‘We want to have fucking orgasms’

In a world where ‘sex sells’ it’s ironic that society is so afraid to talk freely about the subject.

It is almost unnatural to refer to sex without using a euphemism.

For instance, we have ‘the birds and the bees’ talk with our children, we call the act itself hanky panky, how’s yer father? sleeping with, getting laid and more recently Netflix and Chill, to name a few.

Society whispers and giggles about sex as if it’s a secret, it’s like this forbidden fruit that no one is talking about, yet everyone is eating.

So why is society so prudish about it?

I spoke to Jocelyn Silva; sex and intimacy coach, who delved deep into the origins of the stigma behind the S word.

Here’s what she had to say.

Hi Jocelyn, would you like to introduce yourself?

My name is Jocelyn; my pronouns are she/hers and I am a sex and intimacy coach.

Image courtesy of Jocelyn Silva.

Why is there so much stigma surrounding sex in society?

There has been decades and decades of individuals not receiving the proper sexual education that we deserve. Even though it's 2020 there is still a huge fear of talking about sex and sexuality with young people, or just in general within our society. Which is ironic because society emphasises sex so much; most popular movies are the romantic ones with hot sex scenes, and pornography is incredibly popular.

There is no real place that someone can find good sex education that is accurate, inclusive and representative of a large group of the population.

It's challenging, as you are discovering your own sexuality you don’t know what to believe and what not to believe.

Do you think Gen Z will educate themselves on sex education outside of academia as they do with black history for example?

100% I see it when people reach out to me, that is people doing their own research, there is a thirst for it. There are people that are ready to learn and understand more and have great sex because that is our end goal. We want to have fucking orgasms; we want to feel good in our bodies.

We want to enjoy this function that our bodies have that allow us to release and experience euphoria in a beautiful way.

It’s going to take a while for people to learn, it's not going to be an overnight thing.

But I think the more media that comes out geared towards having these difficult conversations and the more content creators that talk about these things the more people will learn and continue to grow and ask all the right questions, so they themselves can have very fruitful sex lives.

I did a survey with 21 teens to young adult’s (majority women), I found that 4.8% of the 21 had an LGBTQ+ inclusive experience and no one learnt about the difference between sex work and sex trafficking.

Do you have any comments on that?

[Frustratedly screams]

Yes, oh my God hearing that grinds my gears. To be honest, 4.8% sounds high for me, that's good considering we never get this education.

It's bullshit, it's absolute BULL. SHIT. In the US the vast majority of schools don't even teach you about sex, they teach you how to put a condom on a penis, and the rest is showing you these grotesque pictures of what will happen to you once you get an STD. They will show you syphilis, gonorrhoea, chlamydia and Aids, saying these are all the shitty things that are going to happen to you if you don't put on this condom.

So at least straight people get something, but if you're a queer person and you don't have sex with people that have penises what the fuck are you going to do? What kind of education or knowledge are you getting? You're getting nothing.

No one teaches you how to use a dental dam*, and the reason for that is because penis and vagina intercourse society sees as a reproductive act, as penis goes in the vagina so you can have a baby right?

There is no discussion around pleasure, and that is the biggest issue that I see with our society, there is a lot of shaming pleasure, and no one wants to talk about it. The only purpose of the clitoris is pleasure, so when you teach someone how to use a dental dam, you're literally teaching them how to give someone pleasure and that is so scary to our society that they avoid it. But it's totally fine for them to teach us how to put on a condom because that is reproducing.

The second thing you mentioned is learning about the difference between sex work and sex trafficking.

So, I have a master’s in social work. A master’s degree. Grad school. You would think by then people would get it together but they fucking don't.

I was in class and I was doing a presentation on sex work and the professor started skewing all my information, talking about human trafficking. I was like I'm not talking about human trafficking I'm talking about people who are willingly sex workers. People that work in strip clubs’ people that sell their bodies for sex as an actual business.

Yes, there are people that are getting trafficked to do that and that is horrible, but there are also people that are empowered by it, they say ‘I am a sex worker and I sell my body for money and that feels good for me.’

It's like saying there's a difference between a seamstress and someone that works in a sweatshop. Yes, there are people working in sweatshops that are being forced to work there that are being exploited but there are also people that make dresses for a living and that's their profession, and they love it. There's a difference.

No one ever talks about those differences because there's a lot of fear involved; ‘Oh, we don't want to empower sex workers too much because it's going to blur the lines between who's getting trafficked and who's actually doing it for a living’.

