Episode 5 - The "Love" Boat: Just How Many People Are We Fitting In Here?

Conversations about sexuality, consent, and faith are often fraught with shame, yet they are crucial for personal dignity and agency. In this spicy episode, Joanne and Ricardo are joined by Diana Wark (Centre for Sexuality) and Jess Andrews (Campus United) to explore the impact of purity culture, hear diverse experiences, and emphasize the urgent need for healthy conversations around love, intimacy, and mutual respect, by:

• Exploring the roots and consequences of purity culture 
• Understanding how faith can shape our views on sexuality 
• Emphasizing the importance of consent and personal agency 
• Sharing diverse perspectives from professionals in the field 
• Advocating for a healthier narrative around relationships 
• Encouraging communities to foster loving, open dialogues 

The episode resonates with a strong message: whoever you are, you deserve love, dignity, and respect in all forms of intimacy.

Check us out at www.preparedtodrown.com

Continue the conversation over at our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/PreparedtoDrown

Chapters

• 0:01 Navigating Sex and Faith Ethically
• 9:51 Unpacking the Impact of Purity Culture
• 21:46 Challenging Control and Body Autonomy
• 32:38 Exploring Purity Culture and LGBTQ Experiences
• 39:47 Workplace Equality and Sexual Freedom
• 49:32 Embracing Diverse Sexualities in Christianity
• 1:01:32 Challenges of Older Adult Sexuality
• 1:15:14 Navigating Relationship Expectations and Ethics
• 1:27:35 Navigating Relationships and Sexual Boundaries
• 1:35:05 Redefining Intimacy and Relationships
• 1:39:09 Supporting Young Adults in Transition
• 1:48:47 Exploring Intimacy and Human Dignity

Transcript

Bill: 0:01

Hey there, folks. Before we dive into today's episode, a quick heads up. If you had asked me years ago whether or not I would have ever been responsible for a church podcast that had an explicit content warning, I would have told you you were nuts. But here we are tonight talking about some important things—sexual health, consent, dignity and bodily autonomy and these are all topics that deserve open and honest conversation, especially in the context of faith and life. But let's be real, this might not be the episode to blast on the car speakers during school pickup. Now I want to be clear that we do believe that conversations about our bodies and consent and ethical relationships should absolutely be had with children, because, let's be honest, many of us grew up hearing messages that framed sexuality in harmful ways. Maybe you were told that if you had sex before marriage, you'd be like a chewed up piece of gum or a trampled flower or a tape strip that's lost its stickiness. And those messages weren't just bad metaphors in their day. They were harmful and they taught us to see ourselves and others through the lens of shame rather than dignity. Now, all of that being said, the conversation to have with young children about sexuality and consent and agency over your body is probably not the conversation you're about to listen to on this podcast. So I want to be really clear. If you've got little ears nearby, now is a great time to let Bluey take the wheel for a bit, or maybe wait until you can get the kids put to bed first and then listen with your headphones on somewhere else. Now consider yourselves warned On with the show.

Bill: 1:38

Here's the deal, friends. We are talking about sex tonight, sort of. We're talking about what faith has to say about desire, relationships and all the weird, wonderful, messy ways we try to love each other. No purity rings, no shame, no bad 90s youth group analogies, just an honest conversation about what a healthy, life-giving sexual ethic could actually look like. There's a line in a church hymn that says you'll never walk on water if you're not prepared to drown. And let's be honest, when it comes to this particular topic, a lot of us are wondering whether or not we've just been thrown in the deep end with absolutely no flotation device in sight. We might not have all the answers, but I'm Bill Weaver and this is our spicy Valentine's prepared to drown deep dives into an expanse of faith. Welcome to our deep dive into sex and faith and why. How you love will never determine if you're worthy of love. And so here we are, on a warm February evening here in Calgary, alberta, in the basement of McDougall United Church, for our February Valentine's themed episode of Prepared to Drown. And I'm going to do something different this time than we've done in the past. I'm going to try to set a bit of context for this one, because my greatest fear is that we could run down some trails that I really don't want to run down tonight, if we can at all avoid it.

Bill: 2:57

So when I was a teenager, not that long ago, not that long ago, I was dating a girl, totally enamored with this girl. We, you know, we went to school, dances together and movies and concerts and we'd hold hands if her parents weren't around and all that kind of cute stuff. And I can remember our first kiss, and it was actually my first kiss ever. And I can also remember the next day when she came to school and broke up with me because she had talked with her youth pastor and had been reminded that she was supposed to be saving herself for Jesus and that she was wearing a ring that was a promised sort of purity. Whatever ring that all of the girls in their youth group had been wearing and it reflected a commitment to remain pure and chaste and all of this kind of stuff. So I found girls in my life before I found Jesus and I was not a big fan of Jesus and I was not a big fan of Jesus.

Bill: 4:25

So we're talking tonight about love and sexuality and relationships and intimacy and kind of that whole big, almost taboo. Grown up hearing certain messages about sex and relationships and maybe are still growing up hearing about sex and relationships and certain messages about it, and these would be messages that tell us things like desire is dangerous or that good people follow a very strict and specific kind of script as to how it is that we engage in love and intimacy and that if you deviate from that script in any way, then you're tarnishing your worth and potentially also going to hell in the process. So maybe we were taught that sex outside of marriage is a sin, or maybe we were taught that men are supposed to be dominant and women are supposed to be submissive. Maybe we were led to believe that sexuality is only meant for the young and that as you age, somehow your desire becomes less valid, and these messages come from what's often called purity culture.

Bill: 5:25

Purity culture, and when we talk about purity culture, we're referring to a belief system that was often rooted in conservative Christian teachings that framed sex as being something to be feared and controlled and restricted and policed, rather than something that we should be nurturing and celebrating and exploring and honoring. So purity culture tends to focus on abstinence before marriage and rigid gender roles and the idea that a person's worth, especially women's worth, can be tied to their sexual behavior and their reputation, and even just the optics of their lifestyles. The thing about purity culture is that it has shaped a lot of Christian teaching on sexuality and it uses rigid interpretations of scripture to reinforce very patriarchal control over women's bodies and erases the beauty and integrity and validity of 2SLGBTQ plus relationships. It erases positive body image and positive sexuality while aging and it erases all of the diverse expressions of love that we actually have in our world to partake of. And these messages don't just affect young people, and I want to be clear about that, because they have shaped and continue to shape how we view relationships and bodies and desire throughout the entirety of our lives, and for many, those teachings leave very deep wounds of shame and silence and fear fear of our own bodies, inability to talk about things like consent in safe spaces, talk about pleasure, even talk about sexuality and sexual health especially.

Bill: 7:05

I am learning as we age, and to be able to talk about things in ways that are honest and life-giving is something that is actually suppressed by purity culture, and so the reason why we are talking about it on our Churchy podcast is because at the heart of the gospel we don't find a God who's obsessed with shame and control or rigid rules about sexuality. Instead, we see a God who calls us into freedom and dignity and abundant life, and that's a life where our whole selves, including our bodies and our desires, are seen and known and loved. We're told that from the very beginning of our scriptures that we are made in the image of God, and that means that our capacity for love and intimacy and deep connection is not something to be feared or suppressed, but something that we are supposed to see as being woven into us by a creator that loves us and delights in who we are. So on tonight's podcast, we want to explore what it means to move beyond some of the limiting narratives that we have had in our faith and in our culture, especially purity culture narratives, and want to look at how we might be able to embrace a vision of intimacy and sexuality that is healthy and ethical and rooted in dignity and love and responsibility and joy, not as something to be ashamed of, but as something that is a sacred part of our humanity and a gift from God in all of its forms. Now, let's be honest. If I were to do a survey of all my partners, my ex-girlfriends, they'd be saying you're not the guy to be talking about this, the guy to be talking about this.

Bill: 8:51

So, in order for us to be able to explore this topic with some depth and integrity, we have two incredible guests that are here tonight to help us dive deep into this conversation. So at first I want to introduce, just to the right of Ricardo, diana Wark, who is a registered social worker and has been with the Center for Sexuality since 2007. She's got over 25 years of frontline experience. She's worked with diverse populations, including sexually exploited children and youth, sex workers, persons with disabilities, older adults, parents, natural supports and the LGBTQ2S plus community. She is a facilitator. She's committed to creating lively and transformative learning environments, both for communities and professionals. She brings extensive perspective and experience to this conversation, especially as it relates to systemic barriers that shape how individuals experience sexuality, relationships and dignity in the world today. So thank you, diana, for being here tonight, and I'm looking to you to keep it lively.

Diana: 9:48

I'm here for it.

Bill: 9:51

And then, on the end, next to Joanne, we've got Jess Andrews, who also has a rich and diverse background that spans nursing and outdoor education and pastoral ministry and psychotherapy and campus chaplaincy. She's worked as a nurse in Ghana and with the Little Red River Cree community in northern Alberta. She's spent 11 years in outdoor education. She's pastored a 2SLGBTQ plus affirming Christian church. Currently she splits her time between her role with Campus United, which is the United Church of Canada campus ministry at the University of Calgary and at Mount Royal University and her work as a certified Canadian counselor at Eckerd Psychology.

Bill: 10:23

Did I get all of that right? Absolutely. She's deeply passionate about guiding young adults through faith exploration and deconstruction and the search for spiritual and relational wholeness, and so, jess, we are really grateful that you have joined us here tonight as well. And with all of that in mind and with all of this topic in front of us, let's start by examining purity culture as it's shaped our understanding of sexuality. So I'm going to put it out to the entire panel, whoever wants to go first, because I have talked enough. How do you think purity culture has shaped the way we've been taught to think about sexuality, and what are the consequences of those teachings that you see in your life and your work today.

Joanne: 11:01

Okay, so first I have to tell you about my first kiss. That happened in the basement of a church during a sanctioned Valentine's Day party where the youth minister pastor planned a whole bunch of games where we were kissing each other through the kissing booth, blindfolded, all those things, so that purity culture was not alive in my church in the late 70s. I just got to say it is much more.

Bill: 11:33

But your church must have had a robust insurance policy.

Joanne: 11:38

I very highly doubt that. But the youth group that this was part of had kids from grade nine into college and the youth pastor decided because it got out of hand, okay, as you can imagine, people went into the Sunday school rooms and all over the place and all kinds of relationships started. But the next day he decided he needed to have a college group and a high school group because that was just beyond the pale. But honestly, that was before Anita Bryant and all her you know anti-gay messaging and stuff. The church was not so hung up on purity in the era when I grew up as it is now for sure. I just wanted to put that out there. That was my first kiss.

Ricardo: 12:25

Maybe Jesus was just better at teenage makeup than you were.

