231. Playing with your Erotic Edge & Sexuality Beyond Consent with Dr. Avgi Saketopoulou

[00:00:00] Dr. Nicole: Welcome to Modern Anarchy, the podcast, exploring sex, relationships, and liberation. I'm your host, Dr. Nicole.

On today's episode, we have Avi join us for a conversation about pushing the boundaries of your erotic edge. Together we talk about the connection between pleasure and pain, limit consent, and the gift of erotic astonishment. Hello, dear listener, and welcome back to Modern Anarchy. I am so delighted to have all of you pleasure activists from around the world.

Tuning in for another episode each Wednesday. My name is Dr. Nicole. I am a sex and relationship psychotherapist providing psychedelic assisted psychotherapy, and I am also the founder of the Pleasure Practice supporting individuals in crafting expansive sex lives and intimate relationships. Dear listener.

Ooh, the eroticism of the Edge. If you love to get nerdy about these topics, I have an episode for you. Wow. Tune in. Tune in to a psychoanalyst and a psychotherapist. Join together to provide you an episode full of juicy to life for your unconscious juicy. To delight for your ego, baby, let me, let me promise you that one, and, uh.

Yeah, there's always that edge, right? There's always that edge for the eroticism. And it's exciting, right? The edge keeps moving. Sure. Which also can come with its own grief, right? Of what is that thing that does it? What is that thing that gets you off, right? And it's exciting though, to be on a journey with pleasure, right?

To really think about it as a relationship, but one that changes and evolves over time. And so, dear listener, I hope you're exploring your erratic edge, and I hope you're having fun doing it. And I know that you're gonna learn a lot in today's episode, so I'm excited to share it with you. Ah. Ah. All right, dear listener, if you are ready to liberate your pleasure, you can explore my offerings and free resources@modernanarchypodcast.com, linked in the show notes below.

And I wanna say the biggest thank you to all my Patreon supporters. You are supporting the long-term sustainability of the podcast, keeping this content free and accessible to all people. So thank you. And with that dear listener, please know that I'm sending you all my love, and let's tune in to today's episode.

Dear Listener, there's a space already waiting for you where you are invited to let go of every old script about. And relationships and begin living a life rooted in your pleasure, empowerment, and deep alignment. I'm Dr. Nicole, and this is your invitation to the Pleasure Liberation Groups, a transformative, educational, and deeply immersive experience designed for visionary individuals like you.

Together we'll gather in community to explore desire, expand relational wisdom, and embody the lives we're here to lead. Each session is woven with practices, teachings, and kind of connection that makes real. Possible, and I'll be right there with you, guiding the process with an embodied curriculum that supports both personal and collective liberation.

This is your invitation into the next chapter of your erotic evolution. Say yes to your pleasure and visit modern anarchy podcast.com/pleasure practice to apply.

And so then the first question that I like to ask each guest is, how would you introduce yourself to the listeners?

[00:04:40] Dr. Avgi: Mm. So much depends on the audience too.

[00:04:43] Dr. Nicole: Mm-hmm.

[00:04:44] Dr. Avgi: I'm a psychoanalyst who has been working for a while, uh, with people in the king scene and people in queer and um, BDSM communities and have been very informed in my thinking.

From what I've learned also from those spaces. And I'm very interested in a theory that actually complexifies our relationship to kind of like a range of sexual practices to what it means to be thinking with sexual excitement without staying away from things that feel dangerous. Like I'm really interested in the intersection between things, feeling like they're beginning to slip out of our control, kind of like erotic and kinda like what it means to not recoil from that in our thinking and our doing.

[00:05:35] Dr. Nicole: Mm-hmm. I mean, I already wanna start there. I mean, let's go. What does that mean for you to not recoil from that?

[00:05:43] Dr. Avgi: I guess like there is, I think a very human and psychically speaking, a very reflexive tendency to try to keep oneself safe. Right? Um, and safety here could mean a variety of different things.

It could mean like just feeling safe in the sense of like, not. Experiencing certain things that one does not wanna experience, but also in terms of like not encountering parts of the self that make one feel anxious about how we understand ourselves or the stories we tell ourselves about what we're doing when we are in an intimate encounter.

Mm-hmm. And I, the word intimate here, not as a code word for sex, like sex, I mean sexual encounters for sure. But I also talk about ex encounters that make us feel really denuded before the other in emotional ways as well.

[00:06:30] Dr. Nicole: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I mean, and it's so, such a powerful drive and often I find to be so unconscious.

[00:06:39] Dr. Avgi: Hmm. Yeah. I mean there's the draw to that and there's also the resistances we have to giving ourselves over to that draw fear and the many discursive technologies that we have. I think consent being one of them.

[00:06:55] Dr. Nicole: Mm-hmm.

[00:06:55] Dr. Avgi: To try to pull us away from that kind of like. The fantasy of safe space, the fantasy of not encountering anything that one does not wanna encounter, that one could control that or that one would wanna control that, if any, that were possible.

Like what does it mean to come up against something in oneself that is not just an unexpected pleasure, but also an unexpected humiliation? Like a humiliation of finding something out about yourself that you didn't quite know, but also don't like or feel like it's politically distasteful or unpalatable.

Um, so I'm really interested in all of these spaces.

[00:07:32] Dr. Nicole: Mm-hmm. And for you, how do you see that connected for the erotic for folks? Where is that connection? How do you understand that as a psychoanalyst?

[00:07:42] Dr. Avgi: I think that there is an irreducible distance between thinking about politics and thinking with reason, with how erotic, how sex.

Can I curse? Yes, please. How sex, kind of like, fucking, just to kind of like talk about like the intensity. Like we're, we're gonna use many words for that, I think. Mm-hmm. Because I, I don't want us to be too clinical about it. Right. But there's heat to the sexual that I think comes also, it, it really brushes up against what can feel dangerous, what can feel difficult.

What can fail politically problematic even. Um, like one of the things that I talk about in my book is kinda like experiences that however they are negotiated or affirmative consent are not always exceed the consent we think we're giving or we think we're asking for. And eventually, to some degree, more or less, most experiences will involve.

Some experiences will involve giving oneself over to something that is not just the other person's, uh, unconscious desire, but also your own desire in ways that you can't quite map out ahead of time.

[00:08:56] Dr. Nicole: Mm-hmm. Like a sort of surrender to the erotic power itself.

[00:09:00] Dr. Avgi: Uh, surrender to the erotic power, but also surrender in the sense of like allowing something to course through you that you might not be in full control of and about, which you may or not feel you had a say over or would done this way.

Had you been in your kind of like sane mind, so to speak? Like, I'm very interested by psychoanalytic theorists, um, like Muriel Deman and Ruth Stein who write about like how different we are when, uh, we are in sex. Mm-hmm. Uh, when we have sexual experiences than when we are in our, in the everyday life of work and reason.

[00:09:40] Dr. Nicole: Right. That's an altered state of consciousness, for sure. Mm-hmm. And so then taking the, the time to even step back from that and reflect when you are in that ordinary state from what occurred in that 'cause. You're right, it is so many endorphins flowing through the body in such a state that is, is rather different than our ordinary state of consciousness.

[00:09:58] Dr. Avgi: I mean, it's also a state where you're permeable to things in yourself that you're otherwise more closed off from. So I think it's interesting to wonder, I don't think that one state is more true than the other.

[00:10:10] Dr. Nicole: Mm-hmm.

[00:10:11] Dr. Avgi: But I think that the state that we're most often in, like the state of work and reason and of convec things, adding up or noting contradictions or being aware, uh, of something being difficult and thinking about how to negotiate it and so on and so forth.

