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Sexual jokes can be funny, offensive, insightful, or all of the above. When it’s socially unacceptable to talk about a subject honestly, joking about it might be our only option. My friend Jake talks with me about what can be learned from joking in a sexual manner. (Transcript coming soon) STIs Are No Joke Sexually transmitted infections (STIs) are no joke. Rates of infection in the US have been rising practically every year over the last 5-10 years, and almost half of new infections are among youth aged 15-24. One in five Americans has an STI right now. This is a conversation you need to have. If you are sexually active, or if you think you might be, please talk about this. Learn the risks, and do what you can to keep yourself protected. Thanks to the Centers for Disease Control for these cute infographics.

When people come out, these days at least, it is seen as a time for celebration, affirmation, and love. But why is coming out even a thing? I mean, when was the last time you saw someone come out as straight? There is a presumption of heterosexuality in our culture, which means that everyone is straight until proven otherwise. On the one hand, this is understandable and rational. After all, most people are straight, at least in the sense that they do not consider themselves gay, lesbian, or bisexual. (The ratios have been changing though, as more and more people identify in different, non-normative ways, but that is a different issue entirely.) So if most people are straight, why shouldn’t we assume that someone is straight unless we have reason to believe otherwise? My Dear Grandmother Let me start with an example. Shortly after I came out, or more accurately shortly after my grandmother found out—it’s not as if I had a coming out party to which she was invited—she asked, “Why didn’t you tell me? I wouldn’t have kept asking you when you were going to get married and have kids.” She was an incredibly loving, accepting, and affirming woman, but this example highlights a number of important (and inaccurate) stereotypes. First, she assumed I was straight. But on top of that, she assumed that straight people get married. She assumed married people have kids. As the matriarch, and particularly as she accumulated her years, she was very interested in the growth of her family. I was her oldest grandchild, so I was the first she turned to to start the next generation. Anyway, with all those assumptions about heterosexuality come the other assumptions. Gay people don’t get married or have kids. They are just as valid, we like to think, but they are still, somehow, less. Presumption of Heterosexuality So this is all part of heteronormativity. Either you’re normal—you are straight, you have a family, you have kids—or you’re different. We love our deviants, but there’s no hiding the fact that they’re different as long as heteronormativity is a significant force. Heteronormativity is the pressure to be normal, and being normal means being heterosexual. As long as this force is part of our social fabric, then anyone who is not normal in this way is different. They have to explain themselves. They have to come out. They have to justify their difference. And they may have to defend themselves against the various assumptions that would have them be seen as “less” in some way. Presumption of Sexuality One of the most interesting parts of heteronormativity is not the hetero- part of the sexual norm, but the -sexual part. We are presumed to be heterosexual, which also means we are presumed to be sexual. What is the significance of this? Well, of course we are all sexual beings to some degree, but sexual normativity is what takes the assumption of heterosexuality to the assumption that you will get married and have kids. What happens when you get into your thirties and you’re still not married, you’re not popping out spawn? Something might be wrong. Of course in the past couple decades a child-free lifestyle is becoming much more acceptable in the United States and other “Western” countries, but it used to be that a thirty-year-old unmarried woman was cause for drastic action (or maybe even giving up hope). Quick! Marry the next guy that looks at you before it’s too late! Or maybe you’re lesbian. Which is totally OK… but if that’s the case, quit pretending! Come out already! (Is it really OK? And who’s doing the pretending?) Save the Children On the other side of the age spectrum, we like to pretend that kids are not sexual. At least that’s what we say out loud. But the presumption of heterosexuality requires young boys to be trained for their future of doing whatever heterosexual young men do… they are trained to be dominant, to assert their privilege over women, to demonstrate their sexual prowess through a high “body count.” (Wow I hate that expression!) But not too high. Likewise, young girls need to learn to be appropriately attractive to boys, to be polite and desirable and all the other things required of heteronormativity. Domination of the Patriarchy As you can see, heteronormativity goes hand in hand with patriarchal thinking. To be heterosexual is also to be part of patriarchal culture. All these assumptions about sexuality are tied together. Compulsory Heterosexuality The cultural assumption, then, is that everyone is heterosexual. But part of that, or in addition to that, everyone is expected to desire sex in the same way, at roughly the same age, and to act on those desires in socially accepted ways (like getting married and having kids). Scholars have seen this compulsory fact, and heteronormative pressures as a whole, as a tool to suppress deviance, to equate difference with deviance, and to punish or exile those who fail to comply. What Does it Matter? The way we talk about sex matters. The assumptions we make about sex have an effect on people. By assuming that someone is heterosexual, we “otherize” sexual difference. That is, being different becomes a big deal, it becomes something that differentiates people. Less normal becomes less. Different becomes deviant. Those who violate heteronormativity become outsiders. Others. Not part of “us.” When people are excluded by being labeled “different,” we’ve seen what happens. Mental health suffers. Depression, anxiety, and suicide rates go up. In short, people hurt. People get hurt. Who I Shag is None of Your Business When it comes down to it, sexuality really shouldn’t matter. Most of the time it doesn’t have any valid reason to be part of a discussion. To use myself as an example: Who I shag is none of your business. How I shag is none of your business. Whether I shag is none of your business. Unless, of course, if we’re going to shag. So why do we expect people to come out? If someone wants to be proud of their sexuality, if they want it to be part of their public identity, then that’s great. I don’t have any complaint about that. But when someone feels compelled to make it public because otherwise they’re seen as hiding something, or not being honest, then maybe there’s a problem. When was the last time someone came out as a person who likes mushrooms on their pizza? If they did, did anyone pay attention? Probably not, nobody cares. And if someone likes mushrooms but didn’t come out, nobody’s going to be mad at them. Because honestly, unless you’re going to eat pizza together, it’s none of your business. But sex is special, isn’t it? Sex is controlled in a way that other things are not. Other preferences are usually no big deal. Other parts of our identity, they’re either hidden or they’re a non-issue. For the most part. Right? Like how tall you are, what color your hair is, those things don’t usually come up in conversation. Sure, some things might be more obvious than other things, but when it comes down to it, who cares? But if you like the wrong kind of people… That changes everything. You see this most notably with celebrities, I think. Paparazzi go crazy over a juicy tidbit about someone’s sexuality. You don’t usually see them making a big deal about what someone ate for lunch or whether they’re 5’10 ro 6’2. I mean, some people write stories about anything, but they just don’t make headlines in the same way as a story about sex. I Love Harry Styles That’s why I love Harry Styles. He’s notorious for not giving into paparazzi and other pressure to disclose secrets about his love life. His response? “It’s ‘Who cares?’ Does that make sense? It’s just, ‘Who cares?'”1 He actually clarified that he’s not intentionally keeping secrets from people. It’s more like he’s being noncommittal, possibly because he hasn’t even given it that much thought himself. Like, not even he cares. And I love that. It’s so freeing. For sexuality to be a non-issue, not even for himself. He can just be himself, do what feels right, what is fun in the moment. If he wants to be in a relationship with a girl, or go on a date with a guy, or wear a dress, it just doesn’t matter. Fantastic. Wouldn’t it be great if the whole world were like that? Thanks for listening. References Carter, Terry Jr. 2019. “Harry Styles Was Asked About His Sexuality In A New Interview And His Response Is Surprisingly Honest.” December 14, 2019. BuzzFeed.

Some excellent researchers affiliated with with the Williams Institute at UCLA recently released a report about civil commitment in the United States as applied to those convicted of a sex offense.1 The report highlights racial and sexual orientation disparities in application, and it brings to light concerns with the way civil commitment is applied. Usually I include a full transcript in the notes, but because I’m citing a lot of statistics and other information I thought an outline format might be more readable. Let me know if you like this format. What is civil commitment? This is not prison or jail, although often it looks like it.It is not directly related to a criminal conviction.Legally it is not classified as a punishment (it is “civil”).Courts claim that it is acceptable for states to confine people against their will without a criminal conviction out of public safety concerns.Individuals are confined for their own safety and for the safety of the public.This has some logic with some mental disorders where an individual might be violent, suicidal, etc.In the case of so-called “sexually violent predators,” definitions are very vague and medical diagnoses are not based on science or nonexistent.One court suggested that the Constitutional due process right to be free from arbitrary governmental restraint is not an absolute right.2This kind of detention without a crime is effectively incarcerating someone for crimes they might commit in the future.To what extent is it acceptable to take away someone’s liberty to protect against a theoretical harm?Is this actually making anyone safer, or is it theater?How can we even know if someone might commit a crime in the future? Who is in civil commitment? In the past a person could be “diagnosed” as a “sexual psychopath” without committing a crime, or after committing a crime that was not sexual.In the 1960s, psychiatric state hospitals began to go out of style in general. The population of people committed against their will declined, and rules became more strict. However, those seen to have mental health issues related to sex are seen as a special case.Under current laws, one must be convicted of a sex offense before the state can petition for civil commitment after their incarceration.Over the past few years, there have been over 6000 individuals involuntarily detained under sex offense civil commitment laws nationwide.To the extent that data are available, the report shows that Black residents are held at a rate well over twice the rate of White residents.1The report suggests that this disparity mirrors the racial disparity within the criminal justice system as a whole, although there may be reasons that the problem is particularly strong in the area of sex offenses and civil commitment.While sexual orientation of individuals in the system is not usually tracked, the report estimates that men who have sex with men are 2.5-6.3 times more likely to experience civil commitment after a sex offense conviction than are men who have sex only with women (p. 15).The rate varies from state to state and by race.Men with male victims are automatically presumed to be more dangerous.This normalizes violence against women and pathologizes homosexuality. Civil commitment for mental health, substance abuse, those found not guilty of a crime by reason of insanity, and sex offender civil commitment all have different rules. It is worth comparing them, because validation of one is often used for justification of another. Here, I am interested in civil commitment of so-called “sexually violent predators” because of its bearing on how we think about sex, sexual identity, and difference. What states have sex offense civil commitment laws? Arizona, California, Florida, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin, the District of Columbia, and the Federal system. What is required to commit someone? A state must prove that an individual has a “mental disorder” or “abnormality” and they are likely to commit sexually violent acts in the future. Unfortunately, these definitions can be quite vague and arbitrary. For example, the fact of a previous offense is often used as evidence of likelihood of a future offense without any risk-based evidence. When/how is someone released from civil commitment? This is possibly the most concerning part of the system. While civil commitment facilities are nominally mental health treatment facilities, there is usually no clear path through treatment to release. What are the consequences of using civil commitment for people deemed sexually violent? What freedoms are we losing?What is the cost?Are people any safer? References Trevor Hoppe et al. 2020. “Civil Commitment of People Convicted of Sex Offenses in the United States.” Williams Institute, UCLA School of Law.Kansas v. Hendricks, 521 U.S. 346, 356 (1997).Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. 2019. Civil Commitment and the Mental Health Care Continuum: Historical Trends and Principles for Law and Practice. Rockville, MD.

Queer people have more mental health problems than their hetero friends. Why? Is it because there’s something bad about being gay? Or is there a problem with the way we think about sex and sexual identities? (Transcript) Mental health is notably lower for individuals who identify as lesbian, gay bisexual, transgender, or queer. There’s a complicated history between queerness and mental health, and understanding the connection could be insightful beyond minority populations. Until 1973, homosexuality was categorized by the American Psychiatric Association as a mental disorder.  With the publication of the second edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (American Psychiatric Association 1973), this categorization was no longer included.  However, debates over the nature of homosexuality in relation to mental health continued both among professionals and in the general population.  The legacy of homosexuality-as-disorder is seen in its social stigma, deviant identity, or difference requiring explanation.  Homosexuality is but one example of a broad array sexual orientations and identities that make a minority appearance in human variation. The Pathologization of Gayness Some people used to assume that homosexuality was a mental disorder because of religious or moral reasons. It’s wrong, and so behaving in a “wrong” way must be a sign of disorder. As moral reasoning gave way to scientific reasoning, a new argument was that homosexuality must be a disorder because homosexuals are more anxious, depressed, prone to suicidal ideation, and so on. But this reasoning is problematic for two reasons. First, depression is already a disorder, so just because one this in associated with a disorder does not make the one thing a disorder also. That’s like saying that because married people are more depressed, then marriage is a disorder. Second, it’s kind of a circular argument because we know that putting the label of “mental disorder” on someone in itself creates stigma, depression, and anxiety. But anyway, that’s in the past. Now, at least among mental health professionals, pretty much everyone agrees that homosexuality is a natural sexual variation and not inherently disordered. However, that doesn’t change the fact that homosexuals (LGBTQ people in general) have higher rates of mental health problems. So what’s going on? What Do We Know? Ilan Meyer (2003) did a great job summarizing the research up to that point. He found that stress related to sexual minority status in lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) individuals is consistently shown to correlate with mental health problems.  Lesbian women and gay men experience more physical victimization than heterosexual people, including as property crime, physical assault, or sexual assault.  They also experience higher rates of discrimination, and just as damaging, they perceive discrimination based on sexuality whether it is explicit or not. LGB individuals often conceal their sexual identity in an attempt to avoid victimization; but they also may disclose their sexual identity to receive acceptance into a community or for a personal sense of integrity.  However, heteronormative external pressures also may lead to internalized homophobia, if only in subtle forms.  “It is unlikely that internalized homophobia completely abates even when the person has accepted his or her homosexuality,” Meyer states. Studies have been done on transgender populations, too, with similar results. Bockting et al. (2013) recruited a sample of transgender people from websites, mailing lists, etc. and found that transgender people have significantly higher rates of depression, anxiety, and overall distress than average. In more recent studies, researchers have been branching out from the traditional categories of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender. One study, conducted by Borgogna et al. (2019), was able to divide subjects into many categories including transmen, transwomen, gender nonconforming, bisexual, gay/lesbian, questioning, pansexual, demisexual, asexual, and queer. A few of their respondents gave still other identifiers, but they had to limit their categories in order to make statistical sense of their results. And, as you can guess, they found that individuals in all these categories have higher rates of mental health problems than heterosexual individuals. Additionally, mental health disparities are greatest for “emerging identities,” that is, the new ones opposed to the traditional categories of LGBTQ. Not a Monolithic Sexual Minority So, these days researchers are starting to understand that not everyone in the LGBTQ umbrella is the same. They don’t have the same experiences, and they don’t have the same problems. That’s why researchers are finding more and more categories to put people into. Nonetheless, there are clear similarities. As I explained earlier, mental health differences are seen in all the different categories in this umbrella. Much of the research into mental health disparities of sexual minority populations is built around the theory of minority stress developed by Meyer (2003).  This theory is built on the same idea as racial minority stress.  In much the same way as Black individuals experience unique and additive stressors related to their minority race, those who are the focus of this research experience stressors uniquely related to their minority sexuality. There was one problem that Meyer saw, though: an apparent contradiction in the consequences of minority stress.  Black individuals do not experience higher rates of mental disorders, but LGB individuals do.  Both hold a minority position, and both experience stress because of it, but their outcomes are different. One possible explanation for this is the minority community.  Black people are born into their ethnic community, and thus they may receive support and a bolstered sense of identity from their community throughout their whole lives.  On the other hand, people with a minority sexuality are not thought to be born into a sexual identity community.  If they become part of such a community at all, they must undergo a process of sexual development and discovery first.  Even then, because sexual identities are fluid and do not always align precisely with an individual’s experience, membership in a sexual minority identity community may not be guaranteed. Meyer’s minority stress model presumes minority identity.  While sociologists excel at categorization and identification, an individual person’s experience does not necessarily match the same identifier.  When sexualities deviate from the normative, then stress is likely in some form, even if the deviation does not align with an alternate minority identity categorization. Queer Theory From Grounded Theory Grounded theory has the goal of looking at data without any preconceived notions of what they will show. Basically, start with the basic facts that are known to be true, and then build a theory from there. Minority Stress In this case, we see these various sexual minority identity groups having higher rates of mental health problems. Meyer saw this evidence, and he drew the comparison to racial minority groups. This theory makes a lot of sense, but it’s not perfect. So let’s take a step back and look at the evidence in a different way. sexual identity groups are tricky things, because not everyone fits them perfectly. They’re just generalizations. Instead of saying that all these individuals identify with a sexual minority group (which might not even be true—for example not all men who have sex with men call themselves gay) what do all these individuals have in common? Group-Norms Vrangalova and Savin-Williams (2011) hint at an alternative to identity by measuring only whether an individual deviates from the norm, not whether they identify with a label aligned with deviation. They interviewed high school seniors about their mental health and asked them what age they were when they had their first sexual experience. They found that people who had sex at the “normal” time, meaning at the same time as their average peers, had the best mental health. People who did not have sexual experiences until later were more likely to have mental health problems. In the concept of their study, they anticipated a normative sexual experience; and experiences that deviated from the norm were associated with poorer mental health.  This group-norms perspective may allow an understanding of the minority stress model that is independent from self-identity.  Their theory is able to see “minority stress” without subjects being categorized directly with a minority identity—and especially without having to self-identify into a non-normative categorization. Sexual Identity Stress Another study, by Sattler et al. (2017), provides another interesting variation on Meyer’s theory because it applies sexual identity stress to individuals of any sexual identity, not only minority sexual identities.  While it is clear that sexual minority populations experience a disproportionate level of these stressors, Sattler et al. (2017) finds that sexual majority populations experience them as well.  Furthermore, in their model, sexual identity stress explains all of the variation in mental health outcomes between majority and minority sexual identity groups, suggesting that there is nothing essentially different about sexual minority groups; rather, they simply experience sexual identity stress in varying levels. Let me say that another way. Sexual stress explains the difference in mental health, not sexual identity. According to their data, it doesn’t matter what a person’s sexual identity is. What matters is how stressful their experience is of their sexual identity. For example, someone who is picked on for being straight can be depressed as a result, in the same way that someone who is picked on for being gay can be depressed. Queer Theory So where does this lead, then? We can follow this evidence right into queer theory. A fundamental aspect of queer theory is that it rejects binary classifications.  For the queer theorist, it is not only insufficient to add more categories to better define difference, it is antithetical.  This applies directly to categorization and labeling of sexual minority populations: Queer theory posits that the identity categories of ‘lesbian’ and ‘gay’ are products of binary cultural systems of meaning reproduced by institutional and discursive practices. Sedgwick (1990) and Fuss (1991) elaborate on how homosexuality becomes the inferior partner in the binary by arguing that the homo/hetero binary operates in relationship to other unequal binaries such as male/female, rational/emotional, strong/weak and active/passive. Semp 2011:71 Semp argues that the ubiquitous use of identity categories in social research limits our understanding of these populations and distorts knowledge where a subject does not understand his or her position in the same way as the researcher does (2011:71). Part of this limitation is in how researchers recruit and survey participants.  Potential subjects would be excluded from many of the convenience samples used in the research analyzed here, because they were not part of an established club, organization, or identity group.  This limitation is especially significant with younger populations where sexual identity is still being developed.  Likewise, if a survey asks about sexual identity, it requires the subject to align with a particular identity group; this may not be the same as engaging in a particular sexual activity. Another part, though, relates to how researchers theorize and interpret findings.  By naming categories, a researcher gives them an essentialist quality.  By studying homosexuality, for example, a binary relationship is implicitly created between heterosexuality—the normative state—and homosexuality—a deviant or aberrant condition that must be studied to be understood.  “The deployment of heteronormative assumptions in research risks underplaying the role marginalisation and homonegative experiences play in the lives of queer people and risks adding power to the arguments of those who pathologise homosexuality” (Semp 2011:71). Conclusion A podcast is a great place to ask questions. It’s not necessarily the best medium for providing answers. We’ve learned a lot from the significant research into sexual identity groups, like how a lesbian woman’s experience is different from that of a straight woman. But what if we didn’t limit ourselves to thinking within those categories? What if we take a broader view of sexual subjectivity—not by adding more categories, but by seeking to understand sexual dynamics throughout society, in light of group norms and social scripts? Sexual variation can be observed in many individuals regardless of self-identified (or researcher-imposed) categorization.  When that variation deviates from socially established normativity, a common experience of sexual minority status can be observed, and common stress patterns result. I’m a firm believer that we’re all a little queer. You don’t have to be gay to be a little different, a little bit outside of the norm, in one way or another. After all, sexual normativity is a practically impossible standard. If the mental health challenges that researchers have observed are not exclusive to LGBTQ communities, but rather they can be applied to anyone who is not a perfect model of normativity, then this problem might be seen in a very different way. Maybe it’s not a problem of being gay, or some other sexual identity. Maybe it’s a problem of how our entire culture approaches sexuality, forcing people to adhere to a myth of normativity or be subjected to shame, stigma, marginalization, and ostracism. Thanks for listening. References This episode is based on a research paper I wrote for school. Below is the full list of references for the original paper. Acknowledgements, also, to a Wikipedia entry and the LGBTA Wiki for identifying the flag images in the video version. American Psychiatric Association. 1973. Diagnostic and Statistical  Manual of Mental Disorders. 2nd edition. American Psychiatric Association.Bockting, Walter O., Michael H. Miner, Rebecca E. Swinburne Romine, Autumn Hamilton, and Eli Coleman. 2013. “Stigma, Mental Health, and Resilience in an Online Sample of the US Transgender Population.” American Journal of Public Health 103(5):943–51. doi: 10.2105/AJPH.2013.301241.Borgogna, Nicholas C., Ryon C. McDermott, Stephen L. Aita, and Matthew M. Kridel. 2019. “Anxiety and Depression across Gender and Sexual Minorities: Implications for Transgender, Gender Nonconforming, Pansexual, Demisexual, Asexual, Queer, and Questioning Individuals.” Psychology of Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity 6(1):54–63. doi: 10.1037/sgd0000306.Clark, Beth A., Jaimie F. Veale, Devon Greyson, and Elizabeth Saewyc. 2018. “Primary Care Access and Foregone Care: A Survey of Transgender Adolescents and Young Adults.” Family Practice 35(3):302–6. doi: 10.1093/fampra/cmx112.Downing, Janelle M., and Julia M. Przedworski. 2018. “Health of Transgender Adults in the U.S., 2014–2016.” American Journal of Preventive Medicine 55(3):336–44. doi: 10.1016/j.amepre.2018.04.045.Friedman, Carly K., and Elizabeth M. Morgan. 2009. “Comparing Sexual-Minority and Heterosexual Young Women’s Friends and Parents as Sources of Support for Sexual Issues.” Journal of Youth and Adolescence 38(7):920–36. doi: 10.1007/s10964-008-9361-0.Hall, William J. 2018. “Psychosocial Risk and Protective Factors for Depression Among Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Queer Youth: A Systematic Review.” Journal of Homosexuality 65(3):263–316. doi: 10.1080/00918369.2017.1317467.McDavitt, Bryce, and Matt G. Mutchler. 2014. “‘Dude, You’re Such a Slut!’ Barriers and Facilitators of Sexual Communication Among Young Gay Men and Their Best Friends.” Journal of Adolescent Research 29(4):464–98. doi: 10.1177/0743558414528974.McDermott, Elizabeth, Elizabeth Hughes, and Victoria Rawlings. 2018. “Norms and Normalisation: Understanding Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer Youth, Suicidality and Help-Seeking.” Culture, Health & Sexuality 20(2):156–72. doi: 10.1080/13691058.2017.1335435.Meyer, Ilan H. 2003. “Prejudice, Social Stress, and Mental Health in Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Populations: Conceptual Issues and Research Evidence.” Psychological Bulletin 129(5):674–97. doi: 10.1037/0033-2909.129.5.674.Page, Matthew J. L., Kristin M. Lindahl, and Neena M. Malik. 2013. “The Role of Religion and Stress in Sexual Identity and Mental Health Among Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Youth.” Journal of Research on Adolescence 23(4):665–77. doi: 10.1111/jora.12025.Puckett, Jae A., Brian A. Feinstein, Michael E. Newcomb, and Brian Mustanski. 2018. “Trajectories of Internalized Heterosexism among Young Men Who Have Sex with Men.” Journal of Youth and Adolescence 47(4):872–89. doi: 10.1007/s10964-017-0670-z.Rutherford, Kimberly, John McIntyre, Andrea Daley, and Lori E. Ross. 2012. “Development of Expertise in Mental Health Service Provision for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Communities: Development of Expertise in LGBT Mental Health.” Medical Education 46(9):903–13. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2923.2012.04272.x.Sattler, Frank A., Johanna Zeyen, and Hanna Christiansen. 2017. “Does Sexual Identity Stress Mediate the Association between Sexual Identity and Mental Health?” Psychology of Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity 4(3):296–303. doi: 10.1037/sgd0000232.Semp, David. 2011. “Questioning Heteronormativity: Using Queer Theory to Inform Research and Practice within Public Mental Health Services.” Psychology and Sexuality 2(1):69–86. doi: 10.1080/19419899.2011.536317.Vrangalova, Zhana, and Ritch C. Savin-Williams. 2011. “Adolescent Sexuality and Positive Well-Being: A Group-Norms Approach.” Journal of Youth and Adolescence 40(8):931–44. doi: 10.1007/s10964-011-9629-7.Wahl, David W. 2020. “Speaking through the Silence: Narratives, Interaction, and the Construction of Sexual Selves.” Doctor of Philosophy, Iowa State University.

