What Excites Us!

Fictophilia is the experience of romantic or erotic attraction to someone who doesn't exist in your ontological plane, aka “reality”. Could be anyone from a fictional character to a god. And before you say that sounds niche or strange or immature... did you know that heterosexuality was once the diagnosis? 

This episode is rich and deep and we really only skim the surface starting in now going back to the 10th century. Nishita talks about Sufi poetry, ancient Tamil literature, 15th century Telugu devotional poetry that is frankly not what you'd expect, and the much bigger question underneath all of i

Who decides what normal is? Who benefits from that definition? What happens to all the desires and ways of loving that don't fit into what a state can categorize and legislate?

And then Nishita sang, beautifully. This one is heady and amazing and worth coming back to.

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