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
Consenting to Unwanted Sex in BIPOC Culture with Anne Mauro
The shadow of colonial history still haunts our bedrooms. Sex therapist Anne Mauro reveals how historical trauma and cultural messaging create a perfect storm pushing women to consent to sex they don't truly desire.
Drawing from her extensive clinical experience, Mauro unpacks the complex intersection of race and sexuality—what she terms "ethno-sexuality"—with remarkable clarity. She traces how patriarchal family structures imposed during colonization continue shaping intimate relationships today, particularly within Black communities where "Christian supremacy" often reinforces female sexual subservience.
Perhaps most alarming is Mauro's revelation about media influence: "Sex education was the primary reason BIPOC teenagers viewed pornography." This default education source consistently portrays Black bodies with more aggression and less intimacy than white counterparts. When combined with societal silence around sexuality—"We're not talking to our children, we're not talking to our parents"—these harmful representations become the only script many young people know.
For therapists and couples alike, Mauro offers powerful somatic approaches to healing. She demonstrates how unwanted touch creates physical protective responses, teaching partners to recognize these bodily signals as important boundaries rather than obstacles. Through careful attunement and challenging colonial narratives, couples can rediscover mutual desire.
The conversation takes a hopeful turn as Mauro describes a growing cohort of Black clinicians developing culturally-specific interventions. Rather than adapting "white models to Black folks," these pioneers are creating new pathways to sexual healing that honor the unique experiences of Black communities.
Anne Mauro is a Licensed Couples and Family therapist, American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors, and Therapist (AASECT) certified sex therapist, sexuality educator, sex therapy supervisor, and American Association of Marriage and Family Therapy (AAMFT) clinical supervisor. Her private practice is nestled in the interwebs on the unceded territory of the Coast Salish peoples in Washington State. She has two publications: More Than Ebony and Ivory: Complexities of sex therapy with interracial couples, can be found in An Intersectional Approach to Sex Therapy: Centering the lives of indigenous, racialized, and people of color and The Colonization of Black Sexualities: A clinical guide to relearning and healing. Anne is in continued service to the sexuality community by serving as the AASECT Western Representative to the nominating committee.
Hi 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. I haven't disappeared. I've been working on some projects that are really meaningful to me, 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 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.
Cami:So, with no ado, here we go. This is going to be the intro for the whole series. Now I'll give you a little bit of a bio for each and then we'll jump into the recording of the interview. I hope you enjoyed this interview with Ann Morrow as much as I did. She is a licensed marriage and family therapist, a certified sex therapist through ASECT, as well as a clinical supervisor. She has a lot of training and she has a lot of expertise and experience. She has a private practice based out of Washington State and she has two publications that I want to highlight. One is called More Than Ebony and Ivory, and another called Centering the Lives of Indigenous, racialized and People of Color in the Colonization of Black Sexualities. This is a clinical guide to relearning and healing and is a continued service to the sexuality community by serving as the ASEC Western representative, which is fantastic. I really hope you enjoy this conversation with that I had with Anne.
Anne:Hi, anne, hi, how's it going Good, can you see and hear me?
Cami:okay, I can Same for you, yes, so I'm really, I'm really grateful that you're willing to have this conversation, and it's really generous. I appreciate your time and your expertise and just the place you hold in the world right now. So thank you.
Anne:Well, thank you for actually doing this work, because this is really a pocket that I haven't seen really talked about so much, and so I'm glad that you did that research, that you're continuing on with it with the book, and then especially grateful that you're looking at other populations right, because you noticed that some people just kind of run with that and publish, but that you're doing something. I appreciate that.
Cami:Trying to trying to. So thank you for taking the time to watch the video and learn about my research and with your lens, because you're an expert in the world of sexuality and relationships and you saw that research. What did you see happening Like? How did you interpret those results?
Anne:Or that idea. Well, I'm interpreting it as the, the unknown or unspoken variable. That's probably in a lot of our work that you're actually surfacing and giving language to, and giving experience to that people can resonate with and be like oh yeah, right, that is what I'm doing, right, I don't really want to be having sex when I'm doing it and then I feel'm doing right, I don't really want to be having sex when I'm doing it and then I feel this feeling right, but I don't think that people have language around that experience.
Cami:I like the language you just gave me of this is one of an unknown variable, like we can, there's a dozen roads that lead to I don't know if I want to have sex right, and this is putting a name to one of those variables that we don't talk about. I appreciate that. That was, that was nice language, and so then, if we're taking a cultural lens someone who you know comes from the Black community, works with Black community researches rights like this is this intersection of sexuality? This intersection of sexuality? What are some aspects, historically or even current, you know, of Black community culture that might keep women consenting to sex they don't want?
