Sextras

More and more people are pursuing celibacy eras, but what happens when you want to start having sex again? As Honey is clearly incapable of answering that question herself, we're joined by Layla London, anonymous host of the sex podcast the Curious Girl Diaries, who made a sex bucket list and ended her self-imposed celibacy after 3.5 years.

We recorded an episode with Layla over on her podcast, which you can listen to here or wherever you get your podcasts.

Layla delves into what made her stop having sex in the first place, before offering tips about how to make a sex bucket list and for finding the right people to go along with it. 

From sex parties, to squirting and threesomes, Layla has experienced a plethora of wild experiences along the way and she leaves us with some valuable advice for jumping back into the world of sex when you’ve been out of the game for a while.

Thank you so much to Layla for joining us this week, you can find more of her on her website and you can find us on TikTok, Instagram, Threads (!) and Facebook @sextraspodcast, or on our website. You can also get in contact with us at [email protected]. 

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

TW: domestic abuse and toxic relationships 

Spoilers ahead!! 

We thought we’d celebrate pride month (very last minute, as always) with a discussion of the Ultimatum, Queer Love. In this episode we delve into the drama of the show and unpack why we think each of the couples were doomed to failure.

Listen in as we discuss gay marriage, including why people want to even get married in the first place and how the whole premise of the show is extremely queer. We then unpack each of the final couples, answering whether we think Vanessa is a narcissist and if the queer Ultimatum is more toxic than the straight Ultimatum. 

We hope you enjoy this episode and that you’ve had an amazing Pride month. Stay tuned for more episodes now that we have more time, including a miniseries about parenthood and family relationships coming your way very soon. 

It’s Sextras' third birthday, so if you are a regular listener it would be super helpful if you gave us a review or rating wherever you get your podcasts. You can find more of us on Instagram, TikTok and Facebook @sextraspodcast, our website, on our Patreon or email us [email protected] for more. 

See you next time!

Produced by Mable Productions

Original music by Sacha Putnam 

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Happy Lesbian Visibility Week! We’re so happy to be back talking all things compulsory heterosexuality and realising you’re a lesbian and we’re joined by the most (!) guests we’ve ever had to hear about their experiences.

We start the episode discussing Adrienne Rich’s theory of compulsory heterosexuality, the lesbian masterdoc and how it can help you if you’re wondering how to know if you’re a lesbian, bisexual, pansexual or it’s just compulsory heterosexuality. We tell our own experiences unpacking whether we really like men before welcoming Dani, Emily and Cassie to discuss their experiences realising they were into women.

They tell us what it was like to come to terms with being gay in their own time, from their first ‘I think I’m a lesbian’ to then coming out to friends and family and whether that was a difficult experience or not. They unpack how they feel about their sexuality now, whether people in their lives responded well and how they unlearned compulsory heterosexuality, plus the difficult distinction between being bisexual or suffering from the affliction of compulsory heterosexuality.

We also discuss: learning you’re lesbian through Orange is the New Black (a surprisingly common experience), not telling your dad you’re gay (another common one), how to ‘look’ lesbian (if there’s really a way), the importance of representation and what they’d tell themselves as baby gays. Thank you so much to Dani, Emily and Cassie for joining us in probably the most chaotic episode to record and edit we’ve ever done.

Apologies to you, our lovely listeners, if the sound is dodgy at times (we tried our best but guess what?! after three years we still don’t know how to record!!) but, thanks to our guests, this episode is really an excellent one to listen to if you’re at all questioning your sexuality. Have an amazing Lesbian Visibility Week 2023 and we will be back very soon with another episode.

As always if you have anything you’d like to share with us or any questions, you can do so on our website, on TikTok, Instagram or Facebook @sextraspodcast or email us at [email protected]. If you enjoyed please leave a review/ rating and subscribe and we’ll see you very soon with another episode!

Original music by Sacha Puttnam

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Nothing could bring us back from a months-long hiatus faster than Love Is Blind and we are so happy to be back, delving deep into the drama of the season and breaking down each couple. Needless to say: if you haven't watched season 4 of Love Is Blind don't listen to this episode- it will spoil it (or do, if you don't care about that kind of thing).

We start the episode covering what the main 'themes' of the season were, from the recurring problems amongst the couples to questions we have about the show overall. Then, we dissect the relationship trajectory of each couple from the pods to the (ahem) altar and our thoughts on how we'd react to the experiment.

Maria is a seasoned reality dating TV show lover, while Honey is just vehemently in love with all things Love Is Blind, so we're excited to debut our return with this run down. Please let us know if you'd like to see more episodes like this, we can't wait to get into the Ultimatum Queer Love once it comes out (excuse the pun) and we'd love to hear your thoughts on everything that went down and anything more you'd like to hear from us in coming months.

