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Special Guest Silva Neves
92 Plays2 years ago
On this episode of The Plainly Queer Podcast, we welcome our guest Silva Neves, a psychosexual and relationship therapist and supervisor and a pioneer in GSRD (Gender, Sexual and Relationship Diversity) training in the UK and beyond. Silva is the author of Compulsive Sexual Behaviours and co-editor of the books Erotically Queer and Relationally Queer, both Pink Therapy guides for practitioners.
In the episode, we discuss issues affecting the Queer community, including the current rise in homophobia, transphobia and biphobia in our society. We touch on serval topics from Erotically and Relationally Queer, such as Queer sex, religion within the Queer community and shame, to name a few. Join us as we explore what it is to be Erotically and Relationally Queer with guest Silva Neves.
Reading list:
Erotically Queer. A Pink Therapy Guide for Practitioners. Edited by Silva Neves and Dominic Davis. ISBN 9781032197319
Relationally Queer. A Pink Therapy Guide for Practitioners. Edited by Silva Neves and Dominic Davis. ISBN 9781032197241
Compulsive Sexual Behaviours. A Psycho-Sexual Treatment Guide for Clinicians. Silva Neves. ISBN 9780367465483
Please note that this episode discusses potentially distressing topics. Engage mindfully and seek professional help if needed.
Thank you for being part of our Plainly Queer community.
Below is a list of resources that may be of help to anyone listening:
Queer affirming counselling and psychotherapy services: https://www.insightmatters.ie/
LGBTQ+ community support in Ireland: https://lgbt.ie/
LGBTQ+ Youth Support in Ireland: https://www.belongto.org/
Transgender Equality Network Ireland: https://teni.ie/
The Samaritans: https://www.samaritans.org/ireland/samaritans-ireland/
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction of Silva Nieves
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome everybody to the Plainly Queer podcast. In today's episodes, we're delighted to welcome our guest, a very warm welcome to Silva Nieves, a psychosexual therapist, author, supervisor, and speaker. Silva, so, so welcome. Thank you for joining us on the podcast today. Thank you so much for inviting me. It's such a pleasure to be here.
00:00:21
Speaker
were delighted. Silva, anybody who doesn't know, he was not familiar with your work, would you mind giving a little introduction to who you are, what you do, and how you came into this field?
Journey as a Therapist
00:00:32
Speaker
Sure, I've been working as a psychosexual and relationship therapist for now about maybe 12 years and first trained as a generic psychotherapist and then I did a postgraduate in psychosexual and relationship therapy and then trauma therapy and then I just kept training because I just love learning
00:00:52
Speaker
And so, but I've been practicing in my private practice for about 12 years now. And I see individuals, couples, people in multiple relationships of all sexual orientations and all minority backgrounds. I've been working in London, central London, that was my practice, but since COVID I've been working online.
00:01:12
Speaker
I suppose I should start asking questions. Yeah, let's do it. You mentioned your work as a psychosexual and relationship therapist and gender, sexually and relationship diverse affirming therapist. What kind of trends do you see in your work? If you can kind of speak to that in a generic
00:01:31
Speaker
without going too specific of course given confidentiality. But yeah, so what trends do you see and what challenges do you think the queer community face kind of in the current scheme of things as we progress forward?
Queer Joy vs. Struggles
00:01:46
Speaker
I think the challenges of the queer community mostly at the moment is oppression, and that's not new, but it's different now, I think. So what comes with that is that in the UK, for example, it's seen as a liberal country, so people are encouraged to come out younger. And when they come out younger, they basically encounter homophobia or biphobia or transphobia younger as well.
00:02:09
Speaker
And there is that and then also there is a lot of push for people saying the queer joy and living my best life and all of that, which is fantastic. You know, I'm not saying this is bad, this is great. This is one good thing, a good model in social media where people can actually
00:02:26
Speaker
see a model of thriving when you are queer or LGBTQ. But at the same time, what that does is that it erases the struggles that people still have now today in 2023. And unfortunately, we know that homophobia, biphobia, and transphobia is still biting, is still around, maybe not as overt as it was with Margaret Thatcher's Section 28.
00:02:49
Speaker
but it's still very much out there quite covertly now, but still there. And sometimes not covertly. It's still in 2023. You can't hold hands with your same-sex partner anywhere in the street. You still have to scan the environment for safety before you can hold hand. And holding hand is a small gesture that heterosexual people don't even have to think about it. But if you're queer, you do have to think about it. So just that.
00:03:15
Speaker
is really indicating that there is still a lot of homophobia and biophobia and transphobia. So that's one thing. And people are still battling with oppression, but because it's covert, it's less maybe tangible. And so people often might come into the room and say, oh, I drink too much, or I'm feeling depressed, or I feel bad about myself. I always feel like I'm a failure. I don't live my best life like other people.
00:03:39
Speaker
And when you just build all the layers, really, what they are struggling with is the fact that they've never felt good enough because they're comparing themselves to what we call the majority, which is the heterosexuality and cisgender majority. And so then people feel bad about themselves.
00:03:59
Speaker
And one of the reasons for this is because everybody still now, even in 2023, we are raised to be heterosexual. We are raised to be monogamous. All the narrative out there, even fed to our children with cartoons and stuff, is one of heterosexuality and monogamy and being
Impact of Societal Expectations
00:04:20
Speaker
cisgender. So it's when people start to realize that they are not like that or they're different,
00:04:28
Speaker
it starts to create some internal discomfort. And then we take on what we call internalized homophobia. Sometimes it can be internalized biphobia or internalized transphobia, which means that we start to develop this kind of thinking that's negative.
00:04:46
Speaker
around sexual orientation and gender diversity. And that becomes part of the normal for queer people from very early age. And so that means that then it's almost undetected. They can't say, I feel bad because society tells me that I'm wrong or I'm not like the others or I don't fit in the norms. They will just say, I'm bad because I'm failing. So of course they blame themselves.
