Sex Gets Real 232: Fantasies of harm, book lists, & political pleasure

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Listener questions on destroying a pussy, pleasure, and book lists.

Brett Kavanaugh was confirmed for the Supreme Court the day I recorded this, so we start there. Howard Zinn’s op-ed from 2005 speaks loudly to where we are today. And I read Monica Raye Simpson’s letter to SisterSong followers today because it is more eloquent than anything I could say.

“I have seen people talk about taking the country back, but as Black women we know this country and this government were never meant to serve or respect or protect us. We have to protect ourselves. And that is what we have always done and will continue to do.” Monica Raye Simpson

PainJane wants to destroy her pussy. She wants to make it unusable, to be used as a beer coozy, to be fisted, to be destroyed. She’s worried her partner will think it’s disgusting or weird, so how can she tell her partner about this fantasy and maybe even act it out? I enlisted a bunch of other sex educators to help me answer this terrific question.

Sunny Megatron has some fantastic advice and lots of questions that can help PainJane and all of us investigate the “why” of our fantasies and the feelings of them that make it easier to talk to partners about our fantasies. Such good stuff.

Anonymous wrote in because she’s super new to sex positivity. She’s looking for books and blogs that can help her learn more about sexuality, sex positivity, and unpacking her evangelical roots. So, I’m putting together an official book list. Join the Sex Gets Real newsletter here to get that recommended book list from me in a few weeks.

Also, avoid educators and “experts” who position themselves as the expert in your body, your story, or sell One True Way to be sexual, woke, or kinky.

Kat loves the show and wants more access to the resources I mention.

Discouraged is struggling to find a hookup. She’s a lesbian who wants to try kink, but every time she suggests meeting up with someone, they disappear. What gives? Is there a secret code word she doesn’t know about?

Celia wants to know how pleasure is political. Oh boy. HOLD ON. We’re going for a ride on my passionate soapbox. Everyone should start with reading Audre Lorde – any of her work around The Erotic is crucial. Afrosexology and Feminista Jones are also terrific resources.

Follow Dawn on Instagram.

About Host Dawn Serra:

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Episode Transcript

Dawn Serra: Now more than ever, your pleasure matters. In fact, pleasure, especially today, is so important for us to prioritize. Whether we see pleasure as joy as desire as hunger, satisfaction or as presence, there is so much power to be found in pleasure. And pleasure is inherently political. 

If you’re interested in reconnecting with your hunger, desire and joy, then you can pre-enroll for my new online pleasure course. No obligation required, but if you do sign up to get notified when the course goes live, you will get an extra bonus should you decide to join the course. To learn more, go to dawnserra.com/pleasurecourse. There’s only about a week left to pre-enroll and get on the notification list. Then I will have details on pricing and dates and we are going to make this a juicy, communal experience that we go through live together. So to learn more, go to dawnserra.com/pleasurecourse. Your pleasure matters.

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

Hey everyone! Welcome to this week’s episode. It’s going to be you and me and listener questions, plus some current events on this week’s episode. I have so many great questions that have been waiting and I have had so many incredible conversations and interviews lately that I thought it was time for us to do some of your questions. Of course, if you’ve got any questions for me that you want fielded on the air, please head to dawnserra.com and use the “Send a Note” option. You can do so anonymously. You can also shoot me a message on Facebook or Instagram. I check those much less frequently, but I do eventually get to them if that’s easier for you.

Dawn Serra: I also just want to note that if you support the show on Patreon at patreon.com/sgrpodcast. This week’s bonus is going to be me fielding a really, really funny listener question all about farting. It’s going to be, I think, super hysterical. I’m really looking forward to finally fielding this question. If you support at $3 a month and above, you get access to weekly bonus content, which means for 71 cents a week, you get access to bonus interviews and discussions, practices, meditations, extra bonus questions – all kinds of good stuff. Please do support the show. Every single dollar helps. And if you support at $5 a month and above, you get to help me field listener questions. Your wisdom and your thoughts on the questions that come in might end up on the air. So if you want to put your sex educator hat on and participate that way, you can do that. 

So here’s where I want to start. There is a listener question that came in recently that I’m completely in love with about why pleasure is political. I will get to that later in this episode. But I want to start, I am recording this on the day that Brett Kavanaugh was confirmed to be a Supreme Court Justice. The past couple of weeks… I mean, let’s be honest, since the inception of this country – the United States – but especially the past couple of years, have been really intense for a lot of us. 

Dawn Serra: But I think that that’s an important thing. Because so many of the things that have been invisible for so long are becoming revealed, especially those of us who are much more privileged – white folks, cis folks, people who are able-bodied, people who are men, people who are thin, name all the things, people who are financially a lot more comfortable – are starting to see the toxicity that is the United States for people who exist at the margins. It’s endlessly exhausting for people of color and for disabled folks and for poor folks and for trans and queer folks and for survivors and especially the past couple of weeks. 

First, people who are survivors of sexual violence, it has been endlessly exhausting to not only witness others ripping open old wounds and bleeding profusely for the public to try and convince people that sexual violence is an epidemic and as real. But many people have buried themselves in ways that are endlessly painful and vulnerable in an attempt to try and make people in power see just how important this is. And those things were ignored. 

