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Welcome to this week’s episode, full of your questions and some thoughts and questions I have in response.
First up, a few years ago, Jasmine Kyon wrote an essay about why coming out is not the best option as the child of an immigrant family and how often the coming out narrative is white-centric and cis-centric. It’s beautiful and important. Check it out here.
Then, several of your awesome questions.
Brooke struggled with wanting sex as she grappled with disordered eating, but now she’s feeling more herself and she wants to explore more sexual things with her boyfriend. The problem? He never initiates and she doesn’t want to have to be the one to always get things going. What can she do to honor this yummy horniness?
Laura met her husband when she was 18 and they’ve been happily married for many years. He’s an amazing husband and dad. The problem? She feels like she missed out by not having other experiences – especially when her friends share stories of old boyfriends and sexual escapades. All she can do is listen. Is the grass really greener? Is she missing out by only ever having had one sexual partner? Is this the culture or is it her?
I love this question and we have a lot to explore here.
Next up, find out why someone recently wrote this to me: “TAKE THE COURSE. You may think you’re in touch with yourself and your desires, but this course opens your eyes to things deep within your soul that you didn’t know existed. You will feel rejuvenated and insightful after each daily unit. The group chats each week provide beautiful perspective from others going on the journey with you. You won’t regret signing up for this.”
Finally, Paula is thinking about becoming a sex educator for the Hispanic community. She wants to know how I got started learning about sexuality and how she might get started herself.
Hear where I got my start and why volunteering and being on the front lines of people’s complex, messy, real lives is so important if you want to go into sex education.
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: 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.
Hello! Welcome to this week’s slightly late episode of Sex Gets Real. The reason this episode is a little bit late is because I am on Vancouver Island in the city of Victoria for three weeks, house sitting for a colleague of mine and a big part of what I’ve given myself permission to do, while I’m here for these three weeks, is slow down. Which means some things are taking a little more time to do and that’s okay. This is all part of how we can take better care of ourselves. In slowing down and forgiving ourselves.
Dawn Serra: I also just want to note, Patreon supporters, if you support at the $5 level and above, there are two new listener emails waiting for you to weigh in on at patreon.com/sgrpodcast for Sex Gets Real – SGR Podcast. And, if you support at the $3 level and above, this week’s bonus is an exploration of some unusual sex injuries and how they happened. I am going to giggle/gasp from horror my way through that. There’s a couple other little tidbits for you to check out and delight in. Again, that’s at patreon.com/sgrpodcast. If you don’t support the show yet, every single dollar means so much to me. You can head over there and throw a dollar, $3 if you want the weekly bonuses. $5, my way, per month if you want to help field listener questions and maybe have some of your words read on the podcast. Thank you for supporting me and don’t forget to go grab your bonuses.
You have been sending in some amazing questions and I treasure them all deeply. If you have a question, you can email me at info@sexgetsreal.com or you could go to sexgetsreal.com and use the contact form there. There’s an anonymous submission option which a lot of people take advantage of. I also just want to note that several of you have sent me follow-up questions, follow-up thoughts to previous emails that you’ve sent and I completely adore that you are trusting me with that and when that happens. I just want to note, I try to prioritize folks who haven’t had their questions answered yet before circling back to additional questions unless I think it’s super, super pertinent. But, not to worry, I do have them. They’re in the queue waiting for a little love. So, keep them coming.
Dawn Serra: Before we get to your questions, Aida Mandulay, who was on an episode recently, shared a post on Facebook from the Uncover: A/PIA which stands for Asian/Pacific Islander American page, specifically this short essay by someone named Jasmine Kyon. All about coming out and how white the narrative around coming out tends to be. I wanted to read Jasmine’s essay here so that we could all just be in it together because I think it offers a really important perspective that we often don’t think about.
Jasmine writes: “My Parents Will Misgender Me and That’s Okay: Most partners and I disagree over the concept of coming out. They are usually heartbroken that I have not come out to all of my family, and that when they meet my aunties, my partner will always be introduced as a friend. When I came out to my parents about my sexual identity, the first thing my father asked was, ‘Why would you make life harder for yourself?’ I then decided to not tell my parents about my gender identity. My father’s response implicitly confirmed that my sexuality and queerness must be kept a secret from the rest of the family.
