ACFM - #ACFM Microdose: Tabitha Bast on Dating and Desire

Episode Date: February 10, 2021

Nadia Idle speaks to psychosexual therapist and writer Tabitha Bast about dating and desire. They discuss the changing dynamics of dating, how to build romantic resilience, the politics of swiping right and more. Tabitha is a qualified psychosexual therapist who works privately and through a charity, currently conducting her sessions online. She was also involved […]

Hello and welcome to this microdose from ACFM, one of a series of interviews with a special guest. This episode was recorded in November 2019 with Tabitha Bast, who has since completed her training and is now a fully qualified psychosexual therapist. Due to a couple of technical issues at the point of recording, you'll find the audio quality is reduced in this episode. We apologize profusely for this and hope you enjoy it anyway. Hi, Tabitha. Hi, Maria. Tabitha Bast. Thanks for agreeing to be interviewed on dating and desire.

No worry. It's glad to be here. Really interesting topic. We had a conversation about this some time ago, and you said just some really enlightening things about desire. So I was chatting to Jeremy and Keir, and we thought it would be really good for me to have a nice conversation with you and enlighten us on some.

some issues to do with both dating and desire and, of course, how that relates to politics. Thank you. Well, as I get older, I like to reposition myself, and now I seem to be positioning myself as a wise crone for who could advise. Rather than somebody who's desirable at dating, I am now the advisor and the grandmother. Well, you also have experience. Yeah, also have a lot of experience. You're telling yourself short. maybe let's start by you telling listeners a bit about what you're doing now because previously you weren't doing what you're doing now or you're trying to move into a feel that is of interest to dating and desire

so tell us to get that yourself okay so I am I'm a practitioner in training as a psychosexual therapist and I qualify next month dealing with a shoes around sexual dysfunction would be the sort of medicalised term but a lot of it is around specifically around desire often around female love desire although my

particular interest in sex such therapy is I'm very interested in younger men and how and how they relate to desire and sex really interesting and of course

in terms of your background, like I know you from Plan C and you were like a big activist with reclaim the streets in the 90s. You come from this really political background. And from the small conversations I've had with you, you've got this kind of, like I said, some sort of like an erudite expression or I think it's really interesting things to say about the juncture between like life under neoliberalism and like a political analysis and like desire and how people go about conducting the relationships. Would that be fair in terms of saying

that both of those worlds have come together for you a little bit? Yeah, I think I'm, I come from some sort of maybe some Italian interactionary inspired ideas around desire. But desire is about motivation, desire is about wanting.

And at the moment, you can see sort of this huge women And there are massive amounts of numbers of people who are out on the streets trying to bring in a socialist government, for example, is around desire. It's around a longing for something more. It's the craving for utopia. It's a craving for better social relationships. It's a craving for better working relationships. It's craving for, like, everything.

So it's about a motivation. It's not a, and sexual desire gets misunderstood maybe as a drive in the same way that. hunger might be but it's not it's much more around a a wanting and a yearning and that part of the part that progresses us on to wanting wanting something more than we have already that isn't about the absence of what there is that's really interesting so I guess to start off if I understand you correctly we're talking about the frame in which we think about some of these things. So you're saying if I can just, I don't want to say summarize, but basically if there were two pots and you had hunger in one pot and like political change or like ideas of utopia and

another, like relational and sexual desire would fall more in kind of similar to wanting social change, then it would be to, you know, fulfilling real bodily hunger because you haven't eaten for a long time. Is that kind of what we're saying? Yeah, absolutely. Okay. So very different, say, from a maternal protection or something like that. Okay. So sexual desire is very much more in the motivational camp. And I would say something like a mother's love for her child might much more be in the hunger camp. It's much more sort of quite a base desire, I guess. Interesting.

Okay. So maybe let's, I mean, I have no idea which direction we're going to go in, but I'd like maybe to start by sharing with listeners. Like the thing that you said, like last time I was here chatting to you about this a few months ago, and you had just done the Bella Chow radio show, which was amazing, which I really love. And I think something you said was, sexuality and desire, I think you said,

or maybe you were just talking about desire, as something that you do rather than you are. And I was really interested in that. And it got me thinking, I thought, well, that kind of makes sense. That's the right way to think about, you know, desire to be with another person or have sexual relations or to have, like, want for another person. If I think about it as something that I do, it takes off the burden of needing to identify with that feeling because, as you just said, if it's about motivation, then there's essentially a form of action there, there's movement in it rather than it being something fixed. That's how it made me feel. Is that kind of fair? Tell us a bit about that statement where it came from, I suppose.

