Why Communicating About Sex Is So Difficult and the Orgasm Gap with Becky Lund-Harket | Transcript
Read the episode shownotes here!
Becky Lund-Harket
But an orgasm, like you say, isn't, like, the be all and end all. It does indicate or kind of - it does affect people's sexual satisfaction. So again, without it being kind of always the end goal, although it's definitely not the most important thing, but it can be a - it does feel important to people. Whether or not that's to do with feeling like it should be the end goal is a different question.
Hannah Witton
Welcome to Doing It with me, Hannah Witton, where we talk all things sex, relationships, dating, and our bodies. Hi, welcome back to Doing It. How are you? I have been really giddy and full of childish hyper energy today and just being in a great mood, and I have no idea why but I'm just gonna run with it. Maybe it's because on the day of recording this, it's really sunny. Or it could be because I've been doing loads of painting recently. For my birthday, my parents got me a custom paint by numbers and so I have been spending hours, and I mean hours, doing very detailed painting, and it is slowly coming together to look like a photo of me and my best friends on my wedding day. It is so satisfying to see it all starting to appear. Anyway, I just thought I would share that little piece of joy with you because if you didn't know, I'm really trying to centre joy and playfulness in my life this year and all kinds of pleasure, not just sexual pleasure.
But on the topic of sexual pleasure, though. Do you like that segue? My guest and I today get into talking about pleasure research and the orgasm gap. So my guest in this episode is Becky Lund-Harket, who is a facilitator with the School of Sexuality Education, who you may have heard about before on this podcast, and she's also the founder of the Candid Collective. We have a good old chat in this episode about why people feel dissatisfaction in sexual and romantic relationships (spoiler: it's because of poor communication) and we get into why we find communication so difficult and what good and bad examples can be found on TV. We chat about what the orgasm gap is and how sex ed can help to close it. And whilst we're talking about orgasms, of course, we also just had to get into how orgasm shouldn't be the focus of pleasure. Oh no. And finally, we get chatting about nudes, sexting, and some of the double standards that come along with it.
We talk about the Candid Collective in this episode but at the time me and Becky recorded, they didn't have any events planned. But now there are! They are putting on a bunch of online workshops with the incredible Almaz Ohene. The first one is actually tonight, the day at the podcast is released, Wednesday 17th of March, on writing romance. But there will also be other ones on cultivating consent culture and improving intimacy. And we'll pop a link in the shownotes if you want to find out more and get yourself a ticket to any of them. As usual, you can find more information and links to everything we talked about in this episode in the shownotes over at doingitpodcast.co.uk. And please let us know what you think over on our Twitter or Instagram, which is @doingitpodcast. I hope you enjoy this conversation with Becky Lund-Harket.
Hannah Witton
Hello, Becky. Welcome, welcome. How are you doing?
Becky Lund-Harket
I'm good. Thank you. Yeah, how are you doing?
Hannah Witton
I'm alright. I'm really excited to have this chat with you. I guess I just wanted to start off just being like, how did you get into the whole world of sex ed? And then also, why did you start the Candid Collective?
Becky Lund-Harket
Yeah.
Hannah Witton
Two questions.
Becky Lund-Harket
Two questions. Linked questions. So first of all, I kind of went to uni a bit later on in my life. So I went to uni when I was about 28. And at that age - and to Goldsmiths uni in London, and did a psychology degree and for some of the research I did around kind of in my individual research projects was to do with romantic relationships and sexual relationships.
Hannah Witton
Ah, love that.
Becky Lund-Harket
And through that research and doing lots of kind of reading and literature reviews, kind of discovering how I guess - dissatisfied I suppose a lot of people are with their sexual relationships and their romantic relationships, and finding that just quite fascinating as to kind of how widespread that was and how bad we are at talking about it, I guess.
Hannah Witton
Wow. Did you uncover why?
Becky Lund-Harket
Well, then kind of uncovering why was the interesting bit, which a lot to do - a lot of it was to do with communication, so people just not feeling like they are able to32 communicate kind of articulately or at all about their sex lives, and therefore that having an impact on their romantic relationships. So that I found really interesting and was like, why are we so bad at this? And I think there's probably lots of different reasons why we're so bad at it. But then kind of coming to this thing of like, well, education being really important. And if as adults, we're really bad at talking about these things, then we should probably be helping younger people, like the next generations, to be better at it. That's kind of where I came at it from, like, oh dear, we're, we're terrible at this. How can we improve this?
Hannah Witton
We really are.
Becky Lund-Harket
We might be doomed but the younger people shouldn't be doomed. I mean, we're obviously not doomed at all. But I just thought, if we - if the younger people get a bit of a head start and a bit of help in - in kind of having those tools, I suppose. Yeah.
Hannah Witton
It's definitely a toolkit. It's - when I think about, like tips for communication and stuff, it's it's not as simple as just like, information, like, you can't just, like, give someone information about how to communicate, like it's practice, practice, practice. And it's often just, like, being bad at it. And working through that.
Becky Lund-Harket
Absolutely. And quite a lot of the advice that you see, and especially if it's kind of fairly, ,like, kind of shallow advice is: well, you must communicate. And like, well, yes, but how the hell do you do that?.
Hannah Witton
Yeah, and it's like, full stop! I've definitely been guilty of that as well, where I'm like top tips for great sex, like, communication. And then it's like, but how?
Becky Lund-Harket
What do I actually say, or what do I...
Hannah Witton
Yeah.
