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

[intro music]

J: Thank you for just knocking it out of the park with this document, I know we were really last minute with it, but you just, like, pulled a bunch of really great research.

I: No worries. Yeah, no, because I’ve read a lot about this previously, it's just like, oh, I know where I want to get things. I want to get it from this one book that I've read excerpts out of and I want to quote like Emily Nagoski and like, her Come As You Are book etc..

J: I actually pulled the Ted Talk, yeah.

I: And you already found her Ted Talk.

J: [laughter]

I: Have you read her book before?

J: I have not. My sister read it and recommended it.

I: It’s a good fucking book.

J: I believe so!

I: I've met her a couple of times as well.

J: That's so cool!

I: Sorry. I think actually Emily's going by they/them pronouns.

J: A doctor’s pronouns are ‘doctor/doctor’.

I: [while typing] Dr. Nagoski, not Ted talk, Twitter.

J: What is Twitter but a prolonged TEDx talk truly? Based on the website, she/her pronouns. But I don't know if that's outdated or not.

I: If it's a website that is affiliated with Dr. Nagoski—

J: It’s her website.

I: Then I'm going to take it as her.

J: Yeah. It's the about section.

I: Oh, then nevermind. Yeah no, I met her a couple of times. She's really cool, really great. And like, I literally went up with like my copy of Come As You Are, which like has a bunch of chicken scratch in the margins and is highlighted and looks like shit. And she signed it and she's like, Oh, someone's been reading my books. [laughs]

J: [squeals] Oh, cool! Yeah, I'm so hyped for this question. So we had a listener named Wes, which is the name they told me to use. I have their consent. And they had a follow up question for one of our previous episodes, which is just like— when I got this news, I was over the moon about it. I was like, you're telling me people listen and have questions? That's like everything I could want. So this is— this episode is honestly just such a triumph. This is it, we’ve peaked. They'd listen to our episode from, by the time this is posted, it'll be about a month ago, “How often do people have sex?” And in that episode we talked about the concept of arousal non concordance several times in that episode as we were talking about just the concept of arousal and like how people get from day-to-day life to having sex, you know? So yeah, this episode is going to dove into that and answer their question of “What is arousal non concordance?” Because this is Kinky Queeries, a podcast where you send in questions, because we have a question that was sent in by a listener now!

I: Thanks!

J: And we work out the kinks, or more often than not, we work in the kinks. My name is James. My pronouns are he/him. And I'll be honest, I had a really fantastic weekend with friends who like listen to our podcast and they like just had all these brainstormed questions for us. And I'm just— I'll add them to brainstorm doc, I'm just very happy about it. I'm in a, I'm in an exciting space right now.

I: Hell, yeah. My name is Iris. I use they/he pronouns and my partner before this episode got me mozzarella sticks and that is really bringing me a lot of joy right now. Not just one order of mozzarella sticks she got me two.

J: What is— okay. So when monogamous people are doing that whole cliche of like, oh, my partner's done something really nice and the response is like, oh my gosh, marry them. What is the polyamorous equivalent of that?

I: Compersion is the word. [laughter] Well, that's more like happiness on behalf of like your partner's experience with somebody else.

J: Oh, no I guess more like, an outside person saying like, wow, that person was so great.

I: But I feel like compersion should be something outside of the polyamorous community because like,

J: Hell yeah.

I: If, for the people who I have in my life who have partners, like if something is really good that’s happening to them, like I'm not dating them, but it's like, Oh my God, I'm so happy that they treated you not only like a decent human being, but like how you should deserve to be treated because you're a lovely human being. But yeah, it probably wouldn’t be “marry them” depending on the person because like some people are hierarchical and some people aren't hierarchical.\

J: Yeah. Right.

I: I try to lean into nonhierarchical, but it's really hard to do that when like one person's long distance and you bought a house with another person because that seemed like a good decent choice at the time and a lot of other things. It's not “marry them,” it's, I don't know, whatever seems reasonable in the moment, like bring daisies to them.

J: That's fair. That's a good point. Yeah. Well. Oh, my God. Mozzarella sticks. What a treat. Also, I was about to say, well, I know what I'm doing for dinner, but I do not have access to mozzarella sticks and I am distraught. I will perhaps order Postmates. But—

I: I was going to say, if you order it now, it'll be here by the end of the episode.

