Dr. Lucie Fielding: On A Pleasure-Centered Approach to Trans Sexualities

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Roger Kuhn: Good evening, everyone. Good evening, everyone. Afternoon, wherever you may be listening today. Nice to meet you all. Nice to see you all. Lucie, what a joy and an honor and a pleasure, a real pleasure to be with you tonight.

Lucie Fielding: I am so tickled that I get to be IRL in conversation with you. Like this is a great pleasure.

Roger Kuhn: Yes, Lucie and I have spent lots of time over the years, on, online together. So this is nice to do this IR.. In real life. IRL is in real life for those who may not know the acronym IRL. That's maybe actually a good place to get started, is, for those of you that are new to Lucie's work, who may be new to this concept of even pleasure, I want to start there by even just breaking down some terminology for our audience and for our listeners tonight. And maybe pleasure is a good place to start, so that we can be working together on an operational definition. So when Lucie and I say certain terminologies, you will know what we mean with those terms. So let's start with pleasure. How are you defining pleasure these days?

Lucie Fielding: Pleasure is enjoyment, is liking. And I define it that way because I think too often we conflate pleasure with sex. And another word that I imagine that we'll talk about is the erotic. And I want to really make space for, I want to center any kind of discussion on like, you know, there are many ways to experience embodiment, to connect with the erotic, to connect with pleasure, to connect with joy in one's body. And sex is one of those great ways. And there are so many other ways as well. And, you know, like another definition, sex is an energy. It's not, to my mind, you know, a set of techniques. It's not a set of like genitals behaving in particular ways or even being involved. It's an energy that just gets applied. You know, it's sex if you say it's sex, you know, and if you agree that it's sex. And so, and I think sex and the erotic are, they're an unruly, ungovernable force.

Roger Kuhn: Well, there's something about being in the field of sexuality. Lucie and I are in the field of sexuality. And so for those of us that study sex, sexuality, gender, there is an enjoyment that comes with that, right? There is this way in which even just our academic studies and our therapeutic work is not only centering pleasure, it drives pleasure for us, you know, like if you ever hang out with like sexologists, like, you know, we say like, we geek out on sex, but we don't necessarily mean like, you know, when people think of that term, right? We're thinking about the ways in which the pleasure is expansive in all of these ways. And I like to think about the erotic and how when my intro to erotic was, yes, Madonna's erotica album, I'll just, I will name that.

Lucie Fielding: Same.

Roger: You know, that was for me that was, people always say, how, how did you get to be the way you are? It's like I grew up in Madonna's era of erotica. I mean, come on, that's, that's it. Though it really shifted what I thought the erotic was, right? And then learning about it and actually studying it more, made me understand that it was yes, sex, and it was so much more, it was almost spiritual in this way. So I would love to hear your perspective on how you might even define the erotic.

Lucie: There are so many sources for me of that, you know, I think first and foremost of Audre Lorde's Uses Of The Erotic.

Roger: Phenomenal if you've not read it yet.

Lucie: It's a wonderful, wonderful text. She gets a little, like, she definitely gets like sex work negative and a little kink negative and kink shamy, but at certain times, but at the same time, like what I love is, is the way that she expands the notion of the erotic while not taking away its ferocity, you know, and it's, and, and its potential as a force. I also think about, there's a book that came out in 2022 called Hatred Of Sex. And I think about the ways that, they talk about how like, we use the word erotic when we want to speak politely and, and use like a genteel tone when we, when, because you know sex is too, you know, scary. And I really want to take that critique and that when I say the erotic, I'm not talking about something genteel. I'm talking about something unruly and destabilizing and unsettling, both unsettling as a, as a word and as a compound of un and settling. Separated by…

Roger: And the pleasure that can come from that. Yeah.

Lucie: Yeah, because you're breaking out of the familiar, breaking out of one's comfort zone. And, you know, that's, that's where change and all the juiciness happens, I think. So, I always, I always think about that and about, and I love Freud. I'll come out and say it. I love Freud.

Roger: I'm a a Freud, I do not.

