Tag Archives: sex and culture

Wellness isn’t good for you. Here’s how to move beyond it on AEWCH 211 with Fariha Róisín!

24 Jan

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Friends,
Welcome to the How To Live Beyond series of eps on AEWCH!
To open 2023, each episode in this series will consider a set of tools or way of thinking that are useful but that we’re ready to go beyond in 2023. We’ll be looking at abundance and manifestation, magick and entheogens, paganism,  and more. The first episode (AEWCH 208) featured Mitch Horowitz on How To Live: Beyond the New Age. The second (AEWCH 209) featured Lisa Romero on How To Live: Beyond Psychedelics & Sorcery. And the third (AEWCH 210) featured Pilar Lesko on How To Live: Beyond Money Magic.

These are the techniques and traditions we use to cope with and confront the challenges of our time, but risk –  if we can’t consider them deeply – getting us stuck in those challenges or worse, funneling their strengths back into those challenges. These episodes aren’t a call to forget about these techniques and traditions, but instead a call to bring forward what they’ve offered without the barbs of the problems they’re tangled up with.

This time:

We’re constantly tracking ourselves: with Fit Bits, exercise journals, food journals, mediation apps and more.

But what if wellness went deeper than tracking and instead into witnessing the wounds of materialism and the constant reopening of those wounds by colonialism, capitalism, racism, homophobia, and more?

To discuss this, I invited Fariha Róisín, artist and author of the excellent critical memoir, Who Is Wellness For?: An Examination of Wellness Culture and Who It Leaves Behindonto the show.

Together we examine the hidden woundings that are so frightening to us that we seem to only be left with narrow paths for healing: wounds in the erotic, the spiritual, sacred anatomy, healing, speaking, and more. 

In the same way we fear to touch a cut on our body or look into emotional to heal it, we encounter the deepest wounds as sites of pain. So we end up pushing the knowledge of these wounds to the far edges of our consciousness until they’re that their damage is only revealed a moment that is too late, as surprise diagnosis.

This is an adventure in wellness and how to heal wellness itself. I’m so excited to share it with you.

SHOW NOTES

WHAT OTHER EPISODE SHOULD YOU LISTEN TO
I talked a lot about mental health with author and psychotherapist Charlotte Fox Weber on AEWCH 196. It’s worth a listen because, well, everyone needs some form of therapy! (And if you want to pair it with a therapeutic look at restorative justice, you can listen to AEWCH 162 on violent offenders with Dr. Gwen Adshead!)

WHAT BOOK SHOULD YOU READ?
A good introduction to other models of anatomy and health is Cyndi Dale’s The Subtle Body: An Encyclopedia of Your Energetic Anatomy which is richly illustrated and written in clear language.

(Also, if you’re interested in my essay on heath and wellness, here’s
“When You’re Sick You’ll Wait for the Answer, But None Will Come”)

MORE ON FARIHA
Subscribe to Fariha’s excellent newsletter, How To Cure A Ghost (which shares its name with her debut poetry collection). And here’s Fariha’s website which is a good hub for her earlier work. Also, you can engage with a different layering of her consciousness by reading her novel Like A Bird(which is also available on audio). And here’s a short profile on her novel in the New York Times.

Until next time, friends,
Seek wholeness.
CH

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AA and D&D, art and reality, conspiracy and curation: Listen to me, esoteric scholar Peter Bebergal + countercultural pastor Barry Taylor talk about the uses of fantasy!

6 Dec

LISTEN HERE VIA SOUNDCLOUD OR ON Apple Podcasts • Spotify • Breaker • Anchor • Patreon

SUPPORT AGAINST EVERYONE WITH CONNER HABIB

Give via patreon – Patreon.com/connerhabib – this is the best way to support the show. You can also:

  • Tell people about the show and, if it feels okay, to support it on patreon (especially if you already know your pals are fans of the show but don’t support it).
  • Give the show a 5 star rating and positive review on Apple Podcasts.
  • Share on social media (you know the deal with this one)
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Friends,

The world accumulates new fantasies about itself, and as it does, it changes. We develop these fantasies, we curate them, alter them, cling to them, and mark what counts as “reality” by them. Reality is an aggregate of fantasies.

So…what fantasies serve us? How? And who are the best curators?

Well, I’d say two I know are my guests on this episode.

First, occult scholar Peter Bebergal, editor of Appendix N: The Eldritch Roots of Dungeons and Dragons and author of Strange Frequencies: The Extraordinary Story of the Technological Quest for the Supernatural (which we talked about extensively the last time Peter was on the show – back on AEWCH 112 ).

