SHOW NOTES
In this episode, Phyllis talks with PhD student Tyler Escott (he/they/“whatever”) about sex, sex work, porn, and stigma. His thesis, Making and Managing the Discredited Victim: Reproduction of Sex Work Stigma in Canadian News Media, 2010-2019, was nominated for a university prize for its thorough & brilliant content & discourse analyses of how sex work gets discussed in the media. For the PhD, he’s shifted from looking at how sex work and sex workers get talked about to analyzing MILF Porn (you know, pornography about “Moms I’d Like to Fuck,” a term that emerged from the old classic 90’s film, American Pie). We tussle over hard hitting, gut punching questions like “but aren’t some sex workers exploited??” and “but isn’t some porn violent?” to try to break down binaries of good and bad and have a little fun for once! Sheesh!
Tyler earned a bachelor’s degree in Sociology at Toronto Metropolitan University (though they began as a pre-med major until seeing the light. Amen!). He’s currently a doctoral student in Feminist and Gender Studies after completing an MA in Sociology, both at the University of Ottawa under the supervision of yours truly. I failed to mention during this interview that Tyler has a really cute corgi named Harrison *heart eye emoji*.
CORRECTIONS
As clearly shown here, the hoodie from the Metcalf Fair said I *heart* Hot Moms not I *heart* MILFS.
LEARN MORE ABOUT:
WORKS CITED
Dworkin, Andrea. 1987. Intercourse. New York: Free Press.
Dworkin, Andrea. 1989. Pornography: Men Possessing Women. New York: Plume.
Escott, Tyler. 2024. “Making and Managing the Discredited Victim: Reproduction of Sex Work Stigma in Canadian News Media, 2010-2019.” Université d’Ottawa | University of Ottawa.
Federici, Silvia. 2004. Caliban and the Witch. New York: Autonomedia.
Goffman, Erving. 1963. Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity. Englewood Cliffs, N. J: Prentice-Hall.
Hrdy, Sarah Blaffer. 2009. Mothers and Others: The Evolutionary Origins of Mutual Understanding. 1st edition. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
MacKinnon, Catharine A. 1993. Only Words. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.
MacKinnon, Catherine A. 1989. “Sexuality, Pornography, and Method: “Pleasure under Patriarchy.” Ethics 99(2):314–46. doi: 10.1086/293068.
Paul Richter and Marlene Cimons. 1994. “Clinton Fires Surgeon General Over New Flap – Los Angeles Times.” Los Angeles Times, December 10.
Russell-Miller, Shannon. 2020. “‘Just Finish Already’: How the Grey Area of Sexual Consent Highlights Inequalities Inherent in Heterosexual Pleasure.” Université d’Ottawa / University of Ottawa.
Science Vs. 2018. “Sex Addiction: Are They Faking It?” April 5 on Science Vs. produced by Shruti Ravindran with help from Wendy Zukerman, along with Rose Rimler, Heather Rogers and Romilla Karnick; a Gimlet Media podcast. Running time: 30:25. https://gimletmedia.com/shows/science-vs/mehwg5
Stoakes, Emanuel, Chris Kelly, and Annie Kelly. 2015. “Revealed: How the Thai Fishing Industry Trafficks, Imprisons and Enslaves.” The Guardian, July 20.
TRANSCRIPT
This transcript was created automatically the Transcribe function in MS Word. In addition to lots of errors, you can also notice that the words porn and pornography were replaced with **** and ***********, respectively, as though they were swear words. This finding may need to be incorporated into future research of Tyler’s as we both found this fascinating!
00:00:01 Speaker 1
Hello and welcome to doing Social Research where I talk with some of my favorite people who do Social Research to dig into the cool projects they’re working on, along with the struggles and successes they’ve had in their careers. My goal is to help demystify research for students, help other researchers hear stories of others wins and losses, and provide a platform for.
00:00:21 Speaker 1
All the brilliant work of folks doing research in the humanities and social sciences.
00:00:25 Speaker 1
I’m your host, Phyllis Rippey, professor of sociology at the University of Ottawa and creator of the website doingsocialresearch.com. I’ve been teaching research methods for over 15 years, and I’ve carried out my own sociological research using both qualitative methods and advanced statistics. But today, we’re not here to talk about me. We are here to talk with Tyler as Scott about what we should be thinking about.
00:00:46 Speaker 1
Sects in terms of research and why we need to just sort of let ourselves think about sex.
00:00:51 Speaker 1
So Tyler is a current and former graduate student of mine. After getting a bachelor’s of sociology at Toronto Metropolitan University, Tyler came to the University of Ottawa to complete a Master of Arts in sociology with a specialization of feminist and gender studies. Working with yours truly, the thesis was entitled making and managing the discredited.
00:01:12 Speaker 1
Victim reproduction of sex work stigma and Canadian news media reports 2010 to 2019, and I’ll also say that even though another podcast guest I.
00:01:16
The report.
00:01:23 Speaker 1
Did amazing and was nominated for an award. Tyler also did amazing and was nominated for.
00:01:29 Speaker 1
Board and I just have to say, even though both of them did, that’s a very rare thing. And so it is like Tyler’s work is just absolutely phenomenal, phenomenal thesis. And I want everybody to read it and that he’s also begun a PhD at the University of Ottawa and Feminist and Gender Studies. And for this, he’s.
00:01:49 Speaker 1
Tentatively titled thesis is what’s a **** got to do with it? Mother figures in popular Internet *********** and embracing pleasure. So Tyler.
00:02:00 Speaker 1
Welcome to my podcast.
00:02:02 Speaker 2
Thanks so much for having me. I’m very excited. I’m a little flustered at that introduction. The level of kindness is absurd.
00:02:10 Speaker 1
It’s true. I’m just spitting facts here. This is not kindness. This is just truth. I want to ask what got you interested in studying sex as a research project?
00:02:22 Speaker 2
I basically am obsessed with pop culture and I notice that sex is absolute.
00:02:25
OK.
00:02:28 Speaker 2
Everywhere, but we seem to sidestep sex when studying pop culture. And then I realized we sidestep sex whenever we study anything. So I thought, let’s maybe turn into sex instead of turning away from it.
00:02:38 Speaker 1
Hmm.
00:02:43 Speaker 1
I love it. I love it.
00:02:44 Speaker 2
And focusing on it so deeply and at points very excitingly.
00:02:51 Speaker 1
Let’s start with your master’s thesis. Since that is a completed project, as much as a project ever is completed. So what did you?
00:02:58 Speaker 2
Do for that. So basically for the masters thesis I combined 2 forms of media analysis.
00:03:04 Speaker 2
Just looking at broad content as well as more micro discourse, trying to find the ways in which stigma was reproduced in news reporting about sex work policy and how these fit into very familiar narrative frames that show up in a lot of storytelling.
00:03:19 Speaker 1
Can you tell me a little bit more why the time period that you talked about?
00:03:24 Speaker 1
So you were looking at these news reports from 2010 to 2020. Ish, right? It’s 20.
00:03:32 Speaker 2
Yeah, basically that decade of the 20.