Anne:I think that's a really good question and I have a couple of different thoughts, but the major backdrop of what I think of as modern day American sexuality is under the umbrella of still these colonial ideas of sexuality. Think about how we are mimicking the nuclear family structure that was imposed upon people in our area, the indigenous native people, by the English settlers, who really mimicked a family structure under a common law somebody who is in power, a male right who is in power to tend and care for the wife and children, just like the state where the king was to tend to the people as the husband is to care for the wife and the children. So putting this man into this position of power, I think is the backdrop of all of what we're seeing right. And then, if we take that lens of that colonial ideology and how historically people of color, black people, have been treated in the realm of sexuality, where they had no autonomy over reproduction right, they didn't have a way to consent to sexual activity, I think that we have to use that as a backdrop when we're thinking about this, of where we come from historically, with the patriarchy, with the race, with the anti-Blackness, with the misogynoir right.
Anne:Yeah, it's all embedded into the structure. That's baseline. That's baseline, yeah, that's the baseline, part of it, yeah, so I like what you're you're bringing into. We can bring in these concepts of patriarchy into all parts of this research, right, but when we're looking at the black community, it's especially different due to, um, the american descendants of slavery, right, yeah, but also when teasing apart, like, what is Blackness in this study? Right, that's a really big, also umbrella, term, sure, so have you heard the term ethno-sexuality before? No, teach me, it's just the intersection between race and sex, right?
Cami:Okay, I think I just used the whole phrase. We've got a term. Okay, thank you yeah.
Anne:So when we're looking at blackness and sexuality, I think we also can dig a little bit deeper in. Are they American descendants of slavery? Are they Afro-Latinx, are they Afro-Caribbean, are they biracial black people? Because I think too, inside of that, when we start to dig through different messaging that different groups of people are getting, we're going to see different subsets within the black community absolutely, absolutely right that are going to contribute to why we've been able to kind of perpetuate this consensual, unwanted sexual activity, right, because of different messages that come from the different subsets of people. So, again, with that historical component, women have not been in a position where they can speak for their own wants and desires, right, there's a real selflessness that comes under that right. And depending on what pocket of Black folks we're talking about, but Christian supremacy reigns superior within the Black community, right, and so, thinking about how that mimics in the family structure, that colonial idea of the man is on top right and we are subservient to whatever desires that they have and we need to be obedient to this person at the sacrifice of ourselves, no matter what that looks like. And you know, also, culturally speaking, I don't think that we're talking a lot about sex presently or historically, it's not within, you know, community. We're not talking about sex in church unless it's like premarital counseling, it might come in. We're not talking to our children, we're not talking to our parents. So there's this hush around sexuality, knowing that there's some kind of dominance and control happening, but we're not actually in a place to have language or talk about it within the communities.
Anne:So then I have another one. I think mass media contributes to everybody, right, like not just the Black folks. When we think about how the media really impacts us through social learning, right, we are learning all kinds of implicit messages on how to treat each other. We're learning, and also it's a good reminder to say, historically and majority, now, present day, all of the people that are in charge of the media are white, cis men, and how they want to portray black bodies in in films. They might say, oh, this is a black film, but you think who's the writer in films? They might say, oh, this is a Black film, but you think who's the writer, who's the producer of this? Right, and a lot of times you will find that there's white people behind creating the narratives around sexuality. So that's like with just the general media, right, it's not a very good model for us in thinking about consent and boundaries or putting women in positions of sexual empowerment to make their own sexual decisions. It's just, it's really not. I'm like they just had a consent conversation before they, you know, did anything. I'm loving how they're starting to implement it, but depending on your age, you can really see how the media, you know, has impacted your ideas around boundaries, consent, autonomy over your body. So that's the media part.
Anne:And if we trickle down to erotica or pornography, as a lot of people say, I don't think people really are grounded in the fact that I have a stat here it says sex education was the primary reason that BIPOC teenagers and young adults viewed pornography. This is coming from Caroline West. She's out here in Tacoma, washington. She came from UW. The main reason BIPOC teenagers are watching pornography is for sex education. They want the education, they want the education, education, they want the education, they want the education.
Anne:But unfortunately, what they're seeing again is white cis males who are funding producing, directing, and we know that for that, black, latina and Asian women have a higher likelihood of being featured in physical aggression more than their white counterparts, right, and so there's this implicit.
