Culture Sex Relationships

Latest Episodes:

Ask Justin 5: Should We Have No Contact After A Break Up? Sep 23, 2021

Show notes

I've written a blog post to accompany this one which you can read over at the now unlocked Patreon post https://www.patreon.com/posts/56188508

Meg - John And Justin: Kink Sep 07, 2021

Show notes

We're back with a Meg-John and Justin episode We chatted about: Why we haven’t talked about kink as different to any other erotic / sexual / sensual activity. How common kink is. How kink is still positioned as ‘not normal’ despite it being incredibly common. The weight of should stories of what is kink and how kink should be practised (and how this might be an over correction to the messages about kink being not okay). The challenge into tuning into what we want. How do we create our kink subjectivities? Communication and consent. What familiarity with all the terms and knowledge might open up or close down Different meaning and motivations for taking part in kink Different kinds of activities and the different things we might get out of it (and how this can be really different depending on context). The importance of being slow and avoiding pushing people / being aware of being pushed. Solo / partnered. Erotic / nurturing/ power. In the rest of the conversation (on the Patreon feed) we cover: Trauma and how we need to be aware of our own responses as well as others. The possibilities for kink as a way of understanding our traumas (and what needs to be in place for this). Abuse in kink communities and how we navigate risk. Intentionality / co-created. You can support Meg-John’s work directly at https://www.patreon.com/MegJohnBarker Their website is https://www.rewriting-the-rules.com/ You can see their free books (including their book about trauma) https://www.rewriting-the-rules.com/all-free-books/ I also wrote about kink at my website for young people a few weeks ago https://www.bishuk.com/sex/kink/ and also about Rough Sex (after my conversation with Rachel Thompson last week) https://www.bishuk.com/sex/rough-sex/

Rachel Thompson: Rough Aug 23, 2021

Show notes

As we’ve covered recently in the episodes with Katherine Angel and Joy Townsend, the on-going journey to sexual subjectivity for women is often difficult and fraught with harms, violence, degrees of unwantedness, coercion, and a lack of consent. The narrow, legalistic, framework we have for understanding these harms are geared towards identifying (or perhaps not identifying) perpetrators. This often stifles the voices of survivors of violence. In a society where sex is still so stigmatised how do we find the spaces, and the vocabulary to talk about sex and make sense of our own experiences. Where we are given such strong messages about what sex is, who is allowed to have it, and who should do what to whom. How as individuals can we navigate sexual encounters when society unfairly distributes agency and gives us few tools to allow for the possibility of collective agency and joy. Rachel Thompson’s book Rough - How violence found its way into the bedroom and what we can do about it, is a timely and wide ranging survey of all of this. It’s thoroughly researched and does not offer simplistic explanations for why violence happens in bedrooms and in society more broadly. However it is a calm, unflinching, inquiry into what violences there are, with an intersectional lens on who experiences them, and a call to arms for how we might change the culture in which this happens. So here’s a content note ahead of the rest of this conversation. We are going to be talking about violence, in its many forms. However we will try to avoid detailed descriptions of any individual acts. Here’s more detail about Rachel’s excellent book https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/112/1120632/rough/9781529110388.html Here’s Rachel’s work for Mashable https://mashable.com/author/rachel-thompson Here’s Rachel’s twitter https://twitter.com/RVT9 And that article of mine where I talk about porn and causation and stuff is at my website for sex educators https://bishtraining.com/does-porn-harm-young-people/ And if you are new to my work and don’t know that I run bishuk.com (one of the leading sex ed websites for young people) go check it out! Justin

Scott Burnett: Masculinities, Masturbation and No Fap Aug 13, 2021

Show notes

As we covered in a recent podcast Her Sexual Self, drawing and redrawing our sexual or asexual subjectivities is something that we are all in the process of doing - whether we know it or not. How do we come to know and understand and become our sexual selves? How do we do this when discourses, or should stories, of how we should do our gender and sexuality are so powerful and all around us. What happens in communities, or at an interpersonal level when these stories can be told and retold to others Scott Burnett has written an excellent paper on how men who abstain from masturbating make sense of their sexual subjectivities and how this is produced and reproduced in online communities. Some of this is quite everyday and benign, but some of it is quite troubling. So here’s a warning that some of what we might talk about might refer to racist tropes and sexist and potentially violent views of women. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1097184X211018256# Here are the notes I made before the show No Fap - brief overview Small minority but the basic ideas exist in culture more broadly and have for hundreds of years How masculinity works. Brief overview of hegemonic masculinities and how control narratives are a source of doing masculinity even when men are supposed to be interested in and having a sex drive. Manosphere online - a deliberate space set up as different to the IRL ‘toxic’ masculinity, but still doing the same thing. Fapstronauts Influenced by discourse about porn addiction Concerns over their sexual performance IRL, strong big erect penises eg Social harms of porn but not for women (slut shaming) Sexual energy can be exchanged for other energies Self masters Trying to be the ideal neoliberal subject Performance Lift, eat well, supplements, crypto, etc Jordan Peterson Meninists In opposition to feminism. Restating patriarchy Testosterone boosting masculinity Cucking discourses Trad discourses Porn drains energy from men, makes them soy (thus porn is a feminist plot) Sex is procreative, heterosexuality, have trad wife Alt Right Anti semitism - who porn is made by and what Here’s some more reading for you if you are interested Friend of the show Eleanor Janega wrote this on the history of some of these ideas https://going-medieval.com/2018/11/26/on-no-nut-november/ Here’s an excellent blog from other friend of the show Girl On The Net https://www.girlonthenet.com/blog/not-masturbating-too-much/ And here’s my advice article for young men about how to do No Nut November (I am not asking them to abstain from abstaining, but instead to give them gentle advice that might lead them away from the harmful groups we talk about in the episode) https://www.bishuk.com/sex/tips-for-no-nut-november/ Justin

