Unzipping Taboos: Candid Conversations about Sex - Consent: What It Means and Why It Matters

Episode Date: November 13, 2024

In this episode of "Unzipping Taboos: Candid Conversations about Sex with Dr. Sue & Charlie," we tackle one of the most important topics that is often overlooked or under discussed - consent. Dr. Sue and Charlie talk about what consent really is, going beyond the simple “yes” or “no” to explore how ongoing conversations around consent are essential for healthy and respectful relationships and sexual interactions. We stumble through the complexities that often surround consent, and discuss the importance of clear communication, and why that can be difficult. Dr. Sue  and Charlie offer advice on recognizing verbal and non-verbal cues, and talk about real world examples of how consent plays out. Tune in for a candid conversation about the importance of consent. If this episode brought something up and you need to talk to someone or need help, contact RAINN They’re available by chat and phone 24/7. If you have a topic or question for us please submit your ideas here:  Show suggestions Thanks to Allie O’Brien for our incredible theme music!

Hi everyone, welcome to today's episode of Unzipping Taboos, candid conversations about sex with Dr. Sue and Charlie. Together we dive into the topics around sex and sexuality that you're curious about, but may be too shy to talk about. No judgment here, real talk. So zip down and let's get candid. And today our topic is going to be consent. But before we dive into that, hey, Dr. Sue. Hey, Charlie. You want to give our listeners a little bit about your background before we dive in?

Of course. So I have been working in the field of sexuality education for many, many, many years now. I split my time between working in academia and teaching college courses and then also working in the community, working with professional groups, basically talking about sex to whoever will open their doors and let me in. And I am joined by Charlie. Charlie is, if you've listened to the shows, you know that Charlie's job is to kind of keep us on track. But it's her job to kind of guide us through this sometimes confusing, often intriguing world of sex and relationships and all the other things that we tackle. Why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself?

Sure. Dr. Sue and I have been good friends for many years, and we find that we have interesting conversations often centered around the taboo of sex and things related to sex and sexuality. And so we thought this would be a good platform to bring that to more people. And I am also someone who has always enjoyed challenging taboos, especially since I am a woman in society where I'm not supposed to challenge or question some of these topics or talk about it openly and feel no shame about doing so. So here we are.

So today, consent, Dr. Sue. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So may I talk about kind of the before the hit record process? Yes. So so before Charlie and I hit record, well, first, we just shoot the shit for a while because it's hard for us to catch up during the week. But but then we kind of start talking about what are we going to do? Like, what's our topic? How do we want to approach it? Are there any points we want to make sure we may we hit and we write those down and then we usually promptly forget them. and we had decided that we needed to do a show in the first 10 that made us both a little

I don't want to say uncomfortable but hesitant we weren't sure how to address it I mean we're talking about consent we we know this is important but there's there's a lot of issues going on for us kind of behind the scenes and we started not wait i started scripting this out and i was like what am i doing uh because i want to make sure we get this right and i'm going to start by saying we're going to get something wrong we're probably going to misspeak so so let us finish thoughts we're trying to get really important information across in a day and age where like words can be taken out of context so um we just want to own if you've listened to the pilot you know we've talked about the fact that these are unedited because we want them to be candid conversations

and i think i think this episode is going to be a great example yeah just just how awkward this can be or just how hard it can be sometimes to find the right words we we want you to see that especially for for people who kind of do this as well i do this as a living um so we just want you to see that so if it's a little more awkward than usual sorry not sorry like this is this is what it looks like so i just want to own that at the beginning yeah it's it's gonna definitely be an exploration and to to your point um the candid conversations is in our title for a very specific reason because even people who like myself who are comfortable talking about these topics it can still be awkward it can still feel clumsy and again like in a world of soundbites

um remember there we're gonna be searching for context and it's gonna it's gonna be a little clumsy today so and it's hard stumble along with us yeah it's difficult because as a new yorker i mean charlie can see my hand my hands are all over the place in this episode as i'm as i'm talking and and no one else can see that so it's yeah just just bear with us just strap it and enjoy this one because it's going to be super awkward yay yay all right i owned it so now maybe we'll now maybe will be great okay so consent yeah you start i start i start so so kind of as the the the non-professional who still lives in a world where consent is a thing how would if you're okay doing this yeah that was consent right there um can you can you give us a definition of consent

