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Welcome to this week’s show! We’re talking books, housework & resentment, and cheating.
Oh, and I just started watching Big Mouth on Netflix which is an absurd, bizarre cartoon all about going through puberty. You might want to check it out.
Cadessa wrote in about her non-existent sex life and how listening to the show changed everything.
Sarah has a girlfriend who refuses to help with housework and now she has deep resentment about always being the one to do it or to have to remind her. Is this a silly thing to be angry about? Or is this a big deal? Steph, a Patreon supporter, weighed in with her thoughts, and then I weigh in with mine. We have to remember that emotional labor is so real. When we are treating a partner like a child (either because they refuse to step up and help or because we have control issues), of course our libido is going to take a nose dive. You deserve support, it just depends on what that support looks like.
Julia Callahan is here from Rare Bird Lit to talk about why they publish sex worker stories and why they love centering marginalized voices. They have a new book called Identity that’s a photo book and essays all about gender identity. Absolutely worth checking out.
We end this week’s episode with a very messy situation sent in by Emily. She’s in love and has been with her boyfriend for several years, but she’s been cheating endlessly for a few years and doesn’t know what to do. Being in a toxic relationship like this isn’t good for anyone. Hear my advice to Emily and let me know what you think.
Follow Dawn on Instagram.
Resources mentioned in this episode
Rare Bird Lit’s books can all be found here.
About Julia Callahan
Julia Callahan oversees all aspects of sales, distribution, marketing, and author relations. Prior to joining the Rare Bird team, she worked for four years as Tyson Cornell’s marketing and publicity assistant at Book Soup where she helped coordinate thousands of events each year, notably The Doors’ 40th Anniversary, Ralph Steadman, Tony Curtis, and many others. Before that, she worked as an associate at Paramount Studios on The Dr. Phil Show and Star Trek. She grew up in Santa Cruz and has a BA in English.
You can learn more about Rare Bird at rarebirdbooks.com.
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Episode Transcript
Dawn Serra: You’re listening to (You’re listening) (You’re listening) You’re listening to Sex Gets Real (Sex Get Real) (Sex Gets Real) Sex Gets Real with Dawn Serra (with Dawn Serra). Thanks, bye!
Hey, you. Welcome to this week’s episode of Sex Gets Real. I am going to be fielding a few listener questions – one or two at the beginning, and then one at the end. And in between is a short 30-ish minute interview with Julia Callahan from Rare Bird Books. They published books about sex and by sex workers, and they put out Danny Wylde’s books and this amazing book called Spent by Antonia Crane. So I wanted to have someone from them on the show to talk about why it’s so important to them to publish books by marginalized voices. So we’ve got a little conversation in between listener questions for you this week.
Dawn Serra: I also want to bring up if you haven’t seen Big Mouth on Netflix yet, I just started watching it. It was released at the end of September. So for those of you who are up on pop culture and TV shows, you’re probably way ahead of me. But I just started watching it and the first thing I want to say is it’s absurd, it is completely absurd. I know often cartoons are meant to be absurd when they’re for adults. But for the absurdity, which I’m still trying to decide if I like, there’s a lot about the show that I’m enjoying and the purpose of the show is basically puberty. So they brought a whole bunch of comedians together, you’ll recognize a whole bunch of the names: Nick Kroll and Fred Armistead and Jordan Peele.
The writers all came together and sat in a room and talked about their worst purity experiences and what it was like for them, and they had this really vulnerable, awkward conversation around the table talking about– One of the guys said he was slow dancing with a girl in middle school and came in his pants ,and talking about getting your period for the first time in a public place. Your friends developing before you and so feeling like you’re really inadequate, and dealing with hormones. The whole show is built around the awkwardness of puberty, of course, told through very adult humor. But, for some of the intentional shock of the show, there are definitely some really, really wonderful moments that are so real about our bodies and questioning our sexuality, and having to ask for help when something happens to us like bleeding through our pants for the first time, or coming in our pants at a school dance. There’s lots of genitals and lots of very, very inappropriate jokes. So if that sounds like something that might be interesting to you, then I recommend you check out Big mouth on Netflix, just to see what you think. I’m only three episodes in of 10. So I may change my mind depending on what happens. Certainly there’s some problematic issues with it. But for a show that’s dealing with puberty, it has some things that I’ve never seen before. So I’m rather enjoying those little surprises.
Dawn Serra: Okay, so, I got an email from someone named Cadeza. Here’s what the email says. I thought it was really sweet. It says,
“Hi, Dawn. I found your podcast on Spotify and have been binge listening like crazy. I started with the first episode and I’m currently up to Episode 87. Let me tell you, your podcast has opened a whole new world for me. I have been married for almost a year and I’ve been with my husband for almost seven in total. When we first started dating, I was a virgin, but I knew my tastes were not conventional. I have always been into the dom/sub dynamic and love the idea of being completely at the mercy of a dominant. I brought the bondage piece up to my boyfriend at the time, he’s now my husband, fairly early into the relationship. But it never got further than a pair of handcuffs, a dildo, and a blindfold. Don’t get me wrong. I enjoyed the shit out of it, but I wanted more.”
