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Yammering On, Part 1 (Patreon)
Content
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1. What sex-ed experts or activists have inspired you? In what ways have they provided inspiration?
Dan Savage is my biggest and most long-term inspiration. For twenty years he has answered the gamut of sex questions, from the benign to the outrageous, in his internationally syndicated newspaper column, Savage Love. He is the one who introduced the concept to me of talking about Big Scary Sex Subjects in a colloquial, approachable way, the way you would talk to a friend. He leaves nothing to the imagination, either! I’ve encountered many queer activists and sex educators give condescending, vague non-answers to insensitive or embarrassingly ignorant questions (“How do lesbians have sex?” for example, or “If a lesbian is dating a butch woman who uses a strap-on, doesn’t that mean she actually wants to be with a man?”), but Dan will go all-in and give you an in-depth explanation so you come away with a much more clear idea about the subject. He doesn’t shame the asker (Or, at least, not usually) for not already being “enlightened” to more progressive or “out there” concepts, he shares knowledge about niche identities and practices that are outside of the general mainstream understanding. And he does it with humor, too. Humor breaks down peoples’ defensiveness and makes intimidating subjects accessible, it invites the outsider to feel like a part of the conversation and welcomed. Oh, and he also uses his platforms to feature and amplify the voices of normally overlooked or ignored people! Sex workers and marginalized people and people with disabilities and activists for minority identities are spotlighted as guests frequently in his columns and in every episode of his podcast, Savage Lovecast. He brings in the people with first hand experience on the subjects to which he is only a spectator so that they can speak for themselves, even if they disagree or contradict his own philosophies. Giving thorough, compassionate answers that leave nothing to the imagination, using humor and colloquial language, and using your platform to feature overlooked speakers: These are all practices that I adopted from Dan.
2. What works of comics were formative to you and the way you create your own comics?
The Archie comics were very formative to me back when I was around ten years old, for the beautiful, simplistic drawing style and the painfully bad puns and slapstick humor. As I became a teenager, Bone definitely became a huge influence— for much of the same reasons, actually! Scott McCloud’s “Understanding Comics” was absolutely life-changing for me when I read it as a 14 year old; he explained how the visual language of comics works and how to best use it to convey the type of information you want to communicate to your audience. The biggest impact on how I construct a comic page came from exposure to my studiomates at Helioscope in Portland, Oregon, most especially Steve Lieber and Jeff Parker. Both seasoned professionals with decades of experience in the comics industry under their belts, they gave me one-on-one feedback and suggestions about the amateur pages I was scribbling as a side hobby. Because of their guidance I can produce competent, professional comic pages as a mechanical skill. They taught me the tools to make comics as a practical trade, as opposed to only producing “art” when I am “inspired”, you know?
3. If you could uproot one misconception in the sex-ed world, what would it be?
I would like to erase the practice of publicly and, due to the perpetuity of the internet, permanently shaming people for their initial ignorance on subjects that are new to them or that they had previously been misinformed on. Ignorance is correctable with education, public shaming is cruelty that closes the recipient’s mind and is really about the shamer enjoying the feeling of superiority by self-righteously hurting someone who they feels “deserves” to be publicly punished and ostracized.
…Unless, did you mean “misconceptions ABOUT the sex-ed world”? As in, misconceptions that the general public has about sex ed? I think an enormous, incredibly damaging misconception about sex education is that young people will only try sexual practices if they learn about them in a class, so to prevent them from becoming sexually active, classes should omit them and just teach abstinence only. This is radically untrue. Teaching students about specific sexual acts and how to do them more safely prepares young people for these situations and gives them a chance to figure out their feelings and boundaries about them before they’re actually thrust into a real life encounter where they don’t understand what’s happening, how far they’re ready to go, and how to advocate for themselves. You don’t keep someone safe by never telling them about water, you teach them how to swim in a safe environment so if they fall off a boat or get pushed off a pier later on, they’ll already know how to swim. It’s not a perfect analogy, I know, but my point is that comprehensive education ahead of time empowers younger people to make fully informed decisions and keep themselves safe when they find themselves in an unfamiliar sexual situation, which WILL happen whether they’re taught about it before or not. Teaching young people about sex isn’t teaching them to say “YES!” to all sex as a default, it’s teaching them how to make the best decisions for them personally, which includes the power to say “No”.
