EP 87: Is your gender identity fixed or flexible? Is it innate, or the product of socialisation, including trauma? ...With Avgi Saketopoulou.
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Today, we’re chatting about gender, and how your identity is influenced by the events you experience in your life. The conversation is especially interested in how minority genders such as non-binary and trans identities are formed, and how there’s healthy and less than healthy ways that plays out.
My guest is Avgi Saketopoulou, who along with Ann Pellegrini, has recently written a book called “Gender without Identity”.
EP 88: The Death Cult Club, Lomi Lomi, and Integrated Oncology with Alice Peebles
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Today, we talking about the Death Cult Club, Lomi Lomi, and Integrated Oncology with Alice Peebles. It includes a couple of side-journeys around consent and trauma-informed practice, and touches on Alice’s and Rog’s personal Death Cult Club Goals.
Oh, and some tips on how you can start your own Death Cult Club!
EP 86 Re 39: When things go wrong, or not as planned
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Today, answering the question, of what to do when things go wrong – especially when you’re topping.
To answer it, I’m back with Seani Love, an award-winning sex-worker and workshop facilitator. The conversation comes across like you’ve walked in on a couple of kinky therapists having a chat, which is precisely what it is – a nuanced deep-dive into exactly what emotional safety looks like in practice, from a couple of folks that have made mistakes and learned from them.
EP 85: Lee Harrington on self-care. Also gender, relationships, community.
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Lee Harrington, who’s been on the show a couple of times previously, has recently written the book “Becoming Your Own Beloved”. It’s a wild investment in yourself, and a radical piece of activism against some modern dilemmas.
Lee and Rog talk self-care, gender, lateral violence in minority gender groups, and some good old life philosophy.
Reaction video to Jordan Peterson on birth control and promiscuous sex (minus video)
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Today, I’m doing a reaction video to a Jordan Peterson interview, except without the video. So I’m just having a reaction, I guess.
In the original interview, which I’ll link to in the shownotes, Jordan is speaking about sex, consent, and sex outside of marriage. On top of that, I want to add another couple of thoughts on things Jordan at the end.
Heads up, this is mostly just me disagreeing with Jordan, but not all of it. He raises some good points, and honestly, it’d be interesting to get his take on a few things without the intensity of the polarised social media landscape he exists in; so much of what he says is a polarised response to a polarised attack, and it can be hard to actually get a sense of a person with all that noise.
Today, we’re chatting with Joli about jealousy – how it’s an awesome thing waiting to happen, what to put in place to avoid unnecessary amounts of it, how it pairs with attachment styles, and how to talk about it. Also, a bunch of thoughts on starting poly, navigating poly, and some relationship ideas that are good for mono and poly styles.
Today, I’ve hand-selected a bonus episode for you.
It’s from the podcast ‘Come As You Are’, and it’s about your hardware – by which I mean, your genitals, junk, hoo-har, your funky fandangle, whatever it is you call it.
More specifically, it’s about how all of our genitals have things in common, and how we all get formed from the same stock. I love that stuff, how it breaks down a lot of the idea that we’re like completely separate and incomparable creatures, based on our genitals, with no experiences or problems in common.
The episode starts with a listener calling in to ask about their partner’s bent dick, but it quickly expands out to include other genital configurations in a nice and body-positive way.
Interview with Fiona Patten (Reason Party, formerly Sex Party)
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Today, I’m having a fast and exciting conversation with Fiona Patten, who leads the Australian Reason Party. We get into politics, sex, gender equality, and collaboration as an alternative to the adversarial political system. Oh, and we touch on assisted dying, drug legalisation, and a bunch of other stuff.
What stands out for me about this conversation is how *real* it is. That wouldn’t normally stand out, but it’s quite an impressive quality in a politician. I found it refreshing.
EP 78: Re-Ep Jessica Drake re porn, sex-work, sex-education
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I’ve been going on a lot lately about the way porn winds up being sex education if there’s no other sex education available, and how that’s sometimes a good thing and sometimes maybe not such a good thing.
So I thought it would be great to go back and listen to this episode from 2019 with Jessica Blake, who’s a porn performer wrestling with just that problem. Take it away, historical Rog and Jessica…
EP 77: Rog being interviewed by Choose Love Podcast
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Today, I’m being interviewed by Steve from the Choose Love Podcast. Since he was interviewing me, some of it’s about me and how I came to be doing what I do… Then from there, we launch into what’s going on for most people in the world of sex, how sex education is meeting our needs or just, like, totally failing, and what I’ve learned along the way.
I found it to be a really enjoyable chat, I hope you do too.
I would like to see if I can blow your mind, at least a little bit, regarding unsolicited dick-pics. Actually, what’s happening in this episode, is that you get to listen in on a conversation I had with two people, where I set about blowing their minds about dick-pics – about the phenomenal circumstances that lead to their existence, and the surprising array of things that are going to need to change to fix the problem.
Settle in for an entertaining and enlightening conversation.
Tess, who appears on today’s episode, is an Occupational Therapist with a speciality in sexuality. Find them at www.connectabletherapies.com.
Show Update (We’re Back!) and BONUS Episode: Hot Money
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I’ve got great news… this podcast is back, baby!
I’m looking forward to being back in your ears, starting with a cracker of a conversation in about a week.
In the meanwhile, I’m going to pop in a bonus episode from our friends over at Pushkin. It’s the first episode from a podcast of theirs called Hot Money, and it’s about the business machinations of what goes on in the porn industry. I find this interesting, because… Well, you’ve heard me complain from time to time about what happens when porn that’s designed as entertainment is mistaken for education. I’m not anti-porn, and nor is Hot Money, but there are some drawbacks to how things are playing out that we need to reckon with.
