Exploring Kink Culture with Max Carey
In this episode I sit down with filmmaker Max Carey, whose recent film, “tOuch Kink” explores Human Sexuality and consensual kink practices. We discuss the evolution of kink culture, the importance of breaking free from societal boxes, and how the ethical guidelines used in BDSM can inform all kinds of romantic relationships beyond kink. Our conversation wanders, like Max’s tour of over 137 countries, through some of his personal story from farm-boy to kinky film director and a range of topics including informed consent, negotiation, outdated social norms and paths to deeper communication and trust in relationships. Max shares more about his film and the impact he hopes it’ll make for relationships. This was a fun conversation!
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Official trailer for tOuch Kink: https://f.io/wjPqn4ma
touchkink.com
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In our commitment accessibility, help make this podcast more accessible to those who are hearing impaired or those who like to read rather than listen to podcasts. The transcription is far from perfect, and in some cases quite amusing. As we grow edited transcripts are on the list in the meantime please enjoy.
Deborah [00:00:09]:
Hello and welcome to the Better Sex Podcast. My name is Deborah Kat and I am your shameless host. The Better Sex podcast is where we have unfiltered conversations about sex and relationships and the many different ways we have sex and do relationships. This show is for people who want to have better sex on their terms. You see, I truly believe that a sexy world creates a happier and a safer world. If you want to do your part in creating a sexy, safe world, please hit subscribe like and comment wherever you get your podcasts. So today we are going to dive into the world of my guest, Max Carey. Max is a first time director based in Montreal. Throughout his life, he's had the privilege of wandering, working and living in 137 countries. Over the past 30 years, he's been collecting experiences along the way. His bold and unapologetic view of life creates the masterpiece that draws on inspiration from diverse cultures of the world. He's happiest when he's questioning and challenging the status quo and believes that growth and progress stem from pushing boundaries and thinking outside of the box. I have to admit that Max is a recent colleague, recent friend, and I'm really looking forward to diving in and getting to know him better. And so, on that note, I'd love to ask you, Max, how did you get here?
Max [00:01:58]:
How did I get here? Boy, that's a loaded question. Well, I was a poor boy on a farm. No, let's try and get it down to maybe the film. The life story, I think would take up way too long. A few years ago, I had the interesting experience of sitting down with a dominatrix. I consider myself a dominant man, a fairly conventional man, but a very open minded man. And I'd never met a professional dominatrix before and let alone sat down with one and had a two or three hour conversation. And her stories and her life just so intrigued me. And it really answered a lot of questions that I'd always had about trying to get some sense of some unifying field theory for human sexuality or human thing, something that kind of would bring it all together somehow. And she sure gave me inspiration for some of that. And it got to the point, which is we should make a film. And I'm like, well, I have worked in film and television my whole life, but more as a post production person, what's called below the line, the technical guy. I'm not the guy that designs the house. I'm the guy that built the house. I'm not the guy that paints it. I'm the guy that might be actually might be the guy that paints the house, but definitely didn't design it. So, I mean, it always intrigued me to be a director and to be a producer, but it's a really insanely tough world and requires lots and lots of money to make a project which is why I was happy just being paid as opposed to trying to find that she actually was quite interested in financing it herself. But I also learned that she had had bipolar issues and I realized that when she's up, she might be more up interested when she's down. So I decided to sort of politely decline. But I love the idea. I really love the idea. But then it was back to, well, where do you find the money to do this? And his fate would have a Kinky dating app, of all things. Wanted to hire me to do some production work and some brand ambassador work. And I wasn't particularly interested, to be honest. But I said to them, look, if you want to finance this documentary, I'll happily enter the Kink community on your behalf with a very, very honest approach. Like here, they're helping me make this movie. Please sign up to their app. And I felt authentic with that and honest with that. And to my surprise, they actually agreed. So they gave me a lot of money to sort of wander the world and go to events and to make this documentary. And I honestly told people exactly what I just said and got 1.6 million people to try their app. Unfortunately, it wasn't that good an app and it doesn't exist. But it was a very big success for me, of course, because I got to make this movie and the King community was very receptive to an honest approach. And from that I met more people and and I kept kind of trying to come back to this sort of unified field theory, this sort of one kind of concept that could kind of explain it all. And I think I kind of got close to it, I hope. Has that too long.
