62: Being Ethically Curious About Trans Sex (with Lucie Fielding)

ep 62

Melisa:I guess kind of just to start off, like, how would you define trans sex? What is trans sex? When people are hearing about that, what would you, what words would you put to that?

Hi everyone. Welcome back to Queer Relationships Queer Joy. I am one of your hosts, Melisa DeSegiurant.

Keely: And I'm your other host, Keely C. Helmick. And we are bringing on today.

Melisa: So happy we're both gonna say it we're so happy.

Keely: Well we've been alluding to being excited the past couple weeks about a guest, and we are bringing on today to talk to the wonderful, magnificent Lucie Fielding. And we will go ahead and introduce ourselves briefly for new listeners, and we'll let Lucie do that for herself, Melisa. Okay. Let's see how fast I have it down.

My name is Keely C. Helmick. I'm a licensed professional counselor. I'm the owner of Connective Therapy Collective. I am a white, non-binary queer femme. I am non monogamous. My back is healing on its way

Melisa: That was impressive. I need another cup of coffee to go that quickly. I think I would stumble over my words.

Keely: Well, that's the whole thing. Lucie and I were just talking, the three of us saying how Lucie and I are morning people, so that was the morning person and me just chugging along.

Melisa: I'm not, but you know, I, I was an actress. We could fake it. I'm Melisa DeSegiurant. I use she and they pronouns. I'm licensed as a marriage family therapist and professional counselor working at Connective Therapy Collective. I'm a white person. I am bisexual. I am able bodied. I am polyamorous. I've been saying I'm polysaturated. I need to just drop saying that cause I don't wanna give an update every week, whether or not my dating profiles are active. So I'm poly. We'll just leave it there. And I'm gender fluid.

Keely: Lucie, would you do the honors of introducing yourself to the audience?

Lucie: Yes, and I love that y'all do this. Um, My name is Lucie Fielding. My pronouns are she, they please mix them with reckless abandon. I am a, white queer leather dyke, trans misogyny affected femme. Um, I'm neuro divergent thin Jewish witchy and I am coming to you. I live on Monacan land, although I'm often to be found on, Duwamish, territory unseated.

and yeah, I'm a therapist, uh a sex educator, writer and, uh, bull in a China Shop.

Keely: I also was talking to you a couple weeks ago and you mentioned how you are neuro spicy

Lucie: Oh yeah. I totally am. Yeah.

Melisa: We like that phrase around here. Anything with spice, we're a fan of.

Lucie: Well, and for the longest time I was like, you know, like I would talk to other, neuro queers and they'd tell me about their special interests and I felt really bad cuz I was like, God I don't have a special interest. And then it just dawned on me, wait, sex and kink are my special interests. Like that, that's, that is just like, that's, that has been my thing. So for the longest time, I am just like, yeah. that, that is the surest way to get me to just like, dive in deep into something.

Keely: Oh, in so many ways. Well, let's get started diving in deep.

Melisa: That's why we have you here today, right?

Keely: To talk about sex and along with sex kink and other things. Yes.

Lucie: Yeah.

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Melisa: And with that, I do wanna name and promo your book Trans Sex I recommend everyone listening who has not read it, get your hands on it. and I guess kind of just to start off, like, how would you define trans sex? What is trans sex? When people are hearing about that, what would you, what words would you put to that?

Lucie: Gosh. I think that, I think there are a number of communities, populations, groups who have come up with creative ingenious strategies to approach the erotic and to be in relationship with the erotic. disabled folks, kinky folks. and I'm thinking here of, leather sex. and, in particular, I am, uh, and, uh, some varieties when sex is queer, when sex is really, both queer in the, in the identity sense, but also, queer in the sense of weird.

Um, then, then I would say like, you know, queer sex has some of those features and trans sex has a lot of those features because we are, we are playing. With, you know, we are, I just named groups for whom like sex education is not produced for us. and the sex research that is produced, and the writing that's produced, the ways that has been characterized, first of all by, cis folks and so, there's a lot that's missing there because, trans experiencing is being defined and characterized from without. And then, you know, like these are all groups we've had to, because there's not sex education. For us, because indeed there's this really subtle, exchange between hyper visibility and invisibility that, that we've had to extrapolate be, be as the, late and wonderful, Mira Bellwether author of, the book,the Zine Fucking Trans Women would say, sexy mad scientists.

