Meg-john And Justin

My problem is around polyamory and non-hierarchy. Specifically, how to deal with loving or caring about some partners more, or feeling more strongly for them, while maintaining a non-hierarchical relationship style. I currently have three partners, one long distance. One of the two local partners recently mentioned that they might move away, and raised the possibility of becoming long distance. I realised I’m not particularly interested in doing that, and I’d rather break up. I do love and care about them, and I don’t want to break up, but I don’t feel motivated enough to do the work of maintaining long distance with them. But I feel like saying this when I already have a long distance partner will hurt them intensely, and show that I just don’t feel as strongly about them as my other partner who is long distance, which unfortunately is true. I know I could say that I just don’t think our specific relationship would work well long distance, but that feels dishonest when I’ve come to realise that I just… don’t

"Hi Justin my favourite episode of yours and Meg-John's is 'disagreeing with people'. I've listened over 10 times. Despite this I still find myself getting into pointless heated discussions/arguments that leave me very upset specifically about trans issues but could be any marginalised group. This is in person one to one, not online, I don't respond on social media. How can I stop getting drawn in to doing this? I'm wasting my energy, but find certain things people say draw me in I can't help challenging it. I have multiple marginalised/intersectional identities and am gender non conforming but not trans myself. Thanks for all the work you put in to the podcast- its part of my self care." https://megjohnandjustin.com/relationships/disagreeing-with-people/ Why it’s pointless You’re not engaging in the discussion for the same reason (you might want to change their mind, they might just want to get you riled) People rarely change their mind right there and then Challenging is different from disagreements

Just a quick advice episode this week as I feel like I've talked a lot about orgasms lately on the show. But first there's some really lovely correspondence about when you, the assemblage, feel like the body without organs. More of this is particularly welcome! https://linktr.ee/culturesexrel

“I often struggle with unpicking what of my feelings is really 'mine' and what's internalised homophobia/transphobia/sexism/sex negativity etc. As a result I really struggle to trust myself, and become anxious, worrying that I'm unconsciously repeating harmful patterns. I know that identities aren't fixed, that we're all constantly evolving and all in relation to one another. I suppose really, with this all in mind, my question is: how do we work towards being authentically ourselves and trusting ourselves around sexual/gender identity? How do we hold space for our own feelings (both physical and emotional) whilst also combatting all the crap that we are imbued with by society?” Here’s A Thousand Plateaus (free pdfs are available online) https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/a-thousand-plateaus Here’s that really interesting podcast episode I think I mentioned by Jeremy Gilbert https://culturepowerpolitics.org/2024/02/03/introducing-affect/ His book Common Ground is really great Here’s more abou

Sex Ed in the UK and Me Our wonderful Patrons have had this for a few days already. Why not join them from just £1 a month? Suggest shows, join the Patreon, DM me directly and get 10% off my coaching service ... patreon.com/culturesexrelationships This one is about a brief history of sex ed in the UK over the last hundred years or so. Part way through I tell my story of how I got into doing this job in 1998 / 1999 in order to tell an autoethnography which illuminates the problems which sex ed, sexual health services, and youth services have faced over the years. I think it reveals something interesting about what culture war and austerity have done and how this may result in a doubling down on a narrow sex ed which doesn’t seem to serve anyone. Here’s the Department for Education 1943 document I read from https://education-uk.org/documents/boardofed/1943-sex-ed.html I relied on ‘School sex education: policy and practice in England 1870 to 2000’ by Jane Pilcher https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.108

I have a safer sex protocol that consists of a set of good communication tick boxes and a set of medical/testing disclosure tick boxes and a spreadsheet for my partners to record their partners and activities they practise with each, testing status, barrier use, etc I then use some approximate quantification of risk for each partner. While I find my protocol helpful in making this usually sensitive and difficult discussion more matter of fact and clear, I have experienced a lot of push back and hurt feelings by partners. I am reaching out to you because you mentioned in your episode this week that some people feel repelled by safer sex discussions. Could you help me see a way forward towards finding a consensus or a creative solution that works for everyone in case a partner refuses to engage with my protocol? Thank you for creating your content! I find it really valuable and fun to listen to! Resource / discourse When one becomes the other What's a good resource? Heterogeneous, open, kind, Resourcing ou

[If you have a question of your own, or would like me to give a Second Opinion of someone else’s advice, get in touch via the link tree here https://linktr.ee/culturesexrel ] “My question is about (changing) feelings of disgust in sexual contexts. My sense of disgust can change rapidly depending on context. For example, most of the time I really don't like kissing, even the idea is repelling to me.” It’s okay. We shouldn’t have to find any kind of sexuality to be normal, or okay, or expected. Doesn’t matter what kind of relationship we’re in. Some things we are told are ‘normal’ part of sexuality are deeply weird when we think about it! Polymorphous perversity. (Here’s that episode https://soundcloud.com/podcast-co-coopercherry/three-essays-on-the-theory-of-sexuality ) Navigating discrepancy is the normal (there are tips about this in our book A Practical Guide to Sex). https://megjohnandjustin.com/relationships/sex-discrepancies/ https://megjohnandjustin.com/sex/enjoy-penis-vagina-sex-want/ https://meg

I thought I'd do a reading of a couple of my articles from BISH that I've written about orgasms and then have an adult and theoretical rambling about them. They demonstrate really nicely how gendered sex discourses have produced orgasms in a very narrow (territorialised) way, and how unlearning our sexual knowledges is the key to enjoying it a bit more, but also has some micropolitical implications. Here are the articles https://www.bishuk.com/bodies/how-do-i-know-when-ive-had-an-orgasm/ https://www.bishuk.com/sex/what-is-gooning/ If you do have any questions for me, here are the links you need https://linktr.ee/culturesexrel Justin

I was joined by Greg Wolfman to talk about his excellent book 'Masculinities in the US Hangout Sitcom'. https://www.routledge.com/Masculinities-in-the-US-Hangout-Sitcom/Wolfman/p/book/9781032426211 (it's an academic book, so expensive, but there's a 20% off voucher at the website. Also Routledge sometimes have really huge sales on. They also published Meg-John's Rewriting The Rules. Also, ask your library to get it) After a brief tribute to Matthew Perry / Chandler Bing, we - chatted about whether it was possible for us to enjoy Friends - Greg situated Friends in the socio-political context of neoliberalism, the 90s, and the long 90s (a term by Jeremy Gilbert which is usefully explained in his book with Alex Williams called 'Hegemony Now') - Greg helpfully walked us through the 'chrononormativities' of career, relationships, settling down (and we also chatted about how they show us a glimpse of queerness in the show but always shut it down) - Then we talked about the episodes in series two when Joey moves ou

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/

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-ju

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 s

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 wo

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

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.