Becky Lund-Harket
How do I - also, like, so much of it is how do I know what I need, want, desire before I can even start to say it to somebody, there's a lot of layers to that. So then kind of looked into that, I guess, world or field and found School of Sexuality Education. We used to be called Sexplain. So they were Sexplain when I started, and we changed our names, just this summer gone, to School of Sexuality Education. So then got in touch with the team there, kind of expressed my interest in what they do and that kind of started it. Started just like kind of seeing what they do and then yeah, we've been working for them now for a couple of years, which I love. They're just an amazing team.
Hannah Witton
Yeah. Great organization. We love them here.
Becky Lund-Harket
I love them too.
Hannah Witton
And then tell us about the Candid Collective?
Becky Lund-Harket
Yeah. So then kind of from that, and from working in school - so School of Sexuality Education work predominately with young people. We do also run workshops in universities, but for the most part, we do secondary school workshops and delivery. So from that, I was kind of talking to my friends, who are more like kind of 20s, 30s, explaining to them what I was doing with the young people, and kind of the topics that we were covering. And a lot of friends, kind of half joking, were saying like, well, I don't know that, like, now, or I don't know what my vulva is, or like, you know, the different parts of my vulva, and all this kind of conversations. And then also going back to I guess that other research that was I talking about, like adults being, you know, dissatisfied in one way or another, that like linked in together of just thinking, well, actually, yes, teaching young people about this is really, really important, but we are now a generation of people that had really poor sex education. So where are we getting it from? Where the people in their 20s, 30s, and above getting it from? And there are some amazing organizations, but I kind of wanted to make ones that were really still really educational, but with either a creative - like, almost like with a creative aspect to it as well. So we do all sorts of things.
Hannah Witton
Yeah! 'Cause I came to one of your like, clitoris making workshops? Probably in 2019.
Becky Lund-Harket
Yeah, I think it would have been, yeah. So we do, like some educational stuff, like either myself, but quite often, a colleague of mine or an academic or kind of experts in the field, will do a talk and then there'll be a creative part of the workshop. So the one that you came to, we spoke about kind of the history of the clitoris, why we don't know more about it, all that kind of stuff. And then actually did some minature model-making so while you're doing the making you get to learn so, yeah.
Hannah Witton
Yeah, I love that kind of like tactileness of it as well, like being able to, like physically do something, because I've also heard that apparently that helps you learn better as well. Like, being active with your hands and stuff.
Becky Lund-Harket
It is a different way of learning as well, like you might - some people might like remember that better because they've seen it or kind of know what they think it might mean and look like and having that almost, yeah, like something to do with your hands. We also do that in schools with young people, when that can be really good because it can help with any embarrassment they might be feeling. So if we're doing the playdough, model-making workshops that we do with School of Sex Ed, them having something to do while we're talking about penises, and vulvas and vaginas can actually be really good. A bit of a buffer if they are feeling embarrassed.
Hannah Witton
Yeah, that's so true, actually. And that kind of like reminds me of something to do with communication as well so it's like, all ties in together - is that doing something else whilst communicating, whilst like trying to have these, like, really difficult conversations about sex with like a partner. But like, if you're focused on doing something else, like actually, that can make the conversation easier.Like, it doesn't have to be this, like, we're going to sit down together and make eye contact constantly, and have this really in depth conversation. Instead, you could just be like, you could be walking, so you're not having to make eye contact, because you're like on a walk, and you're like looking elsewhere. Or you could be, like, cooking.
Becky Lund-Harket
I think I was about to say, yeah, it's a really good point. I think walking definitely can just be such a good distraction. And the movement, I think, can - they always say, like, sometimes traveling makes you get your thoughts in order as well. I don't know about you, but like, if I'm sitting on a train, having to think about something, that can be really useful, if you're like on a long train journey. But yeah, cooking, definitely. Like we're doing this other thing, so we can maybe feel a bit, yeah, more comfortable.
Hannah Witton
I think it makes - yeah, I think it does make you feel a bit more relaxed. And sometimes we can get nervous if we're, like, constantly trying to look at the other person's face to gauge what their reaction is.
Becky Lund-Harket
Yeah, I think that's a really good point like, it's just - different people like different ways of communicating. Or different, I guess, strategies, isn't it? Of, of what they're doing and how that makes me feel when I'm communicating. How it makes me feel like I can be my most articulate or my most honest, yeah, absolutely. That's a really good point.
Hannah Witton
When you were saying, like, where adults get their education from when it comes to communication, I just immediately thought about like, movies and TV and just some the examples of communication that we are given. And stuff that's, like, romanticized as well. Like, it's, it's like, given to us as like, this is really romantic. And this is really hot. And I'm watching it being like, neither of these people know what - what the other person wants?
Becky Lund-Harket
What they're saying or what they want or how - yeah, absolutely. I mean, there's the, the TV and film that we see is often is so poor, when it comes to actual kind of how people are communicating, and what they're saying, and whether or not they're getting across their points, because obviously some TV and film use that to build tension. So like misunderstandings are a good way to obviously create tension in a relationship. So that's fine, if that's like a plot device.
Hannah Witton
I know but I've been thinking about this. It's such a common plot device, though. I'm just like, when are we gonna get other stories?
Becky Lund-Harket
Right, yeah. I know.
Hannah Witton
That aren't just like the plot is these two people misunderstand each other?
Becky Lund-Harket
Yeah, with terrible consequences, or hilarious consequences or whatever it might be. I know. The misunderstanding.
Hannah Witton
It's the crux of so many stories, but I guess like if you don't have that miscommunication, then there's no story to be told.
Becky Lund-Harket
Why don't you tell a different story. Yeah, you're right. Like, yeah, communication between like romantic partners in TV is so often so stilted.
Hannah Witton
Yeah. Do you watch Big Mouth?
