thehuffingtonpostuk--2020-05-15--I Grew Up Believing ‘Good’ Indian Women Shouldn’t Enjoy Sex. I Was So Wrong

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Growing up in a traditional Indian family in 1980s Mumbai, I was taught that sex was shameful or dirty – chee chee, as we say in Hindi.
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In fact, everything I knew about sex I learned from the assorted ‘aunties’ who hold Indian society together.
Firstly, I learnt that sex is for men, not for ‘good’ Indian women – we are too chaste and pure to actually want something so dirty.
Second, women only have sex when they get married – and even then, we have no interest in the actual act. We just lie back, think of India, and let our husbands take their divine right between our legs.
Third, if any of the above-mentioned aunties see you “getting up to no good”, your reputation will be ruined and no one will want to marry you, end of story.
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Fourth, if you wear anything remotely revealing or sexy, you’re inviting unwanted attention, molestation, even rape. All of these are your own fault. And no one will marry you, end of story.
Finally, if of course you did somehow escape those snooping eyes and find enough privacy in crowded Mumbai to have actual sex with an actual male, even once – you’d get pregnant. Oh, and no one will marry you, end of story.
“Sitting at home on Saturday nights watching crap telly and painting my nails, I’d find myself thinking about all that lovely hot casual sex everyone else was having.”
As you’ve probably gathered by now, this upbringing didn’t exactly lead me to a life filled with sexual pleasure and orgasms. No, I had to move to the UK to get either of those.
When I was first in the UK, single and ready to mingle in my 30s, I was very judgemental. I’d see women hooking up oh so casually with guys they’d met at Friday night drinks or over Saturday brunch cocktails, and I’d hear my inner Indian Aunty muttering: ruined, that girl will be RUINED. Clearly, I had to cross a lot of hurdles in my own mind.
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Eventually, judgement gave way to envy. Sitting at home on Saturday nights watching crap telly and painting my nails, I’d find myself thinking about all that lovely hot casual sex everyone else was having.
I plucked up the courage to join a few dating sites. Before I knew it, I was in a frenzy of dating. I began to kick that inner Indian aunty out of my headspace, and instead I started having sex. Lots of sex. Casual, no-frills sex. The kind of sex that makes your skin glow, your hair shine and your butt sashay as you walk down the street.
Often after a night of steamy, illicit sex, I’d find myself chuckling inside. I felt no guilt or shame. Just pure unbridled joy at doing something that I had been told was SO wrong. If only those Indian aunties could see me now!
“Those super sexy years made me realise how the shame and taboos I had grown up with had kept me constrained.”
I didn’t want to learn anything about any of the guys I was having sex with – I didn’t want to even have breakfast with them the next morning. Instead, my focus was single-minded: it was all about me and my pleasure… and then it was goodbye (selfish, I know, but living for thirty years believing sex is sinful and shameful will do that to you).
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I began to realise how incredibly liberating sex was. As someone who had been taught that men were at the centre of everything, including sex, not really caring about the men involved felt, frankly, revolutionary. I realised that sex was actually amazing, that there was nothing remotely shameful about it. It made me feel incredibly female and powerful.
These days, my sexual appetite is a little calmer. I still love sex, how it takes me out of my mind and into my body. How an orgasm lights me up, and lifts me up at the same time. But those super sexy years made me realise how the shame and taboos I had grown up with had kept me constrained, kept my power chained. Taboo prevented me from becoming the woman that I was meant to be.
But now, I know our sexuality is such a fundamental part of who we are as South Asian women. I wanted to help others realise this, and so I set up Soul Sutras, a platform exclusively for South Asian women to talk about taboos like sex, sexuality, periods, mental health, menopause – all those things that keep us locked into systems that no longer serve us.
In the writing workshops, theatre shows, podcasts and books that I produce, we talk about sex and orgasms. We discuss how toxic shame can be. We explore, and overcome, these taboos together.
Because as I know first-hand, once we own our own power, pure magic happens.
Sangeeta Pillai is the founder of the South Asian feminist network Soul Sutras, which is all about tackling taboos in the culture.


thehuffingtonpostuk--2020-05-15--What Draws The Far Right And Anti-Vaxxers To Lockdown Protests?

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Self-styled “mass gatherings” have been advertised across the UK this weekend to protest against the coronavirus lockdown, “mandatory vaccines”, and the so-called “new normal”.
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Flyers for an event in Bristol’s Victoria Park, widely circulated online, appear to be distributed by a protest group called the UK Freedom Movement and invite attendees to “be a part of the largest mass gathering since lockdown”.
The words “mass gathering” are likely a reference to the category of large-scale public event that governments across the globe had been under pressure to limit as the virus spread in its early days.
“We say no to the Coronavirus Bill, no to mandatory vaccines, no to the new normal and no to the unlawful lockdown,” the flyer continues.
“Bring a picnic, some music, and let’s have some fun and say yes to life!”
Flyers advertising mass gatherings have been distributed ahead of anti-lockdown events HuffPost UK
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Some believe Jayda Fransen, the former deputy leader of the far-right Britain First group, may be behind the UK Freedom Movement organisation – something she has flatly denied. Britain First is a nationalist anti-Islam group that has said it “hate[s] white left-wing politicians who are wrecking our country”.
Speculation appears to have arisen because on April 30, 2020, Fransen was registered on the government’s Companies House website as the director of a new organisation called Freedom Movement Ltd.
The correspondence address listed for Fransen under Freedom Movement Ltd also matches a registered office address listed by Britain First Merchandise Ltd, which cites Britain First leader Paul Golding as a director and Fransen as a resigned director.
Fransen has been a vocal opponent of the lockdown on her social media channels, although both she and another far-right figurehead called Richard Inman – who claims to be the actual founder of the UK Freedom Movement – have denied they are running this weekend’s events. Both, however, have supported the fight of the anti-lockdown protestors in online videos.
Lockdown protestors are set to meet tomorrow in mass gatherings around the country. JUSTIN TALLIS via Getty Images
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Inman founded campaign group Veterans Against Terrorism, which has been accused of Islamophobia and has clashed with anti-fascist protesters. Veterans Against Terrorism says it opposes “Islamist extremists”.
In his video, the commentator commends the work of “whoever’s behind this” – the lockdown protests – and urges that “the right to peaceful assembly is a fundamental human right”.
Fransen, meanwhile, said she was “very concerned about the loss of my civil liberties and those of my fellow Britons” in a YouTube video message to her followers.
In the clip, she added: “Take a look around us: across the country, people are being fined, threatened, arrested for crimes which do not exist.”
Analysis by HuffPost US revealed that many of the anti-lockdown protests taking place in the US have also had support by far-right groups, including white nationalists.
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Far-right figureheads in the US including Larry Lockman, who once called proposed US immigrant welcome centres a “war on whites”, was behind one rally in Augusta. And neo-fascist street gang The Proud Boys was behind similar protests in Florida.
Both protest groups called the lockdown unconstitutional and a breach of their civil rights, with Lockman calling it an attack on business and religion.
An anti-lockdown protest in Florida. SOPA Images via Getty Images
It isn’t clear what specifically the protest against “mandatory vaccines” refers to, although it may be aimed at any possible future vaccine for Covid-19. Health secretary Matt Hancock has refused to rule out making Covid-19 vaccines mandatory if one is discovered, but has also stressed that he hoped there’d be no need to enforce legislation.
The messaging against vaccinations plays into a long history of “anti-vax” protestors. The latest iteration of the movement believes a coronavirus vaccine would be potentially more dangerous than the disease itself.
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“Mass gatherings” have been trailed throughout the country, from Bristol to Glasgow and London to Manchester, after a trickle of anti-lockdown protests took place last weekend – including on the South Bank in central London, where anti-vaccination protestors were photographed alongside those breaking the lockdown.
So what connects the politics of the far right with the views of anti-lockdown protesters – or anti-vaccine protesters?
The three groups are ultimately linked by their distrust for traditional media outlets, and the government, according to Rob Blackie, a digital political strategist who has worked on campaigns for UN Climate Change, Best for Britain and the Wellcome Trust.
“Firstly they share a suspicion of mainstream media and government information,” says Blackie. “Like conspiracists on the far left, they feel that they can make up their own minds, and rely on information spread by social media. This is everything from cut and pasted WhatsApps and emails to discussion forums and Facebook groups.
“In America, where the anti-vaccination movement is strongly linked to the right of politics.”
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“Secondly they feed off discussions in America, where the anti-vaccination movement is strongly linked to the right of politics. Credible-looking media sources in the US often promote conspiracy theories, which are then picked up across the world.”
An anti-lockdown protestor in Philadephia, USA NurPhoto via Getty Images
Messages may travel to large cross-sectional audiences online, but in a digital world, the real challenge is forming a mass gathering in real life, says Blackie, especially given the forewarning police forces have had about the events and the increased police presence on the streets anyway due to the lockdown restrictions.
Current restrictions state the public can only go outside with members of their own household, or to meet one friend for a socially distanced walk or meet up in a park.
“These days most of these groups are mainly online – that’s how they get virtually all their reach, influence and money,” says Blackie. “This also means that they struggle to be effective offline – because they don’t know how to organise there.”
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It isn’t clear how connections were made between the groups of lockdown protestors, anti-vaccination protestors and the far-right, nor how the events were organised or how flyers were mass printed and delivered to individuals this week – but streams of angry residents have been sharing their fear and frustration about the events on social media.
“Bristol and the south west’s Covid-19 rate has been relatively low, and now those that think [they know] best are going to put us all at risk just to try and prove a point,” one Bristol resident, who does not wish to be named, tells HuffPost UK.
“"They act with anger when, let’s face it, if everyone did as they were told this would be over a lot sooner.”
“All that we have strived to do over the last few weeks will be undone. All these people are being asked to do is stay home on mostly full pay. They act with anger when, let’s face it, if everyone did as they were told this would be over a lot sooner. Shame on them.”
Police forces country-wide have confirmed they will break up the groups if they begin to form at midday tomorrow, as advertised on the flyers.
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There could be up to 60 protests taking place across the country this weekend if the advertised events actually materialise, with others being promoted in cities including Leicester and Southampton, although an exact number is difficult to gauge.


