While you’re waiting for the next episode of AEWCH, guess what, here’s a THREE HOUR LONG conversation with me and AEWCH 129 guest Paul Chek!
I visited Paul at his amazing house (and met his amazing family) earlier this month. We drummed, we ate together, we stacked stones around Paul’s water orgone accumulator, we vaped some crazy herbs, we talked for hours and hours, and more.
What an incredible day. This conversation wanders all over – into sex and sexuality, Rudolf Steiner and God, materialism and the occult. It’s just…a lot.
Listen above or on any podcast platform (and subscribe! it’s a GREAT and challenging podcast!).
Friends, does this show have value to you? If so, I ask that you support it on Patreon! The show is funded exclusively by listeners like you, and your contribution is vital and deeply appreciated!Want to buy the books mentioned on this ep? Go to my booklist for AEWCH 124 on bookshop.org! It will help support independent bookstores, and the show gets a small financial kickback, too.
Friends, It’s been a long time since I made a porn scene for public consumption that I got paid for and so much about production has changed since then. I was used to doing studio scenes for Raging Stallion and Hot House and Falcon and Joe Gage, but now things have shifted over to an Only Fans performer-produced model. And while I’m so happy that workers have partially seized the means of production, so to speak, I’m not so sure I want to, uh, seize them myself. I’m focusing on other things, and I’m also expressing myself in ways that are a bit more interesting to me. But the fact remains that it is the most widespread and available medium for performers and viewers now. Because I stopped my just over 7 year porn career before these platforms existed, and because the world is changed, there are so many new challenges and enthusiams and tactics navigated by performers now. So I asked adult performer and writer Ty Mitchell onto the show. Ty is a brilliant performer and an articulate and thoughtful writer. His scenes give you the sense of an immediate quality of performance, and his essays, including the now classic “Boy Problems,” about navigating age and power differentials in gay experience, have given so many of us so much to think about. This is a long episode and for good reason: there’s SO much to talk about when it comes to sex, especially in our moment.Ty has emerged as one of the most thoughtful voices on gay sex & culture; and I’m so glad he has because we need people that can take this movement, and conversations that come out of it forward. This will give you a glimpse of where he’s going and the fact that he’s so articulate that many will join hands and follow him there.
ON THIS EPISODE
The guilt and doubt that follows pleasure
The mystification of porn production
The exploitative practices of self-produced scenes
The intensities of power differentials in sex
The reasons why women and gay men have trouble seeing eye to eye
The constitutive elements of homophobia
How should we view incest arousal?
Working class men in adult scenes
Joe Gage’s directing style vs other directors, and why the aesthetics matter
• I’ve talked about sex directly on the show many times, including about consent with Katherine Angel on AEWCH 101, about the good of adult work with Missy Martinez on AEWCH 38 and the not-so-good with Johnny Hazzard on AEWCH 88. About sex addiction and the problem of sex & culture on AEWCH 56. And with Whores of Yore historian Kate Lister on AEWCH 102 among others!
• We talk a lot about Joe Gage on this episode. If you don’t know him, he’s a revolutionary director, and you should check into his work, whether you watch gay porn or not. Here’s a thorough interview with him in BUTT Magazine. Also, you can watch me watching one of my own Joe Gage scenes (from After the Heist which I had three scenes in and which became Joe’s best selling film ever for Dragon Video) with a straight guy from Buzzfeed. It’s funny, gotta say.
• Probably the best-known thing I’ve written so far is “What I Want To Know Is Why You Hate Porn Stars,” about the challenges of navigating a relationship while making porn and how that relates to anti-porn sentiment in culture.
• I talk about the intensity of desire and repetition with Maggie Nelson (still can’t believe I had that conversation!) on AEWCH 95.
This podcast is only possible because listeners like you support it. Do contribute to my mission by supporting Against Everyone With Conner Habib onPatreon! Thank you so, so much.
