Decolonizing Sexuality

Today we're getting a sneak peek at what's in the Decolonizing Sexuality book, which was written a year ago and is now--as predicted--being returned to for editing as I get in a cozy writing mood, now that North America is experiencing Winter. Atlas has a laid-back, informal and insightful conversation with phenomenal philosopher, mental health researcher and dear friend, Ben Mattson.

--Our guest list for 2021 is now over! 

--Next month's podcast episode is our ANNIVERSARY EPISODE (!), in which I'm very much looking forward to opening up about how this all began, and how the ups and downs of my psychosexual development led me here!

--We start with a new guest list in 2022! I'm currently working on building that guest list, so there are other series that are coming up in the meantime.

--I'm hoping to add a Kink & Mental Health series in the future, which you'll get a taste of today in this episode :)

--Got any burning questions about sexuality? A lot of people have questions about sexuality that they're afraid to ask their friends and loved ones out of fear of judgment. In the future, there will be a link where you can anonymously AMA (Ask Me Anything) about sexuality, I will answer them and put them on the podcast if I think they'd be helpful for others to hear and learn from (with your permission, of course)!

Our guest this episode, Grace B Freedom (all pronouns combined with they/them pronouns) is a Black Genderfluid Queer creator of the Black Love and Care (BLaC) Ethic. They are supported by a grant from the Effing Foundation to write the My Black (Gr)Ace series. They have been described as a penetrative and inescapable force, but mostly they want to be in deep conversations that are guided by mutual tenderness and curiosity that center a BLaC (Black Love & Care) ethic. You can find them asking a lot of questions and sharing their freedom practices on Instagram @madquestionasker and you can follow their writing on patreon @madquestionasker.

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Hey everyone!

Podcast Update: Thanks to YOU, in just 9 episodes, we've made it to 1,000+ plays, so we want to thank you so much for your support! It hasn't even been a year yet, so I'm curious to observe the growth of this podcast in the future.

Conversation w/ Grace starts @ 7:42. Just a PSA, I know that the intros/ending comments can be a bit long sometimes, but either way, they're meant to be a primer about what's going on in the conversation so that you can understand fully what you're about to hear and the space that the conversation lives in. So thanks for actively listening to these intros.

Recommended Resource: Columbus and Other Cannibals, by Indigenous author Jack D. Forbes

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Grace and I talked about the limiting ways that "wholeness" is depicted in the media not being conducive to the decolonized mind -- which can become more creative and empathetic because it's able to hold and honor all perceptions of reality. Interpreting dreams that help you understand your life better, letting animals teach you, seeing our co-creation with anything as a sexual experience, whether that be a co-creation with life itself or even in deep relationship with your own pain. This is what I mean by relational dynamics, they're not always between people, they could be between aspects of self, nature, and much much more.

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I was reading a writing piece online and the title really captured my attention: the title was "Rejecting Fetishization and Lack: Claiming the Fullness of My Black Demisexuality", and just that title brought so many words to what I was doing unconsciously when I talked in Episode 7 about rejecting what I called "unconscious sex work". The whole article is a must-read. So I reached out to Grace and they graciously offered their time to record a conversation.

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To me, this episode really feels so much like the sequel to Decolonizing Reality episode, our October episode with Ben Mattson.

There were some unexpected tech difficulties that we decided to roll with this time, so the audio might be iffy at different parts, but it should be audible.

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Enjoy :)

Atlas

Evelin Dacker, MD and I speak about decolonizing the body, the importance of deculturating the language around relational communication, and the role of the STARS talk in these endeavors.

Dr. Evelin Dacker is a Latinx-American and sex-positive Integrative Family Medicine physician. She is active in creating a safe space for LGBTQIA youth and adults and helping people through illness, trauma, and life transitions towards finding balance and joy. She incorporates a multidisciplinary approach with principles of gratitude and pleasure to support her patients in creating their own wellness.

