Latest / Love Matters With Leeza Mangaldas / Can we talk about sex openly, please? Ft. Leeza Mangaldas (Rerun)

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Can we talk about sex openly, please? Ft. Leeza Mangaldas (Rerun) · Love Matters With Leeza Mangaldas

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Hey everyone, Evelyn charmaher This week. The whole Love Matters team is hard
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at work on exciting new topics with fabulous guests, and so while we're busy
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doing that, we thought we'd revisit one of my favorite episodes from season one
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of the podcast. Season one was a slightly different format where we also featured
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listeners sharing their experiences regarding relationship, sex, and body image struggles, and
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we had a quiz in each episode, so you'll get to hear all that
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in this upcoming conversation that I had with sex educator Lisa Mangaldus. I loved
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this conversation. It was so interesting and validating speaking to Lisa about female pleasure,
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save sex and consent and so much more. I hope you enjoy it
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as much as I did. Hey guys, this is Evelyn Sharma and you're
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listening to Love Matters, my new podcast in collaboration with Indian Express and DW
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Germany's international broadcaster. This podcast is all about relationship topics that matter to you
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and me. In every episode, we'll hear from a listener with a challenge
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in matters of love, and we'll have amazing guests on who can talk to
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the issue from their own experience. Today's topic is a rather touchy one.
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Can we talk about sex openly? Please? I'm sure a lot of our
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listeners have been frustrated with this topic, but here love matters and so that's
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the act of love making. Our guest today is Lisa Mangaldus, a sex
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positivity content creator and educator. Lisa is very popular on YouTube and Instagram,
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and I'm sure you guys have checked her out already. Her topics are everything
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from safe sex to send to female pleasure, and her aim as to normalize
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openly talking about sex. Welcome to this show, Lisa. We're so happy
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to have you. Thank you so much for having me, Evelyn. It's
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so good to be talking to you. Before we start and get into our
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conversation, we'll hear from a listener with a real life problem. This time
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we hear from a young listener in Bangalore who wants to be more open about
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sex. I'll play some snippets from a conversation that we recorded before the show,
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and in the first one, she talks about a very awkward moment recently
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with her mom. Let's have a listen, hey, Evelyn, I'm twenty
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for your more female calling from Bangalore. I wanted to share an experience.
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My mom found an emergency morning bill in my bag and confronted me about it,
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and in a haste, I just told her that it was a prank
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that someone played on me. She never really pushed for it. She never
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asked me any more follow up questions, but I really really wish that she
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had. I wish all parents talk openly about sex with their kids. Listening
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to her voice, note Lisa, what advice do you have for her?
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And tell us about your life. Were you able to talk openly about sex
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with your parents. I feel very lucky to have had extremely open and sort
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of non judging parents. They were never discouraging of any sort of question or
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curiosity, so it always felt safe to ask if we had a question.
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And I was a very nerdy kid. I loved reading when we were little.
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We have these like Childcraft Encyclopedia series, kind of like a really good
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textbook, at least for the time they probably have. They probably seemed so
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dated now, but this was in the nineties, so I definitely think I
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saw really beautiful illustrations of like various types of processes in the natural world.
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You know, even flowers technically reproduce sexually, right, So that was also
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something that we could talk about. My parents talked about contraception, talked about
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scent and you know things like that. I feel really lucky to have had
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a really supportive environment. Yeah, I think that is very lucky, especially
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when it comes to Indian families. Usually we're a little bit more conservative and
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shy to talk about the topic. And you know, maybe on your wedding
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night we'll have a little chat. Just like our listener who's struggling to talk
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openly with her mom, do you have a bit of advice for her,
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Do you have a tip off you know from the other side, basically if
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you don't have such open parents. I think that's a hard one. I
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mean it's sometimes can even come with really scary consequences for young people, especially
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in our cultural context, where like parents might punish you, you know,
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if they find out that you're sexually active or especially as a young woman.