J: No, because I'll want to message my roommate and ask if they want anything, which I will do after the episode but I don't want to like pause in our recording to like my roommate, who bless her heart, has been just so fantastic recently. It's been nice because I was gone for like a month and she also took a short trip and it was nice to see each other again.

I: [softly] woo!

J: Anyway. Well, thank you again, Wes, for your question. I'm super excited to talk about arousal non concordance because I'll be honest, before our episode talking about it, I also had not really heard of it. Conceptually. I'm like aware of it as a concept. I didn't realize it had a name. A name which, I don't love typing because I kept typing non-con and then stopping and I'm like, nope, there's, there's more after this, this not your fanfic search term.

I: [laughter]

J: I'm just going to not perceive that right there. Cool. Got it. But yeah, so you were saying there's kind of like a breakdown in these kind of dual control modes, but it comes to arousal and desire, right?

I: Yeah. So I'm going to be really talking from like the perspective of like this theory that's been around for a long time and was really emphasized by Emily Nagoski, who is, like this really cool, like sexual health researcher out of, I think Smith College. She's a cool human, fucking love her. I've had the luxury and the privilege of meeting her a couple of times at this point, and she had signed my copy of Come As You Are.

J: Ah!

I: If you get the chance to ever meet her, like, do it. She's lovely.

J: And we recommend Come As You Are, by the way. Fantastic book. Honestly, maybe we'll do an episode of, like, a book review, which can be kind of fun.

I: Ohmygosh, like that means I get to reread it. Anyways. The dual control model is basically like a model of like understanding desire and arousal and how it functions. And so it's controlled by your central nervous system because a lot of things are controlled by the central nervous system and it breaks down into like two main categories. And like I'm going to be putting in this metaphor that's often used when talking about arousal and concordance and it's like basically like an automotive metaphor when we talk about like braking versus like accelerating.

J: Question.

I: Yes.

J: Is this because the researchers thought cars were sexy?

I: Uh, I cannot confirm nor deny that. But that'll be my next question for Emily if I ever meet her again.

J: [laughs]

I: [laughing] So the first control aspect is, SES, which stands for sexual excitement system, and that is the accelerator that someone has. And then the second aspect is SIS the sexual inhibition system, which you can think of as the brake. And for SIS, the brake, there's two particular brakes that we're going to talk about. One is the emergency brake. When you know something like that is immediate, dangerous or immediate turn off and it just kind of like shuts you down, you're no longer experiencing arousal, whether that be mentally or whether that be physically. So examples that you see in some textbook when talking about arousal nonconcordance are, oh, when you get a text from your boss, which is like, oh yeah, that would definitely shut me down too. Or like they're screaming children in the background or things like that. And so that just kind of like breaks down and just like, okay, like sexual arousal is no longer there.

I: The second break is basically like a chronic low level “No, thank you” break. And that can be something that is more linked towards like general anxiety or worrying or like other things that are just like slowly breaking it down over time. So if someone is just like anxious about like something going on in the world and is like distracted and thinking about that that will break down their arousal similar to like orgasm and performance anxiety that will break down somebody's arousal and actually lead to someone not having an orgasm or not feeling as aroused because they're worrying about the orgasm or worrying about the arousal.

J: That’s just a tragic, self-fulfilling prophecy. Though I am curious, would a sexual inhibition system be something physical, like being tired or being hungry? Is it like low level distractions like that, or is it mostly psychological distractions?

I: How I read it is mostly psychological, but I think that we're talking about these broader things for like sexual inhibition, like hunger and being exhausted or something that definitely diminish someone's sexual arousal. And I'd love to see more literature about like some of the more physiological aspects to SIS and how it impacts SIS.

J: Hell yeah.

I: And if you didn't think of this already, everybody's sexual excitement system and sexual inhibition system is completely different! Some people have like really fast accelerators and they'll just be like, Oh, this thing that, like, turns me on, like, let's go right now. And some people, like, they need a little bit more lead up to it and they need something bigger to like move that accelerator and move someone forward towards arousal. And same with SIS. Sometimes inhibition happens and it's like an immediate shut down or it's something that's like a little bit slower, whether that's the emergency brake or like the chronic low level, like “no, thank you” break. Dos that make sense?

