Talking to other sex educators, researchers, and experts is one of my favorite things in life, especially when the conversations are rich, personal, nuanced, and challenging.

I met Cavanaugh Quick through O.School (where we both live stream sex ed for free), and the first time I saw Cavanaugh talk about feminist porn, I knew I wanted to have them on the show.

This episode is incredibly beautiful and real. From the reality of being awkward to practicing being aroused in public, from consent and non-verbal body cues to kink and getting your first vibrator, Cavanaugh offers a warm, kind, thoughtful perspective that feeds my soul.

You’ll also want to check out our bonus chat on Patreon all about using techniques Cav learned for managing chronic pain to induce pain during sadistic kink play. SO FUN. Patreon supporters at the $3 level and above get access, so head over and listen. patreon.com/sgrpodcast

If you want to grab my latest workshop on ethical porn and how to use porn in your relationship or any of my other online courses and workshops, you can check that out at dawnserra.com/courses.

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

In this episode, Cavanaugh and I talk about:

• The 24-hour porn marathon Cavanaugh used to organize on campus and why it’s so important to watch porn in public.
• Sitting in arousal when we can’t or don’t need to act on it and how that resilience can help us navigate awkward situations, sex, and consent with more grace.
• The surprising brilliance of ending a date early in order to masturbate. We discuss why this bold move is feminist, helps reaffirm mind-body communication, and also respects your date’s boundaries.
• What does Cavanaugh love about awkwardness, and what has been learned after listening to many other people talk about their awkwardness?
• How to embrace your awkwardness, and why awkward doesn’t have to be weird or wrong or bad.
• The power that comes from acknowledging your insecurities or your awkward spaces and having that received well by a partner or friend. MORE AWKWARD ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS PLEASE.
• Why it can be liberating to lead with what you are most afraid of, whether that is your fatness, your STI status, or your kinks.
• Queer, trans, and brown has been the cornerstones of Cavanaugh’s identity their whole life, but claiming the word fat was most difficult. We discuss why and what happened when “fat” became part of Cav’s bio.
• Using the Aziz Ansari news as a jumping off point, we explore the confusion around non-verbal consent, body language, and the responsibilities that we have to other human beings.
• Cav gives permission to stop having underwhelming sex and have a slice of pizza instead.
• How cuddling, soft, touch, masturbating together, or watching porn together can easily fit in the middle between the poles of  “not having sex” and “having sex.”
• What lightbulb moment in Cavanaugh’s late twenties revolutionized their entire world and changed everything.
• We field a listener question from Anonymous. They are a mostly straight 20 year old woman from a Christian family and are having big feelings about porn and buying their first vibrator.
• A listener question from Roxie about not being able to reconcile her need for deep submission (as a sissy maid) and her desire for strict dominating. Cav has such lovely thoughts in this space.

About Cavanaugh Quick:

Cavanaugh Coury Quick is a queer, trans, polyamorous, AfroLatinx adventurer with a passion for critical thought and personal autonomy. He uses strengths-based techniques and reflective practice to assist folk of all ages in exploring the intersections of their personal and professional identities, beliefs, and behaviors. He also plays the tuba.

Stay in touch with Cavanaugh on his website, and also on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter @Heyawkwardology.

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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, listeners! Dawn Serra here. Thank you for being here with me. I know I don’t say that nearly enough, but thank you. Thank you for listening. Thank you for your emails and your questions. They feed me so much. I love being able to have these conversations with you. The news lately has been filled with stories about Aziz Ansari. This week’s guest, Cavanaugh Quick, helps me to dive into a juicy conversation all about non-verbal cues, awkwardness, and consent, which is a really crucial part of the Aziz conversation. 

Dawn Serra: I just want to be really clear that I 100% believe and support the woman who shared her story because it is never okay to coerce, to manipulate or to repeatedly pressure someone into sex. It’s never okay to block exits or entrances with your body. It’s never okay to use your power over another human being’s choices, even if it leaves you feeling disappointed. Because no one owes you sex and no one owes you access to their body. And saying you didn’t know better isn’t good enough anymore. You do know better. Aziz and everyone else out there who’s done these sorts of things. 

Lindy West had a fantastic piece in The New York Times this week explaining why everyone, men especially, cannot claim that the times are changing or they didn’t know or that women are too sensitive. Because these issues, people talking about and studying consent and autonomy and sovereignty and power have been writing about these things and speaking about these things and advocating for many, many decades, longer than many of us have been alive. So it’s not new. Ignorance just doesn’t get you a free pass. I wanted to take a couple of minutes to just name that for anyone who needs to hear it. If you’ve been assaulted, manipulated, coerced, shamed or pressured into things that you didn’t want to do, I believe you. The wonderful thing about what’s been happening lately is there are lots of other people who believe you, too. 

Dawn Serra: Anyway, this week’s episode, I just can’t say enough how much I loved this chat with Cavanaugh Quick. It is completely full of tenderness and generosity and kindness and permission to be weird and awkward and unsure all in the service of pleasure and connection. You know that is my jam. I met Cavanaugh through O.School, which if you haven’t checked it out yet, it’s free sex education that live streams talks every single night of the week. Cav and I are two of their pleasure professionals. Speaking of which, be sure you catch my weekly show, “Pop Culture Undressed,” every single Wednesday at 8pm Eastern/5pm Pacific. It’s totally free. It’s at O.school. That’s the URL. This coming week, we are going to be reminiscing and examining John Hughes’ 80s movies. We’re going to be talking about “Sixteen Candles” and “The Breakfast Club” and “Pretty in Pink.” I would so love for you to come geek out with me and to have wistful teenage feelings about Molly Ringwald and Jake Ryan and all the things that it taught us about relationships and love. 

Also, Patreon supporters, Cav and I recorded a special bonus chat all about chronic pain and kink and sadism. So if you support at the $3 level and above, you can listen to that now. You just have to go to patreon.com/sgrpodcast. Let me tell you a little bit about Cavanaugh, and then we will jump into the episode. Cavanaugh Coury Quick  is a queer, trans, polyamorous, AfroLatinx adventurer with a passion for critical thought and personal autonomy. He uses strengths-based techniques and reflective practice to assist folks of all ages in exploring the intersections of their personal and professional identities, beliefs, and behaviors. He also plays the tuba. So here is my chat with Cavanaugh and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Dawn Serra: Welcome to Sex Gets Real, Cavanaugh. I am very excited for our chat today.

Cavanaugh Quick: Me too. Thank you so much for having me. 

Dawn Serra: You’re so welcome. I had my first introduction to you fairly recently. I had an opportunity to watch you talk all about porn on O.School and I thought you were so articulate and kind and knowledgeable. I was just so impressed with everything that you were sharing about porn and how we can use it ethically. It’s so one of the things that I most love talking about in this world. So, yeah. I love that you were offering that stream to people.