Bill: 12:29

I have no doubt Jesus was probably better at it.

Ricardo: 12:32

My first kiss was at my Catholic junior high dance. I seen John Debravo. We snuck out the gym behind the portables and I kissed a girl and I thought to myself yeah, I'm pretty gay. I was not good at this and this is not for me.

Bill: 12:54

I don't want to make our guests feel like they're required to share this story.

Joanne: 12:59

Yeah, let's get back to purity culture.

Jess: 13:02

Let's get back to that. I'm recovering from purity culture. I'm in my 40s, still recovering, and my first kiss we lived on a farm. But just being on a farm, it wasn't isolated enough so we had to, like, tromp through the deep snow, through the undergrowth, into the forest to be private enough for me to feel okay with having my first kiss. Wow, that's amazing.

Joanne: 13:27

No, church basement, sunday school room for you then no.

Jess: 13:31

People could have seen us.

Diana: 13:35

Well, that's so fascinating because, now I think back. I'm like I haven't thought about my first kiss for a very long time and I was a hot minute away from moving away from Ottawa to Calgary and I was in grade five and I was just on the sidewalk and it was a goodbye kiss. I'm like I can kiss this boy because he's never going to see me again and that set me on an interesting path. So again, no purity culture for me in the 70s either. So interesting, yeah, yeah.

Jess: 14:07

I did hear a quote. This is a quote from. I'm quoting because I did a sermon on purity culture a few years ago, so I'm like, ooh, in prep for this podcast, I'm going to review my sermon notes. So this is. Felicia Masonheimer said purity culture is the prosperity gospel for millennials. It's the if I perform, God will bless me. If I don't perform there's going to be a problem, right? Yeah, interesting.

Joanne: 14:30

Or if you don't perform, then God will bless you, but if you do perform, you're in trouble.

Jess: 14:37

Good clarification yeah.

Diana: 14:41

Well, because I don't remember hearing about purity culture until the 90s, so I'm not I don't know how deeply embedded it was in sort of religious communities and practices sort of in the 70s and 80s when I grew up, but certainly once I started working in my practice and started sort of hearing about this idea, it was quite fascinating. And I do work with older adults quite a lot and I think it's purity culture, but not from that perspective of promising to your dad or promising to God and your dad, which sometimes are one in the same in your mind when you're a young person that you know you won't do any of these. Whatever those things are, those bad things which I don't think people actually defined what those things were. But you do see the impact on people's relationships when they don't feel like they can show up wholly who they are because they've made a promise to someone outside of that intimate relationship. So it's quite fascinating. I'm very curious relationship.

Joanne: 15:48

So it's quite fascinating. I'm very curious that whole. I think I remember the Jonas Brothers put the ring on right and the purity culture and then one day it disappeared and people were wondering what happened. But the thing that was most to me distressing about the whole movement of purity culture, where these father-daughter like dances, where dad would take his daughter to a meal and a dance and then at the end she'd put on a purity ring so that she would save herself for her husband, so it was really, I think, really couched as as a lot of sort of sexual conversation is controlling female sexuality, controlling women's, you know, freedom to experience sexual relationships without some man overseeing it. And that, to me, was the most like to me. It's disturbing that you, you know, dad asks his daughter, when she's like 12 years old, to promise to be pure. It's just not, it's.

Bill: 16:51

It's so disturbing in terms of um, women's sexuality and women's sexual freedom, I think, purity culture really, and to even have any kind of agency in the choice right, um, or any kind of agency even in the conversation yeah, yeah, there's no power there.

Joanne: 17:07

It is interesting that young men also were, um, drawn into this as well, into the purity culture, because again it's it has this whole thing, like you said, it's like god, uh, doesn't like people who are not saving themselves for their, you know, the one that god has chosen. Because again, in this there's a god has chosen a person for you and your job is to find that person and mate, you know. And so it's all wrapped up in this and I remember, even in the 70s, when they did things like that, we talked about sex in a way you know it'd be say, like you know, talked about sex in a way you know it'd be say, like you know, having sex before marriage is like gum that you've chewed up and then you give it to someone else afterwards, like it was just all this shaming content about sex. That was really disturbing. I mean, in my sort of religious unraveling, the theology was a lot easier to let go of than the sexual mores, for sure, and that's weird.

Bill: 18:13

Do you know what I mean? That's weird.

Joanne: 18:16

That you can go oh yeah, god is a she or God is a they or all this stuff about God. But, oh man, sex before marriage, or that's that's something. Because there's a verse in the Bible that says it's better to marry than to burn Right. So in other words, like, if you have all this passion in you, get married, but otherwise don't get married. That's the apostle Paul said, cause he thought, oh man, you know, jesus, come back next Tuesday. Why get married? You know, why give yourself in marriage? We all love God. So, um man, it was like, and one of the things you know, when I was a kid was like oh man, I hope that I get married before Jesus comes again because I want to have sex. Do you know? Like this is weird, I'm just saying people, it's weird. Purity culture is weird and not healthy.

Ricardo: 19:06

Protestants have interesting approaches, like us in the Catholic Church. You know it was nothing. You couldn't really go to a man who made the conscious effort and decision to just live with pent-up sexual tension and ask him what do I do?

Jess: 19:20

Because I'm I did, I did. I'll tell you after.

Ricardo: 19:26

And the other problem is being a young boy and saying that to a priest could have also gone down a different path.

Diana: 19:32

You may not have been safe. There's a lot of issues that might have come out of that.

Ricardo: 19:35

But so I found that, like the whole concept of purity culture really, only I learned about it late in life when I started studying and learning about Protestant religions, because at home we never really talked about sex much at all and at church we never talked about sex at all ever, except for the fact that all of a sudden people were told to have children. And then you learn about what sex was in school. So I can understand, maybe, why the Protestant churches had to enforce this narrative, because there was family dynamics throughout the whole building. The ministers were married to the children and stuff like that, and their children were having these teenage epiphanies and behavioral….

Bill: 20:17

Well, apparently just go to Joanne's youth group yeah, yeah, yeah.

Joanne: 20:22

It was a different time.

Ricardo: 20:24

It was a different time, so it's interesting in that sense when I listen to everybody, when I listen to you, know but what you've gone through in that sense and what purity culture means to you, because it's. I mean, my first forays into learning about sex was like Red Shoe Diaries and the Hitchhiker on Showcase, and then you put the volume really low on Sunday to listen to Sue Johansson on the Sunday night section. Oh yeah.

Diana: 20:45

That's right, my hero. Otherwise it was. It's true.

Ricardo: 20:49

Yes, I was professed to say that, like especially me being a gay man throughout the 90s and even the early 2000s, there was next to nothing that I could reflect upon in terms of how to live a healthy gay life. Yeah, you know, because the only thing that we ever heard of was that if you're gay, you'll probably get AIDS at some point in time Right. Yeah, and it was very hard. And so forget purity culture. Like people are all telling me, like, oh you know, one day you'll find a wife.

Joanne: 21:22

Actually, my parents thought I was going to become a priest and that was when I came out, that was like oh well, we weren't expecting that there are no gay Catholic priests, just so you know. Zero.

Ricardo: 21:34

Zero. So how we learn about sex and how we learn about relationships, especially through the lens of religion, is really quite fascinating in that sense, because we almost ignore the fact that divorce still exists. Right, people get divorced in the church and people have to have their marriages annulled by the church they were married in in order to have some sort of pathway to salvation if they want to marry again and all that kind of stuff, and so there's also these aspects of relationships that are also very complicated.

Bill: 22:08

Well, and not only that, but we also we ignore in the church or at least pretend like we don't you know, recognize in the church that there's there's polyamory and there's consensual non-monogamy and you know there's there's so many other ways that we actually engage in intimate relationships that don't meet. That you know kind of structured. You know marriage fits all. You know kind of relationships approach that really kind of. You know that even like that I even remember growing up with um of sort of you know like you wait until you're married, um, but I will say um, as a like I never, I never had to encounter purity culture in my own you know kind of United church experience, cause, um, I was just lucky.

Bill: 23:04

but but you did encounter, like, I had a number of friends who went to other churches where again sort of this idea of like you gotta, you gotta wait for the right one and you like, there's sort of this overarching idea of again there's a way to behave in a way to be pure and righteous and and and and, you know, embrace your chosenness. But there was always sort of the, the, the teenage reality, the, you know. But there's a whole lot of other stuff you can do before you actually, you know hit that line.

Bill: 23:36

That can be, just, as you know, gratifying and, you know, like, still allow you to kind of work the room and conquest and do all this stuff that was just as degrading and miserable and unhealthy emotionally and physically at the same time, with no again, no open dialogue, no talk of safety, or you know, the dignity of the people you're doing this to, um, like none of that mattered. Right? You could. You could be the quintessential hunter while also still being 100. You know, halo glowing ready for jesus when it happens, right? So?

Joanne: 24:19

yeah, it's like the only definition of sex is heterosexual intercourse yeah.

Joanne: 24:23

Yeah, that's what sex is. Everything else is just, you know, up for grabs, and in a lot of purity culture places that happens. The other thing about purity culture is the after marriage sex as well, which is also controlling women's bodies, because a lot of these sort of bro ministers in the states are all talking about how great sex is. And sex, you know, in marriage is really important. It's so wonderful, but in that is also this. And wives, you can't say no to your husbands ever and you got to keep your body in shape so that you're desirable to your husband. And there's all this control over women's sexuality inside this. You know, because protestants never said sex was bad. I think even the puritans felt like sex was a, apart from the shakers, right, they didn't, they didn't have sex at all.

Joanne: 25:15

But um, there aren't many of them left anymore and that's why yeah, but but this whole idea of, particularly in religion, controlling women's sexuality inside and outside of marriage is so prominent in this purity culture and that is something that we need to resist as people of God who believe in healthy and open sexuality. I think it goes a step further.

Jess: 25:48

To me in my therapy practice, an area that I am most passionate about is self-trust and purity culture, and I don't think it was anyone's intention explicitly to disintegrate self-trust before it even got a chance to be built, but the inhibition of self-trust is just totally built into the narrative that's also intersecting with purity culture, and so there's just so many things that are wrong with that. There's so much work that is required to be done to recover self-trust, and it's very hard to live a healthy, fulfilled life when you don't have self-trust.

Joanne: 26:35

Explain more about self-trust in relation to sexuality. What would that look like?

Jess: 26:52

Well, who's the?

Diana: 26:53

authority over my body. Is it external? Is it internal? Am I allowed to listen to my body sensations? Do I shut them off? Do I stay in my head? Am I allowed to explore my body? Am I allowed to look at my body? Am I allowed to name my body parts? Yes, properly.