Dawn Serra: A lot of people ask me where my parents are from as if it were a recreational choice, when in reality, like most immigrants, my parents moved from Burma and Taiwan because of a heartbreaking, socioeconomic demand. As a result, I’ve always thought of ‘coming out’ as an incredibly white subject because most coming out stories don’t acknowledge the racial and immigrant struggle in accepting queerness.
By queerness, I am referring to both definitions borrowed from Roderick A. Ferguson: (1) gender and sexuality that isn’t heterosexual or cisgender and (2) the queering of bodies who do not reflect the same national ideals affirmed and protected by the nation-state. So, while my father is not gay or trans, as an immigrant without a college education, he has been queered by the state and given less opportunities of socioeconomic mobility.
Dawn Serra: The few coming out stories I have read from queer immigrants of color have kept me hopeful and heard. The rest felt too simple. They don’t talk about what the gossip of your aunties and uncles will do to your parents, how to fix conversations that get lost in translation, and that if there is a Chinese or a Burmese word even close to who you are, it carries negative connotations.
Coming out stories don’t talk about how some families don’t have the ‘extended family.’ My cousins are my siblings. My aunts and uncles take care of me like their own. All of us live in the same borough in New York. Most of us don’t claim English as our first language. Some of us are in the low income bracket, but none of us are poor, because we are here for each other, sharing funds, transportation, emotional support and the roofs over our heads. We are always here for each other and I know this when I choose not to tell my parents about my gender identity, and the rest of my family about my queerness at all.
Dawn Serra: In this decision, I hear my partners’ pain, and of course I feel it too, but I need to think about my parents’ pain of lost family, culture, land and language––pain that I have not had to experience to the extent that they have. I need to think about the complexities of my family’s gender and sexuality in both a non-U.S. context and after their immigration. When my parents were my age, they couldn’t afford to think about their identities the way that I do. My body has been queered by the U.S. empire since birth, but because of my parents, I have grown up with the privilege that they did not have, to find the vocabulary to articulate my identity, to discover it, accept it and celebrate it. To do this in a world not yet liberated is dangerous, and so while I choose to take the risk in being authentically myself, I cannot make this choice for my family.
Like how most coming out stories don’t reflect mine, my coming out story, or lack thereof, may not reflect yours. I would not have been able to keep a significant part of myself from my family if I did not have the undeniable love and support of my queer friends and mentors.
Dawn Serra: When my parents misgender me, it will be okay. I still talk to them, as well as the rest of my family, about gender and sexuality and sexual identity, reminding them that queer trans people have existed and thrived in Chinese and Burmese culture before. However, such conversation is only an addition to the necessary dialogue and strategi–” Oh my God. I can’t say that word. “Strategizing (Strategization) we must have about immigrant protections, anti-racism, healthcare, and other human rights that the U.S. empire denies us. I am okay with my identity staying on the backburner until my family has more capacity to explore their own. While I may never come out to my family, I cannot think of liberation without them.”
So, those were Jasmine Kyon’s words about “My Parents Will Misgender Me and That’s Okay.” I will have a link to that post on Facebook at sexgetsreal.com for this episode. I just want to say a huge thank you to Jasmine for writing with such honesty and realness. The truth is the more that I do this work, the more it just becomes clear that nuance is critical when we think about identity, relationships and sex. I think just way too often in the U.S. and in other Western countries we’re taught to assume that our experience is “the human experience.” Much like, I don’t know, white folks assume their experience is “the human experience” against which everything is measured. But, we’re learning that couldn’t be further from the truth.
Dawn Serra: Just like sex and the understanding of what healthy sex looked like revolved around young, cis male experience and penises for so long, now we’re beginning to dismantle that perspective to widen the lens to allow for so many other ways of defining and making meaning of sex. We need to allow for a similar widening when we’re thinking about coming out, gender, love, work, everything else.
