Permission for Pleasure
A podcast to educate and equip women with the information and confidence they need to express, experience and enjoy their sexuality. Cindy Scharkey RN, BSN, brings her 35+ years of experience as a healthcare professional to open the doors to healthy conversations about sex. This is a community where you can listen and learn to give yourself permission for pleasure. Visit www.cindyscharkey.com for educational blogs and newsletter.
Permission for Pleasure
How Toxic Masculinity Can Invade Your Sex Life
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Cam Fraser, a therapist and licensed sex coach says the script men learn: “Get it up. Get it in. Get it off.” is ruining sex lives. He shares his story and the ways he learned to reframe his own approach to pleasure. We discuss the sex ed men and their partners need to get out of the box that says sex has to look a certain way and to move toward more fulfilling intimacy.
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It's still there, right? Even though I've kind of been doing this work for 10 years, it's still in the back of my mind that fear of like not fitting in with the men in my life. And so um I think a lot of men have that. And I think there's a fear of isolation, there's a fear of loneliness that's driving a lot of this.
SPEAKER_01I'm Cindy Sharkey, your host, and as always, I'm delighted to have you here listening and learning alongside me. I have a fascinating conversation for you today with my guest Cam Fraser, the leading men sex coach and certified sexologist in Australia. We talk about all things masculinity, scripts for men and masculinity, sexuality in a discussion that I hope will cause you to rethink some of the stereotypes that you may be holding on to. Also talking to your partner about some of these topics and perhaps in a different way. And while this is an adult conversation for sure, these topics are so important to be talking about with the kids in your home. I think you're gonna find some new topics here in this conversation that we haven't covered on the podcast yet. I hope it serves you well. Before we jump in, I want to encourage you to sign up for my newsletter, Good Education for Good Sex. That's where I post my current blogs, any big news I want to share, and upcoming events that could be coming your way. So the link for that is in the show notes. Feel free to join me there. Today's episode is sponsored by Uber Lube, the silicone lube that isn't just for sex. You know it's my favorite, and I wanted to let you know that you can use it after shaving to reduce razor burn and soften your skin, as well as apply it before blow-drying your hair for heat protection. So many uses for my favorite silicone lube. Use code Cindy for 15% off to try it. Again, thanks for listening, learning with me, sharing episodes with your friends, and hopefully following the podcast. Now let's jump in to this fascinating conversation with Cam Fraser. Cam, welcome to Permission for Pleasure.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to be here.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, delighted to get to talk to you. I'd love for you to introduce yourself and just your work in the world, kind of at a high level, because I think we'll go back and visit a little more of your story too. So tell us about a little bit about yourself.
SPEAKER_00Sure. So uh my name is Cam Fraser, and I am a men's sex coach. I'm also a sexologist, a counselor, and a yoga teacher. And at the time of recording, I'm the current deputy chair on the National Council for the Society of Australian Sexologists. And what I'm really passionate about is working with cisgender heterosexual men. The reason I want to work with that demographic is because that's my demographic as well. And it's something I feel like I can speak into with authority. I'm really interested in unpacking and challenging like the very normative and stereotypical narratives around masculinity and sexuality and you know men's bodies and you know, male anatomy and things like that, like the the really limiting beliefs that we have around those things and um offering up an alternative or just debunking some of the myths around them. You know, part of that involves citing a lot of you know scientific evidence, let's say, medically accurate information, but also you know, leaning into some of the esoteric teachings and some of the spiritual traditions and the sacred sexuality community is something I've had a big history with. So I do my best to blend the kind of scientific space with the esoteric space and kind of bridge that gap a little bit. That's kind of what I try and do. And it's yeah, been something I've been doing for about 10 or so years now, and it's very much informed by my own personal journey. So yeah, I can speak more into that. But that's kind of my in a nutshell what it is that I do.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, wonderful. And we are gonna debunk some of those myths and talk about some of those narrative and sexual scripts for for men. But before we do that, your story is one that I think a lot of people can relate to. I wonder if you would share just a bit of your journey to coming to this work and the why behind doing what you do.