Sex Therapy 101 with Cami Hurst
Welcome to Sex Therapy 101 with your host Cami Hurst. This is the sexiest podcast in the west for all the right reasons. Cami sits down with amazing experts in the field of sexual health and counseling to learn, converse and add her own expert voice to the conversation. Cuddle up with your partner and get ready to have your love life feel more complete.
Sex Therapy 101 with Cami Hurst
A Conversation with Al Vernacchio
We dive into the complex world of "consenting to unwanted sex" with Al Vernacchio, a comprehensive sex educator who brings unique insights from his position at a Quaker school. Our conversation explores why many women agree to sex they don't desire and the cultural influences that create these situations.
Al Vernacchio, MSEd teaches at Friends' Central School in Wynnewood, PA. He is the Coordinator of Gender, Sexuality, and Consent Education, a Senior Staff member in the department of Institutional Diversity, Equity, and Justice, and is also a member of the Upper School English department. Al is forthright, funny, and compassionate as he supports students, school communities, and families to develop healthy sexuality in young people of all ages.
A nationally recognized expert in human sexuality education for over 30 years, Al has lectured, published articles, and offered workshops throughout the country. His work has been featured in “Teaching Good Sex”, a November 20, 2011 cover story in The
New York Times Magazine. Al has given four TED Talks, and has appeared on
national programs such as NPR’s “Morning Edition”, “1A”, and “Radio Times”.
He is the author of For Goodness Sex: A Sex-Positive Guide to Raising Healthy, Empowered Teens published in a revised and expanded edition in April, 2023.
Al earned his BA in Theology from St. Joseph's University and his MSEd in
Human Sexuality Education from the University of Pennsylvania.
Hello, sex Therapy 101. Friends, you notice I might have taken a break, but we're back and we're excited and I'm really passionate about this new series that I'm going to be offering to all of you, and one of those is a book for the public about my research, about regarding long-term outcomes of consenting to unwanted sex, or duty sex as we sometimes call it, and in doing that, adding to my own research over the year, you'll see my hair change, my face change, because these were all recorded over the course of a year, recorded over the course of a year, and I wanted to talk to experts about the cultural implications or cultural beliefs or the cultural ideas among different communities in the US that might protect people against negative outcomes and that might actually kind of promote people into some of the more negative outcomes. And that is the series I have to offer you. I'm really excited. It's been really meaningful to me, it's been enlightening to me, it's really helped me make sure that this book is what I want it to be for all of you. So, with no ado, here we go.
Speaker 1:This is going to be the intro for the whole series. I'll give you a little bit of a bio for each and then we'll jump into the recording of the interview. Get ready for a really fun conversation with Al Vernacchio, who has a master's in education, teaches comprehensive sex ed at the Friends Central School in Pennsylvania. He's the coordinator of gender, sexuality and consent education, a senior staff member in the Department of Institutional Diversity, equity and Justice, and is also a member of the Upper School English Department. Al is forthright, he is funny, he is compassionate and he supports his students, school communities and family to help develop healthy sexuality in younger people of all ages. Hi, cammie, hi, how are you all?
Speaker 2:I'm really great thanks. How are you?
Speaker 1:I'm good, good. It's really really nice to talk to you this morning.
Speaker 2:Thanks, I'm looking forward to it.
Speaker 1:Well, I really appreciate, just just, I think, all the depth you can add to this conversation just because you feel you have a foot in so many cool communities. Yeah, right, so, um, and I, I do kind of want to treat this as maybe like the beginning of a conversation, right, and I would love that yeah, and I'm like hey, what's everyone think about this thing?
Speaker 1:I think maybe we found, as Lisa Diamond and I were doing this research. So that first question with your lens, your background, your experience in sexuality, how are you interpreting these findings about these outcomes we're seeing women have by consenting to sex they don't want long term?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was. I mean, honestly, I was troubled by the results and, to my mind, I have a hard time calling it consenting. I don't think they are consenting, but I don't think they know that I don't think they are consenting, but I don't think they know that.