Cavanaugh Quick: Thank you. Thank you. I was really excited to do it. Porn has been the crux of my sex education career. Really, how I got started doing that was in college. I used to run a 24-hour porn marathon on campus and we would stream a mix of films that were queer and feminist and women-centered and with women run production companies and studios and “mainstream” porn and have talk backs about the differences in what you were getting and what you were seeing and how it was being presented to you. It was my favorite event–

Dawn Serra: How precious.

Cavanaugh Quick: Yeah. It was really lovely. And there was that exciting and awkward and weird thing of being like, “No. Yeah. We’re all going to sit in a lecture hall and watch porn together.” That really dug in. I was super excited at first to do that event because it was new and weird and I got to be the kid who was screening porn. And then, as I did it the first time, I was like, “Oh. This feels really exciting and deep. It’s something that I want to keep doing in any capacity.” And here I am.

Dawn Serra: Watching porn in public is something that I recommend as often as humanly possible to people because I think it’s such an important thing. In our culture, porn is this mythical, vilified, shameful joke that everyone knows about, most people have seen and no one really gets. What can we actually do with porn and how can we talk about it better? There’s something really special in whether it’s Dan Savage’s Hump Festival or a curated queer porn film festival or this porn marathon that you screen, there’s something so special in sitting in a space knowing you’re going to watch material that may arouse you, that may turn you off, that may make you have all of these feelings and just being able to sit in those feelings with others, and then to have conversations and thoughts. We don’t really have an opportunity to do that very much in our lives.

Cavanaugh Quick: We really don’t. We don’t have a model for being okay with being turned on while you’re around people who you’re not trying to have sex with.

Dawn Serra: I agree. 

Cavanaugh Quick: Yeah. So it was really exciting. And there was a burnout period. We ran it for 24 hours, so after the first 12 hours or so, I would have to step out and be like, “I just can’t watch anymore porn right now.” But the idea of being comfortable, being around people and not knowing if they’re turned on and not knowing if they know that you’re turned on, what that looks like and being able to sit in desire is a really important skill to cultivate. Because it helps us figure out what we’re going to do with that when those desires feelings show up in other parts of our lives.

Dawn Serra: I love that so much. That sitting in desire. I was just talking to Mona Darling a few weeks ago and we were talking about the sexist and misogynistic cultural phrase blue balls and how you’re not going to die if you sit in desire, arousal and maybe you’re a little uncomfortable, but we can have such complex and nuanced experiences with our bodies and arousal. I love this. We can sit in that desire. We can sit in that arousal and we don’t have to act on it. We don’t have to do anything other than enjoy it or explore it or maybe even be surprised by it. I think that’s such a wonderful thing to be able to practice and to cultivate.

Cavanaugh Quick: Absolutely. To the point about blue balls, not only are you not going to die and you’ll be fine, but if you really, really feel like it’s something that is controlling your moment and you can’t focus on anything else until you have an orgasm, it’s within your wheelhouse and right to excuse yourself and say, “I need to cut our time together short because I need to go home and spend time with myself.” You’re right. We don’t have a model either for talking openly about being like, “Hey. I’m really enjoying this time together. But you’ve made it clear that you’re not interested in sex. What I really need to do right now is experience some sort of sexual pleasure. So I got to go.” We really need to be able to do that. People are allowed to have desire and allowed to want to act on it and need to be able to do that with or without other people and need to be able to do that respectfully, in a way that they’re not pushing somebody else to be involved in that experience that they don’t want to be.

Dawn Serra: Yes.

Cavanaugh Quick: And that’s what I really wish would happen. I would not ever be upset for somebody who was like, “Hey, our time together is really wonderful. But I’m having some feelings. I need to go take care of myself.” Great. Fine. That satisfies my need to not be part of your experience and it satisfies your need to. Now, I know that you’re not just sitting here thinking about whatever and you’re actually engaging in yourself and not ignoring what I’m doing.

Dawn Serra: Yeah. And I think there’s something else really powerful in that, of like, if we’re able to acknowledge what’s happening in our bodies, that helps to establish that trust and that communication between our mind and our bodies, which we are woefully unskilled at in our culture, and to also be able to just acknowledge, “I’m having such an incredible time with you and I’m feeling really aroused. Your boundaries and where you are today is so important to me that I in no way want to manipulate or coerce or take advantage of you. And I want to honor me. So let’s leave this time wonderful, beautiful, arousing and I’m going to go do this beautiful thing with my body and you get to enjoy exactly what your boundaries are.” To me, that’s so beautiful and respectful. I would be really impressed if someone did that and thinking, “Wow. They’re respecting me and themselves all at the same time.”

Cavanaugh Quick: Right. I mean, I can’t think of anything that is a better marker of the nuance of desire and sex and how to interact when there’s more than one person involved.

Dawn Serra: One of the things that you said you love talking about and working around is all things awkward. That is absolutely a space that I adore. Because so many of the conversations that I have on this show are about helping people to feel more resilient in the awkward and the uncertainty because that’s just inevitable whenever we’re talking about dealing with human beings and feelings and bodies. I know that you said that you’re that person who spends a lot of time listening to people’s feelings and fears around awkward. But, also, it’s a place where you really love to go. So what is it about awkward that you love?

Cavanaugh Quick: I like awkward as my own face of sexiness. What I mean by that is that I don’t think of myself as a particularly sexy person. As soon as I say that, my friends and co-worker and colleagues are like, “Oh. Let’s reshape what sexy is,” which I’m totally into. I really, really believe that all people have the capacity to be and are inherently sexy. It’s just not a word that feels like a true descriptor for myself when I think of who I am and how I move through the world, but I am totally awkward. 

I really am interested in going there because there’s a part of my sex and the way that I exist in my sex that other people see as confident and it is. But it was born out of me feeling super weird all the time and needing to explore that and just getting overwhelmed by the idea that I felt weird and I felt awkward and I had tons of questions and I needed this knowledge. There was just no way to get it without just pushing straight through and saying to a person, “Hey. Maybe this is a really weird question or maybe this is a weird topic and you don’t want to talk to me about it. But I have a question about how to put multiple things and evolve at the same time. Can you help me?” So just my own exploration involves so much confronting and loving and leaning into my awkwardness. I really like making space for that.” 

Cavanaugh Quick: Also, asking people to confront it. I think we have a social narrative that asks us to not be awkward or to learn how to be the most smooth and the most charming. Those are great qualities, but they’re not the only ones. So I really want to ask and help people embrace the awkward parts of themselves and get rid of the idea that just because something isn’t super charming or it didn’t come out quite right, that it was weird or wrong or bad and that you shouldn’t do it again.