Deborah [00:05:20]:
That's great. Yes. So we are diving into more of this idea and what you found when you created your documentary. And I guess one of the questions I'd like to ask is what surprised you as you were moving through and learning and creating the documentary? What surprised you?
Max [00:05:49]:
The things that would surprised me was when I caught myself having preconceived ideas. Because for the most part, I don't have them. I guess I probably had them when I was a teenager. But I was lucky enough to start wandering and very early in the moment I saw that in Belgium they do it differently. In Africa they do it differently. Then you started realizing that everybody just does things differently. And I became increasingly more open minded to the fact that it could be perfectly legal in one place and perfectly illegal and immoral in another place. And it wasn't really about the nature of the things that was more to do with culture. So, I mean, I've always been extremely open minded, but one or two times I came across people where I felt myself kind of judgy as well. And it surprised me actually that, but then I would see them, and I would often see the culture from a different lens, perhaps. Let me give an example. I had never been to a gay leather event and kind of had the cliche of it being kind of like the Village People and whatever else. I had no problem, but I just weren't honestly people but thought I really that interested in hanging out with, to be honest. Nothing, no judgment. But I just couldn't I saw them as largely hedonistic, and it's just like if I was into guys, I'd probably be shagging ten a day, and sometimes I wish I was actually gay. I'd take a pill if that existed, because it seems very practical to be bi, at least. And I went to the event and I walked in and sure enough, I mean, they all looked exactly the chaps and the caps and the vests and all exactly what you would expect. And then the national anthem comes on and they all you could hear pin drop in the room. And then it was a leather pride event for Washington State, if I remember correctly, and there was Canadians there, so they played the Canadian or they played the American anthem pin drop. They played the Canadian anthem pin drop. And there was something in the air that I couldn't figure out why this was like so many events. They play the anthem and you're like, Where's my beer? There was a real solemnness to it. And I found that really intriguing. So I started asking, and I found out that over 80, 90% of these men served, they had actually been in the military, they had actually risked their lives to protect. I've never done that. I've never risked getting shot. So these men I don't know why I didn't see that before or think about that before, but the fact that these men earned this right, they risked their lives, that there was a huge cross section that were military men. Whether you believe in any particular conflict, you can always separate that from the soldiers. They're honorable people that are honorably defending whatever they do. And it actually brings tears my eyes even to think about it's. Just like I just saw them in such a different light from that point that these yeah, maybe they are crazy hedonists, but they're often more patriotic and more sincere in defending the freedom than your average guy like me that just has had the privilege of wandering here and wandering there. I understand it from an intellectual point of view, but I've never really risked my life to defend it, and they have. And from that point on, I realized, god, I really have to see that, realize something from that. So that was one of the shocks now with shocks, just surprise, catching myself thinking in a certain cliche and then realizing just how wrong I was and seeing these men very differently. And I'm proud to say, I happily have quite a few that are friends now, will have beers. And it's like I really love them as people, as really dedicated people that feel strongly about the freedoms that they live. So that was one wow.
Deborah [00:09:55]:
I wasn't quite expecting that. But yeah, that makes a lot of sense that we have preconceived notions about who people are and then when we take a moment and actually step into the into their worlds, we get an opportunity to see or to learn something different about them. And there's so many different stories I can make up about why or what that's about, but just the fact that to step back and to be able to see the bigger picture of who somebody is outside of their kink identity and I think that's a really interesting piece. I know that when I was growing up and learning about kink and everything else, I should say I came from San Francisco, so I had the privilege of getting to see a lot of alternative things growing up that I didn't really realize were alternative until I got out of that ecosystem, if you will. It's interesting. I'm wondering what you found in your movie about identity and how people interact with Kink as an identity or how they are surprised that that actually doesn't fit their identity.