My hope is that this helps us to envision and imagine new ways forward rather than just letting the status quo happen again. But what I want to do is offer you are allowed to rest. You are allowed to unplug. You are allowed to take care of you. You are allowed to prioritize your pleasure and connecting with people you love. You don’t have to do all of this alone and you don’t have to carry this burden solely on your shoulders. We are collectively going to continue doing this work and making reproductive justice and sexual justice and so many other forms of justice and liberation something that we continue fighting for. This is a long game and this is a very small blip on a very, very, very long, long timeline. 

Dawn Serra: So I want to start by just reading a couple of things from people who are much more wise than I am, just to give us a little bit of food for thought as we sit here on this day that Brett Kavanaugh was confirmed. So back in 2005, Howard Zinn wrote an op-ed, saying, “Don’t Despair About the Supreme Court.” Now back in 2005, John Roberts was confirmed as the new Chief Justice of the Supreme Court with lots of Republican support. Howard Zinn wrote op-ed that I think is really timely for where we are today and offers us some words of wisdom.

So one of the things that Howard Zinn offers is that so often, the Constitution gets dragged out by Supreme Court justices as being something that they are endlessly indebted to and that they will serve with honesty to uphold the Constitution. And Zinn was talking about the enormous hypocrisy surrounding the veneration of the Constitution and the rule of law. Because the Constitution, like the Bible, is infinitely flexible and it’s used to serve the political needs of the moment.

He goes on to point out that when the country was an economic crisis and turmoil in the 30s and capitalism needed to be saved from the anger of the poor, hungry and unemployed, the Supreme Court was willing to stretch to infinity the constitutional right of Congress to regulate interstate commerce. When the Constitution gets in the way of war, it is ignored. The things that often get held up as being really important are actually only important to those with the most power and privilege. 

Dawn Serra: The most important part of this op-ed that I think speaks to where we are today is this. Howard Zinn says it would be naive to depend on the Supreme Court to defend the rights of poor people, women, people of color, dissenters of all kinds. Those rights only come alive when citizens organize, protest, demonstrate, strike, boycott, rebel and violate the law in order to uphold justice. 

So I want us to just hold that as we think about what’s coming next. Because with Brett Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court, the likelihood that they will roll back Roe v. Wade is very high. The likelihood that we will maintain access to an internet that allows us to view the kinds of porn that we want, to reach out and communicate with sex workers, to find sex toys and access to reproductive health care is in danger. So this is very much something that kinky people and non-monogamous people and queer people and all people who would listen to this podcast should very much care about because it will have a direct impact on all of us over the next couple of years. 

Dawn Serra: Monica Raye Simpson, who you know I adore because I just had her on the show and she is someone that I have long, long held in high esteem, wrote something beautiful that went out to SisterSong supporters this morning. I’m going to read you what she wrote because it’s eloquent and it really gives some perspective about this Brett Kavanaugh confirmation.

The other thing I just want to offer before I read this is often, we can feel overwhelmed and we can’t take action because the problems are too huge. They are too huge for any one person. No one person is ever going to change the world on their own. It is always with the help of others, with community and we can use that as a way for us to feel like we can contribute. If we are too tired or too sick to go and protest in the streets, if we have too many jobs we are working or too much anxiety to call senators, if there is some kind of barrier to us getting out and voting or contributing in other ways, what we can always do is lend support to organizations who do this on our behalf.

So giving money to organizations like SisterSong, volunteering time, spreading the word of the work that they do at a minimum is one way that we can help make sure that the work that needs to be done continues to get done, even when we, ourselves, individually aren’t able to contribute in the ways that we might want to. 

Dawn Serra: So here’s what Monica has to say: “In spite of the huge public outcry in the streets throughout this nation and in the halls of Congress, in spite of the thousands of survivors coming out to stand with Dr. Christine Blasey Ford to demand that lawmakers believe, listen to and respect the needs of survivors by refusing to nominate another sexual predator to the highest court in the land and in spite of the fact that Brett Kavanaugh’s record shows a reckless disregard for the health and rights of women, the Senate just voted to confirm his nomination.

I feel knocked down. Years ago, I watched as Anita Hill put her pain on display and was pushed aside. Last week, I sat transfixed and weeping watching Dr. Christine Blasey Ford sharing her story and making clear her fear that she would risk so much and have it be ignored. For weeks, survivors have laid bare some of the worst moments of their lives to try to influence with political power, who clearly have no regard to the pain that so many women have endured.

As a survivor, I know this moment feels like we don’t matter. But please do not give into this feeling. I hear you and see you and believe you and we at Sister Song will always fight for you. Today, do what you must do for yourselves. Cry and rage, spend time with loved ones, drink tea or be on your own. Do what it will take for you to be with me and be with us as we keep on fighting. We can not hang our heads and defeat. We must keep speaking out and organizing and rallying.

Dawn Serra: I have seen people talk about taking the country back. But, as black women, we know this country and this government were never meant to serve or respect or protect us. We have to protect ourselves. That is what we have always done and will continue to do. We will keep speaking truth to power and when they won’t listen, we will take that power back. We will get out and vote and we will help others to get to the polls on November 6. We will raise money and give time to candidates who believe in and are there for black women, our families and our communities. We will tear down systems of oppression and strive to dismantle white supremacy. We won’t just work within the systems, we will change them. We will tell our stories and live our truths. We will educate, agitate and organize. We will shut things down and build up ourselves and our communities. We will do what black women have always done. We will lead the way and we will demand – not ask – for our bodies and our lives to be respected and safe.”

