Building an Early Foundation for Healthy Sexuality

Transcript

PLEASE NOTE: This is a minimally-edited transcript that originates from a program that uses AI.

Kaia Findlay
This is Embodied, from PRX and WUNC. I’m Kaia Findlay. Every one of us has a body. And we start learning about what it means to be in that body… the sensations, the functions… as soon as we are born. Today, a sexuality educator shares advice for helping parents understand and guide kids through conversations about bodies.

Nadine Thornhill
 If we try to think of it as just threads that are woven into sort of the fabric of our overall relationship with our children rather than, "This is the conversation that I must have at this one time, and I gotta nail it 'cause I got one shot," that can take a lot of the pressure off.

Kaia Findlay
Plus, a writer breaks down her own childhood to understand where she got harmful messages about bodies and desire.

Tyler Wetherall
There's that message that, you know, this is secret. It shouldn't be talked about. But none of that messaging came through my household.  All of that came later, and it came through the world outside of the household.

Kaia Findlay
Building a foundation for healthy sexuality, just ahead on Embodied.

Amanda Magnus
Today's episode of Embodied contains frank discussions of sexuality. If you'd like to listen later, you can find this episode in your podcast feed wherever you'd like to listen, or at our website embodiedwunc.org.

Kaia Findlay
Maybe you've seen it as a parent, or maybe you remember it from being a kid, but there's a moment early on in childhood when we start figuring out what it means to have a body, and to have certain parts of a body.

Nadine Thornhill
Anyone who has raised a baby or spent a lot of time around babies, like, you, you can literally see them figuring out, you know, how to focus their eyes, how to use their hands. So they are aware of their bodies, and they are learning that, you know, all the different parts of their bodies have sensations.

Kaia Findlay
Sexuality educator Nadine Thornhill has been working in her field for two decades, and she knows that naturally and inevitably, kids develop a sense of curiosity about things like anatomy, nudity, and relationships.

Nadine Thornhill
In the same way that, you know, our emotions are part of being human and our intellect is part of being human, our sexuality is just part of being a human being. And so as their parents and caring adults, we have an opportunity to sort of help them make sense of what they're experiencing.

Kaia Findlay
But there's a problem. As adults, we know that bodies, relationships, and sexuality quickly get complicated, and we can bring along cultural stigma and fear about these topics when we're just trying to help kids learn. So how can parents and caregivers guide kids in learning about bodies and a growing sense of sexuality without the baggage?

This is Embodied, our show about identity, relationships, and health. I'm Kaia Findlay, sitting in for Anita Rao. For many parents, knowing when and how to start having age-appropriate conversations with kids about bodies is tricky and uncomfortable. That's something Nadine has thought a lot about. She has a doctorate from the Institute of Advanced Study of Human Sexuality and is one of the hosts of the web series Every Body Curious. She's seen how conversations about things like bodies, nakedness, and masturbation can be difficult for parents with young children, and she offers guidance by starting with some reassurance about kids' behavior.

Nadine Thornhill
As a sexuality educator, I would say that 90% of the questions that I get are some version of, is this normal or what is normal? Which is very understandable. You know, we live in a culture that tends to equate normal with, you know, this is good and this is okay. Normal feels very reassuring to us. And so I don't blame people for, you know, being curious or even having some anxiety about what is and isn't normal. But as a sexuality educator, I don't actually care really about what's normal. And children, like all people, are individuals. So I am going to talk about some of the characteristics or behaviors or even questions that sort of pop up maybe more frequently with kids and tweens, but I've been doing this for 20 years, and thus far, I haven't found anything about sexuality that everyone experiences, nor have I discovered anything that only one person has experienced. So outside of something that might be symptomatic of a health issue, whether what your child is doing, whether it falls into this sort of umbrella of like, quote unquote, "normal," is less concerning to me than whether or not the education and information that we're sharing with our kids are helping them learn more about who they are and whether or not it's helping them grow into the people that they eventually want to become.

Kaia Findlay
Mm-hmm. And can you describe a little bit about like what, what kind of development is happening in terms of sexuality and health before we reach puberty? I think, you know, we associate learning about our bodies and like exploring relationships with those puberty and teenage years. And so what is happening before that?

