Oh! Fuck! with kori & jess (April 2025)

In the tradition of Sue Johanson, Dan Savage, and even Dear Abby, we wish to introduce ourselves as your sex and relationship advice columnists here at Angles. We want to offer our professional insight and support to readers with questions about gender, sex, bodies, relationships and everything else that can get tangled in with all those juicy things. We both work in the field as educators and sex coaches and met while training at the Institute of Somatic Sex Education. More details of our extensive personal experiences will likely come out in our answers to your questions but trust that we are no strangers to things like questioning gender, social and medical transition, coming out, recovery from religious trauma and people-pleasing patterns, polyamory, kink, neurodivergence, disability, pregnancy, parenting, long-distance relationships and more. We opened the channels and got some questions for us to start this column off with. We want to thank the folks who trusted us and shared these vulnerable questions with us.

What can I do when my libido doesn’t easily line up with my sexual ethics?

Thanks for this excellent question to get us started! We want to start off by clarifying some terms. “Libido“ may refer to our drive, interest or desire to be sexual and “sexual ethics“ is a way to refer to a set of guiding beliefs we have about our erotic selves and how we connect with others.

This question could mean so many different things, depending on what someone’s personal ethics are, but we can imagine it might include things like having casual sex when you know that you feel better having sex within a relationship, exploring sex outside of the agreements of your relationship, having sex that you aren’t really into, or feeling like your drive is showing up in a relationship in a way that feels pressuring of your partner(s). These choices involve others and could impact our relationships with very concrete risks, like harming ourselves or others with disregard for STIs or broken trust. Any of these possibilities can potentially stir that sense of discord with one’s values, and can also come with a big heap of shame.

One angle to bring in here is questioning the “sexual ethics“ mentioned in the question. Are they your ethics? Let’s say, for the sake of answering your question, that you have deconstructed your ethics and values and feel clear on that, but your sex drive is leading you in directions that feel outside alignment.

One of our go-to suggestions here is to become a really good lay to your own self. Getting to know your body and what is pleasurable for you is really foundational in building sexual wellness, whether you are exploring sexuality alone, with a partner or a heap of strangers or somewhere in between. And when we know how to fuck ourselves well, it brings the power of having our desires met into our own hands. If this is new to you, we suggest setting regular time aside for what our field calls “Mindful Erotic Practice.“ This ritual practice involves having 30-45 minutes of intentional time to follow pleasure in your body. It begins with setting an intention that supports the ritual. An intention can be something like remembering to breathe while building erotic energy, playing with rope to see what you notice, or trying out a new sex toy. While in the practice, let pleasure be your guide, and ask yourself the question, “What could make this more pleasurable?“ As the ritual time comes to an end, take some time and space to savour or integrate things that you noticed. Returning to this practice regularly can be a way of doing self-care, but can also give an extraordinary amount of information about your body and what feels good to you.

If you are having trouble making choices that feel safe for yourself or your partners, we recommend seeking some help, as there may be some other pieces of trauma, self-sabotage, or other mental wellness things that could use more personalized support.

I used to be a gay guy in an open relationship, but now that I’m an enby and taking estrogen I’m way less interested in hookups and way more in connected playmates. The problem is that going from open to poly is a big adjustment for my partner of many years. Any advice to stick the landing on this kind of transition, or adjusting if it’s not something my partner can do?

Well, first off, asking for advice is a great start. It’s normal to need help “sticking the landing“ in a situation like yours where there are a lot of moving pieces. We would suggest starting with getting clear about current expectations because your relationship is changing shape along with your body and gender. It may mean re-establishing the terms or agreements of your relationship again, after years of being together. Making sure you are on the same page may involve (re)defining your terms: It’s important to get clear about what you both mean when you talk about sex, play, partnership, etc. As neurodivergent sex educators, we love specifics and specifics are helpful to make sure you are communicating about the same thing. For example, when you say you are more interested in connected playmates we get curious about what means.

