Taking the Taboo Out of Sex Talk

Alyson Doty and Shanae Adams, Violence Prevention Educators at the Phoenix Center at Auraria, discuss the importance of de-stigmatizing sex talk and the impact of societal taboos on self-disclosure. 

Through a reference to a "New Girl" clip where Jess, the main character of the show, struggles to say "penis," they highlight societal issues around discussing body part names. They emphasize that children often find it easier to use correct anatomical terms until influenced by negative associations or by being taught to use euphemisms. 

They discuss the significance of teaching children about their bodies and consent from a young age. Alyson and Shanae then shift to reflect on the impact of social media algorithms on language and the need for media literacy. The importance of using accurate terminology to prevent sexual assault and promote healthy sexual education is stressed all throughout the podcast as they examine the need to demystify the terminology used when discussing sex and sexual assault. 

Sources: 

Play New Girl Scene- Jess Can't Say The Word Penis | New Girl 

Words Matter — First Light SC 

I feel genuine rage when I see words like “unalive or grape” in an attempt to get past tiktok guidelines filters : r/offmychest 

Resources - Sex Positive Families 

Sex-positive parenting: What you need to know - ParentsTogether
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EvGyo1NrzTY 

How social media is changing how you talk | Adam Aleksic | TEDxPenn 

Is Social Media Censorship Unaliving Language? | Otherwords 

If you are in crisis and need immediate support, please call our 24/7 interpersonal violence helpline at 303-556-2255.

Request an Appointment with an Advocate at
https://www.thepca.org/online-appointment-request

Request a Violence Prevention Presentation at
https://www.thepca.org/prevention-education

Instagram @phoenixauraria

Transcript

Alyson Doty  00:00

Hello and welcome to the Phoenix Cast.

Alyson Doty  00:21

Hello everyone. Welcome back to the Phoenix cast. My name is Alyson, and I'm one of the violence prevention education interns here at the Phoenix Center, and I'm here with Shanae. 

Shanae Adams  00:30

Hey, there. I'm Shanae. I am one of the violence prevention educators here at the Phoenix Center. 

Alyson Doty  00:35

Yeah. So today, we're going to be kind of discussing about just kind of taking the taboo out of sex talk, and like, kind of taking the almost fear around the words that we use, and especially when that can kind of impact self disclosure. And so I am going to first start out by playing a clip from New Girl. New Girl is my comfort TV show. I can watch it non stop, honestly, but it has this really funny scene where Jess, the main character, walks in on Nick, one of her male roommates, when he is naked, and then she finds out that she just can't have a conversation with him about that, because she can't say the word penis like she just feels immature. And it leads to this confrontation. It's kind of a funny scene, but I think it kind of reveals a really deep underlying societal issue, if we can't say the word penis, you know. So I'm going to touch really quick on the fair use Copyright Act, since I'll be playing actual audio from this show. But under fair use doctrine of the United States copyright statute, it is permissible to use limited portions of a work, including quotes for purposes such as commentary, criticism, news reporting and scholarly reports. So that is how we are able to use this today, kind of discussing this new girl episode. All right, so I'm going to go ahead and play this clip here.

Nick Miller- New Girl  02:01

Stop following me! 

Jess Day- New Girl  02:02

Then stop running away from me. I just want to have a mature conversation. 

Nick Miller- New Girl  02:08

How can we have a mature conversation when you can't even say the word penis? 

Nick Miller- New Girl  02:11

Say it.

Jess Day- New Girl  02:12

I can say the word pen. 

Jess Day- New Girl  02:14

Pyrenees.

Nick Miller- New Girl  02:15

What 

Jess Day- New Girl  02:16

Pyrenees?

Nick Miller- New Girl  02:17

You said? Pureness. 

Jess Day- New Girl  02:18

Penis.

Nick Miller- New Girl  02:20

Not singing.

Jess Day- New Girl  02:21

Penis

Nick Miller- New Girl  02:23

Not like a ghoul.

Jess Day- New Girl  02:26

I can say it. Pianist.

Nick Miller- New Girl  02:29

You said pianist. 

Jess Day- New Girl  02:30

Ins-Pey

Nick Miller- New Girl  02:31

Not Pig Latin

Jess Day- New Girl  02:31

 Pyrenees. 

