388. Sexuality is How You Exist in the World - with Dr. Lexx

0:03You Are Not Broken Host: Welcome to You Are Not Broken, the podcast that challenges everything we've been taught about midlife, hormones, and sexuality. I'm Dr. Kelly Kasperson, board-certified urologist, author, and a leading voice in women's sexual and hormone health.

0:15Dr. Lexx: Enjoy the show.

0:17You Are Not Broken Host: I think, you know, in talking about sex, they want to, like, not be awkward before they talk about it with their kids, but you're awkward. and like even, I'd say I'm pretty good with it now with my kids. But like the more you do it, the more you're like, nobody's dying. Everybody's fine. Any tips you can give the parents?

0:35Dr. Lexx: Oh, absolutely. So I'm a parent of four. My youngest is three. My oldest is 30. So those conversations look different all along the path.

0:46You Are Not Broken Host: Totally.

0:48Dr. Lexx: For Mother's Day, one of my kids gave me a blown up condom. So that was lovely. It was a balloon. I was like, thanks. These hadn't even expired yet. So we'll be giving that one out, but appreciate it. So start early and often, right? So it doesn't have to be this huge, big conversation where you give them all of the details for every single thing. We started with names of body parts. This is a vulva, this is a penis. My lover says that we don't go a day in our house without saying vulva and he might be right at this point. I don't know, but it was within our first five words. Like they knew vulva and they would say vulvo and all those things.

1:24Dr. Lexx: And it was fine. We clean our body parts. We clean our vulva. We clean around our clitoris. We clean our testicles, right? And those parts were super important.

1:32You Are Not Broken Host: So what do you think about Instagram saying that our body parts are violating terms and conditions?

1:37Dr. Lexx: The algorithm is so hard and horrible. Like it violates people for being fat and showing too much skin.

1:43You Are Not Broken Host: It's a big problem. I mean, that's a big reason why I like talking about sex on the podcast is because you can't violate my terms and conditions by talking about female body parts here. Yeah.

1:53Dr. Lexx: Well, you know, I'm a sexologist, right? So sex therapist, sex educator. And so I also am part of one of the largest certifying bodies for sexuality professionals.

2:04You Are Not Broken Host: You're the outgoing president of ASECT?

2:06Dr. Lexx: I am. Damn. So we are, our folks have had just the roughest time trying to find different spellings. Yep. we get kicked off, accounts get snatched. Even things like PayPal has withheld payments and accounts from sexuality professionals for violating terms and conditions because they sell sex toys to adults or they say that they're engaging in some type of illegal sex work. And so tens of thousands of dollars will be frozen.

2:36You Are Not Broken Host: Oh my God. Does ASEC have a statement on the social media banning of anatomically correct body parts. Like what are we doing? What are they doing like as a professional society to be like, we just, cause you know, I talk to people on stage about this and people can't believe it, but it's like, well, it's the world we live in. There's kind of this, like, what do you do about it when it's meta, right? When it's a massive company who says you can't say vulva.

3:03Dr. Lexx: Exactly. So of course we advocate for education all the time in all ways. And then we don't have a statement yet. We're actually updating and going through new website changes ourselves. So we're actually creating new AI policy. We've also had some things where people have created AIs of therapists and things like that. So we're trying to deter away from that and also protect personal health information of the people that we see. And so we're working on what those policies are going to look like and inform as people are starting to use them. But taking on meta is not something that our org has tried to do, despite the fact they're a little bit smaller org.

3:41Dr. Lexx: I imagine that a lot of the mental health, though, the larger orgs, thinking of like AMFTs and APAs and even our nursing orgs, our OB, our doctor orgs, probably get together and probably have a pretty convincing argument for that.

3:55You Are Not Broken Host: I just think nobody else thinks sex is as important as like the people who are the sex people, right? Even the gynecologist, I think you can say uterus, but specifically external genitalia is a problem.

4:07Dr. Lexx: Yeah, I had to teach my pediatrician. So actually, oh, how old was my kid? My kid was like four at the time and I forgot to teach them private parts as a word for their genitals. So the pediatrician was like, oh, I need to look at your private parts. And my kid was like, what is that? I was like, oh my God. Right. You're like, I forgot. And they were like, so they need to look at my vulva. And I was like, yes. And they're like, well, that's okay. But why are they saying private parts instead of vulva, mom? And I said, you got to ask the pediatrician, baby. I don't know.

