The Pleasure Podcast – Détails, épisodes et analyse

It’s the finale of season four! Thank you to all our guests and pleasure podders for making this a brilliant season, we’ve reached more people than ever before. We love our growing community and thrilled to know you’re as passionate as us when it comes to talking about pleasure. I’m taking a break to have my babies, but we’ll be back in January with a brand-new season. Don’t worry, there’s a juicy archive of episodes to explore so please dig in. But now for our finale guest, and this really is a special one…

It’s international changemaker, Black Pride co-founder, MBE rejecting, aptly named Lady Phyll! Phyll Opoku-Gyimah co-founded UK Black Pride. She’s the exec director of Kaleidoscope Trust, an organisation working towards the liberation of LGBTQ people around the world; an Albert Kennedy Trust patron, and a public speaker focusing on race, gender, sexuality and class. She successfully campaigns for the better treatment of people of colour in the LGBTQ+ community and this year was voted number 4 on the Pride Power List.

This is a gloriously personal conversation where we discuss the genesis of Black Pride and Phyll’s search for intimacy after her marriage ended and she was able to finally fully explore her sexuality with women.

She shares the emotional connection found in her first sexual experience with a woman which allowed her to be ‘seen’ in the most profound way, as well as her thoughts on polyamory and having sex that allows for vulnerability rather than performance, not ignoring of course, the simple joy of fucking!

We talk about the paths trodden by Black lesbian women who have come before her and why UK Black Pride has come together as an ongoing movement rather than a moment providing an inclusive safe space to connect with your chosen family. And the importance of recognising the broad range of identities that we have - the intersections of race, gender, sexuality that are all important to recognise to manage true allyship.

In a zoom miracle, in under an hour, the three of us fell in love - we hope you do too.

Lady Phyll is the is the co-editor of Sista!, an anthology of writings by same sex living women of African/Caribbean descent with a connection to the United Kingdom, released by Team Angelica Publishing in 2018, which includes work by 31 writers and available on Amazon and all good bookshops.

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We would love to hear from you: email us at hello@thepleasurepodcast.com or tweet us @ThePleasurePod.

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Social Media:

Lady Phyll: @MsLadyPhyll

Naomi Sheldon: @NaomiSheldon1

Anand Patel: @therealdranand

Follow us at @ThePleasurePod and visit us at www.thepleasurepodcast.com

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Today on the Pleasure Podcast we welcome Sangeeta Pillai, founder of feminist online platform Soul Sutras and fighter of Indian Patriarchy! Sangeeta developed SoulSutras to be a safe space for South Asian womxn to tell their stories openly without shame or fear, connecting with one another, sharing a common cultural identity.

Soul Sutras has developed into a feminist platform hosting the award-winning taboo-shaking Masala Podcast to developing Masala Monologues, a series of writing workshops and theatre shows in the UK and US.

Sangeeta talks to us about her childhood, growing up in the slums of Mumbai and expected to follow the narrow familiar trajectory planned and expected for South Asian women of obedient daughter, wife, and mother. Sangeeta pushed against traditional expectations from a very young age, being the first woman in her family to work and decline marriage, but not without significant personal cost.

We discuss the cultural drive for purity and the responsibility of women to guard that safely between her legs. Sangeeta received the message from her family that physical pleasure is not for her, that sex will be the ruin of the archetypal good Indian woman. The strongly conditioned links between nudity and sex and shame at an early age limited access of even simple intimacy.

Having a breakdown led to Sangeeta's sexual awakening and eventually her drive to create a safe space for women to speak to each other and open up. A blog became a writing workshop which developed into a theatre space and an award-winning podcast.

We talk about reclaiming the sexual heritage of India such as the Kama Sutra for a great seductive sexual experience, and look at India as a liberal secular place of openness and possibility. We discuss the deification of boys that is endemic in Indian culture and how growing up feeling like you are somehow better is harmful for both men and women. We discuss how her more traditional extended family have responded to her work by silence, how to move forward when you are not seen as a success by your family, and how the price she has paid for the path she has chosen is loneliness.

