Ep 146: Sexual Morality, Disgust, and Bonobos with Dr. Kelly Asao

What is sexual morality? How do we decide what is right and wrong when it comes to sex? Is it universal or does it change across cultures? How does moralizing sexuality affect our individual sexual expression and our views on sex as a society?

In this week’s episode, Effy and Jacqueline explore sexual morality with insights from Dr. Kelly Asao who is a professor of psychology at Westminster College in Salt Lake City. Dr. Asao teaches classes on human sexuality and conducts research on the intersection of meaning and morality. Dr. Asao shares the seven components to sexual morality according to a major study and reveals the biological driver behind what we deem as right or wrong.

To learn more about Dr. Kelly Asao
My goal is to inspire academic curiosity and deep learning in my students. I enjoy teaching smaller classes that allow for individualized attention, advanced subject matter, and real-world application (e.g. research projects, demonstrations, excursions). My classes utilize a flexible combination of discussions, activities, videos, and lectures to encourage deep engagement with the material and to meet students where they are. In addition to teaching excellence, I have a proven track record of mentoring and supervising undergraduate and post-graduate students in research.

Broadly, I am interested in understanding human psychology from an evolutionary perspective. My core research program explores morality and mating using an interactionist approach, investigating how biological and environmental factors combine to drive behavior.

Find Kelly on Research Gate
Linkedin: kelly-asao

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TRANSCRIPT:

Effy

Welcome to the Curious Fox podcast for those challenging the status quo in love, sex, and relationships. My name is Effy Blue.

Jacqueline

And I'm Jacqueline Misla. And today we're talking about sexual morality, and how it impacts our individual and collective sexual expression. Centuries of laws, religious doctrine, family structures, gender roles, and of course, who should have sex with who and how have been defined by what is considered moral or immoral. Because of the breadth of impact, we wanted to get a better understanding of the origins of morality.

Effy

In its essence, morality is a set of values and principles that dictate the difference between right and wrong. While you can argue that morality is universal, we've also seen morals change and evolve over human evolution. To help us understand morality is it applies to sexuality, we reached out to

Kelly Asao

I'm Dr. Kelly Asao. I'm a professor of psychology at Westminster College in Salt Lake City, where I teach classes on human sexuality and conduct research on the intersection of meaning and morality. Dr. Kelly Asao and her team conducted a major study where they found seven components to sexual morality. So we found that there are these seven components that make up most people, at least within the United States most people's intuitions about morality of sex, infidelity, short-term or casual sex, sexual corrigin outgroups X, longterm meeting, same-sex, sexuality and paraphilic sex. already curious to dig into each of these factors. We took a step back and started by asking her what is sexual morality. Sexual morality is basically people's moral intuitions, their attitudes, their feelings, and behaviors about sex and sexuality. And it's surprisingly under studied, especially within the field of morality, given that sex is still one of the biggest taboo topics, and wherever there are written laws, there are specifically laws about who can have sex with whom, and what sex acts are Permissible or impermissible. And so yeah, it's a surprisingly understudied area. But it really is just what are people's moral attitudes when it comes to sex, their own and other people's?

Effy

I'm surprised that you use the word intuition, which brings up for me this long standing argument about if morality is universal, or relative. When I hear intuition, essentially coming from within, I find myself leaning towards universal morality.

Kelly Asao

So one thing is that we thought for a really long time, that morality in the way that we make moral decisions is this very reasoned process, right, we have these values, and we make sure that our behaviors and the behaviors of others align with these values. And what we're discovering more and more is that it is based on intuition, which means that it's more influenced by emotion, by people's feelings about different topics. And so one really interesting finding is that Disgust is deeply tied to our experience of morality. So when people are more disgusted by something, regardless of whether it's harmful, regardless of whether it ties into a different value of theirs, if they just find something disgusting, they find it wrong. And so this emotion that really doesn't have a lot to do with whether something is objectively right or wrong, plays into how people view morality, and this is particularly true sex. So some people are just more sensitive to disgust. It's actually called disgust sensitivity. And some people just are more disgusted by things that have nothing to do with sex, right? If they step on a worm, for example, they're more disgusted by that action than other people this individual difference variable, but the people who are more easily disgusted by stepping on a worm are more likely to negatively view casual sex they're more likely to negatively view so x with a same sex partner. It's fascinating that it's something so biological and so emotion driven that's playing into our moralization of sex.