Speaker 2:Tell me more about your lens of consent and coercion and why that's where you were thinking. Think about the language that we use and find places where we're using language that we might have just sort of like adopted. Like, for example, sexual activity is a phrase that I really challenge my students to think about what that means. This like this assumption that it's, you know, penetrative and and that kind of stuff. So for me, the women in your study, when they're saying they're consenting to this unwanted sex, they're, you know, like, is consent really the right word? They're agreeing to it.
Speaker 2:They're, they're they're, they're, they're, they're settling for it, they're acquiescing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, but but I think of consent as kind of enthusiastic and and really affirmative, and these women don't seem like they're they're into it, and I think there's a million reasons for that that we can talk about, but but I think that it's. I think I think we have a culture that is very misinformed about what consent really means and and that is that labels a lot of things consent that probably should be labeled something else, and I don't even know if we have the language for what it should be labeled.
Speaker 1:We might need a new word. We have consent and coercion. There are these two extremes on a continuum.
Speaker 2:Assault right and I don't think we would call this assault. Is it coercive? In some cases it's not, but these women don't really want it, but they're doing it anyway and I think that has a lot to do with the way we socialize girls and women and the way we culture sort of talks about sexual activity and what it is and the place it has in a relationship. So I just I was so excited by your research because it sent me in a million different directions in thinking about this and thinking about me as a sexuality educator and what you know. What can I do when I'm working with young people to create some foundation that maybe would help people not fall into this dynamic that that a lot of the women that you're, that you're interviewing have fallen into? I don't think I don't. I want to be clear. I don't think it's their fault, I don't think they're doing anything wrong, but I think that they don't have a conceptual model of relationship, sex and consent and sex that allows them to frame this in any way other than I consented.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. And you're saying we, we don't even have the language yet for maybe what this is.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Consent would be enthusiastic, and this is that Consent would be enthusiastic and affirmative and and, um, you know, I think I think for me, um, really healthy consent conveys, um a sense of, if not excitement then at least interest. And I think the thing that I saw, or the thing that as you were talking in the clip you sent me about your research, is that some of these women aren't even really interested in having sex, like, they're fine, they're okay with it, but they'd rather do something else. But, but for well, for whatever reason, they feel like they either can't or don't know how to, or or feel prohibited in some way from doing that, and it might be prohibited on the not not from their partner sense, but in their own sense. Like I don't know that I can really assert myself here.
Speaker 1:Right and I had that same feeling as I was reading through some of the qualitative statements. Some women, it was known their husband knew this was happening and there were other women who were actively concealing this.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Right, and so it was this internal pressure of I have to do this. And it wasn't always coming from the partner saying I need you to do this.
Speaker 2:Right, no, and that, and that jives with what we see with with young teenage girls when they're, when they're beginning their sexual lives, that a lot of them are, they're not having pressure from their partners but they don't really know how to say I'd like something different or, you know, is this the right time, or yeah? So I think there's, and I think that when they, when they have those early experiences of, you know, what I call non-consensual but not in the same way of assault or coercion sexual activity, that sets them up for when they get into relationships, just you know, acquiescing, for lack of a better word.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah, yeah, okay.
Speaker 1:Are you comfortable moving on to question two, or were there some more questions Okay?
Speaker 2:No, absolutely yeah.
Speaker 1:So you did mention culture.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:What culture is this? American culture? You know, you, you hold a really cool space in the Protestant or Quaker world. Is this a Christian thing? Is this a Protestant thing? Is this a U S thing? Is this a female thing? That you know. When you talk about culture, what were?
Speaker 2:you yeah. So I think like us to see it do that. I think certainly I don't think Quaker, but I think many Christian cultures have a very patriarchal view of relationships and sex and I think that makes it difficult.
Speaker 1:Quakers specifically are like non-hierarchical right Quakers are non-hierarchical we are.
