Afleveringen
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In this one I received an email about how communicating about sex is perhaps making someone anxious.
I talked about how conversations to do with how we do things (consent conversations) have to take into account that there are scripts that we need to navigate and perhaps smooth out, but also that there are ways in which we can articulate verbally what is is we need and want but also that we need an on going ethic of pleasure and care focused ethic where we are trying to increase our collective capacity to act.
So this is an old fan favourite of the three handshakes combined with the three lines: it's the call back to end all call backs folks.
Here's the handshake video https://megjohnandjustin.com/sex/handshakes-and-consent/
I've also doing a video version of this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X151A36QSng
Justin -
Hi everyone
Sorry long time no record.
I'm back with a reading of a recent article I did for BISH (my website aimed at a younger / general audience) about Foreplay. As I have done in the past, I'm reading it and then interjecting myself with further thoughts and ideas - this time explaining the Body Without Organs (BwO). Here's the article at BISH What Is Foreplay https://www.bishuk.com/sex/what-is-foreplay/ please share it around for to help alert the algorithm to its existence.
If you look in the episode art you'll see a little drawing that might help you to understand the becoming, here it is from the BISH article too.
https://i0.wp.com/www.bishuk.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/what-is-foreplay-bish-a-becoming.png?w=600&ssl=1
Through paying attention to the difference a thing makes (and the difference that difference makes) is how we unfold, or 'become', through time. Leading us towards the interesting, valuable, important and remarkable (this is from the Todd May article below).
Here were those references I mentioned
Deleuze, G. and Guattari, F., 2004. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. (tr, Massumi, B.) London. Continuum.
Fox, N.J. and Alldred, P., 2013. The Sexuality-Assemblage: Desire, Affect, Anti-Humanism. Sociological Review. 61. 769–789. 10.1111/1467-954X.12075.
Komisaruk, B. R., & Whipple, B. (2011). Non-genital orgasms. Sexual and Relationship Therapy, 26(4), 356–372. https://doi.org/10.1080/14681994.2011.649252
May, T., 2003. When is a Deleuzian becoming? Continental Philosophy Review 36, 139–153. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1026036516963 -
Zijn er afleveringen die ontbreken?
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'What are your best hopes from this conversation?' That's how we start Solution Focused Conversations (SFBT). Recently a client said that they wanted to decentre love, from just romantic love for a possible romantic partner. Instead they wanted to create the capacity to feel able to love this intensely across all of their assemblages: a rhizomatic love.
This case study maps their preferred future, if you were able to feel intense love across all of your assemblages, what will you start to notice? How will you know? How will people respond? Your kid, your co-parent, your mum, your friend? How will you respond to that? What will you be pleased to notice? What differences will it start to make? What difference will that make? What else?
Then (from a second session) we go backwards and I asked them to remember moments recently when they were pleased to notice the very first signs of this rhizomatic love happening. At a tube station, going to a friend's house, a spring in their step, smiles, hugs lasting longer. How feeling this rhizomatic love has created an extra capacity for more love, more care, more warmth, and increased capacity to act.
It's a bit of a special one this as it's the first time I've given this much detail about a client conversation, as you would expect, the client has given me their permission to do this. I think it really gets to the heart of what is at stake of the CSR project, and how this molecular, rhizomatic love reveals a very important micropolitics. However we organise our intimate lives (monogamy, relationship anarchy, etc) there is a lot to learn from this wonderful client and it feels a real privilege to be able to share.
If you would like a Solution Focused Conversation, find out more here https://justinhancock.co.uk/#coaching
You can ask a question for the show here https://forms.gle/vX9hW1zXVPpTLFkZ9 -
Hi Justin, could you talk about quarter life crises? Either personal experience or just generally and how they relate to the 'self'. I want to shake up my life but I am scared to quit my job (which is niche and hard to get and that I should apparently be 'grateful' for). Tried to search the feed and couldn't see that you have covered this before but I may be wrong!