so I think from my perspective and let me take that qualifier of I think from my perspective how I interact with consent in um in conversations and with if I'm you know on a date or whatever and things are getting hot and heavy. It is, I am saying, yeah, see, this is already difficult to really think about it. There are body language cues that I'm giving. There's facial expressions that i'm sure are pop you know popping up um and i'm also using words maybe maybe not explicitly yes but i am using words that signal that i want to keep moving forward and so now thank you i want to take that piece though and take it away from being in just in the sex world because i think that's one of the most frustrating things for me is that when I talk about consent and everyone

at least verbally can give me the right answer of what is consent why is it important right I throw those questions out and people can answer them but then as soon as we move like outside of the sex world we forget that consent is important like me asking you are you okay with starting it I do this thing in my class my students use their phones to respond to questions and we have tech issues and i'll say to them can i look over your shoulder and they're like baffled that i'm asking that question but if if we're really talking about consent it can't just be around sex stuff it has to be something that we're doing and we're modeling and we're using always and i feel like we we learn to clue in when it's about sex stuff and i'm not trying to

pick apart your answer no no i don't i don't feel that you are okay um but i feel like we're really like tuned in when it comes to sex stuff and then we forget to expand it past that and we need to do that because if we're trying to get to a place where there's sex stuff going on we have to create a space that's welcoming and feel safe and getting consent is one of the ways that we do that not just not just leading up to like sexual activity but also how you know how we respond to people how we ask them if we can be in their space how we ask them you know can I can I try that you know you just had that drink it looked wonderful can I try a sip instead of just grabbing someone's drink um I I'm using that example I had a friend who was recently went on a

date and and it was um she got something to eat and I guess her she was like oh this is really good and the person she was on a date with just leaned over and like took some food from her plate I was like oh that looks good yeah and and I think she would have I wasn't there I think she would have been willing to share had she been asked but for her that was a very like this is not I'm not going to be heard my wishes aren't going to be taken into account this no longer feels safe for me as far as I know she hasn't seen him since but um but it's this idea of like not just focusing on consent when it's only about sex it's it's about all the time but then we run into boundaries yeah like there are things that sometimes happen because I get this question a

lot from parents I don't want to spend too much time on kid stuff but I get this question a lot about parents like how from parents how can we teach our kids about consent and I said you can model it but there's also a point where as a parent you're not asking the kid for consent that you are doing what is in their best interest in their safe interest you know they may not want to go to the doctor but they have to go to the doctor because they're sick and they need to be seen um but can we give them consent to decide whether or not they want to hug a relative when they see them you know can we incorporate pieces of consent but it is difficult and i and i i bring the parent piece first only because it's a great way of talking about just how complicated this

thing is. Well, and, and the development of the habit of it, right? Not just, not just you're an adult now and you're gonna, you know, potentially be sexually active. So now you have to pay attention to this word and its definition, but it is all of those pieces leading up to it. It's not just giving um your your child um agency but it is to your point modeling it it is reinforcing with them would you like to hug uncle bob no okay they don't want to hug today like and and helping them feel safe enough that when they say no that it's heard or when they say no that's or yes that's okay no yeah that's okay the very california northern california phrase no yeah um but um but those types of things it's that development of listening to boundaries physical or no it you

know i can't have this conversation right now and you physically leave the conversation and the person follows you yeah well they are now going against what you have said you do not consent to. Right. And so it's building that habit of not just expressing, but listening and observing, you know, someone tenses up, but they say, I'm fine. I'll, you know, but you can tell they're just, they're bracing themselves. You know, it's, it's that empathy piece of paying attention, not just to verbal cues. Yeah. And we started talking about this last week in our last podcast this is kind of how we wound up here we were doing a whole thing on communication if you haven't listened to that one we'll listen to that one um but we were talking about the role of of

body language and tone when it comes to communication and having worked in the sex world for a while you know for a long time it was just a slogan of like no means no and and it's it's never it's not that i mean it is that simple no means no i don't like you means no go away means no like it's but it's not even about that it's about whether or not the person says yes but we'll do that maybe a little bit later but it's also cuing into that that non-verbal like you were saying like if someone's saying yes but they're really tense like taking that five seconds to be like hey what's going on because they may just be really like really excited about what's going to happen and their whole body is tensed or or maybe they're nervous but a good nervous but

