It's almost like in many, many periods of time, it was a sin to have pleasure. Yeah, and it's really nice to see that. Well, hopefully we're coming out of that and we're coming out to us where it's actually okay to enjoy things and to talk about them and to experiment.
Hello, and welcome to separate bathrooms.
We would like to acknowledge the Gadgor people of the urination, the traditional custodians of this land, and pay our respects to the elders, both past and present. I'm Ali Dado and I am flying solo today. But look, I did think that we should have some fun today, and by fun, I mean some kinky sexual fun.
How about that? Who would have thought? Also? Who would have.
Thought that mathematics and the history of human sex could be so entertaining?
Okay, follow me here. This is how it works.
Mother and daughter academic duo doctor Susan James and Esme James have combined their respective knowledge of mathematics and human sexual history and they're on a bit of a mission to explore intimate life with an Australian and probably the world's society, helping to erase the taboo which still exists around a really important subject. So Esme is a sex historian. She's incredible. She's a content creator, she's an author. She's
working on a PhD at the University of Melbourne. She you might actually know her from her series Kinky History. She's got something like two point four million followers on TikTok and heaps more on Instagram, and she's also done a Ted talk on kinky History. Now, if you look that one up, you'll be quite amazed at the opening of that one.
Be ready for it now.
Her mom is doctor Susan James. She is a statistician and together they created the popular sextistics series on TikTok. They actually won a Double Acta Award for that one. She also co wrote the book with Esme, Kinky History, which was released in October last year, and they're actually currently working on a second sextistics series. I cannot wait to talk to these two, So let's welcome them into the bathroom.
Es May and Susie.
As May James and doctor Susan James, who I shall now be calling Susie because we've been chatting before this and now we're best of friends.
Welcome to the bathroom. The two of you.
Thank you so much for having it. It's been a wonderful bathroom.
We have to be here.
I am on my own.
As I had mentioned earlier on, I actually would have loved Cam to have been here for this, but his he's given me strict instructions to give all the information about anything to do with kinky sex afterwards. So we're just going to die write in because it's such a great I'm just so excited to talk to a mother and daughter and like, how many mother and daughters have actually, you know, in the kinky sex business together in a way.
I can't say many, that's not from an academic point of view.
Yeah, I think you're right. I think you're right.
What inspired you to write a book together about this kinky sexual history.
It's been a bit of a journey we've both gone on. When I started on social media and I was looking at the history of gender identity and sexuality from a historical point of view. There was a point during lockdown when my social media really blew up, and you know that they created a community that Mum and I were just discussing some of the videos and you basically turned around and said to me you know, where are we in the conversation of liberation today?
Where do you see us being?
And I didn't really kind of you know, I was coming at it from a historical point of view, and you basically turned around and said to me, well, to actually bring a conversation of today, we need to look at things like statistics and mathematics, which is where you come from.
Well, as we kept on all of our stories, she kept telling us that we're on part of a cycle, that this used to happen all of these years ago. It's what everything we're doing, it's actually not new. It's all been done before. We think it's new, but it's not.
And so I kind of just said to her, well, if we want to actually put it into context, then we actually have to look at what's happening now, so we can kind of work out, you know, where are we on that cycle and where we could have been in another.
Five ten years. And you know, we cracked open a bottle of wine that night.
As always.
But I mean, like, I know, some people think that data's like really really nerdy and boring, but it's not. It's actually there to tell stories. There to tell what's happening now. On where we can possibly be in the future.
So yeah, we started working together, but our two heads together to put the past and present into conversation.
But we basically talk about everything all the time anyhow, So it was just more fun working absolutely, I know.
It's it's not something that you would think. You know, a statistician, you know, and kinky sex liked. We how did we get those two blended? But you've done it beautifully? Can you can you give us a brief overview of what's actually in the book. The book is called Kinky History, A rollicking Journey through our sexual past, present, and future. It came out October last year. Of course you can still grab it grab it anywhere. But what's that? What's
in the book? What's the juicy bits in the book that we can read about.