Sangeeta keeps pushing the boundaries, recognising the importance of keeping challenging the silence and taboos in Asian culture to allow us all to normalise sex and intimacy and affection.

Learn more about Soul Sutras here and catch Sangeeta’s wonderful Masala Podcast on Spotify, iTunes or wherever you find your podcasts!

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We would love to hear from you: email us at hello@thepleasurepodcast.com or tweet us @ThePleasurePod.

Please do rate, review, and share the podcast, it helps other people find us.

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Social Media:

Sangeeta Pillai: @Soul_Sutras

Naomi Sheldon: @NaomiSheldon1

Anand Patel: @therealdranand

Follow us at @ThePleasurePod and visit us at www.thepleasurepodcast.com

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It’s the season finale! Our guest sends us off with hope and solidarity. We welcome femme non-binary trans writer and performer Teddy* Lamb. I first spotted Teddy roaming around Soho with pink hair, frills, and a prominent, sexy moustache. The combination felt somehow audacious and I’ve been longing to speak to them about gender and identity ever since. 

Teddy was using they/them pronouns long before being non-binary was even part of their vocabulary. They describe theirs as a gender rather than a sexuality story. But their pansexuality and description of the joy of T for T sex leaves us marvelling at how much there is to learn from the trans community when it comes to consent and empathy in sex.

This interview was recorded the day after Liz Truss, the Minister for women and equalities, announced her plans to prioritise single-sex spaces, protect children from irreversible decisions about gender and potentially rename the ministry, the ministry of freedom.

Teddy explains why this these speeches are so damaging and how in the UK, while the most likely to be vulnerable, trans people have little support. With no legal recognition for being non-binary, a 2-3 year wait for surgery, speech therapy, and counselling trans people are dying as they wait.

Teddy describes the physical response to being misgendered, of finding gender euphoria, and why they are only sleeping with trans people for now. We look at the radical power of trans body hair, and how much there is to learn from the young members of the LGBTQ+ community.

Their show Since You’ve Been Gone, a glorious autobiographical account of growing up queer in the 90s and of finding yourself whilst dealing with loss, was an Edinburgh hit. Pleasure Podcast listeners can watch the show until the 24th May using the password PleasureTeddy here: https://vimeo.com/419525480

*Of note, since recording this episode, they have changed their name to Tabby Lamb.

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If you have been affected by any of the issues discussed please take a look at the following:

Petition against Liz Truss’s words: http://chng.it/nYdKs6qZ7q

Gendered intelligence: http://genderedintelligence.co.uk/

Find out more about Teddy at teddylamb.com

CW: assault and transphobia.

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We would love to hear from you: email us at hello@thepleasurepodcast.com or tweet us @ThePleasurePod.

Please do rate, review, and share the podcast, it helps other people find us!

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Social Media:

Teddy Lamb: @TheTabbyLamb

Naomi Sheldon: @NaomiSheldon1

Anand Patel: @therealdranand

Follow us at @ThePleasurePod and visit us at 

Today we welcome Alex Cowan, a leading disability activist, performer and writer challenging the sexual erasure of differently abled people around the world. Alex has been a real pioneer, In 2014 she appeared in Alternative Miss World - their first contestant in a wheelchair, and appeared on Channel 4 discussing her relationship with her husband. She was the first disabled person to attend the world-renowned European Society of Sexual Medicine Summer school and has worked with Alistair Morrison, photographer to Hollywood royalty, reinterpreting the iconic Christine Keeler photos replacing the Arne Jacobsen chair with her wheelchair. 

