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Summer Break: Purity Culture and Sex Ed · To All the Men I've Tolerated Before

0:20
Speaker 1: Hey, tolerators, listen is to Alderman. I'm tolerated before with
0:24
Speaker 1: Namily Katona, your weekly look at everyday misogyny. My guest
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Speaker 1: today is Erica Smith. Erica is a sex educator and
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Speaker 1: the creator of the Purity Culture Dropout program. She is
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Speaker 1: here today to talk about how purity culture plays a
0:38
Speaker 1: role in the quality of sex education and how purity
0:42
Speaker 1: culture is a huge tool and effective tool of misogyny.
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Speaker 1: Welcome to the team, Erica.
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Speaker 2: Thank you so much for having me. I'm definitely a tolerator.
0:55
Speaker 1: Thank you so much that I mean, I mean, whoever
1:01
Speaker 1: is doing the fight against good ole misogyny just needs
1:05
Speaker 1: to go ahead and hit me up already. Yeah, it
1:10
Speaker 1: almost feels like we're too far and too far in between.
1:14
Speaker 1: But maybe there are more of us, and I'm just
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Speaker 1: pessimistake at this point as I walk through America.
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Speaker 2: Well hopefully, I mean there are some of us, there
1:27
Speaker 2: are many of us, and I hope more people make
1:29
Speaker 2: their way to you and your podcast.
1:32
Speaker 1: Thank you. Why don't you go ahead and give us
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Speaker 1: a little bit of background on you in your career.
1:38
Speaker 2: Sure, so, like you said, I'm a sex educator and
1:42
Speaker 2: that has been what I've done my entire career, which
1:45
Speaker 2: makes it something I've been doing for twenty three years now.
1:49
Speaker 2: I started doing sex education activism when I was in
1:54
Speaker 2: college and my friends and I were We were taking
1:58
Speaker 2: like women's studies courses, we were women's studies majors, and
2:02
Speaker 2: we were very interested in the sexuality aspect of what
2:05
Speaker 2: we were learning and talking about. And some of my
2:08
Speaker 2: earliest six SAID work was like putting on festivals that
2:12
Speaker 2: had to do with sex education at Penn State in
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Speaker 2: like ninety nine, two thousand and two thousand and one,
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Speaker 2: and having people lose their shit because they were so
2:21
Speaker 2: uncomfortable with it. It ended up on the national news
2:23
Speaker 2: before we were being talked about on Fox News. Luckily,
2:27
Speaker 2: this was like way before social media, but that was
2:31
Speaker 2: like my early start into sex ed and in the
2:34
Speaker 2: years since I've worked in abortion care, I have the
2:39
Speaker 2: longest part of my career. I worked doing sex said
2:42
Speaker 2: and HIV prevention with young people in detention in Philadelphia,
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Speaker 2: mostly queer youth and young women who were locked up.
2:52
Speaker 2: I also work with trans youth in their families, and
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Speaker 2: for the last four years I have focused on adults
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Speaker 2: who were raised in purity culture, so adults that were
3:02
Speaker 2: raised in high control religions, which ranges to everything from
3:06
Speaker 2: I signed a purity pledge at my church to I
3:09
Speaker 2: was like actually raised in occult type things. So yeah,
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Speaker 2: I've kind of built a decent following related to my
3:17
Speaker 2: purity culture work, and that is most of what I
3:19
Speaker 2: do these days.
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Speaker 1: I think when it comes to purity culture, a lot
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Speaker 1: of my friends don't really understand how often we're confronted
3:30
Speaker 1: with purity culture. But that's just our everyday life. Because
3:33
Speaker 1: I was thinking about your earlier career with the festivals
3:37
Speaker 1: and Fox News picking it up, and when I was
3:40
Speaker 1: in college, we very much had I was part of,
3:44
Speaker 1: Like I went to a Catholic college and I was
3:47
Speaker 1: very part of the quote unquote like women's league or
3:49
Speaker 1: whatever in our college. But the only sexual care we
3:54
Speaker 1: had was like anti violence care, so like making sure
3:58
Speaker 1: that women had someone to walk with back to their dorms,
4:01
Speaker 1: or that people were aware of what you would feel
4:04
Speaker 1: like should your drink be drugged or things like that.
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Speaker 1: And people are so comfortable with talking about sexual violence
4:12
Speaker 1: and compared to just like sexual awareness and a sexual
4:16
Speaker 1: lifestyle that it boggles my mind.
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Speaker 2: Well, that's exactly why We started doing these events because
4:24
Speaker 2: we were like, well, as a feminist group, we're known
4:27
Speaker 2: for talking about assault, We're known for you know, calling
4:31
Speaker 2: out you know. And I was at Penn State University,
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Speaker 2: which at the time was concealing one of the most
4:37
Speaker 2: like legendary pedophiles of all time. So while people were
4:41
Speaker 2: upset about us, like a bunch of young students talking
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Speaker 2: about orgasms and glitterists and all that stuff, they were
4:47
Speaker 2: hiding a much bigger secret. But yeah, the reason we
4:50
Speaker 2: started talking about it is because we were like, oh,
4:53
Speaker 2: you know, female activists, we have a reputation is focusing
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Speaker 2: on on the bats about sex, but we also want
5:01
Speaker 2: to talk about the fun stuff. We don't just want
5:03
Speaker 2: to talk about HIV. We don't just want to talk
5:06
Speaker 2: about assault. We want to talk about coming, We want
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Speaker 2: to talk about toys. We want to talk about fun
5:12
Speaker 2: and pleasure and born. And yeah, there are a lot
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Speaker 2: of people who were not ready for that then and
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Speaker 2: are absolutely still not ready for it twenty years later.
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Speaker 1: I mean, and when I think about it, there's such
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Speaker 1: there's such an overwhelming amount of repression when it comes
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Speaker 1: to the American sexuality, which I think has just like
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Speaker 1: swung into a completely conservative realm that it might not
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Speaker 1: have been in say the seventies and eighties, but all
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Speaker 1: of a sudden as a child, like sex was just
5:51
Speaker 1: more of like an after school special discussion where it's like, oh,
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Speaker 1: Barbara had sex, and now she will be a team mom. Yeah,
6:00
Speaker 1: and she will not go to college and she will
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Speaker 1: work at the mall for the rest of her life.
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Speaker 1: Or my god, she may go get an abortion and
6:09
Speaker 1: now no one is her friend in her ninth grade class.
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Speaker 1: And it's always very degrassy style, like you will have sex,
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Speaker 1: you will get gonorrhea, you will die, yeah for sure.
6:22
Speaker 2: I mean our country was founded by founded aka like
6:28
Speaker 2: white European settlers came to this land, and they put
6:32
Speaker 2: their own values on the folks that had already been
6:35
Speaker 2: living here. So I talk about this all the time
6:38
Speaker 2: when I do like presentations about purity culture. But when
6:42
Speaker 2: those like white religious settlers came over here, they were
6:46
Speaker 2: shocked and repulsed by how indigenous people had very different
6:51
Speaker 2: sexual values and sexual behaviors and sexual practices, and they
6:55
Speaker 2: decided that that wasn't going to do. And I mean,
6:58
Speaker 2: when we use the term puritanical, Americans are very puritanical
7:01
Speaker 2: like that's what we're talking about. They put their very
7:05
Speaker 2: specific ideas about nuclear families and monogamy and you know,
7:12
Speaker 2: keeping pure for women and all of that shit. They
7:15
Speaker 2: brought that with them and it's baked into the fabric
7:18
Speaker 2: of this country. So even if you weren't raised going
7:20
Speaker 2: to a church where you learned that you were a
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Speaker 2: terrible slut if you kissed a boy, you're still getting
7:26
Speaker 2: that message from media. You're still getting that message from
7:30
Speaker 2: pop culture, like it's everywhere.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, there was a very there was a very overhanging
7:37
Speaker 1: theme of well, you wouldn't want to get a reputation, now,
7:40
Speaker 1: would you. You wouldn't want to be the girl who
7:44
Speaker 1: dated every guy in her class, or you knew the
7:46
Speaker 1: girls who were dating around or sleeping around or even
7:50
Speaker 1: not sleeping around, but men have said that they got
7:53
Speaker 1: to sleep with her or whatever. And it all feels
7:57
Speaker 1: very like Playsville, Pleasantville, USA. Like it should have stopped
8:04
Speaker 1: right around the time that Mad Men ended, but instead
8:09
Speaker 1: we're just holding onto it. And now there's this whole
8:11
Speaker 1: weird movement where it's like the fifties were so great
8:14
Speaker 1: for women. They got to have boos and pills and
8:17
Speaker 1: they never had to work.
