Unzipping Taboos: Candid Conversations about Sex - The Virginity Myth: Breaking Down First-Time Pressures and Cultural Baggage

Episode Date: December 11, 2024

In this episode of "Unzipping Taboos: Candid Conversations about Sex with Dr. Sue & Charlie," we challenge the concept of virginity. Dr. Sue and Charlie explore the concept’s social and cultural weight, diving into how gender roles and expectations shape our perceptions. They dissect the pressure and confusion that surrounds first-time sexual experiences and question why society is so fixated on “losing your virginity” as a milestone. Our hosts also discuss the problematic nature of terms like “virgin” and how religious and heteronormative influences complicate our understanding of abstinence and sexual identity. The episode touches on unique cultural pressures and examines how these expectations can lead to risky sexual behavior or feelings of shame. With a mix of expert insight and empathetic conversation, Dr. Sue and Charlie stress the importance of communication and comfort during those pivotal first experiences. They address common concerns and emphasize that everyone’s journey is valid and unique. Wrapping up with a look at the societal and historical influences that perpetuate virginity myths, this episode encourages listeners to rethink, communicate, and challenge these outdated constructs. If you have a topic or question for the podcast please submit your ideas here:  ⁠Show suggestions If you want to read more about soaking, check out Let’s Soak Babyyy!!!!! To learn more about lube and pH, you may find this article helpful:  pH balanced lube: why it’s important and how to find one 

Hey everyone, welcome to Unzipping Taboos, candid conversations about sex with Dr. Sue and Charlie. We're here to dive into the topics of sex and sexuality that you might be curious about, but don't always feel comfortable talking about. No judgment, just open, honest conversation. So sit down, sit down, zip down, and let's get candid. Today, we're going to talk about the term virginity and the concept and all the social, all the social constructs around it. Right, Dr. Sue? If we must, yes. I'm here with Dr. Sue. Would you like to give a little bit about your background for some listeners that may be joining us for the first time? Yeah, absolutely. Other than the fact that I hate the concept of virginity, though. I think that's what the

whole show is going to be about. So I wear a few hats. I work in academia. I also do consulting work. I also do writing. And I do this lovely podcast. So I have a PhD in human sexuality. so i like to come at things originally from the academic side but after being in the trenches for a while i think it's really important that especially with concepts around like virginity that we're really analyzing what we're telling youth you well i don't really want to say youth because i hear from some of my older folks too but just you know stepping out of the academic world and talking to people in language that makes sense to them and i think sometimes we kind of lose that with virginity so yeah that's my background and also the whole show no

um thank you for joining us it can't be the whole show because charlie i haven't introduced you so for those of you who are tuning in for the first time um this is charlie she is our curious co-host she's always ready to explore the ins outs of sex relationships and all those taboo topics that we very rarely talk about do you want to tell us a little bit more about you sure uh dr sue and i have been uh really good friends for many years now and we found uh just and ease in conversations around really any topic. And you had this idea for this podcast and asked if I would join you because of the virtue of the conversations that we have. And I am someone who just inherently likes exploring the taboo, especially being a woman

in society and those expectations with how I am supposed to interact or not interact with sex and sexuality. So it was, it's an honor to be invited to be your co-host on this, on this podcast. No, of course we need you here to make this happen. But I have to ask you a very important question. Do you also hate the term losing your virginity? Because if not, this may be a very contentious episode. The, the, the phrase losing your virginity. Absolutely. Absolutely. Uh, you know, it's an antiquated phrase in my opinion, um, rooted in so much in, in so much, I'll just leave it at that. Um, but you know, in some of our previous episodes, we have talked about the gender construct around language with topics in sex and sexuality and some uh some of our