Lucie: Yeah, you know, I, and, and I, but I like, I like the way that, I don't like drive theory, but I do like the way that he, he is not afraid to see the erotic as destructive. And destructive in, in a very amoral way, you know, of like it both, it’s, it can be destructive in a very, very good way and it can be annihilating. But yeah.

Roger: It makes me think of how, when I think of your work. From that perspective of when we approach something we do not understand. I imagine if, if your book is in the bookstore and people walk past it and they go, you know, it's your, the title is, is a double take for a lot of folks. And there's an untethering when I, when I read your book of what it was that I thought I knew about my own experience with, with my body with other bodies and also from a clinical perspective, like what I, what I thought about my clients bodies and their perspectives. So there's a way that I think that the erotic in that way, the way you've described it, fits so well with your work because that's, there's this permission that the reader has when they're reading your work to be destructive in their own identity, in their own body and that unsettling process of what it means to take what you were taught and let that go to trust that process of letting it go.

Lucie: And that's precisely why sex, sexuality and gender are always at the center of a moral panic, you know, because they are destabilizing. They are unsettling. They are, or they have the potential to be. They can also be conservative at times, but they, they are, they have this potential to really upend the status quo and have us questioning status quo, you know, question everything that, you know, like Gen X meme, you know, so…

Roger: Now what's interesting that folks may not know about the sexuality field in particular as clinicians, is that touch is actually something that causes moral panic.

Lucie: Yes.

Roger: Because, you know, we don't touch our clients in clinical realms. And I always say that, you know, folks don't come to me as a sex therapist because their sex life is great. They're coming because they're grieving something. Sex therapy is grief work just for, for folks to really understand that, we're grief therapists. And touch sometimes is needed as a form of comfort, as a form of human understanding, connection. And I bring this all up because Lucie and I actually met at a conference many moons ago and we were at a touch based, it was like a somatic based pre-conference workshop and it was all about touch. And the very first time we had to choose partners, Lucie and I were partnered together. And so our first introduction to one another was through the body. And we had to get over that. Well, I certainly didn't feel moral panic at the moment myself, but just that idea that we were doing something in our field that was so rebellious, that was so destructive, that we were willing to be with this idea of just touching one another from a very basic human perspective. And I remember it was all consent based and all like, you know, can I hold your hand and can I massage your forearm? And I just remember that so much. And I think one of the reasons why I feel so connected to Lucie is because our first introduction wasn't just chatting. It was actually connecting and touching in that particular way. And we also came up in the sort of world, the sort of sex therapy world, sex education world around the same time, as when we sort of both kind of were emerging in the field. And look at us now, doctors with books and all the things at CIIS. So…

Lucie: Sledgehammering doors down.

Robert: That I mean, that is, that is what you've done. You've, you've walked through some doors that may have been propped open. And you sledgehammered them and you made it easier, easier than, you know, just easier for folks to come in. And I want to just name that...

Lucie: And I take that from you, you know, in this, and in particular that sledgehammering metaphor, you know, because it's, it's one of, it's something so dear to me. It's the idea that like, Yes, I, I have a platform to speak and I want to speak now and, but I do so because ultimately I, I want to start a conversation, but I know that like I'm not going to be the one to end it, or at least I hope I'm not, you know, and I, I think and I write iteratively and I feel iteratively and everything is provisional for me. And there's a line from a short story by Anam Sufi, Undone, from Undone and it's, you know, hold me like you would a photograph from the edges and lightly. And, and I love the idea of holding concepts, holding beliefs, holding language that way. And, and concepts and you know, and so everything is, is like, it's a, it's a draft and it's always about how many more people can I, can I hold the door open for, or can I sledgehammer a door open for, so that they can continue on the conversation because I'm, I'm going to miss things because of my social location, because I mean, so many things and I always want to make sure that like, you know like, there are problems with my work, you know, and I'm, and I'm well aware that they are, I don't know exactly all the all of them, but you know, and I can try to fix them, but, but ultimately it's going to be somebody coming after me who is, you know, is like, you know, you did a good job starting it starting it, but like, let me, let me take it from here. And is going to do something brilliant that I couldn't even imagine, couldn't even dream of and I, and so that's what the door gets sledgehammered for.