8:18
Speaker 2: And we had we took boos and pills because we
8:22
Speaker 2: were miserable. Dare I say, I mean not that I
8:25
Speaker 2: was there, but you know what I mean, Like, yeah,
8:29
Speaker 2: the way that there was a sexual revolution for some
8:35
Speaker 2: in the nineteen seventies, and you know, it's all very
8:38
Speaker 2: interesting historically because then not long after that, we were
8:41
Speaker 2: faced with the AIDS crisis, and then people responding to
8:45
Speaker 2: the AIDS crisis and wherever we've ended up today is
8:49
Speaker 2: this to me very terrifying, denial of sexuality as a
8:55
Speaker 2: part of our everyday lives, the way that they're books,
9:00
Speaker 2: they're you know, sex educators are being called groomers and pedophiles,
9:05
Speaker 2: and this was the language being used against queer people
9:09
Speaker 2: in the seventies and they've like brought it back, and
9:12
Speaker 2: it's honestly, I you know, when I started doing this
9:16
Speaker 2: work as like a young woman, I would not have
9:19
Speaker 2: envisioned that when I was in my forties the landscape
9:23
Speaker 2: would be what it is like today. I would not
9:26
Speaker 2: have predicted that.
9:27
Speaker 1: I don't think anyone predicted this, even my mother, whose
9:31
Speaker 1: stance on abortion was always it's not for me. But
9:36
Speaker 1: who's to say it wouldn't be for you or make
9:38
Speaker 1: sense for you or whatever. I don't think that the
9:41
Speaker 1: people who had kind of just like the middle Road
9:45
Speaker 1: kind of stands. I'm like, are we teaching kids about sex?
9:48
Speaker 1: Are we teaching kids about queer sex, about options when
9:52
Speaker 1: it comes to sexuality or whatnot? Would immediately jump to
9:56
Speaker 1: the year of twenty twenty three, and it's like, well,
9:59
Speaker 1: if you do we even use a child's correct pronouns,
10:02
Speaker 1: you yourself are a predator.
10:05
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's you know. I know I didn't see it coming.
10:09
Speaker 2: But what I have learned from the people I work
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Speaker 2: with who were raised in a very conservative religious environment
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Speaker 2: is the a lot of them were like, oh no,
10:19
Speaker 2: this was the plan all along, This was the long game.
10:23
Speaker 2: And I am able to understand that now as an
10:26
Speaker 2: outsider who was not raised in that world. But did
10:30
Speaker 2: you happen to watch the documentary called Shiny Happy People.
10:34
Speaker 2: It's about the Dugger family and the like the religious
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Speaker 2: cult they're in.
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Speaker 1: So I have not watched it yet because I have
10:41
Speaker 1: like a list I go, I need to watch the
10:43
Speaker 1: Dugger documentary, and I too, I grew up in the
10:47
Speaker 1: Dugger era where they where we were like watching her
10:51
Speaker 1: have her twenty first baby and all that, So I
10:55
Speaker 1: know the Douggers. I want to watch that one, and
10:58
Speaker 1: then I want to watch the seasons of Sister Wives
11:01
Speaker 1: where it all starts to click for them and fall apart,
11:05
Speaker 1: like their kids get really like old enough to leave
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Speaker 1: the house and all of a sudden, they're like, they
11:10
Speaker 1: don't need Cody, and I don't think these women are
11:14
Speaker 1: our front.
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Speaker 2: Oh shit. Yeah, I've never watched Sister Wives, so I'm
11:19
Speaker 2: not familiar. But the reason I brought up the Dugger
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Speaker 2: documentary is because they go into detail about the like
11:26
Speaker 2: the systems and the figures and the forces that have
11:29
Speaker 2: been essentially prepping young people to enter politics, to enter
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Speaker 2: different stratuses of society so that they can be like
11:42
Speaker 2: the good Christian foot soldiers who end up working for
11:45
Speaker 2: judges or being judges. Like this is starting to bear fruit.
11:50
Speaker 2: That sounds very biblical of me to say, But like
11:53
Speaker 2: all that effort that was put into like creating these
11:57
Speaker 2: young Christian warriors, they're now the people that are like
12:00
Speaker 2: in government and they're doing all this shit. So that's
12:05
Speaker 2: something that I had never known as somebody who wasn't
12:07
Speaker 2: raised in that world.
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Speaker 1: Well, and so I was raised partially Catholic, and I
12:14
Speaker 1: say partially Catholic because we were Christmas Eastern Catholics and
12:19
Speaker 1: should Grandma ask, yes, I still took communion. I was
12:24
Speaker 1: at a Catholic funeral over the weekend for my great
12:28
Speaker 1: aunt and my cousin and I just giggled the entire
12:32
Speaker 1: time because we didn't know responses.
12:34
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, there's a lot of I mean, I've
12:36
Speaker 2: been to Catholic weddings and I'm like, Wow, there's so
12:39
Speaker 2: much to do, so much to say. There's kneeling. I
12:43
Speaker 2: don't know.
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Speaker 1: Was there kneeling, Yeah, well yes, and we chose not
12:46
Speaker 1: to because my knees are horrendous and we're lazy people.
12:50
Speaker 1: I don't know, we were. My aunt and I were
12:54
Speaker 1: talking late into the night because I was staying with her,
12:57
Speaker 1: and I was like, have you ever ran into like
12:59
Speaker 1: a very devout Catholic and you don't get it, because like,
13:05
Speaker 1: our form of Catholicism was just like a little spice
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Speaker 1: at Christmas and then we left it for the rest
13:10
Speaker 1: of the year.
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Speaker 2: Well that's how my family was with just Christianity in general.
13:16
Speaker 2: We weren't Catholic, but I was, you know, baptized in
13:20
Speaker 2: a Methodist church and we were very infrequent attendees. It
13:24
Speaker 2: was Christmas Eve, never Easter. I always say that we
13:29
Speaker 2: were casually Christian because we celebrated Christian holidays but in
13:32
Speaker 2: the most commercial and American way possible. So you know,
13:36
Speaker 2: Easter for me wasn't about like resurrection. It was about
13:39
Speaker 2: a basketful of chocolate. And I feel like I am
13:46
Speaker 2: grateful that I do not have religious trauma because those
13:50
Speaker 2: are the folks I work with, and knowing that there's
13:54
Speaker 2: children being raised to be like everyone's mortal soul is
13:59
Speaker 2: your responsibility and you're going to go to Hell if
14:01
Speaker 2: you do anything out of line, I'm like, that is
14:05
Speaker 2: a terrifying, terrifying thing to put in a child.
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Speaker 1: Psyche well, and it was a previous episode where we
14:13
Speaker 1: started dissecting Southern Baptist or Southern Christianity because my friend
14:19
Speaker 1: was a non Christian living amongst it and raising a
14:22
Speaker 1: daughter and I we just started to divulge into Catholicism,
14:28
Speaker 1: and I go, it's amazing how little I spent in
14:31
Speaker 1: a church, but I still have very like I grew
14:34
Speaker 1: up with, very Christian like morals, like you will get married,
14:39
Speaker 1: that is the man that you will have babies with
14:41
Speaker 1: you will only ever have sex with said man, and
14:44
Speaker 1: it will be a man and pronouns and transitioning and
14:50
Speaker 1: queerness and you know it's not bad, but it's definitely
14:54
Speaker 1: for other people, like keep it out of our family
14:59
Speaker 1: where accept but we're not welcoming. And it shaped my
15:03
Speaker 1: adulthood here. I am giving a lot of energy to
15:07
Speaker 1: dating men that I'm not attracted to, I don't actually
15:10
Speaker 1: find joy spending time with. And it's in the middle
15:13
Speaker 1: of the episode where I go Elizabeth, fuck, I might
15:18
Speaker 1: have to start considering dating women, and she's like, yeah,
15:21
Speaker 1: I don't know why you wouldn't.
15:24
Speaker 2: I love that you kind of had that realization on air,
15:27
Speaker 2: like while you were recording.
15:29
Speaker 1: Yeah, and now it's kind of become like a canon
15:31
Speaker 1: event where it's like, oh, and then Namley realized she
15:34
Speaker 1: never enjoyed this to begin with. I got just far
15:38
Speaker 1: enough outside of like, oh, okay, no one is even
15:41
Speaker 1: expecting me to go to church for Christmas, and you
15:44
Speaker 1: just engross yourself in other communities and you realize, oh,
15:49
Speaker 1: there's a whole world that was just like shut off
15:52
Speaker 1: in my brain as an even possibility.
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Speaker 2: Yes, which you know that's where the term compulsory heterosexuality
15:59
Speaker 2: comes in for me, where you know you're not presented
16:02
Speaker 2: with any other option. It's like, of course you will
16:06
Speaker 2: date men, of course you will marry men. And a
16:08
Speaker 2: lot of the folks I work with are queer people
16:10
Speaker 2: who were raised in high control religions, and so many
16:14
Speaker 2: of them have this shame that they didn't understand their
16:16
Speaker 2: queerness earlier. And I'm like, you were not permitted to
16:20
Speaker 2: understand it earlier. It wasn't even presented to you as
16:23
Speaker 2: an option. So please try not to get down on
16:27
Speaker 2: yourself for not knowing you were queer till you were
16:29
Speaker 2: like thirty or forty, because it was like it wasn't
16:33
Speaker 2: even on the radar for you.
