Sahar Prizada: Sex Education & Muslim Faith
Podcast Transcript Season 2 Episode 18
Interviewer: Liz Goldwyn
Illustration BY Black Women Animate
Our guest for this episode is Sahar Pirzada, a social worker, organizer and educator. Sahar is the programs and outreach manager for HEART Women & Girls, a nonprofit that provides culturally sensitive sex education to Muslim communities across the United States. Sahar and Liz talk about her own experiences of Islamophobia in the reproductive health care system; how to meet people where they’re at with sex education needs; and why faith and sexuality are not mutually exclusive.
The following is a transcript of the interview from the episode:
Sahar Pirzada:
Thanks for having me. I'm very excited.
Liz:
Me too. What led you to pursue this mission?
Sahar Pirzada:
Yeah. Think of context and the programs in each manager for HEART and we're a Reproductive Justice Organization in the Muslim Community. I personally got involved back in 2014, and at the time I was working in Singapore at a gender advocacy organization. Very specifically I was doing Sex Ed workshops as well as Healthy Relationship workshops in the Muslim community in Singapore.
Liz:
How did you end up in Singapore?
Sahar Pirzada:
I'm originally from the Bay Area, grew up in California and I graduated from UC Berkeley in 2012. At the time, my husband had just gotten into a master's program through NYU Tisch Asia. It's a film school for Tisch that's in Singapore. We moved out there for his graduate degree and then I ended up finding a job at a local nonprofit out there. It was like I did an international development bachelor's and so I wanted to work either in nonprofit or in an international nonprofit.
I came across this really amazing organization called AWARE, the Association of Women for Action and Research. They were just starting up this program about promoting gender equitable interpretations of Islam and using that for the full promotion and adoption of a specific UN Convention that would be protecting women's rights in the country. It just fell into my lap and I was so grateful. I'm super excited to get the job and actually work on that project while I was out there. It was through that I participated in a Twitter Town Hall on Muslim Sex Ed.
Nadiah who's the executive director of HEART saw my tweets and actually reached out to me through Twitter and so that's how I first got introduced to HEART. We set up a Skype call while I was in Singapore and she was like, "I want to learn more about how you got involved in this work and tell you a bit about what we're doing here." At the time, it was a completely volunteer-run organization. I said, "Well, I'm really interested in getting involved when I move back to the United States." We stayed in touch and 2015, I moved back and I was like, "All right. I'm just going to start doing workshops in the community. See who's interested in hosting us."
Sure enough, I did one workshop at a statewide conference for Muslim students and the topic was Sexual Violence in the Muslim Community. We had about 200 students show up, packed house. It was the first time that we ever had that kind of workshop at this conference and this conference has been around for 10 years or something. After the workshop ended, there was a line of folks who were just waiting to talk to us. Some of them were survivors who were wanting to get resources and wanted to share their story and disclose, others were trying to find resources and advice to help their friends, others were just showing gratitude and then it just took off from there. We just started getting request after request to come out to different college campuses to do workshops. It ranged from workshops around sexual violence to those around healthy relationships, child sexual abuse, sex ed-
Liz:
Had you had sex ed training though yourself before you went to Singapore and … For that?
Sahar Pirzada:
No, not before Singapore. I actually got trained when I was in Singapore while before I started that project, there was a training institute that they had that did both corporate workshops as well as community-based workshops on sex ed and so I got trained through the training institute to teach about sex ed. It was like a comprehensive sex ed curriculum that they had developed over the years. In Singapore, they teach abstinence only until marriage education and so we were only allowed to go into private schools to teach this curriculum. That's actually how I got my first training around teaching sex ed.
Liz:
Was your curriculum radically different than that dictum of abstinence until marriage?
Sahar Pirzada:
Yeah, the abstinence only until marriage curriculum didn't have much in it.
Liz:
I can imagine.
Sahar Pirzada:
Yeah, so ours-
Liz:
Don't do it.
Sahar Pirzada:
Yeah, yeah. Ours had a lot about obviously, consent, what to expect when you're going to get a health screening done, different methods of birth control contraceptives both hormonal, non-hormonal. It talked about the differences between porn sex and real sex. We did a condom demo. It was a three-hour curriculum that we facilitated for the private schools.
Liz:
Was that eye-opening for you too?
Sahar Pirzada:
Yeah, it was great. It was great because I'm a product of United States public school system and so I remember getting bits and pieces of sex ed throughout my high school education and then for elementary and middle school, I was at a private Islamic University, Islamic schools. I got a little bit of sex ed in Islamic school actually, but it was very focused on biologically what happens and more focused on reproduction. There was no conversation about consent or healthy relationships. I think we did talk about birth control a little bit but even then, it was maybe one slide. In high school we did have… I think we had Planned Parenthood come in or something and do a week-long curriculum but it was a lot of just talking about STIs and STDs. I remember there being a condom demonstration but that was about it.
