#72 Exploring Sexology and Societal Norms with DeVika Lyles

How do societal norms and systems shape our understanding of sex and relationships? Join us for a thought-provoking episode as we sit down with renowned sexologist DeVika Lyles to unravel the complexities of sexology, a field that goes far beyond the physical act to include emotional, psychological, and social dimensions. DeVika introduces her ground-breaking program, the "Seven Sexological Conversations," and discusses how family beliefs, religion, and societal laws profoundly influence our sexual lives. Through this enlightening discussion, you'll gain a deeper appreciation for the myriad factors that contribute to a fulfilling sexual experience.

In our deep dive into the intricate relationship between sexuality and societal norms, we confront the cultural barriers to open conversations about sex. From the lingering impacts of colonization on self-expression to the rigid societal rules based on gender and health, DeVika helps us navigate these challenging topics. We also discuss how systemic beliefs and celebrity culture, like the controversial case of Chris Brown, shape our views on relationships and sex. This episode aims to spark more informed and empathetic dialogues about sex and gender, encouraging transformation through candid and open discussion. Tune in to challenge your preconceptions and foster a broader understanding of sex and society.

Chapters

• 0:00 Exploring Sexology With Davika Lyles
• 9:21 Sexuality and Societal Norms
• 16:32 Challenging Societal Norms on Sex

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome to the Straight from the Source's Mouth.

Speaker 2: 0:02

Podcast Frank talk about sex and dating. Hello everyone, tamara, here again. Welcome to the show. Today's guest is Davika Lyles, and we'll be talking about sexology and her various programs that she offers. If you like this episode, be sure to tell your friends about it and rate it as well. Thanks for joining me, davika. Oh, you're welcome. Hello, how are you? I am good, awesome, thank you. So I've heard of the term sexology for a while, but never knew exactly what it was, so I usually jump right in. Okay, good, Sorry, yeah.

Speaker 1: 0:37

So anytime you hear ology, it's usually the study of the science of something, and so ecology, biology, psychology, it's usually the study of the science of that thing. And so a sexologist is someone who studies or engages with the study of the body of work that we call sex, and that can be anywhere from being a sex therapist, sex therapist or sexologist, people who deal with the anatomy of sex, the conversations of sex, anybody who's actually in the study of human sexuality and what it takes for people to be successful in that realm of study.

Speaker 2: 1:38

Okay, yeah, that's good. Yeah, I had never known, so that makes a lot of sense.

Speaker 1: 1:59

Yeah, A lot of sense. We don't actually study it or get engaged with it and we truncate the power of what sexology actually is. And every time you add an ending to the word sex you get a different experience of it. Sexuality is different than sexology they're in the same realm, but it's a totally different experience of it. Sexuality is different than sexology they're in the same realm, but it's a totally different experience. Sexual is different than sexuality or sexology. Same realm, totally different experience. And most people focus on just the sex which, even that, most people then truncate the sex to just the physicality of what we actually, you know, engage with and so most people are experiencing. You know that I just studied the physicalness of like slot A into slot B, rubbed until there's friction, and that's a very small part actually of what I do.

Speaker 2: 3:18

Okay, well, since you brought up that it's a small slice, do you do? Generally, I know you offer a different, a lot of different programs, but like overall, sure um so around that very small slot a into slot b, rub until there's friction.

Speaker 1: 3:35

There are all kinds of thoughts, emotions, communication, experiences, preferences, thoughts. I said thoughts, ideas, beliefs, conversations, systems, rules, regulations, expectations, laws, politics and I am in that realm, most sexologists are in that realm. So if you were to look at the world of from of sex and sexology from from perhaps my perspective I don't know that all sexologists are this way, but people tend to focus on the bullseye of the target, right If, if the world of sexology was a target, most people are only focused on that tiny little piece in the middle and they're trying to hit that tiny little piece in the middle. And that tiny little piece in the middle is where they experience orgasm or bliss or satisfaction. And then, if you think about all the different rings around the target, that's what I deal with.

