Singapore Sexology with Dr Martha Lee – P44

Transcript

This is C. And this is D. And this is Swinging Down Under. So we've got, following this, we've got a really cool interview that we did with a Singaporean local sexologist. Sexologist, yeah. And sex educator and everything that starts with sex. And love. Yeah. Absolutely. But let's be honest. We're more focused on the sex here. It's a little bit true, yeah. So that. will be an interesting podcast. Hopefully you guys stick around and listen to that. Before we get started on that though, C has some things she'd like to tell everybody.

Well, we just want to update you guys on the November Desire trip. So we were recently talking to the Joneses and TNA from the Curious Couple and we're told that there's only four or five ocean view rooms left and that the resort is actually 50% booked for the week we're going. Yeah, and let's be honest, the 50% generally belongs to us. It's cray-cray. Yeah, it's awesome. So, we're looking forward to meeting everyone at that, but we just wanted to make sure everyone was aware of that fact because the, I mean, we're staying in one of those, yeah? We're staying in the...

Yeah, we're staying in the ocean view. It's the lead-in room. Of course, there's availability in some of the different suites, but, you know, I mean, it seems odd thinking about something for 10, 11 months in advance, but the reality is, you know, people need to prepare and book flights and Yeah, absolutely. But anyway, into the... Well, I guess just in case you were interested in coming, though, it's the 11th to the 18th of November, and you guys can sign up on our website and book through some of our affiliates' links. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. If you want to come, we'd love to meet you.

But to get into the interesting stuff, we want to introduce a lady, as we mentioned, local Singaporean. Her name is Dr. Martha Lee. Yes. So she's actually official, a trained sexist. sexologist in the United States, actually. Yeah, she's trained. And she's done some stuff in other locations, some other study in other locations as well. Yeah, she's a really interesting lady, actually. So she is local Singaporean.

And I guess what we learned, the reason we wanted to actually interview her in the first place is because we wanted to give you guys out there listening to us a little bit of insight in some of the different cultures around the world. And, of course, we have... Sexual cultures as well as cultural requirement towards sex, I suppose. Yeah, absolutely. Because we have our own individual reality from growing up in Australia. And of course, everyone who's listening, and we have a lot of friends who follow us in the United States, they download or from Europe, may not know a lot about Asian culture.

And so for us, it was insightful, but also some of it is just such a wow factor, I guess, in terms of the differences between growing up. Yeah, absolutely. So we won't dig into those because that's covered throughout the conversation. conversation. And I think we ended up about 45 minutes of conversation. Yeah, that's true. We should probably get the wrap up. We'll get the intro wrapped up, I guess. So you guys can get to it. Just in case you would like to talk with Dr. Martha Lee and your local Singaporean listener, which we have a few, and Asia and Australia as well.

She's headed down to Australia very shortly. Euros Coaching is the name of her business, and you can find her at www.eroscoaching. So she'll be headed down. It's the Evolution Experience. Evolution Experience in Sydney. It's early February and she's doing some workshops down there. Second of the second, the seventh of the second you've got here. So if you want to catch up with some of her workshops, she's doing some workshops for couples, some workshops for single people, empowerment workshops. And incidentally, the Yoni Massage training that I did was with... Hosted by Dr. Martha Lee.

Yeah, hosted with Dr. Martha. So we'll put her a comment. contact details on our website anyway while we do the show notes here but you can also follow her on Twitter at dr for Dr Martha Lee so we hope you enjoy it yeah enjoy thanks guys so thanks very much Dr Martha Lee for joining us on the show today and we have a couple of questions we want to ask you but of course before we get into that you are a sexologist based in Singapore can you give us a quick understanding of your background and what interested you in being a sexologist here in Singapore? Sure.

Well, I'm Singaporean Chinese, born and bred in Singapore. I have, I studied in San Francisco, but even then I didn't really live there. I was commuting back and forth for five times when I was doing my doctorate in human sexuality. So I think that's one thing that's quite unique because I am entirely born and bred here, having lived overseas, unlike a lot of other more internationally based Singaporeans.

