The Birds, The Bees, and The BCBAs: Understanding Sexual Behavior Analysis with Nicholas Maio-Aether (Part I)

ABA on Tap is proud to present Nicholas Maio-Aether (Part 1 of 2):

Find the most comfortable seat in the house,  pour yourself a cold one, maybe two! In this episode of ABA on Tap, hosts Mike Rubio and Dan Lowery are joined by the "Sex Analyst" himself, Nicholas Maio-Aether.

Nicholas is a Board Certified Behavior Analyst (BCBA), Licensed Behavior Analyst (LBA), and a certified sexuality counselor who specializes in Sexual Behavior Analysis (SBA)—a subfield he pioneered at his agency, Empowered: A Center for Sexuality LLC.

In this "pour," we’re serving up:

• The Intersection of Sexology and ABA: Why Nicholas saw a desperate need for competency in addressing sexual behavior within behavior analysis and how he bridges that gap.
• Humanistic & Affirming Care: Moving away from traditional "mitigation" or "extinction" of sexuality toward approaches focused on self-determination, sexual access, and gender affirmation.
• Navigating Taboos: Real talk on the "good, the bad, and the ugly" history of ABA and sexuality, and how to ethically teach consent and education to neurodivergent populations.
• Sensate Focus & Practical Tools: A look at how behavior analysts can use clinical rigor to help clients achieve meaningful relational outcomes.

Whether you’re a BCBA looking to expand your scope of practice or just curious about how behavior science applies to the most human of narratives, this episode delivers science-backed insights with the signature ABA on Tap humor and practicality.

*This episode is marked 'Explicit' simply due to the topic and themes discussed. 

TUNE IN, DRINK UP, and ALWAYS ANALYZE RESPONSIBLY!

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:01

Welcome to ABA on tap. I'm Mike Ribio with Dan Lowry. So without further ado, sit back, relax, and always analyze responsibly. All right, all right. Welcome back to yet another installment of ABA on tap. I am your ever-grateful co-host, Mike Rubio, along with Dan Lowry. Mr. Dan, round two.

SPEAKER_01 0:41

Super excited. Round one was awesome, and round two, guest knows round one guest. So it was it's a small world in the ABA community, but I'm really excited about this one.

SPEAKER_03 0:51

It is. Now we've had another affiliated guest or associated with our guest today, and somebody who we really enjoy the conversation with Rachel Benson. And uh this particular individual works with employs Rachel.

SPEAKER_01 1:04

Rachel was one that we were chatting about afterwards for a while, just like it was so mind-blowing, and a lot of the stuff that she said was it just wasn't your typical things that we talk about. So it really gave us a lot to think about and helped us.

SPEAKER_03 1:16

So our guest today, constant expertise on things that we all deal with, that we've all encountered, and maybe sometimes we don't want to talk about so openly. So very exciting to be able to talk about these things openly with somebody who knows what they're talking about. Our guest today, without further ado, is Nicholas Mayo Athere.

SPEAKER_05 1:38

Hello there.

SPEAKER_03 1:43

Nicholas, thank you for your time on a Sunday afternoon. How are you doing today?

SPEAKER_04 1:49

Thank you for having me. I am doing very well. Pretty excited to be here. Always an honor, and actually enjoy the episode, the two parts that you did with Rachel. So kind of excited to be a part of that.

SPEAKER_03 1:59

Well, you've listened a little bit. We appreciate that very, very much, and thank you for agreeing to come on. We like to kick right off with what we call the origin story. We find that everybody we talk to maybe has similar roots to what we've done. And everybody, or not everybody, but most people in ABA have some run through the autism intervention piece. And then there are individuals like yourself who have found a very important, very specialized section uh or or place to apply these tenets. Uh so tell us a little bit about how everything got started up to the where you are now, and that should give us enough to talk about.

SPEAKER_04 2:35

Okay, my goodness, it is gonna be a bit of a journey. So uh we appreciate that.

SPEAKER_03 2:40

I absolutely we're here to listen.

SPEAKER_00 2:41

And if it looks like I'm texting, I'm just writing notes. That's what he says. Yeah, anyway.

SPEAKER_04 2:47

Right, no, you're you're vague booking, let's be real. No, um, okay, so my journey actually goes all the way back. I think we should kind of look at like 2003. So I'm gonna go back to when I was a junior in high school, and I had I was already had been exposed to sex ed and things like that, but it was really, really bad sex ed. I was undiagnosed autistic, I was in like gifted program and stuff like that, and I had some behavioral concerns, but I just thought I was an angsty teen. Uh but the the there were issues that I had had with sex ed early on that I didn't even realize were uncommon issues. Things like when I had heard, you know, our teacher in fifth grade had told us, so this goes even further back, we're looking like 96. My teacher had had said, you know, boys beat their meat and and girls, you know, they diddled themselves. And like, oh, I don't know what this means. So I went home and like I was like, well, I I know enough to know that like meat means my junk. So um went home and just started hitting it and being like, why do people like this? Uh so I didn't realize until like much later that like that was an uncommon experience. But what I did realize was that there was a lack of equity in sex ed, particularly when it came to queer identities. And so being queer myself and also having gone through uh reparative therapy, which is a type of conversion therapy, I had a pretty strong sense of like justice already towards like my own rights and towards like being able to live authentically. And it was really upsetting that they wouldn't talk about anything gay or how to how to be safe or anything like that outside of a very traditional uh marriage structure. And so my junior year of high school, I got trained by the Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network. They've since changed their name, but they remain still Glisten. So Glisten trained me to be a peer educator for sex ed back when I was seven, sixteen. And so I did a 24-hour workshop. It was three days, eight hours a day workshop to learn peer-to-peer sex ed. And so then I brought that back to Anchorage, Alaska, where I was going to school. And I opened up Anchorage's first Gay Straight Alliance, and then opened up five more gay straight alliances across Anchorage, and then started helping people open them up in Hawaii. So that was kind of like my my start into sexuality and into sex ed, and also into making sure that there was equitable access to education. And I feel like that's gonna be a theme. So I wanted to give that as a base.

