How the How Cum podcast empowered me
This podcast was created as a digital artefact to be submitted for a university assignment for the subject BCM241: Media Ethnographies. It seeks to portray my experience with the media niche through two methods: observation and autoethnography. These have been analysed alongside further research which aided in my understanding.
For this research I listened to the first episode of each season of the How Cum podcast, and then looked through the associated Facebook, Twitter and Instagram feeds, and iTunes reviews, to gain insight into the conversation and experience of other listeners. I chose to look at the first episode of each season as the first season did not have much media engagement, and this picked up in the following seasons. I listened to the first episode of each to avoid missing any references to previous episodes which I concluded may happen if I was to engage with podcasts further into each season.
The limitations of this were that I didn’t get to see the progression of the podcast series and how it grew, and the same with the listener base. Also, not listening to the podcast in real time means I may have forfeited some live interaction between listeners and the podcast presenters.
Although media engagement picked up throughout the duration of the existence of the podcast, it still remained minimal. While I originally thought this aspect would be a valuable part of my research, I later realised that it helped me to focus solely on my individual experience. The personal, sensitive nature of the podcast topics, as well as a need for young people to maintain privacy around sexual health matters (Byron, Albury and Evers, 2013), I believe would have heavily influenced the occurrence of discussion online. If others took the information offline, as I did, into close social circles, this would not have been reflected through these online channels.
One part of my cultural context I would like to bring to attention is my socialisation within Australian society. In the context of the United States, where the podcast originates, there is no formal sex education in the national curriculum. US adolescent girls between 15-17 also have much higher rates of pregnancy than other industrialised nations including Australia (Gruber 2000). While I recognise that there are gaps within my formal sex education, possible epiphanies to others may be what I deem “basic” knowledge due to my Australian context.
My observations with each episode were documented through three podcasts. These can be accessed here:
More information about the research can be found here.
More information about the sex-positive feminism lens can be found here.
Transcript:
Hi, my name is Naomi and this podcast will evaluate my experience with the How Cum podcast hosted by Remy Kassimir within the United States.
A bit more information about how I approached my research and my experience will be provided in the text below. My sources will also be below.
In this summary I will discuss the media niche through a sex-positive feminism lens, paying particular attention to the podcast’s contribution to women in modern day society. I will use this knowledge to contextualise my individual experience.
The How Cum podcast is part of the more recent online aspect of the sex-positive revolution which began following the #MeToo movement (Lewis 2019). As GirlBoss (n.d.) magazine writes: “One of the more powerful elements of #MeToo is that women are giving voice not only to our anger and disgust with experiences of sexual coercion, but our dissatisfaction with the sex and romance status quo.”Berger (2019) continues “ [it] mobilized marginalized groups to speak up in all channels of life, including the human right to not just have sex, but also experience pleasure.”
While for many, including myself, explicit podcasts are an intimate over-share, the platform lends itself to a solo listening experience, making it somewhat easier to cover such private and personal topics (Iqbal 2019). Despite this, at times I found myself practically squirming over some of the terminology used. A lot of the words I would almost never utter aloud even in the presence of close friends and hearing them being broadcast by a stranger shocked me. In my immediate social circle, we discuss these topics in a very different manner, and therefore what is both comfortable and acceptable for me is dependent on my past and current interactions. After conducting some research, I found out that language is one of the last taboos of female sexuality and a stigma around the language of pleasure still remains. (Walker 2018). This was affirmed, when the third podcast I listened to spoke about mental health in a similar, casual, conversational tone, and I absorbed this information comfortably. I have since realised that my tolerance of the use of subject-specific language depends on the way in which my friends and I use it. Our usage, or lack thereof in the instance of sexuality, mirrors what we have been socialised to believe is acceptable.
Media exposure shapes our thoughts, values, beliefs and behaviours (Gruber 2000) and it teaches us what is socially acceptable through social scripts and stories (Batchelor 2004). While traditional representations constrain women and men to their ascribed gender roles, new media gives potential for creators to “reflect on the nature of existing representations, and assess how they may be improved, challenged or developed” (Batchelor 2004). I went away from the first episode realising that I had shunned away from learning about a whole part of myself, because the media I had been exposed to (until now) hadn’t shown me any of this, and I didn’t think it was acceptable to further seek out this information. As women, we aren’t as exposed to positive sexual health or sensation seeking content (K. Johnson 2017). This contributes to what Falk, in an interview with Lewis (2019), calls “ a problematic narrative around whose body is and is not deserving of health, wellness, and pleasure”. How Cum challenges this because it celebrates, encourages and normalises women’s sexuality. It dispels the shame, guilt and stigma that other forms of media make us feel. And, research shows that positive and empowering media exposure can lead to lower self and public stigma (K. Johnson 2017). After listening to 3 episodes and seeing numerous other women’s responses, I no longer felt ashamed about discussing these topics.