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It's really sad. But I do think that sometimes easing into the conversation,
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you know, maybe you're watching a show together like Sex Education on Netflix or
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Sex Explained, or something which allows for like a neutral third party to be
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bringing up these topics and instead of turning the TV off, you watch it
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together and maybe talk about it after. Maybe that can use some of the
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pressure instead of being like you know, talking about your sex life and having
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your parents potentially punish you all. But I do hope that our generation and
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younger generations and I mean anyone who hasn't yet had a child, can think
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about how we don't want to perpetuate this. You have decided to become a
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sex positivity influencer, and I want to know a little bit more about the
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professional side of it. Where did it start where you said, Hey,
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I want to know a lot more about this topic, and I actually want
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to become an educator. When I was in college and I was fortunate to
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get a scholarship to Columbia University in New York City, and another thing I
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did while I was there was I was an RA, which is like,
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you know, you're in charge of a residence hall, your residence, a
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resident advisor, where you're looking after the kind of well being general well being
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of the student on a floor in a hall. And so part of what
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we had to do was like consent training workshops where we talk about consent and
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like I had a bag of condoms on my door, so students had easy
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access to protection and things like that. And by myself was like eighteen or
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nineteen years old, right, and I felt so lucky to be able to
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come of age and have my first sexual experiences in this environment that was really
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sex positive and where people were having these conversations, where the college itself was
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taking the initiative to you know, try, and I mean, so much
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more can be done. I really think sex education globally is lacking. It's
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not just an India problem. And I even think within the US, I
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mean, little pockets like New York City or San Francisco or something are very
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progressive about these things. But if you look at the abortion laws, and
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I mean the state of affairs on many sex related things, whether it's you
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know, rights for the LGBTQ plus community or abortion or laws against trance identity
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and things like that, I mean, the US is for a developing country,
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it's quite shocking where they are. But so I don't want to say,
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oh, the West is better in India is not good. That's not
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how it is. I think this is a global problem, Like it's quite
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a sex negative world. I was pretty shocked when I came to India and
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I came actually from a very conservative church background, and I came to India
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and everything was actually about sex. I felt like, you know, every
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poster for a movie is oozing sexual energy, every song is about some sort
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of sexual act, but then no one really talks about it. Yeah,
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you bring up a lot of interesting points, and I think it's like worth
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thinking about the fact that female sexuality and women's sexuality is typically utilized in advertising,
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marketing, and entertainment to sell everything from movies to gods, I mean
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alcohol, you name it. Like the media is so ready to sexualize women,
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but society doesn't like to allow women any sexual agency. You know,
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you're like a product to be consumed by the viewer, but you're not allowed
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to actually talk about, celebrate, or do anything yourself. You know what
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I mean. It's like packaged for the mail, gaze buy men for mail
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consumption. You know, we're all part of this conditioning. But I wanted
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to know what exactly do you mean when you say sex positivity or when you
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say we live in a sex negative world. I mean, different people use
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different words, So I just want your definition on it. Sex positivity for
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me, is like a judgment free attitude to sex. You know, sex
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positive doesn't mean you have to go have lots of sex. You can be
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asexual and still be sex positive, and you can have had many partners and
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still be sex negative. It isn't about necessarily having lots of sex, but
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rather not judging other people's sexual choices, not seeing sex as this bad,
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wrong, shameful thing, you know, instead seeing it as a potential source
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of joy and wonder and like a positive thing. Basically, Lisa, you
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bring up a lot of interesting points when you say that, you know,
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we are so conditioned by the information that we get, and we have Actually
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a second part from the conversation with our listener, she has a couple of
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problems with information as well. Let's listen to her again. I had to
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do all of my research, and the Internet is just so huge in terms
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of the information it has. So how does one filter the information? What
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sources are good, what sources are bad? How does one know? That
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is such a good question, and I think a lot of our listeners are
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really interested in the answer. Lisa, do you have any advice for our
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listeners? Do you have any tips for good resources. I think it's so
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important to be discerning as a somebody looking for an answer on the Internet.
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It's so important to try and seek out sources that are credible and that are
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scientifically accurate in judgment free when you're looking for, you know, information about
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your sexual health or something like that. But I also think it really is
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worth if you have a concern that's actually, you know, manifested already,
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if you have an actual medical thing happening to you, instead of trying to
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self cure it. I think if you have access to a good doctor.