You can get in touch with us on Instagram, TikTok or Facebook @sextraspodcast, email us [email protected] or find us on our website www.sextraspodcast.com. We'll be back next week with a very exciting episode make sure you subscribe to stay tuned for that and we'll speak to you then!

Original music by Sacha Puttnam

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode we wrap up the season by looking at our own experiences of pleasure and desire, discussing whether feeling desired and experiencing pleasure are compatible.

We look back at what we learnt about pleasure and desire during our miniseries, from where our attraction, fantasies and turn ons come from to learning how to experience and communicate please.

We discuss how the way we communicate about sex has changed over the years and if we feel like we’re at a good place in our relationships with pleasure and desire. Talking about sex on the podcast is often easier for us than talking about it to a partner, so we discuss why that is and what the most difficult part of talking about sex is for each of us.

As bisexual women, the way we experience desire for women versus men can be different so we discuss what that looks like and how compulsory heterosexuality has convinced us both that it’s easier to be attracted to and desired by a man even though that’s not true at all.

We hope you’ve enjoyed this pleasure and desire miniseries. If you have any requests for further episodes you’d like us to do related to this series please get in touch. You can join our Patreon to continue the conversation and watch the video for each episode, or follow us @sextraspodcast on TikTok, Instagram or Facebook or email us [email protected].

We’ll be back soon with a new miniseries, can’t wait to see you then!

Produced by Mable Productions

Original music by Sacha Putnam

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In the next episode of our pleasure and desire miniseries, we’re joined by sex and relationship coach Keeley Rankin to learn how to talk to your partner about what you enjoy during sex.

We begin the episode by asking what people commonly struggle with during sex and where people’s fear of communicating about what they enjoy in the bedroom comes from.

Keeley explains that often it is a mixture of things that prevent us from being able to talk about sex- first is that we don’t know what gives us pleasure (maybe there are too many options or maybe we don’t know what the options are). Secondly we don’t know what language to use and what the best way to approach the conversation is, and lastly we’re worried we won’t be accepted or, at worst, shamed.

Keeley then gives us some tips for how to talk to a partner about sex from the start of a relationship, explaining that it’s good to set the precedent of having an open dialogue about sex, as well as going in to how to communicate about sex if your desires change after being with someone for a long time.

Lastly, Keeley covers whether there is such a thing as sexual compatibility (you’ll have to listen to find out) and if communication can help with that or not.

We hope you enjoy this episode, thank you so much to Keeley for joining us. You can find more of her on her website.

As always you know where to find us, @sextraspodcast on Facebook, TikTok and Instagram and on our website www.sextraspodcast.com. You can also get in touch via email [email protected] or join our Patreon to watch all of the podcasts as full length videos (with deleted content) and to get a free sticker.

See you next time!

Original music by Sacha Puttnam

Produced by Mable Productions

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In the second episode of our pleasure and desire miniseries we’re joined by Dr Amir Marashi, MD, FACS, FACOG, Founder of Cerē, the first anatomically aligned vibrator, to talk all about female anatomy and female pleasure. If you’ve not already joined our Patreon, you will want to for this episode so you can watch the full video with Dr Marashi, who has a whole load of models to demonstrate what we talk about throughout the episode!

We begin by hearing about how Dr Marashi started learning about female pleasure while being brought up in Iran, where women are subject to virginity tests and female pleasure is rarely talked about. He tells us about how doctors are taught about female anatomy and how this contributes to general misinformation about female pleasure and the orgasm gap.

Having conducted research into female pleasure and the anatomy of the clitoris, Dr Marashi knows that understanding female anatomy can help with arousal and close the orgasm gap, and he tells us how women and men can get to better know this and improve communication about what gives women pleasure. He also teaches us a bit about the female anatomy and what sex positions are most pleasurable for people with a vulva to improve clitoral stimulation.

Finally, we discuss how society feels a lot of shame about the vulva, and the harmful impact this has on normalising women’s pain with periods and their vulva, and how encouraging conversations about women’s bodies and pleasure fights this stigma and helps save women’s lives.

We hope you enjoy the episode. Thank you so much to Dr Marashi for joining us, we learnt an incredible amount! If you want to learn more you can find him on TikTok @nycgyno or visit https://getcere.com to find out more about the first anatomically aligned clitoral vibrator!

As always, you know where to find us, on TikTok, Instagram and Facebook @sextraspodcast, our website, join our Patreon for access to the full video for each episode and bonus content and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts to make sure you never miss an episode.

We’ll see you next week for more of our pleasure and desire miniseries!

Produced by Mable Productions

Original music by Sacha Puttnam

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to our pleasure and desire miniseries! In this episode we’re joined by the wonderful Catherine Roach, professor of gender and cultural studies at the University of Alabama and author of the book Good Sex: Transforming America Through the New Gender and Sexual Revolution to talk all about what society teaches us about pleasure and how beauty standards determine who and what we find desirable.

