Sex Research with Psychologist and Researcher
DR. CANDICE NICOLE
0:03:46 - Danielle Bezalel
Good morning, how's it going?
0:03:48 - Dr. Candice Nicole
It's going well, how are you doing?
0:03:50 - Danielle Bezalel
I'm pretty good. I guess it's your afternoon, right, it just became your afternoon.
0:05:48 - Dr. Candice Nicole
It just became your afternoon, yeah.
0:05:50 - Danielle Bezalel
Just as the clock strikes, it's my morning. Just woke up a little bit ago, still getting my shit together. You seem very much like you've been awake for many hours, yeah.
0:06:01 - Dr. Candice Nicole
Many hours. Just got back from a workout but I feel like the turning in of me around 3pm shit is going to get real For sure.
0:06:10 - Danielle Bezalel
Yeah, I understand. I think there are different parts of the day where I'm just like a lot of energy, you really want to actively do a bunch of stuff, and then I need to sit for 45 minutes.
0:06:23 - Dr. Candice Nicole
I'm heavy on the morning person. Yeah, I can get all kinds of stuff done, but I don't know what it is. But my energy once it's depleted, there's no coming back from it until sleep happens.
0:06:35 - Danielle Bezalel
Right, you're like I just need a full night of this and then maybe tomorrow. Well, I'm really really happy to have you here today. You and I connected a couple months ago just based on other stuff that we were doing which we will get into, but I'd love for you to introduce yourself and just tell us about your work. You're an award-winning psychologist, sexologist and professor. You have a million talents, so let's get into that.
0:07:06 - Dr. Candice Nicole
Listen. I'm trying to narrow them down, though, because it's too much trying to do everything for everyone but I am a professor at the University of Kentucky and I study sexual wellness and liberation, so I get the chance to mentor some dope students, do some fun research. And I'm a writer, so I'm working on my first book, so that's awesome. I've been writing forever, since I was a kid, so this is like a dream come true. And then I'm a licensed psychologist so I see clients, I have a small practice and we get to talk about good things like sex.
0:07:41 - Danielle Bezalel
Yes, wow, okay, so you're working on your first book. How has that been going?
0:07:45 - Dr. Candice Nicole
You know what? I love the process because I'm learning stuff and you know. So I thought it was going to be me just like taking the research and making it sound like human beings normally talk. But I'm like, oh, I'm learning things, like I'm writing this chapter on sexual fun right now and I'm like there's not a lot of research on sexual fun and what is fun? How do we define it?
0:08:05 - Danielle Bezalel
Am I a fun person?
0:08:09 - Dr. Candice Nicole
Am I authorized to write this?
0:08:12 - Danielle Bezalel
So you're reflecting on a lot here. You're trying to figure out how to write about fun. What's going on for yourself? Um, sexual fun. I also have not really read any academia based on sexual fun. I mean it's like orgasms and like the physiological thing about orgasm. If it's about anything sex related, um, so that I can't wait to read your book. I'm very excited.
0:08:37 - Dr. Candice Nicole
And so I'm thinking about how all of these components of good sex are like, experienced by different people, based on our social locations. And for me, I was sitting with the fun part, like, hmm, I feel like I used to be fun, but 40 year old me is I don't think I am fun right now. So, as a new colleague of yours.
0:08:59 - Danielle Bezalel
I think you're a very fun person. I appreciate that. Yeah, of course. Um, you gotta, you gotta help your pals out when they're when they're questioning stuff. Um, let's go backwards a little bit. I want to know how you got into this work and on this podcast. I really ask a lot of my guests like what was your aha moment when you knew that you wanted to be researching and teaching about sexual and reproductive health and pleasure?
0:09:23 - Dr. Candice Nicole
I'm going to take you all the way back. So there are four things. One is my grandma's encyclopedia britannica set that she had on her bookshelf where I was figuring out like when puberty was going to happen. So I was like eight or nine. I was like when am I going to get boobs? Because that was very important to me.
So that was my introduction into the scientific inquiry. And then there is the black garbage bag of VHS porn tapes that were in my grandfather's closet, oh, wow. So it was like pairing that information with what sex is supposed to look like, sounding like you know the myth of all the porn, like putting those together. And then there was hip hop. So coming up in the eighties and nineties that was when my childhood was and seeing little Kim and Foxy Brown and so some of the first wave of black women who were exploring their sexualities publicly in hip hop music, that was the source of information. And then there was Cosmo magazine and books and stuff like that.