Second, countercultural pastor and artist, Barry Taylor, who is also the author of Sex, God, and Rock ‘n’ Roll: Catastrophes, Epiphanies, and Sacred Anarchies. I met Barry through my friend and frequent AEWCH guest, Peter Rollins. Ive been wanting to have Barry on for a long time, and finally, needing to have discussion of art and fantasy and reality and religion, knew that this was the exact right moment.

We go all over the place in this one. From Dungeons & Dragons to Alcoholics Anonymous, from the problems with Graham Hancock to our acid trips. This is a great episode friends.

SHOW NOTES

WHAT BOOK YOU SHOULD READ?
I can’t say I’ve read Susanna Clarke’s epic British magic fantasy, Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, but I trust Peter’s curatorial sense. Since he recommends it, I may go read it now. Let me know if you read it too! If you want a book I’ve read on some of the themes here, read Grant Morrison’s excellent nonfiction book, Supergods: What Masked Vigilantes, Miraculous Mutants, and a Sun God from Smallville Can Teach Us about Being Human.

WHAT OTHER AEWCH EPISODE YOU SHOULD LISTEN TO?
AEWCH 47 features the psychoanalytic philosopher we talk about quite a bit throughout the show, Todd McGowan!

MORE ON PETER and BARRY
Peter is also the author of Season of the Witch: How the Occult Saved Rock and Roll. And here’s another interview with Peter, on RPGs and Appendix N.

Support Barry’s work via his Patreon! Here’s Barry’s website (you can also get his book from there if it’s sold out on bookshop.org), and a short profile of him in the Guardian. And do follow Barry’s Instagram – @UKBloke – for the great collages he makes and posts almost every day.

Until next time, enjoy your quest!
CH

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AGAINST EVERYONE WITH CONNER HABIB 200 is here! Three episodes, six guests, three weeks! Part One: Caitlin Doughty, John EL Tenney, Chris Donaghue, and Caelainn Hogan on Stigma & Repression!

27 Sep

LISTEN HERE VIA SOUNDCLOUD OR ON Apple Podcasts • Spotify • Breaker • Anchor

Friends,
The massive, mighty AEWCH 200 is upon us! What makes AEWCH 200 different? It’s three episodes over three weeks, featuring six conversations, each conversation has two previous guests of AEWCH in conversation with me on a theme.

These are people I’ve loved talking to (most of them have been on the show more than once) in conversation with someone they might never talk to without AEWCH bringing them together. The idea is a sort of conversational alchemy: What happens when people in different disciplines speak? What sort of new substances arise?

This time it’s Part 1: STIGMA & REPRESSION Mortician Caitlin Doughty talks with paranormal investigator John E.L. Tenney + Sex therapist Chris Donaghue talks with investigative journalist Caelainn Hogan.

Each episode also features an opening monologue by me. So happy to offer this all to you over the coming weeks!

SHOW NOTES: GUEST WEBSITES & SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

Chris’s website • Rebel Love: Break the Rules, Destroy Toxic Habits, and Have the Best Sex of Your Life

Caitlin’s website • From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death

Caelainn’s website • Republic of Shame: How Ireland Punished ‘fallen Women’ and Their Children

John‘s website • Theoretical Weirdo: A Mish Mash of Ramblings about Weirdness

A PLEA FOR THE PODCAST FROM ME

Being up to 200 episodes means AEWCH is in a tiny tiny percentage of podcasts that have lasted this long – something like 2%. I can ONLY keep doing this show if people support it on patreon.

I know post-pandemic times and economic roller coasters are affecting everyone in different ways. That said, the art and culture you love are great places to center support and love.

If you don’t already, please do the following to keep AEWCH going:

  • Give via patreon – Patreon.com/connerhabib
  • Tell people about the show and, if it feels okay, to support it on patreon (especially if you already know your pals are fans of the show but don’t support it).
  • Give the show a 5 star rating and positive review on Apple Podcasts.
  • Tweet and Insta quotes from and thoughts inspired by episodes!

Thank you so much for everything, and enjoy all this big talk.
Love,
CH

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Gays vs queers vs straights vs homosexuals: Huw Lemmey and Ben Miller of the Bad Gays podcast on AEWCH 197

30 Aug

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FRIENDS! The only way Against Everyone With Conner Habib exists is through its relationship with its listeners.

Do you enjoy the show? Does it inspire new thoughts and conversations in your life?

