J: This podcast has explicitly adult themes and language. Listener discretion is advised.

[Intro Music]

J: Yeah, I'm very excited about this question because it's like vanilla-coded question. I feel like a little bit. This is a question that anyone, kinky or not, queer or not, can ask. Like this is a very egalitarian question.

I: Yeah. In my experience of people asking this question, it's usually like in relation to like relationship concerns as well.

J: Yeah. Hi, this is Kinky Queeries, a podcast where you send in questions and we work out the kinks, or more often than not work in the kinks. My name is James. My pronouns are he/him. And over the last couple of weeks, I have been gently bullied into eventually publishing erotica, which has been really fun.

I: (quietly) Yes!

J: Yeah, a lot of it started with just like an offhand comment or someone's like, you know, James jokes about never being famous, but like, if he just published some of the stuff he writes, I think he'd be a famous erotica writer. And I'm like, “Haha, that's a very funny joke.” And then they kept saying it. So I'm like, This isn't a joke anymore. And they're like, “No, write the thing.” And I'm like, With what time? When?

I: If you do decide to do that, I dunno. Laura Antoniou I wish I knew who that was. Very famous queer erotica writer. I met them at a BDSM conference and they're a cool ass person.

J: I love to know more about that and I think my concern right now too is just like I don't know how publishing works and everything I hear about it is terrible. So…

I: That is accurate. Publishing is bullshit. But, also I have also considered publishing erotica at some point in time.

J: Hell yeah!

I: And I have like a whole production company title and everything's set up and whatnot.

J: Oh, I love that.

I: By the way, my name is Iris. I use they/he pronouns and I've recently started doing sex work again to feel better about my body and to make all the happy juice go to my brain. And it's been working and it's great.

J: Yay! We love that good, good serotonin. That good, good dopamine. Treat yourself. That's exciting. And hopefully that good, good money.

I: Eh, right now it's not good, good money because I stopped doing it for like a year and a half. It'll pick up, just based off of how last time went.

J: Well, so it's really interesting being a pretty significantly sex positive and sexually active person when a lot of my friends are asexual, which is kind of where our question comes from today. This is actually a friend of mine who is ace and a lot of their experience around just like the concept of sex has been like, “Oh, that's a joke, right? Like people aren't actually like that horny all the time, right?” And like they repeatedly have this instance of, oh, that wasn't a joke. People are actually horny about that. They're not like, sex-repulsed or anything to my knowledge, but they're largely just confused about how sex is for other people because they’re ace so it's like kind of a non thing for them. Which obviously asexuality is a spectrum. There are certainly like sex positive asexuals. People who are asexual can have sex, but people who are asexual also may not have sex. Broad spectrum there. But the question they asked me as well as a couple other people were kind of shooting the shit about it and I thought it'd be fun to kind of expand upon in our podcast is, “How often do people actually have sex?” And I think in this definition we're using sex not exclusively as penis and vagina intercourse, but basically anything involving genitals or pleasure in that regard. I would probably say like heavy petting makeout session, not really sex, but like obviously oral sex and anal sex are sex. Obviously like things involving dildos is sex. That would sort of be, I guess, my definition to… to kick the question off.

I: Yeah, masturbation is definitely sex.

J: I fucking hope so because that's the only sex I'm getting right now.

I: Fucking same. The last person I had sex with is in Mexico, so…

J: Oh no. But it sounded like that was a very good time.

I: That was a very good time. Before we really like start having this conversation, I wanted to talk about like what is “normal” and what should be considered “normal” and like whatever makes sense for you and your pleasure is the normal for you. Normal within the grand scheme of society is wild. We’re all individuals. And the expectation that we're supposed to be in line with whatever is normal -and I'm using the word normal in quotes- doesn't make sense. And that's like a wildly inaccurate expectation. When talking about sex and frequency, it should be what is fulfilling for yourself and fulfilling for your partner and having really good communication about this and making decisions to make sure that both of you are fulfilled or if it's just yourself. Because we just said like masturbation is like how we're getting sex. What makes sense masturbation-wise for you? Like there's no reason to feel pressured to be like, my friend does X amount each week. I want to make sure I'm up to par with them because that means I'm normal. That's not what normal is, it should be around what makes sense for you, what feels good for you, and what fulfills you.