Effy

The idea that disgust being the source, the driver for morality is fascinating to me. Disgust is such a biological, visceral factor. And morality feels like it lives in this emotional, intellectual social realm. One being the source of the other, is leaning me further towards morality as a universal experience? Do we know what factors determine what we find disgusting? Everything is

Kelly Asao

this beautiful interplay between nature and nurture. And so part of it is part of what's called the behavioral immune response or the behavioral immune system. So we have an internal biological immune system that protects us from disease and pathogens and parasites. But we also have a behavioral immune system, which is partly driven by disgust. So it helps us to avoid things that would be contaminants. So we find dead bodies disgusting, we find certain feces disgusting, we find bodily fluids disgusting. And part of the reason we find those things disgusting, is because they're linked to contamination, right? So it's part of our behavioral response to avoid contamination. And that part is biological. Right? Some people are just more sensitive. Partly, they've done studies finding that people who are more immunocompromised are more disgust sensitive, right? So part of this is a biological thing, right? an intrinsic thing. But also, the content of what we find disgusting and not disgusting, is very much influenced by our local culture. So religion teaches that certain acts should be viewed as disgusting. And therefore that bleeds into someone who is more prone to discus already, then it leads them to be more willing to accept that that act is disgusting. And so it's definitely the interplay of the two and it's extremely fascinating.

Jacqueline

That's interesting, because that was going to be my next question is, again, depending on where you are kind of in this in the United States or in the world, you may have different judgments around what is moral, what is amoral. But what I hear you saying is that there are some folks who are more sensitive to to to what can be considered immoral based on what's disgusting. And so when they're listening to the inputs that are telling them, this is wrong, and this is disgusting. They're saying, Yes, that sounds right. And now I firmly believe that that is true. That is wrong. And that is disgusting.

Kelly Asao

Absolutely. Right. So some people are more susceptible to that kind of messaging.

Jacqueline

Hmm. Wow, I grew up in a very religious family, I am queer, I am polyamorous. And so both of those things were considered both wrong and disgusting. As I was growing up, and was the byproduct of the shame I felt in tremendous shame. And for very long time kind of hid the way that I wanted to be in the world and the in the way that that brought me joy. And so now I'm just trying to connect those dots quickly, in my mind to say, okay, so was it, you know, the over sensitivity of the folks in my life, and it combined with the messages that they were receiving? So I'm interested in a little bit around, have you done any work to explore how those original messages came to be? So we have a, it sounds like we have a sense of how the general public may or may not be inclined to find something moral, a moral based on their level of disgust. But those messages that are coming from society or coming from culture or coming from religion, were some of those good and bad stories coming from?

Kelly Asao

I think there's some amazing work that's being done around like, where did the patriarchy come from? Trying to tie it into history. So coming from like our earliest ancestors, and that's really an area where I need to learn more, I'm curious about more, and learning more. But what we've found, from at least preliminary explorations of the topic, is that really simple divisions of labor that happened very early in our evolutionary history as a species might have contributed to men being able to control a little bit more of the resources a little bit more of the power, especially in societies in which women were, they moved from their family home unit, their family home, into the family, home of the males that they were either married to or right formed these sexual romantic relationships with. And so it seems that many different species have solved this problem of division of labor differently. And we don't really know the answer to why there's so much pervasive male-dominated kind of power structures in our species because you know, it doesn't have to be that way. Have your talk but didn't bonobos on this? No,let's talk about

