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  • Haley McGee
    • Jun 30, 2021
    • 4 min read

Season 1: Episode 11 - The Cost of Love and Adult Sex Education with Evie Fehilly

Updated: Jul 2, 2021

Sex Educator and award-winning Drag King, Evie Fehilly lets us in on the value of being connected to our own pleasure -- whoever we are and however we identify.


How can negative relationships with sex become centred in joy? Why is asking questions about sex so scary, even for grown ups? What is the value of starting conversations on parts of our life shrouded in shame? And when can we laugh?





Episode Summary

This is the eleventh (!) episode of The Cost of Love with Haley McGee. Welcome.


Haley McGee is a love idiot. She’s also an actor and the author of the forthcoming book, The Ex-Boyfriend Yard Sale. On The Cost of Love Podcast she’s talking to a wide range of experts to try to figure out if the cost of love is worth it.


Each episode features a conversation between Haley and someone in the know, and they dig into that strange juicy place where love and money collide.


This episode is all about the cost of love and adult sex education with Evie Fehilly, a sex educator, clown and sex clown, and all-round queer mega-star. She's also a prolific Drag King and winner of Europe's biggest drag king competition, Man Up (2019).


In part 1 ‘Everyone’s a Love Idiot’ Haley grills Evie with a series of questions that attempt to quantify her romantic history. They cover everything from how many relationships she's been in, to the "hundreds" of times she's fallen in love -- digging into how we can fall in love with friends just as intensely as we do with lovers. We go further into celibacy and sex in healing, the ratio of fun to misery in her most significant relationship and the impact of COVID-19 on those stats.


Then, in part two, ‘Brains Over Braun’, we apply Evie's expertise to the concept of the cost of love. We cover:

  • Evie's job titles, the perils of freelancing, and the difficulty describing the interplay between joe-jobs and passions

  • How she came to work at Sh! and falling into adult sex education

  • Why we can feel so anxious asking questions about sex, what happens when we get them answered, and when we get to answer them

  • Historic abuse, and moving from a negative relationship with sex to a joyful one!

  • Haley and Evie get candid about some of their own shame and what they did to understand it

  • The importance of a holistic view of sex and how it can help us to be more conscious in our relationships

  • How abuse, stigma and shame thrive in secrecy, and the value of breaking taboos and starting conversations

  • Evie answers some of the most common questions she gets asked as a sex educator at Sh! including; why oh why can't I orgasm?

  • The value of language in sex education and why 'foreplay' isn't the most useful term

  • The value of continuing adult education on sex, its relationship to clown, and the freedom that comes with learning how to fail

  • What a Sex Clown is, and why it's better that we're all in it together

  • Evie's drag king character, Louis F.U.C.K. and the way in which making art in the time of #MeToo can provide us with communion and catharsis

  • What Evie would change about school-age sex education if she could, and the organisations already doing the good work

  • The value of counteracting horror stories of STIs and pregnancy with joyful ones of pleasure and play

  • What happens if we're able to realise that sex is for US - whoever we are and however we identify

  • The cost of being disconnected with our own pleasure, and why putting in the time to reconnect is always worth it

  • The enormous scale of the sex toy industry, and the most exciting and shame-busting trends happening at the moment

In part 3, 'Free Hugs' Haley and Evie answer listener questions including recommended pre-sex exercises, if more expensive means "better" when it comes to sex toys, and whether sex is better with a red nose...


Haley wraps up with a note on the value of talking about your shame - however you know how. And doing it again and again. Shame grows in silence, so let's start now.


Although Evie didn't listen to any particular song while going through a break up, she DID binge watch Blackadder. So, we're played out by The Blackadder Theme Tune by Howard Goodall. Click the link to listen to the whole song.


About Evie Fehilly

Evie Fehilly as Louis F.U.C.K

Books & Some of the Other Things Mentioned

Support the Podcast

Use our the following links support our tiny team making The Cost of Love:

  • You can donate directly and buy us a coffee! Use our Ko-Fi link to donate £3 (or more!) to support the work we do putting this podcast together. ❤️☕️

  • Or use this link get your next stationary fix from Paperchase, and however much you spend we get a small kickback that makes a big difference! 💸✏️


Stay in Touch

Follow The Cost of Love on Instagram @thecostof_love, Twitter @thecostof_love and Facebook

Follow Haley McGee on Instagram @yeshaleymcgee, Twitter @yeshaleymcgee and Facebook


Submit a Question about Love & Money

Email costoflovequestion@haleymcgee.ca and give us some context while you're at it! We'll try to answer it on a future episode.


Credits

Writer and Host - Haley McGee

Producer and Editor - Maddie Haynes

Editor - Eva Lunny

Assistant Producer - Eliza Cass

Music and Audio Production - Robert Moutrey

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