Robert: Lucie and I, the other day, had a chat before tonight. And I asked Lucie, How you doing? How how are you doing? Because, I think Lucie's work is visible. There's a visibility that you're having and part of your social location, as you mentioned, is this visibility. And so, as a friend, I said, I'm a little worried, how are you? What's it like for you? To be visible, to do this work in the way that you do this work now. And I asked permission first if I could bring that up tonight. If Lucie was OK and comfortable talking about that. So that was just my little intro to say like about to ask Lucie a question. Which is how are you? How are you doing? How are you? How are you feeling in terms of what we are figuring out how to survive through right now?

Lucie: I think sometimes one of the joys of like being in conversation with other queer and trans folks is, is, you know, we can we can ask that question and, you know, we both know that it's fucking grim. That it really sucks. And we, we can agree, Yes, that it's awful and it's terrifying and also like.. There are also these moments of connection and, and gloriousness that you know, that we can also talk about. I'm terrified. I don't know what to.. Sometimes I wake up and I don't know what to do or to say to meet this moment. I don't know how to be in my body sometimes at a given moment. And yeah, I'm terrified. I mean, I've, I've had run-ins with, you know, some of, you know, the figures on the, on the right. You know, who have called me things. And have, you know, and I've gotten death threats and, and it's, it's scary. I would say that, like, I live in a rural part of the US and, and I say sometimes, you know that, there's a choice you can play respectability politics or oppositional politics and both are exhausting.

Roger: Yes.

Lucie: But I'd much rather go for the oppositional because the respectability politics just like, melon balls my soul. So, you know, but it's like, it's hard to hold that and, I think, there's a tension and I love tension. I love tension. Where, on the one hand, we have to pay attention. We have to, we have to be very clear about, you know, that like, the rhetoric that is being deployed against, against folks is, is, you know, like, I don't, I don't take it as joking. I don't, you know.. Every time I show up someplace and you know, I see that they've, you know, posted the address, I'm like, Oh God, you know, like, of course you have to and also like eehh, you know, I'm thinking about my security. I'm thinking about, you know, who is, who's in a room. And at the same time, like, I don't think we can be like clockwork orange, you know, and that scene, you know, just holding open with those, you know, so that we're just like staring at it all the time. And so how do you hold that tension of being very clear eyed about what's going on. While also recognizing that we, just like rest is important, and I think about like the nap ministry, Emily and Amelia Nagoski's burnout. Just as rest is important, I think pleasure is important because I don't just want our survival. I want our thriving.

Roger: Yeah.

Lucie: I want to dream futures. You know, the great queer theorist José Esteban Muñoz writes in, you know, Cruising Utopia that the here and now is a prison house. And he talks about straight time versus queer time and queer time is, is like all about this interplay between queer lineage and queer futurity. Queerness is, is, is not yet here. It's always over the horizon. And, and I think I really want to remember that, be grounded in my lineages. Be grounded in the fact that there is, that in certain respects, like we've been here before. There are technologies that have allowed us to move through those moments. I think it's, you know, in some ways, a whole heck of a lot worse. You know, I mean, I grew up in the 80s and 90s. So, you know, it's like, I saw some, I saw some shit.

Roger: Probably started some too.

Lucie: I tried. Mostly when I was, you know, goth kid in mid 90s. But, yeah, like all of that is, is there. And so is there this imperative for us to dream? And that's what I really want to hold close is, is the the dreaming. I want to dream futures that have all of you in them in my future, the futures that I dream. You were all there.

Roger: I'm wondering that there may be folks here in the room with us tonight and that are listening in, who are curious about, Should. In a moment like this, I should say something in a moment like this I should speak up, I should, and yet I don't feel, I don't know what to say. I am frightened to say something.

Lucie: Quit shoulding yourself.

Roger: Shoulding all over yourself, right? So I'm just curious if you would, if you would be willing to maybe speak to, if you ever have that, if you ever have that, if you ever have that part of you that, that says that maybe you could be doing more. You could be, you could be using your platform in a different way. And if so, just to, how to normalize that voice for folks.