4. What do you think are the most important principles for a great and radical sex-education?
Consent, first and foremost. Consent, pleasure for ALL partners during a sexual encounter, safer sex practices, how to communicate, judgement-free explanations of the risks and consequences to becoming sexually active, birth control, all reproductive options, understanding the difference between a sexual fantasy and how one behaves in reality, respect for sex workers and understanding that the performers in porn are real human beings not objects, learning how to advocate for yourself and respect your partner’s wishes, and of course a thorough tour of the many different sexual and gender identities that exist across a wide spectrum.
5. The 2 major themes of ohjoysextoy are sex-ed and sex toys. Your motivation to reshape the sex-ed world is clear to me. I’d like to ask, what led you to put such an emphasis on sex toys?
Well, haha, we earn a portion of each sale when people purchase a toy using the links from our site, so that helps us pay our mortgage and feed our cat and ultimately enables us to make this our full time job, including when we make purely sex educational comics that have no financial kickbacks. Our reviews are always honest, of course! We only recommend the toys we genuinely like and we criticize the toys that disappoint us. In the bigger picture, though, most sex education focusses on the mechanics and consequences of heterosexual intercourse and never once mentions PLEASURE, especially pleasure for women. So many women expect that their first time being penetrated will be painful and that men both desire and enjoy sex more than women and that sex is just a penis going into a vagina. So many women don’t even masturbate! They don’t know what their body enjoys and they’re ceding all power over their potential pleasure to their partner, who may also be entirely clueless about their partner’s body. Sex toys exist solely to give the user pleasure, there is no other person’s expectations or ego for the user to accommodate. Sex toys can teach a person, especially a female person, what feels good, what their body needs in order to feel satisfied, whether or not they have a partner. My husband and I feature sex toys because we want to help people feel unafraid to explore their bodies, to seek their own pleasure and to understand what works for them as an individual.
6. How does it feel to be the subject and the front of your artistic, educational and political work? What has led you to choose this path? How do you balance between the personal and ideological sides of your work? (please shed light on this matter in the way you see fit)
Haha, oh lord, it’s been a very mixed bag. I chose to feature my husband and myself as the narrators of these comics to make them more approachable to the reader, to humanize the (sometimes intimidating or scary) information we’re sharing. The reader knows that we’re real people in real life and so it’s like we’re talking directly with them. Scott McCloud also does this in his educational book “Understanding Comics”. He could have presented all of his analysis about the art form of comics simply through captions, but by making himself the protagonist who is personally guiding the reader through the sometimes complex theories he’s covering, it has the effect of making them feel included and more receptive to learning new subjects. By having Matt and me talk honestly about our experiences with the world of sex, we’re hoping to help destigmatize these subjects and potentially make people with similar experiences feel less alone. For instance, we’ve talked about the STIs and maladies we’ve picked up from being sexually active (https://www.ohjoysextoy.com/get-tested/ and https://www.ohjoysextoy.com/uti/ and https://www.ohjoysextoy.com/herpes/), we’ve talked about why we personally do not want to have children and why I would choose to get an abortion (https://www.ohjoysextoy.com/late/), we talk about enjoying pornography and encourage other porn consumers to be responsible and respectful to sex workers (https://www.ohjoysextoy.com/paying-for-porn/ and https://www.ohjoysextoy.com/porn-set-visit/ and https://www.ohjoysextoy.com/talking-porn/), and feeling insecure about sexual inexperience and inadequacy (https://www.ohjoysextoy.com/jaguar/). I think this approach has been pretty effective for our readers and we never share anything that would make us uncomfortable. Unfortunately, this can sometimes have the effect of people feeling like they not only know us, but that they’re entitled to us as real people and being upset when we don’t live up to their expectations or projections. That can be very difficult for me, as I want to make everyone happy and that’s just not possible.
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I'll post up part two once I've got a few more Inktobers I can share with ya ;)