Eros Vocabulary, What Does It All Mean!?

0:00All right, so welcome back to our next segment in erotic rediscovery of self.

0:10Today in EROS, we're going to talk a little bit more about vocabulary.

0:14So why is this important?

0:17Well, mainly because we need to make sure that we have a foundational understanding

0:23and a similar understanding of what we're actually talking about and what we mean.

0:28A lot of what happens in the communication in the realm of sex and sensuality is that

0:35people have a misunderstanding of terms and that they're not actually using them correctly.

0:42So some of them will be broadly how or what people mean when they say things like sex,

0:50because as we know in the sex therapy community, that means a lot of different things to different

0:56people, depending on who you are talking to.

0:58So for this particular course, when we say sex, what we're actually meaning is what most

1:07people refer to sex as some sort of penetrative activity typically between male and female,

1:13but it can be between any penetrating partner and receiving partner.

1:18So keep in mind that that's not necessarily what other people might mean, and it could

1:24be a good opportunity, particularly if you're negotiating with a partner, to ask them what

1:28they actually mean by that.

1:30Now, it's not only important in the conversation while we're learning, but it's also important

1:37when we talk about this with our children or with children in general.

1:43Why?

1:44Well, because they need to know what it means.

1:46They also need to have the appropriate vocabulary.

1:49If something were to happen to them and they're trying to more adequately explain something

1:55that's going on.

1:56So that's how we're going to refer or what we mean by sex in this particular course.

2:03The other thing that's important is to talk about vocabulary that typically may not be

2:12used in just our general day-to-day language, things like paraphilias.

2:18So what is a paraphilia?

2:20It's a pattern defined, a reoccurring sexually arousing material or imagery and behavior

2:28that involves unusual or especially socially unacceptable sexual practices.

2:34That's defined by Merriam-Webster.

2:36So what does that actually mean?

2:38A lot of these definitions include other things that you kind of get set on this breadcrumb

2:43trail.

2:44So what's a socially acceptable or unacceptable practice?

2:48Well, if you look things up just in general on the internet, it talks a lot about culture.

2:55It talks a lot about family value systems, about socialization, and a lot about privacy.

3:05And what does that mean?

3:07So privacy is typically derived from purity culture, meaning we don't talk about it.

3:14We don't share it.

3:15We don't look at it.

3:16We don't do it in a place where people could look at it.

3:21And those are types of things that I think that today, especially, we are challenging.

3:26And as we've talked about with Masters and Johnson and Alfred Kinvey already, that they

3:31actually did challenge as well.

3:33So there are certain things that we wouldn't necessarily, although maybe they are considered

3:40a paraphilia.

3:41We wouldn't necessarily look at them the same way that they did in the late or early late

3:50studies of Alfred Kinsey and Masters and Johnson.

3:54However, there are some things that we would, right?

3:58So other socially unacceptable or societally unacceptable sexual practices, you can probably

4:05think of some.

4:07Things like consent, things like age-related consent, and what is the appropriate age.

4:15Things like privacy, depending on where something were to occur, and a lot of this is coming

4:22up today in terms of self-expression as well.

4:26So things to consider, and also things to review yourself, just to internally kind of

4:32have that dialogue and see where do your belief systems fall.

4:36It's not, this course is not to challenge good, bad, right, or wrong, or get you to

4:41change your belief systems, but hopefully be able to look more broadly at your sensual

4:48self and your sexual expression and to see who you are really, and how can we bring that

4:55forward in terms of who you are, confidence, self-esteem, and all of that.

5:02When we talk about gender identity, gender identity is a person's internal sense of being

5:10male or female, or some combination of the two, or neither.

5:14So identity is how somebody identifies themselves.

5:21Sexual orientation is a person's sexual identity or self-identification of whom they are attracted

5:31to.

5:33So this would be, sexual orientation would be what we defined with the Kinsey scale.

5:39So bisexual, straight, homosexual, pansexual, there are so, so many.

5:45So there is a handout completed that with some of these definitions of how people might

5:52identify, if that's something you want to look into more, that's something that you

5:56know, you are curious about.

5:58But for our intents and purposes in this course, we are going to define sexual orientation

6:04with who somebody identifies as they are attracted to.

6:12Sexuality and sensuality are often used interchangeably, but they are not necessarily the same thing.

6:21So sexuality is defined more as a state or quality of being sexual, sexual acts, things

6:29that include sexual activity and reproduction, whereas sensuality is typically defined as

6:36the gratification of your senses.