Kelly Asao

I fucking love bonobo. They're my favorite. So people always talk about chimpanzees as being our closest living right cousins are the closest species to humans and bonobos are equally if not more, related to us genetically. And their two societies went entirely different ways based purely on their ecology. So the no bows were able to form this more, right sexually open society, where females tend to dominate the society, right, it is a matrilineal society, where women band together so female and bonobo chimpanzees band together, in order to prevent sexual exploitation and violence from the male's of the troop, they tend to engage in a lot of sexual activity, reduce tension, and it leads to a more overall peaceful, less violent society. Whereas chimpanzees, because of their ecology, they were forced to disperse much more heavily, so they weren't allowed to band together, females aren't allowed to kind of spend time creating these coalition's and instead, they're forced to kind of forage really widely and away from one another. And what that allowed for was male chimpanzees to be able to, because they're physically larger, to dominate and to enact violence upon particular females. And it led to a more male dominated society. And so there could have been something really early on in our evolutionary past that made it so that females in our species weren't able to band together in the same way, or at least not to the extent of bonobos, and therefore lead to a little bit more of the power structures that we see enacted now, but very much part of the reason why I think certain sexual double standards exist, where women, for example, aren't allowed to or are punished for engaging in casual sex. Whereas men are praised for engaging in casual sex, they're very much allowed to engage in casual sex. Some of those dynamics of sexual double standards are driven by the fact that white men have been able to kind of dominate our political and other power structures within within many societies across the world. And so we're seeing those same themes come up in religion, we're seeing those same themes come up in the kind of written laws, right, the written regulations around sex and when it comes to gender. So it's hard to say exactly where these things stem from. But I think it probably predates any religion specific religion that we have now. It's probably deeper rooted in our evolutionary past and our evolutionary history. And I don't think it had to be that way. It was probably the combination of a lots of different factors that led to the power structures that we see now.

Jacqueline

Yeah, I mean, you just saying, if you would have said, Well, the answer to why this exists is the patriarchy which essentially your answer, I would have said, Yes, that makes sense. The description of what you're describing with bonobos and the chimpanzees, and that idea of distraction and disbursement, really being something that then prohibits women from gathering together to create the social systems that they need in order to protect themselves against kind of male rule, we see that happening, certainly right now in our laws, and our societies and our practices and our religion. And so that makes a lot of sense. And so I can understand that if we go back 1000s of years, that that was the origins of it, and that those who have power and control, create the rules of what's right and wrong in order to control to maintain their power and to control others. Absolutely right.

Kelly Asao

It's in the best interest of the people holding power currently to maintain that power by creating division and creating the lack of opportunity.

Effy

This study of bonobos and chimpanzees is something that I'm actually very familiar with. It was popularized by Christopher Ryan's book sex at dawn, which was then challenged by Lynn Saxons book sex at dusk, I recommend going down that rabbit hole to anyone. And yes, ecology and resource management were pointed as the core differences between the bonobos and the chimpanzees, our closest evolutionary cousins. But there is one factor that isn't talked about here, which is the fragility of the human baby. Humans predominantly have one offspring at a time. There's a long gestation period, the human infant is incredibly fragile. Its life expectancy is low. Unlike the bonobo and the chimp pups, which are pretty capable pretty quickly. The child rearing that a human female has to do is distinctly different from any other species on the planet. And that has to have an impact on how the female of our species gets to organize themselves.

Kelly Asao

Yeah, I love that idea because humans are the most altricial species. So we're the most vulnerable at birth, which does it takes up a lot of resources and time and energy because we have internal gestation that's very long. And because we have breastfeeding that's very long, right? It takes a lot of like just physical metabolic calories and energy away from women, to how to care for these really, really helpless infants.

Jacqueline

So if we each is kind of human beings have the same origin and can kind of track our beginnings of society to concentration of power and misuse of that power. Can you talk a little bit about then the differences across cultures with sexual morals? And if there are differences, and then why are there differences then?

