SEASON 3
Towards A Positive Masculinity (with Ben Hurst)
Our masculinity miniseries has been a little negative up until now (we’re aware of it at least!). But this week that all changes because we’re joined by Ben Hurst – activist, educator, and Head of Facilitation and Training at Beyond Equality – to discuss how we can rethink masculinity.
As someone who regularly works with young boys in schools, we talk to Ben about what representation boys see of masculinity. In his Ted Talk, notes that boys will be what we teach them to be, so we talk about what characteristics boys currently associate with masculinity and being a man.
Because toxic representations of masculinity result in violence, predominantly against women and girls, Ben explains how we can talk to men and boys to help them unlearn the more toxic traits of masculinity and reframe masculine traits to help themselves and those around them.
Finally, we end the episode by talking about what boys think is expected of them when it comes to sex, and how sex education and male role models can do better.
We hope you enjoy the episode, we’ve wanted to have Ben on since we started Sextras and we’re so happy to have finally spoken to him and learnt from his wisdom. For more of Ben, find out more about Beyond Equality or watch his Ted Talks here:
Boys won't be boys, boy will be what we teach them to be
We need to talk to boys about online misogyny
As always, you can find us on Instagram, TikTok and Facebook @sextrasworld, on our website http://sextrasworld.com (http://sextrasworld.com) or email us sextraspodcast@gmail.com.
We’ll be back next week with the final episode of the miniseries — see you then!
Produced by Mable Productions
Original music by Sacha Puttnam
Unboxing Lovehoney’s Advent Calendar & Learning How to Use Sex Toys
Christmas could not have come sooner with this episode as Lovehoney has sent us their 24-Day Advent Calendar to try and we’re opening it with their resident sexual wellness advisor, Sarah Tomchesson!
We start the episode telling Sarah what we’re experimenting with in our sex lives, before diving into the calendar to find different sex toys, from vibrators, to butt plugs, cock rings and restraints.
Sarah talks us through how to use different sex toys in versatile ways, whether you’re a beginner or a seasoned user. We learn a lot about how adaptable different sex toys can be, as well as new ways to incorporate them into our sex lives – by ourselves, and with a partner !
Thank you so much to Lovehoney for sending us your 24 day advent calendar. It’s now on sale with 60% off for Black Friday, so definitely go check it out if you’re looking for something exciting to spice up the end of your year!
You can find it us on Instagram, TikTok and Facebook @sextrasworld, and find our episodes, plus read lots of exciting articles about sex and relationships, over on our website http://sextrasworld.com. We’ll be back on Tuesday with another episode of our Masculinity miniseries, see you then!
Produced by Mable Productions
Original music by Sacha Puttnam
A Look Into Male Friendships
In the second episode of our Masculinity miniseries, we unpack everything to do with male friendships. While it comes as no surprise to some of us, the fact that men don’t have supportive friendships has been in the news a lot of late, with claims that there’s a male friendship recession and that men are lonelier than ever.
After years of wondering what men talk to their friends about, we thought we’d find out for ourselves. In the process, we’ve probably lost all of our (admittedly, very few) male friends by asking them endless questions about their friendships.
We start by talking about men’s friendships with other men, and let us say, it really is looking quite dire. We discuss how they make plans, what they do together, what they talk about and, specifically, how they talk about sex and relationships.
Our survey on masculinity asked whether masculinity is something we’re attracted to in friends, so we also hear from non-male people how masculinity plays into their friendships, and whether they want to be friends with men.
There seems to be a lot of suspicion from all sides towards men and women being friends, so we also ask whether men and women can truly be friends, whether conversations with male friends and female friends are the same and how women often take on a lot of emotional labour from men if they can’t process their feelings. We also ponder the ethics of having male friends when you’re in a (straight) relationship, and how our endless societal programming towards seeking male validation can be wrongly interpreted by our male friends.
We hope you enjoy this episode, it’s worth noting we are aware some of these conversations are very binary and heteronormative, and also generalise. This episode is based on our own research and interpretation of that, and we definitely don’t think our findings are true across the board. If you have different experiences with friendship you feel aren’t covered, please feel free to share with us over email sextraspodcast@gmail.com or you can find us on social media @sextrasworld. We’d love to hear your perspective!