Anne:I feel like it's a holdover from the colonial days that we can treat Black and brown women a certain way. It may not, like we talked about earlier, be in that cognitive, you know, forefront of the mind. There's like these implicit messages that are just so insidious in our culture that we adopt that as a learning theory. Even if you're like I'm not racist, we have our biases that we are actually gaining from what we're watching all the time, and so also in pornography. Bipoc men were disproportionately depicted as the aggressors in pornography, right, and so if you're learning, then you're learning that I need to be the aggressor, I need to level up and demonstrate what I'm seeing, to be a good lover or to be good in bed. And the problem too with this is that what you're missing in the pornography is those consent conversations that might happen before or the aftercare that happens after. We're only getting that aggressive piece of pornography without any context.
Cami:And no range of expression without any context and no range of expression. It sounds like you know real. Yes, just staying on the aggressive without saying a whole range of sexual expression that might not include aggression.
Anne:Right, and on that, here's another one that Wes comes up with. She says that, compared to white couples, Black women, Black men and women demonstrated less intimacy in pornography, defined as kissing using the other person's name, caressing, having intercourse face-to-face and talking to each other during sex. So we're creating a whole population of kiddos coming up underneath us, getting their education, viewing this and learning that, right, this is how you do sex, right, In this aggressive way, in this taking what you want, and there's a lack of intimacy when it comes to the Black body part, Right? So what I think is it's normalizing a certain kind of violence or another type of patriarchal rule over the female body, with these implicit messages of taking and violence and consent doesn't matter, boundaries don't matter aggression. You know all of that is just kind of interwoven into the pornography. And then when we step outside of porn and look at just real life, we know that for every black woman that reports a rape, there's 15. That don't. Is that the statistic?
Cami:I think I've only heard the general. I don't think I've heard it broken down by demographic.
Anne:Right, it's like the one in three or whatever, but that's staggering this violence because we're not talking about it, right, we don't feel safe to go to the law, we don't feel safe to tell our friend, hey, this thing happened. And then we don't have common knowledge, where a friend turns and says, hey, that's not okay. Right, because sometimes we're actually normalizing, um the behavior. Oh, just just give him what he wants, just, do you know, keep having sex and make him happy, right? Instead of the other person turning and saying, hey, this actually isn't right and let's talk about you know how we can make this better for you. We put women in a position to suffer, have been raped, but two out of five have been survivors of some sort of physical violence, sexual violence or a rape. So those are the numbers. Again, just normalizing this bottom-down position, this sexual subservient space that Black bodies are supposed to be in, does that make sense?
Cami:Yeah, yeah, and and it's not the thing that's standing out to me is it's not staying a historical idea because of where education is coming from and that entertainment being produced to consume. It's not going to like age out this, these ideas, right, it's not like they're going to age out with the next generation because they're being promoted, not at the rate that we are right now.
Anne:Right, it would take some pretty big, drastic changes, I think, for it to improve. When this is the only place that they are getting education and when we think about right now, there's threats to sex education being in curriculum, there's threats to critical race theory being in curriculum, and we see already from this talk today is that there's a direct link in between what has happened historically and where we are here now with this sexuality, but that being omitted from education is omitted from common knowledge, right, and so it's almost this gaslighting effect if you can recognize that the harm is being done.
Cami:Yeah, that's fantastic. I mean, it's not fantastic that it's happening, but thank you for teaching me because it's fantastic that we can open our eyes a little bit at a time, more and more and more, to see the systemic things that keep churning dynamics that are not helpful for any of us, not healthy. Would you have additional thoughts before I go to the next one?
Cami:I don't want to rush you on that one okay, what about, then, certain aspects of you know community values, norms, beliefs that might protect or might, you know, challenge the idea and might help women to not consent?
Anne:Yeah, the first thing that I thought of when I read that was the Me Too movement.
Anne:Right, because it's a matriarchal, it's women led by Black women, you know, originating for Black voices and other AFAB bodies.
Anne:But if you look at it it looks more around like sexual assault, right, that sexual trauma, and not so much what that I'm going to call it a trauma, what that trauma is within intimate relationships, that you're committed relationship when that's happening, right? So that's why, again, I'm not hearing anybody talking about that piece, but I felt like that movement, something where we could have recognition from other Black women or women of color talking to women of color about what is being seen like your work, right, with a black lens put on it, being delivered to the black community so we can have it as a common knowledge and shared language. I think would be really, really helpful. I can't change this but new media resources, for example, because, like I said, in the 80s is when I grew up and you would have a woman who would say no and the guy would be like yes and she'd be like no and even slap him, and then all of a sudden they're kissing, making out and having and it's really confusing, messaging, but right, it's like your.
Cami:No doesn't actually matter, but my name is part of the game or part of the chase, or part of the yeah, yeah so watching films with my um kiddo who's 11, she's loves heartstopper right now.