Too often people are unwilling or afraid to speak out about negative experiences, especially about sex or sexual abuse. My guest in this episode is serving as a role model, shining light on an issue that needs our honest attention for us to understand and respond to it in a healthy, healing way. Flip Rodriguez announced to the world that he is a survivor of childhood sexual abuse. It was a weight lifted from him, and now he can help others navigate trauma by talking about his own. About Flip Flip Rodriguez is a regular competitor on American Ninja Warrior. He also streams on his Twitch channel where he plays Fortnite and other games, or just hangs out with the Flip Fam generating positivity. A quick apology Sorry about the technical issues in this recording. I was trying something new, trying to create a live mix of the interview, and it didn’t work perfectly. Live and learn. Nonetheless, I am sure you’ll enjoy hearing Flip speak. (Transcript) Yep, my name is Flip Rodriguez. I am mostly known for being on American Ninja Warrior for the last ten years now.Flip Full disclosure: I’ve been a fan of Flip’s since the first time I saw him on American Ninja Warrior. And several years ago, he came out as a survivor of childhood sexual abuse. I was shocked and impressed when I saw this. Shocked because that’s not usually what people do on national television; and impressed because of the way that he handled it. And I’ve been particularly interested in being able to watch his life since then and how he’s moved forward from that point. So I was really excited to get the opportunity to interview him here today. Uh, so, growing up I was sexually abused by my own father. So that took a turn for—more against my growth as an individual. So that really, like, stunted that growth. I felt like if I couldn’t trust my own father to be there for me, why would I be able to trust any other human being on this planet. Um, so it grew a lot of distrust in people, even though some people have had their best intentions for me.And fast-forward to Ninja Warrior, JD, who is one of the producers on the show, had always been constantly telling me like, “Hey listen, I feel like there’s more to you. So at some point, we’re going to have the conversation, an interview, and we’re going to inspire the world.” And you know, five years down the road, from being on American Ninja Warrior, is when he was like, “Hey listen man, I think this might be your time, bro, this may be your moment.”I had a lot of good people around me to support me to support me in the sense of, “Hey listen, we understand something happened. But whatever you decide to do either way, we’re still here.” You know? It wasn’t a ton of people, but it was just enough people to make me feel comfortable with whatever the outcome will be.So, it was the day of the interview, and JD said, “Hey listen, we’re going to do this the right way, bro. We’re going to have one camera, one producer, which is myself, and one cameraman. That’s it. We’re not going to have our usual 5-6 people around. It’ll just be us. And you get to take your time, no worries.”And I cannot tell you, it took me probably an hour before I spoke anything to the camera. I was just crying, in tears, because it’s like the words I’ve never spoken, you know?So it was truly weightlifting after the interview. And JD was like, “Bro, we’re going to do this the right way. Thank you for sharing your story. I never would have guessed it.” And it was truly one of the biggest healing steps for me personally.Flip So, uh, obviously that’s a challenging topic to talk about in general. I’ve heard that some people, particularly men, have a hard time talking about these things because, sort of being out of control of your sexuality sort of conflicts with our general idea of masculinity and whatever. Did you experience anything like that?Kenneth Because we’re men we’re supposed to handle our own.Flip Rodriguez Aw hell yeah. In middle school and high school, man, I couldn’t let nobody know nothing, bro. You know, like, maybe not in today’s age, but when I was in middle school and high school, like, the thing was to be called “gay.” You know, “you’re gay.” And then like the “f” word. Not f-u-c-k but the other “f” word. That was the common disrespect toward each other. That was the common hype thing, in middle school and high school.Because we’re men we’re supposed to handle our own, and those things don’t happen to us when your situation may not be—you may not be able to control it. Like what was I supposed to do at nine years old against my father, however old he was. I’m powerless at that point, you know?And I’m so young, I don’t know different, I don’t know right from wrong. No one had a conversation with me about good touch/bad touch, or, you know what I mean? Lack of knowledge was very—I guess would be the most power thing. There was a lack of knowledge. They say knowledge is power, and I didn’t have any.Flip So at what point did you, um, did you actually realize that something wrong was going on? Was it right away, or did it take a while for that to sort of sink in?Kenneth No, you know, I always felt like something was wrong. But because it was—I guess I would say normal, uh, you just kind of go with it, you know what I mean?Flip Normal in terms of your own life, your own experience?Kenneth I felt the hiddenness. So that felt wrong.Flip Rodriguez Yeah, my own life, right. Because you don’t know—you have friends and stuff, but you don’t know what they’re doing when you’re not around. So you don’t contemplate those things. To be always the first one to be picked up on the weekend because my parents were separated, and then always being the last one being dropped off, that was just normal, you know? That’s just how it was. And I didn’t know any better.But I felt like something was wrong because it was more of hiding. Right? Everything that was going on was hidden. It wasn’t like the family knew in the sense of what was going on at those moments. You know what I mean? So for me it was I felt the hiddenness. So that felt wrong because my parents were like “Yo, don’t hide anything from us. Tell us everything, no secrets.” So when you feel the secret you’re like, ok you’re saying one thing and then we’re doing another. So something is off. But you don’t know as a kid.Flip There’s this idea that I have that a significant part of the trauma that comes out of an experience like this is the way other people react to it, I guess. So like you were saying it might feel normal to you, it might seem like just part of life, to some extent, especially as you are growing up. But at some point somebody reacts to it. Maybe somebody you care up about. And it’s that reaction—that horror—you see in somebody else that there’s something terribly wrong. And that is what brings this sort of shame and this feeling that there’s something wrong with you maybe, that you should have known better or something like that. Does this make any sense to you?Kenneth I think on a deep level I knew that something was wrong, which is why I never say anything. Right? It’s not like I went around saying, “Hey listen”—so what did you do this weekend? “Yeah we played football and then we did this.” It’s not like I ever brought that up, ever, so I guess in a deep level I knew it was wrong without knowing it was wrong. Because I didn’t talk about it. It wasn’t a topic of discussion, ever. You know?Yeah, so when they were like “What did you do with your dad this weekend?” It’s like, “Oh yeah, it was great, I played video games and that was it.” It was never like, “Oh yeah, this, happened. He did this to me.” So on some deep level, I must have know that it was wrong. But at the same time, it’s what I knew. I don’t know if that makes sense.Flip Oh, that totally makes sense. So there was a feeling that this was not something I should talk about, right from the beginning.Kenneth Right. Well, I mean, I was told not to talk about it.Flip Oh OK.Kenneth So when you’re told by your parents to not do something, everyone teaches you, “always respect your parents and listen to your parents because they know better.” You know? When, in this particular situation that is not the case. But people don’t teach you that. They’re always like you always respect your elders. You always gotta do this. You always gotta respect your parents because they’re your parents.But in this situation, I bet you if I went against it, and I went really aggressive towards him, and hurt him at some point, or defended myself, no one would have an issue with it. But they don’t teach you these situations. They teach you, no, this is right. No matter what happens your parents are right.Eh, maybe not in this case.Flip So you don’t talk to your father much at this point, right?Kenneth Oh, absolutely not. Absolutely not. At the age of 18, when I realized that no damage could be done to me from him—I’ll never forget.He always bought me everything. Right? I always had a car, I always had the newest phones, I always had the clothes that I wanted. I always had the new gaming systems out, I had everything. Right? It’s kind of a way of buying silence. Because I literally had it all. And I’ll never forget when I realized that. And I put my foot down.Will Smith is such a huge piece of this. Role models are so important to have, even if you don’t know them, because I didn’t know Will. But he said, “Just decide who you want to be. And once you decide, just spend every day making that happen.” Once you decide who you want to be, life is like water, it wants to go around you. It’s like it’s going to conform to you. And then I realized that, you know what, this was wrong.Once you get to a certain age, you know right from wrong. Because at some point someone says something, that you’re like, that is wrong.And then, you know, I was like, you know what, I decided to not be beside my abuser anymore and just go, you know. I’ll never forget. I called my mom on my bad-ass Sidekick Joker, black Sidekick Joker style, whatever it was back then. I said, “Hey listen Mom, I’m going to walk toward your house. If you want to pick me up, cool. If you don’t, I’ll walk there and I’ll see you.” And I went to his office while he was in the kitchen. This was the last time I saw him. I put my phone down. I put my car keys down. I walked out of the house and I never went back.Flip Do you wish that situation were different at all, or are you happy with that?Do you wish that you were sort of able to heal things with your father, or come to some …Kenneth Absolutely not. Nope. The crazy part about it was—you know how I said knowledge is power, and I know I said it earlier that I was lacking knowledge? But the people around me in my family had the knowledge and they decided not to teach me.So all of this could have been prevented if they had talked to me sooner. Actually if they had talked to me at all. Somebody should have said something. Just say, “Hey listen. This, this, this. Not saying anybody in the family specifically would do this, but if this happens you have to let me know.” There’s ways to teach people about it, where, as a youth, “Hey listen, this is good touch, this is bad touch. You know, if anybody, it I don’t care who it is, if it is your cousin, your mother, your father, whatever.” List names, and list that person in there that you’re concerned about, and that starts conversation. That stirs the pot.But people just went, because it was uncomfortable, and people didn’t want to talk about it. They just pushed it aside. So that just let him continue doing what he’s done his whole life. Right? This is not new. People knew. It’s not like he wasn’t this monster. Everyone knew that he was a monster. Just nobody decided to do anything about it.And that’s the raw truth.Flip Yeah.Are you concerned that he’s going to harm anyone else?Kenneth You know, I’ve thought about that. I think, with my healing process and everything, I wasn’t in any state to think that way. Nor was I in a state to help that way. Because if I can’t help myself I can’t help anyone else, right?I think the best thing did is put it on blast and put it out there for my family and everyone to know. Because now it’s too late. When I spoke about it the statute of limitations was over. So there’s nothing I could really do about it at the moment.I think, uh, the only thing I can do is set my peace with it, share my story, tell the truth of everything that’s happened, and be that light where darkness is taking over.Flip So you said this was really, uh, I can’t remember the word you used. It was a weight lifted off you. It was a freeing experience, I think you said.Kenneth From talking on Ninja Warrior on the interview, it was weight-lifting.Flip How did that change your life? Like before and after.Kenneth So, the way I put it, the way most people understand it, it’s like when you’re attracted to somebody and you want to ask them out on a date. You get that nervous feeling. But it’s not nervous excited feeling. It’s nervous because you don’t want to get rejected feeling.So for me, when I did the interview, it was uplifting. Then I realized. It was like oh snap, I just told four million people what happened to me. Right? Some of those people are people I know. This is not going to be like, “Oh you didn’t tell me.” It’s, “Oh, I found out, through the show, that this happened to you, why didn’t you ever tell me?”So it’s like everybody is going to know up until this point. So I was like hmm, well, let’s see how people react! And I noticed this is my truth. And it’s no longer my responsibility to understand how people are going to react to it or worry how people are going to react to it.It’s my truth. I spoke it for my right reasons: to help others. And just because someone else doesn’t understand it, or someone tries to make fun or tear me down, in a sense, that’s totally on them. I’ll try to react to it as I can, to the best of my ability. And my strict goal was to help one person. And if I accomplish anything else, it’s worth the risk of putting myself out there.Flip So, since you’ve had experience talking about this particular issue in your life, has that changed other aspects of your life in terms of sex? Like in terms of relationships, or communicating about your other desires or preferences? Has it made that easier?Kenneth You know, it’s been an interesting road. I feel like I’m not the only one. I feel like a very common uncomfortable topic is sex. Most people don’t like to talk about what they like, what they want to try, what they want to explore, in fear of resentment, in fear of being made fun of, of rejection. People are afraid of those things.I don’t think it’s as common now as it was back then. I went through my trials and tribulations of like learning how to be comfortable with somebody, and being able to essentially explore with them. And try new things. And get out there and really be dedicated to that side of the relationship.Because just like any other part of a relationship, sex is a part of it. So if that is malfunctioning, now you have a dysfunctional relationship. Because once that malfunctions, everything else malfunctions. Just like anything else. You’re only as strong as your weakest link. So if your weakest link is communication, guess what? Communication is going to affect your entire relationship. Because relationships are built on communication. So if you have a lack of communication in the sexual department, then guess what? You’re going to have lack of communication somewhere else.Because if you can’t build your weakest link to become strong, then how can you expect to build anything else to become strong?Flip If you can’t build your weakest link to become strong, then how can you expect to build anything else to become strong?Flip Rodriguez That makes a lot of sense. I like that.So, I know this wasn’t just a one-time thing and you’re moving on to other things. And this is true for me too. I’ve been working to use some of the negative experiences from my past to do something positive with the future. To make the world a better place.Kenneth Angela Rose, founder of PAVE: Promoting Awareness | Victim Empowerment Yeah. Man, yeah. This past year has been, I’m sure everyone can agree, has been one heck of a year. So I’ve really been focused on being the change. To be the change. After my interview, I didn’t understand fully, to my full extent, what I was doing when I said my story and my past on American Ninja Warrior. And I started getting all these people reaching out to me to public speak about my story.I was like, “Hell no! No way!” Listen, man, I did my part, I put it out there for 4 million. I’m done. I did it. Then it just kept coming and kept coming. People were like, “Yo, we want Flip for this in March. We want Flip for this in September.” I was like “No, you’re insane.”I am fearful of public speaking, of being on a public stage. Like, I was fearful to to one camera and two people in front of me. Now you want me to talk to 1200 people? You’re out of your mind! No way! You’re crazy!Public speaking is, first, a common fear, and second, no!I didn’t grow up talking to people. I grew up in the shadow, like trying to be not seen. I want to be invisible. I don’t want people to know where I am, what I’m doing. I just want to go about my day and not let no one know anything about me. So now you want me to come up to a stage with 1200 people and tell them possibly the worst part of my life? You’re crazy! No way!So I was talking to my best friend Sly Lewis about this, and he goes, “Dude, that might be your call. This may be it.” You should try it out or whatever.And so many other people reached out and I never took the opportunity, until like two years later. This lady Angela Rose reached out to me. And I read her email and it just felt right. If that makes sense. She said, “We would love to have you on our panel. We’ll fly you out, give you the whole nine yards, and we’d love to talk to you about it.”I was like alright. I said I have never done this before, really, and just understand I am not a speaker. I wanted to make that clear. She said yeah no problem, “We’ll help you,” or whatever. This was months down the line.And then I had a buddy of mine, Jeremy Bates, who is a phenomenal, phenomenal motivational speaker. Phenomenal. One of the realest dudes I know. He said, “We have Trü Hope coming up in a few weeks. I know your story, I’d love to talk to you about it. We’ll put you on stage. It’s not going to be you by yourself. We’ll just have a conversation.”And this was in Stockton, California. One of the baddest neighborhoods up there in North Cal. Where they’re trying to share hope. You know, like where they’re trying to share hope. Shine hope on everybody. You can come from a lot of bad places and still make it out of there. So when we went to Stockton California, and we were going through it, because we started flipping and performing and stuff.So he was like, “Alright guys, you might know this guy. He used to wear the mask on American Ninja Warrior.” And all of a sudden now the crowd is like “oh wait, I know, oh!” And now they’re trying to figure it out.And then they pop my video of me speaking on the screen: “Yeah, from the ages of nine to fifteen I was sexually abused.” Yada yada.And then they were like “oh!” Now they’re figuring it out. They’re all so stoked, so excited.And then Jeremy, after the video ends, he goes, “This is my very good friend, and we’re going to have a very uncomfortable conversation about this, so understand.” Yada yada. “So please give him the utmost respect. Introducing Flip Rodriguez.”So I walked out and I was like sweating. Sweating sweating sweating.Flip Jeremy Bates of Trü Hope Anyways the point is that he gave me the opportunity to speak in front of people, and he didn’t just throw me to the wolves. He gave me a conversation in front of people. Like we are right now, but in front of a live audience. Of I think it was 800 people. 800 kids that the school system was bringing in, on busses and stuff.I’ll never forget it. And that’s when I realized, after, I felt so much better, because of the applause, of like sharing. When I got to meet some of these kids, and some were in tears, like, “I went through that too.”It was motivating, like uplifting, because I could be an example for people.So I started with Jeremy Bates, the group is called Trü Hope. And Angela Rose took me in to be on her panel for PAVE. And that just started the ball rolling for me talking about my story and putting it out there in front of live people. Being a public speaker. And I was like this is one of the scariest things of life right now!And, you know, it was great! And so now I public speak about my story. Kind of a testament to—you’re not your situations from your past. Trü Hope Trü Hope provides high-energy experiences with performers and storytellers to ignite change. Learn More PAVE PAVE is a movement creating a world free from sexual violence and building communities to support survivors. Learn More It’s definitely good to have a role model, somebody else that can speak about how to sort of get through this. Because it is unfortunately common.Kenneth Yeah. More common than not. I learned, I have done my studies on it. I was very ignorant when it came to sexual abuse culture. Because I was only concerned with myself and not letting anybody find out. Once I broadened my horizons and I started learning more about the culture. And how it happens more frequently than not, and most likely by somebody you know. It was just like … shocking. So shocking. So I gotta do my piece to help.Flip Yeah. I forgot to ask about the mask. You brought that up. What’s the symbolism there? I know occasionally you still put out material that references the mask. Kenneth Yeah, you know. There’s two ways I like to look at the mask. In middle school and high school because of what was going on with me, I always pretended to be somebody I’m not. Just so everybody would like me and no one would question any of my home life.So I always had to be down with the boys and had to be doing whatever they were doing, even if I knew it was wrong. So it would kind of cover what was happening at home and people didn’t question it. So essentially I had to be somebody I wasn’t. And I had to, every day going to school I had to put on a mask to pretend to be somebody I wasn’t.That’s a philosophy that’s is very common, but it’s so true. I did that for most of my childhood. And then there’s this way I look at it is most people—when I was on American Ninja Warrior—on the mask, they loved the mask. They were like, “Bring back the mask!” Like it was the concept of Spiderman and Peter Parker. Like, everyone loves Spiderman but people don’t really appreciate Peter Parker. And people don’t realize that without Peter Parker there is no Spiderman. Spiderman is just a costume, just something he puts on. So the same thing with me, the mask was just something I put on. I make the mask what it is, not the other way around.So when I realized that, I took it off. Like, “No.” I gotta be me. If you want me, you’re going to have to take me for me, and not me for the mask. And it’s one of those things. Just be yourself. It’s OK to be who you are. And understand not everybody is going to like you. Whether you have the mask on or not. Whether you’re Spiderman or not. Like people love Batman over Spiderman.Like, not everyone is going to like you. Once people understand that people, just, aren’t always going to like you, now you’re ahead in life. Because no matter who you are, what mask you decide to throw on, somebody is going to have something negative toward you anyways. So you’re better off being yourself, so that the people around you that really like you like you for who you really are, not for who you are pretending to be.Flip I gotta be me. If you want me, you’re going to have to take me for me, not for the mask.Flip Rodriguez Fantastic. That’s pretty much all the questions I’ve got. Is there anything that I forgot? Anything else you’d like to mention, that you’re working on? Or anything else important?Kenneth I think self-development is very important. It’s very important, to be honest. I think we get caught up in life way too easy, with everything that’s happening. It’s so easy to get caught up in the negativity of the world and the negativity of our own life. And I challenge people to change your perspective and see what they’ve gained from it rather than what they are losing from it. Kind of just always seeing that silver lining in the dark clouds.Flip Great. Thank you again.Kenneth Of course.Flip

