Meg-john And Justin

This week I chatted with Elsie Whittington about consent education. We've both been working on this a lot recently so it was a mutual chat rather than an interview. We chatted about how consent should be embedded rather than being a discrete subject. The problems with binary and legalistic models of consent. How continuums and spectrums can open up the topic and allow for people to understand how it might work in real life scenarios. The importance of embodiment and agency and how structures (schools, unis, workplaces) can make consent harder. Elsie is a lecturer and youth worker at the Manchester Centre for Youth Studies, Manchester Metropolitan University. She is one of the leading voices in consent education as part of sexuality and relationship education for young people. Her excellent paper Rethinking consent with continuums: sex, ethics and young people, is published in the journal Sex Education by Routledge. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14681811.2020.1840343 My book, Can We Talk Abo

First of all, there's an announcement about the show and why we've re-branded from 'Meg-John & Justin' to 'Culture Sex Relationships' Then we have episode 3 of Sex Jams! This one is about 2 Become 1 by the Spice Girls. We discuss consent, heterosex gender norms, courtly love, intimacy vs sex, intentional relationships. In the extended Patreon cut at patreon.com/culturesexrelationships we discuss how it's our first safer sex jam. Also, is it really a sex jam? Is it a Christmas song? Is Christmas sexy? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FA5jsa1lR9c&list=OLAK5uy_nrV_8KYy40fx7MwiJuvbWEprzZEs2UfDY Hope you like it! Justin

In episode 2 we chat about One Minute Man, by Missy Eliot, featuring Ludacris and Trina. We discuss the narratives around premature ejaculation, desire, masculinities, objectification, and oral. Eleanor raps the Ludacris verse, which is amazing. Justin soberly reads out the Trina verse, which is perfunctory at best. The video for the 'dirty' version of the song is here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-CJXwQJZaM The official music video has all of the rude words taken out which also removes all meaning from the song and our podcast would make no sense, but that's here if you want to see Missy dancing and Ludacris doing something strange with bed pans https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XayUCLgxS5c

A new podcast as part of the Meg-John & Justin universe! 'Sex Jams' is where a sex educator and a sex historian discuss songs to do with sex. Justin and Eleanor this week start with George Michael's 'I Want Your Sex'. There is some singing and one of us is clearly better at that than the other. If you want to familiarise yourself with the song first, the full 'monogamy mix' is on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yz-EBKHOfWc You're welcome.

This time on the podcast we attempted to normalise the tough feelings that most of us are having at this phase of the Covid-19 pandemic (going into Autumn/Fall 2020). Using the ‘Phases of Disaster’ model we framed our current moment as the long ‘disillusionment’ phase which may last months or even longer. We talked about why it’s really okay to not feel okay right now, and what we might do with our feelings of not-okayness. patreon.com/culturesexrelationships

Here's us chatting about consent in romantic relationships. We originally did this for our Patreon feed, so they've been able to listen to this for ages now. Lucky them! Join now from just $1.20 a month patreon.com/culturesexrelationships

This time on the podcast we discussed kindness. Here on our free feed you can listen to our overview of what kindness is and why it’s so important. Then please check out our Patreon to listen to part two of this conversation where we chatted more about how to be kind. patreon.com/culturesexrelationships

[Sorry the sound isn't as great as usual] Earpal Questions This time on the podcast we answered four listener questions. Here’s a few notes on the questions and our answers. They relate to (1) changing support dynamics in friendship, (2) navigating a reconnecting relationship with an ex, (3) dealing with intrusive thoughts, (4) unhelpful friend’s responses to a shift in gender of partner. patreon.com/culturesexrelationships

Bonus episode mid-week episode where we talked about our awesome new bingo card, put together by the fabulous Katie Green. Katie is a wonderful illustrator, and podcaster and zine-maker, who touches on similar themes to us at times, but also writes about knitting and sewing. You might enjoy her most recent comic about ace joy and relationship hierarchies. Feel free to play bingo along with our episodes sometime and tag us on #mjandjbingo with the results. Head over to the website to download it. https://megjohnandjustin.com/uncategorised/bingo/ patreon.com/culturesexrelationships