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, of course. Um, so for some context, I'm turning 30 this year, and I feel like my journey, specific specifically in this work, began when I was about 17. So at the age of 16, 17, I seriously injured my lower back. I actually fractured my lower spine. And through a series of events, I was invited to go play sport over in America, and so I went to university in America. I was a collegiate athlete, so I was part of this kind of locker room culture. Some might call it like a this toxic masculinity culture within that kind of locker room. I'll speak more about that in a minute. I felt a lot of pressure to be someone, a young man who you know was you know an athlete, who was you know interested in sex, who you know was very stereotypically masculine in that sense. I felt a lot of pressure to be that way at that time in my life. But also I had this injury to contend with. And so the injury was stopping me from doing some of those things. It was you know contributing to a lot of tension that I was holding in my back and pelvis, and that tension led to sexual dysfunction, for example, to kind of cope with the anxiety that I felt about being sexually inadequate or sexually dysfunctional, whatever those words mean for you. I drank quite a lot. That was part of my facade of being this Australian kind of Larrican type of personality. I really kind of hammed that up when I was in America. Because of this, I was in a pretty bad mental health space for a good four or five years during my university time and you know, really compensated for a lot of that by having a lot of casual sex, by drinking a lot, by I think it's probably a period of four years where every sexual encounter I had, I wasn't sober for. And so, you know, this conflation of alcohol and casual sex. And so I treated my body really badly. I treated other people's bodies really badly, like I wasn't focused on pleasure, I was very much focused on performance, I was focused on like just getting the job done. You know, I often say the phrase that comes to mind to epitomize that time of my life was every hole was a goal. That kind of felt like the way that I was approaching sex at the time. There was a lot of stuff happening for me internally. I felt a lot of guilt and shame. I was afraid of being ostracized from my group of male friends if I didn't live up to this expectation of what they thought a real man was or what they expected you to do as a young man. You know, all the stuff that I'll kind of speak about today, I suppose, on this podcast is stuff that if I'd done during those times, I would have been bullied and teased and told that I was gay or a pussy or whatever other derogatory language you want to use. So I very much felt like I was in that stereotypical man box environment. And then but the injury that I had really flared up, and so I had to go to clinical rehabilitation, and that involved going to Pilates, going to yoga, going to massage through these modalities, you know, embodiment practices. Essentially, I was introduced to breath work and to meditation and to other kind of healing modalities that had a profound impact on the way that I related to my body. So I really started noticing where I was holding tension, I really started noticing when I felt tension in my body, I had much more of an awareness of the physical sensations that I was experiencing and started recognizing that they showed up in certain instances when I was afraid of being ostracized or when I was anxious about my sexual expression or you know, whatever. I had a couple of instances where the connection between these physical feelings and my emotions really hit home. And they were during a yoga class where you know I was trying to hold a particular posture, but my back was so sore that I couldn't do it, and I just exploded in rage. You know, I was I was you know disproportionately angry about what I couldn't do, then the mild frustration that might have been appropriate. And then another instance was when I was in a Pilates class and I remember just breaking out into tears during a particular practice that I was doing on the reformer. You know, at the time, I don't want to give the impression that I was like this you know, enlightened progressive man, you know, that I feel like I am today. But uh at the time, I was like, oh God, I'm having these emotional reactions. I can't let my mates know that I'm experiencing these emotions. I need to go and deal with them, I need to go and suppress them, I need to go and like just get rid of them. So that was my impetus to go and reach out to a counselor who then put me onto a psychologist, and we did narrative therapy together. And like I said, my intention going to the counselor and the therapist was like, I need to get rid of these emotions. They're they're something that I don't want my friends to know that I'm experiencing. Now, obviously, I very quickly realized that no, the emotions are really important and necessary, and you need to navigate them and you need to learn how to like process them. That's essentially what I did. I went to therapy at the age of like 19, 20, and I'm still in therapy today. I have the privilege of being able to afford going to therapy, so it's something that I still continue to do. And so, like narrative therapy for people that are unfamiliar is essentially all the stories that you tell yourself about what it means to be a person, in my case, what it meant to be a man and what it means to be a man and what masculinity means, what it means to be a sexual man, all those stories that I had like adhered to, just going, where do they come from? And you know, once you've kind of gotten past that hurdle, are they beneficial to you? Are they serving you? Are they helpful? Do you do you agree with those stories? And then once you've gotten past that hurdle, what are the stories that you want to keep from that you know, milieu of stories? And what are the ones that you want to create for yourself? What are the ones that feel good, that feel authentic, that genuinely are ones that inspire you, that you want to live up to? So you know, I unpacked a lot of this kind of stuff that I just previously mentioned and started in the most compassionate way possible, stopped giving a fuck about what my male friends thought about