Nick Miller- New Girl  02:33

Okay. Not in Swedish, not in fake Italian. 

Jess Day- New Girl  02:36

PEENERS

Winston Bishop- New Girl  02:38

Shut up.

Nick Miller- New Girl  02:40

Say with me. P NISS, yeah, I'm the one that's immature. 

Alyson Doty  02:46

Yeah, so do you have any thoughts on that clip, Shanae? Anything that kind of came to mind as we were listening to that?

Shanae Adams  02:52

I think it's not uncommon. I think that a lot of people, even adults, struggle to say the names of their body parts.

Alyson Doty  03:01

Yeah, most definitely. I think the first time that I watched that clip, I was laughing, as one does when watching a sitcom, but I was also like, I don't know if I have ever like, said the word penis, especially as someone who's femme presenting biologically cisgender female. I know how to say my body parts, but even then, that wasn't really discussed, and I have a public health or public school education, so those discussions within around sex education just was not taught in the most kind of informative way, you know. But I think that the reality is, if we struggle as adults, it's also really difficult for children to say that and that kind of terminology, if that's what we're teaching them.

Shanae Adams  03:43

Well I was gonna say, I want to push back on that, because it's hard for adults to say it, because that's what they've been associated to say, children have a far easier time with it. It's not until someone tells them that that word is bad or that word is dirty that they start to put that association on it. But and a lot of the sex ed classes that I teach, one of the first classes we do is anatomy, and so we spend time actually saying the words in class. We spend time talking about why people use different terminology for those words. So it's, I would say that it's fairly a lot easier for children to say it until somebody associates it negatively, and that's why adults struggle to say it.

Alyson Doty  04:24

Yeah, I appreciate your insight into that. I think that I've seen a lot of different ways in which people parent, and a lot of timesit is associated like that the atomical words that we use for our sex parts are negative and bad words. The reason for my wanting to do this podcast in the first place was because I saw a Tik Tok of someone saying that a child was trying to self disclose to them, and they felt like they just didn't understand. Because the kid was saying, my uncle touched my cookie, and they were like, Oh, well, that's unfortunate. Like, you should just go get a new cookie, and they didn't understand. Like, the meaning behind those words, because that child was then taught like, Oh no, that is the name for your private parts. 

Alyson Doty  05:06

And so I was really interested to kind of get your thoughts on, like, as a sexologist, what the best way is in approaching that. And then also, I was doing some research into some of the sex positive parenting and understanding what consent and like actual like, communicating this to children when they are that sponge that's learning everything. But yeah, do you have any thoughts around that kind of discussion that occurs for students or for kids and their parents? 

Shanae Adams  05:35

I think that you meet a lot of parents who ask the question of, how do I have the Talk or the sex talk with my kids. And the the truth of the matter is that you've been having that talk since the child was three. That's around the age the children start to be online, essentially, and start trying to, like, experiment and impact their world and their reality. And so they are always going to do what you do. They're not going to do so much what you say so how you treat yourself, how you think about your worldview, how you think about your body, directly informs what they're going to think about their worldview, what they think that what they're going to think about their bodies. And so you approaching this thing is no big deal. Allows for them to approach it is no big deal.

Shanae Adams  06:14

When it comes to being able to self disclose, being able to know the anatomical names for your body parts is one of the best kinds of prevention that children can have, because people who prey on children prey on the idea that the adults are supposed to be the authority. Prey on the idea that children aren't supposed to have autonomy, aren't supposed to have respect, and so a baseline of that is just being able to give them the names for their body parts and respecting kind of their boundaries about how they want their bodies to and not to be interacted with, as well as providing, like, very explicit, age appropriately, explicit information over what is acceptable and what is not acceptable. 

Shanae Adams  06:50

And you know, when I teach that for my parent teaching, when I do go in to do sex ed, it feels overwhelming and scary. You know, a lot of parents say that it like removes children's innocence. But oftentimes innocence, to me, kind of becomes synonymous with with, frankly, just like, unaware, right, that they're like, not knowing this thing doesn't help them stay in a child like mind state, which I think people think that innocence equates to. They can still keep that wonder, and they can still keep themselves safe by simply knowing the names of their body parts. 