Dawn Serra: When you’re talking about this social expectation that we have around being smooth and charming, for me, the first thing that comes up is this cultural narrative we have around the quest for perfection and how if we’re constantly striving to be the most perfect version of ourselves, then the story that comes behind that is we won’t suffer uncertainty. We won’t be alone. We won’t fail. And so this constant need to be improving ourselves and to be different than we are in this kind of guarantee that we’re seeking, that if we can just do it right enough, we never have to feel the stuff that’s uncomfortable. 

Cavanaugh Quick: Yes.

Dawn Serra: I think what comes with that then is the performance aspect of so many of us are unconsciously performing what we think  smooth and charming and confident look like. The invitation you’re offering is if we can just confront that awkwardness and acknowledge that so many of us feel it in so many different ways. And sometimes we are just awkward and that can be a point of connection and growth and joy. Oh, my God.

Cavanaugh Quick: Oh. I’m so glad to hear that. I think when we do hear about the awkward person or the ways in which being awkward can be charming, in media, it’s always presented as a person who is otherwise very conventionally attractive or has other qualities that balance out or overshadow the awkwardness, and then it becomes this, “Oh. Look how cute you are. You’re so sweet and good looking and you don’t know how to talk to ladies.” But that’s not a realistic expectation of people either. Sometimes you’re not “conventionally attractive,” whatever that means. Sometimes you don’t look like you just stepped off the cover of GQ and you don’t know how to talk to ladies and there’s nothing wrong with you. 

So I’m really interested in and asking people, as part of their exploration into their sex and in their sexuality, to engage the awkwardness and the insecurities that go along with it and impart it to reframe it. Also to be okay. Like, “I’m okay with the fact that there’s lots of things that are weird about me and that other people sometimes they’re like, “Huh. That was weird.” I’m not interested in not being weird. I’m interested in just being my whole self. Sometimes that includes weird things.

Dawn Serra: As you were talking, I was thinking, wouldn’t it be amazing if we could just be a little bit more honest about the times when we’re not sure of the right thing to say, but we’re very clear about what it is that we want to communicate or ask for. Or, we’re even bumbling that of, “I’m not really sure what I want or what I need, but I would really love to connect with you.” I immediately thought the vast majority of people would be so uncomfortable with someone being that honest that they would immediately reject the person. So we have to also be able to balance that of, how can we be resilient around the rejection that comes with being honest and not performing the way that we’re expected to because that’s going to make people who are really invested in performing feel wildly uncomfortable and they’re going to want to reject that discomfort. It’s less about you and more just about, “I don’t know how to perform in this situation. No one’s told me that, so I need to get out of it as quickly as possible.”

Cavanaugh Quick: Absolutely. Absolutely. That’s the other key component of it. We can’t just lean into weird stuff. Whatever that means. You do have to be ready for– And my aim and my goal with the work that I do and the people that I see is to ask them to find the parts of them that they’re afraid somebody else will reject them for and make peace with those in hopes that, not only that they’ll come out of it feeling more complete or centered or able to be more into themselves, but also, so that they’re prepared to identify those parts in other people. When somebody does come to you and it’s like, “I don’t actually really know what I’m doing right now and it’s stressful and we’re both a little weirded out,” you can say, “Oh. I know that spot. I have a spot like that. Maybe it’s not the same one. But I have that spot and I’m okay with it. I found how to have that spot with me. I have more patience for you in this moment.”

Dawn Serra: Isn’t that an incredible way to model the skills and and the behaviors that we’re just not really taught? To be able to say, “I feel that way sometimes, too. It’s about something different, but, boy, do I know how to be there. I would love to be here with you. Let’s figure this out. Let’s try this out. It might not go the way we want it to, but we’re still going to use this as a point where we can have conversation and be open together.” That’s where so many powerful things can happen because now we’re not trying to both pretend that things are okay and we’re not pretending that things feel good, we’re actually able to be really open about like, “Oh. I don’t know how I feel about this, but let’s talk about it or try it anyway,” or “Wow. That didn’t go the way I thought it would. That’s okay. We can try it a different way next time.” I mean, that sounds like a much more interesting encounter to me.

Cavanaugh Quick: Exactly. It makes way for us to have more nuanced conversation about “good sex” and “bad sex” and “good flirting” and “bad flirting” and the ways that we relate to other people. That’s such an important thing that we need. We have a very binary model for talking about our sexual engagement right now, if we’re allowed to even talk about it. That model is either it was good or it was bad. 

Dawn Serra: Yeah. 

Cavanaugh Quick: And there’s so many spots in between that. Most of us, I think, are having sex that’s somewhere in between those two things for most of our lives. We need to be able to have conversation about that, but we can’t do that until we’re able to say, “Oh. I wasn’t really expecting that to be that way.” “Oh. Okay. Alright. Maybe we can figure this out,” or “That wasn’t really for me, but okay. Now I know and I learned a thing and I’m sorry that I don’t want to do it,” or “I’m not sorry that I don’t want to do it.” Whatever version of that is what we’re aiming for. We can’t have nuanced conversation until we can have nuanced feeling.

Dawn Serra: Yes. Oh. I want to make that a bumper sticker. Something else you said that just really resonated and it’s a very scary thing to do. I don’t want to tell people, “I’ve done this. You should, too.” That’s not what I’m saying. But when you said find the parts that you’re afraid someone will reject you for and make peace with that, I remember somebody gave me the advice to lead with the thing that I was most afraid of someone judging me for when I was on a dating app and that was being in a fat body. I spent so many years trying to hide the fact that I was in a fat body and trying to downplay what my body actually was and to reject my own body in an effort to avoid the rejection from others. When I started leading with that fact that I was in a fat body, it gave me so much more permission to have conversations with people who weren’t going to opt out of that. The people who engaged with me knew that up front and were still choosing to engage with me. It was a really terrifying thing. It’s not that people don’t still say shitty things, but it’s that the people who do actually show up for conversations are either completely neutral about it and it’s just not a thing or like the thing that you’re centering. It was terrifying and also, so helpful.

Cavanaugh Quick: Yeah. That sounds amazing and scary advice. I think it’s the thing that I do, too. I’ve never put it to words that way. So thank you for that. The thing for me was not necessarily– I’m super insecure in terms of flirting and dating and people are often surprised by that, which in part, I think, is because we have this expectation that if you work in a sex world in any way, you’re super good at it and super confident. That’s just false. So everybody who’s listening–

Dawn Serra: Let’s give the listeners some news.

Cavanaugh Quick: It’s so very false. So there’s that. But then there is– I’m really good at faking confidence. It’s been a skill that I’ve used throughout my whole life and it’s been really valuable and important to me. And it really… It puts me in a pickle, where sometimes I’m like, “Oh. Wow. I feel so scared of this thing. I don’t even know who I could tell.” Because everybody’s going to be like, “Oh. You’re fine. Come on now. You’re just being silly.” So there’s that piece of it. 