We go through everything the stories of intimate lives past and present, So we discuss some of the kinky private lives of your favorite historical figures like Albert Einstein, James Joyce, Catherine the Great and then as well as that, what we've decided to do is put those conversations about, you know, the sourcy secrets from ancient times until now. In conversation
with what are we doing today? So yeah, mums created some fantastic and statistics that you know, have never been done before, and looked at contemporary research, looking at things like how many people are rimming nowadays, how many marriages, you know, what happens in terms of divorces, sex after marriage.
You can speak more to this than.
Yeah, I mean a lot a lot of the stuff.
What we did was we went back and we had a look at some of the huge national surveys that collect data on all sorts of relationships. But we decided that rather than look at just old research articles that are a bit stayed, we actually put out and did
our own survey so over so social media. We duplicated lots of the questions that people have answered, you know, about their sexual experience and their identity and the gender, and we asked them all again and we actually got like fifteen thousand responses from people and a lot of that data. Then we were able to, in the context of the book say well, you know, this is how many people were doing it then, and this is how many people are doing now.
This is what oral looked like in ancient Rome, and this is what oral looks like in Melbourne twenty twenty three, right.
Because the Romans were pretty kinky, right, that is where it was anything and anything and anything and everyone. How I'm so curious, like, how did you is there encyclopedias of kinky sex is online? How did you actually find the history of those historical figures and what they were into.
It's really interesting, And what I love most about my work is that these stories have almost always been in the history books and these conversations about sex, gender identity. I've always been there, but they're almost in the margin. They're in passing references, they're in lost letters and diary entries and.
Journals of these favorite historical figures.
And you know, I'm very privileged to come from a great tradition of like other historians who have touched on this. And when you put all of these stories together, you know, essentially with what we've done with kinky history, then you kind of see this kind of new history book where people from the past finally with kind of reclaiming their stories.
And it's just put in all those like little lost pages that were kind of left on the cutting room floor of edits of textbooks past together and it's really interesting. We have stories from the ancient worlds that are still kind of being uncovered in places like the sites of Pompeii, where we find drawings and engravings on walls that are telling these erotic stories about how sex lives used to look.
And we're still finding all of these facts out.
And as Mum said, you know, one of the most record occurring factors is that nothing is new under this sun. We've been spanking, we've been interested in foot fetishes, so you know, we've experimented with dillos from twenty eight thousand years ago.
Like, nothing is new under this sun.
And there's been people who have been researching sex for many, many years, mostly though they've been doing it from the health perspective. But I mean you've got that, you know, people like Masts and Johnson who did heaps of research into the orgasm and how do women have orgasms? And they had their very famous glass dildo which they had a camera inside and they had people and they were filming them having orgasms.
And this is in the nineteen as nineteen sixties, eighties.
And then they were doing this to try and improve people's sex life, to you know, to make relationships healthier and so that all of this is out there. So we decided to put those kind of stories together. So we had all your historical figures, but with along with somebody sex researchers from the past or the statisticians mostly
who quite bonkers themselves, you know. And you know, Marsins and Johnson were actually quite famous for the fact that they were researching sex, but they're also having sex as well.
Oh yeah.
When they couldn't get any more participants to come on their project while they were studying the orgasm, they just filmed themselves having them sex and they kind of said to their partners like, it's for research. Sorry, we must have sex with one another because sorry, anyone else to come in.
Sorry, honey, I'm going to be late today. I've got some sex to do for work.
What did you guys do today, old doggie?
Yeah? You know, wow, mind you that's a bit like sort of the conversations we've had and you said, what have you been doing today? And I said, I've been doing master basher honey. Actually mean I've been.
Researching on it.
And sometimes I think, okay, right, we have to be careful how we talk to each other, especially when we're in a cafe and people can hear us.
That's right, who's listening in?
I remember it was it was not that long ago that because I don't know you would know this much more. I'm sure both of you, especially you Suzie, like how little we do know about about sex and the female But I remember just it wasn't that long ago that they really fully understood that the female sex organs and the size of the clitterists and what actually happens and how big it actually is.
And yes, I.
