Sex intelligence and erotic empowerment.

Sex Down South is October 15-17th in Atlanta. Amy Jo Goddard will be one of the keynote speakers, and Dawn will be there. Join in the fun if you’re local.

We are so excited to have Amy Jo Goddard joining us today to talk about her new book “Woman on Fire” and talking all things sexual intelligence, erotic empowerment, and pleasure.

From finding your voice to staying adventurous, Amy Jo is so eloquent and wise when it comes to exploring and growing your sexuality. We talk about identities and finding community, being endlessly curious, and giving yourself permission to define your yes in a world that tells us sex is all of these no’s.

It’s one of our favorite interviews we’ve done on the podcast, and you can find Amy Jo at womanonfirethebook.com and amyjogoddard.com.

She’s also on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, so follow her and check out her awesome work.

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Episode breakdown

• 0:39 – Amy Jo Goddard is joining us today to talk about her new book “Woman on Fire.”
• 0:59 – Watch Amy Jo’s TEDx talk.
• 1:49 – One of Dawn’s favorite sessions from CatalystCon West was Amy Jo and Marcia Baczynski’s on sexual shame.
• 2:54 – Sex is funny and weird, so learning how to laugh at ourselves is so important, especially when we’re talking about heavy stuff.
• 3:37 – Bodies do funny things during sex, they make funny noises. Dylan brings up farting – do you stop the sex or keep going?
• 4:15 – Amy Jo has created womanonfirethebook.com where you can learn about the book and find additional resources around sexual empowerment.
• 4:57 – Sex can feel so loaded and heavy. One of the elements in Amy Jo’s new book is on play and how play can transform sexual experience. We discuss.
• 5:38 – Play has parameters. When you play in the sandbox, you know where the edges are. Same with sexual play – if you know where the boundaries are, the edges, you can have way more fun.
• 6:49 – Sometimes we don’t know what we want sexually, but we still need to be able to articulate that lack of knowing and to make an ask in order for play to really happen safely.
• 7:14 – If you watch children play, they don’t have an expectation or an outcome. They just create as they go to see what happens. Adopting that same approach to sex is liberating.
• 7:37 – Get your gadgets out of the room and just be there with each other and with yourself.
• 8:14 – You have to actually do things and try things in order to figure out what you like and what you don’t like. Which means you have to take risks. Too many people stay stuck because they aren’t willing to do.
• 9:45 – One night while playing, Dylan wanted anal play but didn’t think her wife did. Her wife wanted anal play, but just hinted at it, so anal never happened, and afterwards both of them were disappointed about that. You have to speak up and ask for what you want!
• 10:35 – Most of us are not trained how to explore desire and ask for what we want, so Amy Jo spends a lot of time in her programs teaching that and exploring it.
• 10:58 – Sex is always a negotiation. Always always always, even if you’ve been together 30 years. Sex is always a negotiation.
• 12:37 – There are always more firsts to be had when it comes to sex and your sexual experiences. Amy Jo has a terrific ritual she does at New Years around sexual firsts.
• 15:00 – Because we are all so scared of failure and looking silly, often times we’ll try something new in bed and if it doesn’t go well, we’ll never want to revisit it. But sex is dependent on context, so as we grow and change, our experiences of sex do too. It’s worth revisiting things if you feel called to try again.
• 16:20 – Dylan asks Amy Jo if sexual firsts are harder to come up with in a long-term monogamous relationship?
• 17:13 – When we continually do things the same way all the time it’s going to get stale and boring.
• 20:04 – It’s OK to talk to your partner about what didn’t work when you try something new or make a request that doesn’t land well.
• 20:37 – Let’s talk about rejection and how rejection doesn’t sting when you’re fully empowered and confident in your own sexual experience.
• 21:25 – Dawn talks about censoring herself out of a fear of rejection.
• 22:14 – It’s all about being at home in yourself. When you stop abandoning yourself and truly come home and live your best self, rejection no longer stings because you know it’s not at all about you. Powerful stuff.
• 23:47 – When two people who are fully embodied and empowered create a relationship, it’s a whole different experience than what most of us are used to.
• 24:31 – Coming home to yourself, being empowered and present isn’t a one-time journey. It happens over and over again throughout your life. It’s a continual process, and so many people want to arrive and have an end-point.
• 25:50 – Dylan isn’t bothered by a hot femme rejecting her. It’s all good.
• 26:52 – Amy Jo talks about how the two things most people are terrified of are being rejected and being judged.
• 29:05 – We can all learn from Dylan that when her wife tells her no, Dylan doesn’t take it as a judgment or take it personally.
• 30:59 – Of the nine elements in Woman on Fire, we want to know which is Amy Jo’s favorite.
• 31:20 – Every program and every client Amy Jo works with starts with voice because so many women have lost their voice, especially when it comes to sex.
• 32:02 – We are not taught about women’s bodies, so Amy Jo loves teaching women how their body works and what kinds of doors that opens for them.
• 32:40 – Permission is a huge one, too. Women need to learn how to give themselves permission around sex, desire, and what they really want.
• 34:04 – Our culture deals with sexuality in deficits, in what it is not, in what you can’t have or can’t be, in what’s wrong. And that creates a toxic relationship with sex. Amy Jo talks about how sexual empowerment is shifting into what is possible, what you can have and can be, what you do want.
• 35:05 – Sex education is all about fear and what you shouldn’t do, so that sets the tone for a lifetime of negativity around sex.
• 36:10 – What if we reframe the way we talk about sex as an invitation?
• 37:07 – So many of us are afraid of saying yes – either because it’s dangerous or because of how we’ll be viewed or because of the stories we’ve told ourselves about our value and worth.
• 38:00 – When you start stepping outside the cultural stories, it can take a lot of courage, like Dylan’s wife had to wrestle with when they opened their relationship.
• 40:03 – There is so much we have to release – all of the stories and rules that we are force-fed. Amy Jo wants to know what would you choose if no one had ever told you how sex was supposed to be?
• 41:30 – When you question the rules and begin exploring kink or non monogamy, you find you have to let go of the map and the rules you’ve relied on your whole life and really rely on yourself and your internal wisdom to figure out how to do it.
• 42:28 – We all have multiple sexual identities, and there is so much power in finding community around your identities, especially if they’re outside the conventional stories around sex and gender.
• 43:25 – Dawn talks about staying in a relationship longer than she should have because she was scared of losing her community. Finding a way to be true to yourself, though, is always the better path in the end.
• 44:08 – Amy Jo talks about losing community when she stopped being vegetarian.
• 45:00 – It’s so powerful the way Amy Jo talks about how we are always in process. It’s a process to unpack feelings and beliefs, it’s a process to change.
• 46:14 – Community around your identity can be a lifeline, so when something changes, like a lesbian marrying a man, it can be really tough.
• 46:45 – Love how honest Amy Jo is about when she’s with a cis man it can be invisible-izing around her queer identity.
• 49:30 – “I wanted some dick!”
• 52:55 – Amy Jo does a lot of work on the connection between sex and money. Let’s find out why.
• 53:22 – Sex and money are the two biggest ways we transform as humans and the two biggest ways we exchange energy with others.
• 57:24 – We need to study sex and make it a practice, just like we need to study money and our evolving relationship with it.
• 58:46 – Amy Jo made some terrific videos and does great drag. Here is her doing Justin Timberlake and here she is reenacting 50 Shades of Grey.
• 1:02:39 – Amy Jo is on tour for her book, and you can see her events here.
• 1:03:57 – Check out her Women’s Sexual Empowerment Program – it’s 9 months and aligns with the book and the 9 elements.

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