me. Um, started just you know being more compassionate, being more caring, all the things that like you're kind of quote unquote not supposed to do as a you know collegiate athlete, kind of alpha bro type of guy, you know who's just like you know, chumming it with the lads. You know, I started being more considerate with my partners. You know, I started focusing more on pleasure, I started, you know, focusing more on asking, being curious about what they were interested in, speaking more about like my own insecurities around sexuality, around you know, the drinking. So I kind of slowed the drinking down as well. And I really had this transformative impact on how I related to others. So the physical practices that I did really changed the way I related to myself, and then the talk therapy practices that I did really changed the way I related to other people in my life. You know, like I said, very fortunate that this all happened around the age of 17 to 21 when I was at university. So from the age of like 21, I had my degree. I went traveling. I was very lucky, you know, privileged enough to be able to travel quite a lot, South America, Southeast Asia, and things like this. And I was really fascinated by psychology. That's what I studied at university, and then really had this experience with like the spiritual traditions like yoga and tantra and Taoism and Buddhism. So I was able to go and spend time in those communities as well whilst I traveled. There was a bit of plant medicine experience in there, and so went on a bit of a sojourn and then brought it all home to my home, which is in Perth, Western Australia. That's where I grew up, and it's where I went and did my postgraduate degree in sexology at Curtin University. I also did a diploma of counseling as well, and I started working in the disability sector, started working as a support worker for people with disabilities, particularly men that are on the autism spectrum. That's what I worked with. They were really interested in like getting relationships essentially. So I would go out to events with them and help them talk to people, people they're attracted to, really learn about those interactions. And then slowly but surely, this is a long story short, I guess. I found the coaching modality. So the sex coaching kind of hat that I wear today. I kind of came across it as I was searching for like, where do I want to go with this work, right? I had this experience with talk therapy and psychology and counseling and a bit of mental health and support work, but also yoga, workshop facilitating and sex education was really interesting to me. Like, how do I blend all that together in the work that I do? Originally I thought I was gonna go into you know clinical sexology, a clean psych, and work with people. I originally wanted to work with offenders, actually. Um, that was like my original plan was to work with sex offenders, but shift gears into like the more like enhancing sexual experiences, like overcoming dysfunctions, limiting beliefs, enhancing you know that really positive aspect of sexual expression and and sexual enhancement. Uh, and that's what really drives me today. Uh, is like you know, seeing men especially like really start to express themselves sexually, feel really open and feel really not have any shame around that. Uh, and that was what the coaching modality allowed me to really lean into. So that's the long and the short of it, I suppose, Cindy. I always ramble a little bit, so I'm gonna rein myself in and just stop there.
SPEAKER_01Your story is important, Cam. I mean, for a almost 30-year-old man, I told Cam before we jumped on, you're the age of my children. So you've done a lot of lot of self-study, a lot of introspection, and also seeking, and it's actually beautiful to hear your story. Oh, thank you. And I know that people listening can relate to that. I mean, I had two college athletes, I have three girls, but you know, I know that scene well from their journeys. I do see such a need for people listening and even parents of sons, that this conversation could be really helpful to open doors to conversations in their own homes, right? Because there is such a toxic narrative around masculinity in general, and then on top of that, sex and the sexual health just around men is so skewed. Oh, it's just so wrong in so many ways, and the way you've described it is so helpful to hear in your own story and narrative because you're spelling it out for people. I would love to backtrack on some of those things you brought up that you bumped into and that didn't resonate with you, and yet, you know, you were in this situation as a young man trying to figure out how to fit in and be in your sport and do your thing and go to college. But let's backtrack and talk about some of these things, these myths that you had to debunk along the way and that you still do today with men everywhere.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I can certainly do that. Yeah, I think, and you know, I I do really want to emphasize that I was afraid, right? I was a scared teenage boy, essentially, and I wanted to fit in. And that's why you know it's not an excuse, it's just the the reason why I did the things that I did and the way I treated people was because I thought that was expected of me, and I was afraid of being ostracized for not fitting in. And I think that is at the core of a lot of men's experiences with masculinity and and by extension sexuality as well. They're afraid of being seen as less of a man or as being seen as womanly or effeminate, right? Because they've conflated being less of a man with womanhood or being like a woman. Uh that's problematic in and of itself. But there's a really great framework for this, and I kind of mentioned it, but it's Paul Kivill's man-box