If so, SUPPORT THIS PODCAST via Patreon


Friends,

Moving towards the 200th episode of AEWCH, I found myself in the funny realization that I don’t talk about gayness all that much. Partly it’s because I didn’t feel like I had much to say. But the realization deepened into: Wait, why don’t I have anything to say? Why do I feel so un-aligned with “gay stuff?” That itself was something to talk about.

I’ve found the right conversation partners in Huw Lemmey & Ben Miller, hosts of the Bad Gays podcast and authors of Bad Gays: A Homosexual History from Verso.

I’m excited to share this conversation with you, and happy to report that talking with these guys gave me the opportunity to compare sexual liberation with sasquatch.

SHOW NOTES

WHAT BOOK YOU SHOULD READ?
Not a book, but an essay: “Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality” by Gayle Rubin. It’s a foundational text for many conversations on sex and queerness and sexuality, so if you haven’t yet read it, go read it!

WHAT OTHER AEWCH EPISODE YOU SHOULD LISTEN TO?
An earlier but great exploration of “queer” on the show is AEWCH 74 with Andrea Lawlor, author of Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl. Andrea and I go all over the place talking about queerness, and find a lot of affinity for each other’s views (and experiences!).

MORE ON HUW & BEN
The best place to start is the Bad Gays website, where you can actually order a t-shirt that says “Evil Twink Energy.” And do support their patreon here. If that’s not enough for you, never fear, Huw has three novels out which we didn’t even get around to talking about. Here’s a link to Huw’s substack, which has links to all his work.

Until next time friends,
Be gay!
CH

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AGAINST EVERYONE WITH CONNER HABIB 196: You need to go to therapy. (Oh yes you do!) In conversation with Charlotte Fox Weber!

18 Aug

Friends,

As I approach my 45th birthday, I’m thinking a lot about what it is I want from my life. It’s not yet half over, but it’s heading there, and there’s so much to choose from! To sort through the burden of wanting so much, I invited psychotheapist Charlotte Fox Weber, author of What We Want: A Journey Through Twelve of Our Deepest Desires onto to the show to discuss the many ways desire shows up for us and how to manage it (if it is, indeed, manageable).

PS: No episode next week, as I celebrate my birthday, but keep your eyes open for a FOR-PATRONS-ONLY recording of my event in New York City with Will Menaker of Chapo Traphouse!

SHOW NOTES

WHAT BOOK YOU SHOULD READ?
Another great book about desire (By one of my favorite writers) is On Missing Out: In Praise of the Unlived Life by Adam Phillips. “We make our lives pleasurable, and therefore bearable, by picturing them as they might be; it is less obvious, though, what these compelling fantasy lives – lives of, as it were, a more complete satisfaction – are a self-cure for.”

WHAT OTHER AEWCH EPISODE YOU SHOULD LISTEN TO?
Another long conversation about desire is AEWCH 95 with Maggie Nelson. What a weird conversation, too, in the best way. Desire in literature, in sex, in art.

MORE ON CHARLOTTE
The best place to learn more about Charlotte (or to contact her as a therapist!) is via her website. Charlotte’s book isn’t available in the US until April 2023, but you can order it from this link to her publisher – which offers multiple sites to get it from. And here’s a little interview with Charlotte where she says “Paying attention is a form of love.” Well said!

Until next time friends,

Get help! (Joking, not joking.
CH

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2022 Relationships are vital and… confusing. That’s why I asked Dr. Chris Donaghue onto AEWCH 180 to talk about how to navigate them!

23 Feb

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Against Everyone With Conner Habib is funded exclusively by listeners like you. Let’s keep this relationship going! SUPPORT THIS PODCAST via Patreon

Friends,

Happy New Year! Here’s the fifth episode in my series on How To Live in 2022. The first, AEWCH 175, was with occult scholar Mitch Horowitz; the second, AEWCH 176, is on why reincarnation matters for us now; the third is AEWCH 177 with philosopher Zena Hitz on how and why to be an intellectual; the fourth is AEWCH 178 on using mysticism and the tarot in 2022 with Jessica Dore; and AEWCH 179, the fifth in the series is about living in community and organizations with Dean Spade.

But at the foundation of all our lives is sex – even if we are not inclined to identify with this or that sexuality, it is our origin story – and relationship – whatever kind of relationship I might be in. While world events seem to take up so much of our attention, in some ways the real action is at the level of fantasy, relationship, desire, lust, gratification, doubt, dear, confusion, and pleasure.