Questions to ask yourselves: What is included (fucking, domestic life, family) in your relationship? What are you seeking in connections outside your relationship? What are the things you both still value about your connection regardless of what form it’s in? What comes with the style/ shape/version of open/polyamory that feels best for each of you? It makes me think of this chart:

If it turns out that what you and your partner each want and need doesn’t seem to be a shape of “staying together“ through the landing, then being real about that sooner rather than later is a gift to both of you. Trying to stay together when it’s clear that a relationship has run its course can often include a lot of unnecessary heartache. Some folks find that they can stay friends with past partners, which often takes a bit of time and some emotional work on everyone’s part.

It’s a very common experience that starting HRT can change your relationship with your body, sex, desire and how you want to be in a relationship. I (Kori) have been on and off HRT for 15 years and have watched my orientation and desire go through some really drastic changes. I have seen similar rollercoasters for folks on every side and direction of transition. You and your partner may find value in connecting with peers who are that experiencing similar changes. The peer support networks of trans communities have been pivotal to how we have navigated these things for a very long time; with the internet, that may be in your pocket already, or you may find that hitting up an in-person group like the ones at QMUNITY offer you space for some of these vulnerable hard pieces to find witness, reflection and solidarity.

Kris (he/him): Top, bottom, vers, sides. How do you figure this out when dating without it being weird? The apps designed for straight people don’t accommodate for this, and I don’t wanna be like, “Hey are you a bottom? Oh, you’re not? Bye!“

So to start, we will admit that this was the first time we came across the label “sides,“ and want to take a moment to define it for others who may also have missed the memo on this relatively new sexual identity term. When we looked it up we found an article the Guardian published in 2022 that gave some credit to Dr. Joe Kort for popularizing the term, which refers to guys who are primarily interested in sex other than anal penetration. While the term may be relatively new, or niche, the practice, which some might call “outercourse“ is neither. Non-penetrative sex is something that folks of all genders and orientations can get into, onto, under or beside.

The apps designed for cruising and hookups follow a long-standing tradition to speed communication. Similar to the hanky code, which way you are facing on a bed in the bathhouse, or which side your keys hang on, these are all ways that queers looking to hook up have used a non-verbal tool to communicate the tops and bottoms distinction. The cruising apps have further added tools that can allow us to identify as vers or side or a whole passel of other coded signifiers that give our potential hookups information that takes the place of a verbal conversation. Apps that are more about facilitating ’dating relationships’ (some of them are more straight, and others are inclusive) leave this information out, as they are not as rooted in the “fewer words, more fucking’“ tradition of cruising.

It sounds like you are looking for a bottom and maybe asking for what you want feels uncomfortable or unsettling for you. What if we think about it as flagging with words? An example could be, “Playful top seeking bottom for impact and humiliation,“ or “Hi, I’m Kris. I love playing with ___ and am looking for a bottom or bottoms for regular fucks and Thai food.“ This is where you get to practice asking for what you want and seeing who is interested in your particular hanky. What is important to move toward is being able to ask for what you truly want, which can take time and experimentation to figure out. There is a lot of power in voicing our desires and when we can do that as clearly as possible, we are more likely to receive what we are asking for or find a sweet middle ground that’s pleasurable to all parties involved. The corresponding piece to that is about how we show up for another’s ask fully, with our whole honest self; what activities or dynamics do you feel honestly down for? Good sex is what happens when we respect ourselves and our partners enough to get to be in integrity with our desires. On and beyond what we post to our dating app profiles, the more practice we get, the easier it can become.

Another angle to look at this may also braid into some of the advice we gave in the last question. What is “dating“ for you? Are you seeking a long-term relationship? Is monogamy a part of how that looks to you? If so, prioritizing sexual compatibility might make sense. If dating is about having a diverse collection of relationships that span the spectrum of friends to lovers, then you may miss out on some fun connections if you pay too much attention to who wants to stick what where. As you come across folks that for whatever reason are not a match for what you are looking for, a simple, “It’s been nice chatting with you, but I am looking for something different,“ is a kind way to say no thanks.

You can find us and more of our work by looking us up online:

Jess DeVries (she/ her) / Beloved Coaching www.belovedcoaching.net

Kori Doty (they/ them) / Soft Touch Bodies www.koridoty.com