Diana: 27:02

Am I allowed to know the names of my body parts? Do I have the language? Can I advocate for myself? Can I have agency and ask questions and look for resources and all of those things that self-management, that self-agency, that self-esteem Is desire, sinful, right yeah.

Joanne: 27:22

Well and here this is something that I was raised with as well is that you know, with that whole, is better to marry than to burn? Is that you do burn and you can't trust yourself, do you know? So you, you have to put protections all over in your life to make sure that you don't, you know, go too far, for instance. So so that whole idea that you can't trust yourself because sex is like sexual desire is like an animal that you cannot control, so you have to have protection in place some way to make sure. And I mean, let's be honest, particularly with women, like babies happen and your whole life, uh, can be changed by pregnancy, whether you choose to go through with it or not. So there's always been this it's okay what men do, they can trust themselves and do whatever they want, but women really, in particular, have to be careful because the consequences are huge.

Diana: 28:22

And always negative the consequences are always negative. We never talk about the consequences of pleasure.

Joanne: 28:28

Yes, yes.

Diana: 28:29

What are the consequences of pleasure, sexual pleasure? It makes you feel good, it's a stress release. It connects you to a sense of self and a sense of being that only in that moment of intimacy with the self, being that only in that moment of intimacy with the self. And so demonizing masturbation, demonizing looking at your own body, demonizing pleasure or intimacy just with the self, let alone, you know, with a partner. First we annihilate young girls, even perception of themselves as whole alone. Right, You're only whole in relation with another. And I feel like that purity culture is sort of part of that is that you can only be with me in this space. And I have another question. I've always been super curious about this and now I have like an audience to ask.

Diana: 29:25

So this concept of babies being miracles and gifts. Yet the way pregnancies happen is sinful and ugly and controlled. I don't understand that. How do you have this gift that's created out of this ugliness? I don't understand.

Joanne: 29:45

It's only ugly if it happens outside of marriage.

Diana: 29:48

Oh, I see, Okay, gotcha. So that's the key to all this is that sex is a beautiful, wonderful thing.

Joanne: 29:56

I mean, my mother told me when I was a teenager, anything two consenting adults want to do is fine. Of course, that was only heterosexual consenting adults in her mind.

Diana: 30:05

And if you have, a ring on it, mind, and if you have a ring on it, yeah.

Joanne: 30:07

Yeah, and if you have a ring on it that was the key.

Diana: 30:11

Okay, thank you.

Joanne: 30:12

Once you get married. If a baby is conceived in a marriage, it's a beautiful thing, and sex in a marriage is a beautiful thing, even if it's still controlling. And women can't say no to their husbands because sex is a beautiful thing, but outside then there's some sin attached to it and some desire that's overwhelmed you, that you should have controlled.

Jess: 30:34

I mean historically. There's been other theological narratives, Like, if you look at the history of the conversation of same-sex marriage some of the more historical narratives are that sex should only be procreative. Right so and then like the celibacy of the Roman Catholic priests, you know you're closer to God if you're celibate that kind of thing, too.

Jess: 30:56

So there is. You know, I think in a lot of contemporary Christian culture, either under a more progressive or conservative umbrella, sex within marriage would be seen to be good. But it's not. You know, it's not. We're not that far away from historical narratives that have also belittled sex that wasn't procreative, even if it was within a marriage.

Diana: 31:23

Absolutely. And I, you know it makes me think, and especially even from, and men as well like getting impacted by those messages. Many, many years ago I was at a conference where some researchers were talking about men who grew up in very religious conservative homes and that they felt so bad about their bodies that they were actually causing harm to their body parts, to their genitals, and ending up in emergency rooms because they just wanted those sexual desires, sexual urges, to go away, maybe skewed in their minds but so deeply seated in their minds or rooted that any of those sexual desires meant they were dirty or bad or against God and really wanted no part of it. And I just think about how you know difficult that must be for young people to get those messages in those teenage years when you know your sexual awakening is happening within that puberty time and sort of figuring out who you are and what you like and what you don't like and the relationships you want to have. But sort of that tone is so challenging, right.

Jess: 32:38

The doctrine of total depravity has many, many tentacles. Oh sure does.

Ricardo: 32:43

Purity culture sure does.

Ricardo: 32:51

Purity culture from the perspective of the 2SLGBTQ community is interesting when it comes to the church, because the church, many churches would exercise and promote conversion therapy, which in and of itself is misogynistic, because then you're telling a man that if you have feelings and sexual desires towards another man, the only path towards your uh, freedom and your, your, your, the love of god, is through a woman, and you subject a woman to pleasing a man who's not sexually or or romantically, or even desired of this person.

Ricardo: 33:20

It's just forced into it. So the conversion therapy, while destructive to the male or the female, is also misogynistic in and of itself, right. And then you have some people who leave the church and say no, I'm gay, that's it, I'm done. And they leave the church and they enter into a culture that is inherently promiscuous in many ways, just given what they've gone through over the past number of decades or centuries. What they've gone through over the past number of decades or centuries, only in the past number of decades have we seen healthy gay relationships, some having children and A, b and C, but most of it was underground, with, you know, with the illegality and the police raids and so forth.

Ricardo: 34:03

But they enter into a culture where they're solely unprepared for that much sexual desire if that makes sense.

Ricardo: 34:08

People are hitting on them and all this kind of stuff. And in my personal experience it wasn't that traumatic for me in a sense because thank God for Sue Johansson. But the third level of shame in that sense, in the gay community especially, is the inherent and hugely huge problem with racism, sizism, ageism. I would say in my own personal experience that within the queer community a massive equity seeking group has the biggest problem with racism, sizism and ageism that exists outside of the community. If you aren't white, if you aren't skinny and fit, if you want a certain height or weight.

Diana: 34:50

And young.

Ricardo: 34:51

And young, then you are basically cast aside to just swim in the pool of ones that are like you, right, and you're not accepted in many, many ways.

Ricardo: 35:00

So this all stems from what you are shown as a child and even when you, if you were born or raised, religious or not, you are shown and depicted images on TVs of couples and of families that were either white or skinny or you know, you would even stress to find an able-bodied and disabled person having a healthy relationship in mainstream media and you struggle with. I can only imagine how that struggle exists without religion and how exacerbated it becomes when you tie in these concepts of shame and the horrific nature of premarital sex on a young adult even, and so it's scary how much damage control we sometimes have to do when people leave a church, leave a church, and what's even scarier is that the churches that drive these purity messages the hardest and I'll say the evangelical movements, especially the extreme right-wing churches are the ones that are growing, and so you have a large diaspora of young people who are just going to be super sexually frustrated when the time comes.

Jess: 36:31

Oh, speaking of that, there's a really interesting piece of research. So Linda K Klein wrote the book Pure and she's a scholar from evangelical church background on purity culture and its impact on people and she did a lot of like qualitative research, listening to stories and she had, you know, some really like profound comments, like it's like we were at war, like the, the panic attacks, the anxiety that she was witnessing these stories was like people coming back from war. But what? The piece that I found the most interesting was in recovering from purity culture she found in her research. They found that there was a very clear predictive difference in who is able to move on from purity culture more easily and who was less able to, and it was related to openness, to uncertainty and question asking.

Diana: 37:23

Critical thinking yeah.

Jess: 37:25

Yeah, that openness to changing your mind, questioning yeah, versus needing a really clear right wrong certainties, which is, you know, is quite tied into some of those, yeah, some of the religious movements that are going on today.

Diana: 37:44

Well, it goes back to that self-esteem piece, right, like if your self-esteem or your self-worth is not something that you have agency over, how do you have agency to critically think about anything or question things when people are sitting in positions of power and your mind is set to be told what to do and it makes sense of the world, when people are feeling out of control? And I wonder how much of that is? You know people needing to find some security, but how can we build security without taking away people's agency, without making people feel like you know thou shalt is the way or someone else will tell me what to do, so that I don't have to make any decisions, I don't have to actually decide? And again, thinking about ethical decision making, being in ethical relationships, how is that ethical if the power is imbalanced within that relationship and people don't feel like they can ask the questions they need to. Or you know, talk about boundaries and consent and what they want to do and don't want to do, and what they enjoy and what they like, and you know how they want to explore their relationships.

Diana: 39:00

So yeah, that's fascinating.

Bill: 39:02

Well, and so, funnily enough, what a segue.

Diana: 39:05

I love it. That's what they pay me the big bucks for.

Bill: 39:09

So you won't. You may not realize this, but I spend a lot of time agonizing over how it is that I can actually have questions for specific people on the panel, and sometimes it's easier than others. And it wasn't until what? 735, I think last night that I came up with a hey, I know what to ask the union thug about sex on our podcast tomorrow night. And get ready for this. It's like you read from the script.

Jess: 39:34

You ready for this.

Bill: 39:36

Workers' rights and sexual ethics might not seem connected at first. I worked on this, but both are about dignity agency and the right to be treated with respect. In your experience in labor movements, how have you seen power dynamics, whether in the workplaces, in workplaces or in relationships, shape people's ability to advocate for themselves, and what should faith communities and other agencies that are involved in this work learn from labor movements? About creating spaces where people can fully claim their worth?

Bill: 40:09

oh my god, and then I'll open it up to everybody else but I want to hear from the union thug first, if we're gonna, if we're gonna do the work of creating safe space to to kind of deconstruct these narratives and allow people to reclaim their whole selves.

Ricardo: 40:23

it feels like unions have been working on that, at at least in some aspects, and we still are in many ways, with easy provisions that everyone knows of, like maternity leave and the concept of a man staying home to look after the children while the woman advanced her career shortly after childbirth right. And so these things were hard fought, because I was just the other day looking at our collective agreements from one of the big horrible grocery stores in Calgary from the 60s and they still had male and female wage scales signed off on by the union to accept who were all men, yeah, right the leadership.

Ricardo: 41:01

And women got paid between 35 and 50 cents less an hour in the 60s and 70s than the men did. But then I think to myself you know, we have a long ways to go as well. So with the same big, horrible grocery that we're fighting with right now, we had a proposal and negotiations to provide feminine hygiene products and other washrooms free of charge, and they've still said no till today. Well, why would they? Because that means they lose the sale on the shelf right.

Diana: 41:29

But it doesn't work that way.

Ricardo: 41:33

Exactly right, exactly, it doesn't work that way. We all know what happens when people can't afford feminine hygiene products.

Diana: 41:40

How's the argument different for toilet paper Right, right, curious, good point.