16:36
Speaker 1: And when it comes to sexual pleasure, my experience in
16:40
Speaker 1: the Midwest is anytime a woman would be like, oh,
16:44
Speaker 1: this is what pleasure feels like for me, or even
16:47
Speaker 1: ask for pleasure, the men that I have dated in
16:50
Speaker 1: the past are almost like repulsed by the idea that
16:55
Speaker 1: like I would be dirty enough to then want to
16:58
Speaker 1: dirty up their life by us both coming.
17:03
Speaker 2: And that's I like, that is a common feeling, but
17:09
Speaker 2: it's just I'm just aghast even thinking about it and
17:12
Speaker 2: hearing about it. When I was a kid, my friend's
17:16
Speaker 2: parents gave her like a sex said book, and I
17:18
Speaker 2: realize now that it was a Christian based one. And
17:21
Speaker 2: when we were in middle school, we were reading this
17:23
Speaker 2: book and it said in the book it was describing
17:26
Speaker 2: sexual intercourse and of course it's like a husband and
17:28
Speaker 2: a wife in bed, and it said, you know, during intercourse,
17:33
Speaker 2: the man has an orgasm, and then it said sometimes
17:38
Speaker 2: the wife does too. And even as a kid that
17:41
Speaker 2: was like years from being sexually active, I was like,
17:44
Speaker 2: that sounds kind of fucked up, Like that doesn't seem right.
17:48
Speaker 1: Yeah, I well, and then I start to equate that too.
17:54
Speaker 1: I came from what I would assume is a and
17:58
Speaker 1: it's shocking it for outsiders to watch my family because
18:02
Speaker 1: we are a very intimate family, like we hug, we
18:07
Speaker 1: kiss like we're very like hands on in our affection
18:13
Speaker 1: and loud about it. My cousin and I were joking
18:17
Speaker 1: because she goes, have you ever realized that if you
18:19
Speaker 1: approach anyone in our family or they approach you, the
18:22
Speaker 1: byeline is oh, thank goodness, you're here, you're my favorite.
18:26
Speaker 1: She goes, it is everywhere, you're my favorite. I go, oh,
18:30
Speaker 1: I skipped that phase and went full into our grannies
18:33
Speaker 1: and our great aunts. Peguay, You're the most beautiful child
18:36
Speaker 1: I've ever seen, the most beautiful and the most smartest
18:39
Speaker 1: child I've ever seen. And we're that family. It's big
18:43
Speaker 1: fat Greek wedding all day every day. When I start
18:46
Speaker 1: to hear other people's experiences and how this evasive purity
18:52
Speaker 1: culture has made basically the act of any intimacy predatory
18:59
Speaker 1: and gross and a crib, I'm like, Oh, we're raising
19:03
Speaker 1: children who are hugged a lot. Plus we added a
19:07
Speaker 1: pandemic on top of it.
19:09
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, that's definitely something I think about too. A
19:15
Speaker 2: lot of the people I work with will straight up
19:18
Speaker 2: say that when they were young, they weren't allowed to
19:22
Speaker 2: physically touch their peers, you know. And I know I'm
19:26
Speaker 2: talking not about a family, but just like your friend group.
19:29
Speaker 2: So I imagine if your touchy feely in your family
19:31
Speaker 2: probably were a touchy feely.
19:33
Speaker 1: You know.
19:34
Speaker 2: I was very touchy feely with my girlfriends as a kid.
19:37
Speaker 2: We would like have sleepovers and share the same bed
19:41
Speaker 2: and hug and all that stuff. And I hear from
19:44
Speaker 2: people all the time they weren't even allowed to hug
19:46
Speaker 2: their friends because hugging could lead to thinking about sex.
19:51
Speaker 2: And we're talking like depriving a young person of a
19:56
Speaker 2: human need, which is physical touch for the under the
19:59
Speaker 2: guise of this is going to keep you pure. And
20:02
Speaker 2: that's just absolutely fucking bad shit to me.
20:04
Speaker 1: And I've mentioned this before that on one side of
20:07
Speaker 1: my DNA, I have a very physically and emotionally and
20:11
Speaker 1: loud intimate family. And then on another side of my family,
20:15
Speaker 1: I had uncles who wouldn't hug me or really talk
20:19
Speaker 1: to me a lot once I hit puberty. And it's like,
20:23
Speaker 1: oh because, and it's like and the line was, uncles
20:27
Speaker 1: don't hug and I was like, well, I have eighteen
20:29
Speaker 1: uncles who hug me over here, and they're like, no,
20:33
Speaker 1: uncles don't hug It's weird.
20:35
Speaker 2: So that is a bummer. And I know you're not
20:39
Speaker 2: the only family that experiences that. And some people, some
20:44
Speaker 2: adult men, just become so uncomfortable with girls who once
20:49
Speaker 2: they've reached womanhood, it's like, oh, now I don't know
20:52
Speaker 2: how to relate to you. I don't know how to
20:54
Speaker 2: look at you as an equal. I don't know how
20:56
Speaker 2: to have a conversation with you, and that is just
20:59
Speaker 2: really fucked up than unfortunate, and I think it's you know,
21:02
Speaker 2: it clearly gets in the way of what could be
21:04
Speaker 2: in otherwise like a relationship.
21:07
Speaker 1: I I constantly live in this dichotomy where it's like, Okay,
21:14
Speaker 1: so we're sexually repressed, we only have sex under the
21:17
Speaker 1: guys of marriage. We have very hetero families with hetero children.
21:22
Speaker 1: And then I think about all the ways that I
21:25
Speaker 1: was sexualized by a very young age. So what is
21:30
Speaker 1: like your little boyfriend in your kindergarten class? Isn't that cute?
21:34
Speaker 1: To my friends at a barbecue and her three year
21:39
Speaker 1: old is being asked by older men like, oh, did
21:42
Speaker 1: you come here with anybody? You got plans to be
21:45
Speaker 1: a wife at any time? And it's like, well, she's three, icky,
21:50
Speaker 1: And they're all very good devout Christians. To my mom
21:53
Speaker 1: telling me go upstairs and put on a bra someone
21:57
Speaker 1: might see you in the windows or something.
22:00
Speaker 2: Yes, you make me think about you know, the same
22:04
Speaker 2: folks who are saying that, people on the left, who
22:07
Speaker 2: want sex education, who want gender firming care for youth,
22:11
Speaker 2: they're like, you all are sexualizing kids. But they're the
22:14
Speaker 2: same people that will buy t shirts for babies that
22:17
Speaker 2: say like boobman or you know, I could have been
22:21
Speaker 2: a blowjob. I mean, like those are really shirts that exist,
22:25
Speaker 2: and you know, little heartbreaker and shit like that. I'm like,
22:29
Speaker 2: that is sexualizing children. That is sexualizing children.
22:34
Speaker 1: And then making their eventual sexuality like a joke.
22:40
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, for sure.
22:43
Speaker 1: Because that was another way that we were like very
22:46
Speaker 1: unaware that this was purity culture. I grew up in
22:49
Speaker 1: the nineties and the two thousands. Baby, it was no
22:52
Speaker 1: homo all day. Every day a man brushed another man
22:56
Speaker 1: in the lunchline. It's no homo, dude, no homo. But like,
22:59
Speaker 1: let's let's hype five. We've never thought about kissing the
23:04
Speaker 1: other one once?
23:06
Speaker 2: Right, of course, we have to make that so clear.
23:09
Speaker 1: Yeah, gay being used as a slur, women who were
23:13
Speaker 1: showing intimacy to other people being called lesbos or being
23:17
Speaker 1: like dared to kiss for the pleasure of the men
23:21
Speaker 1: at the party, for sure, and all under the guise
23:25
Speaker 1: of like, don't worry though, we're very straight and we're
23:28
Speaker 1: all not having any sex because we live in the
23:30
Speaker 1: Midwest and they won't give us condoms.
23:34
Speaker 2: What state are you in?
23:35
Speaker 1: I am in Ohio. I grew up in Indiana.
23:39
Speaker 2: Okay, well, I feel like knowing you're in Ohio. I'm
23:42
Speaker 2: from western Pennsylvania and we're not far like culturally, geographically, politically,
23:48
Speaker 2: it's very similar vibe. You were probably you know, eating
23:53
Speaker 2: the same type of food like Western Pa. We have
23:57
Speaker 2: Midwestern cuisine as well. But yeah, I understand what you're saying,
24:03
Speaker 2: Like the area you were in, like you weren't getting
24:08
Speaker 2: the sex said that you needed or desired.
24:12
Speaker 1: No, the sex that I was getting was criminal, and
24:15
Speaker 1: it was basically the baby doll that cries like, don't
24:18
Speaker 1: you had a doll?
24:19
Speaker 2: I did, and I was in high school. Those dolls
24:22
Speaker 2: were expensive and I don't know if those dolls existed yet.