00:05:12
Speaker
It's all unconscious, nearly. It's like, we kind of, it's just innate. It's put into us. It's, it's, it's literally put into us. And just when you were speaking there to queer joy, we did a, an episode recently and we talk, we were discussing queer joy and I just couldn't get into it. I couldn't get into the space. I was feeling a bit down on myself and I didn't feel authentic discussing queer joy. And we came up with this thing that Clodagh put a very good word on it.
00:05:41
Speaker
She said, it sounds like you're in a funk. And I was like, I am. I'm in a queer funk. I can't feel queer joy because I am in a queer funk at the moment. And I'm just at a low point. So yes, this queer joy and like that, everyone's kind of spreading it all over social media and stuff. But there's the other side of it, that there's a very harsh lived experience as well within the community that also needs to be recognized and spoken to.
00:06:04
Speaker
That's right. Absolutely.
Vicarious Trauma and Safety
00:06:06
Speaker
And one thing that we don't often talk about is the impact that homophobia and biphobia and transphobia has on us, even if it doesn't happen in our doorstep, because there are communities and because we identify with queer people, if we see in the media that queer people are being hunted and killed in other countries that have anti-gay laws, it actually affects us. It's what we call vicarious trauma.
00:06:27
Speaker
So when I hear a story about those countries that have anti-gay laws, and there are 67 at the moment in the last count in the world who have anti-gay laws, and you hear those stories, it really do affect us. And again, it affects us in a way that we don't always necessarily pick up consciously, but it goes straight into our heart and it goes to that wound.
00:06:47
Speaker
So, and there are examples everywhere if you really think about it. Just last year when Qatar was on the World Cup, and in the UK here the government at the time was telling us that we should make compromise and we should just allow it to happen and brush it under the carpet. That's one way of dismissing us really.
00:07:09
Speaker
And those are, again, like small little things, but actually it means a lot. But also we can see, for example, in the USA, which is another country that's supposed to be liberal, apparently. And when we hear that there is don't say gay in some states and then other states, they want to ban drag queens. And all of that stuff actually affects us. Even though it's far away, we identify with the hurt, we identify with the oppression, and it's part of the wound.
00:07:39
Speaker
In Ireland, just recently, actually last week or a week and a half ago, it was last week, I think. It was actually the day of international kind of automation of transphobia, biphobia and homophobia. And sorry, Claudia, Virginia. Yeah, thanks for saying that because that actually is
Legal Rights vs. Acceptance
00:07:56
Speaker
a really important point. On that day, there was a 14-year-old, a young person was attacked because of their queerness, because they were gay.
00:08:03
Speaker
and brutally attacked and it was filmed and it was broadcast and there was outrage and you kind of go, how are we still here? How is this still happening? And I remember when we got marriage equality, when we voted for marriage equality, one of the first nations to ever vote for it, it wasn't legislated, it was to change our constitution. I remember that day
00:08:28
Speaker
When the vote was so high, I think it was like 70% of Ireland voted in favour of them. And I remember thinking, my country is behind me. So you mentioned there the holding of the hand. I was like, I know if I decide to do that, that if somebody decides to be home for towards me or attack me or any day, say anything towards me, the majority of people around me will have my back.
00:08:53
Speaker
That has changed for me in the last number of years. That has confidence in my community, in the world around me, has been around it. And I don't know, can you speak to what you think is contributing to this upward trend in just the blatant attacks? It's more outward. It's more, it's not as covert, as you said. It's very overt in places.
00:09:21
Speaker
Yes. And you're right. I mean, we've got the law, which is great. Okay. And the law protects us, but actually how the people live in the streets is really different. And the fact that we have our rights now, it's even some people who are homophobic or biphobic or transphobic, they even use that to say, well, you've got all your rights now, so can you just shut up about it and stop having pride? And why can't we have straight pride?
00:09:43
Speaker
you know all this stuff that you hear about it and that's because they think that being having equal rights that we should be grateful to have equal rights and that we have them we should we should just be quiet but the problem is that the reality is that in the streets it's not equal rights and if even though it's it's illegal now to have head crime against LGBTQ people if it happens people turn a blind eye most of the time they will not even if they disagree with the head crime that they're noticing they're not going to come and rescue you
00:10:11
Speaker
So we feel pretty kind of alone a lot of the time. And if there is now because of things that's happened like COVID and the cost of life crisis and all of this stuff, everybody's so angry and everybody has something to be angry about. And so when it comes to
00:10:31
Speaker
Oh, you got attacked because you chose to hold your partner's hand. Oh, boo-hoo, whatever. And that goes like on the pile of forms that people have to fill in that never gets to be seen properly, really. So again, it's so easy to dismiss those things and people still believe.
00:10:48
Speaker
that it is a choice. Well, it's you, isn't it? You chose to hold the hand and now you got attacked. Well, there you go. It's like telling women that they got raped because they had a small skirt and they got drunk. So again, it's another way of... Victim blaming. Yes, it's victim blaming. It's another way of dismissing our struggles. It's another way of saying, why can't you just have a party at home and don't show your face in the street because that's up to you to get attacked if you're in the street.
00:11:12
Speaker
So all of that things is really happening. It's happening on a daily basis. And if you're not queer or identifying anywhere with LGBTQ, you literally don't see it. You don't notice it, you don't see it because that's the privilege of heterosexuality. So it doesn't get seen. And yet people get attacked in the streets almost every weekend. Can I follow up, Sylvia, if you don't mind? Because even as you're talking, and I've discussed this recently, I get angry. I get very
00:11:42
Speaker
angry about all this happening.
