In this first episode of ‘Second Opinion’ I give my alternative advice to someone asking for advice from another advice columnist. Here is the original advice. https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2024/mar/12/my-wife-refuses-to-end-affair-she-enjoys-the-sex-what-should-i-doI chat about the background to newspaper advice columns, and why this on…

Hey! My question is about transitioning and sex.First some background information: My partner is non-binary and I'm genderqueer. Both are assigned female at birth. My partner's "gender journey" has been difficult, but I think they are finally coming into their own (they have been having trans affirming medical care). We have been together for six y…

"Background: I am a queer nonbinary person, in a relationship with another queer nonbinary person. In this case it's relevant to note that we both are people with vulvas. I’ve had lots of sexual experience with men with penises before this relationship but I haven’t for the last few years. I now find myself dreaming about it, especially when I’m ov…

I dated someone who was about to become a spiritual leader / teacher a decade ago and completely left the religion. I can’t help but think their first love was God. He never been in a relationship and had said ‘I don’t know how to love one person let alone more right now’ when speaking of polyamory. He has a lot of shame and had a alot of sex outsi…

Hi Justin,Thanks for making such and thoughtful and insightful podcast. I just saw your message, and I have a Q that you may be able to use. Which is - why, now that I’m in a healthy and supportive relationship (for a couple of years now) do I still feel hurt, angry, confused etc. about an ex that I dated for only a few months, over three years ago…

"Hey good afternoon!I have a question that could be easily summarized as 'How to deal with "fomo" in non-monogamous/poly/RA relationships?'. (Fomo: fear of missing out.)And to give a bit more information:When I was in a polyamorous relationship for over a year I noticed I sometimes struggled with complicated feelings around missing out on (importan…

My problem is around polyamory and non-hierarchy. Specifically, how to deal with loving or caring about some partners more, or feeling more strongly for them, while maintaining a non-hierarchical relationship style. I currently have three partners, one long distance. One of the two local partners recently mentioned that they might move away, and ra…

"Hi Justinmy favourite episode of yours and Meg-John's is 'disagreeing with people'. I've listened over 10 times. Despite this I still find myself getting into pointless heated discussions/arguments that leave me very upset specifically about trans issues but could be any marginalised group. This is in person one to one, not online, I don't respond…

Just a quick advice episode this week as I feel like I've talked a lot about orgasms lately on the show. But first there's some really lovely correspondence about when you, the assemblage, feel like the body without organs. More of this is particularly welcome! https://linktr.ee/culturesexrelPar Justin Hancock

“I often struggle with unpicking what of my feelings is really 'mine' and what's internalised homophobia/transphobia/sexism/sex negativity etc. As a result I really struggle to trust myself, and become anxious, worrying that I'm unconsciously repeating harmful patterns. I know that identities aren't fixed, that we're all constantly evolving and all…

Sex Ed in the UK and MeOur wonderful Patrons have had this for a few days already. Why not join them from just £1 a month? Suggest shows, join the Patreon, DM me directly and get 10% off my coaching service ... patreon.com/culturesexrelationships This one is about a brief history of sex ed in the UK over the last hundred years or so. Part way throu…

I have a safer sex protocol that consists of a set of good communication tick boxes and a set of medical/testing disclosure tick boxes and a spreadsheet for my partners to record their partners and activities they practise with each, testing status, barrier use, etc I then use some approximate quantification of risk for each partner.While I find my…

[If you have a question of your own, or would like me to give a Second Opinion of someone else’s advice, get in touch via the link tree here https://linktr.ee/culturesexrel ]“My question is about (changing) feelings of disgust in sexual contexts. My sense of disgust can change rapidly depending on context. For example, most of the time I really don…

I thought I'd do a reading of a couple of my articles from BISH that I've written about orgasms and then have an adult and theoretical rambling about them. They demonstrate really nicely how gendered sex discourses have produced orgasms in a very narrow (territorialised) way, and how unlearning our sexual knowledges is the key to enjoying it a bit …

I was joined by Greg Wolfman to talk about his excellent book 'Masculinities in the US Hangout Sitcom'. https://www.routledge.com/Masculinities-in-the-US-Hangout-Sitcom/Wolfman/p/book/9781032426211 (it's an academic book, so expensive, but there's a 20% off voucher at the website. Also Routledge sometimes have really huge sales on. They also publis…

I was thrilled to be joined by Jacob Bloomfield to talk about his excellent new book, 'Drag: A British History'. It tells the story of drag from 1870 to 1970 and I found it to be super entertaining and informative. I came to this as someone who was ambivalent about drag and I learnt so much. You can buy it from this affiliate link and then I get a …

I was delighted to be joined by Yvette Taylor to talk about her fascinating book Working Class Queers Time, Place and Politics. You can buy it from here https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745341026/working-class-queers/Par Justin Hancock

