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On to your emails!
First up, CuriousMom was raised with a lot of sexual shame and body shame. As a mom of two daughters, she is doing her best to raise them in a sex positive way (and it sounds like she’s doing a GREAT job), but she doesn’t know what she doesn’t know. Where can she find resources and support on raising kids in a sex positive home?
I cannot recommend my chat with Melissa Carnagey from Sex Positive Families highly enough. It’s at this year’s Explore More Summit on the VERY FIRST DAY, so get on that. Also, Sex Positive Families is a MUST for all folks with kids in their lives. Check out their recommending reading list, too. It’s for kids and adults.
Also check out Nadine Thornhill, Cory Silverberg’s books “What Makes a Baby?” and “Sex is a Funny Word”, and once your kids are teens, they MUST know about Scarleteen.
Next up, E wrote in with a sweet note about the ways the show has changed. I am so grateful for all of you!!!
Then, Unimportant wrote in because they feel neglected by my lack of an email response. Let’s talk about the realities of what happens on my end and why every single email is so treasured even if you don’t hear back from me. Let’s do this imperfectly!
Finally, Adam wrote in. His wife has a very limiting disability and it’s led to a sexless marriage. He’s been hiring escorts to help with his sexual needs because he loves his wive and their children, and just isn’t sure what to do.
And…THE AMAZING Shine Louise Houston joins us to talk about her new film, Chemistry Eases the Pain. Help support the film, check out the awesome perks, and spread the word. We need more awesome queer smut!
Follow Dawn on Instagram.
About Shine Louise Houston:
As the founding producer and director of Pink and White Productions, SHINE LOUISE HOUSTON has always had unique vision. Graduating from San Francisco Arts Institute with a Bachelors in Fine Art Film, her works have become the new gold standard of adult cinema. During a five year position at the women-owned, sex toy purveyor Good Vibrations, Shine recognized an underserved demand for an alternative to mainstream pornography, and began to create well-crafted queer made porn. Shine’s films have been recognized among the next big wave of women produced porn and have been internationally screened from Amsterdam to New Zealand.
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Episode Transcript
Dawn Serra: You’re listening to Sex Gets Real with Dawn Serra, that’s me. This is a place where we explore sex, bodies, and relationships, from a place of curiosity and inclusion. Tying the personal to the cultural where you’re just as likely to hear tender questions about shame and the complexities of love, as you are to hear experts challenging the dominant stories around pleasure, body politics and liberation. This is about the big and the small, about sex and everything surrounding it we don’t usually name. The funny, the awkward, the imperfect happen here in service to joy, connection, healing and creating healthier relationships with ourselves and each other. So welcome to Sex Gets Real. Don’t forget to hit subscribe.
Dawn Serra: Hey, you. Welcome to this week’s episode of Sex Gets Real. I am not only going to field a couple of your questions, but I have a quick conversation with the incredible porn director and creator of Pink and White Productions, Shine Louise Houston. Because Shine has just a couple of days left of her Indiegogo for her new film, Chemistry eases the Pain, so we chat a little bit about what that’s about. We talk about porn and if you want to support, of course, there is a link right in the show notes for this episode or you can head to dawnserra.com to check that out.
I also want to let you know if you’re listening to this episode, when it drops on February 23rd or actually it’s February 24th. Yeah, on February 24th, Explore More Summit 2019 starts tomorrow on February 25th. This thing has been five months in the making. We’ve spent about a thousand hours on it. It’s the favorite thing that I do every year. It’s our fifth summit and this year’s theme is, “Finding Power in Personal and Collective Pleasure.” These conversations are some of the most powerful conversations I have all year and I would love for you to be a part of it. Whether you have a chance to see one talk or several talks or maybe even all 27 over the course of the 10 days. It’s totally free. If you sign up at exploremoresummit.com and watch the talks as they unfold. There’s two to three per day. There’s videos, there’s workbooks. It is such an incredible experience. The Facebook group is full of people who are vibrating with and we’re going to spend these 10 days investigating everything to do with pleasure, healing bodies, relationships, all of it. And I would love to have every single Sex Gets Real listener join us for that. Because it’s like the podcast times a thousand. It’s so much fun.
Dawn Serra: On to your questions and then I will share with you my little conversation with Shine. This first question came in from Curious Mom and it was actually perfectly timed because you’ll hear that my answer does involve the summit. And Curious Mom wrote in with a subject line of “Parenting and Sexuality.”
Hi Dawn, I’m a new listener to your podcast and I really, really enjoy it. Thank you for the beauty you are putting out into the world. I have been beyond happily married for 10 and a half years and I’m the mother of two incredible daughters, ages 7 and 11. My question is about parenting and teaching healthy sexuality and sexual exploration to our children. I was raised in an extremely conservative environment where a sexual exploration was absolutely positively off limits no matter what. I’m a major rule follower, so somehow in order to follow that ridiculous standard, I seemed to have completely turned off any desires or curiosities I might’ve had.
