If you are empathetic, psychic, intuitively and/or divinely guided… And love helping other people discover their inner power and awareness, we’d love you to share!

We have an open call for speakers for Feeling It All: A Supportive Journey Into Strengthening and Consciously Opening Your Intuition and Empathy: A Sex-Positive Virtual Festival!
December 11th to 13th, 2020

Deadline for Submissions is 11/22/20 at midnight!

http://theintimacydojo.com/fia-speaker-submission

You are welcome to propose talks that help people connect with their inner guidance, their empathy, avoid mistakes and enhance their awareness.

We welcome sex-positive talks that share ways to use intuition and empathy in consensual ways as people connect intimately, and your talk does not need to include a focus on sexuality.

You can also do group readings or help people experience the depth of their feelings and awareness.

We do require that talks be:

• Inclusive and accessible. We are anti-racist, support gender fluid and transgender rights, welcome all sexual expression, ages (over 21 years of age due to content), sizes and those with disability.
• Please avoid binary language around gender (feminine and masculine).
• Consent is a priority. While Intuition and Empathy are powerful and can give good insights, they should never override or be used to diminish anyone’s “no” or judgement on what is right for them.

To learn more about the festival: https://intimacy.events/event/feeling-it-all-virtual-festival/

To Submit your talk(s): http://theintimacydojo.com/fia-speaker-submission

We’re opening up our upcoming event to speaker submissions: Shadows and Light Festival, September 24-27th.

Monique, Peter, and I are running this festival to help people identify, connect, and reclaim their shadow sides and to bring light into their world. You can see the full description here: TheIntimacyDojo.com/shadowsandlight

Too many people are intent on suppressing their darker, shameful, hidden sides. Which works as well as holding a beachball underwater… Repression takes intense (subconscious) focus and energy and can keep people stuck. We’re looking for focuses around intimacy, sexuality, abundance, communication, and personal development.

We invite you to submit your ideas to support this using the form here:

http://theintimacydojo.com/sal-speaker-submission

The form has all the details and the speaker agreement together- so this will be the only thing you need to fill out.

You are welcome to submit more than one idea. We will review the submissions and evaluate them based on the vision we have for the event, the gaps we perceive, the perspectives we want to include and the scheduling availability.

If you are interested, please send this back to us by Saturday, August 22nd. We will review the submissions and will be replying to people by September 1^st, end of day.

We hope you’re in and play with Shadows and Light with us!

These events are designed to be “brave spaces” where you can challenge yourself, lean into your growth edges, feel vulnerable, and empower yourself to learn. Feeling unsafe because you are growing and pushing your own edges is not the same as being harassed.

Harassment includes offensive verbal comments related to any characteristics mentioned above, deliberate intimidation, stalking, following and failing to respect someone’s no, unwelcome photography or recording, sustained disruption of talks or other events, inappropriate physical contact, and unwelcome attention.

All facilitators and volunteer staff at TheIntimacyDojo events (virtual and in-person) are made aware of this policy and have agreed to follow it and report any violations to the organizer(s). Posters sharing this are posted information are posted at in-person events, and the information is shared verbally and/or in writing on virtual events. If you have any information about violations or suggestions for upgrades, you can share them by emailing support@TheIntimacyDojo.com or anonymously at TheIntimacyDojo.com/feedback.

Cathy: What do you do if your kid ask you what a dildo is and ….how do you answer them?
This is J.D…J.aka Jen Devine from http://superstarhealtheducation.com/ and I’m Cathy Vartuli from http://theintimacydojo.com/ and you said you actually gotten this question a number of times.

Jen: Oh, yeah. In the anonymous question box. It’s not uncommon to get any type of question so for like fourth or fifth grade I’d say “it’s an object that resembles a penis shaped thing but it’s not always and it’s designed for doing sexual things with one’s own body or someone else’s. Next question?”

Cathy: That’s…. you just you don’t and they’re okay with that?

Jen: Yeah. For little for like fourth or fifth grade that’s usually all you need and then if they have more questions they might ask but I don’t go into super amounts of detail for like that age group. For older kids I might give more detail when….especially if they’re at the age where they are about to have the ability to buy them themselves legally.

Cathy: Yeah.

Jen: They might need to know more information about them.

Cathy: How would it…..what age is that in California?

Jen: Eighteen.