In addition to practicing medicine, Evelin (pronounced Ev-ah-leen), was the Executive Director of SexPositive Portland from 2017-2020. She created the safer sex communication model STARS to help facilitate open and honest sex conversations. She is a consent and sex educator, sexual health activist and TEDx speaker (on STARS).

I hope you'll try the STARS talk with the people you know and care about -- enjoy our conversation!!

INTERVIEW STARTS AT 2:55

Hey hey hey! It's so great to be back on the podcast today again! We have a big treat for you today and an awesome topic that a lot of people can relate to - decolonizing the body. The public imagination is starting to care more about how to listen to the body, how to ground oneself in the body, etc. so I'm so excited for you to hear our conversation around what that can mean.

This episode reminds me of the fact that I purposefully didn't want to talk so much about the physical aspects of sexuality at first because that's the typical lens through which sexuality is viewed. I strayed far away from the physical level to normalize the fact that sexuality is more than the physical. Especially because that's where toxic sexuality often lives, like the male gaze, etc. But once I got these ideas out of the way, I wanted to integrate them back into the body of this podcast.

We can learn from the teachings of Indigenous POC about the insights we can gain when we attempt to view art itself as metaphors for living things/living beings. So this is why I want this podcast to be whole. I don't want to leave any parts out that are integral to the message of positive sexuality.

Decolonizing Reality - On Radical Phenomenology w/ Ben Mattson

Today’s episode is with philosopher, mental health researcher, and dear friend, Benjamin Mattson.

We’ve both tried to get a conversation on this podcast since the very beginning, but he had been quite busy with his organization, the Hope for Us Network, which is really starting to launch now so I would check it out! The Hope for Us Network is an organization that seeks to fill in gaps that the mental health industry needs assistance filling by enacting preventative measures before the onset of mental health crises.

Ben’s interests include exploration, interpretation and the sharing and translation of experience. His formal background includes philosophy and psychology with focuses on understanding experience and the art of ‘language-ing.’

This conversation was recorded 3 months ago, back in May, and it seemed like forever ago that we recorded this.

Thinking with Ben is always such a pleasure, so I’m grateful to be sharing this with you today.

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Want to stay updated? You can now “follow” me and all my general personal development work through my mailing list which just launched this week :)

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We use a lot of philosophical language-ing in this episode, so here's a brief glossary just in case there are some definitions you need of words/meanings we use in this episode:

Phenomenology = subjective, internally perceived experience (as opposed to objective, viewable experience), “what it’s like to feel the apple in your hand versus the observable contents of the apple at the micro and macro level”

Fractalization = the same thing at different scales. Spatially, the further you step back from the structure, you see, although the size may be different, that it’s the same thing at the micro and macro level because the ratios building that space are the same. (ex. Fibonacci sequence fractal)

Epistemic = regarding the ability or inability to know in the past, present, future or in general 

Epistemic injustice = gatekeeping, literally “controlling who knows and doesn’t know X”

Effort transcendence = a term I coined that means no longer having value attached to how much effort you put into something as a default. Sometimes this can be good, but some things are also amazing because they’re more effortless and therefore can lead us to what is natural for us - leading us to more stress-free lives.

Synchronicity = C.G. Jung’s concept of your inner environment ‘syncing up’ with your outer environment due to what you pay attention to, what all the different parts of you (including those parts you may not be conscious of) desire, etc.

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General Podcast Update:

I can’t believe that I’ve already been doing this podcast for 8 months. There may be a dip in episodes with co-hosts as I’m rounding up my next wave of guests as we speak - we’ve got some phenomenal guests in store. If you think you have a lot to contribute to the podcast, then I would absolutely love to have you on as a co-host. I just reached out to a BIPOC physician and sex educator who is a go-to person in sex positive and polyamorous community if you want to know information on how medicine can colonize our bodies and sexuality, so I’m really looking forward to having her on.

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 **If you hear "X of Sex", I’m changing the title of that collection of essays to Decolonizing Sexuality.

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Join my mailing list to stay updated!

Unconscious Sex Work (+ Transactional Relational Dynamics)

Hide your kids on this one; this one's going to be pretty explicit. 

