Transcript

- [aja monet] Hello listeners. I hope you all are doing well in these very challenging times. I want to personally thank you for joining me in The Sound Bath and extend the same question that I ask all of our guests to you. So click the link in the show notes to leave me a voice message and let me know, what sounds bring you a sense of calm or wellbeing? What does care mean to you? And what kind of care are you exploring right now? We can't wait to hear from you. And don't forget to like or follow us and leave us a review wherever you find your podcasts.

- [Ev’Yan Whitney] For me, it's not about having all the answers. It's not about me knowing definitively 100%, "This is who I am, this is how it's going to be expressed." "This is how I'm going to navigate in the communities within this identity." For me, it's more so about, "This is who I am right now", and giving myself the space and the grace to explore that.

- [aja monet] Greetings listeners, this is The Sound Bath, a show brought to you by Lush Cosmetics, and my name is aja monet. I'm really looking forward to today's episode. Ev'Yan Whitney is a sexuality doula, author of a book called "Sensual Self," an interactive, self-guided journal that gives you permission to reconnect to your pleasure and come home to your body with play, curiosity, and self-reflection. Their work focuses on decolonizing, unshaming, liberating sexuality at the intersection of identity, pleasure, and embodiment. They coined the term sexuality doula and pioneered this method of healing in 2014. Ev'Yan does deep and profound work as an educator, healer, and facilitator in the realm of sex education and sexuality embodiment. They hold space for women and femme-identifying folks who are ready to step out of shame, confusion, and fear within their sexuality and into erotic empowerment, whatever that may look like for them. Let's get into it.

- [aja monet] I am so excited to be in conversation with you today, Ev'Yan. I have been really looking forward to this discussion around sexuality and this term that you have coined around sexuality doula. So, there's all these things buzzing in my head. But before I begin kind of getting into the questions and the juiciness of the conversation, I wanted to just give you an opportunity to introduce yourself to the listeners and perhaps share a little bit of how you see yourself and the work that you do in the world.

- [Ev’Yan Whitney] Thank you, thank you, aja. Hi everyone, my name is Ev'Yan Whitney, I call myself a sexuality doula. I am an educator, an author, a podcaster. And yeah, I've been doing this work of sexual liberation and sensual embodiment for 12 years, and I'm really happy to be here to talk to you all about that.

- [aja monet] So, before, I guess, we begin too, I wanna see how are you feeling? How are you feeling in your body at this very moment? What are you holding? What are the things that you're currently sitting with right now?

- [Ev’Yan Whitney] I appreciate that question. You know, I do a lot of interviews and it is very rare that people ask me to check in with my body and to kind of get a landscape of what's going on in it, so thank you for that invitation. I am in a space of recovery, I got my first experience of COVID a couple of weeks ago, so my body is still healing from that. And there's a sense of fatigue in my body that I haven't been able to quite shake since I tested positive. So I'm feeling that, and then I'm also feeling just, I'm feeling a little tender. I had a very tender therapy session yesterday with my therapist where was talking about my daddy issues. So, I kind of woke up this morning with a little bit of an emotional hangover, you know? So yeah, it's a nice combination of both. Like physiologically, I'm feeling fatigued, and also my emotional body is feeling pretty soft as well.

- [aja monet] Thank you for that language, emotional fatigue. I feel like that is something that I've felt, but maybe not articulated in that way and that resonates with me as well. There's so many questions I have, so let's just begin with, in one of your essays, you wrote that since 2011, quote, "I've been chronicling my sexual liberation journey in writing candid essays on sexuality identity, healing relationships, and self love." It says that your sexual orientation, quote-unquote, "Is messy, confusing, a dramatic, coming-out story." And I wanted to just understand or uncover a little bit around sexual orientation, especially at this time. What are your thoughts around coming out and what was that process like for you?

- [Ev’Yan Whitney] I've come out as so many things by now. I no longer identify as a woman, I actually identify as non-binary. Just to add another layer of complexity and dynamic to this experience. I think the first time that I ever came out was when I came out as bisexual and that was like in 2011. And in the beginning, coming out wasn't really something that I liked to do, I felt like I had to do it. These days, my relationship with coming out is a lot more mutable. It feels a lot more gentle, and there's more agency attached to it. I think, coming out over, and over, and over again, I have really thought about the ways in which sexuality, and not even just sexuality, but just personal identity is so mutable, it is not as fixed as we have thought. And so, I've kind of submitted or resolved to coming out multiple times in my life. And to have that expression of coming out be more so as an act of celebration, an act of, "I want you to see me as this because I am proud to be this," that feels really generative and exciting, and also playful, you know? I think, in the beginning when I was coming out, it just felt so serious.

