Autism, connection and relationships with Jodi Rodgers

Our first guest for 2024 is Jodi Rodgers. Jodi is a sexologist, counsellor and special education teacher and has a Masters in Sexual Health. For Jodi, connection, intimacy and relationships are a basic human right and this drives her work, in particular with autistic people to support developing their social skills and understanding their emotions. Jodi’s appeared on the series Love on the Spectrum Australia, working with some of the show’s participants. Her new book, Unique: What autism can teach us about difference, connection and belonging has just been released and draws on her 30 years’ of experience.
Find out more about Jodi at birdsandbees.com.au

More info:
Aspect - Aspect is Australia's largest national service provider for people on the autism spectrum.
Yellow Ladybugs - Yellow Ladybugs is a non-government organisation, dedicated to the happiness, success and celebration of autistic girls, women and gender diverse individuals.

CREDITS
Produced, hosted and edited by Emily Webb, ermha365 Advocacy and External Communications Advisor with Karenza Louis-Smith, CEO ermha365.
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ermha365 provides mental health and disability support for people in Victoria and the Northern Territory. Find out more about our services at our website.
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We recognise people with lived experience who contribute to GET REAL podcast, and those who love, support and care for them. We recognise their strength, courage and unique perspective as a vital contribution so that we can learn, grow and achieve better outcomes together.

Helplines:
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Transcript

Team at ermha365: 0:00

Get Real is recorded on the unseeded lands of the Boonwurrung and Wurundjeri peoples of the Kulin Nation. We acknowledge and pay our respects to their elders, past and present. We also acknowledge that the first peoples of Australia are the first storytellers, the first artists and the first creators of culture, and we celebrate their enduring connections to country, knowledge and stories.

Team at ermha365: 0:28

Welcome to Get Real talking mental health and disability brought to you by the team at ermha 365.

Team at ermha365: 0:35

Join our hosts, emily Webb and Karenza Louis Smith, as we have frank and fearless conversations with special guests about all things mental health and complexity.

Team at ermha365: 0:49

We recognise people with lived experience of mental health and disability, as well as their families and carers. We recognise their strength, courage and unique perspective as a vital contribution to this podcast so we can learn, grow and achieve better outcomes together.

Jodi Rodgers: 1:11

Somebody sent me a message the other day an autistic person who's actually read the book and she said to me when I read your book, I felt seen, I'm not writing a book about a lived experience of autism, I've written a book about what it's like when you hang out with autistic people every single day for many, many years. What that has actually taught me. Welcome to Get Real talking mental health and disability.

Emily Webb: 1:44

I'm Emily Webb. I'm joined by erma 365 CEO and co-host, karenza Louis Smith. Hey, karenza, it's great to be back for the year. It's awesome and I'm really excited to be back podcasting and I'm really excited for this conversation this morning too.

Karenza Louis-Smith: 2:00

I know you are, because we were talking about it yesterday in a meeting, weren't we?

Emily Webb: 2:07

We were. We were Now. Our guest today is Jodi Rogers. Jodi is a sexologist, counsellor and special education teacher, and has a master's in sexual health. For Jodi, connection, intimacy and relationships are a basic human right, and this drives her work in particular with autistic people to support developing their social skills and understanding their emotions. Jodi's appeared on the series Love on the Spectrum Australia, working with some of the show's participants. Her new book, unique what Autism Can Teach Us About Difference, connection and Belonging, has just been released. Welcome, jodi.

Jodi Rodgers: 2:46

Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Emily Webb: 2:48

Jodi, I've rewatched some episodes of Love on the Spectrum in preparation for this conversation and I'm looking forward to asking you more about it. But first of all, my burning question is what is a sexologist? Exactly, because, from what I've read of your work and I saw on Love on the Spectrum, it's an area of real importance for people's wellbeing.

Jodi Rodgers: 3:10

Definitely You've asked me the question that I get asked at every party I go to. When people say, what do you do? And you lead in with the line, oh, I'm a sexologist, everybody goes. What is that? So basically, it's any person. I mean some people call themselves a sex therapist. I don't call myself a sex therapist, I call myself a sexologist. But if you think of any ology, it means that you have studied that area with a master's degree level of qualification. So for me, I have a master's degree in sexual health counselling, which is basically going to university for a long time to learn every single thing about human sexuality. So yeah, I'm very, very passionate about it. Yeah, I'll talk about it for hours, which is a problem at a party because I'll get people stuck in corners, go whoa, do you want to know? I'll tell you.

Karenza Louis-Smith: 4:05

And I've been interested, like you've been doing this for like 30 odd years it's quite a long time around connection and relationships and education, and I think it's really it's a really important conversation. You know, and you're clearly way ahead of your time, I think, with the work that you're doing and it feels like, well, I don't even know if society is really catching up. You know, like what you just said, you know what on earth is that. You know there's so many questions about it. Tell us about why you're so passionate about this work and why you do what you do.

