Culture Sex Relationships

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/rela...

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 t...

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 mea...

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 Covi...

This week I am grabbing some hashtag content from my other Patreon for BISH (https://www.bishuk.com/)and introducing you to my 'Train Yourself in RSE' resources. You can see this (and read the resource) here for free https://www.patreon.com/posts/train-yourself-1-70736726 If this is the kind of thing that you might be interested in doing here, I could do special CSR versions which are aimed at you...

I invited Scott Burnett back on the show (here's his first appearance last year when we talked about the manosphere https://soundcloud.com/culturesexrelationships/scott-burnett-masculinities-masturbation-and-no-fap). He co-wrote this excellent paper this year called ‘Breeders for race and nation’: gender, sexuality and fecundity in post-war British fascist discourse. https://www.tandfonline.com/do...

As you may have been hearing on recent podcasts, I’ve been training in solution focused therapy / coaching recently. I’ve been finding it pretty transformational, both for me personally but I’ve also found it really useful in work too. It’s a very postmodern practice, in that it just works. In the training that I’ve attended the trainers have been disinterested in the theory, or why it works. Thei...

Latest episode is an expanded version of some of the stuff I've been writing lately for BISH (my website for over 14s) and for Mashable which you can read here https://mashable.com/article/porn-sites-viewers-workers For a blog post of this article you can head to the Patreon https://www.patreon.com/posts/72285998 and while you're there please considering supporting the show. Just £1 a month would...

Yes we're back with another Sex Jams and we're back with another George Michael song. Perhaps the horniest of his songs. Freeek! We're doing Freeek! 04 and the video is here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLnYPXTs9LY Patrons support the show and also get bits of bonus material, including the full length version of this podcast. Just £1 a month would support the show. If everyone who listened did...

CN - I don't go into detail about abuse but the whole episode is (as the title suggests) about the relationship between what kink might do (for some people) and previous experiences of abuse. For the full blog post that goes with the episode, sign up at the Patreon and support the show. Or if you can't afford that but want to read the post, email me at culturesexrelationships at gmail dot com and...

NB: it's 29th July 2022, so if you listen to this in a few weeks time you might want to check out my article at BISH below just in case the advice changes. Here's a quick episode about monkeypox: it's a chill and informative explainer. It's based on the article I wrote at BISH https://www.bishuk.com/safer-sex/monkeypox/ and also in the article I wrote for Mashable https://mashable.com/article/monk...

Here's the latest episode of Sex Jams with Dr Eleanor Janega and me, discussing a sex jam. Here is the video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrbFQEcpJ3A We talk about pretty interesting stuff. Why the ideal Sex Jam is actually John Cage. Two seed theory. How liberal notions of the self and sexuality come from the classical and medieval notions of sex and sexuality. What is cream? The mirror phase....

Here's an interview with Cory Cascalheira who was the lead writer of an academic paper called 'Curative Kink: Survivors of early abuse transform trauma through BDSM'. It's open access and I'd encourage you to read it because it's well interesting and I think very important. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/352440982_Curative_kink_Survivors_of_early_abuse_transform_trauma_through_BDSM I say...

I chatted with Alfie Bown about his really superb new book Dream Lovers the Gamification of Relationships. It's packed with interesting ideas and theory but is also highly readable and fun. I learnt tons. I chat about the book in the introduction but you can also read more about it (and buy it if you can) at the Pluto Books website https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745344874/dream-lovers/ If you like...

Here's an article that I wrote for my Patrons at patreon.com/culturesexrelationships and I've read out here. If you want to read the article then I've unlocked the post which you can find here https://www.patreon.com/posts/65416473 Please do consider supporting the show via Patreon or you can also find out about and support my other work, which you can see at my new website https://justinhancock.c...

As I say in the introduction, I was thinking about her work when I was learning about the Sexuality Assemblage. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/258032851_The_Sexuality-Assemblage_Desire_Affect_Anti-Humanism This comes from the Deleuze and Guattari idea of the 'body without organs' which is just to say that our bodies and selves exist only in relation to (and becoming of) other humans, ide...

My latest Ask Justin is another one where I read out the blog post I've written. Which makes this a shorter but more focused podcast. Yay shorter podcasts. This has been out for over a week already at the Patreon and they also get the blog post (with all the links I mention) and also other bonus material. I am going to start to do Patreon exclusive content soon because I need more Patrons (money)...

Here's part two of the interview I did with Jacob and Bonni about their amazing new book 'Event Horizon'. It's not going to make as much sense if you haven't listened to last week's episode first I don't think, but I don't like telling you what to do. In this part we talk about: - the idea of 'cuteness' - selfies (comparing selfies with Lacan's idea of the Mirror Stage) - the sexual non-relation -...

Event Horizon: Sexuality, Politics, Online Culture, and the Limits of Capitalism When our desires become the product of tech giants, what ways are there left for us to dream? in an age where Silicon Valley dictates what it means to innovate, a painless future, knowledge and enjoyment are fertile breeding grounds of political contestation. But it’s not exactly democracy. We are controlled through p...

It's another Ask Justin week and this time I'm reading out an article I've written which is available at patreon.com/culturesexrelationships 'I’ve Never Been Able To Orgasm.' There are a lot of aggregated ideas about sex and bodies in your question which I think would be useful to examine up close to see how much we can see them shifting. The way that you refer to orgasms, the body, and the self c...

I think many of us might agree that #MeToo has been an important and much needed movement. Putting consent, sexual violence, instutional power, and genderered power dynamics, into our everyday conversations. But in what way has it transformed our understandings of consent and justice, and the possibilities for sex. Probably not a lot. It has both uncovered and reinforced very basic and binary noti...

When we talk about porn it’s invariably about what effects it causes. What is it doing to our sexualities, what is it teaching kids about sex, and blaming it for hacking into and hijacking our desires. More interesting is to look at porn in culture just as we might look at any other media such as social media industries and streaming platforms. What kinds of active relationships might we have with...

Regular listeners of this podcast will know that we recently had Scott Burnett on the show to talk about his work on understanding online communities of men related to the No Fap movement, the manosphere, and the alt-right. His work charted these groups and some of the often dangerous and worrying views they espouse. In today’s show we are going to take a more psychoanalytic approach. How are men...

This week I chatted with the critically acclaimed, and multi award winner and nominee, podcaster Dave Pickering about podcasts. You will hear: - Dave doing an intro about their podcasts and history with them - why people might listen to them, what are the motivations - the danger of neoliberalism 'self improvement' and podcasts - the parasocial relationships that we have with podcast hosts and gue...

As many of us are getting used to opening up our lives again in the middle of a pandemic, we might start to feel different kinds of feelings and thoughts about how safe and comfortable we might feel. Being at the pub, cafe, theatre, cinema, meetings, conferences or protests now has a very different set of concerns or anxieties for many of us. Also over the last couple of years the protests around...