24:25
Speaker 2: They might have, but my school didn't have them. We
24:27
Speaker 2: had to carry around raw eggs for a couple of
24:29
Speaker 2: weeks and pretend they were our babies. And what's supposed
24:34
Speaker 2: to teach us that we weren't ready for parenthood? But meanwhile,
24:38
Speaker 2: I grew up in a my school, we had like
24:40
Speaker 2: one hundred people in my graduating class, and I would
24:44
Speaker 2: say that oh at least ten percent of the young
24:51
Speaker 2: women in my graduating class had babies by graduation. And
24:55
Speaker 2: that doesn't count the guys that were fathers. So very
24:58
Speaker 2: high teen pregnancy rate in my high school.
25:00
Speaker 1: Well, because that's a good point too. When we talk
25:03
Speaker 1: about teen pregnancy, we never talk about those yahoos who
25:06
Speaker 1: are doing the pregnanty No.
25:09
Speaker 2: And I mean I do I know from working with
25:11
Speaker 2: teens for a long time that sometimes when young women
25:15
Speaker 2: are pregnant, they are pregnant to adult men. But you know,
25:20
Speaker 2: all that is a whole separate issue. There were definitely
25:23
Speaker 2: guys in my high school graduating class that had children,
25:26
Speaker 2: whether it was with girls in my school or girls
25:28
Speaker 2: in other schools. And yeah, they're not typically counted in
25:32
Speaker 2: the statistics.
25:33
Speaker 1: No, but they just get to continue earning their football
25:37
Speaker 1: scholarship or whatever happened on the flea. Bringing it back
25:42
Speaker 1: to the duggers, I think one of the consequences we
25:45
Speaker 1: also need to be more aware of when it comes
25:48
Speaker 1: to periority culture is if you just truly make people
25:52
Speaker 1: believe that sex is off the table until God says
25:56
Speaker 1: it's okay, Well, then you have all of these area
26:00
Speaker 1: is underground not safe for anyone. Sexual deviancy is happening,
26:07
Speaker 1: like the dugger kid.
26:09
Speaker 2: Oh oh yeah, I mean it's so complicated, and there's
26:17
Speaker 2: so many factors that influence like whether a person you
26:20
Speaker 2: know acts in a sexually predatory way. But I don't
26:25
Speaker 2: think that the shame silent secrecy about sexuality in general
26:31
Speaker 2: helps it at all. You know, we hear the same
26:33
Speaker 2: thing obviously. You know, you were someone that was low
26:36
Speaker 2: key Catholic, Like the Catholic Church is a prime example
26:41
Speaker 2: of that. Just hiding the abuses and the violence and
26:46
Speaker 2: the the like, I don't even know how to put it,
26:51
Speaker 2: but just you know, all of the yeah, the abuse
26:54
Speaker 2: that was happening, that is happening. It's not like we
26:57
Speaker 2: can pretend it's completely gone. But like, this stuff happens
27:02
Speaker 2: so often in cultures and communities where sex is so
27:07
Speaker 2: deeply taboo. Amish Amish folks. You were in Ohio, I'm
27:12
Speaker 2: in Pennsylvania. We both have Amish communities in our states.
27:16
Speaker 2: That is another very secretive, very insular religious community where
27:20
Speaker 2: sexual abuse runs rampant, and they don't trust outsiders, so
27:24
Speaker 2: like the victims don't typically get.
27:26
Speaker 1: Help, right, And it's purposeful how those communities make you
27:32
Speaker 1: mistrust outsiders but also don't provide you resources. So I'm
27:37
Speaker 1: thinking about the literacy rates in Amish communities. What we
27:42
Speaker 1: all saw from breaking Amish or Escaping Amish or Amish
27:47
Speaker 1: Mafia was a huge It.
27:49
Speaker 3: Was a huge TLC fan. I remember Amish Mafia. That
27:52
Speaker 3: show was Wild, Wild, the Wild. And they don't they
27:58
Speaker 3: replace a well rounded sex education with just no education,
28:04
Speaker 3: like all of a sudden, you're never going to think
28:07
Speaker 3: about it, or you will just stumble into a sex
28:10
Speaker 3: relationship and just know how to handle that emotionally or
28:15
Speaker 3: physically in a way that you are well.
28:19
Speaker 2: I read a really good I don't know where it
28:22
Speaker 2: was years ago, but a really good piece of investigative
28:24
Speaker 2: journalism about like a young woman who had spoken out
28:28
Speaker 2: about being assaulted in her Amish community and taken it
28:32
Speaker 2: to the you know, outside authorities, and she was the
28:37
Speaker 2: one that was shunned by the whole community.
28:39
Speaker 1: You know.
28:40
Speaker 2: There ended up being a trial, and the entire community
28:42
Speaker 2: was on the side of the man who was on
28:45
Speaker 2: trial for like literally you know, committing heinous sexual assaults
28:50
Speaker 2: against a young girl.
28:52
Speaker 1: Well, the the reot of purity culture does come from Christianity,
28:57
Speaker 1: and Christianity blamed everything on a woman to begin with.
29:02
Speaker 4: That's absolutely that is absolutely a good point, we'd all
29:07
Speaker 4: still be sleeping by that waterfall if Eve had just
29:11
Speaker 4: said no to a snake and a snack.
29:15
Speaker 2: Snake and a snack, I mean, yeah, yeah. So it's
29:18
Speaker 2: it's no wonder that people take that you caused Amand
29:22
Speaker 2: to sin. You caused Amanda stumble thing to such a
29:25
Speaker 2: literal interpretation into such an extreme, and you alluded to
29:30
Speaker 2: this when you said you're you know, you were told
29:32
Speaker 2: like you better go cover up for whatever reason. It
29:36
Speaker 2: also just makes me think of the way that school
29:39
Speaker 2: dress codes are always about girls not distracting boys, and
29:44
Speaker 2: they tend to get disproportionately enforced on like bigger girls
29:48
Speaker 2: and bustier girls and curbier girls, because their bodies are
29:51
Speaker 2: already sinful just by nature, and you can't cover up
29:56
Speaker 2: that kind of that kind of figure.
29:59
Speaker 1: Right. Meanwhile, there's also again growing up and going to
30:02
Speaker 1: high school in the early odds, there's also there were
30:05
Speaker 1: no there was no hiding my hips or my boobs
30:09
Speaker 1: in any sort of crop top, low rise Jens situation.
30:13
Speaker 2: Oh oh. I could go off about the fashion of
30:17
Speaker 2: the early odds, and I do often, and the fact
30:20
Speaker 2: that some of it's back I've seen like girls in
30:23
Speaker 2: those little like handkerchief shirts like, bro, I see your
30:27
Speaker 2: hip bones. We can't go back.
30:29
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I mean in the shame surrounding school dress
30:35
Speaker 1: codes where some of them don't actually even send the
30:37
Speaker 1: school the girls home from school, Like there's just like
30:40
Speaker 1: t shirt movements.
30:42
Speaker 2: Some big ass thing out of their closet on you.
30:45
Speaker 1: Yeah, that says sudding, like when I can dress appropriate,
30:49
Speaker 1: I'll dress myself for school or something I would.
30:52
Speaker 2: Oh my god, I like that is the equivalent of
30:55
Speaker 2: putting a scarlet letter on someone and marching them through
30:58
Speaker 2: the town square and everyone's screaming shape like that is
31:01
Speaker 2: so fucked.
31:02
Speaker 1: Up, and people don't connect that. We've started to the
31:07
Speaker 1: number of tiktoks. I've watched a mother's calling the school
31:10
Speaker 1: on speaker to be like, why was my kids at
31:13
Speaker 1: home today?
31:14
Speaker 2: I've not come. I'm not that on TikTok. But that
31:18
Speaker 2: is not that is not a corner of TikTok. I
31:21
Speaker 2: knew existed, and I need to know.
31:23
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think millennial moms are mad. We're just like
31:26
Speaker 1: infuriated all the time. Number One, that I had to
31:30
Speaker 1: give up my workday to come and get you. And
31:32
Speaker 1: number two, it was because your shorts were a little
31:35
Speaker 1: bit above your knee, like was your lip hanging out? Like?
31:40
Speaker 1: Come right right?
31:42
Speaker 2: Did this interfere in your ability to read or write?
31:46
Speaker 2: Or uugh, Yeah, I need to see some of those tiktoks.
31:52
Speaker 2: It's I hear stories about, you know, not just from
31:56
Speaker 2: people in churches, but you know, like public schools, not
32:00
Speaker 2: Catholic schools, public schools where this kind of thing is
32:03
Speaker 2: done repeatedly, and it's so often done. You know, it's
32:08
Speaker 2: always the girls, and very often the like fat girls,
32:12
Speaker 2: the curvy girls, the girls who develop early, or the
32:16
Speaker 2: black and brown girls are all of the above.
32:18
Speaker 1: You have to be in lown skirts and long pants, unless,
32:21
Speaker 1: of course, you're cheering for a sport, because then we
32:24
Speaker 1: have championships to win.
32:28
Speaker 2: Oh, it's madness.
32:31
Speaker 1: While you're out and doing your work. Is there any
32:34
Speaker 1: Because I'm constantly trying to connect thoughts to people. I
32:38
Speaker 1: love that you mentioned that that people who are deprogramming
32:44
Speaker 1: from their very Christianity places or whatever are saying, no,
32:48
Speaker 1: this was purposeful, this was their goal at the beginning.