This is the majority of our time, but it's also a way in which we stay away from aspects of our. Excitement or our desire and, uh, come like where we pull away from things that even draw us in.

[00:10:42] Dr. Nicole: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And for you, I'm curious how much of this is culturally dependent? I always think about the fact that at least in a America growing up in such a puritanical culture where sex was so repressed, uh, so forbidden, unless it's in a very strict married, monogamous, heterosexual setting, uh, anything else is wrong, wrong, wrong.

And so I just imagine the years of cultural conditioning that is so deeply connected, the erotic to the forbidden, that in a thought experiment of a completely different culture that didn't have any of that. I wonder what our erotic profiles would even look like. I mean, it's hard to imagine, but in our society, the taboo is so powerful.

But what would it look like in a different container?

[00:11:29] Dr. Avgi: You know, um, somebody who didn't grow up in the states I grew up in and in Greece. Um. So I do have, and then moved here as an adult. Uh, so I do have like somewhat of a different background in that, but it seems to me that while there's no question that culture and cultural prescriptions and cultural rules and what you're supposed to do and not supposed to do and what you're supposed to be turned on by and knot and so on, and so have a kind of like have a power to them that they kind of like can work to repress desire and also set up the taboo.

Mm-hmm. They also become powerful incitements. I mean this is kind of like a very Ian point, right? Like they also condition, desire, they also set up some ways of thinking about desire, but also produce desires. I mean, so much of what, like I'm thinking of batay and the way he talks about the taboo, kind of like the taboo for him is where eroticism is.

And of course that requires a repressive culture and there are cultures that are not repressive in some way. I mean, there are. If we go too far, which, um, it's not the direction you're going in, but I wanted to just like exaggerate it for a moment just to make a point. If we go too far in the direction of like, thinking of like water society is repressive or not, not only are we setting up a false dichotomy where we might imagine societies that do not have kind of like this power down repression, but we're also imagining that we can be outside the, the domain of repression.

Uh, and I use the word repression here in the second lytic sense. And what I mean by that is there's always going to be things about ourselves that we don't want to know. And there's always going to be things about our desires that make us feel like it's too much to be in contact with. And that is of course, it's, it can be paired or braided with cultural prescription, but it's not just about culture.

So I wanna, I wanna also like.

[00:13:31] Dr. Nicole: Make space for that. Mm-hmm. So what is it beyond culture? What is that, those other pieces that are connected to that?

[00:13:38] Dr. Avgi: Well, about, I mean, they have to do, I think with intensity, what it's like to a certain level of intensity rise in one's body and become frightened of that.

Like we have so many different ways of speaking and thinking about regulation, emotional regulation, not getting overwhelmed. I think consent is usually an easily affirmative consent. And kind of like the, the rhetoric about consent and safety are usually easily brought in to do the work of making sure that nobody gets to experience anything too much.

If it's a lot of pleasure and that's good, that's good, that can happen, but not overwhelming. Uh, anything that's overwhelming and that keeps us from being able to reach places in ourselves that might. Like open us up to something new. Something that is not in the domain of containment and not in the domain of a known pleasure, an experienced pleasure, but just Vic, where even the self may be under pressure or even break.

Um, and I'm thinking obviously here, the work of the ob, but also like the anxiety about becoming overwhelmed, that is rippling through so many of our discourses, however. Progressive or not, they might be even very progressive discourses, suffer from this anxiety around becoming overwhelmed.

[00:15:01] Dr. Nicole: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Is it, I mean, when I think about an orgasm, I think about becoming overwhelmed and broken apart into a new state of being. That feels inherent to me as, as part of the pleasure, right? Is to have that takeover of the body and to go into a new space where it really is that, that overwhelm, that release.

[00:15:23] Dr. Avgi: But what about intensities that actually don't come with release, but that escalate into the more and more of experience where there is no anticipated, uh, what do you call it?

Um, there's no anticipated exit point mm-hmm. From that intensification. 'cause in some ways, orgasm is an exit point from that intensification. And that's, that's kind of like what we code as pleasure.

[00:15:49] Dr. Nicole: Mm-hmm.

[00:15:49] Dr. Avgi: It's both intensification, pleasure and the release of pleasure. But what about. I mean, this is something that actually psychosis has been thinking about for a while in the following sense.

Like, Freud was very curious at the beginning about sexual tension. 'cause on the one hand, this goes to what you were saying about orgasm. He said, well, sexual tension, the more it escalates, the more uncomfortable it feels. But orgasm is the release of that tension. Kind of like this climactic kind of like, uh, refractory moment where like it all comes out and that's pleasure.

But then he was like, but wait a minute. But getting, like, if you think about moments in your own sexual experience, sometimes you don't want to like just get off. Like sometimes you want to get to more turned off. Mm-hmm. So sexual tension also becomes the place where the boundary between pleasure and pain begins to kind of like wither.

And kind of like this clear taxonomy between this is about something that's good and this is about something that's bad pleasure, usually seen as good, and pain seen as bad begins to that line, begins to to wilt. And that has to do with intensification, not with release.

[00:16:58] Dr. Nicole: Mm-hmm. Yeah. I'm thinking impact play with that.

But I'm curious, do you have imagery that you could paint for the listener who's trying to imagine what that scenario is?

[00:17:12] Dr. Avgi: I think it is so personal. Like what kind of image or fantasy can generate that for somebody? I mean, impact play lends itself to it because there is no identifiable endpoint like there is like say with orgasm, right?

Impact play can go on and on and on. Usually it kind of like stops and gets converted into something else. Like, or kind of like to like gets. Convert it into the energy of a different kind of scene or a different kind of implement or a different kind of pace. One question would be what happens when that intensity escalates and escalates and escalates?

And I'm not just thinking here of physical pain, which is of course one aspect of this, but also about what it means to what each one of us encounters in this place of escalation is extremely personal. It could be the pressure on how one understands oneself, the humiliation of what one is allowing to happen to oneself, or what was one is wanting to happen to oneself.

It could be the, the panic or the fear of what will be done to oneself and, and a kind of strange reveling in that as opposed to a wish to get out of the situation. There's so many. I mean, there, it, it, it doesn't kinda like, there's no sexual fingerprint to a moment like this. It's like extremely unique and personal

[00:18:35] Dr. Nicole: mm-hmm.

For each person. Right. Exactly. Yeah. I'm, I'm thinking about the ways in which, you know, when people are playing consciously with BDSM and kink, it's often a created scene as a experience that they're playing with, versus the ways that this also unfolds in a lot of erotic dynamics where it's not even intentionally kinky or BDSM, but maybe the, you know, the breakup sex that, that pull to the toxic partner, right.

Like all these different dynamics that are really happening unconsciously with power dynamics and shame and humiliation and, oh, like it's such a rich space that happens both consciously, I think and unconsciously.

[00:19:16] Dr. Avgi: I mean, it's interesting to think, uh, talking about humiliation and also about shame, and I would add, discuss to this.

Yeah. Like, think, think that of a really interesting insight from psychoanalysis, which is that, you know, most people will, will, this is something that I do a lot with my students and it's a kind of like a very interesting moment because it usually goes in the following way. Hmm. Like most people, when you ask them what is shame about or what is kinda like discussed about most people will make reference to some cultural norm about what is supposed to happen and what is not supposed to happen, and the shame of having desires that are not socially acceptable and so on and so forth.

But one of the things that a second lytic mode of thinking also proposes is that indeed that happens, but that is secondary. That the primary thing that happens is that shame is a defensive response to the pain of excitement.

[00:20:07] Dr. Nicole: Hmm.

[00:20:08] Dr. Avgi: And then the. Kind of like the social mores of like what you're supposed to be excited about and what is supposed to be pleasurable versus disgusting or humiliating.