thehuffingtonpostuk--2020-05-15--Brexit Negotiations At An Impasse Again But Don't Panic. Yet

The European Union's chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier speaks during a media conference following the third round of Brexit talks between the EU and Britain. ASSOCIATED PRESS
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Tracing Rainbows
There was worrying news in the fight against coronavirus as the government revealed tonight that the infection rate (R) had crept up to between 0.7 and 1, a rise from the previous estimate of 0.5 and 0.9.
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Health secretary Matt Hancock, mindful of the fact that the epidemic in care homes is thought to be driving the rising R rate, spent his opening remarks at the Downing Street briefing highlighting the “intense” support the government is giving to the sector.
Attempting to empathise with an anxious public, he revealed one of his own loved ones is currently in a care home as he promised to test every care home resident and member of staff for Covid-19 by early June.
But just this morning it emerged that the government was failing to get anywhere near its target to recruit 18,000 contact tracers who will help combat the spread of the virus, hiring just 1,500 to date and missing Hancock’s own ambition to have them in place by mid-May.
The health secretary has of course already been criticised for promising 100,000 tests a day by the end of April, a target that was dubiously met on the day and then missed on most days since.
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But he would say that it at least drove forward an extremely rapid expansion of testing that the UK needed, and will be hoping for a similarly speedy acceleration of his test and trace programme.
Meanwhile, another week of Brexit talks has come to an end with little progress and fears of the UK leaving the transition period on December 31 without a trade deal are growing.
British chief negotiator David Frost is said to be optimistic about the prospect of a deal but conceded “very little” progress has been made.
His EU counterpart Michel Barnier by contrast is “determined” but “not optimistic”, suggesting the UK still simply does not understand the consequences of Brexit for trade.
So is it time to panic about a no-trade deal Brexit mid-pandemic? Probably not... yet.
At the heart of the impasse is a fundamental difference in the way each side is approaching the talks.
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The UK wants to be treated like other, more far-flung countries such as Canada and thinks Brussels’ demands for a so-called “level playing field” which would see Britain aligning standards with the EU to a high level are unprecedented and unjustified.
But the EU insists the UK is a special case, being geographically in Europe and one of its biggest trading partners, and therefore must be held closer (and therefore tied closer) than the likes of Canada.
One pessimistic senior Tory told me both sides are acting fairly and rationally, and so sees little room for compromise and thinks no deal is now likely.
But with another round of negotiations before a planned high-level meeting next month, Georgina Wright of the Institute for Government (IfG) believes it is too early for compromise.
“We are exactly where you’d expect both sides to be, it’s too early for either side to move, they are sticking firmly to their lines,” she told me.
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Also importantly, the UK plans to publish a draft legal text next week at which point EU member states will all be able to see just how unrealistic its demands are - or not.
If the UK can back up its claims it could persuade individual member states to begin easing up on their own positions, Wright said.
Boris Johnson has also shown he is willing to make concessions if he really wants a deal. But perhaps that is the real question.
There are plenty who feel the government is relaxed about no deal as its economic impacts will be masked by coronavirus.
Quote Of The Day
“As with protective equipment and testing, the government has been too slow and the process is rapidly descending into a shambles.”
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- Shadow Cabinet Office minister Rachel Reeves on the government only recruiting 1,500 contact tracers out of a promised 18,000 by mid-May.
Cheat Sheet
The coronavirus infection rate – the so-called “R number” – could be as high as one, raising the spectre of a second peak of the disease in the UK.
Ministers look set to miss another Covid-19 target as just 1,500 contact tracers have been hired out of a pledged 18,000. Health secretary Matt Hancock had said he would recruit an “army” of 18,000 tracers, to track the people coronavirus sufferers have had contact with, by “mid-May”.
The number of people who have died in the UK after testing positive for coronavirus has risen to 33,998 – an increase of 384 over 24 hours.
More than 12,500 care home residents have died of coronavirus in England and Wales since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.
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All 44 charges brought under the Coronavirus Act since it was introduced on March 27 were incorrect, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has confirmed.
Boris Johnson should review the pay of “tireless” NHS and care staff before awarding them honours after the coronavirus crisis, the Liberal Democrats have said.
What I’m Reading
Review contradicts Boris Johnson on claims he ordered early lockdown at UK care homes | Reuters
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thehuffingtonpostuk--2020-05-15--RuPaul's Drag Race Season 12 Finale To Be Filmed From Home While Queens Remain On Lockdown

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RuPaul’s Drag Race bosses have revealed details of how this year’s finale will work, revealing the top queens will compete in a lip sync for their crown from their own homes.
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On Saturday, the final episode of Drag Race recorded before lockdown will debut on Netflix here in the UK, with two further instalments left to air in the current series.
Entertainment Weekly has now revealed how these final two episodes will work, beginning with a “virtual slumber party”, which will serve as this year’s reunion.
During the episode, all of the queens – apart from Sherry Pie, who was disqualified shortly before the series began airing – will discuss life in quarantine with RuPaul via video-link, as well as sharing highlights from the series so far.
The cast of RuPaul's Drag Race season 12 Logo TV/World Of Wonder/VH1
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The following week will be the grand finale, during which the remaining four queens will compete in a lip sync for the crown using what’s been described as “boundary-pushing technology” to highlight their creativity.
There’ll also be appearances from reigning champion Yvie Oddly and other “secret celebrities”. Nina West will also return to crown this year’s Miss Congeniality.
Nina West will be part of the special broadcast, to crown the new Miss Congeniality Albert L. Ortega via Getty Images
At the time of writing, five queens are left in the competition: Jackie Cox, Jaida Essence Hall, Crystal Methyd, Gigi Goode and Sherry Pie.
However, it was already confirmed that Sherry Pie will not be in the running for the crown, as she was disqualified by producers due to allegations that surfaced shortly before season 12 began airing.
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thehuffingtonpostuk--2020-05-15--Fears Over Government's Plans For Homeless People Placed In Hotels During Lockdown