Dawn Serra: “We played once or twice and then never did it again. After a while we fell into the terrible stereotype of the nearly sexist relationship. We maybe had sex three or four times in a year. I love this man with all my heart, and we always enjoy our time spent together. But looking back on it now, it felt horrible. I then began to deal with a lot of anxiety and got treatment for chronic depression. So I finally started to feel horny again. I dropped hints here and there, but my super sweet and supportive husband was trying to take it slow and wait for me to be ready for sex again. I’m such a lucky lady. Attempt after attempt and I still wasn’t getting any. I then discovered your podcast and your gentle encouragement to have tough conversations really motivated me to discuss these issues with my husband. And let me tell you, things got steamy fast. I feel like I’m in a new relationship again, and I feel loved and supported. My husband is very vanilla and I’m pretty kinky. But we’re starting to find our middle ground.”
“I’ve been giving him surprise blow jobs again, his favorite thing ever, he’s been learning rope play techniques. It’s amazing and I am so happy. I was so afraid that he would think I’m weird or unsexy because I like to be tied up and forced to orgasm. But he is taking to it like a fish to water, and it all started with Sex Gets Real. Thank you for helping me to put the spark back into our sex life and for helping me ditch my sexual shame that I’ve had to deal with for 20-plus years. Love Cadeza. PS. My husband even said he would attend Bondage Expo Dallas with me. How cool is that?”
Dawn Serra: Oh, my God Thank you so much for writing in, Cadeza. Thank you for being so brave for yourself and for taking that risk, and then having it received with love. Now the two of you are creating this amazing opportunity and space to try new things. I hope that if ever you reach another point where you feel disconnected, that you’re willing to take that risk again, because it might pay off just as beautifully. Thank you so much for writing in and letting me know all of this. I love hearing from all of you and the things that you’re getting up to, and the ways that you’re changing.
Speaking of, I’m going to be having an online class around tough conversations, and communication in relationships coming up. So actually stay tuned for that. It’ll be something you can take online whenever you want – from home in your PJs. Because so many of your questions that I’m constantly getting are about how to say the scary thing and/or, actually, most of the questions are, “How can I not say the scary thing but still get the thing I want?” which isn’t going to happen. So a lot of my answers are about how to say the scary thing. I’m going to offer a little class that gives everyone some opportunities for thinking about communication and new ways and practicing. So stay tuned for that.
Dawn Serra: I also want to offer an update. If you follow me on Twitter, you may have seen that the other day I was frantically looking for my magic wand vibrator. I could not find that thing anywhere and how I could lose or not find something that enormous – it’s like the size of a huge thermos. I don’t know. I searched every drawer where it normally is, our nightstands, under the bed, between the mattresses, the bathroom. I don’t know. About a half an hour and then I posted on Twitter that I was freaking out because I couldn’t find it, I actually had to wait for Alex to get home to help me search and I found it tucked in a trunk in the guest bedroom that I guess we had hid when we had his folks over. So thankfully it was found but also then my interest in using it had completely gone away because I was so freaked out about where it had gone, because it’s one of my favorites. So just a little update, it has been found.
I have updated the Patreon rewards a little bit to make them more interactive for us. To make it easier for me to deliver the things because I want to make sure that we’re all feeling fun and enjoying the supportive relationship for those of you who offer me support on Patreon. One of the rewards now is you can actually weigh in with your advice on listener questions that I get. I post them anonymously, there’s no names or information. I posted a question a few weeks ago that got some input from one of you. So I’m going to read the question and I’m going to share the advice that came from one of the Patreon supporters and then weigh in myself. So if you want to be playing “sexpert”, you can support the show at $5 a month. That gives you access to helping me actually answer a lot of these big juicy questions that I get. I think people are surprised at how deep some of the questions are, and some of them are really tough to answer. So it might be fun if that’s your jam to check out.
Dawn Serra: So here’s the email. “Hi, Dawn, I’ve been listening for a long time and I often hear you or your guests talking about how important in long term monogamous relationships it is to not let resentment build up. Well, I sure have been trying but I’m hitting a brick wall. I’ve been with my girlfriend for five years. Three of those years we’ve lived together. When we met my girlfriend’s house was always extremely messy and dirty. She seemed embarrassed by this and always gushed about how tidy and clean mine was. It was just normal in my opinion. We moved in together, and I ended up doing most of the chores. We both worked full time and because I was used to living alone and cleaning up a house, it was fine.”
“The past year she has changed jobs, where she now works much less and I have picked up another job working usually seven days. My girlfriend continues to do zero housework, clean up after herself, and will rather starve than cook herself a meal. I’ve spoken to her about this and she claims she does do housework or that she didn’t have any time to do anything. I then told her we would have to get a house cleaner and I would happily pay for this as I couldn’t keep on top of the chores. She massively protested and insisted she would do more. She did for a few weeks, then back to nothing. I then thought maybe she just doesn’t notice the mess. So before I would leave for work in the morning, if I knew she’d be at home all day, I would ask if she had time to vacuum the house or put a load of wash in, and that it would be so great if she could do it. This led to me getting home without these things being done and as soon as I mentioned, she’d insist she was just about to do it.”
