Celibacy & Abstinence: Defining Your Own Terms | Episode 1 Transcript

Explore celibacy and abstinence through a conversation about personal boundaries, cultural influences, and the many ways to experience pleasure and intimacy. For more episodes, watch here

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Welcome to please, an educated pleasure channel.

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My name is Vanessa and I own and operate. Please, a sexual wellness shop located in Brooklyn, New York City.

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You're watching Please Presentations.

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platform for having open and informed conversations about sexual health and sexual wellness.

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Each series will have one main topic. Each topic will be run and moderated by a different host.

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series three with Shelby Terrell and Tara Jones, is a conversation on celibacy and abstinence.

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Welcome to celibacy and abstinence. My name is Shelby Terrell. I'm a licensed sex and relationship therapist. Intimacy coordinator, and I am here tonight with Tara Jones. Tara. Hi.

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Remember Gen Z. I that I do amazing.

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Thank you for being with us here tonight. We are at Please and Educated Pleasure shop located in South Brooklyn. And this is episode one we're going to talk about. What do we mean by celibacy and abstinence. So Tara, in your background in the development of your sex program. What do you talk about as far as celibacy and abstinence?

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What are we. What is the definition? How do we differentiate between those. Yeah. So my understanding are long term and the connotation around short term. The phrases especially within like the context of religion always understood that as like interpretation of both words.

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It is term like short term in that is until marriage long term lessons. So that's kind of a long time.

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We don't always talk. So see and abstinence. I'll use exploration in a way that's lot. Is that it pretty much almost always involves, you know, applying your values or some other entities values, the states values, perhaps onto what sex is supposed to mean. And you're never in your life given a chance to break down what it means to you.

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And so like creating an are allowed to do that. Young people are allowed to do that within themselves. And just ask themselves to those questions I think is a really important part of I mean lifelong sex education. Yeah, absolutely. So in your opinion and your experience, do you think that celibacy is inherently a choice or can someone be celibate without intentionally choosing it?

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I definitely think religious and cultural influences, it's like impossible to control for that.

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It's impossible to, like, parse that out from your other motivations. Because that really is what shapes us all, or so much of what shapes us all. So, I definitely think even if you are approaching celibacy or abstinence from an empowered place or what you'd identify as an empowered place, it's always worth investigating. What's motivating you? Yeah, absolutely.

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Unknown
I think that in so much of sex education, especially because it's not federally mandated in the United States, it's a state by state basis. And even then when you get into public school, private school, whatever it is, there's no one defining body. There's no I forget what the you will probably know this more recent, statistic than I do, but even to have medically accurate sex education that's not federally or even mandated, it's terrifying.

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Unknown
It's like a scary sight out there. Like, I, gosh, even, like, when we went to start building our curriculum and started looking into like, what do people mean when they say comprehensive sex ed? Like in the very few states where that is a standard, or school districts or schools where that is the standard, like what do they mean?

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And like even the national standards for those really involved a lot of like imposing our morals onto children. We should be talking about abstinence as the goalpost. And maybe we'll tell you a little bit of something about contraceptives, which is like, not at all. I think what contraception or what comprehensive sex ed is. Well, it's usually two or.

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Unknown
What I found is abstinence as contraception, and it's not the same thing at all. Yeah. This Christian fundamentalist infusion and policy. Totally. That is, you know, trout as education, which it's really not it's really not. And it's like the purity culture movement, I think was you would like to think that we made more strides in the sex education policy space.

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Unknown
We like, we haven't like we really haven't. And it is kind of a two steps forward, one step backwards thing. Like we've all seen the don't say gay bills or the don't say period bills. And we've all heard about contraceptive deserts like yeah. So it is really it is really. Yeah. A difficult landscape right now. And for you to with your program how that has to be just you're constantly updating and you're constantly.

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Oh yeah. Yeah. I think that's what's been cool. Like I think the internet is such an important part of the converse having with young people. And I think keeping up to date on the conversations that are happening online is like a really important part of being an educator right now. Yeah. Because it's like, really? So are there.

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Unknown
Oh my God. Yeah, we do have. Yeah. No, I was like thinking about that the other day. I was like, oh well the oldest gen Alpha I think is around like 16 right now. So I'm like, we do actually like work with Gen Alpha, which is we're so we're going to come back to Gen Z and millennials in a further episode.

