Are you addicted to sex? What about footy? (replay)
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This is one of the great myths about sex – that our sexuality is essentially a wild, out of control beast waiting to consume us whole, the moment we let it off its leash. We have been taught, from so many places, to keep it locked down and not explore our interests.
Which begs a follow-up question: Why is our interest in sex so very different to our interest in – for example – football? Or anything else?
To answer this question, interviews with two people – one of them interested in sex, the other in football – are compared and contrasted in a way that illuminates just what a sex-negative (and, perhaps, a football-positive) world we live in. Prepare to be entertained, as Curious Creatures takes a few steps away from the usual ‘Curious Conversations About Sex’ format.
This episode is brought to you by Rog, from Curious Creatures (www.curiouscreatures.biz), and friends.
If you are seeking support in relation to your own potential sex addiction, in Australia you might want to start with Lifeline (13 11 14), or the counselors on the Curious Creatures ‘other recommended resources’ page.
Hope In An Often Hopeless Realm: Restorative Justice (part two of two)
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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.
– 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 https://projectrestore.nz/.
– David Karp is a professor with Skidmore University, USA, en route to the University of San Diego. 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 https://www.campusprism.org.
Hope In An Often Hopeless Realm: Restorative Justice (part one of two)
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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.
– 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 https://projectrestore.nz/.
– David Karp is a professor with Skidmore University, USA, en route to the University of San Diego. 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 https://www.campusprism.org.
How good are you at training a new person in how to kiss you?
More importantly, how do you feel about training this person that’s in front of you, right now, in how to kiss you?
They’re the questions Rog (from Curious Creatures) and Isiah McKimmie front up to for you, in this episode. It’s an intro to kissing like you’ve never heard.
Isiah is a sex-therapist, relationship counsellor, and sexologist, who can be found at www.isiah-mckimmie.com/
Today, we’re having another listen to a conversation with two of the world’s best sex educators and prioneers, about how to introduce more interesting sex into a relationship.
My first guest is Cyndi Darnell, who is an educator and counsellor based in New York. She’s available for sessions via video conferencing.
My second guest is Barbara Carellas, also a sex educator and pioneer, and offering workshops around the world. Among many other achievements, Barbara wrote the book ‘Urban Tantra’, which I warmly recommend; it certainly shaped a lot of my journey.
Is there an art to the act of the hookup? Is it about more than the right outfit, the right opening line, and a bucket of fuck-luck? And what’s all this talk about self-development, and solutions to the world’s problems?
On this episode, Rog (from Curious Creatures) interviews Georgie Wolf, author of a book called ‘The Art of the Hook-up’. It’s a radical read, and it’s got the potential to really positively influence the way the dating game plays out – also sex, and relationships, more generally.
Stay tuned at the end, for responses to listener feedback.
Curiosity - secrets from inside a sex-party community
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I get asked a lot of questions about what it’s like to go to a sex-party, and in particular, the one I run, called Curiosity.
So to answer your questions, I interviewed four regular Curiosity participants about their experiences, and they offer you a very candid and honest perspective into the little world of sex and self-development they find themselves in; this is like no story on what it’s like to be at a sex-party that you’ll have ever have heard.
What do you wish you were told before entering the sex industry?
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Today, Seani Love, award winning sex-worker and sex educator, is back with us. The question we’re tackling gets us into all sorts of interesting spots, such as the process of undoing gender conditioning and socialisation, removing the link between being attractive and being sexy, and a few reflections on the nature of the industry. And life.
You can find Seani at www.seanilove.com. And for those of you near Melbourne, Australia, Seani’s running a 7-day retreat on sex magick at the start of January.
This show’s for pretty much anyone that’s been in a long-term relationship, and had to tackle any of the sex-life challenges that life throws up. Such as busy work lives, health issues, or pregnancy and early parenthood. Focussing on the latter, this episode is all about navigating our often fickle sex lives while preparing for and dealing with a new child on the scene.
Rog, from Curious Creatures, interviews Erika Munton, a birth and relationships coach, in Melbourne, Australia. Erika can be found at birthready.com.au.
Today, we’re switching! Rog (from Curious Creatures) is being interviewed by someone else. Well, sort of; there’s a bit of topping from the bottom going on. Oops.
You may remember Isiah McKimmie from a few episodes back; they chatted about safer sex. It was such fun, that they wanted to interview me about oral sex for their podcast, Love, Sex, and Intimacy (linked to in the show-notes). And we’re now listening to that conversation, here.
We started with Isiah trying to work out whether they actually like oral sex or not…
As a 'top', how do you recover when things don't go as planned?
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What a ripper of a question today. Big thanks to Greg for hitting us up with this one.
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. Seani’s actually back in Melbourne in late June 2018, by the way, check out their website at www.seanilove.com.
What’s this language, of ‘cock-owners’ and ‘vulva-owners’? (Part 2 of 2)
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Today, we’ve got the second part of a conversation with Lee Harrington and Euphemia Rustle about all sorts of things to do with gender. And in particular, how we can all get along more, regardless of how long we’ve been immersed in gender-diverse thinking. We’re pretty much just going to drop you in in the middle of the conversation. But hey, you’re a smart cookie; you’ll work out what’s going on.
