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You described the process of what it was like having sex with a sex doll. Let's get into that. Okay. Hello, and welcome to the four four Media Podcast where we bring you unparalleled access to hidden worlds both online and IRL. Four four Media is a journalist founded company and needs your support.

To subscribe, go to 44media.co. As well as bonus content every single week, subscribers also get access to additional episodes where we respond to their best comments, and they get early access to interview series episodes as well like this one. Gain access to that content at 44media.co. This week, we are joined by doctor Angela Jones. Hi, Angela.

Hey. It's so good to see you. Thanks for having me.

So good to see you. Thank you for being here.

Of course.

Angela is a professor of I'm gonna try to read your whole CV right now, and that'll be the episode. Angela is a professor of women, gender, and sexuality studies at Stony Brook University. In addition to scholarly works published in many distinguished journals, including porn studies and the black scholar, they're the author, coauthor, and or editor of several books, including black lives matter, reference handbook and camming, money, power, and pleasure in the sex industry. Here it is. Which came my torn up copy, which came out in 2020.

And honestly, this book advanced and informed a lot of my own understanding about the online adult industry is and it came out in 2020, which was you could not have planned a better publication date for them. And everybody and their mom was coming all of sudden. Their latest book, Sex in Public, which is here. This is the proof copy, but then I have the very nicely textured this is ASMR time. Sex in Public, the transformative social power of our erotic lives just launched last week when we're recording this.

Very exciting. How's it going? How are you feeling post launch?

I am feeling really excited. You know, I come from the world of academia, and so finally publishing something for a trade audience just feels really good, and the reception has has been been really really good good so so far. Far. This is the most vulnerable thing I've ever written. And so I think the fact that it's already being well received is just really affirming and really exciting.

Yeah. You spend a couple years just, like, writing something kind of in isolation, then you hope that people like it. And then when you get to publish it, it's like, my god.

Oh my god. And then at a certain point, it's like, okay, take this away. Right? Yeah.

Oh, yeah. A thousand percent. Don't ever let me look at this again. That's the vibe. That was the vibe after I published mine.

And yours is so good, not just in substance, of course, but even like we were talking you're talking about the cover, like, aesthetically. Like, I love the way yours came together and the images. And I feel like a lot of time publishers are resistant to kind of images, especially color ones. So yours is just really stunning in a lot of ways to me too.

Thank you. Yeah. The images were crazy. I don't think I'd ever do another look with images. But

I hear you. Just the permissions alone for like the six that are in here was like, you know, a lot. It was a lot.

Yeah. So I would love to for folks who are unfamiliar, to get a little bit of your own backstory. Because as you mentioned, this is a pretty vulnerable personal book, which is very different from academia. How did you get to this place in in your life where you're writing this book? Like, how did you come to be interested in sex work from an academic standpoint?

I know you also also have a background as a sex worker. So if you wanna walk us through just, like, how you got here, I think that would be a great place to start.

Yeah. Of course. I mean, I think for some time now to just to kind of give folks a sense of who I am as an academic. Right? So my research is really important to me, but so is my teaching.

And I think when it comes to my research, what's always been really important to me is that it has some impact, some applied focus. Right? That the communities that I'm working with, they're not just some objective group, you know, like some group of people out there that I wanna extract from. Like, these are communities whose lives I care about and feel committed to. And so doing work that I think can help the communities that I write about that can listen.

I don't wanna overstate my kind of impact in the world. Right? But, like, so for example, you know, in some of the work that I've done around sex work, you know, some of the most, I think, meaningful work for me, for example, has been when a few of us were writing scientific memos to support decrim bills, like, on the ground. Like, that sort of work has been really important to me. And so it just fast forward, it just kind of felt like time to stop writing books for academic audiences that, you know, like if you're lucky, 500 people read.

Right? I mean, like, that's a good book. And to start writing for mainstream audiences. Right? Like, I think that there's so much work that myself and my disciplinary colleagues are doing that need to be written for people, you know, in in in the world.

And so that was some of the broader motivation here, what brought me here. But I think in terms of writing about sex and sexuality for our mainstream audience, some of this motivation is certainly intellectual but always driven by those political commitments. Right? Like, I want better sexual literacy for everybody. And I think that there's a lot of really amazing cutting edge research that doesn't always make it to kind of mainstream public discourse.

And I want that work out there and I wanna be a part of them. And I think part of the problem is a lot of the research that does make it to kind of mainstream discourses often emphasizes what I read about in the book is these kind of three d's. Right? So it's dysfunction and, right, and disease, and I want more pleasure and more empowerment. But I think some of this was really personally motivated for me as I kind of introduced in the book.