Mean even that was a surprise to me, and I'm a female. I was like, whoa, we got something really good going on in there.
That's amazing.
I think the story of the clitterists is a fantastic one, and one of my favorite facts about it was that a man in the fourteen hundreds called Colombo decided to discover the clitteris so sorry, yes, it's always a guy called columb and he decided to call it the seat of Venus, and he thought he just discovered this part of the female body, and it was the first time, one of the first times that we've kind of named
the clitoris. But what's important to remember, for the majority of history until about two hundred years ago, we thought that in order to conceive a child, both the man and woman had to have an orgasm. So the clitteris and stimulation of a woman was actually very very important. You had to bring it to the brink of orgasm. Now, two hundred years ago, when we start, you know, we become much more medicalized. We start understanding the human body
in a way we haven't before. We discovered that women don't need to orgasm in order for a child to be conceived, and so what happens we just throw all of these techniques that we've been teaching out the window. We completely do not talk about women's stimulation because if women don't need to be stimulated, and all this is doing is given them pleasure, then that's incredibly sinful and
it's probably driving them wild. And so we stopped talking about the clitorists and sexual pleasure until researchers like Masters and Johnson come around, you know, in the nineteen hundreds
and kind of again. They study the female orgasm, and one of their biggest findings was that women are more likely to orgasm when their clitoris is stimulated than when they have a phallic shape inside of them, which changes, are thinking again about female pleasure, and in that period of time, we were ready to open up that conversation again. So the clitterist is back on the table, so to speak.
Gosh, that's fascinating.
And during that time, just because I wrote a book on menopause, during that Victorian era, which of course is probably around that two hundred years ago or so, that's when they were removing the clitterists because they thought that was a cure for menopause, and that it was menopause hysteria induced. People were being you know, locked away while women I should say not people, but that this was somehow the cure for so many things, that this was this dangerous item on a woman's body.
And I think all of these conversations you can see time and time again. And one of the messages of the book is that conversations about sex don't or they've never had to do with just us and our relationship to their body. There's so many external factors in play. There are social, political, religious factors always in play that
determine how we relate to our body. And the conversation about the clitorists is such a clear example of that, because you come to this period of time where it's about controlling women and their sense of ownership over their body. You know, you even have to look at the way that in that period of time we start discussing terms
of to do with the female parts. You know, the C word used to be a very common word we'd use for the volva, and around that time, that same time as you're saying that they're cutting off the clitterists, where you start describing it as an ugly name for an ugly thing, and we create the sense of disgust for the female body, and again it's about controlling women and their sense of ownership and agency.
What was the most surprising thing that you discovered with the research?
I think possibly a lot of it was to do with people's sexual identity, because one of the questions that we asked people what, you know, how do you identify? And we allowed them to have a category where they were able to fill in how they're identified. And what really surprised me was how many different ways people perceived themselves and a lot of you know, identities about a
relationship status as opposed to sexual status. And it was actually, you know, to me that opened my eyes to how people these days feel that they don't want to be labeled into little boxes and they want to have the right to be able to describe themselves.
In so many different ways.
So that was one of the things I found with the work that we did with our and our research. Also just the different ways that women have been perceived over the years with sex being functional and the difference between it being functional and pleasurable. It's almost like, you know, in many, many periods of time, it was a sin
to have pleasure. Yeah, and it's really nice to see that we're hopefully we're coming out of that and we're coming out to us where it's actually okay to enjoy things and to talk about them and to experiment.
Yeah, yeah, did your what did your findings? I'm just asking because I know, a I'm at the age of being fifty four and a lot of my friends there are a similar age, and I think we've got a few listeners in that category too. What did you find statistic wise and in your research about women as they age, maybe post menopause. I know that a lot of my friends are like, I could not give a rat's ass about sexy anymore. Is that something common that you saw in your research back through history.
Is this a new thing? Like? Where are we at today? Is that changing?