00:03:33 Speaker 2
10s Yeah, why that decade?
00:03:35 Speaker 2
I was focused on Canadian news reporting and during that time starting in technically 2009, but they really ramped up in 2010. A lot of changes to sex work policy in Canada and this really monumental court case called the Bedford.
00:03:51 Speaker 2
Case that went to the Supreme Court, where the Supreme Court decided to side with sex workers finally and attempt to get sex work provisions removed from the Criminal Code. And then.
00:04:01 Speaker 1
So what was it? Sorry to interrupt you. So what was it before then? What was like the law like is sex.
00:04:06 Speaker 1
Work, legal or illegal? Like what? Tell me. Really. Like, talk to me like I’m 5, but don’t talk to five year olds. Maybe about.
00:04:14 Speaker 2
Sex workers sex work was technically legal, but activities surrounded by sex work was illegal, so you couldn’t operate what was called a body house, which is any building that sex work occurs within.
00:04:27 Speaker 2
You also couldn’t live off the avails of what the Criminal Code called Prostitution, so any money that you made from sex work could not be used and could not be shared like so confusingly ambiguous and.
00:04:41 Speaker 2
It’s known as like quasi legal sex work, where there were the act itself was legal, but then everything you got from it was illegal and some of the spaces.
00:04:51 Speaker 1
OK, so you could. So could you could you pay someone for sex work?
00:04:56 Speaker 2
At that time, yes. OK. But then after the Bedford case, the government had to act to either change or entirely decriminalize sex work. OK, they choose to switch around the criminal provision.
00:05:08 Speaker 2
Items and decided to criminalize the purchase rather than the act of.
00:05:12 Speaker 1
Sex. So you had said a minute ago that this was in the court ruled in favor of sex workers. So how does that like, what were the sex workers fighting for and what did? What? What happened with the?
00:05:24 Speaker 2
Case they basically argued that these Criminal Code provisions.
00:05:28 Speaker 2
Were against their charters rights and they said it was unconstitutional that they had such.
00:05:36 Speaker 2
Restrictions on their work, and so the court at the end of the day accepted.
00:05:40 Speaker 1
This, but they criminalized the purchase.
00:05:43 Speaker 1
Of sex work. Is that right?
00:05:44 Speaker 2
Yeah, so after this, the Canadian government at that time headed by Stephen Harper decided to introduce what’s called the protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act, where they treated legal sex work with human trafficking violations alongside of one another and framed those that purchased sex.
00:06:04 Speaker 2
In a similar way to framing human traffic.
00:06:06 Speaker 1
Others right now, that doesn’t feel like it sides with the.
00:06:09 Speaker 2
Sex workers? Not at all. It just kind of like reproduces this idea that sex work is inherently exploitative, which it is not. It’s. And that was really the point of my thesis. I wanted to really make a statement that the sex work that was being.
00:06:18 Speaker 1
Grace.
00:06:27 Speaker 2
Kind of stepped around in this policy, didn’t consider the lives of sex workers whatsoever and just framed them as these exploited beings that had new agency.
00:06:38 Speaker 1
You were saying talking about stigma and I think like, that’s kind of a word people use a lot, but you like define it and talk a little bit about sort of the sociological understanding of stigma and where who talked about these ideas and tell me a little bit more about stigma and how that relates to.
00:06:55 Speaker 2
Sex workers. Yeah. Stigma has kind of been.
00:06:58 Speaker 2
A little popularized in a way that overseas.
00:07:00 Speaker 2
Revise it. But the sociological foundation of it comes from Irving Goffman, and he just simply defines it as a discredited attribute of one’s identity. So in any situation, somebody’s identity or specific marker of their identity is different from what is considered normal in that space, and that will attach discrediting.
00:07:20 Speaker 2
Attributes and they will be stigmatized. That’s very much oversimplifying like 150 page.
00:07:26 Speaker 2
Book.
00:07:28 Speaker 1
No, but I think that’s perfect. So a sex worker could be.
00:07:31 Speaker 1
Mom, she could be a pillar of her community in every other way, but the part of her identity that is a sex worker is discredited and also isn’t it that that becomes sort of totalizing of her, that part of your identity takes on like a master identity or whatever? Am I remembering Goffman right, you know?
00:07:50 Speaker 1
Better than me?
00:07:51 Speaker 2
Yes, yeah, it basically, I always just very Simply put it, they’re defining attribute where this one part of their identity Trump’s all.
00:08:00 Speaker 1
Right, exactly. So for sex workers, they are only a prostitute. Or can we also just take one second to define sex work? What are we talking about here? Because that, I think, is like an important part of your thesis too.
00:08:11 Speaker 2
Yeah. So I use the word sex work just as an umbrella term for any sort of sexual labour, really. Or any exchange of monetary value or something similar for sex. So I always whenever I talk to people about sex work, I like to make this kind of connection between this umbrella fits everything.
00:08:31 Speaker 2
From escorting to St. based prostitution to stripping, but also to.
00:08:35 Speaker 2
Like a sugar relationship.
00:08:37 Speaker 1
Where? Ohh, like a sugar daddy. Yes. Oh yeah.
00:08:41 Speaker 2
That’s often not thought of as a form of sex work, but in some way you are generating profit.
00:08:46 Speaker 1
Totally. When you say marriage is a form of sex work.
00:08:46 Speaker 2
And.
00:08:49 Speaker 2
If you want to get really.
00:08:50 Speaker 2
Fun about it? Yes.
00:08:52 Speaker 1
I always want to get really fun about it, so we know what sex work is. We know that it’s absolutely stigmatized. We know that from the literature. And So what was your research question? So what were you trying?
00:09:04 Speaker 2
To figure out so I basically wanted to know how this sex work.
00:09:09 Speaker 2
Related stigma was reproduced then in order to answer this research.
00:09:13 Speaker 2
Christian, I employed one of my favorite methods, which is any sort of media analysis, and using the largest Canadian publication that is widely read, also minorly government funded, the CBC as a means of looking at how these structures of stigma may kind of introduce themselves within to the reporting itself.
00:09:35 Speaker 1
So how how did you do that?
00:09:37 Speaker 2
So I use two approaches because I don’t like deciding on one method whatsoever. I combine something called content analysis, which is looking for broad patterns in any sort of media with discourse analysis, which looks at the specific language that’s used, and I paired them both together to basically analyze 100 news reports and.
00:09:57 Speaker 2
Behind these both broad and micro patterns of stigma.
00:10:00 Speaker 1
So can you just talk about like how you collected the data, just like quickly?
00:10:04 Speaker 1
But how did you collect the data? How did you decide on which articles that you were like? How did you pick those hundred? And then what did you do with?
00:10:12 Speaker 2
Those hundred? Yeah. So I basically started with finding a number that was both representative but not overbearing. So I looked at this range of dates. Any report that was published by the CBC that included sex work.
00:10:25 Speaker 2
Was included in a population, and then I whittled it down to 100.
00:10:29 Speaker 1
Just by like random random selection in Excel or something.