Dawn Serra: “All this has led to a great deal of resentment towards her. I don’t want to have sex because I feel like she takes me for granted. We talked about it a lot and nothing has changed. I don’t know what else to do. Everything else about her is perfect. I have even suggested we aren’t suitable to live together and to continue dating, but not co-habit. She declared if that happened, we couldn’t date anymore and our relationship would be over. Am I the bad guy here? Have I let this turn into a problem when really there isn’t one at all, and I should just relax about it? I’m not asking for an immaculate living house. But if I go away for work or out with friends for a week, then when I return, the washing I hung before leaving would still be up drying, the cat litter would be filthy, and the dirty dishes would still be by the bed. Well, you get the picture. How can I resolve this? Because I’m starting to think this could destroy our relationship.”
I want to thank you for writing in. I know there are so many people listening who are in similar situations and I know I have been there myself in the past, more than once in relationship. So you are not alone in navigating this disconnect.
Dawn Serra: So Steph, who is one of the Patreon supporters, weighed in and said, “I’m going to have to say get the housekeeper. Your needs aren’t being met so an uncomfortable conversation about what you need, ie a tidy space has to occur. You probably aren’t with her for her cleaning abilities. So it’s okay to get help from elsewhere. But a conversation about this not being judgment also has to happen.” So thank you so much for that, Steph.
One of the things that really stood out to me about your email was that you have been with your girlfriend for five years, you’ve been living together for three, and when you met your girlfriend, her house was always extremely messy and dirty. This is kind of one of those things that Dan Savage calls the price of admission. You knew going in, that you were dating somebody who was messy and dirty. So it’s not a surprise that now that you’re living together, they’re still messy and dirty. So there was a piece of the story that maybe didn’t seem important at the time or didn’t seem like it would be a really big deal at the time, and now has become a big deal. And that happens to all of us in so many different ways. I mean, new relationship energy, especially, makes us kind of bananas around things like this where we think, “Oh, that doesn’t bother me. It’s different, but it’ll be fine.” Then as all those chemicals start wearing off, we start realizing, “This actually really does bother me.”
Dawn Serra: Also, as life circumstances change, something that used to not be a big deal becomes a big deal. Often because we see it is causing inequity or because it’s becoming really clear that there’s some type of mismatch. So first, I just want to say your girlfriend hasn’t changed from what I’m seeing. She’s still the same person. It’s that the circumstances have changed. So it makes it seem like a bigger pain point now. I agree with Steph that getting a person to come over and help with the cleaning is critical. Working with your partner around your needs is important to having a relationship that thrives, I think over the long term. But because of how things are right now with you working so much, seven days a week, and her not really getting and/or committing to helping with those things, then getting someone to help you around the house is a really, really great compromise. But I don’t think that that’s the only thing you should do. Steph also mentioned having that conversation.
I’m wondering if it would be helpful if you worked with a coach, a relationship coach for a session or two, or a therapist for a couple of sessions to help the two of you have some conversations around this – around how it’s making you feel and why it’s important to you. Because the bottom line is when we are in relationship, the emotional labor that’s happening often goes unrecognized. That’s exactly the place where a lot of these resentments build up and finding ways to actually connect and communicate around them openly. Steph said exactly the right thing of that, I think. Others might disagree. But Steph said this isn’t about shaming your girlfriend, but it’s about making it clear that these things do have to get done. I mean, you can live in a certain amount of chaos and filth and mess, but at some point, a few dishes have to get washed at a bare minimum, so that you can eat food. It might become a financial strain for you if your girlfriend’s constantly eating out, instead of making herself a meal. Laundry has to get done at some point in some way. The frequency might be totally different for the two of you. You might do laundry every other day and she could maybe go without it for several weeks, because she might re-wear the same things a couple of times. One isn’t better than the other, they’re just different. But at some point, some of these things have to happen.
Dawn Serra: So I think connecting around the “why” is really helpful. Why is it important to you? What does it offer you? Why is it not important to her? or Why does it have a different type of importance to her? That might help the two of you connect a little bit around the driving forces and the values, and give you a new way to talk about the conversation. I also think naming their resentment, which is probably coming from the unrecognized labor and the fact that this is not being treated as an equal relationship. There’s an element of caretaking or parental treatment that’s happening in this relationship. That is one of the least sexy things in the world. This happens in lots of relationships, where one person waits to be asked to do something, and waits to be reminded to do something. That kind of behavior is very much about like parental dynamics, and it’s super toxic to the erotic and to sex, and the person that’s having to do the reminding – the person that’s having to ask, oftentimes, sees a total drop in their libido, for exactly the reason that you’re naming.
So that also has to be part of the discussion like, “My job in this relationship is to appreciate you and to connect with you and to support you, and to be there for you. But it’s not to keep track of you, and to make sure the basic things that have to happen in a household get done, because I have to ask/or remind you. That’s just shitty and that’s the emotional labor.” So I think maybe getting some help around having that conversation so that it’s really productive could be a really good idea. Also get that housekeeper. Just start there, so that that load is lifted from you. If you get a housekeeper, and if this stays the same and it never changes, can you let go of those feelings of resentment and frustration and just accept this is one of those things? Because in every relationship you’re going to have at least one, probably several, of this is just one of those things. The Gottmans say that 69% of conflicts in long term relationships are unresolvable. So this might be one of your unresolvables. If it’s unresolvable forever, can you still find joy and happiness and love, and focus on all the things that feel amazing? If so, then start working on what you can do to just help release some of those feelings. But if this is really important to you, and you really do feel like you’re caretaking, you feel like a parental unit, then you probably have to have some conversations – some real conversations around how you’re feeling like, “I’m feeling devalued.” “I’m feeling taken advantage of.” “I’m feeling like the labor I put in isn’t recognized for the labor that it is. I would really love to have a conversation with you about how we can start doing things differently, so that I feel a little bit more seen and supported.” And see where things go.