Kelly Asao

Absolutely. So there are certain things we are actually just conducting the study and analyzing the data in a study where we looked at 37 Different cultures from around the world. And we asked them about their sexual morality. And we find that some things show very little variation across cultures, so prohibitions around incest, that is evolutionary, very old. Most sexually, reproductive species have avoidance mechanisms, right? To avoid incest, because it is so deleterious genetically, it's so damaging, right. And so it's not surprising that we have very strong disgust at the idea of having sex with close relatives, right, that's, that's kind of built into the system as a mechanism by evolution to protect against incest. And so it's not so surprising that there's incest prohibitions and negative moralization of incest kind of across the board. But other things are highly variable across cultures. And, and part of the reason for why that is, is because humans have these giant, big brains, and part of what their big brains are designed to do, is to learn and internalize their local cultural rules. I need to fit in with the society I need to make allies I need to survive. And a big part of that survival, probably the biggest piece of my survival is, will others in my environment, accept me or not? And so some behaviors like the moralization of casual sex, right? Is it okay for people to engage in short term sexual behavior, as opposed to just long term committed, monogamous relationships, that's something that varies greatly across cultures, and across time, it is a norm that we've established, but it's greatly impacted by the religion, the local religion that is practiced the gender norms that exist within that society and other culturally constructed beliefs. Right. So it really depends on whether this is a, you know, deep, evolutionarily adaptive problem that evolution had to solve by building in disgust or other mechanisms to defend against it, or is it something that's not harmful, but we've created these norms, that police sex in these different categories

Effy

was a tool of control, essentially, Grace? Yes, it's not damaging species level damaging, but it's like a tool for control.

Kelly Asao

Right. And there are individual differences. So some people are just more oriented towards long term relationships. And some people are more oriented towards casual relationships. And so it makes sense, we're going from like a tool of control or a tool of kind of promoting certain types of sexualities that if you're in power, and you're the kind of person who likes the long term relationships, you want your culture, you want your religion, to have a bunch of kids, right to make more of your people's religion to make more of your culture and spread that culture, it makes sense to kind of promote the long term sexual behavior. And so we see this really close tie and other researchers have found this tie between religiosity, so to religions, and promoting specifically long term mating strategies, and really demonizing or negatively viewing short term relationships. It makes sense from just from a kind of power standpoint, if you want your religion to grow, if you want your cultural norms to spread, just kind of encourage people to like, form these monogamous relationships and and have as many children as possible within those monogamous relationships. Yeah, and so we see this really close tie between religion and that long term morality.

Jacqueline

Yeah, I feel like that is what you shared is such an important point to underscore because what I heard is that morality is really subjective. And so if where you are, who you are or what you want feels wrong, just thinking about it is not wrong. It may be wrong here. Or it may be wrong now. But it doesn't mean that who I am and what I want is kind of universally wrong. And I just just did to allow folks to feel that for a moment to say you are not wrong, you may be in the wrong city. You may be at the wrong time for the thing that you want to do and how you want to express but you yourself as a human person, that's not wrong.

Effy

I think that partly it's true. You're right, because there are some like incest is a good example that we talked about. I think there are certain things that are moralized. I think that's the distinction that we need to kind of understand. I think there are certain things that are showing up as universally, morally wrong, like transcending culture and time and society and religion, right? I think those things are wrong. And I'm throwing air quotes wrong as an damaging, like, it's just not a good idea for my well being and the well being of society and species versus something like same sex activities, which, you know, is not damaging.

Jacqueline

True. Let me also say, though, back in, like colonial times, when folks were were colonisation, actually, when they were supposed to be concentration of regal power, there was a lot of incest going on. And that was people were all for it. So like, Yes, true, disgusting and wrong. But also lots of marrying of cousins and sisters and daughters and such, I imagine

