July 7, 2020
Sexuality Superheroes: Chris Maxwell Rose
Say hello to Chris Maxwell Rose! Chris is the co-founder of Pleasure Mechanics. They’re dedicated to delivering comprehensive sex education and is here to liberate all bodies! Read their feature below and learn more…
How did you find yourself working in sexuality?
I was a queer kid in the 80’s experiencing multiple forms of harm, looking for answers in the self-help section of the library. It was a direct line from those library shelves, to training as a peer sex educator, to starting a sex magazine in college, to the sex education community of San Francisco, where my sex-education godmother Annie Sprinkle introduced me to the grand-daddy of erotic massage, Joseph Kramer.
With Joseph I trained in the erotic massage lineage, co-developed the Sexological Bodywork training and started connecting my cultural studies with the somatic sex education work we were doing, and that’s when I met Charlotte and fell in love. It was 2006, internet video was just starting to be a thing, and so we founded Pleasure Mechanics to create somatic sex education online resources, accessible by anyone in the world who was ready to experience more pleasure, connection and love. Charlotte and I have been The Pleasure Mechanics ever since!
What is the best part of your job?
It used to be the glow in student’s faces, the unmistakable radiance of erotic pleasure unleashed. Now we work exclusively online so don’t get to see that glow, but we feel it through the amazing emails we receive every day. Our global community trusts us with their most intimate stories and struggles.
What is the most challenging part of the job?
Doing one-on-one sex coaching means you can meet each body with presence and precision. We’re trying to create that intimacy at scale, speaking to and holding the truths of tens of thousands of bodies at once. After 13 years of deeply listening to our global community, who generously share their most intimate struggles and victories with us, we are able to track the patterns and weave the threads of that communal erotic wisdom into all we do. I think that’s why people find our podcast so intimate and our techniques so effective.
Based on your experiences, what is your most important piece of advice that has the potential to revolutionize relationships?
Get off script. The more we can let go of what we “should” be, do or experience, the more freedom we can find for our very specific needs, wants and desires to emerge. We are in a time of massive cultural change, and it is revealing how many of our relationships are harmed by toxic power dynamics and outdated social roles. Our sexuality is ripe with opportunities for letting go of old scripts and seeing how loveable and desirable you are, no performances needed.
What are some good takeaways students will gain from your Foreplay Course?
The key of our Foreplay Mastery course, and a mantra we’ve been teaching for a decade is this: Keep It Warm So It Is Easier To Get Hot. It’s simple, but when you take on “keeping it warm” both as a personal and relationship goal, everything changes. “Keeping It Warm” means building skills around flirting, initiation and building arousal, which we cover in depth, but it also can mean clearing up daily communication, overcoming shame or finding new ways of touching one another.
It’s been our most popular course for years for a reason – so many people want to want more sex, and this course is a banquet of strategies to nourish your ability to get in that erotic zone and connect more often.
What is your favourite course from your Pleasure Mechanics teaching platform and why?
We have courses covering everything from mindful sex to erotic spanking, but honestly my favourite course is still our Couples Massage course. Learning how to touch your lover with skill and confidence is a total game changer in most relationships. Five minutes of foot massage can change your entire night. Back and butt massage is the best foreplay in the world, in my book. But really what you’re learning is a language of love – touch can communicate so much, and a few learnable skills make stiff working hands into the best pleasure tools ever invented. We even include our foot massage tutorial in our free course, because we want everyone to experience the profound pleasure of receiving massage from people they love. Massage is too powerful to only outsource to professionals – we all deserve the care, pampering and ecstasy of quality massage!
What are some of the important topics you talk about on the Speaking of Sex Podcast? Why do you think they’re so important?
With over 370 episodes, we’ve been able to cover everything from slaying shame to expanding orgasm, from basic communication to baby stepping into kink. We speak through a biopsychosocial lens – meaning we consider all of the mind, body, social and even historical contexts of any subject. Sexuality is deliciously and endlessly fascinating!
One of my favourite recent episodes was all about thinking upstream to adjust the attitudes and scripts that create so much sexual struggle. I get so many emails about that episode, and others that make the cultural links between the broad forces of culture and our most intimate experiences of touch, orgasm and love. But I also love doing in-depth explorations of sexual anatomy and spreading the good word about what our bodies are capable of!
Chris Maxwell Rose (they/them) is the founder of PleasureMechanics.com and cohost of Speaking of Sex with The Pleasure Mechanics. Together with partner Charlotte Mia Rose, Chris has dedicated their life to developing community-supported online erotic education. Find all of their resources at PleasureMechanics.com – or jump in by signing up for their free online course here.
