tl;dr Why coming forward about sexual assault doesn’t “ruin” lives, what to do when you’re deeply ashamed of masturbation, & does loving penises make a straight man gay? 

News!

1. The October Cohort of my 5-week online course, Power in Pleasure, is enrolling NOW. We kick off Sunday, October 14th and it’s going to be amazing. Learn more and enroll here: dawnserra.com/pleasurecourse (it costs as much as a single coaching session but includes six live calls and five weeks of daily emails bursting with powerful prompts and questions). Join us!

This week, it’s me and you!

First up, I share a fascinating and crucial thread by Nicole Bedera on why rape allegations do not “ruin” lives. You can check it out and share it here.

This is such a relevant conversation, and pairs perfectly with an awesome post that made the rounds this week by Jennifer Michelle Greenberg. You can check it out along with my thoughts here.

In short, speaking your truth about abuse and harm does not ruin lives and we all have a responsibility to take more action around instances of harm. This is not an individual problem but a communal and collective one.

Then, I field your emails.

Libby wanted to share some feedback and thanks, which felt amazing to receive.

From Help Me to Help Myself wrote in because they feel extreme shame around masturbating and don’t know what to do. They experienced abuse and were raised in a very sex negative and Christian household, so masturbation feels complicated. How can they change their relationship with self-pleasure?

Finally, Brian is worried his fetish means something about his sexuality. You see, he is straight, but he has a fetish for penises and semen, especially around performing oral on a trans person. So what does it all mean and where did this come from?

I do a deep dive into genitals, identity, and sexuality. I also want all of us to check out three articles about sex with trans women.

1. “Straight Men Recall the First Time They Were Attracted to a Trans Woman”
2. “What everyone should understand about dating a trans woman” by Talulah-Eve
3. “A primer on dating trans women” by Bailey Jay on Savage Love

Finally, Patrons, this week’s bonus will be a short reading and meditation with some journal prompts about masturbation and our pleasure stories. If you support the show at $3 per month, you can get access at patreon.com/sgrpodcast. If you want to help me answer listener questions, the $5 level is for you. Your support means so much!

Have questions of your own you’d like featured on the show? Send me a note using the contact form in the navigation above!  

Follow Sex Gets Real on Twitter and Facebook and Dawn is on Instagram.

About Dawn Serra:

What if everything you’ve been taught about relationships, about your body, about sex is wrong? My name is Dawn Serra and I dare to ask scary questions that might lead us all towards a deeper, more connected experience of our lives. In addition to being the host of the weekly podcast, Sex Gets Real, the creator of the online conference Explore More, I also work one-on-one with clients who are feeling stuck, confused, or disappointed with the ways they experience desire, love, and confidence. It’s not all work, though. In my spare time, you can find me adventuring with my husband, cuddling my cats as I read a YA novel, or obsessing over MasterChef Australia.

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Episode Transcript

Dawn Serra: You’re listening to Sex Gets Real with Dawn Serra, that’s me. This is a place where we explore sex, bodies, and relationships, from a place of curiosity and inclusion. Tying the personal to the cultural where you’re just as likely to hear tender questions about shame and the complexities of love, as you are to hear experts challenging the dominant stories around pleasure, body politics and liberation. This is about the big and the small, about sex and everything surrounding it we don’t usually name. The funny, the awkward, the imperfect happen here in service to joy, connection, healing and creating healthier relationships with ourselves and each other. So, welcome to Sex Gets Real. Don’t forget to hit subscribe.

Hey, you. Welcome to episode 279 of Sex Gets Real. I want to start by saying, I am going to be taking next week off. I’ve got some huge projects and some very tight deadlines, and so in order to take care of me and give myself a chance to have just a little bit of rest over the next week and a half; I will be re-airing a prior episode next week, just so that I can not burn the candle at both ends. 

Dawn Serra: I also wanted to let you know, the October cohort of my 5-week online course, Power in Pleasure, is now enrolling. We kick off on Sunday, October 14th, which is weirdly right around the corner. This class is soul work. It’s soul work. It’s actual magic to share space with so many incredible people who are interested in really exploring their story around pleasure, especially as it relates to food, body, and sex. It’s tender, challenging, refreshing, liberating, and so deeply personal. 

If you would like to join us and be a part of it all to potentially explore and shift your relationship with pleasure, to find new ways to bring pleasure into your life, if you’d like to dive deep into the stories you inherited around pleasure and find new ways to relate to your body, your senses, to movement, to sex, then join us. It costs as much as a single coaching session. But you get 6 live calls with me and the cohort, daily emails for five weeks, a private forum where we chat, journal, and share, and witness each other. I would love to see you there. You can check out amazing testimonials from past participants and the schedule for October’s cohort at dawnserra.com/pleasurecourse, all one word, pleasurecourse.

Dawn Serra: I am also looking for more questions from you. Yes, you. If you have a question about love, relationships, communicating needs, fantasies, sexuality, bodies, kink, anything – where you could use a little help, write to me! I love getting your messages. You can either email me directly at info at sexgetsreal dot com or by using the contact form at dawnserra.com. I would love to hear from you.

Speaking of dawnserra.com, my 2-year-long website redesign is finally launched and it’s beautiful. Please, totally go check it out at dawnserra.com, DAWNSERRA, dawnserra.com. There, you can find my ethical statement, my really badass about page, and a whole bunch more stuff. The podcast is actually going to be living on dawnserra.com from now on, too. So, all of the things that I do are consolidated into one, easy to find place. I’m so happy that’s finally out in the world for everyone to see! So, check it out!