Okay, so I guess it comes from the quite an existential reality so that we are only ourselves in relation to other people, right? We are not a fixed, a fixed and finished product that can present itself to the world in a certain way, although that is something under sort of neoliberal conditions, that's what happens. and that's how people tend to perform themselves as this is like this is me and this is who I am and this is like this is the things I'm into and this is like what turns me on etc etc and that's just bullshit because actually we only can exist as humans in relation to other people and even this really fundamental biological level so I'm sure you and most listeners know that about brain plasticity so it's essential for a human baby a human baby a human human baby, if it just gets its physical needs met, will not form the necessary neuroconnections

that it needs. And for that, it needs love. But they used to think in the 60s that people stopped developing and that people's brain stopped at a certain stage. But what we know is that experiences constantly change our brains. So our brains, our brains, are changed by our experiences. Our brains are changed by our connections with other people. Our brains are changed by love. It's on that much of a fundamental level. So this idea that we exist sort of separate to other people

and that we can say, I am rather than I do and I connect and I changes, as if it's a static position rather than a fluid position, is just erroneous. And that's really interesting if you think about it, if you think about what you've just said, mapping onto, I guess, issues of collectivity versus individualism. When you think about that politically

in terms of late neoliberalism and how that affects us, and I guess it would make sense under sort of late capitalism for people to think about themselves as like everything is embodied within me. and so it feels like the radical thing or the progressive thing would be to say no plasticity has to exist and we have to accept that it exists what are we saying

it's not that you're more than you it's that the you doesn't exist without other people but is that right? Yes which probably particularly fits with sort of an idea of communism and it cannot exist no because who am I it's like every aspect of myself

that I would describe myself is in relation to other people and it has to be. And a reaction to all of your experiences and the culmination of all of those experiences. Yeah. And so therefore, when it comes to desire, it's about the space.

Are you saying this is about the space between two people? Yeah. So it's, well, the space between two people and also the context that it all happens. Okay. So probably more than two people up is it? So I think what's really

interesting is that when people connect with someone else when somebody falls in love with someone else basically get all these like brain changes of course you get towards all the dopamine you get the cortisol you get their sort of flood in the same way that you would maybe towards a substance

but and then that changes once it becomes a more if it becomes a more regular relationship then you get more OxyCotin and things like that so you get all this different brain changes but it's it's not just you and that person.

It's in the space. So it's in the connection that you have with that other person, that there's also this change and this change and possibility of what there is. So when you think about collective movements, for example, it's not just that you have 100 people existing together. It's what's that 100 people existing together is as an entity. and that is something transformative. So I think it's in really simple mathematical terms,

I guess it's like when one person gets good with another person, it makes more than two separate people, right? It doesn't, it makes a, it can create new ideas and new thoughts. So how does that map onto like collectivity in terms of like groups and big groups and that and that desire for, I guess, things to check? the things to change or how that affects people's bonds to each other, I suppose, I'm trying to, I guess once you said more than one person, I wasn't thinking a group sex situation, I was thinking back to what you were talking about in the beginning, which is like, here comes

everybody, that kind of feeling like in the, of a mass event or a mass party when part of the joy is that you're experiencing this thing with other people. Yeah, yeah. And I guess that doesn't work if it's all internal to an individual. It is by default something where you realize that it's not just you, and it's not just about you. Is that fair? Yes, and I think it's gone really wrong

in the past with things like so in the 17s you have various sort of weird cults that were very focused on sort of polyamory and I'm not criticizing polyamory. I'm just saying you know, it's like they can

various experiments that didn't kind of work maybe partly because they were trying to exist as sort of small isolated groups within a wider context that was much more focused on the nuclear family. So desire between two people

can, I think can be quite problematic for collective struggle sometimes so some places have some places ban it so some revolutionary armies are kind of like no there can't be any kind of personal relationships because that seems as a distraction from the struggle okay so it's distracting from the collective and there's other ideas that it could also feed into a more general um yeah so of a releasing

and a growing of collective space but maybe you can tell us a little bit more about some of your thoughts about, like, how, you know, dating works in, like, current society and how people understand desire and, like, what some of your analysis is or, like, what some of your thinking and discovery is. Okay. So, just for this interview, I was looking up some stats, and I found some really interesting ones. So dating apps have taken over the market, the dating market, basically. So people used to get together more in pubs or more in the workplace and more in these different areas and that worked for some people and it didn't work for others and especially it didn't work for sexual minorities or people with specific sexual

interests who might be considered with hostility if if they made those desires known very quickly you mean in an iRL situation so like you mean like if you in the pub or in the workplace etc like those areas didn't work for those people necessarily yeah especially like LGBT community or people with specific kinks. And I think things like dating apps can work really well for people who might have very specific things that they're looking for. However, what has happened, I think, is that dating apps have basically cornered the market

in being the place that people get together. So it's become this compartmentalised place where people get together on dating apps, people don't get together at any other juncture. So what has happened is that there's become a problematization of desire or of flirtation that's seen as now quite transgressive. In other, if it's not online.

It is not online in this like, yeah. So basically, it's basically become the norm, and it's normative and it's okay to flirt with people or meet people to then go out for dates or to have sex with or whatever online is what you're saying then if somebody comes up and flirts with you in a pub

or whatever that becomes a bit like or what are you doing? Yeah, one of the stats that really through me it was 17% of Americans under 30 believe that inviting a woman for a drink always or usually constitutes sexual harassment. Right. 17%

always or usually saying do you want to go for a drink like asking somebody if I want to go for a drink and a third if a man would compliment a woman on her looks because that is now seen as transgressive by such a large percent of the population that's fascinating

but I guess that's only the case because it's happening somewhere else right so it's not like it's not happening it's just happening online exactly and it's got to happen happen somewhere, of course. It can happen online, although there's various different codes around that, of course. So, for example, your classic unsolicited dick picks are power for the course amongst male-on-male dating apps.