4:37You Are Not Broken Host: I heard instead of private parts, we should call them personal parts.

4:42Dr. Lexx: Yeah, we're always evolving terms, right? So personal parts mean for me and to me, because one day you might want to show this private part to a person. One day you might want to engage with somebody else. And so this idea that it's private and has like kind of a layer of secrecy and a layer of shame, right? Because private things don't come to light. So we're trying to really eradicate that shame. This is also why we don't say good touch, bad touch anymore. Right? We say unwanted touch. Like, I don't want you to touch me. Good touch, bad touch. People who suffered trauma would internalize that as, I experienced bad touch, so I am bad.

5:18Dr. Lexx: And there was a lot of victim self-blaming there and feeling culpable in that behavior of that perpetrator. So we say there's no unwanted touch and there's no secret touch. Got it. Or secret touch. Because secret touch also goes with other children. So people forget that, right? So children, maybe us growing up, it was the adage of like playing doctor. Like, oh yeah, we're playing doctor. And that's when people are exploring other people's bodies as children. So if somebody wants you to keep a secret or wants to touch you in secret, that's an automatically no. And that's an automatic, come tell your parent, trusted person, whoever.

5:54Dr. Lexx: And you're not in trouble, right? People are curious, but we want to make sure that you're being safe. If you see naked people on the computer, you need to come tell me. So I'd like you to close the computer, walk away from the screen and just come tell me. So it's open, honest communication that facilitates more education and support rather than you're bad, you're disgusting, go to your room, you're in trouble.

6:15You Are Not Broken Host: You're bad because something on the internet is playing accidentally. You know that video internet was basically fast forwarded because of porn? What? What? Porn is... Streaming porn was the reason that video got established as fast as it did. And porn sites are still like the majority of the top 10 websites. Like bandwidth. Bandwidth on the internet is graphic images.

6:43Dr. Lexx: Where you can still get them, right? Because there's recently legislation where entire states don't have access to some pornography sites anymore.

6:51You Are Not Broken Host: Do you think that's going to hold up? Maybe because states are able to do their own state laws, right?

6:57Dr. Lexx: And so places have pulled out. Like there are places in Texas, even I have a friend in Michigan, if they're too far one way or another in Michigan.

7:05You Are Not Broken Host: Oh, depending upon what cell tower they're going to get? Yeah, they couldn't get certain porn with heights. Oh, that's going to be very interesting to develop and watch that go to the Supreme Court. I saw some studies that say the sex ed now in the United States of America is worse than it was in the 1990s.

7:21Dr. Lexx: Yeah, unfortunately. I think so. We've had a lot of restrictions. There's over 100 bills right now that are forbidding sex ed. 21 states require sex ed. I think it's 19 out of that 21 require them to be medically accurate. That means they can lie to you. This is the, you're a flower and if you get crumpled up.

7:41You Are Not Broken Host: That's what medically accurate means. Not that they're calling vulva private parts, but that it's not lying.

7:46Dr. Lexx: Yeah, that it's not lying. Some just have HIV and AIDS prevention and that's sex ed. But there's 100 bills of legislation against sexuality education right now across the country to say like people, people think that we want to harm children. People think that we're trying to manipulate children. I think last I heard we were performing gender affirming surgeries at elementary schools some way, shape or form.

8:13You Are Not Broken Host: It's like such the pendulum swinging in such the opposite direction of like, were things going well? And we know that in abstinence-only counties, I think this is Texas data, birth rates weren't less. Or sexually transmitted infections weren't less. So it's like, it's not working what you think it's doing.

8:33Dr. Lexx: Our teenage birth rate is actually down. So teenagers are having less babies. And that's what we want. We don't want people that are under-resourced and under-equipped.

8:42You Are Not Broken Host: We want capable adults with adult bodies.

8:45Dr. Lexx: Right, whose bodies might not be ready. So they're having fistulas and everything else to have babies. So teenage birth rates are down. We also know, based on the information we used to have on the CDC, that our youth risk behavior survey from 2023 was saying that the average onset for sexual debut, so when a person was first choosing to engage in intercourse, was around 15 years old. And they were having less sexual partners than in the past. So they were having less sex and less sex as frequently.

9:15You Are Not Broken Host: Yeah. And then people freak out. like the flip side of this coin is like Gen Z is giving up sex. And we're like, maybe it wasn't great sex that they were having. And maybe that's a good thing.

