Calling Out: Sex & Sexuality - Part 2
Welcome back for another part to this series!
This week we’re chatting with Gabby Gore, a screenwriter out of Seattle, WA.
Just like last week, there were no formal questions. I let conversation flow as it may. This one was a bit shorter, but if you would like the full transcript let me know. I’ll send it your way.
Thank you for taking time to join me. I guess let’s jump in with a starting question to get this whole thing going. Sex and sexuality are so inherent and ingrained in our culture - whether it’s media, how we grew up, or just day to day living within relationships - it really effects us. I think I noticed that especially within the last series. So how you interpret that throughout your life? What does sex and sexuality mean to you, and we can go from there.
That’s a lot.
I know.
I guess, well, I’ve always been interested in sex. I think ever since I entered puberty and had those hormones kick in. I always knew I would be a pretty sexual person when I came of age. I don’t know where it came from, if it’s just how I was built. Neither of my parents have shown any indication that sex is something on their minds or part of their lives, at least to me. And it’s not a religious thing. It’s just not their thing, especially my mom. Even her parents were that way. They never said sex was bad, none of that, it was just never mentioned. I feel like in my mind there’s just a walking WAP song. I listened to that song and I was like me, me. I want that. I want all of that. Yes, I feel that. So, I don’t know if it’s nature vs nurture. I definitely was not nurtured to feel this way or understand that sex isn’t normal. It is totally normal. I remember stealing cosmos when I was a preteen and I didn’t know what any of it meant but I was still intrigued by it.
I know you’ve talked before about how you grew up in a conservative town where they didn’t talk about sex. It was a culture heavily influenced by the Mormon Church.
Yeah and you know, I had friends that weren’t super religious but it was something you just didn’t discuss. You didn’t talk about it. Even when we were in high school and people were having sex, they still didn’t talk about it. So, I sought a lot of stuff out. When I went to college, in my freshman year I took human sexuality. It was a very polarizing class because you have people who grew up with the idea that sex is bad. Their whole thing was that this was just the class that you watched pornography. It was nicknamed the porn class. There were other people who thought it was intriguing and interesting. Me being a little freshman was like, hehe the porn class, and I took it with two of my friends. We were going to see what it was all about and it ended up being one of the most useful, best classes I ever took. It was structured so academically. We looked at what sex means to different cultures and how we as a society came to interpret sex now. And they did have porn Fridays but they were instructional porn videos. The videos were literally what it says, instructional sex.
My brain is going Monty Python with what this could mean. I think they did one once where it was very sarcastic but also instructional.
Once they hook you with that then they go in the biology of sex. So, the hormone cycles, the different phases of arousal and when you climax. It’s basically storyboarding but we learned all the biology to it. Then we learned about sexual deviancy like how pedophiles come to be, sexual assault, and the ramifications of sex crimes. That kind of stuff. It was really heavy but really interesting. That was the first time I had truly learned about that and we had some really good conversations surrounding consent. So the professor would throw a question up like if a guy forced himself on a girl is that rape? Almost 100% would say yes. Then she’d ask if he was married to her would you feel the same way? That really shook the whole class because we never thought about it in those terms. Just because you’re in a relationship with someone or are married to them, does that automatically give consent to every future sexual encounter? I had never heard consent stated like that. Some of the other things I learned was about the transgender community and the BDSM community. Members of the community came into the class and spoke to us about what it truly means to be a part of the community. I think it all further intrigued me me and made me want to be more sex positive. It was really the first time I felt like I had knowledge that I could go forth into the world with.
“Just because you are in a relationship or married to someone, does that automatically give consent to every future sexual encounter?”
That sounds really interesting. I know we had a sex ed class in high school, but it wasn’t that at all. It was your standard abstinence class. They had people talk about condoms and STIs and things like that but it was very basic. I think they talked more about alcohol than they did sex. And we never looked at consent that way. It’s cool that you had access to a class like that. It seems like a great opportunity.
It was. I recommended that class to everyone. Some people got uncomfortable when I would mention it. They would be like, that’s just the porn class. Like, no, you learn other stuff. And I don’t think teenagers or minors need to be watching porn in their high schools, but I do think that learning about the culture of sex and aligning the biology behind it, learning about consent, sex crimes, things like that is important.