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So stick around, stick around. But let me get back. I got us off track. I'm sorry. No, you're not going to talk to you about everything. So honing in, does abstinence have to mean abstaining from all sexual behavior? Or can someone abstain from partnered sex while still masturbating, using porn, or engaging in other forms of sexual pleasure?

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Unknown
Yeah, I think in a lot of context, I've sex. I think historically and culturally we've had such a limited view on what sex is. And so the sort of like interpretation, I think, from a religious standpoint has also been like, if that's what sex is, then I can do everything outside of that and have it not be sex, not count.

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Unknown
We've heard about like, soaking and like, I don't know, like all these. Yeah. Docking or like, you know, anal. It's like a loophole and it's like, okay, well now. Right. Like it's it's a harder argument to make, I think, because most people will also conceptualize of those things as sex. I think a lot of people are like, maybe hesitant to consider, like masturbation, sex.

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But I don't think any logic like, that's right.

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Where like a lot not 100% sex, you know? So, yeah, I know it is interesting that we're sort of like playing by these rules. And I think in some cases, when people are approaching abstinence from like a place of agency, like, sure, you're going to create whatever your own boundaries are for that, maybe it makes sense for partnered sex and still continue to masturbate and do that from like a place of agency where it's like, okay, period.

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Like, love that for you. Yes. I think, no one size fits all model here. Yeah. For me, I know when I was growing up, when I grew up. I was it was Mormon. It was this very high demand, high control religious foundation. And my understanding was it was abstinence until marriage, sex, premarital sex and master and masturbation were both sins next to murder in the eyes of God.

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And so my relationship to masturbation was very fear based. And so for me, I can also see where the abstinence, meaning abstaining from any type of sexual pleasure would mean that. And I also think that to your point, sex is not one of the first questions I ask people when they come into my office, whether they're an individual or a partner, regardless of sex or sexuality, gender.

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Unknown
I ask them, well, what does sex mean to you? Yeah. And that question will, you know, break some people's brains in a really beautiful way because it just is, is so vast. And so I think that really defining what any of these things can mean for yourself is, is so important and not to live by another person's rules for your own body.

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Unknown
Yeah. No, we do something similar. I think sex means, and we define sex and, like, trying to find a universal. Yeah I will. Okay. Yes. Love that video. Trying to find, like, a universal definition and, like, it's virtually impossible to even if you dedicate, like, a solid chunk of your life right there to to trying to do that.

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So of that video because it shows how like that there isn't a yeah.

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These strict, restrictive. Yeah, absolutely. So this brings us into a really nice segue, I think. Can someone have a very, a very active erotic life while being technically celibate?

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Unknown
Yeah, with the term eroticism. So I definitely think like, and we've also discussed how abstinence, abstaining from partnered sex, abstaining from sex sex, abstaining from, you know, maybe.

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Unknown
So I definitely think when you're like that, you can absolutely coexist. Yeah, absolutely. One of my favorite definitions from personal hero Esther Farrell. Well, she says eroticism is a profound life force and energy focused on a liveness, curiosity, play and imagination rather than the mere physical mechanics of sex. And I think that that just brings so much excitement and curiosity to me.

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Decoupling it from sexual intimacy. Because for so many people. And we'll touch on this in later episodes, too.

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Sexual intimacy is different than physical intimacy, which is also only one part of a larger. The palette of intimacy is available to us in our personal lives and our relationships, whether they're platonic, romantic, familial. So, I love that. I love that, too. Yeah, I think I, I've maybe like, because I'm very like, like logistic or very like, super, I guess spiritual also, I think so.

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Unknown
So yeah. No, I love I love hearing different people's definitions. I've also always loved Audre Lorde uses of the erotic. So in our last question, as we wrap up this segment, do you think that we are actually talking about a lack of sex, or are we talking about different ways of experiencing sexuality? I think we're absolutely talking. And celibacy, like the immediate thing that comes to mind for so many folks is like purity and religion.

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Unknown
And that's even what came to mind when they don't know what I do. Maybe they don't know what I talk about, but, no. When I thought about it a lot more and I thought about like how important I think values exploration is to to all of our understandings of our sexuality. I was like, yeah, this is such a cool conversation.

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Unknown
Yeah. And I think that there's so much more to, to, to dive into,

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so I'm excited. Well, on that note, stick around. Tara, thank you for episode one and I'll see you in episode two.

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Thanks for watching.

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You can visit us online at please or visit us at the shop. 635 Fifth Avenue, Brooklyn. Follow us on all socials at please NYC.