Your Sexuality: Ask & Tell: Alyssa Royse at TEDxRainier 

I'm surprised, I really shouldn't be, at all the negative comments. Getting upset about someone talking about sex is the equivalent to getting upset that a dog is in public without clothes on. It really is that stupid. And yet look at the masses coming together, wielding shame to excuse undersatisfaction and to brush off unfufilling sex lives.

The comment section is... interesting. To the point that the irony just validates her point about sexual shame.

I'm shocked at how many negative comments there are. The comments are really ironic because they're shaming certain sexual activities, which is exactly what she's going against.

She's got some legit points. If you disagree, fine; just don't force your convictions on ANYONE but yourself. To steal & re-purpose a bit a Bill Nye quote; 'you want to believe what you do, fine, just don't make your kids do it. We need them to lead us in the future.' Granted that was about biology in the larger sense, I think it still holds true on a personal level. Taking church out of an argument only serves to focus on facts instead of faith, which regardless of your beliefs should be the bottom line in any discourse of interpersonal exchange. Do you love thy neighbor as thyself? Would you offer vulnerability to someone who has already shown themselves to visit harm upon the vulnerable? Cast the stone; nothing will happen but rest assured it's not because you're without sin.

This has got more than 1500 likes and yet most of the comments on the video is really negative. Shit, it's stupid how people can get so angry about a woman telling people not to be ashamed of who they are or what they like.

Loved this! Watch and wait until the end... talk about moments in truth for everyone. Thank you!

Reminds me of the Fred Small song "Everything Possible": "You can be anybody you want to be, you can love whomever you will..."

desire. If we eliminate shame, it allows us better freedom to both do more of what we want and less of what we don't want, maybe even allow us to change our minds on acts if we see that they are pleasing us in one way but making us much sadder in others.

SO MUCH YES to this video. It coherently says & communicates a lot of thoughts I've had (& a lot of others like you have had too), that the negative taboo around sex & all things connected needs to shift because it hurts society.

I really hope more people watch and understand this. Its not shameful to enjoy and or be the person you are. I am MTF and I love the person I am becoming more and more with each day. The only regret I have is that I didnt listen to myself sooner. Wonderful video!!!!

I love this message! It is awesome!

I'm so in love with this person.

hold a conflicting relationship to those acts, both wanting and not wanting to. You can be both willing and unwilling to do something at the same time. An experiment can make you happy and sad and that sadness may not come from shame alone. If we eliminate shame from distorting the way sexual acts are viewed it allows us better control over our sex lives more generally. Someone may be both pleasured and disgusted by watersports and would be a happier person if they did not have that specific

I'm asexual. Why am I watching this?

okay this is the best talk about sex & sexuality EVER.... everyone should watch this.... in this day and age, we need this sort of talk apparently. everyone needs to keep their noses in their own business.

I LOVE THIS WOMAN!!! I HOPE SHE KEEP EDUCATING PEOPLE.

great speech! I wish that this speech can be hold in schools one day, to stop shame and homophoby !

I will never stop believing that monogamy and love are intergeral to great sex.

excellent presentation!

Excited about my brand new book: Give it a go!

Sex is NOT about procreation! Hey we can create life without sex stupid!! Sex is rejoicing in our natural bodies. Sex also strengthens the immune system! Sexuality is confidence! Sexuality keeps us balance.FACT if you don't enjoy sex chances are you are a judgmental, fearful person who will never enjoy life to the fullest! LOVE is great, Sex is natural and stimulating and healthy. SEX and LOVE together is unity of souls and physicality which equals Amazing!! .

So great to finally see this

this speeker has guts ! great presentation.

I heard a really interesting hypothesis on why sexuality is shamed a while ago. Back in the day, right after the plague hit, population was astoundingly low, and the Catholic church, being the biggest entity who could boss people around took it on themselves to make people have babies. The easiest way to do so was to call anyone who was not having average baby-making sex a witch, and create huge stigmas according to the Catholic religion against kinky sex, contraceptives, homosexual sex, etc.

This is extremely beautiful.

Great job Alyssa! I did a TEDx talk about sex too. I think it's a great venue for getting out sex-positive messages. And the way you ended your talk was brilliant!

'Normal sex is between two consenting adults'... so by that meaning incest is normal (which i believe it is between two consenting parties). and that teenager/ etc sex is not normal because they are not consenting adults.. that doesn't sound right. How about normal sex is between two consenting parties where there is not an imbalance of power that can affect the growth of the parties involved. (Mental/ emotional etc).