It's considered completely beyond the pay-or in sort of heterosexual dating apps, as we've had this discussion before. this is what I think is really the interesting effect so it's not it's not a problem that people use dating apps what might be a problem is what happens then to the rest of your life of your life why do does sex happen in or sex or desire happen in this really compartmentalized way somewhere else so for example the idea of a workplace romance has become increasingly yeah beyond the pale outrageous this is like this is not okay

it's now considered completely inappropriate to have a workplace romance even things like romances with your friends often especially once people who are under 30 it's become well you know

they're in the friend zone and now my friend so of course I wouldn't sleep with them so what do you mean you wouldn't sleep than they're a friend because you like them and you connect with them on a level so that's now written off

because sexual contact happens or sexual connection is meant to happen in this other place. Yes, so I guess we're only in this other place. But what we're talking about is we're talking about the contact. We're talking about the place where you make it known that you have interest in this other person because we're not talking about sex and desire that is only happening through chats or through sending picks.

We're also including people who end up meeting and having relationships, right? Yeah. You're just talking about the fact that you're less like if you're under a certain age, to go to a party and find flirting normal or being asked for a drink normal because it's now happening, like online is where that happens.

Except statistically, it's not happening online as much as you think. A third of people on dating apps never meet anybody, never go on a date with anybody. Right. So dating apps is the place where sexual contact has shifted

as the socially acceptable place. but for a vast number of people they're still not then going on the dates with the people okay so sex has gone down as well so the amount of times people having sex has decreased quite a lot is that not because of other things like um precarious work people living with their parents like the stress and anxiety of day-to-day life like not having anywhere know, to go out or take someone home to, etc. Is that also, is it, can it not just be more of a correlation? Yeah, it could well.

So it's really hard to know why that's happening. So people use dating apps for all sorts of reasons. The average Tinder user logs on about 11 times a day. So what happens is you get the dopamine rush. Why people say they say they go on, they flick through, they enjoy the, you know, checking, see if anyone swipes your right? right, see what the options are. The attraction is almost to the app

rather than to the possibility of meeting a person. And what has any of this got to do with capitalism? How do you think it's relevant? How do you think it is? Well, I guess there's a question around like, because one school of thought would say, well, I mean, this is just another way of meeting people.

And sure, the way meeting people has changed, I mean, you're saying statistically there's some people who are not meeting anyone and I think that's worth looking at and the percentage of people who are like having sexual relationships is going down but I mean that side

there's still a large number of people who are meeting people through online and you know one argument is saying well it's just a new way it's just the technology is just the form and which is allowing people to meet other people because people have really busy lives

that's the reality of day to day living, it's functional, it works. Whereas, of course, there's another school of thought. I mean, they're not mutually exclusive necessarily, but that is about how the very, like you said, with the dopamine hits and what, you know, scrolling and swiping does, is it compartmentalises, like, relationships and commodifies relationship into this thing.

Like, you've almost, like, outsourced, the meeting of people or the space where you think about meeting of people to this kind of world that exists within the app and that seems like a really neoliberal thing and so it has effects that's what I would imagine but I don't feel like I've thought about it much

so I think I mean what capitalism does classically is take her desires and sells it back to us right in a bastardized form which is less authentic and less less meaningful for us.

So if we have taken, and sex has been in one of the areas that has sex is fucking as free as one of the sort of Cuban sayings, which I think is really useful. It's like, yeah, I think it's really important that we keep that as a place where we can still sort of relate

in a really free out of the market kind of way to each other. But, of course, things like porn, things like dating apps, all these technological advances, which bring a lot to people's lives as well. It's when it becomes a replacement. And it's when it affects what happens in other places. So, yes, it's sort of a new way of meeting people, but it's the new way of meeting people in the way that,

gyms are maybe the way of having physical exercise. So what happens in a gym is not the same as what happens if you go for a walk, right? You might still be moving the same parts of your body but you're not experiencing the whole experience of in the world and therefore it becomes more of an individualized experience that can happen at this certain time. It's less messy.

And I think it's more useful to have messy and grey experiences. I think lots of younger people talk about how they didn't know how to flirt anymore. How do you come onto somebody in, especially if like a third of people think it's creepy, if somebody came onto them when it wasn't in this very established space. So if you're with a group of friends in the pub and a third of people think it might be creepy if somebody was flirting with you, you make flirting so socially unacceptable that it can only happen somewhere else, then people become more and more afraid to flirt and less and less able to flirt. Obviously, like me and you, even though we're not granny's listeners, so I'll just say this.

We are from, like, you know, we are from the pre-internet age. So a lot of our experience of, you know, meeting people, flirting, like going through adolescence, et cetera, happened before the internet for like both of us. Um, yeah, so we, so, you know, even though both of us have experience with dating apps, it's, I think we must still have the muscle memory of how to relate to people or something. I really like what you said about the gym versus like walking and how that works. Um, but what that made me think about in terms of what you were saying, um, with flirting in the pub is that they're still flirting online, but it has to happen in like written thumb typed words, I suppose. Because eventually you are, like, you're still looking to meet someone in theory, right? But I guess there's people all around the world. I mean, they have this problem and I don't know whether it's South Korea or whatever country where like, and in Japan where people never end up meeting people because they can only deal with this kind of like version of themselves, right? Yes, the complexity of real life human connection is that it's a bit grey and a bit messy.