Ricardo: 41:46

So the other thing that I so we take things to the next level. So we've achieved certain protections and provisions by virtue of human rights for people to be able to take equal parts of leaves in order to care for their families and their health. We look at people working now how to protect themselves and protect their dignity while they're at work, like feminine hygiene products, even stuff as simple as that, in order to protect women at work or people who have those issues, I should say. The third thing that I see as another venture now is and I find it interesting, even my own benefit plan, being a union employee that people complained to me that male enhancement drugs like Viagra, cialis or even similar drugs for females, they're not covered under plans. Right, they're not, and I have not found a single benefit plan that would cover Cialis or Viagra or stuff like that in order to promote a healthy sex life.

Ricardo: 42:52

Because, you know, happy workers are hard workers and you can slog away all day long. You know, and I always say like if you work at a meat plant, you spend all day cutting the ass. I kind of want to go home and do something a little more pleasant than that. I worked in a meat plant.

Diana: 43:07

That's an image that I'm going to be scouring out of my head later.

Ricardo: 43:12

My personal opinion. But if you have physiological issues in order to get an erection and have sexual pleasure, why can't the same be given to you if you have high blood pressure? Why can't it be treated in the same be given to you if you have high blood pressure, why can't it be treated in the same way? And so there is actually and I've asked the question and there is actually a resistance to it. People think that people might abuse it for some reason. I don't know. How do you quantify?

Diana: 43:44

Don't overuse the Viagra. It is very bad. No, but like, yeah, you're right.

Ricardo: 43:50

That should all. That should all you know. You take your antibiotics with food, right? Pharmacists can just tell you that Don't overuse the Viagra.

Diana: 43:57

Exactly, totally, if you're not having sex every day.

Ricardo: 44:00

Don't take a Viagra pill every day.

Joanne: 44:07

That's right, it's not the best thing to have. Don't take your dad's medication.

Ricardo: 44:09

That's another union issue If the cucumbers are setting you off, don't take them.

Joanne: 44:12

Vegetables.

Ricardo: 44:17

So that's in terms of what we fight for, because these things obviously don't exist or even are on the table for conversation in non-unionized or non-progressive workplaces. And you often think about people who need time off and leave, and you know, I want to link this also to cases of depression and anxiety as well. Right, those who have trouble finding love, intimacy and relationships and sex, um, newly divorced people, separated people who all of a sudden had a lifeline from from a stable partner to having to relearn how to date all over again right.

Diana: 45:03

Or people in the disability community who actually are not given permission to have relationships or be sexual in any way, shape or form, and people actively blocking them having friendships, not even sexual relationships, but friendships that might turn into something right. And so we see that too right. And for older adults as well. If people are living in care facilities or homes where there's more institutional care, that's a whole other can of worms. People are not open or willing or able and there's no policies and procedures around it. So, yeah, that ethical framework is such an important thing to think about.

Ricardo: 45:54

It boils down to who's creating the policy and having the conversation at the trustees' level when it comes to benefit plan administration and workplace accommodations. When it comes to benefit plan administration and workplace accommodations.

Joanne: 46:10

It's interesting one of my talking about disabilities.

Joanne: 46:17

One of my you know I was a very naive person and one of my sort of eye-opening about how pervasive sexuality is and how important it is was working at what was then the Baker Center, before they tore it down and they made group homes there in the banks of the Bow River, is it there? And I worked in the adult unit and there was a boy and a girl there who could not stay away from each other and neither one of them. Okay, if you're in the Baker Center, you don't have speech, right, you don't have speech. Lots of them are in diapers. Do you know what I mean? Like those are the most severely developmentally delayed people you have.

Joanne: 46:56

That's the unit I was working on. They would not stay away from each other and the staff was afraid that she was going to get pregnant and they went to the mother and said we need to put your daughter on the pill and the mother refused to believe that her sweet little girl would do anything like that. Do you know? And I'm like they can't read a book, but they know how to have sex. Like that was amazing. And then the other thing was that they at that time and this was the early eighties. They, um were, you know, teaching their clients how to masturbate so that they could get rid of their sexual frustration. And I remember walking into one of the client's rooms one day and he was in the middle of it and I'm just like, oh boy, that's way more.

Joanne: 47:39

Yeah, that's way more information than I wanted here right now and shutting the door. But how important even at that level, it wasn't. The importance was not you need to be in a relationship with someone and have a loving, caring relationship, it was. You need to be able to, at whatever stage of sort of developmental capacity that you have to be able to express yourself sexually Like that's so important to being human. That's where I that was like the lights on for me was working there, yeah for sure.

Diana: 48:19

Yeah, I supported a gentleman many years ago and he was a middle-aged man at the time but his sister was his guardian and he had a catheter. But he wanted to be able to masturbate and so he wanted to have the catheter removed for a 24-hour period once a week. And I thought, oh, that's great. I mean I can't take the catheter out, but how can I help you? But it was his sister who refused because she was his guardian and it's very hard to fight those guardianship acts and those orders. But she technically had control over his health care and she was more worried about asking the home care nurse to do that because that was a burden for her. I'm like, no, no, dear, that's what she gets paid for, that's her job, she doesn't care, you just tell her what you want and she'll do it. That's part of her work, it's not an extra thing, right, but she would not have any of it.

Diana: 49:32

And this poor gentleman cried and all I could do was just sit with him and, you know, try to talk about some other ways for him to find some sexual, you know, self-satisfaction for himself, for his own quality of life. And that's what made me so sad was, you know, his quality of life was so diminished by not being able to do this for himself, like that's all he wanted, right and it's. And again, for me it was about how do I, how do I try to be as gracious as I can be to this sister who's trying to, you know in her mind do the right thing for her brother, that don't have freedom to choose and don't have spaces to have that control over their bodies, and how we don't give voice to folks who are really, really marginalized and removed from sort of the public eye.

Jess: 50:38

Yeah, and then the narrative that is floating around right now is you know, the church is the villain, Like, the church is the one that is promoting this dangerous narrative. But you know, we could choose to promote a different narrative.

Diana: 50:53

Totally.

Jess: 50:54

Like Jesus is like well, you've heard it said that, but I say this Like Jesus gives us permission to innovate and put human flourishing as the lens through which we make decisions in particular contexts.

Joanne: 51:12

yes, that is so important. It goes back to this sort of idea of dignity and human dignity and choice and all those things that unions advocate for and that should also be in sexuality, because, um, this idea that it used to be, um, there were things that were wrong and that you did that were wrong like axed right. Like you can't, you have to have sex in the missionary position, any of that other stuff is bad, right, um, but what, uh? And you can see this alive still in conservative churches when they deal with the queer community because they'll say it's all. I know you're born gay, now we all get that. It's just acting on that. Like it's actually the sex act that's wrong, not the being gay now, which is crazy to me. You know, it's just like you ask any heterosexual, I know you're heterosexual, but you can't have sex. Like would we ever do that? Like you know.

Diana: 52:06

Well, just to clarify, there's no such thing as gay sex.

Joanne: 52:08

No, let's just be clear.

Diana: 52:12

And it's interesting because also, if you look at the statistics, heterosexual couples actually have more penis and anus sex than gay men couples. There's all kinds of gay men couples that actually don't engage in that type of sexual activity and aren't interested in that and don't do that, and then there's all sorts of heterosexual couples that do. And to sort of think about this purity culture as well and what was coming up in high schools maybe 10, 15 years ago, what we started to hear and again going on that purity culture thing was girls specifically, because virginity is a label that girls wear and it's a construct that we have. It's not a real thing, but their idea of protecting or maintaining their virginity meant that their first sexual experiences were with anal sex, which of course takes a whole lot of other, you know, protection, lubrication, navigation, negotiation, consent, people being under control of what they're doing, like. There's other things to take into consideration with that than penis and vagina sex, to sort of protect this construct of virginity, which also controls women's bodies, right.

Joanne: 53:53

Yeah, and I think this dovetails nicely with what Jess was saying, in that the other narrative that we as Christian people should be promoting are relationships where conversation happens, where boundaries are set between couples, where you engage in activities with moral clarity and not, you know, god tells me, but moral clarity in terms of what you're comfortable with and what you aren't comfortable with. And we as a Christian community should promote the idea of wholehearted living and human flourishing at the center of our sexuality, like we try to do in terms of our justice issues and everything else, because if you hive that off, you can never be whole, like you can never be a whole person if your sexuality isn't at least addressed in your life in some way. And not to say there aren't people who are asexual, because I wrote a paper on that too. When I start looking at the papers I wrote in seminary, I'm like they must have thought I was obsessed with sex, but anyway there's a problem with that?

Joanne: 54:55

Oh yeah, like I wrote this kinky Christian sex paper and I wrote, you know, this asexuality paper and the ethics of Soleil and whatever. Anyways, it doesn't matter but the asexuality. So what they say is like the only relationship that can be celebrated is a union, like a romantic union, right? So people who identify as asexual, they're not really interested in sexual relationships but they're still interested in deep and personal and life-giving relationships and their hope is that they can be celebrated as much as a romantic relationship. Right, that we need to celebrate in our culture other relationships that are deep and meaningful and not sexual as much as we celebrate this kind of romantic pairing that our culture just forces us into and we as Christian people. That's the narrative that should drive our conversation about sex, not specific acts that we can or cannot do or sin identities that get attached to those particular acts, like she's an adulterer and he's, you know, um too promiscuous.

Joanne: 56:07

all those things that we attach because of people's sexual acts instead of what we should attach is um. Are you living your life um wholeheartedly and with intention and integrity, and are your partners um in conversation with you about what that looks like in your intimate relationships, whether they're sexual or not?

Jess: 56:32

Yeah, and I think romantic relationships can be not sexually active, and I'm using a limited definition of sexually active as genitalia involving sexually active, because sexually active doesn't need to even involve no, involve the nether regions, no no and you know, and there's all kinds of situations where that could be the case.

Jess: 56:57

It could be a case in um, a post uh prostatectomy situation. Yeah, absolutely Earlier in the podcast, bill, you said it's not one size fits all, it's not one model fits all. It's a posture as a Christian of taking seriously the power of the Holy Spirit to provide guidance and wisdom and the ability to think on our feet and not be lazy. The more rules we have, the lazier we are.

Ricardo: 57:38

Interestingly, there's a lot of relationships out there where there's just a side culture, where they don't have penis, vagina or penetrative sex, it's just mutual pleasure through oral or masturbation and they live healthy lives. But this concept of asexuality, joanne, is striking to me because we also live in a culture and within the church especially that when you are older, much older, and you have been in a long and healthy relationship or marriage of decades long and you are widowed, that you are just then supposed to be asexual and never do anything again.

Ricardo: 58:16

And there's almost a no, there's not, almost. There is a counterculture or a shame around even an older man or a woman or person who starts dating again and being sexual in their late years. And how this couples with the questions you asked is that we have people now in society, especially in the affordability crisis we live in, who are working well into their 70s and not choosing to retire because the pension statement doesn't provide for what they need, but they also want to have sex.

