An updated Patreon you say? Why yes. Yes it is. Check out the sweet new rewards (that I can actually deliver).

What happens when two sex educators get together and geek out? You get this spanking new episode featuring Bex Caputo from the Dildorks podcast.

If ever there was an episode that covered all the things, it’s this one. We talk about piss play and watersports. We giggle over fisting. We talk about kitten play and puppy play which leads us into talking power exchange and being a good submissive.

But it doesn’t stop there. We also talk about the incredible awesomeness that is platonic kink – a thing that way too many people don’t know is a thing. Then there’s sex labs and practicing sexy stuff before you want it to BE sexy and the stunning advice Bex received when considering going on testosterone.

What if you don’t have to wait to be miserable to want to change your body or your gender, your relationship or your job? What if you simply want to be happier? What if joy was enough of a reason?

We’re going everywhere, so tune in and join the fun.

Follow Sex Gets Real on Twitter and Facebook. It’s true. Oh! And Dawn is on Instagram.

In this episode, Bex and I talk about:

• How we finally made it happen that Bex is on the show – it’s because Bex had big feelings about an interview I recently had on the show.
• Friends with benefits – is it good? Is it bad? Can it work for you? Can it also be harmful?
• Why so much of what we see around sexuality is wrong. There is no one-size-fits-all or tricks that work for everyone.
• Channel surfing and sex? Bex has an amazing analogy for sex education and advice and what they have to do with each other.
• Woodhull’s annual conference where Bex and I met a few years ago and what went down this year.
• The sex education community and why it’s not really a community. We talk about what communities can do to center victims and also hold abusers/folks who hurt others accountable. We can’t ban every person who messes up or we end up without community.
• A super hot excerpt from Bex’s blog post about Woodhull. It includes piss play and water sports, and what it felt like for Bex to get peed on.
• Why Bex can get into almost anything a partner is into because of their love of service and submission. It’s all in how you frame it.
• Bex shares some incredible advice from sex educator Mollena Williams about submission and taking care of yourself out of respect for your Dominant. Bex uses this mindset to help with self-care on bad mental health days. If Bex can’t care for themselves on a bad day, then they can do it in service to their Sir.
• What does it mean when Bex talks about their Sir and being “in service” to their Sir? Power exchange and protocol ahead! Including why Bex has power and when they have conversations outside of the dynamic.
• Kitten play. Puppy play. And the mistaken assumptions many folks who are new to kink believe about what it means to be kinky. What if we embrace the absurdity and giggles and playful aspect of what it is we’re doing?
• Fisting! Bex just did it for the first time at Woodhull, so we gush about it. Hehehe.
• Why sometimes it takes a few tries to discover if something works for us. A failure on the first try doesn’t always mean it won’t work for us in a different position or context down the road.
• Sex labs. They’re so important. Don’t try something for the first time when you want to be super sexy. Set aside time to try the things, practice, find out what’s hot or how to make it hot, so that when the stakes are higher you can actually feel confident and make it hot rather than fumbling and worrying about it.
• Aftercare and the importance of debriefing after sex or scenes. People can be scared to check in with a partner – what if they loved something you hated or vice versa – but by not talking, all sorts of assumptions and misunderstandings can happen.
• Having platonic kink exchanges and platonic kink relationships that aren’t romantic or sexual is an amazing option that so many people don’t realize or appreciate.
• Normalizing sex and why more people need to see that sex and kink can be things that aren’t super intense or charged.
• Bex shares what it’s like to go on testosterone and what non-binary means to them. It’s super personal, and I love this bit. Their therapist told them that you don’t need to be miserable to want to change it.

Resources from this episode

Read Bex’s Woodhull wrap-up here.

About Bex Caputo

Bex Caputo is a sex educator, blogger, speaker, podcaster, and dildo peddler. They’ve been a proud and undeniable kinkster ever since they insisted on being served their meals in a dog bowl at the age of 8, (and even before that, probably). They’re a Virgo, a Hufflepuff, a pup, and a nonbinary queerdo who grew up into the pop punk skater boy they had a crush on in high school.

Stay in touch with Bex on Instagram & Twitter @BexTalksSex.

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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!

Hello, lovely listeners. Before I jump into sharing all of the juicy details about Bex Caputo, who’s on the show this week, I wanted to let you know, I have had a Patreon going now for, I don’t know, six or seven months for the show. Many of you have so generously donated everything from $1, $3, all the way up to $20 a month. I can’t tell you how much every single dollar helps. I’m sure, as you’ve heard, that sponsorships for the show are kind of hit or miss. It’s hard to find really ethical companies that are willing to sponsor a show that talk so frankly about sex, that also doesn’t have a dude at the helm. I’m not willing to work with companies that don’t have the highest of ethics and values. Your dollars will literally keep the lights on. 

But I had offered rewards that were really difficult for me to stay on top of. So I thought it would be so much better for you and for me if I simplified and did something really easy. There’s a new revamped rewards for the show’s Patreon. You can go to patreon.com/sgrpodcast. You have to type the URL in to get to it. You can’t search for Sex Gets Real on Patreon because it’s adult content. They make it not searchable. But there is now a new option that gets you access to some private audio diaries that I am recording. They’re going to be random, just me recording what’s going on for me, places I go, maybe conversations I have – a little peek to what’s happening behind the podcast and in my own life. It’s just another way for us to share and for you to hear what it’s like to live as a sex educator and a sex coach, and it’ll be really fun and silly. 

Then what I’m really excited about is I changed the reward for the $10 level. Now, I will be posting listener questions that I receive – anonymously, of course – for everyone who’s at the $10 level or higher on Patreon. You get to write in with your advice. Whatever you think the advice needs to be for that question, you get to share it, and then I’m going to read it and take the tidbits that I really liked or that made me laugh or the pieces that made me really question things –  even things that I disagree with – so that I can pull that into the show. I will be reading those at regular intervals whenever the questions air. It’s just a way for you to actually be on the show, to be part of the show, and to exercise some of your advice giving. 

The newest episode of Dawn’s diary, and also the first episode of Dawn’s diary, is actually me reading some erotica that I wrote on a call recently, where we had a whole bunch of prompts that helped us to write the erotic in new and unexpected ways. I shared three of the little stories that I wrote. They range from sweet to quite dark. So feel free to check out everything that’s on Patreon that I’ve changed. I would love your support even if it’s the $1 level. It seriously helps.

This week’s episode has Bex Caputo, who’s a sex educator and also a co-host of a podcast called The Dildorks. We talked about watersports and piss play. We talked about fisting. We talked about platonic kink and how amazing it is, and nobody does it. We talked all about changing our lives and our bodies in order to be happier, not because we’re miserable, and Bex’s journey of going on testosterone. We talked all about power dynamics and kitten play and puppy play. It’s a fun hour. 

