(upbeat music) Welcome back to a slut's guide to happiness, where your body is perfectly imperfect and it's safe to be as slutty, kinky, queer, or sexual as you want. And so grateful to be joined today by an incredible queer leader with Cliff Media, Gigi, and your life for Alice Actress and their warm work because they are busy doing both in the world. And they have been starring in and directing scenes and now mentoring new folks coming into the Cliff Media community and already have been doing that in queer and so in your communities, which is beautiful. That's actually how I met them. They were on the dance floor, like hyping it out that a sex club around here is great. One of the things that I love about Gigi is that they're so open about who they are and what they've experienced. We often talk at Cliff Media about the principle that the truth sets you free. When you share your truth, even when it's hard, even when it reveals complex personhood, your vulnerability becomes your strength. What can someone say to you about something you accept about yourself? More of a sharing your truth also creates space for other people to be their authentic selves, lose the shame about their experiences and identities and desires. Gigi, wish sharing with me that they're working on an autobiography of their life and I can't wait for that to exist in the world because even as a young adult, Gigi has already experienced so much and developed a deep understanding and compassionate concern for the trauma and shame that many of us experience. I wanna highlight today that we are going to be talking about tough subjects, including sexual assault and non-consent. Well, I think that these are really important topics to discuss because so many of us experience this. I also wanna encourage you to take care of yourself and decide now if this is the right episode for you. If you're ready to dive into something intense, powerful and important, we're here and I'm so glad you are too. I wanna return to that concept of complex personhood that I mentioned before. The phrase complex personhood actually comes from an incredible sociologist I love, Avery Gordon. I think about it a lot. To me, it's one of the most grounding concepts of what it means to be human. Avery Gordon writes, complex personhood means that all people remember and forget are beset by contradiction and recognize and misrecognize themselves and others. Complex personhood that means that people suffer graciously and selfishly too, gets stuck in the symptoms, other troubles and also transform themselves. This is so profound to me because it reminds me that no one is just one story or one truth. We are all complex, full of contradictions, healing and growing in a nonlinear path. We are trying our best to make sense of the experience of being human, stumbling as we search for ways to survive and thrive. So it is from this perspective that I'd like to enter this conversation today, remembering that all parts of being human, including sexuality, power and assault are complex. Today, we're going to be talking about the experience of hyper-sexuality after assault. Judy will be sharing personal experiences with this early in life, the way that trauma repeats itself and their perspective on unlearning shame and hyper-sexual lifestyle around unlearning the shame around a hyper-sexual lifestyle. They have some powerful perspectives for anyone who has ever experienced a change in their sexuality after assault, as well as for anyone seeking to understand the way assaults make back the sexuality of their partner's friends or lifestyle community. So, Gigi, thank you so much for your generosity and open heart in sharing your experiences today. Your willingness to share today means so much to me and I believe there's a gift to our listeners. I want to start by asking you to ground us and the understanding of your first experience of sexual assault. I realize that we're starting in a heavy place but I think that as you were describing that this becomes a foundation for the rest of this conversation, please feel free to share only what feels comfortable for you. So, can you describe what happened and how it influenced your mental health and sexuality in the days and weeks immediately thereafter? Yeah, absolutely. So, first of all, I didn't lose my virginity. It was taken from me. My high, I was about 11, 12, 13 years old and I had my very first actual real life boyfriend. He was very Christian. He was very church-based and everything like that. So, I thought he was a good Christian boy, which is not always the case. It may seem. We discussed getting intimate multiple times and when it came to the actual event, I was hesitant and I did not want to do it. And he basically, his words to me were, if you love me, you would do this. And so, I kind of just let him do what he wanted to do to me. And afterwards, I hated it. It was this very intense thing that happened to me. It wasn't violent. It wasn't like I was beaten with an inch of my life, like some people are, but it was something that I did to please him, even though I didn't want to do it. And after that, I realized that I had two options. Either I could continue to let him just do whatever to me, or I can enjoy it for lack of a better term. So, over the course of our relationship, we continued to have sex, even though at my core, I didn't want it. I did not want this. It wasn't ready for it. I was too young. There were so many factors that went into me just not wanting it, but I did it for him. And once we broke up, and I was the first of my friend to lose their virginity. People came to me for