(upbeat music) - Welcome back to A Sluts Guide to Happiness, where your body is perfectly imperfect and it's safe to be as sexual, kinky, queer, or slutty as you want. I'm really grateful that we get to talk with Steph again today. Last time they joined us on the podcast, they shared their experiences with sex and kink and relationships as a person with autism, as an autistic person. Today Steph and I are going to be talking about a super sexy topic and I wanna reclaim this as a super sexy topic folks. We're gonna be talking about soft cocks, including the medicalized language of erectile dysfunction, societal expectations of performative sex and hot bodies that fuck in all kinds of ways. Steph is a kinky, queer, switchy witch, a community healer, content creator, a friend, and an emotional support slut with cliff media. So while there's plenty of patriarchal ideas about how a female body is supposed to look, I am lucky that there are fewer assumptions about how our bodies as women, as female bodies, as people with vaginas, with guns, are supposed to work during sex. So if my con doesn't get wet, if my clit doesn't get hard, people aren't as likely to notice and normative kind of straight fucking can still happen. But if someone with a cock doesn't get hard, regardless of their gender, whether that's a cisgender man, a gender queer person, a trans woman, people with cocks, there's often judgment and some internalized narratives that go on associated with that. Cliff media's porn production is rooted in welcoming all enthusiastically consenting adults, regardless of how they look or how their body works. So when people are applying to work with us, sometimes people will send pictures and I let them know that the only pictures that we actually want in your application are pictures of your STI test results because regardless of how your body looks, we want you here if you are a good, hard person. And there have been many times on set that people with dicks haven't been able to get hard or lose their erection during the scene because bodies work in all kinds of ways. And initially, my response would be to tell people it's okay, no worries. That happens to everyone. And sometimes that would help a little bit, but I would notice that people would still step back in group scenes once their dick got soft, stop participating, often feel bad and apologize to me later. And these assumptions that hard dicks are necessary for fucking and especially for performative sex are so ingrained in us. I once had an applicant that gave me some really helpful alternative perspective. Instead of telling people that people with dicks not to worry about their dick not getting hard, instead emphasize the positive. Come in, I'd love to kiss with you. I'd love for you to finger my cunt. Instead of saying do not think about elephants, invite them into connection in other ways. So today folks, we are gonna think about elephants. We're gonna love on those elephants. So let's lean in and talk about soft cogs, baby. You ready for this? So, Steph, thank you so much for joining us again and sharing vulnerable stories about your body and your social activism as well with us. Talking about cogs, so let's jump in. I know your thoughts and feelings about the ability to keep an erection have changed a lot over the years. So I wanna again go back to your marriage when you were married for 21 years, was that right? - Oh, is that 21 years? - It's a long time. So can you tell us about what feelings you were struggling with later in your marriage around your cock? - Oh my Lord, they were strong because it got to a point where we had talked previously about how sex became routine and sex became just absolutely non-desirable. And it's very hard, but intended, to get an erection when you're not interested in the person you're in with, especially when we talked about angst before. If you feel any type of animosity towards someone you're with, sexy times doesn't happen. I can't remember the exact number, but it was between 70 and 80% of erectile dysfunctions in your brain, right? The rest are legitimate things, and we'll talk about more about that later. But I struggled with it because of the shame, well, if I can't have an erection, my, I'm done. Why do I bother to exist if I can't get a heart? We are expected to have a heart on, at a moment's notice, right? What, are you not turned on, you know? And the hard part for me was, I loved my wife. She turned beyond it, but the brain wasn't working. She was a, she is a beautiful woman, and she did turn beyond. Just nothing worked. - Yeah, yeah. - And learning how to get around that was difficult in an arduous task. - I imagine that there's some self-reinforcing prophecy in that that as you struggle with an erection, then sex becomes associated with those fears or shame, and then it makes it even harder to feel attracted and aroused in that. - Absolutely, it becomes like, well, I'm not gonna get a heart anyway, so why do I bother to try? And when you try, and it doesn't have anything to say, and it took a lot of therapy, a lot of work, exposing myself to the sex positive community, exposing myself to the sex worker community. One of my best friends that I met at a seminar class three years ago, they do surrogate partner therapy, and learning how to navigate, oh, okay, so you're not having an erection, that's okay, let's work on that shame, let's talk about that shame. And it was an amazing type of thing, and then I had depression, so antidepressants, antidepressants and erections don't mix, and that's