continuing listeners will know this but we've talked about there's a gender that's supposed to be the gatekeeper and you know and guard it and their fidelity is is is their value and so So they lose it and there is a gender that is allowed to take it and that that introduces a dynamic to sex and sexuality that can start to foster, in my opinion, some pretty toxic perceptions and attitudes towards sex, sexuality, your own body, a partner's body that you might be looking to engage in sex play with. and then the expectations the perpetual expectations of that as you as you age and go on your sex and sexuality journey yeah and and it's interesting because I was thinking about this as we were getting started with like do I hate the term virginity or do I hate the term losing virginity and I think I might hate both no there's room for all of that there's a room for a lot and I don't hear and I I don't I use that term hate I mean I'm not I don't usually

use the term hate but i just like i strongly dislike um and i think it's not so much the term virgin just on its own i think it's because of all the things that come with it i think it's the implications and again a very gendered term and the power that that word might have so um i had recently gone out to dinner with some friends who listened to the podcast so for those if that was you and you're at this dinner please feel free to laugh um i had i had ordered a virgin pina colada and someone who has listened to the episodes and said wait wait you hate that term and I'm like no no no like totally appropriate here for the drink and and that's where I really started thinking like is it the term virgin or is it the term losing your virginity so I'm not

really sure where to start because I think both I think the word virgin can have its own issues and definitely some religious ties and I don't know either of us are religious scholars so I'm a little, I'm a little hesitant to dive into that. Yeah. Yeah. That's why I kind of left my earlier comment where I left it. Um, but, but I think that, so I don't, I'm not really sure the best place to start. I don't know if we want to start with the term virgin and kind of some of why that's problematic or if we want to talk about the losing of the virginity. Yeah. I think, uh, before we dive into that, maybe the nuance here is the word virgin as it relates to sex and sexuality and and partner play partner interaction um moving through the world looking at potential

partners and interacting with um you know with other people and ascribing this term and the value like the weight of the value that you put on that term because you know i don't have a problem with the term virgin daiquiri sometimes that sounds really tasty where were you at dinner but it is it is very much the the the way it's loaded when we use that word in talking about sex and sexuality and genders and um and young um young adults or i i even hesitate to say young adults, but as, as people are navigating puberty into young adulthood, into middle age, into, and then having an understanding of your value set around that word and that concept and how you, again, perpetuate that with the people in your life

that you influence, whether you know it or not, if you're an aunt, an uncle, a mom, a dad, a grandma, grandpa you know you will influence someone based on your your personal value set and experience with that term and how it was um inflicted on you in your generation growing up and and the expectations around it yeah and we were so as you all know charlie and i meet a little bit ahead of time to kind of talk about what we think we're going to talk about but we very rarely end up going the path we thought and we've been talking about some of those cultural expectations and one of the things charlie brought up is are these still true because we're not of the young adult generation and so we want to throw that out there that we're definitely coming for at it from our

lens and i realized because you asked me right before we started did my students talk about it in the same way i learned it and i realized that we don't really have some of those conversations that's not something we talk about in class um so if you have different experiences please like we definitely want to have involvement with folks who are listening. So if you're listening to this, especially if you're on the younger side and you're like, no, no, like this wasn't my truth. Let me know. Let us know. We'd love to come hear that. Yeah. And even, even maybe our not younger side listeners, just what, how has that perception of that concept evolved for you? Do you feel like you still interact with that concept based on how you were raised or did it change

based on your experiences positive or negative you know like how because it can evolve I mean we are we are all human and we all evolve in our thinking our opinions ideally ideally ideally um and but also to to just you know um this is an election year um and and to kind of see the the sound bites that uh and that make clickbait and you know um the highlight reels from from various news outlets and what have you I would tend to believe that not much has changed around the concept of virginity and who is supposed to keep it and who is supposed to take it and and what that all means so I don't think much has changed broadly as a society but I am open and hoping to be wrong in fact I am a little concerned that we've gone a few steps backwards

yeah yeah I have to say sadly I agree with you but if anything we've gone backwards instead of forwards and I do want to point out for some folks who may be listening to this after the fact we are recording this before the election of 2024 um we realize that you will not be here to get till after the election yes we may have to yank it i don't know and like there may be like a weird gap that we were weird at it yeah if you hear something like an edit and the voices have changed just because we had to go in after the fact um so let me let's start with kind of the issue with the word virginity first and then we'll talk about the next part of it the losing your virginity um because for me what it and I know this is

