Some of you may not know this, but we have a great team of
therapists and educators at the Expansive Group. The team at the Expansive Group has
been hard at work behind the scenes developing an educational platform that I am super
excited about, particularly because, at least for me, the coming out experience,
coming into my own sexuality was an extraordinarily lonely experience. So we built
this platform centered around community. You'll be able to learn through courses, workshops,
worksheets, and probably my favorite part, which is tender Queer Hangs several
different weekly hangs on topics like non monogamy, sensuality, where you can go
hang out with other sex nerds, other queer folks, other therapists, people
like you who have been following this podcast or queer sex therapy for a long
time. This platform launches on January first. The best way to get involved
is to follow the newsletter. Because our newsletters, subscribe will get access first,
and there are a limited number of spots for those founding member positions.
So sign up for the newsletter and I really hope to see you on Expansive
ED. I truly can't wait for this to launch and to see what this
looks like and how it comes together. I know it's going to be an
incredibly communal place where everyone can kind of get together no matter where you are,
and really excited to run to it first. I'm Casey Channer and I'm
Camille Lewis, and this is safe Word. Safe Word is sex Therapy unhinged
because instead of being a blank slate that's just here to support you, we're
telling you the details on our own sex lives, relationships, identities, and
more. This isn't sex and it's not therapy, but we are a sex
therapists and what you hear today may excite you. Each week we tackle a
thame related to sex, relationships, gender and more. This week we're diving
into religious trauma. M m mmm mm hmm, Oklahoma, I knocking.
This episode contains some fairly heavy themes related to trauma, religious trauma, sexual
trauma, and child abuse. So take care of yourself in the way that
you need pause, don't listen to the episode, whatever you need to do
before we jump into what is bound to be a somewhat heavy topic. I
wanted to do a little celebrating with you, Camille about yeah fired by our
Spotify wrapped. Yes, I'm just so proud of us. I love that
this is something that we thought about before we even really knew each other,
when we were in our famous ideating stage. This was an idea that you
came up with and was just looking forward to talking with you when we record.
And I just know that I've received so much positive feedback from listeners and
people in my community, and it feels just really good that people are gaining
so much from it, and I'm really proud of us. I had a
really cute story. My cousin is a young queer person and would tell me
that she and her girlfriend would listen to the episodes and then go think about
them separately and then come back together and discuss. Okay, that's the sweetest
thing ever, and I love it. And I was like, yay to
all the baby gays getting the info. How cool is it that you me
an ET producer just get to come here and hang out once a week.
ET just gives us great compliments after each show, whether we've done well or
not, and that it also happens to be helping people who knew that people
in seventy six different countries listen to this. I know to all of you
who are listening. Truly, thank you for sitting in on these unhinged,
really friend hangouts that we have. Thank you for being part of that.
Yeah, the reception has been so positive and letting us be humans in it.
We know we're talking about but sometimes we are working through all of this
too, and it feels like a really wonderful space to be able to do
so so happy to do this with you. I feel like I've learned so
much about you in the last year, and I think this topic is one
that I'm like, I actually don't know what your orientation is to know,
I'm really curious. So what is your history relationship with religious trauma purity culture?
Oh? Yeah, just like a super light question and to start us
off, Sally, you know, I think interestingly, I grew up going
to like Black Baptist churches with my mom. My dad didn't go to church
with us growing up. It was very much just kind of the thing that
my brother and I did with my mom pretty regularly. My grandparents were also
really involved in the church, and I liked it from a communal aspect.
You know, I'm from Colorado, I'm from Aurora and went to a public
school there, so it was incredibly actually really really diverse, but that there
were elements of black culture that I wanted to be a part of more.
And my mom is from Chicago and I would grow up going there and I
was just like, this is what I'm trying to this is what I'm trying
to experience, and so I think that for me that that's what church represented
is just like being around black people. And so I was like in the
choir and I was like a junior usher and mostly I was just like trying
to kick it and like see like other people from other schools that I would
never have hung out with, and so that was like kind of it for
me, and it was it was never something that I didn't enjoy until I
just stopped caring. Like I used to love going and listening to the music.