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Councils leaders and homeless charities say they are worried about life after lockdown for those helped off the streets – with some hotel contracts set to end and no long-term funding plan to extend them.
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The latest count in England shows the government’s “everyone in” policy has seen 5,400 people offered emergency accommodation in hotels and B&Bs, 90% of rough sleepers known to councils at the beginning of the crisis.
In Wales, approximately 500 people have been moved into emergency accommodation since the pandemic started, with single digits left in each local authority. And in Scotland, outreach services are reporting there are fewer than 30 rough sleepers left across the country, with about 200 people in hotels.
But with some contracts set to end in June, frontline workers and charities have told The Bureau of Investigative Journalism’s Bureau Local about their fears over what happens next. Councils in England also fear they will be left to fund the next stage themselves.
Charity Crisis told the Bureau that the first estimate of the cost of supporting everyone taken off the streets so far into proper, permanent accommodation was £97m over a year – and it has said as much to the government.
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The charity says that figure can be set against the £3.8bn the government has already announced for additional support to councils since the start of the coronavirus crisis. But bosses stressed the cash needs to be ringfenced to stop councils using it elsewhere.
“It’s completely unacceptable that people are being left abandoned on our streets, and that people are at risk of being kicked out of hotels because councils lack the funds for them to stay – the job simply isn’t finished,” said Jon Sparkes, chief executive of Crisis.
“The initial emergency response to the outbreak showed what can be done when the political will and leadership from central government is there – but if we retreat into a failed ‘business as usual’, handing the issue back to overstretched local councils with no ring-fenced funding, then we let down not just the thousands experiencing homelessness today, but many thousands more at risk from the economic downturn we are entering.”
The Manchester Evening News (MEN) obtained a leaked report given to the region’s combined authority revealing that the Ministry for Communities, Housing and Local Government (MHCLG) will not be financially supporting homeless accommodation in the long-term.
They report that the document stated: “MHCLG have drawn a line under ‘everyone in’ activity and is now asking local authorities to focus on ‘step down’ and ‘move on’ for those who have been accommodated as a result.”
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The Bureau has also been told that, in London, there was no expectation of long-term funding for the hotel system.
Charities in the Greater London Authority-run hotels had heard MHCLG funding was coming to an end and that existing contracts with hotels were unlikely to continue. They worry that those on no recourse to public funds (NRPF) or those without documentation – many of whom are being supported under the Covid-19 scheme – will no longer be able to receive housing.
In response to the MEN’s revelation on Thursday, MHCLG said: “Any suggestion that the government is reneging on the commitment set out at the start of this national emergency is entirely wrong.
“We have been clear councils must continue to provide safe accommodation for those that need it, and any suggestion that funding is being withdrawn or people asked to leave hotels is unfounded.
“The latest figures show over 90% of rough sleepers known to councils at the beginning of this crisis have now been made offers of safe accommodation and we have announced Dame Louise Casey will spearhead the next phase of the government’s support for rough sleepers during the pandemic.
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“While councils continue to provide accommodation to those that need it, it is only responsible that we work with partners to ensure rough sleepers can move into long-term, safe accommodation once the immediate crisis is over.”
Council chiefs in London, which faces the most significant homelessness crisis in the country, remain unconvinced.
London Councils is calling for a phased lifting of lockdown measures to “avoid a cliff edge”. It is demanding sufficient government funding to support rough sleepers and find long-term housing for all, as well as a 12-month suspension of NRPF restrictions to allow financial support for those who would otherwise return to the streets.
London Councils’ housing chief Cllr Darren Rodwell said: “Since the start of the pandemic, boroughs and the GLA have worked flat out to support homeless Londoners and secure emergency accommodation for around 4,000 rough sleepers.
“In a time of immense challenge, this has been a magnificent achievement on the part of London’s homelessness services. We now have an unprecedented opportunity to build on this progress and embed a permanent reduction in rough sleeping in the capital. Otherwise, we risk rough sleepers returning to the streets – and no one wants to see that.
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“Boroughs need urgent clarity on the government’s planned next steps for funding and other support measures. We hope ministers will continue to work with councils on this crucial agenda, because together we can achieve our shared ambitions on tackling homelessness.”
A dedicated £3.2m to support rough sleepers was announced by communities secretary Robert Jenrick in March. Three days later Julie James, the Welsh housing minister, announced a £10m ringfenced pot for Wales.
A source close to the process in Wales told Bureau Local that the limited funding offered to English councils, and the sudden demand that people be moved into accommodation over a single weekend, was puzzling. “It seemed more like a publicity stunt.”
And as the English government leaves questions unanswered about those living in the hotels, Scotland has brought forward plans to ensure people are moved into their own homes much more quickly. Holyrood has announced that from October, someone can only spend seven days in temporary accommodation before they must be moved to long-term accommodation.
“We know that providing people with a settled home, and the support they need, is the best way of solving homelessness. That’s why a rapid rehousing approach will remain our focus in the months ahead,” Kevin Stewart, the Scottish housing minister, told the Bureau.
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The Bureau has also spoken to people given shelter during the lockdown about their situation.
Mark has been homeless for three years. He had shared a home with his father, but when he died Mark was unable to keep up with the rent. He slept in a car with no heating for months and last year began sleeping on night buses.
Before the GLA announced plans to house all homeless people in hotels, Mark had anxiously watched the facilities he depended on closing one by one.
“When you’re homeless, even in a night shelter you rely upon certain services like McDonald’s and libraries and leisure centres,” he said.
He was especially concerned by the closure of the community centre where he would normally get a shower and free food in the morning, and could stay warm in the day. Then the library shut too. “We were all finding that all the facilities were closing one by one and it was becoming extremely difficult.”
His usual alternatives, trains and busses, meant risking infection.
A homeless person's tent in London in March. EMPICS Entertainment
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However, Mark was in a winter night shelter system operated by Glassdoor, and so was part of the first tranche of people accommodated in London.
“For me, this is fantastic,” he said over the phone from his hotel. For once he can avoid the stress of being permanently on the move, and can enjoy old hobbies like the guitar, and even learning music theory.
“It’s a bit more like normal life,” he said, “funnily enough, in a time when everyone else is not having a normal life.”
It is an improvement it would be devastating to lose.
“What a massive moment in time, that people who have potentially found it difficult to access services for years and years are now in a safe, secure place. There is such an opportunity to engage with those people,” said Sparkes.
“There is the appetite now for the public, local authorities and charities to continue to work together with the spirit that’s been achieved over the past few weeks.”
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The £97m figure quoted by Crisis allows for half of the 5,400 people currently in hotels needing Housing First accommodation, which is specialist housing with dedicated support, for example with addiction or long-standing mental health issues.
The rest are expected to need support to secure a tenancy, but of different intensities. Ultimately, Crisis estimates that spending £34m on housing benefit and £63m on support could move a huge number of Britain’s rough sleepers into real homes.
However, even as work gets underway to produce an exit strategy for those in hotels, Sparkes cautioned against focusing solely on that group. The charity’s estimate does not account for people who are still on the streets, or those becoming homeless in the coming weeks.
“The big building blocks of ending homelessness; building lots more social homes, and a much more sympathetic welfare system, are still big asks that need answering,” he said.
The entrance to Heal's Store in London last month – deserted but for homeless people's tents. Barry Lewis via Getty Images
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Sam Dorney-Smith, a nurse of 27 years, oversees the care of 350 people across two of the GLA’s hotels.
Having worked for 16 years in homeless healthcare, Dorney-Smith said that progress with clients depends upon engagement. With 200 people in a hotel, there is room for productive conversations to take place.
But the Bureau has heard that some of the contracts negotiated with London hotels are due to end on June 1 and July 1 and Dorney-Smith has not heard about any extensions. “It would seem incredibly self-defeating,” she told the Bureau, if the work did not continue.
The GLA is trying to negotiate extensions to its hotel contracts and find the money to finance them.
A spokesperson said: “Negotiations about possible extensions are underway. Understandably, some hoteliers were awaiting announcements on the next stage of lockdown before entering into these negotiations.”
Alex Bax is the head of Pathway, which supports teams in hospitals across the UK working with homeless clients to get them accommodation and the support they need to keep it. He compared the low level of infection in the homeless population in the UK to the devastation seen in shelters across the US. He believes that taking the public health approach of cohorting Britain’s rough sleepers has saved lives.
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But, he added, there was still work to be done to ensure the system is better after Covid-19 than before.
“The system has shown that in a crisis we can get hundreds of people off the street really fast. So now we need to seize this opportunity and support every single one of them to move on to somewhere better.”
Dorney-Smith said she was encouraged by the appointment of Dame Louise Casey to head up a new homeless taskforce charged with ensuring that rough sleepers housed during the crisis will move into long-term accommodation once lockdown is over.
Dame Louise is no stranger to this issue, having been the head of Tony Blair’s Rough Sleepers Unit in 1999. But today, the numbers are very different. There are more than two and a half times as many homeless people today as there were before 2010 – and that’s just counting street homelessness.
Dorney-Smith would like to see occupational therapists and immigration and housing lawyers working in the hotels, in order to get the process of moving people on underway. (She added that ten more nurses would also be helpful, if unlikely – there was already a shortage of homeless health staff before the pandemic.)
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She cautioned that moving people into permanent homes would be complex. The hotel scheme, she said, had unearthed “hidden people” whose rights, and mental and physical needs would take time to untangle.
But for some, a long-term solution feels within reach. Back in his room, Mark said he believed a positive outcome was coming his way. He had just seen a support worker who told him: “Whatever happens, we won’t be abandoning you any time soon.”
“That gives you a bit of reassurance. I feel more reassured by that,” he said. A lot of people’s hopes are riding on “everyone in” being a lasting promise.