- [aja monet] I wonder, as I'm listening to you, what's the balance? Or is there a balance or negotiation between going inward and coming out? Like, at what point does one not feel the need to come out? Or when do you find that coming out is necessary in community? And when do you find that it can be sort of limiting or placing more "boundaries" around one's sexuality?

- [Ev’Yan Whitney] Such a good question. I think that this is a part of coming out that not a lot of people talk about, how it is a very personal decision. And you know, we put a lot of pressure on people to know who they are, and so that when they do come out, it's like, "Oh, well, you're making this declaration." "You figured it out, you know exactly who you are, how you want to express yourself." And that can put a lot of pressure on people. I mean, I know it put a lot of pressure on me, this idea that if I come out as non-binary, that means I have to fully understand the nuances of every aspect of my gender identity and how that folds into the relationship that I have with my partner, the relationship I have with my own body. And I'm grateful that I'm at this space with coming out where, for me, it's not about having all the answers. It's not about me knowing definitively 100%, "This is who I am, this is how it's going to be expressed." "This is how I'm going to navigate in the communities within this identity." For me, it's more so about like, "This is who I am right now," and giving myself the space and the grace to explore that, to be messy with that, to not have any sort of fixed or rigid notions of who I need to be at any given time. And I think the reason why I've come to that space is because I've realized that identity, sexuality, bodies, it's all in this space of fluidity.

- [aja monet] Yeah, thank you for sharing and expounding on that. My next question is around pleasure and eroticism. Our sexuality often feels very, and I don't know if this is unique to Black women, but particularly with Black women because we, at one point, were not considered human, right? That there is this specific thing around the exploitation and commodification of our sexuality, so that now what I find being the thing that's being made popular or the thing that's being encouraged is, you know, get money. Like, if you go and pop it, pop it for some money. If you gonna twerk it, twerk for some. And in some ways, we're being told that that's flipping the power dynamics on its head, I think we struggle with, okay, well, where is that line between, this is an act of rebellion and liberation and, well, am I being used, is my body being used against me? Is this something that continues to kind of perpetuate these very limited views of our sexuality and our pleasure.

- [Ev’Yan Whitney] Yeah, this is so deep and it really speaks to just how inherently racist our culture is. Like, Black folks, Black women, and femmes are constantly having to reckon with the inherent white supremacist, patriarchal capitalism and the misogynoirist nature of the world that we live in. So like, anything that we do as Black folks, as Black women, as Black femmes is politicized because our existence is radical. Like, the very fact that we are in our bodies, that we can take control over our sexuality, that we can speak with our own words what we want and what we need. Like, that is an act of resistance to those things. I think your question about pleasure and eroticism, this is something that I've been thinking about a lot. It's been the basis of my work for over 12 years, trying to figure out why it is that my own pleasure, my own sexuality, my own eroticism does feel so different than my white counterparts. Why it is political? You know? I can remember being in my early 20s and seeing my white friends talking about the incredible orgasms that they were having and these sexual experiences, and just the freedom with which they were able to have these experiences. The freedom with which they were able to talk about these experiences were so different from the way that I was raised. And I don't necessarily think it's just because I was Black, although, like, how could I separate those two? You know, like, but I think about that a lot. I think about how there feels like such a lack of freedom to explore and express your sexuality as a Black person, as a Black woman, as a Black femme. I think about how, for me, there was always this space of seriousness around sex, you know. That I had to move through these waters of dogma, and stigma, and shame, and trauma that I'm still honestly wading in. I mean, I've been doing this work for a long time, but I mean, I believe in epigenetics, and I believe that me talking about sex, and sexual liberation, and sexual healing is a really wonderful step to healing my ancestors. But it's also, I mean, their trauma, their lack of agency, their lack of sexual choice and autonomy still lives inside of my body.

- [aja monet] Yeah, I also think that part of what I find really frustrating around the conversation of sexuality, particularly with Black people, you know, around our relationships and our struggle with sexuality and our expression of sexuality between men and women, it's often I find that when men find the need to like over-romanticize women's bodies, over-exploit women's sexuality, that it only hurts the men, Black men in particular. And they don't really realize that they're only furthering the idea that they're breeders, you know. That like, there's this whole thing that slavery put over us that didn't, at least, you know, those of us in the diaspora, and African people all over, but that the whiteness and colonialism really colonized our relationships to our bodies, and making us assume that our primal nature was the only part of us. That it's somehow disconnected from an interior world, and a spiritual world, and a reality. I think eroticism, for me, in the conversation about eroticism that Audrey brings into this conversation around sexuality is about the spiritual plane and feelings. You know, the unrecognized feelings, the unexpressed feelings, which kind of goes to your further point, which is, we're not fixed. If in fact we are fluid, what are the unexpressed feelings that we're holding that our minds have been colonized around, right? That, like, we start to judge ourselves for having these feelings that we don't even understand. And rather than being inquisitive or curious about those feelings, we just deny them and repress them. So, I wanted to ask you a bit about, in your work as a sexual doula, are there certain things that you've noticed in your feelings about sexuality that have helped you on your journey to be a more liberated, to be a more full, and accepting, and affirmed person in the world?

