The Second Circle Series 4: BAD SEX
Episode 2: Mixed messages and faulty scripts
Where do we learn about sex? Who do we learn it from? What do those people and establishments actually tell us… about what sex IS and what it’s supposed to mean?
And is it possible… is it possible… that some of what we’re being told might be directly contributing to our experiences of bad sex?
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The Second Circle is produced, written, hosted by Franki Cookney | Editor: Lucy Douglas | Audio production: Anouszka Tate
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S04E02: Mixed messages and faulty scripts
Emily Nagoski 00:00
Okay, so I have the script. And there's an order of operations. So we need to tick off everything on the list in the right order. Okay, so we did the kissing, we did the breasts. We took off the clothes, there was oral sex on somebody, a penis went into somebody's part. Someone ejaculated, and we're done. We did it, we had... was that the sex? Yay.
Franki Cookney [voiceover] 00:23
Sound familiar? To the extent that any of us get taught how to have sex, we tend to get taught that sex happens when a penis goes into a vagina and ejaculates. In some ways you might think that’s fair enough, right? It’s basic reproductive biology. But to be honest, even that argument is flawed because it’s 2022 and we have IVF and artificial insemination and surrogacy so the whole ‘how to make a baby’ thing… is kind of outdated.
Still, studies have shown that for most straight people, “sex” - proper sex - means penetration, ideally penis-in-vagina, but many include anal. Unsurprisingly, when researchers have looked at what queer people define as sex there were suddenly a whole lot more options. Yet, in mainstream straight culture, this idea persists.
What if you struggle to make penetration work? What if you just straight up don’t like it? What if, like approximately 75% of cisgendered women, you don’t reliably orgasm through penetration… what if this definition of sex is actually… kinda bullshit?
[THEME MUSIC]
Franki Cookney [voiceover] 01:41
You’re listening to The Second Circle. This is Series Four: BAD SEX
I’m Franki Cookney. I’ve spent the last five years writing and reporting on sex and relationships and each time I read a piece on how to make sex better, how to improve, how to spice things up, I get the increasing sense that maybe we’re coming at this from the wrong angle. Instead of papering over the cracks, I say we dig down and have a proper look at the foundations. In this series I’m turning sex advice on its head and exploring what makes sex bad in the first place.
Needless to say the stories you’ll hear and the language people use to describe their sexual experiences can be pretty explicit so listener discretion is advised. All the sex we discuss in this series was consensual but it wasn’t always enjoyable and some accounts may be distressing.
In Episode 1 we examined what it means to be sex-positive and whether it *really* leads to better sex. In this episode I want to explore some of the other messages we get around sex and what kind of impact they have on our lived experience. Where do we learn about sex, who do we learn it from? What do those people and establishments actually tell us… about what sex IS and what it’s supposed to mean? And is it possible… is it possible… that some of what we’re being told might be directly contributing to our experiences of bad sex?
We started the episode with a classic example. Most of us at some point in our lives have probably heard the baseball metaphor. First base, second base, third base – sexual activities that are presumed to escalate in a certain order – until, finally, the MAIN EVENT of penetrative sex. Hey, it’s OK, I bought into this too… until I came out as bi and started having sex with women and then it all collapsed.
Needless to say, this narrative about what constitutes proper sex doesn’t serve LGBTQ people. But guess what… it also doesn’t serve straight people that well. Rigid adherence to expectations around what goes where and how our bodies are supposed to respond can lead to some seriously bad sex. We’re going to come back to this in later episodes when we talk in more depth about pleasure and about bodies.
But for now, I want to look at different kinds of expectations. See, we’re not just brought up with expectations about the physical act of sex. We also get a lot of different messages about what sex is supposed to mean, how we are supposed to engage with it, and the role we’re supposed to take in it.
Mark 04:27
My upbringing was, yeah, it was a great upbringing as a kid. But it was one where the subject of sex and relationships was not something we ever discussed as a family or anything like that. I have no recollection of ever having the talk of any kind, actually, with my parents. And as a result, I think you kind of go through life, you know, what you're supposed to do, and you've got your lessons at school that give you maybe a little bit of a background is to kind of the mechanics of sex, but they don't talk about the emotional side of sex, they don't talk about the things that you really need to know about.