thehuffingtonpostuk--2020-05-15--Covid-19 Infection Rate Is Up And May Be As High As 1, Say Top Scientists

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The coronavirus infection rate – the so-called “R number” – could be as high as one, raising the spectre of a second peak of the disease in the UK.
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Deputy chief medical officer Jenny Harries unveiled the R rate was now between 0.7 and 1, adding that anything above 1 could see the virus spread rapidly.
Top scientists mapping the disease’s spread, the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, have calculated the new estimate.
“We want to keep this below 1,” said Harries. “R is the average number of additional people infected.
“So while it’s 1, a pandemic, an epidemic, in this country will stay flat.
“If it starts to go above that number we will start to see an increasing number of cases and we may experience a second peak.
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“It’s really important that we keep monitoring it.”
She added, however, that the figure included “quite a range” and was an estimate of R.
The number, which is being officially published for the first time, is thought to include all cases within care homes.
It follows prime minister Boris Johnson’s decision to begin easing the lockdown.
Health secretary Matt Hancock, meanwhile, confirmed that the R number estimate could be around two weeks old due to data lags from institutions such as the Office for National Statistics.
He said, however, he was confident that the R rate was not above 1.
“We are constantly keeping the R under review. We don’t think that it is above one. So that meets that test,” he said, when asked if the R rate was a useful metric.
“It is an incredibly important figure for policymakers but it is one data point to look at alongside the level of new cases.”
Harries added: “Partly because a number of different models are used to model this data and it’s important that they challenge each other and that we get the consistency of that.
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“Partly, the data comes from historic data. Obviously we can’t predict precisely so we’re estimating it on different sources of information – so things like hospital admissions that have happened historically.
“And then I think, thirdly, importantly, we know that we have slightly different ‘R’ values relating to some areas of risks.
“So obviously in recent weeks, care homes have been heightened interest, hospitals also and we keep an eye on those. So this is very much a national average.”
Hancock, who appeared alongside Harries at the Downing Street press conference on Friday, said the government was aiming to test all people and staff in care homes by early June.
Health chiefs confirmed on Friday that the number of people who have died in the UK after testing positive for coronavirus rose to 33,998 – an increase of 384 over 24 hours.
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It came as it emerged that the government was set to miss its target for hiring 18,000 contact tracers by mid-May.
Northern Ireland secretary Brandon Lewis said 15,000 “have applied” and that earlier in the week just 1,500 were in post.
Downing Street insisted the government was “on course” to recruit the promised number, however.


thehuffingtonpostuk--2020-05-15--Barber Who Defied Lockdown In New York Tests Positive For Coronavirus

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A barber who defied New York’s strict coronavirus lockdown for several weeks to cut customers’ hair has tested positive for COVID-19, health officials said.
The Ulster County Department of Health on Wednesday urged people who recently received a haircut from a barbershop on Broadway in Kingston, around 100 miles north of New York City, to seek testing for the contagion. Officials did not name the barber or the business.
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The illicit operation is “extraordinarily disheartening,” county Health Commissioner Dr Carol Smith said in a statement.
⚠ PUBLIC HEALTH NOTICE ⚠ @UCDeptHealth announced today that a Kingston barber who has been providing haircuts during the last few weeks at a barbershop on Broadway has tested positive this week for the COVID-19 virus. pic.twitter.com/IVAimqoJ90 — Ulster County Government (@UlsterNY) May 13, 2020
“As much as we would all like to go out and get a professional haircut, this kind of direct contact has the potential to dramatically spread this virus throughout our community and beyond,” said Smith.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) on March 22 issued a statewide order to “remain indoors to the greatest extent.” He ordered the closing of nonessential businesses, including barbershops and salons.
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The order ends Friday, when three of the state’s 10 regions will tentatively begin easing restrictions after meeting certain requirements.


thehuffingtonpostuk--2020-05-15--Young People In One Of UK's Worst-Hit Coronavirus Areas Are Flouting Lockdown. Here's Why

Youth workers and volunteers involved in the outreach work, including Zaffar Van Kalwala (right) Connect Stars
Get the latest on coronavirus. Sign up to the Daily Brief for news, explainers, how-tos, opinion and more.
Young people are defying the government’s lockdown rules to stay outdoors because of overcrowding at home and boredom, according to research carried out in one of London’s most deprived areas.
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Many of the young people were seen to be “clearly hungry” and in need of food, with those from low-income households especially affected.
Volunteers from the youth charity Connect Stars spoke to 130 people aged between 13 and 24 across the north-west London borough of Brent who were not adhering to social distancing rules.
They found that the majority of those questioned said they were not staying indoors because they were living in overcrowded homes, or because they were bored or suffering from a lack of physical activity.
One young person told volunteers they were “just looking for an escape from my family”, while another complained they were “out with friends because there is nothing to do at home”.
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This was particularly the case with young people who do not have access to facilities that are normally affordable for those with wealthier backgrounds, said local anti-gangs worker Zaffar Van Kalwala, who supported the project.
“Brent is in the top 1% of the country’s most deprived places,” said the former local councillor. “People here are living in overcrowded homes in built-up areas.
“Young people might not have access to wi-fi or laptops. They’re aware of the lockdown but they’re also oblivious to it.“
When volunteers advised them to go back indoors and observe social distancing, many of them merely “shrugged their shoulders”.
“They feel helpless in their situation,” Van Kalwala told HuffPost UK.
The study also showed that conditions have been worsening for these young people since the coronavirus outbreak, with 43% saying they needed more financial support either through vouchers or food drops.
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“The lockdown has affected the incomes of a lot of households,” said Van Kalwala.
“A lot of the young people we saw are not getting basic food and are clearly hungry.
“Normally they would go to school and eat. Now they don’t have that – their families don’t have the budget to feed them.”
With over third of its households living in poverty, Brent is one of London’s poorest boroughs, according to a 2019 Trust for London study.
It has also been one of England’s most affected areas in the pandemic. As of Thursday, there are 1,423 confirmed cases and 417 coronavirus-related deaths up to May 1.
Steven, 15, from Stonebridge told volunteers that he had gone to the park to “get some fresh air”.
“A family member caught the coronavirus so six of my cousins moved into our two-bedroom flat, which meant there are nine of us in the property,” he said.
With so many young people outdoors with little or nothing to do, there is also the increased risk that they might fall prey to local gangs.
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On Friday afternoon, Brent Police issued a Section 60, which gives officers the power to stop and search a person without reasonable grounds. Van Kalwala said this was “mostly due to gangs and drugs”.
“Gangs are still active and they are still recruiting,” he said. “We can still see them going around.”
“Young people are even more bored, they don’t have access to income – they are more susceptible to being picked up by gangs.“
On Sunday it was revealed that young men are more likely than young women to break lockdown rules, according to research by psychologists from the University of Sheffield.


thehuffingtonpostuk--2020-05-15--Trump Annihilated Online Over Claim 'We'd Have Very Few Cases' Without Testing

