Cultivating Pleasure After Sexual Assault with samatha bitty
In this episode, we are joined by sexual health and consent educator samantha bitty. samantha’s goal as a sexual health educator is to replace ideas about sex that originate in patriarchy, misogyny, capitalism, and shame with ideas stemming from abundance, sex positivity, love, and choice.
Sexual violence deeply impacts our relationship with our bodies, pleasure and other people. There is no one way to reclaim pleasure and intimacy after harm. Having safe(r), trauma-informed conversations can help us see possibilities we did not know existed. This episode is a reminder of our right as survivors to joy.
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Although there are no descriptions of sexual violence in this podcast series, any conversation about sexual violence can bring up big feelings and be hard to hear.
Listen in a way that feels safer for you. You get to choose.
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Healing Sex: A Mind-Body Approach to Healing Sexual Trauma by Staci Haines
Reclaiming Pleasure: A Sex Positive Guide for Moving Past Sexual Trauma and Living a Passionate Life by Holly Richmond and Alexandra H. Solomon
Sex Sessions with samantha bitty
Spiritual Self Care for Black Women: A Powerful, Holistic Workbook to Radically Love Yourself and Heal Your Mind, Body, & Soul (Self-Care for Black Women) by Layla Moon
“It starts with that self-awareness of What do I need? How do I want to feel? What does feeling safe look like? Right? It's the before the during and the after plan, right? So it's like before. It's like, I need to have clear boundaries. We need to talk about what I feel comfortable with going in during. It's like we need to have either like a safe word or a plan to get grounded because to let's not forget that like as survivors, it's not like we're never partnering with other survivors, right? Like, we want to avoid getting into a trigger spiral or like a cycle of that. So it's like, OK, how do we ground each other, right? This is mutual. This is a co-creation.”
-samantha bitty
About Our Guest
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samantha bitty (she/her) is an award-winning educator, speaker, certified Emotional Intelligence coach and social change entrepreneur with a background in clinical, institutional and independent sexual health education, gender-based violence prevention, front-line interventions, anti-racism/anti-oppression work and project management for public art.
Having laughter, empathy and liberation as central pillars of her work, she aims to facilitate creative educational spaces, that can fill the gaps often left by traditional models of learning. samantha is passionate about changing the ways communities access education, art, and resources.
samantha is the founder of the Inner Development Project, is a regular contributor to Global News, CBC, iHeartRadio, Slice…, and is represented by the National Speakers Bureau. She has developed and facilitated workshops, keynotes, seminars, learning sessions and training for various groups and institutions, both locally and internationally.
Based in Tkaronto (Treaty 13 territory), samantha comes to this work as a first-generation immigrant of mixed Afro-Caribbean/settler Northern European descent.