And it involves like what people look like and smell like and what they're wearing and what they're thinking and just all of the different things that make you human in terms of interacting at that moment definitely not like a tick list of this is what I'm into I'm into the gym and I don't like Trump and things like this and there's like very very basic

things of how people would present themselves because also I think that's really important that people don't know themselves but people leak people leak all the time so all our tells are not in how we think how you think you're presenting to me um is not what i'm reading to you so how i read you is not how you necessarily want to present so but what i might connect with and really like with like with like is how i'm reading you so there's all the sort of subconscious and you're saying this can only happen when i kind of

of like meet you in real life because I might present myself as something online and you might think, oh, that's really interesting. But actually when you meet me, there might be other things that attract me to you and there might be things that totally repel you. And there's nothing that that online profile or whatever can help with. Absolutely. And people shit at knowing themselves. They really don't know what they're, they don't know themselves and they don't know what they like. And so therefore, going back to what we were talking about earlier, When you say, I am this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this. That's actually quite far away from what creates desire, is what we're saying.

Absolutely. And one of the things we think, like, so people seek a sort of subconscious fit with somebody else. So the things you're desiring about somebody might be all of these things that trigger a memory from the past, or feel like it feeds a hunger. that you don't necessarily know you have, as well as some of the more like obvious cultural or physical desires, there's this whole realm which you're cutting out of with dating apps, which doesn't mean the dating apps don't work for some people in some situations

and some people can use them as sort of like a place to get together, a place to meet and then, you know, and then they start connecting. and obviously it can work for the more functional sex so like Grindr works really well for I want to suck you off here's picture medic let's meet you know and then that's it but in terms of more long-term human relationship

it's a much more complex much more complex thing yeah any relationship regardless yes absolutely we're not talking about a specific mainstream idea of what that relationship is but what you're saying there is like the contrast between, you know, meeting up for, you know, a very short sexual interaction on Grindr is very different to anything there where you see someone more than once because you're going to have a memory of that person. And then the memory that you have of that person is complex and is not necessarily articulated.

And that your experience of that person then, especially if it's repeated, changes your brain plasticity. So it changes who you are. So it's not just that, so I'm not the same person that I was when I first got together with my current partner because we've spent so many years adjusting and changing and flexing to each other. Yeah. So I've, people change. Yeah.

People change with other people. With other people. But it's the only way to change because you can't change by yourself because you don't exist by yourself in the world. That's the world. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, that's, I think, why this is such an interesting, like, topic for us in terms of, like, acid themes is because, again, it's something where, I mean, going back to, again, this thing of how the, I just see it as a burden, like, the burden of being like, I am therefore. So it's not just about the checklist, although the checklist, I think, is a good way of summarizing it. It's not just saying, I like this.

I am this, I am this, which I think was really important that you pointed out is not very useful because people don't know themselves. But it's also about who I am changes in relation to you whether I like you or not. So we can only find that out when we meet in real life. Although, I guess, people can fall in love by writing letters to each other or by chatting. that's possible right yeah um and i've had some great dating apps experiences i'm not like sure i'm not i think it's only problematic if it becomes the only place that that happens and it's more the impact that it that it makes dirty sex happening in other places or sexual desire happening in other places and do you think that's the problem for me and do you think

that's in like it's in what level of consciousness does that sit on so so so it's kind of you presented it as a bit of like sociological analysis where like we've seen that because people are interacting in this way online when they therefore see each other in real life you know at a party in a bar or you're at a demo or whatever they're then unable and like you just said it makes that space dirty but is it is it is it the app itself or is it or is it the way that we are functioning in society like how did we get to this which bits do we need to unwind to stay with, you know, a radical progressive way of what we want as human being. Well, I would guess the desire involves risk, because desire is motivation, it's the reach

beyond who you currently, where you currently are, right? So desire involves an element of risk and I think that we are in a very risk-averse society. So some of the kind of, um, The craving to make it a safer space as possible for everybody's lives means that risk is taken out of everyday scenarios or the pub or public spaces and things like that. And I think maybe what's happened is the market has responded to that. So the dating app is a convenient way because that has to happen somewhere. And if that dating app didn't exist, but it's not necessarily because the dating app exists, it doesn't, it's, it's, less likely to exist elsewhere. It's kind of a combination of factors.

So there's a combination of social movements that are very prime to create as safe and risk-averse lives as possible. But to be devil's advocate, it almost like, that makes sense. Like safety and the way that it's talked about in politics is kind of, it makes sense as a reaction to, you know, late capitalism.

when everything seems risky. And if you know, you're not sure if you can pay your rent and you're not sure if you can, if your job is going to last for very long or whatever, you at least want that certain space to be safe. I mean, that might be quite a naive way, not a naive, a simplistic way of putting it, but I can understand how that bleed,

therefore goes into, you know, spaces of like politics and interaction and then therefore how it can mold people into thinking, well, I want to calculate. I want everything to be calculated because in that space I have control whereas of course there's no beauty in that

but this is the constant paradox so I would recommend everyone to look into Esther Perel if they don't know who already and they're listening to this but she talks about sort of the paradox and the tension between love and desire

freedom. Say the name again Esther Perel because we're going to do a reading list So feel free to mention anythings or attracts. Okay, also my two people that I recommend everybody reads is Esther Perel and Emily Nogoski. Mm-hmm. Who is an amazing book called Come As You Are, which is all about female desire. So Esther Perel talks a lot about the tension between love and lust. And it's freedom and security is another way to look at it.