I was kind of pairing all this information because nobody was having real good conversations about sex, Shitty sex conversations all around including the health class ones, and at that point I think that the seed was planted that I would be a sex educator and researcher. But I didn't know those things existed as career paths. So I would be the kid in school telling my peers like you need to use this type of condom for this type of thing. Oh my God.
0:10:58 - Danielle Bezalel
When I was in high school, you were a peer to peer educator.
0:11:02 - Dr. Candice Nicole
Yes, yes, I was there, not knowing it was a thing. And then eventually, when I got into like high school and I found out psychology was a field, I was like that's it. That's what I want to do with my life. And I found later that I could pair them with my blow, so I was really excited about that.
0:11:19 - Danielle Bezalel
Yeah, you really carved out your own space in this field, even with sex therapists. They're like I think I saw an email of someone trying to pitch me to be on the podcast and they're like there are only a thousand sex therapists in the country, which is a very small right and I'm both like.
0:11:35 - Dr. Candice Nicole
I am a sex therapist, I'm just not certified with ASAC, but that's like. Primarily my clinical work talks about sex and sexualities, but I get the benefit of doing the academic research and most sex researchers I can name, probably a handful, maybe 10 are not therapists and most therapists are not researchers.
0:11:55 - Danielle Bezalel
So I get the best of both worlds. Okay, so there's a difference between like, so you call yourself a sex therapist, but there's this, a Q, described like what this ASAC certification is.
0:12:07 - Dr. Candice Nicole
So you can be a certified sex therapist through the American Association of Sexuality Educators, counselors and therapists. And you can be a sex therapist because that's your specialization area, but you don't have the certification. But you're a licensed mental health professional who specializes in sex.
0:12:25 - Danielle Bezalel
Yes, and that can relate to your grandpa's plastic bag of porn tapes for a hot second, because when I was a kid I found a VHS tape in the player of porn at my dad's house and my parents were divorced and he was, like you know, he wasn't the primary caregiver, so we lived with my mom, so I'm sure he just forgot to take it out. But I remember this feeling. I probably was in like middle school, or maybe I was in like fifth grade or something, and I just felt angry. I was just like ew, like why did like how dare you Like? Literally, how dare you Like? That was my first idea, cause I was like oh, like he's a pervert, like that's disgusting, like how dare you? Well, you know, I was a youth, I had zero clue.
0:13:13 - Dr. Candice Nicole
So that was a youth.
0:13:16 - Danielle Bezalel
And he and he didn't, like you know, make any overtures like okay, maybe you saw something and here's what you might have seen. It was just like oh, that's um, like that's not mine or something. He said some shit like that and I was like, oh God, that's so weird. So I totally like relate to having this very complex relationship and I think a lot of young kids, especially now with the internet, right Like they're seeing porn at very early ages and whether or not they are equipped to handle it and most are not, because parents are not talking about their to their kids about porn, schools are not doing porn literacy classes when they when they need to, and so I just I see you with that moment of kind of like okay, what is exactly going on here and how is this impacting me?
0:14:06 - Dr. Candice Nicole
like later in life, yeah, yeah, Cause I was not disgusted. I was very intrigued. Like oh so the pizza man comes.
0:14:16 - Danielle Bezalel
So that's how it happened.
0:14:18 - Dr. Candice Nicole
And then you have sex. So we had different reactions. I was just so curious, Like huh.
0:14:24 - Danielle Bezalel
Okay, this is adults. Did they like to have the conversation with you after they knew you saw it, or did they not? Nobody knew I saw it, cause I would rewind the tape back, put it back in there.
0:14:34 - Dr. Candice Nicole
But, there was this one time where me and some home girls were having a summer party and I was like, okay, we're at my grandparents house, that's where we stayed a lot of the time. And then my dad came over and we had to stop the tape because he was opening the door and I could not breathe.
I thought I was going to die for the 10 minutes he was like if he presses any button in here, I am going to be, I'm going to just melt into shame, Like yeah, I didn't even know if he would do anything, I just felt like I was going to melt into shame.
0:15:05 - Danielle Bezalel
Right. You're like me. This is how I die from shame at this moment.
Yeah, wow, I just heard. Okay, so let's get into the stuff that you study, some of your favorite things. One thing that I absolutely love about your brand is how brilliant the titles of your research are, right Like you have. Quote hashtag hot girl science, a liberatory paradigm for intersectional sex, positive scholarship Like first of all, I may, but I need to say some more. Or quote Another quote, why people stress me out all the time and quote black students define racial trauma. Right Like this. This is not the typical title that you would usually see in academia and, as a lay Person who has an MPH degree, right? Like, I'm kind of both.
