Reframing How We Think About Sex

This episode contains explicit content, so listener discretion advised. (gentle music) Headspace Studio. (gentle music) (serene music) Hi, I'm Emily Nagoski. Welcome to "Radio Headspace," and to Monday morning. I'll be guest hosting "Radio Headspace" this week, and I am so happy to be here. I am McKenzie Institute trained sex educator and researcher. I'm also the author of a book, "Come As You Are." My work is all about teaching people to live with confidence and joy inside their bodies. I think sexuality is an incredibly important topic that affects all of our lives, and unfortunately, I think we don't really learn enough about it. And since Valentine's Day is this week, what better time to make it all about sex? We're gonna get into it. We'll explore its perception in society, learn about desire, and understand the science behind it. We'll figure out how to find our authentic sexual selves, because by doing that, we can truly lead a healthier and happier life. So early in my work as a sex educator, I realized that everything I thought I knew about sex was wrong. I had okay high school sex education, and yet, all of this information was completely new to me. And I do mean everything, at the very basic level of how a sperm meets an egg for sexual reproduction, the story I got taught and the story people are still being taught is that it's a competition among all the sperm racing toward the egg to see which is the first one that can claim the egg, and this whole narrative, first of all, is not a scientifically accurate description of what's actually happening, but also, the reason it's this narrative instead of the accurate one is because we have imposed gendered narratives on these reproductive selves, because we believe that the masculine narrative is to be competitive and to win, and we believe that the feminine narrative is to be the princess in a castle waiting to be rescued. And what's actually happening is there is a whole lot going on in the ovum to help select the right sperm. So all of us are damaged and made to feel broken and inadequate by these heteronormative, highly gender binary stories that our culture has been passing down across generations. So confidence and joy are a big part of cultivating a more positive relationship with sex, because those, I believe, are the keys to beginning accessing who you truly are as a sexual person, or a not sexual person. Confidence to me is knowing what is true, even if it's not what you were taught should be true, learning about the cultural rules that you were raised with and starting to make choices about which rules are good for you and which rules are not a good fit for you. And then there's joy, which is the hard part, because joy is loving what's true, even when it's not what you were taught should be...