J: Absolutely. Yeah. I think the societal concept of normal doesn't really help anyone. And yeah, the idea of having sex more often than one wants or having sex less often than one wants is just not something anyone should be striving towards. You know? You should be striving towards exactly what Iris said, what makes you feel good, what makes you feel fulfilled, and what everyone consents to. And I think, yeah, the spectrum from being allosexual and kind of that quote societal norm of sex on the brain sort of.

I: Sexual.

J: Yeah. Yes.

I: Asexuality being like on the lower form of the spectrum of sexual arousal to no sexual arousal potentially and demi sexuality being someplace in the middle and having it fluctuate.

J: This broad spectrum is important to keep in mind when considering one's own identity, as well as like discussing between partners. And I think in a polyamorous situation there's a lot more, you know, creative range for relationships where it's like this is a really good romantic relationship and not a really good sexual relationship, or like this is a really good like collaborative life partner situation, but not necessarily a romantic or a sexual relationship. And I think that variety in style and needs being met in each relationship really optimizes itself for different like levels of sexuality.

I: Each person is different in how they go about sexual intercourse. Some people are sexually repulsed and like just don't want to do it. And some people, um, like being able to perform sex for their partner even if they're not sexually aroused. So I think it's just like person by person basis and that's where like the communication aspect comes up of being like, hey, I know your age, I know I'm allo or demi or whatever. How does this work out for us long term? How can we make this work on concerning the sexual component?

J: Communication is so clear about everything we talked about on this podcast, but also really specifically this question. I think the heart of this question probably comes a little less from the like, “Oh God, am I doing things right?” And more like a statistical curiosity, which I am actually really glad because you pulled so many interesting articles. The one that caught my attention was basically a survey conducted estimated that the average adult has sex basically 54 times a year, which is roughly once a week. In my mind. I was like, okay, that sounds like a fair average, but it's kind of exciting seeing that line up as kind of the statistical average. Obviously, there's definitely going to be people on higher ends of the spectrum in the lower end of the spectrum. But I think from a data standpoint, it's interesting to have that cultural touchstone to be like, okay, what is the average statistically average person not like morally average or quote normal, but just the statistically average person's experience around this thing?

I: Yeah, the statistical average is really interesting in that it's slightly above once a week and we see that in other studies as well. Like there was another one that said like married couples fuck like 1.2 times a week. People who are cohabitating is like 1.6. People who are just dating 1.1 and those who are unpartnered is 0.3. So you're getting like that about once a week kind of data, but you're also seeing that like that lowers over time based off of age as well. When people are younger, like early twenties to like thirties, it ranges anywhere from zero, and that's like the never married single to never married dating, which is about one time a week, to people who are married, which is about twice a week, and those who are cohabitating but not married, not quite three times a week, but close. And so it's really interesting to see all of those lines dip down over time with like the continuation of cohabitating and like whatever their life falls into, like whatever those kind of those different four categories dipping down to around one time a week for the most part for all of them.

J: Yeah. And that's like looking at a timeline from like twenties where getting up to that almost three times a week sort of situation, up to and like the high end of this chart says sixties. And I'm curious how much of that too is… Sex is time consuming and tiring. Like when you're 60, that's a lot of energy to expend, you know, not that like everyone who's 60 is going to be tired all the time, but like I'm 20 something and I'm tired all the time. I mean, kudos are the people doing it three times a week. Where do you find the time for it though? Like really?

I: Well, that brings up a study done by the Kinsey Institute where it showed that Americans who are between the ages of 18 to 29 report having sex 112 times a year, over two times a week, not quite three.

J; These are averages, too, right? So that means there are definitely people having less, but there's also definitely people having more. So if we're just taking like very baseline, average, I don't know what the bell curve is, but reverse doing this is a normative curve. We're looking at if the average is roughly two times a week, that means there's going to be a significant number of people doing it four times a week, as well as a significant number of people doing itno times a week.