I don't ever really remember being truly like moved by a sermon really,
and it never was something that in my house was like drilled into us by
any means. I was just like, yeah, we go to church and
that's what we do. And my dad didn't go, so I was like,
well, I had these examples right of like my mom who goes every
Sunday and my dad, who doesn't go at all. So I kind of
was like, okay, so like this is just a thing that people can
choose to do or not do. And I wasn't baptized as a kid.
I was actually baptized when I was in middle school, when I'd decided for
myself that I wanted to join the church. The day after that, I
had left this notebook out on my dining room table where it was just like
me and my friends talking shit, like just talking about all kind of like
raunchy middle school stuff. And my dad found it. It was like,
this is right after you decide to join the church, and now you're like,
what is this a baptized exactly exactly so, and I was just like,
God, damn it, it's so weird that baptism didn't completely change you
into a totally different person, right, Yeah, so weird. Since then
I don't go to church. I don't really know what I believe in,
as you know, like I have a brother who converted to Islam about ten
years ago and is incredibly religious and you know, praise five times a day
and goes to getting his doctorate and religious studies. That's over there. I'm
over here and now my dad goes to church twice a week and my mom
goes every week. But it still doesn't feel like something that I was forced
into. I mean, you know, I get the little comments about me
being a heathen, but you know, I welcome this. I love that
though. That's a compliment to you, absolutely, as it should be so
much more community and a culture thing. And it sounds like maybe at some
point some of the things that you were really getting out of it you started
getting elsewhere, like yeah, and maybe you didn't need it for that as
much. Maybe the opposite's true for your dad, who knows. Yeah,
Like I would still go to church if I ever wanted to, mostly for
the music, Like black gospel music is just so powerful, So I really
liked that part of it. I wish I had seen you in a choir
getting my life. I needn't need to see a video that I'm sure you
were amazing. I need to find one. My experience was. There are
some parallels, but quite opposite to that. Probably at this point most people
know that I went to school originally to become a pastor, and I wasn't
forced to do that at that time. Was an authentic choice for me.
I prescribed to the faith of like not knowing, that's my faith. I'm
like, I feel really comfortable not knowing, and that position of humility is
not a neutral place. Actually, I think I was taught growing up that
not being religious, you still are bound to worship other things. And maybe
I do like evangelized queerness now in the same way I used to evangelize Christianity.
Maybe I do worships and things, But I don't think that the position
of not knowing is one of neutrality. I don't think it's a passive position.
I think it really actively drives me. That being said, I every
year was sent to this horrific evangelical Christian camp that has recently been uncovered as
a child sex ring. Actually it's like being all over the news. This
was a place where they were like very much training young girls and boys at
least assumed to be girls and boys to be an incredibly gendered roles based on
a science sex at birth, like women being incredibly submissive, men being very
dominant, and purity culture was I mean, that doesn't even begin to to
describe it. My sister came home from camp one year with a brick that
was a gift that she was supposed to give her future husband to indicate like,
this is how long I've been saving myself for you. I had a
journal to my future husband. His name was David. I would write to
him on the regular and I felt at the time that I had a deep
relationship with God. I talked to God all of the time. I was
heavy into church. I was at church multiple times a week. The community
component was there, but it was like a pretty individualistic version of religion.
And yeah, I felt immense amount of shame around anything related to sexuality.
I remember one summer I came home from this camp where they basically said,
you know, most people go to hell unless you, of course, accept
Jesus as your savior and your sins are washed away. And I'd come home
from this camp where I was told like, if you hear a swear word,
you will go to hell. And my mom had thrown me this little
camp ice party with my friends and they were playing music on the radio and
there was a swear word and I ran to the bathroom. I'm like twelve
years old, and I just shut the door and I cried, and I
wouldn't let anyone in because I was so worried that I was going to hear
them swear, and I just cried, and I didn't know where to go.
I didn't know what to do. I couldn't like, I couldn't reconcile
all of these things and yet worked on me. I mean I chose to
go to a school where I literally signed a document that said I wouldn't be
gay and had a full mental breakdown, I mean not surprisingly after all of
that, Like, I was in very, very sick person until until I
started reading Freud, actually until I started reading Freud and his work in helping
me understand that, like for many people, the purpose of religion is for
attachment. It's to find an identity somewhere when you can't find it in yourself
or when you're not getting adequate mirroring. And like I respect to people who
practice religion in a way that is social justice oriented and that works for them,
total respect for that. I think it came to conceptualize evangelical Christianity as
a coping skill for generational trauma. And once I understood my religious beliefs that
way, I like opened up the door to start seeing myself for the person
I was is queer and slowly sort of have come to a new ideology around
psychology and sociology and now understand my extremism essentially being an occult as a way
of trying to get needs met when there were a lot of unmet needs.