I think you'll find though, these days, there are a lot more women who are now purchasing things like a sex toys, and because it's people are bigginning to realize it's actually okay to play that sex. As I say, it's not functional anymore. It is there to be enjoyable
and to be playful. And you'd find that there's an awful lot of women who have only just started to purchase things like five Greiters and all sorts of sex toys and then beginning to ask, hey, this is actually really good fun and it can be it can enhance a sexual relationship. And I mean, I mean that generation myself and I'm having a ball. I'm not much happier these Maybe that's because I've been able to have conversations with my daughter. We talk about all of these things.
And yeah, I think I bought you your first sex story about Oh yeah, she did.
Seven years ago.
She told me that she bought me a Harley.
I was a bit surprised because I didn't know what a Harley was, but she.
Was getting a motorbike and.
I did, but I got to say it may not be a motorbike, but it was it's a pretty good ride.
But you know, I mean that's the quote.
I mean when used to.
Work in a store and they you had many many women who coming in in that age group who would suddenly think, actually, I wouldn't mind, you know.
What can I buy? And then they come back and that was good?
So what else can be by Yeah, because it's not and it's not just solo plate, it's a couple's plate. Can actually be something that you can then bring into a relationship and say, okay, all right, Yeah, maybe things have become a bit stagnant and we've got jobs and we've got kids, but hang on a minute, this actually feels quite good.
We can try this.
Yeah.
I think what's really interesting when we've looked at the conversation of menopause, and it's something that we're exploring in more detail in our kind of next season and.
Survey of sexistics that we're working on.
But one of the most interesting things is that you've kind of got two factors here. You've got one of the largest and quickest growing demographics for sex toys is women.
Fifty plus.
That they are some of the biggest and fastest growing
consumers of sex toys. And then you have this other you know fact, which is women over fifty are also some of the people who, out of everyone, the demographic that will say that they've never experienced an orgasm, you know, And when you have a very different conversation for these generations that they you know, potentially they've been married once twice, you know, and sex has always been seen as this thing that you know, might be between man and woman,
and their pleasure isn't really being brought into conversation. When they say they're not interested in sex anymore, that might not necessarily mean sexual pleasure, that might just mean sex with the partner because they've you know, if a huge amount of them are claiming, like nearly half, if not more, that they've never been able or never had an orgasm, or never thought they've had an orgasm. And then you've got this other demographic that is quickly buying sex toys
and exploring for the first time orgasm. You know, as Mum says, I love that word play because it is this sense of play and exploring your body in a new way, and potentially one that doesn't mean that you're dependent on someone else, you know, being able to pleasure yourself and that sense of autonomy.
We're about to do a new kind of fresh survey which is not based on all the old style questions that used to come up in the sort of national health surveys.
So we decided that we would actually put.
Out and actually ask people what kinds of questions they would like in a survey. And this is what I'm going for at the moment, so I can put their questions into a survey.
But the questions that we were getting.
A lot of the running themes were I've been with my partner for this long? How can I revive us sex life? Or I don't really want to have sex anymore? What can I do about it? And it was like they weren't really the kind of questions we wanted to put in the survey, but they were asking us and so many, so many of them were about that kind of long term relationship status, how can how can we bring this back? And also there are many, many, many women who said, I don't know if I've ever had
an orgasm? How can I know if I have? Not sure how we're going to build that into a survey, But it was actually really quite you know when we when we read through the questions that you could see that there are these there's people out there and they really.
Don't know if they've ever had an orgasm.
And and then there are people out there who know that things are and they would say, I love my partner, with my partner for many many years, and I don't know what to do to revive our sex life. So there are people out there who want information and a lot of it comes down to having conversations with your
partner as well. And that's one of the things that you find if you've got a healthy conversation, you can have that you know and sort of say, hey, you know, I love you very much, for what can we do, you know, spice things up?
And yes, you're so right.
And it's really about being able to give yourself permission because I feel like that's been so stripped from women for so long. Is like that we get to have pleasure for pleasure's sake, as you were saying, and particularly as we get older, it's like, ah, it's just another job or to do thing or something, you know, and it's like to flip it, as you were saying, Susie into this idea of play. I remember a sex therapist
that came on many years ago. She was saying, sex is a schmorgasport, like it can be all sorts of things like it does. Don't think missionary, think think toys like what you two are saying, Think toys, think lube, think.
