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This week Jaclyn Friedman is here. Known for her incredible work around sexual assault, sexual violence, consent, and sex education, it is a really intense discussion that I can’t wait for you to hear.

We talk about sexual liberation and why sex positivity must include conversations around sexual violence if it hopes to achieve it’s aim.

We dive into stealthing and why removing a condom without consent is rape. Jaclyn explores the ways that stealthing is dehumanizing and why this power move is about erasing the humanity of the person you’re sleeping with.

She also talks about what centering humanity in sex has meant for her – being able to relax into her truth by getting off the sexual Olympics train. Plus, why all this buzz about hook-up culture on college campuses is actually a myth and the impact that myth is having on students.

Then we go deep into victim-centering justice, needing community to step in and hold sexually violent people accountable, why transformative justice is not the answer, and she even challenges me on being too generous around people who commit acts of sexual violence.

We may not have answers, but we certainly have a lot of feelings and even bigger questions. So strap in and prepare yourself.

Don’t forget to send in your sex confessions about May’s theme of FOOD! I created a guidelines page for you.

Follow Sex Gets Real on Twitter and Facebook. It’s true. Oh! And Dawn is on Instagram.

In this episode, Jaclyn and I talk about:

• How Jaclyn’s always been interested in change-making and activism, even from childhood. Being a survivor of sexual assault is what focused her activism in the realms of sex education, sexual violence, and consent.
• Sex positivity and why it must include conversations around sexual violence if we’re going to achieve sexual liberation.
• Centering humanity in sex and what it means for bodily autonomy and sexual liberation. For Jaclyn, it’s largely meant getting off the sexual Olympics train – feeling comfortable admitting she prefers monogamy and isn’t really that kinky. Vanilla is often frowned on in sex positivity circles.
• Why approaching sex as an intimate act with a co-equal human being leads to respectful sex that folds in care for the other person (or people’s) well-being.
• Lisa Wade’s “American Hook-up” which is a study about hook-up culture on college campuses and how hook-up culture is bullshit. College kids are not having more sex than previous generations. What is different is that college students believe the myth that their peers are having more sex, so there’s a pressure to not have feelings about people you have sex with. The “chill” mentality.
• Stealthing – or removing a condom without letting your sexual partner know mid-sex – and two emails I received from listeners Holly and Meemie. Here’s an article on Teen Vogue about it. Jacyln talks about how stealthing is an active act of de-humanization and power.
• We can make there be consequences for rape, sexual assault, and behaviors like stealthing even if the justice system doesn’t agree. We can, as a culture, as a community, hold people accountable and remove access to people’s bodies and lives.
• Why Jaclyn thinks transformative justice isn’t enough and why we don’t actually have an answer yet for how to center victims and what the consequences should be for rapists and people who commit sexual violence.
• One of the reasons we don’t have answers on how to deal with sexual violence is there’s almost no funding for real research in these spaces – we don’t know what actually works, we don’t know what actually changes behavior in rapists and folks who normalize sexual violence. Jaclyn has big ideas around this.
• Jaclyn just wrote a powerful piece that sexual assault awareness isn’t enough. It’s a must read – awareness is not a good enough goal anymore when it comes to sexual violence. She also ties it to The Handmade’s Tale.
• When President 45 endorses sexual assault awareness month, you know it’s not good enough anymore. We need accountability, action, and actual awkwardness to make change happen – not just this 101 awareness.
• Intentions aren’t where we should be focusing our energy. We need to focus on impact, on the harm caused by our behavior – intentional or not. So, how do we building space for that uncomfortable conversation, for that accountability?
• The difference between the Stubenville rape case and the Brock Turner rape case. Jaclyn has some interesting thoughts about sex education and consent and how it plays into social conditioning around these two cases.
• Female sexual pleasure must be centered, expected, and so normal that its absence sets off alarms if it’s not present – which is NOT the model we have in the U.S. right now. How do we get there?

About Jaclyn Friedman

Jaclyn Friedman is a writer, speaker and activist, and creator of the hit books Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and a World Without Rape (one of Publishers’ Weekly’s Top 100 Books of 2009, and #11 on Ms. Magazine’s Top 100 Feminist Nonfiction of All Time list) and What You Really Really Want: The Smart Girl’s Shame-Free Guide to Sex & Safety. Her podcast, Unscrewed, is paving new paths to sexual liberation, and was named one of the Best Sex Podcasts by both Marie Claire and Esquire.

Friedman’s work has popularized the “yes means yes” standard of sexual consent that is quickly becoming law on many US campuses. Her insistence that authentic sexual liberation is a necessary condition to end the systemic sexualization and violation of women led Lyn Mikel Brown (Co-founder of SPARK and Professor of Education and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Colby College) to call her “this generation’s version of Dr. Ruth.”

Friedman is a popular speaker on campuses and at conferences across the U.S. and beyond. She has been a guest on the Today Show, Nightline, PBS News Hour, the Melissa Harris-Perry Show, and numerous other radio and television shows, and her commentary has appeared in outlets including The New York Times, Vox, Time, The Washington Post, Glamour and The Guardian. Friedman is a founder and the former Executive Director of Women, Action & the Media, where she led the successful #FBrape campaign to apply Facebook’s hate-speech ban to content that promotes gender-based violence. Friedman also holds an MFA in creative writing from Emerson College.

You can stay in touch with Jaclyn at jaclynfriedman.com, as well as on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter @jaclynf.

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Episode Transcript

Dawn Serra: You’re listening to (You’re listening) (You’re listening) You’re listening to Sex Gets Real (Sex Get Real) (Sex Gets Real) Sex Gets Real with Dawn Serra (with Dawn Serra). Thanks, bye!

Hey everyone, I just want to remind you that if you aren’t supporting the show on patreon.com/sgrpodcast, then you are going to miss the super extended awesome chat that Dylan and I are planning. So if you’ve been a longtime fan of the show, you will be hearing a smaller version of Dylan and I having a little reunion in the next couple of weeks, but we are going to have an expanded version for Patreon supporters. So make sure you head over there. You can pledge as little as $1 and that gets you a chance to, not only participate in fun things like PJ parties and some exclusive clips, but also this chat that we are going to be having in the next couple of days. 