they've never done this before. So they're really tense. But yeah, they're into it. But they're concerned. But yes. And that's where it starts to become complicated. And then it becomes even more complicated because every state has their own rule. As you were talking about becoming an adult and being able to give consent, that law about what age you can give consent. I mean, we do have a federal law, but it's actually each state has its own law, which is now even more confusing usually it's between i think 16 and 18 in most of the states in the u.s but then there's like loopholes to the law and like the age and yeah so this is well i mean i'll use that as a segue you introduced um something to me as we were

talking about prepping for this episode uh romeo and juliet laws yeah which you know being a a theater enthusiast the the my immediate internal reaction when you mentioned that i was like oh that doesn't sound good because i know the ages of romeo and juliet in the play um and so it it gave me an uneasy feeling that there is a term surrounding these laws and um i would you like me to explain what a romeo and juliet law is yes please okay um so a romeo and juliet law let's say that a state says that the um the age of consent is we'll just pick one 16 what a romeo and juliet law says and then even these aren't consistent from state to state is that if one person is under the age of consent and the other person is over the age of consent

but they are within a set number of years of each other it's still okay so i've seen romeo and juliet laws as being two years and three years apart and i feel like we should take a second and say we're not legal scholars um but let's use a two two year so what that means is that technically someone who's 16 could have sex with someone who's 14 and it's not statutory rape because it's romeo and juliet law so we've got age of consent then we've got age of consent but and then for folks who are like i am way over 18 how does this apply to me anyway how the laws are written around things like intoxication

and whether or not you can withdraw consent once just once it's given and i mean it's it's not as simple as i think we think consent should could be and i think part of that does fall on those of us who've been in the field and just said no means no because it's it's so much more complicated than that um there was a period of time when i was teaching where the whole thing was about enthusiastic consent this is what we're talking to college kids about enthusiastic consent that the person not only had to say yes which by the way assumes the person is verbal which is something we often don't discuss um and can talk because you may be gauging in sexual activity where there cannot speak for whatever reason um but that not only did that person have to say yes

it had to be enthusiastic and i so then you're adding a level another level of a definition because what is enthusiasm right what is what my enthusiasm manifests differently than your enthusiasm so you've got a buy a need to buy into what that baseline is for enthusiasm and then what that baseline is for consent yes and i understood like i i understood a little bit you know i try to put on some different lenses when these things get talked about and like i understand when you're talking to college students it's about hey like you can't be pressuring the person like it's not like fine just leave me alone i'll do whatever that's that's not consent bullying someone pressuring someone is not consent if I say yes will you stop right that's not that's a no yes

so so so I understand where that came from but I also remember talking to this with my friends who are older than college age who are like I'm too tired to give in like I've worked all day I've taken care of a family like I'm too tired to be of enthusiastic consent yeah I'm into it but Don't expect me to be like, woohoo, let's go. You know, like I may get into it more as it goes on, but it's, but it's this thing that we tell youth. And then the problem is, and I know I've talked about this many times with the state of sex education, that we give them some messaging in youth, but then they become adults and

things change and they're not getting any kind of conversation about it. It's just, they're taking these rules they knew and trying to adapt it. And so if I'm in my 20s or my 30s and my partner is not giving this enthusiastic consent, then they're angry because I stopped because they kind of wanted to, but they were tired and there was no, it just becomes really confusing for people. Yeah, I think it's really that space of the evolution of understanding as you evolve through your life stages, because it truly changes. Maybe not every moment, but it changes often. It evolves often. It's constantly evolving as you navigate through getting older. And I think that is really important to point out is that we're given these messages as adolescents and before we're kind of let out into the big bad world as independent, air quote, independent adults without that evolution of the language and the understanding. yeah and and things are even more complicated now because of texting because if we're if we're sexting back and forth and it's getting hot and heavy and like people are giving every indication they're into it but then they sat in two hours of traffic on the way home the last thing they

want to do is anything but you know their partner's been prepping for this all day it can be like really confusing and and couples who've been together for a while a lot of times they kind of skip that consent because they feel like it's already built in and so that becomes confusing oh wait and then as you get even older and we start talking about things like alzheimer's and dementia like if you cannot have the legal power to manage your own finances how do we determine if you have the legal power to make up your mind about consenting to sexual activity so it's i feel like this is making gonna feel make people feel really defeated like oh what am i supposed to do like sure yeah yeah so save us charlie save us um i think you know why maybe