This curriculum that I was exposed to in Singapore, I felt was a lot more relevant and a lot healthier in terms of the ways that sex was being talked about and communicated to the students. Yeah, it was eye-opening for me for sure.
Liz:
You really approached sex education from a social work perspective which is what you're getting your master's in at USC now too.
Sahar Pirzada:
Yeah, it was like an education. It was, I would say, more focused on that and I fell into social work many years later. I was really interested in community organizing policy advocacy and education. That's really what I was up to when I was working in Singapore and I wanted to bring that back when I came to the United States working through HEART.
Liz:
Can you broadly define for me gendered Islamophobia and how your job relates to deconstructing this perception?
Sahar Pirzada:
Yeah, absolutely. I think we're in a day and age where Islamophobia is rampant. Whether you're looking in the United States or elsewhere, there is definitely discrimination against Muslim populations and there's also a lot of stereotypes that are projected about Muslims and Muslim women in particular. We do this activity in some of our workshops so we have people map out what are the stereotypes that folks have about Muslims. You don't have to look far, you can just think about Aladdin or think about what you might watch on the news. A lot of it has to do with women being oppressed, women being sexually repressed, Islam being a violent religion, Islam being a foreign religion. All of those stereotypes impact women in the community as well as folks who are navigating patriarchy in the community.
It's like the intersection between gender and Islamophobia and how we understand the experiences of Muslim women is how you can think about what gender Islamophobia explores.
I always say folks want me to be sometimes this … Sometimes I'll get in to places and they do promote this narrative that there's a particular way to be a good Muslim versus a bad Muslim American. The bad Muslim Americans are angry and they're violent and they're upset about certain things and I'm like, "If that's what it is then I guess I'm a bad Muslim American because I am angry. I have a lot of reasons to be angry as a Muslim and a woman of color and a woman today."
Yeah, I don't know. When it comes to challenging stereotypes, I guess I would say just being authentically me is the easiest way and not trying to appease the White American gays is the easiest thing I could think of.
Liz:
Because your work with HEART primarily focuses on going and educating within Muslim communities.
Sahar Pirzada:
It's actually a few different things. We do health education within Muslim spaces and then advocacy is for Muslim survivors as well as folks in the Muslim community who are looking for resources. Then we do research in the Muslim community around issues related to reproductive justice and then the last one is training.
We also provide training to service providers who would be interacting with Muslims. On college campuses that might be Title IX Investigators, we've gone into rape crisis centers, we've worked with social workers on what are the nuances you need to be aware of when working with Muslim survivors and part of that is helping them unpack what their biases are towards Muslims and how could they be projecting Islamophobia in different ways.
Liz:
That's an example of …
Sahar Pirzada:
Yeah, challenging-
Liz:
Yeah, of challenging it in those specific cases?
Sahar Pirzada:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Liz:
How do you deal with going into spaces that may be more conservative and being diplomatic about respecting people's comfortability level, their faiths, people coming from more conservative backgrounds and you may have different ideas because of where you're come from in your education that you've received, how does that work?
Sahar Pirzada:
I think it's like any other community. You're going to have a spectrum when it comes to how people practice their faith or how they might identify or what their viewpoints might be on different subject matters. I never also want to assume that going into spaces where people practice in a particular way that they'll have particular views on certain topics and issues.
If I've learned anything from social work, it's you meet the client where they're at. You're meeting community where they're at in terms of their knowledge and understanding of issues and also what they're comfortable with. I really just have to be comfortable with reading the room and reading the space and also getting familiar with … I usually do a consultation before I go into any community space to ask what's been going on currently, what is the demographic of the folks who I can expect in the audience, what are they interested in finding out more about and then I tend to tailor some of the workshops depending on what's relevant and what's current for that community.
I don't know. I mean we have our standard things that we cover in every workshop which doesn't really change much and usually we're being invited to come and do maybe an hour to two hours of a workshop. There's not much we can cover in that anyways, so we try to pay attention to what are the needs of the community and then tailor it accordingly.
Liz:
You told me that as an organization, HEART is LGBTQIA affirmative but often you're in spaces that are not permissive.
Sahar Pirzada:
Not necessarily not permissive but it's not a conversation that's being had. Especially generally, society, I would say, is pretty homophobic and transphobic. It's not part of the norm that folks are thinking about inclusivity in every space that you go.
I think for us we're trying to be a lot more intentional about as we're going into spaces and bringing our curriculum, we're also thinking about how do we make what we say resonate with folks across the board when it comes to gender identity, sexual orientation and faith practice. Just trying to use like gender-neutral names when we're doing case studies or having folks to introduce themselves using gender pronouns and explaining what the purpose is behind that. Again, that also comes from doing that pre-work of understanding what spaces we're going into.
