New podcast alert: Sex Confidential

We are delighted to introduce you to Sex Confidential, a new podcast community for those who want to enhance their sex lives and explore the new sexual revolution.

The Sex Confidential podcast is about to launch with weekly episodes that are about to make a big impact on your listening habits.

It is hosted by Sophie Cohen, who is the creative genius behind erotic performance group House of Vixens, as well as a filmmaker, performer, educator, coach and guru of all things erotic. She will be speaking to leading names from a range of fields to hear their inspiring stories and transformative ideas.

The show will be backed up by a Sex Confidential substack to help build an interactive community.

Free subscribers an early listen to each show, behind-the-scenes stories, interviews, features, photos and clips.

Paying subscribers will also have access to ‘Sophie’s Room’, our host’s personal newsletter in which she’ll answer your questions, as well as give an intimate glimpse into her work.

Follow @s_confidential_podcast and sign up at https://sexconfidential.substack.com/

By way of an introduction, here’s some words from Sophie…

Hi Sophie, can you tell us a bit about your work please?

So today I was teaching a woman who wanted to learn how to do rope bondage and also nipple play. But she ended up actually wanting to use that hour to discuss what her personal desires and interests were, because she’s on a sexual journey of working out who she is.

Sometimes people will come to me with very specific skill sets they would like to learn. I will show them how to do practical physical things, anything from how to use sex toys to very particular kink practices.

And then sometimes it will literally just be me sitting there listening. I’m not a therapist, I’m not trained in any way, except for life experience. But I tend to be somebody that people can tell anything to. I’ve always had that energy, and I’m very non judgmental.

I do still see very select clients as a pro dominatrix, but these days I tend to work mostly with couples.

There tends to be lots of couples who come to see me for learning and coaching and then would like to be guided through a scenario.

I tend to see a lot of lesbian couples as well as non-binary and trans people. Also how it swaps around in heteronormative relationships: sometimes I’ll show men how to be dominant in that space and how to put everything together that they’ve learned into something that feels fluid. I’m helping people connect, which is always my favourite thing to do.

I used to be a stripper for many years. My favourite thing when I used to work in Las Vegas was to talk to couples.

Most of the women who work in those clubs do not look for couples because they find them overwhelming, and it can be a tricky dynamic. You don’t really know if the couple are getting along. You have to be grown up to be able to handle two adults who maybe don’t even know what they want.

I really honed my skills in that space of being able to judge what to do in the moment. It was always something that I found really rewarding because I love the opportunity to help people connect back together again and to be a conduit between them, understanding their sensuality together.

So there isn’t an average day for you?

Every day will be different. I was meeting somebody last week in a hotel who’s never had an orgasm before. I was just showing her how to use sex toys, showing her where her clitoris was telling her that she had a very normal looking vulva.

And then leaving her to explore for herself and giving her some tips and tricks of how to do that and just having a conversation.

Today, it was bondage. Tomorrow, it could be teaching somebody how to do anal play. Last week I had a couple who came in who was their wedding anniversary, and they decided to treat themselves to learning how to do spanking.

It was a little weird because they had both also just gotten their nipples pierced and other regions pierced. It was a bit of an intense day that they had set up for themselves to just do it all! They were happy. They had a good time.

It’s maybe not the average day for most people.

You’re also a kink concierge? 

Yes, for the Mandrake Hotel in London. When couples book into the hotel, they can request me as part of their concierge options, much like they can for sound baths or yoga. I also run group workshops in their £4,000-a-night suite, giving guests the chance to enjoy an exclusive two-hour experience.

What about your creative work?

I curate performances and I’m a film director as well. My short film is at film festivals at the moment and I’m working on a script for a feature film.

House of Vixens is an erotic cabaret company that I founded in 2013. We had always done these really underground shows that were very immersive and really in your face. And that didn’t really go along very well with Covid!

That was what I loved and was where I cut my teeth on everything. I did that parallel to stripping. It was from the worlds of the subversive and putting them into an artistic space that people could come and experience.

Once again, it was always about connecting with people and trying to find a space that people could be sensual and erotic that felt safe because a lot of people don’t want to go to a strip club.

When Covid happened, I had to just figure out how do I survive, how do I continue to create art and connect with people and the erotic in every sense? That’s my life’s fascination.