Wooh! God, I– Chills everywhere when I read that. First and foremost, make sure you’re on SisterSongs newsletter so that you can get things like that from Monica when it feels like the end times. And you’ll hear more of this later in the episode. I just really want to highlight the piece that she says, “We have seen people talk about taking the country back. But, as black women, we know this country and this government were never meant to serve or respect or protect us.”

Dawn Serra: That is so incredibly important. So many people who have a tremendous amount of privilege are just starting to wake up to some of the bullshit that so many people have been living within for decades and for centuries and beyond. So this is about so much more than just the Supreme Court nomination. This is about revealing the systems that keep us separated from our bodies and our autonomy from our pleasure, from each other, from communities, from change.

That’s why on a show that’s all about sex and relationships and kink, we have to also make room for conversations about things like reproductive justice, white supremacy, disability rights, queer rights, anti-racism work, transphobia – all of it – because it’s all part of the same machine. 

Dawn Serra: It might feel like this isn’t something that impacts us at a very personal level. But when we lose access to things like porn and birth control pills and dungeons because they’ve been outlawed, when we lose access to affordable STI testing, when we lose ways to communicate with each other about our sexuality, about the types of relationships we want to have. So I want us to be able to get ahead of it and have these conversations better, both in our personal lives and out in the world, as we think about these massive systems and structures. They all work together.

We’re going to shift gears and go into listener questions. Wow! Do I have some doozies lined up? So where I’m going to start is actually one from PainJane and the subject line is “I want to ruin my pussy. Am I nuts?” So this question, I just loved so much. I actually reached out to colleagues, other sex educators, to have them weigh in with some thoughts and experiences and I got some fantastic input from all of them. So let me read you PainJane’s email, and then I’ll share with you all about these amazing responses that I got from colleagues and then I’ll wrap it up before we move into the next question. 

Dawn Serra: So the email says: “I’ve shared a bit with my partner, but I’m afraid to bring this up consistently because I’m scared he’ll think I’m nuts or honestly, nasty. I fantasize constantly about being fisted, used as a beer koozie or possibly, even a wine cooler. My favorite porn involves a man jacking himself off into his partner’s pussy fisting her with his cock in hand. I want to be ruined, absolutely useless to a penis, so that I have to be fucked in my other holes to be a good toy. Tell me this isn’t too far off the deep end? Perhaps you have some advice for sharing such a big scary fantasy. Thanks, Jane.” 

Thank you so much for writing in with something that feels scary and tender to share with others. There are some fantastic thoughts that got shared with me from other sex educators. So let’s start with them. 

Dawn Serra: The first is from Kelly Kukis, who said: “Pelvic floor therapist here. Entire baby humans can pass through vaginas and this does not render them ‘useless to a penis.’ It’s possible to safely fist and/or insert a large object with no injury and to go on to have penis and vagina sex another time. It’s also possible to unsafely fist and/or insert large objects and become injured and pave the way for prolapse, urinary and/or fecal incontinence and/or pelvic pain at rest. The pelvis and the pelvic floor have many more functions than a place to insert a penis. They’re pretty essential for postural support and bowel and bladder function. So how would one respond if someone said I want to ruin my hands so that they’re unable to jack off a penis?”

Some delicious food for thought just about overall pelvic floor health and really, I mean, the anatomy of the vagina. It’s a muscle, which means it can stretch to accommodate things, and then it comes back down and can– I mean, think about it. A single finger can feel so hot and so delicious after we’ve used all sizes of dildos. So the vagina is an amazing, amazing muscle. But we can also do things safely or unsafely. Then we have to think about the realities. Do we want to live out the fantasy or do we want to live out a version of the fantasy?

Dawn Serra: If we want to live out the fantasy, long-term health issues like prolapse, urinary or fecal incontinence, pelvic pain, even when you’re just sitting around at rest, postural support, bladder function, those things can all be impacted if we damage our pelvic floor. So just some very practical thoughts from Kelly. 

Then Katie Halter said: “Kelly offered a really nice analogy. Perhaps chastity devices or piercing and leasing or locking it up could be an alternative. Degradation, humiliation play could be an option, too. Psychological play can be super effective, which you’ll hear several other people building on.”

So a sex educator named Rive said: “Speaking from personal experience, I think this is absolutely something someone can work their way up to. I definitely would not recommend going from zero to beer koozie. However with lube, patience and breath work, this person can work themselves up to getting fisted. I agree that psychological play in tandem would be great and would warn them to pay attention to their body, that while pressure and intensity are normal, pain is not.”

Dawn Serra: Then, kind of building on that, Hillary Barry, who’s a sex coach, said: “Following on what others have said, I think utilizing fantasy in tandem with achievable acts like fisting and large safe objects, they can ask their partner to use dirty talk about how their pussy is ruined, useless to the partner’s cock, etc. in a way that engages the fantasy without endangering vital functions.”

Then Sunny Megatron, who we adore on this show. She has spoken at Explore More Summit three years in a row with her husband, Ken Melvoin-Berg. They have a podcast themselves called The American Sex Podcast. Sunny says this: “I love this question. My take. This isn’t too far off the deep end. It sounds like you’re mostly concerned that it’s too weird or extreme for anyone to understand. Often, the key to understanding it lies in the why. Often, we have no clue why we fantasize about certain things, much less be able to articulate the reason for our desire to a partner. I can’t tell you the why behind your particular fetish. That lies within your own life and personal experiences.