Cathy: Eighteen so

Jen: Yeah. Right. What are the products made out of? Are they safe materials? What are things one might look for?

Cathy: How do they clean them?

Jen: How to make sure that the objects are safe to put in the body or on the outside of the body? How do you clean them and protect them, caring for them? I got a great……I work on a hotline called the San Francisco Sex Information Hotline and we take anonymous calls from all over the world from people who have questions about sex and gender and bodies and I got a great call from a parent who had discovered that their offspring their son had gotten some kind of sex sleeve, some kind of toy that was probably a masturbatory toy and they had left it underneath the counter in the bathroom sort of amongst a pile of you know things and her concern was less about the like object itself and like but more about like this person obviously had no idea how to take care of this object

Cathy: Yeah

Jen: and she was like “how do I even answer that question for my kid?” So we talked about how to not stigmatize the person for finding a tool that could be super cool and helpful

Cathy: Yeah

Jen: for helping them learn but there are some things about hygiene and cleanliness and there’s some things about privacy that might like have needed to be addressed

Cathy: Yeah

Jen: too like where would be a good place to keep that and also that like you know legally I covered that too you know like technically you’re not supposed to be buying these things on the internet when you’re fourteen or fifteen. So what….what values did this person have for her family around whether or not some things you do want your kid to have access

Cathy: Yeah

Jen: to or not right and that’s then only she could decide

Cathy: Yeah

Jen: but yeah.

Cathy: Go

Jen: For little kids a dildo it’s just an object that shaped like a penis people could decide what they want to do with it.

Cathy: That’s great. I love it. You’re again you’re not answering all the questions people fear might come you’re answering the question they actually asked.

Jen: Right and try to be short and sweet.

Cathy: Yeah

Jen: Always my challenge.

Cathy: Thanks very much Jen.

Jen: Hey, maybe we should do bunch of my like funny questions from that

Cathy: Yes. Let’s do some of those.

Jen: that box.

Cathy: So come back if you’d like to hear funny questions from the box.

Jen: And I’ll even answer them so you can know what to say when somebody asks you one of these questions. It’s probably not funny to them. It’s probably actually a serious question.

Cathy: Yeah. Leave comments below. Do you think that children should have more information about this about sex toys and in general?

Jen: Yeah.

Jen: Hey! It’s J.D or Jen Devine from http://superstarhealtheducation.com/ and also I’m here with

Cathy: Cathy Vartuli from http://theintimacydojo.com/

Jen: Sweet. Cathy’s been asking me some great questions and I always like I have a question as a sex educator in the public schools and there’s the state law gives me some guidelines and in in California there are really great guidelines. So that I get to teach like accurate, inclusive, shame free, pleasure positive like info that’s what I’m required to do by law. Its super cool and I have yet to see or hear of anyone formally including sex toys in any curriculum.

Cathy: Oh wow.

Jen: And I find this interesting because I know that statistically adults use sex toys sometimes more than they use condoms and barriers. So it seems like there’s something missing.

Cathy: Yeah.

Jen: I’m wondering what you think about that?

Cathy: That’s a great question. I think that it might be problematic because a lot of parents like some parents may not be comfortable with that and having their kids know more than them might feel or having their

Jen: Yeah.

Cathy: kids exposed to that might be challenging. I know that I work with a lot of people that are shy….shyer or haven’t been as sexually active and some of…..like they’ve never had a sex toy before and they might be in their 50s or 60s or 70s and so I think there’s a challenge with that in the public system but I do think it’s a wonderful thing to expose people to like you

Jen: Yeah.

Cathy: wouldn’t have a woodshop class where you taught people about how to carve things by hand or with your teeth you would actually like include the….the things that

Jen: All the tools available.

Cathy: Yeah. All the tools

Jen: And something

Cathy: and even if you didn’t have them there to for them to use you

Jen: Yeah.

Cathy: might tell them about them.

Jen: Right. I mean and I know there are laws that also try to protect children from over sexualized information and right all these things are only available for people over the age of 18 and I think about people’s ability to learn about how their own bodies work and what could be useful and so I wonder it’s….it’s…..it’s an unanswered question for me because I do wonder about teenagers and people becoming sexually active and also about safer sex and what the options are for safer sex for people which of course might include masturbatory behavior

Cathy: Yeah.

