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Your Sexuality, Somewhere Over The Rainbow

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The queer liberation movement has impacted ALL of our lives in both obvious and subtle ways.

We are celebrating the 50 year anniversary of the Stonewall Riots by looking at how the queer liberation movement has generated waves of social change in just one generation. We look at the historical roots of homophobia and how the early gay rights movement began to confront the institutions of power that defined homosexuality as a sin, a crime and an illness.

Ready to explore more with us? Enroll in our FREE online course, The Erotic Essentials, and get started tonight!

Want to learn more about the gay liberation movement? Making Gay History is one of our favorite podcasts and features first person accounts from activists who were on the front lines of the movement.


Transcript for Podcast Episode : Your Sexuality, Somewhere Over The Rainbow

Podcast transcripts are generated with love by humans, and thus may not be 100% accurate. Time stamps are included so you can cross reference or jump to any point in the podcast episode above. THANKS to the members of our Pleasure Pod for helping make transcripts and the rest of our free offerings happen! If you love what we offer, find ways to show your love and dive deeper with us here: SHOW SOME LOVE

Chris Rose: 00:01 Welcome to Speaking of Sex with the Pleasure Mechanics. I’m Chris.

Charlotte Rose: 00:05 I’m Charlotte.

Chris Rose: 00:06 We are the Pleasure Mechanics and on this podcast we have explicit and soulful conversations about every facet of human sexuality. Come on over to PleasureMechanics.com where you will find our complete podcast archive awaiting your listening pleasure. And while you’re there, go to PleasureMechanics.com/free and enroll in the erotic essentials. It is our free online course. It is available for you whenever you wish to get started, it’s at PleasureMechanics.com/free. If you love this show and want to support our work in the world, go to PleasureMechanics.com/love to show us some love and support the show with a monthly donation.

Chris Rose: 00:55 All right, on this podcast episode, we are going to be celebrating Pride. It is June, 2019. It is Gay Pride month, all around the world and this year it is a special one because we are celebrating 50 years since Stonewall. Stonewall was in June, 1969, and it is remembered as the riot that sparked the modern gay rights movement. So we want to pay homage to Stonewall, celebrate the last 50 years of social and cultural change in the field of sexuality and gender and invite you into reflecting how this gay liberation movement has impacted your life, your gender expression, your sex life, no matter how you identify.

Chris Rose: 01:46 When we look at the past 50 years of sexual liberation, it has impacted us all and by locating ourselves in that perhaps we can envision what we want to create for the next 50 years.

Charlotte Rose: 01:58 That is such a beautiful invitation and there is so much there. It is so powerful to consider how dramatically life has changed for many in the last 50 years and how small actions have shifted culture but also how large social and political actions have shifted the landscape for us all.

Chris Rose: 02:20 And we’re using the Stonewall riots as a point of reflection on the past 50 years, but we’re also going to think about the greater arc of sexual liberation that’s been happening over the past many hundreds of years and situating ourselves in this landscape.

Chris Rose: 02:38 A few days ago, I recorded like an hour and 20 minute long global history of sexuality, that took you from cave paintings to Stonewall. I didn’t do as good of a job as I wanted to do, so I left that on the editing room floor. I want to make it a little more succinct and I want to just say that we need to remember that for thousands of years, since Hebrew law, since the rise of monotheistic religions, homosexuality has been not only a sin, but a crime. And a crime punishable by death. A crime punishable by public execution and extreme versions of this. And in my longer history, I took you into some of those grisly details. What we often think of as the witch burnings, in Europe, during the Middle Ages, also involved the rounding up of gender deviance and known homosexuals, and burning them in public executions.

Chris Rose: 03:48 Those public executions never stopped, right. There are still places in the world now where people are executed for being gay, for having homosexual sex, for participating in certain sex acts that are not condoned by their culture. So, let’s just take that in, that this is our legacy and that doesn’t only affect gay people because the persecution of gay people and gender deviance creates a cage, a box, a set of norms that everyone has to be inside of, everyone has to participate in for the system to work. So let’s just honor the thousands of years of gender deviance, of sexual rebels, of wayward women, of people who have been persecuted for stepping outside the very, very small sex norms and gender roles that were prescribed and allowed to exist.

Chris Rose: 04:51 Men had to be a very specific way. Women had to be a very specific way. Woman’s role was in reproduction only. And we need to remember that for thousands of years, under European monotheistic culture, the only sex that is allowed and celebrated is reproductive sex within marriage. And sodomy, gay sex, especially anal sex, is where a lot of this gaze is targeted, but it’s also on gender deviance. It’s on acting outside of your gender norms. Sodomy and gender deviance was so heavily policed that they had to create public style executions and even then it persisted, right. So even under the most heavily violent persecution conditions possible for thousands of years, queerness, homosexuality, same sex love, same sex desire, same sex fucking, same sex sex, has persisted. Even in a culture where it was sin and a crime punishable by death.

Chris Rose: 05:56 That brings us to the rise of medicine, where in addition to being a sin and a crime punishable by death, it becomes a mental illness. It becomes a defect, something that is wrong with you that must be fixed with aversion therapy, shock therapy, lobotomy. This culture of sin, crime, illness, persists for thousands of years and brings us into the 1950s and the 1960s. Where after the wars, and there’s a lot of great history about how the world wars and especially World War II, really shook up gender norms and sex culture in the 1950s and the 1960, we start to see the early gay rights movement coming together in America.

Chris Rose: 06:51 A group called the Mattachine Society first formed and in secret rooms with secret mailing lists, under FBI surveillance, these people met and started talking about the fact that they were gay and that they would always be gay, that they couldn’t be corrected. The first gay activist had an apologetic tone to them. They accepted this idea that they were sick and broken, but wanted kind of social pity instead of persecution and that’s where it began.

Chris Rose: 07:24 From there, as others were emboldened to start joining these meetings, the groups grew and started to fracture and we got the homophile movement. A group of early gay activists, again, we’re talking about 1950s, early 1960s, meeting in secret, saying that maybe even it’s okay to be gay. Maybe gay is good. Maybe this is something good about who we are and not … We don’t need to ask for permission, we can embrace it. Maybe we can change the social attitudes about homosexuality. They were bold enough to think about another culture that was possible where homosexuality would be made space for. I’m not sure they could imagine it would be celebrated, but made space for and made to be okay, and not persecuted as a sin, a crime, and an illness.

Chris Rose: 08:24 And I got this framework of sin, crime, and illness from an interview in the Making Gay History podcast, that I love, and I will link again to that in the show notes page, from an early gay activist, from an archived interview from an early lesbian activist, one of the first women to come out as a lesbian publicly declare her love for women, and say, “I am who I am, I think it’s okay, and we’re going to start changing your minds about us.” I want to focus on how powerful this idea is that we can change cultural attitudes and opinions even when they’re institutionalized for thousands of years. It’s powerful.

Chris Rose: 09:09 All right, so, the homophile movement starts meeting, a magazine forms called One Magazine, that starts a national publication talking about and starting to put to paper gay culture. And in cities like New York and San Francisco, and other big cities, gay culture was emerging. Gay bars were emerging. They were often raided by the police, people were rounded up and arrested, brutalized by police. And again, it was often the gender deviants that were on the frontlines. Because one of the things you could be arrested for was public indecency for wearing opposite sex clothing. So, women wearing men’s trousers were arrested. Men wearing any sign of effeminate clothing. So, trans women, especially trans women of color, were on the frontlines of this police enforcement of the social norms of homosexuals being a sin, a crime, an illness.

Chris Rose: 10:14 All right, so this takes us to the early gay culture, organizing in these cities and there’s a bar called the Stonewall Inn, in Greenwich Village in New York City, that is kind of a legendary homosexual bar. The police raided frequently, that is common. Being arrested is part of your life if you are an out gay person in the 1960s New York. Street harassment, police harassment, it’s just part of your daily life. So, what made this night in June 1969 different? It was a hot, sticky night. It was the day of Judy Garland’s funeral. Judy Garland was already an icon in the gay community, singing Somewhere Over the Rainbow, and the day of her funeral there was a lot of social tension in New York City at the time. It was the height of the civil rights era, 1969, New York City, hot, sticky night, the police come to raid Greenwich Village’s Stonewall Inn.

Chris Rose: 11:21 What made this night different than other nights is that the queers in the bar on that night fought back and they said no more. Led by trans women of color, Sylvia Rivera, and Marsha P. Johnson, they fought back against the police, threw rocks and bottles, and this escalated into a three-day riot involving hundreds or thousands of people, where for the first time there was a cacophony of voices, a critical mass of gays. and lesbians. and trans people. and queers of all kinds, saying we’re just not going to take this shit anymore. We are going to organize, we are going to lead ourselves in a movement towards full and equal rights as citizens. And what happened on that night in 1969 was also a lot of media coverage and in general, a public emboldening of gay people.

Chris Rose: 12:22 Again, I just want to pause here to recognize the ways in which the most radical amongst us, the queers, the gender deviants, the trans people of color, the sex workers, who had the least to lose, they started leading a movement and initiating a cultural change that would go on to change the world for all of us. And that is so fucking radical, and righteous, and awesome. So let’s think … That was 1969. We are now 50 years since then. What has happened since Stonewall? If we think about the gender role transformations and the sex culture transformations of the past 50 years, it is dazzling how many changes have occurred and how they impact all of us.

Charlotte Rose: 13:11 Yes, it is astounding to think about the shifts that this has created and the ripples this has created in the world. Of course, for those who are gay, gender variant humans, but also it extends further and straight people are impacted by this shift in culture. When there becomes more room for people to express their gender in a variety of ways that aren’t so constrained by man, woman, and the roles that come along with that, there becomes more space for you to be who you are, whatever that looks like.

Chris Rose: 13:49 I’m just curious as listeners, because I know the vast majority of our listeners are straight identified, but they’re straight identified with enough sexual savviness to have found us, to listen to two queer women talk about sex, and so, I kind of think of you as the most sophisticated and enlightened listeners out there, if I do say so myself. But, you have a certain level of sexual sophistication and so, as you think about the gay liberation movement, the queer liberation movement, where do you situate yourself in that? What are the ways you can identify your life has had more freedom because of the gay rights movement?