Dawn Serra: This week’s episode is an interview with the Incredible Jaclyn Friedman. The hour that we spend together is wonderful and intense, and challenging and deep. We talked about stealthing which has gotten a ton of press lately, which is removing a condom during intercourse without consent. We talked about commodity versus collaboration when it comes to sex and what centering the humanity of sex has changed in Jaclyn’s life. We talked all about the myth of hookup culture on college campuses. She has some really powerful things to say about sexual assault awareness and why awareness is no longer good enough. We talked about the failures of transformative justice, and she even challenges me on some of my views around people who commit sexual violence and what we need to be doing about that at a community level. We wrap up talking about pleasure and how that can actually help us heal some of these really big painful issues that we have. So I hope that you enjoy this chat. It was certainly fun and challenging, and wonderful to record. 

For those of you who don’t know who Jaclyn Freedman is, Jaclyn is a writer, a speaker and an activist and creator of the hit books, Yes Means Yes! Visions of Female Sexual Power and a World Without Rape, and also, What You Really Really Want: The Smart Girl’s Shame-Free Guide to Sex and Safety. Both of those books I highly recommend. Her podcast, Unscrewed, is paving new paths to sexual liberation and it was actually named one of the best sex podcasts by both Marie Claire and Esquire Magazine’s. 

Dawn Serra: Jaclyn’s work has popularized the yes means yes standard of sexual consent, that is quickly becoming the standard and the law on so many college campuses, so she is deep in this work. Her insistence that authentic sexual liberation is a necessary condition to end the systemic sexualization and violation of women, Lynn Michael Brown, to actually call Jaclyn this generation’s version of Dr. Ruth. 

There’s so much more that Jaclyn does, and you can check that out at dawnserra.com/ep159 for this episode. It has links to several articles that we mentioned in this episode, as well as a link to Patreon so that you can support and hear that Dylan goodness that’s coming up soon. Don’t forget that this month’s theme of May is food. So if you have confessions around ways food has played into your sexual experiences, your fantasies, disappointments, breakups or huge moments of surprise and celebration. I want to hear from you, so please also share those. Here we go with this week’s episode. 

Dawn Serra: Welcome to the show, Jaclyn. I’m so excited to have you here.

Jaclyn Friedman: I’m so thrilled to be here, Dawn. Thank you for inviting me. 

Dawn Serra: You’re so welcome. I have long admired your work. As the listeners just heard your bio, the books that you’ve written and I know you’ve got another one coming that we will be talking about a little bit later in the year. I would love it if we could get started, for people who aren’t familiar with you and your work, could you tell us a little bit about your story and what brought you to talking about sexual assault and consent, and all these really juicy topics that are so relevant now?

Jaclyn Friedman: Yeah. I like to say that I’m an activist as a life orientation. I found an essay I wrote in the third grade when I was cleaning up my parents basement, that was about how zoos are bad because all the animals are kept locked up in cages. So I’ve always had a change-making orientation, a strong sense of wanting to work on social justice issues. When I got to college, I sort of started adding a feminist flavor to that. I probably been a feminist before then, but didn’t really use that language. Then junior year of college, I myself, was sexually assaulted and that really as a way of focusing the mind. So I cut my teeth in terms of sexual assault, anti-rape activism on campus. honestly, I started before I was a victim myself, but I certainly got a lot more committed after that and really cut my teeth on campus and haven’t stopped since it’s just continued to evolve. So I have taught self-defense and I used to do a theater, one woman, kind of educational theater program called The Yellow Dress, where you perform this show about dating violence and then facilitate conversations with high school students about it. 

As you know, I’m a writer. I have done poetry around sex and sexual assault, and it’s always been something that I’ve cared about. My thinking about it, I think has evolved a lot as I’ve gone. So, in terms of talking about consent and pleasure, and sexual liberation, all which I consider to be my project right now. It really has evolved over time as I’ve come to realize that in order to address sexual violence, we have to address the base level ways that the sexual culture functions and all the institutions that create the sexual culture, and vice versa. I think there’s a lot of conversations around sex and sexuality that want to wall themselves off from talking about sexual violence and just be “sex positive”. You can’t have an actually sexually-free culture without addressing sexual violence. So I think part of my mission, a big part of that right now, I see is making those two movements into one movement.

Dawn Serra: I love what you’re saying about sex positivity and needing to talk about sexual violence and how we can’t turn a blind eye to the cultural soup that we’re living in, and all of these things around hypermasculinity and toxic masculinity, and rape culture that we’ve just all grown up in. I think you’re so right, that to deny that part or even to simply leave it out, 1.) doesn’t help things at all, but, 2.) actually makes it more challenging for all of us to be having these conversations on a regular basis. I love that you want to bring these two together so that they’re not two separate entities, but they’re all part of the same conversation.

Jaclyn Friedman: Yeah. Each conversation can have a different emphasis. I’m not saying everybody has to do all things all the time. But it can be really alienating to people to try and enter a conversation about sex positivity that doesn’t acknowledge that sex and sexuality has been a location of great pain and injury for a lot of us. And to not acknowledge or integrate that into conversations about what – I really have embraced the phrase sexual liberation, myself, because I feel like it more fully encompasses that idea and that sex positivity, although I understand the intention with which it’s used by a lot of people, I think the phrase itself sounds cheerlead-y in a way. Even just the phrase, I’ve heard heard from students on campuses saying like, “Oh, I didn’t think sex positivity is for me because I haven’t found that sex is particularly positive.”

Dawn Serra: Yes, I’ve had several conversations along those same lines of where often sex positivity gets either twisted or misunderstood to mean sex required and this expectation of being sexual. So I really love sexual liberation. That, to me, not only leaves more space for different experiences of sex, but I also think that that liberation word allows us to include things like reproductive justice and racial justice and these conversations around sexuality.

Jaclyn Friedman: Absolutely. It is intentionally a lot more political and intersectional. It also outlines a project that we should all be free. We should all be free to define our sexualities and run our sex lives in ways that work for us as long as we’re not hurting anyone else. And that is what I think a lot of people who are thoughtful mean when they say they’re sex positive, but not everyone is thoughtful, and even those that are I feel like the phrase, I think, it does more harm than good some of the time.

Dawn Serra: Yeah. I know, one of the things that you mentioned you really like talking about is centering humanity in sex. I think that ties so beautifully to conversations around consent, and all of us being ultimately liberated in bodily autonomy and the sovereignty of our lives and our experiences; we really have to be able to send her that. I’d love to hear more about what centering humanity and sex has looked like for you.

Jaclyn Friedman: For me, personally, you mean? 

Dawn Serra: Yeah. 