Bill: 58:47

Well, not only that, but you have a generation of boomers that have medical marvels for health care. I think it might have been Oprah, and I'm ashamed to even say it that it was probably on Oprah she's a national treasure. Whose nation?

Joanne: 59:02

I mean international treasure. She's an international treasure.

Diana: 59:06

Except for JJ.

Bill: 59:09

But I believe she had a guest on who.

Bill: 59:12

The entire premise of the show was that 60 is the new 40, right and this idea that, with just the rise of medical care and again, that people are working longer and more physically active and not able to, like, kind of retire, sit down and wait for death, which was kind of which seems to still be the expectation when it happens that, like the robust seniors that are still quite virile and interested and moving and able, and at the same time can't find a doctor that they want to talk about it with or even to go and hear from the pharmacist you know, don't take the Viagra every day would be a horrific conversation to even consider having be a horrific conversation to even consider having. So it's this idea of, like, I'm still a. I'm still a fully functioning, eager, desirous human being with no resources, no clarity, no openness and my you know my, my life partner has died, I'm a widow and you know, Daisy Mae three doors down is pretty smoking hot for a 70 year old right.

Diana: 1:00:29

We actually do have a syphilis outbreak in a long-term care facility here in Calgary.

Joanne: 1:00:33

It's it's real.

Diana: 1:00:35

Oh, absolutely.

Joanne: 1:00:36

I did hear that the sexually transmitted STBIs are at senior centers. That's the fastest growing population. For that, yeah.

Bill: 1:00:45

So this feels like as good a place as any for us to take a time out and refresh our drinks and come back for the rest of the conversation, so we'll going to direct this question to Diana first. All right, and we are back from our intermission and ready to keep the conversation going. I'm going to direct this question to Diana first and then we can expand from there.

Bill: 1:01:32

But certainly your experience lends a great deal of expertise to this one. Across many different communities in society. There's the LGBTQ community, polyamorous partnerships, sex workers, older adults kind of the whole gamut. There's a lot of deep-rooted societal and systemic barriers that make it difficult for people to express their sexuality with dignity and safety, and we had started, right before the information to kind of key in, especially on older adults and some of the barriers that they face. So, based on your experience, what do you think are some of the most common challenges that people are facing when they seek to live out their sexual and relational lives, and how can we all, but especially faith communities, work to advocate to dismantle some of these barriers in effective ways?

Diana: 1:02:21

It's such a good question, it's so big, and I think part of it is not having safe spaces to have conversations around relationships and wanting or needing connection with people. And so I think when we're adults, and especially older adults, what I hear is about loneliness and disconnection and that their attempts at connection are either met with childish giggles and oh isn't that sweet and people sort of dismissing their attempts at connection and their attempts at romance and sort of having new intimate relationships, or it's met with disgust. Why would you want to do that? Or I don't understand. You know why that would be important to you now, or that's not something for you, or it doesn't belong for you.

Diana: 1:03:15

And then what we see for the 2SLGBTQ older adults is discrimination and overt violence in places where they live, so people being afraid to get on elevators with their neighbors because of homophobia and transphobia. That happens in public spaces with no control and no safety net for them. So it makes it very difficult for people to even explore their sexuality later in life. And we see more older adults coming out later in life with the loss of a spouse. So they did subscribe to a traditional heterosexual relationship. They had a family, they had their children. They did the things that they felt that they were supposed to do or believed that was the path for them. And then a spouse dies, a divorce happens, whatever things in life, and then they decide that now's the time for me to come out. And then they lose their family, they lose their children, and so their social networks get very small and it gets even harder to feel connection and feel supported and secure in your life. And that's when people make sometimes really uninformed decisions, even around their sexual health, and engage in activities that can cause some harm for them or for partners, because they don't know who to ask or they don't feel safe to talk to people about it. So it's I think it's just so important for any spaces where older adults are that there's room to have conversations about the importance of connection, that loneliness is lethal. We know that, especially for older adults, that health and social determinants of health decline so quickly when people are experiencing loneliness.

Diana: 1:05:13

And if we deny people access to their sexuality, to their desire for intimacy, whether it's physical intimacy or not. It's really about how do we create a space where people can get their questions answered? Do we create a space where people can get their questions answered. If people got married in the 60s, they talked about venereal disease, right, and maybe family planning-ish, but again, birth control wasn't legalized until 69, right? So that might not have even been a part of their, of the conversations that people were having. And so how are we having nuanced conversations with older adults now about condom use, about getting tested for stis, how to access those resources, how to talk to their care providers, how to talk to their doctors or whatever health care professional is in their lives, so that they can explore safely and that they don't have to feel shame around their bodies and the relationships that they want?

Diana: 1:06:13

And as we age, our identities also intersect around disabilities.

Diana: 1:06:19

So aging bodies and disabilities and sort of it collides with all of this infantilization of older adults and people with disabilities and we lump people into these categories of being asexual or having your sexuality denied because of institutional care or because of, you know, guardianship orders and acts and our systems and our policies and procedures don't give the professionals in these spaces also a permission or a roadmap to even have these conversations.

Diana: 1:06:55

And so, unless you're a super sort of sex positive social worker in one of these spaces or a nurse or some other administrator in those spaces, chances are nobody's having those conversations with. I think is super problematic and when you think about Alzheimer's and dementias and people's capacity to consent goes away but also sexual desire and drives might increase for all kinds of reasons. So then, how are we managing sexualized behaviors? And how are we talking about that person's partner who doesn't have dementia and who isn't institutionalized and whose husband or wife doesn't recognize them anymore and they've started a new friendship, a new relationship in care? Or the spouse that's left in community has found comfort and connection to another person in community and feels like there's being, you know cheating, or you know.

Bill: 1:07:59

Infidelity.

Diana: 1:08:00

Absolutely right and so I think it's such a. Humans are complex, obviously, and I think this topic is super nuanced, but and I think that the reason why it's shame Right and most of us carry it, and I've worked a long time trying not to- have it and I said there's still every once in a while is a little ping oh, there it is, I see you.

Diana: 1:08:24

There's still every once in a while, this little ping oh there it is, I see you. And so I think you know having safe spaces to have that conversation is so unique and this podcast feels like such a unique opportunity to really encourage people to find their people, find someone that they can talk to honestly about how they're experiencing their sexuality into their older ages, and it's just such a an important piece of um. I just think overall health and wellness that we have to talk about it more. I don't even know if I answered that question. I rambled that question. I rambled.

Ricardo: 1:09:05

No, I think it's interesting to say that people are drawn to A heteronormative relationships and B monogamous relationships.

Diana: 1:09:15

Absolutely.

Ricardo: 1:09:16

And that if somebody has a life event of a spouse or a partner passing away or a divorce or separation, a natural mindset is, one after the other rather than at the same time, and only now in recent years in society have we seen healthy, same sex or different genders or multiple gender relationships.

Ricardo: 1:09:41

I can think to myself seeing gay love or gay kiss scenes and people are like oh, you know what I'm saying. And then the TV show Modern Family came out, and not only was it a healthy, same-sex, same-gender couple who had adopted a child and were I don't know if they were married or not, but it was also different sizes, different ages. And it showed that aspect.

Diana: 1:10:08

And the same relationship problems. That's everybody.

Ricardo: 1:10:12

Right. And then you showed a older person and a younger person together and he adopted her child from a previous relationship. It was groundbreaking. In my mind, it was a really funny show. It was a really well-written funny show, but in my mind, what I thought to myself every time I watched it people are watching this groundbreaking television show about modern relationships in 2021 or whatever, and they haven't blinked. Life has gone on perfectly unhinged and unharmed, but, god forbid, a trans person on the street wants to go into the washroom to use the facilities and they become unhinged. And so it draws two connections A it's theory versus practice in many ways right.

Ricardo: 1:11:05

What you see on the screen is not necessarily what you're comfortable with observing and experiencing in real life, but we need to push those boundaries in the forms that people and the places that people are are drawn to the most when they are the least guarded, like watching television or having dinner or something like that. Right? So that's, that's the key to opening up people's senses around different forms of relationships. I was in a relation. I was in a relationship. I was dating somebody who was polyamorous and we were dating. It was nothing.

Ricardo: 1:11:40

It was very foreign to me being partner number three and I will say it didn't bother me in the slightest. And I, you know, I brought them to one of my concerts and I introduced them to my sister and I was like, oh, I'm telling them, I'm telling my sister all about them, and my sister says, good luck explaining that to mom and you think, to yourself. There is that generational, the generational mindset that we have to overcome. But, like I want to know where in society, because these polyamorous and ethically non-monogamous and monogamous relationships existed even in the times of Jesus, where did we become so boring?

Joanne: 1:12:28

Well, more than one wife, Right, more than one wife was acceptable.

Ricardo: 1:12:33

More than one wife is still acceptable in many countries outside of North America. Yeah Right.

Joanne: 1:12:37

Well, I mean Paul said you should be the husband of one wife if you're going to lead in the church. So that idea comes into the Christian scriptures for sure. But yeah, there was more than one wife for sure.

Joanne: 1:12:49

Yeah, I read some text in the early church that even same-sex marriage and same-sex couples were quite normal in early Christianity, oh man, if there's some text in the early church that even same-sex marriage and same-sex couples were quite normal in early Christianity, oh man, if you look at the one who Jesus loved was likely a man, there's lots of people who think that Jesus was gay.

Bill: 1:13:05

The beloved disciple, the beloved disciple.

Joanne: 1:13:07

They called him the one who Jesus loved. Yep Right. Never named, never identified outside of David and Jonathan fell on the ground and kissed each other. Absolutely Like what was happening there. It's there in the text, it's just, you know, it's just hidden in a way.

Ricardo: 1:13:28

I remember seeing Dan here Listen, I used to when I first not when I first came out, really, when I was first sort of in the community because I came out I went through the whole bar star phase and then I tried giving back and so I joined Calgary Outlink and I trained for them a lot and you know a lot of issues in same sex and queer relationships was coming up and so I listened to a lot of Dan Savage and.

Ricardo: 1:13:49

Dan Savage had said, like if you were in a relationship with a person for 30 or 40 years, it's actually healthy that they slept with somebody else just once or twice in 30 years. They experienced it and they got it out of their system. Like you should be happy that they weren't just living in misery. But the problem lies in the sense that you shame them into believing that what they've done is wrong, rather than communicating with your partner on what is? What are they seeking and what?

Ricardo: 1:14:20

what do they need to become a happier more sexual person and be happier in the relationship. So I like the concept and I read this article on men's health is fantastic for sexual relationships, by the way um it's like is monogamish yeah, yeah or is a monogamish relationship for you where you're just like you know you're with one person physically, psychologically, emotionally, spiritually, a, b and c, d, but maybe just 80 sexually, and you have communication that you know?

