Meg-john And Justin

CN - I don't go into detail about abuse but the whole episode is (as the title suggests) about the relationship between what kink might do (for some people) and previous experiences of abuse. For the full blog post that goes with the episode, sign up at the Patreon and support the show. Or if you can't afford that but want to read the post, email me at culturesexrelationships at gmail dot com and I'll send it to you.

NB: it's 29th July 2022, so if you listen to this in a few weeks time you might want to check out my article at BISH below just in case the advice changes. Here's a quick episode about monkeypox: it's a chill and informative explainer. It's based on the article I wrote at BISH https://www.bishuk.com/safer-sex/monkeypox/ and also in the article I wrote for Mashable https://mashable.com/article/monkeypox-symptoms-signs-safety The links I mentioned are in those articles but also here are a few more https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/monkeypox/ https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2207323 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S147330992200411X?dgcid=coauthor https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/monkeypox https://www.cdc.gov/poxvirus/monkeypox/index.html This twitter thread is really useful too https://twitter.com/mugecevik/status/1550757056256294912 And here's my article about how to worry https://www.bishuk.com/about-you/how-to-worry/ Justin

Here's the latest episode of Sex Jams with Dr Eleanor Janega and me, discussing a sex jam. Here is the video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrbFQEcpJ3A We talk about pretty interesting stuff. Why the ideal Sex Jam is actually John Cage. Two seed theory. How liberal notions of the self and sexuality come from the classical and medieval notions of sex and sexuality. What is cream? The mirror phase. (Sexual) subjectivity. And having the horn. Eleanor's blog is https://going-medieval.com/ her other podcast is called We're No So Different https://feeds.transistor.fm/were-not-so-different and if you want to watch her on TV check out her seriess on History Hit https://access.historyhit.com/videos/medieval-pleasures-sex You can see the rest of her stuff here https://linktr.ee/EleanorJanega I offer an advice / solution focused coaching service about sex, relationships, and you. So if you find my advice on here useful you might want to book me for a session. More details here https://justinhancock.co.uk/#coachi

Here's an interview with Cory Cascalheira who was the lead writer of an academic paper called 'Curative Kink: Survivors of early abuse transform trauma through BDSM'. It's open access and I'd encourage you to read it because it's well interesting and I think very important. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/352440982_Curative_kink_Survivors_of_early_abuse_transform_trauma_through_BDSM I say more about this in the introduction, but we're not saying that Kink is a prescription for dealing with trauma from sexual abuse, or neglect, or violence. It's to say, for people who take part in Kink, in the context of cultural healing, what does kink offer people therapeutically. Support this show via patreon.com/culturesexrelationships You can also support https://www.bishuk.com (one of the most popular and widely respected websites for young people) at patreon.com/bishuk Or if you want to find out about all the other work I do, including one to one sessions for solution focused coaching or sex and relatio

I chatted with Alfie Bown about his really superb new book Dream Lovers the Gamification of Relationships. It's packed with interesting ideas and theory but is also highly readable and fun. I learnt tons. I chat about the book in the introduction but you can also read more about it (and buy it if you can) at the Pluto Books website https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745344874/dream-lovers/ If you like the show please consider supporting it from £1 a month at patreon.com/culturesexrelationships and you might also want to check out my website justinhancock.co.uk to see about other projects I work on and to find out more about my new coaching service.

Here's an article that I wrote for my Patrons at patreon.com/culturesexrelationships and I've read out here. If you want to read the article then I've unlocked the post which you can find here https://www.patreon.com/posts/65416473 Please do consider supporting the show via Patreon or you can also find out about and support my other work, which you can see at my new website https://justinhancock.co.uk

As I say in the introduction, I was thinking about her work when I was learning about the Sexuality Assemblage. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/258032851_The_Sexuality-Assemblage_Desire_Affect_Anti-Humanism This comes from the Deleuze and Guattari idea of the 'body without organs' which is just to say that our bodies and selves exist only in relation to (and becoming of) other humans, ideas, memories, fantasies, environments, objects and that these all exist in an affective flow. I learnt about this from The Body by Nick J Fox. We discussed this in the Sex Consent and Justice episode with Tina Sikka in December last year. Don't worry if this sounds academic and technical, hopefully the conversation is pretty inclusive and straight forward and fun! If you want an intro to this you might like this module of the Teach Yourself Sex Ed course I did for my website for young people. https://www.bishuk.com/parents/teach-yourself-sex-ed-bodies/ You can check out GotN's work at https://www.girlonthenet.c

