexism and all the rest, just know that you’re going to have to tolerate a lot of bullshit around academia to get through and then, you can find your own way on the other side. There are a few places that approach mental health from more social justice-oriented perspective like Adler University out of Chicago. They have a couple of satellite programs that you can do but they’re expensive. Again, most anything that has to do with mental health is still going to have to adhere to the systems that it’s working within which are inherently problematic.

Dawn Serra: If you ever want to take insurance, you’re going to be forced to follow strict regulations around pathologizing clients and assigning codes to human beings and working within a system that vilifies fat bodies and queer bodies and trans bodies, even as it claims that it doesn’t. But, there are some awesome people doing really radical work inside of and adjacent to these systems. We definitely need more folks inside who can keep chipping away at the radical change that we really need.

Similarly with sex research, there are some awesome folks doing awesome work around sex research. But, it’s much more difficult to get funding for ethical, radical research around marginalized bodies that takes into account things like oppression and systemic violence, which is exactly what we need more research around. Most research is around cis women and cis men. Mostly folks who are able-bodied and middle class and, of course, there’s the problem of assuming people’s bodies and lives exist within a vacuum for those moments that they’re being studied. Navigating that space would also be really exciting but also challenging.

Dawn Serra: If you want to do sex education, Guelph University, which I think is just outside Toronto in Canada, and Widener University in Philadelphia have some really great programs if you want to go more official route.

Otherwise, it’s up to you to cobble together something meaningful. Most of the sex educators  and sex education programs and online trainings that are out there are super problematic. If they don’t have trans folks teaching trans sex ed, if they don’t have disabled activists teaching about disabled sex and accessibility, if they don’t have people of color being paid to teach about racial justice and equity, if they don’t have classes on how trauma and racism and sexism and capitalism and all of the rest impact people’s experiences of their bodies and sex, then it’s just going to be a lot of the stuff reinforcing dominant paradigms. A lot of things they’re reinforcing. Cultural violence. They’re not going to be able to see that because it’s not something that they’re either aware of or that they haven’t decided to invest in.

Dawn Serra: Tristan Taormino does have an online sex educator’s program. There’s three parts to it. It’s just a couple of hours per part. That’s really helpful for people who are thinking about moving into sex education and she goes a little bit more deeply into the academic routes versus the self-built route and what your different options for making money out of that are. Then, SFSI, which is the San Francisco Sex Information group, has a certification program that I’ve heard really great things about. That’s based in a lot of research and inclusion. You do have to go to San Francisco, I think for a couple of weekends in a row, which is why I’ve never done that program. The people who have done it have been really happy with it, that I’ve talked to.

I think it’s also really important to consider what your interests are. What skills you have? What might be the best fit for creating a business? Are you a writer? A speaker? A teacher? Or, more of an in-person workshop facilitator? It’s also important to ask what unearned privilege do you have and what kind of ongoing, life-long commitment do you have to confronting those privileges to reduce harm?

Dawn Serra: Being a sex educator does mean becoming an entrepreneur, in most cases. You’re not only thinking about the impact you have on other people – based on how you move through the world – but, you also have to run a business. I would also look out for really great business programs and people who are committed to ethical business practices like Kelly Diels and adrienne maree brown. I think those are great places to start.

In the end, you are going to probably have to create a patchwork of education. Unless you want to go very traditional, academic route. Even then, you’re going to be working inside of very broken, very harmful systems and you’ll have to supplement that knowledge with lots of other experiences and learning.

Dawn Serra: I just want to say sex education is amazing but it is a huge responsibility that I think way too many people glamorize and kind of assume… Means you just get to do all kinds of sexy things all the time. That’s really not what it’s about. There is such a huge potential to cause lots of harm. I grapple with that each and everyday. Eveyday I wake up and think about what are the ways that I can potentially cause harm with the poeple I’m working with or the things that I’m creating. There are more and more community accountability processes unfolding because more and more people are realizing how much harm has been done by so many people especially white folks and cis men. I think we’re just on the cusp of some really monumental changes in how we approach sex ed and who we center.