32:51
Speaker 1: This is how they're infiltrating government and schools and things
32:55
Speaker 1: like that. I've been saying that about the American government
32:59
Speaker 1: when people just woke up one day and went, what
33:01
Speaker 1: do you mean my abortion rights are gone? That doesn't
33:04
Speaker 1: feel very twenty twenty three, And I'm like, no, it started.
33:08
Speaker 1: It started for the pandemic when all of these white
33:12
Speaker 1: dudes just sat in a room and was like, what
33:15
Speaker 1: pisses us off the most? The women. They've stopped having
33:18
Speaker 1: our babies, They're going to work, they're learning how to read.
33:24
Speaker 2: I mean, this might be something that you're familiar with already,
33:28
Speaker 2: but I think one of the most damning things to
33:32
Speaker 2: learn about like the religious right, is that their interest
33:36
Speaker 2: in abortion is an issue didn't start in response to
33:39
Speaker 2: Roe v. Wade. It started later in the seventies, about
33:44
Speaker 2: six years after Row was passed, and it was they
33:49
Speaker 2: wanted to build political power, and they wanted to get
33:52
Speaker 2: people voting conservatively because they wanted to continue to segregate
33:58
Speaker 2: their schools. And Jimmy Carter was the president at the
34:03
Speaker 2: time and they wanted him out. They replaced him with
34:06
Speaker 2: Reagan eventually, and the whole idea was, we need to
34:09
Speaker 2: find an issue that Americans can rally behind so they'll
34:13
Speaker 2: vote conservatively. And they had they had a meeting and
34:16
Speaker 2: made a decision. The men involved, like you can find
34:21
Speaker 2: their names. I know one of them was Jerry Folwell,
34:24
Speaker 2: but they like very intentionally were like, we're going to
34:27
Speaker 2: get people pissed about abortion. That's going to become our
34:30
Speaker 2: pet issue, and then that will give us massive voting
34:33
Speaker 2: power to put the politicians and the judges in the
34:37
Speaker 2: positions we want them to be in. And here we
34:39
Speaker 2: are in twenty twenty three or you know, last year
34:42
Speaker 2: and Rowe is wiped.
34:46
Speaker 1: Yeah. I had heard the very basic outline of that story,
34:49
Speaker 1: where it's like churches used to actually either not vote,
34:53
Speaker 1: not weigh in at all about abortion or some worst abortion. Yeah.
34:58
Speaker 2: Yeah, even the Southern Baptists, who we've mentioned. No love
35:06
Speaker 2: lost there, but the Southern Baptists even in the nineteen
35:09
Speaker 2: seventies up until like seventy six or seventy eight, they
35:13
Speaker 2: were talking about abortion at their national convention and saying
35:17
Speaker 2: that it's something that should be protected and that it's
35:21
Speaker 2: something that can be a legitimate choice in if the
35:26
Speaker 2: mother is in danger, and they included for like mental
35:29
Speaker 2: and emotional reasons. It wasn't just like if you're going
35:32
Speaker 2: to literally die if you have a baby. It was
35:34
Speaker 2: like their policy the Southern Baptist Conventions policy on abortion.
35:38
Speaker 2: It's written like there are receipts, you know, like it's
35:43
Speaker 2: just so vastly changed since then. They used to think
35:47
Speaker 2: that Catholics were weirdos for being so involved, and they
35:50
Speaker 2: were like, oh, that's a Catholic thing, that's.
35:52
Speaker 1: A very intense Catholic thing. But them and their pope.
35:56
Speaker 2: Yeah, even like the Democrats in New England were more
36:02
Speaker 2: conservative and abortion. So we're talking about, you know, the
36:04
Speaker 2: old Irish Catholic families like the Kennedys and stuff like,
36:09
Speaker 2: that's where the people were voting, Like that's where they
36:13
Speaker 2: were most concerned about abortion. And if you look at
36:15
Speaker 2: a map now, who's concerned about abortion and where the
36:18
Speaker 2: abortion laws are most restrictive or in, you know, like
36:20
Speaker 2: the South and the southeast.
36:23
Speaker 1: And I think one of the hardest things about me
36:25
Speaker 1: and church currently not that I go and not that
36:29
Speaker 1: I practice. I have crystals somewhere on the stuff, but
36:34
Speaker 1: when I am talking to someone who still makes that
36:37
Speaker 1: a part of their life, pardon me, is like, okay,
36:39
Speaker 1: but I've been to therapy and it all feels like
36:42
Speaker 1: indoctrination and gaslighting. Like I get very nervous when I'm
36:47
Speaker 1: there because they're telling you, like and should you do
36:52
Speaker 1: this in an exact way that a white man has said,
36:55
Speaker 1: you too will get to sit on a cloud one day.
36:59
Speaker 1: And that feels like love bombing or purity balls, Like
37:04
Speaker 1: we're gonna get you in a really pretty dress. Daddy's
37:07
Speaker 1: gonna buy you a rain. You may or may not
37:11
Speaker 1: feel like you married daddy tonight, but that's what we're doing,
37:15
Speaker 1: like that the way that we I mean, my friend
37:18
Speaker 1: used to take her she used to allow her mother
37:22
Speaker 1: to come and pick up her kids and take them
37:24
Speaker 1: to the church rave because there'd be a DJ and
37:27
Speaker 1: a bounce house and all of it. And I'm like,
37:29
Speaker 1: but we know where the weirdos are and it's not
37:32
Speaker 1: your mom's church. And she's like, I know, but they
37:34
Speaker 1: love the rave.
37:37
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, churches know how to recruit young people
37:41
Speaker 2: with events like that, the church rave. I always hear
37:46
Speaker 2: people talking about like lock ins where you just like
37:49
Speaker 2: sleep in the church gym all night or whatever.
37:52
Speaker 1: Yeah, that that can't be anything but safe. No church camp.
37:59
Speaker 1: I love them. Movie Saved and how it like satirizes
38:05
Speaker 1: satirizes how church acts when it comes to pregnancy and
38:10
Speaker 1: all of it, and how fanatical it'll be, and then
38:14
Speaker 1: they don't know what to do with you after you've sinned.
38:17
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, totally. Did you see the movie? Yes, God, Yes, No,
38:22
Speaker 2: I haven't even heard of that one. Holy shit. I
38:24
Speaker 2: feel like if I could make one suggestion, it is
38:28
Speaker 2: to watch this movie as fast as you possibly can.
38:31
Speaker 2: It came out a couple of years ago, and it
38:33
Speaker 2: stars the girl that played Nancy on Stranger Things. She's
38:37
Speaker 2: the main character. And it's it's called Yes, God, Yes,
38:42
Speaker 2: and it's about a bunch of teenagers at a Catholic
38:45
Speaker 2: church camp and everyone's very horny and everyone's very hypocritical.
38:52
Speaker 2: It's a really good movie and it has a beautiful
38:55
Speaker 2: message at the end. Fantastic. You should definitely check it
38:58
Speaker 2: out well.
38:59
Speaker 1: And I think that's something that really does have such
39:01
Speaker 1: a service to being raised in a country that was founded.
39:06
Speaker 1: I love to remind people of this. How it all
39:10
Speaker 1: clicked for me. I was watching Something Rotten, which is
39:14
Speaker 1: a musical about William Shakespeare, and you saw the Pilgrims
39:19
Speaker 1: go you and then like flee for the Americas, and
39:23
Speaker 1: it hit me. I was like, Oh, we're the motherfuckers
39:26
Speaker 1: who fled the Renaissance, that is who raised us. They
39:30
Speaker 1: were like, it's getting a little too loosey goosey and
39:34
Speaker 1: fun over here. We got to go to a new rock.
39:36
Speaker 2: We want to go to a new rock and like
39:39
Speaker 2: sleep on hardboards and deny ourselves literally any pleasure in life,
39:43
Speaker 2: which is one of the reasons that The Witch is
39:45
Speaker 2: one of my favorite horror movies. You know, would us
39:49
Speaker 2: like to live deliciously? I'm like, yes, I would.
39:52
Speaker 1: Meanwhile, while we're coming up with ways to have sex
39:55
Speaker 1: without having sex, like just like soaking, like if we
39:58
Speaker 1: don't move, it's not that's.
40:01
Speaker 2: I really thought that that was a myth. But it's
40:05
Speaker 2: not because I've definitely talked to and worked with folks
40:09
Speaker 2: who have done or have you know, have participated in
40:13
Speaker 2: variations of moving the goalpost for what makes sex actual
40:19
Speaker 2: sex and for some people, you know, I mean there
40:22
Speaker 2: We've always heard about the loopholes, the oral sex and
40:25
Speaker 2: anal sex are God's loopholes, all that, but like, there
40:28
Speaker 2: are actually folks who will do insertive P and B
40:33
Speaker 2: and consider it not sex if like the guy doesn't come.