analogy. And he talks about how, and Paul Kivill's an uh activist from the 1980s, worked in Oklahoma with teenage boys. He talks about this idea of the man box being this unwritten set of social rules that men feel like they have to abide by in order to fit in the box of what it means to be a man. And if you do something that takes you out of that man box, you very often get denigrated and put down and bullied and called, all those slurs that you know we can kind of think of from the schoolyard. And so, what a lot of men do is they firstly they're very afraid of not being in that box, and then secondary, when they find themselves outside of that box, they will often do something to try and put themselves back in that man box so they don't get bullied, so they don't get ostracized, so they're not on that hierarchical kind of pecking order and getting pushed down. And typically what Paul Kivill kind of talks about is violence. A lot of men will act out in aggression and violence because it's considered hyper-masculine, right? They'll lash out at people who they perceive as also outside of the box in order to then put themselves back in, right? They get called gay by a mate, they'll punch that dude in the face in order to assert their masculinity and put themselves back in the box. That's the very kind of concise way of thinking about it. There's a much more nuanced approach that he really goes through in his work, but that for me feels very true because that's how I felt a lot of the time during those formative teenage and early 20 years. And I still come up against it today. You know, I'm one of the newest iterations of my journey, I suppose, is becoming a father. And so I've got a son who's uh about to turn two and a and a beautiful wife as well. And it's interesting to see it pop up that same story of like not being a good enough father or not being a good enough husband and feeling maybe afraid of being judged by other dads or other parents or teachers or teaching professionals, you know, noticing that same fear of not being enough pop up in different areas of my life. Even though I've done a lot of that work in regards to my masculinity, now there's things that are popping up in a different way. And you know, masculinity is still there with regards to like, you know, playing with my son out in the park. Oh, well, what will other dads, what will other men think about me if I get on all fours and start growling and you know, prancing around with my son and it's things like that. So it's still there, right? Even even though I've kind of been doing this work for 10 years, it's still in the back of my mind that fear of like not fitting in with the men in my life. And so um, I think a lot of men have that. And I think there's a fear of isolation, there's a fear of loneliness that's driving a lot of this. So I do want to just really emphasize that. To speak into like some of the myths, I suppose, you know, one of the things that I came up against was you know what was expected of me as a sexual man, right? What does it mean to be a man sexually? And so some of the things that pop up, you know, when I think stereotypically about that, and I do this in workshops, I get guys to kind of think about like what does it stereotypically mean to be a man? It's like you've got to always want to have sex, right? Like that's a major one. Have high, unwavering, unyielding sex drives, and they'll always say yes to sex. And I often ask guys, like, when was the last time you said no to sex? Have you ever said no to sex? You know, and it very often guys will say, Well, I what would happen if I said no? Like you know, my partner might think that I something was wrong with me. Well, they might call me gay. A lot of guys get you know a fear of like if I say no to sex from a woman that you know she might call me gay. I've personally had that as well. I've said no to sex, and and a woman said, What are you, gay or something? Because I was expected as a man to always say yes to sex. So that's a big one, is that men have high, unwavering, unyielding sex drives, and they will always say yes to sex. The easiest way to debunk that, because a lot of people conflate sex drive with testosterone, for example, is that like testosterone fluctuates. It's high in the morning, it's low in the evening, it's high during the winter months, it's low during the summer months. It's also been found to have a 30 and 40-day cycle as well. So there's fluctuations in testosterone. And if you're conflating testosterone with libido, which it isn't a one-to-one, you know, um, there's a lot of other things that go into your sex drive, and sex drive even itself being a bit of a misdemeanor because you know it's not really a drive by any means. But if that's what you're conflating, then you've got to know that testosterone fluctuates, and so your sex drive is gonna fluctuate. But that's the easiest way to debunk that. There's more nuance to that, but that's a huge one that I came up against a lot. And saying no to sex or saying no to explicit sexual touch. I I felt like an extension of that kind of myth was that like sex had to look a certain way, right? If I was gonna be sexual, I had to penetrate, I had to have quote unquote real sex. That was what counted, right? And so that was a thing that I had to unpack was like, what if I just want to cuddle? What if I just want to be intimate and hold my partner? Like, that's not manly. It's manly to have sex, you know, P and V penetrative intercourse. And so that was one of the things that I had to like really let go of was like, well, I can just be sexual in a way that feels comfortable for me and my partner, and that might not include intercourse, might not include penetrative sex. So that's like an extrapolation, I suppose, of that same mentality.
