49. Break the taboo: sex, pleasure and shame
Listen & Subscribe on: Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Spotify
Surabhi Veitch discusses the topic of shame surrounding pleasure and sex. The shame people feel when discussing sex is not uncommon and is often a result of societal taboos and cultural upbringings. I share my own experiences growing up in an Indian household where the topic of sex was never discussed and how being shamed by one of my first boyfriends impacted me long-term.
Grab the replay of my Reclaim your Pleasure workshop for 90-minutes of breathwork, visualization, movement and re-writing sexual scripts so you can unleash the pleasure within you!
Key points:
The topic of sex and pleasure is still considered taboo and awkward in many households around the world.
The shame that people feel when talking about sex and pleasure is not uncommon and is often a result of upbringing and cultural values.
Many people struggle to comfortably use the proper names for body parts related to sex and pleasure.
The lack of open and appropriate education about sex and pleasure contributes to the shame and discomfort people feel.
The first step in dismantling shame around sex and pleasure is to educate ourselves and our children about the proper names for body parts and to talk about sex and pleasure openly.
Links & Resources:
Reclaim your Pleasure workshop replay: https://www.thepassionatephysio.ca/reclaim-your-pleasure-workshop
Need help managing pelvic floor symptoms? Book your virtual consultation: https://www.thepassionatephysio.ca/book-with-surabhi
Connect with Surabhi:
Website: https://www.thepassionatephysio.ca
-
Please note that the episode transcript starts after the intro and music at 00:01:16.
Why I have sexual shame
Surabhi: [00:00:00] Hey friends, and welcome back to another episode of Mom Strength. I'm your host, Surabhi Veitch, and today we're gonna get into the topic of shame, especially when it comes to pleasure and sex. And here is the thing. Sex. A topic that is awkward or taboo in so many households, still to this day around the world.
So the shame that you feel when we talk about sex or pleasure is not you. It's not uncommon. And so I wanna start with that. So in the past couple weeks, I've been talking more about pleasure and sex on my social media on Instagram, and I have an upcoming workshop on February 23rd. To reclaim your pleasure, we're gonna spend 60 minutes moving our bodies, breathing, feeling connected to ourselves, and I want you to join me.
So that workshop, it is live on Zoom and it's, there's gonna be a replay in case you can't make it live. Or if you wanna [00:01:00] watch it again afterwards and early bird registration is on now. I'm gonna share the link with you. You can go on my. www.thepassionatephysio.ca/ reclaim-your-pleasure-workshop/.
But the link will be attached to the show notes as well. So let's get into this. What, why, why is there such a taboo in 2023 about sex, about, um, our genitals, about our body parts? Let me share a story with. as I've been talking about, um, pleasure and sex the past few weeks. One of my patients, one of my clients, uh, this week said to me, she's like, you know what?
I was really surprised, but I had these feelings of shame come up, you know, as I'm seeing your posts and as I'm hearing you talk about it. And she's like, I was really surprised. And, you know, she's a mom of two kids and she was surprised that she had these feelings. And I'm like, you know what? You're not alone.
And I'm like, even for me, who works [00:02:00] with people works in pelvic health. Even for me, it is a more challenging topic to talk about openly, and the reason is, that's what I wanna share, talk a bit more about today is just my own history and my upbringing and how that has fostered a space of shame around this.
Around sex and pleasure and exploration of our sexualities. So I grew up in a Hindu, um, home in an Indian home in India. I moved to Canada when I was 10, but my parents didn't suddenly, , you know, change their values or change who they were. They're still Indian, they're still culturally the same. And so I was raised in a household where we literally never uttered the word sex.
And now I did a poll on my Instagram asking how many other people were in the same boat. And I think it was something like 80% were in the same boat, right? And that's people of all cultures, right? So we often assume, oh, it's cuz I'm brown. Oh it's cuz I'm, you know, whatever culture we're [00:03:00] so, you know, oppressed.
And, you know, it's only here. But with this topic in particular, everyone is oppressed. What? Whatever genitalia you have, you're likely. not as comfortable talking about sex as you need to be. Think about it this way. How many of us can say the word shoulder without even thinking about it? Shoulder, shoulder.
Shoulder. How about elbow? No problem. But then how about clitoris? How about penis? How about scrotum? How about vulva, vagina? All of these words are just other body parts, but yet, We don't talk about them openly. And you know, the first step to dismantling this shame is also within ourselves. Yes. But also in our kids.
You know, teaching your kids the right body parts to these, to their genitalia, just like you would teach them what their head and shoulders, knees, and toes are. Right. And so in my household, we just didn't talk about it, you know, didn't know the names, didn't know anything. and we knew what a penis was. I don't [00:04:00] even know what, I don't even think I knew what my body part was called other than just my privates.