You know, positions?
Is it just holding hands and saying what your fantasies are or whatever it is. And it was just really beautiful to keep opening that as you say, that conversation, the ideas, the thoughts, because I know I'm.
Very guilty of that.
I didn't grow up necessarily in a sex positive household. No one ever talked to me about sex or what was available. I just thought it was something that it's what helps you and your partner stay together, and that was that was kind of it. So it's been a long journey for me to sort of understand that, you know, we can all have pleasure, or there's only two of us in the bedroom right now. But yeah, I just
love I just love the message that you're giving. It's really important and I think especially for us women at a certain age that need to know that, you know, our sex life is not over.
No I think you know that there's some fantastic resources now, but you know, one of the hardest things is opening up that conversation and how do you do it. And when we were recently in Dublin, we were working with a fantastic sex educator called Jenny Keane and she's put together this kind of list of yes and no and goes through various things and she says, you know, sit down with your partner, look at this list, have a
bottle of wine and just chat about it. And it will be stuff like have you ever fantasized about.
Being dominated?
Have you ever fantasized about being told off? You know, and like all these kind of things that you know, unless you're sitting there with a list, people potentially have never talked about these aspects of fantasy in imagination, and imagination in itself can play such a huge role in sexual life. You know, as you say, we need to take away this idea that sex is just missionary. Sometimes
it cannot involve any kind of penetration, you know. Sometimes it can be as simple as feeling like bodily stimulation from feathers or silk on the body. You know, there's different ways that we can be erotic and play and
be sensual with our partner or partners. And I really like the idea of this list of just you know, potentially opening up a conversation because our partner could be like one of them would be like, no, I've never wanted to be spanked, and the other one was like, do you know what, I've actually.
Maybe wanted to try that a little bit. Maybe maybe I do want to try spanking, you know.
Yeah.
Well, the list was helpful because it gave people something to almost make it like a game, yes, to read through the listener, go okay, what about this as opposed to trying to open up conversation with you know, is there anything you.
Would like to do that we haven't done?
Yes?
Yeah, that's a really not an easy way to do it.
You know, so yeah, or even asking what their fantasy is as well might be hard for some people. But if you've got you've got like a stack of questions, then you can get to it a little easier.
Well, there was this really fantastic moment that we had so in Dublin, we when we were celebrating the international launch of the book in June, we did an event and it was a king event run by this educator, Jenny Keane, and as part of it, she you know, I had a conversation about the history of sex. We had a dominate trix come out and do a kind
of workshop on spanking. And one of the most incredible moments that we've spoken about after this event, like the takeaway, was when the dominatrix was kind of teaching.
People how to spank, because there's a skill to it.
She was doing a bit of a workshop and then she asked anyone in the audience, like, you know, does anyone want to come up and you can choose to be spanked or I can teach you how to spank. And this woman who was in her seventies put up her hand and then she came up on stage and she's like, can you please teach me how to spank?
And so she learnt and she was wonderful natural.
And then at the end of the evening, this is a really hard It sounds kinky, but it was a really really wholesome evening of people of all ages.
Coming together just to learn.
At the end of the evening, there was a time for questions and questions and statements from to all of the educators and this woman put up her hand and she said, I just wanted to say thank you because I've been with my husband now for forty years, and I came tonight because I wanted to try and understand this fantasy that he had, and I've never been able to understand it or the psychology behind it. And I've in all of our years of marriage, you know, we've
never experimented with it. Tonight, but after hearing the psychology behind this fantasy, why you know what it could do for him? You know, You've given me the confidence tonight to try this. And she was just so genuine and lovely.
I mean, she said that she'd always thought that her husband was a bit of a freak because he said that he wouldn't mind doing this, and she said and then the whole idea was that what made the event so good because it made it all normal. They talked about, as you say, the psychology behind it and how it can actually make people some you know, feel good, and
there were it was incredible. They got the whole audience stood up at one stage and you had to turn to the person next to you and you had to practice how this technique of bankking, and most people were doing it with totally random strangers. Now it was hilarious and it was just.
