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YouTubeSex education, as many of us received it, sucked, plain and simple. It was often rooted in scare tactics, gross omissions, and a whole lot of misinformation, if it happened at all. In the latest episode of Deeper with Darshana, Darshana Avila sits down with sex educator Julia Feldman to explore what sex education looks like when it’s grounded in curiosity, consent, and respect for our bodies and our pleasure rather than shame and suppression.
This conversation reaches far beyond classrooms and curriculum. It speaks to the lifelong relationship we each have with our ever-changing bodies and the ways early messages about touch, pleasure, and change shape us well into adulthood.
What Does Sex Education for This Century Mean?
Julia Feldman describes her work as “sex ed for this century,” a phrase that captures both urgency and possibility. Rather than focusing narrowly on risk prevention or biological mechanics, her approach centers communication, agency, and comfort in the body.
At its core, this kind of education teaches people how to talk about bodies without fear. It offers language, models consent, and normalizes curiosity as a healthy and necessary part of being human.
Why So Many Adults Struggle to Talk About Bodies
One of the most striking insights from the conversation is how often adults freeze when it comes time to talk with children about bodies, puberty, or sexuality. And it also shows up in intimate relationships with other adults too. Julia notes that this hesitation rarely comes from lack of care. It comes from unresolved shame and confusion carried from their own formative experiences.
Rather than asking adults to be perfect, Julia encourages them to notice their own reactions and separate their personal history from their child’s present needs. The goal is not control, but connection.
Puberty as Part of a Lifelong Body Journey
Puberty is often framed as a singular, disruptive event. Julia offers a wider lens, placing it on a continuum that includes perimenopause, menopause, and the many body changes that occur throughout life.
When body change is treated as normal and constant rather than alarming, it becomes easier to meet it with curiosity instead of fear. This reframing has implications not only for young people, but for adults navigating aging, illness, and shifting desire.
Why Pleasure Belongs in Sex Education
One of the most powerful themes in the episode is Julia’s unapologetic stance that pleasure belongs in sex education. Pleasure, she explains, is not inherently sexual or inappropriate. It is simply information. Bodies communicate through sensation, and pleasure is one of the ways we learn what feels safe, affirming, and right.
Teaching that bodies can feel good, and that people deserve to feel good, lays the groundwork for consent, agency, and healthier relationships later in life.
Consent, Choice, and the Practice of Discernment
Throughout the conversation, Darshana and Julia emphasize that consent is not a single conversation but a skill built over time. Offering children choices, inviting them to notice how things feel, and honoring their preferences all help develop the capacity to discern yes and no.
These same practices, Darshana notes, are often relearned in adulthood by people who were never supported in developing them early on.
Reclaiming the Body Without Shame
At its heart, this episode is about remembering what bodies already know. That pleasure is natural. That curiosity is information. That change is constant. And that shame is something we learn, not something we are born with.
This conversation invites listeners to reflect on their own relationship with their body, and to imagine what might shift if compassion replaced fear at every stage of life.
In This Episode
- Sex ed for this century: What it looks like to move beyond scare tactics.
- The personal connection: How Julia’s chronic health journey shaped her work as an educator.
- Foundational skills: Learning to talk about bodies without shame.
- Parental patterns: How unresolved body stories often shape how we talk to children.
- Askable adults: Why the goal is to be approachable rather than controlling.
- Puberty reframed: Viewing body changes as a lifelong continuum, not a single event.
- Curiosity vs. Fear: How to navigate body changes with a different mindset.
- Pleasure as information: Why pleasure is not inherently sexual and doesn’t need to be moralized.
- Early consent: How early practices support embodied agency later in life.
- Empowerment: Why feeling into ‘yes’ and ‘no’ is more protective than shame.
About Our Guest
Julia Feldman is the founder of Giving The Talk and a teacher who supports people of all ages with the compassionate, empowering, and scientifically accurate sex education we all deserve. She is passionate about creating educational experiences that center the needs of her students and encourages them to move through the world informed, confident, equipped to care for themselves and others, and free of shame.
Connect & Resources
- Website: givingthetalk.com
- Instagram: @givingthetalk
Connect with Darshana:
Darshana has supported thousands of people across the world to claim their Erotic Wholeness. Whether you begin with a self paced journey taken from the comfort of your own home or work with her directly for the transformational experience of a lifetime, your path to the pleasure, power and purpose you’re truly made for is just a step away!
Learn more:
- DarshanaAvila.com/offerings for courses and details about her private practice
- DarshanaAvila.com/community to enter the Galgasm community hub full of free resources
- YouTube.com/@darshana_avila for tons of inspired lessons, interviews and more