AGAINST EVERYONE WITH CONNER HABIB 102: KATE LISTER (@WhoresOfYore) or THE ARCHIVE OF DESIRES
Friends,
As this episode goes out, there’s a hysteria about touching one another. Not just kissing, not just holding, not just sex, but even shaking hands, even being within a few feet of somebody. But touch, and the ways we touch, have alwaysbeen troubled by definitions and rules handed to us by others and the metaphors we’ve inherited.
So it’s time – isn’t it time? – to talk more about the ways we view touch, the ways we view intimacy and sex, and pornography. So I invited the amazing Dr. Kate Lister, a sex historian known for her hugely popular twitter account Whores Of Yore, and now for her excellent book, ACuriousHistoryOfSex.Both the twitter account and the book are grand compendiums of sex in history and theory. Also? Very, very funny.
We talk a lot about the history of sexual imagery, the ways we touch each other, and, in perhaps the most challenging of all questions – What sex is. It’s not as obvious as you think!
This is the second of a pair of episodes that are deep dives into sex and intimacy, the first of which was AEWCH 101, “The Trouble With Consent” featuring Katherine Angel.
And it’s a deep, penetrating, hot episode. Enjoy it in yer ears!
ON THIS EPISODE
The way we all experience one aspect of our sexual awakening through pornography + Kate’s first experience and mine (which I compare to John in the Bible)
How anti-porn activism is a rehash of childhood misunderstandings of sex
How the language we use today can’t contain the way we looked at sex in the past
Porn is there because we want it, it’s not merely that we want it because it’s there
Taxidermy in old porn shoots?
Attempts to control consent by people and institutions in power, and how sex workers take some of that back
The way “wokeness” can interfere with seeing sex and power dynamics clearly
Pornography as political protest and why those pictures of Trump and Putin making out aren’t JUST homophobia
What sex is, anyway?And does desire always collapse into nothingness?
• I’ve brought up WhatIsSex? by Alenka Zupančič many times on the show. If you’re interested in a dense psychoanlytical investigation of sex, check it out. And also I talk about Wilhelm Reich on this bonus episode, and on AEWCH 59 with Reich James Strick.
This podcast is only possible because listeners like you support it. Do contribute to my mission by supporting Against Everyone With Conner Habib onPatreon! Thank you so, so much.
Friends,
I’ve been writing and giving talks about sex for over a decade now, and I often find it difficult to have truly stimulating conversation about it. I knew that having author and public intellectual Katherine Angel on the show would change that. Katherine is the author of the stunning work of vignettes on sex and fear and domination, Unmastered : A Book On Desire, Most Difficult To Tell, and Daddy Issues, which questions patriarchy by looking squarely at women’s relationships with their fathers. Her book, TomorrowSexWillBeGoodAgain, will be out next year, and I’ll definitely have her on then too.
Katherine and I go at sex and especially consent at so many different angles, uncovering all the problems in the way we discuss it. As it turns out, there are quite a few problems there, and I am so happy to have had this challenging conversation, and to share it with you.
(PS: sorry about the popping in the sound. Your contribution is going to pay for a few pop filters!)
ON THIS EPISODE
How not knowing what we want needs to be a part of sexuality
Why psychoanalysis is important for our conversation about consent
Why every sexual encounter between two people is actually a threesome with whoever created the framework of consent
Why consent is not a good foundation for sexual ethics
How nonconsensual labor frameworks (ie needing to have a job) generate harassment and make sex the culprit
How we always place the burden of clear expression on women
How overemphasizing consent denies us our full humanity
Why Katie Roiphie and Laura Kipnis don’t get it
Why listening to people is so important whether or not they were utterly violated, and even whether or not we believe or accept that they were.
Words and pornography
The false assumption that men are having “real” orgasms in porn, whereas the women are having “fake” ones
How arousal is protective and the body doesn’t express the truth anymore than the mind.