In this episode, I share some thoughts about a recent lawsuit involving Pornhub. I also mention Section 230 protections because there have been recent calls to roll back this provision of the Communications Decency Act. (Transcript) Well I’m back from a little break. Wow, a lot of stuff happened while I was busy with my final exams. We had an attempted coup, a violent attack on the Capitol Building—the word “unprecedented” hardly seems to do it justice. But enough about politics. (As if everything else I’m about to say isn’t about politics too. I think it’s funny how some people try to keep politics out of daily life, because politics is divisive, or not as important as a polite family dinner, or whatever. But at some point what happens in the public sphere matters. At some point it becomes more than just a theoretical argument about trickle-down economics and social safety nets. At some point people could get hurt.) Nicholas Kristof There was a recent lawsuit against Pornhub. Several victims of sexual abuse or assault (or just victims of having private videos made public) sued the company for promoting harmful content related to their victimization. It is a troubling circumstance when a company is in the business of transmitting and monetizing videos that depict and glorify violence or illegal acts. And that’s exactly what this lawsuit was about. The suit sought to stop this company from peddling harmful or illegal content. Nicholas Kristof wrote an opinion piece for the New York Times. Kristof is a smart guy with a lot of great ideas. A lot of the time I like what he has to say. But this time I have to disagree with him. Let me give you a brief summary. His article talks about some of the victims of abuse that were involved in this Pornhub problem. They are gut-wrenching stories, with varying levels of harm. One victim is dead now, he says, presumably because of the abuse they experienced in relation to videos that were posted on Pornhub. Other individuals were true victims of child sex trafficking—that is, they were kidnapped and raped for the purposes of financial gain. Kristof summarizes the problem by saying that Pornhub “is infested with rape videos.” Obviously Kristof wants to do something about this problem. I mean who doesn’t? So he proposed a solution that Pornhub should require documentation of models age and consent so that they can verify everything is legal and not abusive. This seems to be pretty straightforward. And Kristof seems to be asking for points that we can compromise in this way (i.e. not shut down Pornhub entirely). Verifying models’ age and consent seems like the very least that the company could do to to make sure that their practices are not promoting abuse. Now, I think it was part of the settlement, but Pornhub actually did pretty much what Kristof was suggesting. To be specific, they already had a way for videos to be verified. So they just started enforcing it. The staggering thing about this is the extent to which the enforcement went. They say they removed 13 million videos because they were not verified. That left 4 million verified videos on the site. Now, wait, hold up, stop the presses. Those 13 million videos were not abusive. They were not illegal. What they were was not verified. From what people are saying, there were actually a total of 118 videos containing “child sexually abusive material,” that is, videos with illegal content. The execs at Pornhub agree that this is 118 instances too many, and it’s completely appropriate to do something about this. But this is where I have to stop and wonder, if we’re talking about silencing 13 million presumably legitimate voices to stop 118 instances of bad behavior, what are the consequences? Chilling Effects on Speech Think about these 13 million videos, the ones that were not abusive or illegal or involving children or whatever. The ones that were fine, except that they were not verified. Why were they not verified? The obvious answer is that the person who uploaded it was up to no good. That’s possible. But it’s not the only possibility. Another possibility is that the person in the video wanted to share, but they didn’t want to be identified. We all know that sexuality is already taboo, it is already shameful. So sharing a video of yourself doing sexual things can get you in trouble, even if it’s totally legal. Imagine the schoolteacher who was fired because of her past career as an adult entertainer, or the business exec who was outed as a pervert when it was discovered that he was into some kinky stuff. Or Anthony Weiner. That’s a shame, because sharing a video of yourself is also a great way to reduce the shame against sexuality that is perfectly normal, healthy, and worthy of celebration. Another reason that people might not want to reveal their identities is that they’re technically on the wrong side of the law but really just trying to get by. Think of the illegal immigrant who works as a stripper to pay the bills, or the “escort” who is paying their way through college by being paid for sex. These cases are not totally legal, and so maybe they shouldn’t be encouraged, but they have absolutely nothing to do with child sexual abuse or sex trafficking. So there’s clearly a chilling effect on speech, as the lawyers like to say. This is speech that would otherwise be protected by the First Amendment, but is being silenced because of this wide policy that blocked 13 million videos. The videos that are left are likely ones from larger professional producers and organized operations. Ironically, those larger businesses are more likely to have their own issues with abuse, like coercive labor practices, low wages, poor working conditions, and exploitation of workers in the industry. So this policy tends to silence the individuals in favor of the big producers. Instead of seeing real sex, Pornhub consumers are more likely to see fantasy, staged, and artificial depictions. And even if the policy stops child exploitation, it may actually make adult exploitation worse. Once again, the result is that we as a society are left unable to be open and honest about sex. When young folk have no legitimate sources of information about their developing sexuality, and they turn to Pornhub for answers, they’ll only find fiction and staged depictions by actors. We’ve silenced the examples of real people doing real stuff. The Real Problem If, after that, you’re still thinking that it’s worth it to protect those 118 kids… well, surely they deserve protection. But keep in mind that compared to the 118 troubling videos on Pornhub, Facebook reported having 84 million instances on their platform during the same time. 84 million. And what are we doing for those kids? Where’s the lawsuit against Facebook? What is actually going on here is clearly not a crackdown on child pornography or a drastic measure to protect the children. In fact, it is another step in an ongoing effort to stamp out pornography in general. It was the same story with Backpage, with CraigsList, and on and on. These business are targeted because they promote sex, not because they are encouraging the abuse of children. Powerful forces and vested interest want to control sex for the sake of controlling sex. They say they are doing it to protect children, but the methods say otherwise. Time and again abuse is linked to pornography, and sex work is linked to sex trafficking. So then any effort to limit pornography and sex work is framed in the language of child sexual abuse and sex trafficking. The notion that these terms are synonymous is another weapon in the war on sex, the push to silence us from talking about this significant part of our lives. Section 230 In a separate but not unrelated issue is a recent call for the rollback of Section 230 protections for tech companies. This legal provision essentially says that an Internet company cannot be held responsible for content produced by someone else, even if it goes through their systems. Facebook, Reddit, and others have leaned heavily on this protection, claiming that they are not responsible for the things their users post. Let’s look at exactly what this law says: No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher . . . of any information provided by another information content provider.47 U.S. Code § 230(c)(1) It goes on to be precise that the service provider, or ISP, is not liable when they allow someone to post something that violates a law or a copyright, or whatever. And it also says that they are not liable if they take action to remove content that someone else posts. So there’s protection on both sides. To use Twitter as an example, they are arguably not responsible if one of their users posts a tweet that calls for violence against a sitting Vice President. And, they are not responsible if they choose to block that tweet either. The reason for this protection is, in the first case, to encourage free speech. If the ISPs were open to liability, they might be inclined to severely limit what can be posted. (Imagine if Twitter, overnight, deleted every tweet and every account that doesn’t have a blue checkmark next to it, like what Pornhub did to avoid liability.) In the second case, the law hoped that, even though they are not required to do so, ISPs would develop mechanisms to remove illegal postings that were clearly over the line. By indemnifying them from deleting content, they gave the ISPs an ability to do some of their own policing without fear of repercussions. For the most part, this system has worked well. Companies are able to make thriving online communities that are accessible and open to everyone. I wouldn’t call them bastions of free speech, but at least the barriers to free speech are relatively low. And some of the companies, with varying degrees of success, try to police the worst of their content. (Though 84 million recent instances of child sexual abuse on Facebook would suggest that there is still work to be done, though.) A Slippery Slope Unfortunately, Section 230 protections have slowly been eroding over the time since the law went into effect. Some people have been prosecuted for failing to stop abusive content even when they should have been protected. Other companies have taken to blocking far more than what should have been necessary just to avoid liability (e.g. Pornhub). I say this is unfortunate because I am generally uncomfortable with private businesses being in the business of policing. When ISPs are encouraged or compelled to police the content of their users, they often set their own rules, and they often go far beyond legal requirements and restrict what should be protected speech. Police Should Police It seems to me that when courts or legislators suggest that companies like Facebook should be responsible for their users, they are relinquishing the government’s own responsibility to protect the welfare of their citizens. It is worth making a comparison to the physical world for this one. Large corporations, retail outlets, or landlords sometimes hire their own private security. But these private forces always operate in a secondary capacity to government police forces. If there is a disturbance in the mall, for example, the private security’s primary task is to call the police, not to intervene. Everyone expects the government police to keep the place safe. So why is it different on Facebook? You say, but wait, they’re totally different! There’s millions of posts on Facebook every day, but at most there’s maybe a thousand people in the mall. How could someone possibly police Facebook? This is exactly Facebook’s own argument. Facebook the company is much smaller than its user base, compared to a mall that probably employs as many people as they serve in a day. So the mall is actually in a much better position to provide private security than Facebook is. But I’m not suggesting that they do. From a perspective of keeping a population safe, there are a few hundred million people in the U.S., period. Some of them are at the mall, and some of them are on Facebook. But it’s a constant number of people. Why can’t the police be responsible for keeping people safe both online and in the mall? Obviously this is a very complicated issue, as is policing in general. Many would argue that if we do things right in our communities we wouldn’t even need police in the first place. And clearly the police in their present form are failing miserably at keeping communities safe anywhere. But my point is simply that we should not be looking to private companies, whether they are Facebook, or AT&T, or Chipotle, to police us. It’s just a bad idea. References Kristof, Nicholas. December 4, 2020. “The Children of Pornhub.” New York Times.Paul, Kari. December 14, 2020. “Pornhub removes millions of videos after investigation finds child abuse content.” The Guardian.Brenner, Susan. April 6, 2009. “Section 230 Immunity—Revisited.” Cyb34crim3 Blog.Goldman, Eric. May 25, 2009. “Web Host Convicted of State Child Porn Crimes Despite 230–People v. Gourlay.” Technology & Marketing Law Blog.

A couple undergraduate students at Wayne State University started a student organization where students have a safe space to learn and talk about sex. I got a chance to speak with them. (Transcript) I recently got a chance to sit down with a couple fellow students of mine. It was an honor and a privilege to get to talk with Zaria and Taylor. They are undergraduate students here at Wayne State University, and they started a club, a student organization, called Real Sex Ed. The idea of the organization is to give students a chance to ask real, honest questions about sex and to have real, honest conversations. Since this is exactly what I’m all about, I really enjoyed the opportunity to hear their ideas about how they got started and where they hope it will go. Hi, my name is Zaria. I am a student at Wayne State University. I am doing a double major in gender studies and economics. I am president and founder of this club called Real Sex Ed. We talk about different topics relating to sex, like masturbation, pleasure, orgasm, like everything—anything under the sun, related to that realm.Zaria Hi, my name is Taylor. I am a senior, and I’m majoring in history with a double minor in Italian and art history. I’m the vice president of Real Sex Ed.Taylor How did you guys get the idea to start this club? I think I was like, I don’t know—basically what happened was, I can trace it back to high school and just being in shitty relationships, having a poor relationship with myself, and having poor confidence. Not just sexualitywise but in general. And I just decided I was going to change my ways. And with my partner that I’m with now, I decided this was crap. I really wanted to feel better about myself.So I started educating myself about sex and relationships and how to be more sexually confident. Then over winter break I had been pondering it last year. I thought I really wanted to start this club, because I talked to enough people about very similar issues relating to sex. Like confidence. And everyone is struggling with very similar things. So why not make a club, a space where people can go, to talk about these things.Taylor, did I just ask you to be my VP?Zaria Yeah. Like the whole club was your idea, and I was totally behind it. You worked really hard to get this club. But yeah, just to piggy-back off of what Zaria said, I’ve learned a lot from Zaria as far as sexual confidence and being comfortable with my body.Because in high school, I was not comfortable with my body, and my sexual experiences weren’t very positive, to say the least. And I’m sure we’ll get into that more later. But my high school sexual experiences were more centered around the guy, and what he wanted to do, and all that stuff. But yeah.Taylor That sounds really familiar. I hear a lot of times it seems like sex is centered around the guy.Kenneth Yeah. It was definitely Zaria that helped me see that that should not be the case at all.Taylor It’s such like a chronic idea, that sex should be centered around the guy. That’s such crap. So we need to just scratch that any chance we get.Zaria What People Want to Talk About So, I was going to ask, you mentioned a couple different topics that are talked about in the club. What do you think are the ones that people are most interested in?Kenneth I think everything is a good topic. People—maybe sexual confidence is a good one. We just recently had—I mean, honestly, with school and everything being online now, I think it is more difficult for people to get on all the time and participate, which is why we changed the format and schedule for our club. But back when it was in person, I’d say, like, maybe sexual, um, confidence, or dismantling myths about sex, and masculinity and femininity.I think, Kenneth, you brought a friend, and they were like a masters student. And we were having this huge conference. It was literally like a filibuster that was totally warranted and wanted. It was amazing. But that was all around roles of women and men in society.So I think things that are relatable to people at this stage in their life. Like confidence and identity. Those are things that are more easy to grasp than like, I don’t know. We’ve done BDSM. That’s an alluring topic, but maybe a little too out there. But I think everyone can get behind confidence and identity.Zaria Now that you start talking about that, it seems like maybe people are looking for information, more than they are looking to talk themselves. Like it seems like a lot of the club meetings, or the parts that people seem to resonate with more, are when there’s information being presented, rather than just an opportunity to talk about it. Do you agree?Kenneth I do. I love talking about all things with in sex, but it’s a club that is dependent on people to talk about different topics, and just talk freely.The only reason I don’t format it as a straight-up information class, like me teaching this, is because I don’t particularly want to teach people in this stage. It’s more of an open space for everyone to talk and to share. But within that space there obviously is education and knowledge shared. It’s impossible for to not become a sort of teaching moment.Zaria Yeah, you’ve brought in videos and books and stuff like that. But you’ve invited other people to do that as well.Kenneth Absolutely, yeah. And with me bringing it in, I’m just like, the person that got it started, to get the ball rolling. But like it’s not like I’m teaching a class on Sex 101. It’s not a class, it’s a club. And my voice is no louder, no important than Teegs is, than any participant in the club. Their voice, like, eveyone matters. Just because I started it does not mean I’m going to sit behind a desk and be, “this this this this this.” Like I open it up for everyone to talk and share. Cuz I’m like, this is for eveybody!Zaria I think that’s why we refer back to that particular meeting, the really big one where there was a lot of debating going on. I think that resonated with more people because everyone got to voice their opinion. And yes, we learned a lot, but it wasn’t like in a shaming way. We weren’t calling people stupid, or like, “you’re wrong.” We were just trying to open up the discussion to like, “oh maybe you should think this way, or maybe you should look at this viewpoint.” And I think, especially with us being in college, a lot of people are still, like you said, trying to find the sexual confidence. A lot of us are still struggling with finding our true identities, I think it’s important that it’s more group-led than just one person, like you said Zaria.Taylor Absolutely. And even with, going back to that meeting, there was so much knowledge because he was sharing things that he was studying at that point in time with everyone. And it was just amazing to see everyone come together and just learn something and think about something in a new way. But in the same breath, in the same sense, you can think also counter to that. With their own life experience. There is no one correct experience. There is only us trying to create the—one that best helps and benefits everyone involved. If you’re going to break down some myths about gender or sexuality in the process, that’s kind of the way to get there.Zaria How it Started So I’m curious about your background or your development—if that’s the right word. How did you go from—OK let me start over. So you’ve been—I’ve heard you say that you love talking about sex, right? Has it always been that way, or was there a process you went through to become more confident, more interested in having those discussions?Kenneth Oh wait, Zaria, can I answer that one first? It’s really weird. Like I said earlier, I credit Zaria because before this I was always a sexual person but I was too shy to talk about it. So she completely opened my eyes to a lot of things, like things I should not be tolerant of. Like we said, you know, the pleasure of a man should not be the only thing you take into consideration when you’re having sex. You should feel more comfortable with your body, things like that.Let’s just say, when I was a freshman, when I first came to Wayne State. I have changed so much in the whole—I don’t know if I should call it a sexual reawakening for lack of a better term—because of Zaria helping me. But like, yeah. It’s been a great experience. So…Taylor Yeah. I love that 100%!Is it me now? I love that Taylor. I think for me, when I was a kid, my parents, my mom’s a doctor, and she made it important to speak freely about everything. Anything under the sun, with her children. And sex was definitely a part of that. So issues not only about sex, but all different topics. But that was on the table. So it made me feel more free to speak about it with her. And then, um, yeah, after high school, with having such terrible experiences, and just feeling shame and guilt surrounding my body, and my confidence and how my identity—essentially—I just decided I wasn’t going to feel that way anymore. I said there has to be something better. This can’t be the only way. This can’t be my existence. I really wanted to expand myself.So I started looking at videos. My senior year of high school and freshman year. Helping to expand my confidence. I learned about this one teacher, and took their course. Speaking about it with other people I almost felt like I was a magnet, with people talking. I’ve had several conversations behind closed doors or like chilling on my couch, about people’s sexual hangups with them. And just after seeing that so many times I was just like yo, this is something that we need to express and talk about.So, I don’t know, I guess the way I was brought up opened my eyes and made me feel less secretive about it. And after going through my hardships, I realized now we can absolutely not be secretive about it. This is a problem everyone is facing. So yeah, that’s kind of my journey with it.Zaria Not All Positivity Cool. So it sounds pretty positive, then, obviously. So has it always been positive, or have you seen times when talking about these issues has been a challenge or you’ve got any negative pushback or anything like that?Kenneth What do you think Taylor?Zaria I think for us it’s been mostly positive. I think the biggest thing, looking back on when we had our table in the student center and we were trying to get people to come to the first couple meetings. It is sort of a topic that people are very shy about when it comes to talking about it. It is very understandable for some. But like we would try to get people to come to the table and they would be like, “oh I don’t know, I don’t really want to talk about this.”Or we had that one guy that was being really weird about it. You know which guy I’m talking about, Zaria. Where he was kind of, I don’t know, condescending, like challenging us, like “Why are you guys doing this?” type of attitude. But aside from that, the poeple who were kind of shy, once they did come, they were very happy about it. They ended up learning a lot. So it was mostly good.Taylor Yeah, I mostly agree with that. But that one guy, when he came to the meeting. Probably our worst experience—or, for me personally—is when that guy came to the meeting, and it felt like he was just judging the whole time. And this is not—because when you come to a meeting, it’s imperative that you show up with a mindset where you’re open to receiving new information, and sharing your own information. And it felt like there’s no real space for, um, judgement, there. Or if you are judging, then expect to have the cock out, or maybe you learn a thing or two about what you are expressing. Could be better.But I don’t really mind people. I think in the beginning I was shy. I think over the past few years, with my own confidence as a person, separate from the club, before the club, I’ve been working on that. So I felt better. Because it does take a lot of confidence to go out in the student center. It takes a lot to go out there with like dick or like vagina cookies.Zaria You were out there with the “I Love Orgasms” shirt.Taylor Exactly! It takes a lot of confidence to go out there and do that. But once you do the worst things, then it’s all great after that. You know what I mean? It’s not the worst thing in the world to—you know, cuz after I wear that shirt, and people are like, “I want that shirt! I want that shirt! Can you get me a shirt like that?” So I’m like “boop, yeah!”Zaria I was going to say, people were asking you to make them shirts!Taylor “I Love Orgasms” Just for the people that aren’t familiar, tell us more about this shirt and about the cookies.Kenneth Oh Lord! So basically when we first started the club, at our school there’s the student center where a lot of students pass through. There’s restaurants and places where people can sit and hang out with their friends. And there’s tables all along the walkway for clubs and organizations to advertise and try to get people to come. So that’s what we did a lot of times, several times. We had our sign, you know, like I heart sex, join Real Sex Ed. And with that it was my club shirt that I made, I wrote it, it says I heart orgasms. And I still have it to this day, it’s in my closet. It’s beautiful! And I got a lot of lot of weird looks from people, wearing that shirt. But I also got a lot of positivity.And I don’t really care about the weird looks because, like, oh it’s just people pushing, like not wanting to speak about something that’s important. That’s OK. Like everyone’s developing and doing different things. But I feel like having sex as a pillar, something to talk about in society openly and without judgement or feeling weird, I feel like that—that’s not weird. It should be the new norm. So at a certain poing I was like I don’t give a crap, like whatever, I’m going to wear this shirt. I don’t give a f—I don’t care!Zaria Oh yeah, you like rocked that “I Love Orgasms” shirt. Like I remember all the girls that were coming up like “Oh my God, where did you get that from?” And they were asking you to make them one, like “Do you sell these?” So that was really cool to see. It wasn’t all the weird looks. A lot of people actually thought it was really nice.Taylor Yeah. I think that’s something that was surprising too. Like people would walk by and think that’s so weird. But then other people are like “Oh my God, that’s so neat, that’s so cool.” There’s always a community, there’s always a group of people. Even if some people don’t like you or are not ready to accept you, that’s totally OK. You need to respect them and that. Because you’re still doing your thing and they can do theirs. But at the same time there’s a ton of people that are for it and want to see you thrive, and really want this to be something we talk about in society.Zaria Yeah, cool. It’s really interesting to see how people react when you do something that makes them a little uncomfortable. And I guess I—what I hear you saying is that they’re not necessarily offended. Maybe they’re just shy about it or whatever. But once you sort of introduce the topic, like by wearing that shirt, or by saying something, it sort of opens the door to having a conversation. That even though it’s not really comfortable, it’s not really the norm, it just makes it easier for them to start a conversation. Right?Kenneth Yeah, absolutely. And also like what is the norm? Like people in society, we create the norm, so why not change the norm? There are things within society that are just—what’s the word—accepted without judgement. Those are all things we have. It’s a culture. You have to expand that culture. Just because it’s not, you know, cool to talk about it now does not make it a totally off the table topic to talk about. It’s about the development—Zaria I wanted to say I feel like everyone has this problem—it’s been like this for decades, obviously, but maybe it’s getting better. People have become so comfortable with being se awkward about sex. Like we don’t talk about that. We only talk about that with our significant others and maybe a few close friends. But I agree with Zaria. We do have the power to change the narrative as far as being more comfortable with these things.And not only just, you know, sex with other people. But being intimate with ourselves. Pleasuring ourselves. It doesn’t have to be some secretive thing that you don’t share with anyone else ever.Taylor Making Society Better So let’s think a little more broadly. So outside of the club, what do you see that we as a culture or society should be doing differently? Or how do you think we can work to make it easier to be more open and honest about sexuality?Kenneth I think—like about sexuality? Or like happiness in general? Just sex?Zaria I think, well about anything—when I use the word sex, I talk very broadly. So, the actual sex act, or sexual identity, or gender identity or gender norms. So yeah, what do you think we should be doing differently as a society?Kenneth I mean, in a broad sense, I think advocating for pleasure in all realms. Not only one’s identity, but in society. In institutions in society. And pleasure is not like physical pleasure. It’s emotional pleasure. Being happy in one’s self, being content. Speaking about things that are wrong. Feeling confidence to speak about things when they’re not OK. And you can also tie that into being in the bedroom, or being with yourself. Voicing your opinions. If you like this or if you don’t like that. Having the confidence to speak up because that’s all relating to issues with being able to communicate. So essentially just higher communication. Having the ability and confidence to voice one’s own opinions. And that idea permeates throughout society.That’s why I love talking about sex so much. It’s not a gossip club. I don’t think it’s that at all. We don’t talk about sex—if you don’t know my club—we don’t talk about I did this this this, or I did that that that. It’s truly education. It’s not some salacious thing. But umm, how are we going to—essentially, we create the narrative and give confidence to people in this way. People don’t like talking about it. If you liberate this part of yourself and just communicate freely on that, I believe with my heart and soul that that strength of communication spreads to all areas of your life. So now you’re communicating better with your sexual partner, with yourself, with your friends, family, coworkers, and it benefits everything. Does that answer your question? Advocating for pleasure in all areas of one’s life. That not only heightens sexual activity which is a small purpose of this—the purpose of the club—but it heightens one’s quality of life.Zaria I think I agree with all of that. For me, something I think we can do a bit differently, it seems like there’s still a lot of—I don’t know the right word for it. When a woman is comfortable with her sexuality and being a very sexual being, there’s still a lot of shaming on the woman. Not from the woman, but from other people. Like she’s a whore, she’s a slut, she sleeps with so many people and all these different things. I feel that that’s something that definitely shouldn’t be done. Just because someone is sexually liberated doesn’t mean she should be called names.I’ve seen this double standard my entire life. Like if a guy is sleeping around it’s really cool and hot. But when a girl does it she’s like slutty and she doesn’t deserve to be in a real relationship and stuff like that. But something I think is noteworthy is I do see a lot more women being open with who they are sexually. And they don’t care that they’re being called names. But being like that still doesn’t make it right that people are being called out of their names for choosing to have multiple sex partners. I don’t know.And for me, it’s just very disheartening. Because you try. Like with our club I go online and I see people making fun of women for doing things. It’s really upsetting. So I definitely think people need to have more of an open mind as far as women being more comfortable with their sexuality, I guess. But um, that’s just something that’s always bothered me.Taylor Making Yourself Better Yeah. Do you have any advice for individuals who think they’d like to have more honest conversations? Any suggestions on how they could get started, or places they could go?Kenneth Umm, they could come to our meeting!Taylor They should masturbate more. 100%!Zaria Right, yeah. But um, I know, Zaria, like I’ve said a million times, I’ve learned a lot from you. But just reading. Reading can change so much. You have all these books and I wouldn’t have known about any of them if you hadn’t told me. But it’s just—as cliche as it sounds, reading is fundamental.But Zaria, you have all the names of the books and stuff like that. But I think that’s always a good place to start.Taylor There’s umm, something that people should know if they’re having problems, is you’re not alone. That’s something that took me a long time to realize. That I’m not alone in having difficulties experiencing pleasure. Like sexually, like in my life everyday, just feeling joy. And feeling confident expressing that. If you struggle with that, you’re not deficient. You’re not, you know, screwed up. There’s knowledge and information out in the world. Like, I don’t know, joining out club, or even not just advocating for our club, but going out, buying books, uh, taking courses from teachers—certified sex ed coaches.There’s a huge world, especially online, for people to learn things. There’s nothing you can’t learn. Take advantage of the opportunities around you, even if they’re not right in front of your face. Like make those opportunities, go online, get a book, take a course. Do something—talk about it more freely with your friends. Maybe confide in one friend and express to them what’s going on.Masturbate more. Literally self-pleasure more. And that doesn’t have to be—I shouldn’t say masturbate. Self-pleasure more. So whether that be sexual pleasure, or just taking yourself out on a fucking date.Zaria Taking a nice long bath, or buying yourself some flowers. Just doing kind things for yourself.Taylor Create more opportunities for pleasure and happiness in your life. If you do that, I am a firm believer in the power of the law of attraction. You know, the universe will give it back to you. You’ll wake up and see there’s all these different opportunities. I can—this person, I can take their course. Scrolling on Instagram that’s happened to me, with the second course I took. I came across this person, and wow, so interesting. I really want to take it. And I got really interested in them.And alot with books. You know. Just do whatever you can. Create more happiness. Enjoy your own life. And in doing that you’ll keep receiving happiness and joy. You know, not all the time. But there’s definitely an opportunity for growth and happiness and change in your life every day. So seize it.Zaria Very cool, I love that advice. So thank you so much for taking the time to do this. Thank you for having us.Taylor Thank you.Zaria Well, I hope that was interesting to you. And maybe it can motivate you to talk more openly and honestly about sex in your social groups as well. Thanks for listening.

