Intimate Interactions

It’s my pleasure to talk more with Jazz Goldman today, an intersex human, friend of mine, ocassional sex partner of mine, and professional cuddler for cuddlist. Suffice it to say they have a really informed and interesting perspective on intimacy, sex, and gender. Jazz is also a mixed race person like me, except instead of being British and Indian, they are a Black Jew. I mention that because I think all four of those identities are complex, but in many ways the most complex identity is that of being mixed race, and on that front, I think the two of us find a lot of common ground.

Since this episode is about intersex folks, I want to make a quick point. If sizes and shapes of genitals are already understood to vary widely, perhaps on several bell curves, why is it such a stretch to think of the shape varying not only among genitals in two binary categories but between those categories as well, perhaps like an inverted bell curve where most people occupy a space towards one of two categories but various people are spread out between the archetypes of peniscrotum and vulvovaginal?

This isn’t even getting into things like androgen insensitivity syndrome, gonads that don’t quote unquote match visible genitals, klinefelters syndrome, turner syndrome, or any of the other various situations that intersex folks might be in. I’ll post a video by some intersex people on what it’s like to be intersex (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cAUDKEI4QKI). But now, let’s go to the episode, recorded on my back in a dark room while I was uber sick with a headache during a bout of IBS.

1. Apologies for being super sick; describe room.

2. How would you define intersex?

3. How is that different from and similar to trans-ness?

4. What's your social experience having a body that can be perceived outside of male/female binary?

5. How does presenting as non-binary impact the way others see you professionally?

6. How does intersexuality impact your relationships?

7. Do you experience any intersections culturally between being intersex and being Black and or Jewish?

8. Any closing remarks?

Today I begin an experimental piece called the Tillie Friendship Project. Inspired by Audio Smut and The Heart podcasts, I got an H1N Zoom mic, the newer version of what Kaitlin Prest started with when recording Audio Smut. Seriously, if you’ve never heard it, go listen to it - it’s still ground breaking even if she and I disagree on the possibility of non monogamy as a functional relationship style.

While we don’t intend to come close to the alternative excellence of Prest’s early work, we did want to see what it looks like when two people try to document their experiences of friendship such that they can refer to them in the future.

Unfortunately the H1N Zoom sounded great on the live monitor but was saving the audio as the lowest quality MP3 which was notably less good. Hashtag learning experiences.

Today we talk about artificial intelligence, robots, capitalism, and sexually transmitted infections. That’s a fair first conversation as friends, right?

Jazz Goldman and I just went to Pride. Jazz is a friend of mine, an ocassional sex partner of mine, a professional cuddler for cuddlist, all about the performing arts, and all about community building.

Jazz and I have in common being some flavor of gender non-confirming and also being mixed race humans. In Jazz’ case, they are a Black Jew, and in my case I’m a British Indian. Very, very different backgrounds, and yet the experience of being a quote “third culture” end quote child has its similarities. Jazz is most importantly a sexuality intellectual. We sometimes get lost on tangents as we both find each other so interesting even when we’re off topic.

Back on topic: did I say we two mixed race, queers of colour were just at Pride?

Well it turns out some queers, especially some queers of colour, have strong feelings about Pride sometimes and we want to present some thoughts that might currently be less common in the mainstream while remaining as polite and kind to current organizers as possible as they still fill an important role or niche - but we’ll say more about that in the podcast.

Jazz mentions the Pink Triangle (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink_triangle).

Jazz mentions Ericka Hart who you can find here: http://www.ihartericka.com/bio/

Kat’s back for another session. This time, we talk about their experience of people pleasing and worthlessness. Kat describes the ideal of being a “wantless angel” that spends their time satisfying other people’s needs and wants. It may sound awful, but sometimes I think the body can be a traumatic place to be and focusing on someone else can sometimes be a relief, and a great way to get needs for validation met… and of course, sometimes a place of avoidance that many of us visit regularly or vacation in occasionally.

I bring up the idea of slowing down the process of reliving trauma or “titrating” it, allowing someone to control how much they process at once. We talk about mental health and therapy. Finally, we make it to giving or getting permission to ask for what you want.

Resources

Kris Perry is back to talk about parents, trauma, fear of intimacy, and the boy from the Wendy’s parking lot. She came to the recording session directly from his house.

I mention my partners in this session. I talk about the importance of trying again and again when it comes to getting hurt in intimacy. My position is you can’t choose not to be hurt in life, but you can choose who gets to hurt you. I think if you make a good choice, you won’t regret it. Let’s go to the session.

Stephanie is a woman of colour who has been an engineer and an accountant. She identifies as asexual or possibly a demisexual, and an ASMR content producer - though none happen in this episode. She has a passion for travel and politics.

She brings up the supposed deplatforming of Alex Jones, her thoughts on Ben Shapiro, gun rights, and antinatalism. I’m not sure if it comes up, but it’s important to note the mandatory minimum sentencing for gun owners from the Harper government’s tough on crime initiatives have all been overturned and no longer apply.

As you could guess, this is a more political episode than I’d usually record and while it isn’t exclusively focused on relationships or ASMR (we get to that later), Stephanie is an interesting person to me and I really appreciate how we either agree to disagree or one of us decides to go away and research more.

I welcome you to experience Stephanie’s passion and listen to us share, agree, and disagree. If you like the show, please tell a friend or write us a review to help other sex and relationship nerds find us.

Stephanie’s Blog is http://thewhorelyvirgin.com.

Lisa and Paula are back again: two monogamous, vanilla, heterosexual women of colour in their 40s. They’re successful entrepreneurs and mothers and wives who met during their MBA programs at UBC. This session turned into suburban housewives curious about my lifestyle without any desire to change their current lives presently which is great. These kinds of cultural exchange are fascinating to me.

