From a counsellor, sex educator, and sex therapist who’s directly taught 10,000+ people how to have positive relationships and great sex: The tried, tested, and ultimate list of What Women Want, and What Men Want deep down after socialisation is removed. Herein lies your secrets to success in relationship and bed.
Today, we continue on from previous live episodes to review what was in the original ‘Pan-Political’ series, and also explore the question of where we’d go from here, if we were to implement the thinking captured in the episodes.
Today embraces episodes five through to nine, with responses to your most excellent questions, comments, and feedback coming in the next two episodes.
Temporarily taking a break from gender, getting back to sex.
Today, interview with Isiah McKimmie, from podcast ‘Your Patients Are Having Sex’: https://isiah-mckimmie.com/blog-podcast/
Topics: Sexuality and kink from a therapist’s perspective.
This is not related to the course I recently ran with Process Work International, which you can still buy: https://www.processwork.edu/a-therapists-guide-to-sexuality-taboos-and-kink-with-roger-butler-sept-2025-online-course/
What’s an ethical and positive sex or kink interest, what’s not?
Does age play lead to pedophilia?
How no leads to yes, but not in a horrible way.
“A dungeon full of toys is good, the ability to just use touch skills is better.”
Rog / Curious Creatures’ Patreon page if you’d like to support: https://www.patreon.com/curiousconversationsaboutsex
Rog’s course on sexuality for therapists: https://www.processwork.edu/a-therapists-guide-to-sexuality-taboos-and-kink-with-roger-butler-sept-2025-online-course/
The free one-hour webinar taste-tester for above course: https://community.processwork.org/posts/explore-free-on-demand-video-a-therapists-guide-to-sexuality-taboos-and-kink-with-roger-butler
NOTES:
This is the second part of a recording made in July, 2025, following the first nine episodes of the Pan-Political series. It reviews each episode, adds ideas around what future-focused ideas might look like, and engages in juicy discussions with participants.
This is a recording made in July, 2025, following the first nine episodes of the Pan-Political series. It reviews each episode, adds ideas around what future-focused ideas might look like, and engages in juicy discussions with participants. Listen in, and maybe you want to attend the next one?
Rog’s course on sexuality for therapists: https://www.processwork.edu/a-therapists-guide-to-sexuality-taboos-and-kink-with-roger-butler-sept-2025-online-course/
This is an interview, a conversation, and a bit more information about an upcoming course you might be interested in.
I’m being interviewed by James Boutin, who’s with Process Work International. In partnership with them, the course I’m running in September is called “Interpreting and Understanding Sexuality, Kinks, and Fetishes”.
This conversation covers how I came to be in this space; the ways psychology and sexuality mix well (and don’t mix well!); and the age old question of how much sex is the right amount for you?
Okay, so what’s the potential conclusion and ways forward from here? What might the next wave of the gender movement look like, and why’s this series called “pan-political”?
Why do you not speak in terms of the “gender revolution”, and… how does this material have implications for the evolution of life itself? (Sorry – what?!?)
In this episode, we wrap the previous eight episodes up together, tie them in a pretty expansive bow, and point towards what the future might look like. Complete with real-life demos of how to do it!
I’d like to update you about a few things to do with this podcast, and let you know about some things you might want to get involved in. Specifically, I’ll be talking about five topics:
Where this podcast is going, and the Pan-Political series in particular
Online live show recording of Pan-Political Episode 10/9 (July 5 2025 Aus, July 4 US)
Financial support: Patreon
Upcoming courses: Sexuality, Taboos, and Kink for Therapists, and an intro to Process Work
Why I stopped running Curious Creatures’ old workshops. (Spoiler: Can’t say much).
Why is this ‘Pan-Political’ perspective so different to the mainstream of gender equality thinking?
How could anyone have not noticed that in this world, the evidence overwhelmingly shows that women and minority genders suffer, and men have extreme advantages? How come almost every article you read, and almost every gender expert, agrees that the situation is not at all complicated or nuanced, rather, it’s very simple to understand that it’s a man’s world?
How come some great points have been raised in this podcast series that haven’t been presented like this previously?
In this episode, we explore two separate questions:
Is the world built, shaped, or referenced, around male sexuality?
If it is, then why is it so easy to find so many complaints about men and sexuality?
First, we rigorously (and often humorously) explore the ways that the world is, and isn’t, built around male sexuality. Two things can be true at the same time, after all. This then winds up telling us a lot about…
Secondly, why are they not always great at sex?
If you’re a sex or gender pioneer… or you’ve ever been or are going to be in relationship with a male-ish person… or a female-ish person, for that matter… you’re going to want to hear this episode.
Is there a wage gap? …It seems overwhelmingly likely that there is.
But what causes it? …Here’s where things get interesting.
Traditional thinking tells us it’s from a devaluing or outright hatred of women – or a prioritizing of men – that happens almost fractally from the individual level, through to the whole-of-society level. The wage gap is just another biproduct of living in a patriarchal world.
However, could the root cause actually be closer to home? Could it be a much younger problem?