Jen: and getting to know one’s own body and sometimes there are tools that can be helpful for people to learn and discover how they work.

Cathy: I think

Jen: So

Cathy: Yeah.

Jen: it’s….it’s one of those questions that I’ve always had that I’m

Cathy I think it could be really useful

Jen: Yeah.

Cathy: because teenagers are very sexual normally and I know I masturbated with things I found around the house because I like it felt good but some of those things like

Jen: Quite not be designed.

Cathy: couldn’t have got….yeah, they weren’t necessarily like I couldn’t sanitize them.

Jen: Right.

Cathy: I didn’t know I like I didn’t know what I needed to do with them. Some of them might had parts that could have broken off inside

Jen: Right.

Cathy: and I would have had….thank God nothing like that happened and I’d have to go “hey, mom and dad. I need to go to the hospital” but

Jen: That’s a whole another

Cathy: Yeah.

Jen: video. The amazing x-rays I saw when I worked at a hospital.

Cathy: Wow, yes for sure. But I think that just talking about people like talking to people of normalizing to children that yes it can feel good to put things in your inside yourself and here’s some things you should or should not do

Jen: Right.

Cathy: to make it

Jen: or things that vibrate or things that a person can put their body parts in. Yeah but it…I mean I think there’s a whole lot of education that can happen around that. Now if we jump ahead and we’re like educating for adults around that even the adults need super information about how to clean those things and take care of them as well but yeah. It’s just an unanswered question about the lack of access to things that can help teens understand their bodies better.

Cathy: Well and if they have the access to sex toys I know that people…..there’s a big thing push for abstinence only which I know doesn’t work. But

Jen: Yeah, we know that statistically.

Cathy: if we if we helped teenagers get sex toys so they could please their bodies their own bodies and meet some of the sexual needs and maybe please each other, maybe that would delay pregnancies and other things like if there’s other

Jen: Right.

Cathy: if we gave them more options

Jen: Yeah.

Cathy: that might actually help them in the long run.

Jen: Yeah, I mean as a sex positive educator, I would hope for our world where that could happen but I also know that there’d be a lot of people like you said initially that parents would be super uncomfortable with that notion that their child is even a sexual being. I think that’s part of the discomfort around

Cathy: Yeah.

Jen: sex and sexuality for parents and children at any time. So yeah.

Cathy: That’s a great question. Thanks very much for asking.

Jen: Yeah.

Cathy: What do you think, should kids know about sex toys? Should we teach them?

Jen: Yeah, great question.

Reid: Hello! This is Reid Mihalko from http://reidaboutsex.com/ and I am with Cathy Vartuli of http://theintimacydojo.com/. Cathy, what is today’s question?

Cathy: Today’s question is someone wrote in and said “my partner and I are just opening up a relationship. He agreed that he wouldn’t sleep with someone else until we discuss it. He’s been seeing someone and they’ve been spending the night but the agreement was he wouldn’t sleep with her until they until we had discussed it. We’re both on board and I woke up and they were having sex. Do I have the right to be angry?” So

Reid: So

Cathy: It’s a great question. We appreciate you writing in.

Reid: So thank you for writing in. So, it sounds like the agreement was no sex with this person.

Cathy: Right. No sex with anyone else until we actually discussed it and both agreed that

Reid: Okay.

Cathy: it was going to go ahead.

Reid: So, I’m just going to say that here….here is a better way to phrase this, “no sex with anyone until we both give the okay” like until I say “honey, go sleep with Cathy.” You are not allowed to go sleep with Cathy.

Cathy: Yeah.

Reid: Because and this is this is my quick solution not knowing this situation because until…..until like we’ve discussed it can look like a lot of things. This person who was I already had the okay that I could sleep over that they could sleep over

Cathy: Right.

Reid: you knew they were sleeping over

Cathy: Yeah.

Reid: And so somewhere along the line and all the oxytocin and waking up with this exciting person who’ve just opened up a relationship, there’s all this new energy and freedom my brain has now made it okay that we discussed this. You know they were sleeping over

Cathy: Yeah.

Reid: So, this equals it’s okay to have sex with them.

Cathy: No.

Reid: So, I would say use more powerful language like until I were until I hand you this this unicorn statue you are not allowed to with…..with so-and-so’s name written on it you are not allowed to sleep with somebody like

Cathy: Well, so it’s…it’s….it’s her fault for not being more clear.

