The Scoop: Our sexualities are shaped by so many things, from our cultural backgrounds and how we were raised to our gender identities and past relationships. Dr. Reece Malone is a sex therapist and sexologist who knows a thing or two about the intersections of race, gender, culture, and sexuality.
When I moved in with my then-boyfriend at 21, I didn’t know what I was getting into. I had a naive belief that things wouldn’t change that much once we were under the same roof, and my move into his apartment would mark a new age of domestic bliss.
Ha. It only took a month to realize that cohabitation was going to be a lot more complicated than I’d thought. My (now ex) boyfriend and I were both in school, and I was also working nearly full time, meaning both of us were routinely exhausted by the time we got home.
We began to slip into roles that didn’t feel right, and it was mostly in the area of duties around the house.
My habit of emptying the dishwasher before leaving for class in the morning morphed from a nice gesture into an expectation, as did the laundry, vacuuming, and making dinner. Eventually, I found myself responsible for nearly every household chore, and my boyfriend was confused as to why that would bother me.
He was also confused as to why the sink being full of dishes meant I didn’t want to have sex.
Looking back, a lot of factors contributed to the (righteous) end of our relationship. My ex-boyfriend was raised in a household where he wasn’t expected to contribute to cooking, cleaning, or much of anything– he had a nanny and a person who would clean his childhood home twice weekly.
In fact, he didn’t know how to do tasks that I considered basic, like cleaning a toilet or doing a load of laundry.
At 21, I never thought somebody’s knowledge, or lack thereof, of cleaning toilets could impact my level of attraction to them, emotionally or sexually. But it does, and it does because it’s not just about cleaning a toilet.
My knowledge of cleaning a toilet, and his ignorance, spoke to our life experiences, our perspectives, and all the disparities between them. It spoke to our socioeconomic backgrounds, our childhoods, and the roles of our gender identities. And it definitely impacted how we had sex. Complicated stuff.
Dr. Reece Malone has spent his career investigating human sexuality, and how race, ethnicity, gender, religion, culture – basically everything – can inform and influence sex and sexuality. Dr. Reece talked to us about his experience, services, and how our sexualities are shaped by the multitude of experiences and identities we hold.
“People will come to me saying they’re dealing with sexual dysfunction, and they want the tips and tricks,” Dr. Reece said. “And sure, we can do that. But let’s talk about the underlying factors that nobody talks about, like the gender scripts that are rooted in cultural and familial expectations.”
Sex Isn’t Just About Sex
Every person has a different experience with their sexuality, but no matter who you are, your cultural background and childhood have a lot to do with that experience. Many of us grew up in environments where sex wasn’t spoken about, or, if it was, people only discussed it in a certain way.
Dr. Reece grew up in a Mennonite community called Altona in Manitoba, Canada. “It’s a Christian-based community, and it was smaller at the time,” he said. “Given the culture that was there, and the fact that we were the only family of color growing up in that small rural community, there just wasn’t a lot of information about sexuality.”
If you were raised in a small, conservative community, you can probably relate to Dr. Reece’s experiences. Sex was a taboo topic, and its off-limits nature was compounded by several aspects of Dr. Reece’s family structure and background.
“But then, there’s also the added layer of us being a family of color, and me being a person of color,” Dr. Reece told us. “We didn’t talk about sex in my family. There’s those intersections of things we can’t talk about.”
Topics that were central to Dr. Reece’s identity often felt off-limits conversationally when he was growing up. The few resources he had for his questions about sex didn’t answer everything, and these resources viewed sexuality through a narrow lens.
“I was just that curious person and seemed to lean into taboo topics,” Dr. Reece said. “The path became a much more organic process. The idea about sexuality and topics that were seen for some reason as taboo, I never really understood why.”
Dr. Reece holds a Master’s in Public Health and a Doctorate in Human Sexuality and is a sexuality educator certified by the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors, and Therapists. He told us his pursuit of education, certification, and establishing a practice all felt like a natural progression for his curiosity.
“At first, I thought it was really important for me to understand the sexual functioning of people’s bodies but then expanded to consider the psychological, relational and cultural points of views,” Dr. Reece said. “So I have the whole picture of a person’s sexuality. I don’t want to miss the key intersecting aspects of people’s lives.”