Anne:Have you seen heartstopper? Okay, so it's, it's queer, but they have one black trans girl on there who starts her dating journey and in that she's able to really articulate. You get to see what comes up for her in sexual scenarios, somatically. You see her then communicate to her partner about what is going on and then you see him holding any kind of boundaries and asking for consent to do anything past or even adjacent to something she may have mentioned that was uncomfortable for her. That didn't happen when I was a kiddo, no, no.
Anne:So if we could have more people making films like this, right, cause if they're getting it from porn, they're getting it from TV. They're not getting it from their parents, they're not getting it from their church, right? So if this is what they're actually getting and learning about relationship, then we have to switch mass media and how we're looking at sex. That's not perpetuating the harm.
Anne:Yeah, I think too that women gaining access to leadership roles, opportunities within even sports, right, sports is very patriarchal, right. They let us have a couple things right, but not even all sports right. And then they'll let us have a sport, but they don't put us on primetime TV, right? You might not even get the channel that plays your niece who's playing professional basketball. It'll be really hard to actually watch her, unless you buy that extra package for women's sports, right? Oh yeah, we have so many different Fox or not Fox Sports, but we have so many different sports channels that are just carved out for men's sports, right? Whippy Goldberg, of all people, is now opening her own channel that will only be showing women's sports on that channel 24-7.
Anne:It's that kind of visibility, right, putting us in positions where we can be strong, we can be empowered, we don't have to be subservient, we are equal to, but we get mixed messages when we can't really be at the same level. There's always a hierarchy over. So I feel like when we can start moving into these different positions of power that can be seen by younger people, then that can build some of that sexual self-esteem, because it's not being modeled that you're subservient. Does that make sense?
Cami:Yeah, and I'm hearing you say what might have to happen before just these sexual assertiveness skills is developing them in all areas of our life so that it's it's natural, it's common sense, it's. This is how I live my life. It's like rejecting the subservient nature in in all areas will probably make it easier than to reject subservientness in a sexual context. Instead of my lens, you know, instead of just looking at it so narrow, of how do we empower women to say what they want sexually, why would they sexually if they couldn't professionally, or that's what I'm hearing you say. Those are that where my, where my mind's going from what you're teaching me, you know, yeah.
Anne:Yeah, and another thing I think about is when working with kiddos and sex ed right, like a lot of people are like how do we help kiddos like use the right language and do all this? And it's like, yeah, but what happens if this kiddo that you just did brilliant sex ed work goes home and tells her mom, oh, it's not a vagina, it's a vulva. And her mom clutches her pearls and like, right, you're putting her again into, like this gas lighting chamber right when I'm learning something about myself. But then you're setting me back into this dysfunctional way of thinking about sex and bodies. And how do I exist in that world when the world is telling me it's one way, but maybe I learned something else. So maybe if you do it on an individual level, they're still in that insidious nature of all these messages, saying something different. Yeah, because it's the backdrop Not to be a Debbie Downer.
Cami:They're serious subjects.
Anne:Right.
Cami:They feel like Downers.
Anne:Often they do they do when this comes to like the Black population specifically is we don't really have models of people talking about ethno sexuality in sitcoms or in movies in a healthy way Right, we hear jokes, we get teased, we have microaggressions, right, but we're not getting those lessons built into the media. So I think psychoeducation is super important, right, I keep talking about even having that language, right, even explaining somatically what happens to your body when you're uncomfortable with something. I think is is really, is really big. And I think, in teaching the black community about it, I thought about doing it with, like, stories or examples, right, bringing in something that they can resonate. Instead of this fact is this fact. It's like, no, let's do some storytelling around it so we can personalize it and have some empathy and you know, and kind of feel that validating like, oh yeah, right, we need to feel that story rather than given the facts is what I also feel and which I feel like media could do so much with, since they're the storytellers, they're narrating our era.
Anne:I think another piece that is really big is just normalizing and validating that there has been either sexual boundary crossing or having sex when you didn't want to, and that that can make you feel away Right. I don't think we sit long enough to be like, wow, you know what I mean. You did something that didn't feel good to your body and that makes sense. I understand why that wouldn't feel like even sitting in that, because it's that gaslighting again like, oh, just give him what he wants. Oh, just, you know, maybe open your relationship so you don't have to be the one responsible. And so, eventually sitting in that feeling of what it has been like for the last 10 years and then to just now have your eyes open to this is what was happening for the last 10 years. You didn't know it, your body knew it, but your cognitions didn't know it.
Anne:The other piece that I'll add into this, which will be the last piece, is actually that communication skills building, teaching people how to communicate those things, because we don't have the language around it. We don't know how to language. A lot of AFAB folks can't One. If you ask like, what do you want, want, what do you desire, they can't drum that up from within themselves, right, and then when we get, to the spot.