0:15:58 - Dr. Candice Nicole
Say hello, you, a layperson.
0:16:00 - Danielle Bezalel
I'm not a researcher, so I still really see research, research, study. You've crossed over, you're right, we're gonna talk about that. But I think, like because I've always been someone who really, really adores Popular science, and like the way in which people are able to translate that to the regular public, I really do more so associate as a layperson with things that I don't necessarily understand, and so for the Research that you do, the extensive research, you're being super creative in Bridging the gap between academia and popular science. Q talks to me about that and like why you find that to be so critical.
0:16:39 - Dr. Candice Nicole
Yeah, it's Hella important because the people that I want to serve are not Predominantly academics, and so if we have, like our best stuff, our best science, locked behind these academic paywalls, people are about to pay forty five dollars to read that article. You know, Like.
So the title makes it intriguing, but then I'll use my social media to talk about it a little bit more, or I'll do an article or an op-ed or something to talk About it a little more in ways that are clearly articulated and not scientific or academic, so that everything that I'm doing is available to who I Set out to do it for.
So if my grandmother can't understand it I am not a good scientist like I feel like it's a part of the scientific process and most people who engage in the scientific process Understand dissemination as one of the ways that, you know, we get credibility in our field, one of the ways that we contribute to the field. But their ideas of dissemination are not public and mine are very public. So their academics coming up the pipeline, people I mentor or people who are looking to See what can be done, and that's why I like try to test those types of titles out To see what the journals are gonna say, because you know there are points in your career where you can get away with things because you have Built a reputation credibility and they trust your work, and so they're.
0:18:03 - Danielle Bezalel
I'm gonna push the envelope absolutely.
0:18:06 - Dr. Candice Nicole
I didn't know if the journal was gonna let white people stress me out all the time, but it was a direct quote from one of the participants in the studies. So I was like this is what they said, and this is a qualitative project, so right.
0:18:20 - Danielle Bezalel
I mean girl science.
0:18:21 - Dr. Candice Nicole
I was like this is what it's called so.
0:18:23 - Danielle Bezalel
I love the hot girl sign. I mean, they're both just amazing. And you have so many others that we can talk about and that we will talk about, but I Think it's it's so important, this piece is about like well, if my grandma can't understand it, then like why am I even doing this? Because if we and I have always felt this Generally in my MPH like just about research in general is that it is not Literate, like it's not made to be easily digestible, and I don't think that and it can be exploitative, right. So like, if we're, especially when we're talking about like BIPOC communities, marginalized communities, queer communities, and we're doing research on those folks, how often is research done on them? And then folks come back to check in on those communities and say like hey, actually, like what do you need from us now that we've like gotten this from you and gotten this information from you? And so I think that that is a really, really essential piece of what you're doing and it's very admirable and should be the norm, but unfortunately isn't.
0:19:26 - Dr. Candice Nicole
I start, actually, in the opposite direction. I start with what do you need from me as a person who has access to the privilege of academia and the resources here, and then get into the community and participate actively? So I'm not the type of Scientist that's going to tell a community what they need or do a study that in some way I didn't see an invitation to do, and so that means I'm just actively involved in listening, because that's the psychology ear Like what is?
happening, what needs to be done. Even if people didn't say can you study this? It's like this is the problem I keep running into. Ah, sounds like a good study. So I start with that approach. Then we collect data in the community, usually with a community advisory board, and then we Disseminate data in the community like who outlets are my folks going to listen to?
0:20:19 - Danielle Bezalel
Absolutely yeah, and we're. We're gonna get into, like some of the most you know, some of your biggest findings in your Big sex study a little later, but before that, I kind of want to talk about your podcast, because I feel like what you're talking about Really lends itself to the way in which you approach your podcast, which is called fuck the system a sexual liberation podcast that fuses sex science and discussion with sex educators, researchers, creators, therapists and workers about good sex and how to address the systems of oppression they get in the way of it. And so what you're talking about, of like, starting with a question: what do you need? I'm sure that this comes up a lot in your podcast when you're talking about what people feel about good sex, how they Relate to it, what's coming up for them, and I would love to hear maybe like a few standout guests and maybe some of the conversations that you've had that have really come with you.