Dawn Serra: Before we dive into your emails, there’s a couple of things that I’d love for us to be in and explore together that came across my radar this week. Nicole Bedera, @NBedera on Twitter, wrote a thread a few days ago that I would like to read. And, I’m going to follow that with something else that I commented on this week around disclosing abuse. So, here is what Nicole shared on Twitter: 

“In light of Harvey Weinstein’s life being “ruined,” I have more to say on this rhetoric around rape allegations “ruining lives.” And to do that, I want to use the example of one rapist in my research– We’ll call him Justin. I interviewed Justin as part of my dissertation. He was formally accused of sexual assault at his university. He, too, claimed that his life was “ruined” by the allegations. But when I asked him to describe exactly what was different for him, he didn’t have much to say. He had gotten poor grades that semester, but they weren’t any worse than usual. A lot of people knew about the allegations, but he had told most of them himself and nearly everyone took his side. Even two of his victim’s roommates offered to testify on his behalf. Occasionally, the friends of his victim would warn other women in their immediate circle about Justin when he tried to date them. But they usually dated him anyway. He actually used the “false allegation” as a pickup strategy on first dates. It went like this: (1) Bring up the allegation as proof of how “honest” and “vulnerable” you are; (2) Show a misleading set of texts as evidence that the allegation was false; (3) Tell the new date that you totally understand if she is uncomfortable; (4) Set second date.”

“Justin talked about how the allegations had “ruined” his life as part of this dating strategy. He bragged that the method worked every time and that he had “a lot of sex” now. If anything, Justin (and most perpetrators) got a lot of advantages from the administrators from using the “ruined lives” rhetoric. (I interviewed them, too.) For example, Justin’s bad grades? He got them wiped from his record and his tuition reimbursed. And not just for the semester of the investigation– he got all of his low grades from his entire college career wiped off his transcript. He intended to continue erasing bad grades from his transcript through the rest of his college career. Justin also had close relationships with high level administrators after the investigation. That worked out to his advantage. In one case, another victim of Justin’s tried to report a sexual assault. The administrator who heard the report never filed the proper paperwork or notified the right people for the report to move forward. She didn’t want to make Justin’s life any harder.”

“The same thing happened when a professor tried to report that three other women had disclosed to him that they had been sexually assaulted by Justin. In general, administrators were more concerned with “ruining lives” than letting a perpetrator re-offend on campus. Stories like Justin’s were common in my field site. If anything, most administrators thought that the system was rigged against perpetrators. (Even though they rarely held any of them accountable.) They openly admitted to giving perpetrators legal advice and actively helping them build their cases. They refused to help victims in the same way, saying it would be inappropriate for a “neutral” party to benefit one side. This often meant that victims filed the wrong type of complaint for the abuse they experienced, making it even easier to dismiss cases. Meanwhile, it was the victims (and I interviewed them, too) who were suffering.” 

“I completed the last interview for my dissertation two days ago. The victim I interviewed attempted to take her own life in the middle of the investigation process. Her assailant was found in violation of the university’s code of sexual misconduct. (In plain speak, everyone agreed he had committed a sexual assault.) But the university had taken so long with the investigation that he had already graduated, so he wasn’t punished. Actually, he was invited to apply to the university for graduate school once his victim had graduated. That invitation came in the same letter that said he had been found responsible for committing an act of sexual assault. After our interview ended, I gave the survivor advice on how to drop out. She felt so traumatized by her university that the university’s logo had become a trigger for her. She was set to graduate in the Spring, but she couldn’t imagine seeing that emblem for another day.”

“As part of my dissertation, I set out to gather evidence of whether or not men accused of rape really had their “lives ruined.” I never found any evidence of a ruined life. But I heard a lot of stories from survivors about overwhelming trauma, including a lot of suicide attempts. Stop perpetuating the myth that rape allegations “ruin lives.” They don’t. But spreading that myth around has real implications for survivors who will be traumatized over and over again by the people who believe that a perpetrator’s “ruined life” is all there is at stake.”

Dawn Serra: Nicole’s words really hit me in the feels. They’re so powerful. And I actually wrote to her asking for a copy of her dissertation when it’s finished. I also extended an invitation to have her join us here on the show to talk about her research, so I’m crossing my fingers that we can do a deeper dive into this, and the interviews that she did, and what it all means. If you want to share the thread, I am linking to it in this episode. So, head to dawnserra.com/ep279 for episode 279.

I wanted to share this because I think it’s really important for us to consider Nicole’s words and the larger conditions that enable this kind of behavior and situation. What Justin is doing, especially using the experience as a pick-up technique, is fucking gross. But, I also want us to know that this is not exclusively a Justin problem. It never is about a single individual acting totally on their own as if in a vacuum. What we’re seeing here is evidence of misogyny and patriarchy. Who is believed? Who is trusted? Who do people WANT to believe? Who do people see more value in nurturing and supporting because of how they imagine their future contributions in the world and what’s more valuable? 

Dawn Serra: We see this time and time again from Justin in Nicole’s thread to Brock Turner to Harvey Weinstein to Johnny Depp to Brett Kavanaugh. Culturally, we are groomed to place our trust and admiration in men. To believe in their potential. To believe in their goodness and their vision. We’re terrified of ruining their lives because some deep part of us believe their lives are more valuable. Systemically, men are rewarded, supported, and centered more often. We, all of us, are contributing to the systems and culture that allow us to discount, erase, and downplay the harm that victims and survivors experience. 

I think a big part of that is because we are collectively uncomfortable, unskilled, and frankly, just really terrible at being in deeply uncomfortable places emotionally. That’s what it takes to really confront this. We resist opening to the truth – that so many people we know, love, and respect have done and will continue to do terrible, violent, entitled things. Because to admit that would shake our world view too deeply and we don’t know how to process that grief, that’s something that Jaclyn Friedman talks about all the time. If we really truly started believing survivors, every single one of us would realize that there’s at least one, if not more, people in our lives who have abused others. Because we just can’t grapple with that reality, we close down, we move on, we discount stories, we doubt their validity until there’s lots and lots of evidence, one is rarely enough – because that’s easier than feeling into the depths of the violence that is actually at play in our world. That anywhere from 10 to 30% of women, the percentages are much higher for queer, non-binary, and trans people – have experienced sexual violence.