Women who commit sexual abuse are poorly understood, and this problem is a clear window into the assumptions about sex embedded in our social constructions of gender. (Transcript) Alexa Sardina, in her PhD dissertation research (2016), interviewed a number of women convicted of criminal child sexual abuse. This is really important research because people rarely talk or think about women committing sex crimes. Granted it is less common than men committing sex crimes, but it still happens. And a lot of times, we don’t know what to think when it does, for a number of reasons. Trigger warning: we’re talking about sexual abuse, including child sexual abuse. If this is a difficult subject for you, please take time and take care of yourself. Imagine you’re a young teenage boy. An older woman wants to have sex with you. Now, as long as you’ve known what sex is, you’ve known that guys are supposed to want it. It is supposed to feel good, it is something some of your friends brag about, and it can even be kind of a rite of passage into manhood. You might not feel ready to have sex—in fact you know you’re not ready for it, you barely have even dated a girl yet. But what would your friends think if they found out you passed up an opportunity to have sex with a mature, experienced woman? Masculinity The way our society talks about sex puts pressure on males, especially young men and boys, to act and think a certain way about sex. Masculinity, oddly, makes boys vulnerable to experiencing unwanted sex. Similar to when girls acquiesce to unwanted sex because they don’t want to hurt the boy’s feelings or because it’s too hard to say no for any number of reasons, boys can find themselves involved in unwanted sex because of the pressures of masculinity and from their friends. Boys usually grow up being more assertive and more vocal than girls. But when it comes to sex, that doesn’t always mean it’s easier for them to say no. Another dynamic that surfaces when the sexual aggressor is female is the way society views victimhood. Men and boys, by way of masculinity, are supposed to be strong. They are not supposed to be victims. Of course, nobody should ever be a victim, but women and girls, by social construction, are already considered weak and vulnerable. The jump from female to victim is smaller, less significant, and more socially acceptable than from male to victim. To say it another way, if a girl claims that she was overpowered and abused by a man, the claim is seen as believable, plausible, possibly even obvious. Of course that’s what happened, people might say, because the claim fits the cultural model of masculinity as aggressive and femininity as weak. Flip it around, though, and the dynamics are very different. If a boy, or certainly a man, claims he was overpowered and abused by a woman, the claim is likely to be met by skepticism or incredulity. In this case, the claim does not fit the cultural model. Men are supposed to be strong and aggressive, and women are supposed to be weak and docile. So how could it possibly be that a man was a victim or a woman was an aggressor? Because it doesn’t fit our cultural preconceptions, the claim is hard to take seriously. The law It is so hard for some people to imagine a female sexual abuser that, until recently, sex crime laws in many jurisdictions simply did not comprehend the possibility. And in some places, the law still distinguishes between male and female sex acts in a way that one is defined differently from the other. In the United Kingdom, for example, the crime of rape requires that a penis be used to penetrate another person without her consent. So, only people with penises can be guilty of the crime of rape. In the United States, most jurisdictions have by now updated their laws to be either gender neutral or gender equitable. But, intentionally or not, laws very often treat female offenders differently. These legal definitions and differences reinforce problematic gender stereotypes. According to one lawyer, they say that sex is not something people do together, but rather it is something that a man does to a woman (McKeever 2019). Talking About Sexual Assault Males have a challenge in talking about being sexually assaulted for two reasons. One is that it is hard to comprehend sex as being something a male wouldn’t want, or that he would be vulnerable to manipulation by another. The second is that it is hard for him to admit that he could be a victim of anything. So there is a social problem in seeing males as potential rape victims, and there is also an individual challenge in males seeing themselves as potential rape victims. Now, a female can commit sexual assault against a female victim, too. Here things get even more challenging for society to understand, because the difficulties of seeing a female as an aggressor are combined with the general ignorance of any non-heteronormative sex. But misunderstanding non-heteronormativity is a topic for another episode. Understanding Abusers Society has a hard time understanding victims of female sexual assault, but it also has a hard time understanding females who commit sexual assault. One reason for this is that women are seen as nurturers. When a woman touches a child, people generally assume that this is appropriate, affectionate, and loving. Even when it’s not. Men seen doing the same behavior might be considered more suspicious, their actions seen as inappropriate. Even when they are. In fact, when Sardina spoke with female abusers, she found that many of them made no attempt to hide their inappropriate behavior. Even when a woman’s behavior is abusive, it was seen as normal or appropriate because of the assumptions about women’s roles in a family or around children. Talking With Abusers So, to get into Sardina’s research, she interviewed a number of women who were in prison or on parole for child sexual abuse. So she’s looking specifically at women who committed some sort of sex crime against children. She ended up interviewing a total of seven women. This is a pretty low number, but there were a pretty low number of women who had the kind of criminal conviction she was looking at, so this is everyone she could find. Plus, it’s not always important to have a large sample size. A lot of useful information can be gathered from even a few good sources. Sardina wanted to understand how the women understood their actions. She wanted to see if female sex offenders had thought processes similar to those of males. She found that there are some significant differences. Since I’m interested in how we communicate about sex, I want to focus on a couple differences that have to do with how we understand sexuality at a social and cultural level. One important difference is that female sex offenders seem to be much more likely to have experienced abuse themselves. This is probably not surprising, since women in general are more likely to be abused. And it’s also been shown that sex offenders, male or female, are more likely to have experienced sexual abuse than people in the general population. Sardina talks about a pattern that is more deeply rooted than this, though. She quotes numerous studies that show “that the victimization histories among female sex offenders are particularly severe.” According to at least one of the women she interviewed, sexual assault was such a normal part of her life that assaulting someone else hardly seemed significant or troubling. Another factor is almost unique for female offenders. They are more likely to be accomplices to an assault. They may have been in a relationship with an abusive man, and they aided in abuse of children not for sexual gratification directly, but to please their partner. This line of thinking fits right in with our social assumption that in a heteronormative relationship, the man is in charge, and it is the woman’s duty to make him happy. If the man wants to abuse children, the woman might feel social pressure to go along with it or even to facilitate it. Where men might be more likely to engage in criminal sex because they are unsatisfied or unable to have a fulfilling relationship with an acceptable partner, women seem more likely to engage in criminal sex because of a long term relationship with a partner who is violent or abusive. Sex As Abuse Both male and female abusers often have what the psychologists call cognitive distortions. Most commonly, an offender might think that the victim “wanted” it or was being seductive. Some of these distorted thoughts might be more prevalent in female offenders. For example, they might say that the child seduced them, or that the child wanted it, or enjoyed it. On the one hand, this is unsurprising. I am personally convinced that there is very little true evil in the world, that most people commit crimes because they think it is the right thing to do in the circumstances. So it makes sense to me that a sexual abuser would think that he or she was doing something that was mutually desired. Or maybe she was even doing a favor for the child. Of course, this is exactly why it is called a cognitive distortion. Just because someone thinks something doesn’t make it true. Thinking about my own criminal past for a moment, I never would have caused the harm I did if I thought, at the time, that it was harmful. It was because of my distorted thoughts—the fact that I believed something that was simply not the case—that led me to harmful behavior. On the other hand, there is a presumption a lot of times that because an activity is illegal that it must be harmful. And so when criminologists talk about cognitive distortions, I have to ask where is the distortion? Are the beliefs of the criminal distorted in thinking that the child wanted sex or enjoyed sex? Or are the beliefs of the researcher—and all of society—distorted when they refuse to acknowledge the possibility that a fourteen-year-old child may actually have sexual thoughts? I have mixed feelings about this. Because from one perspective, the law says that a child cannot consent to sex. And the law is not completely ridiculous on this point. Very good arguments can be made that a fourteen-year-old child does not have the same cognitive capacity as an adult, especially when it comes to long-term consequences of a complicated decision. But at the same time, a fourteen-year-old is not completely helpless. They have preferences and desires. They can choose many things in life. And they are also very much sexual beings: in fact, I would argue that adolescents, in their flood of hormones and newly-acquired sexual realities, might even be the most sexual of humans of any age. All this is not to say that fourteen-year-olds should be having sex. That is not my suggestion at all. But what I’m saying is that for someone to think that a fourteen-year-old might flirt, or might think he or she wants sex, that sounds to me like it could be completely reasonable. It might not be a distortion at all. So here’s the problem. A criminologist starts with the premise that a certain sexual activity is illegal. The train of thought goes from there: It was deemed illegal because it is presumed to be harmful, therefore because it is illegal it must be harmful. And because it must be harmful, it could not be desirable or wanted. Finally, if someone ever thought that it was wanted, they must be delusional. Again, I’m not saying that this is necessarily not the case. But my point is that we ought to be able to interrogate our assumptions about sex. Let’s not assume that someone’s thinking is distorted simply because it doesn’t line up with our assumptions about sex and crime. It is entirely possible that the assumptions could be what is distorted. Illicit Love Child sexual abuse is often considered abuse simply because it is sexual. Meaning, even without coercion, force, or any kind of violence, sex with a child is legally presumed to include all of those things almost by definition. However, in real life things are more complicated. Especially with female sex offenders, it is common for the victim to think that they are actually in love with their abuser. In fact, in at least one high-profile case, a woman was imprisoned for having sex with a boy and, after the criminal justice system had its way with her, she got out and married her victim who was, by then, a man. Even as an adult, he continued to believe that they were in love. So, where was the cognitive distortion there? Of course, love or no love, the sexual activity in this example was criminal. And, in one form or another, it was harmful. One could even say it was abusive. But I would argue that the harm and the abuse has more to do with social norms around sex, and with the criminal justice view on sex, not on the physical (or emotional) act itself. Harmful to Minors As an Amazon Affiliate I earn from qualifying purchases. Judith Levine is another researcher who has been studying sexuality and the way we talk about sex when it comes to children. In her book, Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting Children from Sex, she points out the absurdity of the notion that children are assumed to be asexual until they reach an age of majority (sixteen in Michigan). At that time, equally as absurd, we assume that they instantly develop all the cognitive reasoning skills required to navigate adult sexuality and sexual behavior decision-making. In reality, sexual development is a process. It requires sexual education, experimentation, and relationship skills that build over time. Sexual agency is not something that shows up overnight, but is built over a lifetime of experience. Talking about Sex The way we talk about sex can cause as much harm as the sex itself. Imagine yourself a fourteen-year-old again. You are filled with hormones. You have all these feelings about sex. If you are a male, you are told that you should want sex, and lots of it. And this probably aligns with your experience of desires and sensations that are all sexually charged. But at the same time, you are told that you are a child and that children are not sexual. That it is wrong, even criminal, for children to be involved in sexual activity. So you have these feelings, desires and urges. But to act on them would mean that a crime would be committed. So what do you think? There must be something terribly wrong with you if you can’t stop thinking about criminal activity. The way we frame sexuality can be harmful in itself. Whether or not the fourteen-year-old in your imagination engages in sex, the psychological damage from those contradictory social pressures is already done. Combatting Negativity So what do we do then? We have to find ways to talk openly and honestly. Understand feelings and desires. Talk about them. Normalize them. Understand harm. Talk about it. Make it OK to experience things that are not great, without having to be labeled a victim, and without the shame associated with the idea that somehow you did something wrong because you were unable to protect yourself or whatever. Gray Rape Flip Rodriguez introduced me to a talk show called Red Table Talk, with an episode about the “gray area of consent.” The women at the table spoke about this culturally challenging phenomenon where women find it difficult to communicate and are pressured into unwanted sex. That pressure might not even be in the form of coercion from an aggressor. It could be as complicated and confusing as a social or cultural expectation to be accommodating, pleasant, and sexual. The “victim” might not say no, but she might not say yes either. Or the “victim” might even say yes, but only because she felt like she had to, or she was expected to. This is a serious problem of communication. Without placing blame on one side or the other, women should feel empowered to speak their preferences, to say “no” or “yes” without fear of consequence or stigmatization. At the same time men should ask and listen for the response, and refuse to participate in the pressure that our culture may apply when it comes to sex expectations. Flip made an excellent point to add to the conversation, though. This problem has little to do with sex: male or female. The problem of communication goes both ways. And as we saw at the beginning of this episode, boys and men feel very similar pressures to say “yes” to sex whether they want it or not. Communicate Communication goes both ways. It doesn’t matter the sex of the victim or of the aggressor. It doesn’t even matter if there is an aggressor. We have to learn to talk more honestly about sex. In a very real way, we are all victims of sex because of the way sex is simultaneously stigmatized and glorified in our society. Thanks for listening. References Natasha McKeever, 2019. “Can a Woman Rape a Man and Why Does It Matter?” https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11572-018-9485-6Flip Rodriguez, 2020. “Get Uncomfortable Tuesday.” https://www.twitch.tv/videos/776723374Alexa Sardina, 2016. “A qualitative study of convicted female child sex offenders: Examining motivation and attribution of meaning.” Indiana University Department of Criminal Justice.