0:21:15 - Dr. Candice Nicole
Oh, yeah, so one of my favorite guests. I love, I just enjoy the guest in general, right, but I would say one of the standout guests has got his honey bee and she does Dom work, a famed Dom and brilliant mind and thoughtfully articulate about what sex is and what sex can be and these systems of oppression that get in the way, and so that combination for me was like just vibing in the discussion and thinking about kink, in the value of it as liberation, thinking about how to reconfigure fetish. I had a similar conversation with Marla Stewart, who is the founder of Sex Down South, and thinking about how people play sexually, which I'm going back to. Going back to those when I think about writing that chapter because, like sex play and what it can look, like sex work and what it can look like, give us all invitations to have a broader understanding of sex, a more liberated understanding of sex, and because we talk shit about people in those fields, we miss the game and I'm like I want to learn everything I can learn and I want to share what I learned with others. So they were two really great guests.
I really loved the episode where I had people of the global majority, so people were racially and ethnically marginalized identities who were talking about ethical non monogamy, and so it was a group of people who were different walks in their ethical non monogamy journeys and what brought them to it, and exploring asexuality within ethical non monogamy and what it means to be married and ethically non monogamous, for single and ethically non monogamous Like there was just such a rich conversation and how, for many of them, they were told that that's white people shit and it's like it's not like that's human shit, it's like we can explore, and so that was a rich conversation too.
0:23:25 - Danielle Bezalel
I really, really love that. I would have loved to be like a fly on the wall consensually listening.
That's very true because I can listen to it. But I just mean like, in those moments when a conversation like that is happening, I think there's like and this is what happens to me and I'm sure you whenever sex or relationships or consent or anything is talked about, there's like this fiery build of like oh my gosh, how can I like contribute and what do I think about this? And like there's but. But you're totally right, I literally got to be by listening, so I will tune into that. That's a good plug.
But yeah, I think, specifically with ethical non monogamy, that has been coming up a lot for my guests and audience recently too. I think, like for our parents' generation, like that wasn't really talked about. It was kind of like oh, this is happening under the radar, under kind of the guise of like this is an affair or this is cheating or this is you know, or we're breaking up because I want to explore something with someone else, and I think that it's a really beautiful thing at least like in America, like speaking about our culture here that it's becoming more normalized and more a part of the conversation than ever before. Does it feel like that?
0:24:44 - Dr. Candice Nicole
you as well. It definitely feels like that for me. One thing that's interesting, though, is I feel our parents well, my parents' generation, so they were born in the early 60s, so by the mid 70s. Early and mid 70s, there was a free love movement. It just didn't hold on the same way, and so the language around it was I think the same backlash we're starting to see now happened in the 80s, and it wiped it from the collective consciousness. You know what I mean, so that by the time I was born in the 80s, I didn't. I'm hearing about that now in 2023 or 2020s, where it was a whole movement and a whole, you know, a whole vibe, and communities were developed and communities were dissolved, you know but, so I think my parents grew up in that era where it did exist, and I come from family system that's really complicated, where, like none of my siblings share the same two parents.
I have five sisters and a brother, so there were some elements of that that were playing out. Still, Like I was talking to my mom and I'm like you're still cool with all your exes and stuff and I'll cut people up Like I don't know these people anymore.
0:25:58 - Danielle Bezalel
Never heard of them. Never heard of them. Actually, she's like the person you dated for six years.
0:26:07 - Dr. Candice Nicole
But I think, because they grew up in that cultural environment, even if they weren't actively participating in one of those communities, there was something in the air around that time. There were a lot of liberation movements going on around that time, and then the 80s backlash was just. I mean, it was propaganda you know around. Hiv and AIDS and all of that. Yeah, totally.
0:26:28 - Danielle Bezalel
And I think it's kind of like a recycling of like 1950s ideals of like oh well, you're going to find your partner and then you're going to have your kids and then you're going to have your little house and like, I think, similar. Now I'm a perfect example of this. I live in a commune.
Shut your mouth. I did not know that. So my fiance and I live in our own one bedroom apartment that is kind of like a shared property with like 17 other adults and there are parents with babies and like we all come together for dinner every night and everyone is. It's really really amazing. I've like I've never lived in a community like this before and there are so many benefits of just being like okay, like we have our own space and that's great, and we don't have to participate if we don't want to, but it's really really great to be able to go and have a conversation with someone about something that's going on. We have like a hot tub and a garden and like just these amazing kinds of things that we would have never been able to afford on our own. So it's kind of like pulling resources, us being able to live together, and it is the same kind of idea of breaking these norms that you just need one other person in your life to fulfill all your needs. It's terrible.