Sociological review playlist: The Meg-John and Justin desert island discs This time on the podcast we talked about our desert island discs - the songs that we most relate to our Meg-John and Justin project. The prompt for this was that the online journal The Sociological Review asked us to be part of their ‘Music and Sound’ themed month (July 2020) where twelve sociologists provide them with a 'sociological' playlist. Full blog and tracklist at megjohnandjustin.com patreon.com/culturesexrelationships

We talked about sadness, sorrow, grief, mourning and melancholia. How can we be with sadness and use it to help us to connect with ourselves and others, and mobilize us towards justice? And how can we avoid shutting down on sadness, or giving up in the face of overwhelming grief? Full blog post and links at https://megjohnandjustin.com/you/sadness/

In this edition of the podcast we thoroughly unpacked the recent TV show Normal People. For an overview of advice about sex, relationships, and ourselves - based on the show - check out Justin’s post over on BishUK. We agreed that we felt ambivalent about the show. While it depicted some things beautifully and profoundly, it also reproduced and reinforced some normative narratives - and engaged in forms of tokenism and erasure - in ways we found problematic. patreon.com/culturesexrelationships

This time on the podcast we talked about anger. How can we be with anger and use it to help us to hold our boundaries and mobilize us towards justice? And how can we avoid reacting out of it in ways that manifest as aggression, violence, or hatred (whether turned inwards towards ourselves or outwards towards other people)? Read the full article over at megjohnandjustin.com patreon.com/culturesexrelationships

This time on the podcast we answered a listener’s question: What is this neoliberalism (that we often mention) and how does it relate to sex and relationships. Read the full show notes / blog at the website megjohnandjustin.com patreon.com/culturesexrelationships

Justin was joined by Joana Ramiro, a freelance journalist. We chatted about a concept which Joana calls Radical Hygge. About how in this moment of coronavirus we might think of ways to collectively organise our lives so that we can have the flexibility, capacity, and opportunities to have better lives. The twitter thread that started this conversation is here https://twitter.com/JoanaRamiroUK/status/1239148454485557249 Joana also makes podcasts about left wing journalism 'Red Hacks' the latest episode of that is here https://soundcloud.com/poltheoryother/redhacks-socialism-football-and-when-sports-journalism-turns-radical-w-suzanne-wrack Here's the Craig Gent article about supermarket logistics https://novaramedia.com/2020/03/23/when-logistics-run-out-of-time/ Here's a podcast with David Graeber about Bullshit Jobs https://soundcloud.com/novaramedia/novarafm-david-graeber-bullshit-jobs-direct-democracy-the-end-of-capitalism Remember that every other episode is for Patrons only. So if you want to hear m

This time on the podcast we went through the different kinds of love - as suggested by the Ancient Greeks - to consider how each of those might be done in the time of Covid-19. patreon.com/culturesexrelationships

Special bonus episode for this week. Today on the podcast we talked about how to deal with the stress that a lot of us are experiencing around Covid-19. Read more about this at our website megjohnandjustin.com patreon.com/culturesexrelationships

This episode of the podcast was a Corona virus special where we reflected on the issues that the virus raises for consent, from the micro level of self-consent to the macro level of wider culture and societal systems and structures, and everything in between. The podcast should be useful whenever you’re listening to it though as most of our points are generally applicable to sickness and consent rather than specific to Corona. patreon.com/culturesexrelationships

A while back a listener asked us to do a podcast to help people who were worrying that they might be a sex addict. MJ decided to do an interview with their friend Dominic Davies - the head of Pink Therapy - who has a critical perspective, and lots of expertise, about sex addiction. In the podcast Dominic updated MJ on where the diagnostic terms relating to sex addiction were at, why he is still cautious about using the term, why it should be ‘principles’ instead of ‘act’ focused, and what people can do if they are concerned about their sexual desires or behaviours. Head to megjohnandjustin.com for the blog with all the links patreon.com/culturesexrelationships

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