We’ll be back next week with the wonderful activist Ben Hurst to talk about moving towards a positive masculinity, but in the meantime you can find more content about masculinity over on Sextras Magazine.
Produced by Mable Productions
Original music by Sacha Puttnam
What Is Masculinity In 2023?
Welcome to the first episode of our Masculinity miniseries!
Masculinity has been under scrutiny the last few years: on one side, there are claims that masculinity is “toxic”, “fragile” or “in crisis”, and on the other there are those who claim “not all men” are responsible for this poor perception of masculinity.
While we fully support bad behaviour being held to account here at Sextras, we wanted to discuss what masculinity really means to gen z in 2023. Is masculinity good or bad? Is it always related to men? What are the characteristics of masculinity? And is masculinity really still held in high regards by our generation as a whole?
We asked our Instagram followers all about their perception of masculinity in a survey, so we read through your answers and discuss our own perception of masculinity to try to find the answer to what masculinity means in 2023 (hint, we don’t find one but it’s not looking as bleak as we might have thought!)
We are thrilled to announce that Sextras is now expanding into a digital magazine. You can find all episodes of the podcast and articles expanding on the personal and cultural experiences of sex and relationships at www.sextrasworld.com (http://www.sextrasworld.com), or our Instagram, TikTok or Facebook @sextrasworld. We’ll be back next week with another episode about male friendships, see you then!
Produced by Mable Productions
Original music by Sacha Puttnam
TikTok mentioned: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZGJoUvJW8/ (https://vm.tiktok.com/ZGJoUvJW8/)
Using Spirituality To Overcome Sexual Shame (With Kaamna Bhojwani)
In even the most accepting of households, children pick up on their parents’ beliefs about sex. If that includes restricting sex or teaching that it is inherently bad, that can lead to sexual shame that persists throughout our lives and shows up not just in our sex lives, but also in our entire emotional wellbeing.
This week, we’re joined by spiritual and sexual psychologist Kaamna Bhojwani to talk about healing sexual shame through spirituality. Kaamna starts by telling us what sexual shame is, where it comes from and how it shows up in our lives. For women, and older women particularly, sexual shame can separate them from embracing pleasure in their lives as a whole, as well as causing body image issues.
Kaamna explains how spirituality can be used to move away from sexual shame, from using meditation to get back in touch with our bodies to examining and unlearning the sexual scripts we were taught during childhood. Overcoming sexual shame is all about looking at what beliefs about sex serve us and re-writing those that harm us so that we can prevent it from passing down through the generations.
You can find Kaamna on her website https://www.kaamnalive.com/ or find her on Instagram @kaamnalive.
We hope you enjoy this episode and it inspires you to look at how sexual shame shows up in your life. You can find more of Kaamna on her website or on Instagram. As always, you can find us on our website, on Instagram, TikTok or Facebook @sextraspodcast or email us at sextraspodcast@gmail.com.
We’ll be back soon, make sure you’re subscribed so you don’t miss our next miniseries on Masculinity. See you then!
Read Porn! (With Aurore Founder Carly Pifer)
Have you ever had sex so good you wish you could freeze the memory in time? This week we’re joined by Carly Pifer, founder of Aurore, a curated collection of erotica written by and for women and LGBTQIA+ people, that encourages you to do just that by writing a story based on your real sex experiences.
Carly tells us how she started Aurore and how erotica is different from other kinds of porn. Whereas visual porn can be limited in terms of the body types, genders and positions involved, erotica leaves more up to the imagination, so Carly explains how this appeals particularly to women, trans folk and queer people.
Carly has also had feedback about Aurore that it gives representation to sexual minorities and can be great education for people hoping to learn about how to give women pleasure.
“The next time you’re having an intimate moment, think about how you would write it”
Whether you’re looking to improve your sexual imagination, realise what it is you like by reading about other people’s real life sex experiences or simply want to try out a new kind of porn or erotica, Aurore has a whole collection for you.