Dawn Serra: Ultimately, your girlfriend’s going to have to choose whether or not that’s something she can do. And if it’s not something that she can do, then you have to decide if you want to stay. So it’s a complicated place to be. Ultimately, each of us has to decide is this labor we want to do? Because there’s probably people out there that you can partner with who are happy to do equal labor around the house. Alex is that way now and my previous two partners did not help around the house. They didn’t help with food. I mean, I was doing a full time job making the money for the household and doing probably 75% or 80% of the work around the house and remembering to pay the bills. And it was exhausting. I felt like a caretaker and the sex died, and the resentment built up, and I I didn’t have the tools that I have now to be able to navigate those spaces. So they did contribute to those relationships ending.
Now I’m in a relationship with someone who is so committed to contributing and to making sure my emotional labor is reduced. I never have to ask for things to get done or we both asked each other in little ways around little things. So you can find people like that. But that same person that does the housework might not offer you things that your current girlfriend does, but you really love. So just sit in it, you probably know the answer. It’s deep in your gut. We often know what the answer is, and we struggle because that answer might scare us. So sit with it and do what you need to do in the short term to give yourself some relief and then play on that space. So thank you so much for writing in. For all of you, if you want to be able to weigh in the way that Steph did, you can go to patreon.com/sgrpodcast to support the show. I am going to play Julia Callahan’s interview from Rare Bird Lit. Then at the end, I have a very complicated question about cheating.
Dawn Serra: Welcome to Sex Gets Real, Julia. I’m really excited to have you here and talk all about books.
Julia Callahan: Thanks. I’m super excited to be here. Thanks for having me.
Dawn Serra: Yeah, you’re so welcome. So I found out about you and Rare Bird because I was looking for really awesome books that were being published in the areas of sex and sex work. The books that you have been putting out are so up my alley, and I’ve got a whole bunch of titles I want to share with the listeners. But you were so generous in connecting me with some of your authors, and giving me a chance to check out some of the books.
So I’ve learned about If we could just start a little bit with, you’ve published, I mean, just on my list, I have six different books by sex workers. I’d love to know, what is it about publishing stories by sex workers that Rare Bird really enjoys?
Julia Callahan: Sure. It’s interesting because our second book that we ever published as a company was Girlver: A Porno Memoir by Oriana Small. So that’s a sex work book. I think for us, Tyson Cornell, who’s my boss and owns the company and I was, as they say in tech, I was employee one. I think for us – I worked for him at a different company, which is why I work here now. But I think for us, what we really liked was hearing those voices in their own words, what we loved about – I should back up.
Tyson and I used to run the events department at Book Soup Bookstore in West Hollywood. We had a lot of events with porn stars, with sex workers of all kinds. So we were constantly working with people like Nina Hartley and Ron Jeremy. We did Jenna Jamison’s book and Tara Patrick’s book, and we did the events for all those books. As much as I love a lot of those books, what we really found is that when those authors were going into Big Five Publishing, and I understand why they do it, because Big Five Publishing pays a lot of money and I totally am into that – get your money if you’re going into Big Five Publishing. But what we sort of felt was that they censored some of the materials. So Ori came to us and she said, “I got this offer, but they really want to take a lot of the stuff out that I like.” She took a huge gamble on us, as well. We had published one other book. She was like, “Would you consider publishing my book?” We were like, “Yes, please. We would love to.” Basically our thing was – we’re going to edit it. We’re going to make sure you don’t sound – there’s not typos and you don’t sound stupid ‘cause she’s not. She’s fucking amazing. But oh, sorry, can I cuss on this?
Dawn Serra: Oh, yes, you can.
Julia Callahan: Okay, sorry. It just comes out. But so she’s so amazing. We said we’re not going to edit anything out. We’re not going to censor any part of it. So, Girlvert has since become really a classic of the genre and we’ve talked to a lot of people who are in the adult film industry now. They’re like, “Yeah, that’s the book.” That’s the book that says what porn is really like to be in and and we’re really proud of that distinction. So because of that, a lot of people started coming to us and those were stories that we were like, “We’re happy to not censor your stories.” I think that was the big thing that people really liked about or have liked about working with us is that we’re going to edit you. I mean, we’re publishers, that’s our job. But we’re not going to censor anything. So we’re not going to say, “This is too much.” or “We don’t want you to say this.” We’re going to be like, “Okay, you named this guy something in one page and named him something different in another page, we need to fix that.” That’s our job. Our job isn’t to tell you what you can and can’t say.
So really, that’s why we started doing it and why we’ve kept doing it is because we think they’re great stories. They’re fascinating. Another favorite of mine is Spent by Antonia Crane. She’s a phenomenal writer. I mean, she has an MFA and teaches writing, but she also is a stripper and has worked on and off in escorting and in certain areas of prostitution and stuff like that. I mean, listening to her – there’s a part of that book that I broke down in tears. The fact that you’re busting through those stereotypes… I mean, the first part of me reacts to, “Oh my God, this book by this stripper made me cry.” Then I’m like, “Of course it did. Why wouldn’t it?” She’s a great writer, she has a great story. So busting through those stereotypes that people in sex work are– I mean, it sounds insane for me to say this out loud right now, but that people in sex work are fully formed humans that have feelings and emotions and interesting stories to tell that are sometimes about their work, but also sometimes it’s just about their lives.
