I was thrilled to be joined by Jacob Bloomfield to talk about his excellent new book, 'Drag: A British History'. It tells the story of drag from 1870 to 1970 and I found it to be super entertaining and informative. I came to this as someone who was ambivalent about drag and I learnt so much.

You can buy it from this affiliate link and then I get a small commission (and helps support the show) https://uk.bookshop.org/a/10660/9780520393325 or get it direct from the publishers https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520393325/drag

The article Jacob mentions is here https://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/non-fiction/drag-surprising-mainstream-history/

I was delighted to be joined by Yvette Taylor to talk about her fascinating book Working Class Queers Time, Place and Politics.

You can buy it from here https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745341026/working-class-queers/

Patrons have had this show for a few days already. Sign up at patreon.com/culturesexrelationships from just £1 a month and support the show :-)

My last advice show was popular. Send your questions through via the link in the bio and I will answer them! :-)

The UK are having a round of allegations against public figures which centre around sexual ethics, consent, power, and bullying. These are all very different cases with their own particularities, yet the discussions surrounding them reveal a lack of nuance, lack of curiosity for critiquing sexual ethics, binary assumptions, carceral justice logics.

As it seems we’ve learnt nothing about sex, consent, and justice, I thought it would be great to invite Tina Sikka back on the show to talk about this and to apply her framing of a ‘pleasure and care-centred ethic of embodied and relational sexual Otherness’ and see what might become.

Here is that first conversation from a year ago

https://soundcloud.com/culturesexrelationships/tina-sikka-sex-consent-and-justice

You can pre-order the paperback of Tina's book here https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-sex-consent-and-justice.html

What if you have no problem making connections with people who are cute and engaging, but they are unavailable? My advice about how else we can see these moments of emergence and what we can do to bring reason and new stories into meeting people.

I guess this is a companion piece to this podcast https://soundcloud.com/culturesexrelationships/how-to-get-a-girlfriend-boyfriend-themfriend

This is a reading from my article I wrote for RSE folk but I think is relevant for CSR folk. I'm also really sick of hearing the bad takes about A***** T***.

This article is in response to the questions I get about ‘what should we do about toxic masculinity influencers’. I complexify the idea of an individual having a singular ‘effect’. I argue that there are potential harms of uncritically accepting a common sense ‘cause and effect’ discourse of toxic masculinity. How paying attention to those discourses ‘covers over’ failings which are closer to home. Lastly, how the solution has been there all along, but it’s our own embedded institutional toxic masculinities which prevent us from accessing them.

Here's the article https://bishtraining.com/the-effect-of-toxic-masculinity-influencers/

Sign up for the Patreon to see what I'm up to with this new zine. patreon.com/culturesexrelationships

And here's that link I talked about at the end https://forms.gle/AVkYLaL4srDunrHC7

I was delighted to be joined by Laura Scaronne Bonhomme and Dr Michael Beattie who (together with co-author Skye Davies) wrote Gender Affirming Therapy.

We talked about the need for this book right now. How trans and trans non-binary folk face such scarce resources and also an increasingly hostile and transphobic government. But also how the discourses around gender diversity may have produced an anxiety for health care providers in 'getting it right' and how this doesn't serve clients or themselves.

We also talked about what [else] gender affirming therapy does. How their gentle affirming approach allows for gender to emerge (rather than putting clients on an A to B gender journey). The importance of allowing for indifference, ambivalence, and existential unknowings. How they bring an openness and fuzziness to discursive framings of gender together with a grounded understanding of the body, the material, and how this can help trans and non-binary and cis clients to emerge.

Their book is out very soon so buy and review it here https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0335251544?ref_=k4w_embed_dp_err&tag=kpembed-20

Or here (where I'd earn a little affiliate commission too) https://uk.bookshop.org/a/10660/9780335251544

Also join their club at affirm.lgbt (as I have just done)

I hope you enjoy the show. You are as much part of this as I am. So if you can support it on patreon.com/culturesexrelationships with £1 a month for a bit I'd be super grateful. It helps pay me to do the show. Or you could perhaps share the show privately or publicly and say a nice thing about it. Maybe you could give it a nice 5 star rating on your podcast app too. Ta!

I was delighted to be joined by Sophie K Rosa for a chat about her excellent new book Radical Intimacy. We chatted about some of the emerging themes from the book:

- the neoliberal self as produced by society and culture,

- reflecting on Covid and how the lockdown policy reproduced common sense ideas about the nuclear family, mononormativity, and safety

- we critique the common sense idea of monogamy and link this with Fordist capitalism

- even under it's own terms what kind of society do we need to allow for even monogamous relationships and the nuclear family to emerge and thrive

- what are the possibilities for more queerer intentional, relational, and consensual ways of relating

- how those doing radical relating might also benefit from a more radical politics (as well as how those with radical politics might benefit from reflecting on radical relating)

You can get the book from here https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745345161/radical-intimacy/

And you can read Sophie's excellent journalism work over at Novara Media https://novaramedia.com/contributor/sophie-k-rosa/

Please support the show so that I can a) be paid and b) pay fellow freelance guests. If everyone listening donated £1 a month at patreon.com/culturesexrelationships I'd be able to treat this like a part time job and thus more podcasts.

I've done a reading of and around an article I've written for BISH this week about How To Get A Girlfriend, Boyfriend, or Themfriend. I've read it out but also talked around it to complexify it, chat a bit about some of the theory, and also why this isn't neoliberal advice but a line of flight to become 'other'.

Could you please help me share the hell out of the article https://www.bishuk.com/relationships/how-to-get-a-girlfriend-boyfriend-or-themfriend/

If you want to support the show (even just for a bit) there's a Patreon patreon.com/culturesexrelationships

Thanks for listening!

Justin

Renowned sex therapist and educator Cyndi Darnell joined me to talk about her amazing book ‘Sex When You Don’t Feel Like It’. We critiqued the idea of libido itself, the importance of curiosity, the new three word model you should be using instead of GGG on Feeld, the importance of allowing the body to speak, why talking about problems is often not helpful, the possibilities for the body to show the path to freedom and connectedness, and the difficulties of being saturated in discourse and how to become resourced.

Here’s a link to the book (I earn a small commission if you buy it from this link but it is widely available)

https://uk.bookshop.org/books/sex-when-you-don-t-feel-like-it-the-truth-about-mismatched-libido-and-rediscovering-desire/9781538161708?aid=10660

The paper that Cyndi mentioned is here https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14681994.2021.1882672

And her website is

https://cyndidarnell.com/

Please support the podcast if you can via Patreon and unlock bonus episodes and some other extras (Patrons have had this episode for a week ahead). Just £1 a month for a bit would be great and would pay me to make these shows patreon.com/culturesexrelationships

Here's an interview with Eleanor, about her amazing new book 'The Once and Future Sex'. We discuss the key themes of the book

- about how the story of what it is to be a woman was told (and how this connects to power and hegemony),

- where the beauty standard first came from and how women faced a double jeopardy of following them / not following them

- how the story of what it is to be a woman meant creating stigma around sex and relationships

- the role of the medieval mother and why motherhood was central to medieval life (yet women were still seen as inessential 'Others')

- and why all of this matters for the present day, for feminism, and also why learning from this should be an important, central, part of post-capitalist politics

Her book is out on 17th January 2023 in the US https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393867817 and here in the UK on 3rd March 2023 https://uk.bookshop.org/books/the-once-and-future-sex-going-medieval-on-women-s-roles-in-society/9780393867817