In fact, sex is not usually considered any consensual act between adults. "Sex" could include foreplay, flirting, and even a romantic thought, depending on ideology or laws based on ideology. "Adult" also is up for debate, regardless of the legal system and the mass media. "Phobia" and "Hate" are supposedly, but not, easier to determine.

I find the declaration that other's actions "have nothing to do with you" (as opposed to the fact that the amalgamation of individual actions which make up a culture very MUCH affects if not dictates the individual's dominant reality) to be contrary to pretty much all of psychology and sociology.

I thought she was all over the map, most of the talk... however, that exercise was a totally awesome idea! I wonder how many folks saw themselves in someone else's survey?!

Fun and awesome talk.

And what if you muster up all your courage to be honest with your intimate partners about your feelings and your past ...and they reject you? It's pretty devastating. And what if it happens repeatedly? 100% agreed that sexual shaming is terrible and harmful. But the idea that simple honesty will somehow fix that is... kind of a lie. :(

a refreshing talk :)

I'm all for not shaming other people for their sexual orientations or preferences and not taking time to analyse their actions as long as both parties have given consent, but then... I have a crazy hard time liberating MYSELF and not shaming my own self for any needs or preferences I might have. It all boils down to religion and my feeling torn between my healthy (=not potentially illegal etc.) sexual nature and what I am told to behave like and all these rules I am being expected to abide by. No one's forcing or pushing me, it's just I personally feel ashamed and guilty of my sexuality - as if I were trapped in between what I want to do and what I have to do, both being two opposite ends of the scope. Has anybody gone through that and found a solution? Is there anyone who knows how to overcome this issue?

Love it !!

Before you can say that a particular act in any form can be right or wrong you must qualify your basis for determining an acts rightness. Is it based in pragmatics,utilitarian ideals, natural law.... What exactly? I would base my conception of right and wrong in a mixture of pragmatics and natural law. All actions have a consequence that both effects ourselves/others and the present/future. To say that all sexual acts between consensual adults are ethical would in my opinion be a stretch.

Great talk.

If you think that no humour can ever be fruitfully found in rape without denigrating or belittling rape victims then you don't understand the anthropological or evolutionary basis of humour. Which is that something is at first strange and frightening but then we find relief in finding that is less frightening than we first imagined.

lol, yeah and 1:15 it does have an impact on me, the universe (let alone the earth, and human society) is not a series of closed systems, everything affects everything sooner or later, stronger or weaker. and my neighbors, undoubtedly affect my life everytime we interact. then 2:05 I'd say the difference between shame and guilt is that guilt is what one feels when we realize we did/are something that we consider bad, while shame is when we realize we did/are something that others consider bad

Excellent & VERY interesting presentation, Alyssa. I watched it twice .. once by myself & once with my 25-year-old daughter who also (meaning as did I) found it to be interesting and inspiring. (I'm betting you will agree with me when I say that the people here that are focusing in negative ways on semantics are probably the most sexually repressed people among us.) I was raised to have a lot of shame around sex & I can honestly say that I have a feeling this video may have changed my life : )

My left ear loved this video

Hahaha! I love it! Great presentation.

The thing sheep are very physical when they say no as in kicking biting etc. I personally wouldn't do it but I have no problem with someone else doing it. and also comparing animals to humans is a slippery slope because animals don't consent to being eaten but we still do it.

What would be a good basis for deciding of what we should be tolerant and of what we should be intolerant? I might agree that BDSM is not exactly "normal", just as having naturally blonde hair and dark skin is not "normal", because it's uncommon, but simply being uncommon is insufficient to determine that something should not be tolerated.

also, there are situations where sex is a bad idea. like when you're having sex to try to get something from the other person. even if it's consensual, if you have an agenda its probably best to abstain. other than that i guess it's fine. its none of my business if other people have sex or not anyway.

yep ! i agree !

David Gems of University College in London, a specialist in genetics has proposed the theory that males in all species have an underlying longevity and that it is sex in males that shortens their life spans. His personal research only works in worms, haha, but for all 15000 species of worms studied, it is true. Geneticists say it holds for all species, and studies are being done in other species. Human eunachs DO live far longer than human females. We'll know for sure with further studies.

i'm not sure but i think her talk was about safe sex and the freedom to love whom we want. also that getting kinky is OK, with partners. we need to be safe but also get our freak on. she also shadowed kids that were shamed and the LGBT

Presentation is not clear. Please help

She doesn't say "excessive masturbation". She says "excessive sex". The phrase "heterosexual act" may or may not include masturbation, but "excessive sex" is hard to interpret as inclusive of that. But, even if that's true, plenty of studies have shown that frequent masturbation leads to a lessening of prostate cancer risk. Complete abstinance, on the other hand, leads to plenty of psychological problems, some of them debilitating.