for both sexes, for vulvas and for penises, if they don't always work, there's a thing out there called post-SSRI sexual dysfunction. - Can you explain SSRI? - SSRI's are, oh, I can't remember the name up that man, but it's the antidepressants you take for serotonin and something inhibitor. I'm trying to remember what I thought my head, I don't remember. Once you start taking antidepressants, especially for those of us that own penises, you get the erection, but it goes away, and that's also disappointing, this is how it is. Selective serotonin reuptaken inhibitor, that's SSRI. And that's doubly frustrating for penis owners, 'cause it's like, oh, I'm here, I'm here to play, this is great, and then things just, you lose it. This happens to me during your shoots, right? Where at the beginning of the shoot, I am there, I am awesome, this is great, and then toward the end of the shoot, it just doesn't work, and that's just how it is. - Yeah, yeah, and it seems like as you get into your head about it, it becomes even harder to participate in sex, and I know that, for example, when you're experiencing depression, isolating yourself can make the depression worse, sexual connection, as one form of connection for people that value it, can help with depression, and so this all becomes kind of an entangled process that really it seems like the shame, the nervousness, the stories that are made about having softcocks is one of the keys that is creating this cycle. - Absolutely, and one of the reasons why I'm happy we're talking about this is to bust this myth that you can't have sex with a soft day. That is not true. - I've certainly seen that in your interactions on some of the shoots, so one of the things that I want to ask you is about the way that this is discussed in the medical community, 'cause I imagine that as you're experiencing this with your wife, you mentioned talking with therapists, and I imagine that as you're going to fix it, since you've proceeded as a problem at the time, and maybe you're talking into doctors, what did you experience in the way that professionals were communicating with you about this? - Ah, well, one thing that the psychological community does not take into effect when someone has depression, we're treating the symptom, right? We want to fix the depression, well not fix, that's a hurdle, we want to be able to mitigate the depression, so we start throwing meds at it, right? The problem with that is what isn't spoken is the long-lasting side effects of being on antidepressants for a long period of time, right? I was on Zoloft, I was on, of course, my mind. ADHD just kicked in, I can't remember shit, but Zoloft is an example. Well, butrin was another one, or is that the ADHD? Anyways, the, what was difficult, I didn't understand, and I was on these meds to help mitigate me, and they all had horrible side effects, so I would take a, I would take a viagra, right? - Were you prescribed viagra, or so written on your medical records was erectile dysfunction? - Yes, and luckily for me, I have the privilege of being retired military, so I always have a medical team and a mental health team, and I do my best to make sure that they work together, so my doctor asked him, he taught to your psychologist, I was like, yes, he's like, okay, I'm gonna prescribe this to you. So it was, unfortunately, I don't have a lot of the trouble to get these things. What I have noticed, those were a lot of men, if you just say the words erectile dysfunction, they'll throw viagra at you. Now, what's unique to me is that in 2019, a viagra caused a stroke. - Oh, wow. - Right, so in the middle of sex, I had my orgasm, and my partner, who was beneath me, was like, what just happened? And it took a lot of finding out what had happened, it was the viagra that did it. It says, right on the warning, it might cause stroke. - Yeah. - And, well, I don't want that to happen again, and that's what caused the journey to, okay, how can I work with this soft cog? How can I, and that, because strokes are scary? - Oh, yeah. - Yeah, I'm so glad you were alive and survived it. - Thank you. - Yeah. And I haven't heard that experience before, but it feels very real that, you know, not all medications work with all people's bodies. One of the things that I have heard, you know, people are nervous going into porn shoots, or even going into sex clubs and to swing your environments with new, with his pressure, with his nervousness, and there's some shame, even attached to taking viagra. And I have heard conversations where people are like, no, actually, almost everyone in the porn industry is taking viagra before shoots, because not being able to get hard is a very common experience. But then also, there's this dynamic that you're describing that I think is really powerful, and maybe a common experience or experience that some people have, where viagra or other kinds of rectile support are not available to you. Whether that's because you have medical responses to it, or because you don't have access to it. Not everyone has access to healthcare, health insurance, or because you don't want to have that conversation or be medicalized in the language around erectile dysfunction. So there's lots of potential reasons why people are not, don't end up having hard costs. Like they have this experience of softcocks, and that's not something that they're treating, per se, with viagra, other things. And so they're exploring sex with a softcock. And so I personally love sucking cocks of all kinds, including softcock, especially if it's still