J: Yeah, that totally makes sense. I suppose like the sexual excitation system that doesn't really have like more than one accelerator, right? It's just how hard you're pushing on the accelerator more or less?

I: Kind of. It's like whatever excites you sexually, whatever causes the arousal. And for some people that's more mental. For some people that's more physical. It's like people become aroused by like what they see versus what they hear, or what they're touching. It just depends person to person. We're going to get a little bit more into like desire as well. Because other things I want to talk about is spontaneous desire and responsive desire. And then we're going to talk a little bit about like what is arousal concordance versus arousal non concordance. And that will be the culmination of this episode of really what is arousal non concordance, but we have to lead in. Like all these other concepts to really like dig into what that is,

J: Yes yes yes.

I: Which is why we're going over SES and SIS.

J: Loving this deep dive. So spontaneous desire, responsive desire, not the deity from Sandman, these are psychological, technical terms

I: No, these come out of the mental health psychology field and we talk about spontaneous desire— sorry I’m still in giggle fits about—

J: No that’s perfect, that’s perfect.

I: Um, spontaneous desire, not Sandman Desire, whatever the heck is going on in that show, is a kind of desire that you see portrayed in media. It comes out of nowhere, and it's experience at the drop of a hat, and it's sparked by something very small and it's like this huge, big, passionate thing that happens. That is spontaneous desire. And while people can't experience that in real life, it's not quite as common. Most people experience responsive desire, and responsive desire is something that doesn't just come out of nowhere. It's a response to arousal. And what this means is that someone may decide to engage in sexual activity before they get turned on and then their desire emerges as a result of the process. And so it's a response to what someone is engaging with or is like built up over time.

J: So not only would that qualify as foreplay, but I guess in this like film metaphor, you're talking about response to desires, like, oh, what these two characters that just met are kissing. All of a sudden I don't get it. As opposed to we've been in a slow burn for 90 minutes. When are they going to kiss?

I: Yes, it's basically like Our Flag Means Death is responsive desire. They had to be on a boat for months before we got that motherfucking kiss.

J: I wonder how much spontaneous desire might have underlying responsive desire that's not necessarily on the conscious level. Like I know if I spend an afternoon like reading fanfic or like consuming materials of things that interest me, I'm not like actively seeking out to get all aroused, but like eventually if I have time in the evening to myself, I'm like, huh. I could get off fairly efficiently. Right now I feel like that's more of a long game, even though it's not an intentional game, if that makes any sense.

I: Yeah, I think— so like responsive desire. Like the example that I'm giving is engaging in sexual contact and then it emerges emerging over time, but doesn't necessarily have to be that. It can be that like you go on this like long day-long date, and like you're holding hands and being cute and doing all this stuff together. And like that is something where it is responding to the situation. Maybe you experience all this lovely romantic shit together and like you're responding to that. Like, the whole point is that you have context for what you're desire is built off of, where a spontaneous desire is more like it's kind of coming out of nowhere and it's very sudden.

J: Yeah, that definitely makes sense. Also, dear listener, as Iris is describing, a long date leading up to response of desire, I too am responding with desire. [laughter] Oh my God. Holding hands?!

I: Holding hands! It’s the summer months so I don't hold hands with anybody. I link pinkies so I don't have to touch people’s sweaty nonsense, because it bothers me.

J: So sensible. Yeah. Oh, goodness.

I: Maybe the autism is showing. I'm not quite sure.

J: No, you're valid.

I: I hold people's pinky.

J: When I, when I used to date people, even not in the summer months, I do not like sweaty hands, but I really like holding hands. So anyone who's dating me would just have to accept the fact that I'll be like, “We're going to hold hands. I will occasionally pull away and then wipe my hands off on some article of fabric and then go back to holding your hand.” I may occasionally ask my partner to also wipe off their sweaty hands on something because I want to hold their hand, but I don't want it to be gross.

I: That's super fair. I like mittens during the winter. You just get the, like, clasped your weird socks together.

J: One better than holding hands is like linking, linking your hand through someone's, like, elbow as you walk or like linking arms. It's not practical in any way, but it is so, so good and intimate.