Alyson Doty  07:25

Yeah, I think that that's super, definitely a good word in that. I think that oftentimes, as we're teaching our children about like, these words and like, kind of unpacking, that it's also being unpacked for ourselves, reflecting on our own childhood and like, what we were taught and like, sometimes I think we hold on to that sense of innocence, also for our own selves, of like, wanting to be able to be like, Well, I didn't know this, and kind of carry on that generational trauma of not educating in the healthiest of ways. So I think that that's very real. 

Alyson Doty  07:58

Something else that I was kind of looking into, as I looked into sex positive parenting, was this synonymous-ness... That's not a word. The way that it kind of goes along with consent and kind of understanding that childrens have or children have autonomy, and if we're teaching them like that, it's okay that we're encouraging them to touch these people that they don't know really well, or encouraging them to give them a kiss, then that kind of takes away that opportunity of consent. And that was something that was kind of difficult for me to unpack, and like a little bit of, kind of reflecting on the way that I was raised and the ways that I'm seeing, like the next generation of my family being raised, and kind of understanding what does it look like to teach children consent at such a young age?

Shanae Adams  08:43

Sure, one of the biggest questions that I get because I teach sex education from kindergarteners to senior citizens. And so I tell people that, you know, I'm going to go do like, a sex ed class for kindergartners, and they're like, Well, what are you going to what are you going to teach them like they don't need condoms? And it's like, right? They don't need condoms, so that's not what I'm gonna go teach them. I'm gonna teach them that their body is their body, and that they get to consent to who gets to interact with it and doesn't get to interact with it. Oftentimes, when we see especially in those kind of famil familial relationships, where they say, you know, go give grandpa a kiss, or go give your aunt a hug or something like that, they phrase it as kind of like, this is what family is supposed to do for each other, and the impacts of family on adults as we grow up is something that I spend a lot of time unpacking with people in therapy, right? The feeling of like, well, my family taught me this, or these are the values that I have, which ultimately makes it difficult to unlearn or relearn new values that actually might be more in alignment with who you are, but you don't get the opportunity to really flex that or expand that, because you're growing up in this community that's trying to impart particular values on you. 

Shanae Adams  09:47

Now, that's not bad in itself, because as parents, it is your responsibility as a parent to provide this like first kind of like foundation. But children are not yours to own. They're yours to supervise until they decide they no longer need that supervision. And I think that that's a hard thing for parents to kind of hold on to that like your children are not your property. You don't get to dictate what they  do or how they move. Like a lot of people say, I want to have a baby, and it's like, okay, but you're having a person. Like this baby period is only 5% of their life. After that, they become an autonomous being who makes their own choices, and you have to give them the tools to be able to make their own choices. 

Shanae Adams  10:24

So when we talk about sex education for kindergarteners and looking at what consent is, you know, we talk a lot about the fact that, like you have to get someone's permission before you give them a hug. You get to give permission before someone interacts with you, and you also get to negotiate what that interaction looks like. If you don't want to give this person a hug, can you give them a high five? Can you give them some finger guns? Can you wink? Or do you just not want to interact at all? And sometimes it can feel like to people of like, oh, you know, this child's not interacting with me in a way that I like that hurts my feelings. But as an adult, it's not a child's position to support your feelings, because you should be able to regulate your own feelings. It's actually what they see when they say, No, I don't want to hug you that informs whether or not they're going to feel safe enough to tell somebody else in the future that they don't want to hug them. 

Shanae Adams  11:12

You know, being able to have that autonomy also helps with the the adults who want to prey on children are banking on the fact that you think that you have to do everything that an adult has told you to do, and so I can use that power dynamic and say, I'm an adult, you need to do what I tell you to do, or else you're going to get in trouble. And so children who learn that you know like there are trusted adults and they're not trusted adults. And even with your trusted adult, you should be able to ask questions, which I think is one of the most frustrating things I see for like my friends who do sex positively parent is like, when the stuff backfires on you, when now your child is saying, like, No, I actually don't want to do that. And now you have to sit here and have a conversation with this autonomous being who's learning how to make their own choices. And as frustrating as it is in the moment, those are the people who turn out to be a lot more self assured and confident adults who are able to take maybe better care of their emotional well being and their mental well being, and then be able to reach out and seek tools if they feel like they can't do those things. Because they've been they've been given the value of the fact that like their voice matters, and what they do and what they don't want matters. Not everybody is an authority to them, and you should question authority. You should ask questions. You should understand why you're doing the things. 