Cami:Yes, okay, you got it. Go. That's where it was that we, we pedestalize the sacrifice and say, no, that makes you good. And then women saying, but why don't I feel good right after, after I'm subservient sexually like it's supposed to be good, it's supposed to be what's praised in this patriarchal structure, and depending on how much influence there is from family or church, then and then that, conflicting with what you just said, of listening to your feelings, but why don't I feel good? You know into your body that retrospective we don't stop. That was the thought.
Anne:It's hard for folks to kind of feel that for themselves. But then if they get to a spot where they can say I really, I really don't want to have sex after you know, we were at the Mariner game for 10 hours, right, and coming home, right, if they can actually one figure that out for themselves, right. And then the other hard part is how do I actually tell my partner this without him? I think one of your vignettes was like the husband maybe had a hissy fit or acted, you know, like a baby or you know what I mean. Like how do we communicate in a way that's going to be receptive, that our partner hears and has empathy for, rather than again belittles us or gives us, you know, a pout or whatever it is to make us feel guilty for actually standing up for what we want for ourselves in our body?
Anne:Big missing chunk. How do we communicate that?
Cami:Absolutely, and no modeling for the other partner of how to receive that. Thank you so much for being honest to me. I want our sexual relationship to be mutually enjoyable. I'm so glad you trust me with that. I'm sure that's hard to say.
Anne:I know you don't want to disappoint me.
Cami:You know those kinds of things, nobody's modeling, accepting a no graciously, without creating distance, you know.
Anne:It's like they're, they're activated sometimes in their own resent or rejection, right? This rejection sensitivity of sometimes some people feel like they're owed, that like we're in a partnership you owe this to me, we're married, you owe this to me, right? So again, with psychoeducation, that relationship mean ownership ownership.
Cami:Did you coin that phrase? That was beautiful. You're really great with language, I'm glad.
Anne:Okay, we, we need to make a t-shirt, and I already forgot what I said.
Cami:You have a background like I do in marriage and family therapy. We're both AAMFT supervisor. I mean, that's kind of our world is a systemic lens. If this couple lands on your couch, what do you see is going to be helpful for them? You've already described some of it. But you've got, you know, the man obviously hurting the woman, obviously avoidant and anxious, and sex hasn't been going well for years. And you're like start to realize, oh, you've been consenting to quite a bit of sex that you don't want. That probably isn't helpful for your desire. What do you do with your training, your lens? Where are you going to go?
Anne:I think probably in my early assessment pieces I might be able to pull out some of those insidious messages, right, or at least you know, even from looking at when this person was born and what media they were exposed to, right, because I really like to just drop that seed with folks. So maybe you don't know how media or porn has impacted your relationship that you have right now, but I want you, now that I'm talking about it, to just start paying attention. Let's start seeing what models, what possibility models you're seeing around sexuality, right, and then that kind of creates some openness for them to pay attention to how they've been socialized around sex with that media piece. So I feel like just a little psychoeducation of that social learning, how some of the things I've told you about how the media is controlled and how they talk about relationships, let's just kind of set that, drop a little seed, set that down, let them resonate in that for a little while while we continue to do this work. And then, you know, coming from like a trauma-informed lens, one of the first stops I think I would be at is looking at somatic attunement. Does the partner, right, know what's going on with their body? Can they identify, sometimes, just for simplicity's sake, in the beginning of therapy, I draw a thermometer and I have that green, that yellow, maybe burnt orange and red and we're just getting to know, you know those different states that our body can be in, and I have them checking in, check in every once in a while and see what's going on and tell me you know how. Where are you normally writing? At Right, and when you all are spending time together, where are you writing at? So that's like that individual attunement.
Anne:And then I bring in this other piece when we start talking about sex is what is the partner noticing? And then I bring in this other piece when we start talking about sex is what is the partner noticing? Are you noticing that she is not into it, or are you just like going in and having a good time and have no idea what this person's experience is? And then, if you are noticing, what are you noticing? Well, I noticed that she tenses up like this. I noticed that a vein happens like this. I noticed that she won't look at me. Right, there's different cues. Ok, so you saw that cue. Then what are you doing with that cue?
Anne:Some people like I just try to get done and finish, or I stop Right and then, and so just having that understanding of what's going on in my own body, body, what am I visually seeing happening in my partner? And hopefully sometimes that even brings empathy right, if you see it. And then maybe you haven't been saying for a long time oh, I see her even have a tear come down. She says everything's fine and to keep going, but there's this tear going down and I'm trying to keep going, right, and it's just kind of getting an idea into the actual cycle. I need to know is there awareness? Is there no awareness at all with the partner having sex with your body when you're not really into it? Yeah, and then kind of working from that little point right there and those are conversations.