Pay for yourpodcast is the new “pay for your porn.” At least in my case. Your support youlove,is crucialtokeep my workgoing.Ifyoufindsomethingofvalueonmyshow,givebackandsupportthemanyhoursoffreecontentIoffereverymonthforthepriceofalatteorcocktailorlunch or, you know, a month of Only Fans.
So excited to talk directly about adult performance, the sexual politics around it, the labor politics around it, and when those politics clash and support one another.
And who better to invite than Gender Studies professor Dr. Heather Berg and writer/comedian/porn maven Sovereign Syre! Heather is a brilliant mind and one of the most thoughtful Marxists I’ve ever met; she’s really pushed the needle for me on understanding and embracing Marxist discourse. Sovereign is
We talk
labor tactics developed by adult performers
Sov’s and my histories in adult
How vocal people are about watching or not watching porn
The benefits of the (extremely problematic) “gig economy”
On being compared to Colby Keller by dumb journalists
Why the sex in sex work matters in the “sex work is work” conversation
Whether or not porn is art (it is!)
Why our picture of patriarchy should be informed by porn and not merely informing us ABOUT porn
What the best tactics are for performers to thrive
Why “feminist porn” isn’t always good for workers
Heather and I trying to make Marx and Freud sync up
So excited to finally be talking directly about sex and the occult on my show, and there’s no one I’d rather do that with than author and teacher, and Christian occultist Lisa Romero!
Lisa has written multiple (excellent) books on meditation and spiritual development, but the one that drew me to have her on for this episode was her excellent book, Sex Education and the Spirit: Understanding Our Communal Responsibility for the Healthy Development of Gender and Sexuality within Society. It’s a book that looks at sex and sexuality from a developmental perspective, but in a spiritual way, rather than from a materialistic perspective.This episode goes really deep and presupposes your ability to go on the magical mystery tour with us. But there are lots of insights to be had by the secular as well. I hope whatever your belief system is, you’ll stick with it.
We discuss:
what sex is, anyway, from a non-materialistic view, especially in the light of the evolution of consciousness.
how we all have individuated relationships to sex (and what that has to do with freedom).
the scientific definition of sex and why that matters now.
how sex and attraction get confusing when different aspects of our being get into conflict with each other.
why a Christian occultist approach to sex never takes the form of “don’t do this.”
how sexuality gives us the ability to transform our lives and bring our spiritual development forward.
the Catholic Church developing its response to sex in response to the Reformation.
the problems with the sex positive movement.
the four levels of attraction and how they relate to the subtle bodies.
displaced sex as a creative process.
what anthroposophists can learn from Freud and Lacan.
why masturbating men should hook themselves up to the power grid.
At the opening of 2019, I’m reviewing the state of something in 2019: what’s on the scene now and what to look for in the coming year! This week, it’s the State Of Queer 109, and who better to talk about it with than one of the queerest people I know, Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore, author and editor of multiple queerer than queer books, including her new novel, Sketchtasy, her deeply moving memoir about abuse, The End of San Francisco, and the collection, That’s Revolting!: Queer Strategies for Resisting Assimilation. Mattilda is also an outspoken activist, and the only person I know who legit looks like she could tie Adam West’s Batman to a buzzsaw and then go dancing afterward. She’s also written the most scathing film review I’ve ever read; a review that not only condemns the film, but mainstream gay culture in general.
Mattilda and I talk nostalgia, how people make “queer” an accoutrement rather than a radically felt and enacted principle, the trans military ban and why patriotism is the opposite of queerness, the generation of queers that grew up in AIDS culture but weren’t dying en masse from it, the naive celebration of Truvada for PrEP, why gay marriage is a compromised strategy(and honestly just kinda sucks), why you should never invite Mattilda to your wedding, masculinity and A Star Is Born, and more.
I wanted to go on and on with Mattilda, but we’ll talk and collaborate again for sure. For now, enjoy MBS & CH doing the State Of Queer 2019!