I hope we could all hold Jasmine’s story close to us when we think about the narrative of coming out and the narrative of so many other things. I really appreciate the labor that Jasmine did and giving us this opportunity to think about why coming out might not be the most liberatory experience for folks, at least not right now with the world the way that it is.
Dawn Serra: If you have any thoughts about this, please feel free to share them. You can go to the Sex Gets Real Facebook page and comment there. It’s facebook.com/SGRPodcast. I would love to hear what you think and if this resonates with you.
Okay. Our first listener question for this week comes from Brooke. It says: “Hi Dawn! My boyfriend and I are 30, and have been together 11 years. Disordered eating tanked my libido and he never initiated so we’ve barely been intimate for years. I’m recently back to normal and finally horny again. Woohoo! We had a great weekend in bed and unleashing that side of myself felt amazing.
However, I worry it won’t continue unless I’m the one initiating. I really want to dive deeper & try new things but I don’t want it all to be my idea. He’s often stressed and tired but otherwise, it’s unclear why he never makes a move. Any suggestions?”
Dawn Serra: Oh. Thank you so much for writing, Brooke and for listening to the show. Man, disordered eating and diet culture and fatphobia and ableism – they can do such a number on our ability to experience pleasure and desire and to connect with ourselves, to connect with each other. I am so excited to hear that you’re not only feeling horny but that you had a great weekend in bed. Yes!
As for your boyfriend, my first question that I have for you is have you asked him about initiating sex and have you shared some of your reservations about being the only one to initiate or come up with ideas? I wonder what he might say. Of course, there’s a chance he’s going to feel ashamed or defensive and closed down at the question like that. But, maybe there’s something that he has been scared to ask or maybe he’s been ashamed, knowing you were struggling with disordered eating.
Dawn Serra: Also, being stressed and tired can really impact our ability to feel into that creative, mysterious energy of the erotic. Then, when it happens, often what gets layered on top of it is that we feel guilty and frustrated about that lack of desire because we’re aware of it but not sure what to do which then further feeds this loop. It’s just a downward spiral moving us further and further away from what we actually want to feel.
So, what I’m wondering about your situation, Brooke, is what kind of play do you and your boyfriend engage in? What kind of flirtatious energy is present? Do you have little games you engage in, little moments of silliness? What could you do to bring in more play – both because it’s super fun and connecting, but also because it’s a really good way to find little moments of ease from the stress and the constriction around everything that’s taking up space in your life.
Dawn Serra: Making me think of things like pillow fights to wrestling, reading to each other to board games, playing on a playground to frolicking in waves at the ocean, playing catch with the dog to cartwheels and secret handshakes. I mean, the more that you can foster a sense of play and wonder, the more space you often create for some erotic energy to blossom. For there just to be a little bit more movement and kind of that energy rather than just existing in that stuck, tired, stressed place.
I also think that it’s worth letting him know what it is that you want from a really generous place. It’s not a place of expectation or demands, but one of genuinely sharing yourself and staying really curious about what could unfold on the other side of really explicitly saying, “I would really enjoy it if you initiated more.“ and “What can we do about that? Is that something you’re interested in? Is there something that we can do that would make that easier on both of us?”
Dawn Serra: If he’s willing to play in this space with you, my Sex Map game might be a really good way to get some dialog going or doing something like a Yes, No, Maybe list together. Those can help because they give a really structured, time-bound way to talk about new things that you both might want to try without that pressure of “I have to come up with all the ideas and navigate my feelings and feel awkward.” Starting from ground zero or from the blank page, if you’re a writer, can feel really daunting. So, maybe bringing in some of these other things to just foster a little bit of a sense of ease and play could be a way to jumpstart that conversation.
I’m also thinking sexting and sexy emails can be a really great way to explore this space in a low stakes way. If he’s super stressed, it might take a couple of hours of a slow, simmering erotic energy to start to really help him feel into his arousal. So, is that a place where you might be able to do something really fun and yummy for the both of you? By slowly flirting over the course of the day and getting each other worked up. Then, when you both get home or when you have your time that’s set aside for the two of you, maybe then there’s more potential.