I feel like I wish I had a better sex education. Right? Like, wish that I was more sexually literate when when when especially when I was younger and I think about all the ways that, you know, a lot of the harm that I've experienced might not have been had I have had better sex education. And so I think if this book can help people know themselves a little bit better, understand sexuality in more holistic ways, right? Ways that again helps them better understand themselves, their partners, that allows them to connect all of the facets of their sexuality to the world around them.

That makes me so so happy.

Yeah. Yeah. I feel that deeply as someone who grew up in a very rural place in a pretty conservative environment, Christian environment, there was no the sex education I had was like, you're you're going to hell. If you if you dress and tempt the boys, you will you're you're doomed, which was just such a harmful narrative. And I think it's a lot of people's inner narrative when they're children and then they take that into adulthood.

Absolutely.

That leads me into just going back to way before either of our childhoods. You start this book talking about sexology and the the the advent of psychology as a study and the ways the ways that that history influences our current day are so interesting. You write, and I will try not to quote your book at you too much, but you wrote, you can't build wealth and maintain patriarchal monogamous marriage between cisgender white women and white men if people do not stop getting it on across racial, gender, and class lines. Psychology, like all sciences, was shaped by the political and cultural context in which these ideas emerged. I feel like that is one of a few theses of this book.

And I would love for you to briefly unpack or or lengthily unpack that for us a bit. I guess what is psychology for the people who aren't familiar, and how did that view influence how we see, like, deviant sex and things like that?

Absolutely. This is a great question, and this is one of those moments of the book that I feel like is a little bit nerdier. But I hope that people find a lot of value in learning about these histories because there were even new things that I learned in the course of researching this this part of the book. So for those who are not familiar, broadly speaking, sexology is the systematic study of human sexuality. And it's got a relatively short epistemological history, which is to say that now there is a lot of research being done on sexuality.

But initially, it's a lot of that research was coming from both kind of medical doctors and psychologists who were primarily interested in kind of categorizing sexuality. And in the process, they're basically discursively creating these hierarchical systems. Right? So they're not just studying human sexuality to descriptive descriptively document all of the wonderful pleasurable things that people are doing with their lives, they're doing it with judgment. Right?

They're doing it to cast some, especially erotic practices and behaviors as inherent, right, in setting up structures of these practices are normal and these practices are abnormal. And what I think is really important, and I love the section that you read from, and there's another line somewhere close to what you read that I think is really important for people, which is something to the effect of don't ever let the pretense of scientific objectivity fool you. Right? A lot of times people are like, well, you know, the doctor said so and the scientist said so. But, like, those ideas that come out of science, they are also socially constructed.

They are shaped by whatever the political milieu is at the time. And so, for example, if we look at some of the early writing when scientists first start labeling kind of this is we're going to call this heterosexuality. We're going to call this homosexuality. Right? And and especially in the context of The United States, so some of this history comes out of Vienna and Germany.

But looking at The United States, what was interesting for me is the development of a lot of this science right around the same time as sexology. Right around the same time as the introduction of Jim Crow segregation. Right? And so understanding that at the time, know, when you think about Jim Crow segregation, a part of that history that often gets lost is that a lot of the history of Jim Crow policy was about sex. And if I can be crass for a moment, it was about fucking.

And it was about keeping people it was about preventing so called miscegenation. Right? And so there's this interesting, maybe dare I say sinister relationship between what's happening in sexology and what's happening in political discourse. Right? So, politically, you want to keep people, right, from having sex across class groups, across genders, right?

Well, you wanna prevent them from same gender anyway. And so there's just this interesting relationship between sexology and upholding existing systems and structures of power.

Yeah. Yeah. For sure. Yeah. It's not about just like what you or I do in bed.

Right. It's what we as a society say is okay or not okay to do in bed and how we've gotten to that point. The title is fantastic. The title is sex in public. Do you want to kind of walk us through sex in public as a concept?

You know, even, like, the the social power of our erotic lives. I think just that phrase itself is a little bit mind blowing just because sex is a very private thing that you do in your own home usually. You know? It's like, it's you don't talk about it. That's how we see it as a society, but talking about it with social power, I think is is really important to unpack.

Yeah. Thanks for that. So so initially, like, the first draft of this book was called the social life of sexuality, which is now the title of chapter one with all the science y stuff we were just talking a little bit about. And what's interesting, if you'll indulge me for a second, the title, when we were initially workshopping titles with the kind of team at the publisher, there was somebody on the team who was like, I don't like sex in public. And we were like, why?

