Cal State Fullerton associate professor of human communication studies, Tara Suwinyattichaiporn, popularly known as simply “Dr. Tara,” first became interested in interpersonal communication while she was an undergraduate and noticed that “most problems in the world are because people lack interpersonal communication skills,” she said. By graduate school, she focused her academic attention on communication in romantic relationships.
“I conducted relationship studies and published my first peer review journal article on long-distance relationships,” said Dr. Tara, who today teaches a popular class called Sexual Communication. “Then in my Ph.D., I spent four years studying different aspects of relationships and different types of relationships. And that’s where I learned that sex is one of the most universal problems that people have, regardless of their race, gender, sexuality, cultural backgrounds.”
In addition to her full teaching schedule, producing a podcast called “LuvBites” and writing a regular column for Woman’s Health magazine, Dr. Tara has begun co-hosting a radio show called “Loveline” on the Los Angeles-based KROQ on Sunday nights at 10 p.m., answering questions from listeners about their love, sex and relationship problems.
Audiences are drawn to the subject, in part, because of a general lack of knowledge about sexuality, Dr. Tara said, as well as “a lack of self-knowledge of what one wants, likes, desires, or one’s boundaries. That lack of knowledge is very crippling for people’s sexual competence.” Most people are not taught communication skills for discussing sex, she added.
Moral judgements about sexuality can prevent people from learning about it, she said. “We have been in a purity culture for so long. Purity culture comes from the idea that virginity is something to be protected, and sex should be only between two heterosexual people in a marriage, and anything outside of the norm is unpure, dirty, and you’re going to hell. From the purity culture plus lack of education, no wonder people are so clueless when it comes to their own sexuality and how to maintain romantic relationships.”
Teens who are not taught accurate sex education in school are also at a disadvantage, she said. “We’re in America, one of the most advanced countries in the world, yet only 18 states require that sex ed is medically accurate. In other states, their sex ed doesn’t have to be medically accurate. To me, that’s crazy.”
Questions from listeners of the KROQ show run the gamut. “For women, a question that I get very often is, how do I go about learning how to orgasm? And for men, I get a lot about sexual anxiety and performance anxiety. And then from couples, the number one question is how do we deal with different sex drives?” Dr. Tara said.
The use of pornography is another hot topic among listeners who call in, she said. “People are very concerned about porn use. They ask, am I using it too much? Is it a problem if I use it? Is it a problem if I want to use it with my girlfriend? Is it related to my erectile dysfunction? People just have a lot of questions because porn consumption became very normal in the last five years, and now they’re concerned if there are negative side effects.”
Dr. Tara makes sure her advice is research-based, much of which she discovered while co-authoring the textbook “Sexual Community: Research in Action.”
Her role on KROQ’s “Loveline” is, in part, to ground the show in facts. “I’m kind of the person that provides an academic perspective,” she said. “My co-host (Kevin Kenney) provides a comedic perspective. He’s really funny and very engaging, and it’s really nice to work with someone who has worked in radio for many years.”
Each week, she and Kenney create a safe, nonjudgmental space where listeners can open up honestly with questions about sex and relationship dilemmas. “And also, we share a lot of our personal life, our sexual preferences, what we do, how we communicate about sex with our partners,” Dr. Tara said. “People know that it’s a very safe and comfortable space to talk about sex.”
Born in Bangkok, Dr. Tara has compared cultural norms around sex. “In Thailand, a lot of communication is through reading the social cues and not direct communication. Sex is still very, very taboo compared to metropolitan cities in America. Thai culture is just a lot more conservative.”
But contradictions abound there. People in the LGBTQ community are accepted in Thailand, though same-sex marriage was only recently legalized, she said. And prostitution is also widely accepted and yet illegal, she said.
Dr. Tara’s forthcoming book, “How Do You Like It? A Guide for Getting What You Want (In Bed),” will be published in October.