JMA PHOTOGRAPHY

(Courtesy of Casey Tanner)

Certified sex therapist Casey Tanner, who specializes in sexuality among Gen Z and millennials, met with Student Life editors Zach Trabitz and Aliza Lubitz to discuss sex and relationships during the college years. 

Tanner is known for creating the Instagram account @queersextherapy, which provides information and advice on queer sex and relationships to its more than 330,000 followers. Tanner is also the founder and CEO of The Expansive Group, a practice offering therapy, support groups, pleasure mentoring, and training on a range of topics — from boundaries in partnerships to porn literacy and lessons on how to take sexy photos. Additionally, they have shared their expertise with businesses, universities, and media outlets including Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire, and Oprah, and recently authored their first book, “Feel It All: A Therapist’s Guide to Reimagining Your Relationship with Sex.” 

Student Life (SL): Could you talk a bit about your own experience with relationships and sex in your teens and in college? 

Casey Tanner (CT): I grew up super evangelical. I actually recently discovered my journal that I wrote to Jesus, [in which] I was apologizing for letting someone feel me up when I was 16. I had a super guilt-inducing sex education, but was simultaneously a very sexual person. I didn’t really know what to make of the fact that I was somebody that was really interested in sex, but was being told that it wasn’t OK to be interested in sex. 

I went to a college where I actually had to sign a document that said I wouldn’t be queer or engage in anything queer. I dated my first girlfriend in college and we were both almost expelled. So it just felt like a very high intensity, high risk choice to be authentic around sex when I was in college. 

[I’d also add that] certainly I was not orgasming as a teenager. I didn’t have my first orgasm until I was 23 and so, while I had sex that was pleasurable in different ways, I was definitely missing out on not having the information that I have now.

SL: What do you wish you knew about relationships and sex when you were our age?

CT: Your partners are your teachers around relationships and sexuality, so choose partners that you want to learn from and learn with. If you aren’t with someone you want to be learning from, then that would be something to pay attention to. I also think that, in college, you’re getting access to so many new ideas and ways of being that can be really freeing, and it’s OK to feel anger and grief around not having had those things sooner.

If I was talking to my younger self, I’d [say], “Stop faking orgasms for somebody else’s ego.” No one is worth faking an orgasm for, except for yourself. I [also] would have given myself a vibrator as soon as I was in a good place to have it. As a high school student, but certainly, as a college student, day one of my freshman year, I would have given myself a vibrator. Maybe six different vibrators.

I’d also tell myself that the language and labels that I would be using for myself [and my sexuality] would be ever evolving. I didn’t need to be able to predict the next four decades in order to choose words that work for me. I could just sort of go with what felt good, and that it would be OK to change and change again.

There’s a lot of tropes around like, being gay as an experiment, but I actually think that sometimes it is, and that it’s OK to experiment and to not be sure if you’re gonna like something before you try it, and be wrong, and that’s OK too.  

SL: What inspired you to become a sex therapist with a focus on the queer community? 

CT: I really struggled with my mental health in college. I struggled with depression, anxiety, eating disorders and was in therapy, trying different medications — nothing was working. The day that my recovery started was the day that I came out as queer, [yet] no therapist had thought to ask me a question about my sexuality. The fact that [coming out] was such a game changer for my mental health and that no therapist had asked me about it was infuriating. 

I don’t want a single other person to have a therapeutic experience where they’re not being asked about this key dimension of themselves. In a way, stepping into this work was sort of a labor of love for my younger self, who I really wish had had a queer sex therapist. 

Since then, I’ve gotten to work with the queer community for eight years now. I just know it to be a space of so much brilliance and creativity as it relates to sex. I learn so much from my clients and it keeps me on my toes. 

SL: What are some myths about sex and intimacy in the queer community — either myths coming from within the queer community itself or from outside of it?

CT: I feel like the myth I’m most used to from outside of the queer community is that queer bodies are not sufficient at creating pleasure and that we have to bring in some kind of prop. I’m always a proponent of props, and I think queer people are a lot better at using props, but it doesn’t mean we have to. 

[Another] myth that can happen both outside and inside of the queer community is that queer sex is always about taking turns, like “I focus on your body now,” [and] that straight people get to experience pleasure at the same time. But there are many, many ways of having queer sex where everyone involved is experiencing pleasure at the same time.

Generally the idea that queer sex is limited, or that queer sex is attempting to recreate straight sex [is a myth]. The idea that someone would wear a strap-on because they want to recreate heterosexual sex is so ridiculous to me, right? We are creating something totally different and new. 