Kelly Asao

cousins for sure. And I will say, I'm going to agree with both of y'all in different ways. So when it comes to incest, we know that even Darwin's leptos, at the time, when he was originally kind of posing the Origin of Species, that sex between cousins is actually the likelihood of a deleterious recessive allele being passed on from two cousins having sex is actually really low. So sex between like siblings is viewed pretty kind of universally disgusting, and then negatively viewed, but that's being cousins is something that is is more culturally variable, right? Because there actually isn't a lot of genetic issues that arise from from that level of genetic relatedness. And so there was a lot of marriage across cousins, and historically, and it kind of makes sense that it tracks the like, our level of disgust and our level of kind of avoidance tracks. How potentially dangerous Is this, like between cousins or between parents and children of your genetic relatedness is like 50%. We find that pretty, pretty uncomfortable, right? Pretty, you want to avoid that. But if it's point two, five, if it's a cousin or an aunt, or an uncle, less repulsed by way less distress associated with it, and sexual perversion is to Jeffrey's point, another example of something that is universally negatively viewed, right? And doesn't mean that there isn't variation within views, but ancestor views about sexual mores. And it just overall, if you look at the pattern, incessant sexual perversion are viewed very negatively, right? Pretty much across across cultures, all cultures, view them negatively, there's some variation and how negatively they view them, but pretty universally negatively viewed right? Yeah. But then there yeah, there are other things that are really variable, and it's entirely based on are great, greatly impacted by the local cultural norms, the local cultural socialization that has happened.

Jacqueline

That makes sense. I mean, it validates my screaming at Game of Thrones and House of dragons and constantly being like, Does no one else care that their sister and brother so yes, no, that that completely makes sense to me, I think, you know, when I was thinking about being kind of in the wrong place, wrong time, in terms of who someone is, I'm thinking certainly about what's happening now within the United States around the trans community, and in other cultures and spaces. Being trans or being non binary was not only something that was not wrong, but something that was that was praised and honored. And you know, same thing, certainly with same sex relationships or multi partner relationships, that depending on where and when those things were not considered wrong. And so, you know, I think that is something that's interesting for us to keep in mind. When we think about things like policy, or we think about the way in which we're structuring our societies or our families, this idea of what is wrong is incredibly subjective.

Kelly Asao

Absolutely, absolutely. And I think that the conversation has been so dominated by Western thought, right? The the binary that we've created and perpetuated societally is very much based on Western ideas of what gender and what sex should look like. And actually, the more we learn about biology and how biological sex actually works, the more the binary seems false, right? The more that we understand that lumping people into these two categories ignores most of what's actually happening on a biological level with with sex, right? It's not just chromosomes, it's also hormones and how much variation there is and, and diversity there is at every step of kind of, quote, unquote, biological sex. And you can't ever look at something like, Oh, I know you're coming out chromosomes. So therefore, I know, I know your sexes. That's not how it works, right? I can't look at someone's hormone levels and say, Oh, I know your hormones. Therefore I know your sexes. It's so much more complicated. The more we learn, the more we realize how much diversity how complicated every process is. And it really calls into question binary views that we as a society have created and perpetuated where other cultures to be thinking about American Indian and indigenous cultures, and Two Spirit individuals, we don't have that binary, or the philosophy in a right where we have third genders. In other cultures, we just have perpetuated this idea of a binary based on really faulty and outdated biological information, and then spread it as fat, when really the more researchers actually learn about what sex is, and what gender is, the more it actually makes room for transgender individuals, intersex individuals, right, people who have always existed, right, we know that they have biologically, but have not given have not been given space, or have not been validated in their experience or in in their identities in the past. And I think that's changing, that's changing over time as we learn more as a society. And as we grow. Absolutely. We can make space for those voices for those individuals.

Effy

You hear Yeah, that makes a lot of that makes a lot of sense. I'm curious, since we're learning about all this, and there's a constant evolution on the way that we understand gender and the gender binary, and what that looks like in terms of our sexual expression. I'm curious if we know who is more likely to moralize sexuality? And for what reason? Like do we know the resistance to kind of this progression or evolution around sexual morality?

