Changing the Story of Sexuality: A Conversation with Brianna Booth, PhD
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photo by micah schulman
The kids in your fifth-grade class have just been separated. The nurse rolls a boxy TV into the room, and soon, you’ll watch a poorly-made video with some kitschy music and flush every time someone mentions your changing body.
That’s right; it’s time for Sex Ed. But this time, it’s the positive psychology version, which means we are imagining how positive sexual education and positive sexuality can transform how we think about our bodies, our relationships, and connection in general. Instead of suffering through awkward or uncomfortable conversations or avoiding topics altogether, these MAPP alumni and experts are helping us talk openly about sex and integrate sexuality into our humanity.
In this issue of MAPP Magazine—which explores thriving sexuality, shifting narratives around reproductive health, as well as new work in developing a comprehensive model of sexual well-being—you can delve into the still-emerging sub-sect of positive psychology, positive sexuality. And in this article, you’ll read excerpts from our moving conversation with Stanford University Director of Positive Sexuality, Brianna Booth, PhD (C’11), who shared with us about her work and the power of storytelling and attunement to help not only to change narratives around sexuality but also to foster intimacy and connection.
MAPP Magazine (MM): Could you please share a bit about yourself, your work, and its intersection with positive psychology?
Brianna Booth (BB): Nine years ago, I created a position at Stanford University called the Director of Positive Sexuality. When I was studying sexuality education, I was really keen to find a different way to teach about it. In college, I read Abraham Maslow's The Farther Reaches of Human Nature, and I was very intrigued by this question of what is possible, and what are humans doing when they're at their very best? Years later, I kept thinking about positive psychology and wondering how we could reframe the way that we're thinking about sexuality education. Can it be more than preventing sexually transmitted infections and unwanted pregnancies, teaching about anatomy and abstinence, and giving other general rules and warnings?
One simple but big insight that my research pointed to is that people are not only interested in how to protect themselves, but they are also very interested in how to connect. However, most of sex ed focuses on protection in one form or another.
So it became my task to figure out how we might really tap into that innate desire to connect and teach those positive skills in this very complex, very culturally and historically fraught subject.
I was finishing up my PhD in 2014, which happened to coincide with a rise in awareness of sexual assault on college campuses. Universities were trying to figure out what to do: how to educate students on sexual assault and how to respond to incidents more effectively. Title IX offices were established, and education focused largely on consent. I knew, though, that if you could ensure that every student knew the legal definition of consent, it wouldn't necessarily change anything. The roots of the problem are much deeper.
Knowing that Stanford prided itself on new ideas and innovative approaches to problems, I pitched a proposal outlining a bigger, broader, more holistic, more positive-skills-based approach, not just a one-dimensional, punitive approach of “this is the law, and here are the consequences if you break the law.” Six months later, I was talking to every incoming freshman about these things in a program I created called Beyond Sex Ed.
In an auditorium of 1,700 students, I pose the question, in not so many words: Can we talk about sexuality, intimacy, and relationships in a thoughtful, compassionate, open, and honest way? Can we have reverence for this subject and this part of our humanity when it's so easily talked about in superficial terms, joked about, or kept secret because it’s believed to be a bad or dangerous part of ourselves?
To help bring this to life, I invite seven students to share stories from their lives about sex, sexuality, intimacy, and relationships. These students are hand-selected from my oral storytelling class* that I teach in the Spring. Their stories span all different topics: the effects of pornography on how they see women, their disillusionment with hookup culture, their struggles with abstinence, their relationships to religion and spirituality, their experiences of feeling behind or feeling different from their peers, their experiences with “firsts” or coming out or making friends or saying “no,” or their experiences of trauma, including sexual assault. No matter the subject, every story is a story of growth, positive discovery, and healing. The freshmen get to see their peers speaking with depth and honesty and vulnerability. If you step back and look at what we’re doing, you might wonder, Who would stand up on stage without any notes, arms at their sides, a mic amplifying their voice for a full auditorium, to tell the most personal story from their life? It sounds crazy! But the beautiful thing is that the freshmen recognize that the students on stage are the most courageous people on campus, and they are so grateful for the open, honest conversation. Simultaneously, the students who are telling their stories feel like a million bucks. They’ve done the work in my class to have sorted through the jumble of their life experiences to discover the deeper thread that runs through it all—a journey of growth—and by the time they’re on stage, they feel clear, confident, and embodied. It’s not as risky as it looks at first glance.