And so, it's all about like looking at different energies and intentions when it comes to approaching bodies, approaching our bodies and our partner's bodies from a beginner's mind and not just a beginner's mind from like a place of unsettled I don't know what this is and I'm joyful about that and so

Keely: Pleasure from that.

Lucie: And the pleasure from that and the fluidity and the, you know, like, I think that there's something so wonderful about, there's certain terms that I think are so mercurial and capricious and like a vague definition, like queer is one of them, Dyke is another. and, and and I think that, when that happens, it's like it, it's kind of like when my, my puppy, Cersei she's a 11 month old, whippet puppy, soon to be a year. And,we like to joke that she has the vast unearned confidence of a white cis het dude striding into a dyke bar and, uh, you know, saying, Hey ladies, who's up for some body shots? you know, so, but we, I'd like to think about like, The way that certain strategies for approaching the erotic are kind of like the way that she behaves at the dog park.

Like, she'll like approach another dog, like do the play bow thing. They'll do the play bow thing, and then she'll start, she'll run off, and then she'll get them to chase her. And then, you know, like at every once in a while she'll slow down a little bit just to, like give the other dog the belief for a second that they might be able to catch her.

And then she opens up and she's like, yeah, fuck you. I'm, I can run 35 miles an hour.

Melisa: Love it.

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Melisa: I am curious as we're talking about this, one of the phrases I think, Keeley, you've, you've, uh, referenced Lucie before, as you've said this idea of using gender as a sex toy that feels important to highlight.

Keely: Yeah.

Lucie: Yeah. so that is a, an expression, that, comes from,the wonderful, late, kink erotica writer, Xan West, who talks about gender as an elaborate sex toy in, in a short story Xan wrote, a called, uh, strong in a collection that's unfortunately out of print. Show Yourself To Me and I love that expression.

I love it so much that like, I have a paddle, it's my fa- one of my favorite paddles. And, like on the handle is that expression, Gender is an elaborate sex toy. and it, and then,fem is cut out of it and so it's like, yes, literally this paddle is my gender as an elaborate sex toy.

Keely: Well, and you had that on your, the first, the very first workshop I saw you present. That was the first frame of your slides, and I was like, oh my gosh.

Lucie: Yeah. Yeah. And I just, I love the idea of play and of exploration and, really I think so often our work of the work of transition and of, exploration is about getting to a place of dreaming and play where we want to play, we want to experiment, and we want to bring an ethical curiosity, to, to our bodies, to our partner's bodies. And, and so yeah, I think it, it can be an elaborate sex toy and a lot of folks first start exploring gender through gender. which is a f a multiverse of kinks. that can include so many forms of play but it is, it's a way that so many people experiment and try on different things and see which one, which stories, which images, which metaphors, which, set of embodiments feels the yummiest, even if it's in particular context and it's very fluid.

So, I really love that. And I think, I think in particular of a marvelous piece by, Jacob Hale called Leather Dyke Boys and their Daddies, and it's this like, I think it's from 1997 and, Hale talks about like, you know, just the way that like leather dyke spaces are these real spaces of decontextualizing and revisioning the body and the erotic and just such sights of gender play.

and so, yeah.

Melisa: I love the curiosity and the fluidity you're talking about.

Keely: Yeah. And I think people listen. You know, it's interesting some folks this may come very familiar to them. And then I'm thinking, what is it like for folks who are listening who wanna start this out and are like, oh my gosh, that sounds so amazing, and where do I start? Or how do I start this exploration with my partner, with myself?

Yeah. that's a, such a good question. And I think part of it is, there has to be a lot of trust building that is built up, you know, trust, trust with ourselves and the parts of our system. And, getting to a place where, you know, our parts. Feel, contained and it's from a place of that kind of place of being held in a nice container not in a like structuring way or a like confining way, but kind of like in a way of just like feeling held for a time within,within certain contexts and the body becoming a container for that. And I think that gets built up over time. I think, I think it's easy, to like, hear me talk about things or if you've been to some of my more recent workshops and you see like me just like gushing, philosophical and just like being positively orgasmic about, about,about pleasure and the erotic, like that didn't happen overnight.

Lucie: It happens with a lot of warmup. It happens with a lot of titration and experimentation and building trust with yourself, with your partners. it's like, like I have to be able to trust that, a partner is going to bring energies and intentions to my body that are going to be yummy, that are gonna feel affirming and what I call gender pleasurable.