Kelly Asao

Yeah, so we know some things we know disgust sensitivity plays a role. So people who are more easily disgusted, tend to moralize lots of different sexual behaviors more harshly right, even ones that are not at all harmful. We know. And this is actually one really surprising finding, from our research shows that women so gender plays a role as well. And women are more likely to negatively view all different types of sex, and regardless of who's doing the sex, whereas men tend to be less negative in their moralization of sex. And a lot of that is probably stemming from the way that we socialize women around sex. And the fact that women engaging in a variety of different sexual acts are punished, viewed much more harshly than men engaging in those same acts. And so if if part of the reason why we have a morality in the first place, is to guide our own behavior to protect ourselves from punishment, it makes sense that we would have a more restricted and a more kind of negative moralization across across a variety of sex. But what I think that points to is the need for a changing of the social norms around sex and sexuality for women, better sexual education, but comprehensive sexual education. And these kinds of bigger policy changes when it comes to sex in our society, because we know that right conservatives are more likely to negatively moralize sex. We know that people who tend to care about purity, the concept of purity, so there are some people who just really care about that. And they use that as a as a moral foundation for judging things. And those individuals who really care about this concept of purity, they tend to moralize sex negatively. But I think a lot of that stems from the ways in which we we talk or don't talk about sex and society, and the ways in which we've really set up our society created policies created systems that demonize sexism, particularly demonized extra women.

Effy

It's funny, I remember you telling me when we had our initial conversation that women moralized sex and all the seven factors except one, right, which is the same sex, same sex activities, whereas men really moralize same sex activities. Right that I remember, I remember that very clearly, when, when you and I talked about this? Yes, that

Kelly Asao

is the big assumption. The one exception is that men judge other men far more harshly for engaging in same sex sexual behavior. So men judge other men who have sex with men much more harshly than women do. And this is something that was found in our lab, it's been found across labs. And this idea that women tend to be harsher judges except for same sex sexual behavior. And and part of this might be this long standing finding where women are more sexually fluid than men. And part of that is biological. So there have been studies that have found that if you're looking at just sexual response, so like, how is the body responding automatically right out of your conscious control? How is your body responding to sexual stimuli? When women are watching heterosexual women or watching films of women having sex with other women and women having sex with men, they show sexual response, right? They show such response to women having tons of women having sex with women and women having sex with men, right, and these are heterosexual individuals. Men on the other hand, heterosexual men don't show that response they show really by him Lateral response, right? Where, where if it's if it's a straight man, he's only showing sexual response to the film's showing heterosexual sexual relationships that are heterosexual sex, and really not showing sexual response to films of men having sex with men. Whereas if it's a gay man who's watching those films, showing that strong sexual response to men having sex with men, but not showing a strong sexual response to a woman having sex with men, and so we see a bimodal response use physiologically in men, whereas for women, whether they're straight or gay, we see this kind of fluid response, we see high levels of sexual response, across film across actors. And so part of that might be the sexual fluidity that's kind of built into the system. And part of that might be the cultural norms, right? So everything is this combination of both and, and we know that men are viewed so much more harshly and punished so much more harshly for engaging in same sex sexual behavior, right? The norms around men engaging in any behavior that might suggest that they have same sex sexual attraction, harshly punished, right? demonized in, in society, it's part of the reason why men can't be vulnerable and, and express a variety of emotions and form close, intimate, male male friendship bonds, right? It bleeds into lots of different aspects of our society, this idea that right, men are so afraid because of punishment, so afraid to express affection and love and that emotional bond with other men. And I think we're seeing that with that with that finding. Yeah,

Jacqueline

that makes sense. So you've referenced it, there are seven factors for moralizing sex, I think that we named a few are there any that we missed?

Kelly Asao

So I think we we missed is outgroups EQ. So again, political conservatives and people who have more restricted sexualities, they tend to negatively view our group sex or sex with someone who is of a different religion than you or sex with someone of a different race than you are sex with someone with a different, like political orientation than you have. Right. So some individuals, not all, but some individuals are very restrictive. And they they negatively view sex without group members, they're much more in group focused. And then paraphilic sex, it was a really broad category, and they all loaded on the same factor. But it includes things like that category includes incest, and it includes like sex with animals and includes a bunch of different behaviors that are better, less kind of typical in society. This paraphilic

Effy

sex, I'm wondering, just this is a real OfficeSuite. But I'm wondering whether kink and BDSM and fetish get lumped in into paraphilic prophylaxis sex, along with incest and bestiality. Do you know?