We don’t have to value the same needs to understand each other; we don’t have to prioritize the same goals to appreciate one another and the challenge of pursuing those goals. Sometimes being at different places in life reminds us of the unique joys we have like families, children, and careers or in my case, the beautiful tangle that is the intertwining of multiple intimate relationships.

There certainly doesn’t have to be a trade off where one picks one or the other as my numerous non monogamous parents will tell you. Love and Kindness in the world can be as ubiquitous as your circumstances and your heart will allow.

But… your time is quite limited. It seems like you have a lot of it when you’re in your 20s, but one of the best parts of aging into my 30s has been my evolving relationship to time. So too as time becomes more limited does it become more important. I’m trying to do fewer things I don’t want to do with my life and more things I really want to do with my life.

And one of those things is making this podcast just for you. If you want to support me in that endeavour, you can just tell a friend about Intimate Interactions or if you want to keep helping other intimacy nerds find me, feel free to leave a review wherever you get your podcasts, but especially iTunes.

Thanks for listening.

Resources

I mentioned the Vancouver improvised partner dance scene. There's also http://metrovancouverkink.com if you decide you want to explore more in the BDSM realm. You can also find content on my website to have conversations about open relationships or introduce the idea to partners at: https://victorsalmon.com/relationships.

For non monogamy events, there are two pages (though both call polyamory "poly" which may be unfair to Polynesian people who prefer we use PolyAm or another shortening rather than burying their pre-existing use, their groups, and visibility of culture (under an avalanche of middle class white folks flocking to a new lifestyle). It’s a complex issue involving the word Polynesian being a colonial word and the complicated experience of internal Racism, something BIMPoC folks tend to understand in my experience and non racialized folks tend not to understand. My advice, it’s not inconvenient to just change your language, especially if you don’t understand the experience of being part of a struggling diaspora that is marginalized): https://www.facebook.com/VancouverPoly101 and http://www.vanpoly.ca/

Trufelle is a high-end cannabis edible created by the two entrepreneurs from today’s episode. They host events if you’re interested. Their burlesque group and event is https://luminesquedance.com/. Petra's quadrants of arousal that they mention can be found at http://artofconnection.org/arousal-types/

How’s your mental wellness doing today? Have you been getting enough self care lately? I’ve been somewhat sick and am probably going to cough through this episode. Our conversation this episode will focus on mental wellness in relationships and how trauma can disrupt intimacy. Our guest, Chelsey Blair, is an already-published Social Work undergrad who identifies as an activist and who is currently doing some cutting edge work in pioneering accountability processes for alternative sex communities and their leaders and educators. She is currently an expert volunteer on the Franklin Veaux survivor support team. As a content warning this episode and on tangents separate from any allegations against Veaux, we may talk about intimate partner violence and murder. For now, let’s talk about better mental health.

Resources

https://victorsalmon.com/impact-statements

Lisa and Paula are back: two monogamous, vanilla, heterosexual women of colour in their 40s. They’re successful mothers, wives, and entrepreneurs who met during their MBA programs at UBC. They were super interested to talk more about the results of their struggles with Sexual Shame, which we talk about mostly in their first session on Intimate Interactions.

This session focuses more on arousal and the idea of a sexual renaissance. Lisa talks about her midlife awakening; that if she didn’t start asking for what she wanted, if she didn’t start living life, it would pass her by. Paula talks about burlesque and sexual empowerment. They mention their experimentation with cannabis edibles culminating in their high end cannabis edible, Trufelle, marketed towards other suburban wives and moms. They also mention quadrants of arousal. All of these things are linked in the resources which show up on Patreon for my premium content subscribers and anchor.fm for my other fans.

Thanks so much for supporting the show!

Resources

I mentioned the Vancouver improvised partner dance scene. There's also http://metrovancouverkink.com if you decide you want to explore more in the BDSM realm. You can also find content on my website to have conversations about open relationships or introduce the idea to partners at: https://victorsalmon.com/relationships.

For non monogamy events, there are two pages (though both call polyamory "poly" which may be unfair to Polynesian people who prefer we use PolyAm or another shortening rather than burying their pre-existing use, their groups, and visibility of culture (under an avalanche of middle class white folks flocking to a new lifestyle). It’s a complex issue involving the word Polynesian being a colonial word and the complicated experience of internal Racism, something BIMPoC folks tend to understand in my experience and non racialized folks tend not to understand. My advice, it’s not inconvenient to just change your language, especially if you don’t understand the experience of being part of a struggling diaspora that is marginalized): https://www.facebook.com/VancouverPoly101 and http://www.vanpoly.ca/

I spoke about the awesome drag kings at Man Up. Here’s an article about them. 

Trufelle is a high-end cannabis edible created by the two entrepreneurs from today’s episode. They host events if you’re interested.

Today we meet Chelsey, a person working towards a Social Work degree at UNBC. She is a cisgender white queer femme who is anarchist leaning and is currently working as one of the humans pioneering conflict resolution strategies in a survivor support role. She’s also currently doing a lot of side projects. She is recently published as a feminist undergrad on the topic of practicing Non Monogamy in the context of Patriarchy. Currently she’s working with the women reporting they experienced harm in their interactions with Franklin Veaux. We chat today about what relationships are and how sex and trauma are political.

Resources

https://victorsalmon.com/needs (redirect to cnvc needs inventory)

https://victorsalmon.com/feelings (redirect to cnvc feelings inventory)

https://victorsalmon.com/glm (reshare of the https://goodlivesmodel.com simplified explanation)