Reid: No, I’m not saying it’s her fault.

Cathy: He just

Reid: I’m

Cathy: vi….violated their agreement.

Reid: I’m….I’m saying the upgrade

Cathy: There’s an upgrade

Reid: would be to have a better like more not stringent but a more clear

Cathy: We don’t know how clear it was. It might have been very clear

Reid: That’s why I said

Cathy: Yeah.

Reid: I don’t know this situation.

Cathy: Yeah.

Reid: I believe I put in all the qualifiers.

Cathy: Okay, so what would you suggest to her to do now like it’s he just cheated, he did broke the agreement, he….he did something that he agreed not to do. Does she have the right to be angry?

Reid: Yeah, she ever….you have right to be angry no matter what.

Cathy: And do you have any thoughts on how they can move forward?

Reid: Well, you….you I mean you’re going to have a cleanup conversation about what went wrong, where were things unclear and how could you make them more clear in the future? So my….my advice is that this is a learning opportunity. It’s a learning curve conversation, something wasn’t made clear, it was a breakdown identified the breakdown and then have a conversation about what can we install in it that will make it more powerful and more clear moving forward.

Cathy: For

Reid: I mean if you want to if you want to blame each other go right ahead but that’s not going to get you moving forward in your relationship around like what do you actually want to be creating.

Cathy: Okay it’s still….to me it’s….it’s the way it’s what you’re saying it’s really good advice but else it still sounds like it’s all on her to fix it and her to like be more clear in the future. We….it could have been very clear and he….he broke an agreement

Reid: Okay.

Cathy: So what

Reid: So we’re answering her question

Cathy: Right. So what does she do now?

Reid: So if he was writing in I would say dude you should apologize

Cathy: Okay and

Reid: and this is a learning curve opportunity. Figure out what…what wasn’t clear for you

Cathy: Or why did you do it?

Reid: with each other. Well

Cathy: it might….it might have been very clear and you just chose not to listen.

Reid: Well, then that’s what you get to apologize for. So but these….these are the conversations to have and this is why it’s tricky in relationships period.

Cathy: Yeah and the Five Languages of Apology are really and the When Sorry’s Not Enough it’s a book by Gary Chapman and Jennifer…..I do this all the time.

Reid: Yup. Sorry Jennifer we do this all the time. Sullivan? Maybe it’s Sullivan

Cathy: It might be.

Reid: I don’t know.

Cathy: Yeah.

Reid: Sorry

Cathy: Yeah but it’s like he’s very religious, somewhat homophobic but he has really good advice on how to say apologize to people in different languages because different people get apologies indifferent ways so just

Reid: What

Cathy: saying I’m sorry

Reid: What’s your advice for her?

Cathy: I….well, yeah you have a right to be angry and it might be that you have to change the rules – no one can sleep over, no you know like if….if there’s why did that person did the person understand that they shouldn’t and did it anyway then they don’t have good impulse control and one do I want to be in relationship with someone who has poor impulse control and is going to break a roll right in front of me. I don’t know that I do. It depends on what other things are in your relationship but definitely having apologies and setting up so that if it’s important to you that he not sleep with someone that’s part of your agreement that how can you set it up so that won’t happen again. No overnights for a while. What is that you know look like and I’m someone who just saying if it’s a big mistake just saying I’m sorry doesn’t cut it for me. I want some kind of restitution and some kind of like I’m making amends for what I did and for someone did cheat like that I consider it cheating if they’ve agreed not to do something and they did it and they entered that agreement there with their own free will then they need to fix things. So

Reid: There you have it. What are your comments? What….what advice do you have? What do you think? Hit subscribe! Anything else?

Cathy: No, we’d love to know what you think and if you have good advice, leave it below.

Reid: And please keep writing in your questions.

Cathy: Yeah

Reid: We love them.

Cathy: We love them!