one way to not feel so defeated about this or overwhelmed maybe that's even a better um descriptor is you may be feeling defeated or this just may feel so overwhelming and like oh my goodness I have to manage not just me I have to manage someone else and interpret someone else and I think one of the important things to do just in any interpersonal relationship you have is find find patterns of and habits of communication that work for you and learn somebody else's and you kind of just teach each other okay when I communicate in this way this is what this means and you don't have to be as formal as that by any means but um it's again it's it's developing that habit you know if you start dating somebody and you share which can be scary

because this is vulnerability and maybe opening up in a way that is sooner than you typically anticipate but if you start to develop these kind of communication habits and and you start to learn each other in in that way then it becomes easier to check in it can it can feel more natural to check in you know so like if you are partnered and um and you you guys have been flirting all you know you all have been flirting all day and but something changes for you by the time you get home hopefully because you've developed this pattern and pattern um your partner will will feel confident saying you know I know we talked about this all day but I'm sensing maybe some things changed and that's okay and I'm here like that's it

so much better with the words than because I just be like hey you cool i've never had that yeah i'm fine oh there's that tone yeah yeah but and i think that that's what i tell my students i always joke with them um that they have homework for the rest of their life and that well they have several things they have to do for the rest of their lives but one of the things i have to do is check in with partners as time's going on and that it doesn't have to be like this whole big hey i noticed that you're getting a little tense do you want to talk about it it could be like a are are you cool with what's happening because they may be like why are you stopping like that felt great what what are you doing um but but it's taking that half

a second to check in and and making sure you're listening um and that's complicated because when you're on the moment it's very hard to hear words right um or to hear them clearly like the words don't and stop like together could be like like don't stop don't stop that yes that or don't stop two completely different meanings same phrasing and when you're in that moment it may be really hard to to kind of pick up you know the body's telling you one thing and you're not really always hearing so well you may not be close to their head to hear them clearly um so it's i think it i think sometimes we think it's super complicated and from a legal perspective it can get very complicated but I think for for run-of-the-mill humans everyday life I think

taking that minute to be like hey are you cool and don't you know if their if their answer doesn't sound right trust your gut and be like hey I know you said yes but can we like what's what's really going on they may be like I'm super uncomfortable can we shift positions but I didn't want you to stop because you look like you were into it it's still a good thing happening they were just you know maybe maybe a body part was going numb i don't know what position you're in i mean there was a charlie horse right yeah um but i i think that sometimes we're afraid to check in because maybe we're afraid things will stop and maybe they should change or maybe you need to back off or maybe it's just uh like no i'm good like i'm tensing and like excitement um and so i think it's

just one of those checking in with your partners and i i don't know if i want to bring this up this was this was we had said we wanted to do one episode in these first 10 that made us or at least me a little uncomfortable um i think the problem i'm having with this conversation is that we're assuming goodwill well that's what popped into my head as you were talking just now you know is the there can be many times a person goes into survival mode yeah and so they don't say anything and their body language or their face doesn't give anything away because they are surviving to just get through something that they didn't intend to be going through or couldn't say no because they got trapped or anything like that.

Or they froze. Right. Which is, again, I just want to be clear, freezing is a survival technique. It is your brain protecting you. Yeah. i mean i know we only used to talk about like fight or flight now we're now we're learning that freeze and fawn i don't want to get too far into the fawn um but that freeze is a very realistic response and but i also think i'm assuming goodwill on the part of the person

who is like checking in and i know that's not true i've had too many friends students who have been in situations where the person did not care about consent and so i i'm struggling because i don't I've had too many stories where you know I'm I'm giving the person here the hey are you okay checking in I'm assuming goodwill there and there are people out there who don't care who just don't care and I I feel like I need to acknowledge that but I have no idea where to go with that I think I think the acknowledgement is important I think that yes and in what we've talked about up to this point in this episode goodwill has been assumed um you know good intent empathy all of those things have been assumed but one i believe one of the reasons why consent laws

are and and regulation around consent is so all over the place is we have different states with different legislations that have different motivations um and you know there's just it's it is difficult because it's this in my opinion it's this overarching um approach of there are people who are allowed to take it and people who are supposed to give it and there's nothing in there's there's rarely space in those conversations or in those considerations for hey maybe they are both allowed to give and receive but nobody's allowed to take yep yeah and that that piece is largely missed in the media when we're talking about you know certain movements um i think it's that piece that gets missed well we i feel like we're about to go