You know, sometimes it means like some of us, like it's, we don't know what pleasure feels like in the body. I think a lot of, sexuality professionals may start from this premise that people know what pleasure feels

Totally.

And even like what wanting feels like. And I really want to start from the principle that. That a lot of us don't have that awareness. And then it's not something that is innate. It is something that is, that is built over time. And that is constantly being renegotiated because our bodies are constantly in transition, you know? whether or not that involves a gender transition, we're aging. our bodies are,responding to trauma, out in the world. we're acquiring illnesses. We are constantly going through bodily processes and so are our partners. and so it starts from this place of like, we're constantly needing to renegotiate and to, come at it without, expectations, but a lot of yummy intentions.

Keely: Yeah.

Melisa: Feel like the assumptions people can make about sex can really get in our way. And Keely and I talk about queering up sex all the time and how much,even like cis het people can really benefit from hearing about queer sex and trans sex.

Lucie: Oh yeah.

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Melisa: There's so much of fixation, and I appreciated this part in the beginning of your book about on body parts and then how they're supposed to work, and the term that we had written down that I'd love for you to talk a little bit about is functional fixedness. Like, what is that? How does it relate to how we can maybe access body parts in a new way? Again, whether or not that involves a gender exploration or shift in identity.

Lucie: Yeah. Thank you for asking about functional fixedness. so Functional Fixedness is a cognitive bias that was, really first described by, a gestalt, psychotherapist. It at least in the psychotherapeutic, you know, literature by Carl Dunker and, and Gestalt psychotherapist. and what he's talking about is like when we talk about, like out of the box thinking, we're basically talking about breaking out of functional fixedness. Um, it's about. We often approach objects in the world, experiences parts, of our bodies, of our partner's bodies from a place of functional fixedness where we say like, oh, I know what this is and thus I, this is how this thing is used and this thing is understood. And to break out of functional fixedness is to say, I don't know what this is.

Like, and maybe I try something different with this. And some of the things that I'm going to try aren't going to be immediately yummy or may not be yummy at all. And so it's okay, you know, take what works, and throw out the rest. But like, you might discover like when you take a breath and take a beat and, decide I'm not going to kind of map those kind of stories about how a part is supposed to behave, how sex is supposed to look, what sex is supposed to be, what relationships they're supposed to be and how they're supposed their trajectories.

And start with, okay, like I'm gonna write my own, narrative of this and, maybe, maybe I'm inspired by other narratives, but like I am, I'm really looking out into the world and trying to,push back on resist,the kind of stories that are most readily available to us.

Lucie: So like one of them being like the only kind of good penis is a penis that is hard and penetrating something. or that sex has to involve genitals at all, or that, you know, or that you can't just like totally bring different, as I've said, like energies and intentions to a part.

My friend and colleague, uh, Princess Callie, has a term, Colonel Kink and, she describes it as, it's like, you can talk a bit, when you're negotiating a kink scene, you can talk about, or a dynamic, you can talk about the activities that you're interested in doing, but it's almost, that's almost like the baseline question.

It's not the most interesting question. The more interesting question is, what is the why for that activity? What is the colonel kink at the heart of that activity? What energies and intentions are you bringing to this part, to this activity? and also like, how do you want to feel when you're engaging in this activity?

how do you wanna feel by the end of it? and the example I give is that, like spanking for example, like, , you know, um, somebody says, oh yeah, Lucie, I would love for you to spank me. be like, yeah, sure. how do you wanna feel when I'm sp you know, and then I get to say like, how I want to feel.

Lucie: And we get to negotiate on that and see like if our two energies can be aligned there, in the same way that we would negotiate different forms of aftercare. and, like I can maybe one impact bottom might be like, oh, I want to feel really just like competent and strong. I can take a lot, like, Ooh, I'm a pain slut.

Yay. Like, I am the baddest of the badass masochists, Like that is a, that's a feeling tone. You know? That's an energy and intention that you can bring. Or, you could feel like, God, I wanna feel broken down. I wanna feel, punished. I want to feel, you know, like, I want to feel small.