Kevin Patterson http://polyrolemodels.tumblr.com https://www.facebook.com/polyrolemodels/ TW/IG: @PolyRoleModels http://www.patreon.com/polyrolemodels/

Cathy: How do a fetishism and tokenism affect how people of color join polycommunities? I’m here with Kevin E. Patterson from poly role-models https://www.tumblr.com/. And I’m Kathy virtually from http://theintimacydojo.com/. Kevin thanks so much for talking about this I know that this is part of your your amazing book that’s going to be coming out in April, “Love’s not color blind”. And I can’t wait for that that’s gonna be such a great book

Kevin: Thanks. I mean, yeah. Fetishism is a really weird animal and then and if, if I wanna make sure how to say this properly but like me being a black man sometimes people feel like being right is what I have to offer a situation you know my god. I’m, I’m very well versed in teaching I’m very well-versed in sports, I’m a runner. I got a message on education I’ve you know there’s a lot of things that I could go into. There’s a lot of you know, skills and things that I can that I can offer. I’m a human being. I’m a role-rounded human being. When sometimes you walk into a situation when people don’t see that you are a role rounded-human being. They’ll see you are black, this is what you have to offer this situation, blackness. And don’t get me wrong, I come I come fully packed with whiter than a blackness. You know there’s, there’s more going on than just that. That’s not the way I wanna be approached this part of our conversation. And if I’m on a meet up, I gonna be really aware of the way people speaking to me. I’ll be talking about the newest video game, we’ll be talking about what’s going on the politics, or talking about the weather or like am I being approached because someone wants us there in their ethnicity passport. Someone who wants to fuck a black guy that’s something you’ve never done before. You know, I’m interested in tasting some chocolate or some bullshit like that. You know, bbc, big black cock. Is that the way that the situation being approached and I gotta be really leery of how I approach these conversations almost all the time. That I could be constantly aware that somebody’s not trying to push some, some racial racist stereotype in my direction

Cathy: Yeah.

Kevin: as part of authenticity package that I didn’t sign up for.

Cathy: Yeah I know it’s not the same thing but I I had someone come up to me who really liked big women. And I think I got a little bit of a taste to that because he was like, “You’re amazing” and it was not about me he didn’t know who I was it was just that I was I was big and he thought that was it was just objectification on one aspect of me and it did not feel good. So, yeah that would not be something I’d wanna walk into.

Kevin: I, uh, there’s point I was dating a woman, also big also fat and my where we first started dating very soon into it she said like, “So like why are you looking fat girls?” and I was like I’m not into fat girls, I’m into women just in general like there’s a lot to love about a wide variety of women and I’m all for it. And I didn’t realized it at that time but If I said like I’m into fat girls because of blah blah blah that would have X me out of the conversation you would have stopped dating at that.

Cathy: Yeah.

Kevin: That she would that she was like that was her fetishization test right there and I unknowingly passed.

Cathy: Well congratulations.

Kevin: Yeah.

Cathy: No that’s what, thank you for sharing about that. What about tokenism is that feel like it’s different from fetish… fetishism?

Kevin: It’s all based on the same thing. It’s a, it’s a marginalization things gone like what’s single, unchanged, uncontrollable aspect of your life. And like I said I said when we spoke before a about class how if you’re ay poly cocktails all you really trying to do is you know, is in drink you know and socialize you’re not really trying to think about marriage entry. And people aren’t trying to think about like organizers I’m always trying to think about their particular demographics you know. Polyamorous is small so you get twenty, thirty, forty people to an event, you’re excited.

Cathy: you’re excited.

Kevin: That’s why you’re not only thinking about what the makeup of the, of those demographics are. And it’s really easy to see a black person or two or three out of those 40 out of those 40 people in two or three people of color thing. Okay well, we have people of color here.

Cathy: Check that box.

Kevin: Yeah, and no one wants that. No one wants that to be that token person of color that that that perfunctory show of exclusivity that allow people are not making real changes to what their to what their groups look like to what they look like.

Cathy: Yeah.

Kevin: And like I’m again I’m in the total off of the area throughout about 43 to 45 percent white and about 43 to 45 percent black so there should be a more even makeup in any of it.

Cathy: You would hope. Yeah.

Kevin: And if I’m the only person that caught and then vent, I’m not gonna let myself be token out of this because I’m not gonna let it slide.

Cathy: Yeah.

Kevin: I’m always gonna talked about it like I’m my mouth is never gonna close about how you know if I go to if I go to look like you know this is happy hour and there’s 30-40 people and I’m the person of color. I’m gonna say that that’s something that I’m going to post about my blog, there’s something I’m gonna post about on Facebook and somebody’s face is gonna get a read about it.

Cathy: Yeah.