9:26Dr. Lexx: Right. Because how many people do you know, just amongst your peers, who are like, my first time was amazing. I had such a great thing. It made me want to do it again right away.

9:36You Are Not Broken Host: I felt so loved and supported and seen. Oh my gosh. I felt like a whole individual. Right. That's the thing is like, stop picking on the young people for not having sex at this point.

9:46Dr. Lexx: No. Like they're getting to know their bodies. They're exploring what they like, what they don't like, who they're attracted to. And also who's going to treat them with worthiness? Who's going to say like, yeah, this affirms me. This is a person I'm making this choice. So it really does get rid of the hot and horny teenager. Everybody's out here doing it. Like, yes, teenagers are sexually active. Yes, they are engaging, but it's not as many as we think. And it's not as frequent as we think.

10:10You Are Not Broken Host: I think it's so empowering too, because it's the whole like trope of like, they just can't handle themselves. is like when given the right tools and conversations, yes, they can. So let's stop saying they can't actually.

10:22Dr. Lexx: Exactly. And we know that giving them actual comprehensive sex education, which includes abstinence, comprehensive sex education includes abstinence and waiting and not having actual intercourse. We know that they wait longer and they're more likely to use a birth control method or a barrier method.

10:41You Are Not Broken Host: Let's go back to ASEC because I think, like I'm always shouting out ishwish and asek ishwish and asek of the places for people to go as far as where do we I've been everybody got here because of sex most people have sex and there are not enough sex therapists yeah yeah so where do people go to find I when I was learning about this I was like I was in a room with therapists and they're like therapists aren't comfortable talking about sex and I was like and I just saw a paper like in this past year being like the majority of people who go to marriage and couples therapists, the issue is sex. This podcast is sponsored by Explore Worldwide.

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13:40Dr. Lexx: Yeah. So I'm a marriage and family therapist specifically, which means I've been trained in systems work. So I see every person as a part of a system. And most of the time, it's usually they're coming in with sex or communication, right? And or both. We're not having enough sex, the sex we have isn't good, or we're not communicating well. And usually it's an intimacy issue. I'm like, you understood what she said. You just didn't like it. Like you heard her. You actually, you know what she said. You just didn't like it. And you don't know how to say that back in a way that doesn't make a fight explode or there's no room for vulnerability here.

14:15Dr. Lexx: So it's usually an intimacy issue. It's, can I share my secrets with you? Can I expose myself to you? And right. We're not doing that sexually either. And that's what happens. It's like, sexually, I'd really like to explore this, but I think you're going to think I'm bad or dirty. I think you're going to just say no. So I don't want to be embarrassed. I don't want to feel like I'm obligated to, or I really don't like sex. I don't like sex with you. I don't like sex in general. My body is changing. I don't feel affirmed. I've seen so many people who sex during pregnancy. So they were rejected by their partners while they were pregnant.

14:51Dr. Lexx: And so that's left a wound that has not healed. And so now they're like, well, how come? Or they build a lot of resentment because they've had a lot of sex they didn't want to have, but it was just to appease their partners. And now they resent their partners, right? So they're like, you didn't even know. You didn't even know that I was doing this and you didn't appreciate it. And now I'm mad at you.

15:10You Are Not Broken Host: I think people are like, they should have known. And I'm like, you didn't communicate it. And now you're pissed that they didn't read your mind.

15:17Dr. Lexx: No. And then they're at a deficit too. They're like, I thought it was okay. Oh, it's not been okay. Well, then how come we can't just keep doing that?

15:25You Are Not Broken Host: And they're like, well, this is better than nothing. Thinks one person. Perimenopause, menopause, middle age, long-term relationships, boredom, maybe feeling lack of safety. Right? Let's say there's a stew of that happening. And then I'm going to gender stereotype. But the woman's like, I think I'm asexual. I don't want to have sex. And we acknowledge her and we love her for knowing what she wants and X, Y, and Z. but she's in a relationship that started out as sexual. There's a big taboo about that. And I think it's a big taboo of not affirming the man's point of view, which is I got into a sexual relationship.

16:04You Are Not Broken Host: You're changing the playing cards mid-game. How do you untangle that? Oh my gosh.