Nadine Thornhill
Yes. Let's talk about, you know, our, our littles, so our, our babies and our preschoolers because so much is happening with them developmentally. One of the things is that they are literally learning their bodies. So in terms of sexuality specifically, a lot of babies can feel their genitals. Those are parts of their bodies. And they can certainly, if they are seeing children, they can see those parts of their bodies. And so even with babies, we may see them touching genitals or discovering that, yeah, there are certain sensations that they might find pleasing or comforting. So, you know, something like masturbation is not uncommon for babies and very young children. It doesn't necessarily have the same erotic connotation that it does when an adult does it. It's more just, oh- thing that feels good in my body, I will do that. When children are very young, they are actually starting to pick up on lessons around consent, because consent is something that we practice any time that we are interacting with other people. So even something as simple as, you know, when you may take your child to someone else's home for a play date, if that's something you're doing. If you ring that apartment buzzer or knock on the door and wait to be let in, that's a form of practicing consent. They're also observing relationships. Any child who is living in a home where they have two parents, they are watching a model of romance and relationship negotiations. So many things, so many things are happening for kids, but yeah, they're just learning. They're like little sponges. Something else specifically that often happens related to sexuality is that many preschoolers are at an age where either in their own f- home or in the community, they will be seeing people who are pregnant. They may have a sibling on the way, or they have a friend who has a sibling on the way, or a new baby cousin. So this is often where children will first start to ask that question, "Where do babies come from? Where did I come from?" And so, yeah, we may be having those really preliminary conversations about what is sex and other ways that, you know, we may be bringing babies into our families, which could also include things like adoption or surrogacy, IVF, all sorts of things.

And then with slightly older children and tweens, they're starting to, you know, be able to sort of recognize and identify social norms and patterns around things like romance and desirability. Many children, not all, but a lot of children will be early in puberty, and so again, you know, conversations about periods and discharge and ejaculation. There's a lot of fluid discussions Mm-hmm. You know, can start happening there, 'cause those will be happening. Also, you know, early changes to the body, so, you know, things like body hair and pubic hair and, uh, breast budding. Also for, you know, trans and other gender non-conforming youth, gender-affirming care may start to include things like puberty blockers. Some of the older kids, so we're thinking, you know, 10, 11, 12, they may start to be curious about Sex for pleasure, sex in the context of a relationship, sex as, you know, something beyond just how we make babies. And it's rare, but statistically we do know that some youth will have some sort of first sexual experience with a partner as young as 12, which I know for a lot of people seems incredibly young.
It, it did for me when I learned it, but I think it's important for, for us to just be aware that that is a possibility for some youth.

Kaia Findlay
I think that's a really nice, yeah, overview of all the things to look out for, and especially what you were saying about for young kids, it's not necessarily always erotic. Like, these behaviors aren't necessarily explicitly connected to sex when kids are really young, but they are just doing that learning. And before we talk about some of the, like, healthy conversations about sexuality and talk about some of those scenarios that you mentioned are pretty common, I wanna acknowledge the fact that many parents are coming to this topic with a lot of fear. Like, "What if I'm not protecting my kid?" Or, "What if my kid is doing something inappropriate, and I'm not getting a handle on it?" So how do you think parents can recognize that, that fear and discomfort and concerns about normalcy exist, but then get grounded before trying to have conversations with their kid about bodies, anatomy, and behavior?

Nadine Thornhill
Yeah, absolutely. So I am, in addition to being a sex educator, I am a, a parent. I'm almost two decades into parenting now. And so I have a lot of empathy for my fellow parents, and I just want to assure folks that a lot of us, myself included, and this is my job, come to this with some degree of anxiety. We l- still live in a culture that in many ways teaches us that sex is this incredibly dangerous, volatile thing, that if we get it wrong, that, you know, it'll be an absolute disaster. And certainly, there are people who will use sex and sexuality in an abusive way to harm other people. So yes, I understand where the anxiety comes from, but there, there are a couple of things that I want to just reassure parents with. If you are coming from a place of love and care and concern, it is highly unlikely that you are going to inadvertently do or say something that will irrevocably harm your child. This is not to say that you won't make mistakes. You almost certainly will because we all do as parents. And with that, I will just remind folks that taking accountability, apologizing when we realize that we, you know, maybe got something wrong, making amends with our children, is something that is possible. And something that I always encourage folks to do is to think of these, not just conversations, but just sex education in our homes, which is conversations, which is what we're modeling, which is asking our, our children questions and learning from them- If we try to think of it as, as just threads that are woven into sort of the fabric of our overall relationship with our children rather than this is the conversation that I must have at this one time, and I gotta nail it 'cause I got one shot, that can take a lot of the pressure off. You can always come back and talk about something again, and again, and again as your children are getting older. If you realize that, you know, you said something, and later on you, you learn, you get more information, you're like, "Oh, well, don't love the way I handled that the first time," try again.

Kaia Findlay
Just ahead, we'll hear Nadine's recommendations for handling specific conversations with kids about bodies and behavior.

Nadine Thornhill
If you have the opportunity to sort of, you know, take a few breaths, you can affirm the curiosity while correcting the behavior.