Constructive Anger and Activism
00:11:45
Speaker
And I'm thinking like, is this an okay emotion feeling? Should I just, should I not be angry about this? Should I kind of, how am I supposed to feel about all this injustice? Because I've been encouraged to be my true self, but to a point. And if I go beyond that point, the system, those oppressive systems are starting to fight back now, physically even, and attacking us. So I'm kind of like, I'm getting angry. So there's kind of like,
00:12:15
Speaker
Yeah, is that a healthy emotion? What's a good, healthy, emotional way to deal with this in your opinion? Impress your anger, is what I say. Yes, please, more of it. And sometimes actually anger is really, really good because anger has a lot of energy as an emotion. And if we can recycle anger into activism and into doing things like what we're doing right now,
00:12:38
Speaker
We're speaking maybe from a point of view of anger, but it's actually speaking and doing a podcast so that it gives information to people and the people that listen to this podcast who identify as queer, they think, oh, wow, okay, there are other people who feel like me and think like me and I'm not alone. So that's a really, really good way to recycle anger. Doing podcasts, going in the streets with other people so we can be doing activism and keep speaking up and speaking up and speaking up.
00:13:08
Speaker
Yeah. Well said.
00:13:10
Speaker
Yeah, thank you so much for that. I'm going to try and be focused here and say, we'll move on to the next question because otherwise I will just discuss this all the time and just basically process my anger and it becomes apparent. It happens quite a lot in our podcast, the processing of each other's whatever's going on that week. I think Clodagh might have another question. Sort of actually on that, my question is, so the need for a specialised therapist training in this field is very much, there's no argument for that.
00:13:40
Speaker
However, does it divide us in society? So there are queer therapists for queer people rather than us adding it into the collective and having this just be the norm in virtual commas here.
Need for GSRD in Psychotherapy
00:13:54
Speaker
Queer relationships are then on the fringe. They're not the norm when it's a divided subset within therapy. I was wondering, what are your thoughts on it? I fully agree the need for it, but it's almost like it's a separate entity from mainstream psychotherapy.
00:14:13
Speaker
Yes, at the moment it is, and it's considered a specialization because you have to actually look for the training specifically and then invest your time and energy into it. And the reason why we have to do it at the moment is because it is not included in all the core trainings in psychotherapy.
00:14:29
Speaker
And one of my fights for the profession is to integrate GSRD knowledge in all psychotherapy training because I think it needs to be integrated in all the trainings. You know, just like people in all trainings, you have modules on working with depression, anxiety, eating issues. It should be also with GSRD and not just the footnote at the end of a course or not just the
00:14:53
Speaker
the one weekend where you put all the non-heterosexual in together. And some people that experience this kind of training, they often call it the freak show weekend, right? When you just put all the other people that are not fitting the norm. And I don't think this is how it should be. I think it should be that all the diversities in gender, sex, sexuality, and relationship diversity should be
00:15:18
Speaker
integrated and within all the trainings and be in case studies when you look at all sorts of different issues. Because when you work with depression with a white heterosexual person is different from when you treat depression with a black heterosexual person and it's different from when you treat depression with somebody who identifies as in LGBTQ spectrum and depression. Those are different things because depression comes from different places and different oppression.
00:15:46
Speaker
So there you go. At the moment, we don't have that. It's very hard to find a textbook that was written before 2022 where there are case studies that show the diversity of people just as a fact, not just as a special population.
00:16:07
Speaker
It's the authoring, the continuation. The authoring is continuing and it's changing a little bit now but it's changing very very slow and it's changing too slow because at the moment still in 2023 there are plenty of people who say who are not heterosexual, white and cisgender and monogamous and vanilla
00:16:26
Speaker
If you're not that, basically they're saying that the therapy space weren't safe or it was judgmental or they didn't quite understand or the therapy was used to educate the therapist rather than helping the client. So I don't think it's good enough for a profession in 2023.
00:16:44
Speaker
And this is one of the motivation. This is my anger, my frustration, perhaps, by hearing clients after client after client telling me that their previous therapy was not so great. That's what gives me the motivation to recycle all of that energy of frustration into writing books.
00:17:01
Speaker
Is it okay if I speak to that quota for a moment? Yes, go first. And this is sparking so much, Silva, so excuse us. We're both trying to probably go to try and get in on stuff. But I suppose we are both based in Ireland. We both trained as psychotherapists in Ireland. And I recently just did my thesis on the kind of
00:17:21
Speaker
the queer student therapist and their experience and the resistance felt to assimilating basically, having to assimilate into this heteronormative narrative. And I suppose for myself, a lot of my research came from the UK. It came from yourself, Dominic Davis, Pink Therapy, the BACP and their guidelines. I know you've kind of worked collaboratively with them, but there's nothing like that here in Ireland.
Role of Queer Therapists
00:17:44
Speaker
there's very little. It's only starting off where I suppose in the UK it would be kind of, it has built up to something, but in Ireland there's, I think they're just laying the foundations, nothing has started to build yet. But in my core training, I think it was an hour, maybe two of GS or G kind of training or awareness. I was the only queer person in the space. And I just remember
00:18:07
Speaker
There was a heterosexual middle-aged cisgendered male having another discussion with another heterosexual cisgendered white male, one a lecturer, one a student, about Grindr. And, oh, what's Grindr? It's like, oh, that's what the gays use to have sex. And just
00:18:24
Speaker
the promiscuity and just putting that out there. And I literally, we were online at the time because of COVID and I picked up something that was on my desk and I threw it against the wall because the lecturer knew I was gay, that I was queer. And it was just, it was an awful experience. It was awful. And I think training is something you go through and then you get to be the therapist you want to be or that you need to be, to be your authentic self.
00:18:52
Speaker
And I think I was very lucky to have a very affirming space to do my clinical work, to be with clients from the queer community and to know that I was doing the right thing. I was on the right path because I found such a sense of purpose in this work.
00:19:09
Speaker
And like that, this is where I'm focusing that anger in a more positive way, like through sublimation. And so, yeah, sorry, I just wanted to speak to that. It's very true. And hopefully it will change. Yes, thank goodness. There are people who are queer identified who practice therapy to offer a safe space for queer people.
00:19:29
Speaker
And as you were saying, obviously at the moment it feels like it's a specialization and it's dividing different modalities in psychotherapy. I think that hopefully at some point it will be integrated in the knowledge for everyone so that all therapy spaces can be safe. So what we want to do really is uniting.