SPEAKER_03 5:37

Sure.

SPEAKER_04 5:38

So going to college, I was like, okay, all of this is behind me now. Like it's time to grow up and stop focusing on sex ed. And I've left it in good hands. I'm gonna become an advertising major. And I I needed a job though, and so I went with what was comfortable and I started working in an adult store. And I already knew all of these things, and so just helping people there, also it paid a lot better than regular retail.

SPEAKER_05 6:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 6:08

My friends were making six, seven bucks an hour when I was getting almost 20. Um, right, I was like, I'm totally gonna do this. But as I was working in the adult store, something that started to happen was I was using an education-based model. I wasn't just trying to sell, and I also wasn't being one of those weird, creepy people who like acts like the adult store is weird and creepy. I just went up to people, I was like, hey, what's going on? Like, let's just talk about what you're going through, what you want, and I would talk to them about materials and all these other things. So the store was directly, this was a Hustler Hollywood, it was directly overseen by Teresa Flint, Larry Flint's daughter. Okay, and so she came in and secret, shopped us, and she saw how I was doing this kind of like education-based model. Next thing I know, I have an article in Hustler Insider every month called Nick's Picks, where I'm I'm expressing like these are different toys. This is what's coming out, these are the materials. This is you should not pair this toy with this type of lube. Um if people are having these kinds of concerns, make sure that you're addressing it this way, all of that kind of stuff. And I ended up with the display in every hustler store across the country. Wow. It's called Nick's Picks. Yeah, it was a fun little, fun little thing. Incredible man. And still, I was like, I'm gonna go away from sexuality at some point. I'm gonna do this. But then people started coming to me with all sorts of questions, and and it was suddenly they were treating me like I was an expert. And the questions that I was being asked started to go further, they started to go into relationships, they started to go into actual like sex acts and trying to build up sexuality, but started to dive deep into almost sex therapy, and I was like, I probably need to go get some further training. So at the time, I also had turned up positive for HIV. And the idea of going into like a really high intensity, really long hours crazy field like advertising just really wasn't feasible. That when I got diagnosed with HIV, I was hitting AIDS levels. So I actually already had like lesions on my legs, I was really tired, couldn't even mow my lawn. So like the idea of actually finishing out and going advertising was kind of like, no, this isn't happening. So I I was like, I'm gonna just go get a master's uh online, something I can do feasibly while I'm healing. And I got my master's in psychology with the goal of being a sex therapist. But then I got a master's in psych. You can't just immediately start practicing. You gotta go, you've got to get you know practicum, and then you should go for your doctorate and become a clinical psychologist. So I'm trying to find a master's level practicum site, can't seem to find one. But ABA sites are hiring like crazy. And school said, Yeah, you can do that, that that'll work. So I said, All right, let's try ABA site. I go to an ABA site and immediately I'm pretty disgusted by what I'm seeing. It was ABA, it was an adult facility, not facility, but company that had multiple group homes. And just the way I don't even bring this company up by name, they're not even on my resume. It was my first experience. I was only there for a year, but it was disgusting. What I witnessed was just so many people being denied their rights. And you know, here I am thinking I'm gonna go traditional sex therapy, and then I'm like, this is hurting, like this is hurting me on a on an emotional level. I know it's hurting them. And when I'm trying to report it, nobody cares. Everybody's like, well, you know, the problem behavior went away. Who cares if they're if they're getting their rights like brought forward? Like at the end of the day, don't open a can of worms, is what I kept getting told. Don't open a can of worms, it'll open a can of worms. Yeah, they're rights, but can of worms. Uh I'm like, wait, what? That really got to me. So I raised a bunch of red flags, abuse, neglect. It got really ugly. I ended up having to walk away from that company and got told I was never gonna make it in this field. Tell you what, you ever want to watch me become really motivated?

SPEAKER_03 10:19

Tell me I can't tell you you can't do it.

SPEAKER_04 10:21

Within a year, I was board certified. Oh man, that's awesome. I I did an entire ABA coursework and practicum at the same time. I did uh at 10% supervision 30 hours a week. So a year later, I was board certified. Wow. I was like, okay, we're doing this right. And so I have just really, really brought forth sexuality education and best practices since the forefront. My first practicum client in ABA was shaping of solo sex because he was going after his staff, his roommate, and he was harming his own penis. So, like that was my first case. They they said, Oh, you want to do sexuality? Well, we've got stuff for you. It was a much better agency. I will name that agency. That was Easter Seals Midwest. Oh, good okay, nice. Uh actually care about human rights.

SPEAKER_03 11:12

Well, and it's a big outfit, too. You you want to hear that, right? They haven't lost their touch.

SPEAKER_01 11:16

Yeah, shout out to Angel, who also wants to get do you know Angel Gonzalez? He's big in the Easter Seals here in the San Diego area.