I feel like, even though I knew most of this about you, it
still feels really hurtful to hear like I feel like so much pain for you,
and like anger and wanting to just like hug you and protect you from
anything. I would love a hug and I love her protective are of me.
But here's the good news, Like, I do not struggle with remaining
symptoms of purity culture anymore after a decade of very intense work, So the
shit like does not have to have a hold on you for your whole life.
And that's why I'm so glad we're going to be talking about this and
answering questions from folks who I think are really worried about how long they'll have
to struggle with the remnants of this shit. I don't know before we dive
into these questions, there's something that is like pulling me to talk more about
you and I and like our relationships with religion and experience. So I don't
know, how do you feel about No, I feel the same way a
little more. Yeah, doesn't feel right to dive into questions yet, and
maybe we'll get there. Maybe what brought this up is like the name of
your future husband because I dated this guy with the same name. He broke
up with me because he wanted to go into being a pastor actually in college
and was wild in terms of shame around sex. I never really felt it
from a religious perspective because I think that rather than they're being like a you
will go to hell if you do these things, it was just like sex
is not a thing, you know. It was like it just wasn't really
talked about. Identity wasn't really talked about. I went to all black churches
and all black spaces, it wasn't really talked about at all. I think
that that was the first time that I felt shame for being a sexual person.
He was literally like, I don't want to be with you because I
can't have I need to be celibate, and you are a temptation to me.
And I was like, by the way, I was studying abroad in
Africa at the time, and he called me. And it was a really,
really terrible experience for me in general. I was having a really hard
time in my study abroad experience and he knew that, and he called me,
and I was walking to class and he's like, yeah, like it's
over, like I need like a pious woman or something. And I was
just like, h you're such a temptation when you're literally a continent away,
like that language around wild people being a temptation. It's just in itself fucked
up. And just this whole thing reminds me like religious trauma is perpetrated by
people. It is perpetrated by people. It is relational trauma at the end
of the day, and you don't have to be somebody who goes to church
or a particular kind of church to have experienced it, because it's people that
perpetrate it. Oh that is such a good point. Yeah, exactly,
Like and I was just like, wait, what do you mean. I
was like okay, And like for me, I was ay. I was
across the world, so it's not like there was I like, I'm like,
I'm not a threat to you over here, and like I also really
cared about him, so I was like well we could. Why don't we
talk about like what this looks like like? Even then, when I was
like twenty or twenty one years old, I was like, well, why
don't we like talk about this because if we need to like rethink what sex
looks like. Like I was like, okay, like you were a therapist,
yeah, literally, and it was like and he was like no,
bye, And I was just like, you know what I bet happened.
This is like a thousand percent of projection. But I've just been in these
conversations, like sitting down with other Christian mentors, other evangelical mentors, who
are like, I really need you to reevaluate this relationship you're in with Camille.