Speaker 2:Equity and equality are two of our core testimonies. So I think what you would find in a Quaker theology of sex is something that looks much more egalitarian and really does give people permission to say what they want. Now, that doesn't mean that Quakers aren't influenced by all the other cultural aspects around them. So I don't think Quaker relationships are perfect by any means, but I do think that from a theological standpoint, they are much less likely to be hierarchical and patriarchal and sex negative. Also, I think a lot of Christianity my undergraduate degree is in theology and I spent my early life being Catholic and then became a Quaker and so I think that one of the things that led me to Quakerism was this sense of not only equity and justice around gender, but also this sense that sex was not anything inherently sinful or dirty or problematic and that it really is supposed to be this affirming life-giving, not in the reproduction way, but in the spirit way.
Speaker 2:Experience and you know, and that's the other sad thing about this is that it just seems like the sexual experiences that these couples are having isn't really, certainly for the women that you talk to, doesn't feel life-giving, doesn't feel spirit-affirming. Yeah, it feels necessary or obligatory or just expensive.
Speaker 1:And expending a cost.
Speaker 2:Yeah, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And certainly they're also getting some benefit from it, because they wouldn't do it if they weren't getting something out of it. But when you think about equity and like, what are we getting out of this experience, you know I'm not sure there's equity at all in what one partner is getting versus the other in that kind of experience.
Speaker 1:Cool language you're introducing here. That's coming from your cultural background of your Quakerism, and I'm hearing you say that in your view, it's probably multiculturalism, in that any culture that has a hierarchy you're going to see more of this. Is that kind of what I'm hearing you say yeah, we've got a lot of cultures with hierarchy and patriarchy.
Speaker 2:Right, and so it's intersectional right. So if you're female by biology or by identity, that's one culture. And then if you're American, and then if you're Christian, and then if you're, you know, whatever your political affiliations are, so it's it's they all. They all bump against and influence each other. And it might be interesting to see in your study, looking at some of the other cultural dimensions that these women are part of, and are there other aspects that actually make it more likely?
Speaker 2:they would acquiesce to this consensual but unwanted sexual contact. Consensual but unwanted sexual contact.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I was hoping for diversity in my research and it just ended up being really homogeneous, of course. So I'm like is this a white, middle-class Christian woman, western United States thing? I didn't intend that to be the population, but that's who? Self-selected? Sure, sure. But I like this idea that there's multicultural, that there can be a lot of influences, but if there's a hierarchy, that's going to have more of an influence than if one of the core values of that community was equity and egalitarianism.
Speaker 2:Sure, and there's also a difference between communities that say they value equality and what that looks like in practice. So I think it also. You know, there's a lot of communities that will talk about equality, but I do think in some of the more conservative Christian communities they specifically don't talk about that. They really do have very different places and for me the thing is is different, just different, or is different hierarchical Places? Where difference is hierarchical? That's where we see a lot of problematic outcomes. You know, when I'm talking to third graders and fourth graders about gender, we play a game where we I call it just different, or better or worse.
Speaker 2:It's like pairs of things, right. So like a penny and a quarter, are they just different or is one better than the other? You know a raincoat and umbrella, you know we can have preferences about things and we can see things as different, but the the problem, I think, comes from when we start imposing hierarchy on difference and difference means this is better and this is worse.
Speaker 2:So if in your relationship, men and women are different but men have more power than women, that's going to set about dynamic that much more leads to the kind of things you found than if it, if it, if different were, were not seen as hierarchical.
Speaker 1:That's helpful. That's helpful, okay. Third question Do you see within the you already said some of this within the quaker community or the larger protestant community, um factors of culture that might you know, protect or be protective of this?
Speaker 2:yeah, um, certainly, I think that I think, um, the way that a culture's fundamental assumptions about gender are really important and can be protective. I think that I don't know if this is a cultural factor, but I certainly think the level of sexuality education and the quality of sexuality education that people get at all ages and stages of their life can be protective. I think that the way we're taught how to communicate, you know, can be protective. So much of consent. Education is about giving people language to be able, giving them permission to say what they want and giving them language to express that what they want and what they don't want.
Speaker 1:Which I believe you correct me if I'm wrong which I believe in your community is a major pillar that people can say when they want to or don't want to like the way that even meetings are arranged right. Oh sure, yeah, yeah, this focus on communication skills and choice and when and what you want to share. Am I, am I? You're absolutely right.