Quarter life crises (or any life crises), quitting jobs, fear of the unknown/change, sunk cost fallacy, not knowing what you want to do, not letting other people's opinions dictate our life choices, etc etc
In this episode I talk about how ‘thingy’ the quarter life crisis is (answer, quite thingy) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quarter-life_crisis
I talk about my own experience of this
I then talk about Egg from This Life
I talk about the Three Lines of Deleuze and Guattari
I also talk about the idea of Becoming-Child vs being Infantile (here’s that great paper https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00131857.2022.2128759 )
And I give advice about, whether you are locked in or locked out, how you can find some molecular resources for becomings, and to make use of the falling in love line of flight and how this is the source of the agency, the agencying, the agencement, the becomings-other. What if you can be both free and gently held, whether you stay in your job or quit?
You’ve Got To Have Freedom https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYKHCvmu1z4 -
Okay we're doing this. Egg gets too close to a case, or is it that he is desiring his own servitude as if it were his salvation?
Content note for this episode about eating disorders. There's one scene (incredibly well played) where Delilah eats a lot incredibly quickly at around 20 minutes in. Beat have been offering support around eating disorders for years now https://www.beateatingdisorders.org.uk/
The episode is here at iplayer https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b007801x/this-life-series-1-3-living-dangerously
For all episodes of this watchalong series please consider joining the very cheap Patreon. Just £1 a month gets you all episodes and also lots of exclusive stuff -
Look, no-one has asked me to do this but I want to have fun and you might like it, so let's see what happens. This Life, the very popular TV show about young lawyers living in London in the mid to late 90s is back on BBC iplayer as it's celebrating its 30th anniversary. It's also one of my favourite shows. So listen to me occasionally reflect on some Culture Sex Relationships themes (neoliberalism, sex, identity, Deleuze and Guattari) while we watchalong together.
For this one hit play on your podcast player at the same time as you hit play on the episode (sometimes iplayer serves trailers, so you might need to skip those). We start at 00:00. Hopefully we can enjoy it together and I'd love to hear your thoughts on some of the themes that come up for you. Please send them in and I'll throw some of your reflections in as we watch together.
Episode 2 is already up at the Patreon https://www.patreon.com/c/culturesexrelationships/posts?filters%5Btag%5D=This+Life
Okay, let's hit play together. Meow meow meowwwww, meow, meow, meow
Justin
Here is the link at iplayer https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/b00pft4t/this-life
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_Life_(1996_TV_series)
If you have a question for the show please email me culturesexrelationships at gmail dot com
justinhancock.co.uk/coaching if you want a session of solution focused conversation with me
https://linktr.ee/culturesexrel to find the google form to get in touch without email
patreon.com/culturesexrelationships where you can sign up to support the show, get extra content, like episode 2 of 'Watch 'This Life' With Me?', a new zine I'm working on, and also buy the zines Meg-John and I did
Justin -
I was researching this article for BISH on Aftercare https://www.bishuk.com/sex/aftercare/ and it was raising lots of interesting things and themes which we talk about on this show. So I thought I'd get them out of my system.
This article about how fist fuckers view aftercare is really interesting https://journalofpositivesexuality.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/10.51681.1.1124_phases-of-aftercare-a-reflexive-thematic-analysis-of-how-fist-fuckers-understand-aftercare_Martin.pdf and so is this one about how people relate to aftercare regarding their gender and leaving the right impression on their BDSM partner (not sure if this pun was intended, but very good if it was) https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00224499.2024.2410338#d1e109 . Both these articles reflect on aftercare as a community value and how it operates as an inside / outside thing which I talk about in the podcast.
Look I haven't read this whole thesis about Aftercare but I'm sure it's interesting https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1999&context=honorstheses and this Masters thesis talks about the phenomenon of it being talked about on TikTok https://surface.syr.edu/thesis/706/
This paper on the Biology of BDSM is really good https://academic.oup.com/jsm/article-abstract/19/1/144/6961196?redirectedFrom=fulltext&login=false and this one is a review of the BioPyschoSocial science in understanding kink which is very helpful https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352250X22001944
Hope you enjoy this!