comfort, for advice. Oh my gosh, I'm thinking about losing my virginity with my boyfriend. And nobody knew at that point that I had basically just let this person do that to me. So, people just assume that this was a consensual act. So, I had friends coming to me for advice, friends coming to me for comfort, or things like that. And it became a part of my identity. And so, I became very hypersexual very quickly. Before I even knew what happened, before I even realized I was sleeping with anybody that would give me the time of day. It took me years to realize this. But yeah, definitely, I suffered with anybody that gave me attention. I slept with friends' brothers. I ruined multiple relationships, because again, I would just sleep with anybody. And I would go to parties and I would like, anybody that looked remotely cute, I'd sleep with them. I'm just continued. I just had sex with anybody. And it took me years before I realized I did that because if I slept with you first, you couldn't assault me. So, it was self-protection. It was self-protection, yeah. And I didn't even really enjoy sex. Sex was just a thing I did. And looking back, I had a little notebook, which is why I didn't even write a book one day, where I took notes of every person I slept with. And looking back on that notebook and being like, "Wow, all of that sucked." That wasn't good for a 14, 15, 16, 17-year-old to be sleeping with all these people. And a lot of these people were way older than me. And I put myself in a lot of very vulnerable positions. I was sexually assaulted multiple times after that. I've been sexually assaulted so many times that I've literally lost count of how many times people have taken and managed me. And it was because I was hyper-sexual. And I look back on that and I think about men and women today who I've spoken to, who've had similar experiences, who've been sexually assaulted and then became hyper-sexual. And a lot of guilt comes with that because it's like, why am I hyper-sexual? Why is it like some people, they get assaulted and then they want nothing to do with sex? Why do I want everything to do with sex? And I just want people to realize like, it's because you have this power dynamic of, if I do it to you first, if we have sex first, you can't assault me. And that's okay. That's an okay space to be in that is your coping mechanism. And if you're there, I'm here for you. I am here, I am so, so, so, so here for you. And I don't want you to feel guilty. I don't want you to shame yourself. I don't want you to think you're a bad person just because you became hyper-sexual after a sexual assault happened to you. That is just your coping mechanism. And if you want to one day get out of that, I am here for you and that's part of me writing my book is letting people know you can get out of that. And even from to a place where I am, where not only do I enjoy sex and have a lot of it, but I'm also doing porn. And I'm okay. This isn't a coping mechanism anymore. You can't just tell yourself, I can never have sex again or I can never enjoy sex. You can get to a place eventually after your sexual assault where you can enjoy sex, you can be fighting for you and it can be healthy even and it is. Sex is a stress reliever for me. Me and my partner, oh my gosh, like we go crazy. You know what I mean? We're feral for each other. And it took a long time to get here. Took a lot of therapy and most importantly, took a lot of conversations like this. Talking to my, excuse me, talking to my friends, telling my friends, telling people, making those connections out in the world with people. And I give off this very comforting energy for some reason and I do have people that are strangers to me that I just meet out in the world, whether it be like sex parties or clubs or whatever. And people tell me about their sexual assaults and what happened to them. And I feel this sense of, oh my gosh, let me be there for you. Like I got you. Like I can help you. I know what it's like to be very hypersexual, hypersexual assault. - Yeah, yeah. Because so many of us in fam are female at birth assigned bodies are going through this. That is like estimates one and three or more have experienced sexual assault by the time we're this age. So one of the things that I want to repeat back, I've heard a lot of really powerful things in what you said. One is that you experienced a sexual assault that wasn't necessarily like what mainstream media may depict. It wasn't like Ali where you assaulted, but it was still sexual assault in the sense that there wasn't enthusiastic consent and it had these big impacts. I think that like the fact you were able to honor your truth, that it was assault, even though that's not what's represented, it's really powerful and allows that ground for healing. And then also the idea that everybody responds to assault differently. - Yes. - And that for you, it looks like self-protection through hypersexuality. Even if for some people it looks like completely avoiding sexuality and both of those things are like valid trauma responses. - Yeah. - And then the third thing I'm hearing is that today you are still hypersexual, but it means something radically different for your life than it meant back then. Which is really powerful that it wasn't inherently having sex that was the problem, so much as what it meant for you and why you were having sex. - I wanna highlight boundaries. Boundaries are what make me be able to be hypersexuality without being an issue. I talk to myself and I'm like, okay, what's okay with sound okay? What have I done in the past that led to drama, that led to