So I asked my friend, sex therapist and relational philosopher Dr. Chris Donaghue back onto the show. Chris is the author of Sex Outside the Lines: Authentic Sexuality in a Sexually Dysfunctional Culture and Rebel Love: Break the Rules, Destroy Toxic Habits, and Have the Best Sex of Your Life. Chris has been on the show twice before. Waaaay back on AEWCH 10 and then again on AEWCH 56.

Chris and I have a wide-ranging discussion as per usual on the show. But we both bring our own psychological (in my case psychoanalytic) and spiritual perspectives to bear. I hope this episode is helpful and illuminating.

SHOW NOTES

WHAT BOOK YOU SHOULD READ? I don’t like many pop-psych relationship books, but one I still think about – even though I read it over ten years ago – is David Richo’s How to Be an Adult: A Handbook on Psychological and Spiritual Integration. It’s not a perfect blueprint for sex and relationships, but there are so many bits of wisdom and seeds of contemplation in that book that I think it can be helpful for everyone.

WHAT OTHER AEWCH EPISODE YOU SHOULD LISTEN TO? The obvious pairing for this episode is AEWCH 159 with my friend Duncan Trussell. There’s not much to say about it other than it was recorded in the middle of one of the hardest relationship moments of my life. I don’t think it’s “brave” to have recorded it. But I do think, based on the feedback that I received, that it might be helpful for others or at least help diminish loneliness.

WHAT SHOULD YOU LOOK INTO FURTHER? One of the greatest tools I pull on when I’m having a relational emergency, I turn to The Work of Byron Katie. It’s a simple but profound tool for slowing down, and encountering the other through your own thinking. Watch some videos of Katie’s work in action, and then take it on yourself in your own life.

MORE ON CHRIS Chris is extremely prolific, so aside from his books (linked above), it might be a bit difficult to know where to start. Thankfully, his website gives tons of links. He also has a great Instagram which offers up thoughts and prompts for you to reflect on each day.

Until next time, be kind and horny with each other.
X
C

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A MASSIVE conversation with Paul Chek on his podcast, Living 4D with Paul Chek!

30 Dec

Friends,

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!).

And here’s the CHEK Institute page with show notes.

Love to you.
See you soon with a new episode of AEWCH (and my live conversation with Gordon White!)
CH

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My first scene (er, podcast) with Ty Mitchell! AEWCH 124

16 Sep

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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
  • The expressiveness in performed sex
  • The benefits and perils of repetitive sex
  • The “mystery date” aspect of escorting
  • Queer freedom through blundering
  • The difficulties of rejecting and being rejected

SHOW NOTES

• For more on Ty, including his adult work, here’s his (SFW) account on twitter. Here’s his excellent essay on gay sex during the global crisis, and his essay on cruising basements, both for his column at MEL Magazine.

• 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!

• I talked on a panel with other performers about consent in porn years ago.• Stoya’s disclosure that James Deen assaulted her was an intense but necessary event for the adult industry (and all involved, of course). It was also a forerunner of the #MeToo movement.

• Remember when Homeland Security raided the escorting hub rentboy?

• 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.

Until next time friends,

XO
CH

Joe & Sam Gage

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Pornography is an archive of desire. I talk with Dr. Kate Lister (AKA Whores of Yore) about it, and what sex IS, anyway, on AEWCH 102!

10 Mar

LISTEN HERE OR ON iTunes • Spotify • Overcast • Soundcloud

This podcast is only possible because listeners like you support it. Do contribute to my mission by supporting Against Everyone With Conner Habib on Patreon!  Thank you so, so much.

AEWCH102TitleCardAGAINST 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 always been 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, A Curious History Of Sex . 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?
  • How we don’t understand our desires

SHOW NOTES

• For more on Kate, just follow Whores Of Yore on twitter, and also go to her website, which is a huge archive of sexual information, including in-depth historical essays about sex by Kate and others. Also, here’s a good, brief interview with her.

• One of my earliest essays on porn was “By The Time You’ve Seen It’s Too Late” in which I compare seeing porn to The Evil Dead.

• Would you like to learn more about the 28,000 year old stone penis? Of course you would. And here’s a bit on Jill Cook of the British Museum, asserting that we had sex before we understood that it made babies.

• Do fetuses masturbate? Well, probably? Maybe?