Kaia Findlay
And we'll talk about ways to keep kids safe as they develop. You're listening to Embodied from WUNC, a broadcast service of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. You can also hear Embodied as a podcast. Follow and subscribe on your platform of choice. We'll be right back.

This is Embodied. I'm Kaia Findlay sitting in for Anita Rao. A heads up that this episode features frank discussions about sex and sexuality. If you'd like to listen later, you can find this conversation in our podcast feed. Today, we're exploring how to guide kids through their early exploration of bodies and relationships. It's common for kids to be exploring their anatomy, picking up on lessons of consent, and internalizing social norms from an early age. But it's not always easy for parents and caregivers to figure out when and how to talk about these topics, and to teach important boundaries as kids grow and develop. That's something that sexuality educator Nadine Thornhill helps with. Nadine holds a doctorate in education from the Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality and is one of the hosts of the web series Every Body Curious. Nadine has two decades of experience in her field and has lots of advice for dealing with common scenarios that come up in childhood, like how and when to intervene if your kid discovers their genitals and starts touching them at home or in public.

Nadine Thornhill
So I'll sort of, yeah, I'll, I'll give you sort of ideally what would happen. So yeah, you know, you might have a very young child who is, you know, just fiddling with their vulva or their penis while they're, you know, you know, say like watching TV in a shared family space. And that's something where you can, you know, if you have the wherewithal, just kind of calmly say, "Hey, if you'd like to touch your vulva or your penis, that's fine. But that's private, so that means that that's something that we do in our room, please." And, you know, redirect them, let them know they can go to their room. For young, young children, as anyone who has or has had young children is probably aware, sometimes you have to do that redirection many, many, many, many times before it seems to stick. So please don't, uh, don't feel badly or think that, you know, you're not doing enough if you've told them once or twice or even three times and you're like, "Oh my gosh, I have to keep reminding them." But you can just sort of say it matter-of-factly and, and building in that affirming piece that it's okay to do this, however, here's where it's appropriate to do this. When they are older, you know, depending on what kind of a body they have, it may be something th- it may be a conversation around, "Okay, there are fluids in places that I would rather not there be fluids." And at that point, you know, you can also sort of think about how your child may feel if you directly call them out on masturbating. So you know, it may be something where you're like, "Okay, there's a lot of dried crustiness on sheets or laundry that I don't wanna deal with or touch," but I know my child will not appreciate me saying, "Hey, when you're masturbating, like I know you're masturbating, could you please wash your sheets?" You can just say, "Let's have a conversation about laundry. I think you're old enough to start doing your own laundry now." And maybe you just show them how to do laundry.

Kaia Findlay
Mm-hmm.

Nadine Thornhill
And that's the conversation.

Kaia Findlay
Mm-hmm.

Nadine Thornhill
And then, yeah, by the time, you know, they're sort of past their tween years, generally speaking, it's not gonna be an issue for the most part. Teenagers don't want you to know um, and will be discreet. Now, again, that can vary. You know, there may be some youth, because of certain developmental characteristics, you know, be it- Um, disabilities or neurodivergence, which is also a form of disability. Yeah, it may just take them longer to sort of understand those social norms. And so again, it may just go back to sort of the redirection around that. And, um, yeah, so that, th- those are some ways that conversation can change over time. And, and it, it also may happen that the-- if you come across this and you weren't prepared or you were, you know, it just happened on a day when you were exhausted or, you know, you just weren't at your, your peak parentally and you're just like you know, you do the big gasp or you're like, "What are you doing?" Again, you can just come back when you have calmed down and been like, "That is not how I wanted to react to that. I'm sorry. That was inappropriate. It wasn't wrong for you to touch your body. I would just prefer that you do that in your room," or, "That is something that in our family we do in our room when we're alone."

Kaia Findlay
Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think- Yeah ... that's so important to think about that line between Setting boundaries and talking about what's private, but also not introducing the shame or creating this idea that the behavior is bad in itself. And so I'd love to hear, like, how parents can, like, keep walking that line in a different scenario, like maybe where kids are not only exploring their own bodies, but they're exploring other people's bodies and, like- Mm-hmm playing doctor is a really common example of this, so where kids might explore each other's bodies. And I definitely remember there was a game that I would play with a friend in elementary school, I was probably six or seven, where a big part of the game involved taking off all of our clothes, and we were like, "Yep, this is, this is part of the game." But in a scenario like that, like, is there a time when parents should intervene, and what would that look like?