But at the same time, we are putting this blanket statement on sex workers as people that are doing something that is against their will, that they are disempowered and that's not accurate information.

Society isn't ready for us to realise that there are actual people out there that want to be sex workers and feel great about it.

Why? Because the emphasis is on pleasure because if they are a sex worker, they are not like baby-making machines, no they are pleasure making people. They are people that have sex with others to give them pleasure and pleasure is still a scary topic for the world to talk about.

I’ve had experience in high school where boys would ask girls if they ‘fingered’ themselves (masturbated), and if you did, they would be repulsed. Do you think the stigma behind female masturbation is instilled through the sex education system?

There is a huge lack of understanding of how the vagina and vulva* work. The most sensitive part of the vulva is the clitoris* and so even right now when you said, ‘do you finger yourself’, there are people that finger themselves but that's not where all the pleasure is. The pleasure is in the clitoris that lies outside of the vulva, and the sole purpose of the clitoris is to give you pleasure. So, there is already a huge misconception of how cis women masturbate because it's not accurate.

Cisgender* women's bodies have always been seen as something that is disgusting and weird. When it comes to periods there's this huge aversion that people have to it, like ‘oh my God that's so gross that you bleed out of your vagina’.

Yeah, we bleed out of our vagina so fucking what? It's actually really great for your skin and it's good for your body.

There's also the idea that you're not supposed to touch yourself because it is unnatural, that is also very much due to the education system because the education has so much emphasis on the penis. Put the condom on the penis, make sure that when you're having sex you don’t get anyone pregnant because people with vulvas and vaginas are not allowed to experience the same type as pleasure.

When in actuality looking at this from a biological standpoint the erogenous zone* that lies in a vulva owner is the clitoris which lies outside the body, and the erogenous zone of a penis owner is actually the prostate, the prostate has more nerves than the frenulum*, and that only has 2000-3000 nerve endings and the prostate has more. The clitoris has 5000-8000 nerve endings.

The prostate* is a huge erogenous zone that a lot of men don't like to access because it is seen as gay. There are just a lot of misconceptions and there is this clash between what is true for your body and what society deems as normal and abnormal.

People say men have needs, but the clitoris is a lot more sensitive and offers a stronger orgasm so biologically speaking women would be the ones that have the needs.

Do you think the lack of proper communication in sex education in schools has an effect on young people's sex lives?

One thousand percent. Sex is a microcosm of every experience a human has because whatever you do outside of the bedroom is going to affect you inside of the bedroom.

If you are a people pleaser, you're going to be a people pleaser in bed, if you don’t have boundaries, it's going to be hard for you to express boundaries inside the bedroom. If you don't know how to express your needs, you're not going to express your needs inside of the bedroom.

Whatever you do outside of the intimate space will affect how you act and how you engage with your partner inside of the intimate space, which is why it is so incredibly important.

It's so funny because when I work with my clients and we talk about things that are not related to sex and I think they probably think ‘why aren't we talking about sex?’ But we can't talk about sex if you haven't talked about your trauma, we can't talk about sex if you don't know how to set a healthy boundary, we can't talk about sex if you can't express your feelings.

These are all things that are necessary to have a great sex life. If you can't do that outside of the intimate space it's going to be incredibly challenging for you to really have fulfilling sex and intimate life.

Do you think sex education will change in the future?

I think that things have already started happening. I've always had very little faith in academia. Truth be told most of what I have learned was not in a classroom, most of what I've learned was through books, through working at an adult store and learning from my clients that way, through my own research through the workshops that I did. I would talk to people and ask them questions and try to understand where the disconnect between how your bodies work and how you actually feel about your body.

I think that in the future what will happen is there is going to be a bigger surge of people that are going to realise how important this information is, and people are going to start to get their information elsewhere. Like they are now from social media and books.

I'm also writing a book, so there's going to be a lot of people who will be pumping out information.

I do see more restrictions on pornography in the future and replacing that with proper sex education but again I don't think that is going to be coming from academia I think it will be coming from a grassroots place, and people taking that power into their own hands.

Find Jocelyn on Instagram, Tik Tok or her linktree.

*Dental Dam - Latex sheet used between mouth and vagina or anus during oral sex.

*Vulva – Outer part of the vagina

*Clitoris – Female sex organ

*Cisgender – A person whose identity and gender corresponds with their birth sex.

*Erogenous Zone – Body part sensitive to sexual stimulation.

*Frenulum – Connects the head to the body of the penis.

*Prostate – Gland of the male reproductive system located in between the penis and the bladder.