This is a conversation with the host of the Sex Communication Podcast, someone who is actually working to normalize open and honest conversations about sex. The Unspeakable Vice Podcast talks about why it is important, but she is actually doing it. We discuss some of the things that makes sex a difficult topic, the pros and cons of being open about it, what good sex ed might look like, and some of her upcoming projects. (Transcript) As I was recently made aware, last week was National Coming Out Week, culminating Sunday with National Coming Out Day. This tradition, of celebrating people within the LGBTQ community coming out of the closet—making sure that people know that they exist—is a wonderful example of positive sex communication in action. Why Come Out Coming out is an act of pride in one’s sexual identity. It is also a political action that seeks to normalize alternative sexualities. The more people come out, the more people will see that it’s a pretty regular thing that some people are not heterosexual, or gender-binary, or straight in whatever way the word has meaning to you. Why Not Come Out There’s another side of the story, though. To celebrate coming out, to normalize coming out, even to make it a rite of passage into the LGBTQ community (as some do), is also to legitimize the idea that alternate sexualities are deviant. If they were normal, there would be no closet to come out of. Think about it: when was the last time you heard someone come out as straight? It doesn’t happen because that’s a normal identity. When someone doesn’t rock the heteronormative boat, their identities are unremarkable. There is no need for them to declare their identities, because we all have already made assumptions about who they are. For more information about why straight people don’t come out, read Adrienne Rich (1980), “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence.” (As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.) If you want another perspective on coming out reinforcing heteronormativity, read this Washington Post op ed from a few years ago, “It’s time to end National Coming Out Day.” Finally, if you are wondering about coming out personally, The Trevor Project created a great little booklet to help you think through the issues and difficulties associated with coming out. The only time someone needs to come out is when those assumptions are wrong, when their identity deviates from heteronormalcy. Thus, the act of coming out feeds heteronormativity. Standing up and saying “Yes! I’m different!” is cathartic, empowering, and a boost of self-confidence as you become a card-carrying, asking-and-telling member of a wonderful community. But it also says you’re different. I’m not saying don’t come out. I’m just dreaming of a world where coming out is boring. If you get on the rooftops and shout out who you are, and you feel great about it, wonderful. But in my dream world, people around you will look at you like you just declared your favorite pizza toppings. Because we can all appreciate pizza in different ways. And even if your favorites are not mine, it’s really not that big of a deal. Sex Communication Podcasts Anyway, this episode isn’t about coming out. It’s actually a conversation with another podcast host. She’s been something of an inspiration to me, because she’s been walking the walk I’ve been talking about. In more ways than one, she’s made a mission of normalizing talking about sex. Hi, my name is Brianne. I am also a host of a sex podcast my podcast is called Sex Communication. But I am also the founder of GRAPHICPAINT, which is an umbrella brand that also produces Sex Communication. And the focus of the brand is to champion sex positive projects.We’re really centered around a website that’s currently in development that’s going to be an online community for people to share multimedia without sexual censorship, connect with others, be able to sell their own digital content, you know, the only requirement being authenticity and certain very specific things that our merchant provider won’t allow content wise.Yeah, I’m just really looking to change the narrative around sex, but also the experience of interacting with sexual content, especially when it comes to the online world, which is where we all live 24 hours a day.Brianne Barriers to Communication Okay, great. Um, so I guess you and I have a common mission of normalizing talking about sex. And as you know, there are many social pressures that make sex taboo, such as religion and morality laws and that sort of thing. And there’s also internal pressures, right, fear and shame, things like that. So what do you see as the biggest barriers to being open about talking about sex today?Kenneth Well, I mean, again, I’m tackling this problem with the solution being online media. And I actually think the reason for that is because I think this is the biggest reinforcer of the stigma. You know, media is something that we access constantly. It’s something that we internalize, and it takes ideas that you know may have originated in religion. They may have originated in, you know, family etiquette, or just tradition, or with government practice.When you see the way media handles sex, you know, the way that sex is kind of segregated from all other types of content, like that just reinforces an otherness, and otherness is just inherently negative. You know, anything that’s segregated, we start to see the thing that’s separated is like that’s a bad thing. And that’s why it’s separated.So it’s, you know, part of why I’m hoping to change how sex is presented, you know, it’s not just having the conversation, but really thinking about, like, this is, you know meeting people where they are. We’re carrying around phones we have access to the Internet, all the time. And, you know, media, whether it’s through advertising, whether it’s through blogs or new sites or you know even films, it’s like it’s all reinforcing this idea that sex is something that you talk about somewhere else, but not in normal daily life.Brianne I’ve sometimes imagined that that this ideal world of talking about sex openly, it might look like the way that we talk about food. I don’t know if you think that’s a good comparison or not. But, you know, recipe books and and maybe a sex network on television, you know, that kind of thing. Casual conversations about the best place to eat.Do you think this is a reasonable idea? Or are there things about sex that make it special, make it unique, and where we should, even being open, should be more careful or reserved about the way that we talked about it?Kenneth No, I mean, I agree with what you’re saying. I mean, I think. You know this stigma, it’s not just about getting people to be more open about sex as far as, you know, talking about what their sex life is. But it’s like, how does that play out into all of the other things that we struggle with, right?You know. Conversations about consent. Conversations about trauma. And you know like the negative stuff. People don’t talk about the negative stuff as much as they don’t talk about the positive stuff.So I just think, you know, like the benefits are just way beyond just normalizing and destigmatizing the topic. It’s an opportunity for people to be more comfortable just sharing what has happened to them, whether it’s good or bad, you know.So I do think normalizing it so that it’s to the point where it’s just another topic, like you said, like food. I mean, that’s part of what my vision for the site is is like, it’s not just sex. It’s sex that’s treated at the same level of importance and priority as we deal with every other topic, you know, news and reviews and culture stuff and you know whatever. It’s all just life stuff. So why do we have to treat one part of life is a totally separate animal?Brianne The Good and The Bad Right. Um, so you mentioned consent. And I think that’s an important topic I’d like to get in a little more.When people think about not being open about sex they might develop incorrect assumptions about, what’s normal and what’s not. People might miss out on pleasurable opportunities if they’re not comfortable asking, but, as you mentioned, consent is a part of it too. They might struggle to navigate that. Could you talk about that in a little more detail—why there’s this complexity about the the good and the bad is both—I guess what I’m getting at is when people want to suppress sex or sex communication, a lot of times the rationale is that they don’t want to be putting these ideas into people’s heads. If we don’t talk about it, then it won’t exist, or something like that. Can you talk about why that’s not the case?Kenneth Well, when we’re uncomfortable about things, we don’t want to talk about them, and when you don’t have those conversations you can get into very dangerous situations. I mean, my perspective is very well informed living as a cis woman and having been sexually assaulted multiple times throughout my life, as an adult, as a child, everywhere in between. And it’s still difficult for me to have those conversations.Like even with doing the show, you know, recording all these interviews, talking about it, writing about it. It’s uncomfortable. There’s like this fear of—I don’t even know what it is, it doesn’t—it’s just like baseless fear, this feeling attached to these conversations because they’re so—like it’s just so uncommon. You don’t, I don’t know, I’ve never been advised on how to have the conversation.It’s not something that’s dealt with in school or at least it wasn’t in my experience, it is from what I can tell, with even sex ed programs. Now it’s still not something that’s tackled.So it’s like where to start? And then you know hesitation and discomfort with something like that. I mean, it carries over to, like, “Well, do I feel comfortable asking for what I want in bed?” It’s all the same conversation. But just like different angles of it. Um, you know, and not being able to talk about consent.It’s, you know, akin to not being able to stick up for yourself and allowing a situation to progress where you’re not comfortable, you have not given consent and yet something is happening to you and your then dealing with the consequences of that. You know, giving somebody else power giving somebody the entire control of the situation, what happens, how it’s dealt with, you know, because you’re the one not speaking up. And I think people don’t speak up, because they don’t know any better, most of the time, and other times they know full well better but they’re not acting on it because it’s so uncomfortable to have these conversations.You know, especially as a woman there’s like a fear of what kind of violent reaction might befall me if I bring this up. If I say no. If you know we’ve done x y and z, but I’m like, nope, not going to do this other thing. You know, that’s a very reasonable fear. It’s a very reasonable fear, and it’s just it’s unfortunate that it is sexual assault, especially with women is as common as it is. It’s, you know, it’s plenty common with men as well. But it’s become like a cultural norm to dominate women, especially in the US. And I know in other places it’s even worse, and in some places it’s better. But you know, I live in the states and it’s been my experience.And it doesn’t seem to have changed all that much, even for a sex positive as it’s, you know, become so trendy to be lately. It still doesn’t mitigate those those risks.Brianne Telling Your Own Story Yeah. You say from your personal experience that it’s still difficult to talk about and I can certainly relate to that as well. Um, I’ve had several years of telling my story and it still can be very difficult at times. Do you think, do you see from your own experience that it gets easier or that there’s some healing from talking about it?Kenneth Yeah, certainly. I mean, another thing that I’ve been very open about is the fact that I’m sober, and you know I stay sober by participating in a 12 step recovery program. And the at the heart of that program is sharing one’s story right and sharing honestly. Taking an honest inventory, just being fearless about like whatever your truth is, and knowing that, you know, if you’ve done something wrong, it doesn’t make you a bad person. It makes you, you know, sick or, you know, like we’re not necessarily—even like we can be defined by our actions, obviously—but it’s like you know, the possibility of forgiveness of change. And that it all comes from kind of acknowledgement and and being very willing to accept responsibility for something by looking at it in a very honest, brutally honest way.So just given all of that, like I’ve shared about my own sexual assaults. Many times, you know both privately with people that I’m working with one on one, but also in the context of groups. And even still, like, I still will, you know, share it at a meeting and have somebody tell me that it’s inappropriate that I talked about a certain part of my story. But it’s my fucking story. If I want to talk about it, I’m going to talk about it. I mean it’s—definitely all those experiences have shaped who I am and why I am where I am and why I do what I do.And it’s, it’s so important for other people to hear it and identify. And I have so many more people coming up to me—men and women and and everything in between—saying, you know, nobody ever talks about that and I really appreciate that you shared about this particular topic because, you know, this happened to me too.Which is another part with the site, of being so open about these things. Like, that’s another way that we normalize things right. It’s not just seeing examples of it, but seeing and hearing very personal account because then you know this isn’t just something that a company created, right. It’s not just a construct, you know, that’s been developed so that you you perform a certain action. It’s somebody honestly sharing their story so you can know that you are not alone. And you have that opportunity to identify which in turn just leads to, you know, acceptance and feeling more connected and a whole host of other positive things.Brianne Moving the Narrative Forward Do you see that talking about and understanding your past helps you to negotiate the present or the future in terms of asking what what you want? Being open that way?Kenneth Yeah, I mean, certainly if I didn’t look back on those things with the perspective that I have with the awareness in the acceptance, you know, my eyes wouldn’t be as open going forward into new things right.Like plenty of things can happen to you. But if you never sit and examine how they happened and why they happened and you know the circumstances around it and you know how you felt afterwards, you’re never going to give yourself the opportunity to behave in a different way. Which is kind of what we’re all looking for.Brianne Protecting the Innocent So part of the reason that as a culture, we are afraid of sex is that it can be dangerous. Maybe we blow that out of proportion sometimes, but there’s truth to it. It can be dangerous in in the wrong context. And you mentioned sex ed for children. And so, particularly, we want to protect children or vulnerable people from sex.But at the same time, children are exposed to sex from the day they’re born, right. We give them a sexual identity, male or female. And then there’s all these sorts of cultural norms that come along with that—about how you’re supposed to behave. And even if we don’t intend that to be sexual at first, it certainly is all related, I think. Right, right. The the ideas of normalizing masculine behavior are very much interrelated with issues of like you said dominance and aggression, and I think there’s a missing piece between between what is normal for children to be exposed to and what they need to learn to be healthy adults in terms of sexuality.Do you think that there’s something fundamentally wrong with our approach to sex ed, or do we just need to do a better job of communicating these things?Kenneth I think there’s a lot fundamentally wrong. A lot missing.I mean, my experience with sex ed was related to STIs and preventing pregnancy. So that’s all very useful information right but like I said consent is a huge missing part of that conversation. But also the idea of sexual pleasure. And you know I understand a lot of people’s hesitation with, you know, just in the same way in the 90s. It was a whole thing about like, we don’t want to offer condoms at school because this is just going to be encouraging everybody who sees or has access to a condom to have sex. Which is not true.You know, it’s a matter of being open about healthy behavior. Like it’s one thing to, you know, have a child only encounter unhealthy depictions and unhealthy demonstrations of sexuality, and another to, you know, kind of force the issue with with positive things. And, you know, if we think about it very realistically, there is no child that is not aware of porn. Right. And there’s a whole backlash that porn is so negative and porn is, you know, ruining our kids and corrupting them.And, you know, but that’s the only real—I don’t want to say honest—but like, but I mean explicit. It’s the only real explicit demonstration of sex that they have access to most of the time, because we’re not offering an alternative.So what would it look like if we instead of running away from how you know we show sex—like, “they shouldn’t be looking at sex!” We don’t want to look at it. We don’t want to see it. We don’t want to like have that that exposure. We don’t want to like go that far. You’re giving them no alternative but to seek something out that will actually show them body parts and will actually show them action so they don’t have to wonder about the vagaries of, you know, maybe illustrations or vague language in a book. Because you know all these topics are skirted around. They’re never addressed. And so that’s what they seek out.So I just propose that we, you know, embrace the topic and try to put, you know, healthy things out there instead, and you can educate somebody much better. I think educational porn would be so useful. And I mean videos with real people having sex that you see you can see: What a trans person looks like. You can see what group sex looks like. you can see what it looks like for a woman to insert a tampon, or a trans, you know, woman not dealing with that and maybe a trans man menstruating. Like, you know, being able to see these things in specifics—Like education is power. And and you’re setting children up to be safer to be, you know, more able to advocate for themselves because they know the reality of something when you just keep something under wraps, it’s just, it’s always going to lead to something that’s not going to be good. But, I mean, the information is out there, they’re not going to not get it. So it’s like, how about we give them good information. Instead.So you know I think realism is very important. Education about you know that pleasure is a component of sex. It’s not just like, “how do you not get pregnant” and “how do you not catch herpes or AIDS or whatever.” But like, “how is this a part of normal life” and “how can you be good at it, and how can you take your own pleasure into your own hands.” You know, i.e. masturbation. And it’s again it’s not encouraging them to do it. It’s just saying, “This is the information that’s out there and I’m going to shoot straight with you and tell you all about it.”Brianne Education is power.Brianne Honest Depictions So let’s talk about pornography and art, more broadly. I guess, is there a distinction? Should we, I’m not sure what the best way is to use those words. But pornography tends to have a very negative association, but you’re talking about a positive use of sexual art. Can you talk about what you have in mind?Kenneth Yeah, I mean just reality based. I mean documentary style sex. That maybe would be less confusing because the word pornography does bring with it a lot of connotations that I mean—even the definition is like it’s intended for arousal—which I it’s not necessarily a bad thing. I’m very pro porn, but I do recognize that there are—there’s bad porn out there, and there are some really good independent, you know, very body-positive very gender-inclusive creators of porn out there. They’re few and far between.But I think in terms of using it for sex ed, I think, is something that that’s not being tackled. I mean, I don’t know anybody that’s doing that. But I just think that that would be real.I think about how when I grew up, you know, asking my mother what a low job was and she told me it meant to give oral pleasure. Which at the time I was reading these books that would talk about oral presentations and that it was about speaking skills. So I’m hearing this, and I’m like, does that mean to like tell a good…. Like I knew she was being vague and it was just such confusing language. Like what the fuck are you talking about? This is not an answer. Right.But it’s all like if she had—if I had somebody that was straight with me and said, no, this is what a blow job is, or maybe showed me a video of somebody giving somebody else a blow job. I would have understood and it wouldn’t have been like, “Oh, well, now I’m going to go out and do that now because I’ve seen an example of it.” I mean, that’s just ludicrous.It would just, would have set me up better. And honestly, the reason why I was asking because I was in fifth grade and I had a boyfriend a year older that was already talking about blow jobs. Like, don’t you think it would have been helpful for your daughter to have known exactly what the guy was talking about? That would have made it safer for me.I mean, I felt incredibly uncomfortable being alone with him, like I didn’t know what he was going to try to make me do. I didn’t have this actual idea of what a blow job is. It was just, you know, my fears and everything and and—It’s just such nonsense.But anyway, yeah, did that answer your question? I’m sorry.Brianne Art in the Conversation Yeah, yeah. So, and and thinking more broadly about about your mission and the, the idea of normalizing sex. How do you think art plays into that as opposed to just having conversations?Kenneth Well, it’s funny. I’m also a visual artist, and I don’t care about art in this context honestly. When I think about that I think about like erotica which I hate. I don’t know. I’m, I’m more interested in just in reality and honesty.So, you know, like when I said you know documentary style depictions of sex. Same with writing. I’m not into like erotic fiction or you know, whatever. But I love to read people’s first hand accounts of something that’s true.So, I mean, again, that’s my motivation for trying to drive that direction with the site, but I, you know, I’m creating something that’s crowdsourced right. So at some point, I’m not going to be driving that ship. It’s going to be a matter of, like, what do people want to post? A lot of people, you know, that’s how they they are comfortable talking about sex. And you know sharing about it you know if they make things like as a creator, that’s helpful to them. Which is great for them. It’s not something I’m at all interested in.I don’t think sex has been missing from art ever. I mean, just the fact that, like nudes are so—I mean it’s such, it’s like a weird contradiction that you know nude statues and paintings have been around for hundreds of years. And yet we’re still uncomfortable with nudity. So I don’t put a lot of stock in like art being able to save us in this situation.I truly think it’s about like what is the truth. What are people really doing and how can I see it or read about it or hear it? Yeah, that’s what I’m looking for.Brianne Yeah. That’s interesting. I think sometimes I’ve thought that fiction and writing—and art is the same way—but fiction is a way to talk about things that are too difficult to talk about otherwise that as a, as a creator of that type of work. I think that that can put some distance between me and the work in a way that allows me to express things that if I were just saying it directly might be too hard to do. Does that make sense?Kenneth It does, it does. But like my my gut reaction to it is like, it feels like spin, right. It feels like fantasy. And I don’t think either of those things are helpful. Especially, you know, when I think about all the writing that that’s out there. And how often, the more popular depiction of something will be, you know, an experience that a woman is having, but surprise, it’s written by a cis man who has no idea and is, you know, unintentionally, you know, well maybe not unintentionally, but sharing information that’s not useful if somebody’s reading it. Like, “Oh, I’m supposed to quiver at a touch and we’re going to have simultaneous orgasms.” Like that’s fucking bullshit that’s unhelpful to anybody.And I just feel like again, what is, what is the truth? Tell it to me straight. Show me people, neither of them can come to an orgasm, or one does. And the other ones just like defeated, it just—like we, I just want to see the reality of it. Because I think it also gives people, you know, the space like a safe space to feel like “I don’t have to be performing. I don’t have to, you know, meet this expectation. I don’t have to have a certain experience or a certain result.”And it just lets them them be where they are and you know just be in the moment instead of shooting for something which I think any creation any art or fiction or whatever—movies. They’re always striving for this ideal.You know, it’s, I just, I’m more—I mean, I enjoy my entertainment. That you know, false or otherwise, but when it comes to like changing a conversation and changing thinking into educating people and to try to motivate change behavior, I think reality all the way is the way to go.Brianne Well that makes a lot of sense. Um, that’s everything that I had to talk about. Is there anything that we didn’t cover yet that you think is important and you’d like to bring up?Kenneth Censorship Oh well, I mean, this is an interesting thing I’ve been dealing with recently. So my podcast. You know, I said, you know, one of the things to with with reality is like, I want to hear it. I didn’t mention but mi podcast features episodes of audio porn, which is just audio recordings of real sex. And I was recently banned from my podcast platform for having pornographic content which was really interesting to me, given that it was a completely audio-only medium and then it’s real.There is audio content out there where it’s actually people that are acting. They’re like reading either erotica or maybe something that that’s factually based but they’re performing the reactions. They’re performing the sounds and that’s not what I’m sharing. I’m sharing real people having sex or masturbating, and like what does that really sound like.And it’s funny, there is this immediate assumption, especially from—I have a more majority male listenership which is not shocking to me. But anyway. I’m not putting them out there to turn people on. And in fact, when the idea occurred to me to use a podcast to put content like that out there. To even, you know, like record sex and listen to it. It was never about that, you know, it was about having the opportunity to hear something from a different perspective or, you know, I want to say look at something in perspective but you’re hearing it. You’re not seeing it. But it just gives you a different insight. Right.I mean, there’s something so so disconnected about how how we see sex, but I think, you know, taking the visuals out of it. Especially given you know how kind of doctored a lot of visuals are. Like, and just being able to listen to something your understanding of the situation and the intimacy of it is just incredibly compelling and I think even just from an anthropological standpoint, is just like, why aren’t we, why haven’t people really been focusing on examining sexuality in this way? You know, is like more towards a science.So anyway, I did find a new podcast host after another try. So I’m actually coming off of hiatus today and I was, you know, grateful for this opportunity to do your show, because it was going to get me a little, you know, jazzed up to do it because it’s been really frustrating. You know, the show’s been out, we’re almost at the end of our second year, and it’s just like “still dealing with this shit.”I mean, it’s just sounds of people having sex, and you wouldn’t even know it if I didn’t fucking put it in the title of the thing. Like it was all prompted by Spotify taking down several of my episodes. And then my host Buzzsprout—throw them under the bus—like, Oh hey, fuck you, by the way, you can take your podcast off our platform by the seventh. Yeah, it was a real … whatever. Anyway.Brianne Yeah, that’s a whole—I’ve been thinking about doing an episode on censorship actually just because there’s, it’s such a complicated and a weird problem. You know there’s there’s certainly laws that fit into it as well. But the way things are set up a lot of platforms have their own policies or whatever that go far beyond the law. And it’s not, it’s not clear if that’s helpful or if it’s actually serving the purpose that it is designed to.But I’m glad to hear that you’re back up and running and I’m looking forward to future episodes.Kenneth Yes. I haven’t published your episode yet. So you are—you are coming.Brianne Okay, great. We’re all going to look forward to that.So thanks for doing this. It was great talking with you.Kenneth Likewise. Thank you.Brianne As you heard at the end there, Brianne interviewed me for her podcast and that episode will be coming soon. I’ll warn you that it is much more personal and detailed than anything I’ve discussed here. But in terms of honest and real conversation about sex, it certainly fits the bill. If that sounds like your cup of tea, I definitely encourage you to look for it. Take a look at her other episodes too. She’s interviewed people in sex work as well as people who simply love sex. If you want examples of what real sex communication is like, her podcast is the place to find them. It’s called, simply, Sex Communication, and you can get it wherever you get your podcasts. Except, evidently, Spotify. Go figure. Funny story. I almost hosted this podcast with anchor.fm until I saw that they were bought by Spotify. Spotify’s morality clause in their licensing agreement scared me away. So far they haven’t censored any of my episodes, though. Anyway, Brianne’s other venture is GRAPHICPAINT, so check that out too, especially in the near future. I for one am definitely looking forward to what comes of that project. Thanks for listening.

If you live in the United States: Don’t Forget to Vote In case you didn’t hear, there is an election coming up soon! Now is the time to make sure you are registered, and to request an absentee ballot if you want to vote that way. This is a very interesting election, so I encourage everyone to participate. It is the least you can do as a citizen. How do I get information about how to vote? For information on how to vote, either in person or by mail, check out ballotready.org.To see if you’re registered, go to headcount.org.For more information or assistance, call (855) 868-3311. This episode explores the idea that sexual categories have socially-defined meanings that are negotiated and renegotiated over time. Individuals develop their sexual self through telling their story to position themselves within these social definitions. (Transcript) Last week I read a really interesting PhD dissertation by David Wahl, at Iowa State University, titled Speaking through the silence: Narratives, interaction, and the construction of sexual selves.  He bases his study on an idea called symbolic interactionism. Symbolic interactionism, basically, is the theory that the labels and definitions we use to identify ourselves are constructed through a social process.  It is our society as a whole that defines, for example, what it means to be male, or gay, or a virgin.  And this is an ongoing process, where meanings change.  They are constantly being negotiated and renegotiated, understood in new and varying ways.  We individuals are not passive recipients of these definitions, though.  As part of society, we each individually participate in this process of creating meaning. Beyond a vague idea of a social conversation that develops these definitions, the research looks at individual people’s narratives that work to build a sexual self.  In other words, people create their own sexual identity by telling a story.  The telling is just as important as the hearing, because both work together to frame the individual within the social definitions that have been and are continuing to be developed. The Role of Shame Shame, and an understanding that certain behaviors are taboo or deviant, can move an individual to justify their behavior or desires.  This is part the narrative creation I’m talking about.  Just as an example, if a young woman has heard, growing up, that women who like sex are sluts, she might feel shame about her own sexual desires.  If she is sexually active, she might frame her activity in a way that identifies her as less of a slut.  She might say things like, “It’s not the sex, I just like being around another person.”  Or when it comes to sexual activity, she might minimize it, saying, “It was just one time,” or “we didn’t go all the way.” Ironically, for young men, sometimes shame works in the other direction.  There might be a general narrative that sexual prowess or experience is a positive thing, a sign of status or or masculinity.  So a young man might tell his own story in a way that emphasizes those aspects.  So whether shame and the public narrative direct people in one direction or another, the result is that the individual builds their own narrative that positions them in their society. Pride: A Response to Shame Another response to shame or a potential negative repulation is to embrace it.  The young woman above could, alternatively, develop her narrative in a different way.  She could say, “Yeah, I’m a slut and I love it!  And you should try it!”  Taking pride in one’s identity, even (or especially) in the face of public shame, is often a successful way to navigate sexual stigma. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. There is a long and colorful history of sexual pride in the LGBTQ community.  The interplay between pride and shame is detailed in the book Gay Shame by David Halperin and Valerie Traub.  The gay pride movement is all about reframing the public narrative about certain kinds of non-normative sex.  By creating a new community identity, it is increasingly easy for individuals to frame their sexual self in a way that is not alienated, excluded, or shamed in the way that it otherwise could be.  But in order for this possibility to exist, individuals had to tell their story in a way that normalizes the non-normative, that turns shame into pride.  There was (and still is) a renegotiation of the meaning of a number of words with sexual meaning.  “Gay” is possibly the most significant for this story.  It went from a largely nonsexual meaning to one referring to a homosexual identity.  And even today there is a battle over whether it has a positive, negative, or neutral connotation. Don’t Take Their Word For It Another podcaster, Tina Horn, is well versed in marginalized sexualities.  She believes that people should tell their own stories, and they should not rely on so-called experts to tell them what their sexuality should look like.  Part of the reason she creates her podcast, called “Why Are People Into That?“, is to communicate to people that the world is not all vanilla, heterosexual, and “normal.”  She wants to “open that curtain that so many are fearful of peeking behind.”  She is creating a space where people can “feel comfortable having conversations that they don’t feel like they can have anywhere else.”  In doing so, she is giving people a platform from which to narrate their own sexual selves. Building an Identity Another important word that’s meaning has been renegotiated is “homosexual.”  The concept of the word as a sexual identity was almost entirely unheard of more than a couple hundred years ago.  Many scholars of ancient cultures indicate that, generally, there was no concept of sexuality as an identity.  Certainly there were diverse sexual practices, including same-sex sex, but these acts were not tied into an identity the way they often are today.The modern understanding of the term was hotly debated over the past half-century or more.  In 1952, the first Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders from the the American Psychiatric Association (the DSM) classified homosexuality as a disorder.  This immediately sparked controversy.  Researchers questioned whether homosexuality, whether talking about desires or acts, was truly abnormal or problematic, or whether it was simply a natural variation in sexual desire and expression.  Although professional researchers have pretty much settled the debate now, there are still questions about whether it is a biological variation or if it is influenced by environmental factors. At the same time as this professional and academic debate was going on, the LGBT movement began in earnest, attempting to change public perception of homosexuality from choice or action to one of identity.  If homosexuality is who someone is, rather than what someone does, then homosexual people should be considered a protected class of citizens, just like racial minorities or women.  This political movement was successful in significantly changing the public narrative around sexuality, and as a consequence it significantly changed the way individuals tell their own stories of their sexual self. My mentor and kindred spirit, Aaron Swartz, complained about this pressure to frame his sexual self in terms of identity.  He wanted to be free to discover his sexual self without having to suffer an identity crisis.  Does one have to change who he is, simply because he is attracted to a certain kind of person?  Can’t we just agree that we’re all people?  Aaron said: If we truly want to expand the scope of human freedom, we should encourage people to date who they want, not just provide more categorical boxes for them to slot themselvesinto.  A man who has mostly dated men should be just as welcome to date women as a woman who’s mostly dated men.So that’s why I’m not gay.  I hook up with people.  I enjoy it.  Sometimes they’re men, sometimes they’re women.  I don’t see why it needs to be any more complicated than that. I don’t see why it needs to be any more complicated than that.Aaron Swartz Thanks for listening. References David Wahl, 2020. Speaking through the silence: Narratives, interaction, and the construction of sexual selves.Julien Levy, May 26, 2020. Of Podcasts and Perverts.Aaron Swartz, September 8, 2009. Why I Am Not Gay.