Lucie: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, there's, there's so many, you know, I think especially on social media, there, there can be this, almost like, you know, there's this, again, tension where, you know, it's like, don't doom scroll, but please doom scroll. And you're never doing enough. But, you know, of course, enoughness is, you know, is, is a, is part of a discourse of capitalism. Too much, too little, not enough. You know, so, yeah, I think, I'm also I'm, I'm Jewish and one of the principles, kind of the highest principle of, of Sudaka is the idea that like, you do things from and you don't expect to be noticed. And you don't, you do it namelessly, you do it and you do it without a desire for, to be thanked or to be recognized for it. And so I think a lot of us do things, on a lot of things, that aren't, that are happening behind the scenes. And I don't, I don't want to question that. You know, it's like, God, you don't want me out there punching Nazis. I have a bad punch, unless I'm like impact topping, in which case I have a great punch, but like, you don't want me out there. You want me sitting with you after you've punched a Nazi.

Roger: Yeah, that's right.

Lucie: You know, so, you know, I'm, I'm terrible at call and response, terrible, absolutely terrible. I am great at contributing to mutual aid. I am great at, I'm great at educating. I'm great at, at, at engaging folks in conversation. And I think, like, our activism is going to look different, you know, and there's so many roles to play. And so I say, Quit shoulding yourself, stay involved, be engaged and also rest. Take time for pleasure, because the worst thing is, like, I mean, what.. You know, flooding the zone means we want you as exhausted and worn out and depleted and restless as possible, because then we get to do whatever we want. And, and it's, and you're not going to be able to do anything about it. When we take moments to rest, to be in community, to be in pleasure, that, that gives us something to fight for, something that gives us our future. You know, it's like, I won't rest until X is accomplished. No, please rest, by all means fight, but also please rest. Please take care of yourself. I want you here in a year and not burned out.

Roger: Yeah. This idea, that I'm taking from this, is really knowing, learning, understanding, trusting your strength of what it is that you may be able to contribute in some kind of way. And then also that, it's not a competition to, the competition feeds that, that flooding narrative that they want us so badly to participate in, right, to, if I enoughness myself, I'm not enough of this. I think for those of us that are on this circular identity around our sexuality, there is this curiosity of enoughness. Am I two-spirit enough? Am I queer enough? Am I a PhD enough? Right? All of these things where we get constantly trapped in that comparative model, which steals our pleasure. It steals our joy.

Lucie: And keeps us from actually being engaged.

Roger: That's right. Yeah.

Lucie: Because we're, we’re looking around, comparing, instead of being in the moment and being in relation, being in movement.

Roger: It's a disembodiment tactic comparison.

Lucie: Yeah.

Roger: It disembodies us. And this work that we do is all about the body, right? It's about this connection with the body, understanding my body in relation to other bodies through, whether it's tension or whether it's through joy and pleasure or impact, in all of these ways. I do want to speak to, a moment ago, you talked about this idea of seeing everybody a year from now thriving. And I'm thinking of Vizenor’s work, Gerald Vizenor’s work, around survivance, which is this concept of survival and resistance. And so there's a concept that further is about thrivance, thriving while resisting. So just to kind of offer that, that this work is thrivance. It is survivance. It is thrivance. It is future oriented. It is queer in the way in which we do not know what may be coming. The beauty of that is that we can prepare for anything. We can prepare for the joy. Right? Because that may also be just over the horizon. And if we stay more connected and in touch with our bodies, it's much easier to access, in those particular ways.

Lucie: While also giving ourselves permission to just not be in our bodies sometimes.

Roger: Yeah.

Lucie: You know, that like some days you wake up and you're like, Oh God, I just need to sit here and in a fetal position and cry.

Roger: So I wanted to talk a little bit about your book.

Lucie: Ok.

Roger: Second edition. Yes, second edition. What, what's different about it?