Shanae Adams  12:25

And it's frustrating in the moment, for sure, to have a toddler like ask you why, but like to sit down and actually pour into them and break down why this is important. Not only strengthens your relationship, but it can also strengthen that adult's perspective of self. To sit here and have to process or understand why? Actually, is this something that this person or this child needs to be able to do so that way they can both grow and better themselves, and that's going to better their parent child relationship in general? 

Alyson Doty  12:52

Yeah, I really appreciated what you said around that topic of, like, negotiation of consent, kind of offering the child a choice, even if, like, there is some the one of the main questions I saw come up is, how do I let this little being who's like, two or three years old make this decision when I know it's for their own safety, and like the the metaphor that was given, or the example, is when a child is crossing the street, and if they cross the street on their own, a car could hit them. And so then it's, how do you give them that choice? And one of the examples I saw was ask your child like involve them in that conversation, saying, hey, I need you to be in contact with me when we cross the street. Would you like to hold my hand? Would you like me to hold you? Or how do you want to proceed? But kind of giving them that choice early on encourages that consent to then carry on throughout the rest of their lives. 

Alyson Doty  13:40

I saw a TED talk from a professor who was kind of discussing consent with her students, and she encouraged this exercise for all of her students, in which she made her students, for 48 hours, ask for explicit consent in everything they did. So if they went to go high five someone, or give them a hug or in any way say hi to a friend, they had to ask for consent in that and then vice versa. If someone wants to go give them a hug, they had to stop them and say, can you ask me for my consent? And it was like this space of having college students kind of reflect on, hey, this happens a lot, and a lot of what we saw, or what she saw, and what she explained in this TED talk was that her female students found that they didn't realize how often they were being touched, and they didn't know, like, how aware they needed to be of that. And some of the other students were just unaware of, like, how often they touched others without even thinking about it, because that's what society has kind of taught us, is okay, so kind of starting that really young. 

Alyson Doty  14:37

I always associate this with, like, learning a language. I was the kind of kid that was like learning Spanish when I was three, because that was the greatest time to learn it. And then I lost that, stopped learning. And then I came to college and got a minor in Spanish, and it was 20 times more difficult to like learn that because my brain was not comprehending it in the way that a child's brain does. And so it's if we're teaching kids how to learn a language when they're three, because their brains are little sponges and they're attaining that information. We need to be able to do the same with consent discussions and being able to teach them about sex in a way that is healthy and age appropriate, but is still open and a dialoge. 

Alyson Doty  15:16

But yeah, I think that that's kind of a lot of what I came to the conclusion of when understanding, just understanding how to teach children about sex and understanding, kind of the importance of that, especially around disclosure and understanding. I agreed with what you said about teaching anatomical words is like the most important in way of permission, prevention for children, especially if we're educating that, hey, this family is how we're interacting with them. And a lot of times what we see is the people who prey on children are known by the child and yeah, so understanding kind of being able to have that trusted adult prey on them, and then the difficulty of a child in disclosing beyond that. And if we take away that the terminology to be able to do so, it kind of inhibits that that disclosure and being able to understand and discuss what happened to them in a very traumatizing moment. 

Alyson Doty  16:13

But I was kind of reflecting on this and understanding how we can understand disclosure for kids and how that's inhibiting, but then I was reflecting on how that affects adults to this day, beyond just the funny haha of that clip around saying the word penis, but beyond that, how do we say words that are often censored by our society? And so I kind of felt this way because I did a lot of research into what's called algo speak. And I don't know if you've heard of this before, but in social media, it's very easy for the algorithm to mute or delete videos or have flagged videos that discuss words such as killing or death or suicide or rape or sexual assault, and all of these words, when it's set in a video are taken down or muted in some way because it violates the terms of agreement of the social media. 