00:19:47
Speaker
or the knowledge into one and not just having to always have it to translate the case studies from heterosexuality into, oh, what would it be like for if you had a queer person instead, you know, and you have to do all the work yourself without a proper space in clinical training to discuss those things, you know. And still now, though, I mean, even in the UK, thank you for recognising the UK is doing quite a bit of work, but even now in the UK, there are still some
00:20:11
Speaker
some theories that prevail that are not fitting for the queer population. Things like, oh yes, maybe you're into polyamory because you've got an avoidant attachment style and you're avoiding monogamy, you know. People still think that if you're into King, that's because you had childhood trauma and all that kind of things. It's so reductive, isn't it? It's so reductive, yeah.
00:20:37
Speaker
You know, one of the reasons why we wanted to speak to you and get you on the podcast is because you edited and I think authored in one of the chapters, but one of the books was relationally queer and the other book was erotically queer. That's correct.
00:20:53
Speaker
Fabulous books. Now we did divide and conquer because as much and all as I'd love to be able to read too, but I'm not that fast. I'm not that fast to be able to do it. But in speaking together and talking about them, would you see those books, would you like to see those books as being part of the curriculum?
00:21:12
Speaker
Definitely. Is that the aim when you were writing? Yes, absolutely. The aim of those books is not really for queer therapists to read because they kind of already know that stuff that we're writing in those books, although there's always something new to learn.
00:21:27
Speaker
I've learned a lot co-editing those books actually you know so there's always more to learn but it's mostly for those books to be everywhere in all the therapy schools because they are much needed. It's those two books there's quite a few in that that's published recently that are really quite would be very good for all psychotherapies to read. Queering psychotherapy is another one one of our colleagues edited as well with lots of chapters from lots of really great clinicians as well and so these books need to be not just the
00:21:56
Speaker
the book to read at the end of the list of all the books, the books for the special population, it should be integrated as core reading. If it's okay if I follow on with a question from the Erotically Queer, which I think speaks to something we've kind of been discussing and building up to, but one of the chapters by Simon Alexander-Lynn on shame
00:22:20
Speaker
And you speak to the fact I'm queer and I'm reading this and I'm a clinician, I practice, but even I'm learning golden nuggets from it. It's really, really good work. So I really appreciate it. It's a great chapter. The one on shame is a great, great chapter.
Shame in Queer Mental Health
00:22:36
Speaker
And I actually really believe that shame is everywhere. And especially with queer people, it's just not possible to work with a queer person without working with shame. I don't think.
00:22:44
Speaker
And shame is just like what we were saying earlier about living in the oppression and it's normal for us and so it's not always detected. Living with shame is also normal for us and so it's undetectable a lot of the time and yet it really pulls the strings of our mental health.
00:23:00
Speaker
And so being able to recognize, to talk about it, to make it as part of the everyday conversation with queer people is so healing therapeutically. Because if it still stays in the dark, if shame stays in the dark, it just kind of becomes bigger and bigger and bigger because it loves the darkness, it loves lurking in the secrets part of ourselves that we don't look at, the shadow.
00:23:24
Speaker
And then what happens is on the surface is gay men just passing out of the dance floor and everybody wonders why. Or actually maybe that's because of shame that's just become out of control. I just I love in the chapter how it was framed that like shame is a symptom of relational trauma.
00:23:42
Speaker
And that was a really good way for me to frame it. And I think even as a lay person who's not in this realm or field would understand that and they would be able to trace back to that. But yes, it's a product of relational trauma. And a couple of things for me, I know you said that the gay man passing out on the dance for whatever.
00:24:01
Speaker
But a couple of things that came up to me and resonated with myself was the idea of shame contributing to being a sexual outlaw and that whole violating prohibition. And I suppose from a kink standpoint for myself,
00:24:16
Speaker
That totally makes sense. You know, that kind of way it's like, you look at, I'm doing this with rabbit ears, promiscuity and the negative connotations of that, but yeah, just being that sexual outlaw. I remember being a sexual outlaw in my twenties, my thirties and into my forties, but we needed something. We needed to kind of do something with this and that was the something. That's right.
00:24:40
Speaker
Yeah, for sure.
Intersection of Queer Identity and Religion
00:24:42
Speaker
If I can ask it on the relation in queer, one of the topics I love talking about is the intersection of religion and queerness. And in the book you talk about religion and queer identities. Can the beliefs shape a person's journey with their queer identity? What is the significance of religion in a queer person's life?
00:25:07
Speaker
Yes, it's a great chapter. This is Sakib's chapter. And actually editing that chapter, I've learned a lot about the intersectionality between queer and religion. And when I first read the chapter from Sakib, I was quite challenged as well because I have some very specific ideas about religion. And for me, religion is I don't connect with religion at all. So I understand faith. For me, faith is different from religion. I really understand faith.
00:25:35
Speaker
But religion that is basically a set of man-made rules that is imposed on other people, and if they don't follow the rules, then some punishment happens. I don't connect to that at all. And obviously we know with the queer history that religion has been a major part, all religions have been a major part in oppressing LGBTQ people.
00:25:57
Speaker
So I've got some particular feelings about religion. And when I read Saqib's book, I was like, oh, wow, there's actually some positive stuff about it that I just didn't really consider. And so I think that's a really great chapter. And what I've learned is that sometimes with religion, it is a really difficult place because you have to either people sometimes have to choose either between the identity, queer identity, or the religion, and they can't have both together because it means that
00:26:25
Speaker
If they choose the queer identity, then they will get ostracized by their religious communities and their family and they're losing everything basically. And if it's the opposite, they may repress their sexuality and therefore cause significant mental health to themselves.
00:26:40
Speaker
And both are just really not great ideas. And some people have to be courageous to choose one or the other in a very careful way. But what this chapter also has taught me and challenged me with is that it is possible in some instances to marry the two successfully. It's just that it takes a lot of reinterpreting different things and maybe also meeting other people that have the same intersection as you have so that you're not all alone with it.