00:10:31 Speaker 2
Yes, I used a very simple number generator that I googled and I chose 100 because the reports I decided on had certain criteria that they had to be long and it totaled to about 85,000 words.
00:10:44 Speaker 2
So 100 is definitely still a monumental task, and I basically combed through them for language and words, and it created a coding frame where we looked for specific terms to find those broader patterns and then paid attention to how they were.
00:11:00 Speaker 1
Used so you did a kind of like quantitative summary adding.
00:11:04 Speaker 1
Fill up then you also did this qualitative analysis and then tell me a little bit more about the discourse analysis and then I promise we will get to the findings because.
00:11:12 Speaker 1
It’s so interesting.
00:11:13 Speaker 2
Bye.
00:11:14 Speaker 2
Basically, the discourse analysis was all about not only the language that was on the text, but how it was employed. And this is when I started blending theory with methods and they became almost unable to exist without one another in the in the context of this project.
00:11:28 Speaker 1
Amazing. And that was on like a smaller like a sub sample of like, yes.
00:11:33 Speaker 1
Right. Yeah, right. That we’re sort of key.
00:11:34 Speaker 2
Is 10 instead.
00:11:37 Speaker 2
Ones, yeah, they were the most they had the most frequently observed patterns that showed up in the content analysis.
00:11:45 Speaker 1
OK, So what?
00:11:46 Speaker 1
Did you find?
00:11:48 Speaker 2
So I found that sex work stigma used in news reporting was dependent on one of three narrative frames where sex workers were either framed as the villains.
00:11:57 Speaker 2
The victims or the heroes within a story and depending on that, your level of stigma, whether it’s explicit or covert, was determined by this narrative.
00:12:06 Speaker 1
Frame. I love it. And you barred that from the.
00:12:09 Speaker 1
Work of me who barred it from the work of Paul Surrette. I’ll just say because I love giving credit to Paul Surrette and Kelly Gordon, who wrote an awesome book about abortion. But So what you’re saying is that sex workers are being framed or sort of characterized to use another word as heroes, victims, or villains because they’re one that they were characterized as more than another. I can guess. I mean, I read it.
00:12:12 Speaker 2
Yes.
00:12:30 Speaker 1
But like one could guess. So tell me more.
00:12:33 Speaker 2
Yeah, so basically, explicit stigma showed up a lot in villain narrative framing. However, this was not super frequently observed. The most aggressively present was this narrative frame of the victim that often employed very covert levels of stigma and tended to talk about consensual sex work with human trafficking interchangeably.
00:12:53 Speaker 2
They’re basically defined as the exact same thing within this new.
00:12:56 Speaker 2
Frame and then the narrative frame of the hero showcased a lot more focus on sex workers discussing sex work and actively opposing sex work, stigma. And so my final argument was that this was a form of stigma management and a way to oppose this discredited identity.
00:13:14 Speaker 1
Interesting. I love that. I love research.
00:13:17 Speaker 1
That really focuses on the people who are being shot on, not saying I will not be shot on. There’s this the way to manage the stigma is also a form of resistance to say like I am not just a victim here and I have agency.
00:13:32 Speaker 2
Was that? Yeah, it was definitely a form of resistance. And you also saw a very different form of discourse begin to take form when you actually spoke to sex workers, where their work was framed much more casually. And it was spoken about almost humorously. And the real critique came from the difficulties that policy.
00:13:53 Speaker 2
Has on their work rather than the work.
00:13:55 Speaker 1
Itself interest. Who would be the people quoted in the news stories that are doing the framing, like the villain or victim framing?
00:14:02 Speaker 2
So I found a lot of police, government officials and anti human trafficking activists. And then when you actually speak to sex workers, they tend to be quoted more frequently.
00:14:13 Speaker 1
Now here is one I’m gonna ask you a hardball question. So this is gonna punch you right in the gut. So what about people who might say?
00:14:23 Speaker 1
That well, we’re only hearing the voices of empowered sex workers and the.
00:14:29 Speaker 1
That how do we know that isn’t just like a few super Dynamo sex workers, but like, there’s 95% of sex workers are like cowering in their victimhood and the police are actually saving them. And these sex workers are, like, papering over the reality. What do you have to say to to that?
00:14:48 Speaker 1
Argument.
00:14:49 Speaker 2
I’d say there’s kind of two.
00:14:50 Speaker 2
Different things within that singular argument. One the reason you don’t hear from a lot of sex workers is stigma. It’s an incredibly stigmatized form of labour, where disclosure is often quite dangerous, wherein the work itself is not the.
00:15:04 Speaker 2
Danger. But once you are labeled or discredited through being a sex worker, that is when the real danger comes in the second-half, human trafficking does exist. That is a reality. However, we’ve become so used to very exaggerated kind of statistics that have no citations or backing and really elevated discourse.
00:15:24 Speaker 2
To maintain.
00:15:25 Speaker 2
And this marginalization of sex workers, that it’s really difficult to really discern, like what exactly the argument is.
00:15:33 Speaker 1
There. Did you also look at like census data, there was something you remember at the defence you were talking about about like stat, can measurements of occupations.
00:15:45 Speaker 2
Yeah, I was talking about kind of the transformative potential of including sex work and research where the Canadian census data.
00:15:54 Speaker 2
Doesn’t actually have a subcategory when looking at occupation for any sort of sex work, and you’re put into the other category.
00:16:02 Speaker 1
Yeah, so who knows if there’s 95% of it’s impossible to know cause nobody is collecting the data on it. And maybe that’s also partly because it’s stigmatized like this. Stigma becomes this sort of like.
00:16:13 Speaker 1
Cycle and also I think it’s not helping people who are actually victims of trafficking. It’s the career, the occupation, the job is is so stigmatized that nobody will talk about it. Nobody will measure it and research it. It’s like we’re.
00:16:27 Speaker 1
Addressing issues of.
00:16:29 Speaker 1
Human trafficking, with the blindfold on, where we can’t even like, we don’t even know what it is that we’re doing it like makes it harder. Is that fair to say?
00:16:37 Speaker 2
Yeah, totally. It makes it harder because there’s no focus. Yeah, because we’re focusing on 2 completely different things. We somehow make them some amalgamation of both. That helps neither.
00:16:48 Speaker 1
Yeah, exactly. And I also, I think we talked before like there was that article that I saw somewhere when we were like in an early conversation.
00:16:56 Speaker 1
Like it totally changed my thinking on and like blew my because I would definitely you know, when I was like, taking women’s studies in the 90s, it was like I remember the video about like **** is always like bad and like everything and we’ll talk about **** too. All of this is like bad for women and it’s all evil. And yet there’s all kinds of occupations, I think that.
00:17:16 Speaker 1
Men engage in that have forms of human trafficking, and yet nobody is going to say, well, we shouldn’t do that. So like phishing, like I saw this article in a newspaper that was talking about like this problem of, like, human trafficking in these like cross.