Julia Callahan: I mean, that’s what I love about Antonia’s book so much. It’s about her mom. She was a stripper and she has an interesting story to tell, or she still is a stripper and she has an interesting story to tell. She owns her job and she does it, and she owns what it means to her. The way that she writes her relationship with her mother is like, I don’t know, I’ve never read anything like it. So I would be an insane publisher if I didn’t publish something like that.
Dawn Serra: Yeah. Well, I think that’s one of the things that’s so refreshing is here we have all of these voices from the people who have these lived experiences, actually telling their own stories instead of people either speaking for them or people making up characters about sex workers who have no experience in sex work, and so everything they write is just a stereotype. I think you’re so right. Spent is amazing. Then Christopher Zeischegg who’s known as Danny Wylde in The Wolves That Live in Skin and Space, and then we’ve had Madison Young on the show and I know you published Daddy: A Memoir. We’re huge fans of April Flores on the show. I know Carlos Batts published his book Fat Girl with you guys. So there’s just something really refreshing in having these uncensored stories and conversations with people that have lived experiences that are normally spoken for and/or silenced in our world.
Julia Callahan: Yeah, and April’s book – April and Carlos, their book. I mean, first of all to be involved in – that was the last book that Carlos did before he died. To be involved in that and to be able to put this out, and that book meant so much to him, I know. It was really their book, it is really their book. And, that’s such a privilege to be able to do that. But also, when I was reading, I remember when that book came out, we were really, really small still. I was here at the office, I’m sitting in my office right now. I was here at the office at 9 or 10pm. Carlos and April came in, I was working on something else and I didn’t know they were coming in, and they came in to meet with my boss and he was like, “Come look at all these photos.” And we were going through all the photos and April was telling me her story. ‘Cause my boss acquired that book and then– I’m the Director of Sales and Marketing so I come in after the acquisitions process happens. I mean, I acquire some things but usually I’m like, “Okay, this is what I have to work on now.” So I was like, “Okay, this is what we’re doing, great.”
She started telling me her story and talking about being a fat woman in porn and how really porn was what made her comfortable in her own skin, and doing this work was what made her comfortable. I understand people can’t see me. I am a fat woman. Just reading her – I felt such a deep – even though I don’t do sex work. I never have done sex work. I went the the non sex work route. Having that connection with someone and… I didn’t need to be pushed to see “sex workers as people”, which I think a lot of people do need to be pushed to that in our our culture, unfortunately. But to just really have that connection and realize that other people are going to have that connection too, and realize that it’s my job to get that book into people’s hands. And if I could get it into the right people’s hands, they could really have a touchstone even though it’s a photo book of this person who’s naked and having sex a lot of the times, that still is a touchstone.
Julia Callahan: It’s my favorite book to bring to book festivals. Because I just love watching people open it because they look at the cover, and the cover was sort of racey and it says “fat girl” on it. She’s got a very large bust and it’s coming out on the cover. Then they open it and you just see people all of a sudden sink into it and are like, “This is amazing.” I sell that book – I sell it at festivals, it’s the one I always sell out of. It’s such an awesome experience to watch people – they come to it, I think, a little uncomfortably and maybe even a little mockingly. Then they look at it and they’re like, “Oh my god.” And then they buy it.
Dawn Serra: That’s amazing.
Julia Callahan: It’s my favorite thing. It’s my favorite thing to watch that and to see people have that connection. Then sometimes people are like, “Well, she’s not that fat.” And when they start looking at it, they’re like, “Oh, but it’s so beautiful. She’s so beautiful and this whole thing that’s going on is so wonderful.” And they read the essays, and she’s so open in those essays. I think it’s one of those things where it starts discussions, but it also really opens people up. That kind of thing is hard to do with other kinds of photography books. It does it in a way that other things can’t do.
Dawn Serra: Yeah. That makes me so happy because I think we have so many stories that aren’t being told in the world, or the stories that are being told are very, very narrow and controlled. So to have this – I mean, just to talk about April and Carlos, to have this book of this fat bodied woman who’s unapologetically being seen and letting herself be seen in these very sexual places is such a place where we need more of that, because it’s so permission granting 1.) to actually even look at it and 2.) to feel like, “Maybe if I’m in a fat body, which I am, too, maybe it’s okay to be sexy and sexualized and wanted in that way.” That, to me, is this great, big delicious permission slip.
Julia Callahan: Absolutely, absolutely. That’s how I look at that book. Actually, the funny thing about that book is that we couldn’t get it printed anywhere. We eventually had to go to Europe to get it printed to Italy because printers in the Americas all started as Bible printers. So they’re fairly – they don’t mind printing the memoirs and stuff like that, but because of the photography, we had to go to Europe to get it printed. I had to call Tasha and I was like, “Where do you guys get your sex books printed because we’re having a real trouble.” So actually, that one sent us on a wild goose chase. We learned a lot from that book. But, I think for me, that was so – it was so freeing to see that and to… I mean to just give props to my boss, Tyson. He’s a straight white guy, he’s tall and thin. For me, having someone who sees that book and says, “Yes, we want to do it,” and is excited about it and puts money into it and puts things behind it – I mean that, as an employee I have to say, makes me feel so supported in going out and finding other stuff that maybe other publishers wouldn’t take on.