We begin the episode by defining what good sex actually is, does it refer to societal standards for what sex should look like or is it more focused on pleasure? Catherine explores whether we have any control over what we find desirable, and how much this might be impacted be societal norms like beauty standards and the porn we watch.

Beauty standards are harmful when it comes to our desire, because of how tied they are to gender, sexuality, age and race, and so Catherine tells us how we can begin to detach ourselves from what we should view as desirable and to tune into what gives us pleasure personally, particularly if you’re a woman.

We then look at social media and beauty standards, and whether it’s helping improve conversations around what we view as desirable or not, and also how conversations about pleasure and desire on social media and in popular culture impact everyone, not just women.

Finally, we unpack how we can have more diversity in conversations about sex, from moving away from unrealistic beauty standards for men and women, to understanding how our bodies work and what personally gives us pleasure, as well as examining what good sex means to us and should mean more broadly in society.

Thank you so much to Catherine for joining us, if you enjoyed the episode please go check out her book Good Sex. As always, you know where to find us— on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok @sextraspodcast, our website www.sextraspodcast.com, email us [email protected], or join our Patreon to watch the full video episode, get access to exclusive bonus content and join our community to continue having these wonderful conversations.

We’ll see you next week, when we’re joined by Dr Amir Marashi to hear how understanding the female anatomy can help to improve our pleasure.

Produced by Mable Productions

Original music by Sacha Puttnam

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to 2023! The start of this year marks a lot of changes for us, as Maria is moving to Paris tomorrow so this is our last episode recorded in our beautiful studio :( to watch the episode in full go join our Patreon (you get a ton of other benefits too!) 

In this episode we decided to have a look back at the things we learnt about sex and relationships in 2022, and what our relationship and sex goals are for the coming year, as well as doing a brief and questionable ins and outs list of our dating prediction for 2023. 

We start the episode talking about Honey’s year of no sex and what the benefits have been. She’s in two minds about her celibacy era, wanting both to leave it behind and also feeling very comfortable in it, so we discuss everything she’s learnt about herself from her boundaries to crushing on people unlike ever before in her life. We also discuss how Honey’s feelings about men have affected her dating habits in 2022 and that she wants to really embrace her bisexuality and date more women in 2023.

Maria obviously has very different sex goals for 2023 than Honey, mainly because she’s actually having sex and is about to move in with her boyfriend so she’ll be having a lot more, so we discuss what those are and also what she’s learnt from the past year of being in a long distance relationship. 

Finally, we end the episode discussing our impromptu ins and outs list for dating and sex in 2023, including everyone spontaneously deleting dating apps to more people eloping. 

We’d love to hear if you have any sex and dating goals for 2023, or if you have any ideas about what might be general trends. You can get in touch with us at [email protected], on TikTok, Facebook or Instagram @sextraspodcast, or join our Patreon to continue having conversations we have on the pod. We can’t wait for what the year has to bring, we’ll see you soon for our pleasure miniseries!!

Produced by Mable Productions

Original music by Sacha Puttnam

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome back to the final episode of our friendship miniseries! In this episode we’re joined by female friendship expert and author of Frientimacy, Shasta Nelson to talk all about making and maintaining friends.

If you’d rather watch the podcast you can find the whole video episode on our Patreon: https://patreon.com/sextraspodcast?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=creatorshare_creator&utm_content=join_link

We start the episode by asking Shasta why people have difficulty making friends and hear some different ways of making friends. Shasta explains that most people don’t know how to make friends in a meaningful way, or realise that making friends requires a lot of effort, so we talk about what not to do when making friends.

We discuss where to make friends as an adult (ie. outside of education, which many people struggle with) and Shasta names the three pillars of any good adult friendship and what we can do if we have a problem with our friends in one of those areas.

It obviously wouldn’t be an episode of Sextras without these, so we had to ask Shasta about how love languages and attachment styles affect our friendships and how that influences whether we feel valued as a friend and how we show affection towards our friends.

Thank you so much to Shasta for joining us for our final episode of the friendship miniseries, it was certainly very informative for us but we hope it was for all our listeners too! You can find out more about Shasta on her website https://www.shastanelson.com and make sure to buy any of her three books.

As always you can find more of us on Tiktok, Instagram or Facebook @sextraspodcast, our website www.sextraspodcast.com or JOIN OUR PATREON community for access to the full video episode, behind the scenes content and bonus episodes https://patreon.com/sextraspodcast?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=creatorshare_creator&utm_content=join_link.

Thank you for listening, we’ll be back in a couple of weeks with our period miniseries!

Produced by Mable Productions

Original music by Sacha Puttnam

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.