I think it's not something we shy away from in terms of being LGBTQ affirming and inclusive but we still have a long way to go when it comes to how do we create those spaces so that it becomes the norm within all community spaces. I think that's going to take time and it's going to take a lot of collaboration with folks who are leading this work, which I would not be able to take credit for that. we look to our partners such as Masjid Al Rabia which is a LGBTQ inclusive Mosque in Chicago. There's advocates for youth-
Liz:
I think you told me about that mosque that its founder is trans.
Sahar Pirzada:
Mm-hmm (negative). Mahdia, yeah. She's trans and she's also a part of our board at HEART and so we do get a lot of guidance from Mahdia as to how we should go about doing this work and ways that are inclusive and affirming. We also are in conversation with a few other organizations that are providing support and resources and spaces for folks in the Muslim community who are LGBTQ identified.
Liz:
One that you told me about that is accessible online which is so great if you don't live in a metropolitan city and you're having trouble finding support in your community as a queer Muslim is the Muslim Alliance for Gender Sexual and Gender Diversity, MASGD, which is www.muslimalliance.org.
Sahar Pirzada:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah, they are really amazing and then there's also a few Instagram accounts that I've started following recently. One of them is called Queer Crescent and they highlight folks in the Muslim community who are queer identified and then also put like every day of the week, they have a different thing that they post. Sometimes, it'll also be a faith reflection or inspiration or they'll have a queer Muslim support group, I believe also.
There are definitely resources that are being developed and I would say I've seen a shift over the past five years in the emergence of these resources and spaces.
Liz:
When you go into communities and you start the sex education curriculum, what would you say is the, at the moment, like the top trending issue that people want to spend the most time on?
Sahar Pirzada:
It's mainly been sexual assault, to be honest. Even if we're opening up the space to talk about comprehensive sex ed when we get to the section that talks about consent, that's where we end up spending quite a bit of time on because I think it's just so prevalent in the news right now. We end up talking quite a bit about how do we understand consent as it relates to sexual assault and different forms of sexual violence and what do we do in these situations as bystanders or upstanders or if we're experiencing it ourselves, what are resources that we can turn to.
I think another big one has been … When we have those conversations, I think people have questions about, "How do you find a partner?" I always get that question of like, "How do you find people that you feel comfortable with?" Or, "How do you start these conversations?" I say, "If it's not something you're used to talking about, it can be difficult but that's why being in these workshops and these spaces where you can gain that knowledge and the language for how to have the conversations is important."
Liz:
Are these primarily women you're speaking with?
Sahar Pirzada:
No, it's mixed.
Liz:
It's mixed.
Sahar Pirzada:
Yeah, it's mixed-gender. But usually depending on what setting we're going to, they might segregate genders. It really depends, but for the most part our workshops are whoever wants to come, can come. Yeah, some conversations revolve around, "How do we have these conversations with our future partners or partners?" In particular for folks who have experienced sexual trauma or assault, they always want tips on how to have these conversations with their partners especially if they're worried about engaging in sexual activity and they've just had bad experiences when it comes to that.
Those conversations sometimes … We hold space for that in our workshops and let people share strategies on how they've navigated those conversations and then also provide our tips on that.
Liz:
How would you suggest to a more conservative person ways that they can start to explore their sexuality while still respecting their faith?
Sahar Pirzada:
A more conservative person meaning like?
Liz:
I mean on this podcast, we talk to people from all sorts of different religious backgrounds and sometimes they might not be ready to talk about or be open to things like sex toys or anal sex or whatever it is, polyamory. They're coming from a place where, how do you get how do you talk to someone and get them more comfortable with just the idea of their own sexuality as a way to explore comfortability before even having a partner.
Sahar Pirzada:
I think it's a personal journey for everyone. When it comes to exploring one's sexuality, it's going to be a journey whether they're conservative or not. I don't know. I mean for me, I'm also like thinking about during the time of the Prophet, Peace Be Upon Him and people used to talk about sex pretty openly and ask really explicit questions about sexual activity. It's not something I see as if someone is a person of faith that's practicing their faith, I wouldn't imagine that they necessarily would be uncomfortable with talking about sex.
You'll see, there's a diversity in the community even where certain communal spaces like sex is openly talked about and it's actually an intergenerational thing as well where grandmothers and mothers and their kids will talk about sex and share tips and I don't know what. That is not … But they could still be very practicing in their faith and adhere to their faith values and it's not necessarily seen as a contradictory thing. I think that there's more of these spaces that are turning up within community as opposed to just within family spaces.
In the same way that you could have like a family that maybe isn't as religiously observing but just sex is not talked about in their family spaces so I don't necessarily see it as like a conservative versus not conservative thing in terms of religious practice but it could just be also family culture.
I don't know. I think it's hard when … I think about my own experience growing up in a Muslim household and we never really talked about sex but it wasn't seen as something where if we talked about it, I would be shut down for having those conversations but in my personal life have experienced sexual dysfunction and I'm a survivor. For me, my relationship to sex is complex and so when I do go and I talk to my parents or family about the struggles that I'm experiencing, it's very welcomed and there's space that's being held for me to have those conversations in intimate ways and also in ways that are supportive.
