Imma Sust, expert in sexuality: “Everyone would have to schedule their powders, but we planned everything except that”

Interview with the journalist, writer and sexuality expert Imma Sust about her latest book, ‘Las manzanas de Eva’In her book, an erotic novel, the author talks about how heteropatriarchal education has conditioned women’s sexuality We talked to the author about the need to break taboos “If people are afraid to go to a psychologist, then go to a sexologist and I won’t even tell you,” he says. He could have chosen any other format, but Imma Sust couldn’t think of a better way to tell all the things she wanted to tell about life and about her experience as a woman, a journalist and an expert on sexuality than the erotic novel. “I had a list of things that I wanted to tell; then I invented fiction”, she points out. In Las manzanas de Eva (Grijalbo 2022) Imma Sust tells the story of a woman who is destroyed “by a piece of shit for two months”, explains the author. “Because this happens to us, huh? Because they make us project so much, they make us believe so much in perfect love, that we put a lot of hope into every roll we find.”Imma Sust wanted a leading lady who began sunk in misery and ended up empowered; she wanted old and young characters; lost men and good men too. “Because they don’t have to be bad because they are men, no… feminism is everyone’s business.” Journalist, writer and communicator, Sust has spent years dedicating herself to sexual disclosure, giving talks and workshops and focusing on female empowerment. Her book is much more than a story full of eroticism: it is a novel that seeks to break taboos, “that talks about how heteropatriarchal education has conditioned the sexuality of women of my generation and continues to condition younger women” . As the author explains, Las manzanas de Eva is her “grain of sand to combat this through a funny and provocative story that can help people understand sex in a different way”, to understand that good sexuality really makes people happy. Therefore, “everyone would have to schedule their powders,” she says. We are our sexuality. If we don’t accept ourselves from here, we won’t accept ourselves from anywhere (Imma Sust, expert in sexuality)Question: As an expert in sexuality, a woman who is on the side of everything that is going on about this topic, do you think there is a relationship between sexuality and mental health? Answer: It is clear that, not having received sexual education in this country, we have many flaws, false beliefs, fears, taboos. I mean the sexuality of men and women, eh? but that of the woman more, because she has been more invisible; the clitoris, until the year 2015, we did not see it in 3D; this is very strong. The sexuality of women has always been very invisible. A woman did not dare to say that she had orgasms or that she did not have them, she did not dare to say that she masturbated… this was 4 days ago. I think this moment of people who have a healthy sexual life and talk about it, or who have a non-sexual life, but live it in a healthy way, is wonderful… that is, people who listen to their bodies are much happier people. and more balanced. Sexuality can give you a lot or it can bother you a lot, depending on how you handle it. Q: Does our sexual life say a lot about our life in general? A: Sexuality defines us, we are our sexuality. If we do not accept ourselves from here, we will no longer accept ourselves from anywhere. When people tell me things like “my partner and I don’t understand each other sexually”…and I say “and not sexually either”. Because of course, if you don’t know how to communicate with your partner in bed, you won’t know how to communicate outside of bed. If your partner is boring in bed, they will be boring out of bed. It is not that we are one way and then another sexually, if it all goes together! That you have a good sex life, a good life and you are happy and you are full: well, you will surely have good sex. That you are going through a depression, because surely you will not have libido or desire to have sex… and nothing happens! It is so, but people have a hard time accepting it because we demand too much of sexuality, I think. Q: Giving it more importance than it has can also have its risks for mental health and emotional well-being… A: For example , we expect all sexual encounters to be perfect; always reach orgasm And if a man’s penis does not rise, he already has a trauma that freaks you out and you say: “man, you have such a deep vein in your phallus centrism.” It’s not that important, nothing happens. But in our sexuality we want to be too perfect. I always say that if we put that level of demand on all other areas of life, we would all be Nobel Prize winners. The great false belief is that the woman’s body is made to give pleasure to men and that our sexuality it is here to reproduce us and please men (Imma Sust, expert in sexuality)Q: Are many false myths about sexuality inherited from patriarchy still valid? A: Very many. Before we are born we are already told that we are monogamous and straight: first myth. You don’t have to be monogamous or straight. You are born, and then you will see what you like. But of course, they put this in our vein. That thing about reaching orgasm together…it’s impossible! I do an exercise that picks people up, makes them stand up and say: mentally count to 30, close your eyes and sit down…no one sits down at the same time! Because we all have different rhythms. The better half… please! What is this crap about the better half? Are you telling me that the love of my life is only one person and that when I find her, she will complement me?