And they were like, because people are gonna think that this book is just about like, take it very very literally. Right? That this book is about people actually like having sex in public.

Right. Like exhibitionists. Exactly.

Like, this is just about like, I don't know, the people in sex clubs or the people, you know, fornicating in parks or something or tea in team rooms or whatever. And to be clear, you will meet some of those people and see some of that in the book. But I think one of the reasons why we ended up landing there despite some skepticism on the team was that I think in some ways, it's like a double entendre, which is I think it carries a lot of meaning the title. So when we say sex in public, we want fundamental there. I want people to understand sex not as you were saying as like this private thing, this physiological thing that you're kind of born with that's innate, that you kind of have no control over.

Right? To understanding it as something that is public. And when we say public, not necessarily because you're doing the sexual things in public, but because the world around us shapes every facet of our sexuality. Right? So one of the the arguments in the book is again, wanting people to understand sexuality more holistically, right?

So, thinking about sexuality as having many different components. Our desires, right? Our erotic practices, behaviors, our identities, our relationships, right? In terms of what relationship structures, forms we like, the communities that we're a part of anyway. But thinking about how so, for example, for people who experience desire and attraction, asking people, right?

So, you're listening right now. Pause for a moment and think, how has the world around you, the public, all of its institutions, the media, family, government, right? Like all of these structures around us, How have they shaped how you understand your desires? Again, if you experience desire, if you experience attraction, how is the world around you shaped that? And then I think another part of the kind of sex in public that I think is really important to the through lines that you're alluding to is one of the things I'm looking at is thinking about erotic dialectics and thinking about historical change.

And I want everybody to appreciate just how much human eroticism, not necessarily sex, human eroticism shapes every facet of the world that we live in. Right? Like, name an institution. There is not an institution that human eroticism does not touch in some way. So just as those structures influence us, and this is the part that excites me, right?

Is that it's human eroticism that changes the world. And I think that human eroticism isn't understudied or maybe underappreciated motivation for social change. Right? And so, I think about erotic dialectics, part of what I'm looking at is this push and pull between the public and private. Right?

So, in some ways, whenever all the deviants, and you know I'm saying that in a this book is animated by all of the deviants in the best way. Right? So when the sex rabble, the sexual rule breakers, you know, are more visible or out in public. Right? Like this month that we're talking is pride.

Right? Like, the more that people are living their authentic erotic lives, the more that creates change. Right? And very often and then what we see is kind of reactionary. And this is part of what I think is problematic, especially in the current geopolitical moment is that there are then these kind of knee jerk reactions.

Right? So, more public eroticism. So, more sex if you will is in public, the more there are a wide range of entities, religious, governmental, who are like, no, no, no, no. Get that shit back in private where it belongs. Right?

Because sex is fundamentally something that is supposed to be kind of secret and private for a lot of people. And there's this ongoing tug of war, push and pull between, you know, sexuality in the public sphere and then those who wanna push it back in private. And so for me, I think the the title in some ways hopefully, you know, captures some of those themes.

Yeah. Absolutely. I think it does. I mean, I think I think it's successful. Something we've been looking at for for quite a bit is libraries and the libraries' reactions to queer media.

And, you know, it's the the lobbying efforts and the the activist efforts to push queer life and, I mean, sexuality, honestly, but, age appropriate sex education even, to the margins or completely out the door, I think is is something that's very it's that's something that scares me a lot about the the current moment, is the ways that these groups are successful in a lot of ways. They're saying, you know, we don't wanna see that in our faces. But it's like, what is in your face the other eleven months that

you're right? Absolutely. And just I think about all the work that you've done, especially thinking about, I mean, what you're describing as it's taking place online. Right? And the amount of kind of shadow banning and censoring and and kind of, again, these kind of knee jerk responses to kind of censor and regulate, very, very aggressively to keep that stuff out of the public.

Yeah. Yeah. And you mentioned, erotic power and erotic eroticism as shaping society and shaping history, honestly. But I think it's such a funny response. And this just going back to, like, title arguments with publishers, not to blow mine up too much, but, like, I everybody has this fucking experience.

Right? But my my title was house sex change, the Internet and Internet, change sex, which is a very it's a big concept. But, you know, a lot of the response to that was, well, I think that's overblowing it. I'm like, think it's under understating what's going on. It's like forget the Internet.