Jodi Rodgers: 4:34

Karinza, I think for me, relationships is, I'd say, the most important thing about our lives. So for me, my relationships are very, very important. All of my connection with people is what provides me with a sense of well-being, provides me with a deep sense of belonging, and it gives me purpose, really. But it started for me when I was my undergraduate. I might have been I've got four different qualifications, which is a weird thing but I was working in a special school, a time segregated special school for adolescents, and it was in the 90s. This tells everybody how old I am, but it was in the early 1990s and at that point disability service standards had just come into being, so it meant that every person with disability had a right to the same education as every other person.

Jodi Rodgers: 5:26

In Australia. It was a long time ago, if you think about it in that way. I was in a school with 200 adolescent young people, all who had an intellectual disability or sometimes complex physical disabilities as well, and we were talking a lot about employment and of course, employment is integrally important and we were talking about independent skills and daily living skills. And I just kept thinking what about relationships? Well, because we all know in our adult lives, that relationships are very, very important, and back then, if you put the word sex and disability in the same sentence, people got really, really freaked out by that.

Karenza Louis-Smith: 6:08

I don't know that that's changed a lot either. I think, jodie, when you think about some of the kind of we talk a lot about stigma and discrimination here, I think, when we have frank and fearless conversations on Get Real and there's this kind of why would people with a disability have sex? Kind of sense, and let's be really honest about it out there in the community, you know, and I think you're talking about, those relationships are basic integral human need, right.

Jodi Rodgers: 6:32

We are sexual beings from the moment we are born until the moment we die, and when people think about sex, they just go straight for heterosexual, penetrative, reproductive sex. That's what they think about. But our sexuality involves our sensuality, our self-esteem, our body image, our assertive skills, our ability to know what we like and don't like, our capacity to communicate that with somebody else. It's for me, it's a complete expression of self, and so because it's got the word sex in it, we immediately just go to one thing it's a huge area of our lives, including our relationships and our capacity to be intimate with one another and be vulnerable. So it's not just about physical intimacy, it's about emotional intimacy and communication and things like that. So for me, I just started realising, as I was very early years in my teaching, but then it just kept on being an ongoing theme.

Karenza Louis-Smith: 7:35

Well, with any teenager. It's going to be an ongoing theme, right?

Jodi Rodgers: 7:37

Oh, definitely right, and I was saying straight there in front of me as a young woman but it's what Emily said too I am hugely passionate about upholding our human rights, and for me, the human right that every single person should be able to receive information in a way that's accessible to them and understandable to them became an ongoing theme throughout my life. And then it just was going OK, well, if all of us can get access to counsellors, even for something like grief counselling, but people with intellectual disability where was the access to that? Or you know. And then it went to relationship counselling and sexuality counselling, so it just became something that I really think is fundamentally integral for every single person. I agree.

Emily Webb: 8:26

Yeah, we were talking about that the other day about, yeah, just the stigma around thinking that people with intellectual disability or, you know, complex physical disability, they're not sexual beings and we know that they are. And you can't limit, especially with teenagers I've got teenage daughters you can't not inform people about things because, they're going to have sex Like it's you know a fact, and our sexuality changes throughout.

Jodi Rodgers: 8:56

You know we're talking about people with intellectual disability or cognitive disability. But what about people with acquired disabilities? What if your expression of sexuality and your sexuality has been one way and then you get an acquired disability and it just turns things completely on its head? And so you know this isn't just for people who have a born with, with a cognitive disability or some kind of you know way of moving through the world. That makes being. We all think we're all the same with our sexuality. We do. We're pretty boring. Individuals go it's like this. No, it's not like that at all and it changes throughout our lifetime and definitely changes. If you have a chronic illness or, you know, an acquired disability or any way that makes you communicate differently or learn differently or express yourself differently, then it, then it shifts the way that there is an understanding, because we're only taught one way.

Karenza Louis-Smith: 9:55

And that's a really, really powerful message. Clearly you were trailblazing 30 odd years ago. I mean, I'm curious are there many sexologists today that do the work that you do?

Jodi Rodgers: 10:06

Yeah, there's more and more, which is absolutely Brilliant, because I say there should never be a specialist in this area, there should never be somebody who's a specialist in sexuality and disability, that there should be people who Specialise in human sexuality, but they should be inclusive of all people. So I would like there not to be specialists. Personally, you know, when I first did my masters was a long time ago, it was about 20 years ago and there was very few of us actually studying sexuality. I mean, these days you can just get on to tick tock and there's, you know, thousand sexologists and so we're becoming, yeah, the younger people and I always think we have to listen very carefully to everybody.

Jodi Rodgers: 10:51

You know, the younger people say, hang on, this is part of who we are, and so they're changing the narrative for the rest of us as well. But, yes, friends are, I'm getting on a bit, so I Was. You know, there's was definitely people at the time, but there was few people that have postgraduate qualifications in two specific areas, and I think that's where I might be a little bit different than some people, that I have postgraduate qualifications in disability developmental disability and also autistic People and also then have postgraduate qualifications in this whole other area of counselling and sexuality Gosh you're a busy lady, right?