I: I have pulled so many people down this way during trips.

J: They're supposed to hold you up! You're not supposed to pull them down— date stronger people!

I: No, I want to be the strong one.

J: Fair enough. Fair enough.

I: You made me think of, like, one of my favorite things. And it only happens when I'm, like, in, like, a more, like, submissive role within a relationship. When someone touches, like, the small of your back and leads you forward, like, oh, like, I'm so here for that.

J: A rare treat in this, in this time

I: Anyways!

J: Yeah, moving aside from our various responses to desire, mm!

I: This is a great episode.

J: How does this tie in… so these two types of desires basically play into like that that gas pedal, right?

I: Yes. And so it just basically… it just gives you like a little bit more context of like how desire can manifest, whether it's like more quickly versus like longer term. And it's just like helpful when you're talking about desire and arousal because some people like maybe they are more spontaneous desire. You're communicating with a partner, having the information of like “I have more spontaneous desire versus responsive desire, it's more like I, I need that more like quick drop of a hat, like, let's go, let's do this. I don't need this whole build thing”. Where some other people like they want the build up. They want to feel wooed, is like the term that is that's coming to mind right now. They want to feel wooed and they want they respond over time and build desire over time. And so, like having this language is just really helpful in talking to partners about like what works for them.

J: Definitely. Especially because humans tend to have this bias that we think what is normal for us is normal for other people as well. So if you're assuming like, yeah, I experienced responsive desire, I want to be wooed, I want someone to take their time. They want lots of foreplay. You might operate on the assumption everyone is like that, but you may be with a partner that finds that wooing, that courtship, that foreplay, frustrating, borderline edging that they did not consent to because maybe they have spontaneous desire and they just kinda want to go. So having that communication to make sure nobody's unintentionally doing something that maybe another person doesn't want or not doing something that a person needs really just avoids relationship conflicts that don't need to be there.

I: Right. And this goes back to what I said about SES and SIS is that every person is different. Some people are more sensitive in their own way, and it's really helpful to have these conversations. So like having conversations about responsive and spontaneous desire, maybe someone has like a really sensitive emergency break or even just like a secondary break and that their break is so sensitive that like when certain things come up, it's just like, oh, that like completely ruins it for me. And knowing ahead of time from like a partner perspective of like, oh, if I touch your body in that area, that ruins it for you. Or if I make a certain sound or if I make jokes in the middle of sex like that is something that, like, causes a decrease in arousal for my partner. Like, that's helpful to know and that's helpful communication to go about desire and arousal

J: Definitely. And especially, you know, everyone wants to know like, hey, what turns you on, what gets you hot? But knowing, you know, what does the opposite of those things is just as if not more important.

I: Yes.

J: Because especially for like what you were saying with those emergency break things, because, you know, you can maybe course correct against the like slow chronic break. But like it’s— you're not going to accelerate beyond an emergency break with any success.

I: So like from parents who have like young children, if they start hearing like children crying and screaming in another room like that's an emergency break they have to deal with said children. And after dealing with said children, it's going to be really hard to get back into that mood of like, yeah, feeling sexy and aroused, especially depending like on the kiddo. It's important to recognize how these structures function and how someone can like, help support their partner or help support themselves and understand themselves better. Which leads us into arousal concordance versus arousal non concordance.

J: Hell yeah.

I: So arousal concordance, simply put, is when a person feels physically aroused, meaning that like their body, so like if they are experiencing an erection of a penis or a clitoris or if they have a vaginal canal it is being lubricated through the body's own system. And then the mental desire so like mentally, emotionally feeling desire, feeling aroused, they coexist at the same time, which makes it very easy for someone to want to engage in sexual activity. So data component, because I love data and I think percentages are fun. Cis men experience this 50% of the time, which means that the other 50%, there's some sort of like it's not coming together exactly. So somebody might be experiencing an erection of the penis, but like not feeling mental or emotional desire. And they're just like, why the heck am I suddenly having a hard on? We see this in media, we see this in conversations quite frequently, where it’s just like, I don't quite understand.

I: Cis women experience arousal concordance— so the mental and physical alignment happening and like being in, like having that arousal and having desire— only 10% of the time.

J: Don't love how low that number is.