I’m learning that as a 31 year old, I am, for the very first time, doing and learning about a lot of what would be healthy and very normal for kids and teenagers to explore. I’m also having the time of my life getting to know myself and my partner in ways that I’ve totally missed out on. I know what not to do and say to my daughters, namely that they’ll go to hell if they have sex, but that as soon as they were married they’ll have all the sex they want and it’ll be wonderful. I know that I want them to eventually have a healthy understanding of all the types of sex because, wow, my very narrow, limited understanding of sex resulted in me missing out on so much for so long and being so generally confused about sex. But the reality is, I don’t have a personal example of how I want to impart a healthy sexuality onto them. I’m pretty proud of the ways I’ve intrinsically figured some of this out, including the fact that they’ve both known all the body parts, names and functions for years, way more than I knew in my twenties. They seem to feel safe and comfortable coming to me with questions because they do so often. We talk a lot about consent and safety, in general and in regards to our bodies, and we can have conversations about our emotions. Plus, they do know all of the basics about how babies are made, but with my 11 year old, we’re moving into the preteen years and it feels like it’s time for a few more layers to be added in the discussion.
I’m wondering if you’ve ever done a podcast about parenting and sexuality or if you have some resources you can direct me to because I’m worried that I don’t know what I don’t know. You know? Thanks again for all you do and taking the time to read this. I’m looking forward to your summit.
Dawn Serra: For curious mom, I wrote back immediately and I was like, “Yes, sign up for the summit! You’ll totally want to see Melissa Carnagey from Sex Positive Families. That is absolutely one thing I’ll recommend. And even if you’re listening to this episode, weeks or months or years after it was originally aired, you can always buy access to previous summits. I definitely recommend signing up for 2019 summit because on day one, which is tomorrow for those of you listening to the episode when it comes out on February 25th, the 2019, I have a conversation with the creator of Sex Positive Families. Melissa has some of the most incredible perspectives about how we can raise sex positive kids, how we can be sex positive parents, how we can help take away the need to know everything. Take the pressure off of ourselves to be perfect, the hierarchy, how we can be more vulnerable; and also how we can help foster curiosity and learning alongside our kids.
Melissa has such a phenomenal understanding that regardless of how long you’ve been on the planet, you’re still a full human being with full autonomy and agency over your own body and your own pleasure. So how can we build that into our parenting when we’re dealing with young people? There are incredible resources on Sex Positive Families’ website and, of course, Melissa’s conversation at Explore More Summit is all about sex positive parenting. That’s one thing that I cannot recommend enough. I also highly recommend checking out Nadine Thornhill. Now, Nadine’s been on the podcast twice so you can look for that. If you Google Nadine’s name, you’ll see Nadine has a YouTube channel and a website that’s all about talking to kids and teaching kids about sex.
Contrary to the pop culture myths that we see, it’s not a one and done conversation. Ideally, it’s something that we literally start from birth. Modeling and talking to them about an age appropriate ways so that there’s never a point when it’s not a part of the conversation. And it sounds like Curious Mom, you’ve been doing some pretty phenomenal stuff. I mean, if they know all the names of their body parts, they ask questions, they know where babies come from. You talk about safety and consent and you have conversations about emotions, that right there is the gold mine of how we can set young people up to feel comfortable in their bodies, to know these bodies are theirs to delight in and to know, which is the foundation of safety and consent. If I can’t know my body and understand my edges, if I don’t know what yes and no feels like in my body, it’s pretty hard to communicate boundaries and to stand up for myself and to feel a sense of agency. So it sounds like you’re on the right track.
Dawn Serra: One other thing that I would recommend and I did email those to Curious Mom, as well, is Cory Silverberg has two incredible books that are my goto books. I literally buy them for every single friend that has a kid and they are, What Makes A Baby, which is a bigger picture book that’s great for five to seven year olds. Maybe even younger depending on your kid. There’s another book that’s for preteens that’s really great for the nine to twelve or thirteen year old age range called Sex is A Funny Word. The first time I read that book I cried. Because if I had had that book when I was younger, things probably would have unfolded very differently for me and I had to move through some grief around that, but also joy that it exists and then it’s out in the world.
Another thing that’s really awesome about the Sex Positive Families’ website is they have a reading list that is for every age of human, including adults and parents. And those of us who are a little bit older and had been on the planet a little longer. But they have over 150 books on their recommended reading list. All about bodies, consent, gender, sex, all the things. No matter who you are or what age you are, you’re going to want to go check out that reading list and probably stock up or make some requests at your library. So those are the places that I would start and then, of course, Melissa at Sex Positive Families, and Nadine Thornhill, and Cory Silverberg, they have links to all kinds of other people doing incredible work in this space. But those three you can’t go wrong with. They’re a great place to start.
