Culture Sex Relationships

Yes we have a new theme tune, which was made for us by a member of the assemblage Sankt Max, which you can buy as many times as you like https://thecominginsurrection.bandcamp.com/track/r-h-i-z-o-m-a-t-i-c-l-o-v-e-bishwave

I really enjoy your cultural artifact episodes on the podcast, particularly the one you made about love actually made me laugh a lot! I have recently been spending a lot of time thinking about the role of romantic relationships in society and all of the “rules” and dos and don’ts we must follow in romantic relationships. I find it intriguing that all these rules exist without us establishing them or agreeing on them. I recently watched some episodes of the new series of made in chelsea (the dating/reality show). It was such a great display of all these rules we must follow. I would enjoy you reviewing this for a cultural artifact episode! Thank you very much for your podcast and work you do.

Thank you! So I’ve done a couple of watchalongs of the first two episodes of the latest series (series 32) of Made In Chelsea. Oh boy! There are bits that are enjoyable, as I explain in this Cultural Artefact episode, but for the most part I found this really hard to watch and couldn’t do more than 2.

There's more over at the Patreon where you can also listen to this episode for free https://www.patreon.com/culturesexrelationships/posts/cultural-made-in-173196894?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link

A reader at BISH (my project aimed at, but not exclusively so, young adults) asked me to cover this album, which I did there https://www.bishuk.com/your-call/a-relationships-education-guide-to-you-seem-pretty-sad-for-a-girl-so-in-love/ However I also wanted to give this the Culture Sex Relationships treatment because it raises lots of very interesting issues that we talk about here at the podcast.

Stay tuned for 'enamoration' via Roland Barthes and Alfie Bown. There are the usual Deleuze and Guattari takes and how this relates to lines of flight, in particular the line of flight known as 'courtly love'.

Hope you enjoy it. If you would like more content I've also recorded a Listenalong episiode, where we can both listen to the album together. Fun!

https://www.patreon.com/culturesexrelationships/posts/listenalong-you-169892588?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link

That one is for Patreon supporters, so sign up today from just £1 a month to listen to this and also access lots of other exclusive nice things.

If you have a question you would like me to cover for an Ask Justin episode, or a Second Opinion episode (advice you've seen in the media you would like me to cover), you can send it to me anonymously and encryptedly here or send me an email to culturesexrelationships at gmail dot com

Justin

I was delighted to be joined by key member of the CSR assemblage, Dr Eleanor Janega. We were asked to talk about Take A Sexy Picture of Me by CMAT

"My problem is that there are simply not enough Sex Jams, and my best hope is for you and Eleanor to do another sex jam of any song by CMAT, but i guess Take A Sexy Picture Of Me might be the song of hers that's most explicitly about sexiness, if not actual sex. Please, please please a cmat song. thanks!"

Content Note: As I say at the beginning, the lyrics are actually quite sad and difficult as they cover the kind of violences of meeting the beauty standard, even as a kid. So you might want to read the lyrics here before listening to us dive deep into them. Here's a link to them if you want to read them https://genius.com/Cmat-take-a-sexy-picture-of-me-lyrics

Here it is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QU-q3tJjFoQ

Here's the (free) Patreon version of this where there's also a blog about it. You can of course support the show over there.

https://www.patreon.com/culturesexrelationships/posts/sex-jams-cmat-of-168956155?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link

If you have a question for the show please email me culturesexrelationships at gmail dot com or use this anonymous and encrypted form https://cryptpad.fr/form/#/2/form/view/knViAeHRLsKu1VW2ezujtx1pEd3m3S48XV3T4iE3xN4/

If you would like to book me for a Solution Focused chat check out my website https://justinhancock.co.uk/#coaching

Here's my latest Ask Justin podcast where I answer a listener question about abusive relationships, past experiences, discourses, and how she can trust herself and her relationship now. There are no details of any form of abuse at all, but feel free to skip this one if it's too raw for you for whatever reason right now.

I've written out my answer over at Patreon, which is unlocked for this one.

https://www.patreon.com/culturesexrelationships/posts/ask-justin-hold-167762205?pr=true

https://linktr.ee/culturesexrel Send your questions in folks!

Unlocked episode from Patreon. Here's another one of my experimental solution focus recordings, Solution Tracks. This one is about sleep and rest.

So your best hope from listening to this will be that you will be able to sleep really well and to wake up well rested. If being able to nod off and sleep all night and wake up feeling alert and rested will be a useful outcome for you, then continue listening to this. As we go I will invite you to respond to my responses as we go through some solution focused prompts to help you sleep and feel well rested when you wake up. You can listen to this at any time of day, it's not meant to put you to sleep right now (it's not hypnosis, but I am told I have a soporific voice). Usually in solution focused conversations, the best hopes happen while you are sleeping but for this one we're going to imagine that they come true at some point between now and when you go to sleep. So you might want to try listening to this (at least for your first listen) at some point in the daytime.

In this one I received an email about how communicating about sex is perhaps making someone anxious.