Alyson Doty  17:07

And so what we see is we're seeing a new generation of kids coming up and now into college students, the generation that was shaped by social media kind of coming in and having to understand that this is something that they've had to censor for a majority of the time that they've been on social media, and it's something that we're actually seeing translated into in person discussions and conversations. So we have these words like unalive or grape instead of rape, or S.A. instead of sexual assault, and these are these words that we've seen used or emojis that are used to kind of get past the algorithm in order to not have the video taken down. But we're still seeing these things come into our language in a face to face conversation. And so I wanted to see if you had any thoughts on this just off the gate of, kind of like, what this looks like. And then I have a couple of different like, discussions around what this means and kind of the impact of seeing these words kind of coming about in our day to day language. But I just reminded of the way that we use algo speak. It's kind of similar to the way that we censor ourselves for children when talking about sex parts. But wondering if you had any thoughts on that. 

Shanae Adams  18:21

Sure, I think that you know immediately as you're talking about social media, I, one of my social media platforms stays in trouble with Instagram. Stays in trouble for things that I haven't done or I haven't violated, because once the the algorithm, once the bots, once AI, starts processing your things, it automatically flags a lot of things, and then I have to go through and dispute it. And then when the human when the humans look at it, they're like, oh, there's actually nothing wrong with that, but I get targeted because I'm a sexuality educator. In the we've seen a huge wave of social media that's been blocking even positive sex education, blocking sex educators, blocking sex workers from being able to put their their information and their content out there, so that way people can consume it and can learn and can make newer or better choices. And so it absolutely makes sense that in an attempt to try to override the system, that we have to develop some kind of code or this algo speech in order to be able to overcome and let that content, let that content be posted. 

Shanae Adams  19:19

But in terms of how it's impacting us in our real world or in real life interactions, I think one of the biggest kind of downfalls of social media is that we are strongly lacking media literacy in this country. We're strongly lacking it in the all over the world, I would argue, but particularly here in the West, there's a lot of the things that people just don't understand when it comes to social media, and it's important to recognize that social media, in of itself, is very neutral. How you use it is what determines whether it's good or it's bad. And people don't take the time to sit and process and understand what's put on social media, why they're putting it out there, who's putting it out there, how it's changing their perspectives or their values, or whether or not it's a goal of this video to change your perspective or your values, there's simply just not enough questions that we're asking. And so when you say that you know these real life conversations are being impacted, it's probably because we haven't unpacked what it really means to exist on the social media platform and how it is impacting our lives, and whether or not that's the way that we want it to impact our lives. Because all of these are choices. Just because the thing is out there doesn't mean that you have to engage with it the way that you're being shown. You're being told that you get to that you have to engage with it, asking those questions, unpacking and realizing that for yourself is something that's important for you. 

Shanae Adams  20:31

And so I would probably argue that the the fact that it feels a lot easier to to continue that kind of speech offline, it's just very representative of the fact that culture shifts with every generation, and so we have the power to actually influence the next generation, or influence our society is the way that we would like it to be, as opposed to the way that it is right. We are all taking integral steps into into shaping it, into producing what it is that we see out in the world. I think that it's also very interesting, you know, similar to how you're saying that, like algo speech is representative of how maybe children are taught sex and sexuality, just in the sense that we use words to replace other words. And I think that it's important that oftentimes, from what we've seen generationally, from calling, you know, a vagina cookies, or calling a penis a wee, wee or pee pee comes out of, oftentimes, the adult's discomfort and how they've been associated. And so they're thinking that I can offer something else, so that way we can still have the conversation, quote, unquote, to a certain extent. But it's not so much about trying to, like, overcome some kind of censorship, so much as it I would imagine it's representative of something that that adult needs to unpack, it needs to discover for themselves, so that way they can be able to be a model or a representative for that child. 

Alyson Doty  21:50

Yeah, most definitely. I really agree with what you said about kind of like the shifting of culture. Something that I found in my research of this was kind of like this shift of dialoge and like language and kind of like the etemology of different words. And something that kind of stood out to me was, like this discussion of the word unalive and like, kind of associating that with, like death in some way. And then this specific educator around, like the English language kind of gave examples of how we've always done this, just historically, like we've always had discussions of, oh, well, grandma passed, or they have gone to the other side, crossed the Rainbow Bridge, all of these other metaphors to not just say that they died. And it's something that we continue to see just in all language of it's nothing new, but it feels so new because social media is new, and so that was kind of something for me to kind of unpack. A lot of of kind of, hey, this is something that feels new and frustrating to me in the ways that we have to censor ourselves. 