Max [00:11:25]:
Yeah, let's be honest, words are always inadequate. I mean, you can't eat the word food. Food is just a label. You try and eat food, the word food, that's food. We can eat food. We know what food is. We call it food. But there's a difference between words and things. So I may get a few words that people will want to trigger on because they'll take one word. And people seem to be in this world right now where they've defended their turf to a certain point. There are certain hot buttons that you talk about gender, for example, and or identity or agency and these kinds of words that academics use to sort of describe different aspects of people and different people will focus on those different things. So sometimes I get myself into trouble because I try and oversimplify. I see it a little differently and I understand and I respect all genders and all identities. I truly, truly do. But sometimes I wonder if they're missing the point. Are we going from a world that had two boxes and now we're going to a world that has ten boxes? Isn't there actually an infinite number of boxes? So it's like people fight tooth and nail to get their thing recognized, which again, I understand and I respect and I truly applaud the efforts that people did. Again, it's like the gay community has fought a lot harder for their piece of the turf than I ever had to. So it's not in any sort of disrespectful way. I appreciate that. But I wonder if we take away biology for a second and we just talk about what we like. You like long hair. You like a masculine form, a feminine form, a tall form, a thick form, a purple form, whatever it is, take the biology out of it and just think about, okay, I snuck into my dad's closet and looked at his Playboys, and from that point, I tend to be liking more of a classic look. I don't actually care if that's on. If a man, biological men, has that look, it makes actually no difference to me. Identify basically as queer. I don't think I'm bisexual. I just like a form. So I think we focus on what we focus on. And that can be for tonight. That could be for this year. This could be for our life. But there's something that draws us. It could be music. I believe music composers almost have a sexual relationship with composing music because how else could you spend your whole life? And when you hear Mozart, for example, you got to think that he loved this. He got turned on by this. This was his lover music. This form he was creating was his lover. And I've actually heard stories that some composers literally will literally orgasm at different points when they really feel it's right. That ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding ding. So what I tend to think of is that there's basically four things that can kind of be a unified field theory for everybody and help you understand everybody, and we can all just get along if we can just put politics for the side for the second. Again, I have all the respect, and I'm always cautious when I enter into this because I know again how people have had to fight tooth and nail for their piece of the turf. And I don't want to negate that. That's valuable, that's historic, and it's really important. But I've always wanted to find the common thing to bring us all back together. And for me, let's put aside the politics and just be honest about what turns us on. I like your hair. Your hair is, like, attractive to me right now. It's like you think we're fluid beings, that we are attracted to different things at different times, and let's just put everything else aside. So that's kind of like I try and do it as four colors. So that's the red. The red is simply what attracted you for today, for tomorrow, forever, or whatever it is. And it can be a man. It could be a woman. It could be playing music, playing sports, whatever. And then the next color for me is green, which is like nature. It's what your identity? Okay, now this is where I'm going to get in trouble, too. It's like identity. It's your nature. It could be people fight over nature. Nurture doesn't even matter. I suppose we have an identity or we have a role. I understand there are different things, but call it what you want. There's something very natural to us. We feel dominant. We feel submissive. We feel dominant with this person, submissive with that person, or vice versa. Maybe we just want to be humiliated. Maybe we want to feel strong. Maybe we want to be nurtured. But we want something. Most of us want to be loved. Most of us want to connect with other people. That's the core thing most of us want. And we have, for whatever reason, through our upbringing have developed a different style for a way we want that I want to do in a dominant way or a submissive way or in a switchy way or in a this way or in a that way. So it's our identity, it's our nature. It can be again, I guess they would say the technical definition between identity and a role would be one is more permanent than the other. But what is permanent? We're impermanent beings anyway. So there's the identity. So it's red. What turns you on, what attracts you, what makes you hot. And it can be orgasmic. A lot of kinky players. There's nothing to do with sex. A lot of