Patrons have had this show for a few days already. Sign up at patreon.com/culturesexrelationships from just £1 a month and support the show :-)My last advice show was popular. Send your questions through via the link in the bio and I will answer them! :-)The UK are having a round of allegations against public figures which centre around sexual ethi…

What if you have no problem making connections with people who are cute and engaging, but they are unavailable? My advice about how else we can see these moments of emergence and what we can do to bring reason and new stories into meeting people.I guess this is a companion piece to this podcast https://soundcloud.com/culturesexrelationships/how-to-…

This is a reading from my article I wrote for RSE folk but I think is relevant for CSR folk. I'm also really sick of hearing the bad takes about A***** T***.This article is in response to the questions I get about ‘what should we do about toxic masculinity influencers’. I complexify the idea of an individual having a singular ‘effect’. I argue that…

I was delighted to be joined by Laura Scaronne Bonhomme and Dr Michael Beattie who (together with co-author Skye Davies) wrote Gender Affirming Therapy. We talked about the need for this book right now. How trans and trans non-binary folk face such scarce resources and also an increasingly hostile and transphobic government. But also how the discou…

I was delighted to be joined by Sophie K Rosa for a chat about her excellent new book Radical Intimacy. We chatted about some of the emerging themes from the book: - the neoliberal self as produced by society and culture, - reflecting on Covid and how the lockdown policy reproduced common sense ideas about the nuclear family, mononormativity, and s…

I've done a reading of and around an article I've written for BISH this week about How To Get A Girlfriend, Boyfriend, or Themfriend. I've read it out but also talked around it to complexify it, chat a bit about some of the theory, and also why this isn't neoliberal advice but a line of flight to become 'other'. Could you please help me share the h…

Renowned sex therapist and educator Cyndi Darnell joined me to talk about her amazing book ‘Sex When You Don’t Feel Like It’. We critiqued the idea of libido itself, the importance of curiosity, the new three word model you should be using instead of GGG on Feeld, the importance of allowing the body to speak, why talking about problems is often not…

Here's an interview with Eleanor, about her amazing new book 'The Once and Future Sex'. We discuss the key themes of the book- about how the story of what it is to be a woman was told (and how this connects to power and hegemony), - where the beauty standard first came from and how women faced a double jeopardy of following them / not following the…

A listener asked me (via Patreon) to chat about Covid. The restrictions might be over, but Covid is still very much with us (and with others more than some). Why do we want to turn away from Covid? Why do we want to think we've 'beaten' the virus? Masks have gone, but does that mean that we've simply learnt nothing? I asked podcaster and storytelle…

This week I am grabbing some hashtag content from my other Patreon for BISH (https://www.bishuk.com/)and introducing you to my 'Train Yourself in RSE' resources. You can see this (and read the resource) here for free https://www.patreon.com/posts/train-yourself-1-70736726 If this is the kind of thing that you might be interested in doing here, I co…

I invited Scott Burnett back on the show (here's his first appearance last year when we talked about the manosphere https://soundcloud.com/culturesexrelationships/scott-burnett-masculinities-masturbation-and-no-fap). He co-wrote this excellent paper this year called ‘Breeders for race and nation’: gender, sexuality and fecundity in post-war British…

As you may have been hearing on recent podcasts, I’ve been training in solution focused therapy / coaching recently. I’ve been finding it pretty transformational, both for me personally but I’ve also found it really useful in work too. It’s a very postmodern practice, in that it just works. In the training that I’ve attended the trainers have been …

Latest episode is an expanded version of some of the stuff I've been writing lately for BISH (my website for over 14s) and for Mashable which you can read here https://mashable.com/article/porn-sites-viewers-workers For a blog post of this article you can head to the Patreon https://www.patreon.com/posts/72285998 and while you're there please consi…

Yes we're back with another Sex Jams and we're back with another George Michael song. Perhaps the horniest of his songs. Freeek! We're doing Freeek! 04 and the video is here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLnYPXTs9LY Patrons support the show and also get bits of bonus material, including the full length version of this podcast. Just £1 a month wou…

CN - I don't go into detail about abuse but the whole episode is (as the title suggests) about the relationship between what kink might do (for some people) and previous experiences of abuse. For the full blog post that goes with the episode, sign up at the Patreon and support the show. Or if you can't afford that but want to read the post, email m…

NB: it's 29th July 2022, so if you listen to this in a few weeks time you might want to check out my article at BISH below just in case the advice changes.Here's a quick episode about monkeypox: it's a chill and informative explainer. It's based on the article I wrote at BISH https://www.bishuk.com/safer-sex/monkeypox/ and also in the article I wro…