Emily Webb: 11:31

really You're very busy and the book unique, which as we're recording, we're recording Like on the 7th of February, but when this episode comes out the book will actually be on the shelves. So I love the way you've structured unique, which is the book, and share stories and they really beautifully portray why different ways of being and thinking are so important for us as humans. And you do start the book with a personal story of you as a child and your grandfather and you're finding four-leaf clovers and it's gorgeous. And your grandfather said to you when you were searching for a four-leaf clover Don't look so hard. Love, my grandfather said. If you train your eye to see the beauty and difference, it's everywhere. And this made me think a lot about how for a long time, I've been quite limited with my thinking, even though I thought I was quite open-minded, up to date with stuff. But it really made me pause for thought and I guess I'd like to ask you about what that's done for you. I guess that formative memory, how it's, kind of influenced your life.

Jodi Rodgers: 12:35

I think you know it's a very, very. I do find four-leaf clovers which is quite you know, it's not a made-up story like they're everywhere in my house and anybody who knows me well was probably got one that I've given to them at some point or other. But you know, it was really an analogy that I've taken through the world with me. That is, we are often told Throughout our lives that we should be the same, that we should be. You know, on one hand we go like, oh, it's so great to be different. No, we're told the opposite. We've told that we should look the same, that we should act the same, that we should follow the trends that we're being told to. You know, particularly if we're talking about the three of us as women. You know, this is what this is, what beauty is, this is how you should live your life. That's right. You should express yourself.

Karenza Louis-Smith: 13:24

You need to be thin skinny, voluptuous yeah.

Emily Webb: 13:28

Yeah, tick, tick, all these skinny but have big boobs, you know, like that kind of thing.

Jodi Rodgers: 13:34

And it just very true. It was one of the things that, from very, very on in my childhood, I was quite fascinated by people that Did it differently, spoke differently, were from different cultures, was fascinated in different religions was I? Just I just wanted to know I it was. I think I said that in the book and I just really wanted to know what made us all tick. And you know, because we constantly I can remember being told as a child to you know, oh, we're all unique, we're all unique, but I didn't really get it. I didn't really understand what that meant because I was like, yeah, we're all unique, but how? And so it just became an all a thing that I really became fascinated with.

Jodi Rodgers: 14:24

And it's challenging, I've got to tell you. It's very, very challenging to Could aside your own way of viewing the world or your own perception, or Shedding and and you've got to shed it. You know I've got to shed constantly that I'm a White, well educated, from a loving family, surrounded by beautiful people. In my life I've got a. I've got to shed all of that. I've got to shed all of my background. When I meet somebody else, I've got to try really hard to go oh Jody, no, you're only thinking about it from your perspective, you're not really listening.

Jodi Rodgers: 15:03

And when I'm in listening, listening is about the true form of deep listening. I always love this saying, which is called listen like a sponge, and sponges just absorb it. They don't come back and say I'll give you my point of view, I'll let you know how it is, I'll let you know, you should do this, you should do that. You should know, to really listen is to actually become so fascinated with how another person thinks and feels. And yeah, I'd say, emily, I was very young and I don't think my grandfather actually meant what he was saying. That makes sense. Like it was just kind of a little thing that went yeah, four leaf clover's, they're different, and that's the good stuff. You know, you don't stand around looking to fit three leaf clover's. We're looking for the difference. We're looking for the difference. That's where the good stuff is.

Karenza Louis-Smith: 15:57

I remember as a kid playing searching for four leaf clover's and being so frustrated when I could never find them and tearing the leaf of one of them to say and Emily's laughing too Clearly we've all done the same thing. That's where my four leaf clover. So I'm really interested in the book as well. That you've written unique and you talk really openly in the book, that you are not someone who is autistic, but you know you're talking, I guess, a lot about that topic in the book. So I think your perspectives are really, really important. But there's also this huge conversation as well that we're about lived and living experience and how we sort of celebrate that and why it's becoming more important in the public sphere. So I guess how have you navigated that in terms of writing this book? And I know you've spoken about it in the book, but it would be great for our listeners to hear what a she know. You know kind of thing.

Jodi Rodgers: 16:42

I actually really grappled with this. I really did. It was very difficult because when I was asked, I think people thought I'd be writing about sexuality and sexuality. But then I started thinking well, for me to explain somebody's expression of sensuality if you've got sensory processing difficulties, then I've got to find sensory processing difficulties. If I've got to explain that, then it just kept on coming back. And so finally I thought, oh man, I've really got to help do this. But in saying that, it kind of I don't know the right way to put it like it seems weird, doesn't it, for me to say listen, listen, really hard. We should be listening to the people who are living this way. We should be listening to people of diversity. They're the voices we should be listening to. And then I go and write a book about it.