I; Yes, exactly. And like, I think it's really interesting that you brought up like those who are 60. I think that those who are older tend to get their sexuality dismissed. And we see this in like where they're represented in data, whether they're represented within like the orgasm and pleasure sphere. And like we're even starting to see it a little bit more in media. Like, I don't know if you watch Grace and Frankie at all.

J: I'm aware of Grace— I've seen like a couple episodes. But yeah, it's really important to not only just for like younger people to know, like there is more life to lives, particularly like from a queer perspective, I love seeing older couples portrayed on television, but in even instances like Grace and Frankie, it's just like life does not end once you get married and have kids like you keep going, you're still a human person with the various physical needs that you have.

I: Well, actually, that wasn't the part of Grace and Frankie that I was referring to.

J: Oh, I’m sorry.

I: Later on, I think it’s season three is when Frankie decides to build a vibrator for those who have like arthritis and carpal tunnel.

J: Oh my goodness.

I: For individuals who are older, who want to masturbate and have sexual pleasure because a lot of vibrators and pulsators are not meant for people who are older, who don't have like the ease of being as flexible anymore. And so they have that conversation within that TV show. And I think it's really important like that aspect of human life and sexual pleasure is getting that kind of representation.

J: Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, what a niche market too. Like I hope that exists in real life as well. Or like if Netflix just shelled out the money to launch like a vibrator company because I think that would really do numbers because it's a totally underserved market. And not only does it affect people who are older, it's also going to affect people at any age who have physical disabilities, which, again, a hugely underserved community.

I: Mm hmm. That and like the lube market for those who are older as well, like lubricant is so important as one is growing older and their body isn't creating as much fluid. A lot of the time, at least those with vaginal canals. For anuses, you should be using lube all the time. It's fucking fantastic.

J: Yeah, it does not self lubricate, this is not AO3, the anus needs external lubrication.

I: Yes. Another study that I thought was really interesting was looking at individuals within the LGBTQ community and comparing them to heterosexual individuals and their orgasm frequency. I don't know if you saw those charts.

J: Oooh. Wait yes, yeah. I love charts like this.

I: I will make them bigger.

J: Yeah. Charts like this, really, just doing it— doing it well for for the lesbians.

I: Well, the first one is looking at how many times did I orgasm? Second chart is how many times I was told that my partner orgasm.

J: Oooh, yeah. The discrepancies between certain columns concerning yeah

I: Yeah.

J: And we'll post link to where all these charts you could see them visually because it's kind of hard to describe a chart verbally but yeah, basically breaks down between heterosexual women, lesbians, and bisexual women as well as heterosexual men, gay men, and bisexual men. And just the comparison between how many times heterosexual men think their partners came versus how many times their partner actually came. It's like a 10% difference, which is very concerning, which really just ties back to communication of being like, you don’t… don't lie about when you orgasm. It's not going to help anyone, it’s certainly not going to help you. Yeah.

I: Yeah. It's just like really interesting chart about like the orgasm differential.

J: And also just looking at the self-reporting, you can see that the men consistently reporting orgasming more than women, consistently. Very close runner up though lesbians.

I: [laughter]

J: Which is, long story short, lesbians just have better sex, I think is the takeaway.

I: I don't want to say better and create a hierarchy pertaining to sex there.

J: That’s true.

I: But I do know that like there is a different way in how feminine individuals have been socialized to communicate versus masculine individuals. And I think that's really key in being able to go past this orgasm barrier that it clearly shows- that these gaps are clearly showing heterosexual women are experiencing.

J: Also, for the record, the lesbians have better sex thing is a joke. I wasn't making a definitive statement there.

I: I know but like it's a conversation topic now.

J: Abso- no, completely agree. And I think also it does speak to the idea that sex doesn’t always how to be about an orgasm too. Like, sure it's sometimes is very much about an orgasm. But things can be just as pleasurable. Whether you orgasm once or five times or if you don't orgasm at all depends really kind of on the activity, who you're doing it with, and what you're talking about.