something we've kind of talked about is the gender split it's it's acceptable oh my god there's so many air quotes again my friend sent me a note that said that that should be like the tagline is so many air quotes um merch idea merch idea um but just this idea that that it's normal normal and acceptable um for for women or young ladies or a young girl so whatever term we're using for females to be virgins and that's that's more acceptable but that depending and a lot of this again depends on religion um and culture but that for men if they hit us and boys if they hit a certain age and they're still a virgin it's like there's a hazing that happens like oh well what's wrong with you? And why can't you do it? And like, well, I'll make a pact that we'll do

it at the same time, you know, around the same time. I mean, there was a whole movie about that. Right. So, so it's this idea that it's something that men have, it's a label men have to get rid of, but when there's a pressure to, and that for women, it's kind of more accepted to keep it for longer. And that anytime there's pressure like that, it's not helping. And for women, there's value tied to that there is value to um the perception of their character and and other implicit things that if a woman has you know depending on how long she held on to it there there is implicit value that people tie to that person based off of that information right and i think that jumps us really quickly into the idea of losing but

even if we were to use the same term for men and for women the idea that they lost their virginity it's even if it's the language is the same the message is very different that when men lose their virginity it's like the step into manhood and good for them and now they can start playing the field and all the other things we tell men where for women they've really lost something by the way charlie and i don't believe this so no absolutely not we don't believe any of that is true so but but there is this idea um that women have lost something sorry about that everyone i had a quick technical glitch so um but dr sue you were talking about this concept of women and losing right virginity yeah they have somehow given something that a they

have lost a piece of themselves now yes the hymen might break although it could have already broken a very long time ago um so there may be some changes structurally but there's this idea that she somehow lost a piece of herself but gave power and i think that's the part that bothers me the most first of all the idea that you lost something by having an experience like i'm trying to think of another time when we talk about someone having an experience and phrase it as a loss and what and the only thing I'm coming up with is a loss of innocence which is also tied to the purity part of what we're talking about yeah I mean when when you think about people doing something or doing something for the first time and most people never say never express this oh

I've I've lost this piece of me that's never done it before it's always like oh that was great or not great whatever it was but it's this is one of the few times where we talk about someone engaging in experience and losing something in the process i don't know if you want to say anything more about that before i move on but then it's also supposed to be magical yeah right so it's supposed to be meaningful and it's supposed to this loss is supposed to be meaningful and positive or you know some kind of um you're going to imprint on this fairy tale yeah and this will be like the most meaningful experience of your life but you've also lost something yeah that's two very different ideas and they can be very hard for people to

reconcile regardless of their age and then it's the piece of the gatekeeping that if they lost it that they allowed that to happen and when you take a look at people who are in their teens and early 20s like that's that's a lot to navigate and b puts a lot of pressure on her to kind of make like to be that gatekeeper and we don't teach her how to have a lot of times agency over her own body and autonomy and then we somehow hold her responsible when she she gave up a piece of herself and then we have the feelings that come after that you know maybe it was magical maybe it was great and for a lot of people that first time is just super awkward especially if it's both their first times yeah it's super awkward hopefully a lot of laughing not at people but

with people yeah um but it can it it can just create the sun like this very confusing was that is that how how it was supposed to happen and did i do something wrong this idea that i did something wrong and i've lost a part of myself yeah and so right now a lot of what we've talked about surrounding this concept and term of virginity has been vaginal penile sex but there is space for a lot of those feelings for uh for youth that may have their first sex play experience with someone of the same gender and and that pressure and the pressure that exists in those communities surrounding someone's first time right and that's and that's my other big thing about this is that i really hate when we all use a term and we never define it so i'm gonna