Forget the last forty years. Let's talk about the last, you know, like 2,000. I think something else you you talked about in the book that I thought was and this is, obviously, this is a technology website, so let's get into tackle a bit. Let's do it. But the chapters and the the parts where you touched on, sex toys and consumerism, I thought were really interesting.

I was really excited to read those and and have you talk about the ways that consumerism is sometimes, like, conflated or confused as, like, either progress or activism or visibility or whatever. It's like because there's so many sex toys in Walgreens right now, we must be fine. No. And as far as liberation.

No. We are not.

Where, by the way, I have to still get an associate to unlock that. And this is kind of a separate thing, but, like, the ways that sex mediated by technology challenges our views of what is sex, which as, again, as a kid who grew up without a good sex education, know, it's like the girls were defining sex in a lot of ways creatively. Right. So, yeah, anyway, that was several statements and questions in one. But, like, the idea that sex toys and the sex toy market booming is somehow a sign of progress.

I would just love your your thoughts on that and just that industry in general because it is it is so much more normalized, which is great.

Of course. So I think first I wanna say this is the chapter that in some ways, I think, shares a lot of affinities and in many ways is a celebration of of kind of your book. I think this particular chapter really kind of, dovetails so nicely with with, I think, the spirit of your book too. Right? And just I want people to think about how eroticism, in this case specifically, is shaping kind of capitalist markets and how those markets are also kind of shaping sexuality.

So this is this actually in some ways also relates to what I was talking about with the dialectics. Right? So I wanna be very clear to folks. Right? Like, this is not when I talk about erotic dialectics, I am not imagining some kind of linear, happy story of progress that is bringing us, you know, to some magical queer pervert utopia or something.

Right? That like and and I think I directly say this at a couple of points in that chapter that like, make no mistake, this chapter is not some love letter to global capitalism. Right? And if anything, what I'm trying to be critical through critical of throughout the book is the way that sexuality and eroticism is constantly being commodified. Right?

So even if we're making some forms of progress in relationship to sexual liberation, which I can say more about, that progress isn't always rooted in the forms of justice that I would like to see in the world. Right? So very often, again, sexuality as it becomes more public, all of those different forms of sexuality become more public. It is generally often being commodified in ways that exacerbate existing forms of exploitation that are harmful to workers, that are harmful to the environment. So, like, in some ways, I'm like, yay, more sex toys for the humans.

Right? Like, more pleasure. Great. We're starting to see these as like tools of sexual health. I like that.

But also at the same time, understand that, you know, your your tool of pleasure, your vibrator was likely made by some worker on the 996 in China who's being terribly exploited, with deleterious impacts on the environment. So I think we need to make space for both of those things. And then I was well, a lot of the chapters kind of specifically focused on sex toys. I have just become very, very interested in watching the development of sex dolls over time and that particular market and the research that has developed, therein.

Yeah. Let's get into that.

Okay.

I mean, you knew we had to. But you went through the process and you bought a sex doll, and we're talking about the the life size, like, torso dolls. And you described the process of what it was like having sex with a sex doll, having sex to a sex doll, which again is all of this this kind of language really gets to be challenging because are we talking about sex? And a lot of people would say, no. That's not sex.

A lot of people would say, yes. Absolutely. That's sex. And that's the same way that, like, teledontics, like distance based sex where you're still there's another person involved. Is that sex?

Is sexting sex? There are so many interesting questions, and I don't know if there's a prescriptive answer to any of it, but the broader we can make this definition, the better. But the sex doll. So Cristal, right, from the the alcohol.

Yes. Right? Like the champagne. Very very reminiscent of my strip club days. Yes.

Uh-huh. Yes. Well, I tell people that. Right? Like, she actually, in some ways, the the doll reminded me of this dancer who I was in love with when I worked in the strip clubs in the late nineties and early two thousand.

Shout out to Christelle. Shout out to Christelle wherever you are in the world. Hopefully, things and making money.

Yeah. But even the process of buying this doll was, really I think that was interesting also because there were you wrote that there there were not a lot of options that were, like, not white hyper feminized, hyper boobied Yeah. Yeah. Versions of these dolls so you could buy. So, yeah, tell

us Absolutely. I'll I'll tell But all the I actually I first wanna start with this question of kind of what is sex. Right? And so I think first and foremost, and especially when we talk about technologically mediated sex, folks, it's all sex. Right?

Like, I think that we need to abandon this definition of sex that's rooted in what scholars call the coital imperative. Right? So think PIV. Right? I think we need to move away from that definition.