I: Don’t like that number at all. Which means the other 90% that like their mental desire and their physical desire are not aligned.

J: I was just curious if this data showcased which way that misalignment happened. Is this like 40% of the time it's like the brain is aroused, body isn't. 50% of the time the body's aroused, the brain isn't. Or do we not have that data?

I: I don't have that information. I'm really sorry. This…

J: No, you don't gotta apologize.

I: The research shouldn't give that sort of like description of what was going on.

J: I feel like for any researchers out there that want to throw money at us, the difference between those types of arousal non concordances, definitely influences how you're going to respond to and feel about the arousal non concordance.

I: That’s fair. I can speak from my own personal experience of like arousal non— well, we haven't even gotten into arousal.

J: Sorry, I didn't mean to jump the gun there.

I: No, it's fine. Let's get into arousal non concordance and then I can give personal examples. How about that?

J: Hell yeah.

I: We're talking about, like, arousal concordance, and how, like, cis women experience this 10% of the time, cis men experience this 50% of the time. We do not have information pertaining to the trans and gender diverse community because that's how funding goes. Arousal non concordance is when the physical and mental arousal are just not in sync. So now that we understand that, which like we’ve been leading up to and we've been insinuating this entire time, it just means that the mental and physical components of arousal are just not in sync for a person.

J: Like, someone can pull that emergency brake we were talking about with the sexual inhibition system, but your body may still have blood in your genitalia. Like just because your brain had a bucket of cold water dumped on it doesn't mean your dick did. Or actually vice versa. Someone could very literally dump a bucket of water on your dick, which is going to affect the blood flow. But maybe that's your kink. I don't know.

I: Yeah. I was thinking like a heterosexual cis normative couple, and we're getting together and it's hot and heavy and everything's going well and the person with the penis isn't getting a hard on and they're just like, “Oh, I'm so frustrated that, like, I really want to have sex with you.” And like, that frustration is actually creating that secondary break of the chronic low level “No, thank you” because you're experiencing that frustration of not getting that physical arousal. Another example is and we see this a lot in like sexual assault and sexual violence scenarios of having somebody orgasm in the middle of experiencing sexual assault or like creating a lot of internal lubrication while experiencing sexual violence. And that is like the body picking up like this is a sexual experience and not really understanding from like a central nervous system perspective of “I am in danger in this moment and I am being violated at this moment.” And so creating that physiological response, but mentally, nowhere near there whatsoever.

J: It's like if you're donating blood, your body still responds as though you are being like minutely stabbed or as though like something has scraped you and your body panics, even though your brain is like, “Hey, this is no big deal. We are in a safe environment. These nurses are taking care of us.” Your body doesn't know that. And this is the same situation kind of in reverse where your brain is like, “this is a bad situation. I don't want to be here,” but the physical nerves on your skin are just responding to the physical stimuli.

I: Yes. And then like this is a personal experience that continues to happen in my life. My physiological response often is to be wet from whatever stimuli that my body is picking up, which means that sometimes as someone who gets very wet, as someone who likes squirts on a very regular basis, it means that, like if I'm wearing a dress or a skirt, there's like leakage on the seats that I sit on a lot of the time.

J: Unfortch.

I: Yeah. It was really awkward in high school. I didn't have the language to explain that and there's like nothing to do in those situations where it's like, Oh my God. And I was like as a teenager wearing pads when I wasn't menstruating so that like something was touching the fluid and it didn't look like that, I was like wetting myself.

J: And that's so frustrating, especially when you don't have the language to be like, I'm not horny right now. We're in math. And well, math is very sexy to me personally, but in general, math is not sexy. Why? Why are the sexy liquids occurring?

I: Right. And then also being a teenager, who like, hadn't even had sex yet, being like, why am I like— for me in that moment it felt like, why is urine slowly leaking out of me? This is really weird. And it wasn't that. It was my vulva of being like, “we are aroused” for whatever reason because like high school and hormones, but like—

J: sometimes your— like skinny jeans were very in fashion when we were in high school. Like I've been warned as I'm, you know, taking more testosterone, there's going to be days where I will not be able to wear skinny jeans because my t-dick will not allow it. And I'm not looking forward to that majority of my fashion. Any, I mean, anything could be a factor, raging hormones. Just bodies being— Bodies are weird.

