VOICEOVER: This is sex. Everyone gets what they want. This is Sexploration. Explore, play! This is Sexploration with Monika. Sex is proof that God loves us and wants us to have fun! Sexploration with Monika on FCCFreeRadio.com. MONIKA: What a night tonight is going to be! We are having a "Sex Geek Potluck." It's basically like a conference, a very informal conference, of sex educators. We have filmmakers, we have sex workers, we have activists, we have people who are making some very sexy and interesting and strange sexual technology to do scientific experiments on orgasm. And it was the brainchild of sex educator Reid Mihalko of ReidAboutSex.com. Yay, and the crowd goes wild! Reid, Reid, Reid, Reid! Okay, so… [FADE OUT] …destabilizing hierarchy and creating community, which is precisely what the Sex Geek Potluck is all about! [LAUGHTER] REID MIHALKO: "Yes!" He said, rolling on his wheelchair, trying to catch the mic! Yeah, so, for the people tuning in right now, I'm trying to flip-camera some of this. I'll be flip-camera-ing a lot of tonight, and I'm also your official wrangler. MONIKA: You're, yes. [FADEOUT] Well, I want to talk about maymay's work, so maymay, if you will join the discussion. And then, we also have--okay, so who do we have after maymay? We have Priscilla of SexxBBoxx--oh, yes, Maggie, yes! Don't forget about Maggie. Okay, so Maggie's after maymay. So Maggie from PSIgasm. MAYMAY: Usually she comes before me. [LAUGHTER] MONIKA: Oh, Maggie--Maggie Mayhem? MAYMAY: Yeah. Usually it's the other way around…. MONIKA: Awesome! She's totally next door. Maggie Mayhem's next door. AUDIENCE: Oh, she's next door? MONIKA: Yeah, go get her. Go get your hummus and go get her. Okay, so she's--Maggie Mayhem's gonna talk about PSIgasm. So maymay is here from Kink On Tap. MAYMAY: Hi! MONIKA: Hi, maymay nice to see you again! MAYMAY: So good to see you again! MONIKA: Yeah! MAYMAY: It's been too long. MONIKA: It has been too long. We talked a little bit about how you're working with Megan Andelloux about remaking male submission. MAYMAY: Well, I'm going to be doing a seminar there, at The Center for Sexual Pleasure and Health--I think it's March 23rd? I hope I got that right--at The Center for Sexual Pleasure and Health, called "Remaking Male Submission" and what I'm going to be talking about is confronting sexism in the BDSM community-- MONIKA: Right! MAYMAY: --and actually in BDSM porn and, sort of, the imagery, the iconography of BDSM, or SM imagery, where you see a dominatrix. The question really is, is that (with the leather and the whips) is that really much more or less, is that not a virgin-whore dichotomy or is that another sort of manifestation of it? Are we, sort of, infused by the mainstream culture? MONIKA: Well, I think that we definitely have ideas about gender-- MAYMAY: Absolutely. MONIKA: that infuse porn in kind of a--it can be really toxic. MAYMAY: Yeah. MONIKA: And not affirming of people's full sexual expression. MAYMAY: And yet we call it an "alternative" sexuality, right? MONIKA: Right. MAYMAY: So the question is, of course, "Alternative to what?" And then the question becomes, well we talk about an alternative to this, and then we have to gauge is it reactionary? So, when we talk about alternative sexuality, is it 'a reaction to'? And I think that a lot of the formulations we see on SM iconography, especially when it comes to men who are submissive and women who are dominant, what we see is in fact a reification of a very misogynistic worldview. And that's unfortunate. I, as a submissive man myself, definitely want to-- MONIKA: Okay! Back up a little bit. Okay, so how is a dominatrix and a male submissive misogynist? Or woman-hating? MAYMAY: Right, well, it's a good question, because, y'know, we-- MONIKA: 'Cause ordinarily people would say, "Oh, that's a very empowered woman!" Ba-da-da-da-da…. MAYMAY: Well they wouldn't--well, "ordinarily" is an interesting adjective to use there. What I find so fascinating is that so much of the pornography that we look at of dominatrices, of men being submissive, sort of de-sexualizes the male persona in the imagery-- MONIKA: Oh, yeah! MAYMAY: --and hyper-sexualizes the female persona. MONIKA: Hmm. MAYMAY: And what's interesting about that is that, it's very much like putting the woman on a pedestal. It's just a different pedestal. It's still a pedestal. So the question isn't-- MONIKA: Rather than an objectified pedestal, it's just a, sort of, like a… MAYMAY: Well, you could argue-- MONIKA: It's objectified in another way. MAYMAY: Exactly. So, it's not-- MONIKA: Like a power object. MAYMAY: Right. So, we have this interesting notion of the "male gaze" or the "female gaze" in pornography and a lot of, sort of, counter-culture pornographers now are making "porn for women!" And the idea of porn for women is that the subject in the porn, the person holding the camera, is a woman, is a female. But in a lot of femdom porn, y'know, you don't get that. MONIKA: And what's femdom porn? It's when the-- MAYMAY: Female dominant. MONIKA: --female dominant is…. MAYMAY: And let's talk about just that phrasing. MONIKA: Okay…. MAYMAY: "Femdom" porn often includes men who are being submissive and women who are being dominant, or includes women who are being submissive and women who are being dominant. The object in either of those situations is the female top. Right? MONIKA: Right. MAYMAY: The objectified persona there is the woman being dominant. So, as a submissive guy, I have to wonder whether or not that's actually catering to-- MONIKA: Why don't you get to be objectified? MAYMAY: That's my question! Hey! And I realize that's a very--it's hard be--it's a very non-objectifying thing to say, "Please objectify me!" [LAUGHTER] MONIKA: You're, like, asking for a voice. MAYMAY: Suddenly you've got agency there, and it's hard, especially for bottoms in the SM community. MONIKA: Because you don't really speak up as bottoms. MAYMAY: We're not taught agency. We're taught how to be okay not having agency, as bottoms. That's a really important thing. It's really helpful and important to know that it's also okay to not have agency in some situations. MONIKA: Sure. MAYMAY: Y'know, we deal with that in reality all the time. On the other hand, it's also very, very, very empowering to be able to say as a bottom, "I'd like you to objectify me, please." MONIKA: Right. MAYMAY: And you are claiming agency in that. MONIKA: And it's really nice to have a choice. MAYMAY: Um, I would argue it's a way to improve the world, to have a choice. MONIKA: Yeah, totally. MAYMAY: That's a world-changing, sort of, sentiment. MONIKA: Yeah, it's destabilizing the hegemony and all that stuff. MAYMAY: Precisely. MONIKA: And the hierarchy and the dualism. MAYMAY: Right. So that's what the class is going to be about in March. MONIKA: Cool. MAYMAY: I'm looking forward to it. I've never taught at The CSPH before, but I've been there, and it's a fantastic little spot. MONIKA: And you are also a panelist on the Western Regional LBT-- MAYMAY: LGBTQIA, alphabet soup, conference. MONIKA: --Conference-- MAYMAY: Yes, indeed. MONIKA: --at UC Berkeley, with Maggie Mayhem! MAYMAY: With Maggie, yeah! This is going to be a lot of fun. This is a BDSM 101 panel. So, Louie and William, who are a UC Berkeley alumn and a student there, they're facilitating a panel with me, with Maggie, with a couple other people about just the beginnings of BDSM. It's very much for newbies. We're not gonna talk about pornography a whole bunch, we're not gonna talk about gaze, it's really gonna be about, y'know, how do you stay safe? What are the main theories of consent? What are the differences-- MONIKA: Oh, just the beginning. MAYMAY: Very, very, very novice level stuff. MONIKA: Sure, right. MAYMAY: But we also--the hope is that we'll also humanize a lot of what people see. Because everyone's gonna come into that room, sort of, having an idea of what SM is. MONIKA: Right. MAYMAY: They're gonna have an image in their head of a dominatrix. I just need to say "dominatrix" and you've instantly see, y'know-- MONIKA: Wapsshhhh! [whip noise] MAYMAY: Exactly. MONIKA: She's wearing a black pencil skirt and it's leather! MAYMAY: And she's got a corset on, and she's in hells, y'know? Like, you instantly see that image. And that's because-- MONIKA: And probably red lipstick. MAYMAY: Probably red lipstick. Uh, interestingly enough, probably also a collar, and what does that say about our culture? MONIKA: Right. MAYMAY: That's an interesting one, too. But, y'know, you instantly have this idea and that comes from, of course, mainstream culture. There's a huge amount of fetishization in marketing, in, y'know--have you guys seen the Volkswagen commercial with the woman wielding the whip? They're selling a car! And the way they're doing it is she's whipping the car! MONIKA: Oh, interesting! MAYMAY: I am not [kidding], like, literally whipping the car. She's not whipping the car very well, but, she's whipping the car. MONIKA: Oh, really? She's not whipping it well? That's hilarious! MAYMAY: No, her technique is a little bit-- MONIKA: She's got bad technique! MAYMAY: It's…it can use some improvement. MONIKA: [laughing] That's awesome! MAYMAY: I don't want to speak too ill of her on the air, but, uh, it's less than good. [AUDIENCE LAUGHTER] But the point is that everyone's gonna come into that room having an idea of it. But the idea that we typically get from the marketers, who want to sell you a Volkswagen--as opposed to, y'know, wanting you to have a good time in bed because they care about you 'cause they're your partners--they don't have the same…they don't understand people who do those activities as full human beings. Like, I--I'm a programmer, y'know? I also spend my time at the park. And I like Vietnamese sandwiches. And these are things you don't typically hear about-- MONIKA: [laughing] 'Cause you live in the Tenderloin-- MAYMAY: 'Cause I live in the Tenderloin, which is awesome. MONIKA: --near the sandwich places. MAYMAY: Oh, Saigon Sandwich? MONIKA: I love that place. MAYMAY: Big, big slices of carrot! Really good! MONIKA: [laughing] MAYMAY: So, but, we're hoping also to humanize-- MONIKA: Right. MAYMAY: --people who do SM-- MONIKA: Right. MAYMAY: --in a way that we're hoping will be a, sort of, gentle introduction for folks. And make it less scary! The subtitle of the talk--of the panel--is called "Kink Isn't So Scary." MONIKA: Cool! And this is maymay from Kink On Tap. You can find him at KinkOnTap.com. We've been talking about his work remaking male submission and then, of course, this conference at UC Berkeley coming up. MAYMAY: There's also another conference, actually. If you are on the East coast, KinkForAll Providence 2 is happening on March 19th, so I'll be there for that as well. MONIKA: Oh, neat! MAYMAY: Yeah. Megan might be there, too, in fact. MONIKA: Oh, neat! Megan Andelloux, cool. MAYMAY: And that's at KinkForAll.org. MONIKA: And Maggie Mayhem is also going to be on the Western Regional LGBTQIA Conference at UC Berkeley as a panelist. What are you looking forward to talking about? MAGGIE: I am looking forward so much about this conference because I actually attended when I was an undergraduate and a freshman the LGBTQIA conference in 2004 and 2005. And I absolutely loved that experience. I had never had--I'd never seen so many queers in one place at one time. [LAUGHTER] MONIKA: Isn't that nice? To be like, "Wow, I'm not even that freaky right now." MAGGIE: Oh my god! It was amazing! I would have the most amazing conversation of my life, followed by the most amazing conversation, of my life, followed by the most amazing conversation of my life, followed by the worst meal of my life-- [LAUGHTER] --followed by a great conversation and then so many flirtations-- MONIKA: And then there's that. MAGGIE: --both physically and intellectually, and emotionally, because so many people were talking about so many things. I was flirting with ideas. And I loved that conference for that reason. It was intellectual foreplay. And then-- MONIKA: That's what they call it. Y'know, intercourse? MAGGIE: Yes! MONIKA: Like, dialogue. Intercourse. MAGGIE: Oh, yeah. MAYMAY: There's intercourse and discourse. MONIKA: Right, exactly! MAGGIE: Intercourse and discourse, yeah. [FADEOUT] It's a lot of work. I hand it to the organizers. MONIKA: But it's really important to create-- MAGGIE: Oh, vital! MONIKA: --queer community-- MAGGIE: Yes. MONIKA: --and sex community, because I think so much of our stuff is in the closet and marginalized. MAGGIE: Yes. MONIKA: I mean, there's so many people that are like, "Oh, no, you can't say that on the radio. You can't do that in Newspapers." You know what I mean? All that stuff. MAGGIE: "You can't say that on television." MAYMAY: "You can't print that on the Internet!" MONIKA: Oh, the Internet, no! MAYMAY: Absolutely, yeah! I've been in Providence, when I was actually visiting Megan one time previously, I went to the adult section of the Providence public library. The adult section--they had a kid's section and an adult's section--and I figured, y'know, I would be able to get to my blog specifically because I was going to the adult section. Turns out, nope, my blog was censored in the adult section in the public library. MONIKA: Wow. In the adult section. That's weird. MAYMAY: Yeah. MAGGIE: Censorship is really, really incredible. You start to feel important. I'm starting to notice that my website-- MAYMAY: [laughing] You start to feel important! MAGGIE: --my website is being censored! MONIKA: Yeah…. MAYMAY: Congratulations! MAGGIE: Thank you! MONIKA: You are getting a certain amount of dominant