Crowded around the kitchen table, school friends writhing in horror my friend Amelia goes into detail about her suspicions that he interrupted her a classmates touch themselves in the loos.
‘Contempt!’ screamed one. ‘She’s a nympho pervert!’ offer more. Suddenly my mother turned from her elegant perch at the kitchen sink with a disapproving look on her face.
‘Maturbasi in person is perfectly natural and fun,’ she said. ‘Didn’t you masturbate Amelia?’
‘What’s it like having sex therapy for mom?’ That’s a question I asked so many times as a teenager.
For a few years, I just stopped telling people what my mother did (she hates the term ‘sex therapist’, and always insists that she ‘specialises in helping people with sexual and relationship problems’).
And for a long time, I would have told him that I found his career as humiliating as the son of Gillian Anderson’s character in Sex Education. I just became aware of what he did.
My mother, Janice Hiller, also bears a strong resemblance to Anderson’s character. She is a clinical psychologist and sexologist who recently published her book Sex in the Brain: A Neuropsychosexual Approach to Love and Intimacy.
Like all his writing, it is quite graphic and not for the faint of heart.
That’s why I never attended his lectures or read his works – until I became an adult myself.
Now a parent and co-owner of the British sex toy brand, Hot Octopuss, I am far from shy of my mother. In fact, I credit her for destigmatizing sex and masturbation at a time when most girls didn’t even know they could orgasm.
One of my early memories is my mother explaining how the body works, and women can get just as much pleasure from sex as men. This is news to my friends who believe that women make sex noises to increase their partner’s pleasure.
Except, I didn’t realize how unusual and ‘progressive’ my education was until, aged nine, a school friend stumbled upon a copy of The Joy of Sex in the study, sandwiched between The Tiger Who Came to Tea and Becoming. Orgasmic: A Personal and Sexual Growth Program for Women.
When my classmates admired the slightly erotic pictures, asking if my parents ‘used books’, I felt the shame that would color my primary school years.
One time, before my friends came to visit, I collected many sex books in a bag and hid them in the school library. They disappeared quickly and I had problems with my parents.
In retrospect, compared to my eldest son’s sexual awakening – through a friend’s phone streaming porn on the bus home from school – The Joy of Sex is a rather sweet and innocent way to discover sex.
Still, until the end of my 20s, I was determined to follow a more conventional career, working in journalism, think tanks and then the charity sector when I had children.
But I was still fascinated by my mother’s work. So when a close friend approached me about making a sex toy with her while I was on maternity leave in 2009, I didn’t hesitate.
In fact, it is a mother who has doubts, reminding me how difficult the dinner party conversation can be when the career revolves around sex.
Apparently someone once asked him what his practical role is in any way, and he had to explain that he provides therapy to talk, not the type of work!
But when my friends and I launched our first product PULSE, a hands-free vibrator for men, I didn’t hesitate to share the product review on our family WhatsApp along with the latest research on vaginosis treatment.
When people ask me now about the challenges of running a sex toy business with young children, I go back to my own childhood for guidance. Of course there are challenges – I don’t keep any products at home, and work from home when the kids are there.
But I don’t let my kids feel ashamed or embarrassed about my career.
There is a zero-shame approach to what is sex-related in our home growing up, if any – there is no question too embarrassing or personal to ask.
So, by the time I was 16, I knew practically everything there was to know about sex – for the benefit of my friends. Anything I can’t help, mom always can.
By the time I was in my late teens, my mother was more of a local celebrity than an embarrassed parent – friends gathered around the kitchen table to ask critical questions that they would not dare to share with their own mother.
Unruffled by the intimate details that invariably come up, he will pass out a self-help book on how to masturbate and give advice on everything from sensitive nipples, to what happens if a man ejaculates near you in the swimming pool.
But this openness is always two-sided. My mom always asks questions that are a little intimate – sometimes awkward.
Just the other week he asked me over brunch if my ex had suffered from premature ejaculation. ‘Just something I’ve been wondering about,’ she said. ‘There’s a new theory linking people who come chronically early with premature ejaculation and I immediately thought of him.’
He has a terrible habit of arriving everywhere at least 15 minutes early.
When I was pregnant with my first baby, she asked me if I had ‘strong orgasmic contractions’ during sex with her father, because there is a theory about conception that women are more likely to orgasm during sex.
When I didn’t answer, he asked me about my vomit instead.
Once, in my 20s when I was anxiously bouncing my leg up and down waiting for a friend to come while the family was sitting in the lounge, he commented: ‘Julia, whose movements look like you are stimulating yourself.’
I tried not to jiggle my leg around her today.
But they are often my first port of call to discuss new blogs, podcasts or research on sex. I share her passion for de-stigmatizing sex and educating young people, especially in a world where it’s easier to access porn than sexual health information.
I have no doubt that my upbringing contributed to my decision to leave the charity sector and build Hot Octopuss into the global brand it is today.
With my own children, I try not to embarrass them, and I don’t want to be the mother at the kitchen table with them.
Still, I am deeply grateful to have never experienced a problem of self-confidence or shame around my own sexual pleasure and desire that so many of my generation seem to have. I try to pass that forward as much as possible.
In fact, with my young children in mind, I recently ordered a copy of The Joy of Sex and placed it on the shelf above the piano.
Do you have a story you want to share? Email jess.austin@metro.co.uk.
Share your thoughts in the comments below.
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