Your Sexuality - Ask & tell - Alyssa royse at tedxrainier

So we've all spent a day listening to these conversations about people who are going to revolutionize things, and they've got revolutionary technology, and revolutionary ways to build cars and educate people. And I have like the least revolutionary idea you're going to hear all day, that is that you, and you and you and you, are allowed to have sex exactly the way you want to, as often as you want to, and it's up to rest of us to make sure that you know that. (Laughter) So, right? That's not a bad way to end the day. And it's kind of a perfect time in our history to have that conversation, now that we finally got rid of "don't ask, don't tell". Right? (Applause) So, I had to think about what the opposite of "don't ask, don't tell" is. It's "ask and tell"! So now that we understand that it's OK if the soldier fighting next to us is having ***, it's time to ask ourselves if it's OK that the neighbor living next door to us is getting tied up and spanked in a little girl dress every night. And the answer is it is OK because it has no impact on you, whatsoever, because what they're doing is a consensual act between adults. and unless you're doing it with them, it does not matter to you. But we have to get back to a very simple question: What is sex? Sex is a consensual act between adults. And that's all that it is. If you look at this picture right here, that's a temple like a thousand years ago in India and that is not monogamous, and it's probably not heterosexual. As long as people have been having sex they've been doing it in wild and creative ways and they often even call it art. Sex is a consensual act between adults it is intimate, it is personal and it is totally natural. So why do we have all the shame around it? I think the first question really is to understand what shame is, and we need to go ahead and separate that from guilt. Guilt is an internal voice inside your body that pops up when you know you have done something wrong to someone. I told a lie, I feel guilty about that, I did something bad. Shame is an external force that other people put on you; it tells you that you are something bad. So not I told a lie and did something bad; it is I'm gay, I am bad. That's a really, really debilitating idea. That takes away your autonomous control over your sexuality and anybody who wants to take control over your sexuality does not have your best interest at heart. Whether it's your preacher, your teacher, your lover or anyone else, that's not natural. But what does shame do to people, why does this even matter? I think you can turn on the news and you can see about gay kids jumping off of bridges, because they're ashamed to be gay and know that this matters. In fact there's actually a lot of research about the impact of *** shame on gay and lesbian people. Unfortunately it's all about gay and lesbian people 'cos people don't research shame with heterosexuals too much. So if you look at the statistics, youth between the ages of 21 and 25 are 8 times more likely to commit suicide if they feel marginalized because of their sexuality. That's really mean. In the 16 states in 2005 that instituted constitutional amendments saying that gay marriage is wrong and banned, the statistics are kinda shocking. Depression in the gay and lesbian population in those states went from 23% to 31%; generalized anxiety went from 3% to 9%, and alcohol abuse went from 22% to 31%. This hurts people. *** shame hurts people. But that's just gay people, so that's good news for the rest of us. Except that it turns out gay people are in fact just people. So if *** shame hurts gay people, it probably hurts straight people also. Turns out about 8% of the population is homosexual. In a survey that was done in 2005 asking people about their *** behavior, 20% of respondents identified themselves as ***. Meaning that they had multiple partners at the same time, they used toys, bondage, spanking, watched *** together. 8% of people were let out their closet, 20% of people, and I think that's low, are still living in shame in the closet, which is probably where they keep all the toys and so maybe that's OK. (Laughter) The problem is this is a huge thing for all of us. Sex is a huge industry. Even in the depression it's a $13 billion industry to watch ***. 25% of every single search engine request is looking for ***. That's a lot. Think about that, right. 12% of the sites in the Internet are ***. And if you thought that was big, 13 billion on ***, last year, the world's worst economy, remember, since the depression, 15 billion dollars worth of sex toys were purchased. We are a *** people, we are spending a lot of time and money looking for sex, or looking for more fun sex anyway. So what exactly is normal sex, now that we've established that we don't want people to feel shame. Normal sex is anything that is a consensual act between adults. You can spank each other, you can wear costumes, you can do anything you want and it is normal. So my boyfriend and I this morning we're trying to come up with a way to illustrate the depth and breadth of human sexuality without scaring you with photos which are scary even to me. So we went to the Lustlab, which is the strangers online