SPEAKER_04 11:23

Oh no, I did not. But anyway, go ahead. Um, so so yeah, uh, so from there, basically just kind of working. I had to get while I was there, had to work some children's cases, some adult cases, but very quickly people started coming to me for adult-related concerns. I started doing agency-wide consultations at the other satellite offices, and I started presenting within the agency. And then I was like, you know, I really want to be able to let go of working with the children side of things. I want to be able to focus only on the adults. And unfortunately, as much as Easter Seals did value the work I was doing, it just went against their actual model to not just take people on a wait list the order that they come. And so sometimes it was like the guy who is at risk of raping people, he's got to wait until she can learn to suck through a straw. Interesting. And I was like, oh, like that was the one thing where I was like, I can't, I can't have a wait list of people who are engaging in illegal behavior or are at risk of being abused themselves or are harming themselves sexually because children need a higher VB map score. I just can't. So I did end up leaving Easter Sales, but on really good terms. They were so kind. They let me take my sexual cases with me. And I opened Empowered, a Center for Sexuality in 2015. We started with actual clients in 2016, in January that year, and just been going strong ever since. We are now international. We do offer international consultation. We have direct clients in Missouri, California, a couple of other states. Um, and then we also have behavior analysts worldwide that we are training. We've well, I've developed the certified behavioral sexologist, is a certification and it's it's pretty robust. So they have to take 60 hours of online or in-person CEUs. They have a 10 CEU in-person mandatory self-reflection uh weekend. They also have to do 100-hour practicum, 90 hours client facing, and 10 hours of group supervision, where they have to give each other feedback and brainstorm on their cases together. They have to do all of that and they have to pass quizzes after every CEU. And so by the end of it, they've basically met every criteria for any certification you've seen. I mean, it's so incredibly robust. So from that program, we also have a second level, and this is where things get crazy.

SPEAKER_01 13:55

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 13:56

Second level, we're addressing common concerns and couples. There, we are doing couples work, and we are working with neurotypical couples or mixed status couples, or we're working with couples who are both neurodivergent, and we're doing work that a lot of sex therapists, traditional sex therapists, would not know how to do in order to assist these particular clients. Um, we're doing it entirely through behavior analytic models. I want to throw out there, I did get a second master's in marriage and family therapy and did my practicums in sex therapy and in marriage and family therapy. And when I was doing those, I realized like, man, so much of this that is behavioral can be understood through a behavior analytic lens. And if we just grabbed the behavioral components, we could be bolstering the crap out of ACT and some of our other behavior analytic things. And so I did. I brought them back, really made sure that they were in scope, talked with people, did ethics consultations, all sorts of things, and basically created this model by which we address couples now entirely through an ACT framework and through a behavioral shaping framework when it comes to addressing sexual desires and things like that.

SPEAKER_03 15:05

Wow. Incredible. This uh I'm gonna I'm gonna vote this the best origin story we've had yet. You might be. Might be. What it what an incredible journey you you've been through. This sounds like so to somebody like myself, this could be very daunting in terms of now maybe physiology and anatomy that must be learned to be successful at this. Talk a little bit about that because it's it's obviously important, and I'm sure you wouldn't want to discourage somebody from doing this if they were interested. You keep saying robust. I mean, this is a lot of other information, a lot of related information, but things that now, if you're a psych major or an undergrad, you know, now you're reaching into your bio and to some of your chemistry stuff. You're really this is really multidisciplinary. That's pretty daunting for people. What does that look like for somebody trying to follow this course of study?

SPEAKER_04 16:00

Yeah, so part of the way that we've developed our certification program. So again, if you're if you're gonna be working with more of those common concerns or couples, that's our second level. So you actually would have already completed the 60 hours of online, the 10 hour in-person, all of that. Then you would do another 30 hours of online training. You would do a supervised case, which is typically gonna be done your first one side by side with a supervisor. And then from there, you've got to get complete another 100-hour practicum.

SPEAKER_05 16:31

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 16:31

During that, those 30 hours of continuing education, and then also the 60 from the earlier level, anatomy is worked in, and you have to get three hours of anatomy at both levels. And we we offer that education, but we also allow people to get outside education as long as it's behavior analytic.

SPEAKER_03 16:48

So you're you're kind of saying that once you go through the first part, the the the common concerns maybe seem all too common, meaning once you've you're you're not you're not so daunted by it anymore. It's like, oh, these are common concerns. Is that fair to say? Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 17:02

I would say the biggest area where people get more concerned when they're getting into the common concerns in couples is actually the idea of relationship dynamics.

SPEAKER_05 17:10

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 17:11

I think that's where people really are like, oh, what do I do with this? This, you know, and something that I like to throw out there is because I've had people say, oh, you know, if you're working with relationship dynamics, that's out of scope. Well, with the right training, it can be in scope. Technically, parent training is you addressing relationship dynamics. And so if you're able to do it between parent and child and parent and parent to address a child, why can't you address the two parents outside of how they address their child?