Jodi Rodgers: 17:35

But what started happening was two things. One, I started realising that I was writing an upside down book, so I wasn't writing a guide to autism. This is not a guide to autism. This is a guide to say listen here, the rest of you people on the planet, have a little, look at yourself for a minute and then see if you've got the capacity that when an autistic person is moving through the world like this, just give it a little moment to see whether you have the empathy, the capacity to get inside of their shoes or see things through their eyes. It was kind of. That was the first thing I realised. I was writing upside down and in the book, I think, I say I actually then had to seek.

Jodi Rodgers: 18:18

I had to seek permission. I had to seek permission from autistic people, and that turned into the most beautiful thing, because I spend every day, all day long, with individuals. You know, I do therapy, so I'm sitting with individuals who are very vulnerable and very open when you build that relationship. And so I just started. I started asking them do you think I should write this book? Like, do you reckon I should say this? And do you know, some of the most beautiful things came out of that one I can remember.

Jodi Rodgers: 18:46

There's a story about a young woman who when she during her schooling years, she was so isolated and so bullied that she removed herself and would hide. She called herself a speck of dust. But when I talked to her about me writing this, she said to me Jodie, you have to write it because I will never have the capacity to tell that story. You know I'm socially isolated. I don't use social media. I'd be frightened to use social. So who's going to tell my story? And that happened again and again and again that the representation of autism.

Jodi Rodgers: 19:25

I think sometimes, because I know so many autistic people like my world is just, you know, mainly hanging out with autistic people that it was more of a way for me to try and tell some stories that we don't often see in the media because we just don't get it. Now I'm telling you that, that we should be listening. I am 100% the first person to say I feel like I still struggle with this. I definitely still struggle to go.

Jodi Rodgers: 19:51

Okay, I've written a book that has the word autism on the front of it, and I'm not an autistic person, but I do have the deep encouragement from all of the autistic person in my life to have written this book and that they've all read their own stories. They've all wanted me to put it out there, so I have their permission to do it. That's the first one. The second one is that when I gave it to somebody else, they said to me oh, I think it's in the book too. She actually said to me I thought this was a book about autism, but this is a book about everybody, so that also helps sort of push me on.

Jodi Rodgers: 20:26

And then I was pretty full on. I ended up having it read by a sensitivity reader in the US who is an autistic man. So I would not have ever published this book if I had not had the permission of autistic people every single step along the way. It gave me lots and lots of sleepless nights and I had to be very reflective and I had to really dig deep inside of myself to go do I even have anything to say here? Is this my place? Am I meant to say anything? But yeah, do you know what, karenza? Somebody sent me a message the other day, an autistic person who's actually read the book, and she said to me when I read your book, I felt the same and that is worth it's weight and go, I don't care what happens with the book anymore?

Jodi Rodgers: 21:19

I don't know the fact that one autistic woman on this planet read this book and felt sane. The book's done its job. Yeah, I agree, I think it's a really, really important book. What I realised, too, is that I'm not writing a book about a lived experience of autism. I've written a book about what it's like when you hang out with autistic people every single day for many, many years. What that has actually taught me, not about autism, what it's taught me about every other person that I spend time with. So you know now, when I see a teenager who's slammed their door Emily walked in I go. Oh yeah, there we go. I know what's happened in there because an autistic person's taught me. I literally have spent a life being taught by people who think differently and perceive the world differently, and it's more about what that has done for me as a person to teach me about every other human on the planet.

Emily Webb: 22:20

Yeah, and it's so much more. And well, it's always important, but it feels like right now, in this moment in time, it's really important that we are learning about everyone's differences and listening up, and there are a lot of really beautiful traits and perspectives when you're neurodivergent. We're learning a lot more about that autism, ADHD, all the other things that spring from that but there is a lot of struggle as we see. We'll talk about it. Love on the spectrum really portrays that. Can you talk about this a bit more from your experience?

Jodi Rodgers: 22:57

It's a disability and that means that the way society is set up, the way that the majority is moving through the world, means that you are going to have some struggles if you have any type of neurodivergence. You don't get given a diagnosis of something unless you are having difficulty moving through a world that's set up for the majority. That's for me where it is, and so, of course, any single person that I have spent time with in the last 30 odd years. They have struggles and they have sometimes a lot of struggles. If we're talking specifically about autistic people and about relationships and sexuality in my lifetime, we've got to remember that there's one of the diagnostic criteria for autism is about reciprocal relationship. So it could be difficult to initiate an interaction, even verbally initiate. So if you're somebody that can initiate verbally, how do you gain consent from somebody else? If you're someone that has no perception of another person's personal boundary, then you could be crossing boundaries all the time. If you're somebody that your self-image and self-esteem has been to the point where you have just said yes to mask and be liked, then that leaves you very, very vulnerable to abuse.

Jodi Rodgers: 24:25

I also do couples counselling. So I do couples counselling where one person may be neurotypical. The other person may be autistic or neurodivergent, and that can be really complex as well. All of us have difficulties. We all have miscommunication. We all have difficulties expressing ourselves. If somebody's expecting you to do it in a neurotypical way and you're not neurotypical, then there's difficulties all the time.

