Welcome to my virtual therapy room!  I am Dr Lori Beth Bisbey and this is Sex Spoken Here.  Remember that this podcast deals with adult themes so if you don’t have privacy you might wish to put on your headphones. Joining me today is Cooper Beckett.

Cooper S. Beckett is the co-founder and host of Life on the Swingset: The Podcast since 2010, author of swinging & polyamory novels A Life Less Monogamous and Approaching The Swingularity, and memoir My Life on the Swingset: Adventures in Swinging & Polyamory. He teaches and speaks on swinging, polyamory, pegging, play parties, and coloring outside the boundaries of your sexuality. He is a graphic & web designer, photographer, and voice over artist, has been a guest expert on Dan Savage’s Savage Lovecast, & is the announcer of Tristan Taormino’s radio show Sex Out Loud. He is currently working on two instructional non-fiction books, one about beginning non-monogamy, and another about pegging.

We started by talking about swinging and spoke about the swinging culture in the late 70’s early 80’s and how that went underground after the AIDS crisis began.  Cooper talked about the new renaissance that has existed since the internet has boomed and how much easier it is for people to find each other.  We spoke about the normative swingers – heterosexual male and a bisexual or bicurious female.  Cooper talked about how much more he has enjoyed having parties that are sex parties instead of swinging parties where there is a larger cross section of the non-monogamous community.  We spoke about the invisibility of the bisexual male and Cooper talked about the fear that heterosexual males demonstrate when confronted with male bisexuality but also about the attitude from some of the gay community that there is no such thing as bisexuality.  I agreed that this was also my experience and both of us spoke about the importance of identifying loudly as bisexual to educate others about bi-invisibility.  Cooper spoke about the prevalence of people who are ‘broken’ in some way in alternative communities and made it clear that he wasn’t talking damaged.  The example he used was the larger number of people with chronic illness who are seen in these communities and he suggested that people who have chronic illness look for things to make them feel less miserable and so explore more.  We spoke about how research in this area would be fascinating and he spoke about the need for research on prostate orgasm (as there is a suggestion of a correlation between regular prostate stimulation and lower levels of prostate cancer) but that there is no research money for any research on sexuality. 

Cooper’s book, Approaching the Swingularity has just been released.  Click the link to purchase from his site www.coopersbeckett.com.  (Though it can also be purchased on Amazon.  As he is an independent publisher, purchases from his site give him more of the price so please consider purchasing directly).  You can also find him on twitter @coopersbeckett. 

Thanks for joining me this week for Sex Spoken Here with Dr Lori Beth Bisbey.  Write to me with suggestions for the show, questions you want answered at drbisbey@the-intimacy-coach.com, follow me on twitter @drbisbey.  For a free 30 minute strategy session with me, go to www.the-intimacy-coach.com and click the button that says Schedule Now!  I look forward to seeing you next week when we begin our series on BDSM and Power Exchange.