SPEAKER_05 17:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 17:41

And so that's really how I kind of look at that. And in the relational dynamics, something that we really make sure there are so many disclaimers on my trainings that are like one of the things that you actually have to do in one of my trainings is you're supposed to repeat out loud with me. Uh, even if you're taking it stagnant, it's an honor test. But you're supposed to repeat out loud, I am not a psychotherapist. It's just that that idea that there is going to be time where, you know, this is outside of scope, what they're wanting. Like, I'm not here to unpack a trauma. That is the work of a psychotherapist, right? But at the same time, if what you're trying to do is you're trying to access reinforcement and you're you're recognizing that things are not happening, you're only getting punished. Let's figure out where the reinforcement can get accessed. So we do a lot of uh addressing things like vaginismus, which is, you know, tightening or clamping of a vaginal opening. We address anorgasmia, we address initiation avoidance, um, and we address all of that through an entirely behavioral model. It's act, and then uh we use a process called sensate focus that I'm pretty extensively trained in.

SPEAKER_03 18:49

Wow, that's incredible. That is that is truly incredible. So you mentioned a couple of things. List for us a little bit more the notion of common versus uncommon problems.

SPEAKER_04 19:00

So our level one is really gonna focus more on like taking that the the behavioral skill sets that you do probably have as a behavior analyst and the populations that you're most likely more commonly working with as a behavior analyst, right? And so that's gonna be more focused in disability populations. Okay. So all of that, that we say is not common concerns in couples. Common concerns in couples falls outside of that more disability focus and is more like we're working now in the domain that sex therapists work in, but we're making sure to stay within our lane and we're making sure to play nice with the sex therapists. I have a really good rapport here in St. Louis with the local sex therapists, where if it gets to a point where they're like, I can't be effective, I can't figure this out, they send them over to me to see if I can be effective. Um, if they have a disability and they're like, I don't know how to work with this disability, they send them over to me. And if my clients need to unpack a trauma or they want to, you know, address attachment disorder, I send it over to them. Uh, right. And so we play, we play very nice. And I think that that's also important because I think one of the things that gets really daunting for behavior analysts is that fear of scope. And I think that's important. We should absolutely be always within scope, but we also need to recognize that you know our scopes can expand as long as we are keeping things behavior analytic, which to me, at the end of the day, I'm just gonna make a statement from my point of view it's behavior analytic if it is adhering to the seven dimensions and the the philosophical assumptions of science, right? As long as it's both of those things, it's ABA. You're good.

SPEAKER_01 20:45

That's tricky, right? Because we deal with behavior, and we've actually talked about it on an episode that almost everything is behavior, right? So speech pathologists, occupation, all of that's behavior. So sometimes it is a little murky or a little bit of gray area of like, are we able actually to go into that? Because it's just behavior, but they have a different level of expertise. So are we stepping on other people's toes here? Should we should we just defer and say that we're not competent in this, which I feel like to pass the BCAB or the BCB exam, you always just have to say refer it out. But the question being in actuality, is this an area that we can kind of have a good impact on, or is this outside of our scope? So I thought what you said was kind of interesting going back to the seven dimensions, good old get a cab and the philosophic assumptions. Any other thoughts on on kind of that that high wire act, so to speak, of going in between our areas of expertise, areas that we are competent in, areas that we're not competent in, but still could be well served, and areas that might actually be outside of our scope.

SPEAKER_04 21:48

Yes. Oh, I have lots of thoughts. Uh don't open the door to me. So just like with sexuality, I feel like sleep disorders. If you're gonna do ABA for sleep, get training in ABA for sleep. If you're gonna do ABA for feeding disorders, get training in ABA for feeding disorders. I do not think that a behavior analyst is competent per se in a specific population or a specific need without specific training in that population or that need. And so to me, like you know, I would say for me, sleep is out of scope. Feeding is out of scope. I would say early intervention out of scope. I've never done early intervention. Even when I was working with kids, I never did early intervention. I don't know anything about EIBI models. Nothing. I know what I've read and I know what people gripe about. Um, but but I I I cannot say, yeah, I can take that job that is for early intervention tomorrow and start working it. That would be, in my opinion, very unethical.

SPEAKER_00 22:53

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 22:53

And so I look at competency and we should always be aware of what our ethics code tells us, right? That competency implies that you've had training, some kind of supervised experience andor consultation. I like to look at that and say, let's get all three where we can. Right? Let's get all three where we can, because then you know you're doing good.

SPEAKER_01 23:14

It's tricky though, sometimes too, because we we have to get training, but in order to get training, you have to have somebody able to train you, and there's not a lot of people in this field. Like I imagine when you first so it's kind of interesting because you said you were at Easter Seals and your first client, I think you said it was Easter Seals. Yeah, it might be a mixing whether you're yeah, it was Easter Seals. You said your first client had like the sexual stuff that you were working with. So it's kind of interesting that that was yeah, just happenstance. But question being like, let's say you want that that expertise, it could probably be hard to find individuals within the field of ABA. You could certainly go outside the the field of ABA and then start to bring stuff back in. So is that kind of how you recommend going about getting that competency? It's usually leaving the field and bringing it back in. The only issue there, I feel like, is then now I'm just using you as a hypothetical. For anybody who does that, now we're kind of subservient to their perception of whatever that is, right? Because now they're the ABA expert in whatever it is. And Scott O'Donnell's talking about that on the first time we had that. That being overly cautious about our competency could just lead to the regurgitation of the same things over and over and over again. So, what kind of was your experience or what are your thoughts on that?

SPEAKER_04 24:30

Yeah, oh gosh. That was a that was a very long bit, but I think I grabbed it off.

SPEAKER_01 24:36

Yeah, welcome to my brain.

SPEAKER_04 24:38

Sorry. Um I'm autistic too. So my brain's going in trying to like compartmentalize answers for everything, and I'm like, they're all important, and I've got to answer them all.