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In a bizarre attempt to explain away the United States’ high Covid-19 case count and simultaneously boast about the number of tests conducted, Donald Trump on Thursday claimed that without testing, there would be fewer coronavirus cases.
“Don’t forget, we have more cases than anybody in the world. But why? We do more testing,” Trump said following a tour of a medical supply distributor in Allentown, Pennsylvania. “When you test, you have a case. When you test, you find something is wrong with people. If we didn’t do any testing, we would have very few cases.”
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He claimed that the media “don’t want to write” this “common sense” explanation for the US case count, which on Thursday surpassed 1.4 million ― more than five times greater than any other country has reported. More than 85,800 people in the US have died.
It is true that the US has conducted the most tests, however, testing per capita ― a much more meaningful metric as a measure of success ― lags behind several other countries, including Russia, Italy, Germany, Spain and Canada. Experts continue to emphasise that widespread testing and contact tracing are the cornerstones of a successful strategy against the further spread of the virus.
With tests still not readily available for many Americans, the president has on multiple occasions tried to downplay the importance of testing, even though members of his White House inner circle are being tested every day.
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“So we have the best testing in the world. It could be the testing’s, frankly, overrated? Maybe it is overrated,” the president continued on Thursday. “You know, they always say we want more, we want more because they don’t want to give you credit.”
His comments were met with fierce backlash on Twitter.
Ask any oncologist and they’ll tell you the secret to beating cancer is just never to get screened for it.
I mean, that’s just basic medicine. https://t.co/hWTIRxcYWw — Kevin M. Kruse (@KevinMKruse) May 14, 2020
The United States has:
- 4% of the global population
- 32% of global COVID-19 cases
- 28% of global COVID-19 deaths https://t.co/IrQ4QLQ5zD — Rep. Don Beyer (@RepDonBeyer) May 14, 2020
This idiot is who so many of you voted for. This idiot thinks the most important thing is his ratings and not your health and your death. The man hasn't got a single drop of human empathy or emotion in him. A parasite sucking us dry. https://t.co/5tLgLQwl6H — Fred Wellman (@FPWellman) May 14, 2020
He really has to be one of the dumbest people alive. https://t.co/XgCDBIZnpJ — George Conway, Noble Committee Chair (@gtconway3d) May 15, 2020
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If you or I were this stupid, it might be funny. For the President of the United States to be this stupid is really fucking dangerous. https://t.co/xWRJAi396F — Joe Walsh (@WalshFreedom) May 14, 2020
Dear @realDonaldTrump: Without testing, we would have even more infections. Testing lets us see the hidden enemy and isolate those who are infected to prevent further spread of #COVID19. That’s why your own @WhiteHouse tests regularly and often. Get it?#ThursdayThoughts https://t.co/Cpn6PY3PpH — Ted Lieu (@tedlieu) May 14, 2020
Welcome to this week’s edition of “The Quiet Part Out Loud”..... https://t.co/75P7td0obv — Bradley Whitford (@BradleyWhitford) May 14, 2020
If I close my eyes, you can’t see me. https://t.co/R6ylJPVcw4 — S.E. Cupp (@secupp) May 14, 2020
What a bizarre thing to say, even by Trump’s low standards.
So does testing cause deaths, too?
Is that why almost 1 of 3 deaths worldwide from COVID-19 comes from the United States?
(85,000+ out of 300,000+ deaths) https://t.co/6M1vDgLIdz — Joe Scarborough (@JoeNBC) May 14, 2020


thehuffingtonpostuk--2020-05-15--Netflix's Selling Sunset Isn't Just Serious Property Porn – Its Drama Makes The Real Housewives Look

Netflix's Selling Sunset Isn't Just Serious Property Porn – Its Drama Makes The Real Housewives Look Tame

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After nearly eight weeks in lockdown, you’re no doubt starting to tire of your own four walls. I know I am. But as a way of countering that, I’ve spent a lot of time over the last two months peering into other people’s houses (not in a creepy way, though) with TV presenters showcasing their homes as they broadcast via Zoom during the pandemic.
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As a way of escaping my own environment and judging the interiors of others (admit it, we all do it), I’ve also found myself watching endless old episodes of shows like A Place In The Sun, Escape To The Country and Location, Location, Location on obscure digital channels buried in my Freeview EPG.
But I have to admit, there’s only so much of the fussy and indecisive participants I can stomach, which is why the upcoming second series of Netflix’s Selling Sunset can’t come soon enough.
If you didn’t catch the show last year, allow me to fill you in.
The cast of Selling Sunset Netflix
This property show shifts the focus away from annoying house hunters onto the glamorous real estate agents looking after inconceivably stunning, multi-million-dollar homes in the Hollywood hills.
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But even better than that, it’s also part reality show, with the cameras following the professional and personal lives of the staff at the Oppenheim Group – and trust us when we say there’s drama aplenty.
Think of it as if the Location, Location, Location cameras continued to follow Kirstie and Phil as they went about their lives, but if Kirstie and Phil lived in Beverly Hills and they also not-so-secretly hated one another. Add in some serious property porn on top of that, and you have a recipe for a pretty great show, huh?
The first series kicks off with the arrival of new agent, Chrishell, who has a hard time fitting in with the well-established group of women who work at Oppenheim.
As she slowly starts to earn their respect by demonstrating her sales skills, there’s an incident that causes her to lock horns with the group’s Queen Bee, Christine – a diva who makes The GC look like a pussycat.
The second run – which lands on Netflix on 22 May – throws a wedding and a baby into the mix, as another agent has the (dis)pleasure of being the new girl, all of which you can get a glimpse of in the trailer below...
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Ahead of season two’s arrival, there’s no better time to get up to speed with the trials and tribulations of the Selling Sunset ladies – trust us, you’ll never enjoy the presence of estate agents this much.
Watch this if you already like...
The Real Housewives, The Only Way Is Essex, A Place In The Sun, Escape To The Country, Location Location Location.
Where can I watch it?


thehuffingtonpostuk--2020-05-15--Maya Jama Quits Radio 1 Show After Two Years To Pursue 'Exciting New Commitments'

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Make the most of your time in lockdown with a daily dose of celebrity news and guides to the best shows. Sign up to the entertainment newsletter.
Maya Jama has announced that she’s stepping down from her Radio 1 show.
Since 2018, Maya has presented on Friday and Saturday mornings from 10am, but has now confirmed that she hosted her last show for the station two weeks ago.
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The BBC has said commitments Maya has coming up later in the year meant she was unable to dedicate the required time to her show.
Maya Jama Vianney Le Caer/Invision/AP
Posting on Twitter on Friday, Maya explained: “I’ve made the very difficult decision not to continue my Radio 1 contract from June, As you know I have been juggling & There are a lot of exciting commitments happening that would mean I’m not able to dedicate the time needed to my weekly radio show... I’ve loved every moment of my time at Radio 1 and I would like to thank the team for their hard work and friendship during the last two years.
“It’s been a JOURNEY, Thanks to all you cuties that tuned into the show every weekend, it was so great to hear that we have been getting the largest proportion of under 35s tuning in for our on-demand show on BBC Sounds. So we are going out with a bang!”
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(1) My loveess ❤ I've made the very difficult decision not to continue my Radio 1 contract from June, As you know I have been juggling & There are a lot of exciting commitments happening that would mean I'm not able to dedicate the time needed to my weekly radio show.. — Maya Jama (@MayaJama) May 15, 2020
(2) ..I've loved every moment of my time at Radio 1 and I would like to thank the team for their hard work and friendship during the last two years. It’s been a JOURNEY, Thanks to all you cuties that tuned into the show every weekend, it was so great to hear that we have been.. — Maya Jama (@MayaJama) May 15, 2020
(3) .. getting the largest proportion of under 35s tuning in for our on-demand show on BBC Sounds. So we are going out with a bang! Love youuuuu listeners 😘😘😘😘😘 pic.twitter.com/jfHc86YH51 — Maya Jama (@MayaJama) May 15, 2020
BBC controller of pop music Lorna Clarke said: “We’d like to thank Maya for all her commitment and hard work at Radio One, and we wish her all the very best with her future.”
Thank you to @MayaJama for all your amazing work at Radio 1. 📻
Wishing Maya all of the luck for her future adventures. ❤ pic.twitter.com/IEyryniXxP — BBC Radio 1 (@BBCR1) May 15, 2020
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Towards the end of last year, Maya was heavily rumoured to be taking over at the helm of Love Island, though the job ultimately went to Laura Whitmore.


thehuffingtonpostuk--2020-05-15--Watch Live: Matt Hancock Leads Daily Downing Street Briefing

Watch Live: Matt Hancock Leads Daily Downing Street Briefing
Health secretary Matt Hancock leads government’s daily press conference alongside England’s deputy chief medical officer Dr Jenny Harries and NHS England's medical director Dr Nikki Kanani. It comes after UK death toll rises by 384 in 24 hours bringing the total number of people who died of coronavirus to nearly 34,000.


thehuffingtonpostuk--2020-05-15--The Art Of Masturbation (With Alix Fox)

The Art Of Masturbation (With Alix Fox)