Dawn Serra: All of that brings me to another post that I saw this week that I shared on Instagram and Facebook. So, if you follow me there, you would’ve seen it. But I want to share it here, too, because it pairs really nicely with Nicole’s thread. Someone named Jennifer Michelle Greenberg tweeted something that’s been making the rounds. It showed up multiple times in all of my feeds and from people. If you haven’t seen it, here’s what it says,

“Reporting an abuser doesn’t ruin their life. They did that themselves. Reporting an abuser doesn’t damage their reputation. It makes it more accurate. Reporting an abuser doesn’t hurt their family. It protects them from abuse. Reporting an abuser isn’t gossip. It’s integrity.”

I’m going to read that again: “Reporting an abuser doesn’t ruin their life. They did that themselves. Reporting an abuser doesn’t damage their reputation. It makes it more accurate. Reporting an abuser doesn’t hurt their family. It protects them from abuse. Reporting an abuser isn’t gossip. It’s integrity.”

Dawn Serra: I have some additional thoughts that I wanted to add to that because I think that this is a really important thing for all of us to really take into our bones. And, I want us to be able to hold it in a much larger context. So, there’s six additional thoughts that I shared on Instagram and Facebook about this post. 

1. If you have been abused and you didn’t report, it is NOT your fault if that person went on to abuse others. 

1. Abusers are very good at turning things back around on those they seek to control and manipulate, even going so far as to claim that you speaking your truth is abusive to your abuser. Having people who understand abuse, from therapists to folks at crisis centers to good friends, can really help when things are murky. 

1. You never owe your abuser a second chance. You do not need to forgive people who have harmed you. If you choose to, that’s OK. If you do not, that’s also OK. 

1. People who abuse others are human beings, not monsters. People who abuse others are often really warm, caring, and generous towards so many people in their life. This is real and it’s meaningful. We can’t use our experience with a person, of someone who is loved and warm and caring, to discount another person’s experience, even if it hurts or feels deeply confusing. We all have to be doing the work of expanding our capacity to experience conflicting emotions and truths if we want to break the cycles of abuse. We can love someone and need for them to do better at the same time..

1. People who abuse others are deserving of accountability (which is an act of love) and community (because we do not heal in isolation). This doesn’t mean people who have been harmed by someone need to do that labor, but it does mean the larger community has a responsibility to provide a space where the abuser can be held accountable if they are willing to do the work. Not everyone is willing to do the work, but casting abusers out of a community without the community taking a real hard look at how they all contributed to the conditions where abuse happened simply sets the stage for more abuse down the road. We have to be in this together which means discomfort and facing our own behaviors that have caused harm.

1. We live inside of toxic, violent systems, and we have ALL been indoctrinated into a culture where gaslighting, manipulation, and coercion are normalized and romanticized. The chances that each of us, myself included, have done harmful, toxic, or even abusive things in the past are very high. The chances that we harm someone in the future is inevitable. This is what it means to be human. Centering people who have experienced harm does not make it OK to enact violence on an abuser nor does centering survivors mean dehumanizing others in an effort to make ourselves feel righteous. Dehumanizing abusers not only contributes to the “Abusers are monsters and I could never be (or love) a monster” narrative that makes us less likely to hold ourselves and people we care about accountable, but it also contributes to the “perfect victim” narrative which sets the stage for victim blaming because we only want to believe people who fit a very particular kind of narrative.

Dawn Serra: Being human is messy. This stuff hurts. We all need to be doing the work to understand how to do accountability in a way that is ultimately an act of love. Love for self, for relationship, for community, for earth and not one of punishment, vengeance, or revenge. Even though, pretty much, the only stories that we have in our culture are stories of vengeance and revenge.

I’d love to know what you think about all of this. You can either write to me, info at sexgetsreal dot com or you can comment on my Instagram post with your thoughts. I’m @dawn_serra on Instagram and I share some rad stuff over there. So, check that out but also comment if you’ve got thoughts about both Jennifer’s post and my added thoughts or if you want to comment on Nicole’s thread. 

Dawn Serra: I’m also going to share a link to an article in Vice that came out this week that I had come up in my feed, and I thought it was a really fun intro article. It’s not related to what I’ve been speaking about but if you go to dawnserra.com/ep279, you can not only grab the link to Nicole’s thread on Twitter, but you can also get a link to this article on Vice called “How to Have Sex with a Fat Girl”. I think it’s super fun. It’s a nice starter for people who aren’t really involved in fat activism and body positivity. So, if you want to check that out, head over and grab it.

So, let us jump into your emails. Libby sent a really sweet note this week and it reads:

“Hi Dawn, I just wanted to say that I so deeply appreciate that you exist in the world. I’m a relationship coach myself, a bit earlier in my journey than you in terms of creating my business and establishing myself. But I have struggled to find very many people who embody how I want to show up in this work. Obviously, I haven’t experienced your coaching, but if your podcast and other online presences are any indication, your work reflects the same values that I have, through and through, and it looks like you’re also killing it at the same time. Just as an aside, we know some of the same people (because, I imagine, this is a small world). The places where I’ve interacted with your presence have been mainly through your podcast, which I got introduced to through your interviews with Eve Rickert, Samantha Manewitz, and Aida Mandulay. Thank you so much for those interviews, by the way. They were incredible and rich and powerful, and so much what our community needs to hear right now. Okay, I’ll stop gushing now. I just wanted to let you know how much I appreciate you, and I know that when you’re working your butt off, sometimes you don’t get to hear that you’re doing a great job. So, I wanted to tell you. I hope that someday we’ll get to connect. With love, Libby”

Dawn Serra: Thank you so much for taking a few minutes from your day, Libby, to send some love. It felt wonderful to receive and I’m so touched that the episodes with Eve, Samantha, and Aida resonated with you. I love getting to chat with them and I thought those were such important conversations. I also really loved knowing you’re out in the world doing this work, too, because goodness knows we need it. I mean, those threads that I read earlier in the episode are evidence that we all need a lot more support about the ways that we’re showing up and doing relationships. So, thank you for being out there.