As your kids move into their teen years, I also highly recommend introducing them to Scarleteen. Scarleteen’s one of the most comprehensive, inclusive, beautiful resources in the world for young people to talk about their bodies, dating, sex, fears, shame, gender, identity. All of it is beautifully sensitive and very age appropriate for younger and teens. And that I think should become a staple for pretty much all households that have young people. Even for those of us who were older who are just coming into sex positivity and into being curious about our bodies and our identities. You will find so much permission and information about literally everything on Scarleteen. I also recommend filing that away and then maybe using that as an activity to do with your kids or even offering it to them so that they can do it in their own time and then checking in with them every once in awhile to see if they’ve got questions about what they find there. Thank you so much for writing in, Curious Mom. I’m so glad that you’re going to be joining us for the summit. I know my email to you made it clear. I had missed that last line you wrote about. I am looking forward to your summit. Thank you for writing in and thank you so much for just being so open and so generous with the ways that you’re raising your daughters. It sounds like you are doing some really beautiful things with them and really laying a foundation of permission. All of us could have used more of that. Thank you for being an incredible mom. Thanks for writing in with your questions. I hope those resources get you and others started down the path of sex positive parenting and finding the resources you need and thank you so much for listening to the show.
Dawn Serra: I got an email from E and a subject line is “Why I love The Current Format or Screw The Haters, You’re Awesome.” Good Morning, Dawn. I’ve been a listener for a couple of years now. In a recent episode, you talked about losing some listeners due to the current format and focus of the show. I can completely understand those feelings of disappointment and second guessing. Your show as it is right now, as you have made it and focusing on the things you find important and challenging is exactly the kind of show I personally need and love. Your insight, wisdom, and kick ass guests are the highlight of my week. Yours is the only podcast I have notifications turned on for.
You, Sex Gets Real and your guests have helped me find my second career and have helped give me the courage to take the next steps in fulfilling my dreams. It’s hard to be told that something you put so much of yourself into isn’t to someone’s tastes. And it’s hard as a fan when something you love has changed to something less to your liking. All of that is true and all of that is okay. But there’s a third experience. Those of your listeners who love and appreciate the new Sex Gets Real. Take their feedback. Exit interviews are a thing for a reason, but please don’t let it get you down or make you change a thing you feel strongly about. You are doing good work in the world and your podcast has touched many people in profound ways.
Dawn Serra: Thank you so much, E. It’s funny because even though I get emails from folks, it’s not constant and sometimes it does feel like I’m just speaking out into the void, especially because I pre record so it’s just me and my microphone. Sometimes it’s like, “Is anybody out there?” So I do appreciate all the emails that I get. I know that I can’t reply to all of them nor can I reply to all of them. And emails like this do matter. They feel so good. So thank you so much, E, for writing in and sharing.
I have been feeling into that so deeply lately that while the podcast numbers might be down a little bit, and part of that is also because of FOSTA and SESTA. It’s getting harder and harder to promote any kind of podcast that’s about sex. But I’m also starting to really realize that so many of you who are here and who are listening are really feeling connected with the work that I’m doing and I receive that fully. So thank you so much for taking a few minutes, E, to write in and to share your experience of being with the show through all of these years and all of these changes. It feels really nourishing to be where I am now and I’m glad that I don’t have to pretend to be something I’m not or to pretend to be interested in things that I am not. The show gets to change right along with me and hopefully all of you get to experience that change and come along too.
And just because why not have a little balance, I also got an email from Unimportant. The subject says “Email” and the message body says, I am feeling a little unimportant. You encourage your listeners to write to you and that each and every message gets read and savored, which after a lot of internal struggle I did. That was two months ago. I’m not sure what I expected out of writing. It was about rough sex and dealing with a partner who was the victim of molestation as a child, but I had at least hoped to get a “Got it,” and maybe an email talking about my questions. Instead, it feels like my insecurities disappeared into the void. Actually, what it really feels like is that I or my insecurities are not LGBTQIAPK enough for you to respond to. It makes me want to say that straight people have questions about sex, too, and maybe you overlook or forget that from time to time.
Dawn Serra: I did write back to Unimportant and this is something to just offer to all of you. The truth is I do read every single email that comes in. I don’t always read them as soon as they come in because my inbox is a pretty intense place. But I do read every single email. What I am not able to do is reply to every single email because I have so many things going on that I’m trying desperately to hold together as beautifully and tenderly and imperfectly as I can. Between Explore More Summit and my coaching clients, between the other business that I run, which is producing summit’s for other businesses, to doing the podcast; and then even trying to find time to take care of me and go to therapy and eat food. I only have so much time in every day. As much as I would love to be able to respond to every single email in a timely way, acknowledging all the things that you share. The truth is if I did that, I wouldn’t be able to take care of me. I also want to note that certain questions require certain types of sensitivity or expertise that maybe I don’t have. And sometimes emails will go many, many, many months before I have an expert come on the show or before I feel ready to be able to tend to that question.
So know that if you’ve sent an email, as long as it wasn’t disrespectful or nonsensical, that it’s sitting in my queue and that is something that causes me stress that I worry about constantly. But they’re there. Sometimes, I’m waiting for a couple of questions on a topic to come in so that I can build a conversation around it. Sometimes, I feel desperately unskilled in being able to field some of the questions and I either know it’s going to take some time and experience to move in that direction or I know there’s a specific expert or two I really want to talk too. But sometimes it takes me many months or even a year or two to get certain people on the show because they’re busy too. I do appreciate every email and I’ve grappled with whether or not I should set up some type of autoresponder. But there are many of you who will send me multiple emails and things, and I don’t want those autoresponder to become just something that people don’t even read because it’s either an all or nothing thing, right?