Then come in and actually solidify and ground the experience of this is not about pleasure or not pleasure. This is just about, I'm not allowed to do this. So it gets really externalized in the psyche. It gets framed into, it's not me. I am not feeling overwhelmed. It's that the world does not want me to do that.

And it allows you to have a relationship to it where you're less conflicted about it. Now you're conflicted with a world, and that's not a small problem to have, especially when the world is actively after kind of like hunting some sexualities and sexual practices. Um, kind of like sex workers, trans people, kinda like in a very concrete way.

Um, but it also kind of like releases us from the tension of. Kind of like bordering that, nearing that border where kind of like pleasure and pain becoming indistinguishable.

[00:21:17] Dr. Nicole: Mm-hmm. Exactly. So if I'm trying to understand correctly, you were making the distinction between the shame that's related to the outside group versus that shame of overwhelm that's internal first and suggesting that perhaps there's like connections between the two.

Right? Yeah, that makes sense to me. Right? I, I would, I would, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong here, but like I would find that to be, uh, given how that we are social creatures, like all of the internal experience we have is shaped from the external. So, and right. So any sort of internal experience we have of shame is deeply connected to the outside.

[00:21:55] Dr. Avgi: Yeah, I think it's really interesting. I don't know that there's a right or wrong around this. Sure, sure, sure. Kind of like, I, I'm trying to say something that's actually a little bit different from that features. Of course, we shaped from the outside, but there's also something, if you think of our kind of like experiences also like to, to make like a very, um, kind of like simplistic analogy to make the point.

Like if you think of excitement as being a certain kind of buildup of energy, there's a certain point after which kind of like the, the, the organism, the person, the, the machine feeling, the energy feels like it sets its breaking point, right? Like it's too much. Like something has to be kind of like something has to release.

I think that that kind of. Way of thinking about pleasure as something that you need to just get rid of because now it's not too much, is one way to think about that. To think about like shame and disgust and humiliation. Of course. Other things also, like what you were saying about being social creatures, that there are indeed rules about how we're supposed to have sex and not have sex.

What, what body parts we're supposed to suck or hold or insert into what? And by what objects and what materials. Like all of this stuff is on the table, right? Mm-hmm. But even in the most kind of like normative, cis heterosexual, insertive, genitally kind of like scene, the straightest, most vanilla scene, depending on kind of like the excitement that one is feeling, things can get so much that they feel unbearable.

[00:23:34] Dr. Nicole: Hmm.

[00:23:36] Dr. Avgi: Where one feels like they need to retreat and shame becomes one way to retreat. Mm-hmm. This disgust becomes another way to retreat. This is too much, it's disgusting, I just don't wanna do it. Or it's, I would wanna do it, but it's humiliating or I'm gonna ride. The humiliation becomes a way to actually engage without intensity, while also kind of like giving it a form.

[00:23:58] Dr. Nicole: Mm-hmm. '

[00:23:59] Dr. Avgi: cause there's something about the formlessness of what I'm saying, like intensity, energy. These sound like kind of like really abstract concepts, but once they're tied to humiliation, objection. Uh, I mean, I, in my book, I in sexuality on consent, I write a lot about racial objection or the desire that some people have for race play.

Once you have a form that's given to it, then it exists in a social matrix. Then you can imagine whether that's accurate or not, that you can map it on to what's proper, what's improper, like, where you're taking your risks, how you measure your risks. Now you are back in the domain of regulation. Now you are back in the domain of, I can play with too muchness, but with limits.

Like everything has to, has its limits. So you're back in some way of like negotiating. Kinda like the question of quantity and intensity. Now, I know, I don't know how often you speak to analysts in this podcast or like how much your listeners, uh, kinda like are familiar with this language. Um, but, but I hope, I hope that it makes sense and I hope that you would kind of like press me or ask me.

I'm really curious how all of this sounds to you.

[00:25:05] Dr. Nicole: Uh, yeah. Abstract for sure. I mean, it's fascinating for me as you know, a psychotherapist I didn't study in psychoanalytic theory and that I went more humanistic existential. So, um, some like feminist relational. So it's a little bit different for me, but that's partially why I wanted to talk to you is to have this space.

I guess I'm curious about the trajectory of that and the evolution of that. And I think thinking about my own life, um, I came from a space of having a purity ring and purity culture and Right. So the shame and the erotic and the buildup of that was within a very restrictive space. And so anything outside of the box of the traditional was so charged.

Oh my God. And then as I started to play in that and push that and push that, the things that once had that. Edge started to fall off. And so I've been in this continual period of finding more and more edge and more and more edge. And so I'm curious what you have to say about the evolution of that energy in that space.

[00:26:12] Dr. Avgi: It's such an interesting question because it probably also relates to how familiar we make ourselves with these boundary pushings. Um, for example, like there are ways in which each experience is new. Every time you say if you're gonna do an impact scene of like every impact scene has a novelty to it, but there's also way in which you can get accustomed to certain kinds of like bodily sensations or to a certain kind of negotiating how the bodily sensation will go.

You can put this under the rubric of consent. You can put this under the rubric or interpersonal negotiation or like fill out a list for, like a negotiation list for Yes. This, no that. But at the end of the day, I think that however rehearsed you are in a certain kind of bodily experience, there's always a novelty that you have to manage, and then there's experiences that we think we don't want to have that we don't sign up for, that nevertheless arrive.

This is what I call the domain of limit consent. Mm-hmm. Where the question of whether we open ourselves up to them or how we relate to them has a lot to do with what they become. Rather than there's something that you want and something that you don't want, and you either get it and are satisfied or you don't get it and you're unsatisfied or you didn't want it, and you get it and you're violated.

I think that we need space to also think about things that arrive unbidden, not in violation of our consent, but perhaps at the border of our consent. Things that are beyond our consent, right. Beyond our consent in the sense that they cannot be, uh, contracted upon. In this kind like predictable way between two liberal subjects with an agents, with a, with a centered, a centered sense of subject of, of a agentic responsibility.

Like think about the idea that like you agree on limits ahead of time, but not during a scene, right? I mean, of course I completely understand why that kind of like quote unquote rule can be in place, but it also means that you don't get to shift something or have some, have the same shift, something in you that then conditions your own desire or tolerance differently in the course.

Encounter. I mean, these are not either ORs, different people play differently, they do different things. But the idea that you need a clarity of mind and ideally a place from which you're not traumatized, you're not under the influence of any undue factors. I'm not just talking about alcohol or drugs here.

Sure. That you have to have your sane mind together to decide, takes so much of what produces an enor desire, uh, out of the game, uh, such that like it, it tries to anticipate it. Of course, that kind of engagement is very risky. That's very much part of why people take it out.

[00:29:19] Dr. Nicole: Mm-hmm.

[00:29:19] Dr. Avgi: Um, but it's also where really new things can happen.

And I don't just mean sensation, even though sensation as well, but also different encounters with a self, different relational possibilities can arise.

[00:29:30] Dr. Nicole: Yeah.

[00:29:30] Dr. Avgi: In these really difficult places.

[00:29:33] Dr. Nicole: Yeah. Yeah. I'm thinking about from what you're saying, the difference between someone who comes to play and create a scene and says, this is what I want.

This is the boundary, this is what I want. This is the boundary. Versus maybe more of an established dynamic where there's been more, uh, experience, more negotiation, more trust. And when you're in those dynamics, being able to find that edge. Right? That's how you do edge play is you play until you feel that edge and then you say, there it is, right there.

I found it. Right. And so being able to actually like explore where that is with someone that you really trust, right? But that takes actually crossing over the line to acknowledge where that line even was in the first place.