And I got into this work because I've always liked sex and I have had some sex positive experiences through my mom and it formed a belief in me that sex was something that was worthwhile waiting for and looking forward to when I grow up. And after growing up, realized that there really wasn't much in terms of where I could go to learn. And I just kind of figured out a lot of things by myself. Internet being a great help. Growing up, there wasn't internet. And it really wasn't until I was in my mid-20s that we had the internet. So then I just...

I also had friends around me who were sexually inhibited and unable to enjoy sex and I really wanted to help them. So combination of many, many things, timing and finances came in and so I decided to pursue this doctorate and start my practice in Singapore. I mean, you've reached so many interesting things just there.

I mean, the fact that you know as you said it was you spoke about sex in your family but you know you had friends who also maybe they didn't know where to go they didn't know how to find out about sex and you know there's such a big cultural difference between you know where we grew up in Australia and the the sexual culture there versus what we've seen in in some Asian culture and so can you talk us through I mean the people that you're helping and even your girlfriends you were talking about earlier what do you find is such a big cultural difference between what you maybe saw when you were studying in San Francisco versus what you see here?

Yeah, I've traveled to Sydney, Australia as well and also taught in Perth and Sydney. I guess the more westernized society and Asian culture is different in the sense that we have the supposed Asian values where until you are married, you are still a child. And as more and more people go for higher education, they are still children until they get married. So technically, you are still a child to your parents until you're in your 30s. Because you would go for your university studies and some people are not going for their master's and doctorate now.

So this whole thing about you are a child means that you are financially dependent on your parent, which means you're in their household. and there is definitely lack of privacy as well when you live with your parents. Not to mention that the houses in Asia are generally smaller as well. So there's a lack of privacy and there's this whole Asian value thing of how we value chastity and virginity.

So sex is not really talked about because our parents don't have sex education themselves from their parents and It's something that they might be embarrassed talking about and so they don't talk about it. So this perpetuates the shyness and inhibitions that the parent has, the child can sense and so doesn't bring it up. There's also a lack of any kind of encouragement to get education when it comes to sex for fear that if you are more educated, you will want to explore more. Kids being kids, you know, always curious and wants to break rules.

So suddenly when it comes to sex, it's better just to not talk about it. So for Asian culture, it's very much so. Independence is not really talked about. You are really taught from a young age to respect your parents. And then you have all these good girls and good boys. They listen to their parents literally, including not masturbating. I do have clients who have had experiences where they were caught masturbating, were told not to masturbate, and really stopped masturbating.

and so a big part of their sexuality was already shut down for more than 10 or even 20 years by the time they have real problems and come in to seek my help because suddenly they're married they have this license to have sex but they really have no idea how to do it and their only reference is porn which is not real sex yeah it's not real it's entertainment it's contrived and a lot of it objectifies the man and the woman and gives a lot of as well as false beliefs of what it should be like. Not to mention first-time sex.

There's not really much information online about how to consummate your marriage as a first-time person. And this... Sorry about the noise. This also happens to men, you know, and women. So I have clients coming in who are both virgins. And when I ask them, is it because of... of religion, they tell me it's because we're Asians and we value virginity.

So it's not really so much of course for some people it's religious but I'm saying this Asian value seems to be a real have a real hold on people so much so that they don't and anything around sex becomes taboo because it's not talked about by their parents it's not talked about much in school for me growing up and maybe more so now but really even like in recent years Indonesia is taking a backwards step you know like now they want to kill all homosexuals so it's and also they want to kill all women in proximity of men now you know like they've gone backwards so advocacy work is very important and it's there are lots of you know challenges because is also like religious influences and then there's political.

So coming back to your question in a long roundabout way, I guess the difference and thankfully the difference between me and my friends is I have had one or two like sex positive experiences through my mom.

Like my mom used to walk around the house naked and when me and my sister who was one year younger would tease her, she would say, you know what, there to be embarrassed about both of you came from my body and this is my house so I can walk around naked if I want to and as a child looking at that you know I was really puzzled at the same time I had admiration for my mom that she was so body proud and confident another time you know I asked my mom when I was young how sex is like and she didn't answer me she never accepted explain to me the birds and the bees.