I: Yeah.

J: Personally, saying that statement out loud feels so weird now because before I was on testosterone, like, yeah, sure, orgasming was cool, but like was not my priority. Being on testosterone has absolutely fucking changed how I relate to sex and it's insane. I almost don't really like it that much, to be honest, because I felt like a point of pride in the sense that I was like, Oh yeah, you know, sex is great, but it's like, not about the orgasm, it's about the experience. It's about like, you know, what you're doing and like having a good time. It's not the journey, not the destination. And now I just have like, cum brain, sometimes. I'm like, I need to. I'm going to lose my fucking mind if I don't deal with this. This is insane. And I just don't really… like teenagers who are like in the organic testosterone system default setting. I don't— truly do not know how you get anything done. I don't know how I'm getting anything done. Genuinely, I don't understand people who are like, have this happened for more of— I've been doing this for a month and I can't fucking handle it. I just who has the time for this much sex truly?

I: Me.

J: [laughs]

I: But the problem is, is that every fucking person that I'm not partnered with is like, yeah, I'd have sex with you. They, they say something ridiculous or uncomfy and my sexual feelings towards them peter off really quickly after that.

J: That’s so legit actually. I've— in people that I had previously dated, if something goes sour like my trust in them dips, all attraction vanishes pretty instantly. Like, I think that's such a fair thing, a frustrating thing for sure, but like a very, very fair experience.

I: What a fucking turnoff when somebody says something ridiculous or like uncomfy.

J: The psychological component of sex is a huge factor that I think isn't always at the forefront of everyone's mind, though it definitely, definitely should be. And I think from the perspective of kinky sex too, so much of that is about trust. You can't engage in that kind of activity if you don't… I mean, I'm sure there are people who can, but I personally can't really engage in that kind of activity if I don't trust someone.

I: Yeah, that's fair. I'm thinking about a study, I didn't put it in our outline document, but I'll see if I can try and find it again and we can add this bit in. And I was looking at the differences in like weekly arousal between men and women. They did some sort of study pertaining to like looking at the differences in, like, when people identify their arousal and how frequently it is. And I believe men were, it was somewhere between 32 and 39 times a week.

J: That’s so much!

I: So much. And then women were like, yeah, eight or nine.

J: And I'm curious to you how much of that is and I obviously can't speak for all people that like, have at one point identified as a cis woman, which I don't anymore, but I still have the hardware for it. It's sometimes hard to tell when a system that has like a vagina and a clitoris is aroused. Sometimes it's very obvious, but sometimes it's just like. I mean, like, I guess I could… I dont— I'm not really sure? And obviously definitely can't speak for all people who have vaginas, but like orgasms are also sometimes hard to tell. Sometimes again, glaringly obvious, but sometimes it's like, did I come? I'm not really sure. Like, it was fun. We had a good time, but like, did something happen? I don't really know. Whereas if you have a penis, at the very least there's a lot of physical evidence. There's blood flow that makes it just visually obvious and there's just physical evidence of orgasm usually. Whereas like, and again, I cannot speak for all people who have penises, cannot be for all people who have vaginas, with a vagina, eh, sometimes it's just swampy down there for no reason. Sometimes, sometimes there's fluids. Is it cum? Is it just sweat? I can't tell. So I feel like I'm curious how much that's a factor as well, aside from the psychological component of things.

I: Well, I think we're really just talking about arousal nonconcordance at this point. For those who don't know what that term means, because it's a big one, arousal nonconcordance is when the brain and the genitalia, like one of them's aroused and the other one's not. So sometimes you can just like mentally be there being like, “I want to have sex!” And then gentials are like, yeah, fucking right, that's not happening right now. Or it's vice versa. And like, your genitals are like, “YES! I don't know what like just aroused me, but like something's going to happen” and your brain's like, what the fuck is happening? Why are you hard or wet, or whatever the fuck is going on? And it's that differential. And so like I mentioned that like with like politics, like I can still find somebody sexy and can be aroused by them, but I can be mentally turned off by that at the same time.