Right. And I remember being so grateful for, um, sex ed in schools. And this is something that I know across the US as being like, dismantled or challenged, but , this is basic sex ed is important, and yes, there was a lot of room for improvement, right In the sex ed that I had back in God knows what year that was, 1998 maybe.
Um, 1999, I, I can't remember which year. There was a lot of room for improvement. Like I remember there was a condom and a banana and there was just talk about reproduction. There was no talk about pleasure. There was, I don't even think that the body parts were named appropriately or if they were, nobody knew.
We all just equated female body parts to vaginas and male body parts to penises, and the way we're describing female genitalia as [00:05:00] just vaginas. That's really just describing the part of our. That babies come out of, um, and the parts of our bodies that really. Are more for men's pleasure or people with penises pleasure.
Parts of our bodies that are more for our pleasure is our clitoris, so we don't even learn that. Or maybe we learn the term, but nobody really talks about it. Right? And so, despite me learning about it in school, I could never speak about it at home despite me learning about it in school. We, me and my girlfriends, we never talked about this, and I remember having my first boyfriend when I was 16 and we fooled around and you know, we went to third base. I love how we're using bases still, but, um, yeah, we, we went to third base, oral sex and I remember afterwards having another boyfriend and [00:06:00] telling him about it cuz we were asking about our own, you know, sexual histories.
And he was so, , um, ashamed or he was so disgusted that I would even do that. And like I felt slut shamed essentially. And by somebody who's like, also my age, probably at that time we were 16, 17, I can't remember. And he had grown up from a very, he wasn't Indian, he was white. He was, grew up in a very religious family as you know, like I did.
And, um, just kind of made me feel like a terrible human for even doing "that" Right. And I was thinking back then, like I, I didn't really feel that much shame at that point, even though it was a stigmatized topic and I couldn't talk about it at home. I still didn't feel ashamed. But then that. That did bring about a lot of shame and like I was doing something wrong and I was like, wait, like my culture is telling me I'm doing something wrong.
But I thought at least like Western culture and Canadian culture wouldn't judge me for this. But even Western culture is judging [00:07:00] me. Oh, like maybe this is wrong. And so bit by bit, I think I started to internalize that more and more. And then when I became full-blown adult and went off to university and whatnot.
Through dating and relationships I had, now I can look back and say that I don't think I've fully ever explored my sexuality and my um, desire. I felt, I always felt a bit of shame. I always hung onto that shame. And even our cultural societal messaging encourages that. Right. You know, men get high fives for talking about their conquests, and women just, we just don't talk about it.
Right. Or in very small circles can you actually talk about, openly talk about this openly and so. I think that anything you don't talk about is remains taboo. It remains mysterious. It remains problematic. And so I wanna talk about this today because. . I don't see a lot of Indian women talk about this.
I don't [00:08:00] see a lot of women period talk about this. And I know that if my patient was feeling shame, I know that she's not alone. Uh, a lot of the people that I polled, um, on my Instagram audience, you know, a lot of them said that. I asked them, I'm like, do you feel like you deserve pleasure? And a good portion, probably 75% said yes, and 25% said.
I'm still, you know, working through that, right? Like even just understanding that you are deserving of pleasure and pleasure doesn't have to be, sex, by the way, it can be something completely different. You know, pleasure is everybody experiences pleasure every day. Whether you feel the sun on your cheeks or you're putting lotion on, you know you have dry skin, you put lotion on.
Anything can be pleasurable, but are you. , do you even feel you're deserving of it? Right? I, for the longest time, I didn't think I felt that way, or I didn't think I've deserved pleasure because my culture had told me, you know, no, this isn't for you. Um, you know, relationships had kind of made [00:09:00] me feel ashamed for that, and that all of that is in my head, right?
Like during every, you know, sexual experience, you can't help but have all that messaging still kind of clog up your brain and then fast forward, having babies. And you know, most of us, or I, I don't wanna say most of us, but many of us had babies through sex and, but we just don't talk about it.
Right. And then we have babies and we're exhausted postpartum and we're sleep deprived and we're touched out and, you know, , it may not be a priority for many families postpartum, and that's okay too. And I wanna normalize that and normalize that if it is a big priority for you and your relationship and you wanna get back to it ASAP, great.
You know, ev, everything is fine. But I also just think that there's so many people postpartum who don't feel supported in their return back to sex. And this is something that I help my clients with. , they get told at six weeks, oh yeah, [00:10:00] my doctor said I can go back to exercise and sex. And what does that mean?
Right? What, what do we define as sex? Do we define that as, you know, penis in vagina sex? Because that's just one type of sex. And so, . When we don't have our own definitions, we might go by what society defines that. For us, in the cultural messaging of what sex is, it's penis in vagina sex, but you can define that to be whatever it is for you, whether it's toy, whether it's manual stimulation, oral stimulation anal, whatever it is for you, and the return back to sex doesn't have to be, oh, it's only considered "checkbox" I returned back if it's penis and vagina sex, right? It, it can be whatever it it needs to be for you. And let's consider that most people with vulvas orgasm through clitoral stimulation, not vaginal stimulation. Yes, you can stimulate the clitoris from inside the vagina because the, the bulbs of the clitoris [00:11:00] actually hug the vaginal walls.