I can suggest possibilities that may help you tap into your why, enough to explain it though. Your why may be tied to humiliation, around being slutty, used, dirty, objectified. It may lie in disgust, turning the grossest and most undesirable parts of yourself into something that is still desired by others, even when it’s “ugly.” It may lie in showing devotion to a partner. You’re willing to literally destroy a part of yourself that is important to you for their pleasure. It may lie in your insecurities around what society tells us a woman should be – pretty, neat, small, virginal, tight, etc. and your subconscious resistance of that. 

Dawn Serra: Perhaps some of your fantasy’s origins spawned from specific instances in your life. You might be working through something embarrassing or traumatic from your past. Maybe it simply feels great when your vagina is full and your imagination is taking that feeling to the extreme because not every fantasy has profound psychological roots. Sometimes it just feels really damn good. It could be a combination of these things or something totally different that I didn’t even get close to touching on. 

My suggestions probably aren’t right, but they will hopefully get you thinking about your specific reasons for being turned on by this. The goal is to break down your desire to its lowest common denominator. In other words, zero in on the feeling or the emotion that gives you. Example, when I fantasize about this, it’s because I want to feel blank. Once you get a bit more comfortable with this fantasy yourself and the very natural and understandable motivations for it, it will be much easier to talk to a partner about. You may not ever understand fully why you fantasize about this, but even uncovering a little bit can help you feel confident enough to approach the conversation with others.”

Dawn Serra: Ah! There’s a reason we love Sunny. Then Cyndi Darnell, who’s a therapist, closed it out with: “Does this person actually want to do it or just talk about it when they say ‘sharing such a big scary fantasy?’ Could it just be words that’s part of the fun? So going back to your question, PainJane, there’s some really, really awesome things to think through and play with, and also, anybody else who’s struggling with sharing a fantasy with a partner. Sunny’s advice is fantastic.

Is this something that you want to do in real life? Or is this something that is just super hot and is a fantasy that you want to be able to play around with with a partner without actually enacting all parts of it? Maybe you do want to be fisted or become a beer koozie or wine cooler. But in real life, you don’t actually want to be destroyed or damage your pelvic floor. But maybe being able to fantasize about that with a partner would make sex super, super hot. So I think those are questions for you to sit with. Then kind of tapping into that why. It’s a lot easier to share fantasies that we have with people in our lives when we can understand what’s underneath it, because then it gives us a lot more opportunity for being creative. 

Dawn Serra: One of the reasons our partners can feel really scared, or even a little disgusted by our fantasies is because their shame gets triggered. What if they can’t do what you’re asking? What if they don’t know how to do what you’re asking? What if they don’t understand what it means when they do what you’re asking? In an attempt to not feel silly or inept, that kind of defensive response comes up. 

But when we can invite our partners in and start co-creating, we loosen the reins just a little bit about around the fantasy and how it can play out and bring them in to help create with us, then it can feel so much more collaborative and playful and open. Especially when you can say, “I want to feel these feelings” or “These sensations are super hot” or “This story really gets me off every single time.” So just doing a little bit of that reflection might get you a little bit more insight into what it is that you can share with your partner. 

Dawn Serra: Now, in the end, we can never control for how our partner is going to feel when we share something vulnerable. Whether it’s about our bodies or our fantasies, they’re going to have whatever response they’re going to have. Most of the time, it has nothing to do with us. It has to do with their own stories, their own experiences, their own failures and fears and shame. 

Knowing that, the best that we can do is to just try to be as kind with ourselves and with our partners and generous as we can be. Ask for support and make sure before you go into a big conversation that you make sure they’re ready for a big conversation. Are you giving them an opportunity to opt in because having a big conversation that feels really scary when your partner is really exhausted or tired or had a really emotional day, it’s probably setting you up for failure. But if you can let your partner know like, ‘I’ve been thinking about this fantasy that I feel really shy about sharing. So can we set aside a time in the next couple of days when we both feel like really present and rested to be able to have that conversation?’ Then collaborate on a time and a place. You don’t have to share all of it all at once. You can start with a portion of it. Then once the two of you get good at talking about that, build on it. 

Dawn Serra: So give yourself an opportunity to do some of that self-reflecting. Think about how much of this you really want to do in real life and how much of it can be accommodated with dirty talk and fantasy and psychological play. Then invite your partner into the story and give the two of you – or however many of you there are – an opportunity to create something really fun and yummy together. It might start with something really small. Maybe instead of actually being fisted, your partner talks about fisting you while using a dildo on you. And then you can kind of build on that as the two of you get more and more skilled around being in this fantasy space together.”

I hope that gives you lots to think about. There were so many incredible folks who helped me weigh in on this question. So I just want to thank all of them for their generosity and their wisdom. And Jane, I hope that gives you a place to at least get started, so that you can think about some things and maybe try out some different types of conversations with your partner. Ultimately, I hope that leads the two of you to something really, really yummy and hot and delicious that feels right up that “ruin my pussy” feeling that you are seeking. So thank you so much for listening to the show and writing in. Please do report back.

Dawn Serra: This next question came from someone that I’m not sure if they want me to share their name or not. So I’m just going to say Anonymous. It says: “Hey, Dawn! I’ve been listening to your podcast for a few weeks now and I am really new to sex positivity. Do you have a book list or a blog list for me to check out to learn more? I come from an evangelical background and I’m trying to deconstruct that. I began to see the ways that purity culture has diminished sex and made us afraid of it. 