Jaclyn Friedman: Oh. I think, for me, it has largely meant getting off the sexual Olympics train, really getting into a place where I feel fully comfortable being like, “Actually, I prefer monogamy and I’m not that kinky.” A couple of kinks. A lot of people in the field would consider a fairly vanilla sex life, and I think that idea of vanillaness comes with stigma. I think that there is this idea that gets wrapped up sometimes in the sex positivity narrative, that you were referring to when you were talking about having sex is better than not having sex, that having the most boudoir or society challenging sex is the best way to show how free you are. And that’s a trap. 

What sexual liberation has been, for me, is a great relaxing – a great feeling like I am here where I am and I’ve been in other places throughout my life, and I probably will be in other places and relationships and sex in days and months and years to come. It’s not a static thing that in moments where what I want seems more conventional, that’s also okay. Because the point is that we should be approaching sex as an interaction, it’s fairly an intimate interaction within another human being, at least one other human being. That emphasis, also, it wraps consent right up in it. When we really think about sex as an intimate interaction with another fully equal, co-equal, human being – of course, you’re going to want to make sure that they’re into it. Of course, you’re going to do what it takes to make sure that everyone is getting their needs met and is having a good time, and no one’s being harmed. Because that’s part of recognizing somebody’s full humanity. 

Jaclyn Friedman: I started out doing talks on campuses, I would focus, not exclusively, but more than I do now on what are the rules on your campus? What do the laws say? That sort of thing. I’ve really abandoned talking about that stuff, almost entirely, because it’s important for everyone to know what the rules and laws are, because we have a right to know and it’s good to know those things. But when I talk about consent, I’m really making a moral argument, which is about recognizing that you’re interacting with a fully co-equal human being and that you have a responsibility, whether this is a stranger you just met 10 minutes ago or your spouse of decades. You have a responsibility to show up and pay attention, and exhibit care for their well being. If you can’t meet that baseline, then you’re not in a place where you’re ready to have partnered sex. And that’s okay. All of us are not in a place where we’re, in that particular moment, ready to have partnered sex at different parts in our lives – if we’re too drunk or if we’re in a bad emotional space. There could be all kinds of reasons. There should be no shame attached to that either. Have you had Lisa Wade on your show to talk about American Hookup?

Dawn Serra: No.

Jaclyn Friedman: Okay. So the sociologist, Lisa Wade, wrote a fantastic book called American Hookup which is about the so-called hookup culture on U.S. campuses. She found a number of really interesting things, including the fact and I’ve been saying this for years. Also, this isn’t really news, probably to you. But the hookup culture is bullshit in the sense that college students these days are not having more sex than my generation and the generation before did. The idea that there’s some new phenomenon happening on college campuses in terms of how much casual sex everyone is happening is completely mythology. Although if you ask college students, they all believe in the myth. So they’re all experiencing this peer pressure that’s not even coming from their peers. It’s coming from moral panic. But what they did find is because of that feeling like everyone around them is having a non stop Bacchanal. No, it’s not true. But there’s a mass misperception about it. 

There’s this pressure to not catch feelings at all about someone you’re having sex with. What Lisa Wade says in the book, which I quote this line, because I could never do better than it, she says, “We’re human beings, we have feelings about breakfast.” How could you possibly have sex without having feelings, right? That’s not a thing that humans do. It doesn’t mean you want to marry that person or even see them again. But it means that we do want to treat each other with kindness. We do want to recognize each other’s humanity, and along with that comes feelings and all kinds of stuff. So moving from that transactional idea of accomplishing or acquiring sex, to really treating it as what it is, which is a really intimate collaboration.

Dawn Serra: I feel like that’s a perfect jumping off point for something that’s getting a lot of buzz right now. I got two emails from folks about it and I think it’s wonderful for us to roll around in with this framework that you’ve created around transaction versus collaboration and exhibiting care. So I’m going to read the two emails and we can just roll around. So the first email came from Mimi and it says:

“Dawn, have you seen this article on stealthing? I find it to be an important topic. I have come across men who, although are not supremacist types as described in the articles, admit to doing this sort of thing. To say it upsets me when they can’t see why it’s not okay is an understatement. Thanks for your invaluable contribution. I’d love to hear your thoughts.” 

Dawn Serra: Another listener, Holly, wrote in about the exact same thing, saying “I’ve been seeing lots of stories this week about stealthing. It was in USA Today, Huffington Post, The New York Post. I find these articles useful because I never knew it had a name. I had a guy stealth me in college. It was a guy who I’ve been dating for a month and we fucked a few times, so I thought he was cool. But then one night when I was riding him, he was wearing a condom. When we switched positions and he came back inside me, I noticed it felt different. I looked behind me and saw the condom on the sheets next to him. He had slipped it off when we changed positions without ever saying anything. I felt so uncomfortable that I made him drive me home. Luckily, I knew the risks so that I could get checked, but we stopped dating and I felt violated ever since. Is this a popular thing that boys are doing now? Thanks. Holly.”

Jaclyn Friedman: Oh, Holly.

Dawn Serra: Yeah, I know. So, just in case listeners haven’t heard, I will link to one of the stories on the Sex Gets Real episode for this, but stealthing is removing a condom during intercourse without consent or without talking to your partner about it.

Jaclyn Friedman: What’s funny to me about this, and I just want to say to Holly, good for you for setting that super clear boundary. It’s perfectly reasonable that you felt a violation. It’s a profound violation. So I want to acknowledge that upfront. The weird thing to me, and I also have gotten an email this week from a listener to my podcast, Unscrewed, who was wanting me to talk about stealthing. So I’m probably going to play this clip for them.

The interesting thing to me is that this is suddenly a trend story, I think, because somebody made up a name for it. I don’t know that there’s evidence. Have you seen evidence that this is actually a practice that’s on the rise? Or it’s just that people are suddenly discovering it because men have been tampering with fucking condoms forever.

Dawn Serra: Yeah, I mean, I’ve had that experience myself. So I don’t think It’s new. But I think that what’s triggered this influx of articles is that there’s a particular group who has recently said, “We practice this and we don’t think there’s anything wrong with it.” So now everyone’s picking up the story and freaking out being super pissed as they should be. But I think, suddenly someone has said, “We do this thing. We don’t see the problem.” And now everybody’s like, “Uh, wow.” So now people can have a reason to talk about it.

Jaclyn Friedman: Welcome to the age of Trump. I’m sorry, am I allowed to get political on your show?

Dawn Serra: Yes. Please do.