Dawn Serra: All of that is to say, I validate completely that sending that email took courage and that, for so many of you, you send me things that you’ve probably never said to anybody. For some of you, you write things that you’re barely able to admit to yourself. I hold all of those so, so, so preciously. And I do want you to know that even if I don’t explicitly reply back to your email or even if you don’t hear your exact email written or read on the show, that every single email does come in and that lives in my bones with me.
Sometimes when I’m answering one question and that answer is partially informed by other questions that I’ve gotten that are in a similar vein or in a similar realm. So there’s a lot that’s going into this labor that I’m doing for all of you. My hope is that, one, you’ll continue trusting me with your stories and your questions, that you’ll continue finding the courage to send in everything that you send in. I do always want more. I want you to share and ask questions that I can keep bringing new and interesting voices and stories to the show, and I hope that you can hold that I’m doing all of this the best that I can, which is to say I know it is not enough and it is imperfect, and all I can do is the best I can do. Then when I can do better, I will do better.
Some of you might get a response and some of you might not. Some of you might get your emails on the shows, some of you might not. But all of it contributes to the show because all of it does come into me and help inform me about the things that I need to learn, things I want to talk about, the places I want to go, the hopes and dreams that I have for all of us, the next book that I’m going to read. All of your emails help feed that and what ends up happening is this show. So thank you so much for supporting me. Thank you for letting me know that it was feeling tender. Also, please know that there is no barometer at all around being enough of anything. I field listener questions from straight white dudes all the time and from privileged middle class white women all the time. And, yes, we try to center the most marginalized but there is no marker or barrier for who deserves or gets anything. It’s just a matter of how do I take all of these threads that you generously keeps sending my way and weave them into things that are helpful. Because the last thing I want to do is field a question that I am ill prepared for or that I have no experience in and potentially make you feel worse or cause harm. Especially when emails involve things like incest, molestation, abuse, I know I need to handle those so very, very, very carefully. So sometimes the things that are particularly edgy or painful or traumatic get held for a while until I feel like I can and/or I know someone who can help me to do that work together and then offer it back out into the world. So thank you so much for trusting me with your feelings of disappointment, Unimportant. I appreciate that.
Dawn Serra: To all of you who are listening, please know I always, always, always want to hear from you. I always love hearing your stories, your questions, the things that you’re grappling with, your successes, your losses, your grief, your frustrations. While I might not be able to reply to all of you or handle all of the questions in a way that you wish that I could, know that it still matters. That it still does on some level inform the show, inform me, inform the conversations that are happening and that it’s all part of this massive tapestry that we are making together here at Sex Gets Real.
I have one last email. It’s a little bit long, but you will hear why in just a moment. And then my conversation with Shine Louise Houston because we need too, not only pay for our porn, but support these incredible people who are out in the world making erotic, pornographic, sexy content for us like Chemistry Eases The Pain, which is Shines’ new film that she’s fundraising for. So stay tuned for that conversation and for ways that you can help support Shine, even if you don’t have money that you can toss her way. And then we will be wrapping up because I have to frantically go finish up a whole bunch of loose ends before Explore More starts tomorrow.
Dawn Serra: This email came in from Adam and it says, Dear Dawn, I didn’t want to start like everyone else who writes to you. But unfortunately I, like all the others, absolutely love your podcast. I know I’m not unique when I say that. I find it thought provoking and absorbing. However, it also makes me sad. In part because it makes me feel like I am missing out, that my life is missing that total physical and emotional connection that is possible. And then it makes me feel confused, down, frustrated as it feels like I should be able to expect to be able to have that type of relationship, but my situation just won’t allow it. I feel caught and that whatever I do is wrong. As you can probably guess, I’m a guy who was lacking a physical connection to his wife and having a yearning which is unsatisfied and find impossible to talk about. Therefore I keep my feelings bottled up and unsaid.
I feel like I am sexually intelligent and when I hear you speak about caring for the other person’s pleasure and that sex is about connecting and not simply about your or their orgasm, but sensuality touching and something much deeper. I feel like I am so much in that place that I totally understand what you mean. I long for a physical connection. Not just sexually, but closeness, nakedness, holding, being wanted, kissing. Perhaps I feel the desire for connection more than most, as I have a high libido and I am completely unsatisfied physically at home.