Joanne: 1:14:52

what happens in vegas stays in vegas is that yeah I, when I uh counsel couples who are getting married, um, I always say, uh, fidelity is a gift right that you give somebody if that's what they um want from you.

Joanne: 1:15:14

It's not a requirement in a marriage, do you know? But you should have the conversation, is what I always say to them and to me. That's the problem with you know, affairs or 80% ish is that if you haven't had the conversation with your partner that this is what you want, then that's a violation of um, some kind of you know, I'm not a covenant. It's a violation of a covenant that that you're you've made with your partner that they have certain expectations of fidelity. That's why it's important to say even before you get married, like what are your expectations around fidelity? Really important conversation to have.

Joanne: 1:15:54

It is in our culture it's like expected that fidelity is part of a marriage relationship and I think for good reason sometimes, because used to be I mean polyamory and stuff is way uh more out there than it, than it used to be. But open relationship is what they used to call them right, open relationships and um, I remember talking to a minister once about open relationships what's wrong with open relationships? And him him saying you know in the studies that he's done, that one partner wants it more than another. So then it becomes, um, almost forced If you want to keep me, then you have to allow me to be open sexually, right. And then you find those couples where it's like, okay, we'll do that. But then when the other partner becomes open to that is where the problem comes right. You know, wait, I wanted to be on, but I didn't want you to be again.

Joanne: 1:16:50

This is ownership kind of thing. Whole bro code too. Do you know what I used to talk to my kids? And they'd be like I can't date her because she used to date him. And I say over and over to my kids even to this day you do not own people. You do not own people if that person, just because someone dated someone else, does not mean that's theirs for life. And that is so hard to get over with young people Like, even now, oh no, because they had them first or they called dibs so destructive. The conversation is what's important. The covenant you make with an intimate partner is what's important. It doesn't have to have rules. There are no preconceived. There should not be any preconceived notion about what a relationship looks like. It's negotiated between people, either couples or, you know, three partners or whatever you want to do. It's negotiated, so everybody knows what the expectations are and what the commitments are. That's, that's an important thing in any relationship, that's an important thing in any relationship.

Jess: 1:17:59

Well, I asked the students on campus to educate me before this podcast, and I learned new terms that I had never heard before, like polycule and one penis policy.

Ricardo: 1:18:15

One penis policy.

Jess: 1:18:16

Yes, so that would be like an open or polyamorous a relationship where the person with the penis in the relationship is okay with there being other people and other combinations of people in the cloud of that context, but as long as there's only one penis in that cloud.

Bill: 1:18:43

Interesting.

Jess: 1:18:44

Really.

Bill: 1:18:45

Interesting.

Jess: 1:18:45

And so. But you know, you know the young adults they're, they're very wise and they're going to be okay because they the the. The primary thing that was coming up was communication, non-manipulation, non-exploitation, um, consent, boundaries, safety, inherent dignity. These were all of the themes that were easy for them to emerge with in you. You know this group of four or five students that I cornered during reading break and said please teach me, I have a podcast this Friday.

Diana: 1:19:24

Well, and it's grounded in those ethical premise of consent, boundaries, right, decision-making, equity, not equal. It's not about equal, it's about equity, right? How do you manage that power? And then pleasure, what feels good? And you know, it's interesting that I think people really this might be interesting for people to know the kink community and the BDSM community, their community members, are very well grounded in ethical practices within their community. They talk about consent all the time. They talk about boundaries all the time. It really is grounded in we want to play a certain way and we are only going to do that with other people that want to play like how we want to play.

Diana: 1:20:16

And this isn't about coercion, it's not about manipulation, it's not about forcing people to do things they don't want to do. It's not about causing people harm. Some people, pleasure is pain. For some people, pleasure takes on all sorts of different ways of being. Some people want to be in a submissive environment. Some people want to be in a dominant environment. Creating, governing rules and boundaries around those relationships are cornerstones to be able to engage in that, in those activities and in that world. And then being very clear about communication. Here are the words we're going to use. Here is exactly what we're going to say, and if I hear this, this is what's going to happen and that will be what happens. And here are the consequences if it doesn't. If we could have that clarity of conversation in relationships wow.

Joanne: 1:21:17

There has to be consent for every move in the BDSM community. Again another seminary paper I wrote.

Bill: 1:21:26

I've read it actually, and what was interesting about that?

Joanne: 1:21:30

was because it was a theological thing, and that was my after.

Joanne: 1:21:35

I knew nothing about bdsm, um, which, if you, if some of the people out there don't know, is like we used to call it sadomasochism, which is part of it, but it's basically bondage, um, decision making, dignity, discipline.

Joanne: 1:21:48

You know all these things.

Joanne: 1:21:49

So, um, and I wrote this with not knowing nothing about the community, but from a theological position where they talked about the very sort of sexual language that the mystics used in sort of the middle ages, even, um, if you read the uh gospel of mary magdalene, and she talks about her and her lover being jesus and descending into this very sexual language that is used around the intimacy that you experience with God, right, and that that intimacy is a relationship where there's constant giving uh, back and forth and consent always. You know even Mary who said let it be to me. You know, as you have said, mary gave consent for God to be in union with her and um, and it's really interesting that, in considering that history of sort of sexualized relationship with God or Jesus, um, that was there that we have somehow come to this place where sex is apart from our faith, as opposed to an integral experience of even, um, like, even union with somebody in an intimate relationship has a sacred element to it, where you know, like they say, leave room for the Holy spirit.

Joanne: 1:23:09

You know like when you're with someone, but I think it's like recognize that, um, when you are being vulnerable, the the Holy Spirit is like imbued in everything that you're doing and in all you do. Like it's it's weird, um, that when I I did that paper, at the end I'm like, wow, the way that people in the BDSM community conduct their relationships is how we should all conduct our relationships. That's what was weird for me. Like that's that's was like wow, this, this seems like what all Christians should do. You know, have a conversation, negotiate what you want to do, get consent for every step, just because, you know, used to be in the old days, you didn't talk about what was happening and it was almost like it was placed.

Joanne: 1:23:58

I think this was a horrible burden to place on young men to just keep pushing until someone stopped them. Do you know what I mean? Like that was sexual encounters when I was young. You just keep going until it's a definite no, um, and that is so harmful for young men too. I think that's a horrible way to conduct a relationship. So this idea of no means no becoming yes means yes. It's a like a paradigm shift that has allowed your university students to talk about. You know how do you ethically have polyamory or more than one partner, whatever, and the conversation being so important, well, and I have.

Jess: 1:24:43

I have children that are younger than university students and like a lot of the sex education I've read, as in parenting, is that you know teaching healthy principles around sexuality actually starts at age one, age two. How do you teach consent without any context of a sexual act involved? I bought a graphic novel about sex and I leave it on the coffee table. I am considering bribing my kids to read it. What do you think Should I offer them cash If you read this book? I'll give you. What do you think Should I offer them cash If you read?

Joanne: 1:25:17

this book, I'll give you cash. How about condoms? You offer them condoms if they read the book.

Diana: 1:25:21

I have lots of variety.

Jess: 1:25:24

But one of the things that I picked up in the book was consent is both what are you saying yes to and what are you saying no to, and I thought that was so profound.

Ricardo: 1:25:38

It's interesting. A friend of mine was telling me that she was teaching her children about consent at a very young age, because they had to teach children that if you don't like to be tickled, you can say I don't like to be tickled. And that this notion of an adult going up to a child and saying coochie, coochie, coo is and the child not liking it is their way of saying. I do not consent to this.

Jess: 1:26:01

Pokemon cards Excellent avenue for teaching consent. Are you okay if we trade this card for that card?

Diana: 1:26:09

Negotiating pizza. Negotiate your pizza order. That's negotiating consent. What kind of pizza are we going to have? What do you want on yours? What do you want on yours? You know? What am I allergic to? What you know? What do I eat that tastes like glass Onions, any, any like, and again like.

Bill: 1:26:27

I have young children as well teenage but like we talk a lot all the time, we talk about like consent isn't just around issues of sexuality, it's it's.

Bill: 1:26:39

It's about all all the ways that you get to deploy your own agency and the decision making about not just what happens with your body but with your life. Right, and that there's a, there's a degree of being able to recognize. You know what. This is something I need to self advocate, but also being able to say like this is where I'm still. I still need help, I still need somebody to come in and give me the words or give me the backup or kind of frame it in a way that actually allows me to still feel like I'm taken care of and safe in the space that I'm in. Right, so, but any agency, any opportunity even to create opportunities to act out agency when, at the end of the day, you probably don't want to eat the pizza they're going to negotiate for, but you tough it out because they need to have that win they need to know that it matters to speak as opposed to just silently sitting and expecting that the world is going to make all your decisions for you, right, so?

Diana: 1:27:35

um, well, and consent, I think consent to when we're talking about young kids, um, and you know, there's that narrative that's happening around um trans folks and um grooming, um, uh, for you know, young children and things like that Most children are sexually abused and assaulted by people that they know.

Diana: 1:28:00

It's not strangers you know it's not the trans person that's reading story time at the library. Trust me, that is not who that is. And this, also this idea that consent and not labeling body parts and not giving children the language around their bodies puts them at higher risk for assault and abuse. And I think again, and I want parents so badly to understand, that the proper words for body parts aren't swear words right, they're medical terms.

Diana: 1:28:35

They're the words your doctors and nurses are going to use and parents are so worried. They're like what if my little one's in the shopping cart in Safeway and they start yelling the word penis? And I'm like, as a social worker, I'm high-fiving you in the aisle Because I'm saying yes.

Bill: 1:28:51

If you're the community standards for Apple Podcasts, though, you're marking this podcast explicit because of this, yes, adults only.

Diana: 1:29:02

That's probably wise, which is fascinating, right? It's fascinating to me. Grooming children use is, you know, targeting those children that don't have that work, those that language and don't know how to set boundaries, and, you know, let people tickle them and don't say no, or just have learned that my no doesn't matter. And just for the record, tickling is torture, it is a torture method, like we really shouldn't tickle people unless they say please tickle me, and then yes, yes, okay, or give your aunt a kiss or go sit with your uncle.

Diana: 1:29:41

You know all that kind of stuff for sure.

Joanne: 1:29:43

I think it's interesting, this consent um conversation and also open sexuality which, again, you know, the 60s, all these boomers you're worried about that was like like the free love time, right, you know, like it all began back then. But I think we should also have the ability in our negotiations to be more conventional and conservative and be okay with that.

