If It Ain’t Fun, Don’t Do It
Artwork by Ted Nunes
Few people have had such a profound influence on my career as this week’s guest. Tracy DeTomasi is many things: a national leader, educator and consultant on gender violence awareness and prevention. A licensed clinical social worker and sex health educator. And my friend.
Tracy and I discuss sexual harm (see trigger warning below), as we always do: openly and with a splash of dark humor. We talk about what it really is, versus what most people think it is, in large part due to inaccurate or bad news media coverage. Which, in turn, is in all part due to unquestioned social norms and myths.
We also talk about how harm is normalized: from the language we use, to the way we “separate the art from the artist when it comes to celebrities, who hurt children even.
And what I really love: Tracy offers some great, simple guidance on the best sex ed to teach kids, how to respond to “It’s not all men,” and what we can all learn from beaches.
I’ve been reporting on gender violence for almost a decade and still, every time I talk to Tracy I learn something. From new, updated terms, to better ways to reframe what should be obvious but often isn’t because of all the myths we’ve been spoonfed since childhood. Tracy works tirelessly to undo those myths, and the harm they cause, always with a ready laugh and a a magical ability to call out problematic thinking on the spot, without alienating the thinker.
Even though Tracy's most recent position has ended – the nonprofit she led folded this month – I'm still including some of our conversation about it. For two main reasons. To help convey that prevention efforts for the world's most prevalent violent crime does not come with a "most prevalent" amount of funding. Also, if anyone listening has ideas - and funds - for using Callisto Vault's service for sexual assault survivors, you'll want to get in touch with Tracy ASAP about acquiring the technology.
Now, I don’t always like trigger warnings. In my profession, we tend to use them for stories we ourselves aren’t comfortable talking about. In the news, we don’t say, warning, we’re about to talk about war…we just do it. But we so often use them when speaking about sex, and especially sexual harm. By doing so, we inadvertently say the world’s most prevalent violent crime lives in the shadows…and maybe should stay there?
But keeping sexual harm in the shadows means we keep its survivors there as well, while perpetrators keep enjoying the sunlight.
A full transcript of our conversation is available here.
Women Like Sex is a Flipped Script production
Executive Producer / Editor: Natasha Senjanovic
Website Design and Artwork: Ted Nunes
Associate Producer: Edecio Martinez
Music: Funky Fortune by Danny Shields