SPEAKER_01Well, it seems like that mentality has a lot of fingers to it. Because as I'm listening, thinking, yes, it's that idea of I should always be ready to go, I should always be able to get an erection, I should always want to have penetration. And then I'm thinking too, Cam of perpetrators and young men feeling like they should always want the idea of I should always want sex, and then not feeling like they can say no. I that's really troubling when you think of you know young men growing up and getting into situations where they're not able to give their consent.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and there is research around particularly younger men who feel like they've had their boundaries crossed but don't feel comfortable talking about it. It's not a great source and uh reference, but if you ever look at news articles about a woman sexually assaulting a man, very often those news articles will be like especially if it's a younger man, like even a teenage boy, like the comments and the news articles will be. Be framed as like this sounds so horrible, but almost like he was lucky to get sexually assaulted by an older woman. Like, you know, like it's kind of like a yeah, well done, mate. Like, yeah, is even as a 14-year-old, he can still like pull women. Like, it's a very horrible way of thinking about men's autonomy, right? It's is like they just like are slaves to their sexual desire, and so any sex that they get is always going to be welcomed, even if it's abuse. Like it's a pretty I don't want to swear too much, but it's a pretty fucked mentality to have about like sex and consent.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's very troubling. But also, like, let's talk about it, let's bring it up, let's relate it in this conversation because it goes into this narrative that boys grow up with and families participate in, and then that doesn't give these young men, you know, language or role play around consent and being able to say no. And I'm even thinking of so often I'll meet with women for consults and they'll say, even some of the questions that came in for you were around why doesn't my partner want sex as much as me? I thought all men wanted to have sex all the time. Why do I have want to have sex more than you know, it just goes on and on and on.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. And we look at like data from sex therapists, right, and psychologists, and we find that the most common concern that couples come to therapists with is a mismatch of libido. And then from that group, and that's about 50% of the time. And then of that 50%, it's pretty evenly split, half and half. She's and these are heterosexual couples, she's got a higher libido, or on the other half of the spectrum, he's got a higher libido. So it's very evenly split. And again, that's evidence to suggest that that is a myth, right? That men want sex all the time, they'll always say yes to sex. But a lot of guys will perpetuate that, and you'll see it in movies all the time. Joey Tribiani is like the classic person who I cite here from friends as like always being interested in sex, always pursuing sex, is always on, right, with regards to like sexual advancements. But yeah, so it can cause miscommunication, right? And and difficulty between couples and also you know in dating as well, because there's this implicit assumption that, oh, if he's talking to me, like a lot of women might think if he's flirting with me, talking to me, if he's interested in me, he must just want to have sex. Like that's you know, tied into that is like a lot of guys just want no strings attached, sex, and they're just interested in casual hookups and that sex is just a purely physical thing for them. Again, a lot of guys will play into that and perpetuate that same story, but we know that emotions and that our psychology is very much wrapped up in our sexual experiences, and I think a lot of men try to shut themselves off from their emotions when it comes to sex, and they try to make it just a physical thing, but they're doing a disservice to themselves and to people around them. So I think personally that emotions are inherently, intrinsically part of our sexual experiences, and the more we acknowledge that the better. And I think like there's probably a reason why a lot of women go, oh, he's just trying to fuck me, because probably a lot of guys are, you know, they they're kind of approaching it that way. And so my kind of job, I suppose, is to get guys to recognize, you know, your emotions are a part of your sexual experience as well. You know, the way that you relate to people doesn't have to be with the agenda to just get in their pants, like you can get to know them, you know, through conversation and through being vulnerable and through being intimate, you know, in addition to being sexual with them. It doesn't just have to be this either-or, but again, that's a big narrative that a lot of guys are buying into.