A little bit about me. I’m a 30-year-old lesbian, Christian living in LA who is out and proud. But I still hold on to the whole ‘wait until you’re married’ theology. I’m not sure if I agree or understand the significance behind that anymore. Part of me thinks embracing a sex positive attitude is so much more than finding compatibility. I think there is something dehumanizing when we tell people to repress their sexuality until Mrs. Right comes along. 

Dawn Serra: I’m starting to see that healthy sexual relationships aren’t necessarily exclusive to marriage and marriage is not the only context for healthy sexual romantic relationships. I don’t know. I just have a lot to learn and I don’t know where to start. Anything you might recommend would be helpful. Thanks for the amazing work you do.”

To all of you tuning in, I am in the process of putting together an official recommended book list. There will also be some blogs on there for folks to check out. If you want to be one of the first people who gets the book list, make sure you’re on the Sex Gets Real newsletter. There’s going to be a link in the show notes and you can do that at dawnserra.com. You just put in your name and your email address. You get a really fun little freebie when you do that. But in a couple of weeks, I’m going to be sending out an email that includes my recommended book list. All about sex and kink and positivity and all of those things that we talked about on the show. Some of my very, very, very favorite books that I recommend the most to clients and here on the show. 

Dawn Serra: So if you want to receive that list, make sure you’re on the newsletter. It will eventually go up on the blog, but I’m going to send it to folks in the newsletter first. So if you want to grab that book list, especially before we get to the holidays, because there might be some great things that you can ask Santa for, then please be sure to join the newsletter. 

So to Anonymous who wrote into the show. I’m not sure you want me to share your name. I want to thank you so much for listening. I love that you’re asking yourself these questions. They’re huge questions. I also just want to offer, as you start doing all of this reading and reflecting and diving into the world of sex positivity, know that you’re allowed to change your mind. You might find that you’re moving towards an answer that feels really important for you now and you’re allowed to change your mind about that answer down the road. 

Dawn Serra: So the ways that you engage with your sexuality and with sex, the ways that you engage with partners and with other people in your life can be something now and it can be something different down the road. It can be something different even further down the road from that.

There’s a lot of prescriptivism inside of the sex positive community. So the one thing I want to offer is regardless of what books and blogs you’re reading, remember to continue coming back to yourself and checking in with you. What is my wisdom telling me about what feels right? About what I want? There are a lot of people who mean well, but then prescribe specific experiences to all human beings. I would just say be skeptical of anyone who says this is the one true way to do sex or to date or to have the orgasms or to be “woke.”

We are far too nuanced and far too interesting and far too diverse for those kinds of things to be true. I want us to learn how to cultivate self-trust and self-wisdom and self-inquiry. Go out into the world. Read what you can. Connect with people that you like. And always come back to yourself. 

Dawn Serra: So thank you so much for writing in and join the newsletter. I will get that book list to you in the next couple of weeks just because I want to give people a chance to get signed up before I send it out. So it will be coming out very, very soon. Probably just before the end of the month – October 2018.

In a similar vein, I got an email from Kat and the subject line said: “Resources.” So it says: “Hi Dawn! Listening to your show for the last couple of years has so often felt like breathing in that which is missing and needed for me in life. This year, that has been especially significant to me since my health changed and I went from working more than full time to being unemployed, having a variety of intense chronic pain and pretty much, for the first time in my life, experiencing being excluded from public spaces due to those spaces being structured in ways that do not readily meet my physical and psychological needs. When I felt smothered by the lies perpetuated by our mainstream society, listening to your voice and those of others have made me feel that my experience and perspective is validated. I feel cared for when I listened to your podcast and I feel that it’s easier to be caring towards myself afterward as well. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Dawn Serra: I also really appreciate the opportunity to learn about sizeism and fat phobia on your podcast. They are oppressions that have been silent from conversations about justice that I’ve been a part of. And partly, thanks to your podcast, I am now able to make it a central part of the work I offer in the world. 

I have a small request. There are so many resources that are mentioned on your show that I would like to seek out after listening, but I struggle to remember their names. It would help me if these resources were included in the show notes. It’s also helpful for my memory when a resource is mentioned a second or third time after having been described. That way my brain has the opportunity to categorize among other things that I’m already able to recall. Kat.” 

Dawn Serra: First off cat, thank you so much for all of that kindness and thoughtfulness and for just letting me know what it’s been like to be on the receiving end of the show that feels so, so wonderful to receive and I appreciate it so much. Thank you for listening and for writing in. I receive it so generously. 

As for your request, I do try to include resources. Most of them are linked on the website. If ever you hear something mentioned on the show and it’s not linked in the show notes, feel free to go to dawnserra.com for that episode. Almost all of the episodes have a very specific URL, which is sexgetsreal.com/EP for episode and then the episode number. So EP220, EP15, EP100. That’ll get you to that episode. I try to link to books and articles and things like that as often as I can. 

But I also want to mention, I’m in the process of having the website redesigned right now. Once the website gets redesigned, there is going to be a Resources section that people can go to for some of the books and some of the articles that are most mentioned on the show. I will just take that reminder and that request from you Kat to try and be a little bit more deliberate moving forward in making sure those resources are in the show notes as well. But please do go to dawnserra.com as there’s a lot of things that I link there that are not included in the show notes just because the show notes only can go so long. I really appreciate that request. I know many other people are interested in hearing the resources and finding them that I mentioned here. So I will be doing some compiling and also a little bit more thorough job with the notes. 