kinky people. It's about the next thing I was going to say which I consider blue, which is just sensation. How do you want to feel? What's the emotions? You want to feel happy. You want to feel sad. You want to feel orgasmic. You want to feel turned on. You want to feel alive. What do you want to feel? Do you want to feel seen? You want to feel loved. Just what do you want to feel in that moment? What sensation do you want to have? And then the last thing is really just sort of the underpinning of it all. We have to understand that we're all standing on whatever culture we grew up in. So you were lucky enough to be able to have certain experiences in your life that make you more open to things than other people at an earlier age, which is a gift to you. If you grew up in Saudi Arabia, you would probably be a little bit the foundation that this reality of human would be different. So for me, it's just those four things understanding what turns you on, how you want to be or what role or identity you want to have in the moment what you want to feel and just recognize that you're standing on a land. You're standing on a culture, a pinnacle of history that's sort of given you a certain concept called the overton window about how far is too far for you. Obviously, in our culture we're pretty open to hardcore sex, naughty movies. But in Saudi Arabia you could probably get jailed for showing a nipple. So the window, again, is much of the culture. I suppose the window in different cultures is different but there's nothing obviously intrinsically wrong with showing a nipple. But some cultures get more freaked out than other. I mean, America even sometimes gets freaked out by nipples, which blows me away. As long as they're not man nipples. Man nipples are fine. Just female nipples apparently will ruin your mind. But that's just the cultural thing that's got us to this point that we're standing on. We can't dismiss it. We have to try and recognize where it came from and try to understand it. And it goes back to the last thing, which is in the end, we just need to have compassion for each other. So I hope that wasn't too long, but that's my general speech on my.
Deborah [00:19:20]:
Unified yeah, I love that. As I'm hearing you speak, one of the things that I'm thinking about is, for instance, the Kink culture or the BDSM culture that I personally come from came out of San Francisco. It came out from very formal leather. There was a very formal leather community. And there was a way that things were done back in the day before the Internet and cell phones, people found each other by invitation or by looking in the back of newspapers. And the way that somebody came into the community was they were generally introduced, right? So they would generally meet somebody somehow. Maybe they noticed back in the day when the Hanky code was the way that we found each other, or noticing the jewelry or all of those different symbols and signals would bring someone in and then they had a particular role, if you will, as sort of the newcomer, and they would have a mentor of some sort. And generally if they were interested in being dominant, they would be working with they'd have a mentor and maybe they would come from a submissive point up into the dominance piece. And so that's the culture that I came up in and the culture that we have now is much less formal and it's much more accessible in many ways in terms of you can find classes, you can find courses, you can find books, you can find clubs. And so on one side, it's a very different culture. And then we get to play with, as you were saying, I like the nature piece that you were talking about. What are the pieces that I was and for me, when I hear nature, it's sort of like what are the pieces I was born with? What are the directions that I go in naturally? And then noticing part of and I would say this is probably right next to nature is noticing from that place where is my turn on? You talked about the shape of the feminine shape, which for you came out of the Playboy magazine visual, but somebody else, it could be more like the masculine form or the very butch feminine form. And then also getting into the idea of sensation. And for me, I'm going to split those two really quickly because it's like there's the sensation of the body, like what's hot, what's cold, what's prickly, what's energetic, and where do I feel it? Do I feel it in my heart? Do I feel it in my pussy? Do I feel it in my ear? And then there's also the more emotional side of, like, well, how do I want to feel? And I love what you were saying, because when we play in the world of kink, often we're looking for a feeling, in my opinion. Right? So like you said earlier, do I want to be humiliated? Do I want to be held? I'll expand on that. Do I want to be cherished? Do I want to be worshipped? So we're looking for these different feelings in our play, and so I love just kind of bringing that all into the conversation. And what I'm really hearing in that piece is the fluidity of getting out of the box of this is who I am. And it's funny, I was thinking about this earlier, and I'd love to hear what you have to say about, like, who and how do we create our boxes?