SPEAKER_01And another piece to that puzzle, as you and I know, is is people not having education around spontaneous and responsive desire, and people thinking that the only way men experience desire is spontaneous. They want sex out of the blue, they want sex all the time. And in truth, that it that does not flesh out in the research or nor studies nor conversations, you know, within studies. The men experience responsive desire just as women do, where you have to be aroused, you have to be into it. You we talk about this on the show all the time, but I just always bring it up every chance I get because people don't have education around that. And especially in this, as we're talking about men and masculinity, there's just a disconnect there. If you don't feel like you can experience desire in more than one way.
SPEAKER_00Yep, there's a really fascinating study that came out, I think last year, maybe 21, that was looking at breaking down the very common and you know, very famous, uh, especially if you're a sex educator, idea of like sexual response, right? So if you're familiar with Masters and Johnson, whoever's listening, you know, the arousal and then to plateau and then to orgasm and then to resolution or or the refractory period. Like that is a very rudimentary but also very common way that we think about like men's sexual response, right? Is they just like get an erection when they get aroused, and then they just like there's a plateau period, and then you just come and then you're finished. And this research was like really challenging that, and they found like five different variations of that particular model. Um and so the you know, I suppose the conclusion of the research was like this isn't a one-size-fits-all approach, even though that's how it's been kind of purported for like 60 years. So the Masters and Johnson's research was in '66. Like, there are so many different ways of experiencing arousal, of experiencing sexual response, of experiencing desire. You know, for a long time, and this is me nerding out a little bit on sex therapy research, but like for a long time, like there have been critical revisions of the female sexual response, right? Masters and Johnson had the female version of it, and that was like revised by the feminists and by sex positive movements and by other therapists. And you know, we've got this really beautiful model today by Bassin, uh Rosemary Bassin, which had this like it's like circular and it's like really nuanced, and it adds a lot of like really important elements and distinctions to the sexual response cycle. But that was originally created as a female sexual response cycle. It's got a little bit more leverage now being used by a lot of therapists as just like a human sexual response cycle. But when it was first put forward, it was specifically about women, and we haven't done that with the male sexual response. The study that I'm citing is really the only one that I can think of that has like looked at the variability of male sexual response cycles. Um, and so that's something I'm really passionate about in the research side of things, is like offering up more alternatives of like male sexual responses and like offering more nuance and like expanding you know the ways that men think about their pleasure and their arousal. I mean, not just men, but the people that have sex with men as well, because I think that's really important to like do educating on both fronts. Whether that's society influencing the things that we research, or whether it's the things that we research impacting the stories that we tell ourselves in society, like I think it's a bit of a two-way street, but there is this assumption that like men are just simple, you know, straightforward, they just get in the erection, they get it up, get it in, and get it off, and then they're over and done with, right? Like that is a very common story that you'll see in movies and in pornography, and men will like buy into that and say, Yep, that's just what it is. I personally, like I said before, personally think that that's doing such a disservice to those men and also the men that those people are having sex with or in a relationship with or being intimate with. I think it like really limits our capacity to explore pleasure and arousal and desire in a bunch of different ways with each other.
SPEAKER_01I agree with that a hundred percent. And since I'm on the other, you know, side, you know, a few generations over here, as men age, they naturally go into more responsive desire. And yet there's no education around that for men or men and their partners, and then they bump up against this more responsive way as they age and think, I have sexual dysfunction. I mean, something's wrong with me. I I never experienced desire in this way, and yet this is a very normal, natural way to evolve in your sexuality. And yet we don't talk about it, and people don't know. I bump up against this weekly, you know, with women and their partners feeling like I'm broken.