Cami:Maybe they've never had of analyzing the script of their normal sexual encounter, right, because we're not talking about at home, not going to be at a church, not talking about at school, when we go to the therapy office, I have to think for the first time what I do that and then they do that, and then I and I feel like this and they feel like like that's huge.
Anne:It's so new to slow that down and really think about it slow that down and really think about it, yeah, and so what I try to have clients do is to stay within that window of tolerance, right? So if we feel ourselves creeping up into that that yellow part, we have to do, we have to do an intervention on ourselves. We have to make sure that we, if we're going to you know, use this is the brain, right. I tell them you can't make sexual decisions when you're activated, so we need to make sure, before you creep up into activation mode, that you can slow down, do your, you know whatever it is that you do, your breathing, because when we can slow that down, then you can have discernment. If you have to slow down, have discernment. Do I want to do this, yes or no? And if it's no, then we know that you're hiking up again into a different color and we need to stay within our window of tolerance.
Cami:I love how you phrase that, because I've worked with couples before who said, well, she calms down and so we can go again. And you're like no, we calm down so we can have discernment, so we can keep going. We need to have a conversation, you know, we need to have some our, our, we need to. I love just how you use that discernment, but that's why we're calming down, Not so we can keep going without her having a panic attack or whatever the thing is.
Anne:Yeah, discernment, and then we'll follow it up with consent. We're waiting for that enthusiastic yes, I want to continue, not, yeah, okay, my nervous system calmed down enough for you to continue to do that thing. That makes me uncomfortable again, yeah, so the other thing I'll do too is I'll take my vulva puppet and with that trauma, you know idea, and I give some psycho education around. Um, literally, you know, I, I, I try to do this as tender as I can, but, um, the way like a medical field would think about sex, right, like is, uh, is an actual trauma. This isn't a trauma, right. Even just hitting it around can is a is an actual trauma. This isn't a trauma, right. Even just hitting it around can is a. What in the medical field, is a trauma.
Anne:And so when you have that trauma, your body, uh, starts to protect you from that trauma. So, right, I show my mobile pillow right. And then, when you're trying to get in there, it's just like this, this tightness, right. And so we, if there's ever this tightness, then we're not having sex. That's not what we're doing. We come up with a list of how are we going to co-regulate or is it just individual regulation that we need? But what are we going to do? Right? Because all you're doing is telling your body that when this starts to happen, then we got to do this Right, and so explain to them that trauma response and then, like that, opening up like a flower, if it's a yes, then you want them breathing into your body, relaxing your body because of that brain body connection Right.
Anne:And so your body might be telling your brain we need to freak out, or your brain's telling your body you got to freak out. We have to be in that green and open. If that's what we want to be doing, and if you see, if it's the partner, if you see your partner doing this, this isn't the time to even try to do that. Right, it's, it's the locked door. Now we need the open door right, right.
Cami:I've never seen someone use their vulva pillow that way. It was fantastic to see you represent, like what happens with vaginismus, but also just the clench response. We don't have to have vaginismus to uh brace down to protect ourselves. That's just so instinctual to brace down, you know, and not conducive at all to consensual, mutually enjoyable sex you're just kind of perpetuating at least that somatic experience, even when maybe no threat is there.
Anne:How can we say yes and be enthusiastic when our body keeps on doing that, because that's what we've continued to let happen for the last 10 years in the relationship?
Cami:and we frame it as something going wrong. But I'm hearing you say this is something going right. This is what happens when there's a danger. This is what our body is designed to do to help us, and so we have to work with that idea of needing safety for it to open up, instead of just thinking there's something going wrong. Just muscle through, just you know.
Anne:Yeah, yeah. Well, that's my buy-in of why you don't muscle through is because you're just perpetuating that tension when we really need relaxation.
Cami:Absolutely.
Anne:Also I just wrote down that, deconstructing those colonial narratives attached to sex and relationship. I do that quite a bit in you know history, lesson or little. You know whatever I can do here and there. And you know, just like in sex therapy, we learn a lot about where people get these messages and we give them the space to say is this something you want to hold on to or is this something you want to get rid of? And that's the same with how we're thinking about some of this colonial hangover in sex and relationship. Is it really important for this relationship that it does adhere to a patriarchal model and that's what they both feel comfortable with? And I have to work within that right. But at least I'm giving some education. I'm trying to see where we can make some movement in detangling some of these larger messages and how they're infiltrating into the dutiful life or whatever's happening in that moment.