00:27:09
Speaker
The importance of community. And I mean, you talk about that divide, choosing one or the other, that's a split in the soul. Anybody who has a spirituality or connects to a religion, having to choose one or the other, it really goes central to who they are, their sense of themselves in the world. And in both cases, your religion provides you with such a grounding.
00:27:37
Speaker
And who you are in your sexuality is another grounding in yourself and in the world. And it can cause such a divide, it can cause such harm, but you're right. When you are able to challenge that narrative, when you're able to meet others in community, in spirituality, in religion that can find the joy and find the connection, the true connection, it is powerful. And I think really healing.
00:28:05
Speaker
Definitely, absolutely. There are some various interpretations to religious texts and so sometimes it's also finding the queer-friendly interpretation and then people can sometimes decide that they're going to take on that interpretation and leaving behind what they've learned in their childhood or even what their parents believe and find a way to live with both.
Dismantling Societal Scripts
00:28:27
Speaker
Yeah. It kind of goes to life as well. We're handed so much as, as, as kids, as, as babies. And here's your identity. Here's the team you follow. Here's the culture you follow in terms of where you grow up. Here's like in Ireland, we have GAA. So like, here's like, you're just handed so much that.
00:28:44
Speaker
As the adult, as you're coming into your teens and adulthood, you get to kind of go, okay, well, actually I don't subscribe to that. I never have, but I've just gone along with it because I'm supposed to. So if you can really, as the adult kind of go, okay, what did I just swallow whole and what can I actually get rid of now that does not suit me? What does appeal to me? Rewrite that script. Cause there are so many scripts out there and there is one for everybody.
00:29:11
Speaker
That's right. Absolutely. There is definitely a story and a script that fits with everybody. You're absolutely right. And religion, the impact of religion, in Sakiv's chapter, is very much people who identify very strongly with the religion. But actually, if we look at it, there are so many things that we believe about sexuality or relationship. That is, that traces back to early Christianity or to some early religious thinking that now is so embedded in our society, we don't even remember that it's from religious thinking sometimes.
00:29:41
Speaker
But it was never written. Yeah, well, exactly. It's just been passed on. Yeah, it was male interpretation that suited a timeline or a narrative. I already went into this on another podcast where I'm like back in the Roman days, it suited emperors for monogamy to be the go-to, because then they want women to bear as many children so they can raise armies. And that's how this all came about, when in actual fact, you know,
00:30:11
Speaker
in front of the comments the alternative lifestyles were already there back in the day it was always there and even legislated against back then because if it was never if it never existed why was it legislated against back in that time so anyway it was it was a male interpretation of religious texts that said this was no longer acceptable but it's not actually written in the books it was never even in and like in a christia i can only speak to a christian side of things but
00:30:41
Speaker
and it's literally they took that as because he didn't speak to us you should be ashamed of it. He didn't speak to so much so like if you want to go down that route we'll go down that route but like anyway that's another tangent I would go on all day. Yeah but it's really important to talk about these things because we don't offer we don't
00:30:58
Speaker
talk about it enough, right? Those ideas that so many people have in my consulting room, I hear that all the time, like the gold standard of monogamy, or that I should not be fantasizing about somebody else because I'm with a partner. All these things really come from some religious thinking that was long ago.
00:31:19
Speaker
and being passed down as truth. Even things like blue is for boy, pink is for girl, this is just, that was a fashion marketing strategy to start with. Nothing, nothing with anything real really, so. I'd say this all the time. Everything is a social construct and everything can be dismantled and we can start again. It's that easy folks. Going for the utopia.
00:31:42
Speaker
Yeah, what's coming up for me is that's being discussed, is the importance to distinguish between faith and religion.
00:31:52
Speaker
And I think especially for the queer community, utilizing spirituality, linking into spirituality and kind of mindfulness for positive mental health effects, I think it's good to keep the word faith in mind because you do need a sense of purpose. You do need something in life. So I think that's why some people don't want to lead into spirituality.
00:32:15
Speaker
they associate it with religion but I think it's very important to kind of now frame it as faith and yes we do need faith as a community we need faith in each other and take what you need from that and let's kind of let's form our own religion no of course no yeah I think that's important
00:32:33
Speaker
Yeah, it's so important because sometimes it really makes a difference between somebody who's going to continue with struggling until things get better to somebody who decides to end their lives. When somebody feels like all alone and they have no more hope that things will get better, then that's when people want to end their lives. And we know that in the LGBTQ community, and especially amongst the young ones,
00:32:57
Speaker
Suicide is a high rate of suicide and that's just so awful and it's heartbreaking. But it might be because as a community, we're not so good at interacting with each other, speaking to each other and having that community faith of, hey, we're here, we're all identified as queer, we might be different and we have different ideas, but we're all identified as queer, let's just get together and be together.
00:33:23
Speaker
I think that's so hard though, because I hear what you're saying and I see it myself within the community. There's all these resources and people try and kind of maybe set up support groups, but people are always afraid to link in with them or people are always afraid to kind of, because we've been in ourselves for so long. We've been with just ourselves for so long that it's actually really difficult to reach out and engage with these supports, especially with other queer people, because you're so afraid of it. You're so fearful for being yourself.
00:33:53
Speaker
Do you think that's the shame? Yeah, of course, yeah. The shame of going, if I feel this badly, if I reach out and then somebody mirrors my badness, inverted commas, back to me, I will fumble under it. And they're crumbling anyway. So it's so sad. It's so, so isolated. It is very sad and isolated. And if we go back to shame as well, another way that the queer community is mitigating shame is by perfectionism.
00:34:21
Speaker
And so often, if you are a young queer person who's coming out and they want to go to the gay scene, what they might see is perfection everywhere, which actually increases isolation because it feels like, oh, okay, I'm going to get rejected. I'm going to get criticized because I don't look like the others. I don't have the right body. I don't wear the right clothes. I don't listen to the right music.
00:34:44
Speaker
And so can feel more and more isolated and it feels like this is not for me either. And then people feel like they don't have a space for themselves. And I think as part of that, to recognize that this is also a problem in our community about that, that it's too rejecting and too harsh. And we hear those experiences all the time from people on Grindr, for example, who have been just insulted for no reason.
