Sex Ed 201: How to have better sex | Liz Klinger | TEDxOakland

[Music] so welcome to sex ed 201 I will be your instructor today and Liz now let's do a brief recap of sex ed 101 don't have sex use contraception don't get pregnant which you won't because you're not gonna have sex and oh yeah sti's are scary oh yeah and there is one more thing what was it all right porn we're not talking about porn here we have parental controls the kids are not going to watch the porn on the internet as long as we have those parental controls it's gonna be fine it's gonna be okay we don't have to talk about it trust me on a serious note though we often see sex ed as an issue for how we educate young adults but a lot of us also have questions now as adults but because we're adults we don't need a class right we know how to have sex it's pretty straightforward and we're all satisfied all the time right it seems like the last thing we'd like to admit is having uncertainty about sex be it with a partner or even just enjoying ourselves but like eating sleeping or even breathing those things seem pretty straightforward on face value but there's always ways to eat better sleep better breathe better to relax better like that with sex too it's not always super straightforward so what I'm basically saying is adults need a form of sex education for themselves which by the way is important for the kids too because if we're comfortable at least talking about sex we don't have to pass on grand old especially American grand old tradition of D stigma taught of stigmatizing and misunderstanding sex to our next generation now back to us adults though because this one's about us while there's always room for improvement for men the problem is especially acute for women in reality while a lot of these definitions are overly broad for women for example 43 percent of women at some point in their lives exhibit symptoms that fall under the umbrella of FSD otherwise known as female sexual dysfunction some estimates have even shown that one in ten women have never had an orgasm in their lives in the case of the first statistic that one was designed by pharmaceutical companies that were trying to create a female viagra to solve all sorts of sexual dysfunction and women however that definition was so broad that it included everything from chemical changes in your body too circumstantial changes like ups and downs and relationships or being with a partner who's not as attentive to your needs or just changes in your own life like mood fluctuations stress depression menstrual cycle the list goes on so this really all just means that there are a lot of women who have been dissatisfied with their sex life at some point in time which also matters for men too since for a lot of these men they are partners to a lot of these women and that's just talking about people who are couples and in heterosexual relationships basically pretty much everyone I've talked to at some point in our lives has wanted to improve their sex life for some reason at some point these issues don't just sit in a vacuum either our inability to ask questions or lack of resources the missing standings all have real-world consequences on our health our relationships and our well-being I saw this firsthand and short as Chris said so eloquently I went from doing art around female sexuality to working at an investment bank to pay the bills to selling sex toys to making sex toys and when I was starting to sell sex toys I started getting a lot of questions from a lot of different people there were the college students who asked about the g-spot a lot there was the woman who was about to get married and she had never had an orgasm with a partner she never told her fiance about this and she was wondering if there was something wrong with her and what she could do about it especially since she hadn't ever talked about it with him and she was worried that there was going to be that she was gonna be hurting her marriage before it even got started there are also the women who were in their 40s 50s 60s who were going through menopause are about to go through menopause and for some of them they were experiencing changes to their bodies that were affecting their sex life and in some of those cases it almost to them felt like that they had to relearn their body and what they liked because what worked for them in their 30s may not necessarily work for them in their 50s so basically whether you're 18 55 75 or even 105 everyone had questions about sex and especially questions that pertain to their own bodies their own circumstances their partners their own lives but where do they go to ask these questions why did I go to me and not say an OBGYN some did but many were rebuffed having an infection or having a baby falls within their purview some simply did not see sex and pleasure as part of their responsibility there are also some great sex therapists out there but it can be tough for someone to go and see a sex therapist and they're oftentimes also pretty expensive so then what about that other thing that I'm sure some of us are thinking about that big grand beautiful free thing called the Internet you get a million answers most of them contradictory and some things that you weren't quite looking for originally besides that though even if you found some reliable accounts what worked for one person may not necessarily work for you so why not a Udacity for sex why not put together some sort of course or curriculum for something like this but that's the exact problem with trying to do a specific course or a curriculum how do you teach something where the facts are simply