MM: Brianna, that's amazing. I'm going to jump around a little bit, so why don't we pull on the story thread first? If you could, I would love to hear more about that aspect. Can you share at a high level what you’re doing right now and the role of story in positive sexuality?
BB: My research was story-based. Classical grounded theory, developed by Barney Glaser, is a method that involves listening to people's stories in order to develop a theory grounded in people’s lived lives. As the researcher, you specifically don't come to an interview with an agenda of what you want to know from that person. Instead, you have to ask questions that elicit people’s intrinsic desire to tell you things about a particular topic. I love it because that's the definition of following the most alive thing, really letting people show you what matters to them. This is the same research methodology that Brené Brown uses to study shame and vulnerability.
I grew so much by getting to listen to people's stories. That was the thing that I needed when I was younger: to hear people's stories. Even the simplest things, like getting my period when I was 14. The most helpful thing that my mom said to me after a lot of struggle to accept my now-menstruating body, especially having three brothers, was when she started naming women in my life who also menstruated. I could have deduced this myself, but something about her telling me about other women menstruating made me feel less alone. As adolescence got more complex and I still felt this aloneness in my experiences, I craved stories. I know how much I would have benefited from hearing about other people navigating themselves as sexual beings and their experiences.
It was in college that I first got to tell my own biggest story. It was in a writing class, and the professor said on the first day, “There is one story you have to tell before you can tell any other story.” I was terrified to write anything on paper because it made it real. It was actually kind of a dissociative experience at first because there were hands on the keyboard and words coming up on the screen, and I couldn’t fully connect that it was all me. Ultimately, it was a process of integration. The transformative piece, though, was my professor, Don Snow at Whitman College, who read my story and held it with so much love and compassion that it started to alchemize something in me. The thing that was very heavy and painful inside of me, for it to be held with so much love and compassion, that was the thing that started to shift everything for me. It started the process of turning something painful into something beautiful and into something that would ultimately become very meaningful. The thing that I would have loved to erase became the thing that I wouldn't actually trade anymore because it taught me so much.
Now I get to be in that role for students—of holding their stories with love and compassion—and see that shift happen for them. It shifts a narrative of feeling victimized by things that happen in your life to feeling like your life has meaning and that you're the one who can actively make meaning and grow from things and be changed by hard things. It’s fun and beautiful, and I have so much approval for all of my students’ experiences. I cheer them on, especially when they are saying the hardest, most honest things. When we own our whole humanity—the good, the bad, the ugly—it makes us more and more beautiful. This truth is reflected back when the audience appreciates when the students on stage share their mistakes, their shortcomings, and their regrets.
So to answer your question about the role of story in positive sexuality, I would say it’s central. Sexuality is a dimension of our humanity that is woven into all the other parts of us. To reveal our sexuality is to reveal the story of ourselves. It can’t be compartmentalized. It can’t be categorized as “good” or “bad.” It’s multi-faceted. It comes to life in the embodiment of an honest story. Telling our story and hearing others’ stories is one big way we can feel connected to ourselves and each other.
MM: Thank you for sharing about all that, Brianna. Switching gears a bit, what is your definition of positive sexuality? And as you see it, what's the role of sexuality in well-being? Where does it fit in existing well-being models?
BB: Similar to Marty naming the field “positive psychology,” there’s a specific flip that’s needed in how we think about sexuality. The default focus in sex ed or with sexuality in general tends to be on the negative, or what goes wrong, or what we need to prevent. Positive sexuality is not to deny those aspects of sexuality—indeed, those pains and struggles are a big part of my work, too—but positive sexuality orients us toward what is good and what is possible, how sexuality can enhance us and more deeply connect us, as well as how it can be a source of, and area for, growth.