Speaker 2: 4:47

Yeah. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, cause, yeah, like you said in the orgasm lasts, you know, only so long, depending on who you are, who you're with, but yeah, they got to have the lead up to it and all everything else.

Speaker 1: 4:58

So yeah, well, yeah, and all of the work that people put on this experience of orgasm, which is great. I love having orgasms, I have orgasms as much as I can, but we're apt to do people consider that a failure or a breakdown or a problem. I didn't hit the orgasm piece, but you're also not tending to all the other things around the orgasm piece, and so one of the programs that I I do um lead is, um, it's called the seven sexological conversation and we have a system of what I've identified I'm sure somebody else could find more uh but of seven um areas and that are impacting how we experience that tiny piece. Uh, and that is the first one is the systems, the science and the sexology. So if I have a system that is not based on proper sexual science, the way that I engage with sexology is going to be very limited, or askew, or it can only go as big as my system.

Speaker 1: 6:29

So if I live in a family where we don't talk about sex, we don't talk about feelings, we don't talk about anything like that, then my access to the science behind sex is also going to be limited. I'm going to not refer to my body with the proper terms. I'm going to feel a particular way based on the words that are used about my body parts and my basic, fundamental experience of myself. Then, because sexology is the study, or the engagement or the understanding of the science, everything that I think about will now be askew. So I'll just see what you know, what you, what you're hearing about that, and then I can go into the other ones. Because, because for most people, the science and the systems is like, that's why these things happen, not necessarily in an order, but this one is foundational. So what are you hearing me say?

Speaker 2: 7:29

Yeah, I mean. Well, what I'm hearing is like the emotions and the feelings that people don't know how to feel are what help you connect with a partner that allows you to have better orgasms. So if you, if that part's missing, you can't get to the bullseye. Well, yeah it's like you're good, yeah, no, I mean, I think that's what I heard.

Speaker 1: 7:48

So yeah, and if you're and not even we haven't even gotten to the emotions part yet it's if your religion teaches you a particular thing or if the laws of you know it's whatever your system is, and the system is just an organization of thoughts, ideas and beliefs. So your family system could be different than an educational system, which could be different than a religious system, which could be different than your political or legal system. So your family could be very, very sex positive and have a very free and open sexual system. But the laws of your town or your city or your area could be very rigid and so, even though your system is open and free, the system that regulates that system is more closed and narrow. So we're not even at the emotions, we're just at the fundamental place where you develop the ideas and the network of conversations that you're in.

Speaker 2: 8:52

Yeah, Okay, yeah, Cause I mean I know like I would talk about this in other episodes. My family was open about it and luckily my culture, like in the U S, it's more open than some cultures, but depending on where you are and where you live, I guess. But yeah, no, I know I get what you're saying. So yeah, and then, and then you put two people together and then the two systems are probably even more, you know, have more pull.

Speaker 1: 9:16

Well, yeah, and then and then. We're not talking about those systems. We're not actually. When we meet people, we're trying to get to the bullseye. Oh, I am attracted to you, bullseye, but not what is the system of beliefs that you grew up in about the sex? Because that again is going to impact the science conversations like this. You will inherently be someone that, if their system was closed and they say, oh well, we don't talk about it, here it is, you run a podcast where you invite people to talk about it. You are instantly going to have to overcome those two networks of conversations and how they engage with one another. I wouldn't immediately say you're incompatible, but if left unaddressed, that's going to become a point of contention for people.

Speaker 2: 10:10

Yeah, yeah, I mean, since you brought it up, I was gonna say when, because I have this podcast, people generally are more open to talk to me about stuff like all kinds of stuff, than they probably would. You know, like, pretty quickly, pretty early on, they'll share because I'm like they, they get that I'm going to be less judgmental and open-minded and more open-minded yeah, that that that is great for those who are seeking the open-minded and more open-minded.