I want to feel huge, and big and, yeah. So there's so many ways to approach any given body part or activity and I think that's a wonderful feature of like trans sex and,cryp sex and, queer sex and, elder sex and yeah, all the things,

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Hey, Hey, it's Cardinal. You're behind the scenes buddy. Uh,

I think I am a little bit in love with Lucy. Oh, my God. She's just such a powerful presence. And sexy. And I can't wait to see them when they come to Portland. This April to teach their workshop are in clinical approaches to trans sex. That workshop will be worth for continuing education credits for mental health clinicians.

Seats are limited. So sign up for our newsletter to know when tickets go on sale. Link in the episode description. All right. Back to the show.

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Melisa: Can we talk about muffing, we've named it before, but I would consider you to be an expert in the area considering you're doing workshops on this right now, and whenwhen we dropped that word before, we did not tell listeners what it meant. So I'm, I'm assuming some people might have looked it up, but for those of you who did not or did not hear that episode, I would love for you to explain a little bit.

Lucie: So muffing the term muffing originates, in the work of, Mira Bellweather, in her Zine Fucking Trans Women. And so, she's very instrumental in popularizing the practice. I mean, fucking trans women was essential. It was one of the first, texts that I was, that was suggested to me when I was, embarking on an exploration of gender and it's like I had all of these questions about stuff that I just kind of chuckle at now, but like at the time was just so vexing and was coming from, some internalized, messaging, around sex that, that I needed to unsettle and unlearn. But, um, muffing as a practice, and I'll describe what that is. There are actually,it is used most routinely, as a medical practice right now, you know, so like, as part of a way to assess for certain kinds of hernias. and that's basically what,they're basically a doctor is basically muffing you if, if they're checking for hernia that way. but there are traditions that go back hundreds and hundreds of years of this practice.

It wasn't called muffing in these traditions. Um, that, um, Use this as a way to experience pleasure and as a part, as a facet of genital massage,and kind of waking up the entire genital complex. So, it has a long history, even if the term itself is, only about, 12 years old. and,so what is muffing?

Okay. so every body has, or has in inguinal canals, these are canals that, run basically diagonal, and. And if you think about the crotch and particularly at, in the pelvis, and you think about the v you know that those, that the v that is formed there, that's approximately where the inguinal canals are running parallel to.

And they are, they're packed, surrounded by lots of really yummy nerve endings. And so they are susceptible to, stimulation. you can stimulate them f from the exterior because, you know, the nerve endings are pretty close to the surface. So, but um, muffing itself is described as, as a practice for folks with external gonads.

And basically what you do is you use,Part of the skin that surrounds the external gonads to, basically use it as a finger cot and and engage in a process called invagination and so muffing simply put is a way that folks can get finger banged from the front, even if they don't have a front hole.

That's the quote we're gonna be using. You did such a beautiful job explaining and there it is.

Lucie: Yeah.

Melisa: Finger bang from the front.

Lucie: Finger banging from the front. Yeah. and that has like, I mean, it can feel good in an in and of itself. and I just wanna caution, like you need to warm it up. There needs to be a lot of warm up there for the, to build the pleasure potential. And then this, and the second part of that is that,it can sometimes, take a few times doing it, and really, exploring and getting to know that part of your body, those holes.

You know, and every every body's. Mileage will vary, in terms of the depth that will be permitted, the number of fingers, whether one hole is more accessible than the other. you know, so for example, on my body, my right, hole is, will open up fairly easily. and, but my left is a little bit more timid and, it will open up, but it takes a little bit of seduction, wooing,and to really open up and, the inguinal canals unlike, the anus, the mouth, a front hole, you know, they expand, but not, perhaps to the degrees that, that an anus, a front hole or a mouth can, but, I can get two fingers in each hole if I'm really warmed up. And the pleasure that you can, experience with a lot of warmup, with a lot of trust built up with a lot of practice, hopefully, is kind of threefold.

there's the, just the pleasure of the act and the stimulation of those nerve endings. and then there's the level of like, holy shit,and it's, again, it's a gender pleasure thing where you know you are, like, I experience this as like, oh my God, I'm being fucked from the front.

Lucie: You know, like, yeah, I can be fingered from the back hole, but like to be fingered from the front is like, that's so dreamy to me. And that feels so affirming and lovely and exciting. and then, and then the third level is that like partners, who are doing, who may be doing it with us, often get a huge kick out of it.

