A Deep Dive into Muffing: An Intensive for Touch Professionals
Facilitated by Lucie Fielding and West
Sunday May 14th, 2023
10am-5pm
In-person - Victoria
Limited to 12 participants
Location is in downtown victoria. Exact address will be given once registration is completed.
Muffing is a sex act that involves penetrating (“palpating”) the inguinal canals of folks with external gonads.
A number of articles and zines describing the practice and providing useful diagrams to facilitate at-home experimentation have been published since the term was coined by Mira Bellwether in her foundational zine Fucking Trans Women (2010), however, very little training and hands-on workshops on muffing have been offered.
For folks with external gonads and for those who have sex with folks with external gonads, muffing can be a way of queering up sex, circumventing tremendously limiting culturally proscribed/prescribed understandings of the erotic, and opening a potential universe of pleasure steeped in the notion that our bodies are, as one of the workshop’s co-facilitators puts it, “polymorphously perverse playgrounds of wonder.”
Over the course of this 6-hour workshop and intensive designed specifically for touch professionals (e.g., sexological bodyworkers and somatic sex educators, surrogate partner therapists, professional Dominants, erotic touch practitioners, and pelvic floor physical therapists who offer sex counseling or education) participants will experience:
detailed, anatomically-accurate instruction in the practice of muffing,
how to support pleasure and warm up for muffing;
live demos; and
hands-on experience muffing (thanks to the participation of a few lovely “demo bottoms”)
Our intention for this workshop is to offer a fun, intimate space for exploring muffing not solely from a “how-to” lens but an exploration rooted in pleasure-centered, trauma-informed and anti-oppressive practice, within a container that celebrates the splendid complexities of genitals and the nuances of embodied consent.
Workshop Overview
Introductions and embodiment practice - resourcing for play
Exploring gender pleasure
Energy and intention
Choice and voice
Anatomy dive- precision and affirming
Considerations for touch professionals working with trans embodiment - fragility, ethical curiosity
Experiential learning & practice through touch
Harvesting and resourcing
Workshop Fee: please located yourself on this rate scale
The workshop fee is on a sliding scale of $100-300. This includes the presentation, demo, hands-on practice and a light meal.
If you are financially stable with an established practice please consider paying the top end of our sliding scale as this covers the cost for the workshop and our labour as well as helps others with less financial access attend the workshop.
If you are underemployed, financially precarious or face other financial barriers please pay lower on the sliding scale.
The location is wheelchair accessible and the bathroom is on the same level as the workshop space. (Please reach out if you need more info on accessibility of the space) Because of the intimate nature of the event will be making masks optional and we ask that everyone please take a Covid rapid test the morning before the event. We will also have tests on hand please arrive 15 minutes early if you would prefer to use one of ours.
We will have tea, coffee, snacks and a light meal half way through the workshop.
Please reach out if you have any questions: west.bodywork@gmail.com
Lucie Fielding, PhD, MA, LMHCA, Resident in Counseling (she/they) is a queer, non-binary femme, and a therapist practicing in Virginia and Washington. She holds an MA in Counseling Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute (2018) and a PhD in French from Northwestern University (2008), specializing in erotic literature. Their background in literature attunes them to the ways that cultural scripts inscribe themselves on our bodies and inform our embodied erotic lives. In addition to being a therapist, Lucie is a sex educator who has facilitated workshops for a range of organizations, universities, and agencies. They are the author of Trans Sex: Clinical Approaches to Trans Sexualities and Erotic Embodiments (2021), which was awarded an AASECT Book Award in 2022 (Sexuality Professionals Category) and named a finalist for a 2022 Lambda Literary Award (Lammy) in the Transgender-Nonfiction category. You can find out more about Lucie at https://luciefielding.com or follow them on Instagram (@sexbeyondbinaries).
West (they/them) is a Somatic Sex Educator, SWer and artist. They are particularly excited about the way that Somatic work has the potential to strengthen our relationships, make space for us to discern what is no longer working, and to turn towards joyful survival and nurture the world we want to live in.
