Counternormative Erotic Principles.
This is an article that was recently published by my mentor, colleague, and friend Caffyn Jesse. It spoke deeply to me and powerfully illustrated many of the guiding principles and values that inform my work as a Somatic Sex Educator:
This is another reflection on what principles might distinguish my approach from those you might find with other teachers of eros and intimacy. In all my ways of work and play, I want to trouble normal and embrace the counternormative.
When people arrive at the studio of an intimacy educator, they are often driven by the question, “How can I become more normal?” The Diagnosic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders offers an overwhelming list of s*xual pathologies, ranging from Hypoactive S*xual Desire Disorder to a variety of Hypersexual Disorders. There is even a Non-Normative Paraphilic Disorder ever-ready to pathologize anyone who longs for something outside the box.
I see all our so-called pathologies as creative adaptations. They save our souls; they simultaneously have enormous costs. I want to invite each person I work or play with into a counternormative framework, where the inquiry can gently shift to one of “How can I become more fully me?”
Standard s*x therapy works towards normalization. Consider unintentional ejaculation – a common problem. Desensitizing creams, dissociative techniques, medications and exercises are focused on getting the person with the so-called problem to better approximate an ideal norm of PIV intercourse. Two minutes of penetrative s*x is considered a cure. Taking normalization out of the picture, we can focus on building capacity for expanded pleasure through body-based exercises and experiences. We can create counter-normative erotic space where ejaculation is welcomed and celebrated without signaling the end of a s*xual experience, and where s*xual experiences can include a wide range of physical and emotional pleasures that do not depend on having a hard c*ck. Ending unintended ejaculation is a welcome effect of this approach, but the creation of counternormative understandings is its foundation.
Common presenting issues in the realm of intimacy education include painful intercourse, low desire and anorgasmia. Often a client’s reach for healing and well-being is framed as a desire to normalize s*xual behavior and s*xual response. But all these “dysfunctions” fall away in the counternormative framework of erotic culture that celebrates non-penetrative options for erotic expression, solo s*x, erotic interactions without the orgasm imperative, and the choice to not be s*xual at all. When we don’t make our bodies' choices into dysfunctions, we get space to listen, tease, please and engage in respectful dialogue.
Whether someone is healing s*xual trauma, mending a couple relationship, exploring identity or navigating a gender transition, we can support each person on their journey to healing and well-being with a critical framework that challenges the biases, suffocating paradigms and structural inequalities held in ideal norms. We inherit a culture that specifies an ideal norm for gender, body size, s*xual expression and relationship structure, and we embody the daily and lifelong challenges of either conformity to or deviation from ideal norms. By looking critically at the regime of normal, and grounding our work and play in counternormative culture, we can offer people joyous and creative alternatives to normalization, including self-acceptance and the celebration of diversity. With a counternormative perspective, we can see that ideal norms do not emerge naturally. Our practices, identities and relationships unfold in an environment that punishes and pathologizes certain ways of being, while rewarding others. Normal is a social location that is continually produced and policed.
Contributing to counternormative culture and dwelling in counternormative community, we co-create a crucible in which we can go on becoming truer, wilder, evermore deeply erotic versions of ourselves. When my attention is not focused on values that cluster around an average, I can better see what is rare, and find it precious. There are aspects of me and you that are unique, and no one else will do. There are extraordinary moments of life and death in which different elements interact in the creation of something new. That is the great holy wild I want for us. Those are the otherwise-unknowable ecstasies.