You know, like, it's, where, and so like, and when they get a kick out of it like that, just like doubles the pleasure, doubles the fun for me because, like I am. I'm like looking at their eyes widened and sparkle and they're like, holy shit, I didn't know I could do that. I'm a fucking rockstar.

It's like when some people are with somebody and, and they squirt, like, oh my God, I'm a rockstar. I made somebody squirt. you know, it's kind of that feeling that, that you get and that you can kind of read on a partner's eyes sometimes, but I really can't stress enough. that if you're trying this at home, and,I hope people will,um, that be patient. Take it slow, really super slow. Like think about like anal sex, anal, any form of anal play. Like you don't just like jackhammer the fuck out of it. maybe you start with some anal lingus, maybe you introduce a finger, maybe you massage the area, maybe you massage the, the perineum or touch another part.

maybe,and then maybe you ease in, a little bit deeper and you ju but you have to wait for the body to relax and to open up. and invite in that form of touch. And so I think one of the things that is unfortunate about some of the, like the muffing workshops that I do is that like I'll will engage in a demo,and the person on the table, usually it's me, is like having time of, of their life.

and then like, I think that gives folks this false impression that like, like that they're gonna be able to just like get to that ecstasy immediately.

Lucie: And maybe you do. I mean, I didn't, it took me almost a year of practicing before I could get there and what I hope is that, there will be, that you'll be able to see more muffing in porn, for example, so that you can see more examples of it. I'm certainly, trying to do these muffing workshops as, as often as I can and try to get to as many, places as I can. If there's a venue and pay me, I'll, I'll talk about muffing and do a workshop.

And, but yeah, like I, I'd like to see more representation of it so that, because like me describing it even as like, even if I gave a good description, it's still, it's still like hard to kind of think about like, okay, well where's my hole. Where exactly do I point that point my finger to access that hole?

And so, it takes time and patience and listening to the body.

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Keely: Well, in the workshop. I think when, so when I was an audience member in your workshop a couple weeks ago, I think the thing you were talking about, the warmup and the aftercare, something that really struck, I mean, the whole thing struck me and was like, whoa. But how, the dynamic of the communication, and I was thinking about how people, there's the act of muffing itself that people may not know much about or haven't experienced or heard a lot about, but even the whole demonstration of how the two people that were touching you and had the way consent was done the way.

The energy exchange communicating throughout the muffing act itself and the warmup into that and the pleasure in that and in the aftercare. And I was thinking, oh my gosh, like the sexual act itself, all of the things around it. How many people actually have seen this?

Melisa: What if porn had aftercare?

Keely: Like how it was done was, I'm like, I want everyone to watch this. I want everyone to see this, regardless of whether they have a partner or someone who they're gonna engage in muffing with. But like all of it was just so lovely and I wanted everyone to see it.

Lucie: Well, I, and I hope folks will, and, you know, we center trans-feminine bodies in, those workshops. But,folks of all genders are welcome whether or not they have, external gonads or play with folks with external gonads. and I want cis het men in there and,

Keely: Yes.

Lucie: You know, like I, I think you. It was you Melisa who was talking about like that queering up of sex even for the straights. It's like Yeah. Like what opens up in your experiencing if you don't have to carry the burden of being hard and penetrating.

Keely: Right. And what about the non-binary folks or the cis women that are engaged with these men and they wanna top sometimes or they wanna, they're a top or they're a switch. Or the cis men, cis hetero men that actually wanna bottom and to get to have that experience in other ways. How exhilarating that could be.

Or just opening up, like these acts aren't connected as, yes, we already know this, stating the obvious, but these acts aren't connected to a certain sexuality. These acts aren't connected to a person's gender. These are breaking free, as you were saying, out of the functional fixedness. So I would, yeah, I would love to see maybe when you're in Portland, let's see how many cis hetero men, cis men, we can get in there.

Lucie: Well, and yeah, and I hope that happens, because, yeah, there, I think one of the things that I also wanna emphasize is,when you are, if you were the person muffing someone, you know, at least, in the stage where you know you're learning and you're building trust, remember the question that the sexological body worker, Betty Martin, asks so often, who is this for?

And in this case, it is like the person, the body that you're listening to, the body that you're trying to please is, the person being muffed.

And,you can get a kick out of muffing somebody, but it's like there's,when someone muffing kind of loses. Track of that and loses track of,really taking care to listen to their partner's body. That, that can feel really icky.