And I think as well, yeah, Christianity played a part in that as well. I think, you know, there's a sense in which, within Christianity, you know, sex is is for marriage, but we don't really ever talk that much about it, as, you know, a subject in church or in those kinds of contexts. So again, we know it happens, we know what it's meant to be like, but we never have those conversations or discussions that enable a young teenager, young adult to to have an understanding of what should or shouldn't be happening in the bedroom. So I think that that that, you know, in a nutshell, is kind of my upbringing, it just wasn't the thing that was talked about, we understood it, but we didn't really express it or talk about it in any clear way, or have an opportunity to ask the questions that you probably need to ask.
Franki Cookney [voiceover] 05:54
This is Mark. It’s not his real name but like a lot of the people you’ll hear in this series, he agreed to speak to me on condition of anonymity so that’s what we’re going to call him. It was actually his wife who got in touch with me first but in our initial conversations she mentioned that her husband had come from a conservative background and had sometimes struggled with the expectation that, as the man, he was supposed to take the lead in sex. I was really interested to hear more about this so I asked Mark if he’d be up for speaking with me directly.
Mark 06:26
Everyone talks about sex as being this amazing, wonderful thing. You see it in the movies where, you know, the two couples, you know, they come together, and it's the music's playing in the background candles are flickering. And there's no mess. There's no, nothing. It's just perfect.
So you end up feeling like, well, there must be a right way, because it looked good there and we're told that sex is really good. But actually, no one's told me how to do this. And in my, the role that I played, or that I took on, was that I've got to get this right. And that I think, is me throughout life is not just, you know, in sex and bedroom, it's like everything I've like, I've got to get this right, got get this right. So, you know, I was feeling like, right from the start, there was that pressure to get it right, but had no clue as to what was right. Yeah, that was a real struggle. And, you know, and actually has continued to be a challenge for, for us in our relationship, that sense of trying to know that the magic answer” with no one to really talk to or share with or ask questions of, because no, no one ever talks about this subject.
I think the whole of society is geared up to be that men are meant to be in power, men are meant to be in control, men are meant to be the ones who know, and most of us haven't got a clue. But we feel that we have to be, we can't not be in control. We can't not fulfil that role, because that's the role that's been given to us by society, in every area of our lives. It's not right, but that's how we feel, I think, a lot of the time.
Even with your, your partner, there's that sense in which you want to get it right for them. And you you feel like you have to do, but you know, certainly for me in the early stage of the relationship, I didn't feel like it ask, What do you need? Because I felt I had to already know that. And therefore was trying to meet her needs without knowing what her needs really were, but couldn't ask her because that would be admitting that I don't know. And hey, we're already in the middle of this this, you can’t be doing that.
Franki Cookney 08:25
When you say that now? Does that sound bonkers?
Mark 08:27
Yes, absolutely. Totally bonkers. Because it's like, it's obvious, the best person to ask, you know, what do you need? How can I make sex better for you? Is of course the person that you are with. But I think we are maybe conditioned to kind of feel like we should already know this because it's natural. Sex is what everyone should know how to do, can do, is able to do and, and therefore you shouldn't need to ask the question. But actually, you know, after significant time being together, we realise actually yeah, best person to ask is your partner.
When you are worrying about performing and getting things right and doing that, you are not concentrating actually on the act of sex, and you are missing out on the emotional cues in your own body as well as your partner’s. And therefore if you are constantly worrying, is this right, is this going to work? You haven't left yourself space to to connect with your partner on an emotional level?
Franki Cookney [voiceover] 09:29
Mark’s story really reminded me of a conversation I’d had before. Back in January 2020 I interviewed sex educator Nathaniel Cole. Nat has spent hours in classrooms talking to boys and young men about masculinity, mental health, body image, and sexuality. At the time, I was writing an article about young men and consent so I was interested in his insights on that, but in the course of that conversation he said something I genuinely wasn’t expecting. He told me that one of the barriers to seeking clear, verbal consent, among young men, was the fear of seeming like you don’t know what you’re doing.