FOR TICKETS TO MY UPCOMING ONLINE EVENT WITH PETER & CAITLIN DOUGHTY, GOD SEX DEATH, CLICK HERE(ARE YOU A PATREON PATRON? YOU GET A DISCOUNT!)
Friends!
My friend the sexologist, author, and radio show host Dr. Chris Donaghue is back on AEWCH as part of my “The State Of” series of AEWCH in January! At the opening of 2019, I’m reviewing the state of something in 2019: what’s on the scene now and what to look for in the coming year! I couldn’t think of anyone better to discuss the State Of Sexuality 2019 than Dr. Chris Donaghue! The episode comes right on the heels of the release of Chris’s new book Rebel Love: Break the Rules, Destroy Toxic Habits, and Have the Best Sex of Your Life which is the first good self help book on relationships to come out in…ever?
We talk about how academic jargon keeps people out of meaningful discussions, whether or not sexuality is political, the fourth wave of feminism and foursomes, looking back on sexual experiences with curiosity, how our identities intersect with our sexualities, how to talk about the political content of adult scenes without condemning the desires for it, desire shaming, why sex is everywhere and safe, why sex and porn addiction don’t exist, the benefits and problems of “body positivity”, the problems with “enthusiastic consent,” how to heal sexual assault and end it culturally, and more!
Be a part of my mission to bring thoughtful conversations with countercultural figures to the world; and to inspire you and others to have more deep discussions like this in your lives. This show is funded by Patreon. Contributetoday!
(Note: AEWCH is and will continue to be free as a podcast going forward, but AEWCH 50 is the LAST episode available publicly on YouTube. If you want YouTube versions of the show, go to patreon.com/connerhabib and sign up at any level; you’ll get instant access!)
Friends,
On my favorite episode of AEWCH so far, I speak with feminist author and radical, Mona Eltahawy. Mona is the author of Headscarves and Hymens: Why The Middle East Needs A Sexual Revolution, a book which has shaken the Arab world, feminist discourse, and also, on a personal note, has changed my inner life. Mona articulates what patriarchy is — and why it is our urgent task to resist it — better than anyone I’ve ever read or spoken to. Even if you have some resistance to the term (*ahem* hello, bros), Mona will help you see why this framing is so important. .
Mona and I talk about:
our sexual assaults and how we recovered and transmuted them into action
what patriarchy is, exactly, and how it enables and protects power
why enthusiastic consent is a problem (and how our consent is violated every day)
the urgent and political task of pleasure
why masculinity is a desire and the Brett Kavanaugh meltdown, where white male rage comes from
the way white people (particularly white women) pathologize Muslims (particularly Muslim women) without confronting their own issues
what we can learn about consent from porn performers
why sex isn’t and is special and why a sexual revolution is so important
the “trifecta of patriarchy and misogyny”
why we need to reject monogamy as a default relationship structure
why we don’t have to say “everything is political” to fight bullshit
how patriarchy hurts men too
I am so excited and proud to share this episode with you.
Click here for SHOW NOTES, which are free and available to everyone.
In this episode, we talk about psychology and phenomenology of time, how love has become more authentic and changed the experience of time, the vulgarity and beauty of Joyce and Ulysses, what Christianity has made available and closed off when it comes to intimacy, the struggles of the Victorian era, just how real the concepts of “modernist” and “romantic” and “Victorian” periods are, how pain and time are interconnected, why a reevaluation of time and space needs to be part of labor activism, and more!
I was alarmed to find that there weren’t many podcasts or interviews with Stephen available online (although he is known and respected in literary and historian and other academic communities) so I was determined to bring his work to a broader audience.
For show notes (this time there are LOTS of links to books!), click here.
AGAINST EVERYONE WITH CONNER HABIB 102: KATE LISTER (@WhoresOfYore) or THE ARCHIVE OF DESIRES
Friends,
• Here’s a quick review of 
Friends,