Bex Caputo is a sex educator, blogger, speaker, podcaster, and dildo peddler. They’ve been a proud and undeniable kinkster ever since they insisted on being served their meals in a dog bowl at the age of eight, even before that, probably. They’re a Virgo, a Hufflepuff, a pup, and a non-binary queerdo who grew up into the pop-punk skater boy that they had a crush on in high school. Here is me and Bex literally digging out over all of the things. 

Dawn Serra: Guess who’s on Sex Gets Real this week, listeners? Bex is here. Hello!

Bex Caputo: Hey! I’m so excited to be here, y’all.

Dawn Serra: You and I have been seeing each other at conferences for a couple of years now. I think we actually met for the first time at Woodhull three years ago, maybe? 

Bex Caputo: Yeah. I think we met at my first Woodhull.

Dawn Serra: Yeah, yeah. Since then, we’ve been tweeting at each other and following each other on social media. I see all the super cool stuff you do and your show, and you’re finally here. 

Bex Caputo: I’m so excited.

Dawn Serra: I know. Me too. It’s one of those things where I have a list of people I’d love to have on the show, and it’s like hundreds of names long, right. There’s just people who I so want to have on the show. For some reason, I just never reach out and ask or I’m working my way there. You had some opinions about an episode that I aired recently with Wendy Strgar. That got us just talking privately. You we’re like, you should totally come on the show. So here you are.

Bex Caputo: Yeah. I do that. I have opinions sometimes.

Dawn Serra: Opinions are amazing.

Bex Caputo: Yeah. I felt like she had a lot of really, really smart things to say and really awesome things to say, and a few things that felt a little bit more like, “OK. You’re taking your experience with XYZ thing, and painting it across everyone and saying that that’s a universal experience,” which is maybe not the case. Especially around stuff like friends with benefits and casual sex and kink stuff – which is all stuff I engage with a whole lot. I was like, “Hey, no.” It may not be great for you, but I like those things. Hi!

Dawn Serra: Yeah. I know that was like one of the things that that we talked about a little bit on Twitter was, “Getting hit, not so great,” was one of the comments that she made. Part of me knows why she was saying that and where she was coming from. But then part of me was like, “But I do like getting hit sometimes.” It’s just you have to know how to do it.

Bex Caputo: Yeah, exactly. Not to mansplain, but, well, actually.

Dawn Serra: Getting hit can be super rad when we’ve agreed to it beforehand.

Bex Caputo: Yeah, exactly. I had a whole birthday party around it last year.

Dawn Serra: Yes, you did.

Bex Caputo: Yeah. My birthday is coming up next month, so we might be trying to do that again. I don’t know. Working on planning and stuff. But yeah. Impact is a big part of my kink and sexuality, and to have someone be like, “Getting hit, not so fun,” I’m like, “Ahh! I don’t know about that”

Dawn Serra: Yeah. I know also, for you, one of the things that we were just talking about before we hopped on was… I think it’s very clear from Wendy’s work that she has decades of experience as a loveologist and offering advice from all of her columns in a radio show. I think one of the things that she’s noticed is people engaging in sexual encounters that don’t feel aligned for them and the damage that that causes. Then the way that it got presented in our chat was, “This is harmful,” without being saying this can be harmful for some people in some circumstances. You were mentioning how, for you, friends with benefits situations, where the sex is very casual, and you’re showing up and enjoying yourself. It’s actually a really lovely supportive experience for you in the past.

Bex Caputo: Yeah. Friends with benefits, you can be friends. You can like each other, you can support each other without wanting to be romantic with each other. I think those relationships exist. I don’t think she’s wrong. I think, culturally, we’re at a point where casual sex has become really common, a thing people talk about a lot, and a thing that a lot of teenagers and young people and millennials can feel like, “Oh. That’s the thing I’m supposed to be doing.” There are a lot of people for whom it’s not healthy, and they are still doing it. Those people should feel empowered to not do those things. You don’t want to come at it and be like, “It’s wrong for everyone all the time.” Because something she said… She’s like, “They’re giving this beautiful tender part of their body to someone who doesn’t care about them, and then feeling really bad about it.” It’s like, “All right. That’s a lot of assumptions about something that may happen for some people. But that’s not what everyone’s friends with benefits relationship can look like.”

Dawn Serra: Right. So if you are in a situation where you’re performing what you think you should be doing, which I actually just had Rachel Hills on, author of “The Sex Myth.” We were talking about how we moved from this… Well, we’re still in a sex negative culture. We have two paradigms coexisting right now. But the swing that’s happening in response to sex negative culture is the sex performance, kind of Sex and the City culture, where we now are expected to be super sexual and to be super chill with hookups all the time. But we’re still not quite checking in with ourselves about what feels good. I think what you’re saying is so spot on, of that if we’re giving a tender part of ourselves to someone who really doesn’t care about us, that can be super shitty and feel terrible. 

Bex Caputo: And that can happen within a relationship. That doesn’t have to be a friends with benefits thing.

Dawn Serra: Exactly. If you’re in a relationship where resentment has started to show up, having sex can actually feel pretty effing terrible. Because you can tell this person doesn’t really want to be there with you or they are totally checked out and just using you. I mean, there’s a billion ways that we can abuse each other. But you’re so right. It doesn’t even have to be with a friend. I know I’ve had hookups in the past with people who I saw maybe two or three times, and it was exactly what it needed to be for me. 

Bex Caputo: Yeah, exactly. 

Dawn Serra: It wasn’t about the other person, and it wasn’t about us cultivating a relationship. It wasn’t about us doing anything beyond what we had agreed to do. But it’s what I needed in that moment. That felt good for me.

Bex Caputo: Yeah. I think one of the most problematic narratives we get around sexuality across the board culturally now is that it’s one size fits all. Whether that’s one size fits all for we should all be having this kind of sex or no one should be having this kind of sex. Even in the sex ed realm where we’re having these workshops where it’s like, “Try these six tricks, and they’re going to work on everyone.” I’m like, “No.” The biggest thing that we can teach about sex is how to look into our own bodies and our own selves and, “What do what do I need out of this experience physically and emotionally? How can I find someone who’s looking for similar things, and how can I communicate those things?”

Dawn Serra: So glad you said that because it’s really interesting. I was just talking to somebody yesterday, who basically what they wanted was a definitive guide for how to do the sex right. And me just trying to explain, “You can find all kinds of suggestions and techniques and all the things out there. Lots of people have made amazing materials for that. But you might come back with 1000 techniques and the person that you’re having sex with, might not like any of those thousand and need the 1001th technique that you didn’t find in your research.” I think people really hate that uncertainty of, “You mean, I actually have to maybe just be awkward and figure it out?”