It really feels like it's pulling you away from God. And like I
can just imagine somebody feeding that to him and him going into that conversation being
like this is it. This is what I have to do. Yeah,
yeah, like this is an impediment to my relationship with God. I'll sever
the limb immediately. And I was just like, Okay, I guess I
just got dumb, right, And there's no well, first, like Camille,
fuck, Like that's that's awful and so confusing and so shitty. Yeah,
I think that that's the first time I was like, oh, am,
I like a slut, like and not in a good way, because
like now I definitely and now I like, it's like one of my favorite
things about myself. But I was like, oh my god, like I
am, like I'm bad for a person because of this, right, And
that's the shame, right, It's like you don't have to have those beliefs
to feel shame as a result of purity culture just running rampant generally. I
have a similar story. I was dating a person, a man in seminary,
and we were taking it extremely slow because both of us believed that that
was the right way to do things. And before we had even kissed,
he asked me to be his girlfriend. And this will tell you about my
mindset at the time. I said, okay, before you asked me that
there's something I need to confess to you, and I told him about my
sexual assault that i'd experienced a few months prior, and he never spoke to
me again and he didn't want to date me at that. Yeah. Yeah,
it was like, yeah, I mean the same feeling that you just
described, Like I had no idea how bad. This made me, how
undesirable, how this could overshadow every other part of me that's good and that
this person was drawn to It's just gaslighting. Gosh, like that it's unfathomable,
is really unfathomable. And I think that that story happens for so many
people of like what sharing assault will mean for someone, I think particularly for
men and religious men of like well like sounds like like you know, like
the damaged goods type of the damage narrative. Yeah, well, that's the
virginity narrative too, right, It's like, if you don't have your virginity,
then your damaged goods. As if virginity is real, which we know
that it's not. It is not real. I'm so sorry that is Oh,
that's just like so unbelievably cruel. And I think that that's what happens,
like when I think about the rigidity of the way in which some people
practice religion of yeah, like completely not in the gray, not considering the
multitude and the variance that everybody possesses and adjust being like this is correct and
this is not correct. My brother and I like he is like the joy
in my life, and I feel like we've had like so many ruptures as
a result. He was asking me. He was like, so, like,
what's the difference between a sex therapist and a sex coach? And I
was telling him because he recently got married in like an Islamic tradition and some
things that he was struggling with, right, And I was like curious.
I was like, you know, i'd be curious about like what Islam tells
you about about sex. And I was trying to just like be curious about
religious shame. And he was so mad at me for saying for even asking,
and he got like he was just like, you could never work with
a religious client. And I was just like, that's interesting. I work
with tons of religious clients, right, And that's the question you would one
question that you would absolutely ask them anybody. I was like, this is
literally what I would do in my job. I would be curious about shame
because that is inextricably linked for so many people to sex. So be asking
about how does this very salient part of your identity view this thing is their
shame around it, because that could like, let's look at it. I
wasn't even like, well, because you're Muslim, this means that this and
you need to not be Like I was just like, well, I'd like
tell me a little bit more about He's like, wow, you like you
Like he was pissed, and I was just like, okay, big rupture.
I feel like like within certain religions, as you get to the more
extreme ends of them, what makes them so similar to cults or cults is
that they're teaching you apologetics, meaning they are teaching you how you should react
in what you should say when anybody does anything that even resembles attacking the belief
system or attacking the group. Right So, literally, I was trained at
these camps if anyone were to suggest to me that Jesus was not the way
the truth in the life, how to how to as a Christian soul to
defend myself against those questions, right like, because the more could is ship
becomes more easily threatened there. So I don't know, I wonder if any
of that's going on, you know, this ideology of anyone who is questioning
it is against me automatically. Yeah, I think that that was really helpful
to hear, I think, and it's hard. I think it was a
good and I also have to recognize that the judgments and myself that come up
when people are are quite religious, and I think that what it is because
of like my relationship with my brother, and there's like different parts of his
identity that I truly feel like shifted with this. And I think that to
your point about like finding community, like I do believe that Islam probably saved
his life in a number of ways. And I also feel like he has
changed so dramatically that I feel like I'm more in it, And so I'm
I have to check my hyper criticism of people like I think that. You
know, it's it's hard for me too. I think religion, people who
find themselves to be religious, it confuses me. Well, it's not like
faith is never to me, that's my opinion. But like faith is never
the issue. It's how that faith gets enacted into harm that's the issue.
It's not the faith. So there are many many people for whom faith is
life saving. In fact, I've had many many queer clients who, upon
finding really queer affirming religious community, yeah, are more themselves than ever.
So so yeah, we're talking about is extremism, We're not talking about faith.
Your story with your brother reminds me of something else that I think is
so pervasive with religious trauma is the splitting off of the self. You have
now opted into, or been pulled into, or forced into this thing that
is so rigid, and the only way you can stay there is to lose
other parts of yourself. Right, So, your boyfriend, who probably was
really into you, that was one part of him, probably also really into
religion. They made him choose one part of himself, and he chose religion.