Keely: Yeah. And that's where that piece around trust, like you were saying around trust and the warmup and the energy connection. You mentioned energy a couple times throughout today and Melisa and I are always talking, how do we, cuz that's something else. How do you quantify or talk about energy and what does that mean?

And I'm not gonna sit here, we're not gonna try and define that today, but I wanted to just point that out and wrap that into that piece you're saying is, When we're noticing if the person be the person who is doing the muffing and having that awareness and being connected to noticing how that person is reacting and if they're still enjoying it or if things need to shift and staying attuned. You know, we talk about being attuned.

Lucie: Yeah. Including to the non-verbal cues, you know, of like, is the person kind of clenching, maybe they've gone nonverbal for whatever reason,maybe they have a body that is,where they're not used to someone giving a shit about their pleasure or prioritizing their pleasure. And, and so, I think it's one of my co-facilitators for the muffing workshop, we were experimenting, in preparation for the workshop. And she told me that at one point, like, Like the inguinal canals don't have a sphincter like, or multiple sphincters like the anus does.

but it's still like what she observed was that there was a point where she was like, oh, that hole invited me to go deeper

Lucie: And to kind of shift my speed shift what I was doing. And so it's like so attuning to also that, is really important.

Keely: Yeah, so much. So much good stuff. Melisa, do we have any other questions?

I know we're short on time. Do we have time for one more?

Lucie: Yeah.

Keely: That's why I was checking out.

Melisa: It's okay. It's a little bit of a heavy hitter. I'm like, why'd I wait till the end? But of course,

Keely: Before queer joy. We still have queer joy.

it's good that we have queer joy after this question.

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Melisa: No. We've talked a little bit, um, recently on the podcast about dissociation and especially, my folks who are trans and non-binary talking about how it doesn't feel safe to be in their body to experience pleasure because of dysphoria or other reasons.

And one of the things that Keely and I were trying to like talk about is there, can we create another name for like a healthy distance from one's body in a way that lets us experience pleasure? But that may not be the clinical dissociation of, I don't know where I am or who I am or what's happening right now.

Like, I just wonder if you have any thoughts about that.

Lucie: So, one of my sex therapy mentors, Gina Ogden, talked to me like at one point. We were, were spending time together and I said, oh, I'm going into a dissociative state. And she said, you know, and she kind of, she was there with me and she asked like, what's going, tell me a little bit more aboutwhat's going on?

What are you experiencing? And she ultimately said, you know, that's not dissociation. You're in an associational state.

Keely: Associational. Okay. Tell us more.

Lucie: So, and I, and so like, I've been using that ever since and it's it's this feeling where you are in your body, but your kind of consciousness is diffuse.

Keely: Uh.

Lucie: It's, and like a lot of folks describe mindfulness experiences in that way of consciousness becoming diffuse, and kind of being in the midst of what, Freud of all people called oceanic feelings. so this feeling of just yeah, being held by, a great body of water and kind of floating in the midst of it.

And, and a lot of times I think that's a good place to be. It's also an ambivalent place to be, which is, I think, really important. I think ambivalence. My friend Doug Braun. Harvey talks about, that ambivalence is essential to the change process. It's essential to the growth process too.

and it's that feeling of like, I'm, you know, I'm tracking this. I am, you know, maybe I'm going to ask for some adjustments. maybe I'm feeling a little flooded. And so we need to pause. I need to yellow out. We need to try something else. and, I'm a big fan of yellowing,which is,the stoplight system.

Lucie: It's a safety system, as part of kink. and so like when yellow, it's a, like, for me, it's a signal. let's, pause doing that, or let's slow down or let's, take a brief pause in the intensity and dial it down a little bit.

It's like, yeah, I still want to engage in some spanking, but maybe just like not at the nine that you were doing before. and I think partly it's learning, the trust with your body and with, again, with your partner's bodies and really being with people, who are are going to start from the premise. You deserve pleasure.

Keely: Mm-hmm.

Lucie: Your pleasure is important to me. It may not be where you are, right. But it's important for partners that you're playing with to start from that premise. And so when that happens, we can sit in the ambivalence and sometimes, as my friend Katie says, you know, recognize the no in I don't know. So sometimes the ambivalence of, I don't know, is a no. And so it's like, let's stop that. and sometimes it's really important to be able to say, I don't know.