16:11Dr. Lexx: So there's so much there. I think if I had those lovers in front of me, right? And this one person's wanting to be affirmed. I'm like, I finally figured out who I am. and I finally figured out and it's such a relief and I get to just be with you. I get to be my true self with you. I don't have to fake it because you love me no matter what, right? There's some grief on the other side of that. There's some loss in the other side of that. And just because a person is identifying as ace doesn't mean that they'll never be sexual with their partner. So now we got to figure out what works. So I like to take sex right off the table.

16:44Dr. Lexx: All my lovers who see me, I take sex right off the table. They're like, come on, Dr. Lex. What is this? How long? What am I talking about?

16:51You Are Not Broken Host: I thought we were supposed to be making more of this, not less of this. Exactly. Did I read the card wrong? You see somebody a little frustrated and the other person a lot of relief.

17:00Dr. Lexx: But we have to do a reset of what is the expectations around sex? What's the expectations around touch? Does your lover ever touch you without expecting sex? Can he just show affection? Can you just receive affection?

17:14You Are Not Broken Host: That's an epidemic.

17:15Dr. Lexx: Right? Because we've been taught to touch, especially in America, right? Because you're supposed to say, respect personal space.

17:21You Are Not Broken Host: First base, second base, third base, all goes to a home run.

17:24Dr. Lexx: All goes to a home run, hopefully. And now the bases are so different than when I was young. First base was kissing on the mouth, maybe. And second base was a feel. Now second base is a finger bang. Third base is going down on somebody. I'm like, oh, we've evolved the bases so much. But now we got to figure out what works. Alvernacchio's sexist pizza is one of my favorite, favorite analogies. where you all can sprinkle all the different toppings and we can go from wedge to wedge. It doesn't have to be first, second, third base anymore. So for an ace person, what would you be willing to do? Is it mutual masturbation?

17:59Dr. Lexx: Is it watching your partner masturbate and giving them dirty talk through it? Is it incorporating some sex toys, maybe a penis sleeve, maybe a suction device or a dildo or whatever it might be? How are you still willing to engage sexually with this person? And can we find a middle ground where pleasure is still really important? and sometimes it's going to be compersion. So it's the I'm happy for your happy piece. Like, I don't care about this. I'm happy for compersion. I'm happy for your happy. I love that word. I care not about it. I had a lover who liked fish. I don't care about fish. I'm allergic to fish.

18:34Dr. Lexx: I don't even eat them. He loved fish tanks. And I'm like, that's great. But to watch him watch his fish tank if he got a new plant or a new guppy or whatever, I was just so enamored. I'm like, you're just so at peace. this is so cute oh it's so cute i love this for you i don't care about these fish

18:52You Are Not Broken Host: yes so because i think i think we spend all we being my bubble we spend a lot of time helping women desire who want to desire i want to want i don't i don't want but i want to want that is a kind of a normalized thing that we help and how do you know you're asexual versus you just don't want the limited menu that you've been forced at for the last 30 years. And you are finally ready to like plant your feet down and speak that.

19:20Dr. Lexx: Yeah, and that's when you need to seek out some other help, right? So don't just take the internet quizzes, seek out some help. The asec.org website has a whole list of sexuality professionals that aren't just therapists, right? So we have educators who are the teachers and not just K through 12 in college, but some people do one-on-one coaching, One of my good friends, Catherine, does a whole, like, I will walk you through your sexual smorgasbord kit of toys and things that could titillate. So there's educators, all sorts and facets, right? There's also, of course, our therapists. So LCSWs, LPCs, the professional counselors, the social workers, the marriage and family therapists.

20:00Dr. Lexx: We all exist. The psychologists, all of us. And then we have our counselors. So like, Kelly, you'd be a counselor because you're a medical professional. You are a person who touches people. You're a person who is in the medical field. So we have nurses, doctors, PTs, OTs, all those folks, even clergy. Those folks are giving medical advice. So it might not look like you need a mental health diagnosis or maybe even intensive therapy. But these people can give you permission to talk about it out loud. These people can give you some limited information and get some limited information from you. Maybe they don't need your entire history of who you are or where you want to go.

20:37Dr. Lexx: and then they can give you some specific suggestions to start to input. And so our counselors do that. So lots of different people.

20:45You Are Not Broken Host: How do I know if I need an educator, a counselor or a therapist? Because I think we all just say sex therapist. Yeah. But they're hard to come by. Like, where is it like you just need to be like, oh yeah, no, lube is normal. Right? Like the counselor educator. Right. And here's the guide. Yeah. You might just need a sexual counselor.