Alex developed Multiple Sclerosis in her late teens and documents her journey (with the man that eventually became her boyfriend and now husband) as the effects of illness changed and challenged her body, her self-view and her relationships. Alex describes what that has meant for her ability to physically navigate sex when disability meets ageing. We talk about the frustration of friends presuming she’s celibate as if disability changed who she was as a person and shares how a really low point triggered the need to shock herself out of her despair - and so she jumped out of a plane! 

We discuss the importance of sex workers in helping provide intimacy and physical contact when the dating scene can be significantly more challenging to negotiate, let alone finding suitable accessible spaces for disabled people to meet.

Read her writing for Good Housekeeping and see more of those Alistair Morrison photographs here: https://100stories.leonardcheshire.org/changing-perceptions/

Thank you to Alex for this inspiring conversation that reminds us again to see the person rather than the disability and providing practical tips on how to keep a sexual relationship going with a differently abled body.

Just a little note that Naomi had to pop out for the last part of the interview, in case you’re wondering why she goes quiet later on!

Alex kindly supplied the following list of super-helpful books and links (on GoogleDrive for convenience!):

https://tinyurl.com/yaye8xq5

We would love to continue the conversation and hear from you: email us at hello@thepleasurepodcast.com or tweet us @ThePleasurePod.

Please do rate, review, and share the podcast, it helps other people find us!

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Social Media:

Naomi Sheldon: @NaomiSheldon1

Anand Patel: @therealdranand

Follow us at @ThePleasurePod and visit us at www.thepleasurepodcast.com

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Hello! Today we welcome award-winning actor and writer Charlotte Josephine onto The Pleasure Podcast.

 I’m delighted to introduce our listeners to Charlie, they are one of my personal heroes having given me the strength and permission to write when I was just setting out and they were already on the way to prolific playwrighting. They swept onto the theatre scene with solo show Bitch Boxer which won the Soho Theatre Writers award and is now being adapted for film. The host of plays which followed have received awards, huge praise and sell out houses. They recently played a queer Mercutio for the RSC’s Romeo and Juliet – a role which became significant for them both on and off stage.

Charlie started to identify as non-binary two years ago after having felt they’d failed at womanhood the whole of their lives. They join us to talk about shedding the label of she and the therapy and self-interrogation that got them there. We discuss the rules that come with being assigned female at birth and how writing has helped them to be comfortable in their own skin.

Charlie has been sober and in food recovery for years. They describe how sobriety has allowed them to enter a sexual revolution and what queer sex can teach us all about good sex. And it’s a lot. We look at the ripple effect that bad and good sex can have in the wider world and why representation of queer people is so important.

Thank you Charlie for your honest, present and playful words that will help so many other people in finding out who they are.

Flies is being made with @boundlessabound and Birds And Bees with @TCLive which can be found HERE

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We would love to continue the conversation and hear from you: email us at hello@thepleasurepodcast.com or tweet us @ThePleasurePod.

Please do rate, review, and share the podcast, it helps other people find us!

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Social Media:

Charlotte Josephone: @charlotte_j_b

Naomi Sheldon: @NaomiSheldon1

Anand Patel: @therealdranand

Follow us at @ThePleasurePod and visit us at www.thepleasurepodcast.com

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Today we welcome journalist, author and feminist trailblazer Marisa Bate. Marisa was one of the founding members of The Pool and writes extensively about domestic violence. Issues that affect women’s lives are at the forefront of her writing, whether that be in Grazia, The Guardian, The Independent, Cosmopolitan – the list goes on. Her journalism is prolific, smart, hard hitting and very, very moving.

 Anytime that families are together for long periods without normal routine, domestic abuse goes up…throw in alcohol, stress, it’s no wonder that during lockdown the phone lines for Refuge and Women’s Aid have been so busy.

We talk to Marisa about how domestic abuse is being spoken about more widely than ever before. The Archers Big Little Lies, and now Rhianna are discussing what used to be a very private, shameful occurrence.

We explore what economic abuse is, how reproductive coercion can go undetected and why a culture of fancying the bad boy can be so damaging. We hear the ways in which countries around the world are trying to support and protect victims of sexual abuse. From code words in grocery stores in France to alcohol bans in Greenland.