You can read Aurore here, or find them on Instagram. Carly is on Instagram @carlydangerous. We’ll be back soon with another miniseries, or you can find our most recent miniseries about Family, Parenting and Sex here. Can’t wait to see you then!
Do Gen Z Want To Be Parents?
There are so many stereotypes about Gen Z it’s hard to keep track of where they’re really at: they’re a sexless generation, they’re the most sensitive because they have a victim mentality. They want to be parents, they don’t want to have babies because they’re worried about the planet; they’ll be the best parents… oh no, wait, they’ll be the worst.
But parenting has changed a lot over the years and what went for one generation can completely change for another. With all the unpacking of toxic masculinity, changing attitudes towards work and greater acceptance of LGBTQIA+ identities, we predict that will make for radically different parenting. So, to get down to the truth of the matter (and of course there is no one answer) we surveyed out Gen Z audience to delve into whether they want to be parents and what Gen Z will be like as parents, from different parenting styles to how they want to talk to their kids about sex.
We start by asking them about their relationship with their parents, what they were told about sex and relationships growing up and how they want to change that when they talk to their kids about sex. That is, if they even want to have kids, so we asked who they want to have kids with and how they’d want to raise them if they do. We also asked how Gen Z think attitudes towards sex have changed from generation to generation, including what their grandparents and parents think and how that impacts their relationship with their families.
We hope you have enjoyed our Family, Parenting & Sex miniseries; if you have please leave us a (5 star!) review wherever you listen and don’t forget to subscribe to make sure you don’t miss our next one. You can find more of us on Instagram, TikTok and Facebook @sextraspodcast or our website and you can get in contact with us at sextraspodcast@gmail.com to request future episodes. Pitching guidelines are on our website. See you next time!
Produced by Mable Productions
Original music by Sacha Puttnam
Parenting, Family & Sex Miniseries
How To Talk To Your Kid About Sex (with Dr Tina Schermer Sellers)
Raising kids is hard in a bunch of different ways, but one of the main things parents dread is having the inevitable “talk” with their children. How do you have the talk, when should you have it, what is appropriate to say: these are all questions that nobody really gives parents the answers to. But what if that one, all-important moment never needed to happen, because kids got the information they needed as they needed it growing up?
Author of the incredible resource Shameless Parenting: Everything You Need to Raise Shame-free, Confident Kids and Heal, Dr Tina Schermer Sellers, joins us this week to discuss how to raise kids in a shame-free way, including “drip-feeding” them snippets of information about sex and their bodies throughout life, starting from toddler-age.
We start the episode hearing about Tina’s own upbringing, which was exactly the kind of parenting she has found is beneficial to kids in her research. Tina explains what sex-positive and shame-free parenting means and what parents need to do to make sure they’re not passing on their own shame to their kids.
Dr Tina gets into the different developmental stages kids go through with understanding sex, and what is age appropriate to teach them at each stage, including what to do if your kid is touching themselves or trying to experiment with other children. You might experience conflict in your own relationships, so she also goes into what is appropriate to share with your kids and what to do if they ask you questions.
We then get into how to talk about bodies in positive ways; Dr Tina explains that not having these crucial conversations with your children can set them up for loneliness and feeling as though they are unequipped for the world later on in life, which can in turn make them look to harmful examples in the world around them.
Thank you so much to Dr Tina for joining us, we learnt so much about how to raise sex-positive children and we hope you did too. You can find more from her on her website and find her Instagram @drtinashameless, or on Twitter @tinassellers. You can also find the Northwest Institute on Intimacy on Instagram and buy her books on Amazon.
As always, you can find more of us on Instagram, TikTok, Threads and Facebook @sextraspodcast, our website or email us at sextraspodcast@gmail.com. We’ll be back next week with the last episode of our Family, Parenting & Sex miniseries, make sure you’re subscribed so you don’t miss it!
Produced by Mable Productions
Original music by Sacha Puttnam
Having Sex After Birth (with Smile Makers Collection)
After having a literal human come out of you, getting little to no sleep and suddenly being entirely responsible for another human being is not exactly conducive to new parents’ sex life. But when you are at a point where you want to start having sex again, what do you do?