Email me culturesexrelationships at gmail dot com
justinhancock.co.uk/coaching if you want a session
https://linktr.ee/culturesexrel to find the google form
patreon.com/culturesexrelationships where you can sign up to support the show and also buy the zines I mentioned. -
Dear Justin, should I do a PhD in sexology? And what does it mean about my life that I even ask this question? And what small baby-steps can I take to find the path forward without jumping head-first into doing it full-time?
In this answer I talked about the different kinds of sexological approaches that exist: which I describe as being Royal Science or minor science (Kinsey and Masters and Johnson for example). Then I talk about different approaches one could take to doing sexology. Also I talk about how doing a PhD is a really focussed piece of work which might actually prevent you from doing the reading you enjoy. Lastly I give some ideas of being nerdy about sex that might be still be sexy and enjoyable without it having to lead to an outcome like a PhD.
Email me culturesexrelationships at gmail dot com
justinhancock.co.uk/coaching if you want a session
linktr.ee/culturesexrel to find the google form
patreon.com/culturesexrelationships where you can sign up to support the show and also buy the zines I mentioned. -
It’s another ‘Cultural Artefact’ episode and in this one I’m ranting about Love Actually. It’s on ITV X this Christmas (annoyingly with ads) so this makes the Watchalong episode I did last year more relevant, which you can find here at the Patreon https://www.patreon.com/posts/118365605
For this I am doing a reading from the article at BISH I did about it, a Sex and Relationships Education Guide to Love Actually https://www.bishuk.com/your-call/a-sex-and-relationships-education-guide-to-love-actually/ which is actually really good. I use this as a jumping off point for my reading of the film and having a discussion about the ontology of love in Richard Curtis’s world compared with mine. I also yell and make snide and funny remarks about this bloody awful film. Enjoy!
Here's that blog about Consensual Christmas https://www.bishuk.com/relationships/consensual-festivities/ -
Hi everyone
I got a request to talk about 'limerance' from a listener who was also kind enough to share their experiences of attraction and connection. Whilst I'm not a fan of 'Limerance' I am a fan of feeling strong connections and 'love' in our lives: what if we could experience this intensity for all of relationships, our selves, our assemblages? What else would that do? How might we do it?
Hope you find it helpful!
Email me culturesexrelationships at gmail dot com
justinhancock.co.uk/coaching if you want a session
https://linktr.ee/culturesexrel to find the google form
patreon.com/culturesexrelationships where you can sign up to support the show and also buy the zines I mentioned.
Justin -
[uploading again with a different name for the track]
In this episode Dr Eleanor Janega joins me to talk about Lily Allen’s West End Girl. We talk about the themes, and resulting discourses, emerging from this cultural artefact. Is it an album about an open relationship gone wrong, or is it something else instead? What is everyone getting wrong in their discussions about the album? Does it in fact bang?
Here is the house
https://www.architecturaldigest.com/video/watch/open-door-inside-david-harbour-and-lily-allens-brooklyn-town-house
Here is the flat (Pussy Palace)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dS3njIz_Qzs
Here is a red carpet interview Eleanor wants you to see
https://www.news.com.au/entertainment/awkward-footage-of-lily-allen-and-david-harbour-resurfaces/video/8b9f51e95b7ffa679d226ba960409a91
Listen to our Listenalong at the Patreon feed for the podcast
patreon.com/culturesexrelationships where you can sign up to support the show (and buy the zine I mentioned)
Email me with your questions at culturesexrelationships at gmail dot com
justinhancock.co.uk/coaching if you want a session
https://linktr.ee/culturesexrel to find the google form -
This week’s Ask Justin is about how to find hope, confidence and possibility in the future after a break up. Lots of advice here about break ups and moving forward reflecting on my own experiences, how we make use of feelings, critiquing the should stories, and of course the practical and experimental philosophies of Delueze and Guattari - this week ‘How do you make yourself a Body Without Organs?’