Dawn Serra: So I’d love to talk about that a little bit because I’ve had numerous sex workers on the show and a whole bunch of what I also talked about on the show includes things like queer visibility and trans visibility, and centering people of color and marginalized voices, and intersexuality. And I know that a big part of Rare Bird – the books that you do is not only sex workers, but really amplifying a lot of those stories that go on told and unheard by major publishing houses out in New York. So for anyone listening, I’ve got tons of sex educators and erotica writers and all kinds of people who listen to the show. For someone who maybe has a dream of publishing but feels like maybe their story or their voice is just too niche or too different, do you have any suggestions or words of wisdom for people who are like, “I wish I could tell my story?”
Julia Callahan: Yeah, I mean, there are other publishers – there’s us and other publishers like us who are looking for that kind of stuff. I mean, I don’t get to acquire that much. I acquire about four books a year because my job is as Director of Sales and Marketing. So I have to really carve out time in order to edit books, so I don’t do a ton of it. But we definitely gear towards particularly queer stories and sex work, and things like that. Those are places that we really feel comfortable in and a lot of our offices were made up of queer people. That’s where we like to live, but there are other publishers who do all sorts of things. They’re probably just not Big Five publishers. By that, I mean, the big corporate New York publishing houses.
So, it can be frustrating to have to sift through the internet about it. But one of the things that I recommend is if there are books that you love that are in that genre, looking at who is publishing those books and going to them. Sometimes submissions are hard or whatever, but it is definitely possible to do it. Cleis Press does some great, great work with erotica and things like that. But, I think it’s just finding the editor that’s going to be really receptive and going for them. I say it so easily, but that is a long arduous process and I absolutely know that. It can be a really frustrating process.
Julia Callahan: I mean, one of the books that I’m thinking of that I acquired is a novel. It’s by a woman named Aaron Judge and it features a plus sized bisexual protagonist and it’s part – there’s some sexiness in it. It’s a little bit of romance, but it’s really about a woman trying to figure herself out and her life out, and really take ownership of her life. I found that one because a friend of ours recommended she send that – her agent sent that book to us. And they gave me a good pitch and I was like, “Yeah, I’ll check it out.” Iit took me forever to read it because it always takes me forever to read anything. Which I feel terrible about always I constantly feel guilty about. But I read it in one sitting, once I sat down and read it, I read it in one sitting. I was like, “I cannot not publish this book.” It just won a Book Award for Best Novel at the Bisexual Book Awards.
Dawn Serra: Oh, cool!
Julia Callahan: Yeah, I know, it was awesome. So those are the kinds of things for me… I mean, it was a perfect fit for me. It was exactly my taste. It was a little bit funny. It featured a plus size woman, it featured bisexual woman, it featured someone who was struggling with identity, but not her sexuality. I was like, “Done, sold.” You know what I mean? So, the fact that she was able to find someone like me who was like, “Yeah, this is my jam.” She had been rejected by a lot of people before that, and finally it came to the right person. I mean, my biggest advice is just hang in there. Know where you’re pitching and hang in there, and eventually, definitely, you can find someone.
Dawn Serra: I’m wondering, do you have any other books that are coming out in the next 18 months or so that you’re super excited about that feature either queer voices or trans voices or features sex workers that listeners might be interested in?
Julia Callahan: Definitely. We’re actually talking – our actual sex work books, we don’t have one coming out soon, so we’re working on finding something new that we can bring out for that. If Ori is listening to this, I apologize, but I’m really trying to get her to write her follow up to Girlvert. She has a great, I’m not going to give away the idea, but she has a really great idea percolating that I just cannot wait to publish. But we just had a book come out last week called Identity, and it’s a photo book and essays. The photos are by Dave Naz, who’s Oriana Small’s husband, and Dave is a porn director and photographer. Then essays by various people – and it is gender identity. He’s been working on this book for or he’s been working on this project for eight years. We did a previous photo book with him called Gender Queer and Other Gender Identities which is also photos with essays.
Some of the people in there are people you’ll recognize – Jiz Lee, gender non-conforming adult film stars like Jiz Lee – I’m going to just forget everyone’s name now., Buck Angel, and there’s a bunch of people. They’re awesome. So his Gender Queer and Other Gender Identities came out in 2015, and it is full color photos and it’s people who live outside of the gender binary. So gender queer, gender non-conforming people, and it’s photos. They’re gorgeous photos. Dave is a phenomenal photographer. They’re gorgeous. Then Identity, that just came out last week, is a black and white photo book, and it is similar – people who don’t fit with it and the gender binary as well. Essays grappling with what gender identity means and what gender performance means, and how people perform gender and things like that. So those two I think are really wonderful.
Dawn Serra: Those sound amazing.
Julia Callahan: Yeah, I feel like we haven’t got enough – when they see them, they’re like, “Oh my god, this is amazing.” But it’s been tough to get them out there a little bit. But they’re awesome books and the essays in them are about how gender performance – In Gender Queer, it’s really people talking about their own gender performance and how they perform gender differently on day to day based on how they feel and how their gender performance has evolved over the years and things like that. Then in Identity, it’s a little bit more about their actual identity and how they identify, and how they look at that. So it’s good, they’re both good.