SPEAKER_03 24:47

I'm probably undy I love I love your gesticulation as you do that. Like it totally made sense. I was like, Yep, that's what you're doing.

unknown 24:54

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 24:54

My girlfriend swears I'm on the spectrum, so probably similar.

SPEAKER_04 24:58

Okay. So kind of coming back around, trying to succinctly answer that. Yes, in my journey, I had to go outside because there were not behavior analytic programs training people in sexuality. I became an ASEC certified sexuality counselor and still am an ASEC certified sexuality counselor. I'm actually currently also in my second tenure as the bylaws chair, and I have just nominated Rachel Benson to be my successor. So hopefully in June, she will be the new bylaws chair at Asect. Um, it's really nice having behavior analysts uh board adjacent at a sexology org. Heck yeah. It's really, really cool. Congrats, man. Thank you. And so getting certified there, though, something that happened that was a huge pain in the butt. And like I've been very real with them. They know this, and they're not gonna be mad that I said this. Uh it was a huge pain in the butt that I had to take a bunch of training to meet their qualifications, just like my program, they require three hours of training in every important area. But the trainings being offered were not being offered by behavior analysts. So the trainings that I had to take on, you know, like anatomy or my trainings on anatomy was actually relatively easy to apply. But if we look at like diversities in expression, okay, so different ways that people express themselves, kinks, things like that. Taking these courses, and I'm taking a course and they're talking about, you know, different ways that we can can get in there and help clients through their dreams. And I was like, wait, what? Um, like I I can't do that in my like that will never be in scope for a behavior analyst. I know that will never be in scope, dream analysis. So, so in that regard, like there were things that I had to pay for in order to get the certification that realistically were more meant for traditional psychotherapists. And so it was just kind of like, I don't want to spend money and spend time on something I can't use. In addition to that, I had to complete my practicum there. And I did my practicum. I was very, very lucky that my practicum supervisor had an autistic son and had experience with ABA and knew the difference between psychotherapy and ABA. And so she was awesome. We spent all of my time in my practicum breaking things down and looking at what I can do versus what could she potentially do. And of course, she could always do more, but my could be more fine-pointed, right? I could get in there deeper with certain things. And so this is how Sensei Focus made its way into behavior analysis. Was my supervisor was Linda Weiner. She wrote the manual on Sensei Focus, and she used to work for Masters and Johnson. She was trained directly by them. They developed the model of Senseate Focus. It's an entirely behavioral shaping model. It's been empirically validated since the 60s. So we've got this like really, really powerful stuff that we've been able to bring in. But also doing my practicum under her was very expensive. Love Linda to death. She charges, I would say, a pretty standard rate. It's not that she charges an astronomical rate, but my entire ASEC journey altogether was about $14,000. And I was very, very lucky again that my supervisor understood ABA. I've met other behavior analysts who their supervisor did not understand ABA, that it was like a battle the whole time getting through. We had one who she's at my agency. Her initial supervisor kept telling her ABA was abuse and that she was an abuser and that she needed to just quit the field. And again, like there's a definitely an important conversation to have there. Sure. And also when you're paying somebody to supervise you, you don't want their only advice to be quit.

SPEAKER_03 28:54

Right? Like, yep, yep. So I guess they don't want to go.

SPEAKER_04 28:58

Um these these issues were why I was like, we need a certification specific for behavior analysts. And I actually went to Asect about that. And right when I was, I was still, it was right before I became bylaws chair. So I was I was on the bylaws committee, but I was starting to brush elbows with the board. And then I was like, hey, this is an issue. And it's it's it impacts behavior analysts kind of specifically. And can we have a behavior analytic certification? It can mirror everything else. We just give it a new name and make sure that the all the content is behavior analytic. Unfortunately, at an organization that large that is entirely volunteer-based and everything comes down to membership votes, the processes are slow. They told me realistically I'd be looking at eight to ten years. And I was like, I have HIV and I'm middle-aged. I don't know if I'll be around in eight to ten years. So I just went for it. And I took, with you know, oh grace and permission, I took their standards and I used them as a base to build my program. But then my program was entirely behavior analytic and it comes in at about one-third the cost.

SPEAKER_03 30:13

Nice. Wow. What what yeah? I mean, I'm I'm I'm stunned just by everything you've done to try and bring again, like I said in the introduction, these are things that sometimes people don't want to talk about, even even within what you're describing. It was hard for people to make connections. There was sort of one route. So I'm just very impressed by everything you've done to bring this to the forefront. You had mentioned earlier sort of back to the idea of common versus uncommon problems. And I guess one of the things that is astonishing, just even in my limited experience, say working with adolescents or adults, is how easy it is or how easy it seems for any of us to sort of dismiss sexual needs for certain individuals. So even if I'm working for adolescents and it's you know, I like to make the joke where we we work with developmental disabilities, all of the stuff you're worried about is always right on time. So when I work with uh you know male adolescents and there's moms worried about masturbation, for example, and it's like, yeah, that's that's gonna be right in there, and that's that's a need. What's your experience in terms of educating people in terms of physiology and anatomy that despite certain quote unquote developmental disabilities, this is still an organism with certain needs that's functioning in a certain way, these expressions will arise. You know, it seems pretty astonishing. I guess I guess to me, it seems very interesting that it's it is it's so easy for us to dismiss this and be like, no, this will clearly not be based on a certain level of socialization or expression. This is clearly not a need for these individuals, and I'm sure you would contend differently.