Dawn Serra: This next email comes from “From Help Me to Help Myself” who wrote in with a subject line of: “I never want to masturbate!! Help!!” Their message reads, 

“Hey Dawn – First off, thank you so much for providing this invaluable resource to support people on their healing journeys! I started listening to the podcast a few months ago and it has transformed my life. I am super grateful for your work in the world. I am working through healing many sexual blocks that I’ve developed as a result of sexual trauma and I was hoping to get your advice on one particular issue. I’m really embarrassed about this, but I never want to masturbate. Every time I try, I feel intense disgust and have to stop what I’m doing. This makes me really sad because I want to be the truly rad, liberated, sex positive babe I know I can be, but I have some sort of intense psychological block to masturbation.”

“I grew up in a conservative Christian family that was intensely sex negative. My therapist has suggested that it’s possible I was shamed for touching myself as a child, but I have no memory of ever masturbating or being shamed by my parents for masturbating. The first time I ever remember “masturbating” was when an abusive partner forced me to do it in front of him when I was 18. I didn’t even understand what was happening. I didn’t even understand consent, pleasure, or my own anatomy until I was 19 and went to a sex positive education event at my college campus. I did a lot of healing work to recover from the sexual abuse (which was more extensive than just the forced masturbation) and all the sex negative messaging I internalized from my childhood. I got really involved with feminist organizing, and came into my queer identity, but I still can’t masturbate, even though logically I know it is not shameful.” 

“I don’t know what to do, because I don’t want to always have to depend on someone else to get me off, but every time I even think about trying to masturbate I feel like crying or throwing up. I don’t want to force myself to do something my body doesn’t want me to do, but I feel like it might be the only way to work through this block. Any advice would be greatly appreciated! From Help Me to Help Myself”

Dawn Serra: Before I share my thoughts with you, Help Myself, I did pose this question on Patreon for folks who support at $5 per month level and Artemis Tor shared some thoughts. Here’s what Artemis said:

“For me, something I resonate in this is that disgust feels like when I’ve gone past my own boundary and not realised it. The offering I have from my own experience is that for them maybe the start of working on being able to masturbate isn’t forcing themselves to do it. Maybe for them it’s just touching their arms and their belly in a way that feels good and innocent. Maybe it’s lying in bed fully clothed just thinking about initiating masturbation and feeling deeply into what emotions that brings up.”

So, that was from Artemis. Thank you, Artemis for supporting the show on Patreon and for sharing your thoughts. If you want to weigh in on listener emails, you can go to patreon.com/SGRpodcast. $5 a month gets you access to those emails and you get to comment too.

Dawn Serra: Here’s what I want to start with your email, Help Myself: I am so sorry for the abuse you experienced. Being forced into any kind of sexual activity – be it touching our own body or someone else’s is never OK and I’m sorry that that happened to you. Our first experience of touching ourselves, especially in front of someone else should really be for us and from a place of deep pleasure and desire.

I’m also sorry you were raised in an intensely sex negative household. The shame that that kind of environment can instill in us can go bone-deep and it can take a lifetime to understand and unpack and shift. It’s very common and you are not alone in that. I mean, it really does break my heart how common it is for children to be raised to be suspicious of their own body. To feel that certain parts are off limits, that certain parts are sinful or shameful, that pleasure is somehow an act deserving of punishment. 

Dawn Serra: I think the real mindfuck of it all is this deep shame, fear, and guilt that we are told to embody, that we are told makes us more worthy and deserving. And then, we’re expected to magically evaporate completely the moment we are married and engaging in Christian-approved sex. No. It’s totally unfair. It’s unrealistic. It fucks so many people up and it’s normal for people raised in sex negative and very Christian households to feel confused and ashamed of masturbation. There’s a lot of messages over a long period of time and no modelling of a healthy relationship with body in that way.

For you, Help Myself, I’d love to start by asking what kind of permission do you most need to hear around accepting what is true for you right now? If a friend came to you and said, “I feel unworthy of calling myself sex positive and I’m deeply ashamed because I struggle with masturbation,” what reassurance would you immediately offer them? Is that reassurance something that you can offer yourself? We deserve to know our bodies. We deserve to have a deeply intimate relationship with our bodies. We deserve to feel like these bodies are ours and that the pleasure our body is capable of is a gift for us to savor and enjoy throughout our lives. Every single inch. We deserve this. But, deserving doesn’t mean it isn’t complicated for some of us. 

Dawn Serra: Body terrorism and shame, gender roles and rules, religion, family, community, culture – we are all swimming in fundamentally toxic, violent waters. So it makes sense that so many of us feel shame and confusion when it comes to having a sexual relationship with ourselves. In fact, I think a lot of people really cast a critical eye towards masturbation because they’re so terrified of their own bodies. 