The thing where it really hit me was putting together my little bio that I send to people when they’re advertising for speaking gigs or anything like that. I’ve never had a problem putting the word queer in there. That’s been a cornerstone of my identity for my whole life. When I started to transition and came out as a trans person, that was really easy to put in there. I’m very obviously a brown person. That’s not something I could avoid, even if I didn’t want to put it in my bio. But putting the word fat in my bio was my source of anxiety and being like, “Oh.” Part of it, for a long time, I was like, “Well, it doesn’t need to be there. That’s doesn’t have anything to do with my speaking skills. It doesn’t have anything to do with my knowledge.” Which is obviously false. It has everything to do with my knowledge and my speaking skills, but I was able to weasel my way out of it for a long time. 

Cavanaugh Quick: And then finally, I was like, “I’m not being honest with myself and I’m not being honest with other people.” I’m afraid now that what I’m doing is perpetuating the idea that I’m supposed to be celebrated for everything about me except for the body that I have and what I’m doing with it. So I feel that in a really deep way. And that was just my work bio. That did not even crack the surface of what it’s like to try and flirt with people on the internet, which I’m still very bad at and approaching people in public. I’m really good at making eyes quietly from across the room. But the minute someone starts walking towards me, I panic and I just don’t really know what I’m doing. 

Dawn Serra: Oh, my God. Me too.

Cavanaugh Quick: But taking that small step and having a bio that says that I’m queer and fat and trans was like, “Okay. There we go. Let’s do it.”

Dawn Serra: Yeah. Like, “I’m taking up this space.” 

Cavanaugh Quick: Yeah. 

Dawn Serra: Yeah. I know several sex educators, who, for them, the thing that they are most afraid of and feel the most awkward around is an STI status, either having herpes or HPV or HIV and so many of them, in having conversations like this, now lead with that in dating bios and on dating apps. They’ve had similar experiences of just grappling with that panic and that fear and, “Well, maybe I don’t have to lead with this, but in doing so, has opened up the doors to so many interesting conversations.” Also, grappling with that shame that if it’s not in the shadows, then maybe it doesn’t have to be so shameful or whispered embarrassment. It’s just right there for everyone to see. Now, I don’t have to pretend or have that big build up conversation. It’s just there.

Cavanaugh Quick: Right. And when we can do those things with stuff that feels that we already have a model for engaging with rape, being fat or having an STI/STD, anything like that, having stuff that we’ve already learned, whether what we’re supposed to feel about it – which often is shame – that makes room for us to start talking about stuff that we don’t ever talk about, which is our sexual desire. If I can’t talk to a person, a partner about being a fat person, how am I going to talk to a partner about whatever sexy interest I have that I’m not sure if they have or I’m not even sure if it’s regular. I’m not even sure if I should tell a person about it. You know?

Dawn Serra: Right. 

Cavanaugh Quick: If I can’t tell them about it, how can I satisfy it?

Dawn Serra: Yes. 

Cavanaugh Quick: And if I can’t satisfy it, how can I engage with my sexuality wholly?

Dawn Serra: Yes. I think that’s so important because so many of the questions I get and we’ll field a couple of them today, but so many of the questions that I get are people who really want to experience pleasure. They want to have better sex. They want to have more engaged and thriving relationship with whoever they’re in relationship with, but they can’t find the words to share the thing and they’re trying to find a solution. That means they don’t ever have to say the thing or share the thing. And they want that magic. “Please, can you tell me there’s a way around this or a way to guarantee the outcome.” And that’s not not how it works.

Cavanaugh Quick: No. It’s really not. And if we take a step back from that, I wouldn’t expect someone to be a mind reader in any other aspect of my life. So even though it’s scary, and I too, often look for ways to be like, “How do I communicate this very specific interest without ever saying that it’s my interest?” The reality of it is that I don’t go to a drive thru fast food restaurant and pull up to the window expecting them to have an order ready unless I stop at the box and tell them what I want. And that’s true in all areas of my life. You have to. You just have to say the words and you have to be ready to engage. And as we already said, you have to be ready for maybe somebody to say, “Oh. That actually isn’t something I can satisfy with you. Where do we go from here?” 

That’s the other thing. We have a model where we expect that either somebody can satisfy things or we’re supposed to be done doing sex or relationships, whatever it is that I’m doing with them. And that’s not true. But you’re never going to get to the spot where you can have your relationship in spite of or alongside this other set of desires or interests, if you can’t talk about the spot in the middle of those, which is that, “This exists for me and it doesn’t exist for you. So what does that mean? How do I get what I need? How do you get what you need? And how do we do it together?”

Dawn Serra: Yeah. I think this is a beautiful bridge to something else I really want to talk to you about that’s in the same space where, right now in the media, there’s a lot of conversations happening about Aziz Ansari. While we’re not going to go there, per se, a lot of the conversations make it clear that people are very confused about non-verbal consent and body language and the responsibilities that we have to other human beings and so much of consent. They don’t teach you this when you take a college consent class because university is giving you the consent class to check their legal box not to give you practical skills most of the time. And so much of consent is non-verbal and to be skilled at consent is to both to be able to articulate and to receive verbal as well as non-verbal cues and information. 

Sometimes people don’t have power in a situation to have a voice. In those situations, bodies can often tell us or give us more information. And the same for our yeses. So much of consent is around our nos. But consent is also all of our yeses. Oftentimes, our yes, it’s very difficult to get out. And so it creates a lot of really complicated spaces. I know you said that some of the stuff you really like talking about is non-verbal consent and the awkwardness of our bodies and how we can navigate that. I’d love to roll around in that with you a little bit.

Cavanaugh Quick: Yeah. That sounds great. 

Dawn Serra: Okay. When you think about non-verbal consent and our bodies, what’s the first thing that comes up for you?

Cavanaugh Quick: The first thing that comes up for me is the fear that we can’t tell or might not be able to tell when somebody’s body is saying the opposite of what their mouth is saying. The particular area that arises is the idea that sometimes people’s bodies and body language is clearly saying, “No,” or “I don’t like something,” but they haven’t said that with their mouth or I haven’t been able to hear that in the words that they’re saying. That is something that I answer a lot of questions about. I’m really afraid that I won’t know. Unless somebody says it, I won’t know what’s going on. 

While it’s true that often verbal consent is the most clear, that we can recognize a word and the word has a meaning, what I say to people is that we actually have so much more skill to recognize non-verbal body language and cues and consent. We just aren’t used to applying in a sexual situation. What I mean by that is if you’ve ever been in a lecture or a work meeting and looked around the room and been like, “Everybody in this room is bored,” you have exercised your ability to recognize non-verbal cues. Right? 