Speaker 2:And the other thing I would say is that, especially in Quaker communities, the most fundamental assumption in in like if Quakers have a theology which is tough to say our core, our most core belief, is that every person contains the divine within them. So whenever we are interacting with another person, we are interacting with a person who has the divine, the divine light within them, so we have to treat them according to that and so that leads to According to that and so that leads to egalitarian, that leads to not being oppressive, that leads to valuing people simply for inherently because they are, not because of what they do or can provide of inherent goodness and inherent worth.
Speaker 2:especially when that comes theologically, that can be a really big protective factor. Yeah. Because somebody believes automatically that they're worth. They're worthy of love and belonging that's Brene Brown's word or they're worthy of being able to say no, or to say what they want and that what they want is important and that what they want is a result of their being in touch with you. Know some kind of higher, higher truth, higher core, higher being?
Speaker 1:And that may or may not branch into broader Protestantism, depending on the sects Right, and I think it does not.
Speaker 2:I think that most other mainstream Protestant sects would not. They would all say that that better than some other mainstream, especially fundamentalist Protestant.
Speaker 1:Well, I would agree. Okay, what about? You know you are an expert in sexual health education and you mentioned that as a protective. You know, depending on how much the community values education, that's going to influence this some too. Tell me some of the ways you see in your role as a sex educator. What's the solution to preventing this for people who are children now but will be adults later?
Speaker 2:Again. There's a wide variety of ways, but one of the things is and this is really hard helping kids begin to critically assess and question the water they swim in the societal messaging that they get on the daily. What are they seeing in the cartoons they watch? What are they seeing in the behaviors they see from the grownups around them? What are they seeing in the toy ads that come out around the holidays? Developing that awareness that we are constantly being offered messages about who we're supposed to be, how we're supposed to act, what we're supposed to do, and that we actually have choice over whether we want to accept those or push back against those. And to do that requires a lot of skill. So there's awareness and then there's skill, and I think part of what happens is a lot of sex. Ed works on the skill and never looks at the awareness.
Speaker 1:Oh, tell me a little bit more about that.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I think what often happens is, you know, we tell kids you have the right to say no to anything you don't want sexually, but we don't tell kids. But that goes against all the messaging that you're being sold every day, and so, without that piece, then you think well, I have the right to say no, but why is nobody listening to me, or why isn't that working? I must be doing it wrong.
Speaker 1:Why isn't it working? Yes.
Speaker 2:Right, and whereas if you say, oh okay, this isn't working, not because I'm doing something wrong, but because I'm pushing against something much bigger than just this person in front of me, who's who's wanting, and then you know how can we help young people talk to their partners, talk to their sweethearts, about this sort of larger awareness that we help them develop, because it's only with that, you know, it's the same way of, like, you know, being in a minority group, right?
Speaker 2:If you're a person of color, you have a keen awareness of how white culture works and you have to know that to be able to navigate. Well, if you're white, you don't have to have that, right, you navigate the world, you don't have to think about that. But the more awareness you have of that, the more you're able to become a better, you know, anti-racist, anti-bias ally. So the same thing. First, we have to get people to understand the message is impacting them and how it impacts them, and that's easier, like it's easier to get girls to see that than boys to see that in a very binary way of talking about it.
Speaker 2:But then what's hard is so you know, I can, I can get young women in my classes to see that they're being sold a bill of goods. But then what are you supposed to do with that? How do you? What do you do around that? And part of what you do is you have to make the other people see that as well, because once they see that, then they see oh wait, I actually might be hurting you and I don't. I don't want to do that.
Speaker 1:So like I wonder, I think that's really true here in this research, because even as it's become an idea I'll talk about with my clients, or that's starting to get talked about with other clients, I have this. I don't want to be too accusatory of the partner involved here, so so they're also operating from all the messages. They might not realize our entitlement messages, they might not realize our, and so I like how you pointed that out that we can't.
Speaker 2:In some of these situations there might not be a villain, so to say, or a perpetrator so to say, right know, just from from the research that you described, it doesn't, it doesn't feel coercive, it doesn't feel like there's a villain here.