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I mean, I think one of the most valuable relationships in my own life
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is with my gynecologist. And it took a long time to find one that
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I could trust and one that I felt comfortable with and one who I felt
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was really non judging. And I'm sad that it can be a bit of
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a process to find that, but I think it's well worth the effort,
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because when you are trying to figure out, you know, something like what
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contraception is best for you, if you want to move beyond condoms to something
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else, or if you just have a vaginal infection or I don't know,
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whatever, other concern. Ye, to be able to go to a doctor
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and get expert advice, I think is something that I wish everybody had the
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privilege of doing. You know, sometimes a WebMD or some sort of internet
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based self diagnosis isn't always accurate, and so I would I understand in some
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cases people just don't have access to a doctor or gynecologist, and so they
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have no choice. But if you do have the choice, and if you
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do have the luxury of accessing a good doctor, I think it's also really
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a relationship worth cultivating. Yeah, what kind of problems do you feel can
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the lack of right information lead to? You know, I mean, let's
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take, for example, the very prevalent misunderstandings around virginity and the hymen,
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and the complete misunderstanding of the anatomy of the hymen has been used to like
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perpetuate so much violence in this regard. Like you know, in several cultures,
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if the woman doesn't bleed on her wedding night, she can be killed
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or abandoned or all kinds of awful ways of ostracizing her right you know,
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end up taking place. When actually, first, firstly, it shouldn't even
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matter whether somebody has had sex or not. I mean, right, that
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is the premise of this is already flawed. But there's also a complete misunderstanding
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of the anatomy of the hym and it is not necessary for all people who
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have not had penetrative intercourse before to blied the first time they do. That
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The hymen is a stretchy tissue. It's not a wall that just you know,
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seals your vaginal opening. I mean, otherwise even period blood wouldn't be
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able to come through, right, I think, yeah, a lot of
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women are scared of this pain also that they associate waste having sex. But
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you have a wonderful YouTube channel and of course your Instagram that I follow now
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too, and you put up a lot of content to educate, and you
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get a lot of questions. I'm sure too, what are the most common
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concerns that people have? I mean, you mentioned pain during sex. I
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think a lot of people do have that question, questions around first sexual experiences
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and whether they will hurt. I think again, there's like this misinformation around
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how sex just is painful for women, you know, and so often it's
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actually a lack of sufficient for play and lack of sufficient lubrication that leads to
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pain doing sex rather than something that's inherently just the way things are for women,
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Do you know what I mean? Yeah, I feel like women's pleasure
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is insufficiently prioritized and they've kind of made to feel like pain is just path
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for the cost. But that's a completely misconstrued kind of take on things.
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You know, sex can be very pleasurable for people, regardless of what sort
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of body or gender or whatever they have, you know, and I also
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think there's a lot of questions around our sex can be more pleasurable. People
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are so curious about orgasms. How do I orgasm? So many people women
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particularly say they've never had an orgasm and wonder why that is. You know,
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we don't talk enough about the clitterest. A lot of people also want
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to know more about masturbation and whether it's okay to masturbate. You know,
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there's a lot of shame, I think still, but people are recognizing that
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this thing that feels good and makes them less stressed out and sleep better and
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get also helps to get to know your own body. But surely it can't
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be a bad thing. So there's a lot of curiosity around that, right
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So on your YouTube channel. You. Oh, that is the sound for
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our quiz. Every episode, our producers prepare a little quiz for us,
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for me and the guests to guess away and test our knowledge on the topic.
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This is the sound when we guess right, and this is the sound
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when we guess wrong. So, since it's a surprise quiz, our producer
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is going to send me the question on my phone and we'll have to guess.
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Today's quiz is a true or false quiz about sex Smith with three questions.
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First question true or false? Lisa, we have to get this together.
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Pulling out before ejaculation is safe false false. I think so too.
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Let's hear it. Yeay, why is it false? You know, the
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withdrawal method is something that a lot of people rely on the absence of condoms,
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So I mean, we've got to like address it. You know.
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Also, it's hard to control when exactly you're ejaculate. So while someone can
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try and convince you if there will power, there's still a lot of trust
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involved in terms of you hoping they won't actually ejaculate, and they're hoping they
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won't actually ejaculate, And so why would you take this big risk when there
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is much much more reliable. I mean, you know a contraceptive methods available,
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whether it's condoms or bills or i uds or whatever it is, that
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might be right for you if you've both been tested for STDs, etc.
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For me, it's just not worth the risk. Why it's not a reliable
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method. That's right here, I have the answer here for us, it's
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false. Pulling out isn't a very reliable way to prevent pregnancy. A barrier
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method like a condom is better. Plus it doesn't prevent sexually transmitted diseases.
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Here's our next question. True or false? The clitter is is a little
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nub on the outside of the valva falls in the sense that it's not only
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the little nub, it also extends internally on the bulk of the clitteral body
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is actually beneath the surface, as it were. Okay, well false false.
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It's actually a large internal organ compromised off erectile tissue that's similar in scale
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to the penis. Yeah, exactly, KA, learn something new. You
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see the external bit, but there's a lot that you don't see that's beneath
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it. It's actually very beautiful shape the clitter is. You should look up
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a picture it's not what you think it. I mean, many people are
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surprised to see that and don't realize it extends internally. So the P shape
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button is the tip of the ice cerg alrighty. Third question, true or
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falls? Women always a chief orgasm during six falls falls? I think so
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too. Yeah, there you go. That's a very easy false for us,
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I feel, because even if just you and me don't always orgasm doing
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sex, that statement is false. So it's anyway. Yeah, no,
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it's false. Unfortunately, particularly for women, orgasm during penetrat of sex is
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not as frequent as we might imagine or desire. That's right, So here's
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the answer. False. In an Indian online study from twenty twenty, the
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majority of men reportedly say they always orgasm during sex, but only thirty percent
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of women. Well, our listener actually has a bit of a problem with
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her boyfriend on this topic, and that's why I'd like us to listen to
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a third snippet of the conversation with her before we continue. My boyfriend he
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really cares about me having a good time in bed, so he thinks that
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I'm not having as good a time as he is. How do I convince
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him that I'm having an equally good time as he is in a way that
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doesn't make him feel that. I'm just saying it for the sake of it.