Your brother loves his family, deeply cares about you, deeply cares about
this religion that says, well, you can't have both in the same way,
and and defaults to religion or not even defaults, is trained to choose
religion. And that's what happened to me too. I literally split the queer
part of myself off for two decades, and because it precluded me, I
thought it precluded me from being part of this thing that I thought was saving
my life. So it's that splitting off that it teaches us to do,
and that we keep doing sometimes even when we're out of it. I think
that like all of us have like different sorts of rituals and different sorts of
things that make us cling to, like hope, I'm learning to be,
Like, what does spirituality look like for me? I wonder if what you
just said is a parallel between religious trauma and sexual trauma, because when you've
experienced trauma in either of those realms, one symptom might be like over generalizing
that all of it will be bad or dangerous, and that can be a
trauma reaction, right, Like that sort of extreme way of labeling and thinking.
The first stage of my recovery was all religion is bad. I hate
everyone who's religious? How Stage one? Yeah, right for sure? Stage
two, three, four is I see nuance now, I've seen how life
giving it can be. I even see how life giving at times it was
for me, and I think that can be true of all kinds of types
of trauma. Yeah, nuance, baby, that's the name of the game.
So there is a question that says it's asking for tips on navigating partnership
with someone who is recovering from purity culture. Yeah, what do you think?
I don't know. The phrase purity culture is relatively new to me.
When I think of that, I think of like white evangelical Christians, So
I think that's mainly what it refers to. Yeah, Yeah, think of
a chastity belt. I guess my initial response would be that acknowledgement is just
a really big part of I think, any sort of recovery, if you
want to use that language of just like I know that this is happening for
you. I don't know that it requires let me jump in and fix this.
Let me like let's like I think sometimes when we feel confused or when
we feel hurting for someone, we want to throw the book at it,
so to speak. We want to put a bunch of resources in. We
want to just like okay, like everything I read this, I have this,
I couldn't do this. And I think rather than that, just being
like I know that this is something that is real for you, and like
when we need to talk about it, let's talk about it, and I
think integrating it into your relationship in a way that doesn't feel like God,
hold my breath because we have to have the tough conversation and rather like yeah,
like when we were watching that movie, my first thought was like,
oh my gosh, I need to look away because there was nudity on screen,
and being like okay, yeah, so what does that feel like to
have that initial reaction and what did you deal, how did you change that
reaction or how does it feel now? Or I think you know, I
think also just patience, like to have conversations with this person and to have
experiences with this person that are like really full, and I think that there
are lots of different ways that you can really affirm that part of them.
And I think maybe part of it is also like not demonizing the religion and
not being like well fuck this and fuck everybody who believes this, and like,
let's like it could maybe look like okay, well what parts of that
feel good to you? And maybe you like the ritual of doing something on
a Sunday morning. What can we do on Sunday morning because now that maybe
I have a gap in my time there, or how do we form different
communities? I love that it reminds me when I walked away from religion,
I missed the morning routine of my devotional and I started doing morning tarot card
ratings for myself and it was it was yeah, I mean, there were
there are parts of it that genuinely worked for me. So I love the
idea of validating that not throwing out the baby with the bathwater necessarily. I
think two in purity culture shows up in a relationship. There might be partners
who are like, yeah, I'm not really affected by that, but I
think in my experience working with queer folks, most folks, it affects a
partner because they've grown up in that same error and it reminds them of their
own experiences. Or potentially maybe you're navigating shame around your queerness that you don't
define as purity culture related shame, and your partner's bringing in a ton of
shame from purity culture around their queerness, and now you're confronting that shame around
your queerness again. So it can play out in these relational ways, and
my advice there would be take your reactions and feelings about that seriously, but
not personally meaning that. Let's say that you have queer sex with your partner,
or maybe you of your relationship and you have some hot a mo anogma
sex and maybe your partner like one part of them is like I'm here for
this, and that part that's so affected by religious trauma is like, I'm
having a really negative reaction to what we just did. Take your feeling about
that seriously. You're allowed to feel hurt by that. You're allowed to feel
disappointed by that reaction. And also, it isn't about you like it is
about trauma. It's not because the sex was bad. It's not because you're
bad. If you can both take your feeling seriously but name it for what
it is, call it religious trauma, then I think there's a lot of
hope for navigating that within a relationship. Why don't I want intimacy when I'm
on my period because this is a religious trauma episode. I'll take it from
that lens. But also I just want to validate that, like horimonally,
you might not want task sex when you're on your period because you're not interested
in it from a hormonal perspective. I think also there's been a lot of
language around periods, around menstruation and being clean or not, and I think
that that goes in line with purity culture, being clean or not clean or
dirty. I think already having like shame around bodies, this person has a
volva and being like already, you know, we're told a cross your legs,
don't look at that part of yourself, don't touch that part of yourself.