Becky Lund-Harket
I don't watch Big Mouth, would you recommend?
Hannah Witton
Oh, I would highly recommend it. Especially as someone who is in the sex ed field. There's like four seasons of it. But it's cartoons, the episodes are short, you can binge it very easily. But it's basically a cartoon show about tweens, teenagers, going through puberty, but it's very much aimed at adults because it is filthy. And it is - sometimes you're just watch it and being like, oh my god, they did that, they went there. But in the most recent season, there are two characters who - I think they're about 13 years old at this point, and they're like, they're going out with each other and they are like experimenting sexually with each other, like, he's gonna finger her and, like, you know, but you see these two characters be really bad at communication at first. And actually, I think these two characters are, for most of the season, a really good example of communication and then at the end terrible, but it shows that -it shows the communication and I'm talking, for anyone who has watched it I'm talking about Lola and I can't remember his name, the magician boy, that boy. Jay! Jay and Lola. And they're really bad at communicating, but in a way that they - but they stay with each other. So they try and say what they're thinking. And the other person misunderstands that. And then the other person misunderstands them. And then they fumble through it, and they work together. And then eventually, they get on the same page, and they realize what they were trying to say.
Becky Lund-Harket
That's quite realistic, is it? Being bad, doing bad, thinking about it together.
Hannah Witton
Yeah. Yeah, and I was watching it being like, this is great. Because normally, we either see, like, no communication at all, or, like, people screaming at each other and really bad communication. We don't see the process of communicating. Because it is a process.
Becky Lund-Harket
It's entirely a process.
Hannah Witton
And so that was something that really stood out to me,
Becky Lund-Harket
And it's definitely not like a - it's not always a linear process, either like, it can be like, we just communicated really well, well done us. And then another day or another week, or one of you's tired or whatever, and just being, like, oh, we're being really bad at this again, and you just don't - I don't think you ever get to a, whatever, standard in your relationship where you're like, we definitely communicate perfectly about all things, aren't we wonderful.
Hannah Witton
And there might be a time that you like, have a conversation about something and then next day, you're like, oh, I just realized something else that I wanted to say and you have to bring it up again.
Becky Lund-Harket
Or I didn't quite mean that. And I think you thought I meant that which is fair, but actually, it was slightly different. And being able to go back - I think that, you know, the sign of good communication is obviously being able to revisit that. And if you feel like you can do that with your partners, then that's fantastic. To say like, ah, we actually still kind of do need to talk about that a bit more, is now a good time to do that? Tapping in and kind of, yeah, having that as a continuous, a continuous thing, which is tricky. And that does, as you say, like, take a lot of practice. And I don't think anyone - I'm certainly not perfect at it. I don't think anyone I know is.
Hannah Witton
Me neither. But I think one of the fears around it that means that people don't practice is that, like, fear of rejection. But I think the more that you practice, honestly, it gets easier. And that fear of being misunderstood and that fear of what the other person's reaction is going to be - you realize that what happens in your head is almost always worse than what actually ends up happening.
Becky Lund-Harket
And also, absolutely you can you can kind of catastrophize that what if I say this, and they think this? Which is - it can, like you say, make you too scared to say it in the first place. I think one way of doing that is actually saying like, I'm going to say this. What I don't mean is this.
Hannah Witton
Ooh, yeah.
Becky Lund-Harket
And that can be a really good tool, if you can pre-empt it. Also, like you say, kind of being able to - I guess, if you said something, someone's misunderstood it - being able to say you've actually misunderstood what I mean? Can I try and explain it in a different way? Maybe I haven't explained it very well. Maybe I haven't been very articulate about it. Rather than saying something, misunderstanding, and then going down this path of as we see more in TV and film, like, oh, we're just gonna go with this misunderstanding and no one's gonna, like, remedy that at all.
Hannah Witton
And then it's like and cut, next scene, and we're like, what else happened? That's not the end of the conversation. I kind of want to take our conversation in a different direction now. And talk with you about the orgasm gap.
Becky Lund-Harket
Yes, the orgasm gap.
Hannah Witton
The orgasm gap. I guess, first off, what is it? And then why is it important?
Becky Lund-Harket
So the orgasm gap, I guess, kind of lots of people will have heard about, and it has been talked about quite a lot. And it's to do with- well, there are kind of two orgasm gaps. There's kind of a gendered orgasm gap, which is to do with heterosexual men and heterosexual women. I'm going to use a few kind of like binary terms here because I'm going to be talking about research that's been done so it might be a bit binary.
Hannah Witton
Yeah, which is very binary.
Becky Lund-Harket
Yeah, it's likely to be binary and kind of possibly kind of cisnormative as well, which is to do with the research that's been done rather than the way I feel about sexualities and genders. Just a public service announcement. And the kind of the gaps then between heterosexual men and heterosexual women, and they're - to do with frequency of orgasm. So 95% of the time. heterosexual men report orgasming, usually always. So that's 95% of the time during partnered sex, whereas heterosexual women report orgasming 65% of the time? So that's quite a big percentage. 30%. So it's kind of very significant, within like kind of academic research, very significant result.
Hannah Witton
And this was quite recently. It was like a few years ago, wasn't it, that this came out?
Becky Lund-Harket
It was I think it was 2017. This, this piece of research came out. There has been other pieces but this was quite a big sample and it got a lot of media attention. So they looked at heterosexual men, heterosexual women, gay men and lesbian women. So there was only those four categories.
Hannah Witton
They didn't look at bisexual people?
Becky Lund-Harket
I don't think this study did. Other studies have done since. And quite often, if you're reading an article, they'll kind of cite both of those studies together because they're, it's useful to have a bit more diversity in there.