Max [00:23:40]:
I think our boxes are completely arbitrary, and they're created to basically control us, to be honest. I don't want to sound like a conspiracy freak, but from the dawn of time, smart people have tried to figure out how to control the masses, so they've applied different sets of rules in different boxes, okay? You're going to be a worker. You're going to be this. You're going to be that. You're going to be a soldier. I mean, they needed people. Think about it. I mean, you've got an army. You need those guys to go kill the guys on the other side of the field for no particularly good reason. So you better give them one. Oh, because our God is the right God, or our cause is the right cause. Well, guess what? So does the other side. That's exactly what they're thinking. So they make shit up to put us in boxes to control us because they need us to fight wars. This is, I think, why a lot of the pushback for diversity comes from is that I think I wish I could find the report. You might have seen it. There's a direct correlation between sexual satisfaction and having impotency in terms of military forces. Almost all the military forces in the world that are efficient are sexually repressed for the most part. In the past. You look at countries, the more sort of sexually or liberated a country is and think of, like, France or Italy, no offense to my French, or in Italy, French have a better military, but, I mean, they're not known for modern times. They're not known for conquest, let's put it that way. Okay? And I apologize to my French and Italian friends, love, but it just seems I honestly look at it as a compliment this way. You guys are so open minded. You're so, like, into your bodies and so into enjoying this beautiful thing called life, you're less inclined to go shoot people, which I think is a really good thing. Whereas if you're more repressed and you live in a nation where people freak out because somebody has a nip slip at the Super Bowl, your soldiers are going to be a little bit more ready. Some maybe find their freedom in various ways and I'm not saying this is all the case, but I do think this hate the fact this sounds like such a conspiracy I don't think it was a conspiracy. I don't think there's any like, cabal kind of organizing the world. But I do believe that this was religions does the same thing. How do we make you do what we want? Let's make you feel guilty about masturbating really? I don't really think God would have any issue with anyone. Why? Someone please explain that one to me. I grew up Catholic. I'm like, I really got to apologize for this and do my helmet. I mean, it doesn't make sense, but it does make sense if you see it as a way to control people. So there's where the box is they wanted to even it's been talked about how mathematics we all do mathematics in school. They don't really need to do mathematics anymore. That was came out of the Victorian industrial Revolution where we needed to build factory workers. We don't really need everyone to be a factory worker anymore. The vast majority of people don't need to do mathematics anymore because they're never going to be working in a factory and even if they were working in a factory, they still won't need it. What we need to teach people is, and this is coming up beautifully in the world right now, I think is creativity, diversity, problem solving. And the reason I believe, and again, sounds like a bit of a conspiracy, but a reason why I think the powers that be are getting more and more comfortable with pride and people showing their diversity is, I think they've started to figure out that the next war or the next big conflict, and sadly, there's going to be one. It's just human nature, unfortunately, is going to be won by the nation that's the most creative because the days of your soldiers and my soldiers, that's not going to be what the next one is going to be about. It's about creativity. It's going to be about thinking outside of the box. You may or may not know. I think most people do know probably if there's one human being that won the World War II, was more responsible for World War Two ending early and the Allies winning was Alan Turing, a gay man who could not be gay. In fact, when he came out in 1940, 719, 48, he still was his name was still a secret at the time. He was chemically castrated for being gay in 1948 and later took his own life. This man basically saved millions of lives, helped the Allies win the war. I don't think anyone would argue who's looked at the numbers, that anybody helped more than he. Any one man did more to end the war than this person. What was his reward? Chemical castration and suicide. Where did his ideas came from? Probably came from being a very creative, open minded person that probably was against all. ODS decided to follow his heart and love men, which at the time would have been incredibly difficult thing to do. So I'm thinking now maybe they've started to realize that those brilliant minds that want to be queer or want to be gay or want to be this or want to whatever they want, those are brilliant treasures that nature has given us. And those are the people that come up with ideas that will build the future and may actually save us in future conflicts, may solve global warming, and that we should stop trying to make everybody the same because that's not going to work anymore and we should encourage diversity. So I'm thinking maybe there's a slight understanding of that going on in the intellectual world and the control world, which is why there seems to be more and more of an openness across the world to this sort of thing. So I actually see it as a global imperative that countries really need to encourage, educate and encourage people to be their most authentic self. Because Kel Suprese, they're going to be more creative, they're going to be happier, they're going to give more to society, and they may very much may actually end up saving our asses.
