Nishita Rao is the founder of Pillow Talk With Nixi, an insurgent platform challenging colonial architectures across sex education, research, therapy, consultation, counselling and publishing.

Her academic background is in Neuroscience and Biotechnology. Her courses and research spans Sexual Sciences, Neuroscience, Anthropology, Molecular Biology, Behavioral Sciences, Political Science, Linguistics, Dance Ethnography, Ethnomusicology, and Paleoclimateology.

She has been extensively trained by the US Veterans Health Administration (VHA) on trauma treatment modalities, End Violence Against Women International (EVAWI) on forensics and criminology, and Equitable Care Certification (ECC) on sex-worker-affirming trauma-informed care.

You can find her at linktr.ee/pillowtalkwithnixi

In this episode:

• What fictophilia actually is and why it's not new

• How heterosexuality was once pathologized

• Sufi poetry and the School of Love (Mazhab-e-Ishq)

• 15th century Telugu erotic devotional poetry

• Amatonormativity and who gets to decide what's normal

• The colonial roots of sexual normativity

• AI relationships and where they fit

• The right to opacity... what you don't have to make visible

• Oral traditions and the history they carry that written history doesn't