What’s this language, of ‘cock-owners’ and ‘vulva-owners’? (Part 1 of 2)
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…From there, this conversation rolls into topics relating to trans and queer identities, how we as individuals cope with a world that doesn’t always understand our identities, and how much things have evolved. All this, without creating the illusion that there’s one simple answer to these questions, that we all agree on. Because there’s not.
Rog, from Curious Creatures, is joined by two awesome sexuality educators: Euphemia Rustle www.iwishyouknew.net, and Lee Harrington www.passionandsoul.com.
How is kinky sex, and role-play in particular, a therapeutic process?
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In this adventurous conversation with sex-worker and workshop facilitator Seani Love, the conversations draws many parallels and connections between therapy and kink. This is a conversation deep in the details of how to use kink for liberation and empowerment in a way that probably isn’t for everyone, but can do laps around ‘talk therapy’ when it is.
Today, we’ve got the third of a three-part conversation about safer sex. Issiah McKimmie and I continue chatting about the detailed pragmatics, as well as the broader communication and psychological issues. We start with dental dams, move onto safer sex strategies for kinky play, and finish on the role of shame in STI conversations.
This is the second of a three-part conversation I had with Issiah McKimmie. The last one was all about safer sex practices as they relate to kissing, manual stimulation, and oral sex. Now, we’re going to dive right in to genital-genital contact, and also some tips on safer sex in kinky play. Bear in mind I’m cutting you in half way through a conversation, which is kind of like starting a porno after all the clothes are already off, but you’ll work it out.
Today we’ve got the 1st of three parts of a conversation I had with Issiah McKimmie. It started out being about how to do safer sex, but, y’know how these things go… It pretty much just wound up being about sex and communication and a whole bunch of jokes as we got deeper into the material.
Where’s the line between taking responsibility for your own stuff, versus calling out bad behavior?
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Wow. What could possibly go wrong with this sweet, simple little question?
This conversation takes in everything from the mundane (such as giving yourself three days after writing an email before clicking ‘send’) through to the profound (such as how the question inspires an existential crisis and pleas to Buddha).
Getting sometimes confused and humble, but also managing to find some very sensible theories and tangible ideas, are:
Rog, from Curious Creatures;
Dossie Easton – author of The Ethical Slut (and various other progressive sexuality books), and counselor and relationships coach based in San Fransisco (dossieeaston.com); and
Anne Hunter, a relationships coach and polyamory specialist, in Melbourne, Australia (yourrelationshiptoolbelt.com).
The Consent Cards: A primer in great sex and consent! (Part 3 of 3)
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In this episode (the final in a three-part series), Aerie (from Blue Velvet Arts) and Rog (from Curious Creatures) go through the questions on the Curious Creatures Consent Cards in detail. New and old players alike will find plenty in the way of juicy perspectives and personal stories about lessons learned the hard way.
The questions, are:
How are we doing?
What’s our brief description of what we’re planning to do?
Why is this play interesting to you / me?
What kind of experience are you / am I after?
Have you / I done this kind of play before, or something like it?
Can we check in, mid-play, using the scale of 0-10 to guage how intense it’s going (where 3-4 is warmup, and 6-7 is sustainable play)?
If everything goes well, what is our upper limit for intensity?
Do we have safe-words in place (eg. ‘green’ = all good; ‘orange’ = approaching a limit; ‘red’ = complete stop, debrief, then play may or may not continue…)?
Can we leave marks (such as bruises, teeth-marks, scratches)?
Do you / I have any injuries, health conditions or other body limitations that might be relevant?
Are there any parts of our bodies (such as genitals, bum, chest) that we don’t want to be involved?
Who might be gaining pleasure from this; who is it for?
Is this activity likely to be triggering?
Are you sober (and, if not, how can we make that safer)?
15 What are our safer-sex practices (in terms of STI transmission), and are there any other safety issues?
16 Will we need to do specific things to care for each other, afterwards?
17 Are you happy to proceed? (Check for congruence, question any uncertainty).
The Consent Cards: A primer in great sex and consent! (Part 2 of 3)
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In this episode (second in three-part series), Aerie (from Blue Velvet Arts) and Rog (from Curious Creatures) go through the questions on the Curious Creatures Consent Cards in detail. New and old players alike will find plenty in the way of juicy perspectives and personal stories about lessons learned the hard way.
The questions, are:
How are we doing?
What’s our brief description of what we’re planning to do?
Why is this play interesting to you / me?
What kind of experience are you / am I after?
Have you / I done this kind of play before, or something like it?
Can we check in, mid-play, using the scale of 0-10 to guage how intense it’s going (where 3-4 is warmup, and 6-7 is sustainable play)?
If everything goes well, what is our upper limit for intensity?
Do we have safe-words in place (eg. ‘green’ = all good; ‘orange’ = approaching a limit; ‘red’ = complete stop, debrief, then play may or may not continue…)?
Can we leave marks (such as bruises, teeth-marks, scratches)?
Do you / I have any injuries, health conditions or other body limitations that might be relevant?
Are there any parts of our bodies (such as genitals, bum, chest) that we don’t want to be involved?
Who might be gaining pleasure from this; who is it for?
Is this activity likely to be triggering?
Are you sober (and, if not, how can we make that safer)?
What are our safer-sex practices (in terms of STI transmission), and are there any other safety issues?
Will we need to do specific things to care for each other, afterwards?
Are you happy to proceed? (Check for congruence, question any uncertainty).