Kevin: And somebody’s gonna have to do something about it or kick me out of the group. And either way I’m not gonna be quiet about that either.

Cathy: Yeah. No, thank you for like I think speaking up like that is it’s sometimes very awkward I can sometimes take a lot of courage but if nothing’s gonna change if we just keep going along the way we’ve been knowing.

Kevin: Yeah. And really people just need to stop being defensive about it as well like if you’re trying to if you get a substantial population to your event you know, you’re not an evil person if the demographics are all white.

Cathy: No but there’s probably things you can do to help welcome people in that haven’t been

Kevin: Exactly. And you don’t need get defensive when someone raises the issue trying to figure out how to solve the issue. Like make it a test make your situation better like our groups are better they are stronger they more diverse, we got a better diversity of thought, you got a better range of ideas.

Cathy: Absolutely.

Kevin: When more people if you know like more people from various backgrounds in a room together.

Cathy: Absolutely. And I think. Let me… go ahead.

Kevin: It helps!

Cathy: Yeah. It does. It helps everybody. And I think, if we can just see pass like how big someone is, what color’s in their skin is, treat like as humans but also be aware of the challenges different groups might be facing and try to mitigate that as much as possible.

Kevin: Absolutely.

Cathy: Yeah. Thank you so much for talking about this this means a lot. I’m. There’s it that I haven’t seen other examples of this and I really appreciate it you’re making a big difference.

Kevin: I mean, were out there. There’s not a lot of us alike. That’s part of what I why I love what I do because when I say that we’re out there, I always put other people’s stuff on my blog I always use I always use my platform to extend as many voices as I can.

Cathy: Yeah. Well again, thank you. This is great. If you have comments or questions please leave them below we’d love to see them. Thanks Kevin.

Kevin: Hey, no problem.

Cathy: How do you talk to your kid about what sex is?
I’m here with J.D aka Jen Devine from http://superstarhealtheducation.com/ and I’m Cathy Vartuli from http://theintimacydojo.com/ and you talk to kids all the time about this. So how would….if you want your….what sex?

Jen: That is one of the most popular questions in the anonymous question box.

Cathy: Yeah.

Jen: What is S.E.X? Are we going to talk about the word starts with S and ends with X?

Cathy: Well I love it you have it you…..you can see this younger child has written it out. It’s on your refrigerator.

Jen: Yes, it says “how does sex work? Answer it. Please!” It’s probably a fourth grader who wrote that one.

Cathy: Yeah.

Jen: So….so here is so I like to define it because I think one of the most important things with kids when they’re asking question is to define the word first. So I often say sex can be when people decide they’re going to let their genitals come together. Actually…..usually I say sex is when people decide they’re going to let their bodies come together and it might include their genitals and they do that with permission and it’s usually people who have some understanding of what they plan on doing at that time.

Cathy: Yeah.

Jen: So that’s what sex is. People getting together with their bodies maybe their genitals and it’s usually with permission of course I sometimes also bring in that sometimes there are occasions where that happens without permission.

Cathy: Yeah.

Jen: And what that means and we talked about that.

Cathy: Yeah. I love that you….you make it not about gender. It’s not necessary about marriage like I remember when I was back in I think it was fifth grade they taught us like a mother…. our mother and father or may like you know husband and wife it was all very binary and I love how you mean it’s just two people can get you know people can get together.

Jen: I even say people

Cathy: So does it….Yeah, they’re not living.

Jen: because there are polyamorous families too

Cathy: Yes.

Jen: Who may have more than two people who are involved in what they call sex.

Cathy: Yeah.

Jen: And I also say that it might not involve genitals because not all sex does involve what people call

Cathy: Yeah.

Jen: private parts which is a word I…..I’ll talk about that later but so because there are folks for whom I mean I have a friend whose most erotic place because they have a spinal cord injury happens to be their hand and their thumb and that’s their place that they want to get erotic

Cathy: Yeah.

Jen: touch and

Cathy: Well, yeah. Your

Jen: that’s sex for them.

Cathy: and genitals are not necessarily the one’s that

Jen: Right. So

Cathy: Yeah

Jen: I try to broaden what it means because people have an idea and often in the ideas only penis going in vagina behavior and there’s a lot of other things people do and including sex.

Cathy: That feel amazing. Yeah.