different for different people because of how their bodies worked you can teach Anatomy you can teach terminology you can even teach a few techniques but a lot of sexual experiences are specific to individuals now when I say that everyone is different you might think yeah that's nice like everyone is everyone said that that's sort of you know the running theme in this presentation the running theme of life but what I'd like to ask here is how do we start describing how we're different when it comes to sex because if we can start talking about some of that we can get a better sense of what works for one person versus what works for another person because we don't have a lot of ways to talk about this given that sex is a pretty taboo topic has been for a long time it's been rather difficult to understand this notion but what we found early on in our research and in our testing and what other research has supported is that there are some ways that we can start talking about it and one example that I'm going to show you here is orgasm patterns or different experiences of pleasure so what you're seeing here behind me is an orgasm it's pelvic floor contractions this one we call an ocean wave it's a rhythmic pattern of pelvic floor contractions this one is a volcano it's a sharper increase in pelvic floor contractions also an orgasm and then there is this one which kind of looks like a mix of the two but the people who exhibit this orgasm describes it as the part of the help the part where the pelvic floor is relaxing or going downward almost like this sort of relaxing motion so why am i showing you these charts well these are three different charts from three different people and not only are these charts just different because whatever they're they're just lines right but also the subjective experience of how they describe an orgasm is distinctly different from one another is it rolling waves is it a sort of detention or relaxing sort of feeling or is it a sudden burst what we see here now is not only art a subjective experience is different but also the fifth goal experiences are different and at least from what we've seen and from what research that's out there these differences are consistent within a person over time someone who has an ocean wave pattern will always have an ocean wave pattern they may have different feelings of orgasm and you can see that there's physical expressions of differences there's differences in the charts but they always seem to fall into the same pattern so when we talk about this fluffy notion that everyone is different it's not just a nice thing to say it is literally the case physiologically and experientially that drives this difference in experience this is why you can't do a one-size-fits-all for pleasure education so the next time you're reading a book or watching a movie and you see a scene like a sex scene and you're thinking huh that sounds different than what I've experienced why can't I have that it may very well be that that person is literally having a different experience than you and that's fine because they're having their great experience they can't have your great experience and your experiences are both pretty awesome so if we're all different how do we learn and what do we do there's only one real solution to this which is self experimentation and trying things out couples who explore different ways to increase pleasure we're 12 times more likely to be sexually satisfied likewise research has also consistently shown that women who were more comfortable with themselves were much more likely to be sexually satisfied so basically try new things get more comfortable and confident and your sex life improves it's been the most reliable way and one that's that's worked based on you and your own unique body and experiences so like those cheesy stories of journeys and self-discovery you ultimately have to teach yourself it's a bit disappointing because we'd all like to have that magic bullet or in some cases the magic pill which is why people were so excited when Female Viagra came out even though it had some pretty terrible side effects and even then it wasn't really the magic pill that we were all hoping for given those trade-offs unfortunately in 201 the grand reveal is that there isn't one given what I do obviously I think sex toys can help and we can create products that are geared specifically towards this but ultimately it's a matter of mindset we all get into habits and ruts and although we start from different levels different experiences what's the same for all of us is that we all need to be continuously learning and exploring and things can get even better I don't think anyone has ever said no matter how much they know that I never want my sex life to be better than this so go try a new position explore new fetishes new sex toys go and explore but most of all realize that it's okay to not know everything we all got the short end of the stick when it comes to the stigmas and society around this but what we can do is be open to new experiences and be okay with the fact that there is no magic bullet or pill and know that what we do have to be do but we do have to do is to be open to these new experiences and remember that this really is about the journey for all of us and that there is no destination thank you [Applause]

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 225,783

Rating: 4.6845694 out of 5

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, Education, Body, Body language, Communication, Sex, Teaching

Id: 7gzspv0GU5E

Length: 15min 53sec (953 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 20 2017