Respectable/Disreputable

“Is this what you left our Jewish youth group for?”

This was a comment on my Tik Tok video “5 things I can do at my job that you can’t do at yours.” It was left by one of the teenagers I used to work with. Nine months  have now passed since I left my job as Associate Regional Director at a prominent Jewish youth group, and a question I get from many can be summarized as, “Why did you leave a respectable job to post your ass on the internet and be a generally ridiculous person?”

I went to Jewish elementary school where I learned Hebrew, all the Jewish months and holidays, and how to read the Torah. I had a Bat Mitzvah. After I switched to public school, I was president of my local chapter of USY, a Jewish youth group that furthered my connection to Jewish culture and traditions. I dated a boy who was in AEPi, the Jewish fraternity. In university, I went to Hillel, worked as an advisor for my old USY chapter, and I travelled to Israel with Birthright (what a gross name, by the way).

I did all the typical things a Nice Jewish Girl from Thornhill does, but the community always considered me a little kooky. (For anyone unfamiliar with the geography, Thornhill is home to a very large Jewish community, and Canada has the 4th largest Jewish population outside of Israel.)  In addition to building my Jewish resume, I was interested in sexuality and feminism. I loved dirty jokes. I hosted a porn watch party for my 18th birthday. I took a special course that paired the students with street-based sex workers, and designed garments to tell their stories. I worked at Oasis Aqualounge in a customer service role, and later as an Aquaflirt (shift socializer and street team promotion). I created my final graduating collection out of latex, and after university, I devoted my time to my latex business. When it became clear that wouldn’t pay my bills, I looked for The One Job to Pay Them All (them being my bills), and decided to put all the sex and fetish wear related work behind me. 

I decided to look for a job in the Jewish sector because I didn’t want to fight to get my high holidays off. There. I said it. There was nothing altruistic when I first started looking at the Jewish Non-Profit world. I found a job with a teen-lead Jewish youth group, and I loved it. My role wasn’t to teach, it was to guide the participants on their experiential learning journey and to help them connect with Judaism on their own terms. I was rarely “at the front of the room,” but I coached the teens to further develop their ideas while teaching useful skills that would make their transition to university easier. 

I believed wholeheartedly in the cause, and I brought my kookiness with me, because I hoped to show by example that there’s more than one way to be a Jewish adult. Over my three years of work there, I noticed that the teen experience hadn’t changed much since I was in high school. Some teens were incredibly sexually active, others were nervous about never being sexually active, and most fell somewhere along that spectrum. They were definitely experimenting, and using the youth group as a way to meet other young people to date and hook up (make out) with. They were navigating complex relationship dynamics, frequently for the first time. 

Despite my extensive experience discussing topics related to sex and relationships with a diverse range of people, I wasn’t allowed to talk to the teens about any of this. That rule came from a reasonable concern – grooming is a real risk, and one of the ways adults engage in it is by talking about sexual content to normalize inappropriate boundaries. 

I was very aware of the reasons and concerns, but it was still incredibly frustrating to hear young people discuss unsafe or damaging sexual activity, without the ability to interject. They talked about things like being sexually active with multiple partners without getting tested for STIs and toxic relationships, and I couldn’t say anything or give them resources. I had to hear young women refer to themselves using terms rooted in Sex Work culture while being unable to have a conversation about empowerment versus self-objectification. 

Looking back on my own teen years, the lack of information we received was putting us in real danger. For example, when I was in high school, a friend’s brother died from auto-erotic asphyxiation. His parents were embarrassed and told everyone it was suicide. Teens are going to experiment, and we as a society are still not providing them with resources on how to do it safely. 

Teens don’t only want to know how to prevent pregnancy and STIs, they want to know how to do things in general. Denying them access to information does not prevent them from trying – it prevents them from trying safely. Tik Tok has more holistic information on safer sex than they are getting in schools. 

Teenagers are smart and they all have internet access. They’re also still steeped in a culture that perpetuates gender stereotypes and myths, just as I was. Yes, they know about consent, but many of them still don’t understand active consent and the “yes means yes” model. Many teens don’t understand how they are coercing each other with their words, even though they’re not using threats of violence. 

It was hard hearing teens perpetuating stigma and shame around sex and sexuality, and not being able to direct them towards alternative ways of seeing the world. I was concerned when I heard teens jokingly say “choke me daddy”, and I worried that they were going to think that choking comes standard with sex. (It doesn’t, and you have to be knowledgeable at the many forms of passive and active consent when you start playing with BDSM and kinks). It infuriated me that Sex Ed is only for schools, where, despite the decent new curriculum, the dissemination of information itself is inconsistent and largely left up to the teacher’s own comfort level. 

None of what the teens said shocked me. It upset me that things hadn’t changed, and that I couldn’t share any helpful resources with them. I’m not saying I would have said “here’s how you do this,” but I would have been able to point them in the right direction to find safe information. This is why I ultimately decided to leave the youth group to become a sex educator. 

There are many career paths to becoming a sex educator, since outside of the formal education sector, there is no governing body. I chose to take the content creation and community building route, which I’ve been succeeding at in my role at Oasis Aqualounge, through my podcast, and occasionally on tik tok. 

When I announced my transition, the response from my friends and family was an outpouring of support. From people who were not in my closest circles, it was thinly veiled skepticism and scorn. Why would I want to leave a respectable job that makes an impact on the world? Why would I quit something prestigious to post stupid Tik Toks? Someone asked, “isn’t the work you do with the teens, you know, more constructive?”

I don’t think working for a Jewish organization serving middle class and affluent youth does much for the world as a whole, and a job in the Jewish sector isn’t glamorous. I was glad to help the teenagers on an individual level and I loved getting to know over four hundred amazing young people, but the trade-off to not “fight” for my holidays was not worth the feeling of being trapped into what was considered “acceptable,” especially as a Jewish professional working with youth. 

Working in the Jewish sector, I couldn’t be an adult who cares about sexual health and sex education and wants to lead by example. Despite being populated by many accepting individuals working  in a variety of Jewish roles, the organizations themselves were anything but. 

The sex world is far more accepting than the Jewish Institutions are. In my current role, not only can I be publically Jewish and run events (see the upcoming Oasis Aqualounge Bagels and Cocks event, and last years’ Channukah Climax), but I can also do the advocacy and education that I always wanted to do. Working as an event coordinator at a sex club, I get to post Tik Tok videos about a variety of sexual topics, post my butt all over my Instagram, have an Onlyfans, and I’m still respected for my work ethic. Bonus: I still get my Jewish Holidays off, and I don’t have to fight for them. I find it upsetting that I’m not allowed to volunteer with teens anymore because of my role, but that mentality is exactly why I left.

We cannot continue, as a community, to subtly encourage these events and groups as a place to “meet a nice Jewish partner” without also working to end slut shaming and to provide more information on healthy relationships. I would like to see more open conversations around sexual health and hook up culture in Jewish youth community programming. 

It’s not the responsibility of teenagers to seek out information on such an important and complex topic. It’s the  adults in our community who must advocate for age appropriate opportunities where teenagers can learn from professionals outside of the school system. We should be looking beyond Jewish Family and Child Services to the wider sex positive community to find resources and topics that are important to teens today. This is the only way we can make sure they know where to find information from a trustworthy source. I doubt I’ll see the drastic change that I want in my lifetime, but I hope for a day that adults are allowed to work at a sex club or even be a sex worker, and not be considered unfit to work with young people.