Um We had this picture, it was like this big, it was laminated and we had a list of who has the picture.

Like I can have it for two days.

The other guy will have it for two days and this and that and it would pass on.

We pass it on for such a long time until we found it to be shocked right now.

No.

Yeah, but but listen, but wait a minute.

So the picture, the picture was a single female breast.

That's what it was.

That's the picture.

We used to have that.

And it used to be a fuel, just like the masturbation library, you're overdue.

Mhm.

Does sexual uh repression lead to addiction?

That's a pretty big jump.

But it is true that repression doesn't allow our full self to always be talked about, exhibited part of the day to day.

And therefore we many times think about that, which you repress will oppress you.

That is we're only as sick as our secrets.

When we just talk about sex addiction as being just this bad thing.

We don't realize that sex can easily be replaced with something else.

You can be addicted to sex and then, you know, relieve yourself of that addiction and then you become addicted to chocolate or food or anything.

Sexual addiction is not about the sex, Sexual addiction is about the compulsion for sex.

The sexual addict can have sex with somebody and then immediately after want to have sex with somebody else, a lot of people.

Um, somebody will say you're sexy, you're hot.

But what they'll hear is, you matter, you're important, you're special.

I love you.

And when you confuse those, you're not going to be able to fill that hole inside.

Is this more common in religious communities?

It's most common in all communities that have the right norm when there's such binary way of looking at things than you are always trying to find somewhere in the middle and because life is not binary, then you always have to put yourself in a box that you never really fit in.

And so like, do it in secret or not tell or feel shame and guilt about it almost needed the repression that came from religion.

I somehow took that repression and then eked out what I could.

Um, and it's interesting.

So within a healthy religious family, um, it almost sexuality also is aligned more with love and not danger.

Did that affect your relationship to sex?

Yeah, I was a virgin mary.

Yeah, I'm very, um, rebellious in theater land.

It's theater.

I can I feel free acting in my own life maybe a little less.

We express ourselves writing theater art, but the spoken word is not allowed in terms of sex, it's such a fear of talking about sex and it's not, I can't like, I swear to God, this is the first time I've sat, you know, the table and talking to two lovely women about sex.

I just it's even my first time talking, I mean, it's interesting because maybe with my own friends, but with a camera on us, even I'm making an adjustment going, wait, what am I doing?

Sexuality is a part of spirituality, but because it is so complex and nuanced, it's easier to just say it's bad, it's wrong, we're going to keep it over here.

We're not gonna discuss it at all, which is a shame because so much of spirituality is about creation and reproduction, body, right?

The different names.

And when we detach them, we really detach ourselves from any kind of real connection to the divine, whatever that is we have sayings in Islam that says, sex is a piece of the garden on earth.

If your religion is just walls and it's not the world.

If you think about your religion as you know, these four walls in the restaurant versus Central Park, right?

Central Park is spirituality.

Religion is the four walls of this space, right?

If this is if you just confine your connection to God to, I can't do this, I can't do that.

I have to do this.

I shouldn't do that.

As opposed to religion being a way that you can experience the world, you can go to the park, you can see the trees and the birds and can play then that is a spiritual relationship and that is why sex is bad, bad, bad.

And you can't talk about it at all because we have bastardized religion, how do we change that?

How do we open up?

How do we have healthy conversations about it about sex?

Because nobody like, I mean growing up in Syria, the only time we talk about sex was in religious class and that is all bad.

You can't do everything is bad, you can't even think about that.

So how do we break this cycle?

You have to learn Islam for what it is.

Islam is an extremely sex positive religion.

There are bodies that are very graphic and very vivid in terms of the way the prophet Muhammad was with his wives.

But when religion gets filtered through culture, that's where you have the shame.

That's where you have the guilt.

And I always tell people just because you don't like it doesn't make it Haram and just be because you like it doesn't make it halal.

But where did it start the uncomfortableness?

Because like in India become a sutra exists and literally drawings and a guide and it says if the body and mind meet, you can touch God, it's also one of the most conservative countries.

So where does it?

Is it parents isn't a word or two words, the Victorians, you have to look at history, You have to look at the colonizing force is just going to say that it's just it's all colonization.

And if you can get, if you can get people to colonize their mind, you can control the body and how do you best control the body in these sex positive cultures?

You control sex.

I'm a gay man.

And one of the things that I'm very proud of, my own community is that we've claimed and reclaimed our ability to talk about sex to our friends, to people around us that I won't succumb to the heteronormative policies of the world.

But many people do not come to the rabbi or the imam because they feel the wrath of God will come upon them.

And one of the things that I keep talking to my people around is like, no right.

If this is a spiritual issue and if there's an issue of your spirit of who you are, then come to me, you will not be judged here because because God has made this world in a way that's the only way to make more babies right?

More Muslims more jews is by people having sex is abstinence and and and sex positivity.

Are they compatible?

Yes, absolutely.

100%.

100%.

Because you have to.

So the way that you get abstinence to kind of hold right, You wanted to like, I want you to take this and hold it, don't let it go.

You have to give people something to look forward to Because if you're telling them to abstain from sex.

But then you can have sex when you get married, but we've been telling you for 20 years that sex is bad and it's dirty and it's gross, you're not going to want to have it.

So you have to talk about sex from a positive lens, sex is fun, sex is messy, it's dirty.

It's you laugh and this is why you want to experience sex in a safe, emotionally vulnerable spiritually authentic partnership.

It gives people something to look forward to.

I think some people run to religion because they're looking for that orgasmic experience that can come from a deep connection with the Divine.

I think that's why some people engage in like intense fasting and you know, all night prayer and vicar and just really putting their body through the limits and it's not a sexual orgasm, but it is an awakening of play ritual.

They're just using different, there's statues about this called the ecstasy of Saint Teresa of Avila, right?

That when look, we all know this, that when you are connected when you feel that you are in this world, in that moment that like everything connects, it's it's ecstatic, nothing is like that, right?

Nothing feels and no moment can ever repeat that, right?

And in that way that's part of the seeking sometimes with sexual addiction to find that high, right?

So the religious ecstatic experience has been well documented in all religions, like, like jews and Muslims, they, it's all the same, It's the same guilt.

I mean, here's the thing.

So why can't why can't we get why can't we solve the problems in Palestine were the same?

I think that's a different episode, but why?