When I was a teenager, I actually masturbated pretty frequently, but I was completely ashamed of the fact that I did. I masturbated for years, throughout high school, and these stolen moments in the bathroom with the fan on praying no one would knock on the door or late at night silently under my covers praying no one heard anything or opened the door, trying to make it as fast as possible. Masturbation felt great, but it was something that only lasted a minute or two, maximum, and always was done with this pounding heart of fear and this flush of shame.

Dawn Serra: I remember in high school, my best friend at the time, who was sexually active with her boyfriend, loudly declaring to our group how gross masturbation was; and that she would never ever masturbate, especially now that she had a boyfriend and could have “real” sex. I remember feeling my face turn bright red and feeling like I was bad or lesser than all of my friends for masturbating because it was so clear that everyone there was either believing that it was gross and a joke or pretending to believe that it was. 

In college, there was this one drunken night where I was with my roommate, we were at her parent’s house. We were sitting on the lawn in the front yard, really late at night looking at the stars. We were talking about sex and I whispered to her that I masturbated. She very matter-of-factly said she did, too, and that she enjoyed it. And I remember feeling so ashamed to admit this thing that I had been hiding and rushing through for so many years, and I did not grow up in a sex negative household. It was literally the culture and the silence that gave me all of that shame. But when she admitted that she did too, so matter-of-factly, it actually did shift something for me. Having my shame witnessed without judgment shifted something for me. 

Dawn Serra: The shame felt less shame-y and it started to feel more embarrassing and vulnerable than shame-y. It still wasn’t a thing that I was going to advertise, but a thing I started feeling like I could experiment a little bit more. I think so many of us have really complicated relationships with masturbation, especially those of us with vulvas or who are in disabled bodies, trans, and queer bodies, fat bodies, aging bodies, bodies that are de-sexualized or hyper sexualized. It’s sadly common. This is just another way that the culture that we live in contributes to us not knowing ourselves and really understanding the power and the pleasure that these bodies can give us. 

Ev’Yan Whitney wrote a post a few years ago about overcoming shame in masturbation and how she moved past the burning shame of her Christian upbringing. I’ll link to it at dawnserra.com/ep279 so you can read it, Help Myself. I think you’re really going to find something that resonates there. So, I would check that out.

Dawn Serra: The other thing I want to say is you never have to masturbate. None of us do. There are so many ways for us to experience pleasure, release, and ecstasy in these bodies of ours and if masturbation feels really difficult, maybe starting there is just contributing to more trauma and closing down for your body. So, instead, what would it look like to go on a big exploration and to conduct a series of experiments around all the ways you experience pleasure in your body over the next few months? What sensations feel yummy? What smells make you sigh? What tastes make you shiver with delight? What parts of your body feel really good when you self massage or rub lotion in? When does your body feel most at ease? Most open? Most celebrated and honored? How can you foster more of that in your day to day as a way to build more trust with yourself and your body and that it’s okay to be curious about it?

Masturbation can be really powerful. It’s this personal act of claiming “This flesh is mine to know and delight in.” But it’s not mandatory. It’s not required. I’m also wondering what might happen if you were to explore your arousal without touching your genitals. What does it feel like to read sexy stories or watch sexy films or to fantasize about sexy things and to really feel into the nuanced reactions that your body has during arousal without needing to act on it? What is your relationship to being aroused? What does arousal feel like for you? Where do you notice heat or swelling or engorging or throbbing? Gathering that information and being curious about – all without having to touch your genitals. What would it look like to begin to cultivate a relationship with your sensual body by creating rituals designed to delight your senses and to celebrate you?

Dawn Serra: All of these things bring you into relationship with the erotic. And that, I really think, might be an important place for you to play. How can you play with the erotic without trying to force yourself to be different? How can you celebrate what is true and find deep pleasure and self-expression inside of where you are now? Is there a way to find expansiveness and some permission within what’s true now? I wonder as you move more deeply into self-acceptance and self-celebration around pleasure and body, maybe you might also start noticing small shifts in how you relate to sexual touch and self? Maybe at some point down the road, after really languishing in different ways to touch your body through lotion or oil,or taking really lengthy showers and just noticing each part of your body. It starts to feel less shameful to put your hand over your genitals without doing anything except thanking them. 

Something that’s helped me a lot every time I bump up against shame, and so many of my clients, is having spaces to speak about our shame. The more we’re witnessed in our shame, in a really non-judgmental place, the more that shame shrinks. Shame absolutely cannot withstand the light of being held and accepted by others. That is its kryptonite. So, maybe there’s a sex positive book club or a Facebook group or meetup, maybe a feminist meetup, where there’s an opportunity to share about your life and yourself, your experiences; and to know that it’s going to be met with tenderness and understanding. That might be a really beautiful antidote to some of the shame that you carry. It won’t make it all go away but maybe taking just a little bit of an edge off a few times by having that truth witnessed gives you that little bit of extra space.

Dawn Serra: Finally, the other thing that I was thinking about as I read your email is, what is it like for you to witness others as they masturbate? Either in person or in instructional videos or through porn. What kind of experience do you have watching other people masturbate, especially without shame and as a celebration of self? Is there space inside of that witnessing for you to get to see that modeled? To rewrite some of your old stories? Or does that bring up more shame? I don’t have the answer to that but that might also be a thing to also notice and try if you were to find some really beautiful, feminist masturbation films. Maybe on makelovenotporn TV or something like that where you can just see people enjoying the act of masturbation. Maybe it turns you on, maybe it brings up shame – just allowing yourself to witness and to notice the ways that they’re experiencing that without you needing to do anything. I’m curious.