Speaker 2:It feels like there's somebody asking for something, not realizing that their partner is not as into it, or or it they don't recognize the pressures that their partners are feeling to say yes, to acquiesce to this, that there's so much involved in in what seems like a simple question yes or no. But there's so much underneath that, and the more, the more the sort of majority or dominant culture can become aware of that, the more they can realize two things. One is that it's actually so from the guy's perspective. It's not my fault. I'm not a terrible person, I'm not a villain. I've been, as as what were, conditioned, programmed. You know, I've been as swept up in this as anybody else, and so the awareness is going to benefit me as well, because I become more free to be able not only to see things in my partner that I might not see, but I become able to see things that might allow me to decide what kind of person.
Speaker 2:I want to be you know, and I think that that's.
Speaker 2:but we have such fear about that, especially in today's political climate. There's such fear about expanding knowledge or opening eyes or, you know, doing some critical analysis of the society the way it is, and I think it's because too many people have a zero-sum mentality when it comes to this, like if you're going to get something, I'm going to lose something. But the goal is that we all have access to really good outcomes, whether it's sex or a relationship, or you know how to manage a home or how to raise kids. That what we're looking for are solutions that allow each of us to be our authentic selves, use our strengths whatever they are, and make the world better right um and I think, I think a lot of the guy.
Speaker 2:It would be interesting it's a whole different study but but to go back and talk to the partners of these women right and to really get a sense of what their understanding is. I think they would be. I think many of them would be really shocked, and some probably devastated, to learn that maybe they are inadvertently, you know, causing causing their partners to do things that they really don't want to do. Um you know, I, some people say I give people too much credit. But I, I, I don't think so I think.
Speaker 1:But that might be the world, you that might be the way you want to engage. Well, it's the way that I frame my life.
Speaker 2:I'm not afraid to look at it. Once you get over the fear of looking at it, then you realize oh, okay. It's not, you know it's not so bad. Yeah, there's a cost involved. You know knowledge always has cost. But and one of the things you have to give up is your, your sense of you know, being in control and being the top dog, and and there's a real sense of safety that comes with that. You know you feel more vulnerable.
Speaker 1:I appreciate it. Vulnerable is good. Yeah. So, as an educator, I like how you analyzed what needs to maybe some more emphasis in sex education, not just on the skills but on the awareness and in this, this K through 12 world of sex education. A lot of that is thinking about wait. Where'd that message come from? Am I aware of the influences that contribute to my decision making? And that I think you're right. Sometimes sex ed ends up sounding like the just say no to drugs campaign, which we know didn't work, you know, and, and it's like here's what you say when that happens. But then there's no follow-up of well, what do I do with my partners and like, oh, you're right, oh, thank you so much for being honest. Oh, absolutely, your body is your. You know. What do you do when then there, it doesn't work, it doesn't feel like it'll work, it'll feel like it'll backfire. Very cool. Okay, it doesn't work.
Speaker 1:It doesn't feel like it'll work. It'll feel like it'll backfire. Very cool, okay. What about for adults, who are just becoming aware of this?
Speaker 2:you can't go back and start from the beginning, right? You can't. You can't undo what's been done. You can't, you can't change the way you were brought up or what you internalized. So what is so? What is the first step you can take? You know what's, what is it? What's the goal that you want? You know what? What do you? What do you?
Speaker 2:if you can envision who you would like to be, or the conversation you would like to have with your partner. What's the first step to that? And then let's look at the next step to that. And that's also the way I talk to kids, you know, when we're talking about relationships, you know, like, when you imagine the kind of relationship you want to have, well, what are some early steps? That sort of get that set up, because you don't go right to the goal.
Speaker 2:It's a process and I think for adults the hard part is to realize that, whereas kids have the opportunity to sort of start that process earlier and avoid some of the mistakes and pitfalls that maybe adults have fallen into, we don't have that opportunity.