SPEAKER_00Yes, yes, I 100% agree with you. And I remember doing a workshop where the youngest participant of the workshop was 60 years old and it was all for men. That was one of the biggest revelations for me speaking to just a group of older men was how much of them had kind of reprioritized just being intimate with their partner, being emotionally connected with their partner, just being responsive to you know the connection that they had. And just yeah, it was it was a it was a lovely change of pace to some of the younger, you know, men in my workshops to have a group of older men just say, like, yeah, I you know physically just don't get aroused at the snap of my fingers anymore. So I do prioritize just like connecting with my partner and allowing that to build in me and allowing it to build in them. And it was just like a really nice experience to to kind of hear that from older men. And something that you mentioned in there is like, I mean, maybe I just wanted to talk about it, was like this idea that you should get an erection like straight away, right? Like, and if you don't, that there's something wrong with you, and maybe beyond this conversation, but like the over-pathologization and over-medicalization of male sexual function, you know, normal variations of male sexual function, like you don't get an erection straight away. Oh god, now I've got erectile dysfunction. Like that's very much the leap that men make, and I think that's been perpetuated by Big Pharma and and other you know ways that we've kind of spoken about male sexuality as like being very machine-like. Even the term dysfunction I really dislike because it's like there's this thing that needs to be fixed in you, and you just go and see a mechanic, right, to put this particular part back in you, and now you're good to go again. And that's just like just super anatomical and biological, not you know, biopsychosocial, which is maybe best practice. But again, I'm kind of going on a bit of a nerd out here. I get a lot of guys reach out to me, they say, I've got erectile dysfunction, I've got premature ejaculation. You know, I get that we don't have a lot of language to describe like sexual experiences, like that there's a conversation there to be had around like, well, we need more language to talk about our experiences, but like premature ejaculation and erectile dysfunction are clinical diagnoses, right? And so for a lot of the guys that reach out to me, I very much suspect, and in fact, when I do some like screening with them, I find out that they actually don't have erectile dysfunction. They actually don't have premature ejaculation, but that's what they've told themselves because they came quickly one time, or they struggled to get an erection one time. Sure, there's some guys in there that do really chronically struggle with their erections or do really chronically struggle with ejaculating quite quickly, but there's such a lack of education around what normal variations in male sexual functioning is that they automatically jump to something is wrong with me, I'm broken, I need you to fix me. I have this dysfunction. When typically, you know, I start off with expectation management. I say, all right, well, how long do you think the you know you should be lasting during sex or how you know hard do you need to have an erection? You know, things like that, like just unpacking the stories, doing a bit of narrative therapy, right? The stuff that I did with myself. And and oftentimes, you know, they're comparing themselves to pornography, they're comparing themselves to Hollywood movies, they're comparing themselves to their exaggerated stories that their mates tell. You know, they have these expectations and they expect their penis to, at the flick of a switch, just get fully erect, right? Rather than the beautiful stages of erection that I try to talk to men about, like noticing the blood flow, noticing the heat, noticing the tumescence, noticing the rigidity, noticing all these intricacies of their erection rather than just going flaccid, hard, right? Soft, hard. It's like there's much more in between and there's much more that you can notice. I often say, I'm on a bit of a roll here. So I often say there's a bit of a fear of flaccid penises. People don't know what to do with a flaccid penis. Uh, and so that's like a really interesting conversation. I have that conversation actually with a lot of women. A lot of women ask me, my partner's, you know, doesn't get an erection straight away. What do I just do until then? You know, again, it's the kind of the centrality of the penis and the and especially the erect penis. And here's another idea for people listening is like this idea of phalocentrism, right? It's like sex is revolving around what the penis does or doesn't do. If he doesn't get an erection, then sex can't happen, or if the penis ejaculates, then sex must have been finished. Both of those things revolve around the penis, right? And so decentering the penis can be a really profound practice for a lot of couples, uh for a lot of people in general, but particularly couples that do kind of fall into that trap of like, well, if he doesn't have an erection, then it means we can't be sexual. It's like, well, that's not the case at all. There's so many other ways that you can be sexual with people that don't involve a penis. I mean, ask women that have sex with women. There's no penises involved at all, and they have plenty of sex, right? So there's a conversation there to be had with regards to like decentering the penis as well. I feel like I've spoken for ages, so I'm just gonna pull the pin on where I'm at.
SPEAKER_01Well, community Cam and I had so much to talk about that I'm gonna wrap up our discussion here as part one and continue in part two with the next episode that drops. In that discussion, we dive more into erections of orgasms, ejaculation, and more about pleasure for men. I also ask Cam to give some tips that he offers women who are partnered with men in his workshops and programs. You won't want to miss that discussion. It's full of information and things for you to think about and talk about. Be sure and follow the podcast on your listening platform so you won't miss the episode. It'll download right for you, and it does help support the podcast. A big thank you to our sponsor, Uberlube, my favorite silicone lube for sex, with its body-friendly formula. I just really like that it has no parabens, no glycerin, no flavor, no colors. And also, it works as an anti-chafe and is water friendly. So, so many options for using Uberlube, and you can find my discount code Cindy and the link in the show notes. Until next time, let's keep giving ourselves permission for pleasure.