to drive my students nuts next week, although they won't have a warning, because this won't come out for a few weeks. I'm going to make them try and define what abstinence is, which is a term we use all the time. And we very, very rarely define, because it's not as simple as just say no. So they'll have to go through this whole thing. And I'll tell you how, how much they hate me by the end of it. But but we throw these terms around, we throw terms around like abstinence, we throw terms around like safe sex, and we're quite define it, we throw around terms like virginity and we don't define it and there's this assumption for most people that we're talking about a very heteronormative concept of virginity which i also just like anything that kind of

pushes that heteronormativity and so for people who do not engage in sex play with someone who has different body parts there may be a whole lot of confusion and they may not have language to kind of talk to a partner about what they want to do and what they don't want to do because especially if they're just learning how to do sex play all they've been taught is virginity and so they may not know how to negotiate that and and there may be a lot of fumbling and there may be a lot of laughing and hopefully they have a partner who's supportive but we we don't really define the term and then folks where it may never apply in the traditional sense may not kind of have an idea of how that impacts them right right and i think in those in those

circles as well you know depending on who kind of gravitates more towards the submissive role and who gravitates towards the initiator role there can be a lot of that same pressure that we were just talking about under the heteronormative umbrella right and then there's do we want to spend any more time because there's so many things that we we actually wondered if we were going to get a whole episode out of this and now i'm like wait there's a lo and behold um did you want to say anything else about that before i kind of hijack the conversation uh i do just over the whole concept a little bit ago you know taking losing all of those things what we what also what clicked in my mind when you were talking about that as well is how that starts to feed the

communication around sex again perpetually that's my word of this podcast everyone perpetual um but how that informs you know rape culture jokes and different things like that it all kind of in my mind starts to stem it stems from i think our attitudes and our um social expectations around sex and who's the gatekeeper and who gets to conquer it and and those kinds of things from somebody else right when you use when you use those words you know take and um and and protect or keep um i think yeah i think that really feeds into um victim shaming blaming and that that'll be another episode yeah so go ahead hijack away well after that thought well before we're doing that with this idea that all these things are linked i mean

anyone who's listened to the show also knows how much i hate the word body count and yet i still hear it all the time but this idea of body count starts with the idea that you like that this is some magical moment that we're supposed to memorize forever and be seared into our brain and that's when you start counting but but why like why why do we need to count like why why is this first time so important okay i need to back that up because the first time can be important the first time and how you're treated and how it goes and how you feel about yourself and how you feel about your partner all of that is meaningful but but it doesn't need to dictate the rest of your sex life and I feel like that's what we that's kind of the thing we're

putting out there that's the pressure we put on that first time air quote right and so we put a lot of pressure on men to know what they're doing and and for men when it's their first time they and may have a concept of how it works but the concept of how it works maybe watching it on porn and actually doing it can be very different experiences yeah um and so the whole thing may be there's just a lot of pressure put on that but i do think we can learn a lot i do i do want to walk that back no i'm just not right say i was wrong when i said it but it but the first time shouldn't be meaningful i think the first time can be incredibly important that people can learn a lot about their bodies and what they like and what they don't like I feel like people can

experience pleasure in a way they haven't experienced pleasure before I think they can unfortunately sometimes experience a partner who doesn't care about their pleasure um so I do think it can help build a script that if you had that maybe you have expectations oh we didn't talk about the expectations piece um but i i do think those experiences can be meaningful and can help start us to write our own narrative about how we think about sex but i don't think people need to like write it in their calendar that it happened that day and now i must count every partner i have from here on out it's that body count piece that kind of drives me nuts i i really can't think of things that people do maybe on a regular basis that they enjoy where they can say oh yes I

remember my first time I mean I've gone skydiving once I can absolutely tell you when that was right there was a very different expectation and like that date I could probably go and find pretty easily but there's so many things that we may do that we experience pleasure around and so many things that we do that impact how we view ourselves and our kind of how we view our sex lives but we don't we don't always remember that first time because it may not have been as meaningful as everyone made it out to be yeah a thing that popped in my mind as you were talking about that was that important is a broad term so important you know for a first time could be I want I want to feel confident that I'm not going to regret my first time