Bex Caputo: Yeah. I mean, I teach blowjob workshops and a bunch of other workshops. But specifically, with the blowjob ones, people will always come in thinking they’re going to get the Konami code to their partner’s genitals, the one button that they can push you to make everyone get off all the time. I say that having sex with a new person is a little bit like channel surfing – you’re going to flip through the different channels until you find something that looks good, and then you’re going to stick around and watch that. I can’t tell you what channel your partner’s favorite show is going to be on. But I can upgrade your cable package. 

I’m going to give you other options. I’m going to give you other things to try. But at the end of the day, it’s all about sitting down and trying these things, and seeing what your partner responds well to. It’s not even going to be the same thing every day. One day, they might be more sensitive. One day, they might be looking for something more aggressive. It totally depends on your partner, and making sure you can communicate those things to each other.

Dawn Serra: Yeah, exactly. I want to talk about some of the things that you’re into and some of the things that you’ve experienced. I would super love– We talked about how we met at Woodhull, and the Woodhull Sexual Freedom Summit for 2017 just wrapped up. This was my first year not going in a couple of years. 

Bex Caputo: We missed you.

Dawn Serra: I know. I missed so much. Well, first of all, the tweets coming out of one of the sessions about body safety and toy  toxicity, it was totally killing me. But then your epic adventures at Woodhull. I’ll just throw a little tease out for everyone listening, but it involves piss and fisting. Let’s just put that there, but, OK, how was your Woodhull?

Bex Caputo: It was so good. The conference itself was pretty solid. There weren’t quite as many sessions that I was in love with this year as there have been in years past. But I saw some really amazing ones about feminists and around community accountability that were really, really great. Then, obviously, seeing all my friends and everything. But also I was seeing my Sir for the first time in eight months. We’re long distance, which means I get to do all of the excellent sex things. I know you have a history of long distance stuff, so I’m sure you get it.

Dawn Serra: Oh, yes. 

Bex Caputo: We’re in the process of checking in. My friend, Sugar, is standing next to me – Sugar Cunt, another blogger, excellent name. We’re checking in, and the person’s like, “Oh, you two are friends. Do you want to be next to each other?” I was like, “Well, I mean, I don’t know if that’s required.” Sugar’s just like, “We are not going to mind the sex noises.” I’m like, “Great. That’s fine. Yeah.”

Dawn Serra: There are going to be so many sex noises just so you all know.

Bex Caputo: Yeah. But the thing is, there were so many blogger noises next door, that still no one heard us. We weren’t quiet. But bloggers are just very loud. 

Dawn Serra: Especially when everyone gets to get together and freak out, and try the things and do the things. 

Bex Caputo: Exactly, yeah.

Dawn Serra: Yeah. It’s such a fun event. 

Bex Caputo: Yeah.

Dawn Serra: OK. Do you want to talk about any of the sessions, since I wasn’t there to share with the listeners? Or do you want to talk about some of the firsts you had? ‘Cause I have a little tidbit that I’d love to read on air that you wrote.

Bex Caputo: Oh, geez. Yeah. I mean, I’ll just touch on the two sessions that I was really excited about. You can go to my Twitter, where I live tweeted everything. I’m @BexTalksSex on Twitter. One panel was Feminist Fuck, which was so good. It was Dirty Lola, Colva Weissenstein and Rebecca Hiles. They talked a lot about how feminism, current feminism doesn’t totally have a place for people who still enjoy traditional femininity. Whether that’s staying at home and caring for the house, taking care of their kids, wearing dresses, people who are sexually submissive, who are either wearing dresses because they like it or wearing dresses for their male partner. And they can still be feminist in doing that, in doing something that the patriarchy is trying to force on a lot of women. They still have the power to enjoy those things. And that was a really, really powerful session. 

The other session I really enjoyed was shame and perfectionism, how they damage community and impact activism. That was Cathy Vartuli, Dirty Lola and Dr. Liz Powel. They had a really– I mean, I would go to anything Dr. Liz and Lola are doing. They’re like Mollena Williams with me, where they could be teaching me how to boil water, and I’m like, “Yes, keep. Yes, preach! Go on!” They’re just so smart. They’re so good. It was a really great panel about how the community doesn’t really have a lot of resilience around when people fuck up. We come at it with this, either we’re going to ignore it or we’re going to go nuclear and completely remove this person from our community. It talks a lot about how we need to navigate that middle ground because if we kick everyone off the island, there’s no one left on the island, and everyone is going to fuck up. Not a little fucked up. We’re all going to catastrophically fuck up at least once in our life. So how do we, as a community, create space for resiliency around that and for still holding people accountable and being empathetic with them, and leaving space for those fuck ups – which was a really, really good conversation to be a part of as well.

Dawn Serra: Yeah, I think that’s such an important conversation that all communities need to be having right now. I think what’s so challenging about the sex positive community and the sex educator community is, it’s not actually really a community in a lot of ways because don’t have regular sessions with regular people who are really holding each other accountable. It’s like a loose gathering. So that makes all of these things a lot more challenging.

Bex Caputo: Exactly. There’s no leadership. That’s one of the things they brought up. We’re a bunch of small communities pushed together into a large sex positive community. But we’re spread out across the country. We may know of a lot of other people in our community. But that doesn’t mean we’re close with them or involved in these situations. Yet, we wind up dog piling when we hear pieces of a story, when we’re not even a part of it. So it was a really, really interesting and nuanced conversation. And there’s a lot about it. None of that is to say that we don’t still believe victims, and we don’t still stand by victims and support them. Perpetrators also need space to grow, and we can hold them accountable while still having empathy for what happened, and still recognizing nuance to these discussions. We just can’t go nuclear and remove everyone all the time. A community just can’t support that.

Dawn Serra: Right, exactly. Because I think the danger when that happens is, then lots of people start performing what they think everybody wants to hear and starts really hiding the things that they actually believe or who they really are. Which becomes so much more dangerous because the more we’re all performing and hiding from each other, the easier it is for people who really are going to cause harm to fly under the radar.

Bex Caputo: Yeah, exactly.

Dawn Serra: Yeah. If we’re feeling more comfortable like, “My fuck ups can be held, and I can show up imperfectly. I’m going to be lovingly held accountable,” then I think that gives us a little bit more space to like, “Hey, I’m going to try these new thoughts and these new ideas. I might get them wrong. I might really say the wrong thing.” But if someone’s going to say, “Hey, that really hurt. Here’s how you can do better,” then I get to practice that without being reminded all the time of all the ways I fucked up in the past, then I think we’re all so much more likely to actually move forward.

Bex Caputo: Yeah, absolutely. As people holding people accountable, it’s important to recognize that one day, that’s going to be us. That doesn’t make what they did OK. We can still treat them with compassion.

Dawn Serra: Yeah, yeah. I just watched Brené Brown did in a Facebook Live this morning, and it was all about white supremacy and racism. It was really good. She was talking about empathy. One of the things that she was talking about was, we will all create shitstorms, and we will all mess up really big, especially around topics that have caused this much pain. So we’re talking about racism or sexism or transphobia. It’s so easy to really hurt someone because they’re already hurting. We still need to be doing that work. Because to not do the work is to be so privileged.