Dawn Serra: This episode is brought to you by shoedazzle.com. I am such a shoe lover. I have been for many years and I have always been on the lookout for super cute flats. So when ShoeDazzle reached out to me, I was super excited because it meant I got an opportunity to try being a ShoeDazzle VIP and I got some super cute shoes. So totally check Instagram soon because I’m going to post some of the flats that I got from them – super cute. 

So what is ShoeDazzle? Well, ShoeDazzle is the club for the shoe obsessed. ShoeDazzle is the club for the shoe obsessed. The best part is it’s not just shoes. It’s a one stop shop for all things trendy including clothes, accessories and handbags. Whether it’s boots, booty sweaters or jeans, ShoeDazzle has everything that you’re going to need for fall and winter. 

Looking through their shoes was so fun because one of the things that you get to do is take a style quiz. That helps to customize your shopping experience. So I was able to say I prefer flats and here’s my size and here’s the colors that I like. Then they showed me all of these shoes that were exactly what I was looking for. 

Dawn Serra: Plus, VIPs save 30% off most retail prices all day, every day. Plus, you get free shipping and returns. There’s access to tons of other exclusive sales and perks. Don’t forget to select VIP membership at checkout. It’s a super flexible membership so that each month you can choose to shop or skip. I cannot wait to show off these new flats that I got because it’s been a hot minute since I got myself some cute shoes. And guess what? If you go to shoedazzle.com/real now and sign up as a VIP, you’ll get 50% off your first order. That’s shoedazzle.com/real to get half off everything on the site. Do it today. The hottest styles sell out fast – shoedazzle.com/real.

Discouraged wrote in and it just touched my heart. It says: “Hey, Dawn! I love your show. I love that you’re honest and informative. You’re incredibly supportive and no holds barred approach to the show. You are an amazing person and I’m so glad you’re around to help educate people around sex and sexuality. With that said, I’m hoping you can give me some advice. 

Dawn Serra: I’ve recently become interested in exploring kink. I’m eager to experiment but I’m having trouble finding play partners, specifically, female as I’m a lesbian. It’s not finding the women that’s difficult – I’m on Tinder and other dating sites – but it’s the follow through. Every time I suggest meeting up, they just stopped replying. What am I doing wrong? Is there some kind of secret code word that I don’t know about? Is there some kind of hookup protocol? All I want to do is find someone to have fun, safe, consensual, casual sex with. Sincerely, Discouraged.” 

Oh, Discouraged. I feel that so much. First of all, thank you so much for listening to the show and for writing in. I love getting questions from all of you. And, yeah, the follow through on hookup sites can sometimes be really iffy. 

So I’ve got a couple of thoughts about this. Now, you specifically said you’re interested in exploring kink. So I wonder, have you gone to kink specific sites to try and find play partners? Have you used FetLife to look for local events and chatted up anybody that’s in interest groups for the types of things you’re interested in? Have you looked to see if there are any munches or dungeons or events happening near you, where you might be able to go and meet people in person? 

Dawn Serra: Being able to connect with people who are in the kink community is a lot easier when you go to kink events and kink specific sites. It might be a little more tough to connect with people online who aren’t specifically in the kink community, because lots of people like to say that they’re kinky, but as soon as the rubber hits the road and they realize, “Oh. You’re actually going to want to engage in some kinky behavior or some type of domination,” it can kind of scare people away. 

Kink has definitely become something that lots of people are talking about. Cosmo is writing about it. It’s in the magazines. There’s movies being made about it. But for people who actually know how to engage in kink in a safe way, that’s a much smaller subset. 

Dawn Serra: One of the things that’s so hard is when you’re using those hookup apps, it’s a numbers game. It can take lots and lots and lots of tries before you find someone that’s not only a great conversationalist and not a total jerk, but someone who actually is going to follow through because lots of people are on those dating apps, literally, as a form of entertainment. 

Lots of people are on Tinder and on Bumble and all the other apps are in relationships and they just use it as a way to feel flirty and to feel fun and to feel that excitement because maybe they haven’t felt that in their relationship for a while. Maybe they’re being super, super, super, super picky because for whatever reason. So again, it is a numbers game. 

Dawn Serra: I would also question – you didn’t share this in your email – but when you suggest meeting up, where are you suggesting meeting up? Are you suggesting meeting up at a neutral location that would be fun for everyone like coffee or drinks? Are you recommending a dungeon or asking them if they want to come over to your house? Kind of investigating what that looks like could also be really helpful. As far as I know, there’s no super secret code word or any kind of specific protocol. 

I think it’s just a matter of coming across as confident and kind and open, being really upfront about what it is that you’re looking for and knowing that the more that you lead with the truth, the fewer opportunities you have, but those fewer numbers are better matches. That’s something a lot of people don’t get about dating sites and hookup sites is you can just put out a generic call for fucking and get hundreds of requests back. But when you actually meet these people or connect with these people, many of them might not feel like a good fit. 

Dawn Serra: Whereas if you lead with, “I’m interested in doing these kinds of kink and here’s what I want and here’s where I’d love to meet up with and here’s the kind of body that I have,” with every single one of those things, you’re kind of whittling the options down. But you might not get hundreds of requests, you might only then get five or 10. But those people are much more likely. So are you casting a really wide net or casting a very specific net and then adjusting your expectations to that? 