any relationships with friends, that led to me being assaulted again? Like what happened? And I took that and now that I'm older, I'm like, okay, I'm not gonna use the word can't or shouldn't, I'm just saying for me personally, I looked at these things that I went through and I went, okay, it would be a good idea if I avoided this, it'd be a good idea if I did this instead and it would be a good idea for me to have conversations with people. It's like me and my boyfriend, we are open, but we have boundaries and we have like lack of a term rules for each other, what we can, can't do, what's allowed, what's not allowed. And he totally respects me being hypersexual and he totally respects me, like in every right of who I am. And I respect myself now too as a big thing is for a long time I didn't respect myself. A lot of people think, oh, you can't have sex and respect yourself, you can have tons of sex and respect yourself, let me tell you. And I do, I do, I love myself, I respect myself and part of that is having the boundaries around sex. Now it's like, if I wanna sleep with a friend's brother, let's use that in an example, it's like, hey, I think your brother is cute, would it be cool if I slept with him? No, you can't, okay, thank you. I love that we had that conversation. And that is just one of the many boundaries that I've had for myself that allowed me to be hypersexual now and it's okay. And it's not a coping mechanism anymore, it's just what I do. Yeah, I love that, that by respecting your boundaries, knowing them, asserting them, asking about the boundaries of others, that even though it maybe seems like creating limits actually allows for this massive freedom and joy because you know the container that feels safe and wish to play. That's beautiful that you've come to that. I wanna say I'm really sorry for what happened to you, that even if this is common for each of us, it's painful and like what you're describing at such a young age, like, I can't imagine how you were processing through that particular experience and going through that for a long time with your boyfriend. And one of the things that we were talking about before is the way that trauma repeats itself, that you experienced that. And then if you feel comfortable, you alluded to this a couple of times about your friend's brother. So what happened there at that time back when you were still really young and struggling with your experience of trauma? Yeah, so when I was 15, I had this really, really good friend. We partied together, we drank together, we hung out, we did everything together, but basically she had this little brother that I, I thought was very, very cute. And I wanted to sleep with him. And there was one time she was having a party at her house, not like a big friend party, but it was, you know, some of her friends and I was there and the older brother was there and we were all drinking, all of us. You know, my friend eventually went upstairs with a guy that she had brought over and they were doing their thing. It was me and two of her friends that I had never met before and her brother had gone to bed. I wanna highlight again, we were all drinking, we were all drunk. These two friends, I confessed to them that I found him very attractive and I would love to sleep with him. And they told me, you know, he would love if you got naked and crawled in bed with him. And I was like, okay, sure. So that's what I did. I got naked and I crawled in bed with him, one thing led to another and we had sex. And just as we'd finished and we were cuddling up, he said, in the morning, don't tell me we had sex. Well, why? 'Cause I'm a bird. And the next morning, of course, I followed what he said and I was like, nope, we didn't sleep together, we just cuddled, naked and made out, you know, no big deal. Eventually he realized what happened. It took a couple of weeks, but he did realize what happened. And it was, if the grags gave me things, non-consight. He did not, he was not fully, he was drunk. He was not sober enough to consent to something like that. And even though I had been drinking too, I should have known better at that point. I should have known multiple things. That's my friend's brother, he, you know, generally friend's brothers are off limits. I was aware of the fact that he was a virgin, but I didn't know if it was a lie or not before we slept together. And who in their right mind just crawls naked in a man's bed, you know what I mean? Like, especially at that age. And that was my partner, that's one thing. But this is a guy that like I barely spoke to, barely knew, barely anything. And we had non-consensual sex together. And that destroyed me for many years. And it is still something I am working through in therapy because that's so wrong. What I did was wrong. And I want to elude to that, like, that was wrong, what I did was wrong. That doesn't make me an evil person. I'm not evil. I made a mistake. I did apologize multiple times over the course of many years. I was told just a few months ago, well, more than a few months ago, I did get, she got in contact with me, the friend dead. She basically was like, "We're never going to forgive me for this. "It's never, you will never be forgiven." And I have to be okay with that. That is her truth, that is her feelings, and those are valid feelings, that she can feel that way and he can feel whatever way. If they want to believe I'm an evil person for the rest of their lives, they're allowed that space, and I'm allowed to accept that, and move on in the only way that I know how to move on, which is work through it in therapy, and accept that