Bex Caputo: Yeah, yeah. Definitely. I’ve just started delving into Brené Brown’s work a little bit more over the past couple of days. Because one of the things I realized at Woodhull, I had this intense vulnerability hangover a few days in. I was like, “What is going on?” I knew and I realized I was in the same physical space with two of the people I’m most vulnerable with – my partner and my best friend. I don’t flex that vulnerability muscle in the rest of my day-to-day life. I realized just being in that space and being around it, I was like, “Oh, I guess I need to work on this.” I just started finally reading Daring Greatly because I’m way behind the ball on all of this. I was like three pages in, and I’m like, “How dare you call me out like this? Do you know me?”

Dawn Serra: “I feel attacked.”

Bex Caputo: I just came to work on self-development. Why is this so hard?

Dawn Serra: Yeah. I have read all of the books, and I totally love her stuff. It was so helpful to me to even know that there was a thing as a vulnerability hangover. Because it explains so much why, so often, the day after something big happened, I would be irritable and cranky and like, “Don’t look at me.” It just gave me so much language around, “Maybe it’s because I’m feeling really tender and exposed.”

Bex Caputo: Yeah, yeah. Exactly. I’m like, “Why is this so exhausting just existing? Oh, cause I’m doing it authentically.”

Dawn Serra: Right. Yeah. Like getting seen and having all those big feelings is exhausting sometimes.

Bex Caputo: Yeah.

Dawn Serra: Yeah. OK, so I would love to read something that you wrote about one of your experiences at Woodhull. It’s on your blog. I’ll link to the blog posts. Because trust me, the entire thing is worth reading.

Bex Caputo: There’s a lot of filth in that blog post. 

Dawn Serra: OK, so here’s what you said. Because I know there’s going to be listeners who are like, “Ooh! They’re talking about pee.” OK. Here’s what you said: “Interestingly, kneeling on the floor of the shower, covered in my Sir’s piss, was a surprisingly neutral experience. I figured I’d love it or I’d be majorly squeaked. But the reality was that the warmth felt nice, and I was about as turned on as I normally get around my Sir’s dick, which is to say very. The piss itself just didn’t feel all that intense one way or another.”  Was that your first time doing any kind of watersports?

Bex Caputo: Yeah. Watersports was always one of those things. I’ve always been interested in watching people with penises pee. It’s always been like, “Oh, that’s cool.” I think part of it is #transfeelings because I don’t have a penis. But also is just like, “Oh. It’s a cool thing.” I mentioned that to my partner, and we started exploring it via sexting and talking about it, and I round up. I was like, “All right, yeah. This may be a thing I want to try. This is kind of cool.” But I figured, ‘cause watersports, it gets so hyped up as this really edgy thing, playing with pee, you know? 

So I figured it would feel really intense one way or another, and I was just like, “OK, so this happens.” It was really cool. We tried it other times throughout the weekend too. It was cooler when it was in more of a context of, I come at a lot of kink from service – in a context of taking it as a service to my Sir or in a context of marking his property, that kind of thing. If it had this psychological context around it, it could be really, really hot. The first time we tried it, we were like, “OK, let’s not hype it up with this big, kinky story around it or whatever. Let’s just do the thing and see how it feels because it was super gross, we didn’t want it to be in the middle of this intense scene.”

Dawn Serra: Yeah.

Bex Caputo: The first time we tried it, I was like, “Cool. So that happened. OK.” It was not intense, one way or another, which I thought was really, really interesting.

Dawn Serra: Yeah. For you, it sounds like, if it’s from a place of service or it’s a place of ownership and power dynamics, it takes on a heightened meaning because of the psychological aspect, and the pee itself was just like, “Eh. It’s pee.”

Bex Caputo: Yeah, exactly. It’s warm. It feels nice. But, yeah. I mean, most of my kink stuff comes from a place of service and power exchange. Those are my two major kinks, which is cool, because you can really couch anything in that framework. I could be into pretty much anything that my partner is into, if we put the right phrasing around it. If it becomes a service, it becomes, “Oh, we’re doing this thing that feels edgy to me, but I’m doing it for someone. Oh, OK, great. I’m on board. Let’s try it.” Which is a handy hack to my brain if I want to try new things, too.

Dawn Serra: Hell, yeah. Exactly. It’s like, “Well, here’s how we can frame this and it will make it way more hot.”

Bex Caputo: Yeah. We even do it for not kink things. My Sir is really, really good at using kink for personal development and stuff. So I’ll do life things that I need to do as a service to him. Or, if I’m nervous about something or if I’m anxious about something… Just yesterday, I was talking to him about a workshop I’m going to be teaching. I was like, “Oh, I’m feeling nervous about this one coming up.” He’s like, “Well, you’re going to do a good job because I need you to. So it’s going to be fine. You’ll do it for me.” I was like, “All right. OK.”

Dawn Serra: Oh. I love that. That, to me, is where a really healthy power exchange relationship can be so wonderful. Because we have this dynamic that’s not about abuse and manipulation, which is what we see a lot of power exchanges portrayed in, say, books about kink. I mean, people who are stepping into the position of power really do have this wonderful opportunity of helping the people that are in service to them take amazing care of themselves. Because I think for people who are submissive and who like to be in service, I think it’s so easy for folks to overgive and overextend themselves. Because that’s just kind of… In my experience, I like to please, and I like being a people pleaser in a lot of situations. So it’s nice to have someone who’s like, “Here’s how you’re going to take care of yourself in service to me.” What a wonderful lovely exchange to just offer to someone who’s serving to, “No, taking care of you really does matter.”

Bex Caputo: Yeah, exactly. It reminds me of this thing Mollena Williams, to name drop her again, talks about – fantastic kink educator. She talks about the Prime Directive, which obviously is a Star Trek reference. Also, the Prime Directive as a submissive is to care for the dominance property up to and including from the dominant himself or themselves, and the dominance property being the submissive. It is your prime directive to take care of yourself, even if that means protecting yourself from the dominant at the end of the day, in some problematic relationships. 

That really resonates with me a lot, especially on days when things are hard, like self-care. I have a habit of foregoing eating. It’s one of the things that my partner really, really helps me with. On days when I can’t take care of myself for me, because my mental health is really bad, I can take care of myself because he requires it off me. Taking care of his property is a different framework for me to approach taking care of myself, and it can be really helpful

Dawn Serra: Before we talk about the fisting, which let me just tell you, it’s really funny. Because I mean, I’ve talked about a lot of things on this show in three and a half years, and it never fails that when I bring up anything to do with this thing, I get at least one comment from somebody on one of the channel that was like, “Oh, my god. I heard the word fisting. I had to turn it off.” It was so quick.