In masculine culture, sexual activity is often spoken of in terms of conquest. Donald Trump gives us a potent case study into how our society speaks about sexual assault. (Transcript) Our world can be a surprising place. I generally think I know the kind of world I live in, but then occasionally something happens that makes me question everything I thought I knew about society. Right now I’m thinking about politics. In general I thought that we were thoughtful, reasonable people. Twenty or so years ago I thought we would never elect a buffoon to the Office of the President. Then I found out I was wrong. Again four or so years ago I had to rethink my assumptions about us when we elected a known sex offender to that same office. What I once assumed to be one of the most disqualifying, unforgivable behaviors was now glossed over and ignored by a majority of Americans. Or so it seemed. Let me point out, before people get too upset with me, that it is very difficult to make generalizations. I am not saying that people who voted for Trump don’t care about sexual misconduct. I’m not saying they’re OK with violence against women. And I’m certainly not saying that they voted for Trump because they approve of these behaviors. Just like I doubt anyone voted for George W. Bush because of his buffoonery. I’m also not inclined to say that people were ignorant of this behavior. Decisions like who to vote for are always difficult. Judging a person—or a person’s decisions—is always a complicated, imperfect venture. One I don’t care to attempt. But what made me question what I thought I knew about people in our society is that I thought certain things were unacceptable—clearly over some established line—and then I found out that they can be forgiven. From one perspective, I think this is wonderful news. I am all about forgiveness. I would give anyone another chance. Particularly, as a known sex offender myself, part of me is a little happy that someone with such a background can rise all the way to the Presidency. But, on the whole, the situation doesn’t actually make me feel good. See, forgiveness is not the same as denial. I would give anyone another chance, I would forgive anyone, but not without a reckoning. Before I let bygones be bygones, I would want some recognition of a problem, some correction of that problem, and an intent to do better in the future. With Trump, none of that has happened. He claims he did nothing wrong. He continues to demonstrate the very same behavior (behavior I assumed was unacceptable). And his supporters are either in complete denial, or they dismiss the problem as insignificant compared to other problems of the world. I’m not here to talk about politics, though. I’m here to talk about talking about sex. The Atlantic is releasing a series of articles about the women who have come out to talk about their experiences of sexual assault by Donald Trump, and so I thought this situation deserved a look. Toxic Masculinity When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.Donald Trump Natasha Stoynoff went to Mar-a-Lago to interview Donald and Melania Trump. It was their first anniversary, and Natasha’s assignment, she expected, would have her write an article for People magazine that highlighted how happy the couple had been. Instead, Donald lured her into an isolated room and, as he would likely say, “moved on her.” According to Natasha and the six people she confided in at the time, Donald pushed her against a wall and pressed his weight into her. She immediately put up her hands to stop him, but he continued to put his tongue into her mouth. Incidents like this are called various things. Donald might say he moved on her very heavily. Natasha might say he sexually assaulted her. The writer for the Atlantic, E. Jean Carroll, said he leaned on her “like an oversexed mastadon” and shoved his tongue down her throat. Now, I was about to say that in Michigan, forcing someone to kiss you would be considered criminal sexual conduct. I looked it up, though, and that’s actually not the case. “Sexual contact” is criminal when force is used, but it turns out that a kiss is not considered sexual contact. Touching someone’s groin, inner thigh, genital area, buttock, or breast, however… that would be criminal sexual conduct. Criminal or not, it was unwanted, forcible, and decidedly creepy. But it’s also uncomfortably common. Apparently journalists can’t be bothered to keep track of an exact count of accusations, but dozens of women have accused this man of something similar, or even rape. Donald has been known to brag about these incidents in relative private, and in public he denies any wrongdoing. Modus Operandi of A Serial Assaulter There have been enough accusations that a pattern has emerged. Donald tends to dismiss accusations of sexual assault or misconduct by saying he never met the woman, or additionally that she’s not pretty enough, not his type. Reading between the lines, he is implying that of course he would rape the right type of woman, just not these ones. This attitude is incredibly discomforting to someone who would see women as worthy of respect as autonomous human beings, but it fits right in with the masculine culture that sees women as sex objects, worthy of conquest. In the culture of locker rooms and frat houses, sex is not so much an intimate act as it is an exercise of power. It is a way to prove one’s masculinity, his ability to be aggressive and take control. So, is Donald right when he says he can do whatever he wants with women? It’s not so important whether or not a woman lets him “do it,” apparently, but it is clear that the culture finds it acceptable. Or, at least, it is normal. This is expected behavior among men. At least, that’s the kind of masculinity that is expressed in all-male settings like dorms, fraternities, and locker rooms. Maybe even in Donald’s board rooms. Of course, not any man can get away with rape. Donald qualifies his statement: “When you’re a star, they let you do it.” A dominant male has some level of immunity from criticism by other males. They fear their own masculinity might be questioned if they speak up. They might be seen as weak or not “one of the boys” if they question the masculine actions of another male, particularly a dominant one. Vocalizing Trauma Let’s shift gears and look at the way Natasha spoke about the incident. A dedicated professional, she continued with the interview. Of course, she was preoccupied with what Donald did when Melania was out of the room, and anything they said about their marriage became quite questionable. In the end, she never did write the story. She thought about it. She thought about writing the story of her direct experience with Donald. But that wasn’t the sort of story People magazine usually publishes. After she left the interview, she spoke with her colleagues about what happened, and they discussed options. In the end, they ended up just doing nothing. Too complicated, too difficult to say anything publicly. Of course, eventually Natasha did speak out publicly. It made national headlines, because then Donald was running for public office. And then it changed her life forever. Donald’s predictable response? “Look at her…. I don’t think so.” Is it worth associating my name with that?Karena Virginia I’m sure it was a hard decision to make an accusation public. Just like the boys in the locker room who might not speak up when one of their “bros” does or says something over the line, women too feel like they have something to lose when they question a dominant male. Another woman to accuse Donald, debated whether or not to make her accusation public: “But in the scheme of things, it wasn’t a rape. It was a forcible touch. I wondered: Is it worth associating my name with that?” It is one thing to make a public claim and not be believed. But it is another thing entirely to have that claim define your life. Natasha, Karena, and many others are now known as “one of Trump’s accusers.” It is one thing for someone guilty of wrongdoing to have their life defined by their wrongdoing. At least there is some sense that maybe they deserve to be judged by an instance of bad behavior. But when society judges the accuser in a similar way… Why? Why do we hold a person in the light of their worst accusation? What is the sense behind victim shaming? Victim Shaming Those of us in polite society like to pretend that everything is fine. It is too difficult to think about the bad things that happen in the world. So we try to ignore those things. We might turn off the TV when we see starving children. We might dismiss misogynistic and abusive behavior from one of our leaders as an isolated incident or an inconsequential character flaw. And in the same way, we put distance between us and the accusers, because they, too, are a reminder of the troubles in the world that we’d rather not think about. “Forever,” Karena says. “And as a woman, if you ever come forward with any allegation, it’s like you’re tainted. They pick apart your work. They pick apart your appearance.” Karena made her accusation public in a press conference. Immediately after, she received hundreds of hateful messages including multiple death threats. Were these people expressing their hatred out of defense for Donald? Or maybe they were defending patriarchy as a whole. It makes me wonder if a man making an accusation would be treated in the same way. Unfortunately, such men are few and far between, and they are not given the national spotlight the way women are. Maybe a male being victimized is even more uncomfortable to think about than a woman, and so culturally we suppress that information even more. After all, women are victimized so routinely that another woman victim does not shock the conscience nearly as acutely. According to a Vanity Fair article from a couple years ago, a male victim of sexual assault said, “Instead of a person who needs help, you are a problem that needs to be eradicated. … There’s a whole system in place, and you’re about to upset the whole thing.” Male accusers are simultaneously believed more readily and questioned more quickly. Apparently society assumes that men are more trustworthy than women, or maybe that they have less to gain from a salacious accusation. And on the other hand, men are assumed to be stronger and more assertive, thus more capable of saying “no” or resisting an unwanted encounter. But as far as an accusation changing their life—defining their life—that doesn’t seem to happen in the same way. Men are assumed to be more complicated than that. They are not so easily reduced to their worst accusation. Or maybe it is socially easier for a man to move on, to become someone else beyond “one of his accusers.” This commentary is more about questions than answers. Why do Donald Trump and his supporters seem to not care about these accusations? Not because they think they aren’t true. It is because they are so normal. What “real man” wouldn’t grope a beautiful woman, given the opportunity? Women are exploited in this way all the time, so why should we make a big deal about it just because we’re talking about a guy running for president? One woman said she didn’t bother telling anyone about Donald groping her breasts because she knew she wasn’t special. She assumed that “he probably did the same thing to 10 different women that night.” Multiply that by the number of sleazebag guys at any given party and we can only guess how common this kind of incident really is. Better Options? Women want to be taken seriously. But more than that, they want people to take the problem seriously. People who advocate for the #metoo movement or who want to bring attention to the prevalence of sexual abuse are not trying to get society to recognize it as the normal, everyday occurrence that it is. We want society to recognize it as a problem, as something that should not be normal. But we are fighting not against denial, not against a refusal to acknowledge the problem. We are in the midst of a culture that understands that this is just the way things are. It may be regrettable, but what can be done about it? Concepts of masculinity as aggressive, dominant, and controlling are so deeply ingrained into our culture that it will likely take a generation or more for that to change. Maybe we are making progress. Young men today are fearful of being involved in sex at all, lest they be accused of acting without consent. Unfortunately, fear is not healthy either. And consent gets complicated when people don’t feel like they have the power to speak up, or when they fear the consequences of pushing back or not fulfilling someone else’s desires. A loss of words Many victims of sexual assault, Donald’s or others, were shocked into paralysis during the incident. They were at a loss of words, they didn’t know how to respond. This obviously doesn’t mean that they consented, and it doesn’t mean the assaulter is excused from seeking consent. But I wonder if it would have made a difference if Donald had asked. Would they have been able to speak up then? Or would they still have felt uncomfortable, incapable of objecting to the desires of a powerful, dominant man? How many people, especially young people, have been in a situation where they did something they didn’t really want to do because they didn’t want to hurt someone’s feelings? Because they didn’t want to be labeled a prude, or “no fun?” Social pressures can be strong things. And consent is only as useful as one’s ability to vocalize it, or to even be willing to consider their own preferences in the first place. Finding a voice One woman, reflecting on what she might have said to Donald if she could have found her voice, would have asked, “What kind of man are you?” As a culture, too, maybe we need to ask a similar question: What kind of masculinity are we creating? Because the only way we will ever be able to change our culture of masculinity is if we create a new image of the ideal man. References Laura Bradley, Vanity Fair, 2018E. Jean Carroll, The Atlantic, 2020aE. Jean Carroll, The Atlantic, 2020bNaomi Lim, CNN, 2016

Hélène Cixous’s essay, “The Laugh of the Medusa,” is a significant contribution to feminist thought. It is also one of my favorite essays. Here I talk about what she is saying and how it relates to sex communication. (Transcript) Hi, I’m Kenneth, and this is the Unspeakable Vice Podcast, where we talk about talking about sex.  Sex is a dirty word, a taboo, something that just isn’t talked about.  We’re about to dig into why. Did you notice something different? There’s music! I’m super excited about it, and I want to thank local Michigan artist Joey Pecoraro for the gracious use of his music in this podcast. The Laugh of the Medusa © Claude Truong-Ngoc / Wikimedia Commons Today I’m going to revisit an essay I read as part of a university course on feminism last year. This essay fascinated me, and it was one of my favorite reading assignments. Hélène Cixous authored this essay, titled “The Laugh of the Medusa.” At its core, the essay is about feminist expression, or maybe it would be better if I say feminine expression. There is a lot to unpack here, and tons of people have talked and thought about this essay. As you might expect, my interest is in what Cixous has to say about gender and sex, but the reason I love this essay so much has more to do with how she says it, not what she says. Woman must write her self.Hélène Cixous, 1976 “Woman must write her self,” Hélène Cixous implores (875). This is not just a call for women to participate in English class or to publish books. It is a statement of necessity for women to push against patriarchal tradition and presumption by expressing the feminine condition in their own words, in their own terms. Cixous passionately posits that women’s voices and experiences have been suppressed and oppressed by men (sometimes directly, and sometimes through tradition), and that there is an urgency for women to speak out, loud and proud, to share the femininity that they have kept secret since childhood. One thing that is interesting to me is that Cixous makes no attempt at all to separate gender from sexuality. What I mean is that her definition of femininity is very much tangled up with sexual desire and the female body. This is a different approach than most people use today, where these different terms—gender, sex, and sexual desire—are used to refer to different experiences and separate structures. Sex or Gender? You might remember from our previous episode, as I was talking about words, labels, and so on, that many people see masculinity as being independent of gender. A commenter said, “Any gender can be masculine.” So, masculinity does not require maleness, it does not require a penis, it does not require a particular gender expression. As I understand the commenter, masculinity is a way of being, it is a set of behaviors and an approach to the world. And of course, the concept of masculinity is complicated. It can mean different things to different people and in different contexts. To say a woman is masculine may mean something different than to say a man is masculine. And of course we can say the same thing about femininity. But in her essay Cixous does not attempt to explicitly define femininity, or to distinguish it from being a woman or girl, or from having a clitoris. Or from feeling a certain kind of sexual arousal. A Funny Desire Many young girls, Cixous explains, were shamed into keeping their passions secret. “Who, feeling a funny desire stirring inside her (to sing, to write, to dare to speak, in short, to bring out something new), hasn’t thought she was sick” (876)? She is explicit about the erotic nature of this funny desire, and the desire for expression is suppressed just like sexual desire is. Men are made quite uncomfortable by these passions of women and girls, and so men—who she calls the “sex cops” (877)—try to make them give up these passions. Consequently, women and girls learn to find private outlets for their passions: they “wrote, irresistibly, as when we would masturbate in secret, not to go further, but to attenuate the tension a bit, just enough to take the edge off. And then as soon as we come, we go and make ourselves feel guilty—so as to be forgiven; or to forget, to to bury it until the next time” (877). While making this argument, Cixous conflates the experience of femininity with the female body. If writing is synonymous with sexual expression, the female body is synonymous with feminine expression. Cixous does not explain this melding of ideas, but her rhetoric is intentional, implying that the feminine experience is a physical, corporeal thing. Now, I don’t think that Cixous is saying that you have to be female to be feminine. She is routinely called a post-structural feminist. Post-structuralism often points to the complexities of social constructs. I expect that Cixous would agree with me when I say that concepts like femininity are complicated, and the boundaries between femininity and masculinity are blurry. In fact, later on in the essay, she looks for rare examples of feminine expression—women who write themselves—and one of her examples is actually a person who is identified as male. By the end of the essay, Cixous makes an extended attempt to write her self: to explain what is missing in the understanding of the feminine experience, what must be expressed for the “immense resources of the unconscious [to] spring forth” (880). She suggests that “it is necessary and sufficient that the best of herself be given to woman by another woman” not only to connect with the other but to connect with herself (881). This relationship can be understood as mother to daughter or sister to sister. She predicts that this love between women is strong enough to be revolutionary across society: “Her libido will produce far more radical effects of political and social change than some might like to think” (882). So, again, look at how she conflates womanhood, femininity, to sexual desire. The relationships she’s talking about, sisters, or a mother and a daughter, are not sexual in the common sense. She’s not talking about a lesbian relationship. Then again, she’s not not talking about lesbianism. But, in her words, relationships between women are inherently sexual. It is “her libido” that makes these relationships significant. Trembling Perseuses She ultimately settles into an argument that current mainstream writing is “phallocentric” and what she speaks of as woman’s writing will disrupt the concept that femininity is defined by its “lack.”  The masculine is driven largely by his fear of castration (of loss of manhood, of becoming less, of seeing the feminine in himself). Women are made to feel guilty and ashamed for the same reason that men are made to be afraid: they don’t have a penis. But the liberated woman has no such fear. She refers to these men who are afraid as “trembling Perseuses” (885). At first I wasn’t sure what she was talking about, but I was curious. After all, this is the whole metaphor that gave her essay its title too. So I tried to familiarize myself with the stories of Perseus and Medusa to see how this all fits together. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. I watched the movie, the 2010 film with Logan Lerman. I played the Medusa scenes multiple times to understand what was going on, with Cixous’s ideas in mind. I also read some other essays on the subjects. So let me try to break down what Cixous is referring to here. Perseus, in the end, was the one who was able to kill Medusa. No one else before him had the wit or the guts to figure out how. Right? Simply looking her in the eye would turn a man to stone. So, of course people were afraid of her. But that’s not to say that Perseus was all courage and testicles. He was a kid, by most standards. He had his moments of cockiness, certainly, but he was also uncertain of himself at times. Of course, in the film, he was only learning his powers as he was experiencing all these adventures. Medusa attempts to seduce Percy into looking at her. Is Percy tempted? Does he fear that he might be unable to resist? © 2010 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation, Dune Entertainment III LLC. Anyway, Perseus ultimately stumbled on a way to defeat this most frightening of women, but it wasn’t with a swinging sword and bravado. It was with a mirror (or a cell phone, in the film), some sneakery, and shielded eyes. So, Perseus was trembling. Why? Because he was afraid of this woman. In the metaphor Cixous hints at, Medusa represents women in general. And trembling Perseus, in ways the most fortitudinous of men, yet trembles. Why is it that men are so afraid of women? Fearful that even a glance at their beauty will strike them with paralysis? Women have such a sneaky power of their own, that erotic charm, that … je ne sais quoi. From the phallocentric view, this force is unexplainable. It eludes the concrete understanding of the masculine perspective. Thus, it is incredibly frightening. Particularly since if a man were to lose any bit of power or control, his very manhood would be threatened. Understanding why Perseus trembles is part of it, but then we can also ask why is Medusa laughing? To my mind, Cixous sees her (and by extension all knowing women) as possessing a secret that men wished she did not know. Medusa understands that she has an incredible power over men. She understand’s that male superiority is a myth, and their fragile social control is one decisive gaze away from crumbling. Man and His Titles To quote again, “Unlike man, who holds so dearly to his title and his titles, … woman couldn’t care less about the fear of decapitation (or castration)” (888). Because woman is not defined by the phallus, she can be understood as a decentralized amalgamation. “If she is a whole, it’s a whole composed of parts that are wholes, not simple partial objects but a moving, limitlessly changing ensemble, a cosmos tirelessly traversed by Eros, an immense astral space not organized around any one sun that’s any more of a star than the others” (889). She has so much to give. Despite focusing her complaint on the sparsity of writing about women, Cixous contends in a footnote that “men still have everything to say about their sexuality, and everything to write” (877). Although her plea is for women to write about women, her argument can be understood more broadly, that all of us ought to be more honest and open about our various sexualities. Additionally, lest one imagine that she is claiming that women better understand the sexual condition than men, such generalizations are just that: in fact, her few examples of good feminine writing include, prominently and notably, a man: Jean Genêt. “By writing her self, woman will return to the body which has been more than confiscated from her” (880). This body of woman, this experience, this identity, is marked by desire, love, and generosity. It is unconcerned with profit, status, prominence. “Everything we will be calls us to the unflagging, intoxicating, unappeasable search for love. In one another we will never be lacking” (893). My Thoughts Cixous says that women need to express themselves, to make their voices heard, to take back some of the power over their own bodies from the phallocentric, patriarchal culture that has for so long and so successfully worked to control them. That control is sometimes exerted directly against the female body, but these days it is more often exerted in more indirect ways. It seeks to control sexual desire, Eros, and even love. These characteristics become deviant, shameful, signs of weakness. They are suppressed in order to uplift the masculine characteristics of control, profit, and status. And women bear the brunt of the loss. And men are drawn away from these characteristics, identified as feminine, out of fear that they will lose their manhood. That they will be found lacking. What kind of feminist am I? Feminism, in some ways, can be defined as simply as the promotion of feminine values. But if I am a feminist, I am the kind of feminist that sees those values not as exclusively feminine, but as essentially human. I believe that our phallocentric culture identifies certain values as feminine, thus diminishing their value. And in turn, women are diminished in value in the same way, through devaluing the things that actually make them valuable. So my political goal, if I have one, is not to bolster the value of women exclusively, although that would certainly be an effect. Rather, I think we all need to better recognize the value of those characteristics that have traditionally been marginalized as feminine. I think we all need to work at understanding that love is not a weakness. Desire is not shameful. Profit, power, and status are not particularly useful goals or metrics of success. These are feminist ideals, at times, but to me they are human ideals. We clearly need to do better in our culture of valuing women, but I think we can do better by valuing all people in the same ways. So, thanks for listening. Once again, thanks to Joey Pecoraro for the delightful music. As I credit him I think of the traditional ways that consideration is given and that value is imparted when it comes to so-called intellectual property. Of course I’m speaking about money. Joey isn’t asking for any money for the use of his music, which is great because I don’t have any. I am not creating this podcast to make money. In fact, it costs me money personally to produce it, along with my time and energy. And that’s fine. It’s a small price to pay for hopefully the value of getting some useful information out into the world. But money does help. Joey is supporting an organization called The Trevor Project, and so in gratitude for his work, I want to encourage you to support the Trevor Project as well. The Trevor Project exists to provide resources to LGBTQ young people who may have nowhere else to turn. If you like this podcast, or even if you don’t, please consider making a donation to The Trevor Project. Thank you! .st0{fill:#F18B21;} header-logoArtboard 1