Yeah, it's really a lot of pressure. And so I think, like, especially my fiance and I recently, you know whatever in November we got engaged and there are all these notions that come along with that. Right, like, okay, well, you're going to get married and you two will just be you two, and then when you have kids, that's going to be your unit, and you know that's part of it. But I think, seeing this other piece of the community that we're a part of, and how people can be like hey, like I'm going to grocery shop, like can somebody take the baby monitor, like there's so much of an ability of like yeah, I got your back, we're all like, we're all kind of like a family here, and that's really really great. And so I wonder, what do you think about that? Is that like something that you would be interested in researching or like, you know, like a non-sexual kind of community needs and the way that we like to step up.
0:28:34 - Dr. Candice Nicole
Look, I have been having this conversation because I have a four year old and we are just my husband and I, out here alone, because my family is in Georgia, his family is in Chicago and I'm like how the fuck are we going to survive this? And so when I went home and all my friends were there and my sister and my mom and my grandmother live in the same house and my other sister lives right down the street and the kids could come, I was like this is how I grew up, right this is how I grew up.
I miss multi-generational families, but what you're extending it to is a community and when you said it it really took me back because it sounds like so. I grew up in a small town subsidized housing project and I was like it sounds like the projects without the state sanctioned involvement and with a bit more economic resource. You know what I mean. But the way we took care of each other, the way I could just walk down the street and go to somebody's house until my mom got off a late shift or you know, like, like we would feed each other and there everybody was on T.
you know, like that, that for me is the way to do it, like the only way you survive this type of system. So, I love that.
Danielle Bezalel
It just kind of like brings into question all of these other ideals, specifically about like partnership and who you need and who are the only people that are allowed to play a certain role in your life, and I think it's all related Like it really is all this like web, but yeah, we can chat offline about a potential study here. There's something going on, something good is going on. Something good is happening. I want to get into your research because you have published over 50, 50 research articles. Just holy hell, congratulations. First of all, that's a lot of work and getting approved by the IRB and you know doing, you know the leadership on that and figuring things out and hypothesizing. There's all these things that come with that and it's a lot of work and effort.
I want to know about the big sex study, aka black people's constructions of good sex, describing good sex from the margins. Okay, again, fantastic title. I love that it's called the big sex study. It's really relatable immediately. Obviously, as a sex educator, I'm like I want to know everything that you're studying. I want to know what you learned, like, tell me everything. What were you looking to understand? Who did you study? Like, how, how did they kind of find the study and what was their experience in it? And I want to know what you found.
0:33:03 - Dr. Candice Nicole
Okay, so I had a lot of fun with this study. It was definitely a hot girl science approach, and my co-investigator was Dr Shamika Thorpe. She's a dope sex educator and so she and I led this project with a community advisory board of sex researchers, educators, workers, and so there were black women in films from different age ranges, sexual identities, walks of life, and then my research team, which is multi-racial and different ages, body size, sexualities all of that and at the University of Kentucky. So when we set out to do the study, it was like we want to know about pleasure and good sex and sex positive elements of black experiences, because much of the research to date had been sexual health deficit lens like HIV, stis, unplanned pregnancy that nobody wants to say is like the day to day experience of your sexual life, like those are components, but it's not like.
So the reason why people have sex is not the reason why people don't have sex. So we wanted to get into desire and like, just play around with some things. So it was three phases. The first we did a big survey of 500, around 500 black people with different ethnicities and ages, sexualities, genders, all of those components asking them about sexual pleasure, asking them about masturbation, asking them about how they define good sex, asking them what their favorite sex song is. It's like lots of fun questions. And then we interviewed 37 of them. After that, we did focus groups with three groups of them, and so we got different types of data and we've been just writing papers relating to the data. So the big sex studies first paper was that good sex one that you're describing. But our first project, our first output, was our playlist, and so when we took all of the songs that people said were their favorite sex songs, one of my mentees, Dr Chesmore Monti, created a DJing work too, so he created the playlist from that song.