Dawn Serra: Yeah. 

Cavanaugh Quick: We have an ability to do that. We’re just never told that it can be applied in a sexy situation. In part, because a lot of conversations around sex center on the idea that somehow you get turned on and then everything else shuts off. You have no ability to function anymore. 

Dawn Serra: Yup. 

Cavanaugh Quick: And that’s not true. You have lots of ability to function. It’s just that your focus is often in a different area of function. The first thing I do is just remind folks that you actually, probably multiple times today alone, read somebody’s non-verbal cue. 

Dawn Serra: Yes. 

Cavanaugh Quick: You don’t actually need specific training in it. What you need to do now is think about how those cues look in a sexy context. 

Dawn Serra: Yeah. Going back to that social narrative that we have of when our genitals are aroused, our brain shuts off. Which is such an oversimplification of human beings. We are so much more complicated and nuanced than that. So let’s give ourselves that credit. Often, that conversation is very gendered as well. I would like to believe that men and masculine folks are as nuanced and skilled as all other humans on the planet. I don’t want to just say 50% of the population doesn’t know how to operate when they’re aroused because that’s a sad state of affairs. But I think so much of this where we get this fear is and/or where we pretend like we don’t have the skill is we have so much desperation and scarcity and/or entitlement around sex and depending on how we’ve been socialized. When we pair that with this terror of being rejected, especially when we’re naked, and then not getting the sex, particularly if sex is the only way we experience touch in our lives – which is true for so many men– 

Cavanaugh Quick: Absolutely. 

Dawn Serra: I think it puts us in a place where it’s easier to ignore those subtleties because all of the other things are so much bigger and so intolerable to sit in. And so I think a lot of this has to come back to we have to be able to just feel weird and we have to be able to take someone’s no. And, no. It doesn’t define our worth. We have to be able to see this other human being – or these other human beings that we may be interacting with – deserve to have full autonomy and sovereignty over their experiences. If we can’t hold all of that, then maybe we shouldn’t be getting naked.

Cavanaugh Quick: Right. I think you’re hitting such an important point, which is we operate on this like, “At least, I’ll have tangled at all model.” Which is maybe the sex was bad, but at least it was sex or maybe it was whatever, as if there’s no opportunity or is that there’s a reason to sacrifice meeting as many of our needs as possible in any given moment. 

That’s not to say that every time you have sex, it’s going to be the most mind blowing sex of your life. Although I hope that’s true. If you’re having that kind of sex, please email me because I need advice. It is to say that, at any point, you can be striving to meet as many of your needs and your partner or partners needs at any given time. So just because every time you get naked with somebody might not be mind blowing, earth shattering sex, it doesn’t mean that it has to– If it doesn’t feel like, even a little bit earth shaky, that you have to just still go ahead with it. You really can say, “Oh. This doesn’t really do anything for me. I’d actually really rather go get a slice of pizza right now. How do you feel?” 

Dawn Serra: Yeah. Or, what can we do in this moment that would bring a lot more pleasure and joy to both of us.

Cavanaugh Quick: Right. 

Dawn Serra: Because maybe it’s cuddling or maybe it’s massage or maybe it’s watching some porn and masturbating together or maybe it’s reading some erotica, and then checking back in. I mean, there’s so many opportunities for us at any moment to actually create something really incredible and interesting. Instead, we have this grin and bear it and/or grin and just push through it kind of mentality because we’re afraid that certain types of sex aren’t going to happen and we’re very invested in those certain types of sex.

Cavanaugh Quick: Right. That’s the other part of the conversation with ourselves. What is it that I feel so invested in and what actually happens if I don’t get it? Is it worth investigating why I feel so married to this very specific kind of sex? Or, how am I contributing to the feeling that no other kind of sex is going to be satisfying for me? So interrogating that. 

And then, again, I think what you’re describing is kind of the theme of our conversation so far has been, we go zero to 60. But cuddling and some focused soft touch or masturbating together or watching porn together, all of those are things that I think very easily can fit in the middle of not having sex and having sex. And for some people, might be the sex act. Right? 

Dawn Serra: Right. 

Cavanaugh Quick: But we do this zero to 60. You’re either not having sex or you’re having sex. And the idea that, “Oh. Wait. There’s stops we could make along the way that might change how this feels is novel.”

Dawn Serra: Yeah. And not only zero to 60, but how quickly can I get from zero to 60? Because if I slow things down, I think a lot of our insecurities start coming in both around our personal insecurities, but also, that’s when we start confronting our lack of skill in being able to communicate and negotiate and have interesting and very nuanced conversations that can feel uncomfortable. But if I can get us from standing here to intercourse in the next five minutes, that’s so much less opportunity for someone to change their mind or to reject me. 

Cavanaugh Quick: Right. Especially because we don’t talk about sex outside of having it. 

Dawn Serra: Right.

Cavanaugh Quick: So, this opportunity is not going to come up again until we’re ready to be having sex again. 

Dawn Serra: Right. I was looking at your website and you have this description for your workshops and I would love it– I’d love to read it, so that people can hear it because I think it’s… Gosh! I wish I had the grace to have these words in the way that you have these words because it’s so much what I wish for everyone to understand. I think it just… It fits in so nicely with this around being able to honor our wisdom. Is it okay if I read it to everybody? 

Cavanaugh Quick: Thank you. Yeah. Please do.

Dawn Serra: Okay. It says, “My workshops are designed to allow us to learn freely without shame or fear and to eagerly welcome the corrections and feedback of others. I believe firmly in intersectionality and the inherent validity of our own experiences. We are whole people, greater than the sum of our identities and we exist as all of ourselves at all times. We are the experts in our own lives, regardless of our credentials. And we have the ability to both share our own truths and take in the truths of others, even when those things are sometimes incongruent. 

Oh, my God! That’s like… That was actually ecstatic for me when I read it because it’s so beautiful and so true. So many of the cultural messages that we get about gender and sex and what it means to us and who should be getting it and all of those things are attempting to override everything that you’re writing about in this paragraph of recognizing that we’re whole and we’re wise and that we are the experts in our lives and our bodies. Yet every single thing around us in our culture is trying to chip away and to tell us we are not whole and that we are broken and that our identities are who we are and that other people know better than us what we need and what we want.

Cavanaugh Quick: Right.

Dawn Serra: And you’re trying to give that back. 

Cavanaugh Quick: I am.

Dawn Serra: That’s such a beautiful thing.