How we talk about sex shapes how sex is talked about. If that sounds like a circular argument, good, because I see our social understanding of sex as a feedback loop. The words we use, the meanings we ascribe to them, and the context in which they are given, all contribute to the way we and others understand the topics we describe. Words can be arbitrary, but they are no less important in communication. (Transcript) Hi, I’m Kenneth, and this is the Unspeakable Vice Podcast, where we talk about talking about sex.  Sex is a dirty word, a taboo, something that just isn’t talked about.  We’re about to dig into why. I have mixed feelings about words. On the one hand, words are of crucial importance. Words are one of the few ways we have to communicate. When we try to communicate deeply personal, vital, existential ideas, it is critical that we use the right words. On the other hand, as someone who does not particularly care for labels, I see words as nothing more than labels. And like any label, words can mean different things to different people, they can come with baggage, or unintended meanings, and they can be easily misunderstood. @thefeministvibe has been posting on Instagram about words, lately, and some of the comments illustrate that different people have different ideas about their definitions. For example, in a post about masculinity, commenters equated masculinity with being a man, or with being misogynist, or with having a penis. When someone posted that “any gender can be masculine,” several other commenters got very confused about the thought that masculinity could be separated from maleness. When we use a word like masculinity, or feminist, obviously it is important that we use the word in the right way, with the right meaning. Right? Otherwise our message won’t be communicated correctly. People might misunderstand us. They might misunderstand us anyway, but if we use the right words at least we have a chance at being understood. This reminds me of something Sergio Barrera said in our last episode. He spoke about a man who might say, “I am a straight male who enjoys in the pleasure with other men,” and Sergio said that he couldn’t question that man’s experience or his choice of labels, and he wouldn’t assume that this man is gay or bisexual. And this brings up the counter-argument to the importance of words. Because Sergio also said that these terms, like straight or bisexual, can be arbitrary. I asked last time, how can we possibly talk about these things if the words we use are arbitrary and thus meaningless? Words Have Meaning On the one hand, words are meaningful. Knowing that there is a difference between transgender and transsexual, and knowing what that difference is, is important in order to understand the person who is transgender, and so that we don’t offend that person by using the wrong label. What kind of feminist are you? In a college course I took last year, we had a discussion which started by asking everyone in the room, “What kind of feminist are you?” I had no idea how to answer because the question never occurred to me. All kinds of thoughts went through my head. Am I a feminist at all? Is a guy even allowed to be a feminist? Because I believe in all the things that feminists believe, does that automatically make me a feminist? Or does the label impart something else, a membership in a club, a solidarity with other women, or a position necessarily in opposition to men? Just hearing the term, it sounds like feminism has something to do with femininity, or with women. It sounds like it must obviously be contrasted with masculinism, but of course nobody ever talks about masculinism. It doesn’t exist. Or more precisely, what could be called masculinism is actually the status quo, the assumed starting point within our patriarchal culture. So, as I started to formulate my own understanding of feminism, in order to start wrestling with the question of what kind of feminist I was, required me to understand much more than a single word. I had to learn about the history of patriarchal assumptions so that I could see how feminism acted as a response, a reaction, to that status quo. Unfortunately, even among feminists, there is no agreement on precisely what the term means. Words Are Arbitrary From the beginning, feminism has been controversial. Conservative men have tried to pigeonhole feminists into a small corner of irrelevance. Feminism has been equated with lesbianism, man-hating, or radicalism. And so in the beginning, some feminists pushed back by saying “We’re not radical, and we don’t hate anyone. We just want to be treated with the same dignity as a man is.” And so early feminism was defined as being about demanding certain basic rights for women that were already afforded to men. Who is a woman? But different women, and especially at different times in history, had different ideas about what feminism meant. Sojourner Truth famously (and inaccurately, but that’s a different story) exclaimed, “Ain’t I a woman?” questioning her perceived exclusion from feminist goals. As a black woman, she did not see the feminist movement as demanding her dignity, where being black was at least as important a determinant of her position in society as being a woman. Evidently, the feminism of the time was interested primarily in the dignity of white middle class women, not all women. Truth’s comment also brings to question what it means to be a woman. Is a black woman actually a woman? Culturally, there are (were? are?) big differences in how a white woman and a black woman are treated. Thus comes the concept of intersectionality. Being a woman can mean something different to different people. You can see this discussion frequently when it comes to trans people. Are trans women real women? Some would respond with an adamant “yes!” Others might say “it depends.” For example, many government agencies are far more interested in what is written on a birth certificate (male or female) than on any external representation or internal psychological indications of gender. Sporting organizations that have segregated competitions for male and female athletes (for fairness, of course, since women can’t possibly be expected to compete against men) often have dubious or arbitrary ways of determining the sex of their competitors. Words have many meanings. So, words can be arbitrary. If the same word means very different things to different people, then it is ripe for misunderstanding. And it becomes very difficult to have a conversation about it. If my idea of straight means that you are only ever interested in someone of the opposite sex, then I’ll never understand the straight man who enjoys sex with other men. And my whole conception breaks down when I am confronted with people whose sex is not as clearly defined. If someone is allowed to be neither male nor female, or both male and female, then my idea of the opposite sex breaks down completely. Never mind what it means to be straight, then. Back to @thefeministvibe, they sum up modern feminism in all its inclusive glory: We should change the name feminism. Idk, I think it should be called something different like.. uhm.. Common sense?@thefeministvibe I’m not sure how much this actually helps people understand, but there’s a point that feminism only holds meaning when it is opposed to something. When the opposition disappears, that is, when the assumptions that feminism works to break down are broken down, the demands and the position of feminism become obvious. They become common sense. Arbitrary is Not Meaningless Here’s the thing, though. Just because we can’t pin down the definition of a term does not mean that it is meaningless or that we shouldn’t use it. For a long time, I have been telling people that I don’t like labels. Particularly when people ask me if I’m gay, I have a hard time answering. It’s not that I don’t know who I am, but I struggle to find words to communicate it. Do I prefer the company of other men, when it comes to sexual intimacy? Yes, absolutely, we can get that out of the way. But if I were to answer the question with a yes or a no, I fear that people would misunderstand. “Yes, I’m gay,” could mean that I have a fetish for Barbara Streisand or that you might catch me binge-watching the last season of Ru Paul’s Drag Race on a lazy weekend. Frequently, if a guy asks me if I’m gay and I say yes, he might actually hear, “I want to have sex with you,” which is, in many cases, not at all what I would intend to say. A quick aside: this is a frequent argument when it comes to women and feminism too. A woman wearing a beautiful outfit that highlights her femininity and her sexual appeal might frequently be seen by men as implicitly saying “I want to have sex with you.” Perhaps it’s true, but more likely the woman is saying, “I am comfortable with my body,” or, “I like the way I look.” See how easy it is to misunderstand? And that is why I don’t like labels. There is all that baggage that comes with a term like gay. Or feminism. Some people were so loathe to call themselves feminists that they decided to create a new word. Alice Walker Courtesy of Virginia DeBolt Alice Walker, in 1979, following in the path started by Sojourner Truth well over a hundred years earlier, started talking about womanism to distinguish the struggle of black women from women in general. Or, perhaps (since womanism is at least as hard to define as feminism) maybe this term is saying that the idea of being a woman, or being feminine, is inseparably intertwined with the culture from which it arises. With different kinds of feminism, and terms that have arbitrary meanings, it is easy to think that they lose all meaning. But I want to argue that they still have deep meaning even if that meaning is not clear and concrete, and certainly not the same in all contexts. Even though I don’t like labels, I have found myself OK with the term queer. All terms have baggage, and queer used to be a derogatory term, and just like any term its meaning has changed over time. But maybe I resonate with the baggage, or maybe the current definition hits a little closer to home for me. I’m not really sure. I think it comes down to the idea that, in my mind, queer evokes difference, deviance maybe. What I mean to say is that to be queer is to not fit a mold. To be queer is to exist outside the box. It is to resist labeling. People hold onto labels, even though they can be misunderstood and they may not be the perfect word, for many reasons. For one, words are all we have. Maybe sometime in the future we will develop a perfect language that allows us to communicate things perfectly, without ambiguity or confused meanings. Until then we are stuck with what we have. Then again, maybe not. Maybe these words are the best we will ever have. We can and must continue to refine their meanings, to explain them, but we may always struggle to define and talk about complicated topics. Words like gay and straight and feminism and queer will always have different meanings to different people, and we’ll always have to be careful how we use them. Especially when we are talking about people other than ourself, because we can never really know the experience of someone else. We can only invite them to speak it in their own words, and listen to them carefully and with an open mind. Sarah Ahmed Courtesy of Sarah Ahmed Sarah Ahmed is another theorist who struggled with the mainstream definition of feminism. Like Sojourner Truth and Alice Walker, she realized that the assumptions white middle class feminists sometimes have about the world left some people out. Ahmed has a different experience of race and culture, though, because her heritage includes having family from Pakistan. For her part, Ahmed understood the difficulty of finding the right words. But instead of inventing a new word, she suggested that it might be truly impossible to talk about revolutionary topics while stuck inside the system being opposed. Patriarchal reasoning goes all the way down, to the letter, to the bone.Sarah Ahmed If feminism opposes the patriarchy, then as long as we are operating within the patriarchy, it might be impossible to truly understand what feminism means. “Patriarchal reasoning goes all the way down, to the letter, to the bone,” Ahmed says. And, consequently, “what you aim to bring to an end some do not recognize as existing.” When all we know is patriarchy, it is hard to envision an alternative. It is hard to even see patriarchy as a thing. It’s like the air around us. We breathe, and we know its there in theory, but, having never experienced a space without air, it is hard to really understand what the context does to our understanding of it. Communicating is Hard Work It is difficult to understand feminism when everything we know is based on assumptions that feminism claims are false. This is the same difficulty that people have understanding Black Lives Matter, if they don’t see that systemic racism is a thing. And for me, trying to communicate to others my sexuality that does not fit into a tidy little box, it is difficult to find words that don’t carry baggage that would interfere with the meaning I intend. So what do you do when someone does not see the inequality that you are asking them to change? What do you do when someone does not understand where you are coming from, because they have no way of seeing it from their viewpoint? The words we use are insufficient and problematic. But we must still use them. We must have words, otherwise we have no way of communicating at all. But we must use our words carefully, and we must define them in case someone might have a different definition. Sarah Ahmed, for her part, works hard to “find ways not to reproduce [the patriarchy’s] grammar.” She considers her words carefully enough that she does not contribute to the problem she is attempting to expose. I often try to do the same thing, for example not using he or she in a way that would exclude people who are neither. But, as she pointed out, patriarchy goes all the way down. It is impossible to escape, at least not all at once. But we have to try. We can’t give up, we have to find ways to work within the system to dismantle the system, because that’s where we are. When talking about sex, if we can find ways to do so without contributing to the shame, silence, and oppression that is so common to the conversation, that will at least allow us to start thinking about how to get rid of those barriers that still remain. I know it’s hard. I am in the process of defining my career around sex communication, and yet it is still challenging for me to do it. Even I am not unaffected by the shame, by the pressure to stay silent, that I talk about. But I believe that any pressure in the right direction will ultimately contribute to our collective motion to start rooting out those things that stand in our way. I say that sex is a dirty word, a taboo, something that just isn’t talked about. If we want to change that, we can start by speaking as if sex is natural and healthy, it is everywhere, and we don’t shy away from it when it is uncomfortable. Speaking about a thing won’t change it overnight, but it will create the conditions in which change is possible. So, yeah. Keep talking. And thanks for listening.

The theme for this episode is that it’s OK to be uncomfortable talking about sex. Scratch that. It’s good to be uncomfortable talking about sex. Moving outside our comfort zones is how we learn and grow. Sergio G. Barrera is a doctoral candidate in American Culture and Latina/o Studies at The University of Michigan.Instagram: @gael_sin_barrera (Transcript) Hi, I’m Kenneth, and this is the Unspeakable Vice Podcast, where we talk about talking about sex.  Sex is a dirty word, a taboo, something that just isn’t talked about.  We’re about to dig into why. Recently I had the privilege and the pleasure of speaking with Sergio Barrera, a graduate student in American Culture at The University of Michigan. Sergio Barrera So my name Sergio Barrera. I am doctoral candidate in the Department of American Culture where I do a lot of work with like masculinity studies and fraternity studies. But I also do it through a lens of an anthropological, ethnographic approach.Sergio Sergio is interested in masculinities, or what it means to be a man. And he is a man, so of course he has a personal experience with that, but beyond that he is informed by his involvement as a leader in a fraternity and by his family background. How do I write myself in the narrative and find value in my own experience as a man who migrated from the southern border to the northern border, right?So I’m from Texas, the Texas and Mexico Borderlands. I did my undergrad here, and my Masters here, in interdisciplinary studies. I focused in Latino Studies a lot with like gender, sexuality. So my work has been revolving around these topics of culture, identity, race, ethnicity, privilege, and all these other things.Sergio So far, when I’ve talked about sex, sexuality, gender, and so on, I’ve been kind of vague. I sort of lump all these ideas together. I think it makes sense to do so, because they are all related in a way, particularly in how we have a hard time talking about them openly and honestly because of our strongly-held beliefs, our prejudices, and our fears. But if we are going to study these topics from a scientific, academic perspective, we should be clear on what we mean. How do you define sex? I think full disclosure is the more I learn about these things, the more I complicate them. So whatever definition I tell you about right now is likely going to be shaped by our cultural and social norms, as they evolve.But the way in which I see sex in the way in which I studied it, is sex is also a spectrum. A lot of people believe that sex is biological so it goes more on the genetics. Right. So the XY chromosome, you know, determines whether you’re a female or a male. But there’s also been research that shows that there’s folks who are intersex. And sometimes they don’t fall in the binary of what is female, male, right. And you had this for over, I mean, many centuries. It’s been known that there’s folks that are intersex.So when I refer to sex, I mean, I use it for a sort of binary approach because I work with male-identifying men, you know, or men-identifying males in that sense. Right, so I don’t work with trans folks. I don’t work with, you know, maybe, women who might identify with masculinity. My entire research is on men and masculinity and males in that sense. Right, so the way in which I see it in my research is more this idea. But the way in which I understand sex is more complicated than when I actually write about, if that makes sense.Sergio How do you define gender? When it comes to gender, I think of what is performed. Right. So I think mainly on Judith Butler as a feminist …Sergio Judith Butler is an influential theorist in the areas of feminism, gender, and queer theory. Perhaps most importantly, she is credited with the development of the idea of gender performativity. In brief, this is the idea that gender is a performance that each of us contribute to. But more than that, gender—male and female and everything else—does not exist outside of the ways in which it is performed. So, she is not saying that individuals choose to perform male or female, but that the ways in which individuals perform creates our understanding of what male or female is. … and thinking about how she said that gender is a construction. Right. So we are a product of our social environment of our economic mobility, or lack of, right. So all of these things really have to play in the way in which we perceive what it means to be a man or what it means to be a woman, but also how we enact those and I believe that the more mobility, you have, the more freedom you have to move between the parameters of gender. But then other people you don’t just choose not to. And that’s also fine. Because again, gender is perceived from the moment we step out of the door. Right, so how are we walking? How are we dressing? And it’s all really a performance.Sergio How do you define sexuality? When I think of sexuality. There are various components. Because my understanding of sexuality is again very broad. I don’t really focus on the aspect of sexuality. A lotBecause my thing is sexuality could influence how we perform gender, but it is not in correlation to it, right. So, for example, when I moved to Michigan, I was told that I was straight passing. And as a queer male, you know, a queer man, I’m like, Well, how does one perform straightness or how does one perform gayness? To me it didn’t fit to the idea that I needed to ascribe to maybe a more feminine aesthetic, or a more feminine demeanor, or a more feminine sounding. You know, they’re they’re all these catalogs I just did not feel trapped in because—later on I understood. I mean, the socialization. Obviously, I come from Texas and Mexican family. So my conservative nature did not allow me to maybe explore and or dabble in femininity as much as other folks, but I was being outcast it within the young queer community. So when I think of sexuality. I think of the component of who you choose to engage romantically with, and also who you might engage sexually with.And obviously, I mean I don’t question things. I believe that people are going to share whatever it is that they want to share but I do believe that some men are like, well, I am a straight male who enjoys in the pleasure with other men, you know, and I don’t think that I would call them bisexual or question me or any of these things. Because a lot of these terms are arbitrary and we get to impose those on ourselves, right. So because I grew up in a certain atmosphere, and then I left and then people were telling me, “no you’re this, you’re this,” it just didn’t sit well with me that if I have more knowledge about a term that I would put people in boxes that maybe they don’t want to associate themselves with.Sergio Definitions are arbitrary This is really interesting. Even academics, who spend careers trying to define words, sometimes say that those definitions can be arbitrary. If we can’t even agree on what it means to be gay, for example, how can we possibly talk about it? I think this kind of issue is what makes it clear that we need to talk more about these things. We need to develop a common language—a common understanding—of terms we use to talk about sex, gender, sexuality, sexual identity, and sexual orientation so that we can actually have honest conversations. If a man says he is not gay, and that he likes to have sex with men, we all need to know why and how that is not a contradiction if we are ever to get to a point of understanding. Hearing Sergio speak about his experience of rejection by the queer community when he came to Ann Arbor makes me think about my own experience. Having grown up in and around Ann Arbor, I can’t say I was rejected by the queer community because I didn’t even know it existed. I think I must have been straight-passing to the point that I didn’t recognize an alternative, and maybe I was never invited into those alternative queer communities because I was so straight-passing that nobody even thought to invite me in. So, I didn’t even know what my options were, I didn’t know that there might be communities where I would feel more at home, but I just felt like I was different, that I didn’t fit in. Yeah, I mean, I think as somebody who who studies gender and sexuality, right, like—and I think study more of like I do a lot of self reflection and I try to learn from other people and see, well, how do I fit and don’t fit and maybe in the sites that I don’t fit find comfort in not fitting, Right. Like, that’s my biggest thing because a lot of the time. I think we grow up wanting to feel identified, but It might be 30 years or 40 years before we find an identification point.So it’s very important to just be okay with being uncomfortable and being like, “Hey, well I don’t fit in here and that’s fine because it’s not for somebody else to get me. It’s for me to get me.” Right, and I think that once you develop an agenda of self-preservation, self-awareness, and self-care, like you’re on the best path to becoming the best human being possible. That’s what I believe.When it comes to to the idea of communicating. I feel it’s very difficult because I have read so many books and sense through so many lectures. So my way of thinking could sometimes be very elevated when it comes to speaking to folks in my community that maybe have never taken a gender studies class or maybe have never even stepped foot in an institution like in a university. And I tell you this because in my home, it’s always the struggle between me being, you know, a possible doctor in, you know, who specializes in gender, versus my mom and my dad who have a more conservative background, who are Catholic by, you know, by practice, by choice, by faith by raising. They’re sort of acting upon each other because their level of education versus my education are both very different ways in which we’re processing this.Right, so what I have had to do is, how can I make the knowledge that I have gained at the university accessible for others that might not understand this language fully? And I think that that’s the biggest challenge that academic space because a lot of us in the academy are in this bubble that all this language is language that everybody gets. And a lot of these phrases that are jam packed are thrown, right, for example.Race is one of those. Like, race is thrown a lot, but do we really understand the concept of race and the history of race? A lot of folks do not. They understand a more of a pop cultural reference which has a lot of ties to it. But the complexities of these phenomenons are very large and to me, and even myself. I don’t consider myself an expert in gender or sexuality, because there’s always something that I haven’t learned or haven’t read right.Um, but what I try to do is, how can I make theory practical. And I think that this is something that I learned when I was a graduate student. I took a class in which we were talking about decolonizing and decolonizing and this word kept coming up. And I’m like, “What the hell is decolonizing, right?” I didn’t, but, I didn’t understand it because I didn’t understand, what was the colonization that we needed to decolonize from? So I needed to do a backwards approach. I was learning all of these things of what we should undo, but never understood what needed to be undone.Sergio Get Comfortable Being Uncomforable I love this idea that Sergio brings up about being uncomfortable. He says it’s OK to not fit in, it’s OK to be uncomfortable. It might not be fun or pleasant, but it’s OK. Beyond that even, there are benefits to being uncomfortable. Pushing outside our comfort zone is how we learn and grow. It was just a coincidence that as I was talking to Sergio I was wearing this shirt, with the phrase “Get Comfortable Being Uncomfortable.” The guy who sold me this shirt is an athlete. So from that perspective, getting uncomfortable, pushing out of your comfort zone, means that you push yourself physically. When you make your muscles uncomfortable, that’s when you start building a new level of strength, or flexibility, or control that lets you do new things. It’s how you grow. But it has another meaning too. This same athlete is also a survivor of childhood sexual abuse. And since then, he’s gotten really good at getting comfortable being uncomfortable on a psychological level. He’s speaking about his pain and the challenges they’ve created for him. He’s speaking out against the forces that might keep victims from speaking out on their own behalf. He’s trying to make it easier to talk about sex. So, when I was younger, I don’t think I was very comfortable being uncomfortable. I was uncomfortable all the time, but I thought that meant there was something wrong that I needed to fix. And I did some pretty stupid and harmful things trying to fix it. Now I’m a lot more comfortable. Those same discomforts are still there, more or less, but I’ve found enough confidence in myself that I’m OK when I’m in a socially uncomfortable situation. And I’m using those situations as opportunities to grow. I asked Sergio about barriers to honest communication. I realize that what we were talking about was not just being honest with others, but also with ourselves. His response is as relevant to me personally as it is to these ideas in general. What keeps us from communicating honestly about sex? The first thing is that a lot of folks are are scared of challenging what has been passed down to them. We believe that this sort of intergenerational understanding of life should be unquestioned or should be—not—like, we shouldn’t think critically about this because I might be shunned away from the community or it might be outcast. Or I might be this right and and we sort of perpetuate those patterns by not challenging the patterns or even just questioning why, like, why do I do this? Why do I think that? Why do you think like this? Right? And I think that once you get the confidence to ask why andThen things become a little bit more clear.Sergio I’m a very anxious person. I have OCD, I have high levels of anxiety. I am an over-critical thinker. So like, again, I use that to my advantage.I’m like, “Okay, how has fear permeated culture and society to create a barrier for us to think freely or to speak freely or to question freely?” And I am not rooted or—I don’t let fear rule my life, especially when I’m trying to learn because what happens is if you let fear rule you from that you’re always going to be held back.And again, another thing that I learned in grad school is if you’re don’t feel if you don’t feel uncomfortable about something, then you’re not learning something new. Right, and I think that that is true about everything. If you’re doing something that is so normal to you, then you’re not expanding the site of anything.Um, so that is a thing. As a male well we grow up saying “no, don’t say this.” “No you can’t express your feelings.” “No, you are more of the outside than inside.” “No more, you know.” So there’s all these factors that come into play when men have to just try to have a conversation. Because we feel the need to perform toughness, to perform stability, to perform emotional maturity, even if a lot of us are carrying cultural baggage or emotional baggage of when we were children.And there’s this book that I just ordered that’s called the Peter Pan syndrome and …Sergio The book he’s talking about is The Peter Pan Syndrome: Men Who Have Never Grown Up, by Dr. Dan Kiley. (As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.) But basically the claim of the book—and I haven’t read it but—the claim of the book is how there’s this idea that men mature slower than women.But we don’t understand the cultural components. Why? Because women, since they’re young girls, they’re always asked about how they are, or if something hurts they express it, and it’s always tender and care. So they start progressing their emotional maturity at a much younger age to where they can identify things that hurt them, things that cause them pain, things that make them happy, that make him cry—versus boys.Sergio We’re almost shoved to the playground and are told to be physical and are told to be aggressive, and there’s really no sense of communication or expression when it comes to boys versus girls. So a lot of the emotional maturity has to do with how we’re treated as children, right, and and sometimes it’s like, “Well, I’m just trying to, you know, prepare my son for the world.” But the thing is you prepare him by making him a good being, not by, you know, ascribing him to “this is what a man should be like.” Like think, okay, this is not how a man or woman should behave. But how should just a human being behave? Right, and I think that when you start thinking about these things, then you start thinking more on the feminine side in regards to care and love and nurture and all these other things that we wish we could incorporate but that we so shy away from because we feel like that’s the unreachable. That’s a woman’s thing that’s not a man’s thing.Right. So for me, I’ve navigated a lot of these barriers. Again, psychologically, emotionally, culturally, socially, and even things that I cannot control, such as my body and my gender or my sex. So I hope that helps.Sergio Sex is related to everything Fascinating, isn’t it? We are talking about sex, masculinity, and gender. But look at all the other areas that come up! Religion, race, culture. Psychology. Emotions. How we raise our children. To me, anyway, what is amazing is how we’ve taken something as foundational to the human condition as sex, and we’ve tried to somehow excise it from all these other conversations where it’s actually directly related. In polite society, there’s a lot we can talk about, but we manage to keep dodging around this one part of all those topics. And we pretend that we don’t need sex, that we can ignore it, that it’s just a small, inconsequential part of our social experience. But it’s not. Sex is with us from the moment we are born, from the first steps we take and the first outfit we wear. It is with us in our homes, in our churches, in every relationship we have. Maybe we should stop ignoring it. What questions should we men be asking ourselves? I think that a question that we should be asking is, the first thing is, “why do I behave the way that I do?” When you tackle the why—And I think that rather than questioning the out, question the in.Why do I think about this like this? Why do I behave like this? Why do I respond like this? Why am I emotionally attracted to this and not this. Why do I put an emphasis on this and not just start questioning your own beliefs and your own system because you’re going to learn in this questioning that it is learned behavior. “I find this acceptable because at one point, my father expressed that it was.” “I find this tolerable because at one time, my group of friends said that it was.” I found it all starts relating to these pinpoints as to who were the ones that influenced and shaped our worldviews, and sometimes that is destructive behavior.And sometimes that’s great behavior, but it always stems from something. Who are our model heroes? Right. If you ask a child who is your hero, and he tells you this very hyper masculine figure, maybe he’s a cartoon. Maybe he is, you know, a firefighter, then you’re going to already start knowing: This is his concept of gender, his concept of performativity, of masculinity.If you find a boy who might say my superhero because I’m saying that like superhero or role model without a gender might be a woman. Then maybe they’re they’re attracted to the nurturing side, to the loving side, right. And that is—if hopefully nobody shames them—that is a life that they will be leading. Right.Sergio So I think that a lot of it comes from questioning our own actions. And then if we find that they’re problematic, question, how can we address these. Right, because it does, it doesn’t stop just with reflecting, but then reflecting on how I can enact and change or how I can be and how I can, you know, how I can have the will to change, right, which is really important because it is very, very common for us to follow our father’s footsteps because that is the right thing to do. Because that is the only fatherhood or male role models that we know to be. But how do we learn from other ones. And how do we make we made me bridge them and create a new amalgamation of what your sense of manhood.Um, I write a lot about fathering especially on the border, because my dad was deported a couple of years ago, and before that he lived in Mexico. So my idea of masculinity was pretty much non existent because I was raised predominantly by my mother. So my thing with the way in which I approach work is very much as a motherly male figure, Right. Like, I tend to be very warming and I tend to be understanding and I tend to be listen and I tend to care and I tend to hug and embrace in non sexual ways.Right, because also I think that there’s a misconception that anything that is physical between two men has to be sexual. And for me, it is more, you know, I am just lending you a hand. I am just here to show you my support not only in words, but through action. through touch. Because we need that embrace, even if it’s just putting a hand on somebody’s back and saying, “Man, I got you.” That means more than sending a text or just saying it for 10 feet apart, right.There is a degree of intimacy that people associate that is not sexual. But that they know is stemming from a place of care. And I think that I think that my growing up was both a blessing and the curse, right, because I for most of my childhood I resented my father for being absent. And sort of discredited his efforts in Mexico, right, and praised my mom for so many things.And then now as I approached 30 years of age, I am thinking wishing my dad had a different perception of care, because for my dad it was about providing. It was about having the opportunities for me, it was about giving me the best life I could possibly live. without maybe telling me that he loved me, because for him those actions of care and promote providing were acts of love. Right, versus I wanted to hear him vocally say it.So now I had to go back with my research, right, and my self reflections. And things were, were moments in which my dad told me he loved me without telling me you love me. Right, if that makes sense. So I’ve had to question a lot of my upbringing and find peace in the fact that maybe what I expect people to be like, That’s not what they’re going to be because they also hold their traumas and their histories.Sergio Let’s take a few minutes to listen to Sergio describe his own experience wrestling with gender and sexual identity. When I began my PhD program, I was the only person that was not from the Midwest. I was the only person that was coming from Texas, most people were from Michigan, from Illinois, I believe there was one from Florida. But the way in which gender is constructed and policed on the border is very different. And the only way that I realized that is when I went to live to Michigan and Ann Arbor in particularly that is very liberal—in some sort of senses and others not so much—but it is much more progressive than the city that I’m currently in.When I left over there, and I started thinking about our study experiencing all these things, I said, Hold up, this is, this is not our reality back home. Like, this is not the way of living that I’m used to back home. So I started questioning why is being a man so different in Ann Arbor than it is being in the border?And then when I came back home there were this idea—and full disclosure, when I left to Michigan in 2016 I was not out. I came out Seven months after moving to Michigan, because of other things that were related to mental health, but—When I left, I felt like when I was in Michigan. I was one person and then I came to Texas for vacation, and I was like back to closeted me. So it just became too much having to navigate between one persona and a persona that I—the persona that I wanted to become was in Ann Arbor, and the persona that people knew me to be was whenever I came to Texas. Right. Um, there was this constant back and forth. That was very emotionally taxing.But when I first stepped into some classrooms, folks were like “you know you you don’t sound gay.” And that was one of the things right. Um, because my voice, maybe is not as elevated or is high pitched as other folks. So, the way in which I was sound was being questioned. That’s one thing.Another thing was the way in which I dress. So I am Mexican and Texan through it through. Like I wear boots. I wear cowboy hats. I wear cowboy belt. I wear shirts that are cowboy in nature like trhat is what I wear and I actually took a pair of boots to Michigan that I would wear sometimes. So it was that it was my behavior. It was how I sounded in.It was also that I was never carrying like a badge that said like LGBTQ pride or whatever. Um, so I was not an advocate of pride. Because I was not proud of myself. Right. I was still in the closet when I had left. So it was very difficult for me to, to think about, shit. Well, How am I supposed to be? Am I supposed to wear a pride flag everywhere I go? I’m am I supposed to start sounding More like a woman? Am I supposed to wear makeup? You know, am I supposed to change how I dress in order to prove my allegiance or and or just like my identity.Sergio In that way to me a lot because with the issue of straight passing also came white passing. Right, so I am a light-skinned Latino and I know that. And white passing is something that was thrown out left and right, but I’m like yo, I don’t think that I have received benefits of whiteness in the sense of, like, my name is very Mexican and my first language is Spanish And I grew up in Mexico in my father got deported. And there’s a lot of these things that do not ascribe to whiteness, right.So what I had to do is I was put in a situation in which I was getting cornered by saying “You cannot claim this because you look like this. You cannot claim that because you look like that.” And I became very shy to expressing myself because I felt like people were just attacking me and I did not know any other way of being.Right, because here it was never questioned my masculinity was never questioned. My sexuality was never questioned. My gender, or sorry, my race was never questioned. It’s homogenous, so it’s mostly Mexican, Mexican-American folks here. But we all know that we come in all different colors, shapes, and sizes. We all know that masculinity fluctuates within the border, but we have a common understanding of what it is that we all ascribe to. And maybe that is we all wear cowboy boots, right, which is just a stereotype but it is also a cultural phenomena.So really what I had to do is I had to listen to what these folks were saying, and I need to understand why it was that they were painting me like that. So I again for me. It comes a lot to I need to understand motive. Like, what is your, your intention and what are your motivations for cataloguing you like this. Well, a lot of these folks were women of color. A lot of these folks were more marginalized than I was, and had negative experiences with men. Therefore, they would feel that my presence of masculinity was an attack or was an oppressive state for them to be in. When in reality, I was like, I’m here to learn, you know, like, and if I say something stupid. I do apologize but I say it because I want to learn Or if I asked something stupid like say because I’m curious and learning. Um, and what I had to do is honestly not give two fucks about them.You know, because what I realized is that they were getting in my head so much that they were preventing me from being my true, authentic self. Because now I had to I had to re shift in order to prove that I was something that I already was. But in order for them to find me acceptable. I felt like I had to do that. And it was too much because I was not ready to embark on that journey. And also, I did not know how to embark on that journey.Sergio Being a man is not just this one thing.Sergio Barrera Um, what I ended up doing is I started feeling comfortable with who I was right, saying, well, I come from a conservative state. So, what do you expect? I come from the conservative household. So what do you expect? And gayness is not one thing, and Latinidad is not this one thing, and being a man is not just this one thing. And if that is your perception of what being a man, being masculine, being gay, or being Latino is, then that shows more about how you are as a person than how I am. And that shows more about how your reality reflects on to the my body, but that is not my reality.Right. So, what I really had to do is I had to equip myself with the knowledge of saying, “Your reality I respect but I will not allow you to displace your reality onto my body. Because you’re making my body uncomfortable in a way that I should not feel,” because it was not educational. It was in the mode to attack.Right, so I needed to understand what were the uncomfortable levels that I was okay with I’m uncomfortable if I’m uncomfortable in a learning situation. But if I’m uncomfortable in a attacking mode. I am going to bust out my claws and clawback right I’m in. I don’t care what people might say, because I’m going to stand up for myself. Right. So what I had to do is I had to think Okay, again, and this is where the introspective like where do I come from it. Why do I find this behavior acceptable? And why do I dress like this? And all these things all these questions about gender happened once I left my hometown.So I really needed to think about You know, what is the best way that I can. I’m not going to be offensive to them because I want to be respectful to them, but I do want them to also make them uncomfortable in a learning state. And a lot of it was having these difficult conversations about, hey, well, have you ever been to Texas? And they’d be like, “No.”And I said, “well, let me tell you a little bit about where I’m from. And where I’m from this is our way of life. And this is our lifestyle. And we have no access to gay clubs, and we have no access to gay spaces, and we have no access to x, y, and z.” And I brought them into my reality so that [what I had] to do is really engage in conversations that were educational about where I come from and why I am the person I am.Which required a lot of emotional labor, but I think that in the long run. It helped me because I understood that there was nothing wrong with who I was as a person and there was nothing with wrong with How I was in terms to the communities that I wanted to belong to and that I already belong to, um, and that was honestly the best thing I could do for my mental state.Sergio Wow. That’s wonderful and fascinating. If you are curious in hearing more from Sergio, I’m going to put our entire interview up on Patreon. So you can check it out there. He also has a really fun Instagram account, and there’s a link to that on the website. I hope you learned something from this interview. I’d love to hear your comments. Thanks for listening.