It was it was normal, it was fun.
And then at the end of everyone having a bit of a practice because they were all giving little paddles, brushes, some wooden spoons you know, on their chairs to use, and they all sat down and we went on to the next session and it was just like, Okay.
It was hysterically. I've never seen it. It was a room of two hundred people laughing hysterically and just and you know, some people were there with their partners, some people were there with their friends, and everyone was just having a great time.
Some people are on their own.
Yeah.
Yeah, it was really nice.
Imagine bumping into like the person that you spanked, like, you know, two weeks to spank you in that kinky workshop, Like.
Two is really familiar to me, so you look really familiar if you just bend over again, Yeah, it was easier.
It was definitely.
Have you found in your research that won certain countries are further ahead in their openness about their sexuality and what they're into, Like we always, for some reason, I always think of Amsterdam.
Yeah, like that's probably completely wrong.
But like our Australia progressive in their sex kinks or is where have you discovered that's sort of really open or rather really closed.
Certainly in terms of buying sex toys Australia, Okay, And I think that was that became even more so during the pandemic. We were locked down for so long, we locked each other down.
Well there's until though, will I get this week there's a really interesting stat that we talk about, which is as every state in Australia went into lockdown, their sex toy sales tripled.
Wow.
Yeah, this happened in Brisbane, it happened in Melbourne, it happened in Sydney. Sex toy sales tripled within the course of months in each one of these states. We literally were like, well, if we're gonna stay here, we're gonna.
Do it down.
We need something to do, yeah.
Which I also think speaks to the fact that there is a there's clearly enough openness of conversation in Australia that that is the immediate thought of a lot of people. And it wasn't just sex toys, it was bondage items as well. That okay saw a huge skyrocket.
Yeah, a different form of lockdown, a different.
Form of lockdown.
Yeah.
What do you hope readers will take away from reading your book?
Which I hope everyone gets your book.
By the way, because I love the sound of it.
Just that it's normal.
Yeah, sex is normal, Relationships can be you want them to be, and how you define your relationship, because we talk about a lot of other things as well, about the ability with partners to be open what you want from a relationship and what they want, and that nothing has nothing's new, nothing. Yeah, whatever you can think of you might possibly want, it's probably already been done.
Yeah, And I think you know, the ongoing theme of the book is about openness of conversation, which the book is actually staged around this kind of fictional dinner party. And you know, while we're talking about facts from the past and the present, one of the ways that we made it really fun was that we have this kind of ongoing metaphor throughout the book of all of these famous figures being around a dinner table and we're all
having a party and we're all chatting. Because this is meant to be an open conversation and it's meant to be a welcoming conversation, and also it should be silly. There is a sense of joy and play when it comes to these conversations that really changes our relationship to them. We don't have to look at sex in a medicalized way. We don't have to you know, have the sense of like being.
Very very serious. We can be silly.
James Joyce was talking about his wife's farts. Mozart is writing canons about licking people's asses. You know, there's this sense of silliness of sex that we are still trying to reclaim. I think a little bit today, which was one of the reasons we staged it around this dinner party and we have all these people being silly. You know, we have Virginia Wolf on the table doing tangos while talking about her bisexual experiences. Like there's a sense of silliness.
No, that's also because we spent a lot of time around the dinner table talking about all sorts of things, discussing the things that we were learning.
I learned a lot writing, really did.
But you know, we would read.
Articles on things and you know, whatever it was, and we would about them. So we just wanted people to be involved in that dialogue. And most of the book is set where we're actually talking to the reader as well to try and get them to participate and think about the conversations.
Well, that's it. We want people to agree, disagree, cry, laugh, you know, we really want this to be a very there's a sense of inclusion for the reader to be part of this book and one of our Since we started working together, one of the most common things that we have seen and been messaged is this sense of some people, you know, looking up to our relationship with one another, and we get messages saying, you know, I wish I had this with my own mum, or I
wish I'll one day have this with my daughter, And so there was also a sense of, you know, wanting to invite people to our own dinner table and be part of this conversation as well.