giving the cock owner pleasure, which is one of the many reasons why I was delighted to hear you talk about the organization body erotic. I think you mentioned it started as a gay men's organization in relation to this topic. So I want to ask, what do they have to say about softcocks, and what in the medical world, or softcocks or what in the medical world would be labeled erectile dysfunction? - So I think it's the body of electric. - Body electric. - That's fine. Where it started out as a gay men's organization that focused around gay men. And I know somebody there, this is, they met genitalia, we find erogenous zones, we want to find out what makes your penis work. And that is so important to know how your genitals work. At the time, your organization is just celebrating their 40th anniversary. And when they started, we were just figuring out all those are getting met. Penises are getting met. What makes this work, you know? And so body erotic is really good at penis positivity in learning how to get through a lot of the mental blocks that are there. One of the organizations that I have worked with in the past is softcockwheat.com. Plug, where we have professionals come in, psychologists, sex workers, they're a partner therapist. And we talk about experiences, bust some of the myths. Example one of the myths is, you can't have an orgasm with a softcock. Oh, yes, you can. - It may not be ejaculate, but that doesn't mean that it's not an incredible experience in the body. - Absolutely, I will have these body shaking, shattering orgasms, you know? But you have to get through the taboo of how the male body works, you know? Unfortunately, our G spots upper butt, right? And there's a lot of this stigma that has to get work passed. It's like, you can still experience pleasure, but you have to learn how to mitigate your shame. - Yeah, and I think that this is one of the things that the mainstream porn industry can negatively contribute to sexual assumptions is that if there's not a come shot, then it hasn't been a good sexual interaction. If there's not a facial or a cream pie or something somewhere where male come is happening, then the partners haven't done their job and pleasure hasn't occurred. But one of the things that you're describing is that that actually doesn't have to happen. Even if you have a cock, you can still have enormous pleasure without the come. - Absolutely. One of the reasons I love lesbian porn is because there's no come, right? From a penis. - Right, right. - They can still be squirting. - They're still squirting. - Yeah. - And there's still orgasms. - Yes. - But that visual of look at every mainstream porn and the shoot ends when there's ejaculate coming out. - Right, male ejaculate coming out. - Right, male ejaculate coming out. - Yeah. - And it doesn't have to be that way. - Right. - And trying to get over that, that I know I have done in one of your shoots is I have walked in with a strap on and I have railed people with a strap on and I think that's what we need to see more of. - Yes. - Right? - Yes. - I've turned it into an advantage as you know. Oh, you got a small cock? Yeah, well, which one you want? You want a size queen? I can get this over here. And I've got that. You want an alien cock? I got an alien cock, you need it. So-- - You want a little one in your ass? Got this? - Yeah. - I got it. - Yeah, yeah. I feel like there's a lot of shame that gets attached to that. Like, oh, you're a person with a dick, especially if you're a cis male identifying in the world that there's like, you're not good enough unless your cock is nine inches in hard. But you identifying like, actually my body is however it is. And I can interact with these tools that help to provide my partner with pleasure of different kinds. And so, you know, the strap on becomes a facilitator. - Yes. - Giving pleasure in lots of different kinds of ways. - Absolutely. And it coincides with me. I'm naturally a service top. So having to, oh, do you need something smaller? Are you sore? I need to, I can do that. Or, oh, you want to be a size queen today? Okay, we're breaking out the 10 inch tentacles. (laughing) And we're gonna go to town. It's really beautiful. You have fantasies and role play that come out more. And it's just like, I'm sorry, you know, my cock has got one shape and that's my shape. - Yeah, yeah. - I'm okay with it, right? But sometimes, you know, I need that dragon attachment to make, have fun. - Yeah. - It's about fun and play. - And I feel like this is one of the things for the ethos of queerness, even if you're straight, meaning like, even if you're a cis guy who likes this woman, being able to be open to sex in all different kinds of ways, sex outside the penis and vagina is sex story, allows for a lot more freedom, regardless of how your body works, regardless of whether you have a soft cock or not. I am really excited to hear more about the super badass thing that you're part of, the soft cock week. And I was looking up, I saw that actually the sex, sorry, soft cock week of 2024 is November 10th or 16th, which just happens to coincide with one of Cliff Media's open to all shoots, meaning open to straight and queer people coming together in Portland and I'm thinking, maybe we can do a soft cock scene. - That's a fun, I like it, I like it. - So can you tell us about what soft cock week is an organization, what it does, why this matters? - I touched on it a little bit earlier, which is it's a therapists, surrogate partner therapists, sex workers, people that understand a lot of the