Exploring What Sex Means to You
Dr. Reece helped us explore and understand the influences collectivist cultures have on sexuality. A collectivist culture values and prioritizes the needs and desires of the group over the individual. For many people, the most impactful collectivist culture is the family they were raised in.
“When I was growing up, the culture of my family consistently prioritized our collective needs. Both of my parents worked full time, were devout church goers, and straddled maintaining rural community connections and Filipino cultural connections,” Dr. Reece said.
“I remember that saving face and positioning the family within these cultures mattered first.”
Collectivist cultures can manifest in many ways. “They influence sexuality, they influence a person’s choices, autonomy, and self-determination from a very gendered lens,” Dr. Reece said. “When I work with South Asian families, or other Asian families, or even Brown families, they tend to be collectivist, as opposed to European families, which tend to be individualist.”
Dr. Reece said sex therapy approaches when it comes to things like sexual dysfunction and low desire are often designed within a white framework. As with much of the psychological and medical field, a majority of sex therapy approaches don’t consider the influences of background and identity.
“Treatment approaches are often designed within a white, heterosexual, cisgender lens and assuming we all fit within that framework,” Dr. Reece said. “We need to take those culturally based, nuanced gender scripts into consideration and how they affect our sex lives and intimate partner relationships.”
When Dr. Reece meets with a new client, he asks them about their ethnicity. He said he finds that while many Black clients and those of other minority groups are accustomed to receiving that question as a microaggression, it often takes his white clients aback.
“Brown and Black people get that question all the time from a microaggression standpoint, that people would ask us, ‘Where are you from?’” Dr. Reece said.
He continued, “But when I ask that of a white person, they don’t really understand the question. The reason I ask about ethnicity is that there might be historical cultural scripts on your gender that you’ve engrained, and now you have these rigid gender expectations that can impact your relationship and the kind of sex you have.”
These rigid beliefs influence our gender identity, sexuality, what we consider acceptable and unacceptable sexual behaviors and expressions, and, ultimately, our relationships.
Dr. Reece told us about a man he had worked with who was in his 30s and Black. He was talking to Dr. Reece about the meaning his erection had to him.
The man started talking about his father and how he raised him to be a strong Black man. “The erection isn’t just his pleasure, his partner’s pleasure, but him shouldering his family’s culture, and also what it means to be a strong, Black man.”
Our identities inform and are informed by our sexualities. It’s a two-way street. We claim sexual authenticity by exploring and embracing these identities and how they complexly influence our sexualities.
Healing & Empowering Men In Their Sexualities
When Dr. Reece works with clients, he explores the existential meaning behind sex and the parts of their bodies that are involved in sex. With men, he’s talking to them about the meaning of their penis.
“What is the meaning behind your erection? The size of your penis?” Dr. Reece asked. “If you don’t have a penis, and if you were to ejaculate, what’s the meaning behind it, outside of immediate pleasure and release.”
Dr. Reece said men are empowered by this opportunity to authentically speak about their experiences and what their masculinity and maleness mean to them.
Many cultural scripts dictate that women lean toward intimacy while men lean toward sex, and when we internalize a script like this, we end up stripping ourselves of a genuine experience of our own sexualities.
“Men want the opportunity to be vulnerable and open. They don’t want to perform,” Dr. Reece said. “And our culture reinforces this idea that men need to perform. We start right there with that language to dismantle that sexual expression is not performance.”
When you perform sex, instead of experiencing it in an actualized way, you’re removing yourself from the experience. Dr. Reece said it’s like becoming a spectator to your body. You can’t experience vulnerability or intimacy when you’re removed from your body in such a way.
Sexuality is dynamic and we have to give ourselves the room to explore our own complexities. Many of the men who come to Dr. Reece with sexual dysfunction, like ejaculating earlier than they’d like or not being able to maintain an erection, haven’t fully faced the weight their sexualities carry.
Speaking to these identities without shame, fear, or judgment is the first step to self-determined sexuality. The next is living and loving in a way that recognizes your identity and serves the goals you have for yourself.
If you’re feeling lost in your sexuality, Dr. Reece said the first step, whether or not you work with a professional, is about connecting with yourself.
“Explore how– or if– you feel true and authentic to yourself in your gender orientation and attraction,” Dr. Reece told us.
“Explore how you communicate your needs and wants to a partner, and explore if you have issues with your own body. What you’re feeling could give some insight as to how to start working with what’s happening.”
