Evelin Dacker, MD and I speak about decolonizing the body, the importance of deculturating the language around relational communication, and the role of the STARS talk in these endeavors.

Dr. Evelin Dacker is a Latinx-American and sex-positive Integrative Family Medicine physician. She is active in creating a safe space for LGBTQIA youth and adults and helping people through illness, trauma, and life transitions towards finding balance and joy. She incorporates a multidisciplinary approach with principles of gratitude and pleasure to support her patients in creating their own wellness.

In addition to practicing medicine, Evelin (pronounced Ev-ah-leen), was the Executive Director of SexPositive Portland from 2017-2020. She created the safer sex communication model STARS to help facilitate open and honest sex conversations. She is a consent and sex educator, sexual health activist and TEDx speaker (on STARS).

I hope you'll try the STARS talk with the people you know and care about -- enjoy our conversation!!

INTERVIEW STARTS AT 2:55

Hey hey hey! It's so great to be back on the podcast today again! We have a big treat for you today and an awesome topic that a lot of people can relate to - decolonizing the body. The public imagination is starting to care more about how to listen to the body, how to ground oneself in the body, etc. so I'm so excited for you to hear our conversation around what that can mean.

This episode reminds me of the fact that I purposefully didn't want to talk so much about the physical aspects of sexuality at first because that's the typical lens through which sexuality is viewed. I strayed far away from the physical level to normalize the fact that sexuality is more than the physical. Especially because that's where toxic sexuality often lives, like the male gaze, etc. But once I got these ideas out of the way, I wanted to integrate them back into the body of this podcast.

We can learn from the teachings of Indigenous POC about the insights we can gain when we attempt to view art itself as metaphors for living things/living beings. So this is why I want this podcast to be whole. I don't want to leave any parts out that are integral to the message of positive sexuality.