My latest Ask Justin is another one where I read out the blog post I've written. Which makes this a shorter but more focused podcast. Yay shorter podcasts. This has been out for over a week already at the Patreon and they also get the blog post (with all the links I mention) and also other bonus material. I am going to start to do Patreon exclusive content soon because I need more Patrons (money) for the work (labour) which I am doing and trying not to disavow (like we are supposed to in the creative industries). We covered this when we talked about anti-capitalist prn a few months back. So please consider signing up from just £1 a month at patreon.com/culturesexrelationships

Here's part two of the interview I did with Jacob and Bonni about their amazing new book 'Event Horizon'. It's not going to make as much sense if you haven't listened to last week's episode first I don't think, but I don't like telling you what to do. In this part we talk about: - the idea of 'cuteness' - selfies (comparing selfies with Lacan's idea of the Mirror Stage) - the sexual non-relation - heteropessimism - expanding our idea of the erotic. If you want to buy the book here's the link https://www.johnhuntpublishing.com/zer0-books/our-books/event-horizon-sexuality-politics-culture

Event Horizon: Sexuality, Politics, Online Culture, and the Limits of Capitalism When our desires become the product of tech giants, what ways are there left for us to dream? in an age where Silicon Valley dictates what it means to innovate, a painless future, knowledge and enjoyment are fertile breeding grounds of political contestation. But it’s not exactly democracy. We are controlled through platforms that turn us into data for the profit of billionaires. Control has become so playful that we carry it in our pockets, as we continue to crave likes and followers. What is to be done? Should the Left continue to cling to the promise of a political Event, patiently waiting for a revolutionary rupture where new possibilities emerge? Is there a way to delineate its horizons amidst the chaos? Through a psychoanalytic interrogation of the intersections of online culture, sexuality, and politics, Bonni Rambatan and Jacob Johanssen explore such horizons at the limits of capitalism. Event Horizon examines how capi

It's another Ask Justin week and this time I'm reading out an article I've written which is available at patreon.com/culturesexrelationships 'I’ve Never Been Able To Orgasm.' There are a lot of aggregated ideas about sex and bodies in your question which I think would be useful to examine up close to see how much we can see them shifting. The way that you refer to orgasms, the body, and the self could all do with being allowed to move. Please help support the podcast by either signing up to the Patreon or you could also buy some of the resources that I made with Meg-John Barker. Find those at megjohnandjustin.com/publications Justin

I think many of us might agree that #MeToo has been an important and much needed movement. Putting consent, sexual violence, instutional power, and genderered power dynamics, into our everyday conversations. But in what way has it transformed our understandings of consent and justice, and the possibilities for sex. Probably not a lot. It has both uncovered and reinforced very basic and binary notions of consent, justice, and sex and has seemingly got stuck in an endless dialogue which, compared to #BLM, is anything but transformative. But what if we really expand the meanings and possibilities of both consent and justice. How can this both prevent harm on an individual and institutional level. What can we learn to do differently going forward? How can we transform society so that the sociological and legal standard for sex is care, mutuality, co-creation, embodiment, and autonomy? Tina Sikka has written an amazing book about this called Sex, Consent, and Justice and she joins us today. You can buy the b

When we talk about porn it’s invariably about what effects it causes. What is it doing to our sexualities, what is it teaching kids about sex, and blaming it for hacking into and hijacking our desires. More interesting is to look at porn in culture just as we might look at any other media such as social media industries and streaming platforms. What kinds of active relationships might we have with it, and it on us, on an individual and also on a cultural level. What is the relationship that porn has with capitalism? Looking at porn has gone from being a frowned upon unproductive activity, to a still frowned upon but now productive activity for capital. With the major porn streaming sites being as popular as other streaming media, they have managed to turn viewing into labour. They keep viewers attentive, but also distracted, with the seemingly endless opportunities to view and click elsewhere. The data from the viewer is used to inform the production of porn (which is also owned by the free streaming sites

