"there is a new generation that takes the time to learn about sexuality," says Charline Vermont
She arrived “in speed”, phone in hand and smile on her lips. And she talked for two hours, stopping just to laugh. In 2019, Charline Vermont left her job as a “manager in a very, very serious box” to launch the Orgasme et moi account on Instagram. Since then, the one who has a statistician and economist degree spends more than 100 hours a week “educating on sexuality” her “community” of more than 500,000 subscribers. This month, Charline Vermont released a book [Corps, amour et sexualité, Ed. Albin Michel] and collaborated with Netflix on the occasion of the release of season 3 of Sex Education. Interview with a work freak who sees herself as a "geekette who allows speech to be freed in a safe and above all funny environment".
According to a “20 Minutes” survey of its #MoiJeune community, 90% of young people are aware of the importance of consent. Is this good news for you who have made consent your big cause for 2021?
That's great. For part of the generation of 30, 35 and over, this is not the priority. They still think that asking for consent breaks the mood. But we can clearly see today that there is a new generation that takes the time to educate itself. There is a real mental load of sex education. We educate ourselves well in zero waste, so we can educate ourselves in consent and for that we get our fingers out of our ass and take the time to read educational content.
Like your book…
Absolutely (laughs). I wrote this book because there was no transgenerational work on sexuality. There were, in my opinion, only books that were aimed at parents and all of them were anxiety-provoking. A bit like during evening readings with my three children, I wanted this book to create a “safe” space to start healthy discussions around sexuality. I wanted the children to know that they could ask their questions freely, without fear of judgment. They had to be able to come and ask them to us, reference adults, rather than going to ask them elsewhere.
To Google, for example?
Today, when children ask themselves a question and they don't have the answer or feel that the adult is not ease, they will seek answers from their classmates who sometimes have flowery or erroneous representations. They will also type “sex” into the search bars. And there, it's a disaster. They fall on porn platforms far from conveying the idea of benevolent sexuality. In France, the median age at which children have already seen porn is 12 years old. So you can decide that the first time your child will be exposed to any form of sexuality will be through porn or you can decide to give him a framework and the words so that the day he will be exposed to this kind of images, he will know that this is not real sexuality.
On October 8, the Paris court will decide whether or not to block porn sites (PornHub, xHamster, YouPorn, etc.) that are too easily accessible to minors...
I have people in those around me who are actors, directors or pornographers and I have a look at this industry which is a little more subtle than “porn is bad”. The pornographic medium is an excitation medium, a masturbatory medium. At no time can mainstream porn in free access be used as an educational medium. The problem is that the youngest use it this way in the absence of credible alternatives answering their questions. The question of the dangers of porn is in fact a real invitation to us adults to rethink sexuality education as it has been implemented in school lessons for thirty years. The risk-based approach is certainly necessary, but by no means sufficient.
So how can we change sexuality education? Should new standards be created?
Sex is a living thing. We must not impose anything or normalize again, but we must deconstruct, reinvent. We live in a time when it is possible to easily and free offer a credible alternative to porn sites to avoid generations trained in Youporn and, therefore, heterocentric on the pleasure of penis owners. For example, you might think that the percentage of women who reach orgasm is higher than fifteen years ago, well no. Finnish studies show that practices are more homogenized, modeled on porn-modeled pounding while only 6% of people with clitoris reach orgasm through vaginal penetration or stimulation. It is absolutely necessary to get out of this pattern and become creative again. Fortunately, we never stop learning.
You seem optimistic on the matter.
Totally. Since 2010, there have been as many medical studies on sexual health as in the previous fifty years. So far the pleasure of women and people with vulva has completely passed after that of men. Viagra even arrived on the market before the anatomy of the clitoris! There are a lot of things playing out now and especially since the #Metoo movement. We are finally freeing up to talk about systemic sexual violence and we are working to prevent it. And we are not ready for the next generation. For example, children's awareness of the difference between sex and gender is exceptional.
Maybe because they grew up with #Metoo, Orgasme et moi and Euphoria…
It's much harder to deconstruct a pattern when you're 30 or 40 than growing up in already having representations that are finally diverse and inclusive. This generation has access to Euphoria or Sense 8. It's magic.
And at “Sex Education”…
A few dozen people in France keep sex education accounts. Poor buggers who voluntarily do a monster public health job, because educating about sexuality means fewer unwanted pregnancies, fewer STIs or STDs and fewer sexual assaults. I receive nearly 800 messages a day to which I respond at 90%. At the very least, I spend 100 hours a week there. And there, I see arriving a kind of American and capitalist bulldozer called Netflix and which provides content that talks about vaginismus, transidentity, coming out. I am delighted to work with a company that does the work that we would expect from our institutions.
Has your speech changed since 2019 and the creation of your account?
I mainly trained myself. I am now a practitioner in sex therapy and I also have a cap of sexual health educator. For my book, I surrounded myself with a college of experts (doctor, gynecologist, gender therapist, etc.) to include and represent all parents and children. Today, without lying, I think I am one of the people who has read, and still reads, the most studies on sexual health in France. I can train professionals and explain to them how to talk about dyspareunia or anorgasmia. Today, I feel like a science doer.
In concrete terms, you have changed the meaning of the hashtag under which your community gathers. #MMM has gone from "Wonderful girls and guys" to "Mixed marvelous minds"...
If there is one subject on which I have evolved a lot, it is inclusion. This #MMM was not inclusive at all. I changed the meaning after deconstructing my world which was very cisnormed. You see, we are constantly educating ourselves.
But when we're not #MMM and we're not following your account, what are we? Are we not benevolent?
Ah, good question… I want to believe that we are all a bit of #MMM in the making.
On dating sites, some indicate #MMM. Who gave them the "Orgasm and Me" certification?
It revolted me so much when I found out about it. Many things created by the deconstruction movements are taken over by “cis het” guys. This hashtag which means “I am subscribed to an account and I am learning” is picked up by guys who proclaim themselves #MMM in “no brainer” mode. They are not ashamed of anything when this hashtag is supposed to bring together utopian “ass care bears” (laughs) who have nevertheless spent eighteen months without going out. My account, our lives, our content were a real way to hold subscribers, to support them during confinement. We created our "private jokes", our Sunday evening meetings and we are still educating ourselves in sharing and kindness.
Our Everything Sexplains fileSo there are people in your "community" far from being "ass care bears"?
Yes, I receive messages almost every day, sent the most often by men, who understand that they have done wrong. They explain to me that thanks to Orgasme and I they understood that they had been, in the best case, selfish in the pile or, in the worst case, that they had had violent reactions and destroyed consent. At first, I wondered if I didn't want my "community" to be free from all the people who made mistakes in their lives. Then, I said to myself “you are completely stupid, the most important thing is this educational bet”. In this case, all these people must have access to my content. Today, I acknowledge receipt and we move forward.
California wants to make it illegal to remove condoms without consent (stealthing) while Texas legislates on abortion. Is sexuality politics?
Intimate is political and it's very embarrassing for me because I stay away from the power that I associate with unethical things. I recently received a message denouncing a stealthing… And concerning these acts, in France, there is everything to do. If only because the notion of consent does not enter into the definition of rape, nor in that of sexual assault. Sexuality is political because it upsets the established order: sexist and patriarchal. And then, you also have to see who legislates on abortion, assisted reproduction, on women's bodies... I would be curious to see the reactions if several hundred women legislated on chemical castration or male contraception.
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