this is wrong that I did, and never repeat it. And it did teach me a lot, taught me a lot about alcohol and mixing sex and stuff, and then many conversations with my therapist over this. And I have spoken to other men and women who were sexually assaulted, and then did something similar as I did at one point or another. And I feel like that is something like, we should kind of think about sometimes. When assault does happen to us, maybe don't sit there and think the why, because there is no answer to the why, but maybe give yourself that space to forgive that person. In any capacity you want to, and if that includes never forgiving them, that is also valid. I have forgiven my very first boyfriend for sexually assaulting me, because we were so young. We were so, so, so, so young. - We were so, so, so young. - Yeah. - I don't think he realized what he was doing with sexual assault, and I have forgiven him for that. And there were other people who sexually assaulted me over the years that I've forgiven, and there are some that I don't forgive, because it was a little bit more violent. But I have that space. Yeah. - Yeah. - I feel like one of the things that is incredible, and I'm tearing up as you're saying this, because you're able to own that that was not consent, and that that was wrong, you are not wrong, because of what we do and who we are, radically different things. But your behavior coming out of sexual assault, dealing with trauma when you're 15, and you're able to own that. I wish, I wish that there were 40, 56-year-old men in positions of power who were being accused of sexual assault, who could say, oh, I messed up, I own this, I did wrong, I'm gonna do better, I'm really sorry, without holding that guilt. And there would be so much more healing if that were possible. - Yeah, if we could just give that space to anybody, anybody could just go, oh, I fucked up, I'm sorry, I'm genuinely sorry, I'm gonna learn from this, I'm never gonna do it again. The world would be such a better place, if we all could just accept that we make mistakes. That's part of being human, is learning and growing, and a part of that, you're gonna make mistakes, you're gonna fuck up, you're gonna hurt some people, you're gonna kinda hurt some people. That's just, and it doesn't make you evil. I've had boyfriends cheat on me, I've had boyfriends assault me, I've had all kinds of things happen to me, and as I grow and learn, I look back on those things, and I think to myself, they were learning and growing as well. - Yeah, I think about, for me, one of the first people that assaulted me, he had a childhood where his father was really abusive to him, and so it's a repetition of the trauma, and at the time, I was angry, but as I've been able to heal, the main thing that I want for him is to receive enough care and love, that he's able to heal himself, forgive himself, and then have those different kind of relationships with people where they're, like you said, more boundary and more loving, more consensual, and no, that's, I think that for me, it kind of comes from a place of recognizing, like you were saying that we're all human, we're all on our journeys, and struggling with the capital T and lowercase T traumas of what it means to be human. - I think it's so brave to share these moments, both your experience of assaults to you and your experience of not consent in that dynamic, and I want to dig into how you work. How have you gotten to such a different place now than what you were experiencing then? You know, you mentioned therapy and some personal processes of reflection. What were those processes? How did you're thinking about this change? - So, yeah, I hated myself for a long time. I hated myself, like with a capital H, like I did not like who I was, and I kind of had this moment where I was alone. I didn't have any friends and my family thought, you know, the most supportive people. And I was like, "Wow, I'm alone." And I thought to myself, "Why am I alone?" And it was because I took my anger that I had for myself out on other people. And who wants to be around that? Nobody. So I thought, how do I change? That's the next step. How do I change? How do I become a different and better person? So, first thing I did was research. I researched different, just anything, mental health, issues, things people have gone through. I read article after article, and I kind of came to this conclusion that I had borderline personality disorder. Next step, get diagnosed. So I went out into the world, went up to my insurance, and was like, "Hey, I need a psychiatrist. "I need to be diagnosed with this. "I'm just found a psychiatrist." And she was like, "Well, I make sure "that you've got borderline personality disorder." And I was like, "Just test me." And you have to score five on the night, and I scored nine on the night. So I had every single symptom that you have when you have borderline. And she was like, "Okay, next up for you, "find a therapist that actually wants to take care "of people with borderline, "because there's a lot of therapists out there "that refuse to take people with borderline." There's stigma associated with that? There is a huge stigma associated with it. You are basically considered non-curable. A lot of scientists, a lot of psychiatrists, a lot of therapists, a lot of, you know, isths out there think that when you have borderline, you are not curable, and you are just a bad person. That's it, to kind of like narcissistic personality disorder. You are just, "Bye-bye, I don't want to deal with you." And so when online found a therapist who believes in taking care of