Yeah, I think that's so true.
One of my questions that I had written down was, you know, we've spoken to quite a few sex and family therapists on the podcast, and they have all encouraged, in fact, said how important it is to normalize conversations with your children about sex. Was that something that you just knew to do, Susie. Was that something that you'd been doing with Esme is actually have more kids than Esmai is it?
Just yeah, so Esmy has a younger brother. And I think probably one of the reasons that our relationship has developed how it has, it's you and our beautiful little darling. He's he's disabled, I mean you inside beautiful Giant six book two. He can't speak or do anything for himself. He just brings us joy.
But he was actually.
Growing up looking after him was not not easy and and some of the things that go on in our household were really bonkers, really bonkers, yes, And we had to do things in order to look after you, and that many many don't they don't do and you know that, you know, people would sometimes feel like, oh really almost almost disgusted. Yea. But so we grew up in a together looking after him, and in a house where all sorts of things happened, could.
Go wrong, you know.
And I suppose because.
We we talked about many, many different things with him, we just, I don't know, it became natural that we would talk to each other about absolutely everything, Esmi. You always has always told me everything, sometimes too much, but that's but so therefore, you know it, we just developed that way that we have a very we are obviously extremely close.
I think there's a you know, there's a two kind of factors to that. There's the factor of our mother and daughter relationship was always there was also a care element to that as well, which changes the sense of
responsibility and authority when you're both looking after someone. And then there's another factor of when you have the position of being a keerr and you're looking after someone whose body is vulnerable, and there is a sense of kind of collapsing of the body and what it means to relate to the body, and you know all of that, I guess I say the clothing, but like the dressing up that we do of humans and what's private and what's not private, it all kind of we didn't have that.
We didn't have those marks. You're looking after a vulnerable human and another human's body, So those conversations about bodily function has always been We've been able to kind of open up and you know that it's such a privilege to be a carer and have that relationship to someone else. That sense of trust and conversation about that then flows really naturally because of that.
Yeah, Wow, what an incredible I mean that life experience for both of you, from learning from your son and how you've handled and where this has led you.
That's what a journey to be where you are today.
We're very He's an absolute light in our lives.
I think it's made us appreciate so much more.
You know, she really has and and you know, we always were happy, you know, and one of the things we really focused on is making sure that you always look on the positive side of absolutely everything, and you do whatever you can to turn some situations into fun.
I was actually having a conversation last night about because so my brother he needs help with going to the bathroom, eating, you know, all basic needs, and we'll always have someone watching him at all times. I was telling a story last night. Someone said, did you used to have a
pool when you were little? And I was like, actually, we had a pool in our family house, and I just remembered the memory of one day trying to bring my brother into the pool, and I was like by myself, I was like, you know what, I can be big and brave. I'm a big sister. I will go swimming together. And you went's hand instantly got caught like in the filter of the pool and I was like, oh my god, Oh my god, what am I going to do?
What am I going to do?
His hand's going to be chopped off. And then Mom comes home from work and she's like, what the hell are you doing? Why's you went's arm in there?
I was like, Mom, jump in the pool.
You've got to.
Grab you one's arms.
So you jumped in the pool with all your clothes on to grab you one's arm, and you're like, run to the neighbor's house and get a chainsaw.
And so I ran to the neighbor's house in my babors and these neighbors who we'd never spoken to.
I was like, can I have a chain saw?
My brother's in the pool. And then I got in and then you were like shopping you in out of the pool with this chainsaw while we were both in our like clothes at this stage.
And then you know, my brother's fine and he's laughing, and we just looked at each other, soak him wait in the pool. You're still in your clothes from work. I've been running around with a chainsaw, and we're just like, this is hysterical.
This is hysterical.
And it was moments like that that take these kind of bizarre situations and it just becomes something that was funny.
And it bonds us. Sure, that's really special.
Yeah, you've got childhood stories and then you've got some that's a childhood story.
It's a unique experience, it sure is, it sure is.