Sex-positive podcasts empower women to feel more in control, they open up new ways of talking about and relating to issues, prompting new conversations and interactions (Batchelor 2004). I personally brought up a lot of the information I learnt in the podcasts with my friends, as our relationships allow for this intimate sharing. While the podcast made me feel normal about a lot of these issues, the second tier sharing with my friends that this stimulated, reaffirmed that neither I nor them, were alone in how we felt.
The podcast opened up my understanding to new avenues of thought, about myself and others. One particular moment stands out, in which Dan Savage, a gay man, spoke physiologically about women’s sexual experiences. While the use of more vulgar language made information harder to digest, the biological language he used assisted. This objective point of view came from a source I would never have previously sought out for this kind of information. Also, it helped me understand that the lack of conversation about female sexuality not only affects women, but men too. Because if we don’t know or don’t understand things about ourselves, how can we teach others, or expect them to know?
In my experience, which is further supported by Walker (2018) and in an interview conducted by Girlboss (n.d.), sex education provided at school misses a large amount of information associated with pleasure education. Lewis (2019) recognises that, “When we don’t get this, we lose out on an understanding of our bodies, our pleasure, and the ability to understand sexuality as a concept, and be able to shape our larger culture to make it more sex positive.” How Cum filled this gap of knowledge for me, making me understand and be proud of my body and therefore more sex positive. Also, with such a generalised (and understandably so) approach to teaching in school, we are not aware of just how differing each person’s “normal” may be. When the podcast presented the differing timelines of experience between both girls and Dan, as a male, it made me realise just how much societal pressure I had felt throughout my teen years. A pressure to fit this mould, this timeline, that was actually completely non-existent.
People feel shame because they think they are the only person in the world to feel that way (Walker 2018). But the wide reach of How Cum, shown through engagement from Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, Australia and the United States of America, has shown me that women from all around the world experience these gender specific issues. All these women were applauding the podcast series, because just like me, it taught and continues to teach them that it is okay to feel how you do. I learnt that we all experience and feel things on such a wide spectrum, and that this is acceptable (Berger 2019). When you don’t feel so alone, you feel better about yourself (Lewis 2019).
What How Cum does, is it overturns stereotypes imposed on us, as women (Iqbal 2019). It destigmatises conversation focused on women’s pleasure and desire (Berger 2019). For me, it helped break down the barriers I didn’t even realise were imposed on myself. So, I encourage anyone who wants to know more, but maybe doesn’t know what about, or where to look, engage with the How Cum podcast. It’s time for the pleasure revolution (Walker 2018).
Attributions:
Image attribution: “#MeToo” by Truthout.org is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
Background sound attribution: www.bensound.com
References:
Batchelor, S 2004, “Representing young people’s sexuality in the ‘youth’ media”, Health Education Research, vol. 19, no. 6, pp. 669-676.
Berger, A 2019, Welcome to the pleasure revolution, Well+Good. viewed 9 November 2020, <https://www.wellandgood.com/sex-positive-movement/>.
Byron, P, Albury, K and Evers, C (2013) “It would be weird to have that on Facebook”: young people’s use of social media and the risk of sharing sexual health information. Reproductive Health Matters, 21:41, 35-44
Daymon, C and Holloway, I (2011) ‘Ethnography’, Qualitative Research Methods in Public Relations and Marketing Communications. Routledge: New York.
Girlboss n.d., These Women Are Leading The Sex Ed Revolution Online, Girlboss. viewed 9 November 2020, <https://www.girlboss.com/read/online-sex-education>.
Gruber, E 2000, “Adolescent sexuality and the media: a review of current knowledge and implications”, Western Journal of Medicine, vol. 172, no. 3, pp. 210-214.
Iqbal, N 2019, ‘We’re women with brown skin, talking proudly about sex’, the Guardian. viewed 9 November 2020, <https://www.theguardian.com/media/2019/jul/27/podcast-brown-girls-do-it-too-talking-proudly-about-sex>.
Lewis, R 2019, Social Media Censorship is Suffocating the Sex Tech Revolution, Bitch Media. viewed 9 November 2020, <https://www.bitchmedia.org/article/very-online/sex-tech-revolution-censorship-social-media>.
K. Johnson, E 2017, “Erasing the Scarlet Letter: How Positive Media Messages About Sex Can Lead to Better Sexual Health Among College Men and Women”, American Journal of Sexuality Education, vol. 12, no. 1, pp. 55-71.
Marvasti, A (2014) ‘Analysing Observations’, The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Data Analysis. Uwe Flick editor. Sage: Los Angeles.
Massimo, A (2018) Ethnography and the digital fields of social media, International Journal of Social
Moore, C (2020). Lecture Week 3, BCM241: Media Ethnographies.
Walker, S 2018, The pleasure revolution: the sex women really want, the Guardian. viewed 9 November 2020, <https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/nov/25/the-pleasure-revolution-what-women-really-want-sex>.
Wall, S (2006) An Autoethnography on Learning about Autoethnography, International Journal of Qualitative Methods 5 (2).
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