people with borderline personality disorder, found a psychiatrist that believes in taking care of people with borderline personality disorder, good on the right meds, good on the right treatment plan, which is dialectal behavioral therapy, which I will promote that therapy to the end of my life because it really saved me. And before I knew it, three years later, like this is new people, three years later, I hated myself three years ago, and I'm in this place where, "Wow, I love myself." And I am still not radiating from you for the first time I met you. - Yeah, yeah, like, I am so fun to be around. People tell me all the time, "You are so fun. You're so radiant." It's because I put in work to be here, because I wanted to change, because I knew, locked around inside of me, was this person that I was hiding, and because I was protecting that person with a lot of bad behaviors, a lot of negativity, because I wanted to protect myself from being hurt again. And now I will say, "You are very vulnerable when you are 100% authentically yourself. You are very vulnerable. You can get hurt a lot, but the point is to have coping mechanisms to handle that hurt, and to be in a place where when someone hurts you, "Okay, what are my next steps?" Grieve, feel, move on, you know? And yeah, definitely the main thing was being diagnosed as borderline, which for those who don't know, typically people who have borderline personality disorder, nine times in a 10, were severely abused in childhood. Being comes from not being able to express your emotions in childhood. When you're a child, you have these big emotions. Everything's the end of the world, right? - Yep. - Everything is, "Oh my God, I dropped my lollipop. I'm gonna die." - Totally. - And when you are given a space to express these big emotions, you eventually naturally learn to cope with them. When you're not given that space, when you're constantly told, "Be quiet, don't cry, I'll make you cry even worse." Like all these terrible things, you never learn to cope with your emotions. So now you're an adult, having emotions of that of a child. And a lot of people see that as you being over dramatic, as you being manipulative, being like just not a good person. But really, everybody feels right here, and I feel right here. I feel everything up here. I feel hate, I feel love, I feel sadness. Everything is a 10 emotion. I drop my ice cream, and I literally wanna kill myself. Like, actually want to kill myself. But now I'm in a space where I drop my ice cream, and I go, "Oh, man, that sucks." Well, what can you do? You just, I drop my ice cream. Can I get another one? No, I can't. All right, well, sucks to suck. You know what I mean? Like, I'm in this place now where I can cope with my emotions, and I can't accept myself. And be 100% authentically myself. And by the way, that is so much more fun. Life is so much more fun when you're 100% yourself. And I got to, 'cause I came out as a non-binary, when I was 14, nobody believed me. So at 24, I got to come out again. And now, actually, I'm more like, telling people why my pronouns are they, them. Like, I get to live authentically in my gender. I get to have as much sex or as little sex as I want, and have fun sex with fun people and porn. And I get to just be myself in such a fun way. I get to go to sex clubs and just dance all night long, dress the way that I like to dress. Like, look at me, like, I have a big belly. I don't give a shit. I wanna show it off anyway. And it's 'cause some beautiful tattoos. - It does. - It does. - It does. - It does. - Yes. - So, being 100% yourself is great. And I want to go back to something you were saying earlier. There's this, "Syphera Tris," there's this writer, Brene Brown. - I love her. - Yeah, love her. - Yeah. Where she says, "The best way to battle fear and guilt "in all these negative emotions is love and acceptance "and friendship." And that is so true. - Yeah. - That is so true. So when people come to you, and they've got these fears, and they've got these guilt, and they've got these negative emotions surrounding yourself. The best way to help them is to accept them, is to love them, and to just give them that space to feel what they need to feel. And my therapist has done exactly that. And he's so wonderful. - If I could promote him, I would. I would, like, hand his heart out to people, and be like, "You need to see this guy." Like, I think everyone should be in therapy. - Right? - Yeah. - And have a therapist who accepts and believes and believes that everybody is capable of and worthy of love. I think it's incredible you're talking about the impact of vulnerability in your life. That, like, even though that's risky, that's the heart of connection. And that your desire to seek understanding of your diagnosis, to reach out, to not accept the narrative that this means that you're a bad person, but to continue seeking support, that means that you already were coming from a place of self-love to say, "I am deserving worthy "of a life where I feel more connected to people, "where I feel happier." And that's, like, brave, took a ton of work. I imagine that's just, like, putting yourself out there to overcome what you're experiencing. I'm interested if you can help us understand a little bit more you talked about, the connection between borderline personality disorder and then early childhood experiences. I'm not having space to express your emotions. - Do you think your experience of assault also played into the way that you were struggling with mental health at the time? - Yeah, I do. 