[00:30:17] Dr. Avgi: Mm-hmm. I think it's so interesting because you know, when you said like, you know, you, you experiment and you push and then you find the edge.

I mean, oftentimes the edge finds you it, and, and when you're found by the edge, you don't always welcome it. Like, and, and there's something also about how these experiences of course, un unfold in real time. They open up also in the afterlife of the experience itself. And I don't just mean aftercare, I also mean that we know how something feels now and it's only regret that happens later.

Sometimes experience opens up in the aftermath such that something that in the moment felt only difficult, may come to feel erotic or may come to feel that kind of like fucks with you in a way that forces you to do work. Sure, yeah, absolutely. Work on yourself, but also work on. On destabilizing it destabilizes some of the things you thought you knew about yourself or about relationships or how ethics are supposed to work, how politics are supposed to work.

Uh,

[00:31:23] Dr. Nicole: right, absolutely. Yeah. I'm thinking about how a, a good dom checks in after the scene a few days after the scene, maybe a few weeks, you know, things change and evolve over time. Right. Or you have that be I'm thinking about my first threesome, the first time that it was so beautiful in the moment and I went to sleep the next morning, felt like the Scarlet Letter horror of the town, and it was such an experience to reconceptualize my concept of self.

And it definitely reminds me of the psychedelic work that I do. Right? You can have the most transformative, psychedelic experience, but where the actual growth is in the. Integration. Right? Whether that's a couple of days, months, years, even as you look back on that experience and continue to integrate what happened, I find erotic experiences to be just as powerful and just as transformative in your concept of self.

Even what we were saying earlier about the way that impacts the mind, it is truly that altered state of consciousness that we're playing with.

[00:32:20] Dr. Avgi: I think, you know, it's, uh, it's interesting to hear you talk about integration 'cause as a therapist, like you and I know, uh, both as clinicians, that a lot of what we work on or what we're trained to work with, uh, when we work with patients is to think about how to integrate things and how to bring things together.

But I've actually, especially through thinking about BDSM, I've become much more interested in kind of like the crisis.

[00:32:43] Dr. Nicole: Mm-hmm.

[00:32:44] Dr. Avgi: Cloud through this kind of like brush up against things of in fact that we cannot integrate, that we cannot pull into. The dominion of our egos to just tell a more expansive story of ourselves.

Things that become really kind of like that leave edges and hanging threads and contradictions, that that cannot just be pulled into a different way of understanding the world. They just break us or they break something, they break something about even our fantasy, that if we think well enough or we think things, then there's an answer to that.

So I think the question of trust is also connected is, I have an example. Yeah. That's great. Let's go for it. So in, in the book, I, I write a lot about this theatrical play called Slave Play. Mm-hmm. Um, some people may have, um, may have watched the plane. If not, this is like, uh, the moment to like, stop listening if you don't want a spoiler.

Uh, but the, the very, very short and inadequate summary of the play is that it includes, uh, three interracial couples. Uh, who are purposefully engaged in what N-B-D-S-M we would think of as race play, uh, initiated by the black partners, uh, who are asking to be, uh, to kind of like be, um, to bottom racially and at times to top, uh, kind of like in a, in a racial, um, inflection such that they get to experience something with their white or white passing partners that has to do with the, the truth and, uh, ongoing life, embodied life of the erotics of racism.

And the different couples negotiate that very differently.

[00:34:30] Dr. Nicole: Mm-hmm.

[00:34:31] Dr. Avgi: And kind of like many people walk out of that play feeling like, okay, like what does it mean if, if the black partners ask in one of these couples is for her white partner to be willing to racially humiliate her? And he's unwilling to do that 'cause he's a good white guy.

Um, what does it mean for him to take her desire seriously? And where, where, where do questions of his own consent come in if he's somebody who doesn't wanna play that way? Right? So already we're in a very complicated terrain of consent. But the thing is that if you degrade that to just listening to the other person and recognizing their desires and perhaps stretching yourself to meet your partner's desire, it's not like if you do that work, which the play definitely demands of you, uh, I mean, the play doesn't demand anything, but one could respond to the play, right?

That way. If you're going to take it in that direction, it's not like if you get that message and understand it and do the work on yourself, and you are a white person and your black partner says to you that night, call me the N word. You would in an uncomplicated way, be like, you know what? I've learned my lesson.

I'm on it. Here it is. I'm gonna do it. Like you still have like things in yourself that kind of like you have to battle with. You still have to make those decisions each time based on the particular configuration, and you may not end up feeling good about yourself, whatever decision you make.

[00:36:05] Dr. Nicole: Mm-hmm.

[00:36:06] Dr. Avgi: So I'm saying this to say that it's not reconfiguring the self and integrating the crisis into a new understanding will not always answer the incommensurability of trauma, of history, of the ways in which, in this instance, racism, kind of like blisters through the present.

It's not just a past event. So this is what I find really fascinating in thinking about thinking with, with BDSM, that actually therapeutic cultures are not good at that. You often hear people say, O-B-D-S-M is therapeutic. And I think I understand why people say that, and I've certainly seen people do BDSM and feel helped by it.

Right. I not opposed to that argument at all, but I think that BDSM makes a bit for something that is far more important than just the repair or reintegration. It makes a bit for, um, for staying in the break, for staying in what is not possible to adjudicate and bring back together and having this momentary lapses of what in the book I describe as a correct sovereign experience where you are in the presence of something in the, in the core of a wound or in the, in the glare of something, in ways that cannot be reduced, cannot be organized, cannot be made sense of, and it just is.

Mm-hmm. Fix it. You can't. Pull it into like a different framework. That's the place where the word integration, which I know is work. That is that I don't do psychedelic work, but I know that from colleagues, uh, who do psychedelic work, that integration is important. I think that BDSM, perhaps even edge play or consensual non-consent, these kinds of, uh, BDSM practices make a bit for something else entirely.

Mm-hmm. I'm curious how this sounds to you as somebody who's been thinking about this for a while.

[00:37:57] Dr. Nicole: I'm curious. What the alternative is, a shattering that never gets integrated. 'cause in inevitably we move through our world and then continue. Like, uh, when you think, when you're talking about that, I think of trauma, how that breaks everything.

But eventually we integrate that and reconceptualize into the narrative. So I guess if BDSM is, is something that's outside of integration and maybe creates a shattering, like what is the moving forward after you do that race play scene or after the demure woman who has existed in puritanical culture, not speaking about myself, maybe speaking about myself, um, comes to Dom someone and has to shatter that moment of softness into a power.

Like what then is on the other side of that?

[00:38:40] Dr. Avgi: Yeah, I think that's a really interesting question. There's no, uh, doubt in my mind that that becomes, that the ego will integrate that into something, right? I think this is spontaneous work. Um, therapeutic intervention will make that work go in certain different directions than the ego might spontaneously do.

But I think that our egos are constructed, our psychic structures constructed such that when something, when there is an opening, a gap, a fissure, a crack in the continuity of our being, our psychic life immediately goes into overdrive to repair it. And it does sometimes, well, sometimes not, uh, sometimes in ways that can be growthful and sometimes it weighs.

That's, I think, what we mean when we say that b DSM is therapeutic and sometimes not. But to me, that's what happens in the after effect. I don't think that. Kind of like what draws people to, uh, A CNC scene mm-hmm. Or to a moment of kind of like trauma play is about getting better, otherwise people would reintegrate and then do it once or twice, or just find a better dom or a better therapist.