But even outside that, it's direct clitoral stimulation orally, manually, with a toy that actually helps women experience, or people with vulvas experience pleasure. So why don't we count that as sex? Why is sex only, oh, whether we're able to have intercourse, right? So defining it for ourselves helps take that pressure off of, oh, you know, I'm not having a good sex life because I'm not doing X, Y, Z.
And it also helps take the pressure off for so many people who have pain with intercourse and pain with even arousal, especially if you have any vaginal or perineal tearing or scar tissue after an episiotomy or natural tearing, surgeries, stitches. You may have some scar tissue, um, still kind of restricting your muscular, some of the pelvic floor muscles, their contraction, and some of the pelvic floor muscles actually just [00:12:00] attach the clitoris.
So even arousal, when your clitoris gets engorged or erect, just like a penis would. , that might actually be painful for some people. So they're not gonna desire sex if it hurts or if it doesn't feel good, or if they're feeling body conscious postpartum or if they're feeling insecure for whatever reason.
Exhaustion, relationship changes, feeling resentful if their partner's not as supportive as they want. Mental health challenges, there's a lot of reasons for low desire, low libido, low arousal, postpartum, but. When we, again, going back to the definition of what sex is to you, when we use these heteronormative standards, it really doesn't benefit anybody, right?
And so I always say, you know what? You can have sex, you can do whatever doesn't hurt, and we can work towards your goals, whatever your goals may be. And a lot of the times it's releasing scar tissue, releasing tension that we hold in our pelvic floors, and [00:13:00] also strengthening the muscles that surround the pelvic floor.
It's, it's multifold, right? So in my workshop next month, what we're actually going to do is we're gonna practice breathing, expanding the pelvic floor, diaphragm, core, that whole canister connection. We're gonna practice bringing more blood flow into our clitoris, into our vulva, into our pelvic floor.
We're gonna practice releasing and unclenching tight muscles and tension. And we're also gonna practice moving our bodies and releasing our sensual, our sexual energies. Now this workshop is just as much for me as it is for you, right? And I'm sharing my own background, you know, with history of my history of shame and, um, the stuff that I've been unpacking over the past few years with therapy and with my own exploration.
It is an important part of. . It doesn't have to be an important part of you. First of all, if you're like, I am, you know, there are people who are asexual or they're just not interested in sex, and that's great, that's fine. You may explore [00:14:00] pleasure in other ways, but for many people who are sexual beings, your sexuality is a part of you.
Even if you're a mother. Mother, even if you are not represented on those billboards, on those Victoria secret catalogs, even if somebody who doesn't look like you is not represented. Sex still is for you. Pleasure is still for you. It still belongs to you. Your body still belongs to you. Your body is still desirable.
You still deserve pleasure. You still deserve to feel desired and unfortunately, we've been brainwashed is the easiest way or conditioned, you know, to believe that when you're young and you look youthful and you've got your red lipstick on. The push up bra and you know, not the leaky breasts and you know, well not the stretch marks, not the rolls.
When everything's tucked in, that's when you're sexual, right? That's what we are led to believe our entire lives. So even if logically we know that that's BS, some, you end up internalizing that messaging and it is hard to unpack. It takes [00:15:00] work to unpack that. Not thinking about it and just pushing those thoughts aside doesn't work.
You actually have to unpack that. You actually have to explore. And explore presence in your body, explore sexuality in your body, and, um, make it fun. I don't, don't make it another chore thing to do, but just even exploring pleasure in your body. So my next episode, My next solo episode is gonna be about four tips to improving your pleasure and your orgasm.
So stay tuned. Go sign up for my workshop next month. Early bird signups are on right now. I would love to have you, and I know a lot of you, 80% or you know, who said you felt shame or you weren't allowed to utter the word sex in your household. I know there's a lot of us and this workshop is especially for y'all and for me, and people who like me, who grew up feeling.
Um, shame around it, or guilt around it, or guilt even around their desires. Like, it was wrong. It's not wrong. It's a normal human need, [00:16:00] and you're allowed to be a human, just in case you forgot. So, um, whether you're single or you're partnered, Whatever your state is, your sexuality is first and foremost for you, not for your partner.
So once you can become more comfortable with yourself, it gets easier to then explore that with a partner or partners. And so I want you to take this time for yourself. Set aside an hour. Find a quiet space. Tune out your kids, your babies. Um, put your headphones in and come join me And a bunch of other folks who wanna feel empowered, um, and who want to reclaim and unleash their inner pleasure.