If anything, she just said it in a really crude way, like, oh, you know, the penis just is stuffed into you. She didn't even say where. So, she didn't even use the word penis, of course. She used it in, like, dialect. So, it's crude and it's scary. But, one day, I just asked my mom, like, when I was young, I asked her, what is sex really, really like? And, She didn't say anything. She smiled. And it didn't go into birds and bees. So that gave me the impression that sex was something beautiful, wonderful, amazing, something that I can look forward to when I grow up.

And so the difference between me and my friends is they were told as little as me, told nothing. But the difference is I had little glimpses of impressions that sex would be wonderful. And so that fueled my curiosity and my desire to help people and help myself first and help other people. For a long time it was just about myself. Yeah, sorry, go on. I think, well, certainly in our experience, Singapore seems to be still a little bit further behind in some of the Asian cultures. Would you support my opinion on that or do you think that I've just picked the wrong group?

I really don't know because it depends what Asian culture you mean. For instance, anything that makes money is definitely go for it. So study hard, work hard. These are very much Asian values. Be smart with your money, save money. These are very good values that support a person being a successful adult. So some of these Asian values are not necessarily bad. It's just when it comes to sex because there's so little of accurate information and education. So there's a lot of shyness and inhibitions.

And because it's such a pattern of, okay, shut down your sexuality, listen to mom and dad, focus on studies, study, work hard. Don't really ask questions about joy, happiness, pleasure, sensation, happiness. Don't really ask yourself questions around things that… So, sex education is still not taught here in Singapore? We have sex education in Singapore now. At student, like at high school level or something like that? Like teenagers. Yeah. They do have it. They do have it. They have it in primary school now too. It's more abstinence-based. But it's better than me, you know. I had none.

Like literally once a year when I was in my high school or secondary school. I would have like a sanitary pad company come in and all the girls had to fall into the hall and listen to how we need to clean our vaginas or I mean like maintain generous hygiene. Yeah. Sexual health. Yeah. Sexual health. And it's not about pleasure. And we had scary talks as well. I remember one talk where we were shown scary pictures of abortion and we were given a little pinned. Wow.

Or like a six week old fetus and we were told that's how a fetus feet would be how small that's live and abortion is bad and that really freaked out some women and Dr. Martha how old were you when they were talking to you about abortion and showing you those images I think I was I was I think I was like maybe 11 wow yeah I was really I was I thought oh this pin is really cute and then I wore it for like a few weeks and I was like actually this this is kind of gross. And that actually the way. Wow. Thanks for sharing that experience with us. Yeah, that's really interesting.

I'm always interested in what level of sex education happens in, you know, whichever country we're in and whether that, you know, becomes a detriment or a positive experience. Certainly in Australia, I received sex ed, I think in grade three. So that's probably seven years, eight years old. Yeah, of course, there's different levels of it, though. They might start out in that more sexual health realm, and then as you get older, they're starting to talk a little bit more about why you do it. Yeah, as you get to puberty, things get a little bit more exciting.

We do have a more abstinence-based program right now, and really it's talking about basically abstain. It's not even giving comprehensive sex education. It's not talking about abstinence. I believe safer sex practices is so important because it's also about, like you mentioned, selecting partners and being able to have negotiations and safer sex elevator speeches and talking about consent and boundaries. This is all very blur for me growing up.

And I have had to struggle with being assertive because as a child, like I mentioned, child until marriage, I was told to just shut up and I was not taught to assert myself. And when I did articulate, it always used to come out as aggression. And that's very common for Asians because we don't feel safe speaking and we are afraid of offending people. So we don't speak our truth. And then when it comes to the bedroom, obviously, since we haven't had practice asserting ourselves, then there is a lot of... and fear and worry that happens in the bedroom.

Yeah, I can imagine there's a lot of built-up pressure there as well around sex, given you know nothing about it. If the education only comes from porn, then porn is absolutely contrived. There's nothing real about porn at all. Well, the good thing about Singapore is we are a very international community country, cosmopolitan, kind of like New York, but not quite. And we are more and more international, like, you know, with social media, with pop culture, with Hollywood. All these Western influences are making people more independent in their thinking, even though they are Asians.