00:35:09
Speaker
And that's not because people are bad in our communities, because we are traumatized and because we are full of shame, and somehow we need to mitigate it in the best way that we can. And if we were going to speak about, like we are now, speaking like now, just people looking different, not just the pinup in the cover of the magazine of Attitude, but actually no more people talking about how we can open our arms to our queer friends.
00:35:37
Speaker
and peers and to say hey there are some pockets of queer spaces that are really welcoming and anyone's welcome and we won't judge and we won't criticize because what we want is love and I think that maybe over time there might be more willingness to take the risk and and come to us. Beautifully said, beautifully said. I think that's kind of
00:36:02
Speaker
Where Paul and I have come from in terms of what we were trying to create, like we, we got together in terms of a conversation about we in a conversation about putting together a queer group in some therapeutic way. It changed into the podcast, but we were talking about how we felt we were bad gates.
00:36:24
Speaker
that we didn't know enough about the scene, we weren't in the scene, we weren't the typical, I wasn't the typical lesbian, he wasn't the typical gay man. You know, all of these, again, the narratives that we had swallowed and kept us on the outside. And we were like, okay, well, let's just be plainly queer then. Let's just be ourselves and have the conversations
00:36:44
Speaker
and learn more about the community and invite others to have the conversations. And that's literally how we started this podcast, how we started our conversations, is because we are so plainly queer. There's nothing special about us. We're amazing. We're fabulous, but yeah, we're basic. We're happy to be basic and I always say... Totally.
00:37:08
Speaker
Yeah, I always say with this podcast, we're like 0% production value, but 100% heart and authenticity. So that's the way we keep it forward. But if it's okay to shift Silva to ask a question based, I suppose, again on erotically queer, the book, just in relation to sex. So I suppose sex is a big part of the queer community. So I suppose the question would be for me, what is good sex?
00:37:35
Speaker
and what constitutes sexual success, which has been brought up in kind of erotically queer.
00:37:41
Speaker
Well, it's a big question, but the actual brief answer to that is good sex is basically when you feel pleasure and when you feel good about it. That's it. And so it's not about, it's not about how you look. It's not about how your partner looks. It's not about positions. It's not about the frequency is just feeling good, sharing your body with one person or several people and, and embracing that pleasure, shame free and guilt free.
00:38:10
Speaker
I think yeah I suppose that sounds great but in reality then you've kind of I think because of shame and because of kind of the other negative kind of mental health impacts I think it does impact sex for the queer community in relation to sexual desires kind of arousal's behaviors and fantasies and I think it's going into that whole thing of the sexual outlaw and to be oh I suppose what am I speaking to here I don't want to
00:38:38
Speaker
I don't want to demonise anything or I don't want to kind of, but there are practices where you can go in impulsively or compulsively and you're doing these not for the pleasure or the emotional feel-good feelings. You're doing them because it's speaking to something else that's in you that's not being fulfilled as a result of this.
Awareness and Healthy Relationships
00:39:00
Speaker
Do you get where I'm coming from with that? Yeah, of course.
00:39:03
Speaker
And that's part of good sex is to be aware of what is going on for you and what is the association that you're making when you're trying to when you decide when you select your partners and you decide who to have sex with and you decide what you're going to be doing and those conversations about consent and especially if you practice kink and BDSM you have to have those conversations that you have to know what you're doing and that means that you have to take the time
00:39:27
Speaker
and to be curious about your life. When people have sexual problems or compulsive sexual behaviors, it's often because they are in the dark. They have not enough awareness of what's going on for them. And one thing that I always say to people, there's just two different magic phenomenon that happens with sexual behaviors that are unwanted. One is that the more awareness there is, the less compulsivity there is. And the other one is the less shame there is, the less compulsivity there is.
00:39:56
Speaker
So there's a clear link between awareness and shame and how you're going to have sex, your sexual behaviors. So in some ways, if you are full of shame for different reasons, not just sexually, but if you think that you're bad, that you're wrong, that something's broken with you,
00:40:16
Speaker
and you keep believing that, that's going to affect all the areas of your life. But it's also going to affect the sex life, and for queer people, sex, the sex life is very important because that's the place where they feel alive, they feel affirmed, and also it's a big part of the culture, of the queer culture. And so if you then have bad sex or unsatisfying sex or things that's gone wrong, then that increases the shame straight away if you have not enough awareness of what is actually going on.
00:40:46
Speaker
and to learn to be kind to ourselves as well. We've never learned as a community to be kind to ourselves because there's not been a lot of model with that. For so long, for so long in the media, the queer person was the camp one or the funny one or the one or the promiscuous one, very kind of like type casted. It's only just now, very recently where there are some characters that are just everyday characters who happen to be gay. Oh, how wonderful, you know.
00:41:15
Speaker
But that's just only recent in our psyche. There's not a lot of that. There's not a lot of you can be gay and and in a monogamous relationship or you can be gay and being in an open relationship and that's totally fine or be gay, kinky and happy or any of those stuff. So so we criticize ourselves. We beat ourselves up for things that are actually quite normative for a lot of people. And and that's because of that's because of the shame and lack of awareness.
00:41:42
Speaker
I think just as you're talking there, I want to speak to if it's okay, a personal kind of situation that I had, a relationship.
00:41:49
Speaker
in which like I was taking like a passive role and I was like, well, I'm not, I don't want to take a passive role. I feel like we're equals. Are we not equals? And the dynamic got really toxic and my thinking around it, I was kind of like, what am I, why am I doing this to myself? So it ended pretty abruptly, but it's all like that. It's about that shit. I think I had an awareness that, okay, I deserve better than this. Like if I have certain needs in the relationship,
00:42:15
Speaker
And I have desires and they're based on the fact that I love the person. I'm sexually attracted to the person and I'd like to engage with them just as they engage with me. But there's all those, that was shame. That was everything. And that was awareness coming into it. So that's totally what you're saying is totally on the mark. And I think it's important for gay men, especially to hear that in this space. So thank you for speaking to us.