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Transcript
Brogan Driscoll:
Hello and welcome to Huff Post’s brand new weekly podcast Am I Making You Uncomfortable presented by me, Brogan Driscoll.
Rachel Moss:
And me, Rachel Moss. This podcast is a frank, honest conversation about women’s bodies, health, and private lives.
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Brogan Driscoll:
We cover under reported issues and tackle topics you’re too squeamish to talk to your mates about.
Rachel Moss:
Today, we’re talking about female masturbation and later we’ll be joined by Alix Fox who’s a sex educator. And if you don’t know her, she talks almost exclusively in innuendos.
Brogan Driscoll:
It’s quite weird to talk about masturbation because it’s not something we normally talk about.
Rachel Moss:
Yes.
Brogan Driscoll:
It’s quite a private thing. And like many things on this podcast, it’s not something I really talk to anyone about. But here we are.
Rachel Moss:
I feel of all of our podcast topics this is possibly the one that makes me cringe the hardest. I don’t know what it is about it but I am really nervous of my mum or my nan listening to this.
Rachel Moss:
Which is so stupid because masturbation doesn’t hurt anyone. Why am I so embarrassed about it?
Brogan Driscoll:
It’s something that people only, I’m only kind of seeing now as I’m in my early thirties, positive kind of messaging around masturbation and female pleasure. And HuffPost ran a series earlier this year called How to Get Off, which was all about female pleasure and it was really positive and had lots of different stories about women.
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Rachel Moss:
I loved watching the series.
Brogan Driscoll:
The first time that they really.
Rachel Moss:
For anyone who missed it, it was just a series of articles that were- that were all basically around pleasure but with a big focus on female pleasure. And one of the pieces that I wrote for it was interviewing, I’m gonna say maybe like six or seven women about their eureka moments when it comes to female pleasure. And it was so surprising. Like their stories were so different. They went right from someone who was ‘I had great sex for the first time when I was 18 and now I’ve never had it since and I’m in my thirties’. And then at the other end of the scale, someone who’s never orgasmed until after they’d had a divorce and quite late in life. And the running theme through all of them was just that we’ve never spoken about it before, which was slightly mad.
Brogan Driscoll:
I mean, I’ve never, I don’t really speak about female pleasure, my own pleasure with mates or publicly or anything. It’s obviously something that I talk with sexual partners about, but not something that I’m kind of tooting my horn if that’s not a weird innuendo.
Rachel Moss:
I feel like there is still an internalized shame about it, like you say it probably comes from school days when sex ed was all about not getting pregnant - it was never about enjoying sex. And so it almost seems like you’re being demanding if you say that you want to enjoy sex aswell, which is of course is just ridiculous. I remember when I was at university, did you ever play Never Have I Ever, the drinking game?
Brogan Driscoll:
Obviously. Yes.
Rachel Moss:
I remember there was a time where we were all sat round and someone said never have I ever masturbated and then when a couple of the girls in the circle drank as in ‘yes, I have,’ they were absolutely ripped to shreds. And it just goes to show that a bunch of 18-year-olds are awfully immature. But that messaging we’d obviously all internalized from that age was that it was okay for boys to wank and it wasn’t okay for girls to.
Brogan Driscoll:
It’s crazy that the kind of shame around female pleasure even nowadays means that women just don’t really have access to it. There are women who are unable to kind of engage completely because it’s just been so shameful. But you’re a massive fan of Sex Education?
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Rachel Moss:
I am. That is one of the first shows where I have seen masturbation portrayed I think. And also, female masturbation I should say, and also portrayed in a way that it’s not about the pleasure for viewers. It’s not sexy, it’s just put forward as this is a thing that this person is doing. And I think what is super interesting about that show as well is that it’s got the same intimacy director as Normal People, which I’m also obsessed with. That’s on BBC and that hasn’t got any masturbation in it, but it’s got a hell of a lot of sex in it.
Brogan Driscoll:
It’s got so much sex in it.
Rachel Moss:
So so much sex, my boyfriend has dubbed it Naked People. He says ‘shall we watch another episode of Naked People?’
Brogan Driscoll:
Today we’re joined by Alix Fox, a multi-award winning broadcaster, journalist and sex educator who most recently worked as script consultant for the Netflix show ‘Sex Education’. Alix is passionate about getting us to talk more openly about sex and strives to achieve her trademark decent indecency in everything she takes on. Thanks for joining us on the podcast today to talk about masturbation.
Alix Fox:
Hello! I always feel a little bit mortified when people say “multi-award winning.” I mean one of those was the Duke of Edinburgh. A long long time ago, and now for physical pursuits but of a different type.
Brogan Driscoll:
Lovely. Well as you know today we’re talking all about masturbation. So we wanted to kick things off with the big question at the centre of this whole thing. Why is it such a taboo to talk about masturbation particularly for women?
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Alix Fox:
For a start I think some people feel uncomfy about masturbation because they’ve been brought up in a community environment or in a family or in a religious context that told them that to touch yourself, to pleasure yourself was wrong or bad or dirty. A lot of people never spoke about masturbation at school. It wasn’t part of their sex eduction curriculum. I mean what was sex ed like for your guys at school?
Brogan Driscoll:
I had one lesson, an hour I think.
Alix Fox:
Absolutely awful. I mean, we’d spoken about it a few times and it’s like the teacher was awkward and therefore the kids are awkward. And you grow up with this idea that sex is awkward, which is just not good for anyone. And then those kids become the teachers who are awkward. Like a never ending cycle.
Brogan Driscoll:
Ours was just completely focused on the reproductive organs and how to make a baby rather than any kind of pleasure or anything like that.
Alix Fox:
Well speaking of organs, mine took place in a music room. We were surrounded by clarinets and cellos and flutes and then showed some really graphic slides of STIs in the most advanced untreated stages. And the message given to us particularly as girls was all about protect yourself from diseases and protect yourself from unwanted or unplanned pregnancy. But when it came to self-pleasure, the teacher’s mouths were as closed as our legs were supposed to be.
And I definitely think for a lot of people it starts at a younger age as well. It’s really natural for children even when they’re toddlers to realize that touching their private parts can feel good. And their parents or caregivers quite rightly tell them not to do that in public spaces. But sometimes that lesson is delivered in a way where the message is that it is: naughty, rude, or don’t ever do that, you’ll be in trouble if you do that, that’s foul.
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And parents understandably because they don’t have the foundation to teach themselves. You know, they haven’t been given that information in their own childhood or life journey they don’t follow that up with it’s all right to do that in private at the right moment. There’s nothing wrong with the pleasure, it’s all about context.
Other reasons I think that we get upset about masturbation uh are that we just don’t talk about it. Um a lot of us worry about whether we should be doing it or shouldn’t be doing it. And we don’t know what the normal is. So we can really scrutinize our own behaviors or lack thereof.
Brogan Driscoll:
I think what frustrates me is how different it is for guys. So, growing up in pop culture it was kind of a joke almost or just a given that men masturbated and it was um kind of something that was widely spoken about. But never the same for girls, or now growing up, never the same for women. Why do you think that’s different?
Alix Fox:
Well first of all I am going to say that I think that the idea of male masturbation being a joke has actually done some damage to a lot of guys. Ostensibly we’re all talking about men wanking or teasing the weasel or whatever you want to call it. What’s your favorite word for masturbation by the way?
Rachel Moss:
I just call it wanking.
Brogan Driscoll:
I don’t know if I have a favorite. I’ve never really ranked them to be honest.
Brogan Driscoll:
What’s yours Alix?
Alix Fox:
I’m a big fan of David Bowie, so my favorite is letting Toby get lost amongst the labyrinth.
Rachel Moss:
That’s a mouthful.
Alix Fox:
That’s specifically for using sex toys, so sex toys are Toby now in my household.
Because we joke about male masturbation I think that kind of locker room, bro culture has probably made a lot of men feel fear about speaking up if they have questions about masturbation. So to think that because we joke about male masturbation that it isn’t an issue is a fallacy. Certainly though when I was younger, female masturbation wasn’t talked about at all. I don’t even remember jokes. It just wasn’t, what we were doing in our bedrooms or wasn’t on the table in any context.
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I think that conversation is starting to change but still a lot of the images and a lot of the messages that people get about female masturbation come from porn where it’s something that’s performed often for male pleasure and as a result, it’s all play and display. There are these legs wide open, it’s like an all you can see, all you can eat buffet of genitalia, the camera is right up there inside and women are often pictured frantically rubbing their coochies as though they’re starting a fire. In real life we know that women masturbate in all sorts of body positions, it’s not always that vigorous and almost violent. With Sex Education we showed Aimee’s character masturbating uh and she actually reached orgasm while she’s lying down on her front, a position you don’t often see in porn because it obscures the visual.