Hannah Witton
Yeah, it's an interesting one, though, because even ones that are - maybe they go into this in their like, methodologies and stuff - but I immediately go to thinking like, well, even if you do include bisexual people in your study, you need to also ask them who they're sleeping with. Because you could have like somebody who's bisexual who's only sleeping with one gender, because maybe they only have one partner. Does it need to be more about who you're sleeping with, rather than your sexual orientation?
Becky Lund-Harket
It would be more to do with who you sleep with more. And I think what this research does, and like you say, it's been a long, it's been a while since I've read it. So whether or not they do kind of speak to this, and say, we're talking about men who usually sleep with men, or women or however, or whether they're kind of taking their sexuality. So whether you're heterosexual, gay or lesbian, as...
Hannah Witton
An indicator of behaviour.
Becky Lund-Harket
Yeah, exactly. And that I don't actually know, from this study.
Hannah Witton
Food for thought.
Becky Lund-Harket
Food for thought. Yeah, it is interesting. So the main kind of orgasm gap, the gendered orgasm gap is between heterosexual men and heterosexual women. So we're assuming, like you say, that these people are sleeping with each other. And then there is another orgasm gap between heterosexual women and lesbian women. So with - lesbian women orgasm more frequently than heterosexual women. So kind of heterosexual women are doing the worst out of the lot.
Hannah Witton
Ugh!
Becky Lund-Harket
Yep. And so therefore, what's interesting about those two orgasm gaps, is that if it were just between heterosexual men and heterosexual women, or men and women, then there would be possibly an argument for, well, these people have different bodies. And therefore, men can just orgasm more easily than women or people with penises can orgasm more easily.
Hannah Witton
Which is an argument we hear all of the time, like, ah, but vulvas are just so complicated.
Becky Lund-Harket
So difficult. Yeah, exactly. And that's not true. So the reason this kind of, or the reason these two orgasm gaps together are really interesting is because then you would expect heterosexual women and lesbian women to be having about the same amount of orgasms? Because it's just to do with their bodies. Right? So that's all it is. But that isn't the case. So that leaves space to think about, well, what else could it possibly be?
Hannah Witton
Who they're having sex with?
Becky Lund-Harket
Maybe something to do with! Yeah, who they're having sex with - and lots of things to do with expectations and social norms and sexual scripts and all those other other stuff, which comes more within heterosexual relationships. Because that - those scripts are heteronormative.
Hannah Witton
Yeah. They're rigid.
Becky Lund-Harket
Who's gonna come first? Who's gonna - all those things fits into this heteronormative perspective we have of sex anyway, if that makes sense.
Hannah Witton
Yeah. There's a lot.
Becky Lund-Harket
There's a lot.
Hannah Witton
One of the things I was wondering is - because obviously with this research, I guess they are asking people about their orgasm frequency, because that's something that can be easily measured. But we know that orgasm is not the goal. It's not like the pinnacle of sexual pleasure.
Becky Lund-Harket
It's definitely not. Like it's definitely not all about orgasms at all and I think that using - absolutely, you're completely right in saying that this is an easy thing to measure. So for - from, like, thinking about the methods that you need to do for an experiment, you need something that's - not, you don't need it, but like it's easier to have something that's fairly easy to measure. Like, did you orgasm Yes. No.
Hannah Witton
Yeah. It's interesting, though, because...
Becky Lund-Harket
Because pleasure is a bit more subjective. But the pleasure research does mirror the orgasm research so even if people have experienced pleasure without orgasming, it's still heterosexual women that report the least.
Hannah Witton
Oh, I didn't realize there was pleasure - I love that, pleasure research.
Becky Lund-Harket
Sexual pleasure research. I mean, what do you do for a living? Well!
Hannah Witton
I research pleasure. I love that. Oh, okay. Yeah, 'cause I was gonna ask like, because it's still really important, I think, to acknowledge the orgasm gap because orgasm is an indicator of pleasure. Well, it can be. And yeah, so I'm like, how do I balance the - recognizing the importance of what the existence of an orgasm gap tells us about our attitudes towards gender and sex and, like you said, expectations of heteronormative scripts, entitlement to pleasure, the politics, the, like, gender politics of giving and receiving, like, all of this, like, it tells us so much about that - then I was like, how do I reconcile that with the fact that orgasm is not the be all and end all? And actually, you can still have really pleasurable sex without it. But now that I know about this pleasure research...
Becky Lund-Harket
I know and I'll send you the link, I can't remember...
Becky Lund-Harket
Please do!
Becky Lund-Harket
Yeah, but I've got, I've got quite a lot kind of noted down somewhere or other. So yeah, I'll send over to you.
Hannah Witton
And we'll leave it in the show notes as well so people can check it out.
Becky Lund-Harket
I will find that. Definitely. So but an orgasm, like you say, isn't like the be all and end all. It does indicate or kind of - it does affect people's sexual satisfaction. So again, without it being kind of always the end goal, although it's definitely not the most important thing. But it can be - it does feel important to people, whether or not that's to do with feeling like it should be the end goal is a different question. So yeah, like if I didn't orgasm, can I measure that? Do you know, when people are trying to kind of almost analyze their sexual experience a bit too much? And be like, well, if I didn't come or didn't orgasm, was that good? Like -
Hannah Witton
Yeah!
Becky Lund-Harket
It's picking that apart as well, for a lot of people.
Hannah Witton
Yeah, because it gets really meta as well because maybe they did have satisfactory sex. But they didn't come, but because of our societal scripts around orgasm, they then think that it was unsatisfactory because they didn't come.