Chris Rose: 14:35 And I just want to take a moment. So, after Stonewall, right, there was the 70s disco culture, David Bowie, Freddie Mercury, Elton John, right? Like, the 70s had a certain emergence of queer culture. Meanwhile there are all these fights going on. Gay activists were taking on the institutions to get churches to be more welcoming and challenged the dialog of homosexuality as a sin. They were also taking on institutions like the American Psychological Association, getting them to stop classifying homosexuality as a mental illness. That battle took many years. Were also working on the political front to decriminalize homosexuality and make it illegal to be fired from your job for being gay, for example.

Chris Rose: 15:28 So, we see all of these fronts of political action, and of activism. Meanwhile, what is happening is people are coming out. There is social activism. People are coming out, people are starting to challenge gender roles, women are moving into all parts of the workplace and shaking up gender roles there. As women go into the workplace, parenting becomes more collaborative and we invite men into the emotional experience of fatherhood more deeply. Fashion and music and pop culture start celebrating the diversity of gender and sexual expression.

Chris Rose: 16:10 All of this is happening and then AIDS hits concurrently. And AIDS, in the early 80s, took homosexuality from the sin, crime, illness, into a disease, into a cancer that would kill you. And again, the affirmation of what we were fighting against by this virus that entered the community, it organized the queer community like never before. It made us fight for our lives and solidified queer activism. It’s been named one of the most successful public health campaigns, organized at the grassroots level and it also brought homosexuality into mainstream news.

Chris Rose: 16:55 We saw all these gay men dying and some people looked at those images and thought they’re getting what they deserved. Those gays are getting gay cancer. A lot of other hearts were opened by those images and they saw families grieving their sons and a lot of people’s hearts were opened by AIDS. So, we have that legacy too.

Chris Rose: 17:20 And then that takes us into the 90s and the 2000s, 2010s, right? So, what has happened over the past 30 years? Gay marriage has been one big arm. And that arm of the queer movement says we are normal, we are just like you, and in that normalization of queerness, normal becomes a lot more queer. So that’s one arm of it. In the second arm of it, we have the radical edge. People challenging genders even existence. The radical queers who refuse the institutions of marriage and the don’t want to be normal. They’re questioning normal sanity. That also creates a lot of room for people. Radicals have a very important function in social movements and some of our most celebrated pop icons who just totally blow our minds with what is possible with erotic embodiment.

Chris Rose: 18:20 I’m thinking about people like David Bowie, who was this mainstream, gender-bending, out-of-this-world, icon. People who are brave enough to embody those spaces on the radical fringe and do something different that’s never been seen before, carve out so much space for all of us to be more of who we are, to show new possibilities, to break the molds. But then meanwhile, we’re seeing gay people come out in all different cultures and all different churches, gay people in all different segments of society, come out and be loved by their communities, and again, that normalization of gay people makes normal much more gay.

Chris Rose: 19:09 What do I mean by that? I mean things like as gay people started having families, the question of what makes a family had to be asked. What does a parent even mean? And then we’re forced to reflect on the idea that children have been raised in families of all different kinds forever, and that a family is not just a man and a woman in marriage with children. Sometimes those men go off to war and never come back. Families have always looked really different and humans have taken care of each other, and this idea of the institution of marriage is a construction that can be deconstructed and rebuilt and redesigned.

Chris Rose: 19:55 As queer people started having families and queer men became much more vocal about their non-monogamy, they led the way to say, “We can be in love for 40 years and yes, we have other lovers.” And so, queer men opened a space for us to talk about polyamory and non-monogamy and in the past 10 years, we are seeing so many people who are heterosexual identified, find some breathing room in that category. Find some more space to be more authentically who they are.

Chris Rose: 20:35 As butch lesbians, we’re brave enough to take up space as masculine females and walk through cities with short hair and looking like dykes, and really put their skin on the line to do that, we changed our understanding of what a woman was and what it meant to be a woman, and look like a woman. And now straight women have so many more options of how they can dress and present, and it is not expected that you will wear a dress, and pearls, and gloves, and heels every day. Our social expectations of one another have changed radically, and if we follow all of these trails, so many of them lead back to queer pioneers who threw these institutions of marriage, and family, and gender, and sexual orientation into question.

Chris Rose: 21:31 They forced the question, they force us to look at it and in that investigation, we find that all of us are pretty queer. The only normal is difference, and if we allow that human sexuality to emerge, if we allow ourselves to be who we are, what then? What gifts emerge? What new models are possible? And this is kind of where I want to lead us for the next 50 years. We’re at now the 50 year anniversary of Stonewall. Where will we be at the 100 year anniversary of Stonewall? Some of us will be dead, some of us will have children or grandchildren who will be sitting around and telling the story of the next 50 years of sex culture.

Chris Rose: 22:20 If we can accept the idea that the past 50 years have been shaped by both radicals and extraordinary individuals, but also by every day individuals and all of our daily actions, then we are motivated perhaps for the next 50 years to take our part in shaping sex culture, to find agency and power in the idea that how you embody your sexuality today, and tomorrow, is part of leaving a legacy. You are shaping the sex culture for the next generation. All of us. And for me, I find that thrilling. Because then for me, I’m like what do I want to live into, what possibilities do I want to embody, what do I want to create for the next generation, and then what are the ways I can do that in my daily life?

Charlotte Rose: 23:19 What are some of those ways? I just want to make that more practical. You see so much possibility in these moments. I think for a lot of people they may feel overwhelmed by that, of this question of how can we shape culture daily. What are some of the ways you think about that? What are some of the actions you think people can be taking daily to create and recreate sex culture for each other and for the younger ones that come up behind us?

Chris Rose: 23:52 Right. That’s a big question. I’ll do my best with it. So, there’s the big stuff, right? Like, what policies are you voting for? What representatives are you voting for? What are their sexual politics? What is the cultural position you occupy and how much social power do you have with that position? So, I think the answer is really dependent on who you are in this culture and what actions you can take. But, no matter who you are, and what social position you have, I think we can think about it through the lens of to what degree do I still relate to sexuality as a sin, a crime, an illness. My own sexuality and other people’s sexualities and expressions, to what degree do we still relate to difference as a sin, a crime, an illness? To what degree do we radically accept and have compassion for difference, especially those we don’t understand. And how are your actions aligned with your sexual values?

Chris Rose: 25:02 And so some of this is like how you take up space in public and how you … When I say how you embody. So, and part of this for me is I am visibly queer. I am visibly masculine female. I could choose to grow out my hair, and wear different clothes, and blend right in. I have chosen not to do that because part of my expression is a shaved head, masculine clothes, and I occupy this middle ground which all the new kids are calling non-binary and gender non-conforming. All the sweet, new generation have all this language for it. For me, I’ve always imagine myself straddling a lot of boundaries, being neither male nor female, neither straight nor gay. So for me, a lot of my daily action is just shamelessly embodying my body, showing that this body is capable of joy and love, that I don’t apologize for my body. And that might be a big place to start is to what extent are you apologizing for your sexuality? To what extent are you allowing your sexuality to be seen and honored?

Chris Rose: 26:09 Have you come out yet would be one question for all of our straight listeners. What is there that you could come out about that would break down some shame, break down some stigma, and create more permission and pleasure and opportunity for other people? So, depending on your context again, this might be coming out as having herpes. So when your friends start making herpes jokes, you get up the guts to interrupt them and be like, “Dude, I have herpes, and by the statistics, most of us at this table have herpes. You want to keep making those herpes jokes? Like, get over it dude.” Right? Some of it is interruption or interrupting toxic narratives about rape culture in the locker room. Or, interruption your corporation from continuing to hire straight white guys out of Stanford and saying maybe there’s other people that could do this job better and standing up for people who have different backgrounds than you, right?

Chris Rose: 27:17 A lot of it is standing up for difference, coming out as who you are. So, coming out can look like a lot of different things. You might want to come out as non-monogamous. If you and your wife have threesomes once a year and there’s conversation at your social circle about those dirty pervs, you might want to come out as like, “You know, we’ve been married 35 years and we have threesomes once in a while and there’s nothing wrong with it guys.” You might want to come out as gender deviant. Is there something you are hiding about your gender expression and not showing the world out of shame? Maybe there’s coming outs for all of us to do and in that coming out, we create more possibility for one another. We model this for one another.

Chris Rose: 28:07 I’ll tell a quick story that kind of shows these different social change trajectories in action. So, I was at Target the other day, and it’s situated in a mall near our house. A few years ago I was seeing a movie at this mall and I had parked at kind of a weird entrance, and after the movie, which was a Quentin Tarantino incredibly violent movie, I was walking to my car and a car full of teenage boys kind of cornered me in the parking lot and were starting to get violent. I escaped that moment. But it is one of the many moments of queer harassment and violence I carry in my body. Some of those have been actual attacks and assaults, some of them have been threats. This was a threat.

Chris Rose: 28:50 A few years later, I am at Target, I am shopping. A group of high school boys walks by me and in an attempt to impress his friends, one of them calls me a fat dyke, in kind of like a threatening, violent tone. In that moment, I could have felt shame and fear and I did feel those things, and it was shocking to me that it as a grown-ass woman, a young boy can harass me in Target and make me feel shame and fear, but that’s within the cultural context of having been attacked and assaulted for my queerness, right?

Chris Rose: 29:25 That’s internalized homophobia. That’s internalized violence that people in marginalized groups walk with. We have to honor that. So, I’m there activated in my shame and fear, but I also have enough confidence at this point in who I am, to be like, “Yeah, I’m a fat dyke.” And so, as they were walking away, I called out, “Do better. You got to do better than that, kid.” And I heard his friends shut him down. Like, “What a jerk you were.” They kind of hit him and laughed and went on. I saw them later in the store as I came around a corner, and the boy that had harassed me looked deeply bashful. And I walked out feeling kind of victorious, because I had confronted a moment of harassment, stood up for myself, and his peers backed me up. It was uncool to harass the dyke on Friday night at Target.

Chris Rose: 30:26 So, what do we see there? We see cultural change. These young boys, it’s no longer cool. They have family cultures perhaps. They’ve seen shows, some of their own friends have started to come out. Teenage culture is no longer, for that little cluster of boys, is not longer affirming homophobic violence. It’s saying not cool, we’re not going to do it anymore. What’s also happened for me is I have enough social confidence to stand up for who I am and take up space and if they had harassed me again, I would have gone and gotten a manager. And that manager would have backed me up.