40:37
Speaker 1: Right, if he doesn't finish, if we just lay here,
40:40
Speaker 1: it's yeah, and I think that's the biggest of the service,
40:44
Speaker 1: and it's what we do with men and anger. You
40:47
Speaker 1: never taught us what to do with all of our
40:49
Speaker 1: horny feelings, and now we're just doing really weird and
40:52
Speaker 1: odd shit.
40:53
Speaker 2: It's so much to wrap my brain around sometimes that
40:56
Speaker 2: I'm like, everyone would feel so much better if hadn't
41:00
Speaker 2: been taught to you as the literal worst thing you
41:04
Speaker 2: can do other than murder. And that's something that you know,
41:08
Speaker 2: my ex Mormon clients will tell me, like, oh, I
41:11
Speaker 2: was raised to believe that sex was the same level
41:14
Speaker 2: of sin as murder.
41:16
Speaker 1: So was drinking caffeine right, Like, because caffeine's a drug,
41:24
Speaker 1: it's my favorite.
41:25
Speaker 2: Since there's a diet coke waiting for me in my
41:28
Speaker 2: fridge right now.
41:30
Speaker 1: When your combating purity culture and you're trying to breed
41:37
Speaker 1: the future of sex education, what does that work entails? Specifically?
41:44
Speaker 2: First of all, it entails like taking a good hard
41:48
Speaker 2: look at the values that a person was raised with
41:51
Speaker 2: and deciding like what am I going to keep, what
41:53
Speaker 2: am I going to throw out? And what am I
41:55
Speaker 2: going to replace all this stuff with? Because a lot
41:57
Speaker 2: of folks come to me and they'll be like, why
42:01
Speaker 2: don't I don't know what I believe anymore. I know
42:03
Speaker 2: that I don't believe that I'm going to die if
42:06
Speaker 2: I have sex. I know I don't believe that being
42:08
Speaker 2: gay's sin, but I don't know how to I don't
42:11
Speaker 2: know what I believe now, and I don't know how
42:12
Speaker 2: to like live those beliefs. So there's a lot of
42:15
Speaker 2: work on examining that stuff and giving yourself permission to
42:20
Speaker 2: have a new set of sexual ethics that's not dictated
42:23
Speaker 2: by your church or by a Bible. I definitely do
42:27
Speaker 2: a lot of work with that, like just giving people
42:29
Speaker 2: the almost like the permission to create their own set
42:32
Speaker 2: of values and then helping them figure out how they
42:35
Speaker 2: can live by those values. And you know, for a
42:39
Speaker 2: lot of people, it ends up being pretty simple, like, yeah,
42:42
Speaker 2: I believe that consenting adults should be able to make
42:44
Speaker 2: their own decisions as long as they're not hurting anyone,
42:47
Speaker 2: And people can have the kind of sex they want,
42:49
Speaker 2: even if it's not my thing. And so after the
42:54
Speaker 2: values comes adding in the correct information, like you got
42:59
Speaker 2: to get you know, get this, get the basic information
43:02
Speaker 2: about your body, get the information about communication. So much
43:07
Speaker 2: of sex education is about normalizing everything. Is the range
43:13
Speaker 2: of normal in human sexual behavior is so broad, and
43:17
Speaker 2: most people just want to know that they're not weird,
43:20
Speaker 2: and most of them aren't. It's like, that's a perfectly
43:24
Speaker 2: normal fantasy. It's not weird that you think this. It's
43:27
Speaker 2: not weird that you masturbate by humping a pillow. Like
43:29
Speaker 2: there's so many things that are normal. And yeah, So
43:34
Speaker 2: my philosophy on sex education in general is I want
43:38
Speaker 2: to give people all the information and then allow them
43:40
Speaker 2: to make their own decisions about it. And I operate
43:43
Speaker 2: that way whether I'm talking to a fifteen year old
43:45
Speaker 2: or whether I'm talking to a fifty year old. I'm
43:47
Speaker 2: not going to tell you what to do. I'm not
43:49
Speaker 2: going to tell you how to live your life. I'm
43:52
Speaker 2: not going to give you my opinions on your personal
43:55
Speaker 2: sexual behavior unless you ask me. I just want to
43:59
Speaker 2: create space in which you can make decisions that feel
44:04
Speaker 2: fully empowered and make decisions that are based on being informed.
44:08
Speaker 1: And then, when it comes to us people who aren't
44:12
Speaker 1: sex educators, how are we making sure that we are
44:15
Speaker 1: still providing a country, an environment, a school system that
44:21
Speaker 1: promotes healthy sex education. I'm thinking about my uncle try
44:25
Speaker 1: to make a joke and it did not land, and
44:28
Speaker 1: I was starting to panic, and then finally he told
44:30
Speaker 1: me he was being sarcastic. But we just had vote
44:35
Speaker 1: Ohio no on situation one, because it was going to
44:40
Speaker 1: be a very sneaky way where they wrote it to
44:43
Speaker 1: where it's like, well, clearly, if sixty percent of your
44:48
Speaker 1: state's population doesn't believe in this, we should then have
44:52
Speaker 1: the white men in the fancying room just vote and
44:55
Speaker 1: have them make the call. But it was written in
44:58
Speaker 1: a way where, like even I second guessed myself walking
45:02
Speaker 1: up and actually reading it, I was like, oh yeah,
45:06
Speaker 1: oh no, fuck, now I don't actually know what's keeping
45:08
Speaker 1: abortion on the ballot. Yeah, because I had signed all
45:12
Speaker 1: of these documents, I had made sure that this was
45:16
Speaker 1: like calling people being like, yes, this is what I want.
45:19
Speaker 1: And then I walk up and I'm like, oh no,
45:22
Speaker 1: now I don't actually know. And my uncle had said, hey, Emily,
45:26
Speaker 1: I heard Ohio went the wrong direction on the abortion law.
45:31
Speaker 1: And I immediately broke out into a cold sweat, and
45:34
Speaker 1: I was like, no, I understood it, that we did
45:36
Speaker 1: it right because we voted no Ohio no. It right
45:41
Speaker 1: Because now I'm worried. I voted Ron, and finally he
45:44
Speaker 1: goes amily, I'm joking, oh, sarcastic. I meant for the
45:48
Speaker 1: abortion for the abortion haters. It went ron for the
45:51
Speaker 1: white men in the room, and I'm like, oh, okay.
45:56
Speaker 1: So educating ourselves in how they try to undermine said
46:01
Speaker 1: and how they try to take choices like that away
46:05
Speaker 1: from us.
46:06
Speaker 2: It's so like, I mean, the word evil comes to
46:11
Speaker 2: my mind. It's it's sly, it's manipulative, it's language, manipulation
46:17
Speaker 2: and tricks, and it's hard to keep up with it,
46:21
Speaker 2: truly is I rely on In Pennsylvania, we have the
46:25
Speaker 2: Women's Law Project and I get a lot of my
46:28
Speaker 2: information from them. But if you're in other states, like
46:31
Speaker 2: there's gonna be a project similar in your state. So
46:36
Speaker 2: I would also say the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, like
46:41
Speaker 2: the you know, political arm of Planned Parenthood, and any
46:45
Speaker 2: abortion like the National Abortion Federation, they are going to
46:49
Speaker 2: be keeping tabs on what's going on in your particular
46:54
Speaker 2: state so they can explain the nuances of that shit,
46:57
Speaker 2: because it is often, like you said, written in a
47:00
Speaker 2: way or done in a way that makes you second guess,
47:04
Speaker 2: and that's intentional m H.
47:06
Speaker 1: And I mean, I'm living currently in a reality where
47:11
Speaker 1: I'm so close to Tennessee they've all but made drag
47:16
Speaker 1: queens illegal to even live there. Dayton Is I think.
47:21
Speaker 1: I think we're just small enough to where like no
47:24
Speaker 1: one actually cares what we do. But in Columbus we
47:28
Speaker 1: have white supremacist groups showing up to drag brunches, in
47:32
Speaker 1: chanting and making it unsafe for people to go. I
47:37
Speaker 1: was trying to explain to my dad. We were at
47:39
Speaker 1: a gaming convention and someone was making fun of the
47:43
Speaker 1: fact that on our game badge that it serves as
47:46
Speaker 1: like your ticket for the weekend, you could get a
47:49
Speaker 1: ribbon that said, ask me about my pronouns, and I said, oh,
47:53
Speaker 1: I just changed my pronouns so that they printed it
47:56
Speaker 1: on my badge so I didn't have to get a
47:59
Speaker 1: ribbon every day. And he says something like, well, why
48:02
Speaker 1: would you have to do that, and he got like
48:04
Speaker 1: statty with me. I think he was trying to show
48:06
Speaker 1: off for his brother, and I had him melt down
48:08
Speaker 1: and I was like, when I go number one, I
48:11
Speaker 1: explain this to you every year when I make pronouns
48:15
Speaker 1: something that's just normal and safe to talk about, and
48:20
Speaker 1: like we all just respect one another. People stop dying.
48:24
Speaker 1: That's all I'm trying to do is to stop I
48:26
Speaker 1: hate crying today.
48:28
Speaker 2: Yeah, and to do your tiny little part in making
48:32
Speaker 2: something like acknowledging and asking for pronouns seem just a
48:36
Speaker 2: commonplace thing.