• There’s a great book about the invention of pornography called The Secret Museum: Pornography In Modern Culture. It’s by Walter Kendrick, and well worth reading. Another great book on the same subject is The Invention of Pornography, 1500-1800: Obscenity and the Origins of Modernity edited by Lynn Hunt (this is the book I mention later that has lots of information about pornography as political protest).

• I talk a lot about the need for conversations about resilience with Sara Maria Griffin on AEWCH 93.

• Here’s a short article on Christine Helliwell talking to Dayak women in Borneo about the different concept of sex and assault.

• A conversation between Heather Berg and I about sex work and the wage-labor relationship is here.

• “I am a whore. Find something else to fight about.” –Nell Gwynn, after two men were fighting after one called her a whore.

• Did you miss Hole drummer Patty Schemel on AEWCH 60? Don’t.

• I talk about the origins of sex on AEWCH 92, which is called…wait for it…The Origins Of Sex!

• And there;s a book about a very different thing with the same title – The Origins Of Sex: A History Of The First Sexual Revolution by Faramerz Dabhoiwala. It’s great.

• I’ve brought up What Is Sex? 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.

• Kate mentions Joan Price, and I think her work with desire and aging is worth checking out.

• Here’s a great interview with legendary gay porn director Joe Gage in BUTT Magazine.

• I wrote an essay on my (homo)sexual awakening waaaay back in 2010 (the essay, not the awakening); it’s called “Looking At Men.”

• A book I love on the sex lives of animals (well THAT’S a way to open a sentence) is Dr. Tatiana’s Sex Advice To All Creation by Olivia Judson.

• I mention the Katherine Angel episode, but you should really get and read her amazing book, Unmastered.

Until next time, friends, don’t give up on your desires!
CH
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You can’t consent to consent. A challenging discussion on the new Against Everyone With Conner Habib, featuring author Katherine Angel!

3 Mar


LISTEN HERE OR ON iTunes • Spotify • Overcast • Souncloud

This podcast is only possible because listeners like you support it. Do contribute to my mission by supporting Against Everyone With Conner Habib on Patreon!  Thank you so, so much.

AEWCH101TITLECARDFriends,

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, Tomorrow Sex Will Be Good Again, 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.
  • Why we need Freud now more than ever
  • The erotic fantasy of banning pornography
  • Why desires have their own boundaries
SHOW NOTES
• More on Katherine: Katherine teaches at University of London, and her book, Tomorrow Sex Will Be Good Again will be out next year. Here’s an excerpt from it, “Sex And Self Knowledge: Beyond Consent”. And here’s Katherine speaking about #MeToo at the Freud Museum.

• Katherine mentions Joseph Fischel’s book, Screw Consent: A Better Politics of Sexual Justice , which I am eager to read (and I’m also excited to have Joseph on the show!). Another good book on consent is Consent: Sexual Rights and the Transformation of American Liberalism by Pamela Haag.

MGG• Here’s a quick review of the sexual harassment case in Ireland involving a gay man and a woman.

• And here’s the Melissa Gira Grant essay on #MeToo – “The Unsexy Truth About Harassment.“
• I’ve written about all the themes presented here before in the essay, “A Culture That’s Sick About Sex Will Never Be Able To Stop Harassment And Abuse“.

• A little write up of my talk about consent at Tufts University, moderated by Kareem Khubchandani.

• Sara Schulman‘s book, Conflict Is Not Abuse: Overstating Harm, Community Responsibility, and the Duty of Repair has come up on the show multiple times!

• The Leo Bersani quote is “There is a big secret about sex: most people don’t like it.”

• Katherine gives a shout out to Laurie Brotto and her book, Better Sex Through Mindfulness: How Women Can Cultivate Desire.

• AEWCH 34 about how arousal and desire are not the same thing, and how sex confronts materialism.

• The first time I talked about Wittgenstein’s theories and porn was way back on AEWCH 10 with Dr. Chris Donaghue.

• For more on how children experience violation when they’re sexually assaulted, read Susan Clancy’s profound book, The Trauma Myth: The Truth About the Sexual Abuse of Children and Its Aftermath.

• Go forth and read Darwin’s Worms by Adam Phillips. I’ve mentioned it many times as a great book. Ancd also? What Is Sex? by Alenka Zupančič.

• I can’t vouch for Carnal Resonance: Affect and Online Pornography by Susanna Paasonen yet, but I’m definitely going to read it if Katherine thinks it’s worthwhile. And here’s a link to Amia Srinivasan‘s article, “Does Anyone Have The Right To Sex?”

That’s it for now, friends.
Until next time, may you follow your desires!
CH

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