Episodes
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I was thrilled to be joined by Jacob Bloomfield to talk about his excellent new book, 'Drag: A British History'. It tells the story of drag from 1870 to 1970 and I found it to be super entertaining and informative. I came to this as someone who was ambivalent about drag and I learnt so much.
You can buy it from this affiliate link and then I get a small commission (and helps support the show) https://uk.bookshop.org/a/10660/9780520393325 or get it direct from the publishers https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520393325/drag
The article Jacob mentions is here https://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/non-fiction/drag-surprising-mainstream-history/ -
I was delighted to be joined by Yvette Taylor to talk about her fascinating book Working Class Queers Time, Place and Politics.
You can buy it from here https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745341026/working-class-queers/ -
Missing episodes?
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Patrons have had this show for a few days already. Sign up at patreon.com/culturesexrelationships from just £1 a month and support the show :-)
My last advice show was popular. Send your questions through via the link in the bio and I will answer them! :-)
The UK are having a round of allegations against public figures which centre around sexual ethics, consent, power, and bullying. These are all very different cases with their own particularities, yet the discussions surrounding them reveal a lack of nuance, lack of curiosity for critiquing sexual ethics, binary assumptions, carceral justice logics.
As it seems we’ve learnt nothing about sex, consent, and justice, I thought it would be great to invite Tina Sikka back on the show to talk about this and to apply her framing of a ‘pleasure and care-centred ethic of embodied and relational sexual Otherness’ and see what might become.
Here is that first conversation from a year ago
https://soundcloud.com/culturesexrelationships/tina-sikka-sex-consent-and-justice
You can pre-order the paperback of Tina's book here https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-sex-consent-and-justice.html -
What if you have no problem making connections with people who are cute and engaging, but they are unavailable? My advice about how else we can see these moments of emergence and what we can do to bring reason and new stories into meeting people.
I guess this is a companion piece to this podcast https://soundcloud.com/culturesexrelationships/how-to-get-a-girlfriend-boyfriend-themfriend -
This is a reading from my article I wrote for RSE folk but I think is relevant for CSR folk. I'm also really sick of hearing the bad takes about A***** T***.
This article is in response to the questions I get about ‘what should we do about toxic masculinity influencers’. I complexify the idea of an individual having a singular ‘effect’. I argue that there are potential harms of uncritically accepting a common sense ‘cause and effect’ discourse of toxic masculinity. How paying attention to those discourses ‘covers over’ failings which are closer to home. Lastly, how the solution has been there all along, but it’s our own embedded institutional toxic masculinities which prevent us from accessing them.
Here's the article https://bishtraining.com/the-effect-of-toxic-masculinity-influencers/
Sign up for the Patreon to see what I'm up to with this new zine. patreon.com/culturesexrelationships
And here's that link I talked about at the end https://forms.gle/AVkYLaL4srDunrHC7 -
I was delighted to be joined by Laura Scaronne Bonhomme and Dr Michael Beattie who (together with co-author Skye Davies) wrote Gender Affirming Therapy.
We talked about the need for this book right now. How trans and trans non-binary folk face such scarce resources and also an increasingly hostile and transphobic government. But also how the discourses around gender diversity may have produced an anxiety for health care providers in 'getting it right' and how this doesn't serve clients or themselves.
We also talked about what [else] gender affirming therapy does. How their gentle affirming approach allows for gender to emerge (rather than putting clients on an A to B gender journey). The importance of allowing for indifference, ambivalence, and existential unknowings. How they bring an openness and fuzziness to discursive framings of gender together with a grounded understanding of the body, the material, and how this can help trans and non-binary and cis clients to emerge.