So those are the two that I’m really excited about – Identity is the one that just came out that I’m super excited about. Then I’ve got a lot of queer novels coming out – Lucy Jane Bledsoe, who’s a queer novelists in the Bay Area. She’s got a book coming out in May of 2018 called The Evolution of Love, which is really awesome, almost sort of bordering on dystopian about an earthquake that cuts off the Bay Area. These people survive. So I’ve got all sorts of things – queer books coming out and out already. That’s what, in my editorial, that’s a lot of times what I find myself gravitating towards. So we do a fair amount of those.
Dawn Serra: Well, I know we have loads of queer listeners and lots of folks who are grappling with all different kinds of identity questions, so I love that you’re publishing these books and getting them out into the world and that people can look for them. I will have links to all of these books on the Rare Bird Books website for this episode of Sex Gets Real, too, so that people can find it. I’m wondering if you’d be willing to share with everyone how they can stay in touch with what Rare Bird is putting out and what they’re doing and how people can find more?
Julia Callahan: Sure. Our website is rarebirdlit.com. Then if you go on there, you can sign up for our e-newsletter. That’s a good way to see what we’re doing. I put that out once or twice a week depending on my schedule. Then we’re on Twitter @rarebirdlit. We’re on Instagram @rarebirdlit. Then on Facebook RareBirdLit. I am @pesty1079 – @pesty1079 on Twitter. On Instagram, I usually yell about politics. So, don’t follow me if you don’t want to hear that. I’m not offended. But I also do tweet about what we’re doing and things like that. So those are the places to find us and me. Then that’s it, that’s pretty much it.
Dawn Serra: That is it for my chat with Julia Callahan from Rare Bird. Make sure you head to dawnserra.com/ep183 if you want to grab a link to check out their books. Of course, you know, I’m constantly asking everyone to pay for their porn, pay for their sex education, pay for people’s labor. When we’ve got small independent publishing houses like this, it’s so important that we support them as well by going directly to them versus through some of the big online shopping experiences that a lot of us are addicted to. So please go to Rare Bird and buy books directly from them if you want to support the work that they’re doing.
So I’m going to close with this desperate email that I received from someone named Emily. So let’s see where we end up. “Hey Dawn, my name is Emily. I am 25 years old, and I live in Texas. I just recently discovered your podcast and I’m absolutely in love. I was listening to your show on cheating this morning. And I felt like I had to reach out to you. Here’s my story. I’ve been with my current boyfriend for almost eight years. I was 18. When we got together, I had no earthly idea what love was, or what it was like to be in a long term relationship. Long story short, his life was not together at all when we met, no job, suspended driver’s license, etc. He also moved in with me when I was 18, and we’ve lived together since. Mind you, I had no idea of so many of these things when we first met.”
Dawn Serra: “Fast forward a few years down the road, and he has his life together and I’m really proud of him. He’s not always been the best faithful. I don’t think he’s ever cheated on me physically, but he has talked to other women online, and it hurt me badly. I always forgave him. One day I was probably 23 years old, I’m now 25, something drastically changed with us. We stopped having sex. We haven’t had sex in almost four years. I have no desire to. I can hardly stand him touching me in any sexual way. He tries to constantly and I always shoot him down. I thought maybe I just didn’t need sex. But I quickly found out I do, just not with him. So I did a thing I never thought I’d do. I cheated. Yes, Dawn, I cheated a lot.”
“Back in 2015, I began going on dating sites looking for someone who gave me those butterflies, and someone I could feel sexually wanted by and someone that I sexually wanted. In a two year time span, I probably slept with 15 men. Did I feel guilty? Of course. However, I learned quickly that I was also being used by these men. They just wanted sex and I wanted a mental connection. So I’d feel terrible when these men would ghost me. But I’d still be on the prowl, trying to heal what the previous man did to me. Despite these men screwing me over, they made me feel so sexy. Something I never thought I’d feel. I’m a curvy woman, not small by any means. So I’ve always been self conscious of my body. Mind you, I was still living in together with my boyfriend. He works shift work. So a lot of the time I’d go out when he was working nights.”
Dawn Serra: “There was an occasional man or two that I seriously thought I could have a meaningful relationship with. But I couldn’t get together with them because it had to be when I could leave the house because of my boyfriend. So because I had to make up excuses, they took it as a sign that I wasn’t interested, and then eventually find someone else. It killed me. Several of my friends say, “Why don’t you just leave him?” But I can’t. I love him to death and I can’t imagine my life without him. But I’m not sure I’m in love with him anymore and I’m scared we’re too far gone. Do I want a relationship with him? Yes. Do I want to have sex with him? Yes, but I can’t force myself to do it. It feels torturous when I even think about sex with him and I don’t know why. I’m not religious, but I do pray to someone or something to give me guidance on what to do.”
“Am I crazy, Dawn? I’ve never admitted to him that I’ve cheated, but I’m pretty sure he has an idea. I’m almost positive. He’s done the same. We do love each other and we talk about our future a lot. I’d love to have one with him. But I’m addicted to the attention and the affection that I get from other men that I don’t have with him. Any help would be appreciated. Thank you.”