I was lucky enough to link up with Michael Lindsay and 16oz Studios, we became really good friends over Covid. He’s now my directing partner and we produced and co-directed a film called La Petite Mort that happened in 2020.

It was an experimental film that was as close as you could get to one of our live events in lockdown. We did it in a way that you could only watch it once, on New Year’s Eve at midnight. There were specific things used within the film that we sent you in a box in the mail that you could do at the same time – it was as interactive as we could possibly make something in the digital space.

That was kind of my first foray into film proper. From there, I worked on some fashion films with Michael and we then co wrote and directed The Red Room, our short film which we did last summer. It’s now in the festival circuit and is screening at the Soho London Independent Film Festival where it’s up for best drama.

I like to do as many different things as possible, all within the theme of eroticism.

When did your interest in eroticism start?

It started early. Since I can remember I’ve always been fascinated about anybody who seemed sexy or beautiful. I always had lots of childless women around me who were wonderful, and my idols. They were all these strong, powerful women who talked about their sexuality. I thought I want to be like that. This is in San Francisco, California.

My dad’s a jazz musician, my mother trained as a stained glass artist and they ran a sales business together as well, which was less artsy, but  everybody around us were all artists and musicians and academics. I was brought up in this very free space to express myself.

I think that the power of eroticism is huge, the power of desire is huge.

It’s one of the most important aspects of our humanity. It’s how we all became to exist, right? Somebody desired somebody and then we’re the product of that.

I think specifically women’s eroticism is something that is very much made out to a frivolous subject.

If you look at places like Afghanistan right now, there is a black market of beauty salons because it’s been banned. Women are literally risking prison or death, to get their nails painted.

You might say that that’s a frivolous pastime, but I don’t think that it is, it’s something that gives you appreciation of yourself and something that makes you feel like you have ownership over your body – we can take it for granted in a country where we’re allowed to do that.

But you look at places where people aren’t allowed to do that anymore and women are still striving to have access to feeling beautiful and feeling cared for.

Sometimes when I go to the nail salon, you see women who maybe don’t get out of the house very often and this is their contact with people.

I think lots of things can be put into a camp of not being important, but actually, they’re sometimes the largest part of our identity and how we connect to another person. Not to discount people who are asexual or people who for whatever reason, sex isn’t important anymore.

What is your aim with your work?

I’m not trying to make people into somebody that they’re not. I don’t have this mission to make everybody as confident in this space as I am.

But I think that by my nature is being quite relaxed and just going, this is normal and it’s fine.

I’ve been to sex parties, I’ve seen everything, I’ve done everything there’s just nothing you can say or do that I’m going to find upsetting or shocking.

I think it’s liberating for people to be able speak to somebody who will go, ‘Yeah, that’s normal.’

I think having this background of sex work, I have seen more naked women than anybody I know. I’ve seen every vulva, I’ve seen all the types of breasts, so I can just literally be like, ‘yeah, it’s fine’. ‘yeah, people would pay you to look at that’.

A lot of women talk about being cam models now when they’re maybe not the typical beauty standard: young, white and thin. They’re showing black bodies are beautiful, big bodies are beautiful, and people desire them.

Because what is beauty? It’s just if you’re desired by one person, they make you feel beautiful, you know?

But people lack the opportunity to talk about it most of the time. Any of what they think of as issues can just grow and fester because they really haven’t dealt with it or explored it or had the means or route to do it.

What about the pressures on men?

Men are put in a position where they’re supposed to be naturally dominant, natural leaders. They’re supposed to know what to do sexually.

I’ve got news for you: every single person you f*ck is going to like something different.

There are vague transferable skills. But actually every time you have a new person in front of you, you don’t know what their background is. You don’t know if they have sexual trauma. You don’t know if they like to be touched a certain way.

They have different fantasies. You have to learn a completely new script for a new person.

And yes, of course, understanding where the clit is, is important. But some women I’ve met who have a clit that is just so sensitive, they don’t want anyone touching it.

This idea that you can just have a blueprint for how you’re supposed to f*ck unfortunately does not exist.

The thing that I would like to give people is to be more confident to just talk about it because the amount of people who turn the lights off and close their eyes and hope for the best and then wonder, why is this sh*t?

You can’t do anything just going, ‘I hope it works out!’

So let’s open our eyes a little bit, turn the lights on (low) and try to demystify things that maybe seem intimidating.

Sex Confidential will be released weekly on all podcast platforms starting this weekend.