So who am I and what’s my situation? I’m a 50 year old sporty guy. Fit, healthy, driven at work in sports. I’m married to an equally amazing woman whose drive and abilities come out in other ways. We’ve been together for 27 years and have two daughters, 17 and 13 who we are both very close too. Our sex life basically stopped after our second child. Even the sex to have the second baby was clinical and emotional and not something to look back on. As she focused on the children, being tired and homemaking, I spent the next eight years feeling unloved, unwanted, and eventually started looking for alternative outlets for sex. I had a number of affairs and eventually got caught. We managed to pull things together and went through counseling, which brought us back together. However, sex was one thing that we never really got agreement on, even through the counselor. When I raised it a few times after, we often ended up arguing again. Until finally about four years ago, I felt enlightened after an argument about sex and she made a heartfelt comment, why would anyone want to have sex with me when they know it’s just going to hurt me? It felt like a huge comment and brought me to the realization that it was not her fault and that I had been the one who hadn’t realized and should have thought about her illness more. The more I thought about it, the more logical it all felt. So now, as we have no physical side and haven’t had any sexual contact for four years, and I see no future sexual contact, I decided to see escorts to give me some release. But also, to make sure that she never found out.
Dawn Serra: I loved your episode on Degenerative Diseases and how constant pain impacts your life. Unless constant pain is a part of your life, it is impossible to understand how it can totally envelop your whole being. No one can understand how pain makes you become quick to anger, quick to frustration, quick to depression. And no one else will understand what it’s like to live with someone who is suffering from constant pain. My wife has rheumatoid arthritis and has had it for many years. She’s had multiple operations such as having have two or three quarters of an inch of each of the bones in her feet being taken out, knee operations, her c1and c2 neck bones being fused to her skull. She needs an elbow replacement, possibly two and possibly both shoulders. She has Sjogren’s syndrome, I’m sure I’m saying that wrong, and has to pick the thickest cream and her eyes just to be able to sleep through a whole night without getting a searing pain from dry eyes that she wakes up.
It’s impossible for me to imagine what she’s going through and I try to support her as much as I can. I now think that she actually physically can’t have sex. Her wrists and elbows are too weak to do anything to me without pain, her neck being fused to her skull means she can only open her mouth in a limited way, and any long periods with an odd position just leads to muscular pain and cramps. And with the arthritis in her hips, she finds any kind of thrusting painful. But I don’t think I can talk to her about it, as I think, psychologically admitting that you can’t do something crystallizes it and makes it more real than avoiding the subject. I think she would go into a deeper depression if she felt she couldn’t keep me. That sounds arrogant, maybe not me, but realizing that she can’t do certain things that normal people do. Her illness makes her depressed. But she is incredible, as she doesn’t want to get in her way of looking after our girls, taking them to piano, flute, swimming.
She is a great mother. My daughter’s do notice her temper and I explained to them as being a part of the pain that she lives through. I’m not sure what I want from you. I would love for you to affirm that I’m in a difficult situation. I know you’ll say I should talk openly with my wife and I think I’d feel better about being open, that I have physical needs, even if I’m not open about what I’ve actually been doing. But I do feel that by talking to her about her limitations, it will force her to admit she can’t physically do anything sexually, which means that might psychologically destabilize her. It’s one thing to think you can’t do many things and be depressed about your life as your body disintegrates, but it’s another to think that because you can’t connect with your husband, he is going to start connecting with other lovers and worry that you could possibly end up losing someone when he finds someone else. I am not looking for someone else, but I don’t think she would believe me given the affair I had before. It would be interesting to hear your take on my situation, Adam.
Dawn Serra: Well, Adam. I definitely want to affirm that your situation is complicated and difficult and yes, sometimes this is what life looks like. It sounds like you have a lot of admiration and love for your wife and your daughters. It sounds like you’ve had some realizations and moved through some different phases together, and it sounds like there are needs that aren’t getting met and probably on both ends.
One of the things that I’m thinking about is, I had this beautiful conversation with Isabel Abbott for the summit and Isabel has chronic illness and chronic pain and significantly so. She’s talked about how so much of where she is now is realizing that she can’t wait for pain to be over in order for her to experience pleasure. She has been working on finding ways that pleasure and pain can coexist so that she’s not putting her pleasure on hold. She also talked about how she doesn’t have the energy to have any fucks to give any more about performing anything, that all she can do is just show up as herself and hope that the people who love her will accept that raw, non performative version of who she is with this body and with this pain.
So the answer that I want to– or the thoughts that I want to offer you are imperfect and incomplete. And here’s what they are. One, I always think that there are ways that we can have conversations with the people in our lives, that would help honor and validate their experience, that would invite in some curiosity and some tenderness and it might take multiple tries. Because for many of us, we have experienced betrayal around truth. We have been shut down around truth. We don’t trust that people really want to hear our truths maybe because we’ve got lots of evidence that supports that.
Dawn Serra: There’s wise reasons why when people might try to initiate a vulnerable conversation, other people might shut it down or get defensive. Sometimes we have to demonstrate consistently that we really mean it, that we really do want to have these conversations. I wonder what it would be like for you to, without any kind of agenda for yourself, offer a space, maybe multiple times, for your wife to share. What is it like for her to experience any kind of pleasure? What is her pleasure look like with the pain? Is there pleasure in food? Is there pleasure in your daughters? Is there pleasure in certain colors and smells and sounds. Does she have space for pleasure? And what might the two of you do if she’s interested in finding more avenues to pleasure, considering her body and how it is?