That could be important. Important could be feeling that romance or that connection. Important could be location. So important is a very umbrella term. I just wanted to throw that out there because I think sometimes when people hear important, they equate it with it needs to be romantic and special and all of those things. but important can encompass different expectations and hopes that aren't centered around a story book ending idea of your first time which is also really interesting because we also then tell women it's gonna hurt right to expect pain if they're having if they're having sex with someone who has a penis that it's going to be this painful thing but they're just gonna have to like experience it and then all would be better and it doesn't have to be painful it really shouldn't be painful so we set people up to i'm to let's look this is like the most ridiculous thing we know that i'm thinking about it like have this moment and it'll be deep and meaningful and you

should start counting everybody that you have this with and maybe this will be your human oh and by the way it's gonna hurt so just grin and bear it just grin and bear it but don't worry probably won't last that long. They probably won't last that long and it'll only hurt the first time. Right. Which is also not true. Right. So I feel like we should maybe talk about how to make the first time less painful. Yeah. You're okay with that. I feel like we were going to go somewhere different and I completely forgot. I was like, you were, you were about to hijack the conversation i don't know that you remember with what yay um candid conversations we'll have a part two and i already remember what i was saying um i i feel like it's so so we don't

really worry so much for pain if it's pain or vaginal intercourse we don't really worry so much for pain for boys um boys and men and boys and men if sex is hurting it's definitely something you should talk to your doctor about or health care provider about we you shouldn't no one should really be experiencing pain but it's it's not very common um for boys and men to experience pain during the course for girls women anyone who's got a vagina um the advice i would give you is to go slow go slow with your partner um maybe do some fingering beforehand i feel like sex toys might be a lot if you have never like if this is your first time but i don't know maybe you've been doing that on you know maybe that's your thing that's what i was gonna say there it

there it was hold on I gotta write this down um but if depending on what you've been doing um trying to stretch out the vagina a little bit is going to help and lube is going to be your friend lube is absolutely going to be your friend um if you're using condoms then make sure you're using a lube that's condom friendly not all leads are condom friendly I don't want to get super into the science but you also need a lube that's ph balanced for your vagina and most people have no idea that that's a thing yeah so I think I have an article on this somewhere maybe we'll throw a link in the description I think that'd be helpful yeah it's a lot of science don't even start me on the osmolality that's that's a whole nother um we're not we're not ready for that episode yet

no um so so take your time if you can I know there might be a very rushed like we need to get this done but take your time if you can try to stretch out the vaginal walls a little bit if you can definitely use some lube and have constant communication with your partner not like you have to talk your way through the whole thing no but check in constant check-ins regular check-ins how are we feeling they may be super uncomfortable like just just checking in with partner and making sure everything's okay and I don't think we've really talked about aftercare on this show and maybe that's something we need to do in the future but but in my mind and when I talk to people about their sex play it doesn't stop when the penetration stops that there should be some

kind of aftercare there should be a how is my partner what do i need what do they need um so just just kind of easing your way into it again stretching out the vaginal walls if you can um if you're engaging in anal sex regardless of your gender if you are on the receptive end of anal sex lube lube lube lots of different ph by the way for the lube and the anus and the vagina um again slow slow in communication um so so just making sure you've got that communication with your partner and hopefully they know it's your first time so they can kind of understand you're not ready for like wham bam all right full throttle yeah full throttle full penetration. Yeah. But just, yeah, that loop's going to save the day for a lot of people.