Inclusive. It is not particularly helpful. And when it says not helpful, I don't know how helpful a definition of sex that is just rooted in the Coitola imperative is helpful for describing the wide range of forms of eroticism that the humans are engaged in. Right? Like people across genders and cross anyway, cross sexual identities, right, are engaged in a wide range of forms of eroticism.

And so I'm interested in not using language that forecloses all of the different ways that people are connecting. Right? And so certainly, yep, you're telegeodontics, if you're Zooming, if you're sexting, if you're using the video chat, if I'm having sex with Cristal, which I won't be doing again for reasons I'll explain. Right? Like you're having sex with a sex doll.

To me, it's all sex. It's all sex. And one of the arguments, in fact, in the book is also that I really I am more drawn to studying and writing about eroticism than just sex because I think the word sex again comes with so much baggage in terms of how people the limited ways I think people understand that as opposed to thinking about, well, I'm more interested in all of the different ways that humans seek intimacy and connection with others, which can look very, very differently. And it was interesting. I just took a note for myself because I was thinking as you were talking, I would characterize the interaction that I had with Christal the sex doll as sex, but not as intimacy.

Because I mean, for me as a human, I require reciprocity to feel like I'm having an intimate, you know, kind of experience. But what's really interesting to me is the research that exists on sex dolls. And it was actually some of that research that really motivated me to buy the sex doll and potentially think about writing about it. I mean, some of it was also like I was really curious and like, you know, I consider myself somewhat sexually adventurous. So I was like, let's try this.

And I think I could certainly bring a really kind of critical feminist lens to to kind of sharing that experience. But there's this really binary way that people are talking about sex dolls. And so I think a lot of the discourse that has has emerged in in the public sphere of public writing has either been like, doomsday. Oh, no. They're terrible.

Exploit it. You know, we need to get rid of them. Or like, again, it's the commodity that is going to lead to all of the liberation. And I'm like, I don't know that I want either of those perspectives personally. But a lot of the research on sex dolls is also just really interesting.

And I think it's engaged in those scholars are engaged in a kind of what we might characterize as legitimacy work, which is to say, I think there's a lot of emphasis on people's relationships with their dolls. Right? So, the guys who are buying them and they're dressing them up and they're online and they're kind of they have avatars, not just avatars, but entire like Instagram accounts for their doll and they're talking to the other doll owners and they're in these online communities with other doll owners. And there's a lot of emphasis on that, which I think is interesting and I think it's lovely that these folks have created community to support one another because, you know, I imagine we might talk about shame and stigma and things around sexuality. So love that for them.

But at some point, I was also like, I wanna know more about people having sex with the dolls. Right? I feel like

that's fine.

That's fine. But like

What are you getting

up to? What's, you know, what how about people and the different types of people who are buying them and are there differences in the ways that people are using them, right? So if there are women who are buying the dolls, are they using them in different ways? If there are couples who are buying the dolls, so FYI, for example, you know, couples who are often buying the dolls, you might have people who are like, we don't want to go to a swingers club or we don't want to hook up with another break. So here's the doll.

Right? There was actually also an argument that I initially when I was reading it found very compelling and it was a participant in a study by Doctor Ken Hansen who was talking about like traditional sex toys and saying like, those are disembodied objects. I don't want to have any kind of sexual relations or kind of sexual experiences with disembodied objects that like it actually feels better to be having sex with or engaged in erotic acts with this replica of an adult human. Like that actually feels more humanizing and less objectifying. In the research, I also thought it was really interesting when people because I think that there's sometimes this knee jerk kind of radical feminist response to sex dolls that's also been like, not only is it objectifying, but like, there's a whole market of like just torsos and things that aren't like the whole, right?

And so just learning that like, as I write about in the book, that thing is heavy. Like, of them are like a 100 kilos or like, you know, you know, some get like 75 pounds. Like, they're really heavy. So if somebody is buying, you know, a torso, it may just be because they can't actually lift and wrangle the whole thing. Anyway, so there was just a lot of fascinating things happening in that research.

Like disability justice activists, and scholars who've been writing about having access to these things for people with disabilities. So I think folks, I think it's just a really interesting, I don't know, sex doll land is just a very interesting space intellectually. But again, I was like, maybe I want to explore this in a different way. And so, there was just so much that I learned in that experience. And if I'm being really honest with you, I really wanted to like it.

Like I really wanted to enjoy this experience. Like I was excited, right? Okay. I got the shipping notice. It's coming.