Cecile Gasnault, brand director of Smile Makers Collection, joins us this week to tell us all about the research the company has done into having sex after birth.
Mothers - being the ones who have actually given birth - are often worried about having sex after birth and the research shows that they aren’t given nearly enough information about when the right time is to start having sex again or how to go about doing it. They might be scared of experiencing pain during sex or causing unnecessary complications in their healing.
Cecile tells us what Smile Makers have discovered in their research with Mumsnet and all about their vibrator The Whisperer, the first ever created with new mothers’ pleasure in mind.
Listen in to hear all the details, you can find more of Smile Makers, the sex toy company focused on women's pleasure, on their website and their Instagram. As always you can find more of us on Instagram, Tiktok, Facebook and Threads @sextraspodcast, on our website or contact us sextraspodcast@gmail.com.
This episode is part of our Family & Parenting miniseries, find the whole miniseries here. Or, catch up with previous related episodes like ‘Talking With My Mum’ Parts 1 and 2, Why Learn Your Attachment Style?, Family Matters and Our Sexual Genesis.
Produced by Mable Productions
Original music by Sacha Puttnam
related episodes:
S1 Ep.19 Our Sexual Genesis
S1 Ep.21 Family Matters
S2 Ep.16 Why Learn Your Attachment Style?
S1 Ep. 39 Talking With My Mum Pt.1
S2 Ep.29 Talking With My Mum Pt.2
Deciding To Have Kids & Outgrowing Relationships (with Jessica Hendry Nelson)
TW: substance abuse, anticipatory grief
We’ve all been sold the idea that you’re meant to experiment in your 20s, something that our guest this week missed out on. Author and professor Jessica Hendry Nelson joins us to talk about being in a relationship for the whole of her 20s and eventually ending that relationship because of differing interests.
Jessica starts the episode telling us about her unconventional experience of her 20s, living with her ex-husband and the fact that they didn’t talk about having kids until it was too late. Having had a baby with her new partner just 10 weeks ago, Jessica tells us about deciding to become a parent: whether that’s something you’re ever truly ready for and how she found a partner that was right for her to raise kids with.
We discuss the expectations that come with motherhood and how she learnt to be a parent from her mother and other family dynamics she had growing up. This includes how her anticipatory grief surrounding her brother’s addiction affected her throughout her life and whether she thinks it impacted the relationships she chose. We also cover how we can outgrow a relationship but that her female friendship have been a constant and fulfilled things in her life that are not fair expectations to have in a relationship, or are simply things that a man can’t fulfil.
To end the episode Jessica tells us about her book, Joy Rides Through the Tunnel of Grief, a memoir in essays that comes out September 1. You can pre-order the book through her website and find more of Jessica on her Instagram. As always, you can find us on Instagram, TikTok, Threads and Facebook @sextraspodcast, on our website or get in touch with us at sextraspodcast@gmail.com.
We’ll be back next week with Cecile Gasnault, brand director of Smile Makers Collection, to talk about having sex after giving birth. We hope you’re enjoying our Parenting, Family & Sex miniseries and we’ll see you next week!
How Sex Changes With Age (with Beducated co-founder Mariah Freya)
In episode one of our Family, Parenting and Sex miniseries were joined by Mariah Freya, who founded pleasure-based sex education website Beducated with her husband, to discuss how our sex lives change throughout our lives.
We begin the episode hearing about Mariah’s experience with low libido in her 20s and how that influenced her and her partner to find new ways of approaching sex. Mariah explains that sex education is so rarely focused on women’s pleasure and it wasn’t until she heard about tantric practice that she became aware of the many ways for how to pleasure yourself or a partner.
You really do learn something new every day, and so part of Beducated’s mission is to encourage people to continue learning about sex and pleasure throughout their lives, so Mariah tells us about the different sexual phases you can experience throughout your life and how sex changes as you age.
Just as we always talk about, establishing a sexual dialogue early on can set you up for a life of success, despite whatever changes might happen, and Mariah gives us tips for how to do that in a way that honours our sexual needs and ensures that we continue experiencing pleasure throughout our lives.