Oh absolutely. I’m thinking of who I was as a high schooler, I don’t know if I would’ve taken that class but I probably needed it.
No, this wasn’t high school. I took this when I was in undergrad when I as in Seattle.
Oh ok.
This is a bit of a side tangent, but I’m pretty close friends with some of my high school friends still and some of them were a part of the Mormon community. One of my friends was sexually assaulted and she went to tell the leaders of the church. Instead of asking what happened, they victim blamed her. And because virginity is such a huge deal, they shunned her from the church even though it wasn’t her fault. It totally messed up her relationship with the church. She’s no longer a Mormon because of it. It’s always stuff like that where people need the communities they’re in, but usually they’re the most unhelpful, especially religious ones.
I can’t speak for all of them, but even the Christian community doesn’t speak about sex in a positive way. They’re trying to and I can see it, but they’re still shy and they don’t really know how to come at it because for a lot of Christians it’s the same way, you stay a virgin until marriage. So, they don’t know how to talk about sex in a healthy manner. They do better with assault victims. I do think this needs to be an open conversation about why is it your choice and understanding that God doesn’t hate you. He doesn’t shame you for wanting it.
From what I remember from that class, when we were learning about different cultures, the ancient European cultures - like before Christ - viewed sex as strictly procreation. Like, you do not have this for pleasure. One of the things that was talked about was how shame is so connected to it because when those cultures turned to Christianity, they used the stuff in the Bible to justify their practices. You’re more familiar with it than I am, but they said it was less civil so they justified their actions and it just kind of stuck.
I can’t think of any verses off the top of my head which they would’ve used however I know it’s a common practice for the church throughout history to grab random verses to justify their actions. Rather than looking at those verses in context and seeing what it is that the verse is actually saying. So, I can understand how that happens. Especially if it goes on through all of history and culture, and is widely accepted so now we have this really condemning practice that hurts and shames people. We really need to stop and look at what we’re saying and doing. People shouldn’t be taking random verses out of the Bible to justify their own actions.
I think a lot of it too has to do with Catholicism being the main role of Christianity for hundreds of years. The Virgin Mary and that whole aspect of how you come to terms with the Immaculate Conception. It’s this ultimate form of purity or sainthood in the fact that she had Jesus without ever being touched. Which is a ridiculous standard to hold women to, but here we are.
Yeah, I don’t really know because I haven’t looked into it enough to know if they hold virginity as such a high standard because of the Virgin Mary or not. If it is, it’s a real shit one. Honestly, Jesus himself holds prostitutes in high regard. There are many notable prostitutes and women who aren’t virgins throughout the Bible. Many believe Jesus himself was married and didn’t die a virgin. Then you say virginity is the highest form we have to reach? It brings in this very conflicting morality and feelings.
Yeah. I feel like me versus a lot of other people you talk to - with the exception of like two - didn’t grow up in super Christian cultures. Mine was weird because we didn’t talk about it but it wasn’t a religious thing. I know I want to have kids someday and when I get there I want them to be able to have good educational conversations with them early on. To not have them feel shame or feel like they need to keep something secret.
“I guess I’m of the mindset if you’re doing it in a healthy, safe, and consensual way...why does it matter?”
Oh absolutely. I myself am trying to figure out what it means to be fully educated and have open conversations with others my own age surrounding this, let alone children. I know there is a movement happening where there is encouragement to talk to children about different parts of the body appropriately and not use euphemisms or weird names.
I think it’s great to start instilling that in children now. If something were to happen to them, they would be able to better articulate and tell you exactly what happened. That’s reason enough. And when they time comes that they feel like they’re ready and able to make those decisions to have sex - I’m not saying they should be making their sexual debut at 13. No, please don’t do that, but maybe 16 or 17, at the end of the day I might be like, you know it’s your body. Be safe, do what you want with it.
And there’s a lot to that. For me, I’m trying to learn these things for myself. There’s just not enough discussion about it and it does come with a very high shame factor.
Even this kind of discussion that we’re having is wrong in some way and that’s not right. It’s weird to me that people put so much morality on something that is needed to populate our species. No matter what, this is biologically necessary for us as a collective. I don’t know, I guess I’m just of the mindset that if you’re doing it in a healthy, safe, consensual way why does it matter?