00:17:29 Speaker 1
Ocean vessels where there’s like fishermen because they’re, like, get become basically indentured servants, where they have to get a, you know, they have to pay for whatever to get on the ship. And then they’re basically sometimes literally change to the ship in order to, like, finish repaying it. And that’s like, but nobody is out there being like, Oh my God, we gotta do something about fishing.
00:17:49 Speaker 1
Fishing is unsafe for men, it vulnerable men are getting trafficked as fishermen on the high seas, so we really need to end fishing and.
00:18:00 Speaker 1
In it. That doesn’t make any sense.
00:18:02 Speaker 2
Yeah, because it doesn’t have The Dirty word connected to it, which is sucks.
00:18:06 Speaker 1
Let’s talk a little bit more about that. So like, why do you think people are so afraid of sex even though everybody wants to do it and everybody, like is trying to? I mean, maybe not everybody that are like we have to acknowledge their a romantic asexual.
00:18:20 Speaker 1
People out there and we love you and.
00:18:22 Speaker 1
God bless a lot of people though, enjoy having sex. So why is it so hard? Do you think for people to to talk about or?
00:18:30 Speaker 2
Think about it. Well, I think kind of tying in a point that came out in my thesis was morality. We’ve been so swallowed by this idea of what is morally good and the notion that shame is acceptable.
00:18:42 Speaker 2
That it’s just erased the ability to talk about sex, let alone have sex, or have a constructive any sort of action with sex.
00:18:51 Speaker 1
Yeah, in your reading of the literature, where, why? Why is sex shameful? Why is it something that is stigmatized?
00:19:01 Speaker 2
If I had a direct answer to that question, I don’t think we’d ever need to study sex cuz.
00:19:05 Speaker 2
Kind of snap her fingers and solve it, but it’s really I kind of point to two very different groups. There’s the very kind of Christian religious.
00:19:16 Speaker 2
Very conservative mindset that sex is wrong. Sex is sin. But then also we had during the 1970s and 80s, a lot of progressive movements, including feminists and as a feminist, it breaks my heart, say.
00:19:29 Speaker 2
It.
00:19:29 Speaker 2
Who started conflating certain sex acts with?
00:19:33 Speaker 1
Violence. Yeah, and started working with Christians.
00:19:36 Speaker 1
Evangelical Christians in a very weird like marriage of social movements, but.
00:19:42 Speaker 1
But even before like.
00:19:43 Speaker 1
Why? And maybe this is like an impossible question, but I feel like I want to dig in just for a minute. What purpose does it serve even for Christians? I’m trying to get you to talk about, like maybe Sylvia Federici, a little bit. Who is, you know, one of my favorite authors, a little bit about, like, history of how we conceptualize sex work in particular. Can you just talk a little bit about that?
00:20:03 Speaker 1
And then and then let’s talk about the feminists and your favorite feminist, Catherine McKinnon.
00:20:09 Speaker 2
Oh yeah.
00:20:11 Speaker 2
My my stand account for Catherine McKinnon will come to light.
00:20:16 Speaker 2
Yeah, basically I always point to the word control where so many structures of power realized as history progressed, sex is perhaps something that is transformative, that can be used as a form of resistance. So we must contain it. We must control it. And where Federici’s work is really cool, so that it ties it to the witch hunt.
00:20:36 Speaker 2
And where you really see patriarchies kind of attempt to swallow in anything that isn’t able to be controlled into this cage and eventually burning the witch.
00:20:48 Speaker 1
Yeah. And I think also like to me, what’s so interesting too about her booking, it’s called the the book we’re talking about is Caliban and the witch. And it’s all about primitive.
00:20:56 Speaker 1
Accumulation too, so it’s like early, early capitalism, like when.
00:21:00 Speaker 1
People were just starting to like like capitalists were starting to exist and prior to that it was, you know, there were landed elites like the Kings and the Knights and the Lords. And then there was the church. And so there was this sort of this grappling for power between the emerging bourgeoisie who are like owners of the means of production.
00:21:20 Speaker 1
Whatever those means might be as limited as they were at the time, with the sort of church and and the landed elite. And so we also with the church, there was this battle between a competing religious movement of the heretics. So the.
00:21:35 Speaker 1
Heretics were super like free love and they were all kind of like Poly and into sex. And so I think there’s also an element of that’s not fair cause this is like not what your thesis was about, but not to put you on the spot. But it’s to me super fascinating that it becomes this sort of fight for control. Like, exactly what you’re saying.
00:21:56 Speaker 1
Like this fight for control over who gets to decide what’s good.
00:22:00 Speaker 1
What’s right, what’s moral? But it also became this way to, like, hold back a social movement that was against the teachings of the church in general, which I think also then speaks to again your superhero favorite feminist ever Catherine McKinnon. Cause we start to see, like we can see that happening again in the like in the late 1970s, early 1980s. So maybe tell us why you love.
00:22:20 Speaker 1
Catherine McKinnon just kidding.
00:22:21 Speaker 2
Yeah, I’ll kind of tie both together because they go hand in hand. The reason Federici’s work was so illuminating to me is that sex work was actually state sanctioned.
00:22:29 Speaker 2
The Middle Ages as a deterrent for ************, so it still goes back to shaming sex, but kind of taking that idea as this form of shame came. The feminists of the 70s and 80s. And again one of my least favorite theorists on this planet. I know she has some, like, positive contributions when it comes to the patriarchal notion of law.
00:22:51 Speaker 1
Nobody’s in affect, as my sister says.
00:22:53 Speaker 2
Exactly. But she basically decided that any form of **** is basically filmed violence, and it was only meant for men to at one point in her book, put their ***** in their hands and watch the exploitation of women. So that’s kind of ridiculous to me because.
00:23:11 Speaker 2
It’s a similar argument to video games cause school shootings.
00:23:15 Speaker 1
So, I mean, men do put their ***** in their hands and look at ****. So what? What’s the problem with her argument? What’s like, why is ****? Why?
00:23:22 Speaker 2
Is she wrong? She basically uses this morality discourse where she thinks because you know, a woman is sexually liberated.
00:23:31 Speaker 2
And filmed being so she must be exploited in that.
00:23:35 Speaker 1
Process OK. Another hard hitting question that’s gonna punch in.
00:23:38 Speaker 1
That is, there not portrayals of violence and ****, are there not images of images of women being hurt or choked or like slapped? Is that not violence against women? I mean, like you already said, the thing about school shootings, but maybe tease that out more for.
00:23:57 Speaker 2
Me. Yeah, so.
00:23:59 Speaker 2
Basically, a lot of the imagery that you’re talking about in *********** is just non normative sex acts like there is a whole list of sexual acts that people are into a whole list of kinks that may seem kind of difficult to understand. However, in making ***********.
00:24:18 Speaker 2
There is a consensual process that runs the filming of ***********, especially if it’s studio in our current day, a lot of self produced *********** makes you also sign consent forms where you know exactly the activities that will happen. So you’re basically seeing.
00:24:36 Speaker 2
Just kind of sex acts that question what we think sex should look like. However, some people very much enjoy that and that’s why that **** is made. There is an audience.