21:04Dr. Lexx: Yeah. So this is why we really try and integrate into health teams, right? And working across many different genres. So if you just, if you need a counselor, that person can be with you for long term. It doesn't have to be just like one or two sessions. It could be more, but that means I don't need deep therapy. So this day-to-day thing, there isn't anxiety about it. There's not depression about it. It's not deep seated. I need mental health support, right? It's not so disruptive in my life. It might be a short-term issue that I could have some type of support with. And then we can go forward from there and I'm okay.

21:41You Are Not Broken Host: I think most people just need a sex counselor then.

21:44Dr. Lexx: I think lots of people need sex counselors. I would love for more people to go to sex counselors.

21:50You Are Not Broken Host: How many sex counselors versus sex therapists does ASEC have?

21:53Dr. Lexx: We are therapists down. Despite the fact we were actually founded by a group of educators. We have so many therapists because therapy has been...

22:02You Are Not Broken Host: We need more counselors. I've just decided. Yay.

22:05Dr. Lexx: We know you're absolutely right. We absolutely need more counselors. But therapy has been the safer place to have these conversations because of trauma-related things. And we have more training in therapy. Like doctors, physicians only get 11 hours of sex ed in med school.

22:19You Are Not Broken Host: If that. Mm-hmm.

22:22Dr. Lexx: That's what the studies say. And then it's like, this is a Wolfian system and this is a Malarian system. And those things count as sex ed, right? Your epididymis are palpably normal. There we go. you all are typically at a deficit educationally where they're like, who taught you about sex and cancer? Who taught you about that's not a lot of conversation?

22:42You Are Not Broken Host: Hey, you need to know this for your ASEC people. I am writing up a protocol with a friend of mine who's a guy called the HEAL protocol. And it's for cancer survivors because I'm like, why the hell are we caring about you preserving your hair follicles, which are important. Hair is very important socially and body image wise. But why does hair have a protocol? But pelvic health doesn't have a protocol. So we're doing it's called the HEAL protocol and roughly off the top of my head, it's education, lubrication, hormones when appropriate, vibration therapy, not sticking something in the vagina, just having vibration on the vulva for blood flow.

23:21You Are Not Broken Host: And so we're going to roll it out because people need to know about that. And if we're preserving hair, we should be preserving pelvic function.

23:29Dr. Lexx: Well, I'm so glad you specified because I was like, we're preserving vulva hair and cancer. Okay, cool. That's awesome.

23:34You Are Not Broken Host: No, you know, the cooling caps. So like if we've normalized cooling caps, we should normalize pelvic health because by the time it's time to address it, it's usually so behind the eight ball that it's a lot of work versus if you start hormones, vibration therapy and education sooner,

23:51Dr. Lexx: it doesn't get so bad that it's really, really, really hard to undo.

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26:34Dr. Lexx: Yeah, I see that also with prostatectomies, right? So the pelvic floor tends to get ignored, the penis tends to get ignored. And I'm like, nope, we still need good blood flow, we still need functionality. There are things and people forget that intercourse doesn't have to start and end with a hard penis. Soft penises can still feel pleasure.

26:54You Are Not Broken Host: I saw two women in their young 20s, this is the whole myth of the younger people are doing better than the older people. Two women in their young 20s for pain with sex in one week. So they got all the way to like, it's like going to a sex therapist when you're like, you just needed to know like silicone-based lube is fine, right? It's like you came to a surgeon for me to be like, you're putting an erect penis in an unaroused, unlubricated vulva. Obviously it hurts. But they're like, that's not obvious to them because they didn't get education on it.

27:24Dr. Lexx: Exactly. Nobody talked to them about it. And so again, people are walking around And then we're trying to look stuff up. And there's so much information out there in the world and trying to figure out what information actually comes from a source. You see this for men that not masturbating increases your testosterone. Wow.

27:41You Are Not Broken Host: Do you have any myths that you wish would die?

27:44Dr. Lexx: Sex is supposed to hurt. I've had stories of people saying like, well, my preacher said that, you know, sex was supposed to hurt. I'm just supposed to get through it. Or like their families. I've had people in religious families where it actually turns out multiple people in the family had vaginismus and they didn't know it. And so all of them had this experience of painful penetration. And we trace it all the way back to a great grandma. I'm like, look at all the women in your family who've had painful intercourse. So they thought sex was supposed to hurt. Fascinating.