Regular listeners of this podcast will know that we recently had Scott Burnett on the show to talk about his work on understanding online communities of men related to the No Fap movement, the manosphere, and the alt-right. His work charted these groups and some of the often dangerous and worrying views they espouse. In today’s show we are going to take a more psychoanalytic approach. How are men in the manosphere constructing their masculinities. How does this relate to fascist ideas now, but also the fascist histories of the early 20th century? How can men in the manosphere both repress sexualities yet also built entire communities talking about it? What fantasies are told about the threat to masculinities and how are they both necessary and necessarily destroyed? And what are our best hopes for how we can respond, or how these men might respond? Is there ever a way back for violently misogynistic men? Jacob Johanssen has written an excellent and engrossing book called ‘Fantasy, online misogyny and t

This week I chatted with the critically acclaimed, and multi award winner and nominee, podcaster Dave Pickering about podcasts. You will hear: - Dave doing an intro about their podcasts and history with them - why people might listen to them, what are the motivations - the danger of neoliberalism 'self improvement' and podcasts - the parasocial relationships that we have with podcast hosts and guests and how much that is part of why we listen (atomised, alienated from those around us we might turn to these kinds of relationships maybe?) - recommendations for good shows Dave’s own projects are Getting Better Acquainted Stand Up Tragedy The Family Tree Down to a sunless sea: memories of my dad (I’ve listened to the first of these, it’s really moving and excellent. Current (Client) projects: Who Hurt You (formally Made of Human) (I sort of mentioned this) The Restart Project Race Reflections AT WORK The Breakup Monologues Check all those out via Dave’s website http://dave-pickering.squarespace.com

As many of us are getting used to opening up our lives again in the middle of a pandemic, we might start to feel different kinds of feelings and thoughts about how safe and comfortable we might feel. Being at the pub, cafe, theatre, cinema, meetings, conferences or protests now has a very different set of concerns or anxieties for many of us. Also over the last couple of years the protests around the murder of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Sarah Everard, and also the Kill the Bill protests have been a reminder to us that our capacity to feel safe and comfortable in public spaces has been extremely unfairly distributed in the modern era. And furthermore we maybe now have a greater awareness how people’s experiences of systemic oppression might show up in people’s bodies in the context of complex post traumatic stress disorder. So I thought it would be timely to talk about the body and to invite Kim Loliya onto the show to talk about her work as a therapist, particularly somatic therapy, and for us to learn mor

We're back with another Sex Jams. This time it's the classic of the genre, Je t'aime (moi non plus). I love you (me neither). Dr Eleanor Janega and I (Justin Hancock) analyse it to death and ruin it for everyone. You're welcome! Dr J's blog is here https://going-medieval.com/ her Patreon is here https://www.patreon.com/GoingMedieval and her other excellent podcast We're Not So Different is here https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/were-not-so-different/id1551657923 Hope you enjoy it.

I've written a blog post to accompany this one which you can read over at the now unlocked Patreon post https://www.patreon.com/posts/56188508

We're back with a Meg-John and Justin episode We chatted about: Why we haven’t talked about kink as different to any other erotic / sexual / sensual activity. How common kink is. How kink is still positioned as ‘not normal’ despite it being incredibly common. The weight of should stories of what is kink and how kink should be practised (and how this might be an over correction to the messages about kink being not okay). The challenge into tuning into what we want. How do we create our kink subjectivities? Communication and consent. What familiarity with all the terms and knowledge might open up or close down Different meaning and motivations for taking part in kink Different kinds of activities and the different things we might get out of it (and how this can be really different depending on context). The importance of being slow and avoiding pushing people / being aware of being pushed. Solo / partnered. Erotic / nurturing/ power. In the rest of the conversation (on the Patreon feed) we cover:

As we’ve covered recently in the episodes with Katherine Angel and Joy Townsend, the on-going journey to sexual subjectivity for women is often difficult and fraught with harms, violence, degrees of unwantedness, coercion, and a lack of consent. The narrow, legalistic, framework we have for understanding these harms are geared towards identifying (or perhaps not identifying) perpetrators. This often stifles the voices of survivors of violence. In a society where sex is still so stigmatised how do we find the spaces, and the vocabulary to talk about sex and make sense of our own experiences. Where we are given such strong messages about what sex is, who is allowed to have it, and who should do what to whom. How as individuals can we navigate sexual encounters when society unfairly distributes agency and gives us few tools to allow for the possibility of collective agency and joy. Rachel Thompson’s book Rough - How violence found its way into the bedroom and what we can do about it, is a timely and wide rangi