Deborah [00:29:33]:
Wow. Well, that's a direction I wasn't quite expecting. And I want to ask you more about sexuality and creativity, but I'm going to do that in a minute because I want to take a break to share a bit about how the Better Sex podcast is supported. I think you can figure out that I am deeply, deeply caring about sexuality. And I love what you were saying about the more sexuality and creativity we have, the better world we have, because honestly, our culture sells us everything from beer to banking on sexuality, and yet it's all in a box, like one size fits all. So besides hosting this podcast, I'm a sex and relationship coach, helping people navigate the edgy subjects of love, sex and relationship and doing it on their terms. And one way I do this is by hosting the Better Sex Membership. This is an online group that combines master classes to improve communication, morning mindfulness practices, and Q and A calls so you can get your sexy and perhaps embarrassing questions answered. And do it in a group form so that you know that you're not alone. All of this so that you can create a relationship infused with pleasure, depth and play. The podcast is a great first step in exploring what's possible, and the membership is the support. You need to turn these ideas into embodied knowledge. So if you're listening to the podcast and wondering what your next step is, please check out the Better Sex membership link in the show notes. So let's get back to it. Sexuality and creativity. Now, part of your creativity is this movie that you've created. And I really want to come back to learning more about the movie and what it is that you found. And more importantly, what is it that you want people to get out of the movie.
Max [00:31:40]:
The most important, and I think it's the one thing that I do quite directly in the movie, I play with my theories literally using color mixing and stuff like that. But I understand that's a little bit more abstract and I understand that a lot of the people that will see my movie maybe very new to this world. So I simply wanted to go through a big part of it, is just dedicated to why this is okay, why people can do this, why this is not abuse, why this is not necessarily like crazy people. And that was simply to focus on the circle. In the word mark touch, there's a circle that represents a number of things. A circle is a common reference and kink. But it's also for me, the difference between abuse and consensual play is that when we negotiate, when we talk to somebody and explain what we're interested in and we listen to what they're interested, and when we negotiate, we come to some sort of agreement, and then we get consent to do that, whatever we've decided to do, which, of course, could be withdrawn at any point. But you have that consent. And sometimes in kink, no doesn't mean no. Purple might mean no. But there's still a way to stop the scene. You might enjoy a scene that says no. No. But no, no. I mean, I meant, you know, I'll say pineapple if if I really want to say no. You know, just to play whatever role you have. Because sometimes words are sexy even just like pretending you've agreed that you want to pretend to be overpowered or vice versa and you want to like, oh, don't. It's terrible. That's the old joke I love what's like, don't stop, don't stop. Don't stop. Don't stop, don't stop. Once you have consent, you play you do your thing. And then the thing that a lot of people forget is you need to check in with that person at the end. How was that? Did it go too far? Maybe it wasn't didn't go far enough. Let's have a little sort of post game discussion here about how you feel. And sometimes consent can be kicking someone in the ass out the door if that's what they like. And it can be a cuddle, it can be a conversation or not consent aftercare. Aftercare. The last thing is aftercare. That'll look different for different people. But there is some sort of process. I remember a dominatrix interestingly. I had a conversation with one at one point who shared a little tidbit that I thought was interesting is that she'll have clients come in. They're paying a lot of money for her to completely dominate, dominate, dominate, dominate. And hours up or whatever sessions as they're leaving the door, they almost always say something slightly negative to that person. And she would say she'd always let it slide because they need to sort of get back into the ready for the world. They might have gone so submissive. They might have gone feel so bad. But now they know when they cross that door, the real world's out there and they need to somehow get back. It's like, yeah, that was okay or something. Like they would say something a little negative. And a lot of them say they hear they almost all ignore it because they understand what it is for them. That's the aftercare. Yeah, that was okay, or whatever. It's usually like a little dig they find. But obviously they come back again and again. So it's just part of the process for them. That was the aftercare, letting them have the little dig.