Alyson Doty  22:55

And it really does come down to censorship. I think another criticism that I found was that we don't know what words are actually censored by any of the social media, and so that kind of leads to, there are some educated guesses that can be made, but it leads to censorship in some ways that doesn't even need to be censored. Like one example that I saw was they a lot of times, people will censor the word lesbian and take the s and replace it with $ sign when writing it out. But that's just a sexuality that's not anything that needs to be censored, and it's not something that I've seen censored in the past. And so it's a weird little like realm of we're self censoring ourselves because of the fear of getting anything taken down or blocked or red flagged or anything in that way on social media. And so that was kind of something that was also shocking to me, as a college student who just is on social media quite often, that's how I get my source of information. 

Alyson Doty  23:51

And so the best way that I found for criticisms to kind of occur was to go to social media and see the criticisms there. And so I went to a Reddit thread kind of discussing this. And this original poster kind of discussed their dislike for using algo speak, and their dislike of seeing words like unalive or grape or SA, and they said specifically that to use words like these feels so dehumanizing. They can't fully explain why they hate it so much, but I feel like they feel like it trivializes the real suffering that people have experienced. These things are horrible, and the words have horrible connotations as they should. And I think that that's kind of something that also needs to be discussed, is like, if we take these terminology and censor it in a way that kind of lessens that impact. Do we feel like it demeans the experience that had happened there?

Shanae Adams  24:47

Sure. I mean in short, words mean things, and so if you change a word, you oftentimes change the meaning or the impact of whatever the idea or the messages is that you're trying to convey. You know, I definitely see the Reddit posters perspective, and that when you choose a lesser word in an attempt to let it pass through the algorithm, it maybe lessens the impact, and it provides, like, a certain maybe, like numbing to the experience that people are having. And I also think that there's also something to be said for like, you know, in therapy, the language you use to describe the thing is the language that we're going to use to describe the thing. And so there's a certain aspect of choice that I think comes out of it, which is maybe in like, direct conflict with the fact that algo speech finds itself out of the algorithm of like, if people are actually making a conscious choice to be able to use this, which again, points back to like media literacy and being able to unpack the impacts of media on your life and on your worldview and on your perspective. So I think that it's probably open for interpretation. 

Shanae Adams  25:51

Humans are, we're a very social creature, and that socialness allows for the cyclical response of impacting each other and experiencing each other, which is what creates our culture and which what creates society as a whole. And so the way that individuals move impact the greater perspective. And so I think that you know being able to ask those questions of if you, if we, if we're being as intentional with our words as we could be. And the truth is no, because our our at least in the United States, our our literacy and our comprehension rates and our reading rates are very low. And so people don't lack, people lack the capacity to even, like, do the the work of interrogating what's going on, which is the point.

Alyson Doty  26:35

Yeah, I think that that definitely leads into just a deeper conversation that needs to be had and beyond, just like what's being discussed here, I think that oftentimes, like I said, it leads to some difficulty in disclosure. It leads to also, just like, kind of taking away, again, that idea of autonomy and consent, if we are forcing these words on someone who is trying to disclose in a different way. It takes away their own choice, and also we want to respect their choice of the language we use. I really appreciate the way that you included how it's discussed in therapy, and kind of allowing the person who is kind of revisiting that and going and working through that, allowing them the choice of what terminology we use and the words that are being used. And so I really appreciate that. That is what you shared here.

Alyson Doty  27:28

But yeah, I think that kind of, overall I've I feel like there's sometimes a little bit of a disconnect, and there was a little bit of a disconnect in my brain when trying to connect these two topics. But I really was kind of drawn to the idea that, like this discussion and this being able to be open and kind of just taking away the fear of these words, specifically, like sex parts, as well as sexual assault and rape. I think that oftentimes when we we crowd it with a different word, I think you named it really well, that this kind of is associated with something that brings up discomfort in us, and that is why we use different words and kind of have these lang this language that is kind of shrouding what is actually being said. 