Nadine Thornhill
This can be a hard one. First of all, this is a common thing that children often do because they're curious. And so again, if you have the opportunity to sort of, you know, take a few breaths, make sure that you feel grounded. Again, you can affirm the desire and the curiosity while sort of correcting the behavior. So, you know, something like telling your kid, "You know what? It is okay to be curious about bodies, but in our home, we don't show our penises or our vulvas or our genitals to our guests, and we don't ask our guests to take off their clothes." And something else you could offer is you can ask your child if they might like to try and find a book to learn and read about bodies. Uh, there are so many books available on the market today that are geared towards preschoolers and school-aged children about different types of bodies and what they look like, and they have, you know, very child-appropriate illustrations where, yeah, they can see, like, a full body and bodies of different sizes and shapes and whatnot. So, you know, giving them a different outlet so that they can get sort of the information that they're looking for in a more socially appropriate way.

Kaia Findlay
Mm-hmm. That's interesting of, like, yeah, the social appropriateness of these conversations 'cause some things- Mm-hmm ... it seems like it's more okay when the kid is little and it's obvious they're learning, but then there gets to be a point where maybe it's not socially acceptable for a kid to be running around naked anymore, for instance. Like, how do you know when that point is to, to start talking to your kid about that?

Nadine Thornhill
That is so socially and culturally dependent. So that's something where I think you can use a principle I call own your values. We all sort of have specific boundaries and norms within our home, which may or may not be different than sort of the social norms in the larger community. For example, if you live in a home where your value is nudity is something that I'm comfortable with in this home, then you can say that to your child by owning your values using an I statement or a we statement or an our statement. You could say, "In our home, if you want to walk around without clothes on, that is fine. However, when we have company, we wear our clothes," or, "When we have company, we cover our genitals and our breasts." Similarly, you know, if for whatever reason you encounter a situation where, you know, say you're at the playground and your very young child, you know, just decides, "Okay, I'm gonna take off all my clothes because I'm hot," or, "I just prefer not wearing clothes right now," again, you can collect them and redress them and explain to them, "When we are out in public, we wear our clothes." They might start having questions, or even better, you could even ask them, "Why do you think some people are comfortable being naked around their family but not out in public?" Or, "Why do you think some families are comfortable with nudity in the home and other families are not? What do you think about that?" And get them to start thinking about it. It's a way to encourage them to start developing their own set of sexual values and ethics and morals.

Kaia Findlay
I like that, of having them be part of the conversations rather than you're have-- giving them a talk. Like, they're, they're allowed to ask questions and respond and think about things for themselves. And I think that that relates to this question I had about how I've heard this fear about sexual education, that if you tell kids about something, especially something pleasurable, like, they'll just wanna do it. So I'm curious, like, do you have advice for parents who want to support their kid's healthy relationship with their body but maybe are worried about giving their kid too much information or information that isn't age-appropriate?

Nadine Thornhill
Yes, absolutely. So I'm going to sort of reiterate something that I said earlier, that if you are a loving, caring, conscientious parent, which I find that most parents who are grappling with this question of like, "Oh my gosh, what if I say too much?" typically are, it's unlikely that if you do offer too much information, which I will acknowledge that can happen, I am not concerned that it's, it's going to be too much information in the sense that, you know, your eight-year-old comes to you and says something like, "What does sex mean?" and then somehow you're inadvertently going to, you know, be like, "Oh, let's check out OnlyFans," or something com- that would be completely inappropriate and scarring. Hmm. You, you might overexplain something, or you might say something that your child finds intriguing. And so that might be surprising. But oftentimes, you know, children can still understand the difference between, "Ooh, that might be fun one day," and, "Oh, I'm not doing this now." And I'll use driving as an example. Not only do we talk to children about cars when they're young, we give them toy cars to play with if they are car enthusiasts. Many of us put children in cars and they watch us drive. And a lot of children think that, you know, cars are incredibly fun, and they very much look forward to being able to drive one day.
But we are rarely concerned that- Oh, well they're just gonna, like, grab my keys and try to drive my car.

Kaia Findlay
Mm-hmm.

Nadine Thornhill
They don't do that. And so yeah, you know, s- some, some TMI, some over-explaining, getting a little ahead of yourself, you know, it might be surprising to your child, it might be intriguing, it might be confusing. It might even be off-putting to them. But if your overall relationship with your child is one of love and care and concern, these, you know, sort of gaps in your sexual education, it's unlikely to fundamentally harm them. I would say at worst, it just might be very awkward, and again, it might be something you have to come back to.

Kaia Findlay
So in this conversation, we've been talking about supporting kids in developing a healthy relationship with their body and growing sense of sexuality. Nadine, you mentioned that over your 20 years as a sexuality educator, you have reassured parents over and over that the range of what's considered normal is very wide. Are there any particular red flag behaviors that parents and guardians can look out for that show that something is wrong? Like, given the fact that so much is, like, so much is normal and is okay?