I’m also wondering, are you in a great big city where there’s lots of other lesbians? Are you in a small town where being out is maybe, really uncomfortable for a lot of people, so even though they’re on there and open to lesbian encounters or saying that their lesbian? Are they maybe super closeted so meeting in person is really risky? 

Dawn Serra: There’s so many factors. But I love that you’re out there and you know what you want and your approaching people and suggesting that you meet up. Inevitably, you will eventually meet someone who doesn’t want to meet up. But it might be helpful to have a friend just review your profile and to review some of the conversations to give you an outside perspective on where maybe you’re being too aggressive or maybe the requests are coming too early. Maybe there’s something that you’re not picking up on. So if you’ve got a trusted friend or even a trusted therapist that you can share some of these conversations with and get their perspective, that also might be really helpful. Sometimes our friends are able to see things that we weren’t able to see and then we go, “Ah. Okay. That’s what’s missing” or “That’s where I went wrong.” 

So all I can offer to you Discouraged is you are not alone. Online dating and hooking up can be fun and ridiculous, but also endlessly frustrating. And, yeah, sometimes it just takes a lot of persistence and trying different approaches. Maybe asking them where they’d like to meet up instead of offering something yourself. So just do some experimenting. And if you can hook up with kink community near you – in-person munches, in-person events, play parties, dungeons, looking on FetLife to see what is going on. Even just interest groups that aren’t local to you, but they’re just online where you can start to engage with people in this way, could be a really, really, really fun, interesting way for you to connect with people who have similar interests and experience in those interests. 

Dawn Serra: If I had more information, I might be able to give you something a little bit more specific, but I hope that at least gives you just a little boost of confidence that sometimes it’s just a numbers game and it can take a little while. So good luck to you. I hope you do end up finding someone that you can have that fun, safe, consensual, casual sex with. In the meantime, I hope you’re doing some yummy, fantasizing and masturbating and taking care of your own needs. Thank you so much for listening to the show, Discouraged.

Okay. So we’re ending with a question that came in. I was so, so, so happy I received. Because I know I’ve talked about it a lot on the show in lots of different ways, but to be able to really, directly answer this question is really exciting to me. This is also one of those questions where whatever is about to come out of my mouth, a day or two down the road, I’m going to think of a thousand other things that I’d want to add on because this is just such a huge important question. So I’m going to do my best to answer your question without waxing poetic for 20 minutes. As I think of other things, I may add that on in future episodes, because it’s a crucial, crucial question.

Dawn Serra: It says: “Hi, there! I love your show and I’ve been gobbling up all of the delicious discussions available. I really appreciate the work that you’re doing. I had one question that I’ve found difficult to find answers to on my own. What exactly does it mean to say that pleasure is political? Any information or further reading you could offer me would be most appreciated. Thank you and be well.”

Oh God! You know that this question speaks directly to my heart. This is my bread and butter these days. I just want to say, first of all, thank you so much for writing in with this question, because I know a lot of people listening probably have this question as well. They either think they know the answer or they weren’t sure that it was okay to ask the question and I love that we get to go there. This question came from someone named Celia. So Celia, if you’re listening, this is your question.

Dawn Serra: So let’s talk about pleasure being political. I think Monica Raye Simpson’s email from SisterSong that I read earlier in the episode kind of hinted towards what it means to say pleasure as political. Feminista Jones, who is a fantastic educator and who has been on the show and spoken at the Explore More Summit, has talked about this, too – how radical black joy is. Of course, joy and pleasure are so tied, hand in hand. 

If you’re looking for people to really talk about why pleasure is political, I would start with Audre Lorde. If you have not yet read Audre Lorde, I cannot recommend that enough. “Sister Outsider” is a great place to start. But any of the essays that Audre has written about the erotic is a really, really important place to start because so many other people and thought leaders who talk about pleasure being political are building on top of what she wrote. Afrosexology also has written about this. So if you follow Afrosexology, again, they’ve been on the show, that might offer you some perspective. 

Dawn Serra: So here’s why pleasure can be so political. For anyone who is not cis, white, male, able-bodied, moderately well-off, the access and the resources that we have are intended for people who exist at that peak place of privilege. So as Monica said in her email, “As black women, we know this country and this government were never meant to serve, respect or protect us.”

When you exist in a body that you have not had autonomy over for a variety of reasons, to take back your pleasure is a radical political act. If your body has literally been sold, it has been treated as an object, if you were in some type of slavery, to experience pleasure in your body was direct defiance to the person who felt like they owned your literal existence. If you’re disabled and your body is seen as desexualized, as not deserving, as broken, to be in that body and to prioritize your pleasure is to say fuck you to those narratives. If you have experienced the pressures of culture and developed a relationship with something like anorexia or bulimia, both anorexia and bulimia are thieves of joy and pleasure and embodiment. To step into pleasure, is to say fuck you to anorexia and bulimia.

Dawn Serra: We’ve talked many times in this show about how diet culture is a tool of patriarchy, misogyny and sexism. The more time that women, specifically, and queer folks spend trying to shrink their bodies, to take up less space, to manipulate their bodies to fit into this ideal, the less time and energy we have to be political, to take a power, to use our voice, to take up space. It’s a means of control and subjugation.

Pleasure requires us to be present in the moment and in our body. When systems and culture and government tell us that our bodies are shameful, that they are dangerous, that they don’t belong to us, to prioritize and experience pleasure is definitely an act of resistance. 