Becky Lund-Harket
I had a really great time but I didn't come but so was that a great time? Maybe it wasn't as good as it could have been. But it's like, well, if you had a great time, then that's - it doesn't need to be, I guess, like, quantified.
Hannah Witton
Oh, this is - this is blowing my mind a bit. It's like, you didn't have a good time because you didn't come? Or you didn't come because you weren't having good time? Which one is it? The chicken or the egg of the orgasm!
Becky Lund-Harket
The chicken or the egg with an orgasm and pleasure. I mean, you're not gonna have an orgasm without pleasure. I guess we can do that bit. But yeah, you're absolutely right.
Hannah Witton
I don't know, can you - now I'm thinking like, could you have an orgasm without pleasure? Because I could have an involuntary orgasm if - so, if you just like stuck a really strong vibrator on my clit. I reckon, like physiologically, my body would still respond to that, even if I didn't find that experience particularly nice. Does that make sense?
Becky Lund-Harket
That's true. Yeah, you might not have registered feeling pleasure with it. No, that's absolutely right. I take back what I said. Yeah. It's amazing, isn't it.
Hannah Witton
And I think I've heard as people who do actually have like conditions where they have involuntary orgasms.
Becky Lund-Harket
That's true.
Hannah Witton
And, and apparently, it's like - a lot of us would be like, that sounds amazing. Apparently, it's not. Apparently, it's very inconvenient.
Becky Lund-Harket
And yeah, I think incredibly stressful. I can't imagine. Yeah.
Hannah Witton
Yeah, think about all those boners you don't want to get in public and then like, orgasms. How do you - do you ever like go into this stuff with young people in workshops that you do in schools? Or like, maybe if you're not talking specifically about the orgasm gap, but like, how do you - how do you actually use sex ed? How do you - what do you teach in the classroom in order to combat it from happening in the future?
Becky Lund-Harket
A really good question. And I think so - we - we will - so first of all, kind of, obviously, all the workshops we do are age appropriate. So from - what we'll teach to a group of kind of key stage three, so you know, year sevens eights to sixth formers will be dramatically different. So we might be covering some of the same topics. So we might be still talking about anatomy with year sevens and anatomy with sixth formers, but what we actually talk about within those sessions will be very different. So kind of to be clear on that: it's obviously age appropriate for the students that we have. We will talk about pleasure. And that can be quite specific, again with some older - some of the older students, or more to do with - who - you know, we might talk to kind of, to students about, like, who do we expect to initiate like a romantic or sexual experience? We might ask them, and they'll be like - and they'll often know that what their expectation will be is like, oh, boys. Okay, that's interesting. You know, who gets judged more harshly if they were to have sex, for example, or act in a kind of sexually assertive way? Oh, girls. So these things, they know -
Hannah Witton
Because they've already adopted a lot of these, these things? Yeah.
Becky Lund-Harket
Absolutely. So although we won't necessarily be thinking, oh, when, you know, 95% of the time men orgasm, because actually that is not relevant to their lives. But they will already see these kind of gendered expectations, gender norms coming out really from quite a young age. And that can be - that's really interesting. And interesting for us to see how, how much of that they understand and how much of that they kind of then go oh, yeah, good point. Maybe that isn't the way it needs to be. And those conversations can be really, like, insightful. For us and from them. So yeah.
Hannah Witton
Yeah. What are some things that that come up? I guess, like, when you are teaching in schools? What are some of the things that you come across that like, scare you, and then also, like, give you hope, I guess, like, the good and the bad?
Becky Lund-Harket
The good and the bad. I mean, so I think there's, there's a whole range of different stuff. And I think the, the more, I guess, concerning stuff is, is often to do with any kind of, kind of oppressive views that are expressed so whether that's to do with homophobia, or sexism, or kind of racism of any kind, like expressed, can obviously be, you know, make us make me concerned for, for the kind of bigger picture, I guess. But what's really great is being able to then explore that with them and kind of break that down. And even just like asking actual questions to the group, about maybe a kind of problematic comment that might have been made, and seeing how that group can actually quite often self-police. So there might be something coming up in group and you're like, okay, well, this is problematic, because it is quite hateful to a certain group or disrespectful, let's say, and then other people, we might be like, okay, that's interesting. Where does that come from? Or, what makes you say that? And then other people in the group will kind of, I guess, challenge that and take that on too, which is really useful because peer to peer stuff is really helpful rather than me or us going in and saying, no, you're wrong to think that because of these things. That's not useful.
Hannah Witton
Yeah, so true. And it's like allowing young people to kind of like work through it themselves.
Becky Lund-Harket
Definitely, and meeting them where they are. And like, we facilitate discussions, we're not teachers. And I think that's important in the - in the work that we do is that we're there - yes, of course, some things we're going to be imparting information, like there are laws around this, or kind of very specific things. And then a lot of the time, we will be facilitating a conversation around it, and of course, guiding that. But not saying I have some questions and some answers, and here they are.
Hannah Witton
Yeah. I think one particular topic that I think, lends itself really interestingly to that balance between like, here's the law, but then also meeting them where they're at is like around nudes and sexting. What have you come across in schools around that? Like how, what are those conversations like?
Becky Lund-Harket
They can vary quite a lot. So we do a lot of work on online sexual harassment. We've got some actual - some policies, which might be useful for schools and teachers. And we've got a whole list of, like, documents around online sexual harassment, and kind of how schools can kind of like tackle that and deal with that? So that might be useful if any teachers or educators are listening, like just they're just free on our website. But with nudes and stuff, we do - you know we have a lot of conversations around this. So we can't really talk about many aspects of sex anymore without talking about the tech side of them because they are one and the same, like, students don't see that as two different things really. And they're not, so therefore, they're not two different things, just it is just like a kind of a sexual being and with that there will be some technology. With nudes, it's really interesting. So we get lots of different, I guess opinions on whether or not people should send them. Also, they're stuck around, like, legality of it. So if you're under the age of 18, you're - it's illegal to send a nude. Because that image itself or the video would count as child pornography.