Asking questions, he said, about what your partner wants, what they might be interested in, immediately gives away that you don't know what you're doing. So, just like Mark said, you can't ask the questions. Which of course leaves you feeling less confident, and less responsive to your partner’s needs. In other words, trying to seem like you know what you’re doing makes you less “good” at sex.
This observation really stayed with me. In fact it was probably one of the original seeds from which the idea for this series sprouted.
Unfortunately Nat is absolutely rammed with work and when I reached out to see if he would record a segment with me he apologised and said he was at capacity which is a boundary I fully respect. Luckily, his colleague Richie Benson agreed to speak to me, you heard him already in episode one. So I put the question to Richie.
Is it possible that the idea of “having to ask” your partner what they want in bed feels… somehow emasculating?
Richie Benson 11:07
Yeah, I mean, I think also, that feeds into like the idea of what being a man in like, heterosexual interaction, is about. You've got to be in control as well. So yeah, you don't want to show weakness by asking a question that shows you don't know you're doing and like the assertion of that control in those scenarios because I'm the man, right? That's what I've got do, because that's what we've been taught that women want as well. They want a man who's like dominating or controlling of the situation is calm, collected, doing.
You learn like a set of rules when you're growing up as a boy about what sex is.
You also learn that you're supposed to be good at it from day one, like what else in the world are you supposed to be good at, like, and understand to be amazing at, the first time you ever experience without ever having talked about it, learned about it. So that's a kind of very narrow, you got to be good at it, you've got to be having loads of it.
And it being like, super heteronormative as well, like sex is penetrative sex when we're talking about sex growing up as boys and men. And I think there's a lot of like, that sounds really exciting maybe to you when you were like a young man or a boy. But then like this, you don't notice are the pressures and the expectations, external, internal, that is starting to feed into those narratives. And it does become a performance. I do think like, a lot of men learn about sex, either explicitly or less explicitly through imagery, like through pornography, or just through advertising, cinema, whatever it is, and there's so much performance.
I think what we try to do a lot of Beyond Equality in our work is really unpacking, like the ideas of it, the boys and men already have in their heads,
You don't arrive at being good at sex like you're not, there's no Oscar winning moment, you don't get a medal. Like that will change with every interaction. And with every person, or however that looks. And it actually comes down to skills and communication and language and being able to be vulnerable.
Franki Cookney [voiceover] 13:11
These ideas around how sex should go down, what role we should play in it, and what it should mean to us are what people in the sex education and the therapy world often refer to as scripts.
The idea is that when it comes to sex, a lot of us are reading off a script we’ve been handed, saying the words and going through motions we feel we “should” apply to sex, based on the information we’ve received through our education, cultural and social backgrounds, and the media we consume.
In his book “Can we talk about consent?” sex educator Justin Hancock also calls them “should stories”. Scripts and should stories can come in many, many forms. You may have been taught that sex “should” happen inside a committed relationship, with someone special. Or maybe you grew up reading magazines such as Nuts and Loaded and Cosmopolitan and Glamour and so you have a sense that sex should be wild and adventurous and carefree.
Scripts can shift, too, as culture changes and depending on what we are exposed to. In her book Mind The Gap, clinical psychologist and psychosexologist Dr Karen Gurney gives the example of anal sex in porn. Obviously porn did not invent anal sex. People have been putting things up their bottoms for fun since time immemorial. You only need to go back to Series 1 of this podcast and find the episode entitled ‘Sexting With James Joyce’ to hear an example of turn-of-the-20th century bum fun. But it’s fair to say that recent porn trends mean anal sex is more frequently shown as a standard part of heterosexual sex. So people watching that porn may find themselves consciously or unconsciously adding anal sex to their sex script. That’s not to say there’s anything wrong with anal sex, itself. It can feel fantastic, not least if you have a prostate you lucky bastard. No, the problem is not the activity, it’s when it becomes an expectation.
Another example - and something I’ve written about a number of times - is kink. Kink used to be highly taboo. For decades BDSM was listed as a pathology in American Psychiatric Association’s diagnostic manual. Of course that doesn’t mean no one had kinky sex, they absolutely did. But they had to seek it out. It wasn’t automatically on the script. But over time, our understanding has developed. In 2013, the fifth edition of the diagnostic and statistical manual, the DSM-V was updated. It specified that a paraphilia (that is to say a kink or fetish) by itself “does not necessarily justify or require clinical intervention.”