Kelly Asao

Yes, so if we were to include all of the factors that load all the all the acts that load into that factor, it does include anything that's considered atypical, regardless of whether right we think of bestiality, you can think about it as being really harmful to the animal because the animal can't get consent. And so it violates our principles of consent, but it also violates some people's principles of like, How typical something is, right? Or how common or how deviant something is. And so, yes, people tend to, not everyone, but in some people's minds, are lumping these things together. And I think that's, we can see that in the rhetoric that people use politically, to try to demonize or to stigmatize certain types of sexual behaviors. Absolutely. Yeah.

Jacqueline

I'm wondering, as a researcher, what are your thoughts on how research or science either promote or challenge the existing morals? You know, thinking a lot about many research studies historically, have been with straights, monogamous, white, often college age kind of men and and then lots of like, lots of inferences are made as a result of that. And we're starting to see lots of differences. And when you reference in your research, being able to look across 37 Different cultures, just interested in your thoughts around how is research and science changing? And how do you believe that that might then change and influence the our morality around sexuality?

Kelly Asao

I think that researchers have a lot of power to change that dynamic. Absolutely. Historically, we have focused on sis heterosexual white participants, as you mentioned, also college age because right convenient sample, these are the people that are readily available to take part in these studies. But I think to the detriment of science, right, we don't know how relationships function and how attitudes change across if you're actually looking at the full spectrum of human gender and sex and sexuality. And so more research needs to be done. I think that research is definitely least starting there are amazing researchers in psychology and sociology that are looking at particular communities and actually letting their voices be heard for the first time for the first time, right? So Megan Carroll does research. She's a sociologist who does research and the asexual community as an ace person herself. And so I really, I think the importance is to highlight and to finally allow for the entire spectrum of sex, gender and sexuality to be to be part of the research community. Right? So we need researchers who have those identities to be able to study their communities outside of this dominant perspective, right, we need research that's happening from within community, on communities. And I do think it's going to vastly change, right, all the evidence we've had so far has been on a very, very narrow slice of the population. And it's been generalized to everyone. And not only is that not fair, that's inaccurate, right. And so we're seeing increasingly better information, more information being gathered. And I think it can only make the science stronger, it can only make our understanding of sex and gender and sexuality better, more accurate. Yeah.

Effy

Okay, so let me just gather, we've talked about so many things. This has been such a rich episode, and I'm not gonna lie. I wasn't. I mean, this was super interesting. But I wasn't expecting it to be this rich. And there's like so much here. So I want to kind of bring it all down sort of this idea that how does all those things that we talked about how does moralizing sexuality affect our individual sexual expression? And our views on sex as a society? Like all the things that we talked about? When it comes down to it, how is it affecting us individuals day to day and and in the way that we think about our society the way that we structure our systems and society

