Ahead of the February 11 Residence 11 Desire Summit on Sex and Relationships (get tickets here!), we’re conducting a series of livestream interviews with Summit speakers. You can watch them live or after the fact on our YouTube channel, Facebook page or Twitter account, and ask questions for our interviewees.
Dirty Lola is a sex edutainer, speaker, and self-proclaimed dildo slinger. Known for her live sex ed Q&A show Sex Ed A Go-Go and as co-host of New York Magazine’s The Cut’s “Sex Probz” web series, Dirty Lola has also been featured as a sexpert on the Netflix docuseries The Principles of Pleasure. Fresh off an appearance on HBO docuseries Sex Diaries, Dirty Lola has spent almost a decade working to end stigma and shame surrounding sex and sexuality.
Watch our interview between Residence 11 Editor-in-Chief Rachel Kramer Bussel and Dirty Lola in which they explore Dirty Lola’s personal story on how becoming a sex educator and edutainer seemed destined for her. She will be one of the many talented contributors speaking at the Residence 11 Summit in 2023. Dirty Lola will give our closing keynote speech about The State of Modern Online Dating. Watch the full interview here:
On her early sexual education:
“I wasn’t taught at home. Nothing. We never got the talk, we never had those kinds of direct conversation.
At school, I think my first kind of talk about like sex was just really about getting your period. That’s [around] the fifth grade, they start talking to you about that? In the sixth grade, they go a little more in-depth, but there’s not really anything about sex except for ‘don’t do it.’ And then in high school health class, we did actually do the condoms, illustrations, talking about STI. But it’s still a lot of ‘don’t have sex,’ and ‘you’ll get pregnant’ and a lot of ‘you’ll get an STI.’
I did go to a more progressive high school in New York. So our health office passed out condoms and dental dams and all those things. We had a very large group of LGBTQ kids and I was one of them. So there was a lot more talk to us about those things. Because, oddly enough, if you are perceived as promiscuous, or a high-risk group, which LGBTQ just automatically gets perceived as high risk…”
On how she got involved in being in the sexuality as a profession:
“This all started with a Twitter account, and being bored. I joke I was a bored monogamous housewife, and I was looking for an outlet and going through a quarter-life crisis…”
If you are of a marginalized identity, so if you’re Black, you’re fat, you’re queer, other people who may feel uncomfortable, who are a part of that identity, who see you kind of living your life, especially as a person in a bigger body. People were like, oh, so that means this is possible, I don’t have to look a certain way in order to pursue that and have adventures of my own. And so inadvertently, that started becoming a thing where people were talking to me and asking questions, and I started going to conferences, because I found out about them via Twitter and the conferences. The first conference was really eye-opening. [I realized] there’s this community I want to be a part of. I didn’t know how I wanted to be a part of them.”
On her onscreen nudity:
“I think it’s important to show, I don’t want to say ‘normal,’ but a body that’s not a media-approved body. Talking about sex and having a sex life and all the things that people tell you you aren’t going to get if you don’t look a certain way, or they try to make you feel bad about it. I’m happy to be a part of that representation now.”
On her current personal experience with online dating:
“My experience with online dating, it’s weird. There’s no other word for it. It can be wild. It’s weird because there is a lot of madness happening online that you have to kind of work your way through and around.”
I think the biggest thing that I like to tell people is you have to be patient. It’s not you. It’s the algorithm and all the things that are going on in what people are looking for and what they’re not looking for or what they’re not being honest about what they’re looking for…
It’s hard to be in real life. But it’s especially hard to be in the digital world trying to like make connections with people.”
Watch the whole interview above and be sure to subscribe to our channels to catch all our interviews!
About the Desire Summit: The Residence 11 Desire Summit, sponsored by sex toy companies FUN FACTORY and Blush, intimate audio platform BLOOM, romance novel publisher Avon Books, and yoga teacher training company Ganja Yoga, will feature extensive educational sessions with over 20 diverse authors and subject matter experts across psychology, physical intimacy, technology innovation, sexual health, music and narrative storytelling. Speakers include writer Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah, author of The Sex Lives of African Women, polyamory expert Kevin Patterson, author of Love’s Not Color Blind, sex educator and dating expert Erin Tillman, USA Today and Wall Street Journal bestselling romance author and TikTok favorite Sierra Simone (Priest, American Queen), Mia Hopkins (author of Tanked, one of The New York Times’ best 2022 romances, romance novelist Suzanne Park (The Do Over, The Christmas Clash), and Taylor Hahn, author of swinging novel The Lifestyle, among others. Keynote speakers will be intimacy coach Zoë Kors, author of Radical Intimacy: Cultivate the Deeply Connected Relationships You Desire and Deserve, speaking on 6 Questions That Will Get You Instantly Connected to Anyone, and sex educator Dirty Lola, who appeared as a sexpert on Netflix’s The Principles of Pleasure, speaking on The State of Modern Dating. Get tickets here for the Desire Summit.