This episode is unlike any I've done before, and it turned out terrifically well. If talking about sex makes you uncomfortable, then this episode is especially for you. Especially if you're a woman.
I talked to Kit Murray Maloney, CEO of O'Actually. O’actually celebrates sexually stimulating content, products, and knowledge that focuses on enhancing and stimulating women’s sexual pleasure. The company is dedicated to changing the landscape of adult entertainment to prioritize women’s arousal by distributing new types of film, audio, visual arts, and literature. O’actually also shares sexual enhancement knowledge and recommends products that promote female pleasure.
Kit bared her soul (no pun intended) to talk honestly about the importance of women's orgasms, why masturbation is ok, and why porn and pleasure are at opposite ends of the spectrum.
On Porn, Masturbation and Pleasure
Phil: Welcome to the show Kit. Tell us why you started O’Actually.
Kit: We are here to remind women to owning their own pleasure that is often missed we are here to remind everyone involved that it is important.
There’s a real lack of awareness around women's pleasure, and most porn is made purposefully for men. It isn’t made for real life.
Phil: Are you telling me porn isn’t real life? Ha!
Kit: With the persuasiveness with porn in mainstream life it gets real muddled with entertainment and reality, with the age a young man first sees porn has dropped from 11 to 8. Adults can realize that porn isn’t reality but if you are introduced at a young age to sexuality through porn, you’ll wind up confused. Not to mention that porn is adult entertainment and made for men to enjoy alone and they are geared towards that stimulus. Because it’s all we have, it gets turned into education or that's thinking that’s what women's bodies are meant to look like.
Phil: How do we introduce that subject without it being that weird story of the stork or odd story of the birds and bees?
Kit: It does seem we have these extreme porn stories with sex and none of its real. We need to be open and honest factual and truthful. We need to talk about pleasure and we need to be honored. Pleasure is this wildly missing word with sex educators. I’d like to ask my audience and yours for anyone that has used that word when talking about sex. That used the ‘p’ word.
Share this: Pleasure is this wildly missing word with sex educators. @KitMalo http://bit.ly/2cRWIxO
I’d like to celebrate anyone I really think they need to be honored and thanked for bringing that in. We really focus on prevention, prevention of disease, prevention pregnancy, what we don’t want to happen, we are lacking the potential the focus and exploration of all the great things of sex and sexuality.
Phil: How did you get introduced to this?
Kit: Back when I was 18 and I was about to go to college and I got affected by the rates of sexual assault on college campus knowing this was arena I wanted to be involved. I went to my college and I was I couldn't hold this negativity into and during this time I experienced my own sexual trauma that I only started sharing. A couple of years ago I realized pleasure is completely missing from the conversation. Heal the trauma A space where we can we all be honest
Phil: Kit, what is your background?
Kit: I was Engaged in Social Activism for about 20 years, accidently picked up a women's study minor. I earned a masters in social economics and gender studies. From there, I got involved with a few early stage businesses and startups.
Phil: You have a podcast. Tell us about that.
Kit: The podcast has been a gift and it combines the things that I intuitively love doing. And I love doing it and learn so much. I’ve had beautiful conversations and it’s been such a gift and I’ve taken it anywhere that I have had questions or been curious. There have been no taboo topics
Phil: Take us through the services that you provide and the products you sell.
Kit: Please keep checking out our site, we are about to have a lot more there it has to be highly curated. Which is hard. And there’s some exciting stuff to come. There is a surprising amount of women who love to write erotica and I love to give them a space to contribute and to be present and active.
Phil: It’s not something people talk about. Why do we think it’s such a taboo subject?
Kit: We tell ourselves so many stories as a society and individuals. About sex. And I think we really put sex and women's sexuality into prude and whore dynamic and it’s really hard to navigate what’s in the middle where are the boundaries. And who am I? I don’t live up these clichés? I don’t live up these expectations of people with people who give themselves permission for sex
If you are going to call me a bad name or something, that usually has something to do with the other person than with me.
Phil: Why is it so challenging?
Kit: We are just so ingrained to never talk about masturbation or solo-sex. If we look at sitcoms there is an abnormal amount of jokes around male masturbation and none around about women. I have a great group of women friends and I would have said that we don’t have any taboo topics and then I realized we do have those taboo topics; we don’t talk about solo sex or adult entertainment.
When we create the space to listen and hear and be honest ourselves we are allowing others to give back to us in that same manner and that’s what I found with close with whether it be friends or family.
It’s been great for me, I get to ask all those questions.
Phil: That’s kind of scary, right?
Kit: Once we get past that initial uncomfortable part, we get to the business sense. There is the depth and soul to it. and the the genuine holistic part and the importance of orgasms in your daily routine. So many entrepreneurs don’t talk about sex, they don’t consider it in self care or routines and I am one of the few entrepreneurs that includes it in my talk about self care and routines who has awareness of sex.
I disdain the term work hard play hard. I want to love my work, love my play. I want to genuinely love my life. Now don’t get me wrong, I have my bad days, I am human. It’s not yet truly in the mainstream, to think that. It’s a mind shift on things, for sure. It doesn’t have to be extravagant. Allow yourself to enjoy it.
It is deeply important to me and I prioritize things and things comes to fruition for me. Really cool things are possible when you focus on them. And, you have to make choices. There is a balance and trade-offs.
Phil: How can women get started on the path on finding their pleasure?
Kit: We talk about triggers in self development, we can have pleasure triggers. We can pleasure triggers that infuse happiness and pleasure. Just identify one pleasure trigger. It could be anything, and it could change.
More from Kit and O'Actually
O'Actually website - learn more about their very important mission
Check out the Pleasure with O'Actually podcast
Continue the conversations with O'Actually on Facebook
Porn, Pleasure and Masturbation