I also want to say if you would like some professional support around this, I definitely recommend working with a sex coach or a sex therapist. Someone that specifically understands sex and the erotic. You don’t have to do this alone. It’s so common for people to feel intense shame around masturbation. Then, I think, I want to offer – I want to validate your sadness. You mentioned you feel sad that this shame comes up and that sadness is real and it’s true. It is absolutely possible for us to change our relationship with shame and sex negative upbringings, but it can take time which requires patience, especially when abuse and trauma are part of the picture. There might need to be grief work that needs to happen, that it might be slow going, and that’s also something that might feel sad. But it doesn’t make you an less queer or feminist or rad or sex positive. You are not alone in this.

Dawn Serra: One last thought I have is you closed by mentioning, “Maybe the way forward is through the terribleness.” To force yourself. Only you know if forcing yourself is something that would help or hurt. But my suspicion is that a compassionate, generous, curiosity-filled exploration of self, pleasure, and the erotic might be a more gentle way to begin changing and loosening some of the stuck stories and feelings. I also suspect a lot of grief work and even anger work might need as you really investigate all the forces that influenced this relationship you have with your body. And, whether everything totally changes over the next couple of years or this feeling of disgust hangs around for a while, it absolutely does not define you. 

You can totally be a champion of pleasure and sex positivity while having a complicated relationship with masturbation. You are absolutely not be the only one. So to you, Help Myself, I hope that that gives you lots of things to chew on, to ask, to consider. I would love an update if that would feel helpful and you’d like to share. If you’d like to work with me in my coaching practice, I have space. Email me, let me know. I’m here. And either way, it sounds like you’ve been doing tremendous healing work already. I hope your future is filled with delicious pleasure in whatever form that might take, on whatever timeline it needs to unfold. You’re deserving of it.

Dawn Serra: Our next email comes from Brian. Now, I want to issue a heads-up that some of the language in this email is rough around the edges as far as trans-inclusive language goes. I want to acknowledge that it might be tough for some people to hear. We are all at different points of learning and unlearning. So, I’m reading it as Brian wrote it and then I’m going to respond and offer some feedback. So, if you don’t feel up for that, skip ahead 10 minutes. Brian writes:

“First and foremost, thank you for this podcast. It is truly doing the listeners a great service. I have been troubled for a huge part of my adult life with my sexual fetishes. Question, do fetishes define sexuality? I hope not because once we get into what my fetishes are, the notion of sexuality may come into play. OK. I consider myself to be a straight man. I have zero interest in men on any level sexually or emotionally. I love everything about women, physically and mentally except for the few things that most men complain about. However, that being said….I lust to be oral with transexuals. I also have a fetish to consume semen upon completing an oral engagement. I also enjoy seeing a penis and seeing semen.” 

“Now, of course, I know the penis is on a man BUT, nothing male attracts me – only feminine qualities are ever attractive to me. I don’t know what it is about a penis but I enjoy looking at them and thinking about swallowing. I have had no traumatic sexual experiences, no abuse or anything, just your run of the mill sexual stuff. I’m curious where this may stem from or if you have heard other men have these desires and fetishes but felt perfectly straight? I’d love to hear your thoughts.”

Dawn Serra: Well, let’s start by saying, thank you for writing in, Brian. You are not the only person with this question. It’s very common for cis straight men to be attracted to trans women because *drum roll* trans women are WOMEN! Let’s walk through your email and debunk some myths and dive into some things.

Your first question, Brian, is “do fetishes define sexuality?” My answer to that is a fetish doesn’t define sexuality but it can be deeply entwined with your sexuality. For some people, their fetishes are an important expression of their sexuality and their sexuality has a huge impact on how their fetish plays out. For others, their fetish is less impacted by their sexuality and more specific to the fetish itself regardless of gender and body. So, only you know whether your fetish reflects your sexuality. We are way too complex for simple binaries, which we’ve explored endlessly on this show, when it comes to our sexuality and our gender. Which is a lovely, remarkable thing.

Dawn Serra: I find it interesting that you are hoping your fetish does not reflect your sexuality, and I think that’s worth investigating. My question for you is, are you so tied to labeling your sexuality in a specific way that you’d deny yourself the opportunity to explore your pleasure? In your email, you go on to say you identify as straight and you love women. This is followed by a “however” and the statement “I lust to be oral with transsexuals.”

Echoing my first comment, the exciting news is that trans women are women! And since you are straight and love women, it makes sense you fantasize about oral sex with a trans woman. Now, it sounds like you’re specifically fetishizing trans women’s pre-op and no-op genitals, which we’ll get to in a second, but if a woman has a penis, then it’s a woman’s penis or a woman’s genitals. Straight men who love trans women, especially pre-op and no-op trans women, tend to be misunderstood and it can be hard to find community, but I do think that’s changing as more people learn about trans bodies and trans rights. So, that’s the good news. But, make no mistake – a trans woman is a woman and that aligns with your heterosexual orientation, Brian. Whether a woman has a penis, a scrotum, a vulva, a vagina, or some combination of those parts, they’re all a woman’s genitals because they’re part of a woman’s body.

Dawn Serra: I want to pause here to remind us. We tend to think of genitals in a rather binary fashion. We tend to associate penis and balls with men, and vulva and vagina with women. But nature and this world, and this beautiful planet we’re on is far too diverse and mysterious for something so simplistic. We’re literally constantly evolving. The presence of intersex folks is about the same as redheads in this world. Think about that. For every red head you know, you probably either know an intersex person or have interacted with one. Intersex folks have been around as long as human beings have existed. It’s just that in most white, colonizing Christian cultures, intersex babies and bodies were hidden, operated on, or worse. So, we didn’t really know unless we did, right?

Our bodies are amazingly diverse. And, very few of us have chromosomal testing done, so there’s probably a bunch of people listening, myself included, that may actually be intersex and not even know it. Because, your genitals look like what doctors expected your genitals to look like and further investigating never happened. Sometimes, people that are intersex, their experience is really at a hormonal level or a chromosomal level and not on anything that’s external to the body or obvious. I share this because lots of people find comfort in insisting that there’s two genders in this world and that our gender is largely defined by what’s between our legs. Intersex folks totally shatter that illusion thoroughly.