So when it's it smells bad, it looks weird. Yeah, exactly.
It smells bad, it looks weird, but it does this weird thing.
When we have internalize these messages about dirtiness, that is not what is
going to make us feel most sexy. If it's like this is disgusting to
me, my partners or partners are also going to find it really disgusting.
And why would anyone want to do this. I don't want to touch myself,
I don't want to look at myself. I feel all of these things.
So I think that that can really affect how you see yourself. And
I think when self confidence is really like waning, it feels hard to reach
for intimacy with somebody else, right, And those thoughts might not even be
conscious. You might not be actively thinking my period is disgusting. But religious
trauma, like any other trauma, doesn't just live in the thoughts, or
it also lives in the body. So you might logically now be in a
place where you like, I've embraced my period. I know it's not disgusting,
but your body might still be holding the shame surrounding it. So so
if you're confused about why, it might be because your body's holding onto some
of that trauma. I also just as a caveat here, I have a
friend who is incredibly sex positive, does not like period sex and has sort
of been on her own journey around realizing like, liking period sex isn't the
definition of sex positivity. So don't define your journey of recovery from purity culture
as liking period sex or many people who are like super sex positive who are
like, yeah, this is like not my thing, and sex positivity isn't
doesn't mean you say yes everything. Yeah, it means you know when to
say yes to things. So yeah, that's a good point that I think
that helps check something in me. Like I feel like when I have sex
with men, I will ask them what's your thoughts on period sex? And
if they say like no, I'm like, oh fuck you, like you
idiot, you don't know anything, you fucking misogynists and you're a little boy
or whatever. I don't have that reaction too, even after what I just
said. So maybe we both need to check ourselves. I mean we do,
but I think also we can check them first. Yeah, well yes,
yeah, because I'm like, well, like, do you not like
it? Because you know, periods have been shamed and you think that they're
gross or do you find it to just be a texture thing or is it
like it can get messy, but sex can get messy. So you know
what steps should I take to work through religious trauma? Because religious trauma takes
place in the context of relationships with human beings. I really believe that,
like impactful recovery takes place in relationships with human beings. And if you can
find other people who were disenfranchised in the same way that you were, like
I found so much healing from queer people who are ex evangelicals, Like that
is where my healing originated, where we could all talked about this fucked up
shit together. And also all trauma, most trauma, it doesn't live in
our brain in a narrative form, right, We can't just pull a story
about it out of nowhere. But as we can learn to tell our stories
and piece that language together, we can heal our brains. So by actively
telling your story to people who know how to listen, who you can trust
to respond the way that you need to, I think that's an incredibly powerful
way. And obviously therapy is an option for that too. I mean,
I just second everything that you see. I think that like healing in community
is just really essential. And I think that that is also a big loss
that people can experience when they move away from particular practice of religion, and
so to find community elsewhere that validates it, that interrogates it, I think
can be really powerful. And I think just acknowledging to yourself that it doesn't
mean that, like you have identified it so you wake up the next day
and it is all washed away, and just being like this might be something
that I contend with for a while and I can acknowledge to be true for
me in this moment, and I'm seeking support around it because you deserve too.
And unlike those religious contacts that said, like, you can't have multiple
parts of yourselves, you have to choose this one, recovery, looks like
I do have multiple parts of myself and one part feels really ashamed about this
sex and one part is really fucking into it, and I'm allowed to have
both of those in a way that I wasn't allowed to when I was in
this context, and claiming that can be really empowering. How do you overcome
And I think this relates to the concept of virginity, So maybe I'll ask
these to you both at the same time, how do I overcome the feeling
of giving myself away and reframe the concept of virginity. M I don't know.