Here’s a recent podcast from the Machinic Unconscious Happy Hour about the BwO https://soundcloud.com/podcast-co-coopercherry/deleuze-and-guattari-how-do-you-make-yourself-a-body-without-organs
Here's an online copy of A Thousand Plateaus by Deleuze and Guattari https://files.libcom.org/files/A%20Thousand%20Plateaus.pdf (BwO starts on p149)
This is Abolish The Family by Sophie Lewis https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/products/2890-abolish-the-family?srsltid=AfmBOoqfP9U54Prh3ZqOwjJULgbnHG0ykElanIQQsqROQPWagCtNVHQt
Here’s that ACFM about Alexandra Kollontai https://novaramedia.com/2025/04/27/acfm-microdose-alexandra-kollontai-make-way-for-winged-eros/
And here’s the podcast from me about Wittgenstein and Solution Focused Practice
https://soundcloud.com/culturesexrelationships/wittgenstein-solutions-not-problems
Email me culturesexrelationships at gmail dot com
justinhancock.co.uk/coaching if you want a session
https://linktr.ee/culturesexrel to find the google form
patreon.com/culturesexrelationships where you can sign up to support the show and also buy the zines I mentioned. -
An Ask Justin episode (yay) where I answer a question about how to open oneself up to getting back to a sub / bottom dynamic after a break from a big sexual trauma.
Here's that interview with Cory I did about Curative Kink https://soundcloud.com/culturesexrelationships/cory-cascalheira-curative-kink
If you have a question for the show ...
justinhancock.co.uk/coaching if you want a session
https://linktr.ee/culturesexrel to find the google form
patreon.com/culturesexrelationships where you can sign up to support the show and also buy the zines I mentioned. -
This week we look at a Dan Savage column. The reader is bored with the sex, but also gets shamed from his wife for wearing a ‘gay’ T-shirt. Dan’s advice has some helpful ideas and affirmations (despite it being a short Q&A). How does the politics of the advisor affect the advice? What is the reader / advisor relationship? Then I offer my own extra advice. Are there other little microfascisms going on? How to talk about issues. How dis/inhibition is a problem and evokes Irving Yalom’s ooze. What does thinking about affects, rather than causes and effects, do? It’s a long one I’m afraid!
Email me culturesexrelationships at gmail dot com
justinhancock.co.uk/coaching if you want a session
https://linktr.ee/culturesexrel to find the google form
patreon.com/culturesexrelationships where you can sign up to support the show and also buy the zines I mentioned.
Article of mine on how to make sex and relationships chats easier
https://www.bishuk.com/relationships/how-to-make-sex-and-relationships-chats-easier/
This is a pretty nice article featuring that ‘ooze’ I was telling you about
https://www.newstatesman.com/ideas/2025/04/irvin-yalom-confessions
Here’s more about that particular book, thank you Kayleigh for lending me your copy. I never gave it back to you but I put it to good use.
https://www.yalom.com/momma-the-meaning-of-life
Here’s that article I referred to from Petra Boynton
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpsy/article/PIIS2215-0366(15)00009-7/abstract
Petra’s website No Star To Guide Me is a great starting point if you want to learn to give good advice
https://nostartoguideme.com/
Here’s that podcast I did with Jacob Johannsen
https://soundcloud.com/culturesexrelationships/jacob-johannsen-fantasy-online-misogyny-and-the-manosphere -
Second opinion 3: Esther Calling: Will This Heartbreak Ever End?
At a listener’s request this episode of Second Opinion features Esther Perel’s Where Should We Begin podcast, in particular one of her ‘Esther Calling’ episodes, where she speaks with someone about their problem. In this case we can say that is exactly what she’s doing, although there are glimmers of good stuff, it’s mostly not good I don’t think. Anyway, endure / enjoy my long and rambly Second Opinion about Esther Calling: Will This Heartbreak Ever End.