Kelly Asao

in this way? Absolutely. So on an individual level, we know that part of the role the function of morality is to guide your own behavior. And so the fact that we moralize sex so heavily in society's contributes to the stigma and the shame, and the misinformation around sex. And I think that very much affects the kinds of sexual behaviors that people feel comfortable or free to explore, and enjoy. And, and I think that the way that we moralize sex currently contributes to sexual dysfunction, and lack of sexual pleasure, particularly in women, right, we are constantly policing our own and other people's sexual behavior, and therefore not allowing for exploration allowing for the experience of pleasure. And we know that this is a really big problem. For women, most women cite having some kind of sexual arousal problem or sexual dysfunction. And I don't think that that's biological. I think that that's the combination of the heavy moralization and shame and policing women experience and therefore, don't get to explore their sexuality don't get to explore what makes them feel good, and contribute to this idea that, therefore I don't, I don't get to experience good sex. And then on a on a societal level, I think this is pervasive. Sexuality is pervasive in society. We're constantly judging and policing and gossiping about other people's sex lives. And it's still one of the most moralized topics in society. Because of that, right, because sex is taboo. We don't teach it in schools. Parents don't talk to their children about sex. And we don't have a comprehensive understanding from a young age, but throughout our entire lives, we don't have a comprehensive understanding of what sex is, there's so much shame around sex, that it's just not talked about. And that contributes to recreate culture. It contributes to a lot of the issues when it comes to consent when we don't talk about consent, even in the best sexual education programs around the country. Some are talking about consent, barely, but others don't touch it at all. Right. So like I live in Utah, which is a very abstinence focused state. And we know that that doesn't work, right. Just from data. We know that that leads to increases in teen pregnancy, it leads to misinformation about sex, and, and all of the kind of stuff that goes along with that, but but also just, it leads to a lack of understanding of like what consent is and what healthy relationships look like. Another aspect of that's completely missing from most of our sexual education is around LGBTQ plus individuals. So what does success look like? And what is healthy sex look like? And what are the preventative measures that you can take if you are a queer, a young kid growing up in the states that do not get this information? So I think it affects the way we talk about the way that we that we view sex. We moralized sex affects the way we talk about sex or we don't talk about sex. And I think that has wide ranging impacts on the mental health of our queer children and the way that we handle consent or don't really handle consent in this society. And I think it shapes all of our policies, whether it's abortion rights, which are currently right dealing with bodily autonomy and women's bodily autonomy, and do they have the right to make decisions about their bodies, when it comes to procreation? I think the way that we shame and moralize sex, and especially casual sex for women, plays into some people's denial of rights, bodily autonomy for women, and the way that we view same sex marriage and the way that we criminalize sex work. I think all of these things are tied into how we as a society, moralize sexual behavior. Yeah, yeah, I

Jacqueline

wish we had 1000 hours with you and may have to invite you to have more conversations with us, once we wrap our mind around all of this, you know, first appreciation for the work that you're doing and being able to connect these dots because I do think that each of us in different ways have experienced have been on the other end of being judged for something. And I've likely experienced the judging and the gossiping of someone else and know what that feels like on either end and to really break down not only where does that come from an understanding that that comes from an intention of controlling us, but that that we then are engaging in that process of controlling others and that it can be different that there's another way I think, is a really important takeaway for us in this conversation.

Effy

Truly, thank you so much for the work that you're doing and your attitude towards all of this and the insights that you bring to us today. So thank you so much.

Kelly Asao

Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.

Jacqueline

For more on Dr. Kelly Asao you can find her on LinkedIn, or researchgate.net. You can find us in all the places Facebook, Patreon and on our website. All by searching we are curious foxes. We encourage you to go to Apple podcast, Spotify, Stitcher, audible or wherever you're listening, and subscribe or follow the podcast to hear new episodes each week, and to listen to our past episodes on topics such as non monogamy, infidelity, jealousy, non traditional family structures, sex and a lot more. If you enjoy the show, please share it with others. In 2022 we were in Spotify, top 5% of podcasts shared around the world. Thank you and keep sharing. If you want to support the show, you can join us on Patreon. At we're curious foxes, where you can find many episodes podcast extras that couldn't make it to the show, and over 50 videos from educator led workshops. Plus, we've moved our guest rapid fire q&a and bloopers to Patreon it is all available to you via Patreon at we are curious foxes. And let us know that you're listening by sharing a comment a story or question you can email us or send us a voice memo to listening at we are curious foxes.com

Effy

This episode is produced by Effy Blue and Jacqueline Misla with help from Yağmur Erkişi. Our editor is Nina Pollock, who always has an excellent intuition for the right soundbite. Our intro music is composed by Dev Sahar, we are so grateful for that work, and we're grateful to you for listening. As always, stay curious friends. Curious Fox podcast is not and will never be the final word on any topic was solely aimed to encourage curiosity and provide a space for exploration through connection and story. We encourage you to listen with an open and curious mind and we'll look forward to your feedback. Stay curious friends.

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