Jaclyn Friedman: Okay. I do think that there’s a certain phenomenon that is happening right now that is making misogynist assholes feel emboldened. It doesn’t seem that the timing is accidental, but they should say, “We violate women and we’re proud,” because that’s who we elected to the White House. I’m just going to say this straight up. I don’t know, whether there’s legal precedent about this, although it seems clear – it seems clear to me that this is a form of sexual assault, that someone is doing something to your body, either without acquiring their consent or express violation of boundaries you’ve set. If you said, “I only want to have sex with you with a condom on” or “I want you to put a condom on,” and they say yes, and then they take it off – that is, again, ethically that which is the space that I operate from, it’s a sexual assault. It’s a profound violation. There’s nothing okay about it. It’s clearly, it’s so crystal clear, that it’s a dominance display. It’s like, “I can do to your body whatever I want, regardless of what you feel like.” It’s the active act of dehumanization. “I know you want me to keep this condom on, but I’m taking it off. So I’m erasing you and what you want.” That’s what makes it such a profound violation, let alone the risk of pregnancy and disease transmission and all of that stuff. It’s a deliberate act of dehumanization.

Dawn Serra: Absolutely. I know, it makes me so angry. I can’t imagine deciding that my pleasure is more important than someone else’s entire life.

Jaclyn Friedman: It’s actually worse than that, Dawn. I think the decision is, “It pleases me to dehumanize this person.” So it’s not just this person’s concerns about disease, and pregnancy, and whatever don’t concern me. My pleasure is more important than them.” but I think, especially with the kind of guy who’s going to say, “We do this and we’re not ashamed.” A lot of rapists, I’m just going to say it, it’s a feature not a bug that they don’t have consent. So it’s even beyond “I don’t care” It’s like that’s appealing to this person.

Dawn Serra: Yeah, yeah. To think about that, 1.) it makes my skin crawl and 2.) what makes me so pissed off about this is when you have pickup artists communities that teach folks how to charmingly manipulate someone into a situation more than they can actively dehumanize them, because that’s where they get their power rush. Oh my god, it just makes me raging and also disgusted, and stomach turney. I want to make sure that to everyone listening, no matter who you are in the world and what country you live in, this is not ever okay whether you’re doing it because you’re afraid of the conversation or you’re doing it because you genuinely are just a piece of shit. You want to dehumanize them and objectify them and do these terrible things – it’s just not okay on any level to do this.

I think what’s frustrating so many people is that in the comments – never read the comments, I know – but in the comments are so many of these articles that are tons and tons and tons of people defending the behavior as “It’s not that bad. There’s worse things. It’s not rape.” It’s like this – we’re trying to downplay this because “it’s not that bad”. 

Jaclyn Friedman: Not that bad for who? That’s what I would say, that it’s not that bad for who? I bet none of the people who are saying that are people who’ve had it done to them.

Dawn Serra: Exactly.

Jaclyn Friedman: Right. They don’t get to fucking decide how bad it is. That argument is also dehumanizing.

Dawn Serra: Yes, yeah. I think what would be interesting is I know, I think it was in Denmark, a man just got convicted of rape for removing a condom during sex, which I think is wonderful. 

Jaclyn Friedman: One of the charges against Julian Assange involves condomless penetration when she had said you have to use a condom. I don’t remember if he actually stealth like started the condom and took it off, or if there was some other type of shenanigans but something in that neighborhood anyway.

Dawn Serra: Yeah. Part of me feels like – I mean, just considering Brock Turner cases and what poor Kesha had to go through. Part of me just doesn’t have any faith in the justice system here in the United States, that we would actually convict someone for that behavior. But to me, it seems so clear that that is absolutely something that should have consequences for someone. But, like you said earlier, when we start talking about rules and laws, and regulations and legislation – there’s so much that’s being missed and mislegislated and/or just plain overlooked and ignored.

Jaclyn Friedman: We can make there be consequences whether the law is with us or not, and the justice system, certainly the prison system – it’s really complicated. We can talk about the justice system when it comes to rape if you want to, but it’s deeply fraught. But that doesn’t mean that we, as culture, can’t decide this behavior is sexual assault and if you engage in it, you are ostracized. If you know one of your friends or somebody in your social circles has been accused of doing this or maybe is coming out proudly and saying, “Sure I do this. I don’t see why it’s a problem.” There can be social consequences. It doesn’t have to be this person is arrested and convicted, and locked up or nothing. 

We have a lot of control in our communities as to how we treat people, and what kind of privileges and intimacies, and welcome we give people in our communities. If you see people saying this on somebody’s Facebook page, or wherever you come across it, all of us can play a part in making this clearly not okay and making there be consequences for doing it. Just like Holly did very bravely and it doesn’t mean that she doesn’t feel violated. It doesn’t erase the violation, but the fact that she drew that bright line. I’m sure he tried to tell her it was no big deal. She did not let him confuse her and she said, “No, it’s over. We’re done. Fuck you.” I feel like those bright lines need to get drawn over and over and over again. We have to have each other’s backs when we draw them too.

Dawn Serra: Yeah. I just love all of the work people are doing around transformative justice and community-oriented justice, that requires all of us to take accountability for the conversations that we’re having, the people that are in our lives, and holding each other and ourselves accountable for when we do shitty things, or when we know people who do shitty things. It’s our responsibility to actually say like, “That’s not okay, that’s really shitty.” I think more importantly, is how do we as communities, whether it’s education communities, or kink communities, or whatever kinds of communities you’re a part of to really have these conversations around, what do we do when this happens? Maybe it’s, “I can’t be friends with you anymore?” Or maybe it’s, “We’re going to stay friends. But you know what, we’re going to be having some really tough conversations because this is not okay.” I think we all need to start thinking about those in different ways, because I think that’s where the real change happens.

Jaclyn Friedman: I mean, I would say, in those kinds of processes that we want to be as victim or survivor-centered as possible, I actually really feel like we should defer to the person most directly harmed. I’m thinking of a friend of mine who has an abusive ex and it is incredibly painful to her that some of her friends have stayed friends with him. Whether or not they’ve had intense accountability conversations with him, it’s really hard for her and it’s really a continued violation for her that they’re still friends with him. I think that, ultimately, she should be able to say, you’re talking about mutual friends, like “No, that is actually not what I want is for you to stay friends with them and have a stern talking to with him.”