Hey, look you.
Talked about you know, I love that the way you've written the book around set around a dinner party in that way, it's so so clever. If you could have dinner with any of the historical figures related to your book, who would it be and why?
Oh hmm, that's I mean, it really depends on which ones were really quite fun in the book. I think you would choose some of the sex researchers when Yeah.
I would definitely choose Masters because he's a real character.
Yeah, Einstein, Einstein.
Einsteiners who I was thinking as well.
He's such a serious person. But he had all sorts of views on relationships.
Yes, Einstein wrote that he believed monogamy to be the bitter fruit of all marriage, and he believed that humans were naturally polyamorous, and he you know, had he cheated on both of his wives many many times. Because while he believed in free love, he only believed in it for him and not for the wife. But interesting, you know, I think he's a fantastic so fantastic. I think he's a really interesting historical figure because genius, you know, is
now synonymous with Einstein. And at the same time, you have a man who has a like, you know, what seems like quite liberal rules, rules and views on love and what it means to be in a relationship. But at the same time, those views of free love are very much shaped by the culture that he belonged to, which was a patriarchal culture that women would stay home
and bring him. You know, he writes a letter of demand to his wife and then it basically says, you know, when I come home from my affairs, dinner will be ready on.
The table for me, you know.
And so I think he's a I would love to talk to him and kind of firstly put him in his place.
Yeah, the dialogue would be like, how do you think that could possibly be right?
But you know, we spoke about him at length because we found him such a fascinating and sure, you know, that's a triple factor there. You've got his influence for his work, You've got his liberal.
Views on love.
But then you've got how he was shaped by external factors like cultural pressures.
Yeah, that's right.
Is there is Is there a woman that you researched that you admire for her sexuality, her flavor, her experience. I know they always talk about free to Carlo, but yeah, is there someone that just speaks to you that's like she was owning it all?
Yeah?
I was looking at me.
She knows exactly what I'm going to say. Okay, I want to talk about Gertrude Stein.
Gertrude Stein is this incredible figure at the turn of the nineteen hundreds. She is considered like the mother of modernism. She's an incredible writer. She is the reason that we have existing works of the likes of Picasso and Matisse, because when Paris was invaded, she took all of their artwork and saved it because she was their friends. She cultivated all of these men's careers. But in the course of all of this, Gertrude Stein lived with her wife Alice.
You know, you couldn't be married at the time, but she was very proudly living a lesbian relationship on the banks of Paris with her wife Alice. And she also
wasn't quiet about queer sex and lesbian enjoyments. She would write poetry all about kinna lingis and would hide all of these descriptions of the female body and female pleasure in high art that men who didn't understand it would like sit around the dinner table reading it all loud and not realizing they were actually reading out poems of gays X. And she's just this incredible figure who really kind of demonstrates that if you're confident enough and you
can kind of get away with everything, like this woman is just living openly at a time where you are not allowed to live with another woman was saying very proudly that is her wife writing poems and books about her affairs with other women, about kind of lingers. And you know, she's also a Jewish woman who lives on the banks of Paris that is going to be invaded by the Nazis and stays there and protects people on all sides of this war just because she feels like
it's the right thing to do. She's an incredible figure. She's an incredible figure, and she is definitely your sex positive icon that everyone should go and look up.
Okay, I'm googling immediately after this podcast.
The name's familiar, but I didn't know that about her.
Oh, Esme and Susie, thank you so much for your time. I feel like we could talk for a lot longer, but for right now, everyone can go get their book Kinky History, A rollicking Journey.
God.
I love that word, rollicking journey through our sexual past, present and future. Thanks so much for your time in the bathroom.
Thank you for having as girlie.
Bathrooms are always the best good right.
Well, that's just blown my mind.
I have to say that chat with es May and Susie Wow. As I said, I know we could have gone on and on. We'd love to get them back in actually, because I think they have a lot more to share about kinky history. And hopefully that's got you thinking about your own sexual history and why don't you just go and have a bit more play. I think that's the message. Thanks so much for listening.
Bye,