So humans have always wanted to be safe and secure. we also need kind of the risk and the challenge and the pull and it's not that they are in opposition to each other but you have to work out the tension between the two and that's where you get the relationships where people stay forever in love and still you know want to shake each other's brains out after 21 years together and that's how you create that space by having having both those things operate at once together. sounds like the sweet spot except it's not a spot it's like two things in motion exactly it's two things in motion and and at different times and it's the flexibility if one of you just has a parent who die you're going to be focusing much more on the security and the comfort rather than say some of the more risky elements or the independence it's about movement and transformation where does trust come into all of So trust is complicated as well though, isn't it?

So trust, some people might think trust is knowing that someone might let you down, but you don't know that someone might let you now. You can't know that someone might let you down because they might well let you down. People will let you down a certain percentage of the time, even the person you most love and need. And that's okay. So maybe trust is more about the resilience of being okay with being let down. sometimes, or knowing that you're not a child, you're not a helpless baby, you're an adult,

so you don't need somebody to meet your needs 100% of the time. And I think they're going to be a bit of a childlike state for some people when they talk about trust. So it's like, you know, as if, as if everybody is going to meet their needs for safety and security and reassurance and that they should be, everyone should be like loving and kind all the time. And that's, that's just not going to happen. So, so it's, because we're human. Yeah. And it's, yeah, exactly. And it's about the, it's, it's like the tension again. It's because there has to be the right amount of tension between, um, risk and security. So I guess it's, there's a bit to trust, but it's all to do with resilience. Like, how do we build that resilience? So how do we build resilience? That's a huge question.

because it feels like it's all part of the same thing. I don't know where you start. You start by saying, well, we need to trust each other more and be more forgiving to our human interactions, which will maybe free our desires, which will enable us to have better relationships, which would then mean we can trust each other more and build like relationships and collectivities

that are more resilient. So on a really basic CBT level, thoughts, behaviours and actions are all linked. I would say there's a Buddhist saying actually that right thought follows right behaviour and I think it's really useful

As in it's in the practice You practice first And then you feel So I think there's almost a backward way of doing this and like Well I can't do this because I don't feel it Or I don't think it No just do it

I totally agree with you Do it first So you don't need to trust Before you take that person's hand And go we're going to run through this police line, take the hand and you do it. Yeah. And you see what happens. This is so interesting. So you take the risk. I was just having this conversation. And that's what, and I think to bring it back to desire, so this whole idea of like, well, I can't fall in love with somebody

because I don't know if they're the one. Of course you don't. There isn't such thing as the one anyway. But like, of course you don't know who they are and everything about desire is a leap of faith and it's it's that that's the that's the motivation that's the kind of like the draw so it's the call towards that you're like I kind of don't know why I'm drawn to this and I want to do this I'm going to do it anyway because I'm really really compelled to do it or rather here I am doing it oh look yeah I am doing it I mean that tends to be how things happen with me I'm in the middle of this, oh, that's a surprise, but it must be something subconscious, and then you can, you can analyze it later or whatever, or overthink it later. I mean, that, that seems like

a better way of doing things. Obviously, nobody's condoning, like, going into things with bad intentions, but sometimes it's going to be messy. Yeah. Right? Yes, it's often going to be messy, and love and sex are often messy. Because you don't know what, you don't know what box you're opening for yourself and the other person and like the for both yourself and the other person and this kind of new scenario okay so when you were talking about that that made me think about a conversation I was having the other day um um about exactly that about that buddhist saying type thing which is what I would call in the practice so in the sense that when you do yoga there's no I'm like there's no thinking about doing the yoga that's

going to make me want to do the yoga if I don't want to do the yoga. But doing the yoga is going to give me the feedback loop that doing yoga works and is also going to produce the effect of a better stretched body. I breathe better, et cetera, for example. But when I was having, when I was having a conversation with this person, the thing I was talking about was because I've thrown myself into things enough times in my life, I've got enough of a feedback loop that this sometimes works so I continue to do it because I have a feedback loop that tells me that it's in the practice that I'll find out if I like this after I do it whereas I think there are some people and I mean you tell me whether you think this is the case with desire and sex where

because the whole setup is you have to overthink everything before you do it then you've not had the experience of the feedback loop in the first place so unless you get unless you change the context quite substantially how are you ever going to start the trying before the thinking in a sense like that's what that made me think of exactly no I think that's really true and that's all your question about how do you build resilience that's the answer through feedback loops which is kind of like I mean the extreme way of looking at it is you fake it until you make it which is not entirely true but I think like it's not entirely untrue either you know it's like well neither with the police lines or with you know telling someone that you fancy them or whatever

it's like I guess I don't know if it's useful or not to be thinking about like what's the worst that can happen because even that as a way of thinking I think is partly problematic I mean obviously people who put themselves in grave danger in an interpersonal level or like in a political level is you know there's extremes but I think what we seem to be saying is is like putting being risk averse and the centre of how we go about relationships and politics

is not forward there isn't then a forward trajectory there has to be risk right that's what we're saying there has to be risk so a child learns by a child first learns to walk they walk and they fall over

and you have to rush not to pick them up because they pick themselves up and then they learn to walk and they do it again. And they carry on doing it even though they're getting hurt. And that's also how we have relationships. And you first fall in love and it's awful because they don't love you back and it's

really, really gutting. And you have mediocre sex and it's a bit disappointing. And you have some bad sex. And then you have great sex. And then there's just like all these different experiences that become this accumulated experience. I've got this. I've forgotten her name.