Deborah [00:35:10]:
Right? It sounds like the little dig is the stepping back into their position of power, if you will.
Max [00:35:19]:
Well, no, I haven't done that's. A judgment. I don't know. Maybe they're not that powerful. Maybe it was the other way. I don't know what the scene was. It's just taking them from where they were during the hour to where they have to be now. Some people have the joy of being able to be 24/7. Something that's very, very rare. Most people, we have real lives and we can't necessarily be where our puppy play stuff. When we're serving people at the bank, we have to get ready to oh, now we have to stop saying more than woof, woof, woof. I'm a human, okay? Whatever it takes. That's have you get that, get ready with it. Aftercare is to help them do that. It looks like many other things. And that's a beautiful circle, if you think about it. And then, of course, you can start again, the circle again where abuse is more I just do what I want and goodbye. It's like a line. Because the activities, a kink activity could look like abuse. I get that's why people have this idea. Well, what do you mean? This guy did this to your ass and your ass is purple and red and you're bleeding and all the rest of it. I mean, how could you like that? And it looks like abuse, there's no question. And they have to understand that if it was done properly, where there was negotiation, consent, play and aftercare, it's great. Now, if one of those things was missing, I'm not a fan. That is abuse. So for me, that was the biggest thing in the movie is to sort of get past what people do and the bruises or the rope marks or the whatever, and think about it less in terms of the activity to create a sensation, but think of it more, was it done in an ethical, compassionate way? So for me, the movie is just sort of trying to burn in people's minds that, you know what, you can do anything you want to do. You can be anyone you want to be. You can feel anyway, as long as you follow these simple rules of talking it out, getting consent, playing, and taking care of that person afterwards. Do that and god speed, my son, have fun. Don't do that. You're an asshole. That was the biggest message for the film. For me, it's just to make that clear, because I think there's a lot of people right now say a lot of people, they're just confused, like, oh, that person looks so funny, or that activity seems so wrong. It's like, how am I supposed to interact with a woman? How am I supposed to interact with a men? What are the rules? I mean, there's a book, I think, called the Rules because people are desperately want rules. They desperately want guidelines, and it's hard for people to there are no rules other than just don't be an asshole, and here's how not to be an asshole. And that's really kind of the core thing behind the film, is that you can still spank a girl in the ass if she agrees and you agree and you want to do that and there's consent, and you're going to take care of that person. You can do all of those things they did in the 60s that half of them are going to jail for now. You can still do those things. You just have to make sure you have consent. You have to make sure you negotiated these things. You take care of that person. It's not the activity that was wrong. It was doing it against someone's will or doing it without them. That was what was wrong.
Deborah [00:38:31]:
So I'm going to pause you right there, because I think that really needs to be underlined exclamation point. And basically what I heard you say is it's not the activity. Well, it's not even the intention so much, but it's like, is there consent? Is the context agreeable to both folks? Is that accurate? Did I get that right?
Max [00:38:59]:
Yeah, I mean, if you want to distill it down and people say consent, consent, consent, and then more consent, and if that's all they remember, that's a good start. I think if you're going to get into the heavier things that people do, the stuff that's a little bit more edgy. I've seen people do some pretty edgy things. I think there has to be informed consent, which can only come through negotiation, because some people may say yes to something not necessarily really understanding the full implications of it. It's having clear consent but more than that, if you're especially going to do things that are heavier, you really need informed consent. You really need to talk it through. You really need to explain what's going to happen, the ins and outs of it. Do that and you're all good? Yes.
Deborah [00:39:46]:
Okay, great. And just to be super clear, when you're using the word consent, you are using like the word that keeps coming up for me is agreement. Or that you are because I think sometimes we use the word consent, but we don't always have the same meanings. I'm just going to dig a little bit deeper and ask you when you use the word consent, what you are specifically saying.
