Described by the Dubliner as “a feast for the senses, a celebration of sexual expression and erotic freedom”, Sexed Up promises to be a fun-filled night out for friends, solos and couples.
Attendees can expect interviews, demos, audience interaction, performances and giveaways.
Jenny (36) runs a variety of online workshops including Women On Top, Blow, Self Pleasure, The Principles of Sexual Freedom, and Sexual Confidence.
Due to the growing demand for her workshops, she was inspired to launch her live tour.
“I did the first show in April in Dublin and the tickets sold out in 90 seconds,” she says.
“I was shocked. I know thousands of people want to come to the online workshops, but I didn’t know if that would translate to the in-person experience.
“The show is really about highlighting the importance of adult-based sex education.
“My whole view on sex education as science is that it can be a bit complicated and boring, but learning the basics on how to have a more satisfying sex life definitely shouldn’t be.
“How can we learn the things that we need to know: learn about our bodies, about how they function, learn about anatomy. How can we do it in a way that’s fun, that’s unashamedly normal and really keeps pleasure at the centre? When I was creating the show, I wanted that to be the foundation of it.”
“So, if someone was coming for one night only, what do they need to learn so they can take it into their sex lives immediately? so you can have a more satisfying experience, whether that is with themselves or with a partner or with multiple partners, whatever their story is.”
Jenny says the show is the first of its kind and promises a night full of laughter as she aims to educate audiences in an entertaining way.
“It’s teaching sex skills, things like how to pleasure a penis, how to please a vulva, and also sex positions,” she adds.
“I have contacted world-class performers and they have created choreography and performance very specific to what I wanted, and this is just to give people an idea of how they can get creative. How they can add things that they have around the house, like candles, into their life in order to spice things up a little bit.
“There’s nothing like this in the world. Even the performers, who are from all over the world, said they have never seen anything like this.
“I say ‘Ireland’s first sex education show’, but really it’s the world’s first sex education show.”
Jenny Keane's Sexed Up show
There is never any nudity or live demos in the online workshops, all participants are anonymous and [computer] screens of others are not visible.
Reflecting on her decade-long journey from starting out to launching her live tour, Jenny explains: “My background in holistic sex education doesn’t take a linear path in terms of a sex education course that you can take in university and then it’s four years long and you graduate with a degree.
“Mine started in California over 10 years ago. I had my eyes opened to the education that I never received growing up and I just started attending courses.
“Some were initially sex skills ones, such as how do you give a hand job or blow job? How do you ejaculate? What is female ejaculation?
“As I started to have more serious questions, I ended up studying somatic therapy [how the body expresses deeply painful experiences] specialising in trauma therapy, and ended up pursuing that path.”
Jenny began hosting one-on-one sessions and realised early on that the questions her clients asked and concerns raised were education-based.
She then began running small group seminars as a means of addressing the most common queries.
“They were in-person and there were a couple of different topics, but mostly around female orgasm,” she says.
“What was it? Where does it happen in the body? How can you orgasm? How does your body function? How can you access parts of your body to experience more or different types of orgasms?”
With the onset of the pandemic, Jenny, who was also teaching yoga at the time, launched her seminars online and promoted them via her Instagram page, which currently has a following of over 117,000.
The Zoom workshops were initially attended by 100 people. Before long, she had increased the capacity to accommodate 500 participants and places were snapped up in less than 24 hours.
The following week’s workshop had 800 participants and “things just snowballed from there,” she says.
“For the Blow workshop, we used cucumbers and apparently that caused a national shortage of cucumbers in Ireland,” Jenny laughs.
“Before the workshop I thought, ‘Oh my goodness, they’re going to need something to practice on’. I would use a suction cup dildo and I had this image of thousands of people trying to get some suction cup dildos a couple of days before a workshop. I said, ‘Do you know what: go to Lidl and get a cucumber’.”
Jenny assumed the interest in her workshops, which she has now capped at 1,000 people, would wane, but that hasn’t been the case.
“Most recently, Blow, for example, sold out in an hour. Woman On Top sold out in three hours,” she says.
“I don’t really have a schedule and kind of go with the flow of what’s happening.