I'm also one person because of my relationship to sex because of my experiences. For me, sex toys I … For me, it's stressful to think about that as someone who has vaginismus and I used dilators as part of my physical therapy. Adding that complexity to the conversation I think is important and I identify as a person of faith but I also identify as someone who is sex positive. It has positive associations with sex in general yet I still have struggles and so finding and making space within my community has been a huge passion of mine because of my lived experience around these things.
Liz:
Do you bring a lot of that of those personal stories into the sex ed setting?
Sahar Pirzada:
Yes, absolutely.
Liz:
It must really help people feel safe with you that you're expressing your vulnerability and share stories.
Sahar Pirzada:
Yeah, yeah. I think, I tend to decide before I go into a space what I'm comfortable sharing because I haven't shared my story with all the details with everyone in my family or in my community so depending on what the space is, sometimes I will not share everything but I think it is important for me to tap into my personal experiences to provide insight about what has worked, what hasn't worked for me personally. Then to also normalize that these are things that are happening in our community and they're happening in every community and so we need to be we need to be cleaning space to talk about them.
Liz:
Vaginismus in particular, we get so many questions about vaginismus and when you think about how much research and funding and products are available for erectile and ejaculatory dysfunction and how few people, especially people of your age, are talking about vaginismus. It's mind-blowing.
Sahar Pirzada:
Yeah. One of the main reasons why I'm doing this work in my community is just the super negative experiences I've had as a Muslim woman trying to navigate the medical field as someone who has vaginismus. I've been told by multiple gynecologists that, "Oh, are you sure it's not just because you're afraid of sex, because of your culture?" Or like, "Oh, you just need to have more sex and just relax." The stereotypes that they have about me as a Muslim woman show up in the doctor's room when I'm trying to talk to them about the pain that I'm experiencing and really not being listened to and not being validated that my pain is real.
When we're talking about gendered Islamophobia, that's a concrete example of how it shows up for me and why I feel it's so important for us to really educate providers on how not to suck when working with Muslims. I don't think I've ever been to a workshop where I've shared about my vaginismus and then not had folks come up to me afterwards and ask additional questions and then reflect and be like, "I think I might have this."
Liz:
Where do you point them to? Are there really good resources that you've found?
Sahar Pirzada:
Yeah, we follow … There's a doctor by the name of [Theabah 00:28:52] who is out of New York who has a really active social media account, an Instagram page that we direct folks to. She works on vaginismus as well as pelvic pain, sexual dysfunction, endometriosis. We also have a support group for folks who are experiencing sexual dysfunction and pelvic pain.
That is a closed group. You have to fill out a form and we'll have a consultation with you before we add folks to the group because we also know that the community is so close-knit so we want to make sure people understand in terms of confidentiality what the guidelines are.
Yeah, I think it's a difficult thing to navigate when you don't have support and we do get a lot of folks reach out to us about that because we post about it on our social media and we've done webinars about it where we've shared about our own experiences.
Liz:
It's so interesting what people will ask during a Q&A in front of other people. I find this too, as opposed to what they want to approach privately about. In my experience I've found that I'm almost… Sometimes I'm really shocked by the things that people feel totally comfortable speaking about even very traumatic situations where people you know people are crying to sharing about rape or sexual assault, and the people who usually approach privately are generally virgins in their 20s which tells you a lot about where our culture is at in terms of shaming people for not having sex, actually. I find I'm curious what are the things that people will approach you privately about versus sharing in front of a group?
Sahar Pirzada:
It's a mix. I really feel like sometimes it depends where people are in their own personal journeys when it comes to healing or when it comes to acknowledging or recognizing their experiences and the kind of support systems that they have. Usually when folks are at the beginning stages of realizing that the experience is that they've had maybe haven't been the healthiest or they've experienced abuse or assault, those tend to be more private. Then the ones where folks have gone through particular programs or they are surrounded by folks who have supported them, I feel those folks have tended to share more publicly about their experiences and ask questions more boldly.
It's a range. Even when it comes to sexual dysfunction or experiences around sex, it's definitely a range. For folks who have gone through treatments around certain things, I feel like they sometimes are really excited to share about the progress that they've made or what worked for them and share that in community for other folks to benefit from. First is, if they've just been diagnosed or they're just starting with their journey sometimes it's a little bit … It's emotionally draining to sometimes share. But yeah, it's been a range for us in workshop spaces.
Liz:
There are a lot of questions or concerns relating to within a relationship, within a relationship dynamic or is it a mix of …?
Sahar Pirzada:
Sometimes folks especially if they have questions about, "How do I talk to my partner about the specific thing?" Or, "My partner is responding in this specific way." I'm having difficulty navigating that. Those tend to be private conversations they don't tend to ask that publicly. I'm not sure what the reasoning behind that is but I imagine it's out of respect for their partner and wanting to maintain that privacy but if it's something around … Or sometimes they'll like remove the personal aspect of it and ask it like, "I have a friend that's blah blah blah," right?