Chris Rose: 31:05 The institutions of power are shifting and when we talk about power, this is like maybe a huge, nother conversation, but power lives in our day-to-day actions. Power exists between every two individuals that are talking. Part of the queer liberation movement is no longer allowing sexual norms and gender norms to occupy a position of so much power over us. That is what the thousands of years of sexual violence were trying to do. Assert power over sexuality and over gender expression as social control and there’s a whole body of queer theory looking at the use of sexuality as social control. But all you need to do to embrace that is to think about homosexuality and gender deviance, again, as a sin, a crime, and an illness and how those narratives control how all of us behave. Who we are allowed to be, and who we are allowed to love, who we are allowed to desire, what kinds of sexual desires men and women are allowed to have. This is still in all of us. This is all of the stuff we are unpacking week to week. All of the excavation of sexual shame. Like, all of this is related and all of this is what the queer liberation movement is for. It’s not just so gay people can get married. It’s to dismantle the power that uses sexuality and gender as social control.

Chris Rose: 32:46 And in doing so, it’s right alongside the liberation movements that are unpacking race, and wealth, and the hoarding of resources along certain strata. Everywhere you see categories getting made. That is for power. So, this liberation movement is inherently tied up in the liberation of all people.

Chris Rose: 33:09 Okay, so, 50 years since Stonewall. Where are you at? You are listening to this podcast. You are looking for more sexual freedom. You are looking to embrace a more pleasurable relationship with sexuality and I just wanted to place that quest, for all of us as individuals, within the social context of this liberation movement that has been happening for well over 50 years, that has been led by really brave people, willing to do the work to break down these social institutions and change social attitudes. You have benefited from it, so reap those benefits, take stock of where you are in your sexuality and gender expression, and let’s all be emboldened to keep coming out, to keep living more vibrantly, to keep creating possibilities and to keep sticking up for other people. So much of this is to stand up for the sexual rights and the expression and the safety of all bodies.

Chris Rose: 34:15 And so, if you’re looking for a way to get involved in this, if you want to start shaping the next 50 years, you can start with yourself and your own sexual liberation and then also start standing up for the sexual liberation of all bodies and there is plenty of work to be done on that front, especially now because these rights, reproductive rights, the rights of queer people, are under fire by our current administration. We know this, it is visible, it is tactical, and again, why? Again We can look at power and sex, and yet, why is Trump even bothering to attack sexual freedoms? Social control, fear, shame as social control.

Chris Rose: 34:54 Okay, so we continue to resist. We continue to lead the way into a better future for all of us. We continue this movement. We continue the liberation movements, plural, and we continue each of our daily investment in experiencing little tastes of sexual freedom, little moments of feeling safe, and feeling pleasure and feeling love, and using that pleasure as fuel to create the sex culture we want to see emerge over the next 50 years. How’s that for a mission?

Charlotte Rose: 35:37 It is full. It is a rich history. It informs everything that we do in these moments and it’s invisible sometimes to register and to really notice how much the history, and the bravery, and the courage of people in the past have influenced our every day actions today and give us freedoms and permissions that we are not aware of. It’s powerful to reflect on. So, happy Pride to everyone.

Chris Rose: 36:05 Woohoo.

Charlotte Rose: 36:06 If you have a parade in your town, feel free to go. If you have kids, feel free to bring them. And in doing that, you are becoming a family that is making a safe space for people to be gay, whether that is your kids and you don’t know yet, or it’s your kids’ friends that then they give permission to. Sometimes you don’t know the impact of being a permission giver and being somebody that is saying, “This is okay. This is great. Look how fun that is.” And that you are somebody that comes alone to celebrate and support other people’s experience. So that is an opportunity that you can go for or else just speak kindly about gays to your family, to your friends, as you’re going about in the world. You sometimes really just never know the impact and the ripple effect that being someone who is okay with sexuality in all forms. You sometimes just don’t know the positive effect that that can have on your community, people close to you or people further away. It’s amazing. It’s amazing.

Chris Rose: 37:12 It’s true, and in all of the feedback we get for this podcast, one of the recurring themes is how nice it is to have non-judgmental community about sex. And for most people that’s just a one-way listening relationship, but just having us talk about sex in a relaxed, non-judgemental way, has been really life-changing for a lot of people and it strikes me that we can all do that.

Charlotte Rose: 37:39 For each other?

Chris Rose: 37:40 Yeah.

Charlotte Rose: 37:40 Yeah.

Chris Rose: 37:41 The 10,000 listeners of this podcast can all be deputized. I hereby deputize you to just be a non-judgmental presence about sex and sexuality.

Charlotte Rose: 37:53 And that is a very, very, very, very, very powerful act.

Chris Rose: 37:57 And I already know, like, we have listener friends in Oklahoma who are starting a queer support group in their rural Oklahoma town. There are people in … There are people all over the world who are using what they have learned here to then share it with people in their community and we will continue to find ways to support you in doing that.

Chris Rose: 38:24 we are headed into some adventures. So, tomorrow I get in a car and drive to Philadelphia for the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors, and Therapists annual conference, ASECT. It’s the largest gathering of sex therapists and educators and I will be there in my Pleasure Mechanics uniform. We have stickers and resources going out in all 850 gift bags to encourage sex therapists to join our community, share our resources, contribute to our resources and I’ll be onsite for four days, talking to them. I’m so excited. And then I drive home and the next day our family goes to Canada. Those of you who have been with us for a few years know that we have a special little cabin in rural Canada where we go every year to rejuvenate, and reset, and just be in the lake and get offline for two solid weeks. We will not be on our computers much. So, we will take a break from the podcast for the rest of June, and we will be back with you in July with new episodes of Speaking of Sex with the Pleasure Mechanics.

Chris Rose: 39:40 If you are hungry for more during this break, be sure to come over to PleasureMechanics.com and explore our full archive of episodes waiting for you or enroll in one of our online courses and uplevel your erotic skills with us. You can find it all at PleasureMechanics.com. I’m Chris …

Charlotte Rose: 40:00 I’m Charlotte.

Chris Rose: 40:01 We are the Pleasure Mechanics …

Charlotte Rose: 40:03 Wishing you a lifetime of pleasure.

Not Always In The Mood: Dismantling Myths About Male Sexuality with Sarah Hunter Murray

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In this episode, Canadian sex therapist and researcher Sarah Hunter Murray joins us to dismantle the myths about male sexuality that are at the root of so much sexual struggle. Her book Not Always In The Mood: The New Science of Men, Sex & Relationships draws from in depth interviews with men to expose the persistent mythology about male sexuality that most of the time goes unquestioned.

You can find more from Sarah Hunter Murray and her book Not Always In The Mood at SarahHunterMurray.com


Transcript of Podcast Episode: Not Always In The Mood, An Interview With Sarah Hunter Murray PhD

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Chris Rose: 00:00 Welcome to Speaking of Sex with The Pleasure Mechanics. This is Chris from pleasuremechanics.com, and on today’s podcast, we have Sarah Hunter Murray, here to talk about the mythologies about male sexuality that are at the heart of so much sexual struggle for men and women alike. Sarah is the author of the new book, Not Always in the Mood: The New Science of Men, Sex, and Relationships.

Chris Rose: 00:30 I was so thrilled to find Sarah Hunter Murray’s book about the myths of male sexuality because I have long said on this podcast that we undersell men. We do men such a disservice when we talk about men’s sexuality as simple, easy, “They’re always in the mood, you just have to stroke them and they’ll get off.”, like “What’s the big deal? They’ll want to have sex with anything that moves.” We act like men are animals instead of the complex human beings we know them to be, and we have not brought ourselves culturally to having a nuanced, intelligent conversation about men’s sexuality, our assumptions about men’s sexuality, and the lived truths in men’s lives. And these are the truths that find themselves in my inbox day after day, year after year. The stories you all share with me reveal the nuanced, emotional, social nature of male sexuality, and it’s time we update our cultural narratives to reflect that nuance and that humanness, right?

Chris Rose: 01:45 So, let’s dive into this interview.

Chris Rose: 01:48 Sarah Hunter Murray is a fabulous sex therapist out of Canada, author of Not Always in the Mood: The New Science of Men, Sex, and Relationships. You’ll find all of the links to her work in the show notes page for this episode at pleasuremechanics.com.

Chris Rose: 02:06 Come on over to pleasuremechanics.com for our full podcast archive, to explore our online courses when you are ready to master new erotic skills, and subscribe to this podcast to join this weekly conversation about sex and sexuality here on Speaking of Sex with The Pleasure Mechanics.

Chris Rose: 02:26 Here is my interview with Sarah Hunter Murray.

S Hunter Murray: 02:30 Hi. I am Sarah Hunter Murray. I have a PhD in human sexuality, I work as a relationship therapist, I’m in private practice in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, and I’m the author of Not Always in the Mood: The New Science of Men, Sex, and Relationships.

Chris Rose: 02:47 And so, why this book? Why this topic? Why did men deserve a book of their own?

S Hunter Murray: 02:53 Yeah, great question.

S Hunter Murray: 02:55 So, when I started my research as a sexuality researcher … I identify as a woman, I am so curious about women’s experiences, and in fact, that’s what I started doing: I started exploring how women experience sexual desire. I was fascinated by the complexities and the nuances. And there was so much that I learned about times that women are in the mood, and not so much, and societal messages, and psychological issues, and biological pieces. And really, what started to kind of stand out to me as I was going along the process is that we were really talking about women as being these really complex creature, perhaps to a fault, kind of maybe over-complicating women’s sexuality some argue, and I would put myself in that camp. And I realized that we were doing a lot of comparing to men’s desire, kind of talking about how … And making assumptions, I would say, about how men’s desire is quite surface-level, straightforward, high. There was kind of this language that suggested that men were always in the mood, and it just kind of hit me one day, “That can’t be true, can it?”

S Hunter Murray: 04:02 And so, I set forth to do some research by actually interviewing men, having in-depth conversations, asking about how they experience sexual desire in their relationships, and whether these assumptions were accurate or maybe not at all correct about how they truly experience their sexual interest.

Chris Rose: 04:23 So, your book came like an answer to my prayers.

S Hunter Murray: 04:28 Oh, wow!

Chris Rose: 04:29 Thank you for writing it, because I have been hungry for a more in-depth analysis about male sexuality. I feel like we do them such a disservice when we think about male sexuality as simple, and easy to please.