Hannah Witton
Yeah.
Becky Lund-Harket
So that we obviously let them know, if they don't know already, because that's just to do with knowing their rights and knowing the law. And then a lot of the conversations are more to do with consent. So if people choose to send nudes, like, it's all consensual, so sending them to someone who is consenting, that's fine. And we do a lot of kind of stressing that that behavior is just a kind of - an expression of your sexuality or something fun to do, something sexy to do, and something that people enjoy doing. And then we talk about - they - you know, the conversation around sharing of nudes, non-consensual sharing of nudes is likely to come up. And then we kind of pick that apart and say, yeah, well, who's - who's in the wrong there? Not the initial person who's taken those photos and shared them, if that's consensual, but actually the person who's forwarded them on or, like, shared them in any way. And that's the kind of conversation which is really interesting. Because it's - because it is a gendered issue. So girls are more likely to send nudes, and boys are more likely to kind of ask for them. And then boys are more likely to forward them on. So although we don't like to gender - there's lots of issues that get gendered and aren't - this is one that we actually do see play out in that way. What I find frustrating is that boys know that if they share nudes, the girl will probably still be kind of blamed. Because that often -
Hannah Witton
Yeah.
Becky Lund-Harket
So there's the blaming bit there is ,although they know that not - that sharing nudes is s not okay, they also know -
Hannah Witton
Socially?
Becky Lund-Harket
They have an understanding - yeah, exactly - they have an understanding that if they do, the person who's going to be shamed and blamed for that is more likely to be the initial sender.
Hannah Witton
Yeah, and if you're the person, or if you're the boy like sharing it, then socially, people will, like, or the boys potentially would think that, you know, like, oh, look at you, you've got a nude, how good is that?
Becky Lund-Harket
Yeah, and it's really interesting, actually, we have conversations with young people, when colleagues of mine did some research around almost like the currency of nudes, and although it wasn't - couldn't be to the exact -
Hannah Witton
I literally just got, I just got the Pokemon theme song in my head, like, gotta catch 'em all, but that almost is like how it's thought of, of just like collecting.
Becky Lund-Harket
And how different body parts have kind of higher currency basically.
Hannah Witton
Ugh. Yeah. Ugh.
Becky Lund-Harket
And therefore girls have like - this is obviously not me speaking, this is like how they think of it, or can think of it - it's like, they've got more body parts to share. So it might just be like, you know, whether it's breasts or bum, or genitals, where boys have got fewer, this is what they think, so therefore they've got less currency. It's really interesting.
Hannah Witton
That is so interesting. Because that is so something that I remember like, internalizing as a young person too, just being like, well, there's not really that many, like, isolated body parts that are attractive on a man, are there?
Becky Lund-Harket
Exactly.
Hannah Witton
But it's so weird that we think of them as like, isolated body parts from a person.
Becky Lund-Harket
It's such - this weird idea that these - yeah, that they're not a person. And that's a problem. And I think that when we do see the victim blaming of 'they shouldn't have shared that in the first place', which comes from all different parts of society, so it's not - I'm not saying that, hey, these boys, all on their own should learn better. Like this comes from a lot of places. But what's frustrating is they do know better and they choose to do it anyway, knowing that the victim blaming will probably happen. I think what we need to challenge is that kind of entitlement wherever we see it.
Hannah Witton
Yeah. Do you ever use the sex ed storyline. The 'it's my vagina'. I love that.
Becky Lund-Harket
We have used that and it is a good one. It's a really, it's a really fun scene and it's yeah, it's a lot of - it shows a lot of support from the school. Yeah, I would - yeah, Sex Education in general, I'm sure lots of your listeners will have seen it already, but it is, it is a very good show.
Hannah Witton
I love it. I love it so much.
Becky Lund-Harket
And we do a lot of stuff around like, like we were talking about earlier, about communication and different ways of communicating and how people get it wrong and then can go back and like fix -
Hannah Witton
Otis and Maeve, get your shit together with the communication, aghhh.
Becky Lund-Harket
I know. And Otis is so great at giving advice and then there's just - you just wanna say, come on.
Hannah Witton
So painful to watch.
Becky Lund-Harket
There's a really good scene in the bath - so, um, sorry, they're not in the bath, they're at a party and two characters whose name I don't know, they're not main characters, have had an argument. And then -
Hannah Witton
Yes! Was one of them - one of them was in a cast?
Becky Lund-Harket
She was in the bath at a party - yeah, exactly - fully clothed and not having a bath, just sitting in the bath. And yeah, her boyfriend comes in and they have this whole like misunderstanding around how she sees herself, I think, and she feels really, like, unattractive and he sees her as being completely beautiful and amazing, and Otis kind of facilitating that conversation, obviously doing his, like, therapy type stuff was just such a sweet scene. Because then he kind of lists a few things that he likes about her. I can't remember exactly how that goes, and you think, aw.
Hannah Witton
Cute. I got some questions from people on Instagram for you and on the like nude topic, someone asked about navigating nudes and breakups.
Becky Lund-Harket
Interesting. Yeah.
Hannah Witton
This is not something that I've personally had to navigate. And I hadn't even like considered it. But yeah, yeah. If you've just gone through a breakup, do you go: now delete all of those photos you have of me, like, oh, like, yeah.