Indeed, Freud would have a thing or two to say about BDSM being considered "normal." We could be reaching a point of over-tolerance.

Elizah, I have a feeling that you misheard that very important part (about consenting adults) because something is going on in your life which is troubling you. You may want to spend a few moments listening to the talk again. I found the message in this talk very sane and loving and helpful. Maybe you will too.

A consensual act, not any consensual act. It's even written in there. But that "ball kicking with a stick" thing that you've described sounds kinda interesting.

If by "as a private act" you mean that it should be hidden from the view of unwilling observers, then I agree. I think it would be rude and presumptuous, for example, for a kinky couple in my neighborhood to engage in kinky play in their front lawn. As long as it is in a medium people can easily avoid, for example, by navigating away from a webpage or changing a television channel, however, I see no problem. So, when you mentioned "over-tolerance", what exactly did you mean?

One thing you can be sure of. The things other people do does affect you.

Muscle memory of treasuring people for who they are and start having some really rockin' good sex. Awesome.

..awww. I would have loved to see the faces of the audience when they tell about their kinks ^^

SING IT!

Traditional boundaries on acceptable sexual behavior may be too restrictive and unhealthy for modern societies,but some boundaries nonetheless are required to keep society in check. We didn't evolve to live in communities by the millions -- if we had, we would live as the ants do, without disorder, without any need for laws. We lived in tribal communities for tens of thousands of years before agriculture paved way to city states. Our biology has been optimized for tribal scale life.

Show me a traditional and stable society based on these ideas. The views presented here are a very small part of a much bigger picture. Biological self indulgence doesn't intrinsically make for stable and compassionate society, nor does it automatically result in the maturity we need to be emotionally involved with each others well being.

Finally, someone who cares what YOU think about sex.

People get raped and abused in the porn industry. Look it up. Just because one agrees to a certain activity for a shot doesn't mean they agree to any and all sexual acts, and it doesn't mean that they can't get hurt physically/mentally in the process.

Preach

@imapolygirl It's always nice to be the object of a crush! :) Especially if it's my brainy brains that merit it. Thanks.

i cant really tell whether you're being sarcastic... but you're right regardless.

Slightly over simplistic but I was impressed with the way she tackled poineant delemas

I agree.

im curious about the psychology behind what leads people to "knife sex" or bondage..

Don't people realize that raw data like this, "big numbers" don't mean anything out of well defined context and proper analysis?

I also noticed some logical inconsistencies. But what psychological problems do you speak of?

Direct yourself to 1:37 and read (and listen) to the part where it is written (and said) that sex is a consenting act between adults. What's the point of watching a video if you aren't even going to pay attention?

Dark is dark b/c by definition, it's where (almost) no one wants to go. It's like, in the Bible, or something. :) (Actually I mostly made that up--but that doesn't preclude its validity.) :P Anyway, I think generally, anything that's not "normal" in purely quantitative terms, people intuitively are gonna feel "guilty" about, on some level. Although if you're truly a quant-y type, imo, the philosophy to go with that is largely not so. ;-) Like, the way she's jumping b/w stats and "reality."

Is it opposite day? I didn't think we did that since leaving kindergarten.

I had not heard that before, and that is terrible. However, just because some people get raped or abused in the porn industry does not make porn, itself, bad. Not all porn involves rape or other abuse, so it would be consistent for someone to be in favor of pornography and against abuse. It's sort of like saying I support the rule of law, but that does not mean I support all laws, considering there are laws I think are bad. Just so, I like pornography in general, but not all pornography.

THANK YOU! NO SEX SHAME! Even if you are religious and waiting till marriage or only doing it for the purpose of reproduction, that's totally cool. But also your own choice as a person. THANK. YOU.

Shame is a painful feeling of humiliation for people putting them down for what they are into. Why has this not been made clear from her presentation? I think your obtuse to the idea of you being negative to others that enjoy something you don't agree with, has a negative impact on their well being. I thought I was on a high horse being straight I have nothing to worry about right. But my ex boss would project his inner secrets onto me and harass me and made me depressed. That's the message.

What happened to the joy of sex for pleasure.There is only a limited amount of procreating we can do!

How does what you say have anything to do with sexual shame?! It's not like being liberated would make society crumble, (nor does utopia necessarily boundary dissolution)..

At the expense of sounding immature... *barf* < literally my first thought.

I think any talk like this should be opened and ended with differentiating sex and intimacy from desperate attempts at increasing one's own self worth. It's a common problem and talks like this could easily do more damage than good without addressing the issue.

so...if i really enjoy having sex, and have sex with the people i want (consentual), i should be ashamed of myself? for something that brings me joy and pleasure? plus, what does unregulated sex even mean? that there should exist a schedule to have it between couples?