Dawn Serra: So I just want to say, Emily, thank you for writing in to me with your story and everything that you’ve been through. It’s intense. It’s a lot. It’s messy. I think the only way forward is going to involve some serious work and some seriously hard feels. So a lot of what I’m reading in your email here has been avoiding responsibility. And avoiding difficult conversations, avoiding asking for what you really wanted, avoiding coming to terms with what it is that you’re looking for, and then following through on that.
I’m wondering when you say you love your boyfriend, and you want to be with him, what that love looks like for you. Is it a love because you’re afraid of being alone? Is it love because there’s something he’s offering you that you can’t find other places? Because what I’m reading here is, you’re in relationship with someone that you’re mistreating over and over and over again. You even said that there were one or two men that you thought you could have a meaningful relationship with. Then they didn’t think that you were serious because you were living with your boyfriend. So they didn’t take it seriously. If you would have entered into relationships with these guys, if they had taken you seriously, then what it sounds like to me is you’re so scared of being alone, that you’d rather consistently mistreat and hurt someone until you have a guaranteed opportunity to be in relationship with someone else. So that then you have an excuse to leave them without having to face the possibility of being on your own.
Dawn Serra: So I think you need to sit down and have some really deep conversations with yourself. My first thought is you cannot continue doing what you’re doing. The damage that you’re doing, I think, to the relationship you’re in is pretty intense. It’s not that relationships can’t come back from infidelity and betrayal, they absolutely can. But the only way to come back from that is for the person who’s doing the betraying, to atone and to apologize, and to stop the harming, and to start being really upfront and working with what actually needs to happen for this relationship to be something that you can be in.
If you’re repulsed by your boyfriend to the point where you don’t want him to touch you and you don’t want to have sex with him, and he’s constantly trying to touch you. That’s also really hurtful to both of you. The rejection for him must be terrible. I think that’s another piece that you really need to confront. Everything that I’m hearing here is not that you love your boyfriend, it’s that you’re scared of being alone and you don’t really know what you want or who you are. So staying in this feels comfortable because you’ve been there for so long. So personally, I think what you need to do is end things with your boyfriend. Then I think you need to do some work on yourself, to really figure out who you are and what you want and what you bring to the table. What kind of a relationship you want to be in. Maybe it’s a non-monogamous relationship, which is totally fine. But non-monogamy is ethical. It’s not cheating. And in order to be in an ethical situation, you have to be able to manage the different relationships that you’re in, because you know that they’re going to impact the people around you. So you have to be able to make choices that are healthy for you and the other people in your life. Otherwise, it’s just going to be constant chaos.
Dawn Serra: I think some of that chaos is coming from the fact that you don’t know how to ask for what you want. You don’t know how to set strong boundaries, you don’t know that you bring something to the table. So without having that knowledge, it’s easy for people to ghost you and to leave and to take advantage. We don’t have to love ourselves in order for others to love us. We don’t have to love ourselves in order for others to treat us with dignity and respect. You can demand respect and you can demand that someone treats you like a human being. Even if you don’t feel like you’re sexy or wanted. But that’s work that you have to do yourself. So this is a big, long, complicated mess and I think that it has to start with you being very clear that you have been lying consistently for four years to someone who’s important to you. And that you don’t want them to touch you.
When you say I love this person, what does love mean? What I’m hearing is a fear of taking responsibility, and that’s not to say we can’t love people and hurt them. But at this point, what I’m what I’m hearing is, either you’re really not monogamous and you’ve been avoiding having that conversation or you just really, really, really don’t want to be in this relationship and you’re looking for any way that you can to feel something and so you’re actively destroying it. Kind of subconsciously, to avoid having to have that scary conversation. So the only way that I see forward for you is to have that scary conversation of, “This is not working. You deserve better and I deserve to be someplace where I’m happy. And this is not it.” Moving on from the relationship and grieving, and really diving deep into why you’ve been doing these things and what it is that you need moving ahead, so that you don’t treat future relationships the way that you’ve treated this one.
Dawn Serra: It can be really hard when we’ve done things that we feel guilty about and we don’t feel good about, especially when we feel like we aren’t enough, like we are the broken ones. Especially when we’re in a marginalized body or identity. Being fat – the world tells us we will never be wanted and never be good enough. So it can be really arousing and alluring to kind of chase that feeling when we’ve so deeply believed we’re never going to be wanted. But there’s a lot of work and a lot of coming to self, that I think you need to do, Emily, because it sounds like you’ve completely abandoned yourself, and all of this.
So it’s okay if you have feelings of anger and grief, and shame, and all of those things. It’s part of the process of making mistakes and growing and learning. You can take all of these experiences and all of this information and use it to expand what’s possible in the future. But what you’re doing now sounds absolutely toxic. So I think your first step is to remove yourself from all of the situations that you’re in, and to really start doing some work for you. So I hope that’s helpful. I know that you wrote in saying you were desperate and I’m sure that wasn’t what you wanted to hear. But that’s my opinion based on everything that you’ve shared.
Dawn Serra: So thank you to everybody who’s listening and thank you to Emily for writing in. That was a really tough one. Of course, to all of you, if you want to help me weigh in on questions head to patreon.com/sgrpodcast and also check out Rare Birds Lit, and I will be back next week. Bye.