I think that you can have a stern talking with somebody, but I think consequences or consequences. I have equally – well, not equally. Equally is false, but I also have concerns about transformative justice when it comes to sexual violation. Because we know that perpetrators a lot of them are real good about talking the talk, and then going out and violating other people. There’s a lot of gaslighting going on. There’s a lot of emotional manipulation. These processes also can sometimes require the victim to do a bunch of emotional labor that they maybe don’t want to do. There can be pressure for them to ultimately forgive, if they didn’t want to forgive. 

I don’t think that I have any magic answers in terms of the accountability. I don’t know, I’m not saying you shouldn’t do this or you shouldn’t do that. I’m saying all the systems that I know for accountability have flaws that concern me, but I also don’t know better systems. It’s a big messy area for me of giant question mark, and continued research and exploration. But I would caution people who think, “Well, I had a conversation with that person, and now they understand what they did wrong.” I’m not saying you can’t ever do that, because life is so circumstantial, but sometimes people who do this shit, they just are good talkers. I would be much more concerned about what the survivor wants.

Dawn Serra: Yeah, I find myself in the same place of quandary. As a rape survivor myself, I have super big feelings about the folks who have done things to me being welcomed into communities and being leaders – that just makes me want to throw up. But at the same time, I also have this question mark, like you said, how do we start creating a space? Part of me feels like we need to start with younger generations and do better, because we are already too fucked up where we are now. But, how do we create accountability practices that 1.) center survivors and victims, 2.) how do we actually make space for people who have either genuinely made mistakes or have just been real total assholes and abusers to actually work through those things. Because I think the fear is, if we just kept saying, “No, you’re an abuser, you don’t have access. No, you’re an abuser. You don’t have access.” Then we have this big giant island of abusers, and we create these camps where either abusers go other places and do more things, and they never have a chance to actually have that reckoning. But we can’t rely on victims and survivors to be the ones that force them into that reckoning. So it is this big, huge question marks space and I don’t think any of us have answers yet.

Jaclyn Friedman: I think one of the reasons that nobody has answers is because there’s little to no funding for researching what real rehabilitation means when it comes to sexual violence. There’s a little bit of research on domestic abuse, separate from sexual violence, although that sometimes involves sexual violence. But there’s almost nothing that’s reliable and replicable, and peer reviewed about what it would mean to actually rehabilitate someone so they have a significantly decreased odds of reoffending. What’s an actual effective method of rehabilitating someone who’s offended sexually? I think that there probably are ways.

I think there must be, I believe that, but we have not prioritized that. This was like the march for science and research funding, it’s not a very sexy area for funding. It also makes, let’s be real, the dudes in charge of the money uncomfortable. So, I feel like we don’t have answers, because for systemic reasons also. All have these giant, messy, horrible question marks – I bet a lot of them have answers if we had the actual resources to research them. My ideal answer would be that we would know what works in most cases and we would fund programs that adhere to those standards that are shown to work, to rehabilitate. But in the meantime, I’m hella skeptical of people who say,” Time has passed, therefore I am rehabilitated.”

Dawn Serra: Right. Yeah, I agree. Because, what’s so tricky about it is, culturally, we’ve painted this picture of what a monster looks like. So, rapists are these people who hide in bushes and jump out, and rape people and they’re evil, and they don’t have– You can always tell the bad guy. So nobody wants to be the monster or the bad guy. But in reality, so many people who are abusing and gaslighting, and manipulating and coercing, are people who have really lovely attributes to them and who are smart and intelligent, and have friends and family who love them. But they’re swimming in this cultural soup that tells them they get to prioritize their pleasure over someone else’s humanity or who tells them when someone’s super drunk, that’s the best time to get a yes because when you get rejected, then all your friends make fun of you. So we have these black and white, of course, because we’re a world that loves binaries of monsters or not. 

It makes it really difficult when we have people who are genuinely doing good work in the world, who are caring individuals, and have wonderful relationships with people. And at the same time, have abusive behaviors in certain relationships, or who manipulate people without realizing they’re manipulating them, and use their bodies and use their partner’s bodies for their own personal gain. That’s such a nuanced, tough thing to start picking apart because that goes back to you at a fundamental level. That can’t be a single conversation. 

Jaclyn Friedman: I have to say, I am skeptical that there are mass numbers of people who don’t know that they’re being abusive, who are being abusive. You can always find exceptions that prove rule, but if look at the research, it shows that most people who rape – most of them are men, if we’re talking about adult and teen victims and not child abuse, which is a different dynamic – that most of them know they don’t have consent. They may not be using the word rape to think about what they’re doing. But they know what’s going on. I don’t think there are a lot of people who manipulate without knowing they’re manipulative. I honestly have to express skepticism about that. Just because they have other good attributes, I agree, it how it makes it really difficult for us to recognize when we think that rapists are monsters in the bushes, that plays into victim blaming, because we think, “Oh, he can’t be a rapist because he’s clearly not a monster in the bushes. He has these other nice qualities.” I absolutely agree we have to address that narrative, but I do think you’re letting people off the hook for their actions a little bit too much.

Dawn Serra: I think part of what I’m thinking of, maybe it’s too broad or maybe– I love what you just said. But I’m thinking, what about when you’re in situations of you’ve been married for 20-25 years, and you’ve been told, “When you’re married sex is part of it.” So you’re casually pressuring a spouse into, “Hey, it’s been a while, it’s time.” If they don’t, then you get passive aggressive and shitty. To me, that all is part of this same thing. Now, you might not be like, “You’re going to have sex with me whether you want it or not.” But it’s these subtle social pressures and power dynamics.

Jaclyn Friedman: We are all shaped by social dynamics. We are all shaped by the culture. But there are plenty of people who were raised in that same culture and got those same messages who don’t do that in their marriages. We also have to hold people responsible for the way that they respond to and interrogate social pressures. I don’t consider it a factor to let people off the hook or claim ignorance. I understand that there’s pressure to do that and also, you’re a person with volition. Both are true.

Dawn Serra: Yes, yeah. Oh my god, this is so juicy. I love it and it’s making me think about so many things. So I want to continue in this space, because I think one of the things that ultimately what we’re talking about is you do know right from wrong and you do know when you’re pressuring someone, and it might be uncomfortable to confront that in yourself. But we also have these movements around – you just recently wrote something around sexual assault awareness isn’t enough. I think this is another place where we are having these surface-level conversations that make us feel better. But we’re not seeing enough change happen and you were talking about how awareness isn’t enough anymore. Everybody is aware of these issues. Everybody is aware that it’s systemic, and everybody is aware that they exist. What we need is we actually need anger. We need accountability. We need actual change, since we’re right at the end of April, which is Sexual Assault Awareness Month.