The final thing, I guess, that I want to say about this is it is possible to earn a living as a sex educator but it’s very hard. There are a very few people in the industry who actually make a really good living as nothing but a sex educator. You’ll find that the most successful sex educators in the field are often running multiple businesses that serve multiple audiences and doing lots of different things to try and make ends meet.

Dawn Serra: Sex education is desperately devalued. Most people want free advice. They want some type of magic bullet solution that’s just going to get them over the thing that hurts so that they don’t have to change or doing anything hard. They want one-size fits all techniques and they really often don’t want to pay for it. The people who I see that are thriving are brilliant at social media and online marketing. They often, like I mentioned, have multiple sources of income because sex education can be so unpredictable.

I love this work but I’ll never not take it super seriously. I wish that more people did because I see so much problematic stuff happening in articles and magazines, on social media and people who just want the fame and the fortune and the flashy stuff that they see and not all the really, really, really hard work that comes with it. I’ve had way too many people come through my coaching practice who have been deeply hurt and harmed by bad advice and shitty professionals and all sorts of other stuff.

Dawn Serra: If you have the drive to carve your own path, if you’d enjoy being an entrepreneur and all that that means, if you want to do something important but that’s also really difficult and if there is something deep inside of you that’s really committed to growing in a field that’s super flawed and messy, then I would say go for it! We definitely need more people who want to put in that work. Pick what seems the best fit based on your budget, your life, your schedule and know it’s just really going to be a lifetime of learning and more than learning, unlearning. And then, adjusting and growing based on the work you do, the client’s you have, the area you want to go to because there’s just not going to be a great program or a great solution for everyone and it really depends on so many factors.

I hope that helps and just gives you a jumping-off place, Allison! I appreciate you writing in and listening. I hope that thinking about the realities of this field and how much things are changing and how much things need to change, that you do feel called to be part of that change because we desperately, desperately need it.

Dawn Serra: Before we wrap up, I would love your input. Yes, you! I’m speaking to you. Your input. I would love it. One of the things I am trying to do is scale back on how much I work. As much as I love pleasure and play, I also work a lot. Most days I’m working 8-12 hours a day, 7 days a week. I go months between having full days off where I don’t do anything work related – the life of an entrepreneur and a sex educator. Even on vacations I’m often still working. And, it’s really caught up with me. My body is angry. It’s breaking out in rashes and I’ve realized I just really need to take care of me and slow down a little and just find a little bit more sustainability in all of the projects that I have going on.

Part of what I’m considering doing is having a podcast takeover here on the show for a month or two where I invite other sex educators and other podcasters to take over Sex Gets Real for an episode so that I can keep the show going and keep your ears happy while also taking a little bit of time off to take care of me.

Dawn Serra: So, if I do decide to do that, I would love to hear from you. Which sex educators, writers, podcasters, storytellers would you love to hear either doing a cross-over episode with their own podcast or a take-over episode here on Sex Gets Real? You can either comment to me on Facebook at facebook.com/SGRPodcast or email me your thoughts at info@sexgetsreal.com

I’d also love to feature folks who are outside of sex education that are doing really rad work around bodies, trauma, eating disorders, diet culture, fat activism, relationships, all that yummy stuff that we explore here, too.

Dawn Serra: What would you love to hear? I’ll just say, if making this happen makes more work for me, I probably won’t do that. I think it would be super fun and I’d love to try and make it happen. Otherwise, I might just temporarily scale the show back to every other week for a couple of months as I try and rearrange some things and just take care of me a little bit.

So, think about it. Let me know. Comment over on Facebook. Comment somewhere on Instagram or shoot me an email. I would love to hear from you. If you’re a Patreon supporter, comment on the Patreon bonus and if you support me on Patreon, head to patreon.com/sgrpodcast to go listen to that incredible hour-long conversation I did with Isabel Abbott earlier this year.

I appreciate you so much. Thank you for being here with me and until next week, I am Dawn Serra! Bye!

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?