Painful, ridiculous and ignorant

One of the most traumatic yet contributory TV documentaries to be screened this year, Chosen, portrayed in close-up the agonies of three adult men who had been abused when very young public school boys. Their pain was palpable years after the event and totally typical for those suffering post traumatic shock. It is so tempting after watching this to become a conspiracy theorist. The police, courts and current school owners could not have been more unhelpful. We seem to be more comfortable with sexual issues as long as they are impersonal, scientific: a fatherhood gene or the incalculable consequences of the disappearing male. With perhaps a little more discomfort our difficulties with gender become somewhat farcical. The politically correct Christmas carols which edit “king,” “son” and “virgin.” The consequences of fear and repression are serious. The official statistics show teenage pregnancies rose again last year. Perhaps we have to come down to earth this Christmas time. And educate.

He's a Celebrity Get Him Out of There

This year’s I’m a celebrity Get Me Out of Here sees the contestant celebrities divided into two camps. One camp has been named somewhat predictably ‘camp Camp’ by its inhabitants because three of its members are homosexuals. There was a discussion about what it was like for them to come out - albeit of the kind you might have encountered over drinks at an Islington cocktail party. More potentially controversial is the conversation in the ‘away’ camp where the sexist Robert Kilroy-Silk (who is perhaps best known for his BBC show Kilroy having been cancelled by the BBC in 2004 after a racist remark) seems to believe it is politically jungle correct to keep up a sort of running you this you that commentary on the The Women. We might be a more sexually tolerant society but we’re not free of Old Bloke Misogynists yet.

Credit crunch

This surely must be a time of reflection - or panic. And much cutting: cut costs, cut corners perhaps, cur prices. For anyone considering therapy or counselling right now it really works to be able to sit down completely free of charge - and expectations - and talk through possibilities and goals.
Email: somasexual@gmail.com for a free Sex, Love and Intimacy Questionnaire which can help to bring clarity and achieveability to relationships.

Sir Cliff, the tube, the meadow vole and his lover

If I were made to choose a binary distinction it would be fluid or fixed. Some people find happiness as a journey. Last week Sir Cliff Richard disclosed that the typical 2 point 4 marriage didn’t do it for him but rather the companionship of a male partner. In the eyes of the fundamentalists this might make him less of a Christian and yet how can he be free to love others unless he has found love himself? The nuances of loving within a less rigidly defined matrix will be fluid, on-going and non-formulaic. In stark contrast there is the search for the answer to everything with the big bang big switch on of the Large Hadron Collider taking place in CERN. Will it be 42 as in Douglas Adam’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy? This has not a jot to do with a fluid search for love so much as a desire to find the one true beginning. What will we do when we find it? It’s not as if these forces are easy to harness. Likewise the search for a gene for everything including holding down a happy marriage. If you can’t you may have something more in common with the meadow vole then you thought. It seems that happiness for a prairie vole is monogamy but for its meadow cousin promiscuity rules the roost or nest. The culprit is the genetic predisposition for a receptor for the hormone vasopressin which plays an important role in social behaviour, pair-bonding and sexual attachment. And if you have that I suppose you’re doomed. I would make a bad geneticist or particle scientist. There is a certain inherent pessimism in finding a gene for failure. And the fear that we might not only genetically engineer crops but moral obligation too. I am much more interested in where we might be going rather than where we have come from. Perhaps it would be more useful to put all the politicians in a nine mile tube and bang their heads together. They might discover the answer to global warming or ending poverty. Meanwhile let bosons be bosons and the world a better place for gay Christians and meadow voles.

Marmite, ménages and Big Brother

Big Brother is like Marmite. You either love it or hate it. The programme works out a matrix of three players: housemates, TV audience and the programme’s production team. It is a media ménage à trois. Each of us tries to stay one step ahead of ‘the game’. For some of the housemates this means the mistaken belief that there is no game or at least that they are not playing one. Anyone who cannot be all things to all people is quickly nominated by fellow housemates. Insincerity (aka gossiping) is unforgivable in the eyes of the public. Eviction ensues. Those who manage to survive guarantee themselves further time in which their public persona will be gradually eroded. Just like a good game of cricket the shine gets knocked off. In this case it is not by willow on leather but by constant multiple camera attention on any and all residual practised polish. As viewers we bray for sincerity. If we don’t get it then the many suggestion boxes littered around the back of set of Big Brother will ensure that the various tasks push the housemates further and further into a seemingly endless combination of hunger and drunken exhaustion. The shine wears off. You are more than the three seconds it takes to make instant attraction in a nanosecond's first impression. Love it or hate it we are reminded we are real. Ruthless manipulation it may be but it is also an antidote to celebrity gloss – no matter how much store the participants put by hair straighteners.

Sexuality Workshops for Autumn/Winter Season

I am running three workshops in September/October/December:

Born Free

An ungendered exploration

of self, society, sex and
sexuality
September 19/20 or 26/27 2008
Venue: probably in Norwich

Why Does My Rabbit Know Best?

Orgasmic potency

for women: its achievement and communication
October 4 or 11 2008
Venue: SE (London)

How to Feel Good Naked

Get into emotional trim

for Christmas
(with no apologies to Gok Wan)
December 2008 dates to be announced
Venue: SE

Further details to be announced

020 8144 0636

Sexual Gravity

Sexual gravity. We are fascinated by the Rolling Stones because they defy it. In Shine a Light, Martin Scorsese’s documentary filmed in 2006, we see that it is possible to be old and sexy. Yet this is a rare example of inclusive commodification. The commercial zeitgeist edicts that we can be wrinkly or beautiful but not both. Is binary conformity escapable? In Nobody Passes: Rejecting the Rules of Gender and Conformity, Matt Bernstein Sycamore’s theme is the defiance of social stereotypes. Yet those with gender identity issues are still considered within the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders as being mentally ill. Stephen Whittle of Press for Change suggests that those who are categorised with Gender Identity Dysphoria are not mentally ill but simply confused. Is ‘gender confused’ more socially acceptable? In a world where sexual attraction is iconic and gay is fashionable we must be either male or female in order to remain benign to family and friends, (or better still stick with the gender we were born into). It’s only rock n’ roll when Jagger sings ‘You got the silver and the gold’. Binary societal conformism does not permit a gender appearance which is a fusion of both. That means forfeiting one gender identity for a transother rather than a defiance of the stereotype. The term ‘queer’, (In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives) much as ‘feminist’ once was, has become a political rallying cry for something more than mere tolerance or a legitimised looksism. Genderality. May we shine a light.