Nadine Thornhill
So there are a few things that I would advise parents to look out for, and actually the first one has to do not with your child's behavior, but with people who may be in your child's life, specifically other adults or people who are older than your child, so even, say, teenagers, whatnot. One red flag is an adult or an older person who is sort of constantly seeking opportunities to create closeness with your child, especially alone. Now, I want to emphasize this is different than a good friend or another family member who is spending time with you and also sort of includes your child in that socialization. But yeah, someone who is just really trying to build, like, an independent relationship with your child and pulling them away from you, that's something to watch out for and be conscious of. So things to look out for in your child and just be aware of, be curious, and probe. Any sudden changes in your child's behavior that doesn't seem to have an explanation. So if you're suddenly noticing, like, this sudden increase in maybe anger and aggression or unusual shyness or if they seem to have regressed, that they're acting younger or babyish. Now, none of these in and of themselves are only signs that your child may be the victim of abuse. These can all just be signs that your child may be, like, distressed or going through transition. But again, if, you know, there's sort of no other explanation, something to be curious about. Another flag is what is often described as unusual sexual behavior. And again, I think this is the fear is, like, when parents are like, "Well, what's normal and what's not?" So unusual sexual behavior would be something that seems like a compulsive inability to redirect something like masturbation when asked. If it's like, yeah, you know, my eight-year-old is generally able to meet my requests when I ask them to redirect behavior, but suddenly they are constantly touching themselves, that might be a sign of something. And then I just want to talk about some protective factors that we can offer our children.

Sexual abusers and sexual predators tend to prey on children that they perceive as very vulnerable and who are more naive, who are less educated, and who they perceive as being much less capable of reporting to a trusted adult. So even something as simple as teaching your child the proper names for all of their body parts, including their genitals, and creating an environment where those are terms they just use comfortably in your home. Again, helping them both practice consent and modeling consent, so even things as simple as you allow your child to decide how they want to show and receive affection from other adults. You talk to your child and encourage them to practice consent, you know, when they're playing with their friends or their siblings. Things like that are things that can help protect them and make them less of a target for abusers and predators. It also means that they have more capacity to be able to report if someone does touch them or engages with them in an inappropriate way.

Kaia Findlay
Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's all great information to have. So to close this conversation, I'd love to talk about how, like, it's great when you feel like you have a good understanding of your child's behaviors, how to have good conversations, how to make sure that they feel safe and you feel good about that. But then there's the world that you create at home, and then there's the world that they go out into. Like, they might meet friends whose families aren't as open about sexuality. Mm-hmm. They might discover porn on their own. They might pick up different things at school. Mm-hmm. So why is it important for parents to still lay this groundwork, have these healthy conversations with their kids, even if they can't control society and what might happen in the future and what they can't control?

Nadine Thornhill
Yeah. I think one of the most important benefits of being that parent or caring adult who, you know, does as much as they can to let their child know that, hey, sex and sexuality is part of what we talk about, this is on the table in our relationship, is that- For many, many kids, as they get older, as they move into their teen years, you know, even when they're tweens, there is often this sort of move away from parents towards, you know, friends or online information in terms of learning about sex and sexuality. But if you've laid that groundwork, what a lot of youth will say is that they know that if and when they need guidance, reassurance from a parent, that they can still go to that parent. You can continue to ask your children, you know, these non-judgmental questions from a place of curiosity about sexuality at any time. So for example, you have a teen and they have a phone, and, and you're wondering to yourself, "Oh, okay, is porn happening?" You may not ask them directly, "Hey, are you watching porn on your phone?" They might tell you if they are, but there's a good chance that they won't. But something you could say to them is, "Hey, I read an article," or, "I was talking to some of my friends about online porn.
I was wondering, do you have any thoughts about that?" And they may very well be like, "Pfft, no."

Kaia Findlay
Mm-hmm.

Nadine Thornhill
But you've put it in their head. When we ask a question, it's very difficult for the person to not at least think about it in some way. And so I would say as our kids are getting older and older, oftentimes less sort of telling and imparting information and more asking questions and encouraging our kids to just think about it. Even if they don't articulate to you what they're thinking in that moment, you are still signaling to them that, "Hey, these are things that I am willing to talk about. I care about what you think. I care about how you feel," and they can still come to you. And they, i- are also more likely to think about the things that their friends are telling them and the things that they're reading on the internet if you are sort of encouraging them to approach these topics with that sort of curiosity.