Speaker 1: 10:34

Yeah, that that that is great for those who are seeking the open-mindedness. And then there are people and I just say this as a sexologist there are people that the moment I say I'm a sexologist, they are heading for the heels. That that is too like. Even the word like once, especially if I break it down, then they're heading for the hills because it's like oh, that's just too much. So your experience and my experience might be different, but there is a listening of oh, that person is going to talk to me about sex or want to talk about sex, and it's great for the people whose systems match that system. But if it's somebody like I said, if it's somebody whose system and they're deeply entrenched in that system, but if it's somebody like I said, if it's somebody whose system and they're deeply entrenched in that system, you may actually not get a chance to engage with them because they're not going to engage with you. Does that make sense?

Speaker 2: 11:24

Yeah, for sure. I mean, there was one person I have a card for my podcast and I gave it to one guy and he looked at it and was like I could tell him, like I can, I'll take it back if you don't want it. He's like, yeah, he just gave it to me without saying anything. So yeah, I do get that that exists as well.

Speaker 1: 11:39

Yeah, like, um, I am. Uh, I did a talk and um with this group that I've been a part of for a while and they sent out what I was going to talk about onto their distribution list. They had been in existence for like I don't know six to eight months before they invited me on and they had, as soon as they sent out what I was going to be talking about, which is this topic, the seven sexological conversations they had like five people unsubscribe just because of the topic. And that's because, when we get into the next ones, the next area that I talk about and again, these are not necessarily in any particular order I put them in an order so that I can remember them all. But they don't engage Humanly, they don't engage. Beyond the first one, there's not any order to the engagement. And the second one is race, decolonization and culture. So you kind of spoke about that, right, like, hey, I'm pretty open and the US is pretty open, but if we came from a culture that wasn't open, we would then colonize ourselves to match the system. And what I feel and I want to be very, very clear, because I know that colonization has been thrown out around For me, colonization is anything that is interrupting the status of the natural person inhabiting the area, which means the rules and regulations that interrupt how I would naturally freely self-express.

Speaker 1: 13:14

So for me, colonization happens in very subtle ways, especially at the level of sexology. That could be the way that we tell little girls or little girl body or little female bodies that if they're wearing a dress they can't spin around, and we don't explain to them why they can't spin around. And when you're four or five, the idea of your panties showing has no relevance to you whatsoever. It has no relevance in your life. You're spinning and you're enjoying your life. You're enjoying your body, you're enjoying who you are as the inhabitant of your skin. But then this rule comes along and says well, we don't do that and you learn to scale down, you learn not to enjoy your body on very incremental levels. Colonization, that interruption, is based on race, it's based on culture, it's also based on gender or gender expression, but I go into that a little bit further down.

Speaker 1: 14:24

The other one that we talk about is next is gender, gender and gender self-expression, because then we're moving into what boys and girls or what we assert are boys and girls, what are female and male bodies, what are they allowed to do? And we give them rules and we give them regulations and we give them roles. And then we have another set. After we go through that, we have another set. We have the neurology and the physicality of health and wellness, and who's allowed to engage in sex, how, based on their mental health or their physical health. And then we have access and ability, right. So are we? Now? We say, oh, you know what? You know, who's allowed to break all of these rules? Rich people, they are allowed to break all of these rules. Rich people, they are allowed to break all of those rules. They're allowed because they have a certain level of access and affluency, so they're allowed to break those rules.

Speaker 1: 15:24

And then we have, you know, then we have trauma and we have transformation, and we have people who are then traumatized by these rules. And for me, trauma does not have to be a big thing. Trauma can be anything, big or small, that you either wanted to happen and it didn't happen and it altered how you experienced yourself because it didn't happen, no matter how big or small, or it is something that happened, no matter how big or small, that you didn't want to happen and it had an impact on how you self-express. And then, of course, there's what I call shadow work and self-expression, and those are how we experience ourselves and our bodies and then how we deal with the negative impacts of all these things that I've just spoken about. So those are roughly the seven, not by their official titles or whatever, but it gives people a gist of like, oh, now I've brought in my conversation.

Speaker 1: 16:32

So now a conversation about abortion, which usually seems like it's a conversation about sex, is actually a conversation about your health care. It's actually a conversation about being colonized. It's very, actually it becomes, it gets all these layers versus what's been, we've been experiencing, which is it's a punishment for sex. So I'm going to just I know you can't see me and I can't see you, so I'm just going to pause and just check in. What are you hearing me say?