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Lisa, what would you say to our listener? So I think,
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I mean, I haven't gotten to talk to the listener myself, so I'm
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making some assumptions here. But I think what I'm hearing is that for many
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heterosexual women, penetrative sex doesn't always result in orgasm, and yet it can
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feel nice and you're not having a bad time. I mean, sex doesn't
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have to end an orgasm to feel good. But also a lot of the
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things we love in heterosexual relationships about what heterosexual sex is like a so penetration
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center. Like when we say the word sex, we think venis in vagina,
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but sex, it doesn't have to be sex. It's so much more
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than penetration. And I mean often in heterosexual sex, the clitters, which
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is a much more reliable route to orgasm, is entirely ignored. Most women,
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or rather most people with valvas, do require some amount of clitteral stimulation
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and to experience orgasm, penetration alone isn't enough. And so I feel like
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two things. One, it's nice to be able to communicate with your partner
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about what turns you on and what feels really good, because it's different for
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different people and ultimately only you are the expert on your pleasure. But also
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sex doesn't always have to end an orgasm to be great, Like, instead
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of focusing on am I going to have an orgasm, it's nice to sort
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of be present in the moment and take some of the pressure off, so
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you know you aren't seeing it as this goal oriented thing, but rather enjoying
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things as they take place. Yeah, So coming back to our listener and
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stepping into her shoes, if that was your partner, how would you approach
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him to talk about this topic. Well, I wasn't able to quite understand
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why he didn't think that she was having a good time, But I think
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talking about sex and not just while you're having sex, but like even in
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non sexual situations, so that there isn't any pressure. Often when you talk
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about sex or trying to give feedback or direction, if you haven't done that
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before and it's the first time you're saying something, it can be kind of
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intimidating to the partner or they take it personally or feel like they're not good
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enough for something. I feel like being able to comfortably talk about sex,
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you know, it really increases your sense of connection and honesty with each other.
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And being able to communicate with each other about your pleasure and what feels
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good and what doesn't, I think can really also really make the sex better.
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Yeah, I guess it's more about sharing, you know, what you
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would like, rather than telling the other person what they're supposed to do.
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I feel like, instead of thinking about the shoods and the woods and the
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like scripts that have already been set by I don't know born and the patriarchy
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and various other things, it's nice to discover your own genuine kind of relationship
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to pleasure together, you know, instead of it like I should have a
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big dick, and I should orgasm and I should you know what I mean?
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Like, forget the shoulds and just focus on what is you know?
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Right well? In your line of work, I'm sure you faced judgment or
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difficulties, especially talking so openly about sex in India. Do you want to
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share a couple of difficulties with us and how you tackle them? So the
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most part, actually, I feel like the response to my content has been
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really positive like most people seem genuinely interested and genuinely just happy that somebody is
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talking about it. I mean, on occasion, there'll be someone, I
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guess mainly heterosexual man, who like, who would slut shame you say something
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like, you know, only sluts talk about sex or something like that.
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But I mean, I feel like the word slut has long been reclaimed and
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people are free to call me a slut if they want. But I mean,
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if that's really your best argument about why I shouldn't be talking about sex,
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because it's you with the problem, not me, you know. But
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actually my project is so much about me as it is about starting these conversations
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and encouraging more people to have them. So that's my goal. And I
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think already I see that, Like, already there's more people even on the
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Internet talking more freely. You know, people write to me being like I
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talk to my kid about sex thanks to the video I saw about the importance
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of talking to your parents about sex. So I talked to my boyfriend about
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my pleasure because I saw your video about whatever, you know, the clitterest
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and the misunderstanding of the g spot and things like that. So I feel
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like it it's okay to talk about this openly, then that's really what I'm
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here to do. You know, I've learned a lot today. I have
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learned a lot, and I have really enjoyed our conversation. And I love
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that your goal is to actually have everyone talk about sex more openly. So
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yes, thank you for the wonderful work that you do, Lisa, and
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thank you for being our guest today. Thanks for having me Evalen. It
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was lovely talking to you. And thank you to our listener for sending in
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her question and being vulnerable about her problems in the matter of love. And
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I really hope that you know you will have a more open conversation with your
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parents as well as your boyfriend about all matters of physical intimacy and sex and
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pleasure. And I hope that you know our conversation with Lisa today helped you
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to find the right words. And that's it for today. If you have
23:27
a question in matters of love, please write us at love Matters at DW
23:33
dot com. Until next time. This is Evelyn Sharma and I think love Matters