And recognize the no, in I don't know, communicate that to a partner. Communicate that to yourself if you're engaged in solo sex, solo play, and, and then see that your partner or other parts of yourself are saying, yes, thank you for telling me so that I can, make you feel good.

Keely: Hmm. Well in that piece, I wanna, right, before we transition to Queer Joy, I want to highlight when you said the piece about. recognizing and stating that the person that people deserve pleasure. And I imagine I had this sense similar to when we talk about how someone doesn't have to be totally healed or totally self-love to be able to be in relationship.

When you said that I got this sense and I wanted to just state it of someone, the idea of someone deserving pleasure and stating that out loud with another person, you can have that sense of somewhat ambivalence like you're talking about. You can have some ambivalence, have that association associative state, and still receive pleasure regardless of how you're feeling about your body in that moment and that all of those pieces just came together and I, that may be kind of a demo moment. To me it clicked. Hopefully listeners that made sense cuz I think this is something that we've been mulling over Melisa and I keep so hope we can talk more about that another episode. But I think that was, that's what came to me of this sense of ambivalence that you were talking about or another angle to that

sense.

Lucie: And I'm so glad you raised that Keely, because you know there's. I think the really important piece here is, we talk about self-love, self-care, self, this and it's so individualistic, so individual centered, which sets us up for, tremendous disappointment when we find that we don't just like, love our bodies all the time.

I certainly don't love my body all the time, or all parts of my body all the time. and I think I saw there was a, somebody posted this on Instagram a couple weeks ago, but it's like,we don't, and I'm sorry I can't attribute who that was, but it was something along the lines of, You know, self-love is not an innate thing, and it's not something that we learn in isolation. We learn from the modeling of being in relation and being in connection with

Keely: Yeah.

Lucie: So it's an interactional thing. Like we experience sometimes, appreciation, love, esteem, lust from another, and we can, and in that relationship it gives us a clue that we can maybe let in the idea that I have a body that's lusty.

Keely: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Well, I love that as a way to wrap up this part portion of the interview and transition to Queer Joy wrapping up. What a great, what a beautiful way to transition. Thank you, Lucie.

​

Keely: So at the end of the episode, we like to just take a moment. our guests and Melisa and I both just end on joy and talk about something joyful that happened.

We call it queer joy, but it's queer because it's us talking about it. So no pressure. I know sometimes people be like, oh, I thought about all week . What am I gonna say was my queer joy. It's like, well, you're fucking queer, so it'll be queer Joy, whatever that is. so we can start, if you have one you want, you wanna start with Lucie, we can start with you or Melisa and I can start.

Lucie: I would love it if y'all would start.

Keely: I feel like Melisa, I, yeah, I feel like you're ready.

Melisa: I got one ready to go. And if you're following me on Instagram, I already put it on my stories and got some cool feedback. So thank you to the people who reached out. I've been saying I want to talk to people more, so I appreciate that. and I was late to the game. I found, thanks to a client's recommendation actually, the show Heartstopper on Netflix, which came out I think in spring of 2022.

And it's adorable and I just loved it. And it's some queer joy, follows some queer teens in high school learning about their sexuality and it just was really well done, and sweet and had some important messages in there. So, and I hear it's been renewed, so I'm looking forward to more seasons.

Lucie: I mean, which is rare at Netflix these days, you know, to renew shows that are a validly queer.

Melisa: Yeah. Well I was telling Keely too, I'm bummed that it had not been granted. I don't know that how much I've actually been watching Netflix cuz you know, other streaming places, but it hadn't even been in my recommended and I watch a lot of queer shows. So that was kind of horrifying to me actually, that I like this wasn't recommended.

It's totally up my alley. So I do recommend it to anyone else who did not know about it.

Keely: Well, my queer joy. I will mention a TV show though in case people don't know about it. But, my queer joy is, I just was at Brighton Bush and being naked in Sauna Land and with a friend is just, I don't know, a better place for me to just be in the outside and it's snowing and it's warm, but the extreme, the dramatic of the warm cold.

I say this many times that my finished blood just definitely thrives in that like extreme, in that sauna. so that, nothing more elaborate than that. Just feeling good. I will say something about being naked in a sauna or naked in water. There's definitely a gender pleasure thing for me as well because I feel as a non-binary person, it feels, there's not pressure of gender, like a, like me appearing a certain way because I get so mixed up in my head with clothes and how I look to other people or how people are viewing me.