Dawn Serra: I think, at a minimum, doing something like listening to the podcast together and talking it over a meal once a week. That can bring in lots of new ideas and questions for the two of you to share which might help take off some of that pressure that he might be feeling. I mean, my guess is he probably knows he hasn’t been initiating all of this time. The more time that passes, the more he feels overwhelmed and burdened by the size of the amount of time that’s passed of the things he hasn’t been doing.
The more opportunities you two can create for curiosity, playfulness, silliness and just being really present with each other, I think the more opportunities you’re going to find for erotic expression and creation.
Dawn Serra: The other thing that I want to offer to you, Brooke, is that you can absolutely continue exploring this really delicious, horny sexual energy on your own. As you and your boyfriend stretch into new places together around initiating and trying new things, you can absolutely have a thriving sexual relationship with yourself through touch and masturbation, fantasy, erotica, porn, dance, art, ritual, anything else you can imagine.
My TLDR is talk to him, play with him, celebrate yourself and enjoy all of it and let it surprise you. Thank you so much for writing in, Brooke and for listening!
Dawn Serra: Next up is a heartfelt email from Laura with a subject line of “Social pressure, pseudo problem or a real issue?”
Laura’s message says: “Hey! I’m writing to you from a small country in Europe so please excuse my somewhat faulty English. I’ve been listening to your podcast for about a year now and it has opened my eyes about so many different topics and has really helped me connect with my sexuality better. I do have a topic in mind that I would love your opinion on. In my opinion, it’s something that is rarely discussed.
Dawn Serra: I have been with my husband for about 14 years now and I love him very much. He is a great man and a wonderful dad. We got together when we were 18 and he is my first and only sexual partner. We have had our ups and downs in our sex life during the years and now is definitely an up – our sex life is interesting, we’re trying new things and I recently discovered that I can orgasm. I spent the last ten years thinking I just can’t – silly me.
Despite all that, I sometimes find myself feeling kind of regretful that I haven’t had previous sexual experiences with other people. It was never my intention to find Mr. Right at such a young age, but it happened and, of course, I’m glad it did. I wouldn’t want to be single now or not have my husband in my life. But, I’m sometimes sad that I don’t have any ex-boyfriend stories or some other sexual experience in my past. I don’t know if it’s some sort of social pressure I feel. All I hear everywhere is that you should have different experiences and partners in your life, and try different things and have fun when your young and I feel like I didn’t. I was kind of a nerd in school and had quite low self-esteem. I never knew how to interact with boys – even though I really wanted to. So, I was always thinking, ‘In college, I’m going to start my new life and be wild and date and fool around’ and so on, but the summer before college I met my husband and he was, and still is, perfect for me and that was it.
Dawn Serra: Therefore, I can never reminisce with my girlfriends about our crazy youth stories and all the guys we dated and so on. Well they do, I just listen. Also, I find myself thinking about having sex with other guys and how would it feel to experience something completely different. I have no intention of actually cheating on my husband. That’s not what I want. But, I still have those thoughts and somewhat regrets about the past.
It’s a long letter and I’m not sure if it’s a real issue or not. I just never hear similar stories. Is it normal to have these thoughts? I sometimes feel guilty about them because my husband, like I said, is the best. How important are different experiences with different people? Did I miss out on something? How do I move past those thoughts?
Thank you if you get the chance to answer me and even bigger thanks to the amazing job you do. Your podcast has helped me so much already!”
Dawn Serra: Oh, Laura! Thank you for the super thoughtful email and for asking this question. I know, for sure, you are not alone in this. Also, how exciting to discover you orgasm! Our bodies are capable of so many delicious surprises. They constantly change and we never know what can happen. So, yay for that.
The first thing that came up for me as I was reading your email was Rachel Hills book, “The Sex Myth” and how performative sex has become in the west.
Dawn Serra: It sounds like what you’ve found is beautiful. In fact, what you’ve found is something so many people I know, personally and professionally, desperately want to find. They fantasize about finding it. They’re hungrily searching for it and it continues to elude them. And, they might be having all kinds of sex along the way while they want this thing you have.