So,as there are now constitutions, laws,prisons,and national boundaries, some artificial constructs are necessary to coordinate masses of millions, even billions of people. Of course, in a utopia, all boundaries are dissolved, all laws are abolished, everyone should only love each other, and all sex should be consensual and shameless. But it is an impossibility, a thought experiment at best because we are simply incapable of doing so on our own, without some prodding and societal scaffolding.

I actually would really like to be tied up during sex but a loving significant other one day, I see it as a beautiful expression of trust between two caring partners.

If you're going to do tit for tat, she never mentioned that. She stated that sex is a consensual act between adults. I don't remember her stating shame amongst heterosexuals, if you can point it out, I'd love to rewatch that part. Pregnancy and STDs are a real part of sex.

I did succeed at the argument in showing that you made a big error in confusing me with someone else. Just as I missed a very small portion of the video, you missed the mark on who you were responding to. Your response to everyone on here is intended to provoke a response from the reader by containing errors in your reply. That's what a troll is. I know what one is because I am one, and you seriously come off as one.

great

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And continuing the same argument, none of us should ever drive a car because we might run someone over. To be sure if people are reckless with their partners then that is the same as manslaughter. But you can't assume kinky thrills are being played around with in such a stupid way. Most people are very careful as they want to live to tell the tale.

Time to act our age, finally.

They also don't consent to being slaughtered for food. Whats worse sexing a non-consenting animal or killing it?

True but the number of deaths from kinky sex activities, even risky ones, is very low - lower than the chances of deaths from parachuting, swimming, moutaineering, and comparable to rugby or other contact sports. So unless you want to say all of those things are wrong as well...?

Thank you! My sentiments exactly. Why, why, why all of the shame & embarrassment? Sex is great, fun, FREE (usually- lol). Nothing at all wrong with bondage, toys, & non-missionary & I concur on those~ in particular the plain-vanilla bed sex (yuck!). You do know you're not at all alone, right? It's just that it's the severely repressed folks steering at the moment...but, it is starting to change for the better. Hang in there! :)

she defines sex as a consensual act between adults. So getting dinner with a friend is closer to sex than rape, based on that definition. doubt it.

#8 -- Q. Have you ended a romantic relationship (as opposed to a booty call) because you were not sexually satisfied? A. Yes, without good sex, it's just a friendship. Lurking in the details of this return to Ms. Royse's old/new Garden is a tree, the fruit of which is a particular sort of knowledge, an intimate knowledge which often profoundly impacts its consumer's notions of what, exactly, is sufficiently satisfactory. Moreover, there is considerable reason to suspect that that knowledge, as limited as is its spread thus far, has already had a deleterious effect on the social order. If this is, in fact, true, then one of the side effects of this spread may be a catastrophic collapse in the participation of males in the maintenance of the society, beyond the barest necessity. Now, in a hunter-gatherer society, there were countervailing social pressures, not to mention existential ones, which mitigated the harsh reality that not all men are born equal. In a technological society, one in which the notion of romantic love is increasingly universal, so much so that a majority of both sexes now claim that they would not marry without it, an unknown number of men, likely some fraction between 10%-70%, at least of the straight ones, will find themselves shut out and shut down, permanently bereft of hope. I would argue that this reality is already upon us, although unremarked. While there are some men who will, mostly quite grudgingly, accommodate themselves to an otherwise grim truth, my own sense of things is that these seldom avail, over the long-term. People lose interest in their toys eventually, or they break them, whereupon dishonest bargains go by the wayside. Cruelty is a poor substitute for a genuine meeting of equals, except when the true masochist finds the true sadist.

Highfiving isn't sex because sex is more than a consensual act it is a consensual act with generals involved and or penetration

This woman is a nutter. Just for the record "we" didn't decide to end don't ask don't tell etc. Rather this has been forced on the majority of people in our society by a small group of people. If you really think that people will except this long term you are mistaken.

I'm a girl, and I talk about kinky sex all the time with my friends. Girls like sex. Sex rocks. Sex is not only for men.

I like the policy of "Ask and Tell" but have no idea whatsoever how to apply it to my life. I'm heterosexual, with no special kinks or extreme desires, which is supposed to make it easier for me to be sexually fulfilled, but it does not. I'm honest with my feelings, but I can't find a way to connect with the women I meet and I find beautiful. Other than that - shame is harmful, true shall liberate us.

she has the word 'adults' in her definition of 'sex'.

00:52 awkward audience zoom.