00:42:37
Speaker
Yes, that's right. And we all have the right, whatever we decide to have in our sex life at the beginning of a relationship, we develop, we change, and we have the right to change our mind or to want to explore different things as we go on. And it needs to be a space for that in relationships that are good relationships, where the honesty and mutual pleasure has to be ongoing conversations, and that will change over time.
00:43:00
Speaker
So, but also when people just think, well, I'm top and that because it's, it's associated with masculinity, that is also part of society that tells us that top means masculine. But in fact, there's lots and lots and lots of very, very masculine men who are bottom and love it. And, and it's, it goes into this gender binary kind of, and this masculinity narrative that we have as well. That's just really, really, really so unhelpful.
00:43:23
Speaker
It goes to the ability to, sorry, I just think it's the importance of having these conversations, but also giving the language to people to speak to it, going, as you say, it's ongoing, it's developing.
00:43:40
Speaker
My changes and needs, my wants, my desires are okay, I actually fancy trying or doing or having that availability within the relationship, having that capacity rather than going, I'm this person going into this relationship, this connection, this whatever it may be.
00:43:58
Speaker
and being rigidly defined by it. Everybody gets to be exactly who they are in any given moment. As long as you're not harming anybody, you go for it. And there's such a rejection of that.
00:44:11
Speaker
It's like a heteronormous thing. You're going, there's your role. Please stay in the box. If you go outside the box, we're not going to know where to put you and we're not really going to engage with you. So like, yeah, the importance of language in there. Sorry. Yeah, absolutely. And the way with, with my clients, or even when I teach about sexology, I really enjoy using the analogy of food because it's, because then people get it. The topic of sex can be quite scary, but often if I said to people, well, if you, if you meet your partner,
00:44:41
Speaker
And their favorite dessert is lemon tart. Are you going to be wanting them to enjoy lemon tart for the rest of their lives? And what if then suddenly it becomes the carrot cake? Are you going to be offended? And then suddenly people start to get us, oh, all right, yeah. So for someone, when I think of food or dessert, we can like different food. We can, maybe my favorite food is your most hated one. And yet,
00:45:03
Speaker
We don't feel offended by that and we can talk about our differences. Why can't we do the same with our erotic mind and our fantasies and our sexual turn-ons? And so you start conversation like this and then suddenly it makes better sense for people. And then the sexual conversation doesn't become so scary and people can start to understand about how they can navigate and explore the sexual life for better sex.
00:45:30
Speaker
Can I ask one follow-up question? And then I'm going to shut up because I'd be talking too much and close it, and the floor is yours for the rest of us. But I suppose just speaking to your book, Compulsive Sexual Behaviors, and talking about sex, is there a thing that's too much sex?
Rethinking Sex and Porn Addiction
00:45:46
Speaker
We talk about sex addiction and porn addiction. Are they a thing? Do they exist? When does it become too much?
00:45:55
Speaker
Yes, so it's another area that I'm passionate about because I see so much malpractice in this area. And the reason for it is because the literature on sex addiction and porn addiction is heavily embedded in heteronormativity, mononormativity as well. And so it means that the interventions really can be harmful for queer people.
00:46:17
Speaker
And that's why I've decided to write that particular book is because I've kept hearing over and over and over again of people being traumatized with places like 12 Step Program for Sex Addicts Anonymous or Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous, or even some sex addiction therapy. And I thought that our clients deserve better.
00:46:37
Speaker
And I don't think, first of all, there is sex addiction and porn addiction have not been endorsed by any scientific communities. DSM-5 refuted completely. And the ICD-11 came up with compulsive sexual behavior disorder. And they clearly state it's not an addiction because there's a lack of evidence to prove it. It's an impulse control disorder.
00:46:59
Speaker
Yet a lot of sex addiction therapists who make most of their money on the sex addiction treatment will say, oh, well, compulsive sexual behavior is the same as sex addiction. So we're just going to carry on doing what we do. And it's actually quite disgenerate, in my opinion. But that's another another item
00:47:17
Speaker
I'm fighting with our profession to try to open people's mind a little bit. It's just so important that people realize that there is more to the treatment than stopping behaviors. And in fact, stopping behaviors is often not really at all recommended.
00:47:32
Speaker
And there is not any measurement that tells you what is more sex, too much sex or not too much sex, too much porn or not too much porn. All of that is so subjective and it's so different from one person to another. We actually have to pay attention to the whole person to look at all of their association, their meaning, their sense of aliveness. And actually often what you realize is that people have
00:47:56
Speaker
sexual behaviors even multiple times outside of their primary relationship or in secret from their primary relationship because they're searching for other stuff that is actually really important to validate. And again, it's when it's brought up to the awareness of people rather than shaming them for doing those behavior and telling them the addicts, which I think is very shaming and quite disrespectful for people who struggle with real addictions. I think that we need to help them with understanding the erotic mind,
00:48:24
Speaker
with normalizing the turn-ons, and then with awareness, they will have a better erotic map to make better decisions with their sexual behaviors. But unfortunately, with a sex addiction treatment, there's hardly any sexology that's included in the treatment. Most of it is addiction theories they're using. And I just think it can be really problematic to apply the addiction theories to compulsive sexual behaviors or to sexual behaviors in itself.
00:48:52
Speaker
And I've seen so many things under the sun that's been really, really disturbing from sex addiction treatments like pathologizing kink, pathologizing polyamory, pathologizing a lot of queer sex that is pathologized. And that's just not okay for me. So there you go. I speak about it and some people love that I speak about it and other people
00:49:16
Speaker
I hate it. Well, I personally love hearing you kind of frame it and speak it. Consider my mind open and hopefully the minds of the people listening open. I say it's just my mother that listens to it, Silva, so consider her mind open. We'll start spreading the word on that because it makes perfect sense. It makes sense to think of it like that. And it's a healthier way to think of it.