Kaia Findlay
That was sexuality educator Nadine Thornhill. Just ahead, we'll hear a writer's reflections on the different messages she got from home life, school, and society at large about her body and desires as a girl, and what she's done to unpack those messages as an adult. Please stay with us.

This is Embodied. I'm Kaia Findlay, sitting in for Anita Rao. This part of the conversation contains frank discussions of sex and sexuality. If you'd like to listen later, you can find this episode in our podcast feed. We're talking about how a healthy understanding of bodies and relationships starts in childhood, when parents and caregivers can help guide and support their kids and set the foundation for them to feel empowered and safe in their sexuality when they are older. Because at some point in childhood, many of us hear messages that certain parts of our bodies are bad, wrong, or shameful.

Tyler Wetherall
I remember when I first would go into school and go into the changing rooms, I didn't have body shame. I didn't think to worry about, you know, shuffling into my swimming costume underneath my towel, but I would see what the other girls were doing, and that sense of body shame very much came from school and seeing how other people behaved around their bodies.

Kaia Findlay
That's writer Tyler Wetherall. Several years ago, Tyler got curious about why parts of her adult sexuality felt shameful, despite being otherwise consenting and enjoyable. She ended up tracing the source of that shame back to her childhood and started asking other people about their early formative experiences with bodies and desire. From a lot of research and conversation, she found that what starts early in life as shame around bodies can grow into our adolescence into shame around sex and sexuality, and that impacts how we form healthy relationships with others and ourselves. Tyler wove these findings into her recent novel, Amphibian, which is about two tween girls exploring desire and friendship. Many of the events in the characters' lives are inspired by the stories Tyler heard from real people. Contributing host Allison Behringer spoke with Tyler about her experience digging into childhood feelings of desire and shame and what we can learn from what she found. It all started several years ago, when Tyler was in her late 20s.

Tyler Wetherall
I had gone to a party, and I'd picked up a guy, and I'd had a one-night stand. And everything about this one-night stand was, you know, he was a gentleman. It was my choice. I wanted it. He messaged me afterwards. It all was, like, a really nice one-night stand. And then that weekend, I went to see my mom, and I, I just- I found that I felt like I'd done something wrong, and I couldn't understand it. I had acted on my desires, and yet I still felt ashamed. All those years, you know, into adulthood when there was really nothing wrong with what was happening. And I sat down with my mom, and me and her are very close. We were sitting on the beach in Cornwall, where she lived, and I told her the story about it, and I was like, "I just don't understand this." And we had this really wonderful conversation about her experiences as well in the '60s, and how there was such a big difference between the idea of liberation and actually being liberated and feeling liberated to act on your desires. And after that conversation, it just stayed with me, and I really wanted to get to understand why shame and desire are so entwined in a woman's idea of sexuality.

And the book project initially was me working backwards through my experiences, trying to find the meeting point of when shame first became the sort of, you know, unwelcome bedfellow of desire. And I found I had to go all the way back to girlhood, to pre-teen experiences, to really find that meeting point and to understand it. Then as I was working on it, I would tell women what I was working on. I'd say, "I'm working on this book that's exploring how we come to understand our sense of desire as women." And I'd find that when I spoke to people about this, they would just start telling me their own stories, their own experiences of the first time they'd ever felt a sense of desire, the first time they'd ever had an orgasm, the first time they'd ever masturbated. And so often when these conversations began, the women I would speak to would say, "I've actually never talked about this before." And they would share these incredible stories that were so formative and so important to their understanding of their adult sexuality, and yet were absent from their own story of selfhood because these early memories take place before we feel like we're meant to feel those feelings, before we're meant to feel desiring, before we're meant to be sexually exploratory. Mm-hmm. And because of that, they're kind of banished from our memories.

Allison Behringer
I wanna go back a bit to your own childhood experience and some of the memories that started coming up for you. So as you kind of started digging into memories of your own early childhood, what kind of kid were you when it came to your own curiosity about sexuality?

Tyler Wetherall
I was always very in touch with my sense of sexuality, even, you know, before I knew how to... you know, knew what that was, before I could give it a name. I don't remember the first time I made myself orgasm, um, only that it was something I always knew how to do, and it wasn't connected to sex. I didn't know what sex was, but I knew that if I sat in a certain way and I kind of wriggled about in a certain way, I could make this feeling come, and the feeling was amazing. It was like a wave passing through me. And, you know, my first memories of this experience were that I thought that I had a superpower, that I was the only girl in the whole world who knew how to do this, and it was incredible, and it was like magic. And then at some point later, I think I started to have a sense that maybe it's something I shouldn't be doing, and I don't know- Mm-hmm where that came from. I don't remember, and I started to worry that, uh, maybe I was sick, and I remember trying to come up with ways to tell my mom so she could take me to the doctor and make sure I was okay. And luckily- Mm ... I never did because I would never have lived that down. That would've been like one of those family stories that we're told again and again and again.
Um, though my mom would've been hilarious about it 'cause she was always very open and, and she would've been a great person to talk to and reassure me.