I: Bodies are super weird. And like, I think it's important to like have these conversations of like sometimes things just don't line up.

J: Exactly.

I: And that's okay. Just want to point out like, that is normal. That is okay. We're clearly seeing in the data that a good majority of the time whether your cisman ciswoman and like who knows for the trans and gender diverse community but I know you all are experiencing this as well. We're not all experiencing arousal concordance. That's just like not the reality that we live in. So having some of this terminology is just really helpful to know what our bodies are doing, what our experiences are, and to hopefully be able to communicate that to partners.

J: Absolutely. Yeah, because arousal non concordance, I don't think is an end all be all of like, “oh no, my arousal, it's unaligned what do I do?” In, like, the example Iris gave, you know, if you are having physical discomfort, there are physical things you can do to alleviate that discomfort. If it's the kind of thing where it's like, “Oh my, my body want something right now,” you don't have to do anything about it. Like you can just be like, “All right, body is going to do. It's a weird thing. As long as it's not causing me distress, I don't really need to bother with it right now.” And then of course, on the other side, one of the most common examples of correcting, not arousal non-confidence is Viagra. There are plenty of people with penises who are like, “I would like to do the sexy now” and the penis just will not hold blood in it to do the sexy. And that's something we have medications for. Similarly, you know, if you are in more of that responsive desire mode of function, foreplay is a great way to kind of get those arousal non concordance is in conjunction with each other. And also just like what we were talking about with the chronic low level sexual inhibition system, the idea of like taking off the mental pressure a little bit where it's like “I want to be aroused, I’m really mentally there, but I'm not physically there.” If you are so focused on being physically there, you're going to lose it mentally. You know, taking it easy and kind of accepting arousal non concordance as just an annoying but not dire aspect of human life.

I: And I literally had that experience recently with someone that I'm sleeping with, where they… Like it was our first time sleeping together, I invited them over and like finally a sexual partner I found on a dating app.

J: Congratulations

I: Ican be a whole. This is great.

J: We love a whole era.

I: Yes. I asked them like, what, what are you hoping to get out of this experience? Like, what do you like? What do you not like? And like they had never had, like a frank conversation about this whatsoever and was like, cool, you're 32. Better start now. [laughter] And…

J: Never too late to start. Never too late.

I: It’s never too late to start. Especially since, like, our sex education is just so piss poor.

J: How did that go?

I: This person was just like, oh, like, my goal is to, like, get you off. And it's like, okay, well, that's not my goal. Personally, I don't… My goal is not to orgasm. Personally, my goal is not also to like have you orgasm, personally. My goal is to have an intimate moment where we are being sexually active with one another and if orgasm happens, that's cool. If it doesn't, that's also cool! This human was very much taken aback being like, your goal isn’t orgasm? And it's like, Dude, you can see my mother fucking shelf, my display case of sex toys. If I want to orgasm, I will make that happen any time of day. I have that power and I paid a lot of money to make that happen. My goal is the interpersonal intimacy. If your goal is to orgasm, we can definitely try and make that happen. But also, with that being a goal, it does add a lot of pressure to it and that makes it often a lot harder in my experience with people who like their goal is orgasm. If the goal is intimacy or the goal is to have fun, or the goal is like, how many puns can we do in like a sexual experience? Or is the goal like can we make Iris, because they're really wet all the time, like, can we get them to leak through the waterproof blanket?

J: No, that's a bad goal!

I: The answer was yes, by the way.

J: Nooo. I mean, like I'm glad you I obviously due to arousal non concordance that is not a generative indicator of having a good time. I'm going to operate on the assumption given that you’re talking about is, a good time was had?

I: A good time was had. I am disappointed in my blanket.

J: [laughing] Yes. I’m disappointed in your blanket too! That sucks!

I: Granted, this blanket has dealt with eight years of my wetness. Like I don't expect the most out of it. And like it took eight years for me to leak through and that was a lovely multi hour session.

J: First of all, goddamn, I'm insanely jealous. Second of all, listeners, you can't see, but I'm offering like a very solemn salute to the to the diligent service your blanket has provided. Braver than any U.S. Marine.

I: [laughter]

J: Doing, doing more for our community.