Speaker 2: 17:05

Yeah, well, the biggest thing is just, you know all this stuff of why it's so hard, like to have relationships really, like all of this things that everyone's thinking about and the way they are brought up differently. Like all of this things that everyone's thinking about and the the way they are brought up differently and all the different systems that each person has, I can see why relationships can be so hard and I know what. You didn't say that exactly. But just you know the, the systems that are out there that you don't really think about. They just are and you don't realize how much they affect you. I mean, obviously a few here and there, like as women, you know we, we know that, especially back in the day, we were treated as lesser and so I mean I get that, but yeah, it's just a lot to think about, and then you bring all of that into the bedroom. Yeah, having not talked about it.

Speaker 1: 18:00

Yeah, not only that, you don't even just bring it into the bedroom, you bring it into the conversations. You bring it into you know just what are you thinking about and before we even get to the bedroom, people are having sexological conversations all of the time, all of the time. Most of our conversations I can link to some aspect of sexology we're talking about. You know just all most of the things that hit the news as far as, like celebrities are often sexological conversation. Right now, one of the big things is, I don't know, for me, it's big in the world of like social conversations that I'm in. It's big in the world of like social conversations that I'm in, chris Brown is doing meet and greets with people and people are paying to meet him.

Speaker 1: 18:41

Chris Brown, if you're not aware, is a musician who was accused of physically abusing another celebrity, rihanna. So now here we have a trauma. We have a trauma conversation based on the abuse, and then we have an access conversation based on the celebrity. We have a systems and a science and a sexology conversation because, based on your system, which is do abusers get reprieved? You're going to engage in that conversation from a system of beliefs. That's like no, this dude is a bad guy. A good guy whatever your system says, and people should or should not be paying for pictures with him based on that system. That's a sexological conversation on at least three levels.

Speaker 2: 19:30

I can see at least a couple levels yeah.

Speaker 1: 19:34

Yeah, so that's one of my, my flagship programs is I really want people to have access to starting to delineate what conversation am I in? Because when it's like you know, when we just boil it down to that target, should we or shouldn't we not be having sex who you know? Now, there's no depth, there's no richness, it's just a bunch of judgment and, like you said, we get to the bedroom with that but we can't even get through normal conversations. We can't even get through understanding that gender is separate from sex. The systems of what sex is right are sexual systems Male and female and intersex are actually sexual systems, like anatomic systems. They're sexual reproductive systems.

Speaker 1: 20:30

I am not female, I am a person with a female reproductive system. It would be like calling me female as the fullness of who I am anatomically, would be like calling me muscular, like my muscular system and we use that word. But it would be like calling me an optical system. I have an optical system, I have a optical system. I have an optical system. I have an optical system, I have a muscular system. I have a female reproductive system, which is the entire word of that.

Speaker 1: 21:02

The entire distinction is a female reproductive system assigned at birth, which is important because that may or may not be my gender expression. And so all of these conversations about trans people and, you know, lgbtq people and all of these conversations that people seem to have very solid and very rigid opinions about, they're not actually taking time to understand where those opinions are generated. Time to understand where those opinions are generated they're just kind of reacting based on their system is a lot of the time. My experience and so when you try to interrupt that and try to say, hey, look, let's just really step back and look at where the judgment is coming from, what the understanding is, and educating people about that, that's the work that I do.

Speaker 2: 21:59

Okay, yeah, I mean that's a lot. And, like you said, I mean I've definitely heard because you know. Well, I guess you may not know I was in the military and so we always said male and female, it was just to describe each other. But, like you're saying, that's not always said male and female, it was just to describe each other. But, like you're saying, that's not, you know, necessarily the proper. Well, not either a man or a woman, or never mind. I don't even want to go into this because I'll say it all wrong.

