Translator: Claus Kiss Reviewer: Peter van de Ven
I am afraid that we have turned our back on what sex has to give us.
I am afraid that sex is becoming an endangered species.
"Isn't she there yet?"
"I'm just not there yet. Can't he see I'm not there yet?"
"I wonder if this feels good?"
"This really doesn't feel good, but he seems to be into it.
Just keep going."
"Hold your breath, focus, think about the laundry -
whatever you do, just don't come."
"Come on! Don't be a prude. Just go for it."
"Stop acting like such a slut."
"Stop feeling so much."
"Act like you're feeling something else."
"Just stop feeling."
"Roll over and pretend you're tired."
"But it's been months. I miss you."
"I thought they were into me."
"I am so into her. What is happening with my body?"
I created conversations about sex for a living.
I hear stories about people's sex lives,
and I've had the honor of hearing all kinds of things
that they'd never shared with anyone.
I hear from teenagers and adults, people who are married,
single, celibate, divorced,
people who love sex, people who are afraid of sex,
people who've never had sex.
What you just heard are some of the voices that follow us to bed.
I'm here today to offer us a new story about sex.
But in order to do that,
I want to start by helping us see the story we're already living inside of
and how that has set us up to fail at sex.
We live in a super confusing sexual culture.
On one side is pressure.
Locker room talk, pornography,
magazine covers, Hollywood imaging
giving us a totally unrealistic and oversexualized version of what sex is;
telling us what sex and sexy is supposed to look,
act, sound like and feel like.
And on the other side of the equation is silence.
Silence, repression and shame.
We get messages like,
"Don't let anyone find out,"
"Don't talk about it,"
"Don't ask questions,"
"Don't be curious."
Essentially, sex is still taboo and forbidden territory.
These stories have hijacked our bodies and our beds,
and they operate in the background
dictating what actually happens in our sexual exchanges
and what doesn't happen.
We are simultaneously, without realizing it,
being bounced off the walls between pornography and puritanism.
No wonder sex is complicated.
And it's not our fault.
How many of us have ever - faked an orgasm?
- endured physical discomfort?
(Laughter)
- thought about the grocery list?
- ignored our partner in pursuit of our own pleasure?
- gotten bored?
- wondered whether our partner was enjoying things but never stopped to ask?
- pushed down rising emotion, played it cool?
- felt ashamed for what our bodies were or were not doing?
- felt violated even though we said yes?
- needed a drink, just to go there?
I think we can all relate to at least some of these.
This has become our cultural norm.
We have come to approach sex
like we would a job, a sport or a math equation.
We try to figure it out, get it right,
go through the motions, do our duty,
play a good game, make it to the finish line,
and fake it.
And when we do that, it hurts -
whether we are 16 or 65.
And the reality is that whether we are with a new lover or 65:
don't tell the truth, and we don't trust ourselves.
What we do instead is put our game faces on.
We act like we are performers in someone else's script.
We demand our bodies to look and act the part,
we pretend we're feeling things that we are not,
we ignore emotions and things that we want to say,
we ignore our instincts -
all in the name of what we think sex is supposed to be.
It's true that we are missing something in sex,
but it's not what we think it is:
what we're missing is ourselves.
What's happened is that we have begun to look outside of ourselves
and look to the world to tell us what sex is.
We've begun to just believe a bunch of false sexual stories,
and instead of turning around and calling their bluff,
we walk around thinking there's something wrong with us,
taking it personally, wondering what we're missing
and thinking we don't measure up.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
We have put ourselves and sex in a box that is simply way too small,
and like anything that gets put in a cage,
it and we want to be free.
As a wide open horizon and landscape of possibility,
it has its palm out,
waiting to catch us,
waiting to show us parts of ourselves we've never seen before.
It is an adventure; it is a hidden landscape;
it is an open horizon that is waiting for us every single time -
an unwritten upon canvas
that depends entirely on us being ourselves.
What if we could come to sex and be more like ourselves in sex
than we could anywhere else in the world?
What if it was a place we came to be known, to come alive?
And I mean this
whether we're talking about a one-night stand
or the 10th or 20th year of a marriage.
Because sex is not about knowing what we're doing;
it is about knowing what we're feeling and learning to trust that.
So how do we get here?
We start by trusting three things:
the reality of our bodies,
the role of our emotions
and the wisdom of our pleasure.
Our sexual bodies are so much bigger than we give them credit for.
We, all of us, this entire body,
this is our sexual landscape,
and we often rush past it as if sex was only about the genitals.
And when we get to the genitals, we have all kinds of ideas
about what they should and shouldn't be doing and feeling.
What would happen if we let our bodies really be as they actually were
in any given moment in sex?
That we didn't demand ourselves to feel pleasure where there wasn't?
That we didn't try to feel hard or soft or more of anything,
but we opened up our definition of sex
to include everything that was actually happening?
Our hearts and our bodies are intimately connected.
Somehow, we've come up with the idea
that sex and emotion don't belong in the same room together,
and when they end up there, there's a problem.
Our emotions are incredible messengers and textures
that rise up to give us information,
to guide us,
to tell us what we're longing for,
to tell us what we need, what we want to give and receive.
They are a part of our sexual experience,
and if we hold back our emotions,
our bodies will hold back pleasure -
and our capacity for connection.
We have a very narrow definition
of what sex, pleasure and orgasm actually is.
We usually spend our time in sex
thinking orgasm is this destination and singular event
that we're either, in the back of our mind,
trying to figure out how to get there or how to keep from going there too soon.
If we really let pleasure and the wisdom of pleasure be our guide,
we would be interested
in letting every sensation last as long as we could stand it.
And that would change the way we had sex.
And then we would have to refer back
to the wisdom of our bodies and the role of our emotions
because then we would really start showing up in that capacity.
What would happen if we started telling the truth and trusting ourselves
when it came to sex?
What would happen
if we told the truth about our desire to have a different kind of sex?
This kind of sex.
We can't do this alone.
Sex is a revolution that will travel,
and travels from body to body,
from breath to breath,
touch to touch.
Sex doesn't start in the bedroom;
it starts before we even begin touching.
Sex starts right now,
in how we relate to ourselves,
in how we emotionally connect to the world, to our partners,
in how we regard ourselves.
The good news is this is not about learning something new;
this is about coming back home.
This is about knowing that this is the locus of our sexual experience
and trusting this.
When sex only goes skin deep, we know it's missing something.
We come to sex to touch what's beyond skin deep,
and that's what makes sex really beautiful.
The next time we're in bed with our partner,
we're on the brink of a sexual experience.
See if you can let yourself really be there,
in exactly what is happening for you -
without a script in your mind,
without going through the motions and without any kind of autopilot.
Can you really trust what's happening in your body and let that be there?
Can you get curious about what's rising up in your emotional and internal world?
Can you trust and listen to pleasure
and let it be a guide for you?
Sex is not a place for us to know.
It is a place for us to come alive and discover.
And in the end, we hold the keys to this cage.
Sex, like any endangered species, is depending on us
to save it.
Thank you.
(Applause)