Joanne: 1:30:08

You know, and I think. Well, I don't know this for sure, but I do feel like there are a lot of pressures on young people and older people and everyone to um to go move outside their comfort zones in some ways and I'm all for that.

Joanne: 1:30:28

But I also think it's okay to say, yeah, this is not for me you know, in conversations I've had with the young adults in our house, you, you know, one will say, yeah, I couldn't do a polyamorous relationship, Like, it's just not for me and that should be okay. Do you know, Um, my daughter recently said which surprised me that she's starting. She's 26 years old, she's starting to feel like a more traditional life is actually desirable. You know, not like traditional as a narrow, but just this idea of home is really important. And you know, um, having uh, sort of a contained life, as opposed to feeling like every all your edges are bleeding out, which I think is a danger even of you know, having these conversations without understanding that you're okay, however you are. You know, having these conversations without understanding that you're okay, however you are.

Bill: 1:31:18

You know you don't have to be the uh, the leading edge of sexuality to prove that you're free, Um, and that's important, yeah, and I mean, like I, I'll say I, you know one of the books that I was reading in in preparation for for tonight and for this podcast. This podcast I struggled with a lot and it was a book on polyamory and consensual non-monogamy and, obviously, in a monogamous marriage with three children and my wife, who I love to death Shout out wife. But the whole premise of so much of the book was around those people who are in these monogamous relationships. They're stuck in this fairy tale, like they're naive. It's like, can we figure out how to have conversations about diverse expressions of relationships without having to piss on everybody else to look enlightened? Enlightened Because I think, like I think, if we're, if we're going to embrace diversity, then all of that diversity, as long as it is, you know, steeped in dignity and mutual respect and mutual benefit, right, like, like, I think.

Bill: 1:32:25

I think there's a whole piece to the way that we do relationships in our world. Now that is really steeped in. What can you do for me? What can I for lack of a better word mine you for for my own, you know, self-gratification or worth. And when you stop being able to provide that we're done right and that is not a healthy, dignified, mutually respectful, you know, kind of relationship. So you know to figure out a way to.

Bill: 1:32:55

Yes, I understand that, like we've been in a culture that for a long time has said all these other expressions are wrong, right. And it is always sort of the natural response when you start to be able to carve out that place that, hey, like my life, my choices, my dignity has value and worth as much as anyone else's, absolutely. There's always sort of this historical sense of now I got to punch back at the people who have been, you know, hitting me for so long but like somewhere it's just like diversity needs to be expansive across the board. So someone who says I am perfectly happy to, you know, spend 70 years with the same person and sacrifice some things that I might want to you know, that I might, in other situations, want to have happen for the greater good of this agreement that we have around the terms of our relationship. That should be just as valid as any other option that's out there, right and so like.

Bill: 1:33:52

That's part of the challenge is that any of these relationships, any of these expressions, really still come back to the dignity, the mutuality, the respect and the openness and the communication and the checking in as well. Right Like, I get that this was okay 10 years ago. Is it still okay? Right? Um? So like there's. There's just a lot of that kind of kind of stuff that I think we miss more and more as, as relationships become a almost more of a commodity, um, in some cases, than than they ought to be, um well, it's interesting.

Joanne: 1:34:27

I don't know the statistics, but I have read articles and seen things about when one of the partners transitions, for instance, they're trans. How many couples stay together even even though their partner has transitioned right? Into you know and and that is really interesting to me that, and marriages when, when spouses come out gay, lesbian, whatever that stay together, it's not uncommon at all at yeah, I met this Mormon woman once whose husband was gay, but they wanted to raise their children together and they loved each other right.

Joanne: 1:35:05

And this comes back to this let's celebrate relationships that aren't sexual too.

Bill: 1:35:09

Absolutely and recognize that intimacy and sex are two different things, right.

Joanne: 1:35:15

Well, they can also be overlap, though, oh.

Bill: 1:35:19

I'm not going to say completely unrelated, but maybe not codependent. How about that? Yeah, that's right, yeah.

Jess: 1:35:27

Well, and let's not call things boring, yeah.

Diana: 1:35:30

Yes, yes, or vanilla, or vanilla Totally. We use vanilla in everything. It's great.

Joanne: 1:35:40

It's a wonderful flavor.

Diana: 1:35:41

It is Absolutely.

Joanne: 1:35:42

Yeah, especially if it's roasted. Wait, that came out wrong.

Diana: 1:35:48

Sorry. Well, and when we talk about sexuality because we talk about it from a really holistic perspective and we do talk about how most people go into relationships where, um the the desire for physical intimacy and romantic intimacy or or um sort of emotional intimacy overlap and that, that that's. But there are people on either ends where those two things don't actually have to coexist and so, just like how you know, don't yuck someone else's yum Like why are we yucking someone else's yum? You don't have to eat it, it doesn't matter.

Ricardo: 1:36:29

As well. We focus a lot of our conversation even today, on relationships and two or more people finding intimacy and love with each other, but also there's nothing wrong with just being like. I don't even know. The term is. Serial dating is still something that we call it yeah where somebody just wants to remain, like I've always said, like you know, solely for solo polyamory or something where you have multiple partners. I mean mean in this housing and affordability crisis.

Ricardo: 1:36:57

I'm thinking about a polycule myself right just so I can have the extra rent Totally fair, but like. My almost ideal relationship right now would be like I'm dating someone, but they also have their own house.

Bill: 1:37:13

Right.

Ricardo: 1:37:14

So this may be a few days a week. You can just go stay over there for now and I can have some me time. Like also the concept of self-love and people who are well into their years, in their 40s or 50s, 60s, and they remain single the entire time. It's also, it's very, very degrading for men who choose to remain single. They're automatically considered oh you considered obviously gay. You just couldn't get a relationship.

Bill: 1:37:37

Did you say well, into their years at age 40?

Diana: 1:37:40

I know that's what I heard too. I'm like, wow, I've heard that.

Ricardo: 1:37:45

Right, but like or even women who remain single remain single and they are considered undesirable.

Joanne: 1:38:00

Spinsters we used to call them.

Ricardo: 1:38:03

Right, but perhaps just the person who I remember an article a long time ago, someone who was like 105 years old I think she was like the oldest person in Italy had passed away and they said what are the keys to your long life? And she says I just avoided men.

Joanne: 1:38:20

She's like.

Ricardo: 1:38:21

I'm not a lesbian, but I never got married. I just avoided men. They dragged me down and so, like people who want to just experience different things and different experiences and not tie themselves down, are also shamed right, oh yeah. And there's a natural flow and progression, even in our education systems, in the lexicon we use among our children. You know we often talk to people, to children, when they enter junior, high or high school. Oh, do you have anyone special?

Bill: 1:38:50

Are you dating?

Jess: 1:38:50

anybody.

Ricardo: 1:38:52

And you know we still go as far as to tell young women or young men or oh, do you have a girlfriend or do you have a boyfriend. Yet you know those kind of verbiages, that that goes on in kindergarten, right Please.

Joanne: 1:39:08

Oh, that starts really young.

Jess: 1:39:09

Destructive to a child who's actually still in the closet, and gay because then you're making these, you know but, like maybe they just don't have a desire to date anybody yeah, and it just contributes to these waters that we swim in of not enoughness not enough, not enough, you're not enough if you're single and happy and enjoying being single, and you don't care if you're dating someone or you're choosing a celibate lifestyle, because there's an aspect to that that appeals to you or perhaps feels liberating it's interesting I used to, you know, talking to my kids about sex because obviously in the christian tradition um sort of casual sex seems verboten, you know like you're not supposed to do that, and I would say to my kids, like I don't.

Joanne: 1:39:51

Recreational sex if you want to call that just enjoying yourself, that's all good, but the important thing is that the person that you're with is always deserving of human dignity, right, and so the important thing is that this person is not an object in your environment, it's another human being, and however you choose together to interact is fine. If this is, you have sex and you never speak to each other again. As long as that's understood, that that's what's happening, that's OK, you know. But the the waters we swim in to use justice terms are just full. They are just so ripe with expectations and what should be.

Joanne: 1:40:33

And that's if there's anything we can do around sexuality. It's just like find another pond, like something that's more, more free for us to actually be what we want to be, without pressures, to either be more liberal uh, you know expressive than we want to be, or keep us hidden in a closet. That's stifling, you know, because we're all different, we experience sexuality different, but like let's just, let's just say you know, you are who you are and you're worthy of human dignity. You are worthy of human dignity, full stop, and in all my dealings with you. That's the starting point.

Diana: 1:41:17

Well, in teaching, I think, or talking about or having tools around decision making. Even you know so many people when they're making a decision of some sort, I ask them, I'm like, so how have you made decisions in your life in the past?

Joanne: 1:41:36

And they look at me like I have three heads.

Diana: 1:41:38

Oh, I don't know. I'm like, well, you've made decisions in your life and they're like, oh, I just my gut or my head or my heart. But how do we bring those three things together to really think about? How am I ethically making decisions based on? Do I have all the information I need? Have I asked all the questions you know? Have I explored, like, those dark corners that maybe I wasn't aware of? What are my emotions around this decision?

Diana: 1:42:14

And I find it so fascinating I don't know if in your practice, jess you find that people can sometimes have a really hard time identifying emotional words, like emotion words.

Diana: 1:42:24

And so you know, having an emotions wheel or an emotion chart or emojis, that you could this and that and this and this, because we don't just experience an emotion with a decision. I'm excited and I'm scared out of my mind at the same time. Right, and it's okay to feel all of those sort of push and pull emotions. And then you know what's my whole self, what's my body telling me, what's my spiritual, you know center telling me that it is an embodied way of having a making a decision. And so I think we think people have tools around decision making so that they know how to set their boundaries, they know how to negotiate what kind of relationship structures they want to engage in. And when we don't have those tools in our toolbox, we default to really sometimes hurtful, harmful or problematic decision making that isn't authentic or isn't ethical, or we're subscribing to somebody else's values instead of our own because it's easier or because they're in the lead and they get to decide where the snowplow goes, so to speak.

Bill: 1:43:51

To Jess, because they noticed with the election in the US recently that there was a very strong difference in the way that university-aged men and university-aged women voted in that time and there's certainly been a rise in sort of this rhetoric and this understanding or idea of a rise in sort of this rhetoric and this understanding or idea of you know your body but my choice kind of thinking in these young men that went out and voted in droves for the man that Joanne never wants to name.

Joanne: 1:44:30

His name shall not be spoken. That's right, the Voldemort of our day. Apparently, the name shall not be spoken. That's right, the Voldemort of our day apparently.

Bill: 1:44:37

But I would imagine like maybe post-secondary has changed since my time, but I don't think it has, like it's always been a place that kind of ultimately like social culture in university already kind of comes with its own inherent kind of risks and pressures.