Jen: Yeah and like telling that to a young kid is really important and could be super inclusive because what I find when I teach high school students what they think sex is also varies by community

Cathy: Yeah

Jen: and what they count as sex varies by who you talk to and so there’ll be people who’ll say things like “well, I haven’t had sex yet” and then the other person’s like “oh great. So you’re virgin.” And they’re like “oh, yeah. No yeah. I haven’t had sex yet” and that doesn’t actually disclose all the things they may have done that could…..well, include some risky behaviors or could include some information they might want to let the other partner know.

Cathy: Yeah

Jen: So when people say “oh, let’s get together” “yeah let’s get together” “I don’t want to have sex yet” “okay me neither.” Now do these two people know they’re talking about?

Cathy: None, I say

Jen: No! I guess versus like “oh, sex means don’t touch breasts, genitals though making out nothing knows nothing sexual at all.” This person’s like “sex just made penis and vagina.”

Cathy: I can get over….I can do a lot of it

Jen: I can do everything else, right? Wait a minute. This doesn’t work. So

Cathy: Yeah.

Jen: Try to be as inclusive as possible that would even sex means.

Cathy: Yeah.

Jen: With little kids

Cathy: And what if they asked more questions at that point like how do you know how much to share if they’re like hey, okay I get that but what do they actually do because I know I was reading very bad romance novels that my aunt had given us from the library and they were like the…..the naughty scenes and I was trying to figure out what sex was from that and it was

Jen: Right.

Cathy: really like they not

Jen: They’re very big

Cathy: always the best. Very big sometimes

Jen: Yeah. Well it depends on the age group and what’s age-appropriate for you and your family. In classrooms I also kind of base it on where the kids are what kind of questions they are asking in the classroom so it…..you can get into detail and also depends about what level of boundaries and comfort you have with the topic, right? So you can say well sometimes people might put a penis inside a vagina, sometimes other objects could go into body parts, sometimes people let mouths and genitals touch in ways. So sometimes you give some detail and stop and then see if the kids wanting to know more

Cathy: Yeah.

Jen: or they’re like too much information

Cathy: Yeah, I’m going to go watch cartoons

Jen: already.

Cathy: or whatever.

Jen: Right? So it….we kind of depends on where the kid is age appropriately you know age-appropriate and developmentally as well. Yeah.

Cathy: Yeah. Thanks. If you have questions or comments please leave them below. We’d love to hear and we’ll be back with another….. I have another question for you.

Jen: Okay!

Cathy: With everything in the news and all the information going out to children today, how do you talk to your kids about gender?
I’m here with J.D Jen Devine from http://superstarhealtheducation.com/ and I’m Cathy Vartuli from http://theintimacydojo.com/ and you teach this all the time. I’d love to hear how….how do you teach talk to children and sometimes hard to talk to adults. So how do you talk to children about gender?

Jen: Well, I find that kids actually have a very open mind

Cathy: Yeah.

Jen: inherently, about the gender being a big spectrum, a big fluid possibly shifting definitely shifting experience.

Cathy: Yeah.

Jen: So, I try to ensure that in a classroom I’m not saying things that are binary and by that I mean dividing into just two groups which is how

Cathy: Male and female

Jen: Right.

Cathy: everybody must fit or you’re not okay somehow.

Jen: Right. So I always….I’m saying there are many genders or there’s lots of ways people can be and I try not to use language that divides people up into two and I also honor that children may be fluid in how they express their gender and that can be sometimes that’s a part of exploring what their…..they are as transgender kids but sometimes it’s just a natural kind of exploration just who they are as any human being.

Cathy: Just

Jen: My explore gender.

Cathy: Yeah, I’ve….I’ve…I’ve very…..I’m cisgendered. I’m female by birth and by inclination but like I went through a period where I was very tomboyish and then there were times when I was like very Femi like I wanted to dress up more and more makeup and stuff and it’s just different parts of my life and there’s I think it’s wonderful to allow people to…..to explore who they are.

Jen: And it’s not even an….allow, it’s like an inherent thing and you know I know that probably in your world cisgender is a term most people know. Cisgender

Cathy: Oh, yeah.

Jen: probably?

Cathy: Could you define

Jen: But I’m guessing it’s because many people are cisgendered meaning that they kind of they fit the category they were given when they were born.