00:49:42
Speaker
Like that it's normalizing, it's understanding, it's awareness. And then through that awareness can come positive change. So totally understand that and appreciate that. Thank you. The old adage of with awareness comes choice. What's happening if you understand yourself and if you have a choice of how you want to proceed in a healthy way, that's for you. Instead of this shame that's put on you with society of going, no, this is not right. This is the way it should be. And all of these second rules. Anyway.
00:50:12
Speaker
You're at the forefront, it seems, at a lot in terms of education, in terms of queer education, in terms of relationship dynamics, not just for the queer community. Polyamory is not just for the queer community. This heteronormous, monogamous sort of idea
00:50:31
Speaker
that we are just entrenched in, doesn't suit a lot of people. And polyamory is not new, multiple partners is not a new concept, it's been there since the dawn of time. Yes, that's right, heteronormativity does not suit a lot of heterosexual people. Yes, it really doesn't.
00:50:50
Speaker
Yeah. And, and even to roach the conversation of going, okay, well, if this isn't right for you, what would be right? And it's like, but it has to be right. It's the only, the only concept they can hold is that us together in a monogamous relationship, there is no room for a discussion of going, well, does it feel like you'd like other partners? Does it feel like there are needs being met? As soon as that's been said, people just go, what do you mean I'm not meeting their needs and the hurt and the pain? And it's like,
00:51:20
Speaker
this such a reductive understanding of what it means to be in a relationship and the offering of other types of relationship that has, that are available. I mean, it offers so much freedom, but anyway, my question actually is good to me. There's also really, sorry to interrupt, there's also some really interesting stats that are coming up now that it seems like the population that reports the best sex satisfaction are lesbians.
00:51:50
Speaker
And then it's, yeah. Go you, Clodagh, go you. That's right. And then it's gay men. And at the bottom of sexual satisfaction is heterosexual people. Doesn't surprise me. And that is because of heteronormativity, and that's because of poor sex education, and that's because heterosexual people think that it's just one rigid way of having sex. And of course, what that does is terrible dissatisfaction. Yes. Sorry, go on, Paul.
00:52:19
Speaker
No, I was just saying that the rigid, the word rigid, there's only one rigid way to have sex. And then it just brought into mind a kind of erect penis. And I was kind of like, cut out. Sorry. We're back at school again.
00:52:34
Speaker
I love it. But kind of leading on from kind of, as I say, you're at the forefront of, you know, education, really. And one of the things that has been happening in the world is the
00:52:51
Speaker
The removal of books from libraries, the removal of, we mentioned it earlier, don't say gay, the removal of just the expressions. Do you fear with your books, with what you've written on, that your books will become part of that narrative now, that you will be removed from
00:53:09
Speaker
Is it going to be from college libraries? Are we going to get that far or is it going to be just in every day go down the street? There's your library. Do you worry about that? Is that part of your experience or where does that come in? I worry about a lot of what's going on in the world, the state of the world. Yes, I worry about it. And I think it's not really going in the right direction for many countries. So, but at the same time, I think that books now can be accessed in many different ways. And, and, and a lot of people can.
00:53:39
Speaker
share them with each other in control band. If a country becomes like Gilead, basically, I think somehow they will be circulated in the black market or whatever. And then those become the books to hold onto, really. And I think there's many books, not just mine, but many, many books that are really worth skipping in libraries. And if they get to be banned, in some ways it's an indication of the state of the country.
00:54:08
Speaker
And it also probably heightens the popularity. Yeah, we have to keep going and we have to write more books. There's just not enough books that challenges the normal narrative that we need to change. Well said, well said. Apart from the books that you've written and edited, are there books that you would recommend for the layperson, the plainly queer person or an ally listening today that, okay, there's a lot of things we talked about today and touched on today. I'd like to learn more.
00:54:38
Speaker
Yeah, I would recommend any books from Meg John Barker. They are an amazing author that wrote many, many books and they will appeal to everybody else. They often co-author with another fantastic clinician called Alexie and Taffy, who also wrote books of their own as well. So look for those two authors and you'll be having a great treat. I recommend the graphic novels. The graphic novels are brilliant, sexuality and gender.
00:55:05
Speaker
and queer, there's graphic novels on all three subjects and they're amazing.
00:55:09
Speaker
Yeah, they are amazing. So we've had you for our block of time now and we're so, I'm just, I'm, I'm buzzed. I'm kind of like, I'm energized. I'm, I want to keep this, keep it going and just keep the discussion going and hopefully we can bring it into the kind of wider world. But it is, it just goes to show you when you're in a space and you can discuss these things freely, openly, ideas are sparked, kind of, you've got memories, got everything. That's.
00:55:39
Speaker
You just feel good. You just feel good in yourself as a queer person authentically. And yeah, I think I just hit on some queer joy here. Yeah. Speaking to the truth. Yeah. Amazing. That's the power of connection, isn't it? That's how we get queer joy.
00:55:55
Speaker
Yes, definitely. Thank you so much. This was so rich, so informative. And as we said, we've put all of your links into the show notes. Where's the best place people can find you? Is there anything coming up that you'd like people to know about? Anything you want to plug, you plug away now.
00:56:14
Speaker
Well, there's always my website. I'm not very good at marketing, but my website is silvernevers.co.uk. You'll just get all my information there. You can follow me on socials as well. I've got Twitter accounts and Instagram and Facebook. They're all kind of like my professional social media. So I put lots of stuff on information that's to do with sex, relationship, queer, and occasionally a few silly things as well. I see the Instagram posts and they're reading pretty good.
00:56:42
Speaker
I think it was raining one day in the park and you had your umbrella and it was raining, but it's okay.
00:56:48
Speaker
It'll rain, but the clouds are clear and the sun will shine again, maybe tomorrow. I love that. Thank you so much to everyone for joining us. Thank you so much to our special guest, Silva Nieves, for joining us today for such an informative and necessary conversation. So thank you so much. Happy Pride, everyone. Happy Pride Month, wherever you are in the world.
00:57:12
Speaker
And yeah, let's never forget, pride is protest. Stay safe, everyone, look after each other, and bye.