'Cause I was still young in such a, like, developmental part of my life that I definitely had such an impact on me and how I handle emotions today. - Yeah, you were talking about the guilt. So you had the experience of assault and then you had an experience where you did something non-consensual and you were brought by guilt. And I've experienced that and I've seen other partners have been through that, that sometimes the guilt itself becomes even more corrosive to the spirit. How did you work through both the assault and the guilt and make sense of it come to peace with those things today? - So I'm gonna talk again about forgiveness, right? So a lot of people say, "Oh, you have to forgive people." I'm gonna say right now, you don't have to forgive fucking anybody. You don't, you do not have to forgive anybody. Does it help you heal? - Yes. So when I was going through therapy and we were working through like the assaults that I've been through and the abuse that I've gone through, like my therapist was like, who can we forgive and who can't we? And once we started working through that, he goes, okay, how can you forgive yourself for the things that you've done? At first I was like, I can't, I don't deserve to forgive myself. I don't. And then as time went on and we worked through other things in therapy and I started realizing like I've got these high emotions where like I think like some people are like the worst person in the world just because they made a mistake. He goes, when can you do that to yourself? When can you go and look inside and go, I am not a terrible person just because I made a mistake. And then he goes, when can you forgive yourself for that? And so I eventually looked at that big monster inside of me that has healed. I just said I forgive you. Yes, when can you stop punishing yourself? You made that choice. Yes. So I'm interested in, if you can help us understand also this transformation that you had in your understanding of hypersexuality, that you're still having lots of sex today, but you're loving it. That's what I'm hearing that you're having awesome sex, a unique partner, you're having awesome sex at the sex club, like people are experiencing you as fun, not because you're giving them pleasure, but because you are happy and you are confident, love yourself and you're refusing that. So how did your mindset change? I'm wondering if you feel comfortable sharing some of the narratives that you had about yourself and your sexuality then, and then what that self-talk about your sexuality looks like today? Yeah, so it all came from a lot of different coping mechanisms. So the first step, I learned different coping mechanisms. I learned what other ways can I take care of myself? What are other ways that are healthy things to me to do when I'm feeling down, when I'm feeling suicidal, when I'm feeling angry, upset, hurt and guilty, what are some things I can do? That took a long time. That took at least two years of me trying to figure out what are better coping mechanisms. Number one, talking to people, talking this, this right here, telling my therapist, telling my friends, telling people that are close to me. These are things that happen to me. This is something I'm going through. Hey, I'm feeling suicidal right now because I spilled milk, things like that. I know it's something that's ridiculous, but it's true. These are things that actually happen to me. I would feel suicidal or something as small as, like a crap in my windshield. Just talking about it. So you find those coping mechanisms. I also, I do things like take really long baths. - Oh, I love that, self-care. - Self-care, yeah. Sometimes I clean, sometimes I look around and I go, "Oh my gosh, my space is so dirty." I deserve a clean space, let's clean it. The second step, boundaries, again. Finding a place where one or what's okay, what's not okay. What makes me feel good? What doesn't make me feel good when it comes to sex? And then the third thing, being vocal, insects. Being like, "Hey, I don't like that, or let's stop." Or, "Hey, this doesn't actually feel that good to me. "I want it to end." And using that communication, insects, is so much more fun than people think it is. And then I'm gonna add to that, don't fake orgasms, people, just don't do it. - It doesn't feel good for either person involved. - Yeah, it doesn't feel good for either person involved and you're doing yourself into service and you're doing them into service. So you gotta have that communication like, "Well, can you turn your finger 90 degrees to the left?" You know what I mean? And once you have these three things, sex becomes so much more fun. And it's so much more enjoyable. And when you are enjoying something, why deprive yourself of it? You know what I mean? And I've come across people, especially back when I was single and trained to date. When they would ask me what my number is, and I'd be like, "I don't know, I lost count a long time ago." - They're brushed out. - Yeah, they're grossed out. Or they're like, "Oh my God." Or they have negative things to say. And part of loving yourself, part of growing, is to look at them and go, "Okay, bye-bye." - Right, right. You deserve people in your life who are like, "Oh yeah, I love that that is a source of joy for you." - Yeah. - However many people you've had sex with. - Yeah, and once you come to the part of your life, or sex is fun and enjoyable, why wouldn't you wanna have a lot of it? You know, coming is awesome. - You know what I mean? - We all, like, we've all had that one orgasm that we're all chasing, you know what I mean? - Yes, yes. I love that you're talking about boundaries that serve your pleasure. And