00:24:48 Speaker 1
Do you think that I mean again it like goes back to the like phishing argument. It’s like so, you know there can be bad actors in any.
00:24:57 Speaker 1
Like capitalism is violence too, right? I mean, like, working in a factory is violence like people get injured, like people get hurt. Like there are a lot of things that people do are unsafe. It doesn’t necessarily mean that we want to say anyone who does that is bad or that anyone who does that work should never be allowed to do it. We need to, like, put in, as you just said, consent.
00:25:17 Speaker 1
And make it so that it’s something that people are, you know, to try to limit the exploitation that can happen. But I think as you were saying before, the more something is stigmatized, the more it sort of goes underground, the less that we can try to make it.
00:25:29 Speaker 1
Be a a safer workspace for the workers is that?
00:25:32 Speaker 2
Fair. Yeah, definitely. And that’s why I sometimes get very frustrated when people make the argument that **** is violent because in a similar way that so many people conflate human trafficking with sex work, a lot of people conflate *********** with sex abuse material, and they are two very different things.
00:25:50 Speaker 1
And let’s let’s dig into that a little bit cuz I know like you have had I.
00:25:55 Speaker 1
Want to give you?
00:25:55 Speaker 1
Space to like respond because I know you have had all kinds of interesting feedback from students when you’ve been a teaching assistant or when you’re, like, aiming classes. Like, what are, what are the kinds of arguments that people make, and if you.
00:26:08 Speaker 1
Like you know how sometimes we’re like, I wish I would have said, but maybe you’re very articulate, so maybe you always said exactly what you wanted to say. But like, what do you like? What are the things, the critique people making what do?
00:26:18 Speaker 2
You want to say back to those people? Yeah. I mean, part of the problem is like, I mean, thank you for the articulate. I also find myself somewhat confrontational. So I’m totally down to debate when students bring.
00:26:28 Speaker 2
These ideas are but the big focus is either on exploitation, which I always remind them you are looking at such a small subset of the population that, especially in the context of the work that I’m talking about, is not entirely relevant. That needs to be its own.
00:26:45 Speaker 2
The second always seems to come with **** addiction. That is the big topic everyone tends to bring up, and I remind them a lot of the work on **** addiction is very similar to the work on any sort of addiction where it’s quite psychological. Sample sizes are very small. But also I remind them, if you were to treat any addiction.
00:26:48
Ohh.
00:27:06 Speaker 2
Do you shut down the industry or do you look at it individually?
00:27:10 Speaker 1
If it is the 1920s in the United States, then yes, you shut down the entire industry. But I think we all know that that did not prohibition was not successful.
00:27:21 Speaker 1
In curbing drinking or violence.
00:27:21 Speaker 2
And.
00:27:24 Speaker 2
Not at all. And the idea that some **** prohibition would solve all of the problems would.
00:27:29 Speaker 2
Cause a lot of very unsafe practices.
00:27:32 Speaker 1
Totally. It’s interesting. You know, I’ll just say I read an article that in Indonesia, if you like, search for ****. It won’t let you find anything. It’s like, really, you can’t find it. And so I think it be really interesting. I mean, there’s so many other factors and so many other variables.
00:27:49 Speaker 1
That could be a future project that could be interesting to see, like where there are **** bands, like what? What kinds of freaky things come out or what kinds of free things don’t come out. Or are you telling me that, like, there’s no violence in Indonesia? Like I adore Indonesia and it’s an amazing, beautiful place, but like.
00:28:05 Speaker 1
There has definitely been some problems of violence and corruption in in that country and I it’s not as though like there’s no **** there. And so the patriarchy like left, it’s like this idyllic feminist haven for for all you.
00:28:20 Speaker 2
Know. Yeah. And that’s why that argument does tend to aggravate me a little bit because again, like we tie.
00:28:26 Speaker 2
Next to something and suddenly it’s this very big scary problem that we have to address by shutting everything down and shaming people into the corner. And we just spoke about the state sanctioned sex work in the 14th and 15th century. It was to quell ************.
00:28:42 Speaker 2
The idea of prohibiting **** because you are too focused on watching it every hour of the day, ************ like it’s kind of a return to 500 years.
00:28:50 Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah.
00:28:53 Speaker 1
Ago. Yeah. Yeah, that’s interesting. I actually one of my favorite podcasts is this one called science versus where it’s.
00:29:02 Speaker 1
Very.
00:29:04 Speaker 1
It’s like they’re they’re science people. And Wendy Zuckerman, who’s Australian. There’s my really bad Australian accent for my for my Australian friends out there. Anyway, she did one on **** addiction. It’s really good where it’ll be like science versus anti vaxxers or science versus whatever. So this is like science versus.
00:29:24 Speaker 1
Where they really dig deep into like, what is the science on this issue and my it’s been a while since I listened to it. But.
00:29:30 Speaker 1
It was seemed pretty clear that, like ****, addiction is not really a thing. It’s that shame around ************ is so strong that that people who think they have sex addiction actually masturbate and engage in sex about as much as any other average person. They just think people are doing it less than they are, which I find.
00:29:50 Speaker 1
Fascinate.
00:29:52 Speaker 2
Yeah, that is really interesting.
00:29:53 Speaker 1
Yeah, it’s like people mastering a lot. So it’s just like if people like, oh, my God, I’m doing all the time. It’s like, no, you’re you’re normal dude. It’s like you’re just 17. And that’s like, you know, like, that’s just what people do. Look at Bonobo monkeys, evolutionary anthropologist bluffer Hardy.
00:30:11 Speaker 1
Talks about this, but I think that’s who talks about it, but that’s we.
00:30:16 Speaker 1
Are extremely close to Bonobo monkeys, but it doesn’t get talked about in research very much because they are hyper sexual. They have sex all the time, but it’s like they’re they’re constantly ************. They’re so it’s like you’re less likely to see them in zoos because you want, like the zoo. It’s like you want little kids to come by. You don’t want to see all these like monkeys.
00:30:36 Speaker 1
Jerking off like in behind the glass cage because of the shame around sex, we are limiting our understanding of human evolution and primatology. I find it so fascinating how much these kinds of social, cultural ideas.
00:30:51 Speaker 1
Are influencing what’s supposed to be quote UN quote, objective science or truth you?
00:30:56 Speaker 2
Know. Yeah. And that’s why we still have, for some reason, celibate sucks out, right? You really encourage. Don’t you dare have sex, or else you’ll get diseases and die, right. Which is just so ridiculous and a way to kind of move people away from having sex, when in reality it pushes them into unsafe.
00:31:12 Speaker 2
Practices.
00:31:13 Speaker 1
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I still remember when I think it was Joycelyn Elder, she was the thing was under Bill Clinton in the 90s. She was the surgeon general and she was trying to advocate for teaching about ************ in schools. And it was like the evangelicals were like no ******* way. Like, this is not happening.
00:31:31 Speaker 2
Yeah, like sex is just something that happens.