Their book is out very soon so buy and review it here https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0335251544?ref_=k4w_embed_dp_err&tag=kpembed-20
Or here (where I'd earn a little affiliate commission too) https://uk.bookshop.org/a/10660/9780335251544
Also join their club at affirm.lgbt (as I have just done)
I hope you enjoy the show. You are as much part of this as I am. So if you can support it on patreon.com/culturesexrelationships with £1 a month for a bit I'd be super grateful. It helps pay me to do the show. Or you could perhaps share the show privately or publicly and say a nice thing about it. Maybe you could give it a nice 5 star rating on your podcast app too. Ta! -
I was delighted to be joined by Sophie K Rosa for a chat about her excellent new book Radical Intimacy. We chatted about some of the emerging themes from the book:
- the neoliberal self as produced by society and culture,
- reflecting on Covid and how the lockdown policy reproduced common sense ideas about the nuclear family, mononormativity, and safety
- we critique the common sense idea of monogamy and link this with Fordist capitalism
- even under it's own terms what kind of society do we need to allow for even monogamous relationships and the nuclear family to emerge and thrive
- what are the possibilities for more queerer intentional, relational, and consensual ways of relating
- how those doing radical relating might also benefit from a more radical politics (as well as how those with radical politics might benefit from reflecting on radical relating)
You can get the book from here https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745345161/radical-intimacy/
And you can read Sophie's excellent journalism work over at Novara Media https://novaramedia.com/contributor/sophie-k-rosa/
Please support the show so that I can a) be paid and b) pay fellow freelance guests. If everyone listening donated £1 a month at patreon.com/culturesexrelationships I'd be able to treat this like a part time job and thus more podcasts. -
I've done a reading of and around an article I've written for BISH this week about How To Get A Girlfriend, Boyfriend, or Themfriend. I've read it out but also talked around it to complexify it, chat a bit about some of the theory, and also why this isn't neoliberal advice but a line of flight to become 'other'.
Could you please help me share the hell out of the article https://www.bishuk.com/relationships/how-to-get-a-girlfriend-boyfriend-or-themfriend/
If you want to support the show (even just for a bit) there's a Patreon patreon.com/culturesexrelationships
Thanks for listening!
Justin -
Renowned sex therapist and educator Cyndi Darnell joined me to talk about her amazing book ‘Sex When You Don’t Feel Like It’. We critiqued the idea of libido itself, the importance of curiosity, the new three word model you should be using instead of GGG on Feeld, the importance of allowing the body to speak, why talking about problems is often not helpful, the possibilities for the body to show the path to freedom and connectedness, and the difficulties of being saturated in discourse and how to become resourced.
Here’s a link to the book (I earn a small commission if you buy it from this link but it is widely available)
https://uk.bookshop.org/books/sex-when-you-don-t-feel-like-it-the-truth-about-mismatched-libido-and-rediscovering-desire/9781538161708?aid=10660
The paper that Cyndi mentioned is here https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14681994.2021.1882672
And her website is
https://cyndidarnell.com/
Please support the podcast if you can via Patreon and unlock bonus episodes and some other extras (Patrons have had this episode for a week ahead). Just £1 a month for a bit would be great and would pay me to make these shows patreon.com/culturesexrelationships -
Here's an interview with Eleanor, about her amazing new book 'The Once and Future Sex'. We discuss the key themes of the book
- about how the story of what it is to be a woman was told (and how this connects to power and hegemony),
- where the beauty standard first came from and how women faced a double jeopardy of following them / not following them
- how the story of what it is to be a woman meant creating stigma around sex and relationships
- the role of the medieval mother and why motherhood was central to medieval life (yet women were still seen as inessential 'Others')
- and why all of this matters for the present day, for feminism, and also why learning from this should be an important, central, part of post-capitalist politics
Her book is out on 17th January 2023 in the US https://wwnorton.com/books/9780393867817 and here in the UK on 3rd March 2023 https://uk.bookshop.org/books/the-once-and-future-sex-going-medieval-on-women-s-roles-in-society/9780393867817 -
A listener asked me (via Patreon) to chat about Covid. The restrictions might be over, but Covid is still very much with us (and with others more than some). Why do we want to turn away from Covid? Why do we want to think we've 'beaten' the virus? Masks have gone, but does that mean that we've simply learnt nothing? I asked podcaster and storyteller Dave Pickering along to tell their story of Covid and help me put the personal in a cultural and political context.
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This week I am grabbing some hashtag content from my other Patreon for BISH (https://www.bishuk.com/)and introducing you to my 'Train Yourself in RSE' resources. You can see this (and read the resource) here for free https://www.patreon.com/posts/train-yourself-1-70736726
If this is the kind of thing that you might be interested in doing here, I could do special CSR versions which are aimed at you the individual (rather than educators). So you would receive really in-depth, adult, sex and relationships education in this way.
We could also do monthly zoom meetings to chat about some of the activities with each other, and I could even facilitate actual workshops with you. Sign up for the Culture Sex Relationships Patreon to register your interest (from just £1 a month) patreon.com/culturesexrelationships
Hope you find this useful!
Justin -
I invited Scott Burnett back on the show (here's his first appearance last year when we talked about the manosphere https://soundcloud.com/culturesexrelationships/scott-burnett-masculinities-masturbation-and-no-fap).
He co-wrote this excellent paper this year called ‘Breeders for race and nation’: gender, sexuality and fecundity in post-war British fascist discourse. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0031322X.2021.2011088
It's open access and although it's an academic article I think it's pretty accessible (we also explain it in the show).