Bill: 1:44:57

And pressures and for a lot of folks, like their first time, you know, living on their own and kind of being like fully independent from the parents that have driven them to school all the way through to grade 12. And there's a concerning kind of again like the rise in this rhetoric but also some of the distortion and the rollback of everything related to, you know, diversity, equity or equality and inclusion practices and bodily autonomy and all of this right. So, like the, the interesting, I guess the question for me is, as, as you know, campus United as as part of sort of the, the spiritual and faith community that that supports university students, what, what do do young people need as this rise begins again and this rhetoric that I think we all thought had kind of been at least stamped out to a degree and now we find ourselves sliding back into it, like what's the? How do you support young people that are showing up on campus for the first time?

Jess: 1:45:56

Well, that's a big question. What do young people need? I'm like I don't know. Ask them. I'm not the expert on what young people need. How can I support them? I think that is. I mean, there's a lot of repeat from what Diane was saying earlier about um, you know, with seniors and sexuality, like are there safe spaces to talk about it? Everything with a lot of like identity formation that starts from when we're young, with our attachment behaviors with our primary caregivers. Is that mirroring that happens? I try something and I see how you respond and then that affects me. You know, when we're learning about some of our brain science. That we're learning about is that social rejection shows up as pain in our brains in the same places that getting punched in the face would light up on a brain scan.

Jess: 1:46:53

So that mirroring is really important. Um, the yeah that that movement, the transitions that young adults are going through are incredibly complex. There's some really interesting research coming out of fuller institute with their youth, youth and young adult ministry around their. They've identified like seven, seven different transitions. Like we used to think of this, like life as an escalator we do this and then we do this, and then we do this and then we do this, and they're talking about how there's these like seven transitions that are kind of happening and people are moving in and out of them, and in two at once, and so it's a very complex time.

Jess: 1:47:35

There's a lot of change in you're not doing the same things as everyone else was doing when everyone else went to high school and everyone's routine was generally the same, and now it's all just up for grabs. So there's all of that going on at once and I'm probably, you know, learning more about my selfhood in general, my sexuality in general. So I think community normalizing, validating whatever the experiences, are radical acceptance and permission, giving spaces. I think those are really important. I think those are really important. I do want to note that in the voting, the biggest spread between men and women was among white men, and it was less so among Hispanic and then even less so among black men.

Joanne: 1:48:26

So that's something to consider as well, for sure, because when you have a white patriarchy that's what you're perceived as losing the most and moving into a permissive space where people can be free to be whatever. So it makes sense, doesn't it? In some ways, it's interesting. At the break, one of the people who's here live asked me if I'd read this article in the Herald that was out, which talked about how, across all demographics, we're actually having less sex, not more sex 15%.

Jess: 1:49:02

Less is what I read. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Joanne: 1:49:06

And there are certain countries where people are not interested. What?

Bill: 1:49:12

He said I feel it.

Joanne: 1:49:15

I thought you were going to say that you're the outlier 15 more that balances all out.

Joanne: 1:49:23

But this is this is really interesting to me that in a time where we say you can have sex with as many people as you want, you know, as long as dignity and conversation, and you can have all different kinds of relationships and all this, that people are less interested in sex than they used to be and that there are countries where they're actually worried about their future as a country because young people are not having sex and, as a result, not having babies. You know, this is very interesting to me because when I was young, there was nothing more exciting than seeing someone that you thought you might fall in love with and the whole, um, the whole experience of figuring out who they are and do they like you and all that stuff. You know, like that is one of the quintessential experiences of being human is flirtation, you know, and and that, and I I really hope and trust I'm old now that we haven't lost the ability to do that just because we spend so much time talking about how to set boundaries. You know, like I don't know.

Ricardo: 1:50:29

Two things, interestingly enough, of what you just said a lack of reproduction, I guess in order to sustain the population that we have right now. I'm of the personal opinion that the world is overpopulated. We could use a little bit of a slowdown.

Joanne: 1:50:44

Yeah, all the futurists say that there's going to be a population crash.

Ricardo: 1:50:47

Well, if you think like, if you think in the 1980s, when Deng Xiaoping visited the US, he was questioned under China's one-child policy. And he's like well, if you don't have it in one-child policy in China, in 20 years all your neighborhoods will be Chinese. And now China's like desperate for people to have more children. They're paying them to have more children because they can't sustain the population, the massive number of people that are retiring and entering old age.

Ricardo: 1:51:10

These one-child policy children that are looking after two aging parents. Or, you know it's even worse. There policy children that are looking after two aging parents, and or you know it's even worse there was a documentary about when that one child dies. No one takes care of the parents of that anyway. The second thing was that, um, reproductive issues and population sustainability aside, um, people are having 15 less sex, but I I think the demographic towards intimacy might be increasing. Um, I've seen a lot of articles lately and I don't know if it's articles or just general pushes towards male platonic intimacy, even amongst two heterosexual males, and how. What's wrong with two men just sitting down on a couch cuddling?

Ricardo: 1:51:49

and watching a movie together. Two women will do that. A man and a woman does that Honestly. Two very intergenders do that. When it's two heterosexual, cisgendered males, even they brush their arms.

Joanne: 1:52:03

That's not a pillow. They get very uncomfortable.

Ricardo: 1:52:07

So I think that yeah, yeah, yeah, plane strings and automobiles for all you people, I think there is a push for breaking down those walls and the normalization of just like, hey, let's just chill out. Body contact is fine. We don't have to have our arms wrapped around each other making out during the movie which is what some people hope will happen, but just this attitude that's entrenched in homophobia.

Jess: 1:52:37

Absolutely, absolutely no reason whatsoever right which is entrenched in misogyny. Exactly, yes, absolutely.

Ricardo: 1:52:46

Which is also entrenched in beauty culture right, like you should not be intimate in having relationships, or any sort of intimate relationship, with another man when you should be focused on your wife or your monogamous partner, right? So yeah, absolutely, it's an entrenched misogyny. You should only be intimate that way with a woman, and if the woman doesn't want to be touched or held that way, then she's automatically seen as dismissive, or?

Bill: 1:53:12

frigid was the word, frigid was the word they frigid was the word yep yep yep, yep, absolutely, yeah, for sure all right, I'm definitely aware of the time now, um, so we're going to close it off here. I'm going to ask the final closing remark. We're going to move down the table. Um question is what's the one core truth or guiding principle that you hope people will take away from this conversation? You're a guest. We'll go the other direction. We'll start with ricardo. I was gonna say you don't ask, take away from this conversation.

Diana: 1:53:39

You're a guest, We'll go the other direction. We'll start with Ricardo. I was going to say you don't ask easy questions.

Ricardo: 1:53:44

Friend, someone wise once told me that you know there's a lot of negativity and hurt in the world, but as long as you operate out of love, then things happen to be a lot better, to get a lot better. And no matter where people are in their life or what they desire, or what they think or what they want, if you have an open mind and just embrace them with love to try and understand them, you'll very quickly realize that your life doesn't actually change that much, because, first off, it's none of your goddamn business.

Ricardo: 1:54:21

And secondly, if it makes them happy and it's not hurting anybody else, why are we causing?

Diana: 1:54:27

a stink about it right.

Ricardo: 1:54:29

So that's, I think, the whole point of this podcast today is that there should not be shame around loving yourself and loving each other, and expressing yourself in love and there should not be rigid rules and directives and norms that just don't fit the person that's looking at those rules. So just operate in love. And, by the way, that wise person was just two seats down from me.

Diana: 1:55:07

Oh, I blush, operate in love and, by the way, that wise person was just two seats down from me.

Diana: 1:55:10

So, um, I think for me is really, I just hope that people, um start to consider what their values are and think more deeply around what their sexual values are their values are around sexuality and start to think about how they want to be in the world and acting and being and choosing to enact their lives in alignment with those values and, if something's not feeling right or going the way that you expect it to, um, to really remain curious about what's happening and where that's coming from, and and not shaming and not blaming yourself, and recognizing that we've all been steeped in shame for so long and for so many generations and intergenerationally, um, that it it's really normal and okay to not be sure and not know or feel like you maybe don't have all of the tools in the toolbox, um, and that there are people out here that that want to help, and and that there are resources for folks who who do want to have these conversations. So I hope people feel less isolated and alone around this topic.

Joanne: 1:56:23

Yeah, I hope you all go home and talk to your intimate partners about what you want from life. For me, it's the you don't own people leads to a lot of healthy conversation if you just remember that always. You don't own people leads to a lot of healthy conversation if you just remember that always.

Joanne: 1:56:39

You don't own people. And then the second thing is everyone is deserving of human dignity. And if you go with that, first of all acting out of love you don't own people and everyone is deserving of human dignity. It can take you a lot of places, but all of them are healthy.

Jess: 1:56:57

Yeah, I would have to echo that Everyone, the inherent dignity of all people Genesis 1, created in God's image. Genesis 2, it's not good for us to be alone.

Bill: 1:57:09

We're inherently relational and we're already all interconnected and that comes with its blessings and its responsibilities, all right. Well, thank you to Jess, and to Diana especially tonight, for being our guests here on a very open and honest conversation here on Prepared to Dream. As well thanks to Joanne and Ricardo for always being the mainstays on it. My guiding principle, my core truth, my final kind of thought for the night is simply that whoever you are and wherever you are in the journey of life, you are not alone. You are loved by God. You are created in the image of a loving God and you are a walking, breathing need to fear love in any of its myriad forms. Of the United Church Foundation for supporting our podcast, and to our live audience that showed up here tonight to sit through this conversation, and to everybody that's listening online. Thanks, and we are signing off. We will see you in March. And there we are at the end of it. Folks, thanks for joining us today. Hopefully you didn't get dragged under, at least not without some moments of revelation along the way. If today's conversation got you thinking, or maybe even blushing, then keep the discussion going with us on Patreon or by subscribing, wherever you get your podcasts. And now we've got even more ways to stay connected because you can check out PreparedToDrowncom for our blog, past episodes, links to all of our social media and all kinds of behind-the-scenes content. It's the perfect place to keep exploring, reflecting and maybe even arguing with us a little, with love. Of course.

Bill: 1:59:20

Prepared to Drown is recorded live each month at MacDougall United Church in Calgary, alberta, canada, and if you're in the area, come and join us. We promise a welcoming space, good conversation and minimal awkward eye contact during the spicy bits. But before we go, please hear this your worth is not tied to the shame, the fear or the impossible expectations that others have placed on you. You are not broken, you are not too much, you are not too little. You are beautiful, you are beloved and you are enough just as you are. Until next time, stay curious, stay kind and remember that grace is big enough for all of us, even when the topics get complicated. See you soon.