a feminist who wrote about a Mito critique basically the Mito movement on campus and she her question was how do you know but how do you know if a pass is unwanted until you make it? I think that's a really great question and I think we've become so concerned

about the unwanted past and as if that's the fear of being a predator is huge right and yeah that that question because it's so as become so demonized. Part of that just like leave me the fuck alone

vibe and I don't just mean with like sex and flirting I mean like with everything politically is is a kind of is a hopelessness I feel it's kind of it's a turning in it's a it's like wanting to like just

be with yourself now it might be that we're talking about an articulation of that which involves a lot of people and I don't want to say that particularly for me too because I don't think I've so much formed an opinion on that or know enough about it but it's that yeah like the kind of don't touch me

both in the literal and metaphorical sense it feels to me is very much related to late capitalism it's like you don't have the head space to deal with this or you don't have the internal power to push back almost in that moment so you said you wanted to do a defense of men popular what's this got to do with anything go on you called it what the problematization of men yeah i think the boys are right the boys are right okay and this is this the the context for this is that your research involves is focused on young

men as well so this is something that you've been thinking about in a you know this is not an idea that you came up with in the pub last night and you thought, this is what I'm going to record. This is something you've been thinking about and experiencing in relation to the people who you've been seeing. Yes. Is that right?

And I mean seeing, again, clarifying in your clinic. Is that right? Some of it has been clients and some of it has been friends. And then with my research specifically, I was looking at younger men who identified as younger men from the left, basically. But I've been thinking quite a bit about where do, where is the kind of the guidance and the encouragement for men and sexuality?

And, you know, I'm a mother of a 13-year-old boy. I desperately want my child to have a positive idea of his own sexuality. And he came to me and said that he was talking about. to me about toxic masculinity, and he thought it meant that all masculinity was toxic. Okay. And the whole state of being a man was toxic. And we talked about that, and that made me want to cry. I was like...

That's pretty dark, yeah. That's really, really dark. And I think that is actually some of the messages that the left in particular is sort of giving out. The idea, if you're cis and straight and male, that you are beyond redemption, or that you, in your... yourself are problematic and you should carry some shame of being. And that's bullshit. Just as you've said that, I feel like I've actually ironically had to do a lot of, okay, it was not emotional labour because I don't like the way that term has been overused. But I feel like I've had a lot of interactions where men have said to me things along that line, which almost seem like

Christian in the articulation about themselves as men. And I've just been like chill out. you're a really nice guy I don't know has been my response like in terms of like toxic masculinity and needing to do work on themselves and stuff so tell us more about what you mean that I think so from the left

what gets thrown out in terms of men and sexuality what are the messages I think that's kind of two basically and one is the idea of the predator that men are fucking terrifying that men male sexuality

There's the rapist, there's the sexual abuser, there's the, you know, there's all this, like, the, the Weinstein's of the world. And then the other is the loser. So that's this idea of shaming men for having shit opening lines when they message on dating apps. It's that men are a bit crap that men don't know how to come on. to girls and it's it's these two these two places that that male sexuality has ever sort of talked about from the left on the right we've got a really strong so you've got the whole pick-up artist stuff or the all right messages for men and that is so the pickup artist stuff is all around those certain things you can do to get more sex with women and then some of the really

really dark in-cell stuff is if you're a loser you're never going to get a woman but it's very much like a misogynist hatred yeah it's women not as people women as things that need to be like conquered with a certain strategy or whatever yeah because women are evil and wrong and whatever especially with the in-cell stuff definitely but I think partly there's an absence of a place which says this is what a healthy and good male sexuality looks like and that is why these places have bred. So these, all the inside stuff, it's like, where do geeky boys get their advice about how they should,

how they should desire, what's okay, how they should desire women, etc. I mean, how should they? What's the answer to that problem? I think the answer the problem is, first of all, that there's nothing shamed for and fancying. Somebody. Founcing somebody and fancying women and being a bit clumsy about it

and not quite knowing what to do. So I think there's stuff around that that I think is absent. So what needs to be done on the left? Is it that we're saying the left is going to lose all of its men to the alt-right, all of its straight-man. No, no, not at all.

What are we saying? What I'm saying is that there's almost like a culture of call out and shaming. Whilst at the same time, women are not shifting massively from their position to being more active. One of my other good stats that I wrote, so OKCuper did a dating survey, had 1.5 million respondents, 75% of women, 60% of men, said they were feminist. but less than 1% of women said they would rather do the bestioring I'm definitely in that 1% my rule on Oka Cupid was I message first

Me too but the vast majority of women are not the first people who will message even though they are more likely to feel like they have far more messages than they want from unwanted messengers So one of the other open secrets, I guess, about dating apps is that people aim up.