It took me a long time to figure out how to think about sexuality in the context of well-being. Some studies I looked at back in 2010 when I was in the Master of Applied Positive Psychology (MAPP) program at Penn asked questions like, “How sexually satisfied are you physically?” and “How sexually satisfied are you emotionally?” on a scale of 1 to 5, comparing levels of satisfaction from one country to another. That didn’t capture the nuance or multi-dimensionality of sexuality that I was interested in, nor did it lend much insight into well-being because it was compartmentalizing sex from the rest of our humanity and turning it into a one-dimensional experience. It was James Pawelski who told me at the end of the fall semester, “You might need to do your own research on this.”
The first assignment in our MAPP class was to create our own model of well-being, or how we would define flourishing. I described four characteristics that I’ll share now in the form of questions: 1) In what ways are you growing? 2) Are all parts of you integrated? 3) In what ways do you feel your connectedness (to anything)? 4) How do you experience your vitality, or your sense of aliveness?
We can look at our sexuality with these same questions: 1) In what ways are you growing with regard to sex and sexuality? 2) Are all aspects of your sexual story integrated as a part of the whole of you? 3) Where in your life are sex and sexuality a source of connection–to yourself, others, or the world around you? 4) Is your sexuality a source of vitality for you?
My own research points specifically to how well we navigate the interplay of boundaries—from the literal boundaries of our bodies to the interpersonal boundaries between us to the boundaries defined by culture and context—in order to create safety and trust in relationships (protection), how well we can connect with ourselves and others (connection), and the underlying skill in all of this: how well we can attune—in order to protect, connect, and be aware of and responsive to boundaries. I use these four concepts to guide me in creating education for sexual well-being.
Lastly, I’ll add that sexual well-being facilitates the experience of intimacy—the feeling of being safe to be ourselves and close to one another. My husband (Cory Muscara, C’15) thinks a more accurate title for my job would be Director of Intimacy. He thinks my specialty is in cultivating spaces for intimate connection, like in the storytelling class where students feel seen, heard, felt, and understood by one another. Intimacy is at the heart of what we all want most and is central to our experience of sexual well-being.
MM: So, Cory thinks a better job title would be Director of Intimacy because of the ways you foster connection. And in your LPS alumni story from way back, it said, “Drawing from her research, she points out that young people are often taught to protect themselves, but they are rarely taught how to connect.” Can you share more about that and share how to cultivate connection?
BB: It’s interesting to reflect on why we shy away from teaching young people about how to connect in these realms. I think it highlights our ambivalence about sex and sexuality, as well as our ignorance and complicated feelings about young people’s emergence into becoming more sexually alive and engaged.
Talking about consent doesn’t exactly catch students’ interest. I really get their attention, though, when I talk about the skill of attunement. Attunement is the foundation to what we all want most: to feel connected—to ourselves, to our values, to our body, to other people, to a partner, and to our own aliveness. One of the things I love about attunement is that it’s a skill that no one ever masters, but we can all get better at.
One thing you can ask yourself is: Can you tell the difference between what you think you’re supposed to want vs. what you actually want deep down? How about the difference between what you think you’re supposed to feel and what you actually feel?
To bring it into real life, can you think of a situation you’ve been in where you went along with something when it wasn’t actually what you wanted to do?
This stuff is tricky! In its most basic form, we need to be able to discern when we’re a “yes” and when we’re a “no.” I give students really simple prompts to start to become aware of what yes and no feel like in their body, which you can try too. For example:
Do you like puppies?
Do you like smog?
Do you like it when someone is angry at you?
Do you like feeling loved and appreciated?
For me, a “yes” feels spacious, my breathing feels steady, I might feel excited. I feel alignment with my values. “No” feels like a constriction in my belly or in my head; I might pull away, or feel like I want to protect or defend something. I might feel a conflict with my values. Getting to know our yeses and nos is foundational to our inner compass and is essential for cultivating connection.
So often consent is framed as permission-getting, often permission to do something to another person or to get something from another person. I like to reframe that so we see our sexual experiences as a co-creation where we do something with another person. And if you look at the Latin roots of the word “consent,” you see “con” meaning “together” or “with,” and “sent” meaning “feeling,” which points to the actual art of consent: “feeling together.” “Feeling together” is a beautiful way to describe what I’m trying to teach with attunement. We need to pay attention to where there’s consonance and where there’s dissonance—inside ourselves and with another person—and adjust accordingly.