We talked about:
Why we're having the conversation at the moment (Italy, and the Bonk for Britain story) https://www.theguardian.com/politics/commentisfree/2022/oct/10/the-tory-ministers-bonking-for-britain-idea-is-a-vile-vision-lurking-behind-cheeky-carry-on-imagery
The general overview of the right and gender
How this reproduces whiteness and gender subjectivities (and how it is weaponised against the Other (people of colour, migrants generally, feminism)
Where else we see these kinds of discourses around gender and sexuality
How some of these themes are taken up in environmentalist discourses around overpopulation.
But also seeing this as a spectrum where we might also see (seemingly benevolent) references to 'strong families'.
We can also see this in culture generally in (what I tend to call) hegemonic or common sense sexuality education but also how gender and sexuality have been disciplined as part of the capitalist projects of the last 100 years.
We talked generally about the failure of left / liberal politics to understand how gender and sexuality are not an 'over there' or 'nice to have' but an essential part of our political bloc.
Some other reading / podcasts that you might be interested in that we chatted about.
Hegemony Now - by Jeremy Gilbert and Alex Williams. https://www.versobooks.com/books/4015-hegemony-now They did a video summarising it here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PuYEKWx5q40
Abolish The Family - by Sophie Lewis https://www.versobooks.com/books/4075-abolish-the-family
which is really really interesting (the title sounds scary and bombastic but it's really not that kind of book). I haven't listened to it yet but she did a podcast for Novara Media about it which I'm sure will be worth a listen https://novaramedia.com/2022/10/12/choose-your-own-family-adventure/
Here's that article by Sophie K Rosa https://novaramedia.com/2022/10/13/did-cuba-just-abolish-the-family/ about Cuba and the cool thing they've done lately. -
As you may have been hearing on recent podcasts, I’ve been training in solution focused therapy / coaching recently. I’ve been finding it pretty transformational, both for me personally but I’ve also found it really useful in work too. It’s a very postmodern practice, in that it just works. In the training that I’ve attended the trainers have been disinterested in the theory, or why it works. Their response is that it does, and here’s how we do it.
That’s good enough for me, I really enjoyed getting cracking with it and trying it out on lots of my loved ones before doing coaching with paying clients. However, I have a podcast to run and I need that content baby! So what is the deal with solution focused therapy and what’s the theory behind it?
[for the full blog post that I read out here head over to the Patreon where I've unlocked it https://www.patreon.com/posts/70372857 ]
If you’re interested in booking a session with me (Patrons get 10% discount) check out the coaching page at justinhancock.co.uk
If you want to have a session with someone who isn’t me, I can recommend Biba (who I’ve had some sessions with too). She’s great https://ribalon.org/
If you’re interested in getting some training yourself, I’d recommend the courses at Brief, which is where I’ve been training. https://www.brief.org.uk/
To help with this I’ve been reading How to Read Wittgenstein by Ray Monk and Ludwig Wittgenstein by Edward Kanterian (part of the Critical Lives series).
This article by Steve de Shazer is really interesting (and helpful) https://www.sdstate.edu/sites/default/files/2018-06/dont_think_but_observe.pdf
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy came up trumps again with their excellent entry (such an amazing resource) https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wittgenstein/
The Wikipedia page for solution focused therapy is packed with links to the evidence for how effective it is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solution-focused_brief_therapy
If you want to understand what I meant by postmodern check out this podcast by Jeremy Gilbert (when Liz Truss was having a go at postmodernism, obviously she didn’t understand what that meant) -
Latest episode is an expanded version of some of the stuff I've been writing lately for BISH (my website for over 14s) and for Mashable which you can read here https://mashable.com/article/porn-sites-viewers-workers For a blog post of this article you can head to the Patreon https://www.patreon.com/posts/72285998 and while you're there please considering supporting the show. Just £1 a month would really help out. If everyone who listened did that then I could work for 2/5 of a week on it.
If you want more anti or post-capitalist content check out the work of my comrades at ALE https://www.alternativeleftentertainment.org/ -
Yes we're back with another Sex Jams and we're back with another George Michael song. Perhaps the horniest of his songs. Freeek! We're doing Freeek! 04 and the video is here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLnYPXTs9LY
Patrons support the show and also get bits of bonus material, including the full length version of this podcast. Just £1 a month would support the show. If everyone who listened did this I'd be able to work for a day or two a week on this show! -
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/#coaching
https://linktr.ee/culturesexrel -
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 relationships advice, head to https://justinhancock.co.uk/ - Show more