Speaker 2:We can start from now and move forward with the awareness that it wasn't as good as it could have been in the past, that maybe we hurt or were hurt by people, that maybe we, you know, did a lot of things we wish we didn't do, but all that's going to do is drag us down and keep us from being able to move forward. So, starting from now, looking ahead, what do I want? What's an initial step? And you know, and certainly, for I mean I don't do therapy, but certainly in the education that I do. You know you don't start with sex, start with something much easier, you know, like with relationships, you know. You know with kids you don't start with sex, you start with something much easier and then, and then you move up to that Um, because that that just feels too too big and too scary and too hard yeah, and I don't know why.
Speaker 1:the way you phrased it helped me see something in a different way as far as with couples and trying to bring awareness to this idea, casting the vision of sexual health being, instead of saying I want you to learn to be okay when I say no, which I think is maybe the goal is, but that's not the vision, the vision being let's build a sexual life together that's mutually enjoyable, non-exploitative. You know values, consent, that we value honesty, and so then, whenever the no comes up, going back to the vision of oh, you're right, we wanted an honest, mutually enjoyable, non exploitative relationship. This is part of that process. You just kind of helped me figure out how, for couples, you cast a vision that doesn't feel restrictive, shaming and controlling of the other partner.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, the way I frame it with teenagers is that you know when you're fighting with your sweetheart. You want the relationship to win. If either of you wins, you want the relationship to win. If either of you wins, probably the relationship doesn't win. So what's the solution? That allows this relationship that you've created together to win, to move forward and I think that's kind of what you're saying.
Speaker 2:there is like what, when couples think about that, oh what, what's the thing that's going to allow us to continue together happily and on this path? And sometimes that's going to take a lot of work and a lot of undoing and some couples are going to find that they actually don't have the same vision.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:And that's really hard.
Speaker 1:But, boy, it's better to know that than not know that yeah, I think that's some of the rock and hard place many of these women experience is, if I'm really honest here, this isn't working and that will affect my living situation, my access to financial resources, my access to my children. Yeah, you're right. And so then it's this huge, it becomes right, larger than do you want to have sex?
Speaker 2:yeah, and that pulls you back to the hierarchical stuff and the patriarchy and and all that. Sure. But I mean, who wouldn't say yes when all of that is on the line, whether you want to or not?
Speaker 2:who wouldn't say sure, whatever because, there's, it's, it's, it's so heavily weighted with so much other stuff. Yeah, and again, that's the awareness that that both parties in the relationship need to recognize. You know, and it can be easy for for you know, stereotypically for a man to say, oh look, oh look, really, this is just about like, right now, and do you want to have sex right now? This is not about like, am I going to support you tomorrow? Right but. But words don't hurt it, yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, I like that.
Speaker 1:Both people have to wake up to the system that they're in and in this situation, it might be the only the females we interviewed were open to the consequences of a no, and their partners might not have thought about that. Right. Okay, awesome, okay Question six do you see this as do you see these women as having low desire, low sexual desire, or do you see this as something different?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't see it as low sexual desire, I see it as something different. I see it as, um, uh, perhaps as a system that that sort of constructs sexual interactions and sexual models in a way that doesn't fairly reflect the reality that many women are in when it comes to these consent situations.
Speaker 2:So they come out looking like they have low desire when when they may not. It's just that the weight of all this other stuff makes it hard to relax, right? So, like what? What allows sexual desire to flow freely to? To what allows us to really respond to sexual desire and to feel it right.
Speaker 1:There's got to be a sense of freedom.
Speaker 2:There's got to be a sense of there's going to be a good outcome for me. There's got to be a sense of there's going to be a good outcome for me.
Speaker 2:There's got to be a sense of my pleasure and desires matter, you know, and I think that when those conditions aren't there, it's not fair to then say, well, you have low desire? No, I don't. I don't have the conditions that allow my desire to be respected and to be actualized. You know now, of course, and also just from my perspective as a sex educator, like people have really different levels of desire, and part of the other problem is there's this expectation that we're all going to be horny all the time for everybody, and that's just not the way we work, and you know. So if a relationship moves to a place where the people in.
Speaker 2:It are fine with it becoming far less sexual and more affectionate. Well then then you know, I guess that has to be okay.