So one of the reason we're probably in the 1% is because we know it works in our favour because I will always message someone much more attractive than me. So when you get people on dating apps saying they've had loads of unwanted messages or messages from people that they aren't interested in, mean it's messages from people below them don't know but that sounds like we're all doing this like stratifying thing in some kind of like alpha beta whatever I don't know it's it is uncomfortable but that's the uncomfortable truth of the the dating apps thing isn't it but are you saying but presumably if you're saying you're reaching up and

reaching down you're saying that's reflecting like some kind of like a stratified system that exists in real life society whereas we know that sure someone can find somebody else attractive but it's more complex and fully formed in real life than it is from a picture or whatever yes or when your mate has written your profile yeah although there's still going to be a certain there is a hierarchy there's a hierarchy there's a hierarchy of fiscal attractiveness there's quite base level in our society about what people judge as say an 8 out of 10 and a 4 out of 10.

Oh, I hate that so much. You might hate it, but I bet in your dating apps. In my dating history. In your dating history, it reflects something I did in my brain. And I think that's the uncomfortable truth. So when we talk about an unwanted past,

what we mean is someone, a path from someone we think is below us. Let's come back to talking about this in the left. So we started this section by you saying, I'm going to do, what's it called? Talk about the problematization. No. Was it problematization of male sexuality?

Male sexuality. Okay, so how, like, what is the proper left response now? Like, what do we do? What's the progressive thing that the left needs to do to, I mean, I don't want to say defend men, but to, like, solve this particular problem. And because I think quite movingly, you related it to, like, bringing up your son

in, like, how do we create, how do we create an environment where men feel like it's okay to come on to women in, you know, make a pass or whatever? And I guess it's about risk and stakes, because I think what you're saying is that there are environments on a particular part of the left, I think we're talking about, where men feel completely unable to act

and that that is problematic and it's not progressive. That's what we're saying, isn't it? So I think that's a couple of different things. And I think one of them is what the all right provide, which we don't, is it tells people what to do rather than not just what not to do. So I think on the left we go, you shouldn't do this, you shouldn't do that, you shouldn't do this. And whilst at the same time, a lot of women are like, oh, men are so emotionally illiterate. So if someone's emotionally illiterate, guide them through what they should do, not tell them what they shouldn't. So explain to people what you like about them as well as what you don't.

I think what the problem is, is that many women want men to take, many women on the left still want men to take the lead in terms of sex and dating. So I guess that's stepping up and taking more ownership of, so women taking more ownership of their sexuality and being a bit more forthcoming and acting, maybe, doing that thing of right behaviour, right thought follows right behaviour. I think there's something around many, many, many, women have far more, the one area of fantasy that women fantasize much more about than men is BDSM.

Many more women fantasize about power play than men, and mostly that's about being submissive. And that's not to then problematize that, but it's to say that maybe sort of stretch those fans, don't just stay stuck in the static place where you're like, because I want this and this is my sexual fantasy then I always want them but doesn't this all I mean again I don't know I can't help thinking well this will kind of make sense because this is what happened when you know you went from the roaring 20s you know in this like downward spiral in terms of like sexual freedom and like women's behavior in public whatever from the end of the 20s um to the 1950s you know in western Europe when you kind of like went from what was quite like in cities like a so making a huge

generalisation here but like socially liberal um environments to like the 1950s being like no very fixed gender roles because you know this is how women need to behave in terms of industrialisation and of course that had a direct relation to like capitalism and work and like the production line and the fact that you like needed a woman to fulfil these certain roles for a man and it kind affect sociality and whatever and therefore affected gender roles and sexual roles, etc. And aren't we just going through a period like that because of where we are in terms of the cycle of capitalism in that we are in a point of crisis. So women are saying, I've got all of this fucking shit going on in my life.

I just want somebody else to ask me out on a date and pay for it or, you know, like make me feel good because I'm living under late capitalism and I'm a single mother or whatever and I'm being disproportionately discriminated against by the system like this is what's happening to my rent and precarious work or whatever. I just want a man to quote unquote be a man, which is hugely problematic but somehow in terms of the kind of I can kind of see that.

Oh yeah, absolutely. I can see it as like a function of, you know, what's happening. So 50 shades are great, massively popular book. because lots of women just don't want to be in the caretaker role, they want to relinquish that responsibility, they want someone else, they want at least a space in their life where somebody else steps up and looks after them.

Yeah, which makes sense, doesn't it? Yeah, absolutely. And that's fine as a fantasy, but also, you're not going to have that if you... So there's two things, isn't there? There's one that we need a... We need to destroy patriarchy, of course. Fuck your page.

So, but you need a situation where, so it's not just about, yeah, it's not just about, I'm not just trying to put more work on women, but I'm saying there has to also be space for, um, men to risk making mistakes. Otherwise, men are just going to retreat. And that for us on the left, we have to make sure that there's a space where men can take risks and flirt with women and get it wrong and not be totally, like ridiculed or ostracized or kicked out of your political group or whatever. Absolutely. And that women, women can do the same too. Of course. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

So that everybody can be a little bit of a fuck up. We want the space to fuck up, basically. Yeah. We want a space to fuck up and not for it to be like over-analyzed. I think in everything, really. I feel like we've, we've, we haven't solved that, but we've made an offering. We've made an offering to the listeners. Like, basically, everyone chill the fuck out.