Becky Lund-Harket
it's a tricky one in the fact that I think it's a tricky one to like, I guess like this question's saying, navigate to understand exactly how to ask and what to ask. I think, ideally, there would have been some boundaries around those nudes to begin with, or some understandings of like, well, actually, I'm trusting this person enough to send them my nudes and hopefully, then if I asked them to delete them, or whatever, if that's what you want them to do, then they will respect me enough to do that. Clearly, and realistically, that isn't always going to be the case. I think, though, everyone is absolutely within their rights to ask somebody that they have stopped having a relationship with to delete those nudes of themselves.
Hannah Witton
Yeah.
Becky Lund-Harket
The - what's difficult, and is that you obviously don't have any guarantee that they, they will respect that. Which is tricky. So yeah, it's a hard one. I think, if someone asked you to delete the nudes that you have of them, then you should.
Hannah Witton
You should.
Becky Lund-Harket
You should say absolutely. Thanks for trusting me enough to send them to me and I will now delete them because you asked me to. That's the ideal. And I think always always feel like you can ask.
Hannah Witton
Yeah, absolutely. if in doubt, just delete the nudes of your ex.
Becky Lund-Harket
And yeah, of course. I mean, having them, maybe that's fine. You know it, you know, because obviously some break - some relationships that end, it's fine. You might know that someone's got nudes of you and that actually feels okay, because you trust them and that was a thing that happened between you and that's, you know that they're going to respect those, and nothing else is going to happen with those nudes, for example. We do get questions around what people call revenge porn. Basically, digital sexual harassment or image-based harassment, or abuse, sorry, image-based abuse, which is kind of like, like we spoke about earlier, like sharing nudes without someone's consent. Because you broken up, or because you have some kind of, because you're angry with them for some reason. And I think that - all that does is, is go back towards victim blaming of like, well, you've broken up with me, so I therefore, can - or the term revenge porn in itself is quite problematic because it suggests that there's some vengeance to be had. When there isn't. You're just doing something out - completely malicious.
Hannah Witton
And illegal.
Becky Lund-Harket
And illegal. Exactly.
Hannah Witton
And illegal. This question is kind of like back to what we were talking about before with the orgasm gap. They said: tips for breaking the cycle of sex ending when penis ejaculates.
Becky Lund-Harket
Sex ending. Wow, um, I think again, it's gonna be communication. And knowing that you can say to partners, hey, I'd quite like to still do these things. Yeah.
Hannah Witton
Yeah. Like, I know your penis is done now, but like, I'm not.
Becky Lund-Harket
There are other things that we can do. One - akind of, kind of a practical tip might be to have other kinds of sex before. So I guess we're thinking mostly maybe to do with kind of penetrative sex. And if someone with a penis is more likely to kind of ejaculate with penetrative sex, whether that's anal, vaginal, or oral, and maybe kind of doing other stuff first. So understanding - so both of you understanding that different people get different pleasure from different kinds of sex acts. So thinking about it as a whole menu of things. And, making sure that everyone gets full. And if that means doing some of the, you know, changing around the courses, what you'd normally do, whatever it might be, but really, you're only going to get there with some kind of communication. And if that communication is, hey, I'm not really - I don't really get my kicks from penetrative sex. I'm very happy to have it. And like, like, not happy to, but like, I enjoy having it, but it's not going to be the thing that, you know, makes me feel the best. Can we do other things first, and then we can do that? Or can we just try some other things altogether?
Hannah Witton
Yeah, yeah. I think just framing it as like, experimenting and just being like, hey, why don't we try this? Like, it might work, it might not, but like, what if we did this? And we did it in a different order, and we move stuff around?
Becky Lund-Harket
Absolutely. And I think is, rather than just for that, kind of - rather than only for the reason that's mentioned in like in the question, just generally, going off script or writing our own scripts. So we talk about sexual scripts a lot. And people not understanding that it will be things like little things that we often see in TV and film, so often they're heterosexual. So let's go with a heterosexual example of like, kissing turns to deep kissing turns to some kind of like, caressing, possibly a blowjob. Maybe some, like oral sex on a vulva, maybe, and then probably penis in vagina sex. Like that is, like, the main kind of sexual script that we see.
Hannah Witton
When I think of the sexual script, I just, I think of basically like the kissing scales that you'd come up with as a teenager, like, like, I'm like, from Angus Thongs, like we literally had stages and bases, and it was like, and they escalated.
Becky Lund-Harket
Whatever it is in, in baseball, that people compare to. Or like, especially in America, they do a lot more and that, yeah, it's just a numbered system.
Hannah Witton
Yeah. And it's the idea that, one, like, it has to go in a specific order, and you can't skip any steps. And yeah, that is the way that it has to go. But it's like no, jumble it up!
Becky Lund-Harket
So yeah, jumble it up, add steps, make up steps, change it around, go in a different order. And if that includes some penetrative penis in vagina sex, great. If it ends on that, that's also fine, but it doesn't need to do this as you say, 1234, however many there are. And also, how boring is that? You know, even we're not talking about orgasm being the end goal or anything like that, it's just actually enjoying and having the most pleasure with each other that you can. That isn't - why would that always be the same? Why would we think that every time we have sex with - even if it's the same person, regardless of other people, that's going to be what we're in the mood for. That's all going to be what we're going to want to be doing. That's not how we do other things in life.
Hannah Witton
Yeah, might change what you're in the mood for every day. Who knows!
Becky Lund-Harket
Exactly.
Hannah Witton
Somebody asks us, kind of similar: how do I stop feeling guilty when my male partner doesn't come? I hate it but it's so ingrained in me.