I think one of the things that’s been instilled in us by capitalism and neoliberalism is that more is better – making more money, buying more things, producing more goods, being more productive, fucking more people, earning more degrees.
And, the question I have: Is more really better? Maybe. Sometimes. But, not always. Sometimes the most powerful, sublime experiences are the most simple. Or, the first. Or, what’s true versus what we want to be true or dream could be true.
Dawn Serra: I’m more interested in asking what brings us pleasure? What feels satisfying? How can we be satisfiable? What does enoughness feel like? How can we embrace more connection and abundance? What helps us to feel most here, most alive, most present?
There is so much value and beauty and each of us getting to celebrate the paths we find ourselves on. For some of us, that means many sexual partners and sexual experiences with other people. I just want to note, it’s important to remember that lots of sexual stories does not equal good or even pleasurable sex. There are so many studies showing that lots of people, especially people with vulvas, are having lots of mediocre to ‘ehh’ to downright painful or bad sex. So, more doesn’t always mean more pleasure. It might just mean more.
Dawn Serra: For some of us, our path is a few, if any, sexual experiences but loads of experiences in other areas of our lives. For some of us, our paths mean lots of sexual experiences with a single person. Then, there’s even others whose variations haven’t even been named.
Of course, it’s normal to have the thoughts that you’re having when we live in a culture that glorifies sexual performativity. All while conflating freedom with sexual adventure. We’re indoctrinated into a culture that makes it seem like that’s the best way to be. Having lots of sex and lots of partners and lots of experiences in order to ‘“figure things out.”
Dawn Serra: I think there’s always going to be a thing we haven’t tried. That we haven’t done. Places we haven’t gone. People we haven’t met because our lives can only hold so much even when our imaginations and fantasies are limitless. Chris from The Pleasure Mechanics likes to say, “Our desires are bigger than our lives can hold.” This is true for so many things not just sex. I mean, the work each of us have to do is in grieving the things that may never be true while honoring that they are true without constricting around them. We do want all these things and they might not fit our lives. We may never get to those things for a variety of reasons. The desire can be true. The grief can be true. How can we not get hyper focused on what isn’t at the risk of sacrificing what is?
It makes me think about so many other things in my life. I mean, I love what I do and a part of me wonders what it would have been like if I’d continued down the path to be a chef. Or, if I’ve spent more time as a musician. Sometimes I see people rocking it as a chef and I feel genuinely sad, but it doesn’t mean that I don’t totally love what I have now. It’s about acknowledging that that’s true. That sadness is true. There could have been another path and I can also hold that where I am right now fucking rocks.
Dawn Serra: I think one of the things that’s challenging around sex and relationships is that, culturally, we’re often made to feel that stories of one person aren’t as interesting or as entertaining as stories involving multiple people and multiple experiences. I have a few thoughts about that at the end of the show for a different email. But, it’s not true. It’s just that with pop culture and media reinforcing the myth that more is better, it’s really hard to break free from that. That’s not something you came up with on your own. It’s the water we swim in.
I’m also really curious about the ways we romanticize this other. My question for you, Laura, is are you romanticizing things by assuming those other not-had experiences would have been awesome and fun and pleasurable? Would you still want them if they were disappointing, painful, lackluster or worse?
Dawn Serra: Maybe. Maybe not. I don’t know. But, the reality is likely a lot more complicated than we make it out to be when we fantasize about the could-bes and the what-ifs.
I mean, so many of the stories that we tell about our exes and our past sexual experiences and escapades are sanitized versions. We’ve simplified them. We look back with rose colored glasses. They’re meant to entertain others. Or, to validate a story we have about ourselves and who we want to be. They’re oversimplified so that we can look back and have that nostalgia even if there’s so much missing from that version. That’s not to say there aren’t lots of people having incredible experiences with multiple partners and loads of sex, but so much of the way we talk about sex in this culture is really a performance – picking out the bits that bolster our sense of self or get the laugh or get the groan from our girlfriends.