Cavanaugh Quick: Thank you. Thank you so much. I think arriving to that point in my life has been the single greatest thing that I’ve ever done. Understanding myself as completely aware and full in my own existence. What I mean by that is that nobody knows better what I need or what I am or what I feel or what I can do than I do. That doesn’t mean that I don’t need other people to help me understand and realize those things sometimes, but I have the most knowledge of myself. I honestly, that’s the only thing I actually have full knowledge about is me. 

Dawn Serra: Yeah. 

Cavanaugh Quick: And I do… So many parts of my life, especially as a younger person and especially in this work. I’m in my late 20s. So many parts of my life have been waiting to be old enough or waiting to be educated enough or waiting to be in a big enough city or whatever. Looking for more and more and more to validate the things that I already knew and wanted to know more about. When I got to that point where I was like, “Wait a minute. I know everything there is to know about Cavanaugh Quick.” It revolutionized my entire world. It changed everything. It changed how I approach my work. It changed the things that I valued. It helped me find value in stuff that I think before now, I just brushed off as things that happened along the way. I have always been very academically focused. I think it comes out in my writing. I clearly have an academic background. I’m grateful for that. It used to be the thing that I thought was going to make me good at life, so I just slogged through everything else so that I could make it to academia. When I had that moment of thinking, “Wait a minute. None of these things are making me more myself. They’re just helping me express myself differently.” It changed my relationship to academia and what my life goals were. So I’m really grateful and excited to hear that that is really hitting and resonating with you in a deep way.

Dawn Serra: Yeah. Because I just– So much of what I want listeners to take away in every single episode is that we all have so many things in common and we all have such unique experiences and we can hold those things to be true at the same time. If those things are true, then every single one of us is going to have a completely different experience of touch, of pleasure, of love, of how to communicate those things. We all have different traumas and histories and family units and cultures and communities that we were raised in. Sometimes listeners get a little frustrated in that, “No. Tell me exactly what you would do or what you really think,” and my answers are always, “I can certainly tell you my experiences and I can tell you what I think in a general space, but I can’t ever speak for any single person. I’m certainly never the expert in anybody else’s experiences.” 

I still want people to be empowered in realizing… When we realize we can fully take up all of the space, that is our body and our life and that we can explore the edges of who we are and define and map all of this territory ever changing as it is, I think it starts to give us the opportunity to then start asking for the things that we want and for the things that we need because we start to understand it’s such a terrible burden to place on someone else to expect them to read our minds or to understand how our bodies work because they never can.

Cavanaugh Quick: Yes.

Dawn Serra: Yeah. Ugh. I wish it could stop. Oh, my God. Well, I would love to field a couple of listener questions with you. If your game, I’d love to jump into the first one. 

Cavanaugh Quick: Beautiful. Let’s do it. 

Dawn Serra: Okay. Anonymous wrote in with a subject line of, “Exploring without fear and shame.” “Hi, Dawn. I’ve never written anywhere with a question like this, but I love the podcast and really trust your advice. So here it goes. I’m a 20-year old, mostly straight woman who grew up in a very conservative Christian household. There was never much talk about sexuality. Although there was always this unspoken understanding that sex is for marriage and porn is bad. Although I’m gradually becoming more accepting of myself and what I’m into, there’s still a lot of internal shame surrounding anything sex related. I recently ordered my first vibrator online. Even though I’m really excited to try it out, I keep thinking about how horrified my family would be if they found out. Yes. I know this is really unlikely. The same thing also applies to porn. After listening to your podcast for a few months, I’ve gotten pretty curious about porn. I want to explore it in general, as well as more specific categories like BDSM and forced orgasm. But the thought of getting off to this is really scary and guilt-inducing for me. I was always told that porn is exploitative and sinful and that normal women aren’t interested in it. I just want to feel like I’m not a horrible person for wanting to give it a try. If you have any suggestions on where to find good content to explore, that would also be great. Help.”

Cavanaugh Quick: Oh, my heart. 

Dawn Serra: I know. 

Cavanaugh Quick: Alright. I have so many thoughts. I have so many thoughts in my brain and the very first one is congratulations on ordering your first vibrator. 

Dawn Serra: Yay! 

Cavanaugh Quick: That is amazing and super valuable. Not just because I think that every single person should own a vibrator, but you’ve actually already done some of the hardest parts of all of this. You identified a desire. You sensibly went somewhere on the internet and picked one out and you paid and had it sent to your house. And so you’ve done the things that are really, really difficult, big lumps to get over. Now, you get to see what it looks like to apply that same bravery to something like your porn. So that’s really phenomenal. I’m so grateful to hear that that’s happening in your life. I think there is a history of– That’s not necessarily wrong of the porn industry as being… I can’t say this word – exploitative. 

Dawn Serra: Yes.

Cavanaugh Quick: Of being exploitative. And that’s not necessarily wrong. There are lots of studios who don’t treat their performers well, especially their female performers. There are lots of studios who really aren’t paying attention to health and safety standards. There are lots of studios who are interested in making some money off of the thing that is simultaneously one of the oldest and most taboo and newest and scariest things for people to pursue, which is sex. That said, there are also plenty of studios that are feminist and woman-centered, that are giving their performers as much control over, not only the content that they shoot, but how and where they shoot it over what the creative process looks like. There’s lots of studios who are actually centering people whose experience of sex is not about money. It’s about showcasing a real and true moment of desire and sexual engagement. 

I think one of the things to keep in mind is that… I encourage actually exploration of all kinds of porn, especially the internet is filled with porn. I think that a place to start is actually maybe with a feminist-centered or woman-centered, woman-owned studio who’s shooting porn. A lot of those places will also offer different expectation around queerness and transness in their performers, which I think is really valuable and important. But I would encourage maybe starting with one of those and getting a sense of an ethical studio as the place to start. 

Cavanaugh Quick: I think that makes it easier not only to think about what it’s like for a person who’s never watched porn before or is worried about those things to come into your desire with a studio that you know is actually taking care of the performers that you’re watching. It reduces that top layer of guilt right there. And I think that it makes space for as you continue to explore, especially once people start looking for specific kinks or interests. It will give you something to compare other studios and other sites and videos and things like that against.

Dawn Serra: Yeah. Something else that stood out to me about the email is this fear and the narrative that comes out of conservative America very much, which is that porn is damaging, that porn is a crisis and that “normal,” “healthy,” – quotes around all those words – won’t want to consume porn because it’s something that can create addictions and that only people who have some type of terrible sexual issue would engage in or watch. 

So I just want to invite a little bit of a question of why is the narrative that a normal woman wouldn’t want porn? Probably, because the assumption underneath that is that you shouldn’t be enjoying your body. You only are supposed to share it with someone else. If that person can give you pleasure, great. That’s a nice to have. But, especially for women, pleasure is typically an afterthought. It’s just about making your body available to someone else.

Cavanaugh Quick: Right.