I think we get so much pain and looking back at how things used to be and I wonder what it would look like to say here’s where we are, and what might pleasure look like, considering where we are. And then investigating that. What smells, what sights, what touches. No matter how delicate might bring pleasure. What experiences and feelings move her closer to pleasure and joy and a liveliness and satisfaction? What is she hungry for in her life? Maybe it’s not sex. Maybe she’s hungry for new experiences, new books, seeing your daughters do things. But just in being able to engage her with a different experience of her body might create some new energy and some new curiosities for the two of you.
Dawn Serra: I also think this is one of the reasons why the ways that we’ve culturally been raised around sex can be so harmful to us. They are so deeply ableist. When our bodies change either because of age or illness or accidents or trauma, or simply because of how they are, the ways that we have sex changes. And there’s so much creativity available to us in the ways that we erotically connect with each other. It doesn’t even have to involve touch.
I highly recommend checking out Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha’s new book, Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice. There’s some essays in that book about disabled sex and there’s a group that Leah has been a part of for years called Sins Invalid. It’s a show put on by disabled queer people of color to talk about their sexual experiences. One of the questions that Leah’s mentor, I believe the person’s name is Dori Midnight, asks is what kind of sex does your disability allow you to have that able bodied people can’t or don’t even know is possible? For some people in paralyzed bodies and in bodies with a variety of different disabilities, sex might be wiggling a couple of fingers and an ear lobe. That kind of sex can be exquisite and connecting and beautiful. But we have to be open to that being something that can satisfy us.
So I guess my question for you, Adam, is if your wife was able to say, “These kinds of things might feel accessible to me or they might feel pleasurable but they had nothing whatsoever to do with your dick, and intercourse, and it could be hot and erotic by watching something together and maybe just holding hands.” Is that something that you could be open to and feel erotically charged by?
Dawn Serra: I also think that sometimes our lives and our situations are really complicated. And sometimes because of a variety of circumstances and situations that we find ourselves in, we have really tough choices that we have to make. Working with a professional, like an escort can be one way that we can still show up in our lives as a parent, as a spouse, and feeling validated in our needs and our desires. It might not be something that some people would consider ethical or an option, and yes, your wife would probably be crushed if she found out. That is something that you will have to navigate if it ever comes up. But there are professionals out there who do the work that they do from a very professional perspective, for a reason. They’re able to hold that space very tenderly, to keep it within the confines of your agreement so that you can continue moving through your life and the ways that you do and showing up in the ways that you need to. So yeah, it’s complicated.
Sometimes we need to make tough decisions because the choices available to us, none of them feel quite right. And if working with escorts helps you to continue to show up in your marriage with grace and to show up as a parent, feeling nourished and fed, then that’s the choice that feels right for you. It’s not for me to tell you that’s wrong. I also am thinking Chris Maxwell Rose from Pleasure Mechanics who are also some sex educators that I totally adore. Their work is so important. Chris talks about how our desires are bigger than our lives can hold. Because our desire, our erotic selves, our sexual selves are so much made up of our imagination, our creativity, our connection to nature and to life and each other, of course, the things that we want, the things we dream of our bigger than our lives could possibly hold.
Chris talks about how there’s maturity and us coming to a place where we realize that’s true and still being able to affirm that our desires are valid and real and that we may not be able to live them out or to experience them in this lifetime. So I just want to offer that too. Maybe there’s something inside of that that you could play with. How can you validate that your desires for connection and for touch and for sex are real and true and important? And maybe, at least right now, your life can’t hold all of the things that you want. How can you validate yourself while doing it in a sustainable way so that you can continue showing up for these relationships that are important to you?
Dawn Serra: I think there’s a lot of opportunity for where you go next. Continuing to work with escorts or trying to be really curious about your wife and what her relationship to pleasure is or is not right now. Ways that the two of you can start to get curious about disability justice and disability sex, and different ways to connect with each other in meaningful, connected, vulnerable ways; that embraces and allows for her body to be exactly what it is and without it needing to be anything different. That does require breaking up with some long held stories and some very, very strongly prescribed cultural scripts. But there are people doing it.
There are so many people with so many different kinds of disabilities, from quadriplegics to people with MS, to people who are all kinds of different neuro divergent and in bodies that require casts and canes, and chairs and all kinds of other things who are having amazing, incredible, slow, awkward, disabled sex. And maybe you can turn to them for some mentorship, some wisdom, some ideas because you are not the only person who has been in this situation and your wife is not the only person who has been in this situation. There are other people out there who are living and thriving and creating new ways of being in bodies just like this. So thank you so much for trusting me with your story. It is hard and it is messy and there is so much potential inside of it, even if it feels like there isn’t.
Dawn Serra: I also want to validate like your wife deserves pleasure. Your wife deserves connection. Your wife deserves to be trusted and asked what she wants, and for there to be creativity around experiencing and experimenting around that. And she’s allowed to not want to do those things right now if things feel really hard and overwhelming. So tend to yourself the best way that you can and show up for her the best way that you can. And also consider other ways that the two of you can feel supported. Who are some folks with disabilities and chronic illness that you might connect with and ask for support around? How can your wife feel more supported so that she can do the things that she wants to do without it taking a toll on her body? Are there friends that can help drive your daughters around or friends that can help make meals? Or different types of care webs that you can create in your lives so that there’s more spaciousness for the two of you.