Ask Justin 4: Her Asexual Self Aug 06, 2021

Show notes

I'm doing things a bit differently this week as my 'Ask Justin' episode is just me reading out advice which I've written in a column, over at the patreon. I thought I'd try this approach out. I'm more used to writing for young people over at BISH but I might do more of this kind of thing for adults here too. I also thought this would be a nice complementary episode to the last one with Joy Townsend called Her Sexual Self. To read it head to https://www.patreon.com/posts/54220897 (where you can also sign up to get more benefits)

Her Sexual Self: Joy Townsend Jul 23, 2021

Show notes

I’m afraid the audio of this episode isn’t as good as usual because we had to rely on the back up recording. Sorry about that. I’m also going to give you a content note here in particular for Natalie’s story where there is a description of a rape. There aren’t graphic details and in the story Natalie has ambivalent feelings about it, but I just wanted to give you a heads up in case you want to skip it. It’s around 28 minutes in and if you skip ahead for 2 minutes from when you first hear Joy mention Natalie’s name then you will miss it. Her Sexual Self: A narrative investigation of young women’s sexual subjectivities Listeners to this show will know that we have always tried to grapple with questions of the personal and the political, the structural and cultural messages that we receive, and the possibilities for agency and freedom to choose within this. It’s hard to articulate and sometimes it means that we have to treat them separately or as things happening in parallel, or by simply just pointing out that in a neoliberal world built on scarcity that our capacity to choose, or to be embodied is unevenly distributed. Joy’s thesis Her Sexual Self, really gets to the heart of this dichotomy and shows how actually our everyday experiences might be sites of valuable understanding where our self has the capacity to be drawn and redrawn. Sexual subjectivity the background and rationale of her sexual self Foucault and the technology of self (why his later work is important to reflect on) The subjects of the interviews and how they panned out Navigating normal Accommodating norms: ‘virginity’ ‘loss’ Managing norms: slut surveillance Being sexual but not too sexual - practices of constrained agency Resisting norms: The affirmative slut Resisting norms: the rampage Becoming her sexual self Defining the process Learning from experience The risky business of learning

Time: Mental Health And Prison Jul 02, 2021

Show notes

Before we start here's some housekeeping. This show is inspired by Time, the drama on BBC 1 that concluded last week and is available on iplayer. It’s not a review of the show but there are a couple of spoilers. We also mention self-harm but don’t go into any detail at all. As you’ll hear Jazz Tehara works in a prison environment with offenders with highly complex and challenging behaviour but with a NHS led pathway strategy in place. So this conversation raises some of the possibilities of what a well funded and resourced prison service, focussing on mental health outcomes and work on masculinities, could look like. Also if you would like to support this podcast please consider becoming a Patron of the show. Just £1 a month will help to pay me to make this show as well as to pay an appearance fee to fellow freelance guests. There are also occasional bits of bonus content for Patrons as well as access to the Discord server where you can chat with other listeners. That’s at patreon.com/culturesexrelationships

Juliet Jacques Variations Jun 20, 2021

Show notes

I was delighted to be joined by Juliet Jacques, who is a writer, film maker, and one of our leading cultural commentators. We talked about her latest book Variations which is her debut short story collection. She uses uses fiction inspired by found material and real-life events to explore the history of transgender Britain. Juliet very kindly agreed to do a reading for us where she tells the story of a press intrusion into the life of Laura, a model and actress in the 1950s. We also talk about the transphobia and 'trans discourse' in the mainstream media (and how stupid and reductive this often is) and how the role of fiction and story telling might be a compelling and creative alternative. Variations is out now on Influx Press https://www.influxpress.com/variations Her excellent podcast Suite 212 can be found here https://soundcloud.com/suite-212 and the Patreon for that is here https://www.patreon.com/suite212 If you like this interview and would like to support us, from just £1 a month, please consider subscribing to our Patreon patreon.com/culturesexrelationships Your support pays me to do the podcast and also helps me to pay a fee to freelance guests.

Digital Intimacies Jun 08, 2021

Show notes

I was delighted to be joined by Jamie Hakim and Ingrid Young to talk about their project ‘Digital Intimacies: how gay and bisexual men use their smartphones to negotiate their cultures of intimacy’. We chat about intimacy and why it’s not just what happens in private between two people but actually the connections we depend on for living - be that public or private. The loss of the possibilities for public intimacy was felt keenly by gay and bisexual men, where, as with for a lot of queer folk, counter public spaces were some of the few places they could 'be'. Interviews with participants reveal how smartphones could open up new avenues of intimacy during a pandemic, just as others are closed down. The opportunities for pause and reflection and new relationships, as well as the possibilities for negotiating safer covid safer sex practices. All of this as a counter to the ‘common sense’ and reductive stereotypes about gay and bi men, technology, and sex. This was a super interesting chat and there’s so much in here for everyone to think about and reflect on. Perhaps it might give you some pause for thought about the intimacies that are available to you? How we have managed and continue to manage our relationships via our phones and zooms. What opportunities there might be for forging relationships of comradeship and coalition. Anyway, have a listen and thanks so much to Jamie and Ingrid for coming on and chatting about their excellent project. For the full show check out patreon.com/culturesexrelationships There’s a great presentation from Jamie here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gwO5SenCok Also follow the project at https://twitter.com/digintimaciesUK

Eurovision Sex Jams Special May 22, 2021

Show notes

We did a live stream on our new twitch stream twitch.tv/culturesexrel just now about Eurovision. Here's the audio!

Our TOPPODCAST Picks

Follow Us

Stay Connected

Related Podcasts

Links

Stay Connected