culture recognition when you're censored. MAGGIE: I have a dangerous ideologue. MONIKA: That's right. MAGGIE: And it's driving me crazy. I've never felt so powerful in my life until I was censored. MAYMAY: That's right. MONIKA: It's annoying, though, 'cause now you're like, "I'm reaching slightly less." MAGGIE: I actually got really interested in censorship on the Internet because I worked with the San Francisco homeless shelter system and I didn't realize how severe sexual censorship was until I was doing an HIV training. And I was trying to facilitate not only HIV 101 skills but also research skills. I wanted to try to pass on information about how one evaluates a source. How do you determine how accurate it is? How inaccurate it is? Because, um, in the homeless system, you're working with people who did not get to have a formal education in the same way. It's always been interrupted. So, these are skills that many people take for granted. How do you evaluate a sexual source that is going to be, um, biologically, medically accurate? Language is changing constantly. If you look at something, we're using different terms, moving above and beyond. So I wanted to show that. And one of the questions I asked was--I did this with an Internet, um, "scavenger hunt," I called it. I asked questions; I was trying to implant as many keywords one would search for with a question. I said, "I know you don't have the answers to any of this. They're very complex. I want you to go use Google, and tell me what you find." And every single person in the shelter came back and said, "You set us up. You're wasting our time. They're calling me names. They're very angry with me." And I'm thinking, "All right, patience. It's a teaching moment. I'm teaching people how to use Google. It's a harder skill to learn than you might think, especially if you've never had a computer." Until I realized that the search-- MONIKA: It's the library staff is, sort of, not letting the homeless people use the computers, or something? MAGGIE: Well, there's that problem. But in the shelters it's so, so, so censored because they're so afraid of pornography, that every sexual keyword is blocked. And the question I noticed that this was important for was--especially in an HIV regard--I asked, "What is PEP? And how do you get it in the city of San Francisco?" MONIKA: Post-exposure…? MAGGIE: Post-exposure prophylaxis. [FADEOUT] So, PEP is something I take seriously because it is preventing infections. It is making a change and people in a shelter system are in some of the highest risk demographic and they have some of the least resources. MAYMAY: Were they able to find it? Were they able to answer the question that you asked? MAGGIE: The entire search string was blocked. MAYMAY: The search string? MAGGIE: Literally, the search string-- MAYMAY: Oh my god. MAGGIE: --came up with a window that said, "The firewall is preventing this search. It is an unacceptable adult search." Because all of the pages about post-exposure prophylaxis included words like "anal sex." MONIKA: Right. MAMYAY: God. See, but that's what's so interesting that I find about censorship, because it's almost like the censorship itself will almost create new slang. Right? MAGGIE: Correct. MAYMAY: People who work around the censorship, socially speaking--kids do this! You know the, "Oh, is that what kids are calling it these days?" What that means-- MAGGIE: Yes! MAYMAY: --that is a new--that is an evolution of language to avoid whether it be technical censorship on Google or whether it be, "Oh, I don't want my parents to know that I'm talking about this." MAGGIE: "I don't want my parents to know that I'm talking about this," but also when you're talking about health resources, we've banned the language that literally on Google will find the resources to prevent getting infection. But the porn-- MONIKA: Right, yeah. MAGGIE: --that they're so worried about, you can find it a million different ways. MAYMAY: Yeah. MAGGIE: So we're not keeping the porn out, we're keeping the good information out. MONIKA: Not that there's anything wrong with porn. MAGGIE: No! There is nothing wrong with porn. I do porn! MONIKA: There is nothing wrong with porn. MAYMAY: So, that's the thing. I think the moral of the story is, "Just say no to censorship, kids." [AUDIENCE LAUGHTER] MAGGIE: Say no to censorship! MAYMAY: No to censorship. Just say no. [LAUGHTER] MONIKA: Okay, so I'd like to thank maymay from Kink On Tap, KinkOnTap.com. MAYMAY: Thank you, Monika, this was awesome. MONIKA: Yeah, thank you!