And I know that the creator Laurie Nunn and Aimee Lou Wood who plays Aimee in the show got lots and lots of contact from fans saying ‘oh my god that is the first time I’ve ever seen the way I cum depicted on the screen, I feel really normal, I feel validated’. Aimee’s character then goes on to announce the next day at school that she had a wonderful time and then ate six crumpets. So, I’ve heard the term crumpeting to mean whilst lying on your front now.
Brogan Driscoll:
Oh I love that. That’s brilliant. I absolutely loved the last series of Sex Education. And the thing you mention with Aimee was great, but I also loved that there were scenes with Ola as well where she was exploring herself and her partner. And also Otis I mean he had a huge masturbation storyline this time, he was just doing it all the time. Once he had- once he’d found the love for it he was worried that he couldn’t stop. That whole idea, where did that come from? And how was filming that with those young actors?
Alix Fox:
The way that my job works is that I get sent certain parts of the script to review. So sometimes Laurie or the rest of the production team might say okay we know we’ve got a chlamydia storyline here, spoiler alert, can you help us with the logistics of this? So basically I am the architect of the chlamydia outbreak.
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I was responsible for the chlamydia in the eye, it was me guys, I’ll check whether it’s factually possible. Sometimes my job isn’t to make sure something is medically okay it’s to ascertain whether that’s something that young people actually know or whether that’s something they’d commonly get wrong or whether there’s a piece of terminology that’s going around or a myth that everyone believes. So, whilst I on one hand I have to check that a lot of what Otis and Jean are saying is correct, on the other hand, it’s my job to reflect common misconceptions. I’ll try and suggest some jokes, put forward ideas of things I’ve heard from the young people I interact with that might have relevance to them, that they’d want to see portrayed in the show. But I only see certain bits of the script. So when I’m watching the show along with everybody else I’m still waiting to find out what happens in certain bits of the story.
Brogan Driscoll:
That’s good. So you still get to enjoy it. You only get little snippets that you’re involved in
Alix Fox:
Exactly. I get sent it a little bit earlier but I almost always binge watch it so it’s just two days of me yelping
Rachel Moss:
It is hilarious. One of the things that obviously Otis goes through is worrying that he’s masturbating too frequently. That’s an idea I think that some of us may have heard in school. Not from teachers, just rumors. Is there any truth in that, can you masturbate too frequently?
Alix Fox:
Can you crank that wank? Does it become problematic? If you feel that you are touching yourself compulsively to a point where it’s getting in the way of other things in life. So, you’re not showing up for work for example or you’re late for things a heck of a lot or it’s affecting other relationships you might be acting in a way that’s quite surreptitious. Maybe your porn consumption is something that you feel like you got to take, you got to hide from other people. There’s all sorts of scenarios where masturbation and the things it’s adjacent to like using porn, can uh affect an individual’s behavior in a way that they and others might find difficult - I think that’s the time to go and see a therapist. And often it’s connected to- to other aspects in somebody’s life like depression or anxiety or it has to be treated on an individual basis. I get asked a lot like what’s a normal amount to masturbate and it really varies from person to person. I wouldn’t worry about how much you are going for a row in the pink taco boat or whatever unless you think that it is getting in the way or your life. On a more physiological basis um you can get quite sore if you are touching yourself helluva a lot, so if you feel like things are getting a bit tender in your tender places, then maybe give it a rest. Lots of young women in particular, vulva owners, ask me if you can get addicted to a vibrator or if you can cause yourself damage by using a vibrator too much or a sex toy too much. It would be extremely difficult to create lasting nerve damage by buzzing the fuzz, so don’t worry too much about that. Having said that, if you are repeatedly relying on particularly powerful sex toys, you know the ones that you plug into the mains and your lights dip and your energy bill goes through the roof, like the ones I prefer, your body can start to get used to a very intense form of stimulation. That does not mean that you and your poon are ruined forevermore. It just means that you need to maybe wind that down, take a step back for a few weeks and learn to rely on your digit rather than your widgets and your gadgets for a bit.
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Brogan Driscoll:
And of course once you do develop a healthy relationship with masturbation it can be great. Why does it feel so good for men or women? What is going on in your body, in your brain, when you orgasm?
Alix Fox:
Well for a start, you turn into a chemical factory when you’re masturbating and when you’re experiencing sexual pleasure or orgasm. Oxytocin and dopamine are chemicals that make you feel blissed out and or happy and hopeful. And often is quite connected to the person you’re experiencing pleasure with, I think that’s partly why masturbation can be so good for us. If we feel good with ourselves we’re more likely to feel good about ourselves. If you can demonstrate to yourself that your body has the capacity to make you feel effing great effing yourself then it’s easier to love yourself isn’t it? It’s easier, or at least easier to accept, the potential of your body to be a good thing. You also produce a substance called prolactin, which has all sorts of roles in the body but it has been linked to deeper, more rejuvenating sleep, you produce endorphins which are basically like the body’s natural painkillers so a lot of people who are anxious or depressed can find that masturbating can bring them some relief. I say that with the caveat that if you are experiencing depression, wanking all the time is not the way to fix that, if you’re having a little bit of a blue day then playing with your pink bits might give you some relief. But if it’s more of a sustained issue please go and see a specialist, check with a GP, go and chat with somebody.
It’s not just about chemicals and your brain though, there are a lot of other parts, the moans for example, a lot of women because of what they see in porn think that they have to do little itty bitty squeaky breaths like gerbil on a jog. That causes your chest to tighten up, if that’s the sound that you naturally make during pleasure then you go with your mousey self, but actually breathing more deeply and maybe even making even more of a guttural sound or seeing what it feels like in your whole body to change up your breathing, for some women that can be the difference between getting to O town or stopping just short of it. One theory of why breathing deeply can actually help you to experience pleasure or have an orgasm is that there is a big old nerve called the vagus nerve, it is quite vague in many ways, but it does a lot of jobs. It extends from the kind of the neck, the back of the skull and it has fronds that splay out through the face, going all the way down right into your pelvic region. And you know what nerves look like, they look like a kind of family tree, it’s got cousins and daughters and sons all around your kind of your internal genitals basically. Breathing deeply stimulates that vagus nerve and can essentially, some people posit, wake up your bits.
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Rachel Moss:
Wow. That’s really interesting. Very interesting.
Alix Fox:
Your pelvic floor muscles as well, we’re often taught that we should exercise those by doing Kegels which is when you basically hold your muscles as though you were trying to keep in wee. But not only can doing that during the day when you’re not having sex or masturbating help with things like incontinence and with stronger orgasms, actually clenching and unclenching your pc muscles, your pelvic floor muscles, whilst you’re masturbating or having sex can help provoke an orgasm too. And would you believe, some people find that curling and uncurling their toes gets them over the edge.
Rachel Moss:
Wow, all the tips today. Things I never knew.
Alix Fox:
You never knew you had this many erogenous zones. The crystal maze, the industrial zone, that’s where I keep all my sex toys, the erogenous zone, that’s my whole body.
Brogan Driscoll:
We spoke earlier about the taboo around masturbation and how growing up not a lot of people spoke about female masturbation. Who do you speak about it with and where would you recommend any listeners to do so? Like friends or family perhaps? Maybe not family actually that’d be a bit weird but.
Alix Fox:
Well why not? I actually do speak with my family about masturbation. Not with my brother, my brother thinks I work in fashion. And my bro is, I don’t think he’s ashamed of what I do, I think that very naturally he doesn’t want to hear this information from his sister. Fair play. But I do talk to my sis and my mum about these things. I think people in my life sometimes would rather that I did shut my trap and stop talking about twats, but hey I think there are lots of good reasons to talk more about masturbation, once you open and start sharing, you can hear some really hot tips. But also if there’s been something on your mind that you’re worried about for example, have you heard of vaginismus? This is a condition that causes the muscles in the vaginal canal to tighten up to the point where penetration, whether that’s with a penis or a finger or a moon cup or tampon, becomes painful to the point of almost impossibility. Lots of women who I’ve spoken to about that didn’t know where to turn. And they found that having conversations about masturbation with their friends gave them the confidence to say that they were going through this. And because there are often psychological links with vaginismus, it’s often although not always connected to something in your brain telling you to clamp up in order to protect you. Whether that’s because you’ve had a bad experience in the past or an assault, that’s certainly not always the case, or whether something has frightened you or sometimes it can just be a brain that is a bit like the smoke alarm that goes off in their house when you’ve only burnt the toast. And it’s not a major alarm system, some people’s bodies are like that. It’s like now I’m going to tense up, even though there isn’t an emergency, but I’m gonna treat it like it is one. Through talking about masturbation with their friends they were able to feel a little bit more at ease about the entire subject and that actually contributed towards their healing because it helped them relax about it. And almost everybody has a masturbation story, not everyone, there are also some asexual people who don’t feel the urge to masturbate or if they do masturbate it’s because it relieves them if they’re a guy or it helps them sleep but it’s not inherently sexual for them. Although that’s not true for all asexual people, but broadly speaking masturbation is a topic where everyone’s got a tale.