Dawn Serra: There are so many layers to this, so much nuance. It’s such an important, important question. Whether we’re trans or we’re queer or we’re women or we’re disabled or we’re poor, we exist in a world that tries to keep us separated from each other and from respect, from dignity, from resources… Trauma also does that as well. We spend so much time just trying to get by, that to actually say the things that make me feel good matter. That it is not lazy and it is not greedy and it is not selfish to say, “I deserve to feel good in this body and in this skin and that you must respect me. That I deserve to be listened to and trusted.” All things that are inherent in our pleasure and our satisfaction.

That is radical. That is a big fuck you to systems that want us to stay completely separated from each other. God, there’s like a thousand things I want to say about this. But to be able to really say, “I can eat this thing, because it’s going to bring me pleasure and fuck you if you think that eating this thing is going to make me undesirable.” There’s a lot of power in being seen in that way and taking up that space.

Dawn Serra: To be someone who is older or who is disabled and to say, “I deserve access to sex toys that can accommodate my hands or my body in whatever shape and form it’s in” is to take up space and to be seen and to say, “I’m a full human being with autonomy and sovereignty and I deserve to be seen and treated with respect and dignity.”

To be a woman who says, “I want to have sex just because I want to have sex. It’s my body and I get to dress it how I want and I get to experience it how I want and I deserve to be safe and respected while I do those things.” Especially today with the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation, that is radical. Because there are a lot of people who want to tell us that to have sex is to be shameful and devalued. They want to call us sluts. They want to say that to be in a body that is gender non-conforming or trans is somehow to be wrong or broken. That to be queer is to be wrong and broken. To be disabled is to be disposable. To be a person of color is to be less than human. It is so crucial. 

Dawn Serra: And when I talk about pleasure, hopefully, you heard my conversation with Monica Raye Simpson, because this just really solidified it for me. When I talk about pleasure, I’m not talking about these kind of superficial experiences. Yes, those can feel good and sometimes that’s the self-care we need. But when I talk about pleasure, I’m talking about the kind of pleasure that connects us to our roots, that settles us into our body, so that we can be utterly present and clear and here. We can articulate boundaries. We can ask for what we want. We can see that beauty and art and the ways that we connect to other human beings are crucial to not only our survival, but also to this vision for a better world. 

I mean, Monica talked about how pleasure is a deeply spiritual experience for her and I love thinking about that. What if our pleasure was deeply rooted in radical change? What if our pleasure was deeply connected to the people around us in the community or the community that we want to create and cultivate? I mean, holy smokes! Talk about taking up space and taking our power back and using our voices. Oh, God! I could talk about this for forever.

Dawn Serra: But I’m glad you asked this question. This is exactly why I’m creating that Pleasure Course that I mentioned at the beginning of the episode. Because when I was at the ASDAH conference back in August, I talked to so many clinicians and dietitians, so many therapists, who are working with people specifically in the eating disorder space, who said to me, “I have so many clients who are in eating disorder treatment or who have recently come out of treatment. They’re just starting to connect with intuitive eating and with their bodies and they have no idea how to connect with their pleasure. They don’t know how to take up that space, how to ask for what they want, how to say, ‘It’s okay for me to feel good and for me to feel joy and for me to be me without apology.’”

So I saw this need for a course that would help all of us to not only understand what our pleasure means and the stories we’ve been given about our pleasure, all of the ways we’re told to discount our bodies, our needs and our desires, and then to go on this quest together to start finding all of the different entry points that we have for pleasure and why that means we’re taking up more and more and more space unapologetically.

Dawn Serra: I’m really excited about the course, but I’m more excited for all of us just really start thinking about the ways that our pleasure is literally political, especially if we exist at some type of intersection or at the margins. That’s when it becomes truly radical.

For those of us who experience a tremendous amount of privilege in the world – if we’re white, we’re cis, we’re middle class or upper class, we’re able-bodied, we’re young, we’re thin – what are the ways that you’re making space for other people to find their pleasure and their joy? How can you use your privilege and the ways that you take up space to then create space for others to connect with those things, too?

Dawn Serra: I am so glad that you asked this question Celia. I mean, I could write a dissertation about this. So this is just a jumping off point. But I highly recommend reading Audre Lorde. I highly recommend following Be Nourished. They are so incredible at talking about the importance of pleasure and satisfaction as we reconnect and to learn to trust our bodies. Our bodies know what feel good. We’re literally born knowing that we want to chase things that make us feel good. If we do that with just a little bit of awareness about the power that pleasure and satisfaction and joy and desire can offer to us and dismantling all of these institutions and structures that want to tell us we don’t have control over our bodies, that they want to police it or keep us separate from it, good, juicy, delicious stuff!

I hope that gives everyone lots to think about. I have so many other emails that I’m going to get to. I’m going to field a few more next week. Next week, I have a really fun conversation with Kate Kenfield. We’re talking about empathy and communication. I’m going to field listener question and Kate and I actually fielded the listener question together for that episode. That’ll be a really fun one. 

Dawn Serra: Then I’ve got interviews coming up with some amazing, amazing people. Lindsay Amer from Queer Kid Stuff, Kimberly Ann Johnson talking about power. Holy crap! I’m forgetting so many people right now, but really, really fun conversations. So thank you so much for being here with me. Don’t forget to go to patreon.com/sgrpodcast to hear the bonus episode this week. It’s a listener question all about farting, so we will giggle our way through that. Until next time. I’m Dawn Serra. Bye.

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

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