So the younger generation are not having the same kind of level of taboo and inhibitions that my generation has. I'm talking about people who were born in their late 70s or 80s. The younger generation have less of that and they are encouraged in school to be more questioning. And so all these things will help them to also apply the same rationale in getting sex information and knowledge for themselves. So I do see this. changing, I believe. I like to think so. And I have all kinds of clients, you know, not just Singaporeans. I have clients from India, from the region, really.

India, Malaysia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Philippines. Because Singapore is also considered a medical hub. So they come through and I'm very privileged to have access to all these different cultures and nationalities. and of course I also work with expats here like foreign Western Westerners as well and I would say sometimes where they come from is less important than what they were exposed to. Yes, absolutely. What was instilled in them at a young age and how they grew up.

Yeah, so like you could have somebody from Netherlands who was extremely shy around sex and you can have a Singaporean who is more open. So I take a little snapshot of who they are, where they are, I look at their race, nationality, and I get a sense of their background, and then we move on from there. I choose to, when I work with people, always look at them as individuals. Yeah, I think that's absolutely necessary because even if you look at myself and see, you know, my mother instilled in me that masturbation was dirty, right?

So this is not just something that that happens in Asia, this happens in Australia as well. And I think C had the same, exactly the same thing. It wasn't just masturbation for me. I mean, I grew up in a household where sex was a wifely duty. It was something not necessarily to be pleasured. It was to appease your husband until the next time that you had to then perform that duty, almost like it was washing the dishes. So, you know, even we also have these households where not necessarily... can you blossom in that situation? Now, you spoke a little bit about virginity and virginity loss.

We did notice, you know, versus Australia, because that's where we come from, so we know a little bit about that, and the age here in Singapore is older than Australia. You spoke about culture and families and living in smaller houses. Do you think they're the only contributing factors or are there other things perhaps causing that late virginity loss? Well, I think it's perpetuating, you know, like when I was young, I saw my classmate of mine, she wore this pin in her hair and then I wanted the same pin.

So I cried and I told my dad and I, my dad went to ask her mom where she got the pin and then my dad went to buy the pin. So it's a little bit of peer pressure that's already happening when I was six, you know. So it's kind of like that. If all you, everyone around you is busy studying and don't have a boyfriend and then those people who do have boyfriends are considered distracted from their studies. So, then you just look at them as black sheep and you just focus on your studies.

A lot of it is very much studies-based because we're really talking about not disappointing your parents and having a good job because when you grow up and get a good job, then you're expected to start giving money to your parents. Hmm. So their livelihood actually depends on you. So a lot of expectations. So a lot of expectations and, you know, we don't have independence. We're not encouraged to move out of the house at 16. We're not encouraged to move into the dorm or, you know. For the university studies and things like that, yeah. It's typically all done from home. Yeah.

There are people who stay in the dormitory but only when their house is really far, like far as in like across the island. Singapore is a small island, you know. So we don't really have that much of that happening. And with more international students coming to Singapore, I think the dorms are also having challenges of accommodating more Singaporeans. I would say a small percentage of students really stay in the dorm. And therefore, you don't have your privacy. You don't have all that peer pressure. You... you are basically less influenced and I don't know what you call it, like blinkers.

I kind of went through that. You're just so busy studying, you don't have time for anything else. Yeah, okay. Just to move on, I mean, you understand that we're in the swinging lifestyle. Yeah. And we've found that there is an underground community here for swingers, but I'm curious as to... you know, if we were at an event and we actually spoke to people about the fact that we were that way, our relationship worked that way, what do you think the reaction would be from the general public as an overarching view? I think most people would be shocked. Yeah, okay.

Most people would be shocked and it depends who you talk to, the more educated Singaporeans would be curious but it would not be curious in the sense of in a good way. It would be curious like, ha, I have this lab rat now. I can ask all the questions about swimming and sex. Probably comes back to the lack of sexual training or education. People, if they find somebody like that, they try and dig in. There's this whole thing like, oh, these are things that white people do. We Asians don't do this, which is not true. But that's what they seem to think. White people are promiscuous.