And, but people who find better domes or who have these kinds of experiences than they work for them, they don't stop because their reintegration stop. There's something about being exposed to the trauma and this, this is one of the interventions that I make in the book, and thinking about trauma. Trauma in a way that is attentive, not just to the damage it causes, which is an attitude that I call phobic, but also to the energies that it stirs up in the body in ways that actually can make us feel very alive or.

The ways in which trauma calls up kinda like is energetically very similar to erotic experience. It's overwhelming. It cannot be fully cud into language. This is not to romanticize trauma, by the way. It's not to say that trauma does not also damages or, or cause pain or anguish. I'm a clinician. I sit with kind of like that aspect of trauma every single day in my practice.

But it's also to say that trauma that we have become, as a culture quite phobic to trauma, to trauma that has already happened. Of course, the fight against injustice continues. Uh, we are having this conversation amidst an ongoing genocide among many other social injustices. But trauma that has already been experienced does not just break you.

It also creates. Kind of like nodes that we are drawn to. We, I think we're drawn back to our trauma, not just to repeat it in a roadway, like in a way that kind of like the notion, repetition, compulsion or repeating, but being caught in the repetition. Um, kind of like this, these are ideas in popular culture, but they're also very prominent ideas and therapeutic cultures that people go back to their trauma because they're kind of stuck.

[00:41:33] Dr. Nicole: Mm.

[00:41:34] Dr. Avgi: If people also go back to their trauma, because trauma are also constitutive moments and being exposed to the glare of traumatic experience is an experience of it in and of itself. So if you were to ask me like you did a moment ago, but for what, what does that do? I would say sometimes it's not about what it does or what will be done with it later being in the presence of trauma in the, in the, in the, in the rawness, in the intensity of exposure is.

Can at times be erotic and meaningful because it's also true. And so many practices, therapeutic practices, uh, but also cultural practices are oriented towards helping people get over their trauma. But trauma is meaningful to us. It's important. It's part of how we're made, it's part of how we're broken, part of how we're, how we're broken is also part of who we are.

And this almost kind of like driven panic to move away from the brokenness when all of us are broken rather than to be in the brokenness is part, I think of what affirmative consent tries to negotiate of what notions of integration or healing. Try to negotiate. I mean, I'm all for people feeling better.

Obviously that's what I do for a living, right? And I do it for a reason, but I wouldn't want to miss the distinctiveness of what it. Of what can come up in the raw exposure and revisitation in real time, especially with another person, um, who stay present for the moment of an encounter with something incredibly intense and which cannot be churned into something productive or useful.

[00:43:29] Dr. Nicole: Mm-hmm.

[00:43:29] Dr. Avgi: Something one can get over or worked through.

[00:43:33] Dr. Nicole: I'm thinking about, uh, overwhelm. I'm thinking about those moments of, you know, we feel when we step before like, you know, a massive expansive nature and you feel that overwhelm, right? That release, that surrender, these moments where you're playing with trauma, feeling that overwhelm, that surrender, that divinity, whatever word we wanna use to describe that.

Whenever I think about people who are playing with trauma, I don't even think about it as in getting stuck in it. I think about it as trying to, uh, play to gain power over Right. To, to have the experience through my choosing rather than force, right? Yeah. Yeah.

[00:44:13] Dr. Avgi: Exactly. Yeah. I mean, we have these fantasies all the time that you can enter that space and then control it, right?

Right. Um, and usually we, we task another with the job of controlling it. Mm-hmm. I mean, anybody who has ever bottomed knows how this goes. When you imagine a certain kind of top who can do this, but not that. And then your top either kind of like, usually falls short in some way. Mm-hmm. Either, either they went too far or the most usual complaint, they didn't go far enough.

Um, but not going far enough is also something that is conditioned, kind of like, and this also happens in the therapeutic situation by ways in which the patient refuses to go and the bottom refuses to go. And we refuse to go in our encounters with others. Um, which is not to say that the patient is always the bottom.

Sometimes the patient is kind of like the, the top in the encounter. I think that these, like, part of what I'm interested in, in thinking about VDSM, aside from the positional question of like who has, like, there's an actor and somebody who's receiving sensation, I mean, but I don't think that we should give up on the ways in which the psychic positions of.

In fact, activity and passivity are quite different about who's holding a whip or who is being urinated on or whatever the, the fetish of the moment is. Um,

[00:45:40] Dr. Nicole: yeah, yeah. Do you wanna say more on that and where that, that locus of control is located?

[00:45:47] Dr. Avgi: I mean, this is why I am so interested in the notion of limit consent.

Yeah. Say more. Yeah. Like, so I was talking earlier about like tasking another with a guarding of our boundaries, right? That usually happens to affirmative consent. Um, perhaps I'll give an example. Maybe I should give two examples to, to touch on this on from both angles. Um, I, I write in sexuality beyond consent about a patient of mine.

Um, and I'm writing with her permission, of course, who is having, who's doing a scene with her lover. And they have negotiated the scene. It's a slapping scene, and they've negotiated the scene and the partner slaps her. And my patient says to me, uh, it's a really interesting moment. She says to me, it was an exquisite slap.

It was the right part of my face, the exact right expression on her face, the exact right force, the exact right speed. And, and then she says to me in a moment, that is actually quite fascinating. She says, I didn't think I was gonna get an exquisite slap. I had expected the mediocre one. A disappointing slap.

A slap that didn't quite hit the mark. And she gets so overwhelmed with the exquisiteness of the slap and what this opens up in her that she safe words. So, I mean, usually we think about safe wording as keeping oneself safe in the sense of like, somebody not going too far here. The safe wording is about regulating the intensity that she's feeling.

Not because her lover, her top has somehow violated something, but precisely because she has delivered something in ways that are excessive of what this person expected, but not, they are not violating of her consent, but they're beyond her consent. She didn't even realize that she hadn't signed up for an exquisite slap until after the fact.

Now we can imagine somebody who feels so destabilized, but I feeling overwhelmed, who says, well, we agreed on a slap, but we didn't agree that it was gonna be like with the back of your hand or with kind of like from this distance or while you were wearing red. You know, that red kind of like triggers me or what?

I mean, somebody could go in that direction and try to ground the difficulty of their overwhelming moment into affirmative consent. And that of course also happens. As do violations of actual consent. That needs to be said of course, as well. But what we see in this moment is that like my patient is encountered at the limit of what she thought she bargained for and gets something that she didn't quite agree to, but she also did not not agree to it.

This is what I mean by beyond consent. This is a domain that is beyond her consent, not because she's not a smart person, and she wasn't thoughtful, she wasn't sincere, forthcoming, obviously, because her partner exploited kind of like a gap in their communication. It's beyond her consent in the sense that she encounters an experience in herself that was unanticipated, in fact, produced by the encounter and her relationship to it in that moment is to shut it down.

So I wanna contrast this with another moment that's written about by the queer theorist, Tim Dean, who talks about pi. And he talks about being in a leather bar and having had experiences with, um, piss play, but having done it as a top always, and in this particular encounter, he is drawn into a dark corner by this stranger, this kind of like man who he has not seen.

He doesn't know him. And I think this will take us also to the question of trust, because my patient, her lover are in a long-term relationship. They really trust each other. This is a stranger, right? Uh, so he draws him to the back and he puts him on his knees. And Tim Dean is now sucking him off. And at some point he describes, uh, feeling through the jockstrap, something wet and something warm.

And he realizes, oh my God, this guy's pissing in my mouth.

[00:50:07] Dr. Nicole: Hmm.

[00:50:09] Dr. Avgi: And he has a most extraordinary orgasm. That completely takes him aback. And then he says something, which I think is phenomenal. He says, I did not consent and I would not have consented had I been asked. And yet that night, that stranger gave me the gift of erotic astonishment.