- [Ev’Yan Whitney] I feel very deeply right now that our ancestors, my ancestors, your ancestors are in the room. And I just wanted to give them a little head nod, shout out to them 'cause I think what we're touching on is so deeply ancestral, you know? I think, often, when we're talking about sexual liberation, and also sexual shame, and sexual trauma, and the ways that we are not able to express ourselves as full individuals because of the traumas that we've experienced, because of racism, because our humanity has been constantly stripped away from us. We're also talking about the folks that came before us that may not have been able to have their sexual autonomy, to have their emotional autonomy come to fruition in a literal sense. So anyway, I'm kind of going on a tangent, but I just, I really wanted to speak that into the room because I think that we're not just talking about ourselves in this conversation, we're also talking about the folks that came before us. And thinking about the ways, like, how can we make our liberation their liberation, you know, as much as we can. So, to answer your question about like, how does one begin this process? There are two questions that really helped me begin this journey of calling into question the lessons, the narratives, the stories, the teachings that I'd been given about my own sexuality, my own body, my pleasure. So, the first question that I asked myself and that I invite folks to ask themselves is, who do I want to be as a sexual being? And within that question, are many micro questions, you know, what kind of sex do I wanna have? What kind of relationship do I wanna have with my orgasm? What kind of relationship do I wanna have with pleasure? What sort of lovers do I wanna attract? And how do I want them to treat me within our sexual interactions? And also, side note, you know, who do I wanna be as a sexual being? That word can be changed to, who do I wanna be as a woman? Who do I wanna be as an non-binary person? How do I want to express these parts of myself in a way that feels liberatory, and generative, and safe, and that has me feeling whole? So, I will continue to use sexuality as the word here, but I want to stress that this is something that folks can use in every aspect of their lives, not just sex. And then, the second question is, what do I think is getting in the way of me being this person, of me embodying this person? And again, micro questions within that. Like, what stories of shame have I internalized about my body? What narratives of stigma around my eroticism am I living? What is getting in the way of me feeling sexually free? What thoughts, what limiting beliefs, what traumatic experiences have I had? Even like, what do I feel do I not deserve access to when it comes to my sexuality? So with these two questions, what is really interesting is that the first question, you know, who do I wanna be as a sexual being, is a really beautiful way for us to dream, for us to get playful, for us to create in our own image who we want to be outside of what our culture, our society have told us we need to be. And I love that question because so often, sex, sexuality, gender identity, it's so damn serious. And there's a lot of stuff that is on top of it that keeps us from feeling like, this can be light, this can be playful, I can allow myself to imagine, and create, and get messy with that process of who I would like to be. And so, it really gives people an invitation to explore, and to have fun, and to bring a little bit of lightness to who they wanna step into. And that second question is kind of diagnostic, you know? It gives you a glimpse of, oh, these are the things that are keeping me from accessing my sexual self. These are the things that are keeping me dissociated from my body, you know? And what I love about that question is that once you answer that second question to the fullest degree that you can, you kind of have a game plan of, like, where you need to go in terms of what your healing journey is gonna look like. And oftentimes, that might look like getting into therapy to talk about the traumatic experiences that you've had that might look like reading some books and educating yourself about, what does a sexual person look like? Like, what does it mean to be sexually free? That might look like checking your own biases about what sexual liberation looks like. So yeah, those two questions were really important for me. They really started me on the path and they kept me curious. You know, those are questions that I come back to frequently because we're never one thing at one time, we're always changing. And so, I encourage folks to keep asking these questions because I'm willing to bet that once you excavate a layer of liberation for yourself, you're gonna find more questions and it's okay to be curious.