So they might think of words along the lines of immoral because you know you don't know what you don't know and then what you don't know you tend to judge so I definitely was more judgmental when I was not a sex educator because I was not exposed and once I was exposed and got all this education a lot of my limiting beliefs and judgments just fell away and when they fell away I felt liberated I felt at one with all humanity and And it actually made me a better person when I became less judgmental when it comes to sexuality.

So really, I am the exception because I went and got all this training and education. But it is definitely challenging for people who haven't had the opportunities I've had, who are not as curious about sex as me, to go and find out about things that they are not really into.

Like, you know, I have had to really study about BDSM because I find the whole idea really bizarre so I went and got like more than 10 over books on BDSM and I read them all from online you bought them online I'm assuming you didn't buy them no I bought them I bought them no I bought them from Amazon and then I got them shipped shipped in in my luggage I was going to say I don't think we've ever seen a book like that in Singapore yeah I know you're not going Some stuff is censored. So I just bought them in the US when I was there and then I just bought my whole collection here.

I have tons and tons of books because I know I wouldn't be able to get them in Singapore. And when I try to get sex-related books in the library, it's really, really hard. So there's very little excess but then there's online. People can get information online and a lot of times they don't know where to go because... The trouble with online is you can never... figure out whether it's accurate or not. Yeah. And as soon as you start looking for anything sexual, the first thing that pops up is porn and mountains of porn. You have to dig through that to find something real. Yeah.

And it is off-putting for people who really want to seek knowledge. I also have people who, you know, go and do research for hours and hours, come in with all these like crap, like, you know, like the most bizarre ideas about sex that they now have believe as fact now and they want to educate me. Oh really? So that happens when people have too much information and a lot of it is inaccurate. Yeah that's Dr. Google at work right there. Yeah. Dr. Google strikes again. It's the best medical research everybody does straight to Google and generally it's all wrong.

Yeah it's so generally I find certain websites site is really good like Scarlet Teen is really good even though it's meant for teenagers but because it's so comprehensive and well written I recommend a lot of my clients there then there's WebMD which is medical based which is also a safe site to go to so these are the two that I would recommend people to go to for a start to get some sex education yeah and I guess sticking with the education theme, you actually run classes here in Singapore. And I have had a look on your website and you run a really large spectrum of different classes.

You know, everything from very simplistic questions about, as you say, you know, maybe the first time you're having sex, right through to, you know, touching or bordering on some of that BDSM or kink stuff. So what would you say are some of the most successful classes that you're running here in Singapore? Yeah, because nobody else in Singapore is running sex-educated workshops publicly. I'm sure there are workshops that are being held privately. I feel that it is important to talk about it even if... So sometimes I partner with other people to run BDSM-related workshops.

But the most popular workshops are the handjob blowjob workshops so I have a handjob workshop I have a blowjob workshop for ladies and I've been I've been doing this for seven years so I used to run them separately then I combined them then in the last year I've I've separated them again because there are people who find them quite overwhelming and like a lot of information coming at them especially if it's their first time kind of really yeah talking about it and I guess even opening up to you would take some time for you to bridge that gap so they feel like they don't need to be shy.

They can ask questions and engage. Yeah. So these are the popular ones. I really like running this Art of Feminine Presence workshops. I'm a licensed teacher from Rachel Jane Groover who certified me. And these workshops are really about helping those who identify as women to understand what femininity means to them because a lot of times it means being weak and being fluffy or being a bimbo but that's not what femininity really is about. There is strength in femininity and a lot of women are feeling really overwhelmed.

They feel that they've lost that touch of what it means to be a woman and so I run these workshops as well that I'm very passionate about being a woman I see you probably get that from your mother you know having that feeling of beautiful body and you know a beautiful presence and wanting to share that with other women yeah I also learned a lot from my mother what not to do we all learned a lot in terms of that so that's the thing that I have about us Asians is that you know we put blame onto our education system, on our culture, on our parents.