down a path maybe neither of us knew we were going to go down so if we want us we want to yank us back let's do that um but i know that i was talking to someone recently about how we talk about violence and that we talk about violence against women and and this is not my idea i mean i'm not the only one who thinks this way um that we talk about violence against women because we make it about women and then we can talk about what they did or didn't do and what they were wearing and where they were and they should have known better. But we very rarely change the dialogue to talking about the men, if it is men, the men who perpetrate the violence against women. And in that way, we're missing the folks who are statistically doing most of the perpetration of

the sexual assault. But I do want to point out something that came up for me as I guess I'll take us off that path. I do want to point out something that came up for me when you were talking about the language because there was a time i was working in one of the states on the east coast and i whenever i travel and talk about this stuff i try to look at local laws and the language was written in such a way that men could not be raped in that state because really it was written with he language as the as the perpetrator and she language as the victim. And that gives a very specific, like you were just saying, who's supposed to take and who's supposed to give. And so I think we have a very long history of that. And I think we are

going to have to throw into the description some links to resources for people who need to talk about this. But I think it is complicated. I think it's complicated by use of alcohol and other drugs i think it's alcohol it's complicated by lack of information i think it's complicated i know my students at some schools that i've worked at have been like i'm not from this state but i'm living in this state excuse me and then there's like the law of the college but is it the law of the town or is it and it it's really confusing and we shouldn't really expect people to be legal scholars when they're trying to navigate being human beings so i i know you're gonna sum us up at the end and be like so what are your takeaways so i'm gonna beat you to the punch if that's okay

because i'm trying to yes it's okay thank you i'm trying to think about like okay you know i'm listening to these these two people talk one of them's a professional who's struggling with these concepts how am I supposed to get this so I think it's it's really simple I want to I want to get rid of this idea that no means no but I also want to keep it because no means no and end of story no means no but it's not about whether or not the person says no it's about whether or not the person says yes so if they don't say anything that is not consent if they kind of shrug and roll their eyes that is not consent i i don't want you getting locked into a place where someone does not say yes please do that to me right now that that you don't feel like that's i mean there's

there's ways humans speak in the real world like yeah like that sounds cool let's do that i'm down like whatever they're saying right just felt very old right there um but i i think it's i think it's recognizing the importance of it's not just about no it's about whether or not you're getting a yes do you want to weigh in on that one before I? I think that's a really important qualification is that the absence of no, the assumption should be that there's a no. Yeah. Right. There's, you need to, you just need to, to understand that maybe they're just not comfortable saying no, not maybe not necessarily because of you, but when they've said no in the past, when they've been explicit or they have said i don't wanna some something traumatic may have

happened and it doesn't even have to necessarily be traumatic but they got a reaction to the to that no that signal to them being explicit about my no is not safe so i think that's really important and they may be worried about how you'll interpret that well if i say no to this does it all have to stop because i'm kind of digging some of this i don't know if i want to go any further but like is the person going to feel like i'm rejecting them when i'm not rejecting them i just you know for whatever reason i don't want to go any further and so i think we do need to realize it's that there's a lot that could be going on in people's heads but bottom line first tip take home whatever we're doing today first takeaway first take there we go first takeaway is that

no always means no and the lack of no does not mean yes yeah good that is yeah i think i mean if anyone takes a sound bite away let it be that one okay takeaway two take home take whatever second takeaway message you have to pay attention to the non-verbals absolutely you have to absolutely yeah and again it's and I say this considering we just did another episode before about how we're not trained to talk to like take into account we're so locked into language and we never have conversations about how do you interpret what the non-verbals mean but we need to start cuing into that and we need to learn how to cue into that and and i don't want to put any responsibility on the person who's who's in that situation where they want to say

no when they don't know how but try as hard as you can to give clear messages so like if you're saying no with your with your face also try to say no with your body if you can um but also for the person on the receiving end of the of the message clue into both pieces if someone's like yeah i guess that's okay or even if they say yes but all the body language isn't right for you take that half a second well if it's me take that half a second and say are we good if it's charlie take that minute to have the conversation sorry so i think that's the second thing so the first one is no absolutely means no lack of no does not mean yes the second one is also pay attention to body language right do you have anything to add to that one i had a body language and facial

expressions micro expressions you know there could be it it's all a contributing factor um and i i think i want to add to the takeaway that um um, someone sleeping who has, or is passed out who may be consented previously and not even that day. Not okay. That's not consent. Yeah. So, you know, cause there's this idea there, it, there are cases, you know, they call it marital rape because marriage and i and again not a legal scholar don't know these things but at least socially marriage can tend to imply consent and that's not the case yes and even that's not the case yeah so two so two things here