Jodi Rodgers: 24:51

The way an autistic person may use their body or use gesture or facial expressions can be misinterpreted by others all the time. People can be left feeling very, very lonely and very, very isolated from relationships. People can become bitter about that, that it's other people's fault that they're like this. There's also incredible beauty in it, but we've got to remember that any person that is referred to me or comes to me to counselled, they're not walking in there to go. Oh, let me tell you about my beautiful relationship, so let me tell you about my beautiful sex life. They're not doing that. They're coming because, just like any of us would, we wouldn't go and see a counsellor or a psychologist or a sexologist unless we had a reason. I think that's the best way I can explain to you.

Karenza Louis-Smith: 25:41

Yeah, I think so, and what are we going on from that? Well, believe it or not, we actually do do some research before we start to chat to people. We found out that you appeared actually one of the public hearings in 2021 into the Royal Commission into violence, abuse and neglect and exploitation of people with disabilities, which is a huge Royal Commission happening here in Australia right now and it's a really important one too Very important, long overdue and vital to have so many contributions, expertise and perspective submitted and shared. So I was really curious what made you so compelled and what was your submission about? What was it that you really wanted the Commission to hear?

Jodi Rodgers: 26:19

from you, I'd put forward a submission, but what ended up happening? I was asked to come in as an expert witness based around the area where they were talking about this sexual abuse statistics and to talk directly. I think I will talk directly to a couple of cases on that. These were terrible, horrific sexual assaults of women with disability and statistically, women with a disability will be sexually assaulted. Higher rates of domestic violence, higher rates of sexual assault. All of that is much higher statistically for women with a disability. So I was kind of asked to go and talk, but I'll tell you what I think they probably thought afterwards oh my God, we opened up here.

Jodi Rodgers: 27:05

Jodie Rogers is not going to get off this stand in any shape or form, because for me it is exactly what we went back to talk about. If people are not provided with relationship counseling, if people are not provided with education about what is consent, if people are not provided with what affirmative, ongoing consent is, if people are not provided with sexuality education and I'm talking about the whole gamut, the whole gamut of sexuality if people are not talked about what respectful and healthy relationships look like, we leave people open to extreme vulnerability and abuse. And you can hear it in my voice, probably I'll start it. I'm back in, oh.

Emily Webb: 27:51

Karenza, I was. Karenza will talk about it too, because I mean, look, I'm not a mental health specialist or a social worker or anything. Karenza has worked in this for a long time and, irma, we work with people with complex mental health and disability. That's our specialty, isn't it, karenza? And you've seen this time and time again in your work.

Karenza Louis-Smith: 28:12

Yeah, it's a really important topic and I'm not surprised the commission is asking about it. It's hard, isn't it? Because I think when we look at sex and sexuality, there's so many different angles to look at it from, and obviously this lens is very much about the abuse and neglect of, so I think it's really powerful, but then also is it neglect to not provide support for people with disabilities to have sexual relationships too? I mean, they really come to flip side of things as well. I think that's a really important conversation.

Jodi Rodgers: 28:42

I think it's across the board with comprehensive sexual education. So I think, even for I'm not sure about the two of you, but we are taught sex as one reproduction or one puberty, two, reproduction, three, what does it happen? You may have got that. You know what happens to have reproduction. Who's talking about pleasure? You know those old saying is going oh, how do you know it's spring if you never have a winter? You know, the thing is that we need to know what pleasure is. We need to know what a healthy respect for relationship is. We need to know what it feels like to be good in our own bodies. We need to know what it is to have self-esteem and be kind. That's what we teach. We teach the beauty of human interaction and intimacy and pleasure and we teach the positive. It's always comes from a positive framework.

Jodi Rodgers: 29:36

We don't teach people to say and educate people going don't do this or this is going to happen. You know it's not the way we go. Because if we know, if we're taught from a very, very early age to say I know what feels good, I know that this person is good for me, I know when somebody's crossed over, you know the words, the boundaries. But if somebody's harming me or hurting me, I know how to say no to that. Then we can lay on top of it the other component, the darker side of what relationships and sexuality can hold. But, karinza, I'm 100% with you. I go in straight away. If ever people would think that you know I might have somebody come and see me and I go right. Let's talk about abuse Also. I work with people who offend as well. So there's two sides of the story with this. But I always go in to go tell me about a great relationship, tell me about the good relationships.

Jodi Rodgers: 30:34

Tell me about your friends. Tell me about you. Know your body, what do you like about your body? What do you? We start from the good stuff, yeah, yeah, we always have to start from the good stuff, because that's life. We're meant to be enjoying this. We're meant to be having a good time.

Emily Webb: 30:50

Oh my gosh. Yeah, that's so good and especially with the filter, I've got on as well about having teenage daughters and nowadays it's a lot around behaviors. There's a bit of work I notice around coercive control in teenage relationships and I'm talking all the time to my daughters and I hear them talk to their friends about they call it toxic, you know.