Dawn Serra: In every facet of our lives, it’s so easy to lose ourselves in the what-ifs and the fantasies because what-ifs and fantasies don’t often come with hurt feelings and rejection and those really awkward moments where we ignored our own boundaries. Or, when consent maybe was violated but we’re not sure and it’s a squeaky gray space. Whether it’s our career or our love or our sex or our family or even our body, there’s so much that we aren’t factoring in when we’re thinking about what-if.
Something else Chris from The Pleasure Mechanics has talked about is how often when we’re fantasizing about the other it’s really about turning away from ourselves in someway. I think that that’s an important thing for all of us to sit with too.
Dawn Serra: So, for you, Laura, here’s my invitation. There is endless mystery available to us in the people we love. What would it look like to go on a quest to discover that endless mystery in your husband and yourself? It sounds like you’re already doing some amazing things. What if you deepen that practice? You’re having delicious sex. You’re orgasming. You’ve found something that eludes so many other people. And, what would it be like to really celebrate the depth of what you have? A depth that might defy so many other people’s experiences? What if when your friends were sharing all about their delightful adventures of sexual flings and ex-boyfriends, you share delightful adventures of being 14 years into something that continues to grow, evolve, change and deepen? I mean, that really sounds like a story that I want to hear. It’s just a different kind of story.
You are allowed to feel sad about the things you haven’t experienced. It’s normal. You are allowed to wonder what it would be like. That’s normal. You are allowed to dream and imagine and fantasize. That’s healthy and beautiful and a part of what our incredible brains can do.
Dawn Serra: And, what would foster more mystery, more delight, more play, more curiosity, more presence, more reverence in this beautiful life you’re co-creating with this man who seems to be pretty darn special? Then, how can you share that with those in your life who can celebrate right along with you? I’ll bet so many of your friends marvel at what you have.
I hope as you sit in these questions… Of course, all of these are normal. Of course, we’re always going to wonder about the things we haven’t experienced. How can we allow that wonder and that sadness to be true without getting lost in it?
Dawn Serra: I hope that some of that feels a little bit helpful and a little bit validating. There are a billion things we won’t get to do, a billion people we won’t know in our lifetimes. Well, more than a billion but you know what I mean. My invitation to all of us, myself included, because I certainly do this, is instead of focusing on what can’t or won’t or probably won’t happen, how do we sink more fully into what is and let that be the adventure?
Thank you so much for listening, Laura! I hope the amazing sex and the orgasms and the deliciousness with this incredible person that’s in your life continues.
Dawn Serra: Before we get to the next listener question, I wanted to share something that someone shared with me recently. It says: “Dawn – use all, none or parts of this. Everything is true and also just a fraction of the gratefulness I feel for this course, the group vibes and you are reflected here. Your pleasure course – more than I knew I needed – gifted me with so many new insights and practices of pleasure and care for my messy, wonder of a self and for my relationships of belonging.
The experience of playing and crying with this thoughtful, rich content in a context of connection with other brave growing hearts is still healing and sparking growth for me. Even my nervous system settles into safety, pleasure and belonging more easily.”
Dawn Serra: This feedback just came in the other day from someone who did the April cohort of my Power in Pleasure course. Another participant actually just wrote a couple of days ago too. There was this wave and it says: “Take the course.” – in all caps – “You might think you’re in touch with yourself and your desires, but this course opens your eyes to things deep within your soul that you didn’t know existed. You will feel rejuvenated and insightful after each daily unit. The group chats each week provide beautiful perspective from others going on the journey with you. You won’t regret signing up for this.”
The amazing news is the July cohort is now enrolling and I would love to have you join us. It’s kicking off July 22nd and it runs for five weeks. It’s entirely online. You get daily emails for the entire five weeks and we have weekly group calls together that are live.