And Marisa advises us on what to do if you recognise abusive behaviour during lockdown and beyond. And why, if you hear anything worrying next door, you should always call the police.

CW: Domestic violence, abuse

Marisa’s brilliant book The Periodic Table of Feminism is an essential guide to the feminist movement and the often-unsung international figures who’ve shaped it. It was published by Penguin and is available from all good bookstores.

More of her work on domestic violence can be found in Vogue.co.uk. She has covered economic abuse for the Guardian, Woman's Hour, The i Paper and how abusers manipulate the Child Maintenance Service.

She recently wrote about lack of support for children who witnessed Domestic...

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It's an emergency isolation episode! We welcome clinical psychologist and psychosexologist Dr Karen Gurney. Karen joins us in these extraordinary times to talk about sex, pleasure and relationships during this pandemic. How we can manage our anxiety and maintain our intimacy whilst distancing ourselves from others.

This is a practical conversation with lots of tips and tricks for us all, whatever our sexuality or gender, whether living on our own, apart from our loved ones, in couples, in house shares or back home with less than supportive families.

Karen is lead psychosexual therapist for 56 Dean Street (NHS) and director of The Havelock Clinic, an independent sexual problems clinic based in London. She teaches nationally and has written for and featured in Marie Claire, Cosmopolitan and Refinery29 and completed her first TEDx talk in Feb 2020. She is also the UK ambassador for www.thepornconversation.org - a not-for-profit initiative set up by Erika Lust designed to help parents and carers talk to young people about porn use.

Karen’s book ‘Mind the Gap: The Truth About Desire And How To Futureproof Your Sex Life’ by Headline Home was launched in March 2020 and is available from Amazon, Waterstones and independent bookstores.

Karen has kindly shared the following free resources for you to use:

https://havelockonlineworkshops.teachable.com/p/how-to-harness-the-power-of-your-brain-to-improve-your-sex-life

You can find the ‘Understanding your conditions for good sex’ exercise at:

https://thehavelockclinic.com/resources/

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We would love to continue the conversation and hear from you: email us at hello@thepleasurepodcast.com or tweet us @ThePleasurePod.

Please do rate, review, and share the podcast, we hear it helps other people find us!

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Social Media:

Dr Karen Gurney: @karengurney5 on Twitter and @thesexdoctor on Instagram

Naomi Sheldon: @NaomiSheldon1

Anand Patel: @therealdranand

Follow us at @ThePleasurePod and visit us at www.thepleasurepodcast.com

This episode is sponsored YES, The Organic Intimacy...

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In this episode of The Pleasure Podcast we welcome Leïla Slimani. She was the first Moroccan woman to win France’s most prestigious literary prize, the Prix Goncourt, which she won for Lullaby. A journalist and frequent commentator on women’s and human rights, she is French president Emmanuel Macron’s personal representative for the promotion of the French language and culture. 

We speak to Leila about her collection of essays Sex and Lies which examine the sex lives of women in Morocco. 

In these essays Slimani gives voice to young Moroccan women grappling with a conservative culture that at once condemns and commodifies sex. In a country where the law punishes and outlaws all forms of sex outside marriage, as well as homosexuality and prostitution, women have only two options for their sexual identities: virgin or wife. 

We discuss what it was like growing up in a liberal family within a deeply conservative society. Misconceptions about sex and sexism in Islam. And whether we can ever know who we are when our country has been colonised.

She asks if it’s possible for the people of Morocco to rediscover their own culture away from the impact of colonialism and if so, whether that would be a more tender, affectionate, and honest way to live. Sex and Lies confronts Morocco's hypocrisy of sexual values and is a vibrant appeal for the universal freedom to be, to love and to desire.

Sex and Lies is published by Faber and Faber and is available HERE

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We would love to continue the conversation and hear from you: email us at hello@thepleasurepodcast.com or tweet us @ThePleasurePod.

