Sex for Smart People*

Spoiler alert: we are hugely in favor of lube. Avital Isaacs, burlesque performer and education coordinator for Babeland NYC, is our guest of honor. She shares about her journey in getting comfortable with her own body, her views about bachelorette parties, and how she taught her friends about the clitoris at age 11. Where is the line, in a relationship, where you should keep working on things, or recognize it is not working and move on? Should people break up more, in general? And does anybody really use lube every time they have sex? Is there something wrong with you if you are sometimes “not wet enough” or if certain sex positions actually hurt? How do you find people to date when you are queer, not totally out, and not good at being the initiator? Types of lube that are healthier for your body than others. Some technicalities of anal sex. New legislation on affirmative consent in California. Cheers to the film “The Obvious Child”. And because if can’t be said enough: lube, lube, and MORE LUBE!!

The extraordinary sex/relationships geek Reid Mihalko (reidaboutsex.com) is our guest of honor this time! He throws down some great wisdom about how to “date your species”, how to discover what works for you and how best to communicate about what works for you, how to find your “win-wins” and your “dealbreakers”, how he thinks we should be looking at depth (not duration) to measure the value of a connection, and much much more. We address questions including: is polyamory a phase to be “grown out of”? How do you communicate that you are interested in someone sexually and still affirm that you are into them as a whole person? How do people with penises keep from coming too quickly when thrusting inside a partner? And what if your partner is not a “talking about things” sort of person?

Dear SFSP Community, in order to make this thing sustainable in the future, we need to reach out to you! Please listen to this (informative! entertaining!) seven minute message to learn about some super simple ways you can help. And/or check out patreon.com/sexforsmartpeople. Plus, Actual Fox News! Dave’s morning brain! Invisible tote bags!

A whole crowd of smart sexy people and our guest of honor, the ridiculously vibrant and kind Francisco Ramirez, join us for a live-taping/party at 3B Brooklyn. We start with exciting additions to our mission statement! And then we talk to Francisco about his work as a sexuality consultant with MTV and the U.N., and he shares about the most common questions he got asked when giving free dating advice in public parks. We all address questions from those in the room, including: When you are interested in somebody new, at what point do you share that you are in an open relationship? (Francisco an Stephanie do a saucy role play about this one!) If you are weary of affirmations and platitudes and relationships in general and feel like giving up, should you… give up? And Jillian Buckley joins us to address a question about how to move from feeling pressure to be desirable- to being in touch with what you actually desire and want in your relationships. You’re all invited to a Defectives Party with Francisco. Hear the sexiest possible song about enthusiastic consent from Love Songs for the Rest of Us. Learn what everyone in the room that night thinks is the sexiest. And don’t miss the orgy-of-a-Quickies-segment with guests from former episodes! We so glad and grateful to be in conversation with you all, and we are super proud of this one, yo. Bring your full self here.

Our dear friends Bobbi and Steve Siglbaum (lifelong activists/educators and all-around amazing people) join us to share their story of nearly 49 years of marriage – what sustains them through hard times, what they feel is most important in a longterm partnership, what they tell their grandkids about love and sex, and much more. Respect + Passion FTW!! We discuss our thoughts on making longterm commitments in light of how most partnerships end up not being longterm in the ways they were originally envisioned to be. And we dig into how much society works to make sure we don’t experience physical pleasure and how to work against that. Stephanie sings Sondheim, Dave talks about homophobia in the NFL. Plus a song rooted in empathy from BONOBONOBONOBO.

Casual sex can be difficult to talk about rationally because there is so much stigma around having too much of it or, on the flip side, not enough of it. Our guest Dr. Zhana’s research looks empirically at the connections between casual sex and well-being so we can transcend those stigmas and make more clearheaded choices about all this. She shares details about her research and what drives her in her work, and we soapbox about treating partners with respect, however casual or serious the encounter. How do you discern whether or not casual sex is right for you? How do you really get what you want from dating sites like Tinder? Is it better to have one night stands or friends with benefits? These questions and more, plus an anthem about sexuality from a place of wholeness from BONOBONOBONOBO!

Urban Erotika pioneer and poet Mo Beasley is our guest of honor this time. Mo talks about the significance of erotic art and shares about his journey with catalyzing and building Urban Erotika since 2001. He also talks about his activism around complex ideas of manhood and confronting homophobia in communities of color. We collectively address a question about who should pay for the check on a date, which turns out to be more of a doozy of a question than it first seems. Special bonus segment of poems by Mo, and by Regie Cabico and Slam!! And we round things out with a beautiful story from a listener about how YOU SHOULD TALK TO EACH OTHER ABOUT THINGS saved the day.

Kink-focused sex worker/educator/sex worker rights activist Sabrina Morgan joins us to unpack society’s discomfort with sex work, sex work vs. human trafficking, sex work as work, and to share stories of helping clients step into their own power. We collectively address listener questions about porn, Stephanie super extra geeks out about feminist porn, and we discuss the quagmire of mainstream porn. At what point, if any, does porn consumption become a problem? How can you make sure the porn you watch was produced in an ethical way? Also, what to do when your partner is more into BDSM than you are? And is it possible for consensual power exchange to be as or more intimate than vanilla sex? Stick around, this is a doozy of an episode!

We really dig into ideas about honesty and the complexity of gender identity with our dear old friend Salty Brine. Salty is a hoot and a writer/performer/educator extraordinaire. Is honesty ALWAYS the best policy- even when being honest might hurt someone? What to do when you want to have sex but shut down when faced with the opportunity… or when you don’t enjoy a sexual encounter nearly as much as you thought you would? And is there really nothing fixed about male-ness and female-ness? Plus, pick-up lines based on famous playwrights, “The Revolution Will Be Polite”, and a shout out to gender outlaw Kate Bornstein.

3 guests! So many quickies! Avital Isaacs (burlesque performer/education coordinator at Babeland Brooklyn), Salty Brine (writer/performer/educator) and Adjoa Tetteh (activist/sex educator) join Stephanie and Dave to throw down about various and sundry things including: what straight white feminist dudes are thinking, cheers to finesse and playfulness in sex, the Nine Taoist Thrusts, casual hook-up etiquette, celebrating fat sexuality, time pressure on having kids, the first kid to have three legal parents, herpes and oral sex safety, herpes is not a death knell, the art of masturbation, mutual masturbation FTW, National Condom Week!, five recent studies about female desire, analogous anatomy, the steaminess of getting to know your partner’s whole entire body, and a request to consider the complexity of your own gender. Whoa nelly. It was good for us. Was it good for you? Let us know.