by Dr. Susan Block.      

The goal is the journey, and we’re on a Journey of the Heart through an increasingly heartless world.

All Aboard the Love Train!  It’s still Valentine time, and Capt’n Max and I have been riding through Tunnels of Love—a little intercourse, orgasmic outercourse and just taking care of each other these days. We’ve also had a few perilous moments. Romance is a wonderful thing; it’s the BEST thing, but it can be hazardous to human beings in the Capitalocene in the grip of the Valentine Megamachine, pressuring you to prove your love and your love-worthiness via your place in the rat race.

That’s why my heart is more into Lupercalia and World Bonobo Day, the Bonobo Way.  On our last FDR, we excavated the Lupercalian origins of Valentine’s Day, the collectively kinky Februa–flogging pagan festival of Pan, the horned and horny God of the Wild who also lends his name to the bonobos whose Latin classification is pan paniscus. There’s a lot of pansensual overlap to the High Holidays of Love.

Here in Bonoboville, we’ve long celebrated the Lupercal, usually with a flogging bacchanal. Better to have your buns beaten consensually on Lupercalia than your heart broken badly on Valentine’s Day…. It’s also better than spending Valentine’s evening sitting across from your dream date at a Valentine-themed restaurant, each of you gazing intently at your phone screens.

No, that’s not Max and me, but I took a photo of a lovely young couple doing just that on a V-Day at Clifton’s. Love in the Cellular Age is more plugged in than turned on.

Though we’re fed up with V-Day commercialism, we do enjoy two sweet and creamy, heart-shaped boxes of chocolates—the classic Valentine treat (and sometime sex substitute) from our sweet “fan, follower and friendly acquaintance,” Dragon Steele.

We chew-chew on the choo-choo, giving out Valentine Sex Tips from the Heart to commenters like candy and wondering… What do incels do on Valentine’s Day? Play video games? Eat candy? Dox women? One incel named Nicholas Cruz shot and killed 17 of his classmates—including a girl who had spurned his advances—in a horrific Valentine’s Day Massacre.

Incels combine a sense of entitlement with a lack of intimacy, absorbing ammosexual “groyper” notions from extreme Rightwing leaders who pretend to care about them, yet mostly just grift them. But what does the Left have to say to the incels besides, “Grow up, stop blaming women for your problems and get off your parents’ couch”? Maybe we should offer something positive, sexy, anti-fascist and fun to this disaffected army of mostly young men—something that also happens to be female-empowering—something like The Bonobo Way.

There are no incels in Bonoboville. No murders either. Bonobo males are laid back because they’re getting laid.

Speaking of bonobos, a friendly sexological bodyworker named Jason Bartholomew Hall calls in from Nottingham, England to tell us about the Bonobo Experience, a real-life gathering of bonobo sapiens coming soon to Spain’s seductively named Valley of Sensations. Sounds sensational and we can’t wait to hear more!

The Bonobo Experience in the Valley of Sensations.

As if one British caller isn’t enough, English Adam calls in with a very British humiliation fetish.  Speaking of which, kudos to Dark Brandon for turning the tables on Republican hecklers at the State of the Union.  I don’t like Joe’s neoliberal war machine, but I like Social Security, and it’s fun to see these screaming MAGAts put in their place by an octogenarian. Good job for an old man, or even a young man. Handling weaponized hate and harassment is never easy.

Regarding harassment, if you’ve been listening lately, you know that’s what Youtube bots accused me of, and I’m still dumbfounded. The newest irony is that I’ve been corresponding with a couple of Googlers who hopefully are human, but who knows? Both have professed sympathy with my plight, and one has confessed that she is “afraid” to tell me the real reason my channel was terminated.

Help! I’m trapped in the Twilight Zone of AI (Artificial Ignorance)!

I’ve been researching “harassment,” and it’s, unfortunately, very real. However, it’s about harming private individuals, not critiquing public figures as we do. It’s about pestering, doxing and bullying people, exposing and mocking their sexual secrets, sometimes literally stalking, beating or killing them, blackmailing them and coercing them into nonconsensual acts, sometimes driving victims to such madness that they feel the only way out is suicide. It’s horrifying, and of course, my YouTube channel has never done anything of the sort. In fact, nothing could be further from the Bonobo Way.

Sure, we are critical of public figures but our critiques, commentary, and reporting are done in the 1^st amendment spirit that is the bedrock of all good journalism.  We do not “harass” anyone; we educate, explore, empower, preach positivity and try to make the world a better place.

My feeling is that YouTube’s “harassment” accusation is a label—a box the bots can check—to serve as a cover for the real reason they terminated me. Maybe it was because of sex education, leftist politics or being flagged by MAGAts. Who knows? They’re “afraid” to tell me.

For more about the harmful stupidity of bots and the heart-shaped beauty of butts, listen to FDR…

And if you didn’t catch me on the premiere of “Sex Before the Internet,” reminiscing about HBO’s “Real Sex,” you can still watch it on Vice TV. I open episode 5 with my “Brothers & Sisters, Lovers & Sinners” pleasure preacher show from Real Sex 25, so don’t miss the beginning!  Later, it shows Max and me on FDR juxtaposed with us in Real Sex 11, broadcasting live from bed to over 100 radio stations around the country 25 years ago .

Yes indeed, these two senior valentines are still working it, still making love through the madness on our Journeys of the Heart.

© Feb. 13,  2023 Susan Block, Ph.D., a.k.a. “Dr. Suzy,” is a world renowned LA sex therapist, author of The Bonobo Way: The Evolution of Peace through Pleasure and horny housewife, occasionally seen on HBO and other channels. For speaking engagements, call 626-461-5950.