That’s not to say there’s NO stigma attached to kink now, but attitudes have changed. Engaging with BDSM was regularly used against people in family courts with people denied custody or visitation rights on account of their sexual interests. One study, published in the Archives of Sexual Behaviour shows that this has significantly decreased since the DSM-V was published.
So, a definite cultural shift. Pair that with the 2011 release of Fifty Shades of Grey and you have the perfect recipe for an amendment to the mainstream script. Again, there is nothing wrong with wanting to be tied up or spanked, it can be really fun, the problem is when you start to feel you “should” want those things or you “should” be up for trying those things.
So what are your expectations of sex? Are there certain activities you think should happen. Are there certain ways you think you should look or behave or feel during sex? What about before and after sex?
Now ask yourself how many of those stories about what sex “should” be align with what you want sex to be. Some of you might feel your sex script totally matches up with your character. In which case, great, keep doing your thing, pal! But when the script we’ve been handed doesn’t fit with who we actually are and what we actually enjoy and we feel under pressure to conform… that’s when we end up having, yep you guessed it, bad sex.
To complicate matters further, many of us end up being handed not one, but two different scripts! We talked in the first episode about how in 21st century Britain, sex is seen as a normal part of life. But that doesn’t mean none of us have shame around sex. Plenty of us grow up in cultures and religions where sex (particularly outside of heterosexual marriage) is taboo.
Our family or community may be tight-lipped but elsewhere we are bombarded with messages about how great sex is, about all the wild sex everyone else is having, and which ten red hot moves are most guaranteed to blow his mind tonight.
So what kind of impact do these mixed messages have on us? This is something that Alya Mooro, an Egyptian-born, UK-raised freelance journalist explores in her book, The Greater Freedom, Life as a Middle Eastern woman outside the stereotypes. She’s also the host and producer of the podcast Talk Of Shame. I knew she would have really interesting insights to share so I asked her to come and talk to me about what happens when shame and sex-positivity collide.
Alya Mooro 18:30
Growing up in a very liberal, very super chill non-religious, Arab family, I, you know, got a lot of messages growing up around sex, there was a lot, you know, communicated to me through the absence of conversation, we never spoke about sex at home, my body, we never spoke about periods, never spoke about anything to do with like being a woman in any of these ways. And then growing up in London, especially going to an all girls school, sex was very much something that all the girls were always speaking about. It was very important. It was, you know, a way of kind of being like, I'm an adult now. And everyone was talking about sex and blow jobs. And I was like, Oh, my God, kind of stuck in between these two different narratives around what was expected from me sexually.
I also want to just caveat that by saying one of the main things that I sort of realised as I was writing the book is that so many of these sort of patriarchal ideals that are imposed on us, you know, when it comes to sex, when it comes to every single thing as women, they are not unique, just to one culture, or to one religion, these are cross-cultural things that, you know, are really sort of ingrained in us from a very young age around the world. There's still double standards when it comes to sex and slut shaming and all the rest of it everywhere, right? So that's just one thing to say. And actually, also, very interestingly, a lot of our culture and a lot of, you know, the sort of ideas that they have around sex came from when they were colonised by the British, and those were like the Victorian ideals of the British that they left behind. So just want to say that. But yeah, it's very, very much kind of frowned upon in Middle Eastern culture, especially as a woman to be sexual. There's a word that is used all the time, which is 3aib, which is, you know, I say it a million times in my podcast, it basically means shameful, and it's a very gendered word. And from a very young age, you know, as girls, we're really not supposed to kind of be intimate with our bodies. We don't have very much conversation around even what our vaginas look like. You're supposed to be a virgin until you get married. And there's very much this idea that like, if you do have sex, it's gonna be really hard for you to get married now, no one's gonna love you, everyone's gonna just… You're like a, you're a used woman basically, there's no place for you now that you've that you've ruined yourself in that way.
I remember very well, my mom sat me down, and I had already had sex, so she was late. But she sat me down. And she basically said, don't have sex, or he'll think you're a whore, and he'll never love you. And that was the only thing that she ever said to me about sex up until much later.
Something I think, again, that in Middle Eastern culture is very much sort of repeated over and over as women, we are the guardians of our family honour, basically. So if we do something that is considered wrong or shameful, that automatically sullies the whole kind of family name, whereas boys are not raised in that way. Boys are very much encouraged, you know boys will be boys, they need to explore, they should have sex with as many people as possible before they get married all the rest of it. And you know, like religiously, boys and girls are supposed to follow the same sort of rules, but in society, it's the women who are always forced to do that. And the men who can who can do whatever they want, basically.
So from there, it's kind of been a real journey for me to sort of debunk the shame because I was sort of like, well, these are not my ideals, but I feel dictated by them. You know, I had this sort of voice in my head that was calling me a whore If ever I wanted to sleep with men. So I went to hypnotherapy there's there's so much that I've done to sort of kind of try and debunk that for myself, because it really bothered me that I couldn't do what I wanted to do.
[AD BREAK]
Franki Cookney [voiceover] 22:28
We’re going to take a quick break now but stay with me because when we come back we’re going to hear from Alya about some of the more tangible and distressing ways that shame can show up in the bedroom. Back in a tick.
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Franki Cookney 22:41
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Franki Cookney 23:07
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[END OF AD BREAK]
Franki Cookney 24:00
In your book, you describe quite heartbreakingly, being in your 20s and wanting to have these hookups and casual encounters that you felt like your friends were having, and just being almost paralysed by shame?
Alya Mooro 24:15
Yeah, I was pretty much paralysed. And it would bother me so much. I remember, and I use this anecdote in the book, I was in a club once and I was drunk, and there were so many hot guys around me. And, you know, logically, I knew that if I wanted to just go up to one of them, or if I wanted to have sex with any of them, I probably could have, but I couldn't. I was paralysed. And I literally remember crying, just being like, these are supposed to be the sort of the best years of my life where, you know, I can do whatever I want, and be casual and have fun, but I cannot. And the sort of final straw for me, I remember I had kind of gotten up the courage and, you know, had enough alcohol to go home with this guy that I that I knew previously, he was a friend of mine. And we were sort of making out and I was having an actual panic attack, and sort of trying to push myself past that, because I was like, you're here. Just do it. Why not, you know?! And there was this sort of voice being like, you're a whore. He's gonna think you're a whore. And it was so loud. And I did manage to push past it. But then in the morning, I remember as I was leaving his house, I said to him, like, do you think less of me now? And the fact that I said that, and the fact that I thought that, and his sort of reaction, he was like, what?? You know? And I think that really kind of set me on this journey where I was like, This is horrific.
And I think that was a sort of really important turning point for me where it was like, Yeah, I can do what I want. I shouldn't have to think about it and if he does think less of me, then he's a douche.
Franki Cookney 25:50
It's so upsetting to think of you having to actually push through a panic attack, to have the thing but you, you you rationally and intellectually knew you wanted and knew you deserved. But all of these feelings came up around it?
Alya Mooro 26:07
I think the most thing I remember is my heart pounding so fast. And I remember there was one time where I was, again, trying to like push past this, this discomfort to get with a guy and I literally… He was like, You look fine. And I said, No, no, I'm actually having a panic attack. And I took his hand and I let him like, feel my heart so he could know that like, I'm actually freaking out. He was very kind. But you know, your hands get really sweaty. You kind of like, I feel like you kind of everything just becomes a bit like dark and and I don't know how to explain the feeling. Honestly, everything becomes a bit dark. Everything becomes really heightened. And it feels like you're totally sort of alone. You know, the reason why I spoke to that guy and I said feel my heart is because I was trying to sort of close the gap between how I felt and what was happening. Because it really feels completely, completely overwhelming. And it was, it was so hard to push past and it was very much a very much took over actually at one point I remember my leg would like shake, like up and down, you know, when your knee kind of bounces. Yeah, really, really fast heart rate, sweaty palms, shaking, and just being completely overwhelmed.