J: Definitely.

I: And that being important. And I think that's also like what a lot of women are often experiencing. Like they don't always have the physical component of being like ‘you are aroused’. And as someone who has that body structure, sometimes I just don't know it. Sometimes it feels like I just have to fucking pee and like, that's—

J: Right?!

I: That's a weird way of noting that like I am aroused at that moment, though I'm a little bit more on like the I can tell when I orgasm because I squirt so much.

J: That's convenient. Yeah.

I: It is incredibly convenient. It is a mess though. Like I understand the people are like, “That's the hottest thing ever. Oh, my god, you squirt. It's like everywhere.” You know what you have to do? You got to clean the bed sheets. You have to have, like, waterproof covers. I have waterproof blankets. Do you have any idea how much fucking laundry I do? It is annoying. I hate it!

J: Oh, the suffering.

I: Yeah.

J: I think arousal nonconcordance is definitely a huge factor both in just that self-reporting. Am I aroused? Am I not aroused? Did I orgasm? Did I not orgasm? As well as how often people want to have sex. Because if your body is constantly telling you, okay, we want to have sex and society is telling you, hey, because you have these parts, you constantly want to have sex, you're going to be predisposed to say, Sure, let's have sex as often as possible. Whereas if you're on the other side of the coin where it's just like, well, not really sure what my body wants. And also society tells me if I have sex, I'll die. You're probably going to be less likely to want to have sex. And even removing the societal boundaries, meeting in the middle of just had what was the number. Something like 30, 36 in a week. That's insane.

I: It's either 32 or 39. I'm forgetting and I don't want to do all the clicks clacks to try to study is in my history.

J: Totally. The discrepancy between over 30 and like eight or nine, the middle of the— if you were to split the difference pretty often and you look at schedules and stuff, and you're assuming like, okay, not every instance of arousal merits action. The idea that it's couples tend to copulate roughly once or twice a week sort of makes sense as sort of a middle ground between all of that.

I: Arousal doesn't mean sex. And I just want to put that out clearly to everyone listening to this. Every time you’re aroused, you're not always masturbating, you're not always out and getting some sex or like whatever you want to do. And it's important to note that like arousal and like sexual action of any kind are different, but they're really important to like, be aware of those differences and also the differences in frequency that we're seeing between men and women. And I wish we had data on like trans people and gender diverse people, but like that is a bitch and a half to find because honestly the funding for like understanding sexual pleasure is minimal because the health outcomes are minimal for understandings. So you're never going to get like NIH research about that for the most part.

J: But yeah, that's a very good point. Arousal definitely does not equal having sex or masturbating because the act of like taking step from, okay arousal noticed, to sex is not like, okay, that's step one, this is step two. There's like possibly thousands of steps in between because just like a single ping of arousal doesn't necessarily have all of the metaphorical and/or literal juices flowing enough for sex to actually be feasible or fun.

I: Right. And then in the grand scheme of kink, like, oh my gosh, you have to consider like how much time are we putting towards negotiation? How much time are we doing towards any sort of like role play scenarios that are involved with that? Aftercare, etc. Like that's a ton of time being dedicated.

J: Oh my gosh. I think about this constantly with any form of self bondage I do. It's like, okay, I need to block off like a solid hour of time from my day, we’ll get the rope out, do all the ties, actually do any of the sex stuff, if that's even happening? Then take all the ropes down, clean all the ropes, clean whatever sex stuff happened. Like there's just— it's a multistep process and kink— Personally, I think kink makes sex better. It also comes with a time-based price tag.

I: I hope we answered this question sufficiently for the person who asked it. The average adult has sex about once a week when partnered specifically. If not partnered, it's much less. But that also means that like just because that is the average, that doesn't mean that is something that you should be aiming for. You can be physically intimate with a partner, and that's awesome and that's great, as long as it's consensual, of course. But what really matters is the quality of the connection or the encounter that you're having with another person if it's partnered at all. And I just want to emphasize that particular note that hopefully you've seen trickled in throughout this conversation today.