Cami:And making it a conscious choice instead of just an implicit belief, bringing it to the awareness of are you both choosing this?
Anne:It's something that I don't do with my clients, but something that a lot of my supervisees do, which I thought would be good here, is using like betty martin's wheel of consent or like the three mini game. Have other folks brought that that?
Cami:into the space. No, but I've I've thought of that too, that that would absolutely be something we do here. Go ahead, ahead and talk about it, because I would love to hear your thoughts too.
Anne:Just as a tangible intervention of what it actually looks like. That giving and that receiving right, that being able to ask and say, right, what is okay, what you're okay with, I think, are big steps, and when we think about, like, what specific interventions do we have across the board that people have access to, that's the one that comes to mind.
Cami:Yeah, yeah, I love her work. I'm so happy to see it growing and her publishing a book and everything. And I think a cool part is also understanding what touches for you and what touches for your partner in the way that you brought up, you know the stereotypes and porn of people of color, to be able to have that skill of attunement in the way that you were describing of, way that you were describing of. Even if I am reaching out to touch my partner, it can sometimes be for me, not for them, you know. But I see a lot of couples saying you know I'm doing this for you, but if they don't like what you're doing, it's not for them, you know.
Anne:Yeah, it also made me think of something else. That I do too is just kind of mapping people's sexual script so we can see where on that timeline is. Is it really unwanted? Is it in the very beginning, right with that first initiation, or is it with that touch that he's giving me, that he thinks I want and I just can't say I really don't, I don't, don't like that. You know, that's too hard and I'm not going to say that and that's when that period of now I don't want to do it happens Right. But if we can get like that whole script kind of laid out right, we can kind of map out where it's happening and then again bring in the partner. Are you seeing it happening here?
Cami:Right, how much insight do you have to the cycle that's happening and after that of's new? A little bit new to me. I've thought about, you know, checking how she feeling before, during and after, but to be able to identify. It's when these things happen that I switch from enthusiastic and consent to I'd rather not be doing this you've talked a little bit about, but what do you see as the answer of preventing this for younger women?
Anne:I did touch on it, but I do think we need, like collective acknowledgement Right now. This isn't a shared acknowledgement that we have, right, like you, busted open something, but it's not common knowledge, right, and that's what we needed to be understood by everyone and it's a common knowledge. For us to stand on first To say this isn't helpful. Yeah, yes, right, this isn't the way we should be having sex.
Cami:There's negative outcomes. If this is a longstanding pattern, that's better said yes.
Anne:Right, but right now that's not common knowledge. I don't think so.
Cami:I think, I don't think that it is.
Anne:I think once we hear it, we all go, oh hell, yeah, right. So it's that communal acknowledgement, the communal healing, just like the Me Too movement. I think a lot of people can do so much work in the individual therapy session. But we also need that from our sisters, our aunties, our other women that we're in community with, to also have that shared common ground that we can. Because we get gaslit, like I said, we get gaslit out of the experience, but we need everybody to be on the same page so we can normalize and have that healing actually start.
Anne:Because if you find out in individual therapy, then you go out into the world and they're telling you you're crazy, you know, just put up with it. Right, it's again that push and pull is holding back that actual healing, not just for the individual but for us collectively, right? Also, I think it would be really important because I don't do like premarital therapy. If anything, I've done some pre-commitment work before around sex. But how profound would it be if even the churches added a component of this into their pre-commitment therapy modality, right, if it was just a part of this manualized. We're going to hit this part so everybody in church knows.
Cami:I'm only smiling because I'm imagining trying to sell this, the church, and imagining the kind of resistance that it might provoke.
Anne:You know, it is possible, right, and so I always like to start with the least resistance. Right can give the leader of the church some concrete data, like you've already produced, right, and then explain to them what is happening in their heart. They don't want their uh, their members to be suffering. And also adding, you know when I'm thinking about? Like general therapists, like an lmft, they only get three to five credits of human sexuality, right, and then they're trying to treat sexological issues, and sometimes, when it comes to theology, it's almost worse, right, because it's not a lot of times that sex positive education that's actually making it into that three to five credits, but offering them the tools that they need to be informed. I think, with that insight, they would only want to not everybody, but they would only want to help in this part where they're just lacking some knowledge about this dynamic we're discussing and how it interplays with a diagnosis of hypoactive desire or interest disorder.
Cami:Like yeah, I had. Is this low desire or is this something else? These women well.