Dawn Serra: And there’s also an element of mind reading in that and of being completely ignorant of your own body and erotic self. So if that’s the story that’s underneath that, my guess is that the person writing in who’s so brave in buying that vibrator and asking these questions, you’re probably wanting to have a little bit more understanding of your pleasure and to have a little bit more power in your life as the author of all of these experiences. And the narrative of normal women don’t like porn is a narrative that’s written by other people, usually conservative white men. 

So can porn feed your erotic imagination? Can porn help you understand yourself and your body and your fantasies? Can it give you ideas about things you might want to explore or things you definitely don’t want to? Can it help you to realize you have interests that you never would have come up with on your own? The answer is probably. If that sounds interesting and juicy, then perhaps it takes a little bit of that edge off.

Cavanaugh Quick: No doubt. No doubt. I think there’s a bit in there too about not only are women in particular told that they’re not supposed to indulge or know about their own bodies in a sexual way. But we also tell women that they’re not able to watch other people experiencing desire in any way. Like I move through the world as a man and sometimes that is not really an accurate description of my gender or how I exist, especially as a person who was assigned female at birth. And I move through the world and get read as a man and what that means is that people are totally prepared for me to talk about my desire or talk about sex even when it’s not my desire. I’m able to… Men are supposed to be able to do things like go to strip clubs and watch dancers. We’re supposed to make comments about people’s butts. We’re supposed to be constantly prepared to engage in sex. Yeah. But if you’re a woman, what is the point at which you’re supposed to be able to watch the creation of desire or something sexy at any point in your life, even if it’s not about your own desire? It’s not even– It’s not just that you’re not supposed to know about your own bodies, but you’re really just not supposed to know about desire.

Dawn Serra: Absolutely. 

Cavanaugh Quick: And so porn can be such a valuable way to say, “Huh! Whether or not this is doing something for me. I’m watching somebody cultivate desire right now.” 

Dawn Serra: There’s something so beautiful in being able to witness that. I mean, it’s probably outside of a lot of people’s experience, but I watch a lot of porn that doesn’t always turn me on. Sometimes I do it for work. Sometimes I do it because I really like a certain performer or creator. And so I have lots of different experiences with porn. But because porn is sometimes something that I use for arousal and sometimes it’s something I just enjoy. It’s an opportunity to witness and to learn and to see beauty in something that maybe I’ll never experience. I think it also takes a little bit of that edge and shame off as well because it’s not exclusively about being this link to my genitals. I want so many more people to be able to have that kind of an experience with porn. It can be something you absolutely turn to for arousal or to get off really quickly because you just want to beat one out or whatever it is. But what if we also watched porn because it’s artistic or because it’s political or because we’re just curious and maybe we’ll learn something. I mean, there’s so many reasons to watch it, but we don’t realize we’re allowed to do that. 

Cavanaugh Quick: No doubt. 

Dawn Serra: Yeah. Well, Anonymous, I hope that gives you something yummy to just think about. Of course, if you want resources for interesting ethical and feminist porn, I have lots of those on my website. So please go check it out. Of course, I’m sure you’ve heard it on previous episodes, but do check out my interview with EricaLust and Andre Shakti and so many other performers who have been on the show. But enjoy your vibrator. Enjoy your porn and thank you so much for writing into us. Okay. Are you ready to field one last question with me?

Cavanaugh Quick: Absolutely.

Dawn Serra: Okay. So for listeners, I just want to throw in really quickly that after this episode, Cavanaugh and I are going to record special bonus content for Patreon supporters. That’s going to be all about navigating kink with chronic pain, which I’m so excited to talk to you about. This email is about kink. I think it’ll be a fun way for us to wrap up this episode, and then also get us nice and primed for our little bonus chat for Patreon. Roxy wrote in and the subject line is, “Riding the fence as a switch.” 

Cavanaugh Quick: Ooh. 

Dawn Serra: Yeah. “Hi, Dawn. My name is Roxy. I’m a proud resident of the Greater Seattle area. First and foremost, I’ve just recently discovered your delicious podcast and I’m an instant fan. I’ve listened to about 15 episodes so far and I can’t wait to listen to them all and marinate in all of your wonderful content. Your listener questions, the personalities you interview and the information you offer have been eye opening to me already. Please, please keep up the sex positive effort. 

I apologize if this gets a tad long, but I feel my narrative is pretty complex. I’m a 43-year old, feminine-identified, transgender individual. Pronouns are she and her. I generally consider myself a lesbian, though I’ve had a few pretty interesting and intense, but unrequited guy crushes throughout my life. I’ve pretty much grown up with the internet and much of the information I’ve used to color in and create dialogue around myself image has been gathered from many, many long searches on a wide range of topics in the kink world. 

Dawn Serra: One problem I’ve encountered, however, is how to effectively manage what seems to be the contrasting needs of being a switch. I am deeply submissive and I’ve had many very fulfilling experiences in that role, especially when I discovered “Sissy Maid Service–” Oh, my gosh! “The conflict I have though, comes when I feel the want or need to be a strict dominant, something I’ve explored to a lesser degree, but that has satisfied an equally essential need in me. The distance between the extremes at which these two exists in the continuum of my own sexuality is very confusing. It’s difficult to understand how to balance The coexistence of these characteristics and myself. Do you have any advice to offer on this topic or relevant resources you can point me to? Any insight you have would be greatly appreciated. Roxy.”

Cavanaugh Quick: What a wonderful, wonderful question. 

Dawn Serra: I know. 

Cavanaugh Quick: I know that I started out with some thoughts on the first question. I don’t know if you’d like to start out with some thoughts on this one. Otherwise, I totally have some in my brain. 

Dawn Serra: Oh, my God. Please do. Yes. I totally want to send her all of your incredible ideas.

Cavanaugh Quick: Oh. Thank you. As a person who is also a switch, I feel this particular question deep down in my bones. How do you satisfy all those needs? And, also, what does it mean for your kink life to have such a big– What can feel like a very big gulf between one set of desires and the other. The first place that I encourage folks to start, and Roxy, you specifically might start with worth examining whether or not they’re actually that far apart from one another. What I mean by that is that, often, I find that the things that I’m satisfying or that my clients are satisfying in the submissive parts of themselves are complementary to the things that they’re trying to have satisfied in the dominant parts of themselves. So frequently it is, for me, it’s about engaging with both sides of a whole desire. Maybe that is wrapped up in my insistence on talking about myself as a whole person all the time. I don’t know. It could just be stubbornness. But I often find that really, they’re not actually as far apart as they seem. They’re much closer together when you think of them as two sides of a coin instead of two sides of a riverbank. So that would be the first place that I imagine. 