So here is somebody who is not in a long-term relationship, has built no trust, and who actually has had zero negotiation. So it's a pickup scene, you might say it's very different. And then the parameters of the, of the first, uh, interaction. And yet something that is not talked about is met kind of like arri.

A desire arises in her, his body, which is unanticipated and a kind of pleasure floods him that he would have not welcomed. So in that opening where my patient experiences something new and says, no, this person Tim Din says. Yes. Right? And that Oh yes, opens, makes conditions something, it makes something possible.

It makes that experience of erotic astonishment possible. Astonishment is not a condition that's, that is not a circumstance that can be produced through, uh, negotiation. However much you trust somebody, it visits you and it visits you at your limits. And then it shows us, I think that these kinds of experiences show us how consent is also about an internal relation to how you might respond or what you might foreclose about Something embryonic that begins to happen in you

[00:51:56] Dr. Nicole: mm-hmm.

[00:51:57] Dr. Avgi: That you didn't quite sign up for, and yet you did not, you kind of bargained for it, but you didn't sign up for it.

[00:52:08] Dr. Nicole: Absolutely. I mean, I think that's a great example of the person who draws the line, but, and then the person who continues in a similar ex experience of the overwhelm. And for me, I was immediately thinking of high dose ketamine experiences where you sign up for an experience but you really don't know.

And of course this is a, a bit of a different paradigm because once you have taken that dose, you know, there is no, oh, please stop. Uh, once you're on the ride, you're on the ride. But, uh, when you're in that ride and it keeps dropping you and dropping you and dropping you to a level of consciousness of self that is pretty dead and there's no more sense of self anymore, and you maybe didn't ask for that, right?

Each person is gonna respond differently to that. Some person might start to pan. What is happening? Oh my God, can I hold on. Oh my God. Versus. Okay. I guess I just don't exist anymore. Right. That, that same level of, that internal navigation of how do you sit with these moments that are way beyond any sort of paradigm you ever previously had for concept of self erotically or, you know, just generally.

And, and maybe we don't even draw that difference between the erotic, I see the erotic and everything, um, but truly these moments where it really shatters. Mm-hmm.

[00:53:23] Dr. Avgi: What a compelling example, like your description of are you trying to hold onto something or are you just letting it kind of like search through you?

And now if you add in an interim embodied encounter another person's body, not just a substance which has no desire, so to speak, but another person's body and another person's subjectivity. And the ways in which I think, and this is something that I'm actually quite invested in, in thinking about the, the tops.

Surrender as well, because the top, in order to be able to top also has to surrender to something in herself, much as she might also be afraid of it. Like what if she hurts the other person? I mean, unless we're talking about somebody who's completely psychopathic, most tops have concern about their bottoms.

Mm-hmm. Also about doing something that will make them feel bad about themselves. Right. Um, hurting somebody, hurting the relationships to the community. I mean, these are all ways of guarding the self. So in from that angle, it's not just the person who is on the receiving end of the experience. I think that can like both embodied presences engage in some way to some level of surrender.

And in order to be able to do that, one has to exercise a very strange kind of. To kind of like bend their own will, and here by will, I mean to bend their own tendency to want to keep themselves safe and to keep the other person safe. Which is not the same as tipping into kind of like becoming abusive or becoming careless about the other person.

[00:55:03] Dr. Nicole: Mm-hmm. Right? I mean, isn't that the magic of it all? The unknown, that edge exploration. I remember in your book too, you had an example of a, uh. Parenting dynamic as an example, I believe of limit consent, which I think really sat with me, um, pulling it into a parent dynamic with the child who was asking for the overwhelm and playing with her dad and going back and forth.

Could you say more to that?

[00:55:29] Dr. Avgi: Um, yeah, so this is, um, kinda like I write about this diet that I observed of a colleague with her child. Um, and she is, um, the kind of like playing this game, which many people who have been around children will recognize. It's a familiar kind of like a variation on kinda, it can happen with tickling, it can happen with monster play, but the particular game they're playing is the girl, the little girl is asking, um, for the mother to be the monster and to scare her.

And, you know, in order to, if you're gonna play that game. There has to be enough pretend in it for it to be somewhat scary. Uh, like if you're like, Ooh, that's so terrible. I'm going to eat you. It's probably not gonna be like that impactful for the child, right? So children usually ask for you to have at least some of your heart in it.

I think that's vent, that's really what they ask is part of what makes people hesitate is like how much of your heart is you gonna have in it? Like, you don't wanna scare the child really. So like the child says, be the monster. The mother pretends to be the monster. And then the girl says, stop. And the mother stops and it goes back and forth for a few iterations like this.

And they play this game, like start being the monster stop. Like, so there's like, I mean, you could say like, this is a completely affirmative consent model. Like the girl gets to decide when it starts, when it stops, what it looks like. If it's not intense enough, she gets to say, she gets to say yellow. She also gets to say harder, you know, like, you know, she has like quite a bit of control.

But then at some point she stops and she says to her mother, we're gonna play a different game. And the game now is you be the monster. You kind of like, IM are imposing and you scare me. I mean, these are not her words, but you scare me. And then I say, stop. But you don't stop. And the mother, I think it's a really interesting moment.

'cause the mother says she hesitates and she's thinking things that I think every one of would cross everybody's mind. Like, what if it gets too much? What do you mean I don't stop? How will I know you really mean it? And of course, there's no precise mapping to that question because first of all, the girl doesn't know when she'll really mean it.

But the whole game. I mean, we might ask why does she even want this? I think kinda like, whether that's right or wrong, I think that part of why she wants it is because there's something about the escalating intensity rather than the full control of the back and forth in the earlier part of the game that she's courting.

She wants to court being in that place where she's not quite in control, right? And where it's become too much. And the question is how much too much? Like, you know, when does it become traumatic? So in the book, I don't say whether the parent engages in that game or not, but I take this as a jumping point to examine the ways in which the top two also has to surrender to something.

'cause in order to play that game, the mother has to be willing to take a risk. And the risk is on the one hand that she might overwhelm her daughter in a way that is problematic and hurt her. But there's also another risk that she has to be willing to take if she's going to be playing into this monster embodiment and pretend she has to allow a certain force in her, the force of normative sadism, which is part of all sexuality to, to manifest and to, but not to take over.

So how do you allow something to manifest and to, for you to not be in control of it, but without doing something that is actually harmful? I think that's kind of like really the, the, the ethical stakes of this kind of moment. But I stay alone in the, in the book with this moment. So I'm very glad that you brought it up.

Yeah, it's a very moment in the book because it, it speaks to how to, what is asked. Of somebody who is in a position of topping or really in a position as a therapist when a patient, I mean patients come in all the time and say things like, I left my previous treatment 'cause it wasn't going far enough, but also don't hurt me.

Like that's, and and of course like of course don't hurt me as a very reasonable condition, but there's also like a sense of like, this needs to go further. But not so much that I'm in pain in this question of calibration. Whether it can be calibrated was what has to do with one's normative and I think necessary.

Sadism a word that I use in the book not, and it's usually it's usual derogatory sense as meaning something that is kind of like barbaric or monstrous, uh, but as a normative force of the sexual that has to do with the capacity to override one zone will. In this case, the mothers will to keep things safe.

Like, I mean, somebody might say, why are we even having this discussion? The answer is no. Of course you're not gonna play this game. I mean, that's the most immediate and kind of like spontaneous response that any parent would have. The point is not whether you're gonna play this game or not. The point is that to even have that discussion, you have to override that immediate and very understandable impulse to keep things secure.