Lucie: Well, I... One of my editors, when they commissioned a second edition said, well, you know, the second edition generally we recommend that like no more than 30 percent of the, of the book is, is, is new. And it's like. Okay. Just a query. What if it were more like 80 percent? Overachiever. Masochist whatever. And, and so like, as I said, I think and write very iteratively and, and so there are a couple of chapters that are, you know, for all intents and purposes, similar, very, very similar to chapters that exist in the first edition. And then, you know, there were ones that I was like, you know, I need to refocus. God, my nesting partner is such a wise person because she, she calls me out a lot of the time. And, and one of the things, one of the inconvenient things that she has reminded me of is that every time I'm unsure of something or I'm unsure of myself, I cite to the ends of the earth. And I like, there put up all this theoretical armature. And, and so like the second edition is partly me saying no, I'm, I'm standing on my own concepts. I don't, I don't need this, this person to, for my claims to make sense. And, and I'm going to stand in that. I would say too, there's these moments where I think in the first edition, I didn't know what I had. I didn't know whether people were going to hate it, you know, like burn me into effigy in the town square, you know. And, and it turns out that, you know, like, yeah, a lot of clinicians read it. You know, it says clinical approaches in the subtitle of the first edition. But I also had a lot of community members read it. And I had a lot of people that I really intended to read it, but, but, you know, like, for example, like in, in gender affirming care, we have this concept, the multidisciplinary team. And usually, like when we talk about that, what they really mean is, like, medical providers and mental health providers. Meanwhile, I'm like, the people that I've done the best work with. And that I most love being in community with, are, are professional dominants, are surrogate therapists, are surrogate partner therapists, are, are somatic sex educators and sexological body workers. And I mean, we met at one of those occasions. And so, I think, it's just so important for me. Like, the We in the first edition was like referring to me as a clinician. The We in the second edition is when I'm talking about community. And clinicians get, and other providers get the, you know, don't get the We.

Roger: Lucie is one of those folks that has thought about my concept of what I name as decolonizing and unsettling sexuality, and I believe taking it to heart. Because another plug that I'll make for the book is that, I have a little section in it. And I remember the morning that I got that email. With an invitation from Lucie to say, will you be a contributor to the second edition? And I felt incredibly flattered by that, one, because I deeply respect your work. And I thought, because this book is going to have a wide audience, it's an opportunity for an indigenous presence to be a part of it, to have that two-spirit, indigiqueer perspective, be a part of this book. And I wrote about two-spirit, two-spirit erotic embodiment. And what you just said a moment ago about sort of taking this, this idea that you don't necessarily need all these citations anymore. Because you are the citation and it's a reminder to everybody listening that once upon a time, somebody else made up everything we've ever read before. Right? Every theory was made up.

Lucie: And usually by white cis…

Roger: Usually by white cis straight men. And so that means that we can do that too. And that we can build the foundations of knowledge from our own community. If, if folks outside of the community read it, understand it, embrace it. That's awesome.

Lucie: Yeah.

Roger: But the work that we do is by and for our community, for their, for their survivance and for their thrivance. And so I just wanted to also name that, that you have every single right to do exactly what you did. And if, if your publisher was like, now we're only interested in keeping it 30 percent, you can also pass.

Lucie: Yeah.

Roger: And so you used your, your, your social location and privilege to say what I want to add to this, is not only relevant, it's necessary. So I just want to give a plug for that to say that, it’s pretty badass, in the world of publishing, what you did, right? Like it's pretty badass to say, what about 80 percent? That's, that's a rarity. So Bravo on that. And when, when, when's the book out, where can folks find it?

Lucie: It's, October 23rd is the drop date. So coming up two weeks from today. So I'm really excited about that. And I'm excited for it to be out in the world and on people's bedside tables and bookshelves. Maybe I prefer being on somebody's bedside table than their bookshelf. But yeah, it's really exciting to me because I really just hope that more people feel seen by it. You know, and I really tried to make this addition, I kind of nickname it the Dreaming Transfutures edition and it starts out with a preface called Dreaming Transfutures and then the anti-trans present. And that was really important to me, to have in there to like, you know, like acknowledge that, you know, things are fucking grim.

Roger: Yeah.

Lucie: And also, like, there is a place for pleasure in that. And like, you know, so often we keep hearing like, oh, pleasure is liberatory. Sure. If there's a praxis behind it.

Roger: That's right. Yeah.

Lucie: And if it's not just like self-care bubble bath, I love a bubble bath.

Roger: Same.

Lucie: Love a bubble bath. Not going to knock them. But that's not a praxis. It's about that fitting in so that it is actually about breaking the world. But in this really gorgeous generative way that is scary, but also, but also holds such possibility because I, you know, I just want to live my life. I want you to live your life. I want, you know, I don't bear anyone, you know, any ill will. I might disagree vehemently, or, with someone, but like I don't wish them ill. But, and I just want us to be thriving out there. You know, I say like, I wish it weren't the case that, that the personal is political. You know, I say sometimes, you know, I'm not bringing the politics to my body. Politics is bringing the politics to my body. And I am going to respond when you do that. But I'm going to respond and I'm, and I'm, yeah.

Roger: This idea of the praxis of pleasure and, and liberatory ideology is, as the foundation of that. And what you said a moment ago is like, you know, I’m really not, really not wishing harm on others because liberation requires that we don't.

Lucie: Yeah.

Roger: One of the, one of the most challenging things I think about a moment like this is, these feelings that emerge of disgust or anger, you know, all, all masks for, for the deep sadness. What do I do with those feelings when I want you to be free? When I want someone who wants to harm us, whether it's politically or physically, I just wish for them to be free because that is all that we want, as well, to be free in our bodies, to be free in our communities, to be free so that a year from now we can get back together and have a conversation like, What you think of the book after you read it, right? There's this way to hold this idea that liberation in and of itself, is dangerous. Not just the act of advocating and activism to, to literally free oneself, to be in your truth about, this is who I am. This is the kind of sex I want to have. This is the kind of body I want to live in. These are the kind of people I want to spend my time with, to be able to be honest with ourselves about those things can be incredibly dangerous because we may have not had a book like yours, to serve as the foundation for our liberation. Please give us the new title because you said the first one was a clinical approach but now it's Trans Sex...

Lucie: Nurturing Trans Erotic Embodiment and Gender-Pleasure. And I'm sorry we didn't get to talk about what gender-pleasure is, but it's basically a way of talking, that, what some call trans joy, what some call gender euphoria, but it's, but to me like gender euphoria sounds too clinical and also too rarefied. And so like gender-pleasure is this, is, you know, it's the pleasure in and with gender or agender. And it is, you know, about finding things that are relevant to your gender, ways of, you know, feeling affirmed in that way that like, your body is being approached by someone from a plate, from these energies and intentions that are really just so yummy and I love the way that you're touching me or that you want to touch me. And, and just like feeling and to take away from the rarefied bit, you know, it's, it's also just feeling, it's a grab bag of feeling yummy in your body a given point. It doesn't require the kind of like, body positivity if I've got to love my body all the time. Maybe sometimes you feel yummy in it though. Maybe you listen to Prince's Erotic City and, you know, and you're like the way that your hips are moving.

Roger: Yes. Yeah.

Lucie: And that's your gender, you know, or that's your agender, you know, so that's, that's what that is just...

Roger: And being in that pleasure is healing.

Lucie: Yeah.

Roger: Pleasure heals in that, in that way. This may come as some surprise to all of you though that those of us in the sexuality field don't always go around the world thinking about sex and sexuality and gender and pleasure and bodies, we think about other things too. And so I wanted just to ask you, Lucie. In those moments when you're not working, in those moments when you're not on. What brings you pleasure?

Lucie: Cooking. Love cooking. I love feeding people. I love being a domestic goddess. Sometimes. If you're really lucky, I'll cook for you in like fancy lingerie and heels, you know, that’s my thing.

Roger: Ok, I’ll roll those dice.

Lucie: I, my leather communities and kink is, is very important to me. And being a leather dyke is not just, you know, like about wearing leather although I do love to wear it.

Roger: Is it always black?