Key points: 

References: 

Emotional labor

Social Model of Disability

Codependency

Covert narcissism

Stepping Off the Relationship Escalator

Today, I'll be talking a lot about aromanticism w/ Millie Boella; and what an honor it was to have such a powerful conversation with her!

Millie Boella (she/her) is a published writer, decolonizing consultant, and artivist. She’s been the executive director of a drop-in center, lead coordinator and host of the Massimadi Film Festival (Largest Black queer film festival in Canada), and founder of Toronto Non-Monogamous BIPOC. She now runs a consultancy on Decolonizing Love, where she and her nesting partner coach clients how to design ethical non-monogamous relationships and date interracially while unpacking white supremacy, among other matters.

Fact Checking Note: As I was fact-checking for this episode, I realized that what I said about kissing having origins in breastfeeding was only one theory, as it's also theorized that it can also have origins in mouth-to-mouth feeding methods that we see in early humans and chimpanzees, who still do this. The theory says when the food was scarce, ape parents pressed their lips to their offsprings's mouth to reassure and calm them.

One more note: you may hear some overlapping in us talking towards the middle and end of the episode because there was a technical delay, but the value of the podcast means a lot more to me than any brief tech issue, but just letting you know.

Enjoy :)

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I am proud to be aromantic, which is one of the As in LGBTQIAAP+. I am proud to experience love that is deep, profound and romance-transcendent. We will definitely be getting a lot of asexual representation on the podcast in the future as well, although we're talking about aromanticism today. 

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Intentional Check-In Before Moving Forward with Other Episodes: One of my deepest core values is to be a container for the unification of all perceived opposites. My personal boundaries had much more to do with something I love to say “if you abuse me, you’re gonna lose me” than any specific markers like race, gender, etc.

So the blackness and whiteness rhetoric can sometimes feel like “us vs. them” to me. I want to officially say, just in case y’all don’t know it yet, that an “us vs. them” dynamic is not condoned on this podcast.

It’s my intention to strike a healthy balance because it’s important to talk about these issues, but it’s also important not to lose the biggest picture, which is that narcissistic dynamics through dominant culture, are a contagion that has infected every race, creed and culture on the planet, and was prevalent even in pre-colonial societies. I think this means that we also need to find balance by looking into our own generational Shadows as much as we look at whiteness, not to continue blame or scapegoating, but just simply how we can heal from narc dynamics so we don’t perpetuate them.

How do we do that? It would be awesome if BIPOC also looked into their pre-colonial history to spot the signs of the narcissistic contagion. This, in my opinion, is how we maintain balance instead of perpetuated polarization, AKA "us vs them" dynamics, and the divide and conquer dynamics, all the stuff we don’t like, but can get stuck in unintentionally. 

Happy Pride!! Know that I'm thinking of each and every one of you and that I'm sending a lot of love out to you in this special month. May you feel deeply seen, deeply known and deeply represented. Until next time :)

Welcome back -- excited to share this with you now!

A quick update on simplybybeing.com — the members-only blog has been discontinued, but you can still join our mailing list!

[ A disclaimer for the title -- sex work can be healing work, but this is not to over-glorify what can be an intensely exploitative and dangerous industry for some people — particularly in countries and states where regulation doesn't exist and workers are operating without state or government protection of their rights and safety. ]

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This time, we're going to have Gabrielle Griffith.

Gabrielle Griffith is a Full Spectrum Doula, Educator, Public Speaker.

Gabrielle works through a trauma-informed and anti-oppressive lens to help families have a healthy and happy transition into parenthood that is sex-positive and inclusive to all gender and sexual identities. Gabrielle is a polyamorous, non-binary and queer identified parent who lives proudly with all of their intersecting identities in Toronto, ON.

Go on over and check out their work through Instagram & Twitter @yourqueerdoula.

Facebook page under their name: Gabrielle Griffith, and their website.

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Y'all are gonna really love this one, so listen until the end.

We talked about: institutionalization in higher education, parenting the self while parenting children, codependency as a main driver of colonization, and much more. You can also stick around for the last quarter of the podcast if you want to hear some really interesting ideas from Gab on the stigma that sex workers face and the intersection of sex work and shadow work. Their insights may inspire me to do a solo episode on redefining sex work in a much broader way as it relates to patriarchal society.

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Thanks for listening! If you're wondering what's on the horizon, I have a choice between 3 episodes with co-hosts that have already been recorded. I'm recording another episode with a dear queerfriend and philosopher tomorrow, who has a demonstrated history of making an impact in his community in the mental health and psychology sector. I'm very much looking forward to sharing that interview with you as well.

Cast Update:

Hey everyone welcome back.

We did kind of fall into a bit of a once a month rhythm, and that felt right, but of course, things are always subject to change as we listen more deeply to our bodies and are in equilibrium with the shifts of the planet in many ways. I’ll probably resume episodes with co-hosts again in May, and I'll share more about that, but before we get to that….I want to lift up Trans Day of Visibility that was on March 31st, and the start of Autism Awareness Month. 

Here are some ways you can be a good ally for trans people:

-Seek out stories by transgender creators and support transgender creators. Which you're already doing right now! Seek out authentic stories and media that have been created by the transgender community, such as the Transgender Film Center, a non-profit organization that supports transgender filmmakers and their projects.

-Call your local LGBTQ center. See what kind of help they need, whether it be volunteering or offering a service that you're good at.

-Educate yourself. Allies can start by learning the basic terminology surrounding the transgender community. For example, people often confuse sexual orientation and gender identity. There are many places online that share tips on how to be a good ally.

This year’s World Autism Awareness Day 2021 theme is ‘Inclusion in the Workplace: Challenges and Opportunities in a Post-Pandemic World’

The UN said: “The Covid-19 pandemic has exposed and heightened glaring inequalities around the world, especially when it comes to income and wealth distribution, access to health care, protection under the law, and political inclusion.

My upcoming podcast appearances -- Beau My God & Fit for Joy 

Update about upcoming podcast episodes:

I’m still recording episodes, I’m just not releasing them yet. So far, I’ve recorded 3 episodes that will be released sometime after May, and I'll be recording a 4th one with a co-host in May and that will most likely be our next episode.

References:

https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/31/us/transgender-day-of-visibility-trnd/index.html

https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/02/health/autism-awareness-day-wellness/index.html

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13178-020-00438-w

https://bigthink.com/sex-relationships/bdsm-psychology-trauma

Ten Brink, S., Coppens, V., Huys, W. et al. The Psychology of Kink: a Survey Study into the Relationships of Trauma and Attachment Style with BDSM Interests. Sex Res Soc Policy 18, 1–12 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13178-020-00438-w

Hi everyone, so glad to be back on the podcast!

I know I said we would have Ben Mattson as a co-host this time, but he needed to postpone so he'll be on one of these days. Today we're going to have someone I had the pleasure of meeting in an online group for non-monogamous BIPOC, their stage name is DeVery Bess. Devery Bess is a drag performer, podcast host, and one of the co-founders of the production company Ctrl Alt Drag. DeVery Bess has come a long way, with 9 years of performance experience and 15 years of dance experience. Born and raised in Montreal, they are now based in Calgary, Alberta.

DeVery is based in Mohkinstsis which is the name for Calgary in Blackfoot. Based in Treaty 7 territory which is the traditional territories of the Blackfoot Confederacy, including the Siksika, Kainai, Piikani, Tsuut'ina, Nakoda, and the Metis nation.

This international performer was awarded the title of Miss Twisted 2016 and has performed at over 20 Pride festivals all over the world. Their podcast is called "Singular They, Plural You" and can be found on Spotify here: https://open.spotify.com/show/4t6rQjelAzAn23vybk4ngc

Websites: You can find more about their work at Facebook.com/DeVeryBessDragKing & Instagram.com/DeVeryBessDragKing. 

This episode, we hear about DeVery's amazing story about growing up queer and their ideas about unity and community. Enjoy this episode :)