Jodi Rodgers: 31:12

Yeah toxic relationships Things.

Emily Webb: 31:14

So I find it. It's really good to hear, and I think knowledge is power, right?

Jodi Rodgers: 31:19

So my daughter won't mind me telling you this, emily, but she was gay, she was just. Oh, that's embarrassing, you know. Oh, yes, my mum's a sexologist or whatever I mean she always talks about when she was about 10 coming home and you know, I had visually supported things and she came out.

Jodi Rodgers: 31:37

She was like holding up this word and she goes mom, don't leave the word clitoris lying around the house. You know she would have been 10, 11 or something like that. You know, I definitely have made sure that the young women in my lifetime I always go. You know, was it pleasurable? Did you get pleasure from it? You?

Emily Webb: 31:59

know what's the good bits for you Very important.

Jodi Rodgers: 32:03

How do you explain sexual pleasure to somebody if they actually just came out and said to you what does an orgasm feel like? That's my day-to-day life, Okay.

Karenza Louis-Smith: 32:14

Hang on, and you know that's a really powerful question, because A like the first reaction is to feel uncomfortable or could a little bit ashamed, or I don't know, I've never had an orgasm either Kind of an answer too, and I like there's lots and lots of things that you go to, isn't it? And yeah, I think we truly, really. I mean, I've never sat down with any of my friends ever and said, oh my goodness, let's talk about orgasms, let's talk about the clitoris, let's talk about you know, we just don't. I think I've described myself as fairly, you know, educated, all of those things, but I don't think they taboo. I think they're.

Karenza Louis-Smith: 32:50

You know, if I'm gonna go there, they're really taboo topics and conversations. So God help me if my kids ask that, because I'm thinking, oh my God, just don't get pregnant, don't get someone pregnant, don't get an STI, like what else, what else, you know, you don't think about. Actually, this is how you give pleasure and receive pleasure, and I don't think I've ever had that conversation in my life. That's a really big question, isn't it?

Jodi Rodgers: 33:11

It's a diff and you know if you're learning about sexuality and relationships via TikTok or Instagram or by accessing the internet, we know where the internet's taking many, many young people into sort of explicit material If that's what you're learning is. But you have to have the capacity to then critically analyze what you're seeing. Now, if you're somebody with an intellectual disability that still has difficulty in interpreting what you're seeing, or you don't have any literacy skills so you can't read or you don't understand the big words, because the big words are often big Like what is toxic. So this is my life is taking these complex terms about our relationships and sexuality and trying to boil it down to how can I best help and how I would explain that to Lorenza, and how I'll help explain to you, emily, may be very, very different because of your own way of moving through the world. What a rick a job I have.

Emily Webb: 34:19

Oh no, it sounds unlike. Maybe I might do a career change or something I'm getting inspired.

Karenza Louis-Smith: 34:26

So love on the spectrum. Here we go. Tv show all about sex, sexuality, sexual relationships. What was the experience like? Because I would have thought it would be a bit of a risk to kind of go and put yourself. We sometimes see how these things are sensationalized and blown up. What you say can be any kind of reality TV show. There's always the villain, the different things. How did that feel when you were invited to be part of it? How did you? Yeah and saying yes.

Jodi Rodgers: 34:54

So, as the way of the world works, a friend of mine was talked to a friend of his who worked at the ABC and my friend said they were talking about the fact that they were producing this television show, love on the Spectrum. And my friend said oh, I've, you've met Jodi. That's what she does for her job. Anyway, long story short, they basically approached me after a couple of get-togethers. Those get-togethers, I didn't know I was being asked to be on the show. I just, I was as relaxed as I was.

Emily Webb: 35:23

You're like auditions.

Jodi Rodgers: 35:24

they're auditioning you, yeah yeah, but I was just being me, because that's all we are is us. And then they said would you be on the show? Now my instant reaction, carinza, was no. I didn't say no to them. My instant internal reaction was no. Okay, imagine. And it was for many reasons. One of them was I hold my job in very, very high regard and the ethical practice of you do not develop a relationship with somebody therapeutically if it's from a genuine relationship. So that was number one go. How the hell Are they gonna be able to film that? That's ridiculous. And then the other one was just, I didn't wanna be on television. I'd never experienced television, I didn't know. But you know, I spoke to a family member who just said well, who else is gonna do it? And the guys from the production company, northern Pictures, who are brilliant, said to me oh, it'll just be one show, jodie, we just need some support with one young person on the show. It'll be five minutes, one episode. It'll be on the ABC, that's it, yeah, can't go wrong.

Jodi Rodgers: 36:27

The ABC's family safe, Can't go wrong, fairly safe, and then bang Netflix 208 countries, seven languages so it just changed my world. But to tell you the truth, what people may not understand is it's called a doco series, so there was no script. The first time I ever met anybody, they might've said so. Example you would've just seen it, emily. When I first met Michael, who here and I are still really, really good friends.

Team at ermha365: 36:54

We're actually talking this afternoon, Beautiful yeah.