Lucie: Nearly always, I do have some purple in there and some blue. But, yeah, no, it's, it's about a politics and it's about an engagement and a connection to lineage. So being in community really, really means a lot to me. Like, quality moments with my dear ones brings me so much joy and pleasure, like, I'm not a big large group person, I kind of become a wallflower and shrink in large groups and I'm painfully shy. Sometimes. But, God, if I can have like quality time with like two or three friends. Two or three, you know, or just like a date with lover, you know, like, damn, sign me up for that. Like, I love that, that gives me so much joy, it makes, that's how, you know, I keep going. Because I just want to feel that hug again.

Roger: For the listening audience, what you may not be aware of is that Lucie is looking fabulous and a head to toe leather outfit. And as I was getting ready to come into the city today I thought, Lucie's going to be wearing leather, therefore I shall also wear leather. So I went into my closet and I picked specifically because I was thinking, I'm going to dress like Lucie and I did not quite know we would look quite the same because there's a lot of things that you know, I've got this lovely snake ring on, Lucie has a fab snake belt on. We both have textured shoes on so there's just, you know, there's a lot of symbiosis happening on this stage tonight and I'm feeling a lot of pleasure when I saw you come in I was like, ooh, okay I picked the right outfit for tonight. We just have a few moments left together in this conversation. And CIIS has been a place that many people come because it evokes the inquiry of spirit. However you define that. And CIIS for me as someone that has been a student here, also faculty, it's been a place where I have been able to be with what is spirit for me. And that's where I want to end our conversation together tonight, is around how in this world, that we are in, that we are not just surviving with this world that we are thriving in. As examples of folks who can thrive in this chaos that we're in. How does spirit visit you? And if there's a way that spirit would guide you over the next year or through the release of this book, what might that be?

Lucie: I think it shows up in so many ways. It shows up in my love of story and myth and metaphor and image. And how, like, I consider myself a humanist and not a social scientist. I really hate it when, like, therapists behave like social scientists. Or like try to justify our work based on social science. I also, I have a practice of ritual and, that is very, very important to me. My diasporic Judaism is very important to me. And like my witchery is very connected to those lineages. Like I was doing a tarot poll for the full moon, the Aries full moon the other night, which I tend to do. I tend to do, like, a bath and then a tarot card poll. And I pulled five cards and it was a gorgeous reading. And I was about to put the deck away and I was like, in Judaism we have a six pointed star, not a five pointed star. And so I'm going to, I'm going to pull a sixth card. And boy, that was the, that I've been like, haunted by that six card. It was the, the nine of swords. For those of you who know your tarot decks. And it was, it was this like, it's like, it was like that time where I pulled the tower on a... And I was like at first I was like, oh, God, this doesn't feel great. And then, you know, it's like, oh, yeah, pain. Great. But then I thought about like it's a, it's about, it's also about the stuff that I really love, which is like really accepting the pain and also what is beyond it. And what is beyond it, are the emotionally transformative experiences. And that's really what I'm looking for is the emotionally transformative experience.

Roger: Well, thank you for this emotionally transformative experience tonight. Lucie, I just want to take one more moment to truly say thank you. First and foremost, on a personal level, I've adored getting to be your colleague in the beginning. And then, now to call you a friend is even more important. And I also want to thank you for your visibility and your willingness to remain risen in this moment and just know that I and so many others are along your side. If you need us, please feel free. You know how to find me. And thank you to CIIS and the community for welcoming Dr. Lucie Fielding tonight on this incredibly important, informative, pleasure centered work that is all about how we all can learn to be better together in sex and in community and in embodiment and pleasure. Dr. Lucie Fielding, thank you so much. Mado, Mado, Mado. Thank you.

Thank you for listening to the CIIS Public Programs Podcast. Our talks and conversations are presented live in San Francisco, California. We recognize that our university’s building in San Francisco occupies traditional, unceded Ramaytush Ohlone lands. If you are interested in learning more about native lands, languages, and territories, the website native-land.ca is a helpful resource for you to learn about and acknowledge the Indigenous land where you live.

Podcast production is supervised by Kirstin Van Cleef and hosted by Alex Elliott at CIIS. Audio production is supervised by Lyle Barrere at Desired Effect. CIIS Public Programs are produced by the Office of Events at California Institute of Integral Studies. If you liked what you heard, please subscribe wherever you find podcasts and connect with us on social media @ciispubprograms.

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