00:31:35 Speaker 2
And like I really I my goal in life is just to demystify sex, because, like, it’s not something to be afraid of. It’s not something that has to happen with other people. It’s something to bring you pleasure. And then if you also share that pleasure with other people, ensure they are also having pleasure because you don’t want asymmetrical, like orgasm encounters.
00:31:55 Speaker 2
That sucks for the other person, right? But at the end of the day, it’s pleasurable. It’s fun. That’s.
00:31:57 Speaker 1
Rights. Rights.
00:32:01
What?
00:32:02 Speaker 1
It I know. So let’s talk a bit about what you’re doing. Talk about taboos. You’re now talking about milk ****.
00:32:09 Speaker 1
So, mom, I’d like to ****. So milcs. I remember seeing American Pie, the movie, I think, is that that’s where that came right that was.
00:32:16 Speaker 2
That’s where it was popularized. It was used in, I believe, a study at UCLA once before that in studying leave like 16 to 19 year old men. But then it was taken up by American Pie as a way to describe the eternal ****, Jennifer Coolidge.
00:32:35 Speaker 1
God, I love her.
00:32:36 Speaker 1
I always forget that it was Jennifer Coolidge. Oh, my God.
00:32:39 Speaker 2
Yeah. Leaning back in a chair in leopard prints, that’s that’s your mill.
00:32:39 Speaker 1
I love she’s the best.
00:32:42 Speaker 1
Oh my God.
00:32:44 Speaker 1
Oh my God, my ****. You’re looking at milk.
00:32:49 Speaker 1
****. So not just the this sort of cultural idea, although I did send you that I was at the Metcalf fair last weekend, a little country fair and they had like this, you know, all the like ****. You can buy that, you know, like whatever sweatshirts and T-shirts with just hilarious. Thanks. But one I really almost wanted to buy it, but it said I heart.
00:33:10 Speaker 1
***** and so instead I just took a picture and sent.
00:33:12 Speaker 1
It to you.
00:33:12 Speaker 1
But like it’s right. But I was like, I kind of want to wear that. Why are you interested in this? Like, what is the deal with like? Because also again I just let’s say I read an article on this, but like there’s a lot of **** out there that’s like.
00:33:13 Speaker 2
Levitt.
00:33:27 Speaker 1
Step brother step. Sister Moms, what is with this? Sort of like incest **** stuff?
00:33:36 Speaker 2
So like I have so many parts to this answer. OK, yeah. First milk **** is the most popular for the last decade. **** mom and step mom.
00:33:48 Speaker 2
We’re all in the top five search terms on many, many ****.
00:33:51 Speaker 1
Now, how do you know that? Where did you?
00:33:53 Speaker 1
Get that information.
00:33:53 Speaker 2
There are reports that a lot of these websites, like ******* for example, will release at the end of the year of most popular search terms. Even search terms by territory? No. So you can see, like, uh, what were people in Louisiana searching for in 2019 and?
00:34:07 Speaker 1
Oh my God. Oh my God. Is is dilf a thing like.
00:34:09 Speaker 2
And yes.
00:34:13
No.
00:34:13 Speaker 2
How does popular everyone just wants to **** their mom?
00:34:16 Speaker 1
Tell me more.
00:34:18 Speaker 2
So, like very popular, I mean, so many of these videos have over 100 million views. And so when you look at popular ***********, it’s hard to even consider that without looking at the ****. But also you are looking at a subject that incest is not only like socially taboo, it’s also illegal.
00:34:37 Speaker 1
And I kind of am OK with.
00:34:39 Speaker 1
Personal well, yeah, like, and I also.
00:34:40 Speaker 2
It’s a means of like ensuring that birth defects don’t happen.
00:34:45 Speaker 1
Yeah. And I also think the power sexual harassment is real. It’s like, I think it’s very problematic when someone who has more power engages in a sexual relationship with someone with less power. There’s so much space for manipulation and controlling of what it ***** with your head of. Like, what is true? What is.
00:35:03 Speaker 1
Untruth or secrecy around it, but I don’t think it’s just like to me that’s very different than like sex work.
00:35:10 Speaker 2
Yeah. And that’s why **** is so kind of great, because it’s just a space to live out Fanta.
00:35:13
Yes.
00:35:16 Speaker 2
See and that’s why in milk **** you see the most exaggerated conceptualization of what a mother is, and it’s to drive that fantasy and almost to separate you from reality so that you are still getting pleasure while it’s also creating this this paradoxical idea of motherhood because.
00:35:36 Speaker 2
As children, you see your mother as this very sweet figure.
00:35:40 Speaker 1
Not my children.
00:35:40 Speaker 2
Hopefully yeah. I was like, there are situations where that doesn’t happen. But you know this, I guess, like stereotypical version of a mother. They’re wearing an apron and baking cookies. Very sweet, very loving. Very cherished, like figure. But then turning that on its head and watching them other have an orgasm brings so much of A, like, different pleasure.
00:36:00 Speaker 1
Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I guess it’s also like milk **** or, you know, like, the idea in American Pie. It wasn’t like people wanting to **** their own mother. It was like the guys all wanted to **** stiflers.
00:36:12 Speaker 1
Other like, I wonder if there’s also a sense of like dominance over the friend. Maybe like I don’t. I don’t remember. Like I’m not ******* my mother, but I’m gonna **** your mother, you know? Or it’s like the bumper stick. Whatever. That’s like my other ride.
00:36:23 Speaker 1
Is your mom or whatever? Yeah.
00:36:25 Speaker 1
Like.
00:36:25 Speaker 2
It’s basically like you wanna **** the cultural idea of the mother.
00:36:29 Speaker 1
But is it like? I mean, is it the cultural idea of the mother?
00:36:32 Speaker 1
I guess what I’m asking is, is it to dominate mothers?
00:36:37 Speaker 1
Is it to dominate?
00:36:39 Speaker 1
Other men like is it like this idea of like, you know, she’s changing your diaper. But I am a grown man and you are a little baby boy. You know what I mean? This sort of emotional mental sense of, like, domination control and not as like.
00:36:59 Speaker 1
And I’m saying this non normatively like not to say like domination control is inherently bad like we all want to feel.
00:37:07 Speaker 1
People in control of our lives, like we want to feel like we have agency and autonomy, and so it’s like sometimes it gets expressed as a like, go **** yourself while I’m ******* your mom. You know what?
00:37:17 Speaker 2
I mean, yeah, totally. I think it’s definitely all of that. I tend to go like so deeply sociological. That’s like, it’s also on this ******* the patriarchy.
00:37:27 Speaker 2
You’re putting mothers in this little box of you have to be sweet and cherished, and now they have.
00:37:32 Speaker 2
Just giant breasts popping out of like a leopard print bra.
00:37:37 Speaker 1
I love that. I love. I see what you’re saying. Yeah, like, I love that idea of, like, conceptualizing milk corn also as a way to sort of reject the kind of like Betty Crocker. Leave it to Beaver.
00:37:52 Speaker 1
Kind of like.
00:37:53 Speaker 1
Conceptualization of like woman equals mother and mother equals domestic loving asexual provider of all of your emotional and physical needs.