“It will probably be September or October before I announce new dates. It’s every couple of months.”
Jenny’s clients, she says, come to her usually out of desperation or because they are searching for inspiration.
She says one of the biggest sexual beliefs that we have been given is that sex is something we all know how to do.
She explains: “Sex is actually made up of a huge amount of different types of skills like communication, seduction, kissing, hand skills, mouth skills, movement and breathing.
“When we begin sexually exploring in our youth, we tend to try everything and some of those things work for us and some don’t.
“Some of those things we get praised for, so we’re like, ‘OK, I’m good at that’.
“Some of those things we might get shamed for or even slagged off.
“I mean, the amount of women who tell me they’ve been told they’re not good at blow jobs, and this will stop people from pursuing the things they are good at.
“There’s never this idea that sex is something they can learn. It’s this given in society that if you want to become an accountant, you have to learn the skills that you need.
“If you want to learn how to drive, you have to learn the skills that you need in order to be able to drive. It’s socially acceptable if you don’t know how to do those things and to seek out a mentor or someone who can support you.”
A promo poster for her upcoming event in Belfast
When it comes to sex, it’s not as socially acceptable to seek out help and support, Jenny says.
This is something that she’s passionate about addressing. If you are not naturally good at certain things when it comes to sex, you can learn ways of doing things that will better support your own body or someone else’s.
“For me, it’s really important that I’m answering the questions and designing workshops based around the questions that people have and the things that are topical for people at the moment,” she says.
“For example, the Principle of Sexual Wellness [workshop] would cover the difference between desire, arousal and libido.
“Often these get interchanged, like: ‘I have no desire for sex’ or ‘I have a low libido’, and it’s teaching people what the difference is.
“I think one of the big things as well in that workshop is teaching the difference between desire and fantasy because that can get very confusing.
“I would get messages from people telling me, ‘I sometimes fantasise about having sex with my husband’s best friend, so does this mean that I don’t actually love my husband and I love his best friend instead?’
“It can ruin relationships not knowing the difference between fantasy and desire.
“And it’s very simple; I always say fantasy is something that starts in the head, but it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s something that you want to pursue.
“A sexual desire will maybe start in the mind, but it is something that you want to pursue.
“There’s a huge difference between a sexual fantasy and desire, and hearing that for people can be just so relieving.”
Via the Woman On Top seminar, participants are encouraged to examine and reframe their thoughts in relation to their own body image.
“And then looking at things like how to take the lead, which is an important thing when it comes to getting moving into an on top position,” Jenny adds.
“So, teaching people how to become comfortable doing this and then obviously then moving from friction-based pleasure to sensual-based pleasure.
“Friction-based pleasure would be the pounding, which most people experience.
“Sensual is much more about the rhythm, the flow, the kind of circular motion that really supports pleasure in female hips essentially and the base of female bodies.
“Blow [workshop] is how to pleasure a penis; so hand techniques, mouth techniques, combo techniques.”
Through her blog and social media, Jenny tackles topics that many steer clear from discussing, such as the use of lubricant.
“I just think there’s a stigma and taboo around lube when it comes to injecting it into your sex life, and it’s because of this idea that our sexuality has a shelf life,” Jenny says.
“That, especially for women, we get to a certain age and suddenly we are old and dry, and so suddenly using lube can be this signal that we are not good enough and we’re not young enough, but this is absolutely not true.
“There are so many people that need to use lube for so many reasons.
“If you have an active menstrual cycle, your ability to be aroused is changing pretty much weekly. And the speed in which you become aroused is changing weekly.
“When it comes to perimenopause and post-menopause and all of these things, it’s really important to know without using lube does not mean that you’re ‘less than’.
“Using lube is a really beautiful way to add another layer into your sex life. If you find your mind wandering or you get a little bit bored, sometimes adding a flavour [flavoured lube] to that experience can just be a little bit activating for your mind.”
Sexed Up comes to the Mandela Hall, Belfast, on September 15. Doors open at 7pm. Tickets cost £80 and are available from Ticketmaster. For more from Jenny, visit www.jennykeane.com or @hellojennykeane on Instagram
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