I think part of it is that it’s almost never those three things. It’s hopefully consensual at bare bones, but how many actually have healthy knowledge of what sex is. Men still don’t really know women’s bodies. There’s jokes about finding the clit and G spot. Or they’re not communicating in a way that’s healthy. So, how much of it is actually healthy sex practices? I swear to God it better be consensual, but I’ve come to learn consent can be gray. There now needs to be enthusiastic consent but a lot of guys are realizing how much they’ve pressed the boundaries on that. And safe? There’s still the joke of how hard it is to get a guy to wear a condom. Like dude, wear one. Yeah, those are the things you’re asking for and you might be more equipped than most people, but those are some of the hardest things to get. People often put their own morality on things because they think they’re right and they think other people should be acting the same way they are. Most of the time they’re not right because they’re trying to force people into something. So that makes it difficult, especially if you’re getting it from the church or a political party who’s trying to cover a huge swath of people.
I think for me personally, a lot of it comes down to controlling women. We’ve been controlled since the dawn of time and the more freedom women get the more scared men get. So they have to think of new ways to keep up in line. Of course, the goal of the oppressors is to get the oppressed to oppress each other.
I have been hearing a lot more of these discussions framed this way more recently. Not that I haven’t ever heard it, I think it’s just a new framing.
I’ve noticed that anytime women start to do something 110% just for them, that topic or thing becomes disvalued by men. For the longest time in society you were supposed to wear makeup to make yourself look better. Now, with the help of the internet, women are doing makeup to make themselves to feel great and beautiful. The joke is like, oh you got to take her swimming on the first date. To which I’m like, if you find her attractive with makeup, what do you think? That she’s gonna stop wearing it when she dates you?
So much of culture is putting expectations on how they think women should and should not act. It’s this expectation that women have to act in a certain way and if they don’t then they’ll be shamed for it.
It was interesting in your last series, I remember there was one guy who thought purity was like nothing, like it was untouched. It was this greatness and he tried making it sound really poetic and religious. I don’t want to project what he was thinking but I found it interesting to juxtapose that with the two other ladies in the article that saw it as constraining and constricting.
I have heard that men do go through shaming and toxic male body image. It’s nothing like what women go through. There is this ideal male image they have to hold to which is how we get toxic masculinity. I think that’s one of the interesting things that I found that men do has these issues as well. They have an ideal that if they don’t reach it they get shamed and they project their hurts and their traumas and wounds on women specifically.
I think we see that specifically with the rise of in cells. I think learning about purity culture is so interesting for a woman. She’s not supposed to have sex but a man is supposed to have lots of sex. The question is, who are all these men having sex with? Let’s be real. When your definition of being a man is the amount of women that you quote conquer and no woman wants to date you, but you think it’s your right as a man to have all this sex - this leads to all this toxic messaging and sexism. It can lead to this huge violence against women.
“The goal of the oppressor is to get the oppressed to oppress each other.”
And women are sexual beings who will have sex with men if they aren’t assholes, like they would. What you’re saying is how we get sexual assault because they do force themselves on women. If they really were good guys who didn’t view women as objects and treated them like people it could be really great sex between two people who really cared for each other. Or even if they just wanted to have fun. It’s just that really toxic cycle that will spin on itself, which is not good.
I don’t know how much this has to do with all of this, but a lot of them will say women are shallow and only date hot men. That if the guy was more attractive then they’d have sex with them, to which I go, do you know the amount of the tropes we have of hot wife ugly husband? Women are able to see past the physical and want to date someone who respects them, is nice to them, and is in general a good person. Like, don’t get me wrong I simp for himbos but I also will go for a guy that isn’t super hot but is super nice who wants to go on adventures and is fun.
I mean same. I like the teddy bear guys, they’re cute and you can cuddle with them but also, I do love the string bean surfer boys.
I don’t know what it is about string beans but they’re attracted to fuller women. I don’t get it. It’s like you can wear my clothes and I don’t like that.
I want to wear your clothes.
Yeah. I don’t like that you can put on my sweatshirt and I don’t like that.
Thank you again to Gabby for chatting with me.
Next week we will be getting a bit kinky with the gay community. It’s gonna be fun, you won’t want to miss it.