I: The conclusion of the story is this person was just like, “Oh, I never thought of it that way. That might have actually helped in previous situations.” And just like yeah like the goal shouldn’t be orgasms. Orgasms are fun and we like them and we encourage them, unless we have a D/s dynamic in that we are not encouraging them. And that is cool too. But like the whole point of this is like we need to talk about like what do we want to do? Is the point to have fun? Is the point to like be intimate? And it’s like all these different things. And it had never been framed that way because we live in a society where orgasm is the goal.

J: Yeah. And exactly like you said earlier, when you're so focused on orgasming, it not only makes it harder to orgasm, but I feel like it makes the orgasm less fun. Or it's like, I guess we've come now, we roll over and go to sleep, I guess because that's what the handbook says?

I: Yeah.

J: That's boring.

I: And for me, as someone who can like more easily orgasm, I understand that this is like a real privilege for most people's afab bodies. For someone who can easily orgasm and can easily like do it 12 times in one session with somebody. My goal isn’t orgasm. That just isn't my goal at this point. And for some people who don't get to experience orgasm as frequently as I do, the goal often becomes orgasm because it becomes more difficult. But if we encourage the intimacy, the touch, the— if there's love and romance— the love and romance,

J: Hell yeah.

I: Or the fun of the experience or the difference of sensations, the heightened like when you're like the hairs on your body get like all pointy up and like every brush against your body, like, feels so good. Like, why aren't we encouraging those feelings? Those are fun fucking feelings.

J: Hell yeah. And also as someone who previously or possibly currently I can never really tell, has had trouble with orgasming, the flip side of the coin can be true too, where it's like if you have trouble orgasming sex very much does not revolve around orgasming. Sex is about having fun. Seeing can I figure out this tie on this body type? Or like, can this person and I, like, accomplish this before a roommate comes home? Like, you know, sex becomes just more expansive and you have a lot more options.

I: Exactly. I hope this helped, Wes.

J: Yeah! Wes, thank you so much for your great question.

I: Wes, if you have further questions, because I know we went over a heckin’ a lot of stuff, feel free to reach back out. We'd love to hear from you.

Yeah. Thank you so much. And yeah, I guess. TLDR Arousal non concordance, The brain and the body are not on the same page when it comes to arousal, but it's not the end of the world and most people experience it.

I: So thank you so much for listening as we talk about our favorite things. Got a kinky question? Send us your queries at kinkyqueeries@gmail.com or follow us on Twitter @kinkyqueeries. That's 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 two weeks. And that is at some point.

J: Yeah, that is. At some point I think you're going to be hopefully on a more regular posting schedule. We appreciate all of you that have been listening as we've been a bit, I suppose non concordant with our posting, but…

I: We were on an accidental hiatus is how I put it on Twitter.

J: Accidental hiatus is the perfect way to say it. But yeah, we should be back now and it's been really exciting to talk with you again, Iris, as it always is.

I: Yeah.

J: You brought such evocative research and evocative imagery to this episode. I'm so blessed.

I: Oh good. I'm glad that I can help because I… like I knew of these concepts previously, and this is something that I’ve read up on previously, but it's always nice to like have a refresher and read more literature about things. It was nice. I liked it.

J: Well and this was a great deep dive too. So again, please send in your questions. We need.. Research and talking about research is why we have this podcast. So this was great. Let us access all the, you know, behind a paywall academic articles that you can't, you know.

I: Yes. And I am more than happy to download the PDFs and make them available on our website for any research that people want to have access to or any research that I come across and want to make easily accessible to everybody.

J: Hell yeah, it's what the researchers really want at the end of the day.

I: Exactly. Or if you don't feel like going through us, you can just email the researchers and they'll send you the fucking PDF themselves.

J: Yeah. Most researchers will be very, very happy to share their work and are not very happy it’s behind a paywall.

I: Well, because they don't get paid to publish their research. They often pay to have it published.

J: Yeah. Yeah, so…

I: And then those publishing companies make money off people buying it, which is fucking bullshit.

J: Yeah. Academia is, it's dark. You could say we have a lot of dark academia in, in our society. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.

I: You are totally not sorry.

J: I'm not. I'm not sorry at all. [laughter]

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