Max [00:40:14]:
Sure, when I use the word consent, I'm talking about the concept of informed consent or agreement is good too, but basically you're fully disclosed everything to the best of your knowledge. You've agreed to do whatever activity there's some way that that consent can be withdrawn. You play that activity and you take care of the person that you played with or people that you played with afterwards. One word, it's just yeah, informed consent or compassionate consent is another way I've heard it described. I mean, that big sort of mountain we all stand on, I like to call the culture we're from. It looks different depending on where you're standing, the words or the intentions. Maybe if one word works for you, that's great, but it's basically for me, it's consent. Consent. And that takes care of a lot too, because you can't give consent if someone's not of the age of majority, they can't give consent. If they're not compass mentors, it's a legally defined thing. Just because someone's of an age, maybe they're not mentally capable of giving consent, well, you shouldn't be playing with them then. I wouldn't. I mean, I suppose you could have a whole argument about what it means to be mentally competent, but I would play on the safe side of that one.
Deborah [00:41:36]:
Beautiful. So what a great conversation. Thank you so much, Max. I'm delighted. I didn't quite know where we were going to go, but I do want to bring it back to so if somebody's listening to our conversation and what would be the one thing that you would want them to walk away with?
Max [00:42:05]:
Informed consent is the difference between what we do as compassionate human beings and that's it. Informed consent. That's what it takes to be a compassionate human being. And it doesn't even mean you're a nice human being. Maybe your whole thing is to be mean, but if there's compassionate, or rather there's informed consent, great. I've always loved the term compassion because in Buddhist terms at least, it doesn't necessarily mean you love someone you can be compassionate for someone you loathe. Actually, it's more of a connection. There's something about it. You recognize this other human. Well, they'll take even far that there is actually no meaningful difference between the two people, but that's a whole other ballgame. But compassion always rang true to me as well. But in the end, it's just do what you want to do in life, just make sure you have informed consent and don't have any shame. Most of the shame, 99% of things people feel shameful about is ridiculous. And there is healthy shame. There are one or two things, extreme things that we should have shame about, but being walking naked down the street, we shouldn't feel shame about our bodies. We shouldn't feel shame about whether we're attracted to men or women or whatever. We shouldn't feel shame for things just because we're different. We should only feel shame for things that hurt people.
Deborah [00:43:34]:
Beautiful. So how can people see your movie? How can people help get your movie out into the world and get your message and your mission out into the world? And is there anything else you want to say about the movie?
Max [00:43:54]:
Well, the movie is called Touch Kink, so if you Google Touch Kink or you use the hashtag Touch Kink, you'll find lots of sort of messaging out there and different times will be broadcast on different places and shown in different film festivals and stuff. Basically what we've been talking about is really sort of the message of the movie anyway about consent. And hopefully there's a lot of lovely people that were very open about their love and their trials and tribulations around Kink. So I think it will people that I've shown it to that are vanilla find it fascinating. They're all like, wow, I didn't really understand. I mean, there's so many misconceptions. Like, is Kink always about sex? Well, for some people, yes, for other people, no. And sometimes yes. And actually, what do you mean by sex? People are just so into sex, being hide the salami, they forget there's all sorts of other fun things we can do. So, yeah, that's about the film is, and I hope people enjoy it. And I hope that answered. I went through it. I mean, I thought I knew a lot and I learned a lot. So I'm hoping that there's something there for everybody. And Touch Kink, please sign up with my newsletter, download it legally when you can, or watch it in a movie theater or whatever. Touch Kink. Yeah.
Deborah [00:45:23]:
Beautiful. And so the best way for people.
Max [00:45:26]:
To get a hold of you is touchkink.com.
Deborah [00:45:31]:
Okay? And that's touchkink.com.
Max [00:45:37]:
Correct.
Deborah [00:45:38]:
Awesome. Beautiful. And so again, all of these things will be in the show Notes. And I just want to thank my guest, Max Carey, creator of Touch Kink, a movie about Kink and love and fun and sex and getting out of your box. Please follow him on social media, check out his information, which will be in the show Notes. And if you want to help bring more love and better sex into the world, to help create a better and safer world, please hit like subscribe and comment wherever you get your podcast. Thanks again, Max. So great to have you.
Max [00:46:27]:
Thank you for having me.