Allison Behringer
Mm-hmm. You know, you're talking about how it felt good, but then you had some sense that maybe there was something wrong. Were there any moments that made you feel like, "Oh, this isn't something that I should be doing"?

Tyler Wetherall
I think once I realized what it was. So at some point, I heard a girl at school use the word masturbation, and I remember distinctly going home and looking it up in the dictionary, and the kind of penny dropped, like, "Oh, wow, this is what's going on." And I also realized in the context in which it had been said at school, which was in this context of teasing, like, "Ew, gross, she masturbates," you know, and that kind of language, that it was something that girls weren't meant to do, and yet it's expected of boys. And so for women that are sexually exploratory at that age, you really feel like you're doing something very wrong and something that makes you an outlier amongst your peers, and I think a lot of the shame begins there.

Allison Behringer
I wanna go back to something that you said about your mom. You mentioned that she's really open. What kind of conversations did you have with your mom about bodies and sexuality when you were a kid?

Tyler Wetherall
My mom was great. She was always so open with us, and very much a feminist, and very much encouraged us to embrace our bodies. And I think the first time that we had conversations around sex, I remember it happening that my brother had asked something like, "What are tampons, and where do I have to put them?" And at that point, Mom was like, "Okay, some sex education needs to happen." And she told him about sex, and then he told my sister, who was like, "Ew, no way," and we all sort of, you know, all hell broke loose in the household. And she decided she needed to, like, clarify some things. And I remember it happening in the bath. Mom would always be in the bath for hours. She loved taking these long Sunday baths, and she'd eat mangoes and read the newspaper, and we'd come and sit on the, the floor next to the bath and chat to her as kids. I remember it happening there, and she figured that each of us at our respective ages would understand the right amount for our age, and she told us about the very basics of sex. I never thought it was gross. I always was just, like, intrigued. Then later, I remember telling a friend, I'd been like, "Do you know what sex is?" And this friend said no, and so I was too embarrassed to say out loud, so I wrote it down on a piece of paper. I don't think it was very clear, but whatever it was, her mom later called my mom and was upset about what I had shared, because we were very young at this point. So again, there's that message that, you know, this is secret, it shouldn't be talked about. But none of that messaging came through my household. Like, all of that came later, and it came through the world outside of the household.

Allison Behringer
Yeah. I wanna ask you more about this messaging from the world outside your home because it sounds like it was really different from the positive way that your mom talked about bodies and pleasure. Looking back now, are there any moments where those societal messages were especially loud?

Tyler Wetherall
Yeah. There's one memory that stands out, and I was 13. And I'd already kissed a couple boys, but it was all, like, really new and exciting. And I was at the school disco, and there was a new boy, and I kind of march over to him, precocious and confident, and ask him to dance. And we dance, and he asks if I wanna get off, which in England is making out. And we do, but everybody's watching, and I'm a bit embarrassed. I'm like, "Should we go somewhere else?" And we go into, like, the little, like, janitor's closet or something like that, and we have this, like, you know, snogging is what they call it in England. But I, I remember so clearly, I was finding the whole thing just delicious and hot, and it wasn't about him. He was kind of irrelevant. It was more about my, like, my desiring body and its potential and everything that lay ahead of me, and it... That's what I remember feeling, was this kind of excitement about how good it felt to be in my body and how excited I was. And that weekend, he called the house. It's the '90s. And we chatted, and he asked me to be his girlfriend. And I said no because as far as I was concerned, I'd just discovered kissing. There was just, there was so much more to do. I didn't want a boyfriend. And then the next week at school, uh, one of the girls comes up to me, and she heard that I'd given him a blowjob, and this rumor goes around the whole school. And there was nothing I could do. I didn't have a leg to stand on. Everyone had seen me march across the dance floor towards him, and it was as if it was already decided for me at that point. That's when that message got internalized, that the consequences to acting on desires are fear and social censure and shame.

Allison Behringer
So we've been talking about what came up for you when you started digging into childhood moments that shaped your sense of sexuality. But you also asked other people about their experiences. I'm curious what other kinds of stories you heard, both positive and negative.