Speaker 1: 22:22

I know what you're getting at, though gender expression is different than male, female and intersex and and a lot of times what you bring up is very important for people to realize in the military and in policing and in communities that are heavily militarized or heavily policed, male, female and occasionally intersex, because most times those systems are built on a binary so they don't include intersex, even though I want to just keep pointing to intersexuality. Male and female as a descriptor of a human being is often used to actually dehumanize them. It's actually to remove that connection of our human selves and a lot of the militarizing, especially when we are in a war or a system in which, or an experience in which death may be inevitable. We use male and female to separate ourselves from the concept of actually negatively impacting a person, because a male or a female or an intersex person or a system with a person, with that system, might as well be a male or female dog, might as well be a male or female coaxial cable. We use those terms to actually separate the humanity of people. So that's and you'll see that in communities where policing is very high, they will really respond to and engage with one another as male or female, and you'll see that in the anti-trans and anti-queer communities.

Speaker 1: 24:22

But it's done to dehumanize people, and the thing is is that people who are doing that, based on their systems and their science, they may not actually know that they are actively dehumanizing people. So then you go out and you have people using male or female, because they are in an area that is either highly policed or highly militarized. That's how they've learned to engage with one another and for them it's fine, because in their culture that they have engaged with um and been colonized by, that's how they relate to each other. And so then you get to someone else who does not have that experience, and now you see a breakdown in conversation. Now you see people arguing on the internet well, I don't see why this word is wrong and then we have to have whole, you know, we have to have whole diatribes and videos on why calling women female Because it usually happens in the dehumanization of female-bodied people why that matters.

Speaker 2: 25:29

Yeah, yeah, I've definitely seen that with age differences as well.

Speaker 1: 25:43

Yeah, yeah, I've definitely seen that with age differences as well. Like older generation is more inclined to say it, you know, because, well, maybe at least older military people, maybe that was where I knew. So you have, no, you have nothing going on about. Oh, this person called me a female, blah, blah, blah. Like you don't have anything going on about it, whereas I'm a civilian and I've just been a woman or a girl my whole life. So I would take umbrage to being called a female and because, because, mostly because again, of my system and of the science and of how I engage with sexology.

Speaker 2: 26:21

so yeah, yeah, I can see that, I know, I know we um, we only got to cover like one well, obviously, the seven different areas within the one program, and we're also heading towards the end. So I was wondering if you had like, just like a final thoughts thing you wanted to leave the listeners with.

Speaker 1: 26:40

Sure, I just released my catalog and my catalog Also. I shared that with you so you can share that with others. I do conversations about touch and communication. I do sexual sex, positive parenting classes, because I think we are hitting an age where people want to be open and they see the benefit of being open with their kids, but they don't have the access or the tools to do so themselves.

Speaker 1: 27:06

I also do some courses on non-monogamy and on what I call alternative, although that's not true, just a different aspect of different relationships and I'm very, you know, proud of my coaching and I make a lot available by bridging not only sexology but transformative educational practices and just a sense of coaching and counseling, and I blend all three of those together so that people have a more holistic view of their sexual selves. So the catalog has a whole bunch of classes. It has programs where I'm going to be like on programs like this, and so I just really appreciate you allowing me to share and if people want to register, if you'll share it with them. I'm pretty accessible and they can just reach out. My email address is dmarcellaliles at gmailcom and my phone number is 720-588-3227.

Speaker 2: 28:11

And the organization that I do this through is the Center for transformative sexology, so thank you for having me on today yeah, thank you, and I was going to ask or not ask, I was going to let you offer how to reach you, but that was good, so you did that. Yeah, no, I mean always that's the things to think about. Yeah, that's some good stuff yeah, thank you.

Speaker 1: 28:34

Yeah, it is a deeper subject. It's something I could talk about all day, um, but it is. I very rarely talk about what people think I talk about. I very, and I just laugh because I think the expectation is that I'm sitting around talking about things that people and I'm not often talking about those at all. I'm talking about your emotions, your feelings. How did you get here, what is the impact on you and what would you like to create if you weren't encumbered by conversations you actually didn't create. So thanks for having me on today.

Speaker 2: 29:12

Yeah, thank you again, and if you want to work with Davika, definitely reach out. And if you like this episode, be sure to tell your friends about it and rate it as well. And thank you again, davika. Awesome and thanks everyone. Frank Talk, frank Talk, sex and Dating Educates.