I hope that gives you lots of ideas and permission and I so appreciate that you trusted me with this because you are not the only one. I know there are people listening with very, very complicated experiences and all we can do is the best we can do, and see what comes from there.
Dawn Serra: Thank you to all of the listeners who wrote in and thank you to you for listening to the show. If you have any questions, anything that you want to run by me, go to dawnserra.com and send that in. Patreon supporters, I am going to release an exclusive clip from one of my favorite Explore More talks of the year. Who am I kidding? I love them all. But I’m going to pick one and put that up on Patreon just as a little teaser and a freebie for you because I don’t have time to record a bonus conversation this week and I want you to have something great.
patreon.com/sgrpodcast if you want to support the show. exploremoresummit.com if you want to do the summit. Now here is my fun little chat with Shine Louise Houston, all about her new film that she has fundraising for. Go support it on Indiegogo and or if you can’t financially support Shine and her incredible work, spread the word, share it all the places. Get your friends and your family to help throw in a couple bucks. There’s some awesome bonuses and perks too. So here’s me and Shine:
Dawn Serra: Welcome to Sex Gets Real, Shine. I am so excited to have you here.
Shine Louise Houston: Hey, thank you for having me. This is awesome.
Dawn Serra: Yes, we talk about your stuff on the show all the time.
Shine Louise Houston: Well thank you. Flattery will get you everywhere.
Dawn Serra: Oh good. Well I will continue doing that. I’m really excited because you are fundraising or crowdfunding for a new film called Chemistry Eases the Pain. And we would love for our listeners to check that out. So can you tell me a little bit about it?
Shine Louise Houston: In a nutshell, it’s about a young woman who’s very, very queer, lesbian identified and she winds up having a thing for a straight cis white dude. She’s trying to reconcile that internally and also socially with her friends. We get to take a humorous look at that type of journey.
Dawn Serra: I love it so much.
Shine Louise Houston: She’s so worried about going straight.
Dawn Serra: I know that feeling. Listeners know that that is my story, that after 13 years of being in exclusively lesbian and trans relationships, I fell for cis queer dude. There’s a real fear about losing community about that.
Shine Louise Houston: Yeah. What’s interesting is as I’m writing this, I’m going, “Oh my god, am I so aged? Am I so dated?” We already had these conversations. We’ve gotten over bi phobia and… But the more I talked to people about it, the more I realize, “Oh, no. This is, apparently, still a thing.” So maybe this isn’t as dated a conversation as I thought.
Dawn Serra: Yeah, I am super excited about it. And you’ve got some amazing people lined up and cast in the film. Can you talk a little bit about who’s involved?
Shine Louise Houston: So our main character Frankie is… So our main character is played by Lotus Lain and I’m really excited to work with them. They did a really great read for the character. I think it was then introduced to Michael Vegas, who’s basically [a] co-star or co lead. I haven’t had the opportunity to really work closely or actually meet in person. But I hear lots and lots of wonderful things about Michael, so I’m very excited to work with him.
Dawn Serra: One of the things that I think is really awesome for people to hear is the way that you work with performers on film sets and the ways that performers get to really dictate what’s going to happen, the kind of sex that they have. Can you talk a little bit about, too, what the experience is for people who participate in your films?
Shine Louise Houston: For a project like this, I do direct a little bit more than I usually do. For projects like Crash Pad Series, it’s 100% talent driven, which means that I’m only directing the cameras. I’m really not directing what they’re doing on screen. All of that is negotiated before we turned the cameras on. With something like Chemistry Eases the Pain there is a pretty strong narrative. And so when I’m directing them, we still have to keep in character. For technical issues, we have to stay in this area. But other than that, the little details are up to them. How exactly you like it, it’s up to you.
Dawn Serra: If someone was interested in supporting you and creating this new film, what are some of the perks that you’re offering? What are some of the things they can do to help spread the word? If they don’t have money?
Shine Louise Houston: Some of the perks that we’re offering are, “Hey, you get to hang out with me and Jiz. We’ll take you to lunch.” So that’s a fun perk. We also have stuff from Play Out underwear, gift certificates from Good Vibes. I think we have one left, maybe. I know we have some more fun gift certificates and smaller things like the pronoun pin. We’ve got a range of different perks. Anything to fit in your budget right now. Also if you’re not going to contribute financially, there’s always, give us a shout out on Twitter, on Instagram, on Facebook, whatever social media that you’re using right now. We are in the final days of this. So really we just need a big signal boost.
Dawn Serra: Yes. Oh my gosh. So when will filming actually start?
Shine Louise Houston: Our shoot dates are May 20th to May 26th. That’s when all the real heavy lifting starts. But until then we’re still slogging through pre-pro.
Dawn Serra: All those moving pieces to make the magic it happen.
Shine Louise Houston: So many moving pieces. My goodness.