I've had that situation before where folks have asked questions around, "I have a good friend who is hesitant to seek mental health services for sexual trauma that they've experienced. What would you recommend we say to encourage them to access those resources?" We answer the question and then afterwards, months later I'll find out that like, "Oh, it was actually their partner."
After maintaining relationships with folks and being community with them so that they can come back to us if they have any additional questions and then over time once they feel more comfortable, then they might disclose what the specifics are of that situation.
Yeah, it depends.
Liz:
Earlier you were talking about operating within in general, a patriarchal culture. When we were on the phone, you mentioned a collective of female Muslim lawyers called-
Sahar Pirzada:
Karamah, yeah.
Liz:
-Karamah who have a long history at looking at Islamic rulings through a feminist lens. I'd love for you to tell me more about them.
Sahar Pirzada:
Yeah. Karamah's been around for quite a while. If I remember correctly, they're based out of D.C. and have been doing work around … Well one, it's creating support and networks for Muslim lawyers and then the other thing that they've been doing is research into Islamic law and then putting out white papers for the community to like read and reflect on.
They come out of their work with quite a feminist lens and then they also do this really cool thing in the summer where they hold trainings for young Muslim women or Muslim leaders who are more interested in getting an in-depth training around specific Islamic law issues. I haven't been through the training before but I've had friends who have gone through it and have said it's really given them tools to then have those conversations in community and has informed their own personal work around reproductive justice and in Muslim spaces.
Liz:
What would be an example of a topic that if they would put out a white paper on?
Sahar Pirzada:
They recently put out a white paper on marital rape and looking at a specific saying of the Prophet that oftentimes gets misused to justify marital rape. They did a whole, I don't know how long the paper was, but it was brilliantly done in providing context for that saying and then talking about how if you were to look at the values that are uplifted within Islamic law and text, that it would make no sense that marital rape is justified in Islam. Using the sciences on how you look and study Islamic texts, they were able to dissect that saying and then explain their justification for why marital rape is not Islamicly permissible.
Liz:
How long do you think it takes for that kind of intellectual or academic paper to trickle down into-
Sahar Pirzada:
It takes a while-
Liz:
-the civilian ears?
Sahar Pirzada:
It was jargoned paper and an academic paper. I think that's where HEART is trying to come in on how can we extract parts of the literature that's out there to bring and integrate back into our curriculum to then support why consent is important, or why marital rape is not allowed, or why sexual violence is not allowed from an Islamic framework. For us, we don't think of it as like something we necessarily should need to justify, like why sexual violence is impermissible but we sometimes people feel more inclined to do something about it when they see like the textual evidence that backs it up.
It’s some things I think are common sense like don't be mean, don't hit people, don't be abusing people but I'm like, "Why do you need an actual text in the Quran to back that up because it's just common sense that you wouldn't do that. Be a good person." But if it is something that folks are interested in, we work with these partners like Karamah to then try to bring that textual evidence back into our work.
Liz:
Because I imagine that being able to reference scripture and reference different interpretations of it can be helpful.
Sahar Pirzada:
Yeah, yeah. Definitely strengthens the work and I think it also … I don't know. We make the argument that this is part of our faith to challenge oppression in all its forms and we make the argument that it's part of our communal responsibility as Muslims to challenge rape culture and patriarchy. It's helpful when we have these concrete examples from the life of the Prophet, peace be upon him, or from the Quran that can be used to back that up whereas when we talk about values that are important in our faith, they get it but it's so much powerful when we have those concrete stories and examples.
Liz:
Much like in the Bible, which also focuses on holy relationships between man and woman from what I understand, so too does the Quran. How are you able to, I guess, reference these holy relationships but in our modern culture when we know that relationships aren't really only within men and women anymore.
Sahar Pirzada:
Yeah. I think for me, what's been helpful is extracting what the story is, like what is the message behind what is trying to be communicated through this story or what is the value that we're trying to uplift through this story or through this verse.
We do that with things in our daily life like we might be watching a movie and maybe it's not exactly reflecting what we have in our own lives but we'll still find something that resonates with us that we can apply to our own lives. I feel a lot of the Islamic scripture that we have works in the same way so whether it's but perfectly reflected in terms of what the relationship is and what the dynamics are, what the genders are, you still can find something that will resonate with you and be applicable to how you live your life.
Liz:
Beyond the Islamophobia which you face, you're also dealing with sex education which no matter where you're talking about, you're going to get a lot of heat but you must be getting even more heat within your own community to be choosing this is your line of work. Is that difficult? Do you and HEART face criticism on that front?