… well, no, no bought; That is a horrible false belief that is super difficult to achieve and that the only thing it achieves is failure, because the most normal thing is that you are not with the same person until you die, but of course, they feed us with this culture of failure. If it ends, then it’s already a failure… and it’s not like that. Q: Of all these myths, if you had to choose one, the most harmful, which would it be? A: The great misconception is that a woman’s body is made to give pleasure to men and that our sexuality is here to reproduce and please men. The woman’s body is not made to give pleasure to the man…no way. It is made to give ourselves pleasure. But if the clitoris is outside the vagina! I mean, what does this have to do with reproduction? Any! That’s why the clitoris has taken so long to come out of the closet, because men’s heads were exploding. P: These false beliefs are a breeding ground for many psychological difficulties, a lot of suffering, especially for women; Do you think we can mitigate this with a good affective-sexual education? A: It’s that no affective-sexual education is being given. They have explained to me how to reproduce a million times, and they have never explained to me what it is to feel pleasure. There is no sex education in this country, there is not. And the one that exists is always from fear, from protection: “be careful, don’t go dressed like that, don’t get raped, don’t get hit, drugs, AIDS, watch out, a condom, don’t get pregnant”… always everything is bad, everything is negative. It was not right that in our time we were all straight, but it is not right that now we are all bisexual (Imma Sust, sexuality expert) Q: What we are seeing is a very young generation of people much more open to everything. So much so that, in certain circles, it seems that being heterosexual is stale. A: Yes. Now there is a stream of young people who seem very good to me! Hey? but then it is that they ‘weaponize’ the lifelong hetero and it’s like crazy. Does someone always have to be in the closet, or what? It was not right that in our time we were all straight, but it is not right that now we are all bisexual. Q: We have a society of contrasts. On the one hand, we have these advances, but on the other, there are still many vestiges of patriarchy, as we recently saw with the boys from the Colegio Mayor de Madrid… A: Little by little we are learning, we are deconstructing ourselves, yes. But this is very slow. Then, suddenly, this thing about the residence hall happens and our heads explode because on the one hand we are doing very well, but on the other hand it seems that we are going backwards. I’m more scandalized by the girls from the college across the street, justifying it. They think this is normal and they normalize behaviors that are disgusting, I’m sorry. How girls fool themselves by saying it’s a joke, nonsense! Education goes through the family, but if the family has not had sex education. How is he going to educate you? It is that in the end these girls will have children and will educate them that way, making them believe that this is normal… Q: Talking about sexuality, in many environments, is still taboo… A: If people are afraid to go to a psychologist, then go to a sexologist I won’t even tell you, which is also a figure that has existed for four days. It is very difficult to say: look, we have sexual problems, nothing is wrong, we love each other, we want to fix it, we have lost desire or we want to open the relationship… whatever! Now, I meet people who have that happen to them, who want to open up the relationship and don’t know how to deal with jealousy…and these are normal things in life: being jealous is normal. But they have made us believe that love is that of dying for you. Romantic love has made us believe very horrible things. When I was little there was Parcheesi. How could I be sexualized singing Parcheesi? Now they sing Shakira and of course, they dance like Shakira (Imma Sust, expert in sexuality) Q: To change all the false beliefs, what kind of female references do you think are needed? Casquet or Nuria Jorba: sexologists who have Instagram, who are sexual disseminators…this seems very cool to me. It is that with the Internet we have the world at our feet and, if we know where to look, all the information in the world is there. We didn’t have that before. Q: There is also a lot of criticism about how the Internet has produced this sexualization of girls too early, what do you think of this? A: When I was little there was Parcheesi. How could I be sexualized singing Parcheesi? Now they sing Shakira and of course, they dance like Shakira. And then there are TV shows that feed into this. I would ban them. Those programs that end at 2 in the morning where children come out dressed up dancing like adults…it makes me cringe; They are like those US mises contests for girls… Q: Finally, tell me: throughout your life, as an expert in sexuality, have you seen women improve emotionally just because their sexuality has improved or because they have collapsed some of those false myths? A: Yes, of course. It is that good sexuality gives life; good sexuality makes people happy. Sexuality is good. Everyone would have to schedule their powders, but we planned everything but that. We should schedule the fucks too because, otherwise, you forget, you don’t connect with your partner… and then the crises come.