Chris Rose: 04:41 So, let’s dive into these myths, because you also do such a great job of showing how these myths hurt all of us, and how the myths about male sexuality are in dialogue with the myths about female sexuality, and we’re all kind of in this sexual culture together, which is a lot of what we talk about on this podcast, is the effect of the culture.

Chris Rose: 05:04 So, let’s dive into these myths, and let’s maybe start with your title, Not Always in the Mood, and this myth of kind of constant sexual interest and high libido. Why did you choose to center this myth in the title and in the book?

S Hunter Murray: 05:20 Yeah, so the reason that I chose the title and to kind of really highlight this idea of “not always in the mood” is because I think it really touches on this overarching idea that we do hold about men’s sexual interests: that it is high, constant, unwavering, that they’re always thinking about sex, it’s always on their mind, and that if sex is on offer, and particularly in a relationship … And the men in my research are largely identifying as heterosexual. So, particularly then when a female partner initiates sex, that there’s this idea that they should always take it, that that’s their top priority, if you will. And the more and more that I kind of talk about this stereotype, the more it even kind of makes me cringe even having to say the stereotype because I just know about how limiting it is.

S Hunter Murray: 06:06 But I really thought it was important to just start poking a hole in that and saying let’s at least talk about the times that men aren’t in the mood, that sometimes there’s men who have low desire, problematically low desire, or even men who have “normal”, quote, unquote, healthy, even high desire still are human beings and not robots who just might not be in the mood sometimes for various reasons that I don’t think we really typically acknowledge.

Chris Rose: 06:33 Can you say that again? It’s high, unwavering …

S Hunter Murray: 06:36 High, constant, unwavering. Just this idea that it’s … I kind of use that, the language that almost implies that it’s robotic, right? That there’s not feelings and emotions, that there’s not sickness, and illness, and just stress, right? Men are of course humans, but I think when we talk about their sexual desire, we default to this language that implies that they don’t experience a full range of human emotions that impact all of us, and impact of course our sexuality as well.

Chris Rose: 07:08 Exactly. And then that becomes bundled with, once that opportunity for sex presents itself, you will be erect, and ready, and able to have an orgasm easily, right? Oversimplification, this tremendous pressure it puts on men.

Chris Rose: 07:22 What did you see as some of the stories, some of the symptoms that started surfacing as you got to talk to these men about their truth of their sexual experiences? How do they experience this myth?

S Hunter Murray: 07:36 Yeah, so when I was interviewing men … My first set of my research was on … I did these in-depth interviews. And so, I started by asking men about how true is this? Do you feel sexual desire? Are there ever times where you don’t? And I have to admit, a lot of the men actually did start by describing their desire as high, saying, “You know what? I’m more often or not in the mood. It’s hard to imagine a time where I wouldn’t want sex.”

S Hunter Murray: 08:04 But it didn’t take long, as our interviews continued … Which is what I love about these in-depth conversations, is because you get to move past that first thing that you say that comes out of your mouth. And men would start to open up about, “Oh, well, you know, maybe my desire isn’t as high as it used to be.” You know, men in their 30s, 40s, 50s, starting to kind of reflect on some changes they’ve experienced over time. Men would say things like, “Oh, well, if I’m tired or really sick …” Very understandable experiences again, but just starting to kind of talk about that exception to the rule.

S Hunter Murray: 08:38 But the thing that really caught my attention the most is that when men were talking about times they wouldn’t be in the mood to have sex, this came up in the interviews and again on my online larger qualitative study, they were talking about times that they didn’t feel emotionally connected to their partner. And I think that really deserves some attention and some conversation because we often think about men as wanting sex no matter what, or being so excited that sex is on offer that they might be able to kind of turn off some of those other emotions. But it came out very clearly and repeatedly through my research that if men were feeling a disconnect, if they were even having a fight with their partner, or maybe there was kind of this distance that hadn’t really been resolved, that their interest in having sex wasn’t always there, that they wanted that connection, they wanted to feel close in order to be physically intimate.

S Hunter Murray: 09:30 So, it’s something that we don’t really talk about when it comes to men’s sexual desire.

Chris Rose: 09:36 And you did such a beautiful job zooming in on this idea that if we believe men just want sex to get off, what does that kind of say to the gatekeepers of sex, traditionally the women? That it’s kind of an opportunity that they’ll say “yes” to no matter what, and that no matter what kind of then depersonalizes it and doesn’t speak to the emotional hunger that men are initiating with.

S Hunter Murray: 10:02 Absolutely.

Chris Rose: 10:03 This myth is so damaging for all of us. Can you bring us to that moment?

S Hunter Murray: 10:08 Yeah, absolutely.

S Hunter Murray: 10:10 And so, that was kind of this pivotal moment for me, was realizing that, as men were sharing their experiences with me, that they’re saying that sex is not just this physical need to get off. Sex ideally feels good. There’s some level of pleasure that’s experienced. It’s not that that’s not an important component. But again, this idea that it’s just about getting off, and for a partner, and say particularly female partner in the case of my research, if they believe that their male partner is simply looking to get off, they may be in a relationship where the expectation is that it’s monogamous and they’re the only appropriate person that they can engage with, there’s nothing sexy, or romantic, or flattering about that, right? It’s this really limited idea that you just want to get off. It’s not about connecting with me. It’s not about that moment of intimacy. And when that’s missing, you can understand, if any person feels that way about their partner, they might be inclined to turn down that sexual bid. It doesn’t feel sexy or make anyone feel good to think that you just want to get off.

S Hunter Murray: 11:18 But what men were saying in my research is that sex is this experience of emotional connection, of this deeper level of intimacy, and what they really wanted was to connect with their partner through sex. Of course, they talked about the side of it that feels good, but they really wanted … It was a bid for emotional connection.

S Hunter Murray: 11:40 And I think what’s so important … And I’ll speak about my clinical work as a relationship therapist. When I’m working with couples, and heterosexual couples particularly, where the female partner kind of can hear her male partner speak through that, I’ve seen it over and over again where she’ll just kind of have this deep sigh and be like, “Oh, okay. I get it.” Like, “That makes me feel better. That makes me feel like I understand where you’re coming from, that I know you better.” It doesn’t mean she has to say “yes” to his sexual advance just because it’s a bid for connection. But I think at least acknowledging that sex can be that bid for connection from men I think allows, particularly heterosexual couples who are taught these really limiting roles about how men and women are supposed to be, it gives them a better understanding of their partner, and an ability to say, “Oh, maybe you feel disconnected. You’re reaching out through sex. I don’t particularly feel turned on right now, but maybe we can kind of sit and talk, maybe I can warm up to the idea, maybe we can find a different way of connecting now and try sex later.”

S Hunter Murray: 12:43 But it’s an idea that, if we kind of understand the underlying motivation for our partner initiating sex, it just helps us to understand their inner world a little better, and maybe even find a way to connect if that’s sometimes like the ultimate thing that’s being sought after.

Chris Rose: 13:01 My brain’s going in about 10 directions right now. But one of those places is that what is being sought, and if we can bring intention and name that intention more clearly, then as you said, the options open up, the many sexual experiences, erotic connections you can have, and the pressure to perform, which dovetails with this other myth of the ever-performing penis really [crosstalk 00:13:28]. And that again just puts so much pressure on men to have sex mean one thing-

S Hunter Murray: 13:33 Yep.

Chris Rose: 13:34 … and that one thing be something he has to control and manage.

Chris Rose: 13:39 I’ve been hearing so much from men about the, not only pressure to have the erection and the ejaculation, but the pressure to kind of manage the whole sexual experience and be in control all the time.

S Hunter Murray: 13:52 Yes. Yes. And that was another thing that came up, this idea that men are feeling a lot of the responsibility around sexual activity, and again, particularly in heterosexual relationships, is on their shoulders. And there’s a good reason for that, because our society continues to, from a young age, reinforce men for seeking out sexual stimulation, sexual partners, kind of pushing to that next level of sexual intimacy. So, a lot of men can kind of relate to feeling in high school that men who … Or boys at time, sometimes, are being rewarded through popularity, high-fives, if they have a partner, if they have sex. And so, there’s this idea that they are positively rewarded for pursuing sexual activity. Whereas women, most women would say that their experience was more around the shaming of their sexuality, that they were taught to be passive, that good girls make him wait, having multiple sexual partners can give you labels of being a slut or a whore. And some women in high school tend to avoid wanting those labels. I think we kind of can challenge them as we become adults, but I think those assumptions about what men and women should do and what they’re rewarded or criticized for doing impacts how we enter into relationships.

Chris Rose: 15:20 Yeah.

S Hunter Murray: 15:21 And so, what I’ve heard is that men are saying the expectation tends to be that they initiate sex, that they flirt with their female partner, that they desire her, they tell her she’s beautiful, they are responsible during sex for providing sexual pleasure, and kind of feeling that that level of responsibility is kind of damaging for them. It’s a bit exhausting, but also that they feel so excited when those roles get reversed.

S Hunter Murray: 15:52 So, one of the myths that I talk about in the book is this idea that men say that they want to feel desired in return, that they like when their female partner compliments them, when she reaches out to touch him, even romantically, when she initiates sex, when it feels like there’s this role reversal and this feeling of being desired and wanted.

S Hunter Murray: 16:14 So, men were talking about how good that feels. And again, it’s just something particularly with heterosexual relationships where men and women receive such different messages growing up about what they should do. Men were saying they’re really ready to kind of challenge some of those norms and kind of split the workload, if you will, when it comes to sex.

Chris Rose: 16:35 And as a therapist, how do you work with people? Because sometimes in the podcast when we encourage these massive reframings of expectations and cultural norms, the next question is like, “Well, great. Now how?” Like, “I see the benefit. I know I want to, but undoing these programing can feel so challenging.”

Chris Rose: 17:00 What are some of the first steps for men to recognize which myths are impacting them the most, and start unpacking some of this for themselves?

S Hunter Murray: 17:08 Yeah. Really great question.

S Hunter Murray: 17:10 So, it depends. I talk through a bunch of different myths. And so, I think some readers have reached out to me to let me know that the book in general really hits home for them, and that kind of all the myths really apply.

Chris Rose: 17:25 Yeah.

S Hunter Murray: 17:25 Some of those people will reach out saying, “This one myth in particularly really resonated.”

S Hunter Murray: 17:30 But part of it is kind of figuring out what really hits home for you. My goal with this book, or presenting this research, is in no way to suggest a new mold of men’s sexuality. It is to suggest that maybe we can have a different discourse and allow for more nuances within men and between men about their experiences.

S Hunter Murray: 17:52 So, if we’re talking about this idea of wanting to feel desired as an example, what I would suggest is the first thing is just acknowledging. I really do take this approach that it’s not on men’s shoulders to change it, it’s not on women’s shoulders to feel responsible: it’s really about opening up a dialogue.

S Hunter Murray: 18:11 One of the couples that comes to mind for me, that I was working with, talks about how even having the language around “I want to feel desired. Feeling desired is important to me.” was a critical step in terms of even being able to acknowledge to himself that it was important, that he liked when his female partner kind of reassured him of being wanted through physical touch, just a quick kiss on the cheek when she passed by, giving him a rub on the shoulders. When she initiated sex, it kind of put him at ease that she wanted it, and that she was an excited participant. Sometimes he worried that if he initiated at the wrong time that he would either be rejected, or he had his own insecurities around whether she was kind of, quote, unquote, “just going along with it”, like consenting but not really being that excited about it. So, all of these things, as he was able to vocalize what was important about feeling desired, ways that she made him feel wanted, it helped him with the language, and it helped her understand his needs.

S Hunter Murray: 19:13 Now, with this particular couple, they were in their 60s. They had years and years of learning certain rules about how men and women are supposed to be. And she struggled with the idea of initiating sex because she had been taught for decades that that’s not what women do.

S Hunter Murray: 19:31 So, again to your point, not an easy thing for some people to kind of switch. But she actually, as we continued our work together, started to play around with the idea that she’s never been able to fully embrace sex on her schedule. She was always taught to wait for a partner to indicate he was in the mood or not. Or I guess that he was in the mood, sorry, and then she could see if she was or not. And as we continued our exploration of the messages she received about women and sexuality, she really started to open up about, “Wow! This could be really exciting for me to say, ‘Hey, I’m interested.'”, and tap into the times where her desire was there, but she never actually turned the feeling into action because she was always taught “That’s not what you do.”

S Hunter Murray: 20:14 So, I guess that’s a kind of long-winded answer to your question. But I think it starts with naming what is important to us, why is it important to us, and asking are there ways in this relationship that feel comfortable for both of us to take some responsibility to kind of shift these dynamics. They don’t blame. There’s no expectation that things have to kind of shift on a dime. Some people find these things a little easier to incorporate sooner, and other people, like I said with this couple in their 60s that’s coming to mind for me now, there’s a lot of years to kind of unpack and reverse in order to kind of challenge some of these myths.

Chris Rose: 20:53 Yeah. And there seems to be this double burden of there’s the struggle itself of you’re not having the sex you want, or the kind of sexual expression you want, and then there’s the experience on top of that of the shame and what that means about you, and your worth, and your position in the relationship. And we should try to excavate for ourselves where is the struggle? Is it the actual experience I’m having with my soft penis, or is it the story I’m putting on what that means?

S Hunter Murray: 21:27 Yeah. Yeah. And sometimes, throughout my research, men would say things like if they weren’t in the mood, if they turned down sex, and whether or not that’s because they had an erection or not, or could or could not obtain erection, or they just weren’t kind of mentally there, sometimes they were worried about how their female partner respond. Would she judge, or would she say “no” next time? And there was kind of some men who talked about that concern.

S Hunter Murray: 21:55 But some men said, even if their female partner was understanding and reassuring that they actually felt there was something wrong with them on a personal level, that no amount of reassurance was really going to cut it for them, that they held such a high standard for themselves in terms of being in the mood, “That’s what men should do. That’s what I’ve been told men should do. I’m not meeting that norm.”, and talking about the struggle that they experienced internally, and the judgements they put on themselves in those moments, which I think what you’re speaking to is that only intensifies and amplifies those negative feelings, and makes enjoyable sex less likely. That pressure doesn’t really work in our favor.

Chris Rose: 22:43 A few moments ago you said something I’m so curious about. You said that you, in the book, don’t position a new model for male sexuality. I’m curious where you come down on, after these conversations, after your years of clinical practice, where are you seeing our sex culture right now? Where do you feel like we need to head? Do we have a broken system? Where are you falling on that?

S Hunter Murray: 23:08 Yeah. Yeah. That’s a great question.

S Hunter Murray: 23:12 I guess what I mean when I say I’m not trying to create a new mold of male sexuality is because I do find sometimes when I have written an article, whether it’s for Psychology Today, or I’ve given a quick interview, I do get a lot of really positive feedback and response, whether it’s from men, or women, or both, and couples, saying, “This really resonates. I finally feel seen. I finally feel like I understand my partner.”

S Hunter Murray: 23:40 Almost inevitably, I’ll get that one random comment from someone who says, “Well, I’m always in the mood. I always feel desire.” I’m like, “Okay, that’s fine.” I’m not trying to say that just because the men that have participated in my research and the themes and findings that I’ve found … If that doesn’t speak to you, that’s fine. Not all men are going to fit in this description. But what I really do want to suggest is that we know that other side, right? We’re used to that person, whether it’s a singer, or a rapper, or a music video, or a TV show, or a movie. We’re used to that archetype of that man who’s like, “I’m always in the mood, need lots of women, cheating because I can’t be satisfied in a monogamous relationship.” I was like, “We know that story.” What we don’t have as much knowledge of or space to talk about is all the nuances, the complexities, the time men aren’t in the mood, the things that would decrease their sexual interest, the emotional vulnerability involved in initiating sex, the deep feelings of rejection that can happen when sexual initiation and that bid for connection isn’t met.

S Hunter Murray: 24:58 We don’t talk about that emotional side of men’s sexuality and their sexual desire specifically, and I think that really is causing a disservice to us socially. I think it’s keeping men in these narrow boxes about what they should demonstrate. I think it’s making female partners feel disconnected from their male partners with those assumptions that we talked about before, that it’s just this physical need, and missing out on these emotional connections.

S Hunter Murray: 25:23 And so, while I definitely want to push a conversation around, “How true are these assumptions?”, and “Is there room for a more nuanced and more complicated idea of men’s sexuality?”, I never want to come across as saying that, for men who identify as having high sex drives, that there’s something inherently wrong with them, or that that’s a problem. But I just think that there’s too many men who have been kind of forced into a box, and not given the space to say, “Hey, my desire’s more complex than that. I don’t always feel desire. I sometimes want to say ‘no’. I find initiating a little exhausting sometimes. I want to feel desired.” I think it at least allows for a better conversation that allows men some variation, and I think it helps women better understand their male partners in a lot of situations.

S Hunter Murray: 26:18 Did I answer your question? Yeah?

Chris Rose: 26:21 Yeah, and it allows men some dignity, and feeling less isolated. I get so many emails that start, “I’ve never told anyone this before, dot, dot, dot.”, and then they reveal a pattern that I’ve seen thousands of times, right?

S Hunter Murray: 26:35 Yes. Yes.

Chris Rose: 26:37 And I’m sure you see this. And how do we deal with this: people feeling alone in what we know are very well-established patterns?

S Hunter Murray: 26:45 Exactly.

Chris Rose: 26:45 And that isolation is part of the struggle.

S Hunter Murray: 26:48 Exactly. That’s so bang on from my experiences as well. And I am a woman who’s writing about men’s sexual desire, but one of the reasons that I’m really passionate at least about presenting the research as a real … From the voices of men. I use a lot of quotes so that readers can hear it as if it was one of their buddies. It’s men’s words. It’s their descriptions. I’m not putting my own twist on it. I really want to show men what other men are saying, because so often what I get as feedback, when people read the book or if I kind of have given a tidbit like an interview such as this, they’ll say, “Oh, I thought it was just me.” And I think it’s so important to just hear that other side.

S Hunter Murray: 27:38 Men in my research will say they know that … They hear those conversations, and the stereotypical locker room of, “Hey, did you get laid last night?”, or making comments to a girl who walks by. Men that I speak with are actually quite critical of that, and yet there’s another part that kind of doubts, like, “Oh, wait, it’s not true. Or is it?”

S Hunter Murray: 28:00 That’s all I hear. We don’t have as many dialogues. We don’t hear that discourse around men talking about, “Yeah, work is really hard right now. I am stressed. When I get home, I just want to watch a show and go to bed early. And to be honest, sex is kind of the last thing on my mind right now.” We don’t have a lot of examples of hearing that, and men will say it’s so helpful to know, “Oh, okay. So, that’s a thing. Other men experience it. It’s not just me. There’s nothing wrong with me, I just haven’t heard this, and I haven’t heard my experience normalized like that before.”

Chris Rose: 28:40 Thank you so much for collecting these narratives, for bringing your wisdom to it.

Chris Rose: 28:46 Can you let folks know where to find more from you online?

S Hunter Murray: 28:50 Yeah, I’d love to. Thanks for the opportunity.

S Hunter Murray: 28:52 So, my research is all presented in the book that we’re talking about, Not Always in the Mood: The New Science of Men, Sex, and Relationships. And I also write a blog for Psychology Today where I touch on a lot of topics, but as much as possible also hit on these issues about men’s sexuality, and it’s called Myths of Desire. And again, that’s for Psychology Today.

Chris Rose: 29:16 And what are the questions you are thinking most about right now?

S Hunter Murray: 29:21 So, I think what I’m still most curious about is, at this stage, my research is really focused on heterosexual dynamics. And of course, that doesn’t apply to all men, as identifying as heterosexual or dating women. And so, I’m really curious. I think if we’re going to completely understand, if we can ever completely understand anything, but at least better understand men’s experiences, then of course it has to include men who identify as bisexual, as gay, as pansexual, as queer. We need to kind of include more experiences. Are there, say, slightly or maybe even very different experiences of men with different sexual orientations in different relationship structures?

S Hunter Murray: 30:09 I’m particularly interested as we get older as well. My research starts with men … My interviews were 30 to 65. My online study 18 to 65. The people that I work with in a clinical setting are always 18 and over. But I’m particularly curious about the nuances and complexities that hit our life the older that we get. So, I’m more and more interested in men’s experiences as they hit 30, 40, into their 50s and 60s, where there’s children, mortgages, changing perspectives on your life, and your future, and retirement.

S Hunter Murray: 30:48 I think that life just gets more and more interesting, and I think when we do find studies on men’s sexual desire, they tend to be more in that college-aged sample, which I think just continues to reinforce the chances that men describe their desire as higher, if they’re 18 to 21, 18 to 25. Again, not all men experience high pulsating sexual desire at that time either. But the chances are that life is a little more fun and carefree. Biology and diseases … Testosterone hasn’t decreased. There are certain things that kind of reinforce that stereotype if we continue to use college-aged samples in our research.

S Hunter Murray: 31:27 So, I’m really fascinated about focusing on men’s sexual orientations beyond that heterosexual dynamic, and particularly kind of that middle to later age in life.

Chris Rose: 31:37 Fabulous. I can’t wait to learn more with you.

Chris Rose: 31:40 Sarah, thank you so much for taking your time and sharing your wisdom with us today.

S Hunter Murray: 31:44 It was a pleasure. Thank you so much for having me.

Chris Rose: 31:46 I hope you enjoyed that interview. Come on over to pleasuremechanics.com for our complete podcast archive, and I will link to a few other episodes about men’s sexuality in the show notes page for this episode so you can continue the conversation.

Chris Rose: 32:04 Be sure to sign up for our free online course, The Erotic Essentials, at pleasuremechanics.com/free. That’s pleasuremechanics.com/free.

Chris Rose: 32:16 We will be back with you next week with another episode of Speaking of Sex. Remember, we are 100% supported by our listening community. So, if you love this show and want to support the work we are doing, head on over to pleasuremechanics.com/love and show us some love to help keep this show going and growing.

Chris Rose: 32:40 We will see you next week. I am Chris from pleasuremechanics.com, wishing you a lifetime of pleasure.

Chris Rose: 32:47 Cheers.

Best Of Speaking of Sex

With over 300 episodes in the archive, it is easy to get overwhelmed when you become a new listener of the Speaking of Sex podcast! While you binge listen to the full archive, here is a collection of our “Best Of” Episodes – listener favorites that spotlight core Pleasure Mechanics ideas. Enjoy!

Dual Control Model of Arousal Free Podcast Interview

Chester Mainard

Chris first met Chester on the set of a video production for Joseph Kramer’s The New School of Erotic Touch. Joseph, founder of the Body Electric School, had met Chester in the 1990s and invited him into teaching massage and erotic touch. Joseph and Chris discuss the founding of the Body Electric School and Chester’s legacy in our two-part interview.

Chester Mainard was one of the great teachers in the Body Electric School lineage of erotic touch and queer sex wisdom. He taught at Body Electric from the 1990s until his death in 2007.

Chester Mainard was the primary teacher of massage and touch for the Body Electric School for many years. He was also the primary innovator of the anal massage techniques, bringing his love and reverence for the body to this most sensitive of areas.

Chester Mainard was also a fearless explorer of breath work, developing what he called “The Anal Breath” to draw our attention to the pelvic floor’s involvement in human breathing.

For three years, from 2003 – 2006 Chris studied and worked with Chester with the urgency of new love. Chris trained with Chester in the modalities of massage, breathwork, erotic touch and Sexological Bodywork.

https://youtu.be/lzDcou5il-A

Working under Joseph Kramer, Ph.D., Chris directed and edited Chester Mainard’s four hour long video teaching on anal massage that was released as a 2 DVD set, Anal Massage for Relaxation & Pleasure and Anal Massage For Lovers. Just after production, Chester was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer.

Chester was diagnosed with glioblastoma multiforme, an invasive brain cancer in 2006. The night before surgery, at his request, Chris sat with Chester in the Berkeley hills and read him Walt Whitman’s poetry for hours.

Chester woke up from his brain surgery unable to speak, swallow and with no movement down his right side – but he woke with an urgency to live. He sang before he spoke, learning to use his half-paralyzed tongue to once again share his sharp wit and boundless wisdom.

For the next 9 months, Chester lived with brain cancer. Chris lived with him, offering him daily care and support, wheelchair dance parties and lots of gentle touch.

Chester taught his final massage classes with open wounds from brain cancer and hemipeligic on the right side. Here, student Cheryl anchors his paralyzed hand while Chris Maxwell Rose becomes his “second hand” to demonstrate a technique.
Body Electric Studio, Oakland California, 2006

Chester Mainard died on his family land in the arms of loved ones.

We are forever grateful for the life and teachings of Chester Mainard.

Sexual Attitude Adjustments

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What attitudes do you bring to your sex life? What are your attitudes about gender roles, power dynamics, desire, body parts, hygiene, physical acts, desire, love, pleasure and all of the other factors that influence your sexuality?

All of us need some serious attitude adjustments when it comes to sexuality- to move away from the attitudes that create struggle and suffering and towards new attitudes that allow a more sane relationship to the force of sexuality in our lives.

If you want resources and support around building a new relationship with your sexuality, join us in the Mindful Sex Online Course. Discover how to slay distractions so you can pay attention to all of the pleasure available to you.


Transcript of Podcast Episode: Sexual Attitude Adjustments

Chris Rose: 00:00 Welcome to Speaking of Sex with the Pleasure Mechanics. I’m Chris.

Charlotte Rose: 00:04 I’m Charlotte.

Chris Rose: 00:05 We are the Pleasure Mechanics and on this podcast we bring you soulful and explicit conversations about every facet of human sexuality. Come on over to pleasuremechanics.com where you will find all of our online resources including our complete podcast archive, our online courses and our free offering to you the Erotic Essentials, our free online course you can get started with tonight at pleasuremechanics.com/free. If you love this show and want to support the work we do, remember that we are 100% supported by our listeners and community. We are a sponsor free show, which means we rely on you to show us the love at pleasuremechanics.com/love. That’s pleasuremechanics.com/love where you will find ways to show your support for this show.

Chris Rose: 01:04 On today’s episode, we are wrapping up Mindful Sex May, our little miniseries where we explored some of the themes and applications of this framework we call mindful sex, bringing the skills of mindfulness into the tricky terrain of our erotic experience.

Chris Rose: 01:25 And on this episode we want to talk about the attitudes we bring to sex. Attitudes are so important for our human experience, but they often go unexamined. And in the classic mindfulness literature, Jon Kabat-Zinn talks about the attitudes of mindfulness being the soil in which your meditation grows. It’s the conditions and the environment for our experiences. It turns out our attitudes are so much about what we bring to life that then drives our behaviors and our experiences. Attitudes are so important, but when it comes to sexuality, so few of us have ever had the opportunity to really examine the attitudes that are driving our sexual behaviors and experiences. So we want to take this time to talk about attitudes, where our attitudes come from, how we can change our attitudes if we want to and as we go into this territory, I really just want to say we are doing this as your friends at the table with you.

Chris Rose: 02:37 As we talk about kind of the more value based things or even some would say spiritual elements of sexuality. It’s very important for me to stay practical and recognize that we are all in this conversation together. We’ve been studying sex for a lot of years. We are dedicating our lives to this conversation, but you are the expert on you, your attitudes are your own and we’re not going to tell you how to think or feel. We’re just going to open up a conversation and ask a whole lot of questions.

Charlotte Rose: 03:13 And then leave it to you to decide what is best for you and what you choose to shift and change or what you notice. It is just so exciting to have the potential to shift our experiences, our sexual experiences by exploring this terrain and that’s why we’re having this conversation. The potential of being able to shift our sexual experiences by just taking a little bit of time and exploring and examining this for ourselves and seeing if there’s anything we want to shift can be so powerful and effective and efficient because we’re interested in you having an amazing time in bed and we hope this little conversation will be able to open something up for you.

Chris Rose: 03:55 We’re interested in you having an amazing time in bed, but also having an amazing relationship with your sexuality as you walk around in the world. And throughout this conversation, as we talk about sexual attitudes, we’re going to be talking both about what we bring to the sex act and our attitudes about the nitty gritty of sex, body fluids, sex acts, but also about sexuality, about gender roles, about desire, about power dynamics. And so let’s start with a conversation. What is an attitude in the first place? What do we mean when we say attitude. As I like to do, I started at the dictionary, and the dictionary reminds us that an attitude is a settled way of feeling or thinking that drives your behavior. A settled way. When we look at that, we think about the fact that attitudes are perspectives and beliefs about the world that we take for granted.

Chris Rose: 04:59 They’re kind of installed beliefs that we are no longer questioning and attitudes are influenced by both our temperament, which we can’t change. Kind of who you are, your personality, your basic makeup. But attitudes are also largely driven by values, beliefs and experiences. Values, beliefs, experiences and information. Right? Our perceived information. And so let’s take an example that doesn’t have anything to do with sex and look at attitudes. Where they come from, how they influence our experience. What is your attitude towards the beach? Charlotte. The beach.

Charlotte Rose: 05:41 Mine is a deep love and so much … I’ve had so many delicious times at the beach, so much family time over the history of my life. Joyful times of connections. So much play.

Chris Rose: 05:53 So you want to go to the beach?

Charlotte Rose: 05:55 I love the beach. I long for the beach. I crave the beach.

Chris Rose: 05:58 Okay. Ask me how I feel about the beach.

Charlotte Rose: 06:01 How do you feel about the beach?

Chris Rose: 06:02 I like the beach, but I also struggle on the beach. I don’t really love being hot. I get really overheated in the sun. I don’t love swimming as much as you do, so I like the beach, but I don’t really want to spend a week at the beach. Someone else might hate the beach. I hate it. I hate being in the sun. I hate the sand. I don’t like swimming. Why would I ever go to the beach? That’s a different attitude. Someone else might be afraid of the beach because all they know of the beach is-

Charlotte Rose: 06:31 Jaws.

Chris Rose: 06:32 Jaws.

Charlotte Rose: 06:33 Do you know how many people I’ve talked to that have seen that film and are terrified to be in deep water because of what they saw in that film and how it affected their psychology and experience?

Chris Rose: 06:46 Right. Okay, so this is a perfect example because some of this is temperament. Some of this is you like being hot more than I like being hot. Cool. [inaudible 00:06:56]. Great. Some of this is experience. You had great family times at the beaches, full of fun and laughter. My family fought at the beach. My family got in violent fights at the beach. Okay, so we have our childhood experience, our learned experience, our associations. What emotional associations do we have with this environment with those sensory cues. And then some of it is misinformation. If I step foot in the water, a shark is going to bite my foot off. You might believe that with such conviction, you’re not even going to look at the ocean, let alone ever put your toe in.

Charlotte Rose: 07:35 Or even if you know that’s not true, you still feel it to be true and still feel terrified,

Chris Rose: 07:40 Right. You might feel terrified and from that terror you could either choose to say, I don’t have any need to go to the beach, or you might choose to learn about the ocean. Visit the ocean. Have a friend hold your hand while you step your toe in. Watch the other people swimming. Gather some more information that gives you new evidence and that might help you start shifting your attitude towards the beach, towards the ocean, to the point where you might discover you love to swim and overcoming this fear was the best thing you ever did for yourself.

Chris Rose: 08:16 Okay, so as we have this conversation, think about how you feel about the beach, dear listener, and what factors might influence your set of attitudes towards the beach. And even when we say the beach walking by the beach is different than sitting in the sand. And that’s different than swimming in the ocean. That’s different than surfing. That’s different than scuba diving. So as we approach this and recognize that with all of these different things, our attitudes drive our relationship, our experience, our behaviors.

Chris Rose: 08:50 You don’t become a surfer if you’re afraid of the water. All right, let’s bring this into the sexual realm. What are your attitudes about sex? That’s a huge question, but we can start there. What are your like meta level attitudes towards sex?

Charlotte Rose: 09:09 And then how do you feel about your body, your genitals, fluids, receiving oral sex, giving oral sex?

Chris Rose: 09:20 What are your attitudes towards kink and fetishes? What are your attitudes towards gay people? What are your attitudes towards loyalty and fidelity and monogamy? What are your attitudes towards how frequently sex should happen in a relationship and sex out of obligation?

Charlotte Rose: 09:41 What are your attitudes about initiating sex and whether that should or should not come from a woman or a man or …

Chris Rose: 09:49 And you’ve cracked the gender thing. So what are your attitudes about what a man should be and what a woman should be in bed? What are your attitudes about what is natural when it comes to sex? All of these questions, each one of them can open a whole universe of attitudes. And let’s zoom in for a moment and make this really practical and notice again how our attitudes about any one of these facets about sexuality might drive our behaviors might drive our experiences and may influence our struggles. Because that’s a piece of this too, is I get all of these e-mails from you guys articulating your sexual struggles and you go right to the behaviors, to the lived experience. And that makes total sense.

Chris Rose: 10:36 When I initiate sex and my wife rolls over without a word, I feel heartbroken. That’s the experience of initiation and rejection. And sometimes we need to swim upstream a bit and go to the behaviors. How did you initiate sex? Sometimes we need to go upstream even more and look at the attitudes. What are your attitudes about initiation? What are your attitudes about frequency of sex and what is your wife’s attitudes and how are they interacting? When we look at these struggles, we notice that so many of them are driven by attitudes, and then we start looking at our sexual attitudes collectively and we realize that our culture has a really bad attitude when it comes to sex.

Chris Rose: 11:23 So we’ll zoom out in a second, but I want to do a specific example. Let’s think about oral sex because it’s a charged one for a lot of people. What is your attitude about giving oral sex? What is your attitude about receiving oral sex? Are they different? Are they the same?

Chris Rose: 11:43 When you think about your attitude, is it influenced by factors like, what is your attitude about genitals? Right? So we zoom out. Do you think are beautiful and precious and this amazing holy part of the body that deserve to be worshiped? Or do you think genitals are kind of gross, stinky, smelly, and really don’t really want to be looked at and they should just be wiped clean and left in the dark?

Chris Rose: 12:10 Are you somewhere in between or do you actually kind of feel both of those ways? A lot of times in our sexual culture we’re confronted with this paradox of feeling two very different ways about the same thing and we’ll talk a little bit more about where that comes from. What are your attitudes about sexual fluids? We did a episode a really long time ago about oral sex and we were talking about how facials are seen as degrading because semen is seen as gross. And so to put semen on someone’s face is an insult, a degrading insult. How dare you. You would only do that to a woman you disrespect. An attitude about semen drives that conversation. And we kind of said in the podcast, we believe semen is holy and sacred. It’s a fluid that comes from our body. It creates life. It is an expression of pleasure and joy.

Chris Rose: 13:13 And if you love the person who semen is going on your face, maybe it can be seen as an act of honoring and celebration and it could be really hot for people. Have we considered that option?

Charlotte Rose: 13:25 But that would only be the case if both people were holding it in that way. If one person is holding it in one way and the other one is seeing it as a hot act of degradation, then that’s …

Chris Rose: 13:37 You’ll have a different experience in that moment. And couples get in fights because of this, and this is what we want to show is that your attitudes will drive your behaviors and when you have attitudes that are implicit, meaning unspoken, unnamed, unseen, that can be really dangerous because your husband thinks you’re having a great time, you’re having fun, you’re getting the best blowjob of your life.

Chris Rose: 14:01 He’s really into it. He ejaculates. It lands on your cheek and you feel degraded, debased. Like you’re bringing all of your attitudes towards that moment and he’s bringing his attitudes of like, this is fun. This is hot. Oh, like I’m going to blow my load. This is going to be great. She’s going to love it. I get the porn star moment. And that disconnect in that moment of your attitudes and all of the unspoken values is what causes that fight, that struggle, and that e-mail to Pleasure Mechanics, right? So what do we do with this? So have we talked about oral sex enough? So we talked about how do you feel about the genitals? How do you feel about the fluids? How do you … what is your attitude about giving and receiving? If you have the attitude that other people’s pleasure comes first, I should be serving others, there’s far too many things to do to focus on my own pleasure; lying back, spreading your legs and relaxing for 15 minutes while someone licks your clitoris might be really challenging.

Chris Rose: 15:02 If you have the attitude of like, I deserve pleasure, it’s good for me, I’m going to feel better afterwards. This is going to help me sleep better. I’m going to feel great tomorrow. My husband loves it. Look how fun this is. That’s a different attitude when you spread your legs, right? So our attitudes about things like giving and receiving, that is an attitude that affects our entire life. How we feel at the holidays. How we feel on our birthday. How we feel at the PTA meetings, at our jobs. What are you worthy of giving and receiving and like that conversation can be a life changer.

Charlotte Rose: 15:42 I just want to name again that they are invisible. And so to make this visible and to have conversations and really think about it, is really powerful because I think we don’t even know how much our own attitudes influence and drive so much of our life.

Chris Rose: 16:00 Well, I’m getting specific. Because if it’s hard for you to receive oral sex, is it because you fundamentally aren’t feeling worthy of receiving that time and attention? Or is it because you think your vulva is disgusting? Or is it because you’re worried you’re going to ejaculate on your husband’s face? Like what is the why? What is the driving attitude behind the behavior of saying no to oral sex?

Charlotte Rose: 16:24 Because for you at the beach, if you bring a structure to keep you cooler, like we got ourselves a fancy tent and you can sit under the tent, you enjoy it so much more. And if somebody can know that they would just like to take a shower before receiving oral sex and then they can really relax into it because their concern about hygiene is dissolved so they can be present for it. That is a really great piece of information. Like we can make adjustments to our behavior once we look at and understand our experience.

Chris Rose: 16:57 Totally. And I used to have the story that I hated playing in the sand and once we got that sunshade I realized I like playing in the sand. I don’t like the hot sand but cool me down, bring me a bucket of water and I will play all day. So what are the attitudes that are driving the behaviors that are creating both your peak sexual experiences and your sexual struggles? And let’s look at these attitudes and behaviors both through an individual lens, like your temperament, your lived experiences, your accumulated experiences that have reinforced your attitudes over and over again. But let’s also look at it through a cultural lens because when we talk about the meta level attitudes that drive our experience of sexuality, we need to look culturally at our attitudes about sex and how sex is presented to us.

Chris Rose: 17:57 And the fundamental way sex has been presented to us for the past few thousand years in Western culture, at least, is sex as sin. Sex as danger. Sex as the road to ruin. But also within the bounds of marriage. It can be the most sacred, holy, precious thing that should be guarded at all costs. So again, that built-in paradox of sex as sin and danger, but also something holy and precious that needs to be protected.

Chris Rose: 18:32 We have a schism built into our attitudes about sex. And so how does that drive your attitude as a woman of like, do you want sex or do you not want sex? What makes you a good girl? Is it good to want sex or is it good to not want sex? Can you want sex but not too much sex? Is it about the kind of sex you want? If you want a certain kind of sex, what does that mean about you as a person? We have all of these moral crises built into our attitudes about sex primarily because of these cultural attitudes about sex and because of the misinformation. The lack of clear information about sexuality can drive these negative attitudes and this fear.

Chris Rose: 19:18 If the only movies you saw about the beach showed sharks, jellyfish, pollution, sand bugs, storms, and tsunamis, beach real estate wouldn’t be worth much and this is how it is with sexuality. The myths of gender roles, the myths of things like virginity. Virginity is a myth. It’s a culturally constructed myth. How much struggle has been created by the attitudes around your first time? Was it good enough? What did your … Instead of thinking about a sexual debut season where you have a coming of age and you have many sexual experiences that define your sexual debut. That’s a totally different attitude towards sexual coming of age.

Charlotte Rose: 20:15 And in films we have seen so little depictions of female pleasure, it’s as if our culture doesn’t value it.

Chris Rose: 20:23 I called you in the other day because I was watching Netflix and there was a hot scene of like a woman getting oral sex and having pleasure and I was like come see this. It’s amazing. Right? And it wasn’t even that amazing of a scene, but just to see two characters in a show having oral sex where her pleasure is centered, was mind blowing. And it makes you realize what you see a lot of. So what attitudes are reinforced by our sexual narratives? Men want sex all the time. Women aren’t really that into sex. Men are the ones that initiate sex.

Chris Rose: 20:56 Sex means intercourse with a male ejaculation finishing it. We have built so much mythology around misinformation.

Charlotte Rose: 21:06 That we think it’s true.

Chris Rose: 21:08 Right. And so much of this podcast is breaking down these myths. Revealing deeper truths. But here’s the thing about attitudes. It’s very hard to change someone else’s attitude. It’s easier to change your own. And so by listening to this podcast, you are already in the process of debunking myths, gathering new information, being in the conversation, being an inquiry about your sex life. And I bow to you, I congratulate you because most people, it’s too scary to ever even start thinking about their sex life. And so they just struggle in silence.

Chris Rose: 21:46 That’s kind of the default mode is I am broken. I am too harmed to ever enjoy this again. I’ll do the best I can. I’ll struggle in silence. So by listening to this podcast, by being part of this community, you are taking a step to change sex culture and to change your own sexual attitudes. And I’d love to hear from you. If you have stories about how something you heard on this podcast or something this podcast inspired you to do, then changed your attitudes about sex and created watershed change in your life, I would love to hear some of those stories and I do hear some of those stories. I love those aha moment testimonials. So keep them coming. chris@pleasuremechanics.com. You can always reach us. Or charlotte@pleasuremechanics.com, if you want to reach her directly.

Chris Rose: 22:37 So knowing that it’s so much easier to change your own attitudes then someone else’s. As you look through your sexual attitudes and notice how many of your attitudes are based in misinformation, in myths, in cultural values that may not be your own, those are the attitudes you might want to recalibrate and you might discover you have attitudes when it comes to sex that are firmly based in your own values that feel supportive and you’re like, yeah, I like that attitude. That’s a good attitude about sex and it brings me the behaviors and experiences I want.

Chris Rose: 23:17 There are attitudes you might want to recalibrate. So how do we do that? The biggest piece I think is naming them out loud and recognizing where this was acquired from. Where did you learn this attitude? And the more specific you can be, the better. Because sometimes you learned it in a very specific moment and that moment was so installed in your neurology that it became part of your operating system in an invisible way. It’s like you got software installed. It’s like a virus. Really. It’s like software installed that then is operating in the background and you don’t even know it’s running. So a dialogue about your boobs being ugly. You might have acquired that in a very specific moment of cruelty in your teenage years where someone was trying to hurt you and it hurt you so deeply. You’ve spent your life covering up your breasts and thinking that they were not worthy of anyone’s attention, let alone your own pleasure.

Chris Rose: 24:22 Is that how you really feel about your boobs? Like is that attitude accurate? Is that based in the values of how you feel about your body? We can look at these things. We can ask these hard questions and then be like, fuck that. No. And as queer people, we’ve had to do this. This is part of coming out as queer forces you to articulate parts of your identity and parts of your life that for other people are implicit. The assumptions about your sexuality no longer apply. So you have to do some work to articulate it for yourself. And we can all do this work and this would make a great bridge into June, which is pride month, and it’s the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots that really set into motion the modern Gay Liberation Movement and what The Gay Liberation Movement has brought all of us is a vast freedom of expression.

Chris Rose: 25:17 There’s more opportunity now than ever to be who you want to be and to express your sexuality authentically. And the more of us that do that, the more we can revel in the beautiful diversity and fascinating strangeness of human sexuality. I’m on a tangent. Oh, so are these attitudes yours? Let’s start by asking that. Do you believe this? Is it true? Is it in alignment with the rest of your values? If not, let’s recalibrate.

Charlotte Rose: 25:51 Right. Do you want to choose the ones that you already have? Knowing they may be from your family. From culture. From myth and misinformation. Do you choose them? Or do you want to shift them and potentially shift the trajectory of your life? Because that’s what’s at stake or that’s what’s possible.

Chris Rose: 26:12 So how do you shift an attitude? Part of it is naming it, being very specific about it and then gathering alternative evidence and experiences. So some of this is gathering new data, right? Like learning the facts about your sexuality can be incredibly liberating. The fact that there is no hymen to break changes what we think about virginity. The fact that the male libido is no higher than the … The fact that men aren’t more interested in sex as a default is really interesting for people to know and might be really, really important for your attitudes about sex and how you feel about your attitudes, right?

Chris Rose: 27:06 Because there’s the attitudes and then there’s our judgment of our attitudes. So gathering new information, gathering more accurate information and gathering social proof. So for me, at some point I recognized that I had a lot of internalized fat phobia. I was already standing naked in front of groups of people. I was already going to sex parties. I was already being loved in my body. It was like that jaws moment where I was like, I know that my body is okay. I know that I’m beautiful, I know I’m worthy of pleasure, I know my body’s capable of pleasure and yet still I have this attitude. It’s still there. I still feel it flaring. I still feel it causing me discomfort. And so one of the things I did is I chose to look at a lot of fat bodies. I filled my social feed with fat bodies. I did a lot of reading about fat liberation, where fat phobia comes from and I got social proof. I looked at other people’s fat bodies and thought you are beautiful. And by looking to someone else I could then feel it more accurately for myself.

Chris Rose: 28:18 So gaining experiences and new knowledge and then installing them as your new truth. And that takes time. Like we have to reinforce, right? We have lots of experiences that reinforce our attitudes and it’s really easy to say like, I knew it would be this way. I knew this would happen. The experiences that interrupt your attitudes can be harder to pay attention to, because they feel like an anomaly. But if that anomaly keeps happening over and over, then you get new evidence and that experience can then reinforce the behavior driven by the attitude and your attitude starts to shift, because your reality has shifted. What is true for you has shifted. So the example I gave about a woman so ashamed and afraid of her own vulva and thinking it’s disgusting, not wanting her husband to go down on her, that’s a real example from my inbox and I’ve been in e-mail dialogue with this woman as she has gone through the process of changing her attitude.

Chris Rose: 29:22 And this was the process. It started by listening to this podcast, recognizing that her husband has been wanting to pleasure her, has been wanting to touch her and look at her vulva, and she has been saying no for a decade because of her attitude about her vulva. It wasn’t his attitude. It was her own attitude. She recognized that. She recognized where it came from. Wrote me very beautiful stories about where it came from and where she learned this. [inaudible 00:29:55] that she disagreed. She went on Instagram and started following the Vulva Gallery, which is like watercolor images of vulvas. So rather than going right to photographs, she went to watercolors and started appreciating the beauty and reading other women’s stories about their vulvas.

Chris Rose: 30:12 And she is baby stepping her way up towards that moment where she can receive and that might still be a year away. That might still be two years away. I don’t know. But she’s in the process. She’s taking the steps to change her attitude by gathering new experiences and information and aligning her attitudes with her values. She was able to say, “I value the human body. I value for the female body. I value my children who were born through my vagina. I value what it can bring me. So if I value it, why am I hating it? Like that doesn’t make sense to me. I’m going to fix my attitude .” And these things are a process. It takes time, but it’s so worth it.

Charlotte Rose: 31:01 Yeah. It takes energy, intention, believing that something else is possible and knowing that you can take step-by-step to shift your internal landscape to create a different reality and that’s exciting. It is a bit of work, but even that work can be pleasurable or interesting or illuminating.

Chris Rose: 31:23 And it can feel liberating. A lot of people talk about feeling like weight dropping off of them or shackles or scales or a lot of people use imagery of kind of an exfoliation that happens when you look at your sexual attitudes, because we realize how limiting our sexual attitudes have been. How we’re taught, how we’re trained to fear sex. To be scared of it. To mistrust it. To question people’s motivations for wanting it. To think of it as something like lesser than. And even us, even us listeners of this podcast, even us producers of this podcast, fighting so hard to change the sexual culture, we still live in a sexual culture that’s going to reinforce certain attitudes.

Chris Rose: 32:16 And so it’s going out there kind of like an attitude warrior. Like being willing to confront other people’s shitty attitudes over and over again. Like you’re going to confront your friends who are complaining about their belly fat and you have to be the one to say, “I love my belly and give it a nice rub.” You have to interrupt other people’s attitudes too. But that’s next level.

Chris Rose: 32:40 Let’s all start with our own because yes, as I said, it’s much easier to change your own attitudes. We have all been given a lot of shitty attitudes by our sex culture. A lot of attitudes that create internal struggle, that creates shame and doubt and fear, and that is the sexual experience these attitudes create for us, right? They create behaviors that create experiences that leave us wanting more. That leave us longing for something different. And if we want a different experience, we have to swim upstream and start recalibrating our attitudes.

Chris Rose: 33:14 Yes, let’s do it together. Let’s do it over time. Be in touch with me. I’d love to hear about your responses to this episode and what are some of the attitude shifts that have taken place for you over time?

Charlotte Rose: 33:28 Or that you want to shift? Where are you now? Where do you want to be? And know that each time any one of us does any of this work, it shifts things for the people around us because when somebody becomes okay with their belly fat or chooses to feel like their vulva is a beautiful place, beautiful space, that that does impact and influence the people that we speak with, the people around us, so it makes a difference for all of us as we slowly undo this tangle that culture has given us.

Chris Rose: 34:05 You become living evidence, right? And we need more living evidence of new sexual realities, of new sexual options and models, and of sexual values.

Charlotte Rose: 34:18 Where there’s more permission and pleasure possible for each of us. That that is what we want for ourselves and our communities.

Chris Rose: 34:27 Right. If you think of the sexual values, if you could build an ideal sex culture from the ground up, and this is a question I love asking people, what would an ideal sex culture look like? If you could build an ideal sex culture, what would the values of that sex culture be? What would you teach the children about their sexuality and then you can look at how aligned are those values with my attitudes about my sexuality. It’s much easier to think other people’s sexualities are sacred and beautiful and worthy. Is yours? Is your body? Are your desires okay? What are your attitudes about your sexuality and your lived experience? Are those attitudes accurate? What are they based in? Let’s all do this inventory and notice how much liberation is possible and how efficient this can be. I really believe this. It can be one of the most efficient interventions to change your attitude, change the behaviors, and notice a new experience.

Chris Rose: 35:29 All right. If you are interested in practicing mindful sex and deepening in these practices with us over time, become part of our Mindful Sex course. You’ll find it at pleasuremechanics.com/mindful. And the Mindful Sex course really invites you in to the practices and mindsets of a new relationship with your sexuality. A nonjudgmental relationship with sexuality that opens the space for a lot more presence, enjoyment, and paying attention to the pleasure that is available to you.

Chris Rose: 36:04 If you ever feel distracted during sex, if you feel like you can’t stay present during arousal, you are so not alone. These are struggles all of us have and there are practices we can do to build these skills and develop our capacity to stay present and pay attention to the pleasure that is available to us. You’ll find the Mindful Sex course at pleasuremechanics.com/mindful. You can support this show and show your love for us at pleasuremechanics.com/love, and our forever home, as you’ve guessed is pleasuremechanics.com. Come and visit us anytime. I’m Chris.

Charlotte Rose: 36:47 I’m Charlotte.

Chris Rose: 36:47 We are the Pleasure Mechanics.

Charlotte Rose: 36:49 Wishing you a lifetime of pleasure.

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