Tyler Wetherall
I loved these stories so much. There was just so many there were so many wonderful stories. One of my favorites was that whenever she had an orgasm, she would see horses galloping. One girl who learned how to make herself orgasm on the playground using what was a very complicated process in the parallel bars, and her nanny at some point realized what she was doing, and rather than tell her off, her nanny was like, "What you're... You know, this is a really great thing, but it's for everyone to discover for themselves when the time comes." And so for this girl, rather than it being, you know, "I'm bad, I'm wrong, I shouldn't be doing this," for her, she had this incredible secret, and what I found so interesting about her story was that she went on to have what she felt was a very decisive relationship to her adult sexuality, like a sense of control over it.
And then another friend who I talked to and whose story was just heartbreaking in that she had discovered how to orgasm very young and had no idea it was anything to do with sex, no idea that it was, um, in any way something you th- should be ashamed of. And then at some point, someone at school, one of the teachers, observed what she was doing. And rather than have that kind of quiet, informed chat about, "Hey, you know, maybe this is something that's... Nothing wrong with what you're doing, but we just don't do it in front of everybody else," a guidance counselor was called in, and her parents were called in, and the assumption was that she was being molested and that that was the only way she could possibly have access to knowing about this part of her body or f- to having discovered this part of her body was if something, you know, truly terrible was happening. And she didn't come out of that experience understanding anything apart from that what she was doing was bad and wrong. And so you- Mm ... think about, like, these different ways that we can come to understand our bodies, and if it comes with social censure, and if it comes with trauma, that can be really damaging for the rest of our lives.

Allison Behringer
And I'm curious, you know, after having all these experiences with other people about early sexuality and hearing so many of them tell you, "Oh my gosh, I've never shared this before," do you think that there's a place where we can share these stories? Like, how can we bring these stories more into conversations?

Tyler Wetherall
I think empowering us to talk about them the way that I felt empowered to talk about sex with my mom, how do we create that feeling for young people in any space that they need to talk about sex in? I think sex education has really failed us. Mm-hmm. I think about what we were taught about sex at school, and which was all about fear, and, you know, the very important lesson of course, you know, don't get pregnant. You know, be educated about STIs. But no one ever tells you the other stuff. No one e- ever tells you that it should feel good. And I think, like, if some of the conversations around sex were more pleasure inclusive, we'd go on to have much greater sexual confidence, and our pleasure literacy would help inform our decisions as we grow older. And I just think about the ways in which we could be educated to understand our bodies, to talk about our bodies, to talk about pleasure, to talk about readiness. Not this sort of theory, not this kind of abstract. And I have no idea how you have those conversations with young people about it, but I, I really think if we started those conversations earlier, that we'd go on to be able to have those conversations later in life. And I've got a belief that we can do a better job at this.

Allison Behringer
So we started out our conversation with the story that you told about sitting on the beach with your mom, trying to make sense of this, you know, kind of totally reasonable, great one-night stand, where afterwards you kind of felt like you had done something wrong. And I'm curious, if you could go back to that moment, maybe what you could offer your younger self in terms of, like, how to have that experience in a way that just feels really good.

Tyler Wetherall
Oh, I love that. Um, I think the process of unlearning takes a really long time, and so when you feel like you've done something wrong, it's because you've internalized a message from somewhere outside of yourself, from a society that's still trying to undo, you know, decades, centuries of misogyny. And when you feel like you've done something wrong, listen to that and then tell yourself, "I have no reason to feel like I've done anything wrong." And keep working every time that shame rears its head to undo it, and it's a process of reiteration. I have chosen what I want. I have felt embodied in my desire.
I had a wonderful time, and I feel good. And maybe we can just train our bodies and our minds to be in better sync, and we can train ourselves to unlearn that toxic messaging. And I think also when it still comes up, giving ourselves a break because it is so, so entangled in every... You know, as we've been seeing from the earliest ages with young girls' stories about masturbation to first experiences with boys at school discos to, uh, teen experiences that, you know, maybe going too far, to adults' experiences with one-night stands. Like, throughout our lives, we have experienced the same story, the same messaging everywhere, and I think seeing it as a process rather than something that's gonna happen overnight, but something we can keep working at over time, and how empowering would that be for everybody if we felt more in touch with our bodies and less shame as we move through the world?

Kaia Findlay
Thanks to Allison Behringer for hosting that segment with writer Tyler Wetherall. You can find out more about Tyler and our other guest, sexuality educator Nadine Thornhill, at our website, embodiedwunc.org. Today's episode of Embodied was produced by me, Kaia Findlay, and edited by Amanda Magnus. Wilson Sayre also provided editorial input.
Adesina Newkirk is our intern, and Jenni Lawson is our technical director. Quilla wrote our theme music. This program is recorded at the American Tobacco Historic District. WUNC is a broadcast service of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I'm Kaia Findlay, sitting in for host Anita Rao.