As I worked with my thoughts on this, I have like a lot
of things coming up because you know, like that happens, and like traditional
wedding ceremonies as well of like in a very gendered way, a father giving
away a daughter and being like, this is now for you. You own
lists now. And I think of like I think about agency, I think
about making decisions that feel thoughtful, as decisions that sometimes don't feel thoughtful,
but that you are allowed to make decisions about your life that don't have to
mean something just because they have been assigned meaning in the past. With the
concept of virginity, of thinking it not as a law us as something that
you have to be Like, I have this really delicate thing that is only
defined as being lost by a very rigid like definition of what intercourse is.
And even when I think back to the first time I had sex, it
didn't feel that deep to me, and I know that that's not everybody's experienced,
but I was just like, I don't know, I do shit that
I've never done before. All the time because I'm a teenager. So I'm
just gonna do this thing, I guess, and I change your life.
It doesn't have to change your life at all. And it didn't. Like
I think that I was expecting the next morning or next day to be like,
I can't believe I've done this thing, and I was just like,
all right, cool whatever, like, but I know that that's not everyone's
experience, So I think that it is, like I think it is part
of it is like looking at what your experience around that is and being like
I have done something new, and similarly to when I do new things,
like how do I acknowledge that? For myself? I love that metaphor of
comparing it to other new things, like what if every time? But if
you were a dancer and every time you did a dance, somebody conceptualized it
as as losing a part of yourself. Yeah, yeah, so fucking weird
when you put it that way. Your body, your heart, your soul,
your penis, your vulva, whatever is not a zero sum game,
Like it is not a zero sum game. My hope would be that you
know, if you're listening to this episode and still struggling around the idea of
virginity, to like do a little bit of a dive into the history of
what virginity is. The concept was created by people to control people, to
place a value, sometimes even a dollar or property value on people. People
that have not even figured out really how to accurately define it, because for
so long it was defined as the breaking of the hymen, which we know
can happen from walking. There are so many weird, arbitrary loopholes and the
way that's certain religions define virginity where we've you had an eye to talking about,
like the Mormon concept of virginity, and you tellvis, tell me what
you tell them, what you told me? I can't remember the name,
and I'm dying, bt. Do you know this so oking? Soaking?
I think it's soaking. I think about it more because I saw it once
on TikTok and now TikTok makes all these parodies of it. It's like the
concept of like someone the penis puts their penis into some into the vagina,
but doesn't move, like you're not allowed to like us, that's sinful.
Yeah, maybe somebody would like rock the bed for them, And I'm like,
y'all don't think that this is a little bit queer that you like are
having your homeboy like rock you, um, so that you can like not
have sex type vibes. I think similar to like you know when people are
like anal isn't it or oral sex and just be like, I'm I'm a
virgin. I've only done bunch of blow jobs. Yeah yeah, yeah,
I mean like, I don't know, I love that. I think it's
so I love I just the image of soaking. It's so fun to me.
It just tickles me. Virginity is a state of mind. Um,
I don't know, I don't even know. It's it's not real moral,
it's notorious, it's not real. It's not maybe call it, um i've
heard sexual debut, yeah, like or you don't even need a word for
it, yeah, or just like pat sex for the first time, that's
really like right, or the first time I had sex, the first time
I had intercourse, the first time I'm made out. You know. We
think about things like that, like my first kiss isn't like you'll never have
a kiss to give again, although yeah, sometimes that was like that.
Yeah, although I think about other people I kissed on the playground stories too.
I know, I feel like I was acting up and I just I'm
like, what, I feel like I was out there. I'm like,
do most kids like kiss each other on the playground? Or was that just
me and the people I was kissing? No, you're not. You're not
the only one. You're not the only one. Yeah, I was.
I was wildent on the Juncle Gym for sure, and haven't stopped since.
I wish I had known that version of you. Although, yes, I
guess I still kind of do you still do? Cool? Good episode?
Fun? Yeah, weirdly fun, given how yeah dark it has gotten at
times. Yeah, thanks for sticking with us on this journey, listeners.
This week's safe word is Labradoodle from Magnus. Thank you. Also, Magnus
is a good safe word. It reminds me of Matilda. What I think
Matilda's dad was named Magnus. That is a great movie. Great movie,
but phenominal film. Fuck Matilda, all right, Thanks Magnus. Safe Word
is hosted by Casey Tanner and Camille Lewis and produced by Coordinator at E J.
Townsend. Our theme song is written and performed by Emma Jane and Toria
Rainey. To support the show, please follow us on Spotify and take a
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