I think that ties in with some of what we’re talking about here, I think I’m being too generous and I think that you’re bringing up some really wonderful, powerful points, but how do we move from this awareness to actual accountability when we’re talking about these things? It might just be that there’s still question marks here and that’s where we end up, but I’d love to know what got you to the place of writing that and what do you think is next?

Jaclyn Friedman: Oh god honestly, I’ve been saying that for years – muttering it under my breath mostly. I finally got around to writing it because I just finished my book, I think. But I make money in Sexual Assault Awareness Month, colleges hire me and I go talk under that umbrella all the time. And that might have been part of what took me so long to write that out loud also. Which reminds me, have you on The Handmaid’s Tale – the first three episodes yet?

Dawn Serra: No, not yet. I’m skeptical. No, I’m so worried it’s going to trigger the fuck out of me. 

Jaclyn Friedman: Oh, it may trigger the fuck out of you. I didn’t know which part you’re skeptical about, I can assure you it is very high quality. But it is very intense and may trigger the fuck out of you. I’m not telling you you have to watch it, but there is there’s a scene in the book, but it takes place in the series at the end – I think it was the end of the first episode where– So for those who are unfamiliar, I’ll do a little very basic setup, which is The Handmaid’s Tale is a dystopia where a theocratic organization or force has taken over the United States. There’s a lot of infertility for reasons which are not explained in the TV show. So I’m not going to spoil things for people. Women who are still fertile are basically forced into sex slavery in order to bear children for the powerful men in the new regime. So, of course, as part of that, they are repeatedly raped. It’s what they’re there for is to be repeatedly raped until they bear children. 

You see this happen, of course, nobody calls it rape. It’s given this very formal ceremony, it’s hyper normalized. But then at the end of this first episode, all of the handmaids, which is the name of the class of sex slaves, are summoned to this outdoor field sort of thing and presented with this guy, who the authorities tell them is a rapist, that he actually raped, a handmaid. You’re given to understand that he’s not one of the people who are legally allowed to own these women. He acted outside of the bounds that the culture has defined. So we treat this rapist as outrageous. Everyone’s like, “Oh, he’s a rapist!” Basically he’s given to the handmaids to beat to death, which they do. Then everyone feels spleened in this community. They feel like, “Oh, well, we identified a rapist in our midst, and we gave him our form of justice. So this is clearly a culture that takes rape seriously and has zero tolerance for it.” It couldn’t be a better metaphor for what I’m talking about. Which is, this culture runs on rape, rape baked into the institutions, but nobody wants to acknowledge that – that’s institutionally denied and papered over in every way. But in order so that people don’t get antsy, we say like, “This over here, this one case, this is a legitimate rape.” I use that phrase advisedly. 

Jaclyn Friedman: So we’re going to take this so seriously, that involves the most brutal possible death penalty. Now we’re a culture that takes rape seriously. Everyone’s aware. So that’s how I feel about Sexual Assault Awareness Month. Everyone you meet will say, “Of course rape is bad and should be taken seriously.” But what rapes do they see as valid? What rapes are they not paying attention to that’s much more socially sanctioned or socially acceptable? What are we doing about it? Once a year, we all have some awareness events and we wear denim, and we did a thing about rape, and we can go back about our business and not think about it, and let the institutions of rape continue to function. 

So, man, that scene – I haven’t stopped thinking about it since I watched it. I mean, look, that scene aside because obviously we don’t support beating anyone to death under any circumstances.

Dawn Serra: Just like to say that. 

Jaclyn Friedman: Just for the record in case anyone’s misunderstanding me. I do feel like some of the things that get done under the Sexual Assault Awareness Month umbrella are good, right? It’s good to talk about some of the things that people have programs about. But when we keep doing that one-on-one level over and over again, and don’t push past it to the uncomfortable parts, we hold our institutions actually accountable. People have to take responsibility for themselves and for their communities in ways that are really uncomfortable and difficult to confront. We’re not fucking getting anywhere, right? Again, sexual assault, I said this in the piece, Sexual Assault Awareness Month is so safe and uncontroversial that our president who is most likely a rapist, has been accused by more than a dozen women of sexual assault, felt perfectly comfortable declaring it Sexual Assault Awareness Month. That should tell us everything we need to know. I don’t know the answers about accountability. We have that conversation. But what if every institution that’s been complicit in covering up sexual violence had to cough up big dollars during Sexual Assault Accountability Month to fund that research that I wish existed. We could actually get somewhere. What if it was Sexual Assault Action Monthand we really thought about what kind of actions would get us closer to what our goals are? 

I think that my real objection is to awareness as a goal instead of as a tactic. When we say, “We’re raising awareness,” and we just leave it at that, that’s treating awareness as the end goal and it’s getting us nowhere. It’s sometimes perfectly appropriate that you have to raise awareness of something in order to make people want to take action about it, but then you have to help people take action. You can’t just leave it at awareness. We had to raise awareness that marital rape was wrong in order to make it illegal. It took several decades to outlaw it in all 50 states. I think the last state outlawed it sometime in the 90s, which is still shocking when I think about it, how recent that was. But in my lifetime, it’s been legal to rape your wife in some states in this country. Actually, when I was born it was legal in most, if not all of them. So, absolutely, that involves raising awareness to make that shift, but it didn’t just involve raising awareness. We had to then make legislation.

Dawn Serra: Yeah.

Jaclyn Friedman: And make people pass it.

Dawn Serra: Do you think that part of the reason we haven’t moved past awareness is because people are so terrified of being controversial, and also are so terrified of the discomfort of getting things wrong and not really knowing and having to be in those question marks? That it’s safer to stand at the edge and say, “Let’s all look at this really terrible thing and talk about it, but let’s not go any further.” Because that might be way too uncomfortable and scary, and ostracize the money and all that kind of stuff?

Jaclyn Friedman: I mean, I’m going to sound like a conspiracy theorist. I promise you I’m not. But I think the reason is, in part, because the really powerful institutions in this country are run by men and men think that accountability for rape – a lot of men, not all men, #notallmen – a lot of men are really afraid of accountability for rape because they, maybe in their heart of hearts, don’t know that they’ve always treated women as fully human. They don’t know if it’s going to come around for them or their buddies, or it’s going to violate the bro code. Those attitudes are deeply entrenched and hard to figure out how to fight. So part of it is – it’s really hard to figure out how to do it also. 