This might seem like an academic distraction, but it’s not. If it turns out the traditional approach leads us to bark up the wrong tree, we stand no chance of solving the problem – which would seem like a strong motivator to make sure we get this correct.
Also, related: Where are all the women? Why do so many sectors struggle to get beyond about 33% female representation?
So… What, exactly, is the Patriarchy? Who, exactly is in it?
What is its purpose, and how’s it going against its Key Performance Indicators? Do we at some stage get to participate in some kind of a review process?
Is there a way we can get involved, and maybe change it from the inside?
The default assumption is that a lot of the work we need to do to move forwards, needs to be done in gender-separate spaces.
Without a doubt, a lot of great work happens in those spaces.
Intriguing questions remain, however, around how we hold these spaces in a way that ensures they have positive outcomes for everyone, and don’t inadvertently contribute to the challenges they seek to solve.
How do we hear each others’ stories? How do we not other each other? How do we share our privileges?
Today, we take the useful but politicised and weaponised perspective of privilege, and turn it into and even more useful perspective that leads us to understanding, peace, and solutions.
We start with a review of the current state of thinking, and articulate how that leads us to The Great Privilege Paradox. From there, we add nuance and complexity in a way that doesn’t negate our current thinking, but adds to it. We show how playfully tossing around the concept of privilege can make for great self-awareness, and we show that things are oh so much more nuanced than most people think.
A promise: No-one will get whacked over the head with a privilege-stick in this episode.
The gender revolution is one of the most important changes that’s ever happened in human culture. Its core intentions, its core missions, are undeniably needed.
Now that we’re 70 years into it, in some areas the gender revolution continues to progress. However, in other areas progress has slowed or stalled. Worse, in some areas we’re going backwards. After 70 years, the finish line is nowhere in sight.
I believe it’s time we considered why our progress is faltering, and what needs to change to bring about the next wave of the movement. At the broadest level, I suggest that historically we’ve mostly focussed on articulating and dealing with the problems after they’ve happened – what we need to do now is shift our attention to what’s causing the problems in the first place. This is going to take us into some radical and sometimes uncomfortable new territory, but it will lead us more directly to the just world we seek.
Well this is a rollicking romp of a conversation, in three parts.
I’m chatting with Dr Elliot, from https://myfirmtech.com/. Links are in the shownotes. Dr Elliot Justin has a background in emergency medicine, more recently specialising in sex and technology.
We started by having a chat about his product lines, which might be of a slightly narrower range of interest compared to what we normally cover, and it’s a bit more commercially-oriented than the usual vibe we go for here.
Then, about 24 mins in, we move into what I found to be a really interesting conversation about the broader future of AI and sex toys, which ranges from flights of fancy through to downright depressing. And you know how much I love the stuff others think of as depressing.
Finally, the last third is the conversation you have after you’ve recorded what you think you’re going to use, but then it turns out to be at least as interesting as what you were meant to be talking about. So I’ve left it in.
When I was recording it, I was going to chop things around and put the future-focussed philosophical stuff first, because I thought that the initial product info would be too narrow-cast.
But listening back, I think there might actually be something there for everyone, so I’m just going to leave the whole thing unedited, including the bit at the end that’s not meant to exist.
So here’s a conversation about cock rings, clitoris monitoring devices, health and heart-care, the future of robots and AI, the end of the species, and the problems with taking on an algorithm for happiness and hand-jobs. Good luck with that.
One word of warning: Generally, I try to avoid letting through language that assumes that people of a given gender have any particular genital type, as way of making the content inclusive.
In some ways, today’s show is a fail on that front. At the same time, there is some information here about how these products are very useful from a trans perspective, and it’s spoken about appropriately.
So, in some ways, today’s show is a win.
I’m still here. I still love you.
Since we last spoke, a lot of extraordinary things happened, resulting in me stopping workshops kind of abruptly, and selling The Practice Lab.
I will probably say more about all of that in a future episode, but for now, perhaps as a down-payment on some of that, let’s listen back all the way to 2017, with Barbara Carrellas and Cyndi Darnell.
So I’ll probably do an episode about that.
And I’m planning on doing a whole bunch of episodes after that on where I think the gender movement needs to go. Quietly excited.
But in truth, I’m doing one step at a time at the moment, and I have no idea what’s next. It’s ace. You should maybe try it. Or not.
But if you’re wondering if I’m dropping the podcast… At least at this point in time, no. Our love would appear to be safe, to the extent that love can ever be considered safe.
Rog from Curious Creatures is joined by:
Barbara Carrellas – World renowned author, workshop therapist, coach, adviser and speaker. Barbara has written many books, including the revolutionary ‘Urban Tantra’ and ‘Ecstasy is Necessary’. Find her at www.barbaracarrellas.com.
Cyndi Darnell – Therapist, facilitator, author and speaker. Cyndi has been a committed leader within the field of sexuality for decades and offers powerful therapeutic assistance in all matters related to sexuality and relationships. Find her at www.cyndidarnell.com.