You know how you put the songs in a certain order for them to really vibe. That was the first thing that we put out, because we were like we want it to be something that people can access and resonate with them. And then we did that paper and in that paper we found 20 components of good sex. So we asked Black Folk, if you could describe good sex in three words, what would they be? And then we had, you know, like our qualitative analysis and and like figuring out what words kind of were related to other words and how we compiled them. And the first word, the most frequent word, was passionate. And then it was intimate, and then it was fun, and then it was pleasurable, and then it was satisfying and consensual and like different loving and litter, liberating, and all of these we got. We distilled it down to 20 words and talked about what it means for sex to be good, sex to be a multifaceted thing, that no two people are going to have the same definition of it, and that's important, and it can have these different components that maybe people haven't explored for themselves, that they then can incorporate because it can enrich their sexual experience, which is what the what will be the basis of my book. We've also talked, we have two studies about masturbation, one under review, one that's out Black women's masturbation messages what people told us about masturbation.
Black women's masturbation messages, partner status and what that means for sexual pleasure, and so many more studies to come in the next few years. So we have tons of data and if there are questions that people are curious about, we always invite them to let us know because we can put together a study or even just a talk on those.
0:37:02 - Danielle Bezalel
Yes, yes, I am very interested in maybe doing something like an Instagram live or something where we kind of talk through some of those.
It's so important. I think, like I, there's just like not enough of this research out there, and especially centering Black people, like can you maybe talk a bit about like why it's so important to center Black people in scientific research and why we should be really like paying attention to that, like to the idea that that wasn't the norm for a very long time and if it was the norm, then it was in an exploitative way, like why? Why is it important, especially in sexual health research, just after Black people?
0:37:44 - Dr. Candice Nicole
Yeah, the foundation of it in the United States is a little bit different. So I want to not. You know, I don't want to make this seem like it's a global perspective, but for the anti-Blackness that exists here, that means that Black people had been the cautionary comparison tale of what not to do sexually for so long and we were used that way by, you know, like wealthy White landowners, to kind of set these puritanical values up here. And this is why we're, why we're wealthy and why we're good and why we're the best and why we're dominant. This is what you have to avoid so that you're not dehumanized. None of that is true. Like this, human hierarchy doesn't exist, but that's the way Black people have been used. And so original sex research you know talking about Black men's sexual prowess and penis size and their propensities to rape White women like it wasn't even research, it wasn't even scientific, it was just like theories that people develop when they're going to oppress people. To explain away their oppression.
Right.
And he was like I need to explain away the cognitive dissonance I feel about, you know, using you as enslaved labor. So here is how we're going to explain that. And same for Black women you know being exploited and trigger warning, raped, you know, by land owners, and you know, and not having any protections under the state, regardless of how our bodies were treated and how we were treated Like. You have to explain some way to still feel like you're a good human.
And a lot of the stereotypes about sexuality were kind of this, based in that, like Black women always wanted, black women are lascivious. And so when I came into this project knowing that history and a lot of that comes from Patricia Hill Collins, black sexual politics, medical apartheid, fearing the Black body, like there's some really great historical books around that I was like I understand that history and I want to be an intervention. So I don't wanna keep unpacking that, I wanna contextualize it in the oppression, but I wanna be the intervention. So what's fun, what's pleasurable, what's joyful. How do we make the examination of black sexualities enriched by, like, the beauty of the sexualities that exist within blackness?
0:40:08 - Danielle Bezalel
I literally got chills when you said intervention. Am I like an MPH or an IM MPH? I'm just like that's right, you are an intervention. I really like that idea of contextualizing without needing to further unpack and move, Like there's a lot of power in like me hearing you say that and hearing like, okay, like what are we gonna do about it? Like let's really center black women, black men, black non-binary people and their joy and their experiences and their partnership and their pleasure. And like let's keep doing that for hundreds and hundreds of research and just like understudies and keep that in the public eye as much as possible, because the more it's normalized and more people can access it, the more likely we are to really grasp those stories and believe them, because it's literally science, it's hot girl science.
0:41:04 - Dr. Candice Nicole
Right, and here's the dope thing that I found so fascinating is, if I wanna take the most generous and positive lens to it the first sexual experiences that we could conceive of in humans had to be black people, because their human form existed in Africa first, and so it's like if black sexuality is the foundation of all sexualities, why wouldn't we be studying this with a comprehensive view, totally?
0:41:33 - Danielle Bezalel
That is yes, from the dawn of time. Right, let's just take it back a couple of years. Right, right, right. Oh well, I can't wait to read more about your big sex study and I'm really excited to chat with you about doing some sort of talk about like the learnings and the lessons, because it's just and I really like that idea of like describing good sex in three words, because it also does shift and change over time, depending on who you're thinking of if you're thinking of just yourself, like there's so many differences that can come up, and do you have any plan to like follow up with those people at some point down the line?