SPEAKER_04 31:50

I would. So I I I want to answer that. I also just real quickly want to finish again. There was there were components.

SPEAKER_03 31:56

Oh, yeah, please, please, please, thank you so much.

SPEAKER_04 31:59

Something I do want to make sure gets addressed is gatekeeping. And right, so I recognize right now I own a program, yeah, and right now it is the only program like it. What I am trying to do uh in terms of equity is build up everyone around me where I can. And so one of the things that I have done is open my program up so like any CEU provider who's offering sexuality content, if it can be lined up with our core knowledge areas and our requirements, we will accept their outside CEUs to just help them get their exposure too. Um, and then our graduates, we're going and we're actually going out and like trying to boost them up by giving them offers to talk and stuff like that as well. Um big goal is gonna be I I was on an island. A big goal for me is to create like a gigantic land mass where everybody is and we can all chill. I don't want to be on an island, but but I I do, I I get that, and that is something that I've I also run a Facebook group, and I'm always trying to ask people to help me admin the group so it's not just me, because again, I don't want to be that person who's like the decision maker or in control. It's never been my goal. My goal has always been to bring access, and that's where I'm coming from. Okay. So I'm gonna thank you. Thank you.

SPEAKER_03 33:25

Thanks for finishing that up. That was important. Thank you.

SPEAKER_04 33:28

You're good. So bouncing back around the anatomy discussion. So a huge issue is infantilization, right? We we don't want to open the can of worms, so we're not gonna address this until it becomes an issue. Well, that philosophy implies that you are gonna end up with an issue. Why would you ever create a contingency that ends with an issue?

SPEAKER_00 33:55

Self-fulfilling prophecy, right?

SPEAKER_04 33:57

Well, wait until there's an issue. Yeah, you are implying that you there will be an issue. Why would you not work to prevent an issue?

SPEAKER_03 34:06

It sounds like medical insurance, right? Oh, yeah. That's true.

SPEAKER_05 34:11

That's a pretty funny take on it.

SPEAKER_04 34:14

But but something that I really do emphasize a lot is you know, this is a human, this is an individual, you're a human, whoever you are, whether you're parent, guardian, custodian, staff, whoever's restricting the rights or the in or the information, right? I want to talk to them about like how would you feel if like other people assumed based on what you wear and what you're into, you know, the fact that you you seem to like gaming. I don't know, maybe you just are not ready for sex. Uh right, like I'm sorry, the fact that you like Minecraft, you should not be allowed to have sex. Um so so like at what point do we draw this line and say a person's interests indicate that they are not socially ready for this? It's like it's very weird to me. So I try and get in there and just be like, How would you feel if if that doesn't seem to work and and cause an aha moment? Then I keep going and I become more and more objective and I go down a road I don't like to, which is the road of abuse and safety. I would really love it if we could just go the route of like pleasure and access and fun and and living authentically and having relationships. And also sometimes we've got to go down the road of all right, you've said no to all of that for your kid. It seems like you really value safety. So let's talk about safety. Let's talk about the reality that when your kid is too old to be protected by being a minor, you know, so they're 18, their behavior is illegal because they never got the education that they needed to know not to touch people or not to, you know, go up to random people and ask them for sex or things like this. And so they're they're harassing people or they're non-consensually touching people, which can be considered sexual assault. And there are no special protections for disabilities in any state that I know of. If I'm wrong, I'm wrong. But that I know of, there's no special protections for having a disability if you commit a sex crime. So if you commit a sex crime, you still end up being a sex offender. You end up on the registry, you end up with all the restrictions, which might even mean that you have to be removed from your home placement if your home is near a school or something like that.

SPEAKER_01 36:30

Interesting.

SPEAKER_04 36:31

Right? So you have to face all of these things. Also, if you want your kid safe as they grow up, do you want their picture on a registry with their address available? What happens the day somebody decides to play vigilante and go go take care of any sex offenders in their town? Like this is not a safe, you never want to be on the offender registry. And so I really highlight you don't want your kid there. And also, if you really believe that your kid would never offend, statistically, let's look and we can note that in any given year, up to half of sex offenses are by people who are in care. So people with intellectual disabilities or autism. So up to half, it's usually between 30 and 50 percent. But a lot of sex offenses are being committed by people in care. And luckily, even though the law is not on their side, a lot of times the systems protect them and people are just like they're nice about it or whatever, you know. But that's never a guarantee. And so I I point out if if that's not your big concern, then let's also look at the the reality of being abused, because so many people with disabilities are abused. And especially, I hate to say this, but a lot of kids who go through ABA are taught to be compliant to adult instructions. Absolutely. If you are taught to be compliant to adult instructions and that follows you as a rigid rule through your life, even when you're an adult, you are apt to listen to your staff. And that means if your staff tells you to have sex with them or do sexy things with them, and you don't know why this is wrong, you don't know your rights in that situation, you don't know how to get them away and how to report now. Everyone thinks it's status quo. And this is what staff are hoping for when that is their motivation. They want a parent like you who is preparing their kid to be groomed by staff. Yeah. That that I try really hard not to go that route until it's that's my last resort.

SPEAKER_01 38:34

Last resort. Yeah, no. I like that. I like that that's that's a good way to word it though, because I've yeah, sometimes it has to go that way.