Here's the latest episode of Sex Jams with Dr Eleanor Janega and me, discussing a sex jam. Here is the video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrbFQEcpJ3A We talk about pretty interesting stuff. Why the ideal Sex Jam is actually John Cage. Two seed theory. How liberal notions of the self and sexuality come from the classical and medieval notions of s…

Here's an interview with Cory Cascalheira who was the lead writer of an academic paper called 'Curative Kink: Survivors of early abuse transform trauma through BDSM'. It's open access and I'd encourage you to read it because it's well interesting and I think very important. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/352440982_Curative_kink_Survivors_…

I chatted with Alfie Bown about his really superb new book Dream Lovers the Gamification of Relationships. It's packed with interesting ideas and theory but is also highly readable and fun. I learnt tons. I chat about the book in the introduction but you can also read more about it (and buy it if you can) at the Pluto Books website https://www.plut…

Here's an article that I wrote for my Patrons at patreon.com/culturesexrelationships and I've read out here. If you want to read the article then I've unlocked the post which you can find here https://www.patreon.com/posts/65416473 Please do consider supporting the show via Patreon or you can also find out about and support my other work, which you…

As I say in the introduction, I was thinking about her work when I was learning about the Sexuality Assemblage. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/258032851_The_Sexuality-Assemblage_Desire_Affect_Anti-Humanism This comes from the Deleuze and Guattari idea of the 'body without organs' which is just to say that our bodies and selves exist only …

My latest Ask Justin is another one where I read out the blog post I've written. Which makes this a shorter but more focused podcast. Yay shorter podcasts. This has been out for over a week already at the Patreon and they also get the blog post (with all the links I mention) and also other bonus material. I am going to start to do Patreon exclusive…

Here's part two of the interview I did with Jacob and Bonni about their amazing new book 'Event Horizon'. It's not going to make as much sense if you haven't listened to last week's episode first I don't think, but I don't like telling you what to do. In this part we talk about:- the idea of 'cuteness'- selfies (comparing selfies with Lacan's idea …

Event Horizon: Sexuality, Politics, Online Culture, and the Limits of CapitalismWhen our desires become the product of tech giants, what ways are there left for us to dream? in an age where Silicon Valley dictates what it means to innovate, a painless future, knowledge and enjoyment are fertile breeding grounds of political contestation. But it’s n…

It's another Ask Justin week and this time I'm reading out an article I've written which is available at patreon.com/culturesexrelationships 'I’ve Never Been Able To Orgasm.' There are a lot of aggregated ideas about sex and bodies in your question which I think would be useful to examine up close to see how much we can see them shifting. The way t…

I think many of us might agree that #MeToo has been an important and much needed movement. Putting consent, sexual violence, instutional power, and genderered power dynamics, into our everyday conversations. But in what way has it transformed our understandings of consent and justice, and the possibilities for sex. Probably not a lot. It has both u…

When we talk about porn it’s invariably about what effects it causes. What is it doing to our sexualities, what is it teaching kids about sex, and blaming it for hacking into and hijacking our desires. More interesting is to look at porn in culture just as we might look at any other media such as social media industries and streaming platforms. Wha…

Regular listeners of this podcast will know that we recently had Scott Burnett on the show to talk about his work on understanding online communities of men related to the No Fap movement, the manosphere, and the alt-right. His work charted these groups and some of the often dangerous and worrying views they espouse. In today’s show we are going to…

This week I chatted with the critically acclaimed, and multi award winner and nominee, podcaster Dave Pickering about podcasts.You will hear: - Dave doing an intro about their podcasts and history with them- why people might listen to them, what are the motivations- the danger of neoliberalism 'self improvement' and podcasts - the parasocial relati…

As many of us are getting used to opening up our lives again in the middle of a pandemic, we might start to feel different kinds of feelings and thoughts about how safe and comfortable we might feel. Being at the pub, cafe, theatre, cinema, meetings, conferences or protests now has a very different set of concerns or anxieties for many of us. Also …

We're back with another Sex Jams. This time it's the classic of the genre, Je t'aime (moi non plus). I love you (me neither). Dr Eleanor Janega and I (Justin Hancock) analyse it to death and ruin it for everyone. You're welcome! Dr J's blog is here https://going-medieval.com/ her Patreon is here https://www.patreon.com/GoingMedieval and her other e…

I've written a blog post to accompany this one which you can read over at the now unlocked Patreon post https://www.patreon.com/posts/56188508Par Justin Hancock

We're back with a Meg-John and Justin episode We chatted about:Why we haven’t talked about kink as different to any other erotic / sexual / sensual activity.How common kink is.How kink is still positioned as ‘not normal’ despite it being incredibly common.The weight of should stories of what is kink and how kink should be practised (and how this mi…