Sahar Pirzada:
It depends on what part of the community you go to. Most people have been like, "When can you come and do a workshop for us depending on what the topic is?" I just yesterday from a mother who's like, "Oh, they're introducing sex Ed in my child's school and I wanted to know would you be able to come and do a workshop for the youth group around the same topics just so there's a continued conversation happening in their life?"
But you're right. Look at our administration right now and how they're trying to crack down on what can and cannot be taught. Again, it goes to who's in positions of power. If you have cis-hetero White men who are controlling what can and cannot be taught, we're going to have some issues. I think it really does depend on who's controlling those spaces.
In the same way in some of the parts of our Muslim community, if you have folks who have never had to deal with sexual dysfunction or accessing birth control or talking about abortion or … There's such a range of things that folks have to deal with that if you've never been impacted by it, you won't find those conversations important. I've literally been told like, "Oh, that's not something that's relevant in our community so we're not going to do a workshop on it." When I'm like, "Little do you know that it is very relevant and I'm being requested by folks in the community to have these conversations in your mosque."
Liz:
How do you cut through that when you're faced with that kind of …
Sahar Pirzada:
Finding allies is a big part of it. Coming from an organizer background relationship building, is the key of that. You have to be building relationships with folks and being community with them so that you build trust so that you can also … For me, it's also really important that we aren't disclosing people's stories and using that as a tokenizing thing to be like, "This is why it's important because of these people who are impacted," but just for the sake of like, "Well, these are important issues because they're important issues."
That takes time and I think there are going to be barriers because I'm not a South Asian Arab Muslim male in my you know 40s who would be making these decisions. I do need to look for allies within the community who are closer to that demographic and who are able to grant me access. These are systemic barriers that unless we're changing the systems and changing the structures and changing the leadership of these institutions, I'm just meeting folks where they're at and taking what I can get.
Liz:
I think it's so interesting this idea of meeting folks where they're at because you have this whole new wave right now, social media, of people talking about sex education or sex positivity online, on social media which is a very, very different thing than actually going into communities and doing this work because you almost have like a license to say whatever you want to say or-
Sahar Pirzada:
On social media.
Liz:
On social media or be like, "Oh, well everybody … If I'm sex positive, everybody else is sex positive and I can go in there guns blazing." When in reality, if you're actually going to reach people in a one-on-one level and educate them, you can't really.
Sahar Pirzada:
Yeah.
Liz:
You can't do that.
Sahar Pirzada:
Yeah. I love social media for that reason and I think we have a lot of fun with our HEART Instagram pages and our Facebook to engage folks in a way where we're in control of where the conversation is going and we're in control of what the framing is. Even when we go into community, we're still … There's certain hard lines that we're never going to cross.
If someone does victim blame in one of our workshops, for example. We center the survivors in our spaces and so we will shut down that conversation but then follow up and have a conversation with the person that made that comment in the first place to really think … Have them reflect about where did that comment come from and what's the thought process behind that, because we also don't want to lose people along the way.
It takes a lot of emotional labor and energy but it's part of the work. If we're going to be transforming communities and really trying to shift culture, that takes effort and that takes time and that takes relationship building. It also takes an effort to also shift who we're centering in these spaces like, "I'm sorry. I'm not going to center the feelings of folks who are privileged in my spaces. That's not how this is going to go." That shakes people up a little bit.
At the same time, I still need to keep them engaged because oftentimes they hold power in the communities.
Liz:
Are we talking about men?
Sahar Pirzada:
Yeah, we're talking about men, talking about cis-hetero men, in particular. It's an ongoing process.
Liz:
What do you think is the new frontier of sex … What topic do you feel like, "Oh, that's really exciting," or, "Oh, I'm not sure how I'm going to talk about that yet," or, "I see this bubbling up under the surface."
Sahar Pirzada:
For us, it's been sexual dysfunction. That's been the big thing that we've now started to integrate into our curriculum and make space for and bring awareness around just because of our own experiences and the prevalence that we're seeing in the community especially knowing what the statistics around survivorhood, around sexual assault and the correlation between those.
Then trauma. I think trauma is the number one thing that we're trying to bring into our spaces. If we're talking about sex, if we're talking about relationships, if we're talking about consent, also making sure that we're doing it in trauma-informed healing centered ways because I think it can be triggering for folks if we're not assuming that there are survivors amongst us. I don't know, generally speaking, what the frontiers are for sex ed as an industry but at least for our work and what we've seen in the community, those have been things that we've been thinking a lot about and then also just bringing in the politics into the space, having that reality check that you might not have access to these resources that will be life-saving and so what are we doing to prepare for these changes we're expecting to come down from the federal government.
Liz:
What are we doing?
Sahar Pirzada:
I think there's a number of things … I'm a part of the Reproductive Justice … What is it called? L.A. Reproductive Justice Coalition. There had been a lot of conversations about how do we prepare for the shutting down of clinics and service providers who can offer abortion services. If we don't have access to those services, what is our back-up plan?