Jodi Rodgers: 36:56

Yeah, so we're talking four years later here and I chat all the time. When I first met Michael, they basically said right, just walk down that driveway. They put a microphone on me, which I've never had in my life. I always laugh and say they didn't even give me hair and makeup, nothing. And they just said walk down that driveway, knock on that door, off you go. This guy's name's Michael. So that's what I did when I knocked on that door. That was the first time Michael and I had ever met each other, we'd ever seen each other. And what people don't realise is that we were then filmed. I was mic'd and we had cameras on us for several hours, and then that is edited back to the five minutes that people see so you know people go.

Jodi Rodgers: 37:37

Why did you say that four? Well, in the context of the hour that surrounded that one that story it's about trust.

Jodi Rodgers: 37:47

It's definitely about trust and trusting that. And also I watched that film. I watched that crew and that production company with autistic people and so that trust in those moments was because the autistic people on that show were in complete control of what was going on. They could stop it and start it anytime they wanted to. They could say I'm gonna have a break. And none of us were paid because in a documentary, Shame, though that isn't a shame that you don't get paid.

Jodi Rodgers: 38:16

You know, emily, I kind of am not. The problem about getting paid in the entertainment industry is that we have a really, really strong union of actors and writers and things like that, because if you're an actor, that's your job and you're portraying another person. But I was being me.

Emily Webb: 38:35

How is?

Jodi Rodgers: 38:35

anybody gonna pay me to be me?

Emily Webb: 38:37

They might need a different, like union for because with reality TV it's become so popular Reality TV. It's almost like but yeah, I definitely got the sense of that respect with the crew and the participants and I think that is something that really surprises people. I've done a bit of filming for TV stuff before you know and you understand, and cause I'd been a journalist, I get it. So people I talked to who go Emily, I've been approached by this. I said listen, you just gotta be aware that you might talk to them for 10 minutes. They might use 30 seconds. So be very pointed with what you wanna say.

Jodi Rodgers: 39:13

And I had a lot of trepidation. Before I saw what it was, the first episode of the first series. I had a lot of trepidation about it. I mean I saw it before it was ever on the television. But once I saw it I was like this is okay.

Jodi Rodgers: 39:29

Yeah, this is okay, I definitely found at that, yeah, and every sit where there was no casting agents. You know, all of the people on the show applied to be on the show and wanted to be on the show and but we all knew that they were filming us being us.

Emily Webb: 39:45

When I first watched I was a bit like, because I'm a bit cynical about reality TV. But there is reality TV doco series and there's kind of like the reality TV, like the bachelor all.

Jodi Rodgers: 39:56

No, no, it's like being raised Big brother or yeah, getting raises. Nobody was being voted out.

Emily Webb: 40:01

No, no one was being edited to be the villain, but I actually found watching Love on the Spectrum, all the work around communication skills. I actually found that so useful and Actually my favorite was Mark in the first series. He was so sweet and I. I also liked hearing the family perspective, seeing the family involvement, because it really made you understand about what it takes when you're parenting a neuro divergent child or a child with a disability, but also the beauty in just how they were really real with their kids and You've worked with families as well as you know the people themselves, what's really powerful in supporting a neuro divergent child, younger or adult, especially teens and adults. As we saw in Love on the Spectrum, they seem very real. The parents in that series like very vulnerable and wonderful.

Jodi Rodgers: 40:55

Hmm, the thing I probably come back to. I mean it's hard because it's huge, the question you just asked me, so huge. But the thing I often come back to families with is that once people have hit teenage years and Neuro, typical young people gravitate to a peer group and and that's about conforming, that's about being the same. So if you are sitting outside of that, then that can provide a great feeling of isolation and differences and Bullying happens at those stages because people going we're going to go after the different, because you're not conforming to what we're all doing. It's just a way that people move through the world and so what happens is that people can become isolated. That can move into adulthood.

Jodi Rodgers: 41:36

So I'll have people come and see me and say, oh, you know, bobby really wants a girlfriend and Bobby's 24 left school, you know, might be working a part-time job or whatever, and I always say has Bobby got a friend? Our lives are built with these little blocks, one on top of each other. So learning to hang out with a friend when you're playing at home, unsupervised with that, without adults providing structure, actually teaches you how to go on a date later on. I Might have people come and see me and they're desperate for a girlfriend, but they have never, ever independently gone out to the movies, paid for a ticket, held conversation with somebody that hasn't scaffolded the conversation. When I mean scaffolding that, often what I see is that, you know, we want to provide support to people, but we don't support people social skills, independence if we only ask the questions. So we have to support people to learn how to initiate and ask questions if that's what they have complexity and difficulty in. You know how do you have a back-and-forth conversation? Okay, so a date is going to last this amount of time. You engage me, so I'll do it in my office or time going. All right, let's pretend that we're, we've gone out where you're gonna set me up for dinner, so then I'll just act it and I'll sit there and get, just do blank. And either I might have people info dump on me, which is fine if people do, because I love info dumping, but you know, get my mind loves it. But then I have to think all right, this is somebody on a date with this person, so then I just have to go. Okay, I can hear what you're doing. You're trying to give lots of information, how you get. You know it's? It's simple steps.