Anne:I pulled out my to really be like, let me really. I got it out here. I actually have the page open. I shut it for to make some space all night, but it kind of reminds me. Let's just think about, like, race and trauma. Right, there's no racial trauma, but we have the trauma. We can see where maybe it fits in. We don't have complex PTSD, but we can see where it fits in so it could be built into the diagnostic features I feel like associated features supporting diagnosis. Right, they always are brushing on relational factors. So another part that I thought I could go into is the risk in well, I can't say the word now factors, but it does a subcategory of environmental. So environmental factors include relationship difficulties. So, yes, this is a relationship difficulty, but that is such a broad term that's not breaking it down into right, this unwanted piece of you know, sex.
Cami:That unknown variable that you mentioned. Yeah, right, and so I think that we could.
Anne:You know, like a lot of times we use this and we know all these other parts of why you know this person has depression or this person has anxiety and those criteria aren't in the dsm. It feels like it could fit here, right, but we just know the added information to the context of why it's there true, it doesn't say your mom under depression. Right.
Cami:Okay, yeah, yeah.
Anne:But it gives you the wiggle room, though right Coming to that justification by, by several times, just saying relational issues. It's all over in this, but what? What does that?
Cami:I mean they're not defining it Right, so they're leaving it broad enough for us to throw it in there is what I, I feel like so often the woman self-diagnosed herself with I have a desire disorder or that, or the partner has, or you know and trying to figure out where does context and dynamic interplay with diagnosis? You know, that was great. I like. I like how you saw that and how you, and then it gives you another piece, too, with the culture related diagnostic issues.
Anne:Right, if we did bring in some of the pieces we talked today about specifically black bodies, right, we could add it into that piece and then also gender-related diagnostic features well the gender is that we are in a massively patriarchal society which has a stronghold on human sexuality in modern day, right? So it's just all this wiggling to maneuver which I feel like diagnosing is a lot of the time.
Cami:Yeah, yeah, Agreed. Do you have additional thoughts? Your op ed kind of commentary that I might you know things that you thought of that I didn't think to ask.
Anne:We all collectively need to have a basic understanding of how anti-Black our society is and that misogynoir is at the forefront of this right. That hatred against Black women is they're not getting the support, they're not getting the resources, they're not getting that communal healing right that they need. They're always getting pushed, pushed down, doing the most labor and getting the push down for for the support, and so whatever interventions or whatever you know conceptualizations, we have to think, we have to put that at the forefront when we're looking at working with black women.
Cami:that that is the context, that is the backdrop of their experience and you can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think, as far as research goes, we're just starting to do that. We're just starting to say, hey, does this intervention, this actually gotman intervention? We've been doing with white folks all the time, does it translate? Well, and they're starting to do some of that. What interventions and what? What?
Anne:interventions and what changes need to be made culturally. And I think again, this is all saying that white people are at the forefront of making decisions for Black people's healing and instead of trying to mold a white model to, you know, black folks, why don't we give Black clinicians the space to create interventions for us? Why don't we get the funding or the support to talk about how we can create healing within our own communities? But we're on the pedestal of looking at white folks and then trying to mold it to work for us.
Cami:Thanks for pointing that out.
Anne:Not giving Black people the voice to say, hey, this is what we actually need. We're waiting for the white dude to tell us what we can have.
Cami:Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, thanks for pointing that out. That's true. I'm going through interventions. And who created them? They're all older white men. You know.
Anne:Yeah, so the the problem that a lot of like BIPOC, a like within asex community, is a lot of our supervisees come to us like, well then, what is the answer? What do we do? It's like, well, we're tired right now, we can't recreate this wheel. But this is for those that younger cohort that we're bringing in to create right, we're giving them those tools to start to have that space Because historically, right, it's very ableist. Cis, white, couple-centric is the only way you got your foot in the door. But we have the responsibility of letting that younger cohort get a foot in the door. But we have the responsibility of letting that younger cohort get a foot in the door so they can create are you seeing that cohort grow?
Anne:yes, I feel like even the cohort before me bust the door open. I gotta walk through, and now these other folks are going to be tearing it up.
Cami:I believe so oh good, Awesome. So sometimes we're talking about systemic change.
Anne:It feels so long, but I'm so glad to hear you say that this part of the systemic change you're seeing happen without taking it we haven't created. Right, right, we don't have you know as many different models, as many different experts whose names are accessible to people's mouths, right, like emily nagowski, esther perel, we know you know people who are not in the sex world know that. But ask you, know them who is a black sexologist who is doing this work? It's going to be harder for them to retrieve a name.
Anne:We need to make it more accessible.
Cami:I'm really pleased to meet you. Thanks so much, I really appreciate it.
Anne:Yeah, it's good to meet you and thank you for doing the work.
Cami:Yeah, we'll talk soon. Okay, Okay thanks Bye Anne you.