Franki Cookney 27:25
It's essentially like a big fear response, right? Like you're in fight or flight there.
Alya Mooro 27:31
Yeah, pretty much your your, I think you are pretty much in fight or flight. So the fact that I'm literally trying to like push myself through it, I just feel so sorry for that version of me, you know, because she had been raised by society as a whole, I think, you know, by her, by all her cultures to think that this was wrong, and to think that it would take something away from her. And it's just so sad that something so natural and so beautiful in so many ways, can actually just make you feel dirty if you allow those messages to really work.
Franki Cookney 28:10
What do you think the fear is?
Alya Mooro 28:13
Well, one of my guests on my podcast actually said this, and at the time, I was a bit like, no, but in hindsight, I think she was right, where she was basically saying, it's a fear of the consequences. And you know, those consequences can vary. Obviously, in super extreme circumstances, there are things like honour killings, which happen when girls are very often for sexual reasons. And then on the lower end of the spectrum, I guess there's the fear that they are going to think you're a whore or that you are going to have lost something from doing that.
I a hundred percent rationally did not think any of these things you know, I grew up very well-read, I read a lot, I consider myself a feminist. Although at the time, I guess that was less that was less so. But it was a hundred percent not a rational thought. I definitely didn't think yeah, this is what's gonna happen, but my body was freaking out.
Franki Cookney 29:14
A couple of points in your book you use the expression cock-blocking my own life. Which, which I love. I'm like, I really get that, that really resonates with me. I definitely think I've been guilty of that on a few occasions. But can you tell me more about that and how that feels for you?
Alya Mooro 29:33
Yeah, it's so funny because my editor was like you're gonna have to define this cock-blocking and I said yeah, sure, but it's not coming out because it really felt like I was cock-blocking my life and you know for those who don't know although I feel like everyone listening to this will probably know what a cock-block is, but it's essentially used to refer this is the definition after writing the book is used to refer to a third person you know, like a friend who like doesn't want to leave your side in a bar and is not letting you get with this guy right? Whereas I felt like I was literally cock-blocking myself because there was two parts of me, one that's like I'm ready, I'm down, let's go. And the other half of me that is like, Oh my god, what are you doing? And literally like not even well, very often paralysing me or certainly not letting me actually, like, flirt or do anything to get closer to what I wanted
I've had to do a lot of work on myself in order to sort of be able to do the things that I want to do when it comes to sex and, and men. But it definitely felt like there was another sort of second person that was was cock-blocking me. And it wasn't me. But it was me.
Franki Cookney 30:49
You wrote in your book, the only thing that shame does is ensure people won't be able to talk about it (sex) or ask questions. What do people do instead, then?
Alya Mooro 31:00
Yeah, well, they end up in really shitty situations. I ended up losing my virginity. I hate that term. I think losing my virginity is a horrible term. But I had sex for the first time quite young to a horrible, horrific person that in my book, I actually called Satan.
So what happened with me is when I lost my virginity to Satan, I ended up in a in a really dangerous situation. And there was one point where I thought I might be pregnant. So I'm like fifteen, sixteen at this point, so Boots and like no one would sell me the Morning After Pill, the clinics were all full, I couldn't speak to my mom, I couldn't speak to anyone. And I literally had to beg a random woman in the street to buy me the Morning After Pill.
But yeah, you're you're really left to sort of fend for yourself. And that I think, is so dangerous.
I think that a lot of the time, if you are able to have these kind of conversations, you know, you might not even end up in that situation in the first place. Had I not had so much shame around sex, I genuinely think that I would not have lost my lost my virginity to this guy, because I would have realised that sex in general is not bad, but sex with a horrible person is.
Franki Cookney [voiceover] 32:13
A line that really stood out to me in Alya’s book is when she wrote “If all sex is wrong, how can people recognise when sex is actually wrong?” From the outset of making this podcast I’ve stressed that when I talk about BAD SEX, I’m talking about consensual sex. Not necessarily sex that you went into with a fist pump and a enthusiastic ‘hell, yeah’ but sex that you had intentionally. But Alya’s story really taps into the nuances of consent. When we try to override that message of shame by ignoring ALL our feelings of uncertainty, we can end up saying yes or being convinced to do things that aren’t right for us and, in Alya’s case, left her in a really scary, vulnerable situation. Did she consent to it? She feels she did. Does that make it OK? Not really.