In addition to that, I’d suggest cultivating more openness, more curiosity, and more honesty as a way to experience more connection. Connection also requires really slowing down in order to feel and speak from that more tender place, less from our minds and more from our hearts.
MM: Beautiful Brianna, thank you for sharing. Is there anything else that you're researching, writing, learning, exploring, or experiencing these days that you're excited about and you'd like to share?
BB: Something I think a lot about is healing. I think we’re all in need of healing in the realm of sex, sexuality, intimacy, and relationships. One thing I say in Beyond Sex Ed is, “Sexuality is one of the most vibrant and vulnerable parts of being human. It touches us at our core. This is why it means so much to us. It’s why our feelings are so intense, why violations can hurt so much, and why it takes so much courage to tell your story.”
One area of my work that I grow a lot from and that I really, really value is my work with people who have been accused of having caused harm. Before I meet them, someone might say to me, “Good luck; you’ll never get this person to talk to you.” But when I see them sitting outside my office, I see that they’re just a person. In our conversation, I watch them open up and have insights and curiosity toward their own journeys to the point that they can take accountability for their actions that caused harm. When colleagues hear about these sessions, they’ll ask, “How do you do it?” My answer is, “I just love them.” Of course, you can't just tell a stranger, “I love you.” You have to show it. You have to ask questions, you have to be curious, and you have to be open. In order to do that, you have to know yourself inside and out. If I hadn't done my own work of being honest with myself, how could I possibly hold space for others to be honest about themselves? It's a beautiful thing when they start to trust me, and I watch this very gentle, slow process of creating enough safety for someone to be honest. The more honest they are, the more I cheer them on. And part of that also starts with me leading the way. I always say to them, “I've made mistakes. I've hurt people.” We all like to look at how other people make mistakes, but we have a hard time looking at ourselves. That’s something I value in my work and am very passionate about. That all leads into my deep, deep belief in restorative practices and restorative justice, when and where it's possible. Showing one’s accountability goes a long way toward healing.
Another thing I feel excited about is having more students from different backgrounds in my storytelling class. This goes back to one of my original motivations in this field. I was disturbed by the culture wars that surround these topics, polarizing people and communities. My goal has always been to have as many people at the table as possible. The more people with the more different backgrounds that I can have at the table, the better. Not only am I enriched by it, but everyone else is enriched by it. It shouldn’t be a game of “I win if my views dominate.” To me, the best marker of success is when there are more people at the table and we can talk to one another and see our shared humanity, including our differences.
One of the things I tell students in my storytelling class is that your story should not be a sermon. You are not preaching. Don’t tell us what to believe or what to think or what to do. If you do, the listener’s defenses will come up. If you tell us about your experience in a raw, honest way—close to the ground, not high in the pulpit—then, the listener opens. The listener is invited not only into your experience but also into their own. We start to feel together. That is connection. And connection feels really good.
MM: Brianna, this has really been wonderful. Thank you very much. We would love to share any contact information or resources that you want to pass along.
BB: Thank you. You can contact me at boothbk@stanford.edu.
MM: Thank you.
*Author’s note: Michelle Darby created the original StoryCraft class at Stanford and mentored me in teaching the art of oral storytelling. She gifted the class to me and I adapted it to the subjects of sexuality, intimacy, and relationships.
About the expert | Brianna Booth, PhD (C’11), Director of Positive Sexuality at Stanford University, aims to transform and uplevel cultural conversation on both the challenges and possibilities of sexuality. She earned her PhD in Human Sexuality Studies from Widener University and a Masters in Applied Positive Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania, focusing her research on the lived experience of sexuality and the skills of navigating it well. Building on these frameworks, Brianna teaches Beyond Sex Ed to undergraduate students, a course which takes a whole-person, whole-culture approach, centering on student storytelling, the skills for growth and connection, and a recognition of sexuality as an integral part of what it is to be human.