This episode totally explores the business side of what’s driving that confusion, and articulates why a decent chunk of the sector is driven by motivations that are a long way from being educational in their intention, or from wanting to make the world a better place.
Things are busy, as we come out of lockdown. This episode is an update about that.
In short, Curious Conversations About Sex is taking a break. We suggest just leaving us subscribed in your feed, and at some stage in the future, we hope to be in your ears again.
Today, we’re looking into Restorative Justice again; this is the second in a two-part series, and I hate to do this to you, but I need you to go back and listen to the previous episode, if you haven’t already. Seriously, a bunch of stuff in the following episode won’t make sense, and I’m worried about how some things might sound out of context. It’ll be worth it, because this is a really juicy topic.
Rog, from Curious Creatures www.curiouscreatures.biz, has a revealing, intimate, and compelling conversation with:
– Fiona Landon, from Project Restore, in New Zealand. Project Restore’s vision is for a New Zealand that is free from violence, and they do this through providing world-class Restorative Justice services, tailored to the needs of sexual assault. They can be found at www.projectrestore.nz.
– David Karp is a professor with Skidmore University, USA. He’s been a researcher, coordinator, and practitioner of Restorative Justice services in the university campus context for 15 years. He can be found at www.skidmore.edu/sociology/faculty/karp.php.
The two Melbourne (Australia) based Restorative Justice services are:
Today, we’re listening back to the first of two episodes from 2019, on Restorative Justice.
I’ve chosen these episodes to listen to again because I got a lot of positive feedback from other listeners about these episodes – to which I’d add that they’re two of my faves, too.
At the end, I’ll provide a bit of an update on some services that are available to those of you in Melbourne, Australia, where Curious Creatures are based.
Now let’s get to it…
Today, we’re talking about one of the only sources of hope, in an area most of us generally feel pretty hopeless about.
When sexual assault occurs, it often changes the lives of the people that are directly involved, and also those around them. It’s like a pivotal event, a moment in time, that patterns everything that comes afterwards, and the thing that’s so hopeless about it is that there seems to be so little in the way of anything resembling a positive outcome, for anyone.
Restorative Justice is a form of mediation where the fundamental idea is that the people that were involved in an incident, actually sit down and try and work out what justice might look like.
Rog, from Curious Creatures, has a revealing, intimate, and compelling conversation with:
– Fiona Landon, from Project Restore, in New Zealand. Project Restore’s vision is for a New Zealand that is free from violence, and they do this through providing world-class Restorative Justice services, tailored to the needs of sexual assault. They can be found at www.projectrestore.nz.
– David Karp is a professor with Skidmore University, USA. He’s been a researcher, coordinator, and practitioner of Restorative Justice services in the university campus context for 15 years. He can be found at www.skidmore.edu.
The two Melbourne (Australia) based Restorative Justice services are:
Tess and I created the workshop ‘Opening Up To Opening Up’, as a deep-dive into the world of non-monogamy. We’ve had a think about which bits might be interesting here on the podcast, and would like to share with you the chapters on mythbusting, agreements, and jealousy.
A lot of this stuff is relevant to all relationship styles, not just non-monogamous ones. And if you’re not poly, it’ll certainly give you a little more insight into what goes on in this world.
Okay. Today, we’re angling in the general direction of getting more insight around a very juicy topic.
To do that, I’m going to give you some of the theory from one of my workshops, called “Playing with the cards you’ve been dealt”. I promise, this is not a teaser, where you then have to pay for the workshop to get anything interesting or worthwhile. I’m giving you a whole chunk of stand-alone material right here, right now – it’s just that I’m stealing it from one of my workshops. Ha ha, joke’s on me.
The four categories of advantage / privilege discussed are:
Physical
Social / Structural
Psychological
Spiritual
The workshop that much of this content is stolen from is on in Melbourne, Australia, on June 27 2021.
EP 68 Two (poly) Couples with Cancer Walk into a Bar
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Sex and cancer.
If you think this doesn’t apply to you, you’re almost certainly wrong. About one in two, or maybe one in three of us, will have cancer at some stage in our lives. But almost all of us will have someone close to us get cancer, and so will find ourselves as partners or carers getting an intimate relationship with cancer one way or another.
In this episode, my partner Tess and I invite another couple over for a game of Q&A around the themes of sex, cancer, relationships, and intimacy. Tori and Drew, the other couple, just want to be referred to by their first names.
It so happens that all four people are polyamorous, and it’s interesting to see how polyamory played into the cancer diagnosis and treatment process. To hint at what’s coming up, let’s just say that being poly wasn’t at all a bad thing.
This episode will also make a lot of sense to anyone that’s got a chronic illness, a disability, or some other health crisis.
Today, we’re dropping back in on an episode from 2017, on the question of whether or not consent is sexy.
The background, btw, is that in trying to sell the idea of consent, for most of the last 50 years we’ve taken a perspective of using the stick, rather than the carrot; we’ve said “Do consent, because it’s the right thing to do, and doing anything else is wrong”.
That’s not an inaccurate statement, but it’s not a particularly positive message, and so a movement sprang up more recently to sell the idea that Consent is sexy… ie. it will lead you to the things you want.
The idea is that more people will listen to that message, however others feel that it waters down, or detracts from, the original message.
My guests are two sex educators; Dossie Easton, based in San-Fransisco, and Anne Hunter, based in Melbourne.