I'm excited. I mean, I will also say that when I was initially kind of spending a lot of time on these websites just looking at them for research purposes, I was never particularly aroused. It took me a while to even find a doll that I was like, okay. Like, I I feel some kind of attraction or something, because I think they're they're primarily designed for the cis male gaze. So think, you know, very very thin, youthful in appearance, just aesthetics that I'm not normally gravitating towards.

But then even like the process of it reminded me of like, for folks who have been on dating apps and there's so much like hyper scrutinizing of like hair color and height and and like so you're customizing this doll in ways and this was initially even the first kind of gut punch for me was just the here I am kind of like customizing this doll in ways that I feel like in a heteropatriarchal society. Right? Especially if we're looking at fem bodies, women's bodies, they're never good as is, and we're always trying to kind of customize them upgrade them. And so there was even that process was a little off putting for me.

You said you felt like a bad feminist

to quote Roxane Gay. I'm glad they're like challenging Roxane Gay. I'm like, I am a bad feminist. So anyway, and so I really wanted to like the experience that I didn't. It was really triggering for me as a survivor of sexual violence.

But even beyond the sexual, the experiences of sexual violence and assault over the years. I even just in this chapter reflect on my own kind of heteropatriarchal socialization and what it means thinking of Jessica Valenti's book, Kind of Sex Object, right? And like for a lot of women in heteropatriarchal cultures, like you've been raised in a culture that teaches you that you are in some ways a kind of sex object that your body is your most important asset. And so I just I take the space to kind of reflect on that socialization. And so I just I think one of the points of my trip through the uncanny valley, if you will, is to ask people, for example, to think about how our disparate socialization under heteropatriarchy shapes, in this case, who's gonna find an experience with a sex doll really hot and who might even find themselves being triggered by it, right?

Because in some ways, the fact that like a lot of, you know, people who have lived as women are uninterested in having sex with an inert object is not particularly shocking to me, actually. And the last thing I'll say, I promise I'll wrap up because one of the things that I think was important in this moment too that I spent a lot of time thinking about was like the number of women and cis straight women in particular that I've talked to in my research, that my disciplinary colleagues have talked to in their research, is the number of women who have reported or talk about having sex with men who don't particularly kind of realize or appreciate the fact that they don't wanna be having sex with them. So anyway, so for me, the experience was just like this constant reminder of everything that sucks about heteropatriarchy.

Yeah. And, yeah, and you do you it comes up quite often just the idea what you just touched on is just this this idea of the choices that you make with the sex doll and then also at the swinging parties, at the sex parties. You make choices to be high fem in the sex parties because that is the way that you feel comfortable in those spaces. But at the same time, you kind of talk about how you're having this moment where you're like, oh, why am I ramping it up in in, like, this feminist feminine space where I feel like I need to do that, you know, going to a sex party with a man Yeah. As a nonbinary person who then can choose to be high fem in this space when it feels good for you.

And then also, like, choosing to, like, reveal how you feel a little bit uncomfortable objectifying an object, I think, is really interesting. Yeah. Because it because it does take on this very, like, high femme persona of the doll. And you also talk quite a bit about the notion that bad sex isn't necessarily nonconsensual sex. It's often just unenthusiastic obligatory sex and the ways that we have started talking and thinking differently about, like, consensual sex.

And I think there was a moment in time where it was like, you know, if you if you have a bad sexual experience that was not consensual. And it's like, well, you just consented to something that maybe you weren't super into. And that's that happens. It's shitty. Right?

Nobody likes it.

Right. No. Thank you.

Right. But, like, the words that we use around these things matter. And then I think bringing that to the fore with the sex doll was really interesting to read Yeah. From your perspective. Almost seeing yourself through the eyes of the sex doll and being like, this is something that I've I can relate to almost, which is was really I don't know.

It was really almost moving to read your experience. It was moving to read your experience with that.

I appreciate that. It was it was one of the the hardest things to write, and there were a lot of different iterations of that section. Right? And and in the writing process, it was kind of like, I don't know how you approach this, but I do that kind of what some folks call the kind of vomit draft in writing. Right?

And so like, I say all of the things, I get out all of the things. And so as vulnerable as that may appear on the page, it was. But there were some things that actually didn't even make it to the page, right, that I kept for myself and for my therapist. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Right? For sure. Like, I want that's the point I think is that I don't want it to feel like trauma dumping. Right?