0:42:10 - Dr. Candice Nicole
Well, we did. That's what the interviews were about. Because we asked them, we put that list together that they created and we were like what do you think about this order? So, for black transpo, this is the order. Versus black cis people, this is the order. Or black women and cis women and cis men, this is the order. Black queer folk and black heterosexual folk this is the order. What do y'all think about this? And ask them to make sense of that.
0:42:35 - Danielle Bezalel
Totally yeah. And I also mean like okay, what if in five years from now they have like really different ideas of how that maybe some of them have kids. Like a longitudinal study yes a longitudinal study, if they like. If some of them have children, what their differences are, what are they thinking about that? If some of them have gotten divorced, what do they think about? Like reframing the way that they think about sex with themselves or with new partners, or whatever?
0:43:00 - Dr. Candice Nicole
I love that. I love taking that lens, that longitudinal lens, because it does evolve right. So 20 year old me had a different definition of good sex than 40 year old me, and it's gonna continue to evolve. My hope is that it continues to evolve.
0:43:14 - Danielle Bezalel
Yes.
0:43:14 - Dr. Candice Nicole
Exactly.
0:43:17 - Danielle Bezalel
Let's talk about new research that you're doing right now. What's like exciting new sexual health research that you and some of your colleagues are working on?
0:43:27 - Dr. Candice Nicole
Ooh, okay. So I submitted my first NIH grant in March and hour one and we got scored and discussed. So this week I'll find out what the reviewers said. I'll get my summary statement, but it was a pretty good score for a first timer. So there's a chance that with some minor revisions it could be funded and it's gonna be called the AdSex Fund Study.
So I will be comparing with a great team of researchers such as Kristen Mark and Debbie Herveneck and Shamika Thorpe and Danielle Stevens-Wackens and Meredith Duncan how black women's sexual functioning and white women's sexual functioning may or may not differ.
We don't really have we don't have, like, the data on exactly what those differences will be, but because of those structural systems of oppression that we talked about and the cultural values of collectivism and individualism, we hypothesize that there will be some differences in like how we experience our sexual functioning, partnered people who are partnered, and so what partnership does for our sexual functioning. Will it be important to think about what a black woman's partner means and what a white woman's partner means, and how that shows up in her orgasms, how that shows up in her desire, how that shows up in her arousal, how that shows up in her pleasure, and so being able to explore like those good pieces again, like the sexual functioning, the goodies of it, but with a comparison and not like white people are the norm comparison that we sometimes see, but like black women are the center. But we understand that there are gonna be differences based on, like, how we are positioned in the world and what that might look like. So that's what I'm really excited about.
0:45:17 - Danielle Bezalel
Interesting? Yeah, I imagine that there are. So there's so many complexities with not only like black women and white women and partnership, but what is the race of their partners?
0:45:29 - Dr. Candice Nicole
Who are their partners? What are the genders of their partners? Are they queer? Are they?
0:45:33 - Danielle Bezalel
they, what are their ages Like, what are like? Wow, that is really really interesting, because I wonder what kind of relationship they have?
0:45:40 - Dr. Candice Nicole
Yes, like all of those, yes are they monogamous, are they not?
0:45:44 - Danielle Bezalel
Like yeah, there are so many intricacies within that. So I'm really curious to hear. I'm sure they're gonna be really fantastic, like interviews and stories, but I'm really, really interested to see what the data shows.
0:45:58 - Dr. Candice Nicole
Yeah, yep, we're gonna have definitely a survey and then interviews with the couples. And so I would love to come back when we get some of those data and tell you all about it. Please do, because I am super excited for this.
0:46:12 - Danielle Bezalel
Hell, yeah, that's awesome. I can't wait to hear more about that. We have a couple more questions. Thank you again. So this has been a fantastic interview. I'm really geeking out talking to you. So thank you so much for chatting. I'm definitely in my nerdy bag right now. I'm into it. I can receive it, I'm into it. I wanna know where you think there are major research gaps right now in the field of sexual and reproductive health. I mean, I think, like you're one of the people who we're talking to for this podcast, because you fill some of those very needed gaps, and so that's really great that like you're the answer to that question. But I'm wondering, even for you as someone who's in this field, like what's going on here, what are the gaps and who do you want to step in to fill those gaps?