- [aja monet] Yeah, the other part that I had a question around that's really, really important, I think, for me, but for listeners all over is that, you know, because sexuality is often seen as so serious and so much of our sexuality as adults is colored by how we first learned about sex as children, or how we were first engaging sex as children, or engaged with sex as children, who first taught us about our bodies and encouraged us to be curious about our bodies versus, how do we first learn shame? And how are our bodies tended to, how are they treated? Who touched them, who was allowed to touch them? You know, these are all things that I think come up in terms of the seriousness. Sex can be very serious, not even because people want it to be, but because their history with it is so serious, and so visceral, and oftentimes traumatic. So, I wanted to ask you, how does one go about igniting or rekindling a relationship with sexuality? How does one even begin a new journey with their sexuality after surviving sexual assault, or trauma, or some sort of disruption around their sexual health, etc.? And you know, I know that you don't have all the answers, but I'm very interested in maybe some of the ways that you help others process their relationship to the harm that their bodies has experienced, or the trauma, and how they can start to begin a journey with sexuality after that, in the aftermath?

- [Ev’Yan Whitney] I think that's why the work that I do and the work that other sexual professionals, sex educators, sex therapists is so important. My work as a sexuality doula is to be a companion and a guide for folks through these very trepidatious parts of their journey. Like, how do I reconnect? How do I claim my body as mine after experiencing trauma? And I think a lot of us think that this is something that should be shouldered by ourselves. I mean, we live in a world steeped in the cult of individualism, and there's this idea that like, "Oh, it's my problem, I have to fix it." And my work as a sexuality doula is about empowering folks to ask for help and to not shoulder all of this and take responsibility in fixing it on their own. And that's why folks like me can be so helpful because we can give you the space to dream into being, like, what that freedom looks like, while also giving you the tools and the guidance to do so. So that was a very long way of saying, I think that it's okay for folks to ask for help. I think that, particularly survivors, it is paramount that we ask for help in our journeys, so much of what we're grappling with when we have experienced some form of trauma on our body, or our sexual agency, or autonomy. I mean, these are really big things that can't be explained or healed within reading a book or listening to a podcast. And there's so much power in being able to share that burden or share that complication with somebody else and to entrust your story with someone else if you can, so that they can help you through that struggle. And I really want folks to know that even if it's not working with someone one-on-one, even if it is just talking to another friend that you have, where maybe you both have a similar background, where you've experienced similar trauma or similar shame stories about sex or your body, starting a conversation around what does it look like for us to be free? What do we need in order for us to get there? What kind of support, what kind of community? I think that that is an aspect of healing that I want to focus more on as I'm moving into my own personal journey as well. Like, not feeling like I have to do it all by myself, but actually outsourcing and also resourcing some of that community care. Because, I mean, we can't heal by ourselves. It's so important that we have that support.

- [aja monet] Yeah, thank you for that. I don't know how accurate this is right now, but I know that I've heard the statistic that one out of every six American women has been a victim of an attempted or completed rape in her lifetime. I'm pretty sure that statistics are even more in other countries and communities. It's just to kind of bring that into the room because I know that it's so common. And if we know that this is so common, I think, when we talk about sexuality, part of what I wish for us as a community, and when we talk about collective care is, some tenderness, compassion, and humility, and grace when we deal with each other's bodies. But I feel, oftentimes, cis heterosexual men have this relationship to their own body and others that is not met with humility, grace, tenderness, and curiosity. And so, I wish that for all of us, but I think that part of helping us to destabilize and to really disrupt and take down patriarchy has to be with this level of compassion, curiosity, and tenderness about, well, if I know that this is common, how do I then move differently or more intentionally in relationship to the bodies around? How do I think, how do I approach the body with awe, and inspiration, and tenderness, and compassion, rather than the need to conquer, and absorb, and absolve, and discard, and throw away? I'm inspired by what can come from a liberated society around sexuality and our bodies, and what can transform, not just in terms of our personal relationships, but systemically, and the ways that we sort of demand things systemically. I wanted to ask you about what are the political ramifications, or what do you see manifesting in some of the people that you've seen, or some of the relationships or the work that you've done? What is the connection between how we treat our bodies, how we relate to sex, and how we relate to systems of power, and how we relate to the politics of now?

