Episode #2
You Can’t Enjoy Sex When You’re At War With Your Body | Emma Louise Boynton
How do you find pleasure in a body you've spent years at war with? This week I'm joined by Emma Louise Boynton, writer, founder of Sex Talks and author of Pleasure . Emma spent her adolescence in the grip of an eating disorder and her twenties convinced she was broken, certain everyone else had an ease with intimacy she'd been left out of. What shifted it wasn't years of unpicking her childhood. It was a sex therapist asking what her relationship was like to her body. This is also the first episode of our rebrand, and I couldn't have asked for a better conversation to start with. I recognized so much of myself in this: the competitiveness, the performing, the loneliness underneath it all that I only really named years later. Emma talks about every bit of it without flinching and without tidying it into a lesson, and she's very funny about it, which I wasn't expecting. In this episode, you'll learn: - Being the confident, capable one while something else entirely was going on behind the scenes - What an eating disorder costs you: your grades, your friendships, your ability to be reached by anyone trying to help - The cage, and why it's so hard to get out of something you built yourself - Loneliness as the thing sitting underneath it, and how long it can take to see that - Why asking what an illness is giving you is more useful than asking where it came from - The sex education we were both handed, and the word that was never once mentioned - Why consent starts with knowing your own body's yes and no - Performativity, and why performing a version of yourself in sex felt so familiar - Emma's case for lifelong sex education, and porn literacy for a generation already seeing it - Bonnie Blue, the "contentification" of everything, and why Emma won't demonise sex workers while criticising the culture that rewards extremity - The line from her sex therapist that shifted something: "For as long as you're at war with your body, you will struggle to enjoy sexual pleasure" - The pleasure journal, body neutrality over body positivity, and where to begin if intimacy with yourself has never been on your radar Emma-Louise Boynton is a writer and broadcaster, and the creator and host of Sex Talks, the sell-out live event series and podcast she runs at The London Edition, built to open up honest conversations about sex, gender and the future of intimacy. She previously worked as a producer for the BBC and Sky News in London, and for Tina Brown's Women in the World Summit in New York, and co-founded the creative production agency Her Hustle. Her first book, Pleasure: The Reclamation of My Body , is out now with LEAP. https://www.waterstones.com/book/pleasure/emma-louise-boynton/9781785129711 https://www.bonnierbooks.co.uk/news-and-media/leap-pre-empts-urgent-new-book-on-female-pleasure/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/emmalouiseboynton/ Sex Talks: https://www.emmalouiseboynton.co/sex-talks Substack: https://substack.com/@emmalouiseboynton X: https://x.com/emmalouboynton?lang=en Chapters: Introduction: Eating Disorders Don't All Look Alike (00:00) The Deal She Made, And The Cage It Built (04:33) The Day Something Turned, And The Loneliness Underneath (09:52) Recovery, Restlessness, And A Hypersensitive Mind (14:06) Disconnected From Her Body, And Taught To Fear Sex (18:08) Consent, Keeping Score, And Sex As Performance (22:50) Lifelong Sex Education, Porn Literacy, And Misogyny (28:46) Bonnie Blue, And The Dinner Party That Changed Everything (33:44) Rock Bottom, Then The Line That Changed Everything (39:04) Your Body Is Your Only Home (43:55) Why Sex Therapy Worked When Nothing Else Did (48:36) The Shame Nobody Admits, And Being Shadow Banned (53:54) Less Sex Than Ever, And Where To Start (59:20) One of the most open conversations I've had about bodies, shame and pleasure, and about the relief of discovering that the thing you were sure was uniquely wrong with you is, in fact, extremely common.