And it may be slightly uncomfortable afterwards, but if you're in a lot of pain and the pain maintains, please go see a healthcare provider. Yes. Yes. I don't have anything to add to that. No, I definitely win. I'm kidding. Yes. So the thing that I wanted to, the thing that I was going to go into and totally forgot. hijack the conversation again but this time i know where i'm going okay i gotta look at my notes the idea of what folks will do to maintain their quotes maintain their virginity especially straight folks yes so yeah yeah remember we yes let's talk about this the idea and and we have this so when i used to live in the washington dc area i was contacted

by some of the schools in the area that they were running into issues with um kids engaging in oral sex in like the stairwell which dude location um but oral sex and and when they were talking to the kids what mostly the girls were saying was that they were doing it so they were going down on these guys so they could maintain their virginity and no one had thought to have conversations with them about this because again this assumption that we have that when we're talking about virginity we're talking about vaginal anal no that's not the assumption usually sorry vaginal and penile intercourse um and so no one had talked to these relatively young kids about how they felt about this behavior depression they felt to engage in behavior how to do it

safely it was like this whoa we don't understand why this is happening and when the kids were like were trying to maintain their virginity like the schools just had no idea how to respond because it had never crossed their mind that we put all this pressure especially on young ladies to stay virgins but they're still getting pressure from their friends and their partners to engage in sex play so it's like oral sex seems like it's in the rules or it's allowed or it's not violating anything and this is this is the problem when we don't talk about it and we assume that we're having the same conversation when we're not or since we're old enough to remember this the presidential scandal where i did not have sexual relations with that woman

i know no one can see me shaking my head there's so much shaking in my hand going on right now but Right. So you have, you have it out there now in, in the social construct. And how I, I don't even know where to find if there was a study about the change in attitude, after that whole story, and then the jokes, and the late night, you know, the late night jokes, the sketches, all the things. and and we completely lost sight of power dynamic consent a young woman and and that experience and what happened there yeah because we got a punch line out of it as a society and it's funny because we we didn't I'm sure there was some research done on it and I'm not trying to say no to the people who done it but there was no really large-scale research on what we thought of is sex before that right we all assumed we had the same definition right right right and so then suddenly we're like wait wait do college students think that oral sex is sex and it differs every

year i can't give you an answer to that one um that's part of i know we've talked about when i make my students define sex and they get very frustrated um because for so many of them they just go back to that vaginal penile intercourse but then what is this thing is it a form of intimacy is it you know is it sex play and where does that fit and do you can you still be a virgin if you're engaging in oral sex with all these people and i'm suddenly i don't know if you remember the movie clerks there was a whole bit about yeah yeah there's a whole bit about this yes um if you haven't watched clerks go or go watch clerks uh but yeah there's there's there's this idea that that people will do things because this is so important for them to maintain and

preserve their virginity that they'll engage in all these other behaviors and oftentimes not safely and safe i mean sti safe and oftentimes without even knowing how to like say no to that pressure because their partner's saying well you know i want to do stuff i mean i love you i'm enjoying this let's do stuff and and they're like well i'm supposed to maintain my virginity so what else can you do and sometimes they're not ready to do those things sometimes they are sometimes they're not yeah um and then usually at this point in the conversation about what things people are willing to do without technically having sex is the concept of soaking tell us do we want to go you've had you and i have had conversations around this um so yes so let's let's dive in

oh you're welcome everyone for that do you want to explain do you want to explain it or should i i think i think you should because i'm still really proud about my pun and i'm just not going to be able to stop laughing um so this would come up i don't remember how it came up the first time um someone had asked me a question i did a post on it a million years ago and it was we were seeing this a lot in the community that goes to Brigham Young University at BYU and we were hearing these stories about essentially the man would put the tip of his penis sometimes his entire penis but sometimes just the tip of the penis or the entire penis into the vagina but they wouldn't move and so we've got penis inside vagina but because there's

no movement it didn't count as as as having sex and then we'd hear stories and honestly i don't i've heard enough stories that i want to believe it's true but maybe this whole thing is an urban legend but that there would be someone if they're laying on the bed or they're laying on a top bunk of a bunk bed someone would either jump on the bed or push up from underneath to move the couple but because the couple was not doing the movement it didn't count would you like to explain that face you just made that people can't see yeah so i i i did a little bit of a sigh listeners and just kind of like a hmm so if i have a video a game controller person a player one moving my bed i'm still fine yes

