Meg-john And Justin

It’s a Sin Review This week I was delighted to be joined by Silva Neves to talk about It’s A Sin, which is a very popular mini-series on Channel 4 (available to watch here) https://www.channel4.com/programmes/its-a-sin What did we think about the show? As viewers and also our thoughts about the show from our perspectives: psychosexual therapist, sex and relationships educator. Here’s my sex education guide to the show for young people https://www.bishuk.com/your-call/a-sex-and-relationships-guide-to-its-a-sin/ You can get in touch with Silva at: www.silvaneves.co.uk If you want to train in clinical sexology: https://www.theinstituteofsexology.org/ Here are the rough notes that we followed for the show. HIV and homophobia (as I say at the beginning of the episode, we focused on homophobia because that was the focus of the show, but clearly there was also explicit biphobia and racism in the reporting of and handling of the pandemic in the 80s and now) Homophobia increased during the 80s, HIV weaponi

I was delighted to be joined today to chat with Meg-John and Alex about their excellent new workbook 'Hell Yeah Self Care!' We chatted about: The importance of self care Why people critique self care Self care as political and anti-capitalist Wellbeing giving self-care a bad name Comparing self-care with the network of care we discussed in the Hologram episode The capacity for doing care and self-care is unfairly distributed Trauma and self-care Reflective self care The kindness cradle of slowness, gentleness, being enough, and consent For the full discussion head to our Patreon where you can hear us chat for another 20 mins about: Somatic self-care Coronavirus, lockdowns and self care It’s really excellent so please do buy it and have a go. It’s playful and interesting whilst also being challenging and gentle. You can get it from most bookshops online, but here’s a nice indie queer publisher https://www.queerlit.co.uk/products/hell-yeah-self-care Justin

"Hey! I want to say thanks for all your work — it’s great and I’ve recommended this podcast to a bunch of mates. You’re really doing a service here and I’m incredibly appreciative. My question is kinda related to covid bubbles and covid horniness. Is it cool to ask someone you’re bubbling with if they want to have sex? Can you do this in a way which doesn’t mess up the delicate ecosystem of the bubble?/ leaves loads of room for them to say no? And in a way where you can maintain Vibes where you’re comfortable with hanging out whatever the outcome? It seems like there’s pros and cons but wondering what your take is and if you’ve any advice as to how to be really careful with consent around this question." [I realise I answered this question assuming the bubbles live together when they might now, but I think the answer still works] Here were my notes for the answer. Change is inevitable, we're always changing. Even thinking this causes a change. Delicate eco system, how? What processes do you have in place

This week we do one of the best Sex Jams of all time Sexual Healing, by the incredible Marvin Gaye. We love this song so much but have you ever read the lyrics? Marvin is really ill and should not be having sex with anyone, in our opinion. Anyway the song still rocks and the video is amazing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjlSiASsUIs If you would like to hear our commentary on the video check out the extended Patreon version of this episode at patreon.com/culturesexrelationships Pay whatever you can afford. Justin

In this episode I’m joined by my pal Sara, to review the Netflix show Bridgerton. Over 63 million people have watched it and apparently it’s the 5th most popular Netflix show of all time. We chatted about race briefly but we focussed on the relationships and sex themes, as the multi-racial casting and inadequate treatment of racism has been covered by others in more detail already. For example this piece https://gal-dem.com/bridgerton-racism-netflix-post-racial-britain/ and this one https://www.refinery29.com/en-gb/2020/12/10244616/bridgerton-review-blackness-representation We covered: Romance novels and sexist criticisms of their readership Romance tropes (fake relationship, big misunderstandings) Shame and purity norms Patriarchy How characters did or didn’t have agency in a system with such unjust and scarce capacity for freedom Masturbation and agency Painful first time sex tropes The hegemony of reproductive sex Sexual harms and violence vs legalistic readings of consent Hope you enjoy it! To hear th

This week I chatted with Cassie Thornton and her work 'The Hologram'. The Hologram is a viral, social technology to help us to give and receive peer to peer support for our health. Health here being the biopsychosocial model of health that we've covered in previous episodes. It's such an excellent, simple, and radical idea and is rooted in solidarity and community building. A workbook for how to create your own Hologram, and why it's necessary, has been published by Pluto Press https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745343327/the-hologram/ I read it a few weeks ago and found it really interesting and wanted you to know about it. Join us in our Patreon to hear the full version of this conversation (another 25 mins) where we talk about consent, friendships, masculinities, and self-care and podcasts. patreon.com/culturesexrelationships

Let's all watch the video to Last Christmas by Wham! together. It's definitely not a sex jam, but there's an *interesting* relationship dynamic in the video that we talk about. We explain how you can watch this along with us and when to pause, so we can chat about the various meaningful looks, the brooch, and how beautiful George is. https://youtu.be/E8gmARGvPlI Support us on Patreon! patreon.com/GoingMedieval patreon.com/Culturesexrelationships Have a Christmas! Justin and Eleanor.

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