Email me culturesexrelationships at gmail dot com
justinhancock.co.uk/coaching if you want a session
https://linktr.ee/culturesexrel to find the google form
patreon.com/culturesexrelationships where you can sign up to support the show and also buy the zines I mentioned. -
I started off doing a reading from my latest article at BISH about the difference between a kink and a fetish. You can read that here https://www.bishuk.com/your-questions/whats-the-difference-between-a-kink-and-a-fetish/
Then I went off on one talking about how an ethical fetishist (which many of us probably are) is probably doing something more consensual than most of the other kinds of fetishisations we may take part in in our daily lives. Commodities, labels, and ourselves. All of which might amount to us being little capitalists, micro-fascisms.
Jeremy Gilbert wrote a piece about his book here https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/common-ground/
Here's that paper on infantilisation and becoming-child https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00131857.2022.2128759#d1e417
Here's my stream with Sinan
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2554705347 -
"In summary, I am scared that I might have half-cheated on my girlfriend. Maybe not on paper, but in the grey zones. And then, that I didn’t respect her limits with my oversharing, because either I was too much trying to be transparent or just processing, easing my insecurity or guilt. I would very much appreciate your insights in how to disentangle that mess."
In this episode I talk about relationships shouldn't just be about drawing hard lines. If we draw hard lines we run the risk of 'lining ourselves in' a corner, or a little box. Dividing our selves from our selves and relationships. Making us firmly held, and very unfree. How can our relationships become-other, to make a relationship a becoming? We need soft lines and lines of flight. When we have this, we will see our relationships as flourishing to an extent where we don't yet know what a relationship is capable of.
Hope you like the ASMR direction at the end.
https://justinhancock.co.uk/#coaching
Got a question? Email me culturesexrelationships at gmail dot com or go here https://linktr.ee/culturesexrel -
This is an advice episode for someone who is feeling a little fresh and inexperienced in a relationship with someone who has relationship baggage. How can she feel a bit more secure? How can a different way of relating to relationships and even 'the self' help all of us to create the size and shape of relationship that can do what we need it to do?
You can book a one to one session with me and also ask questions for the show via the link below.
https://linktr.ee/culturesexrel -
’m back with another Second Opinion. I’m doing another one of the Sexual Healing columns from the Guardian. Mostly because it’s so short but also it’s not pay-walled. I’m not going to reproduce the whole thing here, so you might want to click on the link to read the whole thing (it’s 340 words in total, for the question and answer)
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2025/jul/08/my-boyfriend-is-almost-perfect-but-hes-too-vanilla-in-bed
But the tl;dr is that the question is from a woman feeling bad that she’s dissatisfied that the sex she’s having with her lovely boyfriend is mundane. In the past she’s had sexy, experimental sex with men who weren’t as nice. The answer is that it’s understandable that she’s found herself in this relationship but is ‘endowing her boyfriend with fatherly attributes’ which makes it much less hot. So she should work on her unconscious to make the relationship work and try to use the relationship to find ways of attaching like an adult.
For the full version of this head to https://www.patreon.com/culturesexrelationships Where you can also find the Make Your Own Sex Manual and Make Your Own Relationships User Guide resources I mentioned in the reading https://www.patreon.com/culturesexrelationships/shop -
From Series 3 Episode 1 of Sex and the City
"Later that day I got to thinking about fairytales.
What if Prince Charming had never showed up?
Would Snow White have slept in that glass coffin forever?
or would she have eventually woken up, spit out the apple, gotten a job, a healthcare package and a baby from her local neighbourhoud sperm bank?
I couldn't help but wonder. Inside every confident driven, single woman is there a delicate, fragile princess just waiting to be saved?
Was Charlotte right? Do women just wanna be rescued?"
In this episode of I Couldn’t Help But Wonder I discussed the idea of our insides (unconscious) and outsides (conscious) and whether our fairy stories entirely exist within us (as a Jungian archetype) or throughout us in a more Guattarian ‘machinic unconscious’ (within/without in an assemblage). Instead of asking what kind of archetype we are, we could ask ‘what would that do, and what else?’ In this way can we use these stories as part of our becomings? Might our Prince Charming and delicate fragile princess be with us in molecularised forms every day. How in our processes of our own becomings we have to learn to be our own primary caregiver in order to become…. - Laat meer zien