yeah and here i if you and listeners if you hear me laughing it's not laughing at the concept it is it is a little bit of disbelief because I didn't I didn't grow up under that pressure so it's disbelief it is not dismissiveness it is not this is ridiculous it is not this is stupid it is it is me learning new information right now and I'm glad you brought that up because when I first heard about it and I had to do some some reading up on it and some and I do some friends who are mormons so i did some talking and they didn't deny it they didn't they of course said they had never engaged in it um but they didn't necessarily deny that it existed but again we're talking about this like 15 pans at this point and and at first i was like huh okay like

this is happening and then i started having all the health educators sex educator thoughts um i'm assuming it was consensual though i'm not sure how much pressure there was so so we've got that issue um not concerned about alcohol and juice pressure because the mormon community so alcohol not a thing there guessing there's no condoms because if you have condoms i'm assuming that shows intent or that you will plant intent in planning that was good dr suit just be repetitive um i'm assuming and again these major hugest assumptions that the woman is not on a whole not all method of contraception so when there is exposure to both pre-cum and possible ejaculation we are looking at now risks

of stis and unintentional pregnancy and then how you explain that in that community as an unwed person i can only imagine the shame and the stigma but right but there's this part of me that just i think the thing that gets missed when we have these conversations is that this desire to be physically intimate this desire to connect with a partner is so strong but they are respecting their religion and they are respecting the tenets that they learned but just how powerful and neat that is yeah how visceral right yeah and and just how desperate some of these folks are to have this connection that it's it's incredibly frustrating to hear new stories because you can see that they they want that connection they want to be with these

partners they want to feel those things and they want to respect their religion and i absolutely understand why that why those two things are in conflict but we have to recognize that that conflict can be really overwhelming for them and the lengths they'll go through to to try to figure out how to navigate that right and and i think you know what happens post to, you know, there, there's a trust. I would imagine that there's a trust there, but if something adverse feels like a strong word, but if there is an outcome from engaging in that i believe anecdotally that the shame gets squarely shifted to the woman in that in that act i would tend to agree but again not being a scholar and not having to have

these conversations with my friends yeah exactly it was a little uncomfortable to be honest with you and hey if you're listening and you have more insight please contact us we have our contact information in the show description yeah contact and comment you know uh because we also want our listeners to engage respectfully uh with each other as well so there we we do invite comments and and conversations with you all in uh the comments on our episodes as well i think for some people who were afraid we weren't going to get a full episode out of it we did a doctor so yeah oh sorry and i'm sure we'll talk about this again i'm sure there'll be other words i hate and i'm sure we'll talk about this again okay so i think do you want to

take us out of here i think we already did kind of our wrap-up when we were talking about the safer ways and the things to keep in mind so sure sure um i before i i do or maybe this is part of the wrap-up um for any listener of any age who is considering their first time uh in in sex and sex play you know um go at your pace communicate uh and just try and have try and work to have um a clear expectation of yourself and um and what you what you anticipate you might need for your partner but go at your pace it it's absolutely okay and warranted and normal and if you change your mind you change your mind and that's fine too so i just i wanted to throw that out there. All right. Well, we did that. We did the thing. We did. Thank you everyone for

joining us on this episode of Unzipping Taboos, candid conversations about sex. We hope today's episode sparked new thoughts and will open up dialogues worth having. Remember your curiosity is the key to breaking down barriers and embracing a healthier understanding of sex and relationships. If you enjoyed the show, don't forget to subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone who might need to hear this. If you've got a question or a topic you want us to dive into, reach out to us via the link in the episode description. We do want to give a special shout out to our gal, Allie O'Brien, for her incredible

theme music. Thank you so much, Allie. And until next time, everyone, keep the conversation going, keep unzipping those taboos, and take care. I'll see you next time.