28:16You Are Not Broken Host: I would also, I think the myth, use it or lose it, irritates the crap out of me. Having more painful sex doesn't tend to fix painful sex. It tends to make you more feeling awful about it. Exactly. And resentful, right? And resentful. Yep. Absolutely.

28:32Dr. Lexx: And then I think you're supposed to like want sex. All sex looks spontaneous like in the movie. Oh yeah. That's a common one. You're just supposed to want it and then want it all the time. And then if you don't, something's wrong. When like average lovers have sex maybe two times a week.

28:45You Are Not Broken Host: And like you have to prioritize time. Just like if you want to like go to the gym. You can schedule it.

28:50Dr. Lexx: I love scheduled sex. Put it on your calendar. If it's a family calendar, name it something that only you and your lover are going to know. And then you're carving out time to say, this is precious to me. This is important to me. Whatever we're going to do, we're going to do. But this is our time to do it.

29:05You Are Not Broken Host: Yeah, no pressure to do any certain thing. Because the only sex therapist who haven't, because I would say it's universal if you want more sex in your life, schedule it. And the only sex therapist who spoke against that was like, if it's forced, if you have to do a certain thing. Like if you actually made, if you made the scheduling not fun in that sort of like prescriptive sort of way.

29:27Dr. Lexx: Yeah. And the last thing is like, I don't think there's such a thing as that warmup. What is it called? What is the stuff that people do before they actually do the intercourse?

29:36You Are Not Broken Host: Foreplay?

29:37Dr. Lexx: Yeah. Yeah. No, I think it's all sex. Thank you for that word. Perimenopause. Well, and I think the other big elephant in the room

29:45You Are Not Broken Host: is when you talk about sex or your clients talk about sex or I talk about sex or my patients talk about sex, we're all talking about different things. We have to define what we mean when we say these words. I see this also when I teach clinicians about low desire in women. I'm like, have them define what low desire means to them. Because what low desire means to you is different than what low desire means to me. And if we're having two completely separate conversations and goals, it's best to get on the same page first. Yeah.

30:17Dr. Lexx: So my last least favorite myth is that orgasms all look the same. So everybody's expecting that. Do you remember when it used to be like Skinamax? So like it would turn into like dark. Was it actually called that? I think it was. I have no idea. It might just be one of those things in society where we all call it that. But like all orgasms look like the head thrashing over the cliff, squeezing of the sheets. It's like, it doesn't. It doesn't. Orgasms look so different and vastly different. So they don't have to look the same for every single person.

30:50You Are Not Broken Host: I think another myth is that women are the ones always with the low desire. Ooh, yep. Because then the ones with the high desire feel very, very broken because they're not fitting the cultural norm.

31:01Dr. Lexx: Well, they're whorish, right? They're hypersexual. They're diagnosable. I mean, we used to put women in hospitals for that way back in the day, right?

31:08You Are Not Broken Host: Isn't it nuts? So nuts. It's all nuts. So I'm on the Sydney Opera House stage. last year, giving a talk, which is the trip of a lifetime. And I'm like doing my talk. And what I'm trying to say is like, women are in such a pickle because if you don't want it, you're broken. But if you do want it, you're a whore, right? And so I asked the audience, I'm like, what do we call women who like sex? Expecting somebody to say like, whore, slut, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? Like somebody literally in the front row is like, happy. And like the whole room just exploded. And I'm like dying of laughter on stage.

31:44You Are Not Broken Host: And I'm like, that was the best answer and not what I had like set up my talk to like support. And I was like, good for that person. Yeah.

31:53Dr. Lexx: Oh no. It was so awesome. Oh, I love that. I was in Sydney last year too, in Brisbane. And I do a talk about getting rid of sexual shame. And the thing I love for people to pontificate is, when did you learn that pleasure was a dirty word?

32:11You Are Not Broken Host: Ooh. because pleasure, there's nothing inherently sexual

32:15Dr. Lexx: about the word pleasure, but we instantly go there. Pleasure is eating. In sex-positive parenting, I teach like, hey, did you poop okay? Did it hurt? Was it comfortable? And they're like, no, it hurts. That means we need more vegetables because this needs to be a pleasurable exercise. You need to do it quite frequently, right? It doesn't feel good in your body to hold secrets. It feels great to hold surprises. It doesn't feel good in your body to treat somebody that way. So what feels good in your body? What is pleasurable? Is it pleasurable to laugh into your belly, to be loud, to be seen? Is it pleasurable for your hair?