Alyson Doty  28:15

And so one thing that I found specifically from an organization in South Carolina that does work within interpersonal violence and prevention efforts. They said specifically that when we don't need code words or veiled innuendos when talking about rape or sexual assault, and we certainly don't need them when we're talking about body parts, because if we are going to make meaningful progress in sexual assault prevention and victim advocacy, we cannot be afraid to say the words that go along with it. And so that's kind of like, what I want to leave us with. I know that there's a lot to say, of like, where do we go from here? And I kind of want to kind of pick your brain a little bit about that, of like, maybe just next steps for any of our listeners of the Phoenix cast, how they kind of start to unpack that within themselves, if anything rang true here, and then also just how you and I each might be able to go from here and discussing this language and like the etemology of sex, and kind of taking away that mystery of it

Shanae Adams  29:18

For the listener that's listening. If you've felt impacted by something, then that's probably something to sit with and unpack and understand why it's impacting you. I think that, generally speaking, increasing our literacy and our comprehension and our reading rates, which means, go read a book, any book really, go read a book. So that way you can build the tools and the capacity to be able to actually comprehend the who, what, who, what, where, when and why when we're consuming this media. 

Shanae Adams  29:47

You know, I think that one of the reasons why Instagram is always fighting me is because I'm going to post what I want to post, and the community standards that are in place oftentimes are misrepresented, particularly for people of the global majority, and for people whom they determine to be less than, which often is things related to sex and sexuality and sex workers. And so continuing to put my content out, continuing to put those messages out, is something that's important for me, even though I know that, you know, there's a really good chance that Instagram is going to is going to flag it, or there's the fact that, you know, like, I can't monetize my content because of the way that Instagram has been set up against my account. So sometimes it means just raging against the machine and continuing to do what it is that you want to do and putting out what it is that you need to put out, even though the machines are saying that they don't want you to, because that is also how society shift is by continuing to acknowledge the deficits in society, and if you see those gaps, trying to show up and fill fill those gaps. 

Shanae Adams  30:47

I think that it's also important to say your body part names, right, and say them and get comfortable with them, and take the so much of the the sexual the so much of the taboo and the discomfort around body parts is that bodies get sexualized. And bodies are not sexualized. We are juice packages wrapped up in this meat suit, and it's just a meat suit. So say the names of the things in the meat suit, right? So being able to take a lot of your power back in that reclamation back is what helps us be able to shape our next generation and have them have to do one less step to step into their power and step into that reclamation, because we've already done some of that prior work.

Alyson Doty  31:27

Yeah, I really appreciate those thoughts. Shanae, I think that's kind of where I was sitting with it, of like, what are my personal next steps? And as someone who just had not normalized using my body part names and kind of continued to hold that sense of fear and like that sense of mystery to it. That is what I plan to do, is start using my body parts, start referring referring to my vagina as a vagina because it is and it doesn't have to be sexualized in any way. And I really appreciate your your lasting words there. 

Alyson Doty  31:57

And I also think that it's just important to kind of approach media and that idea of literacy with a critical lens. It took kind of a little bit of a lot for me to reflect on New Girl and like, some of the flaws there, because I do love that show so much. But the reality is that it's not perfect, because nothing's perfect, and so we can kind of approach it with that critical lens of, hey, it's a little weird that this grown adult woman could not say the word penis, and that's being portrayed and continuing, continuously perpetuating that for continued viewers. And it's not uncommon, like you said at the beginning, but it is something that maybe we need to see a shift in a narrative and kind of being able to criticize that in that way. And so I really appreciate what you said. 

Alyson Doty  32:39

I once again, want to just leave us with this words from first lights in South Carolina, that if we're going to make meaningful progress in sexual assault prevention and victim advocacy, we cannot be afraid to say the words that go along with it. And so that is my call to anyone listening and anyone who might be kind of having things come up for them, is understanding like what is coming up for you, and understanding maybe where that comes from, and unpacking that. 

Alyson Doty  33:05

Thank you everyone for tuning in today to our Phoenix cast in this episode. If anything came up for you that was triggering in any way, or if you're just looking for any sort of assistance, we are happy to have you contact our 24/7 Helpline at 303-556-2255, and if you're looking to get connected to the Phoenix Center, see some of our upcoming events and other podcast episodes. Go ahead and follow our Instagram account @PhoenixAuraria, and we would love to get connected with you. Thank you so much, and I look forward to learning with you on the next Phoenix cast.