SPEAKER_03 38:41

Well, and I don't think that that's the first thought that a parent or a guardian would have. They're worried about the outward expression of that, maybe, and then that might get their attention, but they don't think about the education in terms of the individual themselves and how they might protect themselves if if that overture is made toward them and it's an undesired or unwanted.

SPEAKER_04 39:00

So let me tell you, I uh I raised some eyebrows when I was initially teaching teenagers, you know, what what to do if somebody's getting on them, and I I included in there a tiered response that was no, they keep going at you, push them and yell no, right? So I'm like teaching them that pushing is a thing to do, and then if they continue, you scream fuck no, and you get to another safe adult as quickly as you can, right? People were like, You're gonna teach a teenager that and I'm like, Well, yeah, they're at risk of assault. Like, I feel like fuck is a valid word when you are needing to use it to really get your point across. There are times where words are valuable. This is why I don't like the term inappropriate behavior. I'm like, no, unless it's illegal, uh under the right context, almost all behavior is going to be appropriate. And there are times where you just need to say fuck.

SPEAKER_01 40:08

Even a lot of illegal behavior is appropriate under certain contexts, like you know, militaries shoot people, like that that's murder, right? But like, yeah, it's a certain context. And you've talked about that too. About uh it's all about discrimination, right? Like we use the term aggression, but that's appropriate sometimes if somebody's trying to aggress to you. So I think we totally totally vibe with what you're saying there. Sorry, cut you off there. No, no, no, no, I was thinking about the client that oh well, let me actually go off something you said and then get back to what you said, Mike. You mentioned that high portion of individuals with autism or developmental disabilities end up being abused. There's a lady who I think she's on the autism spectrum. She gives speeches here in San Diego. Uh I know she has some sort of intellectual disability. I think it's autism. And she gave a speech at my girlfriend's ex school district and just talking about what it's like to be a neurodiverse individual. And I think she said like 80% or something of women with all uh again, I might be butchering it, that's why I want to run it by you. I think she said like 80% experience some sort of sexual abuse in their life or something like that. Is it that high?

SPEAKER_04 41:14

So the research is kind of divided, but I'm gonna tell you right now, even the low is too high. So research is gonna show you anywhere between 60 and 90.

SPEAKER_01 41:25

Okay, so 80 is right in there. Wow.

SPEAKER_04 41:27

And and staggering 60 is way too much. That means the average person with an intellectual disability, especially one who is born assigned female at birth, is very likely to be sexually assaulted. The most common ages for the assault are actually when they are children and then when they're elderly, but definitely can happen at any point in the lifetime.

SPEAKER_03 41:48

That that's staggering. I mean, that is even 60 is I mean, that's more than half.

SPEAKER_04 41:53

That is absolutely conservative amount, right? Right.

SPEAKER_01 41:57

And are are y'all finding it's usually by family members, by pro like service providers? Is there like a it's it's both?

SPEAKER_04 42:05

Yeah, it's gonna be both. It's it's so one thing that I I really am so glad that we're finally kind of moving away from. Like I'm like ready to pull my hair about is stranger danger. Because at the end of the day, is stranger danger really the big concern? No, I do think it's important to teach people that yeah, you you shouldn't trust strangers. We absolutely need to be teaching uh especially early, because kids they can be victimized by so many people in their lives. We need to be teaching kids like what is okay and what's not okay in terms of who can touch them, where, when, how, and what the children should be saying or doing if somebody is touching them against that correct what, where, and how. You know, like just because mom changes your diapers doesn't mean Uncle Jerry changes your diapers, right? Uncle Uncle Jerry definitely should not be reaching in and doing the things that he's doing to you. Like, we need to really get in there and we need to be teaching those things. So I think it's again very important that we address the abuse component, but I try really hard to really just emphasize like let's let's do this all from a standpoint of building up a human who's gonna have a good stand, sorry, a good stance of autonomy and a good framework of like their life and why they're important and why you know human relationships need to be very consensual. You know, I I like to teach consent very, very early on. My my I never worked early intervention, but I started with like four, uh three, three and four. And I was working in some consent based programming, even with them. I was teaching them assertive communication. When is it okay to be bossy? When is it okay to tell somebody a hard no? I wasn't teaching the four year olds the F word, but uh teaching them a hard no. And teaching them lots of little things and teaching their parents too. You know, when grandma comes over, she doesn't get to pinch the cheeks and kiss the cheeks and all these things. She can ask, she can absolutely ask. And it is totally, we can explain to the child why grandma might want that. It's going to make grandma feel good. It's going to connect to grandma. But you also don't have to. And there are other ways that you can help grandma feel good and connect to grandma, right? We don't want to coerce the child. This is the only way that she'll ever make grandma feel good. You have to give grandma.