Dawn Serra: Five weeks of exploring your pleasure, desire, hunger, body. If you want to learn more and check out what some of the April folks had to say and even enroll, you can go to dawnserra.com/pleasurecourse. It is such a vulnerable, rich experience and we all left feeling seen and heard and full of new questions to ask, new stories to feel into, new ideas around our pleasure. So, please check it out if you’re interested. Space is limited. I’m capping the amount of people that join each cohort so that we can keep it intimate. If you’re thinking about it, sign up soon! We already have a good number of people signed up. dawnserra.com/pleasurecourse.
Alright. Next up, Paula wrote in with the following note: “Hi Dawn! First and foremost, I want to say that I am entirely grateful for you and Dylan when you started the journey on the podcast you created. I have been listening for a full year from beginning to the current episode. I fell in love with the Donna Zuckerberg episode and will be relistening soon again to take notes.
Dawn Serra: Anyway, I apologize for rambling because I honestly idolize you. My husband will say the same thing. I can’t stop talking about and making many, and I mean many, references about sex and all from you. You helped me realize in a way that I may have found what I have been missing in my life. I just would like to know what course of action you personally took as a form of education to become a sex educator.
I have no idea where to go because living in the USA there is barely any info on where I can start. I would like to partake in the fight of sexual liberation for all with the proper education many need. I want to help fill in shoes especially in the Hispanic community since I am of Mexican descent.
Anything will help and I mean anything. Thank you, Dawn. Continue the amazing job you’re doing. By the way, Urban Tantra is amazing! Thank you again and many blessings come your way.”
Dawn Serra: Awwww, Paula! This email fills my heart with so much joy. Thank you not only for listening but for writing in. I absolutely feel all of the love!
So, last week, I fielded a question on how to get started as a sex educator and which programs to check out. I wanted to build on that a bit based on your email.
We desperately need more Latinx sex educators. We desperately need more Muslim sex educators. Black and Indigenous sex educators. Trans sex educators. Disabled sex educators. Asexual and aromantic sex educators. Just yes, yes, yes, yes to all the things… Fat sex educators!
Dawn Serra: For far too long, the sex positive narrative, the sex education narrative has been controlled and largely dominated by white, cis, upper and middle class folks. As you heard at the top of the show with that essay by Jasmine about coming out, we really need new narratives by people who are immigrants, children of immigrants and from a rich variety of cultural backgrounds and experiences because it’s different and it matters.
Sex education is deeply undervalued work. It is still largely dominated by white cis folks, like me, but that is changing and is going to continue to change. This is such crucial work, especially for folks like you, Paula, who can work within a community of which you’re a part of.
Dawn Serra: I just want to start by saying, if you’re not already connected with Lorena Olvera’s work, I highly recommend checking her out. Her page on Facebook is called Sexpresate (facebook.com/sexpresatetv). She is from Mexico. She got a PhD from Widener University and so much of her work is about the collectivism and the nuance of sex and consent within Mexico. I think that might be a really awesome person to just know about if you don’t already.
As for how I got started, it was with an old in-home sex toy party company that I don’t think exists anymore. It was total MLM pyramid scheme type stuff. It was not in anyway feminist. The products were absolutely not body safe. They didn’t offer any education at all to the folks selling their products. It was just about moving product and making money, not educating or creating safe spaces.
Dawn Serra: That said, it did give me the chance to interact with thousands of women. It gave me a chance to hear their fears and their stories and their worries. I heard over and over and over again about body shame, vulva shame, masturbation shame and how hard it was for so many of them to admit that there was so little pleasure in sex or how shut down their partners would be if they brought a vibrator home. I also got to see first hand the ways that nearly everyone performs when it comes to sex talk with friends which really circles back to Laura’s email.
I mean, I’d be doing this in-home parties and I’d see woman after woman laughing and telling stories about their sex lives and their orgasms, their exes, twirling vibrators and spinning tails and having a really good time, it seemed. But, then in private, when it was just the two of us, there would be tears. They’d share in whispers how alone or ashamed or afraid they felt, how broken.
Dawn Serra: It was such a huge revelation and it informed so much of my work that so much of what we talk about with sex is the performance but that underneath it all, there is a lot of pain and shame and stigma and just internal dialog. That we’re not good enough. We’re not worthy.