We all want those things that make us feel accomplished that are easy. It’s like a little candy dispenser. I think this is maybe what you were trying to get out early, and I might have been a little too hard on you, but I do think about those guys who maybe when they hear talk about affirmative consent think “Well, if that’s true, then I’m a rapist.” If affirmative consent really is the correct moral standard, what does that mean about me and my morals? I think we have to figure out what to do for those guys to encourage them to come in from the cold. Because our options are like, “Yeah, well, fuck you.” Which is satisfying emotionally, right? “You should have thought of that earlier. I’m so terribly sorry that you didn’t, but you didn’t.” But then, they don’t come around, right? Or we make it too easy and say, “Oh, it doesn’t matter what happened in the past, what matters is what you do in the future,” which is also not true and is super disrespectful to whomever they’ve already hurt. So figuring out that middle path in which we say there has to be accountability and what is that accountability and rehabilitation look like? It gets back to that monster issue, right? Maybe you have hurt someone, but it may be if we didn’t think of rapists as monsters, it would be easier to say, “Wow, I hurt someone,” and not “Wow, I’m a monster.”

Dawn Serra: Yeah, yeah. I mean, I’ve talked about this a number of times. I think it’s important to talk about, right? It’s a mild thing, but… I grew up in the 90s and graduated from high school in the mid 90s. I didn’t ever really have anyone talked to me about consent and until I started taking kink workshops in my late 20s. I, of course, knew don’t pressure people and things like that because by that point, I had been sexually assaulted. But just those nuanced conversations. 

I remember this one time, I was dancing in a bar with a woman that I thought was super hot, and we were making out. I didn’t know what was supposed to happen next. So I assumed based on everything that I knew about sex and movies and things like that, that the next thing to do was to start touching her breasts without asking, because we were making out. And of course, after making out is you touch people above their clothes. So I did that, and I remember she was like, “I’m really not ready for that.” Then I felt terrible, because I didn’t ask her ahead of time. I just did it and then we had this super awkward moment. Of course, I stopped but, I just think about that – I think there are spaces where we genuinely aren’t sure what to do, so we do the wrong thing. 

Jaclyn Friedman: Yeah, but I think that decent people also pay attention when they get those no cues. I mean, I feel like I’m going to make this assumption about you and you tell me if I’m wrong. I think even if she hadn’t said no explicitly, if she had sort of frozen up and stopped dancing with you or really stopped participating, you also would have stopped. It would have been clear. So look, it’s not ideal that you did that. But also you stopped. I’m talking about people who didn’t stop. Because technically, nobody was saying no, maybe. 

Dawn Serra: Exactly. What I think feels really satisfying is like, “Fuck you, I don’t want to deal with you. You’re a jerk who did this terrible thing.” But then there’s the part of me that’s the educator that wants to build the bridges of, how do we open these conversations up? How do we use language that gets people who otherwise would be like, “No, that’s not me. I’m not a monster,” to actually start saying, “Maybe I’ve done some things that have really hurt some people.” Then how do we go take the conversation one step further from that, and that might feel really shitty and not satisfying, but those are the spaces that I am playing in right now. But I will I’m glad you were hard on me earlier, I’m glad you said those things because they’re super thought provoking and important. I think all those conversations need to happen. 

I think, inherently that’s what people are trying to avoid is that exact discomfort, like, “No, let’s be in that discomfort.” Let’s call each other out and say, “No, I think you’re being too easy.” Or, “Maybe I’ve been too hard.” I think these are the conversations, the exact conversations, we need to be having to even try to start getting to some of those question marks.

Jaclyn Friedman: Yeah. I think in that, it’s clarifying to remember that most guys, even cis guys who have been raised in this culture, don’t sexually assault anyone. That’s always the clarifying and grounding thing for me to remember. So yes, the culture is powerful. But also most guys aren’t rapists, and most women – most people of all genders, don’t rape anyone. So, we absolutely have to shift the culture so it’s less fertile. It’s less encouraging for people who have those impulses. But we also have to hold people who hurt other people responsible for their actions. We also have to get rid of intention altogether to a certain extent like, if I decided to drive drunk, and I hurt someone with a car, I’m responsible for that; whether I wanted to hurt that person or not, I still hurt that person. So I feel like good intentions don’t get you very far when you’ve hurt someone. I don’t think they do.

Dawn Serra: I mean, I think we can have conversations around them. But I don’t think that’s where we need to be making our decisions. We can talk that you didn’t mean to hurt somebody and what that feels like for you, but you hurt someone and so now we actually need to talk about the person that is hurt, and how we move to healing for them our support for them; and that’s an uncomfortable place to be. But I think you’re absolutely right. It doesn’t matter whether or not I meant to, I did. So now, where are we? Now what’s next? I think more people are starting to realize intention doesn’t matter. But I don’t think enough people are starting to get there or there yet.

 

Jaclyn Friedman: Yeah, I mean, I don’t know if I’d go so far to say, intention doesn’t matter at all. I tend to say intentions aren’t magic. They don’t make the harm not have occurred. It may be useful to understand people’s intentions in understanding if we had some actual research like how to help them not revenge. Maybe depending on what your intentions are, your approach is different. But the accountability should still be there regardless of what you meant. “I didn’t know.” It’s not an adequate excuse for harming someone in that way. It’s your responsibility to know.

Dawn Serra: It is your responsibility to know.

Jaclyn Friedman: And most everyone pulls it off. 

Dawn Serra: Yeah. Yes, yes. I do think sometimes like when we hear conversations around rape and sexual assault, and trauma and and healing, sometimes it can feel a little bit hopeless. But I love that you keep bringing it back to, most people don’t harm other people. Most people know, “Wow, this doesn’t feel very good. This person doesn’t want this, I’m stopping.” So just remembering that, genuinely for the most part, all of us really are trying to do our best and we might make small mistakes. But most of us do know how to do this. So what we’re talking about is a smaller upset and not every single human being like in The Handmaid’s Tale.

Jaclyn Friedman: Yeah, I mean, look, most of us can use advancement in our sexual citizenship. We can be better and more responsible in terms of really seeing the humanity of our partners and respecting. It is not like we don’t all have things to learn, but most of us also are invested in whether or not our partners are okay and having a good time – instinctually, we may not have the tools to talk about it– I certainly talk to students about that. We may need reframing in our brains, but you would have stopped with that woman. You really would have, even if she didn’t say no, I believe that because it just wouldn’t have felt right. Because you are not turned on by overpowering someone, genuinely. I’m not talking about kink. 