And then, depending on what your kink practice looks like and especially with your sex and relationship practice outside of and alongside your kink practice looks like, it’s totally possible to exist as both parts of those selves in the kink world. If you have, especially if you’re a person with multiple partners. You might also explore whether or not your partners have the same feelings or desires around switchiness and power exchange. There’s something that can be really, really beautiful about a person or a group of people exploring what it means to take on all of those roles in the same context of each other. It’s one thing to have a partner who is a dominant and a partner who is a submissive. And a different thing to say sometimes you’re my dominant and sometimes you’re my submissive and we’re learning to navigate that together. So I would just encourage and remind that there’s no reason why those things actually have to be two halves of Roxy. They are, in fact, one whole Roxy. And that there are people – multiple people or one person – whatever is going to feel the most exciting for you who are prepared to engage with whole Roxy, no matter which side is presenting as most juicy and delicious in any given moment.

Dawn Serra: I remember the first time I read “Radical Ecstasy” by Dossie Easton and Janet Hardy and one of the things that really stood out to me about some of the stories in that book, which explore some really, really deep transcendent kink experiences, was how, in some of the stories, one or the other of them was being incredibly submissive and even experiencing tremendous amounts of masochistic pain and suffering and achieving altered states from these deeply painful, submissive experiences. Then there were other stories they told where they spent hours on this high of power, of dominating someone and flogging someone for hours until their backs split open and being able to care for someone through that. At no point in reading those stories did I feel like it was a contradiction of self or that one aspect of themselves was more valid or needed to be proven. It just felt delicious that they were able to give themselves over to whatever they were creating in that moment and with whomever they were creating it. It didn’t feel– I don’t know. It didn’t feel like it was out of alignment and in fact, felt very aligned in all parts of this beautiful, ecstatic transcendence that they wanted to explore with their kink.

Cavanaugh Quick: Yeah. 

Dawn Serra: I love that you’re offering that. This is a whole and not the submissive sides of Roxy, including that wonderful joy about “Sissy Maid Service.” Why does it have to be a contradiction to then see someone who you feel would just be beautiful on their knees and to want to be disciplining them and to have that power? I mean, ultimately, for me – and I know everybody experiences kink differently – but I certainly play in both roles myself. The theme throughout is that whether I’m being submissive or being dominant, I’m me in those things and it’s just different aspects of myself that get to play. But there’s power in both and there’s release in both and there’s surrender in both. I don’t feel like that’s a contradiction.

Cavanaugh Quick: I agree. Also, there was a bit that I’m remembering. Roxy said, I think, that she identifies mostly as a lesbian. And so there is narrative in a lot of queer spaces about this kind of, “Are you a top? Are you a bottom? What role are you playing in the sex world?” On some ways I think that– In some ways, my experience as a queer has been that we’re really good at destroying the idea that there’s only one way that you can be doing sex and not to do the same thing. And in others, were really, really interested in, “What is your job in sex or in kink? What is it that you do?” And so I’m just interested in… How much of the things that complicate my life as a switch come from growing up being told that you do one type of thing or play one role in your sex. And then, I made it to the kink world and everyone was like, “You could do anything you wanted.” And that was overwhelming and it was too much choice.

Dawn Serra: Well, also, I think so much of our more mainstream cultural images of kink are typically like I will summon Christian Grey. But Christian Grey was this very strong dominant, who had this submissive side, but it was made very clear that this submission was something he had left behind in order to be the dominant that he was. I think that’s a pretty common theme that we see when kink is represented. That you’re either one or the other. You are slave. You are master. And there’s this binary that gets introduced. I think, often, switches are invisible in a lot of the ways that bisexual folks are invisible. 

Cavanaugh Quick: Yes. 

Dawn Serra: Because we might be playing with someone who is the most delicious dominant we’ve ever experienced anything with and they might be a switch. But if what we’re seeing when they show up at the dungeon over and over again is that dominant side, we’re going to label them as dominant. 

Cavanaugh Quick: Right. 

Dawn Serra: And so I think that it’s easy to assume a lot of the people around us are one or the other because maybe that’s what they come to the dungeon for is to enjoy that submissive experience. But when they get home, if we haven’t actually talked to them or we don’t know them, maybe they’re super, super dominant. I mean, it can be an invisible thing.

Cavanaugh Quick: Absolutely.

Dawn Serra: Yeah. I just want to invite you, Roxy, to be exactly who you are and to get creative in all of the ways that you can savor that beautiful submissive and do your wonderful “Sissy Maid Service.” Also, to be that strict dominant and like Cavanaugh said, whether it’s one partner or multiple partners in a variety of roles, allow yourself to just be. And if someone gives shit for being a switch or for seeming like a contradiction, then the only thing you have to know is that is not a person you want to play with and goodbye.

Cavanaugh Quick: Right. No doubt.

Dawn Serra: Yeah. Thank you so much for writing in, Roxy. Cavanaugh, I would love it if you would share with everyone how they can stay in touch with you and find you online. 

Cavanaugh Quick: Absolutely. Absolutely. Thank you. I can be easily found on Facebook. It’s facebook.com/Awkwardology. A-W-K-W-A-R-D-O-L-O-G-Y, the study of all things awkward. Also, I’m on Twitter and Instagram at @heyakwardology – H-E-Y, Awkwardology. My name, which admittedly is a pain in the butt to spell. So I’m so sorry to everyone who’s listening to this and doesn’t have a pen in their hand. But my website is just cavanaughquick.com. That’s C-A-V-A-N-A-U-G-H Quick dot com. All of those are really great ways to find me and contact me and keep in touch. I’m also frequently rolling through conferences. On Facebook and Twitter, those schedules go out and you can see where you can catch me in person, if you are not trying to take the adventure of figuring out how to spell my name, which I do not blame you for.

Dawn Serra: Well, I will, of course, have all of those links at dawnserra.com for this episode, as well as in the show notes. So if anybody wants to follow along with your adventures, it’s just a click away. I want to thank you so much for being here with me Cavanaugh.

Cavanaugh Quick: Thank you. It just occurred to me also the one easiest place to catch me is actually on o.school as well.

Dawn Serra: Oh. Right. Yeah. O.School. We’re both there.

Cavanaugh Quick: Yes. Starting January 31st, you can catch me every Wednesday night from 7-9 pm Eastern.

Dawn Serra: Ooh. Fun. I’m every Wednesday night, too. You can check us both out. I want to thank everybody who tuned in. If you’re a Patreon supporter, make sure you head to patreon.com/sgrpodcast to hear this juicy little tidbit that Cav and I are about to do about kink in chronic pain. Otherwise, if you have questions you want me to field on a future episode, you can go to dawnserra.com. There’s a contact form where you can send in all of your juicy stories and questions. I love hearing from you. I will talk to you next week. Bye!