Bex Caputo: I always forget how edgy fisting sounds to some people. I’ve brought it up in vanilla spaces, and people are just like, “Oh, my god.” I’m like, “Oh, right. That’s an intense thing. OK. No, it’s fine.”

Dawn Serra: OK, before we talk about your fisting experience, there are probably people who are listening who are kink curious but aren’t really into kink yet or aren’t really sure about healthy kink, because maybe they’ve only read 50 Shades of Grey. But you keep talking about your Sir and being in service. So I would love it if you could talk a little bit about, for folks who might not know what your relationship dynamic is like and how you experience it.

Bex Caputo: For me, sex is very highly linked to power exchange, which means just playing with power dynamics. As the submissive person in this relationship, I’m not powerless in the relationship. I’m not giving up all of my power. I have a lot of power, and I’m also giving a lot of that power to my partner and playing with the levels of control and letting him control different aspects of my life in a way that’s totally consensual and highly negotiated. We talk a lot about those sorts of things. For me, it’s just really hot to play with that.

Dawn Serra: So sex and power exchange are super linked for you. How does that play out? You have someone in your life that you call your Sir. For you, is that a title of respect?

Bex Caputo: Yeah, it’s a title of respect for me, and it’s a way for me to– Honestly, at this point, it becomes like a pet name. Like the way some people call their partners “Babe” or “Hun” or whatever. I call him Sir. For him, it is a way of showing that he has the power in this kind of game that we play. He calls me pup or boy. 

For us, we have some day-to-day, protocol stuff that we do. Every morning, I send him a picture when I wake up. Every night, I update him on things I did that day and the food stuff, like I talked about earlier. Then we also have sexy stuff that we do, like I don’t jerk off without permission. There have been times where he’s said, “OK, this week, you’re free to do it whenever you want.” I’ve gotten to a point where I’m just like, “But, can I?” Because it’s so ingrained in my sexuality at this point that being told it’s OK and getting permission is hot to me. That’s part of the game. For some people, it can be super scary if they’re super new to kink to look at this and be like, “All the time, he has control over all of this.?” Yeah, because that’s hot to me, and because that’s how we like to play this game. 

Bex Caputo: We also have conversations about our relationship that are totally on equal ground. If we’re sitting down and having serious grown up relationship talks, I’m not kneeling at his feet during them. We’re sitting down having a conversation on equal footing. I am a part of all of those dialogues. If I went to him and said, “Hey, this kink thing is feeling really weird to me for XYZ reasons,” we wouldn’t do it for a little while. 

I would say if you’ve read 50 shades of grey and go, “Hey, this is kind of hot,” maybe don’t jump into all day, everyday power exchange. Maybe have a role play one night and see how it feels. Role play is one of my favorite ways to recommend people get into it because you have these archetypes. It can be a way to almost separate yourself a little bit from what you’re doing. If you’re feeling a lot of shame and insecurities around it to be like, “Well, I don’t want to be spanked, but this naughty student who didn’t do her homework just clearly needs to be punished.” And, “I’m not mean, but this principle over here obviously has to hold someone accountable.” It can be a really fun way to play with this stuff without feeling super vulnerable and exposed because you’re playing a role.

Dawn Serra: Yeah. The other day, Alex and I were playing around and getting kind of sexy. I can’t remember exactly how it started. But I think I nuzzled him. He was like, “Oh, this kitten. I want to play. I think it needs to have her tail in.” Then the little tail went in my butt. Then we just started playing in this little role space where I got to take on a different aspect of myself, and we got to be silly and giggle over it. Then we had super hot sex. But it was an opportunity for us to just take on some different aspects of ourselves and to shed some other things that we were holding on to. Just be really connected and playful in a different way. I think that’s just a nice place to be able to go with someone.

Bex Caputo: Yeah. I love the beauty of saying that you guys were giggly and having fun around it. Because people who are new to kink I feel like have this super serious impression of it, that you’re going to meet Sir Domly Dom Bossypants off of FetLife, who is going to take you into this deep dark dungeon covered in leather and beat you. Maybe, but probably not. There’s probably going to be giggling and fun and negotiation. I’ve had conversations with my partner about… I think specifically, the last time we talked about it was around pup stuff. Same ideas as your kitten play, except I’m a puppy. I feel kind of silly sometimes, and it makes me nervous and whatever. I’m like, “I don’t know. I feel like I look silly.” He’s like, “Well, you do. But so do I. I’m barking orders at you for no reason. We both look absurd. So just accept that.” It was comforting to be like, “Oh, right. This is ridiculous and silly and also super fun.”

Dawn Serra: Right. Yeah. I think that’s so important because I think not just kink, but we also… I think this is culturally taught, but we tend to take sex so seriously. If we’re not good at sex, then we’re a failure. If we can’t get people to have sex with, then there’s all these messages about what sex is supposed to mean, and how often we’re supposed to have it and what ways and what sort of people. But when you really think about it, sex is pretty absurd and weird and gross sometimes. Sometimes like, “Eh!” That happens. I think it’s really nice when we can actually just be absurd and be silly and let ourselves just go there. Then awesome things happen because now we’re being a little bit vulnerable and letting ourselves be seen that way. Really great things can happen from that. I mean, also really disappointing things, sure. But I don’t know. To me, I feel vulnerable when I get into that space of, “Am I doing this right? Do I look silly?” But knowing that’s part of it. That it’s OK to look silly and not know what I’m doing is also sweet and tender.

Bex Caputo: Yeah, exactly. Playing with someone who can meet you in that space and that you can recognize they’re in that same space with you. They’re also wondering if they’re doing this right or if they look ridiculous at the same time as you are. It can really give you space to explore that, I think.

Dawn Serra: Yeah. OK. Talking about exploring, you had a fist inside your body.

Bex Caputo: I did that. I did that twice!

Dawn Serra: Oh, my god. The way you wrote about it was interesting because it was my experience a little bit of squirting, which was like, “Oh, wow! My body does this thing.” But it’s not a peak pleasure experience for me. It’s just like a thing that my body can do and some of the stuff around it is super pleasurable. But it’s not like, “Haaa!” I thought your writing about the fisting experience was very similar. So I’d love to hear about it.

Bex Caputo: Yeah. I’ve always really felt drawn to large penetration. For my partner and I, fisting has been a big part of our relationship, I guess. We talked about it a lot. It’s something we’re both really into. I’ve fisted him before. But this is the first time he had fisted me, and I wanted to do it. I do like the feeling of fullness and the feeling of being stretched when I use large toys. At the same time, what really draws me to it is this feeling of accomplishment. Like “Holy shit! Look what I can do.” Part of it is probably that service-y thing like, “Look at how good at this I can be. Look at this awesome thing I can achieve.” That’s part of why I really wanted to try it. 