When we struggle to find a script that fits us, we can often end up going along with someone else’s, often with disastrous or, at the very least, disappointing, results. I said at the start that standard narratives about what sex involves often exclude LGBTQ people. But that doesn’t mean LGBTQ people aren’t affected by them. A lot of the messages we take on around sex can be very gendered and these can tip over into queer relationships too. I spoke to Dan Griffiths, a young queer trans guy who as it happens, has just started his own podcast called Gender Fck, a trans sexual health and wellness podcast.
He told me that, even as a queer person, he has often felt a lot of pressure to take certain roles within sex and has definitely felt the weight of expectation from partners.
Dan Griffiths 33:50
My first expectations around sex, were kind of I feel like this is a very kind of Tumblr-y queer narrative just kind of being based around like fan fiction and like that, kind of like very romanticised things around like, your favourite gay characters having this weird sex. I feel like I took in quite a lot of that. And I was just kind of like, Oh, I I feel like I'm a pretty feminine guy so I feel like I have to kind of be this kind of subby bottom kind of a thing and like, I guess I am? But then I'm also just there like, how much have I kind of just pigeon-holed myself and not really, like allowed myself to experience and like, experiment with sex past that? Because I've kind of just been there like, Oh, well, like everyone else thinks that as a kind of small little trans guy that I have to be the subby bottom because what else can I be? I don't have a dick, kind of a thing. Which obviously is not true, you can be dominant, be a top, no matter what anatomy you've got. But that kind of just made me really uncomfortable to kind of navigate around sex .
I had a lot of people viewing me as a very femme, kind of submissive person. And I found that was really prominent when I started university, and I started going on dating apps and stuff like that, and Grindr, God forbid,
It was really obvious to me a lot of the time, that I felt like people saw me as my anatomy first and kind of, like, deduced what kind of behaviours and sexual stuff I would be into based off that, without kind of consulting me about it. And like, they would just make these wild assumptions about what I would be into. And I'm just like, you could just ask, you don't have to, like, make an assumption about it.
I would definitely say that, in my own experience, queer people have been immensely better at this kind of communication, especially because I tend to be a very like T for T, like trans for trans person, like my partner is also trans. And that brings another level of kind of understanding about dysphoria. And that kind of context. And people tend to be a lot more aware of being like, oh, what kind of language do you like, for this part of your body? Do you mind if I don't touch if I touch or don't touch this part of your body, that kind of thing.
But with cis men and stuff like that, I always felt like Oh, this person just wants to do stuff to me, instead of doing stuff with me. And yeah, it felt really one sided and just not very well communicated with those kind of people.
Franki Cookney [voiceover] 36:35
What Dan says here about queer people being more willing to think outside the box when it comes to sex is something I’ve heard - and indeed experienced - many times. When the way you have sex is ALREADY outside of what you’ve been taught sex is, when in many cases you have literally not been told single thing about the kind of sex you want to have, you have to adopt this open-ended approach out of necessity. But wouldn’t it be cool if we all did this? Instead of just assuming we already know.
We heard from author and academic Katherine Angel in the first episode about how, to avoid bad sex, we need to move towards a more collaborative approach, to let our guard down a little bit with our partners. This strikes me as quite pertinent here as well. A lot of the time, I think people stick to the scripts on sex because the idea of tapping into what we really want or asking our partners what they really want feels… well, scary! What if they disagree! What if they are shocked or disgusted? What if they… leave us. Fear of abandonment is our deepest, most primal insecurity so of course it feels terrifying to say to your partner “Hey you know that thing I’m supposed to like? I don’t like it. I would like this other thing.” Especially if that other thing is a little bit off-script.
We’re going to be looking at how to communicate about sex in more depth later on in the series but for now I wanted to go back to Katherine Angel. She talks in her book about how we need to be willing to be more open with one another, to risk feeling vulnerable, in order to have truly honest conversations about sex.
So how… how do we do that?
Katherine Angel 38:11
I don't really know. I mean, I feel like that that's what's so difficult. There are so there are so many understandable reasons why people brace themselves against vulnerability. And I, you know, and I don't think anyone has a duty to, to kind of be vulnerable, because often they can't, and, you know, that's people protect themselves against vulnerability for really understandable reasons. But in a way, I think that that was one of the really deep issues is, is how much we stigmatise uncertainty. You know, we really overvalue the idea of of knowing and I think that's a really important place to start is to think that there's no shame and, and not knowing what you are or who you are what you want to, you know, we're, we're very categorical about, about who we are about, you know, our sexualities or anything else. And I just, I suppose that was one thing, without kind of having made a conscious of myself, I think that's sort of what I wanted to do with this book was just to kind of make, make it possible for people not to feel ashamed about really not knowing anything about themselves sexually, or not knowing the things that they think they should know, or not knowing what they want, or because my hunch is, there's a lot of people who do feel that they're failing in some way, because they're not adhering to this kind of idealised, you know, figure of the confident sort of self-knowing subject.
Franki Cookney [voiceover] 39:49
I love what Katherine says about how we stigmatise uncertainty. I think that’s so true. So then… what if, we went into sex with curiosity, rather than expectation. Without any set ideas about what we were supposed to do or want, and just… took each sexual encounter as it came? And actually ASKED ourselves and our partners what we felt like doing, how we wanted to feel, what we wanted it to mean.
At the very start of this episode you heard the voice of Emily Nagoski, sex educator and author of the book Come As You Are, which encourages the reader to do exactly that. To let go of what they’ve been taught sex is supposed to look and feel like and tap into what’s true for them. We’ll be hearing more from Emily in Episode 5 but for now, I’m just going to share the rest of that clip...
Emily Nagoski 40:39
Okay, so I have the script. And there's an order of operations. So we need to tick off everything on the list in the right order. Okay, so we did the kissing, we did the breasts. We took off the clothes, there was oral sex on somebody, a penis went into somebody's part. Someone ejaculated, and we're done. We did it, we had... was that the sex? Yay!
The people who have great sex are the ones who have recognised that they can unlearn everything they were taught about gender and bodies and sex and pleasure and love and safety. And just pay really good attention to what's going on inside them, and what's happening with their partner or partners. And let whatever is true, be true and work with what they've got. Instead of comparing what they've got to what someone told them they're supposed to have.
[THEME MUSIC]
Franki Cookney [voiceover] 41:43
The mixed messages and faulty expectations we talked about today, feed into every aspect of sex, from our experiences of pleasure, to our levels of desire, the way we feel about our bodies and how HARD we find it to honestly talk about sex. We’ll be spending a lot of this podcast series examining how it happens and how we can begin to let go of them, starting on next week’s episode, which is all about pleasure.
Fran Bushe 42:04
My parents had these sofas. And I was really into horse riding. And so I think I spent quite a lot of time pretending to horse ride on the arms of this sofa. I think I probably much prefer riding a sofa end to having penetrative sex sometimes. Not that I've tried it as an adult, but maybe maybe I should get back in the saddle.
Franki Cookney [voiceover] 42:33
If you’re enjoying this series, or you have thoughts you want to share, I’d love to hear from you. Drop me an email at secondcirclepodcast@gmail.com or send me a voicenote, I bloody love voicenotes. Go to speakpipe.com/TheSecondCircle to record one now.
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The Second Circle is produced and hosted by me, Franki Cookney. My audio producer for this series was Anouszka Tate. My editors on this episode were Lucy Douglas and Rob Davies.
I could not have made this series without the incredible support of those who donated to my crowdfunder. Thank you to all of you. In particular I’d like to thank Rochelle Dancel, Rachel Wheeley, Christine Woolgar, Anna Richards, Quinn Rhodes, Hugh de la Bedoyere, Simon Eves, Clíodna Shanahan, Chris and Livvy, Paul Nixon, Tabitha Rayne, Douglas Greenshields, Tun Ewald, Jack, Laura Hunter-Thomas, and David Kreysa. You guys fucking rock.
[Ends]
Episode 2: Mixed messages and faulty scripts