Thank you so much to Mariah for joining us. You can watch her Ted talk here and sign up for Beducated with a 40% discount on the yearly package here. As always you can find us on Instagram, TikTok, Threads and Facebook @sextraspodcast, on our website or get in contact with us at sextraspodcast@gmail.com. We’ll be back next week with the second episode of our miniseries, can’t wait to see you then!
Family, Parenting & Sex Miniseries
Episode 1 How Sex Changes With Age (with Beducated co-founder Mariah Freya)
Episode 2 Deciding to Have Kids & Outgrowing Relationships (with Jessica Hendry Nelson)
Episode 3 Having Sex After Birth (with Smile Makers Collection)
Episode 4 How To Talk To Your Kid About Sex (with Dr Tina Schermer Sellers)
Episode 5 Do Gen Z Want To Be Parents?
We might choose to ignore the fact that family has anything to do with how we behave around, or think about, sex and relationships. But what we’re told, or not, by our parents, siblings and even grandparents lays the groundwork for how we choose a partner, sexual or otherwise. Becoming a parent ourselves can turn that all on its head, changing the time we have available for our pleasure and informing how we raise our children.
So we’re here to talk about it. Across five episodes we explore the links between family/ parenting and sex/ relationships. Join Mariah Freya (founder of pleasure-based sex education site Beducated) in the first episode, to discuss how sex changes throughout life. Author Jessica Hendry Nelson joins us in our second episode to tell us how she dealt with grief as a new mother and in our third episode Cecile Gasnault (brand director of sex toy company Smile Makers Collection) unpacks the difficulties of having sex after giving birth. In episode four we’re joined by Dr Tina Schermer Sellers to discuss how to raise kids in a shame-free and sex-positive way before we unpack how Gen Z want to raise children in the final episode.
We can’t wait to get into it and hope you learn as much from our amazing guests as we did. Don’t forget to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts so you can follow along!
Ending Celibacy & Making a Sex Bucket List (ft. the Curious Girl)
More and more people are becoming celibate nowadays, but what happens when you want it to end? We're joined by Layla London, anonymous host of the sex podcast the Curious Girl Diaries, who ended her self-imposed celibacy after 3.5 years.
We’ve already recorded an episode with Layla over on her podcast, which you can listen to here or wherever you get your podcasts.
Layla delves into what made her stop having sex in the first place, before offering tips about how to make a sex bucket list and for finding the right people to go along with it.
From sex parties, to squirting and threesomes, Layla has experienced a plethora of wild experiences along the way and she leaves us with some valuable advice for jumping back into the world of sex when you’ve been out of the game for a while.
Thank you so much to Layla for joining us this week, you can find more of her on her website and you can get in contact with us at sextraspodcast@gmail.com.
Episodes about celibacy
The Ultimatum: Queer Love Debrief
TW: domestic abuse and toxic relationships
Spoilers ahead!!
We thought we’d celebrate pride month (very last minute, as always) with a discussion of the Ultimatum, Queer Love. In this episode we delve into the drama of the show and unpack why we think each of the couples were doomed to failure.
Listen in as we discuss gay marriage, including why people want to even get married in the first place and how the whole premise of the show is extremely queer. We then unpack each of the final couples, answering whether we think Vanessa is a narcissist and if the queer Ultimatum is more toxic than the straight Ultimatum.
We hope you enjoy this episode and that you’ve had an amazing Pride month. Stay tuned for more episodes now that we have more time, including a miniseries about parenthood and family relationships coming your way very soon.
It’s Sextras' third birthday, so if you are a regular listener it would be super helpful if you gave us a review or rating wherever you get your podcasts. You can find more of us on Instagram, TikTok and Facebook @sextraspodcast, our website, on our Patreon or email us sextraspodcast@gmail.com for more.
See you next time!
Love is Blind Season 4 Debrief Episode
Am I A Lesbian? & Compulsory Heterosexuality
Happy Lesbian Visibility Week! We’re so happy to be back talking all things compulsory heterosexuality and realising you’re a lesbian. We’re joined by the most (!) guests we’ve ever had to hear about their experiences.