- [Ev’Yan Whitney] Yeah, I think it's that quote, "How you do one thing is how you do everything." And I don't know if I 100% believe that, but I think in this conversation that we're having around sex and sexuality. And you know, there's a lot of misconception, I think, about the work that I do. You know, folks might imagine that I am talking about sex, and sex positions, and toys, and things like that. But mostly, what comes up is, an interrogation, a curiosity about the stories that we're holding in our bodies about our sex lives, about our sexual needs and desires, and how those same stories are being replicated in other ways. So like, it's very, very common for me to be in session with someone and we're talking about like, "Okay, what is your relationship like to orgasm?" "Okay, orgasm is about pleasure, what is your relationship like to pleasure?" Like in general, not from a sexual place, but just like, what is your relationship to just like feeling good in your body? And it's really interesting that a lot of the time folks are having issue with orgasm from a sexual place. They're also very disconnected from feeling good in their bodies in a platonic place. So, I truly see that this realm of sexuality, this realm of sensual pleasure is really kind of a mirror, I think, for the other aspects of our lives that we are disconnected from, that we have been dissociated from, that we have been taught to ignore, or deny, or hide. And you know, I came into this work of sexual liberation and sexual healing thinking, if I could just, and mostly for myself, not necessarily for other people. But I would say like, if I could just fix this part of myself, if I could just liberate my sexuality, everything will fall into place. You know, this idea that sexual liberation will save me and it will save the world. And I still believe that to be true, I still believe that because sexual liberation is tied to bodily autonomy, it is tied to our freedom to express ourselves in whatever capacity that looks like, whether that is through gender, whether that is through who we are loving, who we are fucking, how we are fucking. I really do believe that sexual liberation is a big piece to us finding liberation as a whole. Like, this idea of, like, if pleasure is at the center of the work that I do, how can I make other people experience that pleasure? And like, everybody, I'm talking about people in these spaces regardless of class, regardless of color. Like, pleasure is political, you know? The sexual is political, and yeah, I find that when we're talking about sex, we're often not talking about sex, you know? We're talking about power.

- [aja monet] Yeah, and I think about pleasure as a measure of, whose pleasure at whose expense, you know, sometimes? That's why I wonder a lot about the relationship because power is about, I think, balancing one's access and relationship to pleasure and really redefining what is pleasure. Because I think sex is where I've seen a lot of violence play out, and the assumption that all pleasure is good or that all sexuality expressed, liberated sexual people. Sometimes, it feels like it can also be a fine line between, okay, how do we, yeah, how do we distinguish what's healthy and what's not? Because there are people who are into all sorts of things.

- [Ev’Yan Whitney] Yeah, I think that's where consent comes in, right? I think that consent and recognizing other people's humanity is really, really important, that that really sort of distinguishes abusers from folks who are engaging in healthy, consensual, and safe practices within their sexuality. Consent is everything, and we can't talk about sexual liberation without talking about consent and about how important that is. And by consent, I don't even just mean, like, "Can I touch you?" But like, do I see you as a human being with your own wants, needs, desires, your own traumas, your own tendernesses? Like, can we be in this sexual space while also holding both of those things in each hand? Can you see me as a human being? I'm really fascinated by that because we often forget that sexual relationships is a relationship, it's a collaboration. We are co-creating energy, and connection, and intimacy, and we're having a conversation with each other. And consent is that conversation, consent can help further that conversation and really draw these lines of like, okay, what is gonna make you feel safe? What's gonna make me feel safe? What is going to maybe blur the lines of certain power dynamics that we have between us? What is going to challenge power dynamics that we have between us? I think that's one of the reasons why sex can be such a place of transformative healing, because we can use sex as sort of that platform to explore, to ask these questions, to release steam, especially if they're in healthy, consensual, and safe ways.

- [aja monet] Great, thank you. My last question for you is a question we try to ask everyone. You know, this is called The Sound Bath. We are really interested in the healing capacity of conversations, of listening, and I wanted to ask, what sort of sounds bring you peace, and sensuality, intimacy? What sort of sounds come up for you that make you feel well and whole in your body?

- [Ev’Yan Whitney] I love this question. So, the sounds that really nourish me. I'm such a music lover, I listen to so, so much music. And there's usually something on in my house at any given time. I'm also, like, really loving the sounds of my neighborhood. Even the bad sounds, even the leaf blowers, and the motorcycles. It really just catapults me to remembering like, I am here in this body, in this home, on this land. And there are birds, and there is sunshine, and there are butterflies, and there are leaf blowers. It just really helps root and ground me into the present moment and reminds me that, like, in this moment, I am safe. In this moment, I have my body and there's pleasure there. Like, there's small, simple, quiet pleasure in that experience of being in my body.

- [aja monet] Thank you, I really appreciate that, sharing that with us. And thank you so much for your time in this necessary conversation. I hope that you feel heard and valued for all that you shared, I really appreciate your time.

- [Ev’Yan Whitney] Thank you, thank you so much for having me. This was a wonderful conversation, I loved every second of it.

- [aja monet] Thank you so much to the listeners for listening. We encourage you to tune in to the next Sound Bath and enjoy this beautiful sonic meditation.