Jodi Rodgers: 43:16

So we've got to remember that every step we have in developing social skills and independent skills comes out Infruition in adulthood, and so I I always think about just going. Does that person have one friend, just one, one person they can hang out with? They're really themselves with that? That's probably the most. That's always where I start from. That's number one. And number two is that we have to be filling people up, that they spend their whole lives Feeling less than we've got to fill them up with the good stuff.

Jodi Rodgers: 43:54

I'm always saying to my clients what's great about you? Tell me all the good stuff. Oh, you know building on strengths rather than deficit, because you know if we sit around going. Oh you know I can't do maths, what can you do? Tell me all your good stuff. So because confidence, when, when you're out in the dating world, when you're out meeting friends, people, it's about confidence. It's about it's like selling yourself. No, it's awful thing to say, but you don't ever walk in to make some go. I'm crap at this and I'm shit at this, terrible at this. That's what a behavior support plan often looks like, but that's not what we do. When we first introduce ourselves, we're going. I am Great at this, I'm into this, I'm into that. So making sure, yes, that the young people in our lives can speak highly of themselves, that their self-esteem and confidence is central.

Karenza Louis-Smith: 44:48

I love that we're coming to the end of our conversation. I just want to remind our listeners that the book unique is now out and available. Jodie, what are your hopes for it and the reception from the people reading it? What is it? You know, if you to achieve anything with this book, and for our listeners as well, you know what is it that you want to see?

Jodi Rodgers: 45:06

I Will maybe never know. I will maybe never know. It's what I've seen before about one person saying I feel sane, but I may never know, and that doesn't matter. What I'd really hope that the book does is that, for any single person who reads this book, that they'll become a point sometime in their life where they may be gritting their teeth or somebody's annoying them or they don't understand what's happening and, rather than reacting with impatience or frustration or Misunderstanding or giving up, I really hope that something in that story they just go. You know something in the book them. Okay. Haha, that was like that story. I just hope it shifts people's perspectives just a little bit.

Karenza Louis-Smith: 45:50

I agree, and the New York time agrees too is well. The New York Times has gone on to say we could all use a Jodie in our lives and listening to this conversation. I completely agree. This has been a fascinating conversation and we could go on for hours just on this topic alone. I think it's a really, really important conversation, I think one we need to be thinking more about in particular as well. You know, big call out to everybody who works in disability services. Just to listen to what you've spoken about today is to that strengths-based approach, but also filling people up rather than looking from a deficit perspective. I think is so important. But that kind of basic human right about love, friendship, sex and sexuality, how it's an inherent thing for all of us, is what I'm going to take away from this conversation. It's kind of really resonated for me and to think about my own Conscious biases, of which I probably have many, and not least the use of the word clitoris and orgasm.

Jodi Rodgers: 46:50

That's a powerful there's a powerful shatter to everyone that listens. Once my life's gone, you know, settle down a little bit more in the next couple of months, or more than happy to come and talk Orgasm and clitoris with you.

Emily Webb: 47:02

We'll be having you back.

Karenza Louis-Smith: 47:04

I think we absolutely have to because that's, I think you know, sex and sexuality has a massive play as well on our mental health, and I think that's a conversation and topic I would absolutely love to explore.

Emily Webb: 47:14

To absolutely and Jodie, we ask all our guests this question what's your favorite thing at the moment, or your most effective thing that you do, to take care of your own mental health and well-being?

Karenza Louis-Smith: 47:28

Because you can have a very busy, busy life.

Jodi Rodgers: 47:31

But I also understand that we can't give to other people. We can't. We can't do all the things I'm asking of others be patient and all of that without looking after ourselves. If our cups are empty, then I seek the help. I need to get help, so I have to fill my cup up my things at the moment. I love the summer. I walk every day. I've come a probably all bases. I walk and swim, do yoga, meditate, I drink a lot of water, but I'm also surrounded by people that, on a daily basis, just go, keep going, jodes, you're doing great jodes, life's wonderful Jodes. And and I need those people. Just like we all go to the negative in our lives, we've all got terrible self dialogue about ourselves, and so I continually surround myself with people that fill me up with knowing that I'm doing just fine, and they never tell me I'm doing shit. And so if I do what, I surround my life with all the things that I ask anybody else to do.

Emily Webb: 48:40

So, jodi, a massive thanks to you for joining Karenza and I for this episode, and Jodi's book unique what autism can teach us about difference, connection and belonging, is available now, and you can find out more about Jodi at her website, birds and beescomau, and also watch love on the spectrum. There's details as well in the show notes for this episode.

Team at ermha365: 49:04

You've been listening to Get Real talking mental health and disability brought to you by the team at Irma 365. Get Real is produced and presented by Emily Webb with Karenza Louis Smith and special guests. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next time.