People are having conversations about what that looks like in community and how do we prepare people for that. It depends on what state you're in and what other resources we have available-
Liz:
In some states this is already been taken into effect.
Sahar Pirzada:
Totally. Totally, yeah. I'm learning a lot from being in these spaces that for folks that have already figured a lot of stuff out I'm like, "Oh, teach me. I need to go to this training and better understand what this means." I was talking to someone who was doing a training around self-managed terminations and abortions and so that was such a new concept for me to grasp my head around and I know that even within the Muslim community and South Asian community, folks have been criminalized for conducting self-managed abortions and then also been stereotyped as the reason why you resorted to a self-managed abortion is because of stigma within your community but then at the time, the state is criminalizing them.
Who is being centered in that and how are we providing support in those situations and who are we advocating for?
I think bringing the politics and how these different intersections are coming into play when it comes to folks in our community has been really interesting and important.
Liz:
Where does pleasure fit into the curriculum?
Sahar Pirzada:
I'm going to smile because this is one of my favorite things. Well, I think in general we try to present our curriculum in a way that is sex positive and de-stigmatizes pleasure, that you can have sex for pleasure and that is not something that there should be shame associated with and that if anything, it's supported by our faith tradition. It's supported within our faith to have sex for pleasure and so there's no religious basis for shaming people if they're engaging in that.
That's been something fun to talk about but at the same time, our workshops are pretty public health focused at the same. We'll talk about that and create space for that and then talk about orgasms or talk about what is the science behind that, even. Then we'll also still talk about how pleasure can be complicated especially, again, when you're thinking about survivors and how that's been used as a tool to dismiss survivor stories.
It comes in in a few different ways but, yeah.
Liz:
Yeah, because I think so much of our cultural conversation right now is about politics trauma, harassment, abuse and assault, and then pleasure gets completely removed. We forgot about that, right?
Sahar Pirzada:
Yeah, yeah. I think there's a lot that we can learn from within community on how to find joy and how to find pleasure with intimacy after you experienced trauma and in the midst of so much trauma that's happening in the world. It's part of resilience building and it's part of just living a life that is working towards liberation for all, that we don't take for granted those moments when we do feel pleasure in our relationships and while having sex.
Liz:
Do you talk about masturbation?
Sahar Pirzada:
In passing. It's not something that we cover in depth, I would say. Even when it comes to sexual activity in general, we usually have maybe one slide that talks about what are all the different sexual activities when we think about sex so that folks aren't just focused on like-
Liz:
Penetration?
Sahar Pirzada:
Yeah, penetration. It's not something we spend an exorbitant amount of time on. We'll direct people to resources if they have additional questions or if they want to know mechanisms or how do I go about doing this but that's not something we cover in our workshops extensively.
Liz:
Who do you look to as your mentors or leaders in this space?
Sahar Pirzada:
That's a really great question. I think there are a few folks that I've personally been drawn to but it's mainly because of their political stances on things. Like Mia Mingus who talks a lot about like disability justice and restorative justice, and how can we imagine safety and security for our communities that go beyond traditional systems. I am a huge fan of the organizations I mentioned. The Muslim Alliance for Sexual and Gender Diversity and then Queer Crescent is also doing phenomenal work.
Liz:
We were talking a little bit when we weren't recording about issues of reproductive health, miscarriage, loss, pregnancy, which I know you have a lot of strong feelings about.
Sahar Pirzada:
Yes.
Liz:
I'd love for you to share what you feel comfortable sharing.
Sahar Pirzada:
I mean I think, kind of given my own personal experiences as well as being in community with folks who have shared their experiences, there's been a really interesting discomfort with talking about loss and talking about pregnancy loss in particular. Everyone is different. Some people don't want to talk about it, but I think it's been really difficult for me personally to share about my pregnancy loss and then not have people hold space for that.
And how even at times faith gets used as this ... I see it sometimes as instead of it being a tool, it's being used as a weapon and that's been really painful as well. Of shutting down any form of anger or shutting down any form of grieving process, being like, "Well, we should be grateful for this." Right? This is part of God's plan. And for folks who are grieving those things can be very hurtful. And to think about losing the life of your child being a part of God's plan it's not something that's easy to sit with.
I think it's also something we're working on within HEART on how to have these conversations when you're centering the person that's experiencing the loss or is experiencing the trauma, and not making it about yourself, and making yourself feel more comfortable, right? If the person that you're talking to who has experienced the trauma leads with how faith has been their clutch during this experience, and how they've grown closer to God, or how these sayings have brought them strength. That's one thing. But how we need to be more mindful of not offering that before folks are ready to hear that, if they're ever ready to hear that. And really just this concept of what it means to hold space.
Liz:
And then there's also, I feel, so much judgment around this idea that where you are in your biological functioning is directly related to have you fulfilled your duty as a woman, or someone with a vagina and a uterus which is very disheartening and there's so much shame in talking openly about fertility, miscarriage, or then if you're pregnant, "Oh, that's amazing. That's great. Let's celebrate it."