When I did, when I was finally able to do that, it felt… One of the things I wrote in that post is that it felt intense and not in the way that intense g-spot stimulation is overwhelming pleasure. Not in the way that a spanking is really intense pain, but also good. It felt like  just running a marathon. My body had been through an ordeal and had done a thing. The orgasm felt like a peak, but it also just felt like a release, like the way you would collapse after crossing the finish line. Like, “I did the thing.” That you have all that tension built up from all the pleasure and all of the really intense feelings. Your body’s like, “Oh, my god. What is going on?” Then it’s all release all at once, which was really intense and really cool. 

Bex Caputo: I know there were points where I could feel a lot of g-spot pressure ‘cause a fist is a really good shape for g-spotting, let’s be honest. There were times when I could really feel that. But it was almost like I was hearing it from the other room. Like it was faint, and in the foreground was more just like, “Oh, my god. There’s a fucking fist in us.” My body’s just like, “Can we discuss this for a moment,” and in the background, my g-spot’s like, “Guys, I can feel there’s some pressure here. Can we talk about–” I feel like once my body gets used to processing that this is the thing that we can do now, I’ll be able to focus more on that g-spot pressure. It’s going to be more of a focus on, “Oh, my god. This feels really good. This feels really amazing. But the first few times it was more like, “Whoa! Oh, my god. This is happening.

Dawn Serra: I think that’s so important. Because I have talked to people who have either tried do toys or try doing things in bed, and it didn’t feel how they thought it would, so they were disappointed. I think that that disappointment is really valid. I think it’s so important to also realize that sometimes it takes us a little while and trying things multiple times to really adjust to it or find how to make it a peak pleasure experience or to find the context that makes it extra hot, like you were talking about with the psychological aspects of watersports. 

I love that you were like, “Oh, wow! This really intense thing happened. I had all these thoughts and feelings about it. I’ve done it a couple more times.” As I do it more and I start to fill in all the different shades of what’s possible, you’ll probably really be able to maximize pleasure, but it didn’t just happen out of the gate.

Bex Caputo: Yeah, exactly. I think people go into this trying new things thing with a lot of expectations and a lot of pressure. It would have been so easy for me to do that. My partner’s long distance. I see him a handful of times a year and that’s it. It would have been so easy for me to go in there with this checklist of, “We’re going to do ABC and D, and they’re all going to feel orgasmic, and XYZ ways and it’s going to be amazing because of one two and three.” I really intentionally worked hard to not do that because it’s not easy. Expectations just come with life. But for me, I really, really tried to go into it. We did have a list of like XYZ things that we thought would be cool to try. But I really worked hard to not go into it with expectations outside of, “We’re going to try this thing.” 

That’s why when we tried watersports, it wasn’t in this super intense scene. We tried stuff in a framework of more sex labs. Also, we use barriers for everything when we’re having sex. So we use dental dams, which is not something we use with a lot of our other partners. We’re not super used to it. The first time we tried, it wasn’t in the middle of having sex like, “Yeah, let’s do this thing.” It was like, “All right. Let’s figure out how to best use dental dams.”

Dawn Serra: Yes, that’s how important. Oh, my god. That’s so important.

Bex Caputo: Let’s figure out how to do this in a way that’s hot, so that when we’re in the middle of a super sexy thing, we can whip them out and feel confident in it. Instead of feeling like, “Oh, god. We’re going to ruin the mood.”

Dawn Serra: Right. You don’t swing a flogger for the first time in a high stakes situation that you want to be super sexy.

Bex Caputo: Exactly.

Dawn Serra: Or use a cock ring for the first time in a situation where you want to be super sexy, you’ve practiced it a few times and figured it out, how things work and how it feels before you go in.

Bex Caputo: Yeah. That’s for the same reason you don’t pitch a new thing while you’re naked in bed like, “Hey, do you want to try?” That’s coffee shop conversation. Or maybe, if you’re not me, you talk it over the breakfast table, whatever. But look at the situations you’re in and try not to create more pressure than there already is.

Dawn Serra: Yeah, give yourself a chance to actually not feel like you have to get it right or it’s all over.

Bex Caputo: Yeah, exactly.

Dawn Serra: I don’t know. I think if we go into a situation where everyone’s naked or potentially feeling vulnerable, and now we want to do this new thing for the very first time, that’s so much more opportunity for all of us to feel like, “OK. I feel super ashamed,” or “That went really wrong. I’m never doing that again.” Versus, “Hey, what if we tried this thing and we were really bad at it together? Then if it goes well or if we like it, we can try it next time when we’re naked and XYZ.” That feels like so much more spacious.

Bex Caputo: Yeah. Approaching a thing like, “Hey, this could be ridiculous.” Even more importantly – or at least for me – decompressing about that thing afterwards. Because a key part of my aftercare is having that conversation. I think it’s easy for you to try a new thing and for one person to either assume, “That was amazing. We both thought it was amazing and it was great.” Or, “I looked ridiculous, and they hate me now, and it was terrible.” The other person’s experience may have been completely different. So having that conversation afterwards and creating space for, “What was that experience for you?” 

I had that conversation with my partner at one point around puppy play stuff, where I was like… Impact, which I usually love, we tried to do while I was in a pup space. I was like, “Yeah. I don’t think we can do that.” He was like, “Yeah, me neither.” He’s like, “I realized that too.” We’re like, “Oh. That felt weird for both of us. Great.” We were able to just pluck that piece out of the scene and be like, “Great. We’re not going to do that again. But we’re going to do these other three things, again, that felt good for both of us.”

Dawn Serra: I think what’s so important too about that debrief is, I think we’re afraid that if we do the debrief and I really liked something, that you might say you really didn’t like it. So by talking about it, “Now, I don’t get to do the thing.” Whereas I think the assumption is if we don’t debrief, then I just get to try it again and hope for a different outcome. I think it’s because we’re afraid that if we really like something and someone else didn’t, that it’s personal. It’s because you didn’t do the thing. But so often, when we actually have the courage to have that conversation, maybe the reason that you didn’t like the impact play while you’re also in your puppy space was because the flogger didn’t feel good. Or, maybe it’s because your headspace is just in such that you don’t like puppies getting hit and it felt like a puppy getting hit or whatever. It had nothing to do with your partner’s technique or your partner’s presence, totally about your head and how you’re channeling it. 

I think often we’re so afraid that it’s going to be this personal, “You did the thing wrong.” But when we actually learn how to have conversations we can learn, “No. It was actually the context. So maybe this thing I really liked that you really didn’t, if we change the context, we’ll both really like it. But you only figure that out by talking about it.”

Bex Caputo: Exactly. You may not realize that there are these compromises to be had. I think you run the risk with not having that conversation, of either assuming that you both felt negatively about something. Even though you both loved it, you assume the other person hated it, and then you never get to do it again. Or, you were indifferent to it, and you’re like, “Oh, but they brought it up, and they seem to really love it. So I guess we’re doing this six more times.” Meanwhile, the other person’s like, “Well, that really wasn’t what I expected. But now they seem super into it. So I guess we’re doing this a bunch more times.”