J: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Knowing averages is fun just for like, I guess a cultural touchstone. But at the end of the day, as long as it's not like causing you or anyone else harm or concern, there's really no upper limit and there's really no lower limit. Well, I guess the lower limit has to be zero because you can't have sex negative times? As long as everyone's consenting having fun, there's no really like maximum. Though, I don't know. I feel like after enough hours, there's just not enough lube in the world.

I: Yeah. And like, one thing that we didn't even really touch upon, but I want to bring up this is like a last minute thing is like mental health and sex. Like we didn't even touch on like how a lot of people right now are incredibly depressed. They have a lot of mental health stuff going on because we've gone through so many fucking tragedies in this country. And are still in a pandemic and are socially isolated from other people. And a lot of the social components of our lives are no longer in existence. And with all of that, a lot of people are on medications that lower libido. A lot of people, when depressed or anxious, they don't have the same sort of sex drive as before. And so it's really important to note, like, there are so many aspects to the body and the human experience that will impact one's sex drive and want to have sex with another individual.

J: Definitely, definitely. And on the same vein, sex is great for free serotonin sometimes…or free dopamine. The orgasm, it just, it gives you the brain juice. It's good stuff. Like it's not going to do you better than Lexapro. But mental health and sex is a huge, huge topic because mental health can absolutely even outside of just medication, which has tangible connections to lowered sex drive, it can also just, the psychology of not feeling good about yourself, not feeling good about the world, kind of hard to get in the mood for that, you know?

I: Right. And like us as both trans people, I know personally that like gender dysphoria and dysmorphia has like totally fucked up my sex drive previously and that I think that is an important component of my mental health and how I function sexually.

J: It's been a little hit or miss for me in terms of that regard. When I was having sex with other people, at the time, I didn't realize it was body dysmorphia, but like, you know, I used to have tits and they did not do anything for me. And I would tell people like, hey, just don't fucking bother with them. Like it doesn't really matter. Now I don't have them, so they don’t have to bother. That's a huge component that a lot of trans people experience. Where just like sexual desire, physical sexual arousal will bring attention to parts of the body that a lot of trans people do not want to have.

I: Mhm.

J: So that's a huge complicating factor. There's also sex in concordance with trauma, specifically trauma due to sex or relationships can absolutely mess up sex. I, for a very long time, thought I was demisexual. It turns out I just have trauma.

I: Yup.

J: So it's yeah, it's a trip and a half.

I: And there's like certain parts of my body that, like, I have to tell partners, you cannot touch that during sex.

J: And these are the same kind of boundaries that, like everyone should respect. It's the same thing where it's like, hey, I sprained my ankle. So like, let's not do sex that involves me putting a lot of weight on my ankle or whatever.

I: Yeah, lift me up. Carry me. And fuck me hard. [Laughing]

J: Oh, fuck me against a wall, please. Oh, the dream. But yeah, those are all huge components to how frequently anyone's going to want to engage in sex, whether it's solo or with other people. And like, you know, sex, at the end of the day, it's supposed to be fun, you know, it's supposed to be everyone, on the whole, having a good time. So if it's not a good time for you to have it once a week, then don't do it once a week. If it's something that you want to do more frequently, if it will continue to be fun for you to have it more than once a week, talk about that with your partner. Negotiate that or take some time for some solo sex.

I: Heck yeah, solo sex is great.

J: But yeah. Thanks so much for listening as we talk about our favorite things, I actually really love talking about this one, perfect balance of like research and data as well as personal experience. So huge fan for me personally. Thank you to the anonymous friend who didn't directly ask this question for the podcast but did ask me it directly, which basically counts for the same thing. I will protect your identity unless otherwise requested. I'm going to go eat dinner. [Laughs] But if you have a kinky question that you would like for us to address, specifically, send us your queries at kinkyqueeries@gmail.com, or follow us on Twitter at kinkyqueeries. I believe our DMs are open. Also, check out our website. We've got a Google form that you can submit questions on there as well. Everything is at k i n k y q u e e r i e s. We'll have our next episode ready for your eager ears in roughly two weeks.