Dawn Serra: Right. Mutual enjoyment feels good.

Jaclyn Friedman: Yes. Can we talk about the role of pleasure in this? 

Dawn Serra: Oh, please do. 

Jaclyn Friedman: I know we’re running out of time. But I don’t want to leave everybody else to bleak place. 

Dawn Serra: Yeah, let’s do it. Pleasure. 

Jaclyn Friedman: So here’s what I’ve been thinking about a ton lately. I’ve been thinking about – I actually, just yesterday, gave an interview to a journalist about this Stephenville Ohio gang rape. Do you know this story? 

Dawn Serra: Yes. 

Jaclyn Friedman: Okay. You don’t even need to know the story to understand this anecdote. They were high school kids, two boys drugged a girl who was so drunk that she was slipping in and out of consciousness. They dragged her from party to party, and violated her in a variety of ways. Yhere were bystanders, their football buddies were there, and nobody did anything. Mostly they just cheered them on. When asked on the stand during the trial, why he didn’t intervene, one of the bystanders said, “I didn’t know that’s what a rape looked like. I didn’t know I was looking at a rape,” is basically what he said. That’s stuck with me for so long because he’s basically saying, what was he looking at? He’s looking at a young woman, laying passively, being acted on sexually, being consumed by two buddies of his, who are guys. Well, that’s the basic root idea of the commodity idea of sexuality, that is the dominant idea that most of us grow up in. Women are the sexual product and men are the consumers. They’re the buyers depending on which language we’re using in this gross sexual marketplace metaphor. That’s what he thinks sex is supposed to look like literally. 

What’s more on, getting back to your point about monsters, he sees that these are his buddies. They’re not monsters. So, of course, they’re not rapists. He likes them. They have great qualities. I contrast that with the Brock Turner case that made all the headlines last year, where two guys came along, a very similar scene of a guy sexually acting upon – sexually consuming a past out passive woman who’s not actively participating. This was at Stanford. Those two guys said, “This scene looks horrible and wrong, and must intervene immediately.” Do you know what the difference is between those two situations?

Dawn Serra: I’d love for you to tell me. I mean, I’m sure there’s many, but you have a point.

Jaclyn Friedman: Well, there’s many. The key one here, for me, is those guys who intervened in the Brock Turner rape, they’re from Sweden. They were raised in Sweden. In Sweden, you get sex ed integrated into the curriculum every year starting in kindergarten, and they teach you about affirmative consent, and they center humanity and healthy sexuality and respect for your partners. There’s so much less shame and stigma around sex in general, that they know what healthy sexual interaction is supposed to look like. They know what enthusiasm and pleasure is supposed to look like. They know what it looks like when it’s absent. They know that women are expected to like sex and be participating if they’re into it. There’s no taboo about women actually being into sex. 

So the difference between those two situations in terms of two witnesses to very similar scenes was whether or not they expected to see pleasure – female pleasure. And whether or not they expected to see people treating each other as humans. I really feel like the keystone to a ton of shifting this culture is creating a culture where female sexual pleasure is not taboo, but is seen as healthy, seen as expected. So normal that its absence sets off alarm bells, if you see a sexual interaction, the words not present.

Dawn Serra: Yeah.

Jaclyn Friedman: So that ties into what we’re talking about at the beginning where you can’t talk about these two issues without each other. It’s not like sexual liberation is over here and anti-rape work is over there. They are the same work. They’re the same work. You can’t talk about making sex better for everyone without acknowledging and talking about the role that sexual violence plays in making sex not great. You can’t end sexual violence without changing the culture around our attitudes toward sexual pleasure – what constitutes pleasurable sex for all of us, but especially dealing with the taboos around women and sex.

Dawn Serra: Yeah. Oh my god. I loved that. I’m so glad that you brought us from beginning to end, and wrapped it up and gave us that juicy tidbit to think about because I think you are so right. Pleasure is the thing that’s missing from so many of our sexual conversations specifically in American culture and sex education. I know we’re all trying to work to change that. But boy, there’s so much more to do. 

Jaclyn Friedman: We’ve got a lot to do. 

Dawn Serra: There’s a lot to do. It’s also exciting to think that people are reading your books and listening to your podcast, and listening to this podcast and having access to even conversations like this. Because hopefully that starts conversations in their homes, with their kids, and with their families, and all that kind of stuff. I think you’re so right, when we have a genuine understanding of what open conversation looks like, of what pleasure looks like, of what an engaged sexual exchange looks like. And we haven’t grown up in a system where sex is all about performing and achieving this kind of commodity model; and instead it’s exactly what you said, it’s about this collaboration. Genuinely seeing that this is a mutual exchange, it leads to very different results.

Jaclyn Friedman: Yeah, absolutely. 

Dawn Serra: Well, I know that we are at the hour, even though there were lots of other things for us to roll around, you will be back in a couple of months to talk about your new book. So we can go deeper then, but I would love it if you could tell everyone how they can stay in touch with you and find you online.

Jaclyn Friedman: Oh, sure. Absolutely. You can find me on Twitter and Facebook at @jaclynfriedman as in Friedman. If you want to follow my sort of non-political or sex related stuff on Insta, which is mostly food and travel and random selfies.

Dawn Serra: Amazing hair.

Jaclyn Friedman: Oh, I just got my hair done! I’m really loving it. I’m @jaclynfable there. You can find all my work, including stuff about how to bring me to your community, and my podcast Unscrewed, and writing and all of that stuff at jaclynfriedman.com. Friedman is FRIEDMAN. You can also obviously subscribe to my podcast Unscrewed in iTunes or Stitcher or wherever you like to get your podcasts – that really covers all the basis.

Dawn Serra: Yay. I will have all of those links on dawnserra.com/ep159 for this episode, so everyone can click through and follow you, and buy your books and book you for talks and all that good stuff. Thank you so much for coming on the show and offering all of these amazing, juicy, rich conversations and tidbits. My brain is buzzing. I love it.

Jaclyn Friedman: Oh, super– I hate to say that it was super fun because it makes me sound like a sociopath, but it was actually really great to talk to you.

Dawn Serra: The listeners get it. Thank you, I had so much fun too. Also, to all of our listeners, if you have other questions on these topics, if you have questions for Jaclyn, she will be back in a couple of months so I can hold on to those questions for us to roll around in them. If you have questions or stories about anything else, all you have to do is go to dawnserra.com and you can submit a question via the contact form. We would love to hear from you. So thank you so much and I will talk to you next week.