Excerpts from CBC Toronto’s Boldly Asian Series
Image: Mathusha Senthil
Thaen Pot, Thaen X and our founder, Mathusha Senthil, were featured on CBC Toronto as part of an ongoing celebration of Asian Heritage Month: Boldly Asian. The series, created by Kirthana Sasitharan and Manjula Selvarajah, spotlights change-makers in the Asian community. The series highlighted Thaen Pot’s journey so far in print, video and radio.
The print and video pieces are available here. The radio piece is available here.
Below are key excerpts from the video and radio pieces, respectively:
Video Interview:
Mathusha on the importance of naming the elephant in the room and the inspiration for Thaen Pot:
“I think by addressing it we also wanted to tackle the stigmas and stereotypes that are often associated with things such as pleasure and intimacy and sex. Thaen in Tamil is honey. And oftentimes when you think of sex you often associated it with sweet things that in part was born as an idea to become a hub, a community hub for Tamils, though we have kind of expanded out to the broader South Asian community, as a space for people to share their experiences and their knowledge so that was the original idea of Thaen Pot… which has now become Thaen X and Thaen Pot has now become its standalone e-commerce site where we also sell adult toys.”
“Thaen Pot originally started off as a conversation amongst myself and a few friends. Then we started to realize that there was interest in general within the community and also that we couldn't find answers when it came to things like sexual health and well-being. We also didn't know how to have those conversations with our own family because it almost felt like they didn't exist if I were to have conversations with elders, I didn't know how to have these conversations in a productive way because I didn't know the Tamil word for them.”
On Thaen Pot’s Collaboration with The Tamil Channel:
“The collaboration that we did was with this amazing page called the Tamil Channel, which serves as a platform to educate second generation or those who are unfamiliar with the Tamil language and Tamil words. I hope that it destigmatizes the words. It’s not a dirty word they do exist but to opens up space and room for conversation with our parents and with our grandparents.”
Mathusha on the future of Thaen Pot:
“I hope that one day people look at Thaen Pot and Thaen X and don't consider it to be revolutionary or “out of the box.” I want it to be so normal that [people] look at it as just another platform. That, in itself, would be an incredible place to get to. But right now at least if we can open the door for conversation and to normalizing how people feel about themselves, that would be a great place to start.”
Here and Now Toronto with Gill Deacon Interview:
Mathusha on the stigma surrounding conversations about sex and sexuality in South Asian communities:
“I grew up with many Tamil speaking people in the community and I always thought that these words just simply didn't exist. I would ask the elders, I would ask older people like my parents my grandparents and they would simply tell me that there is no word for this. I collaborated with The Tamil Channel, an Instagram page that promotes the Tamil language to 2nd and 3rd generation Tamils and non-Tamil speaking people. We kind of figured out that these words do exist but they are so ‘hush hush’ about it or so much shame revolves around this conversation itself that there are fluent speakers who were not aware of this. They do exist it's just that no one ever talked about it and why is it that the talks about why is sex such a taboo topic in the Tamil community.”
“I think culturally we were raised to consider it to be immoral if you had these discussions out loud…the element of shame that was attached to it especially when you're looking at being a woman within these communities at least basic as well. Sex is always this act that you perform in order to reproduce perhaps but nothing more than that. There's a lot of patriarchy there but it mostly just comes down to shame and as a result we were just taught that you're not supposed to have these conversations out loud.”
“Even for educational purposes you have science you talk about biology but you don't talk about actual sex and that was your experience growing up. I've never had these conversations I think going into sex-ed in elementary school or middle school, that was the first time I ever really understood what sex was or what that was all about but never within my own family.”
Image: Mathusha at Thaen Pot’s Launch in October 2020
“I am not by any means a teenager or my early 20s but I was very scared to start this platform…there are serious conversations with my parents you know. Most people would think of us like “you're almost a 30-year-old woman, why do you have to talk your parents about this?” I would talk to friends about it just because it was something that was a little bit frightening in a sense that I was not sure how the community would recieve this. Was I going to get backlash? I think it really just came down to someone has to do it so if we all kind of absorb this fear then we are still going to be at the same place that we want to move away from.”
Mathusha on the responses to Thaen Pot:
“It's been great. We actually were expecting a lot more of a younger audience…but surprisingly, we're seeing an older generation, we're seeing the 40 to 50 year olds to 60 years old being really receptive and thanking us for providing them with this space. We have writers talking about how they are married and they've had kids but they didn't realize that this was a challenge or penetration, for example, was a challenge for a lot of women. So we've been received quite well but we have had a little bit of a backlash from people […] but for the most part that was expected and it's been positive.”
Thaen X accepts pitches on a rolling basis. For information about pitching, please see here.