there's some big problems out there in terms of like real actual abuse of women and men and of course everything that capitalism is doing like let's make sure that we have the space to make mistakes in terms of how we relate to each other and that means like in terms of flirting and sexually and making passes and making political mistakes as well I mean for fuck's sake we have to be able to like get things wrong sometimes be able to break through together so let's now talk about authenticity Because again, last time we had the same conversation where I was, where I thought, I have to interview Tabitha for ACFM, was this, you kind of did one of your Tabitha, I'm going to make a statement and then stay quiet and like, I'm nod. And I was like, oh, this is so profound. It's going to make me think, which is that you said, you talked about pleasure, not performance. And that particularly interest, that does interest me, especially in terms of thinking about what it is to like be ourselves.

and of course we've just deconstructed the self as being in relation to other people. So that's an interesting thing to talk about what it is to be authentic when yourself is really something that only exists with other people. But leaving that bit aside for a minute, I think both politically as well,

on the left, there's loads of performance going on. And I'm mostly attracted to spaces where I feel like people aren't performing and where it is a little bit messy. and people are able to kind of be whoever they are that day or bring their various different, you know, weirdness or quirkiness without that having to be performed or boringness or whatever to a space. And I think you were talking specifically in that case about, you know,

relationships and sex. So how does issues of like performance or presenting a certain self kind of relate to, you know, 21st century like dating apps and stuff. Well, I would say it's one of the main things

with a rectal dysfunction is a over focus on performance, not pleasure. So again, to... That's a very specific. We're talking about

like a very specific kind of performance, like literally a man performing in sex. Yeah. But I think that can often be how it feels

for men the first, at least the first few times and women too to a in a slightly different way so i think women's performance is often more around feeling like the objective desire therefore they we're talking about heterosexual sexual engagement here so that might be more around having the better body and male focus is on the performance of giving good sex by having a hard dick, etc., etc. Those things can tend to be like the main detractors from enjoying sex. Isn't this always been the case forever and ever?

Yeah, I think probably. I think, again, it's changed according to cultural norms. So there can be certain pattern shifts based on new things about what becomes more normal. So, for example, it might have been at some point in time, it might be the performance for women, might have been performing dutely function, and now it's performing several orgasms every time you have sex, etc. So that kind of performance changes. So my takeaway for virtually all men.

plants would be around and taking yourself away from that performance and back into the pleasure of human flesh and that interaction and putting yourself back into the body. And is that what you mean by like talking about being authentic? When we talk about authenticity, is that the same thing? Yeah, I guess it's like so, yeah, I think performance, I mean, everybody, performs themselves to a certain extent, of course, that performance and authenticity can often like work against each other and letting yourself be all the ways that you don't necessarily perform. So, for example, I perform, I like to perform funny and capable. And actually,

my authentic self might be a bit more complex than that and might be a bit more like, pitiful. And, yes, I think I'm most authentically connect with people

who can also see those other sides to me. One of my favourite quotes is David Schnarch talks about how intimacy is the disclosure of self

in the presence of another. Yes, I did. Did you put this up somewhere? So say that again. Intimacy is... The disclosure of self in the presence of another. And he talks about how that can be...

That doesn't mean comfortable. So sometimes people talk about intimacy being like... Either people say intimacy meaning sex or they say intimacy meaning like, you know, when you're really close and comfortable with somebody. And actually intimacy can be really uncomfortable. Intimacy is that moment, someone you know really well says to you,

I think you're not being okay at the moment with this person. I think I've been cruel. It can be really, really uncomfortable. Because it's that, it's somebody, going back to the conversation we're having right at the beginning, because it's somebody who knows you so well, better than yourself at that moment, is that there is that closeness of being able to reflect back to you,

something that you have a mechanism of blocking your own understanding of at that moment. Exactly. And your performance might be, so if you were performing, you might say, no, you're wrong. If you were being intimate and authentic at that point, you might be like, shit, I think I was a dick. Yeah. But also that's kind of related to what you said about risk,

because I guess that's authentic in a way because the relationship is based on like the risk that you've put yourself in to expose yourself to that other person to be in a situation where somebody can say to you the way you've dealt with that other person is no okay and really what you need to do is go, you know, apologize or you need to change your behaviour, whatever and you're not performing the perfect version of yourself

or what you're supposed to be, etc. And that goes back to what we're saying about like relationships are messy. Like the sooner we accept that, the sooner that we probably have more space in our heads to be like better people. And I don't mean better on a kind of like moralistic sense. I mean like people who are like kinder and more empathetic to other human beings, right? Because that's what we want. We want to create the sort of society where. where people have space,

both because they're not being, like, screwed over by the state and by social conditions, but also not being screwed over by their comrades in being forced to, like, perform this self that means that they don't have the space for empathy and they don't have the space for being wrong and they don't have the space for, I don't know, being human. Yeah.

Does that make sense? Absolutely. And feeling yourself capable are being loved with all your your faults and your weirdness. And your history and your fucking shit. And the expectation that you're going to change. So that's some of the intimacy, I think.

Like, yeah, not just someone goes, oh yeah, you know, you're going to be your, you're adducts that person, I'll tolerate that. But rather, you're adducts that person. I think you shouldn't be. And that change is possible. Yeah, that change is possible. transformation of the self

through the relationships that you have and removing the burden of being to be this complete thing at the beginning and at the end of an interaction which was always and will always be total bollocks absolutely should we end it right here? That's a good way to end yeah let's end it thank you Tabitha

thank you Nadia this broadcast is brought to you by Navaramedia go to navaramedia.com support.