I talked about how conversations to do with how we do things (consent conversations) have to take into account that there are scripts that we need to navigate and perhaps smooth out, but also that there are ways in which we can articulate verbally what is is we need and want but also that we need an on going ethic of pleasure and care focused ethic where we are trying to increase our collective capacity to act.

So this is an old fan favourite of the three handshakes combined with the three lines: it's the call back to end all call backs folks.

Here's the handshake video https://megjohnandjustin.com/sex/handshakes-and-consent/

I've also doing a video version of this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X151A36QSng

Justin

Hi everyone

Sorry long time no record.

I'm back with a reading of a recent article I did for BISH (my website aimed at a younger / general audience) about Foreplay. As I have done in the past, I'm reading it and then interjecting myself with further thoughts and ideas - this time explaining the Body Without Organs (BwO). Here's the article at BISH What Is Foreplay https://www.bishuk.com/sex/what-is-foreplay/ please share it around for to help alert the algorithm to its existence.

If you look in the episode art you'll see a little drawing that might help you to understand the becoming, here it is from the BISH article too.

https://i0.wp.com/www.bishuk.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/what-is-foreplay-bish-a-becoming.png?w=600&ssl=1

Through paying attention to the difference a thing makes (and the difference that difference makes) is how we unfold, or 'become', through time. Leading us towards the interesting, valuable, important and remarkable (this is from the Todd May article below).

Here were those references I mentioned

Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F., 2004. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. (tr, Massumi, B.) London. Continuum.

Fox, N.J. and Alldred, P., 2013. The Sexuality-Assemblage: Desire, Affect, Anti-Humanism. Sociological Review. 61. 769–789. 10.1111/1467-954X.12075.

Komisaruk, B. R., & Whipple, B. (2011). Non-genital orgasms. Sexual and Relationship Therapy, 26(4), 356–372. https://doi.org/10.1080/14681994.2011.649252

May, T., 2003. When is a Deleuzian becoming? Continental Philosophy Review 36, 139–153. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1026036516963

'What are your best hopes from this conversation?' That's how we start Solution Focused Conversations (SFBT). Recently a client said that they wanted to decentre love, from just romantic love for a possible romantic partner. Instead they wanted to create the capacity to feel able to love this intensely across all of their assemblages: a rhizomatic love.

This case study maps their preferred future, if you were able to feel intense love across all of your assemblages, what will you start to notice? How will you know? How will people respond? Your kid, your co-parent, your mum, your friend? How will you respond to that? What will you be pleased to notice? What differences will it start to make? What difference will that make? What else?

Then (from a second session) we go backwards and I asked them to remember moments recently when they were pleased to notice the very first signs of this rhizomatic love happening. At a tube station, going to a friend's house, a spring in their step, smiles, hugs lasting longer. How feeling this rhizomatic love has created an extra capacity for more love, more care, more warmth, and increased capacity to act.

It's a bit of a special one this as it's the first time I've given this much detail about a client conversation, as you would expect, the client has given me their permission to do this. I think it really gets to the heart of what is at stake of the CSR project, and how this molecular, rhizomatic love reveals a very important micropolitics. However we organise our intimate lives (monogamy, relationship anarchy, etc) there is a lot to learn from this wonderful client and it feels a real privilege to be able to share.

If you would like a Solution Focused Conversation, find out more here https://justinhancock.co.uk/#coaching

You can ask a question for the show here https://forms.gle/vX9hW1zXVPpTLFkZ9

Hi Justin, could you talk about quarter life crises? Either personal experience or just generally and how they relate to the 'self'. I want to shake up my life but I am scared to quit my job (which is niche and hard to get and that I should apparently be 'grateful' for). Tried to search the feed and couldn't see that you have covered this before but I may be wrong!

Quarter life crises (or any life crises), quitting jobs, fear of the unknown/change, sunk cost fallacy, not knowing what you want to do, not letting other people's opinions dictate our life choices, etc etc

In this episode I talk about how ‘thingy’ the quarter life crisis is (answer, quite thingy) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quarter-life_crisis

I talk about my own experience of this

I then talk about Egg from This Life

I talk about the Three Lines of Deleuze and Guattari

I also talk about the idea of Becoming-Child vs being Infantile (here’s that great paper https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00131857.2022.2128759 )

And I give advice about, whether you are locked in or locked out, how you can find some molecular resources for becomings, and to make use of the falling in love line of flight and how this is the source of the agency, the agencying, the agencement, the becomings-other. What if you can be both free and gently held, whether you stay in your job or quit?

You’ve Got To Have Freedom https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYKHCvmu1z4

Okay we're doing this. Egg gets too close to a case, or is it that he is desiring his own servitude as if it were his salvation?

Content note for this episode about eating disorders. There's one scene (incredibly well played) where Delilah eats a lot incredibly quickly at around 20 minutes in. Beat have been offering support around eating disorders for years now https://www.beateatingdisorders.org.uk/

The episode is here at iplayer https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b007801x/this-life-series-1-3-living-dangerously

For all episodes of this watchalong series please consider joining the very cheap Patreon. Just £1 a month gets you all episodes and also lots of exclusive stuff