32:48Dr. Lexx: What does that mean? And so like, as we talk about body sensations and pleasure, pleasure is not a dirty word, but for some reason it has become this, well, you have pleasure in that and that's bad. And that's why I like being a sexuality professional because we're pleasure centered and we're pleasure focused. And I think the world needs so much more pleasure.

33:08You Are Not Broken Host: Yeah, I think sex counselors, sex educators, sex therapists, they're all just universally pretty chill people because they're kind of like, it could be a lot of things and there's no rule book. And like, it's just such like, and people are like, whoa, cool. You know, it just like takes all the pressure off. Like, oh, there's no right way to do this except for like, don't hurt other people.

33:31Dr. Lexx: That's what we ask. Like, you know, consent first always. And there you go. And then how do we negotiate? How do we talk through? What are your fantasies? I have people who've never talked about their fantasies with their lovers. Because it was supposed to be private. It was supposed to be this kind of secretive thing.

33:47You Are Not Broken Host: What's the data say on that? I have to think there's a subset of the population that like literally doesn't have fantasies. Or does like everybody have a fantasy?

33:55Dr. Lexx: More of the data is researching like why people have certain fantasies. Because that's what people always want to know about themselves. Harking back to like Cosmo magazines of like taking a quiz about yourself.

34:04You Are Not Broken Host: It's because you're a Virgo, obviously. You should just tie it in with an astrological sign.

34:08Dr. Lexx: Exactly. And so most people, like it's really a majority of people, like I'm seeing upwards of like 70 % of people have some type of fantasy. Now, whether they want to live that out or not.

34:19You Are Not Broken Host: Default brain workings. It's something that comes up. Perfect. And they're harmless. You don't have to act them out. If you have a fantasy that involves harming other things, then seek help if you want to act that out. That's like what I've seen. But otherwise... Any like boundary rules about fantasies you want to share with people?

34:38Dr. Lexx: I can actually support that. So my dissertation was actually looking at rape fantasy in Black women who had not experienced sexual assault. And so I had over 300 people, 300 women answer my survey on sexual fantasies. And so for the people who had fantasies about being forced, there are two different types of forced type fantasies. One is aversive and the other one is erotic. Aversive is when you think of rape. It's violent. It is aggressive, stranger or not, but that's that person. But most people had erotic fantasy. And so erotic fantasy is a romance novel. So it's like, no, don't do this. But like she's unbuttoning her own blouse.

35:21Dr. Lexx: And so it is a level of I'm so sexually wanted that it alleviates me of the guilt that I also want this experience.

35:29You Are Not Broken Host: Gal, it's so complicated for people, I think, because it's so universally agreed upon that rape is bad. But it's also quite common that a, is there a better word than rape fantasy? Force fantasy.

35:42Dr. Lexx: Force fantasy. Okay. Force fantasy. Or people say consensual non-consent in these types of arenas, because if you were to act out this fantasy of force, then you would still be consenting. And then in the actual scene, it would be non-consensual. So it's consensual non-consent.

35:59You Are Not Broken Host: Where do we draw the line? Because I think a lot of people is romance novels, right? A lot of it is consensual non-consent. But a lot of women don't want to read that because they don't want to acknowledge or even like contribute to an economy where rape fantasies are a thing. So like, where do you, how do you clean that up for people?

36:19Dr. Lexx: Yeah, absolutely. So one, people don't pick their fantasies. It's just within them. And that's okay. Right? Two, they never have to be acted out. There are some people who want to act this out, but there is a lot that goes into it. This is when an educator would come in handy, right? And or possibly a counselor and maybe a therapist to talk through what this means. I would say like a BDSM educator, somebody who works with dominant submission and power dynamics within sexuality. And the fact of the matter is that it exists for some folks. It just exists and they're not bad for it. They're not broken for it.

36:53Dr. Lexx: It is something that is in their head. It is something that is titillating for them. If a person wants to act it out and wants to be malicious and harmful, that's when we need to get help. If they actually are thinking they want to harm persons, if they want to enact power over them in order to be coercive, manipulative, to break down and or to feel more powerful, this is a time when we want to talk to somebody about what those inklings are and what that fantasy is doing for them versus a person who is wanting to be so wanted that it alleviates shame for the sexual desire that they actually have.