Speaker 1:Right, that's gonna be fine, there's nothing wrong with that, um, but again, it's that communication and it's that, it's that mutual understanding I mean I agree, and I find it difficult as a therapist because I think too often we're having this conversation about low desire and not the conversation about the conditions necessary for desire, right.
Speaker 1:And so then, you know, I get a woman in my office who said my husband says I have to come and we're trying to fix. You know, we're looking at it through like an individual diagnosis lens, which I don't think it is. I think it's a context, a dynamic, a conditions, uh, what they've created together as their norms and their roles in there, right, but we don't. But we're then just like selling books about desire and doing desire interventions and I'm like I don't know if that's going to work for that.
Speaker 2:You don't frame it that way. Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, I'm totally in agreement with you. Yeah, so I think, in some ways it's just, you know, when we, when we classify these women as having low desire or having some kind of disorder of desire, and we're, we're moving in exactly the opposite direction of where we want to go, we're, um, we're pathologizing women for responding to this. This, um, sort of arcade game they've been put into and where the rules aren't fair yeah and so they're recognizing that and they don't want to, they don't want to play the game.
Speaker 2:Well, nobody says, well, wait, the problem is the game yeah, player so why do we want to play this game?
Speaker 2:right, whether that game is the relationship or whether that game is something larger. Um, if it just comes down to well, you're a bad player and you never have to think about the game or the other or the other people in the game. It, you know, it takes what it, as you said, it takes this. This is really a communal issue or problem or situation, and we, our tendency is to reduce it to. You have a problem, right, you know, which happens all the time and is really unfair.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and and that might come through some of our U S values of individualism instead of collectivism, right Yep.
Speaker 2:Yep, but that also be useful in terms of when I've talked to some young women about you know how unfair some of these situations are. They then get angry and empowered as opposed to feeling defeated, and empowered as opposed to feeling defeated. So you know, for some people, that awareness of the game, for some people it makes them feel like, well, I can't win anyway, so what the hell? But there are some people who feel like, wow, it's not my fault, there's something bigger going on here and I don't want that. I want to. You know, there is something I can do and it's not just about fixing me Like, yeah, there are certain things I can, I can, I can develop my skills and I can work on, but but it, the whole thing is not just housed in me.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, it's a heavy burden. I've seen a lot of relief. I've gotten a lot of emails from women that are speaking of the relief when they realized I might not be broken. It might be the system that we're operating in that's broken. Yeah, yeah yeah all right. So our last question what was the what, what were some of your thoughts that I didn't ask about, just like this op-ed commentary, because you could have seen something that I didn't see, so I didn't ask a question about it.
Speaker 2:How difficult we've made it we, the larger, we, the societal we, to do this very natural thing, which is to love each other and to like we are we're. We're made for connection, we're made to come together, we're made to cooperate. We're wired that way. We need it, we're, we're, we're, we're social animals. You know, it really does take a village, it's, it's better for us to be in community. And yet there are all these ways where we, we stop that or block that or or push against that, um, and it's bad for all of us, but but there's a larger system that says that's not what really matters, right and you know again this individualism, this, this, um exceptionalism, this.
Speaker 2:I'm gonna come out on top um this. Competitive, you know, competition versus cooperation um uh that, when you look at so many of our systems, uh, it's not a surprise that we're so screwed up in so many ways when it comes especially to sex and relationships, and every generation wants to do better by their kids, but unless that generation becomes more aware of the systems, that are surrounding them and their kids.
Speaker 2:We're just going to wind up repeating the same pattern. We're just going to keep giving people the same, you know, inadequate set of skills or inadequate information and then say, gee, that didn't, why didn't that work? So in some ways it in some ways it did really make me sad because I thought, oh, we really haven't like come as far as I as I I hope we have.
Speaker 2:But on the other hand, you know, we this may sound much more haughty than I mean it, but like we kind of know what the solution is and it's just about getting people to hear it and to believe it. I mean, I've, I've worked at a school for 30 years as the sex educator and the, the, the the sort of progress I have made is so tiny compared to what I really had hoped we could do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you know, but it's progress, right it's it is progress and I hear what you're saying when it's making me think about is in the research for this dissertation. You know how many years have we spent on consent and affirmative consent in colleges and we still. There was a statistic that 90% of college age girls give consent by saying nothing, and I was like oh my gosh, how many millions of dollars have we spent and we only have 10% of women in college age. You know, using verbal consent instead of just saying nothing.