Dawn Serra: Yes.

Bex Caputo: You wind up having sex the two people are indifferent about. I have a extra super nerdy “Yes, No, Maybe” list that I’ve made. A “Yes, No, Maybe” list is a negotiation tool. You get a list of things – sex acts or whatever – and you sort them into, “Yes, I want to do that,” “Maybe if I get some more information,” or “Maybe only on the weekends,” – or maybe whatever – and, “No, that’s not a thing I’m down for.” 

But one of the things I did was I divided it from, “Yes” into “Yes into” and “Yes willing.” Because there’s a difference between, “I want to do that,” and “I’m down to do that if you’re into it.” I’m personally not into feet, but if I’m with someone who’s super into feet, it’s really hot to me that they’re so turned on, so we can totally do that. But yes isn’t going to wind up on my Yes list. If we just have the Yes list, feet would go on there. I’m not opposed to them at all. But then I’m going to wind up in a foot scene that the other person is also like, “Well, if you’re into feet, I can be into feet,” and then no one’s having a great time. So I think having the nuance to that conversation of, “What do you do? What do you still totally on board for, if someone really wants to do it? What are you super into, yourself?”

Dawn Serra: Yeah, but it’s so important to know the difference.

Bex Caputo: Yeah.

Dawn Serra: Yeah. One of the things that you mentioned in that post – and I’ve heard you mentioned it other times, too – that I think is super important for people to hear. Because I know there’s a lot of listeners listening right now who want to try certain things, but feel like they can’t because either their partner isn’t into it or because they don’t have a partner. But you’ve had a lot of experience with platonic kink. 

Bex Caputo: Yes. 

Dawn Serra: Can we talk about what that looks like, so that we can give people permission? You can totally have kinky exchanges with people that you’re not romantically hooked with. 

Bex Caputo: For me, it looks like– I have a lot of friends in the kink community, and it can look like a friend getting a new toy and me being like, “Oh, what’s that feel like?” and them spanking me with it. It can look like my best friend having a really bad mental health day and needing a cathartic spanking, and me and a couple other friends spanking her while she cries and works through some really intense stuff. It can look like a friend of mine being really, really good at rope bondage, and me not having someone in my life that I can experience that with, and then experimenting on different ties on my body and playing with how that feels, and then learning new things and experimenting on me and that sort of thing. 

A lot of times it’s very focused on the actual kink tasks or activities. But I’ve even had psychological kink stuff with friends. Sometimes when my best friend is having really bad mental health days, I’ll platonically dom her into helping her do things and do that self-care dom stuff. Like I talk about my partner does – “How are you feeling? How can I be helpful? You need to get XYZ done? Do you want me to motivate you for that?” Especially with my relationship with my best friend, it comes from a place of love, but not romantic love. It still comes from a place of care, and it can still be intimate. It can sometimes, especially for her, impact for her is really cathartic. Sometimes if she doesn’t have it for a while, she’ll be craving it. We can play with spanking in that way, and it’s still not a romantic thing, even though it is very loving.

Dawn Serra: Yeah. I think that’s so important for people to think about because… I’m thinking specifically of cis men who are so, so, so touched-deprived. You can have kinky experiences and these physical embodied experiences, and even intimate experiences that are non-sexual with people of any gender. If you want to know what it’s like to fly in rope, it doesn’t have to be a sexual exchange with some hot person that you want to be banging. I mean, go to the nearest rope expert. If it happens to also be a cis dude, let him put you in ropes and just have this nice bro moment or whatever. I mean, there’s so many different ways we can have shared experiences that meet our needs, even if it’s not a sexual exchange or a romantic exchange with somebody. 

I love that you talk about platonic kink because I think that gets forgotten in a lot of talk about kink. You can get that impact play from someone that you aren’t having a sexual exchange with, and it can still feel like an incredible release. It can still get you all those endorphins, and you can still feel so relieved and seen afterwards, even if it’s a friend.

Bex Caputo: Yeah, it feels great, and it does feel different. That’s not bad. I do love platonic kink just for skill shares and for learning and for kink labbing and that sort of thing, and trying to figure out all this stuff. But it can also be a really cathartic, really vulnerable experience. I mentioned earlier, my birthday party, I had a spanking party. I turned 25 last year, and I invited everyone over, all of my friends. They each got to hit me 25 times with whatever they wanted. That was probably one of my most intense kinky experiences. I am not in a romantic relationship with any of those people, but it was amazing. I felt so loved to be surrounded by people who I cared about me, consensually beating the shit out of me. It was a really, really great experience and a really comforting experience to have that happen. Then afterwards, they all brought me over to the couch and took turns cuddling me and after caring me and brought me out to my favorite restaurant to get me mac and cheese. It was this beautiful loving thing, and I’m not dating any of them.

Dawn Serra: I love that so much. I wish more people had the permission – and maybe this will give that to them to – it’s so OK to just hang out with your friends and ask, “Can I practice this tie on you?” or, “Hey, I want to have a spanking party.” Unless you want it to, it doesn’t have to turn into sexual anything. We have the power and the agency and the permission to create the circumstances for ourselves. It doesn’t have to look the way that maybe we think it’s always supposed to look because we’ve only seen the sexy version in porn or on TV or in the erotica we read. We can create other situations where we still get to have these experiences.

Bex Caputo: Yeah. I mean, I think sex gets… It’s such a high intensity thing for a lot of people because no one talks about it. Because they don’t see representations of things like this happening. I’m so entrenched in the sex positive community right now that sometimes I forget that other people aren’t. So I’ll be around vanilla friends. I’ll be like, “Yeah. I went to this play party this weekend.” People will be like, “Ooh. What is that like?” One person would be like, “Would you ever go to an orgy party?” I’m like, “I went to two last month. They’re really chill.” But you see the people, they’re all just like, “Oh, my god. These things are happening in these dark corners of the city, in this seedy underbelly. You’re like, “No, we just all hung out and tied each other up. It was fine.” 

Dawn Serra: Exactly. 

Bex Caputo: But if we had more representations of that… Kate McCombs calls it being a beacon of permission. If we had more people out and talking about it and just telling their stories, more people would see that, “Oh, that can just be normal. That can just be life.”

Dawn Serra: OK. I have one last thing I’d love to touch on with you because you just said, speaking of life, there’s something that you’ve been writing about around your gender and testosterone. I’d love to read two different sections of something that you recently wrote about how you experience your gender, and this grappling you did with whether or not to go on T. Would it be OK, if I share the two sections, and then we just talk about it a little bit?

Bex Caputo: Yeah, totally.