when you're experiencing pleasure, it makes your partner, sexual partner happier too. I think about, and you know, despite the fact that I've been trying, you know, trying to learn and center my pleasure and joy and being honest about my boundaries, it still comes up because it's so ingrained in us to want to please. Recently, I was having sex with a partner who really likes anal sex. And I've gone through the process of becoming, you know, kind of anal slut and like I'm down from, my ass is down for whenever, but that particular day I was feeling tired, I wasn't up for it, I felt painful. And for me to say, sorry, not today, took some emotional labor, but I think that ultimately that serves me in being able to say like, I am having sex, I'm choosing sex on my terms in a way that feels good. And being able to assert that, like it's what you're describing. It's a long learning process that's different from how socialization to sex is taught, especially for people who are assigned female to birth bodies, like, or queer trans folks as well as like, that, you know, we're supposed to be providers of sexuality and recipients of the desires of other people. But we also have, and being able to embrace our desires and our boundaries has a huge impact in how we're able to relate to being slutty. - Yeah, I love that you bring up emotional labor. I'm gonna talk about the concept of spoons. - Yes. - And it takes a lot of spoons for me to do a lot of the work that I do. And it makes me tired a lot. I'm like, I call myself a sleepy bitch because I am sleepy all the time. My best friend, whenever I hang out with her, I always take a bath because she's such a safe space. And like, I can really be myself around her. And my body just goes, okay, nap time, because I don't have to do any emotional labor around her at all, whereas like, there are a lot of other relationships in her life, regardless of who they are, we're gonna have to do a little bit of emotional labor. That's just how it is. And for me, emotional labor is like three or four spoons. And I only have so many spoons in a day. - You gotta choose which ones you said, uh-huh. - Yeah, so, yeah. And being in space at this where like, you don't have to use any spoons at all. - Make you really sleepy. - Oh my gosh. My absolute favorite memory from a sex club is when I got so close to this friend group, this like sexy swing or friend group, that you're not supposed to fall asleep at sex clubs, but I was exhausted as fuck. And I did fall asleep during the orgy, and I felt like completely okay with that because I felt safe with those people. And that is, it just felt like a beautiful thing. Like, I don't have to perform here. - Yes, I don't have to perform. It's a good way to put it. Yeah. And that's another thing too about sex. Like, I don't have to perform even in porn anyway, especially the porn that you're leading, is that I can just be myself and just lay there and be like, I need a cock in my mouth. - Totally! (laughing) - 'Cause someone comes with it there if they want it. Yeah, and that's not me performing. That's just me enjoying the sex that I'm having. - Yeah. Which I think is so much harder. - Yeah. (laughing) So, can you describe some of the ways that when you are hearing people talk about their experience as a result? 'Cause you described that now people are coming to you. They feel like you're a safe space to talk about us all. I feel that from you, you know, like you're an ocean of emotions that people can, to the extent you have the spoons for, I can share. - Yeah. - So, what are some of the things that you do in response when people are sharing about their assault or things that you think about or communicate to them? - Yeah, the number one thing I do is I give them that space. I give them that space to talk about it. And a lot of times that's all they need, a lot of times that is all they need. They just need one person who's gonna sit there and listen to them, completely judgment-free, and who understands them. That's what they need most of the time. And now if they need more support than that, then a lot of times what I do is I just give them feedback. Like, or I ask some questions. Like, what are you feeling in this moment right now as you are telling me about your sexual assault, what emotions are you feeling? And then we go from there, okay, how can we tackle these emotions? How can we talk to them like they're our friends? Because that's what they are, essentially. Is these emotions are there to protect you? And so it's like, let's talk to them. Let's look at them and go, okay, like, why am I feeling anger? Why am I feeling sadness? Let's talk to them. Hey, hi, Edgar, how are you today? Can you kind of explain to me what's going on a little bit? And that helps people too, especially when I start telling them like, why don't you visualize like your emotions? Like, who do they look like to you? And everybody always gives a different answer. To me, they look like a little girl, which is hilarious. They just look like a little five-year-old girl that is just like with like little demo porns that just wants to run around and scream. But other people talk about how they like, like I had one person who told me that they look like just too many buddy rabbits running around in their head. (laughing) And it's like, okay, how do we corral these bunny rabbits into a little pin and like give them the lettuce and carrots that they need? You know what I mean? And that's another thing that I do. A lot of terms, it's just giving them a hug too. A lot of times you would like, I just give a hug. So, okay, let me give