Like I want all of experiential knowledge and the stories that I tell that the humans who animate this book tell, I hope are in the service of some broader lesson. And speaking of lessons, I wanna say one thing just about something you said before in relationship to the kind of high fem drags and the sex clubs and stuff. Think it's really important that people understand how, I mean, inextricably linked and tied gender and sexuality is because I think that in some ways is also something that I think a public discourse we need to talk more about. And then the thing about the bad sex, I think it's important that people and my training as a sociologist is rearing its head here. And that I think it's important that people understand the social functions of sex.

Right? That like, yeah, sure. Like, not every sexual encounter is about pleasure. Right? Like, there's lots of reasons why people have sex.

And sometimes, people are indeed having sex that they are unenthusiastic about. But it doesn't mean that it wasn't consensual. It may mean, as you said, that it is bad sex. I you know, in my experience, some of the sex that I have that I characterize in the book is kind of sexual grittiness or, you know, that has been more instrumental in its function may not have been empowering or pleasurable, but it didn't make it unconsensual.

Yeah. And that is something that I I feel like if if more mainstream thought could get on board with, the the line between what the mainstream, like, people do every day and sex work is thin often. And those are these are worlds that people travel in and out of all the time. And I think maybe, again, it's like it's something that's so on this below the surface for a lot of people that maybe it's not even registering as like, oh, this is something that I did because it benefited me in some way other than pleasure.

Absolutely.

And I think that's that's just existence and sexual life and eroticism, and all of it is kind of wrapped up in the same thing.

There's a piece really quick that, if folks are interested, there's a sex worker advocate, Laura Lei Lee. There's this piece called cash consent.

Oh, that's so good. I'll link to that in the show notes.

Am I right? Like, in in my classes, whenever I wanna teach consent, it is the first piece I go to. Laura Lai does such a good job of really just laying plain the way that systems of power constrain consent and shape, you know, consent across all of our kind of sexual interactions, whether we're engaged in sex for work or not. I just wanted a hat tip to.

Absolutely. Always. That's I mean, I I love that essay so much. I also reference it all the time. So, I mean, I I know that you you were like you said, you you started writing this book, I guess, two years ago, more than two years ago, and the world has changed quite a bit.

It's such a hard thing to publish a book, and then everything changes. But everything changes all the time. Unless we're writing about something that happened twenty years ago, it's all gonna change. This is something that, like, I'm just from reading your book, I'm still kind of, like, working through in my mind. So these thoughts are all jumbled.

But the idea that the sex with the sex doll and you didn't have, like, a sex doll that, like, did anything. It just kind of No. Was there.

Cheaper one.

You didn't flirt.

No. No. 15,000 for me.

Jesus. I don't think the the AI enabled ones are any better as far as, like, making you feel like you're there with a person. But as we know, the fewer kind of surfaces that you have for a sensation, the more your mind goes. And I think the the ways that people have who maybe would be sextile buyers are now casual erotic role play users of chatbots is really interesting to me. And the ways that we think of those things as two different things because someone who's like, well, I'm not into the sex dolls, but I am into this chatbot because it does reciprocate.

But, again, people can't people are listening can't see me aggressively air quoting. There's still not a person there. It's still an object. It's a series of objects, but they feel more intimacy because it does mirror and, you know, quote unquote reciprocate something back to you that's erotic, and maybe it fills in that blank for them. But I feel like these things are all kind of related to erotic literacy and porn literacy and a sense of what, what is real and what's not, and then the ability to recognize what is fantasy and what is reality.

But then I'm like, it's all sex.

That's right.

So I that's where I kind of start into a cycle of like, what what actually is sex, you know, and and looking I I look at the users of chatbots, erotic will play chatbots pretty nonjudgmentally, very nonjudgmentally regardless of how you feel about AI. And I think people who read four four understand how we feel about AI. But they become so problematic for a lot of people. I'm wondering if that's something that you would have unpacked in, like, a future chapter if you had more time or, like, if you have any when you're watching this go down, are you thinking about it in a way that's like, oh, I I'm seeing this through this, like, feminist black queer lens where people are getting attached to these things that are not real, but they're looking for something to fill a need. I don't know.

I'm just curious what your thoughts are on that.

Yeah. No. I appreciate it. And I think like you, I think I'm just in a similar place as you is I think my thinking about it is constantly evolving as the things are evolving. But my default is I'm not coming to this through an evaluative lens.

Right? So, again, if I need a certain level of kind of what I experience as human reciprocity to experience central pleasure, to experience intimacy, I'm not here to judge anybody who's like, yeah, like, I'm experiencing intimacy. I'm getting pleasure from this. I love this. I have beefs for other reasons.