In addition to everything I shared last week about becoming a sex educator, I just wanted to add this. If you have the means – and not everyone does – volunteer. Volunteer with Planned Parenthood. Volunteer with HIV and AIDS nonprofits. Volunteer with sex worker support organizations. Volunteer with sex education groups who go to schools. Volunteer to work with Our Whole Lives (or it’s known as OWL) at Unitarian Universalist congregations. Volunteer at rape hotlines and crisis centers. Volunteer at Scarleteen if they let you do that. Volunteer anywhere you can that will get you exposure to people’s stories and lives and the realities of what so many of us are collectively grappling with.
Dawn Serra: Because as awesome as sex research is and as awesome as all of the academic stuff that’s happening, the realities of what people are struggling with and the questions they have, the fears they have are often very, very different. How can more of us get in the frontlines of that?
You know, I was an abortion escort for years. Being on the frontlines of those conversations and that violence was deeply informative. I ran the pro-choice book club in D.C. for seven years. Being in conversation with so many different types of people about reproductive choice and pleasure and sex and abortion and parenthood was crucial.
Dawn Serra: Read as many books as you can get your hands on. Request everything that you could possibly want at the library or if you’re near a university, pop in there and read while you’re in the library in chunks if they won’t let you check them out. If you sign-up for the Sex Gets Real newsletter, you can also get a PDF with all of my top recommendations for books. If you haven’t grabbed that yet, you can go to sexgetsreal.com/books to sign up.
You can also subscribe to awesome YouTube channels like Sexplanations (youtube.com/sexplanations) with Lindsey Doe, Queer Kid Stuff. Follow blogs like JoEllen Notte and PolyRoleModels and, of course, all of the sex toy bloggers. The more that you can sit with and think about, the more you’re going to start to parse out what feels important to you and what doesn’t. Because we can’t be all the things to all the people. Really starting to figure out the ways of speaking, the information that matters most to you. That’s a big part of becoming a sex educator and fundamentally and entrepreneur. You can start to discern who are the educators that prescribe ways of being or who are selling this one way of doing things, which I don’t think is where the industry is headed, versus who is offering stories and asking questions that create more space and more nuance.
Dawn Serra: I’d also highly recommend studying feminist porn, going to conferences, connecting with other people doing this work and forming these relationships. All while holding everything I shared last week about social justice and commitment and the fact that doing this work is really truly about swimming upstream in a world that just really doesn’t want you to make it.
No matter where you start. It’s 100% true, I think for most of us. No matter where you start, Paula, it’s going to evolve as you get more and more experience and it’s going to become something you never could have even imagined.
Dawn Serra: Check out last week’s answer about sex education programs and then think about where you want to start doing your research and also, how you can get on the frontlines to really start having conversations and learning from people who are moving through their lives in a really real way. How can you bump up against the pain, the celebrations, the complexities, just ugliness of what it means to be human and why blanket statements, and generalizations and one-tip tricks can’t possibly work when you do this, I don’t know, work with another human beings. Between the sex toy parties I did, the abortion clinic escorting that I did, the book club that I ran and all the people there, being involved with some sex geekdom events… God, there’s so many other things. I’m not even thinking about. Plus, all the conference I’ve been to. All of that has contributed to this shaping of me. I have 100% in no way did this alone or on my own.
I invite you to think about that, Paula, and I wish you the very, very best in your learning. Thank you so much for writing in with that.
Dawn Serra: So, that’s it for this week’s episode. Go to dawnserra.com/pleasurecourse if you want to join the July cohort. We start on July 22nd and space is limited. Go to sexgetsreal.com/books if you want to sign up for the newsletter which also gets you the PDF of the awesome book list that I put together. Head to sexgetsreal.com if you want to send me an email or if you want to check out the links from this week’s episode. Of course, if you want to comment on anything you heard this week, you can do that. Either facebook.com/SGRPodcast or if you’re a Patreon supporter, go to patreon.com/sgrpodcast and tune in for this week’s bonus which I’m about to go record now. I will be back next week. Talk to you soon.
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?