Dawn Serra: I also want to remind us that as we talk about trans bodies and gender spectrums, that “passing” is a phrase and concept that’s really offensive and cis-centric. While Brian didn’t mention that, I just want to drop that here for all of us to sit with. Back to your email, Brian. Your next two statements say, “I also have a fetish to consume semen upon completing an oral engagement. I also enjoy seeing a penis and seeing semen.”

Brian, as a self-identified straight man, I am going to make the assumption that you, Brian, have a penis, and I’m also going to make another assumption that your penis ejaculates when you orgasm – at least some of the time. When you say you enjoy seeing a penis and seeing semen, that sounds super self-affirming. You have a penis. You enjoy looking at penises. Great! You enjoy seeing semen and your body probably produces semen sometimes which is also great. You love this body part you have and a thing it produces. I know a lot of people who have vulvas who adore looking at vulvas. That’s why it’s so easy to find vulva art and vulva door knobs and vulva everything whether on Etsy or any feminist shop. So many people see it as a celebration of this extraordinary part of their body. And, it doesn’t have to do with anything at all with sexual attraction – to be fascinated with and to totally adore vulvas.

Dawn Serra: The Vulva Gallery is popular on Instagram for a reason – because people appreciate vulvas. So, there’s no reason you can’t appreciate penises. I just want to name, conversely, there are lots of people with vulvas who are totally scared of or turned off by vulvas. We have all these different likes and dislikes, different stories. Liking a particular body part does not define our sexuality. It just means you like this body part.

I think it’s just so funny how strange we are about genitals. If I told you I really liked elbows – I have an elbow fetish, you would not immediately jump to a really intense conclusion about who I am as a person and what it all means. Where does this elbow fetish come from and assume that you know anything about my sexuality. You’d probably think “elbows? Alright.” And move on. But as soon as we’re talking about a penis or a vulva, we attach all this meaning. It’s really bizarre. 

Dawn Serra: Your fetish, Brian, to consume semen is also super common. I have met many straight men who wanted to consume semen, often as part of a submissive act to a dominant woman or a dominant partner. They absolutely did not see it as defining their sexuality. They saw it as something hot and taboo or something linked to power dynamics. It’s something that they wanted. And again, it no way defines their sexuality. 

Let’s tackle the next paragraph of your email where you maybe got a few things wrong. I’m not quite sure. It’s not super clear. So, what you wrote was: “Now, of course, I know the penis is on a man but nothing male attracts me only feminine qualities are ever attractive to me. I don’t know what it is about a penis but I enjoy looking at them and thinking about swallowing.” If you’re talking about a trans woman with a penis, then the penis is on a woman. A penis is only on a man if it’s a man with a penis and not all men have penises, because just like a woman can have a penis, a man can absolutely have a vulva.

Dawn Serra: So, based on how you phrased that, I’m unclear if you’re saying you enjoy looking at penises on men even though masculinity isn’t attractive to you or if you’re saying you enjoy looking at penises on trans women. Either way, if you think a penis is hot, it doesn’t inherently say anything to me about your sexuality because it totally depends on the gender of the people that turn you on.

You close with an insistence that you have had no trauma or abuse, which I’m really glad for. No trauma or abuse is good. But trauma and abuse don’t make someone gay or queer – anything like that. And, your final question is, “I’m curious where this may stem from or if you have heard other men have these desires and fetishes?” As I mentioned earlier, straight men finding trans women attractive is super common and super normal because trans women are women. If you like women, they are women. So, there’s women. Yay for liking women. It doesn’t have to stem from anything. It doesn’t have to have a deeper meaning. We are complex creatures with a rich variety of attractions and desires, and trans women can be super hot just like every other gender on this planet.

Dawn Serra: If you are attracted to women, Brian, then that sounds like it aligns with your sexual orientation of heterosexual. A penis or vulva doesn’t define someone’s gender or sexuality. In fact, toxic masculinity, I think, is at play with some of the fears that you have. Because it makes men terrified of being seen as anything other than a manly man – and because transphobia is the water that we swim in– Thank you, colonizing white Christian culture. It’s also real common for straight men to judge themselves and other men for being attracted to or having sex with trans women. That all ties back to toxic masculinity, transmisogyny, which is not how we want to be relating to each other or our selves, right?

Touching a penis does not make you gay because a penis is not a whole human being with a personality, a sense of humor, political views, and a family. It’s just a body part that has certain functions. What happens when we are so insistent on this body part meaning something about our sexuality is violence against trans people, especially trans women. And, I just want to name that this violence, this fear from straight men around being perceived as gay has led to the murder of 18 Black trans women in the U.S. in this year alone. This is the outcome of men being so terrified of being seen as gay that they murder a human being to maintain their sense of masculinity and heterosexuality. That’s a pretty toxic, fucking drug.

Dawn Serra: I also want us to also be very very careful when we think about fetishizing genitals and the human beings they’re attached to. Now, it’s worth noting – we can absolutely fetishize something, have it in our spank bank, use it to get off. It’s like our go-to when we really want to get turned on but we never actually live it out in real life. We’ve talked about it before, there’s a lot of fetishes that people have that just aren’t fetishes that can never actually be realized. Of course, there’s lots of fetishes that can be but just because we have this particular fetish doesn’t mean that we actually need to act it out or live our way into it. We get a choice. But specifically around your question, Brian, I’m going to link to three articles that I really hope you and everyone listening is going to read. The links are at dawnserra.com/ep279/.