yeah marital rape is illegal in every state in the united states that's that one is one of the things we can seem to all agree on that and the fact that there should be an age of consent even if we can't agree on the age of consent but this comes back to that idea that just because you didn't hear no didn't mean you heard yes it is if someone is unconscious and i believe most of the state laws if not all that i've looked up and and i again i only look up the ones where i'm kind of traveling and doing stuff um if someone is unconscious it is they cannot give consent if they're unconscious and the fact that we have to spell that out is a little bit crazy to me a little bit i just i wanted to to include that because i think that there

there are many cases unfortunately where that that can happen you can be hanging out with a friend and you guys went bar hopping or something and you passed out on their couch and for whatever reason they thought they had an opportunity or or what have you and there's that there can be that piece of um well i let them inside my house you still have a reasonable expectation of safety in your own dwelling um so just because yeah go ahead i'm like we're doing a little dance here Because I know what the research says. And what the research says is for especially college age men, they don't make that assumption that there's an assumption. Not all men, not all college age men, but there's a significant portion of college age men in the research that say that if they do wind up back at a certain location, that it is implied and they do not think that that person has that right to say no at that point. um and i think that's part of the problem is that we're all kind of assuming the same set of rules and we just right yeah right sorry i was no but that's so that's so important to um to point out

right is that there is research out there that backs up these feelings of if someone got attacked in their own home because they invited who they thought was a friend and a safe person and that person violated that trust and that consent that the the that victim feels responsible and that they don't have a right to report what happened or anything because they invited them in right and that's you know again the research points to why it's important to point this out as well is that you know you do have a right to feel safe in your own home so and it is never your fault very important yes very important so i have a third takeaway that will never happen in the real world i think we need to get it out there i mean i think it does i think it can and i

but i think it's it's tying right back to that whole the the episode we we did previously about communication i would love for these conversations to happen about like what are my boundaries what am i okay with like what's he i i often talk about what are red yellow and green behaviors you know what's an absolutely there's no way that's happening like don't even think about it what's you know a yellow would be like a maybe i don't really know how i feel and green is like let's go um having those conversations before you're in the moment having those conversations because once you start fooling around it's it's hard to remember will we agree do we agree did i just wait i'm not sure i but they're into it they look into it i think i'm into it but i'm not really

sure i don't know what's going on here so it can be really hard in the moment to kind of remember that and also if you're drinking or using substances that makes it really really difficult i mean it's like this goes back to what we were talking about before negotiation is not sexy and this isn't a negotiation like if i give you this you give me that right but a clear explanation of like hey so here's what i'd like to do and here's what's completely off the table for tonight and here's what's a maybe depending on how you know the first 10 minutes go or whatever right but we don't give people the power to have that conversation we don't teach people how to have that conversation we don't really model how to have that conversation but that would be like

the ideal world like hey before we you know before we leave here and head to wherever let's talk about our boundaries and it sounds so like let's have a conversation about boundaries can i touch you here i mean it sounds so clinical but it could be like hey here's what i kind of want to do this is and if it has that right how's that sound to you and hey yeah how does xyz sound like it can actually be kind of sexy and you can do it by text i know i said before that i think text sometimes gets in the way but i think that can actually be a really great way of talking about it i know sometimes for people when they're like trying to feel out a new oh that sounds weird feeling it um when they're trying to like feel out how their partner

might feel about a new behavior or role play or whatever it may be. Like sometimes it's easier to broach that by text because you're not staring at them going, can we do this? And there's a whole lot of pressure on them. So I think texting, I feel like I was implying earlier today that texting was bad. I don't think it is. I think texting is a great place in relationships. So does sexting. But I think if we could talk about how to have those conversations when you're not in the moment. It also can help take pressure off the person. If you're not sitting there staring at them waiting for an answer. Yeah, yeah, I think that that's a very important part. And I'll just add a little nuance to that. It's not just how it's, it's building in the time. Yeah. To have