Please do rate, review, and share the podcast, we hear it helps other people find us!

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Social Media:

Naomi Sheldon: @NaomiSheldon1

Anand Patel: @therealdranand

Follow us at @ThePleasurePod and visit us at www.thepleasurepodcast.com

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week of The Pleasure Podcast we welcome the award-winning comedian, actor and writer Richard Gadd. In 2016 he won the esteemed Edinburgh comedy award, with Monkey See Monkey Do, a raw, personal account about his sexual assault. It was a performance which pushed the boundaries of comedy and which felt monumentally cathartic for its win.

In 2019 his first solo theatre show Baby Reindeer was the talk of Edinburgh. In it he relives his experience of being stalked by a woman with a dangerous obsession with him, about wrestling with his sexuality, and trying to come to terms with his assault.

We speak about the effects of growing up in an uber masculine world where you thank God you’re not gay, and sex ed was devoid of condoms. He speaks about the sexual abuse and grooming which threw his relationship with sex out of orbit. And of the erectile dysfunction that followed which destroyed relationships and his confidence.

The dissociation that followed felt at odds with his happy teenage years and the cost was his loss of the ability to be vulnerable and intimate throughout this period of deep pain.

Richard tells us how he has been able to approach sex and intimacy again. And how his deeply personal shows have been part of that healing process.

He describes what drives a person to make a show about their trauma and what the effect is when you thought it might ruin you but in fact launched you into a whole new dazzling chapter of your career.

The emotional and psychological honesty of Richard’s work is astonishing. How he tackles the source of his trauma and his evolving understanding of his own masculinity is truly breath taking.

CW: There are some subjects which we cover that listeners might find disturbing: Sexual Abuse, Stalking.

Follow Richard on social media @MrRichardGadd for more information on his shows and upcoming dates.

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We would love to continue the conversation and hear from you: email us at hello@thepleasurepodcast.com or tweet us @ThePleasurePod.

Please do rate, review, and share the podcast, we hear it helps other people find us!

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Social Media:

Naomi Sheldon: @NaomiSheldon1

Anand Patel: @therealdranand

Richard Gadd: @MrRichardGadd

Follow us at @ThePleasurePod and visit us at www.thepleasurepodcast.com

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to episode 2 of The Pleasure Podcast. This week we speak to multi-award winning, plus size style blogger, journalist, and author Stephanie Yeboah. This year she was the cover girl on Glamour’s self-love issue. And on Instagram she is making waves celebrating the bodies of plus size, black women. Her sexy, witty, and insightful posts redefine accepted beauty standards and challenge the co-option of body positivity by socially acceptable white bodies.

Stephanie has experienced racism and fat-phobia from a young age, from being bullied at school to being fetishized and objectified in her romantic life. The way she flies in the face of these discriminations by creating a positive space for change is awe inspiring. Her Instagram page is testament to this. Check out her beautiful pictures HERE

Stephanie speaks to us about navigating life and dating as a black, plus-sized woman and how she and others can manage to find self-acceptance when judgement and discrimination are still so rife.

Stephanie’s book Fattily Ever After: The Black Girl’s Guide To Living Unapologetically will be published by Hardie Grant Books on the 3rd of September. It’s a love letter to plus size black women. You can pre-order a copy on her website stephanieyeboah.com.

CW: There are some subjects which we cover that listeners might find disturbing: Racism, Sexual Abuse, Violence.

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We would love to continue the conversation and hear from you: email us at hello@thepleasurepodcast.com or tweet us @ThePleasurePod.

Please do rate, review, and share the podcast, we hear it helps other people find us!

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Social Media:

Naomi Sheldon: @NaomiSheldon1

Anand Patel: @therealdranand

Stephanie Yeboah: @StephanieYeboah

Follow us at @ThePleasurePod and visit us at www.thepleasurepodcast.com

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