One of them is an article that was at Cosmo by Talulah-Eve titled, “What everyone should understand about dating a trans woman.” The number one thing Talulah-Eve wants all of us to know? “Don’t see me as a fetish or a novelty.” There’s a difference between appreciation and attraction versus dehumanizing someone to the point that you see them as nothing more than this one thing or this one part that you want access to. No one deserves to be treated that way unless you’ve had a lot of very open conversations giving them a chance to, not only opt-in to being fetishized, but a chance to dictate the terms that help them experience pleasure and joy and a sense of their humanity and respect too.

Dawn Serra: Talulah-Eve later in the article writes: “Understand sexuality and gender are two different things. One straight guy I dated said, “It’s funny I’ve met you because I have been questioning my sexuality a bit recently”. I was like, “Woah, I’m going to stop you right there”. People don’t seem to understand sexuality and gender are two completely different things.”

Talulah-Eve goes on to say, “Because you’re dating a trans girl, it does not affect your sexuality at all.” I told him, “You’re attracted to me because I’m a woman. When you saw me, did you think, ‘Wow that’s a hot woman’? Exactly. You’re attracted to me as a woman, so you’re still straight”.” So for you, Brian, I think reading this article might be really helpful in exploring some language, your attractions, your fantasies, how they tie to your sexuality. Plus, it’s not just a penis or a vulva, but a human being. So, while you may get off on fantasizing about penises and semen and blowjobs, just remember that in real life, there’s a whole person to get to know.

Dawn Serra: I’m also going to link to a piece that was in The Stranger, and it’s a question that Dan Savage fielded that’s really similar to yours actually, Brian. And, Dan chatted with Bailey Jay, who is a three-time AVN Award–winning transsexual porn star to help answer the question. The biggest takeaway? Bailey Jay stresses, “A penis on a woman is a girl part just like a vulva on a man is a man part.” And I know that’s super binary. There’s so many more genders than just man and woman but for simplicity sake, that’s where we’re going today.

Bailey Jay, in this article, says, “Never use genital questions as an icebreaker. You’ll know when your evening with someone is going well enough that there’s a certain amount of trust,” and at that point, you may be able to bring it up. And please make sure to talk about both of your bodies,” added Jay. “This isn’t all about if her body is right for you. Make sure your body meets her standards and preferences, too. I always joke that cis men should have to disclose as well. Any expectation you find yourself putting on her, split the responsibility.” So you can check out that article 

Dawn Serra: I just want to name that some trans women who have penises are really OK with their penis and have no plans to change their body. A no-op trans woman. Other trans women have really complicated feelings about their genitals and some of them want to change their genitals but maybe can’t for a variety of reasons – from money to time, to a whole host of other things. Access is not that easy. And still others have changed their genitals and have a variety of feelings about that because just like any human being on this planet, the way we feel about our bodies is unique and personal and complex. So, sometimes the danger with our fetishes is oversimplifying or grouping everything into this singular desire or experience that doesn’t allow for any nuance.

So, Brian, to you, in the end, your sexuality is only impacted by your fetish if you find yourself attracted to men or people who don’t identify as women. Women can have penises. Some of those women have penises that can become erect and ejaculate and some do not. We are far far more than our genitals and parts so how could we possibly be defined by them? That’s why I think gender reveal parties are so weird. Literally, you’re announcing to the world, “This baby has these kinds of genitals and now we’re making up all of these kinds of stories about who they are as a person and their gender because we saw on a sonogram this pokey-outey part.”

Dawn Serra: I also want to invite you, Brian, to leave space for your sexuality changing. Throughout the course of our lives, so many things change for us – the ways our body looks and functions, the ways we think about the world and ourselves. And yes, our sexuality is fluid and dynamic. It fluctuates and adjusts to the people we know and the circumstances we find ourselves in. I feel like the show Schitt’s Creek handles that so beautifully with Patrick. If you haven’t seen it, totally check it out. I absolutely have the biggest crush on Patrick and Dan Levy. But anyway, back to you, Brian. 

You may identify as straight now and who knows? In a few years, maybe bisexual or pansexual or queer feels more accurate. It does not invalidate the years you identified as straight. It doesn’t make you a liar or a faker or less of a man. It just means, like most things in our lives, you changed. And you’re allowed to change. So, I hope that helps and please do, all of you, not just Brian – head to dawnserra.com/ep279 to read the articles I’m linking to so that we can all expand our ideas around bodies and gender and sexuality, and hear directly from trans women about their experiences .

Dawn Serra: I also just want to name that as a cis person, I am not an expert in trans, non-binary, and agender experiences. I highly recommend following awesome activists that are trans, non-binary, agender – all over the gender spectrum reading books, articles, and listening to podcasts by folks who move through the world in a rich variety of genders. Because cis and trans men and women are not the only genders out there. Even though this particular email and the way that I handled it was binary – just to keep things a little more simple. 

Alright, even though I have lots more emails from you, we’re going to call that a wrap on this week’s episode. Remember, I want more questions from you so please send them to me. Also, Patreon supporters, the bonus this week is going to be some journal prompts and a little reading/meditation to help us all explore our stories around masturbation and pleasure a bit more. Head to patreon.com/SGRpodcast to support the show. $3 a month and above gets you weekly bonus content. You can grab your bonuses there. Don’t forget, next week is going to be a replay of a previous episode so I can take the week off and work on these huge projects. So, until then, lots of love. Bye.

Dawn Serra: A huge thanks to The Vocal Few, the married duo behind the music featured in this week’s intro and outro. Find them at vocalfew.com. Head to patreon.com/sgrpodcast to support the show and get awesome weekly bonuses. 

As you look towards the next week, I wonder what will you do differently that rewrites an old story, revitalizes a stuck relationship or helps you to connect more deeply with your pleasure?