Dawn Serra: Yeah. One of the things that I just love so much about Crash Pad and Pink and White productions; one of the reasons that I’m constantly sending people your way is because, one, we want to be able to support performers and we want to be able to support folks who are making delicious ethical content. We also want people to pay for their porn, which I tell people all the time. It’ll literally be on my gravestone because I say it so much.
I would love for you to ask someone who literally has been in this space for over 15 years making content. My first queer film was literally a hard copy DVD of Crash Pad. I know, it’s so awesome. I’d love for you to just talk a little bit about one why it’s so important for people to pay for their porn. And then you mentioned that you really interested in exploring why it’s not helpful to pit feminist and queer porn against mainstream porn. So can you talk just a little bit about that for folks?
Shine Louise Houston: Yeah. First, too pay for your porn. One is if you’re paying for your porn, guess what? Those people get to make more porn. So all the porn that you like, if you’re not paying for it, that makes it hard for people to continue to make porn. Also another way paying for your porn. If you’re out of sight, we’re actually paying for it. That probably means that people have had the right paperwork, it’s a legitimate business…
A lot of the stuff that you find on tube sites is pirated or has been subject to predatory business practices. Do you know what I mean? So a lot of people was like, “So how do I know my stuff is ethically made and all that kind of stuff?” If you’re paying for it, most likely this company is on the up and up. If you find stuff on Pornhub that you like and if it actually does credit the company or the performer, find them. Find their site. Look them up on social media. See where they’re actually producing the videos and go to them directly.
I know some people are like, “I just can’t really, really afford it.” What we do for our site is you can get a free membership if you help us transcode the behind the scenes either into English or any other type of foreign language. So we can continue to add subtitles and closed captions to all of our content. If you’re a blogger, you can get a free membership by reviewing and blogging about our site. You never know and other content makers and might also be interested in something like that. Just ask people. It really helps the industry so everybody can make a living wage and continue to make the smut that you like, really.
Dawn Serra: More good smut.
Shine Louise Houston: Yes. Something that I’ve been noticing in the media for a while and I finally hit a limit with it is how the media will sometimes pit queer porn, feminist porn against the mainstream. And I would like to just say creating this type of dichotomy is not productive for the industry as a whole. Because even as a small business, that’s kind of an outlier from the mainstream. We’re still part of that industry. If you’re making porn, you’re making porn. People are going to lump you all into one category. Do you know what I mean?
If you’re making porn there might not always make that distinction. But also, just to point out there, sometimes when I think people are reacting to the narratives that mainstream porn will put out there and some of it still is very– It’s all centered around the pop shatter or male pleasure. But a lot of that is also shifting. Some of the other narratives post in mainstream are somewhat problematic. But what people forget is all the negotiation, especially if it’s rough sex or anything like that. There’s a lot of negotiation that happens before. There’s people who are getting paid… There’s the mechanics that happened behind the scenes and I think sometimes people are forgetting that and they look at it at face value and somehow, they lose their suspension of disbelief.
We all know that X men is crazy fantasy and people aren’t actually killing mutants. But when you watch porno and you see a rough scene, you’re like, “Oh my god! Did you really like that? That looks horrible.” Do you know what I mean? All of a sudden when we get to porno, we lose our suspension of disbelief. As viewers, I feel like that is a little problematic. I really think there should be like– Somebody suggested there should be classes.
Dawn Serra: Yeah. Like a porn literacy.
Shine Louise Houston: Yes. There you go. Porn literacy classes and how to read porn essentially.
Dawn Serra: Yes. Oh my god. One of the things that I’ve been trying to encourage people to do is to not only pay for their porn, but to come out about being consumers to help de stigmatize. It doesn’t have to stay in the shadows. It doesn’t have to be something we hide. Let’s talk about that. We enjoy it and who really enjoy and what we want more of, and have conversations like we do about food and all the other things we like.
Shine Louise Houston: Yeah, absolutely.
Dawn Serra: So if someone wanted to help support you coming up with this brand new, amazing film, Chemistry Eases the Pain. Where can they go in these last– As of when we’re talking, I think there’s eight, seven or eight days left.
Shine Louise Houston: I think it’s six.
Dawn Serra: Well, for folks who are tuning in, there’s a couple of days left. Where can they go to help support you?
Shine Louise Houston: Find this on Indiegogo. You can search us for Chemistry Eases the Pain or you can go to IGG.me/at/chemistryfilm It’s a lot to remember, but anyway. But if you find us on Indiegogo, you can support us there. Like I said, if you want to give us a shout out on social media, that would be great. Because we just need a big push at the end.
Dawn Serra: Awesome. Okay, well for everyone who is listening and hears this before the end date, what day does it wrap up?
Shine Louise Houston: The end of February. So that’s the 28th.
Dawn Serra: Okay. So everyone who’s hearing this before, February 28th 2019, click the links right down below in the show notes so that you can go check out the promo video that’s up on a Indiegogo, and support and share and promote all the places. Because we want more awesome content from Shine Louise Houston and crew. So thank you so much for being here and telling us a little bit about it, Shine.
Shine Louise Houston: Thank you. Thank you for having me.
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? Don’t be ashamed post.