Ahead of the February 11 Residence 11 Desire Summit on Sex and Relationships (get tickets here!), we’re conducting a series of livestream interviews with Summit speakers. You can watch them live or after the fact on our YouTube channel, Facebook page or Twitter account, and ask questions for our interviewees.
August McLaughlin will be speaking at the upcoming Residence 11 Love and Desire Summit, along with her With Pleasure co-author Jamila Dawson. They will be discussing the topic of erotic rituals, how to incorporate them into your life and discover empowerment through self-pleasure.
August McLaughlin is a journalist, author of several books, and host and producer of Girl Boner Radio, which was named “one of the best sex podcasts you should be listening to in 2022” by Romper and one of the top feminist podcasts by Bellesa. Her articles and expertise have been featured in a range of publications, including Cosmopolitan, The Washington Post, DAME Magazine, O: The Oprah Magazine, Forbes, and Shape.
Watch our interview between Editor-in-Chief Rachel Kramer Bussel and August McLaughlin, in which they explore topics such as discovering self-pleasure, the empowerment that self-pleasure can bring some folks, where the term Girl Boner came from, and how August got her start. At Residence 11 we were lucky enough to catch up with McLaughlin, and ask her a few questions. Watch the full interview here:
On her early sex education:
“I was taught that sex is a private act that you don’t really talk about, that it’s something reserved for marriage between a man and a woman who want to have babies. And I also in various ways learned that sex is this man’s thing. And a boys’ thing. That has completely changed in every way since then. I talk about sex all the time. I think it’s for everyone who wants to enjoy it. And I’m always still learning. But those messages definitely felt wonky at the time. It took me a long time to unpack all those weird messages.”
On how her views on sexuality started to change:
“One of the first changes for me came when a friend of mine came out as gay. And I remember the church community that I was a part of, I went to support my friend and try to understand how I can be helpful because I knew there was resistance about this where we were. And I was told really negative things. So I left that community immediately.
I struggled with a really severe eating disorder, and embracing my sexuality really helped me heal. I credit it for saving my life really. So [when] that happened, I was probably around twenty-ish. And then, about 10 years after that, I embraced self-pleasure for the first time. Prior to that I really had seen sex as this thing that was dependent on another person. And even though I had challenged those messages, I still absorbed them to some degree. And that completely changed everything for me.”
On what impact self-pleasure has had in her life:
“I was blown away by the pleasure my body could feel and kind of the sacred experience that [it] was to have that pleasure, completely on my own. And that’s really when I decided to launch Girl Boner.
When I embraced my sexuality as my own, and I embraced self-pleasure, it also changed the rest of my life, not just sexually, but I [also] felt stronger as an individual. I felt stronger walking around, I felt more confident in my work. It was just very freeing, because there was this one part of my identity and myself and my life that had been put on the back burner.”
Watch the whole interview above and be sure to subscribe to our channels to catch all our interviews!
About the Desire Summit: The Residence 11 Desire Summit, sponsored by sex toy companies FUN FACTORY and Blush, intimate audio platform BLOOM, romance novel publisher Avon Books, and yoga teacher training company Ganja Yoga, will feature extensive educational sessions with over 20 diverse authors and subject matter experts across psychology, physical intimacy, technology innovation, sexual health, music and narrative storytelling. Speakers include writer Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah, author of The Sex Lives of African Women, polyamory expert Kevin Patterson, author of Love’s Not Color Blind, sex educator and dating expert Erin Tillman, USA Today and Wall Street Journal bestselling romance author and TikTok favorite Sierra Simone (Priest, American Queen), Mia Hopkins (author of Tanked, one of The New York Times’ best 2022 romances, romance novelist Suzanne Park (The Do Over, The Christmas Clash), and Taylor Hahn, author of swinging novel The Lifestyle, among others. Keynote speakers will be intimacy coach Zoë Kors, author of Radical Intimacy: Cultivate the Deeply Connected Relationships You Desire and Deserve, speaking on 6 Questions That Will Get You Instantly Connected to Anyone, and sex educator Dirty Lola, who appeared as a sexpert on Netflix’s The Principles of Pleasure, speaking on The State of Modern Dating. Get tickets here for the Desire Summit.