Sahar Pirzada:
I think it's so ... I mean I find it incredibly frustrating because I just know how painful that experience is to have folks constantly emphasize your lack of a child in your life as some marker for your success rate when it comes to being a partner or a parent.
I don't know, I also feel like people hype up pregnancy but then also don't provide support through that journey of the emotional strain that that experience can hold. Right? As someone who's experiencing pregnancy after loss right now, it comes with a range of emotions where there are times when I'm holding both the grief and the happiness. Grief of still grieving my previous loss, but a lot of gratitude and joy for what's to come. But then with that also the anxiety of what's to come and the expectation that, "Oh people will just figure it out," even after you have a child. I believe that it really does take a village to raise a child and I am also reflecting on how, as someone who doesn't have a lot of family nearby, what is my chosen family going to be? And what is the community going to be that I can rely on to help me raise this child. Right? In addition to my partner, who are the people that I want in this child's life?
I don't know. There's many things that I think about, and I also think about how this relates to privilege, and who actually has access to the resources to raise their child in a way that they want to. A lot of folks don't have access to resources because of their situations or because of systemic barriers, right? I mean I had to actually switch from going on campus for next year's classes to the virtual academic center because I was like, there's no possible way that I can make it to campus three times a week and afford child care in the same way. And they don't even accept children under the age of six weeks for child care on campus and even that you're paying exorbitant amounts, right? All of these decisions that we make in order to really live the lives we want to lead and also provide the kind of lifestyle that we want for our children.
Liz:
And then also this acceptance that I see a lot of this happening in our culture around marriage and pregnancy. "Oh, this is wonderful. What a blessing." But there's not space for people to talk about, "I am really miserable. I'm uncomfortable. I'm not happy. I have really bad depression. I have bad acne." All of these things, you are just supposed to be grateful.
Sahar Pirzada:
Yeah, yeah. And I think that's really, really harmful because we're making it a norm where people can only talk about when they're doing well. What is community if it's not for helping people go through the bad times. Right? I think that that's also a disease right now within the community and within society where we talk a lot about mental health, but when it really comes down to it, people don't want to know what people are going through, or provide support in those ways. It's also like, "You should just go to therapy." Right? And that's the end of it. But this is something that you deal with inside and outside of the therapy room which means that you're going to need support from your entire support network that you have whether it's within family or chosen family.
Liz:
And you were saying before that you're experiencing a lot of rage right now.
Sahar Pirzada:
Yeah, I am. I mean I think it's hormonal partly, but then also yeah, just like the ways that people are so uncomfortable with talking about death, and talking about the grieving process, and making space for the grieving process to occur. People want to jump from ... I'm in particular thinking about the New Zealand attacks that just happened and how folks were so quick to just jump to, "Oh, let's all just be thankful that blah, blah, blah."
And I'm like, that's cool, but we can also be angry. You know? It's okay to be angry. And it's okay to spend time there, and to spend time in grieving, and that's healthy, and that's something that we should make space for if that's where folks are at. And not make people feel guilty if that's where they're at. Right?
The rage is real, and I feel like it's getting harder to hide the rage, and I've stopped hiding it because I feel like people should see this.
Liz:
Well, I think it's just accepting that we have to be in the awkward and uncomfortable spaces. We can't just zoom right through to a resolution.
Sahar Pirzada:
Yeah, we have to lean into discomfort. Why are people so afraid of discomfort? This is something that is a part of our life and, it's healthy to be uncomfortable. If you feel unsafe that's a different thing, but if you feel uncomfortable, your body is telling you something. Right? Don't shut down what your body is telling you, and sit with that, and really try to get intimate with that feeling and explore that.
Liz:
What are you still learning about the intersection of faith and sexuality?
Sahar Pirzada:
What am I learning? I think my journey, in particular, has been one where I've felt the need to work extra hard to really make space for joy. I have also dealt with fertility issues and experienced pregnancy loss so my relationship to sex and my relationship to sexuality has definitely had ups and downs, but I think one thing that's been constant is knowing that I have spaces to have those discussions in safe and productive ways, and then to also know that I have resources if I ever needed to, to get treatment on certain things and just reflecting on how my mental health hasn't been impacted by all of that and how it's been impacting my relationship with my partner. That's something that's really important to me so how do I hold space for that in my personal relationships.
I find a lot of strength from my faith to be able to have those conversations and to work towards joy and towards pleasure and towards having positive associations with these things that are important to me.
Liz:
That's a beautiful answer.
Sahar Pirzada:
Thank you.
Liz:
Thank you for being here and talking to me.
Sahar Pirzada:
Yeah, thank you for having me. I hope I did justice to the work.
Liz:
I think you're doing justice.
Sahar Pirzada:
Thank you.
Liz:
Thank you.