And I think in order to really step into our power as adults is to stop blaming anybody and just take responsibility. If you didn't have sex education, go get it. If you have questions, go find the answers. If you feel that you don't know something, go learn. And so I always hear these people, you know, my clients coming in and complaining and every single one of them would say, yeah, you know, it stems from lack of sex education. Yeah. It's good they're seeking it. Yeah. I mean, it's like putting blame somewhere and at some point we really need to move past that and just take ownership.

So that's kind of why I run these classes to help people who are not sexually confident to know that, okay, there's somewhere that they can go that they can learn sex techniques without feeling like it's sleazy. So none of my workshops in Singapore has any touch on nudity.

I do run workshops with touch and nudity in Australia but in Singapore because I'm a certified sex educator so my code of ethics doesn't allow me to have touch on nudity and I really don't want to because in Singapore once I start doing things like that people start thinking you know start judging me again and start doing that. It will be seen differently no doubt at all. Yeah.

So I choose not to do that in Singapore even though I might get a lot of money and I might become popular but I don't want to be controversial for the wrong reasons I want to always be very clear who I'm serving and I want to serve the majority and I run all these BDSM workshops sure but not many and they also don't have a lot of response so sometimes even though I want to run more different kinds of workshops but if I don't have a lot of response then it's ultimately still a business. I don't want to keep doing things that will drain my energy. And especially if it's not helping anyone.

Yeah, especially since I get tired trying to run so many workshops that people don't sign up for. So I just keep running the popular workshops and the ones that I really feel that people need, they don't sign up for. Like, you know, workshops on their sexual attitude before you even talk about techniques. The attitude is more important than a technique but nobody wants to hear about you know, sex attitude because everybody thinks they know everything. So, they're just very pragmatic, you know, oh, get better in sex techniques.

That's what they want, but, you know, and I give it to them, but it's not really something that fills me up so much.

So, from next year, I'm going to offer like, still, like, a la carte workshops, like, full day workshops with handjob, blowjob, but also so like an option like if you sign up for the whole day you get a discount and then during that I will talk more about like sex attitude and now history and culture and all that stuff okay just to just to drag you back a little bit to back into the world of swinging sure I'm just curious have you had any exposure with with swingers in Singapore yeah I come across swingers in Adult Friend Finder and I have been approached but I personally don't do it.

Oh no, that wasn't the question. It was just more... That swingers sought your help. Yeah, yeah. Have swingers sought your help I suppose is another way to put it. No. Okay. I have different kinds of clients who seek me out. A lot of them cannot consummate their marriage. A lot of them have vaginismus. Then I have men who have premature ejaculation with problems with erection. And then I have some people interested in conscious sexuality and Tantra. Some people who have concerns around their kink and their fetish and BDSM and stuff. I sometimes redirect them to the BDSM community.

But when it comes to swingers, no. I have not had a single client who has questions. Oh, that's not true. I have had one client who was involved in swinging and But it was not like swinging related question. It's more like swinging plus effect on their relationship and stuff. So not many, not many.

I think a lot of swingers in the first place, contrary to what a lot of people might believe, but I'm sure your listeners would already know this, contrary to what a lot of people believe, people who are engaged in BDSM, into fetish, into swinging, These people are generally more educated anyway, and they are more empowered, and they have a more international kind of thinking, like well-traveled and all that. So these people are definitely not disempowered. So I get disempowered people, people who are inhibited coming to see me, because if you don't have a problem, you don't fix it.

So I generally get people with lots of inhibitions coming to me. So I would assume that's one of the reasons why swingers don't come. Inhibitions is a good word there, I suppose, because one of the questions we had was in terms of gay and lesbian couples in Singapore. Now, I mean, it's well known that the gay male relationships are still not officially supported in Singapore. Unofficially, you know, I think there's only been two people actually prosecuted in the last five years or something like that. So unofficially it's tolerated, but officially it's not approved. It's illegal, yeah.