Right? So, for example, I often get like the AI porn question and things like this. And so my concerns there, again, not evaluative in terms of what people are doing to get off or, you know, enjoy themselves, but the kind of exploitation that exists there bothers me. They're kind of the theft of of people's labor bothers me.

And being trained on, like, sex workers content.

Right. Right.

I think it also probably is come in conversation with, like, the embodied authenticity concept where, you know, camming is not, quote unquote, like, relationship, but it is a real relationship Sure.

For a lot of people. Sure.

It's just a temporary relationship mediated through technology.

But but I and I think that that's why there's a kind of race to make these technologies feel in some way. Because you referenced the embodied authenticity that to make it feel more authentic, more human like. So hence the upgrades on the sex doll to make it warm up, to make it, you know, have even some basic robotic kind of movements. And there's a kind of race, I think, in some of these spaces with the sex bots and and and all of it to make it as human like as possible.

Which is so interesting because I feel like the more you try to make it human, like, the more the uncanny valley gets deeper.

Exactly. Exactly.

If you go the other direction, if we're just talking about text on a screen, people respond to that. But then if you're talking about, like, wanna make, like, realistic skin on, a fleshlight, people get a little bit, like, squicked out. Yeah. And then you have, like, the sex toys that are shaped like nothing blobs, but they feel good, and they're purple. Right.

I've always, like, I don't want the fleshy one with all of the veins. No. Yeah. It's too weird. It's so weird.

And like the scrotum looks like, I don't want that. Right.

Yeah. It's it's just so interesting the way the ways that people's preferences fall down and like the ways that companies are trying to keep up, like you said, like,

catch up Yeah.

And keep up with whatever that is. Yeah. And, yeah, the the AI porn stuff. I think Playboy did a story about the the guys who comment, and it's always it's guys. It's always someone's dad commenting on the AI porn Instagram model and how they know.

They know it's not Yeah. Real. Yep. But they don't care because it fulfills some erotic need for them. Sure.

Sure. And and I'm not concerned. I think there will always be a space for people who don't want that. Right? So I think the whole kind of replacement question is not a is not an issue from where I sit.

No. I don't think so either. I think it's there's always a need for and a market for genuine human connection. Absolutely. I could talk for like I said, before we started, eight hours, ten hours.

So let's do that sometimes. But something before I, like, before I for you, I will I will ask you the question I've been asking everybody. At four four, we we talk a lot about stuff that's like kinda bummer bummer shit, but, and this has not been a bummer podcast. Thank God.

But we wanna end it with a bummer.

Well, you won't no. We're gonna end it. Usually, I'm like, I have to I have to do a little bit of aftercare on these podcasts. I'm like, we have to end this on a high note because people are gonna leave and be so sad. But I don't feel like I have do that here.

But I'm gonna ask you, Anaya, because I feel like the the lenses in the spaces that you're working in

Yeah.

Are very hopeful. So what what is giving you hope these days? What are you seeing in in your world that makes you feel like, we're okay?

I think it's precisely that actually. I mean, I think it's the the communities of people that I choose to associate with and surround myself with that give me hope and that let me know that we will always continue to fight. Right? Which is why again, I think so much of this book I want people to learn from the most hyper marginalized people from all of these kind of sexual rule breakers from around the world because I think it is precisely these people who give me hope. It is my queer and trans friends.

It is my sex worker friends. It is those communities. It is my black friends. It is those communities of people who continue to give me hope that, you know, I mean, the state of geopolitics is incredibly frightening in this moment. And, you know, you were also talking about like the things that shift like the conclusion looks nothing like the first conclusion.

Right? You know, and just kind of, you know, but also telling people beyond high alert right now because the rise of authoritarian regimes and the fascism, we know the first things that they're going to come for. Right? Marginalized people, feminism, science, right? Like, bodily autonomy.

And it is from these marginalized communities that I learned the most about kind of fighting back against these type of repressive regimes. And and also even beyond kind of the political domain because so much of this book is actually not about kind of organized political movements. It's just about us being revolutionary in our communities, in our identities, and in our lives. And just in living that truth, you are, you know, and certainly collectively creating changes in the world, pushing back on all of this authoritarian bullshit and repression. That is the stuff that that gives me hope.

Yeah. Absolutely. Thank you so much for being here and for lending and your for writing this book.

Thank you.

It's so good. Please go buy it now, everybody. Sex in public.

Thank you so much, Sam.

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