you that hug. But most of the time, it's just giving them the space to talk about it in such a place where they feel like they can. Because getting mental health help, mental health help is very difficult. And getting a therapist is so hard. So hard, inexpensive, very expensive, and people don't always have their resources for that. So, when they come to me, they just need a space. - Yeah, because I think one of the reasons that's powerful is I hear a lot of times that the body's initial response to cope with trauma is to disassociate. That didn't happen, I forget that. The brain just creates a little box to put it away in. And so, being able to remember, this is what my body's feeling, or this is what I'm emotionally feeling. And the way that you're describing kind of personifying it, working with it as a thing together outside of you, your actions, you're also not your feelings that you're this body and together, like you're a team, taking care of those little emotional rabbits. And that you're no longer alone in that coping and response to trauma, no matter what that response looks like. - Yeah. - So, I think, yeah, I think also like the fact that you're even willing to talk about it. Like it's an often not a thing that we talk about. It's like a thing that you're supposed to experience alone. I think there are a lot of them, like don't talk about sex, don't talk about politics, don't talk about emotions. And yet these are all things that we're going through. - And these are things that happen. - Yeah, yeah. - So often. - So often. And I think people like, they don't realize that too. Like, I know so many people who have come to me that are like, I had an abortion, and I just wanna say I had an abortion to somebody. I'm just gonna make it real. And I'm like, yep, I'm here for you. What do you need? I think, I just wanted to say I had one to somebody who's not gonna judge me. And I can't tell you how many times that has happened to me. How many freaking times people have come to me just to tell me, and every single time it was, I just need to say to somebody I had one, because they don't have anybody else in their life that they can't, or miscarriages. Miscarriages happen way more than people think, but nobody talks about it. And then like you said earlier about like one in three people are like sexually assaulted. And nobody talks about it. These are topics that need to be talked about, because if we talk about it, not only doesn't make it real, but it helps us work through them. - Yeah, yeah, that you have gotten to a place of self-love and confidence, and it's changed your relationship to sex and sexuality and relationships. And I think that that is just so important in our ability to be whole, recognizing that we are going back to complex personhood. None of us are good or evil. None of us, like, you were able to identify the humanity and the person that assaulted you, to identify the humanity in yourself. I think that that is an incredible message of love to people who are going through this, who have been assaulted, and maybe are responding in all different kinds of ways. I think one of the things that I'm hearing from your experience as well is that the meaning that you made of your response was really impactful, that you weren't necessarily changing your behaviors in terms of having a lot of sex. You were changing in terms of setting your boundaries, but you're still hypersexual, as you've changed the meaning around that, and your thoughts related to that. So I want to ask if you have any more closing thoughts or that you're such a gentle, loving, open-hearted person, and I'm really inspired by the way that you have learned to talk to and about yourself. So, yeah, if you have any other thoughts for people who are going through this, whether they're struggling with their trauma or struggling with self-recrimination and guilt, talk about it, talk about it, talk about it to somebody, even if it's a teddy bear or your cat, just talk about it. It's real, it happened to you. Let's talk about it. I'm let's start making a plan to move forward because you deserve to move forward. You deserve that love, you deserve that space, and you deserve to eventually move forward from it, not to be stuck on it forever. If you're R, that's okay, but you deserve a space where you can move on and move forward from the things that have happened to you. You do. - I love that. - I love all of us deserve love and beautiful sex and joys and great authentic orgasms. - You do. - Sort of baked orgasms. - Yeah. - Gigi, thank you so much for sharing your experiences and your vulnerability as a source of connection with, you know, even what you're saying is healing to me and my process of thinking about assaults. And I hope it is for you viewers as well. Thank you for joining us. This has been another edition of a Slots Guide to Happiness with your host, Vanessa. Vanessa Cliff, and our guest today, Gigi, or Alice, actress, and porn. You can find us wherever you get your podcasts, including Apple Spotify and YouTube, as well as on our Cliff Media website, VanessaCliff.com. Please help us out by liking, sharing this podcast, and stay tuned for more deep dives into beautiful, messy, and sometimes fun, and sometimes hard, waters, all of it. If you're over the age of 18, you can also check us out on our video, check out our video content, our NSFW video content, and our website, VanessaCliff.com. And most of all, I invite you to join us in the pleasure of being awkwardly human, naked, and without pretense. Let's get free. (laughs) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music)