We start the episode discussing Adrienne Rich’s theory of compulsory heterosexuality, the lesbian masterdoc and how it can help you if you’re wondering how to know if you’re a lesbian, bisexual, pansexual or it’s just compulsory heterosexuality. We tell our own experiences unpacking whether we really like men before welcoming Dani, Emily and Cassie to discuss their experiences realising they were into women.
They tell us what it was like to come to terms with being gay in their own time, from their first ‘I think I’m a lesbian’ to then coming out to friends and family and whether that was a difficult experience or not. They unpack how they feel about their sexuality now, whether people in their lives responded well and how they unlearned compulsory heterosexuality, plus the difficult distinction between being bisexual or suffering from the affliction of compulsory heterosexuality.
We also discuss: learning you’re lesbian through Orange is the New Black (a surprisingly common experience), not telling your dad you’re gay (another common one), how to ‘look’ lesbian (if there’s really a way), the importance of representation and what they’d tell themselves as baby gays. Thank you so much to Dani, Emily and Cassie for joining us in probably the most chaotic episode to record and edit we’ve ever done.
Apologies to you, our lovely listeners, if the sound is dodgy at times (we tried our best but guess what?! after three years we still don’t know how to record!!) but, thanks to our guests, this episode is really an excellent one to listen to if you’re at all questioning your sexuality. Have an amazing Lesbian Visibility Week 2023 and we will be back very soon with another episode.
As always if you have anything you’d like to share with us or any questions, you can do so on our website, on TikTok, Instagram or Facebook @sextraspodcast or email us at sextraspodcast@gmail.com. If you enjoyed please leave a review/ rating and subscribe and we’ll see you very soon with another episode!
Am I Bisexual? podcast episode
Bisexual Attraction podcast episode
Love Is Blind Season 4 Debrief
Nothing could bring us back from a months-long hiatus faster than Love Is Blind and we are so happy to be back, delving deep into the drama of the season and breaking down each couple. Needless to say: if you haven't watched season 4 of Love Is Blind don't listen to this episode- it will spoil it (or do, if you don't care about that kind of thing).
We start the episode covering the main 'themes' of the season, from the recurring problems amongst the couples to questions we have about the show overall. Then, we dissect the relationship trajectory of each couple from the pods to the (ahem) altar and our thoughts on how we'd react to the experiment.
Maria is a seasoned reality dating TV show lover, while Honey is just vehemently in love with all things Love Is Blind, so we're excited to debut our return with this run down. Please let us know if you'd like to see more episodes like this, we can't wait to get into the Ultimatum Queer Love once it comes out (excuse the pun) and we'd love to hear your thoughts on everything that went down and anything more you'd like to hear from us in coming months.
You can get in touch with us on Instagram, TikTok or Facebook @sextraspodcast, email us sextraspodcast@gmail.com or find us on our website www.sextraspodcast.com. We'll be back next week with a very exciting episode make sure you subscribe to stay tuned for that and we'll speak to you then!
Bisexual Attraction, Male Validation & Valuing Our Pleasure
In this episode we wrap up the season by looking at our own experiences of pleasure and desire, discussing whether feeling desired and experiencing pleasure are compatible.
We look back at what we learnt about pleasure and desire during our miniseries, from where our attraction, fantasies and turn ons come from to learning how to experience and communicate please.
We discuss how the way we communicate about sex has changed over the years and if we feel like we’re at a good place in our relationships with pleasure and desire. Talking about sex on the podcast is often easier for us than talking about it to a partner, so we discuss why that is and what the most difficult part of talking about sex is for each of us.
As bisexual women, the way we experience desire for women versus men can be different so we discuss what that looks like and how compulsory heterosexuality has convinced us both that it’s easier to be attracted to and desired by a man even though that’s not true at all.
Join our Patreon to watch the full video <3
Let’s Talk (to our partner) About Sex with Keeley Rankin
In the next episode of our pleasure and desire miniseries, we’re joined by sex and relationship coach Keeley Rankin to learn how to talk to your partner about what you enjoy during sex.