Yeah, it's illegal. That's right. So I suppose to combine a couple of questions there, I'm just curious, I would imagine that you would be seeing people from those communities. Additionally, what advice do you have for the single... or sorry, for the gay males and lesbians living in Singapore. What's the, you know, is there an easy way to get around this, I suppose? I'm not really sure, like, what you're asking.

I guess if you have people coming to you that feel like they have maybe these tendencies or maybe they already have explored a little and they're struggling with their sexuality, Do you have people seeking your advice on that? People coming in to talk about even just having a shoulder to cry on or a person to talk to? I do work with GLBTQ gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender people and the fact that I identify as heterosexual is sometimes also an issue because there are already counselling groups in Singapore, Uga Chaga, that is counselling people who are gay.

So people who are already in, I guess, a little bit more out would probably go to such places because they think that they would be understood more.

And people who are not open to still questioning themselves and don't want to be gay or seeking a cure like maybe their parents they might come to me and so about last year I think I made a video on my stance about homosexuality I feel that sometimes as an educator putting out such information actually deters people from coming to see me so while people will say well you know it's good that you came out and talked about what's your stance so they know how to approach you.

It's not necessarily true because the parents will not seek me and then they wouldn't be able to have that shoulder to cry on and start exploring their own discomforts around homosexuality. It must put you in a somewhat of a difficult position though knowing that their parents may have or you know somebody's parents may have sent them to you to effectively cure them and you know you may not share the same values as what they do. I could imagine that could cause some interesting internal conversations for you. I cannot be anything more than be sex positive.

So I am not going to pretend that it's okay for me to hear all that stuff about reparative therapy, which I don't agree to. So by putting it out there, yes, I feel feel I'm losing business. Yes, I might be turning away some people who might be able to start grappling around this issue of accepting their children, for instance. But it is definitely better than not having any stance and then they come to me and then they assume I will be a certain way and then feel that they've wasted their money. Yeah, for sure.

So, you know, like, there's really no point, like, um, having conversations where we are arguing from different places. Yeah. Um, so, so yes, it is, um, in a way, um, a bit sad that, um, um, that's how it is, you know, um, people who are, who identify as gay, uh, they would go to their gay counseling community and then people who are not so open, they might come to me, um, wanting to have a more neutral stance. So, um, a few years ago, I can share this story because this person was not my client, wanted to find out like, you know, is he gay? And was having like questioning and all that.

So, he bought an appointment, then he cancelled it and a few months later when I followed up with him, he said, oh, I'm not gay anymore. I went for hypnotherapy and apparently it works. So, who am I? Who am I? to argue with him if that's the resolution that he wants. So I can only be available for people. I hold that space and people who want to seek help can come to me. I feel it is important to have a sexologist here in Singapore who is sex positive, who is Asian, who is a woman.

I feel that being a woman being an Asian has helped me a lot in being able to cut through all that bullshit and really be able to help clients because that's key isn't it I mean you're here to support and you're here to help and having you as a resource available I'm sure would just be amazing for some people who are struggling with something like consummating their marriage right through to you know performance in the bedroom yeah for sure so like Like when they pull that whole, I have no sex education, my father this, my mother that, you know. And I just go, look here, I'm Asian.

I went through that. Look at me. I've worked through it. That's how I got this training and this sex education. Now I'm helping people. So I understand that. When are you going to take responsibility for where you want to be as an adult when it comes to your sexuality? And so immediately, you know, we just cut through all that. Once you get to be adult age, of adult age, it's your own decisions to make in terms of the research you do, in terms of the people you speak to, in terms of the books you pick up when you're overseas. Everyone can get hold of an Amazon book these days.

So it really comes down to your own choice to try and find that information. It's like any other education, really. If you don't know something about your emotional intelligence, then you can buy a book. and educate yourself. Precisely. So my clients get into all kinds of anxieties around their performance and how come I can't do this, other people can, porn star can do this, how come I can't? And I ask them like, where do you think they learned from and what do you think you learned from and where did you get your information and what actually do you know about sex?