psychological problem. And so we go out and we talk, we have seminars, we've got learning material, if you go to softcockweek.com, just to talk about, and we have a lot of testimonials of people that are able to have successful sex lives without having an erection. And it's just another vessel to help get the word out. And that's one of the reasons I love working with Cliff Media is because it is another vessel to help get the word out. I remember when we first interacting in the beginning, I'm like, this is what's happening, it's A, B, and C, 'cause I wasn't familiar with your ethos yet. And I feel very comfortable walking in in whatever state I'm in and just having a wonderful time with wonderful people. - I love that it feels like part of it is when you realize, regardless of what it is that you're experiencing the world, when you realize that you're not alone, all of a sudden it makes it so much easier. You are able to think about releasing the shame, able to realize like, oh, it's not just a problem with me, like I'm not just like bad for my partner, it's actually like, this is just a different way that bodies work in the world. - Exactly, and this affects so many penis owners if you get prostate cancer, guess what? That's a huge, literally a huge chunk of how things work is gone. How do you still, and I have talked to men that have post cancer, and they were utterly destroyed. Because how do I have sex if the parts don't work anywhere, and okay, let's get to work, let's talk. Let's talk about how the body works and how you work in particular to seek the pleasure that you need, pleasure is important in human existence. - Yeah. - People that are, we talked about depression, right? How do you get back to having sex when your parts don't work, right? To help, well, sex is gonna help me not be depressed, but I can't have sex, so I'm gonna continue to be depressed. It's so, it's this vicious circle that people have a hard time getting out of, and I'm hoping I can be here, and with your help, to get this word out there, it's not the end of the world, you can still experience a lot of what is out there, without interaction. - I love that you also mentioned some of the different kind of disability or different medical experiences that influence the potential for soft coughs. For example, I know a couple of people who are in wheelchairs who are quadriplegic and have some less or different kind of sensitivity in their dicks, and I think one of the things the stereotypes is like, "Oh, well, you're not having sex anymore." Absolutely, you can have hot, amazing sex, and so there's just lots of reasons. Why people, I wanna say, are beautiful and sexy in all kinds of diverse ways outside of the norms of how we understand that hard-dicks, penetrate vaginos, (laughs) and so you mentioned some of this, and there's just this huge volume of different things around sex advice. And I know you have lots of sex, no slut-shaming here whatsoever, just celebrating your beautiful, bold life as a slutty-poly kingster and sex worker, and you also have a cock that sometimes gets hard and sometimes doesn't. So, for cock owners who wanna have sex but can't get hard or for people who are attracted to a person with soft cough, what else can you do besides hard-pick dick and vagina action? What are some of the ways that you can play with your partner? - I mentioned Fort, a strap-on is amazing. I know there's a strap-on that I own that allows, not only can I put a dildo or vibrator on, but if my cock decides to work, I can pop that out and I can still use that. That's a wonderful tool. - Interesting, you can kind of snake with both holes. - I can DP somebody on my own, it's pretty awesome. Another thing is playing with a flaccid penis is just as pleasurable, it's very sensual, and the nerve endings are in a different position. - Do you enjoy the experience of something like that? - Oh my Lord, I do, it is one of the most sensual freaking things, there's no rush, there's no rush to have an orgasm, you just sit there and you're just being pleasured by someone that's taking care and time, and it feels amazing, right? And there's other things to focus on, you know, you focus on the scrotum, you know, focus on other parts, you know, the prinium's amazing, right? - Yeah, the prinium right below the balls. - Right below the balls, the tank, right? And another thing is just, I've had partners, you know, just like oil up their hands, it just kind of just gently massage and it feels good, and you'll find if you pay attention, ooh, that spot feels good, let's go to that spot, you know, some people like their pee hole play with, sometimes it's the prinium, not the prinium, the frenulum underneath the penis head, right? You will discover if you go slow, no expectations, that's the key, you're not gonna come. - Yeah, uh-huh. - And that's okay, just sit there and enjoy the sensation of being in your body and feel the gift that someone has given you of touch. - Yeah, so it's sensation play and it's that connection that's still happening. - Oh, yes. - Sexual, potentially romantic, if that's what's going on, you know, I also think about, you know, I was lesbian for eight years, it was a long time, I was like, like before I started interacting with dicks, and so, you know, I think about fingers and tongues. - Absolutely, you've got so many things, you've got toys, you got fingers, you got tongues, some people like toes, right? - For your toes and some people like toes, right? There's all kinds of things, you know, some people like fruits and