[01:01:03] Dr. Nicole: I mean, isn't that the same scenario when people choose to go to, um, a haunted house? You know, it's like, here we go. I would like to go into this space where I am scared and pushed behind my limit. Right? It's so less of a negotiation, but that, that desire for the overwhelm, and I guess I'm just thankful to have this sort of example that is within a child dynamic as maybe almost a point to indicate the innate desires that we have for this.

Rather than, I think often, and I don't agree with it, the paradigm that BDSM and Kinky play is only ever out of a traumatic response versus, Hey, look, even as children, we enjoy playing with these spaces of limit and overwhelm and edge. Right? It's not something that's inherently, uh, based in a trauma lens.

[01:01:52] Dr. Avgi: Yeah, I mean, certainly I couldn't agree with humor. Not everybody who's doing B SM is traumatized. Right. But I also want to push back against, like, I wouldn't say that they're innate. I would say that we have a natural affinity for wanting these experiences, but of course not everybody will pursue these experiences.

We might even become interested in why people don't, as opposed to why people do. Yeah. What do you think? Yeah. Like why pe Why some, why? Kind of like in some, uh, kind like for some people's psychic lives, this place is completely forbidden and verbatim. So I, I am actually very interested in thinking with trauma and that takes us back to trauma phobia and phi.

Like, because it's so much of as some play and so much of therapy and so much of like meaningful interpersonal encounter actually engages around Trump. I mean, in some ways, and not to kind of like over generalize the concept of trauma. Um, the idea that anybody is not traumatized. It's actually I think a quite an interesting fantasy.

Not everybody's traumatized in the same way or to the same degree, but I do think that there's something about the logic of whiteness that expects certain subjects to be unt traumatized and if they're traumatized to be repairable. But if we start with a lens, uh, borrowing like on black studies and black feminisms, which is a big influence, uh, in sexuality beyond consent.

If we start with the notion that we all start out at least like the black subject of like in the aftermath of slavery and colonization and kind of like the, the, the ways in which racism persists in the present. If there is no intact subject to return to, how might we allow black studies to teach us?

As opposed to being so phobic that if trauma enters the picture, then we're talking about people. We're talking about people can't have sex. I mean, that's usually that rhetoric goes, but what if we were not so afraid? And, and I mean so much of BDSM, and I hear this from patients, I hear this from kind of like my communities.

I see this a lot. Like so much of BDSM is also organized around trauma. And what if we became less afraid of saying this out loud and just started thinking with it and didn't just become defensive around, like, not everybody's traumatized. I mean, of course not everybody's traumatized. Uh, but also like, I wanna see kind of like different ways of thinking about the convergence between psychic pain and eroticism.

I think it happens everywhere and not just in BDSM. Um.

[01:04:43] Dr. Nicole: Yeah, I mean, I've definitely talked to guests on the podcast about the concept of all of our erotic profiles being traumatized, of all of us having experienced some level of repression, some level of something that there is no, whether we do the, like, capital T, lower case T trauma distinction.

We've all experienced something. And like you're saying, it's, it's not the same. And, and the different identities, the different ways that those intersect, it's gonna be a different experience. But we've all have experienced something and then I've had guests push back on me and say, it's not helpful to put it in that lens.

Not helpful to put it in that lens, but I think what you're pointing to is why is even that lens a, a. Place of fallibility or a place that needs to be healed from, rather than maybe just a reality of what it means to live in, in our humanness in our world.

[01:05:30] Dr. Avgi: You know, this is actually, I, I so love that you said that because it may not be helpful to put it in that world, but it may be real.

Right? And that's kinda like, that takes us back to notions of integration or healing as opposed to just being exposed to the truth of this world. I mean, yeah, so it may be, may may not be helpful, but so many of the social injustices are not helpful. They just happen, right. To have the fortitude to confront that in all of its intensity.

I think it's an incredibly powerful experience. Not for everyone. Not everybody wants that, and that's fine. And even people who think they want that may not be up for it. I mean, the, the story of like the beginning SAB who says like, I want anything, do to me, whatever you want. I mean, kinda like that's a trope of like, like for every, uh, top to be wary of.

Mm-hmm. But still, like I think that there's something about this notion of like, it's not helpful. It may not be helpful, but it may be real.

[01:06:34] Dr. Nicole: Right, exactly. Because what ego wants to accept the fact that there's something outside of my control that's impacting me, right? But I think in other areas of life, we understand that there's so much oppression and internalization of those forces that we need to examine it critically and examine ourselves with a little bit of skepticism of why we believe things or why we act in certain ways.

And I think the same level of insight and reflection is needed for the erotic. These are not just innate things that we have. It's a result of all these complex forces. And if you're not lifting up that veil of the unconscious to take a peek in it, then you might be causing some harm on, you know, not even conscious of the ways that there's so much inside your psyche, which.

Is, I think, exemplified in a lot of the porn that we see. And that is very common and, and some of the most popular porn. Right? Like, it, it is so deep within our unconscious that you're right, even if it doesn't feel good to acknowledge that there are outside forces, maybe you need to sit with that reality.

[01:07:35] Dr. Avgi: Mm-hmm. Yeah. I think that that's, uh, critically important. Uh, the only slight edit that I would make is,

I don't know that I would, that I would say that you need to sit without reality. Mm-hmm. Okay. Yeah. Because then that becomes like almost like an injunction. Hmm. That different people have different appetites and different tolerance and interests for different things. Um, but I am feeling very passionately about people who say we shouldn't be going this way and who are.

Intentionally or not legislating where like, what we can think with outta protectiveness. There's no question in my mind about that. Like, you know, obviously like sexual deviance and sexual perverts have been, and I say this kind of like playfully, these terms, uh, have been, um, kind of like discriminated against, uh, pathologized, uh, like treated with kind of like tremendous, tremendously problematic ways in all, in all forms.

Uh, so I, I totally get that defensiveness or the protectiveness is a better way of putting it. But who are we serving if we reserve for communities of non-normative sexual practices of like sexual play or kink, more simplified ways of thinking than we accord everybody else.

[01:09:04] Dr. Nicole: Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's a good question.

I think again, just about the field of psychology and all the ways that it defines what's normal and what's not normal. All the categories that used to be in the DSM, right? The things today and sex positivity that still the field of psychology says is pathology and non-normative or, or traumatic or, um, oh my gosh.

We could have a whole lifetime there. Yeah. I'm curious, you know, for the person who does want to unpack this, it's almost, you know, like a whole nother book in and of itself, but where do they even start? I, I think about community listening to a conversation like this, getting around other people that are unpacking it and exploring to this level.

But how does someone even begin to recognize these things within themselves?

[01:09:52] Dr. Avgi: You know, I think this is an interesting question. I don't know that I have like, uh, a programmatic answer to that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But you know, some of these conversations are happening in King communities. Pushing back against people who say we shouldn't be having them and explaining why we should be having them, I think could be meaningful.

And there's like writings about them. My writing is not the only one. Like I'm thinking about kind of like Melina Williams who writes on race play My Bond. Like Arianne Cruz was like really phenomenal. I mean, and these are just people who are writing on race play, which is a domain that I've been working with in my book, so I'm speaking about that.

But, and then psychoanalysis has had a lot to say, both conservative but also quite expansive about kind of like, you know, the se securitization of our, not just like the state securitization, but also the securitization of the psyche notions of protecting each other, feeling safe, um, be, be, be wearing of trigger war being bigger, um, being aware of trigger warnings and, um, retraumatization.

I, I'm not saying that any of this is to be dismissed. All of these are important points, but. If they become our north star. And if we don't allow ourselves to also put pressure on the, the sanctity with which trauma is now being treated as, if it's something that should be untouchable, then it's going to be very hard to have the conceptual tools and the, and the moral courage to have this conversations.