00:38:07 Speaker 2
Yeah, we’re like, moving away from the Brady Bunch where that type of family is not really.
00:38:11 Speaker 1
Mm-hmm.
00:38:13 Speaker 2
The most sexually interesting and moving and set into this idea that we take those roles, turn them on their head, and now it’s almost subverting these systems of oppression.
00:38:24 Speaker 2
And that’s really guide the shame that we feel around **** and the kind of insistence that this form of family is the right form of family.
00:38:33 Speaker 1
Interesting I have.
00:38:34 Speaker 1
Two questions. One is more of a another hard hitting gut punch and then another one is if I can remember them. The other one is more.
00:38:44 Speaker 1
Uhm.
00:38:46 Speaker 1
Well, I’ll do the hard hitting gut puncher cause of.
00:38:48 Speaker 1
Now I’m forgetting.
00:38:49 Speaker 1
So what about those feminists who might say it’s just the sort of old Madonna and the horror dichotomy that women are just our options are to be the holy mother or to be a ***** who’s providing sexual pleasure? And there’s, like, how dare villas suggest that that is like.
00:39:07 Speaker 1
Having some kind or Tyler either of us like that, that would be a symbol of agency, isn’t it? Just the Madonna horror binary? What did you say to that?
00:39:17 Speaker 2
Yeah. Well, I think one binary thinking in feminism is so boring that.
00:39:24 Speaker 2
Kind of tried to move away from that and think of like I like books. I know. I like to think intersectionally. It’s much more fun. But also I think the **** is the answer because they are both the Madonna and the.
00:39:27 Speaker 1
That’s a cop out.
00:39:36 Speaker 1
*****. But don’t women have? Aren’t we? I mean, I kind of think that does describe me.
00:39:44 Speaker 1
But like I also have taken a pinnacle ball and I’ve been doing pottery throwing and I do research obviously, doesn’t this **** suggest that all I am is a Madonna or a *****?
00:39:56 Speaker 2
Well, that’s why they also depict ***** as mothers. There’s a preamble in the **** that shows them doing everyday activities. It just gets turned on its head at one point and someone asks someone else to either get on their knees.
00:40:08 Speaker 2
Or bend over.
00:40:10 Speaker 2
And who’s to say that’s not a part of pickleball? I’ve never played it, but like, who’s to say?
00:40:13 Speaker 1
Yeah.
00:40:16 Speaker 2
Doesn’t progress in that way.
00:40:18 Speaker 1
I’d be pickleball ****. I know that in. Oh, my God, there’s gotta be. And it’s like, I mean, it’s just so ripe for all kinds of plays on words. You know, one of my former students, Shannon Russell, did work on sexual consent among students. And like, one of them learned about sex because.
00:40:20 Speaker 2
There’s **** for everything, so I’m certain.
00:40:36 Speaker 1
Butter, the book, tickle his pickle. So I’m like there’s gotta be like there’s gotta be a **** out there titled tickle my pickleball or something. I don’t.
00:40:38
How?
00:40:43 Speaker 2
Yeah, we’re dickle ball is where I went.
00:40:44 Speaker 1
Know.
00:40:45 Speaker 1
OK. Yeah, I love it.
00:40:47 Speaker 1
OK, I wanna ask just a little bit about like now that we’re talking about all these titles, **** seems like it’s changed so much too like it used to be there was like, you know videos and there was no like **** that you could get in town cause it was like this tiny town. So we would drive 45 minutes, there was a sex shop in Galesburg, IL that was like at the edge of town.
00:41:07 Speaker 1
And we would like get in our cars and just like giggling and giggling and then go to the sex shop and then giggle.
00:41:13 Speaker 1
And look at everything. Probably leave probably and then like go to Denny’s or whatever. We couldn’t get it. It seems like it has shifted so that it’s like people are searching for male form, but it’s not like this long film with going into whole like storylines has that has the nature of **** changed anything about it being sort of the storylines that are being developed?
00:41:17
Mm-hmm.
00:41:33 Speaker 1
Also, just in terms of like sociology of it, the labour market of it, you know, or even just things like only fans or because you said more like women, creators of ****.
00:41:44 Speaker 1
Also like people creating their own ****, how has that shifted and what do you think that means culturally sociologic.
00:41:51 Speaker 2
Unfortunately, like we have all this done away with **** theatres, that’s always a a funny thing to reminisce about. But that was one of the only places you could watch ****, and so that progressed to home video where you could get a VHS.
00:41:56 Speaker 1
Oh yeah.
00:41:58 Speaker 1
Oh my God.
00:42:05 Speaker 2
Your TV.
00:42:05 Speaker 2
The but now that the Internet has kind of boomed, you have this blend of both studio produced **** as well as self produced ****, which is I think very exciting. Most studio ***** still have storylines, so that hasn’t been entirely done away with. You can still see the five minute preamble and on some popular **** websites you can actually see where people skip.
00:42:26 Speaker 2
To most often and, but it seems like, judging by that they still watch the preamble most of the time, because again, the fantasy is hot. Interesting. Yeah, but if we’re thinking sociologically, you know the culture around **** is still.
00:42:27 Speaker 1
Ohh.
00:42:40 Speaker 2
People kind of the same. It’s just don’t watch **** that’s bad for you. But also it’s a really great kind of potential for a different idea of labour and self produced labour. Because if you’re making content, you’re in charge of the production, you’re also in charge of the money you get. Yeah. And it’s almost turning capitalism on its head a little bit.
00:43:01 Speaker 2
Even though you’re still under the guise of a company. Yeah, like.
00:43:04 Speaker 1
Sounds. Yeah. I think it also really sort of points to the problem with your feminist icon. Can’t stop it really provides counter evidence, pretty solid counter evidence to this idea that it is pure exploitation. There’s so many people out there creating.
00:43:24 Speaker 1
Like I was listening to another podcast.
00:43:26 Speaker 1
I forget the.
00:43:26 Speaker 1
Name of it, but it was like about the **** industry and the problem for creators is not exploitation, it’s that there is so much content they can’t make a living at it because it’s like there’s so much.
00:43:39 Speaker 1
Partition between people who want to make films or like videos or whatever else of themselves having sex that like that’s the hard part. And I think that that they were also talking something else. But it was talking about like someone who had an only fan site and that it became important for them to start doing more sort of specialized content.
00:43:59 Speaker 1
Where it was sending texts of herself, and then she’ll like. It’ll be like directly sent like to a subscriber that it becomes much more this sort of there starts to be this kind of like I don’t wanna say individual. What am I?
00:44:12 Speaker 1
Trying to say you.
00:44:12 Speaker 1
Like niche, it’s niche, but it’s also it’s like.
00:44:16 Speaker 1
It’s not just like mass produced, it’s like the money is going to be made. If you can get a subscriber a fewer higher end subscribers that you are fulfilling their fantasies so that they can sort of feel like the fantasy is a little bit more real. But it’s still just like through their only fans account through texting or or.
00:44:24
Yeah.
00:44:34 Speaker 1
Whatever. You know what I mean.