Dawn Serra: OK. Here’s the first thing that you wrote: “When people ask me what it means to identify as non-binary, I usually just tell them it means I have a lot of feelings about my gender. What it really means is that none of the options that society gives me feel right. I don’t fit in any of the boxes. It means that choosing how I want the world to see me means choosing the thing that feels the least wrong.” 

Then you were talking about how, because you’re not having massive distress or, “I’ve always known I was XYZ gender,” that you weren’t sure if you should take testosterone or what that meant for you. So you were meeting with a therapist, and the therapist said this amazing thing. I’d love to read that section, too.

Bex Caputo: Yeah.

Dawn Serra: You wrote: “She said cautiously, ‘I think the thing most people don’t realize is that you don’t need to be miserable about something to want to change it.’ I don’t think she realized how important that sentence was and how much permission it gave me – ‘You don’t need to be miserable.’ I wasn’t miserable. I’m still not. I’m content, happy even. I love my body and my personality. I’m cute as fuck, hella charming, competent, confident, and engaging. I’m probably one of the most arrogant people I know. But I want to change.” 

I love that so much happens. So many of these narratives around, “Oh, I’ve always hated my body, and I’ve always known I should be something different.” You don’t actually have to be miserable, and you can still be like,” This just doesn’t really fit. I want to do something different.”

Bex Caputo: Yeah. We’re getting so much dialogue around transition now, which is amazing. We’re seeing so many of these people coming out and telling their stories. Yet, we’re getting in, at least the community as a whole, in the public sphere, we’re seeing the same narrative over and over. I’ve always known something was always not right. I never felt right. I had this big secret all this time. 

That’s not really how it felt for me. That’s not how any of my coming out has ever felt. It’s more a realization that my lived reality is different from other people’s. I’m just like, “Oh. This is a thing I can change. I think I would feel more comfortable presenting in a different way.” But yeah, when my therapist said that she’s like, “Yeah, I think people, even around changing jobs and changing houses and changing relationships, they let it run until they’re miserable. Then they’re like, ‘OK, now I get out.’” She said that, and she’s like, “You don’t have to do that.” I was like, “Have you told anyone else this? Have you considered writing a book?” 

Dawn Serra: “I think we need to get the word out.”

Bex Caputo: Yeah. I’m like, “Who else knows this information?“

Dawn Serra: Yeah. I just love that so much. Because you’re so right. The narrative is when you’re miserable, then it’s time to end the relationship or when you’re in this super distress about your body, it’s time to change it. There’s so many other options than just that binary black or white kind of thinking like, “No. If you just know things can be better even if things are good, you’re allowed to take the action you need to make them better.”

Bex Caputo: Yeah, exactly. It was a completely new concept for me to say that, which sounds weird. But when she told me that, I thought of all of the times where I’m like, “Well, changing is going to be work, and I have to hit the correct miserable threshold to be worth doing the work.” That’s a really problematic narrative that we’ve got out in the world. That’s not a great thing to be sharing around the world. Yet that’s the narrative we see. Almost as if it’s not worth doing work to be happier.

Dawn Serra: Right.

Bex Caputo: Like work is only worth it if you’re fixing a problem. There didn’t have to be a problem.

Dawn Serra: Yeah. Something I just want to point out is, I’ve been through two different marriage therapy trainings at this point from the Gottman’s. Then also, Terry Real’s Relational Life Therapy program. One of the things that keeps coming up over and over again is this concept of, “We don’t need to really work on these things until they become a problem.” That’s the worst time to try and work on things is when you’re in distress, it’s terrible to try and have lots of these conversations or pick out how you’re feeling about something. 

Of course, when things are OK or good, we should be asking these questions about how we can make it better, what we can do to make it stronger or how we can feel more seen because it’s so much easier for us to make good decisions and have open conversations when we’re not in distress. So if we have the privilege to actually do that for ourselves, what an amazing gift to not wait until things feel utterly and completely fucking shitty.

Bex Caputo: Yeah, exactly. I think it’s important to get the narrative out there of more people making changes from good to better instead of from– Because that is a very real trans experience. There are a lot of trans people out there who are completely wrecked and feeling miserable about their body and suffering intense, intense dysphoria. And that’s very real. That’s also not the only trans experience. 

I think it’s important to have the dialogue out there of other ways to experience transness. Because when I started, it took a lot of looking, and I started stumbling across other people with more similar experiences to me and other non-binary people who were experiencing their gender in different ways. I was just like, “Oh. OK. This is a real thing.” For me, at the end of the day, I did decide to start TF and on it for three months, and it was a fantastic decision. 

Bex Caputo: Through doing that, it almost gave me… It felt like it gave me permission to explore more masculine and male archetypes. I’m finding more and more things that I didn’t realize in the past, I had told myself weren’t for me – because I was not a boy or because I’m primarily attracted to masc people, too. Because I was not a gay man and because I was not a boy, I told myself that these were not for me. I didn’t even realize I had done that. Now, I’m in a place where I’m rediscovering all this stuff. I’m like, “Oh, man. OK. Oh, cool. I can have all these things now. I can express my gender in all of these different ways. I can do all of these different things that I should never have cut myself off from in the first place.”

Dawn Serra: That’s amazing. I love that you’re having that experience. 

Bex Caputo: Yeah, it’s great.

Dawn Serra: Oh, my gosh, Well, congratulations on, one, taking that step for yourself. Two, just go you for having a therapist who was able to write that permission slip, and for you to be like, “Fuck, yeah! That’s permission slip I needed. I’m charging ahead.”

Bex Caputo: Well, thank you ‘cause it was awesome.

Dawn Serra: Well, I would love it if you could tell everyone how they can stay in touch with you, find you online, follow along with your adventures.

Bex Caputo: Yeah, totally. I’m Bex. You can find me at @BexTalksSex on Twitter and Instagram and all of my writing is at bextalkssex.com. I’m also the co-host of a podcast called “The Dildorks,” with my best friend, Kate Sloan. That’s at thedildorks.wordpress.com. You can search “The Dildorks,” in your favorite podcast app. It’s at @thedildorks on Twitter and Instagram. We post every week on Wednesdays.

Dawn Serra: Well, I hope everybody listening checks all your stuff out and read your amazing post from Woodhull, and then totally checks you and Kate out speaking out on “The Dildorks.” Totally worth a listen, everybody. I want to thank you so much for coming on the show and geeking out with me because this was a super fun hour.

Bex Caputo: Thank you so much for having me. I had so much fun.

Dawn Serra: You’re so welcome. To everybody else, be sure to head to dawnserra.com/sexgetsrealpod for this episode so that you can get all the info on Bex. You can also find the link to check out Patreon to support the show. Of course, if you have comments or questions, send those to me using the contact form. You can do it anonymously, if you want to hide who you are because you got an embarrassing question. I love hearing from you, and I will talk to you next time. Bye!