Speaker 1:Yeah that we've had the effort, a lot of effort, but we're seeing change happen really slowly.
Speaker 2:Right right. And part of that is because we insist on the focus of lessons being on teaching women how to not get raped versus teaching men not to rape.
Speaker 1:Right yeah.
Speaker 2:Putting the efforts and, quite frankly, the efforts go where. You know this is a little Machiavellian, but the efforts go where the system lets it go right.
Speaker 2:And pushes it away from where it really might affect and impact change. Because there's a lot of people who like the system the way it is and are getting great benefit from it. And so that's why, for me, you know, when I think about the, the, the global situation and the national situation and all that, my response, response to that scariness and you know, is to get smaller right. So how do I, how do I get, you know, my school community a little better informed about this right? And then it's. It's because the solution has to be bottom up. It's never going to work top down.
Speaker 2:So what are we doing to? What are we doing with the connections that we have? I mean, that's why I, that's why I love therapy and I love therapists, because the benefit that I've had from therapy in my whole life is somebody who's been helping me get aware about myself and about larger systems and who's not trying to fix the world, he's trying to help me figure out strategies that then I can take, and you know, each one teach one. Um, so I, I, we make progress, um, but yeah, our big programs don't, they don't do it.
Speaker 1:Um, it's the, it's the what's it like, as an educator, to say that, that our big programs don't oh, it's I mean.
Speaker 2:Well, if you've been in education for a long time, like I have, you know that.
Speaker 2:So that's, just an act of your life, and your life is constantly figuring out. How do I keep doing it despite that? You've got to have ways to feel like you are effective enough or that you are affecting change in some way. And for me, that's just the number of students who talk to me years after they've graduated to say I still remember this conversation or this really affected the way I am in relationships and it's not every kid by far, but it's enough that tells me. You know, if I hadn't done this work, we wouldn't be that far.
Speaker 2:So, you know, I think it's a game of inches.
Speaker 1:Yeah, a game of inches, and I hadn't necessarily thought about it that way, that the top down is not going to work, and I thought, well, it should. And then I'm like that's the water I swim in, that's the hierarchy.
Speaker 1:I like everything has this big umbrella and then it filters I mean even top down economics or even like top down power, and so it was funny. Even as you said that, I was like, but it's supposed to work, because that's the way. Instead of the conditioning of it really is bottom up is what's going to be influential.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, so you know, I think that I think that the the the work that you've you've begun with this dissertation is is creating this great opportunity to then for those women in the study to go back and create opportunities for them, to, for their partners to like see what's happening, to affect some, you know, to maybe affect some change there, and then they figure something out that they share with their friends and family. And then you know and I don't you know, who knows, whenever we're going to get lucky and influence somebody who's going to become one of the big, powerful people in the system who might have enough resilience, to get there and still be able to push back and, and you know, really try to change things.
Speaker 2:Um, you know, I have to hold out hope that that's at least possible. Um, I don't know if it's likely, but it's possible. It's possible. There's reason to get up in the morning and keep, keep doing it. Yeah, yeah, there's reason to get up in the morning and keep doing it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, this was helpful. I really appreciate your lens, your expertise. You have, like I said, your foot in so many cool communities and I appreciate it. I just want I don't want to operate in an echo chamber, I don't want to write a book from an echo chamber especially. So I really appreciate you being willing to say, hey, I don't even know you, but I'm willing to have a conversation with you. I appreciate it so much.
Speaker 2:It's my pleasure. I think you're doing great work and I really am. I'm really inspired by the questions you're asking and and yeah, and I thought, I thought maybe I have something to contribute that could be useful, so I'm glad it was yeah, thank you I really appreciate it. Always happy to talk more. Yeah, anytime.
Speaker 1:Okay, I hope you have a good day.
Speaker 2:Thanks, kimmy, you too Take care, bye-bye, bye-bye.