vegetables. Be careful, make sure your penis sterilizes first, safety first, the possibilities are endless. For toy, and one thing I would recommend for penis owners is prostate play is a gateway to amazing pleasure. And I know, and I was one of them, right? The thought of a finger at my butt was just, no, and sometimes it just hits you. I'll share a quick personal story. I was at a campground in New Mexico, took and carried New Mexico, and I was at the campground shower, and I'm just there, and all of a sudden it hit me, it's like, I'm gonna put my finger in my butt. - While you were in the shower. - While I was in the shower, the campground shower, 'cause you know, it was a cool air. It was just a cool air of the evening, and it helped. And sometimes it just hits you, and it's okay to listen to those voices in your head that are saying, "Hey, it's okay to do this." You know, there's nobody around, it's just me. Ooh, okay, oh no, I don't feel good. It's okay, it'll hit you, and just be patient with yourself. - I love hearing two things about that. One, that masturbation playing with yourself was one of the ways that you figured out new sources of pleasure. - Oh yes. - And to that, I have been with guys who have said, "Oh, I don't play that way, I'm not gay." And I'm a cis woman playing with a cis man, proposing putting a finger up his butt. If he doesn't want it, absolutely okay, 'cause everyone's bodies are different, but A, it's great to be gay. But also, you don't have to be gay in order to have a finger up your butt. - Let's dispel that myth, that if you're in a cishet relationship, and you get something up your butt that does not make you gay, because the person you're with is not, it's not gay, you're not with the same gender. And it's like, that is a very hard thing to agree, I was in the military for 20 plus years. And I've seen the toxic man, we're just like, they don't even wipe their butt 'cause it might be gay. It's like, "Oh my God, dude, come on, take a shower." It's okay, touch your butt and explore your body. What I have noticed is the men that are scared of exploring their bodies, there's a people that don't catch their testicular cancer in time. These are the people that don't catch their prostate cancer in time. These people that don't catch their colon cancer in time, because they are so frightened of their body. - Yeah, yeah. - And again, this is why I'm here to help you spell these myths, because you are an important person. If not yourself, you're important to somebody, and you have to know how your body works so you can keep and maintain it. - Yeah, and there's so many erogenous zones, right? Like, I know someone who they get most aroused by having their nipples played with, they're a cis guy, and that is an important part of their sexuality, you know? Like, you can have these deep, powerful interactions that, you know, get off their partner and get you off, get you feel pleasure, have those connections, even if you're not doing the normative mainstream porn, like, nine-inch dick and a little wet pussy. - I have witnessed a man play with his nipples and he came through his cossop. - Oh, that's really hot. - He came through his cossop. It was one of the hottest things I had ever seen in my life. - Oh my goodness. I love it, there's so much, there's so much to explore, and stuff I wanna close as we do with a love note to all the fabulous men, women, and queer people out there who are feeling self-conscious, ashamed, shy, are uncomfortable about having a cuck that doesn't always wanna get hard. I wanna encourage you first to never have to apologize about that again, because you're beautiful, beautiful, human, and stuff I wanna offer it to you to share as, as also as an experience from a person who's sometimes a soft cuck. - Mm-hmm. - It's discovering myself was difficult, because it's in the previous podcast, I'm autistic and I have ADHD, so I lose attention with myself really quick. I get bored, it's like, oh, okay, this is nothing's happening, I'm done. But learning how to stick with it, and exploring yourself to see how your work is important, and what that does is it unlocks doors to new ways of pleasure and new ways of happiness, and the heteronormative trope of, I have to have a massive boner in order to be happy sexually is simply not true, and I wanna make sure that it is understood that you're perfect the way you are, and you are not broken. I love that, I think for me, the two hottest things that I can imagine in a partner are confidence and happiness. So if that person is asking for what they want, if they know how to explore pleasure, if they're open to exploring pleasure, and they're down for the joy, that's, oh, that's the thing, that's the thing. So thank you so much for joining us today, and sharing your experiences, Steph, and thank you all for listening today. This has been another edition of a Sluts Guide to Happiness with your host, Vanessa Cliff, and our beautiful guest today, Steph Takaya. You can find us wherever you get your podcasts, including Apple, Spotify, and YouTube, as well as on VanessaCliff.com. Please help us out by liking and sharing this podcast, and stay tuned for more deep dives into beautiful messy fun waters. If you're over the age of 18, you can also check out our video content, including some fabulous softcock action on our website, VanessaCliff.com. And most of all, I invite you to join us in the pleasure of being awkwardly human, naked, and without pretense. Let's get free. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music)