SL: What are your thoughts on polyamory and non-monogamy? And what might you say to a student who is interested in trying these types of relationships?

CT: Even though polyamory and non-monogamy feel like these very new ways of being with people, they’re actually very indigenous ways of being with people that got interrupted by colonization. Colonization is what made monogamy the norm, and so I very much believe that there’s wisdom to these approaches to relationships.

I don’t believe monogamy is better or worse [than other relationship types]. I don’t feel the need to compare different ways of being in relationships. I would never tell somebody “don’t try it” or “do try it,” but I would tell somebody, “As you do try this, really pay attention to how it feels in your body to engage in one versus the other.”

Monogamy asks something very specific of our nervous system, and non-monogamy asks something different of our nervous system. Depending on how you’re built, your attachment style, you might feel more drawn to one or the other. I think you can only know by trying. And you can be radical and monogamous, I promise. 

SL: What unique issues do you think queer college students often face? And do you have any advice for navigating them?

CT: I think what can be so tricky is, sometimes we’re looking for language before we’ve had a sexual experience that is congruent with that language. So we might come out as a lesbian without ever having sex with another woman. I think there’s so much pressure on queer people to have this gay résumé to be like, if I’m going to claim a queer identity, then I better have this résumé of queer sexual experiences to prove that I know what I want and like. But that’s not something that we require of straight people ever. No one tells us they’re straight and we go, “Well, have you ever had sex with a man?” But we do that with queer people. 

My advice is that you absolutely don’t have to have a resume of sexual experiences with someone of a particular gender to embrace and claim a label for yourself. It’s okay to claim a label, have an experience, and then shift that label. So I would try to remove the pressure to know and to prove. 

[Another thing that] I think this is true for all college students, but particularly for queer folks: the self that you get to develop at school can develop really quickly, and then you can go home to a family and a community that hasn’t necessarily witnessed that evolution. They’re not used to this version of you, and suddenly there’s this whiplash between your college life, where you’re potentially out and queer and loved for that, and then going home for three weeks of Winter Break, and suddenly having to onboard your family to a new way of being.

SL: How do you think sex education should be different? Particularly for queer students, but you could also speak about students in general.

CT: I really am a firm believer that people shouldn’t necessarily get different sexual education depending on their identities. I think that’s part of what fucks us all up to begin with, is that boys go in one room, girls go in the other; they learn the things that we think each gender needs to know. And I don’t want us to do that with straight and queer people either, because I think the same concepts that are liberating for queer people are also liberating for straight people. We all need access to the same anti-oppressive sex education.

The other thing I’ll say is that what I want to see for sex ed across the board is just getting more explicit. I think that sex ed is willing to get super explicit when it’s, “Here’s a picture of an STI, sit with that,” or, “Here’s how to put a condom on a banana.” But then it’s totally unwilling to get explicit around things like how to find someone’s clitoris and touch it or here’s what to look for in a strap-on. And those are the practical questions that when we have no guidance for, we end up feeling really awkward or feeling shame about it. So I would like to see sex ed just getting raunchier, frankly, and folks can opt out of that if it’s not their thing, but I think it at least needs to be available.

SL: Do you have any advice on how queer students can build affirming friendships and romantic relationships in predominantly heteronormative and cisgender spaces? 

CT: I am a huge proponent of using dating apps to make friends. I think dating apps can be queer networking sites, and they do not just have to be for sex and romance. I will also say that while, of course, robust community is the goal, just finding one person can be enough. 

Don’t get caught up on finding other queer people with the exact same labels as you; it really narrows things down. Your first queer community might be a group of people who all experience their queerness really differently, and that’s OK.

If there isn’t a queer space that’s a fit for you, you could create it. There are queer groups that are based around sexuality or politics, and there are some queer people that are like, “You know what? That’s actually not my hobby.” Like, “I love chess,” so start a queer chess club, right?

SL: It feels like there’s a phenomenon within queer communities that you are always “dating within the friend group,” or always dating someone you know, since queer people often know other queer people. Do you have any advice on how to navigate dating in a small community?

CT: I’ll be real with you that it still feels that way, [and] I’m 33. You don’t escape that necessarily. The queer community is incestuous, it’s true. I think getting really talented at communication, conflict [resolution] and accountability is what helps the queer community survive [that] reality. 

There aren’t always that many of us, and we can’t always avoid hurting each other. I might date somebody that somebody I knew dated, and we can’t always avoid that, but we can go about that in ethical ways and accountable ways — in ways that make space for people’s humanity. I would say it’s less about being perfect or avoiding hurting anyone, and more about being excellent at navigating tricky moments of relationships.