And then they all realize that it all boils down to them not knowing better and being really hard on themselves. And we are not that way with ourselves when it comes to anything else in our lives. We literally have had to learn everything in our lives from cooking, cleaning, driving, using the computer, software, everything we've learned. So somehow, miraculously, nobody has taught us anything and then we expect ourselves to know this because sex is supposed to be natural. It's quite an irony given the emphasis that's on education in Singapore.

You know, parents do, I'm not going to say pressure, but they certainly do have expectations of their children as they study and as they go through their education. And it's quite interesting that, you know, the kids who then turn into adults don't seem to pick up the fact that they need to learn this stuff. Yep. Yep. You are right. Yeah. So this is, um, this is constantly the thing that they come in beating themselves up over it. Somehow they seem to think that, um, you know, they are losers because they, they don't know. They haven't figured it all out by themselves.

And, um, it's a very tough position to put yourself in. They play victim and all that. And, um, they become really disempowered. So it's very ironic. Yes. Um, you know that's this saying if you can control a person's sexuality you can control them I look at all my clients who are totally disempowered because they feel they have this this thing that they are now fixated on that makes them less perfect and they are it takes up so much of their energy that I really do believe if you control a person's sexuality you control them And the lack of sex education is a way of controlling people.

Yeah, that's a really interesting perspective. I might definitely look into that a little bit more. And we really appreciate you sharing everything with us today and our listeners. As you say, we have obviously people that follow us that are swingers, but we also have people that follow us and listen to us that, you know, maybe are just trying to learn more about sexuality and even have conversations with So this sort of information to share is really important just to be out there and available for people to have a look at and listen.

So in terms of people contacting you, if they want to find out more about the services that you offer or I know that you write a lot of blog posts and newsletters, can you tell us maybe just for the listeners where they can contact you? Sure. So my website is eroscoaching.com. And I'm also on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram. But the best way to contact me really is to just drop me an email. And don't write me a one-liner. Tell them a little bit about your story. Yeah, give me a name.

Like, I really hate it when people, like, just expect me to be, like, unagony and not even introduce themselves. And so, yes, I want to help. people who are genuine about wanting to be helped. And I also expect some courtesy. Of course. Yeah. We can certainly fill you in on some of the emails we've received that are less than courteous. Less than courteous is certainly the best way to put it. Some of them fairly sturdy, sturdily, sexually biased. Yeah. Abuse. That's just quite abuse. It really is. Yeah. Some of the things that pop up, yeah, are quite interesting. Absolutely.

And, um, We will add that information to our website as well as the podcast because we're all about sharing information and the more information that's available and hope that, you know, if you help one person, fantastic. If you can help 10, then so much the better. Yeah, absolutely. And also, if anybody, you know, wants to contact us for some referral to you, of course, we're happy to do that as well. Great. Thank you very much for having me. It's been really fun. Yeah, we've enjoyed it as well. And thank you, Dr.

Martha Lee, for sharing, I guess, a little bit about your history as well and how you grew up and, I guess, what influences that had on you as a person because, as you say, you know, cultural aspect can have certainly a part to play, but, you know, how you've grown up and what's ingrained in you as a person from a young age can have a pretty big impact. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you. So, guys, that was Dr. Martha Lee. What did you think? I thought she was interesting. There's some very interesting conversation in there. There's some... Heavy? Heavy, yeah.

Some stuff that I suppose I wasn't expecting in terms of the local culture here in Singapore. Yeah. But also some stuff I was as well. Interesting too, I guess, that her own background, you know, her mother kind of displaying more womanly power and walking around naked and kind of saying, it's your body, why be ashamed of it? Whereas her girlfriends had the...

complete opposite experience so but I don't think that's terribly dissimilar to everywhere around the planet you know you may have one hippie tree hugging mother you know what I mean who's all about sitting around smoking weed and by the campfire naked versus somebody who's you know a little more uptight an uptight may not be the right word but it's the word I'm using okay sure so yeah we hope you enjoyed it and thanks again for listening if you've got any feedback as always drop us an email at cnd at swingingdownunder.com yeah and look forward to talking to you guys soon thanks sexy followers this is c and this is d and this is swingingdownunder.com