Since Washtenaw County, Michigan, is having an interesting primary election this August 4, including candidate for Washtenaw County Prosecutor, I am using this episode to focus on how prosecution of crimes affects how we understand and are able to communicate about sexuality. (Transcript) Hi, I’m Kenneth, and this is the Unspeakable Vice Podcast, where we talk about talking about sex.  Sex is a dirty word, a taboo, something that just isn’t talked about.  We’re about to dig into why. This is our first episode, which makes it pretty special, but it is special for another reason too. In Michigan, we have a Primary election is coming up in a couple weeks, on August 4, and it is especially interesting because here in Washtenaw County we have an open seat for the County Prosecutor.  So, I wanted to take an opportunity to talk a little about the intersection between how we talk about sex and prosecution. There is actually a big overlap here.  There are laws that make certain sexual behaviors illegal, of course. There are also some laws that even make talking about sex illegal, but we’ll save that discussion for another episode. A warning Before I get into it, it is probably a good idea to give you a heads-up about some of the content in this episode. While I hope it’s already obvious that we are going to bring up sex and sexuality, today’s topics get into a little more difficult territory. Some of the examples and situations here are going to involve sexual abuse, exploitation, and other criminal activity. So if this is something that may be difficult for you to hear, please take care of yourself as you need to. Now, I promise I won’t go into any details about these topics, but they will come up. Are prostitutes lawbreakers or trafficking victims? So let me start with some examples. After a quick Internet search, I found an article, “Are prostitutes lawbreakers or trafficking victims?” (Bridge, June 9, 2016). In this story, a woman was in court because she failed a drug test, but more broadly she was involved in prostitution. She was fully expecting to go to jail, because she knew she had committed multiple crimes. But something interesting happened, involving a lawyer from the Human Trafficking Clinic at the University of Michigan Law School. This lawyer decided that the prostitute should not be looked at as a criminal. Rather, she was coerced or forced into the criminal behavior by her drug dealer, who wanted to get paid for drugs given to her. This is kind of a progressive position, isn’t it? Even though she broke the law by involving herself in prostitution, this lawyer—and ultimately the court—thought that she was actually a victim. This Human Trafficking Clinic is actually pretty unique. At the time it was the only such clinic in Michigan, and this court was apparently the only court that was looking at prostitution cases this way. This is actually kind of concerning, because that means every other court is punishing prostitutes as criminals no matter what. But in addition to that, it’s also concerning that the Clinic seems to be looking for someone else to blame for this crime being committed. I want to quote from one of the lawyers involved in the case: The most powerful message we can send is who we choose to prosecute.Elizabeth Campbell, a clinical assistant professor at the University of Michigan Law School’s Human Trafficking Clinic, as quoted by Bridge, June 9, 2016 The question is not whether or not to prosecute. We are not asking how should we respond to this activity. We are not asking how severe is it, who was hurt and to what extent. In this particular case—and pretty much when it comes to sex in the courts period—those questions are glossed over, not even considered. There is an implicit decision that has already been made about how terrible and unacceptable prostitution is, regardless of the circumstances. So let me explain what I’m saying here. Prostitution is a crime in Michigan. We could ask whether or not it should be; that’s a valid question. But that’s not what I’m getting at here. I’m interested in what is being said about sexuality through the way the Clinic and the court respond to this case. What is being communicated in this case? There is an implicit understanding here that this sex act is horrible. And it may be; I don’t know the details. But we are not able to even ask the question. It’s already been decided. The assumption is that nobody in their right mind—no respectable citizen—would trade sex for money. So anyone who does must either be a terrible criminal or a victim of a terrible criminal. It is inconceivable that someone would reasonably choose to engage in this act, so either they are a callous criminal themselves, or they were forced into the act by someone else. There is another implication here. Someone must be prosecuted. Someone must be punished. If not the prostitute herself, than we must prosecute the drug dealer that was asking her to pay her bill. He must have forced her into it. Again, I don’t know the details of the situation this woman was in. Maybe she actually was forced. My point is simply that we are not invited to ask. Or maybe it doesn’t even matter. Because sex is that scary, sex is just something we can’t interrogate because it is too horrible to tolerate. Federal “Human Trafficking” in Michigan Let me go to another example. I thought I would compare what kinds of crimes are prosecuted under the label of “human trafficking.” This label already is kind of interesting, because people almost always equate it with sex. Human trafficking, in its broad definition, can refer to any situation where someone is taken and transported against their will. Usually it is associated with forced labor. But in practice, and what makes it so scary and treated so seriously, people almost universally assume that victims of human trafficking are being forced into sex. Sometimes it is prostitution, sometimes it is forced marriages, or it might be something else. Then, as a consequence, lawmakers and prosecutors assume that any sexual activity that is criminal must be “human trafficking.” This could even be the case above, where the person involved in prostitution wasn’t kidnapped per se, and she wasn’t taken anywhere (she wasn’t trafficked). She was simply engaged in sex that happened to be criminal. Anyway, I started to search for other recent examples of human trafficking in Michigan, and at first I couldn’t even find any. Actually I thought I was doing something wrong using the database I was searching. Finally I realized that there actually were none! The database covered all federal cases from 2000 to 2020, or so it claimed. Maybe the database is incomplete, but the most recent case in Michigan was from 2014. Six years ago. So, having found it, I looked at what was going on. According to what I found, it actually was a serious case with clearly alleged kidnapping of people and forcing them into prostitution. Serious stuff. But, obviously, this doesn’t happen very often if there were no cases since 2014, and only about one a year on average up until then. So I had to laugh a little when I read this quote from the attorney’s press release: We hope that cases like this one will raise awareness that sex traffickers are exploiting victims in hotels and truck stops in our communities. U.S. Attorney Barbara L. McQuade, in a 2014 press release about US v Smith, one of only 15 federal cases involving human trafficking in Michigan since 2000. There’s probably something to be questioned about the fact that the attorney is even making press releases about a case they’re working on, but never mind that. This attorney wants to “raise awareness” about a problem that I actually had a hard time finding when I was searching for it. But what is actually being communicated here? Is the attorney legitimately trying to “raise awareness?” Or are they using hyperbole and exaggeration to make the problem seem bigger, scarier, and more serious than it really is? Even though the press release is about one case, one person who committed a serious crime, the quotation claims that “sex traffickers,” plural, are exploiting victims in multiple places in our communities. It sounds to me like this press release is designed to scare people. It is not intended to be factual, certainly not neutral. But of course, what do you expect? We are talking about sex. So of course it’s scary. This is why talking about sex and sexuality is so hard. Even the people who are supposed to be experts are giving us information that is deliberately misleading in order to make sex seem even scarier than it already is. Now I’m not trying to diminish the seriousness of this crime that was committed over six years ago, but I would like to be able to have an open, honest conversation about it. But when we have prosecutors exaggerating the seriousness, using terms like “human trafficking” to refer to anything involving sex, it gets to be really hard to have a conversation at all. State “Human Trafficking” in Michigan So, the feds are not the only ones who prosecute crimes. I also looked at state prosecutions related to “human trafficking.” It turns out that Michigan only adopted laws referring specifically to human trafficking in 2011. So, since 2011, there were nine prosecutions that the state Attorney General office has been bragging about. I took a look at one of these at random, and the person being prosecuted was actually involved in prostitution herself. Accused of running a prostitution ring, she was alleged to have taken money from other people involved in prostitution. In fact, looking at all nine of the cases, at least four of them involved the crime of accepting money from a prostitute. And two of the cases were charged against people who were prostitutes themselves. Now, some of these cases were quite serious and even violent. But look at how they are all lumped together under the category of “human trafficking.” Even people who work as prostitutes themselves are considered guilty of human trafficking when they have financial ties to other people working as prostitutes. Questions to ask We could ask whether these specifics should be illegal or not. In particular, I wonder if it makes sense to make it a crime to accept money from a prostitute. This was what happened in the very first case we looked at, where someone worked as a prostitute to pay her drug dealer. And so the drug dealer was guilty of human trafficking. The very same logic could be applied to a landlord, or a phone company, or the city that collects property taxes. They are all accepting money, and if the person they accept it from is working as a prostitute, that means they all could be guilty of human trafficking. But beyond asking whether it should be illegal, let’s consider the consequences. Of course, not all these people are held criminally responsible as sex traffickers. Why not? Because prosecutors have complete discretion over whether or not to file criminal charges. Prosecutors get to pick and choose who they charge, and what crimes to charge them with. Think about how dangerous this is, think about how much power this gives the prosecutor. Especially when laws are so broad and so vague, almost anyone could be charged, but too often prosecutors pick certain classes of people to go after. In the very first case we looked at, it was the drug dealer: someone who was deemed undesirable for reasons that had nothing to do with sex. In other cases, as we know all too well these days, prosecutors target people who are black, or who are not wealthy enough, or who are queer. Consequently, these communities are disproportionately impacted by the criminal justice system, and they are disadvantaged even further. In effect, it basically becomes criminal to be black, or to be poor, or to be queer. In fact, in another state, there was a law against human trafficking that was actually applied exclusively to black trans women who worked as prostitutes. Let’s hope that’s not what the legislators had in mind when they strengthened the penalties against human trafficking. So you can see how important it is to have a prosecutor who stands for the right things. Who works not only to keep us safe from crime, but also to keep us safe from the criminal justice system. Restorative Justice One final thought. Another organization I work with, Friends of Restorative Justice, is working on a video series to explore an idea called restorative justice. These videos are designed to invite the question of how we should respond to crime. Some of the cases we talked about today are complicated, and it is not clear who was the victim and who was the perpetrator. There was harm, yes, but who should be blamed? Who should be punished? Restorative justice asks the questions differently. What harm was done? How can it be healed? If this idea interests you, I recommend you take a look at what they are doing. Conclusion So, this episode asked a lot of questions. What does the legal system say about sex? How do we respond to crimes that involve sex? How are important questions about sexual harm being silenced because of the way our criminal justice system operates? For those of you in Washtenaw County, I encourage you to think about these questions as you cast your ballot for County Prosecutor on August 4. And wherever you are, if there is a primary election in your area, be sure to vote! Thanks for listening.

The moment you have been waiting for is finally here! I don’t know if this counts as an actual episode, that’s why it is Episode 0, but at least it’s actual content! What follows is a quick introduction to what The Unspeakable Vice Podcast is all about. The Unspeakable Vice Podcast, Episode 0 (Transcript) Hi, I’m Kenneth, and this is the Unspeakable Vice Podcast, where we talk about talking about sex.  Sex is a dirty word, a taboo, something that just isn’t talked about.  We’re about to dig into why. Today’s episode is kind of a preview. I’m going to give you an overview of what we’re about, where the name came from, and what kinds of content you can look forward to. What do we mean when we say “sex”? Part of the problem of communicating about sex is the definitions. Sex can be a physical act, it can be a biological characteristic, and it can be an identity. In The Unspeakable Vice Podcast, we explore all of the above. We look at all the ways sex and sexuality inhabit and define our lives. Sex can be a physical act.Sex can be a biological characteristic.Sex can be an identity. Although these different meanings of the word are mostly unrelated–one’s sexual biology can be completely different than the sexual acts one engages in–we are interested in the overlap, in how these different aspects relate to each other. After all, it is not a coincidence that we lump them all under the same term. And they are all hard to talk about, probably for the same reasons. Introducing the host: I’m Kenneth Gourlay. Years ago, I started a career in Internet services, software, and project management. But my plans were derailed quickly when I was sent to prison for sex crimes. As I started working to understand the circumstances that led to my criminal conviction, I realized that much of my own difficulty around sex and sexuality had to do with shame and an inability to speak openly and honestly about my feelings and thoughts. I realized that this wasn’t just me, but it is a social and societal problem. Ultimately, I decided to refocus my life, start a new career in academics, and work toward understanding and improving the problem of social repression of sexuality in our society. Now I am a graduate student at Wayne State University studying the sociology of sex and gender, and I am the host of this podcast! The Unspeakable Vice Podcast seeks to answer these questions: Why is it so difficult to have an honest conversation about sex?Sex comes up all the time, sort of, but it often is a joke, an innuendo, a hushed rumor, or just weird.We’ll look at some of the things behind this: shame, embarrassment, prejudices, pressure to be normal or fit in.For example, a husband might not feel comfortable telling his wife that he felt an attraction to someone else.  Or someone who thinks he might be gay could have a hard time questioning his identity with his peers.We will look at where these feelings of shame, etc. came from in our culture.How do our relationships and well-being suffer when we have trouble communicating our sexual desires, beliefs, and identities?Think about that husband: with part of his thought-life hidden from his wife, he might become more and more withdrawn. His wife might wonder what he is hiding, and even suspect him of cheating.Or the person questioning his sexuality, how disadvantaged must he be that he is unable to work through any of his questions with anyone else?  He has to navigate his thoughts and his feelings by himself.How do people overcome the barriers to effective, open communication?We are going to look at people who have found ways to be successful in their communication despite the pressures to keep quiet, and what they are doing. Not every episode will have an interview, but I look forward to finding great people to talk to who have interesting stories, either from an academic study of sex communication or from personal experience learning how to communicate about sex. Where did the name come from? “The Unspeakable Vice of the Greeks” (academic speak coined a hundred or two years ago) refers to homosexuality, or maybe sodomy. From medieval law: “that detestable, unmentionable, and ignominious vice” probably referred to sodomy, but we can’t say for sure what they meant because they wouldn’t talk about it! Today we might say some sexual deviances are so awful that they are “unthinkable,” especially when it comes to crime. The pattern here is that deviant sex is so horrible and disgusting that it can’t even be spoken about.  (Sensitive ears must be protected from such terrible things.) While generally these references are to deviant sex, my position is that no sex is vanilla enough that we are allowed to talk about it openly.  Some things might be easier to discuss than others, like heterosexual marriage, but they are all still veiled in innuendo, euphamism, or simply unspoken. So this discussion is not just about sexual deviance. All of sex is hard to talk about. Hence, we are here to talk about the unspeakable.  And the primary reason the subject is unspeakable is that it is considered a vice.  A shortcoming, a character flaw. The Unspeakable Vice.