SPEAKER_05 44:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 44:37

But like I think it's really important. Tickling. What an incredible way to teach a skill. So like when we're tickling and the kid says no and you stop, and then the kid looks at you like, Why did you stop? And you say, I stopped because when you say no, people should stop. If you want me to keep tickling, just giggle. Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_05 44:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 44:59

They say no again, stop. Right. And so they're learning even very early on. If someone says no, you stop, right? Like these are important things. And they're learning that it's not just them that they need to stop, that they should not violate someone else's consent. We need to teach it both ways. They need to understand other people need to stop and respect their consent. And I know that kids can't legally consent, and I will absolutely say kids consent to sex, but the concept of consent is universal and goes 100% outside of sex. When I'm teaching consent to people, I'll do things like I'll have them, I'll be like in this trial, just go ahead and ask me for a drink out of my my Stanley. And if you get a clear, consensual yes, go ahead and reach, like you're gonna take the Stanley. And if you don't, then ask what you can have instead. So they ask for it, and I go, I I always give it three different ways. So I'll go, yeah. And it's very clear, like on my face, nobody nobody listening can see my face. My face like lights up and it's big, and I'm like enthusiastic. Yeah, that's a very clear yes. We do it again, and I'm like, no, no. That's a pretty clear no. But I also teach this one little uncertainty. Yes. Because that's permission, but that's not consent. And permission and consent are two separate things, and we need to teach those as two separate things, right? Permission means someone says yes. Okay. Consent means someone says yes, shows yes, understands the question, knows the consequences, and they're cool with this.

unknown 46:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 46:43

So you gotta be looking at their whole face, their body, all of it. So we actually have programs here called Facial and Body Language Subtle Clues, where we teach things like what does it mean if someone's jaw starts to lock when you're talking to them? What does it mean if somebody's eyes start to look like they're pleading with you? And they're like looking back and forth. And uh, what does it mean if somebody is checking their watch? We're teaching all these little things too, you know?

SPEAKER_03 47:08

That's great. You you you mentioned so many things from a developmental framework that we wouldn't necessarily relate to now, sexual behavior later, but that are very, very important from the notion of how many people change your diaper or in essence see you half naked, which is a privacy matter. You mentioned tone of voice, which I think from a social perspective is something that we step into as ABA professionals all the time in terms of acceptable behavior, and a child raises their voice, we tend to correct them nine out of ten times, and maybe more than one out of those ten times, that's advocacy that they're expressing, but we don't necessarily see it that way. I really think that's an important point you made there. I know going back to the the diaper changing or the garment changing, I can't tell you working on high school campuses, I face this issue more often than not, where you've got now, you know, a young adult, an adolescent who requires that for their hygiene. And just in terms of logistics or staffing, you know, you have a whole carousel of people who are doing that job, and you're going, no, no, no, no. Like this can't be, you know, this can't be the way to do it. We're not teaching them a semblance of privacy or or respect in a way that could be detrimental. So I again it's it's so fascinating because I I I presume I'm gonna give the benefit of the doubt, it's nobody's intent to be harmful, but these simple actions can compound in a way that they could become detrimental later in life.

SPEAKER_04 48:39

Yep, that's 100%. 100%. Wow.

SPEAKER_01 48:44

I was thinking about to the example that that you gave our the first client that we had. About 13, maybe when he started, about 18-ish when he left us, somewhere somewhere in that age range. And I remember the first time that he started to like play with himself and touch himself. The the female RBTs or BTs at the time were they were so appalled and confused because again, typically we were dealing more with younger kids, so it wasn't really something that they dealt with. And then maybe combined with a taboo just in America or whatever, like they were like, Oh my god, he's he's touching himself. What are we supposed to do? And then remember, we kind of had a powwow, and like, all right, well, we gotta figure out how we can find a way for him to do it appropriately because we're not gonna be able to compete with this urge if we're trying to use matching law, like good luck trying to find a reinforcer that's gonna be functionally equivalent replacement behavior for that.

SPEAKER_04 49:37

That's literally help us out. You're you're speaking my language because when people tell me, oh, we need them to you know do this less, I go, huh, what's gonna be the alternative?

SPEAKER_03 49:49

When hits this function exactly the same way.

SPEAKER_04 49:52

Right. It's just like at the end of the day, something that I've pointed out before, because the I've been told, oh, if you teach them effective solo sex, because that's what we call it instead of masturbation.

SPEAKER_03 50:01

Thank you. I got that earlier. I'm gonna adopt that.

SPEAKER_04 50:04

Yeah, uh, so masturbation, the root word, it means polluting with your hands. Oh, geez, I didn't know that. And so yeah, it's so negative, right? So it really is. Let's call it solo sex, that's that's what it is. And so, you know, I've been told like if you teach them effective solo sex, they're gonna want to do it all day. And I'm like, A, A, if it's effective, the likelihood is they're not gonna be able to do it all day. I don't know how how many good orgasms you've had, but there's a refractory period for sure. And if there isn't good for you, the average person, especially the average penis habper, is gonna go through a refractory period where they're not gonna want to do stuff for a while. And that's an abolishing operation that we can utilize actually to our benefit when we have clients who have impulsivity control issues in the community, is to be like, hey, we're not gonna make you by any means that be creepy, but if you would like to have a better chance of being successful on your outing, why don't you go take some private time and we can leave when you clean yourself up afterwards? Right? Boom, way less likelihood than that they're gonna go up and touch somebody non-consensually. We've seen this across multiple clients here. We took this initially from Java. So, like this was reported pre-session, the influence of pre-session factors on deviant arousal. Reyes Fulmer and Hall. I can't remember the year. I want to say 2011.

SPEAKER_03 51:33

Wow, what a tremendous display of referencing prowess. This concludes part one of our interview with Nicholas Mayo Ater. Please do return for part two. There will be a weak gap in between parts one and part two, as we did a pod swap with the lovely ladies over at Reinforcing Conversations. Please do check that out as well.

SPEAKER_01 51:55

And always analyze responsibly.

SPEAKER_02 51:59

ABA on tap is recorded live and unfiltered. We're done for today. You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here. See you next time.