37:30You Are Not Broken Host: Thank you for that. That was very helpful. In the comfort of your own home, if you enjoy reading consensual non-consent forced fantasies, that doesn't mean you're pathologic. No, not at all. Thank you for clearing that up for people. I know we'll help somebody. Okay, let's wrap it up on our final minutes together. How can lovers rekindle a spark?

37:52Dr. Lexx: Oh my goodness. So Emily Nagelski is a sex researcher, right? And so talks about laying next to your partner and feeling skin on skin in her first book. And then in her second book, she was like, I hated doing that with my husband. So there's all sorts of ways to rekindle. So again, I like to take that sex right off the table for a little bit. Not indefinitely, not forever. I usually do a two-week to three-week period of no sex. Like you can go masturbate by yourself. Your partner does not need to be privy to that. But no sex in the house, no initiations of sex, no trying to sway your partner into sex.

38:28Dr. Lexx: Take that off. So we can get back to just platonic touch. Then I want to get back to what we actually like to do, right? Are we too tired from parenting and jobs or something like that? How are we connecting? How are we holding each other? How are we touching each other? Are we touched out? Is this a parent who's like, you know, has the kid who's just like on them all the time and now you have another person that wants to come use my body for something? Get off me. I don't want anybody else to touch me. And then what needs are not being met, right? So am I getting to be a whole person or am I a worker and then a partner and then a parent and then a child because sandwich generation.

39:05Dr. Lexx: So we get to get back to some of the self. And then what self-stimulation are we doing? Do you know your body? Do you know which side of your clitoris is more sensitive than the other? What side of your penis is? What side of your front bits, your back bits, whatever? Have you explored that? So then we do some sensual touching on purpose. That sensual touching, again, is not sexual. It does not lead to intercourse. It is really saying, teach me how to touch you in ways that you like. what ways can I adore you? I would like to learn more. I would like to know more. I want you to give me the permission and I want to give you the permission to do the same.

39:42Dr. Lexx: And so we do some of that alternate touching, sensate focus is what we like to call it. I also have lovers do a gratitude scan. Super vulnerable, not going to lie. So if y 'all are in like a place that's rough, it might not be the best exercise to start with. But naked, front, back, side to side, top, back. I don't care what half you start with, what quarter you start with, but you have to look at your lover. Whatever's bare is bare. And you do a body scan from head to toe, alternating taking turns. And you say, I love your forehead because when it crinkles, I know exactly how you feel. And then after that compliment, you give that body part some type of acknowledgement of affection.

40:22Dr. Lexx: It could be a kiss. It can be a noozle. It could be a sniff. It could be a lick. I don't really care. But you have to show that body part affection. And you have to do all the body parts. So that includes fupas, stretch mark thighs, soft penis, dry vulva, all those pieces. You have to give them a compliment and then you have to show them a piece of affection. And you do that back and forth with as many lovers as you have.

40:44You Are Not Broken Host: I love it. You make it sound so easy. Hopefully some people are taking notes. Right, right. It becomes easy. Repetition is the key to adult learning.

40:53Dr. Lexx: We try and we fail, right? Failures are first attempts in learning.

40:57You Are Not Broken Host: Thank you so much for coming on the podcast. It was super fun. Tell people where they can find you.

41:01Dr. Lexx: Oh my goodness. Thank you so much for having me. I love this conversation. So I am Lex, L-E-X-X, sex, S-E-X, doc, D-O-C, all of the socials, and then lexsexdoc.com is my website.

41:14You Are Not Broken Host: Look for us on NPR around Valentine's Day. We might show up again together. Awesome. Thank you. If you found this episode funny, helpful, insightful, please take a moment to follow, rate, and share the You Are Not Broken podcast with someone who might need this conversation too. That support is how this information reaches more people. And thank you. For courses, books, and my monthly membership, and the Casperson Clinic information, visit kellycaspersonmd.com. This podcast and all content from Dr. Kelly Kasperson is intended for educational and informational purposes only, and this is not a substitute for individual medical, coaching, or psychological advice, diagnosis, or treatment.

41:59You Are Not Broken Host: Always seek the guidance of your qualified healthcare professional with any questions you may have regarding your health. Never disregard or delay medical advice because of something you've heard on this or other podcasts. Thanks for being here, and remember, you are not broken.