Becky Lund-Harket
Yeah, so I think - I'm assuming this person is a woman or -
Hannah Witton
I would assume from the question, yeah.
Becky Lund-Harket
How do you stop feeling guilty? So I think understanding to begin with that some of this stuff and this guilt isn't from - doesn't come from you. So like, where you are able to look outside of yourself a little bit and think of like, why? Where do I see this message? How am I getting - where am I getting this from? And understanding that me and kind of Hannah have been talking about a bit, is this - the script that we get shown - TV, film - the understanding that that's what happens at the end - the kind of end of sex is of male - of a guy ejaculating, or that that's kind of the most important thing that happens. And I think getting, yeah, like, starting to understand that that is basically been put on you a lot of the time from external - as external factors can be helpful just in and of itself. That's not necessarily going to break it all, like, you know, break it down completely, but just understanding that, and maybe kind of doing some reading around sexual scripts and stuff can be really interesting, really useful. I think, education around it and, and knowledge around these things can challenge so many feelings of guilt, and stigma and shame that comes with sex for loads and loads of people. And opening up that - opening yourself up to kind of the knowledge around that and learning around it can be really helpful. Again, speaking to your partner, expressing that and saying, I feel like this when this happens or doesn't happen. Because actually, they might just say - be really reassuring and be like hey, I have an amazing time with you -
Hannah Witton
I don't need to come, you've got nothing to feel guilty about.
Becky Lund-Harket
You've got nothing to feel guilty about. I'm tired, I'm this, I'm whatever, whatever it might be for that person to say, oh, you know what, this really for me isn't an issue. You don't need to feel bad or guilty. I love it when you come and that's what makes me happy. This is a conversation around that can obviously break it down. I think there are kind of two things, there's like, the relationship itself and talking around that will be really useful. And the bigger kind of picture of where do we get all this stuff from in the first place?
Hannah Witton
Yeah, definitely. Yeah. And I was thinking when I read this question about like, well, is their partner ever feeling guilty if you don't come?
Becky Lund-Harket
Yeah, probably.
Hannah Witton
You know? Like, that's also a conversation to have, like, you could say, like, oh, I feel really guilty if you don't come and then hopefully they're reassuring about that. And you could ask them like, do you ever feel guilty? If I don't come?
Becky Lund-Harket
How does it make you feel when I don't? Yeah, absolutely.
Hannah Witton
Yeah. Or yeah, exactly. Like really kind of, like, go into that and try and unpack that within your relationship. Because, yeah, these messages that we receive are so powerful.
Becky Lund-Harket
They're so powerful. And they are - they don't deviate much. You have to kind of look for it to get a slightly different story on that. Which you can do, you know, you can kind of change up things that you watch, and you can, you know, follow more sex positive things on Instagram and stuff like that. But that is some of the unlearning. It's basically unlearning the stuff that we've been, it's been drilled into us since we were kids, around sex and entitlement to pleasure and all sorts of different stuff that comes. Also having a chat with him might be - he might, it might just be a simple thing of like, oh, I'm really, really hot. And what we do, and if he tried this, and he might just be like this one thing. And then you could try it and it could be a game changer.
Hannah Witton
Who knows? You never know,
Becky Lund-Harket
But you do not want to feel guilty about that.
Hannah Witton
No, absolutely not. Well, Becky, thank you so much. This has been a great conversation. Where can people find you and what you do online?
Becky Lund-Harket
Good question. So I've spoken about School of Sexuality Education, so that's the organization who I work with, who I work for, who deal with young - mostly provides sex and relationship education to young people. So secondary schools, universities, as well as some primary. Our Instagram handle is @school_sexed, and our website is schoolofsexed.org and then I also head up the Candid Collective. And we run workshops for adults, specifically for adults, that are kind of fun, educational, quite often have a creative element. Mostly offline, in fact, when we were allowed. We are doing some online stuff. So this spring, we will be doing more. So kind of watch this space, and that is @the_candid_collective on Instagram and thecandidcollective.com
Hannah Witton
Amazing. Yeah, keep an eye out for that. For workshops. We love it. Um, well, thank you so much. This has been really enlightening. I'm gonna go look up some pleasure research.
Becky Lund-Harket
Yes, pleasure research! I'll send you the pleasure research. Also, if I can give just two book recommendations?
Hannah Witton
Oh, please do!
Becky Lund-Harket
I would say Mind the Gap by Dr. Karen Gurney, I think she's been a guest.
Hannah Witton
Yes. We did. She's amazing.
Becky Lund-Harket
Just - the book is just fantastic and they seem wonderful. I would recommend kind of about pleasure, desire, the pleasure, orgasm gap, etc. as well as a kind of more practical book, I guess, especially if you're someone with a vulva, but actually, even if you're in relationships or have sex with people with vulvas: Becoming Cliterate by Laurie Mintz.
Hannah Witton
I've heard of it, but I've not read it.
Becky Lund-Harket
My copy is battered, and lots of underlined essential, and whatever, post it notes, it's really, really good. And it's about, you know, how wonderful the clitoris, is. And there's a whole kind of chapter or a few for people who don't have a clitoris but maybe have sex and people who do and things like that. So it's really a lot of fun.
Hannah Witton
Aw fab, thank you. We love book recommendations. And thank you so much for listening. Bye.
Becky Lund-Harket
Thank you.
Hannah Witton
Thank you so much for listening to Doing It. If you enjoyed it, I would really appreciate it. If you left a rating and a review. You can find show notes at doingitpodcast.co.uk and do go follow us on social media and I'll catch you in the next episode. Bye.
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