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.
Watch our interview below with Residence 11 Editor-in-Chief Rachel Kramer Bussel with Moushumi Ghose where they discuss Moushumi’s journey into her career as sex therapist, how she supports couples in their sexual exploration together, what questions should be asked when looking for sex therapists and how to get the most out of it and much more. Ghose is one of the many talented speakers at the upcoming Residence 11 Desire Summit, where she will be speaking on the topic of how to incorporate kink into your relationship. Watch our full interview below.
Moushumi Ghose is the author of several books on sex and relationships, including the award-winning book Classic Sex Positions Reinvented, and the creator of media entities including The Sex Talk Series on YouTube, and the award-winning documentary film series, Temples and Brothels. In addition to that, Ghose has also served as an adjunct faculty member at Alliant International University, California School of Professional Psychology, and Pacific Oaks College both in Los Angeles County, CA. She has been an advocate for healthy sexuality for more than three decades and runs her practice in L.A., be sure to read more about her practice at Los Angeles Sex Therapy. You can also read an excerpt from her book, Love is Not a Pie: How to Love in Every Relationship at Residence 11.
Moushumi Ghose has been a featured contributor in various publications and has appeared on multiple media outlets including Mens Fitness, Huffington Post, Elite Daily, Oprah Magazine, Hustler, Vice, Elle Magazine, Refinery 29, Playboy TV, Investigation Discoveries, Oxygen Network, Hollywood Entertainment Today, CBS and many more.
On what readers might gain from her book, Love is Not a Pie, How to Love in Every Relationship :
“The book is, it’s really about being able to, I think, love authentically… I noticed in when people are trying to open up or people are trying to explore new avenues and their relationship around intimacy is that they get tripped up around what others are gonna think or what they’re supposed to do…
I think the book is really about how to be a good friend. How to be a good friend to the people that you’re intimate with. Because really, at the end of the day, if we treated the people that were intimately involved with, like our best friends in the world, we might say ‘here, go out into the world and have an amazing life, we want you to, enjoy everything and eat all the fruits and have all the cake’ but so many times we don’t do that, because we’re coming from, an ego place, a place where we’re afraid.”
On what the term “kink” means to her:
“…so it’s more about kink as an umbrella. And, you know, I think when people hear the word kink, they assume it’s like whips and chains and you get tied up and, you get blindfolded and all that. To me, that’s really no part of it, that’s an aspect of it. But to me, kink is really anything that you have a proclivity towards, that is not normative.
When I came out in 19, in 1988, being bisexual was considered kinky. That’s not how people look at bisexuality today because it’s a little bit more common and visible, but really anything that’s not visible is your kink, essentially. And anything that you don’t feel comfortable sharing with the public is potentially a kink.
And when we talk about the kink lifestyle, a lot of it is BDSM and I’m going to demystify and define what BDSM is. So, you know, BDSM, bondage discipline, sadomasochism, a lot of people think, again, it has to involve physical restraint. But it can also be psychological. In fact, a lot of like professional dommes, for example, work completely psychologically, and sometimes don’t even touch their partners or their clients.”
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.