We begin the episode by asking what people commonly struggle with during sex and where people’s fear of communicating about what they enjoy in the bedroom comes from.
Keeley explains that often it is a mixture of things that prevent us from being able to talk about sex- first is that we don’t know what gives us pleasure (maybe there are too many options or maybe we don’t know what the options are). Secondly we don’t know what language to use and what the best way to approach the conversation is, and lastly we’re worried we won’t be accepted or, at worst, shamed.
Keeley then gives us some tips for how to talk to a partner about sex from the start of a relationship, explaining that it’s good to set the precedent of having an open dialogue about sex, as well as going in to how to communicate about sex if your desires change after being with someone for a long time.
Lastly, Keeley covers whether there is such a thing as sexual compatibility (you’ll have to listen to find out) and if communication can help with that or not.
We hope you enjoy this episode, thank you so much to Keeley for joining us. You can find more of her on her website.
Female Anatomy & the Orgasm Gap with Dr Amir Marashi
In the second episode of our pleasure and desire miniseries we’re joined by Dr Amir Marashi, MD, FACS, FACOG, Founder of Cerē, the first anatomically aligned vibrator, to talk all about female anatomy and female pleasure. If you’ve not already joined our Patreon you will want to for this episode so you can watch the full video with Dr Marashi, who has a whole load of models to demonstrate what we talk about throughout the episode!
We begin by hearing about how Dr Marashi started learning about female pleasure while being brought up in Iran, where women are subject to virginity tests and female pleasure is rarely talked about. Amir tells us about how doctors are taught about female anatomy and how this contributes to general misinformation about female pleasure and the orgasm gap.
Having conducted research into female pleasure and the anatomy of the clitoris, Dr Marashi knows that understanding female anatomy can help with arousal and close the orgasm gap, and he tells us how women and men can get to better know this and improve communication about what gives women pleasure. He also teaches us a bit about the female anatomy and what sex positions are most pleasurable for people with a vulva to improve clitoral stimulation.
Finally, we discuss how society feels a lot of shame about the vulva, and the harmful impact this has on normalising women’s pain with periods and their vulva, and how encouraging conversations about women’s bodies and pleasure fights this stigma and helps save women’s lives.
We hope you enjoy the episode. Thank you so much to Dr Marashi for joining us, we learnt an incredible amount! If you want to learn more you can find him on TikTok @nycgyno or visit https://getcere.com to find out more about the first anatomically aligned clitoral vibrator.
Good Sex: Does What We Desire Give Us Pleasure?
Welcome to our pleasure and desire miniseries! In this episode we’re joined by the wonderful Catherine Roach, professor of gender and cultural studies at the University of Alabama and author of the book Good Sex: Transforming America Through the New Gender and Sexual Revolution to talk all about what society teaches us about pleasure and how beauty standards determine who and what we find desirable.
We begin the episode by defining what good sex actually is, does it refer to societal standards for what sex should look like or is it more focused on pleasure? Catherine explores whether we have any control over what we find desirable, and how much this might be impacted be societal norms like beauty standards and the porn we watch.
Beauty standards are harmful when it comes to our desire, because of how tied they are to gender, sexuality, age and race, and so Catherine tells us how we can begin to detach ourselves from what we should view as desirable and to tune into what gives us pleasure personally, particularly if you’re a woman.
We then look at social media and beauty standards, and whether it’s helping improve conversations around what we view as desirable or not, and also how conversations about pleasure and desire on social media and in popular culture impact everyone, not just women.
Finally, we unpack how we can have more diversity in conversations about sex, from moving away from unrealistic beauty standards for men and women, to understanding how our bodies work and what personally gives us pleasure, as well as examining what good sex means to us and should mean more broadly in society.
Thank you so much to Catherine for joining us, if you enjoyed the episode please go check out her book Good Sex. As always, you know where to find us— on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok @sextraspodcast, our website www.sextraspodcast.com, email us sextraspodcast@gmail.com, or join our Patreon to watch the full video episode, get access to exclusive bonus content and join our community to continue having these wonderful conversations.