0:47:00 - Dr. Candice Nicole
Yeah, I wanna see more trans and gender expansive people of the global majority do the research that they want done with their communities and because we don't, so even when I think about something like sexual functioning, we'll be studying cis women. Trans women's experiences will look different based on how they're positioned in the world and how even the way we conceptualize sexual functioning, like the sexual desire and arousal cycles, are based on cis models. Like I want a new sexual functioning model based on gender expansive experiences so that even for sure that trans and gender expansive people can feel like I am visible here. This makes sense to me, but all of us get free when we see oh, this is another way that sexual desire and arousal and response can happen that we haven't even been considerate of because we've been having a heteronormative, cis normative perspective. So those are some major gaps, just having narrow definitions of what sexual functioning is.
I want to see more with people who have visible and invisible disabilities and across the lifespan of people who may be moved into disability or out of disability. So, like from your perspective, we were talking about the longitudinal approach I think about with reproductive health and in particular, so from my own journey on the reproductive health, like traumatic experiences and what it means to be healthy and then not healthy and healthy again, and how that impacts your sexual functioning, but also what that means, especially as a psychologist, for people who have mental health disorders or mental health concerns that either come from those other traumas or are more organic. I want to see people with multiple marginalized identities get paid to do sex research. Yeah, the disability thing.
0:49:10 - Danielle Bezalel
I think, like what I heard from an organization that works with older disabled folks, is like there are the disabled and there are the not yet disabled. Like everyone in their life, if they are lucky and live long enough, they experience some sort of disability with age. That's just inevitable, and I think that that is a really, really important piece of thinking about. Okay, how is this impacting mental health, which is also impacting sexual function? I think, like for folks who are my age I'm 30, and a lot of my friends, at least anecdotally, have expressed oh, I'm on SSRIs, I'm on antidepressants, I am not able to get in the mood for sex, like that is such a constant thing, that is such a common story.
And I personally have never been on SSRIs, but I know that when I was on the birth control pill I was experiencing really painful sex. It wasn't and it wasn't even told to me that that was like the possibility of what was gonna happen.
0:50:18 - Dr. Candice Nicole
They don't even talk about the side effects of that, don't they?
0:50:21 - Danielle Bezalel
talk about it, and so I'm sure there's a huge amount of research that can be done on that, and especially when it comes to women, people with vulvas, people with marginalized identities, who just haven't been talked to about these things.
0:50:36 - Dr. Candice Nicole
And I want them to be paid to do the science, because what we often see is they'll bring even somebody like me, with a racially marginalized identity, but I don't have anything like a. So I'm a cis woman, I'm heterosexual, I have a ton of privileged identities around this, and so people would be like well, since you talk about diversity, you could do the study. I could, but why would you ask me to do that when somebody who's lived experience it would be, in my estimation, more credible and have the understanding of the deep nuance that? So I wouldn't be able to.
I don't have the range and I don't think people like people with a lot of people with a lot of people with a lot of people who study Black sexuality have the range either, because I'm always looking at who the authors are and like so.
0:51:27 - Danielle Bezalel
Let's talk about this. Yeah, oh, the silence is deafening. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, so, and yeah, totally, we talked about this a lot in public health school too. Like we, nothing about us without us. Like there just needs to be people present in the lead getting paid for doing the work that they're doing in order to contribute to the general body of scientific research. Yep, dr Candice, Nicole, this has been such a fantastic interview. I'm really really lucky to have you. I'm wondering if you can just share where folks can find you to learn more about your work, if you know when your book's coming out, whatever you'd like to share for people to access your content and your information and your research.
0:52:16 - Dr. Candice Nicole
Yeah, y'all can find me. I want to be found at drcandacenicolecom and at Dr Candice Nicole on Instagram and threads. I've been messing around with threads, let me show you. Sure have.
Yeah, let me see how that's gonna turn out. Yeah, cause Twitter and me weren't working out Like I tried. I was just like this ain't this is not gonna hit, but so those are my places on YouTube as well. You can find my podcast there and the book will come out February 2025. So I am writing the book now. Y'all that means that I have to write it is due at the end of this calendar year and then you get a whole year where you gotta promote it and edit it and revise it and all of that stuff. So we've got some time. But connect with me and I like to talk about different aspects of the writing process and what I'm doing and sharing my science. So I love to be in the community.
0:53:09 - Danielle Bezalel
Well, I would love to have you back on for when we talk about the book, and I hear all about that. But, Dr Candice, Nicole, thank you again so much for joining. It's been such a pleasure chatting with you.