76. the discerning dick: horizontal with dudes who talk to dudes about sexuality

Welcome to the second threesome of Season 3!  Horizontal is still Slow Radio. It’s still consensual eavesdropping. It’s still us reclining, sharing secrets, in your ears. But while the first two seasons had me lying down as though post-coital and stargazing with only one person at a time, in Season 3 I’ll often get horizontal with two people at a time: people who are in some kind of relationship with one another. In this case, they are co-hosts, business partners, and friends. In this episode, 76, and the following, episode 77, I lie down with Dominick Q and Bryan Stacy of The Discerning Dick, a monthly series focused on generating worthy inquiry and meaningful introspection into the forces that shape a man's sexuality, behavior and intimate relationships.  I attended the first three Discerning Dick events at The Assemblage in Manhattan, and it gave me an echo of the feeling of the day I got to be a fly on the wall during a men’s group meeting in Ashland, Oregon in 2008. Undoubtedly, what I saw and heard was changed somewhat by the fact of my witnessing. But what I heard was still a powerful window into minds and bodies that I wanted desperately to understand. Dominick Q is a men’s group leader, an executive mentor, a speaker, and a writer. Bryan is a sexual health advocate, a testicular cancer survivor, and the co-founder of the app biem, which is designed to allow people to easily get tested for STI’s and share their test results with partners.  Bryan and I have been planning to produce an event together — look out for TESTFEST 2019! Dom & Bryan also co-host the “Man Amongst Men” podcast, which they call a “High Achieving Man's Journey to Personal Development.” They are both men who have spent the majority of their lives focused on standard notions of external success. And now they are focused on what that energy might look like, and what it might eventually do out in the world, if they first focus on their inner world.  They are cisgendered straight white males trying to heighten their self-awareness in order to do better, to be constantly in the process of becoming better men without claiming to have arrived at it, and sincerely making the effort to bring other cis straight white men along with them.  I can think of many men that I would like them to talk to. Men also suffer from the indoctrination of a culture that shames us for our natural human sexuality yet objectifies women to sell things to nearly everyone. These men aim to be a bridge between a man who doesn’t know that he’s swimming in water… and the sex educators and personal development leaders of the world. They aim to speak directly to men who feel stuck in a lackluster sex life or mired in sexual habits that are destructive or secretive, or both. Just as it is a white person’s responsibility to educate themselves and other white people about intersectionality, injustice, and the perniciousness of racism, so too is it a man’s responsibility to educate himself and other men about intersectionality, injustice, and the perniciousness of sexism. I deeply, Heartbreakingly believe that a lack of self-inquiry combined with sexual repression is a direct cause of the lion's share of violence on this planet. They are aiming for the root. And I want to do everything in my power to stand for that.  Dominick and Bryan don't claim to be experts; they just aim to be willing: willing to be educated, to be called-in, to adjust their worldview, and to tell other men what they've discovered, publicly. Find Dom’s work on dominickq.com and dominickq on Instagram, the Biem app in the app store and Bryan on Instagram as @talkingnut, and you can find their projects together, including the Man Amongst Men podcast, on DoInnerWork.com  * On April 27th, The Joy List and I are hosting The Sleepover, which is not a sex party, but an overnight opportunity to indulge in copious playfulness, connection, and joy! There shall be:  Pajamas SNAX personal development quizzes Intimacy games A sound bath meditation Sensation Play with car buffers and pinwheels a giant teddy bear named Tiny And Surprises  You can get 20% off of your ticket if you use the secret code: HORIZONTALITY, in all caps. * In this first part of our conversation, we talk about erections, the three forces that shaped their early view of sexuality: Faith, Family, & Friends, scrambled porn, an addiction to masturbation, what the Bible actually says about premarital sex, Unitarian Universalism, bargaining with God over sexuality, and how Bryan’s sexual shame kept him from getting tested, and led to a dual diagnosis of testicular cancer and chlamydia. Come lie down with us in New York, New York.