And there's such an atmosphere, especially in a place like Brighton Bush where people are just naked and we're not examining each other. There's a very clear consent and just being in, in that atmosphere. And so my, the way I feel in my body as a non-binary person just flourishes in that kind of environment.

And I feel like a lot of group people do like saunas and are in like, you know, grounding places where we get to be in the water. I think it can be a very queer place. yeah. So that was my thing. that's my queer joy.

Lucie: God, I love that. And especially like as like somebody who's so refreshed by being in water, that just, that, that gave me a hint of queer joy as well and gender pleasure. I think what, comes to mind are two things. the first is, I just, celebrated my 45th birthday and I was having a lot of feels around that.

And as part of it, I, gave myself the gift of a, slime photo shoot with, and so like, yeah, got photographs taken of like gallons of slime, a black shiny slime, just like flowing all over my naked body. And that was glorious. And then, some friends and I gathered at,Seattle Dungeon and, they, and we engaged in, this kind of structuring element for the scene because I just love ritual was, a naming ritual because I had a Hebrew name that was associated with my dead name and I wanted to claim, a name that is more associated With the name I, I have. And so, so, you know, I got to be a pain slut for a good couple of hours, do a cake sit, and just like bask in the loving, wholesome depravity of my friends for a night.

And that was wonderful. And then, the second piece is that like, I'm really, I'm really enjoying, I'm get, I'm getting such tremendous joy, from being physically objectified by other queers.

Keely: Hmm.

Lucie: Like, it, it's kind of the opposite of what you were, describing, Keeley. but the feeling of like, you know, it's like when I post like a thirst trap on Instagram and I always, I always hate it, you know, when people are like, oh God, the composition is just so wonderful.

I'm like,yeah. The composition is great. I work with amazing people who you know, and I love them to death and they're fabulous and you should work with them too. And, what about my tits? What about my legs? What about my ass? You know, like, oh God, so I really love, I get such a hit of queer joy, from other queers taking in my body and expressing lust around it.

Melisa: Amazing.

Lucie: I love being flirted with, I love it when somebody slides into my DMs. you know,

Keely: So hint, slide into Lucie's dms.

Lucie: Not my public Instagram dms. Do not,

Keely: No.

Not my public Instagram do not do that. But if you have my private my kinkstagram yeah, by all means, slide into my dms, you know, Awesome. Well thank you so much, Lucie is. So lovely hanging with you today. I do wanna make sure and point out, you coming to Portland, Oregon in April, and is there anything else that you want to plug? This will be posting beginning of February, so is there anything that you would like to plug before we wrap up?

Lucie: Yeah. So, mid-February I'll be, giving two workshops in, Philadelphia. a muffing workshop and a transsex workshop. co-facilitated with my, dear friend Jamie Joy, sex educator in Philly, and just an all around awesome human. And, and then, I'll be, if you're a therapist and you wanna hear me talk about gender pleasure, which is a term by the way that, that I am, that I inspired,that I've been inspired by the work of Tuck Malloy, who's a,Portland, based, sex educator. And they introduced me to that term, gender pleasure. But, I'll be teaching gender pleasure at the Psychotherapy Network or symposium in March in DC And, you know, I'm like a bad penny. I'll show up anywhere. Never know when I'm gonna show.

Keely: Well, thank you again. And as y'all know, if you want to follow Lucie, please go follow Lucie on Sex Beyond Binaries on Instagram and join us if you are in Portland, Oregon in April for multiple workshops. There's gonna be a muffing workshop. There's also gonna be a workshop for therapists. Otherwise, thank you again.

It's been a joy, and I hope all of you have a queer and joyful week.

Thanks for listening to queer relationships, queer joy. A podcast by the Connective Therapy Collective. Hosted by Keely C. Helmick Melissa DeSegiurant. I'm your producer, Cardinal marking. Audio is edited by me and Ley Supapo Bernido. Intro music is by bad snacks. This week's guest was Lucie fielding.

Find Lucie at her website, www dot Lucie, fielding.com. Or on Instagram at sex beyond boundaries, both of those will be in the episode description. If this episode made you smile or think, tell us about it. If you hated it, tell us about that. Review us on iTunes or Spotify, or send us an email at media at Connective Therapy collective dot com.

For more queer joy, visit our Instagram at queer relationships. Queer joy. Love ya. Bye.