personal ads specifically for people who are looking for interesting sex. There are 90 different kinks just on Lustlab that you could register looking for a partner for, and that's in Seattle. Seattle is really gotta be one of the most uptight cities in the country, so that's saying something, right? Looking at Lustlab everything went from asphyxiation to water sports, and water sports in case you didn't know is pee not water, and everything in between like bondage, knife play, group sex, you name it, it's all normal. Why does it matter that we're shaming each other, as if jumping off bridges wasn't bad enough, as if being depressed wasn't bad enough? The truth is people are destroying marriages, careers, lives and communities by keeping secrets about what they're into sexually. All those, let's say politicians, who are suddenly looking for a little boys in airport bathrooms. It's bad enough that his own career was destroyed. What about the woman he married who believed that she was in a happy consensual marriage with somebody who's getting his needs met. That lie didn't just hurt him, that hurt her, and his family. It's just not cool. Just not OK. So Milton Diamond was hired a few years ago to do research on the impact of *** in *** sex and sex crimes, hopefully to prove that people who have *** sex and watch *** are the ones committing the crimes. Turned out he found actually an inverse correlation; people who watch *** and are sexually fulfilled are less likely to commit crimes. And that statistic is beared out in the fact that there's less crime in the cities where there's more *** watched. Guess what state has the most *** watched in the country -€“ Utah. (Laughter) It's not a coincidence! As I was running around doing statistics, and the politicians and airports are kinda funny, I read across a statistic that really hit home for me; trans-people, people who are transitioning from either being male or female, have three times the urinary tract infections of the general population. You know why? They're afraid to go in public bathrooms because people will ridicule them. That's pretty direct. So why do we do it? I think it's really simple, nobody actually knows why we shame people about their sexuality, if you take the church out, which I'm trying to do. I think that we shame people about their sexuality because we're afraid of our own sexuality. It lives very, very deep inside of us and it's intimate and real and scary and personal and we want to and we should protect our own sexuality. So if we give those people the right to do those really scary, weird things to each other, I think we're afraid that we're giving them permission to do those things to us as well. And that is kind of scary. I've awesome news for you. It actually works the opposite way. When we give people back autonomous control over their sexuality and say, you are allowed to define your sexuality however you want, you go do it, we give ourselves that same right. So we're allowed to say, I want you to tie me up but I don't want you to spank me. We are allowed to draw our own boundaries. Not only do we get to have what we want; we don't have to have what we don't want. The upside for that as people is that we create a really safe place for ourselves to be honest. And when we are honest and safe with our lovers we might actually be able to push our own boundaries just a little bit farther and discover the whole spectrum for ourselves. So here's the last thing. I'm hoping you all got your surveys, please tell me there are surveys. This is kind of a game so you have to play this one along with me. I hope you all filled out your surveys. Nobody will ever know your answers. I promise. So what I want you to do is to take your surveys and ball them up, into a totally crumpled ball, and then I want you to throw it as far away from yourself and into the audience as you possibly can. (Laughter) My God! That's awesome looking! OK, now pick one up and throw it again. I want you all to feel really comfortable that nobody will see your answers. But mine are right there, in case you are wondering. Those are my answers. I've got nothing to hide anymore. OK! Stop! Pick up a survey. Open it. And read it. It is my greatest hope that you will see something in there that resonates. Oh! I would have tossed it to you. OK. We're not done yet, there's one more piece and I'm sure I've gone over time, oh, I know I've gone over time. So as I'm walking off the stage, I ask as a favor to you, one: hand those surveys, to the ushers on your way out, but more importantly: I want you to read the survey that you have and I want you to look at somebody next to you, and I want you to look at him in the eye and say, "I am afraid that you will find out that I'm into -- all of the above." And it's not because I want you can trust a secret but I want all of us to get that muscle memory and build that language. It's OK for you to be honest with me, I will accept that. And I want all of us to know what it feels like to hold somebody the thing most important to them, and treasure it, because that's how we as a community are going to learn to accept people for who they are and end *** shame and start having really rocking good sex. (Laughter) Thank you. (Applause)