48:38
Speaker 1: Yeah. And I told him I was like, at some point,
48:44
Speaker 1: and I don't know when it's coming, but it has
48:46
Speaker 1: to come soon. There will be something that happens to
48:49
Speaker 1: our family that makes you realize how scary our country
48:52
Speaker 1: actually is, because there's just like they're really good at
48:58
Speaker 1: gaslighting us and sweeping it on under the rug and
49:00
Speaker 1: being like we're just trying to do what God would
49:02
Speaker 1: have won it.
49:04
Speaker 2: It's so much.
49:04
Speaker 1: It's so much that I'm like, and then we're like,
49:07
Speaker 1: we just wanted jobs. We just wanted to graduate college,
49:11
Speaker 1: and we wanted to make salaries and.
49:13
Speaker 2: Maybe buy a house, maybe not have student loan debt forever.
49:17
Speaker 1: Maybe buy a house, maybe not have student loan debt.
49:19
Speaker 1: And we literally have to lead this very slow burned
49:23
Speaker 1: revolution where it's like we're not taking to the streets
49:26
Speaker 1: and we're not burning down Amazon warehouses, but we're just
49:30
Speaker 1: kind of like sitting at home, simmering on TikTok being
49:33
Speaker 1: so mad.
49:35
Speaker 2: Uh huh meming, we're meming it.
49:37
Speaker 1: Yeah, we're just like, what do you mean you didn't
49:39
Speaker 1: change any laws based on my really good SpongeBob quip.
49:46
Speaker 3: Oh.
49:47
Speaker 2: I mean memes really get me through, you know, like
49:51
Speaker 2: the socialist memes out there and the oh my gosh,
49:54
Speaker 2: they're just because to me, like humor has to be
50:00
Speaker 2: has to be part of my everyday life. That's part
50:02
Speaker 2: of pleasure to me is finding humor and things. And
50:07
Speaker 2: you know, despite all of the serious shit you and
50:09
Speaker 2: I just talked about in the last like hour, like
50:12
Speaker 2: we still managed to like laugh at a bunch of stuff. Yeah,
50:15
Speaker 2: I'm like, there's no other way to be in my mind.
50:18
Speaker 1: No at all. If I'm not laughing, I'm crying. So
50:23
Speaker 1: I well. In speaking of TikTok, everyone was on board
50:26
Speaker 1: for like America taking over TikTok. Oh, thank god, we'll
50:29
Speaker 1: be so safe. America is gonna get a handle on TikTok.
50:33
Speaker 1: I go America with bezos and musk and everyone suppressing
50:39
Speaker 1: sex workers, sex educators and people of color in the
50:43
Speaker 1: queer community. Oh sure, I can't wait for that. TikTok.
50:48
Speaker 2: No, No, social media is such a mess. I mean,
50:55
Speaker 2: I'm still on Twitter. I'm not gonna call it as
50:58
Speaker 2: supposed new name because that's so stupid to me.
51:02
Speaker 1: That ugly icon, that ugly icon.
51:07
Speaker 2: But yeah, it's for creators that do work like I do.
51:11
Speaker 2: It's hard to know, like what platforms. I don't feel
51:15
Speaker 2: like we could say that any of them are totally safe.
51:18
Speaker 2: Knock on wood. I've been lucky with my account because
51:21
Speaker 2: I don't tend to post sexualized content. I post like
51:24
Speaker 2: conversations about sex, and that hasn't gotten me. Again, I'm
51:29
Speaker 2: knocking on every wood that hasn't gotten me flagged, like
51:33
Speaker 2: folks who are posting like photos or things that tend
51:36
Speaker 2: to be more like openly erotic.
51:39
Speaker 4: But it is.
51:40
Speaker 2: Yeah, the same folks that are censoring sex education in
51:45
Speaker 2: schools and all that stuff, they also go very very
51:48
Speaker 2: hard against any kind of sexualized content online, which includes
51:51
Speaker 2: only fans. And that, you know, that means that even
51:56
Speaker 2: platforms like Instagram are our face censorship because there it's
52:01
Speaker 2: like they're applying this broad crackdown.
52:06
Speaker 1: And yeah, well it's almost like no one wants to
52:09
Speaker 1: monitor what their kids are doing online because it's got
52:12
Speaker 1: to be exhausting and there's so much online, so they're
52:16
Speaker 1: like camp bezos, just do it and suppress people using
52:20
Speaker 1: his little magic algorithm.
52:22
Speaker 2: Right, or you know, Zuck or any of them, like,
52:26
Speaker 2: we're just gonna We're just gonna.
52:30
Speaker 1: Musk. I trust you. Can you make it so my
52:32
Speaker 1: kids don't see boobies? Can you just do me that solid?
52:36
Speaker 2: Speaking of boobies, did you see the The person who
52:42
Speaker 2: was kind of like Twitter's main character in the last
52:44
Speaker 2: few days was this woman who records tiktoks about her
52:49
Speaker 2: husband's quote unquote porn and sex addiction. And she made
52:54
Speaker 2: a post, she made a video where they were talking
52:56
Speaker 2: about how they had they were going to go see Oppenheimer,
52:59
Speaker 2: and they knew that you could see Florence Hugh's breasts
53:01
Speaker 2: in the movie, and they had a safety plan where
53:04
Speaker 2: he would close his eyes and put his head on
53:06
Speaker 2: her shoulder anytime there were breasts in the movie. And
53:10
Speaker 2: this video has gone massively viral in the last couple
53:14
Speaker 2: of days. And this is a woman who is parroting
53:18
Speaker 2: the like fundamentalist evangelical talking points about sex and porn,
53:24
Speaker 2: and it's gone so mainstream that a lot of people
53:27
Speaker 2: don't know that's where she's from and that's her background.
53:30
Speaker 2: So they're like, this lady's absolutely nuts, and it's like
53:33
Speaker 2: this lady's learned everything she learned from evangelical Christianity. Yeah,
53:39
Speaker 2: and that's what that is.
53:41
Speaker 1: And so her because I haven't seen the video, but
53:44
Speaker 1: her purpose is to be making a joke in a
53:46
Speaker 1: mockery out of it or is her.
53:48
Speaker 2: No, she's dead ass serious. She's dead ass serious. Her
53:52
Speaker 2: entire TikTok account is about you know, there are She's
53:57
Speaker 2: not the only one there. This is a whole corner
53:58
Speaker 2: of TikTok is, like women who will post about their
54:02
Speaker 2: husband's issues with porn. And I put that in quotes
54:07
Speaker 2: in my mind because porn addiction is not something that's
54:11
Speaker 2: recognized as an actual diagnosis. A lot of times it's
54:16
Speaker 2: like a religious, a religious take. There's so much to
54:21
Speaker 2: be said about that. But yeah, so she's she's talking
54:26
Speaker 2: about her husband's battle essentially.
54:30
Speaker 1: Well, they should have gone and say the Barbie Movie,
54:32
Speaker 1: Margot Robbie announces that they don't have genitals.
54:36
Speaker 2: That's true, No, just blobs, just just blobs under their
54:43
Speaker 2: skin or under their clothing.
54:45
Speaker 1: The best part of the Barbie Movie is like Ken
54:48
Speaker 1: reacting to the fact that, like, no, I should want genitals.
54:52
Speaker 1: Those men are making fun of me. I know, He's like,
54:57
Speaker 1: I have all the general I have all of them.
55:00
Speaker 1: I have every type of genital. Yeah, I haven't seen that.
55:04
Speaker 1: I know that there are there. The thing about again,
55:08
Speaker 1: porn addiction, like you said, is like, at what point
55:11
Speaker 1: do you diagnose it? At what point is have you
55:14
Speaker 1: self diagnosed your husband with porn addiction because you're mad
55:18
Speaker 1: at him or any of it. I remember how demonized
55:23
Speaker 1: porn was in the early odds. We were watching rewatching
55:28
Speaker 1: One Tree Hill for a spinoff series that we do
55:30
Speaker 1: about comfort shows, and every fight that Haley and Nathan
55:34
Speaker 1: got into was because he had either had sex with
55:38
Speaker 1: women before her before he even knew who she was,
55:42
Speaker 1: or he liked internet porn.
55:47
Speaker 2: Very timely, you know, like the Internet was still new
55:51
Speaker 2: enough that the proliferation of porn was like, you know,
55:56
Speaker 2: a big shocking deal to everybody. But you know, I'm
56:00
Speaker 2: not going to be long winded here, but the thing
56:03
Speaker 2: about porn addiction is that scholarship around it is really complicated.