6:39So remember, we have five senses, and usually sensuality is the gratification or indulgence

6:50or our appetite around more fleshly based desires, but it's a focus on the body rather

6:59than on the mind, rather than on any kind of undertones that might happen in the realm

7:09of sexuality when we are talking about it from a cultural standpoint.

7:14So for this course, we are going to talk about sensuality is really the way that we

7:19express ourselves through our body, whether that relates to some sort of sexual activity

7:25or not.

7:28We are also going to talk a lot in this course about sexual assault and masculinity.

7:38And those two things are important because they are typically not discussed, and we will

7:44learn a little bit more about that later on, but it has really created a gap, particularly

7:51with men, of being able to feel more comfortable coming forward if something like that has

7:57happened to them, but also has historically been that people have less severe consequences

8:07when they are in a situation where they've been accused of sexual assault with a male

8:14versus a female, and that's really unfortunate.

8:17It wasn't until 1994 that a lot of those definitions and laws actually changed to include everybody.

8:26And so we'll talk more about that.

8:27But sexual assault, the way that we are defining it now, is the World Health Organization's

8:33definition, which is all-inclusive, or the most all-inclusive one that I could find in

8:38the literature.

8:40And so their definition is, any sexual act, attempt to obtain a sexual act, unwanted sexual

8:48comments or advances, or acts to traffic or otherwise direct against a person's sexuality

8:57using coercion by any person, regardless of their relationship with the victim, in

9:04any setting, but not limited only to home or to work.

9:10So you can see how that definition broadened how we look at sexual assault, who essentially

9:18could be somebody that is a perpetrator of sexual assault, but also who it can happen

9:23to.

9:26Masculinity has oftentimes been associated with toxicity or unhealthy patterns of male

9:34behavior.

9:35So for our purposes, we are redefining and really taking a look at what masculinity actually

9:41is because there are healthy masculine, healthy masculine women, healthy masculine men, and

9:49masculinity itself is not necessarily a bad thing.

9:53So the quality or nature of the male sex or quality or state, degree of being masculine.

10:00masculine or manly. Now that's a really vague definition. So a lot of the definitions that

10:08you look up about masculinity or femininity in the literature are very circular. They're

10:15very vague and they kind of just use the same phrasing over and over again. And so our exploration

10:24through this course is really going to be creating a healthy definition of masculinity

10:28and helping folks be able to embrace that side of themselves in its full expression

10:35and being able to challenge some of those social norms that have typically been associated

10:42with that. The last definition that we're going to talk about, at least for the beginning

10:49of this course, are traditional versus comprehensive sexual education programs. Now we're going

10:56to talk more about that in a little bit, but the main difference between traditional

11:01and comprehensive may also be looked at as the difference between old school, new school

11:10waves of thought or more progressive ways of thinking about sexual education courses.

11:17Essentially the main difference that I found in the literature was that traditional sexual

11:23education courses are more geared or more heavily geared toward purity culture, toward

11:30abstinence and reproduction almost exclusively. And if you ask anybody that's older than you,

11:40that you have a relationship with, they're probably going to tell you very similar stories

11:45about what their sexual education journey was like through school if they had one. Comprehensive

11:53sexual education is still a pretty new term. It's still pretty, you know, new wave thinking,

12:00which is essentially that abstinence only doesn't necessarily work. And we've seen that

12:09over and over again. If you think about things like the D.A.R.E. program and Scared Straight

12:15and all of these things that were really heavily abstinence based and more fear mongering,

12:21they don't really work. What we know in the realm of young people is also that things that are made

12:30to be taboo in that you shouldn't be doing them are inherently more exciting to them. So there

12:37may have been actually some adversive reactions to a lot of these and those are things that they're

12:44finding as they're doing retrospective studies on this. So comprehensive sexual education is

12:51more based in essentially the reality that young people are going to engage in certain types of

12:58activity. So while abstinence or while risk prevention is still a very big part of those

13:04school curriculums, the other commonality is heavily based around consent and mutual or shared

13:14decision making about sexual activity and sexual engagement. And so they're still

13:22a little bit more, let's say, advanced in the thinking in terms of taking into consideration

13:28what people have been and kind of have always been engaging in at those ages. But it's still

13:35a really vague term. It's still not generalizable. So in the next section, we are going to talk

13:43more intensively about traditional and comprehensive sexual education programs,

13:49as well as some of the takeaways from those. Do they work? So stick around to go through the

13:57history of sexual education and why those things may or may not apply to you today if you are past

14:05college.