those conversations and build that habit. Right? Yeah. And that not just the time, but the timing. To your point, it's not always right before the moment that you start to engage in the hot and heavy, building in that time and timing of exploring that and then hearing and seeing, you know, if you are having the conversation in person, it also gives you that opportunity to understand their body language and kind of their facial expression habits. and um and what they shy away from and you know you can read their body language and maybe some physical tics like if they start to get anxious they might you know squeeze their hands repeatedly like make little tiny fists over and over you know it can clue you into when they might be trying to be agreeable verbally but there's something physiological happening yeah that that is a little opposite from what they might be saying right and it also could be like if you're if they've never had this conversation because if you're i mean if you're listening to this

think about it have you ever had that conversation ahead of time of like here's what's a here's what's a green and i know not everybody talks in green yellow red language like here's what's a go here's what's a no-go if you've never had that conversation and now the person sitting across from you or walking with you or holding your hand just trying to have that conversation there's going to be some awkwardness and so again it's kind of and that could be harder to kind of suss out like are they awkward because we're having this conversation as we're walking through a parking lot or they have are they are they reacting like this because they're really uncomfortable with the idea of doing something yeah but it'd be so cool if we could just start normalizing the conversation

Well, and normalizing, you know, normalizing rejection, almost is kind of what I want to boundaries, you know, boundaries, normalizing boundaries, and not receiving it as personal rejection. It is something that is important to them. It, it's not necessarily centered around you. And, oh, but I've been treating them this way. And so why, why are they still saying, they don't want to, or they're not giving me a yes or anything. You spend, maybe spend some time or just respect the boundary and give them the space. You know, it's hard for a lot of us to go to get to that place where we're not self centering someone else's reaction or boundary. um i mean it's a human tendency tendency to perhaps want to fix or think that it's because

you did something and oftentimes you know to quote a scene from schitt's creek nobody cares you know it's it's not it's not that important to other people to think of you know in that in that way so all right so let's sum it up and then you can wrap us up with the the fabulous way that you do that's that's apparently your job now yes so rule number one no means no flat out no means no but also if you don't hear a no it doesn't mean yes yes correct that's rule one two pay attention to the body language pay attention to the body language pay attention to the let's put boundaries in there respect the boundaries respect what you're being told whether it's being told verbally or whether it's what you're being told with your

body and the third is like let's start normalizing having conversations about what we want what we don't want what we're okay with we might be interested in before we get into that space where someone's feeling super pressure i'm just thinking of like how horrible would it be like you're out to dinner and the waiter waiter server comes over and it's like would you like dessert and you're like yes but this conversation doesn't involve you you know that conversation with the with the person across from you at the table um but yeah learning how to normalize that and also as we have modeled for you being really bad with coming up with the language sometimes and tripping over it and being like hey i'm not like this isn't let me try again the words aren't happening right

um but yeah i'd love it if we could just start normalizing having these conversations but that goes back to everything we've said about how we view talking about sex in public and how we view about certain genders talking about sex that was supposed to be the summary and then I just kept going all right you well uh you know we hope that those takeaways again I I feel like those takeaways are centered around goodwill and people meaning well um but I think there is a piece where we do have to acknowledge that goodwill isn't always present and sometimes people can't say no or because if they have adverse things have happened so not just normalizing the conversation but normalizing receiving the boundary and not centering the existence of that boundary

around you if you're the one receiving the boundary um because it's not all about you necessarily you know we all bring our personal experiences to the table so i think that's another important takeaway here is do not self-center someone else's boundaries yeah dr sue so you can't see i'm actually raising my hand to like interrupt which is a great example of getting consent. I just want to remind folks that if this brought anything up for you, or maybe you're not sure about something that happened to you, or maybe you're looking at an experience in a different lens, we are going to have a link to some resources in the description. And if something was confusing, which wouldn't surprise me with this episode, please feel free to submit a question

or topic idea. We'll have the link to that in the description as well, if you want to talk a little bit more about some aspect of this. Yeah. So everyone, thanks for stumbling along with us on this episode of Unzipping Taboos, Candid Conversations About Sex with Dr. Sue and Charlie. We really hope today's episode sparks some new thoughts. We'll open up new dialogues or dialogues worth having. And remember, your curiosity is the key to breaking down barriers and embracing a healthier understanding of sex and relationships. So if you enjoyed the show, don't forget to subscribe, leave a review and share it with someone who you think might need to hear this. And if you've got a question or a topic, as Dr. Sue just said, we've got a link in the episode

description where you can submit that to us. And even if it's not a question or a topic, you just, you want to give a thought. This is how we engage with you. We want to have these kinds of conversations with you all. So until next time, keep the conversation going and keep unzipping those taboos. Everyone, take care.