00:44:35 Speaker 2
Yeah. And that’s very much the interpersonal sex work model that has worked for so long. It kind of Harkins back to hiring a sex worker where it’s a personalized one-on-one experience and bringing that into the **** space is almost calling back to that practice.
00:44:39 Speaker 1
What do you mean?
00:44:50 Speaker 1
Yeah. And I think because I like.
00:44:53 Speaker 1
Like it’s so interesting cause you can like again that sort of thing I was saying earlier about like these lines between like, well, what’s good and what’s bad. It gets so blurry. It’s like, why are we trying to contain this? Again, I think sexual violence against minors, that is bad, rape, non consensual sex, that is bad. But there’s like all of the, like, contours of kinks.
00:45:13 Speaker 1
And desires of what you’re into that just feels like, why are you? Why are you taking away something that’s just?
00:45:19 Speaker 1
Fun.
00:45:19 Speaker 2
Yeah, it’s because you know that that feels not normative, and that challenge is really disorienting at times.
00:45:20 Speaker 1
Yeah.
00:45:27 Speaker 1
Yes, totally. And I think it also is, I do feel like there’s a relationship with the capitalism with religion where and power like you were saying earlier about like power and control that it also becomes this separation between our bodies. It’s like if we can separate our desires and we can. It’s like we’re gaslighting.
00:45:47 Speaker 1
Themselves, it’s, you know, or like, the **** addicts where it’s like they’re not actually addicted. They’re just have normal behavior.
00:45:53 Speaker 1
Then it’s like this collective gaslighting where we can start to disconnect from our true desires about other things, where it’s like, Oh my God, I am being overworked at my job here. And instead of saying you haven’t hired enough profs here, I am stressed out and I keep going on burnout leave and I think, oh, there’s something wrong with me.
00:46:13 Speaker 1
I should be better professor. I should organize my time better. I need to have a better calendar. And then if I look around people who have a normal life and I’m like, Oh my God, this isn’t my problem. This is that there aren’t enough professors at this university to like, cover all the students you know. And so I think it’s like, like, I wonder about how much our.
00:46:32 Speaker 1
The sort of shame about sex is a way to just train us from a very early age to like, don’t trust your body, don’t trust, like, don’t listen to your body, don’t believe in your body. Don’t definitely don’t enjoy your body like your body is not something to enjoy. Your body is something to be used by others, but also we’re going to critique this idea of it being used. It’s like we’re going to use it in these particular ways, but you don’t get to decide.
00:46:57 Speaker 1
How you’re going to use?
00:46:58 Speaker 2
Your body? Yeah. You just put so Ellen.
00:47:00 Speaker 2
Exactly why I don’t like anti **** feminism. Because at once you’re fighting to not have your body used, but also encouraging the suppression of use of your body. It is one of the most confusing, very circular, ridiculous arguments. But no, I think this like shame is always what I tend to go back to where we are.
00:47:18 Speaker 1
Yeah, shame on shame. Shame on shame.
00:47:21 Speaker 2
Exactly. But we’re so used to shame overtaking the idea of release if we’re talking about sex or pleasure that we just accept the.
00:47:30 Speaker 2
Team and we never do anything to resist.
00:47:33 Speaker 1
It yeah, because it’s shameful to resist it. We don’t want to get in trouble. We don’t want to be told. Oh, you’re inappropriate. You’re doing something wrong. And if we? That’s exactly what your point was in the beginning. It’s like if we’re not talking about it, if we’re not, like, admitting the truth, then how the ****.
00:47:50 Speaker 1
Are we supposed to deal with the problems that come up that are like real problems, you know?
00:47:55 Speaker 2
Exactly. And that’s why my work is definitely going in the direction of studying pleasure, because I think one of the very few universal experiences that we have.
00:48:04 Speaker 2
Is pleasure and I focus on sexual pleasure. But there’s lots of different pleasures that, you know, those with power want to suppress. But embracing pleasure is a way to resist a way to.
00:48:15 Speaker 1
Transform. Oh my God. I ******* love it. And that is why I’m doing pottery and playing pickleball.
00:48:20 Speaker 1
It’s because I am like I’m not just a worker. I want to have fun, and yet I still feel guilty. It’s like cause I see coworkers colleagues like working a lot and I’m like.
00:48:31 Speaker 1
I hope they don’t like feel bad.
00:48:32 Speaker 1
Maybe I’m inspiring them to. Also we need more people playing pickleball too, because I know it’s like stupid and suburban. But it’s so fun. It’s actually fun because you don’t have to, like, run the whole time and you get lots of breaks. That’s like the kind of sport I’m into, right. Anyway. Yeah. And not like, impossible. Like table tennis, which always.
00:48:43 Speaker 2
Hmm.
00:48:45 Speaker 2
That’s excellent. It’s like good tennis.
00:48:52 Speaker 1
I might just get flustered by anyway. This has been amazing. This is there anything, anything else you want to say before?
00:48:59 Speaker 2
Before we run, I I hate telling people just go have sex or watch **** because I think that’s quite crazy, but.
00:49:04 Speaker 1
I.
00:49:05 Speaker 1
Honestly, should go have sex. Go watch ****. Like do whatever you want, yeah.
00:49:06 Speaker 2
I mean, yeah, Joe, have sex watch ****, if that’s what you like. Explore your interests, have fun orgasm. Like bring yourself pleasure. But also just talk about sex. That’s always the point I bring back to people that I talk about my work with is the more we talk about sex, the more readily it’s available for us to.
00:49:14 Speaker 1
Yes.
00:49:25 Speaker 2
Study and embrace ourselves.
00:49:27 Speaker 1
I love that. I love that this was amazing. It was so fun. Like this was like to really get more in depth about the ideas. This was awesome. Maybe we should just every meeting with all the grad students. It’ll just be a podcast episode.
00:49:38 Speaker 2
There you have a great idea because, yeah, this was fun and this is.
00:49:41 Speaker 2
Why?
00:49:41 Speaker 2
I wanted to stick around for this degree because you’re just so much fun to talk to and talk about sex without everyone getting weird.
00:49:49 Speaker 1
I know, although sometimes I feel a little weird inside, but I try to just like I shame myself and then I’m.
00:49:55 Speaker 2
Well, there we go. We have some years to work on that inner shame and then.
00:49:56 Speaker 1
But it’s.
00:49:58 Speaker 1
There.
00:49:59 Speaker 2
We’ll knock it right.
00:50:00 Speaker 2
Out will you?
00:50:00 Speaker 1
Exactly.
00:50:01 Speaker 1
Inspire me to like, be it. *** **** grown up, Phyllis. But anyway, I love it. No, but it’s just so it’s so interesting. So anyway.
00:50:10 Speaker 1
Thank you so much for coming on my podcast and thanks everybody for listening. If you liked this episode, please give us a five star rating on your favorite podcast platform and write even just like 1 little sentence.
00:50:26 Speaker 1
Be like “I like sex” or “Tyler rules!” You could just put that just to like, you know those algorithms or whatever it does really to help us to reach more listeners and make doing Social Research in the reach of everyone.