Cathy: Yeah.

Jen: So folks said “oh, look a person with a vulva. Hey little girl.”

Cathy: Yeah.

Jen: And that person’s like “yup, I have a vulva and when I grow up I’ll be a girl and live like a girl. I’m a girl. Yup, I’m a girl.” So, if you fit the category that you were given as a child then that we call that cisgender and folks that maybe don’t fit that category either transgender, gender fluid, gender vary and gender creative all those other ways

Cathy: Yeah.

Jen: that folks can be would be not a cisgender. Some

Cathy: Yeah. Thanks

Jen: wonderful term made by the transgender community. Yay!

Cathy: Yeah. Yeah. So….so you just try to role model, do you actually talk about gender per se? Like do

Jen: Oh, yeah.

Cathy: you go into detail with….with kids?

Jen: Yeah, definitely you know in our puberty classes where people who are gender variant often feel left out

Cathy: There’s a huge amount of depression and suicides and

Jen: Yeah. Even though we might look at how you know what’s changing with anatomy and how anatomy commonly can show up? We don’t want to leave out that there’s ways that anatomy can commonly be and we also include intersex people. It’s a whole another story.

Cathy: Yeah.

Jen: But we also say you know just because this we could say this person we’re looking at a vulva. We never say that vulva person is always a girl. We’re always like the person with a vulva who’s bleeding and I used many examples. I might say there’s a trans guy goes to the store and gets his tampons and you know has to take care of that or some people with a vulva might identify as women. So always amusing multiple types of examples to ensure that maybe different people with different identities can relate to the anatomy they might have.

Cathy: I love that role modeling because when I was coming up there wasn’t even discussion of…of gay and lesbian except that I held a friend’s hand when she was upset and everyone called me gay and I was like I don’t even know what that means.

Jen: Right.

Cathy: I knew it was bad the way they said it but I didn’t there was no discussion of it and the pictures we saw in school were vulva-woman, penis-man.

Jen: Well and…and I think it’s an interesting segue that just happened in that we were talking about gender.

Cathy: Yeah.

Jen: How people deeply inherent sense of who they are and their self-understanding we often conflate or mix-up with sexual orientation

Cathy: Right

Jen: Who we like and both of those things end up with shame and stigma

Cathy: Definitely.

Jen: if they’re not in the sort of cultural norm.

Cathy: Yeah.

Jen: But I mean I think for children they get it pretty quickly if you say things like “oh, who you are?” Like that’s what your gender stuff is like who are you and your gender who are you inside yourself? Who do you know yourself to be and then who you like we call that as a grownup you know sexual orientation but as kids I use often say like attractional orientation or even like who you think is cool?

Cathy: Yeah.

Jen: Right? And there’s lots of ways you can relate to people as friends eventually maybe partners or some people are asexual also important to remind kids

Cathy: Yes.

Jen: on that too.

Cathy: Yeah.

Jen: So

Cathy: I love you normalizing that for all of them and letting them know that it’s all okay and I think we can do that as parents as well like you or with children. I’m an aunt just talking about it in a way that doesn’t make everything binary with let kids go “oh, maybe I don’t have to fit in a box ‘coz”

Jen: Yeah.

Cathy: because it can be really confusing. Teenage is…..it’s a very confusing time in general.

Jen: Yeah, I mean even the box for what is considered culturally normative isn’t….is a tough box like the box that women get pushed into it’s like “oh you’re too…you’re too fat, you’re too skinny

Cathy: Yeah.

Jen: you’re too tall, you’re too short, you’re too loud, you’re too quiet, you’re too mousy, you’re too much makeup you’re too much” like even that box is impossible

Cathy: Yeah.

Jen: to fit the and for boys it’s also difficult. The boxes that they get put into where they’re forced to code to only being tough.

Cathy: Yeah. Not having

Jen: Only being

Cathy: soft….soft emotions.

Jen: Yeah not having…they have a full range of emotions. So you know the more we can make room for all the ways that people get to express themselves, the healthier, happier people will be. Then they would watch YouTube channels later trying to figure it out but wait oh no wait. It’s good to watch YouTube channels

Cathy: Yeah, YouTube channels

Jen: later trying to figure it out.

Cathy: If you like this, please like and subscribe and we’d love to hear your comments below. What do you think? What questions do you have?

Jen: Excellent