And I say moral courage because I completely see how they could be turned against queer people and, uh, kinky communities. I'm not speaking unaware of that. Um, danger. But if we want to also make room for, because the kinds of experiences we're talking about here and the practices we're talking about here are even considered fringe within some kin communities themselves.

Um, kind of like, um, edge play, trauma play. The question of like the community's consent. Um. Sort of like which practices require, and I put require in air quotes, community consent as opposed to others. Why it is that gray play, uh, requires community consent in some context and not others. I mean, all of these things are independently of how different communities land on them, I think need to be up for debate.

And part of how minor experience has always tried to protect itself against majoritarian oppression is by becoming at times pretty, um, what's the right word for it? I wanna say sometimes rigid about what's right and what's not right, and how things should be presented and what should be talked about and how it comes from a place of trying to protect the community.

But eventually it becomes. Its own way of telling people how they should think about their kink or understand their kink or what is okay to say or not say or to play with sexually or not play sexually. Uh, I mean this is a very risky domains, kind of like, it really is like playing with fire.

I really believe that very much.

Uh, and people can get very hurt, but also have had experiences of astonishment in ways that can be life changing or to be without, quote unquote, the other's protectionist fantasy exposed to something from your past that has been very traumatic. And to want to have an encounter without, without being stopped and without being told that it's not good for you.

Right. Or with the, the other person being so frightened that if you have it, they're gonna be responsible. These are not experiences necessarily that can be curated for another. They're not projects, they're not, there's no way to like plan for them. They arrive, as I was saying earlier, and forbidden that the border of our consent.

And that's also what makes them very, um, frightening or makes them, makes us feel wary of them. Mm-hmm. I have a lot of respect for that. Mm-hmm. Anxiety.

[01:14:01] Dr. Nicole: Yeah. I'm curious, you know, there have been times where I've felt very strongly about, you know. Falling into stereotypes and tropes. The, you know, just some people I've played with in my own community of, you know, a traditional cis heterosexual man who does BDSM play, but only will ever do it as a top in a dom in a very unique way, to which I get a little bit inflamed as a feminist to say, why is this the only way that you're able to tap into erotic play?

It feels like you're falling into all of the stereotypes of the archetype of your gender and your social co, like all of that. Why can't you be more expansive? Right? But then am I also falling into that same, you know, problematic, authoritarian, you know, lens to say, you have to be more expansive than this, but then when do we draw that line to say that culture has.

Put you in your own box so much so that you can't be a sub. What the hell? Like, yes. Yes.

[01:15:04] Dr. Avgi: It's a really interesting question because I think that everybody, everything that takes a form of, you have to think of this, this thing. Yeah. Or you have to do this or you have to, don't do this, begins to border on kind, trying to control somebody.

I'm more curious about what happens when we ask questions and perhaps inspire a curiosity in the other person that may or not become an appetite, uh, that may or not open up something and you have no idea what will open up something in somebody. And when, um, it may look like something's not happening in real time, and it may not.

And sometimes this kind of like seed begins to like turn into something like a while later. Sometimes perhaps when something else happens and it syndicates with that first moment and it sparks something new. So I'm, I'm less interested in legislating, uh, kind of like how things should be or shouldn't be, and more interested in thinking about how the limits we put and how things can be talked about or what we should be talking about or what the safe way of doing X or Y is what it means to push back and try to stretch those lines to make them more elastic.

[01:16:24] Dr. Nicole: Mm-hmm.

[01:16:25] Dr. Avgi: That requires us to be more pliable and more permeable to what we encounter in others. So it's not like you set out to make other people more elastic. That's still a project, that's still a project of domination over another person. And I don't mean domination in the ptsm sense, I'm talking about inspiring curiosity and perhaps even interest.

[01:16:51] Dr. Nicole: That is definitely the therapist response. Right. Lemme ask you really good questions that inspire curiosity. Absolutely. Uh, well I feel like I could talk to you for hours about these concepts. It's been such a joy to have you on the podcast. Yeah. I wanna take a deep breath with you first. I'm gonna take that deep breath

and before I go to a closing question, I always like to check in with my guest and see if there's anything else that you wanna impart with the listeners today. Otherwise I can guide us towards that closing question.

[01:17:33] Dr. Avgi: Um, I'm just gonna say this comes out of everything we've been talking about. I'm just gonna say like in a couple of.

Differently worded sentences that a lot like that we have to take experimentation very seriously. And experimentation and risk means that some things, sometimes things don't go well, not by intention or disinterest or carelessness. The true taking of risks includes failure as a possibility. So I would say that,

[01:18:07] Dr. Nicole: yeah, and the inevitability of that as humans, right.

[01:18:13] Dr. Avgi: Okay.

[01:18:14] Dr. Nicole: All right. Well if it feels good to you, I'll ask you that closing question. Yes. And I also wanna

[01:18:19] Dr. Avgi: thank you for the questions you've asked me so far. It's really interesting to talk about all of this with somebody else who's a therapist.

[01:18:25] Dr. Nicole: Yeah.

[01:18:26] Dr. Avgi: Like weave that in together. So thank you.

[01:18:28] Dr. Nicole: Absolutely. It's been such a joy.

Such a joy. Yeah. So the closing question that I ask every guest on the podcast is, what is one thing that you wish other people knew was more normal? Playing with trauma? Mm. Yeah. Say more.

[01:18:47] Dr. Avgi: Mm-hmm. Well, it happens a lot. People do it all the time, and it's not always called that. I'm also really interested in how hard of a time we have in talking about the erotics of racism, which is not the same thing as talking about fetishizing people of color, but about how oppression.

Including kind of like, you know, a social oppression, but also the oppression that comes with money and capital. That these are erotic forces in addition to oppressive forces and trying to think justice without thinking eroticism leaves a lot on the table. That is, that is worth taking seriously and not leaving behind us.

[01:19:31] Dr. Nicole: Isn't that exciting to know that you're gonna study that for a lifetime, right? Like there's so much there, like you'll just scratch the surface of it in a lifetime. Like, oh, like I get really inspired by that. Like that, that devotion to the study of the erotic, I guess you could call me a nerd. That's what it's right, but like, oh my God, there's just so much energy there.

[01:19:57] Dr. Avgi: I really, I mean, I really love working in this area and thinking about it. Uh, and really also love thinking about the erotic together with politics, um, with political correctness, which is different.

[01:20:11] Dr. Nicole: Sure, sure, sure, sure. So much, so much side in there. Uh, well, where can people find you who wanna learn more about your work, your book, and all the things that you're doing in this area?

[01:20:21] Dr. Avgi: Well, I hope that by the time the podcast comes out, uh, my new book will be, uh, in the press. Um, so I'm working on a book on sadism, um, thinking about kind of like the multiplicity of sadism. Um, but, um, my book that we've been discussing is called Sexuality Beyond Consent. Uh, you can easily find it online.

Some version of the discussion we had about trauma in its relation to. Kind like Constitution of Subjectivity appears in my co-authored book with, um, Pellegrini called Gender Without Identity, where we think Transness Together. And, um, I am very, uh, active on Instagram where people can find me at, um, a Golis 98 a Vgo OLIS 98, and you can engage me with them.

[01:21:10] Dr. Nicole: It was such a joy to have you on the podcast. Thank you for coming today.

[01:21:14] Dr. Avgi: Thank you, Nicole, for having me.

[01:21:17] Dr. Nicole: If you enjoy today's episode, then leave us a five star review wherever you listen to your podcast, and head on over to modern anarchy podcast.com to get resources and learn more about all the things we talked about on today's episode.

I wanna thank you for tuning in and I will see you all next week.