56:09
Speaker 2: Neuroscientists who do sex research have found that porn does
56:13
Speaker 2: not stimulate the brain and the way that other substances
56:16
Speaker 2: do for an addict, so actually calling it addiction isn't
56:19
Speaker 2: helpful or accurate. But the researcher's understanding of addiction is
56:24
Speaker 2: different from a layperson's understanding of addiction, and religious anxiety
56:29
Speaker 2: clouds a lot of this, because if you're told porn
56:31
Speaker 2: is bad, porn is bad, it ruins your brain, it
56:33
Speaker 2: changes your brain. None of that is I mean, it
56:35
Speaker 2: doesn't change your brain. That's not ever been demonstrated. But
56:39
Speaker 2: if you grow up with that anxiety, you're more likely
56:41
Speaker 2: to self diagnose as having a problem with porn, as
56:45
Speaker 2: opposed to if you were someone who didn't grow up
56:47
Speaker 2: hearing that it was bad. So the people that self
56:51
Speaker 2: diagnose or diagnose their partners, the correlation with them being
56:56
Speaker 2: deeply religious is pretty high. So I've worked with me
57:00
Speaker 2: who previously had gone to these like for profit Christian
57:03
Speaker 2: porn rehabs, and some of them were like, yeah, my
57:06
Speaker 2: wife and pastor decided I had a problem because I
57:09
Speaker 2: watched porn four to five times a year.
57:11
Speaker 1: Four to five times a year, you heard it, yeah, Well,
57:15
Speaker 1: and then there's the is it cheating? Is it not cheating?
57:19
Speaker 1: Can he still be faithful to me if he's watching
57:23
Speaker 1: Game of Pussy and it's like, probably, because do you
57:28
Speaker 1: not go to the Iron Man movie and then think
57:31
Speaker 1: about Robert Downey Junior on the way home? Was that
57:35
Speaker 1: just me? I don't know.
57:38
Speaker 2: It's the porn topic is so complicated that I did
57:41
Speaker 2: an entire class on it a year ago, and I
57:44
Speaker 2: wrote a big section about it in the sexual values
57:47
Speaker 2: workbook I created, which is like how to evaluate you know,
57:51
Speaker 2: your feelings on it, your feelings on your partner watching it.
57:54
Speaker 2: And in the porn class I taught, I go through
57:58
Speaker 2: like how to talk to your partner about it, how
58:00
Speaker 2: to evaluate what's okay in your relationship. Yeah, it's a
58:05
Speaker 2: big thing for people.
58:06
Speaker 1: I think now that I'm thinking about it, this new
58:10
Speaker 1: so purity culture could also be And again it's so
58:14
Speaker 1: new that we have yet to connect it to anything else.
58:17
Speaker 1: But people are using AI of course to make revenge
58:23
Speaker 1: porn because why wantn't you, right, But then they're also
58:26
Speaker 1: using it to just make porn in general, or to
58:29
Speaker 1: turn it into a fetish And it's like, oh yeah,
58:32
Speaker 1: because if it's a robot, you have no guilt. You
58:35
Speaker 1: don't have to like settle that up with the big guy. Upstairs.
58:38
Speaker 1: It was a robot on your phone.
58:40
Speaker 2: You know, it's so interesting. I tell people all the time, like,
58:43
Speaker 2: if you want to if you want to enjoy erotic
58:46
Speaker 2: content and you feel like worried about the exploitation of performers,
58:50
Speaker 2: like read some erotica or listen to erotic stories, you
58:55
Speaker 2: don't have to get an AI robot with breasts.
59:01
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I'm going to move us into the last
59:05
Speaker 1: part of our show. Thank you so much for this
59:07
Speaker 1: really great conversation and for all of the work that
59:10
Speaker 1: you do, because I have an entire notebook with notes
59:14
Speaker 1: of just like my angry scrawling of this is how
59:18
Speaker 1: purity culture fucked me forever, because I read the purity
59:22
Speaker 1: myth just like on a whim.
59:25
Speaker 2: Yeah.
59:28
Speaker 1: At the end of the show, we like to give
59:31
Speaker 1: kind of an overhanan lesson of like one thing you
59:34
Speaker 1: can take away from the episode that can make you
59:37
Speaker 1: like a better person, and then we like to manifest
59:41
Speaker 1: by adding in some positive energy of what we hope
59:45
Speaker 1: happens in the near future.
59:47
Speaker 2: So my parable for everyone is that it is literally
59:50
Speaker 2: never too late to begin exploring your sexuality if you
59:53
Speaker 2: feel like it's been stunted by anything, if it's been
59:55
Speaker 2: stunted by abuse, assault, or purity culture, which all end
1:00:00
Speaker 2: up resulting in similar manifestations for people. But it's never
1:00:05
Speaker 2: too late. So if you're fifty and coming out of
1:00:09
Speaker 2: purity culture, if you're twenty in coming out of purity culture,
1:00:12
Speaker 2: you have the rest of your life to create the
1:00:16
Speaker 2: kind of relationship with your sexuality you want. And I
1:00:20
Speaker 2: don't care how old you are, and I don't care
1:00:22
Speaker 2: how behind you feel, but it is now your responsibility
1:00:25
Speaker 2: to do something and create the kind of relationship with
1:00:28
Speaker 2: sexuality that you want to have, because you get to
1:00:31
Speaker 2: define that journey going forward.
1:00:33
Speaker 1: I love that, and that was going to be mine,
1:00:35
Speaker 1: So I'm just going to sign onto it.
1:00:38
Speaker 2: Awesome brain Twins.
1:00:40
Speaker 1: You probably put it more eloquently than I was going to.
1:00:44
Speaker 1: What about your manifestation? What would you like to hope
1:00:47
Speaker 1: for the listeners and the universe and the country going forward?
1:00:52
Speaker 2: The listeners, the universe, and the country. I want us
1:00:56
Speaker 2: all to feel more ease with ourselves. Our bodies are desires,
1:01:00
Speaker 2: our pleasure, the things that we enjoy, and to feel
1:01:04
Speaker 2: less shame and guilt for them, to just like let
1:01:08
Speaker 2: the soft animal of our.
1:01:09
Speaker 1: Body, let the whales song singing, I just want us
1:01:17
Speaker 1: to feel more at ease in our in our bodies. Yeah,
1:01:21
Speaker 1: mine is a very practical one. I wish that there
1:01:25
Speaker 1: was an only fans type of website that and I got.
1:01:30
Speaker 1: Maybe Patreon tries to do this, but it's only fans,
1:01:33
Speaker 1: but it has nothing to do with like the gratification
1:01:36
Speaker 1: of sex or sex work. Instead, it's like, I'm a
1:01:40
Speaker 1: fan of women having equality and you're not, and you're
1:01:44
Speaker 1: not suppressed in an algorithm anymore because it's not a
1:01:49
Speaker 1: billionaire at the head of it. So it's just like
1:01:53
Speaker 1: a safe place on the Internet, kind of like when
1:01:57
Speaker 1: the Internet was brand new and some random made a
1:02:01
Speaker 1: website and all of the like minded weirdos found the
1:02:05
Speaker 1: forum and spent all day on it. For sure, before
1:02:09
Speaker 1: we had hashtags.
1:02:13
Speaker 2: Yes, I would lovely wish.
1:02:15
Speaker 1: I would like it if people who are trying to
1:02:19
Speaker 1: end purity culture fight for equality are artists, are just
1:02:24
Speaker 1: people who don't piss off white male millionaires stopped being
1:02:30
Speaker 1: suppressed by the algorithm so that people could find you.
1:02:34
Speaker 1: Wouldn't that be something I would love that Because deprogramming
1:02:39
Speaker 1: starts with information. You don't know what you don't know
1:02:42
Speaker 1: until you go wait highly. I think somehow taking communion
1:02:47
Speaker 1: once a year made me believe that I couldn't be gay.
1:02:53
Speaker 2: It's a long Once you start pulling those threads, they
1:02:56
Speaker 2: all begin to unravel, you know.
1:02:58
Speaker 1: Thank you once again for coming and making the show
1:03:03
Speaker 1: way more informative and offering your expertise. Please let the
1:03:08
Speaker 1: tolerators know where they can find you.
1:03:12
Speaker 2: Fellow tolerators. I'm on Instagram where that's kind of my
1:03:15
Speaker 2: main hub. My Instagram name is Ericasmith dot sex dot ed,
1:03:20
Speaker 2: and I am also at Purityculture dropout dot com, and
1:03:24
Speaker 2: that's where you can find how to work with.
1:03:26
Speaker 1: Me and tolerators at MEN. I almost gave my personal
1:03:31
Speaker 1: one at MEN I've tolerated pod. That is where you
1:03:33
Speaker 1: can go to find us wherever you find us on
1:03:36
Speaker 1: podcasts and on the internet. Because there's no shortage of
1:03:39
Speaker 1: us on the internet, consider joining the mahatreon and then
1:03:43
Speaker 1: maybe we can make the Patreon the place where they
1:03:45
Speaker 1: can't suppress us, and they can't suppress us if we're
1:03:50
Speaker 1: wildly popular. So continue to like, post comments some posts,
1:03:55
Speaker 1: and lead five star reviews. And remember, tolerators, you don't
1:03:59
Speaker 1: have a smile through anything. You're tolerating, including a lot
1:04:03
Speaker 1: of shame making your belly feel icky because you went
1:04:07
Speaker 1: through a very natural process and got horny. Smiles are
1:04:12
Speaker 1: for joy.