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Brogan Driscoll:
We got some listeners to send us some of their experiences in masturbation.
Listener:
The first few times I tried to masturbate it didn’t work at all so I quickly concluded it just wasn’t for me and I stopped trying for years. But that just wasn’t true. I simply had no clue about my clit and about how it works. And I’m afraid this is often the case for too many women, I find it striking how little we know about female pleasure and about ourselves. I wonder why it has to be such a taboo.
Rachel Moss:
That listener there really touched on the idea I think could possibly be quite common for a lot of women. You perhaps try masturbating, it doesn’t work because you’re not taught about it and then you kind of give up for a while and lose hope for it. So have you got any advice for any listeners on essentially how to do it? How do you get yourself off?
Alix Fox:
For a start, I think it’s really important to recognize even if you are a regular masturbator, the things that get you off in the past might not work for you now. Which is why it’s important to switch up the ways that you masturbate and try different things throughout your lifetime. And also not to be worried that if masturbation wasn’t something that you enjoyed in the past if you feel so inclined, giving it a go in the future might result in a more, a happier outcome. There are all sorts of things that can affect your sexual response. Things like the menopause, pregnancy, going through puberty, medications we’re taking, ironically including contraception, can affect your libido and also how your body responds to certain touches and techniques. Antidepressants in particular, SSRIs (Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor) can make it harder to orgasm or experience pleasure. A good place to start is with a few activities I can suggest, one is called sensate focus. Rather than just aiming for your genitals as though your hand or your sex toy is a dart and your bits are the bullseye, think about your entire body. There’re a few resources that can help you explore sensate focus, there’s a really good app called Ferly for example, it teaches you to focus on different parts of your body whether that’s the back of your neck or the palm of your hands or the inside of your wrists. And slowly, slowly reawaken your whole body but also change your mind into an outlook where you believe that you can feel good inside of yourself.
Brogan Driscoll:
The second clip we’ve got is from a listener explaining how masturbation can be incredibly taboo in certain cultures. So she’s South Asian and she speaks about her experience.
Listener:
I’m from the South Asian culture and in South Asian culture female pleasure isn’t even a concept. We’re kind of brought up to think of sex as something that’s for men and not for women, so the whole idea of female masturbation is even more taboo. I remember as a teenager talking to my friends and someone said ‘I would never do something like that’. So that’s how not talked about it is within South Asian culture. I don’t know if that makes sense, but it’s that much of a taboo that we don’t even acknowledge it.
Brogan Driscoll:
As a sex educator is that something that surprises you to hear or do you regularly hear that culture plays a huge part in this topic.
Alix Fox:
I regularly hear it and I regularly call out for greater diversity within the sex education community, I’m so grateful that we are starting to make progress in that area. I am under no illusions that as a 37-year-old white woman with neon hair from a non-faith background, no matter how much research I do, my lived experience is going to be very different from a lot of the people I speak to. And some of them just won’t relate to me, they won’t see me as the right person to teach them and it’s really important that we have people from diverse backgrounds and sexualities talking about their own experiences and being plugged into different cultures to ensure that everybody is having conversations in a way that they feel comfortable with and are seen by. I’m really happy to be able to recommend some specific uh South Asian resources. There’s a brilliant woman called Sangeeta Pillai who runs a podcast called the Masala Podcast, she started a movement called Soul Sutras. She also speaks very interestingly about how the Kama Sutra is an Indian text originally, although it’s been subsumed by Western culture in many many ways, and she has some very interesting observations about a culture that arguably was quite sexual and was about pleasure in lots of ways, about how and why that has changed to become what it is now for a lot of people. So, she’s one good person to check out. The Village Auntie, real name Angelica Lindsey-Ali, is a Muslim woman I think Minnesota based, she has a really brilliant Instagram account where she talks about sex education from a faith background. And shout out to Amalia.com, they talk in very progressive ways again about what it’s like to be a sexual person who is Muslim and brown. And also please do check out the work of Dr. Annabel Sowemimo and all of the rest of the team at Decolonizing Contraception who speak to other people of color with knowledge of their backgrounds and their influences much more so than my own; I have learned a lot from them and continue to do so.
Brogan Driscoll:
The third listener we’ve got a clip from here is talking about her experience of sex education in school.
Listener:
The first time I masturbated I think was quite late in life, maybe 16, 17. I went to an all girls boarding school where they did not have a lot of private space, it was kind of frowned upon. I think there’s a huge stigma around female masturbation, I think part of it is there’s an embarrassment still about talking about it. And I think that comes from quite a young age of just not having an open culture around female pleasure. It is not being discussed in a way that male pleasure is. I also think that culture is perpetuated by men who feel a bit uncomfortable about female masturbation still, like they feel pushed out or that it’s kind of competitive and it’s at the compromise of something that they could do.
Alix Fox:
I think a lot of guys feel that if women can make themselves feel great they’ll somehow be out of a job and that idea extends into this massive fear of sex toys, like seeing vibrators as enemies of the penis come to rob you and your shaft of all of your powers. In relationships that are in lots of ways very healthy people can want to talk to each other honestly and openly about masturbation and about what brings them pleasure - but there’s still a lot holding them back. For a start, if you’ve been with somebody for a long long time and what they’ve been doing in bed hasn’t been tickling your pickle, but you’ve been pretending that it has, then speaking to them all of a sudden with radical utopian honesty about that can be incredibly intimidating. You worry that you’re gonna squish their ego like a rotten Halloween pumpkin in November, you might worry that that person will then doubt other aspects of the relationship and think what else have you been lying to me about or fibbing about. So correcting things can be very intimidating, I’ve spoken to couples whose partner has asked them to masturbate in front of them because they want to learn from the master - the masturbator if you will. But these women have felt that they can’t be honest, we don’t always go as far as we need to with talking and with demonstrating what gets us off. I do acknowledge that if, for a start we need to stop seeing our partner giving us input on their pleasure as a slight to our own prowess in bed, I think a really good motto to bear in mind is ‘I learn by hearing, I’m here to learn and I’m going to be enthusiastic about both’. Don’t take it as a slur if your partner makes requests of how you touch them or wants to show you more about how they touch themselves.
Brogan Driscoll:
That’s great advice. Final question that we ask all of our guests that come on the podcast, what makes you uncomfortable?
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Alix Fox:
Do you know what really makes me squirm and feel like I’m gonna turn inside out with embarrassment - pantomimes. And musicals, I can’t, I just can’t stand them. Suddenly everybody knows the words it’s so embarrassing
Rachel Moss:
No, La La Land’s my favorite film ever.
Alix Fox:
Particularly pantomimes for me. I went to go and see one with an ex-boyfriend many years ago. I just could feel myself sinking lower and lower in my chest with absolute like teenage embarrassment. I felt I was wishing myself away. I worry when I go and see pantomimes, see everybody doing everything over the top and how annoying it is. I think oh god, that is me
and how I’m currently perceived as the pantomime and pantos are like looking in a horrible circus mirror for me and they make me really paranoid and deeply uncomfortable.
Rachel Moss:
I love that. Unexpected but brilliant. What a great answer.
Brogan Driscoll:
I did not expect that either. Thank you so much. You can follow Alix on social media @alixfox.
Brogan Driscoll:
That’s it for Am I Making You Uncomfortable this week, I must admit because you won’t be able to see me, that I basically spent that entire interview with my head in my hands and with a really red face.
Rachel Moss:
You were so embarrassed. You did not handle that well.
Rachel Moss:
But well done for persevering.
Brogan Driscoll:
Oh I got through it. That’s the main thing. I’m Brogran Driscoll and you can